Idiot Ball/Anime and Manga: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

* ''[[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 Guards Must Be Crazy|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.

** Naruto held the idiot ball '''hard''' during {{spoiler|[[Fan Nickname|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 [[Lampshade Hanging|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 Rape|Mind Raped]] for three days straight on two different occasions by Itachi. For a guy who wanted to prevent needless death that was [[Up to Eleven|very stupid]].

* 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 [[Gadgeteer Genius|smart]] [[Teen Genius|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 {{spoiler|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, {{spoiler|the professor recovers the book in a later episode and returns it to her, no questions asked.}}

** 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 [[Big Bad|Giovanni]], in [[Pokémon: The First Movie|the first movie]]. He's been using [[Physical God|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 [[Restraining Bolt|armor]]. Giovanni knows that Mewtwo is an enhanced clone of [[Olympus Mons|Mew, the probable ancestor of all Pokémon]]. And he ''[[What an Idiot!|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.

* 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 [[The Stoic|Robin]] has carried it in some way, shape, or form.

* Omi Tsukiyono from ''[[Weiss Kreuz]]'', who is supposed to be by far the ''smartest'' member of his team of [[Hitman with a Heart|Hitmen with Hearts]], gets hit by the Idiot Ball when he decides that the best thing to do with a [[Brown Note|CD]] that causes [[Driven to Suicide|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 {{spoiler|has the million people [[I Am Spartacus|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).

** Nearly Oghi's entire arc once [[Love Makes You Dumb|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.

** 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.

{{quote|'''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. {{spoiler|You can see it at the end too}}. But this trope is played straight with Naomi Misora, who, {{spoiler|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 {{spoiler|He never guesses that [[Idiot Hero|Matsuda]] isn't the Second L or thinks to search a suspect in a murder conspiracy. These mistakes that ultimately cost him his life.}}

** 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.

* [[Puella Magi Madoka Magica|Kyouko]] got more of an [[Wrong Genre Savvy|Optimism Ball]] that worked ''too'' well. She believes [[Weasel Mascot|Kyuubey]] that {{spoiler|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 [[You Didn't Ask|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. {{spoiler|It ends with a [[Suicide Attack]], per Kyuubey's [[Batman Gambit]].}}

** There's also the scene where Madoka {{spoiler|throws Sayaka's Soul Gem off a bridge}}. Not the smartest move, though it can be a little understandable since the girl was [[Break the Cutie|quite the emotional wreck already]]... but even worse is how Homura is nearby, knows {{spoiler|from experience}} how bad that sort of thing can turn out, and makes no real effort to stop it until it's too late. [[Sarcasm Mode|What,]] [[Time Stands Still|did she not have enough time?]]

** And the people who caused this situation weren't much better. If they wanted {{spoiler|Yurin's powers for their own benefit}} so badly, '''why in space''' did they {{spoiler|just strap her to a cockpit and use her as an amplifier for the local [[Enfante Terrible]]'s powers}}?