Contrived Coincidence / Anime & Manga

Contrived Coincidences in anime and manga.

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• The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You
  • Subverted when Kusuri just happens to have a special drug that allows people to see infrared, which is just what the gang needs to get past the infrared alarms in Hakari's house and help her escape - but it turns out Kusuri had the drug on her because she was actually planning on mailing it to a company that specialises in making drugs, in the hopes of becoming employed by the company and going to America to make drugs there. The others are shocked that she's giving up this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to help them rescue Hakari.
    • The anime further subverts this by including the scene where Kusuri mentions submitting her application in her debut episode, making this a straight case of Foreshadowing.
  • Played straight with regards to both Hahari, and, later, her maids Mei and Mai being among Rentarou's destined soulmates. In the former case, it saves their lives since it means she gives up trying to forcibly separate Rentarou and her daughter, but the latter two are present for quite some time before they finally lock eyes with him and fall in love.
  • Chapter 83 features a ramen shop owner determined to create impossible-to-finish gourmet ramen challenges to make others feel the humiliation she felt when she failed such a challenge. When her first attempt, a "Spicy-as-Hell Ramen Challenge" fails in the face of Kusuri and Yaku being Unaffected by Spice from all of their drug testing. From there the shop owner tries different challenges, only to have them go up against a girlfriend capable of defeating it. The Hot-as-Hell ramen falls to Iku's masochism, the Steamy-as-Hell ramen challenge is ineffective against Mei's Eyes Always Shut, and so on. Her attempts to create ramens customers can't even order fail when Nano flawlessly remembers and repeats the overly long, complicated name of one and Hahari and Hakari easily afford the Expensive-as-Hell ramen. Finally she tries to create a ramen so packed with food that it should be impossible for any human being to finish... and in walks Big Eater Kurumi, who doesn't leave a drop in the bowl. The shop owner throws in the towel at that point.
  • Lampshaded in chapter 84, a sequel to a Baby Morph Episode in which Hahari wants to use Kusuri's "Become-A-Baby" Drug on the girlfriends who joined since the last time it was used. When Kishika knocks the vial with the drug to the ground, it explodes and babyfies the girls close to her, which just so happen to be the new girlfriends and Hakari, who wasn't changed the last time. This fact is immediately lampshaded.
    Karane: Kishika and everyone who happened to be nearby: Hakari, Mei, Iku, Mimimi, Meme, Chiyo, Naddy, Yamame, Momiji, and Yaku...!
    Nano: To think fate could be so convenient...
    Shizuka: "Surely, the gods must be playing tricks."
  • Exaggerated with the fact that all the girls who don’t attend Rentarou’s school are able to find time to eat lunch on the roof of the school no matter where they go for work or school.
• Butterflies, Flowers: When Choko goes job-hunting at the beginning of the book, the only company hiring is the one where her family's ex-servant has become director of the department she is applying to...
• Cat's Eye:
  • Given that it had been split up and scattered more than a decade previously, it's downright amazing how much of Michael Heintz's collection is stored in or passes through places within easy travel distance of the Cat's Eye café.
  • The final episode of the anime sees Ai writing a school play about Cat's Eye, while Rui and Hitomi try to steal a rare diamond from a famous actress named Noriko Kurokawa. They're thwarted by a high-tech, computerized jewelry vault, and realize that they need to somehow lure Noriko out into the open and swap her diamond with a fake without anyone realizing it. Through sheer coincidence, they find out that Noriko is an alumna of Ai's school, and that all former students are eligible to act in school productions regardless of age. All it takes is some convincing from Ai, and Noriko joins the show and offers up her diamond as a prop. From there, the sisters are able to replace the diamond under the guise of it all being part of the play.
  • In episode 18, Hitomi and Ai tie up and gag a pair of female wrestlers known as the Tiger Ladies, and steal their costumes in order to escape the cops. Not only do the Tiger Ladies wear masks, but they conveniently have hairstyles and body measurements similar to those of the thieves as well.
  • In the series finale, Hitomi and Rui try to steal a priceless diamond from a famous actress named Noriko Kurokawa, but fail. While this is happening, Ai is writing the script for her drama club's upcoming play, which is about a female thief. Due to some unlikely circumstances, it turns out that Noriko is an alumna of Ai's school, and that former students are allowed to act in school productions regardless of their age. The sisters are able to convince Noriko to portray the victim of the play, and use the opportunity to knock her unconscious and replace her diamond with a convincing fake.
• Cells at Work!: Red Blood Cell 3803 and White Blood Cell 1146 keep running into each other whenever something major is happening in the body despite (as they both point out) there being 37 trillion cells in the body and the odds of them seeing each other more than once are ridiculously slim. This goes back all the way to when they were developing cells in the bone marrow, when Red Blood Cell got attacked by a bacteria. They both remember the incident but neither remembers the identity of the other cell.
• After the War in the North Campaign and the 7 year Time Skip in Claymore, the seven survivors out of 24 set out south to finally get their revenge and then run headlong into Riful of the West, one of the Big Bads, almost immediately.
• Code Geass:
  • While a lot of things can be explained by Lelouch using his Geass off screen, the second episode of the second season is just a little convenient. Lelouch, having lost his memory, decides to go gambling in a skyscraper that just happens to be at the start of a street that goes straight to the Chinese consulate, the skyscraper also exactly tall enough to be stretched out along the street, has a spacious ventilation shaft inside it which would protect people in the unlikely event that it would topple over... Starting to guess what's going to happen?
  • Season 1 episode 22 is just as bad. See my mind control eye? I can make you do anything, all of which being horribly bad for everyone involved, and none of them funny, even though I'm trying to make a joke. It would be horrible if my power forced you to do one of them, now - er... Whoops? That was because Diabolus ex Machina was the real Big Bad of the show. While it presumably never occurred to Lelouch that his Mind Control Geass would trigger without him consciously activating it, by all rights it should have figured out that this is what always happens to a Geass user eventually, since he'd already fought Mao earlier in the season, whose Telepathy Geass had become impossible to turn off years before they met.
• The first episode of Darker than Black with suspiciously convenient coincidences that allow Chiaki to escape her many pursuers - electric locks malfunction when she needs them to the most, pursuers will frequently be thrown off by things such as stray cats, and Nice Guy next-door neighbor/obvious Love Interest, Li Shengshun, is always miraculously nearby when she needs his help the most. The second episode then reveals that absolutely none of these are coincidences, not even the cat, and that Li (secretly the electricity-manipulating "Black Reaper", Hei) is after her secrets just like everyone else.
• Death Note:
  • It was just a coincidence that both Mikami and Light knew Kiyomi Takada (although it's not too absurd considering it's not abnormal for two people to know somebody mutual over the span of five years, especially considering Light's popularity). It was just a coincidence that Misa Amane and Light happened to live within a train ride of each other — at one point in the anime, they're shown having coffee in the same little shop, completely unaware that the other one is actually a Kira. When you get down to it, it was a coincidence that Light just happened to have the TV on, considering how much studying he's shown to do with it off, when L first broadcasts his Lind L Tailor message. The list doesn't end; Death Note has a ton of these.
  • The encounter with Naomi Misora and Light not being taken out early is based on one, too. It just so happens that the entire police force working the Kira case was at a meeting, while Misora was trying to contact one of them and Light happened to arrive just as she talked about having information for them. After all, Sayu was supposed to bring their father the spare clothes. Light even lampshades how convenient this little meeting was and begins to hear Misora out on her information. And it just so happens that Aizawa was opening his umbrella just as Light and Misora were passing him by and he didn't see them. Although, to be fair to Light, Misora's interference in the first place was unlucky and so was Aizawa arriving at that exact time.
  • It even starts with one: Light flat-out asks Ryuk why he was chosen to have the Death Note, and Ryuk explains he'd just dropped it from a great height. Anyone might have picked it up. Hell, the instructions are in English just because that's the most common human language.
• Psychometer Eiji's spinoff manga Debusen, featuring comic relief character Mitsuru Fukushima, relies on this in basically almost every presented plot point. One of those examples is the premise of the manga itself; Mitsuru, who decides to commit suicide in Sea of Trees after piling up so much debts, finds the corpse of a woman greatly resembling him and is somehow trapped in the life of a high school teacher replacing the deceased woman to reform a class filled with failure students. First of all, he chooses to go to Sea of Trees^note it's a famous place for suicide in Japan but still coincidence instead of jumping off a cliff or using other suicide methods. Second, because Mitsuru wants to get a chocolate in the pocket of a corpse hanged on a branch which can't hold Mitsuru's weight, he magically stumbles into the woman's corpse in a 35-square-kilometre forest, not to mention the corpse being in an obscured location people won't easily notice. Third, said corpse has similar body structure and appearance to Mitsuru except for general male-female characteristics. Fourth, the woman's name is conveniently Mitsuko Fukushima◊, the name Mitsuru uses whenever he cosplays as a woman. Despite the amount of miracle it needs to work, the plot can still happen.
• In the first story arc of Dragon Ball while Bulma and Goku are searching for the Dragon Balls they find a turtle who is lost. Goku helps the turtle and as a reward the turtle gets his master, known as the Turtle Hermit, who gives him the Kinto'un, a flying cloud. After several more adventures, they face the Gyuumaou (Ox-King) who is known for his power and cruelty. The Gyuumaou recognizes the cloud since the Turtle Hermit is his old master. Even more, Goku's grandfather was also a student of the same master and him and the Gyuumaou trained together. And all of them had Dragon Balls.
• Elfen Lied, both fortunately and unfortunately, happens to be chock full of this. This is the reason why all of the characters meet in the first place, as the chances for these select few individuals encountering one another (especially Lucy and Kouta) is next to impossible. That none of them remember each other is a whole 'nother web of improbability.
• In Earwig and the Witch, the fact that Bella Yaga and Mandrake wound up choosing their old friend and bandmate's daughter out of a literal line-up of children was just one giant coincidence. Maybe.
• In From Eroica with Love, the titular art thief almost always ends up going after something with a microfilm sought by his unrequited love interest.
• The main character of Gakuen Alice just happens to befriend a kid with a superpower, who just happens to have avoided being sent to the special school for those people long enough to befriend the main character, and just happens to have one of her letters reach the main character despite the faculty of the school doing everything they can to prevent the students having any contact at all with the outside world, which just happens to prompt the main character to travel to the school, where she just so happens to be allowed in because she has a power of her own, one which just happens to be so situational that neither she nor anybody else knew that she had it until the plot demanded it.
• Haiyore! Nyarko-san W:
  • The protagonists go to the Great Celano Library so Nyarko can return an overdue book, and come into conflict with a pair of aliens who are ransacking the place looking for something. When the team arrives at the villains' lair, Nyarko realizes she forgot to return her book, which leads to her and Mahiro discussing the possibility that that book is what the bad guys were looking for; Mahiro initially thinks it's stupid, but then decides it's probably right because so far, all their adventures have had "stupid resolutions" (as he puts it). It turns out he's wrong; what the bad guys really wanted was a book Mahiro unknowingly put in his pocket when everything started going nuts at the library.
  • In the first season, a time-traveling alien "borrows" the body of a classmate in order to track down a rebel from her time period. Nyarko remarks that the Class Representative called in sick that day and suggests that the criminal might be possessing him. Mahiro says that would be way too convenient, Nyarko agrees that it would be pretty silly, and they share a laugh...and then the class rep jumps out of a second-story window and dashes away, obviously possessed.
• In Haou Airen, the Triad hitman Hakuron is sent to Tokyo twice to deal with the Yakuza. Both times, he saw the female lead Kurumi. The first one, he took a glimpse of her grieving self during her father's funeral; the second, she was the person who saved his life when he was badly injured after he finished the mission.
• In the sixth volume of High School D×D, Asia gets herself forcefully transferred to a different dimension by Shalba Beelzebub and planned to kill her there. It just so happens that Vali and his group were at the Dimension Gap looking for Gogmagog and he sees her prompting him to rescue her on a whim.
• In How the Masked Earl Fell in Love, the possibility of this is Played for Laughs. Gerald, the eponymous earl, has heard that Crysta, whose family had sent her to marry him, is a promiscuous Spoiled Brat and a Gold Digger, so he is shocked when Crysta turns out to be hard-working, responsible and nice. He then concludes that another young woman named Crysta was going to marry another man with his name, but then remembers that there is only one family with his family name in the country.
• InuYasha: In episode 47, Naraku sics a giant Soul Collector on Kikyo to kill her, sending her running until she runs into Inuyasha, who promptly kills it. Inuyasha thinks that Kikyo deliberately led the demon to him knowing he would save her, but as she quickly points out, she was just running for her life, and Inuyasha just happened to be there.
• In INVADERS of the ROKUJYOUMA!?, every girl in the series (aside from Shizuka and Harumi) wants Koutarou's room for herself for various reasons. While Sanae makes sense (she is the ghost of a former resident), every other girl's explanation sounds rather outlandish to Koutarou.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
  • Minor villain Thunder McQueen in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stone Ocean was arrested as a result of one of these. He was innocently cleaning his shotgun when it had an accidental discharge out of nowhere, hitting a woman who had already jumped from the roof of his apartment building to kill herself as she passed in front of his window. He describes the incident as the opposite of winning the lottery, and precisely because of how outlandish it was nobody believed him at his trial. Ermes tries to cheer him up using an analogy about the difference between Mondays and Saturdays, only for him to point out it happened on a Saturday.
  • In JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Steel Ball Run, this trope is weaponized in the form of Lucy Steel's Stand, Ticket to Ride. If Lucy comes under any form of misfortune, Ticket to Ride will cause a series of unlikely events to occur to prevent or undo the misfortune.
• Kaguya-sama: Love Is War: Fujiwara, Ishigami, and Iino all show up in turn while Kaguya and Shirogane are on their festival date, only for something to distract them before they can interfere. It ultimately turns out to be a Double Subversion. Shirogane had been secretly manipulating everything behind the scenes for months so no one would get in the way of his Grand Romantic Gesture, but Ishigami's distraction was a genuine coincidence because his accidental confession to Tsubame was something that Shirogane hadn't factored into his plans.
• The Kindaichi Case Files:
  • The way Kindaichi finds himself in the same kind of situation in every story, purely by random chance, never seems to strike anybody as too weird.
  • The solution in Smoke and Mirrors hinges on Ryuta Saki, a schoolmate of Kindaichi and Nanase, having a habit of filming everything around him. Kindaichi is able to catch the killer because, conveniently enough, Ryuta and his ever-present camera are around exactly when the plot requires them to be.
  • In the Death God Hospital Murder Case special, the Gentleman Thief is revealed to have impersonated Maki Daigo, the same journalist whose identity she stole back in her first appearance. When pressed by Akechi, the Gentleman Thief admits that she had no idea the real Maki would be aboard the ship for the heist, and that her appearance was merely a lucky coincidence.
  • In "The Yukikage Village Case", the plot centers around one of Kindaichi's childhood friend's suicide, which becomes the motive for the arc's murders. This friend committed suicide because she is pregnant with her boyfriend's child, whom she has reasons to believe is her half-brother. They're actually not related, but they both happen to have absent fathers, and the two men just happens to share the exact surname and given name.
• Little Witch Academia (2017): In Episode 16, the Greenman Disease is a parody of this, working off ridiculously specific triggers. The conditions and effects of the illness make it work more like a curse than an actual pathology in practice; it only happens in a specific region of Finland when, among other things, a certain amount of CO2 exhaled by humans coincides with a specific breeding rate of a specific family of fish, the release of pollen into the air, a freaking planetary alignment event and the consumption of a specific traditional homemade pie when baked at a specific temperature. The conditions are so stringent that the book detailing the disease itself points out that it's something one could only expect to occur AT MOST once every thousand years. Guess where our heroines decide to go to, at which time of the year (and the millennium), and which traditional treat is served to them by a well-meaning old woman.
• Lyrical Nanoha There are a lot of these thought out the series also mix with One Degree of Separation.
  • Season 1:
    • After Arf rebelled and fled to Earth, She ended up being found by Alisa, one of Nanoha's friends.
  • Season 2 (A's):
    • Hayate, the master of the antagonist and is unaware of what's going on, happens to meet Suzuka, another friend of Nanoha.
  • Season 3 (StrikerS):
    • Subaru and Ginga were found and rescued by Quint. Quint ended up adopting them because their eyes are similar to her. Turns out their DNA matches with Quint. Yeah, of all the people in the universe who could've rescued them, it turns out to be the woman they were cloned from.
    • Quint was also partnered with Zest and Megane. Zest ended up dying and was resurrected to take care of Megane's daughter. During their walk around the Mid-Childa, they found Agito, a unison device, who turns out to be compatible with Signum.
    • The first and only time Riot Force 6 have a vacation, Erio and Caro stumbled upon Vivio.
  • ViVid:
    • Five participants of the Inter-Middle Championship are descendants of rulers from the Ancient Belkan Era, four of the rulers were close friends. And a sixth ruler in a Convenient Coma is not that far away from these descendents. Hayate lampshades this.
  • Force:
    • Thoma happens to be found by Subaru on that fated day when he's the sole survivor of a massacre. Years later he goes on a Journey to Find Oneself, and runs across Lily and Isis.
  • INNOCENT:
    • Since this is an Alternate Universe, the Materials are no longer doppelgängers of Nanoha, Fate and Hayate, just a group of strangers who happen to resemble them. And despite the drawing of in-game equipment for the series' virtual reality video game being randomized, they just happen to have Palette Swap versions of the main trio's gear so that the resemblance will be even more apparent.
• In Macross Frontier, the three characters in the primary Love Triangle have the amazing ability to randomly run into each other wherever they go, in a city that's home to millions of people. Even when a character decides to randomly visit places they've never been before, the other two happen to show up there as well.
• In Maison Ikkoku, Kyoko just happens to walk by when Kozue tricks Godai into a goodbye kiss—which turns out to be a turning point in the series.
• Medaka Box has an unusual spin on this: About halfway through the series, Zenkichi has a falling out with Medaka, which leads to him deciding to challenge her for the job of Student Council President (and implicitly, the role of the story's main character; the series is extremely Meta). His ally Aijimu offers to give Zenkichi a superpower since even a Badass Normal like him couldn't realistically challenge Medaka, who is The Ace in almost every way. Zenkichi chooses the power to completely and utterly negate Contrived Coincidences: no Big Damn Heroes, no Million-to-One Chances, no form of narrative Hand Wave at all — even if it would be to his benefit. He explains that he wants to take superpowers off the table completely and make it a contest of skill; while Aijimu goes through with it, she remarks that it's the kind of power that would make any writer recoil in horror.
• In Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid, Tohru just so happens to be rescued by (and fall in love with) Kobayashi, whose manager is a close friend of Tohru's father. Then Tohru's rival Elma gets a job at that very same company when she's stranded on Earth, and is assigned to the same department as Kobayashi (after having chosen a job at random).
• Mobile Suit Gundam:
  • The kid who finds a prototype mobile suit turns out to be a powerful psychic. In six completely different wars.
  • And in all but one of those cases, one or both of the kid's parents were involved in the creation of said prototype mobile suit.
  • In After War Gundam X, the trigger Garrod steals from a salvager's ship just so happens to work in the Gundam he randomly finds in a garage in the middle of nowhere. He at least has the comical sense to lampshade the seemingly divine intervention: "Tifa, I believe in God!"
  • In ∀ Gundam, the titular machine comes to life and the main character Loran just happens to be right next to the thing. He is the only character that can both: A) understand the technology, and B) not use it to completely turn the tide of the war in favor of either side.
    • In addition, the queen of the moon Dianna just so happens to look nearly exactly the same as the earth girl Kihel for no given explanation. This allows the two to switch places at various points in the show.
• In Monster, Johan Liebert is able to find another family named Liebert, who lost a son named Johan, who would be the same age that he is, allowing him to slip right into the community. This is after meeting a family named Liebert as a child who named him Johan. Fortunately, it's a fairly common name in Real Life.
• Monster Musume: Subverted. When the main characters are trying to root out a vampire at a monster convention, there's a huge display of vampires' classic weaknesses that they can use to test on the person they think is a vampire. At first it seems to serve no purpose other than to comically conveniently further the plot, but then some other monster girls explain that it's there so that the countless other blood-sucking monster breeds (who aren't nearly as dangerous as vampires) can easily demonstrate to the people they meet at the con that, despite sucking blood, they aren't vampires.
• Izuku's fight with Gentle in My Hero Academia only happens because of three coincidences, each of which is fairly plausible by itself, but are rather unlikely in conjunction. First, Momo, the richest kid in class, receives a care package from home that includes a very rare and expensive blend of tea. Second, Izuku accidentally clicks on a link to one of Gentle's previous webstreamed crimes, in which he explains that he always has tea before a job, and the quality of the tea is a function of how big a job he expects it to be. Third, he crosses Gentle's path purely by accident while they are both out shopping- Izuku ends up having to do a last-minute errand for the culture festival, since they need to replace a rope and can't make Momo use her Quirk to make another. Because Izuku had recently watched one of his videos, he recognized Gentle's voice. Because Gentle mentioned that he was buying tea, Izuku knew he was about to commit a crime. And since the tea he bought was the same super-rare and expensive blend that Momo had just gotten, he knew that the job Gentle had planned would be very high profile. From there Izuku deduced what the job was and set out to stop him.
• From Naruto we have two 'coincidences' that deal with Itachi during the war. The first is bumping into Naruto by chance, meaning that Itachi's crow, which was meant to hypnotize Sasuke, gets used on Itachi himself instead, giving him free will despite being a resurrected zombie. He also bumps into Sasuke by chance, leading to them fighting Kabuto together, a fight that they needed each other's help to survive .
• Negima! Magister Negi Magi is filled with numerous contrived coincidences. Among some samples:
  • The first student to find out about Negi's secret, Asuna, is not only a magic world princess who had her memories of her past wiped out, but it appears that she is also a creation of Negi's ancestor.
  • Nodoka, after receiving her Pactio card, just happens to be walking by when she overhears Chamo and Asuna discuss how the card can be used to summon magical items. This starts a series of events (and other coincidences) that results in Nodoka not only discovering her Pactio ability of Mind Reading, but also discovering that Negi is actually a mage. Interestingly enough, this isn't the only time Nodoka was walking by when Negi, Asuna, and Chamo are discussing important stuff, as this also happens first when Negi tells Asuna about his past, and later when Negi invites Asuna to go with him to the Magic World during summer break.
  • Taken even further when you consider the sheer improbability of Negi's class being assembled. Asuna, magical world princess Konoka, daughter of his father's fighting companion Evangeline, sealed there by his father Mana, half-demonfolk mercenary, Ku Fei; apparently the most talented martial artist on campus, Chao, his descendent Kaede; exceedingly talented ninja, and Zazie demonfolk princess. It's possible the headmaster just meddled, but then it's still a case of Improbable Age that everyone is in the same grade.
  • It's not that contrived for all of this to happen. Considering that the school itself is quite populated by mages, several of whom are related to Negi's father's group, it isn't THAT big of a stretch so much interesting people would gather there. After all, Asuna being placed into the care of a ton of mages makes sense since she's a princess in hiding, albeit unknowingly so to herself at least, and there probably would be several of those tied to the magical world staying in a place filled with mages, such as Mana and Zazie. And Chao needed to be in Mahora itself since she needed to use the World Tree for her spell, so she would be waiting around in the school for the right time. The biggest contrivance is really just that all these people were stuffed into a single classroom.
• One Piece:
  • The Straw Hats seem to be particularly lucky to show up at Fishman Island at the exact same day that Hody stages his coup d'état after years of planning, allowing them to prevent the whole island from falling to his elite soldiers and 100,000 strong slave army.
  • Even better is right before that, the Straw Hats arrive on the Sabaody Archipelago, after a two year training hiatus, at the same time a group of phoney imposters are there recruiting other pirate crews. Several of them also independently run into the fake Straw Hats purely by chance, who variously get the crap kicked out of them by the real deal (with the fakes not realizing they've been antagonizing the ones they're copying).
  • This happens to the Straw Hats a lot. Luffy arrives at Shell Town to save Zoro and the villagers from Captain Morgan, they end up in Orange Town to save Nami from Buggy's thugs, arrives at Usopp's village the day Captain Kuro's plans come to fruition, stops at the Baratie when Don Krieg floats by...it seems like most of the time they get into trouble just from being at the wrong place at the wrong time. It doesn't help that Luffy's an active thrill-seeker who enjoys throwing himself into danger. This is shown when a new Log Pose shows them the difference between the safest and most dangerous route with the rest of the crew being absolutely terrified if he found that out, which of course he does and chooses the dangerous one.
  • In Robin's backstory, Jaguar D. Saul, a giant, helps Robin's mother Olvia escape from the Marines, but his ship is wrecked. He washes up on the island of Ohara, Olvia's homeland, and the first person he meets on that island is Olvia's daughter Robin.
  • In order to stop a drunken Kaido from razing Kuri and its precious labor force, Hawkins makes up a lie on the spot that Luffy and Law, whom Kaido is looking for, are hiding in the ruins of Oden Castle; Kaido promptly disintegrates the mountain the castle ruins are standing on, neither of them having any way to confirm if anyone was actually there. What neither Hawkins or Kaido knew is that, not only are Luffy and Law not at the castle ruins, several of their allies are hiding there at that exact moment. In fact, Luffy and Law had left the castle ruins the moment Kaido showed himself in order to distract him and keep their allies in relative anonymity, which needless to say didn't go according to plan, but Hawkins had no way to know they were actually there. Lucky for everyone Shinobu is able to use her Devil Fruit ability just in time to bury everyone before Kaido can incinerate them.
  • In the Wano arc, Jimbei, who'd stayed behind to hold off Big Mom, arrives on Wano the exact same time the Straw Hats and their allies are preparing to attack Kaido, and is thus able to finally fulfill his promise of joining the Straw Hats. To make matters worse, Big Mom somehow managed to get to Wano days ahead of Jimbei.
• The Patlabor episode "Black Trinary" has a serial bomber evading police pursuit and laying low in a public bathhouse on the same night that the SVU's bathing facilities break down and they have to trudge to a public bathhouse if they want to wash up — the same bathhouse that the bomber is hiding in.
• In Popcorn Avatar, all of the Devas and Asuras introduced so far have all been Japanese, and conveniently found in or close to the city Kurando and Lisa live in. This fact is even lampshaded in a later chapter.
• In Pokémon Journeys: The Series, while visiting Korrina at her gym, Ash is given a Mega Glove but needs to find a Lucarionite to Mega Evolve his Lucario. It just so happens that his sudden visit to Shalour City coincided with a large island that resurfaced from the sea close by and happens to contain a lot of Pokemon capable of Mega Evolving with a Lucarionite smack-dab in the center of the chaotic setting. Somehow this island never did appear to Korrina.
• Three of the five members of Princess Principal's spy team each acted on a decision the literal day rebellion broke out in the kingdom, affecting their lives forever. Ange and Princess Charlotte pulled a Prince and Pauper switch then got separated in the chaos of the revolution, rendering them unable to switch back and unable to reunite until ten years later. Dorothy ran away from her abusive father and couldn't go back after The Great Wall went up.
• Ranma ½: Carelessly thrown/dumped water (often with a Lampshade Hanging of "of course nobody will be there"). Koi pond. Thunder Equals Downpour. Convenient trajectories from propulsive attacks. Oh yeah, did we mention his curse is triggered by cold water?
• Recovery of an MMO Junkie runs on these pretty heavily.
  • In Episode 1, Moriko Morioka gets into the MMORPG Fruits de Mer, and the first person she meets is an adorable White Mage named Lily. In Episode 2, she and Lily stay up playing all night, which results in Moriko falling asleep at her computer and catching a cold; when she goes to the pharmacy to get some medicine, she runs into a young man late for work — who, of course, is Lily's player Yuta Sakurai. When Moriko starts telling her guildmates about Sakurai (flipping the genders to hide her real identity) and asking for advice, Sakurai realizes that it's her because of how incredibly unlikely it would be that these exact same events would be happening to two completely different sets of people.
    • Adding another layer to it, it turns out that Moriko and Sakurai were best friends and confidants in the now-shuttered MMORPG NanterSG (to the point where, when she reflects on the relationship, Moriko realizes that she probably loved "Harth"). Sakurai gets suspicious when she makes an alt character that looks like an aged-up version of her Nanter character Yuki; he does admit to himself that this is far more likely to be a coincidence, but calls her up and asks anyway. After she confirms that it was her, they both discuss how crazy it is that they found each other completely at random.
  • Just to cap it all off, the college student who works part-time at the convenience store both Moriko and Sakurai frequent is the player behind their guild master, Kanbe. He and Moriko actually find out each others' identities when they strike up a friendly conversation about FdM (he had seen her purchasing prepaid cards for the game) and he suggests meeting up for a quest, sharing his server and character name.
• Rent-A-Girlfriend is about a young man named Kazuya hiring the services of Chizuru, a rental girlfriend. Chizuru wants to keep her job secret from others, especially her family, so she works under an assumed last name and tries to avoid seeing clients in her true identity, hence why she usually does business with clients from out of town. Unfortunately for her, Kazuya not only goes to the same college as her, but also lives in the apartment next door. Both of their grandmothers are friends who stayed in the same hospital, and while Kazuya's grandmother has other friends, Chizuru's grandmother is the only one who sees them together. Kazuya and Chizuru also end up going to the same beach at the same time, even though they have different groups of friends.
  • Later in the manga, Kazuya and Chizuru are encountering problems with the crowdfunding campaign for the movie they want to make. It just so happens that their new neighbour Mini is a cosplayer and streamer with considerable knowledge about crowdfunding, and she's able to give them the advice they need to help with their campaign.
• In The Rose of Versailles, Rosalie sees her foster mother get run over by a carriage being driven by the noblewoman who is none other than her birth mother. Continuing the stretch of crazy coincidences, Rosalie meets Oscar when attempting to prostitute herself, then meets Oscar again later when she mistakes Oscar's home for Versailles. Rosalie just can't avoid the contrived coincidence...
• Sailor Moon R:
  • The second episode reunites the Sailor Senshi for another season of adventure. How does it do this? The bad guys stage a fake casting call for a TV show and out of untold millions of girls, they just happen to completely randomly stumble upon four of the five Senshi and the best friend (and favored Victim of the Week) of the fifth. Let it be noted that it wasn't even as though the bad guys chose these people based on some vague explanation of them having a ton of energy or whatever. It was the original TV staff that just happened to choose them.
  • Kaolinite (from Sailor Moon S) explains that the senshi's powers orchestrate events so that senshi are always close to a place of a future attack. This makes sense given that just five senshi (nine for outerplanetary attacks) have to protect a planet.
  • In general, villains who discover the true identities of the Sailor Guardians is usually conveniently killed off very quickly.
  • Practically every magic talisman or crystal or soul gem the Big Bad is looking for conveniently happens to be located in the same area that the Sailor Guardians are residing in. To be fair, most of the villains in the anime happen to target something that is directly related to the Sailor Guardians. The Dark Kingdom wants the Silver Crystal which Usagi has. The Black Moon wants Chibiusa who had fled to 20th century Tokyo to find Sailor Moon. Not to mention they want to destroy 20th century Tokyo, so 30th century Tokyo would no longer exist. The Witches 5 are looking for the Talismans and Holy Grail, which Uranus, Neptune and Pluto had, the former two having been born in Tokyo. The Dead Moon circus are looking for Pegasus and the Golden Crystal, as he is hiding in Chibusa's dream. Galaxia wants particular star seeds that only Sailor Guardians possess.
• Sgt. Frog uses it for humor in episode 37, pointing out the four different coincidences (including one that seems to have nothing to do with anything) that just so happen to resolve the plot in exactly the right way.
  Narrator: Eh? Why did this happen? Well... we can't help it now that it's done with.
• This is how Slow Loop started. After a meeting at the breakwater and becoming friends, it turns out that Koharu's father and Hiyori's mother end up getting married, resulting in Koharu and Hiyori becoming step-siblings.
• Space Battleship Yamato:
  • A couple of characters are on Titan being chased by an alien mook. One of the characters comes across a blaster lying on the ground and shoots the mook with it. After doing so, he notices that the blaster belongs to his brother, who was thought to have been KIA in the area (his brother's abandoned ship is also close by). It would have been quite a stroke of luck for anybody to stumble upon these items after landing on a random area of the planet, much less the missing pilot's own brother...
  • The fact that the main (human) heroine of the series is a dead lookalike for (the alien queen) Starsha and her sister is also an unexplained and apparently random coincidence.
• Occasionally happens in Spy X Family:
  • The reason why Twilight needs to find a woman to be a fake wife and not just have a fellow agent pose as one? WISE is short staffed and anyone who would match is busy. Downplayed in that being short staffed is a direct consequence of the escalating tensions between the countries (and thus increased efforts to capture spies) that led to Twilight getting the mission in the first place.
  • Of all the people in the country he could have gotten for his fake family, he manages to unknowingly select both an ESPer (who happens to be a fan of spy cartoons no less) and a highly skilled assassin (who just so happened to also need a fake partner). Complicating things further is that his brother in-law is a member of the SSS who made it his personal mission to arrest Twilight, although the latter realises who Yuri is.
  • A college isolationist group attempting to use bomb dogs for an assassination attempt happen to be based right by the animal shelter Yor and Anya were at looking for a dog to adopt... unaware that they have a dog which appears to see visions of the future.
  • In order to protect his fake family's image after the neighbors suspect he's been cheating on Yor, Loid announces a family outing and picks the aquarium based on Anya's drawing. The day of the trip however has him summoned to pick up another mission, which happens to take place at said aquarium.
  • Yor gets a protection job on a luxury cruise. At the same time Anya is able to win two tickets to the same cruise ship so they are all able to go.
  • Anya requests Yor buy some cake while out shopping. While at the Department store, Yor saves a woman from falling down a flight of stairs and gets invited to her community gathering as a show of thanks. Said woman turns out to be Melinda Desmond, the wife of Donovan Desmond, Twilight's very target.
• In Summer Wars, it's a pretty big coincidence that Love Machine's creator just so happens to be related to OZ's most powerful player, right when they're in the same house for a family reunion. And another relative has a convenient super-computer to help fight it. Oh, and the one house guest who's not actually related to anybody? He's the guy Love Machine is framing for its crimes.
• In Sword Art Online, this appears to happen twice...
  • First off, in the Fairy Dance Arc. Amongst the many people playing ALfheim Online, Kirito happens to Crash-Into Hello Leafa who is actually Suguha Kirigaya, his cousin/adoptive sister, though neither of them realized this at the time. What's more, Kirito's ALO character is a newly-created Spriggan, while Leafa is part of the rival Sylph race, meaning Kirito starts outside of his own race's territory. As it turns out, due to the fact that Kirito and Leafa were logged in from the same place, the server thought they were the same person, and moved Kirito to Leafa. So it wasn't a coincidence.
  • The second case comes from the Phantom Bullet arc. Out of all of the possible handguns Death Gun could have wielded, he just so happened to be using the exact model responsible for Sinon's trauma. Once again, this isn't a coincidence. Kyouji, who's obsessed with Sinon specifically due to said incident, is part of the scheme, and thus chose that particular weapon for Death Gun.
• In Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, if the Anti-Spiral hadn't used Nia out of everyone to be their messenger, Earth would have been doomed, since it was due to her and Simon's love that the heroes were able to find the Anti-Spiral's homeworld. Also, what were the chances that Simon, the person with the most Spiral energy potential, find the Core Drill and Lagann underground while digging for treasure?
• Tiger & Bunny:
  • The two main characters happen to have the same exact superpower, down to the name, strength multiplier, and time limit. There is no in-universe reason for this at all, and nobody thinks it's anything noteworthy. Would have been averted in the original draft, where Barnaby had teleportation powers instead.
  • Also in episode 12 when Jake is randomly selecting which hero to fight against, he selects Kotetsu and then remarks he won't last a second before choosing another card. He ended up drawing Barnaby's card. He lampshades this by pointing out how he picked them together and saying "they really are a team".
  • Part of Rule of Funny, there are many, many coincidences that prevent Kotetsu from drinking the drugged coffee in episode 20.
• Twin Princess of Wonder Planet: This seems to be how the Prominence works in the early part of the first season. Whenever Fine and Rein use it to solve problems, the events just seem completely improbable to make any sort of sense.
• In the very first episode of Witch Hunter Robin, the eponymous character shows up at a warehouse where the squad is fighting a witch and saves the day, with no explanation for why she happened to go there. No one ever comments on it.
• Your Name:
  • The owner of the ramen shop Taki and his friends stop at is a former Itomori resident who later helps Taki reach the remains of Itomori. The manga adds that he avoided the Tiamat fragment strike only because traffic just happened to be bad the night of the event.
  • As Mitsuha waits to board a train to go back to Itomori after a day of fruitless searching for Taki in Tokyo, a train Taki was taking just happens to show up at the station she was at. This gives her the chance to pass him her ribbon, which becomes important chronologically later.
  • Taki and Mitsuha just happening to be in trains that pass each other at that exact moment when it never happened anytime earlier on their morning commutes despite the years since their last contact is very convenient.
• In Yu-Gi-Oh!: Capsule Monsters, Yami lampshades this as he wonders how the group could have won a vacation to the place Grandpa was last seen, have their plane crash, and run into the one man who knows where he is. He takes it as a sign that something isn't right.
• Done especially so in the Zatch Bell!. A poor innocent girl in the story gets brainwashed into partnering with an evil demon and attacks her very best friend. But what's this? It turns out the attack was blocked by another demon who happens to be both said friend's partner and that demon's worst enemy. Really, out of 6 billion human beings on earth for the scattered 100 demons to choose from, these two pick two human friends that grew up together? Well, that's just dandy. It's also rather dandy that 50% of the demons fought are at one point found in Japan, and everyone in the cast all speaks English/Japanese. And why doesn't the Brainwashing demon just use his physic powers to raise an army to avoid fighting the latter demon? Maybe because it, in turn, will be the only reason he's able to find and fight him in the first place by attracting his partner's attention.
• In Your True Color, the protagonist gets lost and calls up her smartphone's map app. At that moment, she happens to see her favorite idol on the phone, and said idol spots her, assuming that she used the phone to take a photo of her.

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