Humans Are Good
In a Speculative Fiction setting in which there are other species running around, human beings are Always Lawful Good paragons of virtue.
Diametric opposite of Humans Are the Real Monsters. Compare Humans Are Special.
Examples of Humans Are Good include:
Anime and Manga
- Sailor Moon
- Scrapped Princess sees nearly every human character behave with a degree of honor and decency. Its "villains" are not humans but the so-called "peacemakers", machines designed to keep humanity in the Middle Ages forever -- and they started out trying to preserve humanity by keeping them caged.
- The humans of SD Gundam Force all very nice and friendly. Both humans form Neotopia and Lacroa, (there are none in Ark) It seems only those humans who created the General and his followers where bad people. Of course, we have only their word.
- Most earthlings are decent in the Dragon Ball universe. Sure you've got a couple big time criminals and one or two world conquerors. But other than that humanity seems quite nice.
- Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann is about the war between Humans and Exclusively Evil Beastmen until the four generals and the first Big Bad are dealt with. After that, they merge into the new human-ruled utopia as decent citizens. Even the Biggest Bads turn out to be doing what they think tragic, but necessary.
- Rossiu, the Well-Intentioned Extremist who gets redeemed through Get a Hold of Yourself, Man!, was in fact named for Rousseau, because he really does mean well—and once he and Simon are on the same page, no force in the universe can stop them. Demonstrably. "Rossiu Was Right" is an internet meme.
- Despite the fact that they have sealed off their own Evolution (Or life force. Or whatever) and have spent eons trying to make every sentient being in the universe feel absolute and utter despair, the Anti-Spirals are actually Well-Intentioned Extremists and want to save the universe from uncontrolled spiral energy creating a black hole.
- Trinity Blood - the anime eventually draws the conclusion that all humans, vampire or not, can coexist peacefully. And if it weren't for a certain nihilistic organization with a Sufficiently Advanced Alien Ultimate Evil on the top, they would. A proto-Rousseau Was Right statement, in a way.
- The manga is going in an entirely different direction. The Shaharazard ar-Rahman story arc centered on an evil bishop D'Annunzio! Guderien (an agent of the Order) helped save Eshter too. Kinda turning this possibly into Hobbes Was Right territory!
- A major theme of the manga and second anime versions of Fullmetal Alchemist is that as long as we're not being manipulated by Eldritch Abominations, humans are pretty cool. Protagonist Ed considers absolutely anything even vaguely human to be completely human: Chimeras, living armors, failed transmutations, and even Homunculi, and he never kills anyone who meets any of those descriptions. Fittingly, only three characters who are not utterly incompetent remain completely despicable: the aforementioned Eldritch Abomination Big Bad, Shou Tucker, and the Man in White. Even Barry the Chopper and Kimblee turn out to be advantageous to the good guys in the end.
- This seems to be apparent in Naruto especially in part II. Despite the treatment of the Jinchuriki, and now Four great shinobi world wars, humans are never portrayed as evil or bastards. Its often the system that is to blame, and no one has been able to reform it. Until Naruto Uzumaki that is.
Card Games
- While white and green are not always good, in Magic: The Gathering's new set Innistrad, humans are primarily white and green, and the opposite color, black, while not always evil, is the most classically evil. Given that Innistrad is a horror setting, yes.
Live Action TV
- The entire premise of Star Trek: The Original Series was that humans would eventually grow into this state. The sequel series moved away from this; while The Next Generation mostly stuck with it, Deep Space 9 really started slipping away during the Dominion War, and Voyager and Enterprise mostly abandoned it. (Although, as a Prequel, it could be argued that Enterprise is simply set before it happens. Or that Berman and Braga just don't get Trek.) The steady inversion of Star Trek's meaning begins in the middle of Next Gen, reaching completion in Voyager. It parallels the fading of the WWII-survivor generation in the USA media.
- In Kamen Rider Den-O, the Imagin form contracts with humans to grant their wishes and invariably do evil things. However, as it turns out, practically all of the humans contracted to the Imagin had good intentions, which were twisted in Literal Genie fashion. For example, one episode suggests that a young model is being attacked at the behest of her father, who threw her out a year ago. When the hero confronts the father, he learns that he merely wanted his daughter's career to succeed, and pushed her away so she wouldn't hold herself back by staying with him and helping at his shop; he even supported her from the shadows by sending anonymous bouquet to cheer her up, with the aid of her manager. Thanks to the heroes' actions, father and daughter reconcile.
- There is a very dark example of this in the episode "A Small Talent for War" of the 1980s version of the Twilight Zone. Despite our bickering ways, occasional wars, and nuclear arms race, Humans are merciful, afraid of conflict, and genuinely want peace. This makes us completely useless for the reason Earth was seeded: to breed a civilization of warriors. So the aliens who planted those seeds wipe us out and start another crop elsewhere.
Video Games
- The Warcraft series (including World of Warcraft) has the inherent decency of the mortal races as a theme since parts of the Horde pulled a Heel Face Turn between the events of Warcraft 2 and Warcraft III. Demonic magic tends to be a fairly good way to corrupt people, however, if they don't give into their selfish desires on their own. Even all that being said, the plot is most definitely not a case of White and Grey Morality; things are complicated:
- In World of Warcraft, the Player vs. Environment is generally Black and White Morality. The major villains all have a chain of evil (or possibly forced insanity) that can be traced back to either the Old Gods or the always-evil variety of demons, even if the aforementioned villains now do evil for their own reasons.
- The Horde vs. The Alliance is a case of Grey and Grey Morality, with both sides having sympathetic goals...though sometimes not so much. Both sides want to take down the villains, they just distrust each other too much to form an alliance.
- The history of the Dragons, Orcs, Trolls, and Eredar (one type of demon) all got Retconned at some point or another to blame much of their past evil on corruption by either the demonic Burning Legion or the mysterious Old Gods.
- Chrono Trigger sets this up: The Evil Chancellors were monsters in disguise; Magus, who appears to be summoning a monster to destroy the world, is actually just summoning the monster in order to kill it; the Reptites, who aren't even human, aren't so much "evil" as they are competing to be nature's selection, same could be said for the Fiends; and a giant space tick (not a flea) is set up to be the Big Bad less than an hour into the game. The only villains that seem completely bad is Dalton and Queen Zeal.
- Of all the games to have this as one of the main themes, the Berserk inspired, Crapsack World located Dark Souls is probably the most unexpected. Almost every human character has their reasons for doing what they do. Most of the people you meet in Dark Souls are legitimately good people who worry about you. There are a few bastards in the game, but the overwhelming majority of the NPCs are pretty nice.