Break the Cutie/Anime: Difference between revisions

** After {{spoiler|having to develop her training abilities from scratch, pulverizing a Drilbur in lieu of a Pokemon battle so it can serve as her starter, and wiping 99 trainers in a row}}, Iris had every right to brag. Then {{spoiler|Drayden came along and stomped her so hard she lost her composure and Excadrill stopped obeying her out of despair. It takes losing to Langley for Iris to begin rediscovering herself and helping Excadrill out of his funk. It seems to have paid off, as the rematch ended in a draw between Excadrill and Beartic. [[Tempting Fate|We'll see how long that lasts.]]}}

* In ''[[Pokémon Diamond and Pearl Adventure]]'' this happened retroactively to {{spoiler|Koya}} and his Growlithe. After battling a trainer that was way above their level, Growlithe was so traumatized that it didn't even want to be touched by its trainer. {{spoiler|Koya}} became more aggressive and [["Stop Having Fun!" Guys|serious]].

** Let's not forget ''how'' she got {{spoiler|that secret: by having it ''forcibly tattooed on her back''}}. And Roy later had to {{spoiler|add more scars by burning said back so no one would be able to discover it.}}

** Also Winry. She grows up fine into a [[Genki Girl|strong and cheerful girl]], despite her parents' death in Ishval while helping the wounded Ishvalans. [[Right Behind Me|Then she found out]] who [[Freak-Out|killed]] [[Innocent Bystander|her parents]]. [[Tear Jerker|All emotion break loose]].

** How have we gone without mention of Euphemia, who {{spoiler|was accidentally forced to slaughter hundreds of people against her will, and, just to add insult to injury, was forever known as the "massacre princess" or even "[[Fan Nickname|The Euphinator]]"?}}

** Mao, {{spoiler|the orphan whom C.C. gave Geass to,}} went through this as well. He [[Used to Be a Sweet Kid]] but his mind-reading powers drove him completely insane, rendering him the most irreparably broken character in the entire series, who has to be {{spoiler|[[Mercy Kill]]ed by C.C.}}. He's even [[One-Scene Wonder|famous for it]].

** Lelouch also fits to an extent, dating back to his failed attempt at [[Calling the Old Man Out]] for apparently [[Somebody Else's Problem|not doing anything in response to Marianne's murder and Nunnally's crippling]] that led the expulsion of him and Nunnally to Japan. Then [[It Got Worse]]. [[Byronic Hero|And thanks to himself, in a way]].

* ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh! GX]]'': Judai Yuuki's experiences in Season 3, including being pursued by a supernatural [[Stalker with a Crush]], seeing his best friends die one by one, and hitting the [[Moral Event Horizon]] with his 'being evil in order to fight evil',have slowly and painfully turned him from the happy-go-lucky [[The Ace|Ace]] into a depressed shell that makes [[Neon Genesis Evangelion/Characters|Shinji Ikari]] look downright chipper. The dub, meanwhile, seemed [[Macekre|on track to ignore all of that]] but didn't, for once. {{spoiler|He gets better. A lot better, ending the series by going out into the world to help other people with his powers instead of just selfishly pursuing his own desires.}}

** In the original series of ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh!]]'', Mai Valentine experienced this between the end of Battle City and the Doma arc.

*** Seto Kaiba was {{spoiler|subjected to years of abuse by his [[Knight Templar Parent|adoptive father.]] It worked: he was successfully broken and remade into said adoptive father's image.}} Who could do that to such a cute little child genius??

** In ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh!]] 5D's'' we have {{spoiler|Carly Nagisa, in a combination with [[Kill the Cutie]].}} Results in a [[Tear Jerker]] at the end of Episode 39. It even doubles as a [[Break the Haughty]] moment considering who it is that kills said cutie {{spoiler|and promptly finds himself on the receiving end of a [[Super-Powered Evil Side]]}}.

* Subaru Sumeragi in [[CLAMP]]'s ''[[Tokyo Babylon]]'' and ''[[X 1999]]'' was very carefully broken, and then some more, by his love interest Seishirou.

* Rena and Satoko from ''[[Higurashi no Naku Koro ni]]'' both qualify, though Rena tends to snap, while Satoko breaks. Rika also tends to get it pretty hard. In fact, it's hard to argue that any of the cuties of Hinamizawa ''aren't'' broken at some point.

** Shion, however, outperforms all other cuties in the fine art of breaking and snapping. Don't ask. Rather, instead of breaking/snapping, she [[Ax Crazy|explodes violently with the force of an anti-personnel mine, ripping everyone else apart with the shrapnel]].

* Seems to be the entire point of ''[[Bokurano]]'', featuring a large cast of cuties all broken, [[Cold-Blooded Torture|tortured]], and killed one by one.

** Or any story Mohiro Kitoh writes, really. Just look at Hiroko, Akira, Norio, and pretty much ''everyone'' in the side of good from ''[[Narutaru]]''.

** Gohan actually got an episode seemingly ''centered'' around this. Early on, Gohan had apparently been watching too many Disney movies, as he's constantly trying to make friends with butterflies and squirrels, asking them their names, etc. Then an early ''Z'' episode shatters any illusions he may have had about nature being cuddly and cute. He meets a wounded dinosaur and attempts to nurse it back to health, applying a poultice to its injuries and gathering food for it. There's a short scene where he imagines how cool it will be to keep it for a pet and have adventures with it, illustrated in a cute super-deformed style. Then a short while later, another dinosaur attacks it, and Gohan fails in fighting it off and gets knocked senseless, awakening to find his new friend's ''bones'' scattered on the ground. The lesson: stop baby-talking at nature, little five-year-old, it doesn't like you.

*** He spends pretty much the latter half of his training ''eating'' that other dinosaur's tail, bit by bit, for breakfast. Payback is not only a bitch, but apparently delicious.

* The titular heroines of ''[[Gunslinger Girl]]'' get broken from the inside by their own cybernetic implants and by the brutal mental conditioning they receive to function as cold-blooded assassins. And that's not even mentioning the singularly horrible things that happened to them in order to necessitate them becoming cyborgs to survive.

* The ''[[Berserk]]'' storyline specializes in taking sympathetic characters and putting them through horrible shit.

** The universe hasn't been kind to Guts either. A poor innocent baby who is {{spoiler|rescued from under the tree where his mother was hanged while she was pregnant}}, [[Used to Be a Sweet Kid|Guts is a pretty nice kid early on his life]]. He willingly serves the mercenary group that raises him, and even gives all of the money he earns to his surrogate father, Gambino, and devotes his life to trying to please him. After Gambino {{spoiler|sells him to a mercenary named Donovan for three silver coins, who proceeds to rape him despite Guts's best efforts to fight him off}}, he starts to lose his innocence (as if living day to day by killing people wasn't enough of a stressor), this loss of innocence finally solidifies when {{spoiler|Gambino, having lost his leg in battle and no longer able to fight or lead his men on the battlefield, gets massively drunk and attempts to murder him because he believes that Guts is cursed and blames him for the death of his lover Shisu, Guts's surrogate mother, from the plague, and Guts is forced to kill him out of self-defense}}. Guts still has nightmares about the experiences as an adult, even before the Eclipse goes down.

** Many Apostles have had their lives go completely to shit as part of the process of causality leading them to their [[Despair Event Horizon]], their sacrifice and their transformation, but none more tragically than Rosine. An imaginative and clever little girl from an abusive household, strongly hinted {{spoiler|to have been a [[Child by Rape]] (her mom was raped during the war and her dad abuses both mom and kid due to this)}}, all she wanted was to find the elves that she always believed in and get away from her horrible home situation. {{spoiler|When she runs off looking for the elves, she doesn't find them, but her parents find her. Her mom is just glad that she's okay and alive, but her abusive father is ''furious'', and starts viciously beating on her. The blood from the beating and her despair activates the Behelit, which leads to the poor frightened little girl who just wanted elves to be real finding out that she could have been one herself and not just some filthy cruel human, and proceeds to sacrifice both her parents in order to become what she thinks is an elf}}.

*** And then there's Takeru/TK in the [[Digimon Adventure|original series]]... poor damn TK, it just wasn't fair. To elaborate, at age 8 he is dealing with his parents being divorced, his [[Aloof Older Brother]] being moody and unpleasant because of this, and then he witnesses his close friend and Digimon Patamon die ''right in front of him'' without the knowledge that he'd [[Disney Death|come back okay]]. He does manage to deal with this and becomes a level-headed [[Lancer]] in the second season... [[Berserk Button|unless he encounters anyone making use of the Powers of Darkness.]]

**** Speaking of the original series, Tailmon/Gatomon may be a [[Badass]], but that's partly because she went through this a long time ago. She was accidentally dropped in the forest as an egg when the Chosen Digimon were being transported to where they'd meet their partners, hatched and spent her entire early childhood isolated and lonely but still with a desire to be with her partner that she couldn't place, when she reached her Child/Rookie stage set off looking for her only to be captured by Vamdemon/Myotismon as a recruit for his army. She resisted for a while and ended up regularly beaten for it to the point that she gave in just to stay alive and eventually forgot the whole thing and got to be noted as one of his more valuable servants. When she ''does'' finally find Hikari and remember her past, nothing gets easier, seeing as she gets kidnapped and used to lure out her own partner and Wizarmon, her only real friend during her time under Vamdemon's service, is [[Kick the Dog|killed right in front of her]](twice), and even after Vamdemon seems to be defeated, her experiences don't entirely leave her.

** Aside from this, averted with Lulu, who {{spoiler|sees all of the other Schiff die off in ones and twos, and faces her own premature death from the Thorn.}} Despite this, she remains [[Genki Girl|happy and chipper]], and {{spoiler|eventually they find her a cure.}}

*** Pulled yet again in regards to Haji. Through a flashback, it is shown that the reason he went from being somewhat stoic to made of stone was because {{spoiler|his blood turned his One True Love and reason for living into a murdering psychopath who forgot who he was and ''cut his arm off'' during her rampage.}}

* ''[[Fushigi Yuugi]]'' revolves around this trope. Yui is raped basically within 5 minutes of her second trip there, and becomes a vengeful, hateful villainess, primarily because of her {{spoiler|bishonen bodyguard Nakago, who warped her mind to the point where she blames her best friend Miaka for the rape, since she wasn't there to help her. Eventually, it turns out that Yui was never actually raped, but the entire thing was a [[Gambit Roulette|ridiculously complicated plan]] by Nakago to pit them against each other as a part of a larger plan to stage a coup in Genbu. Later he tries to rape Miaka as well but fails, though he ''does'' get her to believe that it happened until someone else explains the mess.}}

** Also, that whole arc where {{spoiler|Yui drugs Tamahome to make him betray Miaka, who was temporarily broken until she breaks the spell with [[The Power of Love]]. Then, Miaka's own mistakes make everything ''worse'' for her, Tamahome, and their friends}}

** Suboshi and Amiboshi, impoverished twin orphans who have the misfortune of being recruited by [[Manipulative Bastard]] Nakago. Suboshi deals by becoming a [[Hot-Blooded]] [[Jerkass]], later crossing the [[Moral Event Horizon]] and thereby losing his "cutie" status ([[Draco in Leather Pants|for most fans, anyway]]); Amiboshi fares much better, but even he still has {{spoiler|a [[Driven to Suicide|suicide attempt to his name]], and only reaches happiness when [[Tear Jerker|his memory of the preceding 15 years is completely erased]]... thanks by Suboshi, [[Pet the Dog|as his last act of kindness ever]].}}

* Misuzu from ''[[AIR]]'' arguably qualifies, since a lot of time and effort is put into presenting her as a sweet, lovable, although somewhat peculiar girl—only to {{spoiler|have her suffer enormous pain in the last few episodes and die in the arms of her adoptive mother, her aunt Haruko. Her final moments are still [[Tear Jerker|gruesomely beautiful]], though}}.

* Cream gets one of these in ''[[Sonic X]]'' after the {{spoiler|robot Emerl whom she rescued and made friends with goes crazy}} under the power of [[Green Rocks]], tries to attack her mother and then beats the living heck out of Sonic, who [[Taking the Bullet|got in the way]] while Cream was trying to reason with him and he went for her instead. A distraught Cream then {{spoiler|has to destroy Emerl herself}}. Being who she is, however, she gets over it, to an extent.

** Cosmo can be considered this as well, except that she was damn well broken to begin with, what with having her entire home and family destroyed right in front of her, crash landing on another planet being {{spoiler|used as an unwitting spy by the enemy she was trying to fight against and ending up stuck in a situation which meant she either lost her sight and hearing or the bad guys kept watching... Not to mention the fact that the bad guys turned out to actually ''be'' her species with their leader quite possibly [[I Am Your Father|being her father]],}} and having the worst case of survivor's guilt ''ever'' encountered in a series aimed at an under-teen demographic. {{spoiler|And has to force her boyfriend to kill her, which counts as a ''double'' [[Break the Cutie]] between them.}}

* When we first meet ''[[Bitter Virgin]]'''s sixteen-year-old Hinako Aikawa, she had already endured serious [[Abusive Parents|sexual abuse]] from her stepfather. Abuse which [[Adults Are Useless|her mother refused to acknowledge was happening]] until it got Hinako pregnant for the ''second time''. Readers saw these events transpire in a flashback that occurred while Hinako was in the process of being raped ''again'' by a random molester. Fortunately, ''that'' time she was rescued, and the series as a whole focuses on Hinako's recovery from these traumas.

* In ''[[Vampire Princess Miyu]]'', not only [[Dark Magical Girl|Miyu]] is an already broken cutie who {{spoiler|had her powers awaken when someone came to kill her and she had to bite him to survive, then saw her parents be captured and put in suspended animation when her mom tried to [[Screw Destiny]] and not have Miyu become the Shinma Guardian}}, but she actively seeks out pretty people who have been through extreme suffering and pain in their pasts, so she can offer them [[Kiss of the Vampire|a blood contract]]: they give her their blood, she eases their pain through placing them in a [[Lotus Eater Machine|dream-like trance]]. {{spoiler|Unless they ''still'' have things to do and people are suffering because of them, like the third OAV shows}}.

** From the (canonical) Monsters story in [[One Piece Wanted]], Flare breaks down when {{spoiler|[[Bitch in Sheep's Clothing|Cyrano]], the guy she viewed as her hero for years, was actually the one who destroyed her hometown and killed her father (And everyone else in the village, directly or not). What made it even worse is that Cyrano was laughing about the whole thing}}. She tried to hold her tears, but eventually broke down and cried. [[Tear Jerker|Really hard]].

** And a full-blown [[Break the Cutie]] process is what made {{spoiler|Boa Hancock}} the huge bitch that we meet. More exactly, {{spoiler|she and her sisters Sandersonia and Marigold start out as normal little girls in the Kuja Pirates, then are kidnapped by slave drivers and fall in the hands of the World Nobles. They branded them like cattle, force them to eat Devil Fruits for their own amusement, and torture them and many others nonstop '''four''' hellish years. When the Boa girls manage to escape thanks to a really badass fish man, the damage is already done, and Hancock has specially become a total bitch.}}

* In ''[[Full Metal Panic!]]'''s backstory between Sōsuke and Kalinin, you can get a taste of young Sōsuke's [[Break the Cutie]] (though most of what you see is the huge contrast and aftermath). Especially noticeable from [http://pics.livejournal.com/fmp_misha/pic/0003a17w this] to [http://pics.livejournal.com/fmp_misha/pic/0003eq61 this].

* Ditto for ''[[Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle]]''. All 4 main characters have tragic angsty backstory.

* [[Break the Cutie|This]] [[Kill'Em All|happens]] to main character Sara Werec of ''[[Soukou no Strain]]''. In the ''first episode'' no less!

* One has to suspect that the writers of ''[[Vision of Escaflowne]]'' had some sort of "Torturing your main character, in body and soul" checklist, given the sheer amount of abuse Van goes through in the series. [[Parental Abandonment|Kill off his family in his bactstory]]? Check. [[Doomed Hometown|Have his country burned to the ground]] and [[Noble Fugitive|force him to go on the run?]] Of course! {{spoiler|Reveal to him that his brother is alive, but [[Cain and Abel|on the bad guy's side]]}}? Would never think of leaving it out. [[Synchronization|Synch him up with his mech]] just before the one battle where he totally ''trashes'' it, leaving him an oozing, bloody mess? Oh, most definitely. {{spoiler|Having said older brother actually ''pull'' a [[Heel Face Turn]] and return to his side (which in turn reveals that [[Knight Templar Big Brother|he did it to ensure Van wouldn't have to be broken as he grew up]]), only for him to perish through [[Karmic Death]] right before the final battle}}? [[Check, Please!]], Make the only means of saving him (repairing the Escaflowne) the most unimaginably painful method you can think of? Not actually on the list, but sure!... Really, the list goes on.

** Don't even get us started on Hitomi, and for that matter, most of the ''whole damn cast''.

** HELL ''EVERY NAMED PERSON''.

* In ''[[MPD Psycho]]'', a [[Serial Killer]] kidnaps the girlfriend of the lead detective investigating his case, mutilates her, rapes her repeatedly (in that order), then delivers her—limbless but still alive—directly to the detective's office.

*** Yuki lives through over 15,000 (15,498 in the novels, 15,513 in the anime) repetitions of the same 2 weeks without aging, remembering everything to do with it. And she can't do a single thing because her job is to observe. By the end of it, Kyon notices that [[The Stoic]], turned [[Up to Eleven]] is now openly showing her sadness. No wonder. She lived for nearly 600 years without aging a single bit.

*** Haruhi is closer to a [[Broken Bird]] than a Broken Cutie. She learns, rather painfully, that she isn't all that special, and in her quest to make her life special, goes on the hunt for aliens, time travellers and ESPers after some inspiration from Kyon. This leads to her general sociopathy, and her obsession with cosplaying Mikuru. A good part of the plot is her ''learning how to be a good person again'', as noted by Kyon.

** Also [[The Woobie|Ako]]. She starts as a [[Extreme Doormat|doormat]] with major self-esteem issues, then accidentally gets trapped in the magic world, where she gets a disease, forcing her and two of her friends to sell themselves into slavery to pay for the cure. To top it off, she then falls in love with someone who [[Loving a Shadow|turns out to not even really exist]].

** And Asuna as well {{spoiler|who gets so broken, her memory is wiped so she can have a chance at a normal life.}}

** There's a few other characters too, such as Freckles/Doll from the circus arc.

** Elizabeth in chapter 57.

** Oh yes, did I mention that Neo Queen Serenity, King Endymion, Sailor Venus, Sailor Mars, and Artemis all get killed and they don't get better? You can imagine what this does to (Chibi) Usagi and Diana.

* [[Rozen Maiden]]: Suigintou. In Overature, she starts out a very friendly doll {{spoiler|despite the fact that her father abandoned her (incomplete) and she's been literally crawling through N-Fields to find him. She happens to find Shinku, who takes her in and acts as if she cares. However, once Sugintou is killed the first time by Souseseki, Shinku reveals that Sugintou is not a complete doll, and looks on coldly as Sugintou begs Shinku to save her. Shinku refers to her as junk several times. Sugintou comes back, because Rozen decided to quit being a Jerkass, and tries to grab Shinku's Roza Mystica.}}

* ''[[Puella Magi Madoka Magica]]'': The entire universe seems to have it in for the titular character. And Sayaka. And Kyouko. And pretty much any magical girl, really.

** As much as every magical girl here (save Madoka to a degree, she has [[Desperately Looking for a Purpose In Life|other issues]]) seems to have it... they have gotten past what broken them, mind you [[Broken Bird|that doesn't really help much.]]. '''Sayaka Miki''' here takes the prize on this trope for the show so far... since well, {{spoiler|[[Love Makes You Evil|Love, and]] [[Love Hurts|the grief]] [[Did Not Get the Girl|that]] [[Despair Event Horizon|follows,]] [[Love Makes You Evil|makes you]] '''[[Start of Darkness|Evil]]'''.}}

* ''Kodomo no Jikan'' gives us two examples before the series even starts: Rin and Reiji. Reiji was broken first by his abusive, drunken father and indifferent mother, then was repaired a bit by his relationship with Rin's mother ([[Kissing Cousins|his]] [[Values Dissonance|cousin]]), but then she died from lung cancer. That, combined [[Wife Husbandry|with]] [[Replacement Goldfish|his]] [[Love Father, Love Son|actions]], broke ''Rin'' herself.

* Reika Kitami, the main villain of the ''Bible Black'' series experiences this in the Prequel. When she first arrives in high school, she's a sweet, [[Wide-Eyed Idealist]] who bonds with a puppy, who wouldn't hurt a fly unless pushed, and is absolutely pure sexually and mentally. Unfortunately, these make her the prime target of the Rose Cross Coven (a cabal of 7 high school girls who practice black magic to make money and to hurt people they don't like). She also angers Kozono Nami, the school's resident [[Rich Bitch]], [[Alpha Bitch]], and [[Psycho Lesbian]] by refusing her advances. The result? First, the puppy she bonded with is used as a sacrifice, than she gets raped by a bunch of thugs (loosing her virginity in the most horrible way possible short of being tentacle raped), then she gets knocked out and wakes up on a human sacrifice alter in the school basement. While all this is going on, she's not only physically and emotionally traumatized, terrified and likely in shock, but doesn't even have any idea what the hell is going on. After getting stabbed... repeatedly... with a very large sword, she witnesses the rest of the cult members getting massacred by Nami after the ritual fails (since Kitami was no longer a virgin). After summoning the last of her strength to kill Nami she collapses mortally wounded. At this point, the Devil offers her a contract to save her life. At this point, Kitami is simply so terrified and in agony/shock that she accepts it without question. The very final scene in the prequal shows Kitami walking into the sunrise with a vacant grin, on a residential street... naked... and covered in blood.

** And if that wasn't bad enough, the process is repeated on Imari in the original series. Imari starts out exactly as Reika did. Cute, sweet, innocent high school girl, with an apparently reciprocated crush on the primary male protagonist, Minase. As soon as Minase finds the Black Bible used by the original Rose Cross Coven, it all just goes badly for Imari. It begins with her walking in on Minase having sex with another female student (after he invited her to come over and cook diner for him in the first place), she gets kidnapped by the new coven (Now taken over by Reika) thanks to Minase (who has become the 2nd under Reika after his own magical mind break), is drugged and subsequently forcibly sodomized by a [[Charm Person|magically]] [[Playing with Puppets|controlled]] but fully aware/struggling Minase. Then gang sodomized by numerous other anonymous men AND the demonically "gifted" Reika, then has her actual virginity taken by Reika as part of the ritual attempted with her in the prequel. By the end of the series, Imari is pretty much [[Empty Shell|gone]] with Reika having [[Demonic Possession|taken over her body]] completely. Don't think it gets more broken than that.

** Also, in the fanmade game ''[[Heta Oni]]'', {{spoiler|Italy}} is broken quite a few times, {{spoiler|because everyone continues to die while trying to protect him, and he has to watch it all. [[And I Must Scream|Again, and again, and again, and again...]]}}

* ''[[No. 6]]'': Sion in the Correctional facility during episode 10.

* Please don't be a female lead in a [[Mayu Shinjo]] manga. And ''specially'', don't name yourself [[Haou Airen|Kurumi Akino]] or [[Sensual Phrase|Aine Yukimura]]. Because you'll end up horribly broken not just by your boyfriend's rivals/enemies/scorned women, but [[Bastard Boyfriend|by your own boyfriend]].