Canon Immigrant / Anime & Manga

• In ARIA, Ai was originally an anime-only character, but starts to appear in special chapter in various guidebooks, culminating in becoming Akari's apprentice in the last manga chapter (and anime episode).
• Black Butler the Musical II: The Most Beautiful DEATH In The World introduces two original grim reaper characters, Eric and Alan, whose story forms the core of the musical. They have appeared in cameos in both the manga and both the Black Butler II OVAs and Book of Circus anime.
• Bleach: The Filler Zanpakuto Rebellion arc in the anime featured a Zanpakuto spirit named Muramasa as one of its Arc Villains. Muramasa is mentioned by name in Bleach: Cannot Fear Your Own World, where it's stated to be an Ancestral Weapon used by the Kuchiki family. Notably, the aforementioned filler arc is not mentioned in any capacity.
  • During the same filler arc, new designs are drawn up for every Zanpakuto spirit, and none of them are ever seen again... except for Shunsui's, Katen Kyōkotsu, who reappears later when Shunsui reveals his bankai during the Thousand-year Blood War Arc.
• In Case Closed, Inspector Shiratori, Inspector Ayanokoji and soccer player Sanada were originally movie-only characters (Shiratori holding one rank lower there) and Detective Takagi, Detective Chiba and waitress Azusa were originally used only in fillers. A number of minor police inspectors were named after their voice actors.
• A Certain Scientific Railgun:
  • Anything from characters to plotlines in the Railgun manga/anime is canon in the main Index series as it was approved by the author of the novels. This include Saten who makes a cameo appearance in the novels and Capacity Down is used on Accelerator in Volume 19 of the novels. This also counts in the Railgun manga, where anything added in the Railgun anime is treated as having happened in the manga, though only mentioned in passing. Including Harumi's students being cured.
  • There's also Shinobu Nunotaba, a scientist formerly working on the Radio Noise Project, and Nayuta Kihara, who has already ascended to canon.
• City Hunter: Mick Angel is based on the anime-only character Robert Harrison, an old partner of Ryo from the US who arrived in Japan to kill Ryo's current client. They have different names and clothes, and Rick favors the Walther P-38 over Mick's Desert Eagle, but for the rest they're practically the same. Even the way they say 'hi' is pretty much the same, even if Hojo cranked it Up to Eleven.
• Code Geass:
  • Rai the protagonist of a video game spinoff, or someone that looks very much like him, appeared◊ in Code Geass R2 for a few moments.
  • Similarly, Nonette Ennagram (the Knight of Nine, who's name is derived from two words meaning nine) appears in R2 when the Knights of the Round are revealed... She never appears again. Some fans have taken this to mean that she's the only Round who hasn't tried to kill Lelouch, and one of the few Rounds to survive the events of the series.
  • Marika Soresi and Liliana Vergamon, two characters used to expound on Cornelia's opinions of events in the novels while acting as her wingmen, appear alongside Britannian Ace and Knight Of Round Luciano Bradley in Code Geass R2. They die immediately. Code Geass: Oz the Reflection retcons Marika's death by having her be saved at the last minute by her fiancé Leonhardt Steiner.
• In Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, the Light Novel side-publications actually present a few concepts that eventually are brought over to the manga, despite them being authored by Aya Yajima, with original manga author Gotouge Koyoharu just supervising it. Examples include Zenitsu’s master Jigoro Kwajima having his name being revealed in the novels, the mentor and disciple relationship Kyojuro and Mitsuri had, etc.
• Ryo Akiyama from Digimon Tamers and his Digimon don't seem to follow the same rules as the others. This is because he is from the Alternate Universe where the Digimon Adventure series took place. This is explained in the series of video games of which he is the star. To drive the point home, he is not in the manga that was later adapted from the series.
  • Unfortunately for Western fans, his games were on the Wonderswan, a handheld that was never released outside Asia. The first of these games got an English translation for Hong Kong, but the translation sucked. When he did turn up in Tamers, there was naturally massive confusion, as without the games to explain his backstory, he seemed to make absolutely no sense as a character. Interestingly enough, he's a different kind of Canon Immigrant, his games are canon to the Digimon Adventure universe, he cameoed in Our War Game, and then twice in Digimon Adventure 02, and is a vital part of Ken's backstory. He moved to the Tamers universe after ZeedMilleniummon's final defeat, effectively immigrating from one universe to another.
  • Due to the wildly different animation styles of the movies and Tamers, Ryo being in Tamers didn't cause much confusion: your average American Digimon fan had no idea that Ryo was supposed to be that guy in a couple shots of the movie (as a background character and Continuity Nod; if you didn't know who he was beforehand you had absolutely no reason to take note of him.) "Who is that guy we mostly see from behind with Ken in the origin story, and what was that monster-thing" was a major question, though, and even once fans did know, the decision to make a video game that necessary to understand what is going on in the show came to be seen as further evidence of season two's Seasonal Rot.
• Dororon Enpi-chan is a boderline erotic 4koma parody of Go Nagai's Dororon Enma-kun with with main character being Enma's Distaff Counterpart. In the recent remake, Dororon Enma-kun Meramera Enpi is introduced as the main villain and Enma's sister.
• Dragon Ball Z:
  • Goku's father Bardock. Reportedly, Akira Toriyama liked the Bardock movie special so much that he included him in the manga, in a brief two-panel flashback during Goku's battle with Freeza. Dragon Ball Z Kai, a recut of the anime which sheds off the majority of the filler, actually makes Bardock's death the prologue to the series.
  • King Vegeta was only mentioned once in the manga, but appeared physically in a Filler Flash Back. His character design from this flashback was later reused in canonical stories including Battle of Gods, Dragon Ball Super, but by Dragon Ball Super: Broly he was redesigned.
  • The Grand Kai is in a similar situation, being mentioned but unseen in the manga. However, his appearance and personality were created by Toriyama himself, and thus, is more fleshed out in the anime.
• Dragon Ball Super:
  • Piiza, Caroni and Pirozhki were created for the Dragon Ball Z anime but ended up appearing in Super still working for Mr. Satan.
  • Dragon Ball Super: Broly brings Broly into canon along with a brand-new character design and personality conceived by Toriyama. The movie also brings in his father Paragus^note In a twist, Paragus gets a new, aged-up character design but his original appearance is used in Flashbacks to Planet Vegeta and Gogeta from the movie Fusion Reborn as well as once again using King Vegeta.
  • The Yardrats, the race who taught Goku Instant Transmission, fall under the same heading as King Vegeta and the Grand Kai: mentioned but unseen in the manga and given a character design for a Filler episode of DBZ. Dragon Ball Super introduced Jimeze, a Yardrat fighting for Universe 2 in the Tournament of Power; what makes this interesting is, Toriyama created an entirely different design for the Yardrats for Dragon Ball Online (one that somewhat resembles Super's Zen'o) but the filler design was used instead. The Galactic Prisoner Saga of the Super manga uses both designs with the explanation that they're different species from the same planet.
  • Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero brought in Android #21, or rather the human base that she would be modelled after, as Dr. Gero's wife Vomi.
• El Hazard (the TV series) featured a goofy and silly version of the "ultimate weapon android" Ifurita, as opposed to the far more serious and angsty Ifurita from the original OAV continuity. However, her popularity led to her being written into the latter continuity via the Radio Dramas, where her name was changed to "Ifurina."
• Future GPX Cyber Formula: Seiichirou Shiba, Rena Yuuki and Sera Gallagher all first appeared in the PlayStation game The New Challenger and they later were put into the extra ending of Sin.
  • Also Aya Stanford, who appeared in the Sin OVA and some episodes in Saga, was a character originally created for the first SAGA drama CDs.
• Musashi Tomoe from Getter Robo is an example that it might seem surprising to fans, but in Ken Ishikawa's original manga, Getter-3 was piloted by Professor Saotome. Musashi was created to fill that spot in the anime adaptation, and Ishikawa liked him so much that he was imported back into the manga and has subsequently become a central and fan-beloved member of the Getter family.
• The Gundam video game series SD Gundam G Generation features a number of Original Generation mecha in order to spice things up. So far, only one of these has filtered back into the source material: the Gundam Belphagor, from Gundam X's After War time line, which shows up in the sequel manga Under The Moonlight.
  • Gundam actually has quite a lot of these. Mechs that only appear in MSV model kit lines have been showing up in subsequent anime productions since Zeta Gundam, Gundam Unicorn being a particularly massive example, which also brings in the Gustav Karl mobile suit from Hathaway's Flash.
  • One of the most obscure ones comes in the form of the Perfect Gundam, an armor upgrade for the RX-78-2 Gundam from the original series that debuted in an obscure manga called Plamo Kyo Shiro, where it was a kitbash plastic model created by the title character and scanned in to a VR game to battle against other models (a premise later used for the mostly unrelated Gunpla Builders Beginning G). It has since gone on to appear as an upgrade for the actual Gundam in various video games, notably the G-Gen series. The Perfect Gundam finally appears in animated form in the season 1 finale of Gundam Build Fighters (which also users a similar premise to the aforementioned Plamo Kyo Shiro and Gnpla Builders Beginning G), in that episode it is piloted by Takeshi Iori, the runner up for the second world championships and the father of the protagonist.
    • Gundam Build Fighters and Gundam Build Fighters Try have allowed a number of Mobile Suits to make their animated appearance in some form, including the aforementioned Perfect Gundam, the Destiny Impulse (a Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny MSV) and the Crossbone Gundam X-1 Kai Kai "Skull Heart" Full Cloth.
  • The latest example is the Perfect Strike Gundam from the Gundam SEED remaster. The idea of Strike Gundam equipped with all three Striker Packs has been around for a long time. The original concept for the Freedom Gundam was a combination of all of the Strike's Striker Packs. After the Strike Gundam model kits were released, a common project for model collectors was to build a version of the Strike with all three Striker Packs equipped at once. And a SD model of the Strike armed with all three Striker Packs named "Strike Gundam Striker Weapon System" was released in 2004. The Perfect Strike Gundam finally appeared in the latter half of the remastered Gundam SEED, upgraded from the original Strike.
  • Probably the oddest one of the bunch are the Mobile Suit Gundam Wing: Endless Waltz redesigns of the original five Gundams of Mobile Suit Gundam Wing. All five made their first appearance as just drawings. Wing would be the first to make a move, becoming a hidden unit in Super Robot Wars Alpha 2, then an event unit in SD Gundam Capsule Fighter before officially appearing in the remake manga Glory of Losers with the other four.
• In the Guyver anime film Out of Control, the villainous Guyver II was given a Gender Flip. This female version of Guyver II was incorporated into the manga as another character named Valkyria.
• In Hidamari Sketch, Chika was originally an anime-only character. She was only included in the manga about 5 years when the first episode with her premiered.
• The The iDOLM@STER anime introduces, in episode 10, the unit Shinkan Shoujo. The latter appears in the game THE iDOLM@STER: One for All, but in name only. They have no voice, model or image song.
• The Love Hina anime introduced Naru Narusegawa's step-sister Mei, who would later make a cameo at the end of the manga during her sister's wedding. Akamatsu would later reuses the design Negima! Magister Negi Magi with the character Mei Sakura, causing many fans to wonder if they're the same person (since it was never stated if Mei and Naru share their surname).
• The VB-6 König Monster first appeared in the PlayStation game Macross Digital Mision VF-X. Macross Frontier is the first animated Macross series in which it has appeared. Fan theory holds that it got its due to its awesome, gigantic toy.
  • Also from Macross, though possibly a coincidence, the idea of controlling Veritech fighters with a brain interface showed up in the American Robotech tie-in novels several years before they were introduced to Macross canon in Macross Plus.
• Mazinkaiser was born out of the idea of giving the Mazinger Z a Mid-Season Upgrade for Kouji Kabuto in Super Robot Wars F Final. Developer Banpresto asked Go Nagai, Mazinger's creator, to design it; not only were players pleasantly surprised with the upgrade, but the reception of its appearance allowed Nagai to quickly incorporate the Mazinkaiser into Mazinger canon.
• My-Otome 0~S.ifr~, the anime prequel to My-Otome, features Mayo and Shion, characters originally from the Mai-HiME Destiny Light Novels taking place in an Alternate Continuity to My-HiME. A rare example of trans-continuity, trans-setting promotion to canon.
• Naruto:
  • A certain pair of lightning-powered swords from a filler arc in the anime, collectively referred to as Kiba, ends up showing up in the manga being wielded by a former member of the Seven Swordsman of the Mist, albeit with a slightly different design.
  • The guy who actually wielded said swords in the before-mentioned filler arc, Raiga Kurosuki, ends up showing up in the manga himself, during a flashback.
  • Gari from the Hidden Stone Village, Chukichi of the Hidden Mist Village, Pakura of the Hidden Sand Village and Toroi of the Hidden Cloud Village were all originally from the non-canon movie Naruto Shippuden the Movie: Inheritors of the Will of Fire. They made their appearance in the manga during the Fourth Shinobi World War arc.
  • The infamous episode 167 of Shippuden had 6-tailed Naruto perform two anime-original moves: a Rapid-Fire Tailed Beast Bomb and a Tailed Beast Laser. In Chapter 610 of the Fourth Shinobi World War arc, both Killer Bee and Naruto use the former on the Juubi, while the Juubi uses the latter on the two.
  • The Naruto Hiden light novels have canonized a number of things that were originally introduced in anime filler or the Non Serial Movies, though some details still had to be changed to become canon-compliant—specifically, the events of most of the movies are not canon (except for The Last: Naruto the Movie and Boruto: Naruto the Movie, both of which are canon), but their locations (particularly the Blood Prison from the eponymous fifth Shippuden movie) and some of their characters were blended into canon.
• Neon Genesis Evangelion:
  • Mana Kirishima first appeared in the video game Girlfriend of Steel, but proved popular enough that she later appeared in the unrelated Shinji Ikari Raising Project game and manga.
  • The Shinji Ikari Raising Project game introduced three new NERV technicians named Kaede, Satsuki, and Aoi. The three would later appear in the Alternate Universe manga Neon Genesis Evangelion: Campus Apocalypse. However, none of them have actually immigrated back into the anime canon, or even the Rebuild of Evangelion movies.
  • Speaking of Rebuild, someone who looks a lot like Mari Makinami (and sharing her name) makes a brief appearance in the last chapter of the manga, being presented as around Yui's age. Normally, given that the Mari of Rebuild looked around the same age as Shinji, Asuka, and Rei, the Mari of the manga would likely be Rebuild Mari's' mother — but then, 3.0+1.0 revealed that Mari suffered from Older Than They Look even more than the other pilots did and is at least Yui's age.
• Noragami: Rabou was created for the anime, but the creators of the manga created a two-chapter story about how he and Yato met.
• There were rumors that Original Character Ayumi Sakigame of Pretty Cure All Stars New Stage would make the jump to Smile Pretty Cure! as a Sixth Ranger, but nothing of the sort happened. On the other hand, the items known as Miracle Lights, which made their first appearance in the Yes! Pretty Cure 5 movie, would bounce over to the All Stars movies, becoming an important part of how the movies play.
• Puella Magi Madoka Magica:
  • Puella Magi Madoka Magica Portable introduced five new witches, three of which are the witch forms of Homura, Kyoko and Mami. Given as such witches have not appeared in the main show and yet logically must exist in some form, it can be assumed that they are canon, but this is eventually confirmed in Rebellion, the movie sequel to the anime, which features Homulilly, Homura's witch, as the protagonist who doesn't even realize this.
  • Related to the above but less overtly canon, Candeloro (Mami's witch) appears in silhouette in one panel in "The Different Story", a seemingly canon manga. Similarly, Michiru Kazusa appears as well, corresponding with the same point in the plot that Mami appeared in Michiru's original manga. With all these connections, it wouldn't be a stretch to assume that all, or at least most of the spin-offs are intended to be canon, although it is still unclear if any of them will actually affect the main series.
• In Saint Seiya, the special brainwashing technique of the Pope, the Genrou Maouken, appeared first in the anime before being introduced by the author in the manga (although it wasn't referred to by name until then). Similar is the case of the character Lyra Orpheus from the first film, who's later seen (redesigned) into the manga continuity (though Kurumada made the design sketches for the movie enemies).
• Sgt. Frog: Several characters later in the series appeared in the anime before the manga, most notably Pururu and the casts of the 2nd and 4th movies. There's also Angol Fear, who made her first appearance in Soul Calibur IV. Of course, all those characters were originally created by Mine Yoshizaki anyway.
• Minamo from Sketchbook first appeared in the anime incarnation, in which she is Daichi's little sister. She even has a rather big role, interacting a lot with the main character Sora, starting with the very first scene of the series—and she also participates in the art club's events later on. Perhaps the makers wanted to have a younger character to appeal to a larger demographic. She was re-introduced into the manga in chapter 97, about two years after the anime ended. Her first scenes in the manga imply that she has had prior interactions with the main cast, but the author stated in the notes that her Immigration into the manga continuity has no real meaning for the timing.
• Tenchi Muyo! Ryo-Ohki:
  • Beginning with the third OVA, the main cast from Tenchi Muyo! GXP appear as major characters.
  • The main cast from Masaki Kajishima's canonical Paradise War light novels make an appearance in the fifth OVA.
• Tokyo Mew Mew imported everything but characters from the anime after it Overtook the Manga. The girls originally didn't use transformation phrases, for one...
• Trigun: The boomerang-wielding Descartes actually appeared in the first episode of the anime before showing up in the manga Trigun Maximum. Several other one-shot characters from the anime have make brief cameos when Vash flashes back to various people he's met in his journeys. Yasuhiro Nightow has actually stated that Vash's encounters with these characters in the anime episodes is canon within the manga's backstory, though that would mean that they'd be slightly different than the anime versions, since Meryl and Milly didn't meet Vash until the third chapter of the manga and thus wouldn't have been present.
• In Wedding Peach, the Love Angels' outfits from the anime became their fighter outfits in the manga's Volume 3 as a reward for defeating Plulie.
• Several Yu-Gi-Oh! cards that were previously only in the anime, like Guardian Eatos, were made into real cards years later. The Dragons of Legend series of booster packs is specifically designed for this purpose.
  • Two characters from the video game Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's World Championships 2011: Over the Nexus: Tohru and Misaki appear briefly in an episode of 5D's proper.

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