Too Dumb to Live/Anime and Manga

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Note: As a Death Trope, all spoilers on this page are unmarked.

  • Higurashi no Naku Koro ni: Right, Keiichi, go into that creepy basement with a self-confessed psychotic murderer. Nothing bad will happen. And after you survive that, feel free to go out in the dead of night to chat with her. To be fair, the original game had a decent reason, not that that makes it any smarter.
  • Mazinger Z: Several characters of the series (including The Hero or its Tsundere Battle Couple) get at least one occasion where they seem determined to off themselves. The civilians thought it was a good idea remaining near from the place where a Humongous Mecha and a Robeast were fighting, or blamed the heroes for the destruction and deaths Hell and his lackeys were responsible of, or pressed the Government to yield EVERY TIME Dr. Hell was blackmailing it are good examples. A good, specific example is Yuri, Bratty Half-Pint Sayaka's cousin: Let's go over the facts, Yuri. You are a disabled, little Ill Girl can't run or move quickly because you need a wheelchair. You know there is a giant robot in the city, stomping on buildings and people. Kouji has gone out to stop it after telling you very clearly you must stay in home because you are safer. Still do you insist on leaving the home and go to where the giant robots are fighting because you have a crush on Kouji and you want to see him? Okay, you can leave. After all, what can possibly go wrong?
  • Many, if not all, of the characters in Ranma ½ get at least one occasion where they act like this. However, this trope gets played to its actual conclusion in one late-manga story, which really makes it into Mood Whiplash. One character's father receives a scroll detailing a martial arts style which makes use of a lot of brute-force tricks, and a bearhug attack explicitly stated to be capable of snapping a man in half. Kumon Senior intends to use these moves to revitalize his dojo, which is dilapidated to the point it's being held aloft only by a single, rotting pillar, but he decides to master this spine-shattering bearhug by practicing on the pillar. Naturally, when he succeeds in learning it, the whole house collapses on top of him, killing him.
    • In the second movie, the monkey guy who uses his super-cool psychic attack of soul-crushing despair.....on Ryouga.
      • Though that's partially justified, as he had no idea Ryouga was empowered by depression, and against anyone else it would have been a Game Breaker.
  • Poor Retasu Midorikawa. Her first appearance in Tokyo Mew Mew, she was a cool Dark Magical Girl... for less than an episode, until she became too weak to fight the Monster of the Week. But as stressful as that would probably be, you still can't excuse her for forgetting her own powers when she falls into the ocean and panics. (Those powers? Water -- including breathing it.)
  • The premise of Kage Kara Mamoru!, in which a family has been secretly protected for ninjas for so long that they've lost the ability to survive normal life. The latest descendant, the female protagonist, therefore has a supernatural ability to walk blindly into trouble, and generally gets rescued before she even realizes what's happening.
  • Bludgeoning Angel Dokuro-chan: Sakura is this way around Sabato, always offering her a hand even when she had tried to kill him just seconds prior or allowing her to seduce him in her attempts to kill him.
    • To be fair, if she kills him, Dokuro can't.
  • Jun in Devilman Lady gets episode 1 going by encountering a strange woman (Asuka) stalking her. When Asuka comes to her door in the middle of the night, Jun, despite being afraid, unlocks her own door, willingly gets in a car with Asuka, lets Asuka drive her to a darkened area of the docks, and obediently walks into a deserted warehouse whereupon Asuka locks her in with a werewolf.
    • Also in Devilman Lady, Jun's girlfriend Kazumi dies when she leaves her hiding place for no good reason whatsoever.
  • The main character of Kyogoku Natsuhiko Kosetsu Hyaku Monogatari, Yamaoka Momosuke. He has a habit of blindly trusting and attaching himself to even Obviously Evil people, trying to sacrifice himself for others and jumping in to save people from sword-wielding maniacs without any other means to defend himself than yelling "Please calm down!" He'd probably have died at least once every episode if it wasn't for Mataichi's team always saving his ass.
  • In the manga version of Fullmetal Alchemist several members of the Amestris military give Zolf J. Kimblee a Philosopher's Stone so he can test it to see how much more powerful he gets. Kimblee uses it to create massive destruction, upon his return they ask for it back, and Kimblee does what everyone who has spent 5 minutes with the man expects. He swallows the stone then kills the morons who gave arguably the most psychotic person in the series (only Envy is as close) a stone that upgrades his power. Maybe next time they should do some research on the guy they use for their experiment.
    • Kimblee later suggests that he faked being sane in order to pass the State Alchemist exam. Perhaps everyone except the Homunculi and those in on their plan was fooled.
    • Dietlinde Eckhart, the main villain of The Movie. She invades Amestris on the mistaken belief that it's Shamballa, which it shares no similarities with, and doesn't even make sense. Shamballa is supposed to be located near Tibet, and Amestris is in another dimension. She then tries to take over the place when the Thule Society has only about 1,000 members while Amestris is a heavy militarized nation with a much larger army. Her army is crushed in about 15 minutes.
    • Envy itself qualifies. Envy went on a huge rant about how it was the one who killed Roy Mustang's best friend, and almost hurt itself from laughing about it. Keep in mind, Envy went out of its way to tell how it was also the one who started the Ishval War and how amusing it was to see such a huge battle over the death of one little girl that it killed. Envy finds itself being tortured with fire about two seconds later.
  • Loly and Menoly from Bleach are two Arrancar Clingy Jealous Girls who aren't happy to see their boss, Sosuke Aizen, bring a young woman from Earth, Orihime Inoue, as a part of his Gambit Roulette. What do they do? Go torture the girl out of jealous, only to be mauled by their superior. Then, after Orihime shows Messiah traits and revives/heals them out of pity, what do they do? After a while, they try to kill Orihime again and then use her as a hostage in front of Ichigo and Ulquiorra.
    • Loly goes so far to claim that she's going to kill Yammy and Ulquiorra, two of the Espadas while she has no special combat ability of her own even if she most likely didn't know about Yammy being Espada #0.
    • It doesn't help much that the only thing stopping her from being mauled AGAIN is the fact that Ulquiorra, of all people, was forcing Ichigo to continue the fight, saving them... for another ten seconds.
  • In Digimon Tamers, Makuramon decided it would be a great idea to show up and taunt Beelzemon over the latter having trouble fighting Megidramon, while he's still fighting Megidramon. 'Cause pushing the Berserk Button on a guy with a Hair-Trigger Temper who's already a lot stronger than you and has been having a bad day is totally a good idea.
  • Inverted in Baccano! when Randy and Pezzo's stupidity leads to them becoming immortal.
    • Isaac and Miria, also Too Dumb To Die, as they'd probably fly under the radar of anyone who could kill them.
      • Not that they'd be able to anyway; it takes them until they're walking around the modern-day world to realize they haven't aged in about 70 years, and are thus also immortals.
  • Koukaji in the anime version of the first Saiyuki series. He had previously been beaten with an inch of his life by Son Goku with his power limiter removed, and in the finale, he decides to try and fight him on his own again, and nearly gets killed, again. Note that this wasn't in the manga.
  • Death Note. The fiancée of the recently murdered F.B.I. agent figures out crucial information on the Kira case and then decides to trust Light with it after he's been acting creepy, following her around, and asking "Have You Told Anyone Else??" Incidentally, she decides to trust Light because he reminds her of L, lampshading that the two are Not So Different.
    • It should be noted, though, that he is the son of the head detective, and had promised her the opportunity to talk to his father when he returned his call. Also, Light has a genius IQ, so he's got enough improvisation skills and guile to make sure he doesn't go far enough to make her suspicious.
    • Someone who uses the name of Kira to pad his own pockets, knowing that Kira is a vengeful god of justice without much sense of mercy. Demegawa? Can you say "SAKUJO"/"DELETE?"[1]
  • Tytania: Duke Idris Tytania betrays another member of the clan he was sent to rescue, and stands by to watch while the enemy destroys his ship, presumably killing everyone on board, including Idris's subordinate, Berthier, who thought he was in on Idris's plans. Berthier actually manages to get to an escape pod and survives, though he is permanently crippled. Then, although he is presumed dead and could easily just take off, he goes back to continue serving the guy that just double-crossed and tried to kill him. Yeah. That works out real well for him, as you'd expect.
  • Rave Master: Main character Haru Glory's mother Sakura. When someone is telling your husband about how they're going to make him suffer by being alone, you don't run up to them and let them impale you.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh GX: Protagonist Jaden/Judai nearly dooms the world by handing over the key to a Kill Sat, then expecting that Season's Big Bad to not activate it until after defeating Jaden in a children's card game first. The fact that said Big Bad didn't attempt to duel him first was a shock to many fans, as Saiou was the probably the first Genre Savvy villain in Yu-Gi-Oh! history.
    • Well... Maybe not, because Saiou made a bit of a dumb move with that himself. The deathtrap was a scale, and to save Edo, Judai had to throw the key on the other side of the balance. It sounded like a good idea, but when Saiou actually went to get the key, Neos was able to block his path, which gave Kenzan time to pull Edo out of the way, which forced Saiou to Duel Judai. And during that Duel, Saiou quickly falls for one of The Oldest Tricks in The Book, letting Judai goad him into a Trap. So, maybe Judai was dumb, but Saiou wasn't all-too smart either.
  • Black Lagoon: Chaka, not only the biggest asshole in the series, but also the biggest dumbass as well.
    • Thinking himself to be the baddest ass of them all, he obnoxiously hits on Revy in an attempt to get her to duel him, then beats the crap out of Rock in order to antagonise her enough to draw on him, until he gets dragged off by Yoshida. This, despite the fact that Rock and Revy are working for Hotel Moscow, whom his bosses are trying to conduct important negotiations with.
    • He decides to take over the group by kidnapping the heiress to the leadership of the clan with the help of a street gang, and holding her hostage in order to draw out Ginji, her katana-wielding, Badass protector, to kill him before selling the girl into sexual slavery Predictably, Ginji and Revy tear the Mooks apart, whilst Chaka exits, dragging Yukio with him (and loses her after Rock blindsides him with some cleaning fluid, a bowling pin, and a "Fuck You!".
    • Later, he comes across Revy again, and again tries to get her to draw, because clearly he can take the woman who just tore through his entire crew like they were nothing. He starts counting down from ten... and of course she doesn't wait, and instead drop-kicks him in the face and delivers a "The Reason You Suck" Speech, before luring him to a nearby pool... where Ginji is waiting for him to deliver an extremely nasty, but very, very Karmic Death.
    • The Neo Nazi who brags about how powerful his Hand Cannon is. As Revy reloads her guns. The expected follows.
    • Hansel. They made him too aggravated to think and he walked willingly into a trap.
    • The climax of episode 2 relied on this.
  • Pokémon: Ash Ketchum, during the Pokélantis debacle. He starts off by touching things on suspicious-looking pedestals and sets off a rolling boulder that would've killed the whole cast if Brandon didn't show up. Brandon chews him out for being an idiot. What's Ash do next to prove him wrong? Runs off on his own, touches more things that look very much like they shouldn't be touched, and subsequently gets possessed by a dead king. Brilliant, son.
    • Ash very frequently acts Too Dumb to Live. If it doesn't relate to Pokemon training, he hasn't a clue how to do anything.
  • The Red Shirts from the battle against Teppelin in Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. Our leader has just obliterated himself against the mysterious shield surrounding our enemy's city? Quickly! More of us must ram into it so that his death will not be in vain!
  • Ayase from Okane ga Nai has multiple examples:
    • still trusts the cousin who sold him to pay off gambling debts
    • after gaining a measure of freedom he goes back to his old house to get a photo album, intending to come right back!
    • after one of his so called "friends" tries to rape him, follows him into an empty storage room after said friend tells him he's sorry
    • gets a job at a club which basically acts as a brothel.
  • Every single government in Dragonaut: The Resonance. One side commits several outright acts of war, which the other side ignores. The same government then kidnaps one of the dragons, which causes the hive mind of the dragon's homeworld to launch an attack which destroys an entire space station, and a battle which wrecks most of Mars. Who does ultimate blame get placed on? The rescue party. And in a separate incident, a clearly insane dragonaut attacks another dragonaut over a perceived slight at the spaceport. While a shuttle is launching. When he misses a shot, trashing part of the launch equipment (nearly getting all the other dragonauts killed, as they are in the shuttle), he blames his target for dodging. He doesn't even get reprimanded, let alone receive the court-martial that kind of action deserves.
  • The torturer in Berserk. Thinking that he has the upper hand because he locked the most dangerous enemies of his kingdom (aka the main characters) in a dungeon room, he proceeds to hang around to taunt them. When Guts slowly stands and asks in an unnervingly quiet and soft voice if he was responsible for Griffith's mutilation, the torturer pays no heed and proceeds to describe exactly how he tortured him over the past year, finishing by showing them his crowning jewel: Griffith's severed tongue, worn as a necklace. His death is brutal, quick and horrifically painful. Worse, he brags how nothing they do will succeed, because the door is three times thicker than any normal door. Too bad he never took Guts' weapon of choice into account...
  • Dragon Ball Z:
    • ChiChi does this a few times. One of note actually got her killed during the Buu Saga, where she walked up to Buu and slapped him while yelling at him for killing her oldest son. She gets turned into an egg and squished.
    • Frieza has been sliced in half, near dead, and was given a sliver of Super Saiyan Goku's power to survive on as an act of mercy. And what does he do with it? He tries to use it to kill the Super Saiyan from behind, despite the fact that it most likely wouldn't have made a dent. Needless to say, it doesn't end well for the tyrant. He got better. Only to get Killed Off for Real by Future Trunks.
    • Babidi. He controlled Majjin Buu by threatening to seal him up again. Needless to say, eventually Buu got fed up and killed him.
    • Videl is a variation of this. She has enough sense not to pick fights she should know she can't win, but she's been known to be insanely reckless in other ways, such as knocking out all the thugs that hijacked a bus, including the one driving it, and then standing around celebrating instead of taking the wheel. By the time a passenger points out, "Hey, Videl! Who's driving the bus?!" they're about to go over a cliff. Since they're unable to stop in time, they do go over the cliff, surviving only because Gohan caught the bus.
  • Ookamikakushi gives us Hiroshi. He's prone to things like staying in a car with someone making creepy advances on him, walking around town at night after witnessing a brutal murder, specifically walking around the areas another classmate warned him to stay away from, seeing nothing suspicious in being called up at night or being asked to go into an abandoned barn...
    • Isuzu, for the most part, manages to make the right decisions to stay alive until episode eleven, wherein she sees the villain (whom we should add is highly unstable by this point in the story) walking through the forest. Instead of reporting it to the authorities, she decides it would be a better idea to follow them into the forest alone. While wearing bells tied to her wrist. Did we forget to mention this Ax Crazy has a gun?
  • In Chars Counterattack, the Earth Federation makes Char promise not to drop any giant space rocks on them...and pays him off with a suitcase full of money and a giant space rock. Guess what happens next. No, seriously, guess.
  • Sailor Moon: Because Usagi/Serena is such a klutz (as well as a crybaby), the other Sailor Senshi/Soldiers/Scouts, and even the two cats started pegging her as this (or at least that's what DIC's English version would like us to think...). However, this applies more to the anime than to the manga (especially the crybaby part).
  • Run from A Channel. In the first episode, she almost falls out of a third story window while waving to Tooru on ground level outside, and is only saved when Nagi and Yuuko grab her feet and pull her back in.
  • In Code Geass, there are a few characters that fit. Tamaki has a tendency of rushing into things, despite having no special combat talents, and survives most battles only by luckily ejecting from his knightmare as it blows up. Nina Einstein is this as well, during the incident at the lake hotel. Girl, if you're faced with an angry rebel of the island you forcibly conquered, don't call him the derogatory nickname that your homeland gave them!
    • Suzaku is a subversion of this trope: he wants to change the government of Britannia from the inside by joining the military, even though it discriminates against his very people, including himself, and such a position involves putting down his own people to prove his loyalty. It's through sheer luck that he manages to make any progress. The subversion? He's doing it all to fulfill a secret death wish.
    • Nunnally herself also counts. She is more in the right mind, and position, than Suzaku, as governess of Japan, not to mention the ability to detect lies. Not using the latter on Schneizel, who lies to her about Lelouch and Pendragon being evacuated, and later uses her as a pawn in his latest plan with no aversion to abandoning her: big mistake.
    • Ohgi gets so caught up in his relationship with Villetta that he is responsible for several rash decisions which he walks away from through sheer Plot Armor, and is chiefly responsible for leading the other Black Knights to betray Lelouch after being fooled by both Schneizel and Villetta's testimonies.
  • A few cases from My-HiME.
    • Joseph Greer fatally shoots Alyssa with Miyu nearby, but does not run away immediately afterward, instead announcing his intentions for doing so. Within moments, an enraged Miyu kills him.
    • During her confrontation with Shizuru, Haruka not only unnecessarily insults Natsuki, but continues to insult Shizuru even as her Element is drawn rather than stop provoking her or run away as Yukino suggests, thus forcing Yukino to try to defend her, leading to the destruction of Yukino's CHILD Diana, and Haruka's own death.
    • When Nao first encounters Shizuru while attacking Natsuki, she is easily defeated. In response, she kidnaps Natsuki again, this time for the express intention of luring Shizuru out. To make matters worse, by this time, Shizuru has gone insane from Natsuki's rejection, and not only destroys her CHILD Julia, but tries to finish off Nao before Natsuki intervenes.
  • Kanaria from Rozen Maiden has some shades of this during the series, but it becomes blatant obvious during the final battle of the second season: not only she is the cause of turning Suiseiseki's Heroic Sacrifice in a Senseless Sacrifice by going back to the battle field, she also is killed by Barasuishou after the strings of her violin snaps and she forgets that, since she has Suiseiseki's Roza Mystica, she could use her Green Thumb powers.
  • Akko-chan, from Himitsu no Akko-chan, in the aptly named '_____' episode asks her magic mirror to make her deaf and mute, thus, more empathic to the new deaf kid in her class. After realizing that she just wished herself mute, and her magic mirror could only obey to spoken commands, she spends the whole episode as a non-verbal deaf girl, moving from curiosity to deep rooted depression. Keeping her rationality until the realization of her newfound handicaps kicks in, she then starts acting in a completely unreasonable way, ranging from acting as she were completely uncapable of any kind of communication to running blindly in a dangerous, isolated place, knowing that, being unable to cry for help, she'd risk falling in a ravine and being left there to starve. Exactly what happens to her. On the top of it, the deaf boy "inspiring" her wish sees into her self-destructive ideas and manages to save her from certain death.
  • The last Saitama team in Initial D's fourth season calls a bunch of gang-banger types to beat up Project D and neglects the fact that the gang-bangers are from the same region as Project D and thus likely to be fans and that the owner of the car they forced into a wreck during the practice runs (using a cheap trick of spilled oil) was the former boss of those same gang-bangers. The current boss was NOT amused at being made to look bad.
  • One Piece example: Luffy embodies this trope in the Alabasta arc. He makes it to where Crocodile is, a big casino with a lot of people in it, and starts yelling his head off for Crocodile to come out. Then he comes up to a fork in a hallway with a sign pointing left and right, the left saying "VIPs" and the right saying "Pirates". And guess which path Luffy takes? Well, he said in the Arlong arc that he didn't know how to lie.
    • Played straight during his fight with Eneru: Eneru can read his mind, so he tries to fight back without thinking AT ALL. For a while, it works, but it gets so bad, he actually spaces out mid-fight!
  • Fairy Tail: Mirajane and her not quite Dead Little Sister Lisanna are battling Azuma, a Blood Knight opponent who appears disappointed by his two supposedly weak opponents until Lisanna boasts that Mirajane is the famed "She-Devil" Mirajane who only becomes strong when using her Satan Soul transformation (which Mirajane clearly said she is refraining from using because she's low on magic power). So Azuma makes Mirajane do just that...by strapping Lisanna to a bunch of explosives and giving Mirajane three minutes to beat him before they explode, which leads to Mirajane making a Heroic Sacrifice to save Lisanna from the blast. So Mirajane, one of the strongest fighters at Fairy Tail's disposal during a time when they need as many strong fighters as they can get, nearly gets herself killed thanks to her sister's underestimation of their opponent. Fortunately for Lisanna, she realizes just how stupid it was of her to do that and wises up.
    • Something similar happens not long after, though in this case, it's more like "Too Dumb for Everyone Around Her to Live". Before Grimoire Heart came to attack, Fairy Tail was in the middle of an exam that Cana was taking very seriously to the point that she threatened to leave the guild if she failed. So what's the best thing to do when a bunch of uber-powerful opponents have come to fight, inadvertently interrupting the test in the process? According to Cana at the time, it's continuing to take the test as if there weren't any enemies to begin with, instead of helping her friends fight when some of them are falling left and right. To her credit, she didn't realize that some of her friends have already fallen, but what does she do next? After Lucy gives her a lead on how to pass the exam, she knocks out Lucy and abandons her to do just that. And this is while knowing that there are enemies powerful enough to kill them wandering around. And Lucy would have been killed if she hadn't woken up at the last possible second. Again, to Cana's slight credit, she did try hiding Lucy out of sight from potential enemies. But that didn't stop Lucy from being found anyway. Similar to the above example, however, Cana eventually recognizes her own idiocy and rushes to her friends' rescue.
  • Almost all nameless thugs in Fist of the North Star. No matter how easily Kenshiro destroys their allies, be it making them explode with a single touch or throwing them into far away buildings, it's extremely rare for any of them to try to run away. Even those that recognize who he is and/or what power he wields think its a good idea to charge him.
  • Yasashii Succubus-chan to:
    • When a succubus gives you a chance to walk away before it's too late - and this is a succubus you know is a predator of man, not the kind that is a mostly harmless nymphomaniac with a few extra parts - take it, for goodness' sake.
    • Tooru, the protagonist of the third instalment, is particularly stupid. He knows there's some kind of serial killer going around and that the method of killing suggests a succubus... and he decides to go check it out himself without any backup, powers, preparation, skills, training, or anything else at all that might help him survive, much less win, the encounter. Even the succubus can't help pointing out how he "came here without thinking".
  1. ↑ SAKUJO means something like 'eliminate' or 'erase'. It's the catchphrase of Mikami, the 4th Kira. All caps are a must.
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