Unreliable Narrator/Anime and Manga

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Examples of Unreliable Narrators in Anime and Manga include:

  • Being the Animated Adaptation of the light novels, Kyon from the Haruhi Suzumiya anime certainly qualifies. At the end of each episode, in the original 2006 summer broadcast, Haruhi always indicates the number of the next episode by its chronological order, while Kyon corrects her every time with the episode number based on the broadcast order (and for the one episode where the numbers actually match up, he then corrects himself and apologizes). Both are replaced with Nagato delivering a deadpan tie-in to the next episode, in both the DVD release and expanded 2009 broadcast.
    • There is also his stupefying habit of mixing narration with dialogue in language and terms that no high-schooler uses; and tendency not to tell the readers what he has figured out previously until the reveal.
  • In Ghost in the Shell:Stand Alone Complex, the episode Poker Face entirely takes place in a small shack at the side of some large event, where Cold Sniper Saito and some other police officers play poker during their break. When the other players ask him how he got so good at bluffing, he tells them the story how he met the Major while he was a mercenary sniper who killed most of her patrol during a UN mission in Mexico. Since both the plot and the story within the story are all about bluffing, it's entirely unclear if anything was true at all.
  • Very well done in the Higurashi no Naku Koro ni manga-only arc Onisarashi-hen. In the final chapter, it's revealed that the point-of-view character is responsible for every murder in the story.
    • Also, Onikakushi-hen, although we only find out in later chapter. Rena and Mion were completely innocent, and Keiichi was hallucinating the Creepy Monotone, Hellish Pupils, and murder attempts.
    • Tatarigoroshi-hen plays with this, too. Keiichi kills Teppei Houjou in order to protect Satoko. But then his friends tell him he was at the festival at the time, and Satoko insists that her uncle abused her later that night. But wait! Teppei's missing and his body isn't where Keiichi buried it. Subverted by the fact that Keiichi did kill Teppei. Mion just had the body moved and everyone's giving Keiichi a cover story. As for Satoko? Well... Who says the POV character has to be the only crazy character?
    • The narrator in Umineko no Naku Koro ni (or the camera, in the anime) is pretty much the queen of this trope. Pretty much anything the main character doesn't see with his own eyes is highly suspect, at best. Halfway in, and it's still unclear if the series is a genuine mystery or merely a massive Mind Screw, since Beatrice is narrating most of the third-person sections and writing the TIPS. This may only apply to what's happening on the game board, since message bottles were found which depicted the events on the island of the first two episodes, but apparently didn't mention the metaworld segments.
    • At the end of EP 8, we learn that the whole series (except possibly the first two episodes) consists of stories that Battler wrote/collaborated on to help him regain his memories of that fateful weekend. Before that, however, Umineko was a Mind Screw of epic proportions, largely because it had dueling unreliable narrators.
  • Genma Saotome from Ranma ½. Any time he tells a story you just know that isn't how it really happened.
    • This goes double for Happosai.
    • And Cologne. And the principal. And Soun (ESPECIALLY Soun). Heck, point to just about any important adult in Ranma 1/2, and it'd be easier to list the things they claimed that weren't total BS.
  • Jack Rakan of Mahou Sensei Negima is kind of like this whenever he relates any sort of Backstory, tending to massively exaggerate his own importance. That said, what he says is usually accurate... he just leaves out enormous chunks of the story because they don't involve him.
  • In Love Hina, Kitsune starts explaining Naru's past, and says that Naru and Seta were in a teacher-student romance at the time. She then immediately states "If that had happened, it would have been interesting."
  • The narrator in the Japanese dub of Axis Powers Hetalia is extremely reliable. She gives all of the facts straight without cease. The English narrator, however, does not. While she still gives correct facts and has serious moments, most of the time, she is very snarky, sarcastic and witty.

Narrator: Polish horses never charged German tanks at the battle of- right, anime fans. Germany invaded Poland in '39- right, American fans. Poland is a country, in Europe!

  • In the Death Note anime, Mikami himself, rather than an omniscient narrator, narrates his flashbacks. He thus has an unfavorable view of his mother's advice to stop fighting against the bullies, whereas the manga's narrator noted that she was motivated by genuine concern for his welfare that was largely lost on him.
  • According to Word of God nearly every installment in the Macross franchise is in fact an in-universe dramatization of the events depicted made several years after the fact. While the Broad Strokes of what happened is usually correct certain elements are tweaked somewhat due to Rule of Cool, Rule of Drama, or just the contemporary political climate.
  • In early episodes of The Slayers, Lina's narration of the previous episode's events tended to paint herself in the best light possible, to the point of, say...practically ignoring destroying almost a whole village.
    • Lina is no more reliable as the narrator of the Slayers novels.
  • Ii-chan of Zaregoto forgets important details, frequently. He even neglects to tell the readers how he disguised the second murder in The Kubishime Romanticist as a suicide.
  • Done spectacularly in Yuri!!! on Ice:
    • In the very first chapter Yuuri Katsuki established himself as "a dime-a-dozen skater" who performed so catastrophically in the last season that he doesn't understand why his idol Victor Nikiforov suddenly installed into his town, became too touchy-feely with him, and became his new coach. The first part of the above statement turns out to be Yuuri's insecurities and low self-esteem speaking; when the plot moves to the actual competition we discover that Yuuri is actually among the top skaters in the whole world and that there is actually a whole line of competitors and admirers wanting to meet and congratulate him. As for the second part, turns out that Yuuri did invite Victor to be his coach during a very liquor-filled rampage where he became the life of a post-competition party via sexy dancing, but then he forgot his drunken antics next morning, and nobody else ever thought of mentioning those to him until almost a year later.
    • J.J. during his panic attack reveals that he sees the other skaters as a posse. As he falls on the ice, he imagines the normally-sweet-and-anxious Yuri as The Vamp of the group glaring at him.
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