Fallen Hero / Anime & Manga

Fallen Hero in Anime & Manga.

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• Jinno from Afro Samurai. He was Afro's best friend as they trained together for years, but one night under the Bodhi Tree, he witnessed all of his friends and fellow pupils killed by bandits, and then Afro coldly murdered their master to obtain the No. 2 headband. He blames Afro for everything that happened, and had his ruined body fitted with cybernetics to turn him into a formidable warrior. Before Afro can challenge Justice, he has to fight past his childhood friend.
• Akame ga Kill!: In a rather bizarre inversion, Kurome views Akame as a fallen warrior due to her sister undergoing a Heel–Face Turn and turning against The Empire they both stood for.
• Attack on Titan: Eren Yeager, once the Marley arc comes along, is far from the idealistic young boy that he used to be. After learning that humanity is alive and well outside of Paradis Island, but that those people hate them and seek to kill them all, he has become a ruthless, manipulative young man who is willing to do anything to protect the people of his island from those that want to kill them — even if doing this means committing out and out genocide via unleashing the Wall Titans upon the world.
• Aga Mbadi from Battle Angel Alita: Last Order. He was once a renowned hero around the solar system for hunting down a dangerous terrorist. After being forced to watch the only woman he ever loved slowly die in his arms and acquiring his insane nemesis's brain chip, he has turned into a Manipulative Bastard who considers everyone but himself lower than dirt.
• Griffith of Berserk, once the closest thing the general universe had to a hero, but who is now the fifth member of the demonic Godhand, Femto.
• Bleach: Kugo Ginjo was the first human to become a Substitute Shinigami, years before Ichigo did, and in that function he presumably helped protect the World of the Living by hunting down Hollows and helping the souls of the dead move on to Soul Society. Then one day his allegiance to the Shinigami fell apart after a plot by Tokinada ended with the death of several of Ginjo's Fullbringer friends, leading him to think that Soul Society had betrayed him and the Gotei 13 to think he had gone rogue. After going into hiding, Ginjo would spend the next few years plotting his revenge, only to ultimately die at the hands of Ichigo. While Ichigo influences Ginjo enough that he seemingly abandons revenge and later assists Ichigo shortly before the final battle with Yhwach, it's not until he learns about Tokinada's role in his falling out of grace and subsequently helps fight him during the Can't Fear Your Own World novel that he truly redeems himself and starts to move on with his life (well, afterlife).
• Claymore has plenty of these since every warrior is doomed to eventually succumb to her Superpowered Evil Side. However, the one who fits this trope the best is Priscilla — once a gifted young warrior and Wide-Eyed Idealist, she is now the terrifyingly powerful Big Bad.
• Suzaku Kururugi from Code Geass was the poster boy for what an Eleven can become in Britannian society. When Princess Euphie dies, he turns into the White Grim Reaper. That said, he was already an Anti-Villain in deep denial over what he was really doing working for The Empire, but that is the point he started to cross multiple moral lines in pursuit of his goals.
  • Averted for Lelouch Lamperouge, who chose to be a Dark Messiah Type-4 Anti-Hero the moment he could do anything (i.e., the moment C.C. gave him Geass). It's played straight after the Black Knights' betrayal, which coerces him into abandoning his morality and taking over his father's empire followed by becoming an Evil Overlord. That said, it was partly Invoked for the sake of uniting people in hatred against him and behind the new "Zero" as an Ideal Hero of Justice necessary to push the world into an era of peace.
• Light Yagami, the Villain Protagonist of Death Note, is a hero whose fall is the inciting incident. After finding the Note and realizing he can use it to kill people, he decides to become a god who can purge the world of criminals... and anyone who stands in his way. He becomes enamored with the thrill of hunting down police officers trying to capture him, and eventually his 'utopia' becomes a world where not putting all your work effort into exploiting, gaslighting, and otherwise abusing others is 'criminal'. Despite all this, the arc where he loses his memories indicates that he really was an idealistic, well-meaning person (if still a malignant narcissist who could have been cured) before he found the Note, and he proved that absolute power really does corrupt absolutely.
• Lady Flair in the Dirty Pair Flash universe, a Former WWWA agent and predecessor to the Current Lovely Angels who after a mission goes bad and felt betrayed went on to become an assassin, but makes an heroic sacrifice after realizing the truth of what happened.
• The Big Bad of Drifters is heavily implied to be this. Well, he's actually implied to be Jesus Christ turned Omnicidal Maniac. Plus, some of the Offscouring can qualify - Joan of Arc becoming a homicidal pyromaniac after being burned at the stake, for example.
• Mikado Ryugamine in Durarara!!. The entire show appears to surround their own moral decline.
• Fairy Tail:
  • Jellal, before his brainwashing, was a legitimately heroic young boy, being the leader of the child slaves inside the Tower of Heaven and willingly risking his life to save Erza from torture and accepting it in turn. After Ultear corrupted him, he became the very antithesis of his original self, manipulative and self-serving so that he could revive the supposedly-dead Zeref. Even worse, Zeref was still alive, so all the people he sacrificed were for nothing. After he finally breaks his brainwashing, he's horrified to realize what he's done and most of the world sees him as a horrible terrorist.
  • After having his alignment changed by the effects of Nirvana, it emerged that Hot-Eye of the Oracion-Seis was one of these. He originally just wanted to raise enough money to fund a search for his lost brother, Wally, but was corrupted by decades of collecting oodles of money with a bad crowd. After all is said and done, he calmly accepts incarceration for his deeds while he was a villain, after finding out that the Fairy Tail guild members had met Wally not too long ago, and declares himself happy with the knowledge that he's alive and well.
  • Hades was once a noble Socially Awkward Hero named Precht, who was best friends with Guild master Mavis and was so heroic that he was chosen as her successor of the great wizard guild that would become Fairy Tail. Sadly, he would grow into a Faux Affably Evil Smug Super determined to find the Dark Messiah Zeref after the death of his beloved friend, becoming a monster in the eyes of his old team members for becoming everything he fought against. He was the one who orchestrated Jellal's own fall, for starters.
  • Supposedly, Gray was destined to grow into a villain some time down the line in a Bad Future. In the present, the closest he comes is being The Mole for a group of evil cultists.
• Fate/stay night:
  • Archer, after his contract with the world and later his death, became a Counter Guardian whose sole purpose was the elimination of all humans within areas deemed a "threat to humanity" for all of eternity. Conflicting with his ideal of wanting to save everyone, this led to him eventually craving his own death by killing himself in the past and being erased from existence due to a paradox.
  • In the "Heaven's Feel" route, Saber becomes corrupted into Saber Alter, a ruthless Black Knight with a Social Darwinist mindset that ultimately has to be Mercy Killed. Later materials show that she's actually more of a very dark Anti-Hero, however.
• Fate/Zero:
  • Berserker, dubbed "Black Knight", revealed in the final battle (by King Arthur herself, no less) to be Sir Lancelot.
  • Caster is Gilles de Rais, a knight who fought along side Jeanne d'Arc, before descending into madness after her death and turning into a Serial Killer.
• Fullmetal Alchemist:
  • Scar was once a warrior-priest who dedicated himself to his god Ishvala. However, the Ishvalan Rebellion took his family and the most of his people away from him, leading to him turning his back on his people, his culture and religion's principals and values in favor of his quest for vengeance.
  • Apparently Lieutenant General Raven used to be a kind and very good leader who placed the needs of his men first. Now he's a Insane Admiral who wants immortality.
• In Fushigi Yuugi: Byakko Ibun, a prequel to Fushigi Yuugi, the audience sees a kind and silent man named Nirusha, who helps a much abused little girl to start looking for her place in the world. Towards the end of the chapter, it's revealed that said man is none than the horrifyingly cruel Miboshi from the original series.
• Jujutsu Kaisen: Before the series began, Suguru Geto was once one of the strongest Jujutsu sorcerers of his generation. Unlike his fellow special-grade sorcerers, who were either more concerned with big-picture problems that left little room for aiding the everyday person (Yuki Tsukumo) or just having a good time while showing off how powerful he was (Satoru Gojo), Geto was primarily concerned with protecting the powerless non-sorcerer population. A very tragic series of events ( Namely Riko Amani and Haibara's deaths, several cases of non-sorcerers displaying Fantastic Racism against Sorcerers, the feeling that the only reward he will ever get from protecting non-sorcerers is the deaths of his friends and comrades, and realizing that Curses would cease to exist if all non-sorcerers died) leads to Geto snapping and deciding to create a world of only sorcerers, necessitating the genocide of all regular humans, turning him into the villain seen in the present.
• Oskar Von Reuenthal in Legend of the Galactic Heroes. Particularly tragic, since he did not rebel against Reinhard Von Lohengramm out of genuine malice or ambition, but because he was framed and was too proud to accept punishment for a crime he did not commit. His death is arguably the most senseless and undeserved in the entire series.
• In Magical Project S, the third candidate, Romio, was a former magical girl from Earth, but she was unable to maintain the Good-Evil Balance. Because of this, she became bent on destroying Earth.
• Mobile Fighter G Gundam:
  • Gentle Chapman was one of the most admired Fighters ever, but after old age and an illness caught up with him, he could only win via cheating (perpetrated without his knowledge by his wife). He paid for it by dying...and was revived as a zombie by the Devil Gundam.
  • Master Asia also falls under this. He was formally a part of the Shuffle Alliance, a group that was devoted protecting humanity from self destruction, and Domon Kashu's mentor. But during the previous Gundam Fight, he saw how badly the Fight damaged the Earth and blamed humanity for despoiling their homeworld so carelessly. After meeting the Devil Gundam, he joined its plan to wipe out humanity, believing that it was the best path for life on Earth to survive.
  • Also Devil Gundam. It was built as nanomachine colony to restore Earth's environment, but Ulube wanted to use it as a weapon. When it escaped to Earth, the impact messed with its A.I and turned it into an Eldritch Abomination.
  • Ulube himself seems to fit in as well. He seems to have been genuinely heroic, if proud, until he lost to Master Asia, let his bruised pride get to him, and then began to plot to get more and more power...
• Mobile Suit Gundam 00's Big Bad, Ribbons Almark, seems like this, considering that he was a Gundam Meister who piloted the very first Gundam in the series and saved Setsuna's life. It's actually a subversion, as he was never a hero. The intervention when he saved Setsuna had no glorious goal beyond a field test of the 0 Gundam, and he was supposed to kill all witnesses. He only spared young Soran Ibrahim because he saw the devotion in the young soldier. And this incident triggered his god complex, leading him to become the Big Bad.
• Lady Nagant from My Hero Academia was once a Pro-Hero working directly for the Hero Commission, but was branded a villain and imprisoned in Tartarus after killing another hero. Officially, anyway. Nagant was being used by the Commission as an assassin, killing off potential villains and dissidents before they had a chance to act on such impulses. Lady Nagant did this without question for a little while, but her doubts and guilt grew unbearable until one day she asked the Director of the Commission to put an end to the killings. The Director refused and threatened Lady Nagant. This convinced her to shoot him first, and she was branded a villain for 'unprovoked' murder.
• Nina from My-Otome takes this to its literal extreme. At first, she was the top student in her class with a promising life ahead of her, and then she went crazy when she thought that Arika was trying to steal the man she loved. From there, she accidentally killed one of her best friends when she turned out to be The Mole, and purposefully killed tens of thousands more to prove her devotion, ending with her reputation in tatters, him on his deathbed, and the memories of the two of them ever having met lost forever, and a loss in the final battle that ends with her falling from outer space.
• Naruto:
  • Nagato, aka Pain was born with a special power that marked him as a literal messiah. Inspired by the words of his childhood friends and mentor, he desired to bring about a lasting peace. However, his pacifistic attempts left his friend Yahiko dead and him crippled, shattering his dream. So, he set out to create a new peace, by sharing the pain that he had suffered.
  • Hanzo, his predecessor as the leader of the Hidden Rain Village, also started off with good intentions before he became a Crazy Survivalist.
  • Sasuke Uchiha also becomes one of these over the course of the story.
  • Belive it or not, even Orochimaru qualifies. Although he'd die before admitting it, there was a time before his defection when he legitimately cared about his teammates and fought on behalf of his village. After seeing many people die in war, he became obsessed with gaining immortality and lost any sense of ethics.
  • Obito Uchiha, soon after his "death", became the masked man Tobi.
  • The Nine-Tailed Fox could be argued to be this. One of the legends mentioned about him by Jiraiya and a toad made him out to be some kind of supernatural natural disaster that emerged to punish mankind when they got too evil and sinful. As he's very much sapient, regardless of whether or not he's inside a host, and if there is any truth to the legend, that means he chose to seek out and destroy evil wherever it emerged. Considering that the Tailed Beasts were all thought of as nothing more than convenient power sources to be exploited, that means that he could have eventually gotten tired of that nonsense and played the part of the asshole embodiment of evil that he portrayed himself as to be left alone.
  • Itachi Uchiha is perhaps the most sympathetic example here. He spent his life training and working to become the prodigy of his family. Tragically, this didn't matter much to the Leaf, and so he was forced to throw it all away. He cared for the Uchiha clan, that he killed them all (except Sasuke) so that a civil war wouldn't break out. He took on the life of a traitor, yet died the uncelebrated protector of Konoha. Which later drove Sasuke to seek vengeance against the Leaf later.
• Gendo Ikari from Neon Genesis Evangelion, as once Yui dies, he retreats into himself and becomes a Manipulative Bastard and the Dragon with an Agenda to SEELE.
  • Shinji Ikari from Rebuild of Evangelion fits this much better, as unlike Gendo, he was genuinely saving the world until Gendo tricked him into dooming humanity.
• No Longer Allowed in Another World: Kaoru was originally an otherworlder without a divine gift, but under Elton's tutelage, became Blau Kingdom's most talented knight. After Elton, in a fit of jealousy when he replaced him as the Queen's personal guard, sends him on an Uriah Gambit, Kaoru would survive the event and go on to become the Fallen Angel of Vanity.
• One Piece:
  • Supplemental material explains that Baroque's Works agent Daz Bones aka "Mr. 1" wished to become a superhero (and still wishes to, as shown in Baroque Works' mini-adventure), but ended up becoming a corrupted mercenary.
  • Ashura Doji of Wano Country was once one of Oden's beloved retainers who turned his back on the Kozuki clan and returned to his bandit life shortly after his master's death. Thankfully, in the end he joins back the Akazaya Nine and helps during the Onigashima war.
• Prétear. Along with the revelation that the Princess of Disaster is the current form of the last Prétear, Takako, the show also plays with the possibility that anyone who becomes the Pretear could become the Princess of Disaster. Which naturally leads Himeno Awayuki, the current Prétear, straight into a Heroic BSoD while she sorts it out.
• Puella Magi Madoka Magica has not only one, but two Fallen Heroines. In fact, the story is arguably about the Start of Darkness for one of them. And while we don't see their Start of Darkness, it turns out that every single witch aside from former familiars was once a magical girl.
  • And in Puella Magi Madoka Magica The Movie: Rebellion the movie's protagonist becomes the series's new devil figure.
• Gale Raregroove in Rave Master originally founded Demon Card alongside Gale Glory in order to rid the world of demons, but after both drifted apart, he (now King) began wrecking havoc using the organization, and after a botched attempt from the other Gale to stop them and the losses of his wife and son (though the latter survived), he reformed Demon Card as the number one evil organization we see at the start of the story.
  • Likewise, Pumpkin Doryu was a Demon God who loved humans so much that he founded a human town and acted as its mayor, but when tensions accumulated between humans and sentinoids, he was abused and imprisoned by humans, but eventually obtained the Dark Bring Vampire while in prison. Having witnessed human cruelty firsthand, he decided to create a dark world where no human could survive.
  • Hardner was a cheerful sky pirate and member of the original Blue Guardians, but after most of his comrades, as well as his wife and unborn child (who survived) perished in the Liberal Familia crashland, the despair changed him into the cruel captain of the reformed Blue Guardians who aimed to summon Endless in the world.
• In Revolutionary Girl Utena, Back when he went by Dios Akio used to be an idealistic hero who tried to help everyone he could. Unfortunately the stress of this, his despair at seeing people attack Anthy when she tried to save him, and the loss of his powers led to him becoming the selfish, manipulative, murdering rapist he is by the time the series begins.
• LordGenome of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, who was Simon's predecessor. One of them, anyway.
  • Same goes for Guame, who is Boota's predecessor.
• "Platinum Saber" Leon Cromwell from That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime began as a Hero of humanity, blessed by the fairies to defend against the calamities that would strike at humans. However, his obsession with finding a certain Otherworlder drove him to abandoning his position as a Hero and becoming a Demon Lord, casually summoning multiple children and discarding them when they proved to be the wrong person, unless they proved to have enough resolve that he thought they could be a useful servant like Shizue Izawa. However, as both Leon and his few friends note, he isn't actually that different as a Hero or a Demon Lord. He became a Hero both because he wanted to help people and to find that Otherworlder (his Childhood Friend Chloe), and when it became clear the latter couldn't be achieved as a Hero he turned to the Demon Lord role. His kingdom of El Dorado still views him as the shining beacon of hope and stability, and even the Otherworlder children he didn't conscript into his army were allowed to live in peace on his island continent. His big problem is he doesn't feel the need to explain himself to others, which makes him come across as a callous Evil Overlord.
• Tokyo Ghoul :Re gives two examples, both corrupted by Aogiri Tree over the course of the two-year Time Skip between series. Hinami has gone from The Cutie that did her best to assist the heroes and wanted to live in peace with humans, to a Broken Bird that is a prominent member of Aogiri. She handles their intelligence network, and seems to have lost all compassion for humans. More extreme is the other example, former Plucky Comic Relief Seidou Takizawa. The idealistic Ghoul Investigator was Reforged into a Minion, and has become a deranged Half-Human Hybrid that appears to have lost his humanity as a result of extensive torture. He gleefully explains that I Am a Monster, and goes on a killing spree on the orders of the Big Bad.
• Transformers: Armada has Wheeljack, and depending on who you talk to, Starscream could also be considered as this.
• Übel Blatt: 14 heroes go to fight the Dark Lord. On the way there, 3 die heroically, and upon the entrance of the Evil Lair, 7 of the survivors get cold feet and stay behind. The other 4 go to defeat the villain, winning with great difficulty. Returning home, those heroes get ambushed by their former comrades and are bloodily murdered. They go on to become the "Seven Heroes, who defeated the Dark Lord and the '4 Lances of Betrayal'". The 7 Lances end up going insane with power, but can get away with anything because of their hero status. Though one of the 4 is back and wants revenge.
• Undefeated Bahamut Chronicle: Fugil Arcadia and Arshalia Rei Arcadia teamed up to stop the oppressive Holy Arcadia Empire and the rebels who resorted to increasingly radical and vengeful tactics. Despite their efforts, they could never get the two sides to make peace, causing them to become desperate and resort to more villainous methods. Arshalia created a massive Divine Drag-Ride, Ouroboros, to hypnotize the populace into forgetting their hatred. She also created Sacred Eclipse to both save people and kill those who are a source of conflict. When Sacred Eclipse pointed to her and Fugil as a source of conflict due to the entire world fearing them, she sets Sacred Eclipse to murder indiscriminately so that Fugil can defeat it and be seen as a hero. After she's killed by the rebel faction, Fugil spends millennia using Ouroboros and Sacred Eclipse in a misguided attempt to prove Arshalia's methods correct.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! GX: Judai's Heroic BSoD causes him to transform into the villainous Supreme King once he decides to use evil's methods to fight evil itself, complete with a literal gaggle of Fallen Heroes (evil versions of his normal Elemental Heroes).
• In Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds, Rex Godwin qualifies. Before he became the tyrannical head of Security, he was the legendary Mysterious D-Wheeler who tried to build the Daedalus Bridge and connect Satellite to Neo Domino, hoping to free the residents of Satellite from the oppression of the upper class. But Security had other ideas. When they tried to arrest him, he drove his D-Wheel off the incomplete bridge, vanishing, becoming a martyr to everyone who followed him. In a sense, when he became a Dark Signer, he was a Well-Intentioned Extremist, who sought to put a stop to the conflict between good and evil that seemed doomed to repeat itself endlessly. When he was finally defeated, the Daedalus Bridge was completed as a modern bridge, and stands as a symbol of the man he once was.
• Sensui from YuYu Hakusho. Was a Spirit Detective, and a damn effective one, until he saw the Black Black Club torturing demons for their own amusement, got his hands on Chapter Black, and went insane with the desire to get rid of all of humanity.

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