Iron Woobie: Difference between revisions

When his sufferings spring from his heroism, see also the [[Hurting Hero]].

 

 

== [[Anime]] & [[Manga]] ==

* ''[[Inuyasha]]'': Let's see, from we have the titular character himself, Sango, Kohaku... Heck, pretty much every character in the series falls into this at some point or another, and most for darn good reasons.

* ''[[Karneval]]'': Gareki.

* ''[[Mobile Fighter G Gundam (Anime)|Mobile Fighter G Gundam]]'': Domon Kasshu. {{spoiler|Has his master betray him, his own government screws him over, he's forced to fight his brother and was convinced for a long time his own father was a viciously evil bastard, even has his eventual girlfriend eaten by a monster.}} Somehow, he manages to deal with all of it by beating the crap out of the causes of all the above and a lot of [[Hot Blooded]] screaming.

** Rain, as well. She's always calm and kind, offering support to everyone as the good [[Team Mom]] that she is and serving as Domon's support. She only fully breaks down when {{spoiler|she think she's failed in her mission and to Domon}} and when {{spoiler|she finds out the role that her dad had in a certain conspiration}}... But once this is over, she {{spoiler|helps Domon to use the [[Power of Love]] and destroy the Devil Gundam for good.}}

* ''[[Nagasarete Airantou]]'': Ikuto. Before coming to the island he was drifting on a life preserver for seven days without food or water. He spends the first episode/book futilely throwing himself against the same few whirlpools until it's absurd but only until he points out that he did that to '''learn''' their flow and sneak between them (there's an even larger one beyond it, sadly). His grandfather gives him through [[Training From Hell]] and its gives him a fear of heights. In a free-for-all game of tag for marriage the day after he arrives, he gets dropped from a tremendous height and thrown an incredible distance, and loses only by an involuntary gesture of bravery on his part. And the hits keep coming. On the other hand, with renewed training, he becomes a [[Badass Normal]] who manages to outwit or fairly beat four of the island's most powerful champions in a span of two days.

** Ayane is definitely a woobie who can take a beating. As the [[Butt Monkey]] of the harem, she gets stepped on, used as her sister's plaything, and gets stuck with some pretty rotten luck for no good reason. Her punishment threshold is leagues beyond most other members of the island and, for her troubles, has a curious number of immunities that help her with smaller problems. Also, despite sometimes being looked down upon she gets depicted as more competent than most of the harem (though it may be narcissism) and character development has boosted her beyond most of the harem in terms of understanding how they feel about Ikuto.

* ''[[Neon Genesis Evangelion]]'': Shinji Ikari. Say what you want, but it can't be denied that he saves the world on a regular basis despite the pain it brings him.

** The trope specifies someone who does not feel sorry for himself, Shinji CONSTANTLY feels sorry for himself.

* ''[[Science Ninja Team Gatchaman (Anime)|Science Ninja Team Gatchaman]]'': Joe "The Condor" Asakura.

* ''[[Serial Experiments Lain]]'': Lain Iwakura.

* ''[[Tekkaman Blade (Anime)|Tekkaman Blade]]'': Takaya aka Tekkaman Blade.

* ''[[Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann (Anime)|Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann]]'': Viral.

** And {{spoiler|Simon too. Sweet heavens, his ultimate fate would break ANYONE. But he bears it with a forced smile because it's for the greater good.}}

* ''[[Texhnolyze]]'': Ichise.

** The light novels also reveal that his powers gave him seveere [[All of the Other Reindeer]] treatment, such as [[Jerkass|a news group doing an exclusive on his powers and revealing his name and face without his parents' permission]], and a manic old man who blamed Touma's Imagine Breaker for his business's failure who later [[Ax Crazy|stabbed a young Touma as payback.]]

* ''[[Trigun]]'': Vash. Yeah, he does [[Ten Minute Retirement|break down]] eventually--but he gets up again, and when you consider [[Really Seven Hundred Years Old|how many years]] he's been doing this already, and just how bad it's gotten, it's frankly terrifying that he hasn't given in yet.

* While Miles Vorkosigan in [[Lois McMaster Bujold]]'s [[Vorkosigan Saga]] already takes this to extreme levels (born with abnormally brittle bones and needing multiple surgeries and painful physical therapy just to walk, and that was just the first six years of his life; it got worse), his brother Mark has it even worse. Created in a laboratory by absurdly insane and delusional terrorists to kill and impersonate his brother long enough to murder their father, raised by clone traders who sell their services to rich old people willing to murder their own cloned children and transplant their brains into the young bodies, every one of his childhood friends is dead by the time he starts trying to stop the clone trade. But after being physically, sexually, and psychologically tortured by someone vile by LITERALLY everyone else's standards (Mark makes millions from the assassination and ends up rescuing dozens of innocent lives), a beautiful female soldier touches his wrist and offers her pity for what he'd suffered. Mark's response: grab her wrist in a death grip and snarl viciously, "don't you DARE feel pity for me. I WON!"

* Jurgis in Upton Sinclair's [[The Jungle]] - he is not only a Woobie, but also an [[Iron Woobie]].

* Jean Paget in ''[[A Town Like Alice]]''. Even when being marched by the Japanese with a party of women through the jungles of Malaya she always kept her spirits up.

* Túrin Turambar in J.R.R.Tolkien's [[The Silmarillion]].

* Toni Ware in [[The Pale King]] has a horrifying backstory, but she's easily the toughest and most dangerous of the main characters.

* Lissla Lissar from [[Robin McKinley]]'s ''[[Deerskin (Literature)|Deerskin]]''. Just follow the link to that page. Lissar is the embodiment of the tragic backstory. The poor girl goes through utter hell, in one form or another, for seventeen years. And yet she survives it all--with the help of a being called the Moonwoman, who changes Lissar's appearance and conceals her memories until she might be ready to deal with them--becoming the most compassionate and courageous person imaginable.

 

 

* Timothy Pike from ''[[Dark Fall the Journal|Dark Fall: The Journal]]'' is level-headed, affable, and helpful despite his [[Dark and Troubled Past|unpleasant past]] and horrifying present.

* [[Iji (Video Game)|Iji]] woke up after losing nearly everything. Whether she "breaks" or not is up to the player.

* The main character of ''[[Dragon Quest V]]''. No other character in the entire ''series'' compares to him. Where to even begin. {{spoiler|His father is murdered right in front of him as a child. He lives as a slave for the next ten years constructing an icon of blasphemy. He and his wife are turned to stone for another seven years, mere days after his twin children are born. They get seperated during this, and she does not get unpetrified until well after he is. And as probably the biggest [[Player Punch]] in the entire series, his mother, who he and his father had been searching for the entire game, is murdered right in front of him just ''minutes'' after he'd finally found her.}} If that's not an [[Iron Woobie]], what is?

* Ayane from ''[[Dead or Alive]]'' qualifies. She was born from her biological father, Raidou, raping her mother to get back at one of his enemies, and was hated and mistreated by her village of origin as a result, with the only two that ever treated her well being her friends Hayate and Kasumi, and her adoptive father Genra. And even though she and Kasumi are friends and she's crushing on Hayate, the rest of the village tries to keep her away from them due to associating her with Raidou. Then she finds out from her mother that Kasumi and Hayate are her half siblings, and that while they're treated like ninja royalty, she's outcast because her mother didn't claim her due to the trauma of her birth circumstances. Then Raidou comes back to the village seeking a technique they guarded, and while she's beaten aside easily, Hayate is crippled when she fails to protect him. Kasumi then leaves the village to seek revenge, and Ayane is assigned to kill her for breaking the code of secrecy surrounding the village. And this is all before leaving the backstory! She proceeds to have to face off with both her best friend and {{spoiler|her amnesiac love interest}} when {{spoiler|Hayate is brought back by DOATEC as Ein}} as part of Project Epsilon. Then in the third tournament, she finds out that her adoptive father {{spoiler|has been kidnapped by DOATEC and turned into the monstrous bioweapon known as Omega}}, forcing her to enter the tournament, {{spoiler|whereupon she defeats and kills him to set him free of DOATEC's slavery}}. And past that, with Hayate back as of the fourth game, Kasumi is still marked for death due to [[Honor Before Reason]], and Ayane is still loyally serving her clan to take her down. And through all of this, the only hint of the pain we ever see going through her is a single tear {{spoiler|when she's cremating Genra's body after he dies.}} One really wonders how Tecmo could hurt her ''worse'' if the series had gone on.

** Well, at least he still has his supporting cast of the [[Classic Disney Shorts|Disney cartoons.]]

** Also, all three of [[Kingdom Hearts Birth By Sleep|Birth By Sleep]]'s protagonists.

* Scorpion from ''[[Mortal Kombat]]'' is this. First his entire clan is killed, then after being brought back as a spectre he's forced by Shang Tsung to work alongside the guy who killed his family. In life and in death his story is an endless stream of tragedy, his game endings are usually bad, right down to {{spoiler|becoming the vessel of Dark Kahn's rebirth in ''Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe'' (luckily, the game is non-canon)}}. Yet he still continues on.

** Even worse, the Elder Gods are pretty much dicks to him. In ''Deception'', they make Scorpion their Champion to deal with the threat of Onaga. He agrees on the terms that his family and clansmen be revived by the Elder Gods. When he delivers, the Elder Gods [[Exact Words|uphold their end of the bargain]]... [[Be Careful What You Wish For|by reviving the Shirai Ryu as undead abominations]] in ''Armageddon''. No wonder he goes all [[Rage Against the Heavens]] afterwards.

** Surprisingly enough, {{spoiler|Adrian Raven}} [http://egscomics.com/?date=2011-12-30 also counts], as was [http://egscomics.com/?date=2009-06-13 hinted] before. When one feels kinship with an enchanted boar because the critter also doesn't belong anywhere, well...

* [[Nodwick]] has died [http://nodwick.humor.gamespy.com/gamespyarchive/index.php?date=2009-08-17 538 times], usually because his employers are too lazy to pick up a 10-foot pole. Many of these deaths have been slow and painful. He hardly complains, and when the forces of goodness offer to remove him from all this he turns them down (after seeing what this does to his companions or replacement). He still saves the world every other plotline.

* Mecha Maid aka Marilyn Seong from ''[[Spinnerette]]'' has this in spades. She has, at most, ''three years to live'' thanks to ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease). She can barely speak without technological assistance and is only mobile in a wheelchair or her [[Powered Armor|battlesuit]]. Yet she gets into the Mecha Maid suit and goes out to punch supervillains anyway. (Admittedly, part of this may be that the armour's systems allow her to actually ''walk''.)

* O-Chul of ''[[Order of the Stick]]'' is an example [[Made of Iron]]. Blasted through the air from the losing end of a brutal battle, captured and tortured by Team Evil, given half a chance to escape he takes the opportunity to strike out at Xykon and Redcloak, no matter how many times he's humiliatingly beaten down for the effort. O-Chul maintains his code of honor without complaint, and can even show consideration for others through the worst of his torments. His resilience and compassion throughout his imprisonment may also have laid the groundwork for a [[Hell Face Turn]] on the part of Xykon's most powerful minion (which could very well save the world at some crucial point down the line).

* [[Red vs. Blue|Tex]] {{spoiler|She was "literally" designed to fail at everything she does.}}

* [[Billy MC (Let's Play)|Billy MC]] is generally seen as this in that despite the woobie-ish elements of his life, he ultimately perseveres in his [[Let's Play|Lets Plays]] and will beat whatever [[Nintendo Hard]] game he's playing.

* To a certain degree, [[Chuggaaconroy]]. His deleted 50 facts video revealed that he had four siblings that died in miscarriages, he nearly died from an allergic reaction as a kid, and he was bullied in school. He's also admitted that he was only pretending to be enthusiastic in his [[Super Mario Sunshine]] LP since he had been worrying about health problems during it. However, he doesn't talk about it or let it stop him from being the goofy, nerdy gamer we all know and love.

* Chiaroscuro Themyst from [[Sinai Muck]] is a cute mongoose character who got trapped in another world, has to deal with a constant buzzing noise in his head, originally speaks in broken English and gets mistreated because he's often mistaken as a kavi yet he seems to function rather well. He crosses the line from [[Iron Woobie]] to pure [[Woobie]] in [http://sinai.critter.net/log.php?title=The+Trial+of+Envoy this log] though.

[[Category:Badass]]

[[Category:Iron Woobie]]