Revenge Before Reason / Anime & Manga

Those who put Revenge Before Reason in Anime and Manga.

---

• Guts from Berserk. He and his lover Casca were the sole survivors of the dreaded Eclipse which was caused by their former friend and leader, Griffith, selling them and all of their comrades in the Band of the Hawk out to the Godhand in order to become a demon lord so that he could fulfill his life-long dream after a year of crippling torture. To make a long and sad story short, neither Guts nor Casca come out unharmed or intact. After the event, and though all that they had left were each other, Guts was so embroiled in his rage and grief over what happened to them that he left Casca in the care of Godot, Erica, and Rickert after only a few weeks in order to pursue revenge against Griffith, the Apostles and the Godhand, which, apart from leading Guts to Take A Level In Jerkass during those two years, certainly did not help Casca's post-Eclipse condition at all. It is only after getting a serious What the Hell, Hero? speech from Godot about this two years after this that Guts finally starts getting his act together again.
• In Bleach, Gin Ichimaru followed Aizen so he could learn how to kill him. Apparently, Gin came across Aizen's mooks after they took a piece of his childhood friend Rangiku's soul. He wanted revenge. For over a hundred years, Gin waited for the perfect moment. The problem is, Gin never told anyone what his plan was, even Rangiku, possibly for fear of it getting back to Aizen somehow or tipping him off. As part of his cover, Gin unquestioningly assisted Aizen in his efforts for more power, and even fought or killed other people if they got in the way because in his view none of them had what it really took to kill Aizen. All of this backfires when he finally attacks, as the power he helped Aizen get, a literal Diabolus ex Machina, saves Aizen from being killed instantly.
• Lelouch from Code Geass for Shirley half way through the second season. He sends his army — completely unaware of what happened — into what seems to be an ordinary research facility to kill everyone. This, of course, doesn't go over well with them.
  • To be fair, some adaptations like the Compilation Movie and one of the Super Robot Wars Z games, which provide scenarios where she survives, show how this would have happened anyway because Lelouch still considers them too dangerous in general.
• Cross Ange: This is ultimately revealed to be Jill's major Fatal Flaw. After falling in Embryo's Mind Rape and getting everyone dear to her killed during her first Libertas, she has made her sole goal to exact revenge on Embryo at any cost, even if she's willing to use her subordinates and the DRAGONs as sacrifices.
• Ultimately, this is what screws over Light Yagami from Death Note over again and again. With the titular notebook, he can kill from a distance as long as he knows his targets face and name. He couldn't stand the thought of someone deriding his mass murder of criminals as "evil," and so takes the bait by killing the decoy, narrowing down the list of suspects. By being unable to let this slight go, Light deliberately takes actions to maneuver himself into a position where he can get close to the super detective behind the decoy, where his actions only continue to strengthen the suspicion of him. Pride gets to him again in the second season when new detectives come into the picture, and his desire for revenge once again just paints a giant target on himself in the end.
• In Death Parade, in the afterlife, a man has the corrupt detective who didn't lift a finger to help his sister as she was being raped at his mercy and has the opportunity to torture him. Despite the Black-Haired Woman warning him that if he goes through with it, he'll be banished to the void and never see his sister again, he still does it.
• In Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, it is strongly present in one of the most prominent demons in the series, Upper Moon Rank 3 Akaza’s backstory. Back when he was the human named Hakuji, the poisoning of his fiancé Koyuki and father-in-law Keizou showed only a few members of the rival dojo was part of this underhanded maneuver, but Hakuji was so blinded with murderous rage that he ended up killing every single member of the dojo, more than sixty men, only their female maid was spared.
• Sosuke Nekome, one of the main characters of Den-noh Coil, is obsessed with ruining the MegaMass corporation for ruining his father's reputation and causing his death. He's willing to sacrifice anything and ultimately kill anyone who gets in the way of this plan, even the 12-year-old protagonists Yasako and Isako. Fortunately his little brother does possess reason and Heel Face Turns in the final episode.
• Dragon Ball:
  • Frieza never learns, much to Goku's annoyance.
    • In Dragon Ball Z, Frieza could have chosen to escape, but he spends his remaining energy trying to kill Goku, which backfires spectacularly. This also crosses into Fantastic Racism; Frieza is so shocked that he was defeated by a Saiyan, whom he disregarded as "mere monkeys," that he can't accept that he is defeated even though he's missing an arm and the lower half of his body. Ever since then, his entire purpose in life is to get revenge on Goku for defeating and humiliating him; in Dragon Ball Z: Resurrection 'F', he states outright that he can't stand to live in the same universe as Goku, and as long as Goku is still alive, he can't even sleep at night. But that's not all for Frieza.
    • Immediately after becoming Mecha-Frieza, he wasn't even off the operating table before ordering his father and their men to set course for Earth, wanting revenge on Goku so badly that he overrides his father's plan to just blow up the planet from orbit and lands so he could personally kill all of Goku's loved ones and friends... and gets sliced into itty bitty pieces by Future Trunks, another Super Saiyan, for the trouble.
    • In Dragon Ball GT, during the Super 17 Saga, instead of escaping Hell with the other villains, he and Cell stay behind to double-team Goku after Gero and Myuu trap him in Hell with them, only for Goku to effortlessly beat them both without even going Super Saiyan.
    • This is the basis for his entire plan after being resurrected in Resurrection 'F'. He could have simply rebuilt his empire in space with the Z Fighters none the wiser, but he instead goes through Training from Hell to unlock a new Super Mode before launching a full-scale invasion of Earth, all to get revenge on Goku for his previous defeat. It's to the extent that when one of his minions begs him to just leave Goku alone and focus on rebuilding his empire, Frieza either kills him on the spot or uses him as as a living punching bag for the next four months (depending on the adaptation). This ends up being his undoing: Freeza rushed to Earth to get revenge as soon as he achieved his new Super Mode, not realizing its massive Fatal Flaw (it burns through his stamina at an incredible rate). Even though he was technically more powerful than Goku or Vegeta (AND actually manages to mortally wound Goku), he can't seal the deal before he runs out of stamina and drops back to a weaker form, leaving him easy pickings for Vegeta.
  • Goku himself falls into this after becoming a Super Saiyan the first time. He wanted to make Frieza pay for killing Krillin. To that end, he let Frieza power-up to his max level for the sole purpose of humiliating him with the knowledge that even at his best he couldn't beat a "mere monkey". This was around the time when the planet was going to blow up in a few minutes, so defeating Frieza as fast as possible would have been reasonable. He also refused to leave when King Kai planned to wish everyone to Earth, because he wanted to finish the fight. By that point, King Kai considered Goku a lost cause.
  • Vegeta falls into this trope not once, but twice:
    • After Cell kills Trunks during the Cell Games, Vegeta, having had a Jerkass Realization over his treatment of the latter, snaps and attacks Cell at full force; said attack doesn't even faze Cell, and Gohan suffers a Game-Breaking Injury as a result Taking the Bullet for Vegeta. Since Gohan could still have beaten Cell before then, and since Trunks could still be revived by the Dragon Balls, it falls under this, with the other Z Fighters flat-out calling Vegeta an idiot.
    • During the Buu Saga, Vegeta, in order to top Goku, deliberately lets Babidi turn him into a Majin in an attempt to bridge the gap between them. He knew that the energy released by the fight would revive Majin Buu, but he was so obsessed with beating Goku that he just didn't care. From that point on, the remainder the Buu Saga consists of the rest of the universe paying the price for Vegeta's selfishness and obsession.
  • Another, very chilling, example is Super Saiyan 2 Gohan willfully prolonging his Curb-Stomp Battle against Cell despite his father and the other Z-Fighters yelling at him to finish it, stating outright that he wanted Cell to suffer as much as possible before he died. It backfires spectacularly, as Cell suffers an epic Villainous Breakdown and attempts a Suicide Attack that could've destroyed the whole Earth, had his father Goku not stepped in and sacrificed himself for the sake of everyone, leaving Gohan to finish the job when Cell came back.
  • Baby, the first Arc Villain of Dragon Ball GT, is single-mindedly obsessed with avenging the Tuffles' extinction at the hands of the Saiyans no matter what; when Pan tells him that the Saiyans who were actually responsible for his species' demise are long dead, Baby flat-out states that he doesn't care.
  • Dr. Raichi, the Big Bad of the OVA Plan to Eradicate the Saiyans. Like Baby, he's utterly fixated on avenging the Tuffles' extinction, and it makes no difference to him that the Saiyans who actually committed the genocide are long dead; as far as he's concerned, all Saiyans are guilty. He even comes right out and says that he will never forgive the Saiyans for what they did to the Tuffles, even if God Himself does.
  • Zamasu from Dragon Ball Super utterly takes the cake. The other villains listed at least had some concrete reasons for revenge. But Zamasu? His reason? He lost to Goku in a sparring match which Goku requested just to gauge his strength. Goku was more than cordial about it when he won, didn't even gloat, even complimented Zamasu's efforts and tried to help him up. But Zamasu took the loss extremely personally. When Goku and Vegeta go with Trunks to confront Goku Black, they find out it was Zamasu from two alternate timelines going on a rampage to kill all humans. One from a Future Timeline and one from another where Zamasu swapped his body with Goku's via a wish from the Super Dragon Balls, killed him and proceeded to kill his family just for this slight. Granted Zamasu was never right in the head to begin with being that he saw all humans as chronically evil and that they need to be destroyed and, deeming himself a divine being just because he was a kai (Not even that, but a kai apprentice) to the point of zealotry (Kais just monitor their respective universes and the mortal races on planets, seeing if they can evolve to higher functions and be worth keeping around. If not, they let their Gods of Destruction wipe them out, that's it). But he personally made an effort to target Goku, again, just for a loss in a sparring match rather then being sensible and use the experience to better himself. Essentially he's a Sore Loser taken to the extremes.
  • Granolah of his titular arc starts leaning into this hard once he finds out Frieza's alive as it was Frieza's forces that killed his original people back in the past using Saiyans. So much so when Dragon Balls are discovered on the Cereal planet he's inhabiting, he instantly steals them and wishes to be the most powerful fighter in the universe despite being told this will only leave him with three years of his lifespan by the dragon. When he humiliates the Heeters as a showcase of his power, they pit Goku and Vegeta against him as a distraction while they search for their planets Dragon Balls to even the odds for themselves, claiming them to still be part of Frieza's forces. As both Saiyans take their turn fighting him, they start to realize they've been duped when Granolah cites them as part of Frieza's army. They try to tell Granolah this, as well as the extinction of the Saiyans by Frieza's hands, and that they had nothing to do with his people's destruction, being way too young when the Saiyans attacked his planet. But Granolah refuses to hear them out, seeing all Saiyans as evil regardless of affinity or what's transpired as he's too driven by his past to listen to reason. Even his A.I partner, Oatmel, effort to get Granolah to stand down and listen to the two results in Granolah throwing him aside.
• Engi from Dream Eater Merry starts sliding into this in her pursuit of Heracles, willing to risk the life of her vessel, Yui, and going against her friends if it means avenging her sister.
• In Endride, Emilio is so guilty of this that literally every person around him spends the first cour trying to persuade him he shouldn't kill his Parental Substitute Delzaine to avenge his real father but talk to him instead, especially since he's given zero thought to what happens to the kingdom after he kills the king. He hesitates at the last minute, only for someone else to kill Delzaine first. Emilio is, of course, seized with regret as Delzaine was his father figure and now he'll never get to talk it out.
• Sentinel 3, AKA the "Avenging Sentinel" from Franken Fran becomes addicted to vengeance even setting up his own non-combat allies to be killed just to have excuse for it because the act of vengeance feels really good. And it's not like this or like that, just knowing you're avenging someone even someone you set up to die in the first place produces that same kind of high.
• Roy Mustang in Fullmetal Alchemist makes sure to torch Envy over and over, consumed by hatred and the desire for revenge for Hughes's death. Scar points out that he's doomed to walk a dark path to his goal if he had dealt the killing blow. His torturous Curb-Stomp Battle also wastes precious time that the heroes don't have to stop the Big Bad.
• Gundam has a lot of pilots like this.
  • Kamille Bidan of Zeta Gundam, who in the first episode gets himself thrown into military prison for attacking a Titan, and then beaten up for physically assaulting a military police officer, in both cases because of ultimately petty reasons (Kamille is a man's name!). Even his hijack, which goes on to cause him so much misery, is motivated by pointless revenge — he initially climbs into the cockpit, breaking into a military base to do so, in order to intimidate the MP officer who beat him up.
    • Kamille's nemesis, Titans ace Jerid Messa, ends up with an even worse case of it. Initially he accidentally kills Kamille's mother and clearly has genuine regret, but the next time they meet Kamille kills his lover (a fellow Titans pilot) and Jerid becomes absolutely obsessed with his own revenge. They continue killing each other's friends and loved ones in an escalating Cycle of Revenge until the finale when Kamille easily kills the now hopelessly outclassed Jerid.
  • G Gundam has Andrew Graham of Neo-Canada. After his wife was killed in a pirate attack, Andrew became Canada's Fighter solely to get back at Argo Gulskii as the man responsible. He kidnaps Rain to force Domon and Argo into his vengeance, and while he has a Heel Realization, it doesn't stick... by the Finals he's as raring for revenge as ever, even when shown evidence that Argo had tried to save his wife. He finally gets it while watching Argo fight Domon.
  • Gundam X: After Garrod Ran snubs her and pulls a gun on her, Ennil El starts teaming up with some incredibly unsavory types to get back at him. She even spoiled the crew's escape attempt from the Feddies after they'd given her medical treatment. Fortunately, this bites her in the ass in a way that wakes her up to the foolishness of her actions.
  • Shinn Asuka from Gundam SEED Destiny is part of ZAFT's "Operation Fallen Angel", which involves ambushing and destroying the Archangel battle ship that has been avoiding combat. While several members from ZAFT express their doubts if attacking the Archangel is right, Shinn solely focuses on defeating their Ace Pilot Kira Yamato in revenge for the death of Stella Loussier. While Kira did indeed cause Stella's death, being a Technical Pacifist he did so by accident... and if Shinn were in a more rational state of mind he would've realized that saving Stella was probably impossible, even if Kira hadn't showed up and ruined his Defusing the Tyke-Bomb moment.
  • Then there's Lockon Stratos (that is, Neil Dylandy), from Gundam 00, whose whole motivation turns out to be revenge against the people who bombed his family. At one point, the terrorist leader who caused their deaths tries to divide the Gundam Meisters by telling Lockon that his teammate Setsuna used to belong to his group; Lockon points his gun at Setsuna and says (paraphrased) "I know you couldn't have done it, but just let me shoot you so I can feel better." Later on, he goes out in a badly damaged Gundam and missing one eye because the aforementioned terrorist was on the battlefield and he refused to let the guy get away in the time it would have taken to fix the Gundam and regenerate his lost eye. Which ends up causing Lockon's death because the guy picks up on his new blind spot and exploits it, despite a sterling Determinator attempt by Lockon to take him along for the ride.
  • Flit Asuno, the first protagonist of Gundam AGE was already pissed at Vagan for killing his parents, but after their Psycho for Hire murdered his would-be Love Interest, he kept a bitter grudge for fifty years. It lead him to great victories... but it also lead to him instituting The Purge against Vagan sympathisers, wanting to summarily execute Vagan POWs, and trying to turn his grandson into a Tyke Bomb to wipe out every Vagan man, woman, and child. It probably doesn't help that said Psycho for Hire was a child (at least back then).
  • Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans:
    • Mikazuki Augus becomes this after Biscuit's death, he used to fight for his survival, but now, whoever blocks his way is his enemy and he will crush them without questioning. He proves it by shredding every last of Carta's squadrons and Carta herself when they're still talking.
    • Ein Dalton becomes worse than Mikazuki ever since Crank's death, he has been plotting to retrieve Crank's Graze from Tekkadan and murder everyone related to Tekkadan. He proves it in the ensuing battle against Tekkadan as Graze Ein. He took down Azee and Lafter effortlessly with his brutal weaponries, disabled Shino's Ryusei-Go (which is also Crank's machine) with his Pile Bunker, and even blamed Kudelia and made an attempt to outright kill her.
• Hunter × Hunter: Gon's main motivations throughout the Chimera Ant arc are to extract his revenge on Pitou and take Kite back from them, with that second goal just barely keeping him sane and at least somewhat patient to comply with Pitou's requests. Once it's revealed that Kite is already dead, however, Gon stops caring about anything besides killing Pitou; not just "anything" as in "any other motivation within the arc", but anything in his life, period. He was ready to permanently give up on his ability to use Nen and possibly discard his life just to murder Pitou, even as Killua was tearfully begging him to stop using his Dangerous Forbidden Technique while there's still a chance to go back.
  Gon: I don't care if this is where it all ends. So I'll use everything... and kill you, PITOUUUUUUU!!!
• Inuyasha: In episode 23, Kikyo plans to drag Inuyasha to Hell with her as revenge for allegedly betraying and killing her. Even after Kagome tells her that Naraku set them up and that Inuyasha still loved her despite everything, Kikyo openly states that she doesn't care because it doesn't change the fact that she died. However, after confirming Kagome's story with Kaede, Kikyo focuses her efforts on Naraku from there on out. It's still this trope though, but in a different way that ultimately doesn't work out for her in the end.
• Alma Jinnai, the Dark Magical Girl of Jewelpet Twinkle☆. She thinks Jewelina is responsible for her mother's death, so she's out to get her. The truth is that Jewelina warned Fealina about the danger; Fealina went and made a mistake that was ultimately her own.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
  • Battle Tendency: Caesar's desire to kill the Pillar Man for wanting to avenge his father more or less drives him to the point where he lashes out at Joeseph for not going after them when their base is right before them. It ends up being the death of him.
  • Stardust Crusaders: Polnareff falls into this after encountering the man who killed his sister, he leaves the group wanting to settle it himself. He falls into an obvious trap, and ends up outnumbered two to one against J. Geil and Hol Horse. He would have died if not for Avdol and Kakyoin's intervention, and he only realizes his foly after Avdol (seemingly) was killed by Hol Horse.
  • Stone Ocean: Weather Report goes rogue after recovering his lost memories, fully wanting vengeance against Pucci for ruining his life. But in the process, his desire for revenge puts civilians and his allies in danger once his Stand begins spreading The Virus.
  • Steel Ball Run: Wekapipo blames the Zeppeli family for ruining his life after Gyro's father exiled him from Naples which led to his sister's death and wantons killing Gyro. It's only after he's beaten that he learns what really happened after his exile.
• The first season of K revolves around what will happen if the Red King carries this through. Everyone agrees that the killer should be taken down — he shot the sweetest, kindest person around in cold blood and gloated about it. Unfortunately, the victim was also the Red King's Morality Chain, and he wants revenge personally — even though that would cause his Sword of Damocles to (literally) crash down, which would destroy the entire city. And they show the crater from when it happened to the previous Red King, too. But he doesn't care. The Blue King ends up having to kill him right after he takes his revenge, causing his Sword to be at risk of falling, and thus it carries on in Season 2...
• Master of Martial Hearts has the villains pursue Revenge before Reason, common sense, sense of decency and even basic logic. It could honestly be called "Revenge Before Reason: The Anime."
• Mazinger Z: Dr. Hell is a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds with Abusive Parents and a very crappy childhood and early adulthood. His motivation to Take Over the World is having revenge upon everybody who abused him or mocked him when he was young (or people he believes abused him and mocked him). Nevertheless, he is 70-years-old when the series begins, so most if not all of Dr. Hell's former tormentors will likely be dead by now. Yet will he let that insignificant detail stop him? Hell, no!
• In My Hero Academia, Ingenium dives headlong into this trope when he abandons the experienced hero he was assigned to work with in the middle of a supervillain attack so he can personally hunt for the Hero Killer who'd crippled his (much more experienced at being a hero) older brother and a lot of other professional heroes to boot. Unsurprisingly he gets instantly incapacitated and only survives due to Midoriya (who was in the area purely by coincidence) suddenly intervening.
• Naruto:
  • Sasuke Uchiha has allowed revenge to motivate almost every single action he takes. Everything he does in the first half and most of the second half is done to become strong enough to face Itachi, the older brother responsible for killing his entire family. These actions include charging in half-cocked to fight Itachi when he was nowhere near ready, getting excessively jealous when a "failure" starts surpassing him, Face–Heel Turn-ing to the enemy, killing said enemy and absorbing his powers, and gathering his own team to help him. You would think that Sasuke might chill out a tiny bit after he finally succeeds, but nooooo. When Sasuke learns his (now late) older brother did everything he did for Sasuke's sake, he sets out on a whole new rampage of revenge, this one directed at the Leaf Village itself and the current aspirant for Hokage (Danzo) in particular. You know it's bad when Danzo, not exactly a saint himself, calls him on it and has a valid point. Gets even worse when he abandons his new team because he's too impatient to wait for them to catch up, and stabs through Karin simply because Danzo took her hostage and it was too much effort on his part to help her. Remember, she is his only medic at this point. He gets better due to several moments of Character Development that cause him to finally stop pursuing revenge too much and becomes a good guy again... but the final arc to reveal it to be a Bait the Dog moment and in a way, he may still be keeping the position well enough. Eventually after learning the truth about the Uchiha, he figures, the world might as well be his revenge and focuses on trying to change it to his will. This kid just will not let it drop.
    • Weirdly, he intends to keep a promise he made to Naruto about his revenge, namely that he'll fight and kill Naruto first, to the exclusion of all others.
    • In the end, he and Naruto clash, costing them both an arm. Despite this, Naruto's persistence has paid off and he managed to finally get Sasuke to surrender his vendetta against the world and finally helping Sasuke find himself. In the epilogue, he has married Sakura and had a child with her, but often travels away from home to explore the world.
  • There's also Pain, who lost so many loved ones to ninja society that he set about to effectively destroy it so thoroughly people would be too scared to even consider making war. When that fear wore off, as Pain was certain it would, he would lather, rinse, repeat.
    • It should also be noted that the cornerstone of Pain's beliefs and plan is that he thinks everyone acts like this.
  • To his credit, Naruto himself has done everything in his power to avert this. Despite his own desire for revenge on Pain for killing Jiraiya and Kakashi, as well as many Leaf Villagers, and then nearly killing Hinata right in front of him, Naruto is able to rein in his feelings and instead ultimately wins without killing him which pays off far better. Not long after, he tries to get the Raikage to not try and kill Sasuke for attacking his brother.
  • Speaking of which, the Raikage is perfectly willing to lose an arm (and a leg, but was stopped before that could happen) to achieve his revenge.
    • However, he subverts/averts it later when he learns his brother is okay and apparently decides to forget about Sasuke entirely.
  • Subverted with Obito. After he saw Kakashi kill Rin, presumably forced by something Mist ninja had done to her, he utterly slaughtered the Mist shinobi... but he did not touch Kakashi, declaring he no longer cares for his ex-teammate.
  • Izuna Uchiha uses his dying breath to convince his brother, Madara, to refuse Hashirama Senju's offer of a truce in favor of continuing to avenge their fellow Uchiha. Sadly, he didn't seem to acknowledge that accepting the truce would both give him a chance to survive through Hashirama's powerful medical jutsu and prevent his clansmen from dying needlessly in more wars with the Senju clan. As a result, he dies of his wounds and Madara ends up becoming an even worse example of this trope, to the point of continuing the war even when other members of their clan wanted to give up.
• The defining trait of One Piece villain Hody Jones. Despite having never suffered from it firsthand, he craves revenge against the human race for crimes against Fishmen and Merfolk and will do anything to achieve it. This "anything" includes sabotaging attempts by other characters to reconcile and live peacefully with humans so they can continue to justify themselves.
  • Arlong, likewise, shares this mentality largely due to the fact that his mentor, Fisher Tiger, was killed by humans. Thing is, though it was by Marines, Fisher was a pirate, and even as he lay dying, tried to impart to his crew not to let their hatred lead them to his fate (long story, but after he was mortally wounded, a blood transfusion could've saved him but Fisher refused because it was human blood and his hatred wouldn't let him take it). This wisdom fell on deaf ears when it came to Arlong and he decided to take revenge on humanity by enslaving as many as he could and building an empire from it... by going to the more peaceful of the four seas, East Blue, and taking over an island of residents who likely don't even know much about fishmen let alone would abuse them.
  • Kurozumi Orochi, full stop. His family was persecuted due to Orochi's grandfather attempting a dishonorable coup for the Shogun position, which ended with him committing seppuku. Not content with this, the people of Wano made the Kurozumi family's lives hell resulting in several family members' deaths and others leaving Wano. It leads to Orochi harboring extreme resentment which leads him to actually overthrow Oden for the Shogun position, and beginning a reign of terror on his dissidents and everyone excluding his sycophants, instead of ruling Wano properly and dispelling the nation's negative connotations regarding his family.
• Ranma ½'s Ryoga Hibiki. He left his home, his school and everything else to try to get revenge on Ranma for "breaking a man-to-man promise" and abandoning a challenge which Ryoga was ludicrously late for. The original reason for the fight? Ranma had cut in front of him in line at the school tuckshop. Okay, a fair few times, but... Of course, with his sense of direction Ryoga couldn't have stayed in one place anyway, so he might have figured that if he's going to be Walking the Earth anyway he might as well try to get revenge on Ranma. Fanon is that his sense of directing grew worse as he got older, explaining his ability to attend school in the first place, so he would have had to drop out of school and abandon having a permanent home sooner or later anyway.
• In The Rising of the Shield Hero, King Aultcray's sister was killed (actually abducted, but the circumstances sure looked like an assassination) by demihumans Melromarc was at war with, and that torpedoed his previous competence. By the time the series starts, he's willing to doom the world to take petty proxy revenge against one of the heroes summoned to save it, just because he's seen as a god by the demihumans he's never met. His Bitch in Sheep's Clothing daughter falsely accusing the hero of trying to rape her as part of a conspiracy to take back her inheritance and being egged on by the Corrupt Church didn't help, but the grief from losing his sister is the root of his issues.
• The Saga of Tanya the Evil basically deconstructs the trope as a subplot, especially in the character Mary Sioux and the Francois Republic.
• In Servant × Service, Lucy could very easily apply to change her Overly Long Name, (As Hasebe mentions) but she's determined to find the civil servant who approved that name, and give him the business first.
• Tokyo Ghoul: Touka becomes fixated on avenging the deaths of Hinami's parents at the hands of Kureo Mado, rather than let the murder go and avoid attracting the Commission of Counter Ghoul's attention as she should have done. Because of this, Touka is indirectly responsible for the CCG's raid on Anteiku, as her killing Mado caused them to turn their attentions to the 20th ward.
• In Witch Hat Atelier, Qifrey desires to seek revenge against the Brimhats and is willing to do almost anything to get closer to his quest of vengeance, including wiping his best friend's memories so that he won't stand in his way. His master laments that his obsession with revenge might cost him everything.
• Yu-Gi-Oh!:
  • Seto Kaiba
    • In Yu-Gi-Oh! The Movie: Pyramid of Light, Kaiba is so eager to take revenge on Yugi he ends up almost killing him, and refuses to back down when Yami Yugi explains how dangerous their duel has become.
    • This dates as far back as Yu-Gi-Oh! when it wasn't just about card games. Yugi bests him in a Duel Monsters card game. Kaiba goes on to make an entire theme park filled with deadly traps and games just to get even with Yugi for the loss (he clearly has PTSD from Yugi's Penalty Game of horrific hallucinations, but he was hardly a saint to begin with and even Mokuba notes that Kaiba's had issues since long before Yugi beat him). The second time, Yugi decides to Mind Crush him in order to alter his personality and make sure this doesn't happen again. Kaiba's actual personality remains the same, but his motivations shift from "Defeat and kill Yugi" to "Save brother who I previously didn't care about and then beat Yugi, but leave him alive."
  • In Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL, Gilag is so enraged when Alito is beaten up by Rei, he goes gunning for revenge, and when Yuma defends him, thinking Rei is an amateur, Gilag actually challenges both of them at once, using cards that are as dangerous to him as they are to his opponents. This proves a mistake, as Rei is much better than anyone assumed. In fact, we later learn he's downright deadly and capable of murder; he's actually Vector in disguise.

---