Idiot Ball/Anime and Manga

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Examples of characters holding the Idiot Ball in Anime and Manga include:

  • Naruto
    • In one filler episode (161), Naruto gets whacked with the idiot ball hard. He fails to recognize that two people are wearing terrible disguises to make them look like Guy and Rock Lee and misinterprets their horrible tasks as Taijutsu training.
    • In Episode 193, Rock Lee fails to recognize his own sensei, simply because of a weird wig. To make it much worse, the city guards fail to realize something is up when two identical Might Guys are running around all crazy like. This, when the children can disguise themselves as teachers... and just to pound the point home, the next adventure chronologically has yet even more people using disguises to threaten the lives of everyone. Way to go, guards.
    • All the "comedy" Filler episodes of Naruto seem to involve a multitude of Idiot Balls.
    • Naruto held the idiot ball hard during Kabutomaru's attack on the turtle island he and Killer Bee were hiding on to not realize something was wrong. To say nothing of his believing that the "mission" he was on there was a fake to begin with. Even the other characters with him remark on this.
    • Sasuke has dribbled the ball for a while, having switched his goals from "Kill Itachi" to "Kill the people who made me kill Itachi" to "Kill everyone who happens to live in the same area as the people who made me kill Itachi." Itachi went rogue specifically to prevent the needless deaths of thousands... The same thousands Sasuke is now bent on killing to avenge Itachi.
      • Though getting pointlessly Mind Raped for three days straight on two different occasions by Itachi. For a guy who wanted to prevent needless death that was very stupid.
  • Asa from SHUFFLE!!. This requires some backstory. Her mother, Ama, is a homunculus, and had suffered greatly due to magic when she was younger. Although she now lives happily with her daughter, Asa inherits no small amount of magic as a result. Unused, this power will wreck havoc on her, and eventually lead to death. All she needs to do is occasionally use slight magic to stay healthy, but refuses to do so, since she doesn't want to remind her mother of her tragic past. Let me rephrase this. In order not to upset her mom, she decides to subject herself to a long, painful, completely preventable death in a hospital bed while her organs systematically shut down. While her mom, who knows she has magic anyway, cries at her bedside. It takes her friend attempting suicide to force her to save her own life.
  • Ranma from Ranma ½(at least in the manga) is normally the The Ace combined with minor Guile Hero.Able to lie and cheat and even try to find things to use against others.An example would be going to Nabiki room to find things to manipulate her.Of course there were times when he fall and stumble due to his morals and therefore has the most Butt Monkey moments of everyone.Suddenly in the Gambling King Arc,he suddenly was so stupid that this troper want to smack his face in the wall.Unable to keep his face straight?Easily trick by the idiot Gambling King.It goes against everything shown in the previous stories.Thought people from the Anime Ranma will be at home in this Arc due the anime Ranma being much closer to a savant or Idiot Hero.
  • Irina Woods from Mai-Otome is normally a smart girl, but why in the world would she lend her library book on "Human Engineering" to Tomoe when she could have easily returned it herself? Any reasonable person would have suspected Tomoe was up to no good after she returned alone from her little "chat" with Miya, and cautiously refused to turn the book over to her. The lesson learned here, kids? Keep an eye on your own belongings!
    • By giving the book to Tomoe, Irina's just passed the Idiot Ball, as Tomoe leaves the book behind in Professor Youko's lab in a presumed attempt to frame Irina for injuring Erstin, despite the fact there were at least a dozen eyewitnesses who could vouch for Irina never having left the classroom at the time.
    • Luckily for Irina, the professor recovers the book in a later episode and returns it to her, no questions asked.
  • Pokémon:
    • Ash Ketchum in the Diamond and Pearl series. It'd be impossible for him to lose at this point, seeing how he's had his Pikachu through three different regions (four, counting the Orange Islands), let alone all the other Pokémon he's acquired and trained, on top of his extensive knowledge of Pokémon battling and counter-typing from his years of battle. So what does he do? He loses against the first gym leader in Sinnoh.
    • A specific example: The Whirl Cup. Ash is facing Misty's Psyduck with his Kingler. He already demonstrated knowing how to bypass Psyduck's headache powers in a previous episode, yet the writers made him fall for it just so they could hand Misty the win.
    • In a later episode, James is feeling down because his Cacnea is having trouble learning a new move. Ash and Co., for absolutely no fathomable reason, decide to help train it. That's right. They're willingly going to help Team Rocket, the group who have been stalking them, spying on them and attacking them since day one, get stronger. When Dawn points out that Ash is being a monumental idiot, he brushes it off, saying it's their job to help Pokémon. Have to wonder how he would feel if the training had succeeded and Team Rocket used their newly improved Cacnea to successfully steal Pikachu once and for all...
    • Team Rocket actually grabs the ball constantly. Among their exploits are running straight at a Frontier Brain while yelling at him to hand over the Articuno that was allowing him to use it in battle (without sending out any of their Pokémon).
    • And then we have Giovanni, in the first movie. He's been using Mewtwo as his servant for a while, pretending that he believed Mewtwo could be equal to humans. He must have grabbed the Idiot Ball when he decided to let Mewtwo know that he felt Mewtwo was only meant to serve humans... Giovanni isn't unwittingly saying this to a Pokémon that he doesn't know is powerful. He's seen Mewtwo at work. He knows what devastation his "servant" can cause. Even with the armor. Giovanni knows that Mewtwo is an enhanced clone of Mew, the probable ancestor of all Pokémon. And he still insults Mewtwo, right to his face. With a leader this dumb, it's a miracle that Team Rocket hasn't all been rounded up and arrested, or killed by angry Legendaries.
    • Specifically, this is the Pokemon who, minutes after "birth" slaughtered every last scientist in the facility, burned it to the ground and, under Giovanni's training, grew STRONGER still. And AFTER all this, Giovanni STILL chases Mewtwo to the next region over, bringing an army to try and stop him.
    • Played for laughs in "The Double Trouble Header", Casey's first appearance. Being a Genki Girl who loves yellow-colored Pokemon, she thinks Pikachu so adorable and wants him to shock her. In fact, despite Ash's warning, she tells him to "turn up the juice and give me a taste!" She finds out the hard way this was a bad idea.
  • Luffy from One Piece seems to willingly carry the idiot ball because, to him, it makes the adventure more fun. There's a noticeable difference between "serious" Luffy and "non-serious" Luffy. Serious Luffy is the guy who received a 400,000,000 beli bounty for crushing Arlong, defeating Sir Crocodile, and annihilating Enies Lobby, defeating CP9, rescuing Robin, punching a Tenryuubito, causing a prison breakout in Impel Down, and intervening in the War of the Best. Non-serious Luffy is the guy who dances at random, picks his nose in front of enemies, and considers "Four Swords" an appropriate insult against Zoro.
    • There's a stunning example in volume two of the manga, in which Luffy, who is made of rubber seems helpless to get out of a cage. A cage that has only vertical bars spaced more than six inches apart.
    • This is practically confirmed in the Sabaody Archipelago, where Luffy not only willingly passes up a chance to find the location of One Piece, but threatens to quit being a pirate altogether if any of the others ask because he doesn't want to go on a boring adventure. By contrast, Robin asks Rayleigh about what the Rio Poneglyph says, but is convinced that it might be best to see for herself.
    • It seems like every character except Robin has carried it in some way, shape, or form.
    • Some of the characters can't swim due to the powers they received. So what is the first thing they do when they see someone drowning. Dive in after them.
  • Omi Tsukiyono from Weiss Kreuz, who is supposed to be by far the smartest member of his team of Hitmen with Hearts, gets hit by the Idiot Ball when he decides that the best thing to do with a CD that causes suicidal psychosis in half the people who listen to it is play it and see if it works. It takes two of his teammates passing out for him to realize what a very, very stupid idea this was.
  • Suzaku and Lelouch from Code Geass strike a deal, wherein Lelouch has Zero's crimes absolved in return for exile from Japan, as well as his bringing one million people to participate in the Special Administrative Region which Suzaku supports. Then, in typical Lelouch fashion, he has the million people dress as Zero, meaning they get exiled too. The entire plan hinges upon Suzaku being Lawful Stupid and obeying their deal to the letter (though in fairness to Suzaku, it relied equally on his honest desire to avert a potential riot/massacre).
    • Lelouch's IQ seems to randomly drop when someone he cares about is involved. The most obvious example is when his close friend and potential girlfriend is killed, which hinges on none of the important members of the Black Knight finding out but they do. He then follows it up with including an insane male Tyke Bomb who wants to be Lelouch's brother... in the team tasked with saving Nunally. Despite knowing that he killed his almost girlfriend. That's not a typo, he really did something that stupid.
      • After taking over the school during the finale of the first season Lelouch didn't make sure the students -including his own sister- were guarded 100% of the time. After most of the students leave Nunnally alone while trying to help Suzaku, V.V just waltzes on in and picks Nunners up. This makes Lelouch leave the Black Knights and causes the failure of the rebellion, leading to the capture of nearly the entire rebel force.
    • Lelouch joking to Euphemia about being able to make her murder all the Japanese. Given the way the sequence is Dude, Not Funny, awkwardly drawn out, and begging the question "why are you saying all this?", it was rather obviously just a setup for an incoming plot twist.
    • Lelouch fails to take into account shoddy Chinese workmanship caused by corruption, after it was made perfectly clear that the Eunechs are corrupt. Considering that Lelouch sometimes borders on Omniscient this is a huge drop in competency.
    • The reveal that Lelouch has been just outside the base of V.V the whole time looks impressive until Fridge Logic sets in, and you figure out that V.V is too stupid to have such sophisticated things as a lookout in case an army was about to attack his base. This makes him stupider than Meerkats who have developed such sophisticated methods.
    • Suzaku's entire plot throughout the series is driven by his seeming to have swallowed a single-issue-focused one of these; he apparently got the notion somewhere that a foreign-born soldier has the potential to change a corrupt system from within in a highly racist hereditary absolute monarchy, a kind of system where, historically, even high-ranking highborn nobles have little influence on actual major policy decisions of the kind Suzaku wants to change. Has the boy never taken a civics course?
    • Nearly Oghi's entire arc once he falls for Villetta, from letting his guard down around her during the Black Rebellion, leading to him getting shot and Ashford falling out of the B Ks control, going AWOL later on to meet her knowing full well she will kill him, all the way up to him buying into Schneizel's deceptions and turning on Lelouch. The Black Knights follow suit on the latter, and deserve another mention for not questioning Villetta, even though she's a Britannian agent who had they done so, they would have learned had been antagonizing Lelouch, and by proxy, them.
  • An episode near the end of Slayers NEXT put the plot on hold just to show a fight sequence with a Brainwashed and Crazy Gourry. Which wouldn't have been so bad if the villain hadn't slapped a really bad helmet on Gourry (and disguised him with nothing else) and also required the cast to A) Not see through the paper thin disguise B) Apparently forget that Gourry was kidnapped one episode ago C) Not assume that the blond guy dressed like Gourry and wielding the Sword of Light and fighting exactly like Gourry actually was Gourry. The characters would even constantly point out that he seemed familiar, but amazingly, despite the fact this is Slayers, they seemed to lose their Genre Savvy natures for the duration of the episode and the viewer was supposed to take it all seriously.
  • Interestingly, in one volume of the Bobobo-Bo Bo-bobo manga Poppa Rocks/Don Patch uses an actual "Idiot Ball" as a weapon. Whoever is hit by it would "get an 'A' on his exam... by CHEATING!"
    • Don Patch also has an attack where he injects you with a serum that makes you think like he does. Beauty didn't take it well.
  • Subverted briefly on Death Note:

Light: If this phone rings, I'm dead! (beat) Wait, what am I thinking; I can just turn it off.

    • One of Light's few weaknesses is that, if something catches him without a plan, he's prone to panic. You can see it at the end too. But this trope is played straight with Naomi Misora, who, trusts a kid who keeps following her around telling her not to talk to the police and demanding to know her real name when all she had to do was walk three minutes down the street to the police station. In fact, if she had simply taken the three minutes out of her circuitous path to finish her walk she would have survived and Light would have been completely undone. She spiked that Idiot Ball and did a touchdown dance. Also Mello He never guesses that Matsuda isn't the Second L or thinks to search a suspect in a murder conspiracy. These mistakes that ultimately cost him his life.
    • Light still takes the Idiot Ball to the face, however, when he stakes his endgame killing stroke on a note that he kept in an unmonitored box. It would have taken Light less than a minute to verify the deathnote would work, but instead confidently announces he's won, when just shutting up would have kept him in the clear.
  • In Rappi Rangai the hero has a tiny horn that caused him to be beaten and ostracized by his village as a child. This Freudian Excuse causes him to flee like mad whenever he thinks torches and pitchforks might be around the corner. Even when nothing is actually wrong. Even if it'll completely undo his Ninja Harem's plans. Even on his wedding day when his would-be bride says to his face she thinks the horn is cute. Even when the Ninja Harem tells him that his bride thought it was cute. In his defense, they were pretty severe beatings.
  • School Rumble is more like a case of "pass the Idiot Ball". There's usually an idiot of the week.
  • Tsubasa Chronicle, episode 48. After collecting 13 feathers on screen and who knows how many off screen, all with pink markings, King Chaos just hands them a number of purple, blue, and orange feathers. And not one person stops to question that. It's a trap.
  • Higurashi no Naku Koro ni's Keichii carries one of these towards the end of Watanagashi-hen, when he agrees to go for a walk in a secluded underground dungeon with a self-confessed murderer who freely admits to having mental issues that make it difficult to control her behavior even when she doesn't actually want to hurt anyone. She's able to hold herself together enough to let him go after only torturing him a little, but before she does she warns him never to get near her again. Guess what happens when he decides to ignore that warning.
    • In the game version and the manga, he had a better and more justified reason for ignoring her warning -- namely, he was giving Mion the doll that, by not giving it to her, started the whole thing. Still pretty dumb, though.
  • It seems like Momo's class in Peach Girl is forced to carry this, as it regards Sae. Her schemes have hurt or enraged almost everyone long before the first time she is caught out on her campaign against Momo. Yet the class is ready to lynch Momo, and on more than one occasion, based on setups they all know Sae's capable of, and they all say very clearly that they know this when she is exposed. Worse, even when exposed, Sae getting anything stronger than the cold shoulder seems out of the question, since no one wants to do to her deservedly what they did to Momo based on whipped up frenzy. Momo's first boy friend actually believed Sae that it was ok to kiss her as a way to practice for Momo.
  • In Bleach, Urahara has the Idiot Ball when he knows about Aizen's plan to kidnap Orihime and use her powers on the Hogyoku and wounded Arrancar, but instead tells Orihime that she can't fight because she's unable to use Tsubaki. Orihime then, believing that she's not strong enough to fight, goes with Rukia to the Soul Society, and on her way back, gets kidnapped. At no point does Urahara attempt to confirm her whereabouts or keep her out of the fight. What he should have done was keep her with him at his shop where, if any of Aizen's flunkies wanted to get at her, they would have to first contend with him, Yoruichi, Tessai, Ururu, Jinta, Renji, and the mod souls.
    • Zommari Leroux. He could have easily ended his fight with Byakuya immediately, but was too arrogant to finish him off quickly.
    • Kaname Tousen. The guy is practically toying with Hisagi and Komamura with his hollow mask alone. Yet he decides to use his resurrección, apparently without having tested before hand. Once he uses it he gets so intoxicated by his newly gained sight that he fails to notice Hisagi sneaking up behind him, and gets stabbed in the head as a result.
      • Again during his fight with Zaraki. He spent his time in Bankai lecturing him, even though Zaraki couldn't hear him anyways.
    • In Ichigo's second fight with Ulquiorra, Loly and Menoly grab Orihime and start beating her. When Ichigo runs over to help, turning his back to Ulquiorra in the process, Loly pulls Orihime in front of her and warns him not to come closer or she'll gouge her eyes out. What does Ichigo do? Keeps running closer, and even throws a Getsuga Tensho at them, even though Orihime was being used as a Human Shield and would likely have been killed by his attack if Ulquiorra hadn't intervened. What the Hell, Hero?
      • Heck, Ichigo challenging Ulquiorra to a second fight at all. The guy killed you in less than a minute without even trying, your best attack did almost nothing to him, it's only been two hours since your last fight, his inferiors kicked your ass, and you not only charge in for a rematch, you actually expect to win? Wanting to rescue Orihime is one thing, but that's not trying to rescue her, that's tantamount Suicide By Espada; rescuing her would involve grabbing her and getting the hell out of dodge, not trying to fight the guy with a Villainous Crush on her.
    • Every opponent fighting Aizen who could use Bankai and didn't. Granted, it was Aizen, but the fact that they outnumbered him and could have used their most powerful techniques on him but didn't has to be the Idiot Ball on some level.
  • So, Lawrence. You've got a harvest goddess as a traveling companion, who prides herself at being "Horo the Wise" and being far cleverer than you give her credit for. You've already been called out for keeping secrets from her, and you had previously flubbed your Insight check to pick up on her mood when you suggested you just drop her off at the nearest town instead of going all the way to Yoitsu with her. Was it really such a good idea to leave her with the letter that says her hometown is probably gone, just because you assume she can't read?
    • He didn't just assume - she told him she couldn't read. And she did it probably so she could play some kind of trick on him, while he kept a secret to spare her feelings. Their fight was a result of mutual miscommunication.
  • The entire storyline of Angel Densetsu juggles with so many idiot balls that you have more or less every example, subset or relation of this trope. In spades. We even have Word of God that Kuroda is the designated carrier and master of the Idiot Ball, for the express purpose of plot advancement. Behold the Idiot Ball of Plot Advancement! The worst thing? It's so well done it's almost believable.
    • The Selective Obliviousness of the main lead does not help a bit.
    • There's so many balls zipping around it even takes a while to understand who the Butt Monkey is. (It's Ogisu)
  • Greed of Fullmetal Alchemist has the power to make himself invulnerable in a way that can only be circumvented by five people in the world. He rarely extends the power beyond his arms.
    • In the anime, Greed goes full-armor when it's serious business. Any other time, he's still armored below the skin, as Izumi can attest to. "So, how many fingers did you break when you hit me just now?"
    • He also can't regenerate and use armor at the same time, as Ed notices during his fight after using a transmutation technique that makes Greed's carbon armor useless. King Bradley/Wrath doesn't give him time to do either during their first fight.
  • In Hajime no Ippo, Kobashi, a physically weak boxer, uses a boxing style that goes for a win via points and exhausting his opponent instead of going for a knockout. However, during the last round of his match against Ippo, Kobashi, having a two point lead and an opponent too exhausted to catch him (meaning that all he has to do to win is dance around until time runs out), suddenly decides to try to go for a knockout against an opponent known for KOing all of his opponents. This idea ends about how you'd expect it to. This is made even worse by the fact that Kobashi had apparently put a great deal of research into Ippo's fighting style before the match. Kobashi even lampshades it after he wakes up.
    • It actually makes more sense in context. Kenta fights the way he does because he doesn't have the muscle to win by KO, and instead plays to his advantages. During the end of his fight with Ippo, when he has Ippo at his mercy, he lands a really good hit on him and is blown away by how good it feels and pushes to get a KO.
  • In Yu-Gi-Oh!, Joey duels Kaiba for the first time in Duelist Kingdom. After Kaiba plays his Rabid Horseman on around the second or third turn, Joey throws out several weak monsters in attack mode, despite the fact that there's a defense mode that is used in almost every duel before and after this. It's unknown why Joey wouldn't use it, besides perhaps not knowing how the new duel disk worked. However if this is the case, he could simply have just asked Kaiba how the machine worked (this was the first duel between two living humans to ever use the technology). If Kaiba didn't oblige, this would more or less be cheating.
    • After Kaiba played Horseman the first monster Joey sent after it was Swamp Battleguard a monster with 1800 attack points and after it was destroyed Joey sent Axe Raider with 1700 points to avenge Battleguard, yeah he tried to send a monster that was weaker that the first one thinking it would do better. And all of the other monsters Joey attack R.H. with also have 1800 attack points. Joey, if the first 1800 attacker couldn't beat Kaiba's monster what makes you think the others will? It's no wonder Kaiba insulted him to no tomorrow over it.
  • On the same series, we have the infamous ending in Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's of the WRGP duel between Team 5Ds and Team Unicorn. Both teams are down to their final duelists, Yusei and Jean respectively. It's Jean's turn, and Yusei's deck is completely empty. Simply doing nothing and passing his turn would cause Yusei an automatic loss, shown Team 5D's (who, due to the double-loss elimination rule for the prelims, would not have been out of the competition) a great lesson in the effectiveness of a team building their decks to work together as opposed to the haphazard strategies theirs possessed, and given them all a great bit of character development....instead, Jean goes for the win by attacking one of Yusei's Defense Position monsters, who then gets a massive enough Defense Point boost that the backlash damage causes Jean to lose. Why does he attack? Because Yusei opened his eyes to how fun Dueling could be, lodging the Idiot Ball firmly in his chest.
    • Given how often these Duels become life-and-death situations, it's amazing this wasn't a case of Too Dumb to Live.
  • In Chapter 79 of Soul Eater, Tezca Tlipoca, known to be Shibusen's best tracker, walks blindly into Noah's base, not taking any apparent precautions for the event of traps. Sure enough, he gets hit with a powerful attack from underground.
    • Chapter 82: Guess what? He's not dead. He had someone else go and die instead of him. No idiot ball on Tlipoca. Until he uses a gopher mask as a disguise anyway.
  • Dr. Gero, lead robotics scientist of the Red Ribbon Army, tries to create androids to take over the world (and in latter cases destroy Son Goku specifically). The first sixteen are successfully built, and decently strong in each of their time, but none of them can understand and obey his evil programming. (Well, there are the three in movie tales that do obey the programming and end up getting destroyed by Goku). So his eventual bright idea is to kidnap two rebellious runaway teenagers, give them energy circuits to turn them into semi-androids, and try to replace their free will and identities with his evil programming. Is it any wonder who kills him every time?
    • Extra idiot ball time since he shuts them down and locks them into stasis because the eternal energy supplies make them so uncontrollable then when he rebuilds himself into a Cyborg like them uses the older inferior energy absorption design even though logically he's not going to be worrying about being unable to control HIMSELF.
    • Screw that. He could make bombs strong enough to kill Perfect Cell and tiny spy robots that nobody noticed by years. He could've combined both into an Action Bomb and kill Goku that way.
  • Ciel Phantomhive is thrown the idiot ball in the second season of the Kuroshitsuji anime, when he doesn't question why Soma knows him and Ciel himself doesn't remember him. Instead of wondering about this also, Sebastian answers with "Foreigners are difficult to understand."
  • Kyouko got more of an Optimism Ball that worked too well. She believes Kyuubey that Sayaka could be turned back from a witch, despite the fact that Kyuubey admitted to setting up the whole thing. She doesn't ask Homura, who has known about the whole system from the start, if he's withholding information. Finally, she brings Madoka (who is completely defenseless) to the fight, while Kyouko herself has a dimmed Soul Gem from overuse of magic. It ends with a Suicide Attack, per Kyuubey's Batman Gambit.
    • There's also the scene where Madoka throws Sayaka's Soul Gem off a bridge. Not the smartest move, though it can be a little understandable since the girl was quite the emotional wreck already... but even worse is how Homura is nearby, knows from experience how bad that sort of thing can turn out, and makes no real effort to stop it until it's too late. What, did she not have enough time?
  • In one episode of The Big O, Roger chased Allen Gabriel onto an abandoned train in an empty train station, despite knowing beforehand that he himself is unarmed and that Allen Gabriel loves to kill people. Angel even lampshades what a dumb move this is.
  • Signum in the Magical Record Lyrical Nanoha FORCE manga, usually a clever and skilled Lady of War. During her debut fight of the season she confront one of the new villains in very disadvantagous conditions for her and her magical equipement, yet she takes more than questionable descicions during battle that is no surprise she ended up being humilliatingly trashed for her troubles.
  • Yurin L'Ciel from Gundam AGE doesn't usually hold the Idiot Ball, but the time she does it actually causes her death. How so? She should've known better than going with the Veigan military just because they told her she'd never see her crush again.
    • And the people who caused this situation weren't much better. If they wanted Yurin's powers for their own benefit so badly, why in space did they just strap her to a cockpit and use her as an amplifier for the local Enfante Terrible's powers?
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