Unchosen Ones in Anime and Manga.
- In Attack on Titan, Eren eventually finds out that he only gained his powers because his father ate Historia's sister Frieda and then fed himself to Eren. Learning from Rod Reiss that he was never special and that (according to him) he was actively holding humanity back broke him to the point that he was willing to allow Historia to eat him and regain the Coordinate. Then it's revealed that his father's actions had been driven by a greater power, and that Eren really had been chosen...by none other than his future self.
- Basara, the main character is the twin sister of the nominal Chosen One everyone has their hopes on. When he dies still young, she crossdresses to take his place.
- A Certain Magical Index: Shiage Hamazura has no powers or special heritage, and as far as everyone was concerned, he would never amount to anything. All out of a desire to survive and protect his girlfriend, he manages to derail Aleister Crowley's plans by defeating Shizuri Mugino and eventually steps up as a hero. Crowley's mentor Aiwass is intrigued by Hamazura and considers him an equal to the other heroes Touma Kamijou and Accelerator.
- Corrector Yui desired to become a hero so much that she was able to overcome learning she was not The Chosen One and save the true one... when she was Brainwashed and Crazy by the Big Bad. Afterward, she remains The Heroine of the story. Subverted later on the first season's finale, she was, indeed, the chosen one. By Grosser, that season's Big Bad, because it wanted her and not Inukai's chosen one to be its vessel and allow it to live on the real world.
- To quote Death Note's Light Yagami: "The world is rotting and those who are making it rot deserve to die. Somebody's got to do it because the world can't go on like this. And if somebody's got to do it, why not me? In fact, I'm the only one who can..." This is also explicitly stated by Ryuk, when Light asks him why Ryuk chose him and Ryuk notes he didn't, the notebook just happened to land where Light picked it up. However, Light never acknowledges that he wasn't chosen; all through the plot, events fall into place for him, and at the very end he swears blind that he was chosen.
- Digimon:
- In contrast to the Chosen Children of Digimon Adventure and Digimon Adventure 02, the cast of Digimon Tamersnote were not specifically chosen to save the Digital World. They're just kids with Digimon, and for the bulk of the series, it's not clear that they even have anything to save. Digimon Frontier returned to a Chosen Children model, but Digimon Data Squad and Hunters also had unchosen leads. Digimon Fusion note and Digimon Ghost Game note falls somewhere in the grey area.
- A group of four Unchosen Children appeared in the last stretch of Frontier, though a common fan theory is that they would have been the ones to wield to the Earth, Wood, Water, and Steel Spirits had Cherubimon not been corrupted and given them to a quartet of evil Digimon.
- Dragon Ball:
- Son Goku is a fine example. For numerous reasons, such as being the son of a low class warrior, being labeled as such himself, but moving on to become one of Earth's finest heroes despite being supposedly sent there to destroy it. Actually — as of Retcon by Toriyama — his parents sent there to save him from the genocide at the hands of Frieza.
- Averted with his father Bardock, who thought he could pull this off after being able to see visions of the future; he failed.
- The same aversion goes for Vegeta, the prince of the Saiyans from Dragon Ball Z.
- Flame of Recca: Recca is the cursed one destined to end the Hokage clan and Kurei was meant to be the Hokage clan leader. Subverted in that Recca really did end the clan. He defeated their final remaining enemy in the modern day and thus ended the need for the Hokage clan to exist. The spirits of the former dragon clan leaders could finally rest in peace thanks to him "ending the clan."
- Himmel from Frieren: Beyond Journey's End is revealed to be this. He actually failed to pull out the Hero's Blade from the stone, signifying that he wasn't the hero of legends, but that didn't stop him and the party from rising to become the heroes the world needed and defeated the demon king. This is further explained when it's even later revealed that there's a very good reason that he wasn't the chosen hero; namely, that, as devastating as he was, the demon king was, in fact, not the world-ending threat foretold by the legends, meaning Himmel truly wasn't the one destined to defeat it.
- Goblin Slayer: The gods are baffled and intrigued by Goblin Slayer. They didn't choose him for anything, but due to his single-minded determination to rid the world of goblins and his refusal to leave anything to chance, he is Immune to Fate and alters the fates of several of the chosen ones, sometimes saving them when they were destined to die.
- In I Saved Too Many Girls and Caused the Apocalypse, the main character Rekka is both The Chosen One and The Unchosen One at the exact same time. More specifically, he's chosen as destiny's failsafe from sixteen until adulthood. In this period, any time one of the myriad stories in the multiverse winds up without a hero, be it by death or any other circumstance, The Call will hunt him down. And he's been the designated hero for so many stories he even wound up the designated hero for his future self: by the time he grows up he's saved so many girls, including galactic princesses, sorceresses, and demigods, who all want him, that the ensuing strife in the future will threaten to wreck the earth and more, unless he changes the future by choosing someone and getting the others to give up.
- In JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable, only individuals with a specific quality will survive getting hit with a Stand Arrow and gain a Stand, while the rest are killed. Keicho Nijimura fires an arrow at Koichi Hirose, which nearly kills him until Josuke uses Crazy Diamond to heal him. Initially, Koichi's Stand begins as an egg because he didn't have the right fighting spirit. Over time, Koichi's Character Development to a heroic individual caused his Stand to evolve and gain new abilitites.
- The title character of the Lyrical Nanoha franchise. As pointed out in the third season, it was only through sheer happenstance that Nanoha Takamachi encountered a being who knew about the existence of magic and that she happened to have great magical potential. It was she who chose to involve herself in an inter-dimensional case that would later allow her to meet and befriend a troubled Dark Magical Girl, and later be instrumental in stopping a world destroying tome. If not for that one incident, she would have lived a normal, carefree life.
- Amuro Ray in Mobile Suit Gundam, as a civilian, is not supposed to interfere with the warfare in Side 7, but he decides to get on the titular Gundam to kick Zeon's asses. As the story progresses, he goes on maturing as a soldier with his own willpower and the support from the White Base crew and ultimately becomes a hero and source of inspiration to the Earth and the Federation, as well as a nightmare for any Zeon pilot he goes up against (up to the point of calling him the "White Devil").
- In Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn, Bright tells Banagher that this has been the case for every single Gundam pilot in the UC timeline to date: all of them came by their Gundam by circumstance or luck, they were never "chosen" to pilot it. Nonetheless they made the decision to pilot it and combat the evil they saw before them, and through that became heroes. This speech helps Banagher to make that same decision as well.
- My Hero Academia:
- Whereas Midoriya is considered The Chosen One for taking All Might's quirk, Bakugo considers himself this in comparison, saying that just because All Might chose Midoriya as his pupil and the one to take over his quirk, it doesn't mean he has given up and intends to still take All Might's spot.
- Mirio Togata also counts. He’s strong, brave, good hearted and the ideal hero type to the point All Might’s mentor Sir Nighteye was grooming him to be All Might’s successor. All Might took his own path with Midoriya and Nighteye wasn’t pleased. However Mirio refused the quirk when Izuku offered it to him after Mirio lost his own quirk and it was a good thing as One For All has a nasty side effect of draining already quirked users fast and killing them. Quirkless Izuku really was the better choice.
- Gold Roger in One Piece was in a hurry to conquer the Grand Line after finding he had a terminal disease, and suddenly everything fell in place: he found all four Road Poneglyphs that reveal the final island's location and met Kozuki Oden, a samurai who could read them to determine the location of the final island. Upon arriving, however, the Roger Pirates burst into laughter — while the eponymous treasure isn't shown, it involves some kind of task that requires a person who wouldn't be born for ten more years. This led to Roger turning himself in to the Marines and ushering the next generation of pirates through his execution. Ironically, Roger's will is rejected by his son Ace but is taken by Ace's sworn brother Luffy, who tends to be oblivious and indifferent to the legacies that surround him.
- In Pokémon Adventures, quite a few of the Dex Holders weren't originally chosen by the regional professors to receive Pokedexes. Silver stole his, Ruby picked his up by mistake, Diamond and Pearl got theirs due to a mix-up, and White got hers when the original chosen decided to pass it to her.
- Duck of Princess Tutu, at least in part. Drosselmeyer did personally select her for the part of Princess Tutu. She just decided what to do with it. For in fact, Drosselmeyer picks specific roles for the cast characters, but they eventually grow strong enough to pick different roles. Duck, Fakir, and Kraehe are perhaps the best examples.
- Pretty Cure:
- Megumi of HappinessCharge Pretty Cure! wasn't chosen to become a Cure like the rest of her fellow members — Hime just tossed a stone out into the open because she didn't know how it worked and it smacked Megumi on the way down. It was just damn luck it reacted to her.
- Similarly to Rekka, Ruru in HuGtto! Pretty Cure is both The Chosen One and The Unchosen One. Both Ruru and Emiru desired to be Pretty Cure together and that the desire was so strong, Mother decided to split the power and let both of them become Cures. Of course, this is an Achilles' Heel as if one loses that power, so does the other.
- Made fun of in Ranma ½ where Kuno was destined to be the one to pull the legendary Wish Bringer sword from the stone, simply because he was the one millionth person to draw. The students even commented that there must have been some mistake.
- What Daisuke turns out to be in Revisions. Originally, AHRV foresaw his best friend Keisaku being the most important person in the Shibuya drift and Daisuke was the backup, but due to Prophecy Twist and some applications of the Timey-Wimey Ball, things became twisted.
- Lina Inverse of the Slayers universe is a gifted and crafty sorceress who winds up taking on several world-ending threats, mostly out of self-interest or because they're targeting her. The Chosen One with enough dragon-god power to curb stomp those threats is technically her older sister Luna, but she can't be bothered to deal with them or even appear in the series. The most Luna's willing to do about a potential apocalypse is threaten Lina into fixing it.
- Simon from Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann is a rather good example. He was just a kid with the right stuff who was lucky enough to stumble across the right mecha at the right time.
- Sugimoto from The Twelve Kingdoms was not chosen — indeed it was her friend Youko whose destiny was to rule as a Queen. That doesn't stop Sugimoto from and insisting that she is the chosen Queen, and trying to usurp the position from Youko.
- This appears in the backstory of Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V. The entire series happened because two ordinary humans decided to become The Unchosen One in different ways; one becoming the worst villain in history by his own power alone and the other stopping him with only some experimental technology and her own skills.
- Yusaku from Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS has no special destiny or powers that make him The Hero. He just happens to be a normal civilian smart enough to swipe Ignis from the internet before his enemies can. On the other hand, a later reveal shows that the Ignis that Yusaku captured was actually created based on Yusaku himself due to the Lost Incident and shares a special connection to him as a result. And much later it's revealed Ai secretly manipulated Yusaku into fighting the Hanoi and using the Cyberverse deck. Of course, Yusaku knew none of this at the time but capturing Ai gave him the capability to take on the Knights of Hanoi.
