No prizes for guessing what comes of this.
"Girl meets boy, that's a safe beginning."
— Joe Gillis, Sunset Boulevard (The Musical)
One of the oldest and most basic plots goes thus: boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy regains girl. Details vary, but those are the major Narrative Beats.
For example, in Romeo and Juliet: boy (Romeo) meets girl (Juliet). Boy loses girl (due to infighting between their crazy families that ends up with two people dead and boy being banished). Boy finds girl again (in her tomb, so he kills himself, but it turns out she was Not Quite Dead and...you know what, you already know the ending).
In fact, there are so many examples of this trope (the massive quantities of romantic comedies, for instance) that this page is merely going to list interesting variations, subversions, and inversions.
Despite the trope title, Boy Meets Girl can also refer to stories where Boy Meets Boy, Girl Meets Boy, and Girl Meets Girl.
Chic and Awe and Meet Cute are a subtropes of these. Not related to X Meets Y. See also Boy Meets Ghoul.
Examples
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Anime and Manga
- 5 Centimeters per Second: Boy meets girl; boy loses girl for a long time; boy may or may not ever find girl again.
- After War Gundam X: Boy meets girl while being paid to kidnap her; boy and girl find giant robot; the boy pilots the robot while the girl activates its Wave-Motion Gun with her Psychic Powers, boy joins a pirate crew to protect girl.
- Subverted in Asteroid in Love. In the beginning to the story, Mira sees her story with Ao to be like this: Girl meets boy, Girl loses boy, and then... Girl regains boy, only to know she mistook a girl for a boy all along. That, though, doesn't seem to prevent Mira from seeing the two as under Pseudo-Romantic Friendship.
- This is how Guts and Casca's relationship grew in Berserk. Boy meets girl on opposite sides of a battle and joins her mercenary group. Boy and girl fight together and fall in love. Boy and girl are torn apart by a horrible demonic sacrifice that ends in girl being driven mad and everyone else getting eaten alive. Boy leaves girl to pursue vengeance against the leader of the mercenary group responsible for said demonic sacrifice. Boy finds girl again at the Tower of Conviction after realizing he had made a mistake in leaving her alone and going through hell and high water to save her. Now he just has to find a cure for her insanity so they can, you know, actually be together.
- There was an episode of Blood+ actually titled "Boy Meets Girl" which had a slight variation of this plot. Well, Riku and Diva's entire relationship, really: Boy meets girl. Girl rapes boy. Boy impregnates girl. Girl kills boy. This also works on a slightly more conventional level with Saya and Haji. Boy meets girl. Girl goes crazy, cuts boy's arm off, and disappears. Boy finds girl and makes her drink his blood. ...Okay, maybe not so conventional.
- Chainsaw Man: Boy meets girl, girl helps lift boy out of poverty and provides him with friends and a normal life, girl reveals that it was a complete ruse on her part and that she's a sociopath, girl destroys boy's life and kills all his friends, boy eats girl. Yikes.
- Cyberpunk: Edgerunners is a love story in a cyberpunk setting that boils down to: Boy meets girl. Boy joins girl's gang. Boy and girl fall in love. Girl protects boy by killing Arasaka executives and netrunners. Girl gets caught. Boy uses a Deadly Upgrade that makes him go insane to save girl. Boy saves girl. Adam Smasher kills boy.
- The Daichis - Earth's Defense Family: Dai meets Ellen in the hallway on the first day that the earth is being invaded, has some small talk, but later on they have a conversation about each other, what Dai thinks about his family while Dai talks about how lonely Ellen looks. After finding the cure, Ellen gives her gratitude to Dai, with her lonely feelings being resolved.
- Eureka SeveN: Boy meets girl, boy joins mercenary organisation, boy and girl pilot giant transforming robot together.
- Within Ghost Hound: Boy meets girl. Boy accuses girl of being his sister. Boy saves girl from an evil cult.
- Hello! Sandybell: Girl lives in rural Scotland all her life, and through a string of unusual circumstances, ends up meeting a boy who's actually the son of the Countess of Wellington. When the girl's father dies of a disease and she has to move to London, and the boy's parents die in a car accident so he's forcibly hauled off to an Arranged Marriage. Boy doesn't want this, so he runs away from home, and throughout the series tries his best to be in girl's life by leaving her small gifts and messages. Boy sets off a chain of events that help the girl find her long-lost mother, and after the boy's ex-betrothed accepts he's moved on and also moves on with someone else, girl and boy live together happily ever after.
- Honoo no Alpen Rose: Boy finds amnesiac girl. Boy takes her home, and they become childhood friends, and then lovers. A Nazi Nobleman enters Switzerland and takes the girl away from him. Boy rescues the girl, and then they flee the country where they're unfortunately separated again. When they're finally together, they work with their newfound allies to resist the Nazis and work with La Résistance, while unraveling her Dark and Troubled Past.
- Kashimashi: Girl Meets Girl: Played straighter than the title would suggest, as the main character met both potential love interests when s/he was still a boy.
- According to bonus material at the end of the first volume, Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid was originally going to be like this, though the finished product bears very little resemblance to this concept.
- Rick and Morty: The Anime: This anime can be considered a Deconstruction of the Shonen Anime/Manga about a boy meets girl plot where a teenage protagonist meets a mysterious magical girl that is treated as the love of his life and improve his life. One day, using a virtual reality system, Morty Smith meets a mysterious girl named Elle, who claims to know Morty. He instantly falls in love with her, tries to find her, and eventually finds her in real life. The two of them get together and become a couple, with her moving into his home. This mysterious girl named Elle is revealed to be a member of a time-traveling race that could predict the future, and the Galactic Federation wiped out her race. Then it was revealed that Elle is, in fact, from an alternate reality where she fell in love with that version of Morty, who was a galactic hero version of Morty who died. Despite her powers, she couldn’t prevent his death, so Elle went to another reality where she could be with another version of Morty. It became clear that she was projecting her love for that version of Morty to the main version of Morty, even though they were two different people. Finally, she revealed that she was stuck in a time loop where she would be forced to see the death of her Morty over and over and that she had planned to stop the time loop by destroying her old universe, fusing it with the central universe so she can be with that version of Morty, and let Morty decide on whether to destroy her or fused the universe. Morty can’t make that decision, and Elle realizes that she put too much pressure on that version of her love and decides to sacrifice herself to save the universe and stop the time loop, leaving Morty devastated by her death. Eventually, Morty uses the virtual reality helmet to try to find Elle again, risking his own life before Morty’s grandfather takes him out of the virtual reality and tells him that it was all a dream to get him to move on. Showing a heartbreaking story where the anime protagonist doesn’t get together with the mysterious girl that improves his life, and there is a darker reason that a girl loves the protagonist even if the girl thinks the love is genuine.
- School Rumble's Harima is one lucky boy. Boy meets Girl 1 (Tenma) but she thinks he was taking advantage of her. Boy meets Girl 2 (Eri) by confessing his love for Girl 1. Boy meets Girl 3 (Tae) and lets him stay overnight. Boy meets Girl 4 (Yakumo) because he needed her help.
- In SK8 the Infinity, among the Cast Full of Pretty Boys, this is the personal storyline for the protagonists Langa and Reki, who have a Meet Cute, become very close friends, lose each other, and find each other again, seeming to have an increasingly implied crush on each other throughout, with the near-textual yet Ambiguously Gay Langa expressing that Reki is his Implied Love Interest several times by its conclusion.
- Urotsukidouji (also known as Legend of the Overfiend): Boy meets girl. Boy masturbates whenever he sees girl. Girl gets raped by monsters. Girl falls in love with boy. Boy turns into demon king and destroys the universe.
- The final arc of Urusei Yatsura (which became movie #5) is titled Boy Meets Girl in the Manga. (Well actually it's titled Boi mitsu gahru but you know..)
- Völundio ~Divergent Sword Saga~: Cleo just stumbles on Kohaku in the prologue, and she insists to tagging along.
Asian Animation
- While it's never shown, Appa and Amma's history in the Simple Samosa episode "Spa Wars" has Boy Meets Girl as its basis. Appa apparently met Amma when they were younger and got separated, and Appa traveled around the world to find Amma, eventually finding her in Chatpata Nagar operating Amma Spa.
Comic Books
- The basic premise of: Twelve Reasons Why I Love Her.
- This is Tim Drake and Stephanie Brown's romantic arc. The two meet and fall in love, then her death is faked and she lives in Africa while recovering from severe injuries and she eventually returns to Gotham at which time the two of them realize they're still in love and eventually reignite their relationship.
Fan Works
- The first few chapters of Freedom's Limits generally revolve around this; Madavi meets Smador while he's stealing food from the kitchens and they become friends. When Barad-dûr collapses due to the destruction of the One Ring, Smador helps Madavi escape, then leaves to help the other Orcs and they are separated, with Madavi not knowing if he made it out. Months later, she and Smador meet up by chance while Smador is looking for food and they rekindle their relationship.
- The entire premise of I am [REDACTED] is Izuku Midoriya meeting Ochako Uraraka in a post-canon Alternate Universe where Izuku went to a private American school for hero training instead of UA, so he could maintain a Secret Identity when he returned to Japan to become an official pro-hero. Ochako first meets Izuku when she visits his family's bakery on a whim, and then meets his alter-ego, the Number One Hero Nimbus/Redacted, at a villain attack later that morning. The conflict of the story is Izuku trying to meditate between his growing feelings for Ochako and his urge to keep her at arm's length to maintain his Secret Identity and keep both his family and her safe.
- The premise for A Pikachu in Love is Pikachu falling in love with another Pikachu and slowly questioning his bond with Ash, eventually being forced between spending his life with Pichi or continuing his adventures with his trainer. Though incredibly painful, he chooses to stick with Ash.
Films — Animation
- Castle in the Sky: Pazu sees Sheeta falling from the sky and catches her, leading to a new friendship and a new partner to help him discover the lost city of Laputa; Sheeta tells him to forget about Laputa, leading to a separation; when Pazu learns about her doing that on purpose to save him, he joins the sky pirates to save her after a Laputian robot places her in danger.
- Cinderella: mentioned by name by the king, who has a bad case of I Want Grandkids. As he explains to the doubtful duke, "Just a boy meeting a girl under the right conditions. So, we'll arrange the conditions!"
- Your Name: Girl meets boy, they switch minds to bodies to share experiences, Boy finds out Girl died in a tragic comet strike at her village years earlier, Boy undergoes Mystical Time Travel to rescue the Girl and her village before the comet strikes, Boy and Girl separate grow up and forget each other, Boy and Girl see each other on passing trains and race back and forth until they meet each other on some stairs, Boy and Girl finally ask each other what their names are.
Films — Live-Action
- (500) Days of Summer. Like it says in the opening credits: It's a story of boy-meets-girl. It is not a love story.
- Adam (2009) is a film about a young man with Asperger's Syndrome living alone in a Manhattan apartment after his father's death. He meets his neighbour Beth, a teacher and aspiring children's author, over laundry and the two form an awkward friendship which eventually becomes an awkward romance. It doesn't work out, sadly.
- This is literally the plot for the movie adaption of Everything, Everything, in which the two leads grow their bond in, despite Maddy being the one restricted to her home due to an illness.
- The French film Les Jeux Sont Faits had the two main characters meeting and falling in love...after they were both dead. They got better, but died again anyway.
- In Serendipity, the leads meet one another for one night, get separated, and then found each other again.
- In Sleepless in Seattle, the protagonists are perfect for each other - but they've never met. The entire movie is about them not finding each other. They don't meet until the very end, when boy finally meets girl, after the girl believes she has lost him.
Literature
- 1632: the story of Jeff Higgins and Gretchen Richter. Boy meets girl, boy protects girl from army (with only a shotgun and his three best friends to back him up), boy helps girl murder her rapist, boy proposes to girl using a bilingual dictionary.
- Krapivin's story Boy sought girl: Boy meets girl. Girl must return to her home on another continent. Boy moves his continent closer to the girl's to find her again.
- In Full Metal Panic!, the first novel is titled "Fighting Boy Meets Girl". Military Nut Sociopathic boy meets girl. Girl falls in love with boy. Boy is pulled away from girl and thinks she died. Boy goes on a Nietzsche Wannabe self-destruct mode and realizes he likes girl. Boy reunites with girl and proceeds to kick ass.
- Haruhi Suzumiya can be boiled down to: boy meets girl. Girl turns out to be a Reality Warper. It's even lampshaded in the anime. In the first chronological episode of the anime adaptation, as Kyon says "and so we met" in his narration, the scene zooms in on the male sign in the boys' bathroom, followed by zooming in on the female sign of the girls' bathroom.
- This happens in some way just about every time Bell meets a significant female character in Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? after the series starts with him encountering and being saved by Aiz.
- In The Kingdom and the Crown, boy saves girl from getting raped, girl warns boy of Roman ambush, girl is sent to Rome and boy follows to sneak her out and bring her home.
- The Recognition of Shakuntala, an episode from the Ancient Sanskrit epic Mahabharata that was later Expanded into a theatrical drama by the Indian playwright Kalidasa around the 1st century BCE, is probably the Ur-Example of this trope, though it's actually more of a Subversion, since it's a Girl Meets Boy story. It revolves around a woman named Shakuntala who meets Dushyanta and they get married, only for him to get cursed with Amnesia and completely forget her. The only way to lift the curse is to show him the ring that he gave her, but she loses the ring in a river. She eventually finds the ring by the end of the story, makes him remember, and then they live Happily Ever After.
- Gender-flipped in Memoirs of a Geisha. Sayuri meets the Chairman when she is just twelve years old, falling in love with him when he shows kindness to her. After that, she trains hard to become a geisha so she can meet him again. And she does eventually.
- This is what The Restaurant at the End of the Universe has to say about the rock band Disaster Area: "Their songs are on the whole very simple and mostly follow the familiar theme of boy-being meets girl-being under a silvery moon which then explodes for no adequately explored reason."
- The Shortest Science Fiction Love Story Ever Written: "Boy meets girl. Boy loses girl. Boy makes girl."
- So, I Can't Play H!: A pervy highschool student finds a beautiful redhead in the rain, except she's a death goddess who tells him he only has three months left to live. So they form a contract to find a the one who can extend his lifespan and save both their worlds. After copious amounts of sexual tension and his inevitable death, they officially become an item.
- Star Wars Legends has Luke and Mara, though a lot of other things were happening at the time.
- Timothy Zahn, in a panel,
said he is aware of this trope, but believes that there are three basic treatments of that plot: The American novel, wherein boy meets girl and then loses girl; the French novel wherein boy meets girl, gets girl, and then boy and girl decide that they don't want each other after all; and the Russian novel wherein boy meets girl, never gets girl, and broods about it for 800 pages.
- Timothy Zahn, in a panel,
- The Time Traveler's Wife: Girl meets boy for the first time when she's a small child and he's middle-aged. Boy meets girl for the first time when they're both in their twenties.
- The Foreword to Neil T. Stacey's Trespassers will be Prostituted describes the book as "a simple story following the age-old pattern of Boy meets Girl, Girl praises Satan, Boy drowns in Filth". There is no romantic plot-line in the book.
- The La Vita Nuova begins with Dante and Beatrice meeting for the first time when they're nine years old. Dante falls in love and spends a good few years trying to find her again, only to meet her nine years later and to get straight up rejected. Still feeling indebted to her beauty, Dante continues to base his poetry off her even if he now hides his deep love for her.
- This is the basic romantic plot of Wars of the Realm: Drew Carter meets Sydney Carlyle in high school, falls in love with her, is repeatedly separated from and reunited with her throughout the rest of his life, and ends up with her at the end (although for some reason they never marry or even get engaged). On a larger scale, the separation part of the boy-meets-girl arc is metaphorical: Sydney refuses to consider Drew as a possible romantic partner until he becomes a Christian like her.
Live-Action TV
- Every single time there is a TV series with nerds and guns, the following happens: Boy meets girl on team (spies, alien hunters, whatever). one or other is a nerd, and quite likes the other one. About the last episode of the series, they finally get round to doing something about it. By the end of the episode, one or both of them is (or are) bleeding to death on the floor.
- The Russell T Davies series Bob and Rose: Boy meets girl. Boy is gay and girl has a boyfriend, but they fall in love anyway. Everyone else thinks they're crazy.
- Hilariously lampshaded by Wilson in an episode of House:
Wilson: It's the story of life. Boy meets girl. Boy gets stupid. Boy and girl live stupidly ever after.
- Pushing Daisies: Boy meets girl. Boy loses girl. Boy brings girl back from the dead. If boy touches girl ever again, she immediately dies. They try to work around this.
- Kryten in the Red Dwarf episode "Camille":
"It's the old, old story - droid meets droid, droid becomes chameleon, droid loses chameleon, chameleon turns into blob, droid gets blob back again. Blob meets blob, blob goes off with blob and droid loses blob, chameleon and droid. How many times have we seen that story?"
- Teen Wolf plays with this, if not intentionally. Boy meets girl. Boy loses girl (after 2 seasons). The third season appears to build up toward the "boy finds girl" ending, but girl DIES.
- Played in The Vampire Diaries with Stefan and Elena. Stefan meets Elena, Elena meets Stefan, they fall in love and the rest is history.
Music
- The song "Miracle" by Cascada essentially begins this way. In fact, the first sentence in the lyrics is "Boy meets girl."
Mythology and Religion
- The myth of Pygmalion and Galatea as told in The Metamorphoses (which makes this Older Than Feudalism) goes as follows: boy meets girl. Girl is statue. Boy falls in love with girl and prays to Aphrodite to make him a statue so he can be with her forever. Aphrodite brings her to life instead, and they live Happily Ever After.
Theatre
- Boy Meets Boy - The Musical from 1975: No relation to the webcomic.
- West Side Story famously uses this trope with the characters Tony and Maria—unsurprisingly, seeing as the play is based on one of the most iconic examples of the trope of all time, Romeo and Juliet.
Video Games
- Advance Wars: Days of Ruin. Lin comments on Will and Isabella's relationship, saying "Boy meets girl. Boy gives girl flower. Boy names girl. What's this world coming to?"
- Jason and Eve's relationship in the Blaster Master Zero trilogy:
- Blaster Master Zero: Boy meets girl, and they embark on a quest to find boy's pet frog. Girl leaves boy to fight mutants alone, boy rescues girl and they save Earth. Boy gives implied Love Confession to girl.
- Blaster Master Zero II: Girl gets sick due to a mutant infection. Boy and girl travel to girl's home planet. Boy and girl are separated after defeating a mutant planet. Girl finds pet frog. With help from their pilot friends, girl rescues boy, and they go to girl's home planet. Girl gives implied Love Confession to boy.
- Blaster Master Zero III: Boy and girl get separated when they arrive to girl's home planet. Boy embarks on a quest to find girl and stop the mutant invasion. Girl confesses feelings to boy and leaves for the mutant dimension. Boy follows girl, and they get Happily Married and have two children.
- The romance story in the Neverwinter Nights mod The Bastard of Kosigan: boy meets girl, boy loses girl, girl finds another boy and has a nasty time of it, boy finds girl again, girl goes on rampant killing spree against boy's evil family, boy stabs girl.
- EarthBound (1994) has Ness and Paula. Oh, by the way... The song that plays in Twoson is also called Boy Meets Girl, and it kinda foreshadows Paula's disappearance.
- Sigurd and Deirdre from Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War. The boy saves the girl from being harassed by a thug. They fall in love, get married and have a child. Then the girl gets kidnapped by a Big Bad. When the boy reunites with her, tragedy strikes: Deirdre has been brainwashed and cannot remember her husband at all, while Sigurd dies a horrible death at the hands of her new husband. Seliph and Julia in the second generation are Generation Xerox, though they are much less tragic and much more platonic/familial (unless you glitch the game).
- ICO was designed completely around this concept. Much of the game revolves around Ico trying to escape with Yorda in tow, helping her overcome obstacles and guarding her from shadows. It's not until near the end of the game that Ico loses her, fights the queen, and gets her back soon afterwards.
- The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild plays with this. Boy meets girl. Boy meets other girl, who coincidentally has the blood of the goddess (no biggie). Girl with blood of goddess sends OG girl to die at the hands of an ancient evil. Boy and girl with blood of goddess live happily ever after???
- The Metal Gear Solid series has an interesting one between Johnny/Meryl. Boy meets girl falls in love with her then she promptly kicks his ass and takes his clothing. Boy meets girl 10 years later and cheats the army's system to get into the same unit as her. Boy sucks at being a soldier and gets ass kicked by girl often. Boy saves girl using CPR, but Girl still doesn't care much for him. Girl gets mind controlled, different guy saves her while Boy gets knocked out and becomes useless. Girl gets into fight to help different guy, and runs out of ammo. Boy suddenly becomes a badass and saves girl. Epic fight ensues. Boy and Girl fall in love and get married.
- Kyrie and Morte from Sands of Destruction. Boy is in prison for accidentally turning his Doomed Hometown to sand, girl breaks boy out of prison, boy falls in Love at First Sight with girl, girl is Oblivious to Love but wants to use his destructive power. Boy and girl go on adventures around the world, boy becomes depressed because his powers are uncontrollable and this makes him dangerous to her, boy asks opponent to kill him to keep girl (and the world) safe. Girl has Love Epiphany after boy is gone, girl goes on quest to resurrect boy. Boy and girl become Battle Couple. Boy and girl use now-controllable power to fix the world instead of destroy it, so they can be together.
- Played very straight in the beginning of Xenoblade Chronicles 2, where boy meets girl and embarks on a journey to find the girl's lost homeland and save the world. Boy later meets the other personality of the girl, and then boy loses the girls and fights to get them back. At the very end of the final chapter – aptly titled "And thus, boy met girl" – the girls pull a Heroic Sacrifice, but soon come back to meet the boy again.
Visual Novels
- A rather gruesome variation occurs in Tsukihime: boy meets cute vampire girl. Boy goes nuts and carves girl into seventeen pieces (she gets better).
- This is Night's route in War: 13th Day. Boy meets naked girl, boy makes inappropriate comment, and boy gets punched by naked girl's suitor. Boy then blackmails girl into giving him a kiss everyday or he will jail her suitor. This leads to another fight with the girl's suitor. Girl stops the fight and chooses the boy over the suitor because the player said so.
- In Chase's route on Wildfire's side, boy meets girl, boy asks out girl, girl bluntly turns him down. Girl sees another boy, girl wants to tap that boy, girl decides to make him jealous by going out with the first boy. Girl later beats up boy's brother and lies about it to boy. Girl's best friend tries to break them up by attempting to rape boy. Girl kicks her best friend's butt.
Webcomics
- Ray meets Big Sis and gave her a present for saving his life on The Angel with Black Wings Chapter 2: Black and Silver.
- The webcomic Boy Meets Boy.
- In the first page of the webcomic Groovy, Kinda, Larry Pye meets Edison Lighthouse while she's drunkenly hanging onto a lampost.
Web Original
- Steve in the KateModern episode "Free Will":
"So! Boy meets girl, girl meets new boy, old boy punches new boy, new boy goes to the police, old boy goes to prison..."
- The Keit-Ai copypasta meme starts with this:
"A boy falls in love with a girl. Unable to confess, he is gifted by a Deus ex Machina with the girl's phone number."
Western Animation
- WALL•E: Boy meets girl. Boy follows girl onto a space cruise liner. Boy and girl save humanity. And they're both robots.
- With the way the series finale played out, Star vs. the Forces of Evil can be summarized as this. With the series' Arc Words 'Cleaved' applying more to the protagonists' relationship than anything else in the show. A hyper-energetic magical princess from another dimension meets a safety-minded earth boy who aids her to become a little more responsible in exchange of bringing a little more excitement into his life. Girl loses Boy physically to a Knight of Cerebus. Girl sacrifices her magic wand to save him. Girl helps Boy gets together with his longtime crush. Then Girl loses Boy emotionally after realizing a little too late that she is in love with him right after he succeeds to get together with said crush. Then Girl is suddenly told she needs to go back to her home dimension and possibly leaving earth forever. Boy loses Girl physically right after she blurted out she had a crush on him. Boy is crushed and goes to search for her to said dimension. Boy reunites with Girl. Boy witnesses Girl get blown up in an explosion. Girl gets ressurected. Boy is still dating his girlfriend on earth, and after the awkward Love Confession, Boy and Girl think it's too weird to stay in contact with each other despite being only a portal away from each other. Boy and Girl drift apart. Boy tries to enjoy his perfect little life on earth along with his dream girlfriend, but his girlfriend realizes that he no longer really wants it and instead wants the chaotic life the Girl gave him, so she breaks up with him to allow him to move in the Girl's dimension and realizes his own feelings for her. But Girl has gotten back with her ex after being unable to date the Boy, and so Boy loses Girl emotionally. But the Girl increasingly shows signs of being more invested in her relationship with the Boy than with her own boyfriend, but is apparrently too busy with princess duties and too stressed and too dense to question it. The Girl's boyfriend finally gets fed up and decides to call things off both for himself and the Girl's happiness. Boy finally confesses to Girl, Girl accepts it. They hooked up at last...right before the final showdown. The Girl must destroy magic to save her kingdom, and by doing so severing the means to be together with her new boyfriend. Girl destroys magic and the ability to travel dimensions, and Boy and Girl say goodbyes to each other, ready to be separated forever...but then decides to come back to each other...but the last remaining magic still separates them anyway. And then a giant portal comes outta nowhere Boy and Girl race toward the portal...only for the portal to explode before they can reach it, but then it was revealed that the explosion caused the Girl and the Boy's dimensions' to get merged together, allowing them to be together forever at last
Subversions
Anime and Manga
- The final episode of Buso Renkin was titled "Boy Meets Battle Girl". Subverted in that they met on the first episode and the eponymous Action Girl actually retires from her life of combat at this point, as does the rest of the cast.
Fan Works
- Subverted in Beyblade: Hot Air. Boy (Gingka) meets girl (Tenichi). Boy battles girl. Later, boy sees girl again, but girl calls boy's spirit "hot air". Boy wants to understand girl and prove girl wrong. Boy fights girl again. Girl draws with boy and leaves. Boy finds girl fighting evil dragon man. Boy wants to save girl. Girl doesn't care. Girl walks away from both boy and evil dragon man.
Films — Live-Action
- A Cinderella Story had this as "Boy meets princess, boy loves princess, boy loses princess". Austin Ames' (Chad Michael Murray) goal is to find Samantha "Sam" Montgomery (portrayed by Hilary Duff), who had recently left her cell phone at her high school (while becoming a beautiful princess). Mentioned in the film is "Samantha running away from her handsome prince", as a permanent fixture and a subversion. In the end they both Earn their happy ending together after a couple of trials in their relationship in the 2nd half of the movie.
- A reviewer's summary of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial: "Boy meets alien, boy loves alien, boy loses alien". As Elliot's parting from E.T. is permanent, it's a subversion.
- The Fly (1986): Girl meets scientist boy. Boy gradually becomes a diseased insectoid mutant as a result of a teleportation experiment Gone Horribly Wrong. Girl blows his head off with a shotgun.
- Let the Right One In: Boy meets girl. Boy learns girl is vampire. Boy decides he's okay with that. Girl is a castrated boy.
- The Princess Diaries subverts the classic "Boy meets girl" story involving a serious Disney-ified case of "Boy meets princess, boy loves princess, boy loses princess (due to a jealous cheerleading posse), boy finds princess again (while running away from home in her light blue Ford Mustang, still out in the rain all alone)". The name of the princess is none other than Princess Mia Thermopolis (portrayed by Anne Hathaway).
- The 1950 film Sunset Boulevard is interesting in how it subverts it: it's ostensibly a Film Noir, but a boy does meet a girl in the beginning. Except the girl is a fading film star. Then he meets another girl in the middle of the film, which might actually do the trope straight, except we know that he dies in the end. Interesting in that the first girl does love him, but he hates her.
- Billy Wilder, the director of Sunset Boulevard, loved to play with and subvert this trope. Double Indemnity was a "boy meets girl and plans to kill girl's husband for money" story. The Seven Year Itch is a "boy meets girl, even though he's married, and has fantasies about her" story. A Song Is Born is a "whole group of boys meet a girl and together they sing jazz" story. Some Like It Hot is "boy meets girl while on the run from the mob and dressed up as a girl".
- Teen Beach Movie (and its sequel) is one of the classic "Boy meets girl" love stories, in which it had Brady (Ross Lynch) falling for Lela (Grace Phipps) while "Mack" ([McKenzie]) (Maia Mitchell) who is also falling for Tanner (Garrett Clayton), resulting in a 1960s beach-side The Prince and the Pauper fairytale of two people who switch places (most probably a girly surfer and her companion who accidentally switch places/fall in love with another girl and her romantic boyfriend). A power mad scientist (and his minion) gets in the way of the 1960s beach-side "Boy meets girl" love story by kidnapping Brady and Mack altogether as their evil plans are foiled coincidentally by Lela and Tanner.
Live-Action TV
- How I Met Your Mother, as the title suggests, is the story of how Ted meets the eponymous mother... only it's been eight seasons and he's still building up to the point where he meets her.
Theatre
- In George Bernard Shaw's original Pygmalion (the basis for the musical and film My Fair Lady), Eliza Doolittle and Henry Higgins didn't end up together. Instead, she married Freddy Eynsford-Hill. Fans kept interpreting Eliza's and Henry's relationship as romantic (even up to the point where the entire ending was changed for My Fair Lady), even when Shaw wrote an essay about why it was impossible for Eliza and Henry to end up together.
Video Games
- Cloud Strife and Aerith Gainsborough in Final Fantasy VII. Wannabe mercenary boy meets gentle flower girl, they set off to save the world and maybe fall in love on the way, then the girl dies and it devastates the boy, and then the girl saves the world posthumously anyway.
- Silent Hill 2:
- There is something to the trope with James and Maria in one ending. Boy mourns over dead wife. Boy meets girl who reminds him of wife. Boy protects girl from town full of monsters. Girl wants to get into boy's pants. Girl is actually a hallucination created from the guilt James has for Mercy Killing his wife who wants to trap him forever in his delusion. Girl then goes One-Winged Angel and boy repeatedly shoots girl.
- Depending on how you play the game, James had different reasons for killing Mary, from euthanasia to being exhausted from dealing with her illness so long to a little of both. There's even an ending where boy and girl leave Silent Hill together but the game hints that it won't end any better this time.
- In Xenosaga, played with and subverted between Shion and Kevin: Shion meets Kevin as a child; he dislikes her simple and naive attitude, and she's too young to have an opinion of him. Eventually, Kevin learns to love Shion, and they have a budding relationship together as two scientists and two lovers. But then, Kevin dies. Finally, in Episode III, Shion finds Kevin again, and he's become immortal. She finds she cannot be with him anymore because of the implications it would bring and decides to go with Allen Ridgely, who has had a crush on her for the entire series but Cannot Spit It Out until he tries to win her back from Kevin.
Western Animation
- The Legend of Korra: Girl meets boy. Boy gets hit by the moped of another girl and starts dating her. Main girl kisses boy and then boy struggles with emotionally cheating on other girl. 2nd girl breaks up with boy. Boy dates girl. Girl and boy get into arguments constantly. Girl and boy breaks up. Girl loses memory. Boy gets back together with other girl. Girl forgets breakup and boy doesn't tell her. Girl finally remembers and breaks up a 2nd time. Girl and other girl become good friends over the whole incident. Girl and girl fall in love.
Inversions
Literature
- This Discworld quote:
"The Disc's greatest lovers were undoubtedly Mellius and Gretelina, whose pure, passionate and soul searing affair would have scorched the pages of History if they had not, because of some unexplained quirk of fate, been born two hundred years apart on different continents."
- In Connie Willis' To Say Nothing of the Dog, Boy meets girl, but it's the wrong boy and girl, thanks to a mis-aimed time traveler.
Live-Action TV
- There is the old story: boy doesn't meet girl. The British dramedy Love Soup is all about this. It has two protagonists, Alice Chenery and Gil Raymond, who the audience knows would perfect for each other were it not for the small issue that they've never met. The situation is mined for all the near-misses and coincidences it can.
Music
- One could interpret The Beatles classic "Eleanor Rigby" in this light as well—although in this particular case, both parties are probably up in years. Still tragic, though...
- The music video for Fountains of Wayne's "Someone To Love" is another boy doesn't meet girl situation.
- The They Might Be Giants song "Ana Ng" is as well. The reason given is that the eponymous girl is on the other side of the world.
Webcomics
- Matt and Gilly from Dork Tower are achingly perfect for each other. Both gamers, both comic book fans, both cosplayers, both from the same town in Wisconsin. Too bad Matt keeps salvaging his relationship with his gamer-hating girlfriend and Gilly doesn't know he exists.