Grand Theft Me / Anime & Manga

• In the After War Gundam X Sea of Lorelei arc, there's actually an heroic example of this trope. Lucille has been forcibly kept inside a capsule for 15 years and knows that the enemy is searching for her so they can force her to become their Barrier Maiden... So she possesses the body of a teenage girl who not only has similar powers, but is the adoptive daughter of Lucille's former pupil, now a badass Team Dad and leader of the heroes of the story. That way she could guide the group towards herself, thwart the enemies's plans, and finally meet with her now grown-up pupil one last time so she could say goodbye before she could finally pass away in peace.
• In the All-Purpose Cultural Cat Girl Nuku Nuku OVA series, Eimi plots to kill fellow Robot Girl Nuku Nuku and take her body, because Eimi's body is unstable and expected to explode soon.
• Kira of Angel Sanctuary has spent thousands of years switching into and out of human bodies (with the promise that he'll fulfill whatever wish they want, so long as he gets to take control).
• Mykage does this to Zessica Wong in Aquarion EVOL.
• Black Clover:
  • Thanks to Licht performing Forbidden Magic using the magic stones, the reincarnated elves take over the bodies of humans throughout the Clover Kingdom, mostly of Magic Knights. Their goal is to use the eleventh magic stone in the Shadow Palace to fully complete the reincarnation.
  • It is eventually revealed that, following the massacre of the elves, Licht used the magic stones to turn himself into a demon in order to prevent Zagred from possessing him. It worked, but Lemiel was forced to kill him afterwards, which both agreed was the better alternative.
  • Once he discovered that Liebe, a devil without magic, had escaped to the human world, Lucifero immediately attempted to possess him in order to find a way to manifest his real body as well. The devil's adoptive human mother, Licita, tried to stop him by absorbing Lucifero's mana. While Lucifero manipulated the devil's body to impale her in retribution, Licita lived long enough to dispel the possession. Then, to ensure Liebe's safety, she used her magic to seal him in a five-leaf grimoire she found once, which coincidentally was Licht's former Grimoire and would years later belong to Licita's biological son Asta.
  • When the Elf Reincarnation took place, Yuno was mysteriously able to regain control of himself, with it later being strongly implied that this was due to him being possessed by the soul of Licht's unborn son; since his soul had no ego, it was unable to gain control of Yuno. Months later, in the middle of the Spade Kingdom Raid, he discovers that his Wind Magic was actually (or rather, would've been) the magic of Licht's son, whose soul remained with Yuno after the Elf Reincarnation was undone. Instead, his true attribute is Star Magic, a magic attribute passed down House Grinberryall, the Royal Family of the Spade Kingdom.
• Cibo from Blame! pulls of the heroic version of this a few times. First she hijacks Sana-Kan's body after her own went all head-asplode-y. After the evil robot manages to break through all the Mind Rape ten or so years later Cibo takes over of her past self's who was unfortunate enough to be shunted into the fight by the gravity furnace.
• Bleach's 8th Espada, Szayelaporro Granz, has the Gabriel ability. It allows him to steal the spirit particles of someone's body and recreate himself after being killed, essentially resulting in a Grand Theft Me (only with the extra that the new body looks like the old one).
• In Code Geass, Empress Marianne Vi Britannia has a Geass with this effect, allowing her to survive an assassination attempt without her enemies realizing by jumping into the body of a little girl who happened to witness the shooting. From that point in, she spent most of her time dormant, but could take full control of the girl's body whenever it was convenient.
• The increasingly sympathetic but always horrifically monstrous Doctor Jizabel 'Death' Disraeli of the Count Cain series acquires an assistant within Delilah during Godchild, a middle-aged man with a hormone deficiency giving him the appearance of a young boy, working for the villain in hopes of a cure. They inadvertently bond, with Cassian developing paternal feelings toward the pathetic serial killer, and eventually Cassian dies saving Jizabel in a very touching scene...Jizabel then transplants Cassian's brain into the skull of a recently deceased mutual enemy.
  • Cassian therefore has his dream, but he has the face of a man he really, really hates, has lost his own physical skills and identity, and has to live in hiding. He can't take the High Priest's identity firstly because he couldn't pull it off, secondly because the man was a major figure in the evil cult of evil, and thirdly because he committed a lot of very public crimes before dying. Cassian apparently hides in the sewers of London for a few volumes before reappearing in the finale to be mysterious and helpful.
• Dragon Ball Z:
  • Shortly after Goku's long-awaited arrival on the planet Namek, the leader of the Ginyu Force reveals his special ability of switching bodies at will. Naturally he keeps his own voice in Goku's body (and Bulma's, later) and vice versa.
  • And in the movie World's Strongest, Doctor Wheelo is a scientist who lost his body in an avalanche. His brain is living in a giant mecha until he can find the world's strongest fighter and take their body.
  • In Dragon Ball Super, this turns out to be the explanation behind Goku Black. He's an alternate future Zamasu who used the Super Dragon Balls to switch bodies with his timeline's Goku. Unlike Ginyu, he immediately killed Goku - and his entire family, just because he could.
• Near the end of Eternal Sabbath, Isaac abandons his dying body and takes over Shuro's - while shunting Shuro's mind into his own body, which he set on fire while leaving. However, Mine and Sakaki arrive just before he does this, and Shuro hides his mind in Mine's head without Isaac's knowing it.
• In Fairy Tail, Erza's mother, Irene, Was Once Human, but was converted into a dragon by her own dragon slayer magic when it ran out of control. Desperate to restore her humanity at all costs, she attempted to steal her still human infant daughter's body. The spell failed, since it needed someone compatible that didn't share her blood, so she discarded her daughter like trash and left her to die. When they meet again, and Irene discovers that Erza's friend, Wendy, is a fellow dragon slaying enchantress with a resistance to the dragonification process, she uses the spell to steal hers. Wendy manages to reverse the process by jumping into Irene's discarded body and using the spell herself, and it's eventually revealed at the end that Irene lied about the spell failing on Erza; it would have worked, but Irene snapped out of her madness before she could do it out of disgust with herself and left her at an orphanage out of fear that she would go through with it if/when she succumbed to madness and desperation again.
• Fullmetal Alchemist:
  • From the manga, there is Ling Yao, a Xingese prince that went to Amestris seeking the immortality in order to become emperor, so when Greed tried to take his body he accepted so he would be able to achieve his goal.
  • The second example is Pride, who tried to take Ed's body after his own body started to collapse, but his attempt was thwarted by Kimblee, who mantained his ego within Pride's subconscious and berated Pride for "trying to take over the body of a kind he always looked down into".
  • Among the alchemists seeking the Philosopher's Stone in Fullmetal Alchemist (2003) is one who wants to use it to transfer their soul out of their current decaying body and into that of a new host. Dante, who also happens to be the main villain. Hohenheim's body is also revealed to have belonged to someone else, and is decaying just like Dante's.
  • And of course, also in Fullmetal Alchemist (2003), Ed steals the body of his alternate universe counterpart for about an hour before the counterpart dies, though he was forced into this by the villain and didn't want to steal said body.
• Ghost in the Shell, a Cyberpunk world of removable brains and standardized artificial bodies, makes this easy.
• In his debut in Ghost Sweeper Mikami, Dr. Chaos intends to do this to acquire Mikami's in-her-early-twenties body, and leave aside his original over-one-millennium-old body. However, while he does make a good move in swapping souls with her hapless assistant Tadao Yokoshima, he didn't do terribly much research into him, like his more lust-addled tendencies...
• The premise of Izure Shinwa No Ragnarok is that the gods possess human bodies to fight their wars in the real world. Worse yet, the personalities of the human hosts are completely overwritten.
• Dio Brando JoJo's Bizarre Adventure lost his body and decided to rip his arch-enemy Jonathan Joestar's head off and replace it with his own. He keeps this body for the whole of the third major arc and its anime adaptation. Subverted at the end of Part 3, where DIO seems to do this to Joseph after Jotaro gives Joseph a live-saving transfusion of DIO's blood. Joseph starts acting like DIO pulled this off when he wakes up, only for it to turn out that he was just joking.
• The Colorless King from K has the power to Body Surf, and uses it to body-snatch an Ordinary High-School Student, commit a murder on video, then body-swap with a very powerful King, leaving that King in the body of the teenager framed for murder, with all of the Clans after him. He also body-snatches a Red Clansman and attacks the Blue King, and then body-snatches a Blue Clansman and attacks someone close to the Red King, to make the clans fight.
• In Kaguya Hime, clones are created to be used as organ donors for important personalities. The clones of course really resent learning this. It's played straight, albeit mildly, when the clones are killed and their organs transplanted... but then inverted when the cells of the clone attack the original's body until, somehow, the clone's personality and memories takes over the original's. Also, in one case, the transplant occurred the other way around and the clone was brainwashed to have the original's personality.
• In MPD Psycho, personalities can be transferred, copied, split and joined in any body with apparent ease (at least for the Gakuso experiment subjects). It's a common thing to do when the host body is captive or dying, or simply as a backup. Also, several high-ranking Gakuso members and patrons have younger clones for obvious reasons.
• In My Hero Academia, this is revealed to be All For One's Evil Plan following his final defeat by All Might. The copy of his Quirk he gave Tomura also came equipped with a copy of his consciousness, which at times overpowers Tomura's own. Once Tomura's mind is overwritten entirely, he intends to hijack his body and Take Over the World again.
• The Mystical Laws: Theta explains to Shou that while her people enter Earth as souls to reincarnate into humans, unpermitted souls "walk in." That means they would enter human bodies and learn how to live on Earth. Moreover, Theta explains that countries without a strict census registry system and which deny spiritual presence are easier to "walk in" on, and therefore she and her people chose the Godom Empire for the meantime.
• Naruto:
  • Big Bad Orochimaru is intent on becoming immortal by transferring his mind to other bodies. He seems to have a preference for angsty young males, too, making Sasuke one of his favorite targets.
  • This is the trademark jutsu of Ino and the rest of the Yamanaka Clan, though unlike most variants of this trope, it's a temporary thing and their hosts are able to regain their bodies in a short time. Of course, this won't stop the Yamanaka from walking your body to the edge of a cliff and then giving it back.
  • It turns out Pain is actually a series of bodies taken over and controlled by the piercings all over the various bodies. It's worth mentioning that we are talking about dead bodies here.
  • Kaguya Otsutsuki, the true will behind the Ten Tails, does this to Madara with the help of Black Zetsu's backstab in order to manifest physically again by transforming his body into her own. It's implied that she would have done the same to Obito had he not managed to overpower her will first.
  • In Boruto, it is revealed this is how the Otsutsuki Clan resurrect themselves through the use of Kama, which contains a compressed copy of the user's biological data; the Kama is embedded into a target, which is then overtaken until they become a physiological copy of the user, down to the genetic level. Should the original Otsutsuki be killed, their soul can then possess the target, effectively anchoring them to the world of the living as long as they have a backup body prepared in advance.
• PandoraHearts
  • Chapter 39 shows that Glen has no permanent body of his own and must possess others to continue ruling the Baskerville household. 100 years ago, Gilbert was chosen to be his host. Thanks to Vincent, he escaped this fate.
  • Jack can also do this with Oz. Which is especially worrying, as of late.
  • Leo isn't as lucky as Gilbert. In fact, he was taken over by Glen in one of the recent chapters.
• In RahXephon, the human Big Bad migrates into the body of his female assistant, who gave herself willingly, if only because he's a master manipulator who raised her from a small child. In fact, he's been doing this repeatedly (generally with clones of himself) for the past several ten-thousand years in order to stay alive.
• In Reborn! (2004), Rokudo Mukuro's goal is to take over Tsuna's body (the reason being that he can take revenge on the mafia by using Tsuna's status as the Vongola boss). He has also bodyjacked other characters before, which is how we find out that he can't just be killed.
  • And now we have Deamon Spade, who successfully pulled this on Mukuro.
• In Record of Lodoss War, Karla the Grey Witch does this to both the priestess Leylia and the thief Woodchuck. Leylia gets better. Woodchuck does not.
• The manga Seinei (Baptism of Blood) by Kazuo Umezu. An aging movie star suffering from a disfiguring skin condition has her brain transplanted to her young daughter, and assumes the girl's identity — or so the reader is led to believe. The Reveal is a cop-out that makes no sense whatsoever.
• Sgt. Frog
  • Alien invader frog Kururu, following the orders of his commander Keroro, creates a Gashapon machine that steals the body of the one who activates it, allowing anyone else to swap bodies with that person afterwards.
  • In the manga, Keroro switched bodies with Natsumi and irritated her to the point where she attacked him in her own body. That was actually his plan since the start. He recorded the footage and gave it to his father, claiming that he was the one attacking a human girl in the video.
  • In the anime, season 2 (Japanese season number), Keroro stole Natsumi's body to find her "weakness", but the situation quickly devolved into a "Freaky Friday" Flip.
  • Later in season 6, Kururu switched bodies with Natsumi's grandmother, using that to make her obey him and Keroro. In the same story, after discovering what had happened, Natsumi switched bodies with Keroro's mother and had her revenge. However... Keroro's mother just disappears with Natsumi's body afterwards, wanting to sightsee Earth. Eventually she goes on a date with Giroro, buys a bikini and goes to the beach with him.
  • In season 7, Keroro planned to switch bodies with Tamama, but everything goes out of control and he ends up switching accidentaly with a human girl, Momoka... who decides to not tell anyone about the situation in order to hang around with her crush, Fuyuki, for longer. And the Fuyuki who was with her turns out to be Tamama, who switched bodies with Fuyuki and locked the real one, who was in Tamama's body, inside a cardboard box.
• Azalie Caith-Sith uses white magic to trade places with Childman Powderfield in Sorcerer Stabber Orphen. The reasons for this are very, very twisted: it's in part revenge because she believes he tried to kill her when she became Bloody August, in part an Evil Plan to achieve revenge towards the Tower of Fangs in itself, and in part to be close to the man she's been in love with ever since she was a teenage girl.
• Soul Eater's Medusa does this to a little girl named Rachel. In the manga, Medusa moves from Rachel's body into her sister Arachne's after getting Maka to kill her (Arachne, not Rachel who is recovered safely); in the anime, Maka manages to Take a Third Option and exorcise Medusa out without harming Rachel, then kills her.
• Star Driver: Kou a.k.a. Needle Star's first phase power is to pull one of these — and she can let someone else take over a second person's body at the same time.
• The Dr. Evil from Steam Detectives kidnapped the hero's nurse sidekick and put his brain in her body after his own body got blown up. Afterwards he wore a black trenchcoat and mummy bandages to conceal his/her identity.
• In Strike the Blood the protagonist Koujou gets his body stolen by Yuuma, his childhood friend. Meanwhile, he is stuck in a girl's body.
• High Wizard Razen in That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime does this to Shogo. It is impled that he has done this many times before, which is how he has served his country for centuries.
• Time Stranger Kyoko reveals in the final volume that the protagonist Kyoko is the one performing the grand theft on Earth's princess. She's actually the daughter of the God of Time Chronos and gods get born without physical bodies, so they have to take over a human's body to grow up.
• Thriller Restaurant does this when Anko's wart takes over the real Anko's body and mind, as well as forcibly trading faces with her victim. If it wasn't for Shou and his wasp, the wart would've been the only Anko left.
• Yu-Gi-Oh!:
  • The Virtual World filler arc revolves around this, most of the action involves the villains dueling the heroes to win the right to take over their bodies. The only one who succeeds is one of the Big Five, Ota, who takes over Honda's body after he deliberately loses a duel in order to save Jonouchi's sister, Shizuka.]] According to this arc, this is also why Gozaburo adopted Kaiba in the first place; he envisioned him as a replacement body first for his seriously-injured son, and then for himself. Although, it later turns out that Ota didn't actually take Honda's body, since the entire virtual world is literally virtual and all their bodies are still in the real world. Noa succeeds in stealing Mokuba's body, but later changes his mind and gives him his body back.
  • In Yu-Gi-Oh!: Capsule Monsters, the evil side of Alexander the Great does this on his descendent, Alex Brisbane.
• Variable Geo: The purpose of the VG tournament is to gauge which of the participants is the most powerful, making them the ideal host to use as Miranda's vessel. When The Jahana Group learns that Satomi's latent fighting potential is one of the highest on record, they manipulate her into entering the tournament to that end.
• Spirit Migration: An entity wakes up inside a dungeon and finds himself able to possess various monsters in the dungeon. He doesn't know what he is, or was as he lacks any memories prior to waking up. He also has the nifty power of hammerspace by taking items into his spiritual body. He tries to befriend humans, but he cannot speak their language in a monster's body and cannot control humans.

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