Epic Fail / Anime & Manga

You're better off leaving the bike slide to the professionals, young lady.

• The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You: In Chapter 76, Yaku is introduced to each of Rentarou's girlfriends, with Kusuri describing each girl's personality or physical traits. When quizzed on who's who, Yaku gets all 14 girls mixed up over their descriptions, a few of which shouldn't even be possible due to lacking necessary traits.
• The Titans' mission to Paradis Island in Attack on Titan was an absolute failure. In fact, the Titans' mission on Paradis was performed so badly, it ultimately caused the entire war to turn in their enemy's favor. While they did succeed in their secondary objective (cause chaos), they failed their primary objective (obtain the power of the Coordinate Titan, or at least prevent it from being used against Marley). The Shifters were forced to retreat, having lost half of their number — Marcel was eaten by Ymir, Bertholt was eaten by Armin, and Annie had to freeze herself in a Crystal Prison to prevent being interrogated (and all that did was just buy her time before it happened anyway). Two of their Titan Powers were captured (the Colossal Titan being put in Armin's hands, and the Female Titan being rendered inaccessible by Annie freezing herself) — it would have been three if Ymir hadn't voluntarily returned with them. And their failure alerted the people of the Walls to the threat that they posed, when their victims hadn't even known they existed beforehand. The massive failure prompted Marley's enemies to begin a war against them, which raged throughout the Time Skip, allowed the Eldians a chance to get themselves together and counter-attack, and ultimately come out with the victory in the war.
• Ayakashi Triangle: Kanade hands Matsuri a Love Potion to use on Shadow Mei so she'll help them. Matsuri refuses and dumps it out the window... where it immediately falls onto Mei's head.
  Kanade: Ooh. Nice wind jutsu.
  Matsuri: It wasn't even my wind!
• In Azumanga Daioh, Osaka kicks her shoe up to predict the weather. It lands in a truck passing by◊, and Hilarity Ensues.
  • Animated GIFs of Osaka kicking her shoe off and inadvertently causing various epic failures has become a minor internet meme. The most famous edit of this scene has her kick the shoe up, have it fly over the horizon, and make a ship explode◊.
  • There's also the Jump Rope arch-fail in episode 12... Tomo getting slapped in the face by the rope while jumping? Amusing, but not an epic fail. Osaka somehow managing to trip and Face Plant while she's the one holding the rope? How on Earth did she even do that!?
• In a filler episode of Beelzebub, the students of Ishiyama High had to take an assessment test. The students of Ishiyama are Japanese Delinquents who hate studying 180%, so we are treated to comical and downright sad scenes of the cast trying to study for an assessment test that was on elementary school subjects. The people there are so dumb, one guy cheated on filling in his name. Even Oga was left gobsmacked at that one.
• The Big O uses this coupled with the Rule of Funny. In Episode 18, Jason Beck decides to attack Roger Smith with a robot that's a parody of most other super robot shows. While going through a lengthy transformation sequence, Roger completely ignores it in favor of straightening up his outfit. Beck then launches into a lengthy attack power-up sequence, only to be blown apart mid-sequence By Roger and Big O. For bonus points, the player can recreate this scene in Super Robot Wars Z and get new weapons for Big O as a reward.
• In the Arrancar Saga of Bleach, Dordoni manages one during his introduction. While giving a speech and running, he falls off the platform he was running on when it ends and crashes into the ground. And this guy can walk on air.
• Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo is often filled with these moments, especially in fights, whenever some attacks go wrong or just don't work at all.
  • Given the sheer craziness of the show, sometimes these epic fails would become weaponized in and of itself.
  • Don Patch can inject enemies with his "Idiot Serum", which forces them to epically fail in various ways. Beauty finds this absolutely terrifying.
• In the first episode of Cube×Cursed×Curious, Fear tries her hand at cleaning. Granted, she's never done anything like that before, but that's no excuse for trashing the whole house. Some of the things she did just went against common sense.
• The Daily Lives of High School Boys skit High School Boys and the Way We Are is basically one string of failure after failure in the Literature Girl's trying to invoke romantic situations with Hidenori, ending with her breaking down crying (and accidentally knocked out cold by Hidenori).
• The Digimon Adventure movie Our War Game has a moment of this that is both funny and serious. Taichi, in a frustrated manner, bangs on the side of the monitor he's using to observe the fight between the Digidestined's Digimon and Diablomon. The computer it's connected to crashes. Hell, he didn't hit it very hard at all. Taichi's reaction (AKA, his expression) is priceless. Though, besides being funny, it serves as an Oh, Crap! moment as WarGreymon is now more or less a sitting duck for Diablomon.
• Doraemon has Nobita Nobi, an utterly poor student who gets straight zeros in every exam unless he's aided by Doraemon's gadgets. Apparently he has bundles of the sheets at home.
• Dragon Ball:
  • Dragon Ball: During Goku's fight against Piccolo Jr., the Demon King's son hits Goku with a powerful penetrating energy attack. Unfortunately for him, Goku manages to keep standing.
    Goku: It's a good thing you aim as bad as you fight! You missed my vital organs!
    Piccolo Jr.: ALL OF THEM?!
  • Dragon Ball Z:
    • At the end of the Saiyan Saga, Bulma tried to use a remote to summon Nappa's left-over space pod and ended up blowing it up.
    • When Goten faces Ikose in a tournament, Ikose shows off by repeatedly punching the air, but runs out of breath.
    • During Vegeta's fight with Pui Pui in the Buu Saga, Babidi transforms the environment into that of Pui Pui's home planet of Zoon, which has gravity ten times that of Earth, in order to give Pui Pui an advantage. It backfires completely, because not only does Vegeta regularly train in 450 times Earth's gravity, but his own home planet of Vegeta had gravity equal to that of Zoon anyway. Even after the shift in the environment, Vegeta beats Pui Pui effortlessly, not even changing into a Super Saiyan to blast him away with a single shot.
      Vegeta: Maybe if your planet had five hundred times Earth's gravity, you'd have an advantage. But ten? I don't even feel it.
    • When Super Buu transforms Vegito into candy, it seems all hope is lost... until it turns out that piece of candy is still able to talk, fly, and fight. Being so small and agile made Vegito so hard to fight that Buu had to actually transform him back to normal.
  • Dragon Ball Super:
    • Krillin asks Goku to punch him to test his strength. He complies and Krillin is sent flying. Goku teleports ahead of him and holds his arms out to catch him, only for Krillin to crash into a rock to Goku's left.
    • When trying to convince Whis to train him, Vegeta attempts to make an omelette. Bulma asks him if he even knows how to crack an egg, and soon enough the first egg comes out of his hand and onto the table, then he ends up crushing the rest until the last one hatches into a chick.
    • Quitela spent most of the tournament being extremely confident about his 4th Universe's fighters, even after 7 of them were eliminated pretty early. However, when it finally comes time for Damon and Gamisaras to make their move, the best they can manage is to eliminate Katopesla and, during a moment of distraction, Piccolo. In the end, the 4th Universe's overall performance in the Tournament was arguably just as bad as their Foil, Universe 9, the only real difference is that they lasted longer due to Damon and Gamisaras hiding for so long.
• Fist of the North Star: The results of some guy trying to use Hokuto Shinken on Kenshiro. Suffice to say, it did not go well for the mook. Ken just completely ignores the guy at first, and when he finally does deem the mook worthy of his attention, quickly elbows him in the face. After that, Ken lets the mook try Hokuto Shinken anyway... and the mook's technique blows up his own head.^note What really happened was Ken already did it to him shortly beforehand (with the elbow to the face), and like many of his techniques, it had a delayed effect before killing him. Thus proving that Kenshiro has a very sadistic sense of humor.
• Fresh Pretty Cure!: Villainous example — the job of a Labyrinth is to use monsters to cause misery so they can gather it as energy. Enter Westar. His plan involves using a living wig to change people's hairdos to cause misery. It totally backfires and instead everyone hit by the monster's attack is intensely amused. Incidentally, this scene is one of the most meticulously animated in the whole series.
  • The last scene in the episode reveals that Westar did manage to cause a small amount of misery to be gathered: his own.
  • Westar gets another one when he devises a plan of broadcasting his fight against the Precures, in hopes that everyone would see him beat the Precures and lose spirit. That backfired AGAIN when the Precures realized that it serves as more reason that they should fight harder. Cue massive asskicking while the crowd are cheering for the Cures instead of succumbing to despair.
• Girl Friends (2006): A Public Bathhouse Scene. A desire to see her girlfriend. Self-consciousness about her own body. Consequently, a desire to not be seen by her girlfriend. Her girlfriend taking a long time to come out into the bath. Spending too long in a bathhouse being detrimental to her consciousness. Akko wakes up to learn that Mari picked her up out of the bath, carried her out of the bathhouse, dried her off by hand, put her underwear and pajamas, on her, and tucked her into bed (and, later, that she got a few good measurements in the process).
  Akko: Just kill me now.
• In The Great Jahy Will Not Be Defeated!, Saurva's attempts to overthrow Jahy all end in this, but of particular note is her plan to make Jahy drink a potion that will turn her into a harmless dog. After many sleepless nights, Saurva finally perfects the potion, reaches for her cup of tea... and grabs the potion by mistake and drinks it. Having been turned into a dog herself, Saurva panics, flees her apartment... and runs into Jahy, who thinks she's an ordinary dog and starts playing with her.
• GTO: The Early Years: When Nanno tries to kill Eikichi in revenge for blackmailing and humiliating him, he first misses because Eikichi ducked down to pick up a 10,000 yen bill, then is chased off by Saejima and Katsuyuki, who think he's part of the Kamakura Massacre Unit (because he's wearing their uniform for a False Flag Operation). He sends a note demanding a Rooftop Confrontation with Eikichi, but ends up bashing the principal in the head with his weapon, and jumps off the roof to escape, injuring his leg in the process. Nanno confronts Eikichi one more time, but is interrupted by a little girl (the same girl he was fired for having an inappropriate relationship with). The girl's mother sees her daughter near a scary guy dressed as a gang member and tells the police that he's kidnapping her, leading to him holding her as a hostage while cops surround the building. By this time Eikichi had lost interest and gone home.
• In episode 23 of HappinessCharge Pretty Cure!, Megumi and Yuuko arrive in their Cure forms to the scene of a battle, do their introduction phrases and poses... only to find out they were too late - Hime and Iona had already beaten the Monster of the Week by themselves.
• Haruhi-chan: Kyon and Itsuki enter the room in outfits, but during their introduction, they make Mikuru cry.
  • Here is the Epic Fail in English Dub!
  • Another example is episode 3, when Nagato and Achakura first met when Achakura was restored to her normal self... well, not back to her normal self, because Achakura was in chibi form. During one scene, Achakura complains that she did not want to sit in the chair, and so Achakura was placed on a pillow, and then, when Nagato walked out of the room, Achakura was flung into a wall, and when Nagato came back, Achakura was sitting on a chair with a side dose of a Cranial Eruption, and then when Nagato asked that Achakura finally decided to sit in a chair, Achakura said that she did not want to hear about it.
  • Later on, one episode, when Nagato's friends left, Achakura, who was attached to a spring, comes out of a jack in the box, and Nagato puts the lid back on, which makes Achakura 100% mad! Then, when Achakura yelled at Nagato, she went so high that Achakura hit her head on the ceiling VERY HARD. Which resulted in a Cranial Eruption (remaining for the last few moments of the episode) for Achakura.
• Nagi in Hayate the Combat Butler is so bad at domestic tasks that when trying to make herself a cup of tea, she failed so badly that a flying saucer apparently crashed through the wall.
• In Hellsing, when one of the Major's subordinates expresses a desire to not go charging at Alucard's familiar army because it would needlessly sacrifice the lives of the troops, the Major pulls out a gun and shoots at the guy at point-blank range. And misses every shot, causing Doc to wonder how the Major got into the S.S. in the first place.
  • Lampshaded in his death scene, as his having taken out Integra's eye leads him to use several of his final words crowing over finally hitting what he was shooting at, indicating his abysmal marksmanship really had been a lifelong issue.
• In Highschool of the Dead a Straw Nihilist survivor, surrounded by zombies and nursing an injury, decides in his own words to "go out like a badass". His efforts amount to giggling and ineffectually flailing his knife around. He fails to kill or even scratch any of the attacking zombies before they descend on him and tear him to shreds.
• Is the Order a Rabbit?:
  • Chino attempts to use a badminton move Rize taught her in episode 5. It looks cool and she has a Battle Aura as well, but then she hits the shuttlecock into the net, getting it stuck, and also passes out from using up too much energy.
  • Cocoa attempts to flip a pancake in the air in episode 7. But she flings it a bit too high, and it lands on Chino's face.
• Kill la Kill:
  • During the tennis match, Ryuko's racket explodes on contact with the ball, failing to even slow it down.
  • Gamagoori's evasive driving involves a spin. It ends up about as you'd expect.
    Gamagoori: We're out of control!
    Ryuko: NO SHIT WE'RE OUT OF CONTROL! THAT'S WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU CRANK THE WHEEL LIKE THAT YOU ASS!!
• Kurumi's Evil Plan in Kimi ni Todoke to split up Kazehaya and Kuronuma by making Kazehaya think that Kuronuma likes someone else. Not only does the Batman Gambit end with the misunderstanding cleared up, Kazehaya becomes inspired to actually act on his crush and it makes Kuronuma aware of the fact that she likes him too, further deepening their bond. Kurumi, thinking it actually worked, ends up confessing to who she thinks is Kazehaya with her back turned... only to discover that not only has she confessed to the class' idiot gym teacher instead (who rejects her), but Kazehaya accidentally walked in on the confession. Just to rub it in, he kindly informs her that he won't tell anyone else.
• Love Tyrant: Nakito Kusunoki is so weak that when he tries to rescue Mari from a criminal by punching him in the face, the criminal doesn't even feel it.
• Sheryl Nome in Macross Frontier falls into the cockpit of an advanced prototype fighter in episode 14. She invokes her Catchphrase, gets a Theme Music Power-Up, takes off... and promptly bounces said fighter off an enemy capital ship before being mercilessly shot to pieces and forced to eject. This all happens inside thirty seconds. A subversion of Instant Expert, since she's really an idol singer, and she'd only had a handful of lessons before then.
• Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury: Miorine arrogantly steals Suletta's Gundam Aerial to face Guel in a duel, but since she has never piloted a Mobile Suit before, she keeps falling over and gets her ass kicked. Suletta has to get in and take the controls to win.
• Wakamatsu from Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun is so strung out by Seo's roughhousing during basketball games that he decides to tell her off on the school roof... taking cues from shoujo manga. He screws up so badly in expressing his disgust for her that the whole thing looks like a love confession.
• In My Bride is a Mermaid, when Kai is Mistaken for Dying, he gives a Last Request to have a final duel with his love rival Nagasumi. Even though Kai is a trained swordsman, his panic over how he's supposedly dying makes him flail his sword around ineffectually, allowing Nagasumi to easily beat him down with his fists.
• Naruto:
  • Naruto tries to reenter Biju Mode in an attempt to stop Obito prematurely. His chakra flares up, his Badass Longcoat forms... and then everything sputters out. The look on his face, Sasuke's, and Tobirama's says it all.
  Tobirama: Are you trying to make our situation even worse? You're as goofy as your father, so much so that even he's^note One of Naruto's father's students dumbfounded.
  • On the day of his coronation as Hokage, Naruto is knocked out by his toddler daughter and Konohamaru under a henge has to fill in for him.
• Asuna of Negima! Magister Negi Magi once tried to light her crush's cigarette, but accidentally lit his beard instead. She then doused the fire with the first liquid she could get her hands on — piping hot tea.
• Nichijou:
  • An 'in-between' segment featuring several characters jumping rope proves hazardous to most of them. Mio jumps and gets hit in the head with the rope mid-air, Yukko fails the first jump and faceplants. The teacher Sakurai stops the rope in the middle of her first jump, doesn't notice, and keeps on jumping. Nakanojo does all right, except the rope keeps brushing against the top of his mohawk. The only character who does the jump rope without issue is Mai, who perfectly keeps up the jump roping while reading.
  • Yukko kicks off her shoe as part of an augury to get good weather. It lands on top of a parked car, which promptly drives away. Yukko chases the car, trips, and loses her other shoe to a dog that picks it up and runs off in the opposite direction.
  • Nakamura's attempts to use the Poisoned Chalice Switcheroo to capture Nano. Not only does she end up drinking the coffee she herself drugged twice, but the second time was well after the first, which demonstrated that such drugs don't even work on the Robot Girl.
  • Dolph literally kills himself by tripping over his own feet while in the process of Evil Gloating.
  • Chapter 188 features everybody except Yukko falling asleep in class during a test. Yukko nabs this opportunity to start copying answers off everyone else's worksheets. Yukko is just savvy enough to realize that copying from just one worksheet could expose her due to identical answers, so she copies a different answer from each person in class. Such is Yukko's luck that every individual answer she copies is incorrect, resulting in a score of zero.
  • The opening scene of the series: Nano chases after a cat that stole a fish she was cooking (in the manga, she's running to school), only to immediately crash into a random guy. For some reason this causes a massive explosion; afterward she finds herself stuck on a roof, without her shoes or right hand. The guy she ran into ends up on top of a smokestack. And Yuuko gets hit with some toys and a chunk of salmon.
• One Piece: Usopp, on a fight he and a Team Pet had with a member of the Quirky Miniboss Squad that occurred off screen and resulted in them covered with bumps and bruises:
  "We lasted two seconds. One second each."
  • Played for Drama during the Enies Lobby arc, where Spandam's incompetence with Den Den Mushis bites him big time. First, while trying to contact his subordinate CP9 agents with a baby Den Den Mushi, he accidentally activates the Golden Den Den Mushi instead, which results in a Buster Call being called against the island he's currently in. Said Buster Call is ten warships led by five vice-admirals, with the objective of completely erasing the target island and everything on it, enemy or ally. Then, when Spandam manages to activate the Baby Den Den Mushi, he accidentally broadcasts his message to the entire island, revealing to everyone what he had just done. And then he gives Nico Robin a speech about how he doesn't care how many innocents die as long as the Straw Hat pirates are destroyed and he gets his promotion... while the Den Den Mushi is still on. Cue mass panic, and the rest of his CP9 subordinates turning against him.
• Outbreak Company: In episode 9, Myucel gets attacked. Shinichi declares he will save her and gets an Imagine Spot of himself charging heroically at the attacker like an action hero. It cuts to reality, where he is running really slowly, closing his eyes, screaming, and flailing his arms like a spaz. Fortunately, Minori intervenes before he ends up hurting himself.
• Pokémon: The Series:
  • You have to be a particularly intense kind of stupid to use an explosive as your means of transportation in a major competitive event. In one episode, one person has an Electrode as his mount. One pitfall later, he's out of the race...as are several other contestants.
  • In the episode "Holy Matrimony!", James tries to lie about his status, claiming that he froze in the snow and died after running away from home by faking amnesia, because he didn't want anyone to know about his past life. The other characters (including Brock, the wisest person of the group) fall for it, despite James being the one telling the story. Misty is the only one who realizes his story is false.
  • "The Problem With Paras" has a Paras so weak that even the tiniest attack makes it faint. Especially notable is Squirtle shooting a tiny trickle of water at it, since Paras is half Grass-type and Grass resists Water.
    • After Squirtle makes the Paras faint with a tiny stream of water, Ash decides to send in Charmeleon of all things, believing it'll have better luck in throwing a match against the thing. Ash cannot control Charmeleon. He can tell it to lose a match, but Charmeleon won't listen, and Fire is four times super-effective against Paras.
  • "Attack of the Prehistoric Pokemon" shows Ash, Pikachu, and Squirtle being chased by Team Rocket as they try to put out a long, lit fuse set off by the trio, leading to a large pile of dynamite. As the group end up tripping over each other in the chase and try to shake themselves loose to get away from the upcoming disaster, Pikachu, in an act of desperation, uses Thunderbolt on the explosives. The looks on everyone's faces right before the inevitable is priceless.
  • Jessie in her first ever Pokémon contest. She uses Seviper and starts off the appeals round by telling Seviper to use Sacred Fire (a move only legendary Ho-Oh knows), then goes through a book listing off moves that Seviper doesn't know, including Double Kick. Seviper is based off a snake. When she finally calls out a move that Seviper knows, Poison Tail, it attacks her and sends her flying. The judges give her a score of zero.
  • Sullivan from the episode "Whiscash and Ash" has been trying for years to catch a particular giant Whiscash, and has failed utterly. He even fails to capture it when using a Master Ball, a Pokéball that isn't supposed to fail when used to catch a Pokémon. The Giant Whiscash just straight up eats the Pokéball that is normally guaranteed to catch a Pokémon. Failing to catch a Pokémon even with a Master Ball is a whole new level of failure.
  • In two episodes of DP, Ash, Dawn, and Brock (especially Brock) are fooled by Jessie, James, and Meowth's disguises. Normally this isn't noteworthy, but in this particular case the disguises... just consist of glasses and green coats. The coats don't even cover up the telltale red R on their uniforms properly, and they have a light in the background shining on them. It's not even the worst offender either: an entire populace, and Brock, participated in a contest about which Croagunk was the best looking. They chose Meowth, despite his disguise actually being so bad it would have been impossible to mistake him for a Croagunk.
  • Most of what Cameron does. Such examples include: thinking the Unova League in Unova was going to be in Ecruteak City in Johto; thinking he only needed 7 badges to enter the League; somehow forgetting one of his Pokémon on the sidelines before a gym battle; pitting up Pokémon with a 4x weakness against a Pokémon with the exact 4x type advantage (Twice in one battle, too); and bringing only 5 Pokémon to a 6-on-6 battle.
  • "Dazzling the Nimbasa Gym!" has Ash's Gym Battle with Elsea, where he only brought Palpitoad with him. When Palpitoad gets knocked out, Elsea is generous enough to allow him to run to the Pokemon Center to get his other Pokemon instead of disqualifying him. When his Snivy is also knocked out, he laments that no other Pokemon he has stands a chance, somehow completely forgetting about Pikachu. Pikachu shocks and berates him for his stupidity.
  • In the Malie City gym challenge in "Aiming for the Top," there are scenes involving having to dodge a wrecking ball on an obstacle course and throwing shurikens at a target. Ash's Meltan ends up breaking the wrecking ball and the course by eating the chain holding it; and Lillie ends up completely missing the targets and almost hitting Ash, Kiawe and the Rotom Pokédex. In the dub, these items are redone to be pink and more rubbery, arguably making the failure even greater.
  • Faba's battle with Ash in the Alola League ends up going this way: not only does Faba think Ash's Meltan, a Mythical Pokémon is his weakest fighter^*To be fair to Faba, Meltan's base stat total is lower than that of an Alolan starter Pokémon, so that's not a totally inaccurate assessment; but Meltan ends up eating the metal coin his Hypno uses, and Hala judges the act as a legal move in Ash's favor to win the battle.
• In Pretty Cure All Stars New Stage 3, Cure Happy takes notice of Cure Dream attacking and decides she will, too. She charges up a Happy Shower... then trips on a rock and promptly headbutts her target. Cure Rouge calls it her "Happy Head Attack".
  • In Singing with Everyone - Miraculous Magic, Cure Peach, Cure Blossom, Cure Melody and Cure Happy introduce themselves to Cure Miracle, but trip over themselves at the very end, leaving a mess of names as, instead of introducing themselves as just "Pretty Cure", they cram in their team names. A few minutes later, they attempt to perform a Combination Attack, only to watch in horror as their attacks just bounce off each other, forcing Miracle to knock them into place.
• Puella Magi Madoka Magica The Movie: Rebellion: Madoka being taken off-guard by Homura at the end. For reference, Madoka is The Omniscient, and even if one thinks that she didn't have her all-seeing abilities because of Kyubey's machinations, she still had quite a while to view, quote, "Everything that ever happened and everything that ever will", unquote before the events of the movie. Whatever the case, this particular blunder costs her her powers and memories, elevates Homura to demonhood and twists all of reality into knots. This also counts as an epic fail for the Incubators—they started this whole mess because they wanted to see the mysterious being behind the Law of Cycles (and eventually control it/her, but that was a long-term goal). They did get to do that, technically, but in the process they created an omnipotent demon who Mind Rapes them all into submission.
• Puyo Puyo Anime: Apparently, using Meteor in a city causes, instead of some sort of massive finishing blow, a tiny star to plop ineffectually to the ground.
• Sailor Moon
  • The first time Sailor Chibi-Moon attempted to use her Pink Sugar Heart Attack. After shouting the attack's name nothing happens. After a few seconds her wand starts flashing and shoots out tiny hearts... that travel about a foot in front of her and fall to the ground. The Monster of the Week gets so bored she begins drinking tea. Of course, that distraction allows Chibi-Moon to slowly creep forward so her attack hits, but even then it's more of an annoyance than damaging.
  • In the same episode, Rei (Sailor Mars) is in a rush to get to the girls' hangout cafe to meet with someone, the other girls are already there and see her come barreling towards them on her bicycle at a ridiculous speed. She attempts to slide the bicycle to a stop just outside the cafe entrance but overshoots the slide massively and crashes into an advertising display leaving her crumpled on the floor whilst her friends look on nonplussed.
• Slayers: Sylphiel, being a specialist in white magic, lacks the focus and killing intent to cast black magic at first. Her initial attempts to cast Flare Arrow ends up more like a Flare Carrot.
• In Soul Eater, Soul and Black Star try to fight Death the Kid... and make total fools out of themselves. The funniest point is when Soul turns into his scythe form for Black Star to wield, and Black Star fails to catch him and the blade goes into his head.
  • Then it turns into an epic fail for Kid when he passes out with them... after noticing they cut off part of his hair, making it asymmetrical.
• Spy X Family: In "Short Mission 3"/Episode 21 of the anime, the Forgers' dog Bond chews up Anya's beloved penguin plush, riddling it with holes. Yor opts to sew it back up... only to somehow end up ripping the plush's head off.
• In Squid Girl,
  • Ika almost drowns because she forgot that, as a squid, she can breathe underwater in the second episode.
  • When the group goes for a nature hike, she gets beaten up by a King Cobra. A species native to southeast Asia, not Japan.
  • In the first segment of the second episode of the second season, Ika tries to play soccer, but she can't even do the simple act of kicking the ball! In fact, in order to win the game, her teammates make it look like she kicked the winning goal!
• In The World God Only Knows, Katsuragi has faced a major setback when it comes to winning the heart of Ayumi, so he plays the Prince Charming card by literally showing up on a white horse. It bucks him off., but he still tries to look cool.
• In Yes! Pretty Cure 5, Nozomi was revealed to have been kicked out of just about every club in school prior to her becoming a Pretty Cure. One episode revealed that she was kicked out of the Drama Club after only two days. Sadly, they're all Noodle Incidents.
• While it's not uncommon (or special) for a protagonist in Yu-Gi-Oh! to use a card, only for his opponent to counter it, Judai's card Righteous Justice became something of a Running Gag in Yu-Gi-Oh! GX this way. He used it three times in the series against three different opponents, and each time it was countered. (Fortunately for him, it has another use, which came into play two of those three times.)
• In an early (the second) episode of Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds, Uryu uses a Continuous Spell called Retribution of the Ant Lion against Yusei, which causes 800 damage to a player if one of his monsters is destroyed. Clearly he didn't read the card's effect clearly, because he's a little surprised when he intentionally destroys his own Pinch Hopper to use its effect, and then takes damage from it himself. (And ultimately, the card causes him to lose the duel when Yusei destroys three of his monsters at once.)
• A throwaway line by Astral in Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL has him claiming that he once watched Yuma lose a duel to a vending machine. Yuma's already treated as an Idiot Hero compared to most other protagonists, but this is a whole new level.
  • Orbital 7 attempts to go Killer Robot on Yuma in episode 24 by attempting to stab him with a pair of drills. Even though Yuma was standing entirely still, Orbital still manages to not only miss Yuma entirely but also get both drills stuck in the wall, letting Yuma get away.

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