Cycle Of Revenge / Anime & Manga

Cycles of Revenge in Anime and Manga.

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• Afro Samurai has this as the main theme of the series. Sure, you can get the title of being the number one fighter, but you have to take lives to do so. Which won't sit well with the surviving kin/friends of the deceased, as Afro roughly finds out.
  • At the end of Resurrection, Afro has come to accept this. On reclaiming the Number One headband, he goes to a child whose adoptive father Afro killed in front of him — the same way Afro's father was killed in front of him — and hands him the Number Two headband, with a quiet, "Any time you're ready".
• Akame ga Kill! has this in spades. One example from volume 2: Seryu's father was killed on duty as an Imperial Guard, so she vowed to be strong enough to avenge his death, and then the Night Guard kills Ogre, who not only was a Guard Captain, but also her master. So she swears revenge on the Night Guard. When she runs into Mine and Sheele, it becomes clear that Seryu's a bit too far off the deep end as she bisects Sheele, leaving Mine, in turn, with the desire to avenge her. Tatsumi swears revenge, too, but is quickly snapped out of it. And it doesn't stop there. Oh, no.
• Brought up in Attack on Titan, in regards to the Marley vs. Eldia conflict. In a flashback, Eren Kruger tells Grisha, Eren's father that without love they're "doomed to repeat it all again. The same history. The same mistakes. Again and again." While it hasn't yet been made clear exactly what he's referring to, the context implies he's talking about this trope.
  • It's also mentioned in one of the chapter cliffhanger lines, "Will the tragic cycle ever stop?!", during the Liberio battle, when a lot of killing is going on.
  • Deliberately averted by Sasha's father when he's confronted with Sasha's murderer, Gabi. While he certainly mourns his daughter, he recognizes that she was a soldier who knew what she was getting into, and refuses to take vengeance on Gabi when she's entirely at his mercy. His refusal to stoop to Gabi's level shakes her to her core, and makes her realize that Eldians aren't devils, they're normal people with the same capacity for kindness as everyone else.
  • Turns out to be the whole reason the Attack on Titan world is as crapsack as it is now. The Eldian Empire subjugated its people to all sorts of atrocities during its reign, due to the actions of the despotic King Fritz and his abusive control over the powers of his slave Ymir. When the empire dissolved, descendants of those Eldians were subjected to xenophobic laws in response, with the worst treatment saved for the descendants of the Children of Ymir. And the people of Paradis, once they find out, want to take back their former "glory" as revenge for what the rest of the world subjected them to. Eren's plan to break the cycle once and for all? Commit genocide on the entire world outside Paradis, so there can be nobody left to remember the atrocities in any capacity and start the cycle anew. It doesn't work.
• Averted in Code:Breaker: Kouji allowed Toki to believe he was the one who killed Nenene so that Toki wouldn't kill the real murderer, Saechika, causing the Prince to kill Toki to avenge her long-lost brother. "I killed your sister and your brother is dead. Things are neater that way."
• This is the purpose of Zero Requiem in Code Geass. Unlike many of the examples in this list, the idea is that if Lelouch is hated by everyone, then dies with no one to avenge him, then the cycle will end. This has not really gone well with a large portion of the fanbase, as there are far too many things that Lelouch was never responsible for, and fails to exonerate Britannia in the eyes of its many victims, nor does it really provide a solution to Britannia's massive racism problems.
• Durarara!!: Shizuo and Izaya hate each other. They don't even have a logical reason; they just don't like one another. The first thing they tried to do when they met was kill each other. The cycle goes: Izaya antagonizes Shizuo, either by setting him up or just existing in general, and Shizuo will chase after him causing massive property damage. Afterwards, Izaya will then once again antagonize him out of spite. They've known each other for around a decade and their relationship only gets worse, as Shizuo cannot be in the same room with Izaya without some kind of catastrophe and Izaya will simply refuse to even speak about Shizuo, unless he's talking about how much he hates him. In the Final Curtain Arc, Izaya finally decides to break the cycle and goes all out to kill Shizuo. When his plan falls through, he engages Shizuo in a fight. His logic is if he kills Shizuo, he wins, but if Shizuo kills him, then Shizuo is a murderer and society will reject him as a monster. However, thanks to Simon and Vorona, neither outcome happens and everybody lives.
• In Elfen Lied, you can understand both sides. But they are also both wrong. At the point of the manga, it has become "kill or be killed" for both sides. For instance, Lucy is driven to her acts through cruel and depraved treatment, but after killing the horrible people, she kills innocents as well, and infects others who survive their encounters with her. Infectees ended up with their children being born silpelits, and in turn, the silpelits kill their families as well, so they sign up to suppress the diclonius virus, causing many inhuman experiments. The experiments break out and kill the scientists and several innocents, so the military puts them down. Kurama was infected by a silpelit, and loses his wife in child-birth, he seemingly kills Lucy's only friend, and captures her, so she maims his adopted daughter and kills his biological one. He accidentally shoots Kouta, and she rips his arm off.
• EX-ARM: Al Jarde wants to kill the head of Jinkoku-Sha yakuza Hayama Gaho and his family, after losing his family in a military bombing Gaho allegedly was invovled with, eventually making the cast deal with even more people who got dragging into it. Akira points this out and explains that the entire thing was orchestrated, but it falls on deaf ears.
• Used in the otherwise nonsensical filler-filled third season of The Familiar of Zero. The audience expected that The Atoner Colbert had died due to injuries in season two, but some Ass Pull revived him. This gives Agnes a good reason to kill him. But then she gave a reason not to: if she killed him in revenge and cold blood, his students would avenge him, perpetuating the cycle of hatred and revenge. It is hinted that she will still kill him, but presumably in a fair, no-hard-feelings kind of duel to the death.
• In Fullmetal Alchemist, Lust sums up the trope rather poetically:
  Bloodshed begets bloodshed. Hatred begets hatred. The rage and emotion sinks into the land and stains it with the crest of blood. No matter how many times they repeat themselves, they never learn. These sad fools...
  • It is also averted with Winry deciding to spare Scar, who killed her parents. Since Scar is all about the vengeance — and expanding, not shrinking, its scope — he is mystified and possibly mellowed by Winry's kindness in the face of the wrongs he did to her.
• Part of the conflict between the Praying Races and the goblins in Goblin Slayer is this — the title character is one of only two survivors of a goblin raid, and devoted his life to exterminating them in vengeance. He then goes on to describe how any survivors of his raids would escape, grow up, amass its own horde, then start raiding the settlements of the Praying Races. This is not portrayed as something that needs to be broken by diplomacy though. Why? The other major reason that goblins come into conflict with the Praying Races is that they are an Always Chaotic Evil race that commits Rape, Pillage, and Burn against literally everyone else and the only way for them to reproduce is by raping females of other races. The only way this can end is when one side is totally wiped out.
• Revenge is often used in the Gundam franchise. Especially various Char Aznable Expies (tm) are often motivated by it. Char himself and Zechs Merquise try to avenge the murder of their families, therefore infiltrating the responsible military organization. Lockon Stratos goes to all possible extremes to avenge the murder of his family. Flit Asuno even goes to the point of becoming a Dark Messiah because of his desire to avenge his parents as well as Yurin L'Ciel.
  • This is given the most emphasis in Mobile Suit Gundam SEED, after the Atlantic Federation (secretly ruled by Blue Cosmos) destroyed a colony of PLANT, ZAFT quickly invaded, wanting revenge, with the brunt of this by Patrick Zala, whose wife was killed during the attack. After Blue Cosmos gains control of the entire Earth Federation, and Patrick Zala gains control of PLANT, the war becomes one of genocide, as both forces seek to completely annihilate the other. Patrick Zala, having been driven insane by the death of his wife, is finally killed before he can kill the Naturals. Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny continues the Blood Feuds, with Radical Coordinators who were followers of Patrick Zala dropping the remnants of the colony on the Earth, as they believed that the Earth people (naturals) haven't suffered enough in the war, believing that they deserve to die for Junius Seven. The people who dropped that colony seem to have lost family and friends in that attack. The violence feeds into each other, and the Earth peoples reignite their hatred at the Coordinators and declare a second war against ZAFT. Cagalli sums it up quite nicely.
    Cagalli Yula Athha: "One guy's killed for killing another and then he's killed for killing him. How is that kind of twisted thinking ever gonna bring us peace? Well?"
    • Cagalli's quote comes after probably one of SEED's most tragic incidents: the Archangel is ambushed outside of the Orb Union by the Zala Team and Kira is forced to fight them off. During the fight, he has Athrun dead to rights when Nicol tries to save Athrun. Kira ends up killing Nicol in the process with his Anti-Ship Sword by accident, but this pisses off Athrun that he and his teammates Dearka and Yzak go for round two after a refuel. In the second round, Kira's friend Tolle tries to help him fight off Athrun, but Athrun kills him and destroys his Skygrasper, which leads to Kira flipping out and leading to a Combat Breakdown No-Holds-Barred Beatdown that ends with Athrun (supposedly) killing Kira by self-destructing the Aegis Gundam.
  • In Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam, this trope is manifested in Kamille and Jerid's series-long rivalry. Throughout the series, there's a back and forth of Kamille and Jerid killing the people that the other cares about, deepening their rivalry to pure hatred. It gets to the point where it seems like the only thing Jerid cares about is killing Kamille, who actually loses interest in him when it's clear that he's already outclassed him. Interestingly, the rivalry only started on the second killing — when Jerid killed Kamille's mother, Kamille conceded that he was Just Following Orders and that he honestly didn't know that the orders were to commit murder (he had been instructed to destroy an object rather than allow the enemy to claim it, not knowing that there was a person inside) until after the fact. The feud started a few episodes later when Kamille killed Jerid's former instructor in a fairly fought duel.
  • This trope dominates the latter half of Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans' first season. Galieo Baudin fought the Tekkadan kids throughout the series, but when they mangle his subordinate Ein and kill his childhood friend Carta, It's Personal. Carta herself was a target of this, since she killed Biscuit, causing Mikazuki to lay down some Extreme Mêlée Revenge. Biscuit's death caused the members of Tekkadan to fight for revenge, much to the dismay of their level-headed supervisor Merribell.
    • Ein himself is the most extreme example: Mikazuki kills his commanding officer Lt. Crank in Episode 3, and he spends the rest of the season hunting Tekkadan for payback; he even gets pissed off when he realizes they've salvaged Crank's mecha for their own use, and resolves to take it back in his honor. After getting mangled while protecting Galieo, Ein gladly becomes the "core" of a Super Prototype (which involves amputating his limbs and hooking its computers directly into his nervous system) so he can keep chasing them. At that point he's clearly gone off the deep end, since he rants about how "sinful" Tekkadan and its allies are, and says the only way to "absolve" them is by killing them.
• A continuing theme in Gunslinger Girl. Both Agency handlers and terrorists are obsessed with avenging family members killed by the other side. Those who aren't are invariably either corrupt leaders or disillusioned veterans.
• Averted in HeartCatch Pretty Cure!. After Dune kills Yuri's father, Yuri's on the verge of tearing him apart. However, Tsubomi, who witnessed the action as well, stops her and begs her not to go through with it. It works, and the later-united team is able to put Dune down properly.
• In JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders, Jean-Pierre Polnareff joins the team in search of J. Geil, the Stand User who killed his sister. Not too long into the arc, he finds him and defeats him with help from Kakyoin. Later, the group stays at an inn being run by J. Geil's mother, Enya, who plays the elderly innkeeper while plotting to kill Polnareff and everyone else involved in her son's death. Even after all this, when a now-captive Enya is murdered, Jotaro gives a brief And This Is for... in her name among her killer Steely Dan's other offenses before laying down a solid 20-second beatdown.
• In Let's Start An Inn On The Dungeon Island, the main character meets a pirate captain and her boarding party while he's alone on a deserted island and offers them hospitality, since women can use combat magic and he can't. The boarding party decides raping him is fine idea. The captain objects, violently. The boarding party mutinies by faking illness, stabbing the captain in the back as she's tending her "ill" crew. She survives, thanks to being tended by the protagonist. The moment she's well, she takes off to find them and avenge herself. She succeeds. The leader of the mutiny survives, however, and goes after her former captain to avenge herself, but first decides it's a grand idea to return to the island and rape the protagonist 'and cut off his penis with a rusty knife to stick it to the former captain. Fortunately, a third party intervenes and rescues him.
• A horribly convoluted one in Master of Martial Hearts. A generation ago, Aya's father organized a Street Fighter expy brawl for plucky Action Girls. Aya's mother won; the other contestants were mindraped to the breaking point, conditioned into sexual slavery, and sold. Two sisters in particular took the short stick: the younger got raped and killed by Aya's father, in front of her young daughter. Miko, the eldest, got her voice box removed and was sold overseas. She managed to escape, rebuilt her life as a somewhat functional Stepford Smiler Cute Mute, and had a daughter, Natsume. When the two cousins managed to know all the story, they decided to exact revenge. By masterminding and creating a new Platonic Hearts Tournament. And enrolling Aya. And making her fight, and defeat, countless otherwise innocent Action Girls. Who are then promptly mindraped and maimed as their mothers were. And trying, and failing, to get Aya to suffer the same fate. Casting aside the sheer idiocy of the whole plan, there's no warranty whatsoever that the cycle can't be restarted at any time, now, something Aya is willing to change at the end of the series even if it means having to murder Natsume and Miko's families so they don't start any more trouble.
  • The kicker is explained by Aya's mother at the end. Aya's mother was compelled to fight in her tournament the same way Miko and Natsume compelled Aya, and Aya's father was compelled to acquire and beat Miko's mother under orders from Miko's own grandfather, who was the true head of the company running the tournament at the time. Aya's mother regrets not telling Aya any of this, hoping her daughter could live a normal life, as it made her easy prey for Natsume and Miko's manipulations. Also, Natsume's mother is seen at the end stabbing a picture of Aya. She's blaming an innocent teenage girl instead of her own Abusive Dad who mind raped her and her sister and sold each of them into her own custom Sex Slave Hellhole Prison.
• In Naruto, revenge is one of the main themes.
  • The one who is biggest on revenge is Uchiha Sasuke, who is trying to avenge his family, who were killed by his brother Itachi, going to all possible extents to reach this goal. Until he discovers that Itachi was forced to do this to save Konoha, because his family tried to get revenge on the others in the village for being treated as outsiders and for them casting out their leader. Who, by the way, also wants revenge for his clan not supporting him and assists in their murder. And then Sasuke wants to get revenge on Konoha... Just as Kakashi told him once: revenge just leads to new revenge.
  • The entire Uchiha versus Senju issue actually appears to have a consistent pattern to it with the big names. It began when the eldest son of the Sage of the Six Paths refused to accept his younger brother being heir, splintering their family permanently. It repeated again when Madara refused to accept Hashirama as the First Hokage, cementing the rift between the Uchiha and Konoha, as a Senju was its first leader. And now it is repeating with Sasuke refusing to accept Naruto could grow so much stronger than him, driving him to Orochimaru and Madara. One of the reasons the conflict keeps reappearing is because the Sage's sons are being reincarnated, continuing their sibling rivalry right where they left it. The other reason is that Black Zetsu keeps manipulating events so that the cycle doesn't end, all so that he can use both the Senju and the Uchiha in order to resurrect Kaguya Otsutsuki, the mother of the Sage of the Six Paths and progenitor of all chakra.
  • This is Pain's entire theme — trying to create a weapon so strong it'll stagnate the cycle due to fear. He uses it for many a "Not So Different" Remark speech as well. Naruto ultimately decides to break the cycle of revenge between Pain and Konoha by sparing him. This pays off tremendously.
  • Sasuke himself came close to potentially starting one between his team and some members of the Cloud village by apparently killing Killer Bee, with the fact that he actually failed to capture him making revenge extra-pointless. Naruto, seeing where this would end up, decides he needs to do whatever he can to stop this.
  • In an interesting twist, Shikamaru cites this as his reason for wanting Konoha to kill Sasuke. So that Sakura and Ino won't go out to avenge him if the Cloud ninja kill him, which would result in them being killed and avenged by their loved ones, creating a vicious cycle that would lead to war.
• One of the assassination jobs in Noir was because of reasons like this. The girls were hired to kill a man who had run a concentration camp responsible for the slaughter of an ethnic group in Eastern Europe. The survivors and their descendants hired Noir to kill him in revenge. As the episode unfolded, they find out that the man had not only become the kind and benevolent benefactor of a poor community, his own people had been slaughtered by the aforementioned ethnic group as part of an ongoing blood feud when he was a child.
• Averted in One Piece.
  • It began when Usopp was beaten up by the Franky Family as they stole the crew's money. Cue the Straw Hats retaliating by destroying the Franky Family's home with everyone in it. When Franky finds out his nakama were beaten up and their home in pieces, he says This Is Unforgivable! and hunts Luffy down to get even. However, a series of circumstances would have the Straw Hats and the Franky Family work together, and in the end, Franky pulled a Heel–Face Turn and ended up joining the Straw Hats.
  • The Fish-Man Island arc is all about this, bringing together several subplots that have been running since the beginning of the series.
    • Queen Otohime is the most open-minded of the Fish-men/mermaids and advocating for peaceful reconciliation rather than continued retaliation against humans, which she would hold even to her death and pass on to her children.
    • Arlong, while initially not as willing to kill and subjugate humans as seen in his flashbacks, let his continued hatred and prejudice (as well as his captain Fisher Tiger's death by humans) convince him that all humans are nothing but trash.
    • Fisher Tiger, on the other hand, strove to defy this. Despite being a Tragic Bigot because of his time as a slave, he understood the 'irrational' part of Irrational Hatred and forbade his crew from killing humans because he knew that it would just lead to more Fantastic Racism which would reinforce the previous racism and nothing would ever get done. Sadly, despite his best efforts to let it go, he was unable to forgive humans and died because of it (much to his shame). Too bad Arlong didn't get that particular message and lost himself in the hatred that his captain was trying to stop.
    • Hody Jones, on the other hand, takes this to extreme. Encouraged by his idol Arlong, Hody wants to destroy the human kingdoms of the surface world and kills humans whenever he can, even going so far as to kill Fish-men and merfolk who sympathize with them, in response to wrongs he never personally suffered or even witnessed; the culture of hatred he grew up in conditioned him to just hate humans. Hody Jones was the one who killed Queen Otohime, and framed a human in an attempt to perpetuate bigotry towards humans.
    • In the end, it takes the Straw Hats defeating the New Fishman Pirates in front of Fishman Island's entire population, after Hody has made it undeniably clear how much of an insane bigot he and his officers are, before the cycle is brought to an end, with Jinbe explicitly aiming for this outcome so that the Straw Hats will be seen as heroes instead of mere human bullies and helping Fishman Island as a whole become more tolerant as a result. After Hody and his officers are arrested and imprisoned, King Neptune refuses to have them executed in an effort to bury his own hatred, aware that avenging Otohime's death will not help anyone at this point.
  • Orochi's tyrannical rule of Wano Country is primarily motivated out of hatred against its populace due to what he sees as unfair persecution against the Kurozumi Family. Sure, his grandfather poisoned his fellow daimyo in an atempt to seize the Shogunate, but after he was caught and forced to commit seppuku that should've been the end of it. Instead, his entire family was persecuted and lynched by the citizens of Wano, who took justice upon their own hands. After twenty years, however, Orochi's own grudge has not been sated, and he is determined to bring Wano to utter ruin until the day he dies. Unfortunately for Orochi, the enemies he made in the Kozuki Family were willing to wait that long to get their revenge, and the cycle finally ends with his death.
• A central premise in Studio Gonzo's Romeo × Juliet, where it's strongly implied that the love between the eponymous protagonists is the only thing that can prevent the cycle of violence from continuing (and that the fact that one started in the first place may very well cause The End of the World as We Know It).
• This happens with Yoh and Ludsev in Shaman King. Yoh decides to spare Ludsev, who has just killed Joco, so that he can finally get over his hate. Also, Yoh knows his friend will be revived soon anyway.
  • As well as Ren, Iron Maiden Jeanne, Lyserg and the rest of the X-Laws, and a number of others. The Arc Words in the Tokyo Island arc are "When you hurt people, they hurt you back."
• Sheila of Superior explains this trope to Exa while standing in the ruins of his hometown. So long as humans kill demons, demons will kill humans, so she wants to kill every human to end the fighting forever. (Exa, for his part, has vowed to never kill anyone other than Sheila so as to prevent further retaliation.)
• Tokyo Ghoul explores this as one of its major themes, with the conflict between Ghouls and CCG ultimately fueled by both sides striking out in revenge. The story arc that introduces CCG and Hero Antagonist Amon focuses on this theme, with Amon and his veteran partner, Kureo Mado, killing a pacifist Ghoul in front of her young daughter, Hinami. Though advised against striking back, Touka decides to get revenge for Hinami and attacks Amon, killing one of his coworkers in the process. This chain of events leads both sides to a battle in an underground waterway, with Mado luring Hinami into a trap and seriously wounding Touka when she comes to rescue the girl. Hinami is able to turn the tables, but refuses to take revenge against the man that killed her parents because it won't accomplish anything. Mado, obsessed with revenge against all Ghouls, uses this opportunity to attack Hinami, forcing Touka to finish him off. Afterwards, she is horrified to realize the man she'd just killed had a family. In the end, losing his mentor to the mysterious "Rabbit" leads Amon to swear revenge, while Touka's reckless actions have caused CCG to focus more attention on hunting Ghouls in the 20th Ward.
• Vampire Knight: Zero hates vampires because Hiou Shizuka, a pureblood, killed his vampire hunter parents AND turned him into a vampire. He hates them so much that he vows to kill her and every other pureblood vampire, even Yuuki once it's revealed that she herself is one. He also has no issue offing himself once the deed gets done. Later we find out Hiou Shizuka killed his parents because they killed someone very precious to her — only because this person's name was put on the "assassination list" for some malevolent reason, despite the fact he wasn't a Level E. It could have gotten worse had everyone continued to believe he killed Shizuka which, if not for Kaname, would have brought down the vengeance of the vampire senate on Zero.
• When They Cry, in both its incarnations, lives off this trope. In Higurashi, it's helped along considerably by Hinamizawa Syndrome, while in Umineko, the Ushiromiyas are a one-family family feud.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL: The reason why Shark started out as such a jerk in the series? He wanted revenge on Quattro/Thomas Arclight, who hospitalized Shark’s sister Rio and ruined Shark’s dueling career prior to the start of the series. Shark exacts his revenge at the World Duel Carnival, though not before Quattro tells Shark how his father Vetrix/Byron Arclight ordered him to do what he had done. So, Shark’s now hungry for revenge against Vetrix, but Vetrix takes advantage of this to turn Shark into his puppet. This all started because of Vetrix’s own desire for revenge, specifically against Dr. Faker, for betraying him and casting him across dimensions many years ago. He ordered Quattro to make Shark target him for revenge so as to turn Shark into his own tool for revenge against Faker. Yuma ultimately manages to break the chain by convincing Vetrix to let go of his revenge.

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