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Despair Event Horizon / Anime & Manga

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  • Animal X: Yuuji crosses the Despair Event Horizon when he finds out what happened to his first child: she was subjected to vivisection, died, and then her remains were kept on ice in a research facility. After that, Yuuji is quietly broken and makes remarks that show that he's reached a point where he doesn't much care if he lives or dies.
  • Attack on Titan:
    • Mikasa suffers one when she thinks Eren died.
    • Reiner appears to have gone over it after revealing his true identity. He clings to the idea of completing his mission in order to function but is resigned to dying as a mass murderer.
      • It only gets worse after the timeskip; he attempts to kill himself after a prolonged Trauma Conga Line that includes his broken family life, his guilt over the mission, and Bertolt's death. His desire to look after the young warrior candidates is the only thing stopping him from pulling the trigger.
    • Bertolt seems to have clearly crossed it by the time he faces the Survey Corps during the Return to Shiganshina arc. He realizes that the world is cruel and there is no hope or happiness left for any of them in such circumstances, so he might as well end the war right there as quick and painlessly as possible.
  • Griffith of Berserk, broken in body and mind after a year's worth of torture, loses all hope of becoming captain of the Band of the Hawks again when it's discovered that he will never recover from his injuries. Then, just after he resigns himself to living a peaceful life with Casca, he discovers that she's moved on and is now in a relationship with Guts. Griffith loses it completely. This drives him to activate his Crimson Behelit, summon the Godhand, and cross the Moral Event Horizon.
    • Hitting one's emotional nadir this way is all but a requirement for mortal bearers of Behelits in general. It ensures that one is in the proper frame of mind to accept the offer of the Godhand to make the Sacrifice (and thus cross the bearer's personal Moral Event Horizon) to become a demon. And provided the Behelit is somewhere close, a member of the Godhand can also use it to manifest in the physical world, such as when Slan manifests in front of Guts using a pile of troll intestines.
    • Guts comes perhaps the closest that any mortal can get to the Despair Event Horizon at the end of the Eclipse, what with losing everyone in the Band of the Hawk except Casca to the demons unleashed by Griffith's acceptance of the call to Sacrifice, and then being horribly mind raped by being Forced to Watch as Casca, the only woman he's ever loved, is raped to insanity by Griffith, who has been reborn as the fifth member of the Godhand, after a furious but utterly doomed bid to save her that cost him a hand and an eye. The only thing that keeps Guts going in the face of such despair is an undying hatred for the one responsible for it all and a desire for revenge that all but consumes him for two years and nearly destroys the man that he used to be. Well, that and his completely single-minded obsession with finding a cure for Casca's insanity, even though he's warned that it may not be for the best, and she may not even want to be cured.
      • He ultimately crosses it in Chapter 370, when Griffith abducts Casca despite his best attempts at stopping it, which sends Guts into a deep depression.
  • In Black Butler, Ciel eventually reached this point after he was captured following his parents' and his twin brother's murders.
    • In the anime, Jim Macken crossed it after not only he loses his brother Luke and his whole hometown, but is made into a Sex Slave by Lord Trancy. In his despair he summons Claude Faustus, kills his "owner" and renames himself Alois Trancy.
  • From Black Clover, Zenon Zogratis once shared his best friend Allen's dream of becoming the commander of Spade's Mage Defense Force in order to bring the Spade Kingdom to a brighter future. They formed a Friendly Rivalry, training and perfecting their respective magics with Zenon even refusing to become a devil host like his siblings. Unfortunately, it all fell down when the two of them were sent to investigate a dungeon and found a powerful devil inside who proved too much for them. Knowing that the devil would kill them and escape to wreck havoc on the Kingdom, Zenon was forced to stab the devil through Allen, killing both of them. The event convinced a now-broken Zenon that power is the only thing that matters, leading him to become a devil host and make a deal with Beelzebub.
  • Bleach:
    • Subverted when Yumichika Ayasegawa and Charlotte Cuulhorne fight. Cuulhorne's final technique takes the form of a single white rose inside a pitch-black rosebush, the idea being that someone who revels in being the most beautiful person in a crowd will be terrified of dying alone, unnoticed and unmissed. It fails because it allows Yumichika to reveal what he's really capable of when no-one is watching.
    • Nnoitra Gilga hit this at some point in the past and just kept on going, motivated only by his desire to die in battle. Nnoitra's own goal can be summed up as Blood Knight meets Death Seeker: He'll keep fighting and killing until he's either the strongest person around or he gets killed by someone stronger, and he's not really fazed by the second option. In fact, he despises those who consider him Not Worth Killing. While confiding to his Fracción Tesra, Nnoitra shares his belief that they've been beyond redemption from the very start and always will be. According to Baraggan when listing the aspects of death the Espada embody, Nnoitra is "Despair" for this reason.
      Nnoitra: Ain't no chance of salvation for us. Never has been. [...] I'm gonna be strong. Stronger than anyone. If I'm gonna fight the ultimate enemy, then there can't be anyone else stronger than me. I'll take 'em all out. No matter what it takes. I wanna be cut so that my breath is gone before my body hits the ground. That's the kind of death I wanna have.
    • Kaname Tousen's backstory reveals his Face–Heel Turn was motivated by this trope. The best friend he was in love with died at the hands of her own abusive husband (who wasn't punished) and Tousen took up her sword in the name of justice. For him, "justice" was twisted into "revenge", not just against the man who killed her, but against the whole of Soul Society for being the kind of place where killers like that aren't punished.
    • Ulquiorra's backstory in UNMASKED reveals that he hit this long ago when his clan tried to kill him for being different to them. Once he escaped, he found himself in Hueco Mundo, which was just as bad as his birthplace. Isolated and unable to hear, speak, smell, feel or even eat, he crossed the despair event horizon and made nihilism his personal philosophy.
    • Jackie Tristan is all but stated to have crossed the DEH in her backstory. She crossed it in the moment when she found her family slaughtered and she took her brother's lifeless body in her arms. She's the only Fullbringer who was telling the truth about hating her power, and this is the reason why.
    • The final arc all but confirms Ryuuken Ishida's hatred of Quincies is because he's a Stepford Snarker who crossed into this trope years ago. Twenty years ago, Ryuuken's ability to protect the future of the quincies is destroyed, resulting in an Heroic BSoD that barely avoids this trope thanks to a You Are Not Alone speech by his future wife, Kanae Katagiri. Years later, Quincy King performs a special mass murder of Quincies by creating magical silver bloodclots in their hearts. Kanae dies but Uryuu mysteriously survives; Ryuuken is forced to autopsy Kanae to collect the silver and forge a special arrow that becomes the only weapon in existence that can de-power Yhwach long enough to kill him. While Ryuuken's act ensures Yhwach's defeat, he never recovers from it and is left forever despising his Quincy heritage.
    • The backstory of Maki Ichinose, who had a Face–Heel Turn out of despair when his beloved Captain was killed by Kenpachi in his Klingon Promotion stage.
  • Blood+: Saya hits it when Diva rapes and kills Riku, developing a more bitter personality and an I Work Alone mentality; several characters in-universe remark that she's lost hope.
  • Many of the past victims and Sympathetic Murderers in Case Closed are people who, for one or another reason, have crossed the DEH and either died or became killers as an effect. The case involving the Star-Crossed Lovers Hideomi and Miyuki is a very blatant example: the first had lived in the fence after a Deadly Prank caused him to be scarred and killed Miyuki's parents, but crossed it when Miyuki fell in love with him despite his crime, which caused him to commit suicide; the second went past the DEH fence when she found Hideomi's corpse, pushing her to murder the other person involved in the Deadly Prank by using said person's own plans against him, and then to try commiting suicide so she and Hideomi could be Together in Death. (She's stopped by Conan, and is soon screaming and crying about how badly she wants to die, until Hideomi's father gently talks her out of it.)
  • A Certain Scientific Railgun has two of them:
    • First off, Saten has one as she finds out the side effect of using Level Upper: falling into a coma that no one has come out of.
    • Second is Mikoto's, which is much, much deeper. She's trying to stop the Level 6 Shift experiments, and after pushing herself to her limits and still failing, she comes to the conclusion that the only way to stop the experiments is her suicide.
  • In Chobits, We see that Freya has crossed the horizon when she begins to physically malfunction from the incredible emotional strain of being in (and being unable to tell anyone about) an unrequited love situation. In the anime, we are even shown the exact moment this happens. Depending on whether one is reading the manga or watching the anime, she is either Driven to Suicide or dies from despair, respectively.
  • Code Geass:
  • Cross Ange: Episode 22 is this for Ange. After her head maid Momoka and her Love Interest Tusk both perform a Heroic Sacrifice protecting her from Embryo, Ange slinks into a tearful state when she ends up at Tusk's home (she had been handcuffed to Tusk's vehicle, which was on auto-pilot as Tusk stayed behind to take Embryo [or at least, that particular body of Embryo] with him). Looking through his possessions, she gets even more depressed with the entries of his diary stating how alone he used to be before Ange came into his life, and she is almost Driven to Suicide. But she doesn't even have the drive to end her own life as she keeps remembering Tusk, and she just breaks down crying again. She is hardly the snippy, prickly tomboy that she once was, and is once again acting like she had when she was first dropped at Arzenal. Helpless, alone, without hope.
    • Thankfully, it's revealed near the end of the episode that Tusk and Momoka both survived, and Tusk's presence alone saves Ange from that dark place.
  • In Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, Maine crosses this once he realized he inadvertently killed Dorio while suffering from cyberpsychosis. At that point, he mercilessly kills NCPD and Trauma Team members before deciding to arrange a suicidal funeral pyre for Dorio that would kill himself and any Max Tac agents close by.
  • All over the place in Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak High School:
    • In Side:Despair, Hajime crosses it after his attempt to investigate his friend's murder gets him thrashed by the school's security guard, then given a Breaking Speech about just how worthless and replaceable a Reserve Course student like him is. Given that he's been struggling with these exact same feelings for the past few episodes, this utterly shatters him and is the deciding factor for his decision to go be transformed into Izuru.
    • Later in Side:Despair, Class-77 B crosses it in unison when they're Forced to Watch Chiaki being tortured to death.
    • Chiaki herself seems to cross it in her final scene; after the Trauma Conga Line of losing her boyfriend, being betrayed by her teacher, realizing she inadvertently lead her classmates to their doom, being horrifically tortured, and being left to bleed to death, she just breaks down in tears sobbing about how she doesn't want to die.
    • Subverted with Izuru. Junko thought she'd pushed him over it when she told him exactly how, while he might save the world, there'd be no one to save him from his burdens, and that the world would remain meaningless and boring to him unless he joined her in bringing despair. In reality, Chiaki's final words to him gave him the realization that maybe despair wasn't the only path left for him, and he left Junko's service shortly after.
    • At the end of Side:Future, Ryota hurtles past this upon realizing that the Future Foundation's head, his mentor Tengan, was corrupt all along and instigated the Killing Game. Combined with his past trauma from inadvertently helping Junko destroy the world, he completely gives up on hope for humanity and decides the best way to save the world is with mass brainwashing, which was all part of Tengan's plan from the start.
  • D.Gray-Man´s Lenalee is pushed into it when Allen is wounded to about as close to death as you can get (hole in his heart, amputated left arm/innocence, Heroic BSoD from not being able to save Suman and various other injuries), she only gets to see the effects through Timcanpy and then isn't even allowed to see the presumed corpse. She understandably nearly becomes a vegetable for a while.
    • Allen himself crosses the horizon after these events, and he is told that he will never be able to be an Exorcist again. However, it turns out that wasn't true — Bak just wanted to make sure that Allen was determined enough to go through the dangerous process of regaining his Innocence.
  • Digimon Tamers: Jeri goes over this after her partner Leomon is killed and eaten right in front of her. Her despair was so much that the D-Reaper decided it liked the taste of her sorrow and possessed her so it could continue driving her over this by emotionally and mentally torturing her. It succeeds so well that she tries to commit suicide to escape.
  • Dragon Ball:
    • King Piccolo plunges the world into utter despair not once, but twice after he took over the world. It was the Darkest Hour of the original Dragon Ball series.
    • Dragon Ball Z:
      • After Frieza mortally wounds Piccolo, murders Krillin, and threatens to kill Gohan, Goku crosses over the despair line. That despair, however, quickly turns into uncontrollable rage.
      • When Cell returns after Goku made his Heroic Sacrifice to stop him from blowing up the Earth, he kills Trunks and badly wounds both Vegeta and Gohan. After declaring that he will destroy the Earth and the entire solar system, all the Earth's warriors completely give up. It takes Goku talking from the grave to get Gohan to make one last stand against Cell.
      • Both Vegeta and Goku fall into this after the Earth is destroyed by Majin Buu.
  • The plot of Elfen Lied is set off by Lucy crossing the line when she finds out that the cousin Kouta is going to a festival with instead of her is a girl. Not a good reason, but at that point she snaps and starts killing on purpose.
    • This is actually the conclusion of a 8 to 10 years old process that began when her father abandoned her as a baby in the forest due to her cat ear-shaped horns and her mother tirelessly searched for her until she was kidnapped and raped by the Big Bad until she committed suicide. She was found and sent to an Orphanage of Fear, where she spent day and night tormented non-stop by the other children and emotionally neglected by the staff of the facility, again, due to her horns. Then, when she finally thinks she made a friend, said friend proceeds to betray the girl's trust by telling the bullies of a puppy she was caring for; after which the bullies proceed to beat the poor thing to death right in front of her. This was the breaking point for Lucy, who snapped, awakening her vectors in the process, and slaughtered everyone in the room. Then she met Kouta, and the whole cousin issue was interpreted by the girl as another callous betrayal, driving her to a psychotically murderous rage that would become her standard mood from then on.
    • After all that she tries one last time to place hope in humanity with a friendship before her eventual capture. She lets herself get captured to try to spare her only friend only to find out that it was all for nothing as she dies from her wounds. If she didn't cross the line before it was at this point where she crosses it. Her hatred towards Kurama and how she's hellbent on maiming and killing those he comes to care for while leaving him alive stems from this trope, wanting to inflict the same despair on him.
  • Zeref in Fairy Tail was always teetering on it after his entire family was killed by a dragon and the God of Death cursed him with Walking Wasteland powers as punishment for trying to bring his brother back to life. However, it seems that he can finally find happiness when he meets Mavis, who is also suffering from the curse. However, just when it looks like they will be together, the same god takes Mavis' life. This marks the beginning of Zeref's true Start of Darkness.
    • Natsu and Gray both suffer from this relatively at nearly the same time. For Gray, it was Juvia sacrificing herself in order to save his life. For Natsu, it was finding Lucy seemingly dead, with blood covering her eyes. Fortunately, both girls turn out to be mostly okay, but Natsu and Gray don't realize that until after they've started fighting.
  • In Fist of the North Star, Kenshiro was left with little purpose in life after the supposed death of his fiancée Yuria and things don't always go smoothly despite his overwhelming power, but he fights on out of a desire to help the good people. The first series ended with Kenshiro learning Yuria was actually alive, but also sick from radiation. As shown in the Last Piece interquel, her definitive death brought Ken into a deep depression and he couldn't muster the will to save his village from yet another army of bandits. The young son of Juza then decides Kenshiro has already given too much and takes up the torch along with Cool Horse Kokuoh to fight off the marauders, but fails and is killed. Seeing a now one-eyed Kokuoh bringing his corpse back while still requesting help finally snaps Kenshiro out of his funk. He thrashes the bandits and resolves to never fall that low again.
  • Fresh Pretty Cure!: Love crosses this when Setsuna reveals that she was Eas the whole time, despite how much Love began to consider her a friend. She's so upset about it that she isolates herself in her room and cries though her pillow. It's even worst when Miki, rather then giving her space, barges in her room and tells her that they are Pretty Cure and especially that Setsuna never existed.
  • Fullmetal Alchemist:
    • Edward and Alphonse Elric crossed this after their attempt to resurrect their mother went horribly wrong, traumatizing them both. It was only through the intervention of Roy Mustang, who told the boys that getting back their bodies was possible with the privileges of state alchemists, that they regained their will to live. Everyone else who has tried to bring those they love back from the dead with alchemy has reached this point.
    • Gluttony after Lust dies.
    • Scar crossed the Horizon in his backstory, after his friends and family were blown up by Kimblee, his brother sacrificed himself to make sure Scar lived, having a Freak Out and murdering the Rockbells in a blind rage, and then seeing his home having been reduced to rubble. The only thing keeping him going is his hatred for Amestrians, but he grows out of it eventually.
  • Tsubaki Kasugano aka the 6th in Future Diary crosses this in her backstory, after she loses the Tragic Keepsake that kept her somewhat sane after being used as a Sex Slave by a Religion of Evil. By the time we meet her, she's a full-blown Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds.
    • Two of these are brought on by one plot point at completely different times. First Yuno crosses after winning the first survival game and becoming a god and realizing too late that even her new powers can't bring the dead back to life, thus Yukiteru is lost unless she creates an entire new universe and starts the survival game over. This is assuming she didn't cross it upon killing her parents. Later, Yukiteru crosses it upon the same realization, that all of the people he'd killed or helped kill under the assumption he'd be able to bring them back once he won were gone for good.
  • Yomi from Ga-Rei -Zero-. Yomi's adoptive father his killed by her Seishouseki-mind-controlled adoptive cousin, the cousin takes what was supposed to be her place as the family head and her inheritance, then lures her to a fight. When the cousin admits killing Yomi's father, she goes berserk and kills her. Then Mitogawa attacks Yomi, rendering her quadriplegic and mute, and she is accused of murdering her cousin. Her fiancee Noriyuki is too busy trying to prove her innocence to visit her in the hospital, his father breaks off their Perfectly Arranged Marriage because of her physical condition, and her best friend Kagura abandons her after she admits to killing her cousin. Then Mitogawa gives her the same Seishouseki, which heals her but its mind-control powers provide the extra push to send her Jumping Off the Slippery Slope and killing her former friends. Her Despair Event Horizon is such a Tearjerker that even after crossing the Moral Event Horizon she is still a sympathetic Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds.
  • Gundam:
    • It's implied that finding out how Kamille, who Char had considered a hope for the next generation, had been Mind Raped at the end of Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam is what led to Char becoming embittered, pulling a Face–Heel Turn, and abandoning hope for a peaceful way of implementing Zeon Deikun's ideals, leading to the events of Mobile Suit Gundam: Char's Counterattack.
    • Mobile Suit Gundam AGE:
      • Flit Asuno wants to finish the fight against the UE so he could return to the Minsry Colony to live a peaceful life with Yurin L'Ciel. Then, at the Battle of Ambat, Desil Galette forces her to fight for his side and brutally kills her, and Flit loses it completely. This drives him to become a savior not for mankind, but for the corrupt Earth Federal Forces.
      • Later, Kio finds out about life in Vagan in Episode 37. In Vagan, crossing the DEH is not an event in one's life, it's the nature of one's life. A space colony without any natural life, those living in Vagan have to get by on the scarcity of resources and money, all the while being always on the lookout for thieves. Because of the rampant poverty, most are unable to get their hands on medicine for the disease caused by Mars Rays, but even if they could it would only be a temporary measure. The disease can hit anyone from any social class and age from the impoverished such as Lu to the ruling class such as Lord Ezelcant. Conditions are so dehumanizing and hopeless, these citizens tend to lose their sense of human emotions, because loving unreservedly will only bring more pain when those people are likely to die of disease and/or poverty. Is it any wonder why so many Vagans resent the Earth Federation?
    • In Gundam Build Divers Re:RISE, Hiroto Kuga crossed the DEH two years prior to the series' start. He got dragged into the DEH when he was forced to delete Eve, an EL Diver he befriended, after the bugs she absorbed from Sarah began to overwhelm her. Then, while he was still grieving Eve's death, his despair goes from bad to worse when he allows Riku to escape and save Sarah while putting GBN's future at risk. This one-two punch of traumatic events leave him emotionally scarred and broken, and he becomes The Stoic who prefers to work alone, a far cry from his formerly cheerful personality. It took coming clean to his teammates about his Dark and Troubled Past and May comforting and convincing him that his actions allowed EL Divers like herself to live that he finally heals and makes peace with his past.
  • Jose in Gunslinger Girl crosses it when he loses an eye in a botched attempt to kill the terrorist who killed Enrica, and cyborg girl Henrietta is reset to factory settings, destroying her personality so she'll never be able to take Enrica's place. By the nuclear power plant strike, Jose was so far beyond the Despair Event Horizon that after getting fragged, he has Henrietta finish the job and, as she does so, shoots her in the eye, killing her.
  • In Hell Girl, most people who call upon Ai to send their tormentors to Hell have crossed this, most often at the moment they decide to pull the red string.
  • This happens a lot in Higurashi: When They Cry, to a number of different characters. In fact, it's the reason for most of the murderous rampages on the show, if not all.
  • In Chapter 305 of Hunter × Hunter, Gon loses himself in rage and despair after being told that Kite has been Killed Off for Real and can't be revived. When he realizes that the person who strung him along with the promise of a resurrection lied to him, he decides to sacrifice his future potential to give himself enough power in the present to crush his enemy. This is especially of note, because up until this point he had always been a typical happy-go-lucky kid.
    Gon: This is it. I don't care if it's over. So I'll use everything. I'll kill you!
  • The Idolmaster — Chihaya got very close to crossing the line during her Heroic BSoD.
  • The second season of Inazuma Eleven has...
    • Kazemaru after The Genesis decimated Raimon and injured Fubuki, to the point that he actually left Raimon.
    • Unexpectedly Endou. After Kazemaru left Raimon, Endou lost all of his enthusiasm for soccer. So did Kurimatsu,to the point that he also leaves the team.
    • Fubuki crossed it when Desarm effortlessly stopped Eternal Blizzard, after that incident he couldn't dare himself to touch another soccer ball.
  • Inuyasha: Saint Hakushin was driven towards the DEH as he was waiting for his death. He volunteered to be buried alive so he would become a living Buddha and help his people, but as he waited to die he realized that he really didn't want to die, and horrifyingly despaired. Naraku used this to recruit him as his Barrier Warrior.
  • Jyu-Oh-Sei brings us Third/Heiser, who, after learning that Earth, which he had dreamed of visiting for his entire life, was destroyed. He collapses in despair, spends a good few minutes staring blankly at nothing, and eventually shoots himself in the head. Admittedly, his suicide was more to save Thor than a result of his Despair Event Horizon, but it still counts.
  • Kagerou Project: It turns out that the Big Bad's plan hinges on making Mary hit this, hard, in order to activate the Queen Snake and force her to reset time. He achieves this by taking control of the kind-hearted Konoha, then slaughtering all of her friends in front of her.
  • Yoji Kudou of Knight Hunters starts sliding towards the despair event horizon in the "Dramatic Precious" Drama CDs, and finally crosses it during Gluhen when the toll of being a Chivalrous Pervert whose job involves being a Honey Trap, romancing women for information and then more often than not either being unable to save their lives or being forced to kill them himself, finally becomes too much. At the end of the series he's come down with a case of Easy Amnesia that completely wipes out all his memories of who he is and what he's done, and he's generally considered better off left that way. That is how broken he was..
  • Haruka suffered a lot in Kotoura-san's Downer Beginning, but it was stray cat incident (when a lonely Haruka desperately latches onto a stray cat she finds in a park, caring for it because she can't hear its thoughts and believes it is her only friend, only for it to be taken to a shelter — effectively a death sentence in Japan — by an insensitive old woman) that made her to decide she is indeed a monster (as people already said about her) that would bring doom to every living being that she cares about. From that point on she became a complete Broken Bird and wore a facade so that nobody would care her and vice versa, until Manabe broke her shell.
  • In Life is Money, this is used as a weapon because any character whose anxiety gets high enough dies.
  • Lyrical Nanoha:
    • Fate Testarossa had a rather nasty case of this upon learning that she was a clone, with all the memories of the original, and her mother hated her guts. Being cast aside, told she was never really loved, that her life was a lie, that she was truly despised, and told never to show her face again by the (admittedly abusive) mother she was completely devoted to will do that to you. Thanks to Arf's and Nanoha's companionship and combat therapy, respectively, she eventually snapped out of it in order to help and have one last word with her mother. Still counts, though.
    • Yagami Hayate in A's, when she was transported to the hospital roof to see Zafira and Vita beaten and subdued, and Signum and Shamal already gone. Then she see's what looks like her two new friends erase the first two knights and taunted about it. All after being told that she would most certainly die in a short while due to the incurable condition of her body. The people doing all this were purposely trying to set this off, in complete Break the Cutie fashion. Although she regains her composure after the initial shock wears off, then sets about restoring her family and fixing the problem at hand.
  • In Magic Knight Rayearth, Princess Emeraude plowed through this when her beloved Zagato was killed by the Knights, believing him to be the Big Bad. She already was unstable after keeping her love for Zagato bottled up, seeing that since she couldn't devote herself 100% to Cephiro, her Pillar work wasn't effective as it should be, and being kidnapped by a desperate Zagato who doesn't want the Knights to release her from Pillar-dom through death, and in the anime giving her brother amnesia at his own request... and once Zagato kicked it in battle, the poor broken person reacted by unleashing her powers on the Knights and trying to kill them, calling them out on his death. The girls have to give her an I Cannot Self-Terminate, and the Downer Ending of the first season kicks in.
  • Mazinger Z: The Hero Kouji almost, almost crossed it during the Mazinger-Z vs Great General of Darkness movie. After several Mykene Warrior Monsters have easily destroyed four major cities (Paris, London, New York and Moscow) they strike Tokyo. He launches Mazinger-Z to fight them... and he barely walks out of it alive. The Warrior Monsters easily rip his mecha apart and turn Tokyo into burning ruins as he is unable make anything to stop them. Back in the Home Base, he learns MORE Warrior Monsters have visited while he was away. His Home Base is in ruins, Love Interest Sayaka and victriolic best friend Boss' Humongous Mechas have been destroyed, and worst of all, his little brother Shirou got hurt cause a collapsing ceiling and is in coma. Later, Kouji was sitting on the remains of his room, and he cried as he said he knew he could not win and he was going to die in the next battle; poor Sayaka, who was eavesdropping, also cried as hearing him.
    • It was way, WAY worse in one of the first chapters of Shin Mazinger Zero, where he did fully cross it. Straight after seeing his grandfather murdering his father and murdering Sayaka after raping her, and losing one of his arms he was thrust in Mazinger-Z and his body absorbed by the machine. Turned into a raging The Berserker, he began fighting Mechanical Beasts in spite of he not even knew what they were or whence they came, and his negative emotions — pain, rage, despair, sadness, loneliness — fed Mazinger-Z until its sleeping consciousness woke up, transformed into an Eldritch Abomination by poor Kouji's despair, and it burnt the world to ashes.
  • In Chapter 115 of Medaka Box, Zenkichi collapses on his hands and knees in despair after he realizes he isn't special to Medaka anymore. Chapter 116 reveals that Ajimu masterminded this Despair Event Horizon to make Zenkichi receptive to joining her Flask Plan as its first test subject.
  • In Monster, Johan Liebert, the title character, gains power over people by pushing them over this line, putting them completely under his control.
  • Naruto:
    • Sasuke Uchiha spent a big part of his life on the verge one, but completely crossed it after Itachi died and Tobi reveals to him that Itachi had actually killed their clan because said clan was planning a coup, which would've led to a civil war and likely a world war, and since Itachi couldn't bring himself to kill his little brother he became a Stealth Mentor in the hopes that Sasuke would kill him, which would avenge their clan and make Sasuke a hero to the village. Sasuke reacts... poorly to this.
    • This happened to Naruto three times. The first was when Pain seemingly kills Hinata right in front of him. Naruto is so consumed by rage and grief that he willingly submits his body and soul to the Nine-Tails, only to be stopped by the spirit of his long lost father. The second was when Neji is killed by Obito and the subsequent Breaking Speech nearly causes Naruto to give up once more, only to be roused into action once more by Hinata. The third was in the Canon movie The Last: Naruto the Movie, after Hinata "rejects" him and "accepts" Toneri's marriage proposal. Screenwriter Maruo Kyozuka confirmed in the movie's program guide that Naruto actually crossed the DEH this time, by stating that Naruto is "at rock-bottom" and is in "such a pitiable state" for the first time ever, and he even outright calls it Naruto's "lowest point."
    • Nagato crossed it when his best friend Yahiko killed himself in order to save Konan. This can be considered the moment when Pain was born.
    • Obito Uchiha crossed it when his female teammate and crush Rin committed suicide freehand of his best friend and other teammate Kakashi, who promised to protect her at any cost. Unlike Naruto, however, no one helped Obito, he didn't come back, and he took it out on the whole world. He would likely have also committed suicide instead if Madara hadn't arranged the situation and put in a safeguard to prevent it.
    • By his own admission, Madara crossed it when he found out the Awful Truth about the history of the ninja world and came to realize how hopeless the idea of achieving true peace really was. He subsequently decided to follow an Assimilation Plot as he feels that it's the only hope for humanity. Then comes The Reveal that the "Awful Truth" was a huge lie to trick the Uchiha into carrying out said plot.
    • Kakashi has been on the verge of crossing it for most of his life. When he was just a child, he found his father's body when he was Driven to Suicide after failing a mission and being scorned by the village at large for it. Then, a few years later, he lost his two teammates and his teacher within the span of a single year. That nearly broke him, and the only thing keeping him together was his promise to be his best friend Obito's eyes and the few positive relationships he had left (primarily his close friendship and rivalry with Might Guy). It wasn't until Team 7 did he really move beyond being a barely functioning individual. Even after his student Sassuke betrayed the village, Kakashi was able to hold himself steadfast this time around. When he learned Tobi was Obito, however, he regressed immediately, barely defending himself from his opponent's attacks. Had Naruto not been there, he would've crossed it for sure and probably would've allowed Obito to beat him to death.
  • In the Negima! Magister Negi Magi (first) anime, Negi himself crosses the horizon after Asuna's death on her 14th birthday, when the Deal with the Devil she made as a kid takes effect. He splinters so badly that watching it almost becomes the DEH for a few of his students.
    • In the manga, Negi's mother Arika found herself on the edge of it when she was about to be executed under false charges of murder and treason, as well for taking the blame for Asuna's Anti-Magic powers going haywire and plummeting a Floating Continent to the ground.
  • Neon Genesis Evangelion:
    • Shinji crosses this line when he is forced to kill Kaworu, although that isn't actually his lowest point. That comes after he masturbates at the comatose Asuka's bedside, at which point he realizes that he has truly hit rock bottom. When he finds out that Asuka has been chopped into pieces and eaten alive in this rock bottom state is when he loses it completely.
      • In 3.0 of the Rebuild of Evangelion, Shinji comes to find out that not only 14 years have passed, but finds out he was responsible for instigating the Third Impact, that he really didn’t save Rei, and almost everyone, except Kaworu and a few others, hates him. Desperate, he tries to make things right, only to trigger the Fourth Impact. When Kaworu, his only friend at this point, sacrifices himself in front of his very eyes, Shinji completely loses the will to live and is left catatonic.
    • Asuka is declining steadily throughout the series, specially after being on the receiving end of Mind Rape, but she gets better.
    • Ritsuko also hit this after realizing that she'll never be truly loved by Gendo, destroying the Rei clones, and realizing how much she mirrors her mother.
  • One Piece: Many characters have suffered traumas that tip them very close to losing all hope. Quite a few of them have their hope reinvigorated by a chance meeting with Luffy.
    • When she is double crossed by Arlong and realizes he never intended to keep his promise to let her and her village be free, Nami crumples in despair and begins stabbing her shoulder (where she has the Arlong Pirates' Jolly Roger tattooed) in impotent rage. When Luffy stops her, she can only weakly beg for his help before he and the other Straw Hats march off to kick Arlong's ass.
    • Robin had crossed the Horizon a long time ago when she saw her hometown get figuratively and literally blown off the map by the World Government, her mother and best friend seemingly killed in the process, and getting branded an outlaw and hunted nonstop for twenty years (she was eight at the time). By the time she joins the Straw Hats, she's a Death Seeker who thinks nothing of her own survival, but seeing Luffy's determination to save her from the clutches of the World Government convinces her that she truly does want to live and be free again.
    • Luffy himself came dangerously close to crossing it after Ace's death. Fortunately, Jimbei managed to snap him out of it.
    • Yamato almost gave up on ever escaping Onigashima upon seeing Ace's Vivre card burn to ashes on the day of the Marineford War. Remembering that Luffy may still be out there is all that Yamato has left to regain focus and continue opposing Kaido.
  • Paranoia Agent: This is the entire point of the series. Li'l Slugger comes to those who have reached this point, and gives them something entirely different to worry about in the form of a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown. He turns out to be the personification of this exact thing: The desire to avoid confronting the problems that drive one to despair by way of having to face a more immediate, more serious, and in this case more violent problem.
  • Sasame reaches this point in Prétear when he realizes that no matter how much he tries to reason with Takako, she can't come back from the dark side. So he joins her instead. It doesn't help that she nearly killed him during a battle.
    • Himeno's stepsister Mawata also reached the point after the face heel turned Sasame rejected her feelings in front of her family, which tops on her loneliness and hidden emotional turmoil coming from her father's death. After that, she fell into such a despair that Takako easily turned Mawata into the Barrier Maiden for the Fenrir tree, and Himeno had to work VERY hard to bring her back.
  • Puella Magi Madoka Magica is about young girls that approach this as they become Magical Girls, fight Witches and see how their lives are torn as a consequence, thus being very likely to become Witches themselves. The most straight up example is Sayaka Miki, who as of Episode 8 crossed this due to her romantic woes, her ideals conflicting with reality, and the side-effects of Witch fighting, and becomes a witch.
    • Another good example is Mami Tomoe in the third timeline. Learning the Awful Truth did not mix up well with her issues on loneliness and abandonment and, after seeing Sayaka turn into a witch and having to be killed by the group, she freaked out majorly: she then killed Kyouko by destroying her Soul Gem and was about to do the same to Homura (And presumably to Madoka, before eventually killing herself), so Madoka had to mercy kill her and put her out of her misery — almost crossing it herself in the process, but she manages to come back. And then she dies.
    • Kyoko's Jerkassery in her first few episodes is revealed in Episode 7 to be a case of despair event horizon crossed. The Pater Familicide she alone survived pushed her over in nothing flat... or did it? All hope she had before that incident gets promptly restored after Kyubey lets slip the Awful Truth, thus inverting Mami's situation in the third timeline on its head.
    • Homura approaches this during her fight with Walpurgis Night, realizing she's about to lose again and has to wrestle with the choice of rewinding time again, and risk corrupting Madoka's future more, or give in. Her Soul Gem starts becoming increasingly corrupted during this time. And then, in the Rebellion movie, she crosses it for real after learning that Madoka is (supposedly) not happy with having written herself out of reality and left her friends & family behind, and realizing that in the end, she failed in her mission to keep Madoka safe and happy. This results in Homura finally breaking under all the accumulated heartbreak she's built up over so much time, and she drowns in despair and becomes a Witch.
    • The only main character who never reaches this point, at least in the main timeline, is Madoka, which is probably why she was able to undo the Event Horizon crossings of every other magical girl in existence without becoming a universe-obliterating witch. Even Sayaka recovers, although she dies at around the same point in the new universe from using up her magic, rather than becoming a witch. In other timelines where Madoka does cross the horizon, she either becomes an apocalyptically powerful witch or has Homura kill her to prevent that.
  • The Madoka sort-of Alternate Universe Puella Magi Oriko Magica plays this straight and subverts it:
  • The Record of a Fallen Vampire — Strauss crossed this when Stella was murdered. Then he goes on to redefine the meaning of "no hope" as he has make himself the target of hatred and is forced to fight Stella and his daughter's effective reincarnation, the Black Swan, over and over again, without being allowed to die because if he dies then the Dhampirs and the humans will probably destroy each other, and if that doesn't happen, the Dhampirs will lose their hope of being able to turn into humans.
  • Souji Mikage from Revolutionary Girl Utena uses tactics that arguably predate those of Celestial Being, approaching young people who are in their lowest with promise of a chance to change their worlds and end what's making them suffer by defeating Utena. Specially obvious in the cases of people like Wakaba, Keiko Sonoda, or Mitsuru Tsuwabuki; in fact, he rejected Tatsuya the Onion Prince because he wasn't despairing enough. Mikage himself also went past the DEH in his backstory, and is pushed even further in the last episode of the Black Rose arc.
    • Prince Dios and his younger sister also crossed this in their backstories, which is what shaped them into Akio Ohtori the Magnificent Bastard and Anthy Himemiya the Rose Bride.
  • Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei's Nozomu Itoshiki lives four leagues on the far side of the horizon. Constantly. Played for laughs.
  • School-Live!:
    • Miki undergoes one in Chapter 7 due to being the Sole Survivor of her group. She is completely isolated from anyone and is stuck in a storage room. She refuses to just sit around and die but the loneliness and boredom is getting to her. The other girls rescue her within a few chapters.
    • Yuuri hit this line in Chapter 27 after a rescue helicopter crashes and then bursts into flames in front of the school. She's usually a calm Cool Big Sis but she completely snaps afterwards. Her emotional barrier goes down once Yuki is out of earshot. Even after she calms down she is snappy at Yuki which is unusual for her. Yuuri isn't the same after the events, even after she seems to recover, as she begins undergoing a Sanity Slippage which leads to her hallucinating a stuffed animal is her little sister.
  • From The Seven Deadly Sins, this is what drove Helbram into becoming an Ax-Crazy human massacring Faux Affably Evil villain. After he and a few of his fairy friends were captured by greedy humans wanting to use their wings for medicine, and after witnessing firsthand his friends get their wings ripped off, he loses all the respect and fascination he once had for humanity. So much so that he can longer stop himself from killing humans regardless of his own desires.
  • Shaman King: Once upon a time, there was a German boy named Faust (who was a descendant of that Faust, by the way). He had a Victorious Childhood Friend named Elisa, sweet and cute but Delicate and Sickly. Faust became a doctor and worked hard to develop a cure; after many years of research, he finally created the perfect medicine for her, and when she recovered they got Happily Married... and then she was shot to death by a thug. The despaired Faust began researching about necromancy to find a way to properly revive Eliza, but only managed to become a Shaman and have her as his spirit partner. Needless to say, things went bad...and specially for Faust's rivals.
  • In SHUFFLE! Kaede lost the will to live following her mother's death but Rin managed to snap her out of it... by making her believe he was the reason she died. She snapped out of it, but her attitude is now towards taking out all of her hatred out on him. She then suffers another one when she remembers it was because of her that her mother came home earlier and took the flight, now blaming herself for both of her mother's death and all the pain she caused Rin.
  • Smile Pretty Cure! actually invokes this trope. Big Bad Pierrot is able to get ahold of the storybook telling of the team's history and splotches down some of his Bad End Ink on some of the unwritten pages, plunging the girls into despair. Candy's able to snap them out of it, though.
  • Sheryl Formossa crosses this horizon in Space Runaway Ideon, after the deaths of her sister Lin and her boyfriend Gije.
  • In Spiral, Kanone Hilbert crosses this upon realizing that the Blade Children can never be saved. His reaction is trying to kill as many of them as he can — including all of his friends ( and half-siblings) and himself. After he is stopped, he doesn't cross back to the other side of the line: in the anime, he just leaves the country, still sulking; in the manga, the way he finally finds to "save" himself is to have a meaningful death, which will give hope to the other Bla Chil and Ayumu.
  • Nana Hiiragi of Talentless Nana goes through not one, but two of them.
    • The first is the death of her Only Friend, Michiru Inukai. She tried to make a Heroic Sacrifice to save Michiru from a serial killer and Michiru proceeded to use a Sacrificial Revival Spell to save Nana at the cost of her own life. This causes Nana to start questioning her motives and everything about her life, especially her Fantastic Racism against the superpowered "Talented".
    • The second is after her superior and pseudo-father figure, Tsuruoka, reveals himself to be the Manipulative Bastard that arranged for her parents' deaths and manipulated her into becoming a sociopathitc, mass-murdering Child Soldier against the Talented. For extra irony, her parents were trying to protect the Talented.
  • Moriritchi of Tamagotchi crosses the despair event horizon in the final episode of the original installment when she learns the last of the Tama Heart murals needed to stop the egg curse is missing and she realizes she and the rest of Mametchi's gang might die. This proves too much for her, on top of her having witnessed her sister turn into an egg earlier and thinking about how she now has no personality or sense of fashion, and Moriritchi becomes an egg herself.
  • This happens to Lord Genome from Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann in his backstory, when he realizes the truth of the Spiral Nemesis.
  • Most of the main plot of Trigun that made it into the anime (the manga had all this backstory stuff and Knives going One-Winged Angel and staying that way for over a year while he slowly killed off the human race) was a Break the Cutie-slash-Break the Stoic plot aimed at pushing Vash over this, probably in hopes of inducing Face–Heel Turn, but possibly just to punish him for being a disloyal brother. It works insofar as he is pushed past his (admittedly impressive) limits on a couple of occasions, which variously result in a two year retirement and brief catatonia.
    • Meanwhile, the greatest one in a series full of them is when Vash and Knives were one year old, and found out about Tesla. Two boys — physiologically around eight—read the documentation and looked at the corpse, and then shut themselves up in the lab where it had happened and didn't move for over a week. Rem didn't manage to break in to save them until after they'd passed out half-dead from thirst.
      • And then, Vash tried to kill himself with a fruit knife at the first opportunity, and laughed somewhere between hysteria and mania upon thinking he'd accidentally killed Rem when she interfered. Knives, on the other hand, pretended to have Easy Amnesia and then proceeded to methodically enact a plan to Kill All Humans. The kicker is that Knives was always the nicer, more trusting one, before.
    • Legato Bluesummers appears to have spent enough of his childhood in this that when he started developing his mind-control powers he prioritized 'killing everybody connected to my life' over getting away, and was consequently in the process of being raped to death when Knives happened to come along and slice up the building and... save the day. And not kill Legato, and ask him his name. Nicest thing that ever happened to the kid.
    • Several of the Gung Ho Guns have this in their backstories. One in the manga notably is in this omnicide gig because he was a deformed beggar in July when Vash inadvertently blew it up, and the one good thing in his life (a lovely waitress who was kind to him) was killed, and his whole life since has been Training from Hell to get revenge on Vash.
    • Since the point of Trigun is a Broken Bird Wide-Eyed Idealist Actual Pacifist Gunslinger confronting a Crapsack World full of murder, this trope is bread and butter to Yasuhiro Nightow.
  • Fai in Tsubasa -RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE- seems to have made it his hobby to find new DEH's and falling off them. Most notably in Celes when Ashura drives an icicle through Kurogane's chest and he finally snaps and tries to kill both himself and Ashura in one fell blow. Thankfully, Kurogane gets better.
  • In Uzumaki, Kirie can't exactly be said to lack resolve and an incredibly strong will to survive. After losing literally everything, though (including her home, her family, and finally her boyfriend) she reaches the point where she is unable to take the emotional torment anymore and just lies down next to Shuichi, joining him in the Spiral.
  • Wolf's Rain:
  • Yu-Gi-Oh! GX:
  • Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds:
    • Kiryu was arrested and thrown into a Hellhole Prison, falsely believing his best friend Yusei had betrayed him. He suffered abuse from the corrupt guards, but was able to comfort himself by admiring his deck. Then the guards confiscated his deck and he gave up hope, leaving him open to be contacted by the Earthbound Gods and make a deal with them to seek revenge on Yusei.
    • Aporia says this happened to him three times. First when the Machine Emperors killed his parents. Second when the Machine Emperors killed his lover. And third when he became an elderly man wandering the wastelands as one of the last humans on Earth after the Machine Emperors wiped out the rest.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL: It happens to Yuma during his duel with III, but is subverted due to the fact that III uses a curse to steal Yuma's self-confidence, literally. Yuma is able to recover after his father appears to him in a vision, reminding him how he got the self-confidence to begin with.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS: Towards the end of Aoi's and Spectre's duel in Episode 34, Spectre made Aoi believe that she was about to win and was about to save him. However, it was only a façade as Spectre's Sunbloom Doom made him nowhere near losing. He even mocked her, calling her a pathetic girl who couldn't become a Blue Angel and claiming he was the Blue Angel who defeated the villain—her. He then tore up the copy of the ''Blue Angel'' book he materialized and burned the shreds. The story meant the world to Aoi and gave her comfort after her parents died about ten years before the start of the series. To see it be so carelessly destroyed, in addition to her being so cruelly manipulated and mocked just moments ago, destroyed her. Seeing as the Tower of Hanoi would absorb those who lose duels in Link VRAINS and leave their real bodies in a comatose state with little hope of waking up, Spectre essentially tortured her mentally before murdering her in cold blood.


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