Cain And Abel / Anime & Manga

Cain and Abel in anime and manga.

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• Akame ga Kill! sets up this dynamic early on between Akame and her sister Kurome, with Kurome (despite being the younger one) as the Cain to Akame's Abel. While the anime plays it straight, with Akame killing Kurome in their final showdown, the manga subverts it. In the latter, Wave manages to talk Kurome out of fighting Akame to the death by confessing his love for her and convincing her to escape The Empire with him, which leads to the sisters burying the hatchet.
• Altair: A Record of Battles: Egomaniac Sultan Balaban is the Cain and his kind-hearted younger brother Prince Beyazit is the Abel, however in a twist Beyazit ends up dethroning and killing Balaban to end his tyranny.
• In Area 88, the Asran civil war was started by two royal brothers — King Zak and Prince Abdael — with different visions for the future of their country. Tensions erupted years before the conflict when their father chose the younger brother (Zak) to succeed him.
• Attack on Titan: Zeke, aka the Beast Titan, turns out to be Eren Yeagar's older half-brother. However, nobody really knows which side he's on and he may be working for himself. He seems to be trying to save his brother from certain doom which their father is responsible for, although it's yet to be seen if Eren actually wants his help. After the Time Skip, the brothers became trusted accomplices, although it turns out that Eren's plan is more horrifying than Zeke's.
• In Betrayal Knows My Name, it turns out that Kanata, Yuki's childhood friend from the orphanage where he grew up, who was like an older brother to him, is actually Reiga, the Big Bad.
• In Blood+, a natural scientist finds Saya and Diva's mother's corpse and hatches the infants from their cocoons (it's complicated). As part of an experiment, he raises Saya as his own daughter and locks Diva in a tower to be a guinea pig. Saya is raised as a normal human girl; Diva is experimented on and denied anything more than a blanket and a meager amount of food. Saya grows up seeing humans as equals; Diva grows up seeing humans as torturers and also food. One day Saya meets Diva and lets her out. The resulting bloodbath started a conflict between the two sisters that lasted for over a century.
• Blue Exorcist:
  • The tragic aspect of this almost happens to Rin (Hot-Blooded Anti-Anti-Christ) and Yukio (genius exorcist and Rin's younger twin brother) when the former discovers he's the son of Satan and then learns that the latter knew it all along and now wants to kill him (they get better) but there are still hints that Yukio is more susceptible to the dark side.
  • Secondary case with the other two sons of Satan, Mephisto Pheles (AKA Johann Faust V) and Amaimon: Mephisto is outgoing and clownish (similar to The Millennium Earl, complete with umbrella) while Amaimon seems to be quieter and darker.
• The Unno twins of Brave10 are this. Nanakuma knows he's The Un-Favourite and that his parents only didn't kill him at birth because they weren't sure which twin would inherit the Water Crest eye. When it and the God's Jewel, go to the older twin Rokuro, he feels inferior, reinforced when his lord Nobuyuki is unhappy to see the "superior" Rokuro choose to serve Nobuyuki's brother instead. Eager to prove himself as a worthy page, Nanakuma is ready to kill Rokuro in a Duel to the Death in the tournament arc and take the God's Jewel for his own. By contrast, Rokuro doesn't really reciprocate or care...but would still try to kill him if ordered not to lose.
• In Chainsaw Man, Makima, the first of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, plotted to use the titular hero's Ret-Gone power in order to destroy her siblings and the concepts they embodied in order to create a World of Silence.
• Chrono Crusade uses this trope not once, not twice, but three times.
  • Aion and Chrono, as they often seem to be brothers… in the manga Aion and Chrono were close friends and described as "like brothers" — demons in the series are Bee People and don't exactly have the concept of family. Except Chrono and Aion were turned into demons when their (human) mother was pregnant with them — they're twins. Aion is rather obsessed with getting Chrono back on his side, although when he refuses Aion gleefully tortures him for it. The anime version makes the pair have a more distant relationship, but also implies that they're two sides of the same coin.
  • Meanwhile, Rosette made a contract with Chrono in order to save her brother, Joshua, after he was kidnapped by Aion. It turns out that Joshua is radically devoted to Aion (partially because he's been given power that drives him mad), which causes the pair to fight… when Joshua remembers Rosette is his sister at all.
  • Satella reveals early on that she's searching for her missing sister. Guess who also happens to be working for Aion? Her sister Florette, now called "Fiore". When this is revealed the pair naturally ends up fighting each other.

• Code Geass:
  • Lelouch and Suzaku were childhood friends, reunited and fighting for each others' countries, not their own. Lelouch knows at first that Suzaku is a Britannian soldier, but he doesn't know how important he is to them. Similarly, Suzaku suspects that Lelouch is Zero from when he first meets Zero (when he says, "An old friend used to say that about me,"), but his suspicions are under about twenty layers of denial. When they finally do find out the truth, it's after a Wham Episode neither of them can recover from...
  • There's also the fact that Lelouch is actually a prince of The Empire that he's rebelling against, and as such, has to fight several of his siblings. None of them (save Euphemia, who wanted to make peace instead of fighting) had as close of a relationship with Lelouch as Suzaku did, though. But Lelouch is able to use things he knows as their brother against them — such as Cornelia's obsession with Euphemia. Unfortunately, that goes both ways once he's dealing with Schneizel.
• In Corsair, Jean-Hughes blamed Canale for everything that went wrong with their family and tried to kill him several times as a child (thinking he succeeded). When he finds out Canale is, in fact, still alive he continues to plan to do him off. While Canale has a lot of blood on his hands at this point, Jean-Hughes is clearly the "evil" brother and in the end Canale kills him instead.
• In Cain Saga, Earl Cain is, ironically, the Abel to his psychopathic and illegitimate elder half-brother Jizabel.
• In Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, during the later parts of the Infinity Castle arc, it is revealed as part of the quite important backstory for a certain legendary demon slayer; the battle against Kokushibo reveals that he was the human known as Michikatsu Tsugikuni, the eldest twin brother to Yoriichi Tsugikuni, the Sun Breathing user. He became jealous of Yoriichi because he had much greater natural talent and skill than he could ever compete with, even though he was taught daily in swordsmanship while Yoriichi had not trained a day. He was even astonished that his brother managed to survive with a Demon Slayer Mark during their battle 400 years ago and that even at the age of 85, Yoriichi's skill and physical prowess hadn't dulled in the slightest.
• Tsubasa and Souma Ohgami from Destiny of the Shrine Maiden, though Tsubasa isn't really a bad guy and undergoes a rather spectacular Heel–Face Turn late in the series. What's more, technically, they are both Necks of Orochi, only that Souma has a good reason to fight against his "heritage".
• Heine is the Abel to Giovanni's Cain in Dogs: Bullets & Carnage, although they aren't blood brothers but were simply raised in the same research facility by the same Mad Scientist "mother".
• Dragon Ball Z:
  • Goku and Raditz. Raditz is disgusted with Goku for Going Native on Earth and is perfectly willing to kill him. Goku, while reluctant to kill Raditz, eventually resorts to Taking You with Me.
  • Cooler, Freeza's Stronger Sibling, notes that they would have been this sooner or later if Goku hadn't beaten Freeza first.
• D.Gray-Man: MAJOR SPOILER ALERT!! You have been warned. Nea and Mana are revealed to be twin brothers and the result of the split of the original millennium earl. The trope is zigzagged here, Nea is firstly the Cain as he attempted to kill Mana to take his place, slaughtering all the other Noah but Road in the process. However, in the final confrontation, this is Mana, the Abel who eventually killed Nea turning the trope around. The trope becomes glaring when you realize that the second name of the woman who raised the twins is Eve and the name of the original Earl of Millennium who beget them is called Adam

• Agon and Unsui of Eyeshield 21 seem to be set up as this at first, with the younger sibling being blessed with unlimited talent and the elder having to suffer hellish training just to be half as skilled. However, while there's definitely some tension between them, the older brother ends up being more dutiful to the younger rather than hateful.
• Fairy Tail:
  • Natsu and Zeref, once the revelation comes out. In a twist, however, Zeref is the one who has more brotherly feelings towards Natsu despite being the Cain while Natsu is the one who sees him as more of an enemy despite being the Abel. This is due to the fact that Zeref became the Cain in part because of the horrible things that happened to him in his quest to bring Natsu Back from the Dead, while Natsu doesn't remember his past with Zeref due to the method of his resurrection. There's also the little fact that Zeref has become an evil wizard bent on killing off humanity, which makes them automatically enemies, and Zeref wants Natsu to kill him to end his curse.
  • Subverted by both Hoteye and Angel of the dark guild Oracion Seis, who are the older siblings of Wally Buchanan of the Tower of Heaven and Yukino Agria of Sabertooth. Hoteye (Richard) joined the guild originally because he wanted to find Wally and was obsessed with wealth because he thought it was the only way to reunite with him, while Angel (Sorano) originally became a slave because she protected Yukino and despite turning evil still loves her, while Yukino has nothing but good memories of her sister.
  • As he was adopted by Ur before her unfortunate death, Grey was technically the adoptive brother of Ultear, creating one of the few examples of using different genders for this trope, and it was further unique in that the brother was Abel and the sister was Cain. When they first actually met, while Ultear did admit that they were techinically siblings, they instantly disliked each other, Ultear hated Grey because she mistakingly thought Ur abandoned her in favor of him, and Grey understandably thought the dark mage was a disgrace to his adoptive mothers' legacy, with all of the crimes she had committed. Of course, she later did a Heel–Face Turn after being defeated by him, and they reconciled upon meeting each other again as she did with the rest of Fairy Tail, though they didn't treat each other like family. However, Ultear later sacrificed most of her lifespan, turning her into an old woman, to reverse Grey's death during the Dragon attack at the end of the Grand Magic Games, and Grey aganized over her lifespan sacrifice when he found out, indicating they perhaps view each other as family after all.
• Fist of the North Star: The villains, Raoh and Jagi, are the series's Cain to Kenshiro and Toki's Abel. Though Kenshiro and Jagi's relationship is more direct (with the former killing the latter instead of the other way around), Noble Demon Raoh subverts this. While he defeated Toki in combat, Raoh sheds enormous amounts of Tender Tears, knowing his condition due to radiation sickness. Raoh and Kenshiro also have their first and final battles. While the first fight between the two is seemingly played straight, the final one isn't. Raoh held his brother's face like a true big brother after his defeat.
• Honoo no Alpen Rose:
  • Jean-Jacques is the Cain to Lundi's Abel. Lundi is a self-sacrificing, kind soul who's willing to die to save Jeudi, while Alfred aids Count Gourmant. However, he is disgusted by the Count's villainy after he expresses a desire to plunge Switzerland into World War II eventually turns to the side of good.
  • Mathilda Toulonchamp is a Manipulative Bitch who seeks to defraud the Dunants and poisons her adoptive mother, but her big sister Madeleine is against the Nazis, disowns her father for being an Arms Dealer and joins the resistance movement.
• Flame of Recca: Kurei (Cain) to his younger half-brother, Recca (Abel). Kurei despises Recca to the core and wants to kill him, blaming his younger brother's existence as the prime source of his and his birth mother, Reina's, miserable life. In the end, after Recca calls his older brother out and Kurei finally dares to turn against his ruthless adoptive father, Kouran Mori, the two brothers eventually become cordial despite remain distant.
• Fullmetal Alchemist:
  • In Fullmetal Alchemist (2003), the homunculus Envy turns out to be the result of attempted resurrection of Hohenheim and Dante's son, making him Ed and Al's older (by a few hundred years) brother. This is foreshadowed repeatedly through the series, with much of Envy's actions being a result of his, well, Envy of Ed and Al for being their father's favourites, as well as a burning hatred for his father. Envy even ends up killing Ed (albeit temporarily) like the Trope Namer, for bonus points in this trope.
  • The trope is in action in a truly bizarre way in the manga, where Big Bad Father was created from Hohenheim's blood, making him Ed and Al's spiritual and biological brother, and his children, the Homunculi, their nieces and nephews.
• Kagura and Kamui of Gintama, estranged siblings who would probably have gotten along were Kamui not such a jerkass (trying to kill your dad then disappearing for years is not the way to forge strong family bonds). As it is, Kagura considers all their bonds severed and Kamui seems to want little to do with her.
• Glass Fleet: Vetti and Cleo. Though they don't know they're related until the very end of the series, combining this with the Separated at Birth trope.
• In God Mars, the relationship of Takeru with his brother Ma, which fate would have it, pitted the two against each other in the war.
• Gundam has a lot of them:
  • Gundam SEED gets Kira and Athrun, who're the childhood friends version. Unusual in that neither is really a villain, and both end up in a third faction after both sides they worked with turn out to be villainous. Though not before a climactic and nearly fatal final duel halfway through the series, naturally.
    • There's also Mu La Flaga and his father's clone Rau Le Creuset; one is The Ace, the other the Big Bad.
  • Kyouji Kasshu and his little brother Domon from G Gundam… Or so we think.
  • Ginias Sahalin from Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team. We meet him as Aina's caring-but-aloof brother. Twelve episodes later we bid farewell an obsessive, murderous mad scientist who forces his once-beloved sister to pilot his giant mechanical monstrosity, tells her that "Love is an illusion', produced by your body's glands!", and then shoots her. (This is between blowing up/poisoning his allies, working his minions to death, and destroying perfectly good viewscreens.) She doesn't really object when her Main Character boyfriend tells her "Sorry, but I have to kill your brother now", even when she's not exactly happy either.
  • Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn: Alberto is The Half brother and Cain to Banagher and his Abel.
  • In the original Mobile Suit Gundam we have Kycilia and Gihren Zabi, a pair of cold-blooded Manipulative Bastards and social climbers who are perfectly willing to kill one another if it means ascending to control of the family. More like Cain and Cain really.
• In Hetalia: Axis Powers, the characters of China and Japan enact this trope in their Back Story, with China as the Abel (despite being the elder) and Japan as the Cain. Japan was raised by China as his younger brother, yet never really considered himself his brother, and in the end, he injures China with his katana and abandons him. Even when they're shown later to be in more civil terms, the bad blood is not exactly gone.
  • The character of "Korea" represents only South Korea, due to the obvious Real Life issues surrounding the two countries in the peninsula. When fanworkers create an Original Character representing North Korea (sometimes male, sometimes female), they and South Korea end up recreating this trope as well.
  • Due to the nature of the show, there's really a lot of this going on: America and England have this dynamic in America's flashback about his revolution (which England is still upset about), too, and anytime fanwork depicts a conflict between two related nations it becomes this very quickly.
  • Fanon characters 2P!America and 2P!Canada are generally depicted like this, too, with 2P!Canada as the Abel to 2P!America's Cain.
• Higurashi: When They Cry involves this with the twin Sonozaki sisters, Mion and Shion, as one of the two is the only one (besides those who already knew the whole story) who doesn't get infected with the Hate Plague, while the other, when infected, throws her conscience out the window even before she loses her mind and racks up the highest body count in the series besides the instigator herself. Yes, the elder is the "evil" one—the murderer was Shion pretending to be Mion most of the time, but because of a mix-up in their childhoods, the elder girl, originally named Mion, ended up living as Shion due to a Twin Switch, so Mion was pretending to be Shion pretending to be Mion. This relationship is only in two arcs (though it's implied to have occurred several times prior). Usually, the twins are friendly with one another. It just takes little changes to twist their familial affection into bitterness.
• In Honoo no Alpen Rose we have the sibling version with the Courtot brothers. Older brother Jean-Paul is a Cold Sniper hitman Cain, younger brother Lundi is an Action Survivor Abel.
  • In the manga, there's also the Toulonchamp sisters. Older sister Madeleine is the Abel, while little sister Mathilda is the Cain.
• Inuyasha:
  • As a result of Inuyasha claiming the sword Sesshoumaru's been pursuing for years, their Sibling Rivalry escalates into this trope for a while, mainly due to Sesshoumaru's belief that Inuyasha's claim proves he's The Un-Favourite he's always secretly feared he was. This is eventually resolved.
  • Ginka and Kinka are from a youkai race where two heads (with associated identities and personalities) are born to a single body and one personality must kill the other (and devour the defeated head) before they reach adulthood because it's the only way their race can survive. Unfortunately for everyone, Ginka and Kinka have made it to adulthood, both alive, both still firmly attached to each other, and both still trying to kill the other. Their fight can lay entire villages to waste. It's so bad they even have to negotiate when they go to sleep and for how long just in case one takes advantage of the situation.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
  • Jonathan Joestar and Dio Brando in Phantom Blood. While they are not biologically related, Dio was adopted when they were both young, and proves himself to be the most hated enemy of Jonathan and his descendants, especially after becoming undead. Dio also considers Jonathan his only ever Worthy Opponent, and admits that he held some affection for his brother. While Dio would survive to fight Jonathan's great-great-grandson Jotaro, Jonathan dies holding Dio's decapitated (but alive) head, admitting to himself that for all their hatred of each other, he can't help but love his undead brother.
  • Weather Report and Enrico Pucci in Stone Ocean. Pucci started off as a pleasant person, but upon learning that Weather was dating their sister, Perla, due to Weather being Separated at Birth, Pucci hires a detective who he's unaware is part of the Ku Klux Klan, resulting in Weather being lynched and Perla committing suicide. Weather ends up holding nothing but animosity for Pucci, resulting in him removing Weather's memories. The ironic thing is that Pucci, the Abel, ends up being taught what Heaven is by Dio, who was previously a Cain, and in the end, despite Weather being a Cain, Pucci ends up being the one killing him. Though, the Cain and Abel trope is then played straight through Emporio Alniño inheriting the Weather Report Stand and using it to kill Pucci.
• Yukari and Kuroh in K — Yukari turned on their master/adoptive father. In the movie that takes place between Seasons 1 and 2, he returns as a Green Clansman, and Kuroh, as a Silver Clansman, is his enemy. Played with in that Yukari really does love Kuroh and wants to see him grow and become stronger, and regrets that they have to be enemies. When Kuroh finally defeats him, Yukari's reaction is simply "... beautiful." Kuroh's refusal to kill Yukari after that is very heartwarming.
• Subaru and the Numbers Cyborg Nove in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS, a case where the good one is the older sibling by virtue of being an earlier Quint clone. Of course, this being Nanoha, this stops being the case by the end of the season.
• In Mikado no Shihō, even though Shiki is older, he is the Abel to Rinshō's Cain.
• Johan Liebert and Nina Fortner from Monster.
• Tiger (older) and Gray Wolf (younger) in Monster Rancher. The roles are inverted with Tiger being the Abel to Gray Wolf's Cain. It's tragic because Tiger was a well-intentioned Aloof Big Brother who wanted to toughen his brother up. Unfortunately, this only fueled Gray Wolf's inferiority complex. And once Moo captures Gray Wolf, he magnifies these insecurities to the point Gray Wolf becomes a full-blown Green-Eyed Monster who wants to kill his own brother, much to Tiger's horror.
• Prince Kaito from Murder Princess is of The Evil Prince variety. Though the actual Princess Alita (his younger sister) doesn't really fight him, as she previously switched bodies with the Action Girl Falis who handles the fighting part for her.
• Michio Yuki from Osamu Tezuka's manga, MW, has this kind of relationship with his lookalike older brother, Tamanojo Kawamoto.
• My Hero Academia:
  • The whole plot originates from the conflict between All For One and his younger brother, the first wielder of One For All. The younger brother, Yoichi Shigaraki was not strong enough to prevail over All For One and so he entrusted his powers and mission to future generations of heroes. Izuku Midoriya and Tomura Shigaraki are the heirs to One For All and All For One respectively. Interestingly, the spirits of both brothers exist within their respective successors. The sadistic All For One encourages Shigaraki's drive to destroy anything that stands in his way, eventually robbing him of his free will, while the righteous Yoichi is impressed with Midoriya's resolve to save people and supports him on his journey.
  • Chapter 290 reveals that the villain Dabi is actually Touya Todoroki, the eldest son of Endeavor, thus making him the Cain to Shoto's Abel.
• My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!: In the ''Fortune Lover'' game, Catarina was obnoxious, petty and cruel and took it out on her adoptive little brother, who was a sweet little kid. He ended up growing into a playboy, but still basically a decent guy. In the bad ending for his route, he kills Catarina in retaliation for wounding Maria. Due to the reincarnated Catarina throwing the game's plot Off the Rails, their relationship is much healthier in the story proper.
• Naruto:
  • Once, Sasuke Uchiha wanted nothing more than to be like his talented and caring older brother Itachi. Then, the latter seemingly snapped and wiped out the rest of the Uchiha clan, leaving Sasuke with nothing but his life, some harsh parting words, and a burning desire for vengeance against Itachi. After Itachi dies in the middle of fighting Sasuke, it's revealed that the former did it all as part of a deal to spare Sasuke; when Itachi is briefly resurrected, the two brothers manage to finally reconcile.
  • To some degree, Hiashi and Hizashi Hyuga had this dynamic; because the former was born a few seconds first, he automatically became the heir to the clan, which Hizashi always strongly resented him for. Nonetheless, Hizashi still willingly sacrificed himself to save Hiashi's life.
  • Hiashi's daughter Hinata and Hizashi's son Neji also have this dynamic despite technically being cousins (although Hinata thinks of Neji as a brother). Neji is quite bitter toward the younger Hinata since she's the clan heiress despite his own much greater talent, and initially sees her as almost completely worthless until he loses to Naruto and rethinks his fatalist worldview. Hinata's relationship with her younger sister Hanabi is not this trope, as both sisters love each other very much despite their rivalry.
  • It's later revealed that the conflict between the two founding clans of the Hidden Leaf Village was based on this trope. Essentially, the Uchiha and Senju clans are descended respectively from the elder and younger sons of the Sage of the Six Paths; after the Sage picked the younger to be his heir, the elder declared war on his brother, with their descendants continuing the fight despite no longer remembering the reason for it. On a side note, the two brothers are also the grandchildren of a woman who ate the forbidden fruit from the God Tree, like how the Trope Namers were the sons of Eve.
• One Piece:
  • Marshall D. Teach and Thatch. On the crew of the great pirate Whitebeard, all of his crewmates are considered his adopted children; likewise, they consider him "father," and one-another brothers. Since Teach and Thatch were crewmates, the former killing the latter players this trope surprisingly well.
  • The reason Trafalgar Law has it in for Doflamingo is that Doflamingo murdered his own younger brother Corazon, whom Law deeply admired. Ironically, Doflamingo had been grooming Law to take Corazon's place in his crew.
• Hana and Ageha from Papillon Hana To Chou: Hana is a popular city girl and a little manipulative while Ageha is plain country girl and walked all over. When Hana steals Ageha's potential love interest, Ageha is nearly Driven to Suicide. Their mom is a Well Done Daughter Gal to boot: Ageha was sent to the country because her constant crying aggravated her post-partum depression. As Ageha gains confidence she and her mom's relationship improves while Hana's behavior gets worse: Her latest scheme to ruin her sister's life caused Ageha's current boyfriend to break up with her, although they shouldn't have been together in the first place (eh, if he couldn't tell them apart he's probably not worth it anyway)
• Penguindrum: Kanba is the Cain to Shouma's Abel, largely because Kanba is in love with Himari, their (un)related sister and believes he has an obligation to protect her but Shouma saved her when she was younger (and he also saved Kanba when they met), and also disagrees about how Kanba has become more and more embittered, desperate and extreme in his methods in order to save Himari while Shouma is much more honourable and still believes things can be done without such extremes. It leads to QUITE the showdown, in which both guys get into a fistfight before the last episode sees them face off.
  • There is also Masako who is an Abel herself to Kanba, as his twin sister who desperately wants him to come back home after he made a deal with their Disappeared Dad to protect Masako and their little brother Mario from danger.
  • Kanba in general is portrayed as a much more sympathetic version of Cain in general, as his reasons to be in such a position are less about his own benefit and more about genuinely but VERY misguidedly wishing to save Himari.
• The two families in Phantom Dream are the Otoya and the Gekka. Saga’s descendants have spent the last thousand years fighting his elder brother Hira who used his powers to turn people into jaki. It goes even deeper once it’s revealed the angelic Saga never loved his brother and only did things like let him outside of his room and told Suigekka about Hira hoping to have her kill Hira. He reveals in the final volume that he had no intention to save his brother, but rather kill him.
• Primitive Boy Ryu: While Kiba is the Team Dad to Ryu, Ran and Don, his brother Taka is a violent psychopath who wants to kill Ryu for his skin colour.
• Princess Resurrection. All the royal siblings virtually are fighting to the death for the throne except for the main character Hime who has no interest in it.
• Pops up in Season 2 of Princess Tutu, when Mytho becomes tainted with Raven's blood and performs a Face–Heel Turn. His best friend Fakir is constantly forced to fight against him, even though they were practically raised as brothers.
• Belphegor and Rasiel from Reborn! (2004), possibly subverted in the fact that Rasiel isn't dead and his future self allied with the Millefiore.
• It's hard to avoid in Rozen Maiden, where There Can Be Only One of seven sisters that survives (unless that cryptic statement at the end of Season 2 has anything to say about it). Suigintou and Shinku in particular have exactly this relationship, although who is the betrayer and who is the good underdog switches around in different points of the timeline.
• The Rising of the Shield Hero: Both the princesses of Melromarc fit this trope to a T. Older sister Malty is a manipulative sociopath who loves to use her good looks to get people to trust her and then betray them at a moment's notice, all For the Evulz. By contrast, her younger sister Melty is a sweet and kindhearted girl who genuinely wants what's best for the kingdom. In fact, the fact Melty was named heir apparent to the throne by their mother leads to Malty at one point set up a plot to murder her (but thankfully fails).
• The main conflict in Saber Marionette R is the prince of Romana Star-Face wanting to kill his little brother Junior, making Star-Face Cain and Junior Abel. Unlike the original Cain and Abel, it's Star-Face the one who dies, though not on Junior's hands.
• In Saint Seiya, Kanon (younger) and Saga (older). In the beginning, Kanon was evil and Saga was good, but Saga went insane for having a Superpowered Evil Side (comes with being the *Gemini* Saint, of all Gold Saints) and turned evil. Kanon *knew* his brother would become evil and used it to his advantage, staging an epic Gambit Roulette that covers several arcs of the story (two in the manga, three in the anime), where Saga was the first Big Bad and Kanon was the Man Behind the Man from both him and his boss. However, later Kanon pulls a Heel–Face Turn and joins the good guys, while Saga turns evil… apparently.
  • Phenix Ikki (older) and Andromeda Shun (younger) were at first like this. Still, Ikki pulls a Heel–Face Turn early in the story and joins the Five-Man Band.
  • Apparently, Kurumada loves this trope very much because now in Next Dimension we get the real Abel and Cain, and once again Cain is the older one.
  • The filler Asgard saga adds the Mizar Saints, Syd (Abel) and Bud (Cain), who were Separated at Birth twins. It ends in massive tragedy — and with both of them dead, right after they finally sort-of made peace.
• Saint Seiya: The Lost Canvas is rife with this.
  • Sasha and Alone, a brother and a sister who are actually reincarnations of Athena and Hades and are at war with each other for the fate of humans. Sasha is Abel and Alone is Cain.
  • Tenma and Alone play the childhood friends version of this, with Tenma as the Abel and Alone as the Cain.
  • Yuzuriha and her younger brother Tokusa, who awakened as a Specter after killing their parents.
  • Another childhood friends version comes into play with Aquarius Degel and Sea Dragon Unity, who decided it would be cool to revive Poseidon. Unity eventually has a Heel Realization, but Pandora wrecks everything, and Degel has to freeze himself along with the entire city of Atlantis to prevent Poseidon's awakening.
  • As usual, the Gemini Saints end up playing this trope. It's subverted in that, while Defteros was treated badly in the Sanctuary, it was Aspros who became the Evil Twin, due to a growing fear of Defteros' determination to become his brother's equal. He tried to use Defteros as a pawn to kill the Pope (no, not that Pope), and wound up getting killed by Defteros. When he was revived by Alone, he and Defteros had their face-off, and Defteros made a Heroic Sacrifice to restore Aspros' sanity. When Aspros realized what had happened…
• Teru and Saki were once close while growing up, but an incident during their childhood, the full details of which have not been revealed yet, resulted in their parents separating, each taking custody of one of their daughters, and Teru hating Saki enough to stop talking with her and even deny having a sister. Saki's goal in the series is to face Teru in mahjong and somehow reconcile with her.

• Servamp is an aversion of the bad big bro stereotype. The Cain in this case, Tsubaki, is actually the youngest brother from all the Servamps, and he's the Cain to his seven elder siblings.
• Asakura Yoh and his older twin brother, Hao, in Shaman King are a very interesting example of this. Originally one soul reincarnated twice before in a mission to become Shaman King to save the world from humanity, the third incarnation split the soul into between the twins, with Hao taking the majority of it, and thus retaining the motivations and powers of the original incarnation. Neither brother has a real interest in harming one another and only seek to fight because of the stipulations of the tournament. But Hao is, otherwise, quite antagonistic.
• Kazuya and Kyoshiro from Shattered Angels. No, Kazuya doesn't commit any redeeming acts like Tsubasa.
• Sisters Rally and Rosa Cheyenne fall into this in Silent Möbius. In this case, the elder sister (Rally) is the good one.
• In Snow White with the Red Hair the current head of the Bergatt family is a vicious, cruel man who is controlling his younger brothers out of fear. By the time any of the main cast learn Touka's true plot to assassinate Zen Wisteria he's decided to kill his brothers for daring to defy him and his brothers have decided to kill him because he's gone too far and they feel it's necessary, and the right thing to do.
• Soul Eater has Asura (Cain) and Death the Kid (Abel). As this is revealed to Kid only in the finale, he barely has time to deal with this fact before his 'older brother' is imprisoned once more. Up until this point he had thought Asura was merely his father's adversary. Recognising that a fight between Anthropomorphic Personifications could potentially cause Metaphysical Annihilation if either invokes their Reality Warper abilities, Kid rejects his brother's We Can Rule Together offer and decides to Take a Third Option by siding with humanity.
  • Earlier there was also Masumune (Cain) and Tsubaki (Abel). Despite growing together as kids, Masamune was resentful of Tsubaki having nearly all weapon forms in the Nakatsukasa Family while he only had the Uncanny Sword, so he went on a quest to absorb human souls and become stronger at the prize of sanity, and this in turn prompted Tsubaki to join the DWMA in order to track him. After a fated battle, Masamune dies on peaceful terms with Tsubaki.
• The sisters Harulu and Karala from Space Runaway Ideon are an archetypal example: the older, more socially awkward but decisive Harulu grows jealous of the dreamy, honest but romantically successful Karala and shoots her to death, only realizing her true reasons afterwards.
• In Spiral, Ayumu is struggling with the shadow of his elder brother Kiyotaka, although they don't actually fight until the end of the manga. Also Kanone and the other Blade Children, as they were childhood friends (and, again only in the manga, actually also all half-siblings.
• Str.A.In.: Strategic Armored Infantry: Sara is happy, bright, and has an enormous case of Big Brother Worship. Then Ralph, said big brother, turns out to be a psycho that wants to kill all humans, starting with the entire population of Sara's school. It all goes downhill from there.
• Tekkaman Blade. The English dub (Teknoman) actually names one of the brothers Cain, and Tekkaman Blade II includes the biblical Cain and Abel story in its title crawl. This is also slightly reversed: the elder brother (Takaya/Blade aka Tekkaman Blade) is good, the younger brother (Shinya/Cain aka Evil/Sabre) is evil.
  • It should also be mentioned that, in the original, the Big Bad, Kengo/Conrad aka Tekkaman Omega, was also Blade and Evil's older brother. And their youngest sister, Miyuki/Shara aka Tekkaman Rapier, is the gentle Sacrificial Lamb who chooses to die through Heroic Sacrifice rather than through her fatal illness.
• In Tenrou Sirius the Jaeger, Yuliy and his brother Mikhail are essentially this. Yuliy is the Abel of the group considering that he is the hero of the story who works for the Jaegers to kill all the evil vampires while Mikhail is the Cain since he turned himself into a vampire.
• In Transformers: Robots in Disguise, Optimus Prime's brother Ultra Magnus shows up on Earth with a serious grudge over the Matrix of Leadership having gone to Optimus instead of him and quite a bit of firepower:
  Optimus: He's grown a little bitter over the years.
  Side Burn: Bitter? Bitter is not sending you postcards, but this wacko... He knocked you off a cliff!
• Trapped in a Dating Sim: The World of Otome Games is Tough for Mobs:
  • Royal Brat Rutart Bartfort, first in line of succession for the Bartfort Floating Continent barony, is antagonistic towards his "half-brothers" Leon and Nicks, being The Resenter to their fame and success. Of course, Rutart is a Bastard Bastard of his mother Zola's affair, but that was (supposed to be) a secret. In both the main story and Alternate Timeline Marie Route, Rutart ends up attacking his "brothers" and failing.
  • Pierre Faviel from Alzer and his brother seem mutually antagonistic. The Japanese Delinquents styled Pierre has taken up supporting Sky Pirates and trying to drum up a Pretext for War to get glory for himself, in the hopes of succeeding instead of his older brother. After Leon is done putting a stop to his schemes with humiliation and Extreme Mêlée Revenge , Pierre ends up locked up in a torture dungeon by his older brother for his trouble.
• Trigun: Vash and Knives.
  • These two are notably twins with no idea who's older, and the Japanese word they use for their relationship is the incredibly vague "brethren" but because of the conventions of this trope, many fans tend to treat Knives as the elder brother. Knives certainly seems to have decided he's the older one. Unusually, neither really wants to kill his brother, but their opposing philosophies (Knives is a genocidal mass murderer, Vash is a pacifist) bring them into conflict.
  • Given the vague Christian references that get tossed in, the anime scene that confuses who's supposed to be the Cain here was probably intentional: shortly after Knives kills pretty much everyone else, little Vash stands over him at night with a big rock trying to work up the nerve to bash his sleeping brains out. He doesn't manage it.
• Trinity Blood: The battling twins at the center of the story are literally named, "Cain and Abel." Care to guess which of these is the villain and which is the hero? (And to REALLY beat the biblical reference over your head, their little Crusnik "sister" is, of course, named Seth. And their common maternal figure is named Lilith.) Subverted in that it was Abel who first went after Cain because he murdered Lilith.
• You've got a Big, Screwed-Up Family trapped in a mansion possibly murdering each other… Given the context, it would've been astounding if Umineko: When They Cry could have gone without invoking this trope. It's been invoked at a bare minimum, three times.
• Fugil (Cain) and Lux (Abel) in Undefeated Bahamut Chronicle. Fugil used to be one of the few members of the royal family to be nice to Lux, encouraging his talents and eventually helping him in a rebellion against their tyrannical family and country. But while Lux fought with the intention of sparing the royal family and the army, Fugil massacred them all and criticised Lux for his idealism. He then vanished for several years. When he reappears, Fugil is helping the villains yet also provides help to Lux on one occasion, still with the same condescending air as before. Later revelations from the light novels make this even more complex, as it turns out that Fugil isn't actually Lux's brother and he claims to be trying to make Lux into a hero who can save the world. Moreover, depending on who you choose to believe, he's either a Fallen Hero who used to be like Lux before becoming bitter, or still has heroic goals but is ruthless in carrying them out.
• Vampire Knight: Averted with Zero and Ichiru. Though Ichiru did grow significantly twisted in his acts and went against Zero, he didn't become a villain, and was revealed in the end to still hold some genuine affectionate feelings towards Zero, ultimately giving his life to him in a very touching last moment.
• Folken Lacour de Fanel (Cain) and Van Slanzar de Fanel (Abel) from The Vision of Escaflowne, though Folken goes for a Heel–Face Turn mid-series. After all he had done, though, it still takes a lot for Van to forgive him. This is a slight variation in that there's nothing personal about it from Folken's point of view: they just happened to wind up on different sides of an ideological dispute. It's played straighter in The Movie, which casts Folken as a straight-up Green-Eyed Monster Cain over not being named heir.
• Ditto with an older example — Voltes V: Prince Heinel and Kenichi Go. And unlike in most cases of this trope, they have much in common, personality-wise.
• X/1999:
  • Kamui and Fuuma, in another friendship variety.
  • The sisters Hinoto and Kanoe count as well. The younger one, Kanoe, is the evil one though.
• In Yu-Gi-Oh! GX, Manjyome hated both his brothers. They originally had a plan to Take Over the World via business, politics, and Duel Monsters, with him providing the last. However, Manjyome really never had any say in the matter. Eventually, he realized he was just a pawn to them, and quit. He got his revenge against them in spades; when they attempted to take over Duel Academy on their own, they demanded a duel from him with him using only monsters that had Attack Points of 500 or less. Manjyome took this one step further, using only monsters with zero Attack Points, and still won, humiliating them beyond belief.
  • Another example from GX is Shou Marufuji (Syrus Truesdale) and his older brother, Ryo (Zane). While Ryo is more cold and antagonistic, Shou is the absolutely sweet and adorkable best friend of the series' main character, Judai (Jaden). While Ryo does actually care about his brother on some level and can be very protective of him in his own messed up way, he also dislikes his younger brother, despite the fact that Ryo practically worships him. Later on, after being corrupted in Season 2, attempts to pretty much flat out KILL Shou in a duel. Even though he gets better, he becomes totally emotionally distant from Shou and the two pretty much never acknowledge each other. It turns out that Ryo has a fatal heart condition and, when he dies during a duel later on, he basically tells Judai that he's Shou's real brother and needs to take care of him. (In the dub, at least) Ryo does eventually come back to life near the end of the series, but his disease has progressed to the point where he's in a near-constant unconscious state and, on the rare occasions that he is awake, he's more or less a wheel-chair bound vegetable in need of round-the-clock medical care. By the end, Shou actually ends up taking a level in jerkass because he has grown bitter over having to be his disabled brother's caretaker and downright despises Ryo for his embarrassingly pathetic state. This is taken up to eleven in the manga where, despite still being willing to look out for Shou and save him when necessary, Ryo downright HATES his younger brother and makes no secret of it. In fact, despite the fact that Ryo is a beloved and famous duelist (and the top student in all of the duel academy's history), Shou never tells anyone that he is Ryo's little brother until he is nearly expelled from the academy due to a misunderstanding and his friends accidentally find out. In fact, in the manga, Ryo was very angry at Shou for getting accepted into the academy and despised the fact that his brother wanted to follow in his footsteps. In a flashback, after finding out about Ryo's acceptance, Ryo angrily states to Shou that he (Shou) isn't any brother of his and, before leaving, tells him that his kindness and innocence will destroy him one day. It's no wonder that Shou becomes attached to judai and reveres him as a big-brother-figure, despite the fact that they are the same age.
  • A far worse example in the franchise was Lotten, the main antagonist of the Crashtown arc in Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds, who double-crossed his brother Malcolm to take over Crashtown. Of course, Malcolm was a crook himself, but Lotten was likely the only person he trusted. Bad idea; this was truly a case of No Honor Among Thieves.
• In the original Yu-Gi-Oh!, Rishid (Odion) and Marik Ishtar were nearly this as children. When Marik was bitten by a poisonous snake as a toddler while Rishid was playing with him, their father beat Rishid up badly and threatened to kill him if Marik died. Rishid has what could quite possibly be a mental breakdown and blames Marik for their father (who is only Rishid's adoptive father) abusing and hating him (and possibly also for the death of their mother, who died giving birth to Marik) and enters his younger brother's room with a dagger, intending to kill Marik while he is unconscious. Before he is able to do it, however, Marik begins to wake up and, not realizing what Rishid is about to do, calls out for his big brother. Rishid is shocked into hesitating and asks Marik what he just called him. Marik says that he had always thought of Rishid as his big brother, which causes Rishid to drop his weapon in shock. Rishid warns Marik to not say such things because it would make their father angry, but little Marik reaches out to hold Rishid's hand and tells him that it doesn't matter what their father would do to him because he would always love Rishid and think of him as his big brother. Rishid realizes that he just almost killed the only person who cared about him and bursts into tears as he hugs his little brother. It's implied that part of the reason that Rishid is so loyal to his little brother, despite his immoral actions, is because he feels regret and shame over attempting to kill him. Either way, it's pretty much outright stated that Rishid stayed with Marik because he loved his younger brother and felt like he owed him his loyalty because Marik choose to make him his brother, so they successfully subvert this trope.
  • Even though the English dub cuts out the murder attempt above, Which only occurs in the Japanese anime and the manga, the trope still appears and is also subverted. In it, Odion (Rishid) more or less raised Marik and did genuinely love his younger brother, but was also jealous of the fact that Marik was the biological child of their parents and held a grudge against him for that and their father's mistreatment of Odion. The snakebite scene still happens in the English version but, instead of trying to murder him, a noticeably angry Odion sits next to Marik's bed and waits for him to wake up. When Marik wakes up, he apologizes for being the reason that Odion gets beaten by their father and, like in the original, says that he loves him as his big brother, which causes Odion to let go of his hatred towards Marik.
• Zatch Bell!: Zatch and Zeno (Gash and Zeon in the original). Zeno hates Zatch because the latter received the powerful "Bao" spells. In the manga, they end up reconciling, but Zeno hates Zatch to the end in the anime.

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