Jigsaw Puzzle Plot / Anime & Manga

• Amatsuki, particularly concerning the backstory and the real world timeline.
• Attack on Titan throws several curveballs regarding the nature and motives of Titans within the series, most of which just raise more questions than provide answers.
  • Every time there's a reveal, nothing is ever actually answered because we're provided with so much new information that all previous knowledge about a character or a concept is rendered useless. Most notably occurs after the characters finally get to Eren's basement and learn the truth about the world. Well, kind of. All the Unreliable Narrators don't help either, and nobody in-universe really knows what's going on themselves.
• Baccano! is a perfect example of this. The entire series is in Anachronic Order, with almost every major plot point being shown in the first episode but without enough context to put them together. It even includes the above mentioned style of Wham Episode. And being the Spiritual Successor, Durarara!! does this, too.
• The Big O is like one of those advanced jigsaws where every piece is the same color. By design, some of the pieces never do fit (the rumors that this is because of Executive Meddling are false; the "original" ending to the second and last season was only slightly more coherent).
• Chrono Crusade seems to attempt to do this.
  • The manga version is somewhat like what would happen if you're given a few small pieces to a puzzle at a time, only for the person giving you the puzzle realizing they're low on time and dumping the whole box of pieces out at you at the last minute. Thanks to some of the exposition being rushed, some things that are only barely hinted at seem to come out of nowhere (like the demons being aliens) and some things are touched on so quickly it's easy to miss them (like Satella and Fiore being half-demon or Joshua and Azmaria being married in the epilogue).
  • The anime version reveals things a little more smoothly, but thanks to its Gecko Ending a lot of the foreshadowing to things earlier in the manga isn't touched on again in the anime. Basically, in this version you're given half of one puzzle, and then pieces of another puzzle that only fit together if you force them, with some leftovers on the side. This leads to some things appearing in the series that don't make much sense, like the demons' advanced technology.
• Eden of the East. We get to see a lot of slice of life, romance and occasional comedy all while knowing that the story has a much more complex and mysterious plot, setting and back story. We'll only get to see that piece by piece.
• While FLCL is upfront with its Coming of Age Story and Monster of the Week aspects, the Myth Arc the latter is based on (including that the co-protagonist was half of the Big Bad Ensemble) is much more opaque—the protagonist himself only passively interacts with it at all.
• Fullmetal Alchemist, both the original manga and Fullmetal Alchemist (2003) in their own respective ways.
• Future Diary has several important plot points that aren't fully explained until near the end. Something is clearly wrong with Yuno (even aside from all the other things), and then there's Murmur, who seems to have her own plans for the Survival Game. Aru Akise is attempting to investigate the mysteries surrounding Yuno, but he doesn't have much success until near the end of the story.
• The Garden of Sinners due to the first four of its seven parts being in Anachronic Order. Those unfamiliar with Tsukihime (which Kara No Kyoukai was a prototype of) would have absolutely no idea what's going on until the end of the third movie.
• Gantz's only excuse for a Mr. Exposition is a Snark Knight Unreliable Expositor, and the protagonists' only other way of figuring out the rules by which their world operates is trial and error. As for why they're brought back from the dead, given all kinds of high-tech weaponry, and sent out to fight what are apparently aliens that no one else can see? The hints are portioned out very slowly over dozens of manga volumes, and any or all of them may be Red Herrings. Lampshaded when an Intrepid Reporter is taken on a tour of a factory that apparently manufactures the Gantz balls and weaponry by a friendly German gentleman who spins a tale of an Idiot Savant child under extraterrestrial influence inventing the tech... and then turns into an alien, mocks him for believing any of it, and disappears.
• Gasaraki is quite similar, except instead of giving you a new puzzle, it pours gasoline on the old puzzle, then drops a lit match on it, then doses you with either very good or very bad hallucinogens, depending on how drunk you are at the time.
• Get Backers loves this trope, explicitly citing the "puzzle" simile every chance they get. There's a twist, though: while it starts out as a straightforward piece of advice — "don't do anything stupid until you figure out exactly what's going on" — it turns out that many superficially unconnected plot threads are in fact pieces of a much larger puzzle.
• Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex tends to generally Infodump on viewers, especially during the one-of Stand Alone episodes. During the Complex episodes, the layered intricacy of the plotting is paid off in spades.
• Kekkaishi and all the stuff relating to Karasumori and the Urakai.
• Mobile Suit Gundam 00: One example suffices; the primary design for the Innovators, the main villains of Season 2 can be seen in contextually-relevant background scenes in Season 1, specifically on Kinue Crossroad's desk.
• If you ever decide to bypass the Mind Screw of Neon Genesis Evangelion and try to decipher the plot (possibly via The Other Wiki), you can see how it was going for this category. Take Our Word for It, there are a whole mess of things going on here.
  • Due to artistic reasons or whatnot, it's almost impossible to piece together some of the puzzles in the Series on its own, therefore REQUIRING third party material to be explained. Annoyingly enough, the Third Party Material itself often adds MORE questions which are not resolved.
    • A specific example within the series neatly and unexpectedly shows during Shinji and Asuka's first and only kiss near the end of Episode 15. The scene is strange and memorable. After it, Shinji and Asuka handle each other far more coldly. The series does not explain this repulsion until Episode 22, during a visual breakdown of Asuka's intents and personality.
• Noir fits this pattern admirably, despite its (relatively) short run. Early episodes will frequently contain multiple flashbacks with no apparent relevance to the event which triggers them. Most of these connections are eventually revealed, however.
• One Piece, especially between story arcs where we receive glimpses of the bigger world outside of the Straw Hats adventures. Slowly but surely the details of the overall myth arc concerning the One Piece and the Lost One Hundred Years have been coming together and still have some way to go.
• PandoraHearts: From beginning to end, there are hints that paint a bigger picture to the past and the backstories of each character,especially regarding the Tragedy of Sablier, Pandora, Abyss, Will of Abyss, and almost everything, really. And the mystery keeps you at the end of your seat. Not to mention the Alice In Wonderland themes and references that are already confusing and weird by themselves.
• Paranoia Agent seems designed to confuse, bewilder and annoy. It's basically the unfinished, leftover "scraps" of story ideas from an already crazy writer/director.
• Penguindrum. It makes little sense till the last two episodes.
• Princess Tutu. Stuff that isn't revealed until much later (some up to near the end!) are hinted at in the first few episodes, but it takes a while for everything to fit together. Also, every episode has at least one small thing revealed that's important to the plot, even if it seems like filler. Mytho himself could be seen as a representation of this, since we only learn his personality one "piece" at a time.
• RahXephon The anime TV series version of it was pre-planned as a jigsaw plot, with hints that become obvious on a second viewing. And the final puzzle piece comes after the closing credits of the last episode (so make sure to watch all the way through them, if you haven't finished the series!), thus practically necessitating a rewatch with the new info in mind.
• Rebuild World: What are the Mysterious Backer Virtual Sidekick Alpha's goals and motives, and that of her Arch-Nemesis Yanigisawa? The answer to that question is given in crumbs and hints over hundreds of chapters of the Web Serial Novel, often more than a dozen chapters going without it being furthered. The situation is complicated, so we get an occasional White Void Room Shared Dream between Akira and Alpha where she talks to others, or a scene from Yanigisawa, both of which sometimes contain The Reveal.
• Red Garden might be the all-time king of this and still make sense in the end. The viewer is given information at the same pace as the protagonists, which means one has no idea why ANYTHING is going on up until three-fourth of the way through the story, when the protagonists are finally trusted enough to be told exactly why they are fighting for their lives. You can, of course, figure it out a bit earlier then that, but up until then, you're only seeing a small portion of the puzzle.
• Revolutionary Girl Utena may just be the Trope Codifier among anime. Star Driver, from the same writer, also fits very well.
• Saint Seiya: Episode.G Assassin: The story is actually at what will be the seventh published volume, yet there is still no clear plot.
• Serial Experiments Lain has this since the plot is one big Mind Screw.
• Texhnolyze can be a very tricky story to piece together, especially considering all that's going on between the Raffia, the Organo, the Class, and the shared history that ties them all together. It's very tight-lipped about its secrets.
• The anime version of Trigun, in stark contrast to the manga, has a tendency to focus very heavily on the human elements of its story while confining many of the other backstory details to subtle cues that might go unnoticed on a first viewing.
• Tsubasa -RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE- it seems straightforward up until the revelation about the clones and time travel.
• Anything by Naoki Urasawa. 20th Century Boys alternates between present day and the childhood of the central characters, revealing major plot points, Chekhov's guns and backstories along the way. Monster regarding Johan and his plans, Pluto trying to figure out the reasoning behind the murders, and Billy Bat regarding the… it's not quite clear.
• Much like RahXephon, Wolf's Rain has a tendency to keep many of its secrets well-hidden in the background beneath several subtle hints and layers of symbolism. You really have to be paying attention to figure out what the nobles actually are.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V's plot about the Dark Duelist (who for some reason looks just like Yuya) Yuto and his home, and how he connects to Yuzu. In-between Yuya-centered episodes, we'll get episodes dedicated to Yuzu's interactions with him. Each interaction unveils something to the layer of complexity, and goes more into explaining Yuto's story: he comes from a now-destroyed world that may be Heartland City, has an enemy in form of a Synchro-using D-Wheeler named Yugo, a mysterious Greater-Scope Villain in the form of Academia, and a possible counterpart of Yuzu named Ruri. What's stopping us (and Yuzu, much to her annoyance) from getting everything right away is that Yuto is forcibly teleported away by Yuzu's bracelet whenever Yuya shows up. We finally get answers about Yuto when he personally meets Yuya. And reveals everything about himself. We are thrown more into a loop when the secrets of Yuya, Yuto, and Yuzu just get more confusing with the reveal that there's one counterpart for Yuya and Yuzu in all four of the dimensions. All the counterparts appear to have magical powers, Yuya and his counterparts appear to have a magical Berserk Mode that's somehow connected to their dragon-based monsters, and Yuzu and her counterparts are being hunted down by the Big Bad.
  • The second arc becomes even more complex, with the protagonists traveling to another world that turns out to be an Alternate Universe version of Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds and suddenly the story starts focusing on the class war and brutal dystopia of this world, while at the same time keeping the previous plot about inter-dimensional wars still relevant. Unfortunately, there are two separate factions in this worlds government who have different as of yet unknown agendas for the protagonists, neither of which can be trusted, one outright antagonistic towards them and possibly working with Academia, plus a potential rebellion rising up amongst the lower class due to economic and societal issues apparently unrelated to the war. And we still don't know what Reiji's full plan is.
  • In the end, some seemingly separate mysteries were answered together, so as to unite every smaller mystery into the overall plot. (Ex, the mystery of why Yusho vanished three years ago also explains what secrets Reiji Akaba was keeping and what his main goal is.)
• 07-Ghost: The mysteries present themselves throughout the story and are resolved but even those resolutions have many layers and nothing is what it seems. Both with the characters and the 7 Ghosts. The basic storyline itself hides so many twists and turns, especially when you look back to earlier interactions and events.

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