Heartbroken Badass / Anime & Manga

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• Guts from Berserk fits this big time. The romance that he had with Casca was cut tragically short by Griffith's actions during the Eclipse, which served to drive her completely insane. Casca's unfortunate condition has completely deprived Guts of the affection he wants from her so badly. And even worse, ever since his personal Beast almost got him to rape her, she wants nothing to do with him anymore, which only further frustrates him. Even after Casca regains her sanity in Elfheim and she does love him the same as before, her Trauma-Induced Amnesia still keeps the two apart.
• Black Jack: All the women who Black Jack has even come close to loving at this point have been already married, enveloped in their careers or more or less turned into a man.
• Bleach: Uryuu, a Quincy capable of defeating Captain-class Shinigami, is considered a novice by his Retired Badass father Ryuuken, whose Refusal of the Call has alienated his idealistic son. It's heavily implied that Ryuuken is trying to protect Uryuu's life from dangerous family secrets. Uryuu mysteriously survived the Quincy King's instigation of The Purge which wiped out all other "impure" Quincies, including his mother, grandmother and father's cousin. Both the loss and continued threat to Uryuu has dictated Ryuuken's behaviour ever since.
• Code Geass:
  • Suzaku Kururugi after Euphemia's death.
  • Kallen, after Lelouch's death. is seen sulking and missing him in both her character song and character poem.
  • A different kind of badass, but Lelouch Lamperouge after Shirley is killed.
• Spike from Cowboy Bebop is pretty much a perfect example of this trope. He loses his love Julia, spends a large part of the series searching for her in vain, and is finally reunited with her in the finale... just in time for her to be shot. This leads to an epic Storming the Castle moment which results in Uncertain Doom for Spike, with a pretty large chance that he's dead.
• Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak High School:
  • Izuru Kamukura maintains a completely bored and apathetic expression for most of his appearances, finding the world to be dull... until the Big Bad murders his love interest Chiaki via a very extensive Cold-Blooded Torture. Walking in and finding her barely alive body and then watching her pass away pushes him to tears for the first and only time in the franchise and sets him on his eventual path to a Heel–Face Turn. Years later, he's shown to still carry around Chiaki's hairpin.
  • Kyosuke Munakata doesn't fare much better, either. Learning that his girlfriend was The Mole after discovering her dead body and then losing his best friend without ever getting the chance to make up with him after The End of the World as We Know It leaves him a broken man at the end of the series, setting off to wander in loneliness.
• A platonic version of it, but Mana/Cure Heart of Doki Doki! PreCure is pretty torn up when Regina suffers from Brainwashed and Crazy. It takes Cure Ace showing up, snatching away her Transformation Trinket and getting her to remember what she's fighting for to get her head back into the game.
• Shizuo Heiwajima of Durarara!! learned the hard way that schoolboy crushes and uncontrollable rage disorders do not mix◊. In his words, "I screwed up."
• Kenshiro is heartbroken when Yuria fails to recognize him when he faces Shin in Fist of the North Star. Subverted, in that it wasn't Yuria at all, it was a doll that looked like her...
• GTO: The Early Years has both badass protagonists undergo heartbreak, at different times.
  • Ryuji lets out a Big "WHY?!" with Manly Tears when Ayumi leaves him, and spends the next few chapters in a funk, only really getting over her when he meets Nagisa.
  • Eikichi is shaken up when Misato reveals she's transgender, but he still showed up to the train station, implying he would have run away with her. When she doesn't show, he's heartbroken, but much more stoic about it than Ryuji was.
• Gundam multiverse loves this, with Disposable Woman and The Lost Lenore at play. The trend was originated long ago since Matilda Ajan and Lalah Sune's deaths in the original Mobile Suit Gundam:
  Amuro: Matilda-saaaannn!!
  • If so, parodied in Gundam Build Fighters by Butt-Monkey Rainer Cziommer, who only want to take down Fellini for stealing his woman.
  • A platonic version is revealed in Gundam Build Fighters Try with original protagonist Sei Iori. The Build Burning Gundam Sekai uses was meant for Reiji so he and Sei could continue their amazing adventures together. However, Reiji never came back, so he hid the Build Burning in a Dom, then sealed it (along with his happy memories of Reiji, as it was put) in the trophy they won. Seeing Sekai blazing through in action with the Build Burning kicked him out of his funk and asked China to give Yuuma a spare Build Burning and give his blessing to Sekai to keep using Build Burning.
• Issei Hyoudou in High School D×D turns out to be this when it's revealed that his heart was still broken when his ex-girlfriend killed him on his first date with her back in volume 1. It took him 6 months (9 volumes in Real Life) to even be able to move on and confess to Rias.
• Land of the Lustrous: Phos is devastated by her failure to save Antarc starting to suffer from a Sanity slippage, vivid hallucinations and overall becoming grimmer. It all comes to a tragic head upon meeting Cairgorn, a fellow gem with a striking resemblance to the late Antarc.
  • Yellow has outlived so many of her partners that she now can't stand the idea of forming attachments and constantly pushes Zericon towards Bortz, who is arguably better at keeping her partners safe.
• Lupin III: Part II: The first time we actually get to see Jigen have a life, she turns out to be a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing ( using Jigen to get rid of Lupin). Jigen gets over it pretty quickly though.
• Seiji from Midori Days, though it's played for laughs. He's so badass that girls are terrified of him, leading to him getting rejected over and over.
• The entire Uchiha clan from Naruto is this due to how their Sharingan works, but Sasuke takes the worst of it.
• Now and Then, Here and There has Elamba, the leader of the Zari-Bars resistance opposing Hellywood. When we meet the guy, he seems to just be a brash, hot-tempered musclehead hungry for a fight, to the point even the other villagers don't really like him. He and his crew have launched multiple assassination attempts on King Hamdo, usually ending in casualties. Shu is furious that Elamba is putting his people at risk and calls him out for it, but Elamba tells him why he's so obsessed,and it's truly gut-wrenching. He watched his family and friends be slaughtered by Hellywood soldiers, with his sister being taken as a slave. When he set out to rescue her, he discovered her animal eaten corpse in the desert. The scars of his past have never stopped haunting him, and fighting for freedom against the evil nation is all that motivates him anymore.
• In Pokémon: The Series the most notable example is when Ash's Grovyle fell in love but was rejected; he had a Heroic BSoD just after. From Bad to Worse, as he evolved into Sceptile immediately afterward, and the shock of rejection made him unable to use his attacks!
  • The Team Rocket trio's Meowth in "Go West, Young Meowth". (Note that he's not usually particularly badass, but he did wear a Badass Longcoat in that episode.) Meowzy rejected him even before she hooked up with the Persian Meowth had just fought.
  • Mewtwo wins here by being both the strongest character by far, and the angstiest by even farther. He can switch between telekinetically throwing the strongest Pokemon around like rag dolls and whining about clones not being accepted by people in the blink of an eye.
• In Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Homura was originally a Moe Shrinking Violet with no friends. Then she met Madoka, who showed her kindness and became her Only Friend. So, when Madoka ultimately ended up dying to defeat Walpurgis, Homura became a Magical Girl to turn back time and protect her. The more times she is forced to turn back time, the more determined she becomes that Madoka not die this time, and the more badass she is.
• Kenshin in the first OVA. Especially the fact that he inadvertently killed Tomoe.
• Ironically, Minako Aino/Mina aka Sailor V aka Sailor Venus, the embodiment of love, in the original anime and manga continuities of Sailor Moon. In the manga, she has to kill her own love interest, with the knowledge that she'll never be successful in love because she will always put her duty first. In the anime, she fell in love with a guy in England only to realize that he was instead in love with her older sister figure, who also loved him.
• Kurumi in School-Live! is the most effective in killing zombies in their group but she remains affected by the death of the upperclassman she had a crush on, who she was forced to kill after he became a zombie.
• Shin Mazinger Zero: Badass Humongous Mecha Ace Pilot Kouji Kabuto was completely heartbroken and devastated when he saw Sayaka getting murdered in a Time Loop.
• D-Boy in Tekkaman Blade essentially slowly become this throughout the story, after losing his whole family member and friends, losing his little sister, experienced getting called as a monster, and losing his family for the second time because he had to kill them all, and the moment that breaks him was when he discovered that he actually can save all of them, had he know how to. At the end of the series, he decided that his old self is dead and killed the last surviving member of his family who has become the leader of the Radam at that point. The end of the series shown him unable to talk or move. Thankfully, he got better in the sequel.
• Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann:
  • Simon, after he sees Kamina kiss Yoko. He snaps out of it thanks to blunt impact from Kamina. Though he winds up becoming this again after Nia's death.
  • Yoko herself, due to Kamina dying shortly afterwards. Much later, history repeats itself with Kittan, but at least she has a little forewarning there. The ending of the show implies that she became so scared of romance as a result, she stayed single for the rest of her days.
• Barnaby Brooks Jr. from Tiger & Bunny. He saw his parents murdered in front of his eyes, believed throughout his life that Jake Martinez was responsible for the murder of his parents even though he wasn't. And then later on, his nanny that has been taking care him since his parents death was killed off and ended up fighting his close colleague thinking he was responsible for the murder of his nanny. And on top of that, he later finds out that the grandfather type figure that he sees as his role model since his parents' death was responsible for his parents' deaths, his nanny's death, and pulling the strings in regards to Ouroboros. This guy really can't take a break in his life.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! has Yami, after Yugi's soul is taken in the second half of season 4 (Atlantis/Doma arc)
• Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds has Jack Atlas falling in love with Carly, which leads to problems when she is killed and revived as a Dark Signer, one of the people Jack is meant to fight against. And then she dies in his arms. And gets better..

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