Every good story has a beginning, and some of them have a beginning that comes even before the beginning. The storytelling community knows these beginnings-to-beginnings as backstories, specific life events that are explained late into the series as a means of exposition or quick character development. The anime community is no stranger to backstories.

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Every Shonen series, high school anime, and Shojo have their own brand of looking at the past, yet they all somehow manage to overlap with a few qualities. Whether a hero is examining how they got there or a high school character is explaining their childhood, there's bound to be a few common tropes between all anime backstories.

10 Friends Sacrificing Themselves

Monkey D. Luffy consoles Shanks after the latter loses his arm during the first arc of One Piece

There's nothing like a guilt trip to put an anime character down a hero's path. The friend/family member/role model comes to the rescue, either during a major crises or when a major villain foreshadows themselves, and they risk their lives to save the future hero of a particular series or movie.

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Examples of this include Shanks losing his arm for Luffy in One Piece; Simon taking a hit for Erza Scarlet in Fairy Tail; or Shoyo-sensei getting executed for his students in Gintama. It's a quick and effective method for character development as the main character will always have that one person, living or dead, to either model themselves after or live up to.

9 Entire Clans Being Killed

Sasuke Uchiha

While someone just sacrificing themselves is a great way to show tragedy with restraint, some creators like to go all in and just make the edgiest anime characters possible. This means entire families, clans, and even villages being wiped out in horrific fashion, leaving few if not just one person behind to hold a grudge.

Kurapika mourning the lost eyes of the Kurta Clan in Hunter x Hunter; Sasuke Uchiha seething over the loss of the Uchiha Family in Naruto; and Sango witnessing her brother wipe out her family in InuYasha are notorious examples of this trope. There's no contest for sad backstories, but if there were, these characters would be winning.

8 The Dead Mom Haircut

The first episode of Attack on Titan saw Eren's mother meet her end

Fiction has a lot of infamous death flags. This could mean coughing blood into a napkin, going to a party at an abandoned building, or saying everything will be okay when things are obviously far from being okay. However, anime doesn't just have death flags, it also have death hairstyles.

RELATED: 10 Death Flags That Mean An Anime Character is Probably Going To Die

Typically reserved for mother characters, this classic 'do involves long hair with a side section being tied into a ponytail over the shoulder. It's the last haircut seen on Ed and Al's mom in Fullmetal Alchemist, Eren's mom in Attack on Titan, and Jinta's mother in AnoHana. Whenever this haircut appears on an anime character's mother early in the story, always prepare for the worst.

7 Missing Dad

Ging Freecss

Japan has a long, complicated history with father figures that has explicitly fed into their anime industry. Because many fathers in Japan are away from home a lot due to work, several anime series rarely mention them, if at all. There isn't necessarily a vendetta against them but just a huge, shared gap in knowledge across creators.

However, a good portion of them do like to mention that, yes, dads do exist. However, at best, they went missing long ago or, even better, need to be hunted down like a MacGuffin, such as Gon looking for Ging in Hunter x Hunter or Eren screaming for his dad in Attack on Titan. Looking back, Erin Yeager does have a lot of parental issues.

6 Humiliation From A Strong Enemy

Younger Toguro

Whether this is tied to a revenge story or is just a means of motivating a prideful character, defeat always finds a home within anime backstories. A character, either incredibly timid or incredibly strong (there is no in-between), comes face-to-face with an overwhelming opponent and loses in grand fashion.

This serves to motivate weak characters to become stronger and already strong characters to acknowledge their limitations. Classic examples include Tobio Kageyama showing up Hinata in Haikyuu!! or Younger Toguro feeling the limitations of being human in Yu Yu Hakusho.

5 Training Montages

MHA Deku pulls All Might and a refrigerator during his training regimen

The training montage is not only a key staple in anime backstories but fiction as a whole. It's one thing for an anime character to say that they'll get stronger, it's not another to see a heavily edited montage of their development shown under five minutes. These are typically reserved for the beginning of an anime series, though some late game backstories do show montages.

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These include Rock Lee honing his one skill in Naruto, Saitama's heavily expedited and underwhelming path to success in One-Punch Man, and Deku's iconic switch from zero to hero in My Hero Academia.

4 Getting Isekai'd

Katarina As A Child

Isekai anime have become so commonplace that some anime series even forget to include that fact in the beginning. Series like A Wise Man's Grandchild, My Next Life as a Villainess, and Ascendance of a Bookworm currently live in a generation where the story can cold open within the fantasy world and touch on the isekai aspect later.

The exact method of getting "isekai'd" is still varied, though common offenders include getting summoned by a community in peril or the infamous "Truck-kun."

3 Childhood Love Interest Disappears (And Mysteriously Returns)

Futaba and Kou Reunite

While action/adventure series nearly monopolize the backstory market, Shojo, slice-of-life, and high school anime series do have their fair share of tropes. One oddly specific one includes the death/disappearance of a childhood love interest. Said person makes a promise to the main character that they'll be together forever, only for that same person to evaporate into the wind.

This leaves the main character distraught for several years; and just as they've moved on, they find a person that mysteriously looks like an adult version of their childhood, love interest. This is the locket in Nisekoi, Futaba losing her first love in Blue Spring Ride, and, oddly enough, Zoro finding someone that mysteriously looks like Kuina in One Piece.

2 Weak Kid Becomes Good At A Sport

HInata quick spike

Sports anime are certainly not going to be left out of the picture. Never ones to be upstaged, sports anime have their own long line of backstory tropes, with one of the most consistent being the weak protagonist. The story begins like this: Kid who shouldn't be good at a sport trains hard enough to miraculously become good at the sport, and in a much quicker amount of time than is remotely feasible. Sometimes in just a matter of weeks.

This is Hinata in Haikyuu!!, Hinomaru in Hinomaru Sumo, and Makunouchi Ippo in Hajime no Ippo. Weaklings don't stay weak for long, and these kids are strong examples of beating the odds in grand (and quick) fashion.

1 Killing Machine Sees The Error Of Their Ways

Anime Rurouni Kenshin Himura Kenshin Sword Drawn

Sometimes a tragic backstory doesn't mean that something really bad happens to the main character. In a dramatic turn of events, sometimes it's the main character who gives a lot of other people their own tragic backstories. In an effort to stop making more anime protagonists, said monster/soldier/killer realizes the error of their ways and sets off on a path to improve and humble themselves.

This is Kenshin taking on a reversed blade in Rurouni Kenshin, Koro-sensei becoming a sensei in Assassination Classroom, and Yato humbling himself as a god in Noragami.

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