Refuge In Audacity / Anime & Manga

In-Universe Examples Only:

Anime and Manga taking Refuge in Audacity.

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• In Assassination Classroom, Koro-sensei, Nagisa, and Kayano free Kataoka from her guilt complex by forcibly teaching her blackmailer how to swim. They basically get away with abduction and imprisonment by dressing up as fish creatures, kidnapping the blackmailer in the middle of the night (bed included) while she slept, and dropping her off, bed and all, at their secret mountainside pool. When she wakes up, the blackmailer is fully convinced by their disguises and the location that she's merely dreaming and unwittingly goes along with their plan.
  • Nagisa beats Takaoka this way. Nagisa has to land a hit on Takaoka with a real knife (stopping just short of contact counts), but Takaoka, despite being barehanded, is a full grown adult and professional military instructor while Nagisa is just a a scrawny middle school student who would definitely lose in a straight battle. Nagisa wins by simply walking up to Takaoka, "as if he were walking to school", with a calm smile on his face. Takaoka is so stunned by this that he does nothing until Nagisa is well within knife swinging range. With both his nerves and balance disrupted by the near-death experience of the first swing, Nagisa takes advantage of this moment of weakness to go for the "kill".
• In Attack on Titan, Commander Erwin's plan to have Levi viciously beat the crap out of Eren in the middle of his trial in order to both defuse the situation and grab everyone's attention for his own proposal probably wouldn't have worked if it wasn't so over-the-top. Even the commander of the Military Police Brigade who was trying to have Eren executed a few moments ago is stunned at how far Levi goes.
• Isaac and Miria from Baccano! are able to fly under police radar despite being active criminals by virtue of the fact that the heists they pull off are so bizarre that the police don't want to be involved with them.
  • They once tried to steal a museum, after having infiltrated it as a pair of mummies. After discovering that the museum was too heavy to lift, they decided to make off with the entrance door so no-one else could enter the museum. They get caught on camera in the process, and pose for the pictures. While still in their mummy disguises. The police, upon being delivered images of two mummies posing for the camera while carrying the entrance door to the city museum, do nothing. The best part? It worked. Since they stole the doors, the museum had to be closed for the investigation, preventing any visitors from coming in.
  • They steal from Mafia by simply relying on the fact that nobody would be crazy enough to jump on them in clear daylight and run away laughing.
  • Their idea of disguises are so absurd and flamboyant that they're able to hide in plain sight. Their heists appear so bereft of criminal planning or malicious intent that they're taken for performance artists, perhaps pulling some dada stunts. Some of the pictures presented as 'evidence' of their crimes involve them posing with locals!
• While Baki the Grappler has a pretty simple setup, following the quest of one Baki Hanma to defeat his father Yujiro, that's about as sane or rational as the series gets. We get stuff like a Bishōnen caveman who fought dinosaurs, a gorilla that knows kung-fu, people being swung around like nunchaku, and Baki literally fighting with an imaginary praying mantis as a training exercise.
• In the final episode of Black Lagoon, Ms. Balalaika shows up at the home of a powerful Yakuza leader (under 24/7 police surveillance, no less), asks to see his gun and proceeds shoot him with it. Afterwards, she exits, shows a fake diplomatic passport to the policemen who came to investigate the gunshots, and then casually gets into her limo and drives away before anyone can figure out what happened.
• In Bleach, the Big Bad kicks off his on-screen run by having one of the True Companions executed on trumped-up charges, repeatedly has the time of execution changed, has his Dragon running around acting like the Big Bad (because he's so Obviously Evil), and in general mucks around with everyone. How? Nobody expected that one really likable captain to fake his own death, nevermind kill off the Soul Society's government (and nearly his own lieutenant) or have been up to this shit for over a century. Even the Author didn't see it coming.
• Cat's Eye:
  • Many of their heists work because they're too crazy for the police. Such as the time they fabricated a child trapped in a bank vault that was having void made in it just to be able to demolish it in full view of the police.
  • The cops once tried it too: having to guard a painting targeted by Cat's Eye for a few days and knowing they could break into their vault, they put it in a holding cell with five violent murderers. Cat's Eye still managed to steal it.
• City Hunter: Many, many times, from pretty much everyone, but Reika (Saeko's sister) topped everyone with her way to search and identify a Corrupt Cop who was selling informations and confiscated drugs to Yakuza groups and had murdered and dishonored another cop: blackmail said Yakuza groups and take so much of their money they'd have to beg the Corrupt Cop to deal with her, and using the Yakuza money to pay the pension the family of the late cop would get had he not been dishonored.
• Lelouch Lamperouge from Code Geass is known for this using his Magic Eyes to perform actions in such a way that makes it look like he performs miracles. Though he's actually at his best when he instead uses only his wits, brains, and knowledge of people.
  • A good example of this is the "we are all Zero" gambit, where Lelouch gets a million Japanese people (and at least one dog) to all dress up as Zero. As Zero is being sent into exile as a condition of cooperating with the Britannians to refound the Special Administrative Zone, every Japanese person at the gathering also has to leave, because they're also Zero. Which is so outrageous it simply cannot fail, even though the logistics behind it make no sense.
  • Another example is the ending of the series. Lelouch becomes the biggest, most evil dictator in history, then has his Anti-Hero/Anti-Villain ally free the world by killing him. People unite against him! This allows people like Nunnally, Suzaku (as Zero), Kaguya (as AFN representative), Empress Tianzi and Ougi to help rebuild the world, with the side benefit of erasing Euphemia's Geass-incited machine gun massacre from public memory.
  • To say nothing of his on-the-spot plan to stop his parents' Assimilation Plot — he used his Geass on God and requested "Him" ("God" in Code Geass is the collective unconsciousness of mankind, so technically, it has no definitive gender) to not stop the progression of time. God interpreted this as erasing his parents from existence, including his father, who, by this point, was the closest the CG-verse had to an immortal being.
  • Suzaku dissuaded Kallen from helping Lelouch once they found out he was Zero as he apprehended him right in front of her, all while she was carrying a gun; this might have been partly influenced by his order to live.
• In the original Cutey Honey manga, Sister Jill decided to steal a gold statue. So she sent a warning that she'd come at midnight of a certain day, and precisely at midnight she and her goons entered from the front door after politely ringing the bell and saying who they were, and once in she issued a death threat on anyone who tried to stop them. Given how feared they were, it worked like a charm.
• In Death Note, L has Light pegged as the prime suspect for being Kira, but doesn't have concrete evidence. So, he reveals that he's L straight to Light's face just to put pressure on him, knowing that even if Light did believe that he's L, that he can't risk killing him so soon after introducing himself because that would look too suspicious. Once Light is in private, he's furious over the fact that L has thrown him for a loop this way.
• Digimon:
  • In Digimon Tamers, Takato walks around the city with Guilmon right next to him. In plain view. He tells a couple of curious kids that Guilmon's actually just a really good cosplayer; other than the occasional odd stare, nothing ever comes of him walking a four-foot dinosaur. Subverted when Guilmon first Digivolves to Growlmon and triples in size with the group desperately trying to figure out how to revert him, as there's only so much they can get away with.
  • The cast of Digimon Ghost Game take a similar approach. Even though they can use their Digivices to make their partners Invisible to Normals or hide them in their cell phones, they rarely have to since the setting takes place 20 Minutes into the Future and everyone just assumes they're holograms even when they very clearly interact with the physical world. Even when this is called into question (like during meals), they just double down to the point that "I'm a hologram!" has become a Character Catchphrase for Gammamon.
  • In the Digimon Adventure 02 episode The Digimon Kaiser's Loneliness, Daisuke manages to defeat the genius tactician Ken Ichijouji by doing the one thing someone prepared for any plan wouldn't expect; not using a plan at all. Daisuke charges straight at Ken and tackles him. He does this twice in one day, and succeeds both times.
• In Dorohedoro the penalty for offending a devil is death, and they have a very low threshold for what they find offensive. So naturally, no one would think to so much as touch a devil statue let alone turn it into a switch to access a hidden room, which is exactly what En has done.
• Akira Takizawa from Eden of the East pulls this off when the Japanese-English language barrier (as well as his own weirdness) leads him to conclude that the best way deal with the police officer questioning him is to drop his trousers and flash her. Far from arresting him on the spot for indecent exposure, the cop thanks him and lets him off the hook (leading many viewers to conclude that Akira's "Johnny" is so amazing that it has mind-control powers).
  • Then there's the time when he flashed a random businessman on the street, then says something that causes the guy to laugh, then hand over his pants. Charm Person, indeed. And this happens in the first episode. It builds up from there.
• Shirley in Even Though I'm a Former Noble and Single Mother cuts the imperial palace in half at one point. She gets away with it because no one wants to look ridiculous by accusing her of such a feat.
• Expecting to Fall into Ruin, I Aim to Become a Blacksmith: Kururi's construction of a railroad through his feudal domain comes to a halt due to protests that it will awaken a (not-real) ancient dragon beneath the earth. There's also a smaller rumor from Kururi being Shrouded in Myth that says he's part dragon. Taking advantage of this, Kururi gets leaders of the opposing parties together, liqueurs them up, and then presents, complete with diagrams, how the dragon beneath the railway is his cousin, and the train is actually part of a plan to massage the dragon's back. This proves Crazy Enough to Work, and it's dubbed the Dragon's Spine.
• In Fate/Apocrypha, two homunculi guards ask Rider of Black if he's seen one of their number that had escaped. Rider denies this while holding said homunculus sack-of-potatoes style over his shoulder in plain view. After a Beat, they simply move on.
• Ayame from Fruits Basket. In a flashback to his school days, the only reason he was able to keep his long hair was he came up with an outrageous story about him being royalty and wouldn't shut up about it. And that's nothing to what he went on about as class president when some classmates got caught in the red light district.
• In Fullmetal Alchemist, when Ed is doing his practical demonstration for his State Alchemist qualifications (at the age of 12, incidentally) he proceeds to not only create a spear from the ground without a circle in front of dozens of high ranking military officers, but to then threaten the Fuhrer King Bradley with it, just to prove a point. Bradley, curiously, takes it in stride, and even hints at his true nature as a homunculus, as well as what he's capable of, as he breaks Ed's spear without apparently flinching.
  • Later, this is subverted when Roy Mustang makes a joke about Bradley being a homunculus, and it is in fact taken very seriously. This is because, while Ed's threat was ultimately an empty one, Roy's questioning was taken very seriously because he's right, and too dangerously close to the truth for the corrupt higher-ups to let him go.
  • This is how Olivier Armstrong infiltrates the higher-ups. Bradley asked her what happened to General Raven, and she outright says (paraphrased) "I shoved him into wet cement. You should be grateful he's gone, he was so incompetent." This impresses him enough to let her in.
• In Full Metal Panic!, Sousuke is so spectacularly bad at posing as a normal high school student that it paradoxically helps hide the fact that he's secretly an elite paramilitary soldier, because absolutely no one can believe any military organization would ever hire such a weirdo and they all instead think he's a LARPing military geek with delusions of grandeur.
  • This is also what makes Kaname switch from being creeped out by Sousuke's apparent stalking to being curious about it — jumping out the window of a moving train just to keep tailing her pushed it from apparent "creepy pervert" behavior straight into spy movie territory.
• Girls Bravo:
  • Fukuyama is a grade A lecher, who'll stop at nothing to cop a feel. He repeatedly flips up Kirie's skirt just to see what color panties she's wearing and has even groped her in the middle of class — not caring who sees him do it, or that he gets beaten up for it, since he'll just do it again anyway.
  • While most girls want nothing to do with him, the women of Seiren are a different story. Their populace is almost entirely female and they're all sexually repressed. So when Fukuyama and the others finally go to Seiren, the women Zerg Rush him to get first dibs. When Fukuyama volunteers to "hold them off", the women eagerly strip themselves naked, then happily allow Fukuyama to grope and molest them to his and their hearts' content.
• Girls und Panzer: This is Ōarai's typical strategy. Due to the fact that they're almost always outnumbered and outgunned by the other schools, over-the-top tactics are pretty much their only option to remain competitive. In particular, just about anything the Turtle Team does in the final episodes qualifies, including things such as disrupting an enemy formation by sneaking up and literally parking in the middle of it and disabling an enemy tank by wedging their own tank underneath it.
  • Girls und Panzer der Film manages to top anything the series ever did with 'Operation: Kill Serve'. In short: in order to take out a piece of artillery guarded by 3 enemy tanks on the other side of a bridge with a piece missing, Continuation (literally) jumps into the middle of their ranks with their BT-42 in order to distract the guards. They lure them out away from the artillery while Duck Team carries Anchovy's tankette and uses their Type 89 I-Go as a makeshift catapult to launch them over the gap in the bridge to attack the artillery. They don't even reach the gap and land upside-down. Turtle Team then use Anchovy's upturned tankette as a ramp to make the jump that Anchovy just failed and shoots the artillery through its barrel all while the BT-42 runs circles around the three tanks that were supposed to be guarding it.
• In Highschool of the Dead during the bath scene in episode 6, they made it seem as if Rei was doing Shizuka doggy-style while the other girls were present.
• Invoked in-story in Honoo no Alpen Rose. The music genius Leonhardt "Leon" Aschenbach is being pressured by Those Wacky Nazis alongside his best friend (and the female lead) Jeudi, and must write an "Austrian Symphony" as well as use it in a concert. What does he do? He accepts to play... but then he uses said concert to actually escape from Austria alongside Jeudi (via turning the lights off in a critical moment and then rushing out with the hep of his and Jeudi's entourage) AND give them the musical finger via inserting the melody of an anti-Nazi song (written by Jeudi's Disappeared Dad as the "hymm" of La Résistance) in his "Austrian symphony". And he gets away with it cleanly.
• In JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders, the heroes are gambling against Daniel D'Arby, whose Stand allows him to essentially gamble using souls. He's an expert cheater and has already claimed Polnareff and Joseph's souls, leaving only Jotaro and Avdol (their fifth member Kakyoin was currently hospitalized). Jotaro plays next and the two play poker, with chips representing the souls they're playing for. Jotaro catches D'Arby cheating several times, but ultimately loses the first hand, leaving him with only half his starting chips/soul. Seeing that there's no way he's going to get a better hand than D'Arby no matter what he does, he instead decides to go for the ultimate bluff by not looking at his cards and not only wagering the rest of his chips, but also Avdol's soul (Avdol agreeing since he admits that he'd most likely not win by himself, meaning his best bet is to leave it all up to Jotaro). D'Arby tries to call his bluff by raising and asking for Kakyoin's soul to match his wager, but Jotaro not only agrees, but raises the pot with his mother's soul and asking for D'Arby to match it by wagering the secret to Dio's Stand, which would lead to Dio killing him for betrayal. The sheer confidence exhibited by Jotaro, the threat on his own life, and the idea that Jotaro could have somehow gotten a better hand all combine to freak him out so much, that the stress turns his hair grey in a matter of seconds and he passes out in fear. This is all when D'Arby had four Kings and Jotaro only had a bum hand.
• In Kaitou Saint Tail the titular thief gets away with her stunts by making them so over the top the police often just look in Stunned Silence until someone shouts to arrest her. In time they start getting used to it (such as the time she made it look a tree was refusing to let itself carved up by the owner of the local nature park: the owner was terrified, but the cops were completely nonplussed), but since Saint Tail is so over the top she once made a fake UFO to escape they still fall for it most of the time.
• In Kino's Journey, Kino's master and her other apprentice once stopped in a country, only for the apprentice to be unjustly arrested. Kino's master then broke the man out of prison, but they knew that escaping was impossible. They then holed up in a tower with sniper rifles and fought off the police forces for days. The police started by demanding that they surrender, but eventually ended up paying the two fugitives to leave.
• In Kuro Ultimate Girls, one of the male characters enters the girls' changing rooms and proceeds to pull out his camera, openly take photos of them while they are in the middle of changing their clothes and leaving like nothing was wrong. It takes the girls about five seconds to react.
• In Legend of the Galactic Heroes, Yang's plan for the Tenth Battle of Iserlohn relies on keeping the garrison fleet inside for a while. How do they achieve it? Easy: his subordinate Bagdash sends first a false order to sortie and then one to stay inside and guard from sabotage, knowing that the commander would launch an investigation in case the second order turned out to be true and that at least some of the million people in the garrison were either criminals or saboteurs, thus making him believe the second order was true and the first a fake. Then an actual order to sortie arrives... And Bagdash adds a threat of court-martial. The garrison stays inside until too late, Iserlohn falls, and nobody understands what the hell has just happened until much later.
  "If there's someone who can see through Bagdash' disorderly array of orders, he must be... Insane."
• Love After World Domination: Fudo and Desumi try to make it to a ceremony for couples at the end of a school festival where if they get a picture on top of a sculpture of a moon, they'll be bound together for all eternity. The main issue for the duo is that if they attempt to approach the moon, there's a chance that someone could recognize them. Desumi comes up with the idea to simply go in their costumes since cosplayers are attending the festival as well, and it works, as no one believes that the real Gelato Red and Reaper Princess could ever be a couple since they're constantly at each others neck.
• In the first Sound Stage of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS Hayate complains about not being able to "sexually harass" the forwards (one of whom is ten). In fact, one of the people she's complaining to is said ten-year-old's adoptive mother, who is completely unfazed.
• Maria no Danzai: Maria covertly confiscates a distracted Kowase's phone while she's comforting Yashima (whom Kowase was beating up moments ago), and gets away with it by exerting her authority as a teacher and reminding him that using smartphones within school grounds is against the rules.
• In the first season/second volume of Moyashimon, Sawaki, Misato and Kawahama get out of what would have been a very awkward What Did I Do Last Night? situation by arranging the apartment so things look even worse than they actually are. When a hungover Hasegawa finally wakes up to the ensuing scene (involving Sawaki dangling naked upside down from the ceiling, Misato with his head stuck in a pot and Kawahama punched out insensate on the floor, also in the nude), she leaves wordlessly and very very quickly.
• Naruto gives the example of a diplomat attacking under a flag of truce in order to kidnap a three-year-old girl to steal her eyes. Her father catches him in the act and kills him on the spot. So what do his comrades do? Deny the kidnapping attempt ever happened, brand her father a murderer, and demand his execution and have his body turned over to them for confirmation, in order to obtain the set of eyes they couldn't get from the child! It would have worked but for a Heroic Sacrifice on the part of the man's twin brother, and is the source of a considerable amount of angst. They have yet to pay for this action in any way. This status was Lampshaded during a negotiation, and promptly dismissed.
  • Why Konoha was so willing to go along with this at the time is unclear, seeing as they had won the war that the diplomats had been ostensibly sent to negotiate an end to.
    • Most likely Konoha was recovering from the loss of the 4th Hokage, due to the Kyuubi.
  • When up against what amounts to the God of the world, Naruto decides it's time to pull out "That Jutsu". And "That Jutsu" is... the Reverse Harem No Jutsu. And the worst part is it actually works to a degree (whether as intended or by stunning them with sheer confusion is unclear, although the video game adaptations suggest the latter), letting Naruto get in a good hit.
  • During Kakashi's bell test for his new genin, Kakashi is so confident in his ability to evade Naruto's attacks that he actually reads a book called "Make Out Paradise" during the test. It actually works until Naruto breaks out the Shadow Clones.
  • Just after the Time Skip, Kakashi holds the bell test again for Naruto and Sakura, but not only refuses to read, but uses his Sharingan. Naruto comes up with a clever trick to get Kakashi off his guard- announcing the ending to the newest volume of the "Make Out" series so that Kakashi will cover his ears and close his eyes (since his Sharingan might let him read Naruto's lips). The Shippuden episode previews even suggest that Naruto was bluffing.
• One Piece
  • One Piece thrives on this trope. One of your crewmates kidnapped by the World Government? Wage war against them, save your friend, and destroy the place she was being held at in the process. Think you're safe? Pushing is lethal. A whale in your way? Punch the whale's eye. Luffy has been through all of the listed examples so far, but there is way more than just those, to the point where this trope could be one of the show's major themes.
  • Another Luffy example: Whitebeard says he is going to be King of the Pirates. Nope! That's Luffy's job. Whitebeard was so impressed, and amused, that he didn't mind Luffy saying that.
  • How about the fact that Robin can talk about gruesome fates as easily as she can talk about weather?
    Robin (to Nami): Be careful. If you fall, you'll most certainly die.
    Nami (screaming): HOW IS THAT SUPPOSED TO HELP?!
  • Subverted on one occasion. Despite being the "Hero of the Marines", Vice Admiral Garp reporting he let a pirate go because said pirate is his grandson only gets him a tongue lashing from his superior, who sends him back to do his job properly.
  • Over the course of the Time Skip, Zoro ends up marooned on the island that Dracule Mihawk lives on. Zoro, despite having made it his life's goal and ultimate dream to topple Mihawk and usurp his title of World's Greatest Swordsman, kowtows to Mihawk and begs him to train him. This makes Mihawk burst out laughing - the only time we ever see him emote so strongly - at the idea of someone effectively asking him to train up his own Worthy Opponent to a level where he'd be able to defeat him. However, the audacity of the request and the humility Zoro displays when he says it's so he can be stronger for Luffy, not his dream, makes him accept Zoro under his tutelage.
  • Weaponized by Brook, as the Straw Hats are desperately trying to flee a rampaging Big Mom. During a critical moment, Brook drops his; "Can I see your panties?" line on her, which catches the Yonkou completely off guard in shock for several seconds... allowing Brook to Speed Blitz her, giving the Straw Hats an opening to escape.
  • The reason Buggy of all characters is one of the four new Emperors? He began issuing bounties on Marines, i.e the very people who set bounties in the first place.
• Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt: Garterbelt actually did take refuge at one point in his life as a member of the Ku Klux Klan.
• The Secret of Twilight Gemini does this by having Lupin and Fujiko sneak into a police station, while it's crawling with cops, in order to steal the same file on Galoux and end up having sex in the file room! Simply put: Interpol's most wanted thief and his on-again/off-again girlfriend, who happens to be an international jewel thief, banged each other in a police station packed with cops who were canvassing all of Morocco to apprehend them!
• Shimoneta:
  • The series as a whole thrives on it by exaggerating how harmful censorship can be if taken to extremes. In Japan's now dystopian society, the government has declared all manner of indecency to be illegal and punishable by harsh fines and imprisonment — including referring to one's own anatomy, even in clinical terms.
  • Ayame openly defies the authorities by disguising herself with a bedsheet and a pair of her own panties as a mask. She knows that the police can't touch her without risk of exposing her body in public. Plus, she's only 17 so they'd also be implicating themselves with a minor. So any time they corner her, they have no choice but to let her go!
• In Spy X Family, Loid (more or less) gets away with requisitioning thousands of euros' worth of his Government Agency of Fiction's equipment and manpower just to throw a party for Anya after she gets into school. Nobody bats an eye when he tells them it's All According to Plan because he's that good at what he does (and he technically wasn't lying). While getting chewed out by The Handler for the expense, he has the balls to nonchalantly hand her additional bills while she's yelling at him and she can't even stay mad.
• The eponymous protagonist of Tiger Mask loves this trope:
  • At the start of the series, Tiger Mask is a Foreign Wrestling Heel in America (though he quickly moves to Japan). His gimmick? Of an over-the-top violent fighter who only loves money, and horribly maims his opponents so that the wrestling fans will come to his matches hoping to see him finally defeated. He says it to the public after one of his fights - and it works, because they hate him even more and thus want to see him crushed.
  • Tiger Mask is a masked wrestler who ditched the Tiger's Cave organization and is persecuted by the wrestlers they send to try and kill him on the ring. At one point Tiger Mask goes wrestling on the illegal circuit... And wrestles in Tiger's Cave Parisian club using his Tiger Mask gimmick. Invoked by the man who suggested him this: if he wrestled in the underground circuit, either by using his mask or a different one, Tiger's Cave would have identified him by his body build and technique and, as he wasn't in public anymore, have him shot, but if he went in Tiger's Cave club with his mask he expected them to laugh and send him in the ring without even checking, at which point their own rules would have prevented them from looking until he was defeated and unmasked. It worked: Mr X, after almost fainting in shock at the sheer absurdity of the situation, realized the plan but he arrived in Paris when Tiger Mask was already in the ring waiting for his first match and thus couldn't be checked anymore, and the gun-toting bouncers were actually laughing their asses off.

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