This Week in Anime

When Your Fav Anime Protagonist is Problematic

Steve
Nick, you're probably wondering why I showed up to the column this week in full Joker makeup. You're probably also wondering why I told you that when this is a purely text and anime screencap-based medium. Well, that's because our topic tonight is a little, shall we say, twisted.

We are both truly the clowns in this situation. And on the subject of truth, we arrived at this topic on the heels of the Mushoku Tensei discourse circus of the past week. While there are plenty of more relevant angles to tackle said controversy, they're a bit outside the purview of our particular chucklehut. So instead, we thought we'd look more closely at a frequent defense lobbed at Rudeus—that he is supposed to be a bad person. A purposefully flawed protagonist? Have you heard of such a thing?

Even just restricting ourselves to anime/manga, we have a treasure trove of scumbags and scallywags to examine. And that's a good thing! Fiction can be used to explore and play in so many spaces, and contemporary fiction has robustly applied concepts like antiheroes and villain protagonists to all kinds of stories. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with this approach. But, like any narrative choice or literary technique, the devil is in the details.

Yeah, and to be clear, the audience is NOT always right in these situations. That's why Fight Club has such an infamous reputation as a litmus test, or why so many dudes idolize Walter White. It is, in fact, possible to construct a uniformly scathing critique of destructive masculinity and still have your main character's face plastered up huge and scowling on every dorm room wall across the country. People's blinders can be enormous. That said, not appearing to defend the objectively evil institution of slavery is about as close to a layup as an author can get. So.

So it's pretty clear where we both stand regarding Rudeus, so let's try looking at another unlikeable and controversial protag, but one who works within the context of their story. And if we're talking anime, my perennial example is none other than Shinji.

I have no idea if this is still the case, but when I was getting into anime, it was completely normal for people to loathe Shinji. I mean, the "get in the f*cking robot" meme came from a place of genuine anger and frustration. And to a degree, that's warranted. Shinji is a legitimately frustrating character who frequently recoils and cries about it when thrust into the hero's seat. But that's also what the show is about!

He's also such an authentically written character. I love this one moment early on when he knows precisely the right thing to say to hurt Misato's feelings, so he says it. It's exactly how a self-loathing teenager would lash out at the people trying to help him. And you can easily argue that this authenticity comes from Anno's own experiences with depression. That's the beauty of ugly art: it provides a space for people to work through their conflicts and flaws in a way that might speak to others suffering from the same.

Eva, in an abstract sense, is a bildungsroman about Shinji growing up and learning to accept his place among other people in his life. He's flawed because his ultimate arc is about confronting those flaws. And there are tons of similarly sad teen boys along what I call the "Shinji continuum," which can stretch back to Amuro in the original Gundam and forward in time to less robot-afflicted stories like The Flowers of Evil and Goodnight Punpun.

Wow, would you look at the time? I think our readers have gotten the picture with Shinji. So, let's think about the opposite example. What about a kid who gets the robot but isn't happier or more likable for it? And by "get in the robot," I mean "stab a lot of Vikings."

It's great! I mean, tragic! But great!

It's a tricky needle to thread, and there's some cake having and eating, too. That's not to say you can't marry ultraviolence with introspection, but again, it takes a deft narrative hand. And again, the complexity of the characters surrounding Thorfinn greatly enriches Vinland Saga's thematic ambitions early on. Even if I hadn't known about the series' eventual long arc, there was sufficient depth in the challenges to Thorfinn's worldview in that first season to string me along.

It's also tricky to talk about "the audience" in these situations because everyone will have tolerance and breaking points. Just the violence in Vinland Saga will be enough to turn some people away. Being intentionally off-putting will mean that some proportion of the audience will be off-put. That's where much of the friction in these conversations comes from, but that's also normal. We don't all get the same thing from every piece of art. And thank goodness for that.

I'm with you there. But another point I want to be careful about is the notion that a flawed/unlikeable/shitty protagonist must be redeemed or rehabilitated for their existence to be justified. Audiences on Rudy's side might tend to think this is what people on the other side believe, and I want to emphasize this is not the case—at least not for me. I don't think art should exist purely to deliver didactic moral truths. I saw more than plenty of that thinking in Catholic school. I want my art to be messy, ambiguous, and potentially problematic. I just want that in ways that interest me.

We're on season 3 of Rent-A-Girlfriend somehow, so I guess somebody out there does want Kazuyas, as unfathomable as that is to me. In the right situation, though, there's a case for awful people making a story more fun to follow. Another thing that got me thinking about this topic was catching up with BanG Dream! It's MyGo!!!!! last week. The whole show is a melodrama about teen girls being awful to each other and digging deeper and more pathetic holes each time that happens. It's so good.

Granted, you also have the presumed assurance that it'll all work out in the end (they have to sell albums and gacha pulls, after all), but the moment-to-moment messiness is where the series truly shines. And it makes the eventual resolutions feel all the more earned.

Oh yeah, gesturing at a redemption arc, but either not bothering or outright failing to do so has got to be the worst way to approach this kind of character. Because then you're telling your audience that you're aware of what you want or need to do; you're just not a good enough writer to pull it off.

In the isekai sphere, Subaru is a wonderful counterexample for Rudy. And Re:Zero doesn't always nail what it's trying to do and say with Subaru, but by earnestly grappling with its protagonist's flaws, it soars miles ahead and beyond most of its peers. Moreover, it feels like a real story, with villainous foils that meaningfully mirror the hero and everything.

Unfortunately, there's no exact science to making a guy who sucks but doesn't suck so much that you immediately want to throw your remote at the TV. It's vibes. Can I defend why I hold such animus towards Mushoku Tensei yet hold the similarly pervert-infested Monogatari series in such high regard? Well, yes. Monogatari is much better written and has a constantly expanding cast of increasingly complex characters who eventually help steer the trajectory of the series away from Araragi's worst impulses, and which, in the end, directly confronts Araragi's central failings. But I can't defend why I like Araragi more than Rudy. And no, Nick, I don't expect you to come to my aid here. Just leave me to the dogs.

I can't argue with that. Though I wholeheartedly believe to be a true Monogatari fan, you have to, on some level, want to crush Araragi like a bug.

That tack can also work well in sports series, where often brash protagonists finally show depth once the competition humbles them. But sometimes, it's also fun to root for the heel doing the humbling. That was one of the neat things about Hanebado, a show that proved divisive primarily because its heroine was a badminton psychopath. However, that's also why I liked it.

Hanebado was seriously so good at that. Overall, it treated Ayano like a person and sports heroine with something to prove, but the matches where she became a dead-eyed birdie-smacking Terminator were the highlights.

Certainly, it's not as if we have yet to completely pierce through the veil of society-wide misogyny that holds women and, thus, female characters to a different standard that doesn't allow for authentic human faults to be tolerated, let alone explored with any semblance of depth, fun, or meaning. It's not as if shows like Hanebado or Girlish Number got a ton of flak for having heroines who were unapologetically mean and selfish.

I had not looked at the full synopsis of that episode until this moment, and now I wish I had stayed ignorant.

I suppose, too, I'd be more forgiving of Mushoku Tensei's wanton hedonism, blatant wish-fulfillment, and scumlord protagonist if we didn't have that double standard and if that kind of male gratification and ego-stroking weren't the norm. That's my actual problem. People treat this show and Rudy like these precious bastions of transgressiveness when they couldn't be more aligned with what society allows and frequently celebrates. I prefer protagonists whose imperfections dig at the sore spots that society would much rather try to silence or ignore. Absent that, they at least have to suck in a much funnier way.