Trope Workshop:Truck-kun



So, you've created a new world for your hero to be trapped in. You've spent ages developing your RPG Mechanics Verse, fleshed out the characters, created the Big Bad Demon Lord. You have a world ready for your character to get transported to! The only question now to ask yourself is, how on Earth do you get your character there?

Why, with Truck-kun, of course! Day by day, night by night, Truck-kun works restlessly to connect heroes with the fantasy world they rightfully belong to. All it takes is a quick, single hit, and our hero will magically be reincarnated instantly! Sure, there are other ways to get to this world, but Truck-kun is the most reliable and proven. Car-chan? Nah. That's so 1891. All the cool heroes these days are getting transported by trucks (Truck-kun looks a lot scarier)! You think that every country will start passing stricter driving regulations with the amount of teenagers getting hit by trucks each day, but that would mean less heroes are getting transported! Think of all the different worlds that will be lost without a hero!

A closely related trope to Look Both Ways, this occurs when a character is hit by a truck and is reincarnated, transported to another world, or the events to the two options start with a truck. It can get a bit confusing, but there are two vital distinguishing features between the two tropes:
 * 1) Merely getting hit with a truck (and dying) does not count for Truck-kun; the truck must lead to someone getting Isekaied.
 * 2) The character, after getting hit, must remain in the story. In Look Both Ways, getting hit by a truck means you are Killed Off for Real, but getting hit by Truck-kun means you are getting another chance at life.

Watch a compilation of Truck-kun here. See all of truck-kun's anime roles here. Also see Truck-kun's criminal record, in both manga and anime. This is a common trope in Japanese media. If you have time, feel free to watch the first episode of the shows listed to determine which are examples of Truck-kun and which ones are not (these lists contain people getting hit by trucks, but true examples of Truck-kun also requires the person being hit to be reincarnated).

Truck-kun's presence is not limited to just All The Tropes. Also see Truck-kun's article on Wikipedia and knowyourmeme.com.

Anime and Manga

 * Parodied in KonoSuba: God's Blessing on This Wonderful World!, where Kazuma thought he died because of truck-kun. In reality, it's "tractor-kun", not "truck-kun", and his cause of death was not getting ran over, but rather shock from the thought of getting run over.
 * In The Cat Returns, truck-kun helps transport The Hero Haru to another world. Truck-kun never hits Haru, of course. Instead, Haru gets transported after the Cat Kingdom decide to repay her a favour by sending some gifts of cattails, an offer to get married to a cat, and the means of getting to the Cat Kingdom via a procession of cats. There, the Trapped in Another World trope plays out.
 * In the anime adaptation of the Ni no Kuni games, Truck-kun is so powerful they don't even need to hit the main characters for a transport! Instead, Truck-kun transports people by simply being in their vicinity. Yuu and Haru, while carrying an injured Kotona, jump to the side to dodge Truck-kun, a bus joins Truck-kun's efforts in transporting our heroes, and voila! A bright flash of light suddenly moves the two characters to the world of the games! Kotona suddenly disappears, while the two male leads remark that their clothes have changed and they aren't in the same world any more. A Leitmotif from Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch plays in the background, signalling that Truck-kun has done a very good job.
 * In A Reincarnated Witch Spells Doom (Tensei Majo wa Horobi wo Tsugeru), the eighteen year old shut-in Sena Shirai was hit by a truck on one of the rare occasions she stepped outside, and reincarnated into another world as a baby who can use exactly two spells: "explode" and "destroy". This, as you might imagine, does not make her a very popular person in town, and her magic is not the most useful. Therefore, she's back as her old self in the new world: a shut-in who rarely goes outside.

Fan Works

 * Hybrid Theory (the 2004 story by C&A Productions) starts with the hero and the villain being hit by a truck and their identities being sent to another world.

Film

 * Borderline example in Frankenweenie. It features the "reincarnation after getting run over with a vehicle" part of the trope, but nothing else. The vehicle that ran over Sparky isn't a truck; it's a car. Sparky doesn't get reincarnated into another world, and is simply revived instead of transported. Sparky doesn't get immediately reincarnated after the incident by a god or higher power, rather Victor Frankenstein reincarnates Sparky with the power of electricity.

Web Comics

 * Parodied in the comic Isekai Transporter, by Bottle Comics. The entire series is about the various people who get paid to summon heroes to another world. They run over heroes with trucks. The physical body remains in place, but the spirits goes through the interior of the truck. There, they become Trapped in Another World after the spirits pass through a device with a weird shape and the Kadokawa logo.

Web Original

 * Discussed in Terrible Writing Advice's video on isekai (link to the start of the discussion on Truck-kun). Everything discussed about truck-kun there is pretty much here as well. This video is one of the sources of inspiration for the trope page you're reading right now! Given the many ideas creator JP Beaubien gives instead of Truck-kun to help a hero get to the other world (e.g. finding a door in your parents' basement, making a deal with a mystical being that turned out to be a curse), it's clear he doesn't like the trope very much.