Emergency Transformation / Anime & Manga

• In Armitage III, Ross has an artificial leg at the beginning. Later in the story more than half of his body is replaced with mechanical parts to save his life.
• In Attack on Titan after beating the Colossal Titan, the survivors of the 104th Training Corps are presented with the Sadistic Choice of using one injection of Titan Serum to save either Armin or Erwin, who are both dying.
• Ayakashi Triangle: When Shirogane is badly wounded, Suzu's attention is divided between healing him and fighting the enemy that caused the injury. She then figures out she can kill two birds with one stone by taking Shirogane into herself temporarily, healing him while giving Suzu the power to defeat their enemy. Later on, it turns out Suzu's Split Personality Kanade went into Shirogane's body when they split to make sure his injury didn't re-open.
• In Black Blood Brothers, this happened to Jiro Mochizuki, when he was turned into a vampire by Alice Eve, prior to the start of the series.
• The entire premise of Bleach, at least for the living characters, hangs on this trope.
  • At the very beginning, Ichigo gets stabbed in the heart by Rukia, giving him her full Shinigami powers. Slightly averted when we are told that his father was also a Shinigami, and hence Ichigo always had those powers, or at least the potential for them.
  • Played straight when, in an effort to regain his Shinigami status, Ichigo visits Urahara, who has his Chain of Fate chopped off, and turned him into a Visored instead... and when this isn't enough to let him defeat Ulquiorra and rescue Orihime from him, he becomes an even MORE powerful hollow....
• In one episode of Blood+, Saya does this with her adoptive younger brother Riku. Despite herself and Haji being shining examples of Friendly Neighborhood Vampires who hunt bad vampires, she beats herself up for it. It is however slightly tragic in that he will never grow up, becoming an undead Pinocchio. Also he pretty much loses his personality, instead becoming a slave with no desire except to serve and protect Saya. Except... the true tragedy is it only kept him alive a little longer- Diva decided to rape and murder him shortly afterward.
  • She also did this once before by accident, on Haji. He's exactly the same as before. In fact, the reason he needed this trope is the same kind behavior afterward.
• Aureolus Izzard attempted to turn Index into a vampire in A Certain Magical Index in order to stop Necessarius from inflicting the periodic memory loss on her. However, he didn't know that Touma had already saved Index from her fate.
• In Code Geass, Jeremiah gets hit with it TWICE. First he's rebuilt after apparently being killed by Kallen, coming back in the first season finale with a major screw loose and angst about being mechanized. After being crushed in his mecha by water pressure at the end of the season, he returns again in season 2, upgraded further, with his sanity intact and no longer concerned with his transformation. Then he has a Heel–Face Turn and becomes even more of a Memetic Badass.
• Rather sad example in D.Gray-Man. How so? Well Allen Walker out of his sadness at his adopted father's death accidentally has him transformed by the Millennium Earl post-mortem, turning him into the skeleton for a human-killing machine. Said skeleton then curses Allen's left eye, before being torn to shreds by the kid's newly awoken powers.
• In Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z, Tao Pai Pai, Doctor Gero, and Freeza go through this, with varying degrees of success. While Tao Pai Pai and Freeza are quickly defeated to show how powerful certain protagonists are or have become, Doctor Gero lasts longer before he's killed by his own androids.
• Franken Fran. Fran's ideal is the preservation of life by all means possible, without much regard for the patient's opinion and a quite elastic definition of 'life'. Body Horror ensues, though surprising enough some of her patients still get a Happy Ending.
• Alphonse Elric, in Fullmetal Alchemist. His entire body is taken by the Gate of Truth, so Ed does the only thing he can and binds his soul to a suit of armor conveniently standing in the corner. This isn't actually permanent. Al gets his real body back four or five years later, at the end of their quest.
• In a later episode of Fullmetal Alchemist (2003), Kimblee starts a chain reaction that will turn Al's armor body into a bomb. Deciding that the only way to save him is to change his composition into something else but lacking the ability to perform a more traditional transmutation, Scar gives up his arm to transfer its valuable contents to Al, making him into a living Philosopher's Stone.
• A common practice in Ghost in the Shell in its various incarnations, with cybernetics being used for repairs or wholesale replacements of the body. Motoko was stated to have been one of the earliest humans saved using a full prosthetic body in this way, after she and Kuze survived a plane crash as children.
• In the first episode of Hellsing, Seras combines this with First-Episode Resurrection. Alucard shoots through her, using a gun that fires explosive shells, to kill the vampire holding her hostage. He at least asks her permission before vampirising her, and this is also an exception to "never ends well" since she doesn't turn evil though she has gone on a couple of Mook killing rampages.
  • This is because she didn't embrace her new nature. Once she did, she got some of Alucard's quirks, like Slasher Smile, open admission of her status as a monster, trolling Integra and offering her to make her a vampire. Of course, it is what Alucard wanted from the very beginning, so it still counts as positive outcome.
• In High School D×D, this is how another being's transformation into an angel or devil generally works, Issei being the primary series example. It does not need to be done to save someone from death, but it can if necessary.
  • Later in the series, this happens to Issei again. He is mortally poisoned with Samael's blood by Shalba shortly before killing him, and so his consciousness/soul is transferred to his Sacred Gear (which is locked in armor form) while Ophis and Great Red create him a new body. He looks the same in the end, but his new body is more Dragon than Human (until he gets converted to a Devil again). He can also shapeshift into a dragon without Juggernaut Drive.
• Horror-like inverted in Inuyasha the seriously ill Princess Sara Asano is in love with Sesshomaru. In order to be with him, she makes a pact with lesser youkai. She gives them their soul so that they merge with her body and give her a new body. But this makes her a creature who is controlled by the lesser youkai.
• Inuyashiki: After accidentally parking their vessel in the wrong dimension and turning two locals into inadvertent interdimensional roadkill, the Sufficiently Advanced Aliens driving the vessel quickly perform a Brain Uploading on both and download them into Ridiculously Human Robot forms before vamoosing from the scene. Unfortunately in their haste to leave the aliens accidentally give both of them combat forms and forget to turn off all the advanced features, which ends up turning a fifty-year old man and a sociopathic teenager into Persons of Mass Destruction. Hilarity Ensues.
• Dio Brando used the Stone Mask to become a vampire in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Part I when Jonathan and the police had him cornered after exposing his attempts to murder George Joestar.
• Kashimashi: Girl Meets Girl: Hazumu's male body was crushed by an alien spaceship, and for whatever reason they rebuilt it as a female one. The strong hints that Hazumu was suffering from gender dysphoria beforehand may or may not have had something to do with this result.
• In The Laughing Vampire by Suehiro Maruo, as the girl Luna is strangled and Left for Dead on a rubbish heap, the protagonist, a teenage male vampire, transforms her — a beautiful scene with fireworks going on in the distance.
• The story of how Fate and Arf met in Lyrical Nanoha as revealed in the second Sound Stage of the first season. Fate finds a dying wolf, and to save her, she turns the wolf into her familiar.
• There's an entire race of humans who have undergone the Emergency Transformation in the works of Leiji Masumodo, "The Machine People." Machine People can be arrogant and cruel, but they can also be wise and sad. How much of your soul cybernetics eats depends on the person and story in question.
• In Mardock Scramble, protagonist Rune Balot, a Disposable Sex Worker, is almost killed by her current boyfriend/employer in a car bomb. Dr. Easter intervenes and saves Balot's life by turning her into a technopathic cyborg. Though he was unable to save her vocal chords, so she is now effectively mute when not controlling speaker systems.
• Played with in Monster Musume. Lala turns a dying a girl into a zombie in chapter 38. Not to prevent her death, but so she won't have to, since the girl will come back to life afterwards.
• In Monster Rancher, monsters can be combined to make a new, stronger monster. The anime played this for drama by having Big Blue volunteer to be combined with Pixie, giving up their own life to save hers.
• Happened in Nightwalker, vampire variation: Shidou has to turn his girlfriend and local Plucky Office Girl, Riho, into a vampire to save her life.
• In One Piece, Franky manages to rebuild himself after being run over by a train. Of course, this merely serves to make him even more awesome.
• Polyphonica has Prinesca Yugiri. After a fatal injury, her father's spirit combined with her, effectively making Prinesca more than human. The most noticeable sign of the change was her blonde hair turning to purple.
• This is how Hiro ended up Waking Up at the Morgue in Princess Resurrection, the titular Monster Princess's Robot Girl accidentally ran him over, so Hime made him her servant with her blood/life essence, incidentally saving his life and making him Nigh-Invulnearable. Likewise this is done for a Mermaid who had given up her voice. She broke the taboo by shouting to save them which resulting in a death curse; and a different member of the Monster Royalty gave his blood/life essence to her.
• In Rosario + Vampire, Tsukune gets repeated emergency transformations anytime Inner Moka isn't able to fight. Then the last attempt at an emergency transformation turned Tsukune into a crazy powerful ghoul. Oops! It takes a succession of holy artifacts, Training from Hell and even more extensive transformations to let him control his power..
• 3×3 Eyes starts with the main character, Yakumo, killed by a pet monster belonging to the last Sanjiyan (Pai). Pai saves him by taking his soul into herself, turning him into a Wu, an immortal being whose mission is to protect the Sanjiyan (if the Sanjiyan is killed, he dies). The Wu still looks human and is free-willed, but becoming one makes him a severe Plot Magnet and he must leave his friends and travel with Pai until they can become human.
• A ton of this in Servamp. A literal necessity in the creation of a subclass, which are vampires made by servamps through feeding a dying human their blood.
• In Sorcerer Stabber Orphen, according to Orphen himself, this happened to his once partner and the local Cool Big Sis Stephanie. She was a male-bodied sorceress whose body was torn apart in a terrible accident and had to be reconstructed from almost zero by the local healers. Right before that she explained her case to them, asked if she could be given a female body and they accepted.
• Inverted in Superwomen in Love!, where the Antinoid Generals can opt out of Defeat Equals Explosion after losing a fight by quickly shifting back into their human forms.
• The plot of Tokyo Ghoul begins with one of these. After being critically injured in a Ghoul attack, Kaneki wakes up in the hospital to learn that he's received an organ transplant from his attacker. Soon enough, he becomes unable to eat normal food and begins noticing strange urges and realizes the surgery turned him into a Half-Human Hybrid. When he finally confronts Mad Scientist Dr. Kanou about turning him into a Ghoul, the doctor justifies it by claiming that either way, doing so saved his life.
• In Transformers Victory, a dying God Ginrai is transformed into Victory Leo, a Mecha Expansion Pack for Star Saber. He goes feral for a bit but eventually snaps out of it. (Since God Ginrai was actually a Combining Mecha formed of Super Ginrai and Godbomber, the inability to separate might have been a factor in the trauma.)
• In Tsubasa -RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE-, Fai almost dies from shock caused by the loss of an eye. He is saved by being turned into a vampire who can only feed from one specific person (Kurogane).
• UQ Holder! uses this as the basis of the plot: the protagonist inadvertently gets himself in the way of a bounty hunter who cuts off his arm and impales him, and his only means of survival is to drink Evangeline's blood to make himself immortal.