Do Not Do This Cool Thing / Anime & Manga

• The Black Cat anime took great pains to try to show the viewers that the way of life of an assassin was wrong, and that people who have pacifist ideals are, in the end, stronger. However, all this effort was undermined when Train was shown to be infinitely cooler and stronger when he was working for Chronos. His sleek black clothes complete with an awesome Black Cloak, the way he managed to effortlessly defeat every single person who ever stepped in his way, and the way he tended to remain calm and collected all made him seem like he was much better off before he became a pacifist. After he becomes a pacifist, he constantly ends up having to be saved by others, wangsts and throws temper tantrums, and wears clothes that aren't nearly as cool. One can understand why Creed goes to such lengths to make him go back to being the way he was when he was an assassin...
  • Also Chronos itself: despite being portrayed as a negative organization filled with "bad" people, the fact that most of the characters are badasses and some of the most rational characters in the series, doesn't help the Sweeper's case on their opinion on them.
  • It also shows that the good guys who just outright kill their opponents, like the Cronos Numbers against the Super Cyborgs, have a significantly easier time dealing with their opponents.
• Most entries in the Gundam metaseries are meant to have an anti-war message - and many, especially those by Yoshiyuki Tomino, do a decent job of depicting how war can utterly ruin people's lives. At the same time, it has beautiful, brightly colored weapons of mass destruction that move with the grace and artistry of the Bolshoi, plenty of Magnificent Bastard villains you can't help but admire, gorgeous costumes on the forces of dangerous space-fascists, and perhaps worst of all, some of the protagonists actually find some kind of meaning to their lives through the war that they may not have had without it.
  • And the Gundam models, let's not forget the models of those "beautiful, brightly colored weapons of mass destruction."
  • This trope is lampshaded in Gundam 0080, where the 11-year-old protagonist Al - who started the series excited about mobile suits and space battles - ends the series crying his brains out after failing to stop Bernie from needlessly sacrificing himself to destroy the Alex, all while his friends are cheerfully talking about how the mobile suit battle that destroyed their school looked awesome, and that they can't wait for the next war to break out with even cooler mobile suits.
  • Gundam: Reconguista in G deserves special attention here. The anti-war message is quite strong, and it's probably the only one intended to deal with a current issue (Japanese remilitarization), but this is conveyed through a series that has a veritable parade of flashy mecha and the only character that doesn't seem to be having the time of his life fighting is the killjoy main character.
  • Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans subverts this in the second season, Mika slowly dehumanizes himself throughout the series to his death after blindly following Orga's orders that results in an undignified death by assassins after assisting a failed coup. The Gundam Frames were unceremoniously defeated by Boring, but Practical Dainslifs Mass Drivers.
  • Averted by an earlier production not involving Tomino by the same company, Armored Trooper VOTOMS. If anyone remembers the comical and disgustingly hideous suit of armor the bank robbers came up with in Reckless Kelly, this is essentially a macronised version of those suits. Everything about this series is gritty and depressing and practically uber alles (because anything else gets you killed). It doesn't help the hero begins the series just recovering from his own My Lai (he was ordered to flambé a group of children and did so unquestioningly), because their black ops unit worked on a principle of 'no witnesses.' Throughout the series he delves deeper and deeper into conspiratorial military intrigue on both sides, and also when his troupe runs low on funds, as a side venture he winds up being hired into the role of a mercenary in a civil war far more nasty and hateful than the war he just got out of. It is essentially taking all the cynicism Gundam at times lacks (especially in the more recent post-Tomino era), and piles it all into a single series. Because of the way the series starts, it leaves the price of Chirico's badassery always at the back of one's mind, which probably dumps out a lot of the people who would be on the fence about warfare. This was oddly in direct contrast to the manga, which played it more straightforward, and were it not for the clunky, ugly mechas, could be easily mistaken for Wing Commander: The Comic.
• Throughout the entire Mazinger trilogy - Mazinger Z, Great Mazinger and UFO Robo Grendizer - and alternate series, Go Nagai tried to send the message of War Is Hell. Cities were destroyed and burnt to ashes, innocent people were hurt and suffered or died in horrible ways (there are several instances of genocide) or lost their loved ones or were enslaved or brainwashed... And victory always had a high price. Unfortunately, he did so by showing real cool battles between colourful, awesome Humongous Mechas and impressive, imaginative monsters duking it out among them with spectacular weapons of mass destruction, so a lot of viewers kind of missed the point.
  • He did manage to successfully get his point across in Devilman, when he showed that war has no real winners by killing everyone the viewers came to know and love. Unfortunately, that left another Cool Thing in its wake: the Devilman power itself. Sure, you might get slaughtered horribly in the inevitable apocalypse, but gaining the strength of a demon and the newfound confidence it brought Akira would be totally worth it.
• Dan, the protagonist of Basquash!, succeeds at this within the show itself. He wants to destroy the popular sport "Big Foot Basketball" (Basketball... with giant robots!) because of a personal vendetta but also because the sport is really lame (the player robots move sluggishly, use basic moves and tend to fall down; the broadcast has to spice it up with special effects to interest people). Dan manages to obtain a Big Foot and crashes a public game, showing off real moves... then gets arrested and put away in juvie for a year. He's convinced he's "killed" BFB, only to find, on his release, his stunt showed that you can do kickass moves with a robot, thus making the game more popular than ever and "Dunk Mask", the Secret Identity he used to crash the game, a legend among those who play it. He's not happy.
• The original Astro Boy story "The Greatest Robot on Earth" attempted to have an anti-war message while still being a shonen fighting robots series.
• The original manga of Ghost in the Shell carries often painfully apparent warnings about the consequences of unchecked accumulation of power among not just government offices—including Section 9 itself—as well as commercial interests and, thanks to cybernetics, individuals themselves. The television series caries this further, demonstrating what happens when technology advances at a faster pace than the law can hope to keep up with. And yet, the Major and her comrades come off as supremely professional and awesome, even as they consciously abuse the powers vested in them by the state.
• The manga of Dominion Tank Police comes right and says it: any society that not just uses tanks to police itself, but feels as though it has no other option, has crossed a line from which there is probably no easy return. Masamune Shirow acknowledged that he made the mini-tank Bonaparte deliberately smaller and cuter than practical as a concession to the misery of having tanks driving around, trying to establish some semblance of order.
• Full Metal Panic!. War is bad and can seriously mess you up, but it's so awesome to do things like fight epic mech duels, compromise enemy bases single-handedly, and wrestle a Hind gunship out of the sky with a Humongous Mecha.
• Neon Genesis Evangelion has similar War Is Hell themes and deconstructs the whole "Spunky teenagers piloting cool giant robots" trope by showing that they're basically Child Soldiers. The problem is, the Humongous Mecha the kids pilot are extremely cool and have been immortalized in tons of video games, toys, model kits and other merchandise. So even though the show is trying to say "No sane person would ever want to pilot an EVA," quite a few people walk away thinking it'd be awesome to be an EVA pilot. Or "I can pilot an Eva better since I am not a Shrinking Violet".
  • A common complaint about the show is that Shinji, the main EVA pilot, is "too whiny". Basically they're complaining that a show that's all about children suffering has too many suffering children, because they can't fathom the idea that giant robots might not be fun.
  • Building on that, the show also deconstructs an Unwanted Harem setup by showing just how annoying it'd be to live with a Tsundere that uses you as a punching bag, how creepy it'd be to deal with the cold-hearted origin of the Rei Ayanami Expy, or a lazy drunk of a Cool Big Sis that you constantly have to clean up after. The problem is that all women in question are beautiful, the intended audience mostly hated Shinji anyway for shallow reasons, and the actual reaction was more "I am not a Shrinking Violet, I could do better." Never mind that each woman in question is a basket case with issues that no one in real life would want to touch with a twenty foot pole.
• A major theme in the Area 88 manga and OVA is that War Is Hell because it devastates countries and turns soldiers into broken men. The problem is, the pilots look awesome as they engage in aerial combat.
  • It actually seems to toy with the trope, Mick is War Is Glorious personified, but Shin, who is War Is Hell personified winds up the best pilot, and also the one with the most adaptability and forethought. Basically, Mick believes war is glorious because he's an empty shell with nothing to look forwards to anymore except more combat. Shin, the fully fleshed out character, has many things to think about at home, and wants to end the war so he actually can get home. You can see this in the other pilots as well. The cast of characters slides from one end to the other. Boris is like Shin for instance, while Greg is closer to Mick's side of the coin.
• Over Lord 2012 attempts to deconstruct the idea of Escapist Character in an isekai anime. The protagonist Ainz gets to play as his character from a Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game, acts as an Evil Overlord who rules over powerful minions who worship the ground he walks on, and is in a zone he and his followers are massively overleveled for so little, if anything, poses a threat to them. At the same time, Ainz suffers from Emotion Suppression and the influence of his very evil friends is driving him to greater and greater acts of villainy throughout the series. Yet it's hard to take idea of the series as a deconstruction of escapist fantasy seriously since Ainz originally came from a world that was a horrid dystopia, so the idea that one should prefer reality comes off as a Broken Aesop. On top of this, despite the many acts of villainy Ainz and his followers commit and the series emphasizigng that Ainz is an incompetent leader, none of them ever suffer any consequences for their actions, which ends up simply reinforces the idea that he is an Escapist Character (for fans and critics of the series) since he can do whatever he pleases and get away with it.
• Ramen Fighter Miki, being a hilarious deconstruction of the Fighting Series, where everyone states violence is bad and then solves the problems with awesome violence, manages to avert this problem in the very first short: After seeing two teens fighting, Miki's mother asks her to stop them with violence. Miki prefers to defer them to an Eating Contest. Things degenerate to a violent fight between Miki and her mother and after seeing two Man Children fighting, the two teens feel ashamed of themselves and leave as friends.
• Puella Magi Madoka Magica has this going on both in-universe and out. Mami constantly tells Madoka and Sayaka that being a Magical Girl is very dangerous, while she skillfully beats the crap out of Eldritch Abominations with awesome giant magical guns. They clearly don't take her warnings very seriously, and even though Mami dies in action, Sayaka's decision to make a contract was partly for the cool factor. In the fandom, wanting to become a Puella Magi is very common, despite the nasty revelations that show up later in the story (which are partially negated by the ending, but not completely).
  • The third movie portrays Homura's devotion to Madoka as emotionally unhealthy and harmful to both of them. However, before Homura vowed to protect Madoka from the Incubators, she was a frail, self-hating victim who didn't have anything to live for. Comparatively, Homura's Mad Love strengthened her (both physically and psychologically) and gave her a purpose in life - which was to kill Witches with high-powered artillery and pimped-out time powers. It's kind of hard to argue that the net result is negative.
• Although it didn't really come with a "message" per se, Shiki still fell victim to this a little with the character of Natsuno Yuuki. He's a cold, unfriendly high school student who has very few friends in Sotoba as a result, and although he's one of the first people to start investigating the vampires, once his best friend becomes one he instantly loses the will to fight and tells his friend to feed on him until he dies instead, despite having no way of knowing he would ever come back. Once he's reborn as a werewolf, he spends the remainder of the series organizing an elaborate assisted suicide in the process of bringing down the vampires. Unfortunately, all many fans of the series remember about him is that he was willing to fight off the vampires before anyone else, and so they think he's a total badass and Only Sane Man, even though he's not really any less of a flawed Jerkass than many of the other characters. It doesn't help that he doesn't face any lasting consequences for anything he says or does, while the other characters do.
• Heat Guy J consistently promotes the message that violence and hate only beget more violence and hate, and that forgiveness and connection are the way to go. It even goes out of its way to point out that the two most violent major characters (Clair and Boma) are seriously screwed up in the head. Problem is, they both look awesome as they endanger other people's lives!
• Yu-Gi-Oh!:
  • The original series' moral is supposed to be that games are a way of making friends and being a Stop Having Fun Guy is not the way to go. The resident SHFG is The Rival, Seto Kaiba, who is fabulously wealthy, physically attractive, a Badass Bookworm, and a master Duelist in his own right, with a host of powerful and impressive cards. The anime took this even further by adding a fair amount of Adaptational Heroism, and then the dub gave him all the best lines. He's essentially the card game playing equivalent of Tony Stark. Is it any wonder that he became the most popular character in the franchise?
  • From the anime only Doma Arc, there is the scene of Yami Yugi defeating Insector Haga/Weevil with excessive force. A dirty trick pulled by Haga enrages Yami Yugi, so in response he has a monster beat him well after he's lost the game. Yami Yugi is meant to be seen to be in the wrong for letting his anger get the better of him, as it resulted in him torturing his opponent. But Yami Yugi tortured Haga in the first place because Haga lied about having a card that held the soul of Yugi before tearing it up, just to get a reaction out of Yami Yugi. Not to mention, the scene went far enough over-the-top that it just became funny, largely removing the disturbing edge. (The dub even added a Bond One-Liner to the whole thing.) As a result, Yami Yugi's beatdown of Haga is largely seen as a badass moment and one of the anime's highlights, not to mention a gigantic meme.
  • In Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds, Aki's rejection of the cult leader Divine and her falling in with the good guys is meant to be a sign of growth and her thinking for herself, learning to live a healthy life. However, much like the Black Cat example, the intended messaging gets undermined pretty badly by the fact that when Aki was an antagonist, she was an absolute terror, pushing Yusei to his limit and dominating her Duels. She also had a sadistic side and deep-seated issues that made her unique among female characters in the franchise, and was generally positioned as the tritagonist. When she turned good and worked past her issues, she lost all her unique traits and intimidating aura in favor of being a Satellite Love Interest, fell Out of Focus and got displaced in the group by Replacement Scrappy Crow, and suffered a humiliating loss on one of the few occasions she actually did get focus again. Consequently, most appraisals of Aki that don't involve shipping her with Yusei tend to involve the observation that she was infinitely cooler back when she was a depressive psychopath taking out her rage on the world.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V tries to have the moral of ''dueling to make others smile is the way to go!", and contrasts this by giving the main character a Superpowered Evil Side who fights in Tranquil Fury and uses brutal tactics, with the intended point being that this is wrong. The problem is that other series had similar moments of the main characters losing themselves in anger, and it was always conveyed by having them either fail after pursuing suicidal strategies or win too late for it to mean anything. Meanwhile, Yuya's berserk state always wins, and usually in a way that significantly advances his goals, and even usually getting a few new cards that his superpowered evil side created from thin air out of the deal. Even after said evil side becomes the final villain and is defeated, Yuya still keeps using strategies that said evil side provided for him. And that's not even getting into the viewers who found Yuya's attempts to "entertain" people through Dueling to be saccharine and annoying.
• Initial D's anime has a disclaimer pop up before each episode telling the viewer to follow traffic laws. Yet the whole show is premised on the fact that illegal street racing is cool, and proceeds to have 20 minutes of exciting, dramatic and just plain awesome midnight racing.
• Of all the Japan Animator Expo shorts, "ME!ME!ME!" arguably fell into this the worst. The point was that holing yourself up and diving too deep into your usual pastimes to ignore the pain was extremely unhealthy, as the short begins and ends on Shuu staring dead-eyed while barely moving from his bed. But this is all offset by the sexy clones performing burlesque routines in his fantasy, the naked girl climbing out of his TV and getting close to him, the badass Space Marine campaign where he fights a sexy girl army, and the fact that we see more of charismatic, demonic general HANA than Hana-chan, the ex-girlfriend he went through so much hell to reconnect with. Sure, he's pretty much a wreck and the girls cannibalize his corpse, but some viewers got the message that you can get trippy dreams about cute girls climbing all over you with a sweet electro soundtrack in the background if you keep yourself from forming close relationships.
• Digimon Tamers features an inversion of the trope. The show's episode previews keep ending with the words "you, too, should aim to be a tamer!" This is despite the series being Darker and Edgier than previous Digimon series with one of its main character's Digimon partner being murdered before she is captured and tortured by an Eldritch Abomination. On top of this the series has a Cruel Twist Ending where the main characters are all separated from their Digimon. In effect the show's preview said "Do this horrifying thing."
• Naruto shows the horrifying system of kids becoming ninjas and the eponymous protagonist vowing to change it. While life as a ninja is frequently shown to be horrifying, with the characters becoming Child Soldiers, putting aside all of the cool fight scenes, Naruto's life changes for the better by becoming a ninja - he starts off ostracized by his village and ends with several friends and a loving wife. Not to mention many other characters see their lives improve, even if life as a ninja was difficult, so for all the horror the series demonstrates in the system, it maintaining a hopeful atmosphere means that the system it derides as terrible still sees people leading healthier lives by becoming ninja.
• Scum's Wish: The series is pretty forward with the message that relationships born out of lust, manipulation, or loneliness like those of the MCs are nowhere close to healthy or fulfilling, but it also presents those same relationships as being incredibly erotic. Not to mention that the antagonist, whose whole motivation is manipulating and using her partners, ends up with the best ending out of the entire cast.
• Anime and manga also have two very famous inversions related to war: Grave of the Fireflies and Barefoot Gen depict the horrors of war from the victims' perspectives - and qualify as strong anti-war commentary.
• The author's notes for Jo Jos Bizarre Adventure Steel Ball Run have an almost certainly intentional one of these from the author, admonishing readers to stop climbing trees even though "I understand you wish to defy gravity and the natural order of the entire planet." The picture accompanying the note? The author climbing a tree.
• The Saga of Tanya the Evil: The constant focus on how badass Tanya is in any situation undermines any message the anime makes that War Is Hell, especially considering Tanya suffers no traumatic experiences, major casualties, (that she cares about), or unredeemable losses. Of course, it should be noted that Tanya - being obscenely powerful, so cold-hearted she has no real human attachments to anyone, and possibly a bit battle-crazy - is far from the average soldier. Her unfortunate victims, on the other hand - on both sides of the conflict - can confirm that war is very much Hell, unless you're Tanya.
• One early chapter/episode of Dr. STONE has Senku making gunpowder and explaining the process in detail, followed by a fourth-wall-breaking warning from the gag character Mecha Senku telling the audience to not repeat what Senku did, because it will create real gunpowder that you can use to blow things up. Cue fans making their own gunpowder using instructions from the anime.

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