Those who display Pride Before a Fall at or near the beginning of their story in Anime and Manga.
- The Fort Severn arc of After War Gundam X has Garrod decline an upgrade to the Gundam because he thinks its Wave-Motion Gun makes him unbeatable. Then he runs into Carris Nautilus, a Tyke Bomb with Psychic Powers, who becomes the first person in the series to hand Garrod a resounding defeat. The next few episodes have a humbled Garrod get very serious about learning to pilot the Gundam without relying solely on its signature weapon.
- This happens twice to Dante in Black Clover:
- When he is first introduced, Lucifero's Gravity Magic is powerful enough to give the Black Bulls trouble, and Dante's own Body Magic allows him to quickly regenerate any damage done against him. Dante spends most of the fight shrugging off everything Asta and Yami can throw at him, goading them to fight harder and declaring himself to be immortal with a Slasher Smile plastered on his face at all times. Everything seems lost once he deprives Asta of all his swords right as he finally manages to get close enough to attack him, but then Yami hands his katana to Asta, who infuses it with his Anti-Magic and slashes Dante as he's regenerating from Yami's last attack. The smile quickly vanishes from Dante's face as his transformation is forcibly dispersed and he falls to the ground unconscious.
- During the Qliphoth Advent Ritual, Dante gains access to 100% of Lucifero's power as the gate to the Underworld begins to open, allowing him to turn the tide against Jack and Nacht. As he once again brags about how invincible he is, he's then challenged by none other than Magna, who brings him down a peg by forcibly splitting their collective mana evenly between the two and then beating the tar out of him in a fist fight. While at first Dante is shocked and more than a little annoyed by Magna's audacity, he flat out loses it by the end of the fight. And the icing on the cake? When Lucifero realizes Dante is going to lose, he abandons him to his fate, which finally makes Dante crack. When Magna and co. leave the room, Dante wakes up and tries to get back on his feet, outright refusing to accept that someone like Magna could defeat him and losing control of his Body Magic to the point that his body becomes severely warped. But then Jack re-enters the room, having expected this, and puts Dante down so that he won't spoil Magna's victory.
- Bleach:
- Aizen has spent virtually all of his appearances being THE Magnificent Bastard, always being one step ahead of all his enemies and pushing through obstacles with unshakeable confidence, which only intensifies as the Hogyoku allows him to transcend his own limits. Then Ichigo, who trained for three months in one hour within the Dangai, shows up just as Gin dies after failing to kill Aizen and slowly peels his confidence away until Aizen screams in rage at his inability to wipe Ichigo off the map while failing to comprehend how Ichigo became so powerful. And it only gets worse after the Hogyoku rejects him as a worthy master and takes away all the power it gave him, allowing Urahara's Sealing Kido to finally kick in. After all the shit he pulled, Central 46 sentences Aizen to spend 20,000 years in prison, and only because the Hogyoku made him immortal, depriving anyone from the possibility of executing him.
- Yhwach takes very little time to establish himself as a Knight of Cerebus, and like Aizen seems unfazed by virtually anything. While he is briefly surprised by Mimihagi taking a stand against him, he ultimately takes it in stride and alters his plans accordingly by absorbing both the Soul King's corpse and Mimihagi, becoming the closest thing the setting has to God in the Soul King's place. Even after Ichigo uses the full extent of his power to challenge him, Yhwach responds by using The Almighty to break his new Bankai and stealing his power to break his spirit. Even after Ichigo and Aizen team up to fight him, Yhwach still won't go down; he merely resurrects himself after Ichigo kills him. Just as it seems that Yhwach has won (and he certainly takes a moment to gloat about his impending victory), Uryu shoots him with a Still Silver arrow, which temporarily makes him lose his powers and finally makes his confidence crack. Ichigo then capitalizes on the golden opportunity Uryu has provided him and cuts down the Quincy King, killing him permanently. You'd think Yhwach's downfall ends here, right? WRONG! His corpse ends up becoming the new linchpin holding the three realms together, just as the Soul King once did, and judging from the reactions of those who bore witness to the process it's strongly implied that there was a fair amount of Desecrating the Dead involved.
- Code Geass: The main character Lelouch Vi Britannia is a walking, talking definition of pride, thinking that no one can defeat him and that he is infallible. That kind of attitude ends up biting him in the ass hard. Twice, in fact. The first happens in episode 7, where he challenges his half-sister Cornelia in a skirmish but makes the mistake of underestimating her just because he defeated their half-brother Clovis very easily. Because of that, he gets his ass handed to him and experiences defeat for the first time (which, as expected, he takes badly); the only reason he escapes is because C.C bails him out. The second time happens near the end of season one and it's even worse as the consequences this time prove earth-shattering; Lelouch unwittingly causes a horrible accident that results in him being forced to kill someone very close to him, the attack on Tokyo and his decision to leave in the middle of said battle to save his beloved sister who was kidnapped, ends with his army destroyed and his rebellion a total failure and Lelouch himself sold out to his father the Emperor by someone he thought was his friend. All that because of his hubris, arrogance and pride.
- Dragon Ball Z:
- A version of this happens to Frieza after he's rebuilt into a cyborg. He goes to Earth, stronger than ever alongside his dad, ready to seek vengeance against Goku for his defeat on Namek. Not even five minutes after landing on Earth, he's cut to pieces by Trunks and unceremoniously blasted off to hell.
- Android 20, better known as Dr. Gero. He makes his grand entrance by putting a hole through Yamcha and nuking half of a city. He is sure that, thanks to his data on all of Earth's great fighters, he and Android 19 are more than strong enough to kill Goku and the others. While Android 19 did almost manage to kill Goku in their battle, it was because he was sick, and as soon as the healthy Vegeta arrived, saved Goku and turned Super Saiyan, Android 19 was quickly defeated by him. Then, Android 20 was completely outmatched against Piccolo, even after he drained some of his energy. He's reduced to retreating and activating Androids 17 and 18, who kill him.
- Not long after Super Buu becomes nearly invincible after absorbing Gohan, he had to fight the newly-fused Vegetto. It didn't end well for Buu.
- Happens every time Vegeta gets a huge power boost. He goes to Namek, stronger than ever after his fight on Earth, and gets nearly killed by a transformed Zarbon. After he got a boost from that battle, the Ginyu Force come and wipe the floor with him. Then again, he gets a major power-up to fight Frieza and he gets easily murdered. His luck doesn't improve in the Cell or Buu Sagas. By the end of the series, he finally became more humble.
- Fullmetal Alchemist:
- In the manga and Brotherhood anime, the homunculus Pride is reduced to a lilliputian-size infant, right after a Curb-Stomp Battle and a panicked attempt at Grand Theft Me of the main character. Kimblee even lampshades that Pride has essentially cast aside his own pride as a homunculus.
- In the first anime adaptation, Pride is a different character, but still fits the bill. He fights his final battle all by himself because he doesn't want to let anyone else in on it and still completely curb-stomps his opposition, but he inadvertently makes his foster son believe he wanted his 'secret treasure' to fight at his fullest. The 'secret treasure' turns out to be the skull of the man he used to be, and when his foster son brings it to him just as he's winning it paralyses him and lets his opponent kill him.
- In My-Otome, newly crowned Queen Mashiro is more concerned about her birthday celebration and rebuilding her castle than about the lives of the commoners. This changes when Nagi's plan results in him controlling Windbloom and forcing her into exile with the poor people of her country, where she hears of their suffering and watches as they corner her maid Aoi and cause her to fall off a cliff when she refuses to tell them where Mashiro is, mainly because of her having served the Queen.
- Naruto:
- Pain has Naruto pinned down and impaled with six chakra draining rods to prevent movement. Instead of simply capturing him right then and there, he stabs Hinata in a way that would make her bleed out quickly without immediate medical attention, which angers Naruto enough to bring out Kyuubi. Turns out those chakra draining rods are no match for six tails of the Kyuubi's power, and his trump card is no match for eight tails. Pain snatches defeat, but also some redemption, from the jaws of victory because of nothing but his ego.
- The same can be said of his annihilation of the Hidden Leaf Village shortly beforehand. Despite having already won the battle and gotten what he wanted (the location of the Kyuubi jinchuriki), Pain insists on physically destroying the entire village before leaving, expending significant chakra to do so and severely straining himself. It's entirely possible that, had he not been weakened by this effort, he might have been strong enough to succeed in his capture of the Kyuubi. And it's particularly notable considering that, up until this point, despite his repeated declarations of godhood, Pain had demonstrated a very realistic evaluation of his own abilities, putting careful thought into his strategies and averting Explaining Your Powers to the Enemy to great effect. In both the above instances, he did what he did to make others know pain, showing how important that motivation is to him.
- One Piece:
- The Big Mom Pirates are so used to putting down any rookies that enter their territory that they feel the it won't be that different with the Straw Hats, and write them off on vague reports. Naturally, the Straw Hats' counterattack knocks the Big Mom Pirates flatfooted, and things go From Bad to Worse from there, from Big Mom's palace collapsing and the Territorial Sea Slugs they monitor the ocean with going missing. Mort d'Or insists those last two are a coincidencenote , but Baron Tamago points out that ever since the Straw Hats arrived, there have been lots of coincidences, and warns that "An arrogant king loses his crown."
- Tamago's warning ends up becoming true in the Wano Country arc, where Big Mom is defeated after a lengthy battle by the combined efforts of Eustass Kid and Trafalgar Law of the Worst Generation. Until the very end of the fight, Big Mom talks the duo down as just an annoying pair of rookies, supremely confident in her victory as she is, and it's not until she's dropped into a miles-deep crater with a nuke without any hope of getting out that she acknowledges her loss, cursing Roger for starting the Golden Age of Piracy with his final words. Within a few days, she's no longer acknowledged as one of the Four Emperors.
- Ironically, this also happens to Kid not long after her defeat in Egghead Arc. After getting a big ego by defeating Big Mom, Kid tries to kill Luffy due to wanting to seize his position, only to get restrained. In return, he decides to attack Shanks so that he would become Emperor in his place (much like Luffy became one after Kaido's defeat) as well as take revenge for losing his arm at the hands of his men. After deciding to attack Shanks's allied crews to lure him into a fight despite Killer's warnings, Kid is instantly beaten by the older pirate after getting a vision about the casualties, after which his copied Poneglyphs are stolen from the Kid Pirates and their ship is destroyed by Dorry and Brogy, knocking him out of the race of the Pirate King despite being considered as one of the main contenders earlier.
- Outlaw Star: The opening narration of Aisha's introductory episode lampshades how her excessive pride eventually lead to her being demoted from Interplanetary Petentiary, to a mere field officer. She spends the remainder of the series being forced to work minimum wage jobs, while hitchhiking across the galaxy 'til she finally tracks down the crew of the Outlaw Star.
- Reoccuring theme used in Pokémon: The Series. If a main character is being excessively prideful or vain, 9 times out of 10 they're going to suffer a Worf Effect to the trainer of the day.
- The Prince of Tennis:
- Hyoutei's Shishido is introduced as a cocky, conceited, over-confident jerk who makes snide comments about a player underestimating his opponent... only to get his ass handed to him in his next match against Fudoumine's captain, Tachibana Kippei. Since at the time Hyoutei regulars were not allowed to lose, he is immediately off the team. However, Shishido learns from the experience and after Training from Hell and an Important Haircut he earns back his spot on the team.
- Also, Ryoma in the anime goes through another of these. He behaves uninterested and apathetic towards Kevin Smith until he sees him play, then pretty much demands to be included in the line-up of the Senbatsu team. Tezuka does NOT take this kindly and promptly bitchslaps Ryoma in front of others, since his selfishness sounded extremely out of place for someone supposed to become a future leader in Seigaku. Ryoma has to go into a Pose of Supplication to regain Tezuka's favor and be even considered as a reserve player. Due to Values Dissonance (teamwork vs. stardom, Japanese mentality vs. Western views), the episode is often derided by fans.
- In Saki, this happens to a few mahjong players.
- Kazue, an anime-only character, enters the indiviudal tournament and not her school one because she doesn't want weak players to drag her down. She ranks relatively high, but doesn't advance onward.
- Although Izumi of Senriyama doesn't go around flaunting her skill, she thinks she's the strongest player among all first years (not entirely unreasonable, since she managed the unprecedented feat of getting onto the team as a first year). However, in the semifinals, she goes up against three third-year students, and ends up getting last place and losing over 30,000 points. Her teammate FunaQ doesn't mince words when saying Izumi not only is at a disadvantage against the third-years, but also isn't in the same league as the main character.
- Awai of Shiraitodai is incredibly arrogant, considering her teammates' losing enough points to drop her school from an overwhelming first place lead to second as a mere handicap for her. However, she doesn't do quite as well as she expects, and ends up having to desperately seize second place to ensure her school remains in the competition.
- From Saki Shinohayu -dawn of age-, Kanna Ishitobi is undefeated at every game she's played until she branches off into mahjong; while she manages to reach the final round of the tournament, she loses to a young Hayari Mizuhara (who, in the present story, is a professional player), and while practicing for her rematch, loses to her friend Kyouka, despite Kyouka being just as inexperienced.
- Sword Art Online: Sugou Nobuyuki/Oberon is introduced as an arrogant, self-assured creep, declaring himself the god of ALO and rubbing in Kirito's face that there's nothing he can do to stop him. This culminates in him pinning Kirito down and making him watch as he molests Asuna just to rub in how powerless he is rather than just finish him off and be done with it... which allows Kayaba to grant Kirito access to his admin ID, which outranks Sugou's own, and allows Kirito to finally put Sugou in his place. For his ego, Sugou lost everything and landed himself in prison.
