Bond Villain Stupidity / Anime & Manga

• Doraemon
  • Halfway into Doraemon: Nobita's Drifts in the Universe, Doraemon and co alongside their new friends, the Space Knights, get captured by Commander Liebert and his advisor, Angolmois, who have them thrown into a cell. Somehow, it never occurrs to the villains to confiscate Doraemon's gadget-laden Fourth Dimensional Pocket, which they don't have the excuse of being oblivious towards because previously The Mole, Freya of the Space Knights, did report to Angolmois about Doraemon having gadgets. Sure enough, Doraemon quickly brings out a futuristic submarine that could travel underground and busts everyone out.
  • Doraemon: Nobita and The Space Heroes has the gang receive superpowers thanks to getting powered-badges attached on their collars, until halfway through, Suneo and Gian are ambushed by Ogon, one of the villains, and knocked out before being taken to Lord Ikaros' prison. Somehow, none of the villains present ever think of confiscating the badges worn by Suneo and Gian before throwing them into their cells (unlike Nobita who loses his badge before his capture, as Aron retrieves it and delivers the badge back to him); and sure enough, when Doraemon and Shizuka free the gang, they escape using their powers. Justified since Ogon is the Dumb Muscle among the villains.
• Dragon Ball:
  • During the original Dragon Ball, in his fight against Goku during the 22nd Tenkaichi Budokai, Tenshinhan, who was starting to feel overpowered by Goku's tremendous stamina and having several of his techniques outdone by Goku's very own, ingenuously decides that, if he cannot knock Goku unconscious or push him out of the platform, he will simply destroy the entire platform; that way, Goku will lose by ring out because there would be no platform left to stand on. Tenshinhan, who possesses the ability to fly, does not have that problem. He manages to destroy the platform with his powerful Kikouhou, but instead of simply waiting for Goku, who has jumped very high to escape the blast, to hit the ground, he decides to fly close to him, accompanying Goku as he fell down, in order to gloat about his inevitable victory. That opens an opportunity for Goku to use one last attack that knocks Tenshinhan unconscious, and now both fighters are falling to the ground. Subverted because Tenshinhan, by a stroke of luck, actually wins the fight, but he is likely in worse physical condition than Goku by the end of it. (In the manga he's a bit smarter; he intends to stay where he is and watch Goku fall, but Goku reacts quickly.)
  • For a Professional Killer, Tao Pai Pai is pretty damn careless. After his first fight with Goku, he shoots him with a Dodonpa, seemingly killing him, but Tao Pai Pai doesn't bother to actually check Goku's body to make sure. Naturally, Goku is still very much alive, and while Tao Pai Pai is off doing other things, Goku trains with Karin to gain enough power to beat him.
  • Dragon Ball Z has many examples of this:
    • Frieza shows that he completely outclasses Goku and the rest of the heroes while only fighting at 50% power and that he could kill all of them in an instant, and yet he toys with them and lets the fight drag on... until Goku transforms, that is. Frieza himself even lampshades the fact that he should probably just take Goku out right now after the 20x Kaioken, but he still keeps screwing around anyway. He lampshades it again after Goku transforms, kicking himself for not just killing Goku when he had the chance; by the time he realizes this, however, he has no hope of victory.
    • Before then, Frieza's elite, Zarbon, beats Vegeta senseless and drops him into a lake, but refuses to check for Vegeta's body and make sure he's actually dead, in part because he doesn't want to mess up his hair by doing so. Frieza furiously lambasts Zarbon for his idiocy, correctly surmising that Vegeta has found and hidden at least one Dragon Ball and Zarbon's actions may very well have cost them their chances at finding it.
    • During the Cell Saga, Vegeta, after having trained for a year in the Room of Spirit and Time, powers up to Super Saiyan Second Grade, and becomes much, much stronger than his opponent, Semi-Perfect Cell. Rather than finish him here, Vegeta lets Cell absorb Android 18 and upgrade to his Perfect form, lusting for a greater fight. Cue Perfect Cell completely Curb-Stomping Vegeta, and later Trunks. While Vegeta is on the good guys' side at this time, the effect is the same.
    • Vegeta also indulged in this as a villain during the Saiyan Saga, when he decided to wait for three hours for Goku to return to Earth so he and Nappa could crush the hopes of Earth's warriors.
    • Cell himself makes the exact same mistake. After ascending to his Perfect form, and defeating Piccolo, Vegeta, Trunks, and Android 16 in the process, he becomes the most powerful being on earth. Rather than kill everyone, he opts to give the Z-Fighters 10 days to prepare for a tournament. Those were probably the Vegeta cells inside him, as Vegeta himself does this a few times as well, as mentioned above. During his fight with Gohan, after discovering Gohan's hidden power, he does everything he can to piss Gohan off enough to unleash said power just because he wants a more challenging fight; keep in mind that he tricked Vegeta into doing the exact same thing in order to ascend to his Perfect form, and openly mocked Vegeta for being stupid enough to fall for it.
    • Insanely inverted with Majin Buu. He has the Z-Fighters cornered, but Piccolo makes a sick choice that will buy them more time — suggesting to Buu that it would be more fun to kill the rest of the humans on Earth in the meantime (knowing that they can reverse the damage with the Dragonballs if they can power up enough to survive the fight), prompting horrified reactions all around. Buu simply kills the remaining survivors with one attack, then proceeds to thin the numbers of the Z-Fighters and blow up the world.
    • Dragon Ball generally inverts this trope almost as much as it plays it straight. The Heroes are just as prone to holding back in their fights or letting the villains go, just to result in them coming back stronger later. The worst offender is probably Gohan, who, due to not possessing the same natural fighting instinct and impulse control of the Saiyans and willing martial artists, has a problem with holding back too much during his fights due to some emotional or subconscious drive and giving the villains too many openings.
    • Averted with Future Trunks. After improving by going back in time, he is much more powerful when he faces Android 17 and 18 and Imperfect Cell. He wastes no time Curb-Stomping them, making sure that they are gone. Makes sense, since he grew up in misery, watching all of his loved ones die, and saw his world destroyed by the Androids. He just wants them finished as soon as possible.
• After knocking about most of the cast with ease, Roa of Shingetsutan Tsukihime inexplicably declares "We Will Meet Again" and falls backwards off a bridge while laughing madly. This isn't the only instance, but it is by far the most entertaining.
  • Roa does this during the game as well. He goes off on a long-winded display and speech that not only allows Shiki to think but also pisses him off, which allows him to retaliate.
  • Justified in the game version, where he believed he and Shiki were equals and as such felt perfectly justified in explaining to Shiki many important background details.
• Done quite deliberately by Jeremiah Gottwald in the Grand Finale of Code Geass, when he calls off Lelouch's Knightmare Royal Guard and duels the attacking Zero/Suzaku by himself, so as to allow Suzaku to convincingly kill Lelouch for world peace.
  • In episode 4, Jeremiah does this NOT on purpose when Clovis' personal car — hijacked by Zero and company — make their way towards Suzaku's execution. When asked by his subordinates in security if they should blow up the car, Jeremiah replies "No! I shall take them myself!" If it hadn't been for Jeremiah's arrogance, the whole show would've ended right then and there.
  • Lelouch himself does this several times, such as when he taunts Euphemia during the hostage situation about his hatred of the royal family (planting the seeds in her mind that Zero might be Lelouch). He also reveals to Suzaku that he knows Suzaku's deepest secret — that Suzaku killed his own father — in order to appear omniscient. Not only does this fail to recruit him, but Suzaku begins to suspect Zero's identity, as Lelouch is one of the few who knows Suzaku is a patricide.
• Subverted in the fifth The Garden of Sinners movie. Araya mercilessly destroys Tohko, but keeps her head alive on purpose — she's created multiple exact duplicates of her own body and linked them to herself, so whenever she is "killed", her consciousness transfers to the next body, making her depend on this trope. When Alba fulfills the trope and crushes her head, she comes back with a vengeance(-in-a-box).
• Negima! Magister Negi Magi: After stomping Negi and his team, Fate decides they aren't completely worthless because they barely pulled off not dying of the wounds he inflicted. Instead of, you know, killing them in the face like he's clearly capable of, he says 'Okay I'm bored just gonna blow the gate up now. By the way, you suck Negi. Go level grind moar. Later' May be justified in that he intended to use Negi and seems oddly reluctant to actually kill people. Also definitely planning on using Asuna for something, but we don't know what yet. It eventually turns out that he's capable of changing the reality of the magic world on a whim, so his belief that they pose him no threat is at least partially justified.
• In the Kämpfer anime, Kaede Sakura had one of the good guys under her control, and used her to defeat the other blue and red Kämpferinnen. But instead of just killing them like she said she would do, she tied them up with a chain, gloated at Shizuku, and tried to use the mind-controlled ally to kill them instead. However, not only did said victim break free of the mind control, but the heroes got Heroic Resolve so strong they broke free and went to town on the enemy.
• Happens a couple of times in Black Lagoon, as a sign that the person in question is an amateur who's out of their depth in Roanapur.
  • While Revy and Dutch are clearing out a boat full of Neo-Nazis, one of the Nazis manages to ambush Revy and... launches into a lengthy speech about his awesomeness, the awesomeness of the Aryan race, the awesomeness of the gun he's about to kill Revy with... This goes on for nearly a full minute before Revy gets fed up, shoots him, and sardonically asks whether he was trying to kill her or sell the gun to her.
  • Happens twice in the space of three minutes in the "Hunt for Greenback Jane" arc. First, Sawyer chases Rock and Jane onto the roof of the burning dockyard, but instead of just cutting them up, she instead launches into a very long (and thanks to her speech synthesiser, very slow) speech about how she's going to enjoy doing so. Then an explosion triggered by the fire knocks the synthesiser out of her hands, and she suffers a Freak Out that takes her out of the fight. While Lagoon Company are discussing what to do with her, Lotton the Wizard appears on the opposite rooftop, unseen by anyone, with a clear shot... and launches into a dramatic introduction that gets cut short when Revy shoots him. Apparently he was Genre Savvy enough to wear a bulletproof vest, but not savvy enough to just shoot first. Shenhua even lampshades afterwards what a stupid idea that was.
• At one point in Sonic the Hedgehog: The Movie, Tails is using a bit of Applied Phlebotinum, about the size of a wrist watch, to mess with Metal Sonic's programming. From off-screen, Dr. Robotnik whips out a laser gun and shoots the machine right off Tails' wrist, then he orders Metal Sonic to kill Sonic and Tails. Logic dictates that Robotnik could have just as easily saved a step by shooting Tails in the head.
• In Fullmetal Alchemist, Lust stabs Mustang and Havoc and leaves them to bleed to death on the floor and doesn't actually watch them die. Cue her surprise when Mustang comes back to kill her, having cauterized his own wound with fire.
  • Wrath takes it a step further. Having observed Mustang brutally burn his sister to death, he determines that the currently extremely vulnerable Mustang should be left alive, on the logic that Mustang is too valuable to kill, as his alchemical skill is likely good enough to open the Gate. While he's completely right, and Mustang being forced through the Gate is eventually what triggers the city-wide transmutation circle, Wrath has still made the decision not to kill the one person who, besides being smart and having a personal vendetta against them, is exceptionally good at killing homunculi. This ends poorly for the bad guys.
    • Of course, had Wrath decided otherwise he would've had to clear the room of witnesses before Mustang added the most vulnerable homunculus (due to not having a Philosopher's Stone) to his kill list.
• Quite prominent in Naruto; every time a villain has the hero in the bag, they invariably will stop to gloat, allow said hero to get back up to make the fight more fun, or just decide to be idiots instead of killing them right then and there.
  • Notably when Orochimaru had the Third cornered with a kunai and instead of just SLICING HIS HEAD OFF like any smart person, decided to do a huge elaborate drama in which he summoned the Third Hokage's own teachers to kill him, resulting in Orochimaru losing the use of his arms.
  • Sadistically subverted by Hidan: he savors killing so much, he toys with poor Asuma to the very end, who really does get Killed Off for Real.
  • Unbelievably subverted with the power of Edo Tensei — everyone under its control is already dead. As such, a Magnificent Bastard may pull any form of Kick the Dog they want without fear of getting killed by retaliation. However, they can still have their souls sealed away or put to rest. Absolute villains like Deidara, Kakuzu, and Madara Uchiha push it to extremes, while others, like Sasori, Gaara's father, Nagato, and Itachi use it as means to apologize or atone. Itachi even has his free will back!
  • Justified in the case of Kaguya Ōtsutsuki. Being so powerful she never encountered a real challenge or situation where she wasn't free to do as she wished. It's not that she's intentionally passing up chances to end the fight so she can toy with her opponents (though she does consider them beneath her), but rather that she seriously doesn't know any better.
• At one point in Saki, Amae Koromo, who has been dominating the game since she appeared, has the opportunity to give one of her opponents a negative score, thus instantly ending the game and winning the tournament for her team. However, instead of doing this, she quite deliberately makes a lower-scoring move which reduces said opponent's score to exactly zero instead (according to the rules of this particular tournament, someone with a score of zero has a chance to come back) just because she wants to psychologically manipulate everyone and prevent the other players from making a certain type of high-scoring move. Sure enough, this buys our hero just enough time to come up with a way to win.
• In the second Black Jack OAV, when the title character stumbles upon an international drug ring working with a local hospital administrator in the course of treating a coma patient, instead of just shooting him, the gangsters drug Black Jack and leave him to die in a burning peyote grow op.
• Sailor Moon:
  • Queen Beryl put Jadeite in Eternal Sleep just as he's about to reveal who the Sailor Senshi really were. Had she not been so impatient to kill Jadeite for his latest failure, the Sailor Senshi would've been goners for sure.
  • When Prince Diamond kidnaps Sailor Moon and puts her in a dress, despite seeking the Silver Crystal for its power, he leaves it near her bed after nullifying it, just so he can watch her try and fail to transform, apparently to break her spirit. This just ensures that Sailor Moon takes the Silver Crystal with her when Tuxedo Mask rescues her.
• In Haruhi Suzumiya, Ryoko Asakura tries to kill Kyon with a knife, giving him a chance to dodge. When that doesn't work, she freezes him in place, and it is later implied that she could have just outright deleted him from existence. She's a malfunctioning alien bio-robot, so it makes sense.
• The Dark Signers from Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds weren't known for being smart, but the biggest example of stupidity on their part was when Yusei's duel with Kiryu left the hero battered, wounded, close to death, and with a fear of the villain that would take several episodes to recover from. Why didn't Kiryu finish him off when he had the chance? He claimed it "wasn't the right time." (Kiryu was almost the living definition of Ax-Crazy at the time, so at least he had that as an excuse.)
• Bleach:
  • Luppi thinks he's taken down Hitsugaya in one strike and doesn't follow through. Lampshaded by Hitsugaya when he points out that all it did was give him all the time in the world to set up an attack that could curb-stomp Luppi. Luppi was also mocked by his peers upon returning to Hueco Mundo for having been defeated so completely.
  • Aizen sets up an elaborate method of ensuring Ichigo can train for a power upgrade before they fight. He was hoping Ichigo would achieve a level of power strong enough for Aizen to reach a new level of power. Unfortunately for Aizen, he completely underestimated Ichigo's growth potential and ended up being curbstomped.
• During the final battle in Plastic Little, the main villain has Tita by the neck and is counting down until he breaks it, when Tita finishes it from him and blows his brains out. What makes it particularly stupid is that the villain knows Tita is holding the gun (and she is still capable of using it) and doesn't do anything to disarm her.
• One Piece:
  • Played with in Alabasta; Crocodile traps most of the heroes in a cage, tosses the key to one of his giant pet crocodiles, and lets water slowly fill the room. After he leaves, it seems like he's just being overconfident that the good guys are doomed, but it turns out that he has the real key to the cage — the one he tossed was a fake. Nonetheless, the heroes escape thanks to a Chekhov's Gun while he's gone.
  • During the Dressrosa Arc, there's an example of this plus Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: the Straw Hats' plan to liberate the island required knocking Sugar out, thus undoing the effect of her Devil Fruit power on previous victims, which had turned them into toys and made them her slaves (a number that, over ten years, had amounted to thousands). The initial plan was to trick her into eating an incredibly spicy Tatababasco berry disguised as a grape, which would make her collapse. But the plan didn't work well, to say the least; Sugar's toys found out about it, and in the ensuing confrontation ended with Robin becoming a victim of the power in an attempt to restrain Sugar, Usopp beaten up by Sugar's bodyguard Trebol, and the Straw hats' Tontatta allies beaten senseless. It would seem the heroes were, well, doomed. Until Sugar decided that, rather than use her power on Usopp (which she usually did to captured prisoners, and really had no reason to stop now) she would make him suffer, and force fed him the Tatababasco. It made Usopp make a Wild Take to end all Wild Takes, scaring Sugar into submission and, while not the way they planned, knocked her out, doing the job anyway.
    • It should be noted that Sugar wasn't aware that it was Tatababasco and mistook it for poison. She was in belief that it might kill him (in a painful way).
• In the second to last episode of the first season of Sword Art Online, Sugou/Oberon, who has spammed his Game Master status and traps Kirito and Asuna, stabs Kirito with Kirito's own sword after chaining up Asuna before he does his Attempted Rape on her. After stabbing Kirito into the ground, he's about to change the pain absorber, which, once it drops below level 3, starts affecting a user's body in the real world. Given that he was in complete control of situation and the world in which Kirito was trapped in, Oberon could've turned it off all the way on Kirito by setting the absorber to level 0 (or at least below 3) to ensure he will never have to deal with Kirito again in either the digital or real worlds. And if that happened, seeing Asuna in pain as Oberon rapes her would potentially inflict more pain and stress on Kirito and kill him in real life. Sugou wins, the end! Instead, being overconfident in his complete control of the situation, he sets it to level 8, insisting on gradually decreasing the levels to increase the pain to "give [Kirito] something to look forward to". Because of this, Kirito isn't completely dead, and gets help from Kayaba's digital spirit, who gives Kirito his admin status to turn the tables on Oberon by setting his in-game level to 1, and turning off the pain absorber on Oberon himself, then proceeds to kill him, thus, foiling Sugou/Oberon's plans. Even if Sugou had no way of foreseeing Kayaba's intervention, that still wasn't exactly a smart move.
• My Hero Academia:
  • During midterms, Mineta and Sero are put in a mock battle against the Pro Hero Midnight (playing the role of a villain the two have to subdue or escape past). Midnight knocks Sero out easily, but not before he slings Mineta out of range of her sleeping gas. Midnight admits she could just camp the exit until Mineta runs out of time and fails, but her sadistic streak rears up and she gives chase, giving Mineta time to regroup and trap Midnight for the win. This instance may be justified since it's an exam, and she's giving them a fair chance to pass.
  • This is what stabs All For One in the back in the Final War Arc when he literally has All Might in his hands and gives him the standard comic book villain Breaking Speech while slowly tearing him in half, only for a speed-boosted Katsuki Bakugo to roar past him and save All Might while ripping All For One's arms off in the process, robbing him of his percieved "perfect victory" of finally killing All Might.
• Queen Millennia: Doctor Fara monologues to Hajime how Yayoi's mind will be altered once he activates the machine she's attached to, and starts gloating about being the greatest doctor in the universe. Hajime picks up Yayoi and runs away, and Fara is in disbelief with Hajime's lack of chivalry.

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