The yanking of proverbial dogs' chains in Anime and Manga.
- In Bakuman。, this happens to the heroes on a few occasions concerning their goal of getting an anime. They manage to tie with their rival Eiji's manga at the height of their first manga's popularity, but Mashiro is hospitalized for overworking, and their manga is ultimately canceled. Their third manga manages to meet the editor in chief's standards, but parental concerns prevent it from getting an anime.
- Berserk gives us the Fantasia arc, where Guts and company head to Elfhelm to get Casca back to sanity. Schierke and Farnese go through a hellish dreamscape to retrieve the pieces of Casca's mind and eventually restore her to her pre-Eclipse sanity. Except she can't look at or even be close to Guts without suffering horrible flashbacks. And just when it looks like they will be able to convalesce on the island in peace, it turns out that the adorable little moonlight kid that has been visiting them all throughout their journey to Elfhelm since the Conviction Arc, and who looks a lot like what Guts and Casca's kid would be like? He's revealed to be sharing a body with none other than Griffith, who used him to reincarnate on Earth again and is his only means of feeling again, which he had previously sacrificed to become a Godhand. Griffith proceeds to break the seal keeping the demons out of Elfhelm, No-Sell everything that Guts can throw at him, completely shut out resident witches Schierke and Farnese with his overwhelming evil presence alone, and make off with Casca right before Guts's eyes. And to make things worse, Danaan and the Elves either decide to or are forced to depart for the astral realm (including Isma, who vanishes right before Isidro's eyes) leaving everyone alone and Puck and Ivalera the only Elves left in the world. Ouch.
- Billy Bat gives us Lee Harvey Oswald who, because of his I Just Want to Be Special nature, gets yanked around by both the Bat and a Government Conspiracy to the point where he doesn't have any idea what the right thing to do is. By the end of his arc, it looks like he's done the right thing by trying to live a humble life and allowing Kevin Yamagata to give his life saving President Kennedy. But wait! Kevin isn't dead, and it turns out the Bat never wanted him to save Kennedy in the first place. JFK is shot, as history demands, the police are rushing into the building, and Oswald is with a girl who saw members of the previously mentioned conspiracy setting up for the assassination. In a Bittersweet Ending, the only way to save the girl from being eliminated is to let the police find him and take the fall for the assassination while she makes her escape.
- Bleach loves doing this, particularly to its supporting cast.
- Poor Orihime has things really bad in this department. Want to fight? Cue dramatic determination followed by the destruction of your attack abilities! Want to get some training? Not a chance, without your attack powers, you're useless! You've trained anyways, so now you want to help fight? Sorry, but if you don't surrender and defect to the enemy, your friends will all die horrible deaths! But look, Ichigo's beaten Grimmjow and now all of you can go back... NOT! Guess what? You were kidnapped solely to lure your friends and allies into coming to rescue you so that your home would be left unprotected! And look who's there with his laser-blasting finger pressed against your chest while he scoffs over your speech about your heart! Oh, hey, seems like you've been rescued again... or the two lurking behind you could be readying for an attack. But look, Ishida joins the fray, and you two are going up to help Ichigo, who you just so happen to be in love with. Well, what do you know? Ulquiorra was waiting for you to show up so that he could blast a hole in his chest! And Ishida? He lost a hand. Wait, Ichigo's back... as a nearly mindless Hollow with the only goal being to protect you. Plus he just stabbed Ishida because he interfered in mutilating Ulquiorra's corpse, which made him view him as an obstacle in protecting you.
- Poor Ishida is as much of a Butt-Monkey as Orihime is. Hey, you're a Quincy, which is cool, right? Nope! Because Shinigami killed off most of your clan, including your grandpa! Oh man, you have to fight that scientist dude, so you pull your ultimate technique which makes you lose all your powers! But don't worry, daddy is here to help, except that he has to shoot you nineteen millimeters from your heart. One of your closest friends is kidnapped? Follow the hero blindly into a place you have absolutely no knowledge about! GASP! Another Mad Scientist has shown up, and you're about to die! Look out, some weirdo creature is attacking Orihime! You try to save her, except your arm gets cut off! So yeah, poor Ishida doesn't have it that easy either.
- Poor Chad also receives this during the Hueco Mundo Arc, as he managed to win a fight against a named opponent by effectively showcasing his new powers. Chad has enough resolve to feel that he will be successful in Hueco Mundo... until Nnoitra showed up. That scene is another strong example that Chad is a Main Event jobber namely on how he can handle nameless Mooks and secondary named opponents but anytime he comes up against a remotely prominent opponent, well... let's just say he was on the floor for quite a while after that scene. In fact the GameFAQs Adult Swim Anime board once summed up the scene like this.Chad: Now that I have won this fight I shall no longer be a jobber!
Nnoitra: LOL, no. - Momo Hinamori. Oh God, poor Momo. So you want to forever serve the man you practically are in love with? How nice... except oh no, he's suddenly dead and you've just found his corpse maimed and pinned to a wall! And after you try to attack the captain you're utterly convinced that did it, you get arrested! But wait, they found a letter from Aizen, revealing the killer's true identity... too bad that happens to be your childhood best friend, Toshiro Hitsugaya! So wracked with grief, you break out of your cell and try to kill him, only to be knocked out soon after; when you do wake up, you follow him around, go to a part of the Soul Society inaccessible to even captain-level shinigami where you find the person you originally tried to kill, but what's this? He says there's someone who wants to meet you! And standing right behind you is your captain, perfectly alive. You immediately hug him and start to cry, because you're so happy he's alive and well and— wait a minute, did he just stab you? Hahahah, guess what, you've just been betrayed and the man you idolized was all just a lie. Have fun being stuck in a coma for the next 40 or so chapters and remaining in extremely heavy denial when you wake up! When all of that's done, you remain out of the picture for a while until chapter 334, where, hooray, you've made a spectacular comeback saving Matsumoto, hopefully over the trauma of the whole Aizen ordeal! Erm, not quite: you still refer to him as "Captain Aizen," but hey, you're gonna kick some ass and show every actions speak louder than words, right? Well, not really... despite fending off three Fraccion, you get owned by some freaky chimaera thing and guess what, no redeeming moment for you! But lucky you, it gets even better! Cue about 60 chapters later and you make a return... except, once again, you've been stabbed again, by — get ready for this — your best friend, Hitsugaya. Have fun getting over that one! Oh, and did we mention you're one of the most hated characters in the Western fandom, for all of that happening to you? Yeah, it's really fun to be you, isn't it?
- Since the main story arc of Case Closed is Shinichi trying to get himself back to his normal age and the series has yet to end, pretty much any attempt to cure himself will be met with failure. On top of that, every time he temporarily changes back, he never gets a chance to tell Ran what he wants to say to her. The first time it happens it's entirely unexpected and thus he thought it would be permanent, only to start to change back into Conan right after solving the case he was working on. The next time is even worse, because the prototype cure he's given does keep him in his teenage body even after he collapses in pain (the previous sign that he was changing back). Thus, it really did look like he was cured for good... only to de-age again, two days later.
- Code Geass did this close to the end of the first season: Euphemia manages to talk Lelouch out of his plan to start a revolt by making it look like she killed him, and for a few seconds it looks like there's going to be peace... only for Lelouch to lose control of his Geass at the worst possible moment and accidentally order Euphemia to start massacring Japanese people. Which she does. Oops.
- In Corsair, Canale eventually feels like he has a place in Preveza and thinks that Ayace might actually love him and that they can be happy together, and he manages to confront some of his issues from his past. However soon as Ayace suspects he is going back to Sesaam, he becomes enraged and rapes Canale, making him feel utterly betrayed.
- The Cowboy Bebop episode "Hard Luck Woman" has an infamous one that is just brutal. With a few teasing hints of her past, Faye suddenly remembers who she is, and where she came from. She apologizes to Spike before she goes, showing she's starting to revert to a softer side. She's coming home, mirroring herself when she was a little girl and a teenager. She then opens the gates in her flashbacks, but in reality the entire mansion was burnt down to the foundation. So Faye draws lines in the sand of where her furniture was and looks up at the sky and reflects.
- Deadman Wonderland: In volume 6, during a Breather Chapter, the Deadmen are finally allowed to go outside into the fresh air after being kept underground for most of the series, everyone is partying. Ganta has a moment where Shiro asks him if he's having fun, he mulls on the friends he's made in DW, mentally comparing them to his massacred classmates, and for the first time appears to be at peace. in the very next chapter he nearly kills the other Deadmen when he unintentionally activates his Ganbare Ganta Gun trying to save a forgery, and is loathed by those same friends and even beaten.
- Light Yagami of Death Note. Several different times, each involving some Death Note Gambit Roulette. Though frankly, Light's chain can't get yanked hard enough.
- Happens to Laios's party in Delicious in Dungeon regarding rescuing Falin. It took a lot of blood, sweat and tears but Team Touden have finally got Falin back from the Red Dragon, yaaaay! Oh wait, she's been spirited away by the Lunatic Magician and is now trying to kill them. Also, she Came Back Wrong and Shuro intends to get all of them imprisoned (at best) for their unwitting part in it. Also, the Lunatic Magician, a far more dangerous enemy than the Red Dragon, is out for their blood. Ouch.
- Fairy Tail:
- Erza and Jellal get one at the end of the Nirvana arc by means of Diabolus ex Machina. After managing to regain his senses after eight years of being Brainwashed and Crazy, Jellal manages to convince Erza, who is relieved to have him back to normal, that he's good again, and even gains the acceptance of her friends. While he's trying to figure out what to do with himself afterword and Erza is attempting to confess her feelings to him he gets arrested for the things he was forced to do while brainwashed, and also sentenced to life imprisonment. He got broken out later by the very person who made him Brainwashed and Crazy in the first place after she did a Heel–Face Turn, but still...
- An especially tragic example happens during the Tartaros arc. Natsu, after searching for his dragon parent Igneel for over 14 years (seven of which were spent in suspended animation during the Time Skip, but still), finally sees him again. Except it turns out that Igneel has spent that time sealed inside of Natsu and he needs to deal with Acnologia first. And then he dies fighting the Dragon King, only with enough time to telepathically tell Natsu why he left and how much he loved him. And Natsu gets a front-row seat of watching his father get blasted to oblivion. Somebody give this guy a hug!
- Fate/kaleid liner PRISMA☆ILLYA: After losing his sister and reaching his lowest emotional point, Shirou finds an ally in the form of his potential love interest Sakura. She's killed in the next chapter after trying to protect him from Shinji.
- Gantz:
- So Kurono has been freed from the Gantz Room, grown into a heroic, admirable person, and his girlfriend, the woman he loves, has been brought back to life. Sounds nice right? Except Gantz took both their memories so they no longer remember one another, Kurono is back to how he was pre-Gantz, a cowardly Jerkass, and vampires have sent a kill team after him, and while his memories leak back and he manages to hold his own for at least a little while, they succeed in murdering him, but not before showing him his younger brother's severed head first.
- The entire Breather Episode before the Giants Arc; all missions have been cancelled indefinitely, the orbs begin to power down, and Gantz himself shows up to say hello to the survivors. Then WWIII with aliens begins for real, in all its horror.
- In GE - Good Ending, it happens to Utsumi, the main protagonist, more often than he really deserves. Poor guy just can't get a break.
- Hayate the Combat Butler
- Hayate meets up with the girl that he's (apparently) loved for the last ten years. He saves her from the honored spirit inhabiting her body. She tells him she loves him too. Things are going to be happy now, right. No. She leaves him as she tells him he has to return to his master and he's left with the impression that he won't see her again.
- Then again, she only told him to do it because he was torn between the two choices presented, and she knew that he would come to blame himself for whatever happened after that since it would have been his choice. That's why she made that choice for him, in a rather sad example of I Want My Beloved to Be Happy.
- HeartCatch Pretty Cure! has a particularly cruel one. 3/4ths of the way through, Yuri is called to the Great Heart Tree, where she's confronted by the spirit of her fallen fairy partner Cologne. During this time, Tsubomi, Erika and Itsuki is forced to battle the Quirky Mini Boss Squad and the Dark Precure and Yuri, no longer wanting to stand behind in the sidelines, begs to have her powers restored. After returning to action as Cure Moonlight and mopping the floor with everyone, she returns to the tree and it seems that this action just may also return her partner to her. Instead, he floats back up to heaven, his last words to her being "You really are a crybaby."
- Hetalia: Axis Powers:
- Lithuania has this happen to him often, often due to being a Horrible Judge of Character and also just being downright unlucky in everything.
- Ukraine's entire existence seems to be a long line of these.
- In High School D×D, the protagonist Issei, who wants a harem but doesn't know that he already has one near him, wants to confess to Rias but can't because of trauma of rejection (he did get killed by his ex-girlfriend fallen angel after all, not to mention found him boring). He finally does get to confess to Rias and what happens after that? One volume later, he gets killed by poison, specifically made for dragons. It doesn't stick, however.
- Highschool of the Dead heaped so much misfortune onto Asami, that it broke her - from being used a scapegoat by the mall survivors that'd been left in her care, to being gently turned down by Hirano after she'd fallen in love with him. Still, she maintained hope that her CO, whom she respected and admired
, would be back with help for them. Nope. When Asami saw her CO had been killed she became despondent and thought she had no one left to care about her. And just when it seemed her lot in life was about to change, her duty as an officer compelled her to save the so-and-so who had put them all at risk, by letting "them" in to save himself. Which cost her her own chance at escape, and her only chance at happiness. The cruelest part being, the guy she was in love with had no choice but to Kill the Cutie to keep "them" from getting to her. - Higurashi: When They Cry:
- Rika arrives in a Hinamizawa where all her friends have vague memories of past universes, and where Rika confides in them about how she's going to be killed. Due to the episode number, there was no way they could make this stretch the entire anime. This didn't make it any less depressing when, after beating up several of the Yamainu and charging to take over a car, Keiichi gets shot in what would be the first of all their deaths.
- Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Rei takes this to a new level of dickery: Rika has successfully gotten to the bottom of the Hinamizawa Disaster, and stopped the Big Bad. As the fateful summer finally passes she has just enjoyed a peaceful day at the pool with her friends... And then she's run over by a truck. She awakens back in Hinamizawa. The "Groundhog Day" Loop is still in effect... And this time around, all the rules of the game have changed. For one, Keiichi isn't around anymore. But she gets better. It was either a dream, a flashback/hallucination to another Rika in another world, or she died and was brought back to the previous world (the one she died in).
- Gou (which is otherwise a Milestone Celebration reboot) twists the knife again in the start of the second episode — Rika wakes up to find out she's Not Quite Dead. A vision of Hanyu directs her to a fragment sending her right back to the beginning of the story.
- JoJo's Bizarre Adventure had this happen in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Phantom Blood, with poor, poor Jonathan Joestar:
- Since his youth, he'd had to deal with his evil adopted brother Dio Brando beating and humiliating him, kissing his girl, killing his dog, trying to poison his father and steal his inheritance. And then things take a turn for the worse when Dio murders his father as a Human Sacrifice to become a vampire, and goes on a killing spree and now Jonathan must stop him. So eventually, it seems like he's finally defeated Dio, he's married Erina, they're on their honeymoon... and then Dio comes back as a severed head and mortally wounds him, setting the ship on fire and forcing Jonathan to sacrifice himself to stop Dio once and for all. He never even lived to see his and Erina's child be born.
- And it becomes a double whammy as of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders, when it's revealed that Dio didn't actually die, but rather stole Jonathan's body to become even more powerful, meaning that Jonathan's death only stopped Dio temporarily and later unleashed a greater evil onto the world.
- Kaiji plays this brutally with Sahara's death. After making his way across the Bridge of Death, he finally prepares to open the door to cash in on the prize money... only to be blown off the building by the air compression blast from the window towards a certain death. The series itself is ripe with these moments, but this one moment has to be the worst.
- Lucky Star provides a rare Played for Laughs example. A Running Gag throughout the anime is Meito Anizawa, the mascot of Animate Japan, trying to get Konata to buy from his store as anything she buys becomes a big hit among Otaku only to fail for various reasons. In one of these scenarios, after many fake-outs he and his crew are finally able to get Konata to go up to the cash register to purchase one of the items they have in stock. Unfortunately for them, Konata is short just a few yen of buying said item, and so asks them to put the item back where it was as she walks off leaving them with distraught looks on their faces.
- Maria no Danzai: Upon trapping her victims in a death trap, Maria does what Jigsaw does where she presents them an ultimatum where they'll have the slimmest chance of being spared (typically involving self-mutilation on some level). Unlike Jigsaw however, she'll eventually reveal a cruel twist where the odds were naturally stacked against them and that they were effectively doomed from the start.
- Monster: If it ever looks like things will be clearing up for any bleak-lifed supporting character in this series, you know something horribly wrong is about to happen to them, usually at the hands of Johan:
- The worst is probably Richard Braun, who had a lovely daughter that he was finally going to meet. He didn't drink anymore, he was getting his life together, and he had finally found peace. Then Johan shows up, and something inside us dies; poor Richard falls right into his trap, just the night before he was supposed to see his daughter, and Johan heartlessly manipulates him not only into going Off the Wagon, but committing suicide. If you didn't hate Johan by that point, you probably did right after that.
- Even poor Roberto, Johan's worshipper and probably the character we least sympathize with, is snubbed at the end of the series on his deathbed when Johan denies him the right to see the Scenery for a Doomsday that he's so looked forward to.
- Tsunade, from Naruto, almost always loses when she makes a bet, but when she wins, she takes it as a sign that something bad is going to happen. She gets on a winning streak while gambling shortly before she sees Orochimaru again, wins the lottery around the time Gaara is kidnapped, and after Jiraiya suggests that she bet all she has that he won't make it back, on the assumption that she wouldn't win, he gets killed by Pain.
- Neon Genesis Evangelion:
- Shinji... poor, poor Shinji. The universe seems to have it out for this poor kid, such that anytime that things begin to look up for him or he tries to do something heroic or badass, something will inevitably happen to smack him right back down and send him into another Heroic BSoD or worse.
- Specific example: That kind, charming young boy without any debilitating emotional trauma who actually cares for you? He's actually an Angel, and you have to kill him. Sorry.
- As well as mid-series, where he begins to get some confidence, it seems that he has some chance to reconcile with his dad, and he feels in general a bit more like the hero of a more optimistic giant robot series — needless to say, it doesn't last.
- And then there’s End of Evangelion. He had regained the will to be around people, decided that life is worth living, confront his worst nightmares, and stopped Instrumentality, giving humanity the option to accept themselves and be reborn...only for him to be the only one who've done so, and with graves being erected, this possibly means that he was alone for a long while, losing hope for anyone returning before Asuka comes back. One of the planned ending was even worse: It plays out normally like the final ending, only with Asuka not coming back. He says, "I'll never see them again. It's better to think of it this way. I'm still alive, so I'll keep on living," while holding someone's arm, then turns around and sees Rei, thinking that he isn't alone...only to find that it's an arm that she lost earlier in the film. Now with nobody else to give him company, he resigns to a fate of Dying Alone.
- He fares even worse in the Rebuild of Evangelion movies. So, he finally managed to find his own reason for fighting, stormed back from his 10-Minute Retirement with iron determination, forced his EVA to reactivate through sheer force of will, kick serious ass, saved his love interest from the belly of the monster and actually enjoyed an intimate embrace with her, which was probably the first hug he got since his mother's unfortunate death... ...only to find out that he inadvertently annihilated the biosphere in the process, which means that half his friends and acquaintances are dead by his hands, and the other half hates his guts for it. Cue his once Parental Substitute strapping a bomb to his neck and addressing him as "Test Subject DM-03". And that's only how that particular movie starts... It probably doesn't have to be mentioned that the revelation of what exactly he did was too much for the poor kid's fragile mind...
- Asuka wakes up from a Convenient Coma in the movie and goes into combat within 5 minutes of getting out. She wipes out a whole army, so they send in these nine Mass Production EVAs. She only has 3 and a half minutes of battery power and a progressive knife against a nearly impossible to break AT Field, They have no pilots (so they can't be incapacitated as easily) and a copy of the best weapon in the series. Asuka wins before she runs out of time. But the result is really awful. She gets speared through the eye, her guts ripped open, and eaten alive while the poor girl is desperately trying to fight back. Then, it looks like it's going to get better as she is still alive despite having endured all of this. She reaches for the berserker mode button to reactivate the Eva and go back to kicking ass... but then they slice off her arm and impale her repeatedly until she dies. And poor Shinji just has to come across the results, and it is anything but pretty.
- Shinji... poor, poor Shinji. The universe seems to have it out for this poor kid, such that anytime that things begin to look up for him or he tries to do something heroic or badass, something will inevitably happen to smack him right back down and send him into another Heroic BSoD or worse.
- This tends to happen whenever something good happens to Yuuko in Nichijou. In one instance, she successfully scores an 80 on a test, a rare feat for her. She's so happy about it she's bragging it about it constantly, much to her friend Mio's annoyance. Before the day is done, however, we learn that the class average was 92 points.
- In Ode to Kirihito, Kirihito and Reira finally appear to be on way to Japan having escaped numerous gut-wrenching hardships along the way. There's even another Japanese guy on the plane, who promptly decides that the bandages Kirihito wears are to hide the fact that he's an Israeli spy, and he calls Arab fundamentalists to sell Kirihito off. Except he isn't. The Arabs decide to kill everyone there for wasting their time, and they're only "saved" because another extremist group starts attacking the first one. "Saved", as in, now they get to wander around a desert in the middle of nowhere meeting, among other things, a baby that's starving to death.
- One Piece: The entire Marineford Arc is one of these for Luffy. After breaking in and out of Impel Down and storming Marineford, Luffy manages to free his brother Ace from execution, and it seems that they can escape from the marines. But then Akainu calls Whitebeard a coward for not going after the One Piece and becoming Pirate King, enraging Ace to go back and silence the admiral. And when Akainu attempts to kill Luffy, Ace jumps in to take a magma fist to the chest, which renders Luffy's entire quest to save him All for Nothing.
- Pokémon: The Series:
- Raise your hand if you were rooting for James to beat Ash in the Hoenn Pokeringer competition. Poor guy got it yanked by a totally unforeseeable 11th-Hour Superpower, too.
- In a dance party for Performers, Serena naturally wants Ash to be her escort, but has to settle with Clemont since Serena's Shrinking Violet Eevee is close to Clemont's Bunnelby. Things only get worse for Serena when Miette also shows up for the party, and asks Ash to be her escort (a ploy to get Serena jealous). During the event itself it becomes a rotation dance halfway through, so Performers switch dance partners. After several partner switches, Serena realizes Ash is up next for her, but just before they can actually dance together, the music is cut off, signalling the end of the dance number. Poor Serena's reactions are a sight to behold...
- Pretty much all of the Leagues were this for Ash. It looked as if he was going to win against one of his opponents, but often something would go horribly wrong and he would lose anyway. Until Alola, that is. As a consolation, all of his League runs (aside from Unova, which is justifiable due to him being dumber than usual in that region) have him improve on his previous failure and slowly make his way up the podium (again, until Alola), so it's not a total chain yank. To showcase how badly things went for him:
- In Kanto, he manages to sweep his first preliminary round, win the second, take the third, and make a comeback in the fourth to qualify for the Top 16. And what happens? The day of his match, he's kidnapped by Team Rocket, narrowly escaping them and exhausting half his team to make it back seconds before he's disqualified for showing up hours late after the match was supposed to start. He gets knocked down to one Pokemon, uses his extremely disobedient Charizard out of desperation, and in the final battle, the big lug refuses to fight. He's disqualified on that count alone, and is eliminated.
- In Johto, he sweeps through the preliminaries and is able to advanced over Kanto by finally defeating his rival Gary in an intense six-on-six match. Enter Harrison in the top 8, who narrowly wins out over Ash thanks to having a Blaziken that edges his Charizard—already tired from his battle with Gary's Blastoise—and takes him out. The same situation occurs in Hoenn, where he makes into the Top 8, only to be taken out thanks to Tyson's Meowth.
- Sinnoh proved to be his most infamous defeat for a time. He makes it into the Top 4, only to end up against Tobias, who's been using Darkrai the entire tournament. Nearly two-thirds of Ash's team are wiped out, forcing him to use his Sceptile, who narrowly wins against Darkrai. It seems like Ash has Tobias on the ropes, but the guy pulls out Latios and proceeds to demolish the rest of Ash's team, only losing to Pikachu, but still winning the match.
- Unova saw Ash make it into the Top 8 before his rival Cameron is able to have his Riolu evolve into Lucario mid-battle to take the win—something he was explicitly counting on to happen.
- Kalos was where the chain-yanking hit its peak. Ash manages to make it to the finals this time, putting him against Alain and his massively powerful Charizard. Ash uses his Greninja in the final battle against the Mega-Evolved fire type to try and eke out a win. In spite of the type advantage, Charizard narrowly knocks out Greninja. Though it still becomes mitigated when Alain, in spite of being crowned champion, considers Ash the superior trainer for taking on Team Flare and winning.
- Ranma ½:
- In general, Jusenkyo-cursed individuals frequently have cures dangled in front of them (especially frequently in some of the anime's filler episodes). For example, one episode has Ryoga and Shampoo using a special "waterproof soap" that turns out to work only temporarily. And then there are the countless times it seems like someone could get a trip to the springs, but then it turns out to be fake, or in one case Ryôga gets it and doesn't know how to get there. The most downright cruel example, though, occurs at the end of the series, when Soun Tendo has secured the last remaining cask of water from "Spring of Drowned Man" as a wedding gift for Ranma. Well, when we say "secured", we really mean "stole the gift that the Jusenkyo Guide sent as a thank you to Ranma for saving his daughter, with the intention of blackmailing Ranma and possibly Akane into going along with the wedding". Happosai, mistaking it for booze, drinks it before any of the several people after it can actually use it.
- The anime has one of these that almost might approach the end of the manga in cruelty. The Jusenkyo Guide comes to Japan because this is a special day, a day in which a certain body of water can be connected to Jusenkyo's base water, allowing it to be turned into an extension of whichever spring is desired. The lucky body of water is none other than the Tendo's koi pond, which means that every cursed person in Nerima can get cured — even Shampoo, as once the ritual is complete the Guide can freely change the pond from Spring of Drowned Guy to Spring of Drowned Girl or whatever is desired. The episode leads up to the climax of the ceremony, everyone is literally a few seconds away from being cured... and what happens? Ryoga trips and breaks the rope, canceling the spell before anyone can get cured — and what's more this ritual can't be repeated for another thousand years. And then the Jusenkyo Guide wanders back home before anyone can think of tagging along, or asking him to send them back some Nanniichuan.
- In Saint Beast, whether the protagonists will ever succeed is up for debate, but up to this point every time they get a Hope Spot things just keep getting worse.
- Samurai Champloo features both serious and humorous examples for all three of the protagonists in the Grand Finale. After going through hell and back to find the Samurai Who Smells of Sunflowers (her father), Fuu not only learns that he's already dying of a terminal illness, but that the Big Bad has followed her to his location, proceeding to kill the Samurai and rob her of her last chance for proper closure. Later, once everything is wrapped up and the aforementioned Big Bad defeated, Mugen and Jin finally get to have the Duel to the Death they've been putting off since the first episode. They get into position, draw their weapons, charge forward, and... both their swords break.
- Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann:
- Right after the Time Skip, we learn that Simon proposed to Nia, and we see her accept via phone. Right after we see this, her Anti-Spiral nature takes over and forces her into a Face–Heel Turn. Ouch.
- Then the Anti-Spirals attack, threatening to eliminate the human race, and none other than Rossiu, Simon's Number Two in the new government goes all Well-Intentioned Extremist and uses Simon as a scapegoat since ultimately Simon defeating Lordgenome is what caused the Anti-Spiral attacks), having him thrown in jail to be executed.
- The Anti-Spirals refer to this trope as "Ultimate Despair," and their goal is to do this to all Spiral Races. It doesn't quite work.
- What comes across as the ultimate example of Yanking the Dog's Chain is Nia dying the exact second she and Simon were married, especially since it's a series already rife with people dying left and right. And not only that, Simon, the man who broke reality just to save her, stands there and calmly accepts her death as saying the dead should stay dead. What. However, this last is another aversion. Nia's dying was, by this point, ensured to everyone, since she was an Anti-Spiral sleeper agent from birth, and her existence was connected to the villains. The marriage is Simon carrying his promise and making her happy at her final hour. After all said and done (mostly after literally "all done"), they were both content.
- Upon managing to gather up all the spell fragments, Those Who Hunt Elves will ALWAYS blow it at the absolute final moment, usually due to Junpei and Celia's bickering.
- The second half of Tiger & Bunny starts with things finally looking up for Kotetsu: he's going up in the rankings, his partner actually likes and respects him now, his boss isn't treating him like he's completely expendable, the Sternbild population no longer considers him a joke, and he seems to have acquired an unexpected but very welcome boost in his NEXT abilities. Then comes the fifteenth episode, where Ben meets up with him and regretfully informs Kotetsu that the "power boost" he experienced in the previous episode is a phenomenon that occurs in a very small number of NEXT — just before they start losing their powers.
- Trigun: This happens to Vash the Stampede all the bloody time. The cause of this can easily be traced back to the Big Bad constantly holding onto the chain. Hard.
- The manga Uwagaki does this to the heroine Chiaki at one point. Chiaki had been forcibly split into two people, one of whom has no memory of her boyfriend and is spending time with her admirer instead. If, after a few months, this copy has romantic feelings for said admirer greater than her own for her boyfriend, then the two will be fused and she too will forget the boyfriend completely. Immediately after this happens, her boyfriend dumps her for a woman he's long crushed on. After a lot of pain and seeing the copy become happy, she thinks to ask the professor responsible if he can do the same thing to her ex. He tells her that it can be done if he's given time to study him, but then when her hopes are finally up he tells her that this would also require him to erase her copy who'd just started to fall in love herself.
- In Chapter 16 of Uzumaki, rescue ships arrive to rescue the protagonists. Guess what happens next.
- xxxHOLiC
- In episode 24, the Flashback epsiode, then twelve-year-old Watanuki makes a friend who can also see spirits. Of course, we know that in the pilot he was friendless and ghost-besieged for most of his teen years, so his happiness becomes heartbreaking since we know it can't end well. The friend is ultimately lost to paranormal circumstances in something of a Heroic Sacrifice. It's ultimately a Happy Ending because it finishes with his birthday being attended by his four new friends in the cherry grove he met his young friend.
- Unfortunately, this appears to be a constantly recurring pattern in poor Watanuki's life. After he's finally learned the value of self-preservation because there are people who care about him, Watanuki has a series of world-shaking revelations that prove he's probably not supposed to exist. And THEN, when it seems like he's coming to terms with who he is, and life at the shop is returning to normal with having to deal with customers and such, his world shatters to pieces when he learns that Yuuko, the very person who caused his life to change for the better, is dying and there's nothing he can do about it.
- Yu-Gi-Oh!:
- Joey/Jou makes a sudden comeback against Yami Malik in their Dark Duel in the Battle City Finals when he pulls out Gilford the Lightning and has him on the ropes. Yami Malik manages to hold out once again, but apparently has nothing else up his sleeve, with nothing left on the field or his hand, so our hero is in the clear, finally about to be the hero for once and save the damsel, Mai, from her fate, right? Things seem to be looking that way, as the following turn, Yami Malik draws Monster Reborn, with nothing powerful on its own in his grave to stand up to Gilford, including Ra at this point, since that would require a tribute summon to get any ATK points. So he's basically reviving a giant flaming chicken with no attack points, except that it turns out that it has an 11th-Hour Superpower that destroys Gilford and, in this very situation, shocks the controller of said monster into death, and... Oh, Crap!. Sure enough, things go as predicted, except that as the smoke clears, our hero is Not Quite Dead, and is good to make another move, with Yami Malik's Ra leaving the field. All he needs is a monster with enough attack to finish Yami Malik off, and he draws Gearfried, summons it, and is just about to declare an attack until... he collapses and as such is disqualified.
- In Season Zero, Jonouchi enters a game show to win a million yen so he can pay off his father's debts. In traditional Yu-Gi-Oh! style, the host of the game show is a Cheating Bastard, and rigs the game so Jonouchi can't possibly win. Yugi helps out by Mind Raping the host, allowing Jonouchi to win the money. Of course, the check ends up being no good anyways- because Yugi's mind spell also resulted in the show being cancelled and losing all its budget..
