Weirdness Magnet / Anime & Manga

• The system force in Ah! My Goddess tends to cause strange things to happen for no apparent reason whenever someone tries to pull Belldandy and Keiichi apart.
• Akari of ARIA tends to stumble into all sorts of supernatural phenomena — many of them involving the king of cats, Cait Sith. These include, but are not limited to: traveling back in time, visiting The Little Shop That Wasn't There Yesterday, nearly taking a ride on the soul train, and an attempted abduction by a ghost.
• The 104 Trainee Squad in Attack on Titan have ridiculous luck, lampshaded by Jean, considering all the things that has happened to them. Among their numbers are: the last half-Asian (Mikasa), five Titan shifters (Eren, Annie, Reiner, Bertlolt, Ymir) (and from that number, there is Eren as the Coordinate and Ymir as a Wild Card with knowledge of the Titan's secrets) and a Heroic Bastard from a noble house (Krista/Historia).
• Played for Drama with Ciel from Black Butler, since it's implied all the weirdness he's been through is slowly driving him off the deep end.
• In the early chapters of Bleach, characters with spiritual affinity were weirdness magnets. Ghosts appeared to such characters, and hollows hunted them. Ichigo's spiritual attunement spilled over to his classmates making them weirdness magnets as well.
  • The entirety of Karakura Town, the hometown of the human protagonists, can be considered as one giant Weirdness Magnet, going back at least 15-20 years before it became relevant to the Big Bad's plans.
• Dragon Ball has Bulma. The first story arc alone gets her a group composed by a boy with a monkey tail who can turn into a giant berserker ape and is actually an alien (Goku), a perverted anthropomorphic pig with Voluntary Shapeshifting abilities (Oolong), a desert bandit who freaks out at the sight of women (Yamcha) and a flying animal with better Voluntary Shapeshifting than the pig (Puar). Lampshaded in Dragon Ball Super when Jaco (a weird-looking alien Super Cop) shows up and people wonder why all her friends are weirdos... And they don't even know that she first met Jaco before the others.
  • Also, Bulma's older sister Tights. In the few days she spent in East City she met and befriended Jaco (indeed, it was her who made Bulma and Jaco meet) and Omori, a scientist who could stop time as a side effect of his research on Time Travel, and later actually embraced it, getting Jaco to make her travel through space to meet weird people and things and write novels about them.
• Naota from FLCL: A crazy woman riding a scooter hits him in the head with a guitar and then moves into his household as a live-in maid, and a horn grows out of his head that eventually turns out to be a robot with a TV for a head - which also moves in with his family. All that happens in the first episode, and it only gets weirder from there. All the events of the first episode are underscored by Naota's constant comments about his town, how "everything is normal", "nothing amazing happens here", etc. Then at the end of the first episode, Kanti the robot and Haruko are making bread while Naota says, "and everything's back to normal .. nothing amazing."
• In Haunted Junction, Saito High School was built at the center of a triangle formed by a Shinto shrine, a Buddhist temple, and a Christian church. The resultant flow of energy makes it a weird place that seems to attract more weird. And as if to throw fuel to the fire, the Holy Student Council comprises the son of a Christian minister, the daughter of a Shinto priest, and the son of a Bhuddist monk. This is not helped by the Chairman's habit of actively bringing more weird items and creatures onto school grounds. He's a deliberate weirdness magnet, to the chagrin of inadvertent magnet Haruto Hokujo (the Christian member of said Council).
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure has the Joestar bloodline. Though every part has its share of weirdness.
  • Joseph Joestar from Part 2 is the biggest weirdness magnet so far. Imagine godlike super vampires who eat vampires to live, warrior monks who turned into vampires, mafia, Nazis, the power of the sun, and Stroheim. Then getting a futuristic prosthetic hand like Stroheim. Then dying, having his spirit ascend, and then being brought back thanks to a blood transfusion from the body of his grandfather which had been kept alive by a vampire's head. Joseph Joestar is the only JoJo to have battled vampires, Pillar Men, and Stands (which means he's also the only hero to have used both hamon and a Stand), not to mention encountering ghosts and being around when there's a guy claiming to be an alien. Also, he managed to accidentally find an abandoned invisible baby that he ended up raising in his old age.
  • Stroheim, the ultra-hammy, Nazi captain who got blown up in a grenade incident, got rebuilt as a Terminator-esque cyborg and fires a machine gun built into his chest while making hilariously campy poses. He kills vampires with 'NAAAAAZI SCIIIIIIIIIIENCE!!! Also he's actually a good guy. Kinda. Don't even ask how that happened.
  • In Part 3 onwards, it's explicitly stated that Stand users tend to attract one another, resulting in this trope. This ends up sparking the main plot of part 4, as serial killer Yoshikage Kira acquiring a Stand gets him discovered by another Stand user by complete coincidence (he stole the second user's sandwich bag), ending his years of staying virtually undetected and throwing him against a bunch of supernatural people who don't appreciate him or his "line of work" too much.
• It was stated that early on in Kaguya-sama: Love Is War that Shirogane tended to attract girls who were unstable. Considering the three girls that are attracted to him are Kaguya, Karen and Moeha, this is pretty accurate.
• In Mission: Yozakura Family, Mutsumi has some... bizarre people drawn to her, from her oldest brother to Kirisaki to Hatoda. This is on top of being a constant target as a Living Macguffin.
  Taiyo: You really attract a lot of weirdos...
  Mutsumi: Yes. Sometimes, I feel sorry for myself.
• Mizuki in Mokke has the talent to get haunted by lots of different kinds of ghosts. Her older sister Shizuru can see them, but is lucky not to be influenced by them directly.
• Tadayasu Sawaki from Moyashimon. In addition to being born with the power to see and communicate with microorganisms, he ends up hanging out with all sorts of weirdos, including a college professor seemingly obsessed with bio-remediation and weird fermented foods from around the world, the professor's leather-wearing workaholic Ice Queen grad assistant, a pair of slackers obsessed with sake brewing and insects, respectively, a girl who washes way too much and another girl who drinks way too much. And to top it all off, his best friend since childhood comes out as Transgender and starts dressing up in Elegant Gothic Lolita outfits.
• Being a magnet for mushi, the Meta Origin for weirdness in Mushishi is apparently a common affliction for members of the title profession, including main character Ginko.
• Mai (and possibly the rest of Fuuka Academy) in My-HiME appears to be a magnet for the surreal. Nagi specifically mentions in one episode that the Orphans are drawn to girls like her. However, it later turns out there are more sinister forces at work...
• The titular character of Natsume's Book of Friends has spirits (Youkai) coming at him from every direction. It's a genetic thing.
• The Straw Hat Pirates from One Piece always gets in trouble wherever they go and will surely continue do so in the future. Nami actually lampshades a much more literal version of this trope when the eccentric talking living musician fencing skeleton Brook joins the crew, by saying "Why do our crew always attract the weird ones?" - other weird members being the perverted cyborg Franky and the reindeer human Chopper. Plus there's Robin who can make body parts appear all over the place. And then there's Luffy: a living rubber band. We later get an explanation when we see other pirate crews competing with the Straw Hat Pirates: It turns out that all of the other crews carefully choose their paths to avoid as much trouble as possible, whereas the Straw Hats' captain, Monkey D. Luffy, deliberately seeks out the most dangerous options because he finds them the most amusing. That is, Luffy makes himself a Weirdness Magnet on purpose and is fully aware of it.
• In Project A-Ko, whenever C-ko is the Damsel in Distress, it's usually because she's this.
• The title character of Puella Magi Madoka Magica has some of this going on. After she saves Kyubey from Homura, she starts coming across witch labyrinths on a regular basis, her friend Hitomi gets hypnotized by a witch and nearly commits suicide, and so on, and she isn't even a Magical Girl yet. Her insanely high potential magical power probably has something to do with it.
• Ranma from Ranma ½, to the point that most fans suspect that Ranma's curse isn't gender bending so much that it's his almost supernatural ability to attract weirdness wherever he goes.
  • Others have theorized that it might actually be Akane Tendo who's the real weirdness magnet; Ranma, and the trouble associated with him, could be considered the weirdness that she attracts. Or perhaps they're both weirdness magnets, and their mutual presence is strengthening the effect, hence why more and more whacked out stuff happens as the anime/manga goes on.
  • Though it's never outright stated that any character in Ranma ½ is a weirdness magnet, it is a fairly easy conclusion to leap to. While the world itself clearly is full of weirdness — the existence of the various Martial Arts and Crafts practitioners, plus the cursed, easy-to-fall-into Jusenkyo ponds, prove it — it does seem that Ranma, Akane and the other characters do have a particular knack for getting involved with the more bizarre parts of life. Kuno manages to be the 1 millionth customer to a "Pull the Wish-Granting Sword from the Stone" contest, which means he gets the three wishes. Shampoo brings back a supposedly haunted set of bells as a present for Ranma, and sure enough, out pops a ghost. In the first Non-Serial Movie, a young woman who is the third generation of her family to have possession of a relic that will supposedly bring a prince or princess to marry the one who holds it has gone her entire life waiting to be swept off her feet. When she tracks down Old Master Happosai to express her disgruntlement at its failure to work, guess who shows up the second the relic falls into Akane Tendo's hands? Ryoga just happens to stumble upon a creepy merchant selling toy fishing rods that make the person you "catch" fall head-over-heels in love with you and, intending to use it on Akane, he winds up snagging Ranma instead. And these are just a few examples.
• Tsunayoshi Sawada from Reborn! (2004). For the first sixty or so chapters he meets: a baby in the mafia who shoots him in the head and causes him to come back to life in his underwear with a flame on his forehead, a high school student with a lot of dynamite, a five-year-old dressed as a cow who uses grenades trying to kill the mafia baby and can switch with his future self (by climbing into a bazooka pulled out of his large afro and firing), a person who is a klutz without anyone from his family near him, oh and he wakes up to find a corpse in his room, etc.
• Osaka Naru (or Molly, if you prefer) from Sailor Moon was notorious for attracting almost every kind of supernatural creature in existence as the most frequent Victim of the Week. Luna lampshaded this early in the second season. However, her role in later seasons was downplayed until she was finally Put on a Bus.
• Sgt. Frog: Fuyuki and Natsumi Hinata get entangled in all sorts of extraterrestrial weirdness as a result of the Keroro Platoon moving into their house. Fuyuki, a prodigy paranormalist, loves it while Natsumi, an average girl who would rather have her average life back, hates it.
• In Shakugan no Shana, it seems that almost all of the main characters in high school get pulled into something related to the Crimson Realm.
• Lina seems to be this in the first third of Slayers NEXT, as she inexplicably keeps tripping on one Mazoku plot after the other. As it turns out there's nothing accidental about this, as Xellos was leading her into these situations by order of the Hellmaster.
  • Anytime Lina is around she'll have to gather up her True Companions and defeat some sort of Big Bad — not just in Slayers NEXT.
• The title character of Tenchi Muyo! is a serious weirdness magnet. Sena in the spinoff Tenchi Muyo! GXP, who to begin bears an uncanny resemblance to the former, is even more so.
• Chiaki, the main character of Today's Cerberus, attracts yokai to him because, as a child, a piece of his soul was accidentally stolen by the Cerberus head Roze. His magnet status is further enhanced by the fact he is a teenager, "neither child nor adult."
• The entire cast of Urusei Yatsura, but especially the lead character, Ataru Moroboshi. As a cultural note, the very first story has Ataru's mother reminiscing about all the bad omens that took place on the day that Ataru was born. It reads like a beginner's guide to superstitions with particular references to Japanese beliefs, starting with the fact that he was born on the anniversary of the Buddha's death. Also, his name can be translated to mean "Many stars will hit him on the head". And finally, the name of the series itself can be translated as "Those Annoying Aliens", suggesting that the galaxy and series' version of Earth is teeming with sentient species who are all irritating in their own ways. Ataru is therefore simply unlucky enough to catch the attention of all of them.
• Played with in xxxHOLiC, as Watanuki is fully aware that he is a weirdness magnet, and starts the story by making a Deal with the Devil (Yuuko, actually, but Watanuki seems to consider them one and the same) to get rid of his unwanted ability.
  • The cause of his weirdness magnetism is actually explained later on — suicidal thoughts and desires that have been magically amnesia'd away. He may not remember that he wants to die nor the reason for why he does, but he still smells like it to spirits and stuff.
  • A second reason, seemingly taken directly from Futurama, is that as a time travel duplicate, he's doomed, as reality itself tries to exorcise him. He just manages to hang on regardless.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! GX: In Season 4, Judai almost drops out of the Academy under the assumption that, as The Chosen One, he is attracting all the evil, psychotic villains to the place. Two former said psychos clarify that it's Duel Academia that is the Magnetic Plot Device (Sameshima actually revealed it was built for that specific purpose), and Judai can best protect it by staying, not leaving.
  • At this point, we can probably classify the Duel Monsters card game itself as a Weirdness Magnet, considering how many mystical forces have used it as a conduit (like Egyptian gods, Incan gods, and some kind of outer space cosmic forces, for starters).

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