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The Trope Namer herself, in all her Pollyannaish glory. "My father often tried to make himself taller. Whenever times were hard, my father would try to make himself taller. When he got downsized, when the debt collectors came calling, when the company went out of business, he tried to make himself taller. My mother also tried to make herself taller ◊ that one time..."
"Although I've been mishandled by a demon, I'm determined to remain optimistic, no matter what!"
A character, usually but not always female, who undergoes various hardships, losing almost everything she holds dear, and yet seems never to lose her sunny disposition. Think Happy Thoughts may be how she does this.
When this character is played for drama (which usually entails a Break The Cutie situation), you sometimes get the feeling she's conducting some serious repression in order to continue functioning, and we are likely to see her break down; on the other hand, her infinite patience and good humor may give her away as The Messiah. If she's a member of a group that The Hero appeals to for help, count on her being the Least Is First.
When she's played for laughs, the fates the character endures are too horrendous to actually happen in real life, and yet she's too stupid to realize how God-awful her situation is and how miserable she ought to be; it seems as though the whole universe is out to Break The Cutie, and failing. (Although sometimes they just need a Rant Inducing Slight.)
The archetype is the title character of Eleanor Porter's 1913 novel Pollyanna, who was made famous in the 1960 Walt Disney movie, and was mocked by Alan Moore in the aforementioned throwaway joke in the pages of The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen. However, it was popularized over a century earlier by Dr. Pangloss from the novel (and later Broadway musical) Candide, who is always explaining why getting kidnapped by pirates or sold into slavery is ultimately for the best.
May be an unstoppable force of goodness and optimism if she's a Princess Classic.
Compare Knight In Sour Armor. Polar opposite of The Eeyore.
Examples
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- Air's Kamio Misuzu. The girl knows that if she ever makes any friends they're both going to get sick and possibly die, and yet all she wants to do with her summer is play with a creepy stranger at the beach.
- It's not that she knows such bad things will happen, it's more like she just can't seem to connect with others because her optimism and personality are just so...odd. And I wouldn't say Yukito is creepy, just a hot teenager new to the town that little Misuzu thinks might appreciate her.
- To be more specific: Misuzu doesn't seem to have trouble getting to know the other girls or Yukito that whole summer, and she doesn't know about her curse, BUT she knows from past experience that as soon as as soon as she gets close to someone she'll have physical pain and mental panic attacks. A later flashback episode shows her ready to give up on even one happy summer before she sees Yukito on the beach and has a feeling he might play with her.
- Excel Excel, the ultimate Oblivious Genki Girl.
- Tohru Honda from Fruits Basket. In the anime, the other characters use her as a doormat, but she remains eternally perky and eventually wins them over. In the manga, on the other hand, while she acts the same, she's also shown as doing some serious repression.
- Kafuka Fuura is an extreme form of this trope, in order to act as an antithesis to the namesake and other protagonist of Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei. She has had an amazingly tragical childhood and goes to a school filled with social misfits, yet she is either too oblivious to notice or in very, very heavy denial.
- Maria Taro Sekiutsu, a grindingly poor illegal immigrant who frequently expresses rose-tinted views of Japanese life, is an only somewhat less extreme example.
- Kafuka also is easily the scariest example on this page. Although she never breaks her cheerful facade, the series drops many hints that she is quite disturbed and a stone's throw away from killing everyone around her.
- Sora, protagonist of Kaleido Star, has a will of steel, considering the hoops she's had to jump through to get to the top (both figuratively and literally).
- Milfeulle from Galaxy Angel is almost impossible to make depressed or sad for very long, even when starving to death, being completely broke, having people actively trying to kill her, being dead...
- Kasumi Tendo from Ranma 1/2. Nothing catastrophic happens to her, but she does seem to find herself witnessing catastrophe on a regular basis.
- Unless you count being possessed by a demon as catastrophic...
- Nodoka Saotome is far more aware of her situation, but refuses to let it get to her, making her optimism seem heroic next to the passivity of Kasumi (who lives in a big house, surrounded by family, not a care in the world.) At least, until she starts crying in her sleep... and reenacting a Seppuku ritual.
- Tsukimiya Ayu in Kanon.
- Orihime Inoue in Bleach. Only until the end of the Soul Society arc; her issues (related to her feelings for Ichigo and her increasing self-esteem problems) start developing then.
- Rico from Gunslinger Girl fits this trope, being overly happy with her new life as a cyborg-assassin, although it can likely be attributed to her aggressive mental conditioning.
- If Nunnally Lamperouge of Code Geass isn't this trope, I don't know what is.
- Subverted in R2. Boy, does she take it hard upon learning what her brother did to create a better world for her...
- Subverted in Sonic X by Cosmo, who's entire family was wiped out by the Metarex right in front of her and who has frequent feelings of self doubt, Survivor's Guilt, shame for her own hatred of the enemy and unworthiness.
- Brooke from One Piece is an interesting male example of this trope. One of the characters almost Lampshades this by asking why he's so cheerful even though his life has been awful.
- Lacus Clyne, from Gundam SEED is a borderline example. She manages to maintain her childish idealism in spite of everything that happens, including her father losing his office to a genocidal maniac and then being murdered by him, along with most of his supporters and nearly Lacus herself, the nuking of several colonies and just generally living through a Gundam show. She did cry when she told Kira about her dad and was very upset when her Body Double Meer took a fatal shot for her, but other than that, she rarely breaks down.
- Candace White Andree aka Candy, of course.
- Hayate plays this for laughs, naturally. Both his parents were unemployed Cloud Cuckoo Landers who forced him to work a number of jobs to pay the bills (and had a penchant for stealing every extra dollar he earned to, for example, gamble away), but whenever someone asks him about his past, he always answers cheerfully and never complains.
- Hayate has actually gotten mad at and expressed hatred for his parents a few times.
- Keiichi from the X1999 manga. Lost his father in early childhood, and then his mother is killed in one of the earthquakes caused by the Dragons of Earth, yet he remains optimistic and kind until finally being phased out of the series.
- Usagi of Sailor Moon isn't as much of a Polly Anna as fanfic writers would have you believe (where Usagi is a perky saint and can never be pried from her hold on a "good in everyone" mentality), but she does have an overwhelming belief in the power of love in the anime. The manga and live-action are much darker, though.
- Elmer C. Albatross from Baccano!. The woobie factor is subverted in that most people find his constantly chipper, love-everyone attitude to be inappropriate and incredibly insensitive: "C'mon, let's laugh together!" is not what a teenage girl wants to hear just after nearly being killed by her fiance's murderer. Pretty much the only person that doesn't find him creepy is the equally creepy Huey Laforet.
- Nana from Elfen Lied is clearly broken by the time we meet her and continues to have horrifyingly terrible things happen to and around her for the entire story. She nonetheless somehow clings to a generally positive outlook that everything will be okay, especially as long as she can be with papa again.
- Nao Kanzaki from Liar Game
- Subaru during StrikerS Sound Stage X of the Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha franchise. Turns out that the Emergency Services she joined isn't all sunshine and roses, and she not only gets front row seats to a Psychic Assisted Suicide, but she also loses the new friend she had rescued after she slips into a coma that may last a thousand years. Still, she never loses her smile and energetic personality. After all "Even though you’re so sad, you’ve still got to eat. And if you get sleepy, you got to sleep. And if you have to do something, you do it... When you’re doing all that, all your painful memories start fading away..."
- It's very, very difficult to upset either Allen Walker or Lenalee Lee permanently. Allen in particular has been put through staggering amounts of crap by a universe that clearly has it in for him, but is nevertheless The Messiah and a Wide Eyed Idealist who wants to save everyone.
- Another male example would be Yamamoto of Katekyo Hitman Reborn, who very rarely loses his smile (and when he does, RUN) even in the worst of circumstances. Although he isn't unusually optimistic, he remains constantly cheerful despite the sometimes nightmarish situations he's encountered as guardian to a budding mafia boss. Perhaps this is because he thinks that his entire life in the mafia has all been one big elaborate role-playing game.
- Though he has currently (as of the Time Travel Arc) been told the truth, and actually knows more about certain backstory elements than any of the main characters, not to mention the readers
- Battler of Umineko No Naku Koro Ni is yet another male example. He steadfastly refuses to acknowledge the existence of witches (or at least refuses to admit that they're causing the murders) in a universe that is not shy in its attempts to break him. As a When They Cry protagonist, being a Determinator is a requirement. The universe REALLY pushes it, though.
- Shu from Now And Then Here And There is as straight an example of this trope as you could ask for.
- Negi of Mahou Sensei Negima starts as one of these, but when he begins training under Evangeline, she specifically makes it a point to knock that out of him, because the world is not that nice, and he needs to realize that. As it turns out, she wasn't entirely wrong.
- Annie, the 1982 film, when she's in the orphanage ... she just keeps thinking about tomorrow! And her sunny attitude is contagious and transformative.
- Tracy Turnblad is infectiously optimistic, happily championing the de-segregation of the Corny Collins Show. Even though there are times that she has doubts that she can succeed, she never gives up, and in the end, most of the cast is with her. "You Can't Stop The Beat!"
- In volume two of League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen, we get the girl that provides our second page quote (and who is of course Alan Moore's reinterpretation of the Trope Namer). It should be noted that this scene can also be read as her simply liking the sex, and not wanting to admit as much (would you?), and using optimism as an excuse for her behaviour.
- Mary Marvel was described as this during her pre-Countdown and Final Crisis portrayals. This was her most obvious comedic trait in the Superbuddies stories. She is also explicitly called "Pollyanna", causing her to talk about how that's her favorite movie.
- Gar Logan from Teen Titans is a rare male example; content with playing the Plucky Comic Relief character despite a lifetime of hardship and self-loathing untill it gets worse.
- Apollo from The Authority is always kinder, happier and more optimistic than most other folks in the Wildstorm universe. Or you could think of it this way: he's powered by sunshine, and has a personality to match.
- This trope is a Flanderization; the original Pollyanna is The Woobie if not her novel's Butt Monkey, and she has plenty of sad moments when she's alone, but she refuses to let them affect her behaviour when other people are present.
- Dr. Pangloss and Candide in Voltaire's Candide undergo some horrendous maltreatment at the hands of nearly everyone, every power, and even the forces of nature during their adventure. Still the good doctor not only remains optimistic, he even justifies the incredible tragedy they face. This makes the The Pollyanna Older Than Radio.
- The Jack Polo of Clive Barker's short story The Yattering and Jack is like this because if he displays any negative emotions regardless of what happens to him, he will face eternal damnation.
- Twoflower, during his time as a tourist, despite Rincewind's best efforts to convince him that The Fair Folk aren't cute, Bar Brawls featuring barbarian heroes aren't fun, and rundown hovels aren't picturesque. Even being locked in a dungeon doesn't get him too down. He does get quite annoyed at the end of Interesting Times, though.
- In the fourth book of A Series Of Unfortunate Events, the character Phil is a clear Pollyanna. He remains quite upbeat for a guy who is working in a lumbermill, is paid with coupons, and has gum for lunch every day. When his leg is crushed, he says, "Well, this isn't too bad. My left leg is broken, but at least I'm right-legged." Somebody comments, "Gee, I thought he'd say something more along the lines of 'Aaaaah! My leg! My leg!'"
- Tiny Tim of A Christmas Carol even finds the silver lining in being crippled.
- In the novel A Walk To Remember, Jamie Sullivan fits this Trope throughout much of the book. She is a devoutly religious girl who is always optimistic because she assumes any and every perceivably negative circumstance, from Pop Quizzes to the disease that's killing her must be in the Lord's plan. She later shows sorrow for her impending death, but she gets major Pollyanna points for holding it together so long, and even after her initial display of sorrow she thereafter returns to handling the circumstances relatively gracefully.
- Amber in John Dies At The End. She is crippled in a car accident and loses her entire family; yet she appears so bubbly that when David initially meets her he speculates whether she is taking Vicodin.
- Joe Ben "Joby" Stamper in Sometimes A Great Notion becomes one of these after becoming a born-again Christian. He always finds the good in every situation in spite of all the increasingly terrible things that happen to the Stamper family for breaking the lumber strike, insisiting that things will turn out okay and that they're "in God's pocket". He retains this cheerful attitude even when he's trapped under a massive log in the river, insisting that the rising water will float the log off him. It doesn't. He drowns.
- Jane from the Britcom Waiting for God is a mix of this and suffering from Stockholm Syndrome given her seemingly pathological infatuation with the smarmy weasel Harvey Baines
- Basi from the Nigerian TV show Basi and Company is remarkably cheerful for a broke, unemployed (and unemployable) man living in a one-room apartment (which he insists on calling "Basi's Palace"). Basi's landlady wants him out, but he's so sunny that nothing she does, including taking his only mattress, can get him to leave.
- Kamen Rider Den-O: Nogami Airi (the main hero's sister) suffers from selective amnesia. Apparently it has the side-effect of leaving her in a permanent state of semi-creepy, almost Rain Man-like cheerfulness.
- Kenneth Parcell in 30 Rock. "My mother always told me that even when things seem bad, there's someone else who's having a worse day. Like being stung by a bee or getting a splinter or being chained to a wall in someone's sex dungeon."
- The British airmen from Allo Allo remain upbeat no matter how many times their attempts to get home are foiled.
- There was a 1989 made-for-TV Race Lifted (black) remake of Pollyanna, called Polly. Near the climax, the main character falls out of a tree, is seriously hurt, and is morose from there on out. By this point, she's cheered the town up so much that they try and get her to cheer up, by creating a "Polly Day". It works.
- Something very similar to that happens in the original, too.
- Dr. Molly Clock (Heather Graham) in Scrubs. Drs. Cox and Kelso decide to teach her that we live in a World Half Empty.
- Leslie Knope on Parks And Recreation. The world does not agree with her.
- Jumping Jack Flash.
"I was raaaised by a toothless bearded hag
"I was schooooled with a strap right 'cross my back!
"But it's aaaaall riiiiight now, in fact it's a gas!
"Yes it's aaaaall riiiiight...
"Jumping Jack Flash, it's a gas gas gas!"
- Basically the point of Amanda Palmer's "Oasis."
"Oh, I've seen better days, but I don't care."
- The conscript of Command And Conquer Red Alert 3, basically they are the cannon fodder of the soviet forces, and they are not even good at that since is ridiculously easy to kill them, still they will always salute you with phrases as "I make Premier proud!" and "Haven't we won yet?", now that's to have spirit.
- Oh, and yeah, they are also Genki (but not girls) and Ditzies, I mean, you won't expect someone to say "We march to victory" when facing an entire batallion of far better enemy soldiers or "They have television in there?" when garrisoning a building in the middle of a warzone.
- Imoen, from the Baldur's Gate games, especially the second one. Though at times very much vulnerable to Break The Cutie, a few minutes later she would be right back to her old cheerful self. "It's just like old times... well, except for the torture and all."
- Originally it was planned that she would really be broken and transform into the slayer forcing the protagonist to kill her. If you have Throne of Bhaal, you can download (and install) Ascension to see how she was supposed to suffer the same fate AGAIN, which was only stopped by time issues.
- Marona in the PS2 game Phantom Brave. Feared for her ability to summon ghosts, her neighbors all send her hate mail and bilking her pay when they hire her to save them from monsters, and yet she's still unwaveringly kind to them, even though they treat her like crap. She cries when she's alone, though.
- Farah Oersted from Tales Of Eternia. She is typically very upbeat and energetic (in contrast to her childhood friends — sardonic, laid-back Reid, and uptight, pessimistic Keele). She's very fond of the phrase "No problem!".
- Colette Brunel from Tales Of Symphonia is also like this. She smiles and constantly assures everyone that she's fine and nothing's wrong even though she knows she's going to have to die to save the world, and stays positive even after learning that her sacrifice would have screwed over the world even more.
- In Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, in the VCPR radio station, Jenny Louise Crab is a merciless deconstruction of this trope: not only she's a sickeningly cheerful Genki Girl, to the point of not even feeling bad about having her foster family brutally murdered, but the setup also strongly implies that Jenny is addicted to hard stimulants in an effort to ignore these memories.
- An argument could be made for Aerith from Final Fantasy VII, who was orphaned by violence, raised in a dirty, dangerous slum, ekes out a living for herself and her mother through selling flowers on the street, lost her first love in tragic circumstances (that are only probably unknown to her) and is being relentlessly watched and sometimes chased by the Yakuza-esque enforcers of a tyrannical Evil Corporation. Despite all this, she has a cheery, upbeat personality and only occasionally shows glimpses of sadness and/or oddness that are more connected to her unusual powers than her past. She's The Pollyanna, and that's probably why she had to die.
- Tifa is like this too: Eternally optimistic, despite having a backstory involving getting sliced with a sword, watching her father die, having her hometown burned down, and not only having her childhood friend skip town on her a few years previously, but not even helping her after the aforementioned slicing, due to Heroic BSOD. Not to mention almost having a city dropped on her when she's an adult.
- Laguna Loire of Final Fantasy VIII could be called this. He finally hits it off with his longtime crush and the very next day he's forced to jump off a cliff in order to escape a group of enemy soldiers. He's later seen in a quaint village and finds out that said crush thinks him dead, and has moved on and gotten married. Then he falls in love again and gets married, only to have his adoptive daughter get kidnapped, forcing him to search for her and leave his pregnant wife behind. He finally finds his daughter and has to send her, alone, back to his wife. Unfortunately, his wife dies in childbirth and since no one can find Laguna, both of his children are sent to live in an orphanage and he doesn't see either of them again until they're adults. Despite this, he's as cheerful as ever years later, and rambles about needing love and friendship to complete one's mission when he isn't being totally psyched about being on a spaceship.
- Selphie from the same game. Relentlessly cheerful, to the point of announcing that breaking a friend out of a government facility will be "like a picnic! We're going to have fun!" Some lines seem to show that she's scared of not being happy.
- Moira Brown in Fallout 3 is a perfect example of this. Even if you set off the nuclear bomb in her town, causing the radiation to turn her into a Ghoul, she will still retain her cheerful personality, realizing that her being a Ghoul means that she now has a willing test subject for the research that she had been wanting to do on Ghouls. Of course, it is possible to destroy her optimistic outlook by convincing her that her idea for a "wasteland survival guide" is misguided. (This will earn you the "Dream Crusher" perk, and make Moira better at fixing your weapons and armor, as she now focuses all her energy on running her shop.)
- That said, crushing her hopes is punished by the game; the "Dream Crusher" perk is nowhere near as useful as the perks you get for actually finishing the guide.
- Yuyuko Saigyouji from Touhou. She lost her parents when she was young, then later found out that she has the power to invoke death on anyone, terrifying her enough to kill herself in retaliation, reincarnated as a Ghost and eventually hatching a plan to resurrect a body that was sealing an evil tree... only to find out that the seal was her very own body, and thus had to spend her life as a ghost forever. Her reaction? Be a Cloud Cuckoo Lander, act like The Ditz, obfuscate gluttony and all around be a cheery ghost that enjoys her existence while hiding her intellect.
- There's reason to regard Link in the various The Legend Of Zelda games as a male Pollyanna. In each game, he's more or less pushed out of his peaceful lifestyle and into massive amounts of fighting, with little to show for it at the end in the way of reward. He gets turned into different animals, stranded in foreign countries, and never even gets the girl. He's basically a plaything of the Hyrulean gods. But he's still friendly, good-natured, and never turns down a request for help.
- One of the major songs for the game Earthbound is called Pollyanna, and the lyrics are about, well, a Pollyanna. This isn't obvious in the games (Especially the first two, which have minimal character dialogue), but there is a small theme about keeping happy no matter what happens to you.
- Of all people, Excellen Browning from Super Robot Wars Compact 2 and OG series. You think that the resident teasing Manic Pixie Bottle Fairy Cool Big Sis can't even be serious during the most downer of moments (losing Lamia Loveless was, in effect, a massive "Player Punch" to her)). That's not the case for Excellen; in fact, it's her sunny disposition that's what really cheers her teammates up, no matter how bad the situation is.
- Flonne from Disgaea, even after ending up as a servant to Laharl and getting involved in a whole load of Netherworldly and Celestial conspiracies never gives up her ideals of love and justice.
- Maya Fey from Phoenix Wright. Her parents left her when she was very young, she's framed for her sister's murder, she's kidnapped and starved for ransom, her aunt tries to frame her for murder, Dahlia Hawthorne tries to kill her in another murder plot by her aunt, AND her mother is killed in front of her. And yet she still manages to be the perky sidekick almost all the time.
- Tidus from Final Fantasy X is perhaps the best-known male example. Despite everything he's gone through with an abusive father, then loosing everything he has ever known, he remains positive and upbeat. A refreshing change from the usual Final Fantasy hero.
- Sora from Kingdom Hearts maintains this personality for majority of the series. Even with brief Heroic BSODs he normally returns to this personality.
- Kelly Chambers, Shepard's Yeoman in Mass Effect 2 is surprisingly upbeat and friendly. Rather than reacting to some of your most vicious party members with a lot of fear, she instead sees them with a certain degree of curiosity. In fact, when you rescue and recruit Garrus, she notes that she's compelled to hug him and tell him it'll be all right for everything he's been through.
- The titular Teen Girl Squad in Homestar Runner (except for What's-Her-Face).
- Ned Flanders from The Simpsons. Though he did snap in one episode.
- In some instances, Spongebob Squarepants himself.
- The Oblongs — Living in denial, played for all the black humor the writers can get out of it.
- Butters from South Park. This is actually mildly subverted in his "Very Own" Episode, which depicts his parent's anniversary and their annual trip to the restaurant Bennigan's. His mother asks him to tail the father to see what he is getting her, Butters finds out his dad is gay without realizing it himself (he describes what he saw and his mother puts it together), driving his mother mad, and prompting her to kill him and commit suicide. Both fail, but she doesn't know that the former did. The rest of the episode is the parents pretending that a stranger kidnapped their child, and when Butters shows up and everything is admitted, he is fine, saying "Everything will be fine, if we just go to Bennigan's." "Really?", he is asked by the other kids. "No," and then Butters breaks down.
- Aang early on in Avatar The Last Airbender. In the first episode, when presented with the knowledge that he has been frozen for a hundred years, a world war had broken out during his absence, and everyone he ever knew or loved is dead, he comes to the conclusion that meeting his crush more than makes up for it. His blissfully carefree nature gradually wears down over time, culimating in mid-second season where Appa is kidnapped, he has a Freak Out and spends the next couple of episodes trying to find ways to cope. One way is him hostile and overly violent, the next episode has him trying to be completely emotionless.
- Jimmy Two Shoes is this in the town of Miseryville
- It gets better— If Executive Meddling hadn't kicked in, he would have been a Pollyanna in Hell.
- He still pretty obviously is. The ruler of the town is named Lucius, after all.
- Binky on The Fairly Oddparents is pretty cheery for someone who's pretty much the show's biggest Butt Monkey.
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◊ that one time..."
