u/DaOverseer

I know it's hard to top Jack but I felt the need to do this because holy crap, Titus was something else. Bro's such an evil little hater he tried to do a whole genocide route seconds after hitting puberty, so crazy. Hoppers had no business making a bad guy that wicked, I loved it.

There's a couple that come to mind, my friends always bring up Escanor or Ban from Seven Deadly Sins (never read it tho). Now I wouldn't call Prison Break a total waste, even at its lowest it was one of my favorite shows to binge watch but I think characters like Mahone and T-Bag were too freaking good for the plot they had outlined and a huge part of why I kept watching. Same goes for Thrax in Osmosis Jones, film was alright but it had no business making a villain that baller. Heck, I'd go as far to say even works like Twilight have at least one or two characters I genuinely love but the most recent example for me has to be A-Train in The Boys, bro really went out with a bang, y'know. Got any others like that?

Hard to settle for a single example, there's a lot of bad ones out there that still have fans defending them tooth and nail. No joke, I've seen people unironically stand by moments like "somehow Palpatine returned" on the basis that the Star Wars prequels and even the original trilogy had messy bits like that. You could kick a hornet's nest in many fandoms talking about this but I'm all for hearing some hot takes and original answers so knock yourselves out.

It's the works of Alejandro Jodorowsky for me, comics and movies alike. They're a surreal experience and I love them for that but boy, are they hard to recommend most times.

There's a lot of guilty pleasures I've come across in manga and anime too, they're usually just crazy shit I find entertaining but some others are legit well made and have plenty to love but it's all hidden under many layers of weird shit (kinda like Dog Ningen) or they just take too much patience from general audiences (too long, too slow paced, the author loves to go on hiatus). I'm sure you get the point.

I think the meme was originally meant to poke fun at stories where the protagonist is a goofball or silly in his personality like Goku in Dragon Ball as opposed to just poorly written but it got me thinking, a frequent cause for people dropping books or shows can be protagonists that just never click. It does raise the question tho, of how far can a great cast do the heavy lifting to make up for it. Surely there's a hundred examples you already know of stories that are considered good but still have some lackluster villains or annoying side characters but ones where the MC is widely considered to be mediocre aren't as frequent but still plenty.

These are just some examples pictured here, I'd much rather go beyond just anime and bring up all sorts of media types. I think Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings is a classic example, I know some folks claim that him staying dead would have been better for the story as a whole but Idk, it's still a fun example nonetheless.

Hannibal Lecter as depicted in the Hannibal TV series, or Lorne Malvo from Fargo's Season 1. I know Lecter is built different, even at his most natural he's written like a supernatural monster Dracula-style but even ignoring the interpretation that Malvo is the Devil himself he's still a pretty outlandish character in terms of evil too, most Fargo villains are for that matter.

Azula (Avatar), Jinx (Arcane) and Catra (She-Ra and the Princesses of Power). So pretty much the poster girls for female rogues with with severe mental issues in western animation.

I think there's some arguments you could make for each in terms of Freudian excuses and who did more harm, there's also the fact that Jinx isn't held back by being in a kids show so she definitely killed more people on-screen but it's balanced out by her being crazier and having a sympathetic background, which is not to say that you can't sympathize with Azula or Catra to a level, it's just a bit harder for most from what I've seen.

Azula vs Catra is an interesting comparison on its own seeing as Catra did arguably worse things or at least on a bigger scale but she did get a redemption while Azula ends up in a dark place no matter what.

I know grey morality can be hard to write, now there's a lot of people who equate it with good writing, as well as fans who can't grasp the concept that you love a character who's objectively a horrible person without supporting their actions, but just for fun I wanted to take a look at ones that either the fans or the authors themselves try to paint as complex and hard to judge with a ton of redeeming qualities and humanizing factors when in truth they're just fucked up textbook villains for the most part.

Trevor Phillips from GTA V fits the description pretty well actually. He is one of my favorite characters to play as, not just in the series but in all of gaming. For all the shit he gets about being an edgelord I think he's a cool protagonist but I noticed a lot of people think he's a lesser evil and a real one compared to Michael because he has a code (which is debatable) when he's actually one of the most evil MCs in the series and you could argue he and Michael are just two sides of the same blood stained coin.

Daemon from House of the Dragon comes to mind too. I love Matt Smith's work, he's super fun to watch, easily my favorite part of a show I care little about otherwise but the character of Daemon himself is so morally bankrupt and twisted it's actually funny, we see him do the most heinous things time after time like grooming his underage niece, stoning his wife to death, killing small folk as naturally as you would swat a fly, all while the writers bet on his charisma and their feeble attempts at human drama to bail him out every time, which seems to have worked for the fandom in the long run because the glaze is crazy, a lot of fans unironically see him as a lovable rogue and his whole deal with Rhaenyra as relationship goals.

I could go on but you get my point. For the record I don't think pure good and evil characters are inherently better (but they can work, it all depends on the writing and the framework), I actually really enjoy the trope of evil bastards who have just a little bit of humanity in them, it's just the way the label here is used that I find funny at times.

I think DBZ had a fun way of doing it compared to shows like Naruto for example, the way characters like Vegeta and Bulma, Krillin and 18 or even Gohan and Videl get together feels so casual and more natural than whatever Kishimoto was going for with Naruto and Hinata. There's also a lot of interesting examples in gaming where love interests are completely optional but still give us some fun interactions and character growth like the Fire Emblem games.