Humans Are The Real Monsters / Anime & Manga

• Android Kikaider: The Animation: At the end of the Kikaider 01 OVA, the android Kikaider "takes the final step to humanity" by becoming capable of performing evil acts despite his conscience.
• Attack on Titan: Humanity is besieged by the Titans, who mercilessly devour humans and made them seclude themselves inside the walls. Inside of it, however, humans still keep infighting even in face of imminent danger, then we get to The Reveal: The Titans are actually humans from the Eldian race ("The people of Ymir"), the only one who can transform into Titans. They acquired the power of the Titans and used to conquer other races and spent 1,700 years committing genocide and mass rape against the "lesser races" of the world, then the Marleyans rebelled and in turn became the brutal oppressors of the Eldians: rounding them all up into ghettos, repeatedly calls them devils. More horrifyingly, they turn rebellious Eldians into "pure" Titans and send them in the direction of the walls, while the Titan Shifters are Eldians brainwashed by the Marleyians. Even worse, the treatment of Eldians in Marley is actually considered the best in the world, the other nations hate the Eldians as much. The whole situation and cycle of hate is so bad that the villains plan is the mass euthanasia/sterilization of the Eldians (Zeke's plan), or flat out destruction of the rest of the world outside the island of Paradis (Eren's plan).
• Assassination Classroom: Aside from his stated desire to blow up the Earth, Koro-sensei does nothing bad within the scope of the series, more so as it is revealed that he is an involuntary walking time-bomb and wishes to be killed before he explodes. Humans, on the other hand, have more than proven themselves to be capable of being ruthless monsters, including experimenting on him when he was still a human, which turned him into the creature he is today after his augmentations went berserk.
• Many ayakashi in Ayakashi Triangle are inherently malicious and violent to humans and even other ayakashi. Yet even the sapient ones feel no guilt for their actions, and deflect any questions of morality by pointing out that negative emotions and desires by humans were what created them in the first place.
  Kubire Oni: That's hilarious. Telling a Kubire Oni not to strangle anyone. I was created by the resentment that humans who took their own lives hold toward the living. It is the wish of humans to kill other humans.
• All the supernatural horrors in Berserk have humans as their root cause in one way or another. The main villains of the series, the Apostles, were all once human and had to sacrifice the people closest to them in order to gain their demonic powers and then commit an act to prove that they don't hold their humanity anymore. Even the hero of the series, Guts, is far from a saint and is often referred to as a "monster" due to how horrifying he can be when he is hunting and slaying demons.
• This is how Diva views humanity in Blood+. Well, you would think the same thing if you were used as a lab rat.
• Blue Gender: A major theme of the series is that, in their attempt to survive, pretty much every human being has become cold and unfeeling, placing absolutely no value in human life, love, or simple compassion since everyone is viewed as expendable. While Marlene is certainly capable of handling herself, she's not an especially warm or likable character. As she begins to change through Yuji's influence, the tables are turned when Yuji becomes like Marlene was at the beginning of the series, and she has to save him from going completely insane. Yuji himself takes the mindset from pretty much every other human being living at that point. Meanwhile, the people of Second Earth are shown to be corrupt, outright subjecting their soldiers like Marlene to Mind Rape for disobedience, and actively train recruits to be unfeeling killing machines. And by the end, it’s revealed that human overpopulation and technology was what spawned the Blue in the first place, and their attempts to weaponize the Blue were what drove them insane. Chairman Victor, the head of Second Earth and the leader of humanity’s battle against the Blue, is the Big Bad of the series who spearheaded this operation.
• In the Crapsack World of Chainsaw Man, filled with violent monsters formed from Primal Fears that regularly kill people in rampages, there's no shortage of human depravity directed at devils or other humans.
  • The treatment the yakuza put Denji though in early childhood stands out as being monstrously cruel and exploitative, showing no regard for his well-being and outright contempt towards him despite all he does for them just to keep living day-to-day on the bare essentials. The leader even admits that he's always hated Denji and was glad to betray his loyalty for more power from a Devil. Despite being otherwise inconsequential small-fries, the horrific situation they put Denji through proves to have greatly desensitized him to the horrors of the world and the job he performs, something which makes worried that something's wrong with him.
  • Though the overwhelmingly majority of devils are malicious and dangerous, they have no rights in either case. The public are fine with them being forced to hunt their own until they're killed in battle or executed by their own handlers. Aki starts out seeing his devil partners as just tools to exterminate as many devils as possible, but comes to see some of them as deserving of empathy and becomes uncomfortable with how expendable Public Safety treats them. It's also completely legal and accepted for devil hunters (who are often desperate for revenge or money) to sacrifice their bodies and lives to devils for power, so long as it's nominally used against other devils, though many "devil hunters" are just mercenaries in all but name.
  • Human governments are universally portrayed as amoral and power hungry at the highest levels. Despite outlawing devil contracts for everything but devil hunting, they regularly seek to gain and use devils' power to expand their influence. Other misdeeds include classifying humans as devils when they've merged with them (as Denji did) to justify enslaving them, raising the children of political prisoners as Child Soldiers, and using the lives and lifespans of convicts, orphans, or even random citizens as payment—and not just when making devil contracts! The Dreaded Gun Devil most devil hunters want to kill has been contained in pieces for years, but this is kept secret to maintain its fear and power, all the while being The Scapegoat for government-sponsored armed violence. Inverse to Denji's situation, Makima was born the Control Devil but it was the exploitation she suffered at the hands of the Japanese government that turned her into a monster.
• Claymore, the aspiring Spiritual Successor to Berserk, plays around with this trope. In some parts it's played straight, like when Teresa is almost raped by the bandit she previously cut his hand off (much to her apathy though) and she wonders why Claymores even bother risking their lives fighting Yoma to save creatures like the Humans, or when these same bandits are said by Teresa to be "even lower than Yoma" as they pillage a town Teresa herself had previously freed from a Yoma, it is even revealed later on that all the Yoma and Awakened beings in existence have been actually created by the very Human Organization in order to create weapons for the war in the mainland. In other parts instead are also shown positive Human characters and groups (mostly the city of Rabona) who overcome their initial distrust for the Claymores and end up giving a hand in battle even if Humans are completely outmatched in that universe. Considering that one of the theme of Claymore is exploring what is to feel Human and what is Humanity from the point of view of half-human, half-monster warriors this probably shouldn't surprise too much.
• Cross Ange is a zig-zagged example.
  • Human mages in general have an... impressive example of a false utopia. Their bastardy shows when persecuting the anti-magical Norma, but at least they show almost no signs of infighting or grudges with other mages. However, all of this comes at the cost of footing the bill for their exorbitant energy bill to civilizations in other worlds, slaughtering them when they protest, and is an ultimately unsustainable glut of decadence. Once the crises come piling in, especially when their magic starts drying up, the human mages show their truly spoiled rotten insides and immediately turn to violence and anarchy among one another.
  • The Norma are immediately seen as the plucky Army of Thieves and Whores cleaning up humanity's messes while saving the world from space monsters. And they are - to an extent. But underlying their military culture is a deep-seated grudge against anything non-Norma, to the point that they're generally apathetic to the millions of corpses of DRAGONS, even when they're proven to be just as sapient as humans. Once they're really pissed off, a few become even more of a threat than the bastardly human mages.
  • The humans controlling the giant mech-slaughtering DRAGONs ironically prove to be some of the best characters in the setting, purely because they abandoned their humanity. Learning to both adapt into new forms of thinking (and into giant fire-breathing lizards) and conform to a greater purpose of healing the original human world has made them closer to what most of humanity merely pretends to be. They still somehow retain their humanity and personality. But, it's far removed from the common humanity in the setting, as seen below.
  • Not helping matters is that most humans were created by Embryo to be a superior successor race to humanity after they destroyed themselves in World War Seven, but ultimately his ego and lack of anyone to restrain his impulses meant his attempts at perfecting human nature always came out flawed and two-dimensional. His mind control of them through Mana side-effects and direct brainwashing only made them even worse. Thankfully, not every humans receive such treatments from Embryo, but those who don't have been decimated to very small numbers, referred as 'Ancient Humans'. One of such people is Tusk, and he's generally an okay guy with his glaring flaw being prone to make perverted comments.
  • In the end, however, it's ultimately concluded that humans are only the real monsters if we take the term at face value considering the setting: The term 'human' is just for those who have been created by Embryo. Norma was considered an anomaly and persecuted because they were born to look more like original humans, which would screw up Embryo's design of 'perfect world'. And while they could be nasty as stated above, they develop their own sense of kinship and bond, eventually striving to be better, much like actual humans in settings where Humans Are Flawed. Therefore, Embryo's humanity can be considered new abominations far from the term 'human', taking their form and name while smearing their good name with despicability, whereas Normas, Ancient Humans and DRAGONs are much closer to actual humans in form and history alike.
• Dance in the Vampire Bund shows that while vampires and werewolves do exist, neither of them can hold a candle to humans. In the final volume of the manga, one angry mob tries to get at a family of Fangless vampires being harbored by their human friends. One overzealous "vampire hunter" stabs a human mother thinking she would turn to dust like a vampire only to realize she's bleeding on the floor and about to die Thankfully the Earth Clan manages to save both families and one werewolf gives the mob leader the following speech found in this trope's Quotes page
• Devil May Cry: The Animated Series: Dante has stated at least once that "humans are often worse than demons." Despite this, he won't kill full-blooded humans no matter what.
• Digimon Data Squad: While there are plenty of dangerous Digimon on the show, the evilest character by far is Akihiro Kurata, a human scientist who hates all Digimon so much that he wants to commit genocide on them. He conducts a campaign of mass murder against them, slaughtering the Digimon in a way that prevents them from being reborn as Digi-eggs, expresses nothing but contempt for his many victims, and laughs at the notion that humans and Digimon could ever be friends. Tellingly, all the antagonistic, human-hating Digimon on the show only hate humans because this guy came to their world unprovoked and massacred their friends and loved ones.
• Dragon Ball: While the franchise has a lot of malignant aliens and creatures who are Made of Evil, this trope applies to the cruelest humans in the show such as Tao Pai Pai (from Dragon Ball), Van Zant, Smitty and Barry Khan.
  • Tao Pai Pai is a Professional Killer and Psycho for Hire who delights in his sadism and cruelty. Among other things, he kills Upa's father Bora in cold blood, forces a tailor to do a week's worth of work on his ruined uniform in three days, kills said tailor rather than pay him for his hard work, and openly admits he'll kill anyone, man, woman, or child, as long as he gets paid.
  • Dragon Ball Z displays this perfectly with Dr. Gero during the Android/Cell Saga. He started out as a human, one of the people that Goku and the others spent their lives protecting, and both before and after turning himself into a Cyborg, Gero proves an example of how humans can be just as bad as the monsters and aliens the Z-Fighters face every day. On top of kidnapping two teenagers off the streets and forcibly converting them into Androids 17 and 18, there's his creation of Cell. To elaborate: Gero created a techno-organic monster that powers up by literally drinking people in the slowest, most painful way possible, all for the sake of petty revenge on Goku for destroying the Red Ribbon Army, with Cell himself later deducing that Gero in fact created him to kill every living thing in the universe.
  • Then there was an entire episode called The Evil of Men near the middle of the Buu saga. It explores how even we non-powerful humans can be just as cruel as the monsters Goku and co fight on a regular basis. Case in point: A pair of thugs arrive to shoot up Buu and Mr. Satan (who is in the process of rehabilitating Buu) and shoot Bee the puppy then later Mr. Satan himself. Buu managed to save them both in time, but witnessing this cruelty unleashed his evil side. Thus, the rest of the Buu saga is the world paying the price for what these men did. Prior to this, they had been running around murdering random innocent people for fun. Their justification for this? Since Buu had been killing everyone and would most likely destroy the Earth, they can just pretend their victims were killed by Buu.
  • Dragon Ball Super extends on the above Z example during the late Future Trunks Saga episodes with Barry Khan, a jerkass actor and Spoiled Brat. For starters, he forces a stuntman to jump on a speeding tank without wires, not caring if he gets hurt or even killed, and then when he tries to flirt with Videl only to be shot down, he tries to ruin Gohan's marriage purely because he was pissed at being rejected. After he's possessed by a Puppeteer Parasite named Watagash, all of his inner evil is brought forth, and he goes so far as to kidnap baby Pan in an attempt at petty revenge against Gohan. In a nutshell, Barry is easily one of the biggest, most evil bastards in the series, which is saying something given the monsters the franchise is known for, and he was already that way before Watagash hijacked his body and gave him superpowers.
• Elfen Lied makes a point of showing how inhuman and amoral humans can be. At times it seems the diclonius — a new mutant human species who are feared for their murderous tendencies, and are abused accordingly — are more human than the actual humans. Considering the violent psychic dismemberment the diclonious are capable of, that's saying something.
  • Somewhat-Subverted in that humanity has an understandable reason to fear diclonious and it's deliberately stated that diclonii are born with a genetic drive to wipe out humanity, while being kind to animals. Kaede(Lucy) repeats this herself but due to her history it is unknown if this is just something that Kaede believes, or if she is doing this because of her abuse. Concerning the Anime specifically, the series director Mamoru Kanbe states that atrocities such as those committed by Lucy in the series are strongly influenced by the way in which people are treated by their fellow beings. However, as Elfen Lied heavily explores discrimination as well as the ideas of nature vs nurture, it alludes that the reasons that humanity has to fear the diclonius are loosely founded and questionable, as the diclonius themselves seem to be responding more to abuse, than impulse or instinct. As such, this situation incurs the fact that eliminating the Diclonius would be tantamount to genocide. Humanity commiting genocide based on ignorance and discrimination, justified by science, re-enforces the trope that Humans Are the Real Monsters. However the Diclonius surviving could be a genetic threat and end humanity, creating a no-win scenario because of a Genocide Dilemma.
• A commonly brought up topic in EX-ARM, as many AI have eventually started to "learn" from humans' consistent acts of violence and war.
• Played with in The Fruit of Evolution. While the human citizens are mostly law-abiding, honest, and merely wish to live their lives in peace, Seichi learns, from the history of many dungeon bosses, that human rulers are vicious sots who are directly responsible for the tragic backstories that made them into dungeon bosses in the first place, by summoning "heroes" and trying to subjugate or kill them, leaving them no chance for a peaceful life. Even in the current day, an entire school of 800 people, save Seichi himself, were summoned to be "heroes" and are slaves in all but name, and the only reason Seichi isn't in that situation? He was abandoned and left to his own devices by said school-mates.
• GeGeGe no Kitarō often discusses this trope, though it commonly Subverts it. Throughout all iterations we do see a lot of nasty selfish humans who abuse the environment and try to manipulate both yokai and other humans. As Kitaro himself will quickly point out though, most of the time yokai are not any better and we see countless examples of them being just as greedy, arrogant, and hateful as humanity.
• The humans in Helck either are all jerks to each other and hate all demons on principle even if demons themselves want nothing but good for them, or selfish nobles who treat other humans like animals. The exceptions can be counted on one hand.
• While most of the villains in Hellsing are vampires, ghouls and other supernatural horrors, it's telling that the most evil among them is the Major, a fat, squabbly human who never fights himself and lacks any sort of supernatural powers, although he did become a Cyborg. His humanity is even something the Major takes pride in, boasting how he managed to bring London to ruin and slay Alucard with purely his will (and the battalion of Nazi vampires he has under his command).
• Invoked in the Chimera Ant arc of Hunter × Hunter. Even the mightiest product of a rapidly evolving super ant society is small potato against the terrifying might of human society as a whole. As Netero puts it himself before detonating the bomb that will eventually kill most of the remaining chimera ants through radiation poisoning:

"Meruem, king of ants... You know nothing of the botomless malice within the human heart."

• Played with in Interstella 5555. Humans (well okay one human and it's showcased he wasn't right in the head after a disaster of nature killed his family) kidnap the alien rock band, make them appear human to hide their true nature, brainwash them and enslave them as superstars on Earth. It ends up being subverted: when the rest of humanity finds out the truth, they continue to treat them like superstars and do their best to get them back home.
• A main theme point in Inugami, where inugami (wolves with amazing abilities) are sent by a mysterious voice in their heads that says "gaze upon man". An inugami named 23 makes friends with a kind human named Fumiki, and his subsequent encounters with humans influences him into seeing humans as friends. The other inugami, Zero, sees humans as an example of this trope, since most of his encounters with them have involved violence.
• Inuyasha: As bad as the demons can get, humans are often shown to be just as bad, if not worse:
  • The entire series was kicked off when Onigumo, a crippled bandit, voluntarily sacrificed his humanity to yokai to become Naraku, the Big Bad, all to acquire the Shikon Jewel and sate his lust for Kikyo. Even before he became Naraku, Onigumo was far from a Nice Guy; the actions of Muso, Naraku's sixth detachment and first attempt to purge purge Onigumo from himself, reveal that he was a hedonistic psychopath who killed whoever and whenever he wanted.
  • The moth demon Gatenmaru leads a group of human bandits. While they aren't initially aware that he's a demon, when the truth comes out, they're even more eager to work for him and commit atrocities than they were before, helping him slaughter an entire village and allowing him to eat the captured women alive while making a helpless, All Webbed Up Inuyasha and Miroku watch. Inuyasha succumbing to his Superpowered Evil Side and slaughtering them in an Ax-Crazy rage is completely well-deserved.
  • Late in the series, Rin is admonished by a human exorcist for voluntarily traveling with a demon rather than live in a human village. She says she finds humans to be scarier than demons, which is fair considering that her parents and brothers were slaughtered by common bandits and she was then taken in by the demon Sesshomaru.
  • In the film Inuyasha the Movie: Fire on the Mystic Island there is an island where benign humans and benign demons have lived together, and had a lot of half-demons as offspring. They have the island shielded by a magical barrier from the outside world, because they knew that their children would be discriminated against both by demons and by humans.
  • In Inuyasha the Movie: Swords of an Honorable Ruler, three youkai say that humans are the world's most selfish creatures, and that their greed for power knows no bounds. The demonic sword So'unga seeks only humans as allies, because it is believed that they quickly fall to evil. Later in the film, however, it is inverted when Inuyasha explains that humans, because they are selfish and power-hungry, do not give up easily when it comes to fighting for their friends. Ironically, if humans do not use such demonic weapons as So'unga, they can not do much against youkai.
• Pretty much all the evils in "Ju Jutsu Kaisen" can be traced back to humanity in one way or another. For starters, Cursed Spirits themselves are formed from the negative emotions of humanity, with most powerful and malicious of the Disaster curses, Mahito, being the embodiment of the fear, hatred, and negativity humans have for each other. On top of that, the most powerful and dangerous Cursed Spirits seen are Vengeful Cursed Spirits, which consist of humans who become curses after their death. Perhaps most tellingly of all, the two Big Bads of the series, Ryomen Sukuna and Kenjaku are/were originally human, with Sukuna in particular being one of the most depraved and monstrous characters in the series.
• Subverted in Kimba the White Lion. While the series started off with a terrible first impression of humanity with Viper Snakely, there are some good-hearted humans like Roger Ranger and his uncle who become friends with Kimba.
• Tiir and many Cursed Eye bearers from The Legend of the Legendary Heroes view humans this way. Though Tiir isn't much better at times and the protagonist eventually convinces him that not all humans are bad, it's easy to understand how they came to think that way to begin with, living in a Crapsack World where Fantastic Racism is rampant. Tiir says the trope title almost word for word, after recounting an incident where thirty-eight of them were slaughtered in the name of "monster extermination".
  Tiir: Who are the real monsters here?
• Exaggerated in Living As I Please As A Loli Demon King where a class of teens is summoned to a new world by the Church of Human Supremacy (though they simply call themselves Church of the Goddess) to be used as disposable high-yield Tyke Bombs, with the main character getting murdered by one of his class-mates in the prologue and reincarnating as The Demon King of Insanity, then learning that not only did the humans start the war with the demons, but the demons are only the first target of genocide, with one of the two elven princesses captured, put through all sorts of horrific tortures and experiments, and turned into a Living Weapon that is in so much agony she just wants to die.
• Monster Rancher heavily zigzags this. Humanity in the backstory created monsters to be pets, slave workers as well as warriors to fight in wars. One specific example of their cruelty was the enslavement of one Monster race, the Astros, to gather more resources into outer space after exhausting the natural resources in their own planet. The Astros were worked nearly to death and experimented on to test their physical limits, and those that weren't strong enough soon perished. Eventually, a conflict known as the Last War broke out on their planet that lasted many generations and the humans attempted to end it by creating Moo. By the end, everything bad in the series can be traced to the ancient humans, who reduced civilization to medieval level, with Moo ruling the world as Evil Overlord. By the time the story in the anime begins however, we see now this trope be heavily subverted with all villains being wicked monsters who enslave and attack humans and their fellow monsters. Some the monsters act out of old grudges, while others are just plain cruel. Meanwhile, there are no really bad humans to be seen and any that are antagonistic undergo a Heel–Face Turn.
• Neon Genesis Evangelion eventually reveals that humans are collectively the 18th Angel, known as Lilin. With the way mankind was able to fight off every other Angel, and the fact that The End of Evangelion includes the JSDF and SEELE storming NERV headquarters and mercilessly killing most of the NERV staff, including Misato and (via the Mass Production Evas) Asuka, not to mention that Third Impact is finally triggered at the hands of humans, humans turned out to be the most ruthlessly effective Angel of all.
• In One Piece, while slavery affects all species/races, Fishmen and merfolk are the prime target and face very heavy discrimination. Up to 200 years ago, they were seen as just another type of fish.
• The manga series Parasyte: The only way nature can curb human devastation is to introduce a new apex predator to the biosphere to keep humanity in check. This is how real life nature works.
  • It is discussed how in the point of view of the planet we are the disease and parasites are the cure. and how a Nigh-Invulnerable being that could withstand a volley of gunfire was simply killed by pollution.
• Pokémon: The Series:
  • Though several Pokémon have human-like intellect, the series routinely drives in the notion that no Pokémon is truly evil (with villains' Pokémon merely serving their Trainers), and even Pokémon who are bad without masters often undergo a Heel–Face Turn and/or are portrayed sympathetically. By contrast, the series and movies have had several human villains who are evil of their own accord and are shown without a shred of sympathy, thus one is left with the impression that, even if the majority of them are just fine, humans are apparently the only beings in the Pokémon universe capable of being truly evil.
    • This would later be subverted with the appearance of evil Malamar from the future who try to conquer the world through brainwashing, and it is never explained why they are evil.
    • In Episode 26 of Black & White series there were four Litwick and one Lampent who were draining Team Rocket trio's life energy and then tried to take them and our heroes to Ghost World. These Pokémon were evil by themselves.
  • The nineteenth episode of the original series has a group of Tentacool and (one of them evolves after Team Rocket tried to capture them), that attacked the humans because Obaba (not to be confused with the one from the episode before this one) wanted to build a hotel resort on their nest. However, Misty, with the help of a Horsea, manage to convince them that not all humans are bad people.
  • Mewtwo's reason for wanting to Kill All Humans in Pokémon: The First Movie is this trope. He reached this a conclusion when the ones that he was exposed to cared more about what he was than who he was. When Ash performs a Heroic Sacrifice to stop the fighting between the clones and the original Pokémon, Mewtwo is genuinely surprised that a human would give his life for them and stops the whole wipe-out humanity plan.
• Pokémon Adventures: When Lake Valor blows up, most of the Pokémon in the surrounding areas adopt this attitude as a result. When Pearl tries to catch a pissed Buizel and unsuccessfully pleads to it that he wants to stop the ones responsible, Crasher Wake points out that the wild Pokémon don't understand anything that's going on beyond the fact that they know that humans were responsible for disrupting their natural habitat.
• Studio Ghibli likes to look at this trope from time to time.
  • In Pom Poko this is Discussed. Some of the Tanuki believe that all humans are bad and they argue for open warfare against the humans - and even then, they have a hard time fully committing to this as finding food would be a great deal harder with no garbage bags to rummage through. Other Tanuki argue that the humans are simply unaware that Tanuki are real and can be reasoned with. The narrative is also quick to point out the humans are overall not being intentionally malicious and they really do need the room to grow and live. After the Tanuki take the gamble of going public, it turns out that this is indeed the case and the humans are happy to come to a compromise with the creatures, setting aside parkland for them to live in. The fact that their default humanoid forms are cute-looking is a real help but nobody makes pets of them.
  • Princess Mononoke initially appears to take this stance, as it also takes place in a threatened forest populated by animal spirits. Then it turns out that the humans aren't all bad, and the the animals can be just as dickish. It turns out every side was being manipulated by outside forces, who in their own way are just trying to get by, ultimately stating that Rousseau Was Right.
  • Spirited Away does criticize humanity's lax treatment of the environment and their greed, but once again subverts this in a manner very similar to Mononoke. It features a bath house that serves supernatural beings whose view of humans range from worthless to bastards to interesting to delicious. The various employees especially are shown to be extremely greedy and decadent, with only a small handful being remotely friendly. While in the end the jerkish spirits do turn out to be nice, the movie firmly shows the spirit world is no less corrupt than the human one.
  • In Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea Ponyo's dad makes it very clear that he thinks humans are bastards, and has been storing up potions to teach humanity a lesson (or something); on the other hand his wife, the Anthropomorphic Personification of the ocean, is a lot more easy-going on humanity and sees a lot of good in them. In the end he decides he doesn't want to harm humans too badly though mainly because he allows his daughter to choose to become one.
• Rosario + Vampire:
  • This seems to be a widespread sentiment among Youkai, though most of it stems from good ol' Fantastic Racism; many of the more sympathetic ones question their views after being confronted with a positive example of humanity, and the most rabid anti-human faction practice their puppy-punting skills on their fellow nonhumans so much that they come off as blatant hypocrites.
  • This is what Moka Akashiya first thought of humans before she met her human Love Interest. After seeing how she was teased and bullied because of her vampire origins when she was a kid, who could blame her? Ruby and her adoptive mother thought this as well until they met him.
  • Moka's sister Akua also has some sympathetic reasons for thinking this, because her best friend/surrogate sister Jasmine was brutally murdered by an angry mob when they discovered she and Akua were vampires. Of course, it falls a bit flat when one realizes that the entire reason Jasmine was killed in the first place was because Akua exposed them as vampires and injured a human boy who tried to befriend them out of paranoia. Jasmine herself averted this and firmly supported human/monster coexistence to her last breath.
• Though portrayed as the villains, demons and vampires in Seraph of the End believe humans to be the truly frightening ones, citing that humanity's greed and passion are why humans will ultimately be the ones who destroy the world.
• Slayers usually don't go here but in Slayers Premium sentient octopi cast the Curse of Babel on humans for this reason. In the ending scene The assistant healer had, after the demon that the octopi had been mistakenly worshiping as a god is destroyed, admitted to the whole town that they were wrong to hunt the sentient sea-going cephalopods and eat them. However, she then declared that the town's economy was mostly built on their reputation for delicious octopus-based dishes, and suggested that, rather than having the humans go on hunting and eating octopi, the octopi just start cutting off their tentacles (which regenerate) and letting the humans have them for meat instead, a suggestion that the octopi agreed with. This works out best for both sides because the octopi are no longer killed and the humans avoid an economic collapse.
• The Big Bad in The SoulTaker, Kyosuke's sister Runa feels this way after bad stuff happened. In the end, the villain puts Kyosuke in a bind: fight to save humanity who are ungrateful bastards and hate him since he's technically an alien or let them all die and live happily and eternally with the Big Bad. Kyosuke naturally turns down both offers, takes a third option, shows the villain that there IS measure to a non-human and saves the day.
• Downplayed, but present in Suterareta Yuusha No Eiyuutan, the protagonist, after being brought to the world of Randolia, and examining the history of both sides of the human vs demon conflict learns that all humans on the world, including himself, are armed invaders brought there by the goddess Claire in her Cosmic Chess Game with goddess Messiah, mother of the demons. The one who truly summoned Daichi.
• Tokyo Ghoul plays with this, as a result of the Fantastic Racism most humans accept as the norm. The series shows that both sides in the conflict are equally capable of being monsters, portraying numerous cases of kind Ghouls and the cruel humans that destroy their lives simply because of what they are. The CCG embodies this trope to the greatest degree, encouraging a mentality that views all Ghouls as monsters and only giving token lipservice to sparing them from "extreme" suffering. When Kaneki and Touka visit the headquarters to give false information, the secretary they speak with reassures them with a bright smile that it's fine for Investigators to hunt down and slaughter a 13-year old girl, since she's just a Ghoul. Their organization regularly eliminates entire families (including children), arrests any humans that dare to befriend Ghouls, and are hinted to be engaged in horrifying experimentation on captured Ghouls. As a result, many Ghouls view humans with fear or disdain, with Tsukiyama even pointing out that humans are the species most responsible for death and destruction in the world.
• That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime
  • The majority of Falmuth’s army discriminately hurt the monster citizens of Tempest with one Otherworlder even thinking of violating Shion and Shuna here. Anime and Manga spin-off only makes it worse here.
• In Episode 10 of Upotte!! when Genkoku pleads with the girls and the AK faction to stop fighting Nanayon (an anthpromorphic AK74) points out that humans are ones creating guns in the first place.
• Vinland Saga: As a result of Evil Stole My Faith, Father Willibald believes in a highly twisted view of Christian dogma where God's creation is a perfect expression of his love, but humans have been set aside from it as a result of us eating the Fruit of Knowledge — through our Original Sin humanity is incapable of love, or comprehending God's love, and that's why we willingly commit evil.
• Wolf Guy - Wolfen Crest: The protagonist thinks humans are bastards or at least incredibly petty; it doesn't help that he's a certified Doom Magnet and he's surrounded by the most horrific delinquents at school. He acknowledges that his narrow view of humans makes him just as bad.
• This is played with in WorldEnd: What Do You Do at the End of the World? Are You Busy? Will You Save Us?. Humanity, with the exception of the main character, has been extinct for 500 years. They are viewed as monsters from myth and legend who destroyed all life on the surface through their heinous actions. In truth, humanity was no more evil than any of the other races. It’s true that they were racist expansionists, but they weren’t the only ones engaging in such behavior. The apocalyptic destruction of the surface meant that most surviving records of humans came from their former enemies, who naturally weren’t too fond of the damn emnetwytes. As a result, they were scapegoated for the creation of the 17 Beasts.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V unlike the rest of the franchise doesn't tiptoe around the fact that humans are capable of great evil. Unlike the other series which are caused by supernatural forces, Arc-V is caused when the Duel Spirits get sick and tired of being forced to fight each other for humanity's bloodlust and sick entertainment. One human, Zarc, agrees when he feels he's just a toy for the audience when he just wanted to make everyone happy. But the series also shows that humanity is also capable of great good.
• When Yuri Kuma Arashi begins, it looks like the humans are nothing more than victims for savage bear attacks and must therefore stay together for the sake of the herd. But as the narrative continues, showing the entirety of the human-bear war, it shows that the humans, with their systematic destruction of anyone and anything that they deem different from the group, is just as bad as, if not worse than, the bears' religious zealotry and predatory nature.
• YuYu Hakusho
  • Chapter Black arc is a deconstruction. The nutshell is that humans have the capacity for great good and great evil. Sensui, the arc's villain, was a Spirit Detective who held Humans and Demons in views of black and white, until he crashed a gruesome party that had Humans themselves slaughtering Demons and bathing in their blood for the hell of it. Because of this, his view became gray until he saw the Chapter Black videotape- a divine recording of every atrocity humanity had ever committed; you name it, it's got it. Then he harbored a plan to go to the Demon World and repent for his killings, conveniently covered up with the Split Personality disorder he got as an aftereffect of the party and the tape to orchestrate a slow, painful genocide for all of humanity to experience. This is evidenced by a creepy mind-reading with him chanting about how much he'd love to have them all as dead meat. However, this is not the whole story. Koenma points out there is a Chapter White which has every act of human kindness. The two are about the same length and should only be seen together to ascertain a balanced view of humanity. Chapter Black is "just a one-sided argument"
  • It comes up again in a side-story toward the end when Yusuke, serving as a private Spirit Detective, investigates a case at Keiko's school involving a demon haunting the school. It turns out that it's actually a scheme perpetrated by two of the alleged victims to force the third victim off the team due to the others not liking her attitude, and claiming it's the only way to deal with her because she's an athletic scholarship student. After Yusuke sells Keiko's uniform to someone online (who turns out to be his mother) when she refuses to pay because Kurama did most of the work in solving it, the narrator declares that "Humans are as bad as demons- possibly even worse!" This is Played for Laughs when the author's editor points out "But Yusuke's part^note having one extremely powerful ancestor centuries ago demon."

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