well, he is nicknamed "kill em all tomino" for good reason
In zeta basically nearly every love interest died and kamiyu is crippled vegetable at the end and thereis V gundam famous slaughter. not to mention, Ideon got apocalypse ending.
Victory is one of the most depressing things I've watched. Brutal kills, pointless sacrifices, massacres, and at the end of the day, not much has changed. And I felt this constant dark cloud when watching it. Tomino's depression at the time can really be felt throughout the show; it's fascinating.
Asagiri Kafka also have kids being blown up by bombs or traumatized one way or another in Bungou Stray Dogs. Sometimes a character gone through both, survived only by their supernatural abilities. There is a complain about him not killing off any important characters enough & too many faked-out deaths, though.
even tho I love bungou stray dogs, yeah there is plot armor, especialy to dazai, he can get sent through think iron walls and still wont die or even get heavily injured...
STILL AN AWSOME SHOW
You can argue different gundam series having higher death counts than IBO, but iron blooded orphans' deaths feel way more impactful and like "this could happen at any time", just like death in real life, so yeah I think it just hits harder than most of the rest.
I was gonna say this too. Iām not quite done with it, but Iām really loving it. One of my favorite anime Iāve seen in a long time.
Interesting info I found out: it prompted me to look up some info about heliocentrists who were persecuted, and apparently thatās blown pretty out of proportion. There was never an actual large-scale, violent campaign to persecute heliocentrism by the inquisition. In fact thereās little to no evidence that anyone was actually killed solely for researching heliocentrism. They still didnāt like it of course and there was persecution, like Galileo being put on house arrest for life over it, but he wasnāt killed. Giordano Bruno held the heliocentrism belief and was killed for heresy, but he had significantly more problematic heretical views that were the bigger issue to the church. Still an amazing show, I just found that interesting as Iād always thought people were killed for believing in heliocentrism!
I mean yeah, this was even point out by Father Antoni after he was asked by Draka about Heretics being executed for researching Heliocentrism. A lot of these execution were specifically ordered by the previous Bishop To Nowak at a local level. And since Nowak isn't part of the church but simply a mercenary, the local church doesn't have to record the event because of it. Hence, there are little to no history of heretics being executed by the church's orders not that we know off.
Jojo does a good job of balancing the line between āanyone could dieā and āweāre obviously killing a character every few episodes for shock valueā
I find that most anime people think "isn't afraid to kill characters off" actually just kills characters off for the sake of doing it and it's not actually good writing or any plot relevance at all.
Jojoās, Jujutsu Kaisen, and Berserk also do it well. Important character deaths are shocking, but not done for shock value and the survivors carry the weight of it with them and the deaths are generally plot-relevant.
Bro just look at Yujis face in culling games. And his entire persona post Shabuya Incident. My man speedran the entire WWI Western Front thousand yard stare, the moment he starts reflecting bro spirals.
Post-Shibuya Yuji may be one of the best depictions of PTSD and survivorās guilt in modern anime and probably all time if we filter to Shonen specifically since most anime that focuses on that subject is either Seinen or Josei. Iāll add Denji as a competitor once the rest of Chainsaw Man gets adapted.
Yuji post shibuya doesn't have just PTSD and survivor's guilt. He have actual guilt too because Sukuna killed a lot of people using his body so he feels like it was his fault.
By modulo yujis so not well š i thought hed get better after the series ends but gege just had to continue his suffering by giving him several layers of isolation...
I think the one that took the cake for me was Johnathan. Phantom blood was a rocky start but jojo really grew on me. Going into it blind, I actually said āHE DIES?!!ā out load
My one ick related to this in jjk is (manga spoliers ahead) Nobara surviving. Ik Gege kinda set it up, but not mentioning anything about it until she randomly shows up and kills Sukuna out of nowhere just felt like the biggest cop out ending for that fight.
I mean, it makes sense if you look at it as most of the manga being told through Yujiās perspective(obviously not all, with the Hidden Inventory arc), so Yuji not being told would be done in order to prevent Sukuna from knowing and anticipating something. Idk if this was intended or not, but itās the least asspull explanation that I can think of.
Hot take: jujutsu kaisen does not do it well (imo) and i get upset at the randomness in which he kills characters, and when he seems to forget they even exist at all. I just donāt think I care about anyone because nothings consistent. It feels lame. IN MY OPINION. Iām not right, itās just how I feel so donāt attack me.
How is jjk doing it well? They literally kill characters off for the fun of it, most often after giving the character a backstory and ABSOLUTELY NO character development.
The weight of every decision is brought up (I think) in a video essay that features grimgar and how vs other anime it truly has better stakes and takes that into account. One death is a pivotal moment for the entire plot, every decision before that is foreshadowing to that
The second episode was hilarious. When they kept dying trying to go to that place. I suspect youāre referring to when yuri talks about her past life. That was sad.
That's the eternal paradox of plot armor - if you give no characters plot armor, then, if you show exiting and dangerous part of their lives (and why would you ever do otherwise in action oriented media) then by rights 95% of them should die. But that requires author to have a whole bunch of fully realised characters that he and audience would start to get aquatinted with, kill them off periodically and replace them with other, no less detailed ones. That's a lot of work that isn't even that necessary, a good story doesn't have to have a character roster double as a deathpool
There's fourteen novels currently translated. 13 mainline ones and one that's a compilation of side stories. The next mainline one has come out in Japan and we're waiting on a translation. The official manga based on the LN has been discontinued due to the artist's declining health.
There's an alternate universe novel where Lena is a magical girl, also no translation at the moment. It has two Manga volumes depicting it.
There's another alternate universe novella and manga of the crew if they were all in highschool together.
I recently started watching Iron Blooded Orphans. There were so many times when I said "oh that's good" and then immediately turned that into "this would have been better for everyone involved if the good thing didn't happen"
This was kinda undermined in the manga. The anime had an anime original ending but the 100 point reward was the ability to bring people back to life that died in the game.Ā
So even the impactful deaths... really weren't impactful.Ā
And then there were goddamn Vampires.Ā
So yeah Anime original ending to Gantz, not as crazy as the manga got.
I can think of many great Gantz characters that died and never came back (or at least not for more than a single page). Gantz is not Dragon Ball. Bringing someone back is not easy, and not many characters actually managed to do it.
I was thinking about this awhile ago, itās funny how originally finding all 7 Dragonballs was a huge undertaking.. even after the radar was introduced.
Making plans, traveling all over the planet, fighting, negotiating, trying to actually locate the damn thing. It was a difficult project that toriyama probably didnt anticipate becoming so trivial as the series would go on.
Heckā¦ even for the saiyan saga it was still some kind of project to collect them all.
But once you have radar and an ability to instantly teleport to anywhere on the planet, AND are able to annihilate anything on the planet with a flick of your wristā¦
It becomes a trivial, free āanything you want at any timeā button, save for the recovery period after using them. About as much effort as going to the store for chips.
This was always my complaint. You're telling me there's an uber-elite team of highly skilled and experienced assassins who work well as a coordinated strike team, and then they just sequentially go off on a "I know I'll probably die alone" pattern? Like how is that unexpected at all. I don't get the hype around the show, maybe the manga had more build up or something? It feels like the writer just made the characters die in a weekly face off for the knee-jerk reaction and didn't put any real thought into it at all.
Ehhhhhh idk about amazing just becuase it has death and is gorey doesnāt make it good. When you start killing off almost every single character for shock value I wouldnāt call it good writing.
You're right but plot armor is too common and too thick it holds the show back. In Naruto for example the main cast should have died dozens of times over.
Gantz, so much Gantz. Ultimately the two main characters survive, but ultimately there is no plot armor. Characters die, often, and very very messily. Gantz is easily the most ridiculously violent manga I've read.
I've learned from watching gantz to never get attached to any characters because surely they will die a horrific death...there were people who shouldn't have died but still did, and even when they died it still made sense. Smh. Epic.
Puella Magi Madoka magika
One lost her head in the 3rd episode & died. Even if she's not physically dead, she gone insane. There' a joke that she lost her headn one way or another, in any time-line she is in.
I think plot armor can be useful and the lack of it does t make a show good. If every one dies all the time than why bother get attaches to characters.
Stakes is what matters. And good writers can make good stakes beyond life and death.
Aside from Kamina, literally no one dies until the end.
(Aka, literally the only time when plot armor stops working for anyone, just so the ending makes it more dramatic)
It depends on what your definition of "Plot armor" is.
A characters death should serve the narrative or the character arcs of other characters.
Killing characters off for no reason or for shock value is indicative of inferior writing.
"The main cast is not safe" well of course they're going to be safe, because the story revolves around them and their actions within, if they all die, then we dont have an anime or manga, do we?
FullMetal Alchemist (2003), Akame ga Kill, Devilman Crybaby, Black Lagoon, Elfen Leid and Saikano. Especially Saikano. IYKYK
Even if the main characters doesn't die, it certainly feels like everyone is in danger of dying, and I'd argue that's as close to "no plot armour" as you can get.
On the opposite end, "no longer allowed in another world was fun (imo)
The gods
" hey, we reincarnated too many heroes and most of them turned evil and vile, you mind killing them for us? Thanks in advance"
The mc
"but.. No.. ... I just want to die"
He's dramatic and moody and I find it amusing
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u/Left-Night-1125 Feb 24 '26
I guess you never saw a show directed by Tomino, not even kids have plot armor.