Downer Beginnings in Anime and Manga.
- Following the novel a lot closer, the 2012 anime adaptation of Ai no Kusabi starts with an anonymous slave being sexually tortured by his also anonymous master for having slept with another slave behind the master's back. It just gets more twisted and depressing from there after the characters are identified as the protagonists.
- At the beginning of AKIRA, Tokyo is destroyed by a nuclear explosion, setting off World War III. It turns out the explosion was created by Akira, a young boy with psionic powers.
- Amakusa 1637 begins with two of the main characters, Natsuki and Masaki, barely surviving to the Great Hanshin Earthquake
that destroyed Kobe. Natsuki is very emotionally scarred since not only Masaki is injured while trying to protect her, but she's a first-hand witness to the destruction it caused to their hometown. - Astro Boy always begins with Doctor Tenma's son Tobi getting killed in a car accident. This makes him create a Replacement Goldfish — Astro. However even that isn't happy, as Tenma ends up abandoning Astro due to the fact he's an individual rather than a perfect clone of his son.
- Attack on Titan: The story opens with the massacre of an entire city when a gigantic Titan kicks in the outer gate and lets its smaller kin through, and the protagonist and his adoptive sister helplessly watching as another Titan kills and eats their mother.
- Berserk, which is told In Medias Res, starts like this, with Guts in the biggest and darkest pit of despair in his life. Now a ruthless Demon Slayer, Guts is on the brink of losing his humanity to his hatred for the demons, and Griffith in particular—and we aren't even sure if we should be rooting for him or not.
- Blue Reflection Ray opens with Mio and Momo fighting a Sephirot, only for Mio to collapse in despair as the Sephirot attacks and seemingly destroys the world.
- At the end of the fifth Bokurano chapter, one of the children, Waku, dies, and while it is thought that Ushiro accidentally pushed him off of Zearth, he was already dead, having sacrificed his life force to pilot Zearth. The series only goes downhill from there.
- Chainsaw Man starts with the protagonist selling his organs and working his butt off to pay his father's debts after the latter committed suicide. In the first chapter he is killed by the yakuza, cut into pieces and dumped in the trash. He gets better.
- At the beginning of Code Geass, the young Lelouch and Suzaku are shown sitting together in pain in a war-torn Japan, now Area 11 under The Empire. Lelouch is shown promising Suzaku that he will destroy The Empire.
- Crimson Spell starts with the protagonist, Prince Valdrigr, watching in horror as a band of demons rampage through the palace and slaughter his staff and courtiers. Desperate to help, he grabs the cursed Ancestral Weapon his family always told him not to touch. The good news: boosted with the power of the curse, he wipes out the demons. The bad news: he’s now too dangerous to be around his loved ones and has to go questing for a cure.
- Cross Ange starts off fairly happily as we introduce the titular Princess Angelise Ikaruga Misurugi, show off the thriving Misurugi Empire, and reveal how humanity lives in a utopia thanks to a power called the Light of Mana which is shared by all... then we see how the Mana-resistant Norma are treated. Then we find out that Angelise herself is a Norma and the rest of the first episode is her life being torn apart completely; her father is arrested and sentenced to death, her mother is killed trying to save her from the authorities, and Angelise herself is dragged away crying and screaming to a hellhole prison. Once there, she is robbed of her belongings, beaten and brutalized by the prison's warden, and it all culminates in a "physical examination" that looks scarily like a rape scene and leaves poor Angelise — now dubbed Ange — naked, bleeding from her rear orifice, and in tears. Ouch.
- It's actually lampshaded in the next-episode preview, where the characters discuss the episode and one decries how poor Ange was treated. The English Dub version has Ange alone commenting on how awfully she was treated, even Breaking the Fourth Wall and saying things along the lines of "I thought this was a cute girls and robots kind of anime!"
- Cross Game: Wakaba's death in the first episode.
- DARLING in the FRANXX zig-zags this in its first two episodes. The series starts with Hiro musing on his uselessness as a Stamen and his inability to pilot, alongside with his longtime partner Naomi being Released to Elsewhere. However, Episode 2 is arguably his Darkest Hour, with him feeling like a complete failure due to being unable to reinstate his parasite licence, before recovering for a while with Zero-Two's aid... which brought with it the threat of death due to Zero-Two's cursed nature.
- Day Break Illusion starts with Akari's cousin Fuyuna getting possessed by a monster called a Daemonia, and Akari accidentally killing her when her Magical Girl powers awaken.
- Days of Love at Seagull Villa begins with the protagonist arriving in a new town to work as a teacher. A flashback reveals that she went there after learning that her fiancé cheated on her with her best friend, getting the latter pregnant.
- Deadman Wonderland opens up with Ganta's high school classmates getting killed by a mysterious figure with him in the room. Ganta miraculously survives, but is unfortunately pegged for the murders via a fabricated confessional tape, and then gets transported to Deadman Wonderland, a maximum security prison, without question. Things only get shittier from there.
- Delicious in Dungeon begins with Falin being eaten by the Red Dragon, then two members of her team leaving instead of sticking around to help her brother rescue her. Fortunately it gets less depressing from there.
- Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba begins with Tanjiro getting home to find that most of his family has been slaughtered by a demon. The only survivor, his younger sister Nezuko, has been transformed into a demon herself, meaning that she might give in to her hunger for humans and attack Tanjiro, or be killed by the Demon Slayer Corps. Soon after Tanjiro joins the Demon Slayer Corps, however, he finds the organization is full of quirky, eccentric people, and the tone of the series drastically lightens up. The series does get darker and more serious at times, but never as bleak and depressing as the beginning.
- Doki Doki! PreCure. The first scene involves Cure Sword fighting a losing battle with the villains' forces, who succeed in destroying her home kingdom.
- A Dog of Flanders (1975): The series begins with the death of Nello's mother and him having to live with his grandfather. Though his grandfather loves him so, he's a disabled man and can't work.
- Dragon Ball Z:
- The first saga starts off promising enough with Goku reuniting with his friends and introducing them to his son Gohan. Then Raditz crashes the party, kidnaps Gohan, and threatens to depopulate Earth.
- The OVA The History of Trunks takes place in a Bad Future, with the opening showing Goku dying as a result of a mysterious heart virus, and most of the remaining defenders of Earth being killed off one-by-one by Androids 17 and 18 before they proceed to turn Earth into a Crapsack World.
- The prologue of Even Though I'm a Former Noble and Single Mother shows Shirley being abused her entire childhood, rescued by the crown-prince, declared by him to be her fiance, struggling until she bled to be of use to him, and loved by the emperor and the commoners, only to have it all torn away, for no readily discernible reason, with the crown prince yelling all sorts of crimes she could not possibly have committed, throwing her into a dungeon to be tortured into signing a false-confession. If not for the fact that she gave birth to two sweet, adorable little girls, she would have carved a bloody swath through her home country, brutally murdering everyone responsible, her father, mother, scheming sister, the family servants, the lesser nobles, their servants, the crown prince, and maybe even the emperor and empress in a fit of vengeance.
- The cheeriness of Tohru Honda in Fruits Basket is somewhat offset by the quick reveal that her mother has recently died, leaving her an orphan, and that she's currently more or less homeless living in a tent in some woods. Not long after, it's revealed that the rest of her family (save for her grandfather) dislike her because of something her mother did years back, and thus Tohru has very little by way of friends or family and has to almost entirely care for herself.
- Fullmetal Alchemist opens with a flashback of when Ed and Al attempted human transmutation to bring back their dead mother (The result looked like some poor dude that had an encounter with a flamethrower or an acid pit.), which led to Al's body and Ed's arm and leg being lost to the Gate. While the manga didn't cover it in detail for a few chapters, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood flashes back to the event in the second episode.
- Genesis Climber MOSPEADA (aka the New Generation part of Robotech) begins with pictures of Inbit subjugating Earth (skimmed but still shown), followed by the fleet sent to liberate Earth being wiped out by the Inbit in the first 5 minutes of the series.
- Getter Robo loves these.
- Getter Robo G starts from where the original left off.
- Shin Getter Robo vs. Neo Getter Robo starts with Musashi's Heroic Sacrifice and the destruction of New York.
- Getter Robo G vs. Great Mazinger starts with a monster attack that kills Musashi. Seeing a pattern here?
- Getter Robo Armaggedon does not start with Musashi's death, but with how the Getter Team's bonds were broken beyond repair after Michiru commits suicide to avert being killed by The Virus, Dr. Saotome loses it and then is murdered, Ryoma is accused of said murder and jailed for years, Genki becomes a Creepy Child out of trauma, and a huge alien invasion takes place. Which the heroes fail to stop. And on top of it, Musashi still dies.
- The Glass Mask OAV's from The '90s start with a flashback to the time a young actress had a lamp falling on her in the middle of her trademark stage play. Said actress is The Mentor, Chigusa Tsukikage, who got such bad physical scars in the accident that she had to retire.
- Gintama begins the Farewell Shinsengumi Arc following the events of the Shogun Assassination Arc with a funeral march of the Shogun Shigeshige with the heroes depressed about the news coming to light and things get worse from there starting with the Shinsengumi being disbanded and Nobunobu arresting and sentencing Kondo and Matsudaira for execution.
- Goblin Slayer opens with a fresh-faced Priestess joining a party of adventurers on her first quest of slaying goblins. Said quest goes horrifically awry when the goblins turn out to be more deadly than they realized, with two party members killed and a third abducted and raped. The Priestess is spared only by the timely appearance of the Goblin Slayer, an adventurer consumed by a desire to kill goblins that is so strong, not even goblin children are spared.
- Grave of the Fireflies has this in with a combination of How We Got Here. "September 21, 1945. That was the night I died." That is the opening line, and it only gets worse from there.
- The Gundam series is fond of these:
- Mobile Suit Gundam: "A new home for mankind, where people are born and raised...and die." Cue the Colony Drop that opened the One Year War, and the opening narration that tells us that half the human population was wiped out in the first month of fighting. Then cue Amuro's Doomed Hometown, the brutal deaths of his friends' families, and becoming a Child Soldier (well, a teenage soldier) in the One Year War in the story proper.
- Gundam X has the worst Downer Beginning in the entire franchise, consisting of a space war that ends in MULTIPLE space colonies being dropped onto the earth, killing almost 99% of humanity!
- Gundam SEED Destiny opens with Shinn Asuka's family being killed by a crossfire between the Calamity and the Freedom, and him seeing their mutilated corpses.
- Gundam 00 starts with a child soldier named Soran Ibrahim running away from the hellhole of the war zone in his own homeland, murmuring in anger, "There is no God in this world!" After a mysterious Gundam saved him from the attack by a hostile mobile suit, he later becomes Setsuna F. Seiei after the Time Skip, dedicating himself in preventing the same tragedy from happening to other innocent lives again.
- As a homage to this scenario, GundamAGE brings us to a war-torn scenario where Flit Asuno's mother dies in the relentless attack by the Unknown Enemies. Shortly before her demise, she gave Flit the key to activate Gundam, giving him the determination to save humanity from the alleged monsters from out of nowhere.
- Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn begins by telling the audience about Laplace Incident that took place in UC 0001 and set the tone for the rest of the Universal Century.
- Haru and Midori begins with Midori getting a call that her old friend Tsumugi has died. She then attends Tsumugi's funeral, where she learns that the once popular Tsumugi spent her last days alone, and that Tsumugi's teenage daughter Haruko (aka "Haru") is now an orphan.
- The Heart of Thomas opens with the titular character jumping off a railway bridge to his death.
- You'd think that HeartCatch Pretty Cure!, being a Magical Girl show that runs on The Power of Friendship, would start in a light and fluffy way, introducing the main characters as soon as possible. But no: it starts with Lady of War Yuri/Cure Moonlight on the receiving end of a Curb-Stomp Battle against her Evil Counterpart Dark Pretty Cure, ending with her Heart Seed shattered in two, the larger half of which is taken by said Evil Counterpart. Yuri gets better, her fairy partner Cologne, not so much.
- Hellsing begins with a whole village of innocents and Seras' police partners getting killed. In the TV series, Seras is part of a special ops team that gets wiped out. Seras is killed as well, but she gets better.
- I Don't Know Which One Is Love downplays this, since it's relatively lighthearted, but it begins with Mei, the protagonist, learning that the girl she had a crush on ended up getting a boyfriend, and so does not return her feelings. As a result, she's motivated to find a girlfriend in university.
- The first five pages of the I Got My Wish and Reincarnated as the Villainess (Last Boss)! manga are spent on the protagonist realizing she is no longer able to prevent herself from dying, lamenting her lifelong situation, and wishing for a healthy body as she dies, which is rather depressing compared to the rest of the series. This is completed with the "last leaf" imagery and a blue overtone over these pages (except one panel).
- The beginning of the Japan Animator Expo short "ME!ME!ME!" has its protagonist, Shuu-chan, lay wasting in his room in a depressed funk, unable to respond to anything in a scene lacking anything cheery. We later learn that this is he result of his guilt over his breakup with his ex-girlfriend Hana-chan, and that he's not going to get over it anytime soon.
- JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Phantom Blood starts with an Aztec sacrifice ritual, where a young woman is stabbed dead. It then cuts to the childhood of Dio and his abusive father in a slum. The first act consists of Dio making most of Jonathan's childhood absolutely miserable, including ruining his reputation, stealing his girlfriend's Sacred First Kiss, and killing his dog. He then turns into a vampire, murdering Jonathan's father and burning down his house. Thankfully, things start looking up once Jonathan learns Hamon, which lets him fight back against Dio more effectively.
- Kamichama Karin, the series begins with the character, Karin Hanazono, grieving that she's all alone due to the death of her parents, and just now even her beloved cat. The series itself has quite a few jumps from light and happy to darker.
- The first episode of Kimba the White Lion has the title character's parents killed off.
- In The Kindaichi Case Files, quite a few case arcs open with depicting the disappearance/death of someone whose demise serves as a/the motive behind the murder case in their respective case arcs. Alternatively, some case arcs start by bringing up a deceased person that turns out to be the initial victim in the serial murder cases that feature in said case arcs.
- Kotoura-san: Its writeup for Break the Cutie states: the first ten minutes and twelve seconds of the first episode of Kotoura-san does nothing but systematically destroy the titular heroine's life. It is a pileup of several rounds of Break the Cutie—for one single girl—which has caused several comparisons with Gen Urobuchi to be made. It is also the one thing that catapulted the show's status from run of the mill Romantic Comedy that was at first seen to be ignorable to that of a Sleeper Hit.
- Kurenai Sanshiro starts with the main character being too late to save his father's life.
- Maria no Danzai: Ignoring the first page, the first chapter introduces mother and son Mari and Kiritaka Nagare, who love each other very much. Then Kiritaka's horrible school life is showcased as he is brutally bullied by Okaya and his cronies, though Kiritaka puts up with it in order to not worry his mother. Then, that same night, Okaya blackmails Kiritaka into jumping off a cliff in exchange for not spreading an edited sex video of his mother, for no other reason than to enjoy his suffering. Mari arrives to the scene, having followed her son after he left the house in the middle of the night, only to find his broken, mangled body mere seconds before he is run over by an incoming truck, leaving Mari to desperately cradle his intestines while begging him to come back. Then, after a couple of weeks, the ensuing investigation only uncovers fabricated evidence left behind by Okaya that hints towards Kiritaka being Driven to Suicide due to Abusive Parents, which leaves his parents blaming themselves for his death. The only silver lining (which in itself is rather questionable) is that Mari then finds a diary left behind by Kiritaka, where he wrote down all the forms of abuse he had been put through by his bullies, along with the location of a flash drive where he kept recorded evidence on most of them sans Okaya himself. After such a Trauma Conga Line, the revelation that Kiritaka did not commit suicide after all finally drives Mari over the edge, leaving her to decide that simply taking revenge on Kiritaka's bullies is "too soft"; they deserve judgement.
- My Hero Academia opens with a scene of a four-year-old Izuku getting the crap kicked out of him by Katsuki Bakugou before being left, beaten and bruised while noting that "All men are not created equal." The story then jumps to his last year of middle school, where he's mocked by his entire class, has one of prized notebooks scorched and thrown out a window, and is nearly murdered by a supervillain in the span of a few hours. After that, things seem like they'll get better when Izuku meets his idol, All Might, only to be told that it was impossible for him to become a hero without a Quirk, grinding all of Izuku's hopes and dreams into fine powder. Even after he rushes in to help Katsuki (to no avail, mind you), Izuku still gets chewed out by the local heroes and is ready to resign himself to a life of mediocrity. After all of this, this is finally subverted when All Might chases him down to apologize and tell him the five words he wanted to hear his entire life: "You can become a hero."
- The first scene of Natsu e no Tobira has Marion running desperately to stop a Duel to the Death between two of his friends. The following scenes start explaining what led to such a tragedy.
- Neon Genesis Evangelion begins with a brief scene of the Second Impact.
- Pretty Cure All Stars F actually begins this way with Big Bad Supreme actually killing some of the Cures before wiping out the rest and resetting the universe so that she can be the strongest in the universe. Their surprising resurrection with the reset is what kicks off the plot.
- Puella Magi Madoka Magica: The OP Sequence's bright colors and cheerful music make it easy to ignore how the main character is running through the city, lost and in tears, or huddled in bed. There's also the horrifying scene of eldritch destruction in the first few minutes when it immediately cuts to lighthearted scenes with Madoka's family straight out of a standard Slice of Life Magical Girl anime. In hindsight, the third episode shouldn't have been nearly as much a surprise.
- Saki Shinohayu -dawn of age- begins with Shino coming home to dinner and a game of mahjong with her mother and uncle. The next morning, Shino's mother mysteriously disappears, and Shino's goal is to get her to come back by competing in a mahjong tournament.
- The Secret Garden: We don't see it since it's mentioned by other characters, but Mary Lennox's parents have just died, and she has to leave her old home to live with her remaining relatives.
- Sakura Wars (2000), being Darker and Edgier than the video games, has the first episode end with Sakura getting kicked out of the Imperial Flower Division for making everybody, especially Sumire, upset (through ruining a stage production, a press interview session, and wrecking the Kobu). Sakura, rejected and sad, is shown crying and preparing to leave the capital and never return.
- Within the first minute of Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei we see the title character in the middle of a suicide attempt. However, this is played for Black Comedy.
- Seagull Villa Days begins shortly after Mayumi's boyfriend announces that he's getting together with Mayumi's best friend Touko, whom he'd gotten pregnant. As a result, Mayumi's rather depressed about being betrayed by the person closest to her.
- Seraph of the End starts out with a major tragedy that kills off a vast majority of humans as vampires take the rest in like cattle. The first episode ends in a major Tear Jerker when a group of children trying to escape the vampires are all killed horribly aside from the main character.
- The first chapter/episode of Sgt. Frog opens with Fuyuki having a nightmare about a full-scale Keronian invasion of Earth - and Sarge himself actually kills Natsumi!
- Shirobako has a downplayed example. The series begins with Aoi, Ema and Shizuka in their third and final year of high school, Misa in her second and Midori in her first, promising to get jobs in the anime industry together. Fast forward a few years later, and Aoi is working as a production assistant(a job that often amounts to being a gofer), Ema is barely making ends meet as an animator, Shizuka is working as a waitress while trying to get an acting role, Misa has a good job but with a company that has no interest in anime, and Midori is still in college. This serves as an Establishing Series Moment about how the anime industry isn't as glamorous as it seems and it takes a lot of work to realize one's dreams.
- Space Battleship Yamato begins with the Earth getting hit by planet bombs.
- Street Fighter Alpha: Generations begins with the Duel to the Death between a young Akuma and his master Goutetsu, which finishes with the latter's death and the first losing himself to the Satsui no Hado grom then on. It's made worse because Akuma's brother Gouken and girlfriend Sayaka attempt to stop them and fail to reach the place in time.
- The Summer You Were There begins by showing that Shizuku Hoshikawa, the protagonist, is isolated from others out of a belief that she can only hurt other people. The next scene has her complete her web novel, upload the final chapter, delete the entire novel and resolve to kill herself.
- There is an episode of Anime TV de Hakken!! Tamagotchi where Ginjrotchi dies and goes to Heaven. The episode begins right with the ambulance arriving at the hospital and the other Tamagotchis mourning Ginjrotchi's death.
- The first episode of Texhnolyze concludes with the main character getting his right arm and his left leg cut off.
- A Timid Woman Longing For Her Delivery Girl begins with a flashback to how Kei Takase, the main character, left her last job to become a freelancer. Takase had been sexually harassed by a male coworker named Kazama, and while Kazama had been fired, the other employees blamed Takase and thought she should have been fired instead. Since this included Aida, a sempai that Takase had once trusted, Takase ends up quitting and becoming a freelancer who works from home to minimize her contact with other people.
- Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 starts with the earthquake honoring its name.
- The X/1999 TV series starts with a short OVA known as The Omen, which is from the POV of Kakyou Kuzuki. And what's shown through his eyes is how his life has sucked, specially when he can't stop the girl he loves, Hokuto Sumeragi from dying at the hands of Seishirou.
- YuYu Hakusho begins with Yusuke's death. Even though Death Is Cheap here, nobody attending his funeral knew that.
