Strawman Has a Point/Anime and Manga

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Examples of Strawman Has a Point in Anime and Manga include:

  • Chapter 48 of Bakuman。 . Granted, it may be a case of extreme Values Dissonance, but you'd think of an editor-in-chief's decision to put a manga on hiatus as the smart, logical, sane, and responsible thing to do when one of the teenage authors has been hospitalized due to overworking and that the doctors said that it could worsen to the point of being terminal if the kid didn't get some adequate rest. Not to mention that the kid's mangaka uncle practically died from the same thing himself. Yet the editor-in-chief and the staff's decision is thoroughly put down by several other characters in the manga as a stupid decision, even by some of the editors in his staff, to the point where they actively try to undermine it by threatening a boycott. Even the argument that the decision was made due to an overreaction caused by the aforementioned uncle's death making the magazine worried about having another person from the same family line suffer the fate doesn't change the fact that the decision makes sense.
  • In Code Geass, Suzaku and Lelouch call out the head of the Japanese Government in Exile for retreating to China when Britannia invaded rather than staying to fight. He protests that retreating and building one's forces is a perfectly valid tactic, and, well, it is. In fact, it's not all that different to Lelouch's own actions prior to the start of the series. Lelouch does the exact same thing in the next season. Of course, the real reason Lelouch is opposing him is because if he wins, Japan will just be a puppet of the Chinese Federation.
  • Naruto has several cases:
    • The Leaf Village's elders' decision of keeping Naruto on the Toad Mountain during Pain's attack to the village was portrayed as unequivocally wrong, and Tsunade's outburst and calling them out for their lack of faith in Naruto (and in the anime, subsequent lecture to them about believing) was put as the right position. However, the elders' decision was not entirely unreasonable, as the target of the attack was known to be Naruto himself, and there was no guarantee at the time that Naruto could beat Pain (a villain who had already killed Naruto's master, Jiraiya). And then they were proven utterly right when Pain kicked the crap out of Naruto, who was saved only by a timely intervention by Hinata. The anime even retconned the decision as being shown to be influenced by Danzo, adding more fuel to the discussion of Danzo's motives. Interestingly, in later arcs: the Kages make the same conclusion of hiding both Naruto and Killer Bee to keep them safe during the war, with only Tsunade and the Tsuchikage objecting to it, and it's Gaara who shoots down Tsunade's argument of putting Naruto on the frontlines.
    • The Raikage is painted as a stubborn-headed git for refusing to forgive and rescind the 'kill on sight' order of Sasuke for the suspected murder of his brother. The manga tries to make it so that the Raikage's desire for revenge is clouding his personal judgment to the point where he's willing to start a Cycle of Revenge, but the fact remains that A) Sasuke is still at large, working for a terrorist organization, B) Raikage's brother and other such targets hold the equivalent of a WMD, C) Raikage isn't the only person who wants Sasuke's head.
    • The whole argument of a Cycle of Revenge as consequence falls apart when considering that Sasuke just started it by making an unprovoked attack on the Cloud Village. The Raikage even makes the perfectly valid point to Naruto of: "I'm going to kill Sasuke, it will be up to you that it ends there!"
    • Danzo himself is a rather textbook Well-Intentioned Extremist who's generally portrayed in a negative light because he is in opposition to the main characters. He's put in a situation where a neutral, rational head of an international alliance would have put him in charge if he wasn't so busy making sure he was put in charge. Immediately after this, he gets caught in a fight with Sasuke, and the reader is shown that he was pretty much right all along, he was just a dick about it.
      • Danzo's case is undercut by the fact that pretty much everything wrong in the plot not ultimately traceable to Kaguya's account can ultimately be traced to unprovoked acts of deliberate malice and betrayal by Danzo, going all the way back to the Third Shinobi World War. To name just one example, if Danzo hadn't deliberately own-goaled his own side and sabotaged all attempts at negotiating peace during said war, Pein wouldn't exist and Akatsuki would still be pacifist war protestors.
  • In Yu Yu Hakusho, the Koorime are made to appear to us as heartless bitches who would willingly condemn a child to death just because his mother made him with someone from a different race (albeit a demon) and he looks "a little" creepy at birth. Even his sister, by far the purest creature from the series, thinks their whole kind deserves to be killed for what they did to her, her mother, and her brother. The problem is, their point is completely valid. All the male offspring so far have killed many Koorime, who can only reproduce at intervals of over a century. And Hiei was only saved from staying a Complete Monster by The Power of Friendship.
  • In Black Cat, Baldor's desire to murder Kyoko after her Heel Face Turn is supposed to be a sign of how demented he is, which will make us root all the more when Train fights him and his partner, Kranz, to save her. Problem is, Kyoko, pre Heel Face Turn, was not only a member of a group determined to plunge the world into chaos, but a Psycho for Hire who enjoyed burning people alive from the inside out, while kissing them. On top of that, her switching sides is motivated, not by the realization that what she's doing is wrong, but from fear of Big Bad Creed, and a crush on Train. End result, Baldor comes off looking far more reasonable than he ever should when he recommends they just kill her. Happens again when one of the heroes tells him that just murdering your enemies is wrong. Cue one of the enemies she'd just spared blowing himself up to try and kill her. Baldor's maniacal laughter ends up being less Kick the Dog, and more "told ya."
  • Pokémon has Paul. Created as a Straw Fan to the "Stop Having Fun!" Guys of the game franchise of the same name, he was an all-around Jerkass who abused his mons and disrespected everyone that didn't battle like him. On paper, this could've made a good Take That, Audience!; too bad that he almost always wipes the floor with everyone he battles, including Ash, and other trainers praise his skills despite his abusiveness.
  • In Bleach's Bount arc, Kariya recruits the denizens of Soul Society from outside the Seireitei to help him enter. This was a trick, of course, but the terms he used to convince them had a point; namely that the Seireitei treats them like crap and they should dismantle the system. So it's more like Villain Has A Point.
  • A real thinker in Rurouni Kenshin. The central Aesop of the series circulates around Redemption Equals Life, Everybody Lives, and Forgiveness, and main character Himura Kenshin breathes this philosophy in order to atone for his past crimes. However, Kenshin's rival, Saito Haijime, deconstructs Kenshin's no-kill philosophy by stating that by allowing his enemies - who are usually Ax Crazy, sociopathic, card-carrying, complete monsters - to live, he endangers more lives than he saves. And this has happened. Case and point, during the Jinchuu Arc, Kenshin defeats and spares two of Six Comrades, Gein and Kujirinami, who were no doubt the most dangerous. What do they do as soon as they recuperate during the climax of the battle (when Enishi was going to enact his true revenge against Kenshin)? They go straight onto aiding Enishi again.
  • In Freezing, Scarlett Oohara is portrayed as being wrong for wanting to turn ordinary girls into artificial Pandoras to fight the Novas which plague humanity. The argument is that there is no point making civilians fight the battles when they're supposed to be the ones being protected, and that humans shouldn't try to reach for more than they have. Never mind that natural Pandoras are getting killed off faster than they can be born and that the current system is plenty cruel enough in that if you're born with the potential to become a Pandora, you have no other choice but to be one. Giving one a choice would be a huge benefit. Not to mention that Dr. Aoi Gendo, Oohara's main opposition, is okay with the Limiter system, which sends plenty of willing, once-civilian boys into the battlefield. Scarlett's point is then undermined since the E-Pandora project was never really meant to succeed in the first place. It was merely a publicity stunt to buy time for the Type Maria project. The girls who suffered and died because of the E-Pandora project did so for nothing.