They Killed Kenny Again / Anime & Manga

• Although everyone in Angel Beats! dies repeatedly, none of them dies as often as Noda, whose appearance WILL guarantee death.
• In the first season of Bakugan, Julie's Tuskor gets sent to the Doom Dimension (an equivalent for hell) every time he's thrown into the battle, yet he's back the next time she has another brawl like nothing happened, only to be sent to the Doom Dimension again.
• Sakura (a boy) in Bludgeoning Angel Dokurochan is killed many times per episode depending upon how much he pisses off Dokuro only to be resurrected seconds later.
  Sakura: Why did you just murder me, Dokuro?!
  Dokuro: There was a mosquito on your shirt!
• Carnival Phantasm, a parody series of the Nasuverse, spoofs how Lancer dies in every route of Fate/stay night by having him killed in almost every episode. Some of his deaths include getting struck by lightning on a clear day, being caught in a bus crash just before the episode even began, getting eaten by Saber in a lion suit, hit in the face by a volleyball, etc. As a direct Shout-Out to South Park, most of his deaths are accompanied with cries of "You bastards!".^note In Japanese, "koto hitodenashi!", same as the South Park dub. Often given as "You aren't human!" in English due to a fansub mistranslation parsing "hitodenashi" as "hito de nashi" when it's just one word. But the penultimate episode of the series presents him with the chance to avoid all his incoming deaths, and he ultimately succeeds.
  • Strangely enough, he's the only servant to be the butt of this joke, despite the fact that every other Servant except for 3^note said 3 being Saber, who dies in the Heaven's Feel Route, but lives in the Fate and Unlimited Blade Works; Rider, who dies in the routes Saber lives in, but lives in the Heaven's Feel route, and True Assassin, who isn't summoned in the first two routes share his fate of dying on every route - the only route he actually dies early on in is the final route, Heaven's Feel^note and even then, he outlasts False Assassin. In the Fate route, he's the second to last Servant to be killed,^note the last would be Gilgamesh whereas in the Unlimited Blade Works Route, he outlasts Caster, Rider, and Berserker. This is likely due to the fact that he's generally Out of Focus in most routes (everyone else barring False Assassin gets at least one route where they're a major player), and never really gets to show his full strength despite being a powerhouse on paper (not to mention his E-rank Luck).
  • In the spinoff Fate/Grand Carnival, which is based on Fate/Grand Order, this gag gets extended to all versions of Cú Chulainn when they are killed off before the Olympia, with the Lancer, Caster, and Prototype versions killed since only Servants 4 star and above are permitted to survive, while the Berserker Cú is killed simply because there were too many Cú… even though they’d just gotten rid of the others.
  • Similarily, Orion (who shares the same voice actor as three of the four Cú's) is killed twice, both by Artemis for perving on other girls like Mash.
• Leomon from Digimon is a special case. Every series but the second and seventh is a hard reboot, and all Mons of a type are identical, so there are several guys named Leomon or SomethingLeomon who are not the same guy, or even Alternate Continuity versions of the same guy. And what happens to them?
  • Digimon Adventure: Leomon eats an attack from MetalEtemon meant for Mimi, and after helping vanquish the villain, bites it. Since this shares continuity with Digimon Adventure 02 this is also why he isn't present to die there.
    • He comes back to life in Digimon Adventure tri., also in the same continuity with the other "Adventure" titles, thanks to the Digital World's reincarnation cycle. But he's killed off for good when Meicoomon tears him to shreds in the Real World, which basically means he can't ever come back. However, it gets complicated when the Digital World is rebooted: it's hinted, but not explicitly shown, that even Digimon who died in the real world were revived this way, meaning there's a chance that Leomon could have come back.
  • Digimon Tamers: Leomon becomes Jeri's partner, and eventually gets run through and absorbed by Beelzemon, sending Jeri over the Despair Event Horizon and setting the stage for D-Reaper's use of her.
  • Digimon Frontier: Löwemon and JagerLowemon, the human and beast spirits of darkness, are clear expies of the Leomon line. Not helping matters is that JagerLowemon's Japanese name is KaiserLeomon. Actually being human doesn't even save him from death at the hands of Lucemon, though it turns out that like Shibumi of Tamers, he's actually physically in the human world and his mind is connected to the digital world, unlike the others. He's alive and well when they get home. Bonus points for a Monster of the Week, Panjyamon (AKA IceLeomon), who is an ice-themed white recolor and canonical Ultimate level of Leomon. He gets taken out quite easily, but since he's in Mercurymon's illusionary world, and leaves no egg behind, he may never have been real.
  • Digimon Data Squad: SaberLeomon is a "good but misguided" type who believes humans are bad due to the bad actions of one guy. His death is particularly special. See, in all Digimon series but Tamers, Digimon revert to an egg state and begin life again, never truly dying. However, Kurata (the one guy in question) figures out a way to corrupt a Digimon's data so that it can never be revived. SaberLeomon is the first Digimon in this show to get hit with this method, making him the first permanent onscreen casualty. Also, BanchoLeomon turns out to be holding the spirit of the lead character's father. Naturally, he dies too. When the reformed Big Bad gives Daddy back, nothing is said about BanchoLeomon. Harsh.
  • Digimon Fusion: MadLeomon is a villain general. The first one. As he's a Warm-Up Boss, he's offed very quickly, but he's eventually revived and purified into a regular Leomon. And he's not the only one; later on there's Apollomon, who while not sharing the name is definitely leonine. He dies twice, but is revived at the end of the series.
    • The manga instead has MachLeomon, who serves the same role as MadLeomon as being the first enemy general that the heroes face. Like his bulkier counterpart, he gets killed off rather easily; unlike said counterpart, he undergoes some intense Sanity Slippage due to fusing with the Abyss Truffle.
  • And then there's Digimon X-Evolution, where a Leomon dies in the first three minutes. And because he considered the Digimon he was attacking (Dorumon, the main character) more worthy of being alive!
  • Despite all of the above examples, there are instances where this trope is subverted. One of them is Leo, his incarnation from V-Tamer 01. Not only does Leo manage to make it to the Ultimate level Panjyamon and even digivolve into the Mega Regulumon, but he goes up against powerful foes like VenomMyotismon and Arcadiamon, the latter of which killed and absorbed a Piedmon as a baby, and though he doesn't necessarily win in those encounters, he holds on long enough for Taichi and Zeromaru to pull off a Big Damn Heroes before he has the chance to bite it. This was before the tradition of killing Leomon off had started.
  • Subverted yet again with Digimon Adventure: (2020). Leomon is the leader of La Résistance against evil forces and helps the heroes on numerous occasions. While making it to the Eternal Continent via ElDoradimon, Leomon and his two allies, Spadamon and Falcomon, direct the attention of several lightning bolts so the DigiDestined can escape. Leomon, his allies, and ElDoradimon are seemingly reduced to digital atoms. However, all four of them turn out to be alive and well, and from that point onward, Leomon stays alive throughout the the whole season, finally breaking tradition.
  • In a Digimon Ghost Game episode, an AncientSphinxmon goes around and turns people into stone bricks to create a pyramid that summons his master Pharaohmon to enslave humanity and all lesser Digimon. When he fought Angoramon's new Ultimate Evolution Diarbbitmon, he ends up getting pushed into his own attack and presumably dies afterwards. Make no mistake, this guy is completely villainous, but since he's the ancestor of Lowemon and JagerLowemon, it counts.
  • Leomon isn't safe from this even in the card games, in Digimon Card Game Leomon cards tend to have effects which trigger on deletion, almost certainly as an intentional reference to the franchise trend.
• The Dragon Ball franchise has several examples, though most hero deaths are very easily undone by the Dragon Balls or Whis. In particular, Android 17, Chiaotzu, Krillin (especially Krillin), and Piccolo have all died about four times, including every Dragon Ball anime ever. The entire population of Earth has died twice (first by Kid Buu in Dragon Ball Z, and then by Frieza in Resurrection 'F' and its Dragon Ball Super arc). Counting Dragon Ball GT the Earth was itself destroyed a third time, but in that instance they managed to get nearly everyone off the planet before it was destroyed. Among the villains Frieza is the most prominent example especially taking non-canon material into account: he’s been diced into chunks by Future Trunks and vaporised, One-Hit Kill punched by Ultimate Gohan in Dragon Ball Z: Fusion Reborn and then vaporised by Goku’s Kamehameha in Resurrection 'F' and Super (this means he’s been killed by every central Saiyan character except Vegeta, whom ironically has the biggest beef with him).
• Eto-shin in Etotama reincarnate a few days after any deaths. As a result, while Uri-tan dying in episode 3 was treated as a Wham Episode, over the course of the next two episodes we see Uri-tan die and revive again, the second time in the space of just a few minutes.
• Excel♡Saga:
  • Hyatt, often many times an episode.
  • The Ropponmatsus. They seem to exist to explode and then be rebuilt like nothing happened in the next episode.
  • Excel herself has suffered this status on occasion. For example, dying roughly two or three times before the second half of the first episode. She gets better.
• Getter Robo has Musashi Tomoe, who gets Killed Off for Real in nearly every continuity, as a reference to his death at the end of the original anime and manga. The nature of his death varies, but it's almost always a Heroic Sacrifice. This is taken to the point of Black Comedy in Getter Robo Arc, the canonical last series, where it's revealed that in the far future, the Getter Emperor has created an artificial version of Musashi to serve in its army... and every time he dies, it simply makes another one.
  • And not just the anime either. He bites the dust in most of his appearances in Super Robot Wars as well. Very, VERY rarely is he savable. However, despite being savable in Alpha 2, his death is canon.
• Inugami from Gugure! Kokkuri-san dies almost every chapter (sometimes more than once in a single chapter), and comes back to life within less than a chapter. Apparently he likes to insert himself into the Mario game to get infinite lives.
• There seems to be a Recurring Character in Mobile Suit Gundam Wing, who's almost always the Mook leader, that dies all the time during the latter part of the series. On a side note, he may also be the one that ends up shooting Dekim in the head from the sound of his voice but that's probably due to recycling VAs rather than intentionally.
• Nick & Lever: The titular characters often die at the end of the strips and get brought back to life by the next chapter without explication. It's such a Running Gag to the point where one volume cover features them as skeletons (Volume 2) and other one as ghosts (Volume 3).
• One-Punch Man has a Show Within a Show example in Birdbrain from the comedy show "Animal Empire", who would die in hilariously stupid ways thanks to his own stupidity, but would always turn up fine in the next episode. Phoenix Man, who became a monster due to wearing a Birdman costume for so long and fusing with it, inherited this trait from the character, and is not only able to revive from death after a certain amount of time, but get stronger from it.
• Chuck the ghost dog from Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt is killed multiple times in every episode only to reappear at random times alive only to get killed again.
• Played for horror and drama in Re:Zero with lead character Subaru dying and reversing time via his "Return By Death" ability several times in each arc, experiencing new forms of pain and trauma in each loop. To make this worse, "Return By Death" potentially isn't a true resurrection, Subaru may be taken to a similar but not the exact timeline of the story. So if he dies in that timeline, he really is dead and gone, leaving behind multiple worlds because of this ability. This is not confirmed, but theorized by Echidna after Subaru takes the second trial. However, she says that the only person to know for sure is Satella herself, since it is her Authority.
• There is a character in Sailor Moon who gets killed off several times and always looks the same, but never gets lines (or a name).
• Sabagebu! shows most of the regulars dying from bloody gunshots every episode (starting with Maya), which the narrator justifies by the deaths not being diegetic: we are seeing their imagination at work in airsoft games. However this becomes harder to credit in later episodes as passer-bys and aliens spontaneously join in the game. It culminates in the first OVA episode in which Urara is apparently eaten by sharks, complete with a skull bobbing on the water, and even the narrator is uncertain what is happening.
• In Seton Academy: Join the Pack!, Miyubi the sloth dies every time she physically exerts herself, to the point it has become the series' most popular Running Gag. She died four times in her introductory episode alone.
• In one episode of Sgt. Frog, the main character is shot on-screen by one of the characters, and we see him in angelic state, floating away. He is seen alive and well in the next episode.
• Vrumugun from Slayers appears in maybe eight episodes, and dies roughly a dozen times over the course of them. In the anime, this is because he has been repeatedly cloned. In the novels, this is because the 'Vrumuguns' who are killed are actually people being magically controlled by the real Vrumugun.
• Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle: Princess Syalis dies, by her own estimation, about once a week, typically due to being overly incautious around the hazards in the Demon Castle. Because the series takes place in an RPG Mechanics 'Verse, she usually gets resurrected without issue.
• In Space☆Dandy most of the cast have died at the end of an episode then come back inexplicably at the beginning of the next, Dr. Gel in particular.
• A weird case of the protagonist being one of these: the somewhat surreal Spelunker is a Sensei anime has the titular Spelunker-sensei being killed by the slightest of inconveniences. Steam, stairs, a baseball, biting into the tail end of a fried shrimp... the list goes on. Yes, he's not just refusing to get up, he's genuinely dead each time he's shown crumpled on the floor, usually with his accompanying death jingle. Being a video game character (and from a notoriously Nintendo Hard one at that) he inexplicably returns to life without so much as a how-do-you-do, to the point that other faculty (and some of the less easily startled students) come to expect him to die from something before too long.
• Transgendered chickens in Usavich become this with time. In season 1 it was just Komanech, who was continuously swallowed by a frog and pooped at the end of an episode and had all its relatives killed, roasted and eaten. By season 5 transgendered chickens are mass slaughtered in nearly every episode, but their ghosts move into eggs, from which new chickens hatch.

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