Happy Ending Overrides in Anime and Manga.
- Battle Angel Alita: The Motorball arc ended on one of the happiest tones of the series, promptly undone at the start of the next arc.
- Perhaps better called a Bittersweet Ending Override, but the Code Geass recap movies are capped off with Lelouch of the Re;surrection, a follow up to the events after the Zero Requiem. In the movie, the world remains at peace for one year; however, several nations such as the Zilkstan Kingdom still suffer the aftereffects of the Zero Requiem. This eventually leads to the Zilkstan Kingdom kidnapping Nunnally and Suzaku at the beginning of the movie.
- The ending to Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair shows the surviving cast of the first game deleting Alter Ego Junko Enoshima and reverting the surviving Remnants of Despair back to their old selves. The worst they think will happen is filing a bunch of paperwork, right? Wrong. Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak High School begins one day later, when Makoto Naegi gets court-martialed by the leaders of the Future Foundation for harboring war criminals. Then Monokuma returns and forces everyone into another Deadly Game, revealing that a traitor amongst them will be doing the killing.
- Digimon Tamers ends with Takato depressed after The Magic Goes Away until he finds a portal to the Digital World, with the movie Runaway Locomon seemingly acting as an epilogue. However according to Word of God through a drama CD, this was a Non-Serial Movie and the adults sealed off the portal. Although, the story continued through two more drama CDs which saw the kids reunite with their mons again years later.
- While Dragon Ball Super doesn't do this as a whole to Dragon Ball Z, as it's a midquel that takes place before the last three episodes of that series, it does do this to Future Trunks' story. The last time he was seen in the original series, thanks to training in the Z Warriors' timeline he'd managed to become strong enough to take down the Artificial Humans of his world (as well as Imperfect Cell), as well as rebuild all the damage they caused. In Super, new villain Goku Black (a.k.a. Zamasu) decimates his world even more so than the Artificial Humans did, murders his mother right in front of his eyes, and forces Future Trunks to flee back to the main timeline. Even worse, after Zamasu's defeat, he attempts to become reality itself, prompting Goku to have no other choice but to summon the timeline's Omni-King, who completely destroys the timeline to take Zamasu out for good (though the heroes manage to escape), rendering the struggles of its inhabitants between both apocalypses null and void.
- By extension, this also happened to the Future Trunks from Cell's timeline. After saving Goku's life and helping them deactivate the androids, he traveled back to his time to do the same. With the world saved, he decided to make one last trip to the past to celebrate with his friends. However, Cell got to him first.
- Rurouni Kenshin: Part of the reason the titular hero became The Atoner was that he could no longer ignore the fact that he was killing people regardless of how good the motives were. Being indirectly responsible for the death of the woman he loved was the metaphorical last straw. Each major fight afterward, Kenshin speechifies about what he was fighting for, and it takes a Heroic BSoD for him to realize that he can only fight for his own personal peace of mind. The Seisouhen OVA goes on to erase all of that Character Development and have Kenshin still so wracked by guilt that he abandons his family to go Walking the Earth again; it's not until the very end that he returns, only to die in Kaoru's arms, and she dies moments later because he's infected her too. Yahiko has taken up Kenshin's mantle, and his son Kenji eventually comes around to the same point of view, but there's a reason most fans and Nobuhiro Watsuki himself, who didn't write it, deny Seisouhen's existence.
- Eureka Seven AO shows that Eureka and Renton's child is abandoned in another dimension. It's later revealed that Corralian/Human babies can't survive in their home dimension because of high levels of Trapar.
- In Final Fantasy: Legend of the Crystals, though Exdeath is defeated, Mid dies shortly after. Due to taking place centuries later, the heroes have all died by now. And there is a new Big Bad, Deathgyunos.
- Franken Fran: An early chapter in the sequel series Frantic features a young boy dying from a rare disease that even Fran can't cure. So he can die happily, the child's wealthy businessman father and Fran work to create a fantasy world on a private island, where actors and Fran's monsters will help sell the idea that the child has become The Chosen One in another realm. Bittersweet, but still one of the rare happy endings in the series, with everyone involved happily doing their best to make sure this kid has a pleasant remaining years. Now fast-forward twenty chapters, and Fran comes back with a procedure that can cure him. Everyone is overjoyed, until the cured boy — now in the throes of puberty and realizing that since this isn't "the real world", he can do whatever he wants — uses his newfound strength to start raping as many women and torturing as many men and monsters as he can. All the actors start quitting in droves out of horror, anger, and disgust, and the businessman (only caring that his son is finally healthy) commissions Fran to create hundreds of clones for his son to freely rape, enslave, and torture in their stead.Fran: If Roito died, it would have ended nicely. Just a tragic tearjerker, right? But if he doesn't die and things continue like this...
- Gall Force Earth Chapter ends with the heroes stopping GORN, the world saved and mankind, while in for a long time to rebuild, has a bright future ahead. Gall Force New Era revealed GORN survived in data form, managed to infect the network of All of Mankind's territory, and proceeded kill off the human race, save for six women who managed to get lead to safety and launched into space.
- Girls und Panzer: the Ooarai High School is shutting down, but it will remain open if its tankery team manages to win the national tournament. After many trials and hardships, the tournament is won. Girls Und Panzer Der Film opens with an announcement that the school's closing down anyway, as apparently the administration's promise to keep the school open was hollow. Anzu manages to negotiate a promise to have the school remain open if the tankery team wins a match against a University-level team...and this time she gets the agreement in writing so they can't back out of it.
- Gundam:
- Defied in Mobile Suit Crossbone Gundam The Steel Seven. Kincade (aka Seabook) retired from war after the original manga, and he and Cecily settled down in peace. When another threat to Earth is revealed, Tobia initially considers going to him to get his help as a pilot...but decides against it seeing how happy Seabook is, and Tobia can't bring himself to interrupt that.
- Mobile Suit Gundam MS IGLOO ends with the main cast surviving the horrific war and Oliver May leaving the military...Then Mobile Suit Gundam 0083: Rebellion reveals that the IGLOO cast joined Axis Zeon. Considering that throughout the course of IGLOO, the main characters saw many horrors of war, including horrors committed by Zeon, it really feels like a slap in the face for them to just rejoin a group of Zeon remnants and go back for round two.
- ∀ Gundam ends up being this. Because the Black History consists of all previous Gundam series up to that point, almost every single Gundam work is doomed to end in conflict and destruction of the world over the course of millennia. For one Gundam work to exist, the previous must have ended in failure for the protagonists. Ironically, one could argue that Turn A (and the works made between this and Reconquista in G) itself succumbs to this as it must end in setting up the Reguild Century.
- Season 2 of Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans slowly falls into this for the protagonists. Season 1 ended with a positive tone where no one in Tekkadan and their allies, the Turbines (except Biscuit) were killed off. Initially, Season 1 was supposed to have darker storylines such as higher casualties and the public distrusting Tekkadan but the director wanted a lighter and happier tone. As a result, Season 2 picks up these remaining storylines where Tekkadan started losing their friends and were vilified in public by Gjallarhorn's black propaganda. In the end, Tekkadan lost their leader and their Gundam pilots including Mikazuki and Rustal successfully reforms Gjallarhorn without receiving any punishment for his atrocities.
- Naruto had a definite ending in which the eponymous hero, after living many years as a lonely outcast, gained acceptance and recognition from his village, achieved his lifelong dream, managed to bring peace to the ninja world, redeemed his best friend, found love and fathered two children. But the sequel manga, Boruto: Naruto Next Generation kicks off by showing the Village of Konoha destroyed and a now more grown-up Naruto's son, Boruto Uzumaki, fighting a powerful enemy who is implied to have killed his father. Ultimately a Downplayed Trope, since after that Flash Forward we go back and see that there was indeed a long period of peace and prosperity before things went bad due to an unforeseen new conflict.
- A very odd example in Puella Magi Madoka Magica The Movie: Rebellion. Kyubey has turned Homura into a witch and trapped the others in her labyrinth, so that he can try to undo Madoka's wish. He fails, only for someone else to undo Madoka's wish: HOMURA, who absorbs/suppresses Madoka's goddess powers and becomes Lucifer, erases the other girls' memories, and proceeds to remake reality in her own image. To be fair, the ending she puts in place has all five girls (and newcomer Nagisa) alive, with only her and Kyubey really getting the short end of the stick: Homura because she feels unworthy of Madoka's friendship after betraying her, and Kyubey due to being stuffed with all of the curses he had laid on Magical Girls throughout history. So she overrode a happy ending to put a seemingly happier ending in place; it's very contentious among fans, as some see the new ending as happier, others less so.
- The root of the divergence seems to be whether you believe being alive but mortal and trapped in an illusory labyrinth is better than being in magical girl heaven with full agency and immortality, but technically "dead."
- The Concept Movie's
promise of a sequel to the film's events promise another one of these is in store.
- Queen's Blade sees this happen in the Rebellion series, where the victorious Leina hands the mantle of Queen to her sister, Claudette, who goes on to make many reforms as Leina happily retires. The key sticking point is that the Swamp Witch is still free at the end of the first series, and she continues to expand her poisoned domain, starts cursing all of the old heroines to put them out of commission or limit their fighting ability, and corrupts Claudette into a Well-Intentioned Extremist Knight Templar who rules with an iron fist, making the "Rebellion" necessary.
- Rebuild of Evangelion: At the end of the second movie, Shinji succeeds in rescuing Rei from an Angel that had devoured her, inadvertently starting Third Impact in the process, not that he's concerned. The Stinger, however, has Kaworu stop Third Impact, and by the time the third movie begins, nearly all of humanity is shown to have perished when Shinji nearly started Third Impact, and everyone Shinji knew and loved (except Kaworu) is either dead or flat-out hate him, some (like Asuka and Misato) rather irrationally. The Rei that he meets in this movie, to make things worse, is a clone: the Rei he thought he rescued is gone.
- WorldEnd: What Do You Do at the End of the World? Are You Busy? Will You Save Us? has a very bittersweet ending that takes place after a ten year time skip, with it being implied that everyone lived happily ever after during those ten years. Then the sequel, which takes place five years into the time skip, came out and revealed just how horrible things really were. Two days after the main conflict was seemingly resolved, Regul Aire was once again attacked by the 17 Beasts. Although the Warehouse inevitably managed to survive this, it’s not clear if all of its members could say the same.
- Both the Yu-Gi-Oh! manga and anime ended with a conclusively happy ending, but six months later in Yu-Gi-Oh! The Dark Side of Dimensions, trouble is afoot again. Seto Kaiba refuses to let go of the Pharaoh and causes most of the movie's plot by his obsessive desire to duel him again, while he, Yugi, and his friends are menaced by Aigami, who's determined to kill Kaiba and Yugi if needed to stop the Puzzle from being completed. Of course, this movie has to lead into Yu-Gi-Oh! GX, so we all know going in things can't get that bad.
- The first season of Yuki Yuna is a Hero ends with the girls being healed of their disabilities and seemingly retiring as Heroes so that they may enjoy their lives once more. Then the second half of season 2 kicks in, where Togo is used as a sacrifice for the evil Gods before Yuki takes her place, eventually leading to her having to be assimilated to the Sacred Tree... However, the Heroes managed to destroy the evil Gods once and for all and ''finally'' can retire in peace.
- Zatch Bell!: Gash and Kiyomaro saved their home worlds, ensured all participants of the demon war would have their bodies restored and parted ways after Gash was declared the new king, hoping to eventually meet again in "a bigger way than saving the world". The sequel starts a few years later with the Demon Kingdom in ruins after being attacked by seemingly alien entities, Gash being presumed dead and Kiyomaro unable to do much against the new antagonists on his own when a demon child goes looking for his help.
- The first season of Zombie Land Saga ends on a high note, with Franchouchou having a successful show at Arpino and setting forth on the path to become wildly successful idols. Then the first episode of Zombie Land Saga Revenge starts with the girls in the midst of a slump after their last show only attracted 500 fans to a venue that seated 30,000, which sent Kotaro into an alcohol-fueled Heroic BSoD and forced the girls to get part-time jobs.
