Gojo from JJK. The guy is super charismatic, has a bishonen design of this hot tall dude with beautiful eyes and a playful smile. Every time he's in screen he's in command of the situation or is the center of attention. He's a good mentor that also set himself apart because of how selfish he can come off, and how thats actually a deeper theme of his.
This theme of selfishness contrast with both protagonists nature to self sacrifice (yuji and megumin), and is also reflected on the bigger overall themes of the series of selflessness vs selfishness. And on top of that the guy is OP as fuck.
So yeah he was 100% designed to be the most popular character of the series, and the author acomplished it. Say what you want to say about the quality of the series overall, but in term of character design Gojo is a textbook example of OP done right designed to be a breakout character.
Gege knows how to make some damn sexy men. Sukuna also comes off as charismatic and hot and don't get me started on Nanami during the shibuya arc. It's honestly a substantial part of the show's appeal all things considered.
Yuji is just teen Sukuna body wise. And it's obvious that when he takes the body, his face changes at least to the audience POV.
Someone made a edit of Shibuya Sukuna without his tatoos and he genuinely was Yuji but older, all the face is different.
And how we have seen his real body and he is a super tall redhead jacked dude
Gege “hates” Gojo in the sense that he’s had to write the entire series while treading carefully around Gojo. Gege’s said that there can’t be central tension while Gojo’s around because he can just go solve it — he’s the strongest, after all.
It's a running joke that he does, yes. But Gege has also stated that he very much designed Gojo to be pretty - the page spread where Gojo shows off his Domain Expansion is very much this.
JJK's entire power system was crafted with Gojo in mind. He's literally the only character that utilises every single piece of it, with more unique attacks and variants, while most characters only have one single move.
It's even to the point of being silly, like he made up Reversed CT so Gojo can turn his abilities inside out and it's awesome and cool for them, and obviously an Anti-Gravity CT being reversed becomes a Gravity CT, that's fine.
But how the fuck do you reverse a position swap tech? Or shooting blood from your hands? Or turning people into movie-frames? Or what in the world would be the reversal of 10? It's nonsensical and silly.
And then every part of JJK was made with Gojo in mind because he's so absurdly, ridiculously powerful that the start and end of every single arc is dealing with how to make sure Gojo doesn't just teleport in and one shot everyone. Like imagine if peak All Might could also teleport, that's Gojo in JJK.
So no wonder he says he hated him, can you imagine having to invent tension for every single Arc when All Might could just teleport in and blow the villains up in 1second?
>But how the fuck do you reverse a position swap tech? Or shooting blood from your hands? Or turning people into movie-frames? Or what in the world would be the reversal of 10? It's nonsensical and silly.
It's tough to visualize, but not impossible. Nanami's CTR could've been putting a crit point on himself to increase his defense, The opposite of blood manipulation could be blood generation. But Todo's is wack and idk how he could reverse his cursed technique lol.
Cursed Techniques and Cursed energy definitely weren't crafted around Gojo.
Gojo was just Bishie Dumbledore in JJK 0 (which is his acrual debut), strong and mighty but not exactly invincible. It was in JJK where the concept of "Gojo as the pinnacle of sorcery" got introduced
Fuck, he really is Bishie Dumbledore.
Strongest Sorcerer/wizard of modern time
Had a best friend who turned to evil
Best friend wanted sorcerer/wizard supremacy
Student has the greatest evil inside of him
has white hair
>Gojo is a textbook example of OP done right
You mean another OP character that the author doesn't know how to treat? Gege Akutami said on record that the story can't progress when Gojo is around. That's why he was sealed for 60% of the story and then killed immediately. Idea of Gojo's character is fun but realization is one of the worst. He doesn't interact with the world at all. I never understand why writers creates narrative blocks doomed to die unsatusfying deaths.
Oh for sure the author had his fair share of issues writting around Gojo. However for the purposes of this post Gojo was 100% successful at being a character designed to be popular.
I mean if one punch man did majority of his fights in OPM then it would pretty boring pretty fast,making strong person not come up often is OP character writing 101
Yeah, I can't deny that. The story doesn't even give a reason *why* he uses a sword too, and it quickly becomes useless after it breaks on #18's elbow during the Dragon Team's first fight with the Androids (in the "main" timeline").
But Trunks probably made the best first impression of any character in *Dragon Ball*. I remember being so enamoured with his coolness when I was a kid that he ended up being my first cosplay of sorts (minus the sword, alas).
Yeah, he's still one of my favourite characters too. And that sword is still cool too, and at least helps to differentiate his fighting style from most of the other Dragon Team members.
Notably, like most characters deliberately designed for maximum popularity, the character only remained popular for a year or two before fading into obscurity.
He was forged in the belly of mid 2010s Tumblr. As was a good chunk of the Hazbin cast. I remember when they were planned to be in a later book of zoophobia, but that comic crashed and burned.
He was forged in the belly of mid 2010s Tumblr. As was a good chunk of the Hazbin cast. I remember when they were planned to be in a later book of zoophobia, but that comic crashed and burned.
He was forged in the belly of mid 2010s Tumblr. As was a good chunk of the Hazbin cast. I remember when they were planned to be in a later book of zoophobia, but that comic crashed and burned.
He was forged in the belly of mid 2010s Tumblr. As was a good chunk of the Hazbin cast. I remember when they were planned to be in a later book of zoophobia, but that comic crashed and burned.
He was forged in the belly of mid 2010s Tumblr. As was a good chunk of the Hazbin cast. I remember when they were planned to be in a later book of zoophobia, but that comic crashed and burned.
He was forged in the belly of mid 2010s Tumblr. As was a good chunk of the Hazbin cast. I remember when they were planned to be in a later book of zoophobia, but that comic crashed and burned.
He was forged in the belly of mid 2010s Tumblr. As was a good chunk of the Hazbin cast. I remember when they were planned to be in a later book of zoophobia, but that comic crashed and burned.
He was forged in the belly of mid 2010s Tumblr. As was a good chunk of the Hazbin cast. I remember when they were planned to be in a later book of zoophobia, but that comic crashed and burned.
He was forged in the belly of mid 2010s Tumblr. As was a good chunk of the Hazbin cast. I remember when they were planned to be in a later book of zoophobia, but that comic crashed and burned.
We can coclude that he was forged in the belly of mid 2010s Tumblr. As was a good chunk of the Hazbin cast. I remember when they were planned to be in a later book of zoophobia, but that comic crashed and burned
He was forged in the belly of mid 2010s Tumblr. As was a good chunk of the Hazbin cast. I remember when they were planned to be in a later book of zoophobia, but that comic crashed and burned.
He was forged in the belly of mid 2010s Tumblr. As was a good chunk of the Hazbin cast. I remember when they were planned to be in a later book of zoophobia, but that comic crashed and burned.
I would say this is *not* an example because the Mandalorian creators were just doing their own thing and upper Disney didn't really care, which is why when the Mandalorian exploded in popularity Disney was caught off the back foot and didn't even have baby Yoda/Grogu merchandise ready to go for that Christmas season. A lot of fans resorted to buying unofficial merchandise.
Pokémon has had ton of these, I think Lucario is their most successful example, while Zoroark is them missing the mark trying to replicate that success
Since zoroark has a decent fandom and is pretty liked, don’t know if they failed. For sure it ended up less popular than lucario, but lucario is charizard tier of popular
For sure, wouldn’t say it failed by any means. I just think Lucario was designed to be as cool/ popular as possible, and succeeded in that mission, while Zoroark was marketed with a very similar strategy and didn’t reach the same heights by any means
Greninja was definitely an attempt. I remember hearing once that he was added to Smash Bros before Pokemon X & Y were even announced because they knew he would be popular.
I don’t hear much Greninja hype nowadays but he probably still some kind of community.
Clearly it didn’t work but I theorize the writers wanted Mako from Legend of Korra to be popular. One of my reasons is that they’ve said they had a hard time getting a female protagonist greenlit. Maybe it’s why Mako had so much screen time
As a boy myself who is a late 90's baby I wouldn't mind watching one. Growing up I had no issues watching shows with female leads. I was brought up on Disney Channel. I only disliked girly shows that explicitly were made to sell toys. I wouldn't watch Barbie or Winx Club but was cool with everything else. Although I didn't watch Korra at the time. I didn't care she was a girl but I was going through an anti action phase where I only wanted comedic stuff. That phase ended long ago.
Feedback from Ben 10 Omniverse FEELS like he was designed to mimic the glory of the original 10 aliens, after all he's retconned to br from there.
His personality is that of a "cool" dude, his design is made by one of the original artists if I remember correctly, his power set is electric and overpowered (also a nail in Chromastone's coffin) and he has his own arc in the show and also is the final alien to be used to save the universe by holding a big bang on his hands.
Well, I like the dude, so it works, but plenty noticed it and dislike him from what I've heard.
Many Gacha characters are also made to be popular, after all they want the players to roll for them, but Lostbelt Morgan from FGO not only having a tragic backstory, being really overpowered, useful in gameplay, a Saberface, but also calling the player "My Husband/Wife" is just REALLY on the nose lol.
Well it worked and she's pretty popular, she also got a younger version and a swimsuit not much long after her debut (if compared to others), just to cement her popularity.
Oh yeah, Feedback felt like an OC donut steel alien for me, especially when the narrative keeps INSISTING that this one alien I've never seen was so important to Ben. If it was say Heatblast or Diamondhead, I'd be more invested
My benefit of a doubt was that they wanted to use Heatblast, 4 arms or Diamondhead originally but then realized Ben has used those aliens in later series so had to create a new alien for the narrative
Yeah, I just started playing honkai star rail and its very obvious that basically every character is designed to be someone's favorite so they spend money.
That said, Acheron was designed to be extremely popular on every level. Narratively they put her in the center of the plot, give her crazy powers and special cutscenes, make her mysterious and constantly flip sides, made her overpowered, and made sure her design was memorable.
All the acheron pulls made the game brake $150 million last month so they certainly succeeded.
To be fair I think that's heavily just a benefit of being a Mei expy, similar to Raiden Mei for Genshin. Especially since this is connected more heavily to Honkai Impact 3rd, having someone connected to the deuteragonist of the 'root node' for the Hoyoverse stuff has perks.
I may be mistaken but I believe that the crew asked the original ben 10 alien designer to create feedback and they just adapted it to the Omniverse art style
For me two archtypes stand out right away as designed to become the fan favorite:
1- the "bad boy/girl" type who is morally grey and kinda an asshole but has a heart of gold and a tragic backstory to explain why they're an asshole
2- The sweet but bland love interest who doesn't have much going on other than being a love interest and their popularity comes from just being cute.
[You may enjoy this meme.](https://i.imgur.com/GhEexww.png)
Funny enough, I actually really like Mari myself, if only because she let Shinji be happy. He needed someone secure in themselves who could both give and take love, and Mari was perfect for that.
Anno did say she isn't based on his wife. I think the simplest answer is just that they wanna sell merch of a busty perry anime girl. And while I like that trope, she sticks out like a sore thumb in the rebuilds and doesn't belong there
Source: https://www.crunchyroll.com/news/latest/2022/3/9/evangelion-creator-hideaki-anno-confirms-mari-wasnt-based-on-his-wife
I mean... I think the Eva Rebuilds struggle on the character writing front in general. I think she's the worst example of this for sure, but every character in that series is at best a caricature of their OG self. Except Kaworu, but even he has literally no motivation other than "make Shinji happy," which, in a way, is a reduction of the tortured nature of his existence as Tabris in the original series, even though we get to see way more of him and spend way more time with him.
Now, nobody kill me because I love this character myself.
However, Kiryu Kazuma fits this easily.
Hes tall, very handsome and muscular even when he’s old and has grey hair and dresses very classy.
Hes incredibly strong both physically and morally. He will go out of his way to help complete strangers, loves kids and is even very progressive and understanding.
Combined with his charm and passion for things he enjoys, he may not be perfect, but he was designed to be EXTREMELY likeable/popular
Yeah, he fits the always-popular "delinquent with a heart of gold" archetype.
**EDIT:** And, now that I think about it, Jotaro fits right in that archetype too. And he was *definitely* designed to be popular, with Araki self-admittedly basing him on Clint Eastwood and his "image of a hero" as a righteous loner who never loses his cool.
Pixie Maniac Dream Girls like Marin from Dressup Darling and Kaori from Your Lie in April. Designed to be cute, attractive, easy to like and contrast with the blander looking protagonist.
Hideo Kojima created Raiden mainly because a female fan sent him a letter saying she wanted to play a Metal Gear game with a young man as the protagonist.
Yoji Shinkawa (the main designer of MGS) even said that Raiden's design was meant to relate to both men and women.
I would've never imagined the rebellious daughter of Kaido, whose sole personality trait is that she wants to impersonate a hardboiled male samurai, to look like that. Nothing about her design makes sense. Her hairstyle, her clothes, her weapon of choice, her fighting style, her body type, her face, you name it. She's basically an upscaled Nami clone.
Now I'm not saying Yamato is ugly or anything like that. Her design is great in isolation. It would have worked in another story, or even in One Piece still, just for an entirely different character in a different arc. But for the Oni Princess of Onigashima and future guardian of Wano? Nah, she deserved better.
Every character that dc tried to shill in the modern age easy to cosplay easily recognizable and most importantly young, and after a year of trying to sell them forgotten lost to the sands of time except signal he's still around for some reason idk why
Examples
Naomi
Clownhunter
Sideways
Punchline
Etc
They still show up from time to time, but they're just background characters now
Now u just reminded me of Clownhunter lmao. DC should rlly take a break from adding more vigilantes to Gotham. It's super crowded there. Why not a new non powered vigilante in Metropolis for a change
Step one . Make boobs big. Step 2 . Give her a generic, likeable personality. bonus points if she has a sad backstory ( nothing too dark , we can't dedicate too much time for it because we need to work on the giggle physics) . Step 3 . Sell body pillows
Lightning from Final Fantasy 13
Square basically took Cloud, their most popular protagonist, and said "Okay, so what if that, but girl?"
(Not that I'm complaining)
Captain Phasma from the ST was an attempt to capture the mysterious bad guy energy of Boba Fett and Darth Maul. Except she had no swag. And didn't do anything. And died. Then came back. And died again.
Garfield was. Jim Davis is a genius. He was reading the funnies and noticed Snoopy merch flew off the shelves but Charlie Brown merch didn't. He noticed a lot of dogs and didn't see a lot of cats so he made a marketable cat character.
Kiriko from Overwatch 2 specifically feels like they were trying to make a second mascot, and to do this they desperately tried to make her cooler or likable.
- She breaks the rules of the power system within the universe by having magical spirit abilities.
- She breaks the timeline by being 21 but also training with Genji (37) and Hanzo (40) when they were all kids learning from her mother so she can be close friends with Genji since he's a popular character (also I guess they want every character to be associated with another if they live in the same country?)
- She replaced D.Va (the professional gamer) as the character to represent 'arcade mode' for a bit (I stopped playing a while ago, so I don't know if they changed it back)
- She has the typical quirky, joke telling, nice girl personality that people (Disney) fall back on to make a female protagonist people like.
- And she has gotten so many skins since her release, granted that could just be so she could 'catch up' to the rest of the cast but it felt like she got them more often than the other new characters at the time.
Overwatch specifically tries really hard to not include magic, even going as far as saying Hanzo and Genjis dragons are holographic technology that can physically interact with things (like Symmetras constructs) >!I personally don't believe that but that's a whole tangent I can go on!<
Everything else they have can be explained with "they have technology" like Genjis superhuman feats and Hanzos arrows or "they have ninja training" as for why they can climb walls.
But Kiriko is the first character where they drop the whole 'fantastical scifi' elements to just say, "she uses fox spirit powers to heal, buff, and cure allies"
Even Lifeweaver manages to at least balance on the edge of that line because he uses "bio-light" technology which is a subset of the hardlight technology Symmetras group uses that he invented himself to create 'organic matter'
I ALMOST dropped the show on the first couple of episodes because of how much the VA screamed as him. It was almost unbearable to watch, but I'm glad I didn't.
I thought I read somewhere that Carol got a big bump in profile because most of Marvel's most powerful, best-known female characters are mutants, and the MCU couldn't use them at the time. So they started pretending that Captain Marvel was *always* Marvel's biggest female hero, and not the C-lister she'd always been previously
Spamton (Deltarune — he feels very specifically crafted to recreate the Sans lightning in a bottle)
Greninja (Pokemon X/Y, I mean he was just the Pushed Mon of that gen but he was very prominently pushed & got that not-a-Mega-Mega form with Battle Bond); somebody mentioned Loot from the new Magic set and I'd argue if the character is designed to be marketable all of the Pikaclones also qualify
Luke (Street Fighter 6 specifically — they also designed C. Viper for SFIV specifically to pander to the American audience but she hasn't come back yet)
Jax (The Amazing Digital Circus — again specifically fits that "Tumblr sexyman" mold)
Gudetama
Meelo (Legend of Korra — the writers probably thought he was a lot funnier than he is)
I don't really see how Spamton and Sans are similar at all. Sans is goofy and friendly, Spamton is off-putting and pitiable - he's funny at times but it's more of a dark humor. Sans fights you because you're a terrible person, Spamton fights you in an attempt to gain power (though I could see how his role in Snowgrave is somewhat comparable to Sans, he becomes an accidental hero in a way). He's obviously more based on Jevil.
Akechi too was designed to be popular for women. Attractive and popular in universe and out of universe his Japanese VAs most prominent roles are stuff like the MC of Gundam Seed which was huge with female fans.
Funny considering how hated he ended up being, but Scrappy Doo. He was literally made to breath new life into the series and succeeded, only for fans to hate him for replacing several core members and becoming so despised that pretty much everything Scooby Doo from the 2000s onward only brings him up to make fun of him.
True, it is crazy to me that Aka and Mengo were able to craft the perfect character that would make Oshi no Ko incredibly popular as well as being a great character that would spur the entire plot of OnK. It's like everything about her and the series combined with the advertising was just picture perfect and destined to work out
Super recently (as in, it officially releases today), Magic the Gathering released a set with a character called Loot that seems to have divided the fan base on if it's great or terrible basically mostly on this premise. Well, that, and some people say it looks like a League of Legends character.
as a league player with 0 mtg knowledge i can assure you that little gremlin doesn’t look like a league character, i can see the teemo comparison though
Mikasa from AOT.
"–Was Eren the first character you came up with?
Isayama: It was Mikasa, actually.
–Mikasa is what some might call a girl warrior character — or even a calculated attempt at creating a moé character, maybe.
Isayama: It was my plan from the start to make her the merchandise poster girl.
–Apparently you got her name from the battleship.
[Isayama: I have this theory that characters named after battleships become popular, like Misato Katsuragi and Ritsuko Akagi in Neon Genesis Evangelion and Yuki Nagato from The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. Hence Mikasa’s name."](https://mangabrog.wordpress.com/2014/12/24/interview-with-hajime-isayama-creator-of-attack-on-titan-better-to-have-memorable-art-even-memorably-bad-art-and-stand-out/)
Loona from Helluva Boss basically just exists to be furry bait and humanize the main character. There is nothing to her character outside of that and she's only getting worse as the show goes on with how inconsistent her writing is.
Marin from My Dress Up Darling is another example, she's just prime waifu bait for the "want a cute cosplay GF" crowd. It sucks because Gojo is an actual character that's not just a self insert for the incel crowd so seeing them drop the ball with Marin sucks.
A lot of characters are designed to be popular. The vast majority even. It's not like people are writing characters and saying "God, I hope people HATE this guy! I hope NOBODY likes him!", lol
I mean, certain characters *are* written to be unlikeable, especially if they're villains. Just look at Joffrey from *GOT*, or Umbridge from *Harry Potter*.
Of course, some of those characters end up becoming popular anyway, like Bakugou from *MHA*, and might even end up having some of their rough edges softened out and potentially even be given a bigger role in the series as a result
Maybe sasuke?
1. Edgelord with a tragic backstory
2. Prettyboy
3. Overpowered
4. Has powers that would seem cool to teens
5. Author has gone on record to state that sasuke was a late addition to the series and wasn't part of the original plan
In-universe of the character ? Definitely yes.
But as the OP asked if the character was crafted to be popular amongst us, and knowing well enough that Sasuke was bound to go through the antagonist's path with the entire narrative framed against his ideology at every turn, I would not say he was crafted to be popular although he turned out as the most well written, especially so when majority of the fanbase dislikes him and over half hates him to the guts.
Huh?
He has anger issues.
He loses many fights rock lee, gaara (2nd round), Itachi. The way Killer bee and madara beat Sasuke was embarrassing. No way kishimoto made this character to be "popular".
He goes against Naruto, Konoha. He literally becomes villain. He hurt his "friends".
That fact that Itachi, Kakashi are way more popular worldwide debunks your point lol.
What can we say when the fanbase doesn't know the difference between being indifferent or blunt and being an asshole. Sasuke gets categorised as the latter because he doesn't caters to their faves and self-inserts.
Pokémon has a few. Zoroark was set up to be the next Lucario (a popular Pokémon from the previous generation), with its own event, movie, etc., but it didn't really achieve the expected amount of popularity.
Some were already mentioned but:
Levi from AoT
Gojo from JJK
Dazai from BSD
Makima from CSM
Killua from HxH kinda
Ai from Oshi no Ko
And basically any main girl from shounen romcoms: Marin, Shikimori, Kaguya, etc., I mean the whole point of some of these stories is to make you fawn over their special girl leads
I will make the case for Makima, she’s presented in such a way because that’s how Denji views her at first. Throughout the manga they slowly peel that whole “waifu bait” stuff away and show that she’s an incredibly despicable character that you aren’t supposed to like.
Vincent Valentine from FF7. If you look at his original entry, in the original FF7, he's just this massive edge-lord that I'm sure Nomura was betting on people loving.
He wasn't wrong. And the added canon since has done a lot to make him memorable.
Any mascot character like Happy from Fairy Tail and Chuchu from Xenogears. Unfortunately, the former and his shitty source material got massive popularity while the later and her masterpiece are niche to this day.
Basically all crap from Poppy Playtime.
Every single thing there is just made to get money from stupid kids buying merchandise.
That’s if we take the question in bad sense.
EVERY modern kirby game has either a “floaty hands thing with redemption arc” or something very similar made to be almost like a (in some cases definitely) mascot for the new game. The special part is; it works everytime.
Eddie from stranger things is such a transparent attempt to make a favorite character for people. Kinda took me out of the season because of how front and center they tried to put this random, and the jumping on the table devil horns speech with his hellfire club shirt that sold everywhere.... It was cringey to see in real time
Pac-Man and the ghosts, they are few of the first characters to be deliberately designed to be family-friendly and for all audiences. For Pac-Man, he has a simplistic design modelled after a pizza with a slice removed to form the mouth shape, and his bright colour can catch the eyes quite easily. The ghosts are also designed to be cute and colourful, each also has their own personality reflected by their subtly different movement patterns.
The end result is that Pac-Man and the ghosts have become the flagship Namco mascots.
Varian from Tangled the Series seemed tailor-made to be big on Tumblr. He was so unexpectedly popular that he spawned a fanbase within the Tangled fanbase just focused on him going on adventures.
Sonic The Hedgehog was designed to help SEGA break into the American market. To this day, Sonic is still more popular in the States than he is in his home country of Japan.
This isn’t confirmed, but I 100% believe that Shadow was designed to be a fan favorite as well. Seeing as how a sizable portion of the fandom loves him more than the blue blur, I’d say he was quite successful.
A less successful attempt was with Silver. When he debuted in 2006, SEGA really tried to push him as the third member of a hedgehog trio, a foil to Sonic and Shadow alike. But that didn’t really pan out, since the games that really pushed him to the forefront were either critically panned (Sonic ‘06) or flew completely under the radar (Sonic Rivals).
> Sonic The Hedgehog was designed to help SEGA break into the American market. To this day, Sonic is still more popular in the States than he is in his home country of Japan.
Yeah, I guess Sonic is basically the poster boy for this kind of thing. SEGA were like, "OK, Alex Kidd isn't cutting it. We need a cool new mascot to topple Mario in this console war."
> This isn’t confirmed, but I 100% believe that Shadow was designed to be a fan favorite as well. Seeing as how a sizable portion of the fandom loves him more than the blue blur, I’d say he was quite successful.
Yeah, I can see that. The only wrinkle in this theory might be that SEGA/Sonic Team originally killed off Shadow in *SA2* (his debut game), but his popularity among the fanbase persuaded them to bring him back.
> A less successful attempt was with Silver. When he debuted in 2006, SEGA really tried to push him as the third member of a hedgehog trio, a foil to Sonic and Shadow alike. But that didn’t really pan out, since the games that really pushed him to the forefront were either critically panned (Sonic ‘06) or flew completely under the radar (Sonic Rivals).
Yeah, Silver is... a sad case, really.
Sonic (the Hedgehog). He screams 2000s-era design by a company that's trying to make a popular older children's character. He stands out more just by virtue of being old enough that his personality/quippiness, and catchphrases aren't common in newer video game characters any more.
----
Transformers, since the entire line started off as a way to sell car-robot toys to children, but that might be cheating.
reigen from mob psycho but specifically anime reigen, not manga reigen. designed to be suave and good looking in the anime, but if you compare it with the manga reigen doing the same thing, they look like night and day lmao
Gojo from JJK. The guy is super charismatic, has a bishonen design of this hot tall dude with beautiful eyes and a playful smile. Every time he's in screen he's in command of the situation or is the center of attention. He's a good mentor that also set himself apart because of how selfish he can come off, and how thats actually a deeper theme of his. This theme of selfishness contrast with both protagonists nature to self sacrifice (yuji and megumin), and is also reflected on the bigger overall themes of the series of selflessness vs selfishness. And on top of that the guy is OP as fuck. So yeah he was 100% designed to be the most popular character of the series, and the author acomplished it. Say what you want to say about the quality of the series overall, but in term of character design Gojo is a textbook example of OP done right designed to be a breakout character.
Gege knows how to make some damn sexy men. Sukuna also comes off as charismatic and hot and don't get me started on Nanami during the shibuya arc. It's honestly a substantial part of the show's appeal all things considered.
How can sukuna be hot when we only really see him in other peoples’ bodies
Yep gojo and nanami hot, but sukuna is not well defined enough to be, and he needs to steal bodies? He was way hotter within yuji
Exactly! I realized I only liked Sukuna's attitude when I saw he wasn't that hot. (His true form is the opposite of attractive)
Yuji is just teen Sukuna body wise. And it's obvious that when he takes the body, his face changes at least to the audience POV. Someone made a edit of Shibuya Sukuna without his tatoos and he genuinely was Yuji but older, all the face is different. And how we have seen his real body and he is a super tall redhead jacked dude
Manga spoilers >!sukuna's real heian-era body has been shown, and there are people who still desire him carnally!<
So, I’m out of the JJK loop but didin’t the author hate Gojo?
Gege “hates” Gojo in the sense that he’s had to write the entire series while treading carefully around Gojo. Gege’s said that there can’t be central tension while Gojo’s around because he can just go solve it — he’s the strongest, after all.
It's a running joke that he does, yes. But Gege has also stated that he very much designed Gojo to be pretty - the page spread where Gojo shows off his Domain Expansion is very much this.
Also Gege: draw him ugly as hell recently...and that awful cover ugh
JJK's entire power system was crafted with Gojo in mind. He's literally the only character that utilises every single piece of it, with more unique attacks and variants, while most characters only have one single move. It's even to the point of being silly, like he made up Reversed CT so Gojo can turn his abilities inside out and it's awesome and cool for them, and obviously an Anti-Gravity CT being reversed becomes a Gravity CT, that's fine. But how the fuck do you reverse a position swap tech? Or shooting blood from your hands? Or turning people into movie-frames? Or what in the world would be the reversal of 10? It's nonsensical and silly. And then every part of JJK was made with Gojo in mind because he's so absurdly, ridiculously powerful that the start and end of every single arc is dealing with how to make sure Gojo doesn't just teleport in and one shot everyone. Like imagine if peak All Might could also teleport, that's Gojo in JJK. So no wonder he says he hated him, can you imagine having to invent tension for every single Arc when All Might could just teleport in and blow the villains up in 1second?
>But how the fuck do you reverse a position swap tech? Or shooting blood from your hands? Or turning people into movie-frames? Or what in the world would be the reversal of 10? It's nonsensical and silly. It's tough to visualize, but not impossible. Nanami's CTR could've been putting a crit point on himself to increase his defense, The opposite of blood manipulation could be blood generation. But Todo's is wack and idk how he could reverse his cursed technique lol.
Todo could instead of swapping places flip the enemy position so they become head first on the ground
Cursed Techniques and Cursed energy definitely weren't crafted around Gojo. Gojo was just Bishie Dumbledore in JJK 0 (which is his acrual debut), strong and mighty but not exactly invincible. It was in JJK where the concept of "Gojo as the pinnacle of sorcery" got introduced
Bishie Dumbledore is an amazing name for Gojo
Fuck, he really is Bishie Dumbledore. Strongest Sorcerer/wizard of modern time Had a best friend who turned to evil Best friend wanted sorcerer/wizard supremacy Student has the greatest evil inside of him has white hair
It's a joke fans took too far. You don't make the guy you "hate" into the MC for an entire section of the story.
>Gojo is a textbook example of OP done right You mean another OP character that the author doesn't know how to treat? Gege Akutami said on record that the story can't progress when Gojo is around. That's why he was sealed for 60% of the story and then killed immediately. Idea of Gojo's character is fun but realization is one of the worst. He doesn't interact with the world at all. I never understand why writers creates narrative blocks doomed to die unsatusfying deaths.
Oh for sure the author had his fair share of issues writting around Gojo. However for the purposes of this post Gojo was 100% successful at being a character designed to be popular.
I mean if one punch man did majority of his fights in OPM then it would pretty boring pretty fast,making strong person not come up often is OP character writing 101
What do you mean " he doesn't interact with the world"
I think a lot of jjk comes down to good ideas but badly executed/planned out
And a lot of those good ideas are very inspired by predecessors - Bleach esp but a lot of other shonen as well
Levi Ackerman, and the creator admitted it himself
Ah old one: future trunks: edgy style, good looking, swordsman, he even did the “sheat the sword and people get cut”
Yeah, I can't deny that. The story doesn't even give a reason *why* he uses a sword too, and it quickly becomes useless after it breaks on #18's elbow during the Dragon Team's first fight with the Androids (in the "main" timeline"). But Trunks probably made the best first impression of any character in *Dragon Ball*. I remember being so enamoured with his coolness when I was a kid that he ended up being my first cosplay of sorts (minus the sword, alas).
Understandable. Main reason why i said him was because I just saw his first appearance in dbzabridged. And my first thought was “still cool”
Yeah, he's still one of my favourite characters too. And that sword is still cool too, and at least helps to differentiate his fighting style from most of the other Dragon Team members.
for swords its easier to kill a opponent than a fist.
Future Trunks: I’m here because we have no female fanbase.
Yep he is amazing.
Zero Two from Darling in the Franxx
That checks out
Notably, like most characters deliberately designed for maximum popularity, the character only remained popular for a year or two before fading into obscurity.
Alastor for Habzin Hotel was basically handcrafted to become a tumblr sexyman
He was forged in the belly of mid 2010s Tumblr. As was a good chunk of the Hazbin cast. I remember when they were planned to be in a later book of zoophobia, but that comic crashed and burned.
What happened to Zoophobia?
He was forged in the belly of mid 2010s Tumblr. As was a good chunk of the Hazbin cast. I remember when they were planned to be in a later book of zoophobia, but that comic crashed and burned.
Yo dude you typed that 4 times with your alts.
Up to six now, actually. Wonder how many times I'll bother?
He was forged in the belly of mid 2010s Tumblr. As was a good chunk of the Hazbin cast. I remember when they were planned to be in a later book of zoophobia, but that comic crashed and burned.
He was forged in the belly of mid 2010s Tumblr. As was a good chunk of the Hazbin cast. I remember when they were planned to be in a later book of zoophobia, but that comic crashed and burned.
He was forged in the belly of mid 2010s Tumblr. As was a good chunk of the Hazbin cast. I remember when they were planned to be in a later book of zoophobia, but that comic crashed and burned.
He was forged in the belly of mid 2010s Tumblr. As was a good chunk of the Hazbin cast. I remember when they were planned to be in a later book of zoophobia, but that comic crashed and burned.
He was forged in the belly of mid 2010s Tumblr. As was a good chunk of the Hazbin cast. I remember when they were planned to be in a later book of zoophobia, but that comic crashed and burned.
He was forged in the belly of mid 2010s Tumblr. As was a good chunk of the Hazbin cast. I remember when they were planned to be in a later book of zoophobia, but that comic crashed and burned.
He was forged in the belly of mid 2010s Tumblr. As was a good chunk of the Hazbin cast. I remember when they were planned to be in a later book of zoophobia, but that comic crashed and burned.
We can coclude that he was forged in the belly of mid 2010s Tumblr. As was a good chunk of the Hazbin cast. I remember when they were planned to be in a later book of zoophobia, but that comic crashed and burned
He was forged in the belly of mid 2010s Tumblr. As was a good chunk of the Hazbin cast. I remember when they were planned to be in a later book of zoophobia, but that comic crashed and burned.
He was forged in the belly of mid 2010s Tumblr. As was a good chunk of the Hazbin cast. I remember when they were planned to be in a later book of zoophobia, but that comic crashed and burned.
Grogu (Baby Yoda) was created in a lab for maximum marketability. I mean, they also were trying with BB8 and Captain Phasma, but Grogu hit it big.
Baby Groot did irreparable psychic damage to pop-culture. His legacy will live on in shitty attempts at viral baby-characters for 20 years, at least.
I shudder to think of how many funko pops Baby Groot spawned
Oh yeah, "Baby Yoda". Yeah, he's basically a marketable plushie given life.
I would say this is *not* an example because the Mandalorian creators were just doing their own thing and upper Disney didn't really care, which is why when the Mandalorian exploded in popularity Disney was caught off the back foot and didn't even have baby Yoda/Grogu merchandise ready to go for that Christmas season. A lot of fans resorted to buying unofficial merchandise.
Oh, I didn't know that.
Pokémon has had ton of these, I think Lucario is their most successful example, while Zoroark is them missing the mark trying to replicate that success
Since zoroark has a decent fandom and is pretty liked, don’t know if they failed. For sure it ended up less popular than lucario, but lucario is charizard tier of popular
For sure, wouldn’t say it failed by any means. I just think Lucario was designed to be as cool/ popular as possible, and succeeded in that mission, while Zoroark was marketed with a very similar strategy and didn’t reach the same heights by any means
It doesn't help that Zoroark's main gimmick gameplay-wise never functioned out of the gate because Gen 5 also introduced team preview lmao
Meowscarada is the most furry bait furry bait of all time
Greninja was definitely an attempt. I remember hearing once that he was added to Smash Bros before Pokemon X & Y were even announced because they knew he would be popular. I don’t hear much Greninja hype nowadays but he probably still some kind of community.
You didn't even mention ash greninja from the anime either lol. He was hype
Clearly it didn’t work but I theorize the writers wanted Mako from Legend of Korra to be popular. One of my reasons is that they’ve said they had a hard time getting a female protagonist greenlit. Maybe it’s why Mako had so much screen time
They did a good job in season 1 but after that he’s just kinda a bum post season one ngl
Mako ended up being a nothing burger of a character though, I think Bolin had a more interesting journey
And more of a girl fandom at that
He's a cute dork with an endearing journey
Sounds crazy they had trouble greenlighting a show with a female lead considering iCarly and Dora the Explorer are some of their biggest hits.
It probably means difficulty greenlighting an action adventure cartoon targeted at boys that has a female lead.
As a boy myself who is a late 90's baby I wouldn't mind watching one. Growing up I had no issues watching shows with female leads. I was brought up on Disney Channel. I only disliked girly shows that explicitly were made to sell toys. I wouldn't watch Barbie or Winx Club but was cool with everything else. Although I didn't watch Korra at the time. I didn't care she was a girl but I was going through an anti action phase where I only wanted comedic stuff. That phase ended long ago.
Feedback from Ben 10 Omniverse FEELS like he was designed to mimic the glory of the original 10 aliens, after all he's retconned to br from there. His personality is that of a "cool" dude, his design is made by one of the original artists if I remember correctly, his power set is electric and overpowered (also a nail in Chromastone's coffin) and he has his own arc in the show and also is the final alien to be used to save the universe by holding a big bang on his hands. Well, I like the dude, so it works, but plenty noticed it and dislike him from what I've heard. Many Gacha characters are also made to be popular, after all they want the players to roll for them, but Lostbelt Morgan from FGO not only having a tragic backstory, being really overpowered, useful in gameplay, a Saberface, but also calling the player "My Husband/Wife" is just REALLY on the nose lol. Well it worked and she's pretty popular, she also got a younger version and a swimsuit not much long after her debut (if compared to others), just to cement her popularity.
Oh yeah, Feedback felt like an OC donut steel alien for me, especially when the narrative keeps INSISTING that this one alien I've never seen was so important to Ben. If it was say Heatblast or Diamondhead, I'd be more invested
I never liked it THAT ONE ALIEN YOU NEVER SAW IS THE MOST IMPORTANT ONE It's too much of a retcon for me to accept
My benefit of a doubt was that they wanted to use Heatblast, 4 arms or Diamondhead originally but then realized Ben has used those aliens in later series so had to create a new alien for the narrative
Eh i doubt it
Yeah, I just started playing honkai star rail and its very obvious that basically every character is designed to be someone's favorite so they spend money. That said, Acheron was designed to be extremely popular on every level. Narratively they put her in the center of the plot, give her crazy powers and special cutscenes, make her mysterious and constantly flip sides, made her overpowered, and made sure her design was memorable. All the acheron pulls made the game brake $150 million last month so they certainly succeeded.
To be fair I think that's heavily just a benefit of being a Mei expy, similar to Raiden Mei for Genshin. Especially since this is connected more heavily to Honkai Impact 3rd, having someone connected to the deuteragonist of the 'root node' for the Hoyoverse stuff has perks.
I may be mistaken but I believe that the crew asked the original ben 10 alien designer to create feedback and they just adapted it to the Omniverse art style
For me two archtypes stand out right away as designed to become the fan favorite: 1- the "bad boy/girl" type who is morally grey and kinda an asshole but has a heart of gold and a tragic backstory to explain why they're an asshole 2- The sweet but bland love interest who doesn't have much going on other than being a love interest and their popularity comes from just being cute.
eh i feel like a lot of the time #2 doesn’t end up becoming super popular these days, #1 for sure though that’s textbook
Mari from EVA Rebuilds feels purely market tested to sell merch and nothing else
Fuck Mari, all my homies hate Mari Actual dogwater character that is only there to be the cheery girl without much beyond that
I used to edit her out of promo art, and it looks so much better without a quirk chungus clapping in the background.
[You may enjoy this meme.](https://i.imgur.com/GhEexww.png) Funny enough, I actually really like Mari myself, if only because she let Shinji be happy. He needed someone secure in themselves who could both give and take love, and Mari was perfect for that.
Nah she's just based on Anno's wife
Anno did say she isn't based on his wife. I think the simplest answer is just that they wanna sell merch of a busty perry anime girl. And while I like that trope, she sticks out like a sore thumb in the rebuilds and doesn't belong there Source: https://www.crunchyroll.com/news/latest/2022/3/9/evangelion-creator-hideaki-anno-confirms-mari-wasnt-based-on-his-wife
I mean... I think the Eva Rebuilds struggle on the character writing front in general. I think she's the worst example of this for sure, but every character in that series is at best a caricature of their OG self. Except Kaworu, but even he has literally no motivation other than "make Shinji happy," which, in a way, is a reduction of the tortured nature of his existence as Tabris in the original series, even though we get to see way more of him and spend way more time with him.
The evangelion manga has a non-canon(as in, not canon to the manga or rebuilds) bonus chapter that gave Mari far more development than 3 movies did.
Now, nobody kill me because I love this character myself. However, Kiryu Kazuma fits this easily. Hes tall, very handsome and muscular even when he’s old and has grey hair and dresses very classy. Hes incredibly strong both physically and morally. He will go out of his way to help complete strangers, loves kids and is even very progressive and understanding. Combined with his charm and passion for things he enjoys, he may not be perfect, but he was designed to be EXTREMELY likeable/popular
Yeah, he fits the always-popular "delinquent with a heart of gold" archetype. **EDIT:** And, now that I think about it, Jotaro fits right in that archetype too. And he was *definitely* designed to be popular, with Araki self-admittedly basing him on Clint Eastwood and his "image of a hero" as a righteous loner who never loses his cool.
It's probably no surprise he ended up with the most iconic design and became the fan favourite.
And then again with Akiyama and Y0 Majima I love Ichiban too much to admit that he was designed to be loved, that boy earned it all on his own
Zoro lol
Never seen a statement that offends me on such a personal level that I 100% agree with
Oh yeah, I fucking love Zoro, but dude is 100% designed to be the cool guy of the SHs.
> offends me on such a personal level Brother it just means the author hit his mark. You are the target audience.
Pixie Maniac Dream Girls like Marin from Dressup Darling and Kaori from Your Lie in April. Designed to be cute, attractive, easy to like and contrast with the blander looking protagonist.
And it’s frustrating how it hooks me every time.
Marin is actually self insert for the mangaka herself, about the kind of boy she would like
Hideo Kojima created Raiden mainly because a female fan sent him a letter saying she wanted to play a Metal Gear game with a young man as the protagonist. Yoji Shinkawa (the main designer of MGS) even said that Raiden's design was meant to relate to both men and women.
Well that went well didn’t it
Yamato from One Piece
I would've never imagined the rebellious daughter of Kaido, whose sole personality trait is that she wants to impersonate a hardboiled male samurai, to look like that. Nothing about her design makes sense. Her hairstyle, her clothes, her weapon of choice, her fighting style, her body type, her face, you name it. She's basically an upscaled Nami clone. Now I'm not saying Yamato is ugly or anything like that. Her design is great in isolation. It would have worked in another story, or even in One Piece still, just for an entirely different character in a different arc. But for the Oni Princess of Onigashima and future guardian of Wano? Nah, she deserved better.
Every character that dc tried to shill in the modern age easy to cosplay easily recognizable and most importantly young, and after a year of trying to sell them forgotten lost to the sands of time except signal he's still around for some reason idk why Examples Naomi Clownhunter Sideways Punchline Etc They still show up from time to time, but they're just background characters now
Now u just reminded me of Clownhunter lmao. DC should rlly take a break from adding more vigilantes to Gotham. It's super crowded there. Why not a new non powered vigilante in Metropolis for a change
Feels like every female from harem animes is designed by comitee.
Step one . Make boobs big. Step 2 . Give her a generic, likeable personality. bonus points if she has a sad backstory ( nothing too dark , we can't dedicate too much time for it because we need to work on the giggle physics) . Step 3 . Sell body pillows
Lightning from Final Fantasy 13 Square basically took Cloud, their most popular protagonist, and said "Okay, so what if that, but girl?" (Not that I'm complaining)
And that's why she's the 🐐
Captain Phasma from the ST was an attempt to capture the mysterious bad guy energy of Boba Fett and Darth Maul. Except she had no swag. And didn't do anything. And died. Then came back. And died again.
Luna from Helluva Boss
i dont wholly disagree but i feel like thats more of self insert for vivize than a character designed to be popular. she is a goth furry herself
Dude, Flynn Rider. He was literally crafted to be the most statistically attractive dude ever
Disney cooked with that one
Garfield was. Jim Davis is a genius. He was reading the funnies and noticed Snoopy merch flew off the shelves but Charlie Brown merch didn't. He noticed a lot of dogs and didn't see a lot of cats so he made a marketable cat character.
And garfield wasnt suposed to be the main character originally too
Kiriko from Overwatch 2 specifically feels like they were trying to make a second mascot, and to do this they desperately tried to make her cooler or likable. - She breaks the rules of the power system within the universe by having magical spirit abilities. - She breaks the timeline by being 21 but also training with Genji (37) and Hanzo (40) when they were all kids learning from her mother so she can be close friends with Genji since he's a popular character (also I guess they want every character to be associated with another if they live in the same country?) - She replaced D.Va (the professional gamer) as the character to represent 'arcade mode' for a bit (I stopped playing a while ago, so I don't know if they changed it back) - She has the typical quirky, joke telling, nice girl personality that people (Disney) fall back on to make a female protagonist people like. - And she has gotten so many skins since her release, granted that could just be so she could 'catch up' to the rest of the cast but it felt like she got them more often than the other new characters at the time.
she's also paired up with the fan favorite D.Va
kiriko has definitely gotten alot of focus, but how is she breaking the rules of the power system when she summons a spirit just like genji and hanzo?
Overwatch specifically tries really hard to not include magic, even going as far as saying Hanzo and Genjis dragons are holographic technology that can physically interact with things (like Symmetras constructs) >!I personally don't believe that but that's a whole tangent I can go on!< Everything else they have can be explained with "they have technology" like Genjis superhuman feats and Hanzos arrows or "they have ninja training" as for why they can climb walls. But Kiriko is the first character where they drop the whole 'fantastical scifi' elements to just say, "she uses fox spirit powers to heal, buff, and cure allies" Even Lifeweaver manages to at least balance on the edge of that line because he uses "bio-light" technology which is a subset of the hardlight technology Symmetras group uses that he invented himself to create 'organic matter'
Lara Croft
Yeah, I can see that.
Black Clover's Asta was like scientifically designed to mimic other Shonen protagonists.
Definitely did not make him likeable lmao. He was the most infuriating part about Black Clover to me until the recent arcs 🙏
He is great,but aldo,i didnt watch the anime, he dould sound way more manly
I ALMOST dropped the show on the first couple of episodes because of how much the VA screamed as him. It was almost unbearable to watch, but I'm glad I didn't.
Carol Danvers was recreated as Captain Marvel to cater to the female fanbase of Marvel comics and revive the company's trademark mantle.
I thought I read somewhere that Carol got a big bump in profile because most of Marvel's most powerful, best-known female characters are mutants, and the MCU couldn't use them at the time. So they started pretending that Captain Marvel was *always* Marvel's biggest female hero, and not the C-lister she'd always been previously
Mitsturi from Demon Slayer feels like they were crafted to have a certain type of popularity.
Spamton (Deltarune — he feels very specifically crafted to recreate the Sans lightning in a bottle) Greninja (Pokemon X/Y, I mean he was just the Pushed Mon of that gen but he was very prominently pushed & got that not-a-Mega-Mega form with Battle Bond); somebody mentioned Loot from the new Magic set and I'd argue if the character is designed to be marketable all of the Pikaclones also qualify Luke (Street Fighter 6 specifically — they also designed C. Viper for SFIV specifically to pander to the American audience but she hasn't come back yet) Jax (The Amazing Digital Circus — again specifically fits that "Tumblr sexyman" mold) Gudetama Meelo (Legend of Korra — the writers probably thought he was a lot funnier than he is)
I don't really see how Spamton and Sans are similar at all. Sans is goofy and friendly, Spamton is off-putting and pitiable - he's funny at times but it's more of a dark humor. Sans fights you because you're a terrible person, Spamton fights you in an attempt to gain power (though I could see how his role in Snowgrave is somewhat comparable to Sans, he becomes an accidental hero in a way). He's obviously more based on Jevil.
Gintoki Sakata from Gintama
The goat
John Cena
The harem genre is practically designed around filling as many popular archetypes as possible so that everyone can have a favorite waifu
Makoto and Kasumi from Persona 5
Akechi too was designed to be popular for women. Attractive and popular in universe and out of universe his Japanese VAs most prominent roles are stuff like the MC of Gundam Seed which was huge with female fans.
Pretty much every "Atlus rerelease new girl" fits into this
Funny considering how hated he ended up being, but Scrappy Doo. He was literally made to breath new life into the series and succeeded, only for fans to hate him for replacing several core members and becoming so despised that pretty much everything Scooby Doo from the 2000s onward only brings him up to make fun of him.
Ai Hoshino
although tbf this is because the plot demands her to be extremely likeable and popular because that’s what she is in the story
True, it is crazy to me that Aka and Mengo were able to craft the perfect character that would make Oshi no Ko incredibly popular as well as being a great character that would spur the entire plot of OnK. It's like everything about her and the series combined with the advertising was just picture perfect and destined to work out
Tbf in her case she kind of has to be like, for the plot to work lol
i think Kotoko from In/Spectre was designed to be waifu bait a little too much. They justify it pretty well but she feels made for fans and moe.
Super recently (as in, it officially releases today), Magic the Gathering released a set with a character called Loot that seems to have divided the fan base on if it's great or terrible basically mostly on this premise. Well, that, and some people say it looks like a League of Legends character.
as a league player with 0 mtg knowledge i can assure you that little gremlin doesn’t look like a league character, i can see the teemo comparison though
As an mtg player with 0 league knowledge I'll take your word for it. I'm just saying that people are making the comparison.
Mikasa from AOT. "–Was Eren the first character you came up with? Isayama: It was Mikasa, actually. –Mikasa is what some might call a girl warrior character — or even a calculated attempt at creating a moé character, maybe. Isayama: It was my plan from the start to make her the merchandise poster girl. –Apparently you got her name from the battleship. [Isayama: I have this theory that characters named after battleships become popular, like Misato Katsuragi and Ritsuko Akagi in Neon Genesis Evangelion and Yuki Nagato from The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. Hence Mikasa’s name."](https://mangabrog.wordpress.com/2014/12/24/interview-with-hajime-isayama-creator-of-attack-on-titan-better-to-have-memorable-art-even-memorably-bad-art-and-stand-out/)
Goat Might MHA
Lives up to the hype.
Loona from Helluva Boss basically just exists to be furry bait and humanize the main character. There is nothing to her character outside of that and she's only getting worse as the show goes on with how inconsistent her writing is. Marin from My Dress Up Darling is another example, she's just prime waifu bait for the "want a cute cosplay GF" crowd. It sucks because Gojo is an actual character that's not just a self insert for the incel crowd so seeing them drop the ball with Marin sucks.
Seraphine from league of legends, she even had a social media account chatting with people.
Sun Wukong Hercules Thor Gilgamesh King Arthur Maui Rasputin etc
Rasputin? Like the Russian guy?
God wrote him to be popular. A chad fr
Like the lover of the Russian queen
A lot of characters are designed to be popular. The vast majority even. It's not like people are writing characters and saying "God, I hope people HATE this guy! I hope NOBODY likes him!", lol
I mean, certain characters *are* written to be unlikeable, especially if they're villains. Just look at Joffrey from *GOT*, or Umbridge from *Harry Potter*. Of course, some of those characters end up becoming popular anyway, like Bakugou from *MHA*, and might even end up having some of their rough edges softened out and potentially even be given a bigger role in the series as a result
Maybe sasuke? 1. Edgelord with a tragic backstory 2. Prettyboy 3. Overpowered 4. Has powers that would seem cool to teens 5. Author has gone on record to state that sasuke was a late addition to the series and wasn't part of the original plan
In-universe of the character ? Definitely yes. But as the OP asked if the character was crafted to be popular amongst us, and knowing well enough that Sasuke was bound to go through the antagonist's path with the entire narrative framed against his ideology at every turn, I would not say he was crafted to be popular although he turned out as the most well written, especially so when majority of the fanbase dislikes him and over half hates him to the guts.
Nah sasuke's imo the one who started the edgy deutragonist designed to be popular trope.
Huh? He has anger issues. He loses many fights rock lee, gaara (2nd round), Itachi. The way Killer bee and madara beat Sasuke was embarrassing. No way kishimoto made this character to be "popular". He goes against Naruto, Konoha. He literally becomes villain. He hurt his "friends". That fact that Itachi, Kakashi are way more popular worldwide debunks your point lol.
Not to mention the "edgelord" stuff is beyond annoying when used to describe Sasuke.
What can we say when the fanbase doesn't know the difference between being indifferent or blunt and being an asshole. Sasuke gets categorised as the latter because he doesn't caters to their faves and self-inserts.
Pokémon has a few. Zoroark was set up to be the next Lucario (a popular Pokémon from the previous generation), with its own event, movie, etc., but it didn't really achieve the expected amount of popularity.
Darth Maul
Baby Groot
Some were already mentioned but: Levi from AoT Gojo from JJK Dazai from BSD Makima from CSM Killua from HxH kinda Ai from Oshi no Ko And basically any main girl from shounen romcoms: Marin, Shikimori, Kaguya, etc., I mean the whole point of some of these stories is to make you fawn over their special girl leads
I will make the case for Makima, she’s presented in such a way because that’s how Denji views her at first. Throughout the manga they slowly peel that whole “waifu bait” stuff away and show that she’s an incredibly despicable character that you aren’t supposed to like.
Sonic (the Hedgehog).
Vincent Valentine from FF7. If you look at his original entry, in the original FF7, he's just this massive edge-lord that I'm sure Nomura was betting on people loving. He wasn't wrong. And the added canon since has done a lot to make him memorable.
Any mascot character like Happy from Fairy Tail and Chuchu from Xenogears. Unfortunately, the former and his shitty source material got massive popularity while the later and her masterpiece are niche to this day.
Dante and Vergil from Devil May Cry series. I went through the comments and I'm appalled that no one else mentioned them.
bayonet comes to mind. She is sexy, a good protagonist with great charisma and creativity but of course her design is the best thing about her.
Basically all crap from Poppy Playtime. Every single thing there is just made to get money from stupid kids buying merchandise. That’s if we take the question in bad sense.
I scrolled through this entire thread only to realize that I've been tricked into reading a TVtropes article.
Gojo
Sonic
Kai "Pussy" Leng from mass effect 3.
EVERY modern kirby game has either a “floaty hands thing with redemption arc” or something very similar made to be almost like a (in some cases definitely) mascot for the new game. The special part is; it works everytime.
Eddie from stranger things is such a transparent attempt to make a favorite character for people. Kinda took me out of the season because of how front and center they tried to put this random, and the jumping on the table devil horns speech with his hellfire club shirt that sold everywhere.... It was cringey to see in real time
All of the Honkai Characters and about 1/4th of the genshin characters
Shadowheart and Astarion from Baulder’s Gate 3, since I have bg3 brainrot atm.
Sonic is an obvious example I think
Elysia from Hi3
Pac-Man and the ghosts, they are few of the first characters to be deliberately designed to be family-friendly and for all audiences. For Pac-Man, he has a simplistic design modelled after a pizza with a slice removed to form the mouth shape, and his bright colour can catch the eyes quite easily. The ghosts are also designed to be cute and colourful, each also has their own personality reflected by their subtly different movement patterns. The end result is that Pac-Man and the ghosts have become the flagship Namco mascots.
Shadow the Hedgehog
Varian from Tangled the Series seemed tailor-made to be big on Tumblr. He was so unexpectedly popular that he spawned a fanbase within the Tangled fanbase just focused on him going on adventures.
Sonic The Hedgehog was designed to help SEGA break into the American market. To this day, Sonic is still more popular in the States than he is in his home country of Japan. This isn’t confirmed, but I 100% believe that Shadow was designed to be a fan favorite as well. Seeing as how a sizable portion of the fandom loves him more than the blue blur, I’d say he was quite successful. A less successful attempt was with Silver. When he debuted in 2006, SEGA really tried to push him as the third member of a hedgehog trio, a foil to Sonic and Shadow alike. But that didn’t really pan out, since the games that really pushed him to the forefront were either critically panned (Sonic ‘06) or flew completely under the radar (Sonic Rivals).
> Sonic The Hedgehog was designed to help SEGA break into the American market. To this day, Sonic is still more popular in the States than he is in his home country of Japan. Yeah, I guess Sonic is basically the poster boy for this kind of thing. SEGA were like, "OK, Alex Kidd isn't cutting it. We need a cool new mascot to topple Mario in this console war." > This isn’t confirmed, but I 100% believe that Shadow was designed to be a fan favorite as well. Seeing as how a sizable portion of the fandom loves him more than the blue blur, I’d say he was quite successful. Yeah, I can see that. The only wrinkle in this theory might be that SEGA/Sonic Team originally killed off Shadow in *SA2* (his debut game), but his popularity among the fanbase persuaded them to bring him back. > A less successful attempt was with Silver. When he debuted in 2006, SEGA really tried to push him as the third member of a hedgehog trio, a foil to Sonic and Shadow alike. But that didn’t really pan out, since the games that really pushed him to the forefront were either critically panned (Sonic ‘06) or flew completely under the radar (Sonic Rivals). Yeah, Silver is... a sad case, really.
Any sidekick in Disney films.
Sonic
Sonic (the Hedgehog). He screams 2000s-era design by a company that's trying to make a popular older children's character. He stands out more just by virtue of being old enough that his personality/quippiness, and catchphrases aren't common in newer video game characters any more. ---- Transformers, since the entire line started off as a way to sell car-robot toys to children, but that might be cheating.
Astarion from baldurs gate 3. White haired sexy vampire elf man? Charming, morally gray anti hero vibes? They knew exactly what they were doing.
Anything from Genshin Impact.
Alastor is Vivs little Tumblr OC and she wants him to be the most popular.
reigen from mob psycho but specifically anime reigen, not manga reigen. designed to be suave and good looking in the anime, but if you compare it with the manga reigen doing the same thing, they look like night and day lmao
Hello Kitty