Laser Guided Amnesia / Anime & Manga

Laser-Guided Amnesia in Anime and Manga.

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• 3×3 Eyes:
  • Pai suffers from a supernatural case in the second part of the series. Pai and her grandparents believe that she's an Ordinary High-School Student who lost all of her memories in a bus accident, but in actuality she's a 300-year-old immortal Sanzhiyan Humkara who had her memories sealed by The Dragon so she couldn't interfere with their plans using a spell known as "Chuan Lingling" (Spirit-boring Diamond). They even gave her and an old couple false memories and photos to give her a "backstory" and a belief that monsters don't really exist. This sealing also has a tragic twist: The Dragon used a minor demon called Hua She as a basis to "forge" the seal on Pai, who would enforce the seal and keep the Sanjiyan Unkara dormant. But since Pai has a split personality between a Genki Girl and Tsundere, the seal has an unexpected side effect — Hua She herself lost her memory, and thanks to the Masquerade, she believes that she's Pai. And when the good guys finally confront The Dragon to get her memories back, that means Houasyou has to accept that she's actually a demon and won't be able to be with her love Yakumo because he loves the real Pai, not her.
  • Later in Trinetra, Connery (aka Bem Madurai, the five-thousand years old monk who sealed Benares in Wales) gave himself amnesia so that noone of Benares' servants would bother him or obtain dangerous info through his memories, and thus he's initially introduced as an amoral owner of an underground fight club with no sympathy for Yakumo and Pai's reasons. The shockwave of an explosion and a hit on his head awaken his memories.
• In Battle Angel Alita, Doc Ido suffered total mental collapse when Desty Novas revealed the dark secret of Tiphares: all of the citizens of Tiphares, such as Novas and Ido, get their brains replaced with chips at the age of nineteen. Unable to live with this revelation, Doc Ido recorded a final farewell to Alita, erased his own memories a feat made relatively easier since he has a chip for a "brain", and started life anew as an ordinary doctor.
• A side effect of the serum that Eren was injected with in Attack on Titan. Levi points out how (in)convenient this is.
  • On a grander scale, this is the power of the Founding Titan, which can alter and erase memories of any Eldian. King Karl, the first king of the walls, used this power to make the people of the walls forget everything about the universe and make them believe that they were the last surviving humans in the world. It later turns out that Zeke Yeager, Eren's half-brother, is able to alter and erase memories of any Eldian that ingests his spinal fluid. Part of Zeke's plan involves getting his followers to sneak his spinal fluid into wine, which makes him able to forcefully transform them into mindless titans (by screaming) that he can then control.
• In The Big O, a major part of the original plot is that everyone in Paradigm City — and apparently whatever is left of the world, as well — has amnesia of unknown origin. Unable to recall who they were before the incident (but still retaining most of their day-to-day survival skills), everyone begins life anew. Then odd and disturbing reminders start appearing, many years later... The finale implies that they're all characters in an anime series.
• Black★Rock Shooter: When an Otherself is killed, their human counterpart screams in agony, faints, and then wakes up with no memory of whatever caused them grief.
• Bleach has a similar memory erasing plot device, with the downside that the blank is generally filled in by something random from the person's imagination. It has fun with what the blanks are filled with, such as a particularly strange character who "remembers" that the reason there is a hole in the classroom and a missing student is because an army of monkeys burst into class and dragged him away.
  • They later gain an upgraded version without that particular problem, but by this time half the cast has some level of spirit power, and thus the memory modification fails to one degree or another on them.
    • The third movie has villains that can perform a different method that erases entire characters from others' memories. It's surprisingly thorough to the point where a character who trained like mad to get strong enough to save an erased character forgets his training and thinks he's much weaker than he actually is. It can't erase physical evidence, however, and Crazy-Prepared Urahara immediately notices discrepancies in his notes and memory and figures something's up. And The Hero's powers are so intrinsically tied to having met the erased character that it doesn't work right on him.
• In Boys over Flowers, Tsukasa is afflicted with bizarrely specific amnesia that causes him to retain all of his memories except those specifically related to the series's heroine, his girlfriend Tsukushi.
• In Chapter 9 of Castle Town Dandelion, after Aoi resolved a department-store robbery with Absolute Order, she further ordered all bystanders to forget what happened, thus invoking this. There's a justification to this—that character feels their power is too repugnant for them to use.
• Code Geass:
  • Lelouch Lamperouge uses his Geass to erase his close friend Shirley's memories of him because she found out that he was Zero and the man responsible for her father's death and she had shot someone after they saw Lelouch's face.
  • Around the same time, the character Viletta, who was shot by Shirley had fallen into the bay, hitting her head and getting amnesia almost immediately after learning Zero's identity. Convenient. She gets better.)
  • Suzaku Kururugi had repressed memories from the start of the series after, at the age of 10, he killed his dad the ex-Prime Minister of Japan and doomed his homeland to Britannian rule. He was so traumatized that he blocked his own memories of the issue for years, until C.C. forces it out of him in a confrontation between him and Zero (though in her defense, she didn't have any idea of what she was making him see, only using her powers with the intention to stop him). Mao would do this later again via his Geass and some quick wit, cause a Mind Rape for the poor guy).
  • Later on, C.C. loses her powers and is temporally stricken with amnesia; for her, it's even more severe than the usual case, since she reverts to the state she was in at the last point in her life before receiving a Geass: a ten-year-old slave-girl from the Dark Ages. Though she can still speak whatever modern language they're speaking.
  • Plus, at the start of season two, The emperor uses a memory-manipulation ability to erase all of Lelouch and his classmates' memories regarding Zero, Lelouch's heritage, and Nunnally.
  • Lelouch also does this to himself when Mao holds Nunnally hostage; in order to stop him reading his mind and finding out his plan to save her, he tells Suzaku what to do, then mindwipes himself before heading up to face Mao. It works.
  • Anya suffers from frequent loss of memory, having gaps of time where she has no idea what she did. This is due to Marianne taking control of her body. She tries to compensate by documenting everything she does on a blog for future reference.
• Some of the Imported Alien Phlebotinum ("M.E.") in Darker than Black can do this. It's generally used to make people forget about contact with Contractors or to Unperson them.
• In Death Note, owners of the titular object have the choice to give it up at any time, losing all memories of it in the process. However, any repercussions suffered as a result of actually using it (half-lifespan lost for those with the Shinigami Eyes, for instance) remain firmly in place. This is a hilarious example of this trope being played absolutely straight. So Light and Misa, for instance, forget not only the existence of the notebooks and their use of them, but also everything incriminating relating to Kira, while retaining the knowledge that the mass-murderer Kira exists. It not only wipes their knowledge of their own guilt, but that of the other, too, right down to the presence of the secret compartment in Light's watch! It only makes sense if you assume that they're reconstructing the holes in their memory in order to make sense of them — "I had no means to kill all those people, therefore I can't be Kira, so obviously none of this can have happened". How to Read states that Light's memories of certain events are altered "so that they make sense". For example, he remembers the fact that he met Naomi Misora, but he doesn't remember most of their conversation, because the lies he told her would only make sense if he were Kira.
• Done to Hisoka in Descendants of Darkness by Muraki in order to erase the memory of the night that Muraki raped him and marked him with a slowly fatal curse. Muraki later removed the memory block when he thought it would be amusing to make him remember it.
• In Dragon Ball, it's revealed that Goku, as a child, fell off a waterfall and bonked his head, erasing any memories he had as the low-class Saiyan warrior Kakarot. This proved to be a good thing as Goku was planned to raze Earth to be sold by Freeza. Instead, he became instrumental to Freeza's defeat. Twice.
  • The last wish to be made on the Dragon Balls in Z—at least, canonically—is for Earth's population to forget everything about Majin Buu, so the now-reformed Mr. Buu could live a new life without his many, many have-been-victims being afraid of him.
• In Excel♡Saga Excel gets amnesia after Il Palazzo shoots her and leaves her for dead. In this case, it's unclear if she repressed her memories or lost her memories because she was hit by a car.
  • In the manga Excel gets this twice. The first time was brief and played for laughs. The second time it lasts a lot longer, and her personality is flipped. It is also suggested this isn't the first times she has lost her memories.
• Fairy Tail: Jellal, who doesn't remember any of his past crimes or his own terrible life. The only thing he remembers is the name Erza.
• Used regularly in Fruits Basket, whenever someone learns too much about the Sohma family, thanks to the local doctor and family member Hatori Sohma. Tohru is threatened with this, Momiji's mother chose to forget him because she could not cope with the curse, and Kana had to go through it after being put through Mind Rape.
• A reoccurring plot point in Fushigi Yuugi, first seen when Yui feeds Tamahome a drug to make him forget who he is and turn evil.
  • Second, as Amiboshi turns out to be Not Quite Dead but doesn't remember his past at all. The amnesia was guided by his new family, who are big fans of this trope and try to "help" Miaka by pointing some amnesia her way, too.
    • Done again to Amiboshi by Suboshi, no less. Amiboshi tells his twin to not fight the Suzaku warriors and take the amnesia-inducing juice/soup. Suboshi does and kisses Amiboshi because Suboshi doesn't want to forget Yui, on whom he has a crush.
  • Third, in the OVA series, Tenkou uses MacGuffin Spheres to systematically erase Taka/Tamahome's memories of his allies.
• Necrolyzation has this effect on people in Gungrave. It also usually strips the reanimated person of emotions as well. The protagonist undergoes said process and suffers terrible headaches whenever he recovers a fragment of his memory. Conversely, in the videogame he doesn't get the headaches, and never quite gets over his memory loss—with a few crucial exceptions.
• Implied in Hetalia: Axis Powers with Ludwig aka Germany. If this is the case, he probably lost his childhood memories of being the Holy Roman Empire as time passed and he fought in too many wars.
• In the second, '80s series of Himitsu no Akko-chan, the title heroine carelessly outs herself as a Magical Girl in front of her whole community of friends. While at first her empowering entity doesn't take it well, stripping Akko of her powers and her reflected image, later settles for a new, stealthier mirror and free Laser-Guided Amnesia for everyone involved.
• High School D×D:
  • Rias Gremory tells Issei Hyodo in volume 1 that fallen angels and devils can selectively erase themselves from human memories, such as Yuuma Amano with Issei's two guy friends, and later Rias with Issei's parents after his mom catches them in his room naked.
  • At the conclusion of their battle with Issei's clone in BorN, Rias and Issei's memories of that battle and her corruption are erased when they return to the real world.
• In Interstella 5555, the main characters, an alien music group, are put in a machine that changes their memories to make them believe they are human.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
  • In Stardust Crusaders, the Mannish Boy's Stand, Death 13, can trap people in a dream world and kill them in their sleep. If the victim manages to wake up in the real world, however, they wouldn't have any recollection of what they experienced until they're back in the dream world.
  • Diamond is Unbreakable: Rohan can use Heaven's Door to write inscriptions into people to make them do or forget whatever he wants them to.
  • Diavolo in Golden Wind can erase time with his Stand, King Crimson. If anyone within the vicinity is affected, they forget whatever action they were doing in the time that was erased.
  • Miumiu in Stone Ocean has the Stand, Jail House Lock, which causes the victim to only be able to remember three things at once, which she uses to distract her opponents to dangerous effect.
  • JoJolion: Daiya's Stand, California King Bed, can forcibly steal memories from people if they were to break a rule in one of her games and store them in chess pieces. If the pieces are destroyed then the stolen memories are lost forever, unless the victim is able make Daiya touch their shadow to return the rest of the memories.
• Kaguya attempts to do this on Onodera with a taser in Kaguya-sama: Love Is War after the latter overhears her sleep talking about her Secret Relationship with Shirogane. Fortunately, Onodera manages to unknowingly diffuse the situation before she has the chance, so we never find out if it would have worked.
• In Kamisama Kiss Mikage made Tomoe forget his relationship with Yukiji.

• Karin: The vampires can hypnotically erase memories of the feeding from the people they bite.
  • In the manga, this happens to Karin herself. Once she's freed of the curse, she no longer has any vampire traits, so her family erases her memory of them in order to allow her to live as a human, who thinks she was orphaned. Apparently, they'd been planning to do so for four years, preparing her mind so that she would only forget about vampires and nothing else.
• In Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple, Elder Furinji has a technique called, 'Shockwave of Forgetfulness', a soft punch that can cause the victim to lose his memory. He did it once on a crime lord in Thailand to make him forget he was evil, and again on Kenichi- to make him forget about the really expensive drawing Elder bought, which he was going to tell Miu about.
• The Wolkenritter of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's appeared to have been programmed to forget what really happened whenever the Book of Darkness filled all 666 pages. This gap in their memories greatly disturbed Vita when she realized that she couldn't remember what became of their previous masters.
• Kaito of Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch presumably gets a bump on the head that causes him to selectively forget everything about Lucia and mermaids. Of course, this turns out to be an evil plot (and a rather lucky one for Michel at that— he gets the energy from Kaito's memories and blackmail to try and convert Lucia to his side).
• Milk Crown and its sequels. The protagonist, Oto Tachibana, loses her memory at least three times.
• One of the types of mushi in Mushishi can cause this, erasing all of your personal memories up to that point. This is precisely what happened to Ginko as a child, something that also left him unaware of his other condition...
• In the sixth My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! novel, we get to see the Mind Manipulation power of Atsuko's presence in Sophia: the former caused the latter to write a summary on Fortune Lover II in Japanese language, in the latter's hand, and put it inside a book the latter's going to lend to Catarina. Afterward, the former wiped the latter's memory of ever doing this, so when Catarina asks the latter about the note, the latter does not recall writing anything in a language she know nothing about.
• Crops up several times in Mx0, like Taiga's memory of the entrance exam and the Lotus-Eater Machine portion of the exam, in which leaving the 'machine' let you pass but erased your memories (which you kept if you failed).
• In Nanaka 6/17, the title Nanaka, after being told off by the Childhood Friend she kept nagging and then taking a header down some stairs, loses all memory of everything that happened to her after the age of six. Nanaka's six year old personality simply assumes a wish she'd made to grow up right away actually worked.
• Negima! Magister Negi Magi:
  • Asuna did this to herself so she could live a normal life. Apparently, she didn't notice not having any memory of her past or the planet she was living on, although her apparent age may have allowed her to Hand Wave the bit about her own past.
  • Happens later on to Yue after the Gateport incident randomly scatters Ala Alba across the Magic World. She has the bad luck to land right in front of a magic student on a broomstick, who not only gives her a knock on the head, but accidentally discharges a memory erasure spell, causing her to lose all of her memories except her name.
  • At the start of the series, Negi attempts this on Asuna when she finds out he's a mage. It does not go as planned. Otherwise, Negima avoids this by having the masquerade instead of removing memories of crazy happenings, just prevent them from noticing all the craziness going on.

• One Piece:
  • After meeting the cute mermaid Camie/Kaimie/Keymie, Zoro promptly deletes his memory of having met the not so cute mermaid Kokoro through sheer willpower.
    Zoro: A mermaid, huh? (deletes his memory of Kokoro) First time I've seen one.
    Chopper: HE ERASED IT! HE JUST... ERASED HIS MEMORY!
  • A more straightforward example occurs later in the Dressrosa Arc with Sugar, who's fruit power not only turns people into toys but erases everyone else's memories of those people. Which makes for some drama when the toys try to get their friends and family to remember them and are seen as defective and taken away, more drama when Robin is turned into a toy. When Usopp manages to knock Sugar out and undo her powers, all the toys transform back into humans and everyone else remember them at once, causing a mass upheaval of Doflamingo's regime.
  • An even more straightforward example comes in the form of Charlotte Pudding, who ate the Memory-Memory Fruit. This fruit allows the user to pull memories out from someone's head in the form of a strip of film and perform edits on them. The first use seen had our user take a pair of scissors and cut out memories from Reiju that she could've used to inconvenience Pudding later on. Reiju does notice a gap in her memories when she comes to, and Sanji, who had witnessed that point in time in secret, fills Reiju in on what happened.
• Overlord (2012): Ainz' first contact with the natives of the new world is with two little girls who are understandably terrified of the giant skeleton who just murdered an armored knight intent on killing them and turned him into an undead abomination. So he edits their memories so they remember he saved them, but not what he looks like (he always wears a mask, a helmet or an illusory face from that point on).
• In PandoraHearts, this is played straight for many of the characters. Gil wishes to know who his master really is, Alice wants to regain her memories of her life before she became a chain, and Oz wants to discover the truth behind his sin. The results are very, very disturbing. Where shall we begin?
  • Ah, the heroine, Alice the Bloody Black Rabbit, a rough girl who used to be a human until her best friend, a stuffed rabbit named Oz, came to life and was used as a tool of destruction against his will. She killed herself to end his suffering and then her soul took over his body, stealing his power, wiping her memories and her sister's in the process.
  • Gilbert, Oz's little servant who used to be Jack's servant Actually, he was Glen's servant, and he acquired amnesia via being stabbed in the back by Jack. Oz is an Artificial Human whose true form is an Animate Inanimate Object; a stuffed plush rabbit that came to life and wound up in his contractor's body that was de-aging and believed himself to be human. He lost all his memories of being B-rabbit somehow.
  • Also, Elliot lost his memories of killing his own family with Humpty Dumpty's help.
• Masako Natsume from Penguindrum plays this trope to a T by using her laser-guided slingshot to have all Kanba's ex-girlfriends to forget about him at all.
• Captain Dan in Planet Robo Danguard Ace Ichimonji Dantetsu, the hero's long-lost father turns up with an un-removable mask after 10 years as the villain's mind-controlled slave — the mask has not only removed his memories from before it was put on, but seems (since a convenient memory-viewer establishes that he has no memories prior to the accident that broke the mask's control mechanism...) to have prevented new ones forming — however Dan retains his almost unstoppable willpower, a drive for excellence (and revenge!) AND his ace piloting skills which are practically off the charts... After one too many bumps on the head he gets better.
• Ramia is struck with this in the third Pretty Sammy OVA, "Super Kiss". She encounters an alien lifeform which absorbs all over evil traits, leaving her to wander the beachside as a kindly young woman as Rumiya and Pixy Misa try to find her — both Tsunami and Sasami have no idea what's going on as Tsunami thinks that Ramia is there... which is a doll in front of her. She quickly remembers everything, though, when she finds Pixy Misa and Pretty Sammy fighting the creature.
• In Pokémon: The First Movie, Mewtwo erases everyone's memories of himself, the clones and the island. He tries to do this again to everyone in the sequel, but Meowth stops him—so he just wipes Team Rocket's memories instead.
  • He even did this in Pokémon Live!, though as he hits MechaMew2 with enough of Ash's memories to make him faint, it may have been accidental.
• Ranma ½:
  • Shampoo uses a technique on Akane to erase all memories of Ranma. She remembers every other person and thing, even when not knowing Ranma means she wouldn't know how she became familiar with them. Apparently, Ranma's father is living with her for no discernible reason. Shampoo's amnesia technique has the added benefit of preventing the victim from ever relearning the suppressed memory, so every time Ranma was re-introduced to Akane she'd forget the latest introduction as soon as he left her line of sight.
  • After accidentally smacking his head with a watermelon in a training accident, Kunō retains the formidable skills he gained through his watermelon training, but forgets his name, his pompous demeanor, and how much money he owes to Nabiki (none, but she's not going to say that). Worst of all, his self-restraint is gone, turning his infatuation with the Pigtailed Girl into a stalker obsession that nearly ends badly for her.
  • One anime episode goes beyond this into Loss of Identity; after falling into the pond and hitting his head, Ranma starts thinking of himself as really being a girl. "She" hates violence, wants to give up martial arts, faints at the sight of blood, freaks out and starts crying after being returned to male form, talks about becoming a bride and goes bra shopping with Akane, has to have Akane help her go to the toilet because "she" can't deal with either set of body parts, rebukes Akane for her tomboy ways and, after Akane finally breaks down and admits that this isn't Ranma and she wants the real Ranma back, "she" tells her that it can't happen. Fortunately, as with Laser-Guided Amnesia, Ranma is restored to normal after Akane knocks "her" back into the pool and makes him hit his head again.
• Elie gets this twice in Rave Master. She doesn't know her name or how to control her magic, but she can remember how to read a language no longer used in the modern world.
• In Red Garden, the four main girls remember little more than brief, vague flashes of the night they died and certain events connected to this. This gets resolved later, but it turns out that Laser-Guided Amnesia is a side effect of revival in general.
• At the end of the first season of the 90s anime adaptation of Sailor Moon, when Usagi mentally wishes to have a normal life, she and the other Inner Sailor Senshi get resurrected, but end up losing their memories of not only being Sailor Senshi, but also of being friends with each other. Luna does not even fix this until the second season, when the Makaiju Aliens cause trouble in Tokyo.
• Sky Wizards Academy: Somehow, those killed by the devil beetles are forgotten by people who lack magic power. This leads to a lot of angst in Misora's backstory, as her mother was a Sky Wizard who died in battle, which caused even Misora's own father to forget she existed.
• The Sorcerer King of Destruction and the Golem of the Barbarian Queen: The protagonist, Dasai Nemaki, loses most of his memories when he's summoned to another world. He can remember most of the political and historical details of his home world, but he draws a blank on anything related to his personal identity.
• Happens to Yumina in one of the bonus episodes of Sound of the Sky, when she and the main cast (except Kureha) get extremely drunk. Their secret distillery is semi-illegal, and Yumina is a priestess, so she conveniently forgets about the whole thing. Somewhat justified since alcohol can have this effect, but it's awfully weird that she doesn't notice having no memories of the previous night, and she doesn't even get a hangover to go with the blackout.
• Strawberry Panic!: Amane falls from her horse and forgets that she was going to enter the Etoile election, and her relationship with Hikari. She remembers having been asked to enter, and the rest of the details of her life. (This is surprisingly similar to the post trauma memory loss that is actually but rarely incurred by some people.)
• In Switch (2002), Kai lost all his memories from before he turned six.
• In Sword Art Online The Movie: Ordinal Scale, most of the original 6,147 Sword Art Online Players have their memories of the game temporary removed after being defeated in the AR game ordinal scale. which is used in creating a AI from a dead player
• Takopi's Original Sin: Chapter 12 reveals this happened to Takopi. He came to Earth in 2022, and after coming to understand Marina and her problems, believes the only way he can help her be happy is by killing Shizuka. When he went back home to use the Big Happy Clock, his mother took his memories for breaking their planet's law.
• Double Subversion in Tekkaman Blade: D-Boy turns out to have been lying about having amnesia, and remembers everything. Then later, he starts losing his memory for real.
• Tsubasa -RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE- appears to do this to Princess Sakura regarding her relationship with Syaoran; the truth is much, much more complicated.
• Washu does this to the OVA Tenchi Muyo! cast in one issue of the manga. Dr. Clay starts attacking the crew via an old assistant robot of Washu's and forces her into a Sadistic Choice — either fight the robot alone and forget the others, or watch as the robot continues attacking everyone she cares for. She chooses the former and erases everyone's memory of her... but only them, which allows Minagi, a clone of Ryoko, to spot Washu taking Ryo-Ohki to the fight site and be able to push the gang into realizing something's wrong. When they confront Washu, she ends up undoing the Amnesia (which pisses Tenchi off that she did so in the first place), but Sasami ends up undoing it on herself while they're gone.
• In the sequel to Tokyo Ghoul, Haise Sasaki has little memory of the first twenty years of his life. He claims to have little interest in regaining his memories, and insists that he's very happy with the life that CCG has given him. As suspected, at the finale of the original series, the organization captured a critically-wounded Ken Kaneki and erased all record of his existence. It isn't clear how much of his amnesia resulted from psychological trauma, brainwashing, or Arima driving his spear through Kaneki's skull twice.
• In Osamu Tezuka's Unico, when ever the eponymous unicorn befriends somebody or saves the day to a certain person. The West Wind is forced to erase Unico's memories in order to prevent The Gods (notably Venus) from killing him over spreading love and happiness. The upcoming Unico: Awakening manga series actually introduces a sub-plot where The West Wind is trying to find ways to break Unico's cycle on getting his memories erased.
• Done very literally in Vampire Knight Kaname uses his vampire powers to wipe out Yuki's memories of Maria being in fact Hio, the vampire responsible for the slaughtering of Zero's family. It does not last long, though, as the effects are almost immediately canceled by Hio herself.
• A Wind Named Amnesia deals with the whole world suffering from sudden amnesia and not a pretty type: people were turned down to almost animal behaviour while only the main protagonist was restored to humanity by psionics and training.
• Masane Amaha in Witch Blade plays this straight with #3 (classic trauma induced amnesia), but this is subverted later when she never gets her memories back.
• ×××HOLiC:
  • Watanuki is a very interesting case. His magically induced amnesia is not only partially anterograde (for example, he can't remember the taste of anything he eats, or even remember if he ate it), but it's also done in such a way that he didn't even notice he had it for quite some time. The discovery gave him a tomato related nervous breakdown.
  • Later in the same series, everyone except close friends and relations forget who Yuuko is when she dies. She'd been living on borrowed time and so the universe rewrites itself to be as if she'd died when she was intended to. Actually, part of the reason why Watanuki's desire to see her again seems to manifest such a severe obsession that he'd adopt her mannerisms and wear her clothes, is because of his fear that one day he'll start to forget her too. If he keeps her belongings close to him, he figures that they'll serve as reminders to prevent that from happening.
• Yu-Gi-Oh!: In the first series, one of the most important plot points was to recover the memories of the Nameless Pharaoh, aka Yami Yugi. It turns out he himself gave up his memories and bound his soul to the puzzle in order to seal a bigger evil, which had to be defeated near the end of the series.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh! GX: After suffering from nightmares for an unknown period of time because of Yubel being in pain after being shot into space, Jaden was given the most advanced treatments to completely block out his memory of her. This also apparently blocked out his memory of the contest he'd won and the Neo-Spacians that he'd created. He didn't remember Yubel at all, however, until he actually saw her in her own true body again.
  • Astral in Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL suffers from this. At the beginning of the series he cannot remember anything about his history or purpose, and can only regain his memories by collecting Number Cards with Yuma.
• Zombie Land Saga: Averted. All of Franchouchou remember their past lives upon awakening, and react to it in various ways in their undeath. Sakura plays this straight due to her cause of death being a head injury, which first makes her forget her memories before her revival, and then makes her forget her memories after her revival. Eventually, she gets all of them back. Ai also implies she remembers on some level what happened before she awakened, freaking out when Sakura was dangerous close to impaling her again.

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