History HonorBeforeReason / AnimeAndManga

* Though she knows she can't do it for everybody (and this fact does cost her quite a bit of her happiness), [[{{Mai-HiME}} Mai Tokiha]] possesses an unshakable desire to protect her friends and her brother. She even wanted to find it in her heart to forgive a pair of her ''enemies'' (who wanted to turn her school into a pile of smoldering rubble), because she saw them happily singing together in a park one day and figured that even they deserved a chance at happiness.

* Johan/Jessie from ''YuGiOhGX'' refuses to use cards that destroy opponent monsters with effects, claiming that such a strategy is too simple and boring.

*** Al only concedes to use the Stone because he's helping to save humanity, not himself. Ed did try to shoot Envy, but the gun was clogged by blood. Also, these examples are fairly reasonable. What really doesn't make sense is the finale, where he actually is offered a chance to fix anything that really won't cost anyone anything in the long run, because [[spoiler: Hohenheim was dying anyway]] and he turns it down. Probably a good thing, though, because there's a chance that Hohenheim would have ended up [[AndIMustScream stuck in the Gate.]]

* ''YuYuHakusho'': [[TheLancer Kazuma]] [[RatedMForManly Kuwabara]] is pretty much the embodiment of this trope. He [[HotBlooded loudly]] declines his teammates' offers to keep him from dying, insisting that men fight their own battles, and later, after whupping a kid who nearly killed him and his {{Muggle}} friends, Kuwabara opts to save the kid's life by dragging not only his unconscious body, but the body all three of his friends to a hospital despite sustaining heavy injuries himself.

* In the seventh part of ''JoJosBizarreAdventure'', Steel Ball Run, Ringo Roadagain is determined to make sure that not only is he aware of everything that could play a role in a duel; he wants his opponent to be likewise aware. There's actually a good reason for this--those duels are to help purify his spirit of uncertainty. If neither side has an advantage (and before you ask, although Mandom's good at [[GroundhogDayLoop saving Ringo's neck,]] it gives his opponent the same capacity to avoid Ringo's attacks), then he can be sure that his victories were genuinely deserved.
** Josuke Higashikata is the poster child of this trope. In a series where AnyoneCanDie he holds the distinction of having NOT KILLED A SINGLE HUMAN, despite the deaths of people around him, including his grandfather early on! Of course, that's just not taking their life...

* Theoretically this can also be applied to the Dai-Gurren team in ''TengenToppaGurrenLagann'' because they tend to put ''[[BeyondTheImpossible everything]]'' [[HotBlooded before]] [[RuleOfCool reason]]. Viral especially.

* Played straight with Kira Yamato, the protagonist of ''GundamSeed''. He realizes that although stopping one's enemies without murdering them may be difficult, but doing otherwise would breed more hatred and thus not bring an end to war. [[JustifiedTrope Of course,]] [[ImprobableAimingSkills his aim is so good]] [[BeamSpam and his arsenal so large]] [[TheAce that against anything other than a top ace]] [[MartialPacifist the fact that he shoots to disable rather than destroy]] [[OneManArmy really makes no difference at all.]]

** Both these instances can be traced back to Judau Ashta from ''GundamZZ'' who began acting like this about the same time they touched down on Earth and the show started GrowingTheBeard, simply because he couldn't handle any more death. Sometimes it actually worked, such as with Masai and Puru 2. However, it usually failed miserably (the death of the entire Blue Team, Rommel, [[spoiler:Chara Soon]], and Haman). At the end of the series, having born witness to the Federation dragging its heels before mobilizing a fleet to defeat Neo Zeon and showing up after the battle was over, he was at the breaking point. To let him blow off steam, Bright let Judau deck him in the face... [[CrowningMomentOfAwesome something awesome for both of them.]]
** In ''GundamWing'', Wufei tracks down Treize Khushrenada in an attempt to kill him to prevent him from taking control of the Earth Sphere Alliance. However, instead of blowing Treize to smithereens with his Gundam, Wufei accepts a challenge to a sword duel from Treize which he loses. Treize reciprocates Wufei's earlier gesture of honor and allows him to leave in his Gundam rather than seizing the state-of-the-art machine for study or reverse-engineering. Wufei departs--again passing up the perfectly good chance to eliminate the would-be dictator with superior firepower.

** In ''Gundam 00'', Graham Aker is the embodiment of this trope. "Sounds reasonable! Too bad I'm an unreasonable man!!!".

* Chibodee and George in ''GGundam'' both lose their rematch to Domon because they showed their attacks to him beforehand, and he was able to learn moves to counter them.

* In the seventh part of ''[=~JoJo's Bizarre Adventure~=]'', Steel Ball Run, Ringo Roadagain is determined to make sure that not only is he aware of everything that could play a role in a duel; he wants his opponent to be likewise aware. There's actually a good reason for this--those duels are to help purify his spirit of uncertainty. If neither side has an advantage (and before you ask, although Mandom's good at [[GroundhogDayLoop saving Ringo's neck,]] it gives his opponent the same capacity to avoid Ringo's attacks), then he can be sure that his victories were genuinely deserved.

* ''Pokemon Chronicles'' was a SpinOff of the original anime where each episode provided ADayInTheLimelight moments to many of the show's secondary characters. One episode centred around Ash's friendly rival Richie, who met an older trainer named Silver who dreamed of catching a Moltres. Unfortunately, Team Rocket tried to kidnap the Moltres, and Richie and Silver had to team up to rescue it. They succeeded, but Moltres was injured and exhausted from what Team Rocket did to it. Silver knew he could have captured Moltres easily but he chose to let it go. He wanted to [[EarnYourHappyEnding catch Moltres fairly]], beating it in an honest fight.

* ''[=~Ranma ½~=]'' would be considerably less funny [[PillarsOfMoralCharacter without this]]. It also would've been much much shorter.

** Nodoka Saotome and her {{Seppuku}} pledge is a rather darkly humorous take on this, seeing as how the so-called "pledge" is ambiguous as all hell. While the series' heavy reliance on RuleOfFunny ultimately leaves the audience [[LikeYouWouldReallyDoIt too skeptical to believe the threat would ever REALLY be carried out,]] all the evidence in the series is that, if Ranma thought he had sufficiently disappointed his mother, ''he would go through with it''.

* Despite the carnage that inevitably occurs around him, and his superhuman skill with a gun, Vash the Stampede from ''{{Trigun}}'' is absolutely determined never to kill anyone. This puts him in increasingly tighter positions as the series progresses, [[spoiler:until he has to choose between killing a villain with his own gun or allowing his friends to be killed. He shoots. Or maybe the villain forced Vash to shoot him with his mind control powers. It's plausible that he would rather just force Vash to kill him than see Vash maintain his no killing rule (even though it would have caused Vash great suffering from guilt). Vash himself might not even know which happened.]]

** More importantly is the way he always insists on doing the killing the 'honourable' way, in a one-on-one duel. Said man, who is more experienced, skilled at playing the younger man as a two-cent kazoo and far more TheCombatPragmatist [[spoiler:(and once was in the same position as Thorfinn; he assassinated his victim in his bed after spending two years worming himself into his graces)]], considers Thorfinn's methods to be a major case of WhatAnIdiot.

** This seems to be the battle mantra of Squad 11: if your weapon is not a direct attack type, we don't want you, no matter how powerful you are. Also, Ikkaku and Yumichika stayed in their 3rd and 5th seated positions because they wanted to die under their commander. Both of them hide their true power, even when the fate of the world may be at stake, in order to do this. [[spoiler:Yumichika]] gets lucky when his opponent uses an attack that [[spoiler:makes him impossible to see and completely hides all traces of his Reiatsu.]] [[spoiler:Ikkaku]] doesn't, losing the battle and [[WhatTheHellHero getting called out for it]] by [[spoiler:Iba]], who more reasonably believes that winning, [[TheCombatPragmatist however you must do it]], is what matters for the 13 Court Guard Squads.

** Prior to a certain event near the end of the first series ([[spoiler: Euphie's death]]), Suzaku follows this trope pretty closely despite working for the [[TheEmpire evil empire]]. He refuses to shoot his friend even when threatened with being shot himself if he doesn't, he stops pursuing his target in order to save endangered civilians, he always gives his targets a chance to surrender (even after [[ThisIsPersonal things get pesonal]]), and basically has to live as a TechnicalPacifist who's involved in killing tons of people. He also regularly risks himself to save others (although this is partially because he's a [[spoiler: DeathSeeker]]).

* Jin from ''SamuraiChamploo''. A running plot-line of the series is the fact that his fellow disciples are trying to avenge the death of their master by killing Jin. Actually [[spoiler: Jin's Master was forced to kill Jin during the night by the BigBad because of Jin's defiance against an assassin school. Jin merely killed him in self-defense. If Jin simply told the others this, it would save him a lot of trouble. It would also disgrace the name of their master so he takes full blame]]

* Combat Pragmatist and shameless user of dirty tactics Kyoraku saves Love and Rose from Starrk and, when they complain, states that captains can't afford to be concerned with concepts like honour when things get dangerous. A contrast to Ukitake's painfully straight use of the trope regarding Kaien, although even his view has been hypocritically called into question by his actions against Starrk. OTOH, Ukitake was in part respecting Kaien's wishes, and Kyoraku thinks the idea of 'honour' to be something captains can't indulge in.

* Combat Pragmatist and shameless user of dirty tactics Kyoraku saves Love and Rose from Starrk and, when they complain, states that captains can't afford to be concerned with concepts like honour when things get dangerous. A contrast to Ukitake's painfully straight use of the trope regarding Kaien, although even his view has been hypocritically called into question by his actions against Starrk.

** This seems to be the battle mantra of Squad 11: if your weapon is not a direct attack type, we don't want you, no matter how powerful you are. Also, Ikkaku and Yumichika stayed in their 3rd and 5th seated positions because they wanted to die under their commander. Both of them hide their true power, even when the fate of the world may be at stake, in order to do this. [[spoiler:Yumichika gets lucky when his opponent uses an attack that makes him impossible to see. Ikkaku doesn't, losing the battle]] and [[WhatTheHellHero getting called out for it]] by Iba, who more reasonably believes that winning, [[TheCombatPragmatist however you must do it]], is what matters for the 13 Court Guard Squads.]]