Evil Uncle and Big Bad Herman Preminger of Ashita no Nadja, occasionally beats his wife whenever her son from her previous marriage isn't around to defend her.
Assassination Classroom: When Koro-sensei's backstory is finally revealed, he's shown as a human who was once the world's number one assassin before being captured and subjected to unethical experiments. During his months in the lab, he befriends Aguri Yukimura, an intern there who is engaged to the head scientist Yanagisawa. Yanagisawa is verbally and physically abusive to Aguri and it's implied that she was more or less sold to him. He also says he'd be perfectly willing to use her as a test subject instead. A crucial turning point in Aguri and Koro-sensei's relationship comes when he immobilizes Yanagisawa when he is about to hit her. In the present, Yanagisawa is revealed as the main antagonist's identity who seeks revenge on Koro-sensei for not only escaping the lab, but for "stealing" Aguri from him.
The manga Azami is a BL riddled with gayngst and, turns out, the entire story is about how the relationship ends up being abusive. The readers are left hanging as to how the relationship continues after the abuse begins.
Bokura no Hentai: Tamura is in a sexual (but not romantic due to Incompatible Orientation) relationship with his crush. His crush only has sex with Tamura if he dresses like a girl. He makes demeaning comments towards Tamura (especially when puberty causes him to become less androgynous), doesn't let him touch his hand if he's not crossdressing, and is homophobic. Eventually Tamura becomes fed up of him, breaks his glasses, and stops talking to him.
Chrono Crusade has a Running Gag of Rosette hitting Chrono when she's frustrated—at one point kicking him so hard he falls to the ground in a pool of his own blood! It helps that Chrono is actually ademon with enough strength that he could probably bench press her even in his sealed form, and if she caused any serious damage, he could heal. Since his powers are fueled by her soul, any non-lethal damage inflicted on him ultimately ends up doing more harm to her.
Domestic abuse is part of Minai's backstory on Corpse Princess. One night after being beat by her boyfriend she snaps and kills him and then commits suicide, only to come back as a shikabane.
In the English dub of the anime, Penny Milfer's father is portrayed as physically abusive toward his daughter and his wife. Apparently the abuse is so bad that it drove Penny's mother to hatch a (failed) plan to escape and live the rest of her life as a prostitute. The abuse is presented as the reason Penny and her mother are so aggressive and express their anger by punching stuffed bunnies, and it's also played entirely for laughs. In the original Japanese version of the anime, Nene's (Penny) father isn't abusive at all, and is merely a workaholic businessman. In the Japanese version, Nene and her mother beat up their stuffed animals simply because they have hereditary anger management problems, rather than it being a result of abuse. The dub also purposely skipped over episodes that Nene's father appeared in for the dub to retain the dub consistency, save for one where they censored his appearance. Funimation also added Black Comedy in making references to Penny having a little sister who "lives in the lake".
In one episode where the family is staying in an apartment, they hear a male and female voice yelling at each other and then the woman screaming. Convinced that the woman is being beaten by her boyfriend/husband, Hiro breaks down the door to stop what's going on, only to find out that it's a crossdressing actor.
1970s manga and anime Dame Oyaji is made up of this trope, played for laughs.
Death Note: Light seems verbally abusive at times to Misa, his "girlfriend". Nothing suggests he does anything worse than yelling at her; though he does attempt to kill her at several points in the story on the grounds of You Have Outlived Your Usefulness, she invariably ends up surviving anyway due to changing circumstances.
Misaki from episode four of Death Parade was in three abusive marriages in a row and bore five children from her husbands.
ERASED: Akemi Hinazuki, mother of Kayo Hinazuki, suffered domestic abuse at the hands of a lover which unfortunately turned her into an abuser herself against Kayo.
The Familiar of Zero takes this to great lengths with highly Belligerent Sexual Tension. Saito and Louise are both horrible to one another; Louise repeatedly beats Saito with a riding crop. In another instance, after Saito tries to undress Louise in her sleep, she upgrades to beating Saito with a real whip.
Akito is a one person domestic abuse factory — including slapping Kureno for going outside without his permission. Akito also has the reputation of physically or even emotionally abusing everyone else in the Sohma family, to the point where some were permanently injured. Even worse than slapping Kureno for going outside without permission, he follows through on seriously injuring any Sohma girls that any Sohma boys like, pulling off double the abuse (the girls are physically injured, and the boys are unable to comfort them for fear it will make Akito even angrier and step up the abuse). And that's without the fact that every member of the Zodiac sees Akito as God, adding extra dimensions of emotional and mental abuse to every interaction.
Before that, we see that Akito's mother emotionally blackmailed her husband into agreeing to raise the actually female Akito as a boy, threatening to abort their child if he didn't agree. She later went on to emotionally abuse Akito, which is where the kid picked it up from.
Kagura regularly beats the crap out of Kyo. The manga-ka of the series lampshades it by saying that Kagura hits Kyo "because she loves him".
Kyo's father emotionally abused his young son, calling him evil simply for being possessed by the spirit of the Cat at birth. He later goes on to repeatedly call Kyo a murder for supposedly driving his mother to suicide, even though it's implied that her suicide was actually caused by the father's abuse.
Goodnight Punpun: Happens in the first chapter when Punpun finds his parents after a fight. His father was arrested for abuse afterwards. Much, much later we learn Punpun's mom was going to attempt Murder-Suicide with Punpun and the scene really was Not What It Looks Like.
Yaoi anime Kizuna plays this for laughs. The extremely jealous Uke (Ranmaru) punches his boyfriend and Seme (Kei) so that he flies across the room, yet no one thinks twice about it.
Life (2002): ManamiAnzai has this type of relationship with her boyfriend, with Manami being the abuser. They seem like Sickening Sweethearts, however they are only dating because of their parents. When he is Mistaken for Cheating, Manami sends her gang member side-lover to beat him up.
The short yuri manga Lonesome Echo revolves around a high school teacher who is in an abusive relationship with her ex-piano teacher. She that befriends (or more?) a student that helps her break off the relationship.
Narusegawa Naru, of the Tsundere variety, from Love Hina, full stop, to the point where she is flanderized in the anime as this. Kanako is the only one who manages to retaliate against her, and only once. After that, it's back to punting Keitaro into the horizon. Played completely for laughs.
Loveless plays this straight. The main character, Ritsuka, is frequently attacked by his mother. Two years prior to the start of the series, Ritsuka lost his memories and underwent a personality change; his mother claims that, though he may have Ritsuka's face, he's "not her son", and demands that he "give Ritsuka back". She frequently strikes him, and even stabs him with a fork at one point.
Magical Girl Site: Kaname vents his frustrations on his younger sister Aya by beating her and torturing her.
A cross-dressing boy named Mariya from Maria†Holic is Kanako's roommate who enjoys torturing Kanako. He sometimes even resorted to using physical violence on Kanako such as stepping on her face. His abuse on Kanako is a humorous male-on-female example.
In May I Ask for One Final Thing?, Lady Scarlet is engaged to Second Prince Kyle, and he is horrifically abusive to her. She is not in love with him, nor he with her, but she's unable to break a royal engagement and he enjoys abusing her too much to break it off himself. Although the plot kicks off with Kyle indeed choosing to break the engagement (in a way meant to humiliate and upset Scarlet) the flashback showing the six years of abuse she had to put up with is pure psychological horror. Kyle is cruel, petty, condescending, arrogant, lazy, idiotic, has a violent temper, and is always looking for reasons to be "insulted" so he can abuse people. Scarlet was his main target for all of that behaviour. He treated her like a literal slave for years, in full view of other people in order to humiliate her, and physically abused her to a certain extent as well. Scarlet, perfectly capable of physically kicking his ass, was helpless to fight back because of social constraints. She conducts herself with flawless dignity throughout the years, but her inner monologue makes her distress and pain clear. Really, Kyle "dumping" her was the kindest thing he ever did for Scarlet, and he's so deluded and full of himself that he honestly thought it would break her heart. He also didn't realize that the engagement was the only thing protecting him from herretaliation.
The Mermaid Saga has a pair of siblings who are the children of a wealthy family. The son is a complete sociopath who is only protected because of the love of his sister. He shows his gratitude by emotionally and implicitly physically attacking her, as well as poisoning her fiance so she won't leave and stop protecting him. After they both "die" from eating mermaid flesh, he continues to abuse her, stealing an eye from her unrotting corpse and then cutting off the head so she'll stop "haunting" him. He also picks up the charming habit of dating girls that look like his sister, only to murder them.
The Toudou family from Musashi No Ken. Shura's father shows no mercy to his infant son when it comes to kendo practice. Shura's screaming keeps his mother up at night. At one point, Shura's mother loses it and slaps his father, who's just kneeling and taking it, relentlessly for being a cruel father and husband. Shura, however, turns out to be very well-mannered, as opposed to the hot-headed Musashi who grows up in a happy family.
In My Hero Academia, Shoto Todoroki's father Endeavor abused his wife for years and only married her for her ice-based quirk, producing children until he got one with both fire and ice powers. Shoto's mother was driven to a state of such instability that she poured boiling water on his face because he looked like his father. Even though his mother is the one who gave him his scar, Shoto still blames his father since he was the one responsible for her mental breakdown. And that's not even touching on Endeavor's merits as a father...
Neon Genesis Evangelion: Asuka is secretly attracted to Shinji (who secretly is attracted to her too), and yet she hurls a lot of verbal abuse towards him, sometimes on the slightest provocation. Occasionally during the "Action Arc", she becomes outright physically violent, but given the light tone of the arc in question, it's probably intended to come across as slapstick comedy rather than serious physical abuse.
Nodame Cantabile has a notable example of a male-on-female variant played for laughs in exactly the same way as female-on-male examples. Male tsundere Chiaki often resorts to physical violence when Nodame does things that end up annoying him in the manner of a Boke and Tsukkomi Routine. Nodame even admits to playing up the Boke And Tsukkomi Routine simply because Chiaki's such a perfect Straight Man.
Another notable example of a male-on-female comedy variant in exactly the same way as the female-on-male examples is Nyaruko: Crawling with Love!. Mahiro Yasaka, a male tsundere, has no problems using physical violence on Nyarko (and sometimes Cuuko) when the girls do things that annoy him typically in the manner of a Boke and Tsukkomi Routine. Given that the girls are Moe Anthropomorphisms of Cthulhu Mythos entities, it likely does not affect them too much.
Oishinbo: This is the primary reason why Yamaoka is such an Antagonistic Offspring towards his father, Kaibara Yuzan. Kaibara is a famous gourmet who has insanely high food standards, and whenever his wife cooks his meals, he'd throw it out, curse at her, and had her remake it until he's completely satisfied. Shiro recalls that his mother is always fearful and anxious around him.
The second season has Rue suffering from emotional and, later, physical abuse from Mytho. Played very dark and serious, to show how much the Raven's blood is twisting his personality.
The first season also has Fakir treating Mytho roughly, including one point where he slaps Mytho for defying an order. Not played quite as seriously as the above example, but still portrayed as pretty shocking to the people that witness it. Later when Mytho frames Fakir for trying to kill him under the influence of Raven's blood, most of the class has an easy time believing it thanks to witnessing the previous moments of abuse.
Genma Saotome once used a "martial arts move" based off of Flipping the Table. Not only did he use it against his own wife, Nodoka Saotome, he did it in order to get his hands on a medal worth 20 yen. For added measure, the technique's name is "Angry Dad Attack/Wrath of the Father". Then again, this is the same guy who was outright horrified to find that his son Ranma's skills as a martial artist had progressed to the point where he could no longer beat him up and steal his food, the way he did when Ranma was a little boy. And the less said about the "Cat Fist", which gave the poor kid a serious case of ailurophobia, the better.
An arc had Ranma attempting to get Ukyo to break their suddenly more serious engagement by practicing this — flipping tables on her, feigning drunkenness and claiming he was having an affair. All of it backfires.
Akane herself is a classic violent Tsundere, Shampoo loves to transform into a cat to attack Ranma, knowing his invoked Absurd Phobia.
During the time that Saionji Kyouichi is in possession of the Rose Bride Himemiya Anthy, he considers her his possession, and is shown to frequently physically abuse her.
Later in the series we meet an even worse abuser than Saionji, Anthy's brother Akio Ohtori. He physically, emotionally, and sexually abuses her. He rapes her weekly, will get physically violent if she doesn't listen to him right away, and often calls her mean names and tells her that only he can love her. He pretty much is a textbook abuser and the series can be seen as a show how abuse horribly messes up someone. Namely Anthy.
Played straight with Asayo Katsuragi from Sakura Gari, who suffers abuse at the hands of her husband, Dr. Katsuragi, especially when one of the servants rubs ointments on her bruises and she quietly says that it was her own fault for upsetting him. Later in the story, she kills him by setting him on fire when she gets fed up of his abuse.
The male leads created by Mayu Shinjo are this to different degrees:
In Akuma na Eros (Virgin Crisis), the first famous Mayu Shinjo manga, Satan himself becomes one! Oh Miu Sakurai, you lucky little thing, you.
The better-known example is Sakuya Ookochi from Sensual Phrase: this is largely because of an incident where his girlfriend Aine Yukimura ended up with a hickey (due to assault from another character); Sakuya, in a fit of jealousy, barged into her class, tore her uniform to reveal the hickey (and her bra strap), then took her home (while class was ongoing) and prepared to rape her. Only when her uniform was almost totally ripped off and the poor girl was weeping hysterically did he stop and realize WTF he was doing, while deeply apologizing for it shortly afterward. Yeah, he's a Conflicted type with an extremelyDark and Troubled Past (as in, he's a Heroic BastardChild by Rape, his "father" left him when he learned baby Sakuya wasn't his kid, he was bullied all the time because of his heritage, and his Lady Drunk mom drank herself to death when he was a child) and does get better with time, the "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue shows him as a decent father and husband, if somewhat of a Lovable Sex Maniac when he and Aine are alone, but even he admits that's not an excuse. Luckily, Aine happens to be that forgiving towards him.
'Downplayed in Demon Love Spell. Kagura is still a horndog and some of his attitudes can be pretty questionable, especially in regards to erotic dreams but he's nowhere in the league of Sakuya or Hakuron and his girlfriendMiko is more self-aware than Aine or Kurumi.
Hakuron from Haou Airen. Yeah, he is seriously screwed up after being raised in The Triads and the Tongs, and killed his father among MANY other things, and he does admit to Kurumi that he's fucked up, but that doesn't erase how, the moment he met Kurumi, he tried to keep her from making noise by threatening to rape her. (And later, well, he does. For three days straight, even.)
Both Hanamaki and Gin from Love Celeb, to different degrees. Ironically, Gin's Big Brother Mentor was ...Sakuya, another BB.
In chapter 73 of re: Torso brings Mutsuki a flower crown, but gets angry when Mutsuki glares at him and won't accept his compliments. He beats Mutsuki violently while screaming insults and demanding he accept his love. As a child, Mutsuki's father abused him and tried to drown him. He learned that if he played along and praised his father for being the best, he wouldn't be hurt. We get a Big Madam & Juuzou parallel, with his father saying "Here's your reward" and its implied he raped Mutsuki when we see him leering at a soaked Mutsuki. Later, the two are lying together on a makeshift futon. Torso says that he only "scolds" Mutsuki because of how deep his love is, and Mutsuki cries while agreeing. He thinks that he is cursed to be stolen away by men and it's implied Torso raped him as well.
Kaneki was revealed to be abused by his mother when he was younger. He admits that she was a wonderful mother by day but at night...
In Trigun Stampede, Knives heaps emotional abuse on Vash and gaslights him, citing that he's weak, fragile and naïve without his big brother to protect him and blaming Vash for all his atrocities, including the Big Fall. He kills/maims anyone Vash is close to, whether it's a friend who cares about him or a civilian who's kind to him, to further isolate Vash from meaningful relationships. Although Vash loves his brother, he's clearly terrified of Knives as well. Knives's later attempt to Mind Rape his twin is also eerily framed to resemble sexual assault. All in all, even though Vash is the only thing Knives truly cares for, he cannot comprehend how his actions continue to traumatise, violate, and strip Vash of his autonomy, and perceives any attempt by Vash to defend himself as a betrayal that needs to be punished.
