Wall Banger (Darth Wiki)/Anime

IMPORTANT NOTE: DO NOT link to this article in the main wiki. The Main/Wall Banger redirect is a redlink for a reason. We don't want it.

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.

Note: Pokémon has caused so much cranial injury, it now has its own page.

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Bleach

• Two words for the most common source of Bleach's wallbangers: Sosuke Aizen. Everything about Aizen makes you want to ask how contrived things can get.
  • Why does he even bother having Mooks when he's just going to backstab them for being "weak" if he thinks a fight is taking too long? Why has he let the Soul Society forces even get a Hope Spot? He could have pulled that trick he did with Hinamori over and over until everyone was too paranoid to even move; failing that, he could have used the only guy in the group who presents a threat as his scapegoat/designated victim. Seriously, if he had gotten all his people to gang up on Ichigo, then Ichigo would have had problems. You can't even say he does it For the Evulz; it would have been crueler (to everyone except Hitsugaya, that is) to let them know just a little too late that they're beating down their only hope. Hollywood Tactics at its worst.
    • Most of the mooks were the results of his experiments. He wanted to see how powerful his creations are. Just a few extra spins of the Gambit Roulette wheel. It was also a good opportunity to get rid of Barragan's faction.
    • Also, to be fair, Sosuke Aizen is not as perfect as many people would have you believe. With things like this, it's clear that Aizen is mostly just looking to satiate his own massive ego. He tends to try and stay cool and calculating, but he's actually much more petty and egotistical the reputation he's formed would imply.
• There's disease in the afterlife. DISEASE. IN. THE. AFTERLIFE.
  • And the magical ghosts can somehow have kids.
  • The afterlife's bodies are more or less the same as human bodies. This shoots down that what Rukia said about Shinigami bodies being really nothing but plasma, but at this point it would be a worse Wallbanger if she was right... It's a cycle. The Soul Society isn't the final stage. They'll die and become humans once again later on... Deciding that the shinigami world, and not the human one, is the afterlife is basically for convenience.
    • The original plan of having Shinigami just be ectoplasmic bags of blood plasma would also sort of explain the ludicrous amounts of High-Pressure Blood and Overdrawn At the Blood Bank. Of course they're losing a lot of blood if there's not a whole lot else to their anatomy.
• Everyone's already dead, but they can die in the afterlife. OF THIRST. If they have power, OF HUNGER TOO. This makes for the worst afterlife ever. And then they get to reincarnate to do it all over again.
  • In addition to the dying of hunger/thirst and diseases, Soul Society also has a confusingly large number of people living in poverty, resembling at best medieval peasants and at worst ragged drifters. Yeah, you read that right. The afterlife, the place everybody wishes to go to (even though at the same time nobody wants to die), has poverty, the state everybody wishes to avoid. It seems like Soul Society is secretly just the World of the Living with the serial numbers filed off.
• The afterlife is run by whoever has the biggest sword. Everyone takes their orders from a room full of Obstructive Bureaucrats isolated from the rest of society whose word is absolute no matter how Lawful Stupid it is. Okay, there are horrifying monsters that love to snack on ghosts; but couldn't they have a squad or two devoted to re-uniting recently deceased souls with their family and loved ones? Or at least set up some basic infrastructure up to a post-19th century level?
  • There are only about 5,000-10,000 Soul Reapers. They would barely be able to handle Japan, let alone the whole world.
  • There's also a bit of confusion as to just how old the Soul Society is. In recent chapters, Rukia mentions that Soul Society is a million years old. How is this even possible? Humanity as we are today has only existed for 200000 years, a fifth of that time. Were Soul Society fighting and made up of monkeys and cavemen back then?
• Ishida Uryu is fairly intelligent, right? Out of the three running around after the mod-souls that kidnapped Orihime and Sado, he was the one who figured out their game even though he no longer has his powers, as pointed out by Urahara. And throughout the Bount episodes afterwards, he was hung up on getting Kariya after watching him kill Yoshino. So, why, when he had the chance to end things, does he suddenly get a brain fart and fire the arrow he made absorbing the overflow of reiatsu from Rantao...into the air? Kariya's still trying to recover from her attack. All he needs is one shot. And she's overflowing with power which he can absorb to save her life. Sure, the artifact thing he's using is going to break, but all he needed was that one shot. So he absorbs the excess reiatsu to save Rantao and...fires it into the air. Not Kariya. The AIR.
• In the Zanpakutou arc, Komamura fights his zanpakutou in the first episode and gets owned — he's knocked unconscious. A few days later, he's still out but being treated at the 4th division first aid station. He spends most of the arc in a coma, since we never see him after that until the end of 253, the second to last episode of the filler arc. He's never done anything important in the fillers (unless slaying the Gillians and helping seal the garganta in the zanpakuto count), unless it's getting owned.
• Wildly inconsistent aging. Rukia is meant to be hundreds of years old; but in a Flash Back, she and Renji aged from children to adults in 10 years. If they age like normal humans, then they should look much older. And if being a Soul Reaper stops you from aging, then why did Gin, a child Soul reaper, become an adult? Even taking into account that Gin's been at it longer, there's no logic to what ages characters simply "stop" at, other than plot convenience.
  • This really makes things weird with the Turn Back the Pendulum Arc. 100 years before the series. Byakuya is a teen, and hasn't even met his wife, or her sister, Rukia, who may not even be dead yet...even though, when first introduced, Rukia said she'd lived "10 of your [Ichigo's] lifetimes." Which would make her 150 (If she meant Ichigo's lived-life) to 800 (Average Human Lifetime). Yeah...100 years doesn't really work for the flashbacks...
  • Rukia's age can make sense if you assume that she's around 150, you could say that "Shinigami years" are about 10 human years, as in ten times longer. It would place Rukia at around 15 proportionately (albeit a rather short and young-looking 15-year-old). If we are to assume that "Shinigami puberty" happens at a strangely humanlike pace (around 4-6 years) it would explain how they aged from children to teens in within ten years. It still basically comes down to plot convenience, as proportionately their process to becoming teenagers would otherwise take up to 60 years. The only issue with this is that it would make Yamamoto look damn near immortal. He was shown to look basically the same 2000 years ago when the 13 were formed and is the only leader they've ever had, which would mean that he may have been around since the beginning of time itself.
  • Everything that happens seems to imply that what age they hit certain thresholds of development is more or less random. When we look at the Turn Back The Pendulum arc, Gin Ichimaru and Nanao Ise are both children, Gin looking about 8-11 and Nanao could probably be seen as being as young as 5, meanwhile Hiyori looks to be about 10-13. When we hit present day, Gin and Nanao are both adults who look like they could pass for any age from their late teens to early thirties, but Hiyori looks to have only aged maybe four years.
• When Harribel releases, she cuts Hitsugaya in half — but it is later found to be only an ice clone. The anime, unlike the manga, shows no blood. While this solves the problem of how an ice clone can bleed, Harribel was still completely fooled.
• Bleach's final filler arc, The Invading Army arc, started off good, but went downhill faster than any of the previous filler arcs, and has actually upsurped the Bount Arc's position as the Bleach's worst filler arc. One of the biggest reasons for this? NOZOMI!! KUJO!!
  • It Got Worse in Episode 332. After having her Zanpakuto, and then Shikai, for a short time, once she's absorbed everyone's attacks, she's able to single-handedly defeat the Reigai Komamura, who was in BANKAI at the time, AND Reigai KENPACHI. Both of them PWNED the long-term serving Shinigami Captains in a previous episode and were said to be stronger than before due to the removal of their Purple Braclets.
  • Yamamoto is taken down twice this arc. He's supposed to be the strongest of the Gotei 13, but gets taken down like it was nothing. Nozomi can apparently fight better than him! This arc is bent on making the Gotei 13 look like a complete joke! We haven't seen the captains since the remaining ones were defeated with Yoruichi in episode 329! Past that, Nozomi is the only one who has done anything.
  • Dear lord, Kageroza Inaba. Aizen is in pushover territory compared to him. Quick examples? When he's cornered, Kageroza's Zanpakuto is revealed to have the power of teleportation and duplication, and he's then moments later able to resurrect the beaten Reigai. Even after that, after Ichigo uses the last of his Reiatsu to launch Getsuga Tensho at him, it's moments later revealed that he had a cloning ability, which one can't help wondering why he didn't use before. He's also able to absorb Ichigo, Nozomi and YAMAMOTO'S attacks all simultaneously which is powerful enough to one-shot Yamamoto, defeating Yamamoto alone is something even Aizen was aware he couldn't do - which is why he brought Wonderweiss into play. Oh, and did I mention? Urahara's plan to break into Soul Society and help get Ichigo's powers back, which was so incredibly slick it was like Urahara's tactics back in the Turn Back the Pendulum arc? He was Genre Savvy enough to catch on and sabotage it.
  • The Reigai, stronger and more agressive copies of the Gotei 13 shinigami. They were interesting at first, that is, until they kept getting resurrected, then they just become annoying as hell. Then it's revealed that the purple bracelets they were wearing were Power Limiters. They die again, and are resurrected even more powerful then they already were with the braclets removed. How strong? The reigai Ikkaku is able to seriously injure Komamura, allowing the reigai Komamura to gain the upper hand. The reigai of a third seat, can seriously injure a CAPTAIN!
  • The arc's ending is one as well, the reigai all sacrifice themselves to stop Yushima from blowing up soul society. Nozomi is able to seriously weaken Yushima by forcing him to break his soul chain. WHAT A COP-OUT! The only good thing about the ending is that Nozomi dies.
• After the events of the Zanpakuto Rebellion arc nobody thought to question Byakuya on his actions? He decided to effectively kill his sister's zanpakuto Shirayuki (with no knowledge that she could be repaired), helped Muramasa find Koga, never bothered to inform anyone in Soul Society of his double agent status or even what Muramasa's true objective was and did this apparently just he could kill Koga because of his 'honor'. How did this man make captain? Even with his powers he seems like one of the worst people to lead soldiers in a crisis.
• The Reveal of the Lost Substitute Shinigami arc: Jushiro Ukitake is the MASTERMIND of the arc. Are you serious Kubo?
  • However, it's pretty clear that the person who reveals this is carrying a grudge that would bias his view and make him an unreliable source of information. It's also heavily implied that he doesn't really know the full story himself. It may not even matter for now, as Ichigo's attitude toward this news doesn't really get much more intense than apathy.

Blue Gender

• Seno Miyagi, lead scientist of Second Earth buys into Tony's explanation of the "Grand Will of the Earth", without any empirical evidence. Technically, Tony is right, but a man of science should at least try a few hypotheses.
• You know those humans who live on Second Earth and plan to live there for good (minus some on-ground farming, but only until they get some Space farms or something)? Gaia didn't like that, and so she made them go crazy (for no reason) and murder each other. We gotta kill that bitch...
  • Plus, it's made clear that the people running Second Earth know what the Blues are and are trying to fix it and see making Second Earth self-sufficient as a solution. The Blues are actively trying to stop this. That bitch doesn't want cooperation; she wants things done her way.
• It is mentioned earlier in the series that the humans are still able to deploy nuclear weapons against the Blue, but they have refrained from doing so to preserve the biosphere. This is the same biosphere that is actively trying to kill them. Can you say "Exterminatus," boys and girls?
  • From a military perspective, not using WMDs is a wallbanger. Nukes don't give off as much fallout as fiction would indicate, and nature is less harmed by them than man is once you get past ground zero. And the humans control the orbitals, so clean kinetic strikes using near earth objects are totally doable.
• They have equipment that can detect Blue life signs some how. They have literal Bluedar. If they weren't complete idiots, then the tactical advantage this gives them should make the war a cake walk. They are losing because of Forgot About His Powers.
• Marlene says, "All conventional weapons were found to be useless against the Blue." But we the viewers have only her word for it. We do not get to see any of the failures. We do not even get to see how the Blue could possibly defeat some of those conventional weapons. The Blue are vulnerable to small mecha guns; why should large guns, the sort carried by tanks or aircraft and used against tanks and aircraft, be any different? And why can't, say, F-16s or B-2 bombers or battleships do anything to them? The Blue don't fly that well when they fly, and they have no truly long-ranged weapons. Seriously, there has been a Diabolus Ex Machina or some serious failures of strategy here...
  • Park your aircraft carriers offshore — Blue can't swim at all or fly far. Bomb every city with incendiaries. Every Blue hive catches on fire. Love the smell of napalm in the morning, profits!
  • Clear some small islands of all Blue. Use them as air bases for your B-52 equivalent, use more bomb, more profits!
  • Lure the blue into open areas. Slaughter them with artillery/helicopters/tanks/bombers/cluster munitions from miles away, profits!
  • Use modern bunker busters that can penetrate 75ft of solid grano-diorite or tugsten telephone poles from orbit to destroy every hive, profits!
  • Drop big frickin' rocks on them, profits!
  • Use chemical/biological weapons against your organic enemy, profits!
  • Use depleted uranium/tungsten ammunition in all your guns. Cut through the Blues' organic armor like tissue paper. Profits!
  • Blues are made of meat, kill them with fire, profits!
    • Flame tanks! Profits!
  • Arm you infantry with RPGs, panzerfausts, bazookas, and antimaterial rifles instead of assault rifles and smgs. They're super effective! Also PROFITS!
  • Use tactical nuclear weapons to turn the blues' Zerg Rush tactics into suicidal charges. Then, once you have broken their lines of defense, storm their hives and burn their babies alive. Have a good laugh about it. BBQ and PROFITS!
  • Use neutron bombs on Blue infested cities. Blue and Blue eggs die from the neutron flux. All the steel in the city gives off hard gamma and beta radiation for a few weeks, killing the stragglers (especially since we know Blue eat pieces of buildings regularly). In a year, the radiation in the cities will be just above background level. Profits! (And make sure to drink lots of red wine, St90 and all that).
    • Use mirrors and focusing lenses to create orbital solar death rays; like a kid roasting ants with a magnifying glass Up to Eleven! Oh, and PROFITS!
• The mecha that the humans use have an insane open cockpit design. The armament of the mechas is insufficient to do more than annoy the Blue unless they hit the weak point for massive damage. They use what looks to be about a 40-85mm cannon as a rifle, and it doesn't do jack; a modern main battle tank carries a 120mm cannon that would probably kill with one shot anything they meet in the series if it hadn't been magically neutralized. And tanks are as good as mecha for melee.
  • If you look closely at the Mech guns, then you'll see that the top of the barrel sheath extends farther than the bottom. This is the exact opposite of a real military rifle; this design will increase muzzle climb. Did the people who drew this ever see a real gun?
  • The two-man melee mech. The legs are controlled by one soldier, the arms by another. This mech has NO weapons. So, to summarize: Melee mech with no protection for the pilot, no weapons and the arms and legs are completely disconnected.
• The Blue ability to "evolve" is, as far as we can tell, their growing armor over or hiding their cores. It's normal natural selection: the Blue that had exposed cores get killed fast; those that had less exposed cores didn't. They breed fast, and unfit individuals are quickly eliminated by humans. But "evolving" can't help you if there is no defense against the weapon you are being hit with. To spot a KE penetrator made of DU, your need DU or Tungsten armor, which means you need to find those metals and eat them to make them part of your armor. But to find enough of those metals, you have to mine, which would make the Blue into an industrial species based on organic rather then mechanical technological innovation. But Gaia hates industrial species in general... To defeat humanity as it exists in the real world, the Blue would have to become that which they are supposed to destroy. And the Blue don't even understand mining.
  • Even if they did, none of the Blue except the land whale weigh more than MB Ts, making them too light to support the armor they need. Since they are not just boxes on wheels, they have more surface area to armor; they have to carry so much weight that they would collapse. Walking combat vehicles are stupid for many reasons, and those same reasons apply to the Blue. No amount of adaption will change physics.
  • If they attacked from the air, the size of munitions used would make even the frontal armor of a MBT look like tin foil. If the Blue fought humans that used real world tactics and military equipment, then they would be slaughtered.

• Perhaps the humans in Blue Gender are being targeted by natural selection against stupidity rather than Gaia's vengeance.

Code Geass

• In episode 19 of the second season, Prince Schneizel goes to the Black Knights and tells them that Zero is a Britannian prince who is rotten to the core and may have used mind control on them. The Black Knights believe him sight unseen and instantly turn on Zero/Lelouch. That's right, the Knights choose to believe a bitter enemy over the commander who's fought alongside them for the past two years. They instantly attempt to kill Lelouch without even giving him a chance to explain himself! Almost every member of the Knights' leadership turns against him; by the time the conversation ends, no one dissents. This episode caused many Black Knights, most notably sub-commander Kaname Ohgi, to earn Scrappy points with the fanbase.
  • There's the theory that Ohgi did this so he could stay with Villetta.
  • Zero/Lelouch is a former Britannian prince, and Schneizel pretty much admits it. Thus, Lelouch probably has reasons for fighting Britannia. But the Knights choose to believe a current prince who was known to be shady and who just nuked Tokyo. DOES. NOT. COMPUTE.
  • Even if the series had given proper foreshadowing of the Black Knight's distrust, it wouldn't explain how Schneizel knew that the Black Knights would betray Zero. It would have made more sense for Schneizel to blast them to bits with his missiles.
  • What's worse is that the only thing - the only thing - that does make sense is Lelouch choosing to play along. After all, he knew that Schneizel had them cornered and if he tried to hard to convince them his brother was lying, they were all dead, so he lied to save them (especially Kallen). What doesn't make sense is that they turned to the proven Evil Prince over their long-time leader. While there are good reasons to not fully trust Zero (the abandonment for no apparent reason during the Black Rebellion, for one), siding with the man who nuked Tokyo is idiotic beyond words. At least Diethard, Tamaki and Kallen were reluctant to believe it at first, but Ohgi? EPIC - FAIL!!
    • Ohgi's fail goes beyond trusting Schneizel. He also trusted Villetta, the woman responsible for incapacitating him during the Black Rebellion, keeping Lelouch under close surveillance while they were imprisoned and thus being partly responsible for their year in jail and near-execution, and also going AWOL for her when she wanted to kill him, and he has the nerve to implicate him for all of this while defending the woman responsible. And somehow, the rest of the B Ks agree Lelouch is at fault instead. For obvious reasons, the ending is even worse. Can you say Never My Fault and Ungrateful Bastard?
    • This whole situation is made much worse by the fact that none of Schneizel's claims can come anywhere close to being proven. He tells them of Geass, which actually exists, but none of the Black Knights had ever heard of this or any other of the supernatural elements in the show before this and therefore had no reason to believe it. Even when we know that Schneizel was telling part of the truth about Geass, the Black Knights come off as massively gullible and honestly stupid for not laughing in his face about how insane his story is. It comes off as awkward when Schneizel's only "proof" is that a bunch of bad stuff happened that Lelouch might have been involved in and claiming that he has mind control powers with nothing to back that up, but the Black Knights, except for Tamaki, who at least didn't want to believe it at first, almost instantly accept this as fact.
• The hypocrisy here centered around Ohgi is another Wall Banger. Even though Lelouch is accused of abandoning the Black Knights during the Black Rebellion and harboring secrets, Ohgi is just as guilty of these with his season 1 tryst and unrequited love for Villetta Nu, which compelled him to sneak away from his duties and allowed him to be nearly killed by her in Turn 15 when she wanted to sever her ties with Zero and the Black Knights. Most of all, despite his own objections to people being used as pawns, which he voices repeatedly, he uses Kallen, the one person who trusts Zero/Lelouch and knows him well enough to defend him, to bait him into the warehouse to be executed; Ohgi almost shoots her down as well, but is stopped when Lelouch tells Kallen that she was nothing more than a pawn, pushing her away to have her spared. Afterwards, Ohgi doesn't apologize. Not to mention that he asked for Japan in exchange for Zero, which is tantamount to if not downright worse than Zero going AWOL during the Black Rebellion, as it would have constituted a mutiny on the Black Knights' role as military protection force of the UFN. At least when Suzaku was about to inject Kallen with Refrain, he not only stopped himself, but also attempted to apologize. For all his issues during season 2, at least Suzaku had a sense of decency, even if it was still a vain attempt to distance himself from Zero.
  • Kallen was trying to get them to see reason when they asked her to move. They just accused her of being under the sway of Geass. Ohgi used her as bait because he thought that if she tried to defend her commander like any rational military officer would do in the presence of such a mutiny, then she must be under his control. Complete idiocy. As for giving back Japan, Schneizel never made good on that deal (after all, those idiots never delivered their end), as that flash-forward two episode later shows. Milly is still in Japan doing her job and only even starts thinking of Area 11 as Japan after Lelouch gives them the country for nothing in return.
    • The thing with Kallen is even more of a wallbanger once you remember that the Black Knights never TOLD her about Geass, Lelouch being Zero, or all the crimes he committed. They just send her to bring him to the hanger. When she tries to defend him, which she was bound to do since he just broke her out of prison hours before, they accuse her of being under the effect of Geass — without telling her what Geass is. Kallen may have known about all that stuff, but the Black Knights don't know that. Way to treat your ace pilot who was just broken out of imprisonment on the verge of execution. Naoto must be rolling in his grave right now.
  • Schneizel doesn't give them Japan because he then sends Suzaku to kill the Emperor. Gino overhears and then tells his boss, Bismarck. Trying to do anything using his official power would result in him being hunted down and killed by an angry, Super Elite, Geass-Using soldier. This doesn't seem to clue any of the Black Knights in on his nature.
• Kallen goes up against Xing-ke while low on energy. That's not the Wallbanger. It's unwise; but Kallen, as the Ace Pilot of the group, is supposed to take on the strongest opponents (Xing-ke had just effortlessly mopped the floor with Chiba). On the other hand, the entire Order of the Black Knights standing around and watching her fight Xing-ke one-on-one without helping her when they know she's low on energy and when most of their army (including Chiba and Asahina) is deployed and ready to act - that's headdesk inducing.
  • Part of the problem was that both units were flight capable. We see later that they probably have a hell of a time attaching those things on the hangar floor. It's done in advance. Simply put, there wasn't anyone there to help. But it does raise the question of what the hell Asahina was doing the whole time, even if he would have gotten his ass kicked. Chiba was hardly beaten soundly, either — she only lost a sword. Both of them were in a position to assist but didn't.
  • Lelouch's shiny new toy is at most a couple hours from being ready. Indestructible defense and a giant cannon is not useful? Especially considering how conflicted Lelouch is about it.
  • What makes this even more of a Wallbanger is it essentially amounted to nothing. Kallen stays captured for seven (Halfway through Turn 10 to Halfway through Turn 18) episodes, and the only real reason for this is an excuse for an end-of-season upgrade and to make Suzaku see how much of an ass he's being, either of which did not need to see Kallen captured for seven episodes to do. What should have been the main point, namely learning more about Lelouch, is utterly thrown away not one episode after she comes back when the Black Knights betray Lelouch. It's not even brought up beyond a passing mention just prior to said event, and Kallen's just as easily manipulated before as she was after.
• Code Geass hit the wall during episodes 21, 22, and 23 of Season 1, where it turns out that Lelouch's fatal flaw was not his pride, his inability to put aside his personal issues for the greater good, nor even his growing Messiah Complex. No, it's his carelessness. Euphie's fairly competent if naive plan to restore autonomy to Japan with Lelouch's aid is undone because Lelouch accidentally Geasses her with an evil command while trying to warn her that he could Geass her with an evil command. Now we'll never know if Euphie would have, without that Geass, gone forward with her plan once she realized she was being used as a pawn.
  • The Brittanian soldiers restrained Lulu when he was trying to stop Euphie from starting the genocide. This makes The Mutiny even more of a wall banger. Get out a security camera of what happened that day; Lelouch was close enough to what happened that his being grabbed by the soldiers would have been caught on tape--and surely it wasn't taped over, not with what happened right afterward. Granted, Lelouch is smart and could have been passed off as acting, but that would have warranted an investigation just to determine any damage he's responsible for, which would no doubt have led to somebody stumbling upon concrete proof of his decent, if not fully innocent, character. Especially when his way of pushing away Kallen makes it seem like geassing the Black Knights on foot into in-fighting and creating a third massacre makes too much sense for the sociopath he was already believed to be.
• What happened to the battleship Great Britannia? A bunch of Knightmares suddenly appear but never had a battleship to transport them? And if it was there... then why does Lelouch take the Avalon, a flying yacht in every way inferior as his flagship in a battle with better-equipped battleships on BOTH sides, including other "Great Britannia"-class battleships?
• Question: What happens to every city, town and village within a hundred miles of Mount Fuji after Lelouch sets it off? There are no government disaster management teams to help the civilians evacuate — they are too busy fighting. A big deal was made about what happened in Narita in season 1. This would be like Narita times a hundred, but no one mentions it.
  • The same thing happens with Tokyo. The center of Tokyo is destroyed, pretty much leaving only the poor people and crippling Japan's economy. This is ignored; the implication is that they just rebuilt and the economy magically got better. Considering the destruction that the war has caused, the world economy should probably be crippled.
• To this tropette, Nina's Freak-Out and Heel Face Turn qualify as Character Derailment of the worst kind. One moment she wanted nothing more than to drop FLEIJA on Tokyo to kill Zero and avenge her beloved Euphemia... and one second later she gets all My God, What Have I Done?? As if she couldn't even suspect that the weapon she built herself was capable of such destruction! You know, Nina, for a supposed Teen Genius, you are pretty damn retarded. I know that the destruction of Tokyo was mainly Schneizel's fault, but... really, it looked like the producers were saying: "Yes, we know Nina is an absolute bitch with no redeeming qualities at all, but can you viewers just pretend she's actually a tragic character?". Well, for what concerns this tropette, it utterly failed. She will never stop hating Nina or considering her a Karma Houdini.
  • Made worse because she tested the weapon in a non-inhabited area before it was ever used in battle and was happy with the result. She should not have been surprised by how powerful the one in Tokyo was.
    • One could almost be impressed with how the writers managed to make Nina even more hated, if it wasn't for the fact they were clearly trying for the opposite effect. These are the same people who managed to turn Jeremiah into such a badass?
  • At the very least, they tried something in order to redeem her. Seriously, so many other characters got off absolutely scot free for their actions it's not even funny.
• In R2, Lelouch goes Heroic BSOD after he learns Nunally has been made viceroy of Area 11. He's unable to think of a military plan that would free Area 11 without harming Nunally. He gets over his Heroic BSOD and perform the "one million miracle" and exiles the Black Knights to the Chinese Federation. Here, he rebuilds his power base, gathers weapons, and forges alliances; this leads to the birth of U.F.N., which is capable of challenging Britannia. The U.F.N.'s first resolution is to free Area 11 from occupation, which means Lelouch has to confront Nunally IN AN ARMED MILITARY INTERVENTION!!! Lelouch goes mad because he can't figure out a plan to free Area 11 without harming his sister. Why didn't he try to formulate one between Turn 07 and Turn 16?! He knew it would have come to that eventually!
  • Short Answer: He got over it. He had a problem with it at first, then he sucked it up.
  • Also, his main obstacle to a plan was not so much armed conflict against Nunnally so much as it was armed resistance from within the Area against Nunnally. He was terrified of her getting caught up in a guerrilla war. Worse, he didn't want her to restart the SAZ, which would either destroy the Black Knights or result in another massacre - not something he wanted for Nunnally. Furthermore, if she failed as Viceroy, she would have been eaten alive by Britannia - Lelouch couldn't defeat her without making sure he could get her to safety - hence his "capture Nunnally" orders during the Second Battle of Tokyo.
• Schneizel putting his king in check, and then declaring a victory by announcing "checkmate." The shallow justification of Chess being nothing more than a metaphor doesn't help. Sure, it's not his victory he's announcing, but someone should have called him on it.
• The scene where Lelouch defeats his Instrumentality-happy parents is dripping with hypocrisy, not only on his part, but also on the part of the writers. Lelouch objects to their plan because, among other things, it would remove free will from humanity. So, to stop them he uses his Geass on the collective consciousness of humankind — you know, the one that forces you to obey his command... Then, when Marianne claims that they did what they had to do because they cared about their children, Lelouch counters with them not understanding "the meaning in Nunally's smile". Most of what Lelouch does in the story has been to create a better world for Nunally, which as she later points out, SHE NEVER ASKED HIM TO DO IN THE FIRST PLACE! He just decided what would be best for her on his own, just his own parents did for the human race. Clearly, Lelouch's domineering love is better than theirs. What makes it painful is that you get the feeling that the writers wanted to make all these points about life and love and hope, but forgot what had happened already and who they were having say what!
  • Note: the wallbanger is not "Lelouch stops Instrumentality" (we're all for that), it's "Lelouch stops Instrumentality in a manner so agonizingly hypocritical that the ends DO NOT justify the means despite it being Instrumentality."
    • The argument for this being a Wall Banger seems to be that Lelouch used mind-control to save free will, but that's a case of end justifying the means. Lelouch controlled free will for a moment so that it wouldn't be lost forever. That the guy whose superpower is controlling minds chooses to save free will is ironic, but it could be on purpose. Besides, Lelouch was never a saint.
    • It also seems to imply that by having their actions be similar to his, it's a possibly intentional case of Not So Different that not so much the characters, but the viewers are meant to cue in on. This is a theme in the latter part of the series. A theme of whose morality, if anyone's, is better than that of others.
• It's Euphemia's death that is the BIGGEST Wall Banger. In a previous episode, Mao gets miraculously healed despite getting shot several times in fatal areas because of "advanced Britannian medicine", Euphie gets shot once, once, yet somehow no treatment could save her!!!
• C.C. clearly knew from the start that Lelouch's Geass would become so powerful it would require a special contact lens for him to maintain control of it. Why in the fuck would she withhold that kind of information from him? As a result, Princess Euphemia's blood is as much on her hands as it is Lelouch's.
  • C.C. did tell Lelouch, after his battle with Mao she told him that sooner or later that his geass would get out of control. The Wall Banger for this troper is when there are signs of this happening, when he tried to geass a britannia he started to feel pain in his EYE!! So instead of talking to C.C. about it never even occur to him that geass power is acting strange. His ultimate secret weapon is acting weird and he never acknowledge it, him the Chessmaster.

Digimon

• Digimon Frontier more or less fell to pieces in the final arc. From Takuya and Koji taking all the other spirits to activate their evolution, leaving the other cast members powerless, to Takuya and Koji getting smashed by the Royal Knights repeatedly, in the same way, for eight episodes in a row, making no progress whatsoever in fighting them...it was miserable.
  • 'Don't bother running, guys, you'll just die tired.'
• The Distant Finale of Digimon Adventure 02, which came out of nowhere and had several character's future lives just making no damn sense. And it gave them all children who looked more like clones of them. And those clone-children had clone-digimon of their Digimon... Seems like cloning got damn far in the last 20 years.
  • Well, originally, Takari and Jyoumi was going to be canon along with Kenyako and Sorato. However, the fanbase was too divided and so they randomly picked two couples... THE ONES WITH THE LEAST SHIP TEASE. Taiora seemed much more likely than Sorato until the Christmas episode. Takari had a lot of Ship Tease. Yes, Miyako had a crush on Ken early on, but Daisuke or Koushiro seemed much more likely partners.
  • The Digimon World Tour. Simply - Imperialdramon destroyed all of Japan's Dark Towers/Control Spires in mere seconds, shooting all of them at the same time without having to move or break a sweat. But it appears that he can't do this with the other countries' Dark Towers; he needs three episodes with the children to bring each one down, one by one. Why? Because.
  • In the final battle with MaloMyotismon, they defeated him by talking about their dreams. These dreams are what the Distant Finale is based on. These dreams were never brought up at all before then.
    • And here's the real Wallbanger of it: it didn't have to be that way. We know most of their interests. Rather than a noodle cart, where Daisuke has never displayed any aptitude for cooking ever, he could have dreamed of, I don't know, being a big soccer star. And why stick Yamato in a space suit when he has that up and coming band?
• Here's another wonderful Wall Banger brought to you by Digimon Adventure 02, you know how in the original Digimon Adventure in the Myotismon arc the Digimon basically destroy Odaiba, and many of its residents witness the Digimon taking over their town, and yet come 02 for a good while in the series the everyone forgets about the Digimon attack not even 4 years ago, which decimated their city mind you, and yet the children basically say that that no one else knows about the Digital world because its a secret until the last episodes when suddenly for some inexplicable reason everyone now remembers. What makes this worse is that they use characters that came into direct contact with Digimon and had the existence of the Digital world explained to them, but makes them forget about the monster that their child brought home three years ago.
• Another brilliant moment from 02 and another example of the above is when the kids witness the children infected with the darkspores and the older kids point out that they should tell kids' parents so that they can snap the kids out of it, but the new digidestined think that its a bad idea for some inexplicable reason, until Izzy's mom who now remembers Digimon has the common sense to contact the parents of the mind controlled.
• In Digimon Adventure 02, Tailmon losing her holy ring is a major plot point. Yet Plotmon, Tailmon's rookie form still has her holy ring... What.
• Episode 23 of Digimon Adventure. The plot of the episode is this: Matt (Yamato) left his little brother behind, completely helpless, to check what would be on the other side of a lake. Getting there, he finds a restaurant in which Joe (Jou) is being forced to work as a slave because he got a debt there that kept growing (because he kept screwing up thanks to Demidevimon). Matt decides to help, but Demidevimon keeps bothering them (and blaming Joe for the accidents), and so Matt gets angry at him. Then Demidevimon goes to Matt and says that Joe is causing the accidents on purpose so that he wouldn't be alone there. Let me go through this again - Joe, the oldest and most responsible of the children, is forcing Matt to slave-labor and abandon his little brother just so he isn't alone in slavery instead of, say, working harder to pay the debt and get out. And the creature who is telling Matt this is a black bat with a skull on its forehead that has "Devil" in his name (literally). And what does Matt do? He believes it.
  • Matt's a magnet for wall-banging. He was once convinced to do a Face Heel Turn by a talking tree with a porno mustache.
• This troper can think of plenty in the Dark Masters Arc,the first being why when Machinedramon first appeared,the digimon digivolved to ULTIMATE, even the two that could warp-digivolve. It was a revelation that MetalSeadramon was a Mega digimon, and before the digi-volutions Izzy analyzed that Machinedramon was MEGA. So why didn't Agumon and Gabumon skip their ultimate stages?
  • It was revealed in Digimon Adventure 02 that the Digi-Spirits were defeated by The Dark Masters, how did that happen when even Champion Angemon could hold up to Piedmon, when all the Dark Masters were destroyed so effortlessly.
    • New Powers as the Plot Demands
  • If Zudomon's Hammer is made of Chrome Digizoid and MetalSeadramon is made of Chrome Digizoid, why did Whamon have to die, Zudomon could've broke the monsters skull and WarGreymon could've finished it off.
    • Zudomon's Hammer only broke MetalEtemon armor because he stood there like a dupe. MetalSeadramon would not have stood so idly.
  • Leomon's death makes no sense, I mean how could Leomon have managed to stay in the air long enough to get the blast, and why didn't he just push Mimi out of the way instead jumping straight up?
  • If Machinedramon is so powerful and managed to defeat a Digi-Spirit, how come all it took was a Ninja-strike to finish him off?
  • Why didn't Puppetmon just shoot them all with his gun? Maybe the first time it simply was more fun, but after TK escaped and the game was over.....

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.

Inuyasha

• Inuyasha probably has others, but the most prominent Wall Banger is a "They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot" complaint. During the first season, Inuyasha's former lover Kikyo, previous incarnation of Kagome, is resurrected as a kind of golem/undead thing. Though the evil witch who created her failed to steal Kagome's soul and thus truly revive Kikyo, a spark of Kikyo's hatred and rage lingers within the shell; thus, she continues to "exist". To sustain herself, she must eat parts of human souls; otherwise, she reverts back to true death. It's uncertain how she's getting what she's eating, but whatever the method, it's gotta hurt someone. Despite the fact that soul eating is generally used to show that the Villain of the Week or Monster of the Week is truly evil, she is still able to use all of her old holy powers, and none of the main characters have any gripes towards her beyond her being the third point in the Inuyasha/Kagome Love Triangle. Inuyasha and Kagome's attitudes can be explained, somewhat - Inuyasha is a half-demon and doesn't think too highly of either race, and Kagome is Kikyo's reincarnation. (Though perhaps that should make Kagome more horrified at Kikyo.) But neither Sango, a fully fledged Demon Slayer, nor Miroku, a somewhat shady but still skilled Buddhist monk, find anything the least reprehensible about Kikyo's eating habits.
  • Since it's The Warring States Era, there's so many battles and diseases and so much infant mortality rates that Kikyo never kills people for her "food". She just waits until their souls ascend to heaven and plucks them from midair. And it's not like she, y'know, absorbs people alive and tortures her own subordinates For the Evulz.
    • Points taken, but getting part of one's soul yanked away heaven into The Nothing After Death via her digestive-tract equivalent still has to hurt the lunch involved. Or does Our Souls Are Different apply?
    • Wasn't she just retaining them inside her rather than digesting them?
    • If she was retaining them, then she should not need to keep collecting them. Either they are escaping, or she is consuming them. Or maybe she's developing a tolerance.
  • The Moryoumaru arc explained that souls in Inuyasha are divided into two parts; one that grants motion and the other that grants will. Moryoumaru (and probably Kikyo) are powered by the part that grants motion; the baby/Naraku's heart and the portion of Kikyo's soul that she got from Kagome are from the part that granted will. Mouryoumaru probably didn't need to steal souls because he's a superior construct built out of youkai bodies by detachments of friggin' Naraku, while Kikyo was made of dirt and ash by a low level youkai. Or maybe he killed people and stole the requisite soul fragments off screen.
    • Does that mean that Kagome has less than a full soul for most of the series? It would explain a lot of what's listed below...
      • Yes, and we don't know if Kikyou's soul returned to Kagome after her death, since everyone was engulfed in it and it seemed to float to the sky, and her will was still active Kohaku's shard until he lost it. But it seems to be the part of her soul that held a grudge against Inu Yasha for her death (which is why she was so Yandere towards Inu Yasha and Kagome at the start). And even incomplete, Kagome's soul is shown to be mindbogglingly huge.
• Kagome rescued Kouga, a guy who kidnapped her, threatened to eat Shippou, and led the slaughter of at least one village for no particular reason. Even she realized that she was at fault, and that Inu Yasha was justified in doubting her fidelity from her actions. At least it worked out in the end.
• Any time Inuyasha is called out for being stupid because he isn't able to read other people's behaviours well enough to know their emotions (such as in the case of romance). True, sometimes the cues he misses are obvious; but it's as if no one In-Universe ever paid attention. Inuyasha has reasons not to notice these things. Just look at what we know of his history:

1. 1. Both of his parents died when he was young. Most children get their first human interaction from their parents and learn to read emotions from them. Unfortunately, Inuyasha was orphaned, so he missed out on that.
   2. He was despised by both humans and demons and suffered discrimination for it for his whole life. After his parents died, no one ever showed him kindness; he had never been exposed to the gentler or friendlier emotions. He's only just now seeing them with his True Companions, and so he's only now getting the chance to learn the meaning of those signals.
   3. He was isolated from human society and grew up alone in the forest. He had no human interaction. It's hard to learn the meaning of social expressions you haven't seen yet!
   4. He was outright at odds with demon society. The interactions he had with demonkind were filled with intimidation, bigotry, malice, hatred, and anger. No positive or gentle emotions there...
   5. Most demons don't seem to have kind impulses. Be honest here! In the series, most demons showed no kindness or caring; those who did showed it only to people close to them. Even for these, the gentler emotions are harsh by human terms. And most of Inuyasha's pre-series emotional education came from demon society by default.
   6. The only being who was always in Inuyasha's life, his most personal influence, is his Aloof Big Brother Sesshoumaru, who always attacks and degrades him for being a Half-Human Hybrid.
   7. The first person to show him kindness other than his mother was Kikyou, who was always reserved. Also, they weren't together for that long — possibly only a few months. That was all the time he had, pre-series, to learn of the gentler human emotions.
   8. Because of Naraku's trickery, Inuyasha's memories of Kikyou's kindness were tainted with betrayal. Even though he knows the truth now, it doesn't change that they could be easily turned against each other again. Betrayal hurts. Any progress Inuyasha had made in learning how to empathise with others was slowed down significantly because of one horrible incident that hurt not only him, but also Kikyou.
   9. This is the Sengoku Era. When Inuyasha was raising himself in the forest, he had no TV, no internet, and no reading material. He had no way to learn positive human emotions second-hand.

• • Even though his friends all know this much, none of them seem to realise that he cannot be expected to understand the subtle hints they give him about how they feel; nor do they get that he cannot be sure what the proper reaction is if he does get the hints. Instead, they just tell him how stupid he is for not knowing these things. It's only worse considering how emotional they can get (mainly Kagome). And when he gets something wrong, rather than tell him what he did or said wrong, he gets scolded for being rude or inconsiderate; his confusion about why is brushed off. He cannot learn what he's doing wrong because no one is teaching him. True, he is constantly wrong when it comes to positive emotional issues (negative ones, he's got down pat), so it can look like that Inuyasha does wrong because he is stupid. But the writers go out of their way to show that Inuyasha had a horrible life so that Kagome can try to mend his heart, and to make sure she knows it; and yet, no one realizes that, in this case, mending his heart includes teaching him how to show affection and love like a human. And they call him out for not being perceptive and understanding...
• Koga being treated as anything other than a black-hearted villain. Other characters in this series have crossed the Moral Event Horizon and been called Complete Monsters for far less than what he did. He let a pack of man-eating wolves loose on at least two human settlements (with one of the attacks leaving Rin an orphan), kidnapped Kagome, forced her to help him by threatening Shippo (he originally intended to just feed him to his wolves), and sat and let the tribe he eventually would spend all his time trying to avenge raid a human settlement with the explicit intent to kill anyone who tried to keep them from robbing the place. Even taking into account that Kagome only knew of the one raid (though she shouldn't be so stupid as to think this hasn't happened before), all the evil things he's done are glossed over without so much as a scolding.
  • Not to mention, despite being Played for Laughs, he insists that Kagome is his woman and that he will marry her, and Kagome not telling him off doesn't help things. And he gets sympathy because he was used by Naraku and a majority of his comrades were killed by Kagura. Considering they probably viewed humans as simply food themselves, I feel real sorry for ya, Koga. The only logical reason he even stops his old habits is because Kagome wouldn't approve.
• In one of the last episodes of the first series, the heroes meet a mountain spirit who gives them a crystal powered by his life force that could help them track down Naraku's heart. Not five minutes after getting this item, Hakudoushi offs the spirit, making the crystal completely useless. Even with the show's reputation for Arc Fatigue, this plot point was a total waste of time.

Naruto

• Uchiha Sasuke and his relations are responsible, directly or indirectly, for at least 50% of the wallbangers in Naruto. Those he is directly responsible for tend to be Deus Ex Machinas that allow him to win a fight.
  • even worse is the main character. While Sasuke has plenty of offscreen training that could potentially answer some of the asspulls, Naruto has no such excuse. His entire strategy resolves around spamming shadow clones and different Rasengans until one of them finally works- several of the movies have even been solved by him pulling a different Rasengan out of his ass. If he is going to fight an enemy he wouldn't be able to beat with that alone, or with the Kyuubi giving him power, the previous chapters are conveniently concerned with giving him new upgrades that rocket him from chunin to jonin to kage levels. It's not just with the fights, either: army of plant men copying your soldiers perfectly? Give Naruto the ability to sense them anyway, making him the best ninja in the world (that we know of) in a field he has put precisely zero effort or interest into. Plot armor is big in the series, to say the least.
    • Said Plant men in itself "oh look how broken can we make our villains I KNOW why not have them be able to perfectly copy anyone they touch." Then we pull an only the Author Can Save Them Now excuse. Brilliant.
• One mirror-fight in the "Rescue Gaara" arc has Team Gai pulling a "We must become better than ourselves - oh, wait, we just did" Deus Ex Machina ending.
  • For Gai and Lee, anyway. Neji and Tenten can be justified because they just invented new overkill techs on the spot.
  • Note: This didn't happen in the manga; it was fluff for the anime.
  • Considering the clones were explicitly exactly as strong as when they were created, with no increases or decreases over time, it would have made more sense to just have Guy and Lee open a chakra gate, beat up their clones, then go help the others.
• The way the Pein vs. Kyuubified Naruto fight was animated turned what had been a serious, intense fight into an Anime Looney Tunes.
• Hinata hitting Pain in the fight was a BIG one for she gets a clean hit in by her Elemental Punch and because she was Doomed by Canon it does nothing.
  • It would have made sense if it knocked him out until Hinata attempts to get the last spike out of Naruto's hands.
  • Remember the guy was a corpse, so they ignored injury (such as being cut in half) unless it prevented them from moving or from recieving chakra in the first place.
• Itachi. Fucking. Uchiha. So Sasuke is a huge bastard jerkass who wants to kill everyone? Well, he can't take all the credit. Basically, everything that made Sasuke who he is came from Itachi and stupid decisions. Worse is that Kishimoto's recent volumes play Itachi ON A POSITIVE LIGHT!!! I don't care if some of the Uchiha are jerks, nothing justifies genocide and brainwashing people into becoming slaves like Itachi did! What's worse is that people actually ROOT FOR ITACHI KILLING THE UCHIHA CLAN!! Just because they don't like Sasuke for being a bastard, which he is because of Itachi!!!!
  • Justified in that the clan was planning a coup on Konoha.
    • Because they were being accused of treason by releasing Kyubi onto the village. Without any other proof other than an ancestor, Madara, being able to do it. That's, like, accusing a man of being a psychopath because his great-grandfather was a serial killer. Really, I'm not exactly rooting for Konoha here...
    • Not to mention that "Madara" is a very well known liar. Probably not best to take his word for anything.
• Hmm, Hinata's first attack in Shippudden is 32 palms. 32 PALMS when Neji was a genin he could do 4 times as much. So Hinata as a chunnin is still weaker than Neji when he was a genin.

One Piece

• Many of the changes in the 4K!ds version of the anime. This version of the work was an indirect Trope Namer to Frothy Mugs of Water.

Ranma ½

• As it went on, Ranma ½ developed a few Wallbangers. An anime only story, involving a literal Red String of Fate, was almost all Wallbanger. Firstly, Akane fails to realise that Ranma's sudden affections for Shampoo are induced by a magic item that she saw being put on. Then she spends the rest of the episode sulking in her room, claiming that it's all Ranma's fault and that she has no reason to fix things even when she's made aware that love magic is to blame. She only goes and ruins things because of a burst of wounded pride at the last minute. Then you have Shampoo, who not only fails to ask Ranma to sign a marriage license (the only thing she needs for their marriage to be legal in Japan) so she can get a church wedding, which gives her rivals plenty of time to screw things up, but also sends invitations to her rivals and hangs around the Tendo Dojo after zapping Ranma, which gives them a chance to realise why Ranma is suddenly head over heels for her.
• "Ranma, You're Such a Jerk!" is a misleading title. The episode has Akane at her most jerkassish, but nobody even thinks of scolding her for the trouble she's caused. It's stories like this that cause people to consider her a Jerk Sue.
  • Also, Ryoga comes to the conclusion that Ranma raped or tried to rape Akane when everyone thought she had run away, and he chases after Ranma with the intent to beat him up. Akane was on the roof of the dojo the whole time. Yes, Ryoga's very protective of Akane, but sheesh...
    • Not actually that far out of character for him, really. We're talking the same guy who, in the manga, actually leapt to the conclusion that Ranma had raped Akane in the Hiryu Shoten Ha arc and proceeded to try and kill him for it. Despite, y'know, knowing perfectly well that Ranma is so weak he can't even hurt a little kid with his most powerful punch and the fact Akane is shouting that Ranma has done nothing wrong all the while.
    • Actually, Ranma was really egging Ryoga on to test the Hiryu Shoten Ha on him. And we all know what happens when Ryoga is pissed off...
    • Ranma started egging Ryoga on by insinuating he really had raped Akane, yes, but only after Ryoga accused him of doing so in the first place.
  • Akane getting mad at Ranma and asking "What did P-Chan ever do to you?" after she sees P-Chan bite Ranma on the butt.
• "Ryoga, Run Into the Sunset" has Ryoga abandon a girl who truly loves him and whom he himself feels something for to return to being P-chan for Akane. Better Akane's pig than someone else's beloved?!
• And then Ranma is unaware of the fact that his female form's lesser reach will make him disadvantaged against the taller Mousse in their first duel, especially after having fought Ryoga and many other opponents without this ever being an issue.
• "The Last Days of Happosai...?", in which Soun and Genma's Dirty Old Man Fair Weather Mentor begins to get sick and claims to be dying, which causes them to get truly upset and start panicking about what this will mean for the future of the Anything-Goes style. Happosai never trains anyone, not even his "heir" Ranma; and Soun and Genma normally hate Happosai so much that, after he got weak in an earlier story, they attempted to express-mail him to the North Pole.
• The Loss of Identity anime episode "Am I... Pretty?" First, the justification for the Loss of Identity is ridiculous: Ranma has taken much harder and more deliberate blows without much more than a concussion. The skeeziness as Ranma goes right through the Yamato Nadeshiko phase and out the other side makes this episode painful to watch; "Girly Ranma" even willingly offers to let Happosai do whatever he wants with her to apologize for fending off his attempt to grope her. And Akane Tendo gets hit with such extreme Flanderization that this may be the episode people refer to when they claim that the anime turned Akane into a bitch. She effectively does nothing but sulk, throw tantrums, and scream at Ranma for the entire half-hour.
  • And then there's the disturbing implications presented by SUPER-GIRLY Ranma: is THIS what Ranma's subconscious psyche thinks a woman should be like? Given how little interaction Ranma seems to have had with the opposite sex growing up....
• One of the major plot points in the entire series, and especially prominent in the early seasons, is that Ranma must hide his condition from the public. This is one of the driving forces of the second and third episodes of the first season (for instance, Genma has to help Ranma hide his condition when it starts to rain). This is a driving force in many episodes during the early series, but was done away with in the manga during the Mousse introductory arc. Since the anime took a different direction that preserved the secret, the plotline was kept, and many other stories had to be adapted from the manga to match. But in Season 7, episode 20, out of nowhere, for no reason whatsoever, Genma explicitly demonstrates Ranma's transformation in front of the entire school while Ranma himself is incapacitated. Not only does it violate this basic plot point, but it also isn't funny (which would have made it more tolerable).

Sailor Moon

• Telulu's death. Basically, one of her monsters turns on her and is about to eat her. She's screaming like mad, and begging the Senshi to help her right until she dies (the plant doesn't even eat her, it blows up with her still tangled in it)....and SAILOR MOON JUST STANDS THERE, and DOESN'T EVEN SAY ANYTHING!!! Now, anyone who watched the show would say that Telulu is arguably the cruelest of the Witches 5, but come on! At least justify not saving her!
  • That was in the dub only. In the original, she just orders the plant to let her go and never asks for help. Still, Sailor Moon arguably could have attempted to save her anyway, but didn't. In fact, the Sailor Senshi REALLY could have tried to stop Telulu from "unplugging" Mimete eariler (she spent a while monolouging to Mimete so there was a good opportunity to attack her). At least the reaction to Viluy's death was appropriate: they lamented it but given the nature of the death, it was kind of impossible to do anything about it when it was happening.
• Queen Nehelenia's portrayal in the beginning filler arc of Stars. She is suddenly made out to be a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds who grew up lonely and unloved, and she became so vain because the only one she could count on to love her was herself. This is revealed in an incredibly heavy-handed way, with all the Sailor Senshi crying over this sob story (even Uranus and Neptune, which is so out of character it's ridiculous) and Usagi suddenly in full Messiah mode and desperate to redeem Nehelenia. In the end, Usagi actually pushes the Reset Button on Nehelenia's life, making her back a child again able to grow up with love and friendship. All of this completely ruins how Nehelenia was portrayed in Super S which, while usually criticized for being too light, had her as a very dark character: a woman so obsessed with staying beautiful that she would cross the Moral Event Horizon to do so, and whose ending (willingly staying sealed inside a floating mirror so that she'd remain young and beaufiul, and laughing insanely about this fact as she dissapears into space) was so darkly tragic and well-done that seeing it undone in exchange for a (as of this point overdone) "villain gets redeemed and has a happy ending" outcome is really frusturating.

Yu-Gi-Oh!

• From the American TV edit of Yu-Gi-Oh!: a particular episode has Kaiba cornered in a castle tower by two Mooks pointing their fingers at him in odd ways and demanding he come with them. Instead, Kaiba leaps out the window over a cliff to his apparent doom; the Mooks seem just fine with this, never bothering to check out the window. Now, why would someone just jump out the window rather than proceed to his destination with an escort? Before the editing, they were pointing guns, not fingers. Apparently, someone thought that casual (apparent) suicide was fine, but guns were not. The Abridged Series had fun with this one:

"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.
    • If the only way for it to be reasonable is Doylist reasoning then shouldn't the writers have avoided the over used tournament idea instead?
• 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

• Nuriko's death in Fushigi Yuugi. 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. Obviously Watase was more interested in punching the readers in the gut with pain than logic.
  • 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? Somewhat mitigated by her eventually explaining things.
  • 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 of the Stars 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 Mai-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.
  • The Ending itself can be considered a Wall Banger because of the sheer amount of Karma Houdini involved and everyone's coming back to life, which negated the events of a good chunk of the series.
    • The festival story arc is a larger Wall Banger; it completely negates all of the relationships of the characters, as well as the mistrust set up against Nagi after Natsuki blows open that he's been lying about the significance of each HiME's beloved, that occur up to episode 17--well over half of the series! The ending is a Cosmic Retcon of the continuity mess created from that sudden genre change.
  • Also, was it necessary to make Ishigami-sensei use sex to get under Sister Yukariko's skin and trigger her Face Heel Turn? That incident didn't help the portrayal of males, who were almost always portrayed as bad in the series.
• 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 towards 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 abandoned his friends and family for ten years to train him, Uub returns in the Baby Saga. So what does he do? He gets beaten by Baby Vegeta, fuses with Good Buu to become Majuub, gets beaten again by Baby Vegeta and eaten alive, paralyzes Golden Great Ape Baby Vegeta long enough for Super Saiyan 4 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 Super Saiyan 4 Goku and Vegeta), yet everyone treats him like he was Yamcha.
• A general one for Dragon Ball Z. Mr. 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, Krillin, Tien Shinhan 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 and declared martial law. 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. the Army" fiasco 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's 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 Genki-Dama.
    • The military attacks Cell in chapter 392 of the manga, with the media being 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 Witchblade canonically has the power to OVERCOME Death, adding to this Wall Banger.
  • Also? Ron Marz, pretty much god of the Witchblade universe, has never even seen the anime. Take from that what you will.
• 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!
  • The biggest wall banger of them 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 spacesuit 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 astronaut. 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 Valentine 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!!
  • And this happened shortly after the Clash of Kings between Ikki and Ringo, which was actually a non-stop flow of Crowning Moment of Awesome with a Crowning Moment of Heartwarming on top of it... so bonus point to Oh! Great! for Jumping the Shark with the worst possible timing...
• 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 indestructible 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, Emperor 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 Blackstar 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: Shinichiro 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.