WARNING: This article contains spoilers for the anime listed.
If you're a main character in an anime, there's a very good chance you will encounter some traumatic experience that will ruin your life, be it your home planet blowing up, your parents being murdered, or even just a particularly traumatic failure that redefined your whole life. However, some characters endure far worse than your average levels of trauma growing up. These characters descended the trauma conga line in ways that would psychologically break anyone. Here are a mere seven of the most traumatized anime characters ever.
Gaara (Naruto)
Some people deal with inner demons. Others are born with them. While many characters deal with the tailed beasts in Naruto, Gaara is the first person Naruto meets who, like the titular hero, has one inside of his spirit. Within Gaara resides the One-Tailed Shukaku. His father, the fourth Kazekage of Sunagakure, made him as a weapon. His premature birth resulted in his mother's death.
While Gaara was trained to be a living weapon, the entire village feared him. Whenever Gaara tried to do something good for someone else, he'd inadvertently hurt them with his sand, which would protect Gaara from harm and attack anyone who dared pose a threat. The only person who seemed to love him was his trainer... who later tried to assassinate Gaara, on orders by his father. This betrayal left Gaara utterly broken.
Lucy (Elfen Lied)
Children can be insanely cruel to those who are different than them, but what the children in Lucy's orphanage did to her is more than a little extreme. Lucy is a Diclonius, or a new form of humanity with horns who can generate psychokinetic arms that can infect sperm and rip objects apart. Due to her horns, Lucy is treated like a freak of nature from her peers at an orphanage.
Her only two friends are one girl at the orphanage and a stray puppy -- or, at least, so she thinks. The girl Lucy trusted turns the dog over to the bullies, who proceed to beat the dog to death in front of her. Lucy proceeds to murder her childhood bullies, then slaughter the entire planet. Moral of the story? Don't kill dogs, or you might create a literal destroyer of worlds.
Nakago (Fushigi Yugi)
Fushigi Yugi's villain, Nakago, has arguably the most over-the-top backstory of any "sympathetic" villain in fiction. Nakago is a member of a foreign people who are subject to racism in the fictional Chinese nation of Kutou. Nakago is one of seven warriors chosen by the God Seiryuu. When Nakago's mother is raped by Kutou soldiers in front of him, Nakago's secret powers are awakened. The good news is that, in an uncontrollable wave of power, Nakago kills all the soldiers in sight. Bad news? He also kills his mom.
So Kutou's emperor gives Nakago two jobs. One is as a soldier in his army. The other is as a child prostitute in his private brothel. It's no wonder that, by the end of the series, Nakago murders the emperor, conquers Kutou, and sparks a war that ends in thousands of deaths.
Kyo Sohma (Fruits Basket)
Members of the Sohma Family are cursed to transform into one of the 12 animals of the Chinese Zodiac when embraced. While this curse combined with the abusive demands of the family's head, Akito, causes all the Sohma Family great emotional and psychological distress, Kyo has it worse than the rest. Kyo is the Cat, the 13th animal kicked out of the Zodiac, and so he is isolated and extra even beyond what the proper Zodiac members face.
It also doesn't help that Kyo has a second, more monstrous form that's enough to make even his love interest Tohru convulse in terror. Making matters worse, until Tohru enters his life, the only person who cared if Kyo lived or died was his martial arts master Kazuma. Kyo needs love.
Seras Victoria (Hellsing)
Seras Victoria's tragic backstory is a secret for the majority of Hellsing, but it drives her to pursue justice both as a police officer and as a vampire hunter. Her secret is revealed to the audience when Seras is confronted with an illusion recreating her past.
Seras's father was a police officer who got entangled in a case that proved too much. Criminals broke into Seras' home and murdered her father. Her mother hid her in a closet before being murdered and assaulted. Seras managed to stab one of the criminals in the eye before being shot in the belly. The final thing she saw before becoming comatose and spending her childhood alone in an orphanage was her mother's corpse being ravaged.
Asuka Langley Sohryu (Evangelion)
The entire cast of Evangelion could qualify for this list, but Asuka might have the most traumatic past of all. Asuka's mother worked on the Evangelion project in Germany, but during the process had part of her spirit implanted into Evangelion Unit-02. The experiment left Asuka's mother psychologically broken, giving her a bizarre fixation on dolls and believing her daughter was a doll. While her mother was in the mental hospital, Asuka's dad had an affair with his wife's nurse, which he made little effort to hide from his daughter.
The worst came when Asuka was recruited as an EVA pilot. She ran to tell her mom the good news, only to find her mother hanging from a noose with the doll she believed to be her daughter hanging next to her. Immediately, Asuka's psychological complexes make sense.
Guts (Berserk)
If anyone grew up in a literal Hell, it's Guts. Guts fell out of his mother's rotting, hanging body, only to be snatched up by a band of soldiers. His adoptive father, Gambino, trained him to be a soldier, subjecting him to the horrors of war at a young age. While Gambino trained him, he also became increasingly abusive.
The worst came when Gambino prostituted Guts against his will to another soldier. Guts refused to believe Gambino was responsible until Gambino tried to kill him and confessed to the whole thing. Guts had to kill the closest person he ever had to a father before running away. Life would only get worse for Guts from there.
