Training From Hell / Anime & Manga

Seishin:
Step 1: "I want to do something very good."
Step 2: "I can't do it now."
Step 3: "I can do it later if I do other things now."
Step 4: "The things I do now will feel terrible."
Step 5: "My pain will help me do the good thing."
Step 6: "Therefore, I want to embrace this pain."

— A paraphrased translation of the word "seishin"

Due to the Japanese virtue of "seishin", this trope is very often played straight in manga and anime, where the trainee stands for hours under the weight of a raging waterfall or follows a Sink or Swim Mentor that embraces The Spartan Way. This is especially true in Shōnen, since the responsibilities of boys were traditionally thought to outweigh the responsibilities of girls. Girls, however, were expected to utilize it in their own way.

---

Examples:

• Subverted in the anime adaptation of Akazukin Chacha, where the joke vampire villain catches a cold that he hasn't shaken off by the time he tries to take revenge on the protagonists.
• Deconstructed in Assassination Classroom, where the schoolchildren's everyday Stern Teacher "PE teacher" and assassination trainer is replaced by a Faux Affably Evil Drill Sergeant Nasty who tries to get them to train for virtually all hours of the day and violently assaults them if they show any reluctance. He's denounced in-universe as a dangerous psychopath, the children rapidly rebel against his approach, he gets humiliated in a duel with one of the physically weakest but mentally toughest pupils and sent packing by the Dean Bitterman (who is okay with teachers making students fear them but won't have violent brutes on his staff) and when he returns looking for revenge a few arcs later it's as a pure villain so vile that his own associates sabotage his plan because they think it's so abhorrent^note poison the students with a deadly virus, challenge them to fight him for the antidote and destroy the antidote if he loses. The arc is used for an aesop that you can't get genuine respect or inspire people if all you do is terrorise them.
• Attack on Titan: Annie underwent it as a child, prior to enlisting. She tutors Eren by putting him through similarly harsh training.
• Baki the Grappler: Baki Hanma's entire life is essentially Training from Hell, initiated by his mother so that he could someday defeat his father. He's almost there, and seems to be glad, as he apparently has gotten a little tired of it.
  • His older brother Jack deconstructs this before taking it up to eleven with super steroids just so his body can keep up with his unreasonable training. Prior to this, his body was actually atrophied into a ghoulish state because his desperation to get strong enough to face Yujiro caused him to train non-stop without giving himself any downtime to rest and recuperate. Hell, the scientist who gave him the steroids found him in a gym where he was hitting a punching bag for twelve hours straight.
  • By extension every fighter of note in the series has went through training that would make super athletes weep. Some examples are: using an helicopter for ab work outs, punching a huge stone until it is a sphere, and landscaping.
• Berserk: Guts's training as a mercenary began at the tender age of six, where his brute adoptive father Gambino would make Guts train with a sword twice his size, saying that they didn't make swords for little kids. Guts continues the tradition of wielding swords that are as big as he to this day. He self inflicted himself another especially harsh training after his encounter with Nosferatu Zodd.
• Black Butler has an amusing variation in which Sebastian trains Sieglinde Sullivan on how to be a proper English lady... the ensuing montage of which is presented in the same manner as any Training Montage. As Sullivan has to this point been pampered and spoiled, this training is indicated to be just as grueling as any martial artist's.
  Sullivan: I'm even more bound here than I was in the village!
• Train Heartnet, from Black Cat, underwent hellish training, including one-arm pushups on his thumb, to prepare for pistols.
• Bleach:
  • Most of Ichigo's training sessions needed to be this brutal in order to achieve enough power in the short time available. Even in his very first Next Tier Power-Up, being beaten to a pulp by Zangetsu and almost turned into a hollow in training with Urahara resulted in him becoming at least lieutenant class within a couple weeks.
  • His second major training sequence, learning bankai, compressed what generally takes years of work for those few Shinigami able to achieve it into three days. We don't see much of the actual training, but the injuries Ichigo sustains in the process suggest that it crams all the brutal of many years into those days.
  • Later, during the Filler Bount arc, Ichigo and friends are tormented by three powerful strangers who force them to participate in sadistic "games." It turns out that the strangers are Mod Souls working for Urahara, and the games are training exercises designed by Urahara to force Ichigo and company to work together as a team.
  • Also Ikkaku's intense training of the kendo team during a filler arc. It also backfires, mostly, as he ends up severely injuring most of the team. The one person who makes it through intact wins the kendo tournament. Unfortunately, this means Ikkaku is not allowed to fight in the tournament since it then has to end, which leads to his team losing and Ikkaku beating the ever-loving shit out of the entire opposing team.
  • Ichigo's month-long Vizard training definitely counts as well, given that he basically had to practice wrestling his Inner Hollow into submission over and over again.
  • Uryuu receives Training From Hell from his father, Ryuuken, in order to regain the Quincy powers he lost through Letzt Stil. Uryuu did not know in advance that this would entail dodging Ryuuken's attacks until he hit his physical and mental limits because he needed to completely believe his life was in danger for the training to work at all. At his limit, he then had to be shot 19mm to the right of the heart with a spirit arrow, knocking him unconscious and leaving behind a quincy cross-shaped scar, but restoring his powers.
  • Even Ichigo needs 3 months of time getting kicked around by Zangetsu to master the Final Getsuga Tenshou that he uses against Aizen in the climax of the Deicide Arc.
  • Exaggerated when it's Kenpachi Zaraki's turn for training, under someone who is a master swordsman and a master healer. Step 1: Attack student with strongest, fastest, most lethal attack. Step 2: Heal the lethal wounds before death can set in. Step 3: Return to step 1. Repeat until student can dodge and counter. Step 4: Once student can counter the first attack, attack again until student messes up or kills the teacher, at which point you repeat steps 1-3. Justified in that the student in question's problem isn't a lack of strength ( Kenpachi once defeated Unohana in her prime as a child, but weakened himself to avoid killing her because she was his first Worthy Opponent), but that he subconsciously refuses to use his full potential unless he genuinely thinks he's in danger of dying, so actually putting him on the verge of death repeatedly is training him out of the habit of holding back.
• The titular Blue Lock training program is essentially a non-lethal Deadly Game with participants that fail being permanently barred from representing their nation in the World Cup.
• Thymocyte growth is portrayed like this in Cells at Work!. The hardest part is the timely differentiation between normal cells and infected ones, within a split second. One mistake and you're immediately out. We're also told that only 2 to 3 percent will actually manage to graduate. This is actually Truth in Television, where thymocytes are 'trained' with negative and positive reactions, and the percentages mentioned in the show are accurate. It's to prevent your body from attacking friendly cells.
• In Chainsaw Man, the Unskilled, but Strong Denji & Power are put through this by World's Best Warrior Kishibe at the request of Makima. Kishibe's training regimen boiled down to being a Sink or Swim Mentor, taking advantage of the duo's Resurrective Immortality and brutally killing them over and over until they learned to put up a decent fight. This quickly pays off when Denji manages to use his lesson about misdirecting the enemy to defeat Katana Man.
• Motoko Gettou from Change 123 does this from when she was five. When her mother died, three "fathers" (in truth only her mother's acquaintances) came to pick her up: one was a karate master who killed a tiger with his bare hands; one is a master swordsman, tactician and firearms expert; and one is a grand master of jujitsu. Naturally, they taught her everything they know.
  • With the little side effect of making her develop three split personalities, one for each of her fathers' specialty, to cope with the training and a Superpowered Evil Side that nearly killed two out of three fathers in the three minutes before passing out. She was 11 at that time.
• Motes of Classicaloid undergoes physical and mental training under the supervision of Sousuke (Beethes tags alongside as well) in order to unleash his Mujik. It doesn't work and his Mujik gets activated by a slap to the face instead.
• At one point in Codename: Sailor V, Minako engages in an extremely strenuous training that turns her from being slightly overweight into having a fair bit of muscles in a matter of days. Differently from most examples, this was just simple training to slim down brought up to eleven by Minako's own personality... And Artemis using the chance occasion provided by Minako getting slightly overweight to trick her into doing some physical training.
• Tanjiro from Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, alongside other Slayers, undergoes a Breathing training at the beginning of each arc, which can be as dangerous as painfully exhausing, the first one involving avoiding traps all night on a high-altitude mountain.
• Allen Walker in D.Gray-Man underwent this under General Cross, who — aside from making Allen fight and practical things like that — also tended to drop his debts on the boy, among other things. For a while, every time anyone mentions the general around Allen, he goes catatonic at the mere memory.
  • As a side-effect, he now has insanely awesome poker cheating skills, as well as a scary evil side that pops up whenever cards are around. * shiver*
• Daisuke Niwa's family did this to him in D.N.Angel, although it doesn't seem to be as physically demanding as other cases of this trope. His training was mainly in basic agility and dexterity, not much different than a fairly athletic human adult. His alter ego, on the other hand...
• Parodied to Hell and back in an episode of the oldschool shonen manga Dokonjou Gaeru. Main character Hiroshi subjects his Expressive Shirt Pyonkichi to this, hitting him with a baseball bat among other things... to withstand being inside Hiroshi's mom's new washing machine. Exaggerated when Hiroshi chains Pyonkichi to a boat as the corollary and last part. Then, the boat sinks. Don't worry, Pyonkichi gets better.
• Dragon Ball zig-zags this, with many ridiculous training methods that would very easily kill in real life (from the use of weighted clothing to the gravity chamber) but it's made clear that good rests and taking breaks is just as important.
  • In the early Dragon Ball manga and anime, Master Roshi gave Krillin and Goku all sorts of tasks, ranging from toughening their hands by making them plow a field with their bare hands, to wearing something like 100-pound turtle shells for endurance, to evasion/speed training by tying them to a tree near an angry hornet's nest (and all in a single day!). Being an expert, Roshi also makes sure they eat enough, study just as hard, and have enough rest.
  • In contrast, Roshi's old enemy, the Crane Master, overdoes this trope, to the point that his training focuses on nothing but pain and fighting. As a result, his students are powerful, but not nearly as well-rounded as Goku and Krillin. The only reason Tien Shinhan won his fight with Goku was dumb luck, and Chiaotzu lost outright against Krillin because Krillin outwitted him with a simple math quiz.
  • Early on, when Goku still had his tail; it was an easily exploitable weakness for his opponents. Squeezing it caused pain on the level of a Groin Attack and made him lose all his strength. How does he overcome this? He specifically trains for it: in the anime it's shown he goes to live with monkeys, using his tail for everything. By the time the next tournament arrived, grabbing it had no effect at all.
  • Goku's training with Kami takes a page from Roshi's playbook: Goku wears weighted boots, wristbands and undershirt, which Goku would remove when a fight got serious (such as against Tien or Raditz). Piccolo used a similar strategy with weighted shoulder pads and turban. This got phased out after the training with King Kai in favour of high gravity training and using normal clothes.
  • Piccolo begins Gohan's training by throwing him at a mountain. Justified in his case only because Gohan had displayed brief bursts of incredible power triggered by anger in a prior combat situation (i.e. when he dealt a critical blow to Raditz after he beat Goku to the ground). He also had a very limited timeframe to turn Gohan into a competent fighter.
    Find the power quickly, boy... or turn to jelly against those rocks!
    • Gohan gets so used to hellish training that when Goku tries training him in a more normal manner, Gohan snaps at him that he's not pushing hard enough and is too soft to give Gohan the challenges he needs. Goku responds to this by turning Super Saiyan and unleashing a full power Kamehameha on Gohan... to which Gohan replies "That's better!"
  • In Dragon Ball Z, high gravity training becomes common after Goku is killed by Raditz and goes to King Kai's world, which had 10x Earth's gravity.^note Incidentally, this is the same gravity as the Saiyan homeworld, so Goku had been taking it easy up until that point! Later on Yamcha, Piccolo, Tien, and Chiaotzu are killed and train there as well. Past this point, Gravity Chambers are introduced that can be cranked up to 100x Earth's gravity, which Goku does to prepare for the fight against Frieza. This would normally make your blood crystallize, which would be fatal (as Dr. Briefs warns Goku), but, well, this is Dragon Ball; humans have survived worse, and Saiyans are incredibly tough on top of already being Heavyworlders (and they get more powerful when brought close to death, which probably helped). Souls given form also seem to be inherently more durable than an actual living person, which might explain how the humans managed.
  • Additionally, while training to fight the Saiyans, Yamcha, Tien, Krillin, and Chiaotzu are trained in the Room of Time and Space similar to the X-Men's "Danger Room", wherein they are forced to fight Saiyans who are vastly overpowered and utterly decimate them with energy blasts that shoot through their bodies and are actually painful.
  • And just when poor Gohan gets out of training, Chi-Chi makes him study with the same mindset.
  • Vegeta goes through a mental one of these when trying to achieve Super Saiyan for the first time: he only manages to do it simply because his own self-loathing at being inferior to Goku is the traumatic event triggers the transformation!
  • The Cell Saga gives us The Room of Spirit and Time, also known as the Hyperbolic Time Chamber. What makes it this trope is the classic 10x gravity in every spot except the lobby area, as well as near-instant temperature swings. One moment it's incredibly hot to the point of suffocating, and the next it's frigid cold!
  • When Gohan receives his powerup from the Elder Kaioushin, he has to remain perfectly still for 25 hours. Have you tried to be perfectly still for a long time? It is just as hellish as many other examples here.
  • Vegeta occasionally hints that he does almost nothing but train, continuously, whenever he is not on-screen. How he had time to conceive Trunks remains a mystery. He'd probably refer to it as "stamina training".
  • However, the trope is also deconstructed in Dragon Ball Super. Whis points out that Vegeta trains so hard for so long without rest that his body never properly acclimates which messes up his reaction time and stunts his potential overall. Not allowing the body time to recover is legitimately detrimental to its health, which is why weightlifters have specific days to work different muscle groups, allowing recovery time for the others in the process. Goku allows himself to rest and relax, allowing him to build strength more efficiently (if meaning that he's caught with his guard down more than Vegeta).
  • Poor Tagoma in Super gets probably the worst version; unlike in the Resurrection of F film (where he's just Thrown Out the Airlock), he's treated to being Frieza's sparring partner for four months. Each day left him so badly injured he needed to be put in a healing tank just to survive. By the time he gets to Earth, he's incredibly powerful, immune to most attacks (except crotch headbutts) and completely Ax-Crazy from his horrible experience.
• Subverted and parodied, like virtually everything else, in Excel♡Saga, when Nabeshin trains Excel how to bowl in a bathroom. It was over so quickly Excel's not even sure if she underwent the promised training.
• A lot of teams in Eyeshield 21 follow this type of training with the Devilbats taking the cake. Since they are a rookie team and only have one shot at the Christmas Bowl they spend a whole summer running from Houston Texas to Las Vegas, Navada (2343.7 km) with the back training their pass route while the linemen push a truck the whole way. The coach even warn them that this is not a safe training at all, speaking from experience as he ruined his legs pushing said truck. Afterward the practices are more or less regular but diligent training to keep the basics.
• Subverted in Fairy Tail, where Team Natsu goes to the beach to train for 3 months, but end up partying. They then get a free instant powerup from Ultear's Time Arc magic. This is justified slightly, as they did plan to train, but Lucy's Guardian Spirits decided to celebrate their return by taking them into their world. Unfortunately for the wizards, one day in the Spirit world exactly equals 3 months in their world. The rest of the guild elites who went elsewhere did do the three months of intense training (albeit off-screen).
• We don't see much of what Kenshiro and his brothers went through in Fist of the North Star to learn how to use their invincible martial art, but given the one sparring we saw could have ended with Jagi exploding (and in fact Ryuuken asks Kenshiro why did he hold back when Jagi tried his best to bust his face) and another exercise had Kenshiro and Raoh confront a rhino-sized tiger one at a time we can safely say they went through this.
• In Food Wars!, the "Totsuki Friendship and Rapport Training" is literally referred to as this. During this week long training camp, the first-year students must successfully complete a different cooking challenge each day. On top of that, they must cook at least 150 to 200 dishes per day for the hotel's guests. Those who do not pass a challenge or fail to meet the 200 dish quota are immediately expelled from school. Every year, at least half of the first-years are weeded out by this event.
• In Fullmetal Alchemist, Izumi Curtis has put Alphonse and Edward through quite a bit of Training from Hell, to the point that they're genuinely terrified of her. The manga's volume 6 even includes a part where she states she has "Training from hell plan B" scheduled for the afternoon, and therefore should cook a lunch high in calories. (This is from the Viz media release, while other translators' exact phrasing may be different, it'll probably include the 'training' and 'hell' bits.)
  • Izumi herself went through training from hell herself. She was left for one month with no supplies in the middle of a perpetual blizzard. She had to fight bears bare-handed.
    • What makes it funny is how Olivier tells the Elrics that once, a strange woman broke into Briggs and stole food and supplies for a whole month.
  • Turns out it was all a misunderstanding, and the guy who gave her the assignment was the martial arts master, not his (dead) brother the alchemist. Hilarity Ensues. However ironically, it still gave her valuable lessons in Alchemy.
• Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu plays this for laughs in the infamous rugby episode, in which Sosuke takes Jindai High's tea-swilling, terrified-by-moths rugby team and puts them through harsh military drills while bellowing insults straight out of Full Metal Jacket^note He got the last part from his teammate Melissa Mao's "How to Verbally Abuse a Trainee" handbook and didn't even understand half the stuff he was saying. He ends up turning them into bloodthirsty psychopaths who absolutely destroy the Opposing Sports Team, while a distressed Kaname watches and remarks that whatever's going on, it's not rugby anymore.
• Fitting for a man who can fight hand to hand with dinosaurs, Ryoma of Getter Robo had a father who trained him since early childhood in the harsh art of karate until his hands "swelled so badly they looked like they had gloves on them." This included making him fight dogs, as seen here.
• In Glass Mask just about every role for which Ayumi and Maya prepare. Lampshaded, in that just about any character other than Maya, Ayumi and Tsukikage think it's insane, and occasionally say so. Often to the three in question. I.e.: Prior to playing the role of the blind and deaf Helen Keller, Maya spends several days blindfolded.
• In Gokusen, a business CEO offers the students "masculinity training." It's a series of grueling physical tasks (and such "masculine" tasks as drinking), with each successive training series guaranteeing a minimum wash-out, and making cheating not only easily possible, but not punishing it even when the proctors see it. Of course, it's all part of a Secret Test of Character — those who both pass AND refuse to cheat do better than those who pass and cheat; those who pass and help others do even better.
• Played for Laughs in episode 7 of Gourmet Girl Graffiti while Kirin and Shiina try to wash dishes under Tsuyuko's instructions. They break a lot of them, and Shiina accidentally gets dishwater splashed on her^note Having water splashed on is Shiina's Weaksauce Weakness as this would make her seriously ill..
• Hanaukyō Maid Team:
  • In episode 14 Konoe takes Taro into the mountains and puts him through training worthy of a martial arts movie. Running, standing under a waterfall, etc.
  • La Verite
    • Episode 5. Ryuuka joins the household as a maid and takes over the division that serves Taro personally, putting them through a harsh workout.
    • Episode 6. Most of the maid departments go through vigorous physical training to prepare for a softball tournament.
• In chapter 358 of Hayate the Combat Butler, Ruka needs to learn how to ride a bike in four hours. Hayate offers her a choice between kind lessons and harsh lessons. She chooses harsh, so he gives her the same training he gave himself.
  Hayate: Don't worry. People can do anything when they think they're going to die.
  Ruka: I really will die before that happens!
• Subverted in Hetalia: Axis Powers. Yes, Italy gets some training by Germany — not that it helps anything. On the other hand, while he is a coward, he seems not to be such a bad fighter if necessary — once, before he fell under Austria's rule, he managed to defeat Turkey.
  • Played straight with America under Prussia, though.
• High School D×D:
  • Despite its shounen trappings, the series usually averts this — more than once, characters have compromised their effectiveness or put themselves out of action by overdoing the training. That's not to say there aren't straight examples, though their risk is usually mitigated. The worst example being dodging fireballs from a true Dragon in the wilderness for weeks on end while said dragon is quite happy to ambush the trainee while eating or sleeping — the two recipients are Issei (who was already sturdy enough to weather the near-misses and was completely aware he had a dragon-based ability of his own that he could only master by being pushed that far) and Riser (functionally unkillable). Also note that said dragon, Tanninim, is a productive member of polite society asked nicely to help with the training and knew his partners' limits.
  • The concept of seishin is namechecked during the Issei vs. Riser Engagement Challenge, specifically as a virtue Riser lacked. His Phoenix-like immortality meant he'd never lost a fight, but also never suffered for anything before. Issei dumping boosted holy water on his face didn't do any permanent damage, but the unfamiliar feeling of excruciating pain completely crippled him. The above-mentioned training is mostly to work through this flaw.
  • As the group's general power level rises, though, so does the risk inherent in their normal regimen. When Kiba reveals to Issei that the former's sparring blows were capable of killing him anyway, the pair agree for Issei to stop checking his punches so they both get more from the exercise — they trust each other's skills that much.
• Yuu's initial training in Holyland is a rather simple version of this: repeating the one-two combo five thousand times per day, plus an unspecified number of push-ups to become strong enough to take it. He did that for at least one year before the series, and during it he integrates it with an unspecified but more varied regime to increase his skill range.
  • According to Masaki, the best formally trained martial artists train themselves almost everyday and don't stop until they puke. We don't see much of it, but the one time he's seen training Shougo is doing push-ups on his knuckles, and during the flashback about his Origin Story Masaki is seen training for multiple hours at the Boxing Club.
• Biscuit's Kruger training from Hunter × Hunter. Also Killua's heavy endurance is due to his family's very harsh assassin training straight from birth.
  • They have nothing on Netero's personal training methods. 10,000 punches a day for years. To remind the reader, Netero is over 100 years old and he performed this training basically non stop for half his lifespan.
• THE iDOLM@STER: Neue Green for Dearly Stars has one. All the more funny because it's not a sports/fighting manga. Pictured here.
• Jan Akiyama of Iron Wok Jan was brutally trained since childhood by his grandfather to become a Chinese-cuisine chef. For example, basic training included flipping a wok full of stones, one handed, thousands of times in a row — and if he slowed down at all, he'd be beaten until his back was bloody. Later on in the series, the audience discovers that one of Jan's opponents in a cooking competition had undergone the same training — in the rain, while balancing barefoot on the blade of a giant sword.
• In Isekai Quartet, Kazuma states he's too lazy to actually want to make the effort to help his class win Field Day. Tanya immediately decides to put him through the kind of training her soldiers suffered when she was put in charge of them. It consists of Kazuma running while carrying a shovel as he is bombarded by Puck's crystals — and one of Megumin's Explosions.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
  • Phantom Blood mentions "the Seventy-Seven Rings", an ancient training challenge for knights. It involves climbing a giant mountain in heavy armor, defeating seventy-seven opponents along the way. When you defeat one, you must don an iron ring that they were wearing. By the seventy-seventh, those rings equal about 300 extra pounds of weight. Only five men ever completed it. Two of them battle Jonathan at once.
  • Battle Tendency gives us the Pillar of Hell, which both Joseph and Caesar are forced to do at the beginning of their training. They're tossed into a twenty-four-meter-deep pit, the only way out of which is to climb a stone pillar. The pillar continually coats itself with vegetable oil, and any attempts to improvise a rope are prevented by the pillar shooting out a knife and cutting it. The only way out is to use the Ripple to cling to the pillar and claw your way up. To add insult to injury, there's a crack partway up to trick people into trying to rest by using it as a handhold... but it's actually a switch that causes a massive field of high-pressure oil to spray out near the top, making things even harder. And Joseph has to climb it wearing a mask that suffocates him unless he can keep up the proper breathing rhythm. And this is the first step to the training.
  • This is more or less averted from Stardust Crusaders onwards, since the main form of combat through Stands more or less takes away the need to actually train the body, and Stand abilities are so varied that the best form of "training" is experience on the fly through fighting other Stand users.
• Inverted for laughs in Kaguya-sama: Love Is War, where a recurring plotline is Fujiwara helping Shirogane master a specific skill, such as volleyball or singing. Unfortunately for Fujiwara, Shirogane starts out absolutely incompetent in those skills, and she's put through the wringer to make him presentable as the "perfect" Student Council President.
• To be qualified enough to compete with the most seasoned performers in the Kaleido Stage, Sora Naegino and other characters from Kaleido Star are subjected to several variants of this (and just TOO often in Sora's case). Specific examples are:
  • At the start of the first season, Layla and Kalos see that Sora has huge potential despite not arriving to the auditions, so they tell her that if she can pull Layla's signature move the Golden Phoenix she'll be able to stay in the Stage. Sora subjects herself to this so she can do so, and wins the friendship of Anna and Mia in the process.
  • Towards the end of the first season, Layla and Sora must train for the Legendary Great Manouver that would allow them to take the Stage back from Yuri Killian... It's such a terrible regime that Layla almost develops an eating disorder and injures her shoulder so seriously that she must retire and Sora is emotionally crushed.
  • Training for the Angel's Maneuver required Sora to stand on a floating log one-legged and lower then lift her whole body weight without causing the water to ripple at all — 100 times! Another part of the training ripped all of the skin from her toes. And that was after qualifying for it in Leon's eyes; her rival May did NOT.
  • May subjects herself to this on her own so she will be able to perform in the Stage despite having a seriously injured arm, after Leon injures and discards her as a partner.
  • Leon and his sister, Sophie, were subjected to hellish training when they were younger. Examples: standing in the same position for hours, juggling lead balls, sitting at a table without a chair (assuming the sitting position using leg strength alone). As a result, Leon and Sophie pulled the Angel's Maneuver almost by accident during a session, which ultimately gives him the idea to develop the grueling training regime that he put Sora through...
• Parodied in Kamen no Maid Guy, when Kogarashi trains Naeka for an upcoming high school Kendo tournament. Some of his training methods include having her fight a bear, and dropping a log on her from on top of a waterfall. She fails most of the more ridiculous exercises, but Kogarashi gives her a pass anyway for her effort.
• Pretty much the entire point of Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple. And given the strength of his opponents and his lack of natural talent, he needs it. Highlights include:
  • Doing sit-ups while hanging from a bar, and a fire underneath which would burn him if he'd stop.
  • Jumping off a 100m high cliff. (He is given an option. He could either take the jump and relax on vacation, or spend two days training. He picks the jump, (albeit due to some unexpected incentive))
  • Just getting smacked around (mostly when it's Apachai doing the smacking).
  • Akisame's various tortu- training machines that get more... refined as they go along.
  • Being locked in a cave, with no light or food, filled with traps for days. When Kenichi comes out, an old opponent is waiting to fight him. Kenichi ignores him.
  • The very first thing they made him do was horse stance over a fire, holding fifty pound weights in his outstretched arms, with blades attached to his inner arms that will stab him if he lets them down. When he needs a break, Akisame attaches a rope to a tire, sits on it, and tells him to drag it to the store.
    Kenichi: But that's three stops away! Do you expect me to walk there?
    Akisame: No, no, of course not. I expect you to run.
  • It's even worse in the manga; where it's humorously implied that he occasionally dies and has to be brought back with Kensei Ma's potions. In fact it's more seriously implied that the Masters intentionally bring him to the brink of death and then make him recover, with Ma's potions and Akisame's medical knowledge helping them know when to stop and how to speed up his recovery... And then resume the training.
  • When Kenichi was forced to jump off the cliff into the ocean, he didn't even know how to swim, and the masters still pushed him in anyway.
    Akisame: So you can't swim? That's no excuse!
    Sakaki: It just makes things more exciting!
  • A humorous aversion occurs in the manga. When Ryozanpaku needs money badly, Miu has some of the masters take up teaching young children for a little while for the income. Kenichi initially freaks at the idea, fearing his masters will give these kids the same training he gets. However, despite some initial difficulty for Sakaki and Shigure trying to give out actual kunai, the masters train them quite normally.
  • When his former-opponent-turned-friend Takeda the Puncher eventually finds himself a good boxing master to catch up with Kenichi, the said master (James Shiba) gives him a Training from Hell as well. When doing the (now already) usual training routine of Kenichi running through the park towing his master Akisame, they encounter Shiba and Takeda doing a similar training routine. Then Hilarity Ensues as the two masters (who are personally friendly rivals) compete who of them will make his disciple run faster.
• Years before The Bride took up Training from Hell from Pai Mei, the title character of Lady Snowblood, Oyuki, prepared for her Roaring Rampage of Revenge against her mother's rapists by undergoing Training from Hell as an assassin from a priest.
• The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (2016): The Hero's Shade puts Link through brutal, full-contact sword sessions.
• Lupin III: Goemon Ishikawa has always been fanatical about keeping his Implausible Fencing Powers sharp through training. But in Goemon Ishikawa's Spray of Blood, after losing a battle to hitman named Hawk, he has a brief Heroic BSoD before pushing himself to extremes not seen before in the series. The self-inflicted training involves waterfalls, fire, and sharks. By the end, his hands are bleeding and barely able to grip his sword.
• The eponymous Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha subjects herself to this even while sleeping or doing her homework. She herself gives this out to the new recruits as an adult in the third season. There is an ironic paradox here, Nanoha does this to prevent them from "overextending themselves" (theoretically under the idea that a gradually growing Training from Hell would allow them to reach more and more power without turning themselves into cripples by overdoing it suddenly, like she almost did).
• MÄR: Ginta, Jack, Snow and Dorothy get trapped in the Gate of Training for 180 days. Ginta spends about twelve hours trying to break but not destroy a wall by synchronizing with his arm. And Jack and Dorothy's Guardian ARM is an ugly, cranky cat lady who hates Jack. And just being stuck in another dimension with Jack is hell for Dorothy. We don't get to see much of the training after that, but in one montage, Ginta does appear to be coughing up blood, and he comes out with a scar on his face, so something that the viewer didn't see also had to happen that would qualify this as Training From Hell. So Yeah.
  • Ginta and Jack actually go through this TWICE — Gaira puts them through more unseen Training From Hell, they come back tired and beaten up with their reflexes increased. Since we didn't actually see what happened, I'm not sure if this counts.
  • The Training Gate is used at least twice more, with every fighter in Team MAR given a dose. The first time, this trope applies by combining Training Gate with Shadow Man, which makes the trainees fight their own shadows.
• In the World of Badass that is Medaka Box this is undergone at least once an arc since the Genre Shift. The brightest example being the first; Kurokami Medaka's older brother Maguro's special power is being able to bring out the best in anyone he trains, for Zenkichi and Medaka he developes two training regimes, one being a course where they would go to sleep and wake up even stronger, the other is explicitly this and the results aren't even guaranteed. The next episode/chapter features Medaka's and Zenkichi's clothes being tattered to shreds, but the two put up a good showing against Arc Big Bad Miyakonojou Oudo and soundly beating his Quirky Mini Boss Squad to the point of friendship.
• Seiji "Mad Dog" Sawamura in Midori Days was a nice, peaceful child, and picked on for it...until Cool Big Sis Rin forced him through this with sadistic glee, forging him into an unstoppable fighter...with a fear of dogs. Being chased, with meat tied to you, does that... She also used fire, and seems to have tried hypnosis. Played with, as he lost his first fight after a week of training, though he never gave up the fight, and no one save for Rin was able to beat him since then.
• Minami-ke parodies it with Chiaki teaching Kana how to properly blow bubbles with gum.
• My Hero Academia:
  • Izuku receivess his in the early chapters in order to make himself capable of receiving One-For-All. A slightly more realistic example, as All Might creates a very strict plan for training that includes days specifically for resting, as he points out that pushing Izuku non-stop will have the opposite effect. He is very upset when he realizes that Izuku was defying that schedule, resulting in him collapsing from exhaustion halfway through training. Even after a talking-to, Izuku still ended up going above and beyond the regimen by doing a lot more than All Might expected and still making the deadline.
  • After the end of the spring semester, with villains becoming a greater threat, Aizawa has his class take a camping trip to improve their quirks. The camp actually began a number of miles away. The moment it dawned on the students that the first step was going to be a surprise trek through woods being filled by numerous mock-up monsters set up by the trainers, they were in denial for a moment, then tried to run away until they were unceremoniously dumped into their training session. It took the students all day to make it to the actual training camp, and it's clear^note from the signs of quirk overuse each of the students were showing they were fighting the whole way. After that, the students were pressured to build up their Quirks in a hurry. The regiments differ for each student, and include (but are not limited to) Bakugou opening his pores in hot water to create more explosive sweat, Mineta pulling more sticky balls out of his head to increase his resistance to bleeding from his quirk's overuse, Kaminari, Uraraka, and Aoyama using their quirks liberally to combat overload, nausea, and stomach pain (respectively), and Kirishima, Ojiro, Iida, and Midoriya undergoing grueling physical training to increase their endurance. Students who had failed or barely passed the semester finals also had to endure night classes with Aizawa that left them with precious few hours of sleep. When Class 1-B learned of this and the fact they were about to undergo the same, you could see the fear in their eyes.
    Aizawa: [Slasher Smile] This will be so hard, you'll feel like you're dying. Let's hope you all survive.
• Nagasarete Airantou: Apparently Ikuto had this in the past from his grandfather.
  • Mei-Mei, Suzu, and Shinobu decide that Ikuto needs this to overcome his fear of bathing with people. Although it's more like training from marshmallow hell. Actually it did just about kill him.
  • Karaage went through this to learn how to fly. Although being a chicken that goal is impossible, but it did turn him into an amazing fighter.
  • Subverted with Michiru. She was ignoring her mother's letters to finish her snow fairy training because she didn't specify what it is or how long it will take ("depends on how well she does"), it's hard for her to leave the house, and she's worried about the other girls spending a lot more time with Ikuto than she can. When she eventually meets her after rescuing Ikuto from a snowman youkai, she says her training is already finished. Defeating the snowman was all she had to do so that it's bound to her as its master.
• Naruto:
  • Sakura's training with Tsunade was this, which is reinforced by occasional flash backs and Sakura cringing in fear whenever someone doesn't realize how crazy Tsunade actually is.
  • Rock Lee's training procedures consist of setting ridiculous goals for exercises which lead to more unrealistic goals upon failing (ex. "If I can't do 500 push-ups I have to do 1000 sit-ups"). This gets more insane when its pointed out he usually fails his training, but only by a slim margin (usually by only 1 or 2), then barely fails the next one, leading to a ridiculous cycle of him barely failing one objective, then going on to the next, that repeats almost all day. Also, wearing impossibly heavy weights around his ankles during training and, for that matter, actual combat.
    • A flashback actually revealed this was the entire point of his training strategy. He would set himself a goal he could not reach so he would push himself to his limits, with his punishment for failing to surpass those limits being to push a different limit. If he succeeds in his challenges, he's not improving nearly as much as he wants.
  • All of Naruto's training requires for him to put his body through hell: To gain his Wind Release: Rasenshuriken he had to go through weeks and weeks of continuously making clones, and absorbing the combined knowledge which would make him pass out from the knowledge overload. Not to mention when he managed to make the Rasenshuriken he became at risk for destroying his arm entirely. Then, for Sage Mode he was required to sit still for an extraordinary amount of time. Sounds easy right? Wrong, sitting still is the hardest form of training imaginable since humans are moving animals. If he moved...he'd get the balance off and risk turning himself into a toad stone statue. We see how hard this is: there are HUNDREDS of failed disciples all around Mount Myobokuzan. Only Jiraiya had been able to get to the Toad form of Sage Mode before him, and it was an imperfect state. Finally, to gain his Nine-Tailed Chakra Mode and finally Biju Mode, he had to first fight and defeat his dark side, then defeat the Fox, then learn to control its chakra (its so strong he was at risk of seriously injuring other people, if not killing them, with simple grabs with his chakra arms) and finally, taming the Fox, all of which put him through hell to get that far (and almost losing to the Big Bad to boot due to exhaustion).
• Negima!:
  • Negima! Magister Negi Magi:
    • A lot of Evangeline's training techniques are like this. A notable one consisted of her effectively dumping Asuna in the middle of the Himalayas, with nothing but the clothes on her back. If she doesn't die or give up for a week, she passes. It's also said that Negi and Kotaro went through it at one point too. This was the admissions test, and Asuna making it through meant that Evangeline would actually start bothering to train her for real. Worse, originally Evangeline intended for Asuna to do it naked, with no available shelter, and with no source of food (Negi and Kotaro had just been there and had left some behind). But she likes Asuna (or would if Asuna didn't want training), and decided to go easy on her. Even Eva's "normal" training is terrible, such as making Negi fight herself, Chachamaru, and Chachazero simultaneously. He passes if he can survive for a minute. Keep in mind that at the point the training began, any one of them could have kicked Negi's ass with no trouble. Especially Eva, who's one of the most powerful beings alive, to the point that she actually forced the Big Bad to retreat just by being present. The fact that she sucks Negi's blood as "payment" for the training doesn't make it any easier.
    • Judging by Asuna's words, Negi trains himself dangerously past the brink of exhaustion a lot, and possibly has been doing so since he was four.
    • It's also parodied by Ku Fei, who attempts to teach Negi martial arts this way and fails miserably, because she took all of her methods from movies and manga.
    • In chapter 285 Training from Hell takes new meaning when it involves Negi actually turning into a demon.
  • In UQ Holder!, Dana's training for Touta, Kuromaru, and Santa starts with her chasing them around for half a day and repeatedly killing them to reduce the time it takes for them to regenerate. Appropriately, the chapter is titled "Spartan Training". She then tops that by sending them through progressive levels of difficulty, like sending Kuromaru to face enemies who take a number of other fighters to deal with, Santa against creatures that can eat spirit matter, Kirie has to learn a number of magic techniques that she gets quizzed on, and Touta has to balance hoops while juggling or it stops his heart.
• Noir: Kirika and Chloe both went through this, being trained from near-infancy by Altena to be the perfect assassins. Both girls' training involved copious amounts of Mind Rape and Break the Cutie as well, the better to render them into utterly emotionless killers. Mireille managed to deprogram Kirika; Chloe simply went Ax-Crazy.
• One Piece
  • Vice-Admiral Garp took Coby and Helmeppo under his wing, teaching two previously pathetic characters Charles Atlas Superpowers, as well as the confidence to use them. Much of his training seems to involve hitting them a lot and yelling at them, with the intent of getting them to snap and fight back against him. As a result, they are able to put in a good showing (though not beat) his grandson Luffy, who he also raised with such brutal training.
  • Garp practices what he preaches. His daily regimen involves hitting battleships like punching-bags, without Haki. During a flashback of Don Chinjao's in which the two fought, he states he trained for the fight by destroying mountains, by punching them.
  • Zoro trains with absurdly heavy weights for almost impossibly long durations. To practice swinging his sword, he uses one half of a dumbbell with weights almost as big as he is! (And almost assuredly many times heavier)
  • The Straw Hats always seem to come up with cool new attacks at the start of new storylines, mainly because it's implied that they put themselves through rigorous training during the long stretches of otherwise uneventful sailing between islands. This is supposedly because Oda dislikes training arcs. The only Straw Hat we ever actually see training is Zoro, mainly because he never seems to do anything except eat, train, and sleep.
  • All the main crew went through some training during the Time Skip to better themselves at their jobs, all with varying degrees of hellishness.
    • Luffy: Was put on an island full of the most terrifying beasts known to man where everything was out to kill him all while Silvers Rayleigh was forcing him to learn Haki.
    • Zoro: Trained under the Warlord of the Sea Dracule Mihawk, after being able to defeat all of the war-loving humandrills already residing on that island. Not yet explained, but he ended up losing an eye during this training.
    • Nami: Learned "knots" and Weather Balls on the Sky Island Weatheria to better her navigation skills under the training of the Weather Wizards. Looks to have further improved her Clima-Tact.
    • Usopp: Landed on an island full of man-eating plants which trick giant Sea Kings and other monsters to them. Learned about "Pop Greens" under the guidance of Heracles, the ultimate survivalist. Also beefed up physically.
    • Sanji: Landed in an Ironic Hell full of transvestites ruled by Emporio Ivankov. He learned "attack cooking" that will supply nutritional boosts to the crew, while having to fight all the okama fighters of the island to get the recipes, and just generally buffing his kicking power by running from them day and night.
    • Chopper: Studied the ancient technology and medicines of an island that was locked in war with the giant hawks.
    • Robin: Trained under Dragon the Revolutionary and his organization after spending some time as a prisoner/slave.
    • Franky: Researched in Dr. Vegapunk's old lab, and managed to rebuild himself into a bigger, tougher cyborg with tons of features.
    • Brook: Fought the "long arms," who then kidnapped him to be an exhibit. During that time he attained world-wide fame as "Soul King" Brook as he traveled the world doing concerts to improve his music. Also learned to astrally project his own soul.
  • A flashback in the Totland arc reveals that Sanji and his siblings underwent this as kids; their father Vinsmoke Judge wanted to create Super-Soldier by way of enhancing their genes, then subjecting them to harsh and intense training to make them superhuman. While that training paid off with Sanji's siblings, it failed with Sanji himself, whose genetic enhancements failed, making him merely as strong as your average human being. This is the reason why Sanji was mercilessly bullied by his brothers and shown no love from them or his father, who deemed him a useless and weak load.
• Spoofed to the point of utter ridiculousness in One-Punch Man, where during the House of Evolution Arc, Saitama reveals just how he became strong to defeat anything in one punch. His answer: "100 push-ups, 100 sit-ups, 100 squats, and a 10 kilometer run every day, with no breaks or air conditioning!" While a bit tough for your average couch potato, this level of training is far more lenient than what most athletes go through on a daily basis. The idea that that regimen is what granted Saitama his strength so ridiculous in that Genos calls it "complete bullshit." However, assuming the "no breaks" part is taken literally, then it actually wraps back around to this trope. A proper workout routine involves making your body suffer and then letting it recover via hydration, sustenance, and rest; if Saitama truly took no breaks, he's basically ripping his body apart after only a few days of this. It still wouldn't give him that level of strength of course, but then, neither would most of the OTHER entries on this page.
  • There are some implications that Saitama's training actually did work, just not in the way that he expected. Since some Mysterious Beings are former humans who transformed due to a single-minded obsession with something, Saitama's training combined with his drive to become a hero who could defeat any threat with a single punch could've transformed him into a Mysterious Being capable of doing just that.
• Pokémon: The Series:
  • Deconstructed with Paul and Chimchar in the Diamond and Pearl series. Obsessed with recreating the extraordinary Blaze power he saw once before, Paul pushes Chimchar way beyond the limit by forcing it to withstand his entire party attacking it at once. All this does is leave Chimchar brutally injured and traumatized (the latter of which lasts long after it's released and taken in by Ash). Furthermore this behavior earns him the disapproval of Pokémon Champion Cynthia and the Nurse Joy of Hearthome City. Both women take Chimchar away to be healed when Paul refuses to do so himself, showing that authority figures won't tolerate what amounts to borderline abuse and neglect of safety.
    • Surprisingly, it's actually reconstructed near the end of the series: Paul's brutal regimen may not have done Chimchar any good, but it's perfectly suited for his other Pokemon, who are aggressive by nature and actually flourish under his command. Paul also ceases his cruel habits and starts treating his Pokemon like proper partners, indicating his methods can in fact be effective, at least under the right circumstances.
  • A trainer from the first season named AJ put all his Pokemon through rather harsh training which included retraining devices, which did get Ash and company worked up. However, unlike Paul, AJ treated his Pokemon rather well when he wasn't training them and was proud of them.
• Queen's Blade: Given three days to get Leina from "novice" to "ready to fight Risty", Echidna decides to do so by coating both of them with a sap that prevents injury... and then spending those three days actively attempting to kill Leina. Die or Fly at its best.
• Ramen Fighter Miki justified this trope with Miki and then deconstructs it with Megumi: Miki’s explanation about why she didn’t call people out to make the delivery avoiding the Angry Guard Dog justifies those tropes, while Megumi’s reflection deconstructs it:
  Megumi: If the dog is restricted by the leash like you said, would it be better to just call the people out and make your delivery?
  Miki: That’s different! It’s true if I stay outside of that the dog’s range of movement and call the customer loudly, it would be safe to make the delivery. However, to expect me to turn away from this challenge in front of me… Do you think I can do that? No. There’s no way I can do that! If I’m to call the customers to come out, I’ll do it after beating this guy.
  Megumi: [Wearing a serious face] I see, Onimaru-san deliberately takes the more difficult path. It’s true, compared to an uneventful day to day life, this stressful lifestyle would make you grow a lot more. Onimaru-san, you...[Megumi wears a Slasher Smile]...are such an idiot.
• Ranma ½: Virtually all of the advanced training methods seen, such as those for the Bakusai Tenketsu (in which one has huge boulders swung at him from ropes), the Kachuu Tenshin Amaguriken (in which the trainee must snatch chestnuts out of a raging fire with his bare hands or, in Ranma's case, piranha from a tank of water). Futhermore, there is the infamous Neko-ken (in which a young child is wrapped in fish products and thrown into a pit of starving cats), which occurred only because Ranma's father didn't turn the page in the training manual and read that this is a stupid training method that no one should use.
  • And possibly the strangest method: in order to train for the Parley du Foie Gras (a technique in French Martial Arts Dining which involves force-feeding opponents so that there's too much food coming in at once and clogging up the works; the book that describes the technique notes that people who rely on it invariably die of starvation, because they're giving all their food to the other guy), Ranma-chan hangs dozens and dozens of buckets of cold water, and kettles of hot water, from the ceiling, then sits in the middle. Upon release, they all swing with great force towards her — and she must pierce only the buckets with knife and fork, as she's wearing an iron corset that hurts her badly if she resumes male form. This technique is designed to hone the speed and precision of her Amaguriken technique. Note that she devised this training method herself, which probably makes her at least as crazy as Cologne (Bakusai Tenketsu, Kachu Tenshin Amaguriken) and Genma (Neko-ken.)
    • The series actually does treat these with a mild dose of realism, which can often go unnoticed. With the exception of the Neko-ken (and, frankly, the fact that the method of "training" didn't set alarm bells ringing in Genma's head proves what a Sink or Swim Mentor he is), all of these training regimens were undertaken with supervision, so the trainee had someone to jump in and pull them to safety if things got out of hand. Cologne was watching Ryoga while he trained in the Bakusai Tenketsu, Soun and Genma were with Ranma when s/he learned the Parley du Foi Gras, and Ranma underwent the normal Amaguriken training in the Tendos' garden, where people could keep an eye on him/her.
  • In the case of the Bakusai Tenketsu, the training actually proves to be more useful than the technique- the technique just allows you to shatter rocks (and only rocks- it was meant for mining), but getting hit by giant boulders all the time makes the trainee much tougher and more resistant to pain.
  • Parodied in the series itself in "The Date Monster of Watermelon Island". Kuno seemingly turns the Smashing Watermelons game into Training From Hell, giving himself Identity Amnesia when he hits one melon at just the right angle to smash it onto his head and knock himself out cold. However, it turns out that, once his amnesia is cured (and his delusions are restored) the training is nearly useless in combat; it conditions the trainee to attack watermelons with extra strength, so it's only dangerous to others if there's a watermelon around to "power up" the trainee. However, Kuno reveals it isn't intended for combat, and that he knew it was useless in that regard all along; he went through the training because he wanted to improve his skills at slicing watermelons in order to impress girls.
  • Also, when Ukyo is first explaining all that Ranma & Genma did to her (without actually saying she is a she (because obviously she doesn't know that Ranma doesn't know), she says she had practiced her cooking against the raging sea. One student standing there asks "Why against the ocean? Isn't that kinda pointless?" to which another one replies "That's the whole point! Don't you watch samurai movies?".
  • Ranma's training for the Hiryuu Shoten Ha, due to its psychological component, required him to provoke Ryoga into being angry enough to kill him. Which normally is a bad idea.
    • Ryoga was always trying to kill him. Attacking when Ranma sleeping (worst showing). Trying to kill him with one touch after the breaking point training. Trying to kill him throwing sharpened hand band (by ki) and using one as a weapon (also by ki). Manga Ryoga is seriously not a threat to him in a fight most of the time, ignored by Ranma half the time while talking to Akane. Anime Ryoga on the other hand is far closer (also debatably more talented) to Anime Ranma, and probably can beat him in a fair fight.
• Real Bout High School: Megumi Momoi puts herself through Training from Hell, using a pitching machine. No, she wasn't dodging the balls, she was letting them hit her so she'd be able to take hits from her opponent at Dragon Land (who she would be facing the next day).
• Most of the cast from Reborn! (2004) are put through some form of hellish training during the course of the series, but Tsuna, main character and future Mafia boss, definitely wins first place. Some of the more memorable trials he has suffered at the hands of his tutor Reborn include being set on fire, repeatedly shot at with heavy artillery, thrown off a cliff with a whirlpool beneath it, made to stand one-legged on a rock in the middle of a mine field, beaten to within an inch of his life on a daily basis, and habitually taking a bullet to the head. Though it does eventually pay off, you can't help but feel sorry for the kid...
• Played as straight as can be in Ringing Bell. Chirin trains under the Big Bad and goes from dainty little white cartoon sheep to black murderous hell ram after two years of training. The wolf even tells Chirin that his life will be hell from then on out. Interestingly enough, things don't end well for him either.
• Double Subverted in Rosario + Vampire; Tsukune, having learned the limitations of his Unskilled, but Strong ghoul form, starts training under Inner Moka, and dreads this trope. When Moka arrives... she's wearing a dress and takes him on a shopping trip. This pisses off the other girls of Tsukune's Unwanted Harem, and Moka gives him an impromptu course in sensing monstrous energies (said energies spike when a monster's emotions run high). However, when Tsukune thanks her for it afterwards under the assumption that it's a Wax On, Wax Off sort of training style, Moka reveals that she really did just want to take a shopping trip and managed to fit a lesson inside so it wasn't a total waste; she hasn't even begun his real training, which plays this trope painfully straight.
• Rurouni Kenshin: Kenshin's daily training consisted of getting the snot beaten out of him by an adult easily twice his size, first by Technique A until he figured out how to use it, then Technique B (which happens to be the perfect counter for A) until he figured that out and so forth.
• The Saga of Tanya the Evil: Tanya puts the recruits for her prospective rapid-response flight-mage wing through a grueling training course that combines several Real Life examples including the Navy SEAL's Hell Week. They are bombarded with spent/old artillery shells (though a few got mixed up and contain active explosive warheads) during the training as well. The twist is that Tanya wants them to fail because she wants to delay actually going out on the field as long as possible. Ideally, she wants the top brass to give up on the idea and give her a safe desk job. Unfortunately (for her) not a single one washes out of the training, leaving her with no excuse. She takes comfort in the fact that she's now got top-quality human shields and assistants to ensure her survival on the battlefield.
• Saint Seiya: Every single Saint endured hellish training to earn his or her Sacred Cloth — doing finger-stands (as in, standing on the tip of your index finger) during rain and snow, punching glaciers or mountains thousands of years old and not giving up until they crumbled, doing upside-down pullups while hanging from your feet above a chasm, being chained between two rocks and being forced to push back the ocean tide with your Battle Aura before you drown, that sort of thing. It gets even Lampshaded in the first Italian opening, that openly states they had to "complete tasks of rare cruelty", and the Expanded Universe novel "Gigantomachia", that gives a quick description that starts by declaring the training "beyond absurd" right after stating the abysmal survival rate among Mitsumasa Kido's hundred candidates to Sainthood (only ten survived. "Gigantomachia" adds an eleventh survivor that failed his final task due not being crazy enough to walk inside an active volcano to retrieve his Cloth).
  • The first episode, a twenty minutes-long Series Establishing Moment, describes the final task to earn the Pegasus Cloth: fight nine Giants. Hundred went in, two went out... And since there was only one Cloth available, Seiya and Cassios had to fight each other. For perspective, Pegasus is a Bronze Cloth, the lowest tier.
  • Indirectly Lampshaded again in Saint Seiya: Saintia Sho, that shows Toki, the twelfth survivor among Kido's kids: not only he was driven homicidally insane by the training, he actually failed it and survived only because he pledged himself to Eris-assuming he didn't just die homicidally insane and was then resurrected, as he refers to himself as a Ghost.
  • Exaggerated with the training at Andromeda Island and Death Queen Island, considered the worst ordeals of them all (at least among the Bronze Cloths). Andromeda Island is the one of the ocean and chain mentioned above and is a completely barren rock, while Death Queen Island may be more liveable... And not only the island is infested by murderous rogue Saints that, while weak, could kill a trainee, the trainer there was so insane even the one sent to Andromeda Island balked in horror. Both were so bad that the two main Cloths kept there (Andromeda at Andromeda Island and Phoenix at Death Queen Island) were the only ones who had never been assigned a Saint until then, as all the candidates had died during the final task, assuming they survived the training.
  • Just as bad as the two above is the one in Sicily: while the place is luscious, the teacher there was Cancer Deathmask, a sadistic Social Darwinist with an enormous body count. That, and it's the one with the Cloth kept inside a volcano (specifically Mount Etna). Also, the Cloth acts as a seal to Typhon, so when Mei did walk in to retrieve it while Deathmask was away he was possessed. To be fair, either nobody knew the last part or someone did and Deathmask was the teacher specifically because he has the power set to deal with such things, only for Mei to be an idiot and do the really risky part unsupervised.
• Samurai Gun: The titular freedom-fighting gunslinging warriors undergo this when they are recruited into the "project" as children. In many cases, they were first traumatized by having family members brutally killed in front of them by a secret agent of the mysterious Council they take orders from, a man named Rekkai. Even if they weren't, they were then subjected to deadly training exercises that included repeated poisonings (to build immunity), electric shocks and live ammo courses. The anime states that failure in any one of these exercises resulted in the death of the failing trainee.
• School Rumble has Hanai, suspended by his feet, lifting a cupful of water in each hand to buckets at the top, as an old man lectures him. His childhood friend Mikoto finds him like that, she asks Hanai if the old man is his mentor, only for Hanai to reveal that he didn't know him at all. The training comes in handy during the Cavalry Battle, when Harry kicks him in the gut, and Hanai's new rock hard abs repel the attack.
• Sengoku Basara: Takeda Shingen holds "Hot-Blooded Manly Training Festivals" which basically involve his soldiers beating each other to a pulp until he is satisfied with their progress. His idea of being a mentor also seems to be making his ward Yukimura stronger by punching him through walls on a daily basis.
• Shaman King:
  • Yoh has to go through this for his entire summer vacation. And he's put through it by his fiancee. Just judging by what we see in a montage panel, Anna's "special training course" includes slapping and scratching Yoh if he screws up, forcing him to climb a smooth tree and hold his position (lest he fall into a pile of crap), chasing him on a bike with a poleaxe, and forcing him to do homework. During Summer Break.
  • Later on, Yoh, Ren, Chocolove, and Horo Horo go through training from hell LITERALLY.
• In Slayers, protagonist Lina Inverse puts Amelia through this kind of hellish training (including pulling a huge cart of groceries for Lina to eat up a very steep hill daily). Subverted in that Lina wasn't really trying to teach Amelia anything, she was just putting the other girl through the most brutal regimen she could think of in the hopes of making her give up and go away.
• Soul Eater has its resident Highly-Visible Ninja Black Star put himself through this in an attempt to surpass God.
  • Although a subversion (?) because where you'd expect a Hot Blooded Idiot Hero such as him to succeed by putting himself through endless fights and one thorough Curb Stomping, Black Star's turning point is not a fight but a conversation with the Nakatsukasa spirit inside Tsubaki.
• Str.A.In.: Strategic Armored Infantry: Sara dedicates herself to her training in the portion of the series where she is a Gambee pilot.
• Chinmi of Tekken Chinmi (aka Ironfist Chinmi) does this with nearly every issue. One scene that stands out: when captured by the enemy and told he'll be executed at dawn, he spends the night training a particular move in the hopes it will save his life. By the end, he's accomplishing handstands with his forefingers.
• Kamina briefly adopts this in Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann when he attempt to teach Simon to combine in a more awesome fashion...by throwing 40-ton boulders at him. Without giving Simon time to get into Lagann. Fortunately for everyone concerned, this was an isolated incident.
• In Toriko, titular character put trought this by Ichiryu in order to survive harsh environments of Gourmet world. However, instead of training him directly, he gives him list of ingredients, that he needs to bring him — this includes plant, that only grows in clouds, 20000 meters above ground; mineral, that can only be found in cave where gravity increased tenfold; fish, that lives in cave behind a waterfall powerful enough to decapitate a person and meat of the monster, capable of singlehandedly destroying human race.
  • To get one of the ingredients from the list, Toriko had to go through the training in Shokurin Temple. Meals, that he got during the training included slimy eels, rice mixed together with tiny fragile eggs, that would ruin the flavour if just one of them breaks and beans (which he had to eat with five meter long chopsticks). On top of that temple itself build out of special materials and will actively try to kill his inhabitants, if they don't feel proper amount of gratitude towards it. To show just how hard this training is, upon Toriko's arrival, head of the temple revealed, that he was the one, who dropped a mountain of them back at the death falls. He considers that "baptism", and states, that people who could be killed by something like that, isn't capable enough to be trained by him.
• Subverted in TSUYOSHI: given the title character's incredible fighting prowess, Ainosuke, a Karateka who went through a traditional one, thinks Tsuyoshi trains himself extremely hard... Only to be dismayed when his training turns out to consist of one hour of Tai Chi gymnastic three times per week and he apparently became strong that way (and invincible by beating the crap out of all the people challenging him).
  • Played for Laughs with Wan Yundao, whose teacher decided the best way to toughen him up was to punch him in the groin, then hit him there with a hammer, and escalate more and more until he used a siege ram. On one hand, he's now immune to Tsuyoshi's usual punch in the groin because the training already destroyed his balls, and the lack of testicles and thus androgen hormones make it easier to maintain his muscle mass. On the other, all he obtained with Tsuyoshi was to push him past the Rage Breaking Point by revealing it and being beaten unconscious the hard way.
• Undefeated Bahamut Chronicle: Lux Arcadia treats tournament fights as nothing more than training just for him to use Bahamut effectively. There's a reason why he's called the "Weakest Undefeated". He's subconsciously preparing for a rematch with Fugil, the world's strongest Drag-Knight who is even more skilled at piloting Bahamut.
• Parodied in Urusei Yatsura with the secondary character Tobimaro Mizunokoji. He spends most of the year alone in the remote wilderness, seeking to perfect his skills in baseball through endless training and hardening his body by surviving off of whatever he can hunt, fish and forage, all with nothing but plenty of sports supplies for training. But he's so Athletically Challenged, and so clueless about how to train properly, that none of his training works. He's been doing the training for years, and he still can't jump, climb, swim or run with any real proficiency, and his baseball skills are atrocious. The only real benefits he seems to have gained from his training are a ridiculous constitution due to enduring years of hardship and deprivation, and the ability to eat baseballs, due to having been routinely forced to survive off of them because he was unable to find anything else. Nonetheless, he still persists in trying, with his endless failures earning him the scorn of all who know him — even his supposed arch-rival, Shutaro Mendo.
• Eriko Hara goes through this in The Anime of the Game Venus Project Climax. Her coach makes her jog, do stretches, and even boxing and other physical activities until she collapses as he tries to get her to sing. Her coach passes her despite the fact that she collapses from exhaustion as she tries to sing.
• Violinist of Hameln: Cornet puts Flute through this kind of training, ostensibly in order to teach her magic. The training includes doing 5000 squats, walking across a tightrope with a weight on her back (which breaks the rope) and getting pelted with baseballs. Of course, Cornet's just trying to get rid of Flute so she can get together with Hamel.
• Your Lie in April: It's suggested that Kousei receiving this by his mother in context of piano practice. In OVA episode, Takeshi secretly spying Kousei practice from Tsubaki's house only to heard repetitive practice from Kousei since he finished school in the noon until about sunset.
• Yu-Gi-Oh!: In order to make Seto Kaiba a suitable heir to Kaibacorp, his adoptive father Gozaburo put him through a brutally intense period of schooling from age 10 onward. Judging from what is shown in the manga, it involved leashing him to a desk and the occasional beating with a switch.
  • That's actually very accurate. Gozaburo tried hard to hammer it into Seto that he had to be ruthless and see everyone as a potential enemy, including him if need be. Seto may have hated the man, but he learned the lesson only too well; he eventually took over KaibaCorp and kicked him out, then dismantled it and started from scratch, doing his best to destroy Gozaburo's legacy permanently.
• A Flashback scene in Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL shows that Kaito, Gauche, and Droite's training when they young was not only brutal, but dangerous and potentially life-threatenig. Mr. Heartland used a place similar to a Danger Room where they used the card game not against Solid Vision Holograms, but a robot that was trying its best to kill them. (The flashback shows that Heartland even ignored the advice of an aide and turned the robot's setting to very dangerous levels. While Dr. Faker, the Big Bad of the first season, was eventually shown to have a few redeming qualities, Heartland seemed to have none at all.)
• Many of the cast of YuYu Hakusho (especially Yusuke) go through this at one point or another. A sample of Genkai's training regime includes sleeping with a pitful of poisonous snakes, meditating on a bonfire for a week and defending yourself correctly against a near-fatal energy blast until you get it right. There's a reason Yusuke calls it "Grandma's Evil Boot Camp".
  • Kurama puts some of his former Dark Tournament rivals through this (Genkai's training regimen) in order to get six fighters with 100,000 demon power or more to satisfy Yomi.
    • "How did you get them to be so powerful in such a short time?"
      Genkai: "Oh, just moderate exercise and healthy food."
      Trainees: "That hell training and horrible medicines is considered moderate exercise and healthy food?!!"

Sport Examples

• Pretty much all sports anime/manga features characters who go through training from hell one way or another. Captain Tsubasa and Attacker You! are well-known examples.
• Aim for the Ace!. The coach has his own reasons for trying to strengthen the girls, though.
• At the start of All Rounder Meguru, Meguru and Yudai decide to take the training for professional Mixed Martial Arts fighters... And are terrified by the warm-up exercises, that they thought would be more appropriate for strength training. Justified due professional MMA fighters needing to be much stronger and faster than amateurs to properly apply their techniques and have the stamina to fight in the longer pro matches.
  • The strengthening part is shown to be common to all martial arts, even Judo, as they all need a bit of strength to properly apply the techniques... And not tire themselves out in case they fight multiple matches in a day: Momoko is shown to be a genius judoka but skipped reinforcement training until she enrolled at the Fighters' Brew gym, and thus has a long history of entering tournaments, mopping the floor with the competition early on and then losing in the semi-finals or finals because she's too tired, something that happens on page (and this is after the trainers at the Fighters' Brew managed to get her through reinforcement training for months. Her stamina remains relatively poor even in the run-up for the All Japan Amateur Shooto Championship).
• Attack No. 1 makes great use of this trope.
• The beach volleyball episode of Dirty Pair Flash is basically composed of skimpy bikinis and parodies of this trope.
• Eyeshield 21 featured torturous training schemes such as Hiruma's "Tower From Hell", where potential new recruits to the Devil Bats had to carry ice to the upper observatory of Tokyo Tower... on a hot day... with a trip through a room full of space heaters turned on full-blast along the way and many MANY other traps. Later, the team gets introduced to Kurita and Hiruma's sensei Doburoku, who puts them through "Indian running" where the last person in line gets doused with hot water if they don't hurry to the front, and the "Death March", where the entire team ran from Houston to Las Vegas in 40 days, with the linemen pushing a truck, the receivers getting chased by Hiruma yelling out passing formations and shooting his gun at them> Sena kicking a rock in a variety of patterns (straight, zigzag, two rocks, etc.).
  • The Death March, by the way, is an example of training that is an active danger to the athletes partaking in it; a previous attempt by Doburoku resulted in a career-ending injury.
  • Banba of the Taiyo Sphinx underwent some harsh training of his own in preparation for the Kanto tournament. While the details are never revealed, it left him with scars all over his body.
  • This series takes the name of this trope quite seriously, as nearly every training the team endures is said to be "from Hell" in the dialog. This is in keeping with the team's "Devil" theme (and the demonic appearance and mannerisms of team captain Hiruma.)
• In Future GPX Cyber Formula, Hayato goes through this in order to improve his racing skills, including participating in non-sanctioned races where racers crash other racers' cars.
• Hajime no Ippo features loads and loads of training sequences (most featuring a shouting Coach Kamogawa). However, the most difficult training that characters seem to go through is their weight management training, which can leave them as shells of their former selves. Special mention goes to Takamura before his match against Bryan Hawk, where he keeps himself 5 classes underweight. It has to be seen to understand just how hard it was. He damn near went insane.
  • Young Kamogawa hammers tree trunks into a side of a hill. With his fists. And then the damage inflicted on his hands catching up to him in the aftermath of his next boxing match, ending his career as a boxer.
• Initial D has Takumi's tofu delivery runs up Mount Akina, which he must do every single day...at 4 in the monring...without spilling a cup of water in the cup holder...even if it's raining or snowing. The latter bit pays off when he is pitted against the Redsuns' rain specialist Kenta in the rain, who Takumi smokes so badly that Kenta completely loses sight of him.
• The Ur-Example in anime is Kyojin No Hoshi: protagonist Hyuuma Hoshi was put through hellish training as a baseball player since childhood by his father, a former player. The most iconic part of the training was a special spring-loaded harness Hyuuma wore beneath his , which made even daily tasks part of Training From Hell.
  • This one got spoofed in Kekko Kamen, where a parody of Hyuuma put Mayumi in an extreme version of the spring-loaded device... For calligraphy training. He claimed someone once took thirty years to complete the training...
• Parodied in Mr. Fullswing, where Sawamatsu trains Amakuni for the baseball team tryouts. He proves extremely Genre Savvy; "When you talk about baseball manga, it's all about the river scene..." Except once they get there, Sawamatsu just wants Amakuni to read a rulebook. When Amakuni complains, he grudgingly decides that they could do some "sports manga-ish training" instead. So, naturally, Sawamatsu starts mean-spiritedly smacking him around with the bat and hitting balls directly into his face. Throughout the rest of the week, he put Amakuni through a brutal regimen of training that he knew he wouldn't be able to keep up with, just for fun. And, while both of the initial stages of the training were subversions, he eventually plays it straight by making Amakuni field by the riverside; Since it's covered with rocks, he'd only get irregular bounces, and if he could field there, he could field anywhere.
  • And note that unlike a lot of these, Sawamatsu makes Amakuni work on something he actually isn't good at, fielding, because he's already a master at bat. And whatever improvement Amakuni experienced in that regard wasn't very impressive.
• Parodied in The Prince of Tennis: the training methods devised by Ryuzaki and temporary manager Sadaharu Inui apparently look normal, but if one or more of the players fail to accomplish them, they're forced to drink repulsive concoctions prepared by Inui as punishment. Actually, his "juices" are so infamous that everyone in the Seigaku team are terrified of failure because of them.
• In RRR, the protagonist, Rikitarou, has to make it from beer bellied slacker to sculpted rock star in one month, and then into a pro boxer in another three.
• Lampshaded in Slam Dunk, when just before their game with Kainan, Ryonan's coach Taoka tells his boys to take a moment to remember all the training they have done so far. Needless to say, the team (from the plucky assistant Hikoichi to the powerful captain Uozumi and star sub-captain Sendoh) is utterly revulsed by the mere memory of the sheer horror they went through, and are all but grateful when Taoka awakens them from their reverie.
• Tiger Mask, both the manga (1968) and the anime series (1969) involved cruel methods of training used by the inherently evil "Tigers' Cave". The training included wrestling with pumas and gorillas, wrestling with lions using only the legs (the stated objective was to get Murderous Thighs), push-ups on the legs with enormous weights attached to the head and spikes under the butt (notable for being an actual training exercise to improve leg strength. Of course the actual version had smaller weights and replaced the spikes with a shinai-armed trainer ready to provide "motivation" at every screw-up), and being set on fire while wearing a pullover soaken in gasoline (the objective was to force the trainee to improve his speed while on the ground, but it became even more useful when, during a no-holds-barred match, Tiger Mask's opponent started by drenching him in gasoline and setting in on fire: after a moment of surprise that someone would actually do that in a match, Tiger Mask calmly rolled on the ground to put off the fire on himself, then used his own still aflame cloak as a weapon).
  • Also, even legitimate wrestling trainees suffer through extremely harsh training. For example, Giant Baba was noted to have gone through the leg training above (resulting in his devastating kicks) Tiger Mask's own apprentice Teppei Oiwa had Tiger Mask ready to kick him in the ass at every screw up (and was also inflicted the leg training, among other exercises), Black V's training included being headbutted by his teacher Bobo Brazil (infamous for his Hard Head) and being trained by a Contortionist (making him invulnerable to submission moves. When this was discovered, the whole wrestling world had a Mass "Oh, Crap!"), and when Baba decided to train Tiger Mask for his fight with Black V he did so by throwing hyperspeed baseballs at him (in a stealth Crossover with Kyojin no Hoshi to boot: Baba was a former player, and borrowed their field, balls and bats) to teach him Deadly Dodging, stating: "I'll not let you get killed without fighting! Instead, I will kill you with harsh training!" Oh, and a piece of training that Tiger Mask devised for himself involved Teppei trying to run him over with a car.
  • And all of this is actually justified: in the series Pro Wrestling Is Real, so you will need this kind of training to survive a match. Also, they're softer than most examples (even Tiger's Cave waits for the victims to be sufficiently strong to take an exercise, giving them saner training before forcing them to wrestle lions). As a side effect, any wrestler can make short work of random Mooks when firearms are not involved, as shown multiple times (in the very first chapter, a guy tried to kill Tiger Mask with a knife, and was casually slapped to the hospital. Later the bouncers at Tiger's Cave Paris club couldn't gun him down due the dynamite sticks in his cape, so they swarmed him with knives and were bitchslapped to the ground in four panels while Tiger Mask called them out for attacking him with mere knives).
• Tiger Mask W continues the proud tradition of wrestlers doing insane exercise routines. From Tiger's Den itself, we have the climbing bare-handed up a freezing mountain in only the wrestling speedo, and climbing arm-over-arm under a broken rope bridge. Thankfully, these two were graduation exercises, not beginner's ones...
  • Naoto's training is at least as intense: involving weighted squats on what look like a hamster wheel, sparring with massive robots, and working to bodyslam 8 punching bags at once, while being fired and having the bags launched at him like pendulums. The peak of this is hanging upside down, waiting for animal to attack him so they can get dinner: to the point that he's sick of eating bear as he's already killed so many with his bare hands already! This is Justified by his trainer being a former Tiger's Den pupil and having later been trained by the original Tiger Mask (another Tiger's Den pupil) thus knowing pretty much only that, something that made a former Tiger's Den managed declare that This Explains So Much upon finding out.
• Parodied in Urusei Yatsura: Tobimaro Mizunokoji, desperate to improve his Athletically Challenged nature, spends all his time deep in the wilderness trying to hone his bsaseball skills, emerging once a year to duel his rival, Shutaro Mendo. However, because he's all alone and wasn't very good to begin with, he's made little to no progress in his skills. The only thing he has learned how to do is eat baseballs, because they were only plentiful resource he had.
• In Yowamushi Pedal, the bicycle racing club members do a training camp to determine which members would get to participate in the inter-high competition. They had 4 days to finish riding 100 km, with the first-year students given handicaps to make it more difficult for them. Their bikes were modified so that they could no longer take advantage of their individual strengths so they would learn to work around it.
• The training regimen of YuYu Hakusho's Genkai is brutal. One example: using Spirit Energy to hold oneself above a spike for twelve hours. Even if it ultimately paid off during the tournament arc, there's a reason Yusuke called it "Grandma's evil boot camp".

---