Birthday Beginning

"A young man stands in his bedroom. It just so happens that today, the 13th of April, is this young man's birthday. Though it was thirteen years ago he was given life, it is only today he will be given a name!"

— The very first page of Homestuck

Good Morning, Crono! Happy birthday! Come downstairs and open your presents!

This trope is when the story more or less begins with the announcement that it's the main character's birthday. Often it isn't just any birthday, either; it's the day the hero finally reaches adulthood.

Why is this? Well... birthdays represent the start of a new chapter in one's life, which is suitably fitting for the beginning of the story itself. And it's a convenient way to establish how old a character is.

This can let the story start off with people deciding that it's time for the hero to learn an important secret about themselves. Or a mysterious character giving a bizarre, plot-related birthday present, amongst other things.

Tends to overlap with some of the other Birthday Tropes, especially Dangerous 16th Birthday. A subtrope of Liminal Time. Doubles as Easing into the Adventure. Compare A Birthday, Not a Break where bad things happen on a character's birthday. For the literal day of the hero's birth, see A Hero Is Born.

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Examples

Anime and Manga

• D.N.Angel opens on Daisuke's 14th birthday, when he inherits the legendary phantom thief Dark as his alter ego.
• While she isn't the main character and there's a six-month Time Skip immediately afterwards, the events of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's are set in motion on Hayate's ninth birthday at the stroke of midnight when she becomes master of the Book of Darkness.
• Nurse Angel Ririka SOS begins on the heroine's 10th birthday - which is also the beginning of her career as a Magical Girl Warrior. It's a good day for her.
• Pokémon:
  • In Pokémon: The Series, trainers are able to get their license and begin their journey on their tenth birthday.
  • The Ruby/Sapphire saga of Pokémon Adventures begins on Ruby's 11th birthday, when he and his mother move to join his father in Hoenn and he runs away from home. Also Inverted: the same saga ends 80 days later, on Sapphire's 11th birthday.
• Who's Left Behind? Kayoko's Diary begins with the titular child protagonist celebrating her birthday (her 8th, according to an English subbed version of the movie).
• Yes! Pretty Cure 5 GoGo! The Movie: Happy Birthday in the Land of Sweets takes place on Nozomi's birthday and opens on the celebrations, although Nozomi's age is never specified as a result of it being a Non-Serial Movie.

Comic Books

• Allergic starts on Maggie's tenth birthday, where she's finally getting the puppy she always wanted. Until she learns she's allergic.
• Hide begins with Kevin celebrating his birthday with his family.
• The Prince and the Dressmaker opens with invitations being sent out and ladies commissioning dresses made for the ball celebrating Sebastian's sixteenth birthday.
• Scion kicks off with Ethan's eighteenth birthday wherein he is thrust into combat against Bron.
• Supergirl: Being Super begins on Kara Danvers 16th birthday, right before an earthquake—triggered artificially by an individual highly interested in harnessing her powers—hits her hometown, causing the death of one of her best friends.

Fan Works

• The Empath: The Luckiest Smurf novel begins on the main character's 150th birthday, which turns out to be the day when he is finally released from being in Psychelia, and most of the Smurfs in the village are preparing for his birthday and his arrival home. 150 years for a Smurf (particularly a male Smurf) is basically the age of entering adulthood, as in the 1981 animated series.
• Higher Learning: The story begins on Shinji's 16th birthday. The first scenes feature Shinji making a celebratory meal, and later that day Shinji meets his new teacher who will change his outlook greatly and for the best.
• Learning from Nightmares's first (and part of the second) chapter takes place on Hanyu's sixteenth birthday.
• True Potential has an inverted example with Naruto's fourteenth birthday. Said birthday happens during Chapter 56, which is the end of a story arc rather than the beginning of it.

Film — Animated

• Arlo the Alligator Boy: Arlo's journey from the swamp to New York City to reunite with his biological father while making friends on the way — begins with him discovering his past on his fifteenth birthday.
• The Great Mouse Detective starts on Olivia's birthday when her single father gets kidnapped and she seeks out the titular character to find him.
• James and the Giant Peach: James celebrates his eighth birthday with his parents in the beginning of the film. They surprise him with to a trip to New York City. Unfortunately the rhino came along to spoil the fun.
• The LEGO Ninjago Movie: After a live-action Framing Device prologue, the events of the movie begin on Lloyd Garmadon's sixteenth birthday.
• Rankin/Bass's The Return of the King opens with an elderly Bilbo's birthday party, where a minstrel relates the story with the ballad "Frodo of the Nine Fingers".
• Sleeping Beauty: Aurora was raised in secret by Flora, Fauna and Merryweather until her sixteenth birthday, which is when the major conflict of the movie kicks off.
• Tangled: The movie begins with Rapunzel anticipating her eighteenth birthday and wanting to leave the tower out of Gothel's care.

Film — Live-Action

• The 6th Day begins on Adam Gibson's birthday, which is also when Adam Gibson's clone was "born".
• Left Behind (2014) takes place on Rayford Steele's birthday.
• The Mortal Storm opens with Viktor's 60th birthday party. This is a pretty dark instance of the trope, as Viktor is a Jewish professor in Germany, and his birthday is January 30, 1933, the day that Those Wacky Nazis came to power.
• Sixteen Candles starts on Samantha's sixteenth birthday, which is forgotten by her family.
• The Smurfs 2 takes place on Smurfette's birthday, and also on Blue Winslow's (the son of Patrick and Grace Winslow) fourth birthday.
• Star Trek:
  • Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan begins on Kirk's birthday.
• The 2017 segment of Terminator Genisys takes place around the time of Kyle Reese's 12th birthday, which is also when SkyNet in the alternate timeline it created (under its code name Genisys) went fully online and took over, bringing on Judgment Day.

Literature

• Jeramey Kraatz's The Cloak Society trilogy opens on Alex's twelfth birthday. As a treat, he gets to help rob a bank.
• The events of Susan Cooper's novel The Dark is Rising start shortly before Will Stanton's 11th birthday.
• Deltora Quest: In the second part of Emily Rodda's The Forests of Silence, we are informed that it is the sixteenth birthday of Lief, one of the three main protagonists of all three series. It is also the day on which his parents send him on his grand quest to find the seven gems of the magical Belt of Deltora to vanquish the evil Shadow Lord from the land. For his birthday, Lief is given the finest sword that his father, a blacksmith, has made, and a special cloak from his mother that magically changes colour depending on the surroundings so the wearer may hide. While this birthday does not happen until the second part of the book, the first half is a prologue and the rest of the books only follow Lief and his two companions as main characters and not the characters of the first half.
• Light novel Feline Therapy begins on focal character Izzy's birthday, having received a gift from their friend that's expected to be a weekend of Fuzz Therapy, but turns out to be Animorphism. The climax occurs on their next birthday, after having spent an entire year as a cat.
• Harry Potter learned he was a wizard at more or less the hour he turned 11, and most of the other books started on or near his birthday.
• Lirael opens on Lirael's fourteenth birthday. To her it's a humiliation because she has not yet had the Sight, or been Seen with the Sight, and is therefore still a child among the Clayr. However, the events of the day do change her life dramatically.
• The Lord of the Rings begins slightly before a very significant birthday - Frodo is turning 33, while Bilbo is turning 111. The Birthday Party is the first significant event in the story. Since hobbits are long-lived, 33 is their coming-of-age year. (Although, Bilbo was still very old for a hobbit and showing his age well; he would eventually live to be the oldest hobbit in history, a side effect of owning the One Ring.)
• Riddley Walker opens on its eponymous hero's twelfth birthday, which is the age of majority in his society.
• In The Rise of Renegade X by Chelsea M. Campbell, Damien's sixteenth birthday, opening the book, is when a letter will appear on his thumb. Heroes get a H; he's expecting a V for villain (like his mother); he gets an X, indicating that his father must have been a hero.
• The Thorn Birds opens on the female protagonist, Meggie Cleary's, fifth birthday... which her mother just barely acknowledges by tossing her an unwrapped doll. She's the youngest child (at the time) and only daughter in a large family of boys. The brothers nearest her age destroy the toy before the day is out. These things set the stage for Meggie being ignored and/or taken advantage of by most of her family right on into adulthood.
• Waste of Space: The book starts and spends quite some time on Dash's thirteenth birthday.

Live-Action TV

• Andi Mack begins with Andi celebrating her thirteenth birthday and discovering her older sister Bex is really her mother.
• Breaking Bad: Walter White turns 50 in the first episode. His 51st and 52nd birthdays are also significant.
• After a brief opening scene set decades earlier where people on a news program talk about the danger of fungi, the first thing we see in The Last of Us (2023) is protagonist Joel celebrating his birthday.
• Once Upon a Time opens on Emma's twenty-eighth birthday.
• Sabrina the Teenage Witch learned of her powers on her Dangerous 16th Birthday.
• Star Trek: The Next Generation: "Future Imperfect" and "Parallels" take place on Riker and Worf's birthdays, respectively.

Podcasts

• 'The Kingmaker Histories starts on Colette's 25th birthday, which is the day that the spell cast on her to keep the titular magical diamond hidden wears off.

[[folder:Puppet Shows]]

• Parodied in The Wubbulous World of Dr. Seuss, where the episode "Who Are You, Sue Snue?" has Sue coming of age on her eleventh and a half birthday.

Video Games

• Another Code: Subverted in Two Memories. While Ashley coming to Blood Edward Island to begin with is thanks to receiving a letter from her father (who she was told was dead) with a request spend her 14th birthday together, the entire game actually takes place the day before said birthday.
• Brave Hero Yuusha: In all versions, the story starts with the hero being delivered by their mother to the king on what's said to be their 17th birthday, and in EX at least, there's a choice between whether they know they're the hero, or that it's their birthday.
• Car Battler Joe starts on Joe's sixteenth birthday.
• Clea (2019): At the start of the game, Clea is celebrating her birthday with Edmon and Florine.
• Crusader of Centy starts on the Player Character's fourteenth birthday. He is given his dead father's old sword and shield, as fourteen is the age children are expected to begin training as warriors.
• The Darkness starts on protagonist Jackie Estacado's 21st birthday, with two of his friends from the Franchetti crime family taking him out to party. Things go pear-shaped when Jackie's uncle Paulie tries to have Jackie killed with a "present" of a bomb in a closet. Lucky for Jackie, that's when The Darkness, manifests in Jackie and saves his life.
• Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze starts on DK's birthday. Meta-wise, it also signifies the 20th anniversary of Donkey Kong Country.
• Dragon Quest III begins on the hero/heroine's sixteenth birthday, and their being summoned for an audience with the King. The King basically tells them "Okay, you're old enough now to pick up where your father left off and Save the World."
• Fallout 3 starts with the hero's birth, and continues through several more birthdays before it really gets going.
• Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light starts on Brandt's fifteenth birthday, the day when he is old enough to be called a man and must present himself to the king as such. The king promptly gives him the task of rescuing his younger daughter.
• Later Alligator takes place entirely on Pat's birthday aside from the epilogue. Although not the player character, he is the one the story revolves around.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, where it also justifies Link's classic green tunic: He would normally be wearing something else, but village tradition dictates that on their birthday all boys must dress like the hero of legend.
  • Zelda II: The Adventure of Link takes place on his sixteenth birthday, when the mark of the Triforce suddenly appears on his hand.
• Loom starts with Bobbin's seventeenth birthday.
• Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain has an example if you play on your own birthday. Returning to Mother Base will trigger a special cutscene where the Diamond Dogs throw a birthday party for Snake.
• My Child Lebensborn: One of the first things the player will discover on the first evening of gameplay is that the next day is the child's birthday. The friend the child was just playing with has given them a birthday present and it's up to the player whether they get to open it early or not.
• Players of The Neverhood learn that the game begins at Klaymen's birth (well, seeding) through Willie Trombone's video confession.
• Inverted in Pac-Man Party: the story ends with the revelation that it's Pac-Man's birthday.
• Played With in Portal 2 - GLaDOS claims the day Chell woke up was her birthday, but this may just be a lie made up to hurt Chell, and give GLaDOS an excuse to give her a "surprise".
  GLaDOS: I made it all up...surprise!
• The plot of the Shenmue series kicks off when Ryo's father is murdered in front of him by a mysterious assassin on November 29, 1986, which happens to Ryo's 18th birthday.
• Sonic Generations' plot starts with a party for Sonic's birthday (and meta-wise, the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise's 20th Anniversary).
• Wolf's Gang opens on Wolfgang's birthday, with his friends throwing him a party at the Dark Lord's tower.

Webcomics

• CharCole: Cole's trouble starts on his eighteenth birthday, with his absent-minded father wishing him a "happy sweet sixteen".
• In El Goonish Shive, the Before The Party arc starts with the announcement that Grace's birthday is coming up which is followed by the Grace's Birthday Party arc.
• Homestuck:
  • The Trolls' session started on Karkat's birthday – or rather, "Wriggling Day". The date of John's birthday, 4/13, is also plot-relevant.
  • This makes it surprising when the Alpha session doesn't start on a hero's birthday. It actually starts on the villain's birthday. Caliborn's predomination through the murder of his sister marks his emergence into the world as an individual, which he refers to as a birthday of sorts for himself.

Web Original

• Liam Kyle Sullivan: The original video for "Shoes" begins with a skit that shows Kelly and Chris's parents celebrating the twins' birthday. The fact that Chris is so obviously favored by their parents (he gets a new computer and car while she gets a stuffed animal) is the catalyst for Kelly leaving the house to buy herself a pair of shoes.
• Survival of the Fittest: The start of Version 1 is Jacob Starr's sixteenth birthday, though he counts more as a villain than a hero. Also, according to her profile the day of the Version 4 abductions was Anna Chase's eighteenth birthday. And finally, played with in regards to Cillian Crowe, who after being taken out of the asylum assumes that they're letting him out because it's his birthday, and sings Happy Birthday to himself. Again, he qualifies more as a villain than a hero, seeing as he slaughters the next character he sees after cheerfully telling him that it's his birthday.

Western Animation

• Amphibia: Although the first episode opens several days after Anne and her two human friends have been transported into the titular Death World, it's subsequently revealed that they got zapped there when Anne opened the Calamity Box on her thirteenth birthday. The following seasons reveal that this action instigated the overarching Big Bad's evil plan and a prophecy meant to counter it.
• The Batman Beyond episode "Out of the Past" begins with Terry and Bruce watching a Batman musical to celebrate Bruce's birthday. Bruce doesn't like the farcical portrayal and prefers not to be reminded that he's another year older.
• Jackie Chan Adventures: "The Dog And Piggy Show" starts on Uncle's birthday, where he initially hates being reminded of his age till Jackie brings him the dog talisman, which grants its wielder immortality with youthful energy.
• Legend of the Three Caballeros: The series starts on Donald's birthday, and it’s not the happiest start. Since it's Donald Duck's, no surprise there.
• The Smurfs (1981): The Animated Adaptation of "The Astro Smurf" begins on Dreamy's birthday.
• Super Wish: The first episode, "The Big 1-0", starts on Jesse's 10th birthday. Because he got a birthday party for someone half his age instead of the "Go-Kart, Laser Tag Birthday Blowout Extravaganza" he was hoping for, he wishes his birthday party would just disappear, which gets him, his cousin, and his friends sent to the Happy Land of Birthdays.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012) has a variation, with the first episode taking place on the Turtles' 15th Mutation Day, as in the anniversary of the day they got splashed with Mutagen.
• At the start of the Underdog story "Pain Strikes Underdog", Sweet Polly Purebred told Underdog that she was planning a party for his birthday the next day.

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