Would Hit A Girl / Anime & Manga

• Baccano!'s Claire Stanfield considers himself an equal rights activist: he fights for the right of people of all genders to have their asses kicked by Claire Stanfield.
• In the Bamboo Blade manga, Toyama likes to Kick the Dog by beating up on new kendo club members, and Kirino mentions "Boys or girls, it doesn't matter to him. In fact, I think he picks on the girls even more." Of course, this makes the reader cheer that much harder when Tamaki beats his ass.
• Basilisk: Saemon Kisaragi of the Koga Ten says it's not in him to hit or kill women... right after he kills Hotarubi of the Iga Ten by cutting off both of her hands and stabbing her in the chest, then letting her fall down a cliff.
• For Guts in Berserk, there is no such thing as chivalry when he deals with most of female opponents. But then again, holding back against "women" like Rosine or Slan would be plain suicidal. His first on-screen kill is a female demon after getting it on with her, sticking his Arm Cannon straight down her throat before blowing her brains out when she transforms to eat him alive like she previously did to Corkus during the Eclipse.
  • It's played straight, then averted during the Golden Age in regards to Guts and Casca. When she first attacked him he fought her savagely, only hesitating for a moment when he discovered she was a woman and continuing to attack her and almost killed her before Griffith intervened. Years later after finding out he had to strip her naked to treat her wounds, and he tells her that he'd knock her on her ass if she wasn't a woman. Of course, Casca's far less of a threat to him than demons, and it can't be forgotten Guts is in love with her.
  • Also zig-zagged later as Guts does knock out Farnese with a chop to the neck, though considering only a chapter earlier Guts smashed a man's skull with his hand what he did to Farnese was ridiculously gentle in comparison. Guts also bites Casca on the breast at one point though that was thanks to him falling under the influence of his Enemy Within.
• Bleach: In general, the warriors of the Shinigami, Hollows and Quincies are all trained for battle and will fight both men and women. However, much of the time, male characters do struggle with the concept of fighting women and hold back in ways they wouldn't against male opponents.
  • Ichigo effortlessly defeats Isane when she, Omaeda and Sasakibe attacked him (though with Isane he seems to have just shoved her away). He also had no problem kicking and/or smacking Rukia when she got too uppity. In the final arc, when fighting against four female Sternritter, Ichigo comments that he thought that fighting female opponents would be difficult for him, but he soon doesn't have to worry about that as he witnesses how tough they are. He then doesn't hesitate to use lethal force on them, but he does get worried when Candice stubbornly doesn't dodge his attack, which causes her to lose an arm (she gets better).
  • Grimmjow is obsessed with testing the strength of his opponents, so he doesn't hesitate to challenge anyone who gets in his way. This is demonstrated when he stabs Rukia with his hand, then in another fight tried to incinerate her point-blank with a cero. He later ambushes Loly and Menoly when they are torturing Orihime, kicking Loly in the stomach and tearing her leg off while also incinerating Menoly's upper body with a cero. When Orihime refuses to heal Ichigo for their third fight (because she knows if she completes healing him, Grimmjow will just beat Ichigo up again), Grimmjow grabs her in a Neck Lift and almost chokes her; he also threatens to kill Nel if she interferes. It should be noted, though, that with the exception of Loly (who was deliberately provoking him by yelling that Aizen was going to kill Grimmjow for attacking her), Grimmjow usually will finish off a female opponent as efficiently as possible — when he first fought Ichigo he proceeded to kick him around Karakura Town like a football and literally punched him into the sky. He was also disgusted by Loly and Menoly abusing Orihime to the point her face was disfigured and demanded Orihime heal her injuries because "I'm not into carting around girls with beat up faces".
  • Nnoitra believes no woman should stand higher than a man on the battlefield; his loathing for Nel begins from that point, and he disrespects Harribel as well. He is willing to cheat to defeat Nel. When he later encounters her child form, he doesn't hesitate to try and kill her. He also makes unpleasant suggestions to Ulquiorra, implying Ulquiorra should take advantage of his access to the imprisoned Orihime. Normally emotionless, Ulquiorra is disgusted. He also tries to attack Yachiru, who is a child, before Kenpachi interrupts.
  • When Jackie asks Renji if her gender is a problem for him, Renji tells her that gender doesn't matter on the battlefield as he thrashes her. However, he then refuses to finish her off because that would mean killing a defenseless female.
• A Certain Magical Index: Nobody in the series is ever seen to hold back due to their opponent's gender. Everyone is equal in a fight, it seems. More than a few anime fans see this as a breath of fresh air.◊ Every once in a while villains will attempt to use their gender to get out of fights, especially against Touma Kamijou. However, Touma has no problem attacking females that he knows are harming/murdering innocent people or his friends. He has, in fact, gotten into tear-up fist fights with women who he is explicitly attracted to. In his fight with Oriana Thomson, he blushes at her bouncing her boobs in his face, and then breaks her nose. In A Certain Magical Index: Miracle of Endymion, he seems mildly annoyed that all his enemies are girls, but he still punches them.
  Touma: (in the parody A Certain Magical Index-tan: Miracle of Endymion Movie Edition) Ladylee or Shutaura? Which should I punch? They're both girls! But that doesn't matter! I believe in gender equality!
• Crying Freeman zigzags on this a bit. If Freeman needs someone dead he'll carry through on it regardless of gender, but if it's a woman, he's (somewhat) more likely to hesitate or give her a chance to forget she saw him.
• Daimos: Richter is based on Tybalt from Romeo and Juliet and just as violent.
  • He smacks Erika once he finds out she's fallen for a human man. Margarete covers Erika with her body, begging Richter to show her mercy, but he punches and kicks her too. He comes near to killing her while repeatedly muttering "I have no sister...", but seeing the reflection of his frenzied expression in his sword makes him reconsider.
  • Richter repeatedly delivers slaps and blows to Raiza, be it from his hand or his staff. He's not averse to maiming his male subordinates the same way, but the poor girl faces the brunt of it.
• In Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba,
  • Zenitsu’s sense of justice is greater than his very pronounced love of women, he drops any pretense of holding a vow of never hitting a woman if it is a very vain, abusive courtesan who turns out to be a demon in disguise; to note Zenitsu is completely set on passing judgement on Daki for her evil deeds, to the point he never cares about how beautiful she is.
  • In Sanemi's first scene, he stabs Nezuko three times and tries to use his own blood to goad Nezuko, Tanjiro's demonic younger sister, into attacking him. She refuses to do so, which results in the rest of the Demon Slayer Corps accepting her, but Tanjiro is furious with Sanemi for doing this.
  • Rui, the Lower Five of the Twelve Kizuki, runs a fake "family" of demons who have drunk his blood, with them obligated to protect him as the youngest son. He ends up physically abusing those who don't play their roles, especially his "mother" and "older sister."
  • Doma has killed (and sometimes eaten) more than a few women. His victims include Shinobu's older sister, Inosuke's mother and Shinobu herself.
• Dragon Ball:
  • In Dragon Ball, young Goku knocks out Lunch, who is in her violent blonde mode, after she tries to shoot him with a Uzi for sharing a bed with her. The Muten Roshi being a Chivalrous Pervert expresses slight shock that Goku doesn't hold back against women (despite the fact that Lunch was shooting at him). While Goku never intentionally hurts a female character outside Filler afterward until fighting Caulifla and Kale in Dragon Ball Super, the vast majority of Goku's opponents throughout the series up to that point were male ^note His future wife Chi-Chi was an exception, who Goku manages to defeat without needing to lay a finger on her by creating a wave from his fist, which knocks her out of the World Martial Arts Tournament ring.
  • In Dragon Ball Z, Vegeta says he won’t hold back at all against Android No. 18 despite her being a woman and sticks to his words. He still loses badly.
• Elfen Lied:
  • Bandou, who proves himself an asshole by immediately back-handing a random female secretary for approaching him from behind, calling her a "stupid bitch" afterwards. In fact, the only people that the man has hit in the series are girls. He even lampshades it at one point, telling a girl that he is assaulting that he really doesn't give a crap whether she's a little girl or not. Though in the manga, he gets to deliver a Curb-Stomp Battle to a sadistic pedophile, rescuing Nana and Mayu. It's so hard to NOT like crazy old Bandou after he's done the Big Damn Heroes routine. That has to do with Mayu being Bandou's Morality Pet and the Unknown Man being pure evil. He may hit girls and all, but he won't rape or torture them.
• Honoo no Alpen Rose: Leonhardt Aschenbach. When Jeudi first enters his estate, he mistakes her for a thief and throws knives at her. When she clarifies who she is, he lampshades this trope.
  Leon: "Well thank goodness! If you were a thief, you would have been skewered!"
• Fullmetal Alchemist: Edward Elric has no qualms about hitting girls, much to his younger brother's horror. He's one of the only people who can make the sentence "I'm not sexist" sound like a threat.
• In Get Backers, Ginji of all people ends up doing this to Sakura when she gets in his way, electrocuting and torturing her. Of course, the only way that this happens is because he went berserk and reverted back to being the Lightning Lord. Even Akabane is surprised that Ginji would do something so ungentlemanly as to beat the shit out of a girl.
• Hello Sandybelle:
  • Charles, Sandybelle's bully from when she lived in Scotland. He hits Sandybell on the head with a closed fist after Kitty insinuates she may be dating him, though this was long before he realized he liked her.
  • Alec is generally someone who puts the safety of others over his own, but when Kitty pisses him off one too many times, he slaps her, thrice.
• In Immortal Rain, resident Ax-Crazy Dora Folk is stated outright to be willing to do anything to win — even punch a woman or knock over a child. Which is kind of an understatement of exactly how far he's willing to go, considering that he was revealed shortly after to have forcefully impregnated a woman with demon spawn from hell, which caused her to go insane and die.
• Inuyasha: Inuyasha himself fights female villains such as Kagura and Tsubaki just as seriously as he does any male foe. When he fought Princess Abi, he explicitly mentioned that he doesn't like fighting women, but Abi is such an evil bitch that he's making an exception with her.
• Discussed in the manga The King of Fighters: KYO (based on the KOF games). When Athena Asamiya explains Kyo's girlfriend Yuki that she lost in a fight to Kyo and that's why she transferred to their school, Yuki is pissed at Kyo for hitting a girl (and one apparently younger than both of them), which actually offends Athena since she thinks Yuki sees her as Just a Kid. Played more seriously later when Yuki tells Iori "Go Through Me" when he insists on fighting Kyo and he takes her hostage as a reply — but when Kyo says "You Wouldn't Hit a Girl who can't fight back!", he agrees and lets her go.
• KonoSuba: The main character Kazuma repeatably makes sure to mention that he is an advocate for gender equality and is perfectly willing to retaliate. His regular brawls with the main heroine show that he isn't making that claim in jest.
• In Mobile Suit Gundam Wing, Dorothy Catalonia tries to Invoke Wouldn't Hit a Girl against Heero Yuy during a fencing match. He quickly proves her wrong with a thrust that snaps his foil like a twig and embeds it in Dorothy's mask about an inch away from her face.
• My Hero Academia: This is an almost deconstructed in Bakugo's fight against Uraraka in the Sports Festival Arc ^note To be fair, he more [literally] blasts her point blank than attempting to landing a punch, since she reduces gravity to anyone she touches. A lot of the audience boos him for being so okay with showing no mercy to a girl who seems so sweet and weak when compared to him, and his fellow students even call him out for it. Eraser Head though, says that it was a sign of respect, and Bakugo even states, after defeating her, that there was nothing fragile about her. Bakugo also hits Setsuna Tokage of Class 1-B with a Stun Grenade move during the Joint Training arc.
• One Piece: This is used against a female opponent, Monet, during the Punk Hazard arc, whom Zoro has to fight. She thinks him not going all out against her means he isn't willing to fight a female. When Tashigi, a swordswoman who oddly looks like the above mentioned childhood friend, berates him for this, he steps aside and allows Tashigi to fight her to show that she isn't an easy opponent. Once his point had been made, he re-enters the fray by nicking Monet on the cheek and revealing to the both of that that yes, while he doesn't like to fight females, it doesn't mean he won't, then proceeds to unleash his killing intent and split Monet down the middle. Granted, he doesn't kill her (he doesn't use Haki, so her snow powers aren't negated) but he shows that when he's serious and if Tashigi hadn't shown up, he would have. Monet, who had tried her hardest not to underestimate the Straw Hats, has a serious Oh, Crap! moment when she realizes her initial diagnosis of Zoro was wrong.
  • Several male fighters, such as Luffy, Jimbei, Kidd and Law, have no trouble hitting Big Mom without holding back. Justified as Big Mom is not only one of the Four Emperors and arguably the World Strongest Woman but also, many of their attacks would hardly slow her down.
• Ranma ½:
  • Despite widespread Fanon to the contrary, Ranma Saotome is quite willing to fight girls, though he does say once or twice that he doesn't like to do so and, for various reasons, goes easier on them then guys. For example, the whole mess with Shampoo started because he challenged her to a fight and then kicked her in the head off of the challenge log (and if he had been thinking to change back to his real form first, he wouldn't have gotten the Kiss of Death). He usually doesn't get to fight women particularly seriously because the matches he gets into opposing them tend to be goofy Martial Arts and Crafts stuff, and even if this contest involves physical combat he'd rather defeat them by ring-out or Defeat by Modesty than by actually hurting them. When push comes to shove, however, and the woman in question becomes a real threat to his or his friends' safety, he's perfectly willing to fight hand-to-hand with everything he's got — or bury them in a rock slide, whichever works.
  • Recurring opponent Pantyhose Taro outright says that he has no problem at all hitting girls. However, this means that he fights them exactly as he fights men — spending only as much energy and effort as necessary to defeat and subdue them. Therefore, after kidnapping Akane, he easily disarms and overpowers her with a few well-placed strikes; when fighting Rouge, he goes all-out, whether she's in her demure human form or in her psychotic Ashura form.
• Primitive Boy Ryu: Taka, while trying to gauge out Ryu, holds his mother Esta hostage and constantly smacks her.
• In an Establishing Character Moment in The Rose of Versailles, Oscar and Andre beat each other up, with him delivering the first hit. It's treated as a normal, ultimately friendly interaction between them and cements her tomboy status.
• Saint Seiya: Ikki does not care for his adversary's gender, and he is perfectly willing hitting his enemy is that person is a woman. It doesn't mean he's happy when someone else hits a girl in his vicinity, and specially if they're bystanders: he was pissed when Esmeralda was fatally struck down by Guilty, and later in the anime filler when little Helen, a 12-year-old girl, was tossed alive into a volcano by Agora and Shiva.
• Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann:
  • Kamina assaults a number of bunny-themed beastwomen in the Hot Springs Episode, after they were holding him at a point where they would kill him if he moved.
  • None of Team Dai-Gurren has any problems attacking Adiane. They treat her like any of the other Four Generals.
• Umineko: When They Cry:
  • Both Battler and Hideyoshi, according to the third arc. To be fair, both girls (Beatrice and Eva-Beatrice, respectively) were being rather mean at the time.
  • The Furnitures have no real qualms about the genders of their rivals during their fights, either. i.e., the Goat Men from the second arc kill Rosa and Maria after the first goes Mama Bear against them.
• Touta Konoe from Negima's Stealth Sequel, UQ Holder!, was taught by his adoptive mother that gender makes no difference on the battlefield.
• Ryuunosuke's dad from Urusei Yatsura strikes his daughter (quite hard) on many occasions. Then again, it's because he insists that she's a man and she will most certainly fight back due to how tough she's gotten from this treatment. The whole thing, amazingly, is Played for Laughs.
• Played for Drama early in the Wandering Son manga. Takatsuki is a closeted trans boy and he got into a fight with a boy in his elementary school. The boy's mother is especially mad at her son for getting into a fight with a girl. The mother saying this upsets Takatsuki.
• Yu-Gi-Oh!:
  • Yu-Gi-Oh!:
    • Panik roughs up Mai and shoves her. Joey yells at him for this, saying you are not supposed to hurt girls, and has to be held back from attacking him. Panik doesn't care.
    • In the Millennium World arc, when the heroes see the villagers beating up and throwing rocks at Kisara, Joey and Tristan yell at them for hurting a girl and try to attack them. Unfortunately, they are invisible, inaudible, and intangible to everyone, so they are unable to.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh! GX:
    • Jaden duels Tania, where she turns the duel into a Shadow Game where the duelists' souls can battle and damage each other. Jaden admits to being uncomfortable fighting a girl, but doesn't hesitate when it is time to battle.
    • When Jaden duels the Dark Magician Girl, the audience boos him whenever he attacks and yells at him for hurting a girl. He tunes them out and defeats her.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds: Jack Atlas punches out Barbara after she tried to hold two children hostage and threatened to kill them. He said anyone who would try that does not deserve chivalry.
• YuYu Hakusho: There is an instance in the anime where Yusuke reveals he holds this attitude, in contrast to Kuwabara, asking what gender has to do with fighting somebody who wants to fight and declaring there to be no purpose in treating an opponent differently because of their sex. The edited dub plays this straight, while the original Japanese/unedited dub implicitly averts it by revealing that the demon Miyuki, the cause of this, is actually a trans woman, though Yusuke's precise dialogue could be taken as him telling Kuwabara the truth about Miyuki's gender only to keep him from starting a pointless brawl due to being so outraged over how.

---