Big Brother Instinct / Visual Novels

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• Ace Attorney:
  • Lana Skye from Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney comes across as an Aloof Big Sister to Ema, but as it turns out, she's been acting as a reluctant accomplice to Gant for years, all to protect Ema from the Awful Truth: that she accidentally killed Neil Marshall during the SL-9 Incident. However, Gant actually staged the scene to frame Ema and killed Neil himself, all so he could manipulate Lana's protective instincts and blackmail her into forging evidence for him whenever he saw fit.
  • In Justice For All, the third trial reveals that Acro had this for his little brother, Bat, which was how he ended up confined to a wheelchair. When he saw Bat getting his head chewed on by a lion, he ran in to save him and was attacked as a result.
  • In Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney, Apollo shows signs of having this for Trucy. When she's grabbed by a threatening intruder in the courtroom during case 4-2, he follows after and, when he finds her alright, he cries and shouts how he's going to press charges on whoever did it (he's not too happy to find out Trucy faked the kidnapping herself). He is also shown accompanying her to various places, even if he himself isn't very interested (like Klavier's band concert). Bonus points for The Reveal that he really is Trucy's big brother!
  • Simon Blackquill to Athena in Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Dual Destinies, to the point where he'll confess to a murder he didn't commit just because he believes she did it when she was a child.
  • Miles Edgeworth, despite being a serious character who doesn't show much emotion, softens up considerably around young women, especially gifted teenagers like Ema Skye and Kay Faraday, who may blunder at times but are clearly serious about their work. This is probably because his own little sister, Franziska von Karma, is too proud to let him be the big brother.
• Aquarium: Since their mother's passing, Fubuki doubles as Theo's protective mother figure.
• Cafe Enchante:
  • All the non-romanced regulars look after Kotone and protect her from various dangers that occur, both in the human world and in the non-human worlds.
  • Despite being a demon and angel respectively, Misyr is protective over Il who, due to his naïve and carefree nature, can get in trouble when out of the café. In Il's route, Misyr levels a Death Glare on Solitus who caused Il to reset to his original programming who even called Il a "puppet" and he holds a particular grudge against Solitus for doing that to Il.
  • While it's implied that Vennia is the younger sibling, everything Vennia did was to protect Titania and save her from dying to the Yggdrasil.
  • Vennia and Titania's sister Banshee is also this. When Titania became the next World Bride, Banshee waged war against Yggdrasil to protect the former. Banshee unfortunately failed in their goal.
• CLANNAD: A female-female example. Harass Ryou, and her twin sister Kyou will throw a huge book straight to your face and kick you while dazed.
  • Youhei Sunohara is the series' Butt-Monkey most of the time, but mess with his sister Mei and he'll do an Offscreen Teleportation to kick your ass.
  • Tomoya also seems to have this going for him, despite not having any siblings. Whenever Mei calls him Onii-chan, he becomes overly excited and is willing to do whatever she wishes from him.
• The protagonist of Double Homework is very protective of his sisters, Johanna and Tamara.
• In Fate/stay night, Heaven's Feel route, Shirou states that he wants to save Ilya just because the "older brother protects his younger sister". In the route's end, Illya herself does a Heroic Sacrifice to save Shirou, who actually is her younger brother.
  Illya: "You said an older brother protects his younger sister, right?... Yeah. I'm the older sister. So I have to protect my younger brother."
  • Also mostly covered in the Heaven's Feel route (also covered in Fate/hollow ataraxia and Carnival Phantasm) is Rider being one to her true master, Sakura. Rider has an Undying Loyalty to Sakura, which really says a lot considering her adoptive older brother physically and sexually abuses her while she and her biological older sister aren't allowed to act like siblings towards each other. Since Rider (being Medusa) also has a similar past of being a woobie that was sexually assaulted and also loved her older sisters dearly, she can relate to Sakura and is protective of her, especially from Shinji's abuses.
• Yuuya towards Sakuya in Hatoful Boyfriend. Sakuya claims that Yuuya has never once acted like a brother to him, but this couldn't be further from the truth as not only does Yuuya sacrifice his life to save Sakuya's in the Bad Boys Love route, but he reveals that he kept Sakuya's egg from being thrown away on his cruel stepfather's orders and killed his stepfather's own offspring so that Sakuya could take its place and live a life of luxury. For that matter, the sacrifice was done with no thought at all for his own self-preservation. He turned his back on the attacker to focus completely on protecting Sakuya.
  • Just in general Yuuya seems to have this instinct for a lot of characters, even an older teacher at some point. He'll take the bullet or patiently talk someone through things and let go of one of his hard-kept secrets to help them. Yuuya wants to protect and help lots of people, it's just that Sakuya takes priority. Some fans call him "everybirdie's senpai" for this reason.
• Higurashi: When They Cry: Satoshi was like this toward Satoko before his disappearance to the point of murdering their abusive aunt brutally, even though he was usually calm and gentle, since he was under the influence of Hinamizawa Syndrome. A year later, Keiichi and Shion take up the position with Keiichi taking it in the completely wrong direction while Shion plays it straight, but only after screwing up in a previous life. Big Time. Satoko actually starts calling them "Nii-Nii" and "Nee-Nee".
  • In one of the PS2 arcs (Tsukiotoshi-hen), implied to be the way that Minagoroshi-hen could have gone, Rena is convinced that murdering Satoko's uncle is the only solution and tells Keiichi about it, which eventually convinces him too. He later convinces Shion and all 3 of them work as partners in crime.
• In Little Busters!, Riki begins to feel this way towards Komari in her route when she confides that she feels sad that she keeps seeing a non-existent older brother in her dreams. Later, it's revealed that he did exist and felt this way towards her, too, in spades. On the flip side, Komari also tries to be a big sister towards Rin and Token Mini-Moe Kud, though it doesn't always work out – in the test of courage, if you take both Kud and Komari, the two keep switching roles with one always scared and the other trying to act cool and comfort them.
  • Rin, Riki, and Kyousuke all play with the trope a bit. Kyousuke definitely dotes on Rin, but he also worries that she is too dependent on him. Rin herself is open about her lack of respect for him, almost always calling him by his first name and refusing outright to call him 'oniisan' or 'oniichan', but it's also clear that she deeply relies on and admires him. On the other hand, Riki has an admiration for him so strong it borders on the romantic...to the extent that in one scene Kyousuke admits that he thinks both Rin and Riki are cute and Riki worries that Kyousuke 'only' sees him as a little brother. However, like for Rin, Kyousuke is implied to also be worried that Riki relies on him too much, and in Rin's route he seems to be trying to challenge Riki into standing up to him and facing him as an equal. However, ironically, when he tries to break their dependence on him he does it in a way that seems to cement his position as the authority, assuming he knows what's best for them and manipulating them against their wishes.
• Tim from Melody was very protective of Isabella in high school, especially whenever a boy would hit on her.
• Snake of Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors spends the entirety of the game being the cool, aloof, Deadpan Snarker of the group, but when Ace tells him how he killed his little sister Clover, all that composure goes out the door, and he grabs Ace, even after taking six gunshots to the chest, so that he can keep him inside an incinerator, killing them both.
• Deconstructed in Piofiore: Fated Memories. Nicola is fiercely protective of Dante whom he views as his younger brother. But he proceeds to do several questionable actions such as seemingly betraying Dante, attempting to (and can succeed in certain Bad Endings) kill Lili and destroy all three Mafia families, including the Falzone family, all to "protect" Dante without telling him his reasons which was to free Dante from the responsibilities of being a Falzone boss. Meanwhile, Dante is left hurt and confused by Nicola's actions and never wanted Nicola to do any of that for him once he did find out.
• In the School Days sequel of sorts Summer Days, Kotonoha's reaction to seeing her younger sister Kokoro in very... compromising situation with her prospect boyfriend Makoto is grabbing a golf club and hitting the culprit upside the head. Too bad Kokoro intercedes in Makoto's favor.
  • She manages to play it much straighter in Summer Days: when she finds out that Kokoro has been sexually abused by both Makoto and his friend Kyouichi, she... grabs her father's katana, murders both Makoto and Kyouichi, and sets the building where this took place on fire before getting to safety with poor Kokoro.
• In Umineko: When They Cry, Battler behaves this way both towards his younger sister Ange and to his little cousin Maria. He bonds with Maria early on in most of the arcs despite not having seen her in six years, and is very protective of Ange. After Ange reveals her identity to him and performs a Heroic Sacrifice, Battler snaps out of his funk and goes up several levels in badass and sets his mind back on track to defeating Beatrice and making it back home to her.

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