Jerkass Woobie / Anime & Manga

Examples of Jerkass Woobie in Anime & Manga.

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Bleach

• Bleach:
  • Muramasa. Sure, he personally instigated the Zanpakuto Rebellion and incinerated Katen Kyokotsu and Sogyo no Kotowari to death, but as Kouga descended deeper into madness, he quickly became a self-centered, arrogant, abusive Jerkass that frequently treated Muramasa as a mere tool, instead of an actual person. However, since Muramasa was the one that led Kouga to his crazy, power-drunken self, one could say that he brought it on himself. This disharmony caused Muramasa to literally lose the ability to hear his master when needed...which led to Kouga stabbing Muramasa as soon as he was unsealed, completely uncaring about Muramasa's explanation.
  • Also, Homura from the third movie. There's no denying that Homura was a stubborn, jealous, possessive, and irrational teenage girl, who had the potential to be as unstable as Loly can get at times, with an almost-unhealthy obsession towards Rukia to top it all off; but for all her faults, she was a sincerely sweet and cheerful girl, whose only wish was to reunite with the only other friend and loved one she had. In fact, she wasn't even evil to begin with, just selfish, naive, and misguided, with a justifiable excuse for her implied hatred (and fear) of the Shinigami. Considering her past, her interactions with Rukia are all the more heartwarming; as an orphan, she was forced to survive on her own in a lawless slum district, ended up getting murdered by an (albeit mind-controlled) Shinigami, absorbed said mind-controlling hollow into herself as a fail-safe to keep it from killing Rukia (thereby making it into the subconscious source of her power), and unintentionally causing the now-innate hollow spirit energy to revive and transport them to Hueco Mundo, where she presumably spent most of her life relentlessly fighting for survival against hundreds of cannibalistic monsters in a dimension she knew nothing about after forcing the still-barely alive hollow into submission. And keep in mind that, at the time, she was barely over the age of ten. The final kicker is that Homura was a genuinely likable and sympathetic character, even taking into account her Yandere/Psycho Lesbian tendencies, which makes her death scene even more of a Tear Jerker than it already is.
  • The arrancar Ulquiorra Cifer. He's stated to be the personification of Nihilism, is loyal to Aizen, considers Ichigo and all others below his power level little more than "trash", helps Yammy to kill Tatsuki's judo classmates, cannot comprehend things like love and friendship, kidnaps Orihime and verbally/psychologically abusive to several degrees towards her, physically mutilates her friend Ishida, and kills Ichigo in front of Orihime merely to prove a point to her, then taunts her until she massively breaks down. However, he seems to gradually soften up towards humanity thanks to his interactions with the captive Orihime, and Ichigo, too, to a lesser extent. He also regards the senseless killing done by other arrancars as childish, and is disgusted when Nnoitra says that he should rape Orihime. His death is also incredibly heartbreaking. It even seems like he is finally starting to understand human bonds, seeing how, in his last moments, Ulquiorra reaches out to Orihime and asks her if she finds him frightening, mirroring their conversation before Ichigo arrives in the tower. She replies with tears in her eyes that she doesn't and reaches back for him, but his body dissolves before they can touch. Of course, however, fans go from considering him a Jerk Ass Woobie to something else entirely.
    • His backstory in "Unmasked" also reveals that he never experienced happiness and that his hollow brothers/clan tried to eat him because he was different from them. Again, don't forget that he is STILL a pretty creepy bastard when at his worst.
  • There's also Kaname Tousen, the only Captain to ever gets The Scrappy status, who betrays Soul Society for a hypocritical reason (going down the path with the least bloodshed by joining the Big Bad). His close friend was killed by her shinigami husband, after she scolded him for killing his comrade in battle. So, he joins up with Aizen, pretty much wants all the shinigami dead, and is willing to destroy a town full of people, all to get revenge on every single shinigami. After being beaten by his vice captain and being reminded of his errors by his best friend, Tousen seems to repent, cries, and wants to have one tender moment with his vice captain...and then blew up in front of his vice captain and best friend.
  • Hiyori Sarugaki, an aggressive and short-tempered girl with rather violent tendencies who seems to hate everyone around her. However, many fans felt sorry for her when Hollowfied Ichigo tried to strangle her to death and Gin cut her in half, as well as the part where she gets turned into a Visored in the first place. She also shows a more vulnerable side at times, such as when she confesses to Shinji that she hates humans and Soul Reapers.
  • Sure, Kisuke Urahara could've gotten by without callously manipulating everybody around him, but you gotta feel sorry for him once his backstory is shown. His lieutenant and one of his best friends were hollowified in front of him and he failed to save them, and was then blamed for it. Poor guy...
  • Cirucci Sanderwicci is a rude and cocky bitch. Still, she's not all bitchy; in one specific scene, she does garner sympathy after losing her powers by showing a rather dignified sort of anger at her defeat, and generally showing Villainous Valor and a thoughtful attitude during her fight against Ishida.
  • Jackie Tristan of the mysterious organization Xcution. She tries to kill Renji and ends up dead instead, and Chapter 471 features her returning home with her dead brother in her arms to find her entire family slaughtered, which is the reason why she want with the Fullbringers in the first place.
  • Yukio Hans Vorarlberna. His sadism might've been biological, but he would've been far less homicidal if his parents gave enough of a damn to raise him properly. Fully explained in chapter 471: he was a former Cute Mute who was kept locked away by his parents due to his speech impediment, and was so lonely that he first used his powers to recreate images of his parents as sort-of Imaginary Friends.
  • For some, that would be Loly Aivirrne. Yes, she's a massive bitch and treats Orihime like crap, but it doesn't necessarily mean she exactly deserves to be mutilated by Grimmjow and later mauled by Yammy to almost death. A few also feel for Menoly, too, since her primary problem is that she follows Loly loyally in spite of her own doubts.
  • There are some signs in the manga that allow us to see Nnoitra Gilga as that. He is definitely sadistic, does not hesitate to kill a person who cannot fight back, shows misogynistic and lecherous behavior towards Nelliel and Orihime, and is not above cheating on battle to get his win. He also is a Hollow who crossed the Despair Event Horizon very early on, believes all Hollows are beyond salvation, turns to battle as the one thing that can make him feel, and the only thing he has to look forward to in life is dying in the heat of battle. He doesn't offer anyone mercy because, to him, mercy hurts the worst. It's hard not to feel a little sad for him during his death scene, when he dies with what seems to be a regretful look on his eye.
  • Bambietta Basterbine, of all people, can elicit such a response. Yeah, she's ruthless and temperamental, but to see her plead for mercy as her friends seemingly backstab her after she already was reduced to a half-dead state was a bit much. Falls into this trope entirely when it's revealed that her "friends" did kill her off, all for the sake of reviving her as a zombie slave. The person who killed her and has her under her control (Giselle) has already demonstrated that she can heal others so that was really more to satisfy their sadism.
  • In the pilot, Orihime's father more or less comes across as being like her brother in canon, except that he actually succeeded in killing her. However, since it's implied that being a Hollow in the pilot means that he no longer can go to Soul Society once he's destroyed, his despair is all the more poignant.

Death Note

• Death Note have a portion of its cast packed with this kind of character.
  • Misa Amane. If she weren't so damn amoral, she'd be a very sympathetic character - what with her Parental Abandonment issues and her devotion to Light, which is both very crazy (seeing as how he doesn't really care about her at all and is merely using her as a pawn and eventually wants to kill her when she outlives her usefulness) and very genuine. She turns even more sympathetic when by the end of the anime, you learn she kills herself eventually.
    • Her live-action movie incarnation is even more of an example of this trope, as the death of her family is more focused upon (she mentions that she's fine with dying because "she should have died along with her family" when they were murdered, and she even keeps a picture of them in her room next to one of Light). The movie also shows that, if not for her insane fixation with Light, she could be a good person (she ends a killing spree out of hesitation when called a murderer, and later cries when she realizes that Light is willing to kill his own father.)
    • Misa in custody. Imagine the mental state of the poor girl. She's taken off the street, kept continuously blindfolded and restrained for two months, under constant surveillance, and she has no idea why she is there or if she will ever be untied. If she wasn't crazy before, she has every excuse to be afterward.
  • Kiyomi Takada. She's an ex-girlfriend who wishes to be with her beloved Light again, and at the same time, is a Knight Templar who wishes to fulfill justice by herself, and loves to be in the center of attention. Her misery is specially because of her very ugly death, orchestrated by Light himself right after she helps to kill Mello and she actually asked him for help and truly believes he'll give her a hand. But Light psychically forces her into setting herself in fire.
  • Mello, a mob boss that kidnaps innocent (and not-so-innocent) girls and a overbearing jerk that shouts at people but he acts that way out of a severe inferiority complex. He blows up his base, burns up his face, had Matt, his best friend killed by Takada's men, and dies horribly at the hands of Takada herself.
  • Beyond Birthday from Death Note: Another Note. L's neglected Backup turned Serial Killer. As much of a horrifying mass murderer he was, he was born with the ability to see when everyone is going to die, he was raised at an orphanage, neglected by his role model, and saw his classmate commit suicide (and knew it would happen). He's crazy and psychotic but ouch, he attempted to burn himself alive!
  • Teru Mikami. An Axe-Crazy prosecutor who suffers from even greater Black-and-White Insanity than Light, he was a Bully Hunter as a kid and was mercilessly beaten for his efforts on a regular basis. His mother, a single parent, tried to talk him out of it out of concern for his well-being, making Mikami turn on her and actually rejoice when she was killed along with four bullies from his school in an accident. He unwittingly helps trigger Light's downfall, and upon seeing his "God" for what he really is, falls into despair and dies in prison after the fact, at least in the manga. In the anime, he commits suicide right there on the spot by stabbing himself with his pen. Yeesh...

Digimon

• The Digimon has a few:
  • Impmon/Beelzemon from Digimon Tamers. He starts out as The Imp, but later, his human-hating tendencies are explained by the fact that he was fought over by his toddler Tamers, getting physically hurt. But it's not until he, unable to digivolve by traditional means, makes a rather shady deal with Chatsuramon, one of the Devas, that his true jerkass side shows. Of course, in order to be able to evolve, he has to kill the Tamers and their partners. He honors his deal by killing and absorbing Leomon. He deserved a punch in the face. Also, a big hug.
  • Yukio Oikawa from Digimon Adventure 02. Growing up as a lonely boy in a unforgiving world, the only friend he ever had was Hiroki Hida, Cody Hida's father. During their youth, they became the very first humans ever to discover the Digital World, and they together promised that they would one day travel to it. Of course, fate decided to be a mean bitch one day and killed off Hiroki during his line of duty as a police officer before it could happen, leaving Oikawa with no one else in the world but his promise. Depressed and lonely, he became a easy target for Myotismon's ghost to possess, who promised him that he would help him to get to the Digital World and fullfill his promise to Hiroki...at the expense of everything and everyone else.
  • Before him, Ken. In the Digital World, he's the Ax-Crazy main villain who used brainwashing devices on entire cities of Digimon, using them as his slaves and his entertainment, and attacks the heroes just because as people who weren't "perfect human beings" like him, they don't deserve to be in "his" world. In the human world, he's snobbish and considers everyone around him to be "insects" for not being geniuses like him. However, it turns out that his brother died shortly after Ken wished he were gone, and the reason he's such a villain is because he believes the Digital World isn't real. He's having fun with the Videogame Cruelty Potential of the digital world and thinks that the heroes are other players.
  • Gatomon from Digimon Adventure, being the willing servant of a wannabe Multiversal Conqueror, sarcastic, ruthless, disparaging people, and smacking dogs. She's introduced to the heroes by kicking four of five Champion-level Digimons' asses singlehandedly and enjoying it. Then we learn that she was tormented and enslaved by her Bad Boss, but it doesn't make up for the fact she is callous. Then shortly afterwards, she discovers her true self, pulls a Heel–Face Turn, and becomes a non-jerkass Woobie.
  • Puppetmon from the same series. He's a horrible, nasty, psychopathic little jerk, but he really does want company to play with and his inability to grasp how much of a problem he has with making and keeping friends is just plain sad.

Gundam

• Shinn Asuka from Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny. Yes, he may be an abrasive jerk who needs to wake up and stop seeing the world in black and white, but during the story, he goes through such hell that you can't help but feel sorry for him. Especially considering how badly Sunrise and Fan Dumb abused him, coincidentally contributing to his total breakdown.
  • Sting Oakley and Auel Neudiar, as well.
• If you don't think that Fllay from the original Mobile Suit Gundam SEED is The Scrappy, you'll see her as this. Yes, she's a Yandere who uses a particularly sensitive and troubled guy into almost killing himself for her sake as well as massively prejudiced towards Coordinators. But she's also pathologically lonely ever since she was a little girl, thrown into the middle of a war, watch her father die in front of her, AND she also sees the errors of her ways.
• Once you get glimpses of their back-stories as Artificial Humans who were bred only to pilot Gundams, the Trinity siblings from Mobile Suit Gundam 00 come off a pretty damn pitiful. Of course that does not excuse the heaps of shit they pull on everyone except for each other.
  • Even more so in the case of younger sister Nena, who is first left all alone as her brothers (who as mentioned above are the only persons she truly cares for) are killed in front of her, and later has to work with the guy who killed them in the first place. And then the karma she adquired for blowing up a wedding and crippling Louise catches with her. It's even better/worse/etc. when you learn through side materials that Nena actually spent more than half her Artificial Human life in stasis, and has only been conscious for seven years at the start of the series; that doesn't excuse her Psychopathic Womanchild traits, but surely explains why she has them in the first place.
  • Louise also falls into this - You can feel for her losing her family in front of her, but what she does during the second season can be seen as jerkassish.
  • Tieria Erde. At first, he's cold, stern and the most dedicated to Celestial Being's mission. However, after (thefirst) Lockon's death in season 1 and the separation from VEDA, we see that Tieria is a very insecure man.
• Four Murasame from Zeta Gundam. Sure she destroyed a city while laughing like a noblewoman and has yandere tendecies, but her parents died during the One Year War, experimented on by the Federation who wanted to turn her into a psychic Super-Soldier. Said experiments robbed her of her memories of her past and gave her a series of headsplitting headhaches, and the Titans kept treating her nothing more than a living weapon and test subject. No wonder she quickly fell in love with the first boy who treated her like a normal human being.

Hetalia: Axis Powers

• Hetalia: Axis Powers:
  • Russia. A creepy, mentally unstable Stepford Smiler who has fun terrifying and abusing his subordinates, especially The Woobie, Lithuania... but the times we seem him suffer are nothing short of heartbreaking, and he truly loves his Prone to Tears older sister, Ukraine, as much as his insanity lets him and the pressure he puts on her. You also can't help but feel sorry for him as he's constantly being pursued by his even crazier sister Belarus (also an example of this trope, as seen below), who wants to marry him. Also, Himaruya's new profile on him points out that he truly wants to have new friends. However it won't happen in a long time, because he's so scary that he ends up driving away potential friends, and he's had bosses who tell him force is the best way to make friends.
  • Prussia can also qualify. He's an unrepentant, egotistical Memetic Badass who delights in causing trouble for others and seems to only think about himself...but at the same time, he's also something of a Butt-Monkey who isn't as awesome as he likes to think he is, and is shown to be secretly lonely and trying to pretend that he doesn't care about not being a nation anymore or not having any friends at all. And if you see him with Shipping Goggles on, there's the added "pain" of being the Unlucky Childhood Friend to a Ninja Maid, who's head over heels in love with the local Princely Young Man. But even then, he still is a Hot-Blooded, borderline childish jerk that often treats his own neighbors and friends like crap. (Including said Ninja Maid and Princely Young Man.)
  • England. He was quite ruthless and manipulative in his acquisition of his empire, and willing to lie to and betray others for his own gain. He's still very rude and judgmental of others. However, his actions eventually left him lonely and he tends to be very misunderstood. Also, when raising America, he showed almost no cruelty; only kindess and love, only for America to declare independence, start a war, and abandon him. The American Revolution left England heartbroken, and he doesn't get much respect from others when he does let his guard down and tries to be nice.
  • Japan sometimes gets this kind of interpretation, from fans who believe that as ruthless and double-crossing as he may have been toward his siblings during his imperial period, he probably still did not deserve to have two atomic bombs dropped on him and may very well have become as emotionally broken as his siblings in his misguided pursuit of empire status.
  • Romano, the elder of the Italy brothers and a notorious Tsundere, has shades of this: harboring a Hair-Trigger Temper and generally negative demeanor, yet also having an inferiority complex and abandonment issues stemming from his grandfather ignoring him in favor of his more talented younger brother and feeling like others only wanted to use him for said grandfather's inheritance. An early profile even stated that being pushed around by The Mafia made his viewpoint of the world more slanted and negative. Of course, the more sympathetic traits run the risk of being blown out of proportion by Fanon, where some fans opt to lay all the blame instead on the younger brother, Veneziano, who does care for his "fratello" and tries to help him with mixed degrees of success.
  • Belarus, a terrifying Ax-Crazy Yandere became this when Russia threatened to send her to Siberia because Lithuania expressed reservations about accompanying him to a meeting. Can you imagine your own brother caring so little about you that he uses sending you to the horror that was the gulags as an incentive to make someone else do what he wants? If this happens on a regular basis, her bitterness comes as no surprise. Even if it's Belarus, that's just not right. There's also the fact that the poor girl is hopelessly and creepily but also very genuinely in love with Russia, her brother, who will never, ever return her feelings. The Jerkass part, specifically how she scares off anyone who is around her brother because she's jealous of them and how she once broke Lithuania's fingers on a date with him (the poor guy is such a sweet Nice Guy... but he refuses to see that Belarus not only is flawed, but that she does NOT owe him anything just because he likes her.)
    • The autor's notes also put her in this trope, explaining not only her strange behavior as well as what she's good at (gymnastics, fortune telling, etc.) but saying that she's always depressed and pessimistic due to her history. It kinda puts her in a new perspective, though it doesn't exactly justify her bad behavior either.
  • Even though France is a lech, a liar and an all around bastard at times, he has his moment to be pitied. At the end of the first volume, there is a sketch of a much younger France with a girl with short hair and wearing armor. And she tells him, "I'm fighting for you, you know!" Yeah, she's Joan of Arc. We know how that ended. To think of France, hedonistic and arrogant, startled and then drawn to this one girl, only to lose her- it makes you feel for him at least a little, right? That's not counting the French Revolution, the Terror...on second thought, those pretty much explain (along with Jeanne's death) why France became the way he is. But that still does NOT erase how he flips skirts, gropes people without their consent, comes on them way too strongly on them for their comfort...
• A LOT of characters can actually be interpreted this way. Everybody gets a sympathetic side, but most of the characters are capable of being cruel as well.

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure

• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: A world of villains and Well-Intentioned Extremists has quite a number of unlikeable characters that also draw out immense sympathy.
  • Battle Tendency: Caesar Anthonio Zeppeli. At first, he's really just a Jerkass, until he shows that he cares about Joseph/JoJo's survival while hanging to the Hell Climb Pillar when the latter accidentally activates a trap (although JoJo mistakes his facial expression for resentment), and saving him not long after, cementing their friendship for good. The Woobie element comes after Caesar gets in an argument with JoJo (briefly going back to his jerk self) and goes to face the baddies on his own, at which point Lisa Lisa tells JoJo of his difficult past and how his father sacrificed himself to save him without even recognizing him. Then, while he has the upper hand on Wamuu, he does that one really stupid mistake that earns him an instant No-Holds-Barred Beatdown. As Wamuu (and the audience) thinks that he's going to die miserably, he uses his very last strength to make an inspiring speech about the human spirit and to steal an item from Wamuu that can save JoJo's life. And if one of the most magnificent deaths in the series didn't earn the viewers' sympathy, then Joseph's heartbroken reaction upon finding Caesar's remains ought to.
  • Stardust Crusaders:
    • Hol Horse, in spite of being one of DIO's henchmen, is a pretty unlucky guy. Unlike most of DIO's henchmen, who swore eternal loyalty towards him or allied themselves to give justification for their atrocities, Hol Horse just saw his partnership with DIO as just another job. He not only finds himself getting badgered by the heroes, but even DIO's other henchmen, such as when Enya beats him up, and even DIO himself who sees Hol Horse as the weakest link among his henchmen. And to top it all off, his final attempt at trying to defeat the heroes goes horribly wrong.
    • N'Doul grew up as a beggar who was sworn into evil as crime was the only way he could survive in the world. When he met DIO he finally found someone who he could relate to. In short, N'Doul is someone who's evil simply because it's the only thing he knows, and even Jotaro acknowledges that he could have been better than this.
  • Diamond is Unbreakable:
    • Keicho Nijimura debuts as a cold bastard who attacks people with the Bow and Arrow to draw Stands out of them; uncaring if people die or if the new users hurt others. He's abusive to his brother and even tries to dispose of him when Okuyasu gets in his way. Then we learn his backstory where in his childhood he was kinder and more protective of his younger brother especially after they lost their mother and their father turns abusive. Upon seeing his father devolve into a pitiful and barely human monster, Keicho would rather Shoot the Dog and put him out of his misery than let him continue as a pitiful shell of a man. In the end his past comes back to bite him when one of the people he gave powers to return to kill him, but Keicho's last action is to save his younger brother. Upon seeing his remains Okuyasu breaks down.
      Okuyasu: My Big Bro... deserved to end up like that. There's no way he could have lived a decent life. That was his fate. But you know... In the end, in the very end my big bro defended me, didn't he?
    • Father Nijimura used to abuse his sons when he was human out of regret for his wife's passing and had no qualms with allying himself with DIO. Then Jotaro killed DIO... and he suddenly transformed into a blob monster incapable of speech due to the flesh bud inside him going out of control. He has spent years in his home's attic crying for days on end, because he remembered the location of the family photo that was torn up, and when Josuke repairs the photo he starts crying even harder. Despite everything he did in the past he's regretful towards mistreating his son, realized that becoming one of DIO's henchmen only made things worse for his family, and he wishes that his family could be happy again like when his wife was alive.
    • Shigechi is a Fat Bastard who tries to screw his friends out of money in their introductory arc, but he becomes their close friend regardless. Ultimately, he's a middle-schooler with no friends besides Okuyasu and Josuke, very protective of his family, and his death at the hands of Kira is absolutely heart-rending.
  • Golden Wind:
    • Leone Abbacchio's personality is that of a cynical martyr who never takes no for an answer and never wants to hear other people's ideas, but this sense of tunnel vision is the result of extreme self-loathing and guilt due to his backstory of being a police officer who took a bribe from a seemingly-innocent criminal that resulted in his closest partner's death. Seeing himself as completely hopeless, he's devoted the rest of his life to helping those in need, even people who don't want his help at all, and it isn't until he dies and meets his partner in the afterlife, who says that Abbacchio lived a noble life, that he manages to forgive himself.
    • Pesci becomes this after Bucciarati kills Prosciutto, his closest ally, and is motivated to continue fighting just to avenge his friend even if he knows he doesn't stand a chance against Bucciarati and his gang.
  • Stone Ocean:
    • Until Funny Valentine was introduced, Enrico Pucci was the most sympathetic villain in the entire franchise. It all comes full circle in his backstory where it turns out that the only reason he turned to villainy is that at birth he was convinced his twin brother died and no one ever told Weather the girl he liked was their sister.
    • While Rikiel is Affably Evil and Ungalo is utterly unsympathetic, Donatello Versus fits well into this trope. He's an utter narcissist who is willing to kill children for the crime of getting in his way, but he was also arrested at 13 for a crime he didn't commit, and went to a prison where the guard frequently beat him, nearly causing him to die. Considering all the shit he went through, it's not too surprising that he turned out so rotten.
    • Weather Report: Born Domenico Pucci and being Switched at Birth, he grew up as Wes Bluemarine and falls in love with his birth sister. Pucci discovered his identity and hired a private investigator to split the two up. The investigator, a KKK member, lynched Wes because he believed his adoptive black father was his birth father, causing Perla to be Driven to Suicide. Wes finds out that Pucci ordered the hit and vows revenge, only to have his memories stolen. Upon regaining them decades later, he set out to finish what he started, not caring who gets hurt along the way, only to be murdered in cold blood by his long-lost twin.
  • Steel Ball Run: Axl RO was a soldier in the American Civil War who caused the death of an innocent town because he refused to light his station's lantern and perform a Heroic Sacrifice. He feels immense guilt for this grave folly and wants to be free of his sins. To do so, however, he uses his Stand, Civil War, to try and pass his guilt over to Johnny, Gyro, and Hot Pants. Even with his refusal to accept his past, he meets a tragic end when President Funny Valentine, his employer and the one person he placed his faith in, shoots him in the neck and causes him to brutally perish because he shows No Sympathy for his plight and only wanted the Corpse Part that Axl had on him.
  • JoJolion:
    • Aisho Dainenjiyama, one of the many Rock Humans. Despite the fact that he was part of a smuggling ring and Would Hurt a Child, life was far from kind to him at that point. His girlfriend, after learning of his need for month-long hibernation periods, takes advantage of said period to cheat on him and even sold off his property. By the time he woke up, his home and girlfriend were gone, and a fellow Rock Human, Yotsuyu Yagiyama, had to break the news that he was duped and abandoned.
    • Jobin Higashikata is probably the most sympathetic villain since Pucci. Bullied as a child for his condition and forced to procure illicit pictures of his own mother, he ends up killing his bully in self-defense. His key goal was simply to save his family, including his son, from the curse that had plagued their family even if he has to kill in order to do so. When he's driven to incapacitate his father, Norisuke, via Speed King, you'll either want to kick him in the balls, or give him a hug as he tears up realizing what he had done. Fans were heartbroken at his death via Wonder of U.

Naruto

• Naruto: Many, if not most, of Naruto's opponents over the course of the series, notably:
  • Neji is introduced looking down on his teammate, Lee, and hating Hinata enough to Breaking Speech her about her inferiority and trying to kill her. It is later revealed that he believes that his father was killed for the main branch when he was young, and he can be punished at any time, potentially fatally, if the Main Branch members activate the Cursed Seal on his head. Once he learns the truth, he overcomes his previous belief that You Can't Fight Fate, which results in him working to improve his relations with the main family and getting along with Lee when he isn't acting too eccentrically.
  • Kimimaro nearly claimed the life of Naruto, Rock Lee, and Gaara, and was willing to kill his teammates if they disobeyed him. However, considering that he suffered from a terrible illness, was kept isolated by his clan before Orochimaru came along, and that Orochimaru happily sent him to die along with Kabuto, it's hard not to feel sorry for him.
  • Sora in the Fire Temple Filler arc, who is incredibly rude to most people, but has a dark past and an even darker present, as the host of much of the Nine-Tailed Fox's chakra.
  • Itachi Uchiha. He doomed himself to a life of being hated by his only remaining family, who he truly loved all along, along with the stigma of being a missing-nin AND part of an evil organisation, all while hating violence and combat. He was ordered to kill his family in order to prevent another war from breaking out, but he spared Sasuke. His actions were partly motivated by love for Sasuke, but he put on a cold emotionless front, acting like he just wanted to kill Sasuke and take his eyes (which wasn't true, of course); but one cannot deny that his methods of helping Sasuke (Mind Raping him twice) were a bit extreme. In short, you hate him for some of his actions, but once you learn the reason, you also want to hug him. That or kick him in the balls because of how big a mess he ended up making of things in spite of how much you might pity him. There is a reason why many fanfic writers prefer to portray him as a full one villain, after all.
  • Karin. She used to be one of the most hated characters in the manga and she was a bit of a jerk before she started to genuinely care for her other teammates, and then her being so badly hurt by Sasuke and her warning Sakura about Sasuke intending to kill her made her turn into a Jerk Ass Woobie for a good fraction of the fandom. Still, die-hard SasuSaku fans remain firmly in their Die for Our Ship position. The fact that she actually got over Sasuke after all he did to her has also helped pull her out of the Scrappy pile.
    • Unfortunately, as of Chapter 627 she was placed back into the Scrappy pile after when Karin reunited with Sasuke, she immediately forgave Sasuke for trying to murder her, despite realizing that Sasuke despised her and vowing to move on and resuming her one sided fangirl-ish crush on him.
  • The Nine-Tailed Fox. You'd never believe it, but after the asskicking that it endured, to have its power taken from it and locked away again is very depressing. It openly expresses its bitterness over humans imprisoning it and using it as a power source for decades and not even acknowledging him as a person and not a thing, something even Naruto's mother Kushina is guilty of. This sentiment is starting to be recognized by the fandom. Even Naruto feels sorry for it, and apologizes for trapping it in its prison again.
  • Utakata, the Jinchūriki of the Six-Tailed Slug. He is quite aloof toward Hotaru and tries to rid himself of her at every opportunity, but this is largely the result of him being a fugitive for killing his master when he tried to extract his Tailed Beast, an experience that left him quite bitter and unwilling to trust others. And just when he comes to terms with this, Pain captures him and extracts the Six-Tails, killing him.
  • Manipulative Bastard Kabuto has become one. He had a deep existential crisis after Orochimaru's death (Naruto inspired him to continue) and he is shown thinking that all he wanted was for someone to notice him. He just wanted to be acknowledged. Still doesn't excuse his monstrous moral event horizon crossing moments though.
  • In the pilot, Naruto is even more of a brat than at his worst in canon, having no friends or social skills. He traps another youkai boy in a hole for bad-mouthing him, although it feels deserved when the boy goes from insincerely claiming to be Naruto's friend to trying to blackmail him in a matter of seconds. And yet, when he's framed for murdering Takeshi, his horror and grief over the death of the man he was starting to befriend is heartwrenching. You also have to wonder what he went through when he is almost completely unable to understand why Kuroda would be willing to trust him enough to go to prison in his place.
  • Sakura Haruno in Part I, yeah, she constantly beats up Naruto, and broke her friendship with Ino, but she was picked on because of her gigantic forehead and most of her attempts on hitting on Sasuke end in failure.
    • She got it even worse in Part II, yes she is the same girl that clings to Sasuke despite him constantly acting like a jerk and tried to kill her twice, make a false confession to Naruto in a well-intentioned yet misguided attempt to save him from more suffer as well as suffering from a bad case of Aesop Amnesia at times... but no matter how much she tried to train to keep up with them, she is looked down upon by fans and other ninjas simply because compared to Kakashi, Naruto and Sasuke, she is almost unable to catch up with them.

One Piece

• One Piece:
  • Nami, the self-centered, mood swinging, thieving Insufferable Genius of the Straw Hat Pirates. However, her personality, in particular, her obsession with money, is explained as a result of being an orphan raised by the Marine officer Bellemere, along with another girl Nojiko. The family was too poor to afford the things Nami wanted, and when Arlong came along and imposed a tax on the people in her village, with the penalty for not paying as death, Bellemere only had enough money to either pay for herself and hope they don't find out about Nami & Nojiko or pay for the two of them; she chose to save her children rather than herself, and was shot in front of her children's eyes. Arlong then forced Nami to be a part of his crew, even going so far as to forcibly tattoo her, and said that if she manages to get 100 million berries, her village will be freed as well as herself. Even worse is that Arlong had no intention of keeping his end of the bargain, and wanted to enslave her for the rest of her life. Good thing she met Luffy and the other Ragtag Bunch of Misfits who dealt with Arlong personally.
  • Kuina, Zoro's childhood friend/rival, came off as rather arrogant and insulted Zoro a lot but she was covering up her huge self-esteem issues about her gender and being a swordswoman, being told that despite her talent, she will not be able to pursue being the best swordswoman in the world. Her father's suggestion that she might just have overcome her own limitations if she hadn't died makes her sudden and pointless death in an accident that much more tragic.
  • Montblanc Cricket had to deal with the shame of his heritage because of the legacy left behind by Norland. His own (original) crew abandoned him when he decided to resolve his issues with the shame placed upon his ancestor. He initially was annoyed with the Masira and Shoujou for being fans of the tale. But came to love them and admitted he was glad they came along as the loneliness after being abandoned by his original crew was unbearable.
  • Boa Hancock was introduced as a puppy-kicking Vain Sorceress. She showed herself to be an aloof, arrogant, complete Jerkass who wasn't above defenestrating her grandmother for giving the sincerest of warnings and petrifying her subjects for allowing a man (Monkey D. Luffy) onto their island. She was even complacent with her two younger sisters, Marigold and Sandersonia, breaking them in their petrified state just to mess with Luffy - just a hair's breath of crossing the Moral Event Horizon. However, when Luffy defeated the sisters and spared their pride by hiding their tattoos, this brought to light another side of Hancock unseen before: as she explained to Luffy, the tattoo was forced upon Hancock and her sisters (sensing a pattern here...), and is an eternal source of shame from slavery under the World Nobles, descendants of the founders of the World Government and, as shown in the previous arc, a whole 'nother ball of the MEH wax, known for kicking, shooting, and blowing up their slaves if they get frustrated or bored with them. The 3 sisters, who were just pre-teenage girls back then, spent 4 whole years enslaved to those bastards and were force-fed a Devil Fruit strictly for their entertainment. Hancock's own experience was such that she couldn't even talk about it without being reduced to tears. The very fact that she kept the law of her island to the letter could be explained due to her personal experience with one particular World Noble who was in her words "the very object of terror itself", which jaded her view on the opposite gender. It's only that Luffy didn't care that she and the other two were slaves, and hates the World Nobles anyway (for shooting a friend of his, who wasn't even one of their slaves) that caused her icy persona to warm up a bit, and even fall in love with the guy.
  • The Whole Cake Island arc shows that Charlotte Pudding is one. She spent years being abused by her family for her Third Eye, Big Mom included, until she snapped and became the sadistic actress we see in the present. Even after she earned her keep Big Mom still antagonizes her about not unlocking her eye's potential, and her role as the family's Honey Trap doesn't seem to help her sanity much either. When Sanji says her eye is beautiful, she breaks down on the altar and has her first real case of Inelegant Blubbering in the story.

Ranma ½

• Any teen character in Ranma ½ you might be inclined to feel sympathy for is a Jerkass Woobie.
  • Ranma Saotome has had a horrible childhood that, among other things, means that he has been inflicted with a Gender Bender curse that not only embarrasses him and frequently gets him into strife, but puts him at the risk of having to commit Seppuku at the hands of his good-hearted but Cloud Cuckoo Lander mother — which means that he will not only die painfully, but die knowing that he disappointed his beloved mother so badly that she thought it would be best to die. He also routinely harasses his (admittedly, no saint herself) fiancée by hitting her where it hurts her the most (her relatively small chest in comparison to his Gender Bender form and the rest of his fiancees, and her inability to be properly feminine no matter how hard she tries) while being perfectly aware of how that's psychologically abusive to her, sometimes actively leads his fiancées on to satisfy his ego, and loves to harass and torment his rivals, despite knowing that they'll come after him with the aim of brutally thrashing him.
  • Ryôga Hibiki has terrible luck, is cursed to assume the form of a small, defenseless pig when he gets wet, has one of the worst ever seen cases of No Sense of Direction (the direction issues are inherited from both his parents and so he almost never sees his family), is a dedicated romantic, is too shy to even talk to other girls (despite the fact most would probably find him highly attractive), and the one girl he's in love with is engaged to someone else. He's also bad tempered and masquerade as her pet to get affection from her, even if it's only as her pet.
  • Mousse spins a heartbreaking tale of devotion and unrequited love that spans the better part of a decade, refusing to give up on his attempts to woo his childhood acquaintance no matter what blows life deals, to the point that an audience in-series cries after hearing it. However, the object of his affections makes it clear that he's more a Stalker with a Crush who happens to have been a childhood friend than the Unlucky Childhood Friend he sees himself as. There's also the fact that his response to the Love Triangle he's personally caught in as part of the Love Dodecahedron is to literally Murder the Hypotenuse, and as he has very poor vision, even with his glasses, and literally doesn't care who gets in the way...
  • Akane Tendô is a generally nice, placid Girl Next Door who has lost her position as the best martial artist around, seemingly irreversibly, and been saddled against her will with a fiancé who seems to enjoy hitting her most sensitive spots, like her "modest" figure (in comparison to his own and those of her rivals) and her failure to become a Yamato Nadeshiko which is one of her greatest wishes. On the other hand, she's prone to jabbing him where it hurts as well more than once and occasionally manipulating him for her own purposes, and lashing out violently when he does something that she suspects is perverted...and she's so skittish that she has very little trust for him not to do something perverted.
  • Shampoo, particularly in the anime, genuinely loves and cares for Ranma, but gets little affection from him. Due to his Harmful to Minors training and a Forced Transformation curse inflicted on her as punishment early in the series, he actually runs away from her quite frequently. She's also a stranger in a strange land and has no friends at all outside of Ranma and Mousse (Akane might have counted as well if she and Shampoo had not been rivals in love). However, she's also coldly efficient to the point of being frighteningly amoral, perfectly willing to kill off someone she considers an enemy, and her preferred victims are the aforementioned Mousse and Akane, treating the first with incredible cruelty and being determined to get rid of the latter (And even Ranma has been appalled at how badly she treats them).
  • Ukyô Kuonji is Ranma Saotome's Unlucky Childhood Friend, who felt so ashamed after Ranma apparently broke their Childhood Marriage Promise and stole her father's cart that she devoted her life to seeking revenge and even became a Wholesome Crossdresser because she felt that she was unworthy of being a woman. Even when she gives this up and tries to resume her courtship of Ranma, he not only does his best to avoid giving her any romantic favors at all, but he ruthlessly exploits her feelings. However, she is also quite willing to beat the hell out of any perceived rivals for his hand, slap Ranma around if he gets her flustered and upset, and team up with others (like Ryoga and Shampoo) to try to get the upper hand.
  • The Kunô siblings. Kodachi is just as willing as Shampoo to commit murder - she's just not QUITE as adept in combat; she has repeatedly used poisons on her personal ninja Sasuke as well as her own brother in an effort to master the art of chemical mind control. Speaking of her brother, (Tatewaki) Kunô only manages to not end up as a serial rapist in training by his status as a massive idiot with vaguely romantic pretentions (and by his attraction to girls that could mop the floor with him). They both pursue Ranma and/or Akane despite being pretty much the only ones in this entire series to be flat-out rejected. And then you find out that they, like pretty much everyone else in the series, suffer from Dead Mother Syndrome, their father returns from America after abandoning them for years out of an obsession with Hawaiian culture, and now they are both at risk of being attacked in their own home and getting shaved bald. Plus, he (their father) becomes the principal of his son's school, so Kunô can't even get a break during the day. And the anime adds in the sympathy by explaining that Kunô practically raised Kodachi in stead of their dad... which explains a LOT on how screwed up both of them are.

Sailor Moon

• Sailor Moon: Several characters act like jerks, either to Usagi or to people in general, but qualify as this:
  • Mamoru. When he first shows up, he acts like a jerk who takes pleasure calling Usagi an insulting nickname. But life has been cruel to him. A car crash on his sixth birthday killed his parents and left him with amnesia. He also doesn't have any friends at the start of the series (besides Motoki) because he doesn't have Usagi's way with people. Plus, even though he claims to be Sailor Moon's protector, he's often useless in battle and pretty weak compared to the Sailor Senshi. They get power-ups all the time while he's often the one who needs saving. The guy can't catch a break. He's a male hero in a World of Action Girls, so it's hard not to pity him.
  • Rei acts like a violent and angry bitch to Usagi, but it's often because she's frustrated about having to put up with someone so lazy, foolish, and irresponsible. As sweet and lovable as Usagi is, someone like her could drive anyone crazy. Besides, Usagi has an ideal family life and plenty of friends, but Rei's mom is dead, her dad abandoned her at the shrine because he never really cared, and her classmates shunned her for being a weirdo with strange powers. Who can blame her for being a jerk? On top of all that, Rei was dating Mamoru until they found out about their past lives. She had to step aside just so her boyfriend could be with his true love from a past life.
  • Shingo may be a mouthy and rude Annoying Younger Sibling to Usagi, but he's only a kid going throught the trials of puberty. He has all the brains and talent in the family, yet his sister gets an all-powerful destiny. What does he get? Peer pressure at school and a sister with no qualms about beating him up. Grades aside, Usagi is the more well-adjusted sibling, yet their parents tend to put more effort into her well-being and ignore Shingo's issues. Oh, and Chibi-Usa kind of stole his relationship with Usagi much like the Senshi did to poor Naru. And even if you don't feel sorry for him in the anime, you have to in the live-action where's he's the long-suffering Only Sane Man surrounded by Cloudcuckoolanders.
  • Speaking of Chibi-Usa, she counts too. With her brattiness, she acts way worse to Usagi than Shingo. She insults her all the time, messes up her life on purpose, and thinks she doesn't deserve Mamoru or the brooch. But like Shingo, Chibi-Usa is just a kid. And one with a lot on her plate. When we first meet her, her parents are in danger and evil beings are trying to kill her while she's stuck in a century that she doesn't even belong in, so she's too desperate to worry about what happens to Usagi.
  • Jadeite fits, at least in the anime. The above examples aren't totally heartless, but Jadeite actually is an outright Jerkass, and not just to Usagi and not just because he's a villain. He's really sexist to the girls and doesn't care who he hurts while collecting energy. So why feel sorry for him? Well, in his final anime appearance, he learned the identities of Moon, Mercury, and Mars, but before he could tell Queen Beryl and save himself, she gave him a Fate Worse than Death by freezing him in crystal as punishment for his many failures.
  • The Makaiju tree and the aliens it created. It created a race of children so it wouldn't be alone but the race soon fell into warfare and self-destruction. The tree took its remaining loyal followers to find a new home but it was too weak to speak or create new followers, watching as the aliens died one by one until Ail and An were the only ones left. As a result, Ail and An grew up without love and were misguided in thinking the tree needed energy to survive, slowly poisoning it to death, when in reality, it needed love.
  • Haruna-sensei is a hot-tempered Womanchild and a Stern Teacher, and some viewers think she takes her punishments too far. But it's not too hard to sympathize with her because she's also frustrated over being unable to find a husband despite her many attempts, and early in the series, she plays Butt-Monkey as much as Usagi does.
  • The Amazon Trio. They're villains who display a Lack of Empathy towards their victims and are willing to take advantage of anyone to pursue their goals. But they're also troubled over the fact that they weren't human to begin with and don't have dream mirrors, and their constant failures push them into Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain status.

Tokyo Ghoul

• Tokyo Ghoul is filled with these, as a result of the terrible situations they often find themselves in. Many adopt rough or outright cruel attitudes to survive.
  • Ayato Kirishima, the Cain to Touka's Abel. He seems little more than a vicious punk and leader in Aogiri though only about 14 years old. But as his back story is revealed, it's clear Ayato is simply bitter and afraid after a lifetime of loss and betrayal. His mother died while he was still young, and when their father was caught by Investigators, the kindly old neighbor they thought of as family turned them in while calling Ayato a monster. The Kirishima siblings escaped, and lived for the next several years on the streets fighting to survive. Ayato's experiences have made him leery of humans, and Kaneki states his true motivations are to protect his sister, even if it means hurting her to keep her alive. He adopts his sister's alias as Rabbit, and actively begins Taking the Heat to protect her while still trying to act like he doesn't care.
  • Nishiki Nishio, described by others as having a toxic personality. He's cruel and petty, nearly killing Kaneki and Hide over a misunderstanding during his introductory arc. When he returns, however, we learn that he has a human girlfriend he's completely devoted to and his harsh personality is a result of having systematically lost his entire family at a young age. He begins to become a much kinder person after beginning to work at Anteiku, but retains his sharp tongue and bad attitude.
  • The sequel adds Kuki Urie, an arrogant Investigator only interested in promotion and willing to step over the backs of his team to get it. All this stems from the brutal death of his father, an Investigator that ordered his squad to retreat while he held back the One-Eyed Owl alone. This traumatized him, leaving him convinced people couldn't be trusted and determined to become strong enough to avenge his father. During his Super-Power Meltdown, he collapses in tears and reveals how afraid he is that every one else thinks he's in their way.
  • Another addition from the sequel is the Walking Spoiler, Seidou Takizawa. He's essentially a killing machine that gleefully murders Red Shirts left and right, and even brutally torments and tortures Sasaki at length. But the implications of what transformed him into his current state are beyond horrific. During the two year Time Skip between series, Aogiri transformed the former Plucky Comic Relief into a monster through torture and rape severe enough to turn his hair white and make him incapable of feeling pain, forced the Mama's Boy to eat his parents, and drove him insane through making him an incomplete Kakuja. And all of this happened because he wanted to protect his family, and broke formation to go save his friend. He's in the running for most tragic character in the series, as a result.
  • Of the Tsukiyama family clan, there's Shuu Tsukiyama himself. He chows down on living people and ghouls if they should satiate his taste and becomes a Stalker with a Crush to Kaneki, including threatening to kill people who interfere with this. However, his Angst Coma in the sequel manga is quite heartbreaking and occured because Kaneki left him and he believed he had died, which resulted in him falling in a deep despair, nearly starving himself to death and becoming a danger to his family whenever he would lose control. He also seems to take over Kaneki's position at being the target of the Trauma Conga Line in the sequel.
    • Tsukiyama's cousin, Kanae von Rosenwald, is a callous young man later turned out to be a young girl named Karen who looks down on everyone. He secretly hates Sasaki and others for having Tsukiyama's attention and tries to make their life hell. However, he has to deal with his feelings for Tsukiyama being unrequited. He openly harms himself when fretting about his love for Tsukiyama and devotion to his masters and varies between longing for Tsukiyama to get better and not be unstable anymore and return his feelings and wanting Tsukiyama to remain ill so he would be dependent on him. Eto ends up torturing him psychologically when he's vulnerable by telling him unsettling truths about himself he can't deny, then she tortures him physically by sewing his eyes open and sewing his lips into a Glasgow Grin. This causes him considerable Sanity Slippage and causes him to go on a murderous rampage ending when Sasaki decapitates him. Although he cuts off Sasaki's arm in his jealousy and madness and tries to kill him Sasaki returns the beating in kind. He then tosses Tsukiyama to his death, but Kanae saves him at the cost of her own life right after Tsukiyama acknowledged her feelings for him.
  • Ami in the original manga. Souta invited her to the Ghoul Restaurant and baited her by promising that he would marry her. When it was revealed that she was actually brought to be Eaten Alive and Souta didn't actually have feelings for her she had a nervous breakdown. The Jerkass part comes in play when she kicked Kaneki in the path of Taro-chan so that he would become a sacrifice in her place, despite Kaneki promising that he would try to protect her. After some time, the poison in the coffee she drank before started to take effect, paralyzing her. Taro-chan caught and roasted her.
  • Karao Saeki aka Torso. He represents the most horrifying traits of a Ghoul, being a twisted sexual predator that mutilates his victims to satisfy his desires. He also in horribly abusive to Mutsuki despite claiming to love him. He literally doesn't know how to love. But it's shown not to completely be his fault, or at very least have an explanation. Ch. 78 focuses on his childhood, with him recounting how he was raised in isolation by his abusive father....after the two ate his mother to survive. After being abandoned alone for over a month, he dared to venture off the mountain and encountered a human girl that he befriended. After a particularly vicious beating, she ran away from home and Karao hid her in his family's tent where the two talked about running away to the ocean together. But in the morning, his father killed his Only Friend ate her while praising Karao for finally doing something right. He killed his father in a rage, and was left with only his friend's torso. Since then, he's been trying to find someone to replace her, which explains his attachment to Mutsuki. The after-report of his death describes the most gruesome and graphic mutilation in the entire series. Mutsuki chopped his head off, then shoved something up his rectum all the way into his throat, chopped off his limbs, castrated him and shoved his genitals into the hole where his nose used to be, and cut out his eyes and tongue. While some fans thought he was too horrible to be sympathetic other fans felt a twinge of sympathy, especially the horrific picture in the manga of him smiling before his head disappears in the next shot depicting what Mutsuki did to him. His horrible childhood messed him up and made him the monster he was. Because of that Mutsuki killed him, but in his own twisted way Torso genuinely loved Mutsuki who was never going to love him back and believed this spark of love to be his salvation.
  • Taro-chan, the mentally disabled ghoul modified human. He belonged to Madame A and looked at her like his "mama". His daily task involved cutting up people and roasting them alive for the restaurant's consumption. Tsukiyama heavily wounded Taro when he realized that Kaneki was a one-eyed ghoul and proposed Taro as food to the other members of the ghoul restaurant as a replacement for Kaneki. Madam A accepted MM's deal while Taro can only lay injured pitifully on the ground whispering "Mama".

Others

• Tsukasa from .hack//SIGN is a quite a bit of an ass to the people who tried to help him. But he has quite an Abusive Parents background and digital Mind Rape from The World. He also gets better. And we see that Tsukasa is a girl, too.
• Akame ga Kill!:
  • Kurome, much like her sister, was sold to the Empire at birth and endured many horrors while being trained as an assassin. Unlike Akame, she was not chosen as an elite and was forced to take a Psycho Serum, which took a toll on her psyche and would eventually kill her. Without her sister, Kurome ended up a remorseless Yandere who gets a kick out of murder who, despite everything, still loves her sister.
  • Mine is introduced as an Insufferable Genius and a Tsundere who loves teasing Tatsumi. It's also implied that this tsundere nature developed from her childhood, when she was ostracized for having foreign blood. In the main story proper, her closest friend is killed by a psychopath, and after shedding most of her jerkass traits, she falls into a coma in order to save Tatsumi.
• Bonten from Amatsuki, though revealing his Dark and Troubled Past doesn't stop him being a jerk.
• Ayato Naoi of Angel Beats!. He's kind of a Jerkass to everyone, except Otonashi, but when alive, his brother was his father's apprentice in pottery, while he remained in his room, ignored by the world. Then his brother died and he had to take his place, but wasn't nearly as good at the craft as his brother. Having no choice but to live his life as someone else, he began to think that his entire life was a charade.
• Angel Sanctuary: Pick a character, any character. The entire freaking cast is full of woobies (save for God Himself), the overwhelming majority of which are Jerkasses at best. One character wins gold on both counts, however. Is it Setsuna or Sarah? Kurai? Kato? Kira/Nanatsusaya/Lucifer? Zaphkiel? Raziel? Astarte/Astaroth? Alexiel? Rosiel? Katan? Belial? Michael? Arachne? Metatron? Sandalphon? No. Believe it or not, it's Sevothtarte/Lailah. As an up-and-coming scientist, Lailah was outshone (unintentionally) by Anael in both work and love. When she finally rose in status, jealous co-workers raped her. Though she murdered them and successfully blamed Nidhogg, losing her virginity (even non-consensually) left her branded a Fallen Angel. Her entire world crashing around her, Lailah sold herself to Sandalphon, taking a new face to impersonate a dead male soldier. As Sevothtarte, Lailah became a Seraph, Chairman of The High Council and caretaker of Metatron. From there, Lailah tried to "purify" heaven of all sinful/deformed angels. However, Setsuna's interference and Rosiel's return publicly exposed her fraud and freed Sandalphon, who raped her and destroyed her psyche completely.
• Dr. Tenma from the 2003 version of Astro Boy. He's a control freak of a father to the point of abuse, yet watching the last few episodes one can't help but feel sorry for him.
• Attack on Titan is a Crapsack World with a strong focus on Child Soldiers, so little surprise even the Jerkasses need hugs. This is driven brutally home with Reiner Braun, Bertolt Hoover, Annie Leonhart, Gabi Braun, Eren Yeager himself by the end of the series, and arguably even Floch Forster, who regardless of their horrific crimes are all portrayed as morally complex and emotionally damaged teenagers desperately in need of hugs.
• Azumanga Daioh: If her dreams are any indication, Tomo has massive insecurities, which leads to her being such a Jerkass.
• Baccano!: Hey, everyone, meet Czeslaw Meyer. A Really 700 Years Old Crazy Survivalist who uses his appearance to manipulate people. Tried to get someone to kill dozens of people in the hope of finding one immortal. Is a Crazy Survivalist because the guardian he'd trusted spent 200 years torturing him in every way he could think of, supposedly to "test the limits" of their immortality. Czes only escaped by eating him, absorbing all his memories of gleefully tormenting the poor kid For the Evulz.
• Bakemonogatari:
  • Hitagi Senjougahara. She acts cold and abusive towards others, especially towards her eventual boyfriend, Koyomi Araragi. She also pulls out a stapler and a box cutter, threatens Koyomi with them by shoving them in his face, and promises to disfigure him with them if he reveals her secret, then uses them anyway (stapling his face as a warning). All this within minutes of the start of the first episode. In episode two, Hitagi recounts how her mother joined a cult when Hitagi was sick, and that one night, her mother brought a higher up from the cult home. Hitagi injured him as he attempted to sexually assault her, while her mother watching without aiding her. As a result, her family was broken apart with Hitagi feeling that she's responsible. After that, she met a crab which took her feelings(weight) and memories of her mother. Hitagi begs the head crab to return to her the lost memories of her mother and her feelings(weight), but despite this, she has forever lost her mother.
  • Mayoi Hachifuji. She knows that she is caught in or actually is a supernatural event and doesn't want anyone else to have to get involved. She's a 'snail,' otherwise known as a spirit that distracts people who are avoiding going somewhere and makes them follow her. She knows that she's dead and won't reach her destination, so she tells anyone who talks to her that she hates them so they'll leave her alone and not waste their time on her.
• Nakai of Bakuman。. While he crosses the Moral Event Horizon in the eyes of the readers and some of the cast when, after seemingly getting Kato's attention, he asks Aoki to be his girlfriend in order to have him draw for her and others view him as whiny. But he essentially has the same dream as Moritaka (getting a girlfriend and a manga series), but has been at it for longer and has not had nearly as much success. When he, after almost attacking Aoki in a drunken rage while blaming her for ruining his life, says that he focused on manga in his youth, and now has nothing- no job, no money, no girlfriend, and seemingly no prospects- it's hard not to feel a little sorry for him, even if you acknowledge that his own decisions played a significant part in that outcome, and Mashiro realizes that he could potentially have ended up like Nakai.
• BanG Dream!:
  • Yukina Minato is a top-class vocalist and the founder and leader of the band Roselia, and amongst her bandmates she is known for being cold, brutally honest, and accepting nothing short of perfection from her band, bluntly telling those who can't keep up to leave the band. This stems from her father's failed career as a band vocalist; Yukina gives it her all and encourages her bandmates to do the same in order to impress him and inspire him to set foot on the stage once more. After an incident where she almost accepts a shady business deal in order to get into a world-class music festival on the condition that she dissolve the band, she realizes that she's been acting only in the interest of herself and her father and starts to work to make Roselia a band where everyone can excel together.
  • Sayo Hikawa is the guitarist of Roselia, and is standoffish and competitive much like Yukina is, again not being afraid to dish out criticism. She also has a sister, Hina, who she constantly berates at home even when Hina makes an effort to reach out to and care for her. This is because Hina has an uncanny talent for picking things up very quickly, and Sayo wanted to do something that would make her stand out from her sister instead of simply being Hina's shadow, so Sayo started playing the guitar, only to find out that Hina did the same, causing Sayo to develop some friction with her and push herself hard to become better than her and become her own kind of guitarist. It takes a heart-to-heart conversation in an event story for them to reconcile and realize that neither of them is better than the other and that they depend on each other to further themselves as guitarists.
  • Chisato Shirasagi is the bassist of Pastel*Palettes, an agency-formed band heavily inspired by idols. She makes every excuse to avoid band practice and looks down upon her bandmate Aya for believing that hard work alone will lead her to her dreams. But as a former child actor, it's hard not to see why she thinks and acts the way she does, having seen the dark side of the Japanese entertainment industry and the many dealings that go on that influences whose careers succeed and whose don't. She eventually comes around to the rest of the group once she realizes that she and her bandmates need each other to succeed, even standing up for them when the agency credits her for the band's success while leaving the rest out of the spotlight.
• Berserk:
  • Although he claims to be a complete asshole, Guts is actually a Jerk with a Heart of Gold who simply acts aloof and unreasonable towards anyone he meets, including his True Companions. He does truly care for his companions, but since the Brand of Sacrifice he bears attracts monsters from hell, and his Hell Hound Superpowered Evil Side, the Beast, tends to make him go berserk and thus dangerous even to his companions, he prefers to keep them at a respectful distance. Also, he is very much a Woobie. Probably the biggest one in the entire cast, because the Crapsack World he lives in has had it in for him and those he loves since the moment he was born.
  • Rosine, the Big Bad of the Lost Children arc, qualifies because of the horrible home situation that drove her to become an Apostle, and her yearning for elves to be real. Though she and her "children" commit a number of acts that should make her cross the Moral Event Horizon like many of Berserk's other villains, she comes across instead as a misguided, emotionally damaged little girl who just wanted a little happiness that she couldn't find at home.
• Uzuki of Betrayal Knows My Name. When we first see him in the anime, he lashes out at people who express concern for him, stating that he hates feeling pathetic, and dislikes Yuki, who genuinely sees him as a friend because, like him, Yuki was abandoned by his parents, but Yuki is a lot more popular than him. A demon ends up playing off Uzuki's jealousy and resentment, giving him the power he needs to try to kill Yuki. However, Yuki ends up saving him and we learn that his parents abandoned him, his mother tried to kill him several times, and he's pretty much a loner at school. We then get a heartbreaking scene where he's suicidally depressed and states that he should have died along with the demon that possessed him. He then states that he's a horrible person for giving into his resentment and apologizes to Yuki, wondering why, even though he was mean, Yuki is still being nice to him. Yuki responds: "Because when I first came to this school I was all alone and you were the only one who went out of his way to befriend me. That meant a lot to me and it made me very happy. I'm glad that you're my friend, Uzuki-kun."
• Black Butler:
  • Alois Trancy. Alois is possibly the one of the most disgusting children ever seen in anime, and, most of the time, you just want to punch him for being such an ass. But he had a legitimately horrifying backstory as Jim Macken, an orphan who'd later become a Sex Slave, and ultimately a heartbreaking death.
  • Also, Ciel.
  • And Angelina "Madame Red" Durless. Yes, she saw her first love choose her sister over her, and later both lost her Second Love and her unborn child, which left her unable to have children and mentally/emotionally scarred to boot. No, this doesn't mean she's justified into becoming one half of the most serial killer in Victorian England: Jack the Ripper. (The other half being a Shinigami named Grelle Sutcliffe)
  • At the end of season 2, even Sebastian can count as this. That look on his face when he realized that he'd have to serve Ciel for all eternity and will never be able to eat his soul was absolutely disheartening for some fans.
• Black Clover:
  • Gauche. An unpleasant ex-convict who often insults others, his noble parents were killed for their wealth, which led to him and his little sister being cast out onto the streets. As a result, he became a rude criminal who extorted money from others until he was jailed. His past caused him to believe others only care about themselves, and devote himself solely to his younger sister.
  • Zora. He's rude and tends to use his traps to violently beat foes. His father was killed by his squadmates for being a peasant. This, on top of the rampant corruption of Magic Knights, caused him to have a low opinion of the position and dedicate himself to taking down corrupt members.
  • Licht/Patry. As young boy, his entire tribe was killed by humans after they were seemingly betrayed. As a result, he tries to kill all the humans of the present-day Clover Kingdom and reincarnate his fallen people.
• Black Lagoon:
  • Hansel and Gretel. It gets easy to see why they were Ax-Crazy all the time and at least feel sorry for them. Then, after Balalaika gives Hansel a Shut Up, Hannibal! treatment as punishment for harming the subordinates she's so protective of, she orders her men to blow his hand and leg off. When he's lying there, crying and bleeding to death, it's easy to forget that he was a mass murderer. This is taken to further extremes with his sister Gretel, who states that she always wanted to see the ocean and has a heartbreaking Evil Cannot Comprehend Good moment when Rock offers her kindness and even sheds tears for her. When they finally reach a seaport and her wish is granted, she has her brains blown out by an assassin hired by Hotel Moscow, as Laser-Guided Karma for what she and Hansel did to the persons under the lead of the next one in line....
  • Sofiya Irininskaya Pavlovena, alias Balalaika. Thanks to the Afghan War, the girl who Used to Be a Sweet Kid and wanted to become an olympic sniper ended up as a cynical, stylishly brutal Mafia queen and cold-hearted Magnificent Bitch. She's also quite the Mama Bear who shows no mercy to anyone who harms her subordinates, which proves that she's still human: those men are all she has anymore, so she protects them fiercely. And yes, she's the one who has both Hansel and Gretel horribly killed. Because they killed a subordinate and tortured another to death.
• Claudine: Louis learning that his lover, Auguste, has been cheating on him with his sister has got to hurt. That in no way absolves him of going on a murderous rampage.
• A large portion of the cast of Code Geass not only do nominally immoral things for their cause, but also find themselves treating others poorly when it's obvious that either that's not what they really want to do, or they're too far gone to really do anything: Lelouch, Suzaku, Kallen, C.C., Rolo, The Emperor, Marianne, Guilford...
  • There's also Mao, who takes this trope in a different direction. His personality is abrasive and many of his actions are utterly cruel but he still inspires sympathy from some measure of the viewers once they learn that he's essentially a child in the body of a seventeen-year-old who has no sense of perspective whatsoever, in constant pain from his mind-reading Geass, and abandoned by the one person who could interact with him at all normally (who is also the only person he loves!) because he couldn't bring himself to kill her and taking her immortality, and because she actually thought that it was a good idea to leave him to live totally alone for the rest of his life. And all because he became an Unhappy Medium at the age of six!
• D.Gray-Man:
  • Kanda Yu turns out to have a very good reason for being so cynical and rude to nearly everyone. Namely, this, over and over again for months. Additionally, he was created artificially and knows it, grew up with very little human affection, and was eventually forced to kill his only friend, who had gone berserk and killed 40-some people. Also, the Second Exorcist project, which Kanda is a product of, involved implanting the brains of dead Exorcists into new bodies, and he eventually started regaining memories of his own death. Kanda's life sucks so much that using an Exposition Beam to show someone his memories qualifies as Mind Rape, and the local Creepy Child feels sick when she sees them.
  • If you don't feel bad for Kanda after seeing this, you're a horrible person.
• Mio Hio and Satoshi Hiwatari of D.N.Angel, though both end up as just-plain Woobies in the end.
• From Darker than Black, Huang was a cop until his best friend was horribly killed... by the woman Huang loved, who he discovered had just been using him to get to said best friend. He was left with no choice but to join the Syndicate or have his memories wiped, which he feels would be like killing his friend all over again. This resulted in Huang becoming a bigotted jerkass, all things considered.
• Genkaku from Deadman Wonderland is an asshole-ish psychopath who makes Nagi's life a living hell. He's later shown to have been a timid, cute monk that got repeatedly beaten and raped by bullies in the past, with the elder monk in charge being unsympathetic and uncaring, and seeing the little wounded kitten he was taking care of die — all of this causing him to go insane. Considering what happened to Genkaku...you really understand how he became the Ax-Crazy psychopath he is, and you can't help but feel sorry for him, especially when he ends up dying with Nagi.
• Dear Brother:
  • Mariko Shinobu is selfish, clingy, creepy, acts like she owns Nanako and once tries to kill her, and at the start she's a bitch to Nanako's friend Tomoko. She's also one of Nanako's few friends in Seiran, protects her from bullies like Aya Misaki, and is very screwed up after her father first cheated on her mother, and later abandoned Mrs. Shinobu and young Mariko. She genuinely cares for Kaoru, and when Kaoru acknowledges it, Mariko becomes freaking adorable for a second.
  • Also, to the shock of many, Aya Misaki herself becomes one after she gets utterly broken by the last part of the TV series. To the point of being this close to commit suicide.
• Kabru from Delicious in Dungeon. He's extremely judgemental and often falls into full on Black-and-White Insanity when it comes to how other adventurers view the dungeon, but that's pretty understandable when it's revealed his entire village was wiped out when the monsters from another dungeon came above ground and slaughtered everyone. He wants to destroy the dungeon to make sure this never happens again and sees anyone who wants to profit from the dungeon, rather than destroy, it as being willing to put their personal gain over the lives of others.
• Nappa from Dragon Ball Z. True, he was a murderous Space Pirate who enjoyed killing. As well as being responsible for the deaths of Tien, Chiaotzu and Piccolo. He still came off as slightly more sympathetic than Vegeta. Nappa actually showed concern for the Saibamen, and even suggested reviving Raditz before Vegeta talked him out of it.
• Durarara!!'s Shizuo Heiwajima. Underneath the Hair-Trigger Temper and violent, vending-machine-throwing rages is a guy with a severe impulse control disorder that knows fully well that his behavior and strength hurts other people, hates himself for it, and wants nothing more than to be able to stop and control himself, but has no idea how.
• Elfen Lied's Lucy, Mariko, and Bandou.
  • Lucy (real name: Kaede) is a Diclonius, a member of an all-female race with enormous Psychic Powers that make them hated and feared. Lucy was bullied and abused by near everyone in an Orphanage of Love, killed her tormentors, then snapped again and shattered the life of one of the first persons who were kind to her, and spent literally years in a straitjacket. Logically, when she finds herself free bloodily escapes, the poor girl is... NOT very well in the head.
  • Mariko Kurama, a younger and potentially more powerful Diclonius, has spent her whole life as a lab rat. Her mother fell victim to Death by Childbirth, her father is the head scientist of an organization that horribly experiments on her fellow Diclonius, and Mariko herself cannot walk any longer and is said to have several explosive leashes in her body. Unsurprisingly, she's not much more stable than the aforementioned Lucy.
  • Bandou is, to put it simply, a Jerkass. He's a self-admitted Psychofor Hire who takes lots of pleasure in fighting and beating the shit oput of people and Dicloniuses, and isn't much more pleasant when off-duty. But then he meets a girl named Mayu, and while he doesn't fully change his attitude, he starts protecting her...
• Raul Creed of Ergo Proxy. A slightly arrogant bureaucrat who loses his family, his position, and, eventually, his mind.
• Anemone from Eureka Seven. Behind the Cute and Psycho Dark Action Girl, there is a terribly broken and unstable young woman who used to be horribly experimented on. It's no wonder that she totally breaks down when her Love Interest and Only Friend walks out.
• Lots of these show up in Fairy Tail. Looks like Hiro Mashima loves this trope.
  • Jellal Fernandez, Erza's childhood friend who, like her, was Made a Slave by a bunch of Zeref cultists, and ended up being locked up in a cell and tortured almost to death. Flash forward to the present time, and Jellal, after becoming Brainwashed and Crazy, getting a well-deserved revenge against the slavers and having completed the Tower of Heaven, had cooked up a plan to create the "World of Magic" where everyone would be free...which would require mountains of corpses, the sacrifice of Erza herself, and, generally, screwing things up royally for anyone who wasn't magically gifted. He had gone through so much hell in his short life that he thought no sacrifice was too great if it would mean nobody would have suffer like him. And just for grim irony, it turned out that his plan of reviving Zeref had no chance of succeeding from the very beginning, and that it wasn't Zeref who was speaking to him. All in all, Base-Breaking Character as he is, you can't deny that his life sucked.
    • He tones down the jerk and ups the woobie when he comes back free of brainwashing, and now with a horrible Guilt Complex over what he was made to do.
  • Urtear Milkovich, Big Bad Hades' right hand woman and the person responsible for Jellal's Start of Darkness, since it was her who spoke to Jellal, pretending to be Zeref, was revealed to be one as well at the end of the Tenrou Island arc. Want the lowdown? When she was just an infant, she was separated from her mother Ur by a bunch of heartless scientists who wanted to use her for her immense magical potential. (Ur had asked for their help for her ill child. Those monsters took away the little girl and told her mother that Urtear had died from her fever and that her body was too horribly mangled for a mother to see.) Raised as little more than a sentient lab rat, Urtear was told that her mom had abandoned her and grew to resent her...but, most of all, she desired to go back in time to the moment of her abandonment and prevent it from coming to pass. In order to do so, she grew up into a brilliant and Machiavellian Chessmaster and Manipulative Bitch who would stop at nothing to awaken Zeref and uncover the World of Magic, confident that all her evil actions would be erased the moment she travelled back in time and averted the very event that sparked them. In the end, Urtear committed a lot of terrible things which were fueled by her desperate desire to meet with her mother and achieve some happiness for herself. When her plan failed, she fell into such shame and depression over what she had become that she tried to commit suicide to atone...and, ironically enough, she was saved by her Morality Pet, Meredy, a young girl Urtear had taken under her wing (after destroying her village...) and treated like a real daughter. Now, will someone please punch this woman in the face, and then give her a big hug?
  • The Oracion Seis except Brain were once slaves just like Jellal.
  • Minerva in Chapter 388 turned out to be this. Her father was so abusive towards her at such a young age and even threatened to kill her if she doesn't get stronger, triggering her social Darwinism. It was because of the kindness that Erza, Sting, and Rogue showed her that she pulled a Heel–Face Turn.
• Louise of The Familiar of Zero. Saito too. His pervertedness can be too much at times, and he sometimes pokes fun at Louise when she's just minding her own business but Louise frequently beats and berates him, sometimes to Heroic Comedic Sociopath levels, and Saito's stuck in an alternate world (though he decides to stay after falling in love with Louise). And he tends to go all out when trying to protect Louise or his friends from harm. His selfless heroic side tends to be immediately followed by him demonstrating his idiotic perverted side, though. It's also later shown that Louise is constantly being pressured by her family to get married and she's frequently bullied by one of her older sisters who has a bigger temper than Louise. Oh, and although Louise is in her second year at the Tristain Academy of Magic, her magic skills still need a lot of work. Because of this, she lacks self confidence, and her classmates look down on her, calling her "Louise the Zero", frequently teasing her for her zero success rate and flat chest (including Saito!). This gets worse because most of the female cast except her (and Tabitha) are busty. And Saito's total lack of proper human interaction is pretty clear - he knows nothing about sympathy (remember, Saito; when someone's crying, it means something's wrong), empathy (his total inability to figure out how to not piss someone off), and sincerity (telling Louise he loves her while fantasizing about her sister), but despite his flaws, he truly does care for Louise, as shown by his willingness to take her beatings and almost die for her. Amazingly, Saito manages to pick up more Woobie points, and Louise more Jerkass points, when it turns out that the Familiar ritual she subjected Saito to comes with mandatory Mind Rape that forces him to love and obey her, even unnaturally dulling any resentments he may feel at her treatment or longing for his family. When this spell is broken, he freaks out.
• From Flame of Recca: Kurei Mori/Hanabishi. Sure, Kurei is far from nice, but to go through everything he has from the age of four, you just have to feel for him. He was stripped of his birthright for no properly proven reason, exiled with his mother to the outskirts of the village to endure ridicule and humiliation, not to mention implied violence from other children, imprisoned after trying to kill Recca in attempt to make his mother happy, oh, and his entire clan was destroyed in the span of a single night, including his father, and his mother who died protecting him. This is all at the age of four or five! When Kurei arrives in the future, he's adopted by a kind woman. Turns out, her husband is an utter beast! For the next twelve years, Kurei is trained to become a killing machine with no emotions to hold him back, and if he doesn't do what he is told, his adoptive mother would be killed. Then, he meets a girl, who he begins to love, but she is then killed by his adoptive father because she was holding Kurei back. That was pretty much the last straw for Kurei.
• What Rin Matsuoka from Free! turns out to actually be, once we delve in his backstory and specially his relationship with his and Gou's Disappeared Dad.
  • Sousuke turns out to be one too when it's revealed that he is going to give up swimming because of his wrecked shoulder.
• Akito from Fruits Basket. You hate him because he's a total ass and abuses the whole family, but the back story makes some feel pity for the kid. Then there's the fact that Akito is a woman who has to pretend to be a man. And she's far more of a Woobie in the manga.
  • Kyo to a lesser extent. While not as bad as Akito in terms of Jerk Assery, he still came across as an asshole to everyone in the first few episodes. But then again, no one would be able to be or stay a nice guy if they were the family outcast, their mentally unstable mother committed suicide because of that, their father resented them because of said suicide, and then got Tohru's mother, a woman who acted very motherly towards them, killed (not intentionally, mind you) because they'd risk exposing their horrible secret...
• Since almost the entire sympathetic cast of Fullmetal Alchemist consists of woobies, there's a few of these.
  • Edward and Izumi cross it with Iron Woobie, and Roy is a hybrid Jerkass Woobie, Iron Woobie, and Stoic Woobie.
  • Scar is introduced as a ruthless Serial Killer who targets State Alchemists for some reason and who fanatically fashions himself the wrath of God personified. He later turns out to be one when it's revealed that he targets State Alchemists because they have massacred his people.
  • It's likely that one feels sorry for Greed at one point of the series too...or while reading chapter 107 at the least.
  • Envy pushes the Jerkass side of this almost to the breaking point. On the one hand, he crosses the Moral Event Horizon repeatedly and is absolutely gleeful about it. On the other hand, his death makes it obvious that he's incredibly jealous of human concepts like compassion, friendship and empathy, and when you realize what that says about the homunculus family dymanic... yeah.
• Full Metal Panic!:
  • Sôsuke Sagara. Originally a sweet, innocent kid, his heartbreaking backstory turns him into a cold-hearted Jerkass. He finds it extremely hard to understand other people's feelings, and tends to do very morally ambiguous things without much consideration for others. Most of the time, it's played for laughs. There are numerous times where he finds himself unable to understand why someone feels fear or sadness (even when someone died). The poor guy goes through so much crap throughout the series, though, including his childhood as a child soldier, so it's easy to feel sympathy for him despite his flaws.
  • Xia Yu Fan and Xia Yu Lan. Out of all the villains, these two seem to garner a lot of sympathy among fans. The fact that they were taken in by Gauron of all people at such a young age certainly deserves sympathy.
• Future Diary: Tsubaki Kasugano, aka the 6th, and Yuno Gasai. And Yukiteru's always been The Woobie but he also becomes more unstable and more of a jerk as the story continues.
• Edmond (or The Count of Monte Cristo) from Gankutsuou.
• Reika of Good Luck! Ninomiya-kun is an arrogant Tsundere who frequently hits Shungo, but she also harbors feelings for him and frequently angsts over whether or not he likes her back. She has so much insecurity over her love for Shungo that she develops an alternate personality that comes out and attempts to rape Shungo in an attempt to convey her feelings to him.
• Great Mazinger: Tetsuya Tsurugi is irritating, obnoxious, arrogant hot-tempered, jealous, snarky, does not care who he offends with his attitude and has hit the female led only because she -accurately- told that he was acting stupid. Moreover, not only he thinks that he is the best pilot ever, he also demands that everyone else thinks it. He comes across like unlikable until you find out why he is like that:
  • He lost his parents when he was a little kid and nobody cared for him in the orphanage where he grew up. The only person noticed him was because his latent piloting skills. So he thinks that people only cares for him due to his piloting skills, so he HAS to be the best or he will lose his new father and be alone again. And in spite of all his bluster and arrogance he is incredibly insecure.
• Jean Croce of Gunslinger Girl qualifies. Throughout the course of the series, we see Jean as a revenge-obsessed jackass who isn't above torturing Padania agents, or even physically abusing his cyborg Rico. However, Jean's thirst for vengeance comes from the fact that his parents, his little sister Enrica, and his fiancee Sophia were killed by a roadside bomb planted by Padania to assassinate his prosecutor father. To make things worse, Jean's would-be brother-in-law hates him now, because he believes that Jean is doing nothing to get back at Padania, yet Jean can't confront him about it because of the secrecy of his work. And finally, to top it off, Jean's brother Jose has become an alcoholic following the incident, and ends up in a murder-suicide scenario with his cyborg Henrietta.
• Arguably, Haruhi Suzumiya. She learns, rather painfully, that she isn't all that special, and in her quest to make her life special, goes on a hunt for aliens, time travellers, and ESPers after some inspiration from Kyon. This leads to her general sociopathy and her obsession with cosplaying Mikuru. Kyon says that, through her Character Development, she's not exactly turning into a good person, but is returning to be the kind kid she once used to be.
• Happy Sugar Life: Taiyou Mitsuboshi starts as a relatively normal young man working at an all-female restaurant named the Princess Imperial. Upon asking Satou out for a date only to get declined, Mitsuboshi is lured into the manager's office and is subsequently trapped in her cabinet and raped for a week. Being immensely traumatized by it, Mitsuboshi becomes obsessed with Shio, believing that her "pureness" could cleanse his soul. Mitsuboshi at first is made to work with Satou solely so he could obtain access to Shio. Under the threat of having his fingernails ripped off, Mitsuboshi is forced to assist Asahi only to then spitefully go against his orders so he could have Shio all to himself. Mitsuboshi ultimately becomes a broken mess after getting raped by Satou's aunt, and is despondent on the perceived death of Shio.
• Hayate the Combat Butler:
  • Nagi somehow manages to earn the love and sympathy of the audience in spite of being a self-centered little brat. Maybe it's her adorably innocent crying moments.
  • Although Nagi has outgrown the self-centeredness, Athena seems to have taken her spot. She harshly taught Hayate for her own gain, but has had moments when you can't help but feel sympathy for her.
• Heat Guy J gives us two prominent examples. The first is Clair Leonelli, an insane young mob leader whose would-be murderous tendencies are a result of growing up with an abusive and demanding father and who's often at odds with the other mob leaders in his company because he's so young. The other is Shun Aurora, the older brother to hero Daisuke Aurora, who was so badly traumatized by his mother's leaving the family and his father's death that he eventually decided he had to take over the entire city of Judoh himself.
• Hellsing:
  • Rip Van Winkle. Sure, she's a psychopathic vampire, but her over-the-top death at the hands of Alucard and her complete breakdown once he arrives elicits much sympathy.
• High School D×D: Vali Lucifer is the great-grandson of the original Lucifer and a human mother, as such he was born with talent and the Divine Dividing housing the White Dragon Emperor, making him one of the strongest beings in the world. Due to this, his father feared him, leading to Vali's bullied childhood. His father even kept his mother from making him anything but cooked noddles, resulting in Vali's obsession with them. Vali later ran away from home, knowing his mother's memories were erased. in childhood, exorcists chased him before Azazel found and taught him how to use his powers. Vali grew a desire to fight strong opponents to the point where he even said once that he didn't want to live in a world where the biblical god didn't exist since Vali never got to fight him. Ashamed by his weak rival, he threatened to kill his parents so that Issei would seriously grow stronger. All of it stemmed from his childhood and seeking to grow stronger to defeat his grandfather who was capable of challenging god-class beings. Caring a lot about his allies and the people he had worked with in Grigori. Vali was enraged by Cao Cao injuring one of his comrades. Vali later learned his mother lived with a human husband and that he has a half brother and a half-sister.
• Higurashi: When They Cry:
  • In the Watanagashi/Meakashi-hen arcs, Shion Sonozaki pretty much fits the bill. On the one hand, there's everything that she has had to go through as The Un-Favourite of her family, never mind the Cold-Blooded Torture she's put through just before she finds out about her boyfriend Satoshi's disappearance — which she had gone through specifically in order to prevent. On the other hand, her Roaring Rampage of Revenge goes so far off the rails (specially in the case of Satoko, whom she straps to a cross and tortures to death, and Mion, whom she forces to watch as she murders poor Satoko) that it's hard not to be relieved when she finally gets her Karmic Death near the end, if only for her own sake.
  • Takano, to an extent. Growing up and being tortured into insanity in an Orphanage of Fear after the death of her parents after a massive traffic accident caused by the bus driver dying of a sudden heart attack, having her guardian's life's work trampled on by his colleagues made her do everything to prove that the man who had cared for her wasn't full of shit. Possibly inverted by the time of Umineko: When They Cry, when Lambdadelta said in the supplementary materials that Takano's goal, when she was a young child, was to become a god.... after her being massively broken.
• Fudou from Inazuma Eleven might be rude, arrogant and sometimes plays violently, but he has a somewhat sad backstory, according to the adults, and it's hard not to feel sorry for him after all he's been through. His father had to quit his job due to being blamed for his boss' mistakes and pursued by debt collectors and eventually left Fudou alone with his mother, who told him to stay strong and not end up like his father, but unfortunately, he was convinced that becoming strong means that he has to literally get power in order to rise to the top, which is why he accepted the Aliea Meteorite and joined Shin Teikoku, only to be left behind again by Kageyama. When he joins Inazuma Japan, he's not accepted by the others at first due to his actions in season 2 and he continues to act like a jerk until he learns to work better with his teammates and finally be accepted. At least he doesn't get away with nothing for what he did to the heroes before they accepted him.
• Saruhiko Fushimi from K. He's a cold, fairly lazy sociopath with sadistic tendencies who betrayed his former clansmen supposedly for the sake of power, and has a downright Yandere obsession with his former best friend, Yata. He seems like nothing more than a power hungry jerkass... Until you learn that his father was psychologically abusive and he grew up with a depressingly jaded view of the world. Yata was his only friend, and after joining HOMRA seemed to distracted to care about him anymore, spurring his betrayal in a desperate attempt to be noticed by him. Even currently he's shown to be greatly pained by their past and pushes away out every time Yata tries fixing their relationship out of fear that he'll just end up pushed aside if Yata ' s hate isn't focused on him.
• Karakuridouji Ultimo:
  • Rune. By now, it's safe to say that he's done more things to garner Squick than sympathy from the fanbase. Especially to Yamato. But in a way, it's justified, as Ultimo did kill his past self. And then there's the fact that the current Yamato will never return the current Rune's feelings for him.
  • Murayama Musashi. While his whole world was destroyed, his rude quips to Yamato and tendency to rather recklessly do things himself places him in this territory.
• Kevin of Karate Shoukoushi Kohinata Minoru is established as one of these in chapter 66, when it's revealed that he was abused by his mother after she remarried and began to favor her stepchildren over him.
• Gareki from Karneval has a terrible past where he was first sold to slavers by his own parents, then had to watch his loving adoptive family fall apart. Doesn't stop him from being a jerk, though he does seem to have a soft spot for Nai.
• Kaze to Ki no Uta:
  • Gilbert. He may be antagonistic and even violent toward Serge (especially in the beginning), but he sure went through a lot of crap in his life...
  • While he doesn't hold a candle to Gilbert when it comes to sheer woobiness, Arion Rosemariné nonetheless qualifies once certain aspects of his past come to light. Yes, he's ill-tempered and physically abusive (particularly towards Gilbert himself) but he's also rather pitiable in his own right... specially when you learn he was physically and sexually abused in his past.
• Kill la Kill:
  • Satsuki Kiryuin is the Evil Overlord of Honnouji Academy, with a Social Darwinist outlook on life. However, her backstory is disturbing, to say the least. When she was a child, her parents tried to infuse her DNA with Life Fibers, which failed on her. After which they decided to try it on her baby sister, and when it seemingly failed on her, her mother Ragyo decided to throw said baby sister into the trash chute. Her father, Soichiro, upon finding out that the baby was still alive, abandoned Satsuki in order to protect the baby and herself, but not before he left her with a mission to kill Ragyo, which transformed her into the cynical despot she is today. Soon afterwards, Satsuki became her mother's plaything. It's implied that she dealt with Ragyo's abuse for thirteen years, and it's also implied that she could've been much worse, as seen with Nui Harime.
  • Ryuko Matoi also had a pretty bad life. As the aforementioned baby, her father, who changed his identity to Isshin Matoi, sent her to multiple boarding schools, where the other kids didn't want to interact with her. Ryuko's inability to make friends combined with her father's Parental Abandonment turned her into a full-blown Japanese Delinquent with a nasty temper by the time she was in high school, and the one time her father calls for her, he ends up dying. On her quest for revenge, one bombshell after another keeps dropping on her, which only serves to deteriorate her psyche, until she snaps and ends up brainwashed and with the bad guys. It should be noted, however, that her jerkish and woobie tendencies are normally mutually exclusive, and she really isn't a Jerkass Woobie until pushed.
  • Nui can be surprisingly sympathetic when thinking about it. She's still irredeemably evil, but it is not hard to see how she got that way: she knows she isn't made to last and just wants to spend her limited life enjoying it. Sure, her way of enjoying it amounts to doing horrible, messed up things to people, but it's still sad. Further, she was raised solely by Ragyo, without a positive influence like Isshin in her life. Given how enthusiastic Satsuki was about wearing Junketsu before her father revealed the truth to her, as well as the way Ragyo Mind Raped Ryuko by implanting memories of a childhood raised by her, it can make people wonder if Nui is inherently evil, or if she could have turned out just like her "sisters" if she had been given the chance.
  • Finally, there's Rei Houomaru, who has such low self-respect that she's willing to serve Ragyo unto an assured death. It may have more to do with the trauma Rei endured as a child during her country's civil war which seems to have pushed her into being a Misanthrope Supreme. Couple that with the fact that Ragyo was the one who saved her from certain death and it's little wonder she'd go so far as to sacrifice her own life to help Ragyo exterminate humanity or seek revenge afterwards.
• Ume Kurumizawa aka Kurumi from Kimi ni Todoke, she is a Manipulative Bitch but she does this because she just wants to stay with Kazehaya. She gets better.
• Kiznaiver:
  • Noriko Sonozaki, The Heavy of the show is an Emotionless Girl that forced a group of people(who were kidnapped and surgically operated without their consent) to participate in her experiment of sharing pain, pushing them in borderline life and death situations over the most trivial things. She is also suffering constant pain due to the 19 original participants of the kizuna sending her their pain nineteen-fold, her Emotionless Girl status is actually because she is so sedated all the time in order to keep able to live she can't even feel anything. This is somewhat deconstructed in universe, as Nico mentions that she doesn't care how awful was her life, based on the awful things she made them go through, and she wants to help her only because their friend wants them to.
  • Maki Honoka, one of the Kiznas, is a brash, angry girl who and snarks at everybody. She is also still grieving over her Lost Lenore, the Delicate and Sickly Ruru, who died after leaving her with the words that she will never let Maki move on from her, refusing herself to read the last chapter of the manga they were making together, even though that chapter was actually a letter to Maki to apologize and ask her to move on after her death.
• Rin from Kodomo no Jikan, especially in the earlier volumes. Yes, she has had a rough childhood and clearly needs to be helped, but the way Rin behaves - ways that could get a basically innocent man sent to prison, or seriously hurt someone - is just nasty. And she knows it.
• Kotoura-san:
  • Kumiko Kotoura. A huge Jerkass to her own daughter by disowning her for unknowingly revealing her affair and considered to send her to the mental ward, however she lives in constant regret of the aforementioned disowning and failure to be a proper mother, as she at first DID try to help Haruka before she couldn't hack it, snapped, and disowned her. There's also the fact that her husband refused to help with Haruka, put all the responsibility of 'fixing' her on her, and started not coming home. This combined with the Haruka problem drove Kumiko to drink and have the above mentioned affair. We all know how that turned out...
  • The said daughter Haruka is also one in the beginning of the story, for wearing a facade so that she can be alone, partly as the consequence of the above. Manabe's seeing the "woobie" part of the trope was in fact the beginning of her recovery.
• Under her bitchy exterior and unbearable behavior, Sophie Montgomery from Lady!! turns out to be this once the audience learns more about her, especially when ut turns out she is being manipulated into inheriting her family's fortune by her mother Jeanne, with threats of sending her back to France if she fails. There's also how she desperately and genuinely wants her mom's love and approval.
• Lyrical Nanoha:
  • Vita was used as a personal soldier for the owners of an Artifact of Doom for centuries, and seemed to take it harder than the other Wolkenritter. While doing so, she was also quite abrasive to her allies, especially Reinforce, pushing them away when they tried to get close to her, and showed cruelty to her enemies beyond what was necessary to collect their Linker Cores. She becomes a nicer person after meeting Hayate, but still is not above barbs about the size of Signum's breasts and the lethality of Shamal's cooking.
  • The Huckebeins from Force. They're afflicted with a deadly virus that will kill them unless they kill other people, and have resolved to do what they have to to stay alive. Okay, fine, villainous but understandable...what isn't is the degree of dickishness with which they go about it. The fact that they've been immune to karma so far doesn't help matters.
  • Precia in the first movie. She's just as cruel to Fate as in canon, but it's revealed that not only was she a loving mother who wanted to spend more time with her daughter, but she tried to prevent the premature launch of the reactor that caused the meltdown that killed Alicia, and the companion manga shows just how painful it was for her, especially with her cradling Alicia's lifeless body in her arms as tears are streaming down her face. In her final moments, as she's falling to her apparent death, she appears to finally understand Alicia's desire for a little sister and regret her actions.
• Sniff/Nipsu from Moomin (1990) is a borderline case. While he doesn't have the same mean streak that Little My and Stinky have, he can be very greedy, sarcastic and self-centered but is often the Butt-Monkey and Chew Toy of the show. His cute appearence alone makes you want to hug him despite his greediness and in the Secret Fireworks episode, he saved a girls life only to have his heart broken by her.
• Alviss of MÄR, after you watch his backstory and during the Ghost Chess Arc.
• In March Comes in Like a Lion, readers are given healthy doses of how much of a bitch she can be to Rei (and perhaps in general) in a fairly regular basis through her attempts at manipulation and verbal abuse. However, it is also easy to see how and why she has grown to develop such resentment toward him and her childhood.
• Pinocchio (Mock) in Mokku of the Oak Tree. He might have flaws and even tried to murder a child once, but he's one of the biggest Woobies in the Anime industry because he is continuously tormented, persecuted, taunted, hectorized, chastised, assaulted, picked on, humiliated, tricked, ridiculed, ostracised, beaten, downtrodden and subjected to degrading and inhumane treatment, and even shot in the final episode.
• Eva Heinemann in Monster. Terrible, psychotic Rich Bitch Woman Scorned... who still doesn't deserve what happens to her and her beloved bodyguard, Martin.
• Muhyo and Roji:
  • Ebisu typically exhibits both aspects of the Jerkass Woobie simultaneously, rather than appearing to be a jerk with a more sympathetic side. In the past, he lived without parents, and supported himself by commiting petty crimes with his skills as a medium. When a ghost turned on him, he got saved by Goryo, and became his assistant in his Magical Law business, which had become ruthless in the way it did business. He's typically fairly arrogant and condescending towards most people besides Goryo, but at the same time, comes off as pitiable after being fired for failing to execute one of Goryo's plans, even if he eventually gets back together with Goryo. He never completely changes and doesn't regret his actions, even if he acknowledges that many of them are less than noble, but his past shows that he mainly does what he does out of loyalty, and he helps to teach Roji a lesson about how he can best help Muhyo.
  • The Cortlaw siblings are this to varying degrees, with Mick being the heaviest on the Jerkass end (killing Panza when she tries Taking the Bullet for Roji) until his final moments, Ivy a mixture of both, and Kid being mostly a standard Woobie complicit in Ark's plans (albeit largely through manipulation with a few critical lies). They lost their parents to the MLS (unaware that they resisted arrest and killed some of those sent after them) and are willing to resort to dark magic to bring them back. Kid admitting he was wrong and hoping to see his family again as he is dying is particularly heart-wrenching.
  • George Schyuter keeps Muhyo and Roji out of the investigation largely out of pride and the belief that they're unable to help, and even puts a sword to Roji's throat when he tries to help. It turns out, however, that his attitude and belief in working alone was the result of losing all of his partners and being blamed for it. He found a way to practice Magical Law alone, but derived no satisfaction from it, since no one was with him to share his defeats or victories.
• MW: Father Garai is a devoted priest and the long-suffering boyfriend of Michio Yuki. Garai initially refuses to turn in Michio to the authorities, believing it to breach his authority as a man of god, and assists Michio in committing many of his crimes, along with raping Michio when he was young, which, along with the MW bioweapon, exacerbated Michio's transformation into The Sociopath. Despite this, Garai clearly regrets going along with Michio's schemes, eventually resolving to stop him, and is put through continuance abuse, ending with him killing himself in order to save the world from MW.
• Nao Yuuki of the My-HiME anime. She's quite bitter towards others, uses her Child for selfish purposes, acts hostile toward Mai merely for being well-liked for caring for Takumi, and tends to cooperate only when she enjoys it rather than out of a sense of right and wrong. During the Hime Carnival, after her eye gets put out by accident, she swears revenge and tries to kidnap Takumi via Revenge by Proxy, indirectly causing his death, and tries kidnapping Natsuki twice. However, it's later revealed that her father is dead and her mother is comatose (causing her desire to seek vengeance on perverts), and after Nao's child is destroyed, killing her mother, and Shizuru is about to finish off Nao, Natsuki intervenes and says that if she had not met people like Shizuru, she might have turned out the same way, showing that, in spite of Nao's bitter and selfish attitude, she has suffered quite a bit and is ultimately human. By that point, Nao is a complete wreck, and ends up weeping hot bullet tears for her now dead mother.
• In Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, Kushana, who is introduced in the film version as a seemingly stereotypical evil queen ("Nice valley. Think I'll keep it."), her status as an apparent Card-Carrying Villain is quickly subverted. This apparently was deliberate on the part of the writers: Miyazaki describes Nausicaa and Kushana as "two sides of the same coin", largely differing in that Kushana has "deep, physical wounds".
• Neon Genesis Evangelion: Asuka Langley Soryuu may come across like an annoying brat initially, but she has an incredibly heartbreaking Freudian Excuse: When Asuka was very young, her mother, Kyoko, went insane and ceased to recognize her as her daughter. When Kyoko committed suicide, Asuka found her body, with the doll Kyoko believed to be her own daughter hanged right beside her, in a sort of would-be murder-suicide. Her father seemingly never cared about her mother or Asuka in the first place, and began having an affair with the head nurse in charge of her. So far in her life, the people she cared about either a) killed themselves or b) revealed that they didn't care at all. Asuka threw herself into learning how to pilot EVA-02 in a desperate attempt to earn affection from others. She also feels that anyone she cares about will leave her, so she developed a fake arrogant personality to hide her real insecure self and push everyone away. And then the events of the series kicked in. Including the Trope Namer for Mind Rape. Then the second episode after the Mind Rape features Asuka naked, hollow-cheeked, and lying in a tub, well past the Despair Event Horizon, stating that she no longer has the will to live. The tub appears to be filled with a red liquid indicating that she tried to kill herself by slitting her wrists. Poor Asuka...And in End of Evangelion, she finally gets to see her mother inside Unit 02 and feel love and acceptance from her... only to be shortly thereafter forced through the experience of being eaten alive by the Mass Production Evas. On the other hand, the story also Deconstructs the trope by showing that just because you have a bad past, does not justify having a crappy attitude towards others and offloading your anger on others, as the other characters get more and more fed up with the Jerkass half and stop caring about her as they have other things to worry about than her. In fact, the only person who cares about her in the end is Shinji, whom she still abuses when Third Impact happens.
  • While Shinji is initially set up as a straight woobie, it becomes increasingly clear over time that he is actually this. While he's outwardly a Nice Guy that dislikes offending people and shows kindness and concern to many times, his internal mental state is as flooded with irrational self-loathing as it is with negative feelings towards others, and both his motivation and mental state is actually immensely selfish, meaning he's unable to open up to people in the most basic fashion or emotionally comfort them. This eventually reaches the breaking point when he undergoes a Despair Event Horizon in End Of Evangelion and engages in some truly disgusting behavior from sexually assaulting Asuka, initiating Instrumentality out of his sheer rage and loathing towards others give him no appreciation or affection, and strangles Asuka on the beach at the end before barely being driven back to his senses. Despite this, it's difficult not to feel immensely sorry for him as his mother abandoned him at a young age and psychologically shattered him numerous times for his own protection, his father abandoned and then emotionally manipulated and abused him while using him as a tool, and he seemed to lack any genuine emotional connection with people and is forced to kill Kaworu, the singular person who had given him genuine, unconditional affection his entire life, and who wasn't even technically human. He seems to hold on in an Empty Shell fashion until Asuka's death completely drives him over the edge. Finally, he's left to pick up the pieces in a post-apocalyptic world that will likely take years to reach any type of stability, regardless of it being the better option than the others that were laid out.
• Tomoko Kuroki from No Matter How I Look at It, It's You Guys' Fault I'm Not Popular! just wants to make friends and have a social life, despite her crippling social anxiety and utter lack of social graces. However, as often as she is simply the victim of circumstance, she is also conceited, narcissistic, and critical of others' flaws in spite of her own, plus she tends to blame others for her own actions. This can sometimes make her even sadder, as her efforts to socialize are often sabotaged by her own shortcomings.
• Kuromi from Onegai My Melody may qualify, given that the reason why she's acting like a jerk is because My Melody made her life miserable.
• Ōoku: The Inner Chambers:
  • Shogun Iemitsu the Younger (or Lady Chie, depending on who you ask). We first see her when the former buddhist monk Arikoto is presented to her, given a 'maidenly' name, and beaten about the head and face by her until he bleeds, for not answering to it fast enough. However, even without factoring in the improbable extent of her Dark and Troubled Past, it becomes clear that she is, in truth, a prisoner in the Shogun's castle who has been stripped of both her name and, to a large degree, her gender as well. The closest thing to love she gets before Arikoto comes into the picture is from someone who she knows only sees the reflection of a father she never knew in her.
  • Ieshige, eldest child of Shogun Yoshimune, is seen (not without reason) as an ugly, mean-spirited, drunken, lecherous half-wit; and there is considerable pressure to have her removed from the line of succession. However, for all that Ieshige suffers from a severe speech impediment and chronic difficulties with fine motor control her intellectual shortcomings, as her mother recognizes, are non-existent. She hears the whispering campaigns to get her disowned and recognizes the barely concealed contempt of her family's attendants for what it is, which compounds both her shame over her inability to master her own body and her raging inferiority complex toward not just her mother but her^note (comparably intelligent, more articulate, and rather less pockmarked/heavyset) younger sisters. She finds what solace she can in strong drink, compliant men, and lashing out.
• Harry MacDoogal from Outlaw Star. Yes, he's a villain, and an Ax-Crazy Stalker with a Crush at that, but when Hazanko destroys him, Melfina cries out for him, and when he appears as a mechanical "phantom" before Gene and Khan and helps to open the door, his final moments are so poignant that you almost wish it didn't have to end that way. Also, you got to feel sorry for him because he has feelings for Melfina and she doesn't share the same feelings for him and he does everything he can to make her love him only to fail and get curb stomped by a massive douchebag with the ability to break his body parts like a bendy straw.
• PandoraHearts:
  • Break. Sure, he's not always nice, and it's not obvious that he's a Jerk with a Heart of Gold, but he does have his moments. In the past, it's revealed that he signed an illegal contract to try to change the fact that the family he was bound to protect was betrayed and massacred. Then, he was dragged into the Abyss and had his eye torn out, only to have the family die off anyway. Currently, he's going blind in his remaining eye.
  • Leo too. He becomes crazy and lonely after Elliot's death and becomes more of a jerk. He feels like Elliot's misfortune and death are all his fault.
• Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt has Panty Anarchy, a lazy and hedonistic Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist for the first 11 episodes. The last two episodes, however, turns all of this around. Long story short, she's left alone to fend for herself after Stocking is Put on a Bus, she gets stripped of her angel powers, the only person around who still gives a shit about her is kidnapped, she suffers a massive Humiliation Conga, and last, but certainly not least, she ends up as the victim of one of the most infamous Gainax Endings of all time, being cut up by Stocking. Jeez.
• Suzu of Peacemaker Kurogane. Suzu becomes an insane Jerkass after he thinks that Tetsunosuke (his only friend) killed his master, Yoshida (whom he admired and was the only person who cared for him). He was taken in by a Depraved Homosexual old man and raped when he was alone and starving on the streets.
• Penguindrum:
  • Yuri Tokikago. Her actions in episode 14 put the Jerkass in her title, then episode 15 made her a Woobie.
  • And Keiju Tabuki becomes one after episode 18.
  • Kanba ends up as this, after his Face–Heel Turn fueled by his deside to save Himari... followed by Death Equals Redemption.
• Perfect Blue: Rumi. She ends up delusional and tries to kill Mima. Me-Mania too. Yes, he was a serial killer and attempted rapist... But that's because he was a deformed, barely-functioning schizophrenic who lived only for his perfect image of Mima. The scene where we see his apartment is an enormous Stalker Shrine and that all he wants in life is "the real Mima's" affection was genuinely sad.
• Pokémon: The Series:
  • Mewtwo. He goes on a rampage against all living things to prove clone superiority, but after what happened to him, can you blame him?
  • Also from the anime, Meowth. He's technically a mafia goon and kind of a jerk...but that's because he grew up an alley cat on the streets and worked his tail off learning to speak human to impress a girl-cat, only to be rejected and ostracized as a "freak". He ended up as a goon in a criminal syndicate because it was the only place he could find that would have him.
• Princess Kraehe, the Dark Magical Girl, from Princess Tutu. Yes, she's quite the bitch as well as The Rival to Tutu. But she's also a victim of massive abuse from her adoptive father the Raven, and flawed as it is her love for Mytho is very genuine as well.
  • Same with Fakir. He is at first very hostile towards Ahiru and almost abusive to Mytho, but he is later shown to have a softer side to him, and apparently his demeanor has its roots with some pretty scarring experiences and emotional problems, as well as his determination to protect his friend. He gradually becomes nicer through Character Development.
• Puella Magi Madoka Magica:
  • Kyouko Sakura. She's introduced as an amoral, Ax-Crazy, borderline evil Dark Action Girl... and then we learn that her family was destitute after her minister father was excommunicated, she used her Wish to get him followers...and when Dad found out, he went mad and killed the whole Sakura family except for her. It certainly helps that the person she mocked the most, Sayaka, was also the one who unlocked her Hidden Heart of Gold.
  • Homura, too. She first appears in the act of severely injuring the series's lovable mascot (in fact, she had already killed him, but he revived himself, so she was trying to kill him again). Later, she gives vague, threat-like warnings to Madoka, and generally acts creepy and ominous. She doesn't seem truly evil, since she shows up to help the "good guys" a few times, but she's extremely detached and uncaring, especially when Sayaka dies and Kyouko (the other Jerkass Woobie) blows up at her for seeming so heartless. Of course, there's a (spoileriffic) reason for all this: Homura's a time traveler, and has watched all the other girls die extremely tragic deaths in numerous previous timelines. She keeps going back in an attempt to fix things, but always ends up making everything even worse than the last time. At this point, she's given up on everything except trying to save Madoka, despite knowing that it's probably impossible; she's become so detached because, otherwise, she'd lose hope and turn into a witch herself.
  • In the spinoffs, we have the namesake of Puella Magi Oriko Magica and her sidekick/companion/ambiguous lover Kirika. They're behind the magical girl murders, but both their backstories show them broken to the point of non-functionality by depression and betrayal by loved ones, Kirika is literally insane as the result of her wish, and each one's functionality and survival is unhealthily dependent on the other.
• Shiro Onijima from Pupa is a Domestic Abuser and a horribly Abusive Parent towards Utsusu and his sister Yume. However, as an orphan adopted by a Mad Artist, he himself had an abusive upbringing, as his guardian would frequently strip him naked and whip him bloody to make art, all the while claiming how this torment is a form of love. Because of this, Shiro grew up to be a violent man who relishes in bloodshed and the sounds of pained screams.
• Lucia from Rave Master. The one that had to watch his mother die and got locked up for ten years for no reason when he was 6... but that still doesn't justify how he gleefully wanted to commit mass murder.
• Makoto Isshiki from Rahxephon, since he turns out to be a clone with serious identity issues.
• Revolutionary Girl Utena:
  • Nanami Kiryuu. Good lord, what a bad day she has had... After discovering that her brother Touga, who she loved ever since she was a child, was not her blood sibling, she feels like the connection she had was fake, and now has nothing to hold on to. After that, she runs away from home, into the house of a pair of close, happy siblings, only to walk in on them having sex. And after that, she walks in on Touga making out with a member of her old gang, to hear her brother say that he never loved her to begin with, and to have her ex-friend claim that she has no connection to her anymore. And then after that, she gets the Akio Car treatment, where Touga attempts to rape her, which she fights off in fright, and then loses her duel, sobbing that she feels like she's just a face in the crowd and has no way to reconnect with the brother she loves. It's very hard not to feel sorry for her after all that, even though she was a raging Alpha Bitch Yandere most of the time. She does seem to become nicer afterwards, too, warning Utena to not hang around with Akio or Anthy anymore as she thinks they're up to no good, but her warnings fall in deaf ears. Ouch.
  • Mikage Souji could qualify as well. Just as he was beginning to evolve out of his computer-like personality and developed feelings for a woman named Tokiko, Akio seduced her just so he could manipulate Mikage into burning down the memorial center. And, of course, killing the 100 boys trapped inside. Not only that, but Akio gets Mikage to work for him years later as a puppetmaster, pulling the strings of the black rose duellists. Unfortunately, Mikage doesn't know that he's a puppet at all, and that Akio has tampered with his memories.
  • Saionji too. Yes, Saionji was a total Jerkass, but not even he deserved Touga's horrible treatment and manipulation of him. And the flashbacks to his childhood show him as a genuinely sweet pre-teen...
  • Shiori Takatsuki, whose crushing inferiority complex drives her to lash out at Juri because not only does she think no one could possibly genuinely love her, but she hates being treated with pity, which she believes is the only reason Juri was friends with her in the first place. Then she's humiliated by Ruka, the first person to make her feel, for once, good about herself.
• Charlotte de Polignac from The Rose of Versailles. On one hand she's a huge Spoiled Brat who treats her unknown big sister Rosalie like crap when she has done nothing to deserve it. On the other hand, she goes through a very heartbreaking Break the Cutie progress after her mother forces her into an Arranged Marriage to a very creepy old man, which totally breaks her mind and causes her to commit suicide by jumping off the balcony, as she laughs and cries about how she wants to stay pure and not marry.
• Souma and Sakurako Saiki from Sakura Gari. Initially, it seems as if It's All About Me with them, and they'll do whatever it takes to get what they want even if they hurt/kill others in the process. Also, every one of Souma's lovers are shown to have horrible endings. He even notices and mentions it himself. Of course, this doesn't stop him from continuing to take lovers. However, even with all their flaws, it doesn't make their backstories and endings any less heartbreaking or messed up. And at the end, due to his actions, Souma ends up driving away Masataka, who he had genuinely fallen in love with, and, in the last panel, he is shown crying into one of Masataka's shirts. And as for Sakurako, we find out that she's actually a boy named Youya, desperately lonely and unstable after his/her mind totally breaks when s/he was a child, and s/he ends up commiting suicide when s/he thinks s/he's killed Souma... not before having a heartbreaking Villainous Breakdown where s/he attacks his/her dad while asking "why I was born? why was I brought into this world?!".
• Samurai Champloo:
  • Mugen is a crazy, badass, insane Anti-Hero whose childhood makes anyone want to cry...
  • Jerkass may be a strong word, but Fuu fits as well. She's often temperamental, unappreciative of her bodyguards (to be fair, they do abandon her a few times), and seems to recklessly search for someone with almost no leads. But like Mugen, she's also lonely and her search for the sunflower samurai turns out to be because he's her dad, and he abandoned her now dead mother to save her and Fuu from being persecuted by the anti-Christian government.
• The Secret Garden:
  • Mr. and Mrs. Lennox were horrible parents, but anyone who knows the effects of cholera would balk at their Cruel and Unusual Death. Keep in mind this anime takes place when modern medicine wasn't as developed as it was now, and it becomes even more sadder.
  • Colin Craven is a sour-tempered asshole, but he was born into a heartbreaking predicament (being told he was going to die at a young age and being unable to walk) and his only living parent neglects him.
• Hayato Mikogami from Sekirei, the infamous Ashikabi of the South. He's extremely selfish and aggressively pursues any Sekirei that catches his eye, in order to add them to his growing collection. First introduced attempting to capture Kusano, he orders the injuring of the scientist that tried to protect her and is willing to order people killed if they get in his way. He comes across as ruthless, cruel, and utterly lacking in empathy towards his victims and his own Sekirei. Then he's revealed to be a Lonely Rich Kid, completely abandoned by his parents and unable to connect with his peers or make friends. He states that he felt empty inside, and desperately wished for "something amazing" to happen. The Sekirei he collects are the only friends he's ever had, and he expresses anger at the defeated ones for leaving him alone and wonders if he'll be reunited with them if he wins the Sekirei Plan. He's still very much a dangerous, ruthless enemy that has crossed many lines.....but it's difficult to not pity him just a little.
• Sakuya Ookochi from Sensual Phrase is a Fetishized Abuser to his girlfriend Aine largely because of a scene where he attempted to rape her out of jealousy, and even when not being a Fetishized Abuser, he's a huge jerk even to his own bandmates. Then, it's shown that he has an extremely Dark and Troubled Past (as in, he's an Heroic Bastard Child by Rape, his "father" left him when he learned that baby Sakuya wasn't his kid, he was bullied all the time because of his heritage, and his Lady Drunk mom drank herself to death when he was a child). While said past explains pretty well why he's such an asshole, it still doesn't justify his horrible treatment of other people around him, which had to be toned down in the anime quite a bit... and it still wasn't enough to make him anything but a Jerkass.
• Shiki: The most prominent example is probably Masao. Although he's abominably uncaring and rude toward both the other teenagers and his family, he's also one of the least powerful and dangerous vampires, which results in his being the other vampires' punching bag on a fairly regular basis. Additionally, it often seems as though he has honestly no clue just why he annoys the other characters, to the point many fans have speculated that he has some sort of psychological disorder.
• Kaede from SHUFFLE!. You feel bad for her for how messed up in the head she became following her mother's death and how she lost the will to live. But you also hate her for treating Rin like shit all throughout their childhood, because he decided to take the blame on himself so she wouldn't figure out that the death of her mother was actually her fault. For what it's worth, when she finds out the truth, she ends up hating herself for how she treated Rin and decides to try to atone for her bad actions by devoting herself to Rin. Rin does not really want this, but he is afraid of making Kaede have a relapse by not allowing her to punish herself in this way. Kaede is also shown to have romantic feelings for Rin, but considers herself unworthy to be loved by Rin or to stay by Rin's side, and acts like a Yandere (in the anime) when she finds out he and Asa are a couple, as she completely loses her self-worth at the sight. There's also the fact that Kaede has feelings for Rin and is hopelessly devoted to him, but Rin is Asa's boyfriend, so Rin simply cannot never return Kaede's feelings.
• Dr. Gel from Space☆Dandy. Yeah, he is a bad guy, but the sheer amount of times he gets blown up or otherwise horribly killed/abused makes it pretty hard not to feel for the guy. Not to mention he has probably the worst boss in existence in the form of Admiral Perry.
• Damian in Spy X Family is introduced as an abrasive Spoiled Brat six-year-old who's the son of the government official Loid is sent to spy on. He begins bullying Anya almost as soon as the two meet, but it's quickly revealed that he's only like this because his father is a neglectful recluse. Furthermore, he develops a crush on Anya and starts showing a softer side towards her.
• Suterareta Yuusha No Eiyuutan: Katsuragi Daichi is a somewhat pudgy high-schooler that begins the story with a rag shoved in his mouth, being literally used as a mop. This is a relatively benevolent day for him, as he spells out that he's been sent to the infirmary countless times, even with broken bones, yet the teachers and class president don't just ignore his plight, they "help" him by siding with the bullies, even going so far as to physically drag him out of his room and to class so the bullies can have their way. Then the goddess Clare summons the entire class, including himself, to the world of Rostalgia, where his situation hardly improves. Once the class has been magically inspected by King Ginger, he's shoved into the stables, left to his own devices, and treated with derision for failing to improve, even being called "The Useless Hero", while everyone else gets the VIP treatment. Upon their first foray into a dungeon, for live combat practice, Daichi puts himself at risk to save the whole class from their own folly, despite all the crap they put him through, only to find himself being set on fire, kicked down the stairs into the swarm of monsters, and having the exit magically sealed in his face. After waking up from being Eaten Alive no less than five times, he finds a corpse of a classmate and his first thoughts are testing his new "Lich King" ability to resurrect, enslave, and exploit her.
• Sara of Tegami Bachi: Letter Bee prevents all mail from coming to or leaving Honey Waters under the guise of being a Reverse operation, which results in the death of a man who tries to deliver on his own. But it turns out that she and Hunt had lived in a freak show, and Hunt had a dead creature's arms sewed onto him in a desperate bid to avoid being sold. When the people of Honey Waters happened upon them, Sara made up a story about Hunt being the Man Who Could Not Become Spirit in order to protect him from them, and all the other lies were necessary to maintain the first one. It helps that Sara gets a Heel Realization, leaves the money to the citizens, and leaves town with Hunt to start anew.
  • There's also Emil, a blind girl who was taken in and exploited by the keepers of the Wuthering Heights inn, and also formed a bond with the Gaichuu Laphroiag, using him to devour the hearts of her employers and many other people. As much as Zazie wants to stop her, particularly because Laphroiag ate his parents' hearts, he also sympathizes with her because of their similar circumstances as orphans.
• Ichise of Texhnolyze. He's rather Stoic and cold to nearly everyone (which includes not even saying "Thank You" to one guy who was kind enough to give him a meal when he was starving), and he's even like that during his youth: when he was younger, he found his dead father hanging from the ceiling, and while his mother cried at the sight, he showed little emotion and was surprised by his mother's reaction. He also has a tendency to have violent outbursts and gives the Death Glare to people who annoy him. However, practically the whole anime puts him through an extreme Break the Cutie cycle which includes both parents being killed, growing up as an ostracized outsider, working as a fighter in an underground ring, having two of his limbs cut off as punishment for using his fists to defend himself against a sadistic woman, has to go through the agonising pain of learning how to use new artificial limbs, watches his entire world deteriorate, gets beat up to a brutal degree, gets thrown down a sewer, nearly has his remaining limbs cut off, realizes that the entire human race is effectively dead, and then watches the only human he actually has a connection with have her head stuck on the body of his enemy. To top it all off, he dies in the last episode.
  • Doc, as well. She is a rapist who treats Ichise like a science experiment, and lies to him regarding the use of his mother's remains so he'd accept the Texhnolyzation process. As it turns out however, she used to be one of the Class, who was forced out on account of ideological disagreements with the Big Bad, Kano, and when she finally reaches the surface to get help, she finds out, to her despair, that not only are most of humanity gone, but the remainder lack the energy to either care about Lux or her research. Confronted with the fact that Lux is more or less doomed, and that her life's work has been a total waste of time for her, Doc ultimately concludes that she has no reason to live any longer, and is implied to have killed herself after Ichise leaves her behind.
• Tomorrow's Joe has two:
  • On one hand, Yong-bi Kim has what's probably the worst Dark and Troubled Past in this series: he was a survivor of the horrifying Korean War at quite the young age, saw his mother die in front of his very eyes, and later killed his father due to a terrible mistake, which gave him a phobia of blood. But on the other hand, his sordid past clearly gives him a sense of entitlement; it makes him feel that he's better than anyone else in the sport, looks down on boxing as just a game that shouldn't be treated with any passion just because there are rules in the sport, and looks down on Joe especially for struggling with his weight, just because nobody else he knows had to go through what he did. Not a good way to win sympathy points.
  • Joe Yabuki himself becomes this during the prison arc when it looks like Danpei has given up on him for Aoyama. He's pretty much all alone and surrounded by people who really want to see him get hurt at that point. Of course, it gets better when it turns out to have been a Secret Test of Character. Hell, Joe in general can be this before he (mostly) drops the Jerkass part; at the end of the day he's still a runaway orphan with trust issues and who, until meeting Danpei and his True Companions, had never really experienced any real kindness.
• Taiga Aisaka of Toradora!. Her violent emotional mood swings and stature complex stem more from having a broken family than romantic issues, making her a borderline Broken Bird and a walking Deconstruction of the popular Tsundere archetype. One could also reasonably argue that Taiga had become just a plain woobie by the end of the series.
• Tweeny Witches: Sigma is a lying, manipulative child scout with the philosophy of The Social Darwinist. When he was very young, his father advised Grande against using dark magic and foretold the coming of a savior, only to be rejected and killed by Grande for disobedience in front of him; this has given him the belief that he has no one but himself to depend on. In the present day, he plans to betray Grande and the warlock military when the time comes for him to help the savior prevent the destruction of the Magical Realm for his father's sake. When his superiors discard him for failure — later kicking him off a high place into prison — he is devastated like any child would do as Wil calls him a nuisance right to his face, refusing to take him along with Arusu and her friends, the people he betrayed to keep the pretense. He manages to break out of prison together with his cellmate, Jidan, but not before Tiana mockingly rejects his plea to redeem himself outside, reminding him that the military has no tolerance for failure no matter what. Near the Grand Finale, he is among the people who are driven to despair by dark magic until the magic of light dispels it.
• Ataru from Urusei Yatsura also qualifies. He's canonically the biggest lech in the galaxy who leers at girls and often treats his devoted fiancee, Lum, like dirt or an annoying obstacle to him acquiring a harem, but considering how gleefully the universe seems to love punishing him with outrageous and consistent misfortune and how he's shown a couple of signs of being a good person deep down who genuinely loves Lum, it reaches the point where you also can't help but want him to actually get lucky for once or at least have one day where the entire universe isn't out to get him. As one review of the series commented (paraphrased), even though Ataru completely deserves every bit of suffering heaped upon him, you can't help but feel for him at the same time and hope that fate will cut him a break one day.
• Voltes V: Ippei. His family moved from Japan to America in search of a better life, but were extremely poor and had to live on the streets. Ippei's father succumbed to a disease, and Ippei's mother took her own life to save her family from a pack of wolves. Ippei had to learn how to fend for himself at a young age. His Only Friend was his horse, Eiffel, and the two competed in many rodeo shows and won severel awards...only for Hamaguchi to forcibly kidnap Ippei and separate him from Eiffel for years^note Though in Episode 6, Hamaguchi arranges for Ippei and Eiffel to reunite., while forcing the poor boy to go through Training from Hell to counter the upcoming Alien Invasion. Ippei is a rude, melancholic, self-absorbed Jerk Jock pre-Character Development, and it's not hard to see why.
• Akira Inugami from Wolf Guy - Wolfen Crest. He rescues his Morality Pet teacher from baddies regularly, gives hope to his oppressed fellow classmates, and stops an Ax-Crazy psycho from gunning down the student body vice president at point-blank range, but he can be a cold-hearted snarky jerk to everyone. He also lost his parents at a very young age, has a habit of making enemies who want to violently beat him up and murder him, and is pursued and lusted after by two Ax-Crazy psychos who are major threats to anyone he is close to or not. Basically, he's a nice guy underneath it all, but he spares NO ONE the snark and is literally the unluckiest bastard walking. Which backfires horribly when his beloved teacher becomes his Morality Chain — and one of the Ax-Crazy psychos has her kidnapped and gangraped. Which causes Inugami a heartbreaking Heroic BSoD.
• The Your Name side novel Another Side: Earthbound turns Toshiki from a standard Jerkass Archnemesis Dad into this by showing how he got that way. Disowned by his original family for not marrying the woman they had in mind for him. Never fully got along with Hitoha, who saw him as an corrupting outsider who made Futaba go against her wishes. Then Futaba gets sick and dies without his getting the chance to be by her side in her final moments because he was desperately searching for outside doctors who could help. Consumed by grief, with clear signs of depression, and everyone else seems to be moving on just fine when he's still stuck. And then the final nail in the coffin gets hammered in when Hitoha tells him to get lost for his troubles and Mitsuha and Yotsuha reject his offer to go with him. It's easy to see how he could have grown a shell of brusque bitterness to hide his grief and vulnerability.
• Yu-Gi-Oh!:
  • Seto Kaiba, though less so in the anime adaptation, where he stays a jerk long after the finale of the Battle City arc, which, in the manga, was supposed to be where he let go of his tragic past and became a better person. Though the jerk-like behavior after the Battle City arc seemed lacking in enthusiasm, indicating that he was only being a jerk afterwards for show without being intentionally cruel.
  • Pegasus and Marik also fit this trope, what with their heartbreaking tragic pasts.
  • Also Akiza of 5Ds. Yes, she was ostracised as a child by her parents for having magic powers, and subsequently found by a lunatic who wants to rule the world for no adequately explained reason other than "I'm different and therefore I should be on top of the world". But that smile she wore when using her magic powers when dueling, especially against Yusei, was damn creepy.
  • Shun Kurosaki of Arc-V. The guy is a survivor of a war ravaged world, and just wants to find his little sister Ruri and save her. However, his quest to save her has led to him sealing five people in cards, threatening to seal five others in cards, and even attempting to beat one to death after learning said person green lit the attack. In his mind though, all of these actions were likely viewed as getting payback for what Academia did to his world. Even then though, he would not hesitate to attack his best friend Yuto if Yuto got in his way.
• Yuri!!! on Ice:
  • Yuri "Yurio" Plisetsky is a rude Bratty Half-Pint whose treatment of Yuri Katsuki and Victor is sometimes sheer cruelty. He is also a very lonely kid who only got his first friend by the age of 15, is all but stated to have been raised solely by his grandfather (one of the few people he's affectionate to), is the sole provider for his family and is clearly aware that he's reaching a critical point in his career as a whole (he's going through puberty and is aware that the changes it'll bring to his body might ruin his androgynous appeal, which is one of his main catches as an figure skater), which explains his drive and sheer despair to win.
  • Jean-Jacques Leroy might be an Insufferable Genius who makes sure to guarantee everybody knows he is, or at least sees himself as, better than everybody else, but in episode 11 the pressure of the Grand Prix Finals finally gets to him. His fear of the younger, more talented skaters and the older, more experienced ones, together with the amount of pressure he puts on himself, leads him to fumble all his jumps and eventually get a score so low, he can no longer win. Yet, all his fans and specially his girlfriend keep cheering him on and screaming his name even after his low score.

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