Hero With Bad Publicity / Anime & Manga

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• Arata from Arata: The Legend is a wanted criminal due to having been framed for the attempted murder of Kikuri-hime. By extension, Hinohara is this as well due to swapping places with Arata and having his image in the eyes of other people.
• In Attack on Titan, the Survey Corps were already largely considered a joke and a waste of valuable resources due to how unsuccessful the majority of their missions are. However, it's not until their reckless plan to capture Annie, aka the Female Titan, results in the death of hundreds and the near complete destruction of Stohess District that their public opinion really starts to plummet.
  • Taken up to eleven with Eren himself, who is seen by the rest of the world^note everyone who isn't living on the island of Paradis, where the main characters reside as a "traitor of peace".
• Guts from Berserk has been treated as a dangerous villain by townspeople and the authorities since he started Walking the Earth as the Black Swordsman when he is actually just a sometimes ruthless Anti-Hero who is assumed to be — and actively pretends to be — worse than he is. In the first place, he's on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge against the demonic Apostles who killed everyone he cared about, and he claims not to care about collateral damage. He's a Walking Disaster Area because confronting an Apostle on their home turf invariably escalates into an all-out war that causes the streets to run with the blood of innocent (more-or-less) bystanders, and by the end of it everybody who knows the truth of what happened is either dead or on the run, leaving him as the scapegoat. It doesn't help that he looks a lot like a villain because he's dressed all in black, and tries to act like a total bastard toward anyone who starts to get friendly with him in order to drive them away for their own good. There's also the fact that demons and Apostles that he kills turn back to their human form after they're killed, so that if the monsters' original form had been children, he ends up looking like a child-murderer to anyone who arrives on the scene afterwards. That causes Knight Templar Farnese of the Holy Iron Chain Knights to pursue and arrest him because she's convinced that he's a servant of evil. After all these misunderstandings he's gotten sick of trying to explain himself because everybody always assumes that he's evil anyway, and he figures that at least if he scares them, they might keep the hell out of his way. Fortunately, his reputation as a hero has improved somewhat since the Millenium Falcon Arc gave him the chance for some high-profile heroics, and some of his best sidekicks now are former enemies who realized that he was right all along.
• Asta from Black Clover. Because his power source is a Devil, he's blamed by Damnatio and the Magic Parliament for the elves' attack on the Clover Kingdom, with his status as a peasant making him even more disliked by the aristocrats. He gets out of it by investigating the devils together with the Black Bulls.
• The title character of Black Jack is a brilliant surgeon who truly cares for his patients, but his outrageous fees and bad attitude give him a bad reputation.
• Victor Freeman from Blaster Knuckle hunts demons that revert to a human form when killed, and have often taken the forms of women and children. The first issue kicks off with him stomping into a saloon and gunning down a pretty brunette pleading for help (she was actually a demon, but...). We should mention that the manga takes place in the Deep South of the 1880's, and Victor Freeman is a Black man.
• In Bokurano, Zearth is so destructive it's considered a Kaiju. They even assassinate a kid who claims to be a pilot. In the manga, it's somewhat alleviated when Anko appears on television to tell the world the pilots' mission, inform them about the stakes and apologize for the damage. Some people still hate the pilots after that, but others are won over.
• A major plot-point and cause of grief for Hoichi Kano, the protagonist from Cannon God Exaxxion. Good part of it comes from the absurd amounts of damage caused by the titular Super Robot, but the Riofaldian defamation campaign on him (which smashes to dust the We Will Not Use Photoshop in the Future trope) makes things even more difficult.
• Zero and the Black Knights of Code Geass, when it comes to the Britannian Empire.
• In Digimon Adventure tri., the public view all Digimon as trouble because of the collateral damage that they cause. Unfortunately, this includes the Digimon partners of the protagonists. In a twist, there's a seemingly benign government task force that recognizes the Digidestined's role in the crises, and are willing to give a helping hand.
• Dragon Ball:
  • During the King Piccolo Saga of the original series, Tien is briefly suspected to be the Serial Killer going around murdering martial artists and nearly arrested, though Tambourine was the real culprit. It's not unjustified since Tien did have a reputation for being exceptionally brutal during fights, most notably breaking Yamcha's leg when he was already down For the Evulz.
  • Dragon Ball Super: Goku gets hit with this in the Universe Survival Saga when it's discovered that he was the one who gave Zen-Oh the idea for the Tournament of Power in the first place, especially since Zen-Oh will destroy any universe that loses the tournament. Virtually everyone in The Multiverse now sees Goku as a selfish villain, and Goku doesn't help matters since he is more concerned with the powerful opponents he'll face. Even the reveal that Zen-Oh was planning to destroy several of the universes anyway and Goku reminding him of the tournament actually gave them all a chance to defend themselves doesn't help.
• While the public and the Magic Council is grateful that the Fairy Tail guild often solves world-threatening crises, the tendency for its members to cause massive property damage greatly irritates them.
• Soma Yukihira in Food Wars! is really hated due to an incredibly arrogant speech he made on the first day of transferring to his new school. This persists even when he continues to rise up in the ranks of his school. Later on, it's revealed that the students continue to disparage Soma despite his achievements due to envy and their own inferiority complexes because if they acknowledge Soma's skill it would mean to acknowledge that they themselves do not work as hard as he does. His reputation does improve eventually when the student body can no longer ignore his skill as he continues to rise to the top. Hilariously, Soma wasn't even aware of how bad his reputation was and is genuinely surprised by it.
• In Fullmetal Alchemist, Roy Mustang more or less cultivates this by appearing to care only about chasing women and promotions. He gets hit with it for real when he is apparently responsible for cornering a woman who'd been sentenced to death for killing his best friend and burning her so badly her body is unrecognizable. Subverted in that he's still cultivating it — he fakes the murder and smuggles the woman, who is innocent, to safety in another country, knowing full well that people will hate him but preferring that over leaving her to her fate.
• In Gaiking: Legend of Daiku Maryu, this ends up being the case since the heroes essentially take the fight to the enemy's planet very early on. The episode in which the hero Daiya finds this out is actually called "We're the bad guys?!?"
• Guyver features this after the Zoanoids go public and claim that the Guyver and his allies are alien invaders. The recent anime just barely scratches the surface of this plot and is the only non-manga iteration to get up to even that point.
• Madoka Ayukawa from Kimagure Orange Road. She's a thoughtful, reserved and apparently cold and aloof loner, feared as a delinquent at school. That's because she is in truth a selfless and brave girl, able to save other people and defend herself from male thugs — yes, she's 15 but really defeats entire gangs of delinquents.
• The titular character of Kinnikuman has this problem early on. In the first chapter, aliens actually cancel their invasion plans rather than fight Kinnikuman, the only hero available at the time. A bit later, the Japanese government allows American superhuman Terry Man to become their resident hero, in spite of the fact he charges for his rescues because it's still better than being saved by Kinnikuman.
• Mist from Knights is generally feared and hated because he's black and he's in a Medieval European-esque setting with an overwhelmingly white population. Just about everybody in this society believes that witches are real and that the Church is infallible, so Mist's attempts to rescue wrongly convicted witches from burning at the stake are seen as heretical and treasonous.
• Celestial Being in Mobile Suit Gundam 00 thanks to the corrupt A-Laws and Ribbons Almark.
• Kenzo Tenma from Monster is accused of murder and goes on the run; he is hunted by the police wherever he goes, but in truth, he's Walking the Earth in search of the true perpetrator, an utterly amoral creation of a twisted psychological experiment, while trying to save everyone he comes across — even those who are trying to arrest him for crimes he didn't commit.
• Endeavor ends up this way in My Hero Academia after his eldest son Dabi airs a video telling how Endeavor abused him and his other kids trying to create a perfect successor and rejected the imperfect kids from the selective breeding he was doing.
• One Piece:
  • The Straw Hat Pirates tend to be treated like this. They do a lot more good than harm, but still get chased out of places due to technically being pirates amidst a series of bad coincidences. This is mostly because the World Government would rather push out a cover story and pass off the victories onto their own forces than admit that a band of pirates are more effective than said forces (Especially since said forces are the villains Luffy's crew typically fight) at cleaning up messes. During the Fishman Island Arc, Luffy outright states he doesn't want to be seen as a hero... for rather off reasons. He and his crew don't mind helping people and admire those that do, but they're not that interested in getting good press.
  • Montblanc Noland, who lived many years before the main story, is a big example. He was a truly strong and courageous explorer who saved the Shandians from being wiped out by disease, as well as who knows how many other deeds. However, due to a series of bad coincidences much like the Straw Hats, his name became synonymous with a grinning, clueless fool and a liar, a reputation that followed his descendants, and he has effectively become the North Blue's analogue to the Boy Who Cried Wolf.
  • Nefertari Cobra is The Good King and beloved by his subjects... but outside of his kingdom, most people only view him as another bootlicker of the tyrannical World Government to the point that his death at the hand of Sabo (supposedly) is celebrated by most of the world and further encourage revolutionaries through the planet.
  • Bartholomew Kuma was known as "The Tyrant" who oppressed his people until he was driven off into piracy before becoming one of the Seven Warlords of the Sea. He was also a founding member of the Revolutionaries who are working to upend the World Government's rulers. In reality, he saved the people of his country from the cruel and corrupt policies of the previous king, and was elected ruler afterwards. King Bekori worked with the Government to invoke a smear campaign to slander Kuma, and when the Navy attempted to retake the Sorbet Kingdom by force, Kuma single-handedly drove them off.
• Saitama from One-Punch Man is initially regarded as a joke, but after the defeat of the Deep Sea King, word starts spreading that he's a powerless faker who steals credit from hard-working heroes. The truth is that Saitama is that powerful, and has saved humanity from extinction several times over even before the series began; at first he got no credit because he wasn't registered with the Hero Association^note and people latched onto a random bystander who happened to be at the scene every time, turning him into an unintentional Fake Ultimate Hero, but afterwards he willingly cultivated the image of a lazy Glory Hound because he realized the idea of a nigh-invincible fighter diminished all the other heroes in the public's eyes. He only has a small circle of True Companions who not only know how strong he is but that he's an incredibly kind person deep down. Plus, with time and plenty of powerful enemies being obliterated at his hands, the Hero Association is gradually becoming more and more aware that there's much more to him than meets the eye.
• At first glance, Shogun Ienari in Ōoku: The Inner Chambers looks like a case of Adaptational Heroism, due to how different he is (well meaning, secretly working against his Evil Matriarch mother, actively promoted treatment and vaccination against the Gendercide plague) from how Ienari was in real life (a spendthrift who cared more about his harem than government). On his deathbed, he tells his wife he ordered the scribes to portray him as the spendthrift pervert, in order to suppress any knowledge of the Redface Pox from foreign powers who may take advantage of the disproportionate gender ratio and invade Japan.
• Patlabor: Special Vehicles Division 2 is regarded as a pack of reckless, trigger-happy idiots who cause massive collateral damage whenever they deploy: for example, in Patlabor: The Movie, the pilot of the first rampaging Labor turns Blue with Shock when told his rescuers are from Div 2. This is mostly Ohta's fault, as he represents 50% of the pilots in the Division, and is a reckless, trigger-happy idiot.
• Pokémon: The Series: This trope seems to disproportionately affect Dark-type and Ghost-type Pokémon. The eponymous Pokémon in Pokémon: The Rise of Darkrai is this and in the episode "Ghoul Daze", a Dusknoir suffers being attacked by Pikachu and others when it was actually trying to save them from an actual malevolent ghost. Thankfully, both examples receive credit once the heroes realise the hastiness of their judgement.
• In the FireRed/LeafGreen saga of Pokémon Adventures, an ultimatum was set up in that the three Pokedex holders, Red, Green, and Blue, must surrender themselves to Team Rocket, or else the evil team's attack on the Sevii Islands will continue until they are captured. This caused the local community to pin the blame on the Pokedex holders, and even trying to hunt them down.
• In most of Princess Tutu's first season, Fakir is a threatening presence who keeps Mytho under his thumb for unknown reasons. Eventually, it's revealed that this is a misguided attempt to protect the emotion-deprived Mytho from his Chronic Hero Syndrome, and as Tutu restores Mytho's emotions, Fakir eventually decides to help her. Unfortunately, the entirety of his previous behavior makes it really easy for a Brainwashed and Crazy Mytho to cast him as a violent, dangerous villain who pushed Mytho out of a window.
• Exaggerated in Slayers Revolution. Lina Inverse is nearly arrested and tried for the crime of "being Lina Inverse"! Her own friends regard this as being a valid reason to try and arrest her!
• In Sonic X, shortly after arriving on Earth, Sonic and his friends get in trouble with local police and spend the early part of Season 1 hiding out at Chris' house when not foiling Eggman's latest Evil Plan. A few heroic exploits soon turn things around, and they become very popular.
• In Tegami Bachi: Letter Bee, the Letter Bees are the only ones capable of carrying mail across the Gaichuu-infested wastelands of Amberground, as well as the only ones capable of fighting the Gaichuu. Unfortunately, since the Letter Bees are government employees and the government is rather corrupt, people are naturally suspicious of them. This is part of the reason why Lag's aunt, Sabrina Mary, acts hostile toward Gauche despite being grateful to him for delivering her nephew. Her town relies on a illegal port to survive, so the town is wary of government employees.
• Happens to Simon in Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann when the war against the Anti-Spirals start. The guy who was just yesterday praised as a hero who defeated Lordgenome is now going to be executed. Doesn't help that the crowd is breaking Kamina's statue, the war was actually declared by Nia and Rossiu is attempting a coup d'état.
• Vash from Trigun has a reputation so bad he's viewed as a natural catastrophe. Mostly because people keep trying to kill him and blowing up the nearby towns (which he gets blamed for), blowing up a city himself one time (Which was actually Knives' fault) and finally because Knives is trying to break him and convince him once and for all that Humans Are the Real Monsters.
• Yusei Fudou in the first season of Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds. Neo Domino residents do not take kindly to "Satellite scum" with a criminal mark. They don't take kindly to Satellite people in general...

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