Designated Hero / Anime & Manga

• As noted by writer Bamboo Dong (on both of her articles on The Stream, and Shelf Life), Akatsuki of Aesthetica of a Rogue Hero is this, to the point where she felt uncomfortable watching it, and on its original stream, dropped it after four episodes. Akatsuki constantly forces women to wear demeaning clothing, disrobes them, humiliates them, like forcing them to wet themselves, and constantly gropes them, all while the show attempts to justify it, and tries to show why he should be rewarded for it. (“He means no harm!”, “It’s not rape because she’s asleep!” etc.)
• Attacker You!: Some of You's interactions with her adoptive brother Sunny make her come across as a Big Sister Bully instead of a Cool Big Sis showing Tough Love, especially the scene where she likely traumatizes him by letting him dangle out of their apartment window.
• Most of Class F from Baka and Test: Summon the Beasts. Minami is a violent Tsundere, Yuuji is a slacker, Kouta is a future sex offender, and Himeji devolves into Minami 2.0. The whole cast really, mainly because this show runs on Comedic Sociopathy. Whether it's the Yandere Shoko or the Brocon Akira, practically every sympathetic character has serious personality flaws to the point where they qualify under this trope.
• Blue Gender: Gaia is supposed to be the Big Good who wants to protect the planet from the destruction that humans have brought... except Gaia decides to do this by creating a race of Big Creepy-Crawlies to destroy modern civilization and kill scores of people, out of the belief that technology and overpopulation are what is ruining the environment. The humans are basically supposed to be seen as the villains for defending themselves. Not only that, but when humans actually try to make things better by building a Space Station to ease the strain on the planet, Gaia responds by corrupting two of their best soldiers and having them massacre nearly everyone inside, then afterwards drives the rest of them insane and blows up the colony.
• Cannon Busters: Philly the Kid is an unlikable Jerkass, who the story tries to make sympathetic by portraying him as having a Dark and Troubled Past, but in practice, he merely comes across as unpleasant and peripheral to the plot at hand. When he actually confronts the man he wants revenge against, he fails miserably, but doesn't seem any more torn up about it than usual. As a result, it's very hard to get invested in anything he does or his desire for revenge.
• This is one of the reasons why Chargeman Ken! has become a meme. Ken is always treated as a perfect superhero by the narrative, yet he kills people without caring if they are human or the enemy aliens. Most infamously an innocent professor had an explosive device planted on him by aliens against his will, Ken responded by taking him into his ship and using the poor scientist as a torpedo.
• Digimon Adventure tri.: The DigiDestined, unlike in the original series, edge themselves towards this trope. Despite the digimon rampage going on, they'd all rather spend their time focusing on teenage angst and mundane activities like telling scary stories or going to the hot springs. Their treatment of the 02 kids only solidifies their image as this, prominently when they actively cheered on when they destroy Imperialdramon. It's only at the end of Confession that they finally start acting like heroes, and even then it's only to find their missing digimon partners after the reboot, making them come off as self-centred jerks who only act heroic if the problem directly concerns them.
• Digimon Xros Wars: The Young Hunters Who Leapt Through Time: Tagiru makes it clear that he's in it just to become a superstar, and so does Gumdramon at times. Even when Earth is in danger of being destroyed after Quartzmon merges with it to allow DigiQuartz to rapidly expand and take over it, they're still more concerned about becoming superstars than the fact that, you know...everyone and everything they know and love is being assimilated into Quartzmon!
• Dominion Tank Police:
  • There really is little quantitative difference between the cops and the crooks. Both prefer to drive large, destructive vehicles, and both cause massive amounts of collateral damage to life and property; one side merely has the advantage of legal sanction for their acts, while the other's motives are purely mercenary. This is most clearly lampshaded in the sequel series, wherein Anna and Uni are allowed to make a Heel–Face Turn without the least change to their personalities; they've reformed because they're tired of being chased by the police and have realized that being cops would allow them to continue blowing stuff up, but also provide a steady source of income.
  • In the first OVA, there is an exchange between squad leader Brenten and Lovelock that illustrates this mentality perfectly. Brenten, probably the next most gung-ho member of the squad besides Leona, and most definitely a dyed in the wool veteran of the squad, suggests to Lovelock that they should quit the force right then, and go off and become criminals, for the action, the money, and the lack of regulations that plague them as Tank Police. From the tone of voice, it's clear that he's saying this in a half joking, half not manner, suggesting that if Lovelock had agreed to this, they would have actually left for a life of crime right then. When Lovelock declines, Brenten immediately recants everything he said, and nothing more is ever said of it again. Dominion is not a serious series, and the fact that the so-called "heroes" are just as bad as the "bad guys" (and sometimes worse) is part of the joke.
• The protagonists from Dragon Pink. The only good character is a put-upon Cat Girl Sex Slave. In one scene they encounter a group of "Slave Knights", skeleton warriors who defend themselves by keeping a naked girl hostage in their torso as a human shield. The protagonists try to get around them for a while, then the Barbarian just chops one of the knights in half, including the hostage. It really says something when the monster is shocked by their callous behavior, but the elf simply says, "Sorry, It's either you or us!", and blows the rest away.
• Drifters has this in a real bad way. If not for the fact that the enemies they fight are even worse, protagonist Shimazu, Oda, and Nasu would definitely be the bad guys. Within three volumes of their introduction, they've turned the formerly peaceful elves into their own vicious, revenge-focused personal army.
• Earwig and the Witch: Erica is at best a manipulative, selfish child. Bella Yaga's the only character we see who's worse, but at least she gets some sort of comeuppance. Erica ends the film having all but enslaved Bella Yaga and the Mandrake.
• The Familiar of Zero:
  • Louise herself. She abuses Saito and treats him like dirt for the slightest to stupidest reasons non-stop to the point where she may as well punish him for breathing. She is rude, obnoxious and unpleasant to other females usually out of jealousy and arrogance, and she is never punished for her actions. Yet we're still expected to root for her for some reason.
  • Saito also counts after his attempted rape of Louise because of all the factors which insist that it's not really his fault such as Louise sending mixed signals or his familiar runes influencing his actions.
• First Love Monster: Chiaki comes off as unnecessarily mean at best, scummy at worst – constantly mocking and belittling a shy and insecure guy for no real reason, encouraging another teenager to prey on an elementary schooler who's implied to still be grieving for his late mother, and making the Loving Bully argument in light of Atsushi's abusive behavior towards the aforementioned teenager.
• Fushigi Yuugi's Mayo Sakaki. A Clingy Jealous Girl and walking factory of Kick the Dog and Shoot the Dog moments. The writer expects us to sympathize with her, despite everything she pulls, and is even thanked by the people she spent all of Eikouden mind controlling or trying to kill. She'd be a Villain Protagonist except that the author insists she's just an ordinary, lovesick girl who didn't understand the circumstances she was in.
• Genma Wars: Loof and Gin. Despite the viewer being supposed to sympathize with them and their tragic backstories, they commit many horrific acts that makes them almost as bad as the Genma. For example, Loof (the nicer and more noble twin, mind you) rapes his love interest upon seeing her for the first time.
• Haruo in Godzilla Monster Planet. He puts his own selfish and self-centered need for avenging his parents after they were indirectly killed by Godzilla ahead of his responsibility for the lives and well-being of the hundreds, if not thousands, of people he is in charge of. Rather than settling on the part of the planet least inhabited by monsters, he chooses to bring the fight to Godzilla and foolishly puts everyone in danger. Dozens of lives are lost before Godzilla Fillius is killed by Haruo, only for the REAL Godzilla to show up and slaughter everyone else with almost no effort.
• Gokudō plays with this. From the beginning, the title character is an unlikable ass who uses anything thrown his way to cheat and steal, but everyone always tells him he's the hero of the land. After the first few episodes, he's tricked into killing the Big Bad. Eventually, he uses his Genie to stop being the Designated Hero and sends the world back In Harm's Way because he finds the happy evilless world exceptionally boring.
• In Hayate the Combat Butler, Nagi, despite all her qualities, is liked by almost everyone and receives many supporters during her rivalry with Ruka. In fact, she brags that as the main heroine of the manga, everything should go according her way. Ayumu even lampshades this in chapter 394 by comparing the poor but hardworking Ruka to Nagi and the former has the proper qualities as a heroine.
• Highschool of the Dead: Takashi can sometimes come across as this as he can be extremely abrasive at times. This is best shown by his jealousy against Hisashi even after his death to the point where he shouts at Rei for bringing him up even though he's only been dead for a couple of hours and Rei even grabs his sleeve so he calms down. That being said he's still mostly a well-intentioned and good-natured guy, who puts his life at risk for others, even saving Alice who was a complete stranger at that point.
• Youko from Inukami!. As The Cartoon Hero pointed out, she's possessive, tries to murder Keita with fire, mooches off of him, strips him in public, and uses dirty tactics to win fights (like removing an elementary school girl's panties to distract her).
• Karate Shoukoushi Kohinata Minoru:
  • Mutou at first. He assaults and badly injures the judo club captain just for the hell of it, and it's reported that he's been carrying out similar attacks on other students and even teachers at the university. And during the masked rapist incident, Mutou only wants to catch the guy because of him ruining Mutou's reputation, rather than due to the guy being a rapist (although this mentality is shared by the rest of the club, except Ibuki). Once this arc is over, he has less of these moments.
  • Pedro. The guy's an unrepentant rapist (or at least one who's never paid seriously for his crimes), has attempted to sexually assault Minoru three times, deludes himself into thinking that Minoru's being a Tsundere towards him, and later has the gall to consider Nana, a girl who has been Minoru's best friend for years and stuck with him through thick and thin, a "depraved stalker woman".
• Kimba the White Lion: Kimba/Leo does a whole lot of very unheroic and appalling things in the 60s serials that the audience is meant to side with him on because he's the main character. There are many, many examples, but two of the most appalling ones (both from the sequel series) include abusing his newborn son and abandoning him in the jungle to fend for himself and needlessly turning a conflict between a hunter and a group of leopards into a horrible bloodbath for practically no reason. He even gets called out on such actions several times in-universe by other characters, but the show doesn't go any further than treating him like an ultimately good leader and father who just needs to "learn more".
• Maid-Sama! has Takumi Usui, who is presented as a Chivalrous Pervert by the narration, which makes him a rare exception to Misaki's dislike of men, yet much of his behavior towards Misaki is outright sexual harassment. Behavior that he stops other people from engaging in, but indulges in himself. Such as in episode 16, where he gives her a hickey so that she'd be to embarrassed to wear her bikini, because he wanted to be the only one to see her wearing it. Then in episode 17, he selfishly signs up to the volleyball tournament against Misaki and Aoi (to whom winning the tournament was vitally important, as he would win the freedom to dress however he wanted), just because he didn't want Misaki to be crowned beach princess without him as King.
• Kio Asuno of Mobile Suit Gundam AGE is a rare instance of this trope with a nice character. He was initially sympathetic, being a Child Soldier raised by his vengeful grandpa to see Vagan as inhuman monsters before meeting with them and sympathizing. When Kio decided to stop killing, however, he also stopped even defending himself in battle. His wingmates told him repeatedly this put them in danger as well as himself, and every enemy he spoke to told him to shut up, but Kio ignored this and continued doing the same exact thing every battle. He also bartered away the Gundam's secrets to the Big Bad, which destroyed his side's major advantage. Nevertheless, the show sided completely with his point-of-view as though there was no middle ground between genocide and Suicidal Pacifism.
• Momotaro's Divine Sea Warriors: The villains are the British Empire, who are shown as bad for taking over the pacific islands. The "heroes" are the Japanese Empire, who are trying to do the exact same thing.
• My Hero Academia:
  • Mineta Minoru is a perverted hero in training who lacks any of the traits that the rest of Class 1-A is praised for having; he isn't altruistic, selfless, kind, courageous, heroic, charismatic or anything of the sort, and his reason to try to become a hero is so he can be seen as cool and get girls, not to mention his beyond inappropriate treatment of his female peers. Despite these traits, he keeps being lumped together with the rest of the class as a great hero to be and is treated as one of the good guys. Eventually, he starts showing some heroic qualities, but by that point, many fans considered it too little, too late.
  • Aizawa is seen as this by his detractors. He's a deconstruction of the Sink or Swim Mentor, but a lot of people see his methods as either ineffective or downright cruel. He is willing to expel entire classes, and has done so before, should they not meet his standards, and would have done the same to Midoriya had he not impressed Aizawa at the last minute. While it's later revealed that the expulsions were temporary, they still go into the student's permanent record. He repeatedly uses "rational falsehoods" to get the students to work harder, but it in turn just scares the crap out of them. He's so incredibly militant about stomping down on all hope or love for the job for the sake of trying to adapt his class to the harshness of Hero life (read: it may get them killed and "sometimes you can't save them all") that when other teachers arrive the kids look like zombies, so dour he's made them. He tends to miss important details regarding the behavior of his students or punish them when he does notice.^*Including: failing to notice Iida signed up to intern in Hosu, where Stain was last sighted (especially considering that someone who made it to the semifinals of the sports festival could have gotten a more prestigious hero agency than Manual's); thinking Midoriya and Bakugo would become Fire-Forged Friends by facing All Might only for their relationship to remain volatile and All Might almost crippling them; failing to notice Bakugo suffered issues from being kidnapped and being made to take a test that replicated the Kamino incident leading to his fight with Midoriya, then punishing both of them for the fight. He also perpetuates the controversial aspect of Hero Society by threatening to punish the students for acting without licenses, namely by saying he'd have expelled the entire class outside of Bakugo, Jiro, and Hagakure for either attempting to rescue Bakugo themselves or for knowing about the attempt and not stopping them. Many end up seeing him as both a horrible teacher and a Knight Templar Rules Lawyer in the process. He even mentions that Vlad King, the homeroom teacher for Class 1-B, is a far better teacher than him, as Class 1-B's teamwork is on par with Class 1-A's despite the former's relative lack of life-or-death experience.
• The title character from Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water. She's moody, distrustful, bad-tempered, and suspicious about everything. But she's also the sort of person who has never socialized with anyone before except animals. As such, she is unable to recognize how she feels about anyone. As a result of Jean's love, however, she is gradually transformed by the end of the show and uses the Blue Water's power to resurrect the latter when he is killed by Gargoyle.
• Emporio Ivankov from One Piece is presented as a heroic flag-bearer of freedom from the tyrannical World Government. And he is that...but he also has a nasty habit of spontaneously giving out gender reassignment to people who do not want it. In real life, this would be considered a form of sexual assault.
• Kirino Kousuka from Oreimo treats her brother Kyousuke like crap, forces him to lie, expects him to bow down to her every command, treats the people who share an interest in the same thing as her like dirt (because she didn't want her other friends to find out she was an otaku), and wants to screw her brother. Meanwhile, Minami is supposed to be the manipulative, sociopathic Yandere Big Bad for... trying to warn Kyousuke against hooking up with her, being understandably disgusted with incest, and trying to split them apart (and win his heart instead) for his own good.
• Parallel Sailor Moon: The Parallel Inners treat Kousagi like crap, abandoning her whenever they can, making her carry their shopping bags, exploiting her fear of cats and making it very clear they don't like her. They even insult their mothers, Ami's daughter flat-out calling them losers.
• Pet Shop of Horrors: For a given value of "hero". D's attempts at teaching people a lesson might be justified as Laser-Guided Karma... except he's also been known to get innocents killed as well, such as that fiasco with the rabbits. Leon has certainly called him out for this, saying that his pets are dangerous.
• Please Save My Earth: Rin both before and after his memories of Shion awaken. He starts as a bratty kid that bullies Alice when she babysits him, to the point that she hits a Rage Breaking Point and smacks him, which leads to his near-fatal accident. When Shion's memories arise and he realizes Alice is Mokuren, he does all he can to awaken her while lying that he's Shukaido and starts manipulating everyone to destroy the moon base, ostensibly to protect the Earth from it. While Shukaido giving him the vaccine so he would live while his friends died is a What the Hell, Hero? moment for Shukaido, Shukaido's reasons were righteous fury that Shion allegedly raped Mokuren and pressured her into an engagement. Shion doesn't deny that he "violated" Mokuren just because he could. Why is the audience supposed to be rooting for this guy again?
• The Rebirth of Buddha: Sayako is meant to be a sweet girl who wants to do the right thing no matter what. For most of the movie, she is portrayed as such, but then in the climax she refuses to say Mr. Arai is the real Buddha, loudly denouncing him on live TV even when Mr Arai threatens to blow up the stadium full of innocent civilians^note 50,000 of them, to be more specific if she keeps refusing. She goes as far as to agree their lives are worth less to her than her faith in Mr. Sorano. This is meant to be a heroic action on her part.
• Redo of Healer: The audience is meant to sympathize with Keyaru because he was enslaved by people seen as heroes, then raped and tortured for years while used as little more than an object. When he frees himself, he proceeds to... enslave everyone he can, raping and torturing his enemies, and overall doing the exact same things that were done to him, if not worse. While most of his victims are his original tormentors, not all of them are, and even when he's not explicitly raping and torturing he's engaging in a lot of Questionable Consent tricks and use of drugs to influence people. It's little wonder that many who watch or read Redo of Healer near-universally consider this guy a Villain Protagonist.
• Naofumi in the beginning of The Rising of the Shield Hero. He may have gotten a raw deal, he may have had to make some grey choices in order to survive, but the way he trains Raphtalia in the early days of their relationship would make him a villain if he wasn't the main character. Especially since the main reason he purchased her wasn't due to her being all he could afford but more so that he could have a surrogate to take out his anger against Myne on, even hoping she gets hurt in the course of his ownership of her. There's also the fact that by purchasing Raphtalia, he's essentially doing the exact same thing the king did to him, being forced to fight against one's own will. Only when Naofumi learns the kind of hell that Raphtalia has gone through before he met her through the bad dreams she's having does he start treating her like an actual ally rather than a slave and starts maturing into an Anti-Hero.
• The Saga of Tanya the Evil: Anson's hatred of Tanya in particular is actually rather unjustified. He is ultimately right, but for the wrong reasons - yes, Tanya is a nasty person, but Anson hates her for killing his men - while the two of them are in the middle of a war, furthermore, Anson's country was the one that started the war, and Anson's unit was the one to attack Tanya, not the opposite, so she could not have been more justified in defending herself. However, if not more heroic, Anson is undoubtedly more human than Tanya is, as his rage at the deaths of so many comrades to this one seemingly unstoppable mage is, while perhaps not justifiable, at least understandable, and certainly easier for most viewers to identify with than Tanya's cold and calculated mind that views humans as resources and tools, kills foes with dispassion at best (or sadistic glee at worst), and coldly dismisses Anson's actions as illogical.
• Sailor Moon: Sailor Uranus and Sailor Neptune can come off as this. They occasionally play the Rich Bitch card, act condescending to the other Guardians (including Pluto and Saturn made worse by the fact they DID kill them later in the series, and if it was part of a plan that would get them revived in the end, they did not ask for their consent before enacting this plan), are not team players, and tried to kill Sailor Moon at the end of S. And if this was an act to test Usagi's powers, they were unnecessarily nasty.
• Meliodas from The Seven Deadly Sins, who regularly gropes the female lead. The most infuriating example was in the first episode when he groped her while she was unconscious and didn't get in trouble for it. On a later occasion, he creates clones of himself with his Empathic Weapon and has all of them grope her, even after she explicitly says the word "No." That being said, he does get reprimanded, and on some occasions his ass beaten, when he gropes her.
  • There is also the fact that he began the holy war in the first place and broke the armistice between the demon and Goddess while at it. While his reason was sympathetic, the fallout was so extreme that he is a legitimate target. One of the aforementioned Goddesses themselves said that his sin was so grievous that if the truth came out, no one could forgive him.
• Sgt. Frog: While the Keronians are not really saints themselves, and while Natsumi's beatings of Keroro are mostly justified, she even beats the crap out of him when he's trying to help.
• Shakugan no Shana: The Snake of the Festival and/or Snake Yuji is a rare antagonist example- he is clearly intended to be a Hero Antagonist who has the noble goal of wanting to create a world where Flame Haze, Crimson Denizens, and Humans can life in harmony. But the things he does in pursuit of this goal are rather hard-to-swallow: sacrificing millions of innocent lives, human and denizen alike, in the war, driving Margery to the Despair Event Horizon, and outright kidnapping Shana to become his bride and almost raping her, all while leaving his other love interests Kazumi and Hecate in the dust. Needless to say, some people view him winning and reconciling with Shana as a prime example of Easily Forgiven.
• Shaman King: Flowers: Hao. While he's criticized by previous Shaman Kings for his actions, he's still meant to come off as the Big Good of the series and the protagonists are fighting to let him keep his position as Shaman King despite him being completely unrepentant for his actions in the original series. That being said, the main cast isn't exactly respectful of him.
• Strange Dawn: Yuko. Sure, she saves the chibi protagonists once or twice and has one Pet the Dog moment, but throughout the rest of the plot, she spends a majority of the time being a selfish, rude and apathetic Jerkass caring more about getting back to her world and finding a fresh pair of underwear than the lives of the chibi characters, as well as being an Ungrateful Bitch towards them, even when they're trying to help her with things such as finding food for her and Eri, and very rarely does anything remotely heroic, making it very hard to root for her.
• Hentai creator Tohru Nishimaki does this by default with his male protagonists as they're supposed to be Trickster Mentors helping their love interests getting over their issues, but Values Dissonance aside they come off as rapists that're easily forgiven and in the case of Blue Eyes, which is supposed to be set in the real world (besides the giant boobs,) the protagonist is shot dead at point-blank range, realizes it was a premonition, knocks out the blackmailer/intended killer with a kick, impersonates him, then forces his de facto/potential mother-in-law to have sex with him and reveals himself afterwards to which she only gives an "oh you" response since they've had sex before and will again.
• Amano Jaku from the manga version of Urotsukidoji is a hedonistic, callous, selfish and sociopathic jerkass who only cares about having sex with any woman he sees and feels zero regard for anyone around him. The only "heroic" thing he actually does is saving a baby from being ran over by a truck, though this is only before he heartlessly tosses the baby into the river calling it a waste of time and saying that he hates babies and old people. Thankfully his anime counterpart is much more heroic with a majority of his nasty traits from the manga being left out completely.
  • Buju from Urotsukidoji III manages to be even worse than Amano's manga counterpart. He is a vile, nasty, perverted and unlikable psychopath who has no qualms about murdering families (including babies) and raping women and likes getting drunk in his spare time. Even after his supposed "redemption", he's still pretty much the same as he was in the beginning. For example in Urotsukidoji IV, instead of saving a female character from being raped by a demon, he chooses to watch instead as he says he enjoys seeing women getting raped. The only thing that prevents him from being absolutely irredeemable is his love and protection for his adoptive daughter, Himi. Though it still doesn't make up for his despicable personality.
• Kaname from Vampire Knight is presented as an antagonistic character throughout the entire story, but it hits full force when he disappears about halfway through without giving a reason and starts murdering and manipulating other vampires who are in turn presented as victims. Towards the ending however, it's suddenly revealed that he didn't really kill his first victim, which somehow, makes him innocent and heroic for having "merely wanted to push people away", and everything else he did is more or less forgotten about - including having murdered the family of one of the other protagonists.
  • Yuki Cross herself never chooses which one out of two boys (one of which is mentioned above, Kaname and is her brother) to pick, even to the point she has both of their kids, and tells Zero that she loves him but belongs to her brother.
• Kaori Miyazono's actions throughout Your Lie in April are largely built around serving her own dreams and aspirations with little regard for those who stand in her way, or even why they stand in her way. Not only does she force Kousei into returning into the world of music despite his very evident trauma revolving around music (and his unresolved familial issues), she lies to him by never once admitting that she crushed on him, all the way to her death, saddling him with a whole 'nother round of emotional trauma. It's downright amazing Kousei was able to survive the rest of the series with her strangling his neck all the while.

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