Their personal story went to waste.
We talk about proper character development in manga and anime all the time, because the characters that learn something throughout the story are believable. You see them changing under the influence of the events that they go through, you see, how they react to the world and how the world reacts to them, and that makes the whole story a bit more vivid, reliable, tangible.
Character development is something that makes the characters more likable and realistic. And in some stories characters go through this painful journey of self-development — only to be stripped of its results sometime later, just because the author decided that they should just go back to square one.
And we decided to make a list of such disappointments.
Violet Evergarden — Violet Evergarden
The first and probably the most expressive installment in our list, Violet Evergarden was a very independent person at the end of the anime. She learned how to live in this world, we celebrated all these little victories with her, and up until the end of the anime everything was great. Then the movie came out, and sure, it answered some questions that the anime left unanswered, but in terms of Violet's character development it did a complete 180 for the sake of the cliched and sappy ending that was supposed to be happy but ended up being enraging.
Rock Lee — Naruto
He was so, so powerful in the beginning, his fights with Gaara and Kimimaro gave the viewers chills. He was the most feared, most threatening at the early stages of the story, and his potential can be calculated from his teacher's, Gai, fight with Madara. Instead, Rock Lee was just abandoned on the sidelines. All this build-up for his greatness disappeared and was for nothing, leaving a weeping mess instead of a potential hero.
Machi Amayadori — Kumamiko: Girl Meets Bear (Kuma Miko)
She lived in the middle of nowhere, but always wanted to be a part of a bustling city life, to be outgoing and meet a lot of people. And she works her way up towards her goal, becoming a local idol who not just gets recognized but also overcomes the social awkwardness that plagues her. And as the story builds up to the climax, to the concert in a big city, she... panics. She goes home, goes back to her bear, and says that she doesn't want the life she's been striving for throughout the whole anime. Thankfully, it's the anime original ending, as the manga is still ongoing and its author heavily disagrees with this ending of his story.
Goku — Dragon Ball Z / Dragon Ball Super
Goku never was a complicated character. He was simple, not stupid. His fighting is pretty strategic, so no one can call him a fool. He's just an orphan boy who grew up in the mountains, there's not much to learn there to be super intelligent. Then Dragon Ball Super was released, and Goku was reduced to being just dumb, stupidly childish despite having a family with kids and supposedly having memories of what he's been through. Sure, that possibly can be excused by Super being targeted at a significantly younger audience and working as a retelling of the events of the show for kids, but this still hits hard.
Nana Komatsu — Nana
All characters in Nana are flawed in a very human way, and that's what makes this story hit so hard and feel so real. But Nana Komatsu, the one that's called Hachi, is a perfect description of a "one step forward two steps back" mentality in terms of her character development. She's extremely dependent, tries to cling to the nearest person who shows her at least a little bit of warmth, then she gets hurt, she cries, promises to change her life and actually tries to do so — only to fall back into this trap again, with even more devastating consequences this time.
Ochako Uraraka — My Hero Academia (Boku No Hero Academia)
Remember her fight with Bakugo at the sports festival? That gave everyone chills. That fight is smart, brutal, and it could've propelled Uraraka further as a wonderfully developed female character. And then Horikoshi decided to stunt her development and put her aside as Deku's love interest, without actually developing even the love interest part. Honestly, Uraraka's relationship development with Toga Himiko is more fleshed out than with Deku. And her fighting spirit, her motivations and her goals were just gone.
Mikasa Ackermann — Attack on Titan (Shingeki No Kyojin)
Spoiler alert, though you will see it yourself on November 4th. But you remember the character she was in season 1? Reliable, one who's ready to take responsibility, to become a leader, to hone her skills and perfect them. In later seasons she became a killing machine obsessed with Eren. And even her uncovered backstory, her genes and lineage didn't help to develop her further or even get her back to where she started, at least.
Kazuya — Rent-a-Girlfriend (Kanojo, Okarishimasu)
In order to shun character development first there should be a character to develop, and Kazuya lacks that. But he tries, he tries so hard, he almost grows a little spine during the movie arc and that could've been a great start for him to slowly, step by step become a better version of himself, but then it all was retconned for the sake of stalling the story and dragging it without any kind of development. Neither for the characters nor for the story.
Saito Hiraga — Familiar of Zero (Zero No Tsukaima)
One of the early isekai shows was already guilty of having bland protagonists. Saito, who was accidentally summoned to another world through a magic ritual, spends the first season building friendships and discovering his own strengths. But in the second season he's just reduced to being a pervert, obsessed with breasts. All his character development was shunned in favor of more fanservice. And the main pairing goes in circles, too.
Tsuna — Reborn! (Katekyo Hitman Reborn!)
Usually when we encounter characters who seem cowardly at first, we expect them to either grow a spine and become less scared or just tragically die and become a stepping stone for the development of someone more favored by the author. In Tsuna's case it seemed to be the former scenario: as the story went on, he was engaging with the plot more and more, he was learning his own abilities and getting used to them, he finally chose to fight things and get stronger during some major arc. But then the arc ends, and Tsuna goes back to his cowardly self, and the cycle repeats.