Manny (Ice Age)

Manfred, known more commonly as Manny, is the main protagonist of Ice Age, Ice Age: The Meltdown, Ice Age: Continental Drift and Ice Age: Collision Course, and the tritagonist of Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs. He is a mammoth that led a herd of different animals brought together after various adventures and experiences. In the first film, he was cranky, ill-tempered, wrathful, grouchy, grumpy, angry and stubborn, but at the end, he becomes kind, selfless, heroic, kind-hearted, nice and sweet. Once a devoted father and husband, Manfred loved his wife and child dearly, protecting them well until a band of humans on the hunt came between them. Manny attempted to fend them off but was unsuccessful as his wife and child were killed. This left Manny embittered with the world at large, being cold and indifferent towards other creatures.

Manny, however, met a ground sloth named Sid one summer, who insisted on staying close to him after he saved him from an attack brought on by two rhinos. Sid found a human baby named Roshan, who was separated from his tribe, and Manny, along with a Saber-tooth Tiger named Diego, helped him to return the baby to his tribe. Despite Diego's duplicity, Manny forgave him and formed a herd with both the saber and the sloth, heading south.

Soon after, Manny and his herd made their home in a valley that was surrounded by ice, which was due to flood as the immense amounts of surrounding ice were hastily melting with the spring. With this, Manny and his herd led the other herds of animals to safety, though throughout that time, Manny grew uneasy, thinking that he perhaps was the last mammoth alive. This changed when he met a female mammoth named Ellie, who believed she was a possum, along with her adoptive brothers Crash and Eddie. Manny led these three to safety as well, initially with the intent of choosing Ellie as a mate to spark the mammoth population. Soon after, however, the flood ended and mammoths made their presence known as they marched through the valley. Regardless, Manny and Ellie stayed together, taking Sid, Diego, Crash and Eddie with them as part of their herd.

Some time later, Manny and Ellie were expecting a child of their own, and Manny grew uneasy with his status as a father. Manny grew protective of Ellie and was forced to deal with Sid's disappearance as he was abducted by a tyrannosaurus named Momma, whose eggs Sid unknowingly abducted in the hopes of having his own family. Braving the perils of the underground dinosaur world where Sid was taken with the help of a weasel named Buck, Manny returned to the surface with his herd and his newborn daughter, a mammoth calf named Peaches.

Years later, Manny grew more concerned with his family: Peaches was growing up fast and he became more and more uneasy with her social interactions with boys. The continental divides, however, separated Manny from his family for a time, pushing him, Sid, Diego and Sid's irritable grandmother Granny out to sea on an ice floe. Manny, while at sea, encountered a group of animals that declared themselves pirates atop an iceberg ship: the pirate captain, an ape named Gutt, declared revenge on Manny and sought him out, only to be vanquished. Manny soon after led the other herds of animals, who had been driven out of their homes by the continent divides, to a new home across the seas.

Further into the future, with his daughter all grown up, Manny once again became concerned with, not only Peaches marrying her fiance, Julian, but also with his daughter moving away. Much more to his displeasure, he ended up forgetting his anniversary with Ellie, as his "surprise" gift of fireworks, turned out to be a meteor shower, which had forced Manny and his herd to take cover. Manny and the herd were then able to reunite with their old friend Buck, who came to explain to them that they had to prevent an asteroid from colliding with the earth, setting off on another journey. They reached a crash site called Geotopia, where they were able to to the utopia's crystals to successfully divert the asteroid. Afterwards, at Peaches' wedding, Manny was able to accept Julian as his son-in-law, as well as Peaches' decision of moving away on her own.