NOTE: Expect anything in relation to the recent string of natural disasters that befell Tohoku to be prominent in this, since it devastated half of Japan, which almost all anime and manga are sourced from.
Mazinger Z: In episode 17, HolzonV3 unleashed a chain of strong earthquakes left in ruins several Japanese cities and killed a lot of people. Forty years later, after a chain of earthquakes and tsunamis turned several Japanese cities in rubble, that episode looks even more tragic.
And Dr. Kabuto's manor, where he built Mazinger-Z, was located on the Forest of Aokigahara. Why is that relevant? Read and get creeped out. At least it seems clear why Juuzo chose that place: nobody would try to bother him or spy on him.
Getter Robo: In the Getter Robo Go manga, penned in 1991, the Big Bad nuked the city of Sendai out. Flash forward to 2011, when a tsunami has smashed Sendai out and people can not return to the city because a nearby nuclear plant is leaking radioactivity out.
The 70s Super Robot anime Zambot 3 had the Big Bad making people into "human bombs", and detonating them - one even exploded on an airliner and caused it to crash. Horrific even back then, even moreso now with suicide bombings in the news.
Violence Jack: The world went to crap following a major natural disaster. Cool! Did we mention that the disaster took place on September 11, 197-? Oh...
In Neon Genesis Evangelion, when the Japanese government and private corporations create the Jet Alone project, a nuclear powered mecha, as an alternative to the EVA series, NERV hacks the robot's computer system causing a near meltdown and putting an end to the project. This is already harsh enough, when the news breaks that a virus by the name of "Stuxnets" has, apparently successfully, stalled the enrichment of uranium in Iran by sabotaging many pieces of hardware and software critical to the process. In other words, the first known cyberattack to the critical infrastructure of a country, thus raising the chilling prospect that it is now technologically feasible to hack a nuclear power plant and perhaps trigger its reactors to meltdown.
Cowboy Bebop episode "Wild Horses" has an old old Space Shuttle being brought out for one last mission. The shuttle? Columbia. Cartoon Network actually pulled this one off the air for a while after the disaster.
Similarly, the episode "Cowboy Funk" was pulled off the air after the events of September 11th, due to the episode involving the bombing of tall buildings.
The Movie didn't get a release in America until two years later due to its terrorism theme and the fact that the movie was just a few days before 9/11.
Other anime episodes not aired by networks for being too close in subject matter would include an episode of Pokémon in which a skyscraper is destroyed by a giant Tentacruel. I'm not sure that 'close enough to not be aired' counts as 'in any way actually similar'.
Similarly, the episode "Tower of Terror" was banned in North America for almost two years after September 11th, and the episode "A Scare in the Air" was renamed "Spirits in the Sky".
Ironically, that didn't stop the scene of Tentacruel smashing a tower from being in the show's opening for the rest of the Indigo League season.
The Team Rocket vs. Team Plasma two-parters were delayed because of the earthquake in Japan. The special contained such scenes as a Paul-lookalike Plasma Grunt and a Liepard blowing up a building, and James blowing up the city.
A Rescue Team during Episode N deals with evacuating a factory fire, which Team Rocket takes advantage of to steal Pokémon. This becomes much harder to watch after the bombing of the Boston Marathon and the explosion of a factory in Texas in April 2013.
The episode "Palace" begins with Demolishor buried in a desert, taking sniper shots at the Autobots as they struggle to find him. The episode aired during the time of the Beltway sniper attacks.
The later episode "Tactician" begins with a news report of a space shuttle nearly colliding with something in space, which somehow appeared to be an exact duplicate (it turns out to be Jetfire). Two days after the episode aired, the shuttle Columbia disintegrated.
And another one for the WTC September 11th attacks: with another 70s Combining Mecha show, Voltes V. Part of the first episode shows a series of stills showing the invading aliens' armada laying waste on the world's military forces and key cities, and among them was a certain pair of twin towers. What's more disturbing is that this image was flashed right after the montage of the Liberty getting blown up.
In Paprika, Detective Konakawa is tormented in his dreams by the cry of "what about the rest of it?" in regards to a film he started with a friend in school that was left incomplete after he walked away from the project and the friend dies. Satoshi Kon, director of Paprika, died in August 2010 with his next movie incomplete.
In the first episode of Future GPX Cyber FormulaZERO, Hayato and Randoll nearly got killed in the British Grand Prix when their cars collided, Hayato's car went off the track banking and crashed to the ground. Then came the Formula OneSan Marino Grand Prix a month later, in which 2 separate accidents resulted in the deaths of Roland Ratzenberger and 3-time champion Ayrton Senna.
In Macross Frontier: The False Songstress, Alto and Sheryl fall of a cliff with their Segways, but they managed to survive. Less than a year later, Jimi Heselden, the company owner of Segway died in an accident falling off a cliff...while riding his Segway.
Remember Tokyo Magnitude 8.0, the anime which describes a fictional scenario where Tokyo is almost completely destroyed by an earthquake, magnitude 8.0? Well, on March 11, 2011, nature decided to lob Japan with a quake that was 9.0 on the Richter scale.
This is probably the most egregious example, but there are a lot of anime & manga which in some way involve a major earthquake/tsunami devastating Japan. The 9.0 earthquake is to manga what 9/11 is to western comics.
Ditto for Coppelion, which the background story involves Tokyo being destroyed by a nuclear reactor explosion, caused by earthquake destroying its cooling system. It's almost as bad as it can get.
The plot of Kanojo o Mamoru 51 no Houhou deals with the survivors of a sudden massive earthquake.
Most recent example: in episode 10 of Puella Magi Madoka Magica, which aired Friday, March 11 2011, at around 1 or 2AM, the emergence of Walpurgis Night brings forth a ruined, flooded city. Guess what happened around 1PM or 2PM of the same day? It got to the level that the last two episodes were declared Too Soon to be aired, and were broadcast about one month later.
Hayao Miyazaki: It felt really inappropriate to watch Ponyo (it was on cable) wherein one character is chided for freaking out about tsunamis and the title preschool sea spirit causes a fun one; additionally Princess Mononoke ends with a wave of sludge wiping out a human settlement. Ponyo is about a tsunami. Guess what happened on March 11 2011? The second biggest tsunami ever recorded that's what (worst was the tsunami that hit 14 countries in 2004).
The final stretch of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha The MOVIE 1st, which happened in the course of a single day, involved a duel over a devastated city submerged in sea water, a flashback that involved a disastrous power plant meltdown, and a climax where the protagonists had to stop a massive quake caused by the Big Bad. The movie was released in 2010. One year later, Japan was devastated by a 9.0 earthquake that was immediately followed by a tsunami, causing a radiation leak from a nuclear power plant that eventually grew into a level 7 nuclear accident.
Saikano anime ended with the entire planet being destroyed by a massive earthquake. It didn't help that the town was swept away by the tsunami.
Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex features an episode where Togusa visits ruined and flooded Tokyo where rebuilding has barely started despite of years of effort, and where he must keep wary of radiation leaking from a ruined nuclear powerplant. Does this sound at all familiar?
Whitebeard from One Piece has the power to cause earthquakes and tsunamis. He nearly destroys Marine Headquarters. And it gets even worse when Blackbeard takes his power and indirectly sends a Tsunami right into Saobody.
Fans chose the Ruby/Sapphire arc of Pokémon Special via poll to be re-released in wide-ban format. This is the arc where Groudon and Kyogre, two weather-based legendaries, duke it out between each other, causing massive earthquakes and floods *
and droughts
that wreak havoc and destruction all across the Hoenn region. People were even shown crowded and huddling in a shelter. Due to the really bad timing, only the first out of the planned three volumes has been released.
In episode 30 of Digimon Adventure which aired in 1999, Jou makes references to a supposed terrorist bombing in the street outside where the Chosen Children all once lived, a coverup story for the events of the Pilot Movie. To add salt to the wound, in the dub he claims: "It was one of the worst terrorist attacks of all time!"
In episode 32 of Digimon Adventure, the Chosen Children fought DeathMeramon on Tokyo Tower, whose sheer heat output caused the top of the tower to bend and warp. Twelve years later, the 2011 Tohoku earthquake actually physically bent Tokyo Tower's top spire.
In episode 48 of Digimon Adventure, Mugendramon ordered a bombing attack on the entirety of a Digital World city, the first scene of which shown was the destruction of a pair of skyscrapers. The city in the Digital World was a pastiche of several cities from around over the world, so a simulacrum of the World Trade Center may have been the towers in question. That episode hasn't been aired in reruns in some time.
In Digimon Tamers, Tokyo's City Hall was damaged by an explosion midway up its length caused by a digimon attack. The building is a twin tower, and the episode was aired on the 9th of September of 2001. The dub understandably edited the explosions when it aired in the USA in December of the same year.
Digimon Xros Wars may well have outdone all of the above: in episode 30, Taiki and Shoutmon have returned to Tokyo only to find that Tactimon is on the rampage, obliterating buildings and even destroying a bridge. The 2011 Tohoku earthquake struck just three days later.
Similar to the Madoka Magica example above, the episode of Digimon Xros Wars that aired had tactimon turn gigantic and do masive destruction of the city they were in, including cleaving a bridge in half. The earthquake/tsunami combo that affected Japan happened just a few days later.
Tadashi Kawashima, the writer of Alive The Final Evolution died of liver cancer, and wrote the last few chapters from his hospital bed. Ordinarily, Author Existence Failure is tragic enough. However, death is a very strong recurring theme in the manga, with the driving force of the plot being a Happening-esque "suicide virus".
The OVA Series Bubblegum Crash has got a bizarre coincidence. In the last episode, the heroes desperately fight to prevent an attack on a Japanese power plant which could not be deactivated in the right time to prevent damage. This attack could cause a meltdown which could irradiate many parts of Japan and threatens Tokyo directly. In a really bizarre, macabre coincidence, one of the 3 writers of the series has the last name "Fukushima".
Yoshinobu Nishizaki, producer of the iconic anime television series Space Battleship Yamato passed away on November 7, 2010 after falling off his steamboat ironically named Yamato.
Even worse, some sources are claiming that she hates smut and never wanted to write it in the first place.
Area 88 centers around a civil war in the north African nation of Asran, in which a family of autocrats deploys foreign mercenaries against its opponents. Area 88 ran from 1979-1985, but its plot sounds similar to the 2011 civil strife in Libya, down to the use of mercenaries.
When Naruto first defeated Neji in the chuunin exam, he convinced him that he isn't bound by fate, just as Naruto is able to defeat him even though he is a failure, while Neji is born with a pedigree that makes him strong. Later we learn that Naruto's father was the Fourth Hokage (arguably the most powerful Hokage to live), and his mother came from a clan that was related to the first two Hokages, making his pedigree even better than Neji's, and meaning that if fate existed, it was fated for Neji to be defeated by Naruto. What makes this worse is that Naruto is The Chosen One of a prophecy, destined to either save the world or destroy it. No matter which way you spin it, Neji turned out to be right in the end.
Neji does, however, think to himself after learning the truth behind his father's death, that it's not always certain whether a person's actions can change their destiny, and regardless of what they do, the outcome might be the same. He undergoes Character Development, but with the caveat that he still seems to believe that there are some things that are impossible to change.
While it is true Naruto is eventually revealed to be The Messiah from a prophecy, thus leading Neji to be fatefully defeated, and also taking his stronger pedigree into account as well, it actually means nothing if you don't work for it either. This is the true point of Itachi's message to Naruto in 552.
Nagato/Pain's plan involved using the combined power of all 9 tailed Beasts within the Gedou Mazou statue, so that he can use a kinjutsu powerful enough to wipe out a nation, pressuring people to peace, for prolonged periods of time. Already it sounds disturbing, so that could possibly be worse than that? Well, in chapter 594, Tobi revealed that the Gedou Mazou is a vessel for the Ten-Tailed Beast! Meaning Nagato would have revived a demon whose chakra is so evil and foul it endangered the world by existing, planned to only use it as a weapon to use to wipe out a nation and leave ituntil war broke out again and one side got to it first, would have reintroduced the world to unspeakable horrors, all in the name of world peace. Nagato would have likely learned very harshly that Evil Is Not a Toy, since Kurama/Nine-Tails itself said the Ten-Tails formed entire continents and swallowed oceans. When Minato told Naruto that Nagato was probably an Unwitting Pawn to Tobi, he wasn't kidding.
By the way, he used to use that THING as a combat summon.
It seemed like a running gag, with Kakashi’s chronic lateness and horrible excuses combined with Naruto and Sakura’s shouts of “Liar!” Getting a lot of laughs out of us… but then we find out later that Kakashi’s real reason for being late is that he visits the memorial stone every day in honor of his dead best friend. He stays there for HOURS lost in thought, and even TALKS to it like he’s talking to Obito. Oh, and those lame excuses? They were Obito’s. Using them is in effect, Kakashi’s way of keeping Obito’s memory alive.
This becomes even more depressing when Kakashi finds out that Obito is still alive, and is evil, since Obito is the reason Kakashi is the person he is today… so in effect, everything in Kakashi’s life that he believed in has become a lie.
In Chapter 244, After Kakashi passes out while fighting the Rock ninjas, and having to leave Obito behind under a oile of rubble, Two sentences come up, "Have I died?" and "Where am I?" The first happened on a black screen after Kakashi passed out. The second appears right after that on the next page on a star filled sky, we see Kakashi wake up, and assume he thought those words. In Chapter 601 (YEARS later in-story and in the real world) those words are repeated as Tobi flashes back to when he awoke half-dead, and missing his right half of his body, Madara having saved him.
In Fullmetal Alchemist, Mustang tells Hughes that the soldiers who won't shut up about their girls back home always die. Surprise, he was right, just years later, in a death that involved both the girl he was talking about, and was shot to death, where directly after making this comment, Mustang makes a gun motion at him.
Shou Tucker's transmutation on Nina to make a talking chimera. One has the nasty feeling that someone out there did a better job. Guess what?
If one were to watch the 2003 anime version prior to reading the manga or watching Brotherhood, the scene where King Bradley (a.k.a. Pride) kills his son gets a sense of irony in the manga when the kid's revealed to be a homuculus himself, namely Pride.
In-universe example: In Hellsing, there's a scene during which Enrico Maxwell, the head of Iscariot, is being chewed out by Integra Hellsing for allowing her men to be killed by Alexander Anderson. He responds by saying, "Two men? If we killed two million of your worthless Protestant scum I would not have shed a single tear." It becomes a whole lot scarier in hindsight when that's exactly what he does. The killing people, not shedding tears.
Also Jan Valentine said that he planned to kill Integra and violate her corpse afterwards. Later, we find out that thugs did the same thing to Seras's mom.
Natsuki Takaya is the queen of this trope with Fruits Basket and Hoshi wa Utau. Yuki takes the cake with: "There was something I wanted, something I envisioned, loving parents, a happy home with everyone smiling at me. A home that no one would ever want to leave, a warm place, a warm person. It exists, I know it does." When we first meet him it's beginning to become true, but later in the manga, it becomes clear how he became SO desperate for it.
In Durarara!!, Celty describes Shizuo's level of strength to a reporter by saying, "You know how, no matter how good a martial artist is, you can just shoot him and it's all over? Shizuo's the gun." The pithy line seems to take on a much darker meaning in a later arc when Horada nearly kills Shizuo doing exactly that.
Way back around Volume 7 of Mahou Sensei Negima!, Negi reveals his past: how, when he was four, he tried several times to get himself into danger so his Disappeared Dad would show up and rescue him. One night, a horde of demons attacked his village, turning many people to stone and slaughtering the rest. With only Negi and his cousin Nekane alive, his dad Nagi did show up and fight off the demons. Ever since, Negi felt that the entire thing was his fault, and that it was some divine punishment for his earlier actions. Asuna calls him an idiot and says that it couldn't possibly been his fault; one four-year-old cannot inadvertantly catch the attention of a demon horde. And then, late in the Magic World Arc, we find out that the demon attack was specifically an assassination attempt on Negi's life, made by the Megalomesembrian Senate because Negi was the son of two of the Senate's most powerful enemies. So, in short, the massacre was Negi's fault; they came there and butchered everyone specifically to try to kill him.
In The Prince of Tennis, Ryoma oversleeps and arrives late to a match, and when asked he says "I was helping a pregnant woman to the hospital." Later in the story Oishi makes the same excuse, but he was actually telling the truth...and since he caught the soon-to-be-mom when she fell down a flight of stairs, he got a serious injury in his arm.
Many Monster of the Week Digimon in Digimon Savers were good Digimon in prior series. Some fans were horrified about old favorites getting creamed by the new heroes.
In the series Air, MisuzuKamio's body eventually debilitates in a way very similar to a cancer patient, and dies in the arms of her adoptive mother/aunt, Haruko. It gets worse after her seiyuu, Tomoko Kawakami, died of ovarian cancer a few years later on June 9, 2011.
Tadashi Kawashima, the writer of Alive The Final Evolution died of liver cancer, and wrote the last few chapters from his hospital bed. Ordinarily, Author Existence Failure is tragic enough. However, death is a very strong recurring theme in the manga, with the driving force of the plot being a Happening-esque "suicide virus".
Broly, in the climax of Dragon Ball Z Movie 8, says to Goku after being powered up by his friends "No matter how much power you absorb from those idiots, it won't be enough to kill me!" Movie 10 reveals that Broly was actually quite correct about that statement (at least in regards to being killed by Goku's power increase, although just barely).
In Elfen Lied, Kouta's sister, Kanae, tries to tell him that Lucy kills people. This ends up in a rather depressing scene where Kouta yells-at and slaps his sister; his final words to her were "Apologize to her! If you don't I'll hate you!" Immediately after, Lucy brutally kills her right in front of him. The fact that those were his last words to his little sister, who was telling the truth the whole time and whose Famous Last Words were a plea for him not to hate her ("No, Kouta! Please don't say you hate me!"), is pretty damn harsh in hindsight.
In the early chapter of Gunslinger Girl, we get Henrietta making it clear that she would kill herself if Jose stopped caring about her. It's heart-warming at the time, in a weird way, but becomes much worse when Jose, knowing that Henrietta will never be able to feel anything towards him after she was restored to the factory settings, kills her (and himself).
In 2010, Bang Zoom CEO Eric P. Sherman stated that the studio will stop dubbing anime due to internet piracy. Two years later, Bandai Entertainment, Bang Zoom!'s last largest client for their dubs, will shut down DVD/BD distribution. Good job "fans," now there will be no more anime dubs coming from Bang Zoom!
Oh, Bang Zoom's still active. They're dubbing anime for Aniplex of America (e.g. Puella Magi Madoka Magica) and Sentai Filmworks (e.g. K-On!).
In-universe example: In Rosario + Vampire, the Security Committee wanted Tsukune's blood just because he was human. In the second serialization, we find out why. Turns out their leader at the time was actually a mole for Fairy Tail and was even willing to put the entire Security Committee at risk by murdering Tsukune. This means that if Tsukune died and the Security Committee was eventually caught afterward, Fairy Tail would've won for sure.
In Code Geass's episode 19, Kallen claim that Euphemia is a useless puppet princess of Britannia who can't make any decisions of her own. Some episodes later, Euphie gets killed after being accidentally mind controlled by Lelouch (himself a rebellious member of the Britannian nobility) and stripped of her free will. ... Ooops?
In Bleach, Ishida once says: "Tell Aizen that a Quincy has come! For the one you truly have to fear is not a Shinigami but a Quincy!" Flashforward to several arcs later... where the final arc villains are the Vandenreich Quincies, who devastate both Hueco Mundo and Soul Society in truly merciless invasions.
Science Ninja Team Gatchaman episode Farewell, Red Impulse. The title character gives up his life to save the world, including his son who just learned his father isn't dead as he believed for several years. It makes the episodes he appears in earlier in the series much more painful, especially the occasional rivalry between G-1 the son and Red Impulse.note In Japanese culture, Kentarou "Red Impulse" Washio leaving his son Ken behind as a child to secure his future, by securing the world's future, is one of the most selfless things he could have done, considering the Japanese stance on family and its importance to society; here, however, he's viewed as a neglectful or even abusive father who left his child behind to throw himself into his mission for years, and then dies when he's about to come back.
While Bokurano is already quite harsh, there are still instances in which remarks become harsher once you look back on them. For example, when Ushiro accuses one of the pilots of getting cold feet, Misumi admonishes him, saying that "Everyone's scared." When you consider that she's his mother and is all but certain that her son is going to die, you can see that she's referring to herself and her comment has more weight.
