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Back From The Dead / Anime & Manga

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Resurrections in anime and manga.

  • In 07-Ghost, the main character's Heterosexual Life Partner Mikage is killed by the Big Bad to prove a point and is reincarnated as a baby dragon, apparently solely to alleviate the pain of his death. He has done nothing in the plot so far but sit on Teito's shoulder and look cute. And bite a couple of people. And look cute!
  • Angel Beats!: Everyone dies. Repeatedly.
    • This is both played straight and averted because everyone's already dead in their afterlife at the start of the series and 'end of episode returns' don't count toward the trope. It's played straight at the end however when Otonashi and Tenshi are seen back to life for real. We never find out what happens to the others!
  • Afro Samurai:
    • Happens to Jinno and Justice in the first season.
    • Afro's father, the entire point of Resurrection. In addition, Afro himself near the end.
  • Yakushiji Tenzen from Basilisk. He shares his body with his twin brother, who comes forth only when Tenzen is wounded to heal his injuries. Tenzen survives death a total of four times, before Oboro cancels his resurrection technique with her doujutsu allowing the fifth one to be the final.
  • In Betrayal Knows My Name, this happens to Usui Shuusei. The Duras Ashley gets him to admit that he wants to die and then stops his heart. His partner Hotsuma, who's power is the Voice of God, engages Ashley in a fight which she easily dominates and completely distraught he orders Shuusei to live. He does and they kick her ass.
  • The overarching Big Bad of Black Clover, Lucius Zogratis, takes this to logical extremes. He is capable of Soul Magic, which is amplified to the point where he can outright revive dead people and put them under his control, of which includes a villain dead 300 Chapters ago whose body was never found. And it goes worse from here.
  • Bleach:
    • In the Gotei 13 Invasion Arc, it doesn't matter how many times the Reigai are killed, they can keep being resurrected by the same science that created them in the first place.
    • Due to the reincarnation cycle of souls, if living humans die, there's a chance they could crop up later on in the story as ghosts. Also, due to several characters being heavily involved in highly creative scientific endeavour based on reiatsu and body experimentation, some characters that died have returned to the story as undead beings. Living humans returning as ghosts include Ginjou, Tsukishima and Giriko. Undead characters resurrected by science include Izuru, Dordonni, Cirucci, Luppi and Charlotte.
    • Big Bad Yhwach has a special technique called Auswahlen that can redistribute the power and souls of any Quincy. He is even able to use it to distribute the power of his weaker underlings to revive and empower those whom he deems stronger, even if they were killed.
  • Buso Renkin: After being killed by Kazuki at the end of the New Life arc, Papillon's remains were recovered by Dr. Butterfly, and placed within an alchemical Healing Vat that he had invented, to test its capacities. While it takes some time, Papillon is eventually fully restored with no ill effects.
  • Chrono Crusade:
    • Rosette Christopher using sheer willpower and a little help from Maria Magadalena, and probably guided by the Apostles to return to her body, just in time to give Aion a powerful shot that shatters his prized sword.
    • Mary, considering Aion killed her but she's later revealed to have been a ghost and watching over Chrono and Rosette the entire time.
  • CLANNAD: In the second half of ~After Story~, Nagisa endures a Death by Childbirth, Ushio dies from a fatal illness, and then Tomoya himself dies from hypothermia in the snow. After Tomoya collects enough orbs from the Illusionary World, time gets reset since the day he first met Nagisa, Nagisa survives giving birth to Ushio, and Ushio remains healthy.
  • Lelouch vi Britannia of Code Geass is confirmed to be literally resurrected from the dead by C.C. for the Re;surrection Sequel movie, which is part of an alternate continuity and takes place a few years after the events of the Zero Requiem.
  • In the anime Daisuke Bu Bu Cha Cha, a toddler's pet dog comes back from the dead in the form of a toy car.
  • Date A Live: Mio Takamiya's will influences the world to resurrect Tohka Yatogami by the end of Volume 22.
  • In the Death Note manga and anime, any human whose name is written into the Death Note is Killed Off for Real. In the manga pilot, however, there exists a "Death Eraser" that can restore them to life so long as their bodies haven't been cremated yet.
  • A major trait of the titular dungeon from Delicious in Dungeon. So long as a person dies within the dungeon and their body is not removed, they can be resurrected. Falin is resurrected by Marcille using forbidden magic combined with dragon meat in order to reform her completely, as only her bones were left after the Red Dragon digested her.
  • In Digimon, Diaboromon comes back in a movie sequel, bluntly named Revenge of Diaboromon. However, he also returns in Fusion near the end of the series as a copy. Its actions and personality as Keramon imply that it is the very same Diaboromon from the first movie.
  • Dragon Ball. Especially the Dragon Ball Z series, to the point where Mr. Satan is the only character who hasn't died at least once — at least, that was the case until Dragon Ball Z: Resurrection 'F' and its retelling in Dragon Ball Super, where he gets killed when Frieza blows up the Earth (although it technically doesn't happen, since Whis rewinds time a few minutes after Frieza blows up the planet). Krillin in particular almost seems to have some sort of death fetish, having died (and been subsequently revived) four times across the franchise.note 
  • Dr. STONE: it's noted that the healing properties of petrification can cure wounds and conditions that would otherwise be lethal (such as Tsukasa's sister, who was brain-dead, and Tsukasa himself), but it's left ambiguous whether it can bring back someone clinically dead. Later on, it's revealed that it can, when a character is confirmed to be dead shortly before being petrified and subsequently revived, though it's implied that it only works if applied immediately and doesn't affect bodies that have decayed too far.
  • In The Executioner and Her Way of Life, Manon Libelle is killed by Menou, but is later resurrected as a demon by her ally Pandaemonium.
  • Fairy Tail:
    • The beloved little sister Lisanna died two years before the story began. They found her body. They even buried it. Death by Origin Story was the only way you could die in Fairy Tail, at least until she turned out to just be alive in an Alternate Universe (the dead one was from that universe and magic was involved).
    • A more traditional example shows up with Keyes of Tartaros, whose ultimate goal was creating a corpse that acted as it did in life. He succeeded with Silver, aka Gray's father.
    • Neinhart of the Spriggan 12 has a unique spin on this concept. His magic, "Histoire of Corpses", allows him to look into his opponent's memories to learn about their past foes and loved ones, who he can then recreate with all their original memories, powers, and personalities under his control. As the "corpses" part suggests, these projections are all of the deceased, and that includes Ul, Zancrow, Azuma, Ezel, the previously-mentioned Keyes, Kyouka, and Master Hades. Keyes takes a bit of time to note this magic is much different from his version of necromancy. Later, he makes Historias of the slain Spriggan members Wall Eehto, Bloodman, and God Serena for the final clash with Fairy Tail.
    • However, true resurrection from the dead falls distinctly under These Are Things Man Was Not Meant to Know, as the price is usually incredibly high and if you get too close to figuring it out, the god of death will give you a truly horrific curse as punishment. Just ask Zeref. The R-System has the ability to bring a person back from the dead, but requires both a Human Sacrifice and an extreme amount of magical energy (it took a country-destroying magic superweapon's energy being absorbed to get enough) that makes it Awesome, but Impractical. Zeref was able to bring his younger brother Natsu back to life after years of study and work, but he had to revive him with a demon body. And during the Alvarez Empire arc, Makarov is brought back to life after sacrificing his remaining lifespan, but this was only possible thanks to Mavis and Zeref dying and sending him back and it took him a year to actually fully recover.
    • In Fairy Tail: 100 Years Quest, God Serena is revealed to be alive once more despite being eviscerated by Acnologia and getting his Historia crushed by Gildarts in the original series. He claims to Gajeel that he was Only Mostly Dead before a passing alchemist from Gold Owl found him and transmuted his lost body parts to save his life, whereupon he went to Guiltina and joined the guild out of gratitude. However, the spirit of Irene Belserion, who's been tagging along inside of Wendy's head, bluntly states that for Neinhart to make a Historia Serena had to be truly dead and his "transmutation" has to involve some form of resurrection.
  • Fushigi Yuugi: The dead members of Team Suzaku are brought back as Spirit Advisors in the final episode, possessing volunteers so they can contribute to the fight. The OVAs have their ghosts show up a few more times before finally using reincarnation to bring them back for good.
  • Much of the cast of Gantz usually die before their involvement in the story. If they die during a hunt, then someone could spend 100 points to bring them back. a particularly cruel twist on this comes in the final chapters when the alien beings behind the Gantz technology revive some of the fallen (such as Kei Kishimoto and The Old Man) and then off 'em again just to prove a point.
  • Gekiganger 3: Joe Umitsubame comes back from the dead, piloting the original Gekiganger 3 robot, to help the rest of the team defeat the show's Big Bad. A character watching this episode comments on the fact that people in real life (like the dead Gai Daigouji and Tsukomo Shiratori) don't come back from the dead. Ironically, in that very same episode, the apparently-dead Admiral turned out to be Not Quite Dead.
  • Issei in High School D×D comes back from the dead twice! One was from his First-Episode Resurrection, and the other was Great Red and Ophis becoming his de-facto parents by having both of them creating a new body for him.
  • Inuyasha:
  • In Jagaaaaaan, Doku-chan reveals that once Jagasaki has killed all Fractured Humans, his next objective is to blow his own brains out to take care of his own Fractured self. Once that's done with, Doku-chan will obtain the power to resurrect a single life. Jagasaki insists not to revive him, but instead to revive his fiance, whom he killed to defend himself.
  • JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
    • In the second part, Stroheim blows himself up with a grenade in an attempt to kill Santana, who is crawling into his wounded leg. Some twenty chapters later, he returns as a cyborg.
    • Muhammed Avdol of the third part was shot in the head by Hol Horse (giving Polnareff a lesson about not being a selfish prick, and working together), but came back in a later chapter (where it was revealed that the bullet merely bounced off his skull). The kicker here is that he's Killed Off for Real later on by Dio's Dragon, Vanilla Ice.
    • In the final fight against Dio, Dio critically wounds Joseph Joestar and later drinks his blood to get a power boost against Jotaro, with Joseph's ghost giving final advice to his grandson before passing on. After Jotaro defeats Dio, he has the Speedwagon Foundation doctors take Joseph's blood from Dio and put it back into him while Jotaro uses Star Platinum to restart his heart, allowing his grandfather to return from the dead.
    • Part 7's Funny Valentine does this a lot, by way of his Stand replacing him with a close enough version from one of infinite parallel dimensions and passing the original's consciousness into him.
  • In Jujutsu Kaisen, Yuuji is expected to die after Sukuna tears out his heart in Chapter 9. However, in Chapter 11, he is resurrected by Sukuna after they make a pact.
  • Marco Owen in King of Thorn, who comes back to life through sheer willpower in order to protect Kasumi, and ignoring the Charon-like figure who tells him his body is in such a terrible state note  that he's only going to die again. Thankfully though, Alice gives him a helping hand in that regard.
  • In The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (2016), Ordona revives Link and reattaches his arm after King Bulblin kills him.
  • In the Magic Knight Rayearth anime, Presea dies early in Season 1, but is revived by the beginning of Season 2, apparently by Princess Emeraude's final prayer. Subverted in that it is revealed that Presea was never revived, and the person posing as her is actually her twin sister. (In the manga, Presea never died, thus Presea was herself the whole time)
  • The Book of Darkness, the Wolkenritter, and the corrupted self-defense program from Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's are able to perform this repeatedly thanks to the Book's Rejuvenation Program. You can rip off their very life force and obliterate them without a trace using a weapon that distorts the fabric of time and space, but as long as the Rejuvenation Program is active, they will eventually be revived. The only known method to actually stop the Book of Darkness for good is to freeze it. No direct destruction will ever keep it from reappearing.
  • Happens a few times in a few different ways in Naruto.
    • The Edo Tensei (Impure World Resurrection) can bring back anyone that the caster can find physical remains of and whose soul has not been sealed. This binds the target's soul to a new body and fully restores any abilities they had. The caster can remotely control the resurrected person's body and has some limited influence over their mind (a number of fights consist of the resurrected ninja explaining their weaknesses). Kabuto is insistent that this technique has no weaknesses, but he probably shouldn't have let it be known that killing him doesn't end the resurrections.
    • Gaara is brought back by a forbidden technique originally meant to bring life to a puppet as a black ops project which was abandoned after discovering that it costs the user their life. Chiyo, the last living person to know the technique, sacrifices herself to save Gaara with it.
    • Hundreds of people in Konahagakure are brought back a character who has the ability to control the God of Death and essentially forced it to give up their souls. Even then, it seems that this was only possible because they had died very recently.
    • Madara Uchiha has the distinct record of having the maximum number of resurrections. His first death was at the hands of Hashirama, in their climactic fight. Madara revived himself using a clever Batman Gambit and Izanagi on his right eye, disappearing from the world soon after that. His second death comes many, many years after his first, while disconnecting himself from the Gedo Mazo life support keeping him alive unnaturally. He then ends up being revived by Edo Tensei before he naturally gets himself back to life after hijacking Obito's attempt to revive every single shinobi who died in the war (using the same technique mentioned above). Thankfully, his third death is permanent.
  • The aptly named Lifemaker in Negima! Magister Negi Magi. The exact mechanics are unknown as of yet, but its heavily implied that he's come back somehow..
    • Sequel series UQ Holder! reveals how they did so. The Lifemaker has a unique ability. When killed, she (yes, she) possesses the body of her killer after a period of time.
    • Jack Rakan manages to bring himself back from being erased from reality.
  • Neon Genesis Evangelion: Ayanami Rei self-destructs EVA Unit 00 to kill the Angel Armisael, but later turns up alive. Except she has some memory loss, which she suspects is because "I'm the third one." Rei later turns out to be a series of clone bodies.
  • One Piece:
    • The most prominent example was Brook, who ate the Yomi Yomi no Mi (Revive-Revive Fruit), which allowed him to come back to life after his entire crew was slaughtered... though it took him too long to find his body, so that he's now a living skeleton.
    • Used in a warped context in the Thriller Bark arc; Warlord of the Sea Gekko Moria uses his Kage Kage no Mi (Shadow-Shadow Fruit) powers to steal shadows and implant them into corpses to bring said cadavers into a pseudo-living state. Yep, you guessed it: zombies. An army of zombies.
  • Pokémon:
  • Rebuild World: Brain Uploading technology is around in this Cyberpunk setting and so this has Foreshadowing. Akira does some Lampshade Hanging asking if Sebla will show up next.
    • Akira brings down Zelmo while he's raiding Sheryl's relic shop via Boom, Headshot!. The corpses of the raiders were bought from Viola by cyborg terrorists, reporting that they recovered their brother and dumping the other bodies. Zelmo ambushes Akira in a new Full-Conversion Cyborg body they put him in from a black box device in his body that stored memories (these having been discussed by Yatsubiyashi and in a Search and Rescue mission beforehand).
    • Tiol, a Tragic Monster experiment transformed into an Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever and executed by No Range Like Point-Blank Range blast to the face by Akira. It's mentioned in a conversation with his puppet master Tsubaki that he's dead by human terms, but his memories exist in the old world domain. A remaining Remote Body platform he'd used to talk to Yatsubiyashi beforehand is eventually used to reinstate him, but with a Super Serum upgrade by Yatsubiyashi to help him act as Agent Provocateur.
    • Subverted and parodied for a third case. After Akira split Katsuya into Half the Man He Used to Be vertically, Nergo comes out of Chameleon Camouflage and bags the head. Yanigisawa receives a call for a clandestine meeting and spots Katsuya with a crease down his face… Only to hear Nergo's I Have Many Names themed catchphrase. Nergo uploaded his personality into the reconstructed head in a failed attempt to become a Differently Powered Individual. Nergo jokingly declares to be Katsuya out for revenge.
  • ''Raideen"': Akira has canonically died twicenote , but was revived each time by the power of Mu-tron, which itself was connected to his half-Mu genes - unbeknownst to him, he's a Half-Human Hybrid and his mother was an alien.
  • Rosario + Vampire's Aono Tsukune takes this trope to the extreme. As he is a normal human with vampire energy attached to his human cells, he constantly dies from lethal attacks, in the sense that his heart beat stops, and comes back regenerating himself, usually in his most powerful, unstoppable form. In fact, one could say that the easiest way for him to attain his strongest power is simply by dying.
  • Rozen Maiden Suigintou pulls a Back from the Dead after getting killed in the last episode of Season 1 and several are revived in Traumend. And damaged "normal" animated doll brought back by Jun (almost accidentally).
  • Ryu's Path: Thanks to Ryu awakening his full potential and recovering the crystal, he is able to bring his old friend turned for Condor back to life. Condor, now free of his Sanity Slippage, helps Ryu rebuild many devastated cities.
  • Everyone in Sailor Moon is expected to die near or at the end of each arc, usually for the sake of being Team Cannon Fodder, but sometimes for an actual reason. In The '90s anime version this only happens in the first and final seasons. All other seasons they just didn't die.
  • Saint Seiya:
    • The Bronze Saints seem to suffer from this, considering they "die" (or at least, they're dealt fatal blows) by the end of each saga. The series Hand Waves this by claiming that Athena can bring them back from the brink of death; however, Hades himself can reanimate the dead and turn them into Specters for his army.
    • There's Ikki, Saint of PHOENIX. As his name implies, he keeps coming back all the time... only stronger.
    • In Saint Seiya: Soul of Gold, the Gold Saints are very literally resurrected and transported back to Earth from Hell.
    • In Saint Seiya: Episode.G Assassin, Aiolos is alive and well in the present despite dying first in 1973, then in 1986...
  • While the 2001 anime of Shaman King does not play this straight often, with the sole examples being Hao, Ren and Yoh (and in Ren's case even that's debatable, as it's not sure whether he was really dead), in the source manga and 2021 anime the main characters are coming back from dead so often one starts to wonder why death of someone is treated as serious thing. Hell, at one point the main cast is killed by supporting characters so their spiritual power can increase.
  • In Shy, the heroes are confronted with a mysterious girl named Sveta who turns out to be the deceased mother of the heroine Spirits. It is later revealed that the Big Bad Stigma has the ability to fulfill the dreams of other persons which he can use even on dead people, creating bodies for them in the process.
  • So, I Can't Play H!: After being told that he only had three months left to live, Ryosuke finally dies at the end of episode 11. Which causes Lisara to finally accept her feelings for him, prompting her to go after him by using Mina's power to separate her soul from her body. While their souls are in the antechamber between the mortal plain and the afterlife, she convinces Ryosuke to return to with her by confessing her feelings for him and seals it with a kiss.
    Lisara: (smiles tearfully) "Still ready to die, dummy?"
    (scene awashes in light, as Ryosuke returns her smile)
  • Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann:
    • Rossiu and some scientists bring back Lordgenome, the Big Bad of the first half, because his last words were vague enough to warrant further explanation. However, they bring him back only as an Oracular Head, hooked up to a computer, to prevent him from being a threat (even though he does do a genuine Heel–Face Turn later on). And gets his body back, too.
    • Kamina he died in the battle with Thymilph, momentarily brought himself back to life on pure Spiral power to perform the very first Giga Drill Breaker of the series, then he died and stayed dead. He came back from the dead to save everyone from the Lotus-Eater Machine.
    • Kamina gets a third one in the second movie — circumstances cause Team Dai-Gurren to lose the Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, then combine their respective Tengen Toppa Gunmen into the absurdly huge Super Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann... a gigantic flaming blue Spiral Energy avatar of Kamina himself that is so large that it qualifies as a majority percentage of the visible universe. Word of God is that this is not just another mecha, but the literal reincarnation of Kamina himself, returned to fight for Team Dai-Gurren one last time.
  • Tokyo Mew Mew takes a page from Sailor Moon and kills off the whole cast in the Grand Finale, only to bring them back with a single Mew Aqua and True Love's Kiss. (The latter was only for one person; otherwise, it would get really silly.)
  • Tokyo Ravens: Natsume comes back from the dead as a lich following a botched Sacrificial Revival Spell.
  • The Voynich Hotel has characters who either came back to life (Tenebrarum, felled by a poisoned arrow but revived as a Revenant Zombie due to being a witch) or were brought back after mortal injuries (the devil Asheklon returned after being fatally poisoned, and an assassin was put back together and revived after being sliced in two). That said, when the devil Demona is asked as part of the terms of a deal to resurrect someone, she becomes quite agitated, although whether it's because that's outside her power or not something she can easily arrange isn't made clear.
  • In Yu-Gi-Oh! GX, practically the entire cast dies in Season 3, only to be randomly resurrected at the end of the arc, because they were just trapped in another dimension. Then there's Kaiser Ryo, who dies of heart failure but comes back later anyway under unexplained circumstances..
  • Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds:
    Rex Godwin: Dark Signers are the souls of the dead who have awakened to their abilities. In other words, they are no longer of this world.
    • Used twice, in fact: the Dark Signers themselves return to life once the Earthbound Immortals have been defeated (except for Rudger/Roman and Rex, who decide not to take their second chance since they became Dark Signers purely of their own will), complete with Laser-Guided Amnesia in regards to their actions as Dark Signers...except for Kiryu/Kalin, who also became one willingly, and takes a while afterwards to regain a will to live.
  • YuYu Hakusho is rife with examples of this trope. Talking about how many times Yuusuke comes back from the dead wouldn't even be that full of spoilers (It starts in the first episode).

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