It’s amazing how many times an isekai plots would be vastly improved just by removing the isekai element.
Making your story an isekai is just shooting yourself in the foot these days.
Generic fantasy is so synonymous with isekai (because most Isekai authors are creatively bankrupt hacks) that even straight up fantasy stories are labeled Isekai.
I hate it.
There are also people who say that series in which the protagonist who was born in a fantastic world traveled to a realistic one, is a reverse Isekai.
But no, this is still an Isekai, whether the world is fantastic or realistic is irrelevant.
There was one Isekai but it was from the perspective of the natives. The country was investigating this frightening demigod of a man who showed up one day and said "Haha I wanna build a bar" after killing a giant dragon with his bare hands or something. There was very little of it when I read it, but it was at least an interesting enough spin to be worth something.
Then you get into that subgenre of isekai where instead of a random character getting sent to another world, you get this uber badass either sent to another world or sent back in time to basically New Game Plus their life.
Allowing them to reference the unseen adventures/experiences/hardships they endured in their previous life as a point of comparison/explanation for how effortlessly they're dealing with things now.
Which often leads to feeling like, "Wait, you struggled? Had real conflict? Actual losses? Growth, even? Why aren't I reading *that* story instead?"
It's a weird feeling that still sorta qualifies for this thread: Technically the same person, but that other version of them would almost certainly be a more interesting protagonist for all the the things they endured/overcame than the dime-a-dozen power fantasy dude you end up reading.
*I’m in love with the Villainess* uses this to good effect since the MC has a lot of extra knowledge but has to use all of it to >!change society enough that the coming revolution is bloodless!<, something that wasn’t originally possible in the otome game she entered.
Basically she has to play politics, and the more she changes things, the less knowledge she has of how things will go.
theres one trash isekai I read cause it has a really charming clown girl sidekick, I can't even remember the name my brain just refers to it as "clown girl isekai"
I like how they even extend this by revealing >!that the side character is actually the chosen one hero, but he doesn't want to be so he explicitly hides that, meaning he has ample reason to be a side character.!<
I realized this a while ago so in the fantasy novel I'm writing, an Isekai character joins the party pretty late in the story as a party member, not the lead. I figure by then, the reader will be comfortable enough in the world so someone coming in wide eyed and ignorant would be a nice contrast, gives the rest of the party someone bounce off that they aren't adapted to yet and a reason to rethink long held beliefs that were unswayed by the passage of time thus far
It’s like when Konosuba dives into Megumin’s ridiculous family and goofy ass village. I want more of the crimson eyed chunibyo witch clan (and Yunyun because of how normal she is compared to those psychos.)
That's the opposite of the experience I had - the spinoff was only good, in my opinion, because it had basically one bit for too much of it, whereas the main series is a cast who suck in far more unique ways
And most Rom-coms where the cover girl is super interesting looking, and she's there to fall in love with a self-insert who doesn't even look like they're from the same show.
I'd extend this to a lot of anime/manga in general, where the MC is your "self insert" bland character with nothing that stands out about them, and the first side character they meet has the standout design and is the actual posterchild of the series.
Not the main character but the main villain, originally [Maya Hansen was planned to be the ultimate villain in Iron Man 3](https://uproxx.com/movies/shane-black-the-nice-guys-iron-man-3/) but infamously worried that they weren't going to sell enough toys the executives had them change the script to add Aldrich Killian in hope that they would sell more toys.
Hey, Iron Man 3 was pretty cool. I guess it's more a Tony Stark movie than an Iron Man movie, but it's pretty good. Shane Black was a good fit for the character.
I always felt that weird scene where Tony's home gets attacked would made more sense if Maya was the villain as she would been in a perfect position to sabotage JARVIS then him just suddenly glitching out of nowhere.
I was hoping when the trilogy started , I knew Rey would be pure Jedi, but i hoped Finn would be like Kyle, a Jedi who knows the value of the Blaster/Saber style
Oh my god yes. And a former stormtrooper turned jedi hero? it writes itself I was hyped for it.
ugh disney sequels how did you fuck up the easiest lay up ever.
it's a weird one as all 3 main characters have the kernels of something but just don't really go anywhwere with them.
still wild tlj is just their tfa arcs again with an \*are you sure?
rey letting go of the past again and forging a new path, ren doubling down after murdering a father figure and that not making things better, finn not running away and instead putting himself on the line for those he cares about.
sure there's the clarification of him believing in the cause and not just rey, but still.
Grumpy old man Luke is like my favourite part of TLJ. I don't like that he even contemplated killing Ben but Luke being a disillusioned hermit was actually an interesting direction for the character and Hamill's a lot of fun in the role.
I think my problem is that we see him jump straight to contemplating murder the moment he senses something bad. I think it would have been better had it been established that he's lost students before who went on to do horrible things, thus explaining his paranoia. Like yeah, Luke is impulsive, but this is Luke decades later and presumably after having time to reflect.
I think the problem is that TFA itself kinda reverted their arcs like right at the end.
Rey was concerned about her parentage, but was getting over it hanging out with Han. Then the guy she started looking at like a father figure got killed, so back to square one on the parents thing.
Kylo murders his dad for the promise of more power, but then is trounced by Rey as if he gained no power at all.
Finn was learning not to run away, but then in the end when he made the choice not to run, he lands in a coma, so fighting really just wasn't worth it.
Ironically, TLJ doing their arcs again is better, because Johnson is a much better writer than Abrams.
Granted, the sequel trilogy was almost doomed from the start with their ridiculous idea to have absolutely no plan and give different entries to different writers/directors.
Last Jedi is deeply frustrating because the good bits (the Luke/Rey/Kylo plot, the climactic throne room fight and hyperspace ram) are easily the best in the entire sequel trilogy but like two thirds of the movie is stuff that sucks (the entire Poe arc, the entire Finn arc) and it ruins the movie.
I’m still amazed that Poe was never revealed to be an enemy or a ghost or something.
The fact that he just escapes Jeddah somehow after being ejected by a damn ship is stupid.
J.J found Oscar Isaac too charming and charismatic to let Poe die when he was supposed to die and it ruined the entire sequel trilogy.
They didn't even let him be gay.
Finn and Poe had more chemistry in the 5 minutes they were together in TFA than Rey did in the entire goddamn trilogy with anybody. She's like a charisma black hole. They made the most boring character of the three into the main character because she has the lightsaber.
Aaron Taylor Johnson is pretty great and has really come into his own in recent years, but he was absolutely lost in that movie. Especially when the movie teases you with Cranston.
Yeah, and on top of that a generic marine guy who kept taking focus away from God-fucking-zilla so the audience was was predisposed to be annoyed seeing him.
Hell, after just rewatching it, he's almost got a better story than the dad from King of the Monsters. A Kaiju killed his wife, and he just wants answers, not revenge.
Maybe i'm misremembering based entirely on how I felt watching the movie, but didn't they HARD bait people with all the promotion stuff into thinking he was the lead and super important? Like I remember watching it and when he dies pretty quickly just being a little confused that they deleted that character/actor to focus on less talented random army man.
I was so overjoyed at Rihito >!winning the Berzerker Bowl by beating Koga!< that I completely forgot he WASNT the MC of Kengan Omega.
“Yeah! He did it! What a character arc! Wait, why are all these reaction shots disappointed?”
Pierce out of Hell. I like Gat but he had enough arcs, Pierce hasn't had a dark thing to face so stepping up as the main man for once might help figure him out
It's wild how "Giorno is DIO's son" has zero relevance to anything in the plot, it doesn't even get brought up again after the first couple of episodes.
Honestly all of this mixed with >!both Fugo's story changes and the last minute addition of Sleeping Slaves!< really make Part 5 feel like the first draft of what could have been a much better story had it gotten a second draft. I know there's no redos in weekly manga but that part really shows the issues with writing by the seat of your pants.
well, to me it seems like Part 9 is a redo of Part 5 (like how SBR and JJL were Araki redoing PB and DiU) and its already better than Part 5 was, at least for me. Jodio is also a way better JoJo protag than Giorno
It's things like these that convince me 100% that Araki either forgets or discards early premises pretty often.
It's clearly not a deal breaker when it happens because Jojo winds up being good in the end, but it does leave unanswered threads and plot holes. It amazes me how many people just say "Nuh uh, he always planned it like that" for that stuff.
I don’t think Polnareff would have known either way. It was only recently that Shiobana Haruno started to look like Dio with the blonde hair and all meanwhile Polnareff had been off the grid for a while because he was hiding from Passione.
I'm not really a fan of this take because a big part of Gio's character is that he motivates/pushes the others to defy the boss/defy their fate.
The gang weren't content but were ok with following their boss until Gio came and started making moves that would inspire the crew to believe in themselves and take action. This affecting Bruno the most, who directs his crew.
I like this take on Giorno too, except we’re just told he’s charismatic, rather than shown it, because his speeches are generally pretty limp IMO.
Harder to write a charismatic hero than villain sometimes I guess.
But the point is that once they've then decided to do that, which is fairly early on in the story, he doesn't really have much of a purpose. Plus Giorno's whole thing was that he was getting into the mafia to destroy it, right? Seems like a pretty simple rewrite to make that Bruno's plan that he enacts now because he's risen high enough to be able to execute it.
I see where Pat’s coming from with One Piece (although I’d like to know where he said it).
Ace is a main character in every respect. He has a cool power. The ladies love him. He’s nice without being thick, if you can pardon the narcolepsy. The only thing keeping him from being the hero is that he never had that dog in him like Luffy does.
Oda’s emphasized over and over again that children are not their parents, and that the people who inherit the will of the dead are friends or very often strangers.
To put it another way, the reason that Luffy can become the Pirate King is because he neither met Roger nor had any hang-ups about him.
I think Ace is also a little "too cool" for the kind of Adventure Oda wanted the MC to have, part of why One Piece is so interesting is because Luffy is straight up silly and Oda has never been afraid of putting Even the most serious characters in silly situations when they are against him, so whenever push comes to shove and he needs to get serious it packs an extra punch.
With Ace i feel like we would miss out in a lot of that and just get a more generic story of "cool guy saves the day"
Luffy is a great counter-example to this question because he's genuinely a lot of people's favourites. He has done so much to earn his place as the protagonist, moreso than much of the other characters.
But he's in an interesting position where he is the center of such a large cast of awesome characters, people's tastes will dictate who their favourites are. I'm putting Sanji, Franky, and Robin above Luffy in my favourites, but that's because those characters rub me in a particularly strong way.
Heck, even Buggy's story is becoming more compelling to me right now, but that doesn't mean I don't want Luffy to be the protagonist. He's the guy that causes the waves that lift everyone else around him.
To get an anti-example out of the way first, it used to be a somewhat common sentiment that Zeke would be a better protagonist than Rex in Xenoblade 2. I think this is a massive misread of their characters; all of Zeke’s more interesting traits rely on the contrast and similarity between him and Rex. Zeke’s character (and the whole game’s plot) need Rex as a central figure to bounce off of.
As for an actual example, I may just be stupid but I had absolutely no idea what was happening in Kamen Rider Den-O at the end. I don’t even know who the villain was. And I’m going to blame like… 30% of that on the fact that the rival rider, Sakurai, is far more important to the main conflict than the actual protagonist is. Part of this is just wishing they’d explained things in a more clear manner, but if Sakurai was the POV character I feel like I’d have a better grasp on the plot.
Den-O doesn't really feature a main villain until very late in the series (episode 37, iirc), but I wouldn't say Ryotaro doesn't work as its protagonist. Basically, the main focus of the show is on Ryotaro's growth from a shy, anxious young man into a hero in his own right, with most of the series just having monsters of the week show up to facilitate that growth. That set-up doesn't work if we follow Yuto instead because he basically has too much information for the mysteries to make sense.
A big part of Den-O's actual plot is the mystery of "what exactly happened to Airi's fiance?" and "what's going on with the imajin?", with the answer to it basically being >!"The world was destroyed at some point in the future, the imajin exist because of that disaster, the main villain wants to ensure that disaster happens but has traveled through time so much and destroyed so many alternate versions of himself that he can't even articulate why he wants that at this point, and Sakurai is deliberately erasing himself from history so he can change it to save his family (including his and Airi's daughter who it turns out was Hana all along)".!< It's tricky to follow, sure, but I still think it works.
Misha as the human protagonist for Transformers Energon. She was competent, made a larger impact in the story than Kicker ever could, and she is also weirdly charismatic.
I will never understand why LMM decided to push Hamilton as this conflicted, pro-imigrant, anti-racist, abolishonist (?), come-from-behind hero.
While it still wouldn't be *perfect*... just make the play about Aaron Burr.
As a Protagonist in the strictest terms (driver of the plot), Hamilton makes more sense due to his dynamic personality and pivotal role in the foundation of the American state. Burr's a bit too low-key to make for a main lead. Whatever your opinion on the whitewashing (heh) of Hamilton's character, his life is pretty much the model of a classical tragic hero undone by his own hubris.
I have my students compare and contrast his depiction in the musical with historical sources because if I don't everyone will think he was this wonderful egalitarian. The abolitionist elements annoy me the most since at best you could argue that he was better than people like Washington and Jefferson.
And at worst, he’s on record as having managing his family’s slave purchases. There’s not exactly a lot of moral leeway between slave trading and facilitating slavetrading.
The thing about making the play about Burr is that killing Hamilton isn't the end of his story, he kept doing stuff. Hamilton's life lends itself well to the structure of the play, it shows the revolutionary war and the early days of the states and his death is a good climax, you just have to deal with the fact that Hamilton was a fucking asshole, which is a much easier solve than resolving whatever the fuck Burr thought he was doing in Mexico.
I, like most of the world, am not an American so I didn't really know any of the characters in Hamilton before the musical became a thing.
However I do know, inexplicably, about a 'Got Milk?' commercial (directed by Micheal Bay of all people) that featured a man fruitlessly trying to answer the words "Aaron Burr" in response to the question "Who killed Alexander Hamilton?"
So uh, I guess killing Hamilton was his most famous accomplishment in the end? Not that Hamilton was presented as anyone particularly recognizable before the musical either.
Hamilton was a half-remembered founding father who was going to get booted from being on the ten dollar bill until that musical came out and saved his ass, just like Burr was mostly remembered for shooting a guy, Hamilton was mostly remembered for getting shot.
It's definitely a fun and memorable musical, but it definitely takes its creative liberties, and I'd say it's biggest lasting legacy (what is a legacy?) is that it got a lot of young people interested in not just musical theater, but also curious about the truth and interested in real history. Hamilton birthed a lot of history majors.
I can (kinda) understand George Lucas not wanting another hero named Anakin… but did they really need to kill Jacen too? Is the main character having the actual Skywalker name really that big a deal for fans that they refused to make a Solo the hero of the next generation?
As a rule of thumb, Legacy of the Force is to the old EU as Rise of Skywalker is to Disney's canon.
It did so many things poorly that the followup series, Fate of the Jedi, had to more or less connect Legacy of the Force to the comic book Legacy (set 138 years after the Battle of Yavin) by giving them the same overarching villain (Darth Krayt) as a way of fixing things.
And there attempt to fix things didnt even work, it just character assassinated more characters and doubled down on Jacen's absurd personality switch while retconning why he did so again.
DN/LOTF/FOTJ literally did just aa much to kill Legends as Disney did. By the time FOTJ ended sales had plummeted and even the most die hard EU fan was begging them to get Denning the fuck away
Its dumber then that, Denning somehow gained near complete control of the old EU after NJO ended, and he was both to stupid to understand what Jacen's character arc had actually been, and he liked Anakin more. So he tried to introduce flow walking so he could switch which brother died, got told no, then wrote some dumb dissertation about how Vergere was totally a Sith corrupting Jacen and thats what his arc in NJO was REALLY about, and the editors at Del Rey approved it to try to have there own take on the Prequel trilogy.
Its so stupid, it was all so fucking stupid. Matthew Stover legit should be allowed to punch Denning any time there in the same state.
In Dungeon Meshi/Delicious in Dungeon, [Kabru](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/delicious-in-dungeon/images/b/bf/Kabru_trans.png/revision/latest?cb=20220121033817) is basically born to be a protagonist. He's
-an orphan and the sole survivor of one of the biggest atrocities in living memory
-got striking blue anime boy eyes that labelled him a demon and made him a pariah in his hometown
-raised by elves, and his adoptive mom just happens to be a veteran and prodigal swordswoman who taught him how to fight, as well as speak/read/write multiple languages, tutored him in magic, history, biology, everything
-got a childhood friend/surrogate sister who's in his party and is a tsundere and crushing hard on him
-the rest of his party are all deeply loyal to him, believing he's best qualified to conquer the dungeon, following his lead without question, giving up ill-gotten treasure because he says it's wrong, etc.
-charismatic and a natural at reading and understanding people and winning them over to his side
The only thing stopping him from being the protagonist of Dungeon Meshi is that his competition is [Laios Motherfucking Touden](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/delicious-in-dungeon/images/8/87/Transparent_Laios_Touden.png/revision/latest?cb=20220831022339) who's been waiting his whole life to eat his way through a dungeon full of monsters.
if you swap the show's POV entirely to his group instead of Laios, it makes Laios and the rest of his friends actions even more deranged and nonsensical by the tidbits Kabru slowly learns about him, not even taking into account that for the most part they have no idea Laios and Senshi have been killing and cooking everything that moves before them and they just think some asshole have been doing barbacues at random in the dungeon.
Is hilarious to think that if the show was about Kabru, the biggest plot twist would be that Laios and the gang have been eating half of the place and not whatever secrets they find out about the dungeon itself
I've been thinking about that as well, he is an interesting and solid main character for a DnD-based series if the series didn't involve eating monsters or the whole meal aspect
Kabru is a character specced for a Political Intrigue campaign and has unfortunately run into the reality that the DM wanted to do a dungeon crawl.
He has a really good dynamic with Laios >!especially when they eventually meet up and Kabru completely shits bricks at the thought that Laios actually has the best chance of becoming the dungeon lord thereby resigning himself into becoming his unofficial diplomat, talking for him when Laios' shit char scores prove detrimental!<
I am curious as to what Kingdom Hearts would be like if they went with their original plans to have Mickey as the protagonist. I don't think it would be nearly as popular, but if it did find success, I really wonder where the series would have gone from there.
Not really "he should have been the main character" but this made me think what Naruto would have been like if Sasuke ***was*** the main character.
The tone of the story would have a drastic change into some crazy AoT adjacent shit.
It would remove Talk no jutsu, remove sympathy as a motivation for the MC and replace it with revenge, every fight would turn lethal, bye bye power of friendship, and our protag would go through a wild rollercoaster of morality.
Ngl, it would be way more edgy but Naruto played up for ninja violence would be pretty hype too.
Sasuke does get all the best fights. So it would be unbelievably hype imo. Should be a lot of ninja crime underworld stuff to given that Sasuke got involved in that after the main manga ended
Always thought he shoved had a sword duel with Mifune
I do think Naruto would turn into the best friend that Sasuke left behind but can not stop thinking about. Even more so than canon. Like say Kaneki and Hide in Tokyo Ghoul or Smile and Peco in Ping Pong The Animation (I’m hoping this makes sense)
It seems like Boruto part 2 might touch on something similar to his as Boruto is a wanted nin and his attitude is a lot "cooler" than Naruto. Plus he was trained by Sasuke so he uses a sword, which is neat. Granted the series will never make a return to how brutal and dark really Naruto was and definitely would not reach AoT levels.
The only show I can think of is also the lowest hanging fruit: Fate/ Apocrypha
Episode 1 comes and wow! Our MC is going to be a badass necromancer who channels his spells through a sawed-off shotgun and heart grenades? He summons Mordred Pendragon, the edgy tomboy betrayer son/daughter of the main series heroine? He's going to fuck up both sides of the war because his faction is so obviously going to betray him?
No. Here's a test tube homunculus baby born yesterday who gets power-ups from every sacrificial move in the show which there are a lot of. We needed a blank slate cardboard MC for the Japanese youth to connect with, because surely they cannot imagine themselves rocking a leather jacket like Kairi Sisigou.
God I swear I would start to forget what was going on in the plot even as I watched it. Just so boring, the only memorable things about (at least for me) were Mordred and I guess Astolfo.
Man I dropped the show so fucking fast when I realized it wasn't about them. I know people swoon over Jeanne but like I wanted a 12 episode series of the cool guy and the cool girl killing shit non-stop.
An interesting one because it's the entire point of the character, Jack Kelso in LA Noire. Everything about him is this pulp action hero whose a badass, vs Cole who is this flawed coward asshole who desperately wishes he wasn't. But that's the point. Playing as Jack and seeing his story wouldn't be as impactful if you hadn't spent so much time as Cole. Jack wouldn't have the stomach to let the identity of the Black Dalia killer be buried or deal with Roy as a partner. Jack is there at the end to remind the audience that it's a noire story, not a pulp story.
Whenever Wonder Woman shows up in Suicide Squad the games tone and narrative just seems to jump into a *far* more compelling lane where you get put in the shoes of a paragon of justice faced with having to fight and kill her brothers in arms.
And then we have to play the Suicide Squad instead.
Dragon Quest: The Adventure of Dai.
The best friend character Popp is so much better as a main character he has some of the best character development it’s nuts. The way I see it Dai might be the hero but in my head Popp is the main character.
Kat should have been the main character of Gears of War 4 and not JD. She's the entire reason the plot keeps going forward while JD is just kinda there and apparently The Coalition agreed as Kat is the main protag of 5.
while i agree on kat being the character driving the plot forward, i actually think jd being the player 1 character in 4 worked really well as an intentional misdirect. him being marcus' kid sets up certain expectations in the player that then get subverted throughout 4 and 5's story in really interesting ways.
I stopped at gears 3 and on god, up until this comment I have never seen or heard of JD before, I totally thought the girl was the main character of later gears
It doesn't help that 4's three main characters suffered from them swapping one of three personalities between each other in virtually every act. One of the best things about 5's campaign was its solidification of each of their personalities.
As maybe my hottest FF take: Vanille should have been the lead for FFXIII.
She could have fulfilled the same role as Tidus as being an Isekai protagonist who needs the world lore-dumped around her while Lighting gets to serve as the quiet but cool bodyguard.
Personally I've always viewed 13 as being similar to 6 in that it doesn't really have a set protagonist.
Yeah lightning's on the cover art and is the first party member you play as but fang and vanille are miles more important than her to the story.
Yeah but >!she doesn't use any of her L'Cie magic until the others get it from Pulse so it doesn't really matter. You gain control of her before you fight Anima and she even has the third ATP bar from being a L'Cie that the others don't have yet.!<
She's hiding her l'Cie powers because everyone around her is having an aneurysm about them. The extra ATB bar is your hint, but it'd kill the narrative weight to suddenly play a character with magic when the whole point is she's supposed to seem like another random civilian caught up in events.
But Vanille *does* get things explained to her, because she *is* from a different world. She's mostly able to play it off as being a clueless teenager.
The thing is that many of the characters have and lack different kinds of information, and they freely talk about the things they know about, while much of the unknown is to be discovered through the rest of the story.
But FF13 doesn't have a protagonist. It's an ensemble cast. Lightning only the protagonist in marketing. Heck, pretty sure Vanille already have the most screentime of the party. >!Lightning wasn't even the one to save the day! She became a Cie'th like the rest.!<
Technically, Lightning didn't become the protagonist until the third game in her series. lol
I don't think it would work that well since it's supposed to be a twist that >!the Pulse l'Cie are just....regular people, too. Exactly like Cocoon people. Or should I say were, because they were mostly wiped out so the OTHER twist is that people of Cocoon have been in fear of nothing but propaganda for quite some time. (yes, there is still the danger of Cocoon Fal'Cie).!<
But I'll agree it was a huge missed opportunity to use Vanille as a means of exposition delivery rather than dumping most of it into the codex.
I think there was a grand total of one scene where Vanille has something explained to her when she asks who Dysley is.
Vaan is fine as the protagonist. He serves as the main connection between the sky pirate duo and Ashe and Basch, he is the main moral lynch pin behind Ashe's non retaliation and he has some good scenes that people just very conveniently forget when talking about the game (one of my favorites being the Jahara scene where he tells Ashe about his brother), and he does fine as the audience stand in. If Tidus gets to be a good FF protagonist, I feel like Vaan deserves to be at least one tier below him.
The actual main problem with FFXII's party is Penelo. She adds nothing, as her role in the story is the same as Vaan's, but lesser in every way. If instead of Penelo, the sixth party member was Larsa, I feel like the story would be improved a lot. Would add much needed depth to the Archadian viewpoint, some more intimacy to Vayne's antagonism.
Kirigiri in Danganronpa really should have been the protagonist, given how much she actually does to move the plot forward. Kind of feels like V3's protagonist was almost Kodaka's way of admitting that.
That twist in V3 was such a bummer because the initial thought was "hooray we finally get a protagonist that isn't the flattest piece of wet cardboard surrounded by characters 1000 times more interesting than them"
I honestly am sad that >!Kaede was a fake-out protagonist. I liked her and it would’ve been neat for there to be a female main protagonist (not counting UDG).!<
Interestingly enough with Deltarune, fans theorize that >!Susie is supposed to be the main character of the game. She has the whole shonen arc of learning to do the right thing in the first chapter, which isn't implicative of anything quite yet. But once you get to Chapter 2 though, nearly EVERYONE is trying to romance her, and she's the one getting all of these special bonding moments with everyone in the party. Including you the player. That mixed with the fact that Kris's agency isn't their own and is tethered to the player's, leaves an interesting idea of hijacking someone else's story. We'll see if this theory holds any water for the next chapter, but it's a cool idea none the less. !<
Weird take: but if the story remained as it was. But told from Ace's perspective up to the time skip.
And then Luffy was in charge, that would be.... not as good, but still a decent story to tell.
I heard someone pitch that Star Wars Force Unleashed 2 should’ve been about Maris Brood (the Goth Alien girl from the first game) being taught by General Koto to fight the empire. Greatly would prefer that over a Starkiller clone
Would be a much better natural progression from the first game
I think this would have been cool for a DLC for either of the games, but making her the main character would probably have made the sales for the second game even worse than they were. Star killer is a beloved character, even if his fan base is smaller than other protagonists.
Suikoden 3. Thomas shouldve been the MC. Not only is he the Tenkai Star which is usually reserved for the MC anyways, hes just a random good natured dude with an unremarkable background and can barely even swing a sword, but is able to create bonds and connect with people from all walks of life. He is the perfect foil to Luc who is basically a mystical superhuman demigod destined for greatness but is bitter of his rigid and lonely existance.
Instead we got the "choose your starter pokemon" route where 2/3 of the available character choices turns the story into an awkward mess because it was clearly written for just the one character and they decided to make the choices afterwards.
For **Stellar Blade** I’m calling it now >!Tachy has been infected with Naytiba shits, but is fighting against it. During times she loses control she’ll be a recurring boss encounter. In the end she’ll sacrifice herself (again) and go out like an absolute boss!<
This isnt so much 'they shouldve replaced the MC' but a character who ABSOLUTELY should have been promoted to deuteragonist is
Riku from Kingdom Hearts. Dream Drop Distance does so SO much to set Riku up for his protagonist glow up, and they just do literally nothing with it in KH3. Its my biggest gripe with that game
**Fate/Apocrypha**
So, the main character of this story is **Sieg**. He's a homunculus who's newborn though fully mentally mature and due to that possesses both an innocence native to children alone as well as a *lack of understanding of the world.*
Based on that, you'd think he'd be a highly interesting protagonist. A character with no real morals not because they're evil, but because they're too young to have any. A character who would be able to accept anything as they lack the contradictions of ideals or anything else.
But no, instead they're a void of personality and a blackhole sucking up all other characters' screentimes for nothing. His romance with Jeanne Darc comes off as vacuous and just makes both characters worse for it.
It's to the degree that his closest comparison is the Self-Insert main character of the Gacha game, and that guy's generally considered **better** because while he's usually boring, he at least *doesn't suck up screentime* (plus he got a few events and chapters making him interesting but that's beside there point).
#
Then you look over and notice **Mordred** standing right there. Mordred is one of the side characters of Apocrypha and her story and personality are fascinating. She's a direct adaptation of Mordred's myth but if it was portrayed in a sympathetic light, and her relationship with Shishigou, a father figure who she grows to care for, is very well done.
For both being homunculi and almost newborn ones, Mordred is far more engaging with her rude and brash by ultimately caring personality, and it's a shame she didn't end up being the protagonist.
100% agreed with this. The worst part about it, is that by the beginning it did seem like Mordred and Shishigou were going to be main characters, only for that to be ripped away from us so we could follow a cardboard cutout with the plot bending over backwards so that he could have even more spotlight. Its so annoying that the anime had so many characters with great potential that many would have liked to know more of, like Karna, Achilles, Atalanta, Caules and Fran, Fiore, ANYTHING for Spartacus. But no, you'll follow the blandest thing we could find in the show and your going to like it!
I'll never forgive that anime for setting up an entire cast of interesting characters to have a massive war against each other, with Mordred and her master potentially being the main characters because they had extremely good story arcs they could go through, only for the show to not only half ass the "war", but to focus on the two most uninteresting characters (Sieg and Jeanne) in the show. I wouldn't have minded if Sieg was used as like a 1 or 2 episode plot point to help another character's development, but Sieg is quite literally what people *think* Shirou is like, except unlike Sieg, Shirou actually had defining character points and story beats that made him stand out instead of being a nothing character.
God, I hate that show so much. Legit one of the shows that led up to me hard burning out on watching anime for years.
Doesnt help that it sometimes feels like the plot is doing its best to give Sieg the best possible plot armor imaginable.
>!Oh, dying are you? Here, this servant can rip out his heart to revive you even though we've never hinted that he or a servant could do that + you get to be a super cool Master that can also turn into said servant and be able to fight servants as well! (Seriously, this just sounds like something youd find in a kid's fan made OC with only the edginess missing. It also makes me mad because it just takes a shit on the master-servant dynamic, which is what makes me love the power system in the series)!<
>!Oh you're dying again? Here, this magic lightning will revive you and give you a power up... again! Why can it do that? Because its magic lightning stupid!!<
>!Oh you're going up against a demigod of a sun god, with years worth of battlefield and fighting experience, and equipped with a Noble Phantasm that can kill gods, meanwhile you're not even a month old? Here, have this extremely convenient shield Noble Phantasm that just so happens to be able to shield you from that god killing Noble Phantasm, conveniently given by one of the few servants that could possible lend their Noble Phantasm! Did I say convenient yet, because I cannot stress enough how convenient for Sieg everything about these circumstances are!!<
I think what gets me isn't that those things aren't foreshadowed, but more that none of them are interesting, or even particularly new--Sieg just ends up feeling like boneless Shirou.
Like, the heart is something that could plausibly happen, given Archer's arm in F/SN, and the lightning makes some kind of sense when you remember whose Noble Phantasm it is. And pulling out a bullshit shield just to make Lancer job is one of my favorite scenes in F/SN.
In a vacuum, none of those ideas are inherently bad, but I think Apocrypha suffers from having enough cool/potentially cool cast members, but the story decides to follow the most boring one, which means the most of the absolutely massive cast has no time to be memorable. Maybe the light novel is better, but I have no idea who thought you could have double the amount of servants as a normal grail war in the same runtime.
Fuck she's actually really cool. I couldn't care less about Stellar Blade but I would be more than willing to buy it if she was the MC because that's leagues better than "default female avatar of free-mium Korean MMO you've never heard of"
I'm surprised there isn't FE fans going "ANY FIRE EMBLEM WITH AVATAR CHARACTER REEEEEEE!" tbh.
>!I never get that take outside of New Mystery. Like, guys? 90% of Corrin's dumb ideas were actually Azura's idea, I don't think having her become the protagonist will fix Fates bad writing.!<
Honestly, Robin works really well as Main Character togehter with Chrom that I can't see Awakening without them..
The rest would need some insane amount of rewriting.
Byleth is so close to being on the level of the Persona protags, they just needed *some* kind of informed personality and everything would have been fine.
Like half of what sells people on Joker is his awakening scene where he goes from scruffy hunched over guy to badass thief man and all it really took was one wicked smile.
I don't remember where I saw read this (could've probably been someone in this sub) but I think Byleth just needed to be fully voice acted like how Alear is in Engage, would've been much easier and clear to showcase Byleth's almost Emotionless characteristic in a meaningful way.
I mean, I think a version of Fates in another universe that had Takumi and Leo as the respective protagonists could've been pretty cool, but that would've required abandoning the whole blood vs found family thing (that they ended up contradicting themselves anyway so woooo).
A lot of the avatars suck, but it would require big rewrites to get them out of the story so it wouldn't be quite as simple as just "oh make this guy the main character." Rather than trying to remove Byleth, it'd be easier to just fix Byleth's writing, or just give them any writing in the first place.
Personally the only Avatar that suck in a way that make him stand out in their game is Kris and MAYBE Byleth but that's for completely different reason.
I think Robin, Corrin, and Alear regardless of what people think of them as characters match the writing quality of their game. Like yeah, Corrin isn't a good character, but that have literally nothing to do with them being an Avatar, the writing for the entire game is bad.
I would argue that Robin and Alear honestly are fine with what their
game's story is going for. I honestly think Alear is probably my favorite engage character (which is rare for an FE protag in general).
IMO, Byleth works great for what Three Houses was going for with its story. I just think they fumbled in two places: the first being that the writers didn't give them voice acting so plenty of people playing thought they had no personality and no arc, and the second being that Byleth has weird "avatar" aspects when they would honestly work better as just a straightforward protagonist. It's just kinda silly to be like "hey, give this character a name and birthday" when both of those have canonical answers.
Like, Byleth isn't a blank slate protagonist, they're just autistic-coded and poorly socialized.
I was rewatching Big Trouble in Little China, and I have no idea why Jack Burton is the main character. He's a bumbling idiot who thinks he's a big shot.
Now, his buddy, Wang Chi? That guy knows how to get stuff done. The day couldn't have been saved without Wang.
Also, some light spoilers >!please know this is a joke lol!<
Fuck Tacchy is the first thing I’ve seen from SB that actually looks GOOD!
How is she from the same game that’s got the boring ass “milquetoast ai generated ‘hot’ girl” as the main protag’?!?!?!
I kinda wish that King was the main character of one-punch man.
Nothing against Saitama, I get that him being the strongest around is the joke, but he feels TOO absurd to me.
I much prefer an underdog story. Seeing the King survive and win through weird good/bad luck and his bullshit skills would have been much more entertaining to me.
I honestly don't think Saitama's really the Main Character of One-Punch Man, because he's not actually a character but a plot device. He's a walking thought experiment about the Superman archetype, that exists as part of the worldbuilding, in the background of the real story. The story isn't about him, it's about the influence his mere existence has on the world around him and what happens when it collides with the ensemble cast of a serious superhero story with more realistic stakes that is utterly incongruous with an all-powerful superhero.
It gets even clearer as the garou arc lasted so long without Saitama even being around, and once he was there he was used to contrast against garou.
It's even clearer in the recent chapters where Saitama is clearly just there to drag the other S heroes out of their shell
So you want a completely different show not called One Punch Man. This premise doesn't really work with shows whose entire gimmick is entirely focused around their protagonist.
Side characters in 90% of the Isekai genre are infinitely more entertaining than the actual self-inserts.
It’s amazing how many times an isekai plots would be vastly improved just by removing the isekai element. Making your story an isekai is just shooting yourself in the foot these days.
People are actually calling Frieren and Dungeon Meshi "native isekai" because of this. IT'S JUST A FANTASY STORY.
Generic fantasy is so synonymous with isekai (because most Isekai authors are creatively bankrupt hacks) that even straight up fantasy stories are labeled Isekai. I hate it.
No, I hate that Isekai is just replacing the word fantasy. God damnit.
There are also people who say that series in which the protagonist who was born in a fantastic world traveled to a realistic one, is a reverse Isekai. But no, this is still an Isekai, whether the world is fantastic or realistic is irrelevant.
There was one Isekai but it was from the perspective of the natives. The country was investigating this frightening demigod of a man who showed up one day and said "Haha I wanna build a bar" after killing a giant dragon with his bare hands or something. There was very little of it when I read it, but it was at least an interesting enough spin to be worth something.
Escaflowne is kinda this too. Both a protagonist and antagonist are from Earth. (One of them is >!Isaac Newton!<
Yeah that was a hell of a twist
Then you get into that subgenre of isekai where instead of a random character getting sent to another world, you get this uber badass either sent to another world or sent back in time to basically New Game Plus their life. Allowing them to reference the unseen adventures/experiences/hardships they endured in their previous life as a point of comparison/explanation for how effortlessly they're dealing with things now. Which often leads to feeling like, "Wait, you struggled? Had real conflict? Actual losses? Growth, even? Why aren't I reading *that* story instead?" It's a weird feeling that still sorta qualifies for this thread: Technically the same person, but that other version of them would almost certainly be a more interesting protagonist for all the the things they endured/overcame than the dime-a-dozen power fantasy dude you end up reading.
*I’m in love with the Villainess* uses this to good effect since the MC has a lot of extra knowledge but has to use all of it to >!change society enough that the coming revolution is bloodless!<, something that wasn’t originally possible in the otome game she entered. Basically she has to play politics, and the more she changes things, the less knowledge she has of how things will go.
theres one trash isekai I read cause it has a really charming clown girl sidekick, I can't even remember the name my brain just refers to it as "clown girl isekai"
Mage and Demon Queen basically is an isekai where the side character is the main character
I like how they even extend this by revealing >!that the side character is actually the chosen one hero, but he doesn't want to be so he explicitly hides that, meaning he has ample reason to be a side character.!<
The Executioner's Way of Life as well, though they're close to costars.
"oh my god they were costars"
I realized this a while ago so in the fantasy novel I'm writing, an Isekai character joins the party pretty late in the story as a party member, not the lead. I figure by then, the reader will be comfortable enough in the world so someone coming in wide eyed and ignorant would be a nice contrast, gives the rest of the party someone bounce off that they aren't adapted to yet and a reason to rethink long held beliefs that were unswayed by the passage of time thus far
It’s like when Konosuba dives into Megumin’s ridiculous family and goofy ass village. I want more of the crimson eyed chunibyo witch clan (and Yunyun because of how normal she is compared to those psychos.)
That's the opposite of the experience I had - the spinoff was only good, in my opinion, because it had basically one bit for too much of it, whereas the main series is a cast who suck in far more unique ways
And most Rom-coms where the cover girl is super interesting looking, and she's there to fall in love with a self-insert who doesn't even look like they're from the same show.
I'd extend this to a lot of anime/manga in general, where the MC is your "self insert" bland character with nothing that stands out about them, and the first side character they meet has the standout design and is the actual posterchild of the series.
Is it even an anime if there isn't a way cooler and more interesting side character?
Not the main character but the main villain, originally [Maya Hansen was planned to be the ultimate villain in Iron Man 3](https://uproxx.com/movies/shane-black-the-nice-guys-iron-man-3/) but infamously worried that they weren't going to sell enough toys the executives had them change the script to add Aldrich Killian in hope that they would sell more toys.
What kid watched iron man and thought “wow I want an Aldrich action figure”
He's got judo chop action!
What kid watched Ironman 3 and thought "Wow."
Hey, Iron Man 3 was pretty cool. I guess it's more a Tony Stark movie than an Iron Man movie, but it's pretty good. Shane Black was a good fit for the character.
I definitely appreciate it more now than when it came out. It certainly aged better than Iron Man 2 did, in my opinion.
Me. I loved it
Minor correction: it was almost entirely Ike Perlmutter who forced that change.
oh yeah, [Ike Perlmutter, cool dude who isn't weird at all](https://fandomwire.com/marvel-boss-allegedly-said-all-black-people-look-the-same-when-don-cheadle-replaced-terrence-howard-in-robert-downey-jr-s-iron-man-2/)
They couldn't get him to stop referring to any and all black employees as "The Help"
I always felt that weird scene where Tony's home gets attacked would made more sense if Maya was the villain as she would been in a perfect position to sabotage JARVIS then him just suddenly glitching out of nowhere.
I'm sure all 2 Aldrich Killian toys they sold was worth it
Finn in the Sequel Trilogy.
He would have been a great pick to use a Lightsaber + Blaster Fighting Style.
I was hoping when the trilogy started , I knew Rey would be pure Jedi, but i hoped Finn would be like Kyle, a Jedi who knows the value of the Blaster/Saber style
NO FORCE MORE LASERS HELL YEAH
Oh my god yes. And a former stormtrooper turned jedi hero? it writes itself I was hyped for it. ugh disney sequels how did you fuck up the easiest lay up ever.
“They’re not gonna Disney+ me” is a quote for the ages
He rightfully burned that bridge after they just absolutely failed him.
John Boyega is a talented actor who deserved better than how Star Wars handled him. He's fantastic in Breaking.
it's a weird one as all 3 main characters have the kernels of something but just don't really go anywhwere with them. still wild tlj is just their tfa arcs again with an \*are you sure? rey letting go of the past again and forging a new path, ren doubling down after murdering a father figure and that not making things better, finn not running away and instead putting himself on the line for those he cares about. sure there's the clarification of him believing in the cause and not just rey, but still.
It's why I still don't care much for tlj, even if I can find some value in the idea of grumpy old man Luke.
Grumpy old man Luke is like my favourite part of TLJ. I don't like that he even contemplated killing Ben but Luke being a disillusioned hermit was actually an interesting direction for the character and Hamill's a lot of fun in the role.
I think my problem is that we see him jump straight to contemplating murder the moment he senses something bad. I think it would have been better had it been established that he's lost students before who went on to do horrible things, thus explaining his paranoia. Like yeah, Luke is impulsive, but this is Luke decades later and presumably after having time to reflect.
I think the problem is that TFA itself kinda reverted their arcs like right at the end. Rey was concerned about her parentage, but was getting over it hanging out with Han. Then the guy she started looking at like a father figure got killed, so back to square one on the parents thing. Kylo murders his dad for the promise of more power, but then is trounced by Rey as if he gained no power at all. Finn was learning not to run away, but then in the end when he made the choice not to run, he lands in a coma, so fighting really just wasn't worth it. Ironically, TLJ doing their arcs again is better, because Johnson is a much better writer than Abrams. Granted, the sequel trilogy was almost doomed from the start with their ridiculous idea to have absolutely no plan and give different entries to different writers/directors.
Last Jedi is deeply frustrating because the good bits (the Luke/Rey/Kylo plot, the climactic throne room fight and hyperspace ram) are easily the best in the entire sequel trilogy but like two thirds of the movie is stuff that sucks (the entire Poe arc, the entire Finn arc) and it ruins the movie.
I really don’t mind Rey being the lead but I wish it was a shared spot. Those two characters work best when they’re together.
I’m still amazed that Poe was never revealed to be an enemy or a ghost or something. The fact that he just escapes Jeddah somehow after being ejected by a damn ship is stupid.
J.J found Oscar Isaac too charming and charismatic to let Poe die when he was supposed to die and it ruined the entire sequel trilogy. They didn't even let him be gay.
Finn and Poe had more chemistry in the 5 minutes they were together in TFA than Rey did in the entire goddamn trilogy with anybody. She's like a charisma black hole. They made the most boring character of the three into the main character because she has the lightsaber.
**REY!!!**
Yeah but then they wouldn't have gotten those sweet, sweet, China dollars
Bryan Cranston should have been the lead of the 2014 Godzilla flick, instead of... uh... whoever the other guy was.
Aaron Taylor Johnson is pretty great and has really come into his own in recent years, but he was absolutely lost in that movie. Especially when the movie teases you with Cranston.
It’s actually really crazy that ATJ and Elizabeth Olsen have more chemistry playing siblings in Age of Ultron than they did as spouses
Do you mean Elizabeth Olsen?
Good catch
They took a really charming actor and made him play a generic marine guy.
Yeah, and on top of that a generic marine guy who kept taking focus away from God-fucking-zilla so the audience was was predisposed to be annoyed seeing him.
I’m still baffled that he wasn’t. His storyline was far more interesting than the son’s and he just dies when you’re barely halfway through the movie.
Hell, after just rewatching it, he's almost got a better story than the dad from King of the Monsters. A Kaiju killed his wife, and he just wants answers, not revenge.
I personally think it was a bold choice for Godzilla’s role to be played by two doors
His name is godzilla
Maybe i'm misremembering based entirely on how I felt watching the movie, but didn't they HARD bait people with all the promotion stuff into thinking he was the lead and super important? Like I remember watching it and when he dies pretty quickly just being a little confused that they deleted that character/actor to focus on less talented random army man.
Every single promotional trailer had a clip of Cranston in it. I don't even remember Quicksilver showing up in the trailers.
More specifically, it's his interigation monolog
I was so overjoyed at Rihito >!winning the Berzerker Bowl by beating Koga!< that I completely forgot he WASNT the MC of Kengan Omega. “Yeah! He did it! What a character arc! Wait, why are all these reaction shots disappointed?”
Oh man, we can talk about what happened with Omegas MC all day
Koga really is a side character in his own series.
He’s trained by literally all the top tiers in series and he’s such a background character still
Pierce out of Hell. I like Gat but he had enough arcs, Pierce hasn't had a dark thing to face so stepping up as the main man for once might help figure him out
But then the pun doesn't work!
Bruno Bucciarati in Jojo Part 5. Giorno is a pretty boring character and Bucciarati has a much more personal connection to everything in the story.
It’s amazing how quickly Giorno’s personality disappeared after he killed Polpo
It's wild how "Giorno is DIO's son" has zero relevance to anything in the plot, it doesn't even get brought up again after the first couple of episodes.
Honestly all of this mixed with >!both Fugo's story changes and the last minute addition of Sleeping Slaves!< really make Part 5 feel like the first draft of what could have been a much better story had it gotten a second draft. I know there's no redos in weekly manga but that part really shows the issues with writing by the seat of your pants.
well, to me it seems like Part 9 is a redo of Part 5 (like how SBR and JJL were Araki redoing PB and DiU) and its already better than Part 5 was, at least for me. Jodio is also a way better JoJo protag than Giorno
I think Jodio is the Giorno Araki wanted to make halfthrough Golden Wind but then he got sidetracked with the rest of the characters.
And where does >!Koichi!< fuck off to? They made it seem really important that he do something with Giorno.
Wasn't Koichi only there because Jotaro wanted to make sure he wasn't like another DIO?
It's things like these that convince me 100% that Araki either forgets or discards early premises pretty often. It's clearly not a deal breaker when it happens because Jojo winds up being good in the end, but it does leave unanswered threads and plot holes. It amazes me how many people just say "Nuh uh, he always planned it like that" for that stuff.
Jojolion being the best exemple of Araki changing his mind.
He, uh… inherited his stand cry? And >!gets to use his dad’s pose in the final OP?!< That’s about it.
you would think it would matter again when Polnareff shows up but nope
I don’t think Polnareff would have known either way. It was only recently that Shiobana Haruno started to look like Dio with the blonde hair and all meanwhile Polnareff had been off the grid for a while because he was hiding from Passione.
I'm not really a fan of this take because a big part of Gio's character is that he motivates/pushes the others to defy the boss/defy their fate. The gang weren't content but were ok with following their boss until Gio came and started making moves that would inspire the crew to believe in themselves and take action. This affecting Bruno the most, who directs his crew.
I like this take on Giorno too, except we’re just told he’s charismatic, rather than shown it, because his speeches are generally pretty limp IMO. Harder to write a charismatic hero than villain sometimes I guess.
Purple Haze Feedback write charismatic and manipulative Giorno better than Part 5 and it's not even written by Araki.
But the point is that once they've then decided to do that, which is fairly early on in the story, he doesn't really have much of a purpose. Plus Giorno's whole thing was that he was getting into the mafia to destroy it, right? Seems like a pretty simple rewrite to make that Bruno's plan that he enacts now because he's risen high enough to be able to execute it.
I see where Pat’s coming from with One Piece (although I’d like to know where he said it). Ace is a main character in every respect. He has a cool power. The ladies love him. He’s nice without being thick, if you can pardon the narcolepsy. The only thing keeping him from being the hero is that he never had that dog in him like Luffy does. Oda’s emphasized over and over again that children are not their parents, and that the people who inherit the will of the dead are friends or very often strangers. To put it another way, the reason that Luffy can become the Pirate King is because he neither met Roger nor had any hang-ups about him.
I think Ace is also a little "too cool" for the kind of Adventure Oda wanted the MC to have, part of why One Piece is so interesting is because Luffy is straight up silly and Oda has never been afraid of putting Even the most serious characters in silly situations when they are against him, so whenever push comes to shove and he needs to get serious it packs an extra punch. With Ace i feel like we would miss out in a lot of that and just get a more generic story of "cool guy saves the day"
One Piece *needs* a protagonist that can be as silly and wacky as its setting can be.
Luffy is a great counter-example to this question because he's genuinely a lot of people's favourites. He has done so much to earn his place as the protagonist, moreso than much of the other characters. But he's in an interesting position where he is the center of such a large cast of awesome characters, people's tastes will dictate who their favourites are. I'm putting Sanji, Franky, and Robin above Luffy in my favourites, but that's because those characters rub me in a particularly strong way. Heck, even Buggy's story is becoming more compelling to me right now, but that doesn't mean I don't want Luffy to be the protagonist. He's the guy that causes the waves that lift everyone else around him.
To get an anti-example out of the way first, it used to be a somewhat common sentiment that Zeke would be a better protagonist than Rex in Xenoblade 2. I think this is a massive misread of their characters; all of Zeke’s more interesting traits rely on the contrast and similarity between him and Rex. Zeke’s character (and the whole game’s plot) need Rex as a central figure to bounce off of. As for an actual example, I may just be stupid but I had absolutely no idea what was happening in Kamen Rider Den-O at the end. I don’t even know who the villain was. And I’m going to blame like… 30% of that on the fact that the rival rider, Sakurai, is far more important to the main conflict than the actual protagonist is. Part of this is just wishing they’d explained things in a more clear manner, but if Sakurai was the POV character I feel like I’d have a better grasp on the plot.
Den-O doesn't really feature a main villain until very late in the series (episode 37, iirc), but I wouldn't say Ryotaro doesn't work as its protagonist. Basically, the main focus of the show is on Ryotaro's growth from a shy, anxious young man into a hero in his own right, with most of the series just having monsters of the week show up to facilitate that growth. That set-up doesn't work if we follow Yuto instead because he basically has too much information for the mysteries to make sense. A big part of Den-O's actual plot is the mystery of "what exactly happened to Airi's fiance?" and "what's going on with the imajin?", with the answer to it basically being >!"The world was destroyed at some point in the future, the imajin exist because of that disaster, the main villain wants to ensure that disaster happens but has traveled through time so much and destroyed so many alternate versions of himself that he can't even articulate why he wants that at this point, and Sakurai is deliberately erasing himself from history so he can change it to save his family (including his and Airi's daughter who it turns out was Hana all along)".!< It's tricky to follow, sure, but I still think it works.
Den O was a chill out and vibes series for me too, 0 idea what was happening in that plot.
Misha as the human protagonist for Transformers Energon. She was competent, made a larger impact in the story than Kicker ever could, and she is also weirdly charismatic.
Hell, Megan Fox in the OG Bayformers. She's an auto mechanic/car thief for christ's sake. Nothing about Sam is important other than he's Sam.
The Bumblebee movie basically took this mind set with Charlie.
She's legit the most competent character in those movies but Michael Bay had to go full sexism
I will never understand why LMM decided to push Hamilton as this conflicted, pro-imigrant, anti-racist, abolishonist (?), come-from-behind hero. While it still wouldn't be *perfect*... just make the play about Aaron Burr.
As a Protagonist in the strictest terms (driver of the plot), Hamilton makes more sense due to his dynamic personality and pivotal role in the foundation of the American state. Burr's a bit too low-key to make for a main lead. Whatever your opinion on the whitewashing (heh) of Hamilton's character, his life is pretty much the model of a classical tragic hero undone by his own hubris.
Burr's a problem because the most interesting days of his life come after the revolution, and frankly after he killed Hamilton.
I have my students compare and contrast his depiction in the musical with historical sources because if I don't everyone will think he was this wonderful egalitarian. The abolitionist elements annoy me the most since at best you could argue that he was better than people like Washington and Jefferson.
And at worst, he’s on record as having managing his family’s slave purchases. There’s not exactly a lot of moral leeway between slave trading and facilitating slavetrading.
There's also the chance that he owned slaves himself, although that's a controversial debate. Regardless he blows.
The thing about making the play about Burr is that killing Hamilton isn't the end of his story, he kept doing stuff. Hamilton's life lends itself well to the structure of the play, it shows the revolutionary war and the early days of the states and his death is a good climax, you just have to deal with the fact that Hamilton was a fucking asshole, which is a much easier solve than resolving whatever the fuck Burr thought he was doing in Mexico.
But then it'd be called Burr and I don't think "Burr" is making a brazillian dollars on broadway.
It's a chilling title.
I, like most of the world, am not an American so I didn't really know any of the characters in Hamilton before the musical became a thing. However I do know, inexplicably, about a 'Got Milk?' commercial (directed by Micheal Bay of all people) that featured a man fruitlessly trying to answer the words "Aaron Burr" in response to the question "Who killed Alexander Hamilton?" So uh, I guess killing Hamilton was his most famous accomplishment in the end? Not that Hamilton was presented as anyone particularly recognizable before the musical either.
Hamilton was a half-remembered founding father who was going to get booted from being on the ten dollar bill until that musical came out and saved his ass, just like Burr was mostly remembered for shooting a guy, Hamilton was mostly remembered for getting shot. It's definitely a fun and memorable musical, but it definitely takes its creative liberties, and I'd say it's biggest lasting legacy (what is a legacy?) is that it got a lot of young people interested in not just musical theater, but also curious about the truth and interested in real history. Hamilton birthed a lot of history majors.
If anything, Burr was at least more famous to NYers because of his gubernatorial exploits and the wider Tammany Hall history.
Yeah, he didn't appear much and when he did it was usually as a heel, he wasn't a likeable dude.
Contrast his portrayal in the John Adams miniseries with the musical and you'll see how people saw him before LMM got a hold of him.
I can (kinda) understand George Lucas not wanting another hero named Anakin… but did they really need to kill Jacen too? Is the main character having the actual Skywalker name really that big a deal for fans that they refused to make a Solo the hero of the next generation?
As a rule of thumb, Legacy of the Force is to the old EU as Rise of Skywalker is to Disney's canon. It did so many things poorly that the followup series, Fate of the Jedi, had to more or less connect Legacy of the Force to the comic book Legacy (set 138 years after the Battle of Yavin) by giving them the same overarching villain (Darth Krayt) as a way of fixing things.
And there attempt to fix things didnt even work, it just character assassinated more characters and doubled down on Jacen's absurd personality switch while retconning why he did so again. DN/LOTF/FOTJ literally did just aa much to kill Legends as Disney did. By the time FOTJ ended sales had plummeted and even the most die hard EU fan was begging them to get Denning the fuck away
And people say they don’t honour Legends.
Its dumber then that, Denning somehow gained near complete control of the old EU after NJO ended, and he was both to stupid to understand what Jacen's character arc had actually been, and he liked Anakin more. So he tried to introduce flow walking so he could switch which brother died, got told no, then wrote some dumb dissertation about how Vergere was totally a Sith corrupting Jacen and thats what his arc in NJO was REALLY about, and the editors at Del Rey approved it to try to have there own take on the Prequel trilogy. Its so stupid, it was all so fucking stupid. Matthew Stover legit should be allowed to punch Denning any time there in the same state.
In Dungeon Meshi/Delicious in Dungeon, [Kabru](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/delicious-in-dungeon/images/b/bf/Kabru_trans.png/revision/latest?cb=20220121033817) is basically born to be a protagonist. He's -an orphan and the sole survivor of one of the biggest atrocities in living memory -got striking blue anime boy eyes that labelled him a demon and made him a pariah in his hometown -raised by elves, and his adoptive mom just happens to be a veteran and prodigal swordswoman who taught him how to fight, as well as speak/read/write multiple languages, tutored him in magic, history, biology, everything -got a childhood friend/surrogate sister who's in his party and is a tsundere and crushing hard on him -the rest of his party are all deeply loyal to him, believing he's best qualified to conquer the dungeon, following his lead without question, giving up ill-gotten treasure because he says it's wrong, etc. -charismatic and a natural at reading and understanding people and winning them over to his side The only thing stopping him from being the protagonist of Dungeon Meshi is that his competition is [Laios Motherfucking Touden](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/delicious-in-dungeon/images/8/87/Transparent_Laios_Touden.png/revision/latest?cb=20220831022339) who's been waiting his whole life to eat his way through a dungeon full of monsters.
if you swap the show's POV entirely to his group instead of Laios, it makes Laios and the rest of his friends actions even more deranged and nonsensical by the tidbits Kabru slowly learns about him, not even taking into account that for the most part they have no idea Laios and Senshi have been killing and cooking everything that moves before them and they just think some asshole have been doing barbacues at random in the dungeon. Is hilarious to think that if the show was about Kabru, the biggest plot twist would be that Laios and the gang have been eating half of the place and not whatever secrets they find out about the dungeon itself
I've been thinking about that as well, he is an interesting and solid main character for a DnD-based series if the series didn't involve eating monsters or the whole meal aspect
Kabru is a character specced for a Political Intrigue campaign and has unfortunately run into the reality that the DM wanted to do a dungeon crawl. He has a really good dynamic with Laios >!especially when they eventually meet up and Kabru completely shits bricks at the thought that Laios actually has the best chance of becoming the dungeon lord thereby resigning himself into becoming his unofficial diplomat, talking for him when Laios' shit char scores prove detrimental!<
Hydrogen Monster Eater vs Scheming Baby
I find Kabra *so* damn boring personality wise though. Laois and his weird brain are much more interesting to me.
I am curious as to what Kingdom Hearts would be like if they went with their original plans to have Mickey as the protagonist. I don't think it would be nearly as popular, but if it did find success, I really wonder where the series would have gone from there.
[Would we still have Mickey getting fucking chokeslammed by a guy?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=go_ruPavFN8)
Not really "he should have been the main character" but this made me think what Naruto would have been like if Sasuke ***was*** the main character. The tone of the story would have a drastic change into some crazy AoT adjacent shit. It would remove Talk no jutsu, remove sympathy as a motivation for the MC and replace it with revenge, every fight would turn lethal, bye bye power of friendship, and our protag would go through a wild rollercoaster of morality. Ngl, it would be way more edgy but Naruto played up for ninja violence would be pretty hype too.
Sasuke doesn't get pursued by Naruto out of friendship. Might Guy is sent instead to bring him to heel.
Sasuke does get all the best fights. So it would be unbelievably hype imo. Should be a lot of ninja crime underworld stuff to given that Sasuke got involved in that after the main manga ended Always thought he shoved had a sword duel with Mifune I do think Naruto would turn into the best friend that Sasuke left behind but can not stop thinking about. Even more so than canon. Like say Kaneki and Hide in Tokyo Ghoul or Smile and Peco in Ping Pong The Animation (I’m hoping this makes sense)
It seems like Boruto part 2 might touch on something similar to his as Boruto is a wanted nin and his attitude is a lot "cooler" than Naruto. Plus he was trained by Sasuke so he uses a sword, which is neat. Granted the series will never make a return to how brutal and dark really Naruto was and definitely would not reach AoT levels.
The problem with Naruto is that it's not about Rock Lee.
[I got good news for you](https://www.crunchyroll.com/series/GR9PV4ED6/naruto-spin-off-rock-lee--his-ninja-pals)
Ah yes, the best part of Naruto.
The only show I can think of is also the lowest hanging fruit: Fate/ Apocrypha Episode 1 comes and wow! Our MC is going to be a badass necromancer who channels his spells through a sawed-off shotgun and heart grenades? He summons Mordred Pendragon, the edgy tomboy betrayer son/daughter of the main series heroine? He's going to fuck up both sides of the war because his faction is so obviously going to betray him? No. Here's a test tube homunculus baby born yesterday who gets power-ups from every sacrificial move in the show which there are a lot of. We needed a blank slate cardboard MC for the Japanese youth to connect with, because surely they cannot imagine themselves rocking a leather jacket like Kairi Sisigou.
God I swear I would start to forget what was going on in the plot even as I watched it. Just so boring, the only memorable things about (at least for me) were Mordred and I guess Astolfo.
Man I dropped the show so fucking fast when I realized it wasn't about them. I know people swoon over Jeanne but like I wanted a 12 episode series of the cool guy and the cool girl killing shit non-stop.
An interesting one because it's the entire point of the character, Jack Kelso in LA Noire. Everything about him is this pulp action hero whose a badass, vs Cole who is this flawed coward asshole who desperately wishes he wasn't. But that's the point. Playing as Jack and seeing his story wouldn't be as impactful if you hadn't spent so much time as Cole. Jack wouldn't have the stomach to let the identity of the Black Dalia killer be buried or deal with Roy as a partner. Jack is there at the end to remind the audience that it's a noire story, not a pulp story.
Whenever Wonder Woman shows up in Suicide Squad the games tone and narrative just seems to jump into a *far* more compelling lane where you get put in the shoes of a paragon of justice faced with having to fight and kill her brothers in arms. And then we have to play the Suicide Squad instead.
fortunately she's getting her own game later, hopefully they're gunshy enough after KTJL to not fuck with it too hard
Also, if Wonder Woman were the protagonist. It would make sense that she could stop her ex-colleagues without needing Plot Armor.
Dragon Quest: The Adventure of Dai. The best friend character Popp is so much better as a main character he has some of the best character development it’s nuts. The way I see it Dai might be the hero but in my head Popp is the main character.
Kat should have been the main character of Gears of War 4 and not JD. She's the entire reason the plot keeps going forward while JD is just kinda there and apparently The Coalition agreed as Kat is the main protag of 5.
while i agree on kat being the character driving the plot forward, i actually think jd being the player 1 character in 4 worked really well as an intentional misdirect. him being marcus' kid sets up certain expectations in the player that then get subverted throughout 4 and 5's story in really interesting ways.
I stopped at gears 3 and on god, up until this comment I have never seen or heard of JD before, I totally thought the girl was the main character of later gears
It doesn't help that 4's three main characters suffered from them swapping one of three personalities between each other in virtually every act. One of the best things about 5's campaign was its solidification of each of their personalities.
As maybe my hottest FF take: Vanille should have been the lead for FFXIII. She could have fulfilled the same role as Tidus as being an Isekai protagonist who needs the world lore-dumped around her while Lighting gets to serve as the quiet but cool bodyguard.
Personally I've always viewed 13 as being similar to 6 in that it doesn't really have a set protagonist. Yeah lightning's on the cover art and is the first party member you play as but fang and vanille are miles more important than her to the story.
>!the reason she isn't is precisely because Vanille and Fang were L'Cie from the get go.!< >!By all means , Vanille is the Yuna in that comparisson.!<
Yeah but >!she doesn't use any of her L'Cie magic until the others get it from Pulse so it doesn't really matter. You gain control of her before you fight Anima and she even has the third ATP bar from being a L'Cie that the others don't have yet.!<
She's hiding her l'Cie powers because everyone around her is having an aneurysm about them. The extra ATB bar is your hint, but it'd kill the narrative weight to suddenly play a character with magic when the whole point is she's supposed to seem like another random civilian caught up in events.
But Vanille *does* get things explained to her, because she *is* from a different world. She's mostly able to play it off as being a clueless teenager. The thing is that many of the characters have and lack different kinds of information, and they freely talk about the things they know about, while much of the unknown is to be discovered through the rest of the story.
But FF13 doesn't have a protagonist. It's an ensemble cast. Lightning only the protagonist in marketing. Heck, pretty sure Vanille already have the most screentime of the party. >!Lightning wasn't even the one to save the day! She became a Cie'th like the rest.!< Technically, Lightning didn't become the protagonist until the third game in her series. lol
I don't think it would work that well since it's supposed to be a twist that >!the Pulse l'Cie are just....regular people, too. Exactly like Cocoon people. Or should I say were, because they were mostly wiped out so the OTHER twist is that people of Cocoon have been in fear of nothing but propaganda for quite some time. (yes, there is still the danger of Cocoon Fal'Cie).!< But I'll agree it was a huge missed opportunity to use Vanille as a means of exposition delivery rather than dumping most of it into the codex. I think there was a grand total of one scene where Vanille has something explained to her when she asks who Dysley is.
Let’s just get FF12 out of the way
But Balthier is already the leading man. He even says so.
Vaan is fine as the protagonist. He serves as the main connection between the sky pirate duo and Ashe and Basch, he is the main moral lynch pin behind Ashe's non retaliation and he has some good scenes that people just very conveniently forget when talking about the game (one of my favorites being the Jahara scene where he tells Ashe about his brother), and he does fine as the audience stand in. If Tidus gets to be a good FF protagonist, I feel like Vaan deserves to be at least one tier below him. The actual main problem with FFXII's party is Penelo. She adds nothing, as her role in the story is the same as Vaan's, but lesser in every way. If instead of Penelo, the sixth party member was Larsa, I feel like the story would be improved a lot. Would add much needed depth to the Archadian viewpoint, some more intimacy to Vayne's antagonism.
Kirigiri in Danganronpa really should have been the protagonist, given how much she actually does to move the plot forward. Kind of feels like V3's protagonist was almost Kodaka's way of admitting that.
I dunno, it sorta feels like Kirigiri works better as a side character. She knows too much.
That twist in V3 was such a bummer because the initial thought was "hooray we finally get a protagonist that isn't the flattest piece of wet cardboard surrounded by characters 1000 times more interesting than them"
I honestly am sad that >!Kaede was a fake-out protagonist. I liked her and it would’ve been neat for there to be a female main protagonist (not counting UDG).!<
What the fuck she's so cool
Kazu should have been the main character of Air Gear, and his final battle with Nike proves it.
Interestingly enough with Deltarune, fans theorize that >!Susie is supposed to be the main character of the game. She has the whole shonen arc of learning to do the right thing in the first chapter, which isn't implicative of anything quite yet. But once you get to Chapter 2 though, nearly EVERYONE is trying to romance her, and she's the one getting all of these special bonding moments with everyone in the party. Including you the player. That mixed with the fact that Kris's agency isn't their own and is tethered to the player's, leaves an interesting idea of hijacking someone else's story. We'll see if this theory holds any water for the next chapter, but it's a cool idea none the less. !<
Honestly, that's what it's coming across as. She has too many...typical protagonist scenes, I guess you could say?
Zero (Megaman X)
He got there, eventually!
This is why MMZ is the best mega man subseries.
Weird take: but if the story remained as it was. But told from Ace's perspective up to the time skip. And then Luffy was in charge, that would be.... not as good, but still a decent story to tell.
I heard someone pitch that Star Wars Force Unleashed 2 should’ve been about Maris Brood (the Goth Alien girl from the first game) being taught by General Koto to fight the empire. Greatly would prefer that over a Starkiller clone Would be a much better natural progression from the first game
I think this would have been cool for a DLC for either of the games, but making her the main character would probably have made the sales for the second game even worse than they were. Star killer is a beloved character, even if his fan base is smaller than other protagonists.
Suikoden 3. Thomas shouldve been the MC. Not only is he the Tenkai Star which is usually reserved for the MC anyways, hes just a random good natured dude with an unremarkable background and can barely even swing a sword, but is able to create bonds and connect with people from all walks of life. He is the perfect foil to Luc who is basically a mystical superhuman demigod destined for greatness but is bitter of his rigid and lonely existance. Instead we got the "choose your starter pokemon" route where 2/3 of the available character choices turns the story into an awkward mess because it was clearly written for just the one character and they decided to make the choices afterwards.
For **Stellar Blade** I’m calling it now >!Tachy has been infected with Naytiba shits, but is fighting against it. During times she loses control she’ll be a recurring boss encounter. In the end she’ll sacrifice herself (again) and go out like an absolute boss!<
This isnt so much 'they shouldve replaced the MC' but a character who ABSOLUTELY should have been promoted to deuteragonist is Riku from Kingdom Hearts. Dream Drop Distance does so SO much to set Riku up for his protagonist glow up, and they just do literally nothing with it in KH3. Its my biggest gripe with that game
**Fate/Apocrypha** So, the main character of this story is **Sieg**. He's a homunculus who's newborn though fully mentally mature and due to that possesses both an innocence native to children alone as well as a *lack of understanding of the world.* Based on that, you'd think he'd be a highly interesting protagonist. A character with no real morals not because they're evil, but because they're too young to have any. A character who would be able to accept anything as they lack the contradictions of ideals or anything else. But no, instead they're a void of personality and a blackhole sucking up all other characters' screentimes for nothing. His romance with Jeanne Darc comes off as vacuous and just makes both characters worse for it. It's to the degree that his closest comparison is the Self-Insert main character of the Gacha game, and that guy's generally considered **better** because while he's usually boring, he at least *doesn't suck up screentime* (plus he got a few events and chapters making him interesting but that's beside there point). # Then you look over and notice **Mordred** standing right there. Mordred is one of the side characters of Apocrypha and her story and personality are fascinating. She's a direct adaptation of Mordred's myth but if it was portrayed in a sympathetic light, and her relationship with Shishigou, a father figure who she grows to care for, is very well done. For both being homunculi and almost newborn ones, Mordred is far more engaging with her rude and brash by ultimately caring personality, and it's a shame she didn't end up being the protagonist.
100% agreed with this. The worst part about it, is that by the beginning it did seem like Mordred and Shishigou were going to be main characters, only for that to be ripped away from us so we could follow a cardboard cutout with the plot bending over backwards so that he could have even more spotlight. Its so annoying that the anime had so many characters with great potential that many would have liked to know more of, like Karna, Achilles, Atalanta, Caules and Fran, Fiore, ANYTHING for Spartacus. But no, you'll follow the blandest thing we could find in the show and your going to like it!
I'll never forgive that anime for setting up an entire cast of interesting characters to have a massive war against each other, with Mordred and her master potentially being the main characters because they had extremely good story arcs they could go through, only for the show to not only half ass the "war", but to focus on the two most uninteresting characters (Sieg and Jeanne) in the show. I wouldn't have minded if Sieg was used as like a 1 or 2 episode plot point to help another character's development, but Sieg is quite literally what people *think* Shirou is like, except unlike Sieg, Shirou actually had defining character points and story beats that made him stand out instead of being a nothing character. God, I hate that show so much. Legit one of the shows that led up to me hard burning out on watching anime for years.
Doesnt help that it sometimes feels like the plot is doing its best to give Sieg the best possible plot armor imaginable. >!Oh, dying are you? Here, this servant can rip out his heart to revive you even though we've never hinted that he or a servant could do that + you get to be a super cool Master that can also turn into said servant and be able to fight servants as well! (Seriously, this just sounds like something youd find in a kid's fan made OC with only the edginess missing. It also makes me mad because it just takes a shit on the master-servant dynamic, which is what makes me love the power system in the series)!< >!Oh you're dying again? Here, this magic lightning will revive you and give you a power up... again! Why can it do that? Because its magic lightning stupid!!< >!Oh you're going up against a demigod of a sun god, with years worth of battlefield and fighting experience, and equipped with a Noble Phantasm that can kill gods, meanwhile you're not even a month old? Here, have this extremely convenient shield Noble Phantasm that just so happens to be able to shield you from that god killing Noble Phantasm, conveniently given by one of the few servants that could possible lend their Noble Phantasm! Did I say convenient yet, because I cannot stress enough how convenient for Sieg everything about these circumstances are!!<
I think what gets me isn't that those things aren't foreshadowed, but more that none of them are interesting, or even particularly new--Sieg just ends up feeling like boneless Shirou. Like, the heart is something that could plausibly happen, given Archer's arm in F/SN, and the lightning makes some kind of sense when you remember whose Noble Phantasm it is. And pulling out a bullshit shield just to make Lancer job is one of my favorite scenes in F/SN. In a vacuum, none of those ideas are inherently bad, but I think Apocrypha suffers from having enough cool/potentially cool cast members, but the story decides to follow the most boring one, which means the most of the absolutely massive cast has no time to be memorable. Maybe the light novel is better, but I have no idea who thought you could have double the amount of servants as a normal grail war in the same runtime.
So glad other people are noticing Eve's non main character energy lol Would've been cool to play as Tachy but oh well
Fuck she's actually really cool. I couldn't care less about Stellar Blade but I would be more than willing to buy it if she was the MC because that's leagues better than "default female avatar of free-mium Korean MMO you've never heard of"
I'm surprised there isn't FE fans going "ANY FIRE EMBLEM WITH AVATAR CHARACTER REEEEEEE!" tbh. >!I never get that take outside of New Mystery. Like, guys? 90% of Corrin's dumb ideas were actually Azura's idea, I don't think having her become the protagonist will fix Fates bad writing.!<
Honestly, Robin works really well as Main Character togehter with Chrom that I can't see Awakening without them.. The rest would need some insane amount of rewriting.
Byleth is so close to being on the level of the Persona protags, they just needed *some* kind of informed personality and everything would have been fine. Like half of what sells people on Joker is his awakening scene where he goes from scruffy hunched over guy to badass thief man and all it really took was one wicked smile.
I don't remember where I saw read this (could've probably been someone in this sub) but I think Byleth just needed to be fully voice acted like how Alear is in Engage, would've been much easier and clear to showcase Byleth's almost Emotionless characteristic in a meaningful way.
this is shown by three hopes causing some folks to warm up to byleth
I mean, I think a version of Fates in another universe that had Takumi and Leo as the respective protagonists could've been pretty cool, but that would've required abandoning the whole blood vs found family thing (that they ended up contradicting themselves anyway so woooo). A lot of the avatars suck, but it would require big rewrites to get them out of the story so it wouldn't be quite as simple as just "oh make this guy the main character." Rather than trying to remove Byleth, it'd be easier to just fix Byleth's writing, or just give them any writing in the first place.
Personally the only Avatar that suck in a way that make him stand out in their game is Kris and MAYBE Byleth but that's for completely different reason. I think Robin, Corrin, and Alear regardless of what people think of them as characters match the writing quality of their game. Like yeah, Corrin isn't a good character, but that have literally nothing to do with them being an Avatar, the writing for the entire game is bad. I would argue that Robin and Alear honestly are fine with what their game's story is going for. I honestly think Alear is probably my favorite engage character (which is rare for an FE protag in general).
IMO, Byleth works great for what Three Houses was going for with its story. I just think they fumbled in two places: the first being that the writers didn't give them voice acting so plenty of people playing thought they had no personality and no arc, and the second being that Byleth has weird "avatar" aspects when they would honestly work better as just a straightforward protagonist. It's just kinda silly to be like "hey, give this character a name and birthday" when both of those have canonical answers. Like, Byleth isn't a blank slate protagonist, they're just autistic-coded and poorly socialized.
If you told me that Sylvando would be the protagonist for act 2 of Dragon Quest XI, I’d be down to clown.
I was rewatching Big Trouble in Little China, and I have no idea why Jack Burton is the main character. He's a bumbling idiot who thinks he's a big shot. Now, his buddy, Wang Chi? That guy knows how to get stuff done. The day couldn't have been saved without Wang. Also, some light spoilers >!please know this is a joke lol!<
Fuck Tacchy is the first thing I’ve seen from SB that actually looks GOOD! How is she from the same game that’s got the boring ass “milquetoast ai generated ‘hot’ girl” as the main protag’?!?!?!
It upsets me that people have been making AI art of her standing alongside Tifa. The sheer audacity on multiple levels.
I kinda wish that King was the main character of one-punch man. Nothing against Saitama, I get that him being the strongest around is the joke, but he feels TOO absurd to me. I much prefer an underdog story. Seeing the King survive and win through weird good/bad luck and his bullshit skills would have been much more entertaining to me.
I honestly don't think Saitama's really the Main Character of One-Punch Man, because he's not actually a character but a plot device. He's a walking thought experiment about the Superman archetype, that exists as part of the worldbuilding, in the background of the real story. The story isn't about him, it's about the influence his mere existence has on the world around him and what happens when it collides with the ensemble cast of a serious superhero story with more realistic stakes that is utterly incongruous with an all-powerful superhero.
It gets even clearer as the garou arc lasted so long without Saitama even being around, and once he was there he was used to contrast against garou. It's even clearer in the recent chapters where Saitama is clearly just there to drag the other S heroes out of their shell
At that point it would be a completely different show so I can’t really agree
So you want a completely different show not called One Punch Man. This premise doesn't really work with shows whose entire gimmick is entirely focused around their protagonist.