Wall Banger/Anime

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Examples within the following pages will be highly subjective. Read at your own risk, and if somebody rants about a show you like, please don't make Justifying Edits.

Sometimes, when Eastern Animation meets Fridge Logic, bad things happen.

Please note that, if they occur only in the Manga, then put them in the section for Manga.

Works with their own Wall Banger subpages

Gundam

  • Most of the original Mobile Suit Gundam series is fascinating; it's a demonstration of why good people would follow bad orders, that the bad guys are seldom devils and the good guys never angels, and of the costs of war. But the pacifist Author Tract starts too strong. The early Zeon leader eagerly killed and corrupted a peaceful social movement, and then blew away half the planet's population to establish a fascist all-controlling government on Earth. The Big Bad, during the Battle of Solomon and A Boa Qu, takes being compared to Hitler as a compliment. Having a character seriously complain about the good-guy military in this sort of situation isn't just odd, it's hard to stomach. War is not the worst case scenario in this setting. Despite that, characters like Amuro's mother are played entirely straight - and considered right.
  • Most of the Gundam shows by Tomino include wallbanger moments. Especially Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam, which features the character Reccoa Londe. Now, she's not bad initially, but then she defects from the AEUG and joins the Titans for no clear reason. Then she gives a reason: Men only take advantage of her. But the reason she left the AEUG is that Quattro didn't give her any, and she ran right to another man who used her: Paptimus Scirocco. Yeah. Tomino has at least one character a series like that. Sometimes, fans are unlucky enough to find more.
    • This also leads to some major changes in her leading her to gas an entire colony after she joins the Titans. Admittedly she was against the operation and tried to delay it but she never tries to stop it herself and after it's accomplished she seems to only feel angry that the AEUG didn't arrive in time.
    • Misogynistic gender roles were a major theme in Zeta Gundam, so Reccoa's reasoning isn't that far out of left field. But her being completely immature and telling Kamille off for not understanding her nonsensical reasoning because he's a child -- that is maddening.
      • Reccoa was a well respected officer and competent pilot who was entrusted with multiple vital missions. If anything the AEUG expected her to be just as good as the male pilots.
  • Gundam Seed Destiny introduces the Phantom Pain unit. It includes three people who, in the first two episodes, are ruthless and talented killers. After that? They border on uselessness, being worse pilots than the Coordinators and some of the other Naturals; they even lose a Gundam to Elite Mooks in a series where Gundam aces are typically almost invulnerable to everything else on the battlefield. They are either insane or are literally retarded. The biggest Wall Banger involving them is one of their own, Stellar, remaining an Ace Pilot despite her mental instability once leading her to dance off a cliff. And then there's Kira and Lacus... Character Derailment to the max.
    • Phantom Pain has an excuse. It's stated more than once that the Psycho Serum that gives them their powers will eventually destroy their minds & kill them. The problem is that the Alliance kept using them when it was painfully obvious that they were falling to bits much sooner than expected.
    • Alas, the members of Phantom Pain weren't the only Gundam Seed Destiny characters who suffered a sudden decrease in competence. The real main characters just won a world war practically on their own, but were owned without scratching their enemy once! The designated main character, initially portrayed as overtly aggressive, suddenly became a whiny bitch. None of them have an excuse.
    • Kira coming out unscratched from the destruction of the Freedom Gundam with the Hand Wave that Kira had shut down the nuclear reactor before it blew up. At least when Athrun nearly got killed by Shinn (in the same way Kira nearly did), he was half-dead for a few episodes. Kira was fine and dandy at his next appearance.
      • Even better, that handwave? The one where Kira shut down the reactor? FISSION REACTORS DON'T EXPLODE! This is a Voodoo Shark by way of You Fail Nuclear Physics Forever.
        • Never mind that Freedom Gundam actually did explode - so hard, that adjacent Impulse was heavily damaged. Never mind that it got a huge-ass sword rammed right through the cockpit area. It is as if they seriously wanted to kill off Kira, but chickened out at the last possible moment, after animation already was done.
    • Mwu coming back from the dead. Destiny can't even use "magical pixie dust" to explain this one away.
    • Shinn and Lunamaria hooking up right after Shinn has shot down the MS carrying Athrun and Luna's sister. It would have been understandable if Luna simply didn't hate Shinn for doing what he thought was the right thing to do, since Meyrin had been framed as a traitor. Although her blindly believing the accusation when she had reason to suspect that Durandal was not a nice guy is a Wallbanger itself. But to hug and kiss the guy who killed her little sister? Fukuda, that's neither heartwarming nor romantic. It's screwed up.
    • Uh, Talia? YOU HAVE A YOUNG SON WAITING BACK HOME FOR YOU. But you choose to commit suicide with the guy you left years ago so you could have children, thereby leaving your son an orphan. That's real cute, Talia. Way to be mother of the year.
  • From Gundam Seed, Fllay's spiteful, needless, cruel death which basically turned her whole life into a Shoot the Shaggy Dog story. This tropette has never been angrier at a character death before that. It was quite obvious, to this tropette at least, this it was done only to satisfy her haters and deny Fllay the redemption she richly deserved. Then again, Fukuda is known to let fan opinions and model sales dictate the course of the series, as Waltfeld's and Mwu La Flaga's resurrections and Dearka's Heel Face Turn because the sellings of the Buster Gundam were doing poorly prove...
    • Note that many fans would argue that Waltfeld's resurrection and especially Dearka's Heel Face Turn were good things.
      • It also symbolizes Rau's evil and gives Kira the motivation to fight back and kick his ass in a manner most awesome.
    • Kira's survival of Strike's destruction. Strike was powered down, and Aegis self-destructed attached to its chest. The cockpit was scorched and burned out. The attempt to Hand Wave it in "Astray" by saying he was found by the Junk Guild does NOTHING to alleviate the problem because it fails to explain how Kira survived.
    • Kira's behavior when Sai finds out that Kira's been boinking his girlfriend Flay. Kira, you may be emotionally traumatized, but telling your friend whose trust you have betrayed in one of the worst ways possible to "forget it" is still dickish.
  • Evidently some people consider the Trans-Am system from Mobile Suit Gundam 00, or perhaps its Ass Pull/Deus Ex Machina nature, to be one of these.
    • The Trans-Am kamikaze Gaga takes what was a realistic series and shatters all suspension of disbelief. Ribbons wastes tons of resources (Trans-Am technology, hundreds of mechas, hundreds of clones), and all he could do was possibly kill Patrick (it is Patrick) and a supply ship. The mechas would have had better use as regular mechas, which makes the whole scene silly. His using clones makes no sense; basic AI would have done just as well for a kamikaze attack. Also, once again, it's called the Gaga.
      • In the next episode, it is shown that the Gagas have guns and that they will use them. Why weren't they using them from the start!?
    • This idea was a nadir of Villain Decay for surviving 00 antagonists. And their decay was WallBanger-ish before; by episode 24 of the second season, the only human character still on Ribbons' side who is not mind-screwed nor delusional nor carrying an Idiot Ball the size of a moon is Ali Al-Saachez.
    • Hong Long, Wang Liu Mei, and Nena Trinity. They spend most of the second season doing nothing of importance, and then literally die in succession, one after another, in the same episode! Geez, what a waste of characters.
    • One would think that mobile suits with Trans-Am that are piloted by Innovators would be able to master the advanced combat maneuver known as moving in anything other than a straight line to the target so you don't get shot down on the way.
    • The Deus Ex Machina scene where two characters instantly do a Heel Face Turn because of "magical pixie dust"; and a character who was nearly dead is magically healed and perfectly fine, and all of her mental problems and physical problems that plagued her for the entire second season are magically gone. Mu La Flaga has nothing on magical healing pixie dust. It removes all suspense and all tragedy. It's made worse because the writer is trying to prove a point using magic.
      • To explain, "magical pixie dust" was supposed to create a micro-Instrumentality telepathic connection between characters. But Poor Communication Kills was in effect only between one pair, the one where the "evil" character was both brainwashed (a lesser Wall Banger, since it denied her Character Development) and barely alive. Of the two others, one should have only found more reasons to ventilate his "good" counterpart by looking at her mind -- she did manipulate him, and there's not one hint that she has any genuine feelings towards him; another had no reason to believe that the thoughts he "heard" reflect truth.
      • Still a wall banger in how it's a ridiculous idea in the first place.
    • Celestial Being still being around at the end shows that GN magic pixie dust doesn't work. This also shows how incompetent the Earth Federation is. Even after worldwide peace is made, they still can't -- or won't -- protect themselves and have to rely on an organization loyal to no one. They have no one to restrain Celestial Being.
    • How Ali died - was it spontaneously decided that one of the oldest and most battle-hardened human characters in the series would forget one of the most simple tactics in the book and not lay suppressing fire down that corridor so he could get to the other side without being shot?
    • The treatment of female mecha pilots in Mobile Suit Gundam 00. If you're a female pilot, then you will be either brainwashed (as with Soma and Louise) or an evil psycho bitch (as with Nena and, to an extent, Louise). The only ways out are Redemption Equals Death or discarding everything that made you interesting in the first place to become a living appendage of your boyfriend. (Soma became one by turning into Marie; Louise also ended up doing that).
    • The fact that Gundam 00 was meant to be presented as "mature and realistic" but by season 2 and the movie it shatters those themes by resolving them in unrealistic and preachy manners is a wall banger in of itself.
  • Mobile Suit Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory. Nina betraying Kou for Gato, which comes out of nowhere and kneecaps the entire plot for the sake of a Love Triangle. The love triangle could have worked beautifully within the plot, but it was executed so suddenly and haphazardly that it threw the whole plot off its axis.
    • For some sanity defying reason, the creators of Mobile Suit Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory decided to make everyone hate the crew of the Albion...by having them join the TITANS!!!!! Not only is this going against previous Canon (they were a rogue element as far as the proto-Titans [Jamitov/Basque/Jamicain]) were concerned), but it also took everyone who seemed to be genuine good guys and derailed them in a half-assed attempt to wrap up the ending, which itself is a minor wallbanger. Aside from Basque announcing the formation of the Titans and Kou and Nina reconciling, it didn't explain much.
    • On that note: Eiphar Synapse supposedly capped himself to exonerate Kou for the theft of the GP-03, but they never show the body; we never see it.
    • Even worse, after all this, the Titans hush up the details of Operation Stardust, which negated Kou's sentence. Synapse killed himself for nothing.
    • The premise of the series is a Wall Banger. The Gundam GP 02 had no reason to exist. Its only combat role is to deliver a nuke, and delivering nukes is explicitly banned by the Antarctic Treaty. When it was created, there were no major enemies and thus no reason to use nukes or build expensive nuke-delivery systems. Then, before the field testing, the Feds loaded it with a fully-functional nuclear warhead rather than a standard bazooka shell or a dummy shell, which is asking for all kinds of trouble. The only thing they didn't do was install a flashing neon sign that said "STEAL ME!"
      • When you think about it, there isn't any reason to arm a Gundam with nuclear warheads strategically or tactically. Unlike bombers, UC Gundams usually don't seem to be able to go far from their base or ship. Gundams are far easier to target than submarines or missile silos. And a Gundam using those nukes would be just as dangerous to friendly units as to enemies. There is no reason for any of this to happen except for the series' 'nukes are bad' message.
  • Gundam Wing Endless Waltz, Double Wall Banger. First: Launching the Gundams into the sun. Second: self-detonating them in the end. The desire for peace is one thing; this display of commitment to pacifism could double as suicidal stupidity.
    • It gets better. The rebellion (which almost dropped a colony on Earth) was possible because all of Earth's armies were gone. One might think that this little fiasco would suggest that, hey, maybe we should keep the Gundams around, just in case this shit happens again. Instead, it's "Glad that's over! Well, better get rid of the Gundams!"
    • Gundam pilots tended to range from private one-man armies to outright terrorists. It makes sense to disarm them as a prerequisite for lasting peace; the government still had a few other heavy weapons. But they still should have given the surviving Gundams to the Preventers, who were clearly shown to lack the firepower to deal with possible threats, instead of simply scrapping them.
      • We can take this logic a step farther: Wufei could've just kept his when he BECAME A PREVENTER.
  • Everything about Yurin in Gundam AGE. She's introduced as a mysterious girl with precognition; standard fare for Gundam and a clue that things are not going to end well for her. But everything else afterwards is idiotic and frankly insulting. She is very predictably forced to join the Veigans, who want her X-Rounder abilities because they're dead useful in battle, although she isn't much of a fighter. So what do they do to force her hand? Tell her that she'll never see Flit again if she doesn't. Even though she knows perfectly well 1. the Veigans are Flit's enemy and 2. seriously, that's a stupid reason for them to pick; couldn't they have just threatened to blow up her adopted dad or some other innocent bystanders? But no, her only possible motivation has to be Flit. Although the sum total of Flit and Yurin's interaction onscreen is maybe 20 minutes, we're meant to think they're totally star-crossed and deep. The Veigans make no effort to convert her to their cause, either, which is idiotic because she'd be hugely valuable as a pilot. No, they just shove her into a "mobile suit" that doesn't even have independent movement and looks like a goddamn Barbie doll, which has the contrived purpose of somehow using her X-Rounder brainwaves. She literally can't do anything except sit there while it zooms around trying to kill Flit, being tragic, pretty, and helpless. Then she gets killed and we get a Really Dead Montage with her and Flit, just in case we forgot that they were supposed to be romantic and tragic. It's a ridiculously ham-handed attempt to make the audience feel sad, and a really blatant illustration of the fact that the writers only saw her as a cheap sacrifice to make Flit hate the Veigans forever, because I guess killing his parents and specifically targeting civilians isn't enough. And there certainly wasn't any other character he'd be mad about dying; they have to kill a girl he knew for twenty minutes. Her entire reason for being is to get Stuffed Into the Fridge. Gundam doesn't have the most sterling record when it comes to writing female characters, but Christ.

Yu-Gi-Oh!

"Don't move a muscle! Or we will shoot you with our invisible guns!"

  • Many, many, many edits 4Kids made to make sure any reference to death in the Battle City arc was replaced with being "sent to the shadow realm". The worst example of this was during Yugi's duel with Arkana. They glossed over the leg-slicing buzzsaw blade trap with sparkly effects and said they were "energy disks" that would whisk the victim's mind to the Shadow Realm. It got so bad, fans were surprised when they left Yugi's death-duel with a Marik-controlled Joey mostly intact, fearing they would've turned it into "plunging into Shadow Realm water" or something similar. The Abridged Series lampshaded this too ("Er, Yugi...this isn't actually a Shadow Duel. You're ACTUALLY going to DIE.")
    • Consider that the Shadow Realm had always been depicted as a place of endless oblivion and eternal despair. So no, kids, those dark energy discs aren't going to slice off the loser's legs. They'll just send his soul STRAIGHT TO HELL.
    • Never mind that. Just contemplate the idea of disks made of pure dark energy connecting with your legs. 4Kids probably didn't think it through.
  • Mai is a Designated Victim. She consistently displays first-rate dueling skills, but in the end she has to lose the most often for the sake of plot advancement, making her appear to be a case of Informed Ability. The worst of it was probably her duel with Malik, which she could have won if she had attacked with her three harpies instead of being dramatic and trying to use the Ra card.
    • Well, let's face it: Mai defeating the Big Bad and knocking him out of the tournament despite all the build-up about that being part of the Pharaoh's destiny would be an incredible Anticlimax and a Wall Banger in of itself.
  • Season 2 has a couple of Clip Show episodes where the Pharaoh recaps the story so far to Kaiba while they're travelling by helicopter. All well and good (if not particularly exciting) until the end, where he flashbacks to some events that happened to his friends while he wasn't present and has no way to know about. This one speaks for itself.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh! GX has a few of these, as well; Rei's inexplicable age change, Professor Cobra's badly edited death, and characters threatened to be "sent to the stars" in the Duel Monsters world.
  • 5D's, episode 102: Yusei is in a Riding Duel with J'ean of Team Unicorn and has NO CARDS left in his deck, and it's J'ean's turn. But rather than simply end his turn and have Yusei lose by deck-out, J'ean decides to risk everything by attacking. This, of course, costs him the game and disqualifies his entire team from the big tournament!
    • Actually no. The prelims of the team tournament is in either Swiss format or Double Elimination. If it was the former, then no one is disqualified, and the duel was just to establish the ranks for the elimination (like how racers would have a practice race before the proper and the best racers get the best spots). If the latter, then a team would have to lose TWICE for them to drop. The Wall Banger here is that whoever won wouldn't have made a difference other than character development. If we kept every other duel the same and changed the outcome of Team Unicorn's, then Team 5D's would be up against Team Catastrophe first (which is what happened in the next few episodes with a more or less flawless win), and then Team Unicorn would've lost to Team Catastrophe in turn, which means since all of them have one loss only, they're still in the running. The whole of the Team Unicorn duel was just to show that the three members were all Magnificent Bastards with Hearts of Gold.
      • It can still be considered a Wall Banger for one reason: J'ean only attacked because Yusei essentially called him a pussy who wasn't man enough to beat him through force and instead relied on a technicality. Think about that for a sec; the entire premise of Team Unicorn is in The Power of Friendship, the exact thing the protagonists of the shows keep touting; they work as a team, rely on each other as a team, and their strategy and victories are done as a team. Having Yusei call them out on it like that is really hypocritical of him, in that case. Besides that, Yusei and the other protagonists are usually advocates of the Lethal Joke Card, outright dueling with a crap deck at least once in their lives just to show how "no card or deck is useless", yet here he is, insulting a viable strategy as being beneath a "true duelist". Maybe Yusei should have been reminded that, had Pegasus not wanted anyone to win by any other method but through battle damage, he wouldn't have made cards that allowed for alternate win conditions. As for J'ean, the fact that he ended up agreeing with Yusei shows that, Jerk with a Heart of Gold or not, he insulted his team by abandoning their strategy under a tiny bit of peer pressure.
  • 4Kids has a history of changing villain names, but most of them aren't horrible. We have, in order from original to changed: Pegasus J. Crawford/Maximillion J. Pegasus, Doma/Paradius, Takuma Saiou/Sartorius, and Darkness/Nightshroud. And those are perfectly okay! But then we have the new name change for the three Emperors of Yliaster, the main villains in the current arc in 5D's--Jose, Luciano, and Placido have been changed to the incredibly generic and boring Jacob, Lester, and Primo. What the FUCK, 4Kids!?
    • It's a tough call, choosing between the blandness of the dub names (especially having to make someone named Lester a credible threat) and the Narm of the grand villainy of the Three Tenors.
  • Thanks to a Dub-Induced Plot Hole, we have Jack pulling Red Nova Dragon out of his ass and Yusei questioning where he got it from. In case you're wondering, they cut out three different story arcs, including the one where Jack gets Red Nova...and Yusei was right there with him when he got it. Smooth, 4Kids, very smooth...
    • What's worse is the things that are missed out by skipping the arcs. Lazar making amends and helping Team 5d's find Yliaster, Sherry's disappearance, Sleeping Giant Thud and Yliaster changing the past so they can duel in the WRGP. This might just be the biggest dub induced plot hole in ages.
  • During the first duel between Joey and Kaiba, Joey plays so unnaturally and unrealistically bad that it basically ends up that Kaiba was justified in making fun of him at that time. Yes, it's a new type of duel machine, but he probably should have figured out how to put monsters in defense mode at some point.
    • The entire reason for Joey dueling Kabia in the anime was a wallbanger; he just doesn't want Kaiba to get to Pegasus first? Even though Kaiba's doing it to save his brother? What the hell, Joey? In the original manga, Joey duels Kaiba because the last time he saw Kaiba, he was damn near a Complete Monster who trapped them all in a theme park of death and nearly succeeded in killing Honda/Tristan. Joey, understandably, wanted some revenge, and Kaiba didn't show any indication that saving his brother was important to him (he just says he's going to "take his company back from Pegasus".) But because Death T wasn't in the anime, Joey just comes off looking like a stupid jerk.
  • Among the many 4Kids' screw-ups during the Duelist Kingdom Arc there is one that deserves special mention. You see, the prize money for the winning of the tournament was of three million YEN and they "translated" it to three million DOLLARS (with the exchange rate at that moment, it would had come around to thirty thousand Dollars). Yep, apparently Joey not only wanted to pay for Serenity's eye surgery but also to turn her into The Bionic Woman.


Other Works

  • Fushigi Yuugi had a subplot involving Nuriko, the story's Wholesome Crossdresser. We're given every indication that Nuriko is interested in men and dislikes that people assume a "weird" reason for his crossdressing; the fans reasoned that the Suzaku Senshi aren't Miaka's harem... until a subplot occurred, revealing that Nuriko dresses that way to emulate his dead sister. This was coupled with a sudden interest in the lead girl of the story. In the eyes of some viewers, the "interest" in Miaka is no more than Nuriko regarding her as something like a younger sister (or a Replacement Goldfish for his Dead Little Sister)' but the reason for the crossdressing is a groaner.
    • Nuriko's death also falls into this category; he kills himself by overstressing his injured body to move a giant boulder from blocking the entrance to a cave instead of waiting for Mitsukake to come and heal him. Even if there was some reason why he couldn't just sit and wait, the boulder isn't blocking the entrance completely. At most it would be a minor inconvenience while the rest of the Seishi had to shimmy past it; there's even skeletons in the cave already.
    • On a different subject, why does Miaka decide to break up with Tamahome without telling him why when she finds out that she has to be a virgin to summon Suzaku? Are they trying to send some kind of anti-abstinence message? Do they believe that Courtly Love is impossible?
    • What about the ending of Fushigi Yuugi: Eikoden? Mayo cries a lot, and everybody just forgets how she willfully crossed the Moral Event Horizon and then taunted her victims about it.
      • It's par the course for the series: at the end of the series proper, there was Nakago's hastily revealed tragic past which was supposed to make everyone forget what he did and trick us into thinking he was a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds instead of the Complete Monster he really was.
  • Some people consider the inclusion of Fumu (localized as Tiff) in the Kirby: Right Back at Ya! an example; to them, she's nothing but an annoying character who completely steals the show away from Kirby (the star of the show) so the writers can deliver an Anvilicious Green Aesop. Others consider Kirby eating a lightning bolt shaped like a sword to become Sword Kirby a Wall Banger. Still others blast the show for its constant use of Conspicuous CG... Everything about this show is a Wall Banger to someone.
  • In a later episode of Cowboy Bebop ("Wild Horses"), the crew are facing criminals that attack ships with a computer virus to immobilize them. Not only does no one remember that the Bebop has an insanely skilled computer wizard/hacker on board, but also the virus is administered by physically hitting the ships with spiked transfer cables. This is the equivalent of jabbing a USB cord into your motherboard and expecting it to connect.
  • A lot of the drama in episode 9 of Mai-Otome- specifically, Arika and Erstin's emergency bracelets being sabotaged and breaking down at the worst possible time - could have been easily avoided had the staff not left everyone's camping supplies in an unguarded tent at night, or had they double-checked them before the start of the test to make sure everything was working properly.
    • The Zwei OVAs garnered a lot of hate, partly due to the Giant Space Flea From Nowhere plotline, partly due to spending an entire episode of a four-episode series in a Beach Episode when more interesting things were being discussed offscreen, and finally by being a waste of time and pointless Fan Service.
  • Some consider this the case with Shizuru's Face Heel Turn in the second half of My-HiME and find it hard to accept that she would willingly attack people out of spite without any setup or Foreshadowing, especially since she'd been unquestionably on the side of the good guys until then. She does get called out for some of the things she did and is eventually taken down by Natsuki ; but one has to wonder if it worth it, since the writers were going to undo it later. Not only was there no proper foreshadowing for Shizuru's attitude change, but there also were indications against. Her reason for her rampage is that she's defending Natsuki, who has lost control of her powers; a few episodes earlier, Shizuru had no qualms about reserving the fate of Natsuki AND her Child to a giant space laser.
  • In the eyes of many, the finale of Neon Genesis Evangelion is one of these moments, although this is a source of some controversy. Major financial troubles meant that they had to throw out their original script for episode 25 and make a completely new one for the last two episodes. They had to cut costs everywhere possible. But some would argue that, in the long view, there was no way the ending couldn't be a wallbanger. Even if the staff could have snapped their fingers for unlimited money in the end, the original TV series would have had to pack some variant of most of the events of End of Evangelion in forty minutes of effective airtime. It would still likely be a trainwreck in most people's minds, given how many plots, conspiracies, and Aesops were flying around towarda the end. NGE's original TV run was too ambitious to close out with two television episodes or even one feature film. This, ostensibly, is the reason Rebuild of Evangelion exists; part 3 and part 4 especially are expected desperately hoped to streamline the story significantly and lead to a completely different ending... one that doesn't cause people to wreck their homes via headbutting.
    • At the time of the Evangelion films' release, some articles indicated that they were the product of Executive Meddling. Otaku absolutely loathed the ending of the series because it said "pull your fingers out of your ass and do something with your life!" to them. They complained so much that the producers forced Anno to write a new ending. The result could be seen as Anno showing the middle finger to his audience: "So you didn't like the ending? How about THIS ONE, MOTHERFUCKERS?!". This is reinforced by some other interventions where Anno declared that the scene where Shinji masturbates over Asuka's comatose body was his way of expressing how he felt about the whole deal.
      • Ehhh...that's not the only reason. The actual mythos of the series was never completed within the context of the story. They...supposedly released the true answer to the series, and the information inside it is...rather odd. To say the least. Honestly, the actual "official" explanation was so narm that I think they were trolling the fanbase again...
    • In episode 4 of the TV series Misato is angry that Shinji ignored her orders to retreat from battle in the previous episode. So how does she handle balancing the very fragile self esteem of their only available pilot against teaching him how a pilot needs to act? Does she carefully tell him that she's glad that he succeeded and that everyone's glad he's alive but that he put himself in serious danger and he can't do that again? Nope, she berates him for not following orders and then berates him for only answering her statements with a vague 'yes'. Even she admits that it isn't a surprise when he runs away a few days later. Even crazier is the fact that no one seems to be panicking when Shinji (the only uninjured pilot in Japan) decides to stop piloting.
  • "A Kind Land" in Kino's Journey. There's a degree of Fridge Brilliance to it, as the sequence is essential to Kino's character and to the theme of the story in general; but it's frustratingly heavy-handed and monotonous in a series that normally leaves the moralizing to the viewer and prides itself on inspiration and uniqueness.
  • The D.Gray-man manga features an inherently Wall Bang-worthy scene: a flashback of a priest cursing God after losing his fiance... to a humongous cross held up by a very flimsy rope. Instead of going after whoever placed a massive cross on the ceiling using the tiniest rope available, he picks up a massive axe and shouts at God in the most cheesy, over-the-top manner possible. The anime changed the cross to a chandelier. So, instead of the nun being killed by a massive cross on the ceiling held up by a flimsy rope, which, while improbable, serves for a good dose of irony and justifies the man's cursing God because no one saw it coming and the woman is killed after saying "I believe" - it's a chandelier with an equally flimsy rope that breaks right on their wedding day, which makes one wonder why nobody checked to make sure that problem was never there? That's not much of an improvement.
  • Mnemosyne has two such moments: the first involves The Reveal that Apos is a hermaphrodite, which to some was a Villain Decay moment; the other is the Bait and Switch Lesbians situation that put Rin with a guy in the end and made her pregnant.
    • What, you can't be Yuri if you are bi?
    • Most likely, the Yuri Fanboys were pissed that, once again, a lesbian Official Couple (threesome if you wanted Mishio in on it as well) didn't come to pass.
    • Apos being a hermaphrodite shouldn't be a Wall Banger if you have even a cursory knowledge of mythology, especially concerning effeminite gods and angels. But these days, many people know only the Hollywood version.
  • Glass Fleet spends an entire series establishing its Big Bad, Holy Emperor Vetti Sforza, as a Manipulative Bastard who only cares about himself and uses other people as tools. Even the revelation of the Freudian Excuse in his backstory doesn't make him any more sympathetic, since it includes seducing (if not outright raping) his foster mother and convincing her to murder his foster father, and then murdering her. By the last episode, he's made it clear that his only interest is in prolonging his own life and killing the hero, Cleo - right up until he does kill Cleo and has a session of impromptu Epiphany Therapy with Cleo's spirit; after that, Vetti is apparently instantly redeemed. Michel, Cleo's lover and the longtime leader of La Résistance against Vetti, ends up loyally following the man who drugged and raped her, supporting him as the ideal leader of the united galaxy.
    • Right after the story of Cleo's parents, Vetti is revealed to be Cleo's twin brother despite Cleo being the only baby shown in the flashback.
  • There are many Wall Bangers in Dragon Ball GT, but one that stands out was Uub's place in the story. After Goku left for ten years to train him, Uub returns in the Baby arc. So what does he do? He gets beaten by Baby, fuses with Buu to become Majin Uub, gets beaten again by Baby and eaten, paralyzes Baby long enough for Goku to kill him, gets beaten by Super Android 17, and finally does nothing while fighting Omega Shenron. Ten years of training, huh?
    • That's not the worst part. The worst part is how he's the third strongest "hero" character (After the two Super Saiyan 4), yet everyone treats him like if he was Yamcha.
  • A general one for Dragonball Z. Satan/Hercule somehow convinces everyone that not only was Cell simply using bombs when he destroys the military on camera but also that all of the real fighters at the Cell Games were simply using tricks. There are two problems with this. The first is that we and the people watching the video clearly saw Cell being hit by missiles multiple times to no effect. Bombs do not grant near-invulnerability. The second is that this is the same world where, only a little over a decade ago, Goku, Kuririn, Tenshinhan and many others were filmed live in a major tournament using those same 'tricks' with the announcer and the audience clearly aware of what those 'tricks' were. This is the same world where Master Roshi (as Jackie Chun) blew up the freaking moon and King Piccolo took over the planet. Even if you want to argue that those events all took place in the early manga which was far more lighthearted it still doesn't make any sense because Nappa clearly blew up a camera crew by pointing at it and at the time of Satan's claims Cell has just finished consuming a vast portion of the human population. Has everyone taken collective leave of their senses?
    • To be fair, the whole “Cell vs Army” was part of the Anime filler as well as the presence of the Media at the fight against Vegeta and Nappa. Moreover, in the manga, it is clarified that people had forgot about Goku and his friends by the time of the Cell Games. Nonetheless, this does not lessen the whole wall banging. When Cell announced the beginning of his own personal tournament, he did it in front of a camera in a TV station and, as a warning, blew up an entire section of the city. Are we really expected to believe that people were hoping that Mr. Satan, a guy who won a couple of measly tournaments and whose best gimmick is breaking a pile of tiles, could beat such monster? But it doesn’t stop there. Cell doesn’t bother to dodge Mr Satan punches? It’s because the latter is too fast. Mr Satan gets bitch slapped out of the ring? He slipped. He spends the rest of the fight cowering? Oh, that’s because his stomach hurts. At the end, after a fight that nearly shattered the earth, he tells the reporters that he beat Cell by punching him really hard. And everybody believes him. This is not an Idiot Ball, nope. This is a planet-sized Idiot Genkidama.
      • The military attacks Cell in chapter 392 of the manga, with the media there as well. It doesn't even have the excuse of being a filler episode.
  • In Yu Yu Hakusho, Kuwabara's sister, Shizuru, has romantic feelings for Sakyo even after overhearing the guy admit that he's been a Complete Monster since childhood. Shizuru was around him in life for only three scenes in the entire series; she can't know if he has a heart of gold anywhere in there. Now in the anime (which this whole thing is only present in), Sakyo isn't a complete Complete Monster, mind you -- he has a few Pet the Dog moments, and he gets a noble death -- but he wanted to have demons overrun the earth for the excitement. Love is blind; crushes are blinder.
  • It seems rather strange that in Full Metal Panic!, the characters forget that they are working for a mercenary organization at the most painful opportunity - namely, after capturing the Ax Crazy and financially secure Gauron near the end of the first series. Nothing that happens after this in the show is unpredictable except for the lack of Lambda Drive use.
    • Sousuke's recalling in The Second Raid.
      • Hell, the way Tessa handled Sousuke's recalling. Seriously, you're not making things go over any smoother by antagonizing the already mentally-unstable poor boy by disregarding his worry that Wraith is an incompetent replacement bodyguard for Kaname. And his fears were justified - Wraith was completely incompetent, so much so that Kaname managed to get the jump on her and trick her. She even gets shot by the assassins she was supposed to protect Kaname from; evidently, she didn't even notice the assassin.
  • The anime version of Witchblade will probably piss off the fans of the comic for one reason. The Witchblade and its Evil Knockoff variants invariably kill their users with prolonged use. This was probably a stylistic decision to heighten the show's (well done) drama, or at worst one to make it more acceptable to Moral Guardians. But it's NOT true in the comic which it is was based on - and the anime is supposed to be part of the comicverse's Canon! Most fans would probably have accepted if only the bastardized knockoffs killed their users - that would fit with other canon - but the Witchblade itself? Or if there was a good reason given for the Witchblade to kill its users - for instance, if Angelus and Darkness got roles in the anime and cursed the Witchblade and anything related to it to backfire and kill the users as revenge for the Witch Blade's power being so grotesquely perverted by damn near everybody. That would've made the ending even better. But there wasn't.
    • It should be mentioned that the Witch Blade canonically has the power to OVERCOME Death, adding to this Wallbanger.
    • Also? Ron Marz, pretty much god of the Witchblade universe, has never even seen the anime. Take from that what you will.
    • To make sense, the plot needs two assumptions. #1: Rihoko was bound to a not-yet-awakened offspring of Witchblade from day one - this was heavily hinted in at least 3 different ways. #2: Masane's binding was imperfectly performed in a hurry, and unlike most of her predecessors, she is not a very compatible host - instead of being cherry-picked at leisure, she's chosen in an emergency as "the closest thing we have" within range except Rihoko and those already bound to clones - this is supported by her first involuntary form falling short of her own latter form. Witchblade "laid an egg", then nuked the place while simultaneously shielding Masane and Rihoko; which apparently knocked itself into coma for years, then it prematurely awakened still barely alive and forced to protect and regenerate Masane day in day out. This cannot be healthy for either of them. For all we know, she could have recovered completely in half a year without heavy fighting and lived a century, if that boatload of zombie tanks was bombed out while on the beach and in shallow water. What exactly happens to Masane, Doji and NSFW may only vaguely guess, because they don't have any reference data for such unusual circumstances, nor much at all on the original, rather than mindless knockoffs. Also, there's apparently little to no data (beyond basic medical examinations) on Masane before reawakening, let alone before binding. Everyone stumbles along blindly.
  • The otherwise extremely entertaining Overman King Gainer commits one such moment in the next-to-last episode: namely, when Gainer and Gauli fall under the Overdevil's control, their respective love interests Sara and Adette try to snap them back to sanity with a kiss. Adette manages to do so (even though her feelings for Gauli came out of nowhere); but Sara's attempt fails miserably, and she gets Brainwashed and Crazy as well. No explanation is given for such different outcomes. Not only does it seem that this was done only for the sake of drama, but it also looks like Tomino was doing an In-Universe Real Women Never Wear Dresses - meaning, he was biased against Sara just for not being a tough, Badass Action Girl like Adette.
  • Endless Eight * BANG* Endless Eight * BANG* Endless Eight * BANG* Endless Eight * BANG* Endless Eight * BANG* It wouldn't be so bad except they just wouldn't stop. To explain, "Endless Eight" was a short story from the Haruhi Suzumiya novel that was expanded into 8 episodes, which, since it was a Groundhog Day Loop, were mostly the sames scenes re-animated. The length of time spent on it - more than half of the season - and the fact that it could easily have been done in one episode (since the novel only showed the last cycle) makes this a Wallbanger.
    • The REAL crime in Endless Eight? Nagato specifically mentions that the more than 15,000 loops they pass through are NOT identical. The gang regularly did different activities (most notably, working completely different part-time jobs). A lot of the fun of Groundhog Day Loop stories is watching people try different things each loop. But we almost NEVER see this, except once when there's a short, brushed-over montage of them at karaoke and going fishing. Episodes 2-7 ARE virtually identical except for minor visual changes. Kyoani had the potential to make Endless Eight suck slightly less, and they FUMBLED IT!
    • Biggest wall banger of all? Easy. Why did they make a 30-page story last for 2 whole months of airtime? Because of the name "Endless Eight", right? The "eight" refers to the fact that the story happens in August! * sob* * sob*
      • Look at it this way: now we have the Sigh of Haruhi Suzumiya anime episodes and the Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya film to make up for all of their bullshit.
  • Twin Spica had one in the form of Mr. Sano, one of Asumi's teachers. Mr. Sano hates Asumi because he thinks that her father was responsible for an accident and (more importantly!) that her father was stealing his spotlight as worker in the Lion project. Then Asumi, our heroine, has a little trouble because the school couldn't find a space suit her size and had to order a new one. The problem is, it is too expensive for the school's budget and, apparently, getting the extra money for it would require a drastic reduction of everybody's salaries (the hell?). Then Mr. Sano suggests kicking Asumi out of the school because they couldn't afford the space suit, even though the school was already very selective and it was very hard for her to enroll there in the first place. The other teachers reject the idea, but they do consider the suggestion first. And then Mr. Sano tries to make her quit by telling her that, since her father was responsible for the horrible space accident years before, she couldn't become an austronaut. After hearing that, she doesn't even consider that Mr. Sano might be wrong - she immediately starts wangsting about it. Granted, Mr. Sano leaves school after the whole thing, but God, was that an infuriating plot.
  • Hellsing: The second part of the OVA. Listen, no matter what medium you're using, ZOMBIES DON'T SNIPE PEOPLE!
    • You mean those Valetine brother's highly trained Ghoul Solders?
  • Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust has this happen at the very end, after Carmella's castle is destroyed: Leila is left without transportation, and the nearest town is some ways away. D offers to take her back to town, and she accepts. He offers her a hand up, which she rejects, and then she mounts D's horse. This drove the whole character into obstinate stupidity: there's no point in rejecting someone's hand in a show of independence when you're relying on them to carry you MILES ACROSS THE DESERT!!! It wasn't like D was trying to get in her pants anyway, and she knew this. Of course, Leila was just a cut above Too Dumb to Live status anyway, and would have died if not for D.
  • The "Tree Scene" from the anime series incarnation of X 1999. In the manga, it made sense--the tree that Kotori fell from wasn't that high, and Kamui caught her from the ground. In the anime, the two of them are climbing a tree that appears to be at least seven stories tall when the branch that they are standing on breaks. Kamui manages to catch Kotori by the hand, and, promising to never let her go, hangs on for hours until help arrives. Oh, and he apparently passes out at some point ("Kamui, are you dead?").
  • Blue Submarine No. 6: So, what's the reason why Dr. Zorndyke caused the Pole Shift that all but wiped out the world and killed one billion people? Did he want to Take Over the World? Did he have a God complex and think he could do whatever he wanted with the world? No, he just thought mankind was too arrogant and needed to learn to live alongside the other living creatures. Excuse me, but what the hell? So he killed all those innocents and screwed up the world for such an idiotic reason? And we're supposed to think that he's somehow in the right? Bull, this troper says. Zorndyke killed one billion innocents, and that eliminates any tiniest share of reason he might have had. In this troper's mind, Zorndyke is and will always be nothing but a complete scumbag, and Kino should have put a bullet in his screwed-up brain right then and there, instead of stopping to listen to his excuses.
  • Elfen Lied, the Cliff Notes version: A mutant race of humans called Diclonius threaten to destroy humanity, in a large part through Natural Selection turned Up to Eleven. An organization exists to capture, control, and study these mutants. This organization contains a lot of bastardry in its ranks but, given what Diclonii are capable of and that they seem to almost universally hate humans no matter how nicely you treat them, a lot of it might be considered justified extremism. When it comes to catching Diclonii, their method involves...clearing the area and sending in truckloads of soldiers with high velocity rounds. This almost always involves casualties among the soldiers, it can damage the target if it's not a mission to kill Diclonii, and it usually doesn't stop the diclonius from getting one or two civilians before being subdued. The final fight at the end of the anime shows a major confrontation gone horribly wrong.... Question: haven't these people heard of knockout gas and sonics? Send three unmarked units upwind of the targets, release gas, wait for targets to pass out. Throw them in the back of the party wagon. If anyone asks why they passed out at 3:30 that afternoon, then say it was a gas leak. Casualties: zero. Same for sonics: sonic weaponry exists in Real Life that can disable and disorient targets. Given that this is an anime, killing wouldn't be out of the question, either. Send one guy in an APC, have them fire off a sonic cannon, throw a net over the target while they're writhing on the ground, throw them in the back of the party wagon. Casualties: once again, zero. Then again, if this had been done, the anime would be about nine episodes shorter, and there would have been no excuse to perform all those experimental tortures on the subjects in the name of trying to contain them.
    • There is a slight chance that those weapons may not have worked. The diclonii are evolved; maybe they evolved a resistance to sonic weapons or to sleeping gas. Although, if this "no assurances of success" argument is the real reason, then one has to wonder why they wouldn't have tested these things on the Diclonius while it was in captivity!
    • A net? This would do what exactly against a diclonius? Their vectors are extremely powerful, and even under the influence of a sonic weapon, a diclonius could easily shred one. That said: why bother with all that? My standard operating procedure for diclonius capture would be to locate them, covertly observe, and when I had their patterns down, set up a sniper ambush with a tranquilizer. The target never suspects a thing, just gets a tranq shot at her out of the blue one day and goes down. To kill, obviously just swap the tranq for lethal ammunition. Subtlety and surprise is definitely the way to go with such an opponent.
      • One must also recall that those in utmost command of the Anti-Diclonius efforts are, shall we say, compromised? Chief Kakuzawa in particular believed that his family were the Original Diclonius, and that he was aiding the supremacy of his people. Lucy later taunted his corpse by saying, 'Nope-You were just Humans with small horns'. So maybe the wall-banging nature of the methods used served a secondary purpose.
  • Air Gear. No, we are not talking of the ludicrous technology behind Air Trecks. That's part of the scenery so you either accept it or don't read the manga. We are talking about how a Big Brother Mentor turned out to be not The Mole but the Big Bad himself, without ANYONE even suspecting him. Ok, his pupil was arguably on the dumb side, but the busty successor to his will did not seem so airhead despite the appearance, neither was The Trickster, neither were his former brothers in arms. And how he could possibly hide to his eternal girlfriend that he did not really need a WHEELCHAIR? And that he had conspired all the time with his Evil Twin that no one ever, EVER, heard of?? And that he and his brother work for the United States of America??? One could argue that his gambit worked so well that it actually fooled EVEN THE AUTHOR!!
  • The Curb Stomp Battle that wraps up the second series of Fist of the North Star. This show isn't too keen on fighters fighting with equal footing, but it was just unbearable for the Final Battle to end in such an anti-climatic, melodramatic way.
  • This may only apply to a very bad dub adaptation, but Eagle Riders (composed of Gatchaman II and Gatchaman Fighter) pulled a very annoying one of these in its censorship department to tie both of its source series together. You could even call it an Ass Pull with how shoddy and confusing it wound up as: The villainess Gel Sadra, who had a bad case of being voiced by a man in the original, was changed into an alien male ("Mallanox") for the dub and had her tragic backstory (being kidnapped from the remains of a blown-up ship by the Big Bad that orchestrated it and mutated/rapid-aged) cut out. Saban had also claimed that Berg Katse (or "Lukan"), the villain of Science Ninja Team Gatchaman, was Mallanox's father. When it came time for Gel Sadra's backstory to creep back up, Saban then tried to re-instate her original origin and then gave her a FEMALE voice when in unmasked form to assert that yes, really, Mallanox was actually a woman. Yet then when it came time for her to die? Saban butchered her death scene and rewrote the dialogue to suggest that she was being transformed...into the villain of Gatchaman Fighter. Who they renamed "Happy Boy". So let's get this straight: A little girl being transformed into a man (yet who's not a man but actually a woman) then being transformed into a completely different blue-skinned man with an embarrassing name, is somehow more acceptable to children? Crazy.
  • Blue Drop. You have a powerful spaceship with an impressive AI, and you want to use it to ram your enemy's main attack vessel to slow down an invasion. So what do you do? You instruct the AI to maintain a collision course and you get the hell out of the w--na, scrap that. You plant you butt in the pilot's seat and go down with the ship that could easily have steered itself, after you eject the co-pilot. That makes so much more sense than trying to save yourself so you can aid earth's defense forces--and be with the one you love as a nice bonus.
  • Girls Bravo: In the first episode Yukinari accidentally walks in on Kirie in the bathroom when she's naked which results in her kneeing him in the face. He then goes through the process on how it was an accident and how, because of his allergies to girls, wouldn't even want to see her naked. She attacks him regardless for not wanting to see her naked. This is also despite the fact that it's HIS house and she didn't even ask to use to the bathroom in the first place and expects him to remember that she was gonna come over to use the bathroom again like yesterday.
    • Its quite a wonder that Yukinari's nose wasn't broken from that injury. Kirie has a tendency to overreact to anything she perceives as sexual in nature. And she has the never to insult him about how he has a physical aversion to females after she assaults him so often? Ever think maybe you're part of the problem Kirie?
  • Romeo X Juliet! The surviving Capulets keep Juliet in the dark about the fact that she's the last remaining heir and the hoped-for leader that will guide them to victory over the Montagues. They keep this a secret for fourteen years until her sixteenth birthday and refuse to answer any of her questions until then. And after they drop this epic drama-bomb on a normal teenage girl, they get upset and angry that she's naive, untrained, depressed, has no idea how to lead a revolution and has fallen in love with a man she had no idea was a threat to her. They just expect her to suck it up and cope until the Montagues are dead and then she'll be happy. What the hell were they expecting? For her to transform into a strong leader before their eyes? There is so much drama and angst that stems from this complete asshole move against her, the biggest of all being that she would never have met Romeo if she had known! Way to get them both killed, assholes.
  • Zoids: Genesis. The Hollywood Tactics in this show are just unbearable. The supposedly invincible Biozoids have indestructable armour, but it only outlines their Zoids' chassis in a lame skeleton motif and provides hardly any protection at all, and it's more than halfway through the series that anybody even thinks of going after the un-armoured portions. In the final episode, Emporer Gene curbstomps everybody with his Bio Tyranno, but only because everybody who faces him fights like idiots, throwing themselves at him one or two at a time and leaving themselves wide open. Also, the overhyping of Hell Armour, which is specifically stated to be immune to everything except for Metal Zi. Throughout the course of the series, Biozoids are shattered against cliff faces, crushed by falling rocks, and blown apart by beam weapons. The Biozoids are only as strong as the plot needs them to be, it seems.
  • In El Cazador de la Bruja, there is a very Spanish feel to the series and thus there are many characters who use Spanish. However, the Spanish of the voice actors is generally not too genuine sounding. However, on the cast they do have Monica Rial, who speaks very good Spanish... in a NON-SPEAKING ROLE as the Cute Mute.
  • End of the Soul Eater anime. Kishin stops Black* Star and Kid after Kid's BFGs go Up to Eleven, an Ass Pull of its own, leaving Maka to fight Asura. One by one Maka's attacks fail, Demon Hunter, Kishin Hunter, even turning part weapon to unconsciously attack the Kishin. in the end, the Kishin dies from a normal punch.
    • And a lecture about courage, don't forget.
    • This is explained by Fridge Logic. Maka's fist is "filled with courage" (paraphrasing). Asura became a Kishin because he is scared of absolutely everything. Fear and courage are antonyms.
      • I am well aware of the courage/fear thing, but it still feels like a huge Ass Pull to me.
      • Why didn't/couldn't anyone else scare him to death earlier? Surely Maka isn't the only brave person in the world.
      • This troper thought it was one of the best moments in the entire series. Asura was just a whining pathetic loser, who couldn't handle even the implications of his OWN moronic philosophy. Seeing something as weak as a human shattered him. Plus, that punch looked like it pretty much turned his brain into paste. Plus, they foreshadowed the outcome through the entire fight. Asura's attacks couldn't harm her, because of her courage, and he was too afraid to actually fight her. Not that any of that makes Maka's weapon form any less of an Asspull....
      • The worst one is the episode where Black Star first tries to kill a witch. This would be fine (within the show's logic) if the witch had, say, killed someone or destroyed a town or something. Nope! It turns out the witch is just a kid whose never commited a crime in her life. No, of course Black Star doesn't kill her: what this troper finds disturbing is the implication IT WOULD HAVE BEEN PERFECTLY LEGAL FOR HIM TO DO SO! At no point do any of the other characters even imply that he'd suffer any consequences for doing this and would actually be rewarded instead! It's hard to see anyone who works under such a system as the "good guys".
      • ^ YES. It's not even merely 'implied', Tsubaki tells him to kill her, and their teacher/leader flat out tells him that he should have. Not only that, but the main reason for the witch hunting is to get more power; normally something the villains of an anime do.
        • Tsubaki just defers to him to make the decision when they actually find out that the witch is a little girl. Oh, and while power factors into it, the point of taking the soul of a witch is to create a Death Scythe; a pretty big fucking and almost-entirely-justified deal, since said Death Scythes are used by the Grim Reaper to basically protect the entire civilian population from evil. Don't make it out to be worse than it actually is.
          • It's still killing for power when you boil down to it, though.
      • One of the reasons they hunt witches is because their evil. Ergo, everyone thought he should have, since that little girl would eventually join up with the other evil witches. Death thought it would be for the best, since it's the most logical choice from his perspective. Remember, he's not always as nice as he appears.
      • It almost seemed like they didn't think there was another choice. However, they later basically adopted the same girl and said that if a young witch is kept away the witches, they (probably) won't turn evil. It almost seemed like some kind of weird test of character for Black Star, but the author forgot about it halfway through or something.
        • A self-identified witch living somewhere in the desert with a ridiculously powerful and competent guardian, with the witch being almost a complete recluse. The other two witches (or presumed witches) we see in the prologue are Blair, who apparently doesn't get out much, and the necromancer in Egypt, who uses her army of The Undead instead of venturing outside herself. From Death's point of view, and the Academy's experience of witches thus far, Angela could be as dangerous or powerful as either of these individuals - they don't know that she's really a little girl, and the probability of Angela being an untrained and infantile witch would be considered almost ridiculously unlikely.
      • You might be able to assume that Mifune spread the reputation that Angela was actually some kind of powerful adult witch who was extremely reclusive. If they think she's powerful but just wants to be left alone, they may just see no reason to go after her. If they did say she was a little girl, there may be a few opportunistic people who would go after her for what would be assumed to be an easy kill.
  • Tenchi Muyo!, the third OVA. Just...the whole damn thing from episode fifteen onward. Mihoshi forgeting her brother's name. Ryoko getting slapped around like a rag doll? A whole episode dedicated to the martial issues of two characters no one cares about? Queen Misaki stronger than the three Chousin who created the universe? Washu could become a Chousin at any time and did nothing until now? Tenchi's mom a practical joker? Girl Kagato? There could be a folder just for these six episodes alone.
    • For Washu, it is justified. She had lost her memory and she did not remember that she was a chousin.
      • Then how the hell did she remember now? Where was the trigger? If she just up and remembered out of nowhere, that certainly doesn't help it.
  • A Little Snow Fairy Sugar. In this otherwise more-than-decent series, it's revealed that Saga's grandma Regina sold the piano at some point before the story started, for reasons only known to them and never explained. Okay, let's get this straight. Saga's mother Ingrid was a famous piano player before she got killed (giving it a lot of sentimental value), Saga herself enjoyed playing the piano as her number one hobby, her otherwise kindhearted grandmother sold it at some point even though they don't seem even remotely poor, and yet the two of them get along just fine. Even if the poor girl actually did have a fit about it when it happened, that still doesn't justify Regina doing something so out of character in the first place, when she knows damn well how much it meant to her. Look, I know it was an integral part of the story, but c'mon producers, would it have hurt to read your shit over and at least explain why granny made such a dick move?
  • Episodes 7 and 8 of Ore Imo: Kirino decides to write a novel for fun and then submits it to a publishing house. It's implied that she wrote it in one day and that the story isn't even very good. (She is only fourteen.) But the publishing house chooses to publish her book, and it somehow becomes a best seller with an anime adaptation. Kirino is only a kid; there is no way that she could be talented enough to do that. This storyline put her straight into Canon Sue territory, as she succeeds in absolutely everything.
    • It was speculated by the characters that her anime was just there to fill in the gap of the season.
    • What about the "true" final episode? We were promised a "true" ending and instead we got another Gecko Ending where Kirino comes back for no reason (One almost wonders if the anime writers are in love with her, since they did the same for the first Gecko Ending) and everyone is happy because of that. Everyone. Even Kuroneko, who doesn't like Kirino at all and has zero reason to be happy she's back. The episode even ends with they two and Saori merrily jumping together, Saturday Morning Cartoon-style. The hell? Not to mention the rather gaping Plot Hole of Manami suddenly being best buddies forever with Ayase and having her cellphone number, despite the fact the two have never met (This is a Mythology Gag to the PSP Visual Novel, where they're friends too... also with no reason), particularly since there was a perfectly valid way around the issue that caused this twist (Ayase blocked the main guy's phone number so he can't call her, but he could have asked her friend Kanako fine. Instead, Manami pulls out Ayase's phone number out of her rectum).
  • The protagonists of Last Exile experience a sudden loss of logic somewhere between episodes 4 and 5. In #4, despite being attacked and nearly killed multiple times, they manage to survive their delivery trip and their "cargo," Al, is taken away by the person they were intending to deliver her to (the captain of the Silvana, a sky-battleship). They even get paid, partially at least. And then, in episode 5...they suddenly decide Al will be lonely or something, so they fuel up their ship with dangerously incompatible gas from a downed enemy fighter and chase down the Silvana. When they catch up to it, they try to land on the battleship without permission, and continue doing so after it starts shooting at them. Eventually they crash-land on the battleship, get beaten up by the crew, and continue trying to find Al...for some reason. It's all very reckless and out-of-character, and probably only happened for the sake of plot advancement and an exciting action sequence, killing two birds with one dead parrot.
  • In Death Note, to some, the defeat of Kira in the manga and anime was enabled by Light and Mikami not taking precautions that they would otherwise have done.
    • L letting his suspect hold the murder weapon.
    • The second arc in general is full of wallbangers. The canon reasoning that Mello and Near learn that Kira kills via magical notebook is that just some random cop overheard Higuchi say it was a notebook. Higuchi who was at that point was ranting and raving and talking to himself like a lunatic. Also it somehow took them five years to come to this conclusion.
    • The missile Mello fired was apparently something the mob had. As to where they got the resources, equipment, training and ability to covertly install a missile silo that's a very good question (as is why they ever felt the need to have one).
    • Mello's injuries. He survives blowing up his base and only comes away with just a scar on his face. But the wallbanger here is that his face was the only thing (sort of) protected!
  • In Case Closed's Moonlight Sonata case, the initial assumption is that the killer must have been a man, because he was strong enough to move the first victim's body. This supposedly eliminates Narumi Asai, a petite woman, from the list of suspects. However, it is eventually revealed that Narumi is actually a man in disguise. This is the final proof that he is the killer, even though he still doesn't have enough muscle to move the body. Sexism doesn't make a good basis for a murder mystery.
  • The Second Movie of Keroro Gunsou. Where's The real "Deep Sea Princess"? It's was actually Natsumi Hinata all along wearing a some "Deep Sea Princess" gown with a Bare Your Midriff aspect.
  • Sukisho: Shinichirou and Nanami leaving Sunao behind and rescuing Sora when they saw how Sunao was to weak to continue. This despite both of the children being in a starved state and exhausted.
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  1. ↑ albeit accurate reasoning
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