Break The Haughty / Anime & Manga

From an arrogant corporate heir who had it all to a broken wreck who lost it all.

Break the Haughty in anime and manga.

---

• In the one-shot story 99 Roses, the nameless protagonist is a beautiful young woman from a very wealthy family. One day she receives a red rose in her mailbox, and is intrigued when she keeps finding one every single day for months. At one point she spies the young man who leaves the flowers and realizes that he is a working class man. She tells herself that a woman of her social standing does not have any tenderness for a poor man, and fantasizes about herself being a princess in a remote tower, courted by a knight. However, after a while her fantasies make her fall in love with the unnamed man, and she decides to wait until he delivers the 100th rose to declare him her knight. On the morning of the 100th day however, she finds herself standing in front of her empty mailbox. She receives no more roses from then on, and never sees the young man again. She is so heartbroken and affected by this that she never marries. Her rather unrealistic fantasies are contrasted with the young man's practicality: he was working for a florist so he would take the leftover red roses and deliver them to the mailboxes of all the pretty girls in town. He was not in love with the woman, and the reason he did not deliver the 100th rose was because another girl had fallen into his arms first.
• Ace of the Diamond: Satoru Furuya is less blatant about it than most examples, but it's still there. After he's given the ace number following the first year summer tournament, he quickly gains notoriety in the Zenbatsu and the next year's the Spring Koshien. This gets to his head to the point he starts believing that the team needs him more than he needs the team, culminating in giving up five runs against Ichidai Sankou in a single inning, a loss that wasn't any worse because Kataoka switched him by Sawamura. From that point on, Furuya's performance continues to be inconsistent while Sawamura's improves gradually, resulting in Furuya losing the ace number by the second summer tournament.
• Jean of Attack on Titan starts off incredibly self-assured and cocky, confident that he'll slide through training so he can join the top brass of the Military Police who, ironically, are the least likely to fight Titans. Once he gets caught up in a surprise attack and is forced to battle the Titans, he's given a rude awakening when half of his comrades are Eaten Alive and the other half are crippled by fear and despair, sometimes going so far as to kill themselves to avoid being eaten by the Titans. This culminates with him discovering the body of Marco, his best friend who had given him solace with his words of encouragement that, even if he's weak, he can still understand how a normal soldier feels. Then he realizes that he is the only one mourning for poor Marco. This is what triggers his Character Development, setting him on the path to join the Survey Corps, claiming that it's so that he can die a noble death instead of being burnt in an anonymous pile of bones like Marco, but deep down it's really so he won't let Marco's high opinion of him go to waste.
  • In the anime, Eren disdainfully says that the trainees who don't have what it takes to be soldiers should quit. As a result, he gets little sympathy when he struggles to learn how to use ODM gear, although it turns out that he had a faulty set of gear (or rather, Keith Shadis sabotaged Eren's gear in hopes that he'd wash out and be able to live a normal life).
  • Eren suffers something similar when he realizes that he can't use the Founding Titan's power to its full extent to save humanity because he isn't of royal blood. He crosses the Despair Event Horizon and temporarily loses the will to live, then regrets ever thinking he was "special" or that his Titan power was his own.
  • Keith Shadis, frustrated with people looking down upon the Survey Corps, arrogantly assumed that once he was in charge, everything would change. What happened instead was that his plans all resulted in massive casualties, while Erwin proved more competent, eventually becoming Keith's successor. As a result, Keith concluded that only special people have the ability to make a difference.
• In Basilisk: Kouga Ninpu Chuu... Just like Oboro's part of the story is a full-blown Break the Cutie process, Tenzen's end was a great example of this trope. A blinded Gennosuke manages to kill him for already the third time in the series, and when his grunts are getting ready to help him revive, Oboro uses her newly recovered power to blast his head off his shoulders and kill him for good.
• Berserk: Every person that ever met and underestimated Guts in battle dies. Horrifically.
  • This trophy goes to Griffith the most. A man of great skill and pride, his ego is destroyed when he lost just one fight to Guts, and he went and did some self-destructive behavior like sleeping with the princess which got him landed in prison, getting horrifically tortured for a year. After his rescue, Griffith is a shadow of the man that he once was, not capable of being a warrior or a leader anymore. This slowly starts to drive him over the edge...
• Are you a Jerk Jock in Captain Tsubasa? This will happen to you. Wakabayashi, Hyuuga, and Souda got hit by this which led to Defeat Means Friendship, but the best examples are: Napoleon from the Shin manga (because first he gets slapped by Pierre in front of everyone for dirty tactics, and later he misses the vital penalty that gets France eliminated from the tournament, which in the manga a cute scene of crying devolves into him crying Tears of Remorse), Bunnark from the Thai team (as it's due to his mistake that Thailand loses as well, which also sends him into a sobbing breakdown out of guilt), and specially Ricardo Espadas (who loses spectacularly against the Japanese team and ends up unconscious in the infirmary, waking up to the notice of his team's loss. Made even more beautiful considering his big Kick the Dog moments in his first apparitions, all related to him thinking that Tsubasa is a useless rich kid — boy, Tsubasa classily and cheerfully proves him wrong.)
• In Code Geass, both Lelouch and Suzaku slowly go through this, both in particularly brutal ways. Lelouch ends up causing a brutal massacre through his Power Incontinence, necessitating the murder of his half-sister Euphemia. Then Nunnally is kidnapped. Then she's apparently killed. He breaks at this point. It's about the same for Suzaku. He loses Euphemia, goes the Knight Templar route for equal rights, then nukes Tokyo, which apparently kills Nunnally. Both get around to working together after this, and they turn the tables through one HELL of a Thanatos Gambit.
  • An even more apt case would be then-racist Jeremiah Gottwald getting framed as part of a scandal by Zero after attempting to frame Suzaku for the murder of Clovis, done in hopes of having the Honorary Britannian system abolished, which leads to a Humiliation Conga of him subsequently getting demoted, leading up to him almost completely incinerated by Kallen and her brand spanking new Guren. After going completely insane during the Season 1 finale (due to experimentation), he Takes a Level in Badass, finds out who Lelouch really is and pulls a Heel–Face Turn, becoming anime's poster-boy for Ensemble Dark Horse and the series' for badass in the process.
• Combattler V: Garuda was once an arrogant Alien Prince until he finds out that he's actually an android created by Oleana, and she has an entire line of androids set to replace him should he ever outlive his purpose.
• In Cute High Earth Defense Club LOVE!, Kinshirou gets a gentle version of this. Having spent the whole series talking about how superior he is and how he's going to set the world to rights through world domination, he finds out he's been in an Immoral Reality Show the whole time and the entire galaxy has been laughing at him. It ends well.
• Daimos: Richter starts off the series confident that he'll win against the Earthlings. As the series progresses, his allies betray him, his sister runs away from him, his best friend dies and the forces of the king he's serving massacre his remaining loyal generals. The final straw is when Richter massacres large swathes of humans under the belief that they're selfish bastards, but the human race (specifically, Kazuya Ryuzaki and Daimovic) still try to salvage the remaining populace of Baam from crashing into Jupiter, after which he realizes he was wrong about them. Richter can't cope with the guilt of his actions and kills himself.
• DARLING in the FRANXX:
  • Zorome constantly calls himself "Zorome the Great" (using the obnoxiously arrogant pronoun "ore-sama" in the original Japanese) and acts like a big shot. This bites him in the ass big-time when in Episode 3, he opts to brag about how great he is rather than finish off a klaxosaur, which leads to Miku getting badly injured and the entire squad nearly being killed. Zorome is well aware it's all his fault and becomes more pragmatic and considerate of Miku as a result.
  • When riding with Zero Two, Mitsuru gets Drunk with Power, raving about how he's a better pilot than Hiro and insisting he's fit to be her official partner, throwing Ikuno under the bus in the process. In response, Zero Two decides to stop holding back and show him exactly why she's called the Partner Killer, leaving Mitsuru gravely injured and traumatized.
• In Dear Brother, both Aya and especially Fukiko go through this. The former gets her arm slashed when she pushes Mariko's Berserk Button to the freaking bottom in public after mocking Mariko's parents' very messy divorce while clearly knowing it's a bad idea and the latter sees her own actions throughout the series (especially the aforementioned event with Aya, Rei's death, and her beloved Takehiko getting together with Rei's friend Kaoru) results in the Sorority being gone.
• In Death Note, Near figures that simply killing Light Yagami would be too easy, and so chooses to take this route. Holy shit, it works.
• Dragon Ball Z
  • Vegeta refuses to believe that anyone could be stronger than him and so gets his ass handed to him twice, thrice every saga ...and takes an absurdly long time to even be able to admit that someone else could be a superior fighter, despite quite a few of these beatings. He gets a particularly brutal No-Holds-Barred Beatdown from Frieza, and breaks down and cries in his last moments... and after being brought back to life, is straight back to his arrogant self.
    • He knows that he's outclassed by the Ginyu Force and Frieza and actually devises plans to deal with Frieza through subterfuge. When it actually comes to fighting Frieza though, he eventually becomes too confident in his abilities after realizing the Saiyans' ability to get stronger after recovering from having been nearly killed.
    • As for every opponent afterward, though, there's a huge power discrepancy between those he has to fight at first and the current most powerful threat. Vegeta, while having a very high opinion of himself, does realize that Goku is his better. This is especially apparent during the Buu Saga when he allows Babidi to control him for the sake of a power boost (which leads to a fight where he flat out tells Goku he hates him for being better), when he realizes that he'll have to kill himself for the sake of destroying Buu, when he realizes that he has no choice but to fuse with Goku to defeat Super Buu, and finally, during the fight with Kid Buu, where he admits to himself that Goku will always be better than him. He even comes up with a plan to kill Buu and volunteers himself as a distraction for Goku. At this point, the resulting beatdown doesn't hurt his ego nearly as much, though he does say that he deserves to die if he can't even last as a distraction...
  • The villains have it far worse than him. Frieza was capable of eradicating most of the Saiyan race without going beyond the weakest of his four forms. He powers up all the way to his final form and is defeated on Namek when he's accidentally cut in half by his own attack. He returns as a cyborg and Future Trunks easily kills him. He returns again (non-canonically, though), briefly, in Movie 12, and Gohan kills him in one punch. In Dragon Ball Z: Resurrection 'F', he is revived (this time, canonically) by his Vestigial Empire and attains a new Super Mode, but he does not bother to learn how to control its power properly and instead goes straight to Earth to get his vengeance over Goku. The result? The remains of his army are annihilated, and he's eventually outclassed by Goku and only manages to destroy the Earth by blowing the planet with him with Goku himself and some of his friends being narrowly saved. Even this is negated when Whis rewinds time to allow Goku to do things right and send him back to hell.
  • Cell too. After his journey to become perfect, he declares himself the strongest in the universe and holds a tournament just for the sake of pounding all the strongest fighters on Earth before he destroys it. After pushing Gohan to release his hidden power, by beating and torturing his friends, Cell gets his ass handed to him causing him to have both a physical and mental breakdown over being beaten by a kid. He breaks so much that he decides to blow himself up along with the planet. Talk about a sore loser.
  • In "The History of Trunks" Future Trunks arrogantly claims he can beat the androids without traveling to the past to get help from Goku, and recklessly takes on Future Androids #17 and #18, despite Future Bulma's protests. Trunks promptly gets his ass handed to him by the Androids, realizes that he should have listened to his mother, and later agrees with Future Bulma to use the time machine.
  • After taking several levels in badass during his time in the past, Trunks faces #17 and #18 again. This time, it's the Androids' turn to eat some humble pie as Trunks annihilates them with ease.
  • After Gohan goes Super Saiyan 2, he utterly decimates Cell in a burst of Tranquil Fury... but he lets his false belief that Cell has no way to hurt him anymore drag the fight out, which eventually results in the deaths of both his father (due to sacrificing himself to stop Cell's Rage Quit) and later Trunks (when Cell Came Back Strong). Then after Cell returns, he's immediately assuming he'll have the upper hand and won't have any trouble avenging Goku's and Trunks' deaths even with Cell's power boost. Cue Vegeta's ill-fated Roaring Rampage of Revenge and Gohan ultimately letting one of his arms get broken in order to save Vegeta's life, proving that yes, Cell is strong enough to fight him now.
• In Endride, many of the cast want Prince Emilio, who is obsessed with revenge on his father-figure King Delzaine for the rumoured murder of his real father, to stop being arrogant and think of the consequences of his actions. Unfortunately, the bevy of Armor Piercing Questions don't get through, but Delzaine's death at the hands of Ibelda does this to him, as Emilio realizes he can no longer talk out his problems and he grieves over yet another lost father. It doesn't help Delzaine defends him from Ibelda shortly before dying.
• In Failed Princesses, Nanaki Fujishiro is a vain girl who looks down on Kanade Kurokawa, seeing her as plain and unattractive. At the start of the series, Fujishiro gets quite an unpleasant surprise when she learns that her boyfriend has not only been cheating on her, but only kept her as his "backup girl," saying that in spite of her good looks, she's "boring." Fujishiro ends up being comforted by Kurokawa, the very girl she hated (while the feeling was mutual, Kurokawa sympathized with Fujishiro enough not to laugh), and the two eventually become friends.
• Food Wars!: Happens to several characters whose heads have gotten too high one way or another. In order:
  • Hisako Arato, Erina Nakiri's Beta Bitch, is assured that she's only second to Erina and nobody else. When she loses to Akira Hayama in the Fall Classic, he gives her a "The Reason You Suck" Speech for being content with being a Number Two, which sends her into a deep depression. She's forced to intern along with Soma Yukihira, whom she despises for (in her eyes) disrespecting Erina, but during that time she gets to see that he has some abilities that she herself lacks, forcing her to admit that she was wrong to judge him based on personal bias.
  • Subaru Mimasaka, a first year who'd undergone an undefeated streak of culinary battles, took great pride in his "Perfect Trace" ability (basically, he copied his opponent's dish and added one more step to improve it) and even kept their cooking utensils as personal trophies. Soma not only defeats him, but shows him that he's so obsessed with winning that he wastes his talent on something as petty as taking other chefs' pride in a simple duel, forcing him to return every single one of the utensiles he took.
  • Etsuya Eizan, perhaps the most despicable among the Elite Ten Council members, was the one who set up the above, simply because Soma ruined the Kaarage shop he tried to set up near Soma's neighborhood. To contextualize, his plan involved Mimasaka defeating and humiliating Takumi Aldini, knowing that Soma considered him a Friendly Rival and would step up to avenge him, and then have Mimasaka do the same to Soma (he was gambling his whole chef career on it). Then, in Chapter 145, Soma manages to force him into a culinary battle and utterly destroys him, even though he had bribed the judges. To cap it off, much later he faces against Takumi, who has not forgotten he was the one to set up his humiliation. Suffice to say, the result enrages Eizan so much that he's almost driven to tears.
  • Erina Nakiri has a more gradual, subtle process of this. Starting out as an Insufferable Genius, Academic Alpha Bitch who looks down on and is feared pretty much everyone, she's paralyzed in terror when her father Azami shows up during the Full Moon Banquet. She has to be rescued by Soma (whom at this point she despises) of all people, and after that she's forced to run away from home and take shelter in the Polar Star Dormitory, where she learns that Soma is the son of Joichiro Saiba, the only chef that Erina admires. Words can't even describe how she feels upon learning that she's been antagonizing so much with the son of her idol, inadvertedly insulting said idol's cooking style. Thankfully, this sets up her Character Development into a much nicer person.
• Akito from Fruits Basket. Toward the end of the manga, she does a complete 180 after spending most of the series being seen at the Big Bad. This is because one by one, all the people tied to the Zodiac Curse are released — which is Akito's biggest fear. She goes more and more off the deep end as a result (which includes her abusing and locking up a girl who actively fights the curse off, and later stabbing one of her closest allies when he tries to calm her down), and when Tohru finds her, she is few more than a screaming, knife-swinging, sobbing wreck. It takes Tohru a huge effort (and falling off a cliff) to sorta make Akito listen to her.
• Both Pride and Father get a taste of this in Fullmetal Alchemist. Pride, the incarnation of Father's superiority complex over humankind, is pushed to the brink and tries to save himself by taking over Ed's body. Kimblee, who had managed to keep his individuality after being devoured, condemns Pride for his hypocrisy and destabilizes him long enough for Ed to gain the upper hand and deconstruct him, reducing him to a harmless human infant with no memory of ever being a homunculus. As for Father, shortly before Pride's fall, he gloats at Ed, Al, Izumi, and Roy about how the Truth only gave them what they deserved for their "arrogance"; after he's defeated and appears before the portal, Truth turns his words back on him right before the portal drags him into oblivion.
• Naoki Shinjyo in Future GPX Cyber Formula gets at least three of these: First when he is beaten by Hayato in the British Grand Prix due to his car's engine troubles because he refuses to follow his staff's advice, and then he gets chewed out by Sugo's local Wrench Wench Miki Joununchi twice for lashing out at his team's new mechanics and blaming them for his troubles in the races. This also happens to Randoll in the Spain GP, when Hayato sends his car flying into the sea.
• Future Robot Daltanious: Ever since he was a boy, Dolmen groomed Kloppen into being his war machine and local Conquering Alien Prince. After repeated failures against Daltanious, Dolmen's demeanor towards Kloppen turns abusive and he threatens to "have him dismantled" if he doesn't defeat it any time soon. When the Awful Truth of Kloppen's birth (and how he came under Dolmen) is revealed, Dolmen discards him, and Kloppen's own soldiers join in on humiliating and abusing him.
• Hayato Jin from Getter Robo manga starts off as a ruthless and absolute crazy gang leader. While he struggles with Ryouma as the man has invaded his territory, the Dinosuar Empire appear and brutally kill a number of Hayato's men and scared him to the point he wet his pants. Worse off, Hayato is forced to pilot Jaguar machine (Getter-2) despite him being absolutely horrified and sick. After learning about the Big Bad, Hayato joins the Getter Team and became much more heroic and less crazy.
• In Good Luck Girl!, the title protagonist, Ichiko Sakura, is blessed with more "Happiness Energy" than most people could possibly experience in their lifetime. This energy manifests in incredibly good luck and positive outcomes on almost anything she tries. The problem is that, thanks to her absentee parents and backstabbing friends as a child, she could hardly care less about the plight of others and outright mocks them for not being as good as she is. Repeatedly throughout the series she has her attitude brought into question, and the narrative reinforces that she sometimes does have a point, but her callous attitude directed at everyone around her is unfair and results in her coming off as a spoiled brat who cannot understand others. By the end of the series, she is still as rude as ever, but she doesn't try to act as high and mighty and actually tries making friends.
• Hell Girl: This happens to the many of the people the Enma Ai takes to Hell.
• Mikael from I'm Gonna Be an Angel! got thoroughly broken at the end of the series after going evil and insane over his obsession of becoming an angel, leaving him dependent on his teacher who still let him stew in his own juice. But it got subverted at the very end, because his actions, however morally dubious they were, got him promoted to a position of an angel teacher.
• In Inuyasha, Sesshoumaru's entire journey is one long trip along this path until he learns the value of compassion which enables him to achieve his true power. He doesn't stop being prideful, but he does mellow from being a Jerkass to being a Jerk with a Heart of Gold and move from villain to Anti-Hero status as a result.
• Kyoko, from Is This A Zombie?. She's the serial killer who murdered several people, including the primary character and zombie, Ayumu Aikawa, as well as a massive Walking Spoiler. She committed the murders to gain immortality, by using souls stolen from the people she murdered to regenerate from anything thrown at her. She gets careless with this ability and throws around the souls she's stolen like water while gloating about how she's "untouchable", which gives Ayumu an opening — which he takes advantage of after disarming her, by fileting her with a chainsaw to run out her remaining supply of stolen souls. Realizing she's only got one life left at her disposal, i.e., her own, is enough to reduce her to a sobbing, pleading wreck.
• Part 3 of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure has D'Arby, an agent of DIO who works by using his Stand, Osiris, to turn the souls of his marks into poker chips when he defeats them, which he only does by winning bets (an easy feat when one is a dirty cheater). Jotaro challenged D'Arby to a game of poker to reclaim the souls of Joseph and Polnareff while betting his own soul. It would seem that Jotaro has no chance of winning since D'Arby has everyone in the cafe where they play in on his cheating. However, Jotaro manages to bluff the hell out of him, first by raising his bet to include chips for the soul of his hospitalized ally Kakyoin, then using his Stand, Star Platinum, to sneak him a cigarette and a drink, making D'Arby think that he managed to swap their cards, then raising his mother's soul, then demanding that D'Arby call his raise with the secret to the power of DIO's Stand. D'Arby passed out from the shock, spelling out victory for Jotaro.
  • Part 7 has protagonist Johnny Joestar. Fame and money went to his head and he thought he didn't need to wait in line, leading him to get stabbed and paralysed from the waist down before the events of the part.
• Hello! Sandybell: Kitty is a sheltered Alpha Bitch who's never had to go through a day of hard work in her entire life. Her first dose of reality is when Marc leaves her because he can't stand to be married to someone he hates. Then, while working at Longwood Newspaper Agency (a job she got thanks to Nepotism), she's kidnapped and attacked by drug dealers who are angry the newspaper has been exposing their illicit deeds. Kitty learns that life isn't as easy for everyone as it is for her, and apologizes to all the people she's hurt. She moves on from Marc to Alec, the man who saved her from the drug dealers, and gives Marc her blessing to be with Sandybell. She even gifts him some of her family's land property as a token of her friendship.
• In Kaleido Star, May Wong thought she could skip the "hard work" and become the star while breaking her rival Sora and charming her idols Layla and Leon. Well, when Leon deliberately dropped her during an act as a test of strength, seriously injuring her in the process, she was brutally proven wrong. Not only that, but once she was a bit more stable, May was told by Layla and Katie that her performances, while technically good, are completely soulless and not focused on actually entertaining the crowds — meaning, she would have to start from scratch. This works pretty well, actually.
• In Kichiku Megane, Midou suffers this after being repeatedly and brutally tortured by Katsuya. (Though it happens in both the game and the manga, the manga goes on in more detail, including flashbacks from Midou's perspective, woobiefying him a bit)
• In Macross Frontier, just as Ranka's star begins to rise, Sheryl's illness gets worse, her popularity wanes, her agent deserts her, and her career plummets. It all comes to a head as she hits rock-bottom, her illness becoming terminal, her music getting tossed in the bargain bin and people on the street hardly recognize her anymore. Then, despite her illness, a more sincere Sheryl devotes herself to singing for the sake of the people, and she regains the love of her audience.
• Tetsuya Tsurugi from Mazinger Z and Great Mazinger was a proud, arrogant Ace Pilot who fully trusted his skills and got mad when someone challenged them. All of that arrogance caused pleeeeenty of troubles throughout the entire series. When Kouji Kabuto returned, he got a HUGE jealousy fit, and he claimed he did not need help and refused to work with and fight alongside Kouji. Because of it, he almost got killed in one battle shortly after, and his adoptive father/Keouji's biological dad committed Heroic Sacrifice to save him. Tetsuya fell apart cause this, since his arrogance was nothing but a cover to hide his insecurity and huge self-esteem issues, and he gloated over his skills because he wanted to impress his father with them (since he ALSO was an orphan with Parental Abandonment issues and he was afraid if he was not the best, his adoptive father would not love him). Hence, he was arrogant because he wanted to keep his father's love, but said father got killed cause his arrogance. Cue Heroic BSoD, My God, What Have I Done?, It's All My Fault and in one version a Heroic Sacrifice.
• Monster: Eva Heinemann is a woman whose Establishing Character Moment involves consoling her (now ex-)fiance (who had just realized that he effectively let a man die simply because he wasn't prestigious enough to afford his services as a surgeon) by telling him that people's lives aren't equal and he should just stop fussing about it. How far does she fall from grace? Well, let's just say that, eventually, waking up in a jail cell for public drunkenness and discovering that all of her belongings have been stolen is, in fact, the high point of her day.
• Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury: At the start of the series, Guel Jeturk has it all. He has a high position as the heir to Jeturk Heavy Machinery and as such being the head of Jeturk House at the Asticassia School of Technology, is an unmatched Ace Pilot at the school's dueling system, and has a beneficial marriage alliance already set up for him with Miorine Rembran, the heiress to another powerful MegaCorp. All of this power and wealth has made him an arrogant and prideful man albeit one who truly cares for those he respects, his father in particular. Then, Suletta Mercury comes out of nowhere and defeats him in a duel, stealing his position as Holder and his bride in the process. After losing a few more matches, he is stripped of his position as head of Jeturk House by his father Vim and exiled, which causes him to run away from Asticassia. He then stows away incognito with a group of contractors, only for them to be taken hostage by the Dawn of Fold, a group of Earthian terrorists who are seeking to launch an attack on Plant Quetta. When he learns Suletta and Miorine are at the plant, Guel escapes in one of the suits the terrorists have stolen in order to join the battle, only to then be attacked by one of his father's suits despite desperately pleading that he is not an enemy. After being forced to impale the opposing suit in self-defense, he is aghast to find out that the man in the other suit was none other than his own father. In spite of Guel trying to save him, Vim's suit explodes taking him with it, leaving an anguished Guel to break down screaming. In the aftermath, Guel is reduced to a near-catatonic state and is taken captive by the Dawn of Fold yet again as a bargaining chip. It takes quite a while (and much more trauma) for Guel to get back on his feet and try to climb back up to the top.
• Monster Rancher: Tiger of the Wind seems to be a magnet for this:
  • His introduction sees him stealing the Magic Stone from the heroes simply because he can, while lecturing Genki about how Life Isn't Fair. Then he's caught in a trap by Captain Dino, whose forces slaughter his pack of Desert Bandits right in front of him and mock his tears before dropping him in a gorge. The Searchers find and nurse him back to health, while he tells them about an incident that happened before the series proper began where he met Moo, who murdered most of his friends and kidnapped his younger brother, leaving him with a scar across his face.
  • The following episode has him haughtily dismissing Genki's advice that they should watch the other matches in the tournament he's entered, declaring he doesn't need to bother. Hare tricks and trounces him during their final bout, exploiting Tiger's arrogance by lowering his guard with an I Surrender, Suckers gambit.
  • In the third season, Tiger loses most of his powers and has to relearn his signature moves from scratch. He repeatedly denies that this is the case, insisting that he's just as strong as ever, leading to several humiliating moments, including getting trounced in another tournament and booed off the stage for being a Sore Loser.
• In Muhyo and Roji, this happens to the eponymous duo's rivals, Goryo and Ebisu.
  • Goryo is the ruthless and arrogant head of a magical law group with 99 offices. He challenges Muhyo to a ghost hunting competition, with Muhyo's office on the line, but only wins on a technicality^ExplanationGoryo had summoned his envoy before Muhyo, only for Muhyo to interfere and later sentence the ghost himself. Muhyo had stopped Goryo's envoy to prevent him from sending the ghost to Hell; instead, Muhyo worked out a compromise that would send the ghost and her daughter to the Styx, and eventually, Heaven. Goryo ends up feeling dissatisfied with his victory, and fires Ebisu. Goryo then challenges Ark, the main antagonists, and becomes convinced that he's on the brink of annihilating the group after only finding a few of their hideouts. Ark quickly turns the tables, burning down the Goryo group's headquarters and abducting Goryo, forcing Muhyo to save him. Goryo returns Muhyo's office as a Grudging "Thank You", and a newspaper reveals that the Goryo group collapsed as a result of its catastrophic losses.
  • Goryo's lackey Ebisu is rather full of himself. He believes that Judges like himself (second highest rank in Magical Law after Executor) are the only ones fit to assist Executors, and looks down on a Provisional First Clerk(second lowest rank, ahead of Second Clerk) like Roji. He ends up getting fired for making a mistake during the competition with Muhyo and tossed down the stairs to the office, showing up at the magical law retreat worse for wear. When haunts attack the retreat participants, Ebisu is quickly shown to be less useful than Roji or the twins, the latter of which are Second Clerks, and his greatest contribution ends up being giving his tempering to Roji.
• My Hero Academia:
  • Before his Character Development started to set in, Katsuki Bakugo's life was basically a conga line of this:
    • In the very first arc, he gets kidnapped and held hostage by the Sludge Villain, and is embarrassed when the Quirkless Midoriya comes to his rescue. His kidnapping continues to get brought up throughout the series, much to his chagrin.
    • After spending his entire childhood gaining a massive ego due to his Quirk, the Heroes vs. Villains exercise ends up knocking him down several pegs. First, his team lost. Second, he was the primary cause of said loss because he went charging off to beat up Midoriya and left Iida alone. Third, Midoriya tricked him with Exactly What I Aimed At to win, and Bakugo believed that Midoriya was holding back the whole time (he wasn't, he just had no idea how to control his Quirk). Fourth, Yaoyorozu very bluntly describes how badly he screwed up in front of the entire class. Fifth, Todoroki also tried to complete the assignment without his teammate's contribution — and he did it easily.
    • During the U.A. Sports Festival Arc, Bakugo finds himself to be the third wheel in the rivalry between Midoriya and Todoroki (despite desperately trying to make the rivalry between himself and Todoroki), getting shown up by both of them during the first two events. While he ultimately wins the entire competition, he still gets pissed off because Todoroki was distracted by his fight with Midoriya and so held back.
    • Then he gets kidnapped AGAIN by the League of Villains and once again, needing Midoriya and his friends to rescue him, along with many powerful superheroes. This also led to the titanic battle between All Might and All For One, resulting in the loss of the former's powers and the society's symbol of justice.
    • And finally, due to his poor attitude during the Hero License Examination, he and Todoroki (due to an obstructing hero candidate from a rival school) were the only ones who have failed the exam. And all of these failures have been bottled up all the way until his emotional battle against Midoriya, venting his frustrations of Deku surpassing him despite his slow start and Bakugou's latent potential and talent and also for the fact he was the reason All Might loses his powers. And after the battle and All Might's explanation of his secrets to Bakugou, he vows to be best against All Might's successor.
    • And it has shown results. Bakugou teaching an arrogant child, who is the leader among his classmates, in the Provisional Hero License Exam, that continuing to look down on others will prevent him from seeing his own flaws, a flaw that Bakugou himself once had. And he continues to show greater results in the Joint Training Arc, working with great efficiency and results against Class 1-B, vowing to look after his teammates, thus scoring a perfect 4-0 victory.
  • The second-rated top hero is a giant of a man who can control flame named Endeavor, a thoroughly self-centered hero who wants to take All-Might's place as the world's number 1 hero. Much like with Bakugo he gets what he wants, but not in the way he wanted: after a catastrophic fight with All For One, All-Might finds himself unable to use his powers and retires being a hero. This means that rather than earn the title of number one hero, Endeavor is just handed the title with no fanfare. Furthermore, All-Might's career going out with a bang further raises his already lofty reputation to legendary status, utterly overshadowing Endeavor whose reputation with others was shaky at best. The first time we see Endeavor after all this, he nearly burns his own room down in anger. But that’s just the start. Later on, it’s revealed that his son Touya was thought to have burned to death due to an accident when he was practicing his quirk all so he could impress his dad. Only it turns out Touya survived, was in a coma for 3 years, and is none other than the psychotic villain Dabi. Dabi reveals this to the world and laughs while Endeavor’s already shaky reputation is effectively dunked in the toilet. To say this leaves an affect on the fire hero is an understatement.
• Naruto:
  • Neji Hyuuga is a genius who knows it and keeps insisting that everyone else's destiny is to lose to him. He is brought down hard by the titular character, becoming much more likable.
  • A quote from Kakashi, early in the series, would seem to indicate a trend:
    Kakashi: [To Sasuke] They say the nail that stands up is the one that gets hammered down.
  • Ironically, Kakashi suffered from this as well. Like Neji, he was a genius with incredibly high standards for the people around him. Then his best friend Obito Uchiha goes and beats it out of him, but ends up dying in the process or so everyone thinks. This ends up changing Kakashi fundamentally.
• Negima! Magister Negi Magi has this several times.
  • Evangeline is tricked into losing most of her powers and being forced to be a student at Mahora Academy, so far for fifteen years and counting, having stalked Negi's incredibly powerful dad for a long time.
  • Kotaro, after many insults towards western magic was dealt a thorough beating with it, then later joined the good guys where he faced even more powerful enemies, also western.
  • Fate was dealt a strong hit to the face by Negi, who when ready to take revenge for it (he's never been hit before) was given a brutally humiliating defeat by a temporarily empowered Evangeline. She even overwhelmed him when he attempted a sneak attack using a water clone. He still acts like The Stoic, though.
  • In a less extreme example, Asuna does this to Ayaka, whose inferiority in combat and martial arts to Asuna was pushed to embarrassing levels, then salted by her own continued, futile attempts to take an Ala Alba badge. She ended up crying like a spoiled child in the end. Worse yet, Asuna was trying so little that at points she barely noticed her own gross overwhelming of her opponent, asking "Are you okay" many times. To Ayaka's credit, of the whole class, she was one of the few remaining Ordinary High School Girls to manage a hit on one of the masterfully trained Ala Alba, which says a lot about her Bad Ass Normal status.
• Neon Genesis Evangelion contains a few examples.
  • Asuka. In both her first story and "The Day Tokyo 3 stood still" she is set up for such a fall. In the first one, everyone pulls together and she learns no "lesson". In the second, she makes a fool of herself trying to take charge, until the real battle. Then she starts giving orders that make sense and takes over and the whole Aesop is just ignored. However she starts to underperform or lose battles, her synch scores slip down, as her (perceived) rival Shinji not only beats her but also is unable to notice her -- admittedly -- clumsy attempts to seduce him, leading her to wrongly believe that he is not interested in her. As a result, her self-esteem takes constant blows. It eventually comes to a head when she ends up getting Mind Raped by a Monster of the Week, the aftermath of which leaves her deeply mired in depression, leaving her unable to get her Eva to even move. Eventually, she tries to commit suicide because she thinks that no one will ever love her and no one will care for her if she can not pilot Eva, after which she is placed in a medical coma. A Hope Spot allows her to regain some of her old confidence, only to be brutally and painfully killed in battle. When she is resurrected at the very end of the story, she seems to have softened slightly, at least.
    • Though Asuka really never thought highly of herself. She was a girl with huge self-esteem and self-worth issues who pretended to be arrogant because she wanted others to think highly of her. If anything, her self-confidence increases after she gets out of her coma because she becomes self-reliant and learns her mother loved her.
  • Shinji gets to have one moment of being the best on synch tests and then is promptly devoured by an Angel moments later.
  • Ritsuko Akagi is at first is portrayed as a frigid, detached scientist with an intense hatred (though only apparent later on) of Rei and a liking to Playing with Syringes... then she goes on a Motive Rant and is reduced to a sobbing wreck in Episode 23 when she realizes that Gendo was just using her, spending the next episode and the first few minutes of EoE in the brig. First thing she does after being released is setting up her revenge in the form of Taking You with Me. However, like Asuka, this is Played With. Ritsuko's detachment stems from being a Beta Test Baddie and being raised by a mentally-unbalanced mother who thought more of herself than her daughter. She latches onto (and sadly obsesses over) the only person she believes to be one to show her affection, Gendo, and quickly degrades under the fact that she feels unloved, and finds connecting with people hard.
• Erenfried of Neo Angelique Abyss is initially presented as a insufferable prodigy until his inventions stop working on the thanatos, his team is wiped out in a thanatos attack, his plan to kidnap Angelique fails, causing his mentor to scold him, this same mentor gets sentenced to death for the property damage Erenfried's machines caused forcing him to ask for help from The Organisation, he is forced to give up his robot assistant and once he finishes his work The Organisation betrays him and throws him in prison. He's a bit different after all that.
• In New Game!, Tsubame "Naru" Narumi looks down on Nene Sakura after learning that Nene got hired as a programmer due to a favor from their boss, Umiko, since Nene had previously worked for Eagle Jump as a debugger. This is something that personally offends Naru considering how hard she had to work to get the same job at the same time. Eventually, the minigames Naru codes end up having bugs in them as a result of her not thoroughly checking her code, which is partly the result of her desperation to finish her work quickly and partly due to her belief that it was fine. After Nene offers to help Naru debug her work, Naru gives a heartfelt apology to Nene and becomes friends with her. They succeed, resulting in Naru being hired and her becoming humbler and less self-serving.
• One Piece:
  • There's the Celestial Dragons, or World Nobles. For good measure, as descendants of the World Government's originators, anyone who opposes them risks the wrath of a Marine Admiral. Too bad one of them, Saint Charlos, shoots Hatchan in front of Luffy. Luffy got a bit mad. Just enough to punch Charlos' face so badly that Luffy leaves a HUGE crater on the side, drives the poor sap through rows of seats, and sends him crashing into a wall. Oh, and Luffy couldn't care less about the Marines -- he was ALREADY wanted.
  • Charlos's predecessor, Bellamy, got much the same treatment when he arrogantly laughed off the crew's goal of Sky Island and robbed one of their friends. That's not even the worst of it. When Bellamy's employer Doflamingo heard of Bellamy's ignoble defeat, he had him cut down by one of his own crewmates and left him to die in the street, saying he had no need for weaklings in his crew. Let's just say those events changed him significantly, as Bellamy even thanks Luffy later for giving him a reality check since it helped him to take a level in badass.
  • A lesser example; for a long time, one of the most feared and sadistic officials in Impel Down was Sadi-Chan, the whip-wielding Dominatrix who commanded the demonic guardians and got her thrills from torturing the inmates, often to death. However, during the mass breakout, she was defeated in combat by Ivankov who hurt her badly and left her hog tied with her own whip, utterly humiliated. After Magellan found her and cut her free, she was reduced to crying like a little girl.
    • The very concept behind Impel Down is a big Break the Haughty. It imprisons the worst, most feared criminals in the world and tortures them to the point where many of them lose their will to live and wish for death.
  • Doflamingo himself ends up on the receiving end of this trope. His facade as the "heroic" King of Dressrosa is undone by the Straw Hats, his plan to have Dressrosa destroyed after that is also undone, the members of his "Family" end up defeated, and he himself loses to Law and Luffy. PLUS, he loses his spot in the Seven Warlords of the Sea and ends up in Impel Down.
  • The latest "victim" of the trope is Sanji's Archnemesis Dad, Vinsmoke Judge. He goes through it in Chapter 864 as he not only realizes that Big Mom and her crew are about to kill him and his family but is forced to face this in one of the most humiliating ways possible: when the whole family is about to be shot down by Big Mom's son Perospero and his soldiers and his Tyke-Bomb sons not only show no fear of death but mock him for not wanting to die.
• Many S-Class members of the Hero Association in One-Punch Man are considered arrogant about how powerful they are (e.g. Tatsumaki, Atomic Samurai, Flashy Flash, Superalloy Blackluster) and some are considered not very heroic (e.g. Metal Knight, Drive Knight) which Bang himself points out. Those in the Attack team in the raid of the Monster Association HQ, namely Atomic Samurai, Superalloy Blackluster, Child Emperor, Pig God, Puri Puri Prisoner, Zombieman, and even A-Class Rank 1 Amai Mask, receive quite a heavy beating by the Monster Association Executives and Garou (in this latter case, mostly in the webcomic). The narration puts it nicely:
  The everyday world treats the top-ranking heroes as monsters... but today those heroes encountered the true monsters. Preparedness for death comes hardest to those who have acquired superhuman abilities. Thus they were not ready to die today. A feeling they had not experienced in quite some time arose within them... FEAR.
  • Blackluter definitely had the worst breakdown: After Tatsumaki and King, he is considered the strongest in the Hero Association and has the skills to match. However, he put much of his pride in his muscular and shiny body, so when he finally fights against Garou and finds himself pushed to that point, he realizes that what he wanted wasn't so much a "good fight", as a fight that could make him feel good about himself. Because of that, he never considered the possibility that he might actually lose. He was looking for an equal, not a superior. Worse, the instant he meets someone buffer and shinier like Golden Sperm, he undergoes an awful Heroic BSoD. Thus, he's shown falling victim to his fears of loss no matter how much he trains to the point he starts wearing a shirt over his muscles because he lost much of his self-esteem, and when joining the Neo Heroes, he does so as a combat instructor, not a leader unlike Child (er, Wild) Emperor and Metal Bat, and he unsuccessfully tried to warn his students about this during the robot army atttack.
• Whenever a trainer in Pokémon: The Series gets too cocky, this is gonna happen to them. Gary Oak would be the most prominent example.
  • Paul, after spending the entire season being one Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy and looking down on Ash, discovers that Ash has beaten Brandon (a trainer who beat his older brother, Reggie, and is basically the entire reason for Paul being an Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy) and is soundly beaten in front of him.
  • In the case of Gary, after spending the entire first season mocking Ash, two things happen to him: 1.) He gets curb stomped by Mewtwo in Viridian City (it's implied that this is the first time he's ever lost a Pokémon battle), and 2.) He doesn't even make it past the preliminary rounds (he makes to the Top 32) while Ash makes it to the finals (he places in the Top 16).
  • In May's case, she develops an over-inflated ego after learning she had a group of admirers. She ends up pushing her Pokémon too hard during the contest and gets reprimanded hard by Nurse Joy of all people. She's so shocked that she's pretty much driven to tears.
    • Similarly, during the Johto series, Misty befriended a Pokémon cheerleader named Tammi, who was training her Pokémon for a tournament and was very exigent to them, to Stage Mom levels. First, her Politoed and Number Two deserted her and sought solace with Ash's group, who then meet up with Tammi and try to help her loosen up to no avail. Later, Tammi's Pokémon fail to get her instructions right and get hurt as a result but she yells at them, so Misty yells at her since she's ignoring how they could have been wounded. Seeing Misty get things done right also sends Tammi to a sobbing breakdown and mending things.
  • Ash's Charizard also went through this in an early Johto episode. Upon arriving at a Charizard sanctuary, it's revealed that Charizard (for a long time the most powerful Pokémon in Ash's party) is actually weak compared to the others there. Then he gets beaten up by anyone that it challenges, including a female said to be the weakest Charizard there. Ash leaves Charizard behind to get stronger. This mellows him out a lot.
    • Charizard was arrogant as a Charmeleon and disobeyed Ash, only agreeing to battle to defend his pride. He only evolved into Charizard to begin with because an Aerodactyl had brushed him off. When he did battle, he usually won. It took him nearly freezing to death at the hands of a Poliwrath before he snapped out of it.
  • Ash himself falls victim to this on a number of occasions. It seems that every time the guy has even the slightest winning streak going for himself he starts to get a big head. Whenever this happens, you can bet his next opponent WILL rip out his ego and beat him with it. No matter how many times this happens however, he never seems to learn.
  • The Indigo League episode "The School of Hard Knocks" featured Giselle, an Alpha Bitch at Pokémon Tech who bullied the other students under the guise of tutoring, and who had the nerve to openly insult Ash's Pikachu. Ash proceeds to give her a healthy dose of this trope by defeating her Cubone using said Pikachu, making her realize that you can't learn everything about Pokémon through books alone.
  • In the Diamond & Pearl — Galactic Battles episode, "Classroom Training!," Ash and co. attend the trainers' school in Snowpoint City and runs afoul of a student named Jeremiah, who notes how Ash got a low score on a Pokémon exam and outright asked how he won six Badges with how little academic knowledge he has on Pokémon. Jeremiah is subsequently curb-stomped by the Team Rocket trio of all people (with no cheating or dirty tricks on their end) because for all of his book smarts, he had no actual battle experience and could only think of shouting attack names.
  • Iris gets this twice, but the one that stands out is her match with Ash at the Cup. After suffering a humiliating defeat with her Dragonite disobeying her and throwing a massive tantrum, Cynthia tells her that she needs to get Dragonite to have faith in her as a trainer. This motivates Iris to become a much better dragon trainer.
• Hajime Mizuki from The Prince of Tennis gets this in one single tennis game. As punishment for treating an emotionally vulnerable player as expendable. And at the hands of said vulnerable player's protective older brother, too! It's magnificent. (And it marks Mizuki's Heel–Face Turn, too.)
• Autor from Princess Tutu generally comes off as a snob, lording his grand knowledge about the Story-Spinning powers over another character, only to be humiliated when the character is "chosen" over him and he turns out to have no trace of the powers in question.
• Xanxus from Reborn! (2004). "YOU PIECES OF TRASH!" indeed. Too bad for him he lost so magnificently. To a 14-year-old, no less. Not that he became any less arrogant.
• Rebuild World: These happen to the at first Skilled, but Naive Royal Brat Reina and Boisterous Weakling Togami. Reina's is protracted over multiple events, Brutal Honesty What the Hell, Hero? from Akira and falling for Yajima's Wounded Gazelle Gambit and being held hostage via Neck Lift. Togami learns quickly, seeing Akira, whom he looked down on, leave him in the dust. They both realize they're New Meat and The Load on a mission together, and with that Commonality Connection eventually form a Humble Hero team together. The Jerkass Lilina, on the other hand, doesn't survive her breaking and makes a Stupid Sacrifice.
• Nanami of Revolutionary Girl Utena. Poor girl. From the Utena character page: After discovering that her brother, who she loved ever since she was a child, was not her blood sibling, she feels like the connection she had her whole life was a lie. After that, she runs away from home, into the house of a pair of close, happy siblings...only to walk in on them having sex. And after that she walks in on her brother making out with a member of her old gang, to hear that her brother said he not only never loved her to begin with, and to have her ex-friend claim she has no connection to her anymore. And then after that she gets the Akio Car treatment, where her brother attempts to rape her, much to her horror. Her proceeding duel has her break down in tears, claiming that she doesn't have any connection to the brother she loves, and is horrified as being just like the other girls he sees absolutely nothing in. It's very hard not to feel sorry for her after all that, even if you thought she was a raging Rich Bitch.
• In the manga Samurai Deeper Kyo, this happens to Shinrei, Tokito, and Akira.
• Setting Things Straight With Brats is a manga series by Anzo Kunko. Each chapter is usually no more than three pages, and focuses on a different Tsundere type female character in each chapter. The purpose of the manga is for consequences for the tsundere and their behavior, often to horrific or tearjerking results.
  • The first chapter focuses on a girl who approaches a boy and teases him over the fact that there is a rumor saying he has a crush on her. The next panel shows her holding a bruised cheek with the caption "Why did you hit her?"
  • the second chapter focuses on a girl mocking a member of school staff for being a lowly "civil servant". Fast forward fifteen years, and she's being harshly berated by her boss, with one panel showing her getting kicked in the head for her poor work performance
  • The third chapter titled "I Killed Myself To Make The Brat Understand" focuses on a girl who mocks a boy for being unable to get friends or have a girlfriend of any kind. The boy, fed up, shouts at the girl that it's her fault for constantly butting into his conversations and life. The girl says to herself that she never intended to sabotage his chances like that, but doesn't get the chance to apologize as she witnesses him jumping into an oncoming passenger train. She is horrified at the visual before her, and the chapter jumps to some time later, where several classmates discuss the boy's death, and they mention the girl is to blame. At home, she sits under her blanket with a dead-eye expression. In a follow-up chapter, she continues bullying the boy, only to reveal she's insulting the empty desk, and her classmates note that she's basically lost her mind. The final image of the chapter is her laughing expression juxtaposed against a dead-eyes and tears streaming down her face
  • The fourth chapter titled "Setting Things Straight With A Confessing Brat" has a girl who bullies a boy in elementary school (shown by her pouring milk on him). In high school, she apologizes to him and appears to confess her feeling. He rejects her confession harshly, splashing her with his water bottle and rejecting her apology.
  • the fifth chapter titled "After You Set Things Straight With The Brat She Turned Into A Yandere Stalker" shows a girl harassing a guy who is studying. She brings lunch for him one day with a handwritten apology inside, but still openly teases him in class about his lack of friends. She passes a trash can later, finding the lunch box thrown away without being opened. When she confronts the boy about it, he chews her out and tells her to not show her face ever again. She reacts with horror and sadness under all other circumstances, but this time the rejection breaks her and she assumes he isn't being honest (complete with a very Yandere expression.)
  • The sixth chapter titled "Brat Lost Because Otaku-Kun Got A Girlfriend" has a girl teasing a boy about his lack of a girlfriend. He then reveals that he actually did get a girlfriend recently. Taken aback, the girl leaves the classroom and teases him lightly. Once out of eyesight, she cries.
  • The seventh chapter titled "Something Awakened Within The Corrected Brat" shows a girl mocking a boy for being "girly" and looking the part. She also mockingly tells him to kill himself. As she is about the leave the room with her friends, the boy snaps and begins harshly choking her. He then drops her, and the final panel is the girl's shocked and horrified expression over what just happened.
  • The eighth chapter titled "The Brat Who Broke Something Important To Otaku-Kun" shows a girl mocking a boy over a bracelet he's wearing (apparently he had repaired it). She ultimately manages to grasp it, and she rips it off. It jumps forward by several days and he hasn't been going to school. She goes to his apartment to drop off his schoolwork, and finds the door unlocked. When she opens it, she covers her mouth and vomits after finding him hanging from the ceiling. Some time later she would discover the bracelet was the last keepsake he had from his deceased family.
  • The ninth chapter titled "The Brat Who Wanted To Give Valentine's Chocolate" shows a girl mocking a boy for being a loser and unable to get chocolate's on valentines day. As she is about to give him some chocolate, he reveals that he actually did already get a box. On top of that, the girl who gave them also confessed to him. She promptly slaps the box of chocolates, jealous and confused, and states said girl is just toying with him. She is suddenly slapped across the cheek by the boy who says "I really hate people like you."
  • The eleventh chapter titled "Otaku-Kun's Girlfriend Shows Her Gratitude Towards The Brat" shows a girl mocking a boy over images of a girl he's drawn. Another girl then arrives and reveals herself to be the boy's actual girlfriend. When the girl expresses confusion, the girlfriend mocks her and says he wouldn't have told her anything as they aren't friends. She then tells the girl to leave the boy alone, but mockingly thanks the girl for driving the boy away from her. It was because of her bullying that the boy and the girlfriend met in the first place. The girlfriend ends the chapter by telling the girl not to go near the boy again, and the girl stands there in shock.
  • The thirteenth chapter titled "The Menhera Girl Who Accidentally Killed Her Boyfriend" shows a girl getting into an argument with her boyfriend over the fact that he went to a party with other girls. The boy tells her that it was a work party, and it's inevitable given he has women coworkers. He tells her that she has nothing to worry about as he only loves her, but the girl refuses and angrily shoves him. He then falls down the stairs of the apartment. In the next page, it is his funeral, and people mutter about how he apparently died nearly instantly. The mother of the boy smacks the girl and angrily shouts for the return of her son, and the girl meekly apologizes for it. The final panels show the girl holding a noose and crying, ashamed she is apparently too afraid to kill herself and "go after him".
  • The fourteenth chapter titled "So Be Grateful, Nerd" shows a tsundere mocking a boy for his lack of dating experience. He asked out the Student Council Rep, and now has a date tomorrow. She thinks to herself how the rep will absolutely dump him, and that he's too nerdy for this relationship to actually work. She even verbalizes this by assuring he will certainly be rejected just after one date. The boy then asks for help, and the girl decides to assist him in a practice date. Unable to be honest about it, she tells him she's only doing this because he is too much of a "loner" to succeed without help. The chapter then jumps to the evening after the date. The girl gets a call from the boy and is sure he got dumped, however he's absolutely overjoyed as the rep actually accepted his confession, and they're now officially dating. The girl tells the boy to be grateful for her help, but he cannot see that she is crying; realizing she made a mistake.
• In Shadow Star, Aki Honda goes to insane lengths to break Hiroko Kaizuka with help of her also nasty Girl Posse, and to keep reluctant Girl Posse member Miyoko Shito from finding her conscience in time to stop the spiraling madness. Well, the cutie is broken, and then, in some of the most gruesomely memorable sequences in animanga, the cutie breaks the haughty. One of the girls (Hiroka) is a mere thug and dies a simple, but still brutal death in front of her classmates via being thrown off a window. One (Mihaya) is almost as sadistic as Aki, and her remains are left unrecognizable in a dark alley. The aforementioned Miyoko confesses her and the group's sins in public after witnessing Hiroka's death and lives, but she has a leg ripped off her body and is both forever scarred and haunted by how she could have stopped this. While Aki is reveling in her rule-breaking to the point of openly breaking one of the great taboos, and plotting still more impossible-to-pin-on-her attacks on Hiroko, the broken cutie's vengeance finds her, and exacts her revenge in a magnification of Aki's worst atrocity against her. Miyoko's pleading apology earns the former bully her life — not so for Aki, whose pleas come only as she dies, and who is left with no doubt who's killing her and why despite appearances.
• In The Summer You Were There, the protagonist, Shizuku Hoshikawa, starts off the story painfully shy and crippled by self-loathing, and a flashback shows how she ended up this way. In fifth grade, she was significantly more brash and outspoken, and while she took it upon herself to help Ruri Ichinose, who'd fallen behind due to repeated absences, she did so in a rather tactless way. When her behavior escalated to openly insulting Ruri for holding the class back, she was convinced that she was saying what everyone thought and resented others for criticizing her. After shoving Ruri from behind and causing her to fall (although Shizuku's expression implies she didn't intend to go that far), resulting in Ruri's best friend Seri Ichihara slapping Shizuku and calling her out, Shizuku ends up ostracized and believes she can only hurt others.
• Sword Art Online:
  • Due to his position as Game Master of ALO, Sugou Nobuyuki/Oberon has quite the bloated ego, to the point of declaring himself a god, and believes there's nothing Kirito can do to stop him. His delusions of godhood come to a crashing halt when Kayaba's Virtual Ghost saves Kirito and grants him admin privileges to turn the tables, proving that even with the former dead, Sugou is still Always Second Best to Kayaba. This is only the beginning of his Humiliation Conga; immediately afterward, Sugou is left trembling in fear before an enraged Kirito, and by the time Kirito's done with him, Sugou is left a whimpering, blubbering wreck. It happens again when he tries to attack Kirito in real life, going from smugly gloating about how he's going to kill him and continue his research to crying his eyes out in fear and wetting his pants the minute Kirito turns the tables on him again.
  • Raios Antonious and Humbert Zisek, the two top-ranked students in Kirito and Eugeo's year, look down on them for being mere commoners, while Raios and Humbert are high-ranking nobles. The two engage in a campaign of bullying against Kirito and Eugeo, as well as Kirito and Eugeo's pages, but push their luck too far when they try to rape Ronie and Teise. In response, Eugeo summons the will to violate the Taboo Index, which should be literally impossible for a Fluctlight, and cuts off Humbert's arm, while Kirito intervenes to save Eugeo and cuts off both of Raios' hands. Both of them are reduced to gibbering wrecks, with Raios' Fluctlight collapsing and Humbert running away in terror.
• In Tegami Bachi: Letter Bee, Chalybs Garrard was a talented but arrogant candidate for Head Bee who had no idea what he was getting into when he was summoned to the capital. After coming face to face with a being that probes through his mind and replays his Dark and Troubled Past, as well as getting a glimpse of the horrific Awful Truth, he's left as a cynical and broken man.
• To Your Eternity: When first introduced, Prince Bon is a flamboyant and arrogant individual who is prone to showing off his wealth and status. It is his irresponsible nature that leads his father to pass him over in the line of succession in favor of his more responsible younger brother Torta. Desperate to regain his status as heir, Bonchien accompanies Fushi in the hope that associating himself with the immortal and his feats would change his father's mind. However, his association with Fushi earns him the ire of the Church of Bennett, who declare Bon a heretic and order for him to be executed. Even though Fushi is able to help Bon fake his death and reunite him with his family, he is forced to live the rest of his life under an alias and forsake his royal status entirely to prevent the Church from targeting his family. From that point onward, Bon is humbled by his experiences and becomes a humble and selfless individual.
• Trapped in a Dating Sim: The World of Otome Games is Tough for Mobs: These happen so much, often at Jerk with a Heart of Gold protagonist Leon's hands, that it might qualify as a Central Theme. Breaking Speech, public humiliation, and for those especial villainous Smug Snake, Extreme Mêlée Revenge and Kick Them While They Are Down await.
• Princess Shoukei from The Twelve Kingdoms. Oh, booooooy. First, she's a Royal Brat who lives completely closed off from the world, while her Knight Templar parents ruin their kingdom with their Spartan rules. Then the nobles get sick of the Royal Couple's bullshit and send out a Reasonable Authority Figure to punish them with death, which takes place in front of Shoukei. Which is followed by Shoukei being kicked out of the local royalty, meaning she is no longer an Immortal. Then she becomes a Princess in Rags in a small village, taken care of by a peasant woman who loathes her because her son and neighbors were executed by Shoukei's father and Shoukei herself doesn't seem to learn from her experiences. Then she is found out and almost subjected to a Cruel and Unusual Death, with only a neighboring Queen's orders saving her from it. Then she's forced into servitude of this Queen, who is a Little Miss Badass Stern Teacher who takes no shit from anyone. Ultimately she escapes from said Queen and is forced to fend off by herself, only now starting to see how the world actually is with the help of Youko's friend Rakushun.
• The Vision of Escaflowne: Van vs. the Dragonslayers. Dilandau is not having a good day. That day, Van slew all of Dilandau's Dragonslayers...and their pilots, effortlessly and mercilessly — he was having a bad day, too, you see. It was only when Dilandau himself was left, a blubbering mess, that the fallen spirits tried to take Van with them, stopping the battle.
• Yu-Gi-Oh!:
  • In the original manga of Yu-Gi-Oh!, Mokuba Kaiba undergoes this, changing from a stuck up brat who secretly longed for his big brother's approval to someone who was... well, still a jerk sometimes, but mostly okay, after Yugi defeated him at Capsule Monsters. Seto Kaiba sure could have used this plot in the anime, but no matter how many times he lost a duel, he came out of the subsequent Heroic BSoD as arrogant as ever.
  • Take your pick in Yu-Gi-Oh! GX: Kaiser Ryo, which leads to a Freak Out, Face–Heel Turn, and This Is Your Brain on Evil; Edo, who suffered from a huge case of self-righteousness and snobbishness — his early relationship with Judai could, in fact, be considered a case of Slobs Versus Snobs — and eventually discovered (along with his best friend... the season's Big Bad) that he Missed the Call; and Manjyome, to the point where he has to go in the opposite direction and rediscover his true strength! Oh, and it's a foregone conclusion that anyone on this show who undergoes this plot will come within an inch of losing their lives in the process.
  • Jack has this trope covered in Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds.
• Hiei from YuYu Hakusho, though it is somewhat averted in that he remains just as arrogant as before (though he does become a calmer person) and isn't "broken" at all, even after getting his soul stolen by Kaito. So it's more a case of the Jerkass showing he has a heart.
• Zekkyou Gakkyuu gives this to many haughty characters, especially when they are the protagonist. One notable example includes Ayu from The Sacrifice Club being humiliated in front of her former friends, her crush and said crush's girlfriend before she encounters the real Sacrifice Club at the festival. Trying to break a haughty Yandere, though, backfired horribly.

---