No Good Deed Goes Unpunished/Anime and Manga

Examples of this trope in Anime and Manga

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• Monster is all about this trope. Dr. Tenma saves the life of a young boy, who turns out to be the titular Complete Monster, and spends the rest of the series paying for it. He also has a habit of risking capture to tend to others' wounds, even when he knows they're bad guys, and he eventually gets caught by the police because he stopped to help a little kid who scraped his knee. Poor Tenma.
• The reason Nagato finally snapped and became Pain. Well, that and a bit of more general Cosmic Plaything status and a dead best friend (whose corpse he preserved and rigged up as a zombie avatar of himself).
• A few in Battle Royale, but most notably Yuichiro. He was the only person who ever had any faith in Mitsuko and tried to reach her at all (which actually did succeed), and what happened in the manga version? She raped him after he was shot, in a crazed attempt to "make it better," before stabbing him to death with her kama. Not only that, he was shot with his own gun, which he had traded to a friend as a sign of good faith. Note that the above happens only in the manga, and while Mitsuko does kill him in the movie, the novel and the manga, the events differ slightly in all three.
• God, Tsuna from Katekyo Hitman Reborn is a very good kid. But it seems that whenever he ends up doing good or something morally right, he ends up paying for it. Sometimes literally. He saved a rare raccoon-panda thing from being rolled over by a roller coaster, but then the zoo fined him for breaking a few things in the process. He also caught a few infamous crooks, but the police arrested him too for looking like he was one of them, (he was in his boxers).
  • On a more serious note, he almost paid a greater price when Mukuro feigned a give-up and asked Tsuna to kill him. But Tsuna, invoking the Thou Shalt Not Kill trope, declined. Mukuro proceeded to grab him from behind, whispered why he fails at life into his ear- accompanied by a nasty headbutt- and then throws him in the direction of a nasty, pointed object.
  • This also turns out to be an Enforced Trope in the setting because the universe wants him to be a mafia boss, and even with the number of superpowers floating around the setting, it is logistically difficult to do this and be a morally upstanding young man. At least the main thing it actually requires him to do is to get into high-stakes superpowered battles with other mafiosi.
• The main plot of Inuyasha got started when Kikyo decided to be nice and take care of a paralized bandit. The universe's reward for her kindness: She gets to slowly bleed to death, thinking that her first love, who is also the first person to ever treat her like a human woman, had decieved her from the start and killed her in cold blood. And that was only the beginning...
• In Fruits Basket, Machi was afraid her baby brother was cold and went to put a blanket on him. Her parents accused her of trying to kill him and forced her out of home.
• This happens frequently to the title character of Kaiji, almost to the point of being the theme of the show.
  • His situation starts with him cosigning on a loan for a friend. Months later, this turns out to be a loan from the Yakuza, who show up on Kaiji's doorstep to collect on the loan when said friend disappears. (Funnily enough, he trashes a nice car out of frustration just before this. It turns out to be a yakuza car... and he suffers no punishment at all.)
  • He gets an offer to go onto a ship and gamble for one night for a chance to clear this debt. After getting scammed multiple times in multiple ways, he decides to team up with his friend (who apparently didn't disappear after all...) and another man down on his luck to give him a better chance of winning the gamble. Early on, he meets the conditions to leave the ship with his debt cleared, but he refuses to leave until he's helped his two team members do the same. By the end of the allowed time for the gamble, he gets the other two to meet the conditions while losing his own advantage and being taken as a slave—however, with the extra those two got, they can "buy" him back immediately after and all three will be allowed to leave. They keep the money and leave him to be taken away to work off his debt as a slave.
  • He convinces someone else to "buy" him back and then takes back the extra cash his friends were trying to keep. He then uses this cash to "buy" back another scam victim out of sympathy. It turns out that this arrangement has a few strings attached, sending him into even greater debt than before.
  • He's later abducted by the yakuza again and presented with a race for enough money to cover his new debt three times over. He only gets this money if he finishes first or second. The race is a footrace across a thin iron bar. With a potentially fatal and definitely very painful elevation. There are three times as many contestants as iron bars. Pushing other contestants down is not only allowed, but encouraged, and there's one guy in front of him. The one guy in front of him is slow as hell, but he refuses to push. The guy behind him catches up and isn't so nice... Luckily, he manages to grab the bar and pull himself back up, being disqualified but not injured.
  • For another chance to get prize money (and for the winners of the previous "race" to collect theirs), it turns out that they have to walk, though not race, across another iron bar, this time with a dropping distance of several dozen stories and an extremely powerful electric current running through it. When the ten people who have decided to cross are all around the halfway point, he decides to get them to all forfeit the money so they can have the current cut and safely crawl back to safer ground. The power isn't cut... and everyone except Kaiji falls and dies. And then when he makes it, he finds out they were all disqualified because of him asking anyway, and he doesn't receive the prize money he just nearly died over.
• No wonder Lelouch is such a lying bastard, since the universe seems to feel that every single attempt on his part to not act like an evil little sociopath must be dealt with as harshly as possible. Nearly everything that goes wrong can, in some way or another, be blamed on the fact that he wants to protect his little sister and doesn't want his best friend to get hurt.
  • The most egregious example: Lelouch decides not to go through with his plan to make it look like Euphemia plotted to assassinate him, which would've given Japan justification for a full-scale revolution. Instead, he decides to accept the third option that would allow everyone to get what they want without any bloodshed, even though it means he'll lose his chance at revenge. Oops, we can't have that! Instead, his Mind Control Evil Eye goes out of control at the worst possible time and he accidentally forces the most innocent and idealistic character in the show to massacre the people she was trying to help, sparking the revolution anyway, though it eventually fails and everyone is effectively back at square one.
  • Lelouch's desire to protect his sister can also be viewed as a character flaw. He often endangers his men by putting his sister, one person, before the good of everyone else in Japan.
  • If he killed or enslaved Suzaku when he had the chance, he'd be that much more powerful.
  • Had he not also spared Villetta in the second episode, he could have avoided many, many problems.
• In Rave Master, because a woman named Aciela used magic to create a parallel world where humanity didn't go extinct, her each and every descended is doomed to a life of misery and loneliness.
• In Okane ga Nai, Ayase kindly help a hurt and soaked Kanou, giving him shelter and words of comfort. Four years later, he gets owned (literally) by the very same Kanou, who begins the renewal of their relationship by raping him and subsequently taking control of every aspect of his life. This is not played quite positively, but it's not played entirely negatively, either. Presumably because it (and Ayase's incredible level of pathetic) are supposed to be titillating, since it is Hentai.
• Crona from Soul Eater. The epitome of this trope when s/he joins Shibusen but is forced to spy on them by his/her Jerkass mother, Medusa
• In Yu Yu Hakusho, Yusuke is a teen delinquent, always in trouble, being told he'll never amount to anything (and starting to believe it). One day, he sees a little boy chasing a ball into the street, and rushes out to stop him without a second thought. He gets killed as a result. The worst part is if Yusuke had not pushed the kid out of the way, the kid would have been perfectly fine. Because Yusuke 'saved' him, he got some scrapes. Though eventually dying turns out to be the best thing that ever happened to Yusuke, since he gets better.
  • After everything he does in the series—a good half of it actively in pursuit of saving the day, and a majority of it within reasonable moral guidelines—he then gets killed again by the vastly more powerful villain. That isn't this trope; he totally earned getting killed by Sensui after Tempting Fate. What is this trope is that his bosses then work out that he's got the genetic potential to turn into an atavistic super-demon, and send a strike team to obliterate his corpse. Again, he gets better.
• Accelerator from To Aru Majutsu no Index suffers brain damage via a bullet to the head the first time he uses his powers to save rather than hurt someone.
  • Not to mention Touma himself, who almost always winds up in the hospital after helping someone. His first attempt at helping someone? Lost his memories.
• Valiant efforts and good intentions don't usually turn out so well for people in Gantz. The series starts off with two of the main characters (one of them against his will) helping a drunk homeless man who had stumbled onto the subway tracks. They manage to get him onto the platform, and are subsequently hit by a train.
• In the manga and second adaptation Fullmetal Alchemist, Winry's parents, two medics that worked to save the lives of several injured Ishbalans in the genocide, were killed by Scar, after bandaging him up and treating his wounds. When Winry finds out, she immediately loses it.
  • Also, when Armstrong finds two Ishbalan women and try to allow them a way to escape, they don't get far before they are incinerated by Kimblee right in front of him. This sends him into a massive Heroic BSOD.
• In Macross Frontier, super popular Idol Singer Sheryl Nome, befriends a young girl Ranka Lee, who also wants to become a singer, and encourages her to do so, including offering a co place at her show. Not long after that, Ranka becomes the new celebrity, and Sheryl finds herself forgotten and deserted by both her fans and her agent.. Her CDs land in bargain bin, and her posters are thrown into rubbish to make place for Ranka's. Then it gets Subverted Trope hard as Ranka saves Sheryl from her illness and helps her defeat said agent. Oh, and Sheryl regains her popularity too...
  • And it seems that in the movie it gets even worse. While Sheryl's fall wasn't in the first movie, she is also set up to be ruined financially, having paid for rescue operation of Galaxy. And then Sheryl's "reward" for paying for rescue operation is being sentenced to death.
• In Claymore, Teresa saves her dear Clare as well as an entire village from being raped, pillaged, and burned by a bunch of bandits, and got marked for death as a reward since the Lawful Stupid Organization forbids Claymores from killing humans, no matter the situation. Worse in that the village being attacked was her fault, since she'd intended to leave Clare there so she could live in peace and killed the yoma who had been there first. However, the presence of yoma in the village was what was keeping the bandits at bay, so killing the yoma meant giving a gateway for the bandits to begin their operation.
  • Even more sad was when Teresa saves another town from a yoma without being paid the hefty fee that the Organization asks for as payment (since she was on the run), but said it felt nice to do something good without being paid. Moments later, an execution party came to take her head.
• One Piece: This seems to be one of the reasons why the Straw Hats are wanted. Every good thing they do (beating up other pirates or sadistic assassins) simply makes them look like a bigger threat in the eyes of the World Government and Marines. Though the corrupt marine Nezumi does cause Luffy to get his first bounty, it should be noted that Luffy's deeds were considered to be "undermining the worth of Marine forces" back in the East Blue Saga.
  • Though it's arguable as to whether this qualifies as punishment, considering bounties are the impromptu Power Levels of the One Piece world, and the Straw Hats(with a couple exceptions) think it's downright awesome when theirs go up.
• In the 13th Dragonball Z movie, Gohan and Videl as The Great Saiyaman and Saiyawoman end up saving Hoi from committing suicide by jumping off a building. Turns out Hoi was a terrible man who wanted to revive a demon and was the survivor of an equally evil race of extraterrestrial wizards, and intended to feed Earth to it.
  • Heck, this trope is literally the reason Syn Shenron even exists in the first place in Dragon Ball GT, as he was the most destructive shadow dragon and was born of the wish to revive all those murdered by Frieza and his empire in order to restore the Namekian Dragon Balls. To a lesser degree, this also qualifies for the other Shadow Dragons, exempting Oceanus Shenron (who's more grey in the grand scheme of things thanks to being born of a more morally grey wish from Oolong back in the start of the series) and Nuova Shenron (who if anything is an inversion of the trope, being one of the more honorable Shadow Dragons as a result of being born of King Piccolo's wish of gaining eternal youth/being brought back to his prime, an undoubtedly selfish wish and certainly not a good deed).
• This is pretty much the punishment for being a good person in the Berserk universe.

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