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Always Save the Girl: Difference between revisions
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Despite the name, it doesn't actually have to be the love interest or even a single person. A [[Most Important Person]], members of the hero's Nakama, or [[Papa Wolf|beloved]] [[Mama Bear|family]] [[Knight Templar Big Brother|members]] work just as well.
See also [[Hostage for Macguffin]]. Contrast [[
{{examples}}
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* In ''[[Bleach]]'', Ichigo goes nuts trying to save Rukia and later Orihime. The former case pits him against thousands of Soul Reapers, several of whom are stronger than he is even at the end of the arc, and the latter forces him to go into he enemy's fortress alone, at great detriment to the upcoming war. Which he's romantically interested in, if at all, is [[Ship-to-Ship Combat|anybody's guess]].
* Played very straight by Shinji in ''[[Rebuild of Evangelion]]'': "I don't care what happens to me... I don't even care what happens to the world... but I'm bringing Rei back! I'll promise I'll save you Rei, '''EVEN IF IT'S THE LAST THING I DO!!!'''" In classic Evangelion form, saving her means ''killing everyone in the world''. Oops. {{spoiler|Thankfully, the world is saved at the last moment by none other than Kaworu.}}
** In the [[Neon Genesis Evangelion|Original Series]], this is the motivation of [[Generation Xerox|Gendo]].
* Belldandy in ''[[Ah! My Goddess]]'' makes it clear she puts Keiichi's life ahead of all others, once allowing the cutting of the Universal superstring rather than killing him when he is possessed by the Lord of Terror, ends up taking the third option to save the day.
* ''[[Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann]]'', just like everything else, takes this trope and cranks it past absurdity all the way into heartbreaking. While there is the excuse of having to fight off the evil swarm, the last few episodes boil down to Simon's perfect willingness to march into Hell to come for Nia. Even when it costs {{spoiler|him enough energy to create detritus galaxies and fill the cockpit with blood, the lives of the Gurren Brigade, and comes close to destroying the universe.}} That's some Goddamned love.
** Of course, this only happens in ''Lagann-hen''. In the anime, there's a lot less blood.
* Played straight right after the timeskip in ''Mythic Quest''. Tragic has decided to put off defeating the Chaos Sorcerer indefinitely so he can fully concentrate on finding Aramusha. He gets back on track after {{spoiler|discovering most of the information about her is lies and misdirections planted by Shadow himself to keep Tragic distracted from him.}}
* Subverted at the last second in ''[[Weiss Kreuz]]''. This is pretty much Youji's default mindset, but he ends up {{spoiler|killing the woman he loves in order to save his teammates}}.
** Aya also makes it pretty clear that he doesn't give a single fat damn about Weiss's mission to make the world a better place if it interferes in any way with his ability to [[Big Brother Instinct|protect his little sister]].
* ''[[The Place Promised in Our Early Days]]'' has the heroes risk the entire planet Earth to {{spoiler|wake Sayuri from a coma induced by the world-ending machine}}.
* {{spoiler|Akemi Homura}} of ''[[Puella Magi Madoka Magica]]'' is revealed to have this mindset. Happily, saving the girl in question also coincides with saving the world {{spoiler|by ensuring she'll never turn into a [[Cosmic Horror Story|super-powerful, world-destroying Witch]]}}. [[Tear Jerker|Sadly, however]], {{spoiler|it's not as easy as it sounds, even with [[Groundhog Day Loop|multiple attempts]]. She's even had to ''[[Shoot the Dog|Shoot]]''/''[[Mercy Kill]]'' [[Shoot the Dog|The Girl]] once.}}
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* Extremely subverted in ''[[Sin City]]: The Big Fat Kill'', Dwight McCarthy offers Jackie Boy's head to Manute (which will allow Manute to tie Jackie Boy's death to Old Town) in exchange for Gail. Dwight's stuffed the head with explosives and as soon as it's in Manute's hands, blows it up as dozens of Old Town girls show up on the rooftops, raining bullets into the alley, killing Manute and all his men.
* Also extremely subverted in ''[[Ultimate Fantastic Four]]'' during the ''Ultimatum'' storyline. {{spoiler|Reed Richards chooses to confront Doctor Doom and save the world at large, abandoning his dying girlfriend, Sue. Eventually, she calls him out for it and breaks up with him. He explains that he made the "logical" choice, as saving the world would ultimately mean saving her as well. Sue remarks that she always felt that their love ''defied'' logic, and leaves him.}}
* Absolutely subverted at the end of the Argentine comic book [[El Eternauta]] (the second volume). After blowing up the [[Supervillain Lair|enemy headquarters]], the hero flies to help [[La Résistance]]. When he arrives to the war scene, he must choose to help either his wife and daughter at one side of the battlefield, or the bulk of the women and children of the small population of [[Dying Race|last remaining humans]]. He goes for the later and saves them, but by the time he can go to help his wife and daughter, they [[Downer Ending|have died]].
== Films -- Animation ==
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* Subverted in ''[[Plunkett and Macleane]]'' when despite {{spoiler|Plunkett's warnings he'll be captured, Macleane attempts to to go back and save Lady Rebbecca despite the risks. It is a trap and General Chance is waiting to arrest him}}.
* In ''[[The Sorcerer's Apprentice|The Sorcerers Apprentice]]'', despite knowing the consequences of doing so, [[The Apprentice|Dave]] {{spoiler|gives up the Grimhold and Merlin's ring}} to save Becky. Despite the consequences, Balthazar admits that he would have done the same.
* ''[[A Boy and His Dog]]'' {{spoiler|averts this pretty darned hard in the last ten minutes.}} It makes for one of the best movie endings ever put on film.
* In ''[[I, Robot (film)|I Robot]]'', Detective Del Spooner's ([[Will Smith]]) hatred of robots stems from a traffic accident where his car and the car of a little girl and her father was thrown into a river. A passing robot leapt into the river to help. The girl's father was killed on impact and both cars were rapidly filling with water. The robot choose to save Spooner as he had a higher chance of survival (34% to 11%) than the girl had. Saving Spooner was the "logical" choice, something that Spooner, to put it mildly, didn't agree with. In a [[Flash Back]], Spooner can be seen begging the robot to save the girl instead of him.
** During the film's climax, Sonny is faced with a similar choice, with Spooner screaming "save the girl!" {{spoiler|As further proof that Sonny has evolved beyond the Three Laws, Sonny rejects the logical choice in favour of the emotional one, crystallising his humanity in the eyes of Spooner.}}
* ''[[Predators]]'': Royce is a [[Combat Pragmatist]] who doesn't hesitate to abandon any one of the team that gets injured or falls behind, unless it's [[The Chick|lone female]] Isabelle. The fact that he shrugs and moves on any time she deliberately stays behind to help the others makes it seem more like a spinal reflex on his part than adherence to any kind of honor code.
* In Peter Jackson's [[King Kong]], one of the members of the rescue party makes the perfectly reasonable observation that Anne is probably dead already, that a good number of the rescuers have just died, and the rest of them will probably either get killed or get left behind, since their ship will sail without them if they are not back in time. He is immediately accused of being a [[Dirty Coward]] by [[The Hero]], and since the character has been an arrogant douchebag for the entire film, we are presumably meant to hate him even more for the heinous crime of not wanting to die horribly for an almost certainly lost cause.
** In fact, the character's [[Scrappy|Scrappyness]] for the rest of the film {{spoiler|his [[Big Damn Heroes]] [[Crowning Moment of Awesome]] notwithstanding,}} almost seems to have been inserted specifically to make the audience hate him enough to disagree with him as a matter of principle. While he does not put forward his case particularly well, [[Jerkass Has a Point|the points he makes are completely valid]], and would likely have many members of the audience agreeing with his argument if it had been put forward by a more likeable character.
*** His point is still valid [[It Was His Sled|even though Anne is brought back alive;]] of the 17 people who die on the island, 15 were killed trying to find her. No matter how much you might love Anne, is that really a price you want to pay?
* In the [[Mystery Science Theater 3000|MST3Ked]] film ''[[The Magic Sword]]'', a young prince leads a band of knights on a quest to rescue his lady love. All the knights are killed along the way. At no point does anyone even mention that fact that several good men have died to save a single life and several more are likely to before the thing is done.
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* Subverted in [[Adam Hall]]'s [[Spy Fiction]] ''The Sinkiang Executive''. British spy [[Quiller]] murders an opposition agent that has him under routine surveillance, breaking the unwritten rule of the intelligence services and jeopardising the secrecy of the [[Government Agency of Fiction|Bureau]]. Apparently the agent had a peripheral involvement in the death of a local girl who helped Quiller on a previous mission; she was captured and an exchange offered -- Quiller for the girl. Quiller agreed, the girl was released but Quiller didn't keep his side of the bargain, jumping on a plane to Austria instead. The girl was then tracked down and killed by the opposition in an act of revenge.
* ''[[Discworld]]''
** Subverted hard with [[The Cape (trope)|Captain Carrot]], who says "Personal isn't the same thing as important." and, while he wanted to get [[Action Girl|Angua]] back, joined Vimes's group to stop the war in ''[[Discworld/Jingo|Jingo]]'' instead of going off by himself after her. Of course, Angua is a ''[[Our Werewolves Are Different|werewolf]]'', and Carrot knows it, so he rarely thinks she's in any actual danger.
** Played somewhat more straight in ''[[Discworld/The Fifth Elephant|The Fifth Elephant]]'': though there wasn't a crisis in Ankh-Morpork that needed dealing with, he immediately resigns his commission and goes after her when she leaves the city. But also subverted there in that he ''informs the proper authorities first''. He's not rash, even when he ''is'' doing the romantic thing.
** Subverted ''again'' with Susan and that whole time-crisis bit, although it was {{spoiler|an old man, and Time and Existence were almost destroyed because of it. (Apocalypse averted?)}}
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* ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer|Buffy]]'', meanwhile, is willing to let the entire world die in torment to save Dawn. It doesn't fit on the surface, but [[Word of God]] says that Dawn was intended to fill the dramatic role of [[Love Interest]] from Season 5 on out.
* On ''[[The X-Files]]'', this isn't even a thought for Mulder in terms of Scully; he seems to do it on pure instinct. Mulder is so predictable when his partner is taken, that the villains of the story exploit it. In the 1998 movie ''Fight the Future'', one of Syndicate suggests that instead of killing Mulder, they must "Take away what he holds most valuable. That with which he can't live without." with the next scene showing Scully staring off into the horizon. True to form, Mulder doesn't hesitate to save her, even when it includes going to Antartica and breaking into a top-secret space craft.
** It works the other way around, too, in which Scully will risk everything to save Mulder. She doesn't even let being pregnant get in the way of heading her own private investigation into his abduction, which involves driving cross-country and confronting alien replacements. In fact, it is Skinner who tries to convince her that Mulder wouldn't want her to do this if he had known her condition.
* ''[[24]]'' loves playing with this trope; both Jack Bauer and Tony Almeida are put into [[Sadistic Choice]] scenarios at different points during the series run, and their differing reactions are part of what make Tony such an effective [[Foil]] for Jack. {{spoiler|Jack does absolutely everything in his power to [[Take a Third Option]] on Day 1, but his wife ends up being killed anyway. When Tony's turn comes two seasons later, he breaks down completely at the prospect of losing his wife and proceeds to play this trope 100% straight, despite it being presented in-universe as morally and legally indefensible. Agonizingly, it's Jack who has to force Tony almost literally kicking and screaming into taking a third option, despite knowing firsthand what kind of grief is in store for Tony if it doesn't work.}}
* In ''[[Flashpoint (TV series)|Flashpoint]]'' the rules against team members dating are there for this specific reason. During a dangerous situation the team and civilians could be put in danger if one of them breaks protocol to try and save their [[Love Interest]].
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{{quote|'''Amy''': If I had to choose between the world and Sonic, ''I would choose Sonic!''}}
* In ''[[Kingdom Hearts]]'', Sora commites a [[Heroic Sacrifice]] in order to save Kairi. However, "saving her" is equal to "recreating the [[Big Bad|Big Bads]] opportunities to end the world, which he just foiled a few minutes ago". Especially stupid, because Sora's also the only one who could stop this [[Endofthe World As We Know It]], since he's the one with the Keyblade. In the manga adaptation, he at least throws [[Donald Duck|Donald]] the Keyblade before committing suicide, so his friends can take over the task. Turns out to be pointless, because it disappears as soon as he's gone anyway.
** This persists in ''Chain of Memories'', where Sora tells Namine to shatter his heart and memories if it will mean saving her from harm at the hands of Marluxia, and that he'll still protect her even without his memories. Marluxia is amused at the naivete of this strategy, saying that Sora will be ''comatose'' if he loses his memories and unable to do anything. Of course, then something happens that challenges this claim, so it's unknown exactly ''what'' would have happened had Sora followed through with his initial plan.
* ''[[Infamous (video game series)|In Famous]]'' outright averts this when offered a sadistic choice by the villain to save Trish or a building full of doctors saving the girl is the evil choice to make and sacrificing her for the good of the many is the good one.
** Not only that, {{spoiler|there's literally [[Failure Is the Only Option|NO WAY to save her]] -- you go to save her, she's a decoy and the real Trish is among the doctors. You save the doctors, she's the real Trish.}}
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* ''[[Golden Sun]]'' gives us Felix's big [[Establishing Character Moment]] [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|of Awesome]] at Venus Lighthouse: standing up to the endbosses over Sheba (''at Level 5!''), then ''jumping off the top of the Lighthouse'' to save her when she falls off, endangering himself {{spoiler|and the mission to restore Alchemy to the world}} twice for the sake of some girl he implicitly just met.
* ''[[.hack|.hack//GU]]'' has this as a central theme in the story. [[Anti-Hero]] Haseo makes it clear right [[Establishing Character Moment|from the beginning]] that he intends to revive his comatose girlfriend Shino and doesn't care what he has to destroy in the process. [[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero|This causes a LOT of problems]], though [[What the Hell, Hero?|Haseo mostly doesn't care]]... [[Character Development|at first]]. Haseo's own character arc is, briefly put, his learning that although [[Reconstructed Trope|saving Shino is still important]] his friends and the other players matter too. {{spoiler|[[All Love Is Unrequited|Ironically, not only did Shino]] [[She Is Not My Girlfriend|see him as]] [[Just Friends]], [[Multiple Endings|he probably doesn't even end up with her anyway]].}}
* In [[Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors]], {{spoiler|the ''entire plot'' is centered around Junpei saving Akane from dying as a child, to the point where ''she'' set it up that way. Though to be fair, if Junpei succeeds in this, it leads to the ending where every single person who possibly can be saved is saved.}}
* At the [[Road Cone]] in ''[[Radiata Stories]]'', Jack can choose to play this straight or avert it. Deciding to help Ridley {{spoiler|brings about the destined end of humanity but leaves Jack with Ridley}}, while deciding to stay behind to aid the kingdom {{spoiler|saves the human race at the cost of Ridley's life and Jack deciding to wander the earth a bit.}}
* In [[Fable III]], at the beginning of the story you can choose between saving your childhood friend and/or lover, or saving a group of protesters who are dissatisfied with your older brother's regime. To make things worse if you're considering choosing the former, your childhood friend will practically beg you to choose him/her, while the protesters will grovel for their lives as you make your decision.
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** Another episode has Harley Quinn try to invoke this as a [[Sadistic Choice]], telling Batman he can either catch her, or save Catwoman from a [[Conveyor Belt O' Doom]]. Batman [[Take a Third Option|pulls the factory's power switch]].
{{quote|'''Harley:''' Good choice. ''Help.''}}
* In "[[Justice League]]," Morgaine le Fey attempts to manipulate the Martian Manhunter into betraying his new world and his allies for the promise of restoring his dead world - and with it, his wife and children. Subverted in that only when his psychic assault on Etregan causes him to see how Jason Blood had fallen for a similar offer, and been betrayed, did he realize that the offer was false and foil Morgaine's plan.
* ''[[Code Lyoko]]'': [[Smart Guy|Jérémie]] rescues Aelita from drowning. Ulrich, the most athletic of the group, is there the entire time.
* While obviously not a [[Love Interest]], the ''[[Legion of Super-Heroes (TV series)|Legion of Super Heroes]]'' animated series has Superman's [[Darker and Edgier]] clone from the future (further in the future than the setting of LOSH) protecting a boy who is being targeted by assassins. Turns out they're from the future, too. The boy will grow up to be largely responsible for the existence of [[Big Bad]] Imperiex. It was to show how ruthless "Superman X" ''isn't'' anymore, when he decides the ends don't justify the means and chooses saving the kid over preventing Imperiex's rise.
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