Bears Are Bad News / Anime & Manga

Bears Are Bad News in Anime & Manga.

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• Early on, the eponymous Baki the Grappler has to wrestle a monster bear as Training from Hell.
• Biomega gives us Kozlov, a Russian scientist who had his mind uploaded into a bear. He's also a sniper.
• A case in Case Closed features Conan, Dr. Agasa, the Detective Kids and three hunters dealing with a bear that is on the loose and on a rampage. It turns out they're faced with a literal Mama Bear, who lost one of her cubs to the case's Asshole Victim. When her other cubbie is returned to her, she subverts the trope by immediately calming down and peacefully leaving with her remaining cub.
• At the start of Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, Tanjiro gets home to find that almost all of his family has been killed in his absence. He initially assumes that a bear too hungry to hibernate was responsible, but then it turns out that his younger sister Nezuko had been turned into a demon, which means that the Big Bad Muzan Kibutsuji was the culprit. A late series flashback also shows Tanjiro watching his father Tanjuro decapitate a bear with a hatchet despite being terminally ill, realizing the bear was hungry but saying he had no choice but to protect his family.
• Digimon:
  • The franchise has Grizzmon, an Adult-level grizzly bear. He's appeared twice in different anime series: first in the Digimon Frontier movie as the commander of the Beast Digimon army, and many appear late in Digimon Fusion as a staple Mook species in Apollomon's army. Expanded universe material bills the species as ferocious warriors with honourable spirits. Related is Bearmon, Grizzmon's lesser Child-level incarnation who takes the form of a bear cub, also appearing in the Frontier movie and Xros Wars.
  • Digimon V-Tamer 01: A Wake-Up Call Boss from halfway through the manga's run was Callismon, said to be the product of exposing an aforementioned Grizzmon to a sample of Arcadimon's data. The result was an enormous bear of immense power with a Hand Cannon, providing the first real challenge to Taichi and Zero in a very long time.
• Doraemon: Nobita's Three Visionary Swordsmen has the heroes (their Alternate Self in the dream world, anyway) Nobitania, Giantosu and Sunemisu attacked by a huge bear the size of a horse-carriage in the forest. Subverted when it turns out the bear is the father of a cub Nobitania rescued a day earlier, who quickly comes out and stops the bear from attacking. The bear quickly becomes the heroes' companion afterwards, escorting them long enough until they reach the Dragon's Cavern.
• Dragon Quest: The Adventure of Dai: When Pop and Maam are washed ashore following a Hopeless Boss Fight against Vearn, with Maam passing out from exhaustion after swimming ashore while carrying Pop, whose magic power is entirely spent, Pop wakes up to find a ferocious-looking grizzly bear. Pop is prepared to fight the bear to the death, and the bear raises its claw... only to roar while waving its arm around without attacking, with Chu showing up soon thereafter. It turns out Chu had defeated the bear off-screen earlier, and then sent out the bear to help search for the heroes. Pop is immensely relieved upon discovering this fact.
  Pop: Crazy mouse... you scared me...
• Fruits Basket: While visiting a lake house, Shigure playfully claims its the kind of place where Jason would show up. When Kyo asks who "Jason" is, Shigure messes with him by telling him it's a new species of bear, which Kyo and Tohru are both gullible enough to believe right away. Later, when Tohru, Yuki and Kyo see bear tracks while out on a walk, they all assume the worst, though no bears ever actually show up and Yuki points out that "Jason" isn't actually a kind of bear.
  Yuki: Just so you know, Jason isn't a bear, he's a character from a horror movie.
  Kyo: So there's a bear in a horror movie! What do I care!?
• General Olivier Armstrong's Badass Army in Fullmetal Alchemist is nicknamed the "Briggs Bears". And although she is an adorable baby panda, Shao May has one bite for such a tiny thing.
• In Futakoi Alternative a loan shark walks around with a polar bear for some extra muscle.
• Futari wa Pretty Cure: A Zakenna in Episode 6 possesses a large friendly bear that Nagisa and Honoka encountered earlier.
• The most infamous straight example in anime or manga would be Ginga: Nagareboshi Gin. The primary nemeses are bears. The leader bear, Akakabuto, is an ungodly huge, strong and malicious bear with one eye.
  • The manga of its successor Ginga Densetsu Weed does this too... though later in the series. The main bear they fight is an Akakabuto Expy hybrid bear who kills GB.
  • Ginga: The Last Wars (the final Ginga arc) has a bear become the Big Bad once more: Monsoon, a son of Akakabuto hell-bent on dominating Ohu just as his father tried to do nearly fifteen years ago. Not only is he using his fellow bears as soldiers, but he also starts recruiting dogs too.
• Bears have been among the deadliest things in Golden Kamuy. Of course, they can't take out Sugimoto the Immortal.
• Good Luck! Ninomiya-kun starts with the main character fighting a bear twice his size — and several moments later it shows that his sister has beaten an even larger one.
• One of the most famous scenes in Hajime no Ippo has Takamura fighting against an angry bear to save his own life, after Ippo and the other Kamogawa boxers ran away from it when all of them were training in the mountains. Takamura actually wins against the bear in a hilarious and awesome moment. Despite that, Takamura spares the bear's life after he sees it's actually a Mama Bear with two cubs crying for it. The whole incident leaves Takamura with three giant scars on his chest and gaining him the title "Bear Slayer" after the thing hits the news. It also doubles with the Remember When You Blew Up a Sun? trope, as Takamura never shies away from reminding others that he beat a goddamn bear.
• Bizarrely drawn (and bizarrely voiced...seriously, they emit some kind of screech instead of growling) bears shows up several times in Haré+Guu. Actually, this is counted as normal for this anime.
• Inverted in Haruhi-chan. In one episode, Tsuruya claims that she once defeated a bear.
• Almost played straight in Hayate the Combat Butler, during a school hiking trip, one of the groups is terrorized by a huge bear. Which is then turned into a pet by Isumi.
• Subverted in I Got My Wish and Reincarnated as the Villainess (Last Boss)!. While a bear is causing problems for the locals, Elizabeth quickly kills it because she wants to eat meat for her birthday and to make things easier for everyone else. The scene is strictly used to demonstrate how strong Elizabeth is.
• In Inuyasha, it is played down. Early in the plot, a common bear gets a splinter from the Shikon no Tama, and turns into a giant bear monster. However, Naraku easily defeats him, and finally steals the jewel splinter. In a later episode, Sango fights a bear youkai all by herself. Granted, she is a powerful fighter, but it is still a world in which youkai are usually much more powerful than humans.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
  • Steel Ball Run: In Hot Pants' past, she and her brother got trapped in a cave when a bear attacked them. In a desperate bid to protect herself, Hot Pants accidentally pushed her brother towards the bear and got him killed.
  • JoJolion: Daiya's outfits have a bear motif. However, underneath her cuteness is an analytic and possessive Stand User who can remove and destroy memories on a whim.
• Katri, Girl of the Meadows: Katri's experiences with bears have always been bad, from killing her cows to scaring her when she stumbled upon them by accident. Truth in Television as in rural Finland, rabid bears were a common problem for farmers.
• In Kamen no Maid Guy, after training in the mountains, Naeka feels as though she could take on a bear. She finds herself staring down a growling grizzly moments later, courtesy of Kogarashi. Turns out she's not as ready as she thought.
• A similar incident occurs in Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple. Kenichi, annoyed by his training in the mountains, throws a rock at what he thinks is his eldest master secretly watching him. It turns out to be, you guessed it, a bear. Despite being a fan of How-To books, Kenichi does exactly the wrong things in trying to escape this particular bear.
• While Kinnikuman is training for his match with Warsman, Mari-chan is attacked by a bear and he has to save her. It puts him in the Palo Special, which he counters with a Kinniku Buster.
• In Koihime†Musou's Hot Springs Episode, Rinrin comes across a bear that she thinks is a little cub she raised when she was a kid. It isn't. Cue fleeing from an angry bear.
• Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear features light-hearted examples with the protagonist Yuna wearing what is effectively superpowered, bear-themed onesie pajamas that come with two fluffy, adorable bear familiars, named Kumakyuu and Kumayuru. All three of them are still extremely dangerous with physical or magical attacks, they hand out Curb Stomp Battles to anyone they face, and almost drive the predators around a city to extinction. Apex predators indeed.
• In My Heavenly Hockey Club, the hockey club runs afoul of a bear during a trip in the woods... and it makes a strong connection with Hana. Eventually, they try to teach it to play field hockey so they can use it as a goalie in an upcoming game... but contrary to what they'd hoped, it's immediately noticed to be a bear and carted off, perpetuating the Running Gag of the team never getting to actually play a single game.
• In Naruto, a flashback shows a young Karin being threatened by an almost comically-oversized bear while her teammates are nowhere to be found. Sasuke then comes by and drop-kicks it. There's more of them on the island Killer B trained on including one with an eyepatch. B apparently spends some of his "vacation" time sumo-wrestling them.
• Negima! Magister Negi Magi:
  • The magical world arc takes the Mama Bear to literal levels, having a bear named Mama serve as the Apron Matron in charge of Ako, Akira, and Natsumi. She beats up anyone who dares abuse the girls serving under her.
  • Earlier in the series, Negi along with Ninja Kaede (only he was scared) are chased through the woods by a bear while carrying a giant cookable mushroom.
• One Piece, being as fond of Animal Motifs as it is, of course, has some:
  • The original Seven Warlords of the Sea all have an animal theme. Bartholomew Kuma's is, naturally, a bear. Both times he's appeared to antagonize the Straw Hats, things went south fast for the heroes. However, Kuma can also be a subversion, the first time Kuma appeared Zoro was able to appeal to Kuma's honor to be allowed to sacrifice himself in place of Luffy. In the Sabaody Islands, Kuma's arrival was what saved the Straw Hats, despite initial appearances. Towards the end of the manga, we find out that Kuma is actually Beary Friendly by default. He's only bad news when the lives of his loved ones are on the line or when someone has well and truly earned his retaliation.
  • Kumacy, Perona's giant zombie teddy bear. He shows up in the middle of Usopp's fight with Perona — that's already going pretty badly — and delivers a nasty No-Holds-Barred Beatdown that forces the sniper to take a level in bad ass just to survive it.
  • One of Trafalgar Law's crew members is a polar bear in a jumpsuit named Bepo. It knows kung fu and serves as Law's navigator, but tends to be rather apologetic. He's later revealed to be part of a race of animal humanoids called the Mink Tribe. Bepo's Sulong form is strong enough that he can briefly fend off the likes of Blackbeard.
  • In the flashback to their childhood, Ace has begun caring for Luffy after the later got mauled almost to death by a bear.
  • A Bear Zoan-type Devil Fruit, however, is notably absent. Yet.
• Ōoku: The Inner Chambers starts with a young boy getting mauled by a bear while picking mushrooms in the forest. And then the Redface Pox hits his family and spreads throughout Japan, greatly reducing the male population. Generations later, researchers learn that bears are carriers for the Redface Pox and that hunters protect themselves with age-old traditions.
• The last villain encountered in Oumagadoki Doubutsuen, Shikuma, was cursed by a Bear Spirit like Isana and Shiina. As a result, he's a grotesque half-man half-bear hybrid with huge, clawed paws and a bear muzzle on an otherwise human face. Most notably, he was the toughest enemy ever fought by Shiina, and that includes Isana, a whale man.
• Senri in +Anima. Especially when his eyepatch comes off on a large mountain and he starts attacking everyone. The only way it stopped was by both The Power of Friendship and Cooro putting his Eyepatch of Power back on.
• Pokémon: The Series:
  • Ursaring seem to show up whenever the anime needs a menacing wild Pokémon to put the heroes in danger. Oh yeah, did we mention that Ursarings can fire lasers (Hyper Beam) from their mouths?
  • Subverted — sort of — in an episode of the Pokémon: The Original Series Gold and Silver series. In this case, the bad news came from a Teddiursa, a cute-looking bear cub that stole food and blamed it on other Pokemon. At the end of the episode, it evolved into an Ursaring at which point it could no longer use its cuteness to steal food.
    • Played painfully (and we do mean painful) in one episode where the gang had to pass through a forest with a dozen or so Ursaring in the middle of mating season, with no tolerance for intruders.
  • Paul's Ursaring exemplifies this more than any other specimen on the show. Almost NOTHING can even slow it down, and anything that DOES seemingly work on it invariably ends up making it angry, and consequently stronger. On top of all that it has the ability Guts. When it comes out, there's little Ash can do but gawk in horror as it annihilates his Pokemon.
  • In the Pokémon the Series: Sun & Moon, Team Rocket manages to befriend a wild Bewear. A huge bear that resembles a costumed mascot. Well, "Befriend" isn't the correct term as it seems to be overprotective of them, to the point of being too overprotective. It can tear down entire forests by accident when overexcited, and when actually pissed off it took out an Ultra Beast with zero trouble.
• Sherwood the Monster Princess (not Hime, her sister) from Princess Resurrection has blood-immortal empowered Panda bears as her Servants. They have, for example, ripped to shreds an army of lesser vampires.
• Even Ranma ½ includes an unbearable example. While in the original manga, Ranma fought Cologne on the beach while she summoned a shark to assist her, in the anime, the fight instead takes place in a mountain resort, where in an even more outlandish fashion, she creates an ice sculpture of a bear that she can levitate and use to attack on a whim.
  • When Ranma, Genma, and Soun need to retrieve the scroll of a Dangerous Forbidden Technique from a women's Onsen before Happosai does, they have the bright idea of painting Genma's cursed form (a 7-foot-tall panda bear) to resemble a huge, voracious bear and scare off the women. Unfortunately, the only paint they had on hand was white...
    "Who ever heard of polar bears in Japan?"
    Cue the beatings.
  • In the manga, Ryū Kumon is introduced by soundly beating up an escaped bear that was attacking Nodoka (before Ranma could even intervene).
  • Genma himself turns into a giant panda when wet and was quite the member of the Abusive Parents "club", even from before he was cursed...
• The Ride-On King: The previous mountain lord is a demonic bear, who Purchinov throws down judo-style and makes him obey.
• One of the prominent background members of the Dead Moon Circus in the 90s Sailor Moon series is a blue-skinned ballerina who happens to have a giant, smiling bear head with mismatched eyes that never blink. Her expression never changes.
• Saint Seiya: Some of the training scenes feature fighting bears with their bare hands as a means of showing how dangerous it is.
• Sekirei:
  • The animal avatar that represents Musubi is a bear. Musubi herself is the Determinator type, and the Bear-Fist is one of her attacks.
  • For Minato, Everything's Worse With Bares.
• The Beastmaster Maeda Matsu in the Sengoku Basara anime, in a fit of temper, ultimately calls up a bear to attack her brother-in-law Keiji. Keiji is already making a hasty retreat and the bear attacks Matsu's husband Toshiie instead (though Toshiie comes out of it more or less fine since the whole thing is played for laughs).
• Subverted with Shirokuma Cafe. Shirokuma is the friendly polar bear owner of the titular cafe, Panda is a regular customer who prefers the lazy lifestyle, and even the Badass Biker Grizzly, is a genuinely nice grizzly bear who just has a low tolerance for foolishness.
• Speaking of Arakawa's manga, this trope is played for laughs in Silver Spoon, when a Beware Of Bears sign in the woods makes our hero so nervous that he mistakes an approaching horse for a bear.
  • Later on in the series, while working on the Mikage farm, Hachiken gets lost in the woods, causing the Mikages to panic because of the bears in the area. However, when a bear does turn up, it proves no match for Grandpa Mikage's Car Fu and appetite for yakiniku.
• In Softenni, the girls run into a bear about three times the size of an average human in the mountains. Kurusu not only fights it to a draw (while naked), she lets the bear give the team a ride up the mountain.
• In Tales of Wedding Rings, the party runs into an enormous bear while making their way to Romca. It's a normal animal rather than an Abyss beast, so Satou assumes it's safe to approach. The bear quickly disabuses him of that notion. Cue the party chewing Satou out for his stupidity as they all run for their lives.
• In Tantei Opera Milky Holmes, while searching for a lost girl, Sherlock comes across a bear. She tries to play nice with it, but this is a bear that can uppercut. That the bear knocks her into the sky and off the cliff is a major catalyst for the episode. When Sherlock, Kokoro, and Airi come across that same bear later, it's still almost invincible.
• Tono to Issho: Azai Nagamasa fears that Oda Nobunaga will send a bear in place of his sister Oichi as a wife. He then imagines Oichi as a dominatrix in charge of a bear army.
• The enormous Asian black bear in Unlock City that escapes from the zoo and gets trapped inside the local high school. It ends up slaughtering some of the characters, including one girl that was straight up torn to bits.
• The World Is Mine has an overall bear motif: A giant bear-like creature called Hakumadon is attacking Japan, rampaging through whole towns and turning anyone who encounters it into slurry ("My daughter followed my mother into the woods and they both came back in a bucket!"). One of the two Mad Bomber Serial Killers, Mon, always carries a stuffed teddy bear which is implied to be the only friend he had as a child. When Mon encounters Hakumadon, his partner Toshi dies and he gets shredded... but both miraculously survive, the only evidence being Mon's slashed teddy bear. When Mon and Hakumadon meet again, another character thinks he sees Mon once more getting killed, but again he survives. A few characters wonder if Hakumadon is a god sent to reclaim the earth or that it and Toshi+Mon are in a "killing contest". In reality, Hakumadon is an American shock-and-awe weapon/robot that went out of control — imagine the Big Dog rig but three stories tall, covered in shaggy fur with yard-long teeth and claws. Appears to have been inspired by the "Sankebetsu Brown Bear Incident" (see Real Life).
• Yaiba: When the revenant warrior Goemon Ishikawa Turns Red he transforms into a huge, armored Bear-Man armed with dual sais and Fuuma Shuriken.
• The central premise of Yuri Kuma Arashi is that bears can take human form and infiltrate society, and they often devour other characters violently despite their adorable designs. They're used as an allegory for Japan's views on homosexuality and contrasting that view with the country's large quantity of Yuri Genre series. Director Kunihiko Ikuhara has stated that bears tend to be seen in real life as predatory dangers but are often portrayed as cutesy innocents in pop culture, which is a clear parallel to Japan's view of lesbians versus how they're depicted in anime and manga.

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