Aborted Arc / Anime & Manga

• In one of the later chapters of Beastars a new character, Kyuu, introduces a martial art called "Imaginary Chimera" where practitioners take strong feelings towards other species and projects them outward into an illusory avatar that's a chimera of the user's species and those they hold said feelings for (hence the name). Legosi proves to be a natural and begs Kyuu to train him so that he can use it in his inevitable confrontation with Melon. However, we know basically nothing about it beyond what you just read, even its practical application in battle, because its existence is completely forgotten about after a few chapters.
• Bleach is just filled with these.
  • Early on, it seemed like Tatsuki Arisawa, a friend of Ichigo and Orihime, was being built up to eventually become a companion who would fight alongside the core group. However, she became Out of Focus and Locked Out of the Loop once the Soul Society arc got going.
  • Uryu's rivalry with Mayuri just ends out of nowhere, despite the fact that Mayuri experimented on Quincies For the Evulz, including Uryu's grandfather.
  • When the series ended, it left enough plot lines aborted to fill a cemetery, including those introduced a mere twenty chapters before the ending. The biggest is everything learned about the Soul King after his death, and his relation to the Quincy and Yhwach, his son.
• In the first chapter of Blue Exorcist, Reiji mentions that he'll be attending True Cross Academy, and Father Fujimoto warns Rin that he could potentially get possessed by a demon again if he keeps his malicious behavior up. Both of those imply that Reiji was meant to be a recurring character, but he was never seen again after chapter 1.
• Bokura no Hentai hinted that Akane is either gender dysphoric or that she has complex issues with hitting puberty and growing up. There's no resolution to this. Akane was Demoted to Extra in the latter part of the manga and all of her issues disappear after she gains her first crush on Tamura.
• Code Geass:
  • The series lost a couple of important story elements thanks to the time slot shift for the second season and the Retool intended to prevent a Continuity Lockout on new fans. This includes an explanation for Suzaku's superhuman abilities (and any possible connection to the Geass) and the possibility of finally revealing C.C.'s name.
  • There's one in the first season with Shirley after Lelouch erased her memories. Shirley ends up finding a page of her missing diary that she threw away earlier which reminds her about Lelouch being Zero. It never comes into play later probably because of the retooled second season where everyone's memory was erased. Something similar to this does happen in the second season but the diary isn't used this time and isn't even mentioned.
  • Season one heavily hinted on a return, or at least a relevant arc, surrounding Kallen's dead brother. Season two however, dropped this build-up completely.
• In Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, the ranks within the Demon Slayer Corps quickly fade out of any real importance after the Red-Light District arc despite the main trio of Tanjiro, Zenitsu and Inosuke being pointed as rising 3 ranks ever since they started their career – from 10th at the base as Mizunoto, to 7th as Kanoe^note The second Databook reveals all three of them actually rose up to Hinoe rank by the Infnity Castle Arc, that's just three steps down the Hashira – that’s 10 ranks within the field Slayers and the one above all of them, the Hashira rank; Gotoge, in a narrative sense, basically streamlined the Demon Slayer Corps as "those who are Hashira, and those who aren't", thus all the main boys are measured with is with how close, or how far, they are from being as strong as the Hashira, without anything in-between. The series ends without Tanjiro, Zenitsu and Inosuke becoming Hashira but progressing in their strength instead, Tanjiro is outright stated to be a Hashira level slayer by Giyu later, Zenitsu presents feats only the Hashira have (creating a new form, killing a Twelve Kizuki demon), and Inosuke is part of the effort in killing the Upper-Rank 2, but there's no promotion to be had when the whole reason the Demon Slayer Corps existed was to kill all demons, and Muzan dying accomplished that.
• Dragon Ball:
  • During the Piccolo Jr. Saga, Mercenary Tao is revived as a cyborg, but gets defeated by Tien. Shen vows that they will have their revenge, but they never appear again in the manga, and Tao only appears in two filler episodes during the Cell Saga.
  • Androids 19 and 20 are introduced as the perpetrators of a Bad Future, with Trunks specifically referring to those two numbers^* In the anime, he never says 19 and 20 specifically, their entrance setting them up as dangerous threats, and their creator Doctor Gero being Android 20 himself. Then when Akira Toriyama's former editor expressed dissatisfaction with the pair, they were swiftly destroyed to make way for Androids 17 and 18 (now retconned to be the real villains).
  • While Android 18 activates Android 16, Doctor Gero protests that he's defective, dangerous, and would destroy them all, heavily suggesting 16 was intended to be the arc's Final Boss. However, nothing ever comes of Gero's warnings, with only a retcon years after the fact to suggest he was bluffing.
  • Though Androids 17 and 18 hunt down Goku to kill him simply because they have nothing better to do, as soon as Cell (via more former-editorial influence) enters the picture and overshadows their menace, they simply drop their desire to kill for little apparent reason.
• The manga based on the Galaxy Angel gameverse starts up a Mint storyline... but then drops it to focus on Ranpha and Milfie, not even ending Mint's plot.
• Shin Getter Robo Armageddon had its original director pack up and leave, taking his plans with him, only three episodes into its thirteen-episode run. Consequently, while the remaining ten episodes do manage to bring the show to a conclusion, a number of plot points that were set up in the initial three were never really resolved. Among these: why Hayato helped Professor Saotome to frame Ryoma for his murder, why Saotome built the Shin Dragon to begin with, and why the Shin Dragon seemed to have the power to devolve the planet.
• In Gundam Build Divers, Nanami Nanase expresses enjoyment of GBN in episode 19 and plans to join the rest of Force Build Divers by building her own Gunpla with an extra one intended for Sarah. The very next episode kicks off the final storyline involving Sarah's origins and Nanami is punted to the wayside. Heck, Sarah gets her own Gunpla in the end not connected to what Nanami wanted to give her. It's ultimately subverted when Nanami reappears at the end of Gundam Build Divers Re:RISE, saving Momoka from a group of One-Eyes with a Powered Armor resembling a Zakrello.
• Land of the Lustrous: A "Sea Arc", with Phos spending time learning about the Admirabilis and their culture, was hinted at potentially happening after the Moon Arc. Instead, the Admirabilis are Demoted to Extra and have the least relevance of all the Post-Human species and the manga instead had multiple time skips that made the point moot.
• When it first began, Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Astray strongly implied that Lowe Guele's intelligent computer 8 was the learning computer from Amuro Ray's RX-78-2 Gundam. Lowe found it in a long-abandoned space capsule that strongly resembled the Gundam's Core Fighter, and it had the number 8 written on the case along with badly smeared and faded text that corresponded to "RX-7". This may have been done because SEED followed on the heels of ∀ Gundam^note Which outright said that all Gundam series take place in a single timeline with lots of time in the middle to separate each story, but was quietly dropped and 8 had no further significance to the plot beyond being another member of the Junk Guild crew.
• Magical Warfare: Plot twists will be suddenly thrown at the viewer as though setting up an impending story arc, only to be forgotten about as quickly as they'd appeared. One of the most blatant examples is when Ida's sister is supposedly kidnapped by the magical equivalent of the FBI: it seems as though the heroes are going to pull off a daring rescue, but instead the kidnapping is never brought up again and the series ends with the viewer clueless as to what ultimately happened to her.
• Majin Tantei Nougami Neuro: When Neuro and Yako were inspecting their newly-acquired office after ousting a bunch of Yakuza guys that used to live there, they found out a braid of hair sticking from a walled up corpse in one room. The braid was somehow brought back to live thank to Neuro's demonic energy and called herself "Akane". It's implied that the Yakuza killed her but she refused to say anything else or even identify her murderer. Neuro stated he would solve the enigma some other time as he wasn't interested in it at the moment. However, the mystery remained unsolved even as the manga ended. Akane ended up joined the team as perhaps the most bizarre mascot character ever.
• Invoked in Make the Exorcist Fall in Love. Satan declares that Imuri is a target of his, forcing Father to act as her bodyguard. But as the story goes on, Satan never makes good on his threat, which makes Leah and Barbara suspicious that they're somehow playing into Satan's hands. This is what keeps them on guard around Imuri and they tell the Vatican to be wary of her.
• Negima! Magister Negi Magi:
  • The series was going to have a brief sub-arc during Mahorafest featuring Zazie and the Nightmare Circus event, but it was cut because Mahorafest was getting really long as it was (at the time, roughly half the manga). It's implied that Negi did go to the circus, but we never actually get to see it, thus making the series' most enigmatic character even more enigmatic.
  • Thanks to the premature end of the series, numerous events happen offscreen, including the final confrontation with the Lifemaker. Negi's class roster has a lot more notes since there is a brief Time Skip within the last few chapters, which would've set up some of the events listed in the series' final chapter, for example the Narutaki twins meeting the princes they would marry.
• Pokémon: The Series:
  • The GS Ball was a MacGuffin that loosely guided the overall plot for about a season and a half, spanning 60 episodes. A Poké Ball that nobody could open, Ash was supposed to give the GS ball to Kurt, the leading Pokéball expert, in order to discover whatever secrets the ball held. After giving the ball to Kurt, however, neither the GS Ball nor its contents were ever brought up again. The GS Ball was supposed to hold Celebi, a legendary Nature Spirit Pokémon, that would be the focus of the next arc, but the writers later decided to give Celebi a starring role in a movie, hoping that viewers would eventually forget about the GS Ball. They didn't, and haven't.
  • In the Best Wishes saga, we have a case of an aborted conclusion to a near-finished arc. The subplot with Team Rocket and the "Meteonite", a space rock with special destructive powers, is built up for several episodes and just as the epic two-part conclusion to this subplot is about to air, an earthquake devastates Japan and the episodes are pulled from rotation and never referenced again. Various trailers and a synopsis based on leaked information show that it went how one would expect it to go - with Team Plasma stealing the Meteonite from Team Rocket, the two teams fighting over it, and Ash intervening and having Pikachu destroy it to end the conflict. Though even if they did air, the announcement of sequel games as opposed to the usual Updated Re-release third version caused such a shakeup that whatever the rest of the Plasma plotline was meant to be got excised from the main story, completely separating it from the whole Badge quest and Tournament Arc.
  • Half of The Birth Of Mewtwo radio drama, meant to go with Pokémon: The First Movie and later animated (though excluding the first portion), revolves around Jessie's Missing Mom Miyamoto and how she's been searching for Mew for twenty years. Outside of the drama nothing has referenced Miyamoto. She has yet to be reunited with Jessie.
• Psycho-Pass had a storyline about Rina, Yayoi's former friend and a guitarist who is secretly building a La Résistance against the Sibyl System. She was never caught and Season 2 and the movie never mentioned her again.
• In Ranma ½, Ranma's attempts to conceal his curse are quietly dropped in the middle of the "Full-body Cat's Tongue" arc and the story goes from no-one at school knowing about his curse to everyone (except Kuno) knowing about it with hardly a ripple or comment from anybody, signaling a general shift from dramatic arcs to episodic comedy.
• Sailor Moon: When Ami plays the Sailor V game for the first time she goes into a kind of trance, with the manga even showing faint numbers behind her eyes. This was meant to foreshadow a reveal that Ami was actually a Cyborg before Naoko Takeuchi dropped the idea. Oddly enough, this "trance" was kept in the Sailor Moon Crystal version.
• The penultimate chapter of School Rumble throws both major shipping factions a bone by having Harima suddenly get (pretend) engaged to Eri but move in with Yakumo. The final chapter mentions none of this, instead going with a time skip and an infamous "pie end" that resets what little development Harima had managed to obtain.
• Shinzo: The first season sets up an arc where the heroes have to confront the so-called Seven Enterran Generals who started the war that wiped out humanity and ending with their leader, who is of course the most powerful one. This quest is cut short when the third General on the list reveals that she had already killed the remaining ones to absorb their power, then herself is killed by a time-displaced version of the Big Bad. Killing him then causes a Temporal Paradox that changes the entire history of the show.
• In Sonic X, it's revealed that Eggman comes from Earth, which is in a separate universe from Sonic's world. Aside from that one scene this is never referenced again. How Eggman got to Sonic's planet and why he can't remember how he got there is never clarified.
• The first series of Superbook ends with Chris' mother announcing she's having a baby. When the second series begins, no baby has been born, and the pregnancy is never brought up.
• In To Love Ru the plot regarding attacks by Lala's suitors is slowly dropped during the story. The last reference is the return of Lacospo and no other suitor appears after this.
• Wandering Son:
  • Mako comes out as transgender to her mother, but nothing ever comes out of that afterwards.
  • In high school the series foreshadows that Anna will be outed as Nitori's girlfriend and that this will affect her career. Aside from a few close calls, the manga ends with them still being in a Secret Relationship.
• The Yakitate 25 arc in Yakitate!! Japan suddenly came to an abrupt end partway through when Kirisaki cancelled the competition after he had turned into a half-bread monster, which is rather jarring when two matches ago, Pantasia suddenly found themselves on the verge of defeat and struggling to stay afloat. The fact that the arc had quickly succumbed to becoming Strictly Formula might have something to do with it.
• Two different series of cards in Yu-Gi-Oh! GX ended up being Cut Short (funnily, being based on very similar concepts). In multiple Duels, Judai showed off the existence of HERO monsters under the effects of Metamorphosis, which could tribute a HERO to summon an upgraded version from the Fusion Deck. Two of these upgraded HERO monsters, Neo Bubbleman and Clay Guardian, were utilized in various duels, and it's not hard to guess there would have been more... and then Metamorphosis was banned in real life for being abused in completely different decks, and Judai never used Metamorphosis again because he would now be showcasing cards that could never be played. Later on, he demonstrated the use of NEX, which did the same thing but limited to Neo-Spacians and summoned upgraded Neo-Spacians that could be used to summon upgraded Neos fusions. The card even depicts all six Neo-Spacians in its artwork. Over the course of the series, he used it, again, on two of them, and managed to bring out exactly one upgraded Neos fusion. The other four monsters pictured on NEX never got their upgraded forms, and considering the massive unpopularity of the NEX cards, they probably never will.
• In Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds, Yusei at one point duels and defeats a Sadist Teacher to prevent him from expelling Rua, Ruka, and their classmates. The final scene of the episode shows one of their classmates, Sly, staring at Yusei and vowing to acquire his Stardust Dragon, implying he would try to steal it. It's never brought up again.
• In Yu-Gi-Oh! The Dark Side of Dimensions, Jonouchi's quest for a better Duel Disk goes nowhere.
• This happened with the Saint Seiya anime on its final arc, the Temple of Poseidon: There are several scenes in which the Gold Saints gather in Athena's Sanctuary, and discuss how they were summoned there by Dokho, many Gold Saints question this as they say that they should be aiding the Bronze Saints in their battles against Poseidon's Marine Generals, but Dokho orders them to remain in the sanctuary in stand by. The manga revealed that this because Hades is about to return and send it's Specters to attack the Sanctuary, but because the anime was Cut Short the Hades Saga was never animated until several years later and it takes place some time after Poseidon's arc rather than immediately.

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