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  • When Urusei Yatsura was shown in the late 1990s, people complained that it was "just a rip off of Tenchi Muyo!". Urusei Yatsura had been parodying Tenchi's genre since the late seventies.
  • Disgusted fans in various threads on several different anime forums complained that Mobile Fighter G Gundam (made in 1994) ripped off the plot and major themes of Zoids: New Century (made in 2001). Their apparent reasoning was that because Zoids was the first show to air on Cartoon Network, it must have also been the first show to have been made in Japan.
  • Similarly, Mazinger Z often faltered in international releases due to people accusing it of ripping off shows it inspired, such as Voltron and its own spinoff/sequel UFO Robo Grendizer.
  • Much like the Misconception that Mazinger Z invented the Rocket Punch and Calling Your Attacks which was actually inspired by Giant Robo, the concept of combining robots which is usually attributed to Getter Robo actually predates Getter Robo with the 1968 manga Giant Machine, which featured a family of scientists controlling vehicles to combine to form the title mecha, complete with "forming the head" of the Humongous Mecha.
  • Believe it or not, Cartoon Network has shown adult animation prior to [adult swim]. In the early 90s they showed the original Vampire Hunter D movie.
  • Many people seem to think anime/manga invented the Mecha idea when actually Jules Verne and H. G. Wells had everyone beat by more than 50 years with a steam powered mechanical elephant and Martian Tripod Terror.
  • Fans of the Metroid video game series tend to treat the 2003 manga as the first piece of media to explore protagonist Samus Aran's backstory. While it is the origin of her personal connections with some of the series' recurring antagonists, her backstory was first established in Western comics. All the key details of her childhood (orphaned by a Space Pirate attack at age 3, adopted by the Chozo, imbued with their DNA and raised as a warrior) was first revealed in the 1994 Super Metroid comic, while her being the youngest member of a Federation police/military squad before going solo as a bounty hunter in her late teens was cemented even earlier in 1991, in the second issue of Nintendo Comics System.
  • Many people seem to complain that the video game series Tengai Makyou (AKA Far East of Eden) is a ripoff in many ways of Naruto, its main offenses being that it's overly Japanese, it features a character that can summon giant frogs, and has characters named Orochimaru, Jiriya (Ziria) and Tsunade. Tengai Makyou first came out 1989, 10 years before Naruto, and parodies much of the same Japanese mythology that Naruto draws on.
    • This also applies to anyone who thinks Jiraiya, Orochimaru and Tsunade originated in Naruto. They're characters from a 19th century-era Japanese folktale. And they have been associated with frogs, snakes, and slugs since then. Even Princess Kaguya hailed from these legends despite seeming to come out of nowhere in the show itself.
    • The concept of a ninja named Sasuke is also far older than Naruto, and it's pretty much the standard "ninja name" in Japan. The concept originated from Sarutobi Sasuke, a legendary ninja said to be a bodyguard of Sanada Yukimura, who lived in the 16th century.
    • Any series that features ninjutsu as a main theme will be accused of ripping off Naruto; for example, Ranma ½ (manga 1987, anime 1989).
    • The idea of ninjas possessing all kinds of strange mystical powers and acting more like Kung Fu Wizards is also an important and long-lasting part of ninja folklore in Japan.
    • Ironically, Naruto itself experienced this when it debuted in Japan; the story came hot off the heels of the then-recent end of resident ninja powerhouse manga Ninku in Shonen Jump, prompting many who were fans of the latter to call the newcomer a ripoff.
  • Neon Genesis Evangelion was a culmination of increasingly darker takes on the Super Robot genre. Many Gurren Lagann fans believe that it is the first anime to address this trend. However, GaoGaiGar both did it long before Gurren Lagann by being specifically written as a Reconstruction of super-robot manga, which the author felt had been written from an increasingly dark and unpleasant angle.
    • The Rei Ayanami Expy was actually predated by Chirico Cuvie from Armored Trooper VOTOMS, which had come in 1983, 12 years before Evangelion premiered (and he also came to share many of the Unbuilt Trope qualities that Rei had come to epitomize).
    • Likewise, many elements and concepts that people assume originated in Gurren Lagann were actually derived from the Getter Robo series — particularly ludicrously oversized mecha, Combining Mecha that combined with anything, and the idea of an energy source that has strong links with the principle of evolution - and the risk of overusing it. And drills.
      • Eva had spiral energy - background material gives the source of the S2 organ's power as the double helix of DNA (which may just be the reason why Gurren Lagann has its universe centered around it).
      • Speaking of Neon Genesis Evangelion, while it is commonly viewed as Deconstruction of old idealistic Super Robot shows, a good chunk of the supposedly "original" deconstructive elements have actually been done before. Most notably, the idea that giving a teenager the power to destroy the world will have bad consequences was used in Mazinger Z, right during the second chapter of the original manga all the way in the early 1970s, making it very much an Unbuilt Trope. Also, Tetsuya Tsurugi from Great Mazinger deconstructed the arrogant, Hotblooded Ace Pilot archetype long before Asuka Langley Soryu. Also, Zambot 3 deconstructed the whole genre including the Kid Hero trope - in the late seventies, and Space Runaway Ideon destroyed all semblance of limit for what a Mecha Show can do with its' ending being a Gainax Ending before Gainax even existed in the early eighties.
  • A rather infamous example, Ninja Resurrection has been accused of ripping off Ninja Scroll, due to both anime having a lead character called Jubei and the Ninja part in both logos looking dangerously identical. However, in Japan, the anime isn't even called Ninja Resurrection: ADV Films renamed it from Makai Tensho to deliberately capitalize on Ninja Scroll's popularity. Furthermore, the plot of Makai Tensho predates Ninja Scroll by a good 36 years, as it is based on a 1967 novel of the same name. Yoshiaki Kawajiri, the director of Ninja Scroll, even cited Makai Tensho as the main inspiration for the film, down to basing most of its characters off of the cast of Makai Tensho, who themselves are based off of historical figures.
  • Puella Magi Madoka Magica:
  • People accuse Alucard's design of being a ripoff of Dante's, thanks to the fact that they both dual-wield black-and-white guns and wear bright red dusters. The first Devil May Cry game was released on 2001, Hellsing on 1997, but Dante's design is in fact a tribute to the main character of Space Adventure Cobra (1978).
    • It's funny people should accuse DMC for ripping off Alucard when at first he elicited cries of "Vash rip-off!" To get even crazier: Vash is a guy who dresses in red, has blonde hair, a huge revolver and a gun hidden in his arm while Cobra is... a guy who dresses in red, has blonde hair, a huge revolver and a gun hidden in his arm.
  • When NEEDLESS began, many people complained about it shamelessly ripping off of Gurren Lagann due to its animation style and characters (most notably, Blade, who resembled Kamina). What they didn't know was that the manga of NEEDLESS started in 2003, 4 years before Gurren Lagann.
    • Besides, the notion of a wasteland populated by super-powered people was already explored in Scryed.
  • There are Twilight fangirls who seriously think Vampire Knight is a Twilight rip-off. It's hard to say, really, because both of their source materials were published in 2005; but it's safe to say mangaka Matsuri Hino began working on Vampire Knight before the Twilight book was actually published, and translated and reprinted in Japan. Although this is still debatable, Twilight fangirls took it a little too far when they targeted Karin (because, you know, Karin has vampires that can walk under sunlight!).
    • For that matter, there are persons on both sides of the fence who apparently think Stephanie Meyer invented the Friendly Neighborhood Vampire trope. Or even the idea of reflective vampire skin — see Literature for more.
  • Dragon Ball gets hit with this on multiple levels thanks to the number of dubs out there and ways the story has been translated, and the standards of both changing over time.
    • For most western fans, it's easy to forget that Dragon Ball Z didn't start out as a 90s show from 1996; almost all of the Saiyan Arc had aired in Japan by the end of 1989, Dragon Ball GT was nearing its conclusion by the time Z first aired in the US, and Z is a continuation of Dragon Ball, which first aired in 1986. As detailed below, many of Funimation's dubs of the franchise were done completely out of order: the original Dragon Ball and its movies didn't air until the final arc of Z was airing, making it hard to mentally align it all.
    • Many of the tropes associated with Dragon Ball Z actually got their start in Dragon Ball, such as powering up to defeat a new villain, characters intentionally holding back to size up their opponent, the use of science fiction elements, and blowing up mountains. About the only real change that came about with Z was treating the science fiction elements more seriously, going from the goofy Hoi-Poi Capsules to starships, scouters, killer androids and genetic monsters.
    • Many so-called Dragon Ball "purists" insist on not using the term "Saiyan", the anglicized form of Saiyajin, since it's a purely American invention according to them. What those people don't know is that the Anglicization of "Saiyajin" to "Saiyan" was first used by Bandai for their Dragon Ball Z toys, such as the "Super Battle Collection" action figures, which predated any of the American adaptations. Furthermore, even in the original anime, a bystander is seen at one point inexplicably wearing a shirt that reads "Super Saiyan".
      • It's not even an Anglicization. It's a translation, since the -jin ending denotes being of a particular place or people, in this case Saiya (a scrambling of yasai, "vegetables"), so the English way of saying that someone is a Saiya-jin would be "Saiyan". This is the source behind the infamous "Saiya People" of the Speedy dub, and is the main pun of Gohan's alter-ego being "Saiya-Man".
    • The early 2000s Funimation dub of the original Dragon Ball anime wasn't the first attempt at an English dub in the US; Funimation first tried their hand at it in 1995, and moved on to Z after it flopped (possibly intentionally since Gen Fukanaga wanted to adapt Z in the first place). Before even that, Harmony Gold managed to dub a large amount of the series in early 1989, a few months before Z started airing in Japan.
      • The Harmony Gold dub is also where the now-standard English names of Kinto'un ("Flying Nimbus") and Nyoi-bō ("Power Pole") come fromnote . In the case of the Power Pole the name was quite literal: It's claimed to be the reason why Goku is so strong. This dub ended after five episodes, so it never had to contend with Goku having to discard it for the Tournaments, as well as abandoning it altogether later on.
      • As well, all three of the Dragon Ball movies were dubbed by Funimation years before their 2002 dub of the show itself, and the original movie has two versions: one with the names Funimation would adopt, and one using the Harmony Gold names.
    • While the name "Son Goku" is strongly associated with the franchise, it actually is public domain and has its roots in Chinese folklore, as Son Goku is the Japanese name for Sun Wukong from Journey to the West.
    • Fans of Dragon Ball Abridged seem to think that Chris Ayres may have taken inspiration from LittleKuriboh with his Frieza voice in Kai. However, both voices are based on Ryūsei Nakao's original performance, as opposed to Linda Young's version.
  • Berserk was virtually unknown in the US until the 1997 anime fansubs gained a cult following. Because of this, it and the licensed game were often described as taking elements from other works with giant swords. It was actually their inspiration.
  • It doesn't take much effort to find people who accuse Code Geass of being a rip-off of Death Note. However, Geass was in development for five years before it came out in 2006, while Death Note first appeared in 2004.
    • Code Geass and Death Note don't really have that much in common besides some superficial similarities: both involve Xanatos Speed Chess and brilliant, hammy, young men with self-righteous ideals who gain some sort of supernatural power through a chance meeting with an immortal partner, becoming Drunk on the Dark Side but temporarily reverting during a period of amnesia until it comes flooding back with a vengeance and die at the end of the series. That's it.
  • Osamu Tezuka's Kimba the White Lion series has received some flack for bearing similarities to Disney's The Lion King (1994)... even though the original manga was created 30 years ago. Tezuka was dead for almost 5 years by the time The Lion King came out! Sensibly, more people make the opposite accusation in this case.
    • And inverting this trope, it's very common for people to take screenshots from various Kimba projects as "proof" that The Lion King was a ripoff. Many of them are taken from a film released a few years after The Lion King.
    • Many people also mistake Astro Boy for being the first anime character ever, which isn't true since Japan tried their hand at cartooning before Tezuka got to it.
    • This was parodied in The Simpsons: "You must avenge me, Kimba. I mean, Simba."
      • As he was writing Astro Boy and Asimov's stories started getting published apparently a bunch of people accused Tezuka of ripping of Asimov outright. Surprisingly enough Tezuka did come up with the concept of laws that had to be obeyed by robots before Asimov (or at least published such a thing first). Chances are that him and Asimov having the same idea was more than likely a coincidence.
      • The idea for Asimov's laws were actually suggested by his editor. He noticed that in Asimov's work, his robots seemed to follow a set of rules, so he pointed it out to Asimov, who decided to make it blatant text. When thinking about it, the idea that robots need a set of rules to abide by is just logical.
  • The phrase “Get chance and luck!,” commonly associated with Angel Beats! character T.K., originated from "Get Wild", an ending theme to City Hunter. This shouldn't really surprise anyone, though, since T.K. rarely says anything that isn't a reference.
  • Among Defense of the Ancients players, knowledge of “Lina Inverse, The Slayer”'s origins is sparse enough where fanart (her appearance is a reskin of WC3's sorceress unit) and fanfic has been created with no connection whatsoever to the original character.
  • "Shall I cool your head a little", sometimes attributed to Lyrical Nanoha, actually came from Dragon Ball Z.
    • Similarly, people seem to think that the nickname "the white devil" is simply one created for Nanoha, whereas it is in fact a a description of the original RX78-2 Gundam from in-universe, applied to Nanoha for ironic purposes.
  • The "Flat chest is a status symbol!" quote is always associated with Lucky Star protagonist Konata, as opposed to its original user Mayumi (from SHUFFLE!). Which is weird, since Konata flat down says when she uses it she got it from "an eroge character". Admitedly Mayumi doesn't use it on the anime, but still.
  • When Space Battleship Yamato first aired on US tv, it was sometimes derided as a cartoon rip-off of Star Wars. However, Yamato (pilot episode premiered in 1974) came out 3 years before Star Wars (first theater screening in 1977). Productions came even sooner than that.
  • Kamina's Catchphrase of "Who the hell do you think I am?" can be traced back to Godannar character Shizuru several years earlier.
    • Both are slightly arranging and quoting Mobile Suit Gundam character Char from the '70s, "Dren, who do you think I am?"
  • Multi-route adaptation of a Dating Sim: If somebody thought Amagami SS was the first to do this, they must not have read Kimikiss - Various Heroines. Developer Enterbrain must have preferred both of their franchises being adapted that way.
  • When in Naruto the Nine Tailed Fox's name is revealed as Kurama and the Four Tailed Gorilla's was revealed as Son Goku, some were up in arms, claiming Kishimoto ripped off of YuYu Hakusho and Dragon Ball Z, despite the name of the former existing in Japanese folklore in a relevant tale, that of Tengu Kurama, while the latter is also a reference to Journey to the West, a very pivotal book in Chinese Literature. It has been confirmed however that the Nine Tailed Fox's name is a reference to YuYu Hakusho.
    • Quite a few Western Naruto fans who see a kanchou being performednote  will assume it's a reference to the "Sennen Goroshi" scene. Kanchouing is actually a popular real-life prank in Japan, the local equivalent to the American wedgie.
    • Likewise, whenever a character named Jiraiya appears in anything it's almost always viewed as a Naruto reference. The character of Jiraiya dates back to an old Japanese folk tale that just happens to get referenced a lot in Japanese pop culture: Naruto's Jiraiya, Yosuke's Persona in Persona 4 and Greninja in Pokémon X and Y, among others, are all based off the folk tale.
  • When Digimon came out, it was blasted as a Pokemon ripoff because of its use of 'evolution' and monster collecting. Whether or not that Digimon did rip off Pokemon is debatable but it is also moot considering the Shin Megami Tensei series already did the concept of monster collecting (with the use of computers even) long before either did.
    • Digimon grew out of the Tamagotchi virtual pets while Pokémon was an RPG. While they both have the idea of raising monsters to fight for you, the original games were otherwise very different. As far as other media, both had stuff appearing in summer of 1997, Pokémon with its anime while Digimon had a manga. Digimon's release of an anime in 1999 may have been to ride the success of the Pokémon anime, but the concept of the series existed before that. The point however is that neither one invented the kid with the remote control trope.
  • It is often thought that Sword Art Online was inspired by the .hack series, when in fact, both had started around the same time. Author Reki Kawahara had started SAO back in 2002, but was actually a web-novel series until 2009 under a pen name.
  • Making fake bloopers for animated films came to popularity when Pixar started doing it. However, the anime Maris The Chojo did it back in 1986!
  • Pani Poni Dash! did the iconic Shaft head-tilt first before Bakemonogatari and Puella Magi Madoka Magica.
  • When people think of where A Silent Voice began they think of the 2011 manga. It is actual at least 4 years older, the obscure original being released in 2008.
  • Due to Yatterman's popularity, many tend to believe that many Terrible Trios are Expies of the Doronbo Gang. They often are, especially if specific details like a parody of Boyacky's Catchphrase show up. But in general, Time Bokan (by the same creators) beat them to the punch by about three years in the form of the Time Skull gang.
  • After Osomatsu-san took off, many fans were shocked to discover that it was based on a manga that started in 1962, and that it had two anime series (one in 1966 and another in 1988) prior to -San. The first episode outright references the original series but many non-Japanese fans thought it was making fun of old anime in general or creating a Retroactive Legacy for a new product.
  • JoJo's Bizarre Adventure is a long-running ode to pop culture. As an older series that loves referencing even older things, it often gets mistaken for inventing them. Especially outside Japan. Among them...
    • Most of Jotaro's ruffian look, including the hair hat, go back to The '60s and his demeanor actually owes a lot to Clint Eastwood. Series like Kill la Kill are parodying his countless predecessors instead. Similarly, Josuke's pompadour hairstyle was long associated with delinquents in Japan before him, although western anime fans tend to still believe the pompadour is a reference to him alone.
    • Jonathan Joestar's and the general physiques of Parts 1-3 are still thought to be Jojo references when they, in fact, were meant to be akin to Kenshiro from Fist of the North Star.
    • The phrase "Lali-ho," even when it's sleep-related, does not come from Death Thirteen. He's one more character referencing the sleep spell in Dragon Quest, which is making its own reference to The Impossibles saying "Rally-ho".
    • In countries where the series caught on decades later, the release dates of chapters aren't well known. So in cases like Geb homaging Tremors, there are fans who think JoJo came out before its inspiration.
    • From the other side, the anime adaptation in 2012 finally broke the series trend of No Export for You and led to many Western fans suddenly recognizing a huge backlog of the shout outs that other Japanese (and other cultures) works had made in that period. Sharing and trying to discover how many of these things were older than they thought turned into a meme itself, and between the popularity of the series in Japan and the long gap between the manga starting in 1987 and the anime in 2012 meant there was quite a lot to catch up on.
  • Little Witch Academia:
    • The franchise is the story of a human girl who loves magic so much she wants to become a witch. Her beliefs about magic and being a witch go heavily against what "real" sorcerers had held as a tradition for centuries, so naturally, she becomes the black sheep among the magic community. In her misadventures, she's always accompanied by two apprentice witches who befriended her despite even them barely sharing her enthusiasm. What many people may not know is that this exact premise had already been used back in 2004, in Studio 4°C's Tweeny Witches. Even earlier, it parallels The Worst Witch, written in the 1960s.
    • Western fans were surprised upon Andrew's introduction in the TV series due to being an important male character in a show about witches, alongside the confirmation that Wizards existed in the very last episode in said series. In Japan, Little Witch Academia: The Midnight Crown was released in 2015 which featured a Wizard that was a childhood friend of Akko, who she even appeared to fawn over, and attended the same Shiny Chariot show as her, ironically becoming a success in magic unlike her. The lack of western release likely contributed to the surprise of Andrew's character, subtext with Akko and the appearance of Wizards in the finale.
  • Your Name: Although without the "Freaky Friday" Flip shenanigans, there have been previous works involving characters communicating across time, including but not limited to Frequency, Il Mare and its Hollywood remake The Lake House. All the three mentioned here also have one side being Dead All Along and Set Right What Once Went Wrong elements. Frequency also has the communication being tied to a cosmic event - the aurora borealis in its case, Comet Tiamat for here.
  • Yuri!!! on Ice is considered groundbreaking for portraying a Queer Romance between the two male main characters as of episode 7 (in a non-Boy's Love series) and while this is true as far as mainstream and sports anime goes, No. 6 had already done this years prior, making an Official Couple out of the Shion and Nezumi duo in a dystopian setting. No. 6 though never got much attention outside of a relatively niche group while Yuri!!! on Ice became an anime with a gigantic fandom that attracted Yaoi Fangirls, LGBT Fanbase, professional skaters and basically most anime watchers, being very likely one of the most popular anime of 2016.
  • Queen's Blade looks like something Japan made up in 2005 for the sole sake of Fanservice. It's actually a spin-off of the '80s Western gamebook series, Lost Worlds, with the exact same gameplay. In fact, most of the main cast are just gender-swapped versions of its classic characters, only more risque.
  • A lot of western anime fans think the phrase "Moe Moe Kyun!" originated from K-On!. In actuality, it's a Stock Phrase said by servers in Cosplay Cafes (especially maid cafes) while stirring drinks or serving food, as an incantation to make it more delicious.
  • The gap between localization and the original release can do this for series. For example, most of the English speaking fans of Naruto associate the series with the mid-2000s. The manga actually debuted in 1999 and the first episode aired in Japan in 2002.
  • The genre of Hot-Blooded Japanese school delinquents beating friendship into each other is ancient. Its '60s originators are so old, obscure, and inaccessible, not a single one has a tropes page. The first examples to arrive on English-speaking shores were '80s parodies of the genre like Blazing Transfer Student and Ranma ½ (a mishmash of various martial arts parodies including the School of Hard Knocks with battling club activities). So despite being a genre that constantly gets Affectionate Parodies, the immense, ancient culture gap means Western viewers have trouble telling if parodying is happening at all.
  • Throwing up rainbows became a meme in the West around 2006 before gaining noticeable, mainstream animated examples in the 2010s. Except when anime and other Japanese works like KonoSuba do it, it's as a decades old sight gag parodying Ashita no Joe 2 from 1981, with its over the top beautifying of upchuck using vibrant colors and sparkles. As an old method of censorship, luminous barf still gets played straight sometimes like in a scene from JoJo's TV adaptation.
  • Aside from being an often paraphrased classic like in the examples above, Gundam is a large franchise that has been branching into a lot of different areas since The '70s. Having taken a few decades to catch on in the West, there are a few parts that passed us by.
    • Gundam Build Fighters may have seemed like a zany new idea, but its concepts rooted in a manga that began in 1982, Plamo-Kyoshiro. Part of the competitive hobby genre of comics, Kyoshiro was heavily tied to the Gundam franchise and spiced things up by having the plastic models duke it out using whatever excuse. There were naturally other manga that followed in its footsteps using other merchandised franchises.
    • SD Gundam Force was likewise part of something decades old. SD Gundam began in 1985 and almost reached the US sooner as Doozy Bots. The child-friendly franchise steadily grew into multiple thematic universes, and at one point it eclipsed the Universal Century verse in popularity.
  • Every time a competitive cooking anime like Yakitate!! Japan or Food Wars! gets fairly mainstream recognition, there are inevitably a fair amount of fans who see it as something strange and recent. Cooking and gourmet manga, which technically includes other food-related series like Toriko, boomed around the late eighties following series like Mr. Ajikko and Oishinbo, though not every one gets animated and fewer are spotted overseas. The genres and their varying levels of hyperbole have been such a staple in Japan, though, there have been somewhere over 400 such titles so far. Even oddball shows like Iron Chef are thought to be taking cues from them.
  • A lot of people only familiar with Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid through its anime think that Kanna is based off of the main character from Fire Emblem Fates (since she has both the main character's default Japanese name, "Kamui", and the name of their child, "Kanna"), unaware of the fact that both characters were actually named after an Ainu deity (not to mention the fact that the manga predates Fates by two years).
  • Believe it or not, Ranma ½ isn't the first manga about a boy named Ranma who changes into a girl under certain conditions. That honor goes to Cinderella Boy, a manga by Monkey Punch, from 1980.
    • Also, the idea of a teenage boy changing forms due to a change in temperature was first used in Turbo Teen back in 1984 (although in that case, it's the "cursed" form that's triggered by heat, and the temperature change isn't limited to water).
  • When it comes to Magical Girl Warrior pastiches with an all-male lineup, you'd probably name Cute High Earth Defense Club LOVE! as the first to pull it off. Not quite true; Cute High might have been the first to popularize the idea of non-crossdressing, non-genderbent boys fighting crime with cuteness, but its predecesors came in different forms; Toei's Mahou×Shounen×Days!!!!! was developed and distributed around the same time frame, some have considered D.N.Angel an honorary example of the trope, and countless original web series and webcomics (such as Mahou Shounen Fight! or even Pretty Cure) have toyed with the idea before.
    • Speaking of Pretty Cure, once HuGtto! Pretty Cure added Cure Infini/Henri Wakamiya to the lineup (albeit in a noncombatant supporting role and only for two episodes, but still, one male Cure taken seriously is better than none), people started claiming he was Toei Animation's first real attempt at a magical boy. Close, but the above mentioned Mahou×Shounen×Days!!!!! had Infini beat 3 years early.
  • The tropes commonly found in modern Shonen manga are said to have been codified by the breakout success of Dragon Ball. This is true for a great many aspects, such as how the Stock Shōnen Hero is characterized or how Tournament Arcs play out in fighting series. But the grand mac-daddy of Shonen Jump manga to help bridge the winning formulas of today was said to be Masami Kurumada's Ring ni Kakero, one of the most popular action manga running in the 80's. It also falls close to this trope when comparing it to his later work, Saint Seiya— what some fans assumed started in the pages of Seiya were actually holdovers from Ring.
  • Pretty Cure is often hailed as the first series where magical girls beat up enemies with their fists and kicks before finishing them off with magic and the first magical girl Tokusatsu. The first magical girl to beat the crap out of the Monster of the Week before firing off a magic-based Finishing Move was Minako Aino in the Codename: Sailor V pilot that eventually started Sailor Moon (with Minako continuing with the physical attacks for the entire run of her solo manga) 13 years before Futari wa Pretty Cure started airing, the first magical girl Tokusatsu series was Toei's own Bishoujo Kamen Poitrine (itself the closest inspiration for the original Codename: Sailor V pilot) the previous year, and the first Henshin Heroine to use physical attacks (usually a sword, but everything worked in a pinch) was Cutey Honey herself, the prototype for the Magical Girl Warriors, in 1973.
    • Unfortunately, this misunderstanding also brought upon another misconception: that explicitly feminine tokusatsu didn't start until the Magical Girl Warrior movement. Suki! Suki!! Majo-sensei had its own non-magical heroine in Andro Kamen back in 1971, and one could argue Betty Kane's Golden Age tenure as Bat-Girl (where she beat the bad guys with cosmetics) fit the toku mold well despite her comic origins.
  • While Zombie Land Saga is often credited with boosting tourism in Saga by taking place in a largely overlooked prefecture, it isn't the first anime to attract fans there; Yuri!!! on Ice, which came out two years earlier, has also managed to draw tourists to Karatsu since Yuri Katsuki's hometown of Hasetsu is heavily based on that city. Also, while Zombie Land Saga provided a major Colbert Bump for the restaurant Drive-In Tori, Yuri!!! on Ice also had advertisements for the restaurant hidden in the background during the first episode.
  • Before the 2000s series Hamtaro was released in Japan. There was a short OVA adaptation called "Tottoko Hamutaro: Anime Dechu!" which features different designs for the Ham-Hams and an older version of the show's theme song. This version faded into obscurity, and was lost in Japan for 18 years until it resurfaced online in July 20, 2017.
  • Isekai genre:
  • Believe it or not, there was one obscure episode of Crayon Shin-chan that involved Nene's stuffed bunnies coming alive in a somewhat nightmarish sequence that predated the "Happiness Bunny's Revenge" episodes, complete with her and her friends putting on a show for them and one moment where one of her stuffed bunnies dragged a naked Masao while he was crying in fear. There was very little info on the episode (aside from a creepy Japanese video that explained the episode and showed footage).
  • The shift to CGI in Studio Ghibli's Earwig and the Witch came as a massive shock for many and caused many to be turned off simply based on that alone, seeing as Ghibli is widely known and beloved for their traditionally animated films. While it is their first computer animated feature film, Earwig and the Witch isn't the first production from the studio to be computer animated. Both Boro the Caterpillar (which was one of the shorts made for the Ghibli Museum) and their TV adaptation of Ronja the Robber's Daughter prior are entirely computer animated, the latter even being done by the director who would eventually helm Earwig and the Witch, Goro Miyazaki. Most of Ghibli's films starting with Princess Mononoke also incorporated partial use of CGI into their films as well.
  • The first official English-language Pokémon work to include profanity was not Pokémon Detective Pikachu as many a viewer shocked by its second trailer would have you believe, but The Electric Tale of Pikachu.
  • A lot of younger readers and viewers thought that having Moriarty as the protagonist in Moriarty the Patriot is something new. However, given that the Sherlock Holmes franchise had tons of adaptations and pastiches for decades, it's been done before. For example, Michael Kurland is one of the first who wrote about Moriarty being a POV protagonist and an Anti-Hero in his work, The Infernal Device back in 1978. It even spawned four sequels.
    • This is also not the first time the events of "The Final Problem" are fabricated. Nicholas Meyer's The Seven Per Cent Solution predates it back in 1974 though the circumstances are very different where Watson wrote "The Final Problem" to cover up Holmes' descent into drug addiction and recovery and Moriarty is really just an ordinary maths tutor.
    • A crossover between Sherlock Holmes and James Bond? This already happened before with Alan Moore's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Moriarty is also the "M", the head of British Intelligence, has Bond as one of his agents, specifically an ancestor of James Bond, and survives his final showdown with Holmes. However, he dies at the end of Volume 1 and Mycroft Holmes takes his position instead.
  • Jujutsu Kaisen: Gojo's Badass Boast of "Throughout the Heavens and earth, I alone am the honored one" is appropriated from the traditional first words of Siddartha Buddha.
  • Fans of Golden Kamuy who later picked up Dogsred immediately recognised Oniokami High School's hockey coach Nihei Toshimitsu as a dead ringer for Golden Kamuy's Nihei Tetsuzou, leading those unaware of the manga's history to assume that Satoru Noda wanted to include an expy of a memorable character from his previous work in his new series. In actuality it's the other way around: Dogsred is a remake of a manga Noda created before his Breakthrough Hit, and Coach Nihei both predated and was the inspiration for his counterpart in Golden Kamuy.

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