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Azura: "I can't believe that boy was you..." —-- From Azura and Arthur's B support, Fire Emblem Fates
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Many years ago, Alice and Bob met each other by random chance, and the meeting left a deep impression on at least one of them. But years have passed, and now they're grown up (or at least in High School). All unknowing, they have been pulled back together by the Red String of Fate - friendship, romance and/or adventure will see them rekindle a long-lost connection long before they realize that they've met before. The realization that their new friend is the same kid they met years ago may come slowly with heavy foreshadowing, or be a sudden twist.
A classic setup for the romantic anime, when the Childhood Marriage Promise would be a bit too blatant. Quite popular in western shows as well, however.
Related to Already Met Everyone and Childhood Friends. Contrast Forgotten Friend, New Foe, Old Flame Fizzle, First Girl After All.
Anime and Manga[]
- Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu: It eventually turns out that Yuuto was the one who got Haruka into anime and manga in the first place when, as a kid, he found her crying in a playground on his way home from a shopping-trip with an Otaku friend, and gave her a manga magazine. The incident didn't leave a huge impression on him, but it essentially changed her life - arguably for the better. (Though her Overprotective Dad might disagree...)
- In Ai Yori Aoshi there's a broken Childhood Marriage Promise but she (Aoi) wants to find him (Kaori). When she does he doesn't remember her at first. There are flashbacks, not to the first time they met but while the were friends as kids together.
- Komari and Yukio in Gokujou Drops.
- Pokémon: Barry doesn't remember that he and Dawn met when they were younger. Granted, they're probably only ten or eleven...
- In Mamoru Kun Ni Megami Ni Shukufuku O, it gradually becomes clear that the Beatrice-user who saved Mamoru during a disaster when he was small, was Ayako's uncle - and what's more, she was there too. Neither one of them remembers at first due to having been quite young and traumatized to boot, but that event was the reason why Mamoru decided to become a Beatrice-user himself, which led to him joining the Beatrice Academy, where he, of course, met Ayako again...
- Love Hina is probably the poster child for this trope, what with Keitaro knowing that he met a little girl and that they made a promise. There were two girls, actually: Mutsumi and Naru
- Fruits Basket's Tohru met Yuki when they were younger, but it isn't until later on in the series he realises she was the same girl. He believes she doesn't remember but actually the memory was very important to her, even though she never learns that Yuki was the boy.
- In Hyakujitsu no Bara, the young Klaus and Taki meet briefly in the middle of a forest by chance when they are young and make something of a Promise. Years later, they meet again and Klaus recalls but continually dismisses the memory, until their Relationship Upgrade, when he realizes from Taki's scent that it was him.
- In Tokyo Babylon, a child Subaru met a teen Seishirou as he cradles his latest kill, and they end up making a promise. Years later Subaru only remembers this as a vague dream...
- In the Saint Beast drama cds, Rey reveals to Shin that he had met Luca long before the day he actually introduced himself, and felt guilty for hiding it. In their adolesence Luca found Rey crying and lost in a forest and led him out. After searching out his rescuer, Rey was too embarassed to introduce himself until many years later when he received wings and felt he had something to bond over. Shin remarks that Luca probably knew all along and was too gracious to say anything.
- In Junjou Romantica, Nowaki recalls the day he found out the orphanage owners weren't his real parents and tried running away. He stops at a park when his tires go flat, only to have his future lover Hiroki walk by, inquire, and then start dishing out life lessons about the obstacles kids must get through before tattling to the patrolman. Years later Nowaki remembers the encounter and mentions it to Hiroki, but neither realizes it was each other.
- In Spirited Away, Mysterious Protector Haku knew Chihiro's name even though he couldn't remember his. Chihiro kept having a feeling that she met Haku from before but couldn't remember when. It was only when they were flying through the air together that Chihiro remembered she fell into a river as a little girl, only to be saved by the spirit residing there. Chihiro recalling this memory to Haku caused him to remember his identity as such river spirit.
- Pretty Cure franchise:
- Futari wa Pretty Cure: Nagisa Misumi and Honoka Yukishiro first pass each other in the school hallway, but don't really pay attention. They properly meet later.
- Futari wa Precure Splash Star: Mai Mishou and Saki Hyuuga met briefly five years prior to the events of the series and forgot. When Mai returns to her hometown after several years and finds Saki in the place where they met, they remember each other.
- In Axis Powers Hetalia, Germany is hinted to be Holy Roman Empire, Italy's Love Interest when they were little. It's not clear whether Italy believes them to be the same person or not, but Germany, at least, appears to have forgotten about their shared childhood. It's all but stated that he started remembering in the Valentine's Day strip, however.
- In Skip Beat!, Ren and Kyouko actually met when they were young children, not when they were first introduce at the agency. Ren is actually Kyouko's long-lost childhood friend 'Corn,' which just makes it even more ironic that she starts the series off hating him. Ren knows, but Kyouko is still in the dark about their pasts.
- Happens at least twice in Detective Conan:
- It turns out that Shinichi and Ran met Masumi, her mother Mary, and her brothers Shuichi and Shukichi when they were children, during a beach outing. The three didn't see one another until they were teenagers, and only Shinichi remembered.
- This is one of the biggest basis for Sumiko and Shiratori's Childhood Friend Romance. They met once as children, but she made such a strong impression on him that she unadvertedly changed his whole life. From Shiratori's part he always remembered her, but he didn't know her name and chased after another woman (Satou) because he believed her to be Sumiko; from hers, she completely forgot until they were adults.
- In Yuri!!! On Ice, Yuri Plisetsky and Otabek Altin met three years before the series started, in a special training camp for young skaters. It's just that one of them forgot about the other. . .
- Even more so - It turns out Yuuri and Victor did NOT meet when Victor came to Japan to train Yuuri and bring him to the top. They actually met in the Grand Prix Banquet after the GP Finals where Yuuri failed thoroughly. He got piss drunk there (probably to go Drowning My Sorrows), danced with lots of people, flirted the Hell out with Victor while begging him to come coach him... and then he forgot due to, well, being inebriated. However, Victor always recalled that chance meeting and found it charming enough to fill Yuuri's drunken request after seeing the video that the Nishogori girls uploaded to Youtube...
- The start of Tekken the Motion Picture has Kazuya Mishima and Jun Kazama meeting by chance as children. She more or less remembers, but he does not. Until he has her on a Neck Lift at the end of the movie and she tells him about it. . .
- In Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, Tanjiro Kamado and Zenitsu Agatsuma met when they both survived the Final Selection to get into the Demon Slayer Corps. When they met again some missions later, Zenitsu recognized Tanjiro near immediately but Tanjiro did not and Zenitsu had to remind him of it.
- The Natagumo arc has Zenitsu also recognizing Kanao Tsuyuri as "the girl from the Final Selection", but he gets no chance to speak to her and later interactions don't have him telling her either.
- In Naruto, this is eventually revealed to be true for Hinata Hyuuga and Naruto Uzumaki. Few before the two entered the Academy, Naruto stepped into Hinata being harassed for her Byakugan eyes by three boys and gets beaten up trying to protect her; he more or less forgets for a long time, but Hinata holds that moment dear to her heart and it's the reason why she fell for Naruto. It should be mentioned that at first it was anime only (as a part of Hinata's flashbacks as she fights Pain to protect Naruto), but the 100% canon movie The Last confirms it.
Comic Books[]
- In The Phantom the hero and his love interest meet for the first time in the first story arc, until Lee Falk wrote the story of "The Childhood of the Phantom" and included a scene where they met briefly years before when they were both children.
- In Transformers (2010-2011), Optimus Prime and Megatron first met when Orion Pax was the captain of the police station who arrested Megatron following a bar brawl. Megatron's doesn't recall the meeting until Optimus brings it up. In fact, the encounter he thinks was their first was after the two had met, and even worked together, several times.
Film[]
- In The Princess and the Frog, Tiana and Naveen meet minutes after he arrives in New Orleans. He tries to woo her, but she ignores him and he moves on, even saying "Eh..". He fails to recognize her when they meet again at the party, though.
- Brian Allen and Christina Roberts in Blow Dry. They knew each other as very young children because their fathers were business partners. But then the partnership broke up, Christina's parents divorced and she went to live with her mother in Michigan, Brian's parents divorced and he moved in with his dad in York, and the two lost touch with each other for twenty years. Cue the events of the film...
- The prologue to the LGBT comedy Adam and Steve features the two main characters, Adam Berstein and Steve Hicks, hooking up in 1987 and having spectacularly bad drugged-out sex (as in literally shitty sex). They meet, sober and professional, in 2004, and don't realize their identities till almost the end of the film; this poses a huge problem, though, since Adam is a recovering drug addict whose problems began shortly after his and Steve's affair, and when Steve finds out about it, not only remembers everything but feels horribly guilty and thinks he's ruined Adam's life. Still, everything's sorted out at the end..
- This happened in the Nightmare On Elm Street remake to the protagonist.
- In Iron Man, Tony first met Ho Yinsen at a New Years' party in 1999. Yinsen doesn't hold it against him given how drunk Tony was at the time. Iron Man 3 reveals that Tony also met Aldrich Killian and Maya Hansen at that party only for his inebriated state to prevent him from remembering them.
Literature[]
- In King Kelson's Bride, Kelson is reminded (by Rothana) that he had not only met his cousin Araxie when they were children, he also played with her and they got along very well with each other. Though their marriage is arranged, Kelson and Araxie decide to use those happy memories to build upon when forging their relationship.
- The Doctor Who anthology Origin Stories reveals that Sarah Jane Smith, Martha Jones, Ace, Ryan Sinclair and Yasmin Khan all met the Doctor before they started travelling in the TARDIS. The former three were subjected to Laser-Guided Amnesia while the latter two just never made the connection. Though in their defense, the Second Doctor looked quite different from the Thirteenth.
- The Star Wars Expanded Universe novel Shadow of the Sith reveals that Rey met Luke and Lando before the events of the Sequel Trilogy when they were trying to help her family escape from the Sith. None of them show any recognition in the films because Luke and Lando largely communicated by radio and Rey was six at the time, her parents handling the conversations.
Live Action Television[]
- In Fringe Peter met Olivia as a kid, but seems to have amnesia about this ever happening even though he is Olivia's boyfriend now.
- They both forgot this meeting as a result of repressing traumatic memories from around this time: for Peter, being kidnapped by his parents from an alternate universe; for Olivia, being the subject of Mad Science experiments.
- In Community, Jeff and Shirley realize that, when they were children, Shirley humiliated him in a game of foosball. Jeff moved away soon after and they did not meet again until they were adults. The humiliation turned Jeff into the Jerk with a Heart of Gold he is today and Shirley's Heel Realization made her a very passive person.
- The Odd Couple: in one of the several versions of how Felix & Oscar first met, it was when Oscar's father ran a speakeasy in 1920s Chicago and Felix's father was an optomitrist who fitted Oscar's father with glasses.
- My Name Is Earl: Randy goes to meet his childhood crush "Pinky," who it turns out was Earl's ex-wife Joy.
- In one episode Drake and Josh discover that they met when they were nine (rather than in high school as they previously thought).
- In Iljimae, one of his love interests figures out who he was by a piece of jewelry the boy who saved her life carried. The other love interest also figures out who he was because he continued a story he never finished when they were children.
- Dharma and Greg first saw each other as children when they barely missed meeting each other on a subway. Twenty years later they met on the same subway and fell in love.
- An episode of Mad About You reveals that Paul and Jamie first met as kids at the Natural History Museum.
- In the Friends episode "The One With The Mugging", Ross finds out that Phoebe robbed him when they were kids.
- In the post-2005 version of Doctor Who, the Doctor met Rose Tyler and Clara Oswald long before they began travelling together and vice versa.
- From the Doctor's perspective, he first met Rose as the War Doctor in the Last Great Time War when the Moment took on her form[1]. From Rose's perspective, she first met the Time Lord on New Years' Day 2005 when a nearly dead Tenth Doctor, posing as a drunk in the shadows, told her that 2005 would be a great year for her, two months before she was due to encounter his younger self.
- From the Doctor's perspective, he first met Clara when he was a small boy and by reflexively grabbing his knee, she became the "monster under the bed"[2] but managed to convince him that it was All Just a Dream. From Clara's perspective, she first met the Eleventh Doctor at a playground when she was a toddler. She gives no indication that she remembers this, even after she remembers another time he stalked her when she was a teenager.
Theater[]
- Gilbert and Sullivan gives us Patience - Patience and Archibald were best friends when they were children; they are adults and meet again. Romance Ensues.
Video Games[]
- The second Blaz Blue reveals that as a student Ragna met Taokaka while she was still a kitten (although he might remember, she doesn't). In this case their relationship is strictly platonic, however.
- A sequence in Final Fantasy VIII shows that either all or virtually all of the party members spent time in the same orphanage as children, and most of them don't remembered it - much less the fact that the person running said orphanage was Sorceress Edea, whose husband is Cid, headmaster of their mercenary training school. Irvine is the only one who remembers it all, due to not having used Guardian Forced until he joins the party - as it turns out, they can cause memory-loss with sustained use.
- Persona 2: Innocent Sin groups together Tatsuya, Maya, Lisa and Eikichi. They were all childhood friends of a group called the Masked Circle that disbanded when the group belived that Maya was killed in a fire. The last memeber of the group is a Forgotten Friend, New Foe. Note that all the Love Interests for Tatsuya are from this group. Including said Forgotten Friend, New Foe, who turns out to be Jun.
- Fire Emblem:
- In Fire Emblem the Sacred Stones, Kyle and Syrene met as pre-teens: he was a squire sent to Frelia to deliver some messages, she was a pegasus knight in training who helped him around. In their supports, they speak a little and then start rememembering one another.
- In Fire Emblem Tellius, Ike and Soren had met years ago, and Ike did not remember the first time that he met Soren, although Soren remembered in vivid detail. It was not until near the end of Path of Radiance that Soren bothered to remind Ike how they met, and it wasn't until Radiant Dawn that Ike finally remembered it first-hand. Justified in that their first meeting was right before Ike saw Greil killing Elena, for which Sephiran gave him amnesia which wasn't cured until being in the tower, where Ike and Sephiran's memories come to the fore.
- Quoted above: In Fire Emblem Fates, during her harsh days in the Nohrian Deadly Decadent Court, a pre-teen Azura was saved from being punished for running away from Castle Krackenburg by a teenaged soldier, who willingly got himself whipped on the spot to protect her. She remembers the facts well, but cannot recall who that boy was; in Conquest and Revelation, she can potentially meet him again, and it turns out he remembers everything. He is Arthur, Elise's unlucky but noble retainer.
- Additionally, in the Birthright path, if the Player Character fights Laslow, Selena and/or Odin, they'll also claim to know him or her, only for the Avatar to deny it...
- In Fire Emblem: Three Houses, Ferdinand von Aegir and Dorothea Arnault met as pre-teens... in extremely awkward circumstances - Dorothea, who has just gotten the chance to stop being a Street Urchin via singing at the Mittelfrank Opera, was taking a bath in a fountain and Ferdinand spotted her. He was struck by her beauty and got tongue-tied, so he ran off to calm himself down and then returned to properly speak to her - but she had seen him and believed that he found her disgusting, so she had run off as well.. Eventually, the first forgot while the latter did not, and in the present... since she still believes that he looks down on her, she hates him on sight, which is very awkward for him since he has no idea of what he has done to offend her that much, and is shocked when she explains her reasons.
Visual Novels[]
- This trope plays a large role in the 18+ Otome Game Under the Moon, in which it is paired with Laser-Guided Amnesia and Played for Drama. Prior to the game, possible love interests Leni and Seizh were exiled for competing over the affections of the heroine Ashe, but she has forgotten them (through no fault of her own). Unsurprisingly, the guys are bitter about it.
Web Comics[]
- Too Much Information: The latest addition to Ace's Unwanted Harem is a very tall Ainu girl who ran away from home because she was always being mocked for her size, determined to find the only boy who'd ever called her pretty - a young Gaijin boy she'd found lost back in Hokkaido, and helped to find a police-box. Cue the revelation that Ace had gotten lost during a trip to Hokkaido with his mom when he was a kid, and had been helped by a pretty redhead...
- Kevin and Kell does this with Rudy and Fiona, who find out after dating for some time that they were in the same preschool - and hated each other.
Western Animation[]
- The Simpsons: Marge & Homer met when they were circa 10 years old at summer camp and shared their first kisses together. When they met again in high school neither recognized the other (in part because one had very different hair and the other had an eye-patch when they first met).
- Anastasia and Dimitri met when she was still one of the Princesses and he was a servant in the palace. He tried to help her and her grandmother (Grand Duchess Marie) escape from the Bolshevicks but she took a bad fall and ended up disappearing. Years later the grown Dimitri has become an embittered and heartbroken Con Man who alongisde a man named Vladimir uses an orphan girl named Anya in a scheme to make her pass as Anastasia, unaware that she IS the real Anastasia but with Trauma-Induced Amnesia — until she's reunited with Marie and tells her that one of her few memories she's recovered is about a boy who helped her escape, alias Dimitri...
- In the backstory of Steven Universe, Word of God confirmed that Bismuth was the Crystal Gem who poofed Lapis Lazuli, something neither one acknowledge. Justified though. Lapis was attacked from behind and didn't see who poofed her and Bismuth has fought so many battles that forgetting one Lazuli is hardly impossible.
- The Ben 10: Omniverse episode "Trouble Helix" reveals that Ben met Albedo four years before the events of Ben 10: Alien Force. Though justified as Albedo was quite a different person back then and Ben is well... Ben.