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I've been taught that 〜てある is used to express that something has been done already in preparation for something, similar to 〜ておく (with a lot of nuance that I'm going to ignore here). However, just from my own observations (mainly from anime, manga, etc.) it seems to me that at least colloquially, 〜てある is used more as a future tense.

Forgive this crude example, but the first thing that pops into my head when I think of this is when an angry anime character may want to kill an opponent, he may say 「殺してある！」. In this context, he means "I will kill you", but that goes against that traditional definition that I have been taught. Is this a colloquial sort of thing, or am I just greatly misunderstanding what 〜てある means?

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    In that particular example, you most likely misheard 殺してやる. Do you have any other examples, especially in writing (manga)?
    – mirka
    Commented Oct 9, 2015 at 19:30
  • @mirka Actually, that's probably the case for what I'm thinking of. I don't have any manga examples that I could cite, but it would be easy for me to mishear that from an anime. Thank you very much. If you want to repost this as an answer, I'll mark it as accepted.
    – charlieshades
    Commented Oct 9, 2015 at 19:37
  • (For what it's worth, there's also the "spelling mistake" close reason, but this seems like something which others could actually benefit from, so I think we should leave it open!)
    – Darius Jahandarie
    Commented Oct 9, 2015 at 19:50

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You are most likely mishearing 〜てやる, as in 殺してやる.

Related: What does てやる mean when it is not used for giving?

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