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.

Leena is Absolutely Useless

When it comes to hero teams, I like to see each team member pull their own weight and as much as it memes to lump Sakura from Naruto into this category, Leena Toros is way worse.

Leena, also known as Rinon in the Japanese, is a member of the Blitz team, a Zoids fighting team in the New Century timeline, she's hotheaded and approaches combat with as many guns as humanly possible starting with a Dibison which is way more suitable for heavy weaponry, she provides the raw power to the agile Brad and the versatile Bit Cloud, except she's terrible at combat, she's usually the first to fall and even when she switches Zoids to a Gunsniper, she does even worse as the heavy weight armaments don't suit a Zoid designed for moving quickly and sniping, it is not designed to hold more guns than an army platoon, at this point I'm just embarrassed for her and the only reason she's not replaced is because 1. Her father owns the team and 2. The only other heavy unit is Liger Zero's Panzer armour which is too experimental to use effectively and renders the Liger Zero practically immobile, so yeah, not really a good character.

Misty Didn't Get Better Until She Left

Returning to an old character can come with some uncomfortable truths.

For the first three regions, Misty was a constant presence as Ash's travelling companion along with Brock and a one off season with Tracey, initially staying with Ash so he'd replace her destroyed bike, Misty stayed for the long run, becoming Togepi's mother/trainer and acted as a big sister, but after Johto she left to takeover the Cerulean Gym full time, acquiring a powerhouse in Gyarados which included conquering her fear of the beast and ultimately achieved what she set out to do and become the best water Pokemon trainer.
This is where the problems are obvious, Misty achieved absolutely nothing from travelling with Ash and lacked actual character development which were easily surpassed by every female character that followed, even copycats like Iris had argubly better development as she ascended to a champions role.
Only Chloe has had worse development due to this season's mediocre stories.
Nostalgia goggles fail to boost her popularity especially as Ash himself is so close to being the Pokemon Master, battling against Cynthia at time of writing in the Semi-finals, argubly the best trainer in the franchise.
So if I'm implying that Misty actually held Ash back, then yes, that's exactly what I'm saying.

Marik is Such a Letdown

The Yu-Gi-Oh franchise is a stomping ground for some of anime's best villains, Marik sadly isn't one of them.

The Battle City tournament was Yu-Gi-Oh at it's absolute best as Marik was introduced as a mysterious individual with access to alot dangerous cards and a lot of dangerous people, but rather than Marik being a villain with alot of intrigue, his darkside took over and all the appeal went with it as he became just a regular psychopath, losing even more appeal when the tournament was interrupted by filler taking away his threat level, he wasn't even a good final boss as he actually did lose to Joey but got through by virtue of incapacitating him killing any remaining dignity he had.
The Kaiba and Yugi battle being more hyped and Bakura filling Marik's role better just leaves the blonde Egyptian in khakis weak in the villain department.
Still better than Dartz at least.

Just Make Negi An Adult Already

Male characters aren't spared from losing their appeal and Negi is my number one target for this.

Negi is unique among harem protagonists, despite what is required for a magical partnership, the fact that Negi is a pre-teen stops it from pushing into overly creepy territory but as the story progressed into ever more fantastic scenarios, Negi had to steal some aging magic from Marvelous Melmo to achieve some very powerful forms in battle, it got to the point where it was so hard to think of Negi as a child character anymore that I found it difficult to take him seriously, it felt like an ass pull everytime he gained an advantage in a battle, alternate versions remembered to keep him at the same age but the OG version just proves that Ken Akamatsu is terrible at Shonen manga and probably should've used a time skip to allow Negi a much smoother development.

Fuko is a Dumb Anime Heroine

I've already talked about Fuko a couple of times and it's no secret that I really hate the fact that she's a capable hero who needs rescuing but there might be a reason.

The dumb hero is a popular trope that you normally associate with characters like Goku, Luffy and Naruto, not particularly book smart but more than capable fighters, the trope is almost never applied to a female main character, even Sailor Moon, who would fall under the category doesn't fit the trope entirely as she only fights out of necessity not because she enjoys it, that's the key difference.
Fuko fights Recca all the time and is always lumped in with Recca and Domon instead of the smarter Tokiya and Koganei making her an idiot hero, it gives her a unique standing as a character that no other female in her genre as far as I know has equalled.
Doesn't mean I like her though.