I Will Wait for You: Difference between revisions

If she is coerced into marrying, it's [[You Have Waited Long Enough]]—whereupon her true love will show up in time to [[Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Peace|save her from the wedding]]. If this trope follows a breakup, you have [[Love Will Lead You Back]]. If he does return, and she realizes she no longer loved him, it turns to [[Old Flame Fizzle]].

{{examples}}

== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==

* The "turned to stone" variant is featured as a local legend in an episode of ''[[Pokémon (anime)|Pokémon]]'' called "The Ghost of Maiden's Peak." The stone girl's spirit is also said to haunt the area.

{{quote|"Girls like her disgust me. Always waiting around for her man as if she were his faithful pet."}}

** Done again in another episode with a Ninetales (kitsune Pokemon who can reach 1000 years of age) who spent hundreds of years waiting for its master to return.

* Alpha in ''[[Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou]]'' is ''still'' waiting for her owner to return at the end of the series {{spoiler|when humanity goes extinct.}}

* Trisha Elric of ''[[Fullmetal Alchemist]]''. Not only does she agree to wait for Hohenheim while she's still alive, {{spoiler|it's revealed in an omake at the end of the series that she is still waiting for him, despite being dead for 10 years. [[Together in Death|They're finally reunited]] when Hohenheim dies in the [[Grand Finale]]... in front of Trisha's grave.}}

** Also see ''[[5 Centimeters Per Second]]''. [[Makoto Shinkai]] likes this trope.

** It might be worth noting that Mizu Sahara did the manga adaptation of ''[[Voices of a Distant Star]]''

* Shion Sonozaki, of ''[[Higurashi no Naku Koro ni]]'', does this with Satoshi. At the end of ''Matsuribayashi-hen'', she finds that {{spoiler|Satoshi has been kept in the research facilities underneath the Irie Clinic for years. His Hinamizawa Syndrome has reached such a level that he feels immense paranoia to anything he sees, and will claw out his throat if unbound. Thus, he's been kept asleep until Irie could find a cure for the disease.}}

*** {{spoiler|"Can I... come down here sometimes and read to him?"}} AWWWWW.

* A variant of this trope occurs in the [[CLAMP]] manga ''Shirahime Shyo''. A couple makes their goodbyes over a frozen lake as he is going to war, and she promises that when he comes back she will be waiting for him in the same spot. Guy returns many years later in the middle of winter thinking she probably didn't wait for him, until he looks down at the frozen river...and there she is, youthful and beautiful as ever, but dead and frozen in the lake. When she said she would wait in the same spot...[[Exact Words|she meant it]].

** How Himawari reacts to this drastic decision is left to be seen... but one thing is for sure: Doumeki is ''pissed'' that {{spoiler|Watanuki}} pretty much took this vow of celibacy for... possibly the next hundred years.

** In the first [[Cardcaptor Sakura]] movie, we have {{spoiler|Clow Reed's girlfriend and disciple, only referred to as Mahoudoushi aka "the Sorceress", and the [[Big Bad]] of the film. They got into a huge fight when she started practising [[Black Magic]] despite his warnings, so he sealed her away in a [[Pocket Dimension]]. Sorceress broke free many years later... when Clow was already dead; she then proceeeded to unleash her magic against Syaoran's family as well as against Sakura, and as she did so, a lot of her dialogue parts are summed up as her asking "Where. Is. Clow Reed?". When Sakura finally managed to tell her that he's dead, she suffered a [[Villainous BSOD]], saying [[Madness Mantra|"But... I... waited...!"]] all over.}}

* Role reversal in ''[[Seirei no Moribito]]''. Tanda has been waiting for years for Balsa to fulfill her vow to save the lives of eight people so they can settle down and get married. Then at the end she decides to return to her hometown for a while, and he ends up waiting again. Tanda is a very patient guy.

** He does express some frustration with Balsa's wandering ways, noting that she seems to thrive on life-or-death situations. When Balsa admits that this is true and jokingly asks him if he has a cure for it, he painedly replies that if he himself isn't enough of a cure, then there's no point in going on waiting. But he goes on waiting all the same.

* In an early episode of ''[[Slayers]] Revolution'', when Lina is almost arrested for "the crime of being Lina Inverse", Gourry tearfully promises to wait for her until she gets out of prison, no matter how many years it takes. Lina, of course, responds with violence.

* In the ending of the manga version of ''[[Chrono Crusade]]'', {{spoiler|Chrono}} promises {{spoiler|Rosette}} that he'll return to her because the place he belongs is "wherever you are" before {{spoiler|going off to fight Aion in their final battle.}} For a reason that is never explained, he disappears for ''years'', leaving her to wait for him even though {{spoiler|[[Deal with the Devil|their contract]] means that [[Your Days Are Numbered|she doesn't have very long to live]]}}. After eight years he eventually ''does'' make it back to her {{spoiler|right in time for her to [[Tear Jerker|die in his arms]]}}.

** Isn't it just that {{spoiler|he '''died''' in the final battle, and it's his '''ghost''' that came for her as she was dying}}, a la ''[[The Ghost and Mrs. Muir]]''?

* In the ending of the manga version of [[Hellsing]] of all the things, has this when {{spoiler|Alucard disappears and Integra kills the Major, telling him he's a monster and Alucard will return. Then she waits for him during ''thirty years'' (naturally she never married). In the [[Distant Finale]], Romancia, Seras encourages Integra while she looks sour and anxious that he's never come back and she's getting old. He returns to her that night, after fighting millions of lives to get back, and claims that her age is fine with him.}}

* In the finale of ''[[Gun X Sword]]'', Wendy parts from the man she loves. {{spoiler|(It's unclear whether Van returns her romantic feelings).}} The series ends with a few minutes of [[Distant Finale]] in which Wendy reveals that she's learned to cook food he would like, so that she can give him a good meal when he shows up. Though she never explicitly promised to wait for him, it seems to be what she's doing, and she insists that she will see him again some day. {{spoiler|Cue Van walking in the door not five seconds later.}}

* In the manga ending of ''[[Eureka Seven]]'', Renton refuses to acknowledge that his lover Eureka is dead and will continue to wait upon the day she returns back. The final page indicates they might have finally reunited after 2 years.

** In the movie version, Eureka waited patiently and hoped for the moment she could be reunited with Renton, considering she thought of suicide throughout the 8 years of imprisonment.

* Misato tries to invoke this trope in ''[[End of Evangelion]]'' when she sends Shinji off to fight the [[Final Battle]]... only to collapse and die moments after his departure, having lied about the severity of her gunshot wound and [[Cruel and Unusual Death|her dying monologue quickly getting interrupted by]] [[There Is No Kill Like Overkill|a demolition charge turning her into]] [[Ludicrous Gibs]]. And not only is it implied that she was only trying to get the boy motivation and didn't really mean what she said, her death was a [[Senseless Sacrifice]] as well.

* This was {{spoiler|Chiaki and Makoto}}'s promise at the end of ''[[The Girl Who Leapt Through Time]]''.

{{quote|{{spoiler|Chiaki}}: "I'll be waiting for you."

*** Miss Flitworth's comment is a reference to Miss Haversham in Dickens' ''Great Expectations''.

* Bizarre version in Arthur Miller's ''All My Sons'': son went missing in WWII and is probably dead. His mother assumes that the fact that his fiancee, Ann, hasn't married somebody else means she's waiting for him and uses this to validate her belief that he's alive. In fact, the fiancee is waiting for his brother to own up to his affection for her. The mother is furious that she's not waiting for her (probably dead) son, until Ann shows her a letter showing that {{spoiler|he committed suicide}}.

* Herman Melville apparently once wrote a manuscript that told the story of a woman who waited years for the return of her sailor husband after he disappeared at sea. Meanwhile, he'd gone off and started another family elsewhere. The manuscript was never published and is now lost, but records of it exist in Melville's letters to Nathaniel Hawthorne.

* This is a major plot point in ''[[The Time Traveler's Wife]]''. Clare spends most of her childhood and teens waiting to her next meeting with Henry. Even {{spoiler|after Henry dies, Clare keeps waiting for nearly 50 years to meet him one last time}}.

* In Joe Haldeman's ''[[The Forever War]]'', William and Marygay, who have stuck with each other through firefights, injuries, and the loss of everyone and everything they've ever known, are separated by being given different military assignments. The death toll in the war is horribly high, and [[Time Dilation]] caused by near-lightspeed travel means they can never expect to see each other again. William mourns for her as if she's dead, but doesn't take up with anyone else because in the future that he's been thrust into by the time dilation, everyone else is gay. Marygay, on the other hand, leaves a note for him to find if he survives, assuring him that she will wait forever, tells him where she's going, and {{spoiler|buys a ship which spends the next two hundred years going backwards and forwards at near-lightspeed, stopping every five years, during which time she has aged about a month... leaving her still in her late twenties when William, aged thirtysomething, catches up with her. Now that's an optimistic lady!}}

* In the [[Chivalric Romance]] ''Floris And Blanchefleur'', the lovers are forcibly separated to prevent a mesalliance. Both of them are not to be shaken by that—even when Floris believes that she is dead.

* In the [[Chivalric Romance]]s ''King Horn'', ''Beves of Hampton'', and ''Guy of Warwick'', the heroes all win the hand of a princess by their feats. Unfortunately, Horn is in exile from the court of his true love because of [[Malicious Slander|a false accusation]], and Beves and Guy are both seeking to win renown so that the princess he is in love with will find him worthy, despite his low birth. All of them wriggle out of the marriage and (in due time) win their first loves.

* In [[Edgar Rice Burroughs]]'s ''[[John Carter of Mars|The Master Mind of Mars]]'', Dar Tarus was assasinated in order to clear the way for the rival. (Fortunately for him, his body was sold to the [[Mad Scientist]] and he got better.) His love, Kara, fled as soon as her father was assassinated, and returned to be reunited with him.

* In Jan Guillou's ''Knight Templar'' series Cecilia patiently waits for Arn for more than twenty years while he's off making penance as a knight templar. Slightly subverted since she too has been sentenced to make penance and spends twenty years at a convent, but it kicks in for real once she's done her time and has to wait to see if he will ever return home.

== [[Live Action TV]] ==

* ''[[So Weird]]'': "Widow's Walk" features an old woman who has waited decades for her husband, lost at sea, to return. She learns an important life lesson about something or other, then goes right back to waiting. The ghost of her husband seems to approve of this.

* In the ''[[Merlin (TV series)|Merlin]]'' episode "Queen of Hearts", Guinevere (who is only a servant girl in this version) promises to wait for Arthur to become king so that he can change the customs that keep them apart and finally let them be together.

* In ''[[Robin Hood (TV series)|Robin Hood]]'', the titular character is intrigued when he comes back from five years fighting abroad to discover that Maid Marian is still unmarried - not that ''she's'' going to admit that ''he'' has [[Slap Slap Kiss|anything to do with that]].

* Interesting exception: According to Plutarch, King Leonidas told his wife before he left to fight the Battle of Thermopylae that she should "[[Crowning Moment of Heartwarming|marry a good man that will treat you well, bear him children, and live a good life.]]"

* The Greek story of Clytie is a notable variation: Clytie loved Helios, the sun god, but he did not return her affection, though fully aware of it. No one else made her feel the way he did, so she spent the rest of her life waiting under a tree for him to descend to her. He never came, and she eventually turned into a heliotrope flower, turning her face to him at all times. Depressingly, [[Truth in Television|this story is a metaphor for a common real-life occurrence]].

* There's a big rock above Shatin in the New Territories of Hong Kong called Amah Rock which is supposed to be such a woman. Either she's grown since petrification or she was a giantess, it's about twenty feet tall. It has a silhouette resembling a woman with a baby on her back. [[Fridge Logic|How come the baby didn't grow up during the wait?]]

* Also in the ''Zelda'' games ''[[Oracle of Ages]]'' and ''[[Oracle of Seasons]]''. That horrible tower Ambi was building in Ages was originally planned so she'd have a place to wait for her lover, who's out at sea somewhere. The skeleton captain in Seasons is frantically searching for a bell given to him by his girlfriend, "the queen of some country".

** Eventually the two of them do meet each other again if you play a linked game between both versions. They happily thank Link for reuniting the two of them.

* In ''[[Sharin no Kuni]]'', the first thing the main character Kenichi learns about Natsumi is that she's doing this for ''someone''. {{spoiler|She was waiting for him. She either doesn't recognize him, or is in denial because she didn't want him to see her as the [[Break the Cutie|broken shell of a person she'd been reduced to while they were separated.]] }}

* In ''[[Radiant Historia]]'', {{spoiler|the [[True Companions]] express this to Stocke, before he prepares to sacrifice himself. The [[Tear Jerker]] part is his love interest Raynie, who wished to give up fighting to elope with him, but instead accepted his promise to settle down after [[Saving the World]]. However the [[Golden Ending]] implies [[He's Back]].}}

* In ''[[Puyo Puyo]]'', part of Oshare Bones' backstory is this. Before he died, he had a significant other who suddenly disappeared one day. He continues to wait for his lover even in undeath, and in ''Puyo Puyo! 15th Anniversary'', he makes a wish that they will someday be reunited. The wish is technically granted, but due to a slip-up with how Oshare words his wish, he has no idea when that day will come.

* [[Ar tonelico II: Melody of Metafalica]] has an interesting variant. Croix makes what amounts to a [[Childhood Marriage Promise]] with Luca who agrees to wait until he's a full fledged knight and he comes to take her to Pastalia. However {{spoiler|if the player chooses the default ending, Croix says ''he'' will wait for Coccona to return from her journey to the third tower.}}

* In the Sacred Weapons (Kyo, Chizuru, Iori) Team in [[The King of Fighters]] 97, {{spoiler|as the three work together to re-seal Orochi, Kyo has a vision of his girlfriend Yuki promising to wait for his return.}}

== [[Western Animation]] ==

[[Category:Drama Tropes]]

[[Category:Older Than Feudalism]]