Humanity Ensues / Anime & Manga

• The titular Nuku-Nuku of All-Purpose Cultural Cat Girl Nuku Nuku was originally a cat, but her brain was implanted in a robot body to save her, also giving her human-level intelligence (so technically an Uplifted Animal). She's not technically human, but that's not apparent unless her robotic cat ears are up.
• Played with in Bleach, where Yoruichi first appears as a snarky, deep-voiced cat, but is later revealed to be a hot, dark-skinned woman.
• Cube×Cursed×Curious provides an unusual variant, in that the ones gaining human forms are inanimate objects. Still, the idea is the same.
• Also the entire premise of The Devil is a Part-Timer!, where the Devil, his loyal underling, and his sworn enemy are transported to modern Japan, lose their powers, and become broke young adults working as minimum-wage employees.
  • "Are these... human hands?"
  • In a subversion of the trope normally having them return to their original forms at the end of the arc, they all end up deciding that they are actually much happier living ordinary lives as humans. Since their enemies aren't content to leave them alone, they're forced to use their demonic forms anyway...but only as a Super Mode when they have to fight; humanity remains their default form.
• Inverted in Digimon Frontier; one of the main themes is of the human children coming to terms with their new identities as digimon. For example, this theme becomes apparent in one episode in which Duskmon inflicts a Lotus-Eater Machine on Takuya, sending him back to the human world, on the day he left for the digital world, in the form of a childlike digimon. Due to this, Takuya starts to realise that he's no longer completely human.
• This trope is the premise behind DNA wa Oshiete Kurenai - animals all over the world have suddenly transformed into cute young girls with animal attributes, and they attend a research and training facility where they learn about humans.
• Mink's goal throughout Dragon Half is getting her hands on the magical People Potion and becoming pure human as opposed to a Half-Human Hybrid. In the end, this trope happens to elf-girl Lufa, when Mink gives her the potion in order to restore her after she's turned into a toad.
• Chao/Katy (renamed "Chloe" in Unico: Awakening) the cat in The Fantastic Adventures of Unico wants to be a witch, so the kind-hearted little unicorn transforms her into a human girl (complete with cute outfit!). Katy doesn't believe Unico transformed her, so he returns her to her original form and refuses to make her human again because she's selfish (well, she is a cat). After Katy saves the life of the old woman she thought was a witch, Unico changes her back into a human.
  • Similarly, Kukuru the Big Bad of Unico and the Magic Island is a simple puppet who willed himself to life through sheer anger and hatred (and sunlight) to avenge his abandonment by humans.
• The Fox & Little Tanuki: The various youkai characters are capable of taking on human forms to better get around human society. Inexperienced characters like Manpachi have a little trouble getting it right, as their tails show.
• The Fruit of Evolution: Two of the members of Seiichi's harem started out as animals before evolving into humans. Saria was a pink gorilla who turned into a gorgeous redhead upon being fatally impaled while protecting Seiichi, and is able to switch between both forms at will from then on. Meanwhile, Rurune was a talking donkey and became human when she ate some Evolution Fruit seeds. Unlike Saria, she cannot revert to her donkey form.
• Ponta of Guru Guru Pon-chan becomes human by eating a magic bone.
• The plot of Inumimi - the protagonist's father turns their three pet dogs into human girls.
• In Kanon, Makoto is an updated version of the Japanese kitsune fox-woman, a fox who takes female human form to seduce a man.
• One significant difference between Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's Portable: The Gears of Destiny and Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha Detonation is that the Materials were changed to being Yuri's pet cats-turned-familiars in the latter. Levi even complains that human bodies are less convenient after regaining her memories.
• In Magi: Labyrinth of Magic, all of the nonhuman races of Alma Torran, save the Dragons and the Red Lions, were turned into humans when they crossed over into the new world. Most of the present day humans are their descendants.
• Mahou no Mako-chan revolves around a mermaid who becomes a human girl in order to find the boy she loves (it IS a loose adaptation of The Little Mermaid, after all).
• In the Not Safe for Work manga Manatsu no Yoru no Yume, the hero's pet rabbit is transformed into a human girl after he wishes for a girlfriend on Tanabata night.
• Hippo in Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch is a penguin that, when he has been living on the surface long enough, attains an alternate form of a cute little boy. Oddly enough, he finds his human form ugly and his penguin form attractive. Additionally, the Dark Lovers are actually sea animals turned into humans. Same with the Black Beauty Sisters, who become kemonomimi instead.
• At the end of Mini Moni The Movie: Okashi na Daibōken!, the four fairies become human children after the spells wear off.
• In Moriking, the king candidates and their soldados suddenly evolve into human form as part of their mutations to take part in the battle to become King of the Forest. For the most part, all of them take it surprisingly well and adapt to human life pretty easily, with Moriking and Oki happily being their owner's pets while Oka blends in as an ordinary teenage girl.
• In Niku Kyu, the hero's cat turns into a Catgirl. He's not very happy about it (mainly because his parents are forcing him to marry her in the belief that she is a god who will bless them).
• Onegai My Melody:
  • Kuromi in episode 23, her goal being to seduce Keiichi. He actually seems to be very attracted to "Kurumi Nui" (as she calls herself), but she is forced to flee in the middle of the dance in order return to the spell-casting circle before all the magical candles blow out, otherwise she'd be turned into a tapir.
  • In another episode, Mana's pet frog Kojiro got turned into a human boy. He retained amphibian strengths and weaknesses like leaping ability and sensitivity to cold. He declared his love for Mana and kissed her before getting changed back.
• Tony Tony Chopper of One Piece is a textbook example of the mascot variant. He got this way from eating the Human Human fruit, and unlike most examples of this trope, prefers to stay in his hybrid form.
  • Notably, while his "human" form is humanoid, it is roughly 10 ft tall and covered in fur, making him resemble a sasquatch more than anything else.
• Pretty Cure:
  • In Suite Pretty Cure ♪, Seiren had the ability to shapeshift into anything she wanted to, usually as a human to better deal with Hibiki and Kanade. However, when a combination of being brainwashed and Hummy's devotion to her caused her to be conflicted with her emotions and attempt to save Hummy, the collar that allowed her to shapeshift was destroyed and she became human... and Cure Beat. She's quick to accept she can't change back, but it takes her longer to accept people accepting her.
  • Tropical-Rouge! Pretty Cure has Laura turn into Cure La Mer...and then after de-transforming, discovers that she's no longer a mermaid.
  • In Wonderful Pretty Cure!, Komugi, originally a dog, was so full of determination to protect her owner from a monstrous ram that she transformed into a human, and into Cure Wonderful.
• The title character of Princess Tutu is a duck who is granted the power to transform into a human, and then again into a Magical Girl. Her name in Japanese is, in fact, Duck (Ahiru), and she regains her duck form whenever she accidentally lets slip a quack.
• Ranma ½:
  • Subversion: most animals don't care much about being turned into humans (or even other animals, for that matter). The creatures conquered and captured by the Musk Dynasty, however, are justified in their hostility by virtue of being naturally aggressive, powerful beasts that take issue with being domesticated in the first place; the rage they express after being dunked in the Spring of Drowned Girl and locked in the form of women comes less from the shock of being human than from simply wanting to rip their captors a new one.
  • Played for laughs in the backstory of the Japanese Nanniichuan arc, where a traveling monk created a Nanniichuan outlet in Japan and threw all the naughty foxes that were plaguing a specific precinct into its water... only for them to come out as equally naughty men, so the people were if anything worse off than before.
  • In the second Non-Serial Movie, Nihao, My Concubine, the Traveling Landmass of Togenkyō has a unique magical spring on it that transforms any living creature it touches into a human man, regardless of species or gender. Animals turned into human men by its touch remain a Little Bit Beastly in appearance, and vary in intelligence; the Dragons of the film consist of a monkey-man named Sarutoru, a rooster-man named Toristan, and a dog-man named Wonton, and whilst Sarutoru and Toristan are highly intelligent and fully civilized, Wonton is the group's Dumb Muscle. The Big Bad also demonstrates the spring's power by pouring it on a coconut crab, which in classic Ranma ½ fashion doesn't even seem to realize it's become human.
• In the Sailor Moon franchise:
  • Luna the cat is capable of attaining a human form in every permutation of the franchise. In The '90s anime, she turns into an adult human briefly in the S Movie, which was based on an arc in the manga where she also attained human form. In the manga, she does so more than once, as do her fellow cats Artemis (her lover) and Diana (their child). In Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon, however, her human form is that of a young child.
  • In the manga only, Rei's crows, Phobos and Deimos, briefly become humans in order to grant Rei the Mars Crystal during the Dead Moon Circus arc. They're later revealed to be denizens of the planet Coronis, where Sailor Lead Crow also hails from. Just in time for them to both get killed by her.
• Sgt. Frog:
  • In one episode, Kururu invents a device that turns animals into humans, and the Keronians take a trip to the zoo to find recruits for their forces. Despite their best efforts, they don't find any animals who are either able or willing to act as soldiers.
  • Giroro's cat sometimes turns into a human. Apparently she's jealous of Natsumi, and/or peeved that Natsumi doesn't notice Giroro's crush on her.
  • Giroro himself becomes human in episode 196.
• In Soul Eater, Blair is introduced as an apparent witch (it's ambiguous how different from humans the Mage Species is in this universe), but later reveals herself to be a cat who can transform into a Catgirl.^note And if her cat ears are hidden under her hat, you wouldn't know she's not human except for her catlike behavior.
• In Spirit Circle, this was to be Rune's reward once Fortuna accomplished his goals. She eventually gets her wish when she is reincarnated as Fuuta's future child.
• Ryo-ohki gets one of these in the Tenchi Muyo! OVA series. This leaves her with four forms: cute cuddly critter, little kid, sexy teen/adult, and Cool Ship. She's usually shown in either critter or little kid forms (since she has no experience walking on two legs, she's learning how as a toddler like a normal human would). For the record, she started with just the battleship, and was given the cute critter form on her rebirth.
• Umi Monogatari has villainous examples. Any sea creature Sedna corrupts takes on a human form.
• One chapter of Urusei Yatsura has a bat working for a loser vampire, and recruits Ataru to find a fair maiden for the vampire to bite (or alternatively just a decent amount of blood from a maiden). Payment for services is a kiss from a pretty girl, but since the bat doesn't know any girls (he hired Ataru for this), it secretly turns itself into a hot babe... and is thoroughly creeped out by her reflection. She struggles to give Ataru a very brief peck, then flees in abject nausea, and is later seen (in bat form) furiously gargling and brushing his teeth.

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