Death By Irony / Anime & Manga

Death by Irony in Anime & Manga.

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• In the first season finale of Attack on Titan, the priest of the Wall Church that has been harassing the heroes the whole season is preaching to his congregation that the Walls will protect them from the Titans, when the Female Titan crashes down through the temple roof and crushes all of them but the preacher. And it gets averted a few moments later. The wall gets damaged and it gets revealed that within the wall, there are titans. And not just the ordinary ones, we're talking about colossal ones here. Luckily, these are inactive and actually the reason why the wall could be built in the first place.
• Yhwach of Bleach has his penchant for depowering Quincies he felt were "impure", which led to the deaths of Uryu and Ichigo's mothers as a direct result, come back to bite him hard during the Final Battle when Uryu hits him with an arrow made of Still Silver, a substance that was created when Kanae Katagiri was depowered, which acts to temporarily strip him of his godlike abilities. Ichigo, whose own mother Masaki was killed by Grand Fisher as a result of Yhwach depowering her as she was confronting the Hollow in question, uses this window of opportunity to finish Yhwach off.
• Chainsaw Man has a particularly horrific example in the case of Aki, who is mind-controlled and fused with the Gun Devil, the monster he'd spent most of his life hunting down, and sent to attack Denji, his best friend who he'd previously requested to be excluded from the Gun Devil mission in fear for his safety. His thirst for revenge stemmed from the Gun Devil killing his family, but he himself massacres a bunch of civilians under the delusion of having a snowball fight before Denji puts him down for good.
• Averted in Digimon Fusion. Blastmon gets blasted by Shoutmon X5B, except while his body is destroyed, he survives as a head.
  • Then played straight when Blastmon is destroyed in an explosion alongside Laylamon.
• In Dragon Ball Z:
  • Goku's first death. He's teamed up with Piccolo Jr., the final Big Bad of the original series, to rescue his son from his long-lost brother Raditz. In the final stretch of the battle, Goku has Raditz in a full nelson and pulls a Heroic Sacrifice by allowing Piccolo to unleash his new attack, the Special Beam Cannon on both of them. Here, Goku is willingly letting himself be hit by an attack that Piccolo developed specifically to kill him, and technically winning the battle by doing so. The real irony is in how the attack causes Goku and Raditz to be Impaled with Extreme Prejudice so that Goku's son can be rescued, while the person doing the attack is the son of someone who died being Impaled with Extreme Prejudice by Goku himself, and designed the attack to invoke this irony for his revenge, but technically used it to help Goku's own son. It's complicated.
  • In The Ocean Group dub, Vegeta invokes this when he uses the Power Ball technique to make an artificial moon and transform into the Oozaru, saying it is the ultimate irony that Goku will die to a technique invented by his own father. Of course, this wasn't the case in the original, where Goku's father Bardock did not invent that technique.
  • In the regular timeline, Krillin marries Android 18. In the alternate timeline where Goku dies of a heart virus, he is killed by Android 17, Android 18's brother, in assistance with Android 18.
  • Cell loses his Beam-O-War with Gohan because he was distracted by an attack from Vegeta, the same person who helped him achieve his Perfect Form.
  • Cell and Trunks killed each other twice. First, Cell killed Trunks to steal his time machine. Then Future Trunks (with Krillin) killed the present version of Cell as a fetus. Eventually, Cell kills Future Trunks. Finally, Future Trunks goes back to his timeline and kills Cell.
• Escaflowne: The Movie: Folken spends the entire film as a Death Seeker. When he finally gets his wish in the climax, however, he dies not by taking Gaea down with him as he'd planned. Instead, he ends up going out the same way he killed his people during his Start of Darkness: Betrayed and murdered by a member of his own Clan.
• In Fullmetal Alchemist, each of the Homunculi dies in a manner thematically appropriate to the associated Deadly Sin:
  • Lust is brutally incinerated by a man “well known as a serial dater” whose probable love interest she was about to kill.
    • Also her extreme bloodlust and desire to see Roy suffer prevented her from finishing Roy off when she could have, resulting in Roy coming back and burning her to death.
  • Greed Mk.I is boiled down for his most valuable part. However, he came back later.
    • Greed Mk.II, who always craves more and is never satisfied, performs a Heroic Sacrifice, dying content that his friends are everything he could have ever wanted.
  • Envy commits suicide out of self-loathing because he envies his enemies. He does this by destroying his Philosopher's Stone, the one thing he has that humans don't.
    • Even more, someone who prides himself on being a Master Manipulator, his suicide was the result of Ed sympathizing with him.
  • Gluttony is eaten by another homunculus.
  • Sloth is worn out by a long fight where he finally made his own decisions and fought hard due to his own opinions. His opponents are various people who are refusing to listen to their own sloth (Desire to retire to domestic life, ease of following orders, etc.) in order to stop him.
  • Wrath dies at peace with himself and with no regrets, at the hands of someone who became a rage-driven Serial Killer because of Wrath's actions on top of it. On another, subtler level, Wrath declares several times that there is no God, but the solar eclipse, the symbol of God in alchemy, plays an instrumental role in his defeat.
  • Pride was stripped of most of his powers and lost to Ed after badly underestimating both him and what's left of Kimblee's soul. (Plenty of other irony relating to his previous actions, too.)
    • Pride tries to possess Edward's body. What does Ed do? Use a fraction of his soul to cut off the other souls in Pride's body. He essentially defeated Pride by possessing him.
    • Pride had eaten Kimblee because he was no longer useful. Father abandoned Pride to die because he was no longer useful.
    • Also, eating Kimblee came back to bite Pride too.
    • Pride's last words were him begging for his life.
    • In the final chapter, it is shown that Pride has lost his memories of being a homunculus, and is now being raised as a human child; ironic because of his hatred and scorn for humanity and the great pride he took in being a homunculus.
  • Barry the Chopper, a bodiless soul bound to armor by a blood-seal, tracks down and supposedly kills his original body (now a mindless creature). Shortly after that Lust destroys the armor, leaving the piece of armor with the seal on it as the only part of him still alive. His real body then crawls over, picks the piece up, and scratches the seal off (which destroys his soul).
  • The gold-toothed doctor, who had apparently participated in all kinds of hideous alchemical human experimentation and had just gone to some pretty despicable lengths to force Roy to open the Gate, gets transmuted into a hideous blob of Body Horror by Pride, in the process of forcing Roy to open the Gate.
  • The 2003 anime has a few examples:
    • Dante is eaten by Gluttony as a direct result of her turning him into a mindless beast.
    • Envy is sacrificed to open the gate by Hohenheim forcing him to kill him - something Envy has always wanted to do.
• In Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, a group of socialists assassinate millionaires with a custom shrapnel gun loaded with rolls of coins.
• Hell Girl has banishment scenes that invoke this in most episodes as a prelude to the targets being boated off to Hell.
• Higurashi: When They Cry: The "Eye Opening Arc" ends with local Yandere Shion Sonozaki falling from her apartment building to her death. The irony? She had spent the majority of the arc masquerading as her twin sister Mion so she could frame her for her infamous murder rampage, and she had just finished her grand plan by sneaking out and stabbing Keiichi. While she scales her apartment building to sneak back in, the fall is caused by the holster she is wearing (which is part of her disguise) snagging on the wall. Note this does not happen in "Cotton Drifting", or in the original Visual Novel or Manga adaptation of "Eye Opening".
• In Hunter × Hunter, the death of Meruem, the king of the Chimera Ants, comes at the hands of a Suicide Attack performed by Netero, who blows himself up (killing the king via poisoning rather than the explosion itself). In real life, this is a tactic employed by certain types of ants.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
  • Battle Tendency:
    • Invoked by Kars after he becomes the Ultimate Being and unlocks the ability to use Hamon, and attempts to kill Joseph with it.
      Kars: [charging up Hamon] This way of breathing... To send a Hamon user like you into the black pit of death... Hamon truly is a poetic vehicle!
    • And then the trope gets turned around on him several times over. The Red Stone of Aja, the item that made it possible for him to become the Ultimate Being in the first place, is used to block his attack, triggering a volcanic eruption that sends him flying outside the atmosphere. And when he tries to fly away, he gets delayed by Joseph's severed hand, which he himself severed, long enough for volcanic debris to hit him and ensure he leaves the Earth. And finally, the cold vacuum of space freezes him from inside out and turns him into stone, preventing him from returning, and because of the immortality granted by his status as the Ultimate Being he is left forever drifting through space, alone and unable to move.
  • Stardust Crusaders:
    • Devo the Cursed brags about how he's going to bite Polnareff's balls off during his fight with him. Disgusted with how vulgar he is, Polnareff finishes him off in a manner that leaves him a completely mutilated, unrecognizable mess... except for his crotch.
    • Anubis, a sentient Stand taking the form of a sword, is named after the Egyptian God of embalming. After it's defeated, it's thrown into a river and left to rust away.
    • Before entering DIO's mansion, Avdol tell Polnareff and Iggy that the mission to defeat DIO comes first, and that if any of them are in danger, they should focus on protecting themselves first. It's his decision to protect Polnareff and Iggy first that allows Vanilla Ice to kill him.
    • How is DIO finally defeated? By having his head (the one thing that survived the events of Phantom Blood) violently explode.
  • Diamond is Unbreakable:
    • Yoshihiro Kira spends the entire Part trying to protect his Serial Killer of a son, Yoshikage Kira. He's defeated when Josuke tricks Yoshikage into blowing Yoshihiro up with one of his bombs.
    • Yoshikage Kira claims that luck is always on his side. During the final battle, he is run over and killed by an ambulance that, by chance, was called to help him. For extra layers of irony, the man who wanted to stay unknown and live a quiet life ended up dying in a public accident, and (as shown in the spin-off manga, Dead Man's Questions) unable to rest in peace.
  • Golden Wind:
    • As a part of the Edible Theme Naming of the Part, Formaggio is named for the Italian word for "cheese". His death at the hands of Narancia leaves him full of holes.
    • Similar to Formaggio, Pesci is named for the Italian word for "fish". When he's finished off by Bruno, his remains are thrown into a lake, leaving him to "sleep with the fishes".
    • Melone tends to engage in Lecherous Licking, and he dies when his tongue in bitten by a snake.
    • During a flashback, Risotto Nero tells the rest of La Squadra to not let their emotions get the best of them, saying that it could lead to their deaths. Right when it seems like Risotto's victory over Doppio is guaranteed, he lets his stoic façade slip, causing him to forget Team Bucciarati's presence and leading to his death at the hand of Narancia's Stand, Aerosmith.
    • While Diavolo's actual fate is not death, it should be mentioned that a man who spent his entire life paranoid over the idea that everything is out to get him is sentenced to a fate where everything actually is out to get him. On top of that, one of his deaths is him being stabbed by a homeless druggie, who most likely got addicted on the same drugs Diavolo's gang had been selling.
  • Stone Ocean: Jotaro Kujo spends most of the series as The Dreaded, being feared by many a Stand User for his powerful time-based Stand ability. So how does he finally meet his end? He's killed by Enrico Pucci, Only Friend of DIO, the person that pressured Jotaro into unlocking that ability in the first place, the same ability that DIO's stand had no less. And on top of that, Pucci kills him via an even stronger time-based Stand.
  • Steel Ball Run: Funny Valentine, upon getting hit with the effects of Johnny's Tusk Act 4's infinite spin force him to return to the ground, and his attempts to "resurrect" himself transfer said effect to D4C's newest user. Each universe's Valentine is surrounded by earth, the ideal conditions to trigger D4C, and him transferring the effects of the infinite spin parallels how he used Ticket to Ride earlier to transfer misfortune to others.
  • Prior to the events of JoJolion, when Jobin Higashikata was a child, he was attacked by a bully who tried to light Jobin on fire. Jobin then awakened his Stand, Speed King, and nearly killed the bully by heating up his face.
• The page quote from Kill la Kill is between Nui Harime and Professor Isshin Matoi. Nui had come to get Prof. Matoi's prized research and was introduced to the Rending Shears, a giant pair of scissors able to cut life fibers. After a short brawl, Nui stabs the old professor with the very scissors he touted as the product of his life's work. However, this is a subversion, as the scissors are actually not Prof. Matoi's greatest work. He claimed they were so Nui would set her sights on them, thus successfully hiding the Kamui Senketsu, the true product of his life's work. Also, he'd managed to put out her eye before she finished the job, rather souring her boast.
• One Piece:
  • Ace's signature move (and the source of his epithet) was a flaming punch, and he was killed by a punch made of magma. He was also rescued from being executed, only to sacrifice himself minutes later to protect the person that rescued him.
  • All Whitebeard wanted was a family, and one of his "sons" kills him. Admittedly he had already basically disowned the guy, but the point still stands.
  • Fisher Tiger hated humans for enslaving him and treating Mermen badly in general. Despite this, he fought to free all slaves, fishmen and human alike, and tried to avert the Vicious Cycle by not killing his pursuers. Then he was seriously injured in an ambush and his blood-type was unique among fishmen—none of his crew had the right type of blood to save him. The only blood that could save him was from the very humans Fisher Tiger despised. Which he refused because—to his own shame—he could not let go of his hatred.
  • Saint Saturn tries to do this to Bonney by having the Pacifistas that look exactly like her father kill her. Thankfully, their maker Dr. Vegapunk expected that and put in a countermeasure: those exact Pacifistas obey her above all others.
• Pokémon: The Series:
  • In Pokémon Adventures, the Big Bad of the Gold/Silver/Crystal arc AKA Pryce tries to control time itself. He ends up being forever trapped in the time stream, albeit with no regrets, as he accomplished his goal of reuniting his baby Lapras with its lost parents. Celebi eventually lets him out so he can help prevent an even worse disaster in HeartGold/SoulSilver.
  • In Pokémon the Series: Diamond and Pearl, Big Bad Cyrus gets close to undoing the world and creating his own, Palkia and Dialga open a dimension to start but cease when the heroes break Cyrus' mind control. Cyrus refuses to believe his plans have failed and jumps into the pocket dimension just as it closes, and while it's possible he's creating his own universe separate from the main one, it's far more likely the dimensional gate destroyed him when it shut.
• The Sailor Moon anime loves this, but the example that doesn't have a subcategory is Rubeus. He gave Koan/Katzi a bomb to kill herself with after giving her a Breaking Speech. Four episodes later, Esmeraude gives him a Breaking Speech before leaving him to his death... by an explosion.
• Saint Seiya: Corvus Jamian dies by falling off a cliff. The manga inserts describing the cloths reveal that his cloth has wings (and Seiya proved that it's possible to fly with them, once he figured how to manifest them).
• In Talentless Nana, Kiraru Habu is a "Talented" individual with the power to secrete lethal poisons from her body. She ends up poisoned to death while she's hunting for poisonous animals to eat and refill her body's stores.
• Adiane from Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann was killed during her attempt to avenge Thymilph's death by cannon fire from his personal warship (which had been stolen by the heroes after his death).
• Yu-Gi-Oh!:
  • This happens many times in Yu-Gi-Oh!. The biggest example is "The Seal of Orichacos" field spell. When it is played, the loser of the duel will lose their soul. In almost every duel, the one who played the card loses the duel.
  • In the manga of Duelist Kingdom, Panik threatens to kill Yugi with a noose around his neck if he lost while seeking safety from the darkness through his duel with Yugi. He ends up being hanged by a noose, surrounded by nothing but darkness when Yami uses a Penalty Game on him.
  • In the filler arc Virtual World, this is how the Big Five lose their duels.
    • Gansley frequently spends his duel against Yugi mocking Kuriboh. He would lose due to Kuriboh's Deck Master ability.
    • Crump declares that Dark Magician Girl is useless without the Dark Magician. Tea manages to summon Dark Magician and both magicians tag-team together to end the duel.
    • Johnson cheats by rigging Joey's luck-based cards to always fail. When Noah calls him out on this and forces him to play fair, Joey manages to win the duel by forcing him into a 50/50 gamble which he wins with a simple bluff.
    • Nesbitt picks on Serenity for majority of the duel, because she is inexperienced, but it was her monster that ends up defeating him. Nesbitt also defeated Tristan by destroying his deck master. Serenity defeats him the same way.
    • Lector considers himself superior than Kaiba and loses when Kaiba summons a monster with higher power than Lector's.
    • In their combined duel against Yugi and Joey, they allowed Joey to join thinking Joey was weaker and would hold back Yugi. It was Joey's cards that powered up the Dark Magician to win the duel.

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