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As a Death Trope, contains many spoilers. Tread with care.

Times where Anyone Can Die in Anime and Manga.


  • Not-dying is actually a task in 7 Seeds. It takes place after The End of the World as We Know It, so the death toll is pretty large. The people who have died to date are majority of humanity of course, all but one member of Team Winter, every candidate for Team Summer A except the seven that were chosen for it, everyone in the Ryugu Shelter and three out of four guides for the teams.
  • No one is safe in Air Gear. Though they do come back sometimes.
  • Akame ga Kill! has become pretty well known for this. By the end of the manga, side characters are Red Shirts, almost everyone from Team Wild Hunt is dead, and both the Jaegars and especially Night Raid have lost all but a few of their squad members and all that survived are irreparably maimed or changed in some way. The anime, meanwhile, nearly went full "Everybody Dies" Ending in a Gecko Ending.
  • Angel Beats! may look like a series where nobody can die because they are...ya know, already dead, but it later revealed that the purpose of the place is to make the souls who had a troubled life come to terms with their lives and move on to next time, which more or less erases their existence in that plane completely and dying. So it's not that Anyone Can Die. Everyone WILL die.
  • Kaori Yuki in Angel Sanctuary kills of a lot of the cast. It does not matter if you are human, angel, demon or whatsoever. Though, being main-casty gives you a bit of a protection. (Of course, depending on what your definition of main cast happens to be.)
  • In the anime for Another, practically one person dies per episode after the first two exposition/introductory episodes, usually in a pretty brutal or gory fashion due to a curse in a certain classroom...
  • This trope goes full effect in As the Gods Will and its sequel, indiscriminately killing off scores of high school students in what can amount to fun and games. As for how many? Out of all the students that participated, initially 319 people survived, and the death counter is still rising.
  • Surprisingly, Astro Boy uses this trope. People don't die that often, but nobody's too important to die. And we mean nobody.
  • Attack on Titan is brutal when it comes to killing off characters given that they're fighting for their survival against man-eating naked giants. By the series' end, you can barely count how many in the Survey Corps and their allies survive.
  • Basilisk. Anyone can die... and by the end, everyone does die.
  • In Battle Angel Alita, aside from Alita (and even then...), there are absolutely no guarantees that anyone won't be offed later on in the series, AND you will generally have no clue as to when or who it'll be until it actually happens.
  • Berserk: people around Guts have a tendency to die horribly (including the near entirety of the Band of the Hawk due to the Eclipse).
  • Black God doesn't pull any punches either. The very first episode kills off the protagonist's best friend and his next-door neighbor's 10 year old daughter. From then on, all but a few of the named character that appear, die.
  • Black Butler enjoys delving into these antics frequently.
    • Nearly all of the Noah's Ark Circus' members, who were the centre of an entire arc, are killed in a myriad of ways.
    • Sebastian appears to be brutally murdered, though it turns out to just be an act.
      • In the the same arc, random guests at the Phantomhive manor are killed by a mysterious murderer.
  • During Blood+, several major characters are killed off for good , including Saya's father and brother, who die in a particularly horrible manner.
  • Blood-C is even worse in the 6th episode: two major characters (as well as a truckload of random bystanders) are killed brutally, and in the 8th and 9th episode Saya's class (except for the Class Representative) are all killed viciously. However, those major characters turned out to be faking and in the last episode EVERYBODY except Saya, Yuka and the Big Bad dies.
  • Blue Gender has a similarly poor track record. Aside from a few extras introduced the episode before the end, only two named characters make it through the series alive.
    • It was made clear fairly early on this would be the case. The first episode introduces 8 named characters. By the end of the second episode, four of them are dead, three within less than a minute of each other.
  • Bokurano, made clear when it kills off the Decoy Protagonist in episode two, and then outright writing it in stone that not only can anyone die, but just about everyone will die.
  • Book of Bantorra does this religiously. Nearly every new character introduced will be shot, stabbed, blown up, eaten, or lit on fire by the end of the arc. The creators, just to stick it to the audience, have no problem killing off main characters, either. One of the most memorable deaths being Volken, who's murdered after finding out everything he fought for was a lie.
  • In Chainsaw Man, no one is exempt from suddenly getting killed by some horrifying new enemy, not even the protagonist Denji, but he has resurrective powers. None of the other main characters do, and this series isn't afraid to off even characters Denji has befriended and fought alongside for many Story Arcs. Major threats are indicated by them casually and effortlessly killing off a few main characters who were introduced early on, as sort of a lethal variant of The Worf Effect.
  • Le Chevalier Deon uses this trope ruthlessly. At the end of the series, there is only ONE main character left alive, out of a cast of perhaps 10 major players.
  • Choujin Sensen: It doesn't matter whether the selected players have superpowers or not, one of them will die, and the other will survive in a death match.
  • Chrono Crusade did this to almost the entire main cast.
  • Claymore is noted for this trope, in that nobody except perhaps Clare and Raki are truly safe, and even that is stretched to its limit several times. The Northern Campaign had about a half-dozen notable Claymores killed unceremoniously. And Theresa of the Faint Smile certainly feels like a protagonist once you see her backstory — the segment which delves into her and Clare's backstory together makes her feel like The Hero of the story, and had it been told from the very beginning it would have made her being a rather effective Decoy Protagonist.
  • Code Geass mostly plays this straight during its first season. Examples include: Clovis, the first notable antagonist whose early exit surprised many fans. Mao, Psychopathic Manchild and Geass user who somehow survived his initial stint as arc villain only to finally die an episode later. Euphemia, the Rebellious Princess who became increasingly important to the plot as time went on. But the second series tends to subvert the trope more often than not, something that displeased many viewers. Nevertheless, Shirley (the Naïve Everygirl love interest with her own long-running subplot dating back to the first season), Rolo (the Tyke Bomb manipulated into becoming Lelouch's newest subordinate at the beginning of R2), Charles Zi Brittania (Lelouch's father, the Big Bad and main target of his revenge) and, ultimately, even Lelouch, the protagonist himself, were killed off.
  • Darker than Black uses this trope heavily during the last episodes. The last couple of arcs see recurring antagonists November 11 and Wei, November's boss, The Handler Huang, most of Evening Primrose, and Deliberately Cute Child Amber killed off, and Mao gets reverted to a normal cat. (Though Mao got better in the sequel and at least one EPR member, Amigiri, is shown to have made it out alive.) And so many people tend to die in the course of an arc that focuses on them that it's often both a surprise and a relief when someone makes it out okay.
  • DEAD Tube's setting is about a video hosting website that allows users to upload Snuff Films, and even encourage said content by paying them money for it; aside that, there's Machiya's seemly unrelated group of supporting characters, the Film Research Club, all named and good friends of his, joint together for a common hobby of movie making. Only five chapters in, and all of the Film Research Club turn out to be snuff movie-loving psychos themselves who all lied and played Machiya like a fool, even secretly loathing him behind his back. Machiya answers with opening a stage for all their deaths, resulting in seven out of out of the eleven named characters introduced in six chapters dying because this string of betrayals alone.
  • Deadman Wonderland also has a somewhat high body count, though due to the anime only covering part of the story and removing some characters, it doesn't seem to be as jarring as the manga. In the 12 episodes of the anime, two major characters get killed off suddenly Nagi and Hibana, along with numerous members of Scar Chain and various one-shot characters. In the manga, more die in addition to the previous two; Azami, En and Chan and Tamaki. Some other characters get crippled or lose limbs, but in a metaphorical sense another character dies when her evil Split Personality fully takes over her, turning Shiro from a Nice Girl who sometimes becomes evil briefly, into a monstrous sociopath seemingly permanently... unless Ganta uses his power and a machine called the Mother Goose System to reverse this, though the process would ''kill him instead'.
    • Everyone seemed (relatively) safe for a little bit, after Deadman Wonderland actually closed down...but of course, the protagonists (and others) returned due to powerful and dangerous things (or people, in the case of the Wretched Egg and Hagire) left over in Deadman Wonderland. The Japan Self Defense Force went in to find out how to give people Bloody Murder powers like the Deadmen...and got slaughtered by Hagire. Then the protagonists teamed up to kill Hagire, though Hagire killed Yosuga before he went down for good.
  • Death Note lives up to its name. No character's survival is guaranteed. The body count of minor and major characters alike grows so high as the series progresses that there's suspense not in wondering who will die, but who won't.
  • While Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba is very idealistic and perhaps even formulaic, death among named and well-rounded characters is quite common.
  • Devilman in nearly all of its adaptations; absolutely no one is spared, hero or villain, minor or major, child or adult. It reaches the point that by the end of the series, everybody is dead, and works like DEVILMAN crybaby and Violence Jack strongly imply that they're going to relive their deaths again. The only exception to the rule is the 1972 anime, and even then, Akira Fudo himself dies at the very beginning (the Akira we see is just Amon posessing his corpse).
  • Dragon Ball:
    • Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z live and breathe this trope since, thanks to the Dragon Balls, the afterlife of this series has a revolving door. Seriously, by the time the series is over, the only non-one-shot characters who havn't been killed, or at the very least sent to death's door and healed just in timenote , are Fortuneteller Baba and Mr. Satan (Hercule in the dub), the Fake Ultimate Hero who, through this and a few other things, proves to be a Badass Normal.
    • Technically, there's also King Yemma and his ogres, but how alive they are is up for debate.
    • In Dragon Ball GT, Pan, Goku and Hercule's granddaughter, is the only character never to get killed.
  • Elfen Lied tends to kill off its minor characters, and is good at convincing the audience that it will kill all the main ones eventually. And invisible razor arms mean they won't see it coming.
    • To wit: A minor female character who is very quickly established to be a Plucky Comic Relief Cute Clumsy Girl and thus a potential Ensemble Dark Horse in an otherwise serious show is killed off before the end of the first half of the first episode. This show does not fuck around.
  • In Fafner in the Azure: Dead Aggressor, the only character you can really be convinced has Plot Armor is Kazuki, the protagonist. Well over half the main characters die or are assimilated over the course of the series, either in Heroic Sacrifices or just completely at random. By the end, when the four remaining pilots are told that any deaths disrupts the entire plan, it comes as a surprise that none of them do. It's taken to an extreme in the Right of Left OVA, where EVERYONE on the split island dies almost as soon as they found out that there was a way for them to escape.
  • Fate/Zero is full of characters dying. At the beginning of the story there are fourteen main characters (seven Masters and seven Servants) all in a war to get the Holy Grail and get any wish they want. There are also many supporting characters helping them. By the end, almost everyone has died with the exception of a handful of characters. The only characters who survive the war survive due to being in Fate/stay night, and even then, many of the survivors end up dead in the various routes of Fate/stay night. Even the main hero, Kiritsugu Emiya, dies in the final scene.
  • A lot of heroes, civilians, and bad guys die in Fist of the North Star. Any civilian Ken meets is likely to be killed in some horrid fashion.
  • From the New World follows this. By the end, only 2 out of 5 (6 if you count Reiko) of the main characters are still alive, and most of their townsfolk are gone.
  • Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood actually subverts this. While the death of Maes Hughes established this trope, a majority of the minor and major characters were safe from death after his funeral. It wasn't until the last handful of episodes where the characters were really in danger.
    • Once you think about it, Maes Hughes is really one of the only good guys who dies in the entire series. Others include Captain Buccaneer and Fu. Greed could also count since he's not really a villain, but rather an Anti-Hero. And lets not forget Nina, whom Ed and Al could not save early in the series.
    • Fullmetal Alchemist (2003) on the other hand plays this trope straight, with over 30 important or semi-important deaths between the series and The Movie.
  • For a romantic comedy, Fushigi Yuugi has a shocking number of deaths: All of the Seiryuu Seven save Amiboshi, all of the Suzaku Seven save Tasuki and Chichiri, Tamahome's father and siblings, and the Emperor of Kutou.
    • Its prequel Fushigi Yuugi: Genbu Kaiden ups it even more. Due to Foregone Conclusion we know that Takiko, Eisuke, Tomite and Hikitsu will not survive the series, but that doesn't make their deaths any less shocking since it was a case of when they die. Among those, we also' have Lady Anlu, minor characters, several of the citizens of Hokkan due to famine, cold or the war, two Emperors in close succession and Those Two Guys from the Kutou Army.
  • Gall Force All the OVAs and movies start with 12 or so main characters that get whittled down one by one until only a handful, if even that, are left. Only the the New Era OVA averts this with almost everyone surviving, and that's because its story never got finished.
  • Gantz. See Death Note above, except change "who won't die" with "who won't be utterly ripped to pieces, smashed to bits, squashed like a bug, eaten, blown apart, stabbed, disintegrated, melted, etc." And those are the nice ways to die.
    • Gantz is an interesting example in the sense that people can actually be resurrected (or even cloned), so when this is first revealed it seems like a case of Death is Cheap, but it doesn't take long for you to figure out that not only is not that easy, but the process to resurrect someone requires the person to survive through sadistic games (in which the people they're trying to resurrect died at).
      • Gantz has been especially good in killing-off characters no matter how important or popular they might be. This goes to the point that the one protagonist to survive gets killed-off for good.
  • Ga-Rei -Zero- kills off every single introduced character at the end of the first episode and the newly introduced character with the most focus at the end of the second one.
    • Given that the originalGa-Rei's bodycount in the first Yomi incident alone was stated to be over 70 and character deaths happened without warning even later, it was a given.
  • Genma Wars has a bleak tendency to drop characters that are close to the two main protagonists Loof and Gin. Whether its their mom, surrogate father, friends and love interests, nobody is safe. It comes to a head in the final episode where a nuclear war is triggered, destroying civilization and causing billions of deaths. By the end, only Gin, Loof, his girlfriend Namie and his protege Pogo are the only named survivors left to rebuild the world with the Big Bad's survival is still unclear.
  • Over the course of Ginga: Nagareboshi Gin and it's sequel Ginga Densetsu Weed, many important dogs, both good and bad, die horrible bloody deaths. A prominent example from Ginga Densetsu Weed is John, who according to Word of God was killed off because his design was too similar to another German shepherd character.
  • Gunslinger Girl. It's a given that the girls will eventually die from poisoning by their conditioning drugs. However, actual casualties include Angelica, Beatrice, Henrietta and her handler, and Triela and her handler.
  • Higurashi: When They Cry combines this trope with a "Groundhog Day" Loop, allowing it to kill off its main cast repeatedly. The causes of death are just about always cruel and gruesome to look at. Rika actually dies the same way in many arcs of the anime.
  • Hoshin Engi: The Hoshin List contains 365 entries. It is inevitable that characters will drop in spades, and not just the bad guys or the small fries either.
  • Hunter × Hunter plays with this trope quite a bit throughout its run. Early on, several characters make appearances merely to be killed off only seconds later, although any character who is portrayed in a sympathetic matter is safe for the most part. Then the Chimera Ant arc rolls around, and key characters who've been around since the beginning of the series start dropping like flies. Suddenly nobody is safe, and the deaths go from being fairly mild to being brutal displays of violence and gore.
  • Japan Sinks has this in full effect with its setting in a Japan struck by apocalyptic earthquakes. Ayumu and her family, along with some friends, survive the first quakes, but not all of them will make it to the end of the story.
  • From its very conception, the author of Jyu-Oh-Sei only intended for 4 specific characters to still be alive by the end of the series, and 3 of them don't have a huge involvement with the plot.
  • JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, being eight parts long, has this in spades. It gets even worse, because they're the heroes, and not even main characters are safe. In part order, there is...
    • Part 1: Zeppeli, Dire, Jonathan.
    • Part 2: Straizo (he counts even though he went evil), Caesar, Speedwagon, Stroheim (twice; the second time off-screen during WWII, after Part 2 is over), Erina.
    • Part 3: Avdol, Iggy, Kakyoin, Joseph (he gets better).
      • In particular, Avdol dies twice. The first is earlier in the part when succumbing to an enemy attack, later retconned to make it seem like he had been mortally injured and recovering off-stage, later joining the others when it was called for.
    • Part 4: Ryohei, Keicho (again, even though he was evil, he counts), Shigechi, Aya, Josuke, Koichi, Okuyasu, Jotaro, Rohan (the latter 5 got better).
      • In particular, Okuyasu was hit with this twice: the first time, he was killed alongside the rest of the main cast by Bites the Dust, but was brought back before it was made permanent. The second time, he was mortally wounded by Killer Queen, but got better once more.
    • Part 5: Bucciarati, Abbacchio, Narancia, Trish (she gets better), Polnareff (he gets better... kinda).
    • Part 6: F.F., Weather Report, Anasui, Ermes, Jotaro, Jolyne — every hero but one (aside from F.F., they were all resurrected after Made in Heaven's second universe reset, but without their memories of Part 6's events).
    • Part 7: Mountain Tim, Wekapipo, Hot Pants, Diego, Gyro.
    • Part 8: Johnny, Kira, Josefumi, Kei, Mamezuku, Kaato (she started out as evil, but still counts), Lucy.
  • Juni Taisen: Zodiac War is about a deadly battle royale staring twelve deadly mercenaries. Naturally, only one will survive.
  • Key the Metal Idol: Despite its misleading premise about an android girl who's trying to become human by making 30,000 friends, it's anything but family friendly. So many of its cast are killed off throughout the series, that it borders on outright killing them all; main characters included.
  • Knight Hunters makes its position clear with the opening scene of its first episode, in which a boyfriend and girlfriend spend several minutes making affectionate farewells — and then a van comes flying off an overpass onto the boyfriend. Although the four original main characters never suffer more than Disney Deaths, any other character is fair game, whether it's a one-shot potential love interest, a supporting character who's been around for the whole series, or both of the new lead characters introduced for the Oddly Named Sequel Weiss Kreuz: Gluhen.
  • La Seine No Hoshi: Nearly once an episode there's a major character death, either by tragedy or by the hands of the aristocrats - and even the finale kills off Marie Antoinette. Hey, did we mention that the latter half of this series was written by Yoshiyuki Tomino?
  • Legend of the Galactic Heroes plays this trope nearly to the extreme. This story does not know the concept of plot-armor, and not even the main characters are safe and in fact both protagonists die. And not only do people die, if you thought that glorious heroes will also get to have glorious deaths, think again... They even use this to pull a fast one on the viewers: During a particularly brutal battle that has already seen the deaths of two Admirals, the narrator suddenly mentions a report of the death of a major character, just as it shows his ship getting hit. There is just enough time to get the initial reactions of his friends before said character sends a message that he's okay.
  • The author of Limit (2009) has absolutely no trouble killing characters at the drop of a hat. ANYBODY can die AT ANY TIME (except Konno, who has Plot Armor).
  • In Marvel Anime: Wolverine, every named character except Wolverine and Kikyo gets it... and in the last scene of the series, those two are squaring off in a Duel to the Death.
  • Mobile Suit Gundam and, perhaps to a greater extent, some of its sequels or spinoffs use this with regularity. There's a reason Yoshiyuki Tomino got his nickname "Kill 'Em All," you know.
    • Mobile Suit Gundam SEED was the holder of the most cast deaths, main and supporting, in the entire franchise, beating out even the notorious Mobile Suit Victory Gundam. Given that this was the first Gundam series to be broadcast in high definition, some of the deaths are particularly brutal thanks to new graphics capabilities.
    • Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans has quite a few deaths throughout, to the point where not even being a main character is enough to keep you from dying. By the finale the majority of the main characters have been annihilated, including every Tekkadan leader except for Eugene, the three most prominent members of the Turbines and every named member of the Gjallarhorn Revolutionary Fleet. Ironically the antagonists, the Arianrhod Fleet of Gjallarhorn, actually have fewer named characters die than the heroes, with Iok Kujan being the only prominent member of theirs who bites the bullet.
  • Monster: Got a favorite character you like? Have they, at any point, so much as made eye contact with Johan? Big mistake.
  • My Hero Academia has become increasingly willing to kill off characters, hero and villain alike, over the course of its run: first beginning with fairly minor supporting characters such as Magne and Sir Nighteye, then killing off more prominent side characters such as Midnight and Twice, and finally graduating to main characters in Chapter 362 with Katsuki Bakugo.
  • Neon Genesis Evangelion towards about the last third of the series, while the movie shifts into "Everybody Dies" Ending territory.
  • Now and Then, Here and There. Only three of the main characters wins up surviving.
  • One Piece Has been averting this for a very long time where death was only frequent in flashbacks. The paramount war slowly starts this trope as Ace and Whitebeard lose their lives in the war. Luckily the timeskip era went for a downplayed variant, only occasionaly offing a tiny portion of allies and/or enemies per arc. Come the Final Saga however and this trope is starting to get played straight with the deaths of T Bone, Cobra, Mjosgard and Garp. While Kidd and Law's fates are unknown they're both on the verge of death as showcased by the aftermath of their latest fights.
  • Puella Magi Madoka Magica has one of the original magical girls die two and a half episodes in. Brutally. And for this deconstruction of a Magical Girl series, it only gets worse from there. There is only one Magical Girl who hasn't died at any point in the show, and for good reason. She's the one responsible for creating all the timelines, after all!
  • This trope is made to occur in the first two cycles of Robotech: given the series’ status as a Frankenslation, characters from one cycle couldn’t appear in others, which necessitated regular deck-clearing exercises to explain the disappearances. For example, by the time its first cycle, The Macross Saga, had ended, fully half of its cast had died, including several characters that had in fact survived the original series it had been based on. What’s more, part of the backstory for the series’ third and final cycle (The New Generation) involves the revelation that the Army of the Southern Cross — which included the great majority of the characters from the series’ second cycle (The Robotech Masters) — had been decimated by the Invid army that had taken over the Earth. While the statement is intentionally vague, and supplementary materials have established that several of the Masters characters did survive, current canon has only confirmed the survival of two of the Masters characters. Only the New Generation characters, by virtue of being last, manage to keep a survival rate higher than 50%.
  • Sailor Moon does this over and over again with pretty much every one of the senshi, as well as Tuxedo Kamen and the guardian cats.
    • Most notoriously, the two-part finale of Season 1 has all of the Senshi become a Dwindling Party, dying graphically in battle against the youma. Reportedly many parents complained about the episode for making their children sick, and dubs subsequently edited out the death scenes to suggest the Senshi were only "captured" or "taken to the Negaverse".
  • Saint Seiya: The Lost Canvas, a series well known for having minimal Plot Armor. This is a Foregone Conclusion, since the original series establishes that only two saints survived that war.
  • Scumbag Loser:
    • Murai, the main character, is eaten at the end of chapter 4. Although, he wakes up alive at the start of chapter 5, with no idea what exactly happened.
    • By the end of the manga, the only characters that are still alive are a stalker of Haruka named Yumi, and the police detective who had originally investigated the real Haruka's murder. Haruka, all of her "children", and Murai are killed when Murai eats Haruka.
  • Shadow Star. With emphasis on anyone: and for good reason. Shiina herself was a casualty before she got better.
  • Shi ni Aruki: Very much so. Named characters die regularly, with a character lineup sheet at the end of most chapters keeping track of who's alive or dead. By Chapter 14, the sheet needs to get swapped out for a new one, and by the end of the manga, only three main characters are still alive.
  • Shiki, although it sort of figures in a show that is about a zombie-like invasion on a small village. By the end of the series, nearly everyone from the main cast is dead.
  • Starship Operators kills off a main character almost every episode; even the main character's reciprocated love interest isn't safe.
  • Str.A.In.: Strategic Armored Infantry starts off as any Shōjo series would, except in space with mecha. However, by the time it reveals its true seinen colours after episode one, all but two characters are dead; important members of the new cast die every fourth episode after that.
  • Tail Star: In the first and second chapters we meet the inhabitants of Ageha village and the "tail-hunters" who are trained to fight evil knights who basically have spiky dragon tail clubs attached to their heads. In chapter three all the tail-hunters and most of the villagers are killed by one of these guys.
  • Kamina dies early on in Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, along with most of the rest of the cast in the second half. By Lagann-hen however, nearly all of them survive until the end, save for Kamina, Kittan, Lordgenome, and Nia, among others...
  • In Tetragrammaton Labyrinth none of the side characters are safe and even the main cast starts dwindling towards the last part of the manga.
  • In the manga (and anime to an extent) of Tokyo Ghoul, creator Ishida Sui seems to practically have fun making a character that the audience will grow to like and love, even giving them great backstories...all just to dramatically rip off their heads with a surprise panel. That Hairu women that's been kicking ass and taking names? This literally happens. That Boy Shirazu working against a force that feasts on human flesh and modified his own body to help support his hospitalized sister? All to just get impaled by a well known enemy in the series (who was ultimately a flesh puppet corpse).
  • Toward the Terra spans decades and light-years with its plot, and the entire way is littered with bodies. Only two major characters make it out alive.
  • True to its predecessor, Umineko: When They Cry also embodies this. The first half a dozen deaths each arc are particularly brutal.
  • In Vinland Saga, only Thorfinn is left in the story out of all the characters from the opening chapters. It's safe to say that any character that doesn't have a historical basis, and even some that do, will meet a grisly end.
  • In Wolf's Rain, everyone dies in the last few episodes. Wolf's Rain basically sets the stage for this in the first episode when a kid whom is implied to a major character gets killed off at the end of the episode. After that, you get the sense that anybody could fair game despite most of the real cast deaths only occur towards the end of the series.
  • X/1999: While the movie just kills 'em all, the anime and manga both have this. Half the cast is lost in the anime, and while the manga is unfinished...well, it is a show about the Apocalypse after all.
  • In Yu-Gi-Oh!: Capsule Monsters, if a Capsule Monster is destroyed, it's forever lost. Solomon Muto's Summoned Skull is destroyed early on, showing the danger, and in the final battle almost every monster the heroes have collected is destroyed.
  • In the third season of Yu-Gi-Oh! GX, this trope is in full effect. Faux-Big Bad Cobra and one of his subordinates are killed, and then Manjoume, Tyranno, Fubuki and Asuka are sacrificed in the span of ten minutes. Jim and O'Brien both die against the Supreme King, and Edo and Echo are killed by Amon. Yubel then defeats Ryo. It's later subverted when it's revealed that they're actually in a different dimension, but there's still a large number of villagers killed and Amon and Echo are Killed Off for Real, while Ryo didn't initially return. And then in the fourth season, the entire planet's population drop like flies and are absorbed into the World of Darkness, except for Judai, though he manages to get them out.
  • By the end of episode 143, only 16 out of a cast of 96 characters were alive in Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL.
  • The Battle Royale mini-arc of Yu Gi Oh ARCV has the Obelisk Force, Yuri and Sora seal Michio, Teppei, Hikage, Halil, Olga, and the Knights of Duels into cards, which is effectively death since there isn't a known way to reverse it. Resident Badass Kurosaki also comes close to biting it since he actually loses. Hokuto also got sealed earlier by Serena.


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