Heroic Sacrifice/Anime and Manga

Old Man!We will walk him down to hell together! Ye....s.Than...k you!
 * Averted in Inuyasha, but not for lack of trying on Miroku's part - trying to ensure that Sango's younger brother will not have to die, he makes a valiant effort to suck Naraku's heart into the Wind Tunnel in his hand, steadfastly ignoring the poisonous insects and massive amounts of toxic miasma that he's consuming in the process even when it causes him to start bleeding from the mouth, nose, and eyes. He only stops when Inuyasha forces his hand closed.
 * Although it illustrates the main article, it's somewhat subverted in Yu Yu Hakusho. Yusuke saves a small boy from a moving vehicle and dies. However, it turns out that not only was the boy going to survive being hit, but he actually would have been less injured than had Yusuke intervened. This turned his Heroic Sacrifice into a Senseless Sacrifice.
 * Humor aside, it was the intention of the act that counted, and earns Yusuke a chance to come back to life. The true sacrifice comes shortly after when Yusuke gives up this chance by failing the test to save his girlfriend's life. However, this proves to be enough to convince Koenma that Yusuke deserves to live, and he gets revived.
 * Played closer to straight when Kuwabara goes to his death at the hands of Toguro in the Dark Tournament, looking to unlock Yusuke's true power. As it turned out, Toguro missed his heart and Kuwabara didn't die (He might have meant for it to miss, but we'll never know for sure), so Kuwabara played dead instead.
 * Actually Yusuke had attempted this up to EIGHT times. Car crash, egg in the fire, life mirror, explosive shuriken, shotgun the whistle, fight against Jin then Sensui. All subverted.
 * In Angel Sanctuary there are many heroic deaths, though some are more 'I'll die as a hero' by characters who'd die anyway but want to show off a little.
 * , after his wings are cut off - the most cruel torture and death sentence to an angel - uses the last of his strength to kill the warden endangering a big part of the main cast and.
 * In front of Heaven's gate, gives his life when stopping the nearly closed gate to the highest sphere so  can slip through, leaving him to be vaporized by a giant meteor
 * Zig Zagged to hell and back in the final episode of Guilty Crown. (Note that since this is a Death Trope, spoilers will not be hidden in this entry.) At first it seems that Shu is going to sacrifice himself to absorb the Apocalypse Virus and finally free the world from it's horrific take on Body to Jewel, only to find that Inori, whose consciousness was originally thought to have been destroyed when victimized by a case Grand Theft Me, is still alive. It looks like Shu and Inori are going to be Together in Death, but Inori completely gives herself up to the virus and mysteriously vanishes. Then the fortress they're in begins to collapse. Shu's fate is left ambiguous, but the post-credit epilogue displays that he is alive and healthy, but blind, yet still living happily.
 * Mazinger Z: ... Just one too many. The most remembered was made by  It is subverted by Boss at an early stage, though. He self-destructed the Boss Borot, but showed up a short while later asking: "Why do I have to die for you, Kouji!?"
 * And in another episode the wife of a secondary character
 * And in episode 74 to save Kouji.
 * And in Great Mazinger pulled a kamikaze attack to save Tetsuya. In one of the manga versions, Tetsuya's reaction was  to kill all commanders of the Mykene army.
 * And in UFO Robo Grendizer gets in the way of an energy beam aimed towards Duke.
 * And in the Mazinkaiser movie, two Heroic Sacrifices happens BEFORE the opening theme, and later the death of gets rehashed.
 * In Saint Seiya, Dragon Shiryu attempts such a sacrifice, but ends up surviving. Phoenix Ikki follows one through and is vaporized...but has trouble staying dead.
 * Saint Seiya is full of Heroic Sacrifice. For a start, Shiryu only ends up surviving one of his (many) heroic sacrifices because Capricorn Shura decides to do it for him. But the biggest example of this is, of course, at the end of the Hades Inferno arc...where it's twelve heroic sacrifices! This results in the Gold Saints finally being reunited, and facing death with dignity. Redemption Equals Death had already occured (is it an inversion if half the guys doing the heroic sacrificing have already died at least twice?) It's not quite Martyr Without a Cause, either, as their sacrifice enables them to break the Wailing Wall and get the protagonists into the last part of the plot...where Seiya gets his own Heroic Sacrifice moment after he finally dies at the hands of Hades, having rescued Athena and saved the world etc.
 * And see the whole bloody time in Saint Seiya: The Lost Canvas, two notable examples being Capricorn El Cid finally killing the four Dream Gods and saving Athena and the protagonists at the cost of his own life, and with Sagittarius Sisyphus' quite frankly terrifying Heroic Sacrifice, in which he ripped out his own heart. Nice.
 * No, wait a minute, there's MORE! Pisces Albafica pulls this killing Minos with his life's blood, Wolf Junkers and the other four Bronze Saints do this in a very moving way to get the Ship of Hope to fly, Aquarius Degel pulls this saving the world (very quietly) from Posiedon and that was only after Scorpio Kardia did it for him first to give him the chance, Virgo Asmita gives his life to remove the Spectres' immortality (resulting in less Oh Crap and Senseless Sacrifice moments), Cancer Manigoldo pulls this in a Crowning Moment of Awesome when he takes on a God and wins (ish)...it'd be quicker to name the characters that didn't die this way.
 * In Code Geass, The Scrappy redeems himself by.
 * Also, earlier in the season, one of Toudou's lieutenants, Urabe, sacrifices himself to distract Rolo and buy Zero time to escape.
 * Also, believed he was sacrificing his life to save, but he was actually saving
 * Later,
 * C.C. pulls a subversion in the first season finale, using the Gawain to drag Jeremiah's Siegfried into the ocean, but it isn't a sacrifice since she can't die. She even says (in the Japanese version) "I have no intention of committing lovers' suicide with you!"
 * In the same episode of Brave Express Might Gaine, dies protecting a child and  dies taking a fatal blow for Maito and Great Might Gaine
 * Merged with Crowning Moment of Awesome and Kick Them While They Are Down in Air Gear when  However, moments later,
 * Played with in Death Note. Done straight with  Less traditionally,
 * In D.Gray-man, Fo fights against the Level 3 Akuma, instead of Allen, adopting his form,.
 * In most incarnations of the Digimon franchise, there is almost always a Leomon or an otherwise lionlike Digimon who sacrifices himself to either save the world or the heroes.
 * Every heroic Digimon who dies in Digimon Adventure does so in a Heroic Sacrifice, including the very Leomon whose death kicked off the Running Gag. The biggest Tear Jerker of them all would be
 * Digimon Adventure 02 had
 * Digimon Tamers had Leomon again. It was Leomon's death which actually sparked the final arc of the series,
 * In Digimon Frontier,
 * In Digimon Savers,
 * In Digimon Xros Wars,
 * Subverted in the most mean-spirited manner possible in Neon Genesis Evangelion, where, and in End of Evangelion, where
 * Rei II and Kaworu played this trope straight in the show.
 * This one gets a bit of a workout in Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. By the end of the series, we had several significant Heroic Sacrifices that saved other people, most memorably.
 * The ocean incident was actually
 * successfully saved  while destroying an entire enemy fleet, even though they were destroyed in the end, and   to save the Chouginga Dai-Gurren.
 * Cedie, and his successor Carris, in Soukou no Strain.
 * In Houshin Engi,
 * Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind.
 * In One Piece, during a life-or-death (well, life-or-exile) game of dodgeball, Chopper takes a ball to the face to prevent Luffy from being knocked out of the game. The opposing team is so impressed by his Heroic Sacrifice that they demand that the referee not declare him out, because "the face is safe". The ref is reluctant at first, because Chopper is in a spherical form at the time, and it's difficult to tell where his face begins and ends, but eventually succumbs to the pressure. And then declares Chopper out anyway, because he was knocked out-of-bounds.
 * For examples that aren't exclusive to the anime, see Alabasta Arc, which has several:
 * Igaram getting himself blown up to give Vivi and the Strawhats a chance to safely escape Whiskey Peak.
 * Chaka taking on Big Bad Crocodile, knowing he can't even wound him, to buy time for Vivi and Kohza.
 * Pell grabbing a giant bomb intended to level the entire city and flying high into the sky with it, thus saving thousands of lives at the cost of him losing his in a colossal explosion.
 * The Duck Claw Squad all took a poison that gives the imbiber an immense boost in strength before killing them, in hopes of beating Crocodile. Unlike just about everyone else who's ever made a heroic sacrifice in One Piece, they actually die. The worst part is that it was a Senseless Sacrifice as
 * In Thriller Bark,  All that happens, however, is
 * That was hardly an act of mercy:
 * Heck, 2/3s of the Strawhat Pirates have flashbacks in which someone close to them sacrificed themselves heroically to some extent. And of those 6, only 2 of them ended with his mentor surviving...albeit with a lost limb.
 * The worst is
 * This trope is often subverted by Luffy, who adamantly refuses to let any of his crewmates sacrifice themselves for the sake of the crew. As he famously told Vivi, "YOU THINK RISKING ONE LIFE IS ENOUGH?! WHY DON'T YOU TRY RISKING OUR LIVES TOO?! I THOUGHT WE WERE FRIENDS!!"
 * The Impel Down arc ends with  staying behind to ensure the prison breakers gets past its final obstacle.
 * The guy has a special talent for this trope. You may recall that
 * And don't forget how he was jailed into Impel Down: Saving some former Baroque Works fellows from Hina's execution.
 * pulls one of these off in order  This whole situation finally gives Luffy the heroic sacrifice of a family member that had been lacking from his previous history in relation to the other characters.
 * Mobile Suit Gundam Seed's Mu La Flaga pushes this to a near limit when he flies the Strike Gundam into the path of a positron cannon blast aimed at the bridge of the Archangel and blocks it with his shield, despite the beam being nearly as big as the Gundam. The Strike is destroyed in the process, and Mu's helmet is seen amongst the rubble. Ironically, the Special Edition of the series would edit that detail out, in a Retcon to prepare for
 * Natarle also performs one, locking terrorist leader Muruta Azrael inside the bridge of the Dominion with her and refusing to open the door for him, even as he repeatedly shoots her.
 * Subverted in Gundam Seed Destiny, when
 * And played straight with
 * In the manga Konjiki no Gash!!, the former badass Vincent Bari puts himself in a mortal situation to allow the protagonists to enter Big Bad Faudo's innards. To avoid killing him, Umagon burns his book to send him back to the demon world.
 * This is just one instance among way too many to count.
 * Subverted by Ryoko in Tenchi Universe, albeit with a particularly sadistic flare on the part of the writers. Having failed to convince Tenchi to abandon Ayeka to her fate and run away with her instead of heading into a seemingly hopeless battle with Kagato, Ryoko dedicates herself to making sure Tenchi arrives there alive. An elaborate space battle follows as the space pirate does anything and everything in her power to accomplish this. Only she's still grievously injured from her previous attack on Kagato, and the strain for her to just stand upright is noted by at least three characters (neither of whom tell Tenchi, naturally). After dropping Tenchi off at the palace, Ryoko reminisces about how the previous events have been really fun, even if it's just her and Ryo-Ohki again. She then closes her eyes, her arm slips off the armrest limply (complete with blood flowing down along it), and her head slumps forward with a small smile on her face. Ryo-Ohki presumably tries to wake her with her yowling, and the scene fades to black with one particularly mournful sounding howl. This continues into the wrap up episode, where Tenchi notes that no one had seen or heard from Ryoko since that battle, and includes an Antagonist in Mourning moment with Ryoko's rival, Nagi to boot. All this culminates with
 * In Planetes,
 * In the second to last episode of Tokyo Mew Mew when Kish turns on Deep Blue for Ichigo's sake,
 * In the same episode,.
 * And then there are Masaya and Ichigo in the last episode. Masaya basically
 * Even Tart gets this -
 * Subverted on multiple occasions in Dragonball Z, most notably when Chaozu and Vegeta both blew themselves up to try and take Nappa and Buu with them, respectively. Neither attempt worked.
 * Don't forget Goku's sacrifice to stop Cell from blowing up the Earth. That failed to stop Cell though.
 * Heroic Sacrifice almost never works in Dragon Ball; it's usually just a Senseless Sacrifice, for whatever reason.
 * It did work once, at the very beginning of DBZ, when Goku and Piccolo were fighting Raditz. Goku grabbed him from behind and told Piccolo to shoot. The attack went straight through Raditz and Goku, killing them both, and Raditz stayed dead for the entire series.
 * But Goku did it knowing full well he'd be revived by the Dragon Balls. See above.
 * In the Kid Buu arc, Krillin, to protect his family and friends (almost the entire supporting cast), throws himself at the villain (who upgraded to Big Bad), in order to give the others enough time to get away. He's killed while they run for safety. Then they all die anyway. In a bit of cruelty, the people he was mainly trying to protect, his wife and daughter, were the first ones killed after his sacrifice.
 * The straightest play on Heroic Sacrifice from the series is Piccolo putting himself between Gohan and Nappa's giant blast of death {pictured above}. Considering Gohan lives to the end of the fight, which was Piccolo's hope when he took the attack, I'd say that counts as a success. And at the time, he was doing so realizing the Dragon Balls would be destroyed as his death would kill their creator, Kami.
 * He did hear about the possibility of Dragon Balls on his home planet, Namek, but there was no guarantee anybody would live to get to them.
 * More than likely he hadn't really considered that an option, if he considered it at all.
 * This troper believes that the straightest play on Heroic Sacrifice from the series is Piccolo knocking Goku out of the way of Frieza's attack after Goku's Spirit Bomb failed to kill Frieza. Not only did he do this knowing that the earth's Dragon Balls would disappear due to Kami dying with them, but also knowing that Namek's Dragon Balls were gone as well, due to King Guru's death. True, Piccolo doesn't actually die, but he came pretty close.
 * In the manga of Fullmetal Alchemist, It's subverted, however, in that.
 * The reason Scar is alive when the main story begins is because.
 * Occurs in the final episode of the first anime, when.
 * Wrath pulls one in the movie during his fight with.
 * After Major Bucanner & veteran shinobi Fu both fail to take down Weath,aka King Bradley and end up getting fatally injured themselves,Bucanner uses the last vestiges of his energy to stab bradley through Fu's body.Fu  gratefully thanks Bucaneer for this.Also involved is an awesome yet tear-jerking line:-
 * The reason Scar is alive when the main story begins is because.
 * Occurs in the final episode of the first anime, when.
 * Wrath pulls one in the movie during his fight with.
 * After Major Bucanner & veteran shinobi Fu both fail to take down Weath,aka King Bradley and end up getting fatally injured themselves,Bucanner uses the last vestiges of his energy to stab bradley through Fu's body.Fu  gratefully thanks Bucaneer for this.Also involved is an awesome yet tear-jerking line:-
 * A rather strange example from the manga, but
 * Subverted in the Naruto: Shippuden movie when
 * Also in Naruto,
 * The Fourth Hokage sealing the demon fox into Naruto. May double as a Fate Worse Than Death and/or And I Must Scream, seeing as he is stuck inside the belly of a Death God where he will be constantly tortured by hatred for all eternity.
 * Chiyo.
 * Before this, Sakura and Lady Chiyo played self-sacrifice tennis. First Sakura Two nil. Then Lady Chiyo counter-attacks by  Two all. But  got the last move, and so won the game.
 * pulls this off when she attempts to protect  from Pein by buying him time, via an Anguished Declaration of Love, only for Pein to respond by brutally trying to fridge her.
 * had the chance to escape from  but sacrificed himself in order to get and relay crucial intel on the enemy that could not be obtained by anyone else.
 * During Pein's attack on Konoha,
 * And from later in the same battle,.
 * Since was already mentioned, let's not forget how he himself was once saved in childhood by
 * in Mobile Suit Gundam 00. And another one from season 2,
 * Even better is the ending of season 1 which chained as he's dying from his heroic sacrifice with . It might just bring you to tears.
 * The Movie
 * In Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex the Major takes the Tachikomas out of service because they start to develop too much of their own personalities. Because of their increasingly subversive behaviour she no longer trusts them to reliably follow orders in combat situations, which could be deadly for members of the team, hostages, or bystanders. When the members of Section 9 are hunted by soldiers from a rival government agency and Batou is about to be crushed to death by a soldier wearing a mecha suit, three Tachikomas who escaped from their new civilian assignments come to his rescue at the very last moment, jumping at the heavily armed walking tank with nothing but a single mortar round. This leads the Major to change her mind and recommision the remaining Tachikomas for service and keep their developing personalities intact.
 * Which turns out to be a very good idea, as the Tachikomas exhibit an extremely strong compulsion to sacrifice themselves if there's no other way to save someone. At the end of the second season
 * Fortunately, after the first sacrifice, the Tachikomas were Genre Savvy enough to leave behind backups of their memories on the internet. The Major eventually finds them and they make a return in Solid State Society where they were thankfully not asked to lay down their lives for the third consecutive time.
 * The entire cast of GaoGaiGar (or at least the mecha cast members. The robots make up at least half the cast!) do this at least once. Possibly the most memorable is during a turning point in the original series, where  (Although this one was later reversed when the mech in question is eventually brought back online.) Even more tend to happen in FINAL during the final episode in order to defeat their Evil Counterpart. As a matter of fact, even the EVIL CLONES of the characters sacrifice themselves to stop  . To list each one here would be to ruin some great examples of Crowning Moment of Awesome.
 * The anime version of Prétear has the protagonist overloading an evil tree with her own Life Energy until it disintegrates, bringing back characters who died in the battle (including the one who died protecting her), all at the cost of her own life. She doesn't stay dead for long, though.
 * does this in the last two episodes of Sonic X by
 * The real Tear Jerker of the scene is the fact that
 * Never mind the fact that Sonic and Shadow were the ammo.
 * of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha. Knowing full well that  will come Back from the Dead since her recovery system is already working hard to repair it, and that it has become impossible for her to restore it to its normal state, she willingly destroys herself to prevent any chance of it going on an omnicidal rampage again.
 * Defied in The Battle of Aces, where  long story that someone else will have to elaborate on... In Signum's path, the pink-haired Lady of War will have nothing of it and they fight. After Signum wins,   Vita and Hayate have similar reactions.
 * In Macross Frontier, . What this even more painful was that was one of the more popular pairings in the series.
 * Speaking of Macross, in Macross Plus we have 's death, . Manly Tears can and will be shed.
 * Science Ninja Team Gatchaman:
 * Memorably parodied in The Prince of Tennis. During a filler chapter/episode featuring an eating battle between several teams, Hyoutei's Shishido Ryoh noblely volunteers to drink the disgusting Inui juice (knowing full well he'll pass out after doing so) in order to allow his team to move forward. He gets a sunset-y "death" scene, his partner Ohtori pulling a Big No on him and everything. And it was hilarious.
 * Heroic Sacrifice is one of the central themes of Giant Robo: The Day the Earth Stood Still. No surprise then that the series involves a huge number of mind-blowing yet touching sacrifices from both heroes and 'villains' alike.
 * from Getter Robo, naturally, who is required to die in every incarnation, most of the time via Heroic Sacrifice. Given that he's appeared in 3 anime series, a manga and every Super Robot Wars game bar a few (note that there are dozens of them), that's a whole lot of awesome deaths.
 * Two examples turn up in Figure 17. First off, early in the series, DD's first "Figure" unit sacrifices itself in order to move him away from fatal attacks that would have killed him had it saved itself by deactivating—this appears to be something of a standard for the semi-sentient bio-armour. The second is a bit curious:
 * Twisted upside down in the final episode of the second season of Sailor Moon. A large chunk of the season had been spent finding a Heroic Sacrifice in tangible form: a jewel that grants any wish but kills the wisher. It turns out that Sailor Moon had it, but unfortunately a Brainwashed and Crazy loved one from her future had a time-shifted version of it as well. It is expected that the future gem will be used to destroy everything, so our Hero has to use hers to destroy the loved one before she can do any harm.  The gems cancel each other out, the evil is destroyed, and everyone can go home. Aawww..
 * In the manga version of this season,  She uses the same move in the anime when the Outer Senshi's helicopter is swarmed by daimons and explodes, buying time for Sailors Uranus and Neptune to escape.
 * And it's played straight just as many times.
 * One of the major parts of the ending of the series Mahoromatic. Foreshadowed HEAVILY by
 * The Galaxy Railways has a number of these, such as  near the beginning and   near the end.
 * Not death, but still a pretty big price to pay: in Mahou Sensei Negima, Tosaka tries to blackmail Negi into being his slave. Realizing that this would basically screw all the other girls, Ako, of all people, offers to be Tosaka's slave for life, as well as forfeiting any rights she has, if he leaves Negi alone. He still doesn't like her afterwards though.
 * Also speaking of the ball;
 * Now and Then, Here and There has two of these:
 * Pokémon loves this trope, and uses it in almost every one of their movies.
 * gets turned to stone in Pokémon the First Movie, and is revived by the tears of the Pokémon.
 * is willing to do this to help Ash in Pokémon 2000, but they survive.
 * in Pokémon Heroes, saving his town from an enormous tidal wave.
 * does this in Pokémon: Lucario and The Mystery of Mew.
 * is seen doing this in Pokémon the Rise of Darkrai,.
 * S-Cry-ed has one of these with Sherice, whose ability involves . This is also an extreme example of I Want My Beloved to Be Happy considering that
 * is seen doing this in Pokémon the Rise of Darkrai,.
 * S-Cry-ed has one of these with Sherice, whose ability involves . This is also an extreme example of I Want My Beloved to Be Happy considering that
 * S-Cry-ed has one of these with Sherice, whose ability involves . This is also an extreme example of I Want My Beloved to Be Happy considering that


 * Yu-Gi-Oh! is pretty big on the heroic sacrifices both in the anime and the manga. A good number of characters get one, but Yugi in particular seems to thrive on them.
 * In the manga, does one of these.   But, he gets better.
 * Jonouchi does it in "Evil Spirit of the Ring" (a loose adaptation of the above manga story), where Bakura turns most of the heroes into living Duel Monsters, forcing Yami to use them as game pieces; once Yugi tells him what Bakura's set Man-Eater Bug does (as in, automatically destroys one monster, an effect that will activate immediately if one of them attacks it) Yami sets a Trap called Horn of Heaven, which can counter that effect - but only if he sacrifices a monster. In other words, this is a Morton's Fork situation where Someone Has to Die. Jonouchi doesn't give the others a choice in the matter rushing at the set monster and forcing Yami to use the trap with him as the sacrifice.
 * Yugi pulls one in the anime after having to fight a Brainwashed and Crazy Jounouchi in a loser-dies-by-drowning duel staged by Malik. Yugi turns an attack on himself so that he'll lose and Jounocuhi will survive, which also breaks Jounouchi's brainwashing. And Jounouchi pulls the same stunt on Yugi in the same episode - not long after Yugi loses and is pulled into the water, Jounouchi grabs Yugi's own key, follows him down and pushes him back to the surface - while not taking his own key. It takes  to save him.
 * Yugi pulls another later on when the Pharoah has a What the Hell, Hero? moment and loses his own soul to the seal of Orichalcos as a result. Calmly stating that the seal can only take one soul, regular Yugi shoves the Pharoah out of the way and lets the seal take him instead.
 * Jounouchi vs. Mai in an Orichalcos duel where he effectively lets her win despite knowing it'll cost him his soul.
 * Note this is the third time for Jonouchi, three heroic sacrifices done by a character who is canonically still alive. That may be a record.
 * In Umineko no Naku Koro ni, does a spectacular Heroic Sacrifice after Battler goes through an epic Heroic BSOD. In order to restore his faith in truth besides red text, she . She then proceeds to beg him to continue the game and . Keep in mind the fact that.
 * does the same thing at the end of the third arc.
 * pulls a spectacular one in EP8.
 * In the anime version X/1999,
 * Also, Sorata's reason for existing is to die in place of the one he loves, which turns out to be Arashi.
 * It was Daisuke's wish to protect Hinoto with his life ... a wish that Fuuma obligingly grants.
 * Seishiro and Subaru each want to die for the other, or, rather, be killed by the other. Are we seeing a pattern here?
 * Subverted in Welcome to The NHK when
 * A particularly meme-tastic example occurs at the end of F-Zero: Falcon Densetsu. After having his Dark Reactors prematurely destroyed and his plans for destroying and remaking the galaxy ruined by Ryu Suzaku, Black Shadow tries to escape from the destruction so he can lick his wounds and plot anew. However, his escape is prevented by Captain Falcon, who FALCON PUNCH!!!es Black Shadow back into the radius of the explosion, incinerating the both of them while at the same time saving the galaxy.
 * Cloney/Syaoran Sr. from Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle does this. Twice.
 * And let's not forget freaking Kurogane, who slices off his own arm to save a certain angst muffin... (Not to mention any names, but his initials are Fai Fluorite)
 * There's a special irony to this, as Fai's been playing fast and loose with his own life through the series up to this point (in particular trying to put himself between Cloney and Syaoran Jr. in Acid Tokyo), preferring a Heroic Sacrifice—or at least a death with honor—to the betrayal he knows he will eventually have to commit against his traveling companions.
 * Also, Sakura Li, who pulls off a human shield act when.
 * And, before this, she gets a self-sacrificial quest when she goes out into the wasteland of Acid Tokyo to retrieve a magical egg, which serves as Yuuko's payment for saving Fai's life. May I mention that this involves fighting off giant bloodthirsty worms with nothing but a pistol?
 * Towards the end of the Hellsing manga,
 * , during the.
 * Arguably  towards the end of the manga adaptation of Elfen Lied.
 * In the reboot of the Rozen Maiden manga,
 * of the Legend of Zelda: Four Swords manga falls victim to this when he
 * Yu-Gi-Oh! GX uses this trope quite a lot in Season 3. Jim attempts to sacrifice himself via The Power of Friendship to save the protagonist Juudai from his Super-Powered Evil Side. It doesn't work, but O'Brien proceeds to attempt the same thing a few episodes later, and their combined effort does the job. Hell Kaiser attempts to sacrifice himself to defeat Yubel and save Johan. That doesn't quite work out as he planned, but it does snap Judai out of his Heroic BSOD. Edo Phoenix has a duel to the death with Amon Garam over a woman he just met five minutes ago, which actually confused him as well as the viewer.
 * in Tears to Tiara. In the middle of a blizzard with a magical army bearing down on the heroes, he urges everyone else to go on ahead and stays behind to sing the Song of Creation. . Subverted slightly in that
 * In Pita-Ten,
 * In the anime Misha helps bring back Shia by helping restore people's memory of her knowing full well this will cause her to fail her angel exam which will result in her disappearance.
 * In Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, touches the Phantom Gaia to heal it and save Earth, knowing that (meta)physical contact with any alien spirit is fatal.
 * The character  from Berserk definitely earns this one. When the Eclipse goes into full swing, he grabs Casca, the newly made acting Commander, and does everything he can to get her to safety--
 * also qualifies. He steps in to save the Commander from a demon, and willingly stays behind against insurmountable odds in order to buy her and Judeau time to escape.
 * Guts' Heroic Sacrifice is of the non-fatal kind. When Femto, Guts brutally hacks off his own trapped arm with a broken sword so that he can get to them.
 * Spoofed in episode 8 of Angel Beats! when the group decides that the best way to get past the is to impale themselves on the enemies' blades (since they're already dead, they eventually get better) and use the difference in size and weight to pin them down so that the others can move on. While the first instance is treated seriously, each successive sacrifice gets faux-dramatic music, a Bond One-Liner, anguished Say My Name from the survivors, until it gets to the point where it's treated as slapstick.
 * , to revive the dead Arcobaleno in Katekyo Hitman Reborn.
 * At the end of Chars Counterattack,
 * in Puella Magi Madoka Magica does the heroic sacrifice big.
 * More accurately,
 * Let's not forget
 * In Gunslinger Girl, this is how goes out. When used as a Human Shield by Dante,.
 * In the penultimate episode of Tiger and Bunny, that's very similar to Goku's in the battle against Raditz.
 * In Heartcatch Precure, Yuri The event helps cement her Heroic BSOD and Ten-Minute Retirement for most of the series. What's even worse?
 * Four Murasame of Zeta Gundam pulls double duty Heroic Sacrifices! The first time (and the one used in the movie) has her The second time,
 * Subverted memorably in Mawaru Penguindrum. In episode 18
 * Also played straighter by, in different degrees.
 * And later?
 * If Endou Mamoru from Inazuma Eleven is in his down time or if things goes out of control during a soccer match, expect the rest of his team to cover him and take some (usually powerful) shots for him just to pull their captain back to a fight. The shots sometimes even knock them out cold.
 * THE iDOLM@STER - The Producer pulls saves Haruka from falling into the stage pit, but falls himself.
 * Hisui from Kaizoku to Ningyou attempted something like this when they were cornered on Ruberia (there were also shades of I Surrender, Suckers in that he intended to escape at the first opportunity), but Leo saw right through him. It was a pretty reckless plan, honestly, but understandable given the circumstances. It was All His Fault they were in danger to begin with, after all.
 * Hisui from Kaizoku to Ningyou attempted something like this when they were cornered on Ruberia (there were also shades of I Surrender, Suckers in that he intended to escape at the first opportunity), but Leo saw right through him. It was a pretty reckless plan, honestly, but understandable given the circumstances. It was All His Fault they were in danger to begin with, after all.