One of the most popular ways to start an imaginative anime is to have the main character living a boring normal life. It starts the series in a very grounded and relatable way. After all, we are all probably living boring lives ourselves. However, in order to break the monotony and bust into a large plot, a great device is to have a mysterious woman appear and do something that shakes the main character’s world up. She might tell him something about his long-lost father or involve him in a commotion that causes his village to cast him out. Regardless, it starts them off on a much more exciting adventure, typically together.
Of course, for this list, it will be featuring mysterious women, but the trope need not be women. Mysterious men can show up too, but to be honest, it is less common. Everyone knows that young male characters are enthralled by any beautiful woman that gives them any shred of attention. While young women main characters can be similarly entranced, it is used less often likely because it comes off as kind of creepy.
Best Anime Where One Character Changes The Main Character’s World
Code Geass
This series is almost quintessential in this respect. Lelouch is living his normal boring school life, looking on at all the injustice that his father’s empire is wrecking in Japan, and then suddenly he meets CC. She grants him this unbelievable power and suddenly, he realizes that he has the ability to make a change. Throughout much of the series, CC kind of takes a back seat as an observer and a kind of advisor, though her role and purpose is expanded later on. Since you don’t learn much about her through most of the series besides her demonic lust for pizza, it keeps the mystery alive.
FLCL
Haruko is still a mystery to many people that watched FLCL to this day. She runs Naota down and beats him on the head with her guitar which kicks off one of the most high-energy, low-explanation plot lines in anime history. Not just Naota’s life is changed either, Haruko basically changes the whole town.
Mysterious Girlfriend X
In this anime, it is not so much of a case of a mysterious girl arrives, but rather the main character notices a mysterious girl in his class. Urabe, the mysterious girl in question, is a whirlwind of excessively odd quirks that the main character has to adapt to. However, the change in the series is more of a social sort of change rather than boosting the main character on an unbelievable adventure.
Another
While Another sadly spoils the mystery of Mei about half way through the show, she starts off as a heck of a intriguing woman. Main character, Kouichi, transfers into her class and finds this gloomy, eye-patched girl being treated as if she completely doesn’t exist. Obviously intrigued, he starts talking to her. Unfortunately, then everyone starts dying…
Darling in the Franxx
It would be difficult for many a male main character to resist Zero Two the way she is introduced to him – naked and sopping wet. However, Zero Two appeared in Hiro’s life when he was literally at his lowest point. Immediately intrigued by her nudity, horns, and generally amorous behavior, it isn’t until later that she ends up changing his world by drawing him inside her Franxx.
Rage of Bahamut
Favaro was living the general sleaze ball bounty hunter life with his only problem being the revenge-bent Kaiser always somewhere on his tail. However, when he meets Amira, a girl with half the key to freeing the potentially world-destroying Bahamut, his problems grow much larger when he brags that he can get to Helhiem. From there, the story elevates him from bounty hunter to a real world-saving hero.
Eureka 7
Renton is the sort of young boy main character that has a certain thirst for adventure. However, his grandfather is intent on keeping him reined in. However, this all changes when Eureka comes literally crashing down into his life. From his first interactions with her to their last, Renton’s life is constantly changing and his world is vastly expanding.
Kiznaiver
Before Katsuhira and several others were abducted and had their pain sensors linked together by Noriko and the Kizuna system, his life wasn’t especially normal. He got beaten up often because he couldn’t actually feel any pain. However, it was at the advent of the Kizuna experiment that this begins to change and you learn much more about the unique characters within. While Noriko plays mysterious like a champ, perhaps it was the mysterious experiment that expanded this main character’s world more.
Deadman Wonderland
There is no doubt that Ganta would have been better off had he not met Shiro. However, while the series will show you why, she doesn’t really expand his world – she saves it. Shiro is mysterious in everything she does, but there is no denying that without her help, Ganta would probably be dead.
Date A Live
Date a Live is special because the main character actually encounters a lot of mysterious girls. His job is to make the alien girls, called Spirits, fall in love with him so the Spirit and the Anti-Spirit Strike teams don’t have to fight. You know what they say – every girl’s heart is a mystery. In no series is this more true than Date a Live.
Bakemonogatari
When a mysterious feather-light girl falls into your arms, you can kind of expect that things aren’t going to be normal from now on. While it can be argued that Araragi’s world would get super strange even if he hadn’t had that encounter with Hitagi, her appearance certainly didn’t do much to keep things normal.
Love, Chunibyou and Other Delusions
Chunibyou is a distinctly realistic series, which makes the characters and events therein so much fun because much of the fantasy aspect is in their heads. This in particular is what makes Rikka’s appearance and character so amazing. You meet her trying to climb down from her apartment window fully decked out in an eye patch and talking like a literally mysterious woman character you would see in any of these other anime series. She’s cryptic and is made out to be crazy, but while she doesn’t necessary change Yuuta’s life a whole lot, she does help him come to terms with his Chunibyou urges.
Elfen Lied
Elfen Lied is one of the many examples of if you meet a naked mysterious women that only makes meowing noises, you should maybe just leave her be. While there are many heart-breaking moments in Elfen Lied, what goes down between Lucy and Kouta is perhaps the most devastating of them all. Lucy is mysterious, certainly, but she doesn’t change his world for the better.
Higurashi: When They Cry
As Keiichi is the new kid in town, all the girls he meets are mysterious women! Surrounded by girls, he soon gets to know them and soon gets to know them in a way he would rather not. Like any good horror series, Higurashi puts the mysterious girl trope to work big time, even multiplying it by presenting several girls with behavior that is… Hard to explain.
Waiting in Summer
After a particularly strange event, Kaito wakes and decides to make a film over summer break. It is upon this decision that he meets an upper classman that is new to town. However, it might be more apt to say she is new to this planet. There is no more of a mysterious woman than a mysterious alien woman. However, in this show, you watch her try to be normal and slowly feel that very human emotion that we call love. Everyone knows that falling in love in and of itself can be world-expanding.
Spice and Wolf
Maybe somewhere in the back of his mind Lawrence was hoping for a naked girl to end up in his cart, but he probably wasn’t expecting that naked girl to be a sullen wolf god looking to go home after people stop worshiping her. While Holo makes Lawrence’s life more difficult and often more interesting, as a merchant his world comes pretty expanded when they meet. In a way, they both enlighten each other with their unique sets of knowledge.
Michiko and Hatchin
Who says main characters need to be men to meet a mysterious women? While Michiko and Hatchin sort of share that main character slot, when the hard-fighting, chain-smokin’ Michiko shows up and rescues Hatchin from abusive foster parents, she is definitely expanding her world. However, her motives for doing so aren’t very pure and she ends up getting them both in an out of trouble frequently.
The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya
Poor Kyon. Think of how boring his life would be if he never met Haruhi? Instead, he found himself in all sort of world-warping craziness all covered in that thin veneer of a vaguely normal school life.
Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet
While it might be more apt to say that Leto is the mysterious new man that enters Amy’s life, as a human who lived in a very different culture in outer space, she is just as mysterious to him. In fact, it is Amy that works to expand his world view in many respects, from the world they now live on to the basics of social interaction.
Steins;Gate
Steins; Gate, as a time travel show, if naturally one of those shows that likes to explain the “what if” of it all. There is no arguing that the story is launched and actually centered around Okabe’s meeting Makise. How does it affect the story? Vastly.
Did we miss any more anime series featuring mysterious, life-changing anime women? Let us know in the comments section below.
your lie in April ?