Anime/Manga 10 Weeks of Anime Week 9 - BEST GIRLS/GUYS/ETC

BEST GIRLS/GUYS/ETC
Who are your 10 favorite characters in anime and manga? Why? You can even go further and share your 10 best male, female, and non-gendered characters as well!

A lot of my favourite characters originate from games, so my list of anime/manga-exclusive characters is actually very short. My list of overall favourites includes Arturia Pendragon, Akemi Homura, Monomi (the rabbit from SDR2), and my absolute favourite character: Canaan.



Yes, her. I just love her so much. She's one of those characters that brings 'stoic badass' and 'complete softie' together (basically kuudere; one of my favourite character archetypes), but steps it up a notch by her sad past and her strong attachment to her only friend, Maria. From the moment I saw her I really sympathized with her backstory, motivations and attachments. Immediately it was like "I want this character to get the ending they want", because I felt she deserved it so much. It is ultimately because of her that I started shipping Canaan/Maria (wishing for her to be with what makes her happiest), that I've loathed Alphard until last year, and that the ending tormented me for the longest time - it did not feel like a 'good' ending for her.

I know that for many she is way too stoic or dull, and I know that when you compare her to her nemesis Alphard, who is a much more interesting character in terms of motivations, she indeed falls short. But I've always felt like I understood her on a deeper level. To me she never felt dull, and I've never thought "why is she like this"; I've always got why she acted in a certain way, why she was attached to specific things or why some things tormented her a lot. Now that some years have past I can say that we share a similar way of thinking and a similar way of dealing with problems; I think that's the connection I've felt all this time.

Most would've probably forgotten about her, but to me she is the world. I've felt very strongly for a lot of characters, but none of them have made themselves that dear to me like Canaan did. I want to know everything about her that there is to know, I want to know her deepest thoughts and feelings and see what a fully exposed Canaan is like. It is for that reason why I am ecstatic that 428: Shibuya Scramble will come to the West next year. I was already in the process of learning Japanese and doing amateur translations of the game myself, just to get to know any extra bits of information. The things I did find out in the short time I did this made my love for her even stronger. It affirmed my feeling that this character is what I've always envisioned her to be: playful, show-offy, warm, and just someone who seeks to have someone she can call 'hers' in this lonely world.

I mean, how could I not love her with all my heart?

OK, let's do this thing. I'll keep it brief, because I'm tired and lazy right now and I'm pretty sure nobody reads my longer posts these days anyway. In no particular order after the top three:

1. Cure Beat (Suite Precure)
Easily the best Cure in the history of the franchise. Passion might have done the villain-turned-Cure thing first, but Beat does it with far more feeling and with greater integration with the plot as a whole, and her development is easily the best across the franchise to date. As Seiren she was the villain with the most sympathetic goal and the only one with real personality right from the start, and as Cure Beat she's a badass. She has guitar hair.

2. Ange (Cross Ange)
I've already ranted about Ange, I'm not doing it again.

3. Fakir (Princess Tutu)
Whilst I think every character in Princess Tutu is worthy of a standing ovation, and the show itself is a shining example of a proper deconstruction of the magical girl genre, and a damn good story even without that, Fakir's development over the course of the anime is by far the most poignant and inspiring.

4. Char Aznable (Mobile Suit Gundam)
There's just something about Char that I love. In 0079 he's portrayed more like an anti-hero than a villain, and his ability to keep up with Amuro despite his inferior tech is pretty inspiring - although Yazan Gable is perhaps more noteworthy for his skills in this area, given that he's not a Newtype - and in Zeta he makes the show worth watching. We'll pretend Char's Counterattack didn't happen.

5. Suigintou (Rozen Maiden)
Now, if this were based solely on the manga - Rozen Maiden being one of the very few manga I have actually read - Kirakishou would be on the list instead. But her representation in the anime is miserably lacking, and in all seasons of the anime AND the manga, Suigintou really shines through as a sympathetic character who, despite being clearly superior to the other dolls, is held back by her spectacular inferiority complex and psychological trauma.

6. The Major (Hellsing)
The Major is on here because he's the only real villain in any anime, ever. I have never really been inspired or intimidated by villains in anime; they're just characters that oppose the protagonists. But the Major...jesus. This is the guy who rants for about ten minutes about why he loves war. The guy who stands on top of zeppellins and conducts the bombing of London. He looks ridiculous, and his accent in the dub is comically awful and stereotypical. But he's pure evil and he fucking sells it. And the worst part? In the last episode, when he reveals WHY he went out of his way to do what he did? You can almost feel sorry for him and see his point. THAT is villainy at its finest.

7. Jeremiah Gottwald (Code Geass)
...let's face it, there aren't any other reasons to watch Code Geass, are there? Crispin Freeman totally nails it with Jeremiah; he's the largest ham in a show where 90% of the characters are large hams. I'd cringe if it wasn't so hilarious.

8. Itoshiki Nozomu (Sayonara, Zetsubou Sensei)
Basically me if I was an anime character.

9. Nonon Jakuzure (Kill la Kill)
Nonon gets a mention solely for her fight with Ryuko. I was getting kinda bored of the show up to this point. Then she shows up with classical music blasting full volume and starts flying around in a fucking rocket ship firing off musical note projectiles, recorder missiles, and cackling like a maniac. Whilst the Light Cavalry Overture plays in the background. I can't even.

10. Hunter J (Pokemon)
Kind of a filler space because I couldn't think of anyone else, but J is a perfectly legitimate choice I think, because she's the only halfway-credible threat Pokemon has ever had. She added something really interesting to the DPPt saga - an actual villain - and she was unredeemable to the point that she was actually killed off. That's unprecedented.

^I like #9 because NANI SORE