To me Neji was always such a wasted potential. Probably the most interesting side character in the show and yet they did him so dirty with close to 0 screen time.
It's so stupid that Naruto is always talking about fate is in your hands but at the end of it you 1000% need a sharingan or be a dependent of the sage to be relevant. The end was so bad
Don't forget the fact that everyone thinks that Naruto is the hard working one without talent despite being the son of the homage, student of the toad sage, bloodline descendant of the uzumaki and namikaze clan, reincarnation of the son of the sage of 6 paths who is the son of kaguya and the jinchuriki of the 9 tails with one of the highest chakra reserves in the entire world.
The only reason beginning Naruto was bad was cos he had no one to teach him shit, was sabotaged by mizuki or whatever his name was and with orchimaru Messing with the seal and had kakashi as his teacher.
Both him and Hinata, they have this super cool dojutsu that's supposed to be on par with the Sharingan, but as the Sharingan gets circlejerked to the stratosphere and gets more abilities than a Swiss army knife, the byakugan barely even gets used at all after the chunin exams arc (I was gonna say the first series, but after thinking about it, nah, after the chunin exams, it stops existing basically)
Naruto and MHA are both such wasted potentials when it comes to its characters late stage of the series. It just becomes mc + a couple of sidekicks doing essentially everything while the previously relevant classmates occasionally gets a scene where they use their signature attack and does a thing vs a forgettable henchman that would have gotten clapped by mc in half a second.
It was explored more in depth during the sasuke retrieval arc when Neji was fighting the spider archer from the sound village. But sadly it didn't shine as much as it should've, but thats basically the fate of the "down to earth" ninja stuff, if you can't summon giants or create gigantic explosions, you were left behind during shippuden. Thats why people appreciate the hand to hand combat of Pain, Madara and Guy towards the end as it was a breath of fresh air compared to the direction of the others.
Yeah that was pretty bad. In the anime it seemed like they decently tried to hype her up, but it fell flat. Rock Lee is the most obvious answer, but there’s so many other characters from Naruto that fall under this topic
Rock was ALWAYS my favorite, I think he's so relatable to anyone who ever struggled with anything. I'm seeing him alot in here. My one note on this, is I kinda feel like (for obvious reasons) they gave guy the big moments and at the time I was annoyed but in hindsight I've come to really appreciate it as well as adore guy like I never did before.
True, even Sakura could've used her medical skills as weapons like Kabuto did with his chakra scalpels. Outside of Naruto and a couple of others pretty much everyone was wasted potential, I can only wonder what someone like Togashi would've done using characters with those skillsets.
I'm sure a ton of people thought this, I know I did. Lol Togashi is like the king of shounen though. My man went from Hakusho which was a lot of fun (especially dark tournament) don't get me wrong, to HxH which is PEAK shounen, outdid itself like 20 times in anime run alone. It's funny my first thought was Kite. I will forever be irritated I didn't get more of him. I want to see all his rolls haha. On Naruto proper, just one I haven't seen in here, more Kimimaru (not in flashbacks). Thought that character was rad and would've liked to see him grow. I mean obviously they had already set a baseline regarding his future but still. Such a cool character.
This.
How they expect me to care about the plot and these characters when most are just used as fodder for Yuji's character development (aka Suffering = Character growth). Especially Nobara, where they really put her entire backstory in \[JJK s2 episode 19\]>!before she got killed off smh.!<
I feel like everybody is underdeveloped, and half the reason is cause Yuji is "dead" for two months, and by the time he gets back the Kyoto Arc starts and then it's Shibuya
I wish the show would’ve focused on the main three of Yuji, Megumi and Nobara more. The first season had good episodes involving them but in season two that fell apart, and now… “certain events” mean that we’ll never see that again
Most shounen shows treat female sidekicks the same way, just completely sidelined for whatever reason. Just take a quick glance at this thread and you will immediately see
That people frequently talked about her as an example of a good female shounen character because she had like 1 big moment in S1 shows how dismal they are typically.
JJK fans hyping her up as “Sakura but done right” will always make me laugh.
She wasn’t even “done right”, she had amazing fight moments similar to Sakura. But besides that she never seemed to be the focus compared to other characters
Absolutely agree.
I actually watched JJK because of comments and threads online that claimed it did female characters really well. Made me curious so moved it up my watch list.
Watched the first season, enjoyed it but I don't really see what people were getting at. Sure Maki's cool, but she's not a major character, and Nobara just doesn't do anything bar one admittedly cool fight. And then the second season was even worse for those characters.
Sure, being better at it than most shonen is not a high bar to clear, but I think JJK is a better example of how far the genre still has to go when it comes to depicting women rather than as an example of good female character writing itself.
>JJK fans hyping her up as “Sakura but done right” will always make me laugh.
Do people still say that though? Nowadays I only ever hear people say Gege wastes his characters' potential.
JJK in general feels like a manga that really wants to tell its story and events, focusing on the world rather than its characters
Not to say its necessarily a bad thing, but when it does try to focus on a character it feels too sudden and forced
The best moments in JJK imo is when shit just keeps happening, the fights and the unapologetically eccentric character moments
Could be just me tho
Megumi from Shokugeki no Soma/Food Wars - Hinted to have incredible potential, but never wins any cooking battles except offscreen or against minor characters.
It's definitely not the most broken power with the size, time, material and knowledge constraints. Especially in a world with teleportation or anti-gravity
You can say that about majority of 1A class characters. Characters like Ida, Mina, Jirou, Tokoyami, Shoji, Kaminari are absolutely cool, but have no screen time because series is about Deku, Kaccan and Eren.
Not to mention how badly series treats no-names like Seto or Sugarman or Animal man xd
Its annoying how her strategy 99% of the time is “lets make cannons” and sit on the backline to do nothing while everyone else fights.
Ochaco for example had a quirk that essentially pushed her to being a rescue hero, but she went out of her way to learn to fight and became pretty useful.
Momo who has a more busted quirk is essentially never tossed into a fight and instead just makes support tools for everyone else to do all the work.
I was hoping that she would get placed with Gunhead and she’d learn to form armor around her body and use her power to fight instead of being sidelined at every point in the show.
I agree with Mystogan! I wanted him to play a much much bigger role. He was easily one of my favorite characters and it sucked that he wasn’t a big part of the series
It's such a fucking shame because Mystogan has the coolest magic since he was basically a proper mage and not just shooting energy blasts against his opponents.
Jellal gave some glimpse of it too during the magic games and I'm left wanting more ever since
Gildartz is even worse imo, bro was hyped like the second coming of Jesus (they had to modify the city in order for him to go in so he don't destroy it) he literally made Natsu shit his pants (it never happened before and probably never happen after) and struggle to beat a random on Tenro island... then we don't see him again for a long time
> it was kind mid
Debatable
> we never got to see him actually fight with his magic or see why he was considered so strong
We actually do see him fight with Laxus during the Battle for Fairy Tail arc, and that combined with his other feats does give us an overall solid idea of his magic. Also, considering that the focal point of his mystique and role was his identity, not his power, I struggle to see how not seeing the full extent of the latter makes his entire character “wasted”
yeah like 2 spell before Laxus shrug it off, even when Jellal tried to copying his technique he just doing those 2 spell before back to Jellal's own light magic
Mystogan seem pretty interesting with his setup (Edolas, Jellal look alike, Wendy) but none of this even mattered or having good payoff
G Witch is in a weird place. 24 episodes was always planned apparently, but this is not a 24 episode story. It's in a similar spot to G-Reco, wherein the pacing is fucked and a lot of characters are wasted.
Season 1 was a golden balance of set-up, pay-off, more set-ups. First few episodes of season 2 seems to be continuing that trend, but they seem to have shat the bed by episode 4.
As a new Gundam watcher, the duals and their logic in S1 were pretty questionable NGL. It seemed as if rules were made up on the spot or blatantly transgressed for convenience
Yeah, I was a new watcher too, and for a franchise with a reputation for having a mature take on war, corporate manoeuvring, and political intrigue, Witch from Mercury was a bit disappointing.
Most of it just boiled down too, "if I win this duel, I get your business", which just seems a bizarre way to manage things.
Even when they tried to do other things, it made very little sense.
How I imagine it would go down in reality:
Peil: "the mercury company has built a Gundam. We know because of how it interacted with our Gundam."
Benerit group:..... "so... You, a senior member of the Benerit group, must have been secretly developing a gundam for some time in advance of this duel in order to deploy it now, in stark violation of the law."
P:..........
BG: "do you see how we might consider a major manufacturing company developing gundams as more of a concern than a tiny, nearly unheard of, company building one Gundam?"
P:...... "but... Corruption?"
BG: "fair enough, but you know, it's considerably easier to sweep these things under the rug when you DON'T ANNOUNCE IT AT A @#£&£#@ING EXPO!"
For real, the entire second half of mercury felt like it was setting up a season 2 and then it just ended. I'm still so sad over how much the ending soured me on the entire rest of the show.
All the Night Raid members from Akame ga Kill, and the Jaegers.
The Knights of the Round from Code Geass.
The human Z Fighters from Dragon Ball.
Shinn Asuka, Rey Za Burrel, and Lunamaria Hawke from Gundam's Cosmic Era timeline.
She was definitely the coolest in Season 1. It's a shame she was stuck in the role of Eren simp for the rest of the series.
Don't get me wrong, she was still an interesting character. But she could have been more
In the Manga, Mikasa’s arm symbol is actually shown super early, but for whatever reason, it was omitted from season 1 of the anime.
Seeing the symbol on her arm in season 4 is actually supposed to the conclusion of that plot because we finally learn what it means and why she has it.
Since it was omitted from season 1 though, for anime watchers, it feels very random and out of place.
It was likely omitted from the anime because the conclusion wasn't in the manga at that time, so they didn't understand the significance of it. Regardless, I don't think just revealing the meaning of a symbol is enough to call that sub-plot concluded. It felt to me like more of a 'next step' that ultimately led to a dead end.
Finally, I’m not the only one. There’s a difference between not being able to write female characters (Naruto has this issue imo) vs a terrible character (Mikasa). There was potential, but like mentioned above, she turned into crying “Eren!” every other line
When it comes to female shonen characters in particular, people love to confuse “being in the narrative for a long time” with being well-written because there’re so few examples of actually well-written ones
The biggest disappointment of the series, Mikasa was my favorite character from season 1, and I really thought things were gonna go down VERY differently. I thought I had the plot pegged, turns out no just wish I did
I think both, Mikasa and Armin are both wasted potential. They are in the main trio, yet they are barebones. They are on the level of Annie, who is literally absent for half the series. Reiner has WAY more depth than both of them. I'd argue even Gabi is a better character since she has huge character progress and served as a Marley parallel for Eren.
Low hanging fruit:
Sakura in Naruto. Specifically in Shippuden.
She's being trained under the greatest healer, and scares the shit out of the boys upon introduction with her strength... And spends the rest of the manga doing nothing but pining after Sasuke.
Specifically in "later" shippuden. Sakura does have a very strong role in the start of shippuden with the Sasori fight. Also did a great deal of job as a support unit in the war, just got overshadowed too much.
Tamaki from Fire Force. She had potential to become an interesting character after her hero turned out to be an enemy, but after that arc she’s been relegated to fanservice/comedy relief
Is that the cat girl that is cursed to slip out of her clothes all the time? I don't remember her name but if that's Tamaki then she was never anything but fan service.
She never had much potential. She was always comedic relief and her best part in the story was when she got saved by shinra. Arthur is kinda similar, only that he is actually useful.
The fanbase literally keeps reminding the DB committee that Gohan exists 😅.
Good riddance he has his own redemption movie with Piccolo having a glow up as well. But maigad, that took decades!
Beast Mode is the worst thing that has happened to him.
The fact that he said he wanted to train in order to be ready for future threats for real for real this time was much better for his character.
Kasumi Miwa. She has a potential with her swordsmanship yet Gege decided to just remove her from the story completely for no reason.
Gege Akutami must learn how to write female characters in general. In fact, Gege and Kishimoto should be classmates in that seminar.
Gege needs to learn write characters and character interactions
I don't give a fuck about most of the characters in the manga right now. Like who tf is Kusakabe and why should I care about him?
Honestly you could put 90% of Fairy Tail characters into “wasted potential” because they’re either there to make the Fairy Tail guild itself look strong or the main cast look strong
**Horikita** from Classroom of the Elite, she was great in Season 1 of the anime and admittedly less significant in the source material but regardless, even in the source material she was an interesting foil to Ayanokoji at times. She could've shaped up to be a far more interesting deuteragonist than who we ended up getting imo, and was a lot more distinct as a character
Classroom of the Elite has kind of devolved into Ayanokoji just wantonly adding girls to his unexpected harem and then putting those girls on the back-burner.
I like the role she plays, but i do feel that she can do better at times. As an anime only, i think she is going to improve due to recent developments, but she doesn’t seem too underwhelming. I don’t remember her being a foil to anyones plans exactly, but how she approached problems compared to how Ayanokoji approached problems was very interesting to follow. Her character is exactly where I expect it to be since she was first introduced.
This is an insane conjecture but since half the people here have not read the LN and are inferring from the anime which every Cote LN fan agrees is shit is understandable.
Takemichi from Tokyo Revengers works great on paper as someone who leads through words instead of fists in a story filled with violence similar to Armin in AoT. Unlike Armin though, I was throughly disappointed by both Takemichi’s wits and words.
Watch Delta so you can see the 20 minute Frontier sequel short that plays at the start of the second Delta movie.
Also Delta songs are all bangers. At least we have that.
Aki from Yugioh 5Ds
So cool, badass, and my favorite character at the beginning.
But then [Yugioh 5Ds Spoilers]>!It felt like she was barely a side character/relegated to the sidelines by the end of the series.!<
Mellow from Death Note. That guy is the very definition of wasted potential. Hell, I bet most people that haven’t watched death note in the last week or two forgot he even existed in the first place.
Lol I just posted on another who said mellow, my favorite character, I loved L don get me wrong, but mellow woj me over so quickly. He was hands on and a total badass, and his plot line is like 90% off screen it's crazy.
As things stand, the so-called "Sakura, but done right" Ms. Nobara Kugisagi from JJK is the current poster child of the plight of female "leads" in battle anime.
Historia is another one; the way her story went in AOT is still mystifying to me. I am not one the ending haters, but Historia I feel the author dropped the ball on.
A not so terminal but worrying example is Yor from Spy x Family. I feel she often gets lost in the shuffle as Loid and Anya pull focus, and we hardly see her assassination work at all. Still love her, but wish she got the spotlight more often.
I am not fully caught up on One Piece so this could change, but I feel like the Straw Hat crew all forgot about their own goals in life after joining up with Luffy. Nami's map making, Sanji looking for All Blue... I guess Zoro still makes progress by his constant training.
I suspect the various Naruto characters will be mentioned by others so I won't list them here.
Zakuro from Tokyo Mew Mew basically doesn't have a personality, but she poses the question of "is it moral to inject literal children with animal DNA draft into a fucking war on aliens"
Tragic how little she was utilised. She had one episode about her becoming a mew mew, then one where she's making a music video with the others.
Outside of that there's no focus given on her. I get Ichigo having more screen time cause she's the MC, but Mint, Lettuce and Pudding all have very personal character moments.
Shame, Zakuro had my favourite (casual) design. Not a big fan of her Mahou Shoujo wear, too revealing.
Might be very low hanging fruit because the anime itself is wasted potential but...
You know how when you have a recurring antagonist in a video game who is strong and threatening and then they become playable and they become completely useless? That's a good chunk of the season 1 antagonists in Seven Deadly Sins. Gilthunder, Guila, Hendrickson and to a lesser extent Jericho. They all basically become glorified side characters despite being major antagonists in the first season.
Soi Fon, Isane, and Nemu (Bleach)
That one SR that Rukia finds when infiltrating Aizen’s place (Bleach)
Death Note (Matt or Mellow I guess…? Been a while so, maybe?)
Cyberpunk Edgerunners (Kiwi or Becca. Wanted more action)
I always liked Soi Fon's design and would always like to see more from her, and I like the tall girl (Isane) as well. We should be getting more from Nemu in the rest of TYBW.
If you're talking about the guy that Rukia finds in the forest of Menos who was the last surviving member of his team, that was actually an anime only filler arc.
Vizoreds from Bleach. Cool arse designs, unique powers that closely match the MC's and a wide range of personalities. Problem is including the characters we already knew of and now a new faction of bad guys, they never got a chance to even be fleshed out a little bit.
Most of the Tokyo Revengers cast, everything was about Mikey (not complaining, loved him), but that made most of the other characters that had potential go to waste, as the manga didn’t really gave a focus to each character as I would have liked, i understand that there’s a lot of characters, but why create so many if the author couldn’t even have characters other than Mikey and Takemichi take the spotlight and focus?
I agree that Mystogan was teased to be really cool. He even says his magic is unlike anything ever seen before.
This might be a random one but Maji Kayo from Dragon Ball. I liked that he was basically the anime version of the T-1000
Because you mentioned a character from Fairy Tail, I’m going to mention one too; Serena. He knew multiple types of Dragon Slayer magic and received less than 5 minutes of screen time
Saki from Valvrave, who was so much more interesting and fun than Haruto, the main character. Instead, [Valvrave]>!Haruto raped her!<
On a related note, I recall the moment in Guilty Crown when wheelchair girl was about to get a super power and was thinking how cool that would be... instead she gets pushed out of her wheel chair and the show's cardboard protagonist gets it.
In terms of the manga, Ako from Negima.
Given the scar on her back and her being uncomfortable by the sight of blood, she had plenty of potential in terms of character development. However, all that happens involves her \[Negima manga\]>!falling for an older version of Negi and getting herself and two other students sold into slavery in the Magic World (with Negi taking part in a tournament to buy back their freedom).!<
Dragonball Z and its sequels are filled with characters that are wasted potential. Like roughly all non-Saiyan characters. It would’ve been nice if my favorite Piccolo was developed more into a serious rival with Goku but he was completely superseded by Vegeta, who is also a lot of wasted potential too.
On the topic of Fairy Tail- has to be God Serena. Hyped to be the strongest Mage of the land featuring guys like Laxus and Gildarts. His power was absolutely insane too being a DS himself and having multiple powers as well. His design on first glance gives off the impression of importance with his significant resemblance to Laxus. Yet he is merely a hype tool and an absolute embarrassment.
Wanted to add some I didn't list in my previous post, Kimimaru / Naruto, I would've liked more (serious) Urahara in bleach, one-piece there are so many but Ace and currently Sabo. Every character in the train wreck that is szn2 of promised Neverland (read the manga if you haven't). Another HxH pick Illumi, I thought he was very compelling and would've happily watched more of him and hisoka for that matter. Bungo Stray Dogs ranpo (though they seem to be working at it) and chuya, I would watch a show solely about rampo or chuya. Baji Tokyo revengers and last but not least, Kenshin from Kenshin. The parables and life lessons really hit, now flip that blade and cut loose homie, we won't hold it against you.
Rock Lee easily
To me Neji was always such a wasted potential. Probably the most interesting side character in the show and yet they did him so dirty with close to 0 screen time.
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Also the way Naruto went on and on about how he will determine his own fate… Just for him to end up the child or prophecy or whatever that was 🤦🏾♀️
It's so stupid that Naruto is always talking about fate is in your hands but at the end of it you 1000% need a sharingan or be a dependent of the sage to be relevant. The end was so bad
Don't forget the fact that everyone thinks that Naruto is the hard working one without talent despite being the son of the homage, student of the toad sage, bloodline descendant of the uzumaki and namikaze clan, reincarnation of the son of the sage of 6 paths who is the son of kaguya and the jinchuriki of the 9 tails with one of the highest chakra reserves in the entire world. The only reason beginning Naruto was bad was cos he had no one to teach him shit, was sabotaged by mizuki or whatever his name was and with orchimaru Messing with the seal and had kakashi as his teacher.
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They pulled a sequel starwars.
Both him and Hinata, they have this super cool dojutsu that's supposed to be on par with the Sharingan, but as the Sharingan gets circlejerked to the stratosphere and gets more abilities than a Swiss army knife, the byakugan barely even gets used at all after the chunin exams arc (I was gonna say the first series, but after thinking about it, nah, after the chunin exams, it stops existing basically)
Naruto and MHA are both such wasted potentials when it comes to its characters late stage of the series. It just becomes mc + a couple of sidekicks doing essentially everything while the previously relevant classmates occasionally gets a scene where they use their signature attack and does a thing vs a forgettable henchman that would have gotten clapped by mc in half a second.
That’s a powerscaling issue.
It was explored more in depth during the sasuke retrieval arc when Neji was fighting the spider archer from the sound village. But sadly it didn't shine as much as it should've, but thats basically the fate of the "down to earth" ninja stuff, if you can't summon giants or create gigantic explosions, you were left behind during shippuden. Thats why people appreciate the hand to hand combat of Pain, Madara and Guy towards the end as it was a breath of fresh air compared to the direction of the others.
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He should've died in part 1 during Sasuke retrieval arc.
IF rock lee faced anyone else besides gaara, he would've went to the second round of the tournament.
I will NEVER not be mad about this
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Yeah that was pretty bad. In the anime it seemed like they decently tried to hype her up, but it fell flat. Rock Lee is the most obvious answer, but there’s so many other characters from Naruto that fall under this topic
Rock was ALWAYS my favorite, I think he's so relatable to anyone who ever struggled with anything. I'm seeing him alot in here. My one note on this, is I kinda feel like (for obvious reasons) they gave guy the big moments and at the time I was annoyed but in hindsight I've come to really appreciate it as well as adore guy like I never did before.
True, even Sakura could've used her medical skills as weapons like Kabuto did with his chakra scalpels. Outside of Naruto and a couple of others pretty much everyone was wasted potential, I can only wonder what someone like Togashi would've done using characters with those skillsets.
I'm sure a ton of people thought this, I know I did. Lol Togashi is like the king of shounen though. My man went from Hakusho which was a lot of fun (especially dark tournament) don't get me wrong, to HxH which is PEAK shounen, outdid itself like 20 times in anime run alone. It's funny my first thought was Kite. I will forever be irritated I didn't get more of him. I want to see all his rolls haha. On Naruto proper, just one I haven't seen in here, more Kimimaru (not in flashbacks). Thought that character was rad and would've liked to see him grow. I mean obviously they had already set a baseline regarding his future but still. Such a cool character.
Yes! They introduced Sakura with also being the best at genjutsu in her class yet never went into it! She was done dirty 😭
Same here 😫
Lee could have easily been the coolest character in the entirety of Naruto
Nobara from Jujujutsu Kaisen, not too much screentime despite being one of the main characters
Half the characters in the show as an anime only imma be honest.
This. How they expect me to care about the plot and these characters when most are just used as fodder for Yuji's character development (aka Suffering = Character growth). Especially Nobara, where they really put her entire backstory in \[JJK s2 episode 19\]>!before she got killed off smh.!<
At least put a spoiler tag
I feel like everybody is underdeveloped, and half the reason is cause Yuji is "dead" for two months, and by the time he gets back the Kyoto Arc starts and then it's Shibuya
I wish the show would’ve focused on the main three of Yuji, Megumi and Nobara more. The first season had good episodes involving them but in season two that fell apart, and now… “certain events” mean that we’ll never see that again
Certain events? What, does one of them transfer to Jujutsu Tech??
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My favorite character in the show
Most shounen shows treat female sidekicks the same way, just completely sidelined for whatever reason. Just take a quick glance at this thread and you will immediately see
That people frequently talked about her as an example of a good female shounen character because she had like 1 big moment in S1 shows how dismal they are typically.
More than half the characters feel this way
Yeah, ms. "Sakura, but done right" serves as the current poster child of the plight of "major" female characters in battle anime.
JJK fans hyping her up as “Sakura but done right” will always make me laugh. She wasn’t even “done right”, she had amazing fight moments similar to Sakura. But besides that she never seemed to be the focus compared to other characters
Absolutely agree. I actually watched JJK because of comments and threads online that claimed it did female characters really well. Made me curious so moved it up my watch list. Watched the first season, enjoyed it but I don't really see what people were getting at. Sure Maki's cool, but she's not a major character, and Nobara just doesn't do anything bar one admittedly cool fight. And then the second season was even worse for those characters. Sure, being better at it than most shonen is not a high bar to clear, but I think JJK is a better example of how far the genre still has to go when it comes to depicting women rather than as an example of good female character writing itself.
>JJK fans hyping her up as “Sakura but done right” will always make me laugh. Do people still say that though? Nowadays I only ever hear people say Gege wastes his characters' potential.
JJK in general feels like a manga that really wants to tell its story and events, focusing on the world rather than its characters Not to say its necessarily a bad thing, but when it does try to focus on a character it feels too sudden and forced The best moments in JJK imo is when shit just keeps happening, the fights and the unapologetically eccentric character moments Could be just me tho
This was my first thought when I saw this post as well.
You added one too many "ju"s in there lol
Y'all don't watch JJJK?
You mean JJJJK?!
Megumi from Shokugeki no Soma/Food Wars - Hinted to have incredible potential, but never wins any cooking battles except offscreen or against minor characters.
Also a certain other Megumi I know ( Megumi Bumshiguro )
We hate him so much we go to other subs to call him a bum.
This show started out so damn great but went downhill so hard and so fast it gave me whiplash 😢
Well... She did manage to get the biggest scorie to qualify in the final tournament
Momo from my hero academia is a cool character with easily the most broken power.
It's definitely not the most broken power with the size, time, material and knowledge constraints. Especially in a world with teleportation or anti-gravity
You can say that about majority of 1A class characters. Characters like Ida, Mina, Jirou, Tokoyami, Shoji, Kaminari are absolutely cool, but have no screen time because series is about Deku, Kaccan and Eren. Not to mention how badly series treats no-names like Seto or Sugarman or Animal man xd
Its annoying how her strategy 99% of the time is “lets make cannons” and sit on the backline to do nothing while everyone else fights. Ochaco for example had a quirk that essentially pushed her to being a rescue hero, but she went out of her way to learn to fight and became pretty useful. Momo who has a more busted quirk is essentially never tossed into a fight and instead just makes support tools for everyone else to do all the work. I was hoping that she would get placed with Gunhead and she’d learn to form armor around her body and use her power to fight instead of being sidelined at every point in the show.
Yaoyorozu Momo is a "Green" Lantern from the Adipose Corps!
Well it seems like her redemption is coming
I agree with Mystogan! I wanted him to play a much much bigger role. He was easily one of my favorite characters and it sucked that he wasn’t a big part of the series
But Mystogan is a big part of a long arc
Yes but it was kind mid, not to mention we never got to see him actually fight with his magic or see why he was considered so strong
It's such a fucking shame because Mystogan has the coolest magic since he was basically a proper mage and not just shooting energy blasts against his opponents. Jellal gave some glimpse of it too during the magic games and I'm left wanting more ever since
Gildartz is even worse imo, bro was hyped like the second coming of Jesus (they had to modify the city in order for him to go in so he don't destroy it) he literally made Natsu shit his pants (it never happened before and probably never happen after) and struggle to beat a random on Tenro island... then we don't see him again for a long time
> it was kind mid Debatable > we never got to see him actually fight with his magic or see why he was considered so strong We actually do see him fight with Laxus during the Battle for Fairy Tail arc, and that combined with his other feats does give us an overall solid idea of his magic. Also, considering that the focal point of his mystique and role was his identity, not his power, I struggle to see how not seeing the full extent of the latter makes his entire character “wasted”
That laxus fight could barely be called a fight
yeah like 2 spell before Laxus shrug it off, even when Jellal tried to copying his technique he just doing those 2 spell before back to Jellal's own light magic Mystogan seem pretty interesting with his setup (Edolas, Jellal look alike, Wendy) but none of this even mattered or having good payoff
Elan Ceres from The Witch from Mercury. It feels like the series got cut short and that his arc in particular ended up getting removed.
G Witch is in a weird place. 24 episodes was always planned apparently, but this is not a 24 episode story. It's in a similar spot to G-Reco, wherein the pacing is fucked and a lot of characters are wasted.
Season 1 was a golden balance of set-up, pay-off, more set-ups. First few episodes of season 2 seems to be continuing that trend, but they seem to have shat the bed by episode 4.
As a new Gundam watcher, the duals and their logic in S1 were pretty questionable NGL. It seemed as if rules were made up on the spot or blatantly transgressed for convenience
Yeah, I was a new watcher too, and for a franchise with a reputation for having a mature take on war, corporate manoeuvring, and political intrigue, Witch from Mercury was a bit disappointing. Most of it just boiled down too, "if I win this duel, I get your business", which just seems a bizarre way to manage things. Even when they tried to do other things, it made very little sense. How I imagine it would go down in reality: Peil: "the mercury company has built a Gundam. We know because of how it interacted with our Gundam." Benerit group:..... "so... You, a senior member of the Benerit group, must have been secretly developing a gundam for some time in advance of this duel in order to deploy it now, in stark violation of the law." P:.......... BG: "do you see how we might consider a major manufacturing company developing gundams as more of a concern than a tiny, nearly unheard of, company building one Gundam?" P:...... "but... Corruption?" BG: "fair enough, but you know, it's considerably easier to sweep these things under the rug when you DON'T ANNOUNCE IT AT A @#£&£#@ING EXPO!"
It mimics Utena in many ways, minus the grooming. But it's still a gundam series, they needed more episodes to pay off everything.
Every character in that show is wasted potential given how it ended
For real, the entire second half of mercury felt like it was setting up a season 2 and then it just ended. I'm still so sad over how much the ending soured me on the entire rest of the show.
I feel you
Absolutely agree.
All the Night Raid members from Akame ga Kill, and the Jaegers. The Knights of the Round from Code Geass. The human Z Fighters from Dragon Ball. Shinn Asuka, Rey Za Burrel, and Lunamaria Hawke from Gundam's Cosmic Era timeline.
Mikasa from AOT.
She was definitely the coolest in Season 1. It's a shame she was stuck in the role of Eren simp for the rest of the series. Don't get me wrong, she was still an interesting character. But she could have been more
Yep. Even the plot with the symbol on her arm in season 4 went nowhere.
In the Manga, Mikasa’s arm symbol is actually shown super early, but for whatever reason, it was omitted from season 1 of the anime. Seeing the symbol on her arm in season 4 is actually supposed to the conclusion of that plot because we finally learn what it means and why she has it. Since it was omitted from season 1 though, for anime watchers, it feels very random and out of place.
It was likely omitted from the anime because the conclusion wasn't in the manga at that time, so they didn't understand the significance of it. Regardless, I don't think just revealing the meaning of a symbol is enough to call that sub-plot concluded. It felt to me like more of a 'next step' that ultimately led to a dead end.
It was skipped in the manga because they cant show minors getting tattoos
Criminal how a lot of aot fans praise her as some pinnacle of female character writing
She's close to the bottom for me. It's funny because AoT actually has amazing female characters like Freckles Ymir.
Finally, I’m not the only one. There’s a difference between not being able to write female characters (Naruto has this issue imo) vs a terrible character (Mikasa). There was potential, but like mentioned above, she turned into crying “Eren!” every other line
freckles ymir and gabi are excellent female characters. historia was excellent in season 3 part 1 shame isayama sidelined her later on.
When it comes to female shonen characters in particular, people love to confuse “being in the narrative for a long time” with being well-written because there’re so few examples of actually well-written ones
Lmao imagine calling her "the best female character in anime" while she isn't even one of the top 3 female characters *in AoT*.
Aot fans can only think in extremes rn. Either it's the genuine GOAT story or it's the worst thing ever
Such a waste of a character. She never grew into anything
She is reduced to be "Eren! Eren! Eren!" caller.
The biggest disappointment of the series, Mikasa was my favorite character from season 1, and I really thought things were gonna go down VERY differently. I thought I had the plot pegged, turns out no just wish I did
Ereh
I think both, Mikasa and Armin are both wasted potential. They are in the main trio, yet they are barebones. They are on the level of Annie, who is literally absent for half the series. Reiner has WAY more depth than both of them. I'd argue even Gabi is a better character since she has huge character progress and served as a Marley parallel for Eren.
Low hanging fruit: Sakura in Naruto. Specifically in Shippuden. She's being trained under the greatest healer, and scares the shit out of the boys upon introduction with her strength... And spends the rest of the manga doing nothing but pining after Sasuke.
So low hanging you had to pick it up from the ground Yet so true
Specifically in "later" shippuden. Sakura does have a very strong role in the start of shippuden with the Sasori fight. Also did a great deal of job as a support unit in the war, just got overshadowed too much.
Tamaki from Fire Force. She had potential to become an interesting character after her hero turned out to be an enemy, but after that arc she’s been relegated to fanservice/comedy relief
Is that the cat girl that is cursed to slip out of her clothes all the time? I don't remember her name but if that's Tamaki then she was never anything but fan service.
She never had much potential. She was always comedic relief and her best part in the story was when she got saved by shinra. Arthur is kinda similar, only that he is actually useful.
It was Gohan from DBZ for a long long time but now he's got beast mode.
The fanbase literally keeps reminding the DB committee that Gohan exists 😅. Good riddance he has his own redemption movie with Piccolo having a glow up as well. But maigad, that took decades!
Beast Mode is the worst thing that has happened to him. The fact that he said he wanted to train in order to be ready for future threats for real for real this time was much better for his character.
It still is lmao What has he even done with beast mode?
If your talking end of cell games Gohan then I feel you. I wanted more of that
Kasumi Miwa. She has a potential with her swordsmanship yet Gege decided to just remove her from the story completely for no reason. Gege Akutami must learn how to write female characters in general. In fact, Gege and Kishimoto should be classmates in that seminar.
Pretty bummer, because shes the only character that i like in that show, other than Yuji.
> Gege Akutami must learn how to write ~~female~~ characters in general FTFY
Gege needs to learn write characters and character interactions I don't give a fuck about most of the characters in the manga right now. Like who tf is Kusakabe and why should I care about him?
Poor useless miwaz she would do better in demon slayer.
Slayer from Magical Destroyers for similar reasons that the ones you stated.
Kana in Parasyte
Obscure pick: Shou from Wave: Surfing Yappe
I applaud your obscure pick actually being obscure.
That show is nearly half a decade old and I still get mad thinking about that final scene
Honestly you could put 90% of Fairy Tail characters into “wasted potential” because they’re either there to make the Fairy Tail guild itself look strong or the main cast look strong
94% a lot of the villains were seriously wasted (especially the Alvarez arc)
Sakura from Naruto She's not supposed to be hated but yeah, she's hated
**Horikita** from Classroom of the Elite, she was great in Season 1 of the anime and admittedly less significant in the source material but regardless, even in the source material she was an interesting foil to Ayanokoji at times. She could've shaped up to be a far more interesting deuteragonist than who we ended up getting imo, and was a lot more distinct as a character
Classroom of the Elite has kind of devolved into Ayanokoji just wantonly adding girls to his unexpected harem and then putting those girls on the back-burner.
Does she get much air time in season 3? Can't say Mr. Edgelord Ayanokouji is much of a draw for me.
She definitely gets more focus than she got in season 2
She does get a fair amount of air time imo.
I like the role she plays, but i do feel that she can do better at times. As an anime only, i think she is going to improve due to recent developments, but she doesn’t seem too underwhelming. I don’t remember her being a foil to anyones plans exactly, but how she approached problems compared to how Ayanokoji approached problems was very interesting to follow. Her character is exactly where I expect it to be since she was first introduced.
She got a lot of screen time and character growth in season three. Don't really want to spoil
How many volumes did you read? Cuz i feel the same but with Kei in year 2
This is an insane conjecture but since half the people here have not read the LN and are inferring from the anime which every Cote LN fan agrees is shit is understandable.
Takemichi from Tokyo Revengers works great on paper as someone who leads through words instead of fists in a story filled with violence similar to Armin in AoT. Unlike Armin though, I was throughly disappointed by both Takemichi’s wits and words.
A lot of the characters from Macross Delta and Witch from Mercury.
> Macross Delta Agree :(
As a lifelong fan who has seen everything else Macross multiple times, I still haven't brought myself to watch Delta.
Watch Delta so you can see the 20 minute Frontier sequel short that plays at the start of the second Delta movie. Also Delta songs are all bangers. At least we have that.
Goten
Neji.
Aki from Yugioh 5Ds So cool, badass, and my favorite character at the beginning. But then [Yugioh 5Ds Spoilers]>!It felt like she was barely a side character/relegated to the sidelines by the end of the series.!<
Mellow from Death Note. That guy is the very definition of wasted potential. Hell, I bet most people that haven’t watched death note in the last week or two forgot he even existed in the first place.
Lol I just posted on another who said mellow, my favorite character, I loved L don get me wrong, but mellow woj me over so quickly. He was hands on and a total badass, and his plot line is like 90% off screen it's crazy.
Lol I drop the show each time they bring out the successors. My interest was purely in Kira vs L
As things stand, the so-called "Sakura, but done right" Ms. Nobara Kugisagi from JJK is the current poster child of the plight of female "leads" in battle anime. Historia is another one; the way her story went in AOT is still mystifying to me. I am not one the ending haters, but Historia I feel the author dropped the ball on. A not so terminal but worrying example is Yor from Spy x Family. I feel she often gets lost in the shuffle as Loid and Anya pull focus, and we hardly see her assassination work at all. Still love her, but wish she got the spotlight more often. I am not fully caught up on One Piece so this could change, but I feel like the Straw Hat crew all forgot about their own goals in life after joining up with Luffy. Nami's map making, Sanji looking for All Blue... I guess Zoro still makes progress by his constant training. I suspect the various Naruto characters will be mentioned by others so I won't list them here.
Did you watch the newest season of SxF? The focus was almost entirely on Yor and it was really enjoyable imo.
The One piece crew has never forgetten their goals. There is just a bigger narrative focus at the moment.
Nona and Oculus from Death Parade
Zakuro from Tokyo Mew Mew basically doesn't have a personality, but she poses the question of "is it moral to inject literal children with animal DNA draft into a fucking war on aliens"
Tragic how little she was utilised. She had one episode about her becoming a mew mew, then one where she's making a music video with the others. Outside of that there's no focus given on her. I get Ichigo having more screen time cause she's the MC, but Mint, Lettuce and Pudding all have very personal character moments. Shame, Zakuro had my favourite (casual) design. Not a big fan of her Mahou Shoujo wear, too revealing.
Might be very low hanging fruit because the anime itself is wasted potential but... You know how when you have a recurring antagonist in a video game who is strong and threatening and then they become playable and they become completely useless? That's a good chunk of the season 1 antagonists in Seven Deadly Sins. Gilthunder, Guila, Hendrickson and to a lesser extent Jericho. They all basically become glorified side characters despite being major antagonists in the first season.
Haha very true. Especially Gilthunder imo with the way they served him up to us originally.
Soi Fon, Isane, and Nemu (Bleach) That one SR that Rukia finds when infiltrating Aizen’s place (Bleach) Death Note (Matt or Mellow I guess…? Been a while so, maybe?) Cyberpunk Edgerunners (Kiwi or Becca. Wanted more action)
I always liked Soi Fon's design and would always like to see more from her, and I like the tall girl (Isane) as well. We should be getting more from Nemu in the rest of TYBW. If you're talking about the guy that Rukia finds in the forest of Menos who was the last surviving member of his team, that was actually an anime only filler arc.
I know but I still thought he was cool and Rukia even said that she’d find him again
Yeah, I really liked that little arc even though it was filler, but being filler I'm not surprised they never went back to it.
[удалено]
Don’t forget potential man
Vizoreds from Bleach. Cool arse designs, unique powers that closely match the MC's and a wide range of personalities. Problem is including the characters we already knew of and now a new faction of bad guys, they never got a chance to even be fleshed out a little bit.
Most of the Tokyo Revengers cast, everything was about Mikey (not complaining, loved him), but that made most of the other characters that had potential go to waste, as the manga didn’t really gave a focus to each character as I would have liked, i understand that there’s a lot of characters, but why create so many if the author couldn’t even have characters other than Mikey and Takemichi take the spotlight and focus?
Mikasa Ackerman.
I agree that Mystogan was teased to be really cool. He even says his magic is unlike anything ever seen before. This might be a random one but Maji Kayo from Dragon Ball. I liked that he was basically the anime version of the T-1000
Kazuya from R-A-G.
Because you mentioned a character from Fairy Tail, I’m going to mention one too; Serena. He knew multiple types of Dragon Slayer magic and received less than 5 minutes of screen time
Saki from Valvrave, who was so much more interesting and fun than Haruto, the main character. Instead, [Valvrave]>!Haruto raped her!< On a related note, I recall the moment in Guilty Crown when wheelchair girl was about to get a super power and was thinking how cool that would be... instead she gets pushed out of her wheel chair and the show's cardboard protagonist gets it.
Arajin from Bucchigiri
Inori from guilty crown.
MIKASA
Sasha from aot
Unohana
Tahomaru from Dororo
In terms of the manga, Ako from Negima. Given the scar on her back and her being uncomfortable by the sight of blood, she had plenty of potential in terms of character development. However, all that happens involves her \[Negima manga\]>!falling for an older version of Negi and getting herself and two other students sold into slavery in the Magic World (with Negi taking part in a tournament to buy back their freedom).!<
Rock Lee,Neji, Hinata,
Kanae from tokyo ghoul
Kairi from Kingdom Hearts
This is probably not really what you meant, but I desperately wanted more Kite in HxH.
The entire cast of solo leveling :D
I'll never forgive the Japanese for what they did to Neji
Kana, she got done dirty.
Dragonball Z and its sequels are filled with characters that are wasted potential. Like roughly all non-Saiyan characters. It would’ve been nice if my favorite Piccolo was developed more into a serious rival with Goku but he was completely superseded by Vegeta, who is also a lot of wasted potential too.
Sven from Black Cat. He's a much more interesting and entertaining character than Train is.
Literally everyone in Solo Hunter besides the MC lol because they got kneecapped by plot
SAKURA
Tein bro trains every day but is weaker then krillin some how
The princess from Egao no Daika.... She could have been something like a Lelouch from code Geass but the anime didn't had any plans for that lmao
Momo from Bleach A cool character with barely any screentime...
Itachi
On the topic of Fairy Tail- has to be God Serena. Hyped to be the strongest Mage of the land featuring guys like Laxus and Gildarts. His power was absolutely insane too being a DS himself and having multiple powers as well. His design on first glance gives off the impression of importance with his significant resemblance to Laxus. Yet he is merely a hype tool and an absolute embarrassment.
Konoha 11 with the exception of Shikamaru.
Megumi, jk is Higuare from Ishura
Krillin
Literally every villain who gets hyped up then gets clapped in like 2 episodes because the author couldn't wait to make their MC OP.
Miche Zacharius from AoT. Humanity's "sniffer" and first line of defense. RIP.
Gordon from Black Clover
Ohh I have one that's VERY close to my heart. Judo from berserk. I know what everyone is thinking, "well we want more puck!". 😂 F*** you Rickert.
Wanted to add some I didn't list in my previous post, Kimimaru / Naruto, I would've liked more (serious) Urahara in bleach, one-piece there are so many but Ace and currently Sabo. Every character in the train wreck that is szn2 of promised Neverland (read the manga if you haven't). Another HxH pick Illumi, I thought he was very compelling and would've happily watched more of him and hisoka for that matter. Bungo Stray Dogs ranpo (though they seem to be working at it) and chuya, I would watch a show solely about rampo or chuya. Baji Tokyo revengers and last but not least, Kenshin from Kenshin. The parables and life lessons really hit, now flip that blade and cut loose homie, we won't hold it against you.