Bad People Abuse Animals / Anime & Manga

• Bokurano: Kodama's Establishing Character Moment is to burn a beached crab to death with a sparkler, and he is later shown shooting at a cat with a pellet gun. Said individual's probably the most twisted of the pilots, and deliberately causes massive death and property damage during his battle to give his father opportunities to rebuild.
• The Bush Baby: Arthur, with Tembo and Andrew, crack down on poachers targeting ivory and rhinoceros horns, and protect injured animals for a living. One arc involves Jackie taking down a gang of poachers, with a few of them ending up deported as a consequence for their actions.
• Coffee & Cat: Downplayed. Kon is aghast at the state of the Tachikawas' cats and rushes to groom six months of unbrushed hair off of all of them, clean their bowls, and feed them. The Tachikawas never actually wanted the cats, but in their grandfather's will, he insists that the cats be taken care of. As a result, the Tachikawas don't actually know how to care for them or even their names, showing that the sorry state the cats are in at the beginning of the story is more out of ignorance than malicious neglect.
• A Dog of Flanders (1975): Ensor is an alcoholic man and frequently abuses Pastrache, not even allowing him to drink water. Eventually Patrasche manages to escape from him and reunite with Nello and Jehan, who treat him well.
• Shows up in more than one Doraemon film.
  • Right in the first movie, Doraemon: Nobita's Dinosaur, the Dinosaur Hunters are poachers working for a futuristic billionaire, who hunts and kills stray dinosaurs for sport with a lingering scene in their boss' mansion hideout - filled with taxidermized dinosaurs and gigantic skeletons. They even have an arena to watch dinosaurs maul each other to death, for no reason other than to drive in how evil they are.
  • Sherman and his mooks in Doraemon: Nobita and the Island of Miracles ~Animal Adventure~ have no qualms enslaving animals with electrical collars and use them as steeds.
• Elfen Lied: Tomoo, the orphanage bully who teased Lucy for her horns went as far as to take the puppy she had been taking care of and beat it to death. Shocking considering they're supposed to be seven years old. It doesn't end well for the kids.
• In The Legend of Yuria OVA for Fist of the North Star, when Yuria is being introduced to Ryuuken, her pet puppy starts barking. Jagi, a preteen boy and one of the aforementioned Ryuuken's kids, attempts to kill the puppy in response by stomping it, but the puppy is saved by Jagi's step-brother, Kenshiro, who takes Jagi's stomp in order to protect it before bringing it back to Yuria. Jagi grows up to be a horrific murderer and one of the series's most despicable villains, while Kenshiro grows up to be The Hero who ultimately ends Jagi's life.
• Shou Tucker from Fullmetal Alchemist experiments on animals to create his chimera. That is fine as many alchemists and scientists do experiments on animals... However, part of why he's so atrocious is because his experiments involved combining humans with animals. When he made his second talking chimera, he used his young daughter and their pet dog. Both were Mercy Killed by Scar a few hours later. His first talking chimera used his wife.
• In the manga-only Demon-Revealing Arc of Higurashi: When They Cry, Natsumi has been watching her grandmother steadily undergo Sanity Slippage after the Great Hinamizawa Gas Disaster. However, things really come to a head when she walks in on her grandmother drowning puppies in their bathtub as a sacrifice to protect the family by pacifying Oyashiro. Shortly after, her mom apparently kills the grandmother because she's becoming a menace and destroying their peaceful life in the city. This is later subverted when it's revealed Natsumi is an Unreliable Narrator who murdered her grandmother and parents. Natsumi's grandmother did drown puppies but it's a morally dubious case of superstition rather than outright villainy.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure uses this trope very frequently. Hirohiko Araki is a dog lover himself and uses a villain harming an animal as easy shorthand to show that they're past the Moral Event Horizon.
  • In Part 1, Dio literally kicks a dog (Danny, Jonathan's pet Great Dane) as soon as he arrives at the hero's home, and later burns it alive. After that point, animals, and especially dogs, usually suffer cruel fates to the current villain of the series. A century later, DIO demonstrates his Time Stop to the audience by brutally dismembering a cat and putting the pieces in people's food while planning how to kill Joseph.
  • A notable exception, and a prime example of Contrasting Sequel Antagonist, is the villain Kars in Part 2. He goes out of his way to protect living things that aren't human, as in one scene where he cuts off the arms of a driver to prevent them from running over a dog. This trait goes out the window when Kars gains The Power of Creation as part of ascending to the Ultimate Life Form, which he first tests by making a double of a squirrel that messily devours the original.
  • Lots of examples from Part 3:
    • Rubber Soul, having caught Jotaro in a cable car, takes his time using his Stand Yellow Temperance to crush and devour a pet dog in front of its owners (including a child!) while gloating about how indestructible his Stand is.
    • Mannish Boy uses his Stand, Death 13, to kill a dog in Polnareff's dream. Later, the dog is found dead in the same way, first hinting at the Stand's ability to kill people in their dreams.
    • Even other animals can use this to show their villainy. Case in point: Pet Shop, a bird villain, has its Establishing Character Moment when it pulls a pair of dogs under a gate, decapitates them, and starts to eat them.
    • Although he'd already crossed the Moral Event Horizon at that point by killing Avdol, Vanilla Ice further demonstrates his vileness by brutally kicking Iggy to death.
  • From Part 4:
    • One of the first things we see the Starter Villain Anjuro "Angelo" Katagiri do is bite off a pug dog's face. All because the owner wasn't cleaning up after it.
    • Subverted with Tonio Trussardi. Josuke, sneaking into his kitchen after he suspects something is up with him, sees him feeding one of his meals to a small dog, then grinning like a loon when the dog's intestines explode out and screaming at Josuke when he catches him. Only it turns out the dog's perfectly fine; Tonio's Stand Pearl Jam has the power to cure any ailment, albeit in a visceral manner, and the dog was just suffering from a bad case of diarrhea. He only got mad at Josuke for entering the kitchen without washing his hands.
    • Yoshikage Kira, the eventual Big Bad, made his 'debut' in the past by brutally murdering Reimi Sugimoto and her dog Arnold, the latter by slashing his throat and hanging him on the clothes dryer.
  • Formaggio from Part 5 is introduced trying to pet an angry cat. Eventually, he gets annoyed and stuffs it into a glass bottle by using his Stand, Little Feet, which can shrink things.
  • In Part 6, Lang Rangler throws live rats at Jolyne while fighting her. When they go splat against her cloud suit's helmet, her vision is obscured by the blood.
  • In Part 9, the group is attacked by cats Stand users, but manage to repel them. Later on, after the Joestar group rests to eat, the cats' owner sends a paper bag containing the cats' decapitated heads, both as a way to punish the cats for their failure as well as intimidating the heroes. Then it turns out that the trope was actually inverted: the "heads" were just potatoes masked by the guy's illusion powers, and Paco comes to the conclusion that, since the owner didn't abuse the cats, then he isn't a truly bad person.
• King Hamdo, the psychotic ruler of Hellywood from Now and Then, Here and There, is introduced in the middle of an emotional outburst when a cat interrupts him. Guess what happens to the cat. Go on, guess.
• Lady!!:
  • Thomas repeatedly antagonizes Alexandra, the Brighton's horse, while Mary kicks her cat Queen when she finds her annoying. Lynn feels sorry for Queen and decides to show kindness to her, causing Queen to leave Mary and welcome Lynn as her new owner.
  • Vivian abused her first horse, Andrews, heavily while he was in her custody and wanted to put him down when he wasn't useful for her anymore. It's to the point that merely seeing her triggers a panic attack for him. He gets better thanks to Lynn's encouragement.
  • Vivian was actually based on a character named Sonoko from the manga who was Adapted Out in the anime. Sonoko whipped her horses very frequently, causing Lynn to say that people like her had no place in horse-riding. In return, Sonoko slaps Lynn with her whipping crop, leaving her speechless.
• Lucy-May of the Southern Rainbow: Whenever Mr. Pettywell is in a bad mood, he attacks his dog, Happy. In contrast Lucy May is an All-Loving Hero and her list of Animal Companions include her hamster from England, Mash, her goats Sticky, Pansy, and Soppy, her sheep Snowflake and her dingo Little. Not to mention her various ducks and chickens amongst other animals.
• One Piece:
  • Boa Hancock of the Kuja Tribe has a habit of literally Kicking The Dog (or a cat or a baby seal) whenever she comes across them. She starts as a villain that Luffy opposes, but then becomes infatuated with him after showing his kindness; she still kicks little critters around, though, as she's still a big-name pirate.
  • Van Augur, the marksman of the Blackbeard Pirates and the Evil Counterpart to Usopp is introduced shooting seagulls For the Evulz.
• Pokémon: The Series:
  • One of Ash's rivals Paul was physically and emotionally abusive to his Chimchar, pummeling it with attacks as training while forbidding it from showing any emotion. He isn't exactly a villain but is by far Ash's most antagonistic rival. Eventually, he does see his errors by the end, with the Chimchar he abused defeating him in the Sinnoh League as a fully evolved Infernape.
  • Charmander's original trainer Damian was an abusive boy who told him that he'd come back for him, even when he had no intention of doing so. He didn't even care that Charmander would have died due to his Undying Loyalty causing him to stay on the rock even in a storm.
  • In the Black and White series, we have Pignite's former trainer Shamus. He abuses his Pokemon and is pointed out as being bad.
• In Psycho-Pass 2, the season finale reveals that Tougane was groomed as a child by his mother to be criminally asymptomatic, and one of the first things we see him do in his childhood is murder a puppy.
• In Revolutionary Girl Utena, Nanami ended up drowning her brother Touga's kitten because he was giving it more attention than her. Though not evil per se, she's definitely an antagonist of the Alpha Bitch variety for much of the show and clearly has a number of mental issues (mostly involving her brother) that don't really get addressed until late in the story. Her track record with animals in the present of the show is implied to be Laser-Guided Karma for this incident, as well as a curse put on her by Anthy, a well-known animal lover and frequent victim of Nanami's abuse.
• In the first episode of Sailor Moon, a group of nasty kids were shown viciously beating Luna the Cat and forcibly putting a band-aid on her head. Fortunately for Luna, she is rescued by Usagi, who removes the band-aid that covered Luna's "crescent spot" on her head. This reveals Luna as a magical cat.
• Satou Kashi no Dangan wa Uchinukenai:
  • The troubled (though not outright antagonistic) Mokuzu ends up killing all her school's rabbits, beheading one of them, and stuffing its head in her school bag.
  • Mokuzu's dad beat their dog, to the point where he killed him. This serves as foreshadowing to Mokuzu's own death.
• Spy X Family: Keith Kepler, leader of the nationalistic university student terrorists, plans to release dogs with bombs strapped to them during the middle of a peace summit, and set off the explosives to kill the visiting foreign minister, and other dignitatries, with the hope of restarting the war so that his country can reign supreme. To show how the deep end he is, Keith's even shown kicking a dog inside on his gang's safehouse just for the hell of it.
• In Tokyo Ghoul, Juuzou Suzuya is ostracised by his fellows in the CCG partly because mutilated corpses of small animals, mostly cats, turned up on the CCG Academy grounds while he was a student there. Suzuya had a horrifically abusive upbringing that left him almost unable to have empathy for other living things, and he is certainly violent and creepy. But he was framed. The real culprits were one of the staff, a psychopathic torturer, and another unstable student who was suffering psychotic breaks and disassociation. Suzuya displayed a lack of reaction when found with the bodies which made him ideal to blame instead, and it wasn't investigated very closely out of fear the organisation's reputation would suffer.
• Voltes V: To emphasize his barbarian traits, Prince Heinel takes part in a pagan ritual that involves slitting the throat of a bird and pouring its blood in a cup.
  • Also an offscreen moment of villainy, but remember that Bengal Tiger Beast Knight from the eight episode? Heinel is said to have personally hand-picked the animal itself and hunted it down before eventually mindwashing it to be his loyal Animal Mecha.
• In a flashback of Your Lie in April, Kousei's abusive mom abandoned their pet cat after it scratched him on the hand. Kousei was being harshly trained to be a pianist to abusive degrees and his mother didn't want anything to happen to his hands.

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