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Create Your Own Hero / Anime & Manga

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Times where the villain creates their own hero in Anime and Manga.


  • Banana Fish: Dino Golzine spent years training Ash Lynx, first as a Sex Slave, then later as the ultimate Cultured Badass. It works too well; when Ash eventually finds the means to take Golzine down, he does so—hard.
  • Bleach: One of Aizen's Hollowfication experiments ultimately led to Ichigo's birth. Aizen even went out of his way throughout the series to toughen him up in the hopes of fighting a Worthy Opponent.
  • Code Geass has V.V. eventually revealed to have done this: him killing Marianne is what drove Lelouch originally to fight against Britannia and do all he can to figure out why she was murdered and who did it.
  • Codename: Sailor V (the manga Sailor Moon is a spin-off of) shows that the Dark Kingdom (through its subdivision the Dark Agency) pulled the trope thrice with Sailor Venus:
    • At first Minako wasn't exactly thrilled by Artemis' attempts at getting her to become Sailor V (in fact at first she thought it was a joke)... Then the boy she was crushing on revealed himself as a youma and attacked her, leading to Minako first becoming Sailor V.
    • At one point Minako has decided to retire... Cue another youma attack, this time specifically directed at her, getting Minako to unretire for the time being.
    • In the final chapter Minako is still considering retiring once the thing is settled. Then Danburite succeeds in awakening Minako's memories of her past life and her legendary sense of duty, resulting in Minako deciding to stay Sailor Venus for good. Worth noting that Danburite did it on purpose: he was in love with her since their past lives, and knowing they would never be able to stay together planned to have her fall for him and then kill him to make sure she rediscovered her sense of duty when she could still recover from the shock.
  • Cyborg 009: The Black Ghost organization kidnapped nine people to use as test subjects for their new line of Cyborg supersoldiers. Then one of the scientists working on the project had a change of heart and helped the nine cyborgs escape, leading them to go on to become the biggest thorn in the organization's side.
  • Date A Live: The reason why Shido and the Spirits exists in the way we know is all because of the Big Bad, Isaac Ray Peram Westcott. You can hate him with all your might but without this guy, the story of Date A Live would have never existed. If Westcott had not caused the destruction of China and Eurasia by summoning Mio, Tohka, Yoshino, Kurumi and many other Spirits who appear on the series would have never existed and they would have been raised as normal humans, given their background where all Spirits were humans once with the exception of Mio. It was also Westcott's atrocity in kidnapping Mana who lead Shido to his first death. As soon as Shinji refused to give Mio to him, Westcott shot him and killed him right in front of her, resulting in the First Spirit "eating" him and reincarnating with her powers in an attempt to save her beloved; this resulted in Shinji being reborn as Shido, a Spirit-Human hybrid able to seal the power of other Spirits. Without Westcott's corruption, Elliot and Karen would have never created Ratatoskr, the main heroic faction of the series that has been around since from Volume 1, helping Shido and saving all Spirits from DEM's threat. He is also this one for Mana Takamiya. If Westcott decided to kill Mana years ago, she would have never existed in the series and consequently she would never have saved Origami and the SSS Wizards from Minerva Liddell. Not to mention that without Mana, with the powers of an Adeptus Wizard given by Westcott, she would have never saved Shido from Kurumi Tokisaki and many of DEM's minions.
  • In Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, Muzan Kibutsuji, progenitor of all demons and the strongest of them all, reigned in the shadows almost entirely unopposed by the Demon Slayer Corps who never got anywhere close to defeating him for four hundred years after one legendary slayer posed Muzan a threat, but ultimately he managed to escape. Muzan then killed the series' protagonist entire family, save his little sister who became a demon instead, Tanjiro was out on a errand at the time, now with the weight of his lost family on his shoulders and hope of one day curing his sister Nezuko he enrolls in Demon Slayer Corps to hunt Muzan down. The irony of this situation only increases as the series' plot unfolds, it is revealed Muzan went absolutely paranoid with fear after said legendary slayer Yoriichi Tsugikuni almost killed him, so Muzan tried to eradicate anyone who could ever have learned Yoriichi's Sun Breathing style, something that could pose a threat to him; but he couldn't ever know that Yoriichi coincidentally passed on the Sun Breathing to Tanjiro's ancestors and they preserved it not as a tool of combat but as a religious ceremony instead, with them living in seclusion no one knew Sun Breathing was preserved after all official disciples were killed. In short, with Muzan killing Tanjiro's family on a random whim to see if demons useful to him could be born he accidentally made the last inheritor of Sun Breathing start a quest to take him down.
  • It's established that in the Digimon Adventure 01 and 02 universe, seeing or interacting with a Digimon on Earth is what leads to someone being issued a Digivice and Digimon partner and becoming a Chosen Child. In 01, Vamdemon tries to find the Eighth Child by taking as many kids in Tokyo as he can prisoner and screening them. One of them is Daisuke, and this is the incident that links him to the rest of the Chosen and leads to him becoming a Chosen Child in 02... where his ability to No-Sell a highly-evolved Vamdemon's Lotus-Eater Machine leads directly to the villain's defeat.
  • Dokuro: Kanehira Aiichiro taking sexual advantage of and then casting the mother of Takeo aside motivated him to take down the Church.
  • Dragon Ball:
    • As shown in Jaco the Galactic Patrolman's bonus chapter, Dragon Ball Minus, Frieza recalled all the Saiyans back to their home planet so he could kill as many of them at once. This alerted Bardock and Gine that something was wrong, so they sent their youngest child away to protect him. That child is Goku, the same Saiyan Frieza meets on Namek in Dragon Ball Z. Despite having the advantage, Frieza toys with Goku, giving him time to form the Spirit Bomb that nearly kills him. In anger, Frieza picks off Goku's friends until Goku becomes the legendary Super Saiyan, the very thing Frieza was trying to prevent. In the end, Frieza is beaten by a monster that he himself created.
    • In Dragon Ball Z: Cooler's Revenge, as Goku sends him straight for the sun, Cooler remembers that when Planet Vegeta blew up, he saw baby Goku's pod, but ignored it since it was Frieza's fault. His reaction when he realizes this?
      Cooler (seconds before he's incinerated by the sun): I don't believe it. I could have killed him. I let him go. I let him go!
  • Fairy Tail's prequel spinoff, Fairy Tail ZERØ, reveals that Zeref, the Black Wizard, is the one who taught the founders of Fairy Tail magic in the first place, and is thus indirectly responsible for creating the guild that would oppose him. The same character is also responsible for bringing Natsu Back from the Dead for the express purpose of being killed by him, so long as Zeref's curse would let him allow it.
  • Full Metal Panic!: The last original founder of Amalgam, Mr. Mercury, was so disgusted with what his organization had become that he created Mithril to oppose them.
  • The titular Goblins of Goblin Slayer. For untold years, no one spared a thought to seriously exterminating them, seeing them as low rank monsters not worth the time or money. Then they pulled their Rape, Pillage, and Burn routine on a specific village, and violated the sister of a certain little boy. That little boy grew up to be a merciless slayer of all goblins, the titular Goblin Slayer, who is so good at what he does that he has reached Silver Rank in the Adventurer's Guild.
  • In JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stone Ocean, Jolyne Cujoh was thrown into Green Dolphin Street Prison by Enrico Pucci, the prison's pastor and an ally of DIO who planned to use her to lure her father Jotaro to the prison so that he could steal his memories and discover how to achieve heaven. Jolyne didn't figure into his plans at all as anything besides bait, as he thought she was an ordinary teenage girl who wouldn't pose any threat to his plans. However, after seeing her father rendered comatose by his stand while he attempts to break her out of prison, Jolyne becomes determined to recover her father's mind and shows Pucci that he drastically miscalculated which Joestar was the real threat to his plans.
  • Mobile Suit Gundam 00: Supposedly, all members of Celestial Being are hand-picked by VEDA, the supercomputer in charge of the organization's operations. However, it turns out that Setsuna, the main protagonist, was NOT. The Big Bad, Ribbons Almark, manipulated VEDA into choosing Setsuna as a Gundam Meister. The reason he did this was because he caught sight of Setsuna staring at his Gundam with an almost religious awe during one of his missions, which fed into his god-complex and led to him Jumping Off the Slippery Slope, and wanted to keep Setsuna around to further feed his ego. Guess who winds up being one of the biggest key players in Ribbons' defeat, as well as the overall success of Celestial Being's true mission?
  • In Moriarty the Patriot, William does this on purpose. After he met Sherlock Holmes and was impressed by his deductions and ability to recognize the presence of a criminal mastermind, he gave Sherlock an "audition" for the role of hero in his play by seeing what he'd do when framed for murder, then happily cast him in the role, continuing to tease him with mysteries and crimes hoping to frustrate Sherlock enough to end the story of the Lord of Crime.
  • In My Hero Academia, this is the origin of the unique transferable Quirk One for All. Way back when Quirks were first appearing, there was a supervillain with the power to take and give out Quirks, called All for One. He had a more heroic brother, who was thought to be Quirkless. All for One gave his brother a minor power stockpiling Quirk. The thing was, the brother did have a Quirk, just an extremely subtle one. The brother could pass his Quirk on to others, and this ability fused to the stockpile power to become One for All, which not only became stronger with every generation, but was immune to being stolen and was thus the perfect power to face All for One with.
  • One Piece: Donquixote Doflamingo created his own Anti-Hero in his former protégée Trafalgar Law, by murdering his former right hand Corazon aka his biological younger brother, Donquixote Rocinante, who came to be Law's Parental Substitute and eventually saved Law's life at the cost of his own. In turn, Law swore to end Doflamingo's evil and avenge Corazon's death by any means necessary. He worked towards this goal for thirteen years, eventually culminating in the Dressrosa arc, where Doflamingo's criminal empire, the one he's spent almost all his life building, falls apart in the span of a single day.
    • The World Government creates their own heroes as easily as they do their own villains:
      • Sabo likely doesn't have much love for them. Considering he comes from a noble family himself (not World class however), seeing them try to kill homeless innocents (which nearly got Luffy and Ace killed as kids) just to appease a visiting World Noble and was nearly the victim of said World Noble himself just for crossing his ship, it's safe to say he'll be more than glad to help take them down.
      • Fisher Tiger was a slave to them for a time, but escaped and busted out other slaves in the process. His symbol of his crew, the Sun Pirates, is actually a re-branded version of the World Nobles symbol to represent his freedom from them.
      • Monkey D. Dragon was a former Marine who defected because he never found justice there, but hated war for the most part, and was initially resisting the Government through non-martial means. However, after the destruction of Ohara by the orders of the Five Elders, Dragon decided that the Government would never see reason, and had to be overthrown by force, leading to him, Kuma, and Ivankov forming the Revolutionary Army.
  • In The Rising of the Shield Hero, the Church of the Three Heroes works with King Aultcray to summon the Four Legendary Heroes, but both proceed to treat one of them like crap for several reasons. Naofumi Iwatani, the man in question, is forced to strike on his own with zero external support, unlike the other three, and not only becomes the only one of the four that is actually worthy of being a Hero, but he ends up being the focal point of the efforts to destroy the Church and render the King completely powerless.
  • In Tokyo Revengers, it's revealed that the Big Bad Kisaki was the one who arranged for Takemichi to be pushed in front of a train at the start of the story, which was what led to him awakening to his Time Master powers and doing everything he can to Set Right What Once Went Wrong and oppose him.


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