Informed Wrongness / Anime & Manga

• Bleach: Soi Fon gets some of this during her outburst in the aftermath of the initial Sternritter invasion of the Soul Society. She has two separate outbursts regarding her frustrations on the matter. In the first, she's rightfully shut down by the other Gotei 13 Captains who are all feeling the same things, but in the second she lambasts the newly arrived Squad Zero for their inaction during the battle. Soi Fon is at first ignored and then insulted for her comments, and the audience is clearly meant to side with Squad Zero who were merely stating that the other side wasn't doing their jobs properly. But no apologies are made when Squad Zero proves to be equally "worthless" by getting wiped out by their foes later on. Thus proving Soi Fon at least partly correct that all sides should've been working together from the jump.
• Bokura ga Ita Takeuchi is blamed by Yano for going out with a girl he isn't in love with, completely ignoring that he (Yano) is dating Takahashi who used to hate him and when they started dating he just wanted to see where it goes and wasn't in love with her. Even worse is that Yano basically wants Takeuchi to not move one and stay his rival for Takahashi's affection, despite her choosing Yano.
• Cardcaptor Sakura: Sonomi and Masaki are portrayed to be in the wrong for not approving of Nadeshiko's marriage with Fujitaka; Masaki regrets not giving his granddaughter his blessings nor going to her wedding and comes to accept his grandson-in-law late in the series, Sonomi is resentful to the very end but grudgingly acts less cold to Fujitaka after he beats her in the parents' running race, and it's repeatedly stated that Nadeshiko was very happy during her marriage. Given the fact that Fujitaka was Nadeshiko's high school teacher, readers often sympathise much more with Sonomi and Masaki's disapproval than the man in question.
• Dragon Ball:
  • After the Saiyan Saga in Dragon Ball Z, after the Saiyans are defeated (in the anime version at least), when Gohan announces he wants to go to Namek, Chi-Chi gets upset and scolds Gohan about how she wants him to act his age, and she talks about how she didn't see him for a whole year. The show obviously expected fans to side with Goku/Gohan's point of view on what's important so it would make Chi-Chi look much worse than she really is, ignoring the fact that Chi-Chi had a valid point. Had Gohan been an older teenager or an adult, this would be justified.
  • The anime dabbles with this a bit. Gohan continually expresses a desire and excitement to fight throughout the series, with Toei even adding scenes of Gohan yearning for the chance to become a great warrior. This ultimately doesn't gel well with Toriyama's manga script, where Gohan and Piccolo note that he detests fighting entirely and has no desire to be a warrior.
  • In Dragon Ball GT, when Bulma is called out for discovering the Dragonball when she was 16, she blames Goku for it. The writers expect us to side against Bulma for indirectly causing Omega Shenron to appear, and expect fans to ignore the fact that Bulma did not intend for Omega Shenron to show up and it was all a complete accident in her case.
• Part of the premise of Delicious in Dungeon with the In-Universe taboo against eating monsters. Wanting to avoid eating humanoid monsters is understandable thanks to Carnivore Confusion but eating those that are animal type is wrong because...it just is. Even though most of them are safe to eat and many of them are essentially just bigger, more beastly versions of normal animals. Most characters encountered balk at the idea of using monsters as food despite how much easier it makes Dungeon Crawling thanks to relieving adventurers of the burden of buying and carrying large amounts of supplies. There are adventurers who do it (someone had to write Laios's guidebook after all) but it still seems to be an interest that's niche at best and reviled at worst. Quite frequently, a lot of them seem to not want to do it just because they think it's gross.
• My Hero Academia: At the end of the Hero License Exam Arc, Todoroki fails the titular Hero License Exam due to a combo of a I Work Alone mindset, and due to almost hurting another student with his fire powers. The later is a justified reason for him to fail, but the I Work Alone point comes across as unfair towards Todoroki, as he said he was going to work alone because his Quirk, which lets him make ice and fire, makes working in a group difficult because of how destructive he can be if he isn't careful. Unlike fellow student Bakugo, who was failed for working alone but actively demonstrated poor leadership skills due to his rude personality, Todoroki isn't shown doing anything outright wrong while he works alone. Worse, the instructors comment to each other that the exam was designed to encourage students to work together over individually solving everything, but Todoroki was making the choice to be safer by working alone to prevent any of his fellow students from getting hurt, none of the students knew about this being the intention of the test. In fact, the only reason why he almost hurt anyone was because another student, Inasa, went out of his way to antagonize him and harass him, causing Todoroki to eventually lose focus and snap back, which let Inasa's wind based Quirk throw Todoroki's fire in another direction, which is just as much the fault of Inasa for not keeping control of his Quirk. So he ends up being failed on the basis of being unable/unwilling to work with others, when he did so for completely understandable reasons, and is being punished for seemingly putting his friends safety above the exams hidden agenda.
• In an interview by Naruto creator Masashi Kishimoto, he claimed the reason that Sasuke and Sakura still ended up together despite everything bad that Sasuke did to her was that if Sakura gave up on her feelings for him, it would make her a bad person. The problem is that plenty of other characters gave up on crushes or romantic attraction and weren't seen as bad people for it—notably, Naruto had a crush on Sakura for a while, and him dropping it was seen as a sign of maturity. Claiming that Sakura's feelings for Sasuke ran deeper than that feels very off when, from what we see, they just flat-out didn't; Sakura didn't know Sasuke for that long before he quit the team, shared almost no meaningful interactions with him during that period, and her feelings for him could basically be summed up as "he's good-looking and he has cool bloodline powers." Not to mention, most people would consider "he has tried to kill you while openly lecturing you on how you are an idiot for having feelings for him" to be a very good reason to break off even a long-lasting and stable relationship, to say nothing of a one-sided crush you had when you were twelve.
• Pokémon: The Series:
  • In "Challenge of the Samurai", Ash Ketchum spends much of the episode being berated by the titular character for not finishing what he started (not stopping a Weedle from escaping, thus letting it summon a swarm of Beedrill). However, the only reason the Weedle escaped was because the Samurai interrupted him BY POINTING A SWORD AT HIS FACE as he was about to capture it, because he didn't have the courtesy to wait until Ash was done catching it. Yet Ash is meant to accept responsibility for what went wrong, and when he points out the flaw in the logic, he's accused of blaming others for his mistakes. And even though the Samurai later concedes Ash is the better trainer, Ash still ends up agreeing with his Insane Troll Logic and accepting the blame, and he's still short one Weedle that would have eventually evolved into a Beedrill. All of this is duly mocked in the Pokemopolis review of the episode.
  • In "Pokémon Scent-sation!", the gang visits a perfume boutique in Celadon City. Ash comments that he doesn't like the smell of perfume. This results in him getting kicked out of the store by the manager. Simple enough, but then when Ash tries to challenge the gym in Celadon City, it turns out the Gym Leader is the same manager from the shop, and her subordinates ban him from entering the gym (which is against league regulation). Naturally, this is all Played for Laughs, but the episode wants to portray Ash as being the stubborn one.
  • In "Friend and Foe Alike", Ash is kidnapped by Team Rocket before his semifinal match at the Indigo League. He manages to escape and make it in time, but half of his team (Pidgeotto, Bulbasaur and Pikachu) becomes weakened and exhausted in the process. As a result, his Pikachu and Squirtle are quickly taken out, and due to Kingler, Muk, and Tauros still being in Professor Oak's lab at time, he's out of usable Pokémon other than the perennially disobedient Charizard. Charizard takes out his opponent's Charmander but refuses to fight the opponent's Pikachu, resulting in Ash losing the League match and the tournament. When Ash is in the dumps in the next episode, he's told that he's being a crybaby and his loss was entirely his fault for not properly training Charizard beforehand. Again, Ash's party had been unfairly limited before the battle, and he wouldn't have used Charizard if it hadn't been for that fact and wasn't given any time to switch Pokémon. Also, for those paying attention, Charizard pretty much just decided he was hotter shit than his trainer for no reason at all starting from the episode after he evolved into Charmeleon and only obeyed Ash once in the intervening episodes. Ultimately it would literally take a Near-Death Experience for the big lug to even consider listening to his trainer again.^note This arc was probably meant to adapt the games' Artificial Insolence mechanic where traded Pokémon above certain levels will randomly disobey PCs with insufficient numbers of gym badges, but by that logic Charizard should have started obeying Ash again when he won an Earth Badge in Viridian City at the very latest. Worse yet, Misty and Brock didn't lift a finger to help find Ash when he went missing, nor did anyone in the League, who sat on their hands waiting for (and almost disqualifying) him when just yesterday a group of thieves tried to steal everyone's Pokémon.
  • Pokémon the Series: XY: Grace was supposed to be wrong for pushing her daughter Serena to follower her footsteps as a racer. But it's made clear that Serena chose to try out Rhyhorn Racing, actually does have a talent for racing but doesn't enjoy doing it because it gets too rough for her, and indeed has a history of giving up on something she takes on the moment it starts getting too hard and requiring more extra effort from her. Grace thus seems insistent that Serena stick to racing because she knows that's something she's skilled at and pushes for her to put in more effort and work harder at it so that she can get better at it, which isn't an unreasonable thing for a mother to want for her child.
  • In "Betrayed, Bothered and Beleaguered!", Ash is treated as wrong for spending so much time with Riolu he neglected Pikachu to the point he runs off. But Riolu was a baby Pokémon, at most just a few weeks old, which have been established as requiring the extra attention. And Pikachu had never shown any issues with the many other baby Pokémon Ash had raised so there was no reason for Ash to think they would take this so uncharacteristically bad.
• Sonic X:
  • Knuckles would frequently fall victim to this. While he was usually the most serious and vehement on getting the job done, the others were more than willing to turn everything into a game. He would often question the ethics of a plan the team made, only to be bullied into following it through. Most times the plan would fall apart, but he would never call them out nor would the team be remotely apologetic for ignoring him. In one case the team outright steal the Master Emerald from him for their mission (keeping in mind the established importance of the emerald to Angel Island). When Knuckles is rightfully angered by this, the team label him selfish and inconsiderate and outright beat him up.
  • Vector gets taken to task for suggest Cream, a six-year-old girl, should be sent home to her mother Vanilla instead of sticking around with Sonic and friends. They all call Vector heartless because Cream wants to stay, but whether she wants to stay or not shouldn't factor in. Cream is a huge liability for Sonic and crew; she is, at best, The Heart of the team, and otherwise not useful to their mission. Even assuming she'll be looked after by the Thorndykes' staff, Sonic is fighting off monsters and threats to the planet, meaning Cream isn't safe anywhere on Earth! It also doesn't help that Cream's age makes her an easy target for kidnappings. While Vector is portrayed as sticking his nose where it doesn't belong, there's really no reason for Cream to stay.
• In Wagnaria!!, Souta is repeatedly made the bad guy for complaining when Inami punches him. Except, you know, she's punching him, with super-strength, and whenever she gets close, for no reason other than her illness. To be fair, he does get kinda rude sometimes, but it's hard not to sympathize with his plight.
• Toward the end of YuYu Hakusho, Yusuke, while meeting with his Spirit Detective (i.e. demon hunter) predecessor Kuroko, is approached by a group of demons who inform him about a war between the three dominant powers of the Demon World over whether to eat humans, and try to convince him to come see their master. Yusuke takes a moment to see things from their perspective, and says that for the demons, this is an argument over the food supply. After the conversation ends, Kuroko tells Yusuke to go to the demon world, since if he sees humans as food, he no longer belongs in the human world. However, Yusuke was merely expressing an understanding of the demons' perspective, not sharing his own opinion, so Kuroko's rejection of Yusuke comes off as rather unfair, especially considering Yusuke just found out he's part demon in the previous arc, making his point seem reasonable with how much he's learned.