Bully Hunters in Anime and Manga.
- After God: A flashback shows Waka enjoying beating up people who've wronged Shion.
- Karma of Assassination Classroom was placed in Class E for bully-hunting the wrong bully — a top honor student who was beating up a student with poorer grades. The Chairman at their school has some out-of-order priorities. Even now, Karma's favorite pastime is to seek out and make the lives of people who pick on others miserable.
- Bleach:
- Ichigo Kurosaki takes a dim view of bullies and has an outstanding ability to fight them even before his transformation into a Shinigami. He takes down three bullies with extreme prejudice to defend a ghost, of all things, and it's later shown in a flashback that he defended Sado from an attack by groups of thugs, who was more than capable of defending himself but didn't due to his Actual Pacifist nature.
- Ichigo continues doing this after he is depowered at the end of the Hueco Mundo arc, this time with the help of not-friend Uryuu Ishida who has taken up his duty to defend Karakura of supernatural threats.
- Tatsuki Arisawa, who became Orihime's best friend after protecting her from the bullies who cut her hair forcibly.
- Ichigo Kurosaki takes a dim view of bullies and has an outstanding ability to fight them even before his transformation into a Shinigami. He takes down three bullies with extreme prejudice to defend a ghost, of all things, and it's later shown in a flashback that he defended Sado from an attack by groups of thugs, who was more than capable of defending himself but didn't due to his Actual Pacifist nature.
- Hideri of Blend-S is more accurately a Troll Hunter. The manga reveals he used to run an idol online community but got in trouble for flaming against trolls in a live chat instead of just reporting them. What made him so furious is that he finds those who harass and attack people for their passions "unforgiveable".
- Heavily implied in the case of Rin Okumura from Blue Exorcist. Aside from our introduction to our hero is of him beating up a bunch of delinquents for killing/torturing pigeons, he used to always protect his younger brother Yukio and we later get a few flashbacks that show a lot of the time he got in trouble for jumping to attack others who hurt or mocked those weaker than them. This most likely plays into his choice of being an Exorcist; not much bigger of a "bully" you can get than a powerful demon who attacks and hurts the much weaker humans.
- Sonoko Suzuki from Case Closed became Ran Mouri's friend by protecting her from bullies when they were little girls. Ironically, in the present Ran is the Action Girl of the duo.
- Shinichi is shown as this in one of the OAV, where he devises a whole plan to force an apology out of a boy that mocked Ran for having divorced parents. The manga later officially confirms this: as soon as he meets Ran in kindergarten, he realizes that she's being bullied despite Sonoko's attempts to protect her, so he decides to help her out too. This finishes with him giving a "The Reason You Suck" Speech and a headbutt to the bully leader.
- Mikoto "Railgun" Misaka of A Certain Magical Index has been known to put herself in situations where the city's sizable delinquent population can attack her... and lose. She also makes it clear in her own series that she was looking for a Worthy Opponent, which she found in Touma.
- Alice of Code Geass: Nightmare of Nunnally starts defending Nunnally's honour by pantsing anyone who bullies her.
- Daily Lives of High School Boys:
- Yoshitake is strongly suggested to be one for Hidenori, and the "Rubber Shooter" continued to be the latter's major inspiration... until The Reveal.
- The girls' Backstory make this a far more Serious Business; Archdemon caused ten Bully Hunters from four elementary schools, including Yanagin and Rubber Shooter, to form The Alliance and engage in warfare against her. They barely made a draw.
- Dear Brother: In the "Seiran High School", no one should ever mistreat Nanako Misonou or Rei Asaka in the vicinity of one Kaoru Orihara. The ones who invoke this the most are Aya Misaki or Fukiko Ichinomiya.
- Teru Mikami of Death Note was a highly kind and admirable version of this in high school. Unfortunately, he became a real Vigilante Man/He Who Fights Monsters as an adult.
- Dragon Ball:
- Dragon Ball shows that one of the types of people Goku dislikes the most are those who abuse their power. When Krillin is put down by one of his former temple classmates for being a weakling, Goku tells Krillin to go all out when he fights him, reversing course from when he said to hold back to keep from hurting people. He also despises the Saiyans for being Space Pirates who wipe out people weaker than them and wants nothing to do with his own race. Although Goku doesn't grow stronger necessarily to protect others, he does believes that being powerful gives you certain responsibilities, like not terrorizing those weaker than you.
- During Dragon Ball Z, Gohan inherited his father's hatred for bullies. He doesn't want to fight to grow stronger or to test himself against strong enemies like Goku, but he will fight to protect and save people from enemies who abused their strength like the Saiyans, Frieza, Cell, and Buu. He even takes it a step further in becoming Saiyaman, a superhero who goes out of his way to hunt down criminals, aka bullies.
- In the Fist of the North Star world, picking on the weak and defenseless is calling a painful, gory death upon you. Kenshiro and the other heroes in the series do NOT take kindly to abuse of the innocent.
- Takeshi Sendoh from Hajime no Ippo became a delinquent only to protect others from bullies and other crooks, going so far as to make his own gang. When his grandma calls him a scumbag, sportswriter Mari answers "But he never bullied the weak, right? He was a righteous scumbag."
- This is explained by his backstory. He once was brutally beaten up by high schoolers when he was in primary school, and he hated himself for not being able to protect his friends. The next day, little Sendoh grabbed his baseball bat and ambushed the bullies, beating them back as punishment. And one thing led to another soon...
- This is the entire premise of Holyland. Though Yuu's initial purpose in going to the city at night isn't to beat up anyone, but to find his place in the world, he ends up confronting and fighting many bullies and gangsters. Initially for self-defense, but he eventually progresses to justice. He even makes friends with a few of his defeated foes.
- Lyrical Nanoha: The earliest record of Nanoha shows her being one of these, who caught Arisa bullying Suzuka and slapped her. Naturally, this ended up flowing into her career in Magical Girldom and the military.
- Rinne Berlinetta in ViVid Strike! does a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown on a group of bullying girls, in a level of violence shocking for Lyrical Nanoha series. This to say she did not 'befriend' them with lasers like Nanoha would, she physically beat them into the floor and lockers until the area, them, and her were sprayed with blood.
- Maria no Danzai: Played for Horror. Mari Nagare was once a happily married housewife and mother with a great relationship with her husband and son. Unknown to her and her husband, her son was being inhumanly tortured by a group of satanic bullies and thugs. One day, Mari's son died from a prank gone wrong by his bullies and witnessed his death. A police investigation told her and her husband he died of suicide because of abusive parents. Heartbroken, she read her son's personal journal and discovered the truth that he was being bullied, and the bullies at his school caused his death. Mari, realizing her son's death was caused by Bully Brutality, snapped, makes it her mission to hunt down the ones responsible and send them to Hell with her own hands. Mari threw away her life, divorced her husband, changed her name to Maria Akeboshi, had plastic surgery, and two years later became the nurse at the bullies' school to exact revenge. Mari is not interested in just killing the bullies; she wants to make them suffer, give them judgment, completely destroy their lives, and break them before killing them. While it's horrifying to see the Lanks, Mari is willing to go to destroy her son's bullies; they show themselves to be 100% complete scumbags that destroyed her son's life and the lives of others and deserve whatever fate she has in store for them. The truly horrifying thing about this is that Mari was generally a good woman and mother who was destroyed by her son's death, and she's a shell of her former self. Whenever she kills and destroys the bullies, she gets no joy from their destroyed lives and death, and even if she succeeds in getting her revenge on all the bullies, it will cost her her sanity and life.
- Mazinger Z: Annoying Younger Sibling Shiro Kabuto did not tolerate bullies. In Episode 20 he caught several classmates bullying a shy newcomer, and Shiro wiped the ground with them in spite of they were bigger and outnumbered him. However he also exhorted the victims to learn to defend themselves.
- In that same episode, Mitsuo, the bullied kid, later decided he would show them what being picked on by somebody bigger than you feels like when an unknown lady showed up all of sudden and offered him borrowing her Humongous Mecha to take revenge (and he agreed.) Of course, that went as well as you would expect.
- Seiji Sawamura of Midori Days. Strong as he is, he only fights with bad people (i.e. other delinquents, who are mostly shown to be real scum) and he protects the weak. Deconstructed in that the other gangs start to target the people around Seiji just to challenge him, something Seiji is aware and not proud of.
- Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury has Chuatury "Chuchu" Panlunch, who at first glance appears to be extremely girly—short, huge Odango Hair, wears an oversized jacket, covered in pink and purple. Then she opens her mouth, and you discover she is a Hot-Blooded Pintsize Powerhouse with a foul mouth and even fouler temper. And as much as she hates Spacians, she hates bullies even worse—upon finding out that a pair of rich Spacian students had sabotaged her Demi Trainer and done the same to Suletta's, Chuchu disembarks from her machine and approaches the offending girls without a word, dropping one with a bone-crunching right hook before ending up in an extended fistfight with the second. When Suletta tries to break it up (and the second bully accidentally busts her cheek instead of Chuchu's), Chuchu takes advantage of the bully's whiff to deliver one of the cleanest and most devastating cross punches
ever animated in a Gundam series. - Naruto:
- As revealed in Chapters 54 and 71, Sakura was bullied in her childhood because of her large forehead. Ino protected and defended her, which led to the girls becoming lifelong best friends.
- As revealed in Chapter 498, Kushina was bullied in her childhood because of her round face and red hair. She protected and defended herself, which led to her earning the nickname of "The Red Hot-Blooded Habanero."
- As revealed in the Canon movie The Last: Naruto the Movie, Hinata was bullied in her childhood because of her Byakugan eyes. Naruto protected and defended her, which led to her falling in love with him.
- Spoofed in Nyaruko: Crawling with Love!: Mahiro asks Cuuko why she's in love with Nyarko despite their races being mortal enemies. She explains that in Space Preschool, the other kids talked her into playing pretend, but had her be the villain so they could beat her up. Eventually, Nyarko came in and trounced the bullies, winning Cuuko's affection. Later on, Mahiro asks Nyarko if she remembers this, and she responds that all she remembers from Space Preschool is playing a "game" called Imagine Breaker where ran around beating up anyone she saw playing pretend — which included Cuuko.
- The Straw Hat Pirates of One Piece fame are essentially an entire Badass Crew of these. They do little in the way of actual pirating and are basically just sea-faring adventurers, it's just that the "bullies" they often run across are allied in some way with the very corrupt government.
- Both Asuka and Ryou of Otomen have this tendency. In fact they met when Ryou was protecting a guy from bullies and Asuka decided to step in. It gets to a point where not only the school bullies, but the neighbourhood yakuza turn tail and run at the sight of Asuka.
- The Prince of Tennis:
- Ryoma Echizen doesn't show much emotion about it, but he really doesn't like it when his friends and teammates are bullied. The beginning of the Yamabuki arc is one of the biggest examples: when a whole tennis team started bullying his delicate friend Sakuno, Ryoma stepped in and defeated everyone in the team as punishment. The only exception was when Kachirou had a fight with Arai, but that was because he wanted Kachirou to prove his own strength. And he did.
- Ryoma wouldn't have even been born if not for his father Nanjirou being a Bully Hunter too. He actually got the appreciation of Ryoma's soon-to-be mother Rinko (who was Tsundere for him beforehand) after he saved her and a little boy from being beaten up by her tennis coach.
- An and Tomoka, too. Both girls detest seeing abusive situations and will call out the culprits even if they're at risk for it.
- Being a Deconstruction of the Fighting Series Played for Laughs, Ramen Fighter Miki deconstructs this trope with their protagonists: They are all Bully Hunters, but for the wrong reasons, or making thing worse for everyone.
- Miki always hunts delinquents and Yakuza underlings… but not For Great Justice, but because she loves violence and to slack at his job.
- Makiko stops Miki’s bullying, only because she needs Miki to work for her, or when Miki is being a true Jerkass.
- Megumi has been bullied practically all her life by Miki, and as the Hypocrite, she cannot recognize that she has a case of She Who Fights Bullies... and that Miki is the only bully she seeks revenge on.
- Kankuro was bullied by Miki in the past, and he has come back to his old town trying to stand up for himself. Unfortunately, he is trapped in a Cycle of Revenge that didn’t let him get his desired Character Development.
- Kayahara Sensei is a teacher who is actively seeking to stop any bullying and the Cycle of Revenge... only because she wants to avoid her own self-esteem issues. She is easily distracted from her quest by her Trademark Favorite Food.
- Ranma ½:
- Ranma does this occasionally — for example, she stopped Kodachi from beating up the Furinkan gymnastic team further, rescued Gosenkugi from a group of masked kids trying to rob him, and sought a direct fight with Mariko Konjou when Akane and the volleyball team were defeated and humiliated by her tricks.
- Ryoga too, most notably for defending a Brought Down to Normal Ranma from the rest of the males on the Nerima Wrecking Crew, since he thought that it was not fair to have them gang up on him in such circumstances.
- Akane is also a good example. More than once, she has tried to defend Ranma from the Nerima Wrecking Crew too and kept trying to help Ranma fight off Ryoga during their first fight. And she's not this only towards Ranma: she also steps in to defend her friends when Happosai is around, and right after Ranma saved the gym team, she accepted to fight Kodachi for their sake — despite not being good at more artistic gym styles.
- Sailor Moon:
- Makoto Kino was expelled from her old school for fighting bullies, and her first appearance in the original anime has her beating up a group of delinquents who are harassing Usagi on her way to school.
- Back in her days as Sailor V, Minako Aino would often stop whatever she was doing to transform into Sailor V and deal with bullies she stumbles upon, no matter how urgent whatever she was doing before was (and in fact getting late to school at least once).
- Like the other Senshi, Usagi Tsukino often goes out of her way to defend those getting picked on. In the first episode, she told off a bunch of little brats for assaulting Luna. And this was before becoming Sailor Moon.
- Sora of Shitsurakuen is a female Knight In Shining Armour who fights to stop the boys from bullying the girls which they claim as their own. Sadly, the odds are pretty much against her.
- Sword Art Online: Main lead Kirito is this full stop. Case in point, when a greedy woman threatens a young girl to steal a rare item from her, he quickly puts his sword to her neck. Heaven help you if you victimize the weak in front of him.
- Kirito's girlfriend Asuna is no slouch on this department either. A bunch of greedy players force a group of children to strip off their equipment as payment. Asuna quickly steps up and draws her rapier on them to give them a lesson.
- Shota Oruha in Takama-ga-hara uses his powers to fight bullies, presumably. However, what he considers a "bully" is incredibly skewed to where he just attacks anybody who isn't as low on the social ladder as he is, along with the protagonist simply because he was seen in the company of an actual bully and the bully didn't attempt to harm him.
- Rinka Urushiba from Tokyo ESP also qualifies for this. Even before she got her special powers, she was already a good fighter. She has beaten three gangsters who wanted to rob Kyotaro Azuma. That's what made him become a hero after he got his special powers.
- Satou from Welcome to the NHK attempted to be one of these. In order to impress an older female student he tried to save a middle schooler from bullies. Satou got beat up himself.
- Yamada-kun and the Seven Witches: Urara Shiraishi is an Extreme Doormat honor student who gets tormented by Rin Sasaki and her Girl Posse often. When Delinquent Ryu Yamada switches bodies with her and finds out first hand about the bullying, he decides to give Rin "the scare of her life" with a pulled punch.
- In Yu-Gi-Oh!, Tetsu Ushio/Trudge first presents himself as one, but turns out to be a bully far worse than those he beats up. He later became a cop, with little tolerance of bullies (but still one himself towards homeless Satellite residents). Yami Yugi pre-Duel Monsters was this, doling out penalty games to the Monster of the Week bullies (occasionally to Knight Templar extremes).
- In the first episode of Zeta Gundam, Kamille gets beaten up by Titan's military police. Later in the episode, he comes back in a Gundam and tells the MP, "Wanna know how it feels to be picked on by somebody bigger than you?", before taking off to join La Résistance.
- Since she was a child, Towa Higurashi from Yashahime: Princess Half-Demon has been beating up bullies on a regular basis to help others who are bullied by them. As a hanyou, she is superhumanly strong but mostly holds back her true strength very much.
