Angsty Surviving Twins in Anime and Manga.
By Creator:
- Works by CLAMP:
- Fay D Flourite from Tsubasa -RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE-. All of his motivations stem from the death of his twin, by that name, which he adopts in his brother's memory. His real name is Yuui.
- Subaru Sumeragi in X1999 after the death of his twin sister Hokuto.
- In the Magic Knight Rayearth TV series, there's Presea's twin younger sister Sierra.
By Series:
- Double-subverted in Angel Beats! with Ayato Naoi. His twin brother, a pottery prodigy, died; his father forced the surviving twin to become a Replacement Goldfish. But he got over it eventually, and was starting to like his new life...until his father got a terminal illness, and they had to shut down said pottery business. This gave him enough angst to quality for the "ruined childhood afterlife" and turned him into a psychotic hypnotist who thinks he's God.
- In Another, Mei Misaki lost her twin sister Misaki Fujiokanote at the start of the story. It turns out that Misaki's death as a result of complications following a surgery was due to the calamity, which targets people linked to members of Class 3-3 by two degrees of separation (which includes siblings, but not cousins), which means that the calamity was already killing people in April, before Mei became the "non-existent" student in an effort to stave it off.
- In AR∀GO: City of London Police's Special Crimes Investigator, Ewan dies within the first few chapters. Arago ends up replacing him as a detective.In the middle of the story, it is revealed that Ewan is revived by Patchman to contain the Brionac Patchman divided into two, and as Patchman's spare Soul Jar. Ewan is finally Killed Off for Real in the last chapter when Ewan's consience finally resurface and he commits suicide by jumping off a high building, taking Patchman's soul with him.
- This trope plays a role in the single most foreshadowed and biggest spoiler in Black Butler, unless you're one of the fans who guessed beforehand. As in, "Ciel Phantomhive" as we know him is actually the younger, less-known, fragile Phantomhive twin, impersonating his brother Ciel for the past three-four years. As of yet, the audience doesn't even know the protagonist's real name.
- Nacht Faust from Black Clover. Back in his youth, Nacht had a younger twin brother named Morgen. While his brother formed a pair with Yami and became famous as a great Magic Knight, Nacht started studying devils. However, his studies led Morgen to sacrifice his life to save Nacht from a powerful devil when he recklessly went through with casting a Devil-Binding Ritual. Nacht says he still can't forgive himself for causing Morgen's death even years after the incident, and modeled his appearance after his late twin brother's. To atone, he joined the Magic Knights and dedicated his life to destroying unjust evil before it can harm good people.
- Ceres, Celestial Legend plays with this. While Aki is alive for majority of the series, his body being possessed by the Ancestor and his conscious forced down, it is still treated akin to Aki being dead and causing a lot of grief for his twin, Aya. It's played straight in the finale, when Aki gets killed.
- In Chaos;Head, Yua Kusunoki's twin sister Mia died in the "Group Dive," the first First Gen incident. Yua then launches her own investigation into Mia's death. She suspects Takumi Nishijou is involved in the First Gen murders, and attempts to gain his trust by acting as a girl otaku. When Takumi finds out her true intentions, Yua ... doesn't take it well. Turns out that it was actually Yua who died and not Mia. Mia essentially became Yua after her twin's death.
- Played with in CLANNAD. Kyou and Ryou are non-obviously identical twins, differentiated by Only Six Faces and their vastly different hairstyles. There's a literal Bus Crash, and everyone thinks Ryou might have died, but it turns out she didn't take the bus that day at all. Kyou only panics momentarily. It's Kotomi—purple-haired girl #3—who experiences a Freak Out; she takes one look at the flipped bus and jumps to the conclusion that Ryou is dead and it's her fault, probably because she still wrongly blames herself for causing her parents' deaths and destroying their life's work.
- Mrs. Skeener, of The Dreaming, was the only student at Merriweathers Finishing School for Young Ladies (Greenwich's old name) that wasn't kidnapped by Quinkans. Her twin sister Mary, on the other hand...
- Happens very briefly in Full Metal Panic! The Second Raid, when Xia Yu Lan is killed and her corpse is used to goad her younger twin sister Xia Yu Fan into rage to attack their employer (who quickly offs her, too).
- Suboshi in Fushigi Yuugi, who is sufficiently broken by his twin's (perceived) death that he crosses the Moral Event Horizon in a big way to retaliate against the Suzaku warriors. And in a fairly horrible bit of irony, Amiboshi not only wasn't really dead, he was the only one of the Seiryuu seven who survived to the end of the series.
- Though not an actual twin, Shiki Ryogi in The Garden of Sinners goes through something like this after she loses "the other Shiki" after a car accident. "The other Shiki" is in fact a male Split Personality, and in his memory she begins using his masculine manner of speech.
- Ghost Hunt has Naru, who we later learn had a twin brother Gene who was killed in a hit and run type accident. Naru's whole reason for being in Japan is actually to find his brother's body, and the reason he always wears all black is because he is in mourning. We also learn Lin protects him in part because it is dangerous for him to use his PK without Gene, who he could channel some of his overwhelming power into safely. He maintains a stoic facade most of the time but the angst does slips through at times, to his great annoyance.
- Inochi by Reiko Momochi invokes this trope as an important base for its plot, as early as within the first two chapters. It is given that the twins, Nobara and Kotori, are identical to the point where not even their mother can tell apart their Twin Switch moments; unfortunately for Nobara, their last switch ends up getting Kotori kidnapped, killed, and posthumously raped. As a result, Nobara, due to circumstances, must continue to pretend to act as Kotori without getting found out. Cue massive and very understandable angst as Nobara not only sees everyone mourning for her under the belief that she's dead, but also feels horrifyingly guilty over Kotori's rape and murder. It eventually gets to the point where Nobara tricks Kotori's murderer into mortally wounding her in order for him to be brought to justice and reunite with her sister in the afterlife, She get's better.
- Jiu Jiu: The death of Takamichi's twin brother, Takayuki, caused Takamichi to close off her heart. Takayuki was the only person in their clan of demon hunters who truly cared for his sister, despite the rest of the family treating Takamichi like a worthless spare. With Takayuki's death, all the attention and expectations that had previously rested on his shoulders suddenly shifted to Takamichi, who was elevated to the position of clan heir. Years after his death Takamichi is still emotionally distant. Even after serving as the clan heir for the better part of her life, she's still not truly comfortable in the position because she knows how tenuous and circumstantial her family's support can be.
- Rai's death in Jyu-Oh-Sei drives the plot because of the angst it causes his twin Thor.
- K has Adolf K. Weismann and his elder twin sister Klaudia, who is a Posthumous Character - her death is shown in a flashback. Her brother, now immortal, retreats to his airship and removes himself completely from the world for decades, until he gets body swapped with an Ordinary High-School Student and hit with amnesia. He even says that even though he witnessed the Colourless King murder someone, he's not interested enough to interfere.
- In King of Thorn, twins Kasumi and Shizuku both contract the deadly disease Medusa, but only Kasumi is selected to into cryogenic sleep to wait for a cure, which upsets her greatly. Matters are complicated however when it's revealed that Kasumi is a Medusa duplicate created by Shizuku in a bout of incredible grief, when the 'real' Kasumi accidentally died by falling off a cliff after trying to get Shizuku to perform a double-suicide with her around the start of the story.
- In Kurage no Shokudo, Youtarou finds it difficult to accept his brother's death. In fact, he attempted to kill himself, presumably to join his twin in death.
- In Mars, Rei is introduced as a lively Delinquent Badass Biker wasting his youth chasing girls and racing bikes. After he has a panic attack in response to a person committing suicide in a public place, the series spends the much of its plot revealing that his identical twin Sei jumped to his death from the roof of a school, leaving Rei staring at a body that looked exactly like himself.
- One story in Mushishi centers on a woman whose twin sister was stolen away by a mushi when they were children. She still tries to contact her sister despite everyone including Ginko telling her it's a lost cause.
- Naruto:
- Hiashi for his brother Hizashi. After Hiashi killed the Cloud Village emissary when he tried to kidnap Hinata, he offered himself as the murderer, but the clan elders and Hizashi decided to have Hizashi stand in for him, so that his Cursed Seal would protect the Byakugan. Seeing Hizashi's son Neji's skill and resentment toward the head family deeply affects Hiashi, and leads him to tell Neji the truth about his father's death.
- Possibly Kinkaku and Ginkaku. After his brother is defeated in battle, he is unhappy to say the least, as he rampages through the 1st division of the Shinobi Alliance. According to Kakuzu, this is the second time this has happened. So Kinkaku does not do well when his brother is taken from him.
- Sagi, the daimyo of the Land of Birds, assumed the persona of a ghostly warrior so he could hunt down the person who poisoned his twin sister. Ultimately it's revealed that the Big Bad had actually poisoned Sagi, and his sister Toki assumed her brother's identity to avoid succession issues.
- In Sword Art Online, it turns out that Yuuki Konno had a twin sister, Aiko. Both girls were infected with HIV as a result of a contaminated blood transfusion, and Aiko died first. Yuuki, who was quite close to her sister, clearly misses Aiko a great deal, and ends up seeing a bit of her in her new friend, Asuna. When Yuuki dies in Asuna's arms, the last thing she sees is her sister in Asuna's place, clearly showing her undying love for them both.
- Touch (1981): Tatsuya Uesugi's brother Kazuya is killed by a speeding car, driving his surviving sibling to become a great pitcher in his memory.
- Averted at the end of Trigun Maximum in that we don't know if Knives is actually dead and never get to know how Vash feels about it, but from his creepy look when Knives is mentioned it's safe to assume part of him is relieved (if) he's dead. Can't blame him either. Knives, on the other hand, would probably have gone even crazier and angstier if Vash had died.
- Vampire Knight turns this into a legend requiring one of the twins of hunters to "eat" the other. Usually, vampire hunter twins compete for nourishment in the womb and one is absorbed by the other, but in the rare occurrence that both are born, one will be fated to take the other's life and somehow absorb his energy. That's difficult to imagine until you take into consideration that Zero becomes a vampire in the story...and Ichiru does not.
