Appearance Angst Narrator

MEDIA EXAMPLES

In Galaxy Express 999, the Conductor, who normally hides his body in his thick uniform, is terrified of the prospect of anyone seeing him without it. He's actually an invisible being, something he tries to hide from others. In the film Adieu Galaxy Express 999, he reveals that this is due to his indecisiveness, being unable to choose between a human body or a machine one. By this point, he has come to accept his choice, finally revealing himself to Tetsuro. In the Jojos Bizarre Adventure spinoff Thus Spoke Kishibe Rohan, Yoma Hashimoto is a model who becomes obsessed with personal fitness after growing to like his routine. His constant efforts to improve his physique chip away at his sanity, to the point of accusing his girlfriend of trying to "poison him" with his favorite carb-heavy spaghetti dish, complaining about the delivery man ringing the doorbell and ruining his sleep schedule, and glaring daggers at a man who reserved his personal trainer before him. He eventually snaps and murders his girlfriend, the delivery man, and the other gym-goer because he saw them all as threats to his fitness. In Mission: Yozakura Family, Nanao's Yozakura talent manifested in his body's ability to adapt to nearly any poison and constantly strengthen itself to protect him from harm. As a result, he possesses a hulking physique and is three meters tall. He has to take special medicine to shrink himself down to his original size to actually go to school and knows that he has to stop going once the medicine stops working. His strange genetics led him to feel alienated from other people, particularly from the girl he has a crush on, Kitasato. Silver Spoon: Downplayed and Justified with Tamako. While losing her characteristic obesity doesn't cause her any actual emotional distress, she openly dislikes it as she becomes weak and anemic when she loses weight, so she vastly prefers to remain her usual egg-shaped self whenever possible. The Boys: Mother's Milk has a daughter he's been ineffectually trying to prevent from going out with gangbangers or dress more conservatively. Then it turns out that because of the Compound V in his body that was transmitted at birth, she's actually 12 with the body of a 20-year-old supermodel (with all the consequences that implies), making her body image issues far worse than they seemed at first. Ben Grimm, aka The Thing of the Fantastic Four, has always struggled with how the mutation he sustained from the cosmic rays turned him into a hulking rock monster. Because of this, he's shunned and jeered at wherever he goes. It's especially noticeable when compared to his friends, who weren't grotesquely mutated by the cosmic rays. On several occasions he's had the chance to do away with his mutations and live a normal life, only to become The Thing again because his friends need him. Sharon Ventura, when she became She-Thing. By this point Ben had gotten over most of his angst over being rocklike (being the "idol o'millions" helps), so along comes Sharon, who's transformed from a standard comic book babe to a version of Ben's earliest look. She did not take it well. Shards of a Memory: It is implied that some of Raphael's rage had its roots in the crack in his plastron, feeling like it made him defective not unlike a broken toy car Leo found thrown away. Us and Them: During the fight against Jenova, Aeris contracts Id's Death, the disease Jenova was carrying, which wiped out the Cetra of old, which causes strange growths and scabs to start growing on her shoulder where the infection is festering. They die down when she recovers but leave discolored blotches on her skin that she is really self-conscious about. Anne of Green Gables: Anne Shirley is picked on for having bright red hair, so she longs for any hair that isn't her hair color and at one point dyes it green by mistake. By her late teens, it has darkened into an attractive auburn. She's also insecure about her freckles (which also disappear by her late teens) and her skinny figure. In Beauty: A Retelling of Beauty and the Beast, Beauty is a short, sallow, boyish-looking girl with mousy hair and big hands and feet (her nickname is based on a remark she made as a child, not her appearance), while her sisters Grace and Hope are both stunningly beautiful. Her insecurity about her looks makes her avoid society in favor of books, and she agrees to take her father's place at the Beast's castle not only because the rose he stole was for her, but she thinks her homeliness makes her less valuable and more expendable than her sisters. After living for a year in the mirror-less castle, though, she finds after the spell breaks that not only has the Beast become a handsome gentleman, but she has finally grown into her looks and become a physical beauty too. The Vampire Chronicles: Gabrielle cuts off her waist-length hair after becoming a vampire, has a breakdown when she sees that it grows back each evening, and starts to cut and burn it nightly. She loves the freedom that the transformation granted her and is implied to see the long hair as a reminder of her suffocating old life as a nobleman's tubercular wife. A number of Reality TV series make heavy use of this trope: Dr. Pimple Popper: While Dr. Pimple Popper's original Web Video series generally doesn't disclose the identities or backstories of her patients (largely because of privacy concerns), her TLC series goes into the emotional distress her patients' skin conditions cause them, and how much they affect their lives. Another TLC series, Save My Skin, which is basically Dr. Pimple Popper's English counterpart, also spends a generous amount of screen time exploring the emotional toll the patients' conditions have taken on them. Botched: In a similar vein, this series goes all in on the patients' backstories and all the pain and difficulty their botched cosmetic surgeries have caused them, be it internal or external. Cyrano de Bergerac: Cyrano's famous Gag Nose is the reason he's terrified of confessing his love to Roxanne and claims his mother never loved him. Katawa Shoujo: Hanako is deeply ashamed of the scars she sustained from her house burning down, and she makes every effort to cover them up and avoid contact with other people, to the point that she often skips class in order to read alone in the library. House Party (2017): Derek is shy about having "french fry nipples", and so refuses to take off his shirt- in the route where this needs to happen, you have to have everyone at the party sign a petition in order to convince him. Batman: The Animated Series had a villain named Calendar Girl, who refused to be seen without her mask. She was a former model whose crimes were acts of revenge against the industry people who made her feel like she wasn't beautiful enough. There were rumors that she was the victim of a botched plastic surgery. When her mask was removed it was revealed that she was still beautiful, she just couldn't see that anymore. In Batman Beyond, the members of the Terrific Trio were all heavily mutated after a science experiment gone wrong. Although they're initially revered as heroes for their work in helping to stop crime, they are all secretly depressed about their predicament and the looks they get for being freaks. According to popular belief, the infamous "Blood Countess" Elizabeth Báthory was so afraid of the ravages of age that she would bathe in the blood of hundreds of young virgins in an attempt to protect her youthful appearance forever.