It takes a lot to make a great and memorable anime. Visuals, plot, and characters all play a role. But sometimes, even when you have a great central cast there’s a couple of supporting anime characters the story might have been better without (or maybe they just rub me the wrong way).
Which supporting anime characters do you like or hate the most this season? Or who could a show do without?
Now let’s be honest, supporting characters play a really important role in all stories. It doesn’t matter how great your protagonist is if every character around him is about as effective a limp piece of seaweed on the screen. And there are some great supporting anime characters this season as well (I’d look to most of the cast of Sasaki to Miyano for how have a good supporting cast), but there have been some real duds as well.
Here are 5 supporting anime characters I’d happily see deleted this Winter 2022 season.
No. 5 Falanya Elk Arbalest
If your first thought when you read the name Falanya Elk Arbalest was ‘who?’ you probably aren’t alone even from people watching Tensai Ouji no Akaji Kokka Saisei Jutsu. Falanya isn’t an overly annoying character for a younger sister trope. If anything, her greatest flaw is that I cannot see any plausible reason for her existence as she’s contributed pretty much nothing to the plot and is barely present. Yet somehow we’re supposed to find the cut scenes to her doing whatever endearing and her appearance is enough to make Wein suddenly stop throwing a tantrum and at least pretend to act like a prince momentarily.
Honestly, this is one supporting anime character that you could cut from pretty much every episode so far and it would have no discernible impact on the story.
No. 4 Wataru Chikushi
Despite making appearance so far in pretty much every episode of Tokyo 24-Ku, Wataru Chikushi strikes me far more as someone who simply keeps plot points connecting by interacting with each group involved in the story rather than a real character. At times it seems he might be plotting something or somewhat more sinister but mostly he just seems like he’s wandering around and conveniently wherever he needs to be to prod another character into taking some sort of action.
While his role to the plot is critical with several key moments probably not happening without his presence, that’s all he is. I have no sense of who he is as a character and we’re now half-way through the season. Most of his role could be divided between the other supporting anime characters in this story, all of which have made more of an impression so far.
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No. 3 Juna or Carla
If I could have, I’d have also thrown Tomoe onto that list of supporting anime characters that as members of the would-be harem in Realist Hero just aren’t necessary. Unfortunately, while Tomoe has been mentioned in season 2, she so far hasn’t even made an appearance so maybe the writers also figured out that there were far too many unnecessary characters floating around the screen at times.
Both Juna and Carla feel very much on the periphery of Souma’s growing harem with Liscia and Aisha now having dibs and Juna being asked to ‘wait’. When you throw in Jeanne and the Amidonian Princess as well as all the supporting male characters honestly Realist Hero just suffers from bloat (among other things this season). Trimming down the cast might help it regain some focus, though I guess then we have to decide which girls would get the axe. Either that or let them be true supporting anime characters and given them something to actually do rather than just being there.
No. 2 Iris
As supporting anime characters, dragon girls are cool right? Right?!
Or at least The Strongest Sage with the Weakest Crest really wants you to buy into that because they certainly haven’t spent any time making Iris an interesting character in her own right. Of course none of the supporting anime characters in The Strongest Sage are really coming out all that great. And that’s probably because protagonist Mathias is more or less amazing at everything and doesn’t need a support cast (and so why bother).
It makes for a fairly flat viewing experience though. At least Lurie and Alma get to grow their own strengths even if they ultimately end up standing behind Mathias when the real fight comes but Iris, outside of occasional comic relief moments (oh look, the little girl is super strong, oh, she doesn’t know how that works because she’s actually a dragon) really doesn’t serve any purpose.
No. 1 Jim
Anyone who has followed my reviews of Love of Kill so far would have seen this coming. Jim. Oh, Jim.
As far as annoying supporting anime characters go Jim just pushes all of my buttons. From his character design (why doesn’t he have a mouth and why is he comically shorter than every other character) to his voice acting (I don’t know if he’s supposed to have an accent or be from somewhere other than Japan as it hasn’t been made clear but wow I cannot stand listening to him), everything about Jim annoys me.
Unlike most of the other characters on this list, I’m pretty sure Love of Kill wouldn’t function without Jim, but it would be so much better if Jim were a character I was interested in or at least one I tolerated. As it is, his appearance on screen almost always brings the mood down for me.
So there we have 5 supporting anime character that the Winter 2022 season could do without. At least in my opinion. I guess historically we’ve had significantly worse characters along the way who have seriously derailed stories (and at some point I guess I should do a list of worse supporting anime characters ever) but focusing on the here and now, these are the characters I am watching week after week and wondering, ‘just why are you even here?’
But as always, I’d love to know your thoughts so be sure to leave me a comment and share which supporting anime characters you could do without this season.
Thank-you for reading 100 Word Anime.
Join the discussion in the comments.
Karandi James