Black And White Morality / Anime & Manga

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• This trope forms the very backbone of the narrative for Avesta of Black and White, both playing with it and ultimately deconstructing it to hell and gone. Good and Evil are absolutes imposed by a divine will and everything in the universe is defined by it's moral alignment with nothing but endless wars for those who live in it. Any kind of moral ambiguity is seen as unthinkable and yet there are those that are starting to question and eventually lash out against the system that has been imposed on them, eventually growing to hate the world they live in. It is also made clear that for such a system to work, true free will is next to non existent. This means that heroes are without virtue and villains are without malice, they just are stuck under those roles since the system says that those are the roles they have been given.
• Candy♡Candy: Candy White is a beautiful blonde girl who was born as an orphan and attracts boys with her kind heart... and she's constantly antagonized by Eliza Leagan, the daughter of the wealthiest, most influential family in America, who's jealous of all the boys Candy pulls, gets her Girl Posse to single her out at school and repeatedly bullies and abuses her, from locking her into rooms and getting her punished by the teachers. Guess which one you're supposed to be rooting for? If that didn't convince you, Eliza's brother Niel, who's always bullied Candy, falls in love with her because she saved him from being beaten up by thugs, and just as it seems like he's going to reform, he pulls a Scarpia Ultimatum by trying to get her to marry him using his familial connections.
• In Case Closed, no matter the reason(s) behind a crime, Shinichi/Conan will state that it is still wrong and the criminals must face the consequences for their actions.
• This trope is played straight in Digimon Adventure: While the kids and their Digimons represent virtues (Courage, Friendship, Love, etc.) their enemies (Such as Devimon, VamDemon/Myotismon and the Dark Masters) are evil incarnate.
  • Digimon Adventure 02 Goes for White-and-Grey Morality quite a bit though (against the Digimon Kaiser, BlackWarGreymon, Oikawa). Arukenimon, Mummymon, and the Not Quite Dead Myotismon are clearly evil in their motivations and methods.
• Dragon Ball:
  • The series plays this trope straight. During the entire manga run, the pure-hearted protagonist Son Goku fights against openly evil bad guys who don't even hide their evil motives like killing or conquest. Among the villains we have an evil army, a demon literally Made of Evil and his offspring, space conquerors who wish to subdue anyone weaker than them, a genocidal space pirate forces, artificial creations who kill anyone, and space wizards who work with a demon and use the evil in people's hearts to turn them into slaves.
  • This trope is subverted in Dragon Ball Super with Beerus and Champa. While they are antagonistic Jerkass Gods, they are merely True Neutral, with their role as Gods of Destruction needed for cosmic balance serving as a break from straight bad guys. Hit and Jiren from the same series, despite being a Professional Killer and an Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy who believes in Might Makes Right respectively, aren't evil either and merely opponents Goku has to face. Broly from Dragon Ball Super: Broly likewise is an Anti-Villain, used as an attack dog by people clearly eviler than him.
  • Played straight with several other villains in Super. Frieza in Dragon Ball Z: Resurrection 'F' and its series adaptation is portrayed as a genocidal Dirty Coward with no virtues whatsoever. He does become a Nominal Hero during the Universal Survival Arc while teaming up with the heroes to save his universe (but most importantly himself) from being erased but he makes it clear by the end he doesn't intend to change his evil ways. Goku Black and Zamasu, despite being Knight Templars who see themselves as righteous but are anything but, and Moro from the Galactic Patrol Prisoner.
  • Averted with the TV special Dragon Ball Z: Bardock - The Father of Goku, which goes straight into Black-and-Gray Morality territory with Bardock and the Saiyans on the grey end and Frieza on the black end.
• Fist of the North Star has very few conflicts where you're questioning which one is the good guy. Kenshiro, the main character, is a flawless Ideal Hero, and one of the main supporting characters is Toki, a guy so wholesome that he Looks Like Jesus, with most of the villains being irredeemably monstrous sorts whose lives are a neverending succession of Kick the Dog moments. The most morally gray villains are folks like Raoh and Souther, who get a Freudian Excuse or have some kind of higher motivation, but are still unrepentant mass murderers. Meanwhile, Rei is the closest thing to an anti-hero in the main cast, and even he is an Unscrupulous Hero at his worst and on par with Kenshiro at his best.
• Idol Densetsu Eriko: You either love Eriko, or you're the most terrible person to walk the Earth. On the "white" side, we have Eriko, who loves dogs, sings for children, uses her voice to calm a frenzied crowd down and wants to do her best to everyone around her, and on the "black" side we have her Evil Uncle Kosuke Tamura, who gloats about his brother's death, tries to financially incentivize schemes to deface Eriko and abuses his employees, to the point the turnover rate at his company is incredibly high. Kosuke's attempts to turn everyone against Eriko ultimately fail when his true nature is exposed.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Part 1 with Jonathan and Dio is the most blatant example, though other parts do share this mindset to an extent. Even Part 5, with the heroes, despite being mafia members, generally act more like cops against the clearly evil Big Bad.
• The Lady!! manga by Yōko Hanabusa. The original manga by Yoko Hanabusa is this. You're either 100% on board with Lynn, or an unlikable bitch, a jealous rival or a Hate Sink of some kind. The vast majority of the female cast despise Lynn for being more skilled/"better" than them (Sonoko, Sarah, Mary) or because Lynn has a shot with the guy they like (Cathy and again, Mary). Lynn's stepmother is also a horrible, abusive woman, unlike her father who's an angel. The anime adaptation adds grey zones here and there (e.g. Sophie is mean to Lynn because of her mother's abuse, Mary has a few moments of regret and shock after bullying Lynn), while toning down the unlikable characters Lynn meets and giving a lot of them Adaptational Nice Guy.
• The Mazinger franchise (Mazinger Z, Great Mazinger, UFO Robo Grendizer, New Mazinger...). Except Shin Mazinger, where the good guys include various criminals, and the bad guy is unironically a bad guy, but holding back a bunch of even worse guys. Which is still within "black and white", but with a small twist.
  • Dr. Hell is also consistently shown to not be the kind of Bad Boss who punishes his subordinates for being unable to beat the heroes. The only reason he locks up Baron Ashura in Mazinkaiser is because he went over the Doctor's authority on a matter, and he still was willing to let him fight when Ashura begged him to let him.
  • The morality in these series is more greyish than it seems. Dr. Hell became mad after having endured years of abuse, insults and mockery from everybody -including his parents- since he was a little kid, and when he made a good action, he usually got beaten and scorned. Great General of Darkness wanted taking over the surface world because the Mykene civilization had been forced to live underground for millennia and he wanted his people enjoyed again things humans take for granted -such like seeing sunlight and breathing fresh air-. Emperor Vega began invading other planets because his own homeworld was dying, and several of his henchmen were Well Intentioned Extremists wanted establishing a benevolent dictatorship because they genuinely believed Earth people would be better off. And, frankly, humans in the trilogy often acted like utter bastards and forced the heroes to reflect about their motivations.
• Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny deconstructs this with Shinn Asuka, the initial protagonist. When he enters the series, he's a Jerk with a Heart of Gold, fighting the clearly evil Earth Alliance, who is basically going all out in Kicking the Dog. However, his problem is that he refuses to see any shades of gray and when he's confronted by anything that makes him wonder if he's doing the right thing, he locks up. Not helping this is that Chairman Durandal and Rey Za Burrel are constantly reaffirming Shinn's actions as the right thing, which turns this trope into Black-and-White Insanity.
• My Hero Academia plays around with the morality scale a bit, mostly because it devotes a lot of time in fleshing out the respective motivations of heroes and villains alike, some of which are not as clear cut as they seem at first glance. Izuku Midoriya and All Might are examples of almost unanimously good heroic characters who have nothing selfless motives for their actions, and the former's dream is to follow in the latter's footsteps as a great hero who saves everyone with a reassuring smile on their face. But they both have deep-seated character flaws that pop from time to time, namely Midoriya's willingness to sacrifice his well being for the sake of others is noted to not be a good thing as it would be in other series, as if he's incapacitated after saving a few people, he would be no help in assisting anyone else. All Might's status as Big Good has also, inadvertently, created a society that's arguably too complacent in relying on heroes to solve their problems. And then you got heroes like Midoriya's childhood friend and rival, Katsuki Bakugo, who has decidedly unheroic attitude, having a Hair-Trigger Temper and just being an unpleasant Jerkass for the most part who relentlessly bullied Midoriya in their youth. In any other story, he'd probably be a Rival Turned Evil, but he's the Deuteragonist and while his attitude is considered problematic, his drive to be a hero is genuine and its one of his noted redeeming qualities in-universe, and he does eventually mellow into a Jerk with a Heart of Gold. You have other heroes who are motivated by fame, and monetary gain, but they are considered no less heroic for it.
  • On the villains side of things, while they are presented as extremely dangerous and violent individuals, what drove them to their villain status isn't always a simple case of personal gain or being a Card-Carrying Villain. A lot of villains are Forced into Evil because they won't (our couldn't) adapt to a society entirely ran by heroes. The League of Villains specifically are made up of such a group of villains who had no place in the world. Whether it's discrimination due to your appearance, having a Face of a Thug and being in the wrong place at the wrong time, or being born with a condition that nobody could properly treat until it spiraled out of control. Each member of the league have some type of story that led to their current situation, and aren't just villains for the sake of being villains.
• Science Ninja Team Gatchaman: The heroes are (almost) completely good, while the villains are absolutely evil.
• Innocents Shounen Juujigun: The boys' view of the world is very much this.

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