Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas / Anime & Manga

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• In Area 88, Kanzaki is a ruthless sociopath who lusts for power. However, he loved his late mother, and her suicide deeply traumatized him. When Kanzaki tells Ryoko about his mother's suicide, the otherwise sensitive Ryoko responds that she must have been a weak woman — and the look in Kanzaki's eyes afterwards is chilling. Kanzaki's love for his late mother might be more than filial; he remarks that Ryoko looks like his mother, only to propose a Scarpia Ultimatum to her several pages later.
• In Bleach, the Espada Tia Harribel has an all-female Fracción. The three girls (Apache, Mila Rose, and Sun Sun) fight all the time between themselves, but they're very devoted to their mistress and she also cares for them. When they lose and get torched by Yamamoto, even after creating a fearsome Chimera by mutilating themselves, Harribel quietly and coldly goes Mama Bear on her current opponent, Hitsugaya. In the end, this is reinforced when the four women survive... and Apache, Sun Sun, and Mila Rose beg Orihime to heal Harribel first, despite the horrifying injuries they also suffered.
• Ceres, Celestial Legend: Aya Mikage's villainous cousin Kagami is shown visiting his insane mother in one episode, and it's implied that her legends of the 'celestial maidens' was the original driving force behind Kagami's determination to find them. It's one of the few Pet the Dog instances he gets in the entire series, between backstabbing everyone else.
  • Also, the Yandere Miyori Sahara's Freudian Excuse was her beloved mother's murder at the hand of Ceres, during her first rampage.
• In the manga version of Chrono Crusade, the Big Bad has a very, very complex relationship with his mother, but he overall thinks highly of her — and, in fact, some of his motivation stems from an Awful Truth that she's a part of.
• Lelouch Lamperouge aka Lelouch Vi Brittania, the Villain Protagonist from Code Geass, has as one of his motives to uncover the truth behind the really messy death of Marianne "The Flash" Lamperouge aka Marianne Vi Britannia, his beloved mother. When he learns that she is alive (albeit, as a "spirit" of sorts) and the Evil Plan she concocted with his father, he kills both of them, not only to stop the plan altogether but as revenge for abandoning him and Nunnally in a war zone to move that plan forward.
• Takenouchi of Cromartie High School, purported to be the toughest student in the first-year class, is quick to point out that no matter how badass you are, you still have to respect your parents.
• Done subtly in Cyborg 009. In the original manga and the earliest series, Joe/009 grew up to be a delinquent because his mother died and left him in an orphanage and he was ridiculed for being half-Japanese. When Joe is finally fighting Black Skull, he's being strangled and has visions of the three women who were most important to him. The first two are his friend Helena (who he regretted being unable to save) and Francoise/003 (his Love Interest, herself a rather motherly girl). The last is his mother. Upon seeing her, he smiles and mutters "Mom..." before breaking free.
  • Also done in the 2001 series. Carl "Sphynx" Eckermann was an Anti-Villain whose mother died when he was a child. He never recovered from the loss, and in fact he became a Stalker with a Crush towards the aforementioned Francoise/003 because she looked a lot like his deceased mother.
• Matriarch Mina, a Contractor introduced in the second season of Darker than Black gradually comes across as an Anti-Villain, but is icily emotionless and kills without mercy (but also without taking any pleasure in the act). It's implied that she was disowned from her family prior to becoming a Contractor (perhaps because of her lesbianism), and while she doesn't get along with her father, she is taken aback when he tells her that her mother is on her death bed, and to her surprise, this distracts her during a fight with Hei.
• Death Note: Teru Mikami is an inversion — he sees his mother as almost condoning the actions of evildoers by telling him that some things cannot be changed. When she is killed, he inwardly celebrates the death.
  • Villain Protagonist Light Yagami counts as well, considering that he didn't care that his dad Soichirou died, and in the live-action movie, he was even willing to put his name on the Death Note.
  • Psychopathic Womanchild Misa still remembers her dead parents kindly, and in fact she joined Light because he killed their murderer. In the live-action, there's more emphasis in her bond with them, and seeing Light about to write Soichirou's name on the Death Note shocks her to tears.
• Played for laughs in Desert Punk, where the leader of a gang doesn't even flinch when a letter addressed to him calls him a long list of scathing insults but ends up "Hulking Out" when the postscript offhandedly mentions that his mother had a fat belly button (or in the English dub that she was a "dirty whore").
• Dragon Ball:
  • In the film Dragon Ball Super: Broly it is astoundingly shown that even a short-tempered genocidal Bad Boss like Frieza cannot bring himself to even raise his voice, much less vaporize his lady in attendant Berryblue, for warmly teasing him about his height, but instead affectionately confides his insecurities to her with absolute sincerity. Since she is shown in the prologues to have been by his side since childhood (before he overtook Planet Vegeta, in fact), Berryblue is all but implied to be Frieza's childhood nanny. As the closest thing he has to a mother, it's only natural that she would be the one person that he would genuinely love, and dare to be sincere and vulnerable to.
  • In the same movie Raditz (yes that Raditz) was very respectful towards Gine, calling her "mom" despite Saiyans supposedly having no concept of family, and apparently Gine was very proud of Raditz becoming Vegeta's partner. Dragon Ball Minus also implies Gine messaged Raditz about Goku traveling to Earth, meaning Raditz might've gone to retrieve his brother on her orders. It's also notable that despite Raditz not getting along with his father Bardock when they meet in games, Raditz has nothing bad to say about Gine.
• In Fairy Tail, despite August repeatedly claiming not to understand the love between a parent and child, he ultimately ceases his suicide attack because he sees his mother suffering from it in the distance.
• The whole reason why Kaioh from Fist of the North Star went Ax-Crazy in the first place. His hatred for the main Hokuto family comes from the fact that his mother died while protecting a young Hyoh and Kenshiro.
  • Devil Rebirth, a huge monstrous convicted criminal was quite fond of his mother, who defended him despite the fact that he killed 700 people. Surprisingly she looked like a gentle old woman.
• Kurei in Flame of Recca is usually Recca's sadistic Aloof Big Brother. He has different mothers (blood and adopted) and boy does he respect them well. In fact, his adopted mother is actually his Morality Pet.
• Fullmetal Alchemist: The main reason the homunculi do what they do in Fullmetal Alchemist is because they love their father. Father just uses them for his goal, as their love makes them loyal to the end. Pride finally figures out right before his Death of Personality that it was Mrs. Bradley who was the person that was giving him the love that they all crave.
• Nakago of Fushigi Yuugi. She was the only family he had left, and watching her get raped — and accidentally releasing his powers and killing her in a manner most gruesome out of horror — was the reason he became a psychotic Magnificent Bastard in the first place.
• Inuyasha:
  • Youkai leaderess Abi-hime's main motivation to strike a deal with Big Bad Naraku was to get the human blood she needed to save the life of her mother, Queen Tekkei, who was not only old but also was poisoned after defeating and eating an ogre. Granted, she's not portrayed as sympathetic and the mother is a giant bird youkai, but Abi's devotion to her mother is still noticeable.
  • Inuyasha himself enters into this territory in the beginning of the series. At this point, he's still a Jerkass and very much an Anti-Hero (before his Character Development occurs). Despite all this, he is shown to truly cherish his memories of his dead mother, despite Kagome assuming he resents her for being human. In fact, Inuyasha's love for his mother is what causes Sesshomaru to use her form to discover the secret of Tessaiga from Inuyasha.
  • Downplayed with Sesshoumaru, who's a jerk to anyone, but when he turns to his mother for help to master his sword, she gives him a somewhat unempathetic Die or Fly lesson in the value of compassion, the key to mastering Tenseiga, he seems to respect her even with all she put him through.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
  • Jotaro travels all the way to Egypt, enduring constant attacks by enemy Stand users, and then faces off with a time-stopping vampire, all to save his mother Holly. Jotaro's Jerk with a Heart of Gold personality prevents him from ever really admitting that he loves his mother, but his actions speak volumes to her, as she has always had faith in his inner kindness, and in the end, she was right.
  • It's In the Blood: in Part 2, Jotaro's grandfather Joseph was brash and prone to picking fights, but even he feared reprisal from his grandmother Erina after accidentally using his Hamon to fire a bottle cap at a corrupt constable's finger and snapping it, and he becomes quite cross with people who upset her.
  • Believe it or not, Dio Brando himself counts. In Part 1, he harbors a fierce anger towards his father Dario because, according to Dio in his own words, he "made Mother suffer", and he said this to Jonathan when he could have just said that he made him suffer. He cried Manly Tears when his father ordered him to sell his mother's old dress for booze. And shortly before becoming a vampire, Dio fought a duo of drunk Jerkass vagrants because they insulted his mother. Of course, it is possible he stopped caring after turning into a vampire, but it is quite surprising that, at least at one point, someone like Dio could have loved his mother, maybe even to the point of her death being his Start of Darkness.
  • Steel Ball Run is even more explicit about this trope with Diego Brando, who actually gets a backstory with his mother. Unfortunately, this Mrs. Brando died from being mistreated and neglected at the farm, causing him to become vengeful and power-hungry.
• Kaiba:
  • Vanilla, the gruff and short-tempered sheriff is revealed to have been struggling to earn enough money to buy a new body for his mother shortly before he dies.
  • Also Popo, who has to take over the world in order to see his mother again. But then her memory chip accidentally gets destroyed...
• The eponymous Villain Protagonist of Kaiketsu Zorori. He seeks out a cute bride and Zorori Castle to make her proud of him And is more than a little overjoyed at the idea of reuniting with her in Heaven.
• In Kirby: Right Back at Ya!, Escargon (or Escargoon in the dub) is The Dragon to despicable dictator King Dedede, and especially in the dub, is almost as cruel as Dedede. Nevertheless, he cares about his mother a lot and passes himself off as a king so she won't be disappointed.
• Fate and Lutecia, villains from first and third seasons of Lyrical Nanoha, who did what they did because the former wished to make her mother smile again and the latter hoped to awaken her comatose mother. Fate failed, as Precia couldn't accept a clone as her daughter, and is later adopted by Lindy instead. Lutecia makes friends with the people that defeat her, reunites with her now awake mother, and is serving probation.
• In Maria†Holic, the only person that Mariya seems to truly care for is his dead grandmother. So much that he took the whole "spend a year crossdressing in an all-girls school" deal because it came as a last test of character from her.
• Gender-flipped in Mobile Suit Gundam where Evil Princess and uberbitch Kycilia Zabi's love for her father, Degwin, is her only redeeming trait.
• Mobile Suit Gundam SEED where Ezalia Joule, fascist politician and right-hand woman to Patrick Zala is spared from being irredeemable by her genuine love for her son, Yzak. Yzak, himself a colossal Jerkass, returns her affections.
• Tomura Shigaraki from My Hero Academia was shown to have a good relationship with his mother up until his power to disintegrate anything he touched manifested at the age of four and caused him to accidentally kill his dog. Then his sister. Then his grandparents. Then finally he killed his mother when she tried to reach out to comfort her child who was understandably upset, which caused him to snap and kill his abusive father on purpose.
• Female version. Nao Yuuki from My-HiME is said to have been very close to her mother, having become a cynical "lone wolf" and child prostitute of sorts as a twisted revenge after said mother was seriously injured by thugs. This is brought up twice: when Natsuki whom she has attacked and kidnapped once accuses her of being selfish and cruel in her pursuits, causing a pissed off Nao to go into a Motive Rant and explain her backstory, and when Shizuru attacks Nao in retaliation for her attacking and kidnapping Natsuki (twice), killing Nao's CHILD and Mrs. Yuuki, which sends the girl into a heartbreaking Villainous Breakdown in which she falls to the ground, screams, and cries for her mother's death. Who fortunately gets better when Mashiro intervenes in the Grand Finale, though, letting Nao start all over.
• A twisted example comes from Gaara in Naruto. He thinks of the Tailed Beast sealed in him — Shukaku — as his "mother" and when "she" tells him to kill people, he obeys "her". But then, a few years after his Heel–Face Turn, his resurrected father tells him that his real mother, Karura, actually did love him and she's been with him protecting him all this time in the form of his sand shield.
• There's a quick example in Negima! Magister Negi Magi. When Nodoka is being attacked by Bounty Hunters, she uses her artifact to read their minds... only to find that in spite of their threatening, inhuman appearance, they're actually very typical guys. One of whom is mainly concerned about sending a portion of his money for the job to his mother, and wonders idly how she's doing.
• One Piece:
  • It turns out Portgas D. Ace took the last name of his mother Rouge to honor her for extending her pregnancy at the cost of her own life so as to prevent him from being associated with his father Gold Roger. Due to having been told from a young age that his father was a demon and any children he might have had deserved to die for his crimes, Ace hated his blood father and preferred to honor his mother instead. He's not a villain, though he is a notorious pirate.
  • One of the reasons Doflamingo hated his father for giving up his title as a World Noble, ultimately enough to kill him was because he believes the squalid conditions they were forced to live in contributed to his and his brother Rocinante's mother dying of illness.
  • Zigzagged with Sanji's Vinsmoke siblings. As part of Judge's experiments on his children, Ichiji, Yonji, and Niji had their empathy and kindness removed in-utero on the reasoning that not having what made them human will make them 'stronger'. Because of this, they never bothered to visit their sickly mother Sora while she was slowly dying from her desperate gambit to preserve their humanity. And after Sora dies, they viciously and cruelly beat up Sanji for crying during her funeral. Reiju, on the other hand, deeply loved Sora despite being similarly experimented on, but can only express her feelings in secret due to her family's contempt for weakness; once she's alone with her mother's grave, she cries for her openly.
  • All 46 sons of the Evil Matriarch Charlotte Linlin, aka "Big Mom", are insanely loyal to her and despite her immense strength care greatly when she's in danger. Of course, this "love" might also count as "fearful respect" since Big Mom's sons are well aware how terrible she is during an Unstoppable Rage and how she won’t hesitate to hurt her children.
    • Big Mom herself feels this way to her former adopted mother, Mother Carmel. She keeps a framed picture of her, placing it next to her at the arranged wedding of Sanji and Pudding, and when it's broken she lets out a Conqueror's Haki infused wail of sheer despair, becoming briefly vulnerable.
• Pokémon: The Series:
  • Giovanni speaks very fondly of his mother in the The Birth Of Mewtwo radio drama, despite her seeming emotionally abusive and referring to him as a "brat". Madame Boss was the previous leader of Team Rocket.
  • No matter how brutish and menacing a Pokemon is, you can expect them to still be infinitely loyal to their master. Jessie's thuggish Seviper for example stuck by her side for three regions worth of Team Rocket pummellings, it looked elated when it finally managed to win a contest ribbon for its overjoyed master.
  • Jessie's Mimikyu is a vicious Pikachu-killing machine and a Dragon-in-Chief to Team Rocket for the large part, though its largest redeeming aspect is that it seems to begrudgingly care about its trainer, especially after she preserves its Pikachu disguise.
• Lucia Ravegroove from Rave Master is one of the most Ax-Crazy homicidal villains in the series, and he doesn't care about his father at all. But he loved his deceased mother very much, to the point that he named the final form of his sword, Dark Emilia, after her.
• Wholesome Crossdresser version. In The Rose of Versailles, Oscar, a normally cool, passive, obedient royal guard, becomes quite outraged when Madame Du Barry, the mistress of the king, drags her mother into her high-stakes court battle against the then-dauphine Marie-Antoinette. Oscar storms into Du Barry's private quarters and threatens her at swordpoint [mind, Du Barry is the favourite of the king, and needless to say threatening of any manner should have been punished by death], her sudden display of bloodlust frightening Du Barry such that she gave up the entire scheme despite having the king's protection. Although the very passionate Oscar has and would go on to lose her temper and do stupid/reckless/etc. things over other morally-charged conflicts — such as the murder of a child — this would remain by far the angriest and the stupidest, suggesting that she is a mama's girl above all else.
• In Trinity Blood, when Suleyman betrays and rebels against Empress Augusta Vradica, he nevertheless refuses to shoot her, instead Taking the Bullet himself. When she asks why he hesitated, all he replies before dying is: "Is there a child who doesn't love his mother?" Although he was probably not related to the Empress by blood, most vampires in the setting harbor filial feelings towards her.
  • Suleyman was actually more a Well-Intentioned Extremist who dearly loved the Empire and never discriminated Terrans (which casts him in a better light than most Methuselahs) in the novels, teaching this to his niece and ward Shahrazad. Also that Seth is rumored to be a monster to some people (including Lilith, who was a Messiah in the past, thought so). So their dynamic is much more complex than the anime lets on. There is a bit of parental incest on Suleyman's side (who claims she's the 'woman' he 'loves' earlier, but also the person he detests).
• Askeladd in Vinland Saga. His mother — as well as the lineage he shares with said mother — is very important to him, to the degree that despite being an amoral bastard he'll keep any oath he makes in her or his maternal ancestors' name. If he makes an oath on his father's name, however, there's a very good chance he's going to stab you in the back.
• In Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds, Jack Atlas (the Anti-Hero of the series) has no recollection of his real mother, who perished in Zero Reverse, but he's very affectionate towards Martha, a maternal figure to all the children who were orphaned from the disaster. In one episode where he greets her during the Dark Signers arc, she asks him to greet her as he did when he was a child (which is the way a knight knees while addressing a queen) and he does, even though the other Signers are watching.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS: Spectre, a man who delighted in psychologically torturing Aoi and undyingly loyal to the Knights of Hanoi. He also treasured the tree he claimed had raised him and in turn his Sunavalon monsters.
• This concept is explored some in YuYu Hakusho.
  • Kurama, a fox-spirit, fused with his human mother's still unborn child to continue his existence after nearly being killed. He planned to leave and continue his criminal ways once he regained his demonic powers, but found that he had come to love his human mother (Shiori) too much to abandon her, and was even willing to give up his life to save her from an illness. He's willing to give up your life, too, if you threaten her safety in any way.
  • At the beginning of the series, Yusuke is killed in a car accident through some grand cosmic accident: he performed a Heroic Sacrifice a delinquent like him was never expected to, but his sacrifice was also an unnecessary one. As he is told in the afterlife: even had he not intervened, the car about to strike a young child who had wandered into the street would have swerved out of the way at the last moment. Because he has died both unexpectedly and needlessly, the bureaucratic afterlife offers him a chance to be restored to life, but the apathetic and bitter Yusuke isn't even sure he wants his life back. He decides to take the chance after all when he attends his own wake and sees his mother is a miserable wreck, sobbing uncontrollably.

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