MY PERSONALLY UNDISPUTED BEST ANIME CHARACTERS OF ALL TIMES UNTIL NOW SINCE YOU'RE HERE!

HOW NOT TO REVIEW ANIME JAPAN FOR DUMMIES

Specieswise, we the exalted primates of Homo sapiens cannot escape favoritism. There is no way to avoid feverishly liking certain things, fervently indifferent towards other things, earachingly hating so-and-so, and zealously ignorant of everything else.

This typical malady also befell me, although I can assure you that I have done everything thinkable to hide from it, or to hide it from me, I'm not sure which, but the point is, I did try. Really.

Yet here we are now, or more precisely here you are, browsing a wonder of my vanity -- of millions of anime characters, the 14 I so far fished out probably represent a type each rather than the conventional range of senses implanted in the word 'personality'; so for every one of them I bet (do you?) we would find similar characters elsewhere.

Somebody I know whose life for the last 29 years have been almost entirely manga has just told me last night that if all anime characters since the long dark time before the World War II until approximately Monday night, 11 P.M., unite, then they -- the anime characters -- could have populated most of Japan from coast to coast, although the Tokyoites might have never noticed it (they even failed to notice Godzilla until it was too late). There, with this picture in mind, you could scare yourself by homemade images of some science-fiction nature.

Anyone who finds it necessary to make a parody of Colonel Sanders [Kentucky Fried Chicken] must have lost something meaningful in childhood, my late Grandma said; in this case I guess it is excusable to suspect that my friend is still traumatized by the mentally disfiguring accident that made him to lose his mind, an event that according to existing records must have happened 29 years ago. Or else he wouldn't have been observing the growth and lately obesity of manga from such a short distance. By the way he goes around by the name of Shiraki Kazuo, mostly around the Kansai area, and he is single and looking, and if you ever see him there please by no means shoot him. He had a heated fight against my cat once and he is still sore even though the cat has been dead for 3 years.

Anyway, before I forget the 'Magnificent Seven' list of best manga and anime characters, here it is: The list below is not based on an alphabetical order, calendrical order, money order or any other; in fact, it doesn't have anything to do with any order; it is not even numbered as in charts -- I put numbers there only to make life easier when I explain who's who or what.

1. Tsume - 2. Shiryu - 3. Aya - 4. Vash
5. Harlock - 6. Sanosuke - 7. Kenshin

All of these men cause massive collateral damage in every clash, because that is how the world goes round everyday on Planet Anime. All of them fight literal fights, in which only Vash 'the Stampede' is by himself. Harlock is more or less a loner, too. Kenshin, Sanosuke and Tsume are trying to be members of a pack. While Aya and Shiryu are members of such packs. Two of them are red-haired (Aya and Kenshin), two are blond (Tsume and Vash), the rest sport the usual color of Asian hair. Two are swordsmen (Aya and Kenshin), one gunner (Vash), one skilled in both (Harlock), two mostly use bare hands (Shiryu and Sanosuke), and one sort of does, too, but he's not human (Tsume). Except Tsume, all the others are human beings, and they never transform into any other thing.

Tsume from Wolf's Rain (2003, designer Kawamoto Toshihiro) is a wolf; he normally fights with his self [pronounced 'zu-mae', 'tsume' means 'claws']. Shiryu [pronounced 'she-ryou'[ is a Chinese kung-fu guy in the classic Saint Seiya (1986, original character designer Kurumada Masami). Aya Fujimiya ['ah-yah fooh-gee-me-yah'] is a florist by day and a swordsman by night, in Weiss Kreuz (1998, 2002, 2003, designer Yanasawa Tetsuya). Vash 'the Stampede' is a wandering gunman of Trigun (1998, original character designer Yasuhiro Nightow). Harlock goes to bed with a sword and a gun as a captain of pirates in the series, revamps and spin-offs of the main line that goes under his name (1978, 1982, 2000, 2001, original character designer Matsumoto Leiji). Sanosuke Sagara ['sah-no-soo-kay sah-gha-rah'] is a voluntarily leisured ken-po artist in Rurouni Kenshin or Samurai X (1996, 1997, 1998, 2000, 2001, original character designer Watsuki Nobuhiro). Kenshin Himura ['he-moor-ah'] is the Samurai X.

Well, yes, I did include two characters from the series that I don't think of as good, or at least they aren't the ones I love (as a whole series). Shiryu's Saint Seiya is one; it is so 'video-gamey' in the sense that it gives you a relentless deja vu: virtually every episode proceeds and ends the same way as the previous and the next. I guess that is the reason why the series have been so popular even as years have been piling up behind its back. The Shiryu character is slim and simple, just like the personality the story gives him. He's single-minded and unquestionably loyal to the people he loves. Shiryu dies in the series before it gets into any meaningful ramble. I watched this particular episode ages ago and I have never recovered from the "OhmyGod" situation the death of Shiryu put me into. Then there is Weiss Kreuz' Aya Fujimiya. Aya is typical: using a katana [J sword] for killing, having a little sister in a coma out of some traumatic event, cold to adoring young girls and seductive experienced ones alike, broody in general. This series, hence the characters, is reportedly based on the idea of Koyasu Takehito's -- singer for the Japanese band named Weiss -- from which this series came into being, as a way to promote the band. That is still excusable, since at least the 'boy band' Weiss in the anime never tries their bloody hands on music, and none of the characters tries to sing.

Two characters out of the series that I love are the 'incompetent' elements of their worlds.Trigun's Vash 'the Stampede' has usurped quite a chunk of this site elsewhere [click here for storyline and description of Vash's looks and attitude, or here for pictures], here it is enough to say that he is the 'victim' of jokes in the series although he is its leading character. Sanosuke Sagara, the sidekick in Rurouni Kenshin, is in the process of acquiring mastery of the game while Kenshin Himura is already a veteran; the story begins with his retirement from the job as a swordsman [click here for story and comments, or here for visual clues]. Harlock is of course a man who does most things right; but he is even broodier than Aya, for hazy existential reasons. The original Harlock that Matsumoto Leiji created was even suicidal -- the story is about his journey in search of a place to die in [click here for the recent story and why I love the series or here for pictures]. Tsume is a sort of sidekick for the leading character Kiba in Wolf's Rain, but these manimals are mostly pictured as a pack, so he at least got the role of seemingly the opposite of whatever Kiba is thinking or feeling at the time (click here for story and description, or here for pictures). He is bad-tempered just like Sanosuke, but Tsume's hotheadedness is of the 'primitive' sort (well, that means the sketch of personality is good -- he is a four-legged mammal after all). The visualization of him is cool, and his leather-clad muscles fit perfectly against the machineries created by the inimitable Aramaki Shinji -- fashionwise, leading man Kiba really needs some advice. I have no idea why he is designed to look like he has just woken up from a fitful sleep.

Here are two other characters I like, but not as much as needed to spur such a shameless page like this: Spike Spiegel, the leading character of Cowboy Bebop (1998), and Nicholas Wolfwood, a wandering gunman and Catholic priest, guest-character and temporary ally of Vash the Stampede in an episode of Trigun [click here for pictures]. Cowboy Bebop is a visual heartthrob, although Spiegel is decidedly not. There are some sample scenes from the series glued on another page of this section [click here]. Both Spiegel and Wolfwood are laid-back unless the moment (or TV rating) calls for action; then they give it real kicks. Cool.

Spike Spiegel [left, the one who needs hairstylist]
and Nicholas Wolfwood

Meanwhile, Indonesians (actually also the original anime viewers in Japan) tend to love the anime movies whose visual-art quality would never ever beat their 5 year-old kids' refrigerator door drawings; Doraemon, Crayon Shin-chan, Captain Tsubasa, Dr. Slump, Bakabon, etcetera -- with the exception of Shin-chan, the examples above are peopled by characters who look alike. None of the series where my best characters roam is. And none of them put a boy into a man's shoes; Shiryu is 15 or 16, but in China that is way past coming of age -- and the United Nations rule that 15 year-olds are eligible to be sent into combat forces.

By the way, I have been asked who among those seven is best-looking to me. I think I have to say it's Kenshin.

Kenshin Himura

But Aya looked almost good in the 1998 Weiss Kreuz, (some said he already did look good); then he endured an almost absolute overhaul of everything -- his looks, his job, his age, and for those familiar with the series, also, no matter how unchanged it seems, his name, in Weiss Kreuz Glühen (2002-3). It is more than just Batman's slipping vinyl off for leather, and more than all plastic surgeries Mariah Carey had undergone. The new Weiss in visual terms takes the beating better than the old -- now they do look like assassins.

Aya in Weiss Kreuz [left, red hair, florist]
and in Weiss Kreuz Glühen [right, black hair, teacher]

The one who asked the previous question preceding these unnecessary additional pictures is a 12 year-old Mischief in person, and happens to board some female chromosome. So excuse me.

Yet perhaps these female characters would have asked the same thing:

1. Megumi - 2. Excel - 3. Lina - 4. April -
5. Faye - 6. Emeraldas - 7. Robin

Of all the seven, two are magic-users (Lina and Robin), two gunners (April and Faye), one is essentially a swordsperson but also carries a gun everywhere (Emeraldas), and two are, in the terms of action genre, 'normal' women (Megumi and Excel). Actually no one would ever couple Excel with 'normal', but I only meant that even she doesn't have what it takes to turn into an animal, a goddess, or both, or anything else; Excel and Megumi eat like normal people, they weren't born with fire coming out of their hands, they cannot summon demons or the opposite, and so on. You know, like, normal. The rest are essentially a collective of anomaly. When it comes to their looks, what we have here are two red-haired (Lina and Emeraldas), two blondes (Excel and April), two black-haired (Megumi and Faye), and one sort of blonde sliding down to brown (Robin). April, Megumi, and Faye are clearly adults; Robin, Excel and Lina are younger, while Emeraldas is beyond this sort of description. She can be any year-old she likes to be.

Megumi Takani is a physician in Rurouni Kenshin (click here for story, or here for pictures). Excel in her Saga is everything that comes her way (2000, designer Ishino Satoshi, click here for story and description of the character, or here for pictures). Lina Inverse is a sorcerer (The Slayers, 1995, 1996, 1998, original designer Kanzaka Hajime [story] and Araizumi Rui [illustrations], a long way before the Harry Potter frenzy, click here for story or here for pictures). April never met Harlock because her pirate spaceship exists in a different universe altogether, in Sol Bianca: The Legacy (1999, designer Onda Naoyuki). Faye Valentine got herself off the 'Wanted' list of any precint in her world by gunblaze, in Cowboy Bebop (1998, designers Kawamoto Toshihiro and Yamano Kimitoshi, a story about bounty hunters in some future when spaceships are found in every garage, but everybody wears and own something from this Earth that's manufactured in no other decade but 1970's). Emeraldas is another captain of a pirate spaceship, and, yes, she knows Harlock (click here for story, or here for pictures). Sena Robin is a witch hunter, which is obvious from the title of the series (Witch Hunter Robin, 2002).

Megumi Takani and Faye Valentine (who accidentally is the most beautiful of the lot) might have been offsprings of the same stuff. Both have a grey past, both exist in a reconstructive present, and both face all possibilities as a future. Faye's role in Cowboy Bebop gives her more airtime than what Megumi got in Rurouni Kenshin. As a third person related to Bebop -- a spaceship again -- she could sneak herself up in more episodes in the series that focuses on Spike Spiegel, the owner of the spaceship, and Jet Black, his backup. This is a series where virtually every name of any character sounds good in my ears; even if they are pronounced the way Japanese pronounce English words. Rurouni Kenshin's love-interest is another woman, Kaoru Kamiya. Thereby Megumi, although in the anime is loving Kenshin and getting busy ignoring Sanosuke's occasional hint that he has a crush on her, isn't that lucky to get into every episode after the one where she was the star of. Nonetheless their attitude towards life and people and themselves are of the similar tint. Competent, never bear overdose of optimism, and 'normal' in some sense.

Both April and Emeraldas are captains, and they are in the very same business of piracy, and both are simultaneously on some very personal journey, too, but their worlds are lightyears apart. The glum April sometimes gets smitten by is nothing compared to Emeraldas' long and winding and everpresent 'darkness' that is announced anytime she appears onscreen. It is sorrow rather than anything; April's mood to brood only consists of some sort of nostalgy -- and perhaps an excuse for the excessive drinking rampant in her crew's quarters (this is Sol Bianca's 'trademark' since the first edition; it gives the impression as if it was created by a dropout of Alcoholic Anonymous). In this respect Emeraldas' mental makeup (and the atmosphere created by her very presence) is closer to that of Robin's, and not just that they rarely drink anything. Robin exists where she doesn't belong, and that existential thread drags the story on [click here for pictures].

This is what April does.....

.....and this is Robin's state of mind....

.....while Megumi simply lives.

 

Meanwhile, Lina Inverse and Excel are a blast, and in both cases also literally so (click here for Lina's story or here for Excel's, or here for pictures of both). The woes and hums and thaws of adult human world never exists for these leading characters of their own shows; although Excel's fantasy-world is closer to your neighborhood than Lina's (dragons tremble whenever you mention her name there).

And finally a string of girls -- none of them would be allowed to get cigs anywhere -- that I like enough:

Iria, the metal-clad bounty hunter from a series under her own name (Iria, 1994, animator Otonashi Ryunosuke, director Amino Tetsuro), who roams some futuristic environment which is among the worst I have ever seen in terms of designs; Linn Suzuki from Kotetsu (1996, designer Kikuchi Yoko, animator Watanabe Tetsuya, director Moriyama Yuji), a swordsgirl in a story that loves the prospective fans so much that sexual scenes are thought up out of the blue; Nausicaã, a princess or actually de facto queen of Valley of the Wind, in a tome called what else but Nausicaã (1984, directed by the Miyazaki Hayao, who also wrote the script and be the designer), a surprisingly good 'feel-good' movie for the whole family, although Miyazaki had taken the impossible theme of 'save the environment' stuff (shown there as already too late).

I also like one more Miyazakian girl, Sen (a.k.a Chihiro) from his other best-selling and critically acclaimed movie after a post-Princess Mononoke short interval, Spirited Away (2001). Only Miyazaki in this world who could tackle the problem of how to dish out mentally palatable slimy demons -- but he has done the practice in populating Nausicaa's world earlier. Spirited Away is a visual triumph [click here to see the pictures] while its narrative backbone is strong, too; rather 'too much', isn't it? (This is not a complaint.) Sen got 'spirited away' into the dimension of ghosts when her dad and mom were turned into pigs for their literal 'greed'. She worked there under strict rules until they all regained the known world. I really like this girl. She's too skinny, Miyazaki's girls are; but she's no crybaby.

Lastly, a deviation of my own habit, the last is Miyu, from Vampire Princess Miyu (1988, director Hirano Toshihiro). I never like horror movies nor consider them as anything but somebody else's special interest. Many flaws, some are typical (like, Miyu's rabbit-like supernatural 'pet', maybe to soften her image with -- and like a rule she, too, goes to school, God knows what would she do upon exams), others are its own (like, Miyu's horrible sense of fashion -- she really is, albeit unaware of this, in a dire need of a sensible or pretty nice outfit, asking for both might be too much, but lacking both is truly disastrous) besiege this series, but the characterization is its better point.

Miyu, by the way, is the weakest among these ordinary mortal girls. Not that she couldn't stand daylight (countless reviewers have objected to the cinematic fact that she hangs out during the day), but because she simply can't take any other girl's place based on psychological reasons. The one who can be any of the others is, I believe, Sen. Who is the only 'normal' human girl here among the five.

Well, here the list ends.

Needless to say that it was Shiraki who got me into making this list. That's why by now you would find it nice to shoot him.