The Gadfly / Anime & Manga

• Kazuya Miyuki of Ace of the Diamond. On the field, he's a great catcher who knows how to effectively lead his team, and everybody relies on him, especially protagonist Eijun Sawamura. Off the field, he loves to troll others to no end, and whenever people insult or call him "evil", he takes it as praise.
• Chelsea from Akame ga Kill! loves to make fun of Mine and her flat chest.
• Shinnosuke from Apocalypse Alice, who lives to press people's buttons. It also helps to push them away from him.
• Before either of these, Tomo from Azumanga Daioh was doing this to Yomi.
• By episode 12 of Bakemonogatari, Senjogahara admits she likes to troll Koyomi.
• BanG Dream! gives us Moca Aoba, who delights in saying things to tease her bandmates in Afterglow, such as saying that her favorite thing to eat after "pan" (bread) is Ran, the aloof lead singer of the band. She also explains that she never gains weight, despite being a Big Eater because she sends the calories to Himari.
• Motoharu Tsuchimikado and Misaka Worst from A Certain Magical Index. The former is a Self-Proclaimed Liar, the latter does her best trying to troll Accelerator.
• Code Geass: C.C. seems to come off as this trope, with snarking and freeloading the person she does it to as a bonus when pushing Lelouch's buttons.
• Shin of Crayon Shin-chan loves getting a rise out of Georgie.
• Daimos: Kyoshiro frequently lampoons his best friend Kazuya for having a crush on Erika, the Alien Princess of Baam, the planet at war with Earth. More than once this results in Kazuya's fist entering his face.
• L from Death Note does this to gauge reactions from other people, helping him read them more easily.
• Korone (Green) in Demon King Daimao loves yanking Akuto's chain.
• Tsuyuri from Doujin Work is this through and through, causing most of the misunderstandings in the series.
• Bianca's characterization in Dragon Quest: Your Story sees her having this type of relationship with the hero (Luca). She repeatedly lovingly trolls him to get under his skin.
• Rindou Kobayashi from Food Wars!; pretty much every time she appears she's trying to get a rise out of other people she finds amusing or interesting. Indeed, her first significant appearance after her introduction is her hanging around Terunori and Soma's stalls at the Full Moon Banquest festival just to tease them. She later shows up out of nowhere during a crucial shokugeki just to bother the participants.
• Gintama:
  • Sougo Okita pretty much lives to annoy others. The most common target of his is Hijikata, and the pranks he directs at him frequently are more like attempted murder.
  • Honorable mention goes to Gintoki and Kagura for the epic troll faces they pull on Shinpachi in the 9th opening.
• Half the time when Koizumi and Kyon from Haruhi Suzumiya talk, Koizumi will explain some theory to explain Haruhi and Kyon will start getting very involved in the conversation and thinking about it deeply - at which point he says "Just kidding, I made the whole thing up." Annoying!
  • A bad case of this comes from none other than Ryoko Asakura, who decides it's her job to make Haruhi do something and tries to murder Kyon. Actions speak louder than words?
• In Great Pretender, Laurent is a shameless troll who loves teasing his associates. This ranges from merely making snarky comments about them to outright flirting with them to tick them off.
• Hayate × Blade: Amachi Hitsugi, being the head of an Absurdly Powerful Student Council, often uses her powers to amuse herself, usually at the expense of others.
• Holoearth Chronicles Side:E ~Yamato Phantasia~: While investigating the Haunted House, Fubuki tries to find a chance to scare Mio for fun, despite both already been attacked by ghosts and Mio having a past trauma.
• Haru Hozuki from Hozuki-san Chi no Aneki has nothing better to do than mess with her step-brother.
• Hisoka from Hunter × Hunter messes with people just for amusement in some scenes, though he toes the lines between comedy and cruelty (for example, joking about killing Killua to Illumi, who reacts accordingly, though he calms down quickly upon realizing it was a joke).
• Raphael from I'm Gonna Be an Angel! is a mix of this and The Tease towards Mikael.
• Ino-Head Gargoyle: Saejima's police partner Okita, who's younger, more handsome, and luckier than him in every way, never misses a chance to rub Saejima's face in it.
• Joseph Joestar of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, no matter his age. In his youth, he bold-facedly lies to the Big Bad about how he achieved victory (blind dumb luck, incidentally), just for the sake of pissing him off. As an old man, he spends a considerable amount of time doing things to mess with his traveling companions, including his own grandson, to the point where Jotaro nearly ORA ORAs him at the end of the series out of confusion and annoyance with one of his pranks.
• Ritsu from K-On! loves pushing Mio's buttons, mainly to scare the crap out of her.
  • When Mugi tried to simulate her to get more popular, she came off as a Jerkass.
• Kagerou Daze: Kano. It really doesn't help that he's a Shapeshifter. Most of his lines are meant to fluster someone in some way, whether it is to break Kido's cool exterior, reading Mary's poetry aloud for everyone, or making comments suggesting he's attracted to Momo in front of Shintaro. Once his status as The Resenter is revealed, it's clear he's more of a Troll instead.
• Ena of Laid-Back Camp like messing up Rin for fun sometimes, like making a bear-like bun hair out of Rin, or asking Rin to buy her lunch while knowing well Rin's camping.
  • In the Heya Camp segments, this role is fulfilled by Aoi. She tells completely random explanations for something, mostly to mess with Nadeshiko. In the second season, her sister Akari joins in the fun at Nadeshiko's expense.
• Kazuma of Kaze no Stigma is a Deadpan Snarker with a hobby: Trolling his distant cousin Ayano.
• Manabe from Kotoura-san is a mixture of this and The Tease. It's not just that he likes having sexual fantasies of his girlfriend and local telepath Haruka so that she flusters, it also turns him on. When he discovers Haruka can't read his mind when she's sick, it takes all the fun right out of it.
• Prince Baka Ki=El-Dogra, also known as the Prince, in Level E is pretty much made out of this.
• Konata in Lucky Star constantly pushes Kagami's buttons and giggles quietly at the explosive results.
• In Maid-Sama!, Takumi Usui does this a lot to basically everyone, but his favorite victim is his Tsundere love interest Misaki Ayuzawa.
• Akane of My Monster Secret sits right on the line between this trope and being a full-blown Troll. She absolutely delights in screwing around with people, but often has a vaguely benevolent ulterior motive. The exception is her great-great-grandaughter Akari, who she antagonizes just for kicks.
• My Hero Academia: The pro heroine Ms. Joke, real name Emi Fukukado, is this in her interactions with Shota Aizawa. She's constantly cracking jokes and hitting on him, though it's clear it's mostly because she's trying to get a reaction out of him.
• My-HiME gives us Shizuru Fujino, president of the Absurdly Powerful Student Council, is Brilliant, but Lazy. She is also deeply, but secretly, in love with resident Action Girl Natsuki Kuga. She takes great delight in teasing Natsuki with unexpectedly inappropriate jokes, glomps, and various other antics. She also delights in tricking her rival on the student council, Haruka Suzushiro, into taking on larger workloads.
• Negima! Magister Negi Magi:
  • Albireo Imma who seems to feel it is his job to get a rise out of Evangeline. He's described as her 'natural enemy'.
  • Zazie Rainyday appears to be following in his footsteps.
  • More than once, a few of the others - such as Haruna, Kazumi, even Chachamaru - have said or done something teasing or over-the-top mainly to get a reaction from others.
• Nichijou:
  • Mai from goes to great lengths in order to confuse her friends, going so far as to seemingly confess to Yukko just to provoke a funny response or simply stop when playing Red Light-Green Light while the others are in an uncomfortable position and are not allowed to move. She'll even troll herself. Also, her dogs are the same way.
  • Mio's older sister is just as bad. Her initial appearance featured her wearing a mascot mask and chasing Mio around for, to Mio, no reason whatsoever. Unlike Mai, Mio tends to beat up on her sister when she does this.
• Gramps from Ojojojo loves to tease Haru, and on several occasions withholds information about what her friends are doing because it's more interesting to see her get worked up over nothing.
• One Piece:
  • Luffy does this to the villains, often pointing out their physical features (BIG RED NOSE!!!), seemingly just to make them mad. To his credit, however, he doesn't do it on purpose; he's just too much of an idiot to keep his comments to himself.
  • Fittingly, his number one fanboy Bartolomeo lives to piss every non-Strawhat off, delighting in their enraged reactions and keeping any reprisals at bay with his Barrier Warrior powers.
  • Any time they're seen together, Eustass Kid does this to Luffy and Law. At one point he provokes them into sailing down a waterfall.
• Hikaru and Kaoru Hitachiin in Ouran Highschool Host Club generally amuse themselves by baiting Tamaki and Haruhi. Tamaki is a bit of a Butt-Monkey, but Haruhi can hold her own. Often unintentionally.
  • The scary thing is that it runs in the family.
• Morris from Pikaia seems to enjoy messing with the Elfin girls. However, they're happy to retaliate.
• Otako of Please Tell Me! Galko-chan likes messing with Galko.
• Pokémon: The Series: Miette and Serena are rival performers and cooks. They get along just as any rivals would, but Miette also likes to mess with Serena by pretending to be a romantic rival as well, "threatening" to take Ash away from Serena every chance she gets.
• Nabiki often acts like this towards Akane and Ranma in Ranma ½.
• Suiseiseki of Rozen Maiden appears at first to be as aloof and proper as Shinku, but in actuality she loves nothing more than tormenting Hinaichigo with tricks and pranks. Really, her "properness" is about as deep as her paint job. She's more like a spoiled and immature royal who is more than willing to smack around her "subjects." She only sobers up during life and death situations. She acts like this during common situations, she is easily the most caring of the dolls anyway (it says something when she is the only doll who never even tried to become Alice out of fear of losing her sisters). When she snaps out of it, she snaps out of it hard. There's even one instance in the drama CDs when she tries to rectify her behavior after realizing that she had gone too far.
• Michiru Kaioh/Sailor Neptune of Sailor Moon is the series' resident Gadfly. She loves making sarcastic, thinly veiled comments (even wandering to sex jokes in some of her words) behind her innocent-looking smile. She goes around making comments for the sake of screwing with people and watching their reactions when they finally get what she's really saying.
• Kaede Ikeno from Sakura Trick fits the bill, often playing pranks on the other girls because they seem like good ideas at the time.
• In practice, Kafuka Fuura of Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei comes across like this, as while she professes extreme optimism on every subject, she tends to create or encourage chaos by doing so, and we know that she's really Cute and Psycho.
• Yutaka's sister Kaoru from Servant × Service mentioned she likes to play tricks on people when she introduced herself. She's right; the first she appears, she actually staged an Unsettling Gender-Reveal in front of Lucy, making the latter to believe Yutaka is indeed a female for a few seconds!
• Shirokuma of Shirokuma Cafe enjoys making things up and messing with his friends because he thinks their lives are too dull.
• Koiwai of Recovery of an MMO Junkie may be a Shipper on Deck for his current co-worker Sakurai and his former coworker Moriaka, but that doesn't mean he won't take time to mess with both along the way, like tricking them into spending time with each other or sending taunting photographs to Sakurai. It's also suggested that the nicknames he frequently gives out are only tolerated by the recipients, and he knows it too.
• Tales of Wedding Rings: Morion Ravri Nokanatika spends most of her time teasing her brother-in-law Satou and his harem (especially her elder sister Krystal) for her own amusement. She once tricked Krystal into using a birth control spell that wasn't infallible, deliberately waiting for a suitably amusing moment to reveal its 70% success rate. Krystal and Satou, understandably, didn't find this as funny as she did.
• Teasing Master Takagi-san: The very premise revolves around Nishikata's attempts to get back at the titular girl Takagi for all the times she's teased him. Although it's all Played for Laughs, and they are great friends despite this.
• Yuyushiki: Yuzuko and Yukari's favorite hobby is to tease their friend Yui to get a funny reaction from her. Especially Yuzuko.

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