Shoot the Shaggy Dog/Anime and Manga: Difference between revisions

* The end of the Golden Age Arc from ''[[Berserk]]''. {{spoiler|After Griffith's capture the Band of the Hawk is driven out of Midland and hunted as fugitives. Gut's returns a year later and it seems that with his help they may be able to rescue Griffith and restore the Hawk's glory. They succeed, but Griffith is warped from torture and uses his behelit to initiate The Eclipse, which promptly kills the remaining members of the Band of the Hawk. With the exception of Guts, Griffith and Casca, the characters they've spent the entire manga so far building up are offed without much ceremony}}

* The Chapter Black saga from ''[[Yu Yu Hakusho]]'' could be considered an example of this. The characters pull out all the stops, [[Pyrrhic Victory|sacrificing a great deal in the process]], in order to try and stop Sensui from opening a tunnel to Demon World, only to eventually learn that {{spoiler|A) Sensui's true motive for opening the tunnel was just so he could go to the demon world and find an opponent who could kill him, B) he would have been dead within a month anyway, from a fatal disease, and C) the spirit world's elite soldiers could seal the demon tunnel with [[Hard Work Hardly Works|relatively little effort]].}}

* Asano, the [[Unlucky Everydude]] from ''[[The Twelve Kingdoms]]'' has several of these moments in his plot arc. Despite being an [[Ordinary High School Student]] trapped in another world, he is ultimately ineffectual in doing any good for himself or for his friends, and he eventually becomes a patsy of the [[Big Bad]]. Just when it looks as though he's about to redeem himself by performing a vital, heroic mission for the good guys, he gets intercepted by the villains, who kill him in spite of his being armed with a gun, while they only have primitive weapons. To further rub salt into the wound, Asano, before he dies, learns that his mission was completely unnecessary, since reinforcements were ''already'' coming to help the good guys.

** Considering Asano wasn't part of the original book (and neither was his female counterpart) and the only reason for him to be there is to externalize Yoko's inner [[Tomato in the Mirror]] conflicts in the medial transition, this is hardly surprising.

* The whole Fallen One arc in ''[[D.Gray-man]]'' is one of these. Allen encounters another Exorcist, Suman Dark, who has betrayed his [[Empathic Weapon|Innocence]] by betraying the Black Order to a villain, and has been turned into a [[One-Winged Angel|giant angelic torso-looking thing]]. Allen struggles to save Suman while he attacks mindlessly, killing a lot of innocent people. Allen finally manages to hold Suman back by over-activating his own Innocence, and he manages to pull Suman out of the monster... {{spoiler|only for him to find that Suman has lost his soul anyway. Turns out Allen hadn't succeeded; Suman's Innocence basically timed out. Then, just to make things worse, Suman explodes in a fountain of blood, thanks to the sudden appearance of the villain from whom he begged for mercy in the first place.}}

** {{spoiler|Who then destroys Allen's left arm, punches a hole in his heart and leaves him for dead, because the arc just wasn't cruel enough as it was. Really, the only good things to come out of the arc is that Tincampy manages to escape with Suman's Innocence, and the destruction of Allen's arm eventually leads to him receiving a [[Shonen Upgrade]].}}

* ''[[Chrono Crusade]]'' (anime only), also a definitive example of a [[Downer Ending]], ends with {{spoiler|the main cast either dead or broken. None of the heroes' goals were met, and the villain succeeded in all his plans, with his "death" only being a temporary setback. If anything, the world would have been better off if the heroes had NOT been around.}}

* The first season arcs of ''[[Higurashi no Naku Koro ni]]'' are all like this; the audience are treated to several versions of the local [[True Companions]] going [[Ax Crazy]] and murdering each other in various gruesome fashions, only for the [[Groundhog Day Loop]] to kick in and the whole tragedy repeated in a slightly different manner. The last arc seemingly subverts this,as Keiichi remembers one of the other realities and talks Rena down from her attempted mass murder/suicide... Only for Rika to get murdered anyway later, and the whole town wiped out by the volcanic eruption. Again.

* YMMV since the ending was pretty ambiguous, but ''[[Wolf's Rain]]'' {{spoiler|finishes with pretty much the entire cast dying within the last couple of episodes, and they never reach the Paradise they're looking for. In fact, the only thing they manage to do is stop ''somebody else'' from getting to it; it's pretty disheartening when the entire 30 episode show was about getting there. It's kept from being a [[Downer Ending]]}} by implying that they've been reincarnated, or have been put back in the human world, or… well, something, but seeing as they were there anyway, it definitely counts.

* Oh! Great wrote a self-contained arc in his H-Series ''Silky Whip Extreme'' called ''Junk Story'', that is a pretty damn grim version of this trope. To Wit: The plot is that, 100 years before the story began, A super-powerful military robot called Gatt fell in love with a woman named Mariko. By being denied Mariko, Gatt took revenge on all of humanity, destroying most of civilization and forcing humans to live in fear. The first 3 issues are Mariko, revived as an immortal cyborg, teaming up with a gun-runner to try and destroy Gatt. Only, it's revealed in the last two issues that all of this was pointless; {{spoiler|The world government has ''deliberately'' allowed Gatt to keep rampaging for a century, as even though they have cyborgs vastly more powerful than him, leaving humanity in fear of an external monster foe makes them easier to control. The end of the series involves Mariko being captured by Caligula, a powerful [[Ax Crazy]] cyborg employed by the government, the Gunrunner-Turned-Love-Interest getting killed off, and Mariko being forced to become Caligula's personal sex slave}}. Not only does the ending completely invalidate every plot development brought up until that point, but it brings up even MORE questions that will never be answered.

* In ''[[Bakuman｡]]'', "Classroom of Truth," a work submitted for the main characters to judge, ends this way. The characters are put into a survival tournament to escape their classroom, and [[Kill'Em All|all of them die]]. [[The Hero Dies|Even the main character]] gets chased down and eaten by a doppelganger. Mashiro and Takagi note that it is the opposite of the typical Jump manga that value hard work and friendship, but having the main character die in spite of his efforts doesn't work.

* ''[[Death Note]]'' in every adaptation sees the deaths of all major characters and many supporting ones, and leaves no implication that the world is a better place for any losses or sacrifices. If Ryuk's statement about [[Cessation of Existence]] is an [[Author Tract]], this can't be anything but a [[Shoot the Shaggy Dog]] story; negative gain for everyone would be the only possible outcome.

* The Impel Down/Marineford arc of [[One Piece]]. {{spoiler|Luffy breaks into the most secure prison in the world, makes grudging allegiances with SEVERAL old enemies in the process, undergoes incredible punishment and nearly dies from poisoning...all to save his brother Ace from being executed. It's said that he's sacrificing his lifespan again and again with near-constant uses of Gear Second, plus the treatment Ivankov gives him for the poisons. He then breaks OUT, makes it to the execution, reaches the platform against ALL odds with help from newfound friends, and ACTUALLY SUCCEEDS IN FREEING HIS BROTHER. After all that...it's some choice petty insults from Admiral Akainu that goad Ace into a fight when he and Luffy are about to escape, leading to Ace getting killed by taking a magma fist intended for Luffy. It's the first real time in One Piece where the protagonist DOESN'T accomplish his goal.}}

** But he does {{spoiler|[[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero|cause enough chaos in Impel Down which makes it easier for Blackbeard to fulfill his objective of recruiting level six criminals.]] As seen when he initially met Magellan, Blackbeard [[Curb Stomp Battle|was no match for him]] and he only survived because Shiryuu saved him. Why was Shiryuu was out of his cell in the first place? Magellan was busy dealing with Luffy and hoped Shiryuu would help against Blackbeard.}}