This page documents the various different pieces of media with significant plural representation that we've found and think are cool. If you don't see a particular piece of media you like here, that doesn't mean we don't think it's cool, it just means we haven't seen it!
For ease of browsing, we've organized them by the medium through which they're told, and alphabetically within those categories. Each series is also listed with a rating out of five stars, the level to which plurality is explicitly referenced in the story (explicit, intentional, unintentional, etc.), any applicable content warnings, the specific characters which we see as plural representation, and a short synopsis that includes the reasons we see it as being plural representation.
Anime / Manga
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A Tale of a Little Alchemist Blessed by the Spirits (MyAnimeList)
Unintentional, , ★★★★☆
Focus Character: Daisy von PreslariaA young noble girl named Daisy is born in the same body as the soul of a reincarnated former baroness. After being granted the class of alchemist rather than a mage like the rest of their family, the five-year-old Daisy begins to spiral due to the baroness's memories of being abused for the similarly unsatisfactory class of maid, which prompts the baroness to willingly go dormant in order to block off those memories, though Daisy's fear of those memories repeating themselves turns out to have been unfounded.
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Birdy the Mighty (MyAnimeList)
Unintentional, , ★★★☆☆
Focus Characters: Birdy Cephon Altera, Senkawa Tsutomu
Tsutomu, a formerly normal high school boy, finds himself caught in the crossfire between a criminal and the alien supercop Birdy. After accidentally killing Tsutomu when the criminal used him as a shield, Birdy merges his soul into her body in order to save his life until his body can be repaired, and the two begin adjusting to their new double life, as they must now juggle maintaining Tsutomu's daily life as well as Birdy's missions.
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I Can't Pick Between My Childhood Friend(s)! (MyAnimeList)
Unintentional Parallel, ★★★☆☆
Focus Character: Machihashi Karin
High schooler Suzukaze Yuu unexpectedly reunites with his childhood friend and crush, Machihashi Karin, only to find that his repeated wishes to meet her again had been granted... by splitting her into multiple people! Now faced with a choice between which one of the Karins should remain and which should disappear, Yuu refuses and chooses to love each of them equally, and so begins a romantic comedy of errors following his relationship with an ever-growing cast of Karins.
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My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! (MyAnimeList)
Unintentional, , ★★★★☆
Focus Character: Katarina ClaesAfter bumping into her crush and being knocked out by the fall, young noblewoman Katarina Claes remembers her past life and realizes she's been reincarnated as the villainess of a dating sim she had played, and resolves to avert her character's doomed fate. Any time Katarina has to make a difficult decision, particularly ones related to avoiding her original doom, her thought process is represented by a recurring cutaway gag of a council of five chibi versions of herself with distinct personalities.
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Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint (MyAnimeList)
Unintentional, , ★★★★☆
Focus Characters: Kim Dokja, The Fourth WallOrdinary salaryman Kim Dokja lives vicariously through the story of Yoo Joonghyuk, the protagonist of the time-looping web novel Three Ways to Survive the Apocalypse. Long after every other reader has lost interest, leaving him the series' only remaining fan, he finally reaches the end of the series, only to be met with a cryptic message from the author. Moments later, all hell breaks loose as the events of the story begin to become real, leaving him the only one with the knowledge of the future needed to team up with Joonghyuk and prevent the end of the world.
Click to reveal story spoilers
One of Dokja's skills is The Fourth Wall, a mysterious skill that protects him from mental attacks and external analysis. It is later revealed that The Fourth Wall is sentient, and functions similarly to a protector by dulling his emotions and pain, as well as being able to mentally narrate Dokja's actions as if observing them in third person.
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The Holy Grail of Eris (MyAnimeList)
Unintentional, , ★★★★☆
Focus Characters: Constance Grail, Scarlet CastielYoung noblewoman Constance Grail discovers her fiance's infidelity, only to be framed for theft by the woman who took her place. As she begins to despair, she is possessed by the ghost of Scarlet Castiel, a woman executed ten years earlier for crimes she did not commit, who turns the situation on its head and humiliates the perpetrator in her place. In return for Scarlet's help, Constance begins to investigate the circumstances around Scarlet's death, and the two work as a team to root out the kingdom's dirty secrets.
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The One Within the Villainess (MyAnimeList)
Maybe Intentional, , ★★★★★
Focus Characters: Remilia Rosa Graupner, "Emi"Afflicted by a terrible fever during her childhood, the future villainess Remilia finds herself replaced by the reincarnator "Emi", regaining consciousness in a dark void with only a window through which to view her replacement's life. While initially frustrated by this, Remilia comes to love Emi through viewing her memories and actions, and when Emi is framed and betrayed by the story's heroine and goes dormant in despair, Remilia resurfaces to take revenge and make the world a better place for when Emi returns.
Comics
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Dumbing of Age (Official Website)
Explicitly Stated, , ★★★★★
Focus Characters: Amber O'Malley, Amazi-GirlSet at Indiana University, Dumbing of Age follows the lives and growth of a diverse cast of characters as they come to terms with how to be adults, including a homeschooled Christian girl, her atheist best friend, a disgraced cheerleader, a caped vigilante, a teenage delinquent, and more.
Click to reveal story spoilers
Throughout the course of the story, it is slowly revealed that Amber, the face behind the masked superhero Amazi-Girl, is actually a traumagenic plural system. Amazi-Girl is not simply an alter ego, but a fully distinct alter, and her superheroics serve as an outlet for Amber's destructive impulses. After Amber realizes that her next-door neighbor Sal is the same girl whose hand she stabbed when Sal held up a convenience store five years earlier, the two begin to function more and more separately, with Amber starting to not always remember Amazi-Girl's nightly escapades, and the two only fully restore contact and begin to consider each other friends when they're forced to team up and rescue their friends from their own abusive father.
In addition, during the aforementioned crisis caused by their father, a close friend of theirs, Mike, is hospitalized and is later revealed to have passed away. However, due to the additional trauma induced by the incident, Mike often appears to the two mentally to criticize their tendency to self-isolate, and it is currently unclear whether he is simply a hallucination or has been introjected into the system.
TV Shows
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Arcane (Netflix)
Maybe Intentional, , ★★★★★
Focus Characters: Jinx, Powder
Set in the city of Piltover, Arcane reimagines the lore of Riot Games' League of Legends, following the origin stories of Vi, Caitlyn, Jinx, Jayce, Viktor, and others. As the city begins to tear itself apart over differences between Piltover and the Undercity, as well as the invention of magical Hextech and the addictive stimulant Shimmer, the characters find themselves intertwined in a web of nightmares and intrigue.
Click to reveal story spoilers
After a failed burglary attempt and overhearing the resulting insults from her adoptive brother Mylo, a young Powder begins to develop a complex about being a "jinx" who ruins every mission she goes on. When a clash between the residents of the Undercity and the crime lord Silco results in the death of her adoptive father Vander, Powder is taken in by Silco and given the new name of Jinx, becoming his adoptive daughter and right hand woman. Jinx frequently experiences psychosis-induced hallucinations of her deceased family members, and consistently refers to Powder as a separate person who is "dead", despite signs that some aspects of Powder's personality still exist in her, suggesting that she and Powder may in fact be alters.
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Doctor Who (TV / Max / Disney+)
Unintentional Parallel, ★★★★☆
Focus Character: The DoctorA nigh-immortal alien known only as the Doctor travels through time and space alongside a diverse cast of human companions. Throughout the show's over 60-year history, the Doctor has been portrayed by more than a dozen different actors, with each taking up the mantle through the in-world process of "regeneration", which allows the Doctor to cheat death at the cost of their appearance and personality changing drastically. On numerous occasions, multiple incarnations of the Doctor are seen to interact with each other through various time travel-induced events, viewing each other as neither truly the same nor entirely separate, not unlike different fronters in a plural system.
As a single paragraph can hardly do the show's plurality parallels justice, an in-depth page focused on specific instances and evidence is in the works. Stay tuned!
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Moon Knight (Disney+)
Explicitly Stated, , ★★★★☆
Focus Characters: Steven Grant, Marc SpectorMild-mannered museum custodian Steven Grant is down on his luck, constantly tired, and finds himself "sleepwalking" regularly... or so he thinks, until he wakes up one morning in an entirely different country, on the run from paramilitary forces. This sends him tumbling down a rabbit hole, as he is swept up into the life of a superhero by the other alter in his system, the mercenary Marc Spector, who fights against a worldwide cult as the superhero Moon Knight, the avatar of the Egyptian god Khonshu.
Video Games
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Celeste (Official Site)
Probably Unintentional, , ★★★★★
Focus Characters: Madeline (player character), Part of YouA game about climbing a mountain, well known for its transgender protagonist Madeline, inspired by developer Maddy Thorson's own struggles with gender identity and mental health. While climbing Celeste Mountain, she experiences various supernatural phenomena, and is repeatedly impeded by a doppelganger called "Part of You" (nicknamed Badeline by the game's fans), who tries to discourage her from continuing the climb.
Click to reveal story spoilers
At the end of Chapter 5 of the game's main story, Madeline attempts to reason with "Part of You", but misunderstands her as a malicious side of herself that should be grown out of, which angers "Part of You" and causes her to throw Madeline off the mountain, where she lands in a cave below the mountain's base.
Chapter 6 then sees Madeline working her way out of the cave until she encounters her friends Theo and "Granny", who encourage her to embrace "Part of You" instead of rejecting her, and suggest that she may simply be overprotective and expressing it in a toxic way. With her mind changed, Madeline chases a sulking "Part of You" deeper into the caves, eventually reconciling with her and aiming for the peak together.
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Slay the Princess (Official Site)
Probably Intentional, , ★★★★★
Focus Characters: Literally EveryoneYou're on a path in the woods, and at the end of that path is a cabin. And in the basement of that cabin is a Princess. You're here to slay her. If you don't, it will be the end of the world.
Slay the Princess truly cannot be described, and must be experienced to be understood.
Do not skip the list of content warnings before diving into this entry.
Bad Plural Representation
The entries listed below this point drastically misrepresent plurality and related medical conditions, and contribute to spreading misinformation and prejudice. They are not here as recommendations, but rather as warnings, and most if not all of them are terrible to the point of their summaries needing content warnings, let alone the actual piece of media itself. If you believe you may react badly to extreme misrepresentation of systems as violent, insane, or otherwise "evil", please do not read the summaries of these entries, or engage with the pieces of media they describe.
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Split (Movie)
Explicitly Stated, ☆☆☆☆☆
Content Warnings: Medical mistreatment of
DID systems, portrayal of systems as dangerous and psychotic, portrayal of DID as a path to unlocking supernatural abilities, extreme intrasystem conflict,persecutors portrayed as evil or malicious, pedophilia, abuse, kidnapping, graphic violenceClick to reveal potentially disturbing content
The story of Split follows Kevin Wendell Crumb, a DID system who kidnaps and imprisons three teenage girls. Several members of the system worship a malicious system member they refer to as The Beast, which displays enhanced physical strength, extreme healing capabilities, and animalistic tendencies. Said members conspire to deny the more reasonable system members access to the front in order to allow The Beast to manifest and cleanse the world of the "impure" who have not suffered, and when their plan succeeds, The Beast kills the system's therapist and two of the kidnapped girls, before noticing the third's scars from being abused by her uncle and leaving her alive.
Split is the second in a trilogy of movies by M. Night Shyamalan, and the system it follows also appears in the third movie, Glass, as a primary antagonist who has been used as an experimental test subject in an attempt to weaponize the enhanced abilities of The Beast. While Glass is slightly less blatantly gross in its representation as Split, it still carries many of the same content warnings.