I need to stop reading tropes.
But here's a few I found today...
"Woobie"
The lack of dialogue makes this highly reliant on Alternate Character Interpretation, but in Yume Nikki, Madotsuki's dreams (Which make the entirety of the game) are filled with nightmares that may or may not be indicative of a past involving isolation, gender identity disorder, neglectful or possibly abusive parents, and possibly rape. Any of which may help explain why she refuses to leave her room when awake.
Within the dreams themselves, there's Masada, who plays the piano on a spaceship, and generally seems to be very lonely in space, and is completely harmless to the player, and is easily one of the least threatening looking characters in the game. He will also run from you if you equip the knife. Whilst many characters do run from you if you equip the knife, Masada is easily the most obvious in this behavior, and looks terrified when doing so, thus often being assumed to be the only one who does so.
The Touhou Project has several woobies among its ranks:
Hong Meiling's popularity is mainly due to how badly she's treated by the main cast, especially Sakuya. On top of that, people keep calling her China.
Reisen Inaba's woobie-ness is often played for comedy in fanon. In canon, she's also subject to lots of Punishment Time by Eirin, and constantly gets pranked by Tewi.
Kogasa Tatara is an unwanted umbrella who can't even use her powers to surprise people properly, and is often subject to bullying by Sanae.
In their own way, the Aki Sisters are also woobies in a few ways - to wit, they don't have as much faith as they used to have in the old days, so their powers are diminished; due to their comparatively smaller fanbase in proportion to the more popular characters, they're often forgotten; and then there's S Complex, which plays up Shizuha's woobieness to a heart-breaking degree.
And then there's the poor girl who Yuyuko Saigyouji was when she was alive, whose powers over death were too much for her to take, and were enough to drive her to suicide.
Alice Margatroid is a very lonely girl with no one but her dolls to keep her company. Little wonder she's often paired with Marisa.
Not that it bothers her that much, though.
From the PC-98 Era you have Kana Anaberal whom is a poltergeist created from the mind of an insane human and was forgotten by her creator.
Byakuren Hijiri used to be a Youkai exterminator, but grew to love her quarry as much as the humans she was protecting, so she started covertly helping them hide away safely instead of killing them. She ended up as a Sealed Badass In A Can for her trouble. Oh yeah, and her little brother died too.
Is this troper the only one who wants to hug and feed the Weighted Companion Cube from Portal chicken soup, telling him it is all going to be okay, even though it's a lie. The statement, as well as the cake.
I didn't think that, but I feel for poor Chell, especially with the new ending.
Akinari Kamiki from Persona 3 AKA the Dying Young Man social link. Suffering from a terminal illness, poor Akinari just has the strength to wait for you at the bench by the shrine every Sunday. He is so jaded from living in a world where he is destined to die that he suffers from depression, and uses reading and writing as an outlet. He writes a story about a bird and an alligator that starts out happy, then gets sadder and sadder. It has a happy ending as he finishes it just before dying, grateful that the main character was there to support him, and with a renewed feeling of hope in the world.
And among the main characters, there's Mitsuru, the ostensible Tall Dark And Bishoujo leader of SEES. At first she seems to border on an Emotionless Girl, but once you learn about her tragic childhood, her underlying vulnerability and concern for everyone else, and as her current woes continue to pile up, she becomes more and more of a woobie character. Just try not to wish you could hug her whenever she strikes her sideways glancing, clutching one elbow and about to cry pose.
Plus there's an offhand comment about her being "forced" into the whole situation with the Shadows and SEES, which doesn't help matters.
Fuuka and Ken as well. Fuuka is small, sickly, and frequently bullied. Her low self-esteem and obsession with pleasing people are implied to be the result of emotional abuse by her parents. Ken's mother was killed when Shinjiro lost control of his persona. Ken then dedicated his life to killing Shinjiro, with the intention to commit suicide afterwards.
Most of SEES are woobies. Then the PSP remake comes out, and the female route woobifies the last guy you'd expect to be a woobie. Shinjiro Aragaki. While he puts strong front, he's a sentimental and tender guy who worries for others like a distant brother, and is willing to give up his life to fix his mistakes. In the social link he warms up to the heroine (whom he's hinted to have fallen for), and entrust her with protecting SEES. Now that's sweet and all but maxing it out leads to a not so happy conclusion. He goes in a coma, the SEES treat as if he died and move on, and when he does wake up, the girl he loves dies to become a seal. And he's dying too.He also has the distant sideways glance, and when you examine it closely, you realize he's crying. Ouch.
Samus Aran is a 6'3" trigger happy bounty hunter who defines badass. Why might she be on the list? Her parents were killed when she was 3, was adopted by the bird like Chozo only for them to be possibly wiped out, and The Dragon attacks another colony she is on, forcing her to relive the murder of her mother. When she mentally and emotionally shuts down and begs for death, you want to hug her. More than normal, that is.
Cubone is pretty much the Woobie Pokemon. When a Cubone is born, the mother dies, and a Cubone then takes her skull and wears it.(Okay that's creepy at the same time, but still.) Cubone never shows its face to anyone, cries any time there's a moon at night, and the skull is stained with its tears. Poor little guy.
Except for captive-bred Cubone, we're at a bit of a loss of how to explain where they get their skull helmets from...
Of course, it's generally accepted that Cubone took up its mother's skull IN THE NAME OF VENGEANCE!, earning instant badass credentials.
Absol could count as well. It tries to warn people of upcoming disasters, but they don't listen so it gets blamed for the disasters instead.
In the few days since it was revealed, the Generation V Water starter, Mijumaru, has gained Woobie-dom across the fanbase. Those who don't despise it, anyway.
It gained Woobie status because some people despised it. Fandom is weird, oy.
Several characters from .hack series.
Elk from R1 games. His only friend, Mia, turns out to be one of the Eight Phases of Morganna, forcing him to fight against her. You can bring her back to the game in the Bonus Dungeon, but she gets destroyed anyway along with the rest of The World during the disaster before R2. When Elk, now known as Endrance, thinks he is finally reunited with her in form of a cat, said cat turns out to be AIDA, and he has to watch her disintegrates as you defeat him. Ouch.
Atoli from R2, whose entire life has her gets kicked by (almost) everyone, including her own parents. And then Volume 2 happens...
Bo, also from R2. Being an Ill Boy in real life, it frustrates his parents to the point his mother wished that his stillborn twin sister Sakura was the one who lived instead. This leads him to create alternate personality based on his sister, Saku. The kid has his life rough.
Marona of Phantom Brave. Her parents are dead, she lives alone and the whole town fears and hates her for her ability to summon ghosts, even while hiring her to protect them from monsters. She maintains a sunny disposition in public, but when alone in her bedroom at night she cries her eyes out.
MOMO from Xenosaga deserves a mention. She started out the first game kidnapped and had to be rescued. The desire for her rescue only came from the fact that she was a Robot Girl with valuable data. Later on in the game, she is kidnapped by the insane Albedo and mind raped in about 1000 different ways. In the second game, it is revealed that MOMO was originally built simply as a replacement for a mad scientist's daughter. Meanwhile, people throughout the games have been calling her creator, whom she refers to as "Daddy", insane and responsible for unleashing the cosmic horror. The wife of said mad scientist only looks at MOMO as a painful reminder that her daughter is dead. Early on, she is hacked by her mind rapist for her valuable data. Things don't end well there. She's finally cut a little slack at the end when her "mommy" decides to start viewing MOMO as her own person and not as a replacement. She even lets MOMO move in with her. And in the third game, an encounter with her father in a rather heartwarming scene reveals that he was never the lunatic that people made him out to be.
Shion Uzuki. Episode 3. Full stop. To list, She was basically the trigger of the apocalypse, watched both of her parent be brutally murdered by monsters, and watched the prototype KOS-MOS go berserk and kill her boyfriend. This is just the flashbacks for BEFORE THE CANONICAL START OF THE SERIES. It gets worse in the actual plot of Episode 3, where its revealed she's slowly dying,her dead boyfriend manipulates her, and in the end she loses KOS-MOS and her brother, Jin after BEATING the final boss. At least MOMO gets a somewhat happy ending. There's also an official flash series that seems to have her lose someone again. At least Allen loves her, because... yeah.
I picked out the ones I actually knew.
The rest is here.
Almost every single nation-tan in Axis Powers Hetalia has more than a woobie moment, but Toris aka Lithuania takes the absolute cake because of all the Yank The Dogs Chain moments he has to go through.
Also, Canada. The unappreciated country never noticed, or when actually noticed, being mistaken (i.e. beaten up by Cuba) for America.
China also qualifies. He's constantly ordered around by his fellow allies, he's picked on by numerous other characters, including his younger siblings; not to mention the strip where France, Russia and England help him get his land back after he was beaten up by Japan after the first Sino-Japanese war, but proceed to divide it amongst themselves. Their means of comfort don't seem to work either.
Tsundere Mean Brit England also has a number of Woobie moments. His older brothers have hated him ever since he was small and he's never had any friends in Europe (not that there are no reasons for all that), and apparently he feels genuinely sad about this, not to mention lonely. Finally he found America, someone who cared for him and whom England loved very much, until America eventually declared independence and broke his heart. And if this wasn't enough, all his attempts at getting closer to a now grown-up America end with America gleefully shooting him down - even when England is on his death bed. Twice.
And poor Russia, who after all the violence and wars in his past finally snapped during the events of "The Bloody Sunday" and became a Yangire. Woobie Destroyer Of Worlds indeed.
How about Latvia? He is pretty much on his own and the universe seems out to get him...I mean he was eaten by a sheep! Come on!
Not to mention poor Romano, a inferiority-complex stricken kid whose grandfather abandoned him in favor of his younger brother, who was deathly worried that Spain and France only wanted him for his grandfather's inheritance and that he had nothing to offer, and is often disliked in favor of his much-loved younger brother.
Chiyo-chan in Azumanga Daioh most definitely qualifies. Fans don't want to admit it, but they enjoy cooing over her being tortured by Yukari's driving, getting abused relentlessly in gym class, and being teased for her youth by most of her friends. Osaka also has elements of this, though most of her distress comes from her own spaciness.
Osaka was tricked into eating extremely spicy food by Yomi (in a moment of uncharacteristic jerkassery) after saying she couldn't handle anything spicy. Of course she counts.
Sakaki also counts, thanks to her social awkwardness and constant bad luck with the cats she obsesses over. The only problem in her case is that most other characters think she's an aloof and cool badass, even though she's really just shy.
Kaorin may also count, due to her unrequited crush on Sakaki, who is totally oblivious. Then Kimura gets fixated on Kaorin, and the poor girl's life really becomes an emotional roller-coaster.
If you translate Osaka's first image song into English, her woobie levels go waayyy up, since she's basically singing about how she realizes she's a Cloud Cuckoo Lander, but is unable to do anything to fix it.
The entire Yagami family of Death Note (bar Light, who arguably deserves everything he gets (Hey, Your Milage May Vary)) falls into this category. Heck, Ryuk even says at one point that they are the unluckiest family in the world - and yet their whole purpose was to add a little innocence into what is otherwise a dark, mayhem-and-murder-filled series.
Admit it, when you saw child!Mikami being beaten up by looking after others, and then abandoned by those he was helping, you wanted to give him a hug. Sadly, he jumped off the deep end after that.
Even Light eventually has his Woobie moments, after he loses his memories of being Kira. He turns into a genuinely good person, which throws L's less-than-noble tactics (like tricking Light into believing that his father is going to shoot him) into sharp relief.
A large, large amount of the cast of Fruits Basket (particularly in the manga). Even Akito, and virtually every trope that applies to him (well, her, in the manga) tends to lean towards the negative side. Almost everyone has Back Story, and almost all of it is tragic.
Anyone who is even remotely sympathetic in Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni, but especially Satoko Houjou, who slides between a Bratty Half Pint and a Woobie who is horribly abused by her uncle. This troper dies a little inside every time she watches her break down in the classroom.
Mion effectively becomes a woobie in Meakashi. More so in the manga though.
It can be argued that the title character of Naruto is subject to a form of Woobiefication, mostly for the hard life he was able to overcome at the start of the series. At least, that's the only explanation this editor can think of for the sheer number of Fix Fics that give him a better start on life.
There's also Rock Lee, who is unable to perform anything other than martial abilities, trains night and day even when his arm and leg are crushed by Gaara and yet still manages to lose 99% of the fights he's in.
Gaara is even more the woobie. Let's see... his mother died giving birth to him, he's been shunned by everyone for the demon inside him (which causes him to have to stay awake lest it come to the surface while he sleeps), his own father sealed the demon in him and later tried to have him killed because he was too dangerous, the only person who seemed to love him turned out to have resented him and died trying to assassinate him, unlike Naruto he never had people give positive validation to his life... Woobie, woobie, woobie.
Hinata Hyuuga inspires two kinds of reactions from people: those who are frustrated with her repeatedly fainting, her (up until very recently) inability to even remotely articulate her feelings to Naruto, and... oh heck, just look up Avoidant Personality Disorder, you'll practically find Hinata's picture there. The other kind of reaction is from people who can empathize with how crippling shyness is a curse, and to them, she's totally a Woobie.
Keep in mind that a good deal of her Character Development is growing out of her shyness and lack of self-confidence, which makes it easier for viewers to sympathize with her, especially now that she actually told Naruto how she feels about him.
if Naru-Hina doesn't become canon, she'll be the biggest woobie for a lot of people
Itachi Uchiha became a woobie not long after his death. The sheer number of Fix Fics written after certain revelations is staggering. Let's face it; the guy doomed himself to a life of being hated by his only remaining family, who he truly loved all along, along with the stigma of being a missing-nin AND part of an evil organisation, all while hating violence and combat.
Pokemon anime: Chimchar. Just... Chimchar. Watch the Tag Battle episodes and "Tears for Fears". This troper dares you not to cry.
Also, the episode "Chim-Charred."
The Team Rocket trio fits this trope (especially James).
You forgot Dawn who seems to be on a losing streak recently just like earlier. This troper wishes that she could just win her fifth ribbon.
You also forgot about Ash after his full battle with Paul. In a case of irony, the only one that was able to cheer him up was Dawn, who went through something very similar as stated above.
How in the name of Ho-oh's saggy ol' foot has Mewtwo not been mentioned? To recap: the guy had all his childhood playmates die and his memories of them wiped before he was even born; when he awakens, he learns he's a clone of Mew created solely for experimental purposes; after he blows up the lab because of this, he gets taken in by Giovanni, the leader of freaking Team Rocket who sees him as only a tool; upon finding this out, Mewtwo blows up the gym and returns to his island of birth, deciding to (rather understandably) kill all humans. Forget Dawn and Chimchar, Mewtwo was the original woobie.
Depending on both versions and your own opinions, any of the main teen characters from Ranma 1/2 fit this trope. The anime versions of the majority of the cast tend to be more sympathetic- Mousse is the only one who looks better in the manga, and whether manga-Ryoga or anime-Ryoga is more sympathetic is a matter of personal opinion. For some setting-neutral examples of reasons for Woobiedom...
Ranma: a deep psychological trauma that makes him afraid of a common pet, abusive parental figures (not only his mother and father, but both potential fathers-in-law, the grandmaster of his style, and his potential great-grandmother-in-law), a trio of Clingy Jealous Girls who are perfectly fine with manipulating, deceiving and pounding him despite their proclaimed intent to marry him, a curse that earns the lecherous intentions of anyone who isn't aware of his true nature (and one opponent who knows and can't care less), a "chosen" love interest who he has no idea whether or not she loves him back, and absolutely no friends whatsoever beyond his rivals and his so-called fiancees.
Ryoga: he literally can't go to the bathroom without getting lost, he turns into a small and delicious-looking piglet, the girl he loves is not only engaged to his worst enemy but completely unaware of his feelings, said girl would also likely tear him apart if she discovers he's been masquerading as her pet, he has almost no friends except for the aforementioned girl and enemy, he simply cannot catch up with his sworn rival, and one of his most powerful attacks is fueled by how unbelievably depressed he is about all of the above. *
Akane: she's engaged against her will to a socially-unskilled jock who threatens her feminity both with derogatory comments and a curse that lets him change genders, she's gone from the most powerful and respected martial artist in her hometown to a second-string joke, her mother is dead, her father is a wimp, she's a total disaster at acting feminine, her fiancee has a trio of other girls after him who are all "sexier" and better at being "womanly" than she is, and she has no proof whether or not the fiancee she has come to be attracted to returns her feelings in any way.
Ukyo: her childhood crush and fiancee abandoned her after their engagement was decided, after a decade spent pretending to be a guy she discovers that her target A: wasn't truly responsible, B: didn't even know about the engagement, and C: wasn't even aware of her gender, said fiance refuses to acknowledge the engagement, and even barely treats her like a friend.
Mousse: the girl he loves and has loved since childhood has never once shown even the slightest sympathy towards his efforts at wooing her, no matter what extent he goes to.
Shampoo: she is constantly pursued by an obnoxious childhood friend who refuses to accept her blatant dislike for his efforts at wooing her, she never even got the chance to enjoy becoming the winner of the tournament before being disgraced, she has been effectively exiled from her homeland until she manages to get her fiance to accept their engagement, she has no friends beyond said aforementioned reluctant fiance and annoying would-be suitor, and her "fiance" refuses to have anything to do with her.
All of these characters may actually be more accurately described as Jerkass Woobies, given that they are, at the same time, both pitable and deranged in a way that could make them all monsters in the real world.
Suiseiseki from Rozen Maiden. The fact that she loves her sisters too much to fight them for the title of Alice makes you feel sad for her when her sisters start dying right in front of her very eyes in the second season.
Most of the dolls hit on this at some point or another. With the exception of Barashitou/Krakashitou, who doesn't want to give one of these poor girls a hug after learning about how they were designed to fight each other to the death.
Tails gets a few of these moments during Sonic X, not least when he spends roughly twenty minutes or so angsting about letting Sonic and Knuckles get hurt during a pretty awful attack.
While the Sonic X ball is in play, Cosmo has to be the most woobified Sonic character to ever exist in any medium, having gone through so much (death of her entire family and destruction of her home leaving her the last remaining member of her species, spending months trying to deal with the ever complex bonds of Defeat Means Friendship in the Sonic crew, plus the fact that she later discovers she's been used as a spy for the Metarex all along and the only solution is to either kick Metarex butt -a nigh impossible task- or destroy her vision and hearing) it's no wonder she has so many tearing up scenes.
And then, as if things couldn't possibly get any worse, Tails, who had developed an immense crush on Cosmo, is forced to kill her in order to save the world. The scene in which he struggles to pull the trigger is an infamous Tear Jerker.
((I actually did watch Sonic X, and yeah... I balled like a baby during that scene.))
Crona from Soul Eater is practically the living definition of this trope. Has a Nightmare Fuel worthy backstory (it starts with having hir Jerkass Living Weapon implanted in hir body and goes on from there) and is a painfully shy, perpetually bewildered bundle of nerves. The entire fandom seems to be united in the desire to give them a hug and/or beat the tar out of Medusa. Not to mention half way through the anime series (and early in the manga) when s/he had befriended the main cast, Medusa re-appeared and brought back all the abuse with the added "bonus" of making her betray her new friends. Poor Chrona. It now looks as though Medusa is planning to send Crona against Shibusen again (she still wants Maka dead, likely amongst other things) and if Ragnarok's appearance is anything to go by, they're back taking human souls.
Eruka Frog could also be one, considering that she is working for Medusa ONLY because of snakes inside her body, and more recently she is now capture by shibusen, and an explosive collar on her neck to enfore her help. One is worried what will happen considering Medusa can see everything Eruka sees, and Medusa could kill her to ruin Shibusen's plans.
MOKUBA yet?? Mokuba, who has had his soul stolen, been possessed and manipulated by a virtual version of his dead adopted brother, and (in the original series) watched his brother's steady descent into total lunacy (not to mention deal with his egotistical attitude all the way throughout the series)?
Though he's a self centered a*****e with MisaimedFandom, it's hard not to feel for Kaiba with his backstory (which explains a lot about why he is the way he is, though it doesn't excuse it) and his devotion to his little brother. He did get put through a lot of abuse and he forced himself through it mostly for his brother- not to mention the many, many times Mokuba is kidnapped he gets all super desperate and self-sacrificing (not desperate enough to accept any help ever, but that's Kaiba for you).Plus, he opened a park that lets underprivelaged kids in free. Awww.
Then, he should go into either Stoic Woobie or Jerk a** Woobie.
For that matter, why has nobody mentioned YUGI? Who's had his soul stolen, his friends and family messed with, the skin probably all but burned off his hands, had his life threatened more times than can be counted all for the sake of a children's card game, been used as a punching bag by everyone in Japan...
...been betrayed by his best friend, been tied up and forced to watch his soul deteriorate, watched his crush fall in love with his alter-ego, technically died once or twice... Yes, yes. Also, he looks like this.◊
Both Shizuka Kawai/Serenity Wheeler and Katsuya Jonouchi/Joey Wheeler. Separated from a young age by their parents' divorce. Shizuka/Serenity, as of the beginning of the Duel Monsters storyline starts to go blind, and is the focal point of her big brother's struggle as a novice in the game in the Duelist Kingdom tournament who hopes to win the cash prize in order to pay for the operation to treat her condition. Jou/Joey, since his estrangement from his sister, has been living alone with his drunken gambler of a father whose debts he has to pay off with multiple after-school jobs (he is a noted exception to his school's rule against this) and appearances on game shows, not to mention his aforementioned predicament during the early part of the Duel Monsters franchise. While he improves and makes some impressive feats in the game, he nonetheless ends up as Kaiba's personal Chew Toy and suffers a few near-fatal losses, most notably when he tries to save Mai. And let's not even get into the KaibaCorp Grand Prix arc, where he becomes the butt of a joke based upon a card in Yugi's deck (Which even his friends laugh about). Poor guy can't catch a break for trying.
Mai Kujaku/Valentine is one as well, from her lonely childhood, to the penalty game Yami Malik inflicts on her, which in the anime is followed by post-traumatic stress in the form of nightmares of still being under Yami Malik's clutches, and leads to Dartz goading her into joining Doma to conquer her fear of dying by loss of a duel, but instead ends up pushing her to the dark side, and is in danger of what she feared the most, and must be saved again, this time from herself. Eep.
Again, I pulled my favorites and ones I actually knew.
The rest is here.
Oh~ and Doctor Who had it's own page.
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Previously Okage-chan, this is Candles & holy s**t I love Teruteru Hanamura.
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