Arbitrary Skepticism in Anime and Manga.
- In Ah! My Goddess, Sayoko Mishima starts picking up that Belldandy has supernatural powers, but when Belldandy tells Sayoko that she's a goddess, she doesn't believe her and instead assumes that she's a witch. Why exactly she thinks that a witch is more believable than goddess is anybody's guess.
- Ayakashi Triangle: Lucy Tsukioka/"Lu" believes in aliens, but not in magic or spirits.
- In the Alice in Jails arc of Baccano!, Firo is extremely skeptical when Isaac insists that he met a fairy. This skepticism would be more reasonable if Firo wasn't immortal and not-dating a homunculus. For bonus points, fairies actually do exist in the Baccano! universe (read: Celty).
- In Berserk, when Guts tells Collette's father in volume 1 that he's being chased by a legion of evil spirits, he laughs and says that Guts is safe with him because he's a priest and has God on his side. The appearance of a frightening incubus that night shocks him and he asks if Guts was being serious before, to which Guts says, "You're sayin' you believe in God, but not in evil spirits?"
- Black Butler Anime: Ciel Phantomhive has a demon for a butler, has seen a crazy transgender grim reaper with a chainsaw, met the actual grim reaper, met an angel, has a demon dog living at his house...but believes the old story of the white stag is simply a fairy tale.
- Averted in the manga, where Ciel's opinion on what is and isn't possible seems to be "if my demon butler who cannot lie to me tells me outright that X is real/a myth, I'll believe him." The closest he gets to this trope is when he says that "witches" were just innocent women who were accused of magic for various political reasons (like in real life), but he then follows up by admitting that this is just his opinion, and he pays close attention to Sebastian's input on the topic. Throughout the rest of the arc he remains skeptical of the story he's been told about witches and werewolves, but mostly because Sebastian already told him that werewolves are mythical.
- Bleach: Ghosts? Fine, most of the cast can see them. Heartless monsters that eat ghosts? Again, fine, pick up the BFS and let's go kill something (though Ichigo was skeptical of Hollows and Shinigami despite being able to see ghosts until he actually sees a Hollow). Talking cats? That takes some getting used to. The only cast member who isn't wigged out by Yoruichi on first meeting is Orihime, and that's because she has an overactive imagination. When Ichigo finds out Yoruichi is a person, she even says "Cats don't talk. Use your head a little, Ichigo", implying that she also thinks it's supposed to be impossible and that she's merely an exception due to not being an actual cat.
- Book Girl: The eponymous Book Girl is a supernatural being who feeds on stories. She doesn't believe in ghosts.
- A Certain Magical Index and A Certain Scientific Railgun:
- Touma Kamijou sees esper powers on a regular basis (including being blasted by lightning the previous day) but initially dismisses the idea of magic as nonsense. To him, esper powers at least have a scientific basis.
- Kuroko Shirai dismisses anything she thinks is scientifically impossible or contradictory to the Power Curriculum, including Gemstone espers (people who were born with esper powers instead of training to get them), Level Upper (a strange sound that gives normal people esper powers and enhances esper's existing powers when they listen to it), and Imagine Breaker (Touma's ability to negate other people's powers). She's wrong every time.
- When Mikoto Misaka learns of the existence of magic, she assumes it is an exotic form of esper power. A magician tries to explain some of the basics of magic... only for Mikoto to try to fit it in with a scientific framework, causing the magician to give up.
- In A Certain Scientific Accelerator, Esther openly talks about magic and necromancy, uses Instant Runes, and has a wide suite of spells that can't be explained as a single esper ability. Accelerator is rather confused, but just assumes that she's using historical superstition to strengthen her personal reality.
- It's implied that this is actually a Weirdness Censor subconsciously made by all who go through the Power Curriculum as a way to protect Espers from using magic as the incompatible powers would cause tremendous damage to the user if not outright kill them. Case in point: In Accelerator, all the espers dismiss the talk of necromancy, but the non-esper Yomikawa accepts the idea of magic and creating false souls to animate corpses without too much trouble.
- Allen and Lavi from D.Gray-Man are exorcists who fight akuma on a regular basis and have generally seen a lot of weird stuff, but they refuse to believe in ghosts or vampires.
- Death Note:
- L is willing to believe that Kira uses some sort of psychic power to kill over distance, but completely flips when he first hears about the Shinigamis' existence.
- Averted in the manga when Sidoh picks up the Death Note. Mello, who is unable to see Sidoh at the time, wonders why it's flying, and a member of his gang notes that if it can kill people, it wouldn't be a surprise if it were alive.
- In Digimon Tamers episode five, when discussing strange markings on the school soccer pitch, a random fifth grader states: "Oh come on, there's no such thing as Crop Circles! What it really was was a ghost. And that dinosaur the principal saw? That was a ghost dinosaur."
- Dragon Ball:
- Mr. Satan/Hercule was completely oblivious that the superpowered main characters were stronger than him, thinking it all to be a trick (he doesn't appear to have done the research on Roshi, Tien, and Goku, all of whom were champions of previous editions of the World Martial Arts Tournament that Mr. Satan rose to fame by winning) and later on a dream. Toward the end of the Cell saga, he seems to be trying to convince himself that it's not real. After the Cell saga, it becomes a Kayfabe put up by Goku and his fellows. Mr. Satan ends up bribing Android 18 to throw a fight against him so as to maintain the illusion that he's the strongest. By the end of the series, with, among other things, holding the leash of an ice cream-loving Eldritch Abomination and his beloved daughter marrying the strongest man on the planet, he's fully in the know but helps maintain the Masquerade so as to keep the general population blissfully unaware of the constant danger they're usually in.
- Word of God states a lot of his initial dismissal comes from his master being murdered by Taopaipai/Mercenary Tao when he was still a young student. And given the skills of the Crane School like the Dodonpa and FLIGHT, can you blame him for thinking they’re cheap tricks?
- Mr. Satan/Hercule was completely oblivious that the superpowered main characters were stronger than him, thinking it all to be a trick (he doesn't appear to have done the research on Roshi, Tien, and Goku, all of whom were champions of previous editions of the World Martial Arts Tournament that Mr. Satan rose to fame by winning) and later on a dream. Toward the end of the Cell saga, he seems to be trying to convince himself that it's not real. After the Cell saga, it becomes a Kayfabe put up by Goku and his fellows. Mr. Satan ends up bribing Android 18 to throw a fight against him so as to maintain the illusion that he's the strongest. By the end of the series, with, among other things, holding the leash of an ice cream-loving Eldritch Abomination and his beloved daughter marrying the strongest man on the planet, he's fully in the know but helps maintain the Masquerade so as to keep the general population blissfully unaware of the constant danger they're usually in.
- Dragonball Super: In chapter 88, Trunks insists that as the son of a scientist he doesn't believe in ghosts (mainly because he doesn't want to admit being scared of them). When Goten points out that both their fathers have died and come back with halos over their heads, Trunks insists that's not the same.
- Durarara!!:
- Shinra has it on good authority that werewolves and vampires do exist and is dating a dullahan; nevertheless, he finds the idea of alien abductions, psychic powers or doomsday prophesies to be laughably absurd. He justifies this by claiming that the existence of one previously unknown seemingly supernatural being has no implications regarding unrelated phenomena. Shinra actually does acknowledge the possibility of such paranormal phenomena (he says as much at the end of this
), it's just that it's not exactly productive to respond to your girlfriend's fears that we'll all die in 2012 with, "Yep, we're probably doomed." - The real arbitrary skeptic is probably Izaya, who refuses to believe in any afterlife he can't prove the existence of himself, even though he's on first-name basis with a psychopomp. Subverted later on when he acknowledges that the existence of said psychopomp should teach him to have an open mind.
- Shinra has it on good authority that werewolves and vampires do exist and is dating a dullahan; nevertheless, he finds the idea of alien abductions, psychic powers or doomsday prophesies to be laughably absurd. He justifies this by claiming that the existence of one previously unknown seemingly supernatural being has no implications regarding unrelated phenomena. Shinra actually does acknowledge the possibility of such paranormal phenomena (he says as much at the end of this
- In a crossover between Fairy Tail and The Seven Deadly Sins, Hawk, a talking pig, tells Elizabeth there's no such thing as talking cats, and is shocked when they meet Happy, a talking cat (technically an Exceed, a race of winged talking sapient cats, but still...).
- Fate/kaleid liner PRISMA☆ILLYA: Miyu is a Magical Girl with access to powerful magic. Yet, when Illya demonstrates the ability to fly, Miyu is in utter disbelief and cites several scientific laws about why a human flying is impossible. Because Miyu doesn't believe it is possible, she cannot fly. Later on this goes full Cerebus Retcon, since the real reason she can't fly is because she's too emotionally damaged to think that she should be able to fly.
- This is carried even in Fate/Grand Order, where Miyu in a summer event doesn't believe that ghosts exist... Even though Servants are spiritual beings that require mana to physically manifest, making them super powered ghosts in a way.
- Hell Girl: A client accepts one of Ai's contracts — you pull the red string, and the object of your scorn goes straight to Hell. When Ai explains the price for this service (the one pulling the string also goes to Hell when they die), the client scornfully dismisses the idea that Hell really exists. After Ai magically transported him to her crimson field before they started negotiating.
- Hell Teacher Nube: The eponymous Nube is an exorcist who deals with demons, curses and other spiritual phenomenon, but a lot of the stories begin with him dismissing his student's claim of supernatural sighting as just a dream or rumour, even if they all end up to be real. Usually subverted though. It's not that Nube doesn't believe the claim, but it's usually because the phenomenon his students are worried about aren't actually dangerous, and their fear might actually make it so.
- The Hero Who Returned Remains the Strongest in the Modern World: After eavesdropping on Kaguya and Lela and hearing about their clearly supernatural activities, Daiki initially tries to write this off as chuunibyou despite being sent to another world and gifted with tons of awesome powers himself (in no small part due to his desire to live a normal life). It's not until he comes across an earth spider and Kaguya in action does he take their conversation seriously.
- INVADERS of the ROKUJYOUMA!?: Ghosts? Aliens? Underground civilizations? Sure, why not? But a magical girl? Clearly she's a deluded cosplayer. This is partially because Yurika is inexperienced and botches her magical powers the first few times she tries to demonstrate them to the group, and whenever she does manage to use them, they are never around to see. Koutarou admits that he does not want to believe her because he wanted a fellow normal person in the group. When she finally manages to demonstrate her powers, everyone thinks that she only acquired her powers recently and still will not believe that she always was a magical girl.
- JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
- When Jotaro is told about Dio being a vampire, he thinks he's being BS'd, until Avdol helpfully points out to him that he just got Psychic Powers a few hours ago.
- Likewise, the protagonists dismiss the initial observations of Silver Chariot's afterimages and The Hanged Man with the statements "No user can have more than one Stand" and "It's impossible for a Stand to exist inside of mirrors" respectively, which they announce as though they are ultimate authorities on Stand abilities, despite the fact that Stands keep having new and strange abilities. Ironically, while their dismissals prove true, both "rules" are broken later on - Man in the Mirror explicitly exists within a mirror dimension, Bad Company takes the form of a miniature army (with soldiers, tanks and helicopters), Echoes have multiple forms with distinct separate abilities, and Killer Queen has two sub-Stands (Sheer Heart Attack and Bites The Dust) that can operate independently.note
- The protagonists (with the exception of Kakyoin) also dismiss the idea of a baby having a Stand, despite the fact that not only can children develop Stands (as Polnareff can attest to) but a baby having a Stand is apparently more ludicrous than an orangutan having a Stand, which they'd already encountered at that point. Not to mention that the protagonists had already been established for a while as being Properly Paranoid and immediately suspect any strange activity to be the work of an enemy Stand, but here they dismiss Kakyoin hysterically screaming that a baby they've been escorting is a Stand user as Kakyoin losing his mind.
- In Diamond is Unbreakable: Rohan uses his Heaven's Door ability on Kawajiri Hayato in order to literally read his life as though it were a book. When Rohan starts reading things that haven't happened yet, he has the gall to claim that this is "too odd to be a Stand ability". It is, but it isn't Hayato's.
- In the two-part Kino's Journey episode "Coliseum", Hermes tries to tell Kino that a one-off character's dog can talk. Kino's response is "Stop being such a liar." Kino's a traveler. Just on screen, she's seen practically every crazy thing under the sun. Ignoring all that, she's talking to a talking motorcycle. To make this a little bit weirder, everyone in Kino's world seems to think like this. No one is ever surprised when Hermes talks, but a talking dog? No way. And in an odd example of Schizo Tech, there are plenty of countries with highly advanced technology, including hovercrafts, but apparently no body's ever built a working airplane.
- Yuriko of Kotoura-san runs the "ESP Society" as part of her quest to prove the existence of psychics. Yuriko's mother was clairvoyant, and one of the club members is naturally telepathic. But she dismisses ghosts as ridiculous delusions, and explains the said telepath's ghost sightings as accidental telepathy (sort of like Doing In the Wizard with a different wizard). She's right, but Manabe doesn't hesitate to lampshade how inconsistent this is.
- In The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (1999), Ganondorf is familiar with magical items like the Triforce and the Ocarina of Time, but initially dismisses the prophesied Hero of Time as an "old superstition."
- In one episode of Lupin III (Red Jacket), the gang teams up with the ghost of the Japanese historical figure Kira Yoshinaka. Despite the fact that Fujiko, Goemon and Jigen are all smart enough to realize that Kira really is a ghost, Lupin steadfastly refuses to believe the old man's claims, and consistently dismisses his supernatural feats as mere sleight of hand or advanced technology. The fact that Lupin and his pals encounter explicitly bizarre and supernatural beings multiple times over the course of the franchise's decades-long history (including vampires, aliens, zombies, time travelers, dragons and mermaids) makes it even more bizarre that Lupin apparently chooses to draw the line at the existence of ghosts.
- Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's:
- In the first Megami Sound Stage, Nanoha attempts to see if Fate will believe in Santa Claus. It fails the moment Fate, one of the many mages who can fly on her own, reads his description.
Fate: Also, according to this picture he rides through the sky on a sleigh pulled by reindeer. I don't recall hearing of such an aviation method for small aerial vehicles.
Nanoha: Um...
Fate: This can't be magic, can it? How can this be?- As a meta-example, the show's Headscratchers page has someone question why Gil Graham, who is from England, speaks Japanese fluently enough to have a conversation with Nanoha, even though it makes far more sense for a fellow Earthling to know the language than the characters from the TSAB, who were all speaking it before. And of course, that's not even getting into the whole magic thing, which those same fans have no problem with.
- Played With in Marginal #4's "Re: 24 Hours" (a mystery drama the characters star in, presented as episode 8 of the anime). Yukito (Atom) is a cop whose partner/mentor was killed. He meets a young man (Rui) at the partner's grave who claims to be that partner, kept from the afterlife for 24 hours to help Yukito solve the case. Yukito gives arbitrary skepticism, but ends up believing him. He shouldn't have - the young man isn't a ghost, he's the partner's nephew, pretending to be his uncle's ghost in order to catch the real killer - Yukito himself.
- In Monster Musume, even after meeting Lala the dullahan the girls have a hard time believing that dullahans actually exist and aren't just a myth. Kimihito lampshades this by saying that, as monster girls themselves, they are in no position to talk.
- Nagasarete Airantou:
- Ikuto has been on the island long enough to know that the standard rules don't apply to the island, and indeed has gotten to the point that he can talk to the animals of the island, his usual first reaction to a new oddity of the island is to reject any simple fantastic explanation from anyone else (even from the oddity itself) and instead comes up with his own explanation that's usually even more ridiculous (for example, he thinks that all the ghosts on the island are polar bears). Revealed in chapter 126 to be due to a spell his own family placed on him to prevent him from discovering his sister's supernatural abilities. As of the same chapter, said spell is no longer in effect so his skepticism is gone.
- Ikuto finds himself on the other end of this trope in a later chapter when Ikuto sees an alien and is unable to convince anyone else that it's an alien — they just think it's another talking animal or spirit.
- Negima! Magister Negi Magi:
- Negi cannot convince the other Mages that Chao is from the future, despite the fact that he has a working time machine. They reject the idea on the basis that no-one's ever been able to do it, ignoring the fact that somebody could have figured it out, in the future. You know, where Chao claims she's from. It's like going to 1900 and saying that airplanes are impossible because no one's ever built one. While having a working airplane.
- Humorously, Meta Girl Chisame goes out of her way to deny the existence of magic — even after she obtains magic powers herself. She doesn't accept it until she finally frees herself from the madness, only to realize that her life is now too boring. She then goes along with it, albeit grudgingly.
- Parodied in Nurse Witch Komugi R. Tsukasa bakes sweets for her co-star, whom she has a crush on, and he declares them to be delicious. Tsukasa promptly rushes out of the room and giddily wonders whether she's dreaming... while hugging her Mentor Mascot, a spherical, flying, shape-shifting talking cat. Magical Girls and cursed, monster-summing cards are perfectly believable, but apparently her crush liking her food is entirely out of the realm of possibility.
- One Piece:
- Luffy, whose crew consists of a talking reindeer, a perverted cyborg and a talking skeleton, is amazed that Trafalgar Law has a talking bear in his crew. Whether that's disbelief or just thinking a talking bear is really freaking cool is unclear.
- His doubt may have been because the bear in question was seemingly not a Devil Fruit user, just a bear who walks and talks like a person. The post-timeskip revealed he is part of a group of humanoid animal tribe known as the Minkmen (whose existence was hinted at when looking at the slave prices in Sabaody).
- The entire town of Mock Town. When you're on the Grand Line, which screws up physics and natural law so much that it is bluntly stated that anything is possible on this sea, the notion of an "island in the sky" should not be dismissed, especially when it's true. This is later explained as being a deconstruction as their disbelief in Jaya and the story of the island in the sky comes from their disdain, to put it mildly, in the romanticism of the Pirate Age; laughing at things like dreams and wishes and instead focus on the plunder and materialistic worth of things.
- To be quite honest, Skypiea's existence was small potatoes compared to everything that happened in the series after that point. As if to drive the point further, this was in the first half of the Grand Line, later revealed to be utterly tame by comparison to its second half, the New World. If anything, that further enforces the sheer stupidity of the occupants of Mock Town.
- In the beginning of Thriller Bark, Usopp dismissed the ideas of an invisible man, ghosts and zombies. Each being the cause of his imagination, a weird looking bird and a "under grounders" type of human race respectively. He acknowledges having met a walking talking skeleton a few hours earlier, being the product of a devil fruit, but still dismisses the unusual phenomenon. They all end up being related to devil fruit users.
- When confronted with an undead swordsman who was once said to have slain a dragon in a single blow, Zoro retorts that he doesn't believe in dragons, in spite of all the other bizarre animals he's encountered during his travels. This becomes a straight-up Plot Hole in the anime, as one of the filler arcs that preceded it involves the Straw Hats encountering an actual dragon. For further hilarity, it turns out Zoro is a direct descendant of that very swordsman.
- Luffy, whose crew consists of a talking reindeer, a perverted cyborg and a talking skeleton, is amazed that Trafalgar Law has a talking bear in his crew. Whether that's disbelief or just thinking a talking bear is really freaking cool is unclear.
- Pokémon: The Series: During the Unova arc, Cilan — despite living in a world where Ghost-type Pokemon exist — prefers to take a scientific approach to explaining how supernatural things occur such as a museum exhibit under attack from what turns out to be a very angry Yamask who ends up possessing him. He ends up admitting defeat early on in a later episode after the party end up in a Haunted House and nearly get hit by a flying set of drawers, which he tries to explain as simply being blown by the wind until Iris snaps and yells at him that a mere gust of wind wouldn't budge such a heavy piece of furniture.
- Used humorously by Lisianthus in SHUFFLE! when, worried over being able to pass a test in order to avoid summer school shouts "There is no God or Buddha!" when her father IS God!
- In Tamagotchi, Spacytchi comes from a planet besides Tamagotchi Planet and is surrounded by what would be considered aliens to his home planet as a result, and yet he refuses to believe aliens exist.
- Yu-Gi-Oh!:
- Yu-Gi-Oh!
- In the Orichalcos arc, Rebecca and her grandfather explain what they know about the enemy, which involves Atlantis. Honda/Tristan laughs and calls them crazy. Joey/Jounouchi calls him out on it, reminding everyone about all the crazy adventures they've had so far.
- In the English dub of the series, Seto Kaiba stubbornly refuses to believe in the supernatural abilities of the millennium items and Duel Monsters' and his own mystical ties to ancient Egypt, despite constantly witnessing and occasionally being a victim of them. (By contrast, in the original Japanese series, he had no issue believing in the supernatural, he just thought dealing with it was a pain.)
- Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds: Divine/Sayer, who has psychic powers, says fortune telling and Shadow Games are not real as he is dueling Dark Signer Carly, who has the power to do both.
- Invoked of one episode of Yu-Gi-Oh! SEVENS. Yuga is put in a position where he'll lose by burn damage if he doesn't draw Fusion, a card that's not in his deck. Yuuou mocks him saying that the chances of him drawing Fusion are "zero". Yuga points out that he's dueling a new life form born from a manga and that "the chances of me drawing Fusion have to at least be better than that". Even though Yuga is technically correct, Yuuou's skepticism is justified, because as it turns out "better than that" is still "infinitely approaching 0% probability". The way in which Yuga top decks Fusion is less "the stars align" and more "the universe itself bends to Yuga's will".
- Yu-Gi-Oh!
- Yuuna and the Haunted Hot Springs: Kogarashi's class often witnesses poltergeist activity, but they refuse to believe that he has powers.
