Random Poorly Written Anime Characters (13 items)

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  (#1) Sakura Haruno

  • Naruto, Naruto Shippūden, Naruto the Movie: Guardians of the Crescent Moon Kingdom, Naruto Shippuden the Movie: Bonds, Naruto the Movie: Legend of the Stone of Gelel, Naruto Shippuden the Movie: The Will of Fire, Naruto the Movie: Ninja Clash in the Land of Snow, Naruto Shippuden the Movie, Ninja World

  As a member of Team 7, Sakura could and should have been written to be every bit as awesome as her male counterparts. Though she starts off with some serious potential, the series never capitalizes on it. Most of her arcs can be split into two categories: trying to measure up to her talented teammates, and pining over Sasuke.

  While her medical ninjutsu and physical strength are impressive, those things don't compare to Naruto and Sasuke's legendary abilities. While not every character has to be on that level, the fact that she's the only girl on the team and the only one whose skills aren't transcendent is kind of glaring. There's also nothing wrong with her having a crush, but there is something wrong with her having little development outside of that. 

  The writing around Sakura could be so much better. She - and all the other female characters in shonen anime who fall into this trap - deserve better. 
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  (#2) Minoru Mineta - 'My Hero Academia'

  Minoru Mineta is a member of Class 1-A, and he's best known for lewd acts like trying to touch his female classmates, peeping on them while they're changing, and constantly making inappropriate comments. 

  Mineta's perverted personality isn't unrealistic: most people have met teenage boys who are like this. But it is alienating to a huge demographic of viewers. While some people find pervy characters to be light-hearted fun, others find them deeply upsetting. That's not necessarily bad writing - a character can be flawed or controversial and still be well-written. That's why other pervy characters like Sanji and Jiraiya aren't on this list: they are well developed, multi-faceted, interesting characters. 

  But Mineta is poorly written. Why? Because his existence creates a major plot hole. His behavior is distinctly unheroic, and his teacher is notoriously strict. The fact that he repeatedly gets away with behavior that not only upsets his classmates and disrupts lessons but would definitely make the people he's trying to save uneasy is ridiculous. It's especially weird because problematic personality traits in other characters are treated like impediments toward their chosen career: Bakugo is repeatedly warned that if he doesn't get his behavior under control, he won't make it as a hero. 
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  (#3) Yuki Cross

  • Vampire Knight, Vampire Knight

  Vampire Knight isn't exactly known for being a great series, and one of the reasons is the protagonist, Yuki Cross. Yuki doesn't remember anything about her past before she was attacked by a vampire. After being adopted by Cross Academy's headmaster, she becomes a Guardian - that is, a person in charge of keeping the school's human and vampire populations separated. 

  The thing that's so frustrating about Yuki is how clueless she is about basically everything. It makes sense that she doesn't know about her own vampiric heritage - that's amnesia for you - but the amnesia is a clumsy plot device that keeps her ignorant and reliant on the male characters who surround her. She spends way, way too much time pining over her love interests and not nearly enough time engaging with the actual story. She didn't have to be a terrible character but the way she was executed made her into one.
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  (#4) Kirito

  • Sword Art Online, Sword Art Online

  Just as no list about horrible anime crimes is complete without Shou Tucker, no list about badly written characters is complete without Kirito. Kirito is a stand-in for a common pitfall when it comes to anime characters - he's a stupidly OP character who is the object of every female characters' affection for no discernable reason. Basically, he's a blank slate for a specific subset of the audience to project themselves onto. While there's nothing inherently wrong with power fantasies, they don't exactly make for great writing. Kirito doesn't ever seem to work for his powers, he just gets them through Deus Ex Machina. What's more, we barely know how he feels about anything that happens to him, except during the most extreme of circumstances. 

  Kirito improves a little bit after the first Sword Art Online series - for example, during the Gun Gale Online arc he's a support character for the far better developed Sinon, and he begins to display some PTSD symptoms related to his time trapped in the game. By the time this happens, though, most viewers have already formed their impressions. 
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  (#5) Mika Shimotsuki - 'Psycho Pass 2'

  Sometimes, a reason that a character is poorly written is that they're a less interesting rehash of another character who already exists in the series. That's true of Mika Shimotsuki, a teenager who inexplicably starts working for the Public Safety Bureau. Shimotsuki is committed to upholding the Sybil System and is vocally opposed to people like Akane who no longer perfectly toe the line after learning the about the horrors inherent in said system. This is almost exactly the same thing that already happened with Ginoza in Season 1, except Ginoza had a compelling reason for his sycophantic behavior, whereas Shimotsuki is just sort of like that.

  When Shimotsuki discovers that the Sybil System is actually deeply evil, she continues to go along with it out of fear. Meanwhile, Ginoza has the integrity to actually act on his own principles. A character doesn't have to be principled to be well-written, but Shimotsuki had nothing else going on that would make her worth paying attention to.
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  (#6) Sieg - 'Fate/Apocrypha'

  Sieg is a homunculus who acts as theMaster of Rider of Black during the Great Holy Grail War. He begins his life with no emotions or personality traits, before eventually progressing towards a slightly more specific personality. 

  Does it make sense that Sieg spends most of the series without much of a personality? Sure, but that doesn't make it a good choice for a main character. He does change over time, but he fails to hook many viewers in the beginning. It takes master-level character work to pull off a protagonist like that, and Fate/Apocrypha just isn't up to the task. The process of becoming a real person could be fascinating, but not if there's not enough of a hook to get viewers to care about him in the first place. 
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  (#7) Aizawa - 'Sukisyo'

  Hailing from a fully terrible series, Aizawa is one of the most poorly written villains in the anime world. Why? Because his motivation is completely missing from the anime itself, and is absolutely ridiculous in the game he originates from.

  Aizawa is a scientist who performed unethical experiments on Sora and Sunao, causing them to develop alternate personalities. In the anime, he wants to program Sora to take lives on command, but the purpose of this is never explained. Whose lives? Why? As far as the anime goes, we have no idea. 

  In the games, his experiments are supposed to eventually lead towards a cure for Dissociative Identity Disorder, a condition that impacts his friend Shinichiro. This could be seen as kind, if not for the fact that his research involves torturing children and assaulting people - including Shinichiro's boyfriend Nanami.

  Aizawa could do all the evil things he does and be a well-written, but as it is, none of them add up to a coherent whole. 
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  (#8) Satomi Murano - 'Parasyte'

  Parasyte is an amazing show in most respects, but it's not great when it comes to its female characters - Reiko Tamura being a noteworthy exception. For now, we're going to focus on Shinichi's love interest, Satomi Murano. 

  Murano is supposed to represent Shinichi's attachment to the world outside of parasites and constant battle. Basically, she has the same role as Keiko Yukimura from Yu Yu Hakusho, but unlike Keiko, she lacks any defining characteristics. She's a kind, caring, ordinary girl who is worried about Shinichi's increasingly strange behavior. All fine - but shouldn't she have some ambition or emotions that don't totally revolve around her boyfriend?

  One could argue that Shinichi is the main character, and so it makes sense for the side characters to amplify his narrative - but if that's all they do, the whole story is not as compelling. We don't know why Shinichi loves Murano other than the fact that she's nice.

  Considering how deeply the series probes into some aspects of human nature, you'd think they could put some of that energy into a character with Murano's screen time. 
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  (#9) Haru Yoshida

  • Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun

  My Little Monster is one of those short anime that takes a long and complex manga and makes all the wrong choices about which parts it should include and which parts to skip. Rather than fully developing its protagonist, the series went off on multiple tangents about side characters and after school activities - which is how Haru Yoshida ended up being so terribly written in the anime version of the series. Haru is a far more complete character in the manga, but that's the manga. The anime also has to do the work in developing its protagonist, and it failed. 

  So, what's wrong with Haru? His behavior is, to put it mildly, awful. He is constantly violating other people's boundaries - especially his love interest, Shizuku. This includes everything from mild annoyances get in the way of her studying to huge red flags like pulling her into an alleyway and threatening to assault her.

  Most of his terrible actions have to do with his complicated family backstory - a backstory that isn't described in anything resembling sufficient detail. Why didn't they expand on this crucial information? Probably because they're too busy giving a side character appendicitis and then not following up on that, either. This whole anime is a mess, not just Haru.
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  (#10) Puck - 'Berserk'

  Puck is a little elf who follows Guts around on his adventures, offering advice and sarcastic quips, and transforming into a chibi-fied version of himself at random. He's typically used for comic relief, but he also sometimes provides the other characters with useful information or strategy.

  Comic relief and mascot characters aren't inherently bad, but Berserk is not a show that lends itself to that at all. It's a dark, dramatic series that is memorable because of its mood. Nobody is watching this show for a laugh - unless it's that kind of laughing fit you get when you're horrified. When Puck shows up, he doesn't so much ease the tension as he does intrude upon it. 
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  (#11) Shippo

  • Inu Yasha, InuYasha the Movie: Affections Touching Across Time

  Inuyasha is a beloved series, but not all of its characters are actually well-done. One example of this is Shippo, a child kitsune who originally tried to steal the Shikon jewel in order to become strong enough to avenge his father. Kagome and Inuyasha foil his plan, but they decide to let him tag along on their journey after hearing his motivation. 

  Avenging a felled parent is a fairly standard anime motivation, so some extra legwork has to be done in order for it to come off as resonant instead of cliche. That's not what happens here. After the initial conflict, Shippo doesn't really seem to care about what happened to his dad. His emotional response, as much as it exists, is totally secondary to his status as group mascot. There are a lot of ways to react to something as traumatic as your father's demise, but none of them are "the writer forgot about it." Trauma like that doesn't go away in a few episodes, it just doesn't. 

  Also, while it's not like Shippo has to be as strong as the protagonist in order to be a worthwhile character, he could pull his weight a little more. The kid is a kitsune who can transform into anything he wants, but that ability is only occasionally capitalized on. 
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  (#12) Myne & Motoyasu - 'The Rising Of The Shield Hero'

  Rising of the Shield Hero has a lot of good points, but these villains are not among them. Lets start with Myne. She begins the series by accusing Naofumi of a serious crime he didn't commit. Already, we're off to a bad start. While lies and manipulation are well within the purview of a good villain, false assault accusations are statistically rare compared to actual assaults, which makes this story choice socially irresponsible at best. 

  Could Myne still be an interesting villain despite this? Sure - a character doesn't have to be socially responsible to be well-written. But after that dramatic misdeed, she becomes far less intimidating and far more irritating. She shows up randomly to do everything from cheat during a race to try and eliminate her own sister. Why? Because a cult told her to. Why was she attracted to this cult? Unless Season 2 decides to pick up that storyline again, it will remain a mystery. 

  Her lackey, Motoyasu, isn't any better. He follows her around like a drooling dog and pretty much does whatever she says without question. The only time he acts on his own, it's to flirt with Filo, a child. So, that's pretty gross.

  The Filo thing aside, he can be kind of funny sometimes, but that's only before the same jokes have been repeated ten billion times.
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  (#13) Ayumi Otosaka - 'Charlotte'

  Ayumi Otosaka is Yu's adorable little sister... and that's basically all she is. While not every character has to be an incredible warrior to be likeable, a character who the protagonist deeply cares for should have more than one or two traits.

  Here's what happens with Ayumi: she cooks everything using pizza sauce because she thinks her beloved older brother likes it, and he can't bring himself to tell her otherwise. This joke gets used over and over again, and never becomes more complex. Later in the series, a boy she's not interested in asks her out, and then a female classmate attacks her out of jealousy. This causes her power, Collapse, to activate, and she's buried under a building. Her brother gets depressed for a while, then uses time travel to bring her back. 

  Basically, Ayumi is an adorable, affectionate victim who exists for Yu to react to. This is pretty common in anime - Ayumi is far from the only example - but it definitely qualifies her as a poorly written character. 

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