Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse / Anime & Manga

Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse in Anime & Manga.

A-E

• Accel World:
  • Near the end of the battle with Chrome Disaster, which infected Scarlet Rain's friend and "parent," Cherry Rook, the infected Cherry says that he only wanted to get stronger; it later turns out that he's afraid of being left behind by his protégé, especially since he may no longer be able to see her in real life, either. Haru/Silver Crow, however, says that all Burst Linkers want the same thing, so that doesn't excuse him turning into a monster that would even eat his own "child.".
  • Seiji Nomi had a fairly difficult childhood growing up under the thumb of his Big Brother Bully, Yuichi, who exploited Seiji and forced him to turn over his points on a regular basis. Seiji ultimately became strong enough to kill his brother's Duel Avatar repeatedly until Yuichi was driven off Brain Burst, then later became a similar bully himself when he began extorting Haru the same way. The most sympathy Haru has for him after learning of his backstory is expressing his belief that they could have been friends if they'd met as normal Burst Linkers (and he isn't too put out when Seiji laughs it off), and considering that all other Burst Linkers derive their special abilities from various trauma, Seiji isn't the only Burst Linker with a tragic past.
• The Ancient Magus' Bride: Josef is fused with a being cursed with immortality, but can still feel pain and still grows old, meaning over the course of several centuries, he's experienced various injuries and his body aging and rotting away over and over again, feeling every bit of it. To add insult to injury, Josef is bearing the curse despite not even having been alive when the original offense happened; he's just fused with the guy who did do it, which only happened because Josef was trying to save his life. Josef argues that the constant pain is so great, and the unfairness of his situation is so severe, that it fully justifies his habit of murdering people and taking their body parts to replace his own in an effort to stave off the rotting, and that anyone in his situation would do the same thing. Chise acknowledges that Josef's situation plain sucks, and it wasn't really his fault—but the subsequent centuries of murder, torture, and cruelty very much are his fault. She admits he probably has had a harder life than literally anyone she's ever met, but that doesn't give him the right to treat innocent people terribly and let them become collateral in his quest to get out of this mess.
• Black Clover:
  • When the Big Bad Licht starts bemoaning his tragedies and the people he has lost, Yami quickly parodies his own Dark and Troubled Past, by mentioning that he's suffered a lot to get to where he is, but he never made a big deal out of it, held someone else accountable or became evil because of it.
  • Asta plays this straight in Chapter 200 once he understood what Patri went through after seeing his memories as just a young elf who turns out to be tricked by the real Big Bad, The Devil, into hating humans that were the opposite of what the real Licht believes. Asta still won't forgive him because he killed Julius while holding the Clover kingdom hostage, and endangered the people with the Reincarnation spell which is why he'll let Patri be around to stop the Devil from completing his plans.
• Black Lagoon:
  • Revy, the Lagoon crew's nihilistic gunslinger with a Hair-Trigger Temper, once blames the way she is now on her rough childhood (she was raped by a police officer and then killed her abusive father when he didn't care). Rock, a Japanese salaryman who joined the crew after being hung out to dry by his superiors, finally gets fed up with this attitude and accuses her of wallowing in self-pity, which puts a serious crack in her shell.
  • Revy gets another moment like this again in the "El Baile de la Muerte" Arc from Fabiola, who made a temporary alliance with her to get Roberta to return home. Fabiola relates how she suffered a similarly turbulent childhood as Revy did, yet Fabiola in the present doesn't believe in simply resorting to violence and bloodshed to solve problems like Revy does. While Revy pretty much just ignores Fabiola's words, she noticeably doesn't say anything directly opposing them.
• Bleach,
  • Ichigo admits to not paying close attention to Uryu's story about why he hates Soul Reapers (Quincies and Soul Reapers were enemies, Uryu's grandfather wanted them to make peace, but the Soul Reapers killed him), but points out that, whatever it is, cannot possibly justify endangering Karakura Town by baiting Hollows to it just to prove himself better than Ichigo. He suggests that they instead work together to fix the mess, and a humbled Uryu agrees and becomes one of Ichigo's allies from then on.
  • In the filler New Captain Arc, Ichigo displays No Sympathy for Shusuke Amagai's pursuit of revenge for his father's death, angrily refering to his justitications as "self-centered garbage" and calling him out for hurting innocent people like Rurichiyo as part of of his scheme.
  • In the movie Bleach: Hell Verse, Ichigo delivers this to Kokuto, who turns out to be the movie's true villain. As Kokuto had confessed to Ichigo earlier, the reason he's in Hell is because of his own actions; when Kokuto was alive, he had a younger sister. His sister was murdered, and Kokuto murdered her murderers, causing him to be sent to Hell after his death. He tells Ichigo how vengeance made him feel better, but only temporarily. In the movie proper, Kokuto's goal is to escape Hell at any cost, even if that means turning the World of the Living into a living hell. Ichigo won't have any of it, calling out Kokuto for not taking any responsibility for his actions and for trying to vent his anger and agony on innocent people.
• Blood+: Saya's first "father" locked Diva up in a bare stone cell at the top of a tower while he raised her sister Saya like his own daughter as part of a social experiment on the mysterious human-looking twin creatures he'd discovered. Diva spent the first 50 years of her life in near-total isolation with only her jailers for occasional company, and seems sad and jealous of Saya in their final clash when saying Saya was the only one treated like a human and allowed to enjoy life. While it's no surprise she turned out the way she did, Saya and the Red Shield agree that Diva's past doesn't justify her burning down the Zoo, slaughtering the original Joel Goldschmidt, or any of the other atrocities she's committed, especially her rape and murder of Riku, and insist she's an evil monster who needs to be stopped.
• Cells at Work!: White Blood Cell tells Cancer Cell that, while he feels for him wanting to be treated like a regular cell instead of an extermination target, he also points out that Cancer deliberately defied the rules of the body by proliferating, stealing nutrients and destroying normal tissue so letting him live is out of the question. Truth in Television applies since cancer is a deadly disease that is hard to treat once it appears, so you wouldn't want to feel any sympathy for it anyway.
• A Certain Magical Index: Touma Kamijou has this attitude towards his foes' Dark and Troubled Past and excuses in general, acknowledging that what happened to them sucks and even sympathizing to an extent, but also calling them out on using that as an excuse to hurt others instead of trying to make the world a better place to ensure it doesn't happen to other people.
  • Sherry Cromwell is a girl from the Magic Side who befriended Ellis Warrior, a boy from the Science Side. Ellis participated in an experiment to try to make him both an esper and a magician, but it failed and his body was ravaged, then several Magic Side enforcers who were against the experiment burst in and executed him after he sacrificed himself so she could escape. Sherry then attempts to trigger a war between the two sides by assassinating key figures, so that the two sides will be separated forever and the tragedy she went through will never happen again. Touma Kamijou angrily points out her tragedy doesn't excuse the fact that her plan will cause a lot more people than just Ellis to die, and the people she's trying to assassinate have nothing to do with Ellis' death. Touma then points out that two of the people she's trying to assassinate — Hyouka Kazakiri and Index — are friends from the Science and Magic Sides respectively, and she'll put them through her same tragedy if she kills them.
  • Vento of the Front despises the Science Side of the world because she and her brother were critically injured in a ride that claimed to be scientifically proven safe and her brother gave up his life so that she could live (they had a very rare blood type, and with no donors on hand, her brother told the doctors to give her his blood), so she seeks to destroy Academy City as a form of payback. Touma calls her out on her way of thinking, stating that the doctors did try to save both of them regardless of the limits of what they were able to do and her brother made his choice so that she could continue living, and now she's only taking out her anger on anyone associated with the Science Side for something they had no control over, let alone something they had no knowledge of.
• In the second episode of Charlotte, Yuu, Nao and Joujirou set out to track down someone who's using his "thoughtography" ability to take pictures of his female classmates while seeing through their clothes, and sell those pictures for money. Not only is this wrong, but it also puts the ability user at risk of being captured and experimented upon, which is why Nao wants to get him to stop. When the culprit reveals that he was doing this to raise money for his parents, Nao tells him to get an honest part-time job instead.
• Death Note: In the final scenes of the series, Light Yagami delivers a Motive Rant as he is finally against the wall about how he did all he did For Justice, but Near tells him that a truly sane person who had gotten his hands on a Death Note would have not used it at all, or stopped once he discovered that thing really kills people, but Light as "Kira" carried on for years and murdered hundreds to create a very false peace. Near dismisses Light as merely a Serial Killer with a god complex.
• This applies in Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba for the less monstrously evil demons at any rate. Every demon in the series was a human at some point in time and often had completely normal, and in some cases very tragic lives, before they became the monsters they are today. None of their actions as demons are portrayed as excusable, yet Tanjiro is often able to get a sense of their pain and suffering as they lay dying, and even offers them a last moment of respect and sympathy for their situation, with several demons expressing genuine regret for the things that they've done while they're at death's door.
• Dragon Ball Z: Deconstructed, both in how and who it is used on and why the hero adopted this mentality in the first place. During the Buu Saga, Majin Buu kills because he has the mind of a child and doesn't know any better, and it's all he knows, which is why he continues his rampage even without Babidi to order him around. While Goku is somewhat sympathetic, Piccolo rebukes it, declaring outright that one's background does not excuse acts of evil. He is soon proven wrong when Mr. Satan, of all people, ultimately manages to end up befriending Buu because of Buu's child-like nature and very nearly manages to convince him to stop his killing ways. This means that if the Z-Fighters had taken the time to try and explain things to Buu instead of trying to deal with him the same way they did with every other enemy they fought beforehand, they very likely could have avoided the bloodshed of this arc. Unfortunately, Buu's temper is fully triggered when Mr. Satan ends up being shot by some thugs and tried to purge himself of his evil side to better control it, only to be beaten by said evil side since it took the bulk of the power during the split, resulting in a more dangerous Super Buu. Said good side winds up being the key to the heroes' victory against Kid Buu. Piccolo's own disregard is more notable when one recalls that he was similar to Buu, only to be changed by Gohan. In fact, he (or more accurately, his father, the original King Piccolo), was the evil half to the original Namekian (with Kami being the good half). The split was done when the Namekian was told that his exposure to the cruelty of the world had tainted his heart too much to be given the title of "Kami". This, along with basically every villain he's ever fought being completely unsympathetic Card-Carrying Villains probably led him to adopt this philosophy, since it applies to almost every other bad guy.
• ERASED: At the end of her arc, Akemi is revealed to have been abused by a man (presumably Kayo's father), which is what caused her to pass that treatment onto Kayo. While most of the (physical) adults present feel some sympathy after her breakdown, Satoru's narration makes it clear that he doesn't, and from Kayo's refusal to look at her, he doesn't think that she does, either.

F-J

• Fairy Tail:
  • The dark guild Eisenwald was formerly a legal guild before they were made unaccredited by order of the Magic Council, and now they're basically viewed as outcasts by society and find it much harder to make a decent living. For this reason, they're willing to take the lives of people who have it so much better than they do and ultimately plan to murder the ones they view as most responsible with forbidden death magic. Lucy not only calls them out on this but also points out the reason they were unaccredited in the first place was that they kept committing crimes (such as assassinations) even after said crimes were declared as such by the Council.
  • In the Galuna Island arc, Lyon is trying to release Deliora, the demon which his master, Ur gave her life to seal away so he can prove himself strong enough to defeat it; the process of doing this causes a lot of collateral damage. After hearing Lyon explain his goal, how does Natsu respond?
    • "I don't know what happened in the past. But what you're trying to do now is making a lot of innocent people suffer."
  • In a bonus chapter, Erza first meets Bisca when the latter was an outlaw pretending to be part of Fairy Tail. Bisca tried to convince Erza that she had no other choice than to commit crimes to support herself and Sunny, since as an immigrant, she was having trouble finding work, but Erza refused to accept this as an excuse for Bisca's actions. That being said, Erza could forgive Bisca, and invited her to join Fairy Tail, resulting in the two becoming close friends.
• Fruits Basket:
  • Akito Sohma was mentally and emotionally abused by her mother, who raised her as a man while repeatedly telling her that she's worthless and no one will ever love her for her own person, so it's a matter of time before the Sohma curse breaks and she ends up all alone; this shaped Akito into a Yandere Psychopathic Manchild who physically and verbally abuses the other Zodiac members in horrific ways to make them too afraid to leave her. As bad as her childhood was, it's made clear that it does not excuse Akito's actions in the slightest and has destroyed the livelihoods of the other Zodiac members; once Tohru offers her friendship, Akito realizes as such and resolves to become a better person. The rest of the Zodiac, while recognizing that Akito's past doesn't justify her treatment of them, ultimately forgive her and decide not to bear grudges, wanting to move on with their lives and seeing that she's trying to turn her life around.
  • Given the one born with the Cat spirit is by the Sohma's rules an outcast and an abomination to be shunned and scorned, Kyo's father was thus by proxy just as shunned as Kyo was by the rest of the family, fundamentally becoming a pariah and losing most of his social status. That being said, it does not excuse his horrendous treatment of Kyo and his wife or diminish his Hate Sink status in the slightest, and Kazuma makes sure to let him know that.
• Scar in Fullmetal Alchemist becomes a Vigilante Man who targets State Alchemists because many of them participated in the genocide of his people. When Roy Mustang (a State Alchemist himself) tells Ed that his quest for vengeance is justified, the latter rebukes it, claiming that he's still involving innocent people for the sake of his revenge and that he's just candy-coating it by acting self-righteous and calling himself "an instrument of God". Several of his fellow Ishvalan survivors also tell Scar outright that what happened to their people is wrong, but that going around and killing people doesn't make the system better. It's this and meeting Winry, whose parents were his first victims, that Scar begins to reconsider his approach.
• The Godzilla anime trilogy has a downplayed example with the main protagonist, Haruo Sakaki. He may have lost both of his parents and adoptive grandparent to Godzilla, which drives him on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge. There are other people who suffered losses just as he has, so it really doesn't give him any justification to drag anyone down with him, let alone getting everyone else killed or put in danger, as well as getting injured in a process, just so he can avenge the loss of his parents and adoptive grandparent. While some may view his actions understandable, endangering the ones under his command is just plain hypocritically selfish and inexcusable to the point that some random soldier calls him out on it, while taking those words at heart whereas Galu-Gu defends his actions.
• Great Teacher Onizuka:
  • Urumi Kanzaki's vendetta against teachers and "classroom terrorism" is all because, in the past, a favorite teacher of hers revealed a secret she asked her to keep: that she was a test tube baby and doesn't know who her birth father is. When Onizuka finds out, he tells her how ridiculous she's acting and introduces her to some of his old friends — people who've grown up with prostitutes for mothers, had to sell drugs to buy food, were raped and beaten up as children or spent years in prison before ever finishing high school — putting her own problems in perspective; with this, Urumi finally realizes how insane her actions have been and stops her revenge games.
  • Teshigawara was constantly compared to his brother growing up, taught that only perfect academic performance mattered, and didn't have any friends. This turned him into a Broken Ace and creepy stalker who apparently never thought to simply ask Azusa on a date instead of coming up with a convoluted scheme to kidnap her. Onizuka and Azusa directly call him out for this.
  • Anko's father abused her brother, who abused her, which led to her own abusive tendencies towards Noboru. It's not justified, but it does explain part of why she is the way she is.
• The Villain Protagonist of Happy Sugar Life is Satou Matsuzaka, a high schooler who is obsessively in love with a young girl named Shio. The manga lightly touches on her backstory where it is revealed that after losing her parents at a young age, she was raised by her sadomasochistic aunt who carelessly exposed her hedonistic lifestyle to her, thus making her responsible for Satou's sociopathic tendencies. Despite this, Satou tries to use this excuse to force her aunt to help her in her plan of disposing of incriminating evidence by burning the apartment room and Shouko's corpse, claiming that she owed her for tainting her view on love. Additionally, Satou's aunt calls her out for always aimlessly going into situations in spite of the consequences.
• If It’s for My Daughter, I’d Even Defeat a Demon Lord: During Latina's second day of school, her teacher spots Latina’s horn under her ribbon, physically attacks her and begins spewing anti-demon hatred, trying to turn the other students against Latina. While the students defend Latina from the teacher, she is traumatized so badly from it that she breaks off her remaining horn and nearly bleeds to death. When Dale learns what happened, he goes to the temple priestess of the school who explains that the teacher's behavior was due to her family being killed by demons. Dale points out that it doesn't excuse calling a small child an abomination, and threatens to use legal power on the temple if they attempt to cover it up (as the same thing had happened with other schools because the nun isn't just anti-demon, she's anti-anything-that-isn't-human as well and often just got transferred to another school). The priestess is forced to comply, and has the teacher fired and defrocked.
• Isekai Quartet: Played for Laughs. After Tanya's explosive loss of temper, most of her troops are left reeling, with Warren having passed out again. She chastises them for lacking mental discipline, before Subaru points out that they simply know how scary she is. She concedes to this, then yells that it's no excuse and kicks Warren awake anyway.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Phantom Blood: When Dio Brando is exposed for poisoning his adoptive father, George Joestar, he tries to bring up his past with his abusive biological father to gain sympathy from his adoptive brother, Jonathan. Speedwagon, who came from a similar background of poverty and abuse, immediately shoots him down, stating that he can smell Dio's malice and that the latter was evil since birth. It doesn't help that Dio was looking for an opportunity to stab Jonathan while shedding Crocodile Tears. This actually proves to be a crucial piece of development for Dio: prior to then he had inwardly tried to excuse his actions as stemming from his troubled childhood, and reasoning that the Joestars were just rich snobs who deserved his hatred. Even though he planned to kill them and steal their fortune, he didn't consider himself a bad person as he convinced himself that he was only doing what anyone else in his situation would do. It's only after it's spelled out for him that Dio realizes Speedwagon's assessment of his character was completely right, at which point he becomes willing to discard his own humanity and fully embrace being evil, no longer even pretending to justify his crimes.

K-M

• Kill la Kill: Despite the fact that Satsuki's actions were noble from the start, and risking her life to save Ryuko after the latter was brainwashed, Ryuko herself notes that doesn't excuse her iron-fisted rule over Honnouji Academy. It takes a heartfelt apology from her for Ryuko to forgive, and accept her as an ally and sister.
• In Kinnikuman: Scramble For The Throne, Robin Mask learns that Kinnikuman Mariposa became a thief because he grew up poor, and develops Sympathy for the Devil. Terryman interjects that Kin, who they are fighting for, also grew up poor due to being stranded on Earth as a baby, but managed to overcome it without falling to the dark side. This motivates Robin to keep going and win.
• Kiznaiver: At the ending's climax, Nico attempts to rile everyone up to gather together and save Sonozaki. When she is called out on trying to save the one that caused them so much hardship, Nico explains she feels no sympathy for her and doesn't care for her sad backstory seeing how she basically tortured them psychologically and physically for the entire summer. But since Agata, their friend is asking to help the girl he loves, they should help him.
• In Lily C.A.T., Hiro murdered the three men who’d forced his sister into drugs and prostitution, which led to her unfortunate death. Barry states that he did feel sorry for Hiro, but Hiro murdering the men torpedoed Barry’s entire investigation into their prostitution ring and two and a half years of work amounted to nothing.
• In Monster, Dr. Tenma suggests that Johan Liebert's Ax-Crazy nature is the fault of the people who indoctrinated him in Kinderheim 511. Ex-agent Mr. Hartmann gleefully denies this, saying that while he and his fellows did try to turn children into vicious soldiers, Johan is just a uniquely destructive human.
  Hartmann: He was more than human, a monster, from the beginning!
• Muhyo and Roji:
  • In life, Zansetsu was an author who, while dying of tuberculosis, was motivated to write a story about his love for a terminally ill woman who'd died before him, but never finished the manuscript before succumbing to his disease. He then took on the forms of people who'd stayed at the inn where he died, hoping to serve as a ghost writer, and ultimately got his work published with the help of Yontani, a washed up writer. Roji and Nana are somewhat sympathetic to Zansetsu's plight, but Muhyo says that a crime is a crime, and sentences Zansetsu to be Dragged Off to Hell^note Compare how some sympathetic spirits get sent to the Styx instead, meaning they'll eventually go to heaven.. Zansetsu acknowledges that his actions were wrong and accepts his sentence, confident that Yontani will finish the work on his own.
  • The Cortlaw siblings joined Ark after the Magical Law Society killed their parents. Not only does this not justify their subseuent crimes, but as Goryo points out, their parents killed the MLS members who tried to reason with them, and so brought their deaths upon themselves.
• My Hero Academia:
  • Midoriya feels sympathy for Todoroki's crappy childhood under Endeavor. However, Midoriya still calls out Todoroki for only using half his Quirk — Todoroki uses only the ice of his Fire and Ice Quirk both to honor his mother and to spite his father — since it insults every other hero by not giving it his all, purely out of spite. Midoriya even once said "It's your Quirk, not his." Later chapters reveal that not only was Todoroki being spiteful, but also impractical. Besides the fact that overusing his ice would lead to him succumbing to cold, Endeavor worked Todoroki to be his Superior Successor because Endeavor's own Hellfire Quirk was prone to burning him through overuse. So while Endeavor could not go all out, Todoroki, in theory, can because of the balancing capabilities of his Quirk. Tetsutetsu (who is unaware of Todoroki's problems) also chides Todoroki for not going full-out, as his steel is able to handle Todoroki's ice and fire and has pushed himself to his limits like the others. Realizing that the two of them have a point, Todoroki starts learning to control his flames more as the story goes on.
  • A lot of the villains have absolutely terrible backstories as a result of falling through the cracks of the Japanese hero system... not that it justifies many of them being violent serial killers or willing and knowing associates of such. Himiko's blood-based Quirk was seen as disgusting and she was forced to suppress it, Twice's self-duplication Quirk combined with being a petty criminal resulted in him being a paranoid wreck, Dabi's fire Quirk is so powerful that he can't control it and hurts everyone including himself plus his own issues with Endeavor's abusive parenting, and Tomura accidentally killed his entire family when his Quirk first activated because of his abusive father. The heroes always react with a speech along the lines of "That's terrible, and hopefully we can fix the system to prevent things like that from happening again... after we stop you from killing people." Chapter 342 brings the theme back with Midoriya and Uraraka chatting about how they want to be capable of acknowledging and empathizing with the feelings of the villains like Toga and Tomura, but they will still fight and stop them as long as they're villains. The manga makes a case that empathy and recognizing a bad person's humanity is necessary to fix the underlying issues that caused the villain to become evil in the first place.
    Midoriya: I too saw the little boy crying wistfully inside Tomura Shigaraki. Even though our conflict is unavoidable, I don't want to ignore that side of him.
  • This really hits its peak with Dabi when he finally reveals his identity and motivations. Toya Todoroki genuinely believes that he has the moral high ground over his abusive father Endeavor (granted, he also admits that he is messed up beyond belief), due to the neglect and emotional abuse he was put through, and that utterly broke him. This "moral high ground" has motivated him to go so far as to not only willing murder innocent people who have nothing to do with said grudge, but even put the other members of his family at risk simply because their deaths would tear at Endeavor even more (not even mentioning how Toya's own apparent death already haunted Endeavor), plus there's his desire to destabilize and destroy public hope in heroes for his own satisfaction and to destroy Endeavor's reputation. However, Midoriya rescues Shoto from him and states that Endeavor acknowledges his mistakes and is trying to make up for them, rather than ignoring them, making it clear he gives no sympathy to someone who still lives in the past like Toya (at the very least not if they go as far as Toya considering his particular situations).
    • Dabi gets this from his own brother during the final arc, as Shoto points out that, no matter how bad their father was, Toya still made the choice to murder innocent people.
  • Downplayed for one spoilerific example. After Aoyama is revealed to be the U.A. Traitor, Invisible Girl gives him an angry What the Hell, Hero? speech over how his actions have caused so much tragedy and destruction over the past year because he was secretly feeding All for One and his allies information, saying that the country is in chaos and couldn't understand how Aoyama had the nerve to be in the same classroom and sleep in the same dorm as them, a sentiment that doesn't go past him. On the other hand, Midoriya forgives him, noting that a) Aoyama's parents essentially sold him to All for One (in desperation, but still) when he was a little kid and he's not responsible for their actions, b) his situation is more Trapped in Villainy as All for One can and will kill his family if he doesn't play ball (and he's still a teenager; asking him to sacrifice his family for the greater good is way out of line), and c) Aoyama's other actions have made it clear that he hates being a villain and wouldn't do so if given the choice; note that he almost ruins the League of Villains' plans in the Training Camp arc by blasting the Bakugou and Tokoyami marbles away from Mr. Compress and Dabi is only able to salvage their plan by sheer dumb luck. Izuku then promises that Aoyama can be a hero for real after they kill All for One.

N-Y

• Naruto:
  • During the Land of Vegetables filler arc, Naruto hears about the princess' backstory — that she was sent away as a hostage, and only brought back once her life was in danger. He sympathizes with her, but says it doesn't excuse her callous personality, including not caring about one of her loyal bodyguards' death, and putting a group of merchants in danger by hiding among them. He gives her a brief "The Reason You Suck" Speech saying that he wouldn't want to live in a country ruled by someone like her.
  • During his match with Neji, Naruto points out that while Neji's had a hard life, he's not the only one to have suffered. He also points out that Neji's brutally beating and nearly killing his cousin Hinata, the heiress to the main family, is proof that Neji hasn't simply accepted his "fate" to be a slave to the main branch of the Hyuga clan.
  • Rather than kill him when he has the chance, Naruto chooses to listen to Pain's story. Once he's done, he remarks that while he understands his hatred for Konoha and his Humans Are Bastards mindset, he still cannot forgive him for his actions and admits he still wants to kill him, but he won't because he wants to believe in Jiraiya's teachings instead of falling prey to the Cycle of Revenge.
  • Anime-only: During her lifetime, Pakura, known as the Hero of Sunagakure, was sent to Kirigakure as a diplomat but assassinated as part of a deal between the two villages' leadership. Unlike most of the other resurrected ninja who fight entirely and vocally against their own will and try to handicap themselves in every way they can (not that it always helps), Pakura fights and kills her opponents entirely of her own initiative because of her anger at being betrayed. And while Maki sympathizes with her over the backstabbing, she also points out that the people who did said backstabbing died long ago and nobody that she's killing in the modern day even knows what happened. Pakura doesn't listen, but spares Maki out of pride in her as her student.
  • Upon hearing Obito's life story, Naruto, despite realizing their similarities, argues that it doesn't justify what he's done, and insists that Obito should be punished for his crimes. Obito ultimately achieves Redemption Equals Death as the closest thing. Granted, he also attempts to pull a Nagato by using the Rinnegan's ultimate technique (at the cost of his life) to bring everyone who was recently killed back to life, but then Madara happened.
  • When Obito himself and Kakashi were kids and in the same team, the latter only obeyed the rules to a T, even if it meant screwing his own comrades over. It's because Kakashi's father Sakumo was vilified by the entire village to the point he committed suicide, all because he chose to abandon an important mission to save his comrades' lives (they hated him for it as well). This led Kakashi to strictly obey the rules in the hopes of not becoming like his father. Upon hearing that story, Obito is at first sympathetic and tries to be nicer to Kakashi. However, when their teammate Rin is kidnapped by Iwa ninjas, Kakashi decides to continue the mission instead of rescuing Rin immediately. Obito calls him out on this and reveals that he admires Sakumo, believing that while those who don't obey the rules are trash, those who abandon their comrades are even worse. This speech led Kakashi to reconsider his worldview and help Obito rescue Rin; in fact, this even became the first lesson he gave to Naruto, Sakura, and Sasuke as their mentor to get them to work together as a team instead of butting heads like they were doing at first.
• In Neon Genesis Evangelion, Gendo Ikari of all people is finally hit with this in End of Evangelion when Instrumentality occurs and he is confronted by a vision of his wife. Gendo confesses that his inability to be a parent to Shinji was because he felt that he deserved love from no one, and thought he would only cause pain to Shinji if he didn't abandon him to live with an apathetic guardian. Yui, while not spiteful, gently questions this reasoning. Rei and Kaworu join in and add their own two cents: Gendo simply ran away from his son and closed his heart off from others like a coward. He could have forged strong relationships with the people around him and moved on from Yui's death. Gendo weakly agrees that he was nothing but a coward and deserved to die for his sins.
• In New Game!, this is zig-zagged with Tsubame "Naru" Narumi. Her parents, especially her mother, want her to inherit the family's inn rather than work for the gaming industry. As such, the Narumis refuse to pay for Naru's tuition, and tell her that if she doesn't get hired at Eagle Jump, her first choice of a company, she'll have to come home. While Tsubame's goal is sympathetic, she ends up becoming hellbent on making it there, prioritizing meeting deadlines over the quality of her work and looking down on Nene for supposedly being hired through connections. Eventually, Tsubame's haste results in bugs being found in her code, forcing her and Nene to scramble to fix them. Tsubame apologizes to Nene, having come to realize that Nene's more serious and talented than Naru initially thought, but Nene says that while she disliked Naru at first, hearing more about Naru from her friend Momiji "Momo" Mochizuki helped Nene understand her better, especially given that both Nene and Naru got into the gaming industry because of their best friends.
• No Longer Allowed in Another World: When Sensei overhears Kashiwahara's sob-story, he's unwilling to write his story and banish him with "Storyteller" because of how unimpressive his motives are.
• One Piece:
  • In the Dressrosa arc, Donquixote Doflamingo claims to Monkey D. Luffy and Trafalgar Law -both of whom have had tragic pasts, especially the latter- that the misery they may have dealt with in their lives is nothing compared to his, and we soon see that he did have a horrific backstory, in which, after his father gave up their family's nobility to live like normal people, they were persecuted simply for being former World Nobles, Doffy's mother died in squalor, and he, his father, and his younger brother Rocinante were horrifically tortured. However, Rocinante himself calls Doffy -who murdered their father in a fit of rage- a monster and can't fathom how their parents gave birth to someone like him, speculating that his brother was simply born evil. Considering that 1) it was Doffy's fault they were outed as former World Nobles in the first place because he was acting like a Spoiled Brat, 2) Roci went through the same horrors and turned out to be a compassionate, altruistic man, and 3) Doffy went on to later murder Roci as well, it's hard to disagree with the latter's assessment.
  • While usurper Shogun of Wano Kurozumi Orochi had without a doubt a tragic backstory, it doesn't excuse or justify anything that he did. Everything that he ever did was unjustified, from using Oden and Yasuie and stealing their money even though they were supporting him, from allying with Kaido, to taking over Wano and kidnapping hundreds of innocent citizens, to executing people, to emotionally torturing Oden for 5 years and causing his death by boiling him alive in oil for an hour which is an immensely painful way to go, to turning Wano into a wasteland for 20 years and causing every citizen to suffer by starving them and feeding the tested fake SMILEs to the people of Ebisu town, to his obsession over Komurasaki/Hiyori, to killing Yasuie, to attempting to murder literal children; the list goes on. The amount of crimes Orochi has committed makes him a irredeemable scumbag, especially when we consider that he's also a dirty, perverted, and ungrateful coward who always hides behind others, feels no remorse for any of his actions, and uses his childhood to justify the suffering of an entire country.
• Revolutionary Girl Utena demonstrates this to the audience without a single word. End Of the World, aka Akio Ohtori, aka Prince Dios seems at first to have good reason for distrusting the flawed mortals he manipulates through the Dueling game, yet even than a microsecond of thought reveals how superficial this is. The flashback that reveals his Freudian Excuse^note  Episode 34 for the curious makes ZERO bones about how Anthy was the true victim and suffered far, far worse. Furthermore, this person never reached End of the World's height of depravity or malevolence even in their worst moments, making it clear that End of the World's lamentations were only self-pity.
• Sophia in So I'm a Spider, So What? was reincarnated as a vampire against her will after having been an very unpopular and ugly girl in her past life. Her new body's instincts tell her to suck blood, create more vampires, fight against the strong and be contemptuous of humans and demons, which are basically just food for her. It's not her choice that she wants to do these things. However, it is her choice to choose to do them and there is no biological imperative forcing her to do so since she can survive without sucking blood. Her nasty attitude is also based on her past life, but given that she's very popular and attractive in this one it doesn't serve as much of an excuse. When this is made clear to her she admits it's not a good excuse, but this in turn just helps fuel her already high self loathing. The same basic situation is also implied for Wrath and Shiraori, the two people she is closest to, but it's never directly spelled out for them in the same way as it is for Sophia.
• In Sword Art Online, Grimlock, the culprit behind the murder of Griselda in "A Murder Case in the Area" hired Laughing Coffin to kill his wife because he was disturbed by how much more confident and assertive she'd become in the game, and was afraid of her divorcing them if they got back to the real world. Kirito and Asuna do not sympathize, with Kirito expressing disbelief that Grimlock would do something so terrible for those reasons, and Asuna goes as far as to say that Grimlock never truly loved Griselda.
• The Testament of Sister New Devil: The Hero Clan has it out for Basara Tojo and repeatedly call him out over the Brynhildr incident which resulted in the deaths of many friends and family. Takashi is the biggest offender, constantly angsting over how much he's lost and Basara's so-called betrayal. Mio, getting fed up of hearing the same thing for the umpteenth time, angrily lays everything straight to Takashi and points out that Basara went through the same tragedy he did but instead of wallowing in his anger and self-pity he tries to make himself a better man from it and so Takashi has absolutely no room to complain — and that came from someone who watched her foster parents get murdered.
• In the Tokyo Mew Mew anime, the Mew Mews learn that their enemies' ancestors once lived on Earth millions of years ago, but were forced to leave when the environment shifted, taking refuge on a world that was inhospitable. They returned, only to find that the humans are polluting it, and seek to kill all the humans and reclaim Earth. Zakuro says it's understandable that they would be upset over what is happening to what was once their planet, but points out that it doesn't justify their crimes.
• Trapped in a Dating Sim: The World of Otome Games is Tough for Mobs: The Crown Prince of the Holfort Kingdom, Julius wishes he was anything but. He pines for a simple life free of the restrictions and demands of the Royal Court, which he sees his fiancée Angelica as the embodiment of. This leads him to eventually throw a vicious "The Reason You Suck" Speech at her in front of a massive audience and without a shred of sympathy, completely dismissing her feelings and driving her to tears. Everyone who learns of this agrees that while his annoyance of being loved as the Crown Prince is understandable, what he did to Angelica was completely out of line. Olivia even outright states that she hates Julius for making Angelica cry (which is ironic considering that Angelica would be antagonistic towards Olivia under normal circumstances but wound up becoming her best friend afterwards).
• Undefeated Bahamut Chronicle:
  • Hayes Vi Arcadia is the third princess of the ancient Holy Arcadia Empire, but being born last means she has the least importance among her siblings, causing their maid to prioritize saving her older sisters during a coup against their empire. The shock of nearly being killed along with her inferiority complex drove her to become a psychotic and sadistic villain, but this isn't presented as a sympathetic excuse for her misplaced and disproportionate vengeance against modern-day civilization. At one point, Rosa Granhide states that Hayes is just venting her anger and trying to delude herself into feeling superior to others.
  • The Dragon Marauder leaders were all victims of persecution, with Drakkhen being a former ace soldier who was betrayed by her superiors and subjected to torture, Vines being a fallen prince who barely survived an assassination, and Gatouhan being a member of an indigenous tribe that experienced racism. They believe that society is so cruel that their only option to survive is to become Drag-ride bandits and that Virtue Is Weakness. Lisha, who experienced torture and slavery at the hands of the Old Arcadia Empire, rejects their reasoning and points out that with their combat and leadership skills, they could have found a more respectable path rather than seek power and revenge. Unlike Hayes, Gatouhan admits the error of his ways and dies regretting his actions.
• Usotsuki Satsuki wa Shi ga Mieru: In Chapter 57, Satsuki gives one for her father's cold and angry behavior in the midst of explaining her own motivations. That being that her failure to understand the nature of her powers led to her mother dying, as she mistook her mom bleeding out in the hallway as a hallucination. Her father, not knowing about Satsuki's abilities, believes that Satsuki deliberately heartlessly walked passed and ignored her clearly dying mother. As such, he's never forgiven her letting his wife die, and Satsuki hopes to one day find a way to properly explain her side of the story. The following chapter, her best friend Akira (who herself has a pretty terrible home life) argues that regardless of his reasoning, he is still a horrible parent for piling onto Satsuki's already heavy feelings of guilt and emotionally-shutting her out.
• Yu-Gi-Oh!:
  • During the manga version of the Battle City semi-finals, Kaiba talks about how his past was nothing but hatred and anger due to his Knight Templar Parent driving him to be the best, and how that made him determined to only rely on himself and crush everyone in his path. Yami Yugi/Atem calls him out on how he'll never be truly happy this way as he'll just keep seeking someone to hate. Zig-zagged in the anime, when the gang has far less knowledge of Kaiba's backstory. This trope also applies to Jonouchi, who is the only member of the gang not to have forgiven Kaiba for the deadly theme park Death-T, and frequently takes the stance they shouldn't team up with Kaiba, though no-one else listens.
  • During the anime's Virtual World arc, Noah rants about how much he suffered and that he is taking what he deserves, but Yami Yugi points out that's no excuse for how he treated them.
  • In the Doma filler arc, Ryuzaki claims that his revenge is justified because after he lost to Jonouchi in Duelist Kingdom, it shattered his golden-boy reputation and his Dueling career immediately went down the tubes, and therefore he wants to settle the score. Jonouchi claims, quite rightly, that blaming him for winning a Duel which Ryuzaki challenged him to is absurd; every game has winners and losers, after all. Furthermore, he points out that he himself was considered a relative washout prior to Duelist Kingdom, but managed to become a big name surpassing Ryuzaki through a lot of effort—Ryuzaki could have bounced back from his humiliation and used his existing credibility to rebuild himself, but instead, he just stewed in his own hatred and got humiliated again in Battle City. And on top of that, if he really wanted to settle the score, Jonouchi would have been happy to have a rematch with him on friendly ground if Ryuzaki just asked him. Ryuzaki more or less says to all this "okay, you're right, but I'm still gonna beat you."

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