First Episode Twist / Anime & Manga

• AR∀GO: City of London Police's Special Crimes Investigator: Ewan is murdered by the Patchman in the first chapter, and his death is the driving force behind Arago becoming a detective.
• In the first episode of Armitage III, we learn that the seemingly human girl Armitage is actually a robot. Also potentially spoiled by the covers, depending on the version.
• Attack on Titan: Eren's mother getting eaten by a titan, to the point where it's revealed in some official descriptions of the show.
• The first chapter of Ayakashi Triangle introduces Matsuri and Suzu, Childhood Friends strained by the former's profession as a ninja exorcist, who are menaced by the malicious spirit Shirogane. The story seemingly reaches a conclusion with the two reconciling as Shirogane is sealed away, but Shirogane suddenly decides to sabotage their chances of falling in love by turning Matsuri into a girl. The advertising hid almost any hint of this, going as far as to exclusively show Matsuri in his male form, not the female form he'd be in for the rest of the series.
• Bang Brave Bang Bravern!: Over the course of the first episode, it has all the trappings of a standard Real Robot show - that is, until the last few minutes, where the titular Bravern very literally drops out of the sky in front of the protagonist. Pre-release marketing even went as far as to conceal the show's Super Robot nature.
• Blue Lock: Ryousuke Kira seems to be set up as a major character, as he's considered the star player of his generation in high school soccer in Japan and seems to strike a friendship with protagonist Yoichi Isagi. In truth, he's actually the first character onscreen to be eliminated from Blue Lock, as early as the second manga chapter and the first anime episode.
• Blue Flag: Chapter 5 reveals that Touma is in love with Taichi and implies that Masumi is in love with Futaba, turning the plot so far on its head.
• At the end of the first episode of BNA: Brand New Animal, Michiru reveals to Shirou that she used to be a human.
• Dragged out for a little bit longer than one episode, but in Bokurano, the fact that the current pilot of Zearth will die after a battle is not revealed fully until episode 4 (volume 2 of the manga). This fact becomes the major element of the rest of the series. This is masked by having the first pilot disappear, and the second one seems to die for unrelated reasons.
• Call of the Night: The story begins with Kou Yamori sneaking out of his apartment in the middle of the night due to suffering from insomnia. After wandering the streets for a while he meets a strange girl who offers to help him get sleep again by inviting him to her apartment so that he can sleep next to her. While it doesn't quite work, Yamori pretends to fall asleep to see what the girl will do next. The girl thinks that Yamori has fallen asleep and, muttering that she "can't hold back anymore", bites Yamori's neck and sucks his blood, outing herself as a vampire. She then immediately reels back after realizing that Yamori's blood is far tastier than anyone else's, before he drops the charade and asks her what she's doing. After learning that vampires are real and that humans need to fall in love with a vampire before they can turn into one, Yamori tells Nazuna, the vampire, that he wants to become her offspring, and asks to hang out with her so that he can fall in love with her.
• The Case Study of Vanitas introduces us to Noé, a young man traveling to Paris in order to search for a legendary grimoire named the Book of Vanitas. While boarding an airship, Noé meets a sickly woman who is seemingly attacked by a suspicious man. Noé reveals himself to be a vampire and fights the man to protect the woman only for the woman to bite Noé as she's actually a curse-bearer, a vampire who went mad after having their true name stolen. Vanitas, the man who Noé fought, then reveals he's the possessor of the Book of Vanitas and uses its power to restore the curse-bearer's sanity.
• In Chrono Crusade, the cute little boy is really a Demon. Almost everyone that watches or reads the series these days knows this going in (and any summary will spoil it), but it's actually hidden until the second chapter/episode of the series, with the first only showing that he has strange powers.
• Code Geass:
  • Within the first episode we are introduced to the Geass, and by the next it's revealed that not only are Suzaku and C.C. still alive, but that Lelouch is a dishonored prince of Britannia, points which are, needless to say, central for the rest of the series.
  • Geass actually had two- in the first episode of R2, which, due to the new evening time slot, got quite a few additional viewers compared to the first season, the fact that Lelouch is Zero isn't revealed until the end. It's a pretty big reveal to those who haven't seen the first season, and amusingly, it comes as quite a surprise to Lelouch himself.
• The first episode of Cross Game seems to set the story up as a love triangle (as well as a baseball story) as sisters Aoba and Wakaba both have a crush on protagonist Ko. The episode spends its runtime establishing a fun dynamic between the three of them...only for the episode to end with Wakaba's death by drowning. It's then that we discover that the REAL theme of the story isn't a love triangle, it's about Aoba and Ko growing up while trying to process the death of someone who was very special to them (but also there's still baseball.)
  • Only counts as a first episode twist in the anime; in the manga, Wakaba remains alive for several chapters before perishing at the end of volume one.
• Darker than Black: The fact that Li Shenshung is a bit more than he appears isn't clear until the middle of the second episode, and exactly what he can do isn't clarified until around episode 6. Li is the alias of Hei, a.k.a. "The Black Reaper," a contractor, spy, and assassin with electricity-based powers. Oh, yeah, and that black cat we keep seeing in the background? It can talk.
• It can be fairly hard to explain the plot of Death Parade without spoiling the first episode's reveal that Quindecim is in the afterlife; the couple we met was Dead All Along, the bartender is an arbiter of souls, and the games are created with the sole intent of judging whether someone goes to "heaven" (or rather, receive reincarnation) or to "hell" (being sent to a void for all of eternity).
• Deca-Dence has its first episode play the show off as a standard After the End action series, following a plucky young girl who wishes to fight alongside other soldiers to protect what remains of humanity, only for the final scene to be a shot of small technicolor beings viewing the whole thing. The next two episodes go on to reveal that during the apocalypse, a MegaCorp gained ownership of what remained of humanity and turned Eurasia into a hybrid wildlife preserve and MMORPG before leaving the planet in the hands of the cyborgs they created; the soldiers are remotely-controlled avatars controlled by the cyborgs, humans are none-the-wiser NPCs, and the monsters were actually created for the purposes of the game (the real cause of the apocalypse was an ecological disaster). The aforementioned plucky girl's teacher also turns out to be one of these cyborgs.
• Dragon Ball has an interesting case, where Chapter 197 (or episode 155 in the anime overall) drops the bombshell that Goku is an alien from another planet who was originally sent to conquer Earth, only to receive a head injury which resulted in him becoming a gentle soul. At the time this was a swerve as massive as learning that Goku had a son only a few pages/minutes earlier. Why is this example here instead of in It Was His Sled? In the anime series, this was covered as the second episode of Dragon Ball Z, which is the most popular installment of the franchise by a wide margin; especially outside Japan, where the franchise didn't even become popular until Z was first aired, and the ViZ adaptation titled that half of the story with Z as well.
• EDENS ZERO starts its first episode off in a pretty normal fashion with a B-Cuber named, "Rebecca," and her loyal friend, "Happy." They both enter a planet called Granbell and they are greeted by its Robot inhabitants, and its sole human, "Shiki." The Robots appear to be friendly towards Rebecca, Happy, and Shiki, until the Robots turn on them, proclaiming them to be Human Bastards. Shiki, horrified that his robotic friends are evil, forces him to flee planet Granbell. However, the real twist is revealed to be the fact that the Robots pretended to be False Friends to Shiki, so that they could convince him to leave planet Granbell. It turns out that Shiki never had the ability to fix the Robot inhabitants of planet Granbell, and if Shiki found out the truth, he would have never left planet Granbell. The robots in the end were Good All Along.
• The first chapter of Even Though We're Adults sets up Ayano Ookubo and Akari Hirayama as the apparent main lesbian couple, before revealing that the former has a husband at the end of the chapter.
• In Fairy Tail, we have both that the guy casting Charm in the port city and then throwing a party on his boat is not a member of Fairy Tail, and that Natsu, the man with the most-easily-induced motion sickness ever, is a member of Fairy Tail. Comes as an initial surprise in the manga, but the latter part is spoiled by the anime's opener.
• Final Fantasy: Lost Stranger: Yuko, who is set up as the Deuteragonist of the story, becomes a Sacrificial Lamb before the first chapter even ends when she dies to save the life of a young girl from the Mist Dragon. From that point on, the focus of the plot shifts from the Sasaki siblings trying to figure out how to get back home to Shogo and the rest of the party trying to find a way to bring Yuko Back from the Dead.
• Flame of Recca. The fact that Recca has flame-based abilities isn't revealed until the end of the first episode, then goes on to drive about half of the plots in the series. The remaining plots are driven by Yanagi's abilities that are revealed in the same episode, albeit a bit earlier.
• Fruits Basket looks like a normal shojo manga for most of the first chapter/episode...and then Kyo suddenly turns into a cat after Tohru accidentally stumbles into him. The next chapter/episode explains the Sohma curse and how Kyo, Yuki, and others transform into animals of the Eastern Zodiac upon being hugged by the opposite gender. More specifically, it is very difficult to describe any of the characters' personalities without also revealing the various traumas and abuse they've undergone (or inflicted on others).
• The first episode (and chapter, for the manga) of Fullmetal Alchemist sees us discovering that Edward Elric has two prosthetic 'automail' limbs and that his brother Alphonse is a disembodied spirit bonded to a suit of armour. We are also treated to several extremely transparent 'hints' regarding the crime they committed in the first place: trying to bring their mother back from the dead. For the rest of the series this information is commonplace and, in many cases, paramount to understanding the plot.
• Ga-Rei -Zero- is a very interesting and shocking case. The first episode (as well as practically all promotional materials) featured a Badass Five-Man Band; the leader specifically had a vendetta with an established villain from Ga-Rei. The spoiler in question? Dead Stars Walking, ALL of them. At the hands of a former main protagonist, at that.
• Gantz: The first time reading or watching the story, the audience is just as clueless as to what's going on as the characters themselves are. As the characters learn more, so does the audience. Therefore, if you go into it knowing that characters are brought back from death to be sent on alien hunting missions for points, which is the entire premise of the story and happens to the two male leads in the first episode, then you already know more than you're supposed to.
• Episode 1 of GaoGaiGar reveals that Tagalong Kid Mamoru Amami is actually an alien brought to Earth by Galeon.
• In Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet, Ledo has accidentally rediscovered Earth That Was. The second episode quickly establishes that the planet is entirely ocean, which is why everyone lives in ships.
• Good Night World: It's hard to summarize the plot without a mention that the rest of Taichiro's family is also playing PLANET and that the four are in-game guildmates without knowing it, but the fact is revealed just late enough after the beginning to be easily put at the end of the anime adaptation's first episode.
• Happy Sugar Life: The very first page establishes that Satou is not a normal person. However, halfway through the chapter, it's revealed that the person she claims is her "beloved" is a little girl, and at the end we get a Wham Shot of a missing child poster of said kid.
• The first two episodes of Hetalia: Axis Powers has Germany's search for the "mighty" descendent of the great Roman Empire end with the discovery that he is in fact the weak, stupid Italy. The rest of the series has Italy latch on as Germany's ineffectual ally, who Germany tries in vain to teach to be competent.
• Both the Higurashi: When They Cry anime and manga do this. In its first episode (or first chapter) it resembles a quirky, everyday high school series, with the male lead surrounded by several girls, but ends with said male lead discovering the town's dark secret and the resident Cloud Cuckoo Lander holding a cleaver over his head. The manga is even better at this as it has an ominous intro but the anime just straight up shows Keiichi bashing Rena and Mion to death at the start.
• In Initial D, in contrast to his hyper-active and car-crazy friend Itsuki, Takumi is very laid back, terrified of riding with his street racing coworker Iketani, doesn't know anything about cars and doesn't get why anyone else would care about street racing. It's only shown in the second episode, although revealed in a phone call towards the end of the first, that he's an extremely talented driver himself. Most characters take until episode 4 to find that out. His disinterest in street racing was mainly because he's been driving like that as part of his chores for years, and it's implied he was terrified riding with Iketani because the latter is a much sloppier driver.
• In Jinzō Konchū Kabuto Borg VxV, Big Bang is the villain persona of Taiki Amanogawa, making him the Archnemesis Dad of Ryūsei. This is revealed as a surprise at the end of episode 1, where Ryūsei himself and his friends learn about it for the first time.
• Another Bandai franchise, Kamisama Minarai: Himitsu no Cocotama, also does something similar by releasing toys of the characters before the Legendary Cocotama Caretakers get them on the show and showing these characters with the caretakers in the opening and ending themes. Kira Kira Happy Hirake Cocotama was notable for having its' toys released a month before the show began as a result of a "best of" series playing in between Himitsu no Cocotama and Hirake! Cocotama.
• Koshiro and Nanoka from Koi Kaze are siblings who haven't seen each other in years. They don't realize this until their father meets up with them at the end of the first episode...after they've already gone on their first date.
• The very first chapter in the Lupin III manga is about the police trying to find Lupin. If you're aware that Lupin's a young guy with black hair and long sideburns, you're probably not gonna be fooled by the Red Herring. Lupin is wearing glasses.
• Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha ViVid reveals at the end of the first chapter via Page-Turn Surprise that, not only is Vivio's Older Alter Ego back (albeit, in a much weaker version from the one forced on her in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS), but she can now access it whenever she wants. Prior to its release, all promotional material related to ViVid only showed her as a child.
• Mazinger:
  • Mazinger Z: Kouji's grandfather gets assassinated in the first episode. Shortly before dying he reveals to his grandsons that he was secretly building a Humongous Mecha.
• Monster opens with Dr. Tenma finding his calling in life after saving a young boy, only to reveal not much later that the boy grows up to be Johan Liebert, the titular Monster.
• The first chapter of Musunde, Tsunaide follows Tsunagu and Kano as kids. Kano encourages Tsunagu to clean herself up and take some pride in her appearance, and basically does everything she can to paint a giant target on her forehead for "doomed childhood friend". And sure enough, at the end of the first chapter, Kano vanishes into thin air during a game of Hide And Seek at a local shrine. The second chapter then skips forward to Tsunagu in high school. She has duly followed Kano's advice to clean herself up and have confidence in herself, though she rues the fact that people seem to have given up on the search for Kano. She heads to the shrine where Kano vanished and yells her name, implying the series is gearing up for an I Will Find You plot ... only for the nine-year-old Kano to traipse happily out of the trees, wondering what's taken Tsunagu so long to find her. Yes, Kano hasn't aged a single day, and that's a part of the premise.
• My Hero Academia begins with Izuku Midoriya, who is part of the Quirkless, people that lack a special power, yet he wants to be a Hero. Then he meets All Might, the greatest Hero of the time, learns his secret...and All Might offers to give him his Quirk. All Might's past, the secret behind the Quirk and Izuku's drive to learn how to use his Quirk drive a good part of the story.
• Naruto is one of the most famous anime/manga examples. The protagonist has a nine-tailed fox sealed inside him, and this is revealed as a surprise in the very first episode, where Naruto himself learns about it for the first time.
• Most covers of Now and Then, Here and There spoil the fact that it's a Grim Dark war story rather than the generic shonen action-comedy it appears to be in episode 1.
• Oshi no Ko makes it clear with its opening pages that Aqua and Ruby will eventually perform together on stage, know as the twin children of the idol singer Ai, before the first volume focuses on their mother's pregnancy and early years with them and before getting murdered in Chapter 9, setting up the dark revenge-driven story for the rest of the series. The anime adaptation condensed the first volume, leaving Ai the main focus and cover girl of the first episode that ends in her death.
• Ouran High School Host Club. Haruhi Fujioka is initially thought to be a handsome boy for much of the first episode, but at the end, when the members of the Host Club look at Haruhi's student ID, they realize that Haruhi is female. While there are various clues throughout the episode (most of which are only obvious in hindsight or with foreknowledge of the twist), Haruhi's gender isn't explicitly revealed until the end.
• The first episode of Penguindrum focuses on Himari's recovery from her serious illness, and suggests happy relationship times in the future. When Himari suddenly dies at the end of the episode, it's shocking and Played for Drama, especially since she's heavily featured in the credits and marketing. Then she comes back to life due to a magical hat, a twist that is essential for the rest of the plot.
• Plastic Memories starts with protagonist Tsukasa joining an agency dedicated to "retrieving" androids who are approaching their expiration date, after which they will malfunction and go haywire, and being partnered with the cute female android Isla. It looks like a standard "Retrieval of the Week" format...then The Stinger for the second episode reveals that Isla's own lifespan expires in a few months, and the rest of the anime mixes the retrievals with Tsukasa and Isla's tragically-doomed Mayfly–December Romance.
• Pokémon: The Series' Third-Option Adaptation of the games (Ash's Starter Mon being Pikachu, the former Trope Namer) is of course one of these.
• Pretty Cure: By the first few minutes of each incarnation's first episode, it's easy to know which girls will join the team during the first half and what their Cure forms are because of the opening credits that play after the first few minutes. It's also spoiled anywhere from a day to a week prior, as merchandise revealing information about the new series will be released during the period of the prior series' finale to the day before the new series begins.
• The first episode of Princess Principal is the 13th case chronologically, establishing the protagonist team's style of operation, their personalities on the job, and the grittiness of their work. The second episode is the first chronological case, and contains the reveals that the two leads made a Prince and Pauper switch ten years ago, the Pauper-turned-Prince(ss) in the scenario is only in the team so they can help her go from fourth-in-line to rightful Queen, and since they're the only ones in the know about their identity-switch secret, all of their loyalties gain a few extra layers.
• The first episode of Princess Tutu opens with Ahiru (which means "Duck" in Japanese, and is translated as such in the dub) having a dream that she's a bird, but waking up to be a human. She insists in her introduction that she's just a girl that happens to be named after a bird, but by the end of the episode she remembers that she really IS a duck, and her human form was just a magical disguise.
• PriPara: The main plot is set off by the fact that Laala cannot perform in the titular world because she is an elementary schooler and her school bans it. By the end of the episode, Laala becomes one after finding Mirei's lost PriTicket bag.
• In the first chapter of The Promised Neverland, we're introduced to a secluded orphanage lead by a kind caretaker. Once the children reach the age of 12 they leave to be adopted by a family. Emma finds out that the orphanage is actually a meat farm for monsters who prey on humans.
• Ranma ½ starts off with Genma Saotome coming to the Tendo home with a girl. Said girl is his son Ranma, who'd been cursed by falling into a spring, so that he'll turn into a girl when splashed with water. That fact is intended to be a plot twist, but it's also a major part of the premise for the series.
• Ratman takes place in a world where superheros are a common occurrence. The main character is Shute, a boy who dreams of one day becoming a hero. Naturally, he becomes an Ascended Fanboy. The twist that needs to be explained if one wants to understand the actual premise and main plot of the series at all, and is even explained on the back of the books even though the initial story avoids any major tipoff? A crime syndicate tricks Shute into becoming their personal Anti-Hero. Hilarity Ensues.
• Ride Your Wave: The first 30-40 minutes is mostly Slice of Life shenanigans setting up the characters, particularly the super-fluffy romance between Minato and Hinako. Then Minato dies, with the rest of the movie focusing on Hinako struggling to move on despite being able to summon his ghost.
• Rurouni Kenshin: At the end of the first episode, it turns out that the guy going around killing people under the name of "Battousai" is not the legendary assassin. That goofy, red-headed wanderer carrying a Reverse Blade Sword that Kaoru had dismissed earlier, on the other hand...
• Saikano: Chise is the Ultimate Weapon. The first episode of Saikano didn't even have any titles, with the name of the show only coming onto the screen after The Reveal of Chise standing in front of Shuji in the middle of a ruined city with wings and a minigun where her right arm should be. If you didn't know anything about the series (including what the title meant) before you started watching, it was genuinely shocking.
• School Days: Most of the first episode (and a good chunk of the next three) are taken up by Sekai trying to get Makoto and Kotonoha together. Then she kisses him at the end, kickstarting the Love Triangle that drives the rest of the series.
• School-Live!'s first chapter presents itself as a cute, laid-back Slice of Life Schoolgirl Series. Then it turns out that the main character is delusional and she and her friends are actually trying to survive in a Zombie Apocalypse. The anime adapted this by padding out the first episode with cute scenes of her at school with slight foreshadowing something is wrong, only to pan out to a ruined classroom near the end. Even though the work’s page on this very wiki warns readers not to so much as scroll down to read the description of its premise before watching the first episode, the twist is so essential to describing anything that happens in the series that there is a good chance that anyone who discovered the series by clicking on the page has already been spoiled by the entry the wiki led from.
• Scott Pilgrim Takes Off starts out as a fairly straightforward adaptation of the Scott Pilgrim graphic novel series… until the end of the first episode, when Scott dies in the first battle.
• The manga Sensei wa Koi o Oshierarenai is about about a poor high school student and his Stern Teacher who is especially harsh on him due to his low grades and part-time job that goes against school policy. The twist kicks in when he arrives home after a rough day, finds her waiting for him, and it is revealed that they are actually dating.
• Shimeji Simulation has a Dramatic Irony form of a first-chapter twist, since in one panels a mysterious black obelisk is seen standing behind Shijima and Majime. It is a significant twist, since the audience immediately knows that this world is surreal and not normal from the beginning, which is unknown from the main characters. It's a Foreshadowing that this world is a simulation, which is extremely important to the plot in later chapters.
• In Simoun's first episode Amuria, who was being set up as the hero of the story, dies as a result of attempting the Emerald Ri Maajon, and Aer is sent to replace her. Those facts, plus Neviril's Heroic BSoD over that, has a significant impact on the plot.
• By the end of the first chapter of Snow White with the Red Hair, it has been revealed that the helpful fellow traveler Shirayuki met in the woods is actually a prince and second in line to the throne of Clarines.
• Still Sick is the story of two coworkers- Shimizu and Maekawa- the former of whom is secretly a doujinshi author. At the end of the third episode, Maekawa's former editor meets her and reveals that Maekawa is a published manga artist who is on hiatus, a fact that is very important to Maekawa's character arc.
• Str.A.In.: Strategic Armored Infantry: the main character is a happy girl who idolizes her awesome big brother and gleefully awaits her graduation alongside Those Two Guys and the Dogged Nice Guy. At first. Neither her friends, her brother's sanity, or her own mental health survive the first episode.
• In The Summer You Were There, throughout the first volume, it is made clear that Shizuku has a dark secret that causes her to isolate herself from others. As her classmate and pretend girlfriend Kaori spends time with her, Shizuku starts feeling increasingly guilty and afraid that she'll hurt her, until she confesses the truth- she bullied one of her friends in elementary school. Shizuku's efforts to make amends for what she did are a key subplot, and this plot twist is spoiled in the summaries of the second and third volumes.
• The original television run of the first episode of Super Dimension Fortress Macross had a cobbled-together opening designed to hide the fact that the fighter planes are, in fact, Transforming Mecha.
  • Also the Space Fold that occurs in the third episode. The fairly convoluted plot of defending South Ataria island against the Zentraedi fleet suddenly stops, and a new status quo is established (the Macross, not the island, is the main setting) which never quite changes for the rest of the series.
• The first chapter/episode of Tokyo Ghoul has the main character Kaneki going on a date with Rize, who is revealed to be a ghoul when she attacks him. She dies and her organs are transplanted into Kaneki, which turns him into a ghoul.
• In Tokyo Revengers, Takemichi has a dream of his childhood days right as he's pushed into an oncoming train. He remembers a lot of stuff that he had forgotten about himself, and on a whim warns Naoto (the little brother of Hina, his former girlfriend) that his sister will get killed in 12 years time. Then he wakes up back in the present, where Naoto has become a police detective and rescued him from being run over by the train. Naoto reveals to Takemichi that his dream wasn't a dream: it was Mental Time Travel. He then asks Takemichi to use his power to help him save Hina, who is still dead in this timeline.
• Valvrave the Liberator went to great lengths in all of its promotional material to portray the main robot as a white and red gunslinger samurai, like just about any other generic Gundam clone. As soon as the robot's activated, its white paintjob turns black, its swords open up into scythes, the pilot is turned a vampire, and you realize you're in for an entirely different sort of show.
• The first chapter of Venus Puts Fur On Me makes it clear the story is about the horrors of bullying, with Nakajima portrayed as a heartless and brutal bully who picks on sweet girl Shirosaki, and Tanaka being the heroic protagonist who will do everything to save the poor girl. Then the last scene shows Shirosaki physically assaulting Nakajima and demanding he continue bullying her when he wants to back out, revealing that the victim and aggressor are reversed, and the story will actually follow Nakajima as he attempts to escape her abuse.
• The Vision of Escaflowne. Hitomi gets taken to the world of Gaea at the end of the first episode. When this originally came out in Japan as can be seen in early VHS fansubs, it left off the opening credits on the first episode, just to keep this a real surprise.
• The first chapter of While Cross-Dressing, I Was Hit on by a Handsome Guy! (and the chapters are only about 5 pages long) reveals that the "handsome guy" is actually a bifauxnen. Becomes a Spoiler Title with the new translated title, Handsome Girl and Crossdressing Boy.
• The pre-release marketing for Wonder Egg Priority was extremely vague and not entirely descriptive of its plot or characters, simply describing it as being about lead character Ai finding an egg that'll grant her a wish, and potentially making new friends. You could be forgiven for not expecting it to open with a non-linear structure that reveals one of them is dead from a suicide, and that Ai must find more eggs to battle their traumas and save the rest from their own deaths.
• At the end of the first chapter of World Trigger its revealed that Osamu Mikumo, the teenage boy who got his ass kicked by some bullies earlier in the chapter, is actually an agent of Border (a military organisation designed to fight aliens) and that Yuma Kuga, the mysterious boy that he was defending earlier from said bullies, is actually a Badass Neighbour (AKA one of the aliens Border was built to fight).
• The first chapter (and equivalent episode in the adaptation) in Yona of the Dawn has Su-won, the assumed Betty of the series and all around nice guy, murdering Yona's father King Il in a coup.
• YuYu Hakusho begins with the main character Yusuke dying after being hit by a car. Details involving how he returns to life play a very important role in the rest of the entire story. How he is given the assignment of Spirit Detective and the "ghost files" play directly into the events of the first episode.
• The fact that Yuki Yuna is a Hero is a Magical Girl show at all isn't clear from most of the promotional images, which looks like it's from a mundane Schoolgirl Series. The first half of the pilot is pure Slice of Life and indicates that Yuna is a "hero" because she's in a "Hero Club" that does volunteer/charity work. Then the Forestizing hits...
• In Yuri is My Job!, the end of the first volume reveals that Mitsuki Ayanokouji, the one person who isn't won over by Hime Shiraki's cutesy façade, is actually Mitsuki Yano, Hime's former friend from elementary school. It's almost impossible to talk about Mitsuki's character without mentioning this fact, and the second volume's summary makes no secret of the fact that Hime and Mitsuki knew each other.
• The first chapter of Yuureitou shows us on the last page that the mysterious, handsome Tetsuo is biologically female. We aren't told until chapters later that he's a trans man instead of a Sweet Polly Oliver, though.
• Zombie Land Saga manages to pull it off twice during its first episode. The cold opening sets up the show as being your typical Slice of Life Schoolgirl Series, with main character Sakura's narration being abruptly ended when she gets hit by a truck as soon as she leaves her house. Then after spending the next seven minutes appearing to be a zombie Survival Horror where Sakura learns she's one of the undead herself, the loud and brash Kotaro strides into the scene declaring that Sakura and the other zombies will be a new idol group, finally revealing the show's true identity as a wacky Horror Comedy idol series.

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