Butt Monkey / Anime & Manga

The Idiot Hero putting the bite on the Butt Monkey.

"Why does Tsundere-senpai have to suffer so much even though she's such a good person? Is there no god?"

— Yu Ishigami regarding Maki Shijo, Kaguya-sama: Love Is War

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• Keiichi from Ah! My Goddess. Even in the pilot his life sucks so much that Heaven sends a goddess to grant him a wish to make up for it. Even though he gets a Magical Girlfriend out of the deal, he also becomes target number one for the former most popular girl at his school, Belldandy's sisters, a demon, the queen of Hell, and sometimes even Belldandy herself.
• Angel Beats!: Much of the SSS members take turns at the role, but Hinata by far is the most memorable.
• Angel Densetsu's Kuroda seems one, but his Idiot Ball propels too much of the plot to count. Ogisu on the other hand...
• Angel Sanctuary has a cast of them as there is probably none who doesn't get at least a Kick the Dog moment. Though the most suffering is probably Katou Yue, who is not only a drug addict in real life because his father hates him. He gets killed no less than four times throughout the series.
• Ogata of Angelic Layer is the embodiment of this whether due to screwing up, coming in late, forgetting important information or just saying the wrong thing; and each time this happens he gets one of Icchan's Penalties.
• Attack on Titan: Cadet Daz. He's first seen puking all over his shoes during the Battle of Trost, and later blubbering like a baby over the mere prospect of being sent back into battle. In Chapter 40, he is shown being literally dragged through the snow by Krista and Ymir, having passed out from exhaustion. All in all, the guy seems remarkably unfit for the life of a soldier.
• Dallas Genoard from Baccano! seems to exist for the sole purpose of getting smacked around by every other character he comes in contact with in increasingly painful and embarrassing ways, starting with Firo effortlessly handing him his ass and ending with the Gandor brothers dumping him off to be perpetually drowned at the bottom of the Hudson River. Though, given that he tends to be a grade-A asshole most of the time, it's hard to feel sorry for him.
• Akihisa from Baka and Test: Summon the Beasts. He gets horribly abused by everyone in the series. Even his love interests.
• Furuichi from Beelzebub. Seriously, in between being beaten up by Oga (or someone else), electrocuted by Baby Beel, rejected by the ladies, roped into one of Oga's schemes against his will, and caught in compromising situations, he just can't catch a break. In fact, Oga once revealed that part of the reason he drags him everywhere is because he thought it would be funny.
  • The MK5, what with their "talent" of being beaten in the space of one page by protagonists and antagonists alike (Even in volleyball, no less!).
  • As the series goes on, Furuichi is treated increasingly worse by the other characters, getting into Accidental Pervert situations randomly and being called a pedophile. After losing a check for some money, he ends up with a consolation prize, some tissues... though they are not normal tissues...
  • His Butt-Monkey status becomes Deconstructed big time when we see what kind of effects it has on a person, in Chapter 173. The tissues mentioned prior are Demon Tissues. By using them as nose plugs, he could channel the power of a demon, specifically from Behemoth's gang, up to Behemoth himself. He uses this to effortlessly win against several powerful characters before fighting Oga. Oga tried telling him that the tissues are poisonous (and we do get to see Furuichi begin to succumb to the side-effects such as delirium), only for Furuichi to reveal he knew from the start because the first demon told him. More importantly, he doesn't care. All the experiences, insults and mocking have taken a toll on him and being the Butt-Monkey was as good as being dead in his eyes. This desperate determination is so potent that when he actually gets Behemoth himself as the demon of that bit, he lends him some of his power, understanding his pain, but also knows that Behemoth's power could destroy Furuichi. This could be seen as a brutal case of realism, since what Furuichi experiences is technically bullying and many victims develop low self-esteem and become suicidal.
    Furuichi: This is a fight with my pride on the line. Being called a lolicon, pervert, Creep-ichi, Mob-ichi or whatever... and just laughing it off... how is that any different from being dead?
• Vincent in Bizenghast tends to be treated like this. He has been shot at, hung for witchcraft, infected with plague, slammed against a wall while airbourne, enslaved, eaten by a giant Venus Flytrap, stuck up a tree, and finally stabbed in the chest with a rigging pin and killed. Edrear has taken over now (knocked out twice in a row).
• Black Clover: Chances are if someone is going to have their intelligence insulted, their appearance mocked, or their fundoshi set on fire for cheap laughs, it's going to be the Black Bull's resident Japanese Delinquent Magna Swing.
• Bao of Black Lagoon is constantly getting his bar trashed by firefights and explosions. That he's rebuilt every time so far (sometimes with some help from Balalaika) shows either a great sense of resolve, or a great sense of stubbornness.
• Bleach:
  • Nearly the entire Fourth Division (the Captain is the only one who is spared, because the bullies are afraid of her), especially Hanataro Yamada, are frequently looked down upon by the Eleventh Division and are given grunt duties because their specialty is healing, not fighting. P.S. Guess who he's voiced by?
  • Sharing Hanataro's birthday and bad luck (April 1st) is Ichigo's friend Keigo Asano. Despite his attempts to socialize and be friendly (though admittedly annoying), he is constantly abused, beaten up, or ignored by everyone ranging from Ikkaku to his friend Mizuiro. He is also constantly dragged into unfavorable situations; Ikkaku blackmailed him into letting him stay at his house, and his violent sister forces him to let him stay.
  • Among the Espada, Yammy. In all his fights with the good guys, he has made a fool of himself. To be fair, the two first times he ended up fighting Urahara Kiskue, and when Uryu attacked him he was prepared, but still.
  • Loly and Menoly, Aizen's self-proclaimed "aides". Anytime they get involved in a fight, it's a sure bet they will get brutalized in seconds without doing anything meaningful.
  • 7th Division Lieutenant Tetsuzaemon Iba gets this quite a bit in the omakes, especially as president of the Shinigami Men's association, which ends up being pushed around and often having its funding cut. He also gets treated somewhat poorly in the potentially last battle, where he ends up running from Poww until Komamura saves him, and then tries to attack Allon, but is blown away by a Cero in a matter of seconds.
  • Omaeda Marechiyo, Vice Captain of the 2nd squad, aside of being abused daily by Soi Fon, had the honor of being taken out in one punch by Ichigo. Then in the Arrancar invasion arc, he finally did a Moment of Awesome... only to negate it by reverting into his Upper-Class Twit self and the Fraccion he just beat comes back ready to kick his ass and ends up dead by a thrown rock, not by his power. Then he ran off in full fear when Barragan chases him (it's justified, though). Then in the Zanpakutou Tales filler, he didn't get to beat his Zanpakutou Gegetsuburi, Ichigo defeated him first, and then Ikkaku, a third seat officer, belittles him "It's Omaeda. Who cares about him." And then, Mayuri bisected and presumably destroyed Gegetsuburi, but since it's Ichigo who beats him, it doesn't return to Omaeda, now leaving him presumably without a Zanpakutou. In the newest filler arc involving copies of the shinigami, after seeing identical (if a little crazy) copies we see...someone new. Turns out he's Omaeda's copy who refused to look like Omaeda, explaining exactly why. The real Ikkaku and Yumichika laugh uncontrollably, agreeing completely.
  • Arisawa Tatsuki. Virtually every single time she has a close encounter with a spiritual being, she is either a) injured severely, b) being crushed by the person's reiatsu, or c) worse. Numb Chandelier and Tsukishima provide an example of c).
  • Kon is constantly abused and never taken seriously by anyone.
• Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo: The list of characters who regularly become the punchline of a gag by taking a beating from either a villain or one of Bobobo's attacks is quite long. Really, really long. Jelly Jiggler is the main Butt Monkey, followed by Don Patch, Dengaku Man, and even Bobobo himself!
• In Brave10, Kakei is fairly respected by the members of the team who have the capacity for respect, but he's always interfering in fights as the Team Dad between the more wild Braves, and often as not ends up knocked out by them or caught in the crossfire of Rokuro's sonic blasts whenever he drops by to settle things. He also seems to suffer Laser-Guided Karma for his conservatism and sexism, as he is the only male character who has to deal with Attempted Rape and Marshmallow Hell from female villains.
• Sakuya from Candy☆Boy gets treated as such, only for being in love with one of a very close pair of twin sisters.
• Meiling from Cardcaptor Sakura. She exists primarily to be the overactive idiot.
• In Carnival Phantasm Lancer dies once a episode, the exception being the second one (where he didn't appear). The worst that happened to him was in Berserker's First Errand, when Berserker (who is Herakles trading sanity and intelligence for increased strength) beat him up while 'playing with him' and using him in place of the club he lost earlier in the segment.
  • The penultimate episode consisted entirely of Lancer subverting this by being forewarned of all his impending deaths and surviving each of them, only to reveal he was in the rocket in the second episode and that he was killed by Arcueid with a volleyball. After the credits, Lancer emerges from his own grave, having survived both the volleyball and being buried alive.
  • The final episode Grail-Kun segment has the Dark Grail give Kirei a knife and telling him to kill Lancer to form a pact with a better Servant. To Lancer's eternal bad luck, Kirei is the only one accepting Grail Kun's advice.
  • Indeed, anyone who has blue hair in Carnival Phantasm is a butt monkey, including Shinji and Ciel.
• In Castle Town Dandelion, the world seems to be conspiring to make every minute of Akane's life as embarrassing as possible, whether accidentally flashing her panties in public or constantly getting shopping duties. She also tends to be teased the most amongst her siblings. For example, in Chapter 10, when she apparently ranked the lowest in the December polls, the other siblings, specifically Shu and Hikari, tease her relentlessly for being placed last. However, when Shu consistently got last place in the polls beforehand, no one really comments on it.
• Touma Kamijou from A Certain Magical Index. Virtually everyday is a bad day for Touma and nothing ever goes right for him. On the first chapter alone he was chased by other deliquents, breaking his own credit card, having his refrigerator break down, losing 2000 yen in a vending machine, ending up in the same hospital and treated by the same doctor in nearly every story arch's end, and losing his memories. Justified though, considering what his Anti-Magic right hand is capable of doing. The only thing he's lucky on, however, is that his life is a Dating Sim where he gets an Unwanted Harem, which is pretty much a good reason why many of his male classmates are jealous of him.
  • FUKO DA!!! (Such misfortune!)
  • Shiage Hamazura is even more of one. He's had his ass kicked by Touma, bossed around by a bunch of bitchy girls who call him "Lackey", and has been sentenced to death by the city's ruler. Like Touma, he's defied all odds, turned his life around, and gotten an Unwanted Harem.
• Kobeni Higashiyama in Chainsaw Man is introduced as a meek Devil Hunter who really doesn't want to be there. She only chose to be a devil hunter because it was the only path in life open to her. But despite this being the case in a series where anyone can (and does) die she's one of the few characters who survives to the very end of Part 1. Her penchant for surviving situations she probably shouldn't have and the trauma it brings are treated as a running gag.
• Sunohara Youhei of CLANNAD.
  • Even his cute little sister treats him poorly.
    Tomoyo: You really are useful for gags.
    Tomoyo: You exist for that.
  • He gets redeemed a bit in the ~After Story~ when his little sister worried about his future — only to be smacked down hard in the following episodes. Literally.
• The Claymores in the series titled after them are infused with the blood of Yoma, the monsters they are trained to fight and will eventually become them if they exert themselves too much; plus, if they start asking too many questions, the organization will send them on suicide missions to shut them up. The main character, Clare, generally has it the worst, since she started out as a human who was a companion to the most powerful Claymore, only to have her killed before her eyes. Her body is then used to turn Clare into a Claymore herself, except since she's only a quarter Yoma, she's the lowest ranked Claymore and everyone looks down on her. A running gag in the series is somebody (usually a fellow Claymore) pushing her face into the dirt whenever she is about to do something too reckless.
• Tamaki from Code Geass. He's not the butt of every joke, but he's disliked by the cast, and can't pilot a Knightmare to save his life, yet never comes close to dying.
  • Jeremiah "Orange-kun" Gottwald started out as one: he starts with a few losses, once to Lelouch, loses face when Lelouch kills Clovis, loses even more face when Lelouch geasses him into aiding in an escape, gets betrayed, then nearly gets killed by Kallen. All of this resulted in an unexpected amount of viewer sympathy, so the writers naturally brought him back as a superpowered cyborg who winds up piloting the most powerful mech in the whole show. And then on top of that he Takes a Level in Badass in Season 2. Or several.
  • Everything Lelouch Lamperouge "One the universe hates" vi Brittania does just gets messed up, even if it's all treated deadly seriously. Save his best friend? Short-term, friend gets court-martialed for insubordination, long-term Tokyo gets wiped out because of the Geass command he uses to do it. Everything eventually comes back to bite him in the ass. The only one that actually goes off without a hitch or a Butterfly of Doom chain of cause-and-effect is the plan where he makes everyone hate him, then dies.
  • Shirley... Oh my gosh, Shirley... That poor girl cannot catch a break. Her butt monkeyness is both Played for Laughs and Played for Drama.
• While pretty much everyone in the cast suffers their fair share of humiliation in Daily Lives of High School Boys, Mitsuo goes above and beyond, with a major running joke revolving around how stupid he comes across to virtually everyone around him.
• Mao, who's Not Quite Dead, spends most of the second season of Darker than Black being abused in whatever ways the writers could think of this week. He even points out that he feels like he's in an old cartoon.
• Daimos: Believe it or not, earlier in the series, Miwa is also this, serving as the Commander Contrarian only existing to be proven wrong and sometimes gets into hilarious, humiliating situations because of his jackassery (tossed to the pool, hurt his arm trying to hit the Robot Buddy out of frustration, confusing a woman for an alien because he's racist, etc). As the series goes on, however, Miwa gets much more extreme that his antics were played for dead seriousness than occasional humor.
• Death Note:
  • Matsuda. Everyone on the investigative team doesn't hesitate to point out what an idiot he is, with L especially treating him like crap. This despite Matsuda having repeatedly proven his bravery: he never took one of the several chances he got to honourably walk away, and he risks his life every day trying to find and capture a supernatural serial killer. When he gets kidnapped everyone calmly talks about it while monitoring the situation, even mentioning how his eventual death would prove the second Kira's identity. They do launch a rescue mission, but this is the only time nobody gets angry at L for being insensitive towards a member of his team.
  • Minoru Tanaka from the Special Chapter. Despite being the most sane and docile of all Kiras, this poor boy simply couldn't catch a break. From the get-go, we learn that, despite his high intellect, he performed poorly in school, with grades well below average. Yes, his plan, executed with great precision, worked perfectly, but he still ended up being killed by Ryuk after a new rule imposed by the Shinigami King, even though he didn't use any of the Death Note's abilities, only the notebook itself to carry out his plan. In the end, Minoru ended up dead without even being able to enjoy his achievement. It almost gives you the impression that the universe itself hated this boy.
• Death Parade has several Played for Drama examples, notably:
  • The guests in episode 4, Yousuke and Misaki, both lived very rough lives. Yousuke was an emotional kid who had an abusive mother who told him that she wished he'd never been born and eventually abandoned him, and he grew up to become an asocial shut-in who lived with his parents well into his 20's and stayed up all night playing video games. Despite having a Good Stepmother who cared for him, he hardly spoke to her, opting to eat cup ramen in his room instead of the meals she made. Even after dying, he's forced to play an arcade game featuring a Flanderization of him as an obsessive Otaku with "nothing to live for," and he ends up getting his head smashed into the machine by Misaki, his opponent.
  • Misaki became pregnant as a teen to someone who clearly didn't want to marry her, was physically abusive, and eventually left her alone with their two kids. She married two more times, each husband as abusive as the last, and leaving her with at least one young child. Poor and defeated, she eventually got a job as a reality TV star with her five kids (the older two clearly unhappy to be around her), and was happy to have her life turned around, only to become neglectful to her children and abusive towards her manager...who eventually killed her. After dying, she gets another blow to the belt when Decim coldly taunts her about how "unfair" her life was.
  • Played for Laughs with the characters in episode 6, especially Mayu. She's forced to play an Absurdly High-Stakes Game of Twister with her idol, but the game is rigged to create extreme weather changes like strong winds that lift up her skirt, as well as an ice storm that eventually melts due to a drought and ruins her Gyaru makeup. Then she soils herself.
• Zenitsu from Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, due his cowardly and negative forefront personality Zenitsu tends to fall in embarrassing situations due being the first to complain about the current situation he or the group find themselves in, the team going undercover in a Red Light District shows Zenitsu getting the short end of the stick pretty well.
• Devil May Cry: The Animated Series:
  • Dante, to some extent due to his constant running gags of losing gambles, or accumulating more debt when he's already in Perpetual Poverty. The latter is more prevalent, since not all of his demon-slaying jobs pay him enough (at the end of Episode 2, he's even charged for destroying a bridge), or Lady and Trish leave their shopping bills to him (as seen in Episode 4).
  • Episode 5 deals with Isaac stalking Dante in order to find out what Cindy likes in the latter, but Isaac ends up in a lot of comedic moments and misfortunes, such as getting caught in the girls' bathroom by a bouncer, being chased by Patty, falling into the sea, having to hide inside a dumpster, or getting his car wrecked.
• Digimon:
  • In Digimon Adventure, Joe and Mimi tend to be the subject of most, with constant jokes surrounding their high maintenance. However, both Izzy and TK get a nod for the first being antisocial and the latter being the youngest.
  • In Digimon Adventure 02, Davis primarily takes on this role.
  • Kenta and Kazu appear to be the Butt Monkeys in Digimon Tamers, but Jeri is arguably this role later during the season.
  • Digimon Frontier effectively points to JP and Tommy as the primary Butt Monkeys.
  • In Digimon Ghost Game, Hiro's Unwitting Muggle Friend Kotarou ends up being preyed on by the Monster of the Week every single time he appears.
• Dog Days has Valério Calvados. While he's a very powerful Demon King who can effortlessly take on the heroes, Adelaide essentially makes him her bitch. She comically beats him up or shoots him whenever he gets out of line, and he's terrified of her wrath.
• Doraemon:
  • Nobita Nobi, so much that one of his descendants has to send him his robot to help dealing with that. Not that it's getting any better unless when they're going on an adventure.
  • Doraemon himself becomes a Butt Robot-cat in Doraemon: Nobita and the Tin Labyrinth, where after getting tired of Nobita's antics, he decides to leave Nobita on his own... only to run afoul of a robot airship belonging to the villains who mistaken Doraemon to be affiliated with the Burinkin family and shot out of the sky. When Doraemon wakes up, he realize he's been subjected to a Gulliver Tie-Down by minature-robots and knocked out by a robot tank's turret when he broke loose, before getting subjected to interrogation, Electric Torture, and finally damaged to the point where he gets dumped into the bottom of the ocean of an alien world for what seems like three quarters of the story, until Nobita and gang figures a way to find him. What's even worse is that Doraemon seems to be conscious the whole time he's stuck underwater as junk.
• Dragon Ball has a lot of examples;
  • Yamcha is one of the most extreme examples. He's insanely powerful by any reasonable standard — he could destroy a planet if he felt like it — but the bar keeps getting raised.
    • He takes a lot of abuse from Bulma during their relationship, played for laughs.
    • In his first appearance, he runs away at the sight of a pretty girl.
    • Roshi — in disguise as Jackie Chun — easily defeats him in his first tournament appearance.
    • One of his high points is beating See-Through the Invisible Man during the Fortuneteller Baba Saga. Then he loses to Bandages the Mummy.
    • In one tournament, he catches Tien off guard and gives him a better fight than expected. Then Tien breaks his leg while he's down For the Evulz, putting him out of commission for the duration of the King Piccolo Saga. In the next tournament, he's easily defeated by Kami in disguise as Hero.
    • In the Saiyan Saga, he dies from a single Saibaman, who catches him off-guard with a suicide attack. He stays dead until the end of the Frieza Saga.
    • During the time skip, his longtime girlfriend dumps him and soon is pregnant by a complete jerk, who was partly responsible for his death above. She subsequently marries this jerk and has another child with him.
    • First thing when the androids show up, Gero salutes him through the chest. He gives up on doing anything useful after this point, and when he's watching the Cell Games, he gets the piss beaten out of him by a Cell Junior. From this point on in the series, if he's ever shown, he's often commenting on the situation or lamenting his life, having self-admitted later on to have completely given up ever trying to ever even spar again. Even his True Companions aren't really shown to be empathetic to him by this point in the series. As Yamcha is shown to have done nothing to deserve this, and nothing good happens to him to balance it out, this can come off as unnecessarily mean-spirited to some viewers.
    • Come the Tournament of Power, the Dragon Team is scrambling to pull together ten fighters. He keeps waiting to be asked, but Goku decides bringing a powerful, sadistic psychopath back to life is a better idea.
    • During the ending of Dragon Ball GT Yamcha is seen trying to fix his car while stuck in the Diablo Desert, so his role as Butt Monkey is confirmed until the very end of the show.
    • Episode 202 of Gintama lampshades Yamcha's miserable existence.
  • Krillin dies three times, he Can't Catch Up, and his signature attack, likely the most deadly in the manga, just can't score a critical hit. However, unlike Yamcha, Krillin continues to receive screentime and plot importance, and he actually comes through with the occasional cool moment at several critical points. He also got to marry Android 18, and have a daughter with her.
    • Krillin's Butt Monkey status is much more frequent in the films, where he's subject to all sorts of mishaps. Misfortunes that have fallen on him include being peed on by Gohan and having rubble from Garlic Jr.'s castle fall on him (movie 1), nearly getting his face fried by a ki blast and getting whacked in the head repeatedly with a shopping bag by Chichi (movie 7), getting thrown into some rubble by Broly and forgotten by the rest of the Z Warriors (movie 10) and a Running Gag in several of the films where a villain punches him square in the face, which leads him thinking, "why does this always happen to me?!"
    • The Abridged Series has the Krillin Owned Count (a running gag where anytime Krillin is beaten up, disrespected^note in episode 2, Master Roshi told him to shut up after Krillin blamed him for letting Piccolo escape with Gohan, or acts like a loser ^note in episode 13 from season 2, Krillin gets owned after failing to come up with a witty one-liner, a little counter appears featuring a silhouette of Krillin with a Band-Aid on his head and the words: "Krillin Owned Count" followed by the number of times he's been owned. He once found his new girlfriend is a government agent sent to bust him on insurance fraud charges, then telling him that he has to pay back all the money he spent on her out of his own pocket. Also, in the first episode, Goku compares Raditz's power level as stronger than "Krillin's losing streak" (to which Krillin replies: "You know, you guys are the reason I go to therapy"). Odd upside: He eventually reveals to Trunks that he can tell, even from a distance, when someone's holding back.
  • Chiaotzu has his share of Butt Monkey moments.
    • Beaten by Krillin and math in his first tournament.
    • To prevent King Piccolo making a wish, he tries to call out a wish of his own and is struck dead before he can finish.
    • Next tournament, he has to be carried out on a stretcher after Tao gets through with him.
    • During the fight with Nappa, he resorts to a suicide attack, and it doesn't even work.
    • When it comes time to fight the androids, Tien leaves him behind, feeling he's too weak and would only be in danger.
  • In the Abridged Series, Raditz is treated as a butt monkey for Vegeta and Nappa. They constantly mention how weak he is, and at one point, Nappa compares Krillin to Raditz, saying "He's like the Raditz of their group!" But eventually, Krillin shows he's stronger than Raditz, amusing Nappa. It's just as true even in the series proper, the only reason this is played up in the Abridged is based on the actual treatment of the real character from then on. That is to say, Raditz may as well have never existed. Despite being brothers, Goku never spares so much as a thought about him until the end of forever. Vegeta dismisses him from memory outright (albeit the same happens with Nappa, though at least Vegeta and Nappa have scenes together). And worst (and most telling) of all, Raditz disappears from even the AFTERLIFE, never to so much as be heard from again (although he does get a teensy little cameo in the non-canon GT). Granted, they were evil, but no more evil than Vegeta, who got to have a redemption arc.
  • Even Goku himself has had his fair share of pluckiness over the course of the entire series, often occurring when neither Krillin or Yamcha are present.
    • One of his first mishaps involved falling off a cliff as a toddler and nearly dying from the impact to his head. A scene later in the DBZ series involved Goku having his hand be trampled on by a herd of elephants, and the GT series amps up Goku's abuse. Fortunately, Goku's brick-tough nature usually lets him shrug it all off.
    • In the original Dragon Ball there was an entire week worth of filler devoted to making Goku the Butt Monkey. All the fillers were based on his training with Kami and how bad he was at learning how to sense ki and predicting movements. To name a few, he got beat by his master's master, got struck by lightning several times, got beat by a doll dummy of himself, and constantly owned by Mr. Popo. It was a good thing none of Goku's friends were around and Vegeta can take heart knowing that he easily learned how to sense ki.
  • Master Roshi is quite a Butt Monkey himself. In his case, however, he mostly has it coming, him being a Dirty Old Man and all.
  • Vegeta himself in GT. He gets called out by his own daughter for his mustache, and even if he shaved it off, neither Goten nor Chi-Chi notice the change. He doesn't fare much better in Super either.
  • In the original series, Bulma was the Butt Monkey whenever Goku was around. Just in the first arc alone, she had her panties taken off by Goku and then flashed Master Roshi, being unable to ride the Nimbus, had to rough it when she wasn't used to it, and being turned into produce. Bulma becomes this again in the filler of the Frieza Saga when she ended up being switched into the body of a frog that Captain Ginyu inhabited. It seems to be directly proportional to how much screentime she gets.
  • Mr. Satan, infamously known for taking the credit for killing Cell, gets plenty of comeuppance for it (though never in the form of people realizing he's a fraud). He is often found in this trope for being a Muggle in a world full of superhumans and aliens. For starters, Cell *pimp slaps* him away like a fly less than a minute into their "fight". He gets his jaw nearly broken by Trunks where he tried to stage "I let you win", gets extorted by Android 18, and that is just the tip of the iceberg. This has gotta sting for someone who, in real life, would be at the pinnacle of martial arts ability.
• The Elusive Samurai: Genba's proud, mischievous personality and crude sense of humor often lands him into situations where he either makes a massive fool out of himself or becomes the butt of a joke. In Kyoto he gets suckered by some pretty looking ladies into gambling his way straight into debt slavery, which his friends have to bail him out of.
• Every diclonius and even some humans suffer extreme Butt Monkey effects on the anime Elfen Lied. But nobody does it better than our Nana, though Manga-version Yuka is competitive, often placing herself in ecchi situations, to the point she even stops hitting Kouta for them. Even a primal Tsundere can hit this point, it seems.
• Eureka Seven starts main lead Renton Thurston as a Butt Monkey, particularly in episode 7, where he's given a completely bogus and embarrassing mission as a joke. (Namely, find an informant in the sauna that wears a toupee and has a legendary animal tattoo while wearing a fake mustache and a helmet.) People thought the comedy died when Renton starts crying from happiness that they trusted him to complete his mission, and gives a 2 minute speech about how much he wants to protect everyone, even if the world turns on him, how he needs to become better to save innocent people, etc. And then they laugh at him. And put an embarrassing picture on a popular magazine. While his girlfriend was present.
• Pedro from the Excel♡Saga anime. Practically tormented every episode, usually accompanied by his famous Big "NO!", but not often Played for Laughs, unlike Excel and Watanabe.
• In Fairy Tail, Lucy. Despite being the closest thing to being the main heroine of the story, Lucy is the Butt Monkey of Team Natsu, and though these moments often overlap with fanservice, they also often push her to straight-up Woobie and Cosmic Plaything territories. She could even be considered not just the biggest one in the series, which is already saying a lot, but among the absolute biggest ones in anime and manga history in general.
• Franken Fran:
  • Officer Kuhou is a perfectly normal cop with the unfortunate status of being a recurring character in a horror comedy manga. Poor girl had to be temporarily committed to the hospital for psychological analysis after witnessing Body Horror, then later subjected to cloning by Fran. Each chance meeting with Fran after the first one has her going in sheer hysterics thanks to all her past experiences with her, with even her clones developing an instinctual fear of the doctor.
  • Veronica Madaraki, Fran's younger sister. She's constantly used as a guinea pig by Fran, their older sister Gavrill literally tore her to pieces in their first fight and happily mops the floor with her in subsequent ones, she's constantly bullied at school, and all of the friendships she manages to make end in tragedy: mainly because most of said friendships turn out to be the other party taking advantage of and manipulating her to their own ends. The final bonus chapter of the original run does have her older siblings console her with a hug and apology for going too far with their teasing, but as for the series itself, it's telling that the most respect she gets is from a hyper-intelligent society of cockroaches.
• Yoki from Fullmetal Alchemist is fired soon after he appears after Ed tricked him into selling the coal mines he was in charge of. After he sells out the Ishvalans, they force him to become Scar's slave, he gets attacked by a midget panda, and everyone thinks he's worthless (he is). Envy soon learns that he can't even use him as a hostage as the rest of the cast just say their goodbyes to him (they were bluffing). Of course he totally deserves it as he's an obnoxious loser.
  • Vato Falman gets assigned the task of keeping an eye on Barry the Chopper, which means he's stuck in his quarters with a crazy armored serial killer. His only contact with the outside seems to be Havoc, who just boasts about his new girlfriend. When he's transferred to Northern Headquarters, he does indeed get a promotion, but he has to constantly remind Ed and Al about it, and despite it his whole job seems to be picking ice off the ceiling. And believe it or not, readers who wanted to figure out who Pride was had guessed him. But in fact, Pride has a connection with Selim Bradley instead.
  • Havoc gets his far share of suffering. The fore-mentioned girlfriend actually turned out to be Lust who paralyzed him from the waist down and Roy had to burn his wounds to keep him from bleeding to death. I'm pretty sure that was the end of that relationship.
  • How many times has Winry had to build a replacement for Ed's right arm again?
• Manabu Kuchiki from Genshiken; when he joins the Genshiken, he becomes the frequent recipient of Saki's violence, once simply for being there. The others have him do grunt work at Comifest, leading to him going a entire day buying their doujinshi without food or water. However, unlike most Butt Monkeys, he entirely deserves it, knows that, and accepts it all without complaint. In fact, he seems to like it; early on, he cheerfully declares himself to be a "shameless servant", and his masochistic streak causes him to smile whenever the Genshiken mistreat him. Except when they tied him to a lamp in Volume 7 of the manga to keep him from peeping on the girls' bathing. Then he complained... for about ten seconds. And it was mostly acting.
  • He's also highly self-sabotaging; the one time he was shown to be underneath a fairly decent human being, managing to stop a thief from stealing from their stall, his reaction to the Not What It Looks Like that inevitably followed was to... wear the dress. In the middle of the crowded university. And scare off potential members.
  • Kuchiki is a complete and utter tool, all the time. Considering how likeable and "well-adjusted" Kio Shimoku makes the rest of the uber-geek Genshiken members, Kuchiki's behaviour is not only annoying, but embarrassing. Despite the Genshiken members acknowledging his creepy behaviour, they still include him as a form of loyalty.
• While Yokoshima Tadao from Ghost Sweeper Mikami can be said to deserve a fair amount of the abuse Mikami sends after him (we're talking lust incarnate here...), it seems that misfortune makes a concerted effort to seek him out, even when he's not being that lustful.
• Gintama:
  • While almost everyone is prone to being a victim of gags, Shinpachi, Kondo, Hasegawa, and the Shogun are the especially common targets.
  • The Shogun might be worthy of being considered the biggest Butt-Monkey of them all, as it's virtually guaranteed that he'll get knocked out and/or stripped naked at least once per story arc that he appears in, to the point where it can be considered a Running Gag. He doesn't even manage to go a minute/page before it happens in the Courtesan of a Nation arc, getting simultaneously knocked out and blown out of his clothes the moment he shows his face.
• Naru-chan in Girl Friends (2006). Her students don't respect her, since they call her by her nickname when they should be calling her "Narumatsu-sensei," talk to each other when she's conducting homeroom and make fun of her behind her back. It gets even worse when you learn that she had a bad breakup in the past, losing her friends when they took her ex's side, and later on in the story, she ends up getting pregnant and forced into a Shotgun Wedding with a rather unattractive man.
• Yukinari of Girls Bravo.
• Nami from The Girl Who Leapt Through Space gets this treatment from her sisters — with rather nasty consequences.
• Chitose & her rival Yurika from Goldfish Warning!; every episode, several times an episode. It would be the whole premise of the show if Wapiko didn't share the spotlight.
• GTO: The Early Years:
  • Makoto is undoubtedly the biggest butt-monkey of the series. Eikichi and Ryuji bully him a lot, like forcing him to drop his pants in front of girls. He does get quite lucky with the ladies though, compared to those two.
  • Nanno gets flanderized into one after his Villain Decay. He went from The Dreaded Sadist Teacher to a pushover after his students blackmailed him, and his attempt to get revenge ended up with him hitting the principal in the face, jumping off the roof and injuring his leg, and accidentally kidnapping a little girl.
• Patrick Colasaur and Saji Crossroads from Mobile Suit Gundam 00 have had very embarrassing and very soul-crippling things done onto them, respectively. Patrick bounces back effortlessly every time; Saji has to work at it.
• Aoki of Hajime no Ippo gets no respect. He's Takamura's number 1 target of bullying (which means you won't live a good life) and he's the worst boxer of the gym. He is however, the only character in the story who has a girlfriend.
• In Hakoiri Devil Princess, there is Noroi, the shrine boy. He is a Butt-Monkey because of the unlucky streak that he had in both his childhood years and in present. It gets to the point that his shrine got destroyed by some familiars who fight against each other and he wanted to put a curse on them despite not knowing their names.
• Haruhi Suzumiya:
  • Taniguchi, to a minor extent. It is not good to be the Computer Club president, unless you enjoy flying kicks to the head (and hey, some do).
  • Kyon is surrounded by various supernatural events every day, and just wants to be left alone. If he starts dating anyone, Haruhi will destroy the universe. Also, Mikuru, though what type of Butt Monkey she is varies from time to time; sometimes she's The Chew Toy and her suffering is funny, other times she's The Woobie and her suffering...isn't.
• Hayate X Blade: Tatewaki does not get any respect whatsoever. Even her profile page consists of a single phrase: "Whatever, really." OUCH.
• Heavy Metal L-Gaim: Often Kyao is the target and victim of all jokes of the show, being constantly humilliated by being greedy, clumsy, dumb or simply loud. Some of it is deserved (like that time where stole his best friend a cash card that he intended delivering, only to find that it had been locked when he tried to use it, but other times it looks like it the show developers like being mean.
• Henkei Shoujo: The majority of Hiromi's encounters with the transforming girls don't do anything to improve the situation she's in. Haru transforms into a jet to retrieve her hat when it blows away in the wind, but doesn't actually return it. Rin drinks out of the gas nozzle she was using to fill her car, and essentially cheats her out of some money. Nana transforms into a battleship when Hiromi's inflatable raft loses air out at sea, but she's too small to climb onto. Arisa is the only girl who actually helps Hiromi, as Itsuki only transforms to pose for her.
• Hetalia: Axis Powers: Poor Canada and China. No one ever pays attention to Canada, either not realizing he's there or mistaking him for his brother America. China constantly gets picked on by the rest of the allies, even his own younger siblings. There's also The Baltics, particularly Lithuania.
  • England sometimes in Fanon. Fans make use of his magical powers by making him fail in order to create a plot, while implying that England does every spell wrong, which isn't true in Canon. They also poke fun at his eyebrows, cooking skills, eyebrows, alcoholistic tendencies...did I mention eyebrows?
  • Prussia often gets poked fun at a lot and is treated as a Memetic Loser in Fanon, which usually has him in a Boke and Tsukkomi Routine with either Germany or Hungary as the Tsukkomi and giving him a Dope Slap (or Frying Pan of Doom).
• Keiichi from Higurashi: When They Cry seems to be a Butt Monkey sometimes. Though it may be due to his behavior. It may also have to do with the club's general creativity with their punishment games.
• The iDOLM@STER:
  • The Producer, although watered down a little. It's even lampshaded in the final episode by the Futami Twins.
    Mami: This place is boring without you to play around with.
  • In the Puchimasu! subseries, the Producer is this on full-force. Getting thrown to the 'useless' trashcan, left behind in a stranded island, mistaken as a creeper and arrested, you name it, he's been there suffering. After all, having a giant 'P' as a head is like asking for it.
• Inuyasha himself has a bad habit of falling into butt-monkey territory, especially if it involves Kikyo. Any time he goes off to see Kikyo, his first love, and having trouble deciding between her and Kagome, everyone will treat him like he's been cheating on Kagome. Kagome herself does nothing to help this, often hitting him with a sit.
• INVADERS of the ROKUJYOUMA!?: Poor Yurika gets no respect. During the race in episode 3, her cosplay club dresses her up, but then brings her to the race course tied up in a bag. No one gets to see her outfit, which appears to be a maid outfit, before she's trampled on by other students during said race. And in episode 9, Maki makes her escape and takes away the memories of all the residents of room 106, including where they finally acknowledged her as a Magical Girl, so they assume she's cosplaying again.
• Ueda in Japan, Inc..
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
  • Jonathan Joestar from Phantom Blood. Dio made Jonathan's life absolute hell by burning his dog, stealing his girlfriend's first kiss, turning his friends against him, and killing his father. He almost gets his revenge, until Dio beheads him in the last chapter of his story, while nothing more then a head, and uses his body to kill his grandson (though he gets better), his great-great-grandson's friend, and almost the great-great-grandson himself. On the plus side, the two times he got into a straight-up fight with Dio, he beat the ever-loving hell out of him to the point Dio burst out crying after his first beating. Dio had to ambush him to kill him.
  • Robert E. O. Speedwagon is this, as a good chunk of the humor from the first two Parts end up coming at his expense.
  • Rudolf von Strohiem from Battle Tendency. For all his bluster about GERMAN SCIENCE BEING THE GREATEST IN THE WORLD, he always ends up being the first to be taken out of the fight, usually being reduced to a torso and becoming a Combat Commentator.
  • Stardust Crusaders:
    • While Joseph Joestar proves that he's still just as much of a badass as he was in Part 2, this Part has him tend to end up being the victim of a lot of slapstick comedy. If it's not Polnareff who's the butt of the joke, it's usually him.
    • Jean-Pierre Polnareff is frequently the butt of his friends' jokes, and very often the first to be subjected to an enemy Stand or even non-Stand-related slapstick. One of the biggest examples is when he finds out that Avdol, whose "death" he felt responsible for, was actually alive the whole time; after reuniting with him, the overjoyed Polnareff presents him to Jotaro, Joseph, and Kakyoin...only to find out that all three of them already knew he was alive (Joseph and Jotaro knew from the beginning, and Kakyoin found out the day after Avdol's supposed death), and decided not to tell Polnareff about it for fear that he would accidentally reveal it to the enemy, leaving Polnareff as the only one in the dark despite knowing how broken up he was about it. With Friends Like These...
    • Several of the more comedic minor villains of the Part end up being these, the most notable of them being Hol Horse (who, after an impressive first showing, suffers a serious case of Villain Decay and becomes more of an Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain), ZZ (who, after being defeated, ends up chained to a rock by the heroes, who then proceed to steal his car), the Oingo Boingo Brothers (whose schemes to defeat the heroes end up doing more harm to themselves than they do to them), and Nukesaku (who gets treated like crap by both the heroes and his own allies).
  • Okuyasu Nijimura from Diamond is Unbreakable, as like Polnareff before him, he tends to be the first to be subjected to the more dangerous effects of the enemy Stand.
  • Golden Wind:
    • Narancia Ghirga, who, like Polnareff and Okuyasu before him, is almost always the first to be affected when a Stand User attacks their whole group, whether it's Soft Machine deflating him, Talking Head making him unable to tell the truth, or Grateful Dead rapidly aging him.
    • Mista's Stand, Sex Pistols, more specifically, the one of the six labeled No. 5. He's often bullied by the rest of Sex Pistols, most likely due to the fact that he could have been No. 4 (for context, Mista has tetraphobia).
  • JoJolion has both Hato and Joshu Higashikata, with both of them providing a large amount of the Part's comic relief. In Joshu's case, however, this trope is actually deconstructed, as the constant mistreatment he receives from others has led to him developing an inferiority complex.
• Haré from Haré+Guu mostly due to Guu.
• How Clumsy you are, Miss Ueno: In her effort to get attention from Tanaka, main character Ueno will think of some crazy scheme, usually involving improbable inventions. It never really goes right for her, and most of the time she ends up with the short end of the stick. This is either because Tanaka is too dense to go along with it or because the plan backfires on her by not working at all, going differently than expected, or even working too well.
• Agari Yamato from Karakuridouji Ultimo. In the time span of ONE DAY, he had events ranging from having the girl he loves mistake him for a child molester, to being blamed for the earth's destruction. Seriously. Not one chapter can be made without something happening to Yamato. And then even after he hits the Reset Button (because of said earth's destruction), it goes From Bad to Worse. So far, he has had a gun pointed to his head just because he's the master of the greatest good doji, got stabbed almost numerous times by one of the evil doji, got one of his comrades into a comatose state, failed to prevent his best friend from turning to The Dark Side again, who later attempts to rape him, before Yamato convinces him to come to the Good Side. We later learn that this fails too. And this took place in the matter of about five hours.
• Kenichi of Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple starts out like this, and tries to learn martial arts so that he won't get picked on as much. He doesn't get it as much later on, but it still applies. Nijima also has his fair share of this.
• Ignoring the fact that all of Keroro's invasion plans never work, he is constantly put through tons of abuse, usually from Natsumi, even when he doesn't actually deserve it.
• Ritsu from K-On! is often beaten by Mio (for good reasons, as she's the first one to be Ritsu's Butt-Monkey as she always pulls pranks and scares her), and her friends sometimes make fun of her. She also suffers from never getting compliments by them.
• Hiyori from Kotoura-san becomes one after her Heel–Face Turn and enters the ESP Club; although this time it was Haruka (her former love rival!) who was very protective to her.
• In Kyō Kara Ore Wa!!, while everyone steps up to take their turn as butt monkey, the one you can always depend to get burned, beat, abandon, arrested, and literally shit on is Imai. Not only does everything he does blow up in his face, but he will be ridiculed by all the main characters while it happens. His so called "friends"
• Mullin Shetland from Last Exile becomes the series' Butt Monkey when he joins the Silvana crew as a mechanic. Basically, he sucks at it, no-one bothers teaching him anything and every woman he falls for rejects him. A former rifleman who survived 19 battles (where riflemen have a 33% survival rate) he's remarkably badass at other times of the series — after leaving the crew he ends up single-handedly saving the Anatoray flagship with his Heroic Sacrifice (he gets better).
• Not played for laughs at all with the protagonist of Life (2002); nothing can seem to go her way. Ayumu's middle school best friend broke ties with her after she got into the high school she was aiming for instead of her and Ayumu started cutting herself due to that. Her first friend in high school, Manami, turned out to be a manipulative bitch. Manami's boyfriend Mind Rape's Ayumu and sexually abuses her, she's the target of bullies due to them thinking she tried to take Manami's boyfriend, her mother doesn't trust her, and that's not even half of her problems.
• While most of the main characters in Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions! are unlucky, Isshiki is arguably the most unlucky.
  • The poor fellow's attempts at wooing Kumin (in the anime) with the later never noticing one bit. Even better, when he finally does confess in episode 10, it's on a stage in front of the entire school, unfortunately she was asleep at the time.
  • While Yuuta will give the girls a smack or chop every so often, when it comes to Isshiki, he pulls out all the stops and just wails on him. It comes to a peak at episode 10, where the poor guy gets kicked in the face, his head slammed into the floor multiple times, and comboed.
• Love Hina:
  • Keitarou. If it is bad, it happens to him, or he is blamed for it. The worst is almost always thought of him, no matter what he does. With violent results. He gets Character Development, and becomes lusted over by the other women once he starts behaving more competently.
  • Being around and eventually in love with Keitarō seems to bring out Naru's inner Butt-Monkey, and if she is not a victim of his being an Accidental Pervert, then she is a victim of her friends' dubious efforts to "help" the would-be couple. She also consistently makes an ass out of herself in front of her crush, Seta, and fails to get into Tokyo U about as many times as Keitaro does.
  • This also applies to Shinobu, whose own efforts to win Keitarō may have "infected" her. Almost any time she takes the other girls' advice to win their "game", she suffers some mishap, triply so if this help comes from Kaolla Su.
  • Then there's Motoko's "adventures" with her sister. Until she was finally able to confess to Keitaro and beat her sister at the same time.
• Lupin III has Inspector Zenigata, especially in the Lupin III: Part II series. This comes from trying to explain why Lupin is never caught, despite all the chances he gets. He tends to switch between "incompetent Idiot Hero" and plain "Overshadowed by Awesome". Most of the post-2000 Lupin films have him learning Lupin's old tricks (showing him to be competent) and Lupin still making a fool out of him by being one more step ahead.
• Fate Testarossa-Harlaown of Lyrical Nanoha gets this sometimes, being socially awkward and easily embarrassed into adulthood. She gets teasing from Signum about their new relationship (in which Fate is reluctantly Signum's superior officer in StrikerS), is not told about a final mock battle between the captains and forwards that includes her or her daughter Vivio's ability to turn into her Older Alter Ego at will, and occasionally gets subject to loving teasing by Vivio, particularly in the "2nd Mother's Day" one shot.
• Yusaku Godai in Maison Ikkoku. For the majority of the series he's struggling to get into college but is hampered by his out of control living environment. He frequently loses his jobs too and usually goes a few days without eating food. He then pines for the affections of his manager Kyoko, who finds it hard to take him seriously as a potential love interest because he's younger than her and in constant poverty. When Kyoko starts getting wooed by the suave and rich Shun Mitaka, Yusaku is constantly reminded that Shun is much more mature than he is and a much better match for Kyoko. Yet when Yusaku starts to tentatively date Kozue, he is vilified as a spineless coward and womanizer who can't choose between two women. Amongst those holding this view is Kyoko herself, even though she is also dating Shun while sending mixed signals to Yusaku. It isn't until much later on in the series that things start to turn around for Yusaku and he finally get to marry Kyoko.
• Magi: Labyrinth of Magic:
  • Alibaba, the main character, because the mangaka enjoys trampling on his inability to do the do with attractive females, which becomes comedic highlight — at the expense of the poor guy's pride.
  • There is a running gag between Aladdin and Alibaba whenever they visit a pleasure house: Alibaba ends up getting tousled by the female-equivalent of Arlong from One Piece while the 10 years old Aladdin gets all the goods. Pitiful dude is also constantly cockblocked by his own obliviousness and, later, Garda, a gigantic female gorilla he rescued.
  • Sinbad's alcoholism also occasionally makes this badass, handsome lech the butt of the jokes, such as when street thieves stripped off his clothes and magic vessels after he passed out drunk on side of the dirt road. The scenario happens on multiple occasions, one of which resulted in a gigantic tribal orgy.
• Jun Aoi gets this status in Martian Successor Nadesico. Between (multiple!) failed attempts at trying to protect the Nadesico, getting eternally friend zoned by his romantic target, being the only male member Bridge Bunny in the ship, and getting almost no screen time (which may be because the writers themselves forgot about him at some point), it's a wonder he hasn't broken down yet. At the same time, he became a ship captain with a promising future in The Movie, so maybe the weirdness around him just screws him up.
• Boss from Mazinger Z and Great Mazinger: He helps the heroes to save the world, risking his life on a daily basis. What does he gets in return? He gets constantly mocked, ridiculized and berated by everyone — and beaten by Robeasts — and he is treated like a joke or even a nuisance. He has absolutely NO respect.
• Medabots gives us Iwanoi (or "Spike" in the dub); while he first enters the series as part of the gang of delinquents and bullies that make the main protagonist's life a misery, he is soon revealed to be a fairly good soul who is more or less bullied into being part of the gang, gets kicked out of it in one episode, and who is so terrible at meda-fighting that he is ranked among the worst players in the world. And the latter isn't just because he's lacking in skill, no, the problem is as much because of his Medabot, the only real friend he has. The Cyandog model of Medabot is a Dog Type Shooting Model, designed to attack from a distance with built-in guns, as is the Crosserdog model he eventually upgrades to. But his Medabot's Medal is a Monkey Type Medal — even without the reference to Japanese mythology of dogs and monkeys being enemies, the Monkey Type Medal is intended for melee models of Medabots, mainly wrestlers. Needless to say, it's no wonder that his Medabot can't fight.
• My Hero Academia has a jusitified example with Mineta, who is regularly hit, mocked and ignored by classmates and it's almost always Laser-Guided Karma thanks to his perverted and annoying antics, plus he's a Boisterous Weakling who tends to challenge people way above his league and promptly get his ass kicked.
• Natsuki in both My-HiME and My-Otome. Having one's underwear stolen and eaten? Being forced to Show Some Leg to hitch a ride back to school/town? Falling into an easily-avoidable trap set by a Trickster Goddess? It's funny how the most serious member of the cast is always the one to take the comedic pratfalls.
• Mysterious Joker character Oniyama appears to be fulfilling this position. To a lesser extent, Hachi.
• Naruto:
  • The title character is the resident Butt Monkey at the beginning of the series, and relapses in this role in the more comedic fillers and episodes as the manga — and anime — goes on.
  • Yamato is tricked by Naruto's clone into believing he was still asleep when he was, in fact, long gone. Next, Kakashi teases him about the fact that Naruto got away from a tracker and ANBU member. Third, when Naruto pretends his head gets cut off in the training chamber in episode 245 (manga Chapter 496). Not to mention he's been captured for 100 chapters straight now and no one either remembers him, or cares enough to mount a rescue! Then Kakashi ropes Yamato into doing things he doesn't want to, like paying for Naruto's ramen and when Naruto wanted to go see the Raikage, Kakashi said that he and Yamato were going with him. Cue Blank White Eyes from Yamato. Poor guy.
  • Hashirama the First Hokage doesn't get any respect whatsoever in Chapter 619.
• Negima! Magister Negi Magi:
  • Chamo is a mild case; he's constantly abused (punched, stepped on, squashed, etc.) by everyone (mostly Asuna), although he probably deserves it. A battle has an opponent impale him on her horn, where he hangs for a while. He's perfectly fine afterward, of course.
  • Chisame seems to be the person most likely to get put into humiliating situations; she's always the first to get caught by Nitta for breaking school rules and seems to always suffer her portion of Clothing Damage in front of the whole class or on stage at a cosplay contest. Not to mention that incident with the clothes-eating octopus...
  • Secundum seems to have a habit of being Megaton Punched Across The Room in a very undignified way. It happened around three times (by Nagi, Takamichi and Rakan) in seven chapters.
  • In the alternate universe series Negima!? (second season), Makie is given the role of the Butt Monkey, especially when it comes to the Baka Rangers segments that appear at the end of a number of episodes.
  • In one of the other alternate universes Negiho (Ito) Bun (otherwise known as Mahora Little Girls), Konoka, of all people, takes this place for Asuna, usually saying or doing silly, childish things which annoy Asuna, who promptly reprimand her for it^note This could be a consequence of her proximity to a wacky girl like Asuna, and her scheming. Admittedly she brings some (only some) of it on herself. Even her bodyguard Setsuna, due to her lack of experience, can find herself inflicting this on the girl by accident, attempting to save her from minor incidents but making things much worse. Her track record includes a bop on the head, being scaffolded, tied to a RTS package, being drawn-on/tickle tortured/forcibly dressed up all at once, dropped into a lake, having ruined cookies left over her desk and being sucked into a vacuum cleaner in the space of 4 chapters.
• Neon Genesis Evangelion:
  • Shinji Ikari is constantly bullied and ignored (even by his father), even though he saves the world. Multiple times. And in the more light-hearted Sitcom scenes in the first half of the series, guess who is the butt of every humiliating joke? Imagine Charlie Brown with a giant robot. As with everything in the series, it's deconstructed: everyone treating him like dirt at every opportunity directly leads to Shinji allowing Lilith to cause Third Impact.
  • Misato Katsuragi has her moments, too. Mainly when she's on the receiving end of Ritsuko or Shinji's snarky remarks.
• Nichijou:
  • Despite being the main characters, Yuuko and Mio tend to be the butts of most of the show's jokes, particularly embarrassing physical ones that often result in them getting injured. Nano also qualifies, as most of her scenes tend to show her being tormented by Hakase.
  • Sakamoto has to endure just as much tormenting as Nano, if not more as Hakase seems extra careless around him. Prior to his appearance in the series proper, he was Nakamura-sensei's cat Taisho, and he was treated poorly then as well (getting fed hot soup, having said soup poured on his head, bathed in scalding hot water, and getting trapped in a cage are a few examples). He comes to the conclusion that his life sucks no matter where he goes.
• The title character in Ode to Kirihito, pretty much from the minute he leaves the hospital. He is inevitably exposed to disease, human cruelty, murder, rape, imprisonment, pretty much everything possible that would destroy a person's faith in mankind. He doesn't even know about what his best friend is capable of as his mental fortitude disintegrates in Kirihito's absence. Here it's played for drama — Kirihito is a good person at heart, but hardens considerably as a result of his experiences. In the end, it's implied that his final visit to Japan led Kirihito to dare to hope again.
• Does Okayado have a male protagonist who, thanks to his niceness, finds himself the head of a harem of monster girls? Kimihito Kurusu of Monster Musume, and his fantasy counterpart Mamoru Onodera of Deadline Summoner just cannot catch a break. Good thing they're practically indestructible and very driven besides.
• One Piece:
  • A rare example of a villainous Butt-Monkey who nonetheless remains an effective and dangerous villain: Spandam from the Enies Lobby arc.
    • Constantly abused by his subordinates, his enemies, and his teammates, his suffering evokes not a bit of sympathy or pity from the audience. Probably because his Establishing Character Moment involves him merrily skipping over the Moral Event Horizon, and he kicks dogs at every possible opportunity. Snapping his spine in two was letting him off too easy, if you ask me.
    • It's lucky then that during CP9's cover story, Spandam decides to frame CP9 for the disaster at Enies Lobby. This backfires spectacularly when the Marine force sent to capture CP9 are brutally curbstomped, and now Spandam has six of the most dangerous assassins in the world out for his head. Nice work, idiot.
  • After Buggy's initial defeat by Luffy he suffers long in putting his body back together, trying to execute Luffy only to have the universe intervene on Luffy's behalf, get captured and put in Impel Down, gets abused countless times in aiding Luffy's escape attempt, and is frozen solid and used as a human shield at Marineford, all played for laughs. After the Time-Skip, he becomes a new Warlord of the Sea, leading to even more abuse. After the Seven Warlords are abolished, Crocodile starts an organization named Cross Guild with Mihawk and Buggy (the latter owing Crocodile the money he used to start his own mercenary company, which is effectively absorbed into Cross Guild), but because of Buggy's Overzealous Underlings, the World Government is left under the impression that Buggy is the leader, and assume that he must be incredibly powerful to get people like Crocodile and Mihawk to follow him. After Kaido and Big Mom's defeat at the hands of the Worst Generation, their positions as Emperors of the Sea are given to Luffy and Buggy, who despairs that all of his power brings him nothing but misfortune. And because Buggy's underlings regularly piss off Crocodile and Mihawk with their antics, the two regularly take it out on Buggy in the meeting room (read "torture room"). The only reason they let him live is because he effectively stands to be at the front if anyone should target them.
    Buggy: Where is my life taking me?!
  • Luffy was this trope during his childhood. He had a Hilariously Abusive Childhood as a result of his grandfather's training, and even after that he was pretty weak. Wild animals and vitriolic brothers didn't really help, either.
  • Wet-Haired Caribou gets trapped in a barrel by the Straw Hats while on their ship planning to kill them, escapes from the barrel to capture mermaids on Fish-man Island only to get beaten down by the Straw Hats. Tries attacking one of Big Mom's crewmates only to get one-shotted again. Tries to capture mermaids again, only to have Jimbei find him and beat him down before taking him to Marines. Is almost burned alive at the stake, but escapes thanks to his crew saving him and sets out to sea alone, only to end up in a terrible storm. He survives this and is taken care of by a kindly old woman...only to be mistaken as her son, a deceased Revolutionary Commander. Even after he manages a win and liberates Kaido's favorite island for the Revolutionaries, he gets attacked by a post-Time Skip X. Drake, who promptly captures him, drags him to Wano, and imprisons him there. In essence, his life has just been one long-running joke ever since he met Luffy.
  • The Fake Straw Hats had the bad habit to try and pick a fight with the real deal. Hilarity Ensued each time, topping when the imposters had to deal with a force of Marines including Sentomarou (who was a match for the whole crew before timeskip) and two Pacifistas (in the same league as Sentomarou. The Marines believed the actual Straw Hats were trying to recruit pirates, and reacted accordingly), plus Luffy and the hundreds of dangerous pirates they had tried to recruit, all at the same time. The fake Luffy (beaten up, humiliated and arrested by the Marines) and Robin (kidnapped with a fox biting her head) were the ones who got off easy...
  • Charlotte Brulee was initially a capable Dragon, having easily captured Chopper and Carrot, but is quickly demoted to this once Cracker takes over her battle much like King Baum. She then proceeds to make the most inappropriately timed Badass Boast ever (that was really a Remember When You Blew Up a Sun? which she had no participation in), only to get one-shotted by Nami with a lightning bolt. She escapes into her alternate dimension to chase Chopper and Carrot around, and even captured them again, but she was immediately Hoist by Her Own Petard when she tried cooking Carrot in stew, only for Carrot to kick the stew pot at her. Now she's a hostage who gets tickled to force her to give away information, and the only villainous thing she can do anymore is swear revenge.
  • Nami is one of the rare female versions and one of the biggest ever.
    • She's more so known as that one chick who blows up at her crew mates idiocy, and a greedy pirate girl, but whenever something goes wrong, (which is all the damn time,) she'd be no better than Usopp. Best exemplified in the Thriller Bark Arc, where after Enies Lobby is all said and done, you would think that nothing could faze her. Cue the ghosts and zombies.
    • As of the Time Skip, this seems to be flipped: When her doppelgänger pointed a gun at her head, she didn't even flinch. Yes, Nami the greedy red head, pulled a Stoic. That goes thrown right out the window as soon as Luffy starts doing his usual antics because she doesn't have to put on a brave face anymore (and Nami didn't fear Chocolat one bit for pretending to be her and was actually rather annoyed), but Nami can still stare daggers when the moment counts.
• PandoraHearts: Poor Gilbert Nightray. Even the mangaka goes out of her way to abuse him for everyone's amusement.
• Nearly the whole cast of Pani Poni Dash! consists of Butt Monkeys rather than humans (or other species). Let's list them: "Maho" girl Himeko, plain girl Kurumi, super forehead Miyako, small girl Akiyama and clumsy girl Miyata are prone to this a lot. Even the main character and child genius Rebecca Miyamoto gets her fair share. The actual incarnation of this trope though is Mesousa, a bunny not even capable of HOLDING stuff, getting used as guinea pig by nearly everyone, harassed by a strange catlike entity and is the target of a goddess of bad luck in training.
• Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt: Panty becomes this in the series finale when Stocking goes to heaven and Panty loses her powers and promptly goes through a Humiliation Conga and has her only remaining friend kidnapped right in front of her. She bounces back, though.
• Mr. Saruyama from Pecola often has his melons toppled over, usually as a result of Pecola's obnoxious behavior.
• Pokémon:
  • Before it Took a Level in Badass, Ash's Chimchar was this. It was knocked out in almost every battle it participated in, had a Jerkass for its first trainer that called it pathetic even when it won, and nearly died in the Hearthome Tag Battle Tournament. In short, it was not only the butt monkey of the series, but The Woobie as well.
  • Ash started off as such due to his ineptness and impulsive behaviour usually causing him constant problems (keep in mind Pikachu violently hated him initially). It came back a bit in the Best Wishes series, though even he looked good in comparasion to Cilan's Unknown Rival Burgundy, who had bad things happen to her every other minute or so.
  • Out of Ash's many companions, Misty was near equally prone to slapstick and ego-denting humiliation as he was.
  • May is possible runner up due to being most liable to hold the Distress Ball and get endangered, kidnapped or tied up.
  • Dawn isn't too far behind them in Butt-Monkey status. She's easily the least respected main character in the series. Numerous characters (Ash, Brock, and her own Pokémon included) have made fun of and dissed her, is near-unanimously labeled as an incapable coordinator, and has her hair constantly ruined after being shocked numerous times. Then there's all the hell she went through...
  • Dawn's Piplup was pretty much the designated slapstick magnet for the Diamond and Pearl series, most notably getting nailed by Draco Meteor from Ash's Gible on a regular basis in the latter half. He's also probably the only Pokémon in the entire series to get curbstomped by a Magikarp.
  • The Team Rocket trio in the anime, who have sad back stories, are poor, incompetent, hated by their boss and co-workers, and get blasted off at the end of almost every episode. However, this is slowly changing as the trio is becoming more competent... Only to revert back to this all over again. For example, in Sun and Moon, just when they were about to actually defeat Ash and Pikachu in a Pokemon battle, Bewear swoops up and prevents them, much to their dismay. There's also James being on the recieving end of his own Pokémon's painful method's of affection such as Victreebel constantly trying to eat his head and Cacnea constantly hugging him, despite having pins all over its body.
  • Their Pokemon aren't much better off either. The best examples would probably have to be Arbok, Weezing, and Seviper. They will always end up taking a lot of beatings from other Pokémon and on the recieving ends of their attacks in every single episode.
  • In the XY series, Clemont has assumed this role. Among other things, he's in poor physical condition and his inventions constantly blow up in his face. One of his most unfortunate moments, however, was in XY018 where the group had to pretend to trade him to Princess Ally for a PokéFlute. They were planning on going back for him, but forgot about him and so he had to make a decoy of himself with his clothes and escape on his own, in his underwear and undershirt!
  • The Sun and Moon series introduced Team Skull. Basically everyone and their mother (literally in Ash's case) has kicked their asses in a Pokemon battle. They've been curbstomped so many times, that Tupp is ecstatic at the mere fact that he managed to land a single attack on Ilima's Eevee.
  • K-2 in Pokémon: Diamond and Pearl Adventure! is a relatively appropriate example insofar as his defining characteristic is his gigantically swollen rear. Even his name is a pun off a Japanese word for butt. And that butt gets prodded, poked, stabbed, smacked, and generally attacked at every given opportunity.
  • Bill in Pokémon Adventures was this for a little while. He seems to become less and less of this as the series goes on (and seems to have gotten Daisy Oak as a girlfriend), but Pika still shocks him for the fun of it.
• The Prince of Tennis:
  • Kaidoh can be counted as Seigaku's Butt Monkey in some Slice of Life-like anime chapters. Just see episode 22 named "Kaoru's Misfortune": Can't finish his morning lap? Check. Is run over by his rival on a bike? Check. Is stepped on by another guy? Check. Is mistaken for a thief? Check...
  • As the story advances, his Big Brother Mentor Inui is the one who becomes a Butt Monkey. How many times the guy has been punished for trying to sneak out of something and/or has lost his pants? Specially in the OAV, where the punishments he suffers are even more embarrassing and funny.
• Karyl, from Princess Connect! Re:Dive, cannot catch a break. She's been unwillingly fed monsters, unwillingly fed to monsters, operated on by Mitsuki despite there being nothing wrong with her (returning to the guild house the next day with a Broken Smile and not remembering what happened to her the day after that), turned into pudding, and so much more.
• Being a deconstruction of the Fighting Series Played for Laughs, Ramen Fighter Miki deconstructs this trope with Akihiko and Kankuro, two Nice Guys that become Butt Monkeys for no other reason than that the rest of the cast are Arrogant Kung Fu Guys.
• Ranma ½:
  • Mousse and Kuno are always knocked around or be played as the fool for laughs. Yes, Kuno is an idiot and sometimes that idiocy is the cause of it, but it doesn't mean that he deserves it.
  • Not only is Ranma the frequent target of multiple fiancees, but whenever one of these females hug him or even talk to him at times he's treated like a vile pervert. Even when he's clearly shown trying to shove the girls away and loudly protesting, Akane will always attack him over it.
• Reborn! (2004): Among the Arcobaleno, Skull definitely counts. He doesn't exactly have it easy in the manga, but the anime's Arcobaleno filler arcs abuse him beyond belief.
• Rosario + Vampire newcomer Fong-Fong has taken a lot of abuse since his debut, and generally receives very little respect. His reactions are usually amusing.
• In Saint Beast, Shiva's a less-than-stellar example of angelic goodness but he gets a lot of flak from the other characters and rarely gets anything he wants including a coveted position as a Saint Beast. Some fans see him more as The Woobie because he is so unlucky he's empathetic.
• Zakuro from Saiyuki and sometimes Gojyo as well.
• Resident Tomboy Yuzu of Sakura Trick is often the butt of jokes in the series.
• Megu-nee from School-Live! is constantly ignored, gets her sentences cut off, and her students won't refer to her as "Sakura-sensei" like she wants. It turns out this isn't intentional. Megu-nee doesn't exist, or at least not anymore. Only Yuki can see Megu-nee because they're her delusions, and thus the others react inappropriately and give Delayed Reactions to her. In life Megu-nee was treated more like a Cool Big Sis.
• School Rumble:
  • Hanai is usually the first target for pranks. In fact, when he tried to play the recorder to remind Mikoto of when they were kids, Mikoto laughed at how bad he was and had forgotten completely.
  • Harima might well be the biggest Butt-Monkey of them all, always on the bad end of some serious misunderstandings, one of them making Tenma (the girl he's had a crush on forever) believe him to be a pervert when he'd just saved her from a gang of them.
  • Tenma doesn't have the best luck either — all her attempts to confess to Karasuma go wrong and she's always overshadowed by her beautiful, cool, popular friends, with most of her classmates besides Harima regarding her as plain and goofy and preferring either her friends or younger sister over her.
• Masao from Shiki, to the extent that his entire character arc is being put in increasingly desperate situations and getting beaten up and killed. To be fair, some of the abuse he gets is for legitimately dick moves. This trope is also more obvious in the anime than it is in the manga, where he's closer to being an outright villain.
• Did I have to mention the genius Sakuragi Hanamichi from Slam Dunk?? He even got a nickname "Red-headed monkey"!!
• Slayers:
  • Due to his status as The Comically Serious and as a chimera who desperately seeks a cure for his appearance, which often makes him try to ignore or belie his comrades, Zelgadis is this in multiple filler episodes. One memorable episode from the second season had him being used as an anchor, nearly get killed twice by a Lake Dragon, and almost drown. In the latter scenario, he winds up getting CPR from the elderly (male) captain of the boat they were on instead of Amelia, whom he secretly hoped would do it...
  • Princess Amelia herself is this trope in the Slayers Premium Non-Serial Movie; when the movie ends, the others are moving along, while she's stuck on some remote island unable to speak.
• Snow White with the Red Hair:
  • Poor Mitsuhide is always being picked on. Zen and Kiki always take the chance to casually dismiss his importance and competence.
  • Prince Raji, who absolutely no one takes seriously. Even the narration refers to him as "the stupid prince".
• Carrot in Sorcerer Hunters is the ultimate Butt Monkey — for basically everyone.
• Sasazuka from Strawberry Marshmallow. His teachers love to pick on him, and force him to stand in the hall at the slightest provocation, even before he's even said anything.
• While it's not apparent in the anime, Sword Art Online has Kirito show shades of this occasionally. Made most apparent in the supplementary material for the Blu-Ray releases, Sword Art Offline. To note, Kirito suffers multiple embarassing, frightening or painful situations. For instance, having Asuna act like a Yandere, getting stabbed by Asuna (on no less than four seperate occasions), getting beaten up by Leafa thrice, getting shot by Sinon, constantly being either insulted or made fun of, getting hypnotised by his own sleeping face and promptly getting his face drawn on, getting slashed by Yuuki, and, most strangely, getting an envelope lodged in his head. Kirito himself lampshades it when the physical abuse slows down in the second season, but the psychological abuse doesn't. Specifically in Season 2, Episode 2:
  Kirito: I feel like I'm not being physically abused so much this season, but the psychological abuse seems to be increasing. Am I going to be okay?
• Seina Yamada of Tenchi Muyo! GXP is certainly one of these. The boy is The Jinx writ large, causing problems wherever he goes. It's so bad that, when he accidentally gets recruited into the Galaxy Police, they decide to use him as Space Pirate bait, weaponizing his bad luck. And, of course, seeing as this is a Tenchi Muyo! entry, he has beautiful women crawling all over him.
• Simon of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann fits this trope well. Early in the series, he contributes to the death of his best friend/brother figure. Then, years later, his wife-to-be is kidnapped, and he has to fight to rescue her, and all of humanity. Once he succeeds, they're married, and she promptly vanishes. The series ends with humans (and Viral, now immortal) going out to explore the galaxy. Simon is, by this point, an old man, alone, and will probably be forgotten by almost everyone before long.
• While Kotetsu experiences his fair share of being put through the wringer, the true Butt Monkey of Tiger & Bunny is Antonio Lopez (Rock Bison). He winds up in last place in the Hero rankings, gets told off by his boss almost every day, has to put up with being shot out of a cannon (as a part of his grand entrance) despite being acrophobic, has a crush on a woman who barely acknowledges his existence, basically serves as a platonic Unlucky Childhood Friend to Kotetsu (who ignores him in favor of Barnaby), is regularly sexually harassed by his other friend Nathan, and is the only HeroTV superhero who doesn't get so much as a single Day in the Limelight episode. The writers say they actually like him quite a bit — which is why they torture him so much.
• The protagonist of Tokyo Ravens can never catch a break. He's currently the subject of many horrible rumors due to circumstances beyond his control, most of them caused by the fact that no one can know his cousin has to pretend to be a boy for her own safety and he's terribly oblivious to her feelings — and she, along with most of the other girls in the cast, is very powerful and very jealous. The two girls who actually told him they liked him? Of course it didn't work out: the first, his childhood friend was really a shikigami (like an artificial human) and died protecting him and the second, a classmate turned out to be a cross-dressing boy.
• To Love Ru.
  • Rito who is a Iron Butt Monkey. Many of his perverted accidents end up with a certain yellow haired assassin hot on his trail.
  • The principal. Moreso than Rito, who mostly doesn't intend to be gross and/or perverted around girls.
  • Kotegawa. Initially, the harder she tries to keep order, the more screwy fate treats her. Seriously, just how many times has she been involved in Rito's... accidents?
  • Zastin; quite explicitly in the manga, while he's merely an idiot in the anime.
  • Motemitsu essentially exists solely to show up at random times, fail horribly at whatever it is he's doing, and have everyone around comment on how they expected it.
• Kelly of Transformers: Robots in Disguise is a rare female comedic Butt Monkey. She's not clumsy or unintelligent, just really, really unlucky. She's gone through more fancy cars an episode than some people do in a series (Yet still has enough money to buy more...), and always seems to become involved to the various antics of the Transformers. Even running away into the middle of the Sahara Desert gets her caught up in Autobot/Predacon combat! She's trying to get out of the way, honest!!
• All the Dinoforce in Transformers Victory suffer considerable humiliation, but Kakuryu takes the cake. It's a rare episode where he isn't embarrassed or hurt at least twice.
• In episode 4 of Unlimited Fafnir, Iris tries to greet Tear in the classroom. However, she is ignored, and Tear later treats her more like a nuisance for much of the rest of the day when she constantly hovers nearby.
• You could practically make a page for butt monkeys from Urusei Yatsura:
  • Unlucky Everydude protagonist Ataru Moroboshi is an interesting case in that a lot of his misery is self-inflicted. When you insist on being a Casanova Wannabe when your girlfriend is a Psycho Electro Clingy Jealous Girl, you just get zapped. But he's also noted In-Universe to be a natural magnet for weirdness, spooks and specters, to the point it's a plot hook in at least two stories that Ataru's naturally attractive aliens and youkai. Beyond that, his parents regard him as an embarrassment and a failure, and his classmates either resent him for being engaged to Lum or hate him for being a pervert — not an Accidental Pervert, he's very much and very deliberately a pervert.
  • Shutaro Mendo doesn't seem like a butt monkey at first, given he's the intelligent, well-educated, handsome and athletically gifted heir to one of the wealthiest families in the world. But the series derives a lot of humor from how meaningless all of his apparent natural advantages are; he can't enjoy being super-popular with the girls because he has his heart set on the one girl who couldn't give a damn about him, and Ataru is constantly getting the best of him whenever they clash wits.
  • Ran is Lum's childhood best friend who now wants revenge on her for all the times Lum got her into trouble when they were kids. Except her schemes never work and invariably leave her losing, typically in a painful fashion. Worse, she's fixated on a Brainless Beauty whose only interests are food and Lum, in that order.
  • Onsen-Mark, the homeroom teacher for class 2-4 at Tomobiki High, just wants to get through his lessons and help his students learn something. But he receives absolutely no respect from his class, who even when the lesson isn't disrupted by the latest bout of extraterrestrial weirdness, are prone to slacking off or causing chaos in their own right. He is routinely mocked and even beaten up by the kids, and has nobody to turn to.
  • "The Spice Girls", Sugar, Ginger and Pepper, are a trio of wanna-be alien delinquents who are desperate to prove how tough they are by taking on the former top delinquents of their school; Lum, Benten and Oyuki. None of their plans ever work out, largely because they're all absolute morons.
  • Tobimaro Mizunokoji wants desperately to best his "rival", Shutaro Mendo, in a game of baseball, and puts himself through endless Training from Hell to one day achieve his victory. And none of the training ever does him any damn good, whilst Mendo himself treats their "rivalry" as more humoring Tobimaro when he does something stupid. Adding to his woes is that Shutaro's sadistic little sister Ryoko loves to torment him, under the guise of being in love with him, and the one girl who is genuinely in love with him is both a) a super-strong klutz prone to maiming him, and b) his little sister. And their mom blames him for her incestuous infatuation with him!
  • Cherry is despised by literally everybody in the series, to the point his own niece is embarrassed to admit to their relationship, never mind to be seen with him. It doesn't help that he tends to vaciliate between being a useless moocher and trying to help only to cause more problems.
  • Ryunosuke is a girl who was Raised as the Opposite Gender and wants desperately to be feminine, but the biggest obstacle in her way is her insane father, who is stronger and far sneakier than she is.
• Flute, from Violinist of Hameln (manga continuity only). Despite being the story's heroine, she's constantly bullied around by Hamel — dressed in embarrassing costumes, forced to dance for change, ignored in favor of more attractive characters and even used as a weapon with some frequency. Luckily for her, when things get desperate or when Hamel gets too mean, she usually triumphs thanks to the Divine Cross of Retribution.
• Keima's father of The World God Only Knows is this, despite the fact that he has yet to actually appear. When Elsee needs a place to stay, she convinces Keima's mother (using a forged note) that she is the husband's illegitimate daughter. Dear Ms Katsuragi then picks up the phone, dials up her husband and screams that if he ever shows up again, she'll kill him. Keima explains to Elsee that she used to run in a street gang. His position's not helped when Hakua later claims, jokingly, she's another illegitimate daughter.
• Sailor Moon has a lot of examples especially in 90s anime:
  • Usagi Tsukino has some tendency to this:
    • There's a slapstick routine involving Usagi trying to "Sailor V kick" Shingo for irritating her just after she got booted from the house for failing a test. Usagi misses and kicks the closed door, then clutches her foot in pain and melodramatically wails to be let in.
    • In Act 1 of both the manga and Sailor Moon Crystal, Usagi first meets her cat familiar via stepping on the cat's spine, tripping and faceplanting on the sidewalk. Luna returns the favor by maniacally scratching Usagi's face, (the marks from which disappear after a single scene) then leaping away none the worse for wear.
    • In episode 104 of the original anime, Usagi's feet fall asleep during a tea ceremony and Chibi-usa punches her in the foot to deliberately trigger Seiza Squirm. One word: ouch.
  • Her future daughter Chibiusa Tsukino become one in the original anime when she transforms, she's on the receiving end, being a pathetic comic relief whose powers are no good to fight with.
  • Even though she's so strong, Makoto Kino often gets knocked down easily in a fight, and even though she's the one most determined to find love, she's also the one that boys hardly ever pay attention to.
  • Minako Aino fall into this tendency sometimes, but mostly in the 90s anime where she was often thrust into a comic relief role.
  • Luna is the one who often gets the short end of the stick, usually whenever Usagi is being careless.
  • Artemis also never catches a break, especially in the anime. His manga self takes far less abuse (unless we count the Codename: Sailor V manga.)
  • While not to Usagi's degree, but her brother Shingo Tsukino does have his moments, usually whenever Usagi trolls with him.
  • Usagi's original friend, Naru Osaka have moments due to her being the Designated Victim variety. In her case, it's not played for laughs, especially considering how her storyline with Nephrite turned out.
  • Gurio Umino is the one due to his friends and classmates tend to treat him this way in earlier episodes because they find him so annoying.
  • Usagi's homeroom teacher, Haruna Sakurada is the one due to her inability to find a husband. And even beyond that, there's the incident where she thinks she is Defiled Forever.
  • Yuuichirou Kumada created for 90s anime is this due to Rei treating him this way at times by pushing him around and taking his feelings for granted, and he often klutzes out when he's working around her.
  • Esmeraude went into on in 90s anime due to something humiliating or funny was bound to happen to her. Like completely pigging out at a pastry shop, getting peed on by puppies, etc.
  • Eudial become one due to Adaptational Comic Relief where she is more prone to comedic moments and being the Butt-Monkey of many situations.
  • Not as much as Eudial, but Mimete is the one, especially since she's far more of a bungler.
  • Sailor Iron Mouse with her death even begin somewhat played for laughs.
  • Sailor Lead Crow when she had to be the Straight Man for Sailor Aluminum Siren.
• Alba from Senyuu is this for pretty much the entirety of Volume 1, however it significantly decreases in Volume 2, seeing as he Took a Level in Badass, but the amount of physical abuse he goes through due to the sadistic tendencies of the solder Ros are definitely something to behold. Other characters both physically and verbally abuse him, intentionally or not. He was even killed by Dezember before being brought back by Ros after revealed his identity as the hero Creashion. Some other examples of abuse include Ros stabbing him with a knife on their way out of the cave in episode 2, Ros calling Alba useless only for Ruki to scold him then begin listing many ways Alba is useless in episode 6, and Alles accidentally shooting Alba out of the cannon of the bike in episode 19(?).
• In Who's Left Behind? Kayoko's Diary, young Kayoko Nakane and her immediate older brother Kisaburo seem to share this status as whenever something happens that's likely to lead to trouble or embarrassment, it's always one of them two on the receiving end.
• Geraba, Fatman, and occasionally Blume from Xabungle. Geraba usually does nothing to incite Horra's wrath other than question his orders, but he still gets the crap kicked out of him on a regular basis. Fatman is Elche's loyal bodyguard and mute, but he usually gets shoved aside in times of need and constantly suffers physical abuse without striking back or saying a word. Blume is a much less extreme example, but he still manages to take the occasional bullet or strike without necessarily deserving it, while most of the others remain unharmed.
• Watanuki Kimihiro of ×××HOLiC was the unchallenged master of this trope in his early days, now he's gotten a bit better.
• Yakitate!! Japan
  • Kawachi. Though in the beginning he was a bit of a Jerkass, the series soon began abusing him seemingly for the hell of it. If there was something painful or humiliating happening, it happened to Kawachi. The people that were supposed to be his friends and supporters without fail insulted, dismissed, and derided him behind his back, or sometimes to his face. One entire plot point was even dedicated to him having to be a complete screwup on purpose... after which the characterization was apparently absorbed utterly and his Flanderization was complete. To hammer it home, the very last panel of the entire series is Kawachi getting beaten up for no reason.
  • Kageto. He's ignored by everyone in the series, despite keeping the store going while everyone jaunts off to the next Tournament Arc. He is so full of suck that he actually gets Yukino, the show's psychopathic Wolf in Sheep's Clothing, to pity him.
• In Yamada-kun and the Seven Witches:
  • Yamada gets the most of the slapstick, the harshest jokes and the blame directed at him.
  • Tsubaki is a Forgettable Character, and he is — especially in Yamada's absence — made to do a lot of work for the Supernatural Studies Club without much recognition.
  • Odagiri's plans always go wrong, people always manage (often accidentally) to deflate her ego when she is bragging, she is often made fun of, there is hardly any character who hasn't seen her underwear or naked body against her will, and she cannot get the guy she wants no matter how hard she tries.
  • Tamaki is fairly often ignored and made the laughing stock.
  • Kurosaki is often teased by Arisugawa and can't make Miyamura notice him no matter what he does.
• Yo-kai Watch :
  • Whisper gets no respect whatsoever from Nate and Jibanyan. His job as a Yo-kai butler is always hanging by a thread, with them being eager to replace him when given the opportunity. He's often on the receiving end of violent jokes.
  • Jibanyan is this to a lesser extent. He also gets beaten up often and whenever he's summoned first, it's usually to be the victim of Yo-kai's abilities that Nate is fighting.
  • Nate himself is this because Yo-kai often cause him trouble and ends up being possessed and/or humiliated by them. He has a crush on Katie, whom he tries to woo many times, but his chances are always ruined.
  • Indy Jaws gets this treatment in Episode 179. His sister gets turned into a human, forcing him to go into a life threatening adventure to turn her back into a Yo-Kai. There, he meets Jibanyan and Komasan, baffled to learn that they went on the same adventure to *become* human. Afraid to go alone, he convinces them that he's a "Great Great Great Adventurer" and teaches them to avoid traps like Boulders. Cue parody of that one scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark with the poor shark being repeatedly squashed by a boulder that chases him. It happens so frequently that the back side of his clothes gets torn off leaving his butt cheeks exposed.
    Jibanyan: I haven't seen an adventurer like this before.
  • Yo-kai Watch: Shadowside has Micchy, who, in addition to being a weak yokai unable to last long in any battle whatsoever, gets no respect from the other members of the Yokai Detective Agency and is the go-to guy for humiliating physical comedy and general mistreatment. His friends do genuinely care about him, though, despite all the snarky comments made at his expense, and he does prove to be useful to the agency at times (even if being useful often requires him to put himself in even more humiliating situations).
• Yotsuba&!:
  • When reading the manga, one will think "Poor Fuuka!" at least once every few pages because she frequently takes the brunt of Yotsuba's Brutal Honesty and Jumbo and Koiwai's teasings. She also seems to have terrible luck.
    • She gets stuck in the Koiwais' bathroom window when they first moved in, and she wakes up late when Yotsuba came to bring milk to her family, and misses the good stuff.
    • Her crush gets together with another girl, and Yotsuba's attempt to cheer her up makes things worse. And she also asks Yotsuba to keep it a secret — cue the next day, when she wakes up to Yotsuba writing a newspaper announcing that "Fuuka has heartache", and everyone in her family is reading it.
  • One will wish Yanda got more crap than he already gets because he brings it upon himself. Having Yotsuba as an archenemy means having Koiwai and Jumbo against him too, so his friends don't hesitate to go along with Yotsuba and call him unreliable and a bad guy, and will nearly always side with Yotsuba when he defends himself.
• Yu-Gi-Oh!:
  • Insector Haga and Dinosaur Ryuzaki are considered to be the top two duelists in Japan, until the main characters showed up, at least. They never quite make it back to their former glory, even after utilizing an Artifact of Doom. They end up constantly humiliated by the main characters, and even Filler villains.
  • Joey is constantly at the mercy of Kaiba's cruelty, ruthlessly humiliating him whenever he has the chance. For example, the Dub named a dueling monkey "Wheeler" (Joey's dubbed last name) and heavily implied Kaiba named the monkey.
  • Ryou isn't even in control of his body most of the time. Said body is being controlled by an evil spirit trying to kill his friends.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! GX:
  • After his Character Development from Jerk Jock, Jun Manjoume tends to have ridiculosly bad luck, from his unrequited crush on Asuka to being the first of the main cast to lose to the new villian. Occasionlly, he'll return to his badass self, but it always falls apart in the end, until his final steps of Character Development in Season 4.
  • While still better off than Manjoume, Sho still falls into this category quite often. He got into trouble alongside Judai after Chronos snitches on them sneaking into the abandoned dorm, and was often placed in death traps until Judai would save him in a duel.
• Akari Akaza from Yuruyuri. Poor girl.
• YuYu Hakusho:
  • The blue ogre is so pathetically treated by Koenma, we don't even learn his real name (George) until partway through season 3.
  • Kuwabara's first appearance sees him beaten into the pavement and establishes that he's been getting his ass kicked by Yusuke on a regular basis for quite some time, with no wins for him. He gets slapped by Kayko after Yusuke hugs her while possessing his body. A sadistic teacher ropes him into promising not to fight on pain of expulsion, and rival gangs take advantage to beat him up. And that's just for starters.
• Zombie Land Saga:
  • Franchouchou as a whole seems to face nothing but setbacks and misfortunes in their road to success. Ai considers everyone of them to have been Born Unlucky given that they all died young.
  • Poor Sakura usually gets the shortest end of the stick in most of the comical scenarios, to say nothing of how she died.
  • Kiichi Momozaki, Yugiri's lover in life, is victim to a series of slapstick misfortunes and gets the cold shoulder from everyone in Saga due to his lofty ideals.

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