History ShootTheShaggyDog / AnimeAndManga

* The whole Fallen One arc in ''Manga/DGrayman'' is one of these. Allen encounters another Exorcist, Suman Dark, who has betrayed his [[EmpathicWeapon Innocence]] by betraying the Black Order to a villain, and has been turned into a [[OneWingedAngel giant angelic torso-looking thing]]. Allen struggles to save Suman while he attacks mindlessly, killing a lot of innocent people. Allen finally manages to hold Suman back by over-activating his own Innocence, and he manages to pull Suman out of the monster... [[spoiler:only for him to find that Suman has lost his soul anyway. Turns out Allen hadn't succeeded; Suman's Innocence basically timed out. Then, just to make things worse, Suman explodes in a fountain of blood, thanks to the sudden appearance of the villain from whom he begged for mercy in the first place.]]

** In ''Anime/RebuildOfEvangelion'', [[spoiler:the third movie is this compared to ''1.0'' and ''2.0''. To sum it up: everything that happened in the prior two movies has been rendered moot because Shinji triggered Third Impact. It becomes clear throughout the movie that everything Shinji does to try to make things better ends up backfiring and making things worse for everyone, [[TraumaCongaLine usually through no fault of his own]]. Little wonder he's in an AngstComa by the end. The final movie will determine whether things will stay as they are.]]

* ''Manga/{{Kaiji}}'', a series full of [[ShaggyDogStory Shaggy Dog Stories]], has one particularly nasty and fatal one. At the end of the Restricted Rock Paper Scissors arc, Kaiji gives in to his ChronicHeroSyndrome and sacrifices the prize money he would've used to pay off his debt to save Ishida from a very short lifetime of indentured servitude. Not only does he end up even deeper in debt than he was when he started, but Ishida, who's also trying to pay off his debts, ends up becoming a part of the Steel Beam Crossing, where he's one of the many contestants who fall to their death, rendering Kaiji's sacrifice AllForNothing.

* '' VisualNovel/{{Clannad}}'' After Story, before the ResetButton is hit, shamelessly goes for a shaggy dog shoot, taking the story from sad to abjectly miserable and pointless. Despite this, there are some who think this ending is superior to the True End.

* ''Manga/ChronoCrusade'' (anime only), also a definitive example of a DownerEnding, ends with [[spoiler:the main cast either dead or broken. None of the heroes' goals were met, and [[TheBadGuyWins the villain succeeded in all his plans]], with his "death" only being a temporary setback. If anything, [[DarknessInducedAudienceApathy the world would have been better off if the heroes had NOT been around]].]]

* Asano, the UnluckyEverydude from ''Anime/TheTwelveKingdoms'' has several of these moments in his plot arc. Despite being an OrdinaryHighSchoolStudent trapped in another world, he is ultimately ineffectual in doing any good for himself or for his friends, and he eventually becomes a patsy of the BigBad. Just when it looks as though he's about to redeem himself by performing a vital, heroic mission for the good guys, he gets intercepted by the villains, who kill him in spite of his being armed with a gun, while they only have primitive weapons. To further rub salt into the wound, Asano, before he dies, learns that his mission was completely unnecessary, since reinforcements were ''already'' coming to help the good guys.

* ''Manga/TokyoBabylon'', particularly when the continuation provided by ''Manga/{{X1999}}'' is added in. After spending the series waiting to see if Subaru can inspire any actual feelings of love in him, and just when Subaru has realized his feelings for Seishiro, Seishiro decides that... no, he doesn't care about Subaru. [[BreakTheCutie So he tortures him, tries to kill him, and does kill his sister]], leaving Subaru [[HeartbrokenBadass permanently broken]] with his heart's desire that one day Seishiro will kill him too. Except that when he tries to let that happen, he ends up killing Seishiro instead.

* Creator/OhGreat wrote a self-contained arc in his H-Series ''Silky Whip Extreme'' called ''Junk Story'', that is a pretty damn grim version of this trope. To Wit: The plot is that, 100 years before the story began, A super-powerful military robot called Gatt fell in love with a woman named Mariko. By being denied Mariko, Gatt took revenge on all of humanity, destroying most of civilization and forcing humans to live in fear. The first 3 issues are Mariko, revived as an immortal cyborg, teaming up with a gun-runner to try and destroy Gatt. Only, it's revealed in the last two issues that all of this was pointless; [[spoiler:The world government has ''deliberately'' allowed Gatt to keep rampaging for a century, as even though they have cyborgs vastly more powerful than him, leaving humanity in fear of an external monster foe makes them easier to control. The end of the series involves Mariko being captured by Caligula, a powerful AxCrazy cyborg employed by the government, the Gunrunner-Turned-Love-Interest getting killed off, and Mariko being forced to become Caligula's personal sex slave]]. Not only does the ending completely invalidate every plot development brought up until that point, but it brings up even MORE questions that will never be answered.

** One part earlier in ''[[Manga/JoJosBizarreAdventureStoneOcean Stone Ocean]]'', antagonist Enrico Pucci succeeds in [[spoiler:gaining a Stand which [[ApocalypseHow accelerates time to cataclysmic proportions and creates a new universe]] where everybody [[AndIMustScream knows their fate and are unable to change it]]]]. All of the protagonists[[note]]sans Foo Fighters, who had given up their body earlier on[[/note]] confront Pucci in the middle of the ocean... [[spoiler:only for Pucci's Stand, Made in Heaven, to [[TotalPartyKill kill every single one of them one-by-one]], leaving only Emporio alive as the universe resets itself.]] Granted, this trope gets [[SubvertedTrope subverted]] in that [[spoiler:Emporio managed to kill Pucci using Weather Report's Stand to deprive him of oxygen followed by shooting him, [[ResetButtonEnding thus allowing the universe to restabilize itself]]]], but that doesn't stop [[spoiler:the protagonists from being reincarnated into new people with no memories of Part 6's events, leaving Emporio absolutely ''heartbroken'' when nobody recognizes him anymore]].

* ''Anime/LostUniverse'' pretty much ends this way depending on how you interpret the CutShort ending was supposed to turn out. Protagonists die while fighting with the BigBad. But too bad, there are a few baddies left and now there are no people who have the abilities to defeat them if they show up.

* Part VII of ''Manga/JoJosBizarreAdventure'' features Gyro Zepelli, an executioner who took pity on a young boy who, in a bad case of "wrong place wrong time", was sentenced to die. He pleads with the king of Italy to spare his life. The king says that he will give the boy amnesty if he completes the Steel Ball Run, a horse race in the United States. [[spoiler:Gyro dies before completing it, but the boy was granted amnesty shortly after the events of the story arc following the collapse of the monarchy.....only to die of illness shortly thereafter.]]

* ''Literature/KingsGame2009'', [[spoiler: all of Nobuaki's often desperate and extreme efforts to stop the Ousama Game and keep everyone alive are futile. He doesn't manage to save anybody, and the one person he does manage to keep alive, his girlfriend, dies minutes afterward anyway from something practically unrelated.]]

* ''Literature/OusamaGame'', [[spoiler: all of Nobuaki's often desperate and extreme efforts to stop the Ousama Game and keep everyone alive are futile. He doesn't manage to save anybody, and the one person he does manage to keep alive, his girlfriend, dies minutes afterward anyway from something practically unrelated.]]

* ''Manga/{{Narutaru}}'''s anime adaptation. Most of the cast goes insane and dies in a generally unsatisfying fashion, except for the [[BreakTheCutie main character]] and the vaguely established villains, who vanish off the face of the earth around episode 10. Most of the plot points are LeftHanging, and noone seems to care much. The description that 'nothing much has happened except that a few ineffectual people has died' fits the story like a glove, although this is because the anime only covers the first half of the manga, cutting off right before things start to get ''really'' bad. The manga, incidentally, may also count as this.

* ''Manga/FistOfTheNorthStar'': in the prologue movie ''ZERO: The Legend of Kenshiro'', Kenshiro helps the people of a town who were victims of a ruthless slaver defiend themselves from an invasion force led by a ''Nanto Seiken'' user, in doing so taking the detonator for a bomb concealed within the town. Unfortunately, the slaver had a back-up detonator and uses it after being fatally wounded. The town is flattened by the bombs, and everyone Kenshiro met and befriended since his defeat at Shin's hands is killed.

* ''Manga/ChronoCrusade'' (anime only), also a definitive example of a DownerEnding, ends with [[spoiler:the main cast either dead or broken. None of the heroes' goals were met, and the villain succeeded in all his plans, with his "death" only being a temporary setback. If anything, [[DarknessInducedAudienceApathy the world would have been better off if the heroes had NOT been around]].]]

** During the Frieza Saga, as Frieza is going into his final form, Vegeta pulls off a DeliberateInjuryGambit, having Krillin mortally wound him and then having Dende [[HealingHands heal]] him in order to obtain a [[CameBackStrong Zenkai boost]], believing this will allow him to ascend and become a Super Saiyan. Sadly, while it ''does'' make him much stronger, Frieza is still way out of his league, and he doesn't become a Super Saiyan; once this happens, Vegeta completely loses the will of fight before Frieza [[NoHoldsBarredBeatdown beats him to]] [[ColdBloodedTorture a bloody pulp]]. When Frieza subsequently finishes him off, Vegeta spends his final moments tearfully begging Goku to defeat Frieza and avenge the Saiyans.

* ''Manga/SevenSeeds'': The story of the Ryugu Shelter arc is told as an ApocalypticLog of Mark's and told the [[HopeSpot hopeful]] story of the survival of humanity in the shelter. Things worked out well for the most part, TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt has occured, but the people in the shelter are safe and lead a rather decent, normal daily life. An accident leads to most of the food storages to become inaccessible and useless, forcing the higher ups to begin to secretly cull some of the inhabitans, to ensure the survival of the rest. Despite this horrible action, things look up a bit... until an illness spreads throughout the shelter at an alarming rate, ultimately killing majority of the people in it. Mark is the last one to die, leaving his diary behind as the only evidence of what began as a hope for humanity, only to cruelly turn into a complete failure.
* The end of the Golden Age Arc from ''Manga/{{Berserk}}''. [[spoiler: After Griffith's capture, the Band of the Hawk is driven out of Midland and hunted as fugitives. Guts returns a year later and it seems that with his help they may be able to rescue Griffith and restore the Hawks' glory. They succeed, but Griffith is a broken man both physically and mentally from a year's worth of torture, and after a series of tragic mistakes, Griffith hits his DespairEventHorizon and uses his Crimson Behelit to initiate The Eclipse, accepting the call to Sacrifice and promptly killing the remaining members of the Band of the Hawk in order to rise as a horrific demon god. With the exception of Guts, Griffith, Casca, and Rickert, the characters they've spent the entire manga so far building up are offed without much ceremony]].

* ''Manga/{{Kaiji}}'' a series full of ShaggyDogStories, has one particularly nasty and fatal one. At the end of the Restricted Rock Paper Scissors arc, Kaiji gives in to his ChronicHeroSyndrome and sacrifices the prize money he would've used to pay off his debt to save Ishida from a very short lifetime of indentured servitude. Not only does he end up even deeper in debt than he was when he started, but Ishida, who's also trying to pay off his debts, ends up becoming a part of the Steel Beam Crossing, where he's one of the many contestants who fall to their death, rendering Kaiji's sacrifice AllForNothing.

* ''Manga/BlackJack'': In the prequel, "Young Black Jack," Hazama travels to Vietnam during the war to help out a colleague. While there one of the soldiers he was traveling with, Steve, is seriously injured by shrapnel and Hazama spends the entirety of the three-part arc trying to save him. After enduring a brutal Viet Cong torture camp where Steve's neck wound festers and attracts maggots; they're saved and a younger Dr. Kiriko patches Steve up. The final episode of the arc opens with a dazed Steve unable to think clearly from all of the trauma and medication stepping on a landmine and dying for good. Steve's CO snaps and tries to have them all killed before disappearing into the forest and Hazama returns to Japan, disturbed at what he's seen.

* ''Manga/TokyoBabylon'', particularly when the continuation provided by ''Manga/{{X1999}}'' is added in. After spending the series waiting to see if Subaru can inspire any actual feelings of love in him, and just when Subaru has realized his feelings for Seishiro, Seishiro decides that... no, he doesn't care about Subaru. So he tortures him, tries to kill him, and does kill his sister, leaving Subaru [[HeartbrokenBadass permanently broken]] with his heart's desire that one day Seishiro will kill him too. Except that when he tries to let that happen, he ends up killing Seishiro instead.
** Then Subaru learns that he never had chance of succeeding in the first place, as it was a part of Seishiro's [[ThanatosGambit plan]] all along. [[spoiler: Subaru's sister made sure Seishiro knew of a spell she placed on him while dying, if he tried to kill Subaru the same way he killed her, then it'd be deflected back on him]]. What's probably even worse, as Seishiro [[DiedInYourArmsTonight lays dying in Subaru's arms]], his last words to Subaru are[[spoiler:...not quite all heard but it's [[DyingDeclarationOfLove easy enough to assume]], especially since]], he [[KlingonPromotion becomes the next Sakurazukamori]] in Seishiro's place [[spoiler:and the predecessor is destined to be murdered by the one they love most]].

* ''Manga/TokyoBabylon'', particularly when the continuation provided by ''Manga/{{X1999}}'' is added in. After spending the series waiting to see if Subaru can inspire any actual feelings of love in him, and just when Subaru has realized his feelings for Seishiro, Seishiro decides that... no, he doesn't care about Subaru. So he tortures him, tries to kill him, and does kill his sister, leaving Subaru permanently broken with the heart's desire that one day Seishiro will kill him too. Except that when he tries to let that happen, he ends up killing Seishiro instead. And then he becomes the Sakurazukamori in Seishiro's place.

* ''Anime/HellGirl'' Negoro Tetsurou's story is a mild version of this, played mostly for laughs.

* In ''{{Manga/Uzumaki}}'', it's never quite spelled out whether the main characters die in the proper sense (which would make the narration posthumous) or instead suffer a FateWorseThanDeath, but either way, they fight through a hell of monsters, unwanted transformations, and SinisterGeometry only for all of their actions to be completely meaningless in the end.

* The Chapter Black saga from ''Manga/YuYuHakusho'' could be considered an example of this. The characters pull out all the stops, [[PyrrhicVictory sacrificing a great deal in the process]], in order to try and stop Sensui from opening a tunnel to Demon World, only to eventually learn that [[spoiler:A) Sensui's true motive for opening the tunnel was just so he could go to the demon world and find an opponent who could kill him, B) he would have been dead within a month anyway, from a fatal disease, and C) the spirit world's elite soldiers could seal the demon tunnel with [[HardWorkHardlyWorks relatively little effort]].]] Yusuke does end up discovering something important about himself that helps drive the next arc, but this arc itself was pretty pointless.

* In ''{{Manga/Uzumaki}}'', it's never quite spelled out whether the main characters die in the proper sense (which would make the narration posthumous) or instead suffer a FateWorseThanDeath, but either way, they fight through a hell of monsters, unwanted transformations, and SinisterGeometry only for all of their actions to be completely meaningless in the end.
* ''Manga/YuYuHakusho'' starts with one: delinquent Yusuke Urameshi decides, in a moment of selflessness, to rescue a kid from being hit by a car and is killed in the process. Once he gets to the afterlife, he finds that he kinda screwed up a few things by this action, because he wasn't supposed to die that day and neither was the kid - the kid would have been a bit scuffed up, but his ball would have saved him.
* ''Literature/OusamaGame'' ends with the big reveal that [[KillEmAll no one, not even the "winner" can survive the King's Game; to stop the King virus from infecting others, everyone in a King's Game must die]]. Predictably, TheHero and pretty much every named character ends up dying, but TheStinger at the end reveals that [[SenselessSacrifice even this didn't do anything to stop the King's Game]], as a completely new OrdinaryHighSchoolStudent receives a [[HereWeGoAgain mysterious text...]]

** [[spoiler:[[SarcasmMode Oh that's comforting,]] [[NiceJobBreakingItHero Luffy's efforts to save his brother inadvertently helped the guy responsible for his capture in the first place.]]]]

* ''Manga/YuYuHakusho'' starts with one: delinquent Yusuke Urameshi decides, in a moment of selflessness, to rescue a kid from being hit by a car and is killed in the process. Once he gets to the afterlife, he finds that he kinda screwed up a few things by this action, because he wasn't supposed to die that day and neither was the kid - the kid would have been a bit scuffed up, but his ball would have saved him.

* A lot of the more [[BrokenBase critical fans]] consider the ending of ''Anime/TengenToppaGurrenLagann'' to be this, stating that [[spoiler: Nia's death]] seemed to [[BrokenAesop violate the show's theme]] of [[ScrewDestiny defying the odds through sheer determination]], [[spoiler: especially after everything Simon went through to both restore her true self and get her back]].
** However this is not the case, since[[spoiler: the show concluded by saying that reckless growth brings destruction. So by Simon demonstrating self-control by not bringing back Nia back from the dead (like they did for the Spiral King) the show is following its own themes]]

* The end of the Golden Age Arc from ''Manga/{{Berserk}}''. [[spoiler: After Griffith's capture, the Band of the Hawk is driven out of Midland and hunted as fugitives. Guts returns a year later and it seems that with his help they may be able to rescue Griffith and restore the Hawks' glory. They succeed, but Griffith is a broken man both physically and mentally from a year's worth of torture, and after a series of tragic mistakes, Griffith hits his DespairEventHorizon and uses his Crimson Behelit to initiate The Eclipse, accepting the call to Sacrifice and promptly killing the remaining members of the Band of the Hawk in order to rise as a horrific demon god. With the exception of Guts, Griffith and Casca, the characters they've spent the entire manga so far building up are offed without much ceremony]].