| 1 | %%% |
| 2 | %% |
| 3 | %% This page has been alphabetized. Please add new examples in the correct order. Thanks! |
| 4 | %% |
| 5 | %%% |
| 6 | |
| 7 | ---- |
| 8 | * The entire series of ''Manga/SevenSeeds''. |
| 9 | ** It starts off by some of the protagonists waking up to a ship they are on sinking, then learn that they are in the future after [[TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt meteorites impacted upon Earth]] and, not believing this story, head off on their own to see ruins of their hometowns. ''Then'' we even get some flashback chapters that show or describe the world before the impact, and even that one isn't sunshine and rainbows, with natural disasters like earthquakes and floods being an almost daily occurrence. And even shelters, made to keep some of the people save, don't do all that much better. |
| 10 | ** The Team Winter chapters are one for Aramaki [[spoiler: who is the sole survivor]]. Team Winter is already reduced in numbers from eight to five people, due to the cryo-capsules having malfunctioned on three members, leaving them as mummified corpses by the time the rest of the team awakens. Trying to make the best out of the situation, the rest want to continue surviving, but then a primordal saber-tooth tiger gets too close and kills two more members, including the guide, leaving Aramaki, Fubuki and Mitsuru the last ones. Things seem to work out, they manage to live on for some time, [[spoiler: but when the tiger returns to finish them off, Fubuki gets killed and Mitsuru, stricken with grief, [[SnowMeansDeath dances in the snow]] and freezes to death, leaving Aramaki alone]]. And despite there being the hope spot of [[spoiler: Fubuki having survived, being merely injured, turns out to be worse. Aramaki was desperate for company, so he imagined a dog that had grown accustomed to him as Fubuki. The dog ends up injured and dies, just as Aramaki has found a Fuji shelter]]. Aramaki does manage to find company in two puppies that he raises and travels with, but the events have given him severe SurvivorsGuilt. [[DissonantSerenity Even if it can be difficult to tell at times]]. |
| 11 | ** Then you have the entire candidacy for Team Summer A. These are kids who are raised in an institution, knowing of the meteorites to come and are being raised for survival in a post-apocalyptic world and are in constant rivalry to be chosen for Team Summer A. Things get worse when [[spoiler:Ango (and Ryo) find out that "dropping out" means getting killed, that their Final Test to determine who will be chosen involves ''killing'' everyone except the last remaining seven ''and then'' there is the Final Test itself. Students get killed by guns exploding due to backfiring from poor maintenance, being buried alive under rock, getting maimed by animals, being half-crushed under rocks and slowly dying...]] It's not a surprise that the members of Team Summer A are a bit...[[AxCrazy unhinged]] at times. |
| 12 | * Itona Horibe of ''Manga/AssassinationClassroom'' was [[spoiler:abandoned by his parents when their company failed, bullied and beaten up at school, sent off to live with his uncle and ran away to live on the streets, picked up by Shiro and put through painful experimentation, made to fight Korosensei three times, lost all three, was abandoned by Shiro when his implants backfired, and spent days in agony from implant rejection.]] Even though he's introduced as a rival, by the end of all that you just want to hug him. |
| 13 | * ''Manga/AttackOnTitan'' does this to humanity as a whole, via their nightmarish circumstances. |
| 14 | ** The protagonist Eren Yeager has had a life of nothing but hell. He [[spoiler:saved Mikasa from kidnappers at the age of 9 by ''killing them'', watched as his mother was eaten by a Titan, saw countless numbers of friends and comrades murdered, was unwillingly turned into a Titan shifter by his father and entrusted with the fate of humanity (something he doesn't find out about until much later), almost gets eaten by a Titan ''himself'', has to fight people he once considered his friends, he's been kidnapped at least twice, been put through extreme training to master his Titan abilities, almost lost his best friend Armin, has had to relive his father's memories of torture and betrayal, has been accused of being an enemy to humanity more than once by different factions, and lately has discovered that Titan shifters like himself only have a 13-year lifespan once they inherit their powers... and that's just the tip of the iceberg]]. [[spoiler: Eren then broke his friendship with Mikasa and Armin in order to maintain the StableTimeLoop he inherited when he inherited the Attack Titan, witnessed first-hand the tragic creation of the First Titan, unleashed all Wall Titans on rest of the world as a result, and is killed by Mikasa, at which point [[ZeroApprovalGambit he revealed he did everything]] so that his friends will be seen as true heroic Eldians and pave the path for true peace.]] |
| 15 | ** Mikasa Ackerman [[spoiler:witnessed her parents being killed when she was a child and was kidnapped by slave traders. Thankfully Eren rescued her, but she ended up having to kill one of them herself. After being adopted by the Yeager family, she also saw Eren's mother be eaten by a Titan, and thought that Eren was dead during the battle of Trost. She's also had to kill other humans in self defence. Also, her two best friends are Titan shifters, which means they'll die long before her]]. Then, [[spoiler: Eren makes her an accessory in the invasion of Liberio, has to witness the deaths of countless civilians including children, had to watch Sasha die, and then Eren tells her he always hated her and saw her as a slave. Then when she finally begun to move on from Eren, she has to kill Eren to stop him destroying the rest of the world, at which point he tells her he lied to her intentionally so that she could kill him and he always loved her.]] |
| 16 | ** Armin Arlert [[spoiler:was bullied just for wanting to go beyond the walls. He watched as four members of his squad (including Eren) were eaten by Titans during the battle of Trost and felt extreme SurvivorsGuilt. He's also responsible for figuring out Annie's true identity as the Female Titan. He's had to kill members of the Military Police, was molested while DisguisedInDrag, and, most horrifically, sacrificed himself in the Shiganshina battle against the Colossal Titan, only to be revived after Eren and Mikasa convinced Levi to use a special serum to transform Armin into a Titan before eating Bertolt and gaining the Colossal Titan's powers. This, however, means that, like Eren, he only has 13 years to live. He was also saved in place of Erwin, the commander of the Survey Corps, which he struggles to come to terms with]]. Then [[spoiler: Eren forces them to attack Liberio, he has to watch Sasha die along with Mikasa, and when confronting Eren about this, Eren beats him up and tells him he's weak and a slave to Bertolt's memories.]] |
| 17 | ** Levi [[spoiler:is the SonOfAWhore and grew up in extreme poverty. He was raised by serial killer Kenny Ackerman after his mother Kuchel died when he was little. Due to Kuchel’s advanced state of decay by the time Kenny showed up, it seems that young Levi had been living in the same room with his dead mother for ''days''. He turned to a life of crime to survive, and after being convinced by Erwin to join the Survey Corps, his only two friends were killed by Titans during their first mission outside the walls. While fighting the Female Titan, his entire squad is brutally killed by her, all because he told Eren to trust him. And even though he's tortured and killed people for information, he's rather disturbed to find out that the Titans he's devoted his life to killing were [[WasOnceAMan human all along]]. When Kenny comes back into his life, they're on opposite sides, and Kenny has fun tormenting Levi and shooting some of his subordinates right in front of him. However, when Kenny dies, Levi seems upset by it, as Kenny was his only relative. Later on, he ''also'' loses Erwin, whom he was rather close to and respected, after Levi makes the decision to save Armin instead (partially due to Eren and Mikasa's insistence)]]. [[spoiler: After the TimeSkip, most of his subordinates are turned into Titans by Zeke due to which he has to kill them all personally, and when Levi gets some semblance of revenge, Zeke blows both of them up which results in Levi being crippled for life. Even when Levi ultimately kills Zeke, it's only due to Zeke's own efforts to stop his half-brother's plans, so it was hollow for him.]] |
| 18 | ** Reiner Braun [[spoiler:grew up believing his mother's lies that if he were to become a ChildSoldier his parents would be able to live together again, as his mother is an Eldian and his father is a Marleyan and such a relationship is forbidden. He goes through hell to become the Armored Titan and is then sent, along with Annie, Bertolt and Marcel, to Paradis Island in order to retrieve the Founding Titan and its Coordinate ability from within the walls. On the way there, he finds out that the only reason he managed to gain the powers of the Armored Titan was because his friend Marcel begged military officials to give it to Reiner instead of Marcel's brother Porco. While digesting this information, Marcel is eaten by Ymir (who at this point in the story was a mindless Titan). This ends up becoming [[MyGreatestFailure his greatest failure]]. It turns out that being TheMole caused his SanitySlippage due to not being able to handle the role. He's unable to rescue Annie from her crystal and failed to defeat the Survey Corps in Shiganshina, which lead to him very narrowly escaping death... twice and Bertolt being captured and eaten. Upon returning to his hometown as a ShellShockedVeteran, he's made to serve on the front lines of ''another'' war, using his Titan powers to fight against an enemy nation. He's so broken that he AttemptedSuicide but was thankfully [[InterruptedSuicide interrupted]]. He then learns that his subordinate [[ChildSoldier Falco]] is being used by Eren to sneak into enemy territory and send letters to an unknown party. Once Eren and Reiner meet for the first time in four years, Reiner is psychologically tormented by Eren and is reminded of all the things he and his friends are responsible for. Reiner also asks Eren to [[MercyKill kill him]]]]. |
| 19 | ** Connie Springer. Just... the things done to that poor boy over the course of a month. He starts out as PluckyComicRelief, but once things go downhill for him they go downhill ''quickly''. [[NewMeat Fresh]] from graduation, he's thrust into battle against the Titans and nearly killed several times. Many of his classmates die horrible deaths, leaving him deeply shaken. Even so, he [[CowardlyLion does not lose]] the will to fight. Then it went FromBadToWorse, as strange events within Wall Rose result in him finding [[spoiler: his village devoid of life, save a single crippled Titan that he's absolutely sure ''greeted him'' and looks like his mother]]. Then, he finds out that [[spoiler: not only are three of his good friends secretly Titan Shifters, his surrogate Big Brother is in fact TheMole]] and nearly kills them all. Last but definitely not least, he takes part in an investigation of [[spoiler: his DoomedHometown, confirming that Titans were once human. The Titans that attacked within Wall Rose were his friends and family, who are all dead now. And the mysterious Titan that spoke to him ''is'' his mother, trapped as a near-mindless monster and probably doomed to spend the rest of her life as a test subject for the military]]. Ouch. Then, [[spoiler: he has to watch Sasha die, the closest he feels to be a sister to him.]] |
| 20 | ** Grisha Yeager may have the longest, most traumatic conga line of all characters, as it seems his entire life's one of these. [[spoiler:As a child, he and his sister Faye illegally snuck outside of their ghetto to watch a blimp land. They were caught by Marley military officials, after which Grisha was beaten and Faye taken away. Faye was found dead the next day, and the military denied any involvement. Many years later, he's informed of what ''really'' happened: Faye was fed to the dogs of one of the officers that was with them. This leads him to join [[LaResistance the Eldian Restoration Movement]], of which he eventually becomes leader. Through the Movement, he meets his first wife, Dina Fritz, who was sent to them by an informant known only as "Owl". They have a son named Zeke together, and force him to become the last beacon of hope for the Eldian empire's restoration. This involves signing Zeke up for the military's TykeBomb training program, with the expectation that Zeke will inherit one of the powers of the Nine Titans and be able to infiltrate the military and learn closely guarded secrets. However, Zeke betrays his parents and turns them and the rest of the movement into the military. Grisha, Dina and their comrades are then tortured for information before being sent to Paradis Island as punishment. Grisha is forced to watch as his friends and wife are turned into mindless Titans. He's then saved by officer Kruger, who was one of the men present on the day Grisha and Faye went to watch the blimp. Kruger turns out to be a Titan shifter and kills all of the other military presonnel on the island with him. He reveals himself as "Owl", and convinces Grisha to take the powers of the Attack Titan so that Grisha can retrieve the Founding Titan from within Paradis's walls. Many years later, after the walls are breached by the Armored, Colossal and Female Titans (during which his second wife Carla is eaten), Grisha approaches the Reiss family and explains that he knows what's going on and begs them to hand over the Founding Titan. They refuse, so Grisha transforms and fights Frieda, the current holder of the Founding Titan. He manages to secure the Founding Titan, which he then bequeaths, along with the Attack Titan, to his son Eren, who he injects with a Titan transformation serum and is then eaten by]]. Whew. Wait, there's more. [[spoiler: Then it's revealed Grisha gave up his plans to assimilate the Founding Titan as it meant he'd have to harm innocent women and children, at which point, Eren from the future intervenes and basically commands him to kill all of them excluding Rod Reiss (by forcing him to remember Faye and all the Restorationists), which Grisha reluctantly obeys. After inheriting the Founding Titan, Future!Eren shows him the Rumbling which he will enact, and orders Grisha to feed himself to the younger Eren so that the future comes to pass. Knowing how Eren will become an accessory to mass murder in the future and commanding him to do the needful and ''he'' will be the one who helps him to do so, Grisha reluctantly feeds himself to Eren.]] |
| 21 | * Haru's entire life in ''Manga/{{Beastars}}'' has been incredibly difficult. As a tiny dwarf rabbit in a world full of predators, she had to accept at a young age that she could be killed and eaten at any time. To combat this feeling of helplessness, she turned to sex. Sex was the one thing that she could do and feel like she was in control, so she gained a negative reputation amongst the other girls and was only viewed as a sex object by the boys. At one point, she's nearly killed by Legoshi and later kidnapped and forced to humiliate herself in front of the Shishigumi so that she will taste better. |
| 22 | * ''Manga/{{Berserk}}'' does this mercilessly with its three main characters: |
| 23 | ** Guts' childhood was singularly horrific. As a kid, he endured TrainingFromHell from a father figure who hated him due to blaming him for the death of his lover, enough to have him sold as a SexSlave to one of his soldiers for one night, and who ultimately got drunk and tried to murder him, forcing the poor kid to kill him. Things went pretty good for him when he joined up with the Band of the Hawk, and even found a first love in Casca. Then the Eclipse went down, resulting in [[spoiler:his best friend going bad in an unforgivable fashion, Guts losing everyone else except Casca to things out of pure nightmare, and losing an eye and being ForcedToWatch as Casca is raped to insanity by Griffith himself in his new demonic form of Femto after having to chisel off his own left arm to try to save her]]. He is in hardcore vengeance mode following this, resulting in [[TookALevelInJerkass Guts becoming a bit of an asshole]] until some much-needed refocusing and reconnection with Casca and gaining a new set of TrueCompanions sets him on the road to something resembling his original personality. |
| 24 | ** Casca was sold to a noble who wanted her for a SexSlave. She was rescued by Griffith and became one of his best warriors, and life is good for her, and she eventually finds love in Guts. Then the Eclipse went down, resulting in [[spoiler:Griffith going bad as mentioned above, Casca losing everyone under her command (particularly Pippin and Judeau, who sacrificed themselves to make sure she would live), getting captured and stripped naked by demons and ultimately being raped by Griffith himself in his new form of Femto, with Guts trying everything in his power but still failing to save her]]. Casca spends two years as a [[EmptyShell shell]] of her former self, before Guts takes her to Elfhelm along with some TrueCompanions where a JourneyToTheCenterOfTheMind shows Casca's mind is a complete [[EldritchLocation nightmare-scape]] with only a few a fragments memories that have to be placed together to restore Casca. [[spoiler: Casca is brought to normal thanks to the efforts of Farnese and Schierke, Casca is overjoyed at the prospect of reuniting Guts and [[MeadowRun runs towards him]] only when she sees him the bad memories come [[RememberedTooLate rushing]] back causing Casca to scream in terror]]. |
| 25 | ** And then there's Griffith. His childhood was no walk in the park, but he lived quite happily until he discovered a kid who died in his service, whom he had come to befriend personally. Overwhelmed by guilt (not that he would ever admit this), he pimped himself out to a pederast lord for the money to fund his mercenary band, leaving him with serious emotional scars that he similarly hid from others. Then he meets, defeats, and befriends Guts, and life goes good for him up until Guts decides to leave him, and defeats him with one stroke, which brings him to the realization that he has forgotten his true ambitions and reason for living (due to the obsession that he had developed for him). Griffith's life falls apart after that [[spoiler:when he's captured by the King's men after having sex with the Princess, resulting in him getting put to the torture for a year. By the time Guts and the rest of the Hawks rescue him, he's in a very bad way both physically and mentally, and has come to hate everything and everyone (except for Guts and Casca). This lasts up until Griffith finds out that Guts and Casca are in a relationship with each other and are discussing leaving him behind, at which point he [[DespairEventHorizon loses it completely]]. And unfortunately for the two and the rest of the Hawks, his Crimson Behelit returns to him shortly afterward, and he activates it at the first opportunity, triggering the events of the Eclipse and his decision to take back his dream by sacrificing everyone in his command to the God Hand, including Guts and Casca, to become their fifth member, the monstrous Femto]]. Griffith crosses the MoralEventHorizon by the time this is through, and is now the BigBad of the series. Bad things happen to the rest of the cast too, but they die pretty quickly as a result. |
| 26 | * Revy from ''Manga/BlackLagoon'' never had it easy as a kid, growing up in New York's Chinatown with an unstable, alcoholic father who once beat her face with a bottle and outside the home she was constantly subjected to police harassment. She learned how to shoot a gun at an early age and says that she lost her faith in God the day the police beat her up for something she didn't do. The real tipping point that turned her into what she is now was when she was raped by a police officer and her father's only reaction when she told him was to order her to get him another beer, at which point [[spoiler:he became her very first kill when she put a pillow over his face as an impromptu silencer and shot him]]. Things didn't get much better after that, with her spending time in prison, being (in her own words) treated like a whore by her comrades, and occasionally falling into "[[AxCrazy Whitman Fever]]". By the time Rock meets her she's well past the DespairEventHorizon, but with his influence has started getting a little better (or at least not ''as'' crazy). And the setting being [[CrapsackWorld what it is]], she got off comparatively easy relative to some characters. |
| 27 | * ''Manga/{{Bleach}}'': [[Characters/BleachIchigoKurosaki Ichigo Kurosaki]] knows his need to protect can be exploited by the enemy and by the Lost Agent Arc was so smart about this that he was starting to find it annoying. That's when it's revealed that the ArcVillain's plan took this ennui into account. The villain built up trust with Ichigo while tearing down his friends in secret, leaving Ichigo feeling isolated and alone in a world gone mad, unable to do anything other than fight for the strength to save his friends and family. Once he obtained that strength, the villain stepped forward and promptly stole them. In one instant, Ichigo was bereft of his friends, his family and his power and, quite literally, left with nothing but the clothes on his back, a sword through his chest, and tears pouring down his face at how completely he had failed. Before this arc, it would never have been believable to see Ichigo, a stalwart shounen hero, on his knees crying. This arc made it happen. |
| 28 | * In ''Manga/Brave10'', this is how you trigger Isanami's SuperPoweredEvilSide. Any time Isanami experiences trauma or sadness, the power of [[DestroyerDeity Izanami]] spreads out and kills everything nearby, and the [[ProtectiveCharm kushimitama]] is suppressing that power rather than its source as was first believed. Making matters worse, Isanami overhears Yukimura telling the other Braves about this while trying to recover from the trauma of [[TheMole Ana's betrayal]]. This leads to her going into something of a HeroicBSOD followed immediately by the Iga Grotesque Five attack. Things start looking dire for Sasuke and Kakei while Isanami can only watch, which is what finally leads to Izanami taking over her. |
| 29 | * TheRival to ''Anime/CaroleAndTuesday'''s eponymous duo, Angela, has a rough time near the end of the series. While Carole and Tuesday are slowly finding more and more success in the music business, Angela starts her fall from grace. A StalkerWithACrush spends several episodes spying on her, sending her threats and had one of her colleagues run over by a car. Once that's dealt with, she realizes that her music producer/crush made an AI replica of her, then states that he no longer needs to study her. Angela is offended when Tao tries to force her to use the AI as a guide, but [[StageMom her mother]] fights her; she doesn't want Angela to mess up and ruin [[VicariouslyAmbitious all the hard work she put into making Angela famous.]] Dhalia says that she adopted Angela and isn't her real parent, in an attempt to hurt her. The fight ends with Dhalia having a heart attack and dying not long after, leaving Angela alone. Angela turns to drugs to cope, but sends out one final plea for help to her crush to save her. He ignores her. This all culminates in Angela achieving her mother's dream of singing at the Mars Grammys, but collapses on-stage and is rushed to the hospital. |
| 30 | * ''Manga/{{Chainsaw Man}}'' appears to be the result of the author deciding to inflict this trope on Denji as much as possible. He is abused, starved, and outright murdered, and that's just in the first chapter alone. Every friend he makes is either torn from him in the cruellest of ways, or only befriended him in the first place in order to take advantage of his trait of latching onto everyone who shows him the slightest bit of the affection he is so desperately starved of. Poor Denji's life is defined by his never-ending traumatic experiences. |
| 31 | * ''VisualNovel/{{Clannad}}'': Tomoya Okazaki, particularly in the latter half of ''After Story''. [[spoiler: His estranged father gets arrested and ruins any chance at a job, then just as his life is turning around his wife Nagisa suffers a DeathByChildbirth. He's in a HeroicBSoD for the next five years until he finally manges to reconnect with his daughter...who then dies herself a few months later, with Tomoya himself dying of grief. Only a ResetButtonEnding saves the whole family.]] |
| 32 | * [[Characters/CodeGeassLelouchLamperouge Lelouch Lamperouge]], the AntiHero of ''Anime/CodeGeass'', gets a mixture of type B and D. However, streaks of result A are shown at the end as [[spoiler:his last act is to make himself the enemy of the world so the world becomes peaceful by his death]]. |
| 33 | ** There are a few other characters that would fall under this, too, though less obviously due to not being the main character. Shirley and [[Characters/CodeGeassSuzakuKururugi Suzaku Kururugi]] stick out the most, but there are more, [[FromBadToWorse this being]] ''Code Geass''. |
| 34 | ** Lelouch actually has a lot more in common with Type E, largely because he still has a firm grasp of his own sense of right and wrong, as well as wanting to see his ultimately noble goals come to fruition, even if he comes across as quite dark. It's hard to be a Type B when your enemy is a racist [[TheEmpire Empire]] that has one leader [[spoiler:willing to destroy individuality due to his own crappy childhood, and a Prime Minister who's willing to nuke the whole world from orbit to enforce peace]]. Shirley almost becomes type C, before Mao makes her go into Type D, then she almost lapses into type C again before some LaserGuidedAmnesia allows her to shift into type A. Suzaku ''aims'' quite valiantly for type A, but with everything that happens, he shifts into either B or D (depending on your perspective) at the end of episode 19 of R2, before joining Lelouch in type A. |
| 35 | * ''Manga/ACruelGodReigns'': Jeremy. This poor kid gets everything from abuse, rape, being forced to live with his rapist, countless piles of guilt, [[spoiler: drug addiction, prostitution]], some pretty hefty Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and having to live as a murderer, the poor guy has to deal with it all. Also an example of {{Break the Cutie}}. At the beginning of the story, Jeremy is pretty much sweetest, most innocent teenagers to walk the Earth, but that changes in one of the first few chapters. At different points of the story, Jeremy is Type A, Type C, and Type E. |
| 36 | * Both main characters from ''Anime/CyberpunkEdgerunners'' experience all sorts of hardships throughout the series: |
| 37 | ** David is bullied in Arasaka academy and loses his mother to a car accident in the first episode. [[spoiler: As the series progresses, he witnesses his friends getting flatlined one after another and he eventually begins to succumb to cyberpsychosis after he accidentally kills an innocent woman working for Arasaka. Finally, he sees his girlfriend Lucy betrayed by Kiwi and kidnapped by Faraday, creating a scenario when he has to install the cyberskeleton to rescue her. His conga line ends in heartbreaking fashion, [[HeroicSacrifice as he only has enough time to help Lucy escape]] before [[TheHeroDies meeting a brutal end]] at the hands of the notorious HeroKiller Adam Smasher.]] |
| 38 | ** Lucy [[spoiler: as a child is enslaved by Arasaka to explore the Old Net, a task that kills many children from her group. She ends up being the SoleSurvivor from her group's escape attempt, and the death of her captors makes her a fugitive within the corporation. Then, years afterwards, her friends from Maine's crew die one-by-one in a span of few months before she gets tricked by Faraday and double-crossed by Kiwi while trying to protect David, the person she loves the most, from the company that exploited her as a child. The finale caps this awful conga line off when [[TheLostLenore she loses David]], who ends up sacrificing himself to buy her time to escape from Arasaka Tower.]] |
| 39 | * ''Anime/{{Daimos}}'': Sayuri watches her mother and father get murdered by alien invaders, and due to her resemblance to their Princess, Balbas takes her hostage. While at the hospital, she notices Kazuya carrying a wounded Baam soldier on his back and shoots at him, only for Kazuya to take the hit. Once she realizes she has blood on her hands, she breaks down crying. Kazuya, while injured, assures her that she's not a bad person. However, he maintains that she can't give in to her impulses and exact revenge by killing people. |
| 40 | * Ryota Mitarai from ''Anime/Danganronpa3TheEndOfHopesPeakHighSchool'' was bullied in childhood so much that he became a recluse to make the perfect anime, which he wanted to use to bring hope to the world. This goal drove him so relentlessly he overworked himself to the point his health declined, which results in him meeting AxCrazy psycho [[spoiler:Junko Enoshima]] on his way to the hospital. She manipulates and deceives him into turning his anime of hope into a weapon of despair, with the first test victim being one of his two friends. It works and said friend almost rapes him. Then he witnesses a classmate get shot in front of him, receives a brutal BreakingSpeech from [[spoiler:Junko]], watches as his anime is used to help destroy the world, and lastly, gets trapped in the Final Killing Game, all with crushing guilt and despair for his unwitting role in it all. This guy can't catch a break. Eventually, he [[spoiler:snaps and [[FaceHeelTurn becomes]] the BigBad of ''[[GrandFinale Side:Hope]]'', deciding to invoke BrainwashingForTheGreaterGood on ''the entire world'']]. And the worst part is that [[spoiler:this was the entire ''purpose'' of the Final Killing Game -- to ''make'' him snap so that he would decide to brainwash the world and eradicate despair]]. |
| 41 | ** Chiaki Nanami has just as bad a time as him, having spent all her childhood alone and friendless before she went to Hope's Peak. Once there, she found a boyfriend in Hajime, friends in her class, and a mother figure in her teacher Chisa, before every single one of them is taken away from her. Hajime disappears for a year, as he was subject to human experimentation that wiped all his memories, and she spends it fruitlessly waiting and wondering when he'll come back. When he does, he says to her face that he doesn't remember her. Her teacher [[spoiler:is tortured into insanity and betrays Chiaki to Junko -- without Chiaki ever finding out that Chisa wasn't herself.]] Then Chiaki learns that [[spoiler:by leading her friends on a rescue mission, she inadvertently doomed them to the same fate as Chisa. And finally, she gets locked into a death maze by the BigBad, where she is slowly, '''painfully''', tortured via numerous traps. When she reaches the end, she is given a HopeSpot of escape, only to be impaled by dozens of spears and left to bleed to death on the floor. She ultimately dies in pain, in tears, sobbing to Izuru (Hajime's new self, who found her after but still doesn't remember her) about how she wants to stay with him and their friends.]] |
| 42 | * After a childhood full of emotional and (implied) physical abuse at the hands of his mother and, as an adolescent, more abuse (and an attempt on his life) at the hands of his half-brother, Kazutaka Muraki, the main villain of ''Manga/DescendantsOfDarkness'', becomes a very creepy Result B. |
| 43 | * Allen Walker, from ''Manga/DGrayMan''. Even before the series ''starts'', he's abandoned by his parents at birth because of his apparently deformed arm. As a very young child he works at a circus where he's beaten by the clowns. He's finally adopted by Mana at the age of seven, only to lose him three years later. The Millennium Earl promptly manipulates a griefstricken Allen into making a contract to bring his foster father back, only to have Mana [[CameBackWrong come back horribly wrong]] and [[CursedWithAwesome curse him]]. Allen is forced by his own anti-Akuma weapon arm to kill his now-Akuma father and the trauma [[LockedIntoStrangeness turns his hair white]]. Allen then goes through TrainingFromHell with his {{Jerkass}} mentor General Cross for four years, which leads to him becoming an exorcist and the start of the series. After the series starts, the hits keep coming, including having his Innocence seemingly destroyed and getting a hole torn out of his heart thanks to Tyki; having his friends disappear one by one as the Ark disintegrates around him; and having the only place that he could ever call home, the Order, almost be destroyed by a Level Four Akuma attack. Think he deserves a break? [[FromBadToWorse Not a chance]]. After nearly killing himself to fight off the Level 4 Akuma, he is told that he is [[spoiler:the host of the mysterious [[SuperpoweredEvilSide Fourteenth Noah]] who's going to [[SplitPersonalityTakeover take over his body]], and in the process of doing so, will destroy Allen's personality and force him to kill someone who he loves dearly]]. His mentor General Cross suddenly disappears under highly suspicious circumstances. Now Allen's being treated by almost everyone in the Order as a potential threat that needs to be ruthlessly eliminated at the smallest sign of stepping out of line. And in the most recent chapters, [[spoiler: the Fourteenth is not only awakening inside Allen, but is capable of taking control of Allen's body without any warning in his quest to become the next Millennium Earl.]] IronWoobie, indeed. |
| 44 | * ''Manga/DragonBall'': |
| 45 | ** Poor, poor, Future Trunks. His father died when he was a baby, had to spend his whole childhood living in solitude and when he wasn't living in solitude he had to deal every day with reports of thousand people dying in cities all over the world. Future Trunks trains for several years and tries to save the world taking on the Androids only to lose on every occasion. Then his mentor/father-figure [[spoiler: Gohan]] is murdered in cold blood. After that he trains for several years to avenge said fallen mentor and when he takes on the Androids ends up nearly dying. He then travels back in time to try and make thing better and only makes thing worse by unwittingly creating alternate timelines, goes back to his timeline only to find out nothing has change and so goes back to the main timeline ''again'' and ultimately ends up being killed by Cell. Then the FridgeHorror kicks in when you realize that the Cell that killed Future Trunks is not only from a timeline that Future Trunks created due to his constantly time travelling, but in the timeline which that Cell came from, he also killed Future Trunks ''and'' stole his time machine to travel back in time. |
| 46 | ** Gohan has a very bad day at the beginning of ''Anime/DragonBallZ''. On a trip to see some of his father's old friends, he is kidnapped by his insane evil uncle from space and physically assaulted by said uncle, his father is killed by his then-archenemy in the rescue attempt, he is kidnapped again by said archenemy and told he is going to have to help fight off an invasion by two aliens even stronger than the one who just fought off both badasses combined, he is left to survive in the wastelands for six months with no hope of escape and no tools except a sword and the clothes on his back, and [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking he is attacked by a dinosaur]]. All of this at [[HarmfulToMinors the tender age of four]]. |
| 47 | * ''Manga/ElfenLied''. The anime traumatizes the characters enough already, and let's [[FromBadToWorse just not get into the manga]]... |
| 48 | * This sums up the life that Gray, from ''Manga/FairyTail'' lived. When he was a child, he lost his parents to Deliora, and was taken in by Ur, who'd trained him alongside Lyon. Because of his rage towards Deliora, he carelessly attacks Deliora, and is overwhelmed, forcing Ur to perform a HeroicSacrifice, killing herself along with Deliora. He is immediately spurned by Lyon, and is forced to fight him years later. Fast-forward to the Tenrou Island arc, he fights Ur's daughter and his sisterly figure, and is suspended in time along with many of the other Fairy Tail members. During the Grand Magic Games arc, he loses spectacularly during the Hidden challenge, and becomes a laughingstock to the audience. Then, he is violently killed by a dragon, only to be revived by Ultear's time reversal, which ends up turning her into an old woman instead, and Gray is the only one to know of what she'd done for Fairy Tail. Fast-forward to the Tartaros arc, where he faces the threat of everyone who Ur cared about being murdered. On top of that, [[spoiler:he was almost forced to kill his zombie father Silver and loses him anyway as Silver told Juvia to deactivate Face, which would kill Silver in the process.]] Subsequently, he'd been [[spoiler: turned into a demon after battling Silver, and is set to kill Frosch, as Future!Rogue had warned during the latter half of the Grand Magic Games arc. In turn, this would lead to Ultear's HeroicSacrifice]]. No wonder Gray is so somber, especially compared to Natsu and Lucy. |
| 49 | * ''Manga/FullmetalAlchemist'': Another one that most would answer with "Everyone", however this is especially true for Roy, Riza, and everyone who had to live through both Ishval ''and'' the Promised Day storylines. |
| 50 | ** Edward from ''Anime/FullmetalAlchemist2003''. Both at the beginning of the series and at the end. |
| 51 | * ''Anime/GaReiZero'': |
| 52 | ** Kagura. She [[spoiler:[[ShootTheDog kills a teacher from her school]] [[BodyHorror who was possessed by a demon]], gets disowned by her friends, watches as people around her get massacred, [[MentorArchetype sees her best friend]] [[LesYay and surrogate sister Yomi]] [[FaceHeelTurn get turned evil,]] watches Yomi kill her father, [[IDidWhatIHadToDo then finally kills Yomi with a knife to the chest,]] at which point Yomi tells her she loves her.]] Amazingly, the result is eventually type A, even though it's obvious that nothing can fill that spot for Yomi in Kagura's heart (a later arc of [[Manga/GaRei the manga]] deals with this, as [[spoiler:someone who looks exactly like Yomi appears]]). Mind you, in the manga Kagura had ''even worse'' things happening to her. The turn of events destroyed what little resolve she still possess in order to live, and thus her [[{{Mons}} spiritual beast]] went absolutely out of control. Life is a lot unfair for Kagura. |
| 53 | ** Forget Kagura, Yomi had it even worse. [[spoiler:Yomi's adoptive father his killed by her Seishouseki-mind-controlled adoptive [[TheRival cousin]], the cousin takes what was supposed to be her place as the family head and her inheritance, then lures her to a fight. When the cousin admits killing Yomi's father, she goes [[BerserkButton berserk]] and kills her. Then [[ManipulativeBastard Mitogawa]] attacks Yomi, rendering her quadraplegic and mute, and she is accused of murdering her cousin. Her fiancee Noriyuki is too busy trying to prove her innocence to visit her in the hospital, his father breaks off their PerfectlyArrangedMarriage because of her physical condition, and her best friend Kagura abandons her after she admits to killing her cousin. Then Mitogawa gives her the same Seishouseki, which heals her but its mind-control powers provide the extra push to send her JumpingOffTheSlipperySlope and killing her former friends.]] Her DespairEventHorizon is such a {{Tearjerker}} that even after becoming a Type B she is still sympathetic. |
| 54 | * Albert Morcef from ''Anime/{{Gankutsuou}}''. Albert first gets betrayed by [[MagnificentBastard the Count]] and Peppo, who he thought could be trusted, when Haydee exposes Albert's father as a criminal who gained nobility and power through non legal means. Then, his best friend Franz gets killed when Franz decides to go to the duel with the Count (the duel which the Count goaded Albert into making so the Count can get an excuse to kill Albert) instead of Albert. However, instead of breaking down, Albert ends up taking the route A and becomes a better person who not only saves the Count's soul from [[TheCorruption Gankutsuou]] but also fixes his father's wrongs by becoming an envoy of peace. |
| 55 | ** Don't forget that Albert's father also tries to stage a coup detat after he's exposed, even going so far as to ''try to kill his own wife and son'' when they get in the way. |
| 56 | * Gintoki from ''Manga/{{Gintama}}'' qualifies. His earliest memories were as an orphan wandering on a battlefield scavenging for food from death bodies and being ostracized as the corpse-eating demon. He was taken in by Shouyou, his teacher and father figure, and lived with him until Shouyou was arrested for his teachings against the current rotten government. Gintoki joined the war against the government to save his teacher and lost many friends in battle, many of which are still giving him nightmares even at present day. At the end he was captured and forced to execute his teacher, which turned his former best friend and comrade against him. After the war, Gintoki gave himself up and go to jail where he was repeatedly starved and tortured while awaiting the execution day, until a guard felt pity and let him escape. A starving Gintoki then wandered into a graveyard, where he met an old woman who gave him food and a place to live. |
| 57 | * Pretty much all of the protagonists in ''Manga/GunslingerGirl'' are this. The main protagonist, Henrietta, was repeatedly raped (to the point where she apparently can't menstruate due to it) and abused next to the bodies of her recently murdered family. She doesn't [[AngstWhatAngst angst]] about it because she ''can't''. Her memories of the incident were wiped when she was made into a ChildSoldier. Between the rape and being a cyborg she was deeply suicidal so wiping her memories might be a good thing.. Until you remember the whole "Being a terminally ill child soldier who is [[WhatMeasureIsANonHuman barely treated]] as a human" part that came along with it. Her friends weren't treated much better before becoming cyborgs, for example Triela was involved in a snuff film and Angelica was ran over by her parents. The oldest cyborg is only around sixteen and most are under fourteen. |
| 58 | * On the other hand, Ayasaki Hayate of ''Manga/HayateTheCombatButler'' is a most admirable example of Result A. You would think that being raised by two pathologically-unemployed con-artists of parents as a cash-cow only to be abandoned to [[{{Yakuza}} some very nice people]] to pay off debt money with your organs would turn the boy Joker-Crazy. Wouldn't you know it, he is still a kindhearted fella who would [[MessianicArchetype give his life for a total stranger]]. |
| 59 | ** If you think about it, Hayate is kinda Joker-crazy. His childhood was crap, his parents were evil, and the universe occasionally [[CosmicPlaything punts him around like an old football]] ("Watch out for this paint that will permanently stain a cashmere coat!" and "We will attack you with swords that cut cashmere really well!" come to mind). And yet...he keeps [[StepfordSmiler smiling]]. |
| 60 | * ''Manga/{{Hellsing}}''. Seras Victoria had her police unit dispatched to a hamlet which happened to have been infested with vampires, all of whom were killed, including herself, then sired as a vampire herself. It all goes downhill from there. She wobbles between Type C and D until at long last, karma leaves her alone enough for her to develop into what seems to be a Type A thirty years after Millennium's attack. |
| 61 | * In the first episode of ''Anime/IdolDensetsuEriko'', Eriko's parents are involved in a car accident, leaving her father dead, her mother ending up in a coma, and [[CorruptCorporateExecutive her evil uncle in charge of her father's music company]]. Things get worse from there. |
| 62 | * While all the main characters from ''Manga/InuYasha'' have suffered through trauma at some point, what Sango experiences towers over them all. First her younger brother's mind is taken over by Naraku, then she watches her controlled brother kill her companions and father, then her controlled brother inflicts near-fatal injuries on her, and then she discovers Naraku's minions have wiped out her entire village while she was away. |
| 63 | * ''Manga/JoJosBizarreAdventure''. Jonathan Joestar lost his mother when he was a baby which was very sad by itself, but then '''[[TheSociopath Dio]] showed up''' when he was 12; starting with beating him at everything, [[SacredFirstKiss stealing his girlfriend's first kiss]] and settling his dog on fire. Long story short, it got worse from there. |
| 64 | ** Let's not forget Johnny Joestar. One, his father openly favored his brother over him. Two, his pet rat killed his brother after it was set free by him. Three, after that, his father wouldn't acknowledge him because he couldn't beat a certain British punk, and when Johnny and his dad fought, his dad said "God had taken the wrong son". *inhale* Finally, Johnny got shot in the spine by a young boy after he was persuaded to take the boy's spot in the line for a play. After he lost the use of his legs, things kept getting worse for Johnny. At least until... |
| 65 | ** Enrico Pucci from ''Manga/JoJosBizarreAdventureStoneOcean'' got his StartOfDarkness from a traumatic series of improbable coincidences. [[spoiler:First, a woman appears in his church and confesses to him that she stole a child from the Pucci family at birth, which Pucci realizes is his long-lost twin brother, who is [[SurpriseIncest unknowingly dating his sister]]. Refusing to disclose this secret due to confessional privacy, he instead hires a group of private investigators to break his siblings up. However, the private investigators were members of the KKK and mistook his twin brother for being half-black due to the race of his stepfather, which causes them to lynch him. This caused Pucci's sister to commit suicide, not realizing her brother/boyfriend barely survived]]. The string of horrible coincidences caused Pucci to fall under the sway of Dio, and he set into motion a plan to make all of humanity aware of their future fates so that they would never experience the pain of sudden tragedy and surprise. |
| 66 | * Pretty much every one in ''Franchise/KagerouProject'' has absolutely terrible things happen to them, but special mention goes to poor, poor, Kano. [[spoiler: First his mother was unstable and abusive, causing Kano to see himself as no more than an object that can simply be thrown away, then when he's five a man breaks into his house and kills both him and his mother. Child Kano is brought back after entering a hellish never-ending world with the ability to shapeshift and is sent to live with distant relatives until they find out about said power and dump him in an orphanage. There he, along with Kido and Seto, is bullied and treated like a monster by other children. It all seems to be looking up when the trio get adopted by a happy family, only for their adoptive mother to die when they're 13 years old. His father is possesed by the snake that saved him from dying as well and is now plotting to kill Kano and his siblings to bring their mother back to life. Kano is informed of this plot by his older sister and is later forced to watch her kill herself in front of him in an attempt to ruin their dad's plan- only it backfires and Kano is threatened that Kido and Seto will be killed if he disobeys and is forced to lie to them for two years. Eventually he and his friend are all murdered brutally in order to trigger a time reset where all this happens again and again.]] |
| 67 | * The [[DownerBeginning start of the first episode]] of ''Manga/KotouraSan'' has one for the local {{telepath|y}} Haruka: [[spoiler:her classmates [[AllOfTheOtherReindeer ostracize her]] at school because she's different; her parents' unstable marriage is scuttled by her absentee, philandering father and lonely, desperate mother; her mother eventually abandons her, [[IHaveNoSon saying Haruka should never have been born]] [[WhamLine to her face]]; a stray cat she was caring for -- her last remaining friend -- was taken to the pound by a cranky old woman ([[DespairEventHorizon effectively a death sentence in Japan]]); and a broken, cynical Haruka ends up living alone, convinced it's better than being around other people]]. Her resolution was a bit different from what was described in the lead, though: she met Yoshihisa Manabe, a boy whose only worry about being with a telepath was to [[AllMenArePerverts rein in his dirty thought]]. Right, she is clearly happier with the first friend (and not long after, lover) that she made. |
| 68 | * ''Manga/MariaNoDanzai'': |
| 69 | ** Kiritaka Nagare suffers a traumatizing series of events that end with his death. He saw one of his classmates being [[BullyBrutality tortured]] by a group of [[BarbaricBully satanic bullies]], so he took the classmate's place to protect him. He was tortured for months, and the bullies ostracized him from his classmates, so he endured the torture alone. He kept quiet about the torture from his parents because he didn't want to worry his mother while he gathered evidence to turn the bullies in. After months of torture, Kiritaka is forced by the bullies to jump onto the road by threatening to post a fake sex video of his mother. He jumps and breaks his legs when his mother sees him jump, and then he's hit by a truck and dies, meaning that all he endured was for nothing. |
| 70 | ** It's bad enough that Mari watched her son get run over by a truck and was left to cradle his mutilated corpse in the middle of the road, but on top of that Okaya's gang [[FrameUp fabricated enough evidence]] that Kiri's death was eventually written off a [[DrivenToSuicide suicide]] caused by AbusiveParents, leaving Mari to [[ItsAllMyFault blame herself and her husband]] for his death and sink into depression. Learning [[NeverSuicide the truth]] in that state [[DrivenToVillainy did no favors to her sanity]]. |
| 71 | * ''Anime/MobileSuitGundamIronBloodedOrphans'': Even for a {{Child Soldier|s}} in Tekkadan, Akihiro has had one hell of a rough life. At a young age his parents were killed by SpacePirates and he and his younger brother Masahiro were abducted, conditioned to become [[TykeBomb Human Debris]], and then separated when one was sold off. When Akihiro finally reunites with Masahiro years later, [[spoiler:his younger brother has been so traumatized by his experiences that he tries to kill him and later ends up dying before his eyes. He does later adopt some rescued Human Debris children as his younger brothers, but one of them ends up dying due to the machinations of a CorruptPolitician. Afterwards, he becomes close with [[GenkiGirl Lafter]] and starts to come out of his shell a bit, only for her to be killed as part of a MobWar before either one of them can [[StarCrossedLovers confess their feelings]]. In the end, Akihiro is never able to find a peaceful life and dies the way he lived most of his life -- on the battlefield -- after mustering up just enough strength to kill the one responsible for Lafter's death.]] |
| 72 | * Most of the first chapter of ''Manga/MyHeroAcademia'' is the capstone of one that has lasted nearly all of Izuku's life. After being outed as [[UnSorcerer Quirkless]], he was mocked and ostracized from his peers who belittled him for his desire to become a hero without a superpower. In the span of a few hours, he's humiliated by his entire class, has his prized notebook scorched and tossed out a window into a koi pond, told to jump off a roof, and is nearly murdered by a supervillain. Then he has a HopeSpot when he meets his lifelong hero and idol, All Might, whose deeds inspired Izuku's dream and shaped his worldview. Then All Might is revealed to be a shriveled husk of his former self due to an injury five years ago before he tells Izuku to give up, as it's far too dangerous for him to be a hero without a Quirk. With his hopes and dreams crushed into tiny pieces, Izuku realizes that he accidentally freed the villain All Might was trying to capture and is overwhelmed with guilt. But he rushes in to help when he sees that the victim is his ChildhoodFriend and [[TheBully bully]], Katsuki Bakugou, but he manages to do absolutely nothing to change the situation for the better until All Might swoops in to rescue both of them. Izuku is then thoroughly chewed out by the heroes on-site for recklessly rushing in and complicating the situation further. Finally, Izuku is ready to go home and give up on his dreams when All Might once again appears, this time to apologize to Izuku and [[KarmicJackpot give him the chance to become a hero.]] |
| 73 | ** Bakugou goes through this in Season Three, as after two seasons of [[BreakTheHaughty having it hammered in]] that he was a NormalFishInATinyPond prior to UA and has a lot of work to do before he can be considered a hero, he gets targeted by the League of Villains during the Summer Camp Training arc. Not only does he get kidnapped by supervillains while his classmates are injured in the attack, but [[BigGood All Might]] fails to save him the first time and then [[spoiler: loses his power]] fighting the series BigBad, All For One. The incident traumatizes Bakugou and he is given no support during this, not helped by his mother [[UnwittingInstigatorOfDoom Mitsuki's]] attempt at reigning him in just reinforcing his own self-loathing from the event. In sheer frustration and guilt, Bakugou challenges Midoriya to a fight and has a mental breakdown, screaming that [[ItsAllMyFault it's all his fault]] that All Might had to retire. It takes the man himself giving Bakugou a CooldownHug and assuring him that none of what happened is his fault before finally telling Bakugou the truth about himself and Midoriya that he starts to let go of the emotional burden, and even then it's clear he isn't entirely over it. |
| 74 | * ''Anime/MyHime'' |
| 75 | ** Mai Tokiha was a kind and emotionally strong girl who looked after her DelicateAndSickly little brother with a weak heart by giving up her own childhood to work for his medical bills after losing both her parents. Having both that little brother ''and'' the boy she came to love die in rapid succession, as well as seeing that the one to blame is, supposedly, her best friend and sworn sister, can even break a saint like her into a nihilistic Result C. |
| 76 | ** In very short order [[AloofDarkHairedGirl Natsuki Kuga]] is told by a Searrs operative that her mother was planning to sell her to the organization shortly before she died. Then she's waylaid by her ArchEnemy, Nao, who wants to do a literal Eye-for-an-Eye ([[PsychosomaticSuperpowerOutage and Natsuki later tells Shizuru she tried repeatedly to call her CHILD at that time to no avail]]). After Shizuru rescues her, and it looks like she's recovering, she overhears Yukino and Haruka talking about how they witnessed Shizuru [[DudeShesLikeInAComa kissing her while she slept]]. Then Yukino [[AmbiguousSituation suggests that it went even further than that the night before]], which Shizuru neither confirms nor denies, simply deflecting by accusing Yukino of being a voyeur. This leaves Natsuki devestated and unable to call her CHILD as Shizuru makes quick work of Yukuino's Diana, resulting in Haruka's death. Natsuki finally returns to her apartment, only to find Nao waiting for her, and ties her up in a CrucifiedHeroShot to draw out Shizuru. |
| 77 | * Nana from ''Webcomic/NanasEverydayLife''. The comic starts with her losing her limbs, and gets worse. |
| 78 | ** To a lesser extent in ''Manga/ElfenLied'' too. Several times, she thinks she's finally put her old hellish life behind. Not so. Until the very end of the manga...''maybe''. |
| 79 | * ''Manga/{{Naruto}}'': |
| 80 | ** Naruto himself definitely qualifies. He was [[AllOfTheOtherReindeer a life long outcast]] [[ParentalAbandonment who never knew his parents]] at the beginning, before being told [[SealedEvilInACan exactly why]] in a very brutal manner. Most of his peers treat him like trash--and, unbeknownst to him, [[NiceGirl the one girl who always treats him with kindness]] [[ShrinkingViolet is too shy to get remotely close to him for many years]]--and he has to fight for every bit of respect he can. Not too much later, the closest thing to a grandfather and only family member he has dies, swiftly followed by his best friend's betrayal and attempt to kill him. He then spends three years away from his friends for the sole purpose of bringing back said best friend, and when he gets back, one of them dies for a little while. Thankfully, he got better. Then he once again meets traitorous friend, and he once again attempts to kill him. Some time later, a third retrieval fails. Now, here's where it really starts. In rapid succession, his beloved mentor/father figure dies, his village is destroyed, another of his mentors is killed, and then he is ForcedToWatch [[spoiler:his future wife]] Hinata [[AnguishedDeclarationOfLove sincerely declare her love for him]]--the first time he ''ever'' heard ''anybody'' say that to him genuinely--and then, after a brief fight, [[ImpaledWithExtremePrejudice get stabbed]]. ''Then'' his hopes of bringing his best friend back are shattered by revelation after revelation. |
| 81 | ** Sasuke isn't exactly happy either. First his family is killed, and he is forced to watch it over and over again. All of this at the hands of his beloved brother. Just as he was beginning to open up more, he is humiliated time and again by the supposed dead last as he beats enemies even he couldn't. Then, he finally meets his brother again, where he gets beaten and {{Mind Rape}}d ''again''. This drives him into a FaceHeelTurn that WordOfGod says was quite painful for him, but that doesn't count. All is good for a time, until [[spoiler:he achieves his goal. He is then told about how that was all a lie, his recently dead brother really was a good guy who loved him, and how his idolized family were actually traitors. He then suffers a series of defeats, one after another as he tries to get his revenge. Though once again, the most recent doesn't count due to working for the BigBad]]. Naruto is lucky to be as well adjusted as he is, and Sasuke...well, it doesn't excuse his actions, but it does make it easier to see why he is doing what he is. |
| 82 | ** Then there's Kakashi. First his mother dies before she's thirty, then Kakashi witnesses his father's disgrace and subsequent suicide. Then his best friend "dies" saving him and their female teammate and then Kakashi promised said best friend that he'd protect their female teammate, only to end up breaking the promise and killing her and finally he loses Minato, who may well have been a ParentalSubstitute. Then when he began to teach his own team, one of his students pulls a FaceHeelTurn. And finally, it turns out his best friend is NotQuiteDead after all, and has become the BigBad responsible for nearly everything that has happened in the manga. Kakashi needs some major therapy after all of this. |
| 83 | ** Also his best friend Obito qualifies. [[ParentalAbandonment He was an orphan from little up who never knew his parent]], [[BlackSheep despised in his own clan]] and only [[LivingEmotionalCrutch Rin]] acknowledged him and his dream of becoming a Hokage. On one of the missions he seeing how her kidnapped, having half his body crushed under rubble as he and Kakashi save her, and recovering with Madara's help, is given a BreakingSpeech from the very same about how the [[CrapsackWorld world sucks]], and it will only cause him pain, offering Obito a chance to create a new dream world at the expense of the current one. Obito promptly refuses, goes through months of painful rehabilitation, and eventually learns that Rin was kidnapped again, and goes on a desperate attempt to save her, arriving just in time to see her committed suicide hands by Kakashi, ending up a textbook example of Type B, believing Madara to be right and his solution to be the only way to save the world. Almost two decades later, after Obito returns to his old self and performs a HeelFaceTurn, he learns that Madara orchestrated Rin's death so as to manipulate Obito into joining him, since he knew that Obito was a kind person. Yeah, Kakashi isn't the only one that's going to need therapy after this. |
| 84 | ** Don't forget some of the other characters. Gaara, Kimimaro and Pain are stand outs. Notably a lot of them end up going the antagonist route (until Naruto shows them the error of their ways). |
| 85 | ** This makes Naruto a type A, Sasuke a mixture of B and D, Kakashi a type A, Gaara a B -> A, and Pain a type B. |
| 86 | ** Rock Lee was treated this way in Part I, with two parts inferiority complex/jealousy and two parts career-ending injury. Depending on how you look at it, he's either a type A or a type F: On the one hand, his injuries are healed and he ends up fighting alongside the guy who ruined his life. On the other hand, as a result of falling OutOfFocus post-TimeSkip, he stopped getting CharacterDevelopment but no longer seems to be miserable. |
| 87 | * ''Manga/NegimaMagisterNegiMagi'' has Negi. Lets see, he's [[ParentalAbandonment never known his parents]], [[DoomedHometown saw his entire hometown get destroyed]] at about [[HarmfulToMinors age 6 or so]], gets attacked by a vampire with a grudge against his father, inadvertently causes several of his students to get sold into slavery in the Magic World, gets framed for a terrorist attack (along with his other students), starts to lose control of his BlackMagic, and when he finally discovered who his mother is, it turns out that most of the Magic World hates her because they think she's a genocidal maniac. And yet, he still manages to hold a positive outlook on life, making him a case of type A. He does occasionally show a few Type D traits, though. He's been shown to have some really severe hatred for those who destroyed his hometown, and it is suggested that, unconsciously, his real reason for learning how to fight so well was to exact revenge on those responsible. The fact that he specifically learned a spell designed to outright ''kill'' demons is telling... |
| 88 | * Alice from ''Manga/{{Nemurihime}}''. In the space of eight chapters she has [[spoiler: lost her father, was stricken with a disease that will kill her in a year, was frozen for fifty years, learned that her doctor was in love with her but married another woman to have a family. His wife became so desparate for his affection that she figured they could only be TogetherInDeath, which caused the doctor's son to hate Alice so much he unfroze her just to torture her for the rest of her life -- which will be one year because there's still no cure for her disease]]. According to those who read the whole thing ''it gets worse''. [[BreakTheCutie Poor Alice.]] |
| 89 | * ''Anime/NeonGenesisEvangelion'': |
| 90 | ** Shinji Ikari was a lonely, cripplingly introverted kid to begin with, thanks to seeing his mother die at a tender age and being subsequently [[ParentalAbandonment abandoned]] by his [[DisappearedDad father]]. Then, he gets shanghaied into piloting a mecha that's actually a Lovecraftian monstrosity, which exposes his already fragile mind to more than most adults can take. He gets beaten up at school for his efforts and his first proper battle experience all but ''ruins'' him, as in, he shut himself in his room for weeks, ran away, and contemplated jumping off a cliff. In spite of all this, Shinji manages to find himself some friends and a sort of replacement family and even bond with the cute girls surrounding him, pulling through all the challenges that life threw at him...until all of his achievements were ripped away from him in the cruelest possible fashion. First he put on a mental trial by the first Angel with psychic abilities, leading him to question and doubting himself, after which a critical mutual failure to understand each other leads to his relationship with a love interest souring, then, he has to watch his best friend get maimed at his own father's hands, all but destroying their relationship that was finally showing subtle signs of improvement, next, his mentor/father figure is assassinated and his mother figure falls into deep depression as a result, one of his love interests gets subjected to brutal MindRape and the other dies to save his life, just to be replaced by a clone who barely reacts to him, after which he's treated to watching several of these clones dissolving into bloods and gore, the revelation that his dead mother's soul is in his mecha all of which while he couldn't do a thing about her...and then, just when he's at the lowest of the low, some white haired {{Bishonen}} turns up and wants to be his friend...except he turns out to be an enemy whom Shinji has to kill...and ends up sacrificing himself for Shinji's sake. Guilt-ridden, the poor boy loses his will to live, but is unwilling to kill himself as well. After trying unsuccessfully to find refuge in his [[DudeShesLikeInAComa comatose love interest]], he just curls up and waits for someone to shoot him. Cue ''[[FromBadToWorse End of Evangelion]]''. Uniquely, Shinji is all over the scale of results for this trope. At the start of the series he is already a Result E from his back-story alone. Throughout the series he keeps going back and forth between Result F, D and C. He usually tries to be a Result F, until something pushes him far enough and he plunges into D, which he usually precedes to fail at landing him on C until he manages to crawl back to F. In End of Evangelion he [[spoiler:finally breaks the cycle by just giving up entirely and temporary becoming a Result B [[EarnYourHappyEnding before finally managing to find a way]] to Result A]]. |
| 91 | ** In ''Anime/RebuildOfEvangelion'', he's a strange variation of a Result D. [[spoiler:He, not Unit 01, goes berserk at the end of 2.0 to save Rei, but doesn't give a damn if he kills everything else in the process. It's even displayed earlier in the movie, when he tries to destroy NERV and off Gendo with his EVA for using the dummy system on Unit 03 while Asuka was inside it.]] [[FromBadToWorse Then he goes through a particularly nasty one]] in Rebuild ''3.0.'' that sends him straight into Result C. |
| 92 | ** It is implied that Shinji's father is a type B or a type E. |
| 93 | ** In fact, it's harder to name the characters who ''don't'' get put through the meatgrinder as the series progressed. Asuka's story, in particular, is that of a naive young girl shattering on the hard rocks of reality. To wit: her mother went insane after an experiment with Unit-02, causing her to neglect Asuka before committing suicide. Since then, Asuka was resolved not to rely on anyone, nor to show weakness. Things seem to go well for some time after she arrives in Japan, helping to score major victories against a few Angels. After her caretaker Misato started going out again with her colleague and old flame Kaji, whom Asuka was also in love with, her confidence begins to waver, as does her performance in battle. While dealing with the fact that Shinji began to surpass her as a pilot, she is soundly taken out of action by the Angel Bardiel when it took control of Unit-03, then after that, fails to stop Zeruel when it assaults NERV HQ, the Angel completely tanking her attacks before disarming and beheading Unit-02. Following Kaji's death, she then tries to fight against Arale, which launches a [[MindRape psychic assault]] on her that forces her to relive her trauma while confronting her with the belief that her only worth as a human being was in her ability to pilot an EVA: if she couldn't pilot Unit-02, she was better off dead. This specific trauma is further compounded by the fact that she was only saved from death by Rei, whom she had grown to despise, defeating the Angel. Her fears of losing all worth as a person become a self-fulfilling prophecy when Asuka is once again sortied against Armisael, only for her synchronization levels to have fallen so low that she can no longer operate Unit-02. After this, she becomes so suicidally depressed that she falls into a catatonic state. |
| 94 | * ''Manga/NotSimple'' is essentially the trauma conga line of its main character, Ian's life. To explain, [[spoiler: he is the product of incest between his father and sister, Kylie, but due to her young age, [[FamilyRelationshipSwitcharoo he was raised to believe his grandmother was his mother]]. Because of how he was born, both his father and grandmother hate him. After his sister ends up in jail, his "parents" divorce and he ends up with his grandmother, a drunk who abuses him and even pimps him out to pay for her alcohol, which leds to him getting H.I.V. After Kylie gets out of jail, she sends him to live with their father, with the promise that he can see her again when he beats his current running speed and this becomes his sole purpose in life. Unfortunately, before this could happen, Kylie died of H.I.V, which was given to her by the same pimp who infected Ian, who she nearly killed when she found out what he's done, which landed her in prison again. His grandmother blames him for all her and Kylie's misfortunes and disownes him, with his father doing the same shortly after. Eventually, he meets a rich woman who promises to run away with him in a year, only for him to discover later that she apparently died. He's then killed by assassins who mistake him for somebody else.]] |
| 95 | * ''Manga/OnePiece'': Almost every major character will dance this conga until their feet bleed. They promised us cute pirate shenanigans, and we got it, but with a huge helping of horrible heartbreak. |
| 96 | ** Luffy finally had a HeroicBSOD after a Trauma Conga Line that started way back in Sabaody and was compounded by events that only succeeded in twisting in the knife, culminating in [[spoiler:Ace sacrificing himself to save Luffy after Luffy had gone through hell and high water to save ''him'' from execution at Impel Down]]. |
| 97 | ** Nico Robin makes a prominent example. [[spoiler:She was neglected and bullied as a child, then her entire hometown was burned down and everyone she knew was killed right in front of her, including her mother who left her 7 years ago and her only friend. She was then actively hunted down by the World Government for over 20 years, betrayed and sold out by anyone she had ever associated with, up until she met the Strawhats. Even then, she turned herself in the Government to protect them and was abused by the chief of the Government assassins until the Strawhats and Franky gave her the will to live and then saved her.]] |
| 98 | ** Brook. [[spoiler:His ship got shattered, he saw all his friends die one by one, then he died, but [[TheUndead came back]], just to be stuck all alone for 50 years on a ghost ship without food or sunlight. He also got his shadow stolen which would instantly destroy him, if he is in sunlight. He outright states that if it weren't for his Devil Fruit, he [[DrivenToSuicide would have killed himself long ago.]]]] |
| 99 | ** Trafalgar Law's childhood: [[spoiler: doomed to an early death by poisoning along with all the people of his country, his father, mother, sister and friends finally die during the genocide committed by foreign nations to prevent a pandemic that would have never occurred anyway as they were poisoned, not contagious. After he managed to escape by hiding among the corpses, pretty much snapped.]] It got worse, too. [[spoiler:He joined the Donquixote Pirates as a preteen in order to hurt the world as much as he could before he died from the poison. When Doflamingo's brother and right hand, Corazon, realized Law was a D., he knew Law wouldn't be safe around Doflamingo and kidnapped him to look for a cure for his disease. Corazon dragged Law through multiple hospitals... who assumed Law was a plague carrier and called the poor kid a monster to his face. Corazon managed to find the Op-Op Fruit, which Law could use to cure himself...and died at Doflamingo's hands so Law could escape.]] All before Law's fourteenth birthday. |
| 100 | ** Sanji, holy shit Sanji. Specifically in the Whole Cake Island arc. [[spoiler: After leaving Dressrosa with Nami, Chopper, Brook, Momonosuke, and Caesar, they run into the Big Mom Pirates but manage to get away and head to Zou. After saving the Mink Tribe, the Big Mom Pirates show up, having followed them. One of them (a fellow Mink named Pekoms) was going to let him go, but his associate and Worst Generation member Capone Bege shoots him in the back. Bege then reveals the main reason they're there, to "invite" Sanji to his ArrangedMarriage with Big Mom's 35th daughter Pudding. He can't refuse this invitation either, otherwise they'll send him a package with the severed head of someone close to him (not just the Straw Hats, but someone from the Baratie or Kamabakka Kingdom), so he's taken away. Upon arriving to Whole Cake Island, Sanji meets his family who he absolutely despises as they abused him hard as a child. He gets into a fight with his dad, and loses when he summons soldiers to act as human shields. Then they place explosive bracelets on him so if he tries to escape, they'll go off and take his hands. Sanji continues to act out, only for his dad to reveal they have assassins placed at the Baratie, ready to kill Zeff. All this while his brothers continue to beat him. It gets worse when Luffy and Nami show up and prepare to take him back. Sanji proceeds to violently attack Luffy as an act to convince his family that he's cut off ties with the Straw Hats. Luffy doesn't believe him at all, and even goes on a hunger strike until he comes back. At this point he believes the kind gentle Pudding is his only ray of light left and is ready to get married to her. But when he goes to visit her with some food and flowers, he learns that Pudding was EvilAllAlong and plans to kill him and the rest of his family at the wedding. His expressions perfectly encapsulate a broken man.]] Things eventually get better for Sanji though ''it's a miracle'' he [[IronWoobie didn't]] come out of the arc as a broken shell of a man. |
| 101 | * [[spoiler:Oz Vessalius]] from ''Manga/PandoraHearts'' has played the part of a CheerfulChild StepfordSmiler since he was young, but, despite being [[BrokenHero incredibly broken]], he has been able to find some happiness in the present. That is, until he's [[spoiler:[[EtTuBrute betrayed by Jack]], his trusted mentor figure, after which his world comes down around him. Along with the trauma he experienced at the hands of his [[ParentalAbandonment cold and dismissive father]], he then learns that his father's hatred of him may be justified, as it is revealed that he [[TomatoInTheMirror is not the person he thought he was]] but rather an existence dangerous to nearly everybody around him. Consequently, he experiences an [[LossOfIdentity identity crisis]] and goes into a HeroicBSOD after being shot by his best friend. Just as he's getting better after a reconciliation with said best friend, and even better after pulling off a ShutUpHannibal at Jack and calling back Alice to the world, his own beloved uncle gets stabbed by one of his friends, who turns out to be taken over by her SplitPersonality, who is also one of the crazier Baskervilles they know, and said uncle pulls a YouShallNotPass on the pursuing Baskervilles and lets Oz and co. go without him]]. It remains to be seen how he'll come out of it all in the end. |
| 102 | * Both Sorata and Nanami of ''Literature/ThePetGirlOfSakurasou'' suffer through this in episode 21. While they had some other outstanding issues, it finally reached a boiling point for both of them after all the bad things that kept happening to them, such as their failures to achieve something in the goals they were reaching for. |
| 103 | * In ''Manga/PokemonAdventures'': |
| 104 | ** White goes through one over the span of what couldn't have been more than an hour, when N shatters her worldview and proves that her Tepig, Gigi, ''actually'' wants to be a fighter rather than an actress; and Gigi abandons her for N to pursue that path. To make things worse all this happens ''immediately'' after the highest moment of her life when she pulls off an incredibly successful show. Though it takes a little while, she [[spoiler:resolves to become a Type A.]] |
| 105 | ** The XY chapter starts with Shauna as a Type G. Time will tell where she goes from there, seeing how she seems to take the brunt of most personally traumatic experiences in TheTeam. |
| 106 | * A "mild" example occurs in ''Anime/PokemonConcierge'' to Haru. Her long-term boyfriend breaks up with her with a text message, she stepped on gum while wearing her favourite heels, she was late to an important business meeting, her workplace friend quit the job, she trimmed her eyebrows wrong, she spent three hours making a curry that tasted horrible, she worked hard for another work presentation, only to lose the project to someone else ''and'' she stepped on gum again. All of this happening on a day to day basis in a span of a little over a week is what drove Haru to get a job at the Resort in the first place. |
| 107 | * Every character in ''Manga/ThePromisedNeverland'' is continually subject to horrible torture from the very start of the series. |
| 108 | ** Emma's entire life was turned on its head when she discovered the dead body of her surrogate sister Connie about to be shipped off and eaten by demons. Before she manages to escape the farm, she's forced to keep the truth a secret from her whole family, has her leg broken by her own "Mama," watch her best friend go off to his [[spoiler: supposed]] death, chop off her own ear, and [[spoiler: leave her youngest siblings behind.]] And that's nothing compared to after she gets out! She's attacked by demons, almost killed several times, kidnapped into a hunting ground where she has to fight for her life, watch one of her siblings get severely injured, [[spoiler: leave Yuugo and Lucas to their supposed deaths against her will,]] go through terrifying mind-altering gates, and [[spoiler: have to accept that she won't remember or ever see her family again.]] |
| 109 | ** Ray goes through many of the same things that Emma does, but with one added bit of pain: [[spoiler: he knew about Grace Field being a farm from the very beginning. He had to watch for years as his siblings were shipped out, never able to do anything about it while acting as an informant for "Mama" and continually betraying them at every turn.]] |
| 110 | ** Even the villains aren't safe from a lifetime of torture! [[spoiler: Mama was raised as a cattle child until she discovered the truth after her best friend was sent off. When she tried to escape and saw the pit outside the wall, she gave up all hope and resigned herself to becoming a "Mama," where instead of dying she could raise children to go off as meat. When she discovers Ray is her biological son, she isn't able to help him in the long run; she's only able to make sure he lives until 12 before he dies. She watches her farm, her life's work, go up in flames, and finally sacrifices her life to save Emma and the other children after only just realizing that she did truly love them.]] |
| 111 | ** All of the children from [[spoiler: Lambda were forced to undergo experimental surgeries to try and make them into the highest possible quality meat. This left them with seizures and oftentimes horrible mutilations.]] |
| 112 | ** Poor, poor [[spoiler: Yuugo.]] After getting out of [[spoiler: Goldy Pond]] with his siblings, he watched as each of them died until he was the last one left. When he got to the shelter, he spent years alone with hallucinations of guilt until the Grace Field children arrived to bother him. Despite him considering killing Emma to make life easier on himself, he grew to care for the kids. [[spoiler: After only just discovering that his best friend Lucas is alive, the two sacrifice themselves to kill the children's pursuer. The real kicker? He made it out alive.]] |
| 113 | * Several examples from ''Anime/PuellaMagiMadokaMagica'': |
| 114 | ** Madoka [[spoiler: goes through this largely by watching people she cares about either die or turn into a witch, with her being unable to anything about it, largely due to Homura who keeps getting in her way towards becoming a magical girl (because magical girls are doomed to become witches). When she finally does accept Kyubey's contract, she ultimately sacrifices herself by using her wish to ensure that no magical girl will become a witch, instead visiting them at the moment their Soul Gems would blacken completely and giving them a merciful end.]] |
| 115 | ** Sayaka [[spoiler: first ends up fighting against Kyoko, who berates her using her wish for someone else rather than herself, then finding out what happened to her body/soul when she became a magical girl. Then her friend Hitomi mentions that she's interested in Kyosuke as well, and will ask him out after giving Sayaka one day to confess her feelings, which Sayaka doesn't do because of her body/soul situation. Finally, she hears of two guys who are making fun of a woman one is dating, and thinking she's a moron for devoting herself to him, which Sayaka doesn't enjoy hearing, and finally just gives up all hope and turns into a witch.]] |
| 116 | ** Kyoko [[spoiler: first witnesses as her father starts to preach crazy things, which causes people to stop attending their church, and then their family starts to suffer lots of hardships, including starvation. When she makes her wish to have people attend the church, at first it seems good, until her father finds out what she did, and he kills himself and the family as a result. She finally sacrifices herself to stop Sayaka who just recently turned into a witch.]] |
| 117 | ** Homura [[spoiler: is forced to watch Madoka constantly die, or turn into a witch, and almost every time she tries to warn them of something bad happening if they become a magical girl, they either ignore her warnings, or take it a with a grain of salt. Most of the time the main characters view her in a very negative light, and it isn't until Episode 10 that we see why Homura acts the way she does, due to her inability to change the fate of people around her, including the person she cares about the most, Madoka herself.]] |
| 118 | * ''Manga/RurouniKenshin'': |
| 119 | ** Himura Kenshin is a mix between a Type A and a Type E. |
| 120 | ** Considering that Kenji basically becomes [[spoiler:an orphan and most of his childhood consists of waiting for his redemption-obsessed father and watching his mother slowly dying from the grief and a skin illness she caught from said father,]] his life doesn't look much better. |
| 121 | * ''Manga/ShadowStar'': |
| 122 | ** Shiina Tamai is a brave, kind-hearted, upbeat ActionGirl...who, as per the {{Deconstruction}}ist nature of the series, is put through a ''lot'' of crap. Between watching friends and loved ones die, and seeing that [[HumansAreBastards humans are a truly terrible lot]], there's only so much trauma she can take before she turns into an example of Result C. [[HappilyEverBefore The anime version doesn't get anywhere near that far, mind you]]. |
| 123 | ** Most of the kids connected to the Dragon Children. If they don’t have issues they will quickly get them. Akira is [[AbusiveParent sexually abused by her father]], forcibly dragged into a conflict with [[TeensAreMonsters teenage psychos]], [[MindRape mind-raped]] at least twice to [[WeCanRuleTogether make her join]], [[spoiler: locked away for almost a year for killing said father]] and confronted with dozens of violent deaths. There is also [[spoiler:Hiroko]], who has [[LonelyRichKid no-one beside Shiina]], is ''horrendously'' bullied in school (including one instance of [[spoiler:rape by test tube]]) and her demanding parents don’t give a damn as long as she has good grades. When her father tries to [[spoiler:cut her ties with Shiina]] she ''snaps'', and things go horribly wrong. |
| 124 | * Rintaro Okabe from ''VisualNovel/SteinsGate'' had to go through [[spoiler:seeing his childhood friend die repeatedly no matter what he does, and when he finally manages to save her, it's at the cost of sacrificing the love of his life for it]]. |
| 125 | * Simon from ''Anime/TengenToppaGurrenLagann'' has basically almost everyone close to him die, and no matter how much ScrewDestiny is the theme of the series there seems to be nothing he can do to prevent it. In the end, he [[spoiler:abandons Spiral Power entirely, because he knows first hand how destructive it is.]] |
| 126 | * ''Manga/TokyoGhoul'': Poor, poor [[Manga/TokyoGhoul Kaneki Ken]]. Where do we begin? His father died when he was only four, leaving only books to remember him by. His mother, whom he repeatedly refers to as kind and a wonderful person, [[spoiler: beat him as a child]] before working herself to death to support herself, her sister, and her son when Kaneki was ten. After his mother's death, he was sent to live with his aunt, who was verbally and emotionally abusive towards him, excluding him from family meals and instead giving him a meager amount of money to buy his own food. He gets six months or so of happiness after leaving for college, until [[TheChewToy the universe decides he hasn't had enough trauma lately]], and he goes on a date with Kamishiro Rize, who turns out to be a ghoul and tries to kill and eat Kaneki. After [[spoiler: what seems to be]] an accident involving steel beams falling and crushing Rize. To save his life, her organs are transplanted into Kaneki, turning him into a half-ghoul hybrid. ''And all of this is just up to the first episode''. After that, he is tricked into becoming a meal in the Ghoul Restaurant, then forced to fight for his own life and that of three others' because he ''tastes good''. He's then kidnapped by Aogiri and tortured psychologically and physically by having his fingers and toes torn off repeatedly with pliers and a centipede left to crawl around in his ear for ten days straight. [[spoiler: It's loosely implied that he was sexually assaulted as well.]] His defining breaking moment comes when he is forced to choose between killing a mother and a child. He chooses himself to die. His tormentor kills them both. The whole ordeal has such an effect on him that his hair turns white, his nails turn black, and he abandons the subservient ideology he was taught by his mother, instead taking it upon himself to protect everyone he cares about. This mindset leads to him eating ghouls in order to become stronger, taking a serious toll on his sanity; as he fights he's rambling incoherently about his body belonging to him. He ends up accidentally stabbing one of his comrades before coming to his senses and sobbing, apologizing over and over, and going home and [[AngstComa curling up on his bed in a ball of self-loathing for several days]]. [[spoiler: And it all ends with the possibility that Kaneki has injured or killed his best friend and Kaneki being [[CurbStompBattle brutally beaten]] by the CCG's God of Death, stabbed through the abdomen and both of his eyes. The pages of him stumbling around, his sanity slipping, asking if he's going to die, are some of the saddest from the whole manga. He's not dead, but :RE doesn't seem to be treating him much better.]] '''''And all of this happened because the poor kid just wanted to go on a date.''''' |
| 127 | * [[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast Vash the Stampede]] from ''Manga/{{Trigun}}''. As we learn more and more about him two important facts come to mind. 1. He is the [[BreakTheCutie unluckiest person who's ever lived]]. 2. There is someone out there [[BigBad directly responsible]] for that and ''he's far from finished.'' However, Vash takes the route A because he is just that ''badass''. |
| 128 | * Almost ''every'' major character in ''Manga/TsubasaReservoirChronicle''. One good example is Fai, who has a backstory so mindbendingly dramatic [[DeusAngstMachina it's verging on ridiculous]] and during the course of the story manages to [[spoiler:[[UnwittingPawn be used]] by the BigBad, be killed (in a virtual world, but still), have an eye gouged out and ''eaten'' by his surrogate son, after which he tries to let himself die but is ''forced'' to become a vampire by his [[HoYay partner]], a curse obliges him to stab his surrogate daughter, his father figure [[SuicideByCop tries to make him kill him]] right after he finds out the magical creature he made in semblance of his mother has been erased from existence, and then gives up his remaining magic power to get a prosthetic arm for [[HoYay his partner]], who had to rip it off to save him once again]]. And this all happens in around 100 chapters. And that's not even mentioning how his backstory contains [[spoiler:horrible abuse, separation from his twin, bearing witness to the genocide of the people of Valeria, his uncle stabbing himself through the head in front of him, the death of his twin in front of his eyes, and then ANOTHER genocide when Ashura goes batsy]]. |
| 129 | * ''Anime/RingingBell'': Poor Chirin is only a [[SweetSheep baby lamb]], but has suffered so much for only being a few months ago. First Chirin has an [[BreakTheCutie emotional breakdown]] after realizing his mother's dead, then gets knocked out after being thrown off a cliff by the [[SavageWolf Woe the wolf]], fails to protect baby birds (which results with Chirin going through another emotional breakdown), gets sprayed by a skunk, laughed and kicked by a group of buffaloes when attempting to be threatening, rolled into a ball by weasels, almost drowns by falling into a water hole in a lake, and goes [[TrainingFromHell through an intense training session.]] That's one heck of a life for a child that's barely a year old! Knowing, Creator/BarbaraGoodson, (English voice of Young Chirin) also provided the voice of Unico in Sanrio's [[Anime/TheFantasticAdventuresOfUnico Unico]] [[Anime/UnicoInTheIslandOfMagic Movies]] only adds more tragedy to both characters. |
| 130 | * ''Manga/{{Unico}}'' suffers heavily from this, in both the manga and the anime. To summarize: he is a ''baby unicorn'' that simply had the ability to make others happy. The JerkassGods hated that he was popular because of that, so they send the West Wind to kidnap him and exile him to the end of the world where he would be utterly alone. She feels pity for him though and brings him somewhere else. Too bad that Unico - as is his nature - makes friends to the miserable creatures and unlucky people he meets, [[NiceJobBreakingItHero constantly making the gods notice that he is still around]]. They send the Night Wind to take care of Unico which leads to the West Wind constantly appearing before Unico and taking him somewhere else, forcing him to abandon the friends he made (some who are implied to [[BreakTheCutie break]] from being left [[IJustWantToHaveFriends by the one friend they had]]). While he doesn't experience any direct mental harm since the West Wind constantly forced LaserGuidedAmnesia on him, he always watches his friends disappear beneath him with tearful eyes and whenever he is left alone at a new place and forgets everything, he is scared and soon calls out for someone desperately. The manga ends with the DownerEnding that this is literally Unico's destiny that he will never escape from, forever making friends, being forced away from them and then forgetting they ever existed. He is somewhere between type F (since his [[LaserGuidedAmnesia amnesia]] makes him not realize the TraumaCongaLine) and type G and every story - movie or manga - is guaranteed to be a massive TearJerker. |
| 131 | * ''Manga/WolfGuyWolfenCrest'': Let's see. [[TheWoobie Aoshika Akiko's]] trauma conga line began when she was in middle school, where she was sexually assaulted by some older male students. [[SlutShaming Victim blaming]] [[SoBeautifulItsACurse soon ensued]], so she and her family had to move away. Soon after getting her teaching license at a young age, Aoshika quickly gets married at her father's insistence, [[DefiledForever saying that no man would want her.]] Her marriage did not go well and she divorced. She managed to live a quiet and simple life as a dedicated but under appreciated middle school teacher for awhile...until the NewTransferStudent, [[TheProtagonist Akira Inugami]], entered her home room and her life. From there, she went through another sexual assault [[spoiler: but it was averted]], almost got eaten by an escaped lion, and survived not one, but TWO school shootings. Oh, and [[spoiler:Inugami is a werewolf]]. That stuff was pretty minute to say the VERY least, as everything got, really, ''really'' bad when Inugami's arch-nemesis Haguro finds out that the student and teacher are attracted to each other. Wanting to draw Inugami out, he proceeds to [[spoiler: kidnapping Aoshika, having her molested by his Yakuza mooks, raping her, then having his goons gang rape her for several hours, drugging her for half of the duration so then she would enjoy being raped, and he does this all in front of Inugami via video--which he proceeds to release on the internet to ensure that her life would be ruined]]. |
| 132 | * In ''Manga/YamadaKunAndTheSevenWitches'', Shiraishi cannot catch a break during Rika's arc: |
| 133 | ** First she loses her memories of Yamada, with her WistfulAmnesia affecting her a great deal, [[ImCryingButIDontKnowWhy often causing her to cry for reasons she doesn't know]]. |
| 134 | ** Her club (which is generally the bright spot in her life) starts falling apart because the other members also forgot Yamada. |
| 135 | ** Near the end of the arc, Asuka suddenly swaps bodies with her without her consent and has her confined in a house full of strangers --- she is scared because she doesn't know if she'll get her body back, while the regret that she didn't believe Yamada when he told the truth also pains her. |
| 136 | ** When she gets her memories back, she still feels sadness and pangs of conscience that she didn't manage to keep her promise to Yamada to be the first person he kissed. Fortunately, she gets much better when she finally becomes his girlfriend. |
| 137 | * This happens to Mai Kujaku/Valentine. She was MindRaped during the Battle City Finals and her subsequent inadvertent FaceHeelTurn that gets her in arguably even worse danger during the Doma saga in ''Anime/YuGiOh''. |
| 138 | ** This happens on much a higher, much more heartbreaking scale to Judai Yuki in ''Anime/YuGiOhGX'', and could very well pass as the best example of this trope next to ''Manga/{{Naruto}}'' above in Shonen anime history. |
| 139 | ** And it gets worse in ''Anime/YuGiOh5Ds''. At the beginning of the series, all the major and quite a number of minor characters are in a bad place. The major characters in Satellite are orphans and live on whatever they can salvage while pursued by Security and discriminated against by the people of Neo-Domino. But on the other side, things aren't much better. Aki Izayoi was struggling with her father's inability to balance work and home life, leading to the awakening of her PsychicPowers, that ruined her relationship with her parents, who saw her as a monster. She was sent to Duel Academy and came back to find her parents doing well without her, misreading the scene as their feeling glad to be rid of her and ran into the arms of a secret society housing scorned Psychics. Yusei, like Judai, has one heck of a battering--his parents were killed in Zero Reverse; the result of a project his father had been in charge of, who [[HeroicSacrifice sacrificed himself to ensure the year-old Yusei could survive]]. He bares the mask of TheStoic, but has a fantastic breakdown in his match with Rudger--at the very site where the latter was responsible for his parents' (and thousands of others) deaths. There, Yusei reveals that he's been shouldering the guilt of his father and can't even understand why his friends can stand him, [[SinsOfOurFathers as the son of the man whose project]] took away their parents' lives. |
| 140 | ** The present of 5D's isn't even the worst of it. There's the BadFuture to deal with. A global version of Zero Reverse takes place as Synchro Monsters overlord the momentum system and as a result, the Machine Emperors are unleashed. What happens is [[ApocalypseHow the eradication of almost all human life on the planet]]. Of the four humans that are shown among those remaining, [[spoiler: Aporia loses his parents as a child, his lover as an adult and finds no further sign of life by the time he's an elderly man, pushing him far over the DespairEventHorizon. Antinomy is so grief-stricken by what's happened that he's prepared to die when a Machine Emperor is about to fire on him, only to be saved by Zone and breaks down. Zone himself could be the worst. Unable to see his world crumble, he researched Yusei, who is effectively the embodiment of hope and works tirelessly to literally become him, even including headgear that holds Yusei's personality, just to become a symbol of hope and spur mankind into fighting back. His efforts fail horribly when the situation eventually worsens and he's unable to save anyone, almost killed himself. By then, he, too, is pushed harshly over the DespairEventHorizon, and, as a result, is so damaged, that his plan to save the future becomes a journey back 200 years to take out the Synchro Monsters that caused the destruction of his world - even if it means taking out Yusei and [[RetGone himself]].]] |
| 141 | ** And somehow [[Anime/YuGiOhArcV Yuya]] tops them all as his line started before the start of his series to the very end of his series! Yuya's trauma started when his beloved father who was also his hero, disappeared three years ago from a championship match causing the public to not only think lowly of his father but him as well. He then spent the next three years mocked with only his friends Yuzu and Gongenzaka protecting him, causing him to develop StepfordSmiler tendencies that he got over in the first episode. In the series proper, his newly created Pendulum Cards netted him the attention of Reiji and LDS who was interested in Yuya's new cards and Yuya himself, nearly losing his father's school. [[spoiler:This got worse when Yuya learned that not only are there other dimensions but they are at war with each other using Dueling, heavily contradicting his beliefs that dueling should be fun with the added bonus that his new friend, Sora was evil. He is then is mixed up in a death match between two of his counterparts, people who have the same face as him which, ends with the both of [[SuperPoweredEvilSide losing control]] and trying to kill each other. This results in Yuya going into a coma for two days as he absorbing the losing counterpart. Then Yuya awakens his own SuperPoweredEvilSide, which brutalize his ideals to win. In the Battle Royale, Yuya struggles with his SuperPoweredEvilSide as he faces soldiers that card his friends and even his friend, Sora on the enemies side. This comes crashing down when [[LivingEmotionalCrutch his best friend/love interest, Yuzu]] goes missing and he realizes he doesn't have the power to save her. He then crosses dimensions to the Synchro Dimension, a society where the weak are crushed completely mocking his ideals again. His attempts to persuade the Commons results in mocking, hatred or being called a hypocrite. His skill later attracted Jean Roget's interest which nearly resulted in being turned into a cyborg but instead he was literally tortured by electricity. After finally being reunited with Yuzu, they are separated as Yuya is thrown to the Xyz Dimension where he becomes a FightMagnet. After finally getting to the Fusion Dimension, Yuya learns that he and his counterparts used to be part of Zarc, the BigBad that destroyed the world once and he's their SuperPoweredEvilSide. In the heroes' attempt to save Yuya, Yuya see his beloved father fall to one of his counterpart. Yuya despite his best efforts, loses control of his body and Zarc is revived.]] |
| 142 | |
| 143 |
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/context.php
FollowingContext TraumaCongaLine / AnimeAndManga
Go To
- Show Spoilers
- Night Vision
- Sticky Header
- Wide Load
