Welcome to the Anime Walk of Fame, a series of retrospectives on the many characters of the anime world. You'll see all your favorites along with a few that deserve more than their reputations give.
So sit back relax and enjoy the show.
- Created By Dranzerstorm
Miracle Rookie Misaki is All Plot Armour
Any anime where the outsider always wins is kind of a ridiculous setup.
Misaki was originally coerced into doing Angelic Layer but ends up winning everything with only one recorded loss, mostly through imitating things she sees including from the current champion and her over excited best friend. She's dubbed the Miracle Rookie because of this.
If the anime has no stakes, then winning everything loses its appeal very quick, especially when much of Misaki's fighting style is experimental, the manga is a bit better at writing Misaki's battles but has similar issues.
This is why current sport anime, even the most unbelievable like the recently watched Kandagawa Jet Girls doesn't give it's leads easy wins, even Pokemon remembers that Ash Ketchum's journey is a marathon not a sprint.
Maya Did Her Sister Dirty
There will be happier entries, these were already in editing before I did the Shaman King run.
Tenjo Tenge is the ultra mature martial arts anime very much adult in nature, Maya who is first introduced in a small body to preserve her chi only to reveal a very sexy body in episode 1, stands out as the current head of the school's Juken Club.
She hires Nagi and Bob after a quick scuffle mostly because Nagi falls in love with Maya despite Aya pining for the delinquent.
But after the bowling alley incident, Maya decides to taunt her sister about the whole situation between her and Nagi leading to a fight between the sisters.
The fight ending with Maya threatening to kill Aya with the very sword that killed off their brother in Tenjo Tenge's more convoluted back story.
Maya didn't need to ruin her own sister, the whole situation could've been handled better but Maya just makes herself look needlessly cruel for no reason and while Aya is not entirely innocent, she didn't deserve to be humiliated.
Never Give Great Power to Orihime
A lesson in why not to give the best powers to the most technically redundant characters.
From the start Orihime is 100% autistic; she's ridiculously book smart but has strange fascinations and hobbies, this makes her quite an endearing character and I kinda understand why she lacks agency and appears somewhat helpless in a number of situations, speaking from experience, Autism doesn't give you much in the way of social skills or being able to read situations very well, so I'm not as harsh on her as say Leena Toros or Fuko Kirisawa.
But unfortunately despite having a power that if used correctly could easily have made the series more streamlined, Orihime is probably the worst choice for it.
Shun Shun Rikka has the power to reject phenomena by denying or undoing events in various forms, this power can be used for attack, defense, or healing, it's effectiveness is tied to Orihime's emotions, getting stronger through determination and weakening through doubt.
Going over what I just said about Orihime, she's the worst choice for an ability that relies on emotions to control it's power output, this inevitable made her a damsel in distress when she could've quite easily avoided it.
Fuka & Inori are the Real MVP
Minor spoilers warning in effect.
Throughout Kandagawa Jet Girls run, the focus is almost always on the miracle rookie team of Rin and Misa vs the top ranking team of Kaguya and Kuromaru but in a twist of fate that was foreshadowed in the preliminaries was the team of Fuka and Inori, Fuka the tall girl is usually calm and ladylike but erupts into an aggressive delinquent while racing, Inori the smaller calmer more spiritually inclined one is calculating and has the most impressive weapon with a gatling water gun, in an impressive final race, Fuka and Inori were on their way to victory until Misa and Kuromaru teamed up to take the Sea Serpent team down knowing that neither could win if they took them on solo with Kaguya and Kuromaru already struggling. It's usually set in stone who the teams are in the final dead heat but the Sea Serpent team made a rather mundane race ten times more exciting, lets hope more sports anime do this.
Jennifer is An American Stereotype
Rarely do I cover these subjects because I don't want to sound like a snowflake but I think we need a briefing on the Engrish speaking American.
A common joke among anime is the foreigner interaction, the default appearance is often American English speaking with blonde hair and more exaggerated features often a larger nose to distinguish between the American and the regular cast, their voice is often very broken Engrish with a very forced accent or every sentence contains an English word.
This entire persona is Jennifer Peach in a nutshell, it's so distracting that I'd rather listen to her dub voice, at least that makes sense.
What hits it home is that her partner Emily Orange can speak perfect Japanese, so Jennifer comes off as being a massive stereotype of "the Otaku foreigner"
I'm British, so this doesn't offend me because it's not my country they're making fun of but I still find it cringy that Japan are still using these types of characters in this era.