Big Brother Worship



""You gave up everything to find me. You found me broken.""

- River Tam

My big brother is the best and I refuse to believe he has any flaws.

Or the same applied to a big sister. Sometimes a younger sibling just adores their elder brother or sister. And it makes sense. After all they are more mature, and usually physically taller too, and able to do a lot of cool things like adults, but are also closer to your age and willing to do fun things with you and play with you. They protect you too. Why wouldn't you just agree with everything they tell you? Often will also happen when said older sibling takes the place of the parent.

Most commonly occurs with siblings of the same gender, but it can happen the other way around too.

Has always been related to Cool Big Sis. Has never been related to God-Emperor. Thank god this has nothing to do with that Big Brother.

Compare with Big Brother Attraction.

Anime and Manga

 * Soukou no Strain has Sara, who idolizes her older brother Ralph and joins the military to see him. By the end of the first episode, he's gone evil and killed her friends, and she has to come to terms with her Big Brother Attraction before she can defeat him..
 * Played straight (in a non-romantic sense) in Mai-HiME: Takumi Tokiha appears to Big Sister Worship his older sister Mai, and she goes out of her way to protect him. On the other hand, Shiho likes to address her childhood friend Yuuichi as her "big brother", even though they're not related (Mai points this out to Takumi when they introduce themselves).
 * And in the manga version, Alyssa displays Big Sister Worship towards Natsuki, desperately wanting her attention from basically the moment they meet. Unfortunately,.
 * Taken even further in the Mai-Otome manga, where Alyssa tries to replace the Otome system with copies of Miyu, which would dramatically alter the military and political landscape of the entire world... so her beloved big sis Natsuki can quit her job as Headmistress of the Otome academy and thus have more free time to spend with her.
 * Asami from High School Debut has a huge Big Brother Attraction to her brother Yoh that really becomes apparent in the last few chapters. She says he's her ideal guy and tells his girlfriend she loves him more and actually cries when it's pointed out she can't be his girlfriend because she's his sister. She does all of this despite having a boyfriend (who she started going out with because her brother wasn't paying enough attention to her).
 * Bakemonogatari is an interesting example: upon meeting Koyomi, Nadeko asks him if she can address him as an older brother, and goes on to develop a complex over him.
 * Ren Uesugi, from They Are My Noble Masters, thinks his sister Mihato is the best there is.
 * In the Ouran High School Host Club manga, this trope is played straight with Satoshi Morinozuka's adoration of his older brother Takashi.
 * Sayu Yagami has a bit of this with her older brother, Light. Though, she does tease him about eating potato chips right after dinner, claiming he'll get fat, all in all she really looks up to her big brother.
 * Hikari in Digimon Adventure, to the point that she nearly dies twice not wanting to make Taichi worry about her.
 * In Yu-Gi-Oh!, Mokuba has a serious case of hero worship over his older brother Seto. It makes sense, given that Seto basically raised him since they were five- and ten-years-old. Even though Mokuba still gets kidnapped all the time, he can always rely on his older brother to rip his way through the transgressors' ranks to get him back.
 * In Code Geass, Nunnally Lamperouge seems to hold this opinion in regards to her Onii-sama Lelouch, who was her only family after being attacked and exiled. She does not take it well when she discovers his role in the Rebellion and what he did (initially) in her name. Notable in that he also holds her on a sort of pedestal, along with his mother, and seems to regain his former status in her heart.
 * Liechtenstein feels this way about her adoptive Big Brother Switzerland in Axis Powers Hetalia. He found and rescued her in the aftermath of World War I when she went through a horrible recession that almost killed her. Since then, she shares a customs union with him and he protects, teaches, and generally dotes on her.
 * Hatsukoi Limited, being something that explores all kinds of first loves does this with Koyoi Bessho, so much so that her brother Yoshihiko is literally a glomp on site target.
 * Even if he gets punched in the head as many as three times, and gets scared of her, Ichika highly respects his big sister Chifuyu. Fanon plays this up with Incest Subtext.
 * The manga takes it a step further, and puts subtle hints and "arbitrary" blushing (for Chifuyu), here and there.
 * Sasuke and Itachi had this relationship until Itachi killed the entire Uchiha Clan.
 * Alphonse Elric from Fullmetal Alchemist IS this trope.
 * It must depend on the series. The Alphonse I know may love his brother, he's his brother after all. But readily admits he has faults and outright says he is taller than Ed and a better fighter.
 * Elsie of The World God Only Knows is mocked in-universe for this.
 * Gunslinger Girl: Due to their conditioning, the titular girls are very focused on their grownup "handlers" - who all happen to be male. On occasion this even turns into a form of puppy love, with the difference that the "puppies" know how to handle dangerous weapons... And, in the case of, blow your brains out as well as theirs in a murder/suicide if you ignore them too much.

Film

 * Taken to a very disturbing level in The House of Yes.

Live Action Television

 * River Tam showed this in "Ariel" when Simon rescued the patient. Which is natural as that was a Crowning Moment of Awesome. She has a bit of it at a number of other times too.
 * There is an inversion at the beginning when Simon essentially makes a Badass Boast about how smart he is, then says "She makes me look like an idiot child".
 * In The River Tam Sessions, we see River being interviewed by someone at the Academy before all the brain-cutting starts, and they talk about how her brother's studying to be a surgeon. With utter fondness and affection, River smiles and says "Simon's a genius. I could never do what he does." Coming from a girl to whom everything from dancing to painting to theoretical science comes as easy as breathing, that's saying something. The Academy official's reply to that is "Actually, I believe that if you put your mind to it, you could do whatever you wanted."
 * On Malcolm in the Middle, Reese, Malcolm, and Dewey all look up to their older brother Francis because he dared to rebel and stand up to their sadistic, domineering mother Lois, while the rest of them are still at home under her control.
 * In Engine Sentai Go-onger Miu does this. She even refers to Hiroto as "the shiniest Ani in the world". (This might very well be true; he certainly has one of the shiniest suits in the Super Sentai series thus far.)

Theater

 * Electra adores and idolizes Orestes in Electra, but doesn't quite play the trope straight because her love is entirely contingent on the fact that she thinks he will kill Clytemnestra one day and avenge their father. If he chose to stay happily in exile for the rest of his life she'd probably disown him, but as her only ally and potential saviour he is the recipient of all her love.

Video Games
"Miku: "When I saw Mafuyu in that dream... I just wanted to be with him again.""
 * Ventus in Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep has a massive case of this going on for Team Dad/Big Brother Mentor Terra. Edges into tragic as it blinds Ven to the fact Terra is starting to fall to the Darkness.
 * In Fatal Frame, Miku's primary motivation for entering the Haunted Mansion is due to the bond she has with her older brother Mafuyu, who is the latest to disappear into the old house.


 * Emilia of Yggdra Union feels this way towards her big brother Gulcasa; Blaze Union goes to show that she'd already started to adore him like this before they knew that they were related. (Granted, this may just be because Gulcasa is Gulcasa.) In one of the alternate routes of Blaze Union, Yggdra manages to develop a complex over her Long-Lost Relative in record time.
 * Bethany of Dragon Age II starts off the game with her relationship meter heavily tilted to "friendship" to her older sibling Hawke. Her Codex entry states that she nearly idolizes her eldest sibling either for their skill with magic or protective attitude towards her.
 * Nanako Dojima of Persona 4 absolutely adores her "big bro", the protagonist. He may not actually be her big bro (he's actually her cousin), but she makes things for him when he does well on tests, hangs out with him and his friends, confides with him about everything, and is just generally the perfect little sister. The vast majority of the fanbase love her back, to the point where

Web Original

 * Dave from Homestuck refuses to think there's anything wrong with his Bro, despite his operating a puppet porno site.

Western Animation

 * Strange case in Re Boot, as both brothers involved are the same person (Time Skip + System Restore = Clones). Little Enzo is obsessed with Big Enzo (Matrix)'s life and thinks Matrix is the best person to become when he grows up (he even asks to be called Little Matrix). However, Little Enzo realizes just how terrible Matrix's life was when he's asked to repeat what happened to Matrix in order to deal with Daemon. After that point, Little Enzo stops being obsessed with Matrix.
 * Scooter Chan has this for his brother Flip; Flip is the only one he'll take orders from and he's constantly trying to emulate him.
 * Apple Bloom and and Sweetie Belle adore their big sisters in My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic. So much so when Scootaloo suggests finding the coolest person they know, they response with "Applejack" and "Rarity" respectively.
 * As revealed in the season 2 finale, Twilight Sparkle had this attitude towards her brother Shining Armor; she admits that when they were growing up, he was pretty much her only friend, and she's worried about them growing apart.

Song

 * The classic kid's boasting song about My great big brother Sylvest, with a row of forty medals on his chest.
 * Thankfully, most modern performances no longer include the line "He killed a thousand injuns in the west".
 * There is another one about "My cousin Joe" with the Twist Ending that Joe is a girl.