There are many anime series that deliver characters who ultimately attain godlike power, however, the price they pay is not always worth the sacrifice. Rather than a rewarding transformation or a satisfying resolution of their journey and hard work, some characters who gain the power to reshape reality or ascend to a higher plane of existence face unimaginable consequences that are beyond devastating.
While in some cases, this ascension is a natural or necessary development for the story, it often remains a thought-provoking choice that pushes viewers to consider if the power was truly worth it in the end. For these characters, absolute power became an unthinkable burden that came at a devastatingly high cost, pushing them into roles or fates unlike anything they could have ever imagined.
Shinji Ikari (Neon Genesis Evangelion)
Shinji Ikari is the protagonist of the classic hit anime, Neon Genesis Evangelion. He’s a 14-year-old boy who carries heavy burdens and insecurities before being recruited by his estranged father to pilot Evangelion Unit-01. Taking place in a post-apocalyptic world, Shinji must fight against beings known as Angels alongside fellow pilots, all while battling against his own demons that threaten to consume him entirely.
The series focuses heavily on each pilot’s internal struggles, with Shinji’s internalized feelings of worthlessness and need for approval driving much of the story’s psychological tension and stakes. In The End of Evangelion, Shinji finds himself at the center of the Human Instrumentality Project, where he is given complete control over the fate of humanity. His despair ultimately manifests as the Third Impact, which essentially merges all individual consciousness into a single existence.
However, rather than maintaining this unified existence, he rejects that reality, seeing it as hollow and meaningless. He chose to allow people to retain their individuality if they so choose, yet even then, he could do nothing to fully reverse the devastation already inflicted. While Shinji held godlike power, it came with the cost of losing everything he once knew, leaving only the hope that humanity would be able to someday rebuild.
Light Yagami (Death Note)
At the beginning of Death Note, Light Yagami comes across as an exceptionally gifted student who’s on track for a very bright, successful future. However, when he finds the Death Note, a supernatural notebook capable of killing anyone whose name is written within its pages, his entire life trajectory changes. He becomes driven to eliminate convicted criminals to create a world free of crime, effectively remaking society and adopting the alias of Kira.
Light doesn’t gain omnipotent power like many other godlike anime characters and instead relies on his intellect and calculated use of the Death Note. He becomes infamous for his god complex as he ruthlessly manipulates investigators, friends, and family, even going as far as to sacrifice the lives and safety of those closest to him. However, his years of playing god eventually catch up to him when Near, L’s successor, exposes him as Kira.
The price he pays for his years-long crusade and godlike authority is his humanity as well as his very life. His pursuit of absolute control completely destroys his morals and alienates him from those around him. When his identity is exposed, Ryuk makes good on his early promise to write Light’s name in his own Death Note, leaving Light to die knowing that he can never go to either heaven nor hell and that even as the supposed God of the New World, he is not above the consequences of his actions.
Zeref Dragneel (Fairy Tail)
Zeref Dragneel is initially introduced as the epitome of evil in Fairy Tail. However, as the story unfolds, it gradually becomes clearer that his reputation as the Black Wizard is not all he is and that he has carried a heavy, unspoken burden for centuries. More than 400 years before the main story, Zeref lost his family and devoted himself to forbidden research into life and death. However, tampering with this magic resulted in the Contradictory Curse of Ankhseram.
In the end, while he possessed great power, Zeref’s greatest wish remained his own release from the suffering he endured for centuries.
The curse made him immortal while killing any living thing around him if he valued life. The only escape from this curse was to numb himself and close off his heart, completely disregarding the value of life. With Zeref unable to safely love anyone and unable to die, he spent many centuries searching for ways to end his own existence, going as far as creating the Etherious demons in hopes that they would eventually defeat him.
For Zeref, immortality, the power over life and death itself, and immense magical prowess were nothing but a curse that he spent centuries trying to escape. Even when Mavis, the first guild master of Fairy Tail, became afflicted with the same curse, Zeref’s was far older and more powerful, completely draining her life force and leaving her in a permanent, unageing coma. In the end, while he possessed great power, Zeref’s greatest wish remained his own release from the suffering he endured for centuries.
Lain Iwakura (Serial Experiments Lain)
At the start of Serial Experiments Lain, the titular character, Lain Iwakura, is a withdrawn, shy middle school girl who initially has very little interest in computers or the Wired, a massive global network similar to the internet. However, her understanding of herself completely changes after she gets a message from a deceased classmate claiming that she’s alive inside the digital world. As Lain explores more of the digital realm, the boundaries between physical reality and digital reality gradually begin to blur.
Lain eventually realizes that she isn’t actually human, but rather a program that exists beyond physical limitations to bridge the two worlds. As her awareness grows, she finds that she has extraordinary control over information and memories between the Wired and reality. With this power, Lain finds she can completely warp reality and exist everywhere simultaneously, but at the cost of the reality she once knew.
By the end of the series, Lain ultimately sacrifices herself in order to force a global reset. By extracting herself from everyone’s memories and rewriting reality, Lain untangles the real world from the Wired, leaving herself out of the equation entirely while still retaining her awareness. The result is that Lain is condemned to exist alone forever, watching over humanity without ever being able to interact with them again.
Madoka Kaname (Puella Magi Madoka Magica)
Puella Magi Madoka Magica centers on Madoka Kaname, an ordinary middle school girl who unexpectedly comes across a creature named Kyubey and stumbles into a witch’s Labyrinth with her friend Sayaka Miki. When they are saved by an upper classmate, Mami Tomoe, the two are introduced to the concept of Magical Girls for the first time and are given the choice to make a wish in exchange for battling against Witches.
What initially seems like an opportunity to help others and take part in something larger than herself quickly spirals into a far darker reality. After learning that Magical Girls are doomed to become Witches and that every timeline has led to despair, Madoka decides to make a wish that fundamentally rewrites the universe, allowing her to ascend into a divine, cosmic force known as the Law of Cycles.
While Madoka successfully saves all magical girls in the past, present, and future, she does so at the cost of her own humanity and life on Earth. All her friends and family lose their memories of her, and she is no longer able to experience the relationships that she held very dearly to her heart. Her wish and ascension to godhood may have saved every magical girl, but Madoka paid the price for it with her own eternity, making her power the ultimate act of self-sacrifice.