Top 7 Broken Manga Characters
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Some manga characters don’t simply face hardship — they go through events so violent, so devastating, that they come out of them changed forever. Moments that strip away all sense of reality, dignity, and self. In those moments, manga dives into the raw exploration of pain, madness, or identity loss.
This article highlights the characters who, in my view, have experienced the most harrowing turning points.
7. Denji – Chainsaw Man
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Denji grew up in misery, selling his own organs to survive. He was never loved. When he becomes Chainsaw Man, he thinks he’s finally reached a normal life: bed, shower, food. Then he meets Power and Aki. For the first time, he forms something like a family. But the peace doesn’t last. Aki dies. Then Power. And this time, Denji doesn’t cry. He cleans the blood. He eats. And the next day, he goes back to work like nothing happened.
He looks at the world with empty eyes. He wonders what’s left of him. No dreams. No love. Just a body moving forward. He becomes a hero for others, but inside, there's nothing left.
Denji doesn’t break. He empties out. And that’s worse. He keeps smiling, but it’s a hollow, mechanical smile. Chainsaw Man isn’t a story of power-ups — it’s the story of a kid who loses even the taste for life, and no one notices. He embodies the invisible sadness of our age.
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6. Eren – Attack on Titan
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As a child, Eren watches his mother devoured by a titan. He vows to exterminate every last one of them. But the further he goes, the more he learns the truth: the enemies are human too. Worse: the world is larger than the walls. The enemy… is also himself. When he inherits the Founding Titan’s power, he sees the past, present, and future. He realizes he caused everything. That his childhood rage led him to become the very one who crushes the world.
One day, he walks alone on the beach. He sees the sea. And he knows: beyond it are more enemies. There will never be peace. And in his eyes, there is no more hate. Only a massive fatigue. He knows he will kill millions. He knows he will be hated. But there’s no escape. He walks forward, because he already has. He walks, because it’s already written.
Eren’s fall is chilling because it’s lucid. He becomes the executioner while knowing he’s wrong. He is trapped in his own history. He embodies the weight of determinism — the tragedy of an ideal that destroys everything, including himself.
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5. Shinji – Neon Genesis Evangelion
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Shinji is a teenager forced to pilot an EVA to save humanity. But the EVA is not a machine. It’s a living entity, and each sync costs a part of his identity. In battle, his EVA acts on its own and devours an Angel. Trapped inside, Shinji feels every bite. He vomits. He shakes. He isolates himself.
Then comes episode 23: Rei — the girl he’s starting to understand — dies in front of him in an explosion. She comes back soon after, looking the same. But she’s not the same. She remembers nothing. That day, Shinji realizes he is alone. That everything stable is fake. And that he himself is replaceable, meaningless. He shuts down. He stops wanting to live.
Shinji doesn’t lose battles. He loses his sense of self. Evangelion’s universe breaks him, not with enemies, but with pressure, loneliness, and absurdity. He doesn’t become strong or enlightened. He becomes porous. His later refusal to pilot is a silent cry against the inhumanity forced upon him.
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4. Thorfinn – Vinland Saga
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As a child, Thorfinn sees his father — Thors, a peaceful warrior — ambushed and killed before his eyes. He swears revenge and follows the murderer, Askeladd, for years. But Askeladd never gives him the duel he longs for. He humiliates him, uses him, pulls him into war and slaughter. Thorfinn becomes a joyless elite killer, driven only by vengeance that feeds nothing.
The day Askeladd dies — killed by someone else — Thorfinn feels nothing. No triumph. No relief. Just emptiness. He's then enslaved. Without weapons, without hatred, he finally faces the weight of his actions. He dreams of the people he's killed. He falls to his knees. He punches the ground. He weeps — not for Askeladd, but for himself. Because he has no enemy left. And no reason to live.
Thorfinn’s collapse is moral. He doesn’t lose a battle — he loses the hatred that kept him standing. And that’s even harder. He must rebuild a life without swords, without revenge. What he goes through is an inner death, followed by a slow soul rehabilitation. And it’s this silent fall that makes him one of the most human characters of his time.
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3. Punpun – Oyasumi Punpun
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Punpun is a quiet, awkward child, witness to violent domestic scenes. His mother is hospitalized after a suicide attempt. His father, whom he still loves, disappears. His loneliness becomes a wall. He falls in love with Aiko — but she too carries invisible wounds. When they run away as adults, Aiko kills her mother. Punpun hides the body. They live in a tent, hopeless. Aiko commits suicide. Punpun, covered in her blood, stands motionless. No screams. No tears. Just silence.
He walks through the city. Sees faces, lights — but looks at none of them. He doesn’t speak. He doesn’t seek anything. His body’s still here, but everything that made him human died with Aiko’s gaze as she passed.
Punpun’s collapse is slow, diffuse, with no single dramatic moment. But Aiko’s suicide is the final crack. He doesn’t become violent. He doesn’t go mad. He becomes invisible. He no longer expects anything. And that quiet extinguishing of life’s drive makes him one of the most tragic characters in modern manga.
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2. Kaneki – Tokyo Ghoul
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Captured by Yamori (Jason), Kaneki is chained in a cold, empty room. Thus begins a torture session lasting days. Yamori breaks his fingers one by one, daily, letting them heal before restarting. He forces him to count fractures, to recite numbers. Kaneki hears another prisoner’s screams — someone he cannot save. The world becomes pain on repeat. He retreats into his mind, imagines his child-self speaking to him. And the moment the screaming girl falls silent, something in him snaps.
Kaneki makes a decision: to stop fearing. He embraces the monster. He lets go of his humanity to survive. He smiles. He eats his enemy’s flesh. He becomes what he once feared — just so he’ll never be hurt again.
This isn’t a “power-up.” It’s an erasure. Kaneki doesn’t grow stronger — he becomes something else. He burns away his past self to keep existing. The torture isn’t narrative flair — it’s deconstruction. He no longer seeks love. He becomes something that just wants to stop hurting. Everything else is secondary.
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1. Guts – Berserk
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The Eclipse is the ultimate nightmare in Berserk. Guts and the Band of the Hawk are trapped in a hellish dimension summoned by Griffith — their leader and brother-in-arms. They're surrounded by grotesque demons. Former comrades, full of dreams and loyalty, are torn apart alive. Guts fights like a madman until his sword breaks. He sees Judeau die trying to save Casca. Pippin is crushed. Guts screams in rage and despair.
Then comes the worst: organic chains pin him down. A demon pierces his left eye. He tries to protect Casca but is restrained. In front of him, Griffith — the one he admired, thought saved — rapes Casca while Guts, mutilated, struggles in vain to tear himself free. He screams, foams, almost tears his throat out… but he can only watch. It’s more than trauma. It’s the annihilation of his soul.
The Eclipse isn’t a scene of violence — it’s the end of a world. Guts doesn’t just lose his comrades. He loses meaning. Griffith’s betrayal doesn’t destroy an army — it disintegrates the very ideas of loyalty, friendship, honor. Guts becomes a living ruin, inhabited by directionless rage and a pain that will never scar. He has nothing left to protect. Only motion, only survival, only refusal to die.
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manga psychology, broken characters, collapse in manga, introspective manga, tragic manga, deep seinen, manga analysis, serious manga, Guts Eclipse, Thorfinn fall, Kaneki torture, Punpun inner void, Shinji Evangelion, Eren fate, Denji solitude