I’m back asking the important questions! Have you ever asked yourself in fact, if you ever got magically transported to your favourite anime universe, would you be an interesting character. A fan favorite? Would the audience hate you or worse, ignore you?
Don’t worry about not having any fancy powers, you’re going to discover those any second now. As for living a boring ordinary life, that’s just because you’re in that first bit of the story, before the action starts. We all know stories are always about average, ordinary folks anyways. Considering all this now, I ask again, would you make a good anime character?
The thing is, I think I would be the type of character I like the least. If I am completely honest with myself. I’m the super optimistic cheerful type, and surprisingly hardworking. I would be the cheerleader begging people to ” not give up” and rallying everyone to start another project. I’m also very short and small but still fairly well proportioned. You may think this has nothing to do with my character but design plays a pretty important role in how anime characters are perceived by the audience and what roles they are allowed to take. And let’s face it, I’m gonna be a loli…
Personality wise, I’ve mentioned before that I identify quite strongly with Miss Kobayashi. Low key, easy going and efficient. At least on my best days. I lack the deadpan delivery though and that really ruins the whole thing. I’m much more giggly and silly.
In short I would be one of those dime a dozen, nice genki girl lolis. Nothing special or even remotely interesting. I would like to think I would be a better than average dime a dozen loli, but I have no facts at all to base that on.
I came to this sad realization while walking Buddy the other day and have been fretting about it since. Should I change who I fundamentally am to become a more interesting potential anime character? Is it possible for me to wear higher heels without permanently damaging my back? (the answer is no, already looked into that one). Would it be easier to simply change my views on genki lolis? I’m pretty sure that’s also a no. It’s ok. We don’t need to figure this out right now. I’m one of those special puzzles you need to take your time putting together.
For the moment, we can just figure out whether anyone even wants to be a good anime character in the first place.
One of the big problems we’re going to have is defining the term *good*. Obviously we all like different things. Heck, some of you may even like genki lolis! I am not going to trick myself into some unwinnable argument over who is best character… again…
Instead, let’s start with most popular. Not so long ago, I did in fact try to figure out who the most popular anime character was for English speaking audiences. The seemingly overwhelming winner was “L”. Don’t get me wrong, I quite enjoyed Death Note (the manga) but I’m a little surprised by the anime’s staying power. Not disappointed, just surprised. Like I was saying, everybody loves L, but would you actually like a person like that in real life?
Superficially, L is probably more bearable than a lot of popular anime characters. A super smart but eccentric guy who’s likely to leave you alone unless you’re some type of super criminal. If you are not grossed out by bare feet or get upset when people don’t share their desserts with you, you’ll probably be fine around L. Then again, you probably will find him rather boring and super rude. Most of us simply don’t have what it takes for him to consider us worthy of the effort of interaction. As for being like L. Well you’d end up sort of a jerk.
Then again, lots of people are already jerks and not many are geniuses so you may end up better than average after all.
Ok forget L. What about Bakugo…um no…nevermind… Sadly, it seems characters that are both interesting and likable aren’t that common. For instance, I love Ryuji from Toradora and I would love to hang out with him but the character most people prefer is Taiga and no one wants to be around someone that could break their bones at any moment for no particular reason.
Hmmm….guys… Do we just like characters that are kind of jerky? If that’s the case then I guess it’s ok for me to be a boring character. But I can’t trust my own judgment on this. I know for a fact I have horrific tastes in anime people. To be honest, I have a pretty high tolerance for real life jerks as well.
Ok last try. I know what would make this better. Ryuko. You thought I was going to say Natsume…Me too. Kill la Kill’s leading lady is generally well liked (for various reasons), a total bada*s everyone at the party wants to hang out with AND a pretty nice person and sweet friend. I found one. I actually imagine a certain prolific blogger we all know to be a lot like Ryuko in my head.
Ok from now on, I’m adding a bit of Kill la Kill to my attitude. Let’s face it, I’m going to end up as Mako. Well that’s still pretty great. Back to the question at hand then. Would YOU make a good anime character? Why? Is there already a character out there that reminds you of yourself? Who? I’m really curious about this?
