Diabolus Ex Machina / Anime & Manga

Diabolus ex Machina in anime and manga.

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• A minor example of Ai Kora: Hachibei's plan of making Tsubame wear boots filled with clay so he can make a mold of her feet and ankles fails when she lets a friendly rival male driver she just met in that chapter wear her boots, just because she thought they were comfortable. Because when your first meet someone, naturally you exchange footwear, of course!
• Angel Sanctuary seems to fall into this trope. Especially when Setsuna finally reunites with his loved sister, a wacko angel girl shoots her and enrages Setsuna, causing The End of the World as We Know It. (The manga goes well past this point but there's Still plenty of Deus Angst Machina.)
• Takakko's death in the anime version of Another qualifies. Not only was she not an inherently villainous character, not only was death not the only way to resolve the situation, but killing her in the way she was ensures there can be no potential reconciliation with Izumi, who spends the rest of the series thinking her rival and crush murdered her best friend.
• Black God ends in this way, in the last minutes of last episode everyone discovers that final sacrifice is required, even if nobody dies.
• Used quite well to make a point in Black Jack when Dr. Kiriko first appears. A woman with a terminal, inoperable condition has requested that Kiriko euthanize her. As this runs directly counter to Black Jack's principles, he begins meeting with the woman in an attempt to figure out a cure. He and Kiriko meet with each other, and Black Jack delivers a speech about how wrong Kiriko is to do what he does. After the operation goes through, with Kiriko present, Black Jack asks after the patient. She and her entire family were killed when a car slammed into their ambulance after the surgery. All of Black Jack's work — and all of his sermonizing to Kiriko — means nothing. In many ways, this is one of the themes of the series — no matter what doctors can do to save lives, they aren't gods, and many things are out of their hands.
• Bleach:
  • Aizen reveals he's been hiding the Hougyoku inside his own body and has fused with it. This unleashes a series of transformations that make him more and more powerful until even the heavy-weights of the story are incapable of fighting him.
  • Yamamoto unleashes Bankai to defeat and kill Yhwach, but ends up making things worse. Royd possessed the ability to mimic others and sacrificed himself to draw out Yamamoto's power and act as decoy while Yhwach visited Aizen. As Royd dies, Yhwach appears, steals Yamamoto's bankai and kills him. The stunned Gotei 13 is then utterly trashed by Yhwach's army.
• Call of the Night: Yamori, Akira and Mahiru break into their school at night to reconnect and search for The Seven Mysteries. It's all fun and games at first... until they go looking for the ninth mystery: a teacher who supposedly went missing ten years ago yet can be found in an empty classroom at night. Said teacher is not only real, but happens to be a vampire who's starved himself for ten years. The moment Yamori and his friends find him, he promptly assaults Akira in order to suck her blood, unable to contain himself.
• Code Geass. Given the number of times Lelouch has horrible events happen right in his moment of triumph, one might expect that he leaves an open place setting at his dinner table just for Diabolus.
  • Sure, Mao showed us that a Geass grows stronger with repeated use and a careless user runs the risk of losing control of it. Of course, Zero's Geass just had to backfire at the "everything will get better now" moment, and in the most inconveniently nasty way ever, to boot. (Lelouch saying the worst possible thing at the worst possible time, to the worst possible person, made it even worse.) What makes the "kill all Japanese" incident SO much worse is that Lelouch clearly was about to confess all his wrongdoings to Euphemia and leave his villainous ways behind. Only to slip up and stumble right into the Moral Event Horizon without even wanting to. After this you just know there will be no happy ending for Lulu.
  • Season 2 surpasses it when Lelouch commanding Suzaku to "live" in Season 1 caused Suzaku to nuke Tokyo when it activated, heavily implying the death of Nunnally. It's like an exaggerated version of Season 1. In both seasons, every time the Order of Black Knights seems to be winning a battle, you can set your watch to some new Britannian super-Knightmare Frame showing up and sending everything to hell. Honestly, you'd think they were pumping these things out of their asses faster than Evangelion with how many show up.
• At the end of Cowboy Bebop, Spike finally finds his lost love Julia, only for her to be shot dead by a random mook when the Red Dragon makes their move on them both, setting off Spike's final Storming the Castle moment and the final showdown with Vicious.
• Death Note: At the end of the Yotsuba Arc, Higuchi's been captured, Aizawa and Ide are back, Light has no memory of ever being Kira, and everyone's content with a job well done. Then Soichiro takes the Note, sees Rem, panics and the Note is taken to the helicopter where L and Light are sitting. Light regains his memories — All According to Plan — and promptly has everyone who knows anything about the case (bar himself, Misa and the police contingent of the Task Force) slaughtered within weeks, and the series continues.
  • In the Death Note Special Chapter one-shot, A-Kira's plan to sell the Death Note and get the money without getting caught is going off without a hitch. Then suddenly The King decides to add a last-minute rule that anyone who sells the Death Note would die, killing him.
• Dragon Ball:
  • Occurs in the Buu Saga of Dragon Ball Z, when Mr. Satan/Hercule, of all people, manages to stop Buu by befriending him. Just when things are about to calm down, two gun-toting assholes show up and shoot both Mr. Satan/Hercule and the puppy Buu adopted, pissing him off and forming the Evil Buu, which starts the next part of the arc up.
    • The anime changed this a bit so it wasn't completely out of left field: Mr. Satan did stop them before when they shot the puppy, but one of the goons came back for vengeance. The timing of the whole thing does feel a little contrived though.
  • During the Saiyan Saga during Goku's fight with Vegeta. Pretty quickly Goku finds that the only chance he has of winning is to use Kaio-ken at levels where it physically hurts him. After their famous Beam-O-War, Goku finds the only way he'll win using the Spirit Bomb, despite Vegeta losing said struggle. Vegeta reveals a previously unmentioned way to turn into a Great Ape and promptly crushes Goku within an inch of his life.
  • Goku's fight with Captain Ginyu in the Frieza Saga. Goku's just increased his strength to previously undreamed of levels by training in an atmosphere 100x Earth's gravity, and with his new strength is easily able to decimate the Ginyu Force, up until his fight with the Captain, who suddenly reveals his body switch power to steal Goku's body for himself. The events that occur because of this leave Goku heavily crippled when he does get his body back and out of action for a while.
  • In the Frieza Saga, Piccolo is fighting Frieza in what is presumed to be his true form, losing, then powers up to full strength. Whether or not this would have made a difference because Frieza reveals he has two more transformations, transforms into the first one and demolishes Piccolo. In the anime, Piccolo manages to take the upper hand, then Frieza transforms.
  • At the climax of the Cell saga, Cell, having lost his Perfect form and in the midst of a Villainous Breakdown at the revelation that Super Saiyan 2 Gohan is even stronger than he is now, decides to be a Sore Loser and make sure everyone else loses with him. Goku teleports him, along with himself away before he can, and both seemingly die (along with King Kai and his companions). Gohan and the other Z-Fighters briefly mourn, and then out of nowhere, Future Trunks gets a hole blown through his chest. It turns out Cell is back and even stronger than ever, now as Super Perfect Cell. An interesting example in that even he himself thought he was a goner.
  • The ending of Future Trunks saga in Dragon Ball Super, just when all seemed to be perfectly fine when Future Trunks successfully obliterates the degenerating body of Fusion Zamasu, Zamasu suddenly reveals that he can turn into an Eldritch Abomination thanks to his soul still being immortal and starts covering the earth and kills everyone there with the exception of the Z-Fighters and soon begins to spread across the universe to the point that Future Zen'o is forced to destroy the entire timeline just to stop him.
  • Sticking with Super, in the second to last episode of the series, Goku, who has just mastered Ultra Instinct, has beaten the mighty Jiren at the end of the Tournament of Power, throwing back his Might Makes Right mentality with The Power of Friendship and is ready to ring out the Pride Trooper. Just as Goku prepares a blast to destroy the platform and send Jiren falling, his Ultra Instinct power craps out on him paralyzing him. Beerus lampshades this by pointing out that Goku had all but won. The only thing that prevents this being this trope fully is that Frieza saves Goku when he's set to be ringed out, with him and Android 17 set to fight the weakened Jiren.
• One of the more controversial examples of this is in Eureka Seven Ao. A Human/Coralian hybrid couldn't survive in a high density trapar environment as it triggers the body cells of human and coralian to repel each other, leading to Renton and Eureka losing their firstborn daughter, effectively motivating both to antagonise the Scub Coral, a being they both once helped to protect. It sets up a chain of events that led to the events happening in the TV sequel.
• Fairy Tail ends the Nirvana arc by arresting the reformed Hoteye and Jellal, and heavily implying that the latter will be executed (he does get a death sentence later too), then proceeds to top that by revealing that everybody the Token Mini-Moe grew up knowing, with the exception of one man who was Dead All Along were just illusions created to keep her company and she'll never see them again. Never one to out do itself, Fairy Tail then ends the S-Class arc with the Dragon King Acnologia coming out of nowhere and leaving the entire core cast presumed dead, and even when they're recovered seven years later the world has changed tremendously in their absence. And then during the Tartaros arc the exact same dragon appears in the middle of the battle, prompting a Mass "Oh, Crap!" from both sides. However, this is fortunately countered by the Deus ex Machina of Igneel emerging from within Natsu. And then Acnologia kills him after the core cast manages to win out, right in front of Natsu too.
• Subverted in Fist of the North Star. When Kenshiro gains the upper hand on Shin during their final battle, Shin attempts to discourage him by stabbing Ken's fiancee Yuria in the chest. Later Ken finds out that the Yuria stabbed by Shin was actually a mannequin and that the real Yuria was no longer with him.
  • Played straight with Yuria later on. She reappears as the Last Nanto General and hope is restored that her and Kenshiro can reunite and live happy ever after. NOPE. Turns out she has been dying from radiation poisoning and will only live a short time. There was absolutely no clues that his happened or even how it happened. What makes it stand out is that there was only ONE other character to die from radiation poisoning (Toki) and that's only because he was outside the blast doors when the nukes went off. No other character dies from radiation.
• Fullmetal Alchemist (2003) has a recurring villain seemingly die only to show up in time for the finale with half his body replaced by automail and guns, including half of his head — jarring rather badly with the previously established rules of prosthetics for this world. The only purpose for his reappearance is so he can drive madly across the city to the Fuhrer's residence, shoot Roy Mustang in the face as the poor man staggers out, and then be shot dead.
• The ending of GaoGaiGar FINAL is all lined up for the happy ending we were all expecting from the generally upbeat tone of the series, then traps everyone except Mamoru and Kaido in another universe, presumably forever. Though in the ongoing sequel novel GaoGaiGar vs. Betterman, they turn out to be fine. Only time will tell if this becomes a case of Belated Happy Ending.
• It'd be a shame to leave out Ga-Rei -Zero-. Most of the major events that occur only happen in order to screw up everyone's lives even more than they were before. It always gets worse, save for a little spot of hope that Kagura ends up dealing relatively well with her duty fighting against monsters in the epilogue.
• Gundam:
  • Mobile Suit Gundam MS IGLOO Episode 5: The very young recruit, Erwin, has survived the sortie, and talked his opponent into being taken prisoner rather than dying needlessly when a blast of laser fire from a distant Salamis kills them both.
  • Something happens like this in the Gundam Side-Story Space, to the End of a Flash, where the pilot of the Gundam Unit 5 survives the battle of A Baoa Qu and is returning to the ship... only to be shot in the back by a barely alive Gelgoog.
  • Again in the Gundam Evolve story involving the Dendrobrium Orchis, where the pilot is shot by a dying Zaku when he back was turned just as they were cutting to the credits.
• A few arcs of Higurashi: When They Cry have this tendency, although they always have long threads of justification for it. Particular arcs that come to mind are Onikakushi-hen, in which after finally getting rid of two girls who had been trying to murder him the entire arc, the main character dies by "randomly" clawing his throat out; Watanagashi-hen, in which, after the main character manages to escape two different attempts on his life (one involving a freaking Torture Cellar), finally dies from a heart attack after seeing the girl who tried to kill him and was previously declared dead come back from the dead to kill him by nailing his hands to the bed; and Tsumihoroboshi-hen, in which after preventing one of the girls from blowing up the school and bringing her back from her paranoia, the entire town dies when poisonous gases roll through town.
  • Higurashi Kai does even better than that. In Minagoroshi-hen, Rika has spent more than a hundred years of constantly repeating the same month, knowing that she's going to die a horrendous, bloody death at the end. However, there is one world that Keiichi manages to change in the slightest way. A tiny little change leads to a string of minor miracles, with many a heartwarming moment. Then, right before the club can finally save Rika, the Big Bad reveals herself and shoots them all in the face. Then she ritualistically disembowels Rika and goes on to initiate the aforementioned poison gas attack on the village. Although that chapter title (it translates to Everyone-killing chapter) is a bit of a tip-off...
  • Palm goes to Higurashi Rei. Rika finally manages to end the endless loops of death. She's so happy that she gets all careless and runs into a truck, dying in the process and ending up in a perfect world where everybody is happy and there is no Watanagashi tragedy, but in which she has no good friends (Satoko and that world's Rika got off on the wrong foot and Hanyuu just isn't there in that world) and the village will be destroyed due to the dam project. She finally gets back to the old world by killing her own mother.
• Holyland: Yuu has beaten King and had his final showdown with Masaki, where he admits Yuu's the better fighter. Then, on the way back from his final fight in the series, Yuu is stabbed with a knife by a nobody and left to die alone in an alleyway. The final Time Skip chapter plays with whether or not he's really dead, as nobody has seen him in the interim and they Never Found the Body, until Yuu finally shows up alive in the last two pages.
• Jewelpet Twinkle☆: The ending to the series involves Ruby announcing to Akari that she has to leave on a journey to find the Flower of Happiness, a journey that might take decades, which means they won't be able to visit each other in the foreseeable future. This puts a real damper on the overall ending, especially considering that Ruby was only invited to go on the journey in the last episode and there was no foreshadowing to it beforehand.
• Various examples in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
  • At the end of Phantom Blood, Wang Chan, who was last seen in the ruins of the Joestar Manor and was MIA during the climatic battle, smuggles himself and the head of Dio onto the ship Jonathan is boarding. Despite having plenty of warning, just Dio's head manages to instantly defeat Jonathan (who was previously able to reduce Dio to that state and survive), giving Jonathan no other choice but to bring Dio down with him. And even that Heroic Sacrifice is nullified by a Retcon for the sake of Part 3.
  • At the end of Battle Tendency, Kars, who is seemingly facing death by Nazi UV spotlight cannon, quickly turns around with a fully assembled Stone Mask complete with the Red Stone of Aja. The UV rays fired at him shortly after did not kill him, but in fact made him wholly invincible, and fulfilled his original plan.
  • Another example late in Stone Ocean, tying in with the theme of fate, sorta. At the climax of Weather and Pucci's duel, Jolyne crashes a car right as Weather was about to deal the finishing blow on Pucci, allowing him to stab Weather through the heart while the latter was distracted.
• A similar scene occurs in L/R. The bad guys are defeated and one of the partners of the title agency has fallen in love and is all set to live happily ever after. Unfortunately, while walking down the street near his office, one of the villains of the series pops into view and shoots him dead. Instantly. He doesn't even get a poignant flashback.
• Occurs in the second season of Magic Knight Rayearth, to complete the Hope Spot for Hikaru and Eagle — having defeated Nova and saved Lantis, the Knights and Eagle return to Cephiro only for Debonair to show up out of nowhere to kill the Autozam commander. Especially jarring since Debonair had never actually attacked anyone directly until this moment.
• My-HiME actually had a Diabolus with a name: Miroku, the sentient (and malevolent) spirit inhabiting Mikoto's sword for most the series. Given that Miroku controlled Mikoto's berserker activations, as well as her CHILD's actions, and then finally was the sentience behind the seal on Kagutsuchi's power, there were quite a few horrific things that happened directly because of it, including the death of at least three CHILDs (Fumi, Midori, and Shiho's). However, the ending actually has the Hime collectively nuking the Hime Star and thus Miroku, causing the first ever destruction of Diabolus by the direct actions of the protagonists.
• The Wham Episode in My-Otome throws one of these in toward the end. At the end of the previous episode, Arika, Nina and Erstin are ready to take on their quests to become great Otomes as a team, even in the wake of Schwarz's hostile takeover of Windbloom. However, there's still air time left to kill, so along comes John Smith to spoil the party by revealing Erstin as one of their moles, and forcing her to fight against her new friends. At around the same time, Sergey comes by to congratulate Nina on a stellar year, he drops a custom-made handkerchief given to him by Arika, which sends Nina into a jealous rage, sparking a fight that ends with her killing Erstin. As later episodes show, it doesn't get much better for Nina from there, either.
• Naruto:
  • Madara Uchiha tends to do this, such as he was somehow knowing how terminate the contract with Edo Tensei when the person who summoned him was defeated despite the fact that even the original creator of this jutsu does not know how to do it. Or in another example he was somehow able to extract 9 Bijuu in mere minutes, despite it taking 9 members of the Akatsuki and 3 days beforehand to extract at least one.
  • Also happens when Guruguru suddenly appeared on the Fourth Shinobi World War. The sole function of his return was to block the Alliance from fighting against Madara. Even after Karin seems to destroy his colossus and Orochimaru temporarily weakens him by giving Yamato a curse mark, he is shown to be still blocking the Alliance several chapters later. His only other appearance was in a flashback set almost two decades before, and the manga don't shows what he was up to and why he showed up in that exact moment.
• Neon Genesis Evangelion:
  • End of Evangelion: Asuka finally snaps out of her depression coma and kills nine Mass Produced Evas in three minutes. She barely finishes, but it's looking up. The Seele army has been driven out, Rei, Shinji and Asuka are alive, Ritsuko's plan to detonate the entire complex failed, Shinji isn't in his psychopathic mother and Instrumentality has been averted. Then Asuka gets speared by a Lance of Longinius, right as her power runs out. Her Eva is then partially EATEN ALIVE by the Mass Production EVAs, who simply regenerated the wounds Asuka inflicted on them, and skewered to death by even more fake Lances; Shinji gets in Unit 01 and Rei fuses with Lilith, becomes a giant white god and turns all of humanity into orange juice on Shinji's orders.
  • In the original series, everything is going fine, if not a tad angsty. Shinji's social skills are improving, Asuka's teamwork is going well and Rei is beginning to show some humanity. A few episodes later and Asuka's been Mind Raped, Shinji is catatonic and Rei is dead, replaced by a clone.
  • Rebuild 3.0 takes this up a notch; also an interesting example in that the Machina occurs entirely during the first half of it. 2.0, the previous film, ends with an epic final battle where Shinji manages to kill Zeruel and rescue Rei; 3.0 begins with Shinji in turmoil resulting from the fully realized consequences of those actions. Shinji learns that trying to save Rei accidentally triggered Third Impact — the end of the world. 3.0 begins at the end of a 14 year Time Skip, where Shinji learns that his actions have devastated the planet and killed most of the population; secondly, the crew of Wille claim that Rei actually died and was replaced by a clone.
• A non-death example: In Ojamajo Doremi Naisho, Hazuki has taken an unlikely lead in the final leg of a relay to decide a swim meet only to suddenly get a cramp on the way back, allowing the other room to easily win the race.
• In One Piece, during the end of the Enies Lobby arc a random captain with the ability to make things rust catches one of Zoro's swords and destroys it, then is promptly punched down by Franky before he can do any more damage. This captain (named Shuu in source materials) then drops from the plot entirely, his only purpose was to cripple Zoro by destroying his third sword (tellingly, it was the only one that had zero sentimental value, It Was a Gift and that was it) and free up space for him to get a legendary named katana in the next arc.
• Osomatsu-san: Unlike the season 1 two-part finale which simply hit the Reset Button and never looked back, season 2 was one episode shy from letting the brothers separate naturally and finally turning Osomatsu into the proper big brother he never was...Then Iyami, who was leaving the country to find treasure, crashes his plane into the Matsuno house and kills them all.
• In Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt, right after defeating the Big Bad Corset via a seeming Deus ex Machina from a giant heavenly being that is either God or P&S's mother, Stocking makes an off-handed comment, wondering if Heavenly weapons can kill angels. She then proceeds to slice Panty into 666 pieces, reveal that she was a demon spy the entire time, and walks off with Corset (who just resurrected himself from Brief's penis) to another city to try and open another gate to hell, leaving Garterbelt, Brief, and Chuck to gather Panty's pieces while chasing after her.
• In Pokémon: The Series, this tends to come up when Ash loses a league. For the specific examples:
  • During the Indigo League, Team Rocket picks a very bad time to interfere making Ash work with an exhausted team (and a stubborn Charizard, who gets disqualified after refusing to battle against Ritchie's Pikachu, costing Ash the match in the process).^note Squirtle is also infamously declared unable to battle after simply being put to sleep, which is a stark contrast with all future Leagues (where a sleeping Pokémon is still considered fit to battle). While Team Rocket would not cause Ash this amount of trouble in later Leagues, they can also play this role for some characters of the day that Ash and co runs into.
  • Ash in the Johto League faces a Blaziken from a region he hasn't even heard of.
  • The Sinnoh League goes so well for Ash that only three of his League matches are shown, the rest touched on in a montage. Just as he narrowly wins against Paul in a 6-on-6 full battle, in comes Tobias, aka the Darkrai Trainer, who proceeds to curbstomp Ash thoroughly in minutes. And when Ash took out the Darkrai, he just pulled out a Latios and swept the remaining half of Ash's team. He literally serves no purpose except to screw Ash out of a League win he practically had in the bag. Particularly egregious, given that legendaries are treated as a very big deal in the anime, and only the Elite Four-caliber Frontier Brains had been shown to wield them.
  • In Unova, Cameron has a much stronger team than one would give him credit for — including a Hydreigon — and his Riolu evolves midfight. The latter is extremely egregious, as Riolu was on the ropes the entire time, and somehow evolves just by getting to its feet.
  • Only his losses in Hoenn and Kalos do not involve this trope. The latter is arguable, though, as Alain had stated several times beforehand he didn't want to take part in the League, he never gives any explanation as to why he changed his mind beyond a desire to fight Ash a third time, and he somehow manages to get all the badges to enter in a span of seven episodes.
  • This is finally averted in Alola where he actually wins for once.
  • In the opening two-parter of Pokémon the Series: Black & White, Zekrom appears purely in order to shock Pikachu and screw up his ability to use Electric attacks (catching both him and Ash off-guard and causing him to lose to a newbie), provide a 'climactic' cliff-hanger which is resolved within the first minute of the next episode, and then disappear.
  • In the FireRed/LeafGreen arc of Pokémon Adventures, yay! The good guys defeat the bad guys, stop an airship from crashing into Vermillion City, free Deoxys to let it go where ever it wants, have a happy reunion of sorts... then WHAM! They get Taken for Granite. They get freed in the Emerald arc.
• Pretty Cure All Stars DX 3 has the heroines break out of their various prisons and curbstomp all of their Movie-original foes... only for the Greater-Scope Villain himself to show up, One-Hit KO the girls and destroy their Transformation Trinkets. forcing them to use the movie's MacGuffin to beat the monster, but sacrifice their powers and fairy partners in the process. They got better, because the series was still running.
  • Happens almost part by part in Smile Pretty Cure! when the Big Bad overpowers the team's Super Mode, destroying their Transformation Trinket and leading to the heroines to use the series' MacGuffin to beat the monster.
• Several in Rave Master. Gale, after failing to talk down King, asks to government to arrest him, but they shoot down his family instead. King and Gale manage to end the cycle of war between the Raregroove and Symphonia family with a Heroic Sacrifice, only for King's Ax-Crazy son to turn up and start the cycle back up. In order to defeat Endless Elie not only has to fake her death and leave her time period but must also kill her love interest, Haru. Etc.
• Played for laughs in the ending of every episode of Rock Lee's Springtime of Youth.
• Faust from Shaman King has the unfortunate distinction of getting one in his origin story. He works for years to save his wife from a terminal disease and finally succeeds. Then a few months later, a burglar shoots her.
• Shin Mazinger has a pretty brutal one at the end. Kouji confronts and defeats Dr. Hell in one last climatic battle and it seems that Mazinger-Z stands triumphant. However, it turns out to be been planned by Baron Ashura, who sacrifices his/herself to allow the Mycene Empire to arrive on Earth. Cue Cliffhanger Ending.
  • This is based on the ending to the original Mazinger Z, which had the Mycene Empire come out of nowhere to wreck the titular robot, only for Great Mazinger to equally come out of nowhere and save Kouji.
• Shinzo: After the heroes have just spent several episodes trying to save Robot City from the Bird Enterrans led by Lord Caris, after his defeat his angered boss Queen Rusephine immediately destroys the city to render all their efforts null and void.
• At the end of the Super Robot anime Space Warrior Baldios, the hero Marin and his allies can only watch as the Big Bad, Zeo Gattler, unleashes his "Final Weapon" which triggers a cataclysmic series of gigantic tsunamis that ravage the surface of the earth. The last shot of the series is a freeze-frame of a tsunami wave, with the word "End" appearing next to it. Thankfully, there was a movie afterwards that improved the situation a bit, but things still didn't get completely better.
• Tsukihime. "And then Arcuied blew Roa into tiny pieces. Her and Shiki have a long, happy life in store as Shiki shows her all of the things she never thought to experience, and their mutual love is sure to last fore- SLICE."
• Weiß Kreuz Gluhen never promises better than a Bittersweet Ending, but the final scene of the series is pure Diabolus ex Machina; having cut ties with everyone he ever knew and left Japan, Aya goes walking down a sidewalk in New York and Diabolus, in the form of a scruffy little boy, runs up and stabs him in the gut. He ends up collapsed against a mailbox, having a flashback of his former teammates, while the pedestrians walking past pay no attention to the guy apparently bleeding to death all over the sidewalk.
• Yu-Gi-Oh!: After losing his 2nd dual with Kaiba, Yugi literally collapses on the ground after Kaiba threatened to kill himself feeling guilty for almost pushing him to do so. He spends two whole episodes and a dual with Mai later just to recover.

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