How We Got Here / Anime & Manga

Examples of How We Got Here in Anime and Manga.

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• The first episode of Baccano! starts at the end of its primary story (the 1931/Grand Punk Station arc) while the two Meta Guys look over the records of the massacre and start arguing over when the story is supposed to start.
• Berserk opens with the Black Swordsman Arc (volumes 1-3), introducing main character Guts as a vicious Nominal Hero on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge against the five evil deities called the God Hand, as well as their monstrous servants, the Apostles. At this point Guts is missing his right eye and left hand, and carries the cursed Brand of Sacrifice on his neck, which every night summons evil spirits to devour him. At the end of the Black Swordsman Arc we learn that the God Hand includes Guts' Arch-Nemesis Griffith, who used to be Guts' friend before betraying him and marking him with the Brand. Then the Golden Age Arc (volumes 3 to 14) goes back in time and shows us the epic tragedy of how the brotherhood they forged on the battlefield was torn apart by Griffith's betrayal, with Griffith ascending to demonic godhood at a truly horrific cost to everyone he's led, and Guts losing his hand and his eye and becoming He Who Fights Monsters. The anime Berserk (1997) follows the same progression by showing the Black Swordsman Arc in episode 1, and spending the rest of its 25 episodes on the Golden Age Arc.
• Bleach: The "Everything but the Rain" arc starts with a glimpse of a pivotal scene from the middle of the story (Masaki introducing herself to Isshin as a Quincy) and then rewinds several hours to show what lead up to it.
• The Big O, episode 7, opens with Angel and Roger trapped in an old office building on the bottom of the ocean. In flashbacks, Roger shows how this came to pass.
• Chaos;Head opens with a destroyed city and the protagonist laying in a puddle. He wakes but - but was it all really just a dream?
• Chapter 1 of Choujin Sensen narrates Tomobiki Rinji's POV on how he got thrusted into the world of the [Superhuman Game].
• Code Geass almost did this, according to Word of God; the show's creators briefly considered beginning the series by showing Lelouch and Suzaku pointing guns at each other, as per Episode 25 as the first scene, then going back several months to show how the two friends have gotten into such a situation.
• Played with in Episode 11 of Dagashi Kashi. It opens with a shoeless Hotaru running towards To and begging for his help. The story then flashes forward, and only flashes back to explain the opening scene about two-thirds of the way through the episode.
• The first episode of Divergence Eve is the ending; the rest tell the story leading up to that point.
• Dragon Ball:
  • The first episode of Funimation's Dragon Ball GT dub, "A Grand Problem", performed this function so that they could skip the first 16 episodes of the show.
  • Episode 71 of Dragon Ball Super starts with Goku dead. The rest of the episode explains how Goku gets into such position.
• Farming Life In Another World: The first scene opens with Hiraku waking up from a dream of his past life: when he was a patient stuck on life support before walking out of his longhouse and is greeted by several villagers who all call him Mayor. The rest of the series recounts how he managed to be reincarnated into this new world and build a farming village of his own that other people loved and wanted to move to. By the last episode, it's revealed that the aforementioned scene took place just a few weeks after the birth of his son Alfred.
• The Fist of the North Star prequel movie Legend of Kenshiro begins with Kenshiro and Yuria going on their journey together after the defeat of Raoh. After having their wedding ceremony, Yuria asks Kenshiro to tell her of his quest to become the savior. The actual movie is set during the "lost year" after Kenshiro was first defeated by Shin, but before he met Bat and Lin.
• The manga Future Diary opened with Yuno kissing Yuki, stating he won't stab her. Played with in the anime version, as it was shown (thanks to the manga) to be in chronological order from the point of view of Yuno.
• Ga-Rei -Zero- spends its first episode killing off the supposed protagonists. Then Yomi, the villain, becomes the main character, as we get to see her backstory in the following episodes.
• Girls und Panzer opens during the initial movements of the exibition match between the Oarai and St. Gloriana sensha-do teams, with Miho's team acting as bait to lure the St. Gloriana tanks into an ambush. The first few episodes cut back to show Miho's arrival at Oarai, the reformation and training of Oarai's Tankery team, and the challenge from St. Gloriana that leads to the match.
• Grave of the Fireflies: "September 21st, 1945. That was the day I died." Then the story begins, revealing what happened during the last months of Seita and Setsuko's lives.
• Great Pretender:
  • The first episode opens up with Makoto strung up by his legs, dangling from the Hollywood sign, and screaming for help. It then cuts to a few days previously, showing how he got himself in that situation.
  • Episode 6, the first episode of the second arc, opens with Makoto and Abbie in a small plane that's about to crash and getting ready to bail out of it. Smash Cut to the intro, and then it begins the lengthy explanation of how Makoto reunited with the confidence team and what the heck a plane has to do with anything.
• The anime adaptation of Happy Sugar Life starts with the Big Bad Villain Protagonist jumping down a burning apartment shielding her partner/lover and dying (the end of the manga). The rest of the anime recounts the events that led to that point.
• Haruhi Suzumiya: the first episode is a movie that the characters chronologically would have made around episode 11. There are also several mini examples of this trope throughout the series due to the anachronistic airing order; characters often reference events that the viewers haven't yet seen.
  • Kyon Lampshades this in "Snow Mountain Syndrome":
  I, as if drunk on a cocktail mixed with anxiety and uncertainty, call upon my memory in a haze.
  "How did things turn out like this?"
  Flashback mode, start...
• Hidamari Sketch's Sotsugyou-hen anime special is structured like this. Yuno woke up early in the beginning of the two-episode special on the day of Sae and Hiro's graduation ceremony, then spent the rest of the first episode recalling Sae and Hiro's college entrance exams and decisions which spent most of the month previous. The graduation ceremony proper is in the second episode.
• The anime version of Higurashi: When They Cry does this with several of its arcs, particularly Onikakushi-hen and Watanagashi-hen, which kick things off with the murder of one or more major characters and then hit the 'rewind' button back to the chronological start of the arc.
• Holoearth Chronicles Side:E ~Yamato Phantasia~: The manga jumps from mid-fight with Ayame in the prologue to a few days prior.
• Chapter 20 of I Think Our Son Is Gay is structured like this. When folding the family laundry, tenth-grade Hiroki notices his mother Tomoko still uses a old handtowel, and looks at the towel rather intensely. The next eight pages are Tomoko's recollection of the story behind that towel: Hiroki's fifth-grade heartbreak that could be caused by Incompatible Orientation. The last two pages returns to the present day, and it seems Hiroki has gotten over it—he looks at the towel since it looks really old, and should be replaced.
• The first part of episode one of Infinite Stratos shows an Action Prologue where Ichika and his team are fighting off against an unknown I.S. machine. The rest of the series then depict events leading up to that scene.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
  • Stardust Crusaders: The group's battle with the Stand User of The Sun begins with them trapped under a hiding in the desert, with a whole flashback showing their arrival into this situation.
  • Stone Ocean: Episode 13 opens with Jolyne being tossed into the Green Dolphin Street Prison's Maximum Security Ward as part of a plan. This is followed by the lead up to this with her and Ermes' battle with Sports Maxx.
• Kashimashi: Girl Meets Girl opens with two girls alone in a classroom, sharing a kiss and a third girl catching them in act, looking rather shocked. The rest of the episode is spent showing how a guy became one of those girls, not reaching the opening scene until midway through the show's run.
• The Downer Beginning in episode 1 of Kotoura-san starts with Haruka walking alone to school, or, to be precise, people were◊ avoiding her like plague. She has Dull Eyes of Unhappiness, then a Flash Back showing her entire life up to that point is gradually played out, explaining how she got those eyes.
• The first episode of Laid-Back Camp began with Nadeshiko and her friends roasting marshmallows over a campfire. It turns out this was a part of their Christmas camping trip, seen in episodes eleven and twelve.
• Chapter 21 of Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid starts with all the dragons sprawled on the ground with Kobayashi wondering how they got here. Long story short, Dodgeball Is Hell.
• Chapter 6 of Monster Musume starts with a provocatively dressed Miia, Papi, and Centorea fighting over Kimihito. Each saying that they'll be the one he marries. It than goes back to the day before to explain how this started.
• Moriarty the Patriot opens with a page of Moriarty hanging off a waterfall screaming at Sherlock. The scene is from The Final Problem and isn't revealed until chapter 54.
• The second act of the Naruto anime starts off by showing Naruto and Sakura catching up to Sasuke for the first time since his defection from Konoha, before leaping back to Naruto's own return to Konoha and working its way back to that point. Likely as a way of teasing the fans.
• The first scene of Natsu e no Tobira has Marion desperately rushing to stop Jacques and Lind's Duel to the Death, then switches to tell what led to such things.
• Negima! Magister Negi Magi has an in-universe version: The current Big Bad sends the heroes a week forward in time, to when she's already won. Then various side characters explain to the heroes exactly how she won. So they go back in time to take advantage of the new information.
  • The current arc of the manga counts, as it goes into the Back Story and explains the events that directly led up to the beginning of the manga. Such as why Negi is being raised by his cousin in Wales, or how Asuna ended up at Mahora.
  • Natsumi says the trope almost word-by-word in her debut chapter, which opens with Kotarou holding her hostage.
• Occultic;Nine's first episode starts with the discovery of hundreds of corpses found dead in a lake, with the story going back one week showing the events leading up to it.
• Ōoku: The Inner Chambers: The story starts at the end of Shogun Ietsugu's reign and the beginning of Shogun Yoshimune's, then when she reads the Chronicle of a Dying Day to find out why certain traditions began, it goes back to when the Redface Pox began and the death of Iemitsu the Elder, spending six volumes explaining everything that happened that led to Yoshimune becoming shogun, and why the Tokugawa Shogunate became a Matriarchy in the first place.
• Outlaw Star starts even before the OP with Gene taking off in the Outlaw Star and locks grapplers with another ship. After said OP, the show begins that will lead up to this.
• Many modern episodes of Pokémon: The Series do this (especially in the original Japanese version) with the pre-credits teaser abruptly opening on a battle or other dramatic scene with no explanation as to how the characters got there. After the credits, we flash back to the start of the story.
  • This also lets the producers sneak in plenty of recycled footage, since the teaser sequence gets replayed once they arrive at that point in the story.
• Psycho-Pass opens with a scene from episode 16, showing us one of the main characters fighting a masked person, after which he met antagonist face to face.
• The Quintessential Quintuplets begins with Fuutarou and one of the Nakano sisters marrying. It then goes back to just before their first meeting in high school and the story is about how they get together, with the complication that the sisters are identical quintuplets so the reader isn't sure which one's the bride.
• Re:Zero does this in a fashion. The opening scene of the anime is Subaru going about his normal life, intercut with first-person shots of him and Emilia bleeding to death. This then happens at the end of the two-part opening episode, triggering Subaru's Return by Death for the first time and setting up the main plot.
• Remina begins with a deranged mob about to crucify a teenaged girl under an Alien Sky, and then goes back to explain why the Alien Sky looms above, and why the mob blames the girl for it.
• The Rurouni Kenshin manga has a variation. The Big Bad of the arc Enishi, has destroyed two buildings from people who have met Kenshin (one only once). He then meets Kenshin and challenges him to a duel, after Kenshin is forced to accept the challenge does Kenshin return and tell his friends why his brother-in-law wants revenge.
• The first episode of the Saikano anime opens with a haggard young man wearing broken glasses staggering through a deserted town, a service so that you don't mistakenly waste any hope on him later.
• Samurai High School: Chapter 16 of the manga started with the twins being followed by members of the newspaper club and then it went back to when and how it began. Chapter 23 also invokes the trope.
• Sand Chronicles begins with a young girl bugging a 26-year-old Ann, who's about to move overseas with her fiance, and they find the latter's hourglass. Ann then thinks back to how she got that hourglass and its significance to her, kicking off the story.
• Satou Kashi no Dangan wa Uchinukenai starts on the 4th of October, with Nagisa Yamada telling the audience that she's searching for something in the mountains. Then the story goes back to the 2nd of September. It's not until very late that the readers learn that Nagisa and her brother Tomohiko are looking for... the corpse of Nagisa's best friend, Mokuzu Umino.
• Shigurui: Death Frenzy starts at the very end and then goes to the beginning to show how it got there, but unfortunately it never makes it back to the end again.
• The first episode of Shin Mazinger is titled "Finale" and depicts the seemingly climactic final battle between Dr. Hell and the protagonists. Episode 2 goes back to the beginning, and explains the build up from there.
• The first episode of Slam Dunk shows the Shohoku team playing an important match, probably the nationals, before the opening song. The rest of the series is spent showing how they got there.
• ST☆R: Strike it Rich: Chapter 0 focuses on Hina's fight with Toujou and Nozomi asking Hina to hold back to prevent Valkirya from going bankrupt. Chapter 1 through 3 and half of Chapter 4 take place before, and shows how Nozomi got the idea of creating Valkirya and how Hina got involved.
  How was it that Tenma Nozomi and Hongou Hina crossed path? Let's turn back the clock.
• The second episode of the manga Strawberry Marshmallow starts with Chika sitting in a wastebasket. Then we go back half an hour and find out what led up to this situation.
• The entire series of Tenchi Universe does this. The first episode opens with Tenchi delivering an internal monologue as he walks to school alone, lamenting the good old days when he used to hang out with those crazy girls from space... the show then spends nearly its entire run flashing back to how Tenchi met and went on adventures with said girls, until the last five minutes of the very last episode, when we return to Tenchi walking to school alone.
  • This is slightly screwed up in the dub. Tenchi's speech at the start of the series is the same one he gives at the very end, so we know we've come back to where we started. Two different translators handled those episodes, though, and each one translated the speech differently, so Tenchi ends up saying different things in each episode, even they're each supposed to portray the same moment in time.
• Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann opens on the bridge of a vast space battleship as we see its mature and scarred commander, who holds in his hand a small conical key, launch an attack to open the final battle of an intergalactic war. Cut to teenage Simon, digging underground, discovering the key for the first time. Subverted in that the war never happens, although we do get some idea of how it might have.
• Tiger & Bunny: The second season opens up with an injured Barnaby being held by the throat by Mugan and Fugan, before the story jumps back to two months ago.
• Utaite no Ballad opens with the Villain Protagonist getting hauled out of his residence by the police in handcuffs. The series is mostly an expanded flashback detailing his rise in the music industry, and his eventual fall once he is exposed as a prolific pedophile.
• The sixth episode of Wandaba Style starts off this way, with the girls staring in disbelief at future versions of themselves, then complaining to Ichirin about it, then blaming each other for them ending up in the predicament they're in. Ichirin takes advantage of this to flashback to shortly before the episode began, showing how the girls took advantage of a man-powered warp engine to get some exercise and ended up in the future by accident. The rest of the episode continues normally from there on.
• The beginning of episode 1 in World Break: Aria of Curse for a Holy Swordsman shows Moroha and his classmates fighting against a giant dragon. The story then starts six months prior to this fight.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! GX: The eighth chapter of the manga starts with Sho and Judai dueling against each other. It's revealed to the readers Sho will be expelled from Duel Academia if he loses and Judai will lose his cards if he loses. Then it's revealed how it happened.
• The first episode of YuYu Hakusho starts shortly after Yusuke's death, and has him retracing his steps to see how he got himself into this.