Strawman Has A Point / Anime & Manga

• In Akkan Baby, while a little downplayed, Yuki not wanting to give Puni back to his mother, Mika, when he found out she intended to abandon him is understandable as he (and Shigeru) got attached to him and, though she did come back, abandoning one's child doesn't sit well with a lot of people, even if one is young and afraid.
  • Shigeru's dad Norio strongly disapproves of Yuki being her boyfriend, and he's takes a rather melodramatic and immature approach by literally running away from discussing his daughter's pregnancy. He's not all that more endearing when he comes back home, either. However, when he was set up to meet Yuki for the first time, he was under the impression that Yuki was his daughter's female friend... only to find out not only was "she" a he, but also that all this time, his teenage daughter was frequently staying over a boy's house, often without parental supervision — an arrangement that even the most trusting and laid-back parents would be uncomfortable with. Shigeru making the decision to reveal the fact that she's pregnant during the very first time he's even met Yuki couldn't have gone any worse. Part of Shigeru's pregnancy is still his fault for not knowing or asking more about his daughter's friends (something that Shigeru's mother acknowledges), but it's really hard to blame the guy for not being happy about how it happened.
• The child protagonist of Barefoot Gen beats up a scientist for buying corpses from the Hiroshima bombing to dissect for scientific research, and tells him to show some respect for the dead. Thing is... the research in question is to see how radiation affects the human body, and it's necessary research to perform in order to be able to cure radiation-related diseases. Gen is basically letting respect for corpses rank higher than getting living/future radiation victims some medical help.
• In Black Cat, Baldor's desire to murder Kyoko after her Heel–Face Turn is supposed to be a sign of how demented he is, which will make us root all the more when Train fights him and his partner, Kranz, to save her. Problem is, Kyoko pre Heel–Face Turn, was not only a member of a group determined to plunge the world into chaos, but a Psycho for Hire who enjoyed burning people alive from the inside out, while kissing them. On top of that her switching sides is motivated not by the realization that what she's doing is wrong, but from fear of Big Bad Creed, and a crush on Train. End result, Baldor comes off looking far more reasonable than he ever should when he recommends they just kill her. Happens again when one of the heroes tells him that just murdering your enemies is wrong. Cue one of the enemies she'd just spared blowing himself up to try and kill her. Baldor's maniacal laughter ends up being less Kick the Dog, and more "told ya".
• In Blue Gender, humans are ruining the planet due to technological excess and overpopulation, and so nature sends the Blue to forcibly knock humanity back to the Stone Age. Many of the humans in Second Earth are supposed to be seen as cold and heartless, and Chairman Victor of the High Council in particular is supposed to be the Big Bad, for fighting against Gaia and the Blue instead of learning to live In Harmony with Nature. The problem is that at the time of the show's events, humanity knows it's ruining the planet and is trying to fix things... an effort the supposed Big Good Gaia is actively sabotaging with the Blue. At the end of the series, Seno Miyagi decides he and the rest of the humans should remain on the colony and seek out other planets to live on, which would leave the planet alone and spare it from further harm. Instead, the humans go insane, Seno is shot dead, and Second Earth (which was built to ease the overpopulation) is destroyed, the Green Aesop being that humans can live in harmony with nature, as long as they're not abusing tech. Sadly, "tech" here is defined as anything more advanced than the wheel.
• Citrus: Mei's grandfather expelling Yuzu in the early chapters is meant to be a knee-jerk overreaction, and he even admits as much after Yuzu saves him from a heart attack, but considering what she had just done, it's understandable that he would be furious at her. She seemingly broke a multitude of school rules to publicly air his family's dirty laundry, embarrassing him and one of his teachers who he personally chose for an Arranged Marriage in front of his own students, and considering that she was never shy about flaunting her disrespect for the rules even before that happened, it's no surprise that he was already out of patience with Yuzu and overreacted when he thought he had caught Yuzu forcing herself on his granddaughter, even if he was wrong about that one.
• Code:Breaker is an extreme example of this. Ogami is constantly chewed out by Sakura for being a ruthless killer who shows no mercy, in order to ram in the lesson that killing is always wrong and impossible to justify. However, this is completely undermined by the fact that the majority of people Ogami kills are Asshole Victims who couldn't have been dealt with any other way, and killing them ensured that no more innocent people will suffer because of them. Making matters even worse is that Ogami is well-aware he isn't a particularly good person and admits as much multiple times. It gets to the point where Sakura comes off as the strawman instead, since for all her preaching about how killing is evil, she also never suggests any alternatives, and rarely does anything to stop Ogami from killing, despite supposedly being an expert martial artist who's immune to supernatural powers, almost as though some part of her knows it's them or the killers but she's too stubborn to admit it. So, despite the series' attempts to portray her as an All-Loving Heroine, she instead comes off as an arrogant, shallow and highly judgemental idiot who's trying to force her childish beliefs on this guy she barely knows.
• In Dragon Ball Z, Chi-Chi is deliberately written to be a gag character, presented as a Wet Blanket Wife who constantly tries to ruin Goku's fun or has Skewed Priorities about having a family over her husband saving the universe. Her points are almost always seen in the wrong, despite them not being entirely illegitimate.
  • She had a point in being one of the few people who didn't like Piccolo after his Heel–Face Turn. In some filler scenes of the show, she even flips out when people talked positively about him. Keep in mind, Piccolo was once a threat to the Earth. She had seen him almost kill Goku, and put a gaping hole through his chest. So it was only natural of Chi-Chi to freak out when she finds out that Piccolo killed Goku (granted Goku wanted Piccolo to do it, but it still counts), and then kidnapped her 4-year old son.
  • She's made many complaints about Gohan being put into dangerous situations and fighting all the time. Due to her always being portrayed in the wrong for this, fans tend to see Chi-Chi as annoying for these complaints. Not only are her complaints totally understandable, but even other characters (Bulma and Krillin, in particular) have made similar complaints that children shouldn't be fighting in the first place. On multiple occasions, Goku intentionally put all the pressure on his children's shoulders, and each time, it backfired. Yet Chi-Chi is constantly portrayed as wrong for this, despite not really having anyone present an effective counterargument.
  • While Chi-Chi takes her Education Mama tendencies too far (especially with her saying education is more important than the fate of the planet) and smothering Gohan all the time, she does makes a valid point that an education is necessary for one to survive and be a good contributor to society. Again, it's not her fault that her world is a stock Shounen setting always ONE fight away from destruction. Additionally, Goku has made a fair number of poor choices that come from his uneducated background while more intelligent characters such as Piccolo or even Vegeta have used their brains to find a solution.
  • Chi-Chi also bashed the Z Fighters for being a bad influence on her son Gohan in one filler episode. She went overboard, but she is completely right about Piccolo and Vegeta being a bad influence since both of them were evil and were plotting to kill Goku and Gohan at one point.
• In the Tenrou Island arc of Fairy Tail, Mest proposes evacuating everyone using his teleportation powers so the Council's forces can bombard the island since it has come under siege by Grimoire Heart. Natsu and the others from Fairy Tail object, due to not liking or trusting the Council, not wanting to blow up the island with the first Master's grave, and wanting to take down Grimoire Heart themselves. They, however, don't consider that Mest's proposal makes a fair amount of sense considering the number of injured people still on the island.
• Fire Force: The mother from chapter 281 is supposed to be seen as an irrational prude for chewing Tamaki out after she got undressed in public, which is indecent exposure, in front of a five-year-old boy.
• In Freezing, Scarlett Oohara is portrayed as being wrong for wanting to turn ordinary girls into artificial Pandoras to fight the Novas which plague humanity. The argument is that there is no point making civilians fight the battles when they're supposed to be the ones being protected, and that humans shouldn't try to reach for more than they have. Never mind that natural Pandoras are getting killed off faster than they can be born and that the current system is plenty cruel enough in that if you're born with the potential to become a Pandora, you have no other choice but to be one. Giving one a choice would be a huge benefit. Dr. Aoi Gendo, Oohara's main opposition, is okay with the Limiter system, which sends plenty of willing, once-civilian boys into the battlefield. Scarlett's point is then undermined since the E-Pandora project was never really meant to succeed in the first place. It was merely a publicity stunt to buy time for the Type Maria project. The girls who suffered and died because of the E-Pandora project did so for nothing.
• Kaze no Stigma: Kazuma is constantly portrayed as being in the wrong for his cold attitude towards the Kannagi family, especially by Ayano. What this fails to take into account, however, is that these are the same people who treated him like crap his whole life just for not being able to control fire and ultimately disowned him when he failed them one too many times. It hardly takes a genius to see that today's society has No Sympathy for Grudgeholders but the simple truth is that Kazuma has no reason to forgive the Kannagis, especially since, as shown in the first episode, most of them aren't the least bit sorry for how they treated him- in fact, they claim it was his fault for being weak.
• In My Hero Academia, during Bakugo's match against Uraraka in the U.A. Sports Festival, some of the spectators boo him for going too far, especially against a girl, and Aizawa gets fed up and tells one of the hecklers that he should quit being a hero if he feels that way, which is clearly intended to show Aizawa as being in the right and the crowd's worries are unfounded. While the booing is both disrespectful to Bakugo and to Uraraka (since it implies she doesn't have a chance), the crowd isn't necessarily wrong to be worried about what a violent and aggressive former bully like Bakugo might do to Uraraka in what is supposed to be a mock battle. It doesn't help that Bakugo does end up winning somewhat easily after thwarting Uraraka's desperate gambit, or that Midnight later has to sedate Bakugo after he angrily grabs an unconscious and defeated Todoroki at the end of the final match.
• Naruto:
  • The Leaf Village's elders' decision to keep Naruto on the Toad Mountain during Pain's attack on the village, as opposed to summoning him back to help defend the village, was portrayed as unequivocally wrong, and Tsunade's outburst and calling them out for their lack of faith in Naruto (and in the anime, subsequent lecture to them about believing) was put as the right position. However, the elders' decision was not entirely unreasonable, as the target of the attack was known to be Naruto himself, and there was no guarantee at the time that Naruto could fight, let alone defeat, Pain (a villain who had already killed Naruto's master, Jiraiya); the Elders even point out to Tsunade that it's tremendously risky, and even irresponsible, to summon Naruto back, and that if she is wrong and Naruto is defeated, the consequences could be disastrous for the world. They were almost proven right when Pain managed to catch and restrain Naruto, who was saved only by a timely intervention by Hinata. However, the elders' decision also resulted in the destruction of Konoha, and if Naruto showed up earlier, he might have had support from the village. Either way, Naruto still beats Pain. The anime portrayed the decision as influenced by Danzo, adding more fuel to the discussion of Danzo's motives. Interestingly, in later arcs the Kages make the same conclusion of hiding both Naruto and Killer Bee to keep them safe during the war, with only Tsunade and the Tsuchikage objecting to it, and it's Gaara who shoots down Tsunade's argument of putting Naruto on the front lines. Though with the same results as above, Naruto's help was required as well.
  • The Raikage is painted as a stubborn-headed git for refusing to forgive and rescind the 'kill on sight' order of Sasuke for the suspected murder of his brother. The manga tries to make it so that the Raikage's desire for revenge is clouding his personal judgment to the point where he's willing to start a Cycle of Revenge, but the fact remains that A) Sasuke is still at large, working for a terrorist organization, B) the Raikage's brother and other such targets hold the equivalent of a WMD, C) the Raikage isn't the only person who wants Sasuke's head.
  • Although it was intended to come across as an example of Sasuke's callousness and self-absorption, at least some of his observations regarding Sakura's feelings in Chapter 693 are actually spot-on. Given that by this point Sasuke has repeatedly betrayed his friends, his village, his entire nation, and at the latest turn of events the entire social order of the continent, has openly announced his intention to murder everything that is good or just in a bid to take over the world as its new demon-powered overlord, and never had anything in common with or shown the slightest bit of affection or encouragement to Sakura in their entire lives, it makes absolutely no sense that she is still in love with him, and Sasuke is being entirely on-point to stop and lampshade that. For comparison, Naruto is his best friend because they share childhoods of loneliness and time as rivals pushing each other to be stronger, along with having some combat synergy to bond in battle. Sakura is completely unable to argue when he points out that the only reason she likes him was because they were on the same team for a little while over three years ago (and she only liked him because he was attractive). It really interrupts the whole rhythm of a scene intended to show a megalomaniac's utter alienation from normal human emotion when you find yourself stopping to go "...wait, that's actually true."
• Neon Genesis Evangelion has the representative dismissing NERV's methods. He criticises their use of manned Evas that put a huge emotional strain on their pilots and generally rely too heavily on fallible humans, can't be controlled when they go berserk ('Like a hysterical woman!'), are energy-inefficient (they can go for only 5 minutes when not plugged to an energy source, while the Jet Alone can go on for months), and cost a lot of money that is sorely needed elsewhere, e.g. employment opportunities in the US (the only opponent of increasing NERV's budget) and the 20,000 people dying of starvation in Japan alone. Even worse, he makes the 'hysterical woman' comparison while talking to Ritsuko, who later on destroys the Rei clones in a fit of jealousy, and Casper, the computer based on her mother's personality as a woman, foils her attempt to make NERV's HQ self-destruct and stop Instrumentality. It can be argued just how much of a point he actually has though, considering other events in the series.
  • It's actually made apparent In-Universe that he's not wrong, either, since the only reason the Jet Alone project is scrapped is because NERV has to sabotage the prototype. Sounds like they were pretty afraid that his arguments would have left NERV out in the cold at the next budget meeting had their test proven successful. Jet Alone was admittedly a dead-end project (it lacks an AT-Field so it has next to no defensive capabilities against Angel attacks, and with a nuclear reactor, well...) but the notion that they had to go out of their way to sabotage the test shows how strained faith in NERV is in universe.
• One Piece: During the Onigashima Raid, Ulti is considered especially vile for attacking Tama and her pet Komachiyo. However, Tama was running around converting Gifters to turn against Kaido while Nami and Usopp, both major combatants in the raid, were attempting to escape on Komachiyo's back. Not to mention Tama (unintentionally) causing Big Mom to attack Ulti's brother, Page One. While attacking a child is terrible, Tama had proven herself an unacceptable threat.
• Oreimo:
  • The anime director from episode 8 is meant to be viewed as an ass for not adapting Kirino's light novel exactly the way she wants it (likely as a Take That!, given that the scene is from an anime adapting a light novel) but anyone familiar with the way the anime industry works will know that catering to the whims of one fanatical otaku (who is stated to have quite bizarre tastes even by their standards) is a good way to lose money and possibly put a lot of people out of a job.
  • Manami Tamura's outburst in the climax is meant to reveal her as a selfish Bitch in Sheep's Clothing who believes she's entitled to Kyousuke's affection and wants to steal him from Kirino. The problem is that Kirino has been an outright Jerkass for the majority of the series, and Manami, being a close friend of Kyousuke for almost all his life, has been full witness to how poorly she treated her brother. It makes no sense that he would prefer someone who treated him like dirt for most of his life instead of someone who seemed to legitimately care for him, like Manami did. While the series attempts to portray her actions in the past as being the reason the Kosaka siblings turned out this way, her motivation to try to keep Kirino and Kyousuke apart as children is very reasonable — Brother–Sister Incest is considered taboo for awfully good reasons, and she didn't have any idea that they would turn out as screwed up as they did. Maybe Kyousuke never really did love her as more than a friend, but for him to reject her in favor of someone who was the definition of Ungrateful Bitch for so many years, and still is somewhat, is just baffling, and since she was a full witness to how badly Kirino treated her brother, it is hard to blame her for blowing up at them.
• Persona 5: The Animation: While what happened between Ann and someone else at the buffet happened offscreen in the game, it is shown here that the two had bumped into each other by accident, causing the latter to spill some food on herself and get on her case about it. While that lady could have handled things better herself, the least Ann could have done to begin with would be to apologize and call out for help instead of claiming innocence.
• Pokémon: The Series:
  • In the fourth episode of the original series, whenever Ash blames the Samurai for all of his problems, it is meant to be seen as Ash just making excuses for his mistakes for not only missing his opportunity to catch a Weedle but also allowing his own Metapod to be kidnapped by the same Beedrills he provoked. At the end, he eventually learns a "lesson" from it about patience and becoming a better trainer. Except that the only reason that this event happens is because the Samurai rudely interrupted him when he was about to capture a Weedle even though he could easily have waited to challenge him, provoking a swarm of Beedrill and when his Metapod is upset at Ash for letting this happen and blaming himself for it, it's because he got sidetracked by Team Rocket, thus Ash has every right to blame the Samurai for letting his Metapod be kidnapped in the first place. In other words, the Samurai is not just a novice but also an arrogant hypocrite who is never called out by Misty nor the narrative.
  • Upon being defeated by his friend Richie in the Indigo League, Ash becomes incredibly upset at his loss to the point that we're supposed to treat it as him being a Sore Loser with his "friends" telling him that he should have trained his Charizard better and not to make excuses for his loss as Ash eventually accepts his defeat. However, in this case Ash has a very good reason to react the way he does; at the start of the match, his other Pokémon were used up while trying to escape from Team Rocket due to Officer Jenny's absence, resulting in a massive handicap with his own Pokémon, with the referee refusing to let him postpone the match. No wonder Ash reacted the way he did after his defeat; him losing his match against Richie was the culmination of one of the worst days he's ever had. What's more, Ash did hide his angst long enough to congratulate Richie the moment he lost, in full view of everyone who was judging him for feeling sad. What harm is he causing if he feels like crying in the privacy of his own room? Plus, even if Ash was too lazy not to bother trying to fix things with Charizard, the series presented the big lug as not even willing to try and mend fences; it would take it almost dying again before he realized Ash truly did care about him.
  • The episode "A Chansey Operation" introduces Doctor Proctor, a callous, lazy physician who would rather flirt with Nurse Joy than lift a finger while off duty. When Team Rocket causes a traffic accident that injures a literal truckful of Pokémon, Nurse Joy essentially commandeers him and his hospital into helping treat the monsters, a decision which he protests strongly. While the episode treats this decision as bad (and his casual attitude is admittedly cruel), he's absolutely right - he's a human physician, not a Pokémon veterinarian. He has little knowledge about their reactions to certain medicines or their proper temperatures, if he had to do a major operation there would be no guarantee that he would have the faintest idea which major organs did what, never mind that a large number of the Pokémon are very dangerous and hard to control (many are severely agitated to the point that Ash and company had to use their own Pokémon to subdue them, and one of them, an agitated Dodrio, ends up accidentally sedating the doctor in question). If anything, he's being more responsible than the trio or Nurse Joy. She never seems to consider just using the clearly established Pokémon teleportation technology to send them to another Pokémon Center.
  • Paul is meant to be a Take That! to competitive Pokemon players who view the worth of a Pokemon by how strong they are genetically, and he releases those he deems "weak", often immediately after catching them. However, the only reason these sorts of players exist is because the Individual Value mechanic, where a Pokemon's stats are inherently worse than those of another belonging to the same species just because of a series of numbers they were randomly assigned. Thus, to succeed at high levels of competitive play, one has to spend countless hours engaging in a Super Breeding Program to create a full team of Ubermensch Pokemon with max Individual Values.
  • One episode has a teacher trying to get rid of a Trubbish, which is a living garbage bag. The kids in her class scream and disobey their teacher because they want to keep it. We're supposed to see Daniela as a mean, stubborn teacher who isn't listening to their concerns. But the kids just demand they get their way, and Daniela is concerned about the kids playing with living garbage that spits out toxic fumes - there's a reason kids in this series have to be a certain age to own Pokémon, after all.
• Record of Grancrest War has this at the end when Theo confronts the Mage Association's defeated leaders to know why they conspired to keep the humans from destroying the Chaos that plagued the world for so many years. In response, the great jewel that holds the history of the world shows him what had happened to a previous civilization that wiped out Chaos: they grew so technologically advanced that they imploded on themselves, completely destroying their civilization, before asking Theo if this is the future he desires. Theo shrugs it off by claiming that his and the other characters' heroism will serve to create an enlightened state of permanent peace where such a thing will never happen. One wonders how he'd be so sure about that after they're all dead, however.
• A real thinker in Rurouni Kenshin. The central Aesop of the series circulates around Redemption Equals Life, Everybody Lives, and Forgiveness, and main character Himura Kenshin breathes this philosophy in order to atone for his past crimes. However, Kenshin's rival, Saito Haijime, deconstructs Kenshin's no-kill philosophy by stating that by allowing his enemies — who are usually Ax-Crazy, sociopathic, Card Carrying Villains — to live, he endangers more lives than he saves. This has happened. Case in point, during the Jinchuu Arc, Kenshin defeats and spares two of Six Comrades, Gein and Kujiranami, who are no doubt the most dangerous. What do they do as soon as they recuperate during the climax of the battle (when their boss Enishi is going to enact his true revenge against Kenshin)? They go straight onto aiding Enishi again.
• Sailor Moon has a point in the R breakup arc where Usagi tells Mamoru that they are destined to be together; he's Prince Endymion, she's Princess Serenity, and they were in love before they were ever born. Mamoru's response is to ask what that has to do with their present situation, and why they have to be in love just because they were in love in a past life. It's a good question (and in fact calls out the entire premise of the series), but he isn't actually telling the truth about his motives and the viewer isn't supposed to take him seriously for a second.
• Seton Academy: Join the Pack!: Despite Jin's Fantastic Racism towards animals, his repulsiveness towards Ranka isn't entirely unjust. In addition to the two being different species, Ranka's behavior was no better in the first episode as she shows hostility until being given food and forcefully inducts Jin into her pack despite his reluctance while being an extreme Clingy Jealous Girl towards Hitomi (not to mention being loud). Jin's reaction by lashing out at her later on is basically what a normal man would do, especially if one were to replace Ranka with a similarly obsessive human girl.
• In the anime adaptation of Shadowverse Luca says that Shadowverse is not fun, but rather it's a tool that is meant to help him further his goals of helping his ill sister, Shiori. While both the anime and the main character Hiro insists that he's wrong for not enjoying Shadowverse, it's hard to blame him on why he can't. He's has his trust broken by the adults that were supposed to take care of him, his sister is ill and may not have much time left to get her treatment done, and Shadowverse is the quickest and easiest way in-universe to make money, so why would enjoying Shadowverse solve his problem in the slightest? If anything, if he did enjoy himself while helping his sister, his sister might perish before he could even make any progress on her treatment. He has very good reasons to not enjoy Shadowverse while helping his sister.
• Sonic X:
  • Knuckles largely exists as a Commander Contrarian to the team that desires to take more desperate measures to get back home. While he has a bad attitude (especially where Sonic is concerned) and some of his antics like trusting Eggman over and over are genuinely short-sighted, the team tend to demean Knuckles over any point he makes, a few of which are rather valid and likely would lead to less disastrous results if followed, though this is never called out. Most of the time he argues with them, Knuckles is tricked or bullied into following through rather than reasoned with, despite the team endlessly pointing out how wrong it is when Eggman manipulates Knuckles in a similar manner.
  • Vector claims that Cream, a six-year-old girl, should be sent home to her mother Vanilla rather than tagging along with Sonic and the others, since they're fighting a powerful and murderous alien force. While Vector steps over the line by eventually trying to physically send Cream back against her will, it's hard not to feel like Vector is right, especially since this version of Cream is far less physically capable than her counterpart from the video games. Much like their arguments with Knuckles, the other teammates openly belittle Vector's arguments as if him being wrong is somehow obvious enough that they can be completely dismissed, and angrily label him an egotist who should butt out.
• A manga one-shot by Rumiko Takahashi called The Tragedy of P tells the story of an apartment complex where pets are forbidden. We're supposed to resent Mrs. Kakei, who's the most vociferous pet-opponent of all the members of the tenants' association, for the way she mercilessly throws out all tenants who are discovered keeping pets. But the thing is, the tenants' agreement clearly forbids keeping pets. Although Mrs. Kakei's stoic demeanor helps convey the image of her as cold and evil, the pet-keeping tenants did sign an agreement saying they wouldn't keep pets. So they're breaking their word and being dishonest, and we're expected to dislike Mrs. Kakei for not wanting them to. It's revealed that Mrs. Kakei had a beloved dog she was forced to give up after moving into the apartment complex, a decision that was emotionally devastating to her, but she still did it because that was what she agreed to do by signing the tenants' agreement. So her apathy towards her fellow tenants over breaking this rule makes perfect sense because she's upholding herself to the same standards that she expects of her fellow tenants, and because she didn't expect an exception for her beloved pet then nobody else should expect an exception either.
• The Mystical Laws: Tathagata Killer is a Hollywood Atheist who invades the world as leader of the Godom Empire in the name of eradicating all religion. His policies enforced upon Japan include killing anyone found to be religious as well as their entire families, censorship of all media and... teaching kids about Japan's warcrimes in World War II such as the Rape of Nanking, which is downplayed in the Japanese education system and often isn't taught. Happy Science, the makers behind this religious film, are infamous for pushing beliefs held by the Japanese far-right, including saying that any accusations of Japan's actions in World War II are mostly, or even all false and/or exaggerated, or the provably false statement that Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution prevents Japan from defending themselves from an invasion.
• The Twelve Kingdoms:
  • Given that Shoukou is a lunatic guilty of committing multiple atrocities such as hunting humans for sport, it's easy to write off his denouncement of the practice of having each kingdom's ruler chosen by kirin according to the mandate of heaven. However, when one takes into account that the kirin, as spirits of mercy and compassion, have an In-Universe alignment of Stupid Good (to the point that one of the first things a good king has to learn is when to ignore their kirin, since a kingdom cannot be run by compassion alone), that each king becomes The Ageless when they take the throne (and thus stay in power unless/until they go bad and have to be overthrown, which happens eventually in most cases), and that because each king is a Fisher King, a bad ruler causes all kinds of natural disasters in his or her kingdom (famine, plague, armies of rampaging monsters...), it's hard not to concede that Shoukou has a point.
  • Shoukei is meant to portray a spoiled, whiny brat who wants to get out of her responsibilities. She continually complains that she's not responsible for her father's actions... which she isn't... and that she had no way of knowing her "responsibility" to stand up to her father... which she didn't. Rakushun (clearly the author's avatar) tells her that she should have known, that her conscience should have told her that the right thing to do was to stand up to her father, and that she should have known that something was very wrong... that it was only "natural" to know. In fact, the "natural" thing for children to do is follow their parents' example, and to accept the reality with which they're presented. Especially when a child's father is portrayed as both doting and severe (as Shoukei's father was), who doted on Shoukei while repeatedly ordering thousands of people to their deaths for the slightest infraction, the least natural thing for a child of such a parent to do, is stand up and tell him that they're wrong.
• YuYu Hakusho:
  • The Koorime are made to appear to us as heartless bitches who would willingly condemn a child to death just because his mother made him with someone from a different race (albeit a demon) and he looks "a little" creepy at birth. Even his sister, Yukina, by far the purest creature, thinks their whole kind deserves to be killed for what they did to her, her mother, and her brother (although she also expresses that she sees it as a form of Mercy Kill). The problem is, their point is completely valid. All the male offspring so far have killed many Koorime, who can only reproduce at intervals of over a century. Hiei was only saved by The Power of Friendship.
  • A minor example from the Dark Tournament arc is George suggesting Hiei attack Bui while the latter is busy removing his armor. While the women chew him out for suggesting such a dishonorable act, they seem to forget a very important detail. The tournament isn't an officially sanctioned martial arts competition. It's Blood Sport where the only consistent rules are 1) No interfering with the match. 2) Stay in the ring. When most matches are won by killing your opponent, every fighter should be a Combat Pragmatist.
  • Mr. Akashi and Mr. Iwamoto are undoubtedly irredeemable jerks, but their attempts to get Yusuke and Kuwabara expelled aren't unjustified, as they weren't exactly model students. While Kuwabara made an effort to be a straight-A student and avoid his delinquent lifestyle, it was implied that Yusuke never improved his school life.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds:
  • Yusei is a rare protagonist example of a strawman after the Machine Emperors appear. Worried about what might happen if he confronts a Machine Emperor again, Yusei determines the best strategy is to duel without relying on Synchro Monsters, since Machine Emperors have the ability to absorb them to get stronger. Yusei duels Jack to test out this strategy, only for Jack to gain the upper hand and quit because he thinks it's ineffective, without offering any alternatives of his own. This "No Synchros" strategy of Yusei's soon gets brushed aside as he gets introduced to the concept of Accel Synchro, which as the name suggests, are still Synchro monsters that can be absorbed by the Machine Emperors (the ones we see have some protective effects, but that's counterbalanced by the fact that they require at least two standard Synchros just to be brought out). Yusei is meant to be seen as cowardly because of his fear of the Machine Emperors and his refusal to face them head on, but his strategy of not relying on Synchros makes a lot of sense considering they get stronger by absorbing Synchro monsters. Even then, there's a lot of Duelists who don't really rely on or even use Synchros in the series, so it's not like it's mandatory. To the viewer, the problem seems to be not that Yusei was choosing to not use Synchros, but that the particular non-Synchro strategy he tried out was phenomenally bad.
  • While his plan to destroy an entire city is undoubtedly drastic, Z-one is the last human survivor of a Bad Future who is trying to prevent the apocalypse that destroyed the world in his timeline. Team 5D's fights against his plan without even trying to think up of an alternative way to prevent said apocalypse besides a generic hope speech.

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