< Abusive Parents

Abusive Parents/Anime and Manga

  • Dr. Tenma from Astro Boy is an early Manga example. After he lost his son in a traffic accident, he built Astroboy like a Replacement Goldfish. Shortly after he realized a Replacement Goldfish is not a substitute for the original thing, and he began to berate and scorn Astroboy constantly, yelling him for such a nefarious crimes like being unable to grow up. Finally he got fed up with Astroboy and sold him in slavery. Thank God Astroboy was programmed to be a "good boy" and he was taken in by Dr. Ochanomizu, who was an altruistic, kind man instilled and nurtured those traits in Astroboy, or maybe he could have become a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds.
  • Hinata Hyuuga from Naruto has shades of this, what with being so constantly berated for her mild nature and natural compassion that she developed a severe inferiority complex and was veritably disowned by her father and clan. The anime hints that things may have turned a little better, though.
    • Luckily, and probably thanks to Naruto, Hiashi evened out and became supportive to his eldest daughter. By Part II, he now thinks she is as strong as Neji and gives her a personal bodyguard. Character Development, you do your work.
    • It's played VERY, VERY straight for Gaara, however. Oh, where to begin? First, he was only conceived to imprison the daemonic incarnation of sand in order to serve the expressed purpose of being a mindless tool. Hated and feared by all of the villagers, he grew up lonely, confused, and suicidal - his only loved one and confidant being his maternal uncle, Yashamaru. THEN, when he was six years old, Yashamaru attempts to kill him on orders from the Kazekage, Gaara's father. This is not, however, a matter of duty, as Yashamaru tells Gaara he could have refused the Kazekage. THEN, to pour salt in the poor kid's wounds, Yashamaru tells Gaara that he has always hated him, and is unable to think of him as his nephew, that Gaara killed his mother/Yashamaru's older sister Karura due to Death by Childbirth and that he is nothing more than a monster that should carry out the ambitions of Karura's hatred for her village. Oh, and that Karura never loved him. And evidently since then, the Kazekage has been sending assassins for his own son's head for seven years, from the time Gaara was six. And we all know how Gaara turns out. He gets better, though.
    • Then we learn that the deal with Yashamaru and Karura was a lie. Karura actually died blessing baby!Gaara and promising to love and protect him even from beyond the grave, and Yashamaru's own actions and words were a Jerkass Facade coming from the orders of the Kazekage. When did Gaara find out? As he called out the Edo-Tensei-revived!Kazekage out for all the shit that he pulled against him. Woooooow.
  • .hack//SIGN had Tsukasa's real life father, who apparently despised the fact that she was a girl, slapped her at a police station when she was caught trying to steal a bra, and killed a kitten that she was trying to raise in a box in an alley. Word of God says that he's also the man who tried to turn off her life support system in the real world.
  • In the Baker's Dozen episodes of Baccano!!, Huey's conversation with Elmer reveals that he's spent quite a good deal of time emotionally manipulating his daughter, Chane, for that wonderfully vague and questionable goal of Science! While he does show her something resembling affection, it's very clear that he sees and treats her more like a well trained guinea pig than a human being. He doesn't even consider her human.

Huey: Chane, my animal experiment... Guinea pigs often behave in ways you don't expect.

  • From Kodomo no Jikan:
    • Reiji had an alcoholic father and a mother who refused to do anything about it. His hatred for them was so great that he didn't even cry when they died. To make thing worse, Reiji himself becomes an abusive stepfather, with Wife Husbandry intent towards Rin, the daughter of his deceased cousin and wife Aki.
    • Both Mimi and Kuro's mothers are implied to be neglectful, and after Mimi has a run-in with a Chikan, her mother actually scolded her for dressing the way she did even though her clothes weren't risque at all.
  • Hiroko "Hiro-chan" Kaizuka's father in Narutaru constantly berates her for anything but a 100% in every class (despite pressure from bullies to do poorly to lower the grading curve), and cuts her ties to the only friends she ever had. That last one finally broke her enough to kill the bullies *and* both of her parents.
    • It is implied and practically spelled out in the manga that Akira Sakura suffers this at the hand of her father. And she calls him out by stabbing him to death.
    • Shiina's parents aren't together anymore, because her mother Misono strangled her once during an emotional breakdown. Shiina also gets emotional abuse from her, since Misono was so mentally damaged by the death of her older daughter Mishou that she convinced herself that Shiina, born some days before Misho's demise, was to blame. And when Mom actually redeems herself? She's almost immediately murdered.
  • Neon Genesis Evangelion is quite fond of this trope.
    • Gendo Ikari is cold, dismissive, and occasionally insulting toward his son, Shinji, who, for the most part, desperately craves his father's approval. This also overlaps with neglect over his treatment of his surrogate daughter Rei. Ironically its revealed Gendo avoids his son because he thinks he'd be a horrible parent. You'd think he could just tell that to Shinji.
      • It is also implied that Gendo himself had problems with his parents.
    • Yui Ikari is no prize either, taking her four-year-old son along to watch her perform an experiment that carried a high risk of death -- with the predictable result that she died right in front of his eyes. Worse yet, it is implied (but not stated) that she deliberately ended herself to merge with EVA-01.
    • The Ikaris are noteworthy in that they were the only challengers to dethrone the Saotomes as the Worst Parents In Anime (as generally accepted by the fanbase), a title they (primarily Gendo) successfully defended for over a decade until finally losing it to Precia Testarossa.
    • Asuka's parents and stepparents deserve special mention. Her mother's abuse was a result of her being completely insane and not recognizing Asuka as her daughter at all. But her father and future stepmother (who just happened to be the mother's nurse) really should have made sure that Asuka had some help to deal with being emotionally abused rather than allowing unsupervised visits, which led to Asuka discovering her suicide alone and subsequently deciding to be emotionally self-sufficient at age six. And they really should have made sure she was out of earshot when they started having their affair.
    • It's not clear what kind of relationship Misato had with her father, but there was lots of emotional neglect. He did save her life during the Second Impact, but she was still emotionally scarred enough for the rest of her life.
    • In fact, every parental figure in Eva is abusive, dead, or both.
  • Kenzo Kabuto from Mazinger Z and Great Mazinger. He almost died cause a laboratory experiment gone wrong, but his father saved his life. However both of them thought it would be better not telling Kouji and Shiro -Kenzo's sons- he had survived. For YEARS Kouji and Shiro grew up mostly alone, thinking their father died alongside their mother while he was building a Humongous Mecha to defend humankind. When Kenzo revealed the truth to them, Kouji was too glad to hold a grudge, but Shiro took a long while until he could forgive him. Also, Kenzo had no troubles slapping his adoptive son when he thought Tetsuya was crossing the line. All of it finally bit everyone's butts at the end of the series.
    • Professor Gennosuke Yumi also counts. Along the series he quite neglected Sayaka. It was obvious his family was less important to him than his career, and often he was absent when her daughter needed him. Likewise, his niece Yuri is a conceited, cranky, brat, and he explains that is cause her parents never have time for her.
    • Another Mazinger Z character who suffered due to Abusive Parents was... Big Bad Dr. Hell himself. Like it was seen in the manga continuity penned by Gosaku Ota (that gave a backstory to most of the villains), since he was a child his mother abused him physically and emotionally (insulting him, stating openly she did not want getting kids and she would be better off if he would have never been born...) as his father shrugged off indifferently. The physical and psychological mistreatment he suffered back then is one of the reasons he decided Humans Are the Real Monsters and he became so unhinged.
  • The Dark Magical Girl in Princess Tutu suffers from this—her father constantly tells her that she is "hideous" and that "no one could ever love you enough to die for you". He even tries to take her heart to feed his powers at one point. However, near the end, it's revealed that he isn't her true father at all, and kidnapped her as a baby -- which frees her up to help the main characters kill him.
  • In Sailor Moon, parental trouble shows up often. Ami's mother is a well-meaning but workaholic doctor and her father is a wandering artist who never sees her. Rei's mother is dead and her father ignores her in favor of his career, to the point of missing her birthday dinners; at least Rei has her grandfather, but in the anime, despite his good intentions, he's a pervert. Hotaru's mother is dead and her father is either possessed or possessed and crazy (depending on the canon) and, in the anime, he lets his assistant Kaorinite psychologically abuse the girl. Chibi-Usa thinks of herself as neglected, which may or may not be true, since we only really see the future through her eyes; regardless, the perceived neglect is enough to give Wiseman the pull he needs to turn Chibi-Usa into Black Lady.
    • Actually, no. The memories that Wiseman manipulated were not of Usagi and Mamoru emotionally abusing Chibi-Usa, but of them telling her to stand on her own feet in case they weren't there for her. Chibi-Usa was stressed and depressed because of other deals (like showing emotional exhaustion from all of her trials, and how she was despairing because Usagi couldn't wake up her own future self from the coma she was in), and it wasn't helped by Wiseman using his powers to Mind Rape her.
  • There is something unsettling about Kyouko's mother in Skip Beat!!. The few scenes we see of her is when she is openly berating her then six-years-old daughter for not being academically perfect, and then ignoring her. Next we know, Kyouko is living most of her "family" life with Shou's family, the Fuwas, who are quite cold to her while planning to make her either marry Shou or shape her into the heiress to their ryokan but she still sees them as warmer than her mom. By the time Kyouko has snapped out her pathological search of affection and is trying to live in another city, it has become more than obvious that Mrs. Mogami just plainly doesn't care for her, not even to seek fame because of Kyouko's increasingly notoriety.
  • In Soul Eater, Medusa's Moral Event Horizon moment was stating that Chrona was her child (in light of everything she did to hir).
  • In True Tears, Shinichiro's mother hated the deceased mother of Hiromi, who has taken up residence with Shinchiro's family. She makes Hiromi very aware of this and is a driving factor in turning Hiromi into a very emotionally repressed girl.
  • Kohane's mother in xxxHolic sees her daughter only as a financial asset, and maintains her as such. Afraid that anything "impure" would disrupt her powers as a medium, Mrs. Tsuyuri forbids Kohane from having any friends and from talking to people. (This culminates in her throwing scalding hot coffee at Watanuki's face after she finds Kohane eating dinner with him.) Watanuki also notices that she refuses to call her daughter by her name or even touch her.
    • It goes into physical abuse after Kohane points out to her mother that the reason she never touched Kohane was because the mother thought of herself as unclean. She viciously slaps Kohane on live television and would have done it again if Watunaki hadn't protected Kohane.
  • In Bleach, Inoue Orihime's parents. By her brother's own words: "Our mother was a whore, our father a demon. If a child cried, they beat her until she stopped crying. That's the kind of people they were." Hence why he ran away right after turning 18, with toddler!Orihime in tow. Then the same brother tried to kill Orihime...though in his defense, it was only when he turned into a hollow.
    • Mayuri Kurotsuchi is horribly abusive towards his daughter/lieutenant Nemu, emotionally and physically.
    • Isshin Kurosaki is somewhat of a subversion. While he often physically attacks Ichigo, not only is it Played for Laughs, he usually winds up on the wrong end of an ass kicking for it (often with him praising Ichigo for curb stomping him), and neither of them gets hurt worse than a few bumps and bruises. They also seem to have a good relationship aside from this, despite it being a very unusual one. It also turns out that he's a Shinigami himself, and assumed Ichigo would become one, so he was actually making sure his son knew how to fight. And when Ichigo does truly need Isshin's emotional and fighting support, he promptly gives it to him.)
  • Sherry Belmont's mother from Konjiki no Gash Bell. It's hinted in the backflashes that whenever she tried her best at something to please her (like playing the piano), she snapped at her for the slightest mistake. She abandons Sherry for stealing the family jewel (which she didn't) and hasn't seen her since. Sherry was about to kill herself because of the abuse before her friend Koko came along. At least some things get better for her later.
  • Miyu's mother in Super GALS! indicates her utter distaste for her daughter. With the exception of providing her with the bare necessities, she fails to provide any love and compassion.
    • Miyu dramatically demands her mother's attention in the first season only to continue getting the cold shoulder with a harsh response of "I see the man who left me in you".
  • Some conversations in Durarara!! imply that Masaomi Kida's parents are neglectful and uncaring towards him, and don't seem the least bit concerned about him, whether he ends up in the hospital due to gang activity or drops out of school and disappears almost entirely.
    • Anri Sonohara's father started physically lashing out at her when his antique shop business started going sour. During one of these beatings, Anri's mother Sayaka went Mama Bear and grabbed an antique sword they recently came into possession of to protect her. Too bad it was an Evil Weapon named "Saika"...
    • Aoba was beaten regularly by his older brother, Izumi, just because his brother thought that he wasn't getting as much love as him, and the poor kid wouldn't fight back. His brother then stated that he went too far with something that is assumed not to be a physical beating but a sexual one and it finally caused Aoba to retaliate and set his room on fire. Even though they live separately now, Izumi (who has gotten out of jail because of the fight with Yellow Scarves) tells Izaya that he plans on killing his brother for making him suffer. Oh, and after all the abuse, his brother didn't really turn out that sane.
  • Emperor Charles zi Britannia from Code Geass, an extreme Social Darwinist who pushes his kids to take dangerous jobs... and subtly encourages them to war with and kill one another to secure their position in the line of succession. Lelouch gets the worst of it, getting disowned, screamed at, and used as a political hostage when he gets angry at Charles for not giving a damn about the assassination of Lelouch's mother or the crippling of his little sister in the same incident. Late in the series, we learn that Charles actually did love Lelouch's mother Marianne and considered her children to be his favorites; his abusive attitude, which Marianne supported and went along with, was intended to make Lelouch and Nunnally stronger people. The pair even wanted to get the two kids in on their Assimilation Plot, but Lelouch, having recently crossed over the Despair Event Horizon, was in no mood to hear that all the crap he'd been put through in the last decade was "because Mommy and Daddy love you very much". Nunnally's blindness was not the result of traumatic stress, but because Charles inflicted it upon her with his Geass, ostensibly to protect her by making people think she wasn't a threat (her paraplegia, however, was authentic). You better believe Lelouch wasn't happy about that.
  • In Virgin Love, Kaoru's mom neglected him for her relationships and then blamed him when they went sour. His emotional isolation and fear of relationships stem directly from not wanting to be her.
  • Hisoka Kurosaki of Yami no Matsuei got this as a result of his parents's fear of his ability and being a Replacement Goldfish for his dead sister. Not really helped by how his family was associated with a certain demon, which rapes his father and forcibly impregnates his mother.
  • Almost everything wrong in Ranma's life can be traced back to the actions of his father, Genma. Juusenkyo? Genma's idea. A crippling fear of cats? Genma didn't bother reading the page mentioning how utterly stupid a particular training regime was. Getting Ukyou and Shampoo dead set on killing them? Both due to Genma's short-sighted greed and gluttony, though Ranma was somewhat to blame in the latter case. Plus pairing him up with a girl who will assault him or lash out at him for the pettiest misunderstandings, in an arranged marriage. Even separating Ranma from his mother at toddler age, thus ensuring the boy would get very limited social and emotional development, was Genma's idea, because she would have made him "weak"... and let's not even go into the bit about the seppuku vow Ranma was made to take without knowing. Although he may claim he did it all to make Ranma a peerless fighter and man among men, his actual motivation is mostly to provide him, Genma, with a carefree future where he doesn't have to work and can just while his days away with his best friend, Soun.
    • That's not his motivation. If all he wanted to do was lounge around, he could just as easily have let Ranma live a more normal life, brought him to Soun to make arrangements for uniting the two families (Contrary to popular belief, the engagement has nothing to do with uniting the two schools. If Genma and Soun wanted to unite the schools, they could simply train each other's families in their respective arts.), and then freeload off the Tendos, like he does now. It's not like Ranma pampers him or Genma gets financial gain from training his son to be a martial artist.
    • Ironically enough, he may be the less abusive parent compared to his wife, Nodoka. While Genma manipulates Ranma for his own personal gain, he still attempts to protect Ranma throughout his life. Nodoka, on the other hand, is completely determined to carry out the Seppuku contract she and Genma had Ranma sign when he was just a baby. Even though she wants to see her son, she will kill him if she doesn't find him manly. After she discovers Ranma's a Gender Bender and determines that his actions are still manly enough for the contract, she is still perfectly willing to carry out the Seppeku ritual if she feels that his conduct isn't satisfactory... Yeah, Ranma's family is pretty screwed up.
    • Genma and Nodoka Saotome were for a long while considered The Worst Parents In Anime, until finally dethroned by Gendo and Yui Ikari.
  • In The Wallflower, Kyohei's mother repeatedly tells him that she wishes he'd never been born, and she wishes he'd never had his face. It's what causes him to be living with the other boys in the first place. This leads to a very poignant moment in the anime where Sunako witnesses the abuse, then repeats some of the words to him in a fit of rage. This causes Kyohei to run away and join a biker gang until he is lured home by Sunako's fried shrimp. In the live action version, this causes a Tear Jerker episode when Kyohei reconnects with his mother and makes her a special lunch from one of his fondest memories. The memory is not fond for her, however, and she snaps, screaming all of the abuses of his childhood at him as she breaks down. Later on, his father shows his abusive side, by demanding that Kyohei stay out of their lives for good.
  • Pokémon: Chimchar and Charmander were treated this way by their former trainers before Ash came to the rescue. Chimchar even had a bit of character development an episode after being adopted by its new trainer to get used to the drastic change.
  • Soichiro Arima from Kare Kano had very violent parents who beat him until he was abandoned and sent to live with his more generous aunt and uncle. In the manga, Arima's birth father, Reiji, actually realized this was wrong and directly asked his older brother to raise his kid so little Arima would have a normal life from then on. Also, several years later Reiji comes back and attempts to make things better (though, seriously, threatening him and Yukino at gunpoint to make sure your boy listens to you?). Arima's mother Ryouko, on the other hand, remains abusive -- Reiji came back to Japan intending to kill her on behalf of their son.
  • Misaki Aoyagi, Ritsuka's mentally unstable mother in Loveless, abuses her remaining son after the eldest one, Seimei, dies in very odd circumstances. While the anime mostly implies the abuse, showing her screaming and throwing things and one brief silhouette of her strangling him, the manga goes into almost graphic detail with the maddened Misaki hitting, biting, stabbing (with a fork), and trying to drown her 12-year-old son, all the while screaming about how he's not her real child, how she wants the "true Ritsuka" to come back, and how she should have had him aborted. The best part is that his father is implied to live with them and yet does nothing to stop it.
    • Misaki actually starts beating Ritsuka before Seimei died. The reason Misaki started beating Ritsuka was because, at age 10, Ritsuka's personality changed completely, causing Misaki to claim that he wasn't her son. Actually, when he was alive (or rather, before he was thought to be dead), Seimei would protect Ritsuka from Misaki when she went into a rage, and would tend to his wounds when he wasn't there to protect him.
    • There's a shot of his father standing by the door while she's beating Ritsuka at one point.
    • Very early in the manga, there is an occasion where Ritsuka's father grabs Misaki and instructs Ritsuka to run while he holds her back. I thought it was implied that the father spent all his time at work, possibly because his home life was so unpleasant.
    • Soubi from Loveless suffered sexual abuse at the hands of his teacher Ritsu, who, though not technically his father, was the man responsible for raising him after he was orphaned and therefore as close to a parent as he had.
  • A recurring theme in the semi-autobiographical stories by horror manga author Hideshi Hino. Dad is an abusive alcoholic pig slaughterer while mom went violently insane the day the Author Avatar was born with a smile on his face and a blood clot/his dead twin's head in his hands -- "Demon child!". Mom enjoys tying up lil' Hideshi and torturing him while Dad has to tie up mom in order to control her. Incidentally, Grandpa is a yakuza and/or a gambler while Grandma believes she's a chicken/is violently raped, murdered, and stuffed down a well, depending on what story you're reading.
  • Creed from Black Cat was physically and emotionally abused by his mother (a prostitute) when he was young, causing him to become a Draco in Leather Pants.
  • In Kannazuki no Miko, Souma and Tsubasa were often beaten by their father, one flashback showing him holding a baseball bat. This drives Tsubasa to murder him, and is the main reason for Tsubasa joining Orochi.
    • Also, it's strongly implied that Himeko's adoptive parents were abusive.
  • Welcome to The NHK:It's revealed that Misaki was physically abused by her stepfather. The abuse ultimately caused her mother to commit suicide through falling off a cliff. The abuse also caused Misaki to find someone else she thought was more else worthless than herself as a result of the abuse, causing the plot of the show.
  • Similarly, in Umineko no Naku Koro ni, Rosa Ushiromiya is this towards Maria. She is known to leave Maria at home for several days on end, often breaking promises she'd made to her beforehand for no reason other than to go on a vacation and leaving her very young daughter to buy dinner at the supermarket every day. And when people who notice the signs try to interfere on Maria's behalf, it...isn't nice. To say nothing of the times Rosa beats the shit out of her.
    • However, Rosa is somewhat unique in that she genuinly loves Maria and, in fact, is very much a Mama Bear when it's truly needed (in Episode 2, she makes a badass Last Stand against the goat butlers; in the game's Episode 8, she shoves a rifle down Erika's throat when she gives Maria a Hannibal Lecture). She frequently apologizes to Maria after beating her, and spoils and pampers her in several scenes (buying her ice-cream, giving her the stuffed bear she'd call "Sakutaro", etc). In addition, she's portrayed quite sympathetically compared to other examples, though not in a way that justifies her actions, due to her incredibly screwed up life.
      • It doesn't help that Rosa herself comes from an abusive household, since Kinzo Ushiromiya wasn't exactly a model father, either to her or to her siblings Krauss, Eva and Rudolf. Worse, he also commits Parental Incest with his illegitimate daughter, Beatrice Ushiromiya.
  • Rurouni Kenshin - Part this, part Evil Step Parents--Soujirou was horribly battered and mistreated as a slave by his stepmother and half-siblings due to having been born to a mistress, and became a Stepford Smiler to deal with the abuse. He eventually snapped and killed them in self-defense when he learnt that they planned to kill him and blame his death on Makoto Shishio, then a runaway from justice. However, Shishio had taken Soujiro under his wing already and convinced the kid to kill them and then leave with him...
  • Niki from Urotsukidouji was shown to have abusive alcoholic parents who beat him on a regular basis. This eventually causes him to kill them.
  • Misae Nohara from Crayon Shin-chan strikes his son Shinnosuke on his head most of the time he misbehaves or pokes fun at her. There are even times when she spanks him whenever he crosses the line. While most of the time it's Played for Laughs, some other times can be Disproportionate Retribution.
  • Played for Laughs in One Piece with Monkey D. Garp and Luffy. The former used many tricks to strengthen his grandson, including tossing him in a bottomless ravine, leave him in the jungle at night and tieing baloons at him and make him fly to the sky.
  • It is implied in Dragon Ball (specifically Goku and Frieza's fight) that Frieza's father, King Cold, and possibly his own mother, resorts to physical abuse on Frieza, as he mentions when fighting Goku that, besides Goku, the only people who ever managed to hurt him were "his loving parents". That might explain a few things about Frieza's nature.
  • The fact that Tiger and Bunny's Yuri Pretov/Lunatic had an abusive father as part of his Freudian Excuse is probably not too surprising. The fact that said abusive father was an emotionally destroyed, alcoholic Mr. Legend? Much more surprising.
  • In the manga version of Yu Yu Hakusho, Mukuro's stepfather had her outfitted at birth with cybernetics that allowed him to use her as his obedient Sex Slave. Which he did the moment it was finished. He raped her constantly throughout her childhood until she finally mutilated herself with acid so that he wouldn't want to touch her any more, whereupon he threw her out and abandoned her. And did we mention that he implanted an artifical memory of him having once treated her with kindness, so she would never be able to bring herself to kill him no matter how cruel he was? In the end, Hiei obtains a demonic plant called a "pseudocreature" from Kurama and uses it on him, turning him into an immobile half-plant thing that can still feel everything, but will regenerate any wound except for the destruction of its brain. He then gives him to her as a birthday present -- and as well as telling her that her memory of his kindness was a fake, so she is now truly able to do whatever she wants to.
  • Mayu from Elfen Lied was raped by her stepfather, this being the reason why she ran away from home.
    • To add extreme insult to injury, her already-distant mother, when Mayu told of this abuse, did not disbelieve her or ask her to not say anything... she slapped and berated her out of jealousy, treating her violated daughter as a sexual competitor. While in the anime, she refers to Kouta and Yuka as the mother and father of the group, in the manga, she is understandably still phobic towards guys, and while she respects, admires, and is grateful to the pair, any overt parental associations are kind of shut out.
      • Ironically, she bonds the most with Bandou who generally treats her like crap (mostly verbally). Then again, Even Evil Has Standards in Bandou's case.
  • The manga Bitter Virgin focuses on Hinako, age 16, who is revealed to have been a victim of sexual abuse from her stepfather. Made worse by the fact her mother refused to believe it was happening until this abuse got Hinako pregnant for the second time. The experience left her with a powerful phobia towards men.
  • Kira from the manga Mars is raped by her stepfather. That's how her shyness and fear of boys gets explained.
  • In the Ikki Tousen manga/anime, Little Miss Badass Ten'i (Dian Wei) is raped by her father and she kills him in revenge.
  • Hayate from Hayate the Combat Butler suffered this in spades. Not only they ran away from home and slapped their son with their debts, they even sold his organs to the Yakuza to pay it off!!!
    • Hinagiku and Yukiji's real parents did this to her and her sister, albeit not as severely.
    • Neither Hayate or the 'Katsura' sisters are hinted at being abused through the use of money. Hayate simply had to work for himself instead of being supported by them like normal parents. They had originally planned on training him to follow in their footsteps.
    • Hinagiku tells us that her parents simply dropped the debt on the children and disappeared. She still loves them, and loves her foster parents, it's implied that the love is the same for both, and the Katsura parents are implied to be very loving, so abuse is unlikely from the unknown parents.
  • Common plot element in Gunslinger Girl. Angelica in particular, since her father ran her over with his car to collect her insurance. She survived, but barely..
  • A one-shot manga by Rumiko Takahashi that opens with a son trying to escape from his parents, since they keep trying to use his bone marrow to create gold and thus solve their financial woes.
    • In the latest manga of Rumiko Takahashi, RIN-NE, Rinne's dad Sabato seems to have studied at the Genma Saotome Anything Goes School of Parenting... and then invented some more techniques of his own to enhance his massive jerkass status. Let's see...Daddy's been stealing Rinne's money for years, forced him to take on his debts, and is trying to get him married to take over his failing company... probably to force even more debt on him while he gets to go off skipping.
  • In Lucky Star this seemed to be the case for Akira Kogami, who works in the Lucky Channel segment. It's even implied in the first episode that her mother took all of her salary that she got from her job.
  • Gambino, Guts' adoptive father, is an asshole to Guts in Berserk. Berating him on a daily basis, attempting to murder him while telling him that it was his fault that his Ill Girl wife Sylph died, telling him that he's a demon child and that he should've died, putting him through extremely harsh training, selling him to a stranger for one night who rapes him, and putting him out on the battlefield at a young age.
    • And not to be outdone by the main character, a Flash Back reveals a very young Casca was sold to a noble who needed a new serving girl. Unfortunately, the noble wanted a different kind of service from her than cooking or cleaning. Saved by Griffith, Casca joined him as a mercenary in his band until the Day of the Eclipse when in a supreme act of tragic irony, Griffith, in his very first act upon becoming Femto, raped her in front of Guts. Princess Charlotte also suffered an attempt by her father after a confrontation with the still human Griffith forced The King to confront how he really felt toward her in addition to the cold emotional kind from her mother and Farnese had to suffer quite a bit of the emotional kind from her dad. Let's face it, it sucks to be a kid in the Berserk universe, except for the following example.
    • Averted with: Schierke, a young witch, raised by another witch named Flora, who was a kind, gentle, grandmotherly type, and one of the only characters in that world who could be called truly good.
  • Fruits Basket is the absolute epitome of this trope! Part of the curse is that often parents will either become extremely overprotective of their possessed child or they will reject it completely. Let us count the ways...
    • Yuki is used by his parents as a tool for furthering their financial gain. His mother abandons him to live with the already screwed-up Akito, who starts out kind to Yuki but eventually becomes emotionally abusive toward him [and some say physically]. They show no affection toward him but have great interest in the value that his curse can bring to their household. They control every facet of his life and keep him locked away unless they stand to gain from it, pretending not to hear him when he protests. This leads Yuki to seek the mother he never had in Tohru rather than a romantic partner, in a non-squicky way. In a subversion, though, the manga hints that Yuki's mom may have had a Heel Realization, or had started working on it.
    • Kyo is feared by his own parents because of the volatile nature of his curse. His mother becomes obsessively overprotective of him, not out of love, but an attempt to learn to love him and protect her reputation, which Kyo sees through at a young age. The strain of the constant ruse and Kyo's temper drives her over the edge to suicide. At this point, Kyo's father goes completely loopy, abandons him and demands he be kept in solitary confinement, as is tradition for the rejected person who is possessed by the Cat. This is delayed by his later adoption by Kazuma, and definitely abolished when Akito has a Heel Face Turn.
    • Momiji is rejected straight from birth by his mentally-unstable mother. She was prone to screaming and throwing things in despair, eventually driving herself to madness and appealing to have her memories erased. She told the doctor, Hatori, that she rejected ever giving birth to such a creature... in front of Momiji. He then lived with Hatori and was visited by his father occasionally, but forbade to see his beloved younger sister Momo. It's hinted in the manga, though, that his dad is starting to ease up and may let him meet up with Momo some time later, when they're older.
    • Kisa's father is unaccounted for in the story, and her well-intentioned but very insecure mother is so overprotective of her that, after Kisa runs away from home due to bullying, she nearly reaches a breaking point and gives up on raising her. Things get better, though.
    • Isuzu aka Rin is raised lovingly by her parents until she expresses doubt that they could be happy all the time when the other families are experiencing such pain. It's then that they snap, and the happy days are revealed to be nothing but a facade they kept up to keep things stable in the house. After their true feelings come out, they ignore Rin entirely, occasionally yelling at or physically abusing her, leaving her with huge scars on her back. After she runs away from home and falls ill, her parents arrive at the hospital to officially disown her. She lives with Kagura from then on, and later with Kazuma.
    • Akito is raised as a man by her jealous mother, Ren, in order to separate the god-child from her husband Akira (Ren ever demanded this as a condition to not have her abort the unborn Akito, under the excuse that a female leader would "make the Sohma clan look bad".) After Akira's death, Akito is continually manipulated and demeaned by Ren, who tries to take the Zodiac members from her. In terms of emotionally abusive parents in Fruits Basket, Ren's is the worst case, making Akito into the delusional and violent monster s/he becomes as she grows older.
    • Most of the other Zodiac members express a rift between them and their parents to a less dramatic extent (like Wholesome Crossdresser Ritsu and his mother Meshou, who genuinely loves him but is asphixiatingly overprotective and just as much of a Shrinking Violet as she is), but only two children, Hiro and Kagura, can claim healthy, normal relationships with their parents.
      • Not only members of the Zodiac are hurt by parental abuse in this story, though: Arisa Uotani is raised by a neglectful, alcoholic father who pays her so little mind that she joins a gang and rarely comes home, after her mom leaves them for someone else. Machi Kuragi is driven to compulsive acts of violence after being raised by a mother who forced her to be perfect. Nothing she did was ever good enough, and the incredible pressure drove Machi to insecurity and depression. After her baby brother was born, the mother's hopes were invested in him and she falsely accused Machi of being murderously jealous, separating the siblings and making poor Machi even more dysfunctional. Tohru's mother Kyoko was rejected by her parents after she joined a gang as well. Beforehand, her father only expressed contempt for her, and her mother sheepishly ignored the abuse and only worried about what others said about Kyouko's bad behavior. Even after her husband died, they only called to tell her not to come home with her child. Even normal people have terrible parents in this story!
  • Ranma ½: Genma Saotome manages both emotional and physical abuse (constantly insulting and demeaning him, stealing his food, the Neko-ken) of Ranma, and isn't much better towards his wife. Soun Tend? manages emotional neglect of his 3 daughters, due to the huge Values Dissonance: he does have good intentions, like his and Kasumi's Image Song "Otousan" reveals, but is just too backwards in regards to mentality. Finally, "grandfather" Happ?sai rounds off the sexual abuse with groping and molesting anything that looks even vaguely female. And somehow none of these people are considered examples of this trope!
    • Though she gets a lot of glossing over, both in the series and in reality, Nodoka Saotome, Ranma's mother, actually covers emotional abuse just as well as her husband, if not more so. While it was not her idea, and she is a traditional sort of woman, her dedication to a contract that Ranma "signed" when he was barely a toddler, incapable of understanding what was going on, is insane. Worse, the conditions of said contract are so vague as to be almost non-existent—the verbal part of the oath was "Ranma will become a Man among Men", while the written contract simply states "I will commit Seppuku", sealed with Genma's thumbprint and baby Ranma's handprint. Despite this, she is perfectly willing to consider it valid, and is so dedicated that she carries a sword whevere she goes, just in case she should meet Ranma and have to call him to go through with it. She even bathes and sleeps with it! Ranma is thusly forced to hide himself from her, masquerading as "Ranko Tend?", a fictious cousin of his fianc?Akane. Even when they do finally meet face to face, while she doesn't demand he go through with the oath for his Gender Bender curse, she doesn't call the contract fulfilled either. Even at the end of the series, it's still in application, meaning she can threaten him with a torturous death by disembowelment whenever she pleases.
  • Thankfully, no character in Glass Fleet suffers all four forms of abuse, but together the three main characters manage to combine all four. Vetti, the main antagonist, suffers extreme emotional and sexual abuse at the hands of his stepparents. Cleo suffers mildly from physical abuse, and Racine's father's neglect of her is minimized by her older brother's involvement in her life. As it turns out, Vetti and Cleo's abuse was for the sake of a prophecy.
  • Several of Kaori Yuki's works feature Abusive Parents.
    • Rin's mother and Ian's father in Fairy Cube.
    • Alexis, Cain and Jizabel's father, in Count Cain a.k.a. Godchild. Physical, emotional, strongly implied sexual abuse...
    • Adrian's mother in Boys Next Door.
  • Mr. Fujinami, of Urusei Yatsura, fulfills at least several of the types of abuse in regards to his daughter Ryuunosuke. Apparently solely because of his insane levels of chauvinism, he is convinced that a "mere" girl is unable to run his precious (run down) tea shop, and so he has forcibly raised her as a boy, despite her protests, since her mother Masako died left him. He refuses to allow her to buy any feminine clothes, both by refusing to give her money to do so and stealing/destroying any she does manage to get, demands she speak in masculine fashion, refers to her only as a male, frightens off any boys she acts interested in, encourages girls who are attracted to her, insults and mocks her femininity, and otherwise goes out of his way to thwart any attempt by her to discover her feminine side. He routinely enforces his desires with violence, and though she is quick to degrade him and beat the tar out of him in return, he always manages to beat her. For some insane reason he has dozens of pictures of himself, baby Ryuunosuke and women hired for that purpose posing, so many so that even he can't remember which one of them is the real Masako Fujinami, and so Ryuunosuke will never know what her mother looked like (although he has claimed at least that Ryuunosuke looks right like her mother -and Lum checked it with a lie detector only in case-). Despite his daughter's extreme distaste and discomfort, he set up for her an Arranged Marriage with a male-to-female Wholesome Crossdresser, Nagisa.
    • Ataru's parents are not a sterling example of paterhood, either. Both of them go from stating they want protecting their son, even if he is idiot, to state how happier they would live without him.
  • General Cross from D.Gray-man raised Allen Walker and sort of acted as a surrogate father, but it is implied and shown that he heavily abuses Allen (though it's usually shown comedically). When Allen was young, Cross would frequently gamble and get into debt, leaving young Allen to deal with the debt collectors (which is the contributing reason to why Allen became so good at cheating in cards). Cross is also shown later punching Allen (again, played for comedy), suggesting that he frequently did this even when Allen was young. He also left the poor kid to hunt down the Black Order headquarters by himself with no clues to go on, knocking Allen out so he could avoid reporting in. Even though it's played for laughs, Cross's behavior spans emotional, physical, and financial abuse, with a side order of abandonment. Poor Allen.
  • In Hana Yori Dango, Tsukasa's violent and often sociopathic behavior is explained to be a result of his parents never being at home and leaving him to be raised mainly by his older sister Tsubaki, a Tsundere who despite her good heart, had a tendency to correct his arrogant behavior with violence. His mother Kaede is not above humiliating and threatening his girlfriend Tsukushi in order to get the both of them to do what she wants, and in the live-action drama she's even worse: while he's in New York studying to take over the family business, Tsukasa makes a remark that causes the company's stock to plummet, and many workers are laid off as a result. To keep her son in line, Kaede pays a man working for the company with, whom Tsukasa has become friends, to get laid off, pretend to become homeless, and commit suicide in front of Tsukasa. This affects Tsukasa so badly that for months he wakes up with nightmares about the man and is constantly wracked with guilt, which keeps him from breaking off an Arranged Marriage that he doesn't want. It does NOT help that Kaede is constantly making comments referring to the "dead" man to manipulate him.
    • Some mention should go to Tsukushi's parents. While they're generally flighty but loving, one chapter has her coming home from school to find them and her brother packing their things: they were moving out to the city, not taking Tsukushi, or planning to tell her until that very day. Tsukushi's is in school and has no job...Her parents promise to send money for her, but when she finally gets a letter from them, it says that they don't have money to send her yet, so here, have some strips of seaweed. Tsukushi honestly thought she'd starve, and probably would have if not for Tsukasa.
  • In Mirai Nikki Yuno had control-freak parents who measured everything she did from how many hours she got to sleep to how many calories she had a day. They also kept her in a cage and starved her in an effort to raise her to be a model person and ignored her whenever she begged them to let her out. She eventually trapped them in the cage and starved them to the point that they died.
  • Although Baron Julian Danglars from Gankutsuou maintains that he only wants his daughter Eugenie to be happy and that everything he does is for her sake, he clearly cares more about money than his own family. He is the most powerful banker in France and he seeks wealth above everything else, disregarding the feelings of those closest to him in the process. He sees the marriage of Eugénie (first to Albert and later to Andrea) as a way to enhance his family's wealth and prestige. The problem is his pushing Eugenie into marrying Andrea (against her wishes even) turns out bad because Andrea is actually insane, and is revealed to be her half-brother. Andrea routinely sexually harasses Eugenie and eventually tries to rape her as well. Eugenie had started to warm up to the idea of marrying Albert and had fallen in love with him. Her father cancelled the engagement to Albert because of a bad rumor surrounding his family and gave Andrea permission to marry her, without even asking his daughter if she wanted to first or even informing her of his plans. And later refuses to let her out of the house, and slaps her when she attempts to go see Albert.
  • The backstory of Sugishita from Ooku, a senior page in the titular Inner Chambers of the Shogun's palace, hits both the sexual and financial versions of this trope hard. The setting and situation (Tokeguwa Japan after generations of an endemic man-killing plague) generates enough Deliberate Values Dissonance for the reader to swallow the idea of poor families with a healthy son collecting the occasional stud fee without choking (too much) but... Every. Single. Bloody. Night. From the age of fourteen!?!?!
  • Ian's parents in Not Simple run the full gamut of this trope, from Ian's distant and verbally abusive father who also sexually abuses Ian's then teenaged sister, to his alcoholic mother who not only beats him, but even sells a young Ian's body to a pimp in order to fund her addiction.
  • In Speed Grapher, woobie heroine Kagura experiences a number of forms of abuse. Her mother, Shinzen underfeeds and generaly mistreats her, is cruelly insulting, and is shown slapping her on a couple of occasions, since she hates Kagura almost from birth because Shinzen's doctor and husband/Kagura's father ran out on them when Shinzen was still pregnant. Also, Suitengu having Kagura be the "goddess" at his club, with Shinzen's approval, is pretty close to sexual abuse, given that her role is to kiss a bunch of creepy pervs.
    • Two of Suitengu's debtors shown in the series committed Financial Abuse- the first smashed his son's piggy bank to try and pay part of the debt, and the latter was going to try to sell his daughter to Suitengu (also some sexual abuse, given that he did this because of a mistaken impression that Suitengu was a pedophile. Too bad he pressed Suitengu's biggest Berserk Button (sexual abuse of children) and ended up death).
  • Gregory, of Gregory Horror Show, has Gregory Mama, the only character that Gregory actually fears, and is a bigger villain than he is! Gregory Mama frequently shouts at her son, insults him, and can't seem to go a single conversation without striking him on the head with her staff. She's also a witch, and is most probably immortal...meaning Gregory will have to put up with her abuse for all eternity. The guy hates her so much that when a shelf falls on her and crushes her, he actually considers letting her die, or finishing her off himself. (She threw the shelf off of her, screaming at him for not helping, and Gregory broke down the door in his haste to get away.)
  • Yu-Gi-Oh!
    • Emotional and implied physical abuse of Seto Kaiba by his adoptive father, Gozaburo. Also emotional neglect of his other sons, Noah and Mokuba. Backfired.
    • Ryuuji Otogi in the manga, where his father is a crazy clown who carries a whip and uses it on Ryuuji in front of his friends, as well as emotionally abusing him through the guilt-trip of telling Ryuuji he's the only one who can save his father. Cue issues and Ryuuji very cautiously telling his father that it's wrong to want revenge.
    • Katsuya Jounouchi has a drunken father who throws bottles at his friends when they try to visit, under the impression that they're Jounouchi.
    • Malik's father cuts scars/tattoos into his back as part of a coming-of-age ritual, ignores his eldest daugher Isis, and uses his adopted brother Riishid, as a whipping boy. Malik's alter-ego gets revenge.
    • Dartz goes insane and tries to kill his own daughter and father... although in that case, it wasn't his fault.
  • The Big Bad Gyokumen Kousho in Saiyuki, who uses her daughter Liriin and her stepson Kougaiji for her own devices, including experimenting on them. She also has an attraction/crush on Kougaiji, even brainwashing him at one point to become her mindless, obedient slave.
    • Gojyo's stepmother was both physically and emotionally abusive to him, beating him and berating him for the color of his hair, which was a constant reminder that he was a half-breed and therefore that her husband had had an affair with a human woman. She was also sexually abusive to her own blood-related son Jien - when she was so upset she might actually do serious harm to Gojyo, he would intervene and allow her to sleep with him, since he reminded her of her husband. It's clearly implied that this was her idea and not his, although he goes along with it for his little brother's sake.
    • In the prequel Saiyuki Ibun, the young youkai apprentice monk Genkai's parents used his powers of foresight for financial gain, leading them to become greedy for more money and it eventually led to their deaths. Genkai realized after their deaths that not even once in his life did his parents ever touched him.
  • Seto no Hanayome has main character Nagasumi Michisio's parents. It's a lucky thing he's an Iron Butt Monkey, considering all the abuse he gets from everyone around him including his own parents, who regularly beat him up for all the trouble that's happened. They also explicitly say, even when Nagasumi's around, that he's a worthless disgrace to the family and rather have his girlfriend Sun for a daughter instead, to the point that they move him to the attic and move Sun to his room. And then when Sun leaves, they beg her to stay with them and forget about her boyfriend.
  • After his parents' death, Takashi Natsume of Natsume Yuujinchou was passed around from foster family to foster family. While most of the time they just tolerated him until they could push the responsibility on to someone else, chapter 31 confirms that some of them were physically or emotionally abusive.
  • In the manga Satou Kashi no Dangan wa Uchinukenai, self-proclaimed mermaid Umino's rockstar father clearly fits into the emotionally abusive category, often shouting at his teenaged daughter and once leaving her behind in a grocery store parking lot simply because a defective shopping cart made him angry. Later we see that she is also physically abused, and her father eventually beats her so badly that he kills her and tries to hide the body.
  • Oriko Magica: Yuma Chitose's dad was almost never around. Her mom blamed Yuma, constantly telling her she was useless and burning her forehead with cigarettes. Watching her parents get eaten alive and being subsequently reduced to living on the streets was a step up for Yuma.
  • Kaze to Ki no Uta:
    • Gilbert has suffered emotional, physical and sexual abuse by his father (who poses as his uncle) Auguste. He first uses Gilbert to be "his pet" and later turns him to a "pure and artistic" individual by the way of neglect and manipulating his love for him. Gilbert's mother can also fall into the emotional and physical abuse category, since she went a little crazy and she tried to kill him, while he was still an infant. Little wonder why Gilbert is so thoroughly broken...
    • Auguste himself suffered both physical and sexual abuse at the hands of his much-older stepbrother and at one point he tried to kill Auguste by burning him after discovering that he was sleeping with his wife, but it left him with a rather nasty scar. and it's also revealed that that his stepbrother raped him when he was younger.
  • In Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, Fate's mother (technically creator as she was the mother of Alicia) Precia Testarossa regularly flogs Fate for any and all mistakes, and despises Fate because Fate didn't turn out to be as perfect a Replacement Goldfish as she had hoped.
    • Particularly noteworthy in that Fate's age was still in the single digits when taking these floggings. Precia Testarossa is considered the Worst Parent in Anime for a reason.
  • In JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
    • Dio Brando's father was a deadbeat alcoholic who emotionally abused his wife and son (along with implied physical abuse). Dio ends up killing his father and later becomes one of the most evil bastards in all of anime/manga.
    • His son, Giorno, also has a rather abusive step father and neglectful mother, but thanks to Giorno saving a gangster from death with his subconscious use of his stand ability, everything started to change and he went onto become a good man just like his biological father, Jonathan.
  • Mawaru Penguindrum:
    • Yuri Tokikago's father, as revealed in episode 15. A famous sculptor, He told Yuri that she's ugly and he carves her body with his chisels to make her look "more beautiful" and be worthy of his love. It is also heavily implied that he sexually abused Yuri as well. So it's no wonder Yuri is so utterly screwed up.
    • There's also Tabuki's mother. Since she loved the piano, she pressured him to study music and Tabuki intentionally harmed his left fingers in a misguided attempt to get his mother's attention after it's found out that his brother was a better pianist than him. It didn't work.
  • Al Da Flaga from Gundam SEED was a narcissistic bastard who viewed his son, Mu La Flaga, as nothing more than a vehicle for his own ego. When Mu refused to nothing more than an extension of his father, Al cut him out of his life, locked he and his mother up in a Big Fancy House, and had himself cloned. He then proceeded to treat said clone as though he were a replacement for Al himself rather than a real person (his first words on seeing the clone were "This is me, right?"). Said clone eventually rebelled, burned down Al's house, and became Rau Le Creuset.
  • Katherine in King of Thorn, who was an alcoholic and would physically abuse her son Michael, to the point where social services stepped in and removed him from her care. Throughout the series Katherine deeply regrets her actions.
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