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Femme Fatale / Anime & Manga

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  • Bitch-sensei Irina Jelavic from Assassination Classroom. Before coming to class 3-E, she was an assassin famous for her Honey Trap method. Now that she is a teacher, she's more than willing to pass her skills to her students and at least two of them are already on the way to become this trope.
  • Banana Fish's protagonist Ash is a rare, intentional male example. He frequently uses his charm and good looks to seduce adults (usually middle-aged men) to get information out of them. It factors into his tragic backstory, as it stems from him being a former child prostitute and the sex toy of a mafia don. He even goes as far as performing a striptease in front of a security camera to try and trick the guards into visiting his hospital room by throwing a blanket over the camera. It works for one of them, who is promptly shot.
  • In Basilisk, the kunoichi Kagerou's Head-Turning Beauty leads many unknowing (and even some knowing) to their deaths due to her breath turning poisonous when aroused. A simple kiss from Kagerou is lethal enough to drop a man dead almost instantly. While very useful, not very helpful to Kagerou as she can never even embrace the man she's deeply in love with.
  • Bubblegum Crisis: In the public eye, Sylia Stingray is the modest entrepreneur of the Silky Doll fashion boutique. But, away from prying eyes, she's an alluring businesswoman who brokers backwater deals with wealthy clients and informants in high-level government positions, who also act as her eyes and ears against the Genom Corporation. And while she doesn't mind them looking, she makes it clear that her body is never part of the deal.
  • Erica Blandelli of Campione! is an unusual example, since she's also the main heroine and Love Interest for the protagonist. While she's manipulative and seductive towards Godou Kusanagi, she genuinely loves him and everything she does is for his sake.
  • Faye Valentine of Cowboy Bebop has all the hallmarks of the Femme Fatale, a sultry dark haired beautiful and curvaceous woman who’s very seductive to gullible men, while also being quite a deadly wanted swindling criminal in her own right. Spike and Jet understandably distrust her and handcuff Faye in their first and second encounters with her. Subverted as Faye is really a deconstruction of a Femme Fatale, since a lot of her surface feminine wiles give way to klutzy dorkiness as Faye does some very unclassy things like eat dogfood and in later episode get diarrhoea which would never happened to other Femme Fatales listed here. It turns out Faye’s Femme Fatale behaviour is really just a put on, since being a Human Popsicle for fifty-four years Beneath the Mask she genuinely has no idea who she is and being a sultry swindler is just a defence mechanism. Considering the first man Faye met in the future Whitney (whom she fell for), betrayed and ripped her off, you can’t fault her for adapting to that lifestyle to survive.
    • Interestingly Julia is closer to being a straight example, as seen in the vague flashbacks where she’s wearing a black leather getup and sleeps with Spike while still being in a relationship with Vicious. She’s also very much capable of murder and abandonment. Her genuine love for Spike however does undercut this, but even Faye can’t get a good read on Julia, saying she’s either a demonic angel or angelic demon.
  • Lucy from Cyberpunk: Edgerunners briefly plays this role as part of the trap against David when they first meet so Maine can get his Sandevistan implant back from him. She deliberately lures him with his obvious attraction towards herself to eventually 'destroy him' for crossing the gang. Once David joins instead, however, she completely drops this behavior and they earnestly fall in love with each other.
  • Dragon Ball:
    • Bulma usually uses her looks and body to manipulate guys to do her bidding. She tried using it on Goku initially, but it failed.
    • Hasky a female mercenary hired by the Red Ribbon army in the anime, is an effective Femme Fatale who almost steals the Four Star ball off Goku. Unfortunately for her Goku was a Pint-Sized Powerhouse.
    • Colonel Violet proved to be one in the anime, throwing two of her men overboard in crocodile infested waters to save her own skin and feigning loyalty to her superiors before stealing the money in their vault. Although granted, it’s the Red Ribbon army she’s betraying.
  • Two of the three GARO animated spin-offs have subversions:
    • GARO: The Animation’s Ema Guzmán is mysterious, flirtatious, icily beautiful, sharp-tongued, and exceptionally dangerous in a fight, but she soon proves herself to be an entirely trustworthy and reliable ally who just happens to enjoy messing with the heroes’ heads when she’s off the clock. While she does have secrets, they’re more dangerous to her than to anyone else.
    • GARO: Vanishing Line has Ema’s expy, Gina, who occupies pretty much the same narrative role with slight variations. She plays up the Femme Fatale vibe in her introductory episode, before settling down as a reliable member of the team and a Cool Big Sis to the Kid Hero, Sophie. She does still spend most of her time dunking on Sword, the resident muscle, but then again, who can blame her?
  • Ino-Head Gargoyle: Shizuka Aomori is drop-dead gorgeous and knows how to use her charms, but ends up dragging Saejima into her Roaring Rampage of Revenge against the gang that forced her into prostitution.
  • Lupin III's Fujiko Mine is anime's primary and longest-running example. She's a doll and she knows it, often using her sex appeal to charm her way into her mark's good graces, while plotting to rob them blind. Naturally, Lupin can't resist the challenge of trying to smooth talk her into bednote , despite usually being left empty-handed.
    • Fujiko's fame reached a climax in 2012 when, after forty years and much egging by the fans, she had a spin-off series that featured her and the rest of the Lupin gang as a series-long Origins Episode, similar to the Monkey Punch era titled Lupin III: The Woman Called Fujiko Mine.
  • In Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS, there is Due, the second Number, who infiltrated the Grand Cathedral of the Sankt Kaiser Church ten years before the story began. As a Master of Disguise, she pretended to be an innocent-looking sister and seduced an unnamed priest in charge and persuaded him to steal the Shroud of the Sankt Kaiser for her. The DNA of Olivie Sägebrecht was used by the Big Bad Jail Scaglietti to create a clone of her, Vivio Takamachi, Nanoha's (and Fate's) adopted daughter.
  • Maria no Danzai: Maria is not above using her looks to get what she needs, but she also has a low opinion of anyone who falls for her wiles.
  • Nao Yuuki from My-HiME, with claws to match. She uses her feminine wiles to lure overly eager sexual predators with promises of dating them and separate them from their money as a sort-of revenge for the family she lost: thugs robbed her family, killed her father, and left her mom in a Convenient Coma. (Oh, and she can fight, too.)
  • The enigmatic Kaworu Nagisa of Neon Genesis Evangelion fame is the Ambiguously Gay male equivalent. He turns up in The Hero's lonely life to seduce him, note  all while secretly moving toward his own morally questionable goal. Like many female examples of this trope, he's less evil than he is misguided, and in the end, after presumably falling in love with The Hero, he redeems himself through a Heroic Sacrifice.
  • One Piece surprisingly has numerous Femme Fatales making up most of the female cast with only a select few Nice Girl exceptions such as Kaya and Tashigi. Among the main heroines there’s Nami (a seductive Classy Cat-Burglar who has a nicer side but is still very manipulative), Robin (a sultry former female assassin), Vivi (who spent years masquerading as one under the guise of Miss Wednesday, before revealing she’s actually Purity Personified) and Boa Hancock (the Pirate Empress who’s immensely powerful feminine wiles can overcome just about everyone with the exception of Chaste Hero Luffy). There are also a few actually villainous ones like Miss Valentine, Miss Doublefinger, Kalifa and much later Black Maria, although Valentine and Doublefinger turn over a new leaf.
    • Played with Pudding and Komurasaki (really Kozuki Hiyori). The former starts off a sweet and bubbly Nice Girl before revealing herself as Cute and Psycho albeit a Broken Bird deep down, whilst the latter is introduced as a manipulative courtesan who robs gullible men of their money but turns out is Good All Along.
  • Inari of Princess Jellyfish uses her good looks to bend men to her will. It doesn't work on Shu though.
  • SPY×FAMILY: At first glance, Yor Forger certainly has most of the trademarks of one - she is a highly attractive woman, has long dark hair, her Iconic Outfit is a flattering black dress that shows off her curvaceous figure, classy enough to meet Eden College's standards for parents, the love interest to a super spy, and happens to be a dangerous world-class assassin. However, she subverts and deconstructs the trope: first, she's so dangerous that she never needed to use her womanly wiles to complete a mission, as her physical prowess was more than enough to get the job done, and as a result, she became a Socially Awkward Hero whose dedication to providing for her younger brother through her assassin jobs has left her romantically lacking, to the point where she actually has a Paralyzing Fear of Sexuality (though she can overcome this, at least briefly, with some Liquid Courage). For added irony, it is her husband Loid who is the charming Honey Trap who has seduced and discarded numerous women for the sake of his missions.
  • In Tokyo Ghoul, many female ghouls fall into this category.
    • Rize Kamishiro is a beautiful and sadistic Ghoul that enjoys preying on men. She uses her good looks to seduce her victims, often playing coy and innocent to draw them in before revealing her true nature. The story is kicked off when she appears as the mysterious and beautiful girl at the coffee shop that ill-fated Kaneki asks on a date. She plays the damsel, faking tears and asking him to walk her home because she's afraid of doing it alone... then attempts to eat him once she has him in a suitably deserted area. After being transformed into a Half-Human Hybrid as a result of receiving a transplant from her, one of Kaneki's primary goals is to learn who Rize actually was and what made her abandon her original identity and spend her life on the run.
    • Nutcracker, from the sequel. A beautiful ghoul obsessed with money, she works in a hardcore S&M club as a Dominatrix as a means to meet potential victims. Arranging to meet clients outside the club, she lures them to private locations in order to eat them. Besides that, she also works for a human trafficking ring and lures young women with the promise of well-paying jobs.
  • Barbara in Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds, specifically the Crashtown Arc. She not only used her charms to gain Yusei's trust, only to betray him later (and then offer to spare him if she willingly submitted to him, something he refused) she later betrayed her original lover, showing true loyalty — apparently — to her equally-rotten boyfriend (husband in the dub) Lotten, and was, like him, one of the few villains in the franchise incapable of redemption. (Ironically, despite the fact that she didn't duel even once — whether she even did that or not isn't even known — Barbara remains one of the most hated villains in the franchise by fans.)
  • Played with in Yuri!!! on Ice: When Yuri performs his Eros program, he uses the Femme Fatale archetype as inspiration, figuring that "feminine seductress" is truer to his personality than "masculine playboy".

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