I'm doing a cleanup when it comes to characters being unintentionally sympathetic and unintentionally unsympathetic. I could have sworn that this trope was about characters that were supposed to be in situations that should make them come off as Woobies and pitiable characters, not situation in which the characters are poorly written and are not seen in a way that the writers want them to be.
These examples should be deleted since you aren't actually supposed to be pitying these charactes:
- Mai (member of the Pilaf gang from the original Dragon Ball) from Dragon Ball Super is seemingly supposed to be viewed as a cute Love Interest for Kid Trunks. However she can come off as unsympathetic considering she's a grown woman in a child's body, and flirts (like with a flirtatious wink) with a child who's unaware of the truth (which is essentially rape by deception, realistically). Eventually dating the child, largely because it keeps a roof over the heads of the Pilaf Gang, and gives them food, and potential access to gadgets and the dragon balls. Made worse in the future timeline where the manga reveals she, and her comrades used up Shenron's last wish on the selfish desire for her, and her comrades to have young bodies again, preventing Future Gohan from wishing any of those killed back as shortly after Piccolo was killed causing the Dragon Balls to disappear. It also helps that if the genders were reversed in this scenario, people will be horrified and there would be many complaints about this aspect of the show. Mai isn't portrayed as a pitiable character here. I agree that the show is wrong to portray Mai and Trunks as a cute Toy Ship, but she's not seen as a Woobie here.
- In general, it can be difficult for some people to root for the main cast to succeed when they make some appallingly stupid and selfish decisions. Goku spares actual megalomaniacs when they make it clear they won't give up, and the fighters later revive one of those maniacs for a tournament and let him run free with no attempts to stop him from suppressing more planets, because he's not going after their planet. The tournament in question from Dragon Ball Super was kickstarted by Goku and it put entire universes at risk. When called out on this, he callously tells the other universes to bring their best fighters. The fact that the tournament turns out to be a Secret Test of Character doesn't excuse how he acts, as he didn't know about it. He just endangered whole universes, and he didn't care. It's at that point where one could think he deserves to be wiped out in that tournament. He has also become more selfish in general such as when he hired Hit to kill him so he could fight him at his full power with no regard for his family. This falls under Designated Hero, not unintentionally unsympathetic since the heroes aren't shown as pitiable in these instances.
- Androids 17 and 18's reactions to the tournament make it difficult to root for them too. 18 considers bailing out of this tournament that decides the fate of their universe, because there's no cash prize. Meanwhile, 17 initially considers just letting their universe die. Him changing his mind later would probably mean a lot more if he didn't have a wife and child, who apparently he just didn't think were worth saving when he was asked to join the tournament. Again, Android 17 and Android 18 aren't seen as pitiable woobies here.
- Master Roshi apparently overcame his Dirty Old Man tendencies... after years of groping and harassing young women (Bulma was just 16 at the start of the show) and even sending two children out bring him a sex slave, which could easily be seen as a Moral Event Horizon. I wholeheartedly agree that Roshi doesn't deserve to be portrayed in a positive light for being a dirty old man, but he isn't seen as a Woobie for this.
IMO, only the Bardock and Vegeta examples should stay since the media tries to portray the two as woobies in those particular scenes.
