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Jerkass / Anime & Manga

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Why do you put so much energy into pissing people off?
— Kagura (to Tomo), Azumanga Daioh

Works with their own pages

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    A-F 
  • Nishijima Shigeo from Area no Kishi is the resident jerkass of the school football team, unabashedly taking pleasure in the misfortune and mistakes of his teammates.
  • Aika from ARIA has a very competitive attitude and she often corrects her friends in a loud tone when she thinks they make embarrassing remarks. Nobody really cares though and she has her nice moments as well. Her mild crush on Alicia is also pretty cute.
  • Almost EVERYONE in Assassination Classroom who isn't in Class E, and a few students who are until Character Development. The school's chairman gets special mention, because he specially designed the school to encourage its students and teachers to be this way to everyone associated with Class E. Seriously, if this weren't a manga, a good half of this school's faculty would have been canned long ago in any country with a reasonable education system.
  • Azumanga Daioh:
    • Yukari. You can just tell she's got no other friends apart from Nyamo. But then, strangely, neither does Nyamo. This may be justified, though, because they work at a Three ...ish Teacher School, and the third teacher, Kimura, is a Dirty Old Man. And then there's that one no one remembers who made Chiyo freak out.
    • Kamineko surpasses them all. That cat is evil. Perhaps its worst act is when, near the end of the series, it responds to Sakaki's apology for offending it by trying to pet it many times by offering to let her pet it, and then biting her hand again.
  • Baccano!'s Dallas Genoard is practically this trope personified, with nearly every scene he's in being punctuated with a Kick the Dog moment. Even his Pet the Dog scene ends with him Kicking The Dog. Karma does, however, bite him hard.
  • Bakuman。:
    • Ishizawa is incredibly arrogant, thinking he's better than Mashiro when he can't draw anything other than cutesy girls in the same pose. After he insults Mashiro's artwork despite not having tried anything like Mashiro did, Takagi becomes enraged and punches him. Ishizawa later ends up being the one to publicize the news about Mashiro and Azuki's relationship, thus causing her great difficulty in getting the lead role in Mashiro's anime.
    • Nakai becomes one over time, such as by making becoming his girlfriend a condition of collaborating with a fellow mangaka. He later ends up as Nanamine's assistant and tends to treat the others poorly unless they're women and attractive.
    • Nanamine plans on rising to the top of Jump with online collaborators, and later, using out of work mangaka to test his new method, but views everyone as utterly expendable, blackmails his editor, Kosugi, into accepting his proposal by threatening to go elsewhere, and is fairly arrogant and short-tempered. Sasaki gives him a This Is Unforgivable! speech after learning about him casting his mangaka aside, and Kosugi gives him a "The Reason You Suck" Speech, saying that because he has no empathy for others, he can't write believable characters.
  • Black Lagoon has a cast that's almost all villains, but even among them, Chaka stands out for sheer Jerkassery. From the moment we see him he gets a call on his cell when he's supposed to be in a meeting, and tells his girlfriend that for calling him when he said not to call, he's going to knock some of her teeth out to later when he beats Rock without any provocation on Rock's part, to try to get Revy either interested in him or into a gunfight — the concepts are mixed in his mind and his final exploit where he kidnaps Yukio, strips her half-naked with the help of his Mooks and plans to rape her and sell her into sexual slavery, he goes on in the same old way. He also treats his own men horribly, including beating one of them up for a hypocritical reason, criticizing them for hiding behind cover and making them fight in the open {Which gets them killed}, and shooting his last 3 men left just because they annoyed him. He gets his comeuppance big-time when Ginji Matsuzaki, the badass guardian of Yukio, slices up his gun, chops off his hands, and sends him into a swimming pool to drown.
  • BanG Dream!:
    • Yukina Minato, the vocalist of Roselia, starts off as this, what with her unbelievably high expectations of the band, and how she’s more than willing to discard her bandmates if they don’t live up to them. She is also extremely dismissive of Ako even after she joins Roselia and shows she has the skill to be a part of the band. Character Development helps her get over this...
      • ...but in Roselia’s second band story, she lapses back into this behavior after a supposedly poor performance at an event, and she’s even worse than before: insisting that Lisa stops baking cookies and regularly acting like an absolute bitch to poor Ako, calling her a baby and a spoiled brat just for standing up to her bitchiness.
    • Sayo Hikawa also starts off as this, having nothing but harsh words for her former bandmates, the other members of Roselia (particularly Ako), her sister Hina, and the girls outside her band. The primary reason for her aloof personality is because of her inferiority complex towards her more talented sister. Like Yukina, Character Development helps her get better.
    • Season 2 of the anime introduces CHU2, a Spoiled Brat who makes Yukina and Sayo look like saints in comparison. She forcefully tries to steal Tae away from Poppin’Party, seeing her with more potential as a member of RAISE A SUILEN, throws a tantrum when Tae attempts to leave RAS, and bitches about how Tae wants to “play band like a bunch of kids” after begrudgingly accepting that she wants to stay in Poppin’Party. And to make matters worse, she barely gets any punishment for her bratty behavior apart from one confrontation with LAYER. She's not much better in Season 3, spending an episode terrorizing and hunting down Rokka in hopes of getting her to join RAS to the point where the poor girl is a screaming mess, only for her to rudely reject her when she actually wants to join.
  • Bleach:
    • Mayuri Kurotsuchi and Gin Ichimaru.
    • Sosuke Aizen, Nnoitra, Szayel, Yammy, Loly and the Vandereich, especially the leader.
  • Candy's bitchy stepsister Eliza from Candy♡Candy, who gets a kick out of using her money and status (among other things) to humiliate Candy and those of lesser status than her. For the lulz. The only thing that prevents her from being a monster is that she doesn't send Candy into deadly slave labor.
  • The whole soccer club in CLANNAD are made of douchebags, it is no wonder why Sunohara left the club since day one. This gets even worse in the Sunohara path (and in After Story anime adaptation), when Youhei's sister Mei asks to let her brother rejoin to get his spirit back, they instantly dismiss him roughly. Then when Tomoya helps out in requesting, they tell him, Mei and Nagisa to be ball-catcher, and purposely throw the ball out just so they can see the three struggle. And when Mei begs about it again, they start bullying her on purpose.
  • Captain Harlock: Kiruda is a sadistic military general who takes out his anger on seven year old orphan Mayu for having a godfather he doesn't like. When Mayu's told by the government that Harlock has a letter for her, Kiruda doesn't even have the proper decency to hand it to her - he just throws it on the floor and watches Mayu pick it up herself.
  • Claudine: Even before Louis' lover cheated on him, Louis was aloof and had anger issues.
  • A Certain Magical Index:
    • Tsuchimikaido can be a fair bit of this, even if he is technically on the side of good, partially because it's in his nature and because it's how he stays alive with his connections. Especially in the light novels where he picks on Kanzaki and her love for Touma and the way he gets Touma's help in a couple international incidents.
    • Vento of the Front invokes this thanks to her special power of God's Divine Punishment, which causes anyone who feels hostile towards her to fall unconscious and helpless before her. Logically, acting like a dick to her enemies will cause them to feel hostile towards her and let it take effect.
  • Most girls in the Daily Lives of High School Boys are jerkasses, especially if they're the main characters' sisters. The few exceptions include the Literature Girl, Emi (but she randomly drop-kicks people she knows), Ringo and Habara (or at least she used to be a jerk herself).
  • Daimos: Richter is cold-hearted, bigoted, haughty and prone to flying in fits of rage when things don't go his way. He frequently verbally abuses his subordinates because of their imperfections, and is physically violent when he loses his temper. He believes he's justified to sentence his sister to Execution for falling in love with a human. The only one who he averted this behaviour towards was Aizam, but he was later horrifically killed in battle.
  • Kanda Yu, from D.Gray-Man, is the sort of guy who threatens to kill his allies when they try to help him out with a fight. Or steal his hair tie. But since he's freaking gorgeous and incredibly traumatized, we tend to cut him some slack. Kanda gets a lot better in later arcs (threatening to kill his friends starts sounding pretty unconvincing), but his real Jerkass moment was when he callously considered all non-exorcists cannon fodder in the first volume of the manga and bullies a weaker man (granted, the weaker man looked stronger, but it's obvious that Kanda's more powerful).
  • The corpse hunters who run into Team Kabru in Delicious in Dungeon. They deliberately don't tell Team Kabru how they died the first time (treasure bugs) on the off chance the bugs might wipe them out again, and so get the hunters even more money in resurrection fees. Later on they disguise themselves as monsters and try to straight up murder them. It does not go well.
  • Ruki Makino (Rika Nonaka) in Digimon Tamers was absolutely unsufferable at first, mocking poor Takato and Jenrya for being friendly to their Digimon, putting them down every chance she got, and ordering her partner Renamon to kill Guilmon and absorb his data, only so that Renamon could get stronger. Later Character Development mellows her out, turning her into a Defrosting Ice Queen.
  • Dragon Ball:
    • Vegeta. In the early stages of the anime, the arrogant prince of the Saiyans is a complete genocidal asshole with nary a nice bone in his body, constantly insulting his teammates even after doing the Heel–Face Turn, and being perpetually jealous of his Future Badass son Trunks. He does mellow out once the sense of family with Bulma and Trunks sets in for him. Which takes some time.
    • Despite his sophisticated and rational attitude when he isn't angry, Frieza is a racist, cruel, elitist, egocentric despot above all else. Tellingly, after torturing Goku, Gohan, Krillin and Vegeta (the latter two to the point of death), he has the nerve to plead Goku for his life; when Goku heals him, he berates Goku for doing so and proceeds to immediately try to backstab him. Keyword: "try".
    • Cell's Jerkassery comes as an inherited trait of Vegeta and Frieza. He has their cells, after all. He is extremely proud, arrogant, only cares about himself as a perfect creation, and has a tendency to insult his opponents.
    • Super Buu. Unlike Fat Buu, who is Obliviously Evil, and Kid Buu, who is too insane/mentally deficient to feel morality, Super Buu is fully aware of his sadistic personality. He commits atrocity after atrocity, kicks dog after dog, and loves every minute of it.
  • Izaya Orihara from Durarara!!. The first time you properly see him in the anime, he spends most of the episode orchestrating the kidnapping and rescue of a girl he spoke to online, only to hold her over the side of a building, toy with her desire (or lack thereof) to actually commit suicide, and then wander off to watch from a distance as the girl decides to jump anyway. (Luckily for her, someone else was a little more worried about her safety and saves her.) Anyone who meets him in the series is wary of him, has a number of tales to tell about how manipulative and dangerous he is to be around, or just skip the talking completely and throw vending machines in his face.
  • Elfen Lied:
    • Bando. In his introduction, he casually backhands a woman for the hell of it, laughs, then calls her an idiot for "sneaking up on him". And all she was doing was bringing him some tea. He later punches a doctor in the face with his new prosthetic hand moments after the doctor installs it in order to "test it out". Thankfully, he mellows out as the series goes on (though only the manga).
    • Tomoo, The Bully from Lucy's orphanage, counts, as well. But he turns out to be something far, FAR worse.
  • Fatora and Jinnai from El-Hazard: The Magnificent World.
  • Holland from Eureka Seven bounces between this and Jerk with a Heart of Gold. He definitely leans towards Jerkass for the first two thirds of the series, especially regarding Renton, but eventually grows out of it.
  • In Eyeshield21 it sure seems like Hiruma is going to be the (only) resident jerkass, until Jerk Jock Agon comes along. The only area where Agon doesn't fit this trope's definition of jerkass perfectly is that he knows his behavior is inappropriate, excessive and/or cruel, and he's fine with that.
  • Fairy Tail:
    • Luxus. One of the most powerful mages in the guild (the most powerful, according to him, but he's pretty full of himself so that might not be very accurate), he has absolutely no redeeming features and seems to exist solely to anger other people, and try to get into the pants of the guild's female members. His accomplishments thus far include goading the protagonists into putting themselves into life-threatening danger, refusing to help in the conflict with rival guild Phantom Lord, even after the Guild Master, Makarov, was badly injured in the fight, and afterwards mocking the people who got hurt in the conflict, calling them weaklings. When he succeeds Makarov as the guild's master, he fully intends to rid the guild of anyone he deems too weak. He's quite certain he'll be named the next guild master, as not only is he the only qualified mage in the guild at the moment, he's also Makarov's flesh-and-blood grandson. This is, in fact, precisely the reason why Makarov hasn't retired yet: because he knows that if he does so, Fairy Tail will be left in his Jerkass grandson's hands. Tired of waiting for his inheritance, he as pit the entirety of Fairy Tail against itself in an Involuntary Battle to the Death situation. This is accomplished by turning the guild's female members to stone, threatening that they'll turn to dust if not healed soon, then setting up various traps that won't fade unless the male members fight one another. When this fails, by virtue of the hostages being freed, Luxus ups the ante and takes the entire town hostage. All to force Makarov to step down as master and place himself there instead. Although, it turns out he has a Freudian Excuse. Afterwards, Laxus improves in personality.
    • In the Time Skip, Sabertooth is a guild full of such people with their former Guild Master Jiemma and Minerva taking the trope and running with it to escalating levels.
  • The Familiar of Zero: So far it's shown nobles of Louise's world are this, including our pink haired main character, although there are exceptions but too few. Louise herself comes off as such a bitchy, whiny and violent Tsundere that her antics against Saitou are less funny and more disturbing as time passes. Especially once we're informed that Saitou has been mind raped to be incapable of really resisting her or protesting her treatment.
  • Fruits Basket has a disproportionately high number of Jerkasses for a series with The Power of Friendship and The Power of Love as two of its main themes:
    • Akito Sohma is a selfish, immature, and cruel Spoiled Brat who causes much more pain and trauma for some of the Zodiac members than the curse itself.
    • Akito's mother, Ren, is even worse. As a whole, she's all of Akito's worst traits rolled into one, only amplified tenfold and minus any Freudian Excuse or anything remotely positive or redeemable, explaining where Akito got them from in the first place.
    • Kyo's father is a spiteful and petty man who treated his wife and son like garbage for things that weren't their fault.
    • Yuki's mother is extremely callous and self-centered, openly admitting she sees Yuki as nothing but a tool for her own self-gain.
    • Tohru's entire family on her late father's side, sans her grandfather, are openly rude and disrespectful to her even when she's nothing but nice and polite to them, having made disparaging remarks right to her face since she was a child, and have nothing nice to say about her late mother, either. Her grandfather himself freely calls them "terribly unpleasant people" and urges Tohru to go somewhere else to get away from them.
    • Kyoko Honda's parents are unbelievably egocentric and heartless adults who care for nothing but their image.
  • Fullmetal Alchemist:
    • Envy is not only one of the more evil homunculi, but he also enjoys taunting and insulting his enemies, prisoners, allies and fellow homunculi.
    • Basque Grand is also a huge one in Fullmetal Alchemist (2003), to the point that it's actually surprising when in the manga, he turns out to have been a far more reasonable man. Case in point, during this Ishvalan War, he stands up for all his fellow comrades and shoots his own jerkass superior dead when he tries to prevent the Ishbalan religious leader from negotiating with the Fuhrer to end the conflict — and everyone around implicitly agrees with this action.
  • Futana from Futaba-kun Change! is an incredibly selfish pleasure-obsessed individual who only cares about her own satisfaction. She's shameless lecher who abuses her Sex Shifter abilities to seduce women and then abandons them when she's had her fill of bedding them, and doesn't bother to use contraception, which has explicitly led to her fathering a number of bastard children. Her appetite for sex is so ravenous that she even attempts to repeatedly sexually molest her own brother once his ability to turn into a girl manifests. Finally, she's a massive slob, who in one infamous incident drunkenly vomits into his mouth simply because he is closer than the toilet is. Is it really any surprise that her Arranged Marriage never went anywhere because her fiance decided he rather go Walking the Earth?

    G-N 
  • Gantz:
    • Kei Kurono. He gets better though. Then he dies. Then he, un-dies.
    • And Nishi when, after gaining 100 points, instead of choosing to revive Inaba, he chooses a new weapon, leaving him dead.
  • Girls Bravo:
    • Kirie Kojima in season 1 of this series as shown by her frequently (and unfairly) beating up her 'best friend' Yukinari, despite knowing he's scared of girls because of her actions and developed a rash to girls because of it. Really, acts of kindness on her part don't really hold much water when she just immediately follows these acts of kindness with frequent beatings and verbal abuse. She's only a Jerkass in season 1, as she becomes much nicer in season 2. However, even in the second season her actions are questionable, like when she emotionally manipulated Yukinari into cross-dressing for an event and allowed him to get molested by Fukuyama since it meant Fukuyama would pay her.
    • We also have Kazuharu Fukuyama, who also happened to be a Jerkass as well in the first season due to his own selfishness, arrogance, sleaziness, and perversion. He lust after every woman he have his eye on. Despite Koyomi's feelings of not wanting him to touch her, he's doing it against her will. Another example is that he's trying to steal Miharu away from Yukinari. Fortunately, that plan of his goes up in smoke. However in season two and later on in the manga, he's mellows it out at least a little.
    • If you think Kirie and Fukuyama are like this, then you should see the latter's Siren Twin, Kazuha, in the last two chapters of the manga. He's much worse than both of them combined. Heck, even Fukuyama can't stand this man due to his absolute cruelty towards women.
  • Girls und Panzer:
    • Erika Itsumi, Maho's vice captain and Miho's successor in that position. She's introduced mocking Miho and the rest of Oarai as a no-name school that shouldn't even enter the tournament, complains about Maho letting Mako and Saori borrow their team's helicopter to quickly get to Mako's grandmother in the hospital, and shoots a nasty glare at one of her teammates when she goes over to thank Miho for saving them, an act that resulted in Black Forest losing the tournament for the first time in a decade. She gets slightly better after her defeat by Miho in the final, smiling and swearing that they'll beat them next time.
    • Miho's mother, Shiho Nishizumi has a cold and abrasive personality, and after one meeting with her in Little Army, Miho's friends consider her "a scary mother", and immediately notice that Maho acts differently when Shiho's around, unable to oppose her. Shiho considers Miho a disgrace to the family and is planning to disown her.
    • Anchovy, commander of Anzio Academy's tankery crew, goes up to Miho before the match and calls her way of tankery weak. After her defeat, she's so far the only commander who is not a Graceful Loser, and accuses Miho of causing her own team's defeat in the last tournament by way of the aforementioned rescue of a teammate.
    • Anzu Kadotani, the Student Council President of Ōarai Girls' Academy, comes off as this when she's introduced by pressuring Miho to take Tankery (though the reason for going to extremes was because the school was in danger of being shut down if they didn't win the Tankery tournament) and acting manipulative and high-hosed.
    • Emi Nakasuka of the Little Army prequel manga starts out as this, being someone who speaks whatever is on her mind no matter how much it hurts others, causing friction within her group of friends, and is bitter toward Maho because she shot her older sister's team's flag tank when it went to rescue one of Maho's teammates. Over time, Emi becomes a Jerk with a Heart of Gold who is able to force Miho to confront her own problems.
  • Gundam:
  • Mamoru Takamura from Hajime no Ippo has always been portrayed as being serious and knowledgeable when it came to boxing, but a big jerk in anything not related to it. This is the guy who actually pranks the new boxers by surprising them in the showers and grabbing their cocks, after all. He hits kids who want an autograph from him.
  • In Happy Yarou Wedding, Kazuki is none too nice to his brother-in-law Yuuhi, especially over his sexuality. On the flip side he's a good uncle to Shouta which is why Yuuhi tolerates him at all.
  • The title character of Haruhi Suzumiya starts out as a compeletely self-absorbed Jerkass with a dash of Genki Girl, more or less hitting every point on the list of diagnostic criteria for antisocial personality disorder. And the fact that she is capable of destroying the world if she's seriously naysayed — or bored — just puts icing on the cake. In her defense, she does not know she's got said powers... but due to the disregard she shows even towards her closest friends, it's much better to keep her Locked Out of the Loop lest she decide to intentionally screw over humanity on a whim. She does eventually become a Jerk with a Heart of Gold, but it takes a good while.
  • Hayate the Combat Butler:
    • Sakuya is a textbook example. Her cousin and main heroine Nagi treats her like The Idiot from Osaka that she is. She does get better, or rather, it's shown that she has her Pet the Dog moments. It's revealed in chapter 90 of the manga that in her year, there were three places for students skipping grades from elementary school to high school. Those places had been awarded to Sakuya, Nagi and Isumi, but Sakuya gave up her place to Wataru so that he could be in the same class as Isumi (whom he has a crush on).
    • Miki, Risa and Izumi are shown to be examples of this.
  • King Draven from Helios Eclipse is a real dick. Even more evil characters like Soileh is more likeable.
  • Hello! Sandybell:
    • Kitty Shearer. She's hot-blooded, stubborn, refuses to budge unless she gets her way and believes she's entitled to treat people however she wants. She wasn't well-liked in Scotland because of her attitude, and in London, people only tolerate her for the money. When Alec slaps her across the face, she cries and runs away, having suddenly learned that not everyone is going to put up with her bitchy attitude.
    • Eva Ronwood. She knows Sandybell is an orphan but still treats her poorly. She also takes advantage of the fact that her mother shares her disdain for Sandybell and they work together to make her life a living hell.
  • Shingo in Initial D is one of these at first. But after an attempt to destroy Takumi's AE86 in a race ends in disaster for him, he develops a change of heart when Itsuki and Iketani take him to the hospital. He remains a Jerk, but his until then almost non-existent heart of gold does shine through more than one. (And, well, his interactions with Nakazato are funny.)
  • Sesshomaru from Inuyasha. The guy is a cold-hearted, emotionless killer who tried to kill his own brother simply because he's half-human! It's only when he gets a Morality Pet that he finally starts to care for something other than himself, and that's an understatement. The guy went into hell, of which there is no return, killed the hell god and then purified hell to save the little girl.
  • Tsugawa the manager in Japan, Inc..
  • Ryouhei Ogawara in Jinki:Extend fits this trope pretty nicely; he starts out the series looking like a clear villain, dressing up like a woman and headbutting Aoba in order to kidnap her. He insultingly calls her "Ahobaka" (a nickname made up of two Japanese words for "stupid"). He then starts genuinely hating her after an accident of hers ends up permanently crippling his grandfather. Later, as she matures and becomes more reliable, he starts warming up to her (and "Ahobaka" becomes a sort of term of endearment), but he doesn't quite become a Jerk with a Heart of Gold; he's still quite snide and impatient. He's also often shown to be surrounded by women but never shows any of them any interest.
  • Jujutsu Kaisen: Sorcerors have a tendency towards toxic personalities and Curses are made of negative emotions, so it's unsurprising this series has plenty of them. Among the worst cases are Mahito, Sukuna, Suguru Geto, and a whole bunch of the Zen'ins.
  • Both Leon Oswald and May Wong from the second season of Kaleido Star start like this. Oswald is an arrogant French headliner who seems to think because he is the headliner he now runs the Kaleido Stage, and Wong is a bitchy baby diva whose attempts to supplant Sora barely stop short of getting herself adopted by Sora's parents. To their merit, once they do get to see how devoted Sora is to her dreams, they start getting better.
  • Nijima of Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple, otherwise known as "that guy who could solve all of Kenichi's problems by shutting the hell up and not attracting attention". Although he does have some moments that prove that he's not all bad.
  • Kotoura-san:
  • Prince Baka from Level E. He constantly trolls the main character and guilt-trips him, plays sadistic games with his own loyal subordinates, and is generally a gigantic jerk on purpose towards everyone purely because It Amused Me: It's so bad that he has interstellar renown as a gigantic selfish jerk. Episode 5 of the anime sees him kidnap a random bunch of schoolkids off the street and forces them to become a sentai team to fight their homeroom teacher (who is a disguised alien, but hasn't actually done anything) for his amusement. When the kids grow wise to his schemes, he instead sics the kids on his own second-in-command (who is completely unaware of the whole thing), as said second-in-command holds the only way for the kids to get the suits off again.
  • Diana Cavendish from Little Witch Academia (2013) is a haughty stuck up girl out to prove the greatness of witches and due to being a pure-blooded witch, she looks down on muggle-born witches who had non magic parents, such as Akko.
  • Nico Yazawa from Love Live! does not start off as a pleasant person, posting hate comments on µ's website and telling them to break up in their face. She eventually mellows out into a Jerk with a Heart of Gold, but even then she’s still quite arrogant and abrasive.
  • Naru from Love Hina can come across as this at times, especially in the anime.
  • Lyrical Nanoha:
    • Arisa Bunnings was initially a bully who was unwilling to consider others' feelings before Nanoha slapped her (her first "befriending") for stealing Suzuka's ribbon.
    • In one of the StrikerS sound stages, Vita admits to having been constantly abrasive and rude to the rest of the Wolkenritter out of battle during the first Reinforce's existence. She mellowed out somewhat between when Hayate became her mistress and StrikerS, but still has a fairly hot temper.
    • Precia Testarossa systematically batters and abuses Fate for lack of progress on a mission — she whips the poor eight year old magical girl with a bullwhip! All Fate wanted to do was see her mommy smile again. No matter how much suffering was involved, as long her "mommy dearest" becomes nice again. Too bad, Precia reveals that Fate was just a clone complete with the fake memories of Precia's dead daughter, Alicia, and proceeds to call her a tool to her face, admits to have hated her all along! When Fate is in position to give one last chance for Precia to stand down and repent for crimes, telling her that while not being her daughter, Fate still cares for Precia, who brought Fate into the world. And the queen bitch laughs and chooses to die instead!
    • Pick any Eclipse infectee outside of Tohma/Touma in Force, but special mention goes to the Huckebein. Prime examples include:
    • The Grendels from the same series also counts, although they're nowhere as severe as Huckebein.
  • Maison Ikkoku:
    • Almost entire cast, save for the protagonist and his love interest.
    • Notable jerkass-exceptions aside from those two: Grandpa Otonashi, the Godai family (save for Grandma Godai, who can be a jerkass just for kicks), Asuna Kujo (she's just sheltered and somewhat naive... if she's ever being a jerkass, it's entirely unintentional) and possibly Ikuko Otonashi, who isn't able to keep her attention focused on anything for longer than half a minute. Oh, and Soichiro (Otonashi, anways; the dog, most of the time)
    • Yotsuya takes the cake, though. The entire reason of his existence seems to be making life miserable for others, parasitism, causing massive property damage, hurling insults, mind screwing, and not only never providing the tiniest benefit whatsoever to society but making it a point not to, and flaunting it.
  • Mischievous Twins: The Tales of St. Clare's:
    • Patricia. She looked down upon Saint Clare's because it wasn't the same as her old school, and also constantly pressured Isabel to help her get away with breaking the rules.
    • Madeleine. When Doris tries to take a slice of cake, she slaps her hand and insults her weight, even though Doris isn't fat.
  • My Hero Academia:
  • Hachiman Hikigaya in My Youth Romantic Comedy Is Wrong, as I Expected starts off a sympathetic, stoic Deadpan Snarker type — a sort of everyman for the losers and nerds to relate to. He's sharp-tongued and merciless to those who he looks down upon as cogs in society's machine, but not cruel or mean (in fact, he has so little self-worth and self-esteem, he puts himself in harm's way for others very regularly, to the chagrin of those who care for him). In the early episodes of Season 2 and from then-on, however, he becomes a spiteful and self-destructive bully, lashing out and demeaning those who were closest to him: cute and friendly Yui Yuigahama and his sweet and supportive little sister, Komachi. He becomes such a jerk and pushes them away to isolate himself, leading to a self-destructive circle where the only one keeping him alone and bitter is himself. Even the not-so-bad Hayama tries to help and be friendly, if not outright friends, and Hachiman still treats Hayama like dirt. It is so bad, that the primary protagonist becomes someone very hard to root for, and therefore makes it a difficult show to continue after Season 1.
  • The title character from Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water comes across like this for scenes where she loses her temper and says nasty things to Jean and occasionally Nemo (both of whom obviously don't deserve it). Nonetheless, she does apologize numerous times to Jean for her outbursts and does something reconciliatory (e.g. comforting him about his father, bringing him something to eat, or going on walks with him) but she never gets to do so with Nemo, until she realizes, too late, that she could have been nicer.
  • Negima! Magister Negi Magi has Tosaka, who acts like a dick in regard to the slave girls. Although he does eventually reveal that he's not all bad.
  • Neon Genesis Evangelion:
    • Asuka Langley Soryu is practically the epitome of a jerkass who regularly announces that she hates everyone and everything at times of emotional intensity (which is mostly when she fails due to her own fault and tries to blame it on something else). She is not even trying to be playful or joking when she says she hates people; she almost always means it, especially in the case of Shinji or Rei for merely not being nice to her, despite the fact that they did absolutely nothing to deserve it; in other words, she hates them just for being there. There is a good reason for this, though: like all the main characters, she has an extremely traumatic past, which has instilled her with a severe inferiority complex, for which she compensates by aggressively attempting to keep the people around her from getting too close to her, as she does not want anyone controlling or pitying her.
    • Ryoji Kaji starts off as quite a jerkass, coming off as completely self-centered and his behavior toward Misato borders on sexual harassment. He's even introduced in the same episode as Asuka is, and while his debonair demeanor is more pleasant than her's, his actions for his first few episodes actually surpass her in sheer jerkassery. Once he and Misato's past together is uncovered and a misunderstanding between them cleared up, he drops the act of pretending that he is a jerk and reveals that he's actually more of a Jerk with a Heart of Gold.
  • The eponymous character of Niea_7 is a lazy, loudmouthed freeloader who seems to care so little about other people that it sometimes crosses into full-fledged sociopath territory. Why the other characters put up with this is a mystery; strange enough, it's the other aliens who have the most trouble with her. Human Mayuko seems to genuinely care for her, despite their differences.

    O-Z 
  • One Piece:
    • Wapol. While every other Big Bad has a fundamental goal or Freudian Excuse when they do what they do, Wapol doesn't have any, other than to be the king of Drum Island, and he was born to the throne. He partakes in acts of cruelty, most notably gathering up twenty of the island's best doctors, for which it was famous, and then banishing all of the rest just because he wanted the citizens to beg him to let them see one of the Twenty, and also because he could, and there was still no guarantee that he'd let them. This is just the start. He did get some Character Development in the side story title pages, however. He was hungry and tried to eat garbage and reshape them into toys to keep him entertained, except kids loved them so he started selling them to everyone. Then he made a factory, married a model, and was last seen doing some good in the world. Actually, it seems that he's turned into a full-blown Corrupt Corporate Executive, as the final chapter of his cover story was entitled "The Rebirth of Evil". And now he's once again the ruler of his own country, called the Evil Black Drum Kingdom.
    • As shown in recent flashbacks, Arlong seems to have always been a Jerkass Anti-human racist. Fisher Tiger's death and his stint in Impel Down just made him even worse.
    • Doflamingo is easily the biggest one in the entire series, being unbelievably petty and cruel. The best example of this would be when Violet attacked him to by Luffy time to recover and he responds by using his string powers on her niece, forcing the poor girl to lunge at her with a sword. He even has an attack named in "tribute" of someone who was killed by the World Nobles via multiple gunshot wounds called "Sixteen Sacred Bullets of the Assassin".
    • Sanji has been called a jerk on occassion due to treating the women members of the crew better than anyone else, but when it comes down to it he'd gladly give his life if it meant saving his friends and other innocents regardless of gender. So more of a Jerk with a Heart of Gold than a real Jerkass.
  • The Prince of Tennis:
    • Jin Akutsu is a big, scary jerkass who hits people from other teams, treats his mom rather badly, humiliates his childhood friend when he attempts to call him out on his jerkiness, almost hits his coach when the old man tries to recruit him, and in flashbacks he picks on other guys several times. Still, after losing his official match with Ryoma he evolves more into a Jerk with a Heart of Gold.
    • Ryoma Echizen himself is already a big jerkass to start with, frequently taunting his opponents with the phrase "Mada mada dane (You still have a lot to learn)". In fact, Prince of Tennis is ripe with jerkasses, including the narcissist Keigo Atobe.
  • Princess Tutu:
    • Lilie sometimes gets dangerously close to this trope. When she's first introduced, she merely seems a little gossipy and quick to assume the worst. But by the second season she's downright sadistic, to the point where she tries to push two friends into a fight over a boy, and freaks out when they tell her they're too good of friends to fight. In fact, most fans consider her sadistic to the point of comparing with Drosselmeyer, the series' Big Bad.
    • Princess Tutu also has Fakir, but he's not quite as bad as he first appears.
  • Everyone in Ranma ½ has fallen into this at least once.
  • Remote: The novelist, Maria Ishizuka manages to rub almost everybody at the hot springs spa the wrong way very quickly. Later on, the motive for her murder is that she used a friend's sister's disease as the basis for a best-selling novel, driving the sister to suicide and her friend to murder her.
  • Reborn! (2004):
    • Hibari. The school is his life, and he will bite you to death if you do anything to hurt the school in any way, disrupt its functioning, or really just irritate him.
    • Byakuran, Xanxus, Mukuro, and Reborn.
  • Rosario + Vampire:
    • Every male character except the male lead.
    • The bus driver and guy running the school are okay. They're still jerks but they're watching out for him.
    • Gin, the werewolf, is more of a Jerk with a Heart of Gold, actually.
    • And the male members of the Wong family seem to be more-or-less decent guys. Kinda weird, but nice. Which is ironic, considering they're a 'family' in both the blood-related sense and the Mafia sense...
    • Inner Moka and Kokoa Shuzen were both introduced this way. But they improve.
    • Kuyou, the anti-human fascist who headed the Security Committee. He regularly abused his authority to make the students' lives miserable, and on top of it all, he needs little-to-no provocation to burn somebody, human and monster alive, to ash.
  • Ryu's Path: Ryu is a good guy, but he can be flippant and rude sometimes. After Peki's mother is killed, he screams that she was Too Dumb to Live and complains about "having to babysit these damn monkeys".
  • Sailor Moon:
    • Rei Hino (aka Sailor Mars) bounces between this and Jerk with a Heart of Gold. She is especially a jerk to Usagi.
    • Jadeite, one of the villains from the first season, is very sexist. He in fact insults the Sailor Guardians in his final episode after seemingly defeating Tuxedo Mask.
      • It should be noted, though, that these personalities was only for the original anime — Rei was actually much nicer in the manga and Jadeite didn't have much of a chance to act sexist.
  • In Saint Beast, Kira is one, in part thanks to Loners Are Freaks. His main issue is his aloofness and that he enjoys getting a rise out of angels like Rey.
  • Saki:
  • Makoto Itou from School Days starts out as a fairly typical loser protagonist only to turn into one of the biggest jerks of all time by the end of the series, first cheating on his girlfriend Kotonoha with his classmate Sekai, then cheating on her with most of the rest of the female cast — and, when Sekai reveals that she is pregnant with his child, Makoto ditches her for Kotonoha. It does not end well. By contrast, you can completely avert this trope in the visual novel on which the anime is based. Even the manga adaptation and OVAs portray him as a much nicer guy, though the Cross Days manga makes him an even bigger Jerkass than he is in the anime.
  • Hatori from Sekai Ichi Hatsukoi mainly due to his yandere tendencies that seems to extend not just to his rival Yanase but also to Chiaki (his boyfriend) and to a certain extent Ritsu. (Kisa and Mino like to pick on Ritsu too but given his yandere tendencies, it's probably intentional unlike Kisa who admits to like teasing Ritsu since he's the newbie.) Some of his actions include brutally raping Chiaki, constantly harassing Yanase for being near Chiaki and almost beating the shit out of him in his own house after Yanase breaks down from being rejected by Chiaki a second time.
  • Sekirei has quite a few characters with a serious case of jerkassery, on both sides of the morality spectrum.
    • The Sahashi women are both enormous jerkasses, which probably examples why Minato is such an Extreme Doormat. Mother Takami enjoys being a Troll, while little sister Yukari regularly kicks men in the crotch if they annoy her. Despite their actions, they do love Minato very much.
    • Izumi Higa is probably one of the biggest examples in the series, being a Smug Snake that mistreats his own Sekirei and blackmails Uzume and Shiina into working for him. He has no problem doing anything necessary to get what he wants, whether it's forcefully winging Sekirei against their will or ordering assassinations.
    • Seo and Hikari both fall into the Hidden Heart of Gold variation, balancing their jerkass tendencies with kinder moments. Miya can also be quite the jerkass, but is skilled enough at Passive Aggressive Combat to make it easily missed.
    • Mikogami Hayato is a Spoiled Brat that mocks his rivals, and is willing to hunt down any Sekirei that catches his eye in hopes of adding them to his collection. However, he turns out to have shades of the Jerkass Woobie when his backstory is revealed.
  • Kururu/Kululu in Sgt. Frog. He's far more interested in dicking around with anyone and everyone around him, than actually doing anything useful.
  • Skip Beat!'s Fuwa Sho is a different person depending on how you view him. A jackass of the first degree beyond all narrative redemption? A sixteen/seventeen year old boy whose had a little too much positive attention for his own good? Somewhere in between? No matter what way you pick, you can't deny some of his unsavory characteristics and actions
  • Zelgadis Graywords of the Slayers franchise, though only in the original novel series. It really doesn't help that he was shipped off without any justification after the first eight novels were over. ''Gourry'' showed scant shades of this trope in the novels; justified because he isn't The Ditz in that media.
  • Excalibur from Soul Eater is an absurdly powerful being, his weapon form once wielded by King Arthur. But his fame seems to have gone to his head, turning him into an insufferable jerkass, with a list of 1000 rules you must follow if you want to wield him. Yes, 1000. On the other hand, it's hard to tell how much of this is intentional. Excalibur spends most of his time being too incoherent to give the impression of intentionally being a jerk, rather than just obnoxious as a result of his eccentric personality.
  • The agents of the O'Hara Foundation tend to act this way towards Ray Steam in the movie Steamboy. By the end, it seems that they're trying to kill him out of sheer spite, despite having no particular reason to do so and much, much better things to do with their time (such as trying to escape the giant, flying steam-powered castle that's about to self-destruct around them).
  • Miu from Strawberry Marshmallow, to whom the other characters respond accordingly. Cutting to Miu lying face down and sprawled after a Jerkass moment is a Running Gag of the anime series.
  • Tenchi Muyo!:
    • In the OAVs, Princess Ayeka's petty rivalry with Ryoko was a humorous chink in her formal armor, deflating her pomposity. Through several TV series — especially Shin Tenchi Muyo (Tenchi In Tokyo in the US) — made it so noticeable that she became rather ditzy.
    • Ryoko pushes this, especially in the TV adaptations. Many times she goes after Tenchi just to provoke Ayeka, including when Ayeka and Sasami were about to leave Earth forever. She once left the entire team to almost starve to death in space when she spent the money that was supposed to buy them food on partying. However, even in her more selfish adaptations, she still truly loves Tenchi and proves under tougher circumstances to be more of a Jerk with a Heart of Gold, especially by the time period of the third movie (set in the first TV series timeline) in which she and Ayeka still haves squabbles, but now live together and actually respect each other.
    • Tenchi in Tokyo ramps this up towards everyone. In fact, it seems like the anime's entire plot hinges on the idea that everyone has to be complete assholes.
    • OVA Washu.
    • In the spin-off, you have Yume from the manga and Ramia and Konoha from Pretty Sammy.
  • Everyone in Urusei Yatsura has fallen into this at least once.
  • Eguchi in Wa ga Na wa Umishi isn't content with being an arrogant genius. No, he's gotta go out of his way to ruin other people's efforts as sneakily as possible just so he can keep being better than them. Even his bosses don't like him, even though he's their best worker.
  • Ratso Catso from Wowser.
  • Kirisaki Yuichi and Yukino Azusagawa of Yakitate!! Japan. To the point where they're like terrorists.
  • Yanda from Yotsuba&! seems to genuinely enjoy picking on a five-year-old girl. Koiwai probably wouldn't have anything to do with him if he had a choice (he doesn't; Yanda is his kohei and thus he's socially expected to let him hang around). As it stands, Yanda does get put in his place — a lot.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh! has a bunch:
    • Seto Kaiba starts out as this, forcing Yugi's grandpa to duel and mocking anyone, especially Joey, whom he considers beneath him in terms of dueling skills.
      Kaiba: Now do you understand why so many people love me, even though I'm the biggest dick in this entire show? It's because I'm Seto freakin' Kaiba!
    • Weevil Underwood, an annoying little dweeb who is willing to do anything to get ahead of the competition, from asking Yugi to see his Exodia set in order to chuck it overboard to finding out about the tournament rules before anyone else.
    • Bandit Keith is like the above, only worse. When Bones fails to beat Joey in a duel, he not only has his cronies block the exit to the cave that Yugi and Co. are in, but beats the crap out of said cronies and steals their star chips.
  • YuYu Hakusho:
    • Hiei, and egregiously so, especially in the manga. By the end of the anime, he manages to squeak into Jerk with a Heart of Gold territory, but just barely. Considering that he's a demon who was cast out of the female-only society he was born in, despite his own mother actually wanting to raise him, he would naturally be an ass, but Kurama's companionship and respect makes it more of a Freudian Excuse.
    • Juri actually calls Yusuke a jerkass when he harasses her over the ruling that Karasu defeated Kurama.
  • Many of the opponents that Gash and Kiyomaro encounter in Zatch Bell! are assholes, though some more so than others. While it's a given they're all just doing whatever they can to become King of the Demon world, some are just unforgivable. Zofis in particular robs that whole damn bakery.

Alternative Title(s): Anime

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