Nice Job Breaking It Hero / Anime & Manga

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Works that have their own page:

• Dragon Ball

Other examples:

#-G

• In 7 Seeds, Hana, Fujiko, and Chisa explore a cave that turns out to be a preserved ruin from before the meteorites fell on Earth. While exploring, they open a tightly closed door, they feel a slight breeze and find a mushroom farm. Hours later, the location they are staying in, the plants and even animals are sprouting mushrooms everywhere. They unwittingly released shiitake spores, overall a harmless thing, but since the eco-system and location hasn't dealt with anything even remotely close to this mushroom before, they caused the entire location to become dangerous for anyone, animal or human, to live in. The fact that the location gets burned down by a forest fire is seen as a quick way for nature to balance itself out again.
• Angel Beats!: The Afterlife Battlefront spend an entire episode discrediting Angel by making her score zeroes on her exams and manage to get her fired as Student Council President. Unfortunately, compared to the passive Angel (who's only been reacting to the Battlefront's attacks), the guy who replaces her is a huge asshat and the entire Battlefront gets wiped out and very nearly obliterated.
• Attack on Titan: Reiner and Bertolt might have been captured without incident if Eren hadn't mentioned their village at that particular moment. Instead, it leads to Bertolt suggesting they should go home and Reiner confessing the truth to Eren, causing things to rapidly go downhill from there.
• Basara: In the manga, when Momonoi is killed and the Red King retakes his city, Tatara and his rebel army plan on using the leftovers of Momonoi's gunpowder to blow up the water supply of the palace, making the Red King suffer. Too bad it results in the whole city having no water left and the citizens, formerly happy to be freed from their king turn against the rebels. A desert city cut off from water; good way to get their support, hero.
• In the Berserk manga, Skull Knight manages to slash Femto from behind at the very moment of his apparent ascension, using his dimension-crossing sword to teleport and get the drop on him. Unfortunately, Femto then redirects his strike towards the vortex of demonic power they are both standing on and uses its dimension-bending to bring the unholy nature of that place closer to earth, thus bypassing the walls between Seen and Unseen by folding time and space, resulting in the energies of the Unseen manifesting physically on Earth. You've brought about hell on Earth, Skull Knight. Whoops. Guess that's what you get for bringing in sci-fi conventions into a medieval fantasy world!
  • An earlier example: when the King of Midland has Griffith jailed and tortured for deflowering his daughter Princess Charlotte, Griffith accuses him of being attracted to her, since she looks just like his dead wife. Now, if those desires did exist, they were only subconscious — the king would probably never have realized they were there. But Griffith's accusation makes him dwell on his daughter to the point of madness and in one horrible moment he forces himself on her. She stops him and he regains his senses, but the damage is done. Charlotte is traumatized; the king sinks into despair and insanity; and the Band of the Hawk, now the king's only targets for revenge, are hunted for years by Midland's army and worse. Good one, Griff.
    • As the Godhand Void would say, "everything happens within the flow of causality".
• Bleach:
  • Don Kanonji has spiritual power but no formal training. He creates a show where children can watch a "hero" slaying creepy ghosts so they can sleep soundly at night knowing they're safe. However, he destroys the ghosts by breaking open a "hole" in their chest, causing them to vanish. What he doesn't realise is that the "vanishing" is really a transformation process, that he's inadvertently performing hollowfication, and is therefore creating the very monsters he wants to protect children from.
  • Guessing Orihime's unique power is valuable to Aizen, Urahara takes her off the front line to prevent her being targeted but doesn't admit why he's doing it. Rukia takes Orihime to Soul Society to train her for front line battle takes her away from Urahara's watchful eye, and allows Aizen to stage a kidnapping within the Dangai. The Dangai is supposed to be impossible to break into, so people traveling there are very vulnerable. However, the person who figured out how to break into the Dangai was Urahara himself, the only man capable of predicting and countering everything Aizen does. Urahara ends up kicking himself for his mistake.
  • In the Zanpakutou Tales Arc, Ichigo confronts Muramasa in front of the sealed Yamamoto and attempts to strike him down with his full power. This is exactly what Muramasa wanted. Ichigo had thought Muramasa sealed Yamamoto, but Yamamoto had sealed himself away from Muramasa. Ichigo's attack provides Muramasa with the power he needs to break Yamamoto's seal and steal Ryuujin Jakka.
  • Yamamoto unleashes his full power, including his Bankai, on The Emperor of the Vandenreich and successfully defeats him.... only to find out it was a double. The real Yhwach shows up, having been able to fully witness and understand Yamamoto's power, which allows him to steal the most powerful Bankai in existence.
  • After his training with the Royal Guard, Ichigo is given armor made of the "King's Key", allowing him to race back to Soul Society at top speed and fight the Vandenreich invasion, without ever needing to slow down due to air friction burning him. The problem is that doing so also breaks all the barriers keeping the Vandenreich out of their actual goal, the Soul King Palace, and those barriers can't be recreated for 6000 seconds after their destruction. Yhwach proceeds to sarcastically praise Ichigo as being the great hero of the Vandenreich for this.
• Blood+: By freeing Diva, who had been tortured and experimented on until that point and transformed into a Psychopathic Manchild by the scientists who found them, from her confinement in the tower, Saya set loose the Big Bad who would go on to slaughter humanity for the hell of it for the next hundred-plus years. The entire series revolves around Saya and her pals trying to hunt down and kill Diva to correct Saya's mistake.
• Code Geass:
  • In the first season, facing obliteration, Lelouch/Zero geasses Suzaku to "Live!" One year later Lelouch orders his best pilot Kallen in her new Super Robot to kill Suzaku, which results in the Geass activating, forcing Suzaku to turn to his only remaining weapon: an anti-matter nuke. Nice job nuking Tokyo, anti-hero.
  • Suzaku is just as complicit in the latter, as he was strongly advised by not only Cecile and Lloyd, but also Kallen herself, to retreat. Suzaku chose to remain there and suffer death, which is what led to his Geass command activating and driving him to fire off FLEIJA. Not to mention that Lloyd strongly recommended him to not equip the nuclear weapon to his KMF. Not following this advice led him to using the nuclear weapon as his last resort.
  • Suzaku himself is a walking catalog of this trope, trying to be the hero but screwing things up due to his own masochism and that he's playing for the wrong team.
  • Lelouch uses a particularly grim example of his Mind Control power: "I could tell you to kill all the Japanese and you would do it". And said power went into Power Incontinence mode right at that moment. Nice job making your sister a mass murderer.
    • Also after Shirley's, Lelouch has the Geass Order exterminated, while it does damper V.V.'s plans, it actually causes the Black Knights to distrust him further. If he really wanted to eliminate the Geass threat, he should destroyed that one island that was implied to be one of several special sites to active the Ragnarok/Assimilation plan, which would have really fucked up V.V. and Charles' plans completely.
    • Of course, he already did that to the inside of one of them enough so that it would collapse. So, nice job not breaking it hard enough, anti-hero.
  • This trope could also be attributed to Ohgi and his culpability in convincing the Black Knights to follow his lead in betraying Lelouch due to his gullibility regarding the claims of Schneizel and Villetta, which results in isolating Lelouch once and for all and him ultimately going down the path of the Zero Requiem, which is largely an excuse for him to die as he has lost all hope and him causing more destruction than he otherwise would have for a peace that logically won't last very long, as it is built on a flimsy pretext. That the ending is as happy as it is, given the circumstances (Lelouch doing worse things than anyone in history), is pure No Endor Holocaust at its finest.
• Denjin N: The police higher-ups go behind Sudou's backs and try to violently arrest Misaki and her family on the suspicion of being involved with murders, even though the detectives believe she has no idea what's going on. Tadahiro, the real culprit, who already decides to leave her alone and stop the killings, returns to massacre the police squad and panicking Misaki says she doesn't mind him supporting her without considering what she has actually approved.
• In the Ark arc of D.Gray-Man, Wide-Eyed Idealist Allen Walker is facing off against Tyki Mikk. During the fight, Tyki accidentally pushes him into a Next Tier Power-Up and his Empathic Weapon turns into a really big sword that can't damage humans — only Akuma and Noah. Tyki had been relying on Allen's reluctance to kill another human, so he was a bit surprised when Allen stabbed him right through the chest in an attempt to remove the Noah from him. It seems to have worked for a while, but then it turns out that all Allen managed was to wake it up and Tyki goes Body Horror One-Winged Angel. Woops.
  • He makes a very similar (and also understandable) mistake later: while fighting a Level 4 Akuma, in order to trap it, he deliberately makes himself a target, then summons his sword from across the room, impaling both the Level 4 and himself. This would have worked fine if it wasn't for the little snag that he's the host for the Fourteenth Noah. Even the Akuma looked terrified out of its mind before he managed to suppress it.
  • Kanda when he goes berserk and impales Allen with Mugen (his Innocence-forged sword), which causes Allen to collapse and his skin to change into that telltale Noah gray color. The Millennium Earl is positively dancing with joy when this happens and gleefully thanks Kanda for fully awakening the Fourteenth. Oops.
• Deadman Wonderland: Ganta stops the Deadmen from wiping out the Forgeries because one of his friends was among them. In doing so, he inadvertently incapacitates all of the prison's strongest Deadmen leaving the Forgeries free to start picking them off one by one. As a result, Ganta is completely alienated by his friends.
• In Digimon Ghost Game, Kiyoshiro's Intrepid Merchant and troll partner Jellymon occasionally endangers the team with her harebrained schemes.
  • In her debut episode she uses programs Kiyoshiro wrote to disrupt the Japanese economy because It Amused Me, which royally pisses off The Almighty Dollar Digimon Majiramon who rampages through Tokyo with the intent of smiting her master.
  • Three episodes later, she sells stolen go-karts to the Ax-Crazy Sistermon Ciel, who wreaks havoc across the city and ropes the team into deadly Wacky Racing.
  • In episode 22 her "sleep therapy" business sees her partner with the Dream Stealer Digimon Pillomon, who gets sick from eating too many dreams and accidentally traps everyone in a "die in the dream, die in real life" scenario. Once the crisis is averted, Tapirmon heals everyone's wounds but hers and Kiyoshiro's as "punishment".
  • In Episode 32 her habit of ditching Kiyo for days on end with little notice leads to her and subsequently Gammamon easily being replaced by the Betsumon horde, who then Capture and Replicate Kiyo and several other humans at the dorm.
• Doraemon should have a lot of examples throughout the show's run. It at least happened in the movie, "Nobita in the Wan-Nyan Spacetime Odyssey". Nobita finds stray dogs and cats and wants them to have a home. The gang time travels them back 300 million years and providing them with evolution and a food-making machine. When they visit them again, they encounter a time disturbance causing them to be stranded in a different year in that era with advanced sentient dogs and cats, thus starting the movie.
• EL takes place After the End, which happened because some of the world's major powers decided to put an end to environmental pollution by nuking most of humanity and nearly all other life on earth out of existence.
• Eureka Seven: In the anime, nice job saving the girl in a coma, Renton.
• Fairy Tail: The titular guild can never complete a mission without pulling this off, mostly through collateral damage. They're the anime version of ISIS.
• In Fullmetal Alchemist: The Conqueror of Shamballa, Al opens the gate between his world and ours as the Thule Society does on our side in an attempt to rescue his brother, Ed. Though Ed escapes, it also allows the Thule Society to launch a full scale war on Amestris and nearly destroys the capitol city.
• Ga-Rei: At the end of the Setsuna arc, Kensuke is killed, but after a long struggle and overcoming impossible odds, Kagura finally defeats the Big Bad, making sure the evil hate-fox inside her Artifact Of Doom never has to be summoned. She then proceeds to summon said hate-fox to revive him, resulting in the destruction of a good deal of Tokyo and nearly killing her in the process. If it weren't for the Power of Love, things could have gotten a lot worse.
• The Girl Who Leapt Through Time: Several of Makoto's leaps unintentionally break something else while trying to undo something she had broken due to leaping for her personal gain. One example is Makoto swapping places with another classmate in home ec, causing him to cause the accident in the room that Makoto would have caused. However, this accident makes said classmate a target for bullies. When her friend Chiaki confesses to her, she uses her time leaps to avoid talking to him and he becomes frustrated with her and eventually decides to date Makoto's friend Yuri. Which would incidentally lead to Makoto becoming jealous and realizing her feelings for Chiaki. Later, when the bullied classmate snaps and throws a fire extinguisher at Makoto, Chiaki attempts to shield her. Makoto then time-leaps to tackle him out of the way only for the fire extinguisher to hit her friend Yuri instead.
• In Girls Beyond the Wasteland, the Typhoon game company CEO challenges the Rokuhara club to a contest to see who can sell more games on their launch date after being splashed in the face with a glass of water due to her aggressive recruiting attempts of various club members.
• Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters:
  • Upon Haruo and others returning to Earth as a last resort to save the surviving people onboard the ship, Godzilla is detected on the planet. Rather than just leave him in peace and simply land on another part of the planet and allow the people to recolonize and live in harmony on their original home planet, Haruo extremely stupidly decides to take the battle to Godzilla for the sole reason of avenging his parents and forcing humanity off the planet. Less than a half hour on Earth, the landing party is attacked and ambushed by black spikey flying Rodan-like creatures which kill dozens of people and injure dozens more. Upon reaching Godzilla, Haruo orders everyone to attack the creature even though it paid them no heed. In the eventually successful effort of killing Godzilla, dozens more people are killed... only for the REAL Godzilla to make itself known, upon which it promptly eradicates the surviving people and machinery to avenge it's freshly-killed offspring. Haruo got literally everyone but himself, and possibly Metphies, killed just because he wanted some revenge.
  • Haruo's army made the mistake of fleeing while they were still frantic, to the point some used airships. The absolute panic not only caught Godzilla's attention, it annihilates them without even trying.
• Godzilla: City on the Edge of Battle: Unintentional and very unfortunate when Haruo told the rest of crew that they can go back to the Aratrum, which led to them all getting killed by Ghidorah in The Planet Eater.
• Godzilla: The Planet Eater: Martin Lazzari figuring out how to fix the Vulture and planning to use the nanometal inside it and Yuko's body to rebuild human civilization unwittingly ruins Haruo's chance of living peacefully with his new wife and unborn child; leading to Haruo committing suicide via Godzilla's Atomic Breath.
• Gourmet Girl Graffiti: In episode 9, Kirin's mother tells her to get a seat reserved on the train. Kirin mentions she's already done it and continues watching television. Unfortunately when they get to the station, it's completely full and Kirin is forced to wait another hour for the next train since she didn't bother getting a ticket.
• Guilty Crown: It's become a Running Gag on this anime's main page to begin every entry under Nice Job Breaking It, Hero as "Good job, character!" and to follow with an explanation on the plan and how it wound up backfiring.
• In Gundam Build Divers, our heroes are in a conundrum: Tsukasa Shiba is poised to destroy the Gunpla Battle Nexus Online game through his ultimate Break Decal mounted on a Big Zam, making him invincible as it modified the Gunpla's armor to be stupidly strong. As everyone's trying to figure out what to do, Sarah declares her desire to protect their game world, somehow causing Riku's Gundam 00 Diver Ace to sprout energy wings that helped eradicate that device and allow everyone to save the day. All's well that ends well, right? Nope! As it turns out, Riku and his friends later find out that Sarah is actually an AI accidentally created by the game, that the wings were the manifestation of her powers awakening and that her essence was accidentally spread all across the servers, threatening to destroy the game again.

H-O

• Haou Airen: Great, Hakuron. When your girlfriend Kurumi tried to run away and befriended this kid named Kaafai, you reacted via raping her in front of him and then letting him live. That's not gonna backfire in the future. Guess who the kid is who's just shot you to death on your wedding day? Yup, it's Kaafai himself, the same boy you stupidly allowed to live.
• The backstory to HeartCatch Pretty Cure! is this: Yuri and her fairy partner, Cologne, realize that the Desertians are getting stronger. With two new fairies, Chypre and Coffret, around, Cologne urges Yuri to use them to find help, but she declines, not wanting to burden others with the job and instead decides to try to obtain the Heartcatch Mirage. When she does so, the Dark Precure is waiting for her at the Precure Palace and Yuri tussles with her, leading to Cologne's death, her de-powering and shouldering the responsibilities of saving the world to an Innocent Flower Girl and her Genki Girl best friend with no brain-to-mouth filter.
  • The same goes with Yes! Pretty Cure 5 as it was Coco's kindness that allowed Nightmare to get into the Palmer Kingdom and destroy it.
  • And the same goes with HappinessCharge Pretty Cure! as it's Hime who ended up opening up Axia Box and unleashing the Phantom Kingdom.
• In Hell Girl: The Cauldron of Three, Mikage is able to sense when someone nearby may soon be a client of Ai Enma, the titular character. In one episode, she stops one such person and urges her not to use the Hotline to Hell which she had never heard of until then. Smooth.
• In Higurashi: When They Cry, the audience doesn't find out until Tsumihoroboshi-hen that Keiichi's actions during Onikakushi-hen were basically part and parcel of this. Granted, stuff was broken. Just different stuff.
• Isabelle of Paris: Count Red gets the absolutely genius idea of tying Marie to a chair during his duel with Victor, so that the Laustin family don't get in the way. Why he even thought bringing the fight to their house was a good idea isn't stated. When Thiers' men shoot at the mansion, a chandelier falls off and hits Marie in the head, killing her. Cue his father declaring I Have No Son!.
• The entire plot of Inuyasha is based on this. Kagome kills a demon that stole the Shikon Jewel and in the process shatters the aforementioned MacGuffin. This kicks off an incredibly drawn-out plot where the main characters have to fix the jewel and fight evil demons who want its power for themselves. Nice job breaking it, miko.
• Kagerou-Nostalgia: Badass Preacher Shiranui suffers through a particularly horrific one in the early chapters. He and Kazuma are staying with a woman whose husband left, planning to travel to the capital and assassinate General Kiyotaka Kuroda, leaving her and their daughter behind. The husband subsequently returns with a band of mercenaries and massacres the town. When his wife confronts him and accuses him of People Hunting (a form of massacre endorsed by Kuroda), he does not seem to understand what she is talking about. Shiranui realizes that the man has been tainted by the darkness in the capital and purifies him. Horrified by what he has done the husband promptly murders his wife and daughter and then commits suicide while Shiranui looks on, unable to bring himself to stop the killing by shooting another human being. Nice job breaking it, priest.
• In Kinnikuman, all the choujin were celebrating Kinnikuman's victory in the Choujin Olympics. At one point, they toss him so high into the air he goes flying into outer space and bumps into a satellite. As it turned out, that satellite was a prison for the devil Choujin and that bump hit the release button.
• Leave it to PET!: Pet is a robot made from a recycled plastic bottle who vowed to provide Noboru Yamada with help in return for recycling him. Thing is, his forms of help either don't really do anything, or makes it worse.
• Magic Knight Rayearth: Save the princess, kill her kidnapper, Save Both Worlds, right? Uh nope. She was never kidnapped in the first place; he was trying to kill the Magic Knights because they're supposed to be the princess' executioner. Said princess literally cannot focus on her own happiness and fulfillment without dooming the world, so she summoned them to kill her. This leaves the girls with massive psychological trauma and Cephiro without a Pillar, leaving it desolate and exposed to invasion in Part II.
• Magical Circle Guru-Guru has the characters discover Kukuri's birthplace where items for her use had been left behind. The bad news is the items had been collected by monsters called Kem Kems. Good news is they're tame and don't object to people taking back what's theirs. Unfortunately, they also don't object to people taking items and selling them, which is exactly what Nike, Kukuri, and Toma did prior to reaching the ruins. To make it worse, a necklace meant specifically for Kukuri was lost when Toma earlier used the item it was kept in as an impromptu rocket launcher. In the Doki Doki Densetsu version of the anime, Poor Kukuri simply snaps at this point and mentally regresses to a 4-year-old for a few moments. For the record, they did find the necklace soon after. In Old Man North-North's grass skirt.
• Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch has Caren refusing to join the mermaid trio. Good idea for her, but it's a bad idea since that allows the Black Beauty Sisters to capture her.
• When Elma and Tohru first met in Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid, Elma was attempting to bring about peace among the humans in the other world. It resulted in a cult that was prepared to go to war with anyone who wouldn't worship her — getting Elma to look the other way by bribing her with food. Tohru's outrage at Elma's hypocrisy led to them having a falling out and becoming rivals.
• In the original Mobile Suit Gundam, part of the events from before the show starts involves The Federation diverting a Colony Drop from hitting their incredibly well armored fortress in the middle of the mostly uninhabited Amazon rain forest. The problem is a piece of it hit the very much inhabited Sydney.
• Mobile Suit Gundam 00 gives us a Nice Job Breaking It Villain. Near the end of Season 1, the Big Bad's assassination of the hibernating Aeolia Schenberg triggers a Dead Man's Switch which unlocks the Gundams' Super Mode. With this advantage, the good guys have a fighting chance in what had previously been an all but impossible battle. Thus, in the first season finale, They manage to kill the Big Bad and fight the remainder of his forces to a bloody stalemate.
  • Celestial Being had an unintentional variant of this. Their plan in Season 1 involved getting the whole world to quit shooting each other, and unite them towards a common enemy (them). Unfortunately, this works far too well as this results in the creation of the A-LAWS. But in a subversion, it seems that this too was part of Aeolia's plan. Not bad for a guy who'd been in cryogenic stasis for over a century before the conflict even started.
• In Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny, one might say this trope occurs throughout the series with the Freedom and Archangel interfering with the war. But at the Second Battle of Onogoro, Kira preventing Shinn from continuing his attack on Orb allowed Djibril to escape, thus letting him fire Requiem and destroy a lot of the PLANTs. Shinn in SEED mode most likely would have stopped Djibril before getting on the shuttle or soon after he launched. Kira and the Archangel would have lost Orb, but considering the only Orb forces they had at the final battle were the ones they had before Onogoro...
  • One could argue that Athrun's attempts to discipline Shinn by slapping him only made Shinn more resentful of him, thus pushing him towards his eventual psychosis. Particularly when he disciplined Shinn for doing things he was supposed to do, like shooting down Kira who was clearly an enemy of ZAFT at the time.
• In Mobile Suit Gundam Wing, the five Gundam pilots are planning to killing United Earth Sphere Alliance leaders to stop their oppresion of the space colonies. Problem is, they actually started peace talks when the pilots do the plan. Result: peace-seeking leaders killed, OZ and Romefeller Foundation are free from hindrance and take over the Earth and the pilots get serious cases of Heroic BSOD.
  • Since Heero was the one who actually pulled the trigger to kill all the UESA leaders, you could say "Nice Job Breaking It, Heero."
• My Hero Academia: Nana Shimura's efforts to protect her son Kotaro from All For One were for naught as led to Kotaro with a bitter hatred for heroes and abusing his son Tenko for even thinking about being a hero. Eventually Tenko snapped and killed Kotaro with his awakened Quirk albeit at the expense of the rest of his family getting caught in the crossfire. And then Tenko winds up in the clutches of All For One anyway and is rechristened as Tomura Shigaraki. Had Nana told her son the truth about her career, her grandson wouldn't have become the monster with blood on his hands.
• Naruto:
  • Itachi, ordered to kill his entire clan to prevent a bloody coup that would kill all of Konoha, couldn't bring himself to kill his younger brother, Sasuke. As a result, he spared said person, and tried to enact a plan that would end with that person a hero beloved by Konoha, and capable of defending himself and it against the Big Bad. Instead, it ended with him as ally to the Big Bad, swearing to destroy Konoha. Oopsie!
  • Itachi's entire plan for Sasuke is a Nice Job Breaking It, Hero. It never occurred to him that mind-raping him twice would be detrimental to Sasuke's mental health. Nor occurring to him that beating him half to death twice would make him psychotic. Nor occurring to him that Sasuke might kill Naruto to get the MS. Nor tried to stop Orochimaru from getting Sasuke. If he didn't intervene or interfere with Sasuke's life at all, he would have gotten what he wanted — a Konoha Aligned Sasuke killing him instead of a fucked up mentally Neutral Sasuke.
  • Jiraiya's desire to give Sasuke a shot at killing Itachi in the hotel is understandable, but it takes all three seconds for it to become apparent that he's absolutely no match for his older brother. It still takes him at least another five minutes, many broken bones, and a vicious mind raping to actually intervene. In fact, it's very possible that the only reason Itachi even resorted to Tsukuyomi is because he was waiting for Jiraiya to give him the excuse to flee, and nothing else was making him act. This loss was one of the biggest reasons for Sasuke's defection.
  • Kakashi did it twice:
    • He abandoned his mission too late so that he could help Obito when they were kids, resulting in a crippled Obito ending up on Madara's doorstep setting off most of the plot.
    • He inadvertently caused the Kyuubi incident by blabbing that Kurama's Jinchuuriki was gonna have a baby in front of Rin's grave, not realizing Obito was there as well.
  • Sakura also did it twice:
    • Despite her good intentions in the Five Kage Summit arc, due to letting her emotions getting the better of her and underestimating Sasuke and the affair concerning him, the only things Sakura managed to do is nearly get herself, Kakashi and Naruto killed — with Naruto from both facing Sasuke and being cut by her own poisoned kunai that Sasuke tried to used on her when the former saved her.
    • In Chapter 674, Obito pleads for Sakura to destroy his Rinnegan eye so that Madara wouldn't be able to take it. She completely hesitates out of fear, resulting in Madara taking back his other eye from Obito and bringing about the beginning of the Infinite Tsukuyomi. The fact that she doesn't reveal her mistakes to Kakashi when he asks her what happened in the following chapter doesn't help her case.
  • The Second Hokage also did it twice:
    • First, he was of the opinion that the Uchiha would eventually betray Konoha. Well, he certainly laid the groundwork to making sure they would. Between Tobirama's paranoia about the Uchiha, and Madara's even more paranoid reactions to Tobirama, a betrayal became inevitable.
    • Edo Tensei. Even Orochimaru calls him out on documenting a jutsu that allows the dead to be resurrected and used as an indestructible army. And it requires Human Sacrifice to activate. Tobirama's idea was that fallen allies could be raised on the battlefield and enemy soldiers used as the sacrifices to raise them, but still. He should've known such a technique was too dangerous to leave lying around.
  • And then there's the Sage of the Six Paths, in his day he saved the entire world from a monstrous threat, founded the Shinobi way, and was pretty much revered as a Messiah and Physical God. That isn't an exaggeration, the threat he defeated was a godlike Ten Tailed beast, which he then proceeded to seal into himself, inadvertently giving himself Reality Warping Powers. He then proceeded to use those powers to create the moon in order to seal away the beast's body and then split it's chakra into the nine Tailed Beasts. Nice guy. Unfortunately he's also indirectly responsible for The Uchiha massacre and the Fourth Shinobi World War. Not to mention all the deaths the tailed beasts caused over the centuries.
  • Gaara probably wouldn't be half as screwed up as he is if his father had not only had him turned into a Jinchuuriki, killing his mother in the process, but also sent Gaara's uncle on a suicide mission and ordered him to tell Gaara that no-one loved him in order to test Shukaku's power. OK, so the Fourth Kazekage was doing it to protect his village in desperate times, but he ended up with an unstable, Ax-Crazy child who kills people left, right and centre, is treated like a monster, has his own siblings terrified of him, and probably would have gotten a lot worse if Naruto hadn't showed up. During the Fourth Shinobi World War arc, when Gaara's father is one of the zombies raised by Kabuto using Edo Tensei, he is defeated by Gaara and admits that he's well aware he screwed up on every possible level.
  • Naruto letting Sasuke go at Valley At the End. Instead of going for debilitating blow despite his threats of breaking his arms and legs. He goes for Sasuke protected forehead.
  • The First Hokage for stopping Tobirama from killing Madara.
  • Naruto and Minato stopping Kakashi and Sasuke from killing Obito. Ends up with Madara being revived.
• Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind: Way to go, Nausicaä. In the manga version, you've saved your people, but you've also doomed humanity by destroying the pure, corruption-free genes that have allowed humanity to survive. She believes in the natural cycles, but what she fails to realize is that there will be no cycles for mankind if they're all dead.
• In Negima! Magister Negi Magi, all of Ala Alba went to the Magical World, including the unbeknownst-to-them-Princess Asuna. Asuna is then kidnapped by Fate and the Cosmo Entelecheia remnant who do something very ominous relating to her Anti-Magic powers. The going theory is that by bringing the princess to where the bad guys can get her, they directly caused the revival of the Big Bad.
• Occurs on a spectacular scale in Neon Genesis Evangelion. While Gendo and SEELE propagate the general purpose and technically true cover story that their mission is to prevent the Angels from initiating Third Impact (which would kill the entire human race), the reason for killing the Angels is in actuality so that they don't interfere in the Human Instrumentality Project, which is a fancy name for SEELE-controlled Third Impact.
  • While Gendo has been preparing his own Instrumentality plan for years under the noses of his superiors, one that is a little better than "genocide and hope for the best," Shinji accidentally triggers their original plan at the eleventh hour. Things get better.
  • Played straight in Rebuild of Evangelion 2.0: Oh Shinji, in the short span of 90 minutes you've managed to make yourself likable again, have reached out to other people, grown a bit of a spine, and even got to kick a gargantuan amount of ass. Too bad saving the girl results in Third Impact, trapping you and her in your Giant Robot while your bishonen counterpart descends from the moon to lance you in the chest!
    • The lancing actually stops Instrumentality dead in its tracks. After all, they couldn't stretch the final battle over 2 films.
    • Retconned into Exaggerated territory by 3.0. Shinji actually started Third Impact. Which trapped him in Unit 01 on the moon for 14 years, killing off the majority of the population the Second Impact didn't and being universally hated by everyone who survived. And the kicker, Rei II is now stuck in the core of Unit 01.
    • It gets worse. In the climax of 3.0 itself, Shinji, aided by Kaworu, eventually sets out to obtain the spears of Longinus and Cassius to somehow Set Right What Once Went Wrong back in 2.0. But as it turns out, they have been fooled big time and what's waiting for them are two identical spears that will only finish the destruction of humanity by triggering Fourth Impact. Kaworu notices that something's off, but that gets lost in the confusion of the ensuing battle, after which Shinji pulls the spears out. Cue epic My God, What Have I Done? moment. The icing on the cake? Kaworu, the last person to treat Shinji like a human being, decides to pull a Heroic Sacrifice to end the impending apocalypse, dying violently right before Shinji's eyes. The kicker: it doesn't help. Mari ends Fourth Impact by yanking Shinji out of his mecha. That poor kid just can't catch a break.
• One Piece
  • While they can't be fully considered "heroes", the Marines in cause this following The Whitebeard War. Their long, elaborate plan to kill Whitebeard worked and they also killed off the son of the Pirate King (Ace). The only problem is that in doing so, they horribly screwed up the power balance of the New World, causing several towns to get overrun by pirates. Also, since Whitebeard confirmed that One Piece existed with his dying breath, the piracy rates have practically doubled. To make matters worse, Blackbeard managed to free some of the worse criminals in the history of the world, added them to his crew, and has now stolen Whitebeard's Devil Fruit, which is capable of causing untold carnage, before finally declaring war on the World Government. And to top it all off, the Elders decided to censor the escape of even more of the Level 6 prisoners, meaning they can do whatever the hell they want. So basically, they wound up screwing up the Entire World thanks to a horribly short sighted plan. Then the cover-up of the Level 6 prisoners' escape causes Fleet Admiral Sengoku to resign in disgust, leaving a secession crisis for who will lead the Marines. To settle this, a duel is held between Admirals Akainu and Aokiji. Akainu wins and Aokiji leaves the Marines. Thus, two of their four most powerful members are gone.
  • Luffy's jailbreak at Impel Down let a bunch of inmates out of prison. Granted, it's reasonable to assume that a fraction of them were actually decent guys like Mr. 2, Jimbei, and the Newkama pirates, but the majority was made up of dangerous criminals. On top of that, the commotion caused by Luffy enabled Blackbeard to pull off his own breakout, mentioned above.
  • Franky blew up the laboratory of the greatest scientist in the world. Twice. He saw the Big Red Button with the skull 'n crossbones on it and thought that it must be a pirate button.
  • Sanji's surrogate father Zeff literally beat it into Sanji's head that a Real Man Wouldn't Hit a Girl, even threatening to castrate him if he ever heard Sanji had hit a woman. Which, as Sanji's own female crewmate Nami has pointed out, is a very stupid form of chivalry in a World of Badass where Sanji repeatedly runs into Action Girls: he has nearly died on several occasions due to refusing to fight in his own defense when confronted by a hostile female warrior.
  • As she lay dying from an assassin's bullet, mermaid queen Otohime begged the only other witness, her daughter Shirahoshi, to keep the true identity of the killer a secret. As a result, Otohime's killer had years of freedom to build up the military strength needed to launch a coup of Fishman Island, as opposed to going straight to jail. Only the intervention of the Straw Hats kept things from turning out very badly for Fishman Island in general and Shirahoshi in particular.

P-Z

• PandoraHearts has a couple of examples, but perhaps most notable amongst them is Zai Vessalius, who goes beyond the basics of this trope to become a rather original deconstruction. Though how this happens is far too complicated to explain here, the idea is that, while Zai realizes the mistake he made, the same flaws that led to the initial mistake prevent him from fixing it and only make things worse, because his harping over his past mistakes makes him unable to cut his losses and grow as a person. Interestingly, this makes the originally noble-intentioned hero in question an antagonist to the series' protagonists, who at least are actually trying to move on.
• Patlabor: The TV Series features a pretty epic one, with a simple Honor Before Reason decision in an early throwaway episode snowballing into an increasingly deadly story arc that would dominate the later half of the show. Captain Nagumo is opposed to using the prototype Patlabor SRX-70 Saturn created by Schaft Enterprises because she knows they're going to use the motion data from the police's skirmishes to develop military mechs. All well & good, but because Nagumo threw the Saturn away, Corrupt Corporate Executive Utsumi decided to get the Patlabors' data another way, namely smuggling pre-production military Labors into Tokyo & causing havoc in the streets to draw the Patlabors out.
• Phantom Thief Jeanne: In a way similar to the Magic Knight Rayearth example, the entire first half was this. Maron/Jeanne is helping out God by sealing demons to keep Satan at bay and her boyfriend/arch enemy Chiaki/Sinbad is an agent of the devil, right? Bzzt, wrong! It's revealed that Maron's angel sidekick Finn Fish is actually working for the devil and had been lying to Maron the whole time. She was helping the devil and Chiaki God, not the other way around. So Maron had actually been the one working for the devil the whole time, making him stronger than ever.
• Pokémon Adventures:
  • One of the first things Yellow does is breaking up an attempt by an apparently resurfacing Team Rocket to hijack the ship S.S. Anne. Said hijacking was part of a plan by a reformed Lt. Surge to lure out the Elite Four with a rumor about finding the one they were looking for.
  • During the Platinum arc, Buck figures that he has to protect the Magma Stone from Team Galactic, so he moves it, intending to bring it home with him. This action in fact awakens the legendary Pokemon Heatran, Team Galactic's true target, and Buck has unwittingly brought them right to it.
  • In the BW arc, the Dark Stone is in Lenora's impenetrable office and the only key is smashed. However, Black knows how to get in thanks to his Gym battle against her. A Plasma grunt, disguised as Brycen, tricks Black into opening it for him and knocks the kid out before stealing the Stone.
• Princess Tutu: Mostly because the characters are living in a tragedy and Drosselmeyer gets his kicks from making a person's good intentions be catalysts for the demise of those they're trying to help. The main character frequently makes everything worse courtesy of her humble attempts to help Mytho.
  • In order to prevent Mytho from destroying his own emotion of love, Fakir cuts the mythical sword capable of doing so in half. It also ensured that his heart could not be shattered again. Now how could this possibly be a bad thing? The piece of Mytho's heart that held love was recently bathed in raven's blood, thus corrupting it — and now it's corrupting Mytho. The only way to get the thing out? Shattering his heart by using the very sword that Fakir destroyed. Whoopsie.
• Psycho-Pass:
  • Had the Sybil system, after capturing Shogo Makishima, restrained him when they tried to convince him to become part of the system, all the crap everyone had to go through in the second season might have been avoided.
  • Hell, had the Sybil system never been invented, half the latent criminals in the series wouldn't have even become criminals in the first place.
• Puella Magi Madoka Magica:
  • "I Won't Rely on Anyone Anymore": The very first timeline was comparatively mild: Madoka and Mami defeat Walpurgisnacht and die in the process, without becoming witches. Homura wishes to redo it to save Madoka and with each attempt the endgames becomes worse and worse, down to Madoka becoming a super powerful witch and destroying the world.
  • "The Only Thing I Have Left to Guide Me" drills it in: Homura was giving Madoka more power with each reset by creating alternate universes. Greater Magical Girl translates into greater Witch power. In Episode 12, Madoka has enough power to bring the whole universe to an end. However, Madoka turns this around into an inversion. Homura's time loops gave Madoka enough power to break the system and achieve a better conclusion than the original timeline.
  • If Puella Magi Oriko Magica is to be believed, then if Madoka didn't try to cheer Mami up in Episode 3, she wouldn't end up being horribly headchomped by Charlotte and instead handily beat her. However, Mami shares blame because she chose that moment to reveal that she needed cheering up.
  • Madoka nearly killed Sayaka by throwing her soul gem down the bridge in episode 6, and Homura had to clean up after her mess. Again, however, this is due to Sayaka and Kyoukou insisting on fighting each other.
  • The reason Madoka has so much magical power potential is because Homura attaching additional karma from alternate timelines to Madoka everytime she resets time to save Madoka.
  "Excellent work, Homura Akemi. You just made the made the most powerful witch ever."
  • Then there's Puella Magi Madoka Magica The Movie: Rebellion. What did you expect would happen when you told the Incubators about a more effective means of getting energy? They'd try to replicate it.
  • And again, for much the same reason. If Kyubey had remained silent and didn't explain to Homura that she was the sole reason Madoka was in danger again, the Incubator's plan would have gone off without a hitch and they'd eventually control the Law of Cycles. Instead, he provides the impetus for her to take another option, trapping herself in her own labyrinth for eternity rather than letting the Law of Cycles make contact.
  • In Puella Magi Kazumi Magica, poor, poor Pleiades Saints. Their plan is to hide Kyubey from existence, making it unable to contact and contract other girls, including preexisting Magical Girls. To help this, they make Jyubey, an artificial Incubator, who supposedly can clean darkening Soul Gem. Only, there's a bit of a problem: it can't. It can only polish them.
• Queen Millennia: Despite being a victim of Leopardo's Mind Probe once, and knowing that Carmilla base drifts in space to avoid being detected, Hajime confirms that he's seen Hannibal, prompting Leopardo to Mind Probe him again and discover exactly where Millennium Thieves were.
• In Robotech the Southern Cross and reinforcements from the REF launch an offensive against the Robotech Masters at the precise moment they've decided to temporarily cease all operations against Earth to try and destroy an Invid Sensor Nebula. By attacking the Masters and forcing them to abandon their plans, they allow the Sensor Nebula to transmit to the Invid that Earth hosts Protoculture and the Flower of Life, leading to the Invid invasion. Worse, the Invid were weak due a lack of Protoculture, but the Southern Cross was unable to resist because they had exausted their forces fighting and defeating the Masters.
  • Topping that is what Zor does in the final episode of the "The Masters" saga: knowing that, with the Masters being destroyed, it's only a matter of time before the Invid Sensor Nebula detects the Flower of Life on Earth, he crashes the last Masters' mothership on the mounds inside which the Flower is growing to try and destroy it. But only succeeds into seeding the whole planet with the Flower of Life and making the Sensor Nebula notice it early, resulting in the Invid dropping whatever they were doing and coming to Earth before the Southern Cross can rebuild. Lampshaded by the episode title itself, "Catastrophe".
• Kaito from Robotics;Notes, by collecting all the Koujima Kou research files, allowed the true villian to kick off his Thanatos Gambit.
• Rosario + Vampire Capu2: Kurumu and Mizore both make the decision to lie to their respective mothers about their relationship with Tsukune; as a result, Ageha and Tsurara seize their daughters' love lives as an opportunity to continue their old rivalry, with the two destroying a good portion of Yokai Academy in a fight with one another and then directly interfering with Tsukune's attempts to get to Moka's father and retrieve Moka's rosary in the finale.
• Sailor Moon: The entire Black Moon Clan arc is one humongous set of this trope, particularly starting with the first half. The entire thing kicks off when Chibiusa accidentally absorbs the future Silver Crystal, leading to Crystal Tokyo to come under attack. This forces Chibiusa to go back into the past to find the past Silver Crystal as she thinks the future one is lost forever. At the same time, King Endymion decides to put his past self, Mamoru, through a Secret Test of Character by giving him strange prophetic dreams of some disaster happening involving him and Usagi, hoping that he can solve it and the two can handle anything together. Instead, Mamoru bombs it big time as he decides the best thing to do is to dump Usagi and not say why. Needless to say, Mamoru's pissed when the king tells him what went on. And finally, when Chibiusa discovers Usagi is Sailor Moon and that she has the Silver Crystal, she's so indignant that she has the item that she declares her unworthy and steals the crystal (along with the brooch), allowing Rubeus to strike and kidnap the Inners while Usagi is powerless.
• Saint Seiya: Of all the places to lock your Evil Twin brother Kanon in as punishment for his evil, you shouldn't have chosen the Drowning Pit under the Sanctuary! Because if you hadn't done that, then Kanon wouldn't have almost drowned and fallen in a hole through the rock wall which took him towards Poseidon's realm and allowed him to become the Man Behind The Man in the Poseidon saga. Oops.
• Sgt. Frog: The sarge manages to nearly cause Armageddon by returning Moa's cell phone.
  • The Musha Kero saga ends with one. Upon learning that civilians have been enslaved to unearth something in a mine, Kululu scans the area and finds an energy reading and Keroro speeds up the excavation. It turns out to be an Eldritch Abomination.
• Shin Mazinger ends with Koji finally defeating Dr. Hell...but then he discovers that doing so unsealed a far greater threat in the form of the Mycenae Empire.
• Snow White with the Red Hair: Tariga started having a melt down after he realized that Touka had arrived but Tsuruba hadn't been seen as it meant Tsuruba was likely dead. Unfortunately he reacted to this revelation by using a Knockout Gas on Touka's guards in order to confront him and the heartless noble's Breaking Speech worked wonders, with Tariga nearly stumbling from the room while leaving it unguarded, unlocked, and with the unconscious guards' weapons now handy for the villain.
• Early in Summer Wars, Kenji gets a text message with a math algorithm challenging him to solve it. He spends all night doing so and when he wakes up finds that the online world OZ used by most of the world has gone haywire and that the algorithm he solved was in fact the company's strongest security code. Ultimately subverted, though, in that over fifty other people made successful attempts on the code and Kenji actually made a mistake in his, resulting in it being incorrect.
• In Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, the first part of the story is about the struggle for humans to return to the surface by killing the evil overlord keeping them underground. Sadly, the evil overlord was protecting the humans from something worse.
  • Turns out that the "something worse" is actually oppressing and destroying sentient races across the universe because if they become too advanced, they could cause existence itself to collapse.
  • Some have theorized the opening takes this even farther and actually shows an alternate ending right before existence does end.
  • And Rossiu, in an attempt to figure out how close "something worse" is to happening, evacuates humans from their underground cities even when they don't want to leave — not-quite-unwittingly bringing disaster closer with every person living on the surface.
• In Tokyo Majin, Tatsuma attempts a Batman Gambit to redeem Chaos, who claimed to be devoid of emotions other than hate and killed and/or drove insane dozens of people (including Tatsuma's foster parents) For the Evulz. Tatsuma tries to kill Chaos with kindness and forgiveness, eventually provoking an emotional outburst from Chaos, which proved he could feel emotions, which is what Tatsuma wanted. Unfortunately for him, it's also what Yagyu wanted, as he uses that breakthrough to unlock Chaos' full powers and possess him. And the first thing he does with his new found powers? Blow up Tokyo. Whoops.
• Toriko: In one of the early arcs, the titular character gives Komatsu his special, gunpowder-charged firecrackers for scaring off dangerous animals, knowing that he didn't have superpowers to defend himself. However, he went a little bit too far with explosive power. As a result, after they exploded, the sound not only scared off predators, but also ruptured both of Komatsu's eardrums and stopped his heart. Luckily for him, Jiro managed to reanimate him.
• In Tsubasa -RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE-, Sakura leaves one of her memory-feathers behind in Acid Tokyo to keep the reservoir pure and the inhabitants alive. While this act ultimately results in her birth, the aging of the feather also allows the Big Bad to win when he returns it to her body in the "several hundred years later" dimension.
  • Also, Syaoran. If only he could turn back time, everything would be okay and he could save her, right? WRONG!
  • This is clearly becoming a theme since it turns out that the entire plot was set into motion by Clow's split-second wish that Yuuko wouldn't die, though he didn't intend for it to turn out quite that way and the Big Bad just happened to feel the same way and believed strongly in the tenet of Screw Destiny.
• In Tsukihime, if it weren't for Shiki "killing" Arcueid, Arcueid could effortlessly defeat all her enemies and Shiki himself wouldn't be dragged into her business.
  • Actually, this isn't quite accurate. In the sequel story, Melty Blood which takes place 1 year after the end of Tsukihime, its shown that given enough time Arcueid would eventually regain her powers. It's just that the entire Tsukihime story takes place over the course of a few months and Arcueid spends most of that time either hanging out with Shiki or tracking down and fighting enemies instead of resting.
• In Umi Monogatari, Urin lets Sedna's sky half out while looking for the ring and Kanon threw the ring away in the first place.
• The World God Only Knows: In the manga, Haqua releases Fiore out of mercy when Fiore shows "evidence" that she is innocent. Later on, Nora tries capturing her but both Haqua and Nora were restrained. So yeah, Haqua, maybe you should have followed Keima's instructions.
• Yu-Gi-Oh!:
  • In the manga, Yugi's first Penalty Game against Seto Kaiba, the Experience of Death, was meant to teach him how the cards felt in the hopes it would make him a better gamer. Not only did it reinforce Seto's losing equals death philosophy, it made him bitter and revenge-crazed, leading him to try and kill Yugi, his grandpa, and all of his friends.
    • Later in the manga, Yugi subjects a corrupt TV producer to a Penalty Game as punishment for trying to rig a game show Jonouchi is participating on to prevent him from winning the ¥1,000,000 jackpot (which Jonouchi intends to use to pay off his father's gambling debts). The Penalty Game, Mind on Air, causes the producer to rush out onto the game show set, insult the viewers and demand that they send him their money; the entire debacle causes the TV studio to declare bankruptcy before Jonouchi can cash in his check, making his efforts utterly pointless.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh!: Seto Kaiba fanatical research into the power of Duel Monsters (sending cards into space, studying Duel Energy, etc.) so as to find a way to defeat his rival causes the game to mutate into increasingly catastrophic forms as shown in the subsequent shows in the franchise. Although, his holographic tech deal with Pegasus was initially just a lucrative business deal to enhance a trading card game he was fond of.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh! The Dark Side of Dimensions starts when an excavation team finds the pieces of the Millennium Puzzle, as well as the Tablet of Memories, in the burial chamber. Also, most of the problems in the movie can be directly traced back to Kaiba and Shadi.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh! GX:
    • In the Season 2 finale, Kenzan tries to stop a brainwashed minion from firing the Earth-Shattering Kaboom by smashing the laptop computer that controls the satellite cannon. As soon as he does this, he learns the missile was just fired and he's just destroyed the only means of stopping it!
    • The hero wasn't immune to this either. When Judai was little, he had a card named Yubel that was very protective of him. Whoever Judai dueled or was close to, Yubel would cause harm to them and made them fall into a coma. By Judai's request, Yubel was sent into outer space by Kaibacorp hoping they would absorb "the powers of justice" like his Elemental Hero Neos would. But instead they absorb powers the Light of Destruction and was driven insane. After landing back on Earth, they became Season 3's Big Bad and orchestrated the events that happen to Judai and his friends.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds:
    • The five Signers think they've successfully stopped the season's Big Bad and saved the world by defeating him in a duel, only to shortly realize they've brought his Evil Plan to fruition, as, regardless of their victory, the duel completed "the Circuit", allowing the Arc Cradle to descend over New Domino and begin the countdown to the city's destruction.
    • Jack is indirectly responsible for Carly dying and coming back wrong; while he left her to protect her from the Dark Signers, he failed to explain that and was so brusque about it she decided to investigate them to prove she was useful. This led to Divine killing her and her subsequent resurrection as a Dark Signer who Jack had to kill.
• YuYu Hakusho:
  • In the Chapter Black saga, Yusuke allowed Shinobu Sensui to fully power up so they could have a good battle. This ended up getting him killed. Dangit, Yusuke, you made Kuwabara cry again!
  • Of course this led to a Nice Job Fixing It, Villain moment as Yusuke was resurrected as a mega-kickass demon, but he didn't know he was a hidden demon at that time. The only reason Yusuke turned out to be part demon was because Togashi wasn't allowed to kill him off. So ignoring the demon heritage, this trope is played straight.
  • Don't forget that the whole arc was just Sensui's plan to get himself killed by a powerful demon as justice for killing countless demons. Unleashing Hell On Earth against what he sees as a corrupt human race is just frosting added by an enraged Kuwabara. Nice job, dimwit.
• Zatch Bell!: The biggest and baddest of the Big Bads in the manga is Clear Note, who planned to use the King's Privilege to bring genocide to the Mamodo, was powerful enough that it took Zatch and Brago's strongest spells to beat him. And what happens next? It somehow enables him to become powerful enough that Makoto Raiku had to intervene. What's worse, Kiyo somewhat knew what would happen if they did what they did thanks to his Answer Talker ability, which allowed him to determine the answer to any question in an instant, but if they hadn't, Clear would have won anyway.

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