First Girl Wins Discussion - Television Tropes & Idioms

Malchus: Deleted the following since there's too much speculation and the fact that the series is so heavy with absolutely intense Ship Tease that no declarations of who might win can be really definitive. We have to wait until someone actually does win.

Mahou Sensei Negima seems to teeter between following and subverting the trope. Negi's relationship with First Girl Asuna Kagurazaka is a big part of the story, and while Asuna doesn't deny that she cares about him, their relationship is defined as being strictly platonic. Even so, it occasionally shows signs of veering the other way.
- The whole mess is further complicated by the fact that both Anya (technically the first girl introduced, she first appears on page 1 of the manga), and Nodoka (the first girl to show any genuine romantic interest in Negi), could both technically qualify as "first girl".
- Its completely subverted now Asuna is directly related to Negi's mother Princess Arika.
  - Or not. Nodoka and Anna are still on "first girl" spot.
  - According to the definition of the trope only Anya and Asuna would qualify, as "first introduced" and "first implied romantic interest", respectively.
  - Asuna is "first girl he met at Mahora", Nodoka is "first implied romantic interest".
  - To further complicate things, Anya is also the last potential love interest to be properly introduced, so she could also qualify for Last Girl Wins.
  - Except she's not the last girl anymore, and given the cast growth in Negima, she was unlikely to qualify for that position.
  - To complicate things even further the "Last Potential Love Interest Introduced" position seems to belong to Shiori, who's a sleeper agent who's currently pretending to be Asuna, the First Potential Love Interest, and there are hints that Shiori's personality is merging with Asuna's, which kind of makes Shiori both First Girl and Last Girl at the same time.

Kaitou1412 I edited the Ranma example, because it's not really a subversion, it plays the trope stright, Hard. Sure he meets Ukyo and Shampoo earlier in the timeline, but she's the first introduced fiancee, and She gets the most screentime out of any of the fiancee's. "Other rules are if a girl is chronologically first, but first appears on screen much later in the series, she will end up as the Unlucky Childhood Friend." Fits Ukyo to a tee, and Shampoo acts more like an annoyance than a love interest.

Ununnilium: I think the Avatar example actually fit here.

Seth: I'm not sure first girl wins is much of a western trope. But for Avatar i dont think it comes into it. Yes she is the first girl he sees but more precisely it is the only girl he is travelling with for a very long time and the only one who seems interested in him. There is no element of competition, guy and girl travel together, fall in love its a basic story far older than romance sims. Not guy and 5 girls live/travel/go to school with each other. All fall in love with him and he has to choose. Do we have something for Designated Romantic Interest for series that have one female main character we know the lead will fall in love with regardless of anyone else who joins. (It could also work for Ross and Rachiel, JD and Elliot cases like that)

Ununnilium: Ah, good point; I forgot the "competition" aspect.

Seth: Most wouldn't, i snapped at all the erroneous avatar examples and started analysing each one to see if they really fit.

osh: I'd add something about First Love being popular with otaku who never have a second one, but it just comes off as too cycnical when I write it out.. :)

Lale: Cynical is cool. What were you going for? A situation where a character never gets over their first love?

Seth: I always found that such a romantic a concept. It shouldn't be too hard to write in a non cynical manner (Just make the Otaku references a side part, after the lead in). But it works either way.

Morgan Wick: Here's a basic (but not infallible) test to see if the "competition" aspect is held up: if we don't meet a second girl by the time the boy and girl are falling in love, it doesn't count.

Ununnilium: Taking out:

Webcomic example and subversion in one!: In El Goonish Shive, Sarah is presented to the reader before Nanase, and shown having feelings for Elliot before Nanase is even implied to exist. Nanase is then introduced to the reader as Elliot's girlfriend. They split up, since they're relationship's been rocky from the start, and Sarah and Elliot are sure thing. Now, here's where it gets strange: gay guy Justin suspects Nanase of being a lesbian, which caused her relationship with Elliot to fail, and she denies this... So, of course, E Lliot gets turned into a woman. In the process of turning him back, a bisexual female duplicate is created, given the name Ellen, and eventually gets over her case of the Cloning Blues. Nanase falls for her, of course, and they're currently in a relationship that has to be kept secret from all but their closest friends... Said closest friends include Sara and Elliot, though, so there's a happy ending for everybody.

...because a.) The Elliot/Susan/Nanase thing entirely lacks the competition thing, and b.) The rest of it has almost nothing to do with the trope.

Later: Taking out the Elliot/Susan/Nanase thing again.

Solandra: For Better or Worse? I haven't read all of its strips, but doesn't Mike date Rhetta first before committing to Deanna, and isn't Elizabeth's first love Anthony already married to someone else (albeit unhappily) while she's gone through her fair share of boyfriends? (Later: Remind me not to talk when I don't know the whole story. Apparently, Deanna was Mike's first childhood friend, and Elizabeth and Anthony are back on good terms.)

Channel Chasers actually implied the mother of his children could be either one of the two girls, so no trope.

Caphi: Removed Haruhi. Whether you follow novel order, episode order, or even the Earth timeline in-canon, Haruhi's always the first girl.

Momonga: From the description of this trope, it sounds like it's only (or at least mainly) supposed to apply to harem anime, but a lot of the examples involve any situation where someone has to choose between potential love interests. So which one is it? If we want to expand it to include other situations, it should probably be mentioned in the description.

Also, am I the only one really annoyed by this trope? Far too often it seems like First Girl Wins is so pervasive that writers rely on it to justify the relationship being the best choice, and get lazy when it comes to developing actual chemistry and character interaction. "Well, duh, of course they're right for each other! She's the first one he met!" I guess this could fit with the "many writers feel the need to include a romance angle but aren't very good at writing relationships" theory mentioned in Last Minute Hookup.

Uh, wow, someone just took some honking big scissors to this trope. Looks like a lot of subversions were cut. Opinions?

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