The Pirates Who Dont Do Anything / Anime & Manga

• The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You: After becoming one of Rentarou's soulmates, Hahari buys his school and makes herself chairwoman in order to have an excuse to stay by his side. Despite this, we never actually see her engaged in any chairwoman activity.
• Bleach:
  • The manga only shows a few examples of Shinigami hunting Hollows or cleansing souls. The story focuses on the most powerful Shinigami, who simply don't handle that kind of grunt work. Additionally, most of the story takes place during various major conflicts that take priority over normal duties. One major arc pits the main cast against a group of hollows that have evolved their powers, so in a way they're doing the same job they always have, just against more powerful opponents.
  • Among the seated officers, Yachiru is a lieutenant who doesn't even do lieutenant duties (fighting/administration) most of the time. She usually prefers to play, eat sweets and watch Kenpachi fight to the exclusion of all else. Her division has two proxy lieutenants in the form of the third and fifth seats.
• Space Pirate Captain Harlock. He once robbed a ship and threw the valuables into space. He has claimed that pirates who steal are dishonoring the name of pirates. Lampshaded in Captain Harlock: Endless Odyssey, when Tadashi Daiba lambasts the good Captain for his reluctance to give orders and keep discipline onboard the Arcadia. Cosmo Warrior Zero, however, does portray him as a legitimate and somewhat bloodthirsty villain — who is still opposing a Vichy Earth. This is the only show that portrays him as such, though: most of the other shows, especially My Youth in Arcadia imply that Powers That Be labeled him a pirate, because they were afraid that he would inspire them to rise up against the Vichy Earth.
• Played with Chainsaw Man: Most of the protagonist in Part 1 are devil hunters. While they do directly live up to their name on some missions, Public Safety's jurisdiction also includes defense against humans using devils' powers via contract, which is what several arcs focus on. It's implied quite a lot of people are licensed as "devil hunters" primarily for legal access to devil contracts, even if they primarily use them for mercenary work—in secret or with government approval.
• City Hunter:
  • Ryo Saeba is supposed to be a hitman, and a good enough one to terrorize most criminals he is involved with. However, although he is certainly badass enough to be feared, he rarely actually takes assassination jobs. Justified by the definition of "sweeper" being "private detective/bodyguard who is illegal due using a gun in the most gun-phobic country of the world, with assassinations on the side" and only accepting to assassinate someone if the aspiring employer's reasons to have him murder someone touch his heart (Ryo himself states this in an early story arc. Near the end of the manga we also see him refusing one such job because the aspiring employer was a Corrupt Corporate Executive that wanted him to kill a nosy journalist).
  • Umibozu is initially introduced as a hitman, but the first time he tries he lets himself get bribed into failing the job (an actress had hired him to kill herself, but he happened to be a fan of hers and Ryo, who had been hired by the producer to protect her, knew it and got his help into giving her back her will to live), and when we see him in action he's usually helping Ryo for some reason or the other. In fact, the only time he's seriously trying to assassinate someone is an anime-only two parter, where a politician hires him to retrieve his disappeared daughter and kill the guy who had either kidnapped her or was her lover, and even then he ultimately ditched the assassination part of the job due the circumstances (the guy he was supposed to kill appeared to be Ryo, who was trying to find out why the girl was treating him as his lover for no apparent reason. Once it turned out she was on the run from terrorists and was using Ryo to defend her, the need for assassination disappeared).
• The titular Cromartie High School is populated almost entirely by rough and tough delinquents who spend a lot of time talking about how tough they are and how many people they've beaten up, but rarely actually get into any fights and instead just hang out and have Seinfeldian Conversations. Cromartie is also allegedly a high school but there's not a single teacher or faculty member to be seen anywhere.
• One of the viewpoint characters of Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak High School: Despair is a spy whose day job is teaching. Naturally, we never see her actually doing much teaching, especially since her class already got plenty of screentime in the previous installment.
• Doctor Slump: Tsuruten is supposed to be an inventor like Senbei, but we rarely (if ever) see him inventing anything (though he has created the family’s spaceship).
• In Dragon Ball, we have the hierarchy of the Gods, who oversee the various worlds and galaxies. With a few exceptions^note The Kaiōshins fought against Buu's original rampage, God trained Goku and the Z-Warriors for two upcoming threats, and Enma Daiō decides who goes to Heaven and Hell, absolutely none of them have ever been shown doing anything important, from the God of Earth all the way up to the Kaiōshin, who oversees the entire universe. It becomes something of a running joke that all they do is sit around observing the worlds below them and either making casual comments or fretting about how bad things are going, with any intervention on their part deemed "disrupting the order of things" and leaving it up to the mortals to sort it out. Which raises the question why they are even there in the first place...
  • ...Something Zamasu also wondered, and ultimately became his reason for killing all the other Kaiōshins. Well, that and to prevent them from interfering with the Zero Mortals Plan.
  • It doesn't help that Dragon Ball's Sorting Algorithm of Evil meaning that newer threats must necessarily be stronger than old ones, and the need to keep only Son Goku and his close allies strong enough to be relevant to the plot, means that benevolent deities are only ever introduced in order to be shown to have been too weak to deal with whichever monster is introduced in the same arc. In other words, higher levels of gods are only ever introduced when they're already too weak to be plot-relevant, leading to them appearing very ineffectual as guardians. The Kaiōshin suffers from this the most. He is introduced as a mysterious being who freaks out most of the heroes merely by his presence, yet within a couple of episodes he is reduced to standing in stunned awe as the three main characters prove to be far, far stronger than himself.
  • Super also establishes that part of the Kaiōshins' duties is creating planets. Which we still don't see them doing much of, but it does explain their ability to create other things (like clothes).
  • Super somewhat justifies it with the introduction of "Mortal Levels", which serve as Grand Zeno's evaluations of how good a job each universe's Gods are doing. It's revealed that Universe 7 is in second-to-last place, ahead of only the nightmarish Crapsack World that is Universe 9. In other words, it's confirmed that Beerus and Shin just suck at their jobs.
  • A common occupation for one-off movie villains is "Space Pirate" (Turles, Lord Slug, and Bojack are all labeled as such in some source). Despite this, we basically never see them doing much space piracy (that is to say, raiding spaceships and taking their stuff), and they seem to be typical Galactic Conqueror types.
• The "Space Pirate" theme is roughly deconstructed in Eureka Seven. Renton, a teenager with longing for adventure and to get out of his boring town, is accepted to the famous battleship that fights against the government and has its own media franchise telling the world how cool they are and "exposing the truth". He expects all kind of cool things there, but discovered most of the crew is lazy and have no qualms in taunting and using a teenager to do all their work without thanking him, the ship is almost naked on the inside and they have little money and have to do odd jobs (usually amoral at best) to keep things going. To top it off, the captain is an Abusive Parent figure who turned slacker and scaredy-cat (to feelings at least) himself.
• The thieves of Mount Reikaku in Fushigi Yuugi make a few nominal stabs at banditry when they first appear, but mostly seem to hang out, drink and squabble. Tasuki himself, despite having been appointed their leader, is almost never seen actually stealing things or even expressing a particular desire to do so. In fact, he's one of the more gullible characters in the series.
• Great Teacher Onizuka spends very little time doing any proper teaching, though he does go out of his way to teach his students many important life lessons not found in a typical school curriculum. The manga shows a few of his classes and even a couple of his lesson plans, and all of them serve to demonstrate that he has absolutely no idea what he's doing. One class involves his dressing up as Devilman to teach a lesson about sociology, only to give up halfway through and show the kids how to shoot bottle rockets out of their homeroom window instead.
• Nozomu from I Can't Understand What My Husband Is Saying is said to be a boxer on top of his job at a convenience store. The only time this comes up is in an Eye Catch that referenced Hajime no Ippo.
• We're told that the major camps in Ikki Tousen are all schools, and indeed the characters are all of the age where they certainly ought to be in school. However, all any of them do all day is fight, indulge their perversities and generally engage in mobster-like behaviour. The whole 'school' thing may as well just be a decorative theme; not once is a teacher so much as seen at all, never mind seen teaching.
• The Akina Speed Stars of Initial D. Partly because they know that Takumi is the only person there who has any real driving skill and really didn't want to lose him, since if he leaves they can't defend their home turf from any decent racers. This was a big part of the first season, when Takumi didn't want to drive but his friends in the Akina Speed Stars convinced him. Koichiro is the only actual member who had any kind of race whatsoever. The first nearly wrecked his car, and he was completely left in the dust in the second.
• Kaguya-sama: Love Is War.:
  • Conversed in Chapter 75, which has Iino getting the group to do some actual onscreen work after noticing the trend of them not performing their duties while in the council room. They actually do work, but Shirogane points out that she's never around when they work.
  • Lampshaded in the penultimate chapter of spin-off series We Want to Talk About Kaguya, where it's pointed out by the narration that it took 193 chapters for Karen and Erika to actually be shown doing any work for the Mass Media Club.
• Kochikame revolves around police officers who are rarely seen doing any police work.
• In K-On!, despite all of the main characters being part of the light music club, they don't really play much and spend most of their time hanging out in the clubroom and eating cake. When Azusa joins the band, she's put off by how laid-back the band's members are due to taking musicianship more seriously. As far as the show is concerned, the lack of concerts and practicing is a Running Gag; it's more of an Iyashikei than a full-fledged music anime.
• Love Hina:
  • Keitaro is supposed to be the temporary manager/landlord of Hinata Inn while his grandmother is away, but he doesn't really do any management-related duties onscreen and spends most of his time studying for college entrance exams. Much of the day-to-day management seems to be done by his aunt Haruka instead.
  • Kitsune claims to be a freelance writer; there's exactly zero evidence to support this. Though it's more socially acceptable to list "writer" instead of "Con Artist" as your occupation.
• Akira Kogami from Lucky Star is supposedly an Idol Singer and talks quite a bit about her career, but she's never actually seen doing any idol work. She doesn't even get to actually perform onscreen aside from singing karaoke in episode 16, which was all the staff of Lucky Channel could afford. In the last episode she finally gets a chance to perform in the main show, only for Shiraishi to cut her off since it was just a "mic check".
• Apart from the pilots, Yurika (captain), and Ruri (chief science officer) the rest of the crew of the Nadesico in Martian Successor Nadesico seem to spend very little time running a spaceship. Specific examples are Jun Aoi (vice captain), Minato Haruka (helmswoman), Goat Hoary, and Munetake (admiral) who never seem to do anything related to their profession.
• Misaki from Misaki Number One also is never seen teaching anything else but life lessons to her students.
• The Crossbone Vanguard in Mobile Suit Crossbone Gundam are typically called space pirates despite being a guerilla warfare group trying to take down the Jupiter Empire. That said, they do play up the image of being pirates, since it makes a nice cover for their real activities. They do engage in raiding Imperial supply ships, but that's about the only "piratey" thing they do: they release any prisoners they capture unharmed, they don't attack civilians, and they spend their time sabotaging the Jupiter Empire's military rather than looting and plundering.
• My Bride is a Mermaid: The Seto Group is a yakuza family, but the most illicit thing we see them do is heckle Nagasumi under their boss's orders (and possibly the mermaid equivalent of human trafficking with the yakuza-run goldfish game.)
• Naruto: Ninjas were covert agents and mercenaries, who engaged in such things as espionage and assassination and so on and so forth (or at least, that's what pop culture agrees they were, but the difference is semantic). While early arcs did make some attempt to play up these things, at no point did any of the good guys actually do any of it, despite being trained for it. Later in the series this is outright abandoned as the cast begins pursuing personal vendettas and fighting the bad guys using lasers and giant animals. It's less ninja vs. ninja and more super martial artists vs. super warlords.
  • Kakashi (before the series) and other former ANBU Black Ops ninja do this, and Jiraiya (despite being a Highly-Visible Ninja) went on intelligence-gathering missions frequently (though some of those times were also an excuse to conduct "research" for his next book). The reason we don't see it much is probably because most episodes are told through Naruto's POV, and he would never be able to be stealthy and patient enough for that.^note And the narrative conveniently sidesteps him having to personally kill anyone.
  • Another thing to remember is that the ninja in Naruto are different than real world ninja; they are the military force of their respective nations, who are sometimes hired by nations without ninja villages or by individuals, so their duties would be different.
• In Noragami, an interesting version of this occurs. Most Gods in this story can be seen engaging in the activity which they are the God of, or at the very least engaged in the trappings of such. Tenjin, the God of Academics, looks and acts like a scholar. Bishamonten, the God of war, runs around in a stripperiffic officer's uniform atop a lion. Even Yato, a former God of war, is acknowledged to be handy with a blade, and not a stranger to killing. Kofuku however, is portrayed as a sweet, kind girl who never bothers anyone, and is friendly to all who meet her. She could almost be the sweetheart in a harem anime, if it weren't for her true title: the God of poverty. We never see her intentionally or malevolently make anyone poor onscreen. The incident where she does make someone poor seems to be an accident, and something she didn't really intend. The only real hint we get of how dangerous Kofuku is, and why she is a Pirate who doesn't do anything, is one scene where she threatens Bishamonten, who is herself a badass. Bishamonten is visibly frightened by her threat, which doesn't make much sense, until you do some checking and see who has the bigger body count. ^note According to the WHO, there were 58 million deaths in 2005. Hunger alone took the lions share of those deaths with 36 million. Even before you take into account death from poverty inflicted disease, it's clear that poverty is far more fatal than war. This makes Kofuku the most lethal member of the cast, even though she doesn't look or act it.
• One Piece has become more and more of this as time has gone on. There do exist pirates who do things like kill, pillage, steal, and plunder (mostly the more villainous pirate groups, from Buggy right at the beginning), but most of the main pirates have very little interest in treasure (with some notable exceptions like Nami). Pirates often tend to be more about absolute freedom than anything else, or achieving a particular life dream. Even Luffy's goal, to find the 'ultimate treasure' One Piece, is only because the title of Pirate King means that he has more freedom than anyone on the seas.
  • Outside of one flashback in an anime filler episode, "Pirate Hunter Zoro" has never been seen actually performing any bounty hunting, since the first time he's seen he's been captured, and he joins Luffy soon after. Even years after he's given up the bounty hunting business and gained more notoriety as Luffy's right-hand man than he ever did as a Bounty Hunter, his moniker is still the same. Funnily enough, the Straw Hat Pirates do seem to take down a whole lot of other Pirates, making them more bounty hunters than pirates if anything.
  • The only time the Straw Hats did something that could be called piracy was when they "stole" some gold from Sky Island. However, the inhabitants would have given them even more gold if they had asked, as said inhabitants were very happy that Luffy took down "God" Eneru (the local ruler and arc villain) and had no desire or use for the gold. In fact, they were more interested in and excited about Usopp's rubber bands (which they don't have on Sky Island) than the gold.
  • After the Time Skip, generally all of the "good" crews are this, while "bad" crews like the Donquixote Family, Kid Pirates, and Big Mom Pirates are shown to do more typical pirate things. And even then, some of their criminal activities tend to differ a little from what an actual pirate would do; the Donquixote family is more preoccupied with ruling an island and trafficking artificial Devil Fruits, and the Four Emperors are less pirates, and more really successful warlords at best, what with having actual empires they rule and even tax in some cases.
  • It's made clearer that "Pirate" is more or less a catch-all term for "criminals vaguely at sea" when Pedro's backstory reveals that the Nox expedition party was renamed the Nox Pirates by the world government for trying to find poneglyphs.
  • Lampshaded when a third party intervenes during a one-on-one fight, and Luffy's opponent (the beneficiary) apologizes for it not being fair and tries to compensate. Luffy points out that being fair isn't really a pirate thing to begin with and had no qualms with the disadvantage.
  • Earlier drafts acknowledged this by having two specifically named types of Pirates. The more traditional rape, pillage, and plunder type "Morganeer" pirates; and the pirates described by this trope dubbed "Peace Main" who mainly pirated other pirates. This distinction has so far been left out of the main series.
• The anime adaptation of PaRappa the Rapper very rarely features the titular character actually rapping.
• Pokémon: The Series:
  • Misty's stated quest is to become a Water-type master, largely in spite of her sisters who are implied to have been driven aground into this Trope themselves, ^note They all-but-abdicated their Gym Leadership after being trounced by Ash's early rivals, though it's also implied that they weren't too serious about that job anyway but aside from some water-themed captures early on, she doesn't advance in this goal, save for half of the Whirl-Islands filler arc, where she (and Ash) participate in a water-themed tournament, exchanging such progress for being Togepi's nanny.
  • In addition to being a Gym Leader himself, though he's on official leave from that, Brock was introduced as wanting to be a Pokemon Breeder. Yet, like Misty, that plot point was essentially dropped early on (in this case, in favor of hitting on the ladies ad nauseum). When he finally gets written out of the show, he's actually switched goals to wanting to be a Pokémon doctor.
  • Ash Ketchum himself is another example. Early on in his quest, he boasts that he will catch tons of Pokémon. He has yet to back up this goal — he has not caught that many species of Pokémon. As of his final appearance at the end of the Pokémon Journeys: The Series, he has 75 individual Pokémon in his possession, which includes all of his Tauros, with another 11 that he no longer owns for various reasons.^note  Mr. Mime is with his mother, Squirtle and Pimeape have been left with other trainers, Butterfree/Lapras/Greninja/Goodra/Naganadel were all released, Aipom and Raticate were traded away (Raticate within the same episode he received it), and a Beedrill he gave to Casey also within the same episode he caught it. This might have been impressive before hundreds more species were discovered and his final partner didn't manage to catch a few legendaries...
• Prétear: In the manga storyline, Natsue is the CEO of a cosmetics company but this fact is rarely stated and the only time she's ever seen doing something related to that is during a flashback from when she asked her butler to test one product. One of the other few times her job is mentioned has Himeno comment that "at least she's supposed to be".
• Despite being sent to school in the second episode, as well as numerous arcs that center around school characters or are set in the school, the students of Ranma ½ don't seem to be doing that much... schoolwork. Sure they are shown sitting down in class and standing outside in the hallway, but it seems they spend way more time with extracurricular activities (like sports) and martial arts than they actually do learning which is common of most stories involving schools.
  • Speaking of school, how about that Tendo "dojo"? 36 volumes, 0 students.
• The Vongola family from Reborn! (2004) have yet to do anything terribly illegal despite being The Mafia. Even Reborn, the teeny-tiny assassin, never manages to kill anyone with his array of magic bullets. This is mainly due to Tsuna being a pacifist, who doesn't want anyone to die. In the past the Vongola were known to be fiercer and much more violent.
  • Later in the series, by the end the Future Arc, it's revealed that this trope is the real reason why Tsuna is chosen as the 10th boss. Why? Because that's how the Vongola Family was supposed to be since the very first incarnation, which is to say, more of a vigilante group of friends than the full-fledged criminal ring that it became.
• The student council in Revolutionary Girl Utena spends all their time in scheming on behalf of The End Of The World, dueling, or doing things for their school clubs. Juri is the only member shown spending time doing normal student council activities like helping to organize school events, and even that is only in one scene across a thirty-nine episode anime.
• The Sands of Destruction anime turns the World Destruction Committee into one lonely teenage girl who talks about ending the world, but never actually seems to get around to making any progress on that front (her body count is a flat zero by the end of the series, and even her number of attempts can be counted on one's hand). Perhaps justified, since it's actually just a name the Ferals made up to make her sound more imposing (after all, admitting that your biggest problem is a teenager with a bad case of PMS doesn't exactly make you look like the most competent superior species). The Sands of Destruction manga, on the other hand, actually does make her a dangerous threat, and she's shown bombing a town into oblivion in the prologue, then complaining that it's not entirely annihilated because the outlines of foundations are still visible in the rubble. She does it again several chapters in, which prompts Kyrie to leave her. The World Destruction Committee is also back to being a team of people as it was in the game, though as in the game, you won't see any members besides Morte and the leader.
• The only thing Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei's Nozomu Itoshiki ever actually taught his class was that potato starch turns purple if you add iodine. No, rants on society don't count...
• In a chapter of School Zone Girls, it's revealed that Yatsude and Tsubaki are the only members of the film research club, and have never actually done any film research, instead spending their club time on cleaning the clubroom and hanging out. Yatsude claims that there used to be a more active membership, and she joined for reasons she no longer remembers, but only went to a few meetings where they basically just ate out at restaurants and chatted. Since everyone else in the club graduated, she's considered the president of the club by default (and chose to stay in part because she wanted to go to a club president meeting), and Tsubaki is only a member because she wants to spend time with Yatsude.
• In Sherlock Hound, Professor Moriarty spends a lot of time doing things related to his self-assigned title as a criminal mastermind, but does absolutely nothing to justify him calling himself a professor, as the only time he's seen anywhere near a school in the entire series is if he's trying to rob it. Of course if his backstory is the same as in the original stories, he's a disgraced former professor only keeps the title as a courtesy.
• The demons of Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle are ostensibly at war with humans, but aside from kidnapping the princess (who actually prefers life with the demons because she doesn't have to worry about carrying out her royal duties) they don't really engage in anything resembling warfare, or even real antagonism towards humans. They do go out to battle the hero who's coming to rescue the princess, but it's a pure case of Card Carrying Villainy; they also deliberately plant helpful treasure and weapons for him to find, and on the rare occasions they actually do obstruct his mission, it's purely by accident. The story as a whole is much more focused on day to day life in the castle and the shenanigans the princess gets up to, with the whole "demon war" thing staying mostly in the background.
• For most of Tail of the Moon, Usagi falls squarely into the aforementioned category of "ninja in name only", though after the destruction of Iga and Hanzo's disappearance, she gets better.
• The four protagonists of Teekyuu are the four members of their school's tennis club...except they very rarely actually play tennis; when approached for an interview they'll instead break out a Famicom and play Pong, or re-enact it.
• Kuryugumi's Sandaime in Tokyo Crazy Paradise forbids the Yakuza to take part in drug trafficking, human trafficking or underground fights. What they do take part in is never made clear.
• Kyouko in Wagnaria!! never really does her job as restaurant manager other than eating, and other characters notice this.
• We never see the yakuza in The Way of the Househusband do any illegal activity, even the ones who aren't retired like Tatsu is. One mob boss is more obsessed with his cute little dog's birthday than anything else, while a queenpin mostly appears at the local cat cafe.
• Reina and her flunkies in Yandere Kanojo consider themselves to be delinquents, but, outside of liking fighting and being somewhat foul-mouthed, they don't really do much to would support this claim; they attend class, they don't smoke, drink or do drugs, and, though Reina and the school's principal don't really get along, she never skips out on any punishments he hands out.
• YuYu Hakusho: For someone who was appointed Spirit Detective, Yusuke does next to nothing that has anything to do with finding clues and solving crimes. A title better suited to what he actually does would be Spirit Enforcer, since the main thing he does is beat up supernatural criminals that Koenma's people have already identified. Much of his crime solving happens in the early chapters (many of which were never adapted to the anime), which were noticeably different from the rest of the series.
• It's not all that clear what the intended purpose of the Yuyushiki's "Data Processing Club" is, but it probably isn't "lounge around and goof off on the internet."
• Zettai BL ni Naru Sekai VS Zettai BL ni Naritakunai Otoko: The main character notices that there's a big amount of delinquents in the city he lives in, even though the city is really peaceful. He notes that they don't do anything, and are just in the manga for the aesthetics of the delinquent, so there can be a Bad Boy romance in the world. The only delinquent to receive a focus is described as being pure-hearted and immediately falls in love with an honors student.

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