Used To Be A Sweet Kid / Anime & Manga

Used to Be a Sweet Kid in Anime & Manga.

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• Accel World has Nomi, a.k.a Dusk Taker. In the last two episodes of the anime, it's revealed that his mentor, who introduced him to Brain Burst, used and abused him to the point of breaking. When he's defeated, and the Brain Burst (and his memories of it) erased, he reverts back to being a cute boy.
• The first line in the Baccano! novel set in 1705 is from Huey Laforet's mother, talking about how innocent he was. A couple of hundred years since, he's become a Mad Scientist who sees all humans (including his own children) as "raw materials."
• Surprisingly, Guts from Berserk was actually a sweet and innocent kid. The downfall started when he was three and his foster mother Shisu died of the plague, leaving him to be raised by his sadistic and hateful foster father Gambino. Even after being trained for war and serving on the front lines, he was still a pretty innocent kid, until the night after his first battle when Gambino sold him to another soldier for three silver coins, a soldier who liked little boys in the wrong way, resulting in a traumatic rape despite Guts' best efforts to fight the man off. The following day when Guts coldly murdered the man was the point of no return. When he was finally forced to kill Gambino in self-defense and was driven out of the camp by a mob intent on killing him, he became bitter, hateful, and cut off from other people. It’s not until Guts meets the Band of the Hawk and his lover Casca that he opens up again. Then the Eclipse happens.
• Black Butler:
  • Ciel Phantomhive. He's a cynical, callous, and very driven 12-year-old (or 13, depending on how far you are in the series), is The Chessmaster and Wise Beyond His Years. He has no qualms about getting involved in dangerous missions and will command his badass butler Sebastian to kill someone without a second thought. He has also been shown slapping and insulting individuals for being too comfortable with touching or speaking to him. The only individual he appears to genuinely care for is his fiancee, Elizabeth Middleford, although he does seem to view her as a bit of a distraction and a nuisance, at times. In the anime, he appears downright cruel at times, although, in the manga, he is simply just icy and elitist. It's eventually revealed that he was a happy, loving, carefree child before his tenth birthday. Then his parents were murdered, the mansion set on fire, and he was kidnapped by a fanatical cult. He was locked in a cage with other children his age, was implied to be raped, was force-fed all his meals, and eventually was to be a child sacrifice until he accidentally called upon the demon Sebastian in his desperation to live.
  • Alois Trancy in the second season. He was shown to be cute and innocent as a child but then his foster family died in front of him, from unknown supernatural means, including his adoptive brother and only friend, and then he was horrifyingly raped and abused by his master Lord Trancy, alongside other boys. A few years later he's shown to be creepily Ax-Crazy.
• Yuno from Black Clover is a non-villainous example. His personality was much more sweet in his childhood than in the present. He used to cry a lot and was much more shy, and was always looking up to Asta instead of teasing him. The change was most likely due to the promise he made to himself of never crying again after Asta protected him against a robber.
• Black Lagoon:
  • Sofiya Pavlovena, a.k.a. Balalaika, used to be a pretty, young and seemingly friendly girl who wore her hair in Girlish Pigtails and whose dream was to do her family proud in the Olympics as a sharpshooter. That is... until the Afghanistan War.
  • Revy had a horrible childhood where she was beaten up by corrupt cops for doing nothing wrong and then raped by one who threw her in jail. She then murdered her abusive father for not caring about what had happened to her. Her past turned her from an optimistic, religious child to a spiteful, gun-crazy, God-hating, gun-for-hire with an occasional tendency to go on psychotic rampages.
• On a heroic example, Boruto. In The Last: Naruto the Movie he is a happy, friendly toddler who loves and respects his father Naruto. By the time he is an academy student, he has become resentful of his father due to his job as hokage keeping him away from his family. He still loves Naruto but acts like a jerk towards him and calls him out often. Boruto also suffers from being quite a bit overconfident and cocky when it comes to being a Child Prodigy and due to his Heroic Lineage.
• In Brave10, Little Anastasia is adorable. She turns out real cold when she becomes an adult, courtesy of the boatload of trauma that follows.
• Captain Tsubasa: A flashback in the World Youth arc reveals that Kojiro Hyuga as a kid was cheery and enthusiastic about soccer, not that different from Tsubasa himself. The death of his father in a car crash left him devastated, and developed a more ruthless and aggressive personality in his bid to become Japan's ace striker, only opening up to his family and close friends.
• Code Geass:
  • Mao was a sweet, innocent little boy until C.C. gave him his Geass power. After she abandoned him in the hope of making him not rely on her it ultimately broke him completely and drove him insane, so he turned into a Psychopathic Manchild with no grip on reality who Mind Rapes the local All-Loving Hero and the Knight in Shining Armor and kidnaps the Delicate and Sickly girl... To say that his opponent, the girl's Dark Messiah, was pissed off at him, is an understatement.
  • This is a prominent theme in Code Geass, while some characters like Rolo are proven to always have been killing machines since childhood (and often, like in Rolo's case, thanks to the brutal training and brainwashing coming from the Geass Cult), loads of characters started out like sweet kids even up to the Emperor but also including, C.C., Suzaku, possibly Cornelia and Clovis, Karen and Lelouch Lamperouge.
  • Suzaku is a bit of an odd case since while he was mean to Lelouch and Nunnally at first, he was a good kid at heart who eventually befriended the siblings. After killing his father, and especially after Mao reading his mind and confronting him over what he did he was never the same again.
• Simply one person: Doctor Jizabel. If you've read Count Cain, especially volume 7 and more especially the Misericorde chapters you know he's a perfect example.
• Faye Valentine of Cowboy Bebop actually used to be a very sweet, idealistic child, from what can be told from the lost tape found from a time capsule in "Speak Like a Child". It is a very sad comparison to how she is as an adult.
• A Cruel God Reigns: Jeremy, Jeremy, Jeremy... At the very beginning of the series, he is sweet to the point of being ridiculous, but after he is physically and sexually abused by his stepfather for 6 months, he finally snaps and kills him via Vehicular Sabotage. Actually, it is Jeremy's sweetness that causes his Trauma Conga Line in the first place; he refuses to seek help because it would mean ruining his mother's happy marriage. Although more of a Conflict Ball with Fille Fatale problems than evil, he never really snapped back. Arguably, Jeremy still is a sweet kid- he just has some issues he needs to work through.
• Deadman Wonderland:
  • Before the earthquake, Minatsuki Takami aka Hummingbird appeared to be a sweet adorable child. Then after her mother grabbed a pot of flowers and left her to die, her more sadistic tendencies began to arise.
  • Also applies to Genkaku of all people, when it revealed that he was once a kind forgiving Buddhist priest who was constantly bullied and beaten and once fed an injured cat. It wasn't until the earthquake that he lost his sanity.
• Teru Mikami of Death Note was a really sweet kid who would always defend the weak and was a Bully Hunter. As he got older, the fact that most people seemed to tolerate bullying gave him an intense sense of Black-and-White Morality which was strengthened when some of his bullies ended up being killed in an accident. Once he got his hands on the titular Artifact of Doom, he ended up as the craziest person in a series filled with some fairly unstable people.
  • To a degree, also Misa Amane. Had her parents not been killed by a burglar when she was a little girl, she would've possibly grown into the same beautiful and popular Idol Singer she was in canon... but without the Ax-Crazy Yandereness.
  • Light Yagami. Nice, normal family, top of his class, popular with other students... and he's killed God knows how many people by the end of the second episode.
    • Light and Misa were distinctly never normal; they have emotional impairments of some kind. It's possible Misa developed her psychopathic tendencies somewhere between her parents' deaths and meeting Rem, given she's had actual trauma and a showbiz career to mess with her head, but Light is pretty...empty.
    • Or not — the fact that he dropped tennis because it was pointless and several other moments indicate that, even if he was always broken inside, it had been getting worse before he found the titular Artifact of Doom.
    • When Light temporarily forgets about the Death Note, he returns to being a nice, morally sound person. In other words, he was just a REALLY bad case of With Great Power Comes Great Insanity.
• Ken Ichijouji from Digimon Adventure 02. He got better. Yukio Oikawa was also shown to be this, but the death of his only friend pushed him over the Despair Event Horizon.
  • This trope tends to recur throughout the manga adaptations of Digimon. Digimon V-Tamer 01 had Neo Saiba, and Digimon Next had Shou Kahara. They also got better at the end.
  • Kiriha Aonuma from Digimon Fusion is shown to be gentle as a child in his back story. His father critiques that Kiriha must learn to be stronger, which leads to him being a Jerkass. He gets better as well.
• Doraemon: Nobita and the Robot Kingdom have Jeanne, the tyrannical human queen of the robot kingdom who's revealed in flashbacks (as well as a manga-exclusive special edition Prequel story) as an adorable, Spoiled Sweet princess. After her father King Atom died to save a robot laborer, she was then manipulated by her advisor, Dester, to carry out a "Robot Reproduction Process" to have robots stripped of emotions into becoming mindless machines. She eventually gets better after a My God, What Have I Done? moment when she's saved by her childhood robot playmate (who believes there's still good in her).
• Dragon Ball:
  • Chi-Chi in the original Dragon Ball series was an almost unrecognisably sweet girl and kept her gentleness until she was teenage - only lashing out her childhood sweetheart Goku when he didn’t recognise her. By the time of Z, thanks to living in poverty in the mountains and her martial artist alien husband Goku being unemployed, Chi-Chi has become a stern Education Mama to her son Gohan and is Enraged by Idiocy. Chi-Chi still has her sweet and loving moments, more so in the anime than the manga.
  • Future Gohan in the Dragon Ball Z: The History of Trunks special. Once a polite and kind little boy who didn’t like fighting, after the death of his father Goku followed by the butchering of the rest of his friends the Z-Fighters at the hands of Androids, Gohan has become a serious fighter who is willing to put Trunks through Training from Hell in the slim chance he’ll become strong enough to defeat the Androids. It’s particularly notable in the video games when Future Gohan interacts with the younger present-day Gohan, he’s glad to see himself so happy and untroubled.
  • Broly in Dragon Ball Super: Broly. As a boy he used to be a sweet and nice kid (similar to Goku) which is rare for a Saiyan. Broly even befriended a big green monster whom he named Ba, then his cruel father Paragus took issue with this behaviour since he was raising Broly as a tool of revenge against King Vegeta and blasted Ba’s ear off so that the creature wouldn’t play with Broly anymore and trained his son cruelly for many more years. As an adult poor Broly is a severely emotionally repressed, psychologically damaged man with a terrifying Berserk Button who keeps Ba’s ear wrapped around his waist “to remember the fun times”. Fortunately Broly finds some new loved ones, in the form of Cheelai and Lemo.
  • Inverted with present timeline Trunks, as a kid in the Buu Saga (due to being raised by the ever irascible Bulma and Vegeta) he’s an obnoxious, troublemaking Spoiled Brat compared to Cheerful Child Goten. By the time of both Dragon Ball GT and Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero Trunks is friendlier and more easygoing, same as his Nice Guy future Alternate Self.
• Lucy from Elfen Lied, who started out as a kind-hearted but shy little girl, but through enough torment, crippling loneliness, and a psychotic inner voice became an Ax-Crazy mass murderer bent on killing all humans.
• Prince Emilio from Endride used to be a pretty happy kid who earnestly admired his Parental Substitute King Delzaine, until he overheard that Delzaine had killed his real father, prompting a long, revenge-fueled emo phase that the other heroes struggled to pull him out of.
• Tabitha a.k.a. Princess Charlotte of The Familiar of Zero. Before her mother went mad to save her from an assassination attempt from her Evil Uncle, Tabitha was a Cheerful Child. Now she's The Stoic and very quiet.
• Fairy Tail:
  • Laxus Dreyar was once a cheerful young boy who idolized Makarov, his grandfather and guildmaster of the title guild. Due to the influence of his father Ivan, and his growing resentment at his accomplishments being compared to Makarov's, he grows more and more bitter until he finally tries to take over the guild by force and remake it in his own image, the final part of his plan being to beat Makarov in combat. He never gets the chance to fight Makarov, his plan being thwarted by the guild as a whole and Natsu and Gajeel team up to defeat him. Later averted when he returns after being expelled from the guild, as a much kinder and less prideful person.
  • Mirajane Strauss is an inversion. She's very sweet and caring now, but in her younger days, she was a Bratty Half-Pint who was always picking fights and constantly insulting Erza. The change was so jarring that Gildarts (who only visits the guild once every couple of years) didn't even recognize her at first and had to be told that it was her. The change was the result of Lisanna's (supposed) death. When visiting Edolas, Team Natsu finds that Mirajane's Edolas counterpart is exactly like her, rather than her opposite.
  • Zeref. A young, brilliant student at the Mildia Magic Academy, the death of his younger brother Natsu drove him to delve into forbidden magic in order to find out a way to revive him. Everything went downhill from there, and by the present day, he's an almost complete immortal who is desperate to die, after having been constantly rejected by humanity and watching his life's works be misused for evil. Eventually, it becomes too much and he seeks to wipe out the human race for their sins, and/or finally die when they figure out a way to kill him. Either way, he gets what he wants. When it becomes clear that nothing will ever kill him, he reveals that his threat was a case of Exact Words: He wants to use a Reset Button spell to relive his life from the beginning with all of his previous memories intact, which would allow him to alter history so radically that the present world, and everyone in it, will be Ret-Gone.
  • Jellal Fernandez was the irrepressibly kind leader of a small band of kids enslaved in the Tower of Heaven, until Erza was taken away and tortured in another friend's place. When he tried to rescue her, he got caught and was tortured in her place...and when he couldn't take any more of that, another mage took control of his personality and life. For eight years. Jellal became a psychotic cult leader determined to resurrect Zeref, brainwashing most of his friends in turn and exiling Erza when she didn't go along with him. Team Natsu stops him, of course, but after his Unexplained Recovery and Trauma-Induced Amnesia, he becomes his kind and noble old self again — only to be utterly horrified by his former actions. Jellal still hasn't forgiven himself, despite the confession of his brainwasher that none of it was his doing.
• Fist of the North Star: There was a little boy who loved his adoptive father, a martial arts master. Then his father decided to take in some students and teach them his art. The boy felt left out, especially when his father refused to teach him. The boy pushed and begged until his father decided to teach him as well... and that little boy grew up to be Jagi. The story doesn't have a happy ending.
  • There was a tiny baby, abandoned by his parents and adopted by another martial arts master. Though trials were difficult, and the regiment strict, never once did the little boy feel that it was a burden, being driven by nothing more than his love for his adoptive father. Then came the time, when he became 15, to inherit his master's style after a final trial and become an adult. The little boy's name was Souther, and neither does this story have a happy ending. Well, almost had.
  • There also was a young boy, left orphaned with his younger brother, who knew that crying will not make things better, and instead aspired to become stronger along with his brother. As the two get adopted by a martial arts master, the two finally learn to become stronger and this young child aspires to greater glory in his quest for strength. This boy grew up to be Raoh, but his story does have a happier ending.
• A shockingly tragic example happens with one of the main female characters of Food Wars!. She used to be a kind, optimistic girl who always encouraged everyone to do the best they can. But her father, who wanted to refine her culinary skills, put her through Training from Hell which twisted her into a hollow, unfeeling prick who coldly kicks down those she deems as failures. When her family found out what happened, they disowned the father. But the damage was already done and it would take her roughly ten years to recover the kindness she once had. And who is the girl in question? None other than Erina Nakiri.
• In Free!, the backstory shows Rin Matsuoka as a Cheerful Child. The death of his father and training overseas, however, changed him into a deeply wounded Jerkass. Lampshaded in-story, where Haruka chides him for not smiling like he used to.
• Fruits Basket has Kyo Sohma. Kagura's flashbacks shows that Kyo, even with the stigma of being the Cat of the Sohma family, was a timid but well-meaning child who was eager to spend time with her because he'd never had friends before. It wasn't until his mother was Driven to Suicide and every single adult in his family, save for his foster father Kazuma, blamed him for her death, that he develops the hot-headed, rude, temperamental and violent personality he has in the present day.
• Fullmetal Alchemist:
  • Scar is an older example. In the flashbacks, he is shown to have once been a good if very strict person who genuinely cared about his family and people. Having lost everything he held dear, he became the ruthless Serial Killer on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge we know today.
  • The Fullmetal Alchemist (2003) version of Wrath is introduced as a young Wild Child before being revealed to be a homunculus. Envy feeds him red stones which makes him undergo a Face–Heel Turn into a full Enfant Terrible. In the end, he's mellowed down but is solemn and depressed, especially after the death of his mother Izumi, who he had finally accepted as his mother.
• In Full Metal Panic!, one side story focusing on Sousuke and Kalinin's backstory showed that Sousuke was this. During his childhood, when he was rescued by Kalinin and they spent time together, Kalinin was shown to love Sousuke and grow so attached to "that sweet and gentle boy" to the point where he really wanted to adopt him as his own. Then they got separated, and the next time they meet, they met as enemies, with Sousuke becoming the Straw Nihilist Stoic that we know today.
• Yuno Gasai from Future Diary wasn't always such a psycho girl. When Yukiteru and Minene go three years to the past it turns out that despite her abuse, she still was hopeful and idealistic.
  1st World Yuno: When did I become so twisted?
• The titular character of Gabriel DropOut, was originally a sweet and idealistic young angel, who wanted to help as many people as she could. But a mere few minutes into the first episode, she has turned into an uncaring Jerkass Gamer Chick, who scoffs at her old values. Though she claims she was always like this deep down, she just couldn't express herself and had to delude her self into thinking she wasn't back in heaven. Whether or not that's true, is up in the air.
• Gangsta.:
  • Nic and Worick, the latter a nice rich kid who was frequently abused by his father and the former a sweet deaf Twilight Child Soldier who was also violently abused by his mercenary father. The boys formed a bond when Nic was placed as Worwick’s bodyguard and learned to communicate with by learning sign language together, the continued abuse from their fathers, eventual Parental Abandonment of Nic’s father and Worwick getting losing his eye when his dad shoved his cigarette into it - caused Nic to snap and murder all of Worwick’s household and trying to kill himself before Worwick stopped him. Having gone on the run and lived as criminals, Nic and Worick are now handymen for hire Anti-Heroes who readily kill and do dirty dealings.
  • Alex was once a sweet girl who looked after her baby little brother Emilio. Alex lost both her parents, got raped by a Twilight man, lost her brother as well and then became an amnesiac drug-addicted Broken Bird prostitute. Thankfully Worwick and Alex killed her abusive pimp and took Alex off the streets and into their business bringing some happinesses and clarity back into her life. Her brother Emilio is also very different in the present from the sweet boy coddled by his big sister we see in Alex’s flashbacks, as he’s a (reluctant) member of the Ax-Crazy Destroyers gang.
• There was a time when Ichiko Sakura, the protagonist of Good Luck Girl!, was an adorable, cuddly little kid. Then one of her "friends" just had to badmouth her in front of their mutual love interest, driving the little kid over the edge and giving said "friend" a beatdown. That little incident, combined with the lack of parental attention throughout most of her childhood (although it is ultimately revealed that her parents never intended to work away at the expense of spending time with her), unless her butler and surrogate father figure Kikunoshin Suwano counts, molded Ichiko into the Bitch in Sheep's Clothing she has become when the series first started. Fortunately, the genuine kindness in her has never been fully extinguished, and interactions with the few people willing to put up with her snobby, higher-than-thou attitude, such as Suwano, next-seat crush Keita, best friend Ranmaru, and even her Sitcom Arch-Nemesis, misfortune goddess Momiji, helped improve her personality into a girl who's more than willing to put herself on the line for the people she genuinely cares for.
• Gundam:
  • Gundam SEED: Compare the Athrun in the flashbacks, who believed that Earth and ZAFT would never go to war, with the bitter, cynical soldier we all know and love. Also, it seems that the entire universe is bent on turning main character Kira into one of these. He gets it back mostly.
  • Gundam SEED Destiny: Shinn Asuka was a nice kid who loved his family, and especially his little sister. Then they all died. In front of him. Goodbye Cheerful Child, hello Berserker. His friend Rey Za Burrell is also an example; flashbacks show him as an Adorably Precocious Child with a love of the piano, and nothing like the Utopia Justifies the Means Well-Intentioned Extremist and Manipulative Bastard he is today.
  • If side materials like Char's Deleted Affair are to be believed, Haman Khan of of Zeta Gundam and Gundam ZZ was once a cheerful, sweet-natured Genki Girl with a starry-eyed Celeb Crush on the Red Comet. Then her father died and Char left, so she got put in charge of Axis and became the Haman we know and love.
  • G Gundam's Domon Kasshu was a pretty cute kid when he was ten years old before training with a guy who taught him that martial artists communicate with their fists and suffering familial tragedy... with the help of KYOJI!
  • Gundam AGE is basically about how Flit Asuno turned from an idealist Kid Hero who wants to save humanity into a genocidal crusader who wants to exterminate every man, woman, and child on the other side. There are several flashbacks to the idealistic boy he used to be. He's pulled out of it at the very end, when he's in his sixties.
• Clair Leonelli of Heat Guy J. He used to be a cute chibi with a very demure personality. After years of abuse from his dad, he eventually went insane, killed his father, and became Daisuke Aurora's puppy-kicking arch-nemesis. He does pull a Heel–Face Turn, however.
  • A straighter and more striking example is Shun Aurora, Daisuke's Knight Templar Big Brother. Some amount of the trauma he went through as a child that turned him into what he is in the series proper came about as a result of his attempts to protect Daisuke when they were both kids.
• Hetalia: Axis Powers:
  • Resident Psychopathic Manchild Russia, who was just adorable and sane (and oh-so-woobie) as a child. Then came this and this, and I don't think this did him any favors.
  • There's also his sister, resident Yandere Belarus. We see her in her, Russia's and Ukraine's backstory as a cute little girl who clings to her brother and pouts to her older sister. And then, we see her now, as a scary strange girl in a frilly Elegant Gothic Lolita dress...
  • America from England's perspective, who used to be a sweet boy and just adored England. Then, we all know what happened next.
  • England too, apparently. The youngest we've seen him was in the Passing Through The Year 1000 strip when he happily agreed to let France pretend to have conquered him. From there he became a very unhappy child, then a "juvenile delinquent" whose hobby was piracy, and eventually settling into the Tsundere we know and love now.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
  • Jotaro Kujo. First we see him in past as a little boy playing with mom and as a model student, and on the next page, he's in a cell, terrorizing fellow prisoners and telling his mother to shut up.
    • Subverted later on in the manga when Alessi uses his stand to de-age Jotaro to about seven years, and Jotaro was still capable of pounding Alessi pretty seriously, and still had his not-accepting-any-nonsense mentality which, given the way Alessi's stand works (its victims don't remember anything from the years they lose), Jotaro must have had even then. Then again, it takes time for the memory loss to kick in, so who knows?
  • Both Enrico Pucci and his twin brother Weather Report (who briefly became a massive prick and an uncaring, murderous bastard after getting his memories back) were shown to have had a nice childhood. Enrico was a profoundly religious kid loved by his family and peers, who only tried to split up Weather and his sister Perla out of brotherly love and felt tremendously guilty over the latter's death, which proved to be the point of no return for his character. Likewise, Weather was an innocent teenager with a strong sense of justice, whose only fault was unknowingly dating his own sister because of a Separated at Birth situation.
  • Diego Brando was shown to be a really nice kid in his childhood. That is until his mother died from being overworked by the unfair farm owner they were working for. That combined with the knowledge that his father had abandoned him drove him to become ruthlessly ambitious to prove that he's above people like his father by any means necessary.
    • Subverted with his original universe counterpart Dio Brando though, who despite having a similar abused childhood is noted by Speedwagon to be someone who's completely evil by nature.
• Reinhard von Lohengramm invokes and subverts this from Legend of the Galactic Heroes. Flashbacks show that as a child he was perfectly content to live an ordinary life with his elder sister and best friend. And then said elder sister is forced to become a member of Emperor Frederick IV's harem leading Reinhard to grow obsessed with obtaining the power to save his sister and become Emperor himself to gain revenge against the Goldenbaum Dynasty and their supporters. He succeeds and actually institutes proto-constitutional reforms in the empire making it a better place to live for its people compared to the Free Planets Alliance, but in the course of doing so, he makes Machiavellian decisions such as but not limited to: turning a blind eye to rebel nobles launching a strategic nuclear attack on a frontier planet and killing four million people, as well as executing rebel nobles and their male relatives aged 10 and above before exiling their remaining relatives to the frontier. However his reforms DO subvert the trope to an extent, as while he is certainly feared by his enemies, he is respected and even devoted by the majority of his subjects, and it's implied that his new dynasty would preside over a new golden age for Humanity.
• Lampshaded in Lucky Star, when Konata and Kagami talk about how when criminals are arrested in real life and people who knew them are interviewed, they will always say things to the effect of, "he wasn't a bad kid." Kagami then says that if Konata ever gets caught, she'll tell the media that she had "always figured she'd do something like that".
• Lychee Light Club: Tamiya at the very least, and he still is to an extent.
• Ilulu from Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid was friends with human children when she was younger (which is unheard of for dragons, especially chaos dragons), but the death of her parents at the hands of humans and being taught to despise humans afterwards turned her into an Ax-Crazy monster. She gets better thanks to Kobayashi.
• Roberto, The Dragon from Monster, is retrospectively revealed to have been a sweet kid (gave up his cup of hot chocolate to give it to a sick friend, liked to collect bugs but would always let them go because he couldn't bring himself to kill them). Then the Orphanage of Fear really got to him - and as for the later character he shows in the story proper, let's just say "wouldn't hurt a fly" is not the phrase that leaps to mind.
  • Averted with Johan Liebert, the series' Big Bad. Sure, he has suffered the Kinderkeim 511 cruel methods of raising, but he was evil before that. He had the evilness none of those children would have achieved.
  • Peter Capek is another example. Once an ordinary kid, now a Mind Rape-inflicting fiend.
    • Even played with with Peter Capek, as his semi-Forgotten Childhood Friend, who grew up to be a normal dentist, attempts to kill him for what he's become at one point. His friend is shot dead before he can get a shot off, and seeing his now-remembered friend's death affects Peter for the rest of his life (a few more days).
• Subverted in Moriarty the Patriot with William and Louis, who were kind enough children with the same heart they carry into adulthood, but also very much advocating killing aristocracy and planning thefts even before Albert found them.
• Enchu of Muhyo and Roji used to be quite nice and hard-working in comparison to Muhyo, and especially cared for his sick mother, hoping to become an Executor and support her. Losing his mother to her illness and his chance at getting the position resulted in him turning evil. After realizing the truth, that Teeki killed his mother in order to take advantage of his potential he reverts to his former personality, continuing his Magical Law studies, even while incarcerated.
• Michio Yuki from Osamu Tezuka's MW is a sweet-natured, rather shy kid till the age of nine when he gets, in short order, taken hostage, molested, and exposed to potentially lethal neurotoxins that fuck up his mind terribly. After that, he goes "a bit" off the rails.
• There's a downplayed example with Katsuki Bakugo in My Hero Academia. Even as a child he was prideful and rough around the edges, but he was an honest friend to Midoriya and was willing to stand up to bullies. Then his Quirk came in, and all the praise he received for it started going to his head, which gave him a brittle ego and amplified his Hair-Trigger Temper.
  • In a straighter example, this turns out to be the case with Tomura Shigaraki. As a child, he was kind and helpful to those around him and even aspired to be a hero, not unlike Midoriya and the rest of his U.A. classmates. However, he spent years living under the thumb of his abusive father, and began to resent the rest of his family as well, who were too afraid to stop the abuse. Eventually, after a beating from his father, he undergoes a Traumatic Superpower Awakening where he accidentally kills most of his family with his Quirk, before intentionally murdering his father. It's after all this that he was found by All For One and groomed to be a villain.
  • There's also Shoto Todoroki. As a child, he was a sweet little boy who dearly loved his mother and looked up to All Might as a hero he wanted to become. But unfortunately, his father, Endeavor and his Training from Hell, as well as pushing his mother to her breaking point, caused his personality to radically change. For the next ten years or so, he becomes a cold and resentful person, openly defying his father in any way he possibly can. Thankfully, he gets better during the Sports Festival, and is slowly regaining parts of his old personality.
• Osamu Tezuka loved this trope. Most incarnations of Rock have a similar story. Perhaps the most heartbreaking example is Adolf Kaufman, one of the three title characters of Adolf. As a child, he befriends a young Jewish boy and resists his Nazi father's hateful ways, but he's soon shipped off to a Nazi training school and it all goes downhill from there...
• Naruto is a textbook example for many characters:
  • Gaara, despite his great power, just wanted to have friends. However, after one horror too many, he snapped and became an Ax-Crazy Dark Magical Boy with Omnicidal Maniac tendencies. He got better after the main character beat some sense back into him again.
  • Sasuke used to be a genuinely likable, outgoing child. Then his brother Itachi broke his mind repeatedly and other shit happened to the point of becoming at some point The Dragon of the Big Bad. Sasuke went through this twice. Even after the Mind Rape and trauma he was an asocial, aloof boy but not too off. It's during the Chunin Exams, especially just after them, where he began going off the handles. Fortunately, he gets better in Part 2 thanks to Itachi and the Four Hokages, then tried to make a revolution with him as the center, and finally Naruto cements his conversion.
  • Neji at age four was very kind and innocent, and when he first met his cousin Hinata even called her cute. But then, he learned the true meaning of the Caged Bird Seal when his uncle used it to torture his father. To top it off, his father later sacrificed himself to prevent a war between Konoha and Kumogakure, and Neji grew to resent the main Hyuuga family, growing into an Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy who loved to put his opponents down with speeches about how Hard Work Hardly Works and You Can't Fight Fate.
  • As a child, Nagato looked like he could be a Messianic Archetype. Then... things hit the fan, he renamed himself "Pain" and decided it was better to be a Dark Messiah.
  • Orochimaru was one of the Legendary Sannin, and he showed great promise as the next Hokage. He was a kind and helpful orphan, but then he got the idea that he could either bring his dead parents back or extend his own lifespan enough to meet them again when they got reincarnated, if he got more powerful. And he started doing questionable experiments, and became a monster.
  • Itachi himself was an adorable boy who genuinely loved his brother and his village. After shit hits the fan, he seems like the biggest Jerkass in history, until we find out why he is how he is. He had watched countless people die in a bloody world war, and it gets worse after that.^note Nice job breaking your precious brother, kid: now he's worse than he has ever been, and it's YOUR fault. Sure, you eventually help him get better, but still. Good thing the fangirls favor you.
  • Sasori. His parents died when he was very young and his grandmother kept lying to him that they were away on a mission. He grew so alone from the lack of love from his mother and father that—when Chiyo taught him the art of puppets—his first two creations were that of his Mom and Dad. But they could never replace the kindness, love, and affection that human parents could provide, which lead to the development of his twisted views on immortality, the sanctity of life, and how it was so fleeting and needed to be preserved... Cold, emotionless, stoic, and impatient with wasting time. Gee, thanks Sand Village!
  • The Kyuubi, erm, Kurama of all people... the other Bijuu too. We see them all as young beasts with the Sage of Six Paths shortly before his death, and Kurama is tearing up at the imminent loss of the man. It turns out that countless years of being treated as monsters led them to become what they are, but they've now found a human they can believe in: Naruto.
  • Konan. She used to be a sweet little girl, then things happened.
  • And as of Chapter 582, if his flashback is to be believed, Kabuto.
  • And now it seems that the Big Bad is this trope as well. Chapter 599 is a montage of Obito Uchiha as a kid, leading up to his Heroic Sacrifice and supposed death. It then cuts to the present where Tobi's mask has shattered to reveal himself as Obito.
  • Even the real Madara Uchiha qualifies. Flashbacks reveal that he was a genuinely nice and dorky child who was so sensitive to his surroundings, he claimed he couldn't pee if someone was watching them. He also would apologize frantically if he thought he hurt someone's feelings (like when he met Hashirama) and wanted to end the disastrous clan wars to protect his baby brother.
  • Pretty much any villain in this series whose childhood we get to see ends up being this, it's one of the themes of the series - people aren't born evil, the ninja system makes them that way.
  • Furthermore, every single one of these former sweet kids has direct parallels with Naruto - in short, they are essentially what would happen if Naruto snapped.
• Adam Blade from NEEDLESS, who is, to put it mildly, a violent Comedic Lolicon Anti-Hero. Even his foster-father wonders just what had gone wrong in the process. This is actually a plot point that is currently ongoing in the manga.
• Shinji and Asuka from Neon Genesis Evangelion, and practically the entire cast. Rei in particular seemed to be downright cheerful until her first clone met its demise.
• In NTR: Netsuzou Trap, Hotaru is the kind of girl who'd feel up her best friend Yuma and even have make-out sessions with her as "practice" for Yuma to do similar things with her boyfriend Takeda, even though Hotaru has a boyfriend herself. Yuma, who's known Hotaru since they were young, recalls that Hotaru was once a Shrinking Violet who often got bullied, forcing Yuma to save her. The change didn't happen overnight, but it's still drastic enough that Yuma makes note of how different teenage Hotaru is from her child self.
• One Piece
  • Big Mom's Mommy's Little Villainess, Charlotte Pudding. The flashback from Chapter 862 shows that save for her Third Eye, Pudding used to be a normal little girl. Then, all the verbal and physical abuse coming from Big Mom, her older siblings and other kids piled up... and she snapped. Now she's one hell of a Jerkass and a willing accomplice in Big Mom's schemes.
  • Even more so, Big Mom herself. Chapters 866 and 867 are dedicated to her early years, showing her as a genuinely sweet gigantic child who already was a Person of Mass Destruction at age five, and had no control of her Super-Strength and voracious appetite. Around 60 years later, she's a far more ruthless, batshit insane Queen.
  • Despite his dour appearance even as a child, Trafalgar Law was a much warmer person than he is now. It was his country's war and the illness that caused it, that took that away from him. Doflamingo's influence seemed to be the nail-in-the-coffin. Thankfully for all, his close relationship with father-figure Corazon helped him regain the little compassion and mercy he does still have.
  • Similar to Law, flashbacks in Whole Cake Island arc reveal Sanji used to be a sweet little boy who liked reading books and feeding mice his cooking and visiting his sick mother. The death of said mother, horrific abuse from his evil father and three brothers, fleeing the kingdom, having the ship he was working on attacked by pirates, getting marooned on a rock for 85 days, and getting Training from Hell from the pirate captain who gave up a leg to save him turned Sanji into the pessimistic cigarette-smoking Hot-Blooded man we know today. Although deep down he’s managed to keep his good heart, despite it all.
  • This is also invoked in regards to Boa "Pirate Queen" Hancock. A flashback shows her as a cute, even rather sweet cabin girl from a Kuja ship.... Then she and her sisters were kidnapped, branded, force-fed Devil Fruits, and totally traumatized — which is the big reason she's such an aloof, bitchy, cold Lady of War in the present. Thanks to Luffy’s influence, she has softened up a bit.
  • Nico Robin used to a lonely, but adorable little bookworm who wanted friends and some parental love. The annihilation of her entire country and death of her mother along with the scholars who made her feel wanted, at hands of The Government and being on the run for multiple decades and working as a criminal assassin turned Robin into the macabre Aloof Dark-Haired Girl she is today. Though her True Companions have made her value life and wanna live again.
  • Nami while not quite as changed as the previous examples, was once an innocent little girl with a loving foster mother who loved drawing maps. Then Arlong invaded her village, killed her mother, enslaved her for cartography skills, physically abused her along with his men, and tricked Nami into stealing treasure to under false pretence of letting her and her village go free has resulted in Nami into becoming a more bitter and cynical person. It’s not until she meets the crew does Nami lighten up again, smiling and laughing to the amazement of her sister Nojiko.
• PandoraHearts:
  • Raven/Gilbert Nightray was absolutely adorable as a child. Following his Break the Cutie event, he became a brooding, serious man with major issues. He can still act sweet without meaning to sometimes, though.
  • Oz could count as this, too. Even when you consider the fact that he used to be this innocent little stuffed rabbit who was turned into a Chain of destruction against his will.
• A Pokémon manga called How I Became a Pokémon Card has a chapter on a boy. He's a sweet boy who takes in an injured Persian who ran away from a group that keeps "precious" Pokemon to stare at all day. Who's this boy? The infamous Yakuza boss, Giovanni.
• Pokémon: The Series:
  • Trip from Best Wishes is a blatant example. The only flashback the audience has of him is when he meets the Champion, Alder. Back then, he was an adorable, hyperactive kid that wanted to become a Pokemon Trainer so he could battle the Champion one day. Fast forward into the present time when Ash first meets him. He's a trainer now, but the happy go lucky personality is gone.
  • Mewtwo was actually born emotionally well adjusted; looking at the Birth Of Mewtwo radio drama and animated short, it's somewhat of a surprise to see him happily smiling and having a cheerful outlook on life. Then he loses his first friend. And then, of course, he meets the humans who created him and finds out that they just see him as a guinea pig. These experiences turn him into a vengeful Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds in Pokémon: The First Movie. He calms down at the end of the film, and by the end of Pokémon: Mewtwo Returns, while he's no longer the happy youngster he was, he's certainly nicer than he was during his first few months in the outside world.
  • Several episodes into Sun and Moon, we are treated to an Early-Bird Cameo picture of Lillie's stoic brother Gladion as a little boy.◊ The same picture also has a young Lillie holding a Lillipup with no problem, indicating something happened to make her so afraid to touch Pokemon in the present day (which she doesn't remember).
• Pokémon Origins suggests this with Giovanni. During Red's gym battle with him, Giovanni realizes how Red's attitude and respect for his Pokemon not only reminded him of his own days as a fresh-faced Trainer before becoming the leader of Team Rocket but also how it reignited his passion for battling Pokemon for reasons other than business.
• Project ARMS: Most of the Egrigori experimental children were like this before whatever processes they were put through were completed. The Keiths mostly became bloodthirsty psychopaths who had no problem killing anyone they had to and Alice developed a dark side to her previously sweet personality after being shot and taken over by an AI. The fact that the kids were treated terribly and given almost no positive human contact could explain a lot (Keith Green genuinely grew to love Katsumi because she was the first person who was nice to him.)
• Though not exactly sweet, Fushimi of Project K was far more mellow and... well, sane during his middle school years. It wasn't until after joining HOMRA and slowly becoming a Green-Eyed Monster that he made the leap from a lonely introverted kid who clung to his best friend into a full-on Jerkass Stalker with a Crush. Love Makes You Crazy indeed.
• Psychic Squad: Kyousuke Hyoubu is a Well-Intentioned Extremist who uses terrorist methods and has a Screw the Rules, I Have Supernatural Powers! attitude, but as a child, he used to be a kind-hearted and polite Wide-Eyed Idealist who actually wanted to use his powers to help ordinary people.
• Psyren Big Bad Amagi Miroku 'Grigori #06' is an extremely homicidal Magnificent Bastard who decided to Kill All Humans except those with Psychic Powers who are willing to help with the plan, after spending most of his childhood and adolescence as a government test subject. However, several years into being a test subject, while his twin #07 was nonresponsive and #05 had already defaulted to hate, #06 was still the sweetest kid. The fact that he held onto the hope of living as a human being the longest seems to have enhanced the virulence of his hatred once he gave up.
• Puella Magi Madoka Magica:
  • While the primary cast is made of kids by most definition, Sakura Kyouko used to be a sweet, good Japanese Christian girl who only wanted to help her father in spreading the word of his God. Unfortunately, when Minister Sakura figured out that Kyouko used magic to bring people to his church, he snapped, killed his family, and then committed suicide. Only Kyouko survived. No wonder she's such a misanthropic Jerkass.
  • Homura used to be clumsy and sweet, but fighting the scheme of an Eldritch Abomination in a "Groundhog Day" Loop and repeatedly losing her beloved Madoka warped her into a cold, lonely Anti-Hero that, in The Rebellion Story, would end up as a goddess of evil.
  • There are the Witches. Although we don't get backstories for all of them, the few who are explained universally fit this trope. Charlotte, the Witch who decapitates Mami, used to be a bubbly child named Nagisa who was obsessed with cheese. Octavia von Seckendorf used to be Sayaka, easily the most idealistic of the protagonists. And in the timelines where she becomes a Witch, Madoka becomes Kriemhild Gretchen, a monster that Cthulhu would check for under his crypt before going to sleep.
• Lucia, from Rave Master. He goes from being a sweet little 6-year-old who hides behind his mom when he sees a stranger to being a psycho-killer at the age of 16. He's somewhat forgiven for that because he spent the ten-year gap between those two points locked in prison for no good reason after having to watch his mother get shot down.
• Believe it or not, Queen Nakia from Red River (1995) fits in perfectly. The homesick and scared teenage girl who was forced to marry a much older man as a part of an alliance between the Hitites and the Babylonian in the backstory... well, she grew into a massive Manipulative Bitch and Hot Witch, who is also the Big Bad of the story.
• Surprise, surprise, Mami from Rent-A-Girlfriend used to be every bit of a cinnamon roll as she looks. When she was in high school she was in an honest, happy relationship with a boyfriend. However, her Control Freak parents heavily disapproved of her relationship as they have decided her life path for her, to the point that her father confronted the boyfriend behind her back and forced him to break of the relationship. And adding to that, Mami ends up having a miscarriage of her baby with boyfriend, leaving her utterly devistated. She's been traumatized from her parents actions ever since, becoming a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing who is envious of other couples of what she can't have.
• Nanami of Revolutionary Girl Utena. Also, in episode 9 there is a back-story to Saionji's childhood depicting the origins of Saionji's current controlling, depressed Jerkass personality; when he was younger, he was more easygoing and kinder.
  • And there's an even bigger case in the general backstory. Oh, Prince Dios alias Akio Ohtori, how low you have fallen. From a literal Knight in Shining Armor to the Big Bad? Woooooow.
  • Nanami's brother Touga plays with the trope. On one hand, Nanami's childhood memories of him paint him as a much kinder big brother than he is in the series' present. On the other, the flashback he shares with Saionji portrays his pre-teen self as something much closer to a Creepy Child; he casually plays with little Utena's hair, has virtually no reaction to her situation (contrasting with kid!Saionji), and already shows signs of becoming the Manipulative Bastard he is as a teenager. Later, it's strongly suggested that even his past kind behaviour towards Nanami was an act, as he claims that he never really loved her and only pretended to care because his father wanted him to. Finally, Word of Enokido is that Touga really was a sweet kid a very long time ago, but changed drastically soon after he and Nanami were sent to the Kiryuus.
• Saber Marionette J: Gerhard von Faust, as the flashbacks show, was once a Cheerful Child who was always smiling at Tiger, wanting to plant beautiful flowers all over Terra II. Then, he was forcibly implanted the 300+ years of memories of his predecessors, with all the bitterness they carried with it.
• In Sailor Moon, Hotaru Tomoe (Sailor Saturn) is shown as a cheerful child with adoring parents—until the accident that kills her mother, wounds Hotaru fatally, makes her father either "rebuild" her and puts himself willingly under the orders of the Big Bad (manga) or sign a desperate Deal with the Devil to save her life (anime), and sets the catalyst for the S season going. Even though Hotaru remains kind and sweet, she becomes withdrawn and is considered creepy by nearly everyone save for Chibi-Usa and the Inner girls because of her illness, healing powers, and dark aura. When she's reborn and raised by her father (anime) or the Outers (late anime and manga), she's a cheerful sprite again except for when her older, wiser personality slips through.
• Sakurako aka Youya from Sakura Gari was a sweet and adorable child, right until she witnessed the death of her mother under some very screwed up circumstances which turn out to be even more screwed up than they appear. She then became a seriously Creepy Child, eventually revealed to be a total Yandere.
• Sakuya Ookuchi from Sensual Phrase once was a kind boy who lived alone with his Broken Bird mother. We meet him, however, as a massively screwed-up Fetishized Abuser.
• A Silent Voice
  • Naoka Ueno is a particularly tragic example. As a young and genuinely sweet girl in elementary school she nursed an unrequited but innocent crush on the protagonist Shoya Ishida, and wanting to please him badly she started to model her behaviour on his own. Unfortunately Shoya was a bullying troublemaker so Ueno became a brat herself and joined in on Shoya’s torment of deaf girl Shouko Nishimiya. Worse still she soon discovered Shouko had a crush on Shoya as well and stricken with jealous hatred she upped her bullying of Shouko and blamed her when their class eventually used Shoya as a scapegoat when Shouko‘s mother complained. In the present Ueno is an obnoxious Alpha Bitch who still can’t stand Shouko and despairing at a reformed Shoya now reciprocating Shouko’s feelings, does her best to come between them acting like a Yandere in the process.
  • Inverted hard with Ishida who as a young man is sweet and compassionate, completely unlike his younger self who was a feckless, immature and bullying Bratty Half-Pint so Allergic to Routine he was insensitive to harming those around him. Having gotten Character Development in the years since, Shoya hates how he was when he was younger and desperately does his best to make amends as an adult.
• Chouji Suitengu, back then known as Ueno Takeshi from Speed Grapher was a pretty sweet kid, who loved playing games with his little sister. Then his parents were murdered for not being able to pay their debt to the Roppongi Club. Suitengu was sold off as a child soldier, almost killed during his final mission, and then turned into a Frankenstein stitch job. Nowadays, he's a textbook example of Four Eyes, Zero Soul.
• Barnaby Brooks, Jr. from Tiger & Bunny was a joyous, trusting child constantly showered with love and care courtesy of his very affectionate parents. But they were murdered right in front of his eyes when he was just four years old, resulting in Barnaby becoming cold, cynical, consumed by the desire for revenge, and reluctant to trust anyone; up to the point where he has avoided close relationships with other people for 20 years. Subverted towards endgame in that he regains traces of his original personality upon befriending the show's Idiot Hero, Kotetsu.
• In Tokyo Ghoul, this seems to be the standard.
  • The Kirishima siblings are revealed in flashbacks to have started out as cheerful, happy children. In contrast to Touka, Ayato was leery of humans from an early age while she readily embraced them. The loss of their parents, and betrayal by an elderly neighbor drove the siblings onto the streets where they would be forced to grow up fighting for their lives. Both became bitter and violent, though Yoshimura's intervention allowed Touka to slowly begin rebuilding her life by the time she's introduced. Ayato refused this help and instead run away, ending up as one of the commanders of the organization, Aogiri.
  • Similarly, Nishiki Nishio started out unhappy about having to eat humans and eager to live a normal life. Then a human betrayed his sister, and got her killed. He decided he would never trust anyone again, and became a territorial jerk that tried his best to keep his emotional distance. Not that it worked in the long run....
  • As a child, Kurona and Nashiro were very cheerful and sanguine until they witnessed the brutal murder of their parents at the hands of a ghoul. The trauma caused by their deaths has caused them to become cold, distant, and relatively nihilistic. They decided to become ghouls because they considered being human and living in the current " twisted world" to be the cause for their misfortunes in life.
  • Kishou Arima, of all people. A flashback to his childhood at a Tyke Bomb factory shows him seemingly crushing a butterfly in his hand. Later, it's shown that he actually caught it and secretly released it out a window while smiling happily. Rather than an emotionless killing machine, he was actually a gentle child raised as a weapon and came to hate himself because he could only "take" from others.
• Millions Knives, the Big Bad of Trigun. Anime him... kinda, but the psycho tendencies were there even before he flipped out and became a full-blown Creepy Child. Manga Knives... had something much better to flip out over, and before that, just listen to the kid.
  Knives: There's no difference between people's hearts and ours, so if we try, I'm sure everyone can understand each other.
  • This attitude did not survive contact with For Science!! Look at your big sister's preserved vivisected corpse, and the records of how the only people you've ever known experimented her to death before she was a year old! See the lovely metastasized cancers from all the scans!
  • It's obvious Vash was a cute kid, who briefly believed Humans Are Bastards after finding out about his and Knives' sister, but snapped out of it thanks to Rem, but flashbacks reveal Wolfwood was as well...more recently than you might think. And Livio, despite already being psychotic at the time, too.
  • Manga Legato gets a dubious entry because while there is nothing innocent about his flashback (he was a kept catamite who was discovered in a plan to kill everyone he'd ever known and was therefore being raped to death when Knives turned up and coincidentally sliced up everyone but him because he subconsciously used his psychic powers in self-defense), it's practically impossible not to get choked up at the look on his face when he realizes Knives is going to allow him to live and follow, and he admits he has no name.
• Vermeil in Gold: When Alto sees Vermeil's memories of her past, he learns that 550 years ago she was a sweet and innocent Cheerful Child who lived happily under the care of a kindly nun with other orphans, who she loved as her family. Then the townsfolk discovered that she was a demon, and blaming her for a recent plague they murdered her family, resulting in her giving in to despair and rage, destroying the town and killing everyone in it in a single burst of power. From there on in, she would live with the fallout until she asked to be sealed inside the book that Alto found in the academy's library.
• Rinne Berlinetta from ViVid Strike! was originally a shy little orphan who was fortunate enough to be adopted by a kindly rich family and slowly started to break out of her shell (even growing especially close to her adoptive grandfather). Then she spent several months being bullied by some girls at school, culminating in them destroying a precious family heirloom and beating her unconscious. Because of this, she was unable to be there when her grandfather unexpectedly died, and she beat the bullies half to death the next day. By the present day, she is a cold martial artist who often leaves her opponents in tears and — in the words of her Childhood Friend Fuka — has "the look of somebody who despised the weak."
• Airi "Nora" Nobara from Wasteful Days of High School Girls used to be just like Loli when she was a child and was promised a pet cat by her father. Eventually, however, there was never any cat, and her father kept delaying again and again until one day she found out he's actually allergic, so pets are a no-go. She's been having major trust issues since.
• In Yu-Gi-Oh!, Seto Kaiba was once like this; just ask Mokuba. Their stepfather Gozaburo's harsh, strict, and at times cruel methods to mold him into a successor was the biggest factor towards him becoming an arrogant and selfish Jerkass with a win-at-all-costs attitude. In fact, when Seto finally lost in Battle City, the extent to which he had changed is what finally made Mokuba too disgusted with him to continue pandering to him.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! GX's Kaiser Ryo. As shown in a flashback, he used to be a sweet, idealistic kid. Somewhere along the line, he became the stoic, cold, Aloof Big Brother of Season 1. It's even more jarring after he freaks out and becomes Hell Kaiser.

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