Kiki, Kiki's Delivery Service. Perhaps an odd choice, but I've always liked the protagonists of Miyazaki's films, and Kiki is, I think, one of the most..."real" ones. She's a little girl striking out on her own, and finding out that the world can be a hard place. But, as with all of Miyazaki's female heroes, she doesn't give in easily, and is quick to find to good side to a problem. She's charming, energetic, and very, very, human.


Spike, Cowboy Bebop. Oh sure, he's cliche to the core (as is the entire Bebop crew, with the exception of Ed, who lacks any real depth) but he effortlessly steals every scene he's in, but is still hard to grow tired of or annoyed with. He has a hidden depth, but hides his hurt behind a facade of uncaring cheerfulness. Cliche, but great to watch.


Roy Mustang, Fullmetal Alchemist. Sure, FMA had it's problems (too many attempts at overly-juvenile humour being the main one) but I just like the character of Roy Mustang. He's reasonably cheerful most of the time, all the while also being serious and scheming. He's also one of the characters with the most depth in the anime. The protagonist brothers get (obviously) more screen time and development, but I don't wonder if Roy couldn't have driven his own story.

Armstrong, from the same show, gets an honourable mention for being so over-the-top hilarious that I looked forward to every scene he was in. He's not subtle. He's not mature. But when a man can, essentially, argue that his muscles are too awesome to belong to a traitor and have it work, you know you've got a special sort of character.


Dr. Allison Mann, Y: The Last Man. Perhaps an odd choice from this series. Yorick is the obvious choice, since much of the books focus on his growth as a person, but I found him too over-the-top, oddly enough. I could empathize with him, but I found it difficult to really connect, since in many ways he was too..."Hollywood", I suppose. Dr. Mann is, if anything, more cliche still, but I found her character arc far more interesting. Her past is far more troubled than Yorick's, and she goes through her share of trauma and turmoil as the books go on, and I found several times that I was more concerned with what was going on with her than with Yorick.


Hiroko Asahina, RahXephon. A side-character at best, showing up in four (maybe six, depending if a hallucination and the finale truly count) episodes of a 26 episode series, and being utterly stereotypical and cliche for three (four) of them, but in the two episode where she gets the spotlight she leaves an indelible impression on the viewer. Her character isn't particularly deep, she's the childhood friend of the protagonist, and also his best friend's girlfriend. However, she eventually realizes that things don't make sense, and starts trying to figure things out. What she finds out changes the way she treats everyone, and this personality shift ultimately leads to one of the most tragic scenes in any anime I have ever watched.

Perhaps she shouldn't be mentioned here, since the character without the spotlight episode would be utterly unremarkable, and it's not really anything she does that makes her memorable, but I have a very hard time forgetting her, so I think she qualifies for such a list. Especially in a show that, alas, lacks many truly realistic characters.

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"Science is the poetry of reality" ~ Richard Dawkins