History InfantImmortality / AnimeAndManga

* Babies don't show up in ''Manga/DragonBall'' and its sequels all that often, but the Cell saga featured Bulma and Vegeta's infant son, Trunks, alongside his FutureBadass self that came back to SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong. The one time baby Trunks is in mortal danger, Future Trunks jumps in to save him and his mom. On the other hand, Dende, who is roughly the Namek equivalent of a five-year-old at the time, is brutally murdered because Frieza doesn't want him using his HealingHands to help the heroes--and this is ''after'' Frieza jumped the MoralEventHorizon by murdering Dende's entire village, including his brother. Later on, seven-year-old Goten and eight-year-old Trunks are killed when Majin Buu blows up the Earth and three-year-old Marron is turned into chocolate and eaten along with her parents and the other side characters. (This is the poster series for DeathIsCheap...)
** There is a filler scene in the original ''Manga/DragonBall'' where Snow, the girl from Jingle Village, grabs a rifle from a fallen King Castle soldier and takes aim at Piccolo Daimao as his back is turned, but gives up. Piccolo then turns right around and fires eye-lasers in her direction. When the smoke clears, we're relieved to see that he wasn't aiming for Snow at all, but another soldier directly behind her.
** It is however, averted when Vegeta and Nappa first arrive on Earth. Nappa's first action is to blow up the entire city they've landed in--- which does include some children seen in the background. And the kicker? Unlike most ordinary civilian casualties, in the series they ''don't'' get brought back by the titular MacGuffin... Except in the dubbed version where they write the whole thing off as {{Conveniently Empty Building}}s.
* ''Manga/GunsmithCats 1''-ups ''Film/MadMax'' in one particularly memorable chase scene. A girl runs out into the middle of the road, Bean Bandit (who has a soft-spot for kids) and Rally Vincent (hotshot bounty hunter pursuing him) avoid hitting the girl by running their cars into each other and driving simultaneously on two wheels, forming a triangle over her.
* We know from when it's first found that the abandoned baby in ''Anime/TokyoGodfathers'' will survive anything. It's implied in the movie that the baby is getting protected by ''God Himself'', with a nice analogy to the infant Jesus. [[spoiler:This is probably most apparent during the climax, when the baby and Hanna fall off of a building and are saved by a ''huge gust of wind''.]]
* Subverted in ''Manga/YuYuHakusho''. Hiei, minutes after birth was thrown off a floating island, into a demon infested forest. Luckily, he survived. And what's worse, it was all because he was a male. The Ice Maidens are some kinda cold blooded to have zero pity for an infant, indeed.
** The very first episode shows Yusuke [[HeroicSacrifice sacrificing himself]] to save a child from a car accident. It's later revealed that [[ShootTheShaggyDog said child was supposed to survive the accident unharmed]] because the ball he was holding would absorb the impact.
* Mao-chan in ''Manga/ChibiDevi''.
* Zig-zagged in ''Manga/JoJosBizarreAdventure'' part 4: serial killer Yoshkaga Kira has no problems with killing Hayato, an 11 year old boy, except for the fact that doing so will blow his cover - and when pressed, Kira actually does kill Hayato. [[spoiler:Played straight when it turns out that Kira has gained a new ability - a bomb that is able to turn back time, thus undoing Hayato's death.]] And then later on, during the final confrontation with Kira, [[spoiler:Hayato gets blown up ''again'', sacrificing himself in order to get rid of the bomb planted on Okuyasu; Hayato did this knowing that [[GoodThingYouCanHeal Josuke can heal him right back up]], and Josuke is able to fix him ''while he's still blowing up'', ultimately playing the trope straight.]]
* Plenty of children are shown as zombies in ''Manga/SchoolLive'' however no one actually dies on-screen. It looks like [[spoiler:Ruu]] had her head stomped on and died on-screen, however she survives her injuries. [[spoiler:Played with as Ruu isn't real. Rii [[ThroughTheEyesOfMadness sees a teddy bear]] as her younger sister, who is implied to be actually dead]].
* Nearly subverted in ''Anime/TowardTheTerra''. During his escape from Nazca, Keith is attacked by toddler Tony and nearly killed, [[spoiler: but Keith stabs Tony with a large shard of glass. All the Mu telepathically feel his pain and the grief of that pain is enough to kill his mother. He does end up surviving and ultimately becomes 1 of only 2 named characters who survive the AnyoneCanDie series. The rest of the Children of the Mu who artificially age themselves from toddlers to teens aren't as lucky.]]

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* ''Manga/GunsmithCats 1''-ups ''MadMax'' in one particularly memorable chase scene. A girl runs out into the middle of the road, Bean Bandit (who has a soft-spot for kids) and Rally Vincent (hotshot bounty hunter pursuing him) avoid hitting the girl by running their cars into each other and driving simultaneously on two wheels, forming a triangle over her.

[[foldercontrol]]

[[folder:Played Straight]]

[[/folder]]

[[folder:Exceptions]]
* A ''lot'' of children die, and are depicted dying, in ''Manga/BlackButler.'' Especially in the Circus Arc. And it's pretty gruesome.
* ''Manga/SevenSeeds'': Of course, given that the premise of the story is that the chosen teams are the supposedly ''only'' people living on earth right now, after [[TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt meteorites have struck earth]], it is expected that a lot of children died during the disaster, too, albeit off-screen.
** The chapters revolving around the raising of the Team Summer A candidates reveals that the students who "dropped out" ended up killed, but they once again die off-screen.
** Averted by showing the reader children dying, even mid-sentence, during the epidemic claiming more and more lives of the people in the Ryugu Shelter.
* ''Manga/AoNoFuuin'': As the Oni begin to grow in number and breed, they do create offspring and little Oni children. These children are ''not'' exempt from being hunted and killed by the humans and are often shown tortured, injured or dead.
** The human children are not safe, either. When an Oni awakens, they are hungry and will eat whatever human is nearby. A young couple gets turned into Oni, Soko hears them awaken and the couple's baby crying... and then the crying suddenly stops.
* ''Manga/BattleAngelAlita'': In addition to the CrapsackWorld of The Scrapyard where villains have no qualms about killing children, there's also the [[IAmAHumanitarian infant-meat]]-fancying Venusians and the [[{{Immortality}} "Methuzalized"]] space colonists who regard "the next generation as a threat, not a promise" and regularly send death squads after children. There's also the ChildSoldiers of Jeru/Ketheres, who Alita and her new friends from Mars try to save a day too late, and the orphans on the Space Karate guy's planet.
* Kentaro Miura shows repeatedly in the ''{{Manga/Berserk}}'' manga that children do not get special immunity from the horrors of the story's universe.
** The dead body of a little boy can be seen among the victims of the bandit leader from the first major story arc.
** Later in the second arc Guts is given a ride by a kind priest and a young girl who he takes care of. The three are attacked by demonically possessed skeletons and the young girl Collette is brutally killed. She then returns possessed and kills the priest before going after Guts along with the rest of the undead. Guts then has to kill her again, along with the rest of the skeletons.
** After becoming separated from the rest of the Hawks during an earlier battle, Casca reveals to Guts that long before he joined them a young boy who acted as a page to the mercenary band was killed in battle. She says it is the first time that she truly saw Griffith be disturbed and depressed by something and later is shown to have deeply affected Griffith mentally.
** During the Band of the Hawks arc, Guts carries out an assassination order by Griffith on the King's brother and then is forced to kill the brother's young son because the boy saw too much, an act that shakes him up terribly -- not the very least because the boy reminded Guts of...well, himself when he was the kid's age.
*** Judeau later points out that the son was being groomed to marry the Princess who Griffith also wished to marry (as it was the most direct path to become king). By having the boy killed, Griffith has a much easier shot at marrying the Princess and as such gaining his dream, so it is likely he planned for the boy to be there and Guts having to kill him. This turns out to be one of the factors which eventually led to Guts [[spoiler:leaving the Hawks]].
** After [[spoiler: rescuing Griffith after a year of torture]] the Band of the Hawk gets aid from a young family which includes several children who long supported the group. Shortly afterward, the Black Dog Knights, a group of soldiers composed of the worst rapists, murderers and criminals that Midland has to offer appear, having been sent by the King to kill Griffith. The group, led by Wyald, a truly nasty piece of work of an Apostle, question the mother before she and her family including the young children are raped and killed. And if that wasn't bad enough, they then proceed to dismember their bodies (yes, including the kids) [[DeadGuyOnDisplay and carry them naked on poles into battle with the Hawks]], who are all disgusted at the sight.
** That said, [[spoiler:Rickert, the youngest of the Band of the Hawk, is the only other survivor of the Eclipse besides Guts and Casca, and that was only because he was separated from the main body of the Hawks before Griffith's Behelit activated, otherwise he would have been branded and eaten along with the rest. He did almost die when the below-mentioned Rosine and the Count from the third manga story massacred the men with him, but he was rescued by the Skull Knight]].
** The Misty Valley arc main villain Rosine started out as a cute, smart tomboy with a ''horrible'' home life who loved a certain fairy tale. She later sacrifices her parents to the Godhand and becomes a elf/fairy creature similar to that found in her favorite fairy tale and begins to attack the nearby village killing people and animals and kidnapping children to turn into twisted little elf/fairy creatures that play kickball with eyeballs, play war to the death, and rape each other for fun (remember they are still technically children and are acting in a twisted way like the kids they are.) By the time Guts reaches her, she is insane, and has to be killed in order to prevent her from hurting any more people (and given that Guts is still in hardcore post-Eclipse vengeance mode at this point, all he really cares about is killing another Apostle). During the arc you see that she UsedToBeASweetKid who only wanted to have some happiness that she never got at home turning into a case of ''AlasPoorVillain'' especially considering that once she dies, she, like anyone who makes a sacrifice to the Godhand and becomes a demon, is sent straight to hell.
** Also, those eyeball kick balling, to-the-death war playing elf/fairy creatures that Rosine made from kidnapped children? When they are killed [[ThisWasHisTrueForm they turn back into kids]], leading to Guts being seen as a child killer.
*** Guts himself did also indulge in a bit of child-mass-slaughter. Sure, they were [[spoiler:forcibly polymorphed by Rosine and reverted to human form upon death]], but he KNEW that, and he was still grinning maniacally while he crushed them.
*** And also, there's [[spoiler:Rosine's MoralityPet Jill, a somewhat younger girl that calls her "older sister Rosine" ("Rosine-neechan" in the original Japanese). She survives the arc, though not before being in lethal danger at least twice.]]
** In the Millennium Falcon arc, women and children in a village are constantly kidnapped by trolls. The woman are raped till they become pregnant with more trolls, but the rotting bodies of children skewered on poles are seen in the den.
*** As the trolls are being subdued by Guts, those captured escape with the rest of his party and many children are seen with them, acting as a slight subversion.
** And collectively, the most disturbing case in the series so far is what happened to [[spoiler: Guts and Casca's own child.]] When Guts returned to the Hawks and before the crew set out to rescue Griffith, he and Casca had an emotional reunion that ended up with them [[spoiler: making love, with said union resulting in Guts impregnating Casca.]] Though [[spoiler: pregnancy]] was unknown to them at the time, it's assumed that [[spoiler: the baby was developing normally in the womb]]... until the Eclipse happened. When it goes down, '' everything'' [[FromBadToWorse goes down,]] with [[spoiler: Griffith, now the demon lord Femto, raping the pregnant Casca in front of Guts, tainting her womb with his demonic seed and thus poisoning her unborn child.]] After the Eclipse, the now traumatized and insane Casca [[spoiler: undergoes a miscarriage from the event, resulting in a misshapen fetus being born that has been corrupted by evil.]] Guts, seeing the [[spoiler: child as nothing more than a byproduct of an event he failed to prevent, tries to kill it immediately, but because of Casca's intervention, the child disappears at daybreak.]]
* Horribly averted in ''Manga/MurasakiiroNoQualia''. Not only is [[spoiler: Yukari's death]] ''the'' biggest event in the manga that starts off the story proper, there are implications that several of Hatou's parallel universe selves ended up dying at varying young ages. The youngest seems to currently be her parallel universe self that lives in a universe where magic is real and she died trying, and failing, to teleport through a brick wall...
* Horribly averted in ''Manga/{{Naruto}}'', where the BigBad very nearly kills baby Naruto. Not surprising, as the BigBad himself was a child soldier and witnessed [[spoiler: his 12 year old best friend/crush's brutal assisted suicide. Not to mention that the Iwa jounin in Kakashi Gaiden have zero qualms with mutilating Kakashi, mentally torturing Rin, and almost murdering all three of them- Mind you, these three are only twelve whereas the Iwa jounins were in their twenties/thirties!]]
** Nawaki, Tsunade's little brother, is killed around age 11-12 in an explosion. It's not pretty.
* In ''Manga/{{Bleach}}'', there's this whole deal with a little boy having his soul separated from his body and placed in a parakeet's body by a Hollow...
** We see ghosts of children several times, their deaths are not shown on screen though.
* ''Anime/BlueGender''. Things don't go well for poor [[spoiler:Yung]], and during the massacre of [[spoiler:Yung]]'s group by the Blue, we see one of the BigCreepyCrawlies slash at a mother holding an infant (Mom dies; kid goes flying). Needless to say, if the blow didn't kill the baby, hitting the ground will.
* The [[Manga/DGrayMan Earl]] [[BigBad of]] [[MonsterClown Millennium]] doesn't care how old you are; as long as you lost someone close to you, he will be there to turn you into an Akuma.
* ''Manga/DetectiveConan'' occasionally touches on the deaths of children, though always in the backstory providing a motive for the current killer. The closest it has come to killing a child on-screen was the start of the sixth NonSerialMovie ''Phantom of Baker Street'', which [[StartsWithASuicide starts with]] a ten-year old ChildProdigy jumping of a skyscraper.
* Horrendously averted in ''Manga/{{Devilman}}'': Two of the worst deaths are destined for [[spoiler: Sachiko, Akira's little neighbor, and Miki's younger brother]]. In fact, in regards to ''Devilman'' and ''Manga/DevilmanLady'', Creator/GoNagai has absolutely NO compunction about killing children and babies in the most horrific way possible and showing it very clearly, preferably in front of their parents.
** The ''Anime/UFORoboGrendizer'' manga (also a Go Nagai production) has a villain who averts this twice- in a flashback he kidnaps all the kids from planet Fleed and says he'll give them back in exchange for the planet's weapons. When they give up the weapons, he gives back the kids- ''by dropping them from 30,000 feet in the air''. And in the present, he steals Anime/GreatMazinger and ties up a bunch of kids as well as people Duke cares about all over the robot so Grendizer can't fight back.
** There's also an episode of Anime/MazingerZ where [[spoiler: Shirou's crush, Lorelei, was a RobotGirl with the body of a 10-year-old cutie... and [[KidWithTheLeash in control of a huge mecha beast]]. [[TearJerker She doesn't make it]].]] In another, Sayaka's cousin Yuri (who is actually ''crippled'') is kidnapped and placed inside a capsule in a mecha beast's head; she's luckier than the others, though, and survives.
** Also averted in ''Manga/ViolenceJack''. The first arc ''alone'' is filled with graphic deaths of young kids.
* Lucy from ''Manga/ElfenLied'' has no problem killing children in the most horrible ways, including [[spoiler:the male protagonist's little sister Kanae]]. Also young Diclonius children get killed off regularly, often in gruesome experiments (leading to a notably heartbreaking scene in the anime).
** There's also [[YourHeadASplode what Lucy did]] to the [[KidsAreCruel cruel kids]] in her {{backstory}}, though after [[spoiler:[[MoralEventHorizon what they did to the poor little dog that she had started caring for]]]], a good number of fans felt that those kids deserved ''worse''. She did, however, spare Mayu's dog.
* Averted in ''Anime/ErgoProxy'', when viewers are treated to a baby carriage falling down a flight of stairs in slow motion during the mall chase early on in the series; very much a shout-out to Eisenstein's ''[[Film/BattleshipPotemkin Bronenosets Potemkin]]'' 'Odessa stairs' scene. Later, the carriage is shown lying on its side in a puddle of (presumably the baby's) blood. However, that is certainly not the only baby to die in ''Ergo Proxy''. (Not a spoiler. Really.)
* Averted in ''Anime/EurekaSeven'', where, on one occasion, a little boy's death at the hands of the Scab Corals received an ironically graphic GoryDiscretionShot.
** Then there the shot of a mother ''actually'' smothering her crying infant just before some Corals find them and kill them both. Once again that was a GoryDiscretionShot. Plus the scene when Dominic tries to go looking for a replacement for Anemone.
* ''Manga/FistOfTheNorthStar''
** Several children die in the manga, but are spared in the TV series (notably Bat's younger brother Taki, who is murdered by one of Jackal's men; and Ryo, the kid at Shuu's hideout who died eating bread that Souther and his men poisoned). Strangely, the TV series "made up" for it by having several adult characters who survived the manga die instead (like both Harn Brothers instead of just Haz). In the first ''Raoh Den'' movie, the child-poisoning scene is restored.
** In contrast to the TV series, the original 1986 movie shows a group of nomads being massacred by camouflaged thugs while wandering the desert. The casualties include a young mother and her infant child.
* Averting this is ''Anime/{{Genocyber}}'''s claim to fame, to the point that the most brutal and obvious example has ended up on at least one shock site.
* Averted in ''Anime/GraveOfTheFireflies''. [[ForegoneConclusion They warned you]].
* In the ''Manga/{{Hellsing}}'' manga, one of the first images readers are shown during Millennium's invasion of London is a limp, bloody and unmistakably dead infant in the jaws of a [[NinjaPirateRobotZombie Vampire-Nazi.]]
* ''Manga/InuYasha'':
** Suikotsu's evil side emerges for the first time when a soldier kills an [[LittlestCancerPatient injured little girl]] he was trying to save. Worse, the soldier ''[[KickTheDog gloats]]'' [[KickTheDog about that]] since, in his view, [[ShootTheDog he spared the little girl from more pain]]. When the soldier tries to kill HIM, a panicked Suikotsu kills the other first with the same scalpel he was using to operate on his unfortunate little patient.
** Rin's ''first appearance'' has her being brutally and graphically slaughtered by Kouga's wolves. Thankfully, she gets better. Oh, and much later on? [[spoiler:''She gets dragged into Hell.'' Again, she gets better.]]
** Kohaku not only was he brainwashed into killing his dad and fellow Demon Slayers as well as injuring his older sister, but then he [[TakingTheBullet takes a fatal attack for her]] and dies. Then he's revived. But is BrainwashedAndCrazy. And it takes him a LOT to get better.
* Averted in the seventeenth volume of ''Manga/TheKindaichiCaseFiles'', "The Undying Butterflies" in which a twelve-year-old girl is the first victim of the story's murders.
* In ''Anime/{{Mobile Suit Gundam The 08th MS Team}}'', Shiro and his team are completely sickened when they see Zeon soldiers gun down a mother and her child for leaving their house at night.
** ''Anime/MobileSuitZetaGundam'' specifically showed an infant body in the gassed colony 30 Bunch, and a mother and infant child are briefly shown dying when the Titans use the Colony Laser to destroy several colonies as a "demonstration".
** ''Anime/MobileSuitGundamSEED'' doesn't shy itself from averting the trope either [[spoiler: both with the girl that gave the origami flower to Kira being killed in the explosion that Yzak caused when he shot the refugee shuttle in which she was]]. There's also the shot [[spoiler:of a dead mother and her child in the ruins of Junius 7, which either shocked or caused a complete breakdown to the characters who entered the room where these bodies were.]]
* This idea is destroyed in ''Anime/NeonGenesisEvangelion''. By the end of the series EVERYONE is dead (sorta). some 14 year olds have suffered multiple, rather hideous deaths (impaled, eaten alive, impaled some more, then killed).
* Averted offscreen in ''Anime/{{Noir}}'', in the ''Intoccabile'' episodes, when a Mafia traitor gets questioned by the titular Intoccabile, with his wife and child in the next room to ensure his cooperation... and both get shot due to his hesitation. Also, Mirielle's older brother died when he was a young child in the assassination that killed her parents.
* Horrifically averted in ''Anime/NowAndThenHereAndThere''. The fact that the plot revolves around {{Child Soldier}}s in a CrapsackWorld should give you an indication of what happens.
* In the ''Anime/SpaceRunawayIdeon'' movie, even the kids perish. Special mention goes to the scene when [[spoiler:a little girl is ''beheaded'' by a gunshot onscreen. Poor, ''poor'' Ashura]].
* In a ''Manga/VenusVersusVirus'' arc one of a set of twins gets turned into a [[TheVirus Vir]][[TheHeartless us]]. She asks Lucia to MercyKill her so she doesn't harm her brother.
* In ''Anime/MaiOtome'', [[spoiler:Mimi, a young girl who is part of the refugees of Windbloom, dies from her wounds after being attacked by a desert monster]].
* ''Manga/MuhyoAndRoji'''s ghosts are often children, who die of causes such as falling onto a subway train tracks, fires, car accident, or even suicide, or parents who lost their children. The moment of their deaths is often shown in flashbacks.
* So many times in ''Manga/BarefootGen''.
* In ''Manga/FutureDiary'', AnyoneCanDie, even children. The [[spoiler: 4 year old Reisuke]] is killed by Yuno, and later on [[spoiler: Yukki's 14 year old friends are all gunned down as well.]]
** Although a lot of their ages are ambiguous, and many are too old to count, [[spoiler: The 8th's orphanage is slaughtered.]]
* The ''VisualNovel/{{Tsukihime}}'' manga featured a chapter when one of the antagonists invades a hotel, using his powers to kill anybody. He passes by a pair of children and it looks like he'll let them live...till his monsters chomp on them too.
* ''Manga/HunterXHunter'': This is how the Chimera arc starts, with a pair of sibling coming across the queen who eats both of them.
* ''Anime/PlasticMemories'' averts this in its first episode as Tsukasa and Isla have to retrieve and terminate a child Giftia who has reached her expiration date.
* Averted in ''Anime/StreetFighterAlphaTheAnimation'', where [[spoiler:Ryu]]'s kid brother dies.
* Averted seven ways to Sunday in ''Manga/FrankenFran'', where kids die in nasty ways : a little girl gets her head bitten off, a boy from the same chapter is mutated into a monster by a [[TheVirus virus]] and killed by the remaining survivors, another girl from a later chapter is stabbed in the head... Some chapters play it straight, though.
* Averted in episode 77 of SonicX. [[spoiler: Poor Cosmo]]
* Amanuma from Manga/YuYuHakusho thought his ability just made games realistic, but Sensui didn't tell him everything that happened in the game would actually happen. He died when Kurama defeated him, since that is what happens to the boss in the game they were playing.
* ''LightNovel/ShakuganNoShana'' got away with killing two children (one human and one Torch) in the first two episodes, perhaps because their deaths [[{{Retgone}} didn't leave behind any bodies]].
* Horrifically averted in ''Anime/BloodPlus'' by Saya, who impales a baby within the first minute of the series.
* The fourteen year old protagonist of ''Manga/DeadmanWonderland'' is constantly in danger but never really gets hurt. His classmates on the other hand are all brutally murdered within the first ten pages of the series. Hibana Daida, a seven year old, once tortured and killed a boy in kindergarten because ''he flipped her skirt''. [[spoiler:Hibana herself is killed by Toto.]]
* Toboe was actually the first of the ''Anime/WolfsRain'' wolves to die. He's the youngest, being roughly thirteen to fourteen in human form.
* ''Anime/{{Tokyo Magnitude 8}}'' takes place during and after a large earthquake and thus many people, children and adults, are implied or shown to die. [[spoiler:Yuuki, the protagonists little brother, ends up dying near the middle due to cranial bleeding]].
* ''Manga/SatouKashiNoDanganWaUchinukenai'' averts this in a horrid way. [[spoiler: Middle schooler Mokuzu's abusive father Masachika ends up beating her so badly one day that she dies of the injuries. He tries [[DeadMansChest hiding the body]] in the mountains, but Nagisa and her older brother Tomohiko end up finding poor Mokuzu's dismembered corpse]].
* ''Manga/GunslingerGirl'' has a premise which revolves around {{Child Soldier}}s so this is expected. By the end [[spoiler:[[KillEmAll every one]] of the protagonists]] have died, some on-screen and some rather peacefully during the twenty year [[DistantFinale timeskip]]. The first gen Cyborgs were all essentially terminally ill from the first chapter, not expected to live longer than four years if they weren't killed in combat.
* ''Anime/MichikoToHatchin'' has several cases of young children dying, almost dying, and killing people themselves. An episode with a memorable DownerEnding has a woman and her little sister being gunned down by a bunch of kids. One episode even has a woman put her baby in the middle of the road so it would get hurt, or worse, and she could receive money.
* Fourteen year old Kaori dies in the final episode of ''Manga/YourLieInApril''. She had been suffering from a disease her entire life but it was getting worse by the start of the series. Knowing she had little time left [[spoiler:she set out to befriend the boy who inspired her to begin playing the violin almost ten years ago.]]
* ''{{Anime/Daimos}}'': Daimos averts the trope as soon as the SECOND episode. A kid spends a short while egging [[TheHero Kazuya]] and [[TheWoobie Erika]] on to kiss. Later, when the enemy attacks, an explosion destroys the greenhouse had gone into. Kazuya and Erika bolt to the place and find him lying between the rubble. The kid opens his eyes and asks Kazuya if he "got lucky" before dying as Kazuya is holding him in arms.
* ''Anime/{{Zambot 3}}'': This series is notorious -among other reasons- because it averted the trope. AnyoneCanDie. It does not matter if you are a kid; it does not matter if you are a kid and a secondary character; it does not matter if you are a kid [[spoiler:and a MAIN character.]] Given this is a show produced by YoshiyukiTomino (as well known as KillEmAll), it should not be shocking.
* Averted to some degree in ''Manga/KarakuriCircus''. Children (particularly Masaru) are shown to be terribly injured on occasion...and then the French village gets attacked by the evil circus.
* Averted in ''Manga/ReikoTheZombieShop'' by child murdering psychopath Saki Yurikawa. Introduced in the first volume, Saki's a teenage serial killer who has murdered over twenty little girls. She initially takes an interest in them being her "little sister", and when they refuse she snaps and utterly butchers them. Even after [[spoiler: her death and zombification by titular heroine Reiko]] children still die in this series.
* ''Nasty'' aversion in ''Anime/SpaceRunawayIdeon''. [[spoiler: The deaths of the kids in the KillEmAll movie are among the most ''gruesome'' in the Ideon media... like, um, the little girl [[OffwithHisHead who gets beheaded BY A FREAKING GUNSHOT]]?]]
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Partial Aversions]]
* Surprisingly enough, ''Manga/AttackOnTitan'' plays this trope straight almost across the board. Children are implied to die on a regular basis, but so far there's only been one on-panel portrayal of a child being killed. More accurately, a youth approximately 10 - 12 years old being ''bitten in half'' by a Titan with blood splattering everywhere and his legs kicking as he's EatenAlive.
** Children are most definitely victims of Titan attacks in ''Manga/AttackOnTitan'', and Episode 25 clearly shows rocks falling and crushing both children as a consequence of the Stohess incident. We also get to see [[spoiler:Bertolt and Reiner's friend Berik die]] in the manga.
* ''LightNovel/{{Baccano}}'' brings it close multiple times. From immortals stuck in child forms being tested via torture, to a [[TheScream bloodcurdling scream]] as an explosion sears half Nice's face clean off. It's worth noting: these are backstories that have severe impacts on either character. The latter has an [[LivingEmotionalCrutch emotional crutch]] to help her continue on, [[spoiler: who develops into a full love interest,]] but the former, [[BrokenBird well. . .]]
* ''Manga/JoJosBizarreAdventure'' both plays it straight and subverts it in the first part. On the straight-up scale, this is how Jonathan and, later, [[spoiler:Lisa Lisa]] live to maturity. On the subversion scale, Dio is confronted with a mother that begs him to kill her and spare her baby. He takes her up on it. Unfortunately for the kid, the now-vampirized mother is both ravenous and lacking in maternal feelings... Thank the ''gods'' the scene cuts away at that point.
** Later, an old woman with the power to control the dead and wounded uses corpses as weapons, needing to only wound someone once to win a fight. The corpse that deals a wound? It's a baby. Using its tongue. As a knife.
** Despite [[KickTheDog the show constantly invokes blood and gore against bystanders, animals, and dogs]], ''Part III'' is quite sparing when it comes to children. [[TagalongKid The runaway girl]] never suffers physically from an enemy's attack. A boy and a girl victimized by [[spoiler: Steely Dan]] only gets punch once and gets away unharmed respectively. The villainous children, meanwhile, are also less prone to actual bleeding compared to the adults: [[spoiler: Boingo's Stand is a comic book, so he acts more like a strategist. The two times he gets beaten up are played for laugh as he's angered a mob and the party's TeamPet Iggy. On the other hand, Mannish Boy (an eleven month-old genius baby) has a Stand that has a hollow body, so it/he doesn't suffer from being cut in half. In his case, Kakyoin states he won't hurt or kill him because he is a baby.]]
* Averted in ''Anime/KillLaKill'', where Ragyo Kiryuuin is shown conducting horrible experiments on her newborn daughter, and then, when the experiment fails and she dies, drops her down a trash chute in the laboratory without even giving her a name. [[spoiler: But it's then subverted when it's revealed that the newborn daughter was actually Ryuko, the protagonist!]]
* ''Anime/YuriKumaArashi'': [[spoiler: Princess]] Lulu's brother didn't die from [[spoiler: being thrown off a cliff, being thrown off a cliff into quicksand occupied by a Dune worm, or being thrown into a volcano]]. Instead, [[spoiler: he died from a bee sting allergy.]]
* ''Anime/DeathParade'' has a young looking boy appear in Quindecim however it's really a disguise and the person is really an adult. Mayu on the other hand is older but is still a [[DeadAllAlong deceased]] high schooler.
* The Death Note from, well, ''Manga/DeathNote'' has as one of its lesser-known rules that it cannot kill anyone less than 780 days old, or about two years and change. Two other rules exempt people over 124 years of age, and people destined to die within 12 minutes.
** Considering this, it's partially played straight and partially averted, as this means only ''literal'' infants are exempt but not children.
** Also, the Death Note cannot be directly handed to a human under 6 years of age.
* The Mazinger trilogy (''Anime/MazingerZ'', ''Anime/GreatMazinger'', ''Anime/UFORoboGrendizer'') both plays straight and averts the trope. Some children manage keep alive despite being TooDumbToLive, but the series did not shy either from showing dead children. In particular, two instances in the ''Anime/UFORoboGrendizer'' GoNagai manga were sheer horror.
* In ''Manga/OnePiece'', a young boy finds out that the King of Alabasta attacking Nanohana is actually an impostor, and then gets caught by Mr. 1 and Miss Doublefinger. While in most cases, it would [[HeKnowsTooMuch seal his fate]], they injure him and leave him for dead, enabling him to expose the truth after Crocodile's defeat.
** [[spoiler:First averted with Sabo's death. The fact that we never saw his body led some to believe that he was still alive, but WordOfGod confirms that he's dead. Until Sabo eventually comes back in the Dressrosa arc.]]
** Averted in the case that was orchestrated by the World Government [[spoiler:where they ordered that every infant ''including ones not yet born'' that could be related to Roger to be ''killed on sight'' - including the mother and anyone related to her.]]
** Another bloody aversion ordered by the World Government was [[spoiler:the extermination of the city of Flavence. Only a then-10-year-old Law survived. Everyone else, including a nun who was supporting Law, the kids she was taking care of, and Law's parents and younger sister, were all wiped out by the World Government. Needless to say, this fucked Law up pretty badly]].
* ''VisualNovel/HigurashiWhenTheyCry'':
** A backstory arc has a reporter with a pregnant wife, who he left behind to cover Himezawa. He's told that by doing so he'll come to regret it. His wife dies while he's away. [[spoiler:In the TimeSkip, we learn that they saved the baby.]]
** [[CreepyChild Rika]] dies multiple times, in very horrific ways. {{Tsundere}} Satoko also dies a few times as well.
** Then again, ''[[KillEmAll no one]]'' is safe in Hinamizawa. Not the cute little 9 year olds, not the teenagers, not the annoying school kids, not the doctors, not even the random villagers.
** The general rule for both ''When They Cry'' series (''Higurashi'' and ''Umineko'') is that everyone in the series is fair game, and no it isn't just quick kills...
* Played with in the first Episode (arc) of [[VisualNovel/UminekoWhenTheyCry Umineko]] where the "children" (just one of them is really a kid) survived until the end... But didn't survive the epilogue, anyway.
* Both invoked and averted in ''Anime/ScienceNinjaTeamGatchaman''. A child or children directly involved with the main cast in some way will survive. The nameless, faceless children either unseen or briefly seen on the streets when a mecha comes stomping through are screwed.
* Both played straight and subverted in ''Manga/BlackLagoon''. Played straight with Garcia and Fabiola... for now; subverted with [[spoiler: Hansel and Gretel, and the orphans they used as decoys]].
* In ''Anime/{{Gaiking}}'', the trope is zigzagged. The TagalongKid of the crew is put in serious danger ''several times'' and yet he lives through, and the little brother of a crewmember ([[spoiler: Peter's brother Tom]]) is taken hostage and also survives... but the younger brother of ''another'' Space Dragon crew-member ([[spoiler: Fan Lee]]) dies in the arms of his sibling after being shot InTheBack, and in one of the earliest episodes a little girl named Lisa is shot to death because her father didn't want to join the BigBad's forces.
* One would think that this would be horribly averted in ''Anime/CodeGeass'', but it's actually played straight for the most part if the viewer has a sharp eye. Even through throngs of crying babies that are the children of the Elevens/Japanese, all of them seem to live. In the R1 episode [[spoiler:"Bloodstained Euphie"]], [[spoiler:Euphemia]] [[MoreDakka guns down a large throng of Japanese]]. Among the survivors are some elderly folks and [[PetTheDog thank goodness]], a baby.
** There's several instances in the general massacres scenes where you can see smaller bodies, clearly of young children and teenagers, albeit undetailed and from a distance.
** The raid on the Order of Geass.
* Definitely averted in ''Manga/FullmetalAlchemist'', to horrifying effect. There's the [[CheerfulChild Nina Tucker]] incident in which her crazed father [[BodyHorror merged her with the family dog]], Envy started the Ishvallan War by transforming himself into a soldier and shooting a child, Envy and Father have been shown to be PoweredByAForsakenChild, the [[ZombieMooks Doll Soldiers]] can be interpreted as children's souls put in freakish bodies...
** Yet for some reason Pride, a hundreds-of-years-old monster wearing the skin of a child, is the only surviving homunculus at the end of the series.
** In a strange ironic HilariousInHindsight way [[spoiler:the same character, Selim,]] died at the end of [[Anime/FullmetalAlchemist the 2003 anime version]]]. Also, though a bit older than usual, [[spoiler:Edward dies in the 2003 anime (twice)]] only to be brought back (well... [[spoiler:not the "Real world" Edward]] though).
** Wrath dies in ''Anime/FullmetalAlchemistTheConquerorOfShamballa''. He's the youngest looking homonculi, not looking any older than [[spoiler:the physically thirteen]] Alphonse.
* None of the fifteen-and-under cast of ''Anime/YukiYunaIsAHero'' die despite all the battles. [[spoiler:They ''[[FateWorseThanDeath cannot]]'' die. They only lose their senses until they can't take care of themselves anymore.]] {{Averted}} in the prequel light novel, where an elementary school aged MagicalGirl died.
* Eleven year old Nate from ''Anime/YokaiWatch'' has gotten threatened and attacked before but never gets hurt, and Jibanyan's backstory involves [[spoiler:him [[HeroicSacrifice saving]] his owner from getting hit by a truck.]] Despite this several {{yokai}} seem quite young so it's assumed they died as children.
* ''Manga/{{Yuureitou}}'' usually averts this. It contains one boy dying in-series and another dying as a major factor in a characters backstory. An early chapter had a boy surviving being killed but his mother died instead.
[[/folder]]

* The [[DGrayMan Earl]] [[BigBad of]] [[MonsterClown Millennium]] doesn't care how old you are; as long as you lost someone close to you, he will be there to turn you into an Akuma.

* ''GunSmithCats 1''-ups ''MadMax'' in one particularly memorable chase scene. A girl runs out into the middle of the road, Bean Bandit (who has a soft-spot for kids) and Rally Vincent (hotshot bounty hunter pursuing him) avoid hitting the girl by running their cars into each other and driving simultaneously on two wheels, forming a triangle over her.

* Played with in the first Episode (arc) of [[VisualNovel/UminekoNoNakuKoroNi Umineko]] where the "children" (just one of them is really a kid) survived until the end... But didn't survive the epilogue, anyway.

* ''Manga/GunslingerGirl'' has a premise which revolves around {{Child Soldier}}s so this is expected. By the end [[spoiler:every one of the protagonists have died]], some on-screen and some rather peacefully during the twenty year timeskip. The first gen Cyborgs were all essentially terminally ill from the first chapter, not expected to live longer than four years if they weren't killed in combat.

* ''Manga/{{Yuureitou}}'' contains one boy dying in-series and another dying as a major factor in a characters backstory.

* Averted in Anime/KillLaKill, where Ragyo Kiryuuin is shown conducting horrible experiments on her newborn daughter, and then, when the experiment fails and she dies, drops her down a trash chute in the laboratory without even giving her a name. [[spoiler: But it's then subverted when it's revealed that the newborn daughter was actually Ryuko, the protagonist!]]

* ''Anime/DeathParade'' has a young looking boy appear in Quindecim however it's a disguised. Mayu on the other hand is older but is still a [[DeadAllAlong deceased]] high schooler.

* ''Franchise/HigurashiWhenTheyCry'':

** Then again, ''no one'' is safe in Hinamizawa. Not the cute little 9 year olds, not the teenagers, not the annoying school kids, not the doctors, not even the random villagers.

*** Played with in the first Episode(arc) of [[VisualNovel/UminekoNoNakuKoroNi Umineko]] where the "children" (just one of them is really a kid) survived until the end... But didn't survive the epilogue, anyway.

** In a strange ironic HilariousInHindsight way [[spoiler:the same character, Selim, died at the end of [[Anime/FullmetalAlchemist the 2003 anime version]]]]. Also, though a bit older than usual, [[spoiler:Edward dies in the 2003 anime (twice)]] only to be brought back (well..[[spoiler:not the "Real world" Edward though)]].

* None of the fifteen-and-under die in ''Anime/YukiYunaIsAHero'' despite all the battles. [[spoiler:They ''[[FateWorseThanDeath cannot]]'' die. They only lose their senses until they can't take care of themselves anymore.]] {{Averted}} in the prequel light novel, where an elementary school aged MagicalGirl died.

* In ''Manga/MiraiNikki'', AnyoneCanDie, even children. The [[spoiler: 4 year old Reisuke]] is killed by Yuno, and later on [[spoiler: Yukki's 14 year old friends are all gunned down as well.]]

* Mao-chan in ''Manga/ChibiDevi''

* In a ''Manga/VenusVersusVirus' arc one of a set of twins gets turned into a [[TheVirus Vir]][[TheHeartless us]]. She asks Lucia to MercyKill her so she doesn't harm her brother.

* Children are most definitely victims of Titan attacks in ''Manga/AttackOnTitan'', and Episode 25 clearly shows rocks falling and crushing both children and women as a consequence of the Stohess incident. We also get to see [[spoiler:Bertolt and Reiner's friend Berik die]] in the manga.

* The Death Note from, well, ''Manga/DeathNote'' has as one of its lesser-known rules that it cannot kill anyone less than 780 days old, or about two years and change. Two other rules exempt people over 124 years of age, and people destined to die within 12 minutes.
** Considering this, it's partially played straight and partially averted, as this means only ''literal'' infants are exempt but not children.
** Also, the Death Note cannot be directly handed to a human under 6 years of age.

** There is a filler scene in the original ''Manga/DragonBall'' where Snow, the girl from Jingle Village, grabs a rifle from a fallen King Castle soldier and takes aim at Piccolo Daimao as his back is turned, but gives up. Piccolo then turns right around and fires eye-lasers in her direction. When the smoke clears, we're relieved to see that he wasn't aiming for Snow at all, but another soldier directly behind her. This scene sort of doubles as an example of MenAreTheExpendableGender.
*** Why? I could see if she was a grown woman, but the person killed in place of her was not just an adult, but a soldier, too. It's not like a bunch of boys from her village were being killed, too.

* The Mazinger trilogy (''Anime/MazingerZ'', ''Anime/GreatMazinger'', ''Anime/UFORoboGrendizer'') both plays straight and averts the trope. Some children manage keep alive despite being TooDumbToLive, but the series did not shy either from showing dead children. In particular, two instances in the ''Anime/UFORoboGrendizer'' GoNagai manga were sheer horror.
* ''{{Anime/Daimos}}'': Daimos averts the trope as soon as the SECOND episode. A kid spends a short while egging [[TheHero Kazuya]] and [[TheWoobie Erika]] on to kiss. Later, when the enemy attacks, an explosion destroys the greenhouse had gone into. Kazuya and Erika bolt to the place and find him lying between the rubble. The kid opens his eyes and asks Kazuya if he "got lucky" before dying as Kazuya is holding him in arms.
* ''Anime/{{Zambot 3}}'': This series is notorious -among other reasons- because it averted the trope. AnyoneCanDie. It does not matter if you are a kid; it does not matter if you are a kid and a secondary character; it does not matter if you are a kid [[spoiler:and a MAIN character.]] Given this is a show produced by YoshiyukiTomino (as well known as KillEmAll), it should not be shocking.

* One would think that this would be horribly averted in ''Anime/CodeGeass'', but it's actually played straight for the most part if the viewer has a sharp eye. Even through throngs of crying babies that are the children of the Elevens/Japanese, all of them seem to live. In the R1 episode [[spoiler:"Bloodstained Euphie"]], [[spoiler:Euphemia]] [[MoreDakka guns down a large throng of Japanese]]. Among the survivors are some elderly folks and [[PetTheDog thank goodness]], a baby.
* In ''Manga/OnePiece'', a young boy finds out that the King of Alabasta attacking Nanohana is actually an impostor, and then gets caught by Mr. 1 and Miss Doublefinger. While in most cases, it would [[HeKnowsTooMuch seal his fate]], they injure him and leave him for dead, enabling him to expose the truth after Crocodile's defeat.
** [[spoiler:First averted with Sabo's death. The fact that we never saw his body led some to believe that he was still alive, but WordOfGod confirms that he's dead. Until Sabo eventually comes back in the Dressrosa arc.]]
** Averted in the case that was orchestrated by the World Government [[spoiler:where they ordered that every infant ''including ones not yet born'' that could be related to Roger to be ''killed on sight'' - including the mother and anyone related to her.]]
** Another bloody aversion ordered by the World Government was [[spoiler:the extermination of the city of Flavence. Only a then-10-year-old Law survived. Everyone else, including a nun who was supporting Law, the kids she was taking care of, and Law's parents and younger sister, were all wiped out by the World Government. Needless to say, this fucked Law up pretty badly]].
* Averted to some degree in ''Manga/KarakuriCircus''. Children (particularly Masaru) are shown to be terribly injured on occasion...and then the French village gets attacked by the evil circus.
* Averted in ''Manga/ReikoTheZombieShop'' by child murdering psychopath Saki Yurikawa. Introduced in the first volume, Saki's a teenage serial killer who has murdered over twenty little girls. She initially takes an interest in them being her "little sister", and when they refuse she snaps and utterly butchers them. Even after [[spoiler: her death and zombification by titular heroine Reiko]] children still die in this series.
* Subverted in ''Manga/YuYuHakusho''. Hiei, minutes after birth was thrown off a floating island, into a demon infested forest. Luckily, he survived. And what's worse, it was all because he was a male.
** The Ice Maidens are some kinda cold blooded to have zero pity for an infant, indeed.

* The backstory arc in ''Franchise/WhenTheyCry'' has a reporter with a pregnant wife, who he left behind to cover Himezawa. He's told that by doing so, he'll come to regret it. His wife dies while he's away. [[spoiler:In the TimeSkip, we learn that they saved the baby.]]
* Both invoked and averted in ''Anime/ScienceNinjaTeamGatchaman''. A child or children directly involved with the main cast in some way will survive. The nameless, faceless children either unseen or briefly seen on the streets when a mecha comes stomping through are screwed.
* Both played straight and subverted in ''Manga/BlackLagoon''. Played straight with Garcia and Fabiola.. for now; subverted with [[spoiler: Hansel and Gretel, and the orphans they used as decoys]].
* In ''Anime/{{Gaiking}}'', the trope is zigzagged. The TagalongKid of the crew is put in serious danger ''several times'' and yet he lives through, and the little brother of a crewmember ([[spoiler: Peter's brother Tom]]) is taken hostage and also survives... but the younger brother of ''another'' Space Dragon crew-member ([[spoiler: Fan Lee]]) dies in the arms of his sibling after being shot InTheBack, and in one of the earliest episodes a little girl named Lisa is shot to death because her father didn't want to join the BigBad's forces.
* ''Nasty'' aversion in ''Anime/SpaceRunawayIdeon''. [[spoiler: The deaths of the kids in the KillEmAll movie are among the most ''gruesome'' in the Ideon media... like, um, the little girl [[OffwithHisHead who gets beheaded BY A FREAKING GUNSHOT]]?]]

* In ''Anime/CodeGeass'', (albeit, off-screen) as Britannian soldiers are gunning down Japanese, the viewer hears a crying infant, followed shortly by a hail of gunfire.
** Also, there's several instances in the general massacres scenes where you can see smaller bodies, clearly of children and teenagers, albeit undetailed and from a distance.
** The raid on the Order of Geass.

* Definitely averted in ''Manga/FullmetalAlchemist'', to horrifying effect. There's the [[CheerfulChild Nina Tucker]] incident in which her crazed father [[BodyHorror merged her with the family dog]], Envy started the Ishvallan War by transforming himself into a soldier and shooting a child, Envy and Father have been shown to be PoweredByAForsakenChild, the [[ZombieMooks Doll Soldiers]] can be interpreted as children's souls put in freakish bodies...
** Yet for some reason Pride, a hundreds-of-years-old monster wearing the skin of a child, is the only surviving homunculus at the end of the series.
** In a strange ironic HilariousInHindsight way [[spoiler:the same character, Selim, died at the end of [[Anime/FullmetalAlchemist the 2003 anime version]]]]. Also, though a bit older than usual, [[spoiler:Edward dies in the 2003 anime (twice)]] only to be brought back (well..[[spoiler:not the "Real world" Edward though)]].

* In ''VisualNovel/HigurashiWhenTheyCry'', [[CreepyChild Rika]] dies multiple times, in horrific ways. {{Tsundere}} Satoko also dies a few times, as well.
** Then again, ''no one'' is safe in Hinamizawa. Not the cute little 9 year olds, not the teenagers, not the annoying school kids, not the doctors, not even the random villagers.
** The general rule for both When They Cry series (Higurashi and Umineko) is that everyone in the series is fair game, and no it isn't just quick kills...
*** Played with in the first Episode(arc) of [[VisualNovel/UminekoNoNakuKoroNi Umineko]] where the "children" (just one of them is really a kid) survived until the end... But didn't survive the epilogue, anyway.

* Horrifically averted in ''Anime/NowAndThenHereAndThere''. The fact that the plot revolves around ChildSoldiers in a CrapsackWorld should give you an indication of what happens.

* Toboe was actually the first of the ''Manga/WolfsRain'' wolves to die. He's the youngest, being roughly thirteen to fourteen in human form.

* ''Manga/ALollipopOrABullet'' averts this in a horrid way. [[spoiler: Mokuzu's abusive father Masachika ends up beating her so badly one day that she dies of the injuries. He tries [[DeadMansChest hiding the body]] in the mountains, but Nagisa and her older brother Tomohiko end up finding poor Mokuzu's dismembered corpse]].
* ''Manga/GunslingerGirl'' has a premise which revolves around ChildSoldier's so this is expected. By the end [[spoiler:every one of the protagonists have died]], some on-screen and some rather peacefully during the twenty year timeskip. The first gen Cyborgs were all essentially terminally ill from the first chapter, not expected to live longer than four years if they weren't killed in combat.

* ''Anime/MichikoToHatchin'' has several cases of young children dying, almost dying, and killing people themselves. An episode with a memorable DownerEnding has a woman and her little sister being gunned down by a bunch of kids.

* Averted in Anime/KillLaKill, where Ragyo Kiryuuin is shown conducting horrible experiments on her newborn daughter, and then, when the experiment fails and she dies, drops her down a trash chute in the laboratory without even giving her a name. [[spoiler: But it's then subverted when it's revealed that the newborn daughter was actually Ryuko, the protagonist!]]

* Surprisingly enough, ''Manga/AttackOnTitan'' plays this trope straight almost across the board. Children are implied to die on a regular basis, but so far there's only been one on-panel portrayal of a child being killed. More accurately, a youth approximately 10 - 12 years old being ''bitten in half'' by a Titan with blood splattering everywhere and his legs kicking as he's EatenAlive.