Set Right What Once Went Wrong / Anime & Manga

Setting Right What Once Went Wrong in Anime & Manga

Series Plots

• Generator Gawl seems to fall into this category, seeing how the only reason Auge was able to take over was because Gawl, Koji, and Ryu went back in time to stop them. In the end Ryu was the one who created the include cells and gave Auge the ability to take over, which is what caused them to go back in the first place, turning it into a Stable Time Loop.
• An attempt at this is the driving force behind the Myth Arc of Rave Master. The series inverts the trope because changing history back to the way it was is the bad guys' plan, as the original timeline's world was utterly destroyed save one survivor, who was able to change history to create the Rave world. On top of the Eldritch Clock Roach out to undo the paradox involved, most of the late-story baddies want to see the "false" world destroyed.
• The premise of Flint the Time Detective. The Time Shifters got scattered throughout history, changing the way certain historical events played out, and the Time Detectives have to capture them and put the past back the way it was.
• DNA2 begins its story with time-travelling special agent Karin Aoi coming to the past to prevent the "Super Playboy" from ever coming to be, thus preventing an untenable overpopulation crisis. This is accomplished by shooting his past self, Junta Momonari, with a special bullet that will rewrite his DNA so that his "Super Playboy" attributes never manifest. Unfortunately, Karin screws the pooch and accidentally shoots Junta with a different bullet that she had crafted for the purpose of fashioning the perfect husband, in so doing causing Junta to not only become the "Super Playboy" much sooner than he would otherwise, but increasing his "Super Playboy" powers exponentially! The rest of the series follows Karin trying to right this wrong before her mistake causes an even worse overpopulation crisis.
• The main plot of Tokyo Revengers consists of Takemichi traveling back to stop his girlfriend's death at the hands of the Tokyo Manji gang.
• Henyoku No Labyrinth: Miyako only travels back in time to get together with her crush Hiroto who is the boyfriend of her sister. She still fails because he still falls in love with her the first time they meet.
  • It was also revealed that Tsukasa wants to save Miyako from killing herself. It was also implied that he traveled back in time multiple times but he still failed every time.
• Homura from Puella Magi Madoka Magica leaps time to save Madoka from becoming a Magical Girl, or more commonly known as a Lich that may transform in the future into a witch. Each successive attempt only makes things worse. However, each attempt manages to make Madoka stronger until she Ascended to a Higher Plane of Existence upon making her contract in this timeline.
• One of the arcs in Kurohime involves two of the titled character's foes (Kurohime considered a bad guy in that world) going back in time to try killing her, for personal reason (revenge being the main motive, but also to keep the father of one of them being killed by her.) Its a bit of a twofer subvision. 1) They realize Kurohime not as evil as they figured and learn the reason behind her motives and 2) They wind up inadvertently causing the events that lead to the father's death. Kurohime wasn't even trying to kill him but took the blame anyway.
• Amakusa 1637 is built around this trope. Six schoolers from modern Kobe end up thrown in the Nagasaki of 1637, few before the failed Japanese Christian rebellion of Shiro Amakusa; once they reunite and assess their situation, they decide to pull this trope to avert such tragedy. It works.
• This is the story of the first Tenchi Universe film, Tenchi Muyo in Love - the creature KAIN had killed Tenchi's mom in 1976 and the gang has to go back to stop him.
• Touken Ranbu adaptations run into this theme quite a bit, since they're fighting against forces that want to irrevocably change history for their own nefarious purposes:
  • In Touken Ranbu - Hanamaru, the Sword Warriors are constantly reminding each other that this is not a good thing, and that no matter how much they cared for their previous masters, they need to prevent history from being changed by their enemies, not to change it themselves. And all of them can resist... until one of them can't.
  • Its actiony counterpart Katsugeki/Touken Ranbu runs into the same problem; though the defector isn't the one with regrets, it's the person who empathized with him and tried to change history for the former's sake.
• This quickly becomes a running plot point for My Wife Is Wagatsuma-san - Aoshima sees some aspect of the life of either him or his friends that he bemoans, so he tries to find some way to correct it in the present.
• Yu-Gi-Oh!: Bonds Beyond Time was this for the bad guy - he believes that Duel Monsters would bring about the end of the world and he seeks to kill Pegasus to stop it from becoming popular.
• In Rock Lee's Springtime of Youth, Lee instinctively tries to kill Obito, stating he has the feeling that everyone will be better off if the Uchiha is dead.
• The premise of shoujo manga Orange, where main character Naho receives a letter from her future self that warns her of the future death of a close friend, and it's up to her to prevent it.
• The premise of ERASED features Satorou having this ability inherently being able to rewind time and being able to set things right when things go wrong. The series itself features him returning to the past to save a former classmate and clear his mother's name and hopefully save her from being murdered.
• Genma Wars takes this turn late in the series when main characters Loof and Gin are sent back in time by their father to prevent their entire post-apocalyptic present from ever coming into place, and stop mankind from being conquered by demons in the distant past which is modern times. Sadly, they fail spectacularly and end up returning to their own timeline with very little changed.
• The plot for the second arc of Bakugan: Mechtanium Surge: Mechravius Destroyer obliterates Bakugan City and everyone in it, then goes to New Vestroia and succeds in destroying all Bakugan, so Dan and the Brawlers go back in time to stop him. However, it does not save the fallen Nonets and the last two left alive perform a Heroic Sacrifice to make this happen.
• HuGtto! Pretty Cure has this being done on both fronts. Big Bad George Cry travels to the past in order to stop time to preserve everyone's happiness, as not only does he reveal that Humanity was so struck with grief that they were unable to progress anymore, but his wife, the Future Hana Nono, became a victim of her own despair. This leads to Hugtan/Cure Tomorrow and Hariham Harry to travel back into the past as well, encountering Hana to make a new Pretty Cure team to stop the Dark Tomorrow Company from freezing time and robing everyone of their future.
• Girls Go Around:
  • The reason for the time-loops occuring. The creator made a decision and is regretting it, wondering if it was the right choice to make. The loop continues, until the regret has been dealt with.
  • Turns out that Chihiro created her own time-loop to keep Kyousuke from committing suicide on the day of graduation in three years.
• Takopi's Original Sin: Done multiple times by Takopi throughout the story:
  • Takopi uses the power of the Happy Camera to prevent Shizuka's suicide (which he succeeds at), as well as attempt to prevent Chappy getting sent away (which he fails at).
  • After becoming friends with Marina, Takopi decides to go back to make sure her future isn't miserable... by killing Shizuka, the "source" of her problems.
  • In the end, Takopi uses the last of his power to turn back time far enough and help the kids start reaching out to each other, at the cost of his own life.

Episode or Character Plots

• Fairy Tail
  • Ultear's rationale in a nutshell. She’s willing to commit most any and all atrocities because if she succeeds, she’ll unlock Time Master magic that can just undo all the harm it took to reach her goals. It takes the harsh realization that her "goal" could have been achieved if she just talked things out with her mother rather than assumed the absolute worst from a glance to realize how badly she fucked up and become The Atoner.
  • In the Grand Magic Games arc, the Lucy from the Bad Future wants to stop the opening of the Eclipse Gate that would release an army of 10,000 dragons from the past to devastate the world and kill nearly everyone. Things get complicated when it turns out there's a Rogue from another Bad Future where she succeeded, but Acnologia took over the world and killed nearly everyone, so he wants to use the dragons to kill Acnologia and rule the world. On top of that, Ultear attempts to invoke a Dangerous Forbidden Technique that would sacrifice her own lifespan to stop the dragons, but is only able to turn back time for one minute. Luckily for everyone, that one minute gave everyone temporal Combat Clairvoyance and most of them were dying in that time frame, letting them turn the tide of battle.
  • The final arc reveals this is Zeref's final master plan to finally be free of his cursed immortality. By using the infinite magic of Fairy Heart, he will cast the Neo-Eclipse, which would overwrite the timeline by sending his memories to his past self some 400 years ago and giving him all the information needed to both prevent being cursed by the gods by saving his brother Natsu from dying and no longer searching for the secrets of life and death, and to kill Acnologia before he becomes an unstoppable juggernaut. Since Zeref and Acnologia are such integral parts of the world's history, the present-world as it's known would be Ret-Gone if it worked.
• In the Negima! Magister Negi Magi manga, this is Chao Lingshen's motivation for messing around with her great grandfather's childhood, although whether she had an absurdly complicated plan set up, or was simply playing Xanatos Speed Chess as her alterations made foreknowledge less useful is never made clear. She actually fixed the problem she went back to solve with the changes wrought by her first trip, but later makes a second one to tie up a loose end or two before the Cosmic Deadline.
• Subverted in Dragon Ball Z. Future Trunks also attempts to set right what once went wrong, but he does this in a timeline not his own: since in DBZ every timeline counts as another dimension, any changes made in the current time will not directly affect Future Trunks' past or future. He still wants to help out, hoping to create at least one peaceful world, and to return to his own time strong enough to finally stop what he wanted to prevent.
  • Played straight in Dragon Ball Z: Resurrection 'F' and Dragon Ball Super. After Frieza destroys the Earth to kill Vegeta, Whis rewinds time three minutes to give Goku a second chance.
• In JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable, Big Bad Yoshikage Kira gains his Time Master power "Bites the Dust" and uses it to successfully kill off the entire main cast with his stepson Hayato as the catalyst (making him a literal Tyke Bomb). Thankfully, Hayato manages to undo it by tricking Kira into revealing himself in front of Josuke, forcing him to deactivate it to defend himself before it can take effect in the present.
• A great part of the Haruhi Suzumiya Light Novels deals with Kyon trying to rectify past events in order not to let Haruhi's powers go haywire. Although he travels back in time mainly to set Haruhi off so that she'd create aliens, time travellers and ESPers, and to fix up the events on December 18th. On that day, there's a point in time where there's 3 Mikurus and 4 Kyons. December 18th was only because of Disappearance, and to fix what Yuki did.
• Yakitate!! Japan: Kazuma's last bread of the second Tournament Arc is so amazingly delicious, it sends the judge back in time to retcon his own mother's death.
• This is the goal of Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds Big Bad Z-One. However, Z-One is different than most in that he is willing to do anything, no matter how immoral to meet this goal. The plan involved causing Zero Reverse, a disaster that killed thousands, and he was willing to murder anyone whom he felt was in the way. In the finale, Yusei manages to surprise him completely, summoning Shooting Quasar Dragon as his ultimate card (Z-One had expected "Cosmic Blazar Dragon", the card that the Yusei in his timeline used as such), and in he end, it is heavily implied that Yusei's is able to prevent the Bad Future using much less drastic means.
• The Pokémon the Series: Ruby and Sapphire episode "Time Warp Heals All Wounds" sends May, Meowth and Squirtle back in time to prevent a man unknowingly leaving his pregnant girlfriend. May finds a lost necklace belonging to the woman, but oddly, no real explanation is given for the time travel.
• In the Pokémon the Series: XY episode "Rotom's Wish", Ash and Company help Weston's Rotom by having it possess electric items to learn Leaf Storm, Blizzard and Hydro Pump, giving it the edge against Mantle's Krookodile, so Weston doesn't lose the ownership of the Lost Hotel to Mantle.
• The 12th Pokémon movie Pokémon: Arceus and the Jewel of Life has Arceus attempt to destroy humanity after it was betrayed in the past and Dialga sending Ash and his friends back in time to prevent it from happening while trying to hold it off in the present alongside Palkia and Giratina.
• Towards the end of the first Slayers movie, Lina goes back in time to help Rowdy defeat Joyrock when he first arrived on Mipross Island, before he became as strong as he was in the present. Of course, this has a horrible side effect from Lina's perspective - since she defeated the demon decades before she was hired to defeat him, she didn't get paid.
• Discussed, but ultimately averted in Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid. Lucoa offers to rewind time for Ilulu to before her Heel–Face Turn so she can undo her attempted destruction of the city and ease her guilt, but Ilulu turns down her offer on the grounds that it would also undo everything that Kobayashi had done for her.
• Date A Live: Kurumi's goal is to get enough power to travel thirty years back into the past to kill the first Spirit, who was responsible for making Kurumi herself into a Spirit and an unwitting serial killer. Additionally, her power is also used (by herself and by others) to solve other problems, including Origami's Inversion and Shidou's deaths.
• In the third Tenchi Muyo! OVA series, once finding out about who the avatar of their universe's God was, Tokimi, Tsunami and Washu decide to reset time so that the avatar, Tenchi, can grow into his powers better and the damage caused by Tokimi creating Z is undone. However, since Z was the catalyst behind the third OVA series, Noike makes sure the altered message from Mihoshi gets sent so that she can come and join the gang.
• Rebuild of Evangelion gives the franchise its long-overdue happy ending by having Shinji use the power of Instrumentality to undo Second & Third Impact and write the Angels out of mankind's history.
• Happens at the end of the climax battle in the manga rendition of the Monster Association saga of One-Punch Man. With Genos and all the heroes sent on the Monster Association mission dead, the planet Jupiter and its moon Io completely obliterated, and Saitama still unbeatable, Garou is finally overcome with regret when he realises he accidentally caused the death of his Morality Pet Tareo. Rather than succumbing to despair, Garou reveals the existence of God to Saitama and tries to teach him a way to harness God's power. God, enraged, begins to kill Garou by transforming him into a pillar of salt, but not before he is able to fling Saitama back in time, instructing him to use the strength accumulated over the course of their fight to defeat his past self in one punch. It works.

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