Line #19 TheSmurfettePrinciple/AnimeAndManga


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12	TheSmurfettePrinciple in anime and manga.
13	----
14	* ''Anime/{{Albegas}}'': The Dellinger military is all-male except Mirror Zero, who works as a spy-slash-assassin and gathers information for their plans. She's a DarkActionGirl in her own right, but often treated like a ButtMonkey by everyone around her.
15	* ''Manga/AnimalCrossingNewHorizonsDesertedIslandDiary'': The main four humans of the manga are Coroyuki, Benben, Himepoyo, and Guchan. Himepoyo is the girl of the group.
16	* ''Manga/AttackOnTitan'', the absolute majority of Titans look like deformed human males, regardless of the gender of the people from which they have transformed (e.g. the Smiling Titan transformed from Dina Fritz). There are only 2 known Titans with female forms: the Founder Ymir, and the Female Titan (currently controlled by Annie Leonhart). In fact, before Ymir's Titan was revealed, Annie's was the only one, hence the descriptive name "Female Titan" (女型の巨人, literally "Female-Formed Titan").
17	* ''Anime/{{Bakugan}}'' starts off as gender-equal in the first season, but starting from the second season, this trope is played straight, with only one girl in a team of six. Mira in New Vestroia, Fabia in Gundalian Invaders and Paige in the first half of Mechtanium Surge are the only girls in the team.
18	* Quite standard in the Battle Spirits franchise.
19	** In ''Anime/BattleSpiritsShonenToppaBashin'', while the main team averts this by being split 50/50, the enemy team, Numbers Elite, has Number Eight as the lone female member.
20	** In ''Anime/BattleSpiritsShonenGekihaDan'', Mai is the sole female Bearer of Core's Light. [[spoiler: Kajitsu is thought to be the green one at first, but it's revealed that she actually bears Mother Core's light, which is a special case.]]
21	** In ''Anime/BattleSpiritsSwordEyes'', the Sword Eyes of Light and Darkness each have one female member (Kizakura and Amarello, respectively).
22	** Taken to the biggest extreme in ''Battle Spirits Double Drive'', which has only one female character in the whole series who battles.
23	* Casca is the only woman in the Band of the Hawk from ''Manga/{{Berserk}}'' and mainly serves as Griffith's NumberTwo. She's quite respected by pretty much the entire band, at least some of whom refer to her as "anego" (sister). In time, she becomes the {{Love Interest\|s}} of Guts. When the Eclipse goes down, [[spoiler:she becomes the victim of a horrific BreakTheCutie ordeal, culminating in her rape at the hands of Femto right in front of Guts]]. Two years after the horror, she and Guts form the core of a new group of TrueCompanions later on, which is [[GenderEqualEnsemble evenly split between]] four guys (Guts, Serpico, Isidro and Puck) and four girls (herself, Farnese, Schierke and Evarella).
24	** Slan is the only female out of the five God Hand members and the only truly human-looking one to boot, albeit winged [[SuccubiAndIncubi naked Succubus]].
25	* ''Franchise/{{Beyblade}}'':
26	** In ''Anime/BakutenShootBeyblade'', a team either has one girl or no girls. There is one team that is girls-only, the Ming-Ming Band, but that's on a technicality because while they do beyblade, they're first and foremost a band. Their best blader by far, Ming-Ming, only blades as part of the Justice 5, of which she is the only female member.
27	** The BBA are joined by Hiromi in the second season, but not as a beyblader. Half the promotional material doesn't feature her.
28	** ''Team Psychic'' has multiple groups within it, but still only one female beyblader.
29	** Courtesy of ''[[VideoGame/BakutenShootBeybladeGBA Bakuten Shoot Beyblade 2002 - Gekisen! Team Battle!!]]'', Team Amō is the only GenderEqualEnsemble of ''Bakuten Shoot Beyblade''. The reason is that bladers are grouped as teams of four and which bladers you can recruit depends on which version of the game you have. So, each version has its own boy/girl set of Team Amō to recruit.
30	** ''Anime/BeybladeMetalFusion'' pulled the principle too until ''Anime/BeybladeShogunSteel''. Two of the six main characters there are girls and one of them on occasion has her mentor over, who is also female. But other than that group, it's one girl or no girls.
31	** ''Anime/BeybladeBurst'' again averts the trope only for the protagonist team, BC Sol in this case. However, it's a strong example of TwoGirlsToATeam, because of the ten members two are girls.
32	* ''Manga/{{Bleach}}'' has a massive cast, and among the many {{ensembles}}, only the Espada and Privaron Espada include only one female member in a team of many male members.
33	* ''Manga/Classi9'' is set in an [[OneGenderSchool all boys school]] and the main character, Ren, is the only girl to appear more than twice in the manga, save for the regular fangirls. It gets worse, because Ren has to [[SweetPollyOliver crossdress]] to keep studying in Melite, so as far as the rest of the school is concerned the manga enters the ChromosomeCasting territory.
34	* In ''Manga/DeathNote'':
35	** Out of the many {{Shinigami}} to appear in the story, only Rem was revealed as explicitly female. Due to their unusual shapes, explicit declarations of male/female would be needed to determine genders, but enough others were declared male that it's easy to assume if the gender wasn't explicit, it was male, making Rem the only female {{Shinigami}} in the whole universe. Rem is also most seen with Misa Amane which is fitting.
36	** The human cast is predominately male, due to the focus on detectives or high-ranking businesspeople, which are predominantly male groups in real-life Japan. In the Kira Task Force for the Live Action Film, where WordOfGod states that one female (Misa Amane) was added simply to avoid an all male team like in the anime.
37	** Wammy's house had many gifted students, but apparently only one named ''female'' student, Linda, who appears very briefly in the manga and not at all in the anime series. [[note]]She ''might'' be in the anime CompilationMovie ''Death Note Relight 2: L's Successors''; the character she's supposed to be is officially unnamed.[[/note]] Wammy's house ''does'' have other girls in it, but none of them have any NominalImportance or characterization, they're just extras.
38	* In ''Manga/DeliciousInDungeon'', Marcille is the only female member of Team Touden (after Falin is eaten by the Red Dragon and Namari leaves, both in the first chapter) [[spoiler: until Falin is saved and, later on, Izutsumi joins the party.]]
39	* In ''Manga/DetectiveSchoolQ'', Minami Megumi is the only female student in the five-person Q-class, and her role is mostly limited to memorising and recollecting scenes with her photographic memory.
40	* Among the six Digimon that accompanies their Digidestined in ''Anime/DigimonAdventure02'', only one is female (Gatomon).
41	* In ''Anime/DigimonTamers'', out of the 10 main and supporting Digimon, Renamon is the only female, though Lopmon is female in the [[ShesAManInJapan English dub]].
42	* ''Anime/DigimonFrontier'' had an evil team of five digimon, as well as a good team of five digidestined (heroic humans) and five digimon. In each of the three groups, only one character was female.
43	* ''Anime/DigimonXrosWarsTheYoungHuntersWhoLeaptThroughTime'' has 6 hunters as the main characters (3 of them only appear sporadically including the lone female) in which only one amongst them is female (Airu Suzaki).
44	* ''Anime/DigimonUniverseAppMonsters'', out of the five protagonists, only one is female (Eri).
45	* It's always painfully obvious that Shizuka is the Smurfette of the ''Manga/{{Doraemon}}'' gang, especially in the "long stories" (''daichouhen''). And judging by how many panties/naked shots of her there are, she's also the InnocentFanserviceGirl.
46	* In ''Anime/DragonBallSuper'':
47	** Among the 12 Gods of Destruction, eleven are male and only Helles is female.
48	** Android 18 is the only female member out of the ten Universe 7 fighters chosen for the Universal tournament.
49	* ''Manga/Eyeshield21'' is about high school boys playing American Football. The only position a female student can have is the manager position. Unusually, as long as a team has a manager, that position is filled by a girl. Later on, the protagonist team is joined by a second girl; a prominent and active cheerleader. This moves the Devil Bats to a TwoGirlsToATeam example.
50	* In ''Manga/FairyTail'':
51	** Most guilds, especially the Dark Guilds and {{Quirky Miniboss Squad}}s, have just one [[TwoGirlsToATeam (to two)]] female members.
52	** Of the [[ArcNumber seven]] Dragon Slayers introduced, [[BlowYouAway Wendy]] is the only girl.
53	* ''Manga/FistOfTheNorthStar'' only had one female fighter in the manga and that was the village guardian Mamiya.
54	* In ''Manga/FullmetalAlchemist'':
55	** Riza Hawkeye is the only woman in Roy Mustang's group of Amestris Military, which consists of roughly eight men.
56	** Amoung the four known generals of the Amestris Military, Olivier Mira Armstrong is the only female, and her staff consists of only men.
57	** Among the... let's say seven... homunculi, Lust is the only female (though Envy is genderless according to WordOfGod).
58	* In ''Manga/GhostInTheShell'', the only woman in Sector 9 is Major Motoko Kusanagi, and she is TheLeader of seven men, not counting Tachikomas. Justified due to the fact that, while speculative fiction, it preserves the country's real world issues. Sexism in the government is dealt with explicitly in the adaption, ''Anime/GhostInTheShellStandAloneComplex'', and is a major catalyst for many of the political issues encountered later. Given this attitude, it's not unthinkable that an Elite government operations unit would have difficulty maintaining women not hyper-competent.
59	* ''Anime/JewelpetKiraDeco'': Pink is the only girl in the [[FiveManBand Kira Deco 5]], though there are several compensations for this; she's the protagonist, the scientist who recruited the Kira Deco 5 members is a woman, and the 5 Jewelpets who become partners to the team are all female.
60	* ''Manga/JoJosBizarreAdventure'':
61	** Trish Una from ''Manga/GoldenWind'' is not only the only female member of Team Bucciarati, but also the ''only named female'' in the entirety of the Part.
62	** Jolyne Cujoh from ''Manga/StoneOcean'' holds the title of being the only female [=JoJo=].
63	* ''Manga/JujutsuKaisen'' has Nobara Kugisaki, the only heroine in the group of main protagonists.
64	* The anime and manga adaptations of ''VideoGame/LaCordaDOro'': ''La Corda d'Oro Blue Sky'' has Kanade as the only female in a group of twelve guys, and is the only female in her performing group.
65	* While there are many female characters in the main and supporting cast of ''Literature/LogHorizon'', there is only one female member (Marielle of the Crescent Moon Alliance) out of the 11 members in the Round Table Council, the player-run government of Akihabara. This is a result of the major guilds in Akihabara mostly having male guild masters.
66	* In the ''Franchise/LupinIII'' franchise, there are five recurring characters, and Fujiko is the only recurring female character. Even ''she'' was originally only a series of several one-shot characters, as a {{homage}} to ''Film/JamesBond''.
67	* ''Anime/MazingerZ'':
68	** Sayaka Yumi is the only female (with 8 guys) at the Photon Lab Institute.
69	** The six villains under Dr. Hell are all male. Baron Ashura is also female. Or half-male and half-female. Cyborgs.
70	* In-universe example from ''Anime/MobileSuitGundamIronBloodedOrphans'': while there are plenty of female characters for the Tekkadan and Turbines, this is not the case for Gjallarhorn, Carta Issue is exceptionally the ''only'' female soldier in the entire organisation thanks to being born in [[BlueBlood House Issue]], the largest family of the Seven Star, other than Carta, Gjallarhorn is run by exclusively males.
71	* The director of ''Anime/MyHime'' claimed in an interview that he deliberately wanted to invert this trope. Indeed, the important male cast is considerably smaller than that of the female cast.
72	* ''Manga/{{Naruto}}'' mostly utilizes teams of 3, following TwoGuysAndAGirl most of the time, but {{ensembles}} of five or more also exist with single female examples:
73	** There is one female among the five Konoha Jonin sensei, Kurenai.
74	** There is one female among the Sound Five, Tayuya.
75	** There is only one female among the thirteen Akatsuki, Konan.
76	** So far, Konohagakure and Kirigakure have one female Kage each in their history: Tsunade, the 5th Hokage, and Mei Terumi, the 5th Mizukage. They are part of a generation, however, which prevents the Kage Summit and the Ninja Alliance from being led by a group of this trope. [[spoiler:As shown below, Iwagakure eventually also ends up with one female Kage: Kurotsuchi.]]
77	** [[spoiler:The epilogue reveals that there is currently only a single female Kage. The four male Kages are Naruto the 7th Hokage, Gaara the 5th Kazekage, Darui the 5th Raikage, and Choujuurou the 6th Mizukage. The female Kage is Kurotsuchi the 4th Tsuchikage.]]
78	* ''Manga/KurokosBasketball'': Riko Aida is the only female of the Seirin High school Basketball Team. This is rare for a [[GamingAndSportsAnimeAndManga shonen spokon manga]] due to biological reasons along with a Main/BishonenJumpSyndrome cast. All this is justified with her [[ItMakesSenseInContext being the coach of the team]].
79	* ''Manga/MoriartyThePatriot'':
80	** Miss Moneypenny is the only woman on William's team in [=MI6=].
81	** Miss Hudson is generally the only woman on Sherlock's team who does anything--Mary Morstan only shows up extremely rarely and is never involved in cases or the aware of them the way Hudson often is.
82	* ''Manga/MyHeroAcademia'':
83	** Nejire is the only girl of the Big Three.
84	** Himiko Toga is the sole female member of the League of Villains after [[spoiler:Magne, a male to female transgender person, is killed by Overhaul]].
85	** Chitose "Curious" Kizuki is the only female member of the Meta Liberation Army's leadership.
86	** The aptly-named Woman, one of Dr. Garaki's [[EliteMooks High-End]] [[FrankensteinsMonster Nomus]].
87	* ''Manga/OnePiece'':
88	** Luffy's crew, the Straw Hats, begin at five members, including Nami, their navigator. After East Blue, they add four more members, [[TwoGirlsToATeam including another female,]] Nico Robin.
89	** One of the twenty members of Trafalgar Law's crew is female, Ikkaku.
90	** One of the eleven Supernovas is female, "Big Eater" Jewelry Bonney.
91	** One of the "Seven" Warlords of the Sea is female; "Pirate Empress" Boa Hancock. The membership of the Warlords changes throughout the series [[spoiler:until the World Government finally dissolves the Warlords system]], but Hancock remains the only woman.
92	** One of the Whitebeard Pirates was female, "Ice Witch" Whitey Bay[[note]]another woman, Toki, briefly joined in the interim[[/note]], until Bay became the captain of her own pirate crew (still subservient to Whitebeard).
93	** One of the Four Emperors is female, "Big Mom" Charlotte Linlin. [[spoiler:As with the warlords, the roster shifts radically later in the series yet Big Mom remains the only woman in known history to hold the title.]]
94	* ''Roleplay/RecordOfLodossWar'':
95	** The novels start with a typical fantasy adventuring group of six, which is mostly male. The sole female main character is a blond elf named Deedlit (keep in mind that this series was based on an actual TabletopGames campaign played by a bunch of Japanese college fraternity brothers in the late Seventies -- women didn't always fit well into hack'n'slash scenarios).
96	** The sequel ''Chronicles of the Heroic Knight'' averts with a "new generation" of heroes. The party consists of three (or four) male and three female characters.
97	* ''Anime/RedAshGearworld'': The main characters are Beck, Tyger, and Call. Call is the girl. [[spoiler:Then Lucy rejoins.]]
98	* ''Anime/PokemonTheSeries'':
99	** The first example of this was Ash's Bayleef in the Johto saga, the only one from that saga confirmed to be female. His Totodile is confirmed to be male, and the rest of his Johto team is heavily implied to be as well.
100	** The Aipom Ash caught towards the end of the Battle Frontier saga was confirmed female and was the only one on his team. This trope ceased to apply to her once she was traded to Dawn.
101	** During Diamond and Pearl, Brock obtained a Happiny, whose [[OneGenderRace entire species is all female]], and the rest of his team is male.
102	** Ash's [[TwoGirlsToATeam Snivy and Unfezant]] from the Best Wishes saga are the only two Pokémon Ash caught in Unova that are female. His Boldore is heavily implied to be male and the rest of his Unova Pokémon are confirmed as such. Ash regularly rotates his Unova team, but almost always has Snivy in his active party, while Unfezant is usually OutOfFocus and rarely needs to be called on to search for Team Rocket like his other regional birds. In fact, Unfezant was PutOnABus for the rest of the saga once Charizard returned, making Snivy the only female member of Ash's team.
103	** Emolga is the only Pokémon in Iris's team that is female. The other four Pokémon in her team (Axew [[[spoiler: Haxorus as of Journeys saga]]], Excadrill, Dragonite and Gible) are all male.
104	* In ''Manga/Reborn2004'', there is only one female, Chrome Dokuro of the Mist, amongst Tsuna's six Guardians. {{Subverted\|Trope}}, since [[spoiler:the real Mist Guardian is [[MasterOfIllusion Mukuro Rokudo]], and Chrome is a [[SealedBadassInACan vessel for him]]. Meaning instead of one woman, there's half a woman. Less than a woman. The illusion of a woman.]]
105	* In ''Anime/SaintSeiyaOmega'', Aquila Yuna is the only girl among the six Bronze Saints.
106	* ''Anime/ScienceNinjaTeamGatchaman'' (and its various adaptations, including ''Anime/BattleOfThePlanets'' and ''G-Force: Guardians of Space'') has one heroine in a squad of five heroes. Partly justified in that they are fundamentally an elite military unit.
107	* ''Manga/SeraphOfTheEnd'': Subverted in the vampires' case. The first female vampire introduced is Krul Tepes, but later we see other female vampires like Horn Skuld and Chess Belle. However, as the series goes on, Krul remains the only female vampire with both plot significance and character depths.
108	* In ''Anime/ShinkansenHenkeiRoboShinkalion'', out of all the Shinkalion drivers, Miku is the only girl.
109	* ''Anime/SpaceBattleshipYamato'' has -- you guessed it -- one heroine in a crew of eight.
110	* In ''Anime/TomicaHyperRescueDriveHeadKidouKyuukyuuKeisatsu'', Mikoto is the only girl who drives a Drive Head.
111	* In ''Manga/{{Toriko}}'', Lady Chiyo is the only female in the eleven members of Gourmet Corp.
112	* The Fourteen Lances from the backstory of ''Manga/UbelBlatt'' had only one female member, [[GenderBlenderName Gustav]], one of the Lances of Betrayal, although she's not the only female character in the story.
113	* ''Anime/{{Voltron}}'' (''Golion'') has one heroine in a squad of five heroes. Princess Allura originally only joined the team as a replacement after one member of the all-male FiveManBand was killed. Even then, it was over everyone else's objections, and only because they couldn't form the Giant Robot without a fifth member.
114	* Out of the four main characters from ''Anime/YokaiWatchShadowside'', Natsume Amano is the only female.
115	* ''Manga/YuGiOh'':
116	** Anzu is the only female member within Yugi's close circle of friends. Other female characters that become friends with them are more like TheSixthRanger, but they never stick around permanently.
117	** Mai is the only female duelist in Duelist Kingdom, which is one of the reasons why she's the franchise's most iconic ActionGirl.
118	* ''Anime/YuGiOhGX'': Asuka is the only female main character of the ''GX'' cast, as well as the only female Key Guardian during season 1. With the later addition of Rei at the beginning of season 3, it seems like TwoGirlsToATeam, but Rei phases out from the plot so quickly and so many times that she's never around for the important parts of the main story, leaving Asuka as the only prominent female main character.
119	* ''Anime/YuGiOhZexal'':
120	** Droite is the only female member of Dr. Faker's faction.
121	** Merag is the only female member of the Seven Barian Emperors, and the only female Barian, period. This also extends to her Over One-Hundred Number and her Legendary Number, which are also female monsters among mostly male monsters.
122	* ''Anime/YuGiOhArcV'':
123	** Among the nine members of the Lancers, only 1 member is female (Serena). Later additions are also male.
124	** Clear Wing Synchro Dragon is the only female member of the Four Heavenly Dragons. This is however AllInTheManual.
125	* ''Anime/YuGiOhVrains'': [[WaterIsWomanly Aqua]] is the only female Ignis, due to her Origin, Miyu Sugisaki, being the only female victim of the Lost Incident.
126	* ''Manga/WanderingSon'': [[InvertedTrope Inverted]] with Takatsuki. Compared to the [[UsefulNotes/{{Transgender}} trans girls]] this series has (Nitori, Makoto, Yuki), he's the only trans boy out of them. And he's also the only male-identified character of the main cast - the other male characters only have a supporting role.
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Context TheSmurfettePrinciple / AnimeAndManga