Hero Of Another Story / Anime & Manga

• A Place Further than the Universe: While Kimari is off on her adventure in Antarctica, Megumi, her childhood friend, goes on her own adventure at the Arctic following Kimari's example to be adventurous and independent.
• Played for laughs in Ben-To as Satou muses about his own uneventful life so far:
  Satou: Other than that my life's been pretty boring, especially compared to my pal Ishioka from Junior High. That guy's got enough material for a prime-time TV show that'd sell millions of DVDs.
• With its massive cast and complex backstory, Bleach has some subplots that could easily become entire manga series of their own:
  • Uryu Ishida is the protagonist of the story of the Quincy Clan's rise and fall and his quest to reclaim his family's heritage. He serves as an important Foil for Ichigo so his story runs parallel to, rather than within, the main plotline. In the Thousand Year Blood War arc, he even becomes the Unexpected Successor to the Quincy Emperor Yhwach.
  • Toushirou Hitsugaya is a prodigy who rose to captain in record time. He gets an unusually well-developed personality and backstory separate from Ichigo's plotline. He also shares time with a gaggle of less powerful characters during the Soul Society arc, including childhood friend Momo and subordinate Rangiku. This group of characters has a far more personal connection to the bad guys than Ichigo does, and some of their stories play out while Ichigo is otherwise occupied before the focus switches back to Ichigo for the final battle. Hitsugaya's history of unusual power at a young age and having to cope with the alienation it causes is even parallel to that of Aizen's: the difference between them being that Hitsugaya came through the other side having found a place, friends and allies, whereas Aizen felt so alienated, he turned his back on everyone and the world instead.
  • Kisuke Urahara, as Ichigo's Mysterious Backer, alludes to an extensive offscreen history of rivalry with Aizen, with Ichigo's involvement beginning only later. He's also got a decades-long history with Isshin and Ryuuken that is only explored in the Final Arc.
  • Yamamoto was already a warrior of great renown 2000 years before the main story, and built much of the present Soul Society around himself. In particular he established the Shinigami Academy, which has trained the vast majority of Shinigami for the last 2000 years. His body is covered in a road map of old scars, each one of which presumably has a story behind it (we know the scars on his forehead do). Yamamoto's millennium-long struggle with Yhwach, the Quincy Emperor, gives the Thousand Year Blood War arc its name but is mostly unexplained.
• Chiaki from Bodacious Space Pirates. She has her ship that she works on with her dad, and does a lot of things which often forces her to suffer from being Out of Focus (despite appearing prominently in the opening and ending sequences). She also fills in for Marika's pirate role in some episodes while the real one is working on a more covert mission.
• Touya, the main character’s brother, from Cardcaptor Sakura, has some magical powers of his own that are distinct from his sister’s, which allow him to deduce that Sakura has become a Magical Girl despite her attempts to keep it secret as well as that Yukito and Mirror are not human. He also has a backstory with several other magical people, including Kaho and Yukito, long before his sister found the Book of Clow, and towards the end, he gets more character development than pretty much anyone except Sakura herself. Fans often joke that if he had been the Cardcaptor instead of Sakura, the series would be half its length.
• A Certain Magical Index:
  • Every time Gunha Sogiita is shown, he's fighting criminals, helping people, etc. Amusingly, he thinks he's the main character and The Hero, and is completely unaware of the main plot.
  • Mikoto Misaka, who is only around for a few episodes, gets her own show in the Spin-Off A Certain Scientific Railgun.
• Digimon Tamers had Ryo, a character with a fairly small role in the grand scheme of the Tamers story, but who was literally the hero of another story (a set of video games that were never released in the west)
• In Dog Days, most of the plot involves non-fatal sports-like "war" (where literally Nobody Can Die) and the Ordinary High-School Student becoming "the Hero" while Trapped in Another World. Two of the characters in that world, a samurai and ninja partner team (Lady Brioche and her subordinate Yukikaze), are hunters of monsters and demons. While two episodes of the plot deal with a similar entity, even the monster that the main characters fight are redeemable as opposed to the untold Darker and Edgier dealings they handle. They are polite and make gestures at helping the main characters, but it's clear they normally deal with things on a totally different level, and aren't nearly using their full abilities at the games the rest of the cast are playing.
• The Universal Survival Tournament in Dragon Ball Super involves the champions of several universes taking place in a massive battle royal, where Goku and the gang are just one of the teams involved. Naturally, this means that heroes from the other universes are fighting for their own survival, such as the superheroic Pride Troopers of Universe 11, and the magical girl Kamikaze Fireballs of Universe 2. We're only given fleeting glimpses of their universes in the lead up to the tournament, but it's clear they all have other issues and adversaries to contend with in their own stories.
• Fate/kaleid liner PRISMA☆ILLYA: Shirou Emiya, Miyu's older brother and the person who kick-started the plot by sending her to Illya's world. His significance is revealed late in 3rei, where his past is explored through a flashback. In contrast with the Illya's more idealistic story about her struggles as a Magical Girl, his is a darker one focusing on his time as a participant of the Holy Grail War and his life-and-death battle against the Ainsworths to save his sister.
• The Turning Red spinoff 4★Town 4★Real, follows 4*Town with cameos from Jin, Ming and Mei at various points.
• In GANTZ, after following for quite a long time the adventures of a team of fighters from Tokyo, we learn that there's another team in Osaka. And then one in Rome. And in Germany, the USA, etc... Basically, there are GANTZ teams everywhere on the globe, often stronger and more experienced than the Tokyo team.
• The Gundam franchise has quite a few, thanks in part to the substantial lore, Expanded Universe material, and a number of characters that have popped up over the decades. Among the most notable is Kai Shiden, a supporting character from the original Mobile Suit Gundam who, in addition to returning as a veritable badass in Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam as part Intrepid Reporter, part James Bond, has a number of side stories and manga following his off-screen exploits such as the Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam Day After Tomorrow manga.
• Haikyuu!!: Due to the nature of the show, any opponent team Karasuno is playing against gets their fair share of highlights, flashbacks, and character moments throughout their arcs, showing that they are also the heroes of their stories. A clearer example is during the Nationals arc when Karasuno and Inarizaki's game gets put on the backburner for a while to focus on Nekoma's match against Sarukawa Tech. Justified, as it is setting up to the upcoming match of Karasuno vs Nekoma which is the most-anticipated arc of the series since the beginning.
• Hajime no Ippo: Many of Kamogawa Gym's opponents get a fair amount of focus during each arc, and the series usually gives an in-depth look at their gym, their aspirations, their friends and family, and the people coaching them.
• The Ojou Tsuruya of Haruhi Suzumiya. In addition to flat-out calling Unreliable Narrator Kyon on being bad at upholding the Masquerade (but says that she's content to sit back and watch the antics), she is in possession of at least one potential plot coupon and it is known that her (apparently stupidly rich) family are one of the financial supporters of Koizumi's Organization.
• In the Hayate the Combat Butler manga, it seems like Hayate's older brother is shaping up to this. We haven't actually seen him yet, but we've met a few people he helped, years ago.
• In Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?, there is the main protagonist Bell who works as an adventurer as part of the Hestia Familia. Thing is, Hestia Familia isn't unique, and in fact are rookies, and there are plenty of adventurers besides Bell, each up to their own adventure of varying interest and excitement. Loki Familia in particular has their own spin-off series.
• Kaguya-sama: Love Is War:
  • Momo Ryuju is implied to have quite the past with Shirogane due to their time together on the previous student council with him alluding to her owing him a favor during the culture festival arc, mention is made of something happening in the backstory involving Tsubame keeping her from dropping out of school, she's the only one of the four Impossible Girls that is never given any explanation as to why she always turns boys who ask her out down, and she is shown to have something of a hostile relationship with the even less seen Kojima. Despite all of these potential storylines, she barely shows up during the story proper. The author even went on record in an interview that if he ever wrote a hypothetical Kaguya-sama Zero she would be the female lead.
  • Played for Laughs with Go Kazamatsuri, who is mentioned in his character profile to be the assistant of a famous detective who helped solve many cases including the disappearance of his older brother, in addition to being one of the few impures attending Shuchi'in. All of this is only barely alluded to in-series with him basically just existing to show that Shirogane has friends outside the Student Council and (in the spin-off) have a crush on Erika.
  • The Four Ramen Emperors of Tokyo are shown to be the elites of an entire subculture that exists within the series' world that could very easily be the subject of its own food themed manga, but the main cast is barely aware of their existence and only Fujiwara has any meaningful interactions with them (and even then, she has no idea what's going on when she does).
• The setting of Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! takes place in the year 2051, and the first major project the titular trio takes on is based on the Mini-Mecha owned by their school's Robot Club, which has been active with members to the present time since the 1800s.
  • There are many other clubs at the school who get up to their own bizarre shenanigans and have similar obstacles to contend to. The titular club is just the one the audience is following and has only recently formed.
• Kino's Journey: Kino meets a male counterpart, an exiled prince with a talking dog. They go their separate ways after one chapter. In the novels that the anime is based on he is one of the main heroes as he appears in stories of his own, all of which are narrated by his dog, Riku. This trope still does apply though, in that every once in a while he will cross paths with Kino and these stories are never narrated by Riku and are told in the third person, just like all the stories that focus on Kino. The same trope also applies to Shishou (or "master"), the woman who taught Kino and used to go on travels of her own. In the anime, we only see her as an old woman, once in a flashback during the main 13 episodes and during the movie ~Life Goes On~, which is set during the time Kino is living with her, but the novels include stories about the travels of a much younger Shishou and her unnamed student.
• This occurs frequently in the Leijiverse. Captain Harlock and Queen Emeraldas occasionally have made either been referenced or made cameo appearances in Galaxy Express 999 and Galaxy Railways. The Space Battleship Yamato had a very brief cameo in Harlock Saga as well as in the Galaxy Express 999 manga. In all such cases, however, the crew of the Yamato is never seen.
• Lyrical Nanoha:
  • Major Genya Nakajima, commander of Ground Forces Unit 108. There to lend additional assistance when the heroes need help on an investigation, or to provide a Red Shirt Army to protect against The Siege while the heroes go off to handle the named villains.
  • Chrono Harlaown starts out as one of the main characters but becomes a stronger and stronger version of this trope as the series goes on, culminating in his apparent leadership of a large portion of the TSAB's Navy but barely being a part of the story in StrikerS.
  • Inspector Acous, also of StrikerS, likewise gives the impression of staring in his own story; which only briefly intersects with the main characters despite having the same bad guys. Ditto for Sister Schach, who apparently teams up with Acous about halfway through the series.
• Basically every king candidate in Magi: Labyrinth of Magic. They all start their adventure by completing a dungeon and gather True Companions in the form of a household and they go to live their own adventure while at times meeting other king candidates.
  • Among them, Sinbad is the paragon of this trope. He has lived countless adventures already when the story begins and is known in the universe as The Hero. He even gets his own spin-off to tell his adventures.
• The big sister of the main character of Mayoi Neko Overrun! tends to go missing for several days and return with heroic tales to tell.
• The main characters of Mei Company are a Cleanup Crew. Magical Girl Warriors battle monsters in the background and Mei Company often watches and comments on them before moving in to clean up the battlefield after they leave.
• Yu Takeyama/Mount Lady from My Hero Academia. Her first day as a pro hero is at the very beginning of the series, where she establishes herself as a Glory Hound. Eventually, her desire for fame develops more into a desire to give encouragement to the public that she's keeping society safe, and she's one of the few heroes who stays at her job when public opinion on them has become negative. The fact that she starts her job at the beginning of the series technically makes the series her journey almost as much as the protagonists'.
• Maria from My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! takes this quite literally. When the world was just a normal otome game, she was the main character of the story, with each of the main guys being her love interests and Catarina being the nastiest of her romantic rivals. However, after the memory situation with Catarina, her role has been flipped, and instead, she has become a love interest for Catarina, with her former love interests and the rivals for said love interests becoming rivals for Catarina's love now.
• Naruto:
  • Gaara was introduced during the Chunin Exams. One can only imagine the story of how he went from the repentant Dark Magical Guy to the most loved man in his home village.
  • There are also at least 3 other teams that we rarely see in the show, and they're all implied to be out fighting their own battles offscreen.
  • Also Killer B, who was hated/feared as a child (due to having the Eight-tails inside him) and is now considered a hero in his village.
  • Or even Kakashi during the 12 years in between Naruto's birth and the start of the story. We know that he went from being an undoubtedly heartbroken, traumatized teenager to a relatively well-adjusted adult who is highly respected within the village. How did he become this man after losing everyone he loved? Why did he quit ANBU?
    • Fortunately for fans, the anime did run an arc detailing the life of Kakashi's missing years.
  • Hanabi, Hinata's younger sister, actually got a two-episode anime-exclusive arc dealing with how she came to be the heiress to the Hyuga Clan. Parts of the story are actually flashbacks to earlier episodes (such as the Chūnin Exam arc) retold from Hanabi's perspective.
• Negima! Magister Negi Magi:
  • Practically every other member of class 3-A counts. There's a vampire that has lost her powers and been sealed in the school, a Robot Girl who works for said vampire, a half-demon swordswoman hired to protect the heir to a magic association, said heir to the magic association who has been kept in the dark about her powers, an ex-priestess turned sniper for hire, a mysterious acrobat who isn't completely human and rarely speaks, a Mad Scientist who developed and maintains the aforementioned robot, a ninja, a Cute Ghost Girl, a martial artist who won the school's annual martial arts tournament the year before, a pair of bookworms who regularly explore a giant library filled with traps, a rumormonger who explores said giant library with the aforementioned bookworms, a net idol who keeps her pastimes secret from her classmates, and a time-traveling martian from the future who is descended from the main character. And that's not even acknowledging the more normal characters like the cheerleaders, the gymnast, or the basketball player. There are even a few chapters that focus on delivering the message that everyone is the hero of their own story.
  • When Rakan shows the class Negi's Dad's story in the Paru-sama's theatre, one gets the impression that this is the abridged version of a potentially epic shounen story in its own right.
  • Invoked in a scene with Ako.
    Negi: We are all the main characters of our own story.
• Ryoji Kaji from Neon Genesis Evangelion qualifies. His investigation of the Instrumentality Council happens almost entirely offscreen but is implied to have been a long and convoluted project of his, complete with at least two "supporting" characters.
• One Piece:
  • Any D is the Hero Of Another Story. Ace is the most notable, with an arc driving about a third of the series. However, Blackbeard qualifies, from a Villain Protagonist perspective, performing feats like deposing King Wapol, breaking in to Impel Down, and joining the Battle of Marineford.
  • In the manga, the entire crew sans Luffy get demoted to heroes of other stories during the consecutive Amazon Lily, Impel Down and Marineford Arcs as they basically each become the hero of a different island so Luffy can have an adventure with a fresh supporting cast. This differs from the normal split up arcs because we don't get to see the crew's stories while they are away, it's just implied with sparse glimpses and tellings. However, in the anime, they each get episodes explaining this more in-depth every so often while the story still mainly follows Luffy. This stops at the Return to Shabody Arc.
  • The Eleven Supernovas: they are all the rookie pirates that have started their journey through the Grand Line but managed to amass serious bounties and by coincidence, all happened to be on Shabaody at the same time. In total, they are nine pirate crews, including the protagonists^note Two of the Supernovas are subordinates of the others - Zoro to Luffy and Killer to Eustass Kidd. They all had their offscreen journey, their wacky crews, their own dreams. During the arc, they all have their own battles with marine forces. During the time skip, they also continued to have their adventures in the New World and now that the Straw Hats are heading there, the others are becoming plot-important — Trafalgar Law achieved the title of Warlord of the Sea during the timeskip, then joined forces with Luffy to take down Doflamingo and then Emperor Kaido. Eustass Kid (with Killer), Scratchmen Appo and Basil Hawkins also allied themselves to take down Shanks. Jewelry Bonney had an unfortunate run-in with Blackbeard and Akainu, but managed to escape and, post-timeskip, infiltrate the Levely. Urouge actually managed to start a fight in Big Mom's territory way before Luffy arrived, during the timeskip, and took down a Sweet Commander, one of the strongest members of the Emperor's crew. Bege became a vassal of Big Mom's crew through marrying her daughter Chiffon and having a child with her. X Drake went to the favorite island of Emperor Kaido to pick a fight and ended up becoming a member of the Beast Pirates' Tobiroppo, the third-strongest in the crew behind Kaido and the All-Stars.
  • There's also Red-Haired Shanks and his crew, who've been going on adventures since before the beginning of the story and still do so while playing a major part in the overall Myth Arc. At this point in the story, Shanks is one of the most powerful pirates in the world.
  • The members of the Marines are this; for example, Smoker, who has been chasing Luffy since encountering him. Every time he has been seen since then, he has had a new rank, safe for the Summit War. Post-timeskip, he's become a vice-admiral. Another example is Aokiji/Kuzan, who manipulated first the news after Enies Lobby in favor of the Franky Family, and, after resigning, apparently is investigating the Underworld to the extent of being an associate to Blackbeard. Finally, there are Coby and Helmeppo, who even have their own cover story arc.
  • It's noted that in the background of the pirate adventures, there's a group known as the Revolutionary Army that actively opposes the World Government and seeks to overthrow its corrupt leaders. However, even 1000 chapters deep, they've had only minor overall impact on the journey of the Straw Hats, despite the fact the group's leader is Luffy's biological father and its second-in-command is one of Luffy's blood brothers, Sabo. For perspective, it took more than 900 chapters before their commanders even showed up.
  • The manga often has little mini-arcs contained within each chapter's title page) dedicated to characters the Straw Hats encountered (usually the villains) showing where they are now. Examples include Eneru finally reaching the Moon, taking out a band of Space Pirates and finally ruling over the moon with a group of ancient robots as his subjects, Wapol's Rags to Riches story after he's flung to another island by Luffy and has to start all over, and Caribou getting caught up in a revolution against Kaido.
• Patlabor: Special Vehicles Division 1, led by recurring character Captain Shinobu Nagumo, is described as The Ace but is rarely seen; most of the franchise focuses on the Ragtag Bunch of Misfits that is Division 2, led by Captain Kiichi Gotoh. One notable exception is the final episode of Patlabor: The TV Series, where SV2 is Overshadowed by Awesome within a couple of minutes when SV1 arrives as The Cavalry with brand-new upgraded Patlabors.
• The Pokémon Chronicles had an episode do this with a different character in the series, be it Misty, Richie, or Brock.
• Ranma ½:
  • Pansuto Taro. The only character he has any connection to (or wants any connection with) in the cast is Happōsai. As such whenever he appears his plot is at a right-angle to the rest of the series, and the appearance of any of the regulars seems like it's contractually mandated.
  • Also Ryōga, with his terrible sense of direction that's led to him wandering all over the world, and his humorously unrequited crush on his rival's fiancée.
• Sailor Moon:
  • Minako has quite the story on her own in Codename: Sailor V, and only enters the main one after its end. And the manga implies she still has some adventures off-screen in which Sailor Moon is her sidekick.
  • Haruka and Michiru are usually living their own adventure while the protagonists are in Tokyo. In the anime, they even leave after the third season specifically to do this.
• The Gold Saint Leo Aiolia from Saint Seiya is this in Saint Seiya: Episode.G and in Saint Seiya: Soul of Gold (in the latter this apply to all the Gold Saints).
• There are many examples in Sgt. Frog, the biggest one likely being Yamato and Kapuu. Yamato is a boy who found a creature called Kapuu, and alongside his friends, went on many adventures with him, even going to magical worlds and space, and fighting against evil Yokai. Kapuu had a verbal tic, and claimed to be a hero of justice, but was actually quite clumsy and couldn't even swim, in spite of resembling a frog. Yamato also has his own supporting cast of friends. And, yet, he was just a one-shot Keroro character in both the anime and the manga. Fuyuki meets him right after Kapuu had disappeared for unknown reasons, and notes the similarities between their stories. The manga version of the story even ends with a report where Fuyuki writes about how he realized now that the world didn't spin around him, and other stories similar to his own could happen elsewhere, basically Lampshade Hanging this trope, for readers who hadn't understood the point of the story.
  • In the anime, Yamato is voiced by Rika Matsumoto, Pokemon's Ash original voice actress, and the episode title used a "De Arinsu" verbal tic, rather than Keroro's "De Arimasu". The narrator even had to make it clear that the viewer still was watching Keroro after a few minutes into the episode, before the recurring Keroro characters appeared in the story.
  • The third movie ends with Dark Keroro traveling to another planet, while followed by his former subordinates, and, while infiltrating the planet to start a new invasion, he's found by a couple of siblings very similar to Fuyuki and Natsumi in a similar way to the events of Keroro's first episode, with the implication that a similar story will happen there.
  • In addition to that, several of the Captain Ersatz and Expy characters in the show are shown to have their own off-screen adventures, like Baio's and Ouka's Street Fighting battles which are acknowledged several times in the manga and anime. Ouka even reveals that she had already faced nonhuman opponents in the manga (while having flashbacks to thinly disguised versions of several of the odder characters from Street Fighter III). Meanwhile, Orara, a Keronian Goku expy, stopped by the Hinata's once and defeated a villain that collected planets, all while preparing for a tournament that would take place in the secret Alien Street on Earth.
  • There are other Keronian platoons, like the Garuru platoon, as well as individual Keronians, like the invader salesman Urere, who are often in their own missions for the army and invasions in other planets, only sometimes crossing path with the Keroro platoon when they visit Earth for one reason or another.
• Vyura and Chor Rubor on Simoun and Chor Caput, and the Arcus Niger. Vyura is later promoted to the main cast.
• The 501st unit gets the bulk of the action in Strike Witches in the anime, but there's a whole mess of other squadrons out there, each doing their own thing. The manga does a good job showing off these other units and what they're up to.
• Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann example: Kittan is this when first introduced but becomes a member of the main cast at the beginning of part two. While Simon, Kamina, and Yoko were having their adventures he was stealing gunmen and gathering a crew. There's enough material there for GAINAX to write a midquel with Kittan as The Protagonist.

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