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ultraericthered · 2 years ago

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Interesting. Looking at this post made me realize I had a handful of these as well, and maybe some of them are the same for you too.

ANGEL BEATS!:

The GlDeMo members who aren’t Iwasawa and Yui: I felt nothing for Hisako, Irie, and Sekine in the anime to the point where them getting a big sendoff scene at the start of Episode 12 was flabbergasting and only really done ‘cause they and their music are marketable. But additional content like the lost episode, the VN, and especially the two manga series has made me like them so much more, so now I want to see more of them with Yui.

AVATAR: Admiral Zhao: I liked him enough in Episode 3 and Episode 13, but didn’t quite get the point of him otherwise and just viewed him as the Fire Nation baddie who’d go after the Avatar whenever Zuko was unavailable. After the finale and seeing what his character had been building up to, I gained a new appreciation for him as an epic villain.

Uncle Iroh: I adored this character in A:TLA, and when he first cameod in TLoK I was delighted and saw a lot of value in the role he was serving for Korra’s spiritual journey. But after reapparances, Spiritual St. Iroh just got really lame and boring to me. Moreover, a lookback at the flaws and darker facets of his character in the original series made me aware of the still untapped avenues he has, and while I still love him, I find myself irritated by thirsting for content that really explores him in a humanizing way again rather than frame him as some Big Good, pure-hearted, wise spiritual guru.

Korra: For most of Book 1 I loved her as a character and found her an awesome heroine with so much potential for growth, but the end of Book 1 pulled the rug out from me, making her seem like just an oppressive bitch whose development was an illusion, she hooked up with a totally undeserving love interest, her progress went circular and made her horribly unlikable in Book 2. She was practically dead to me. But then the second half of Book 2 set her back on course, and all the way to the end of the series, she more than delivered on her character arc to the point where character-wise, I now consider her and her spiritual journey superior to Aang.

CLANNAD:

Yohei Sunohara: This one happened in real time as I watched the show. Went from loathing the cowardly, whiny, sexist little creep to enjoying and appreciating the character for not only the comedic stuff he started doing way better at but also the sentimental and serious stuff with him too. What can I say? He’s all that and a toilet!

CODE GEASS:

Kallen Kozuki: She was just a mid tier character to me at first, who I wanted to like more but had some problems with like the constant fanservice done with her and what a constantly angry, nationalistic terrorist with OP mech piloting abilities she was, especially in R2. Over time I gained more love and appreciation for what a fun, badass, well-realized character she was in the original season, spinoffs, and adaptations, making her now one of my favorites.

Suzaku Kuruugi: I at first thought of him as just Lelouch’s blander opposite number who could rival Kallen in OPness and who got insufferably unlikable in R2. But actually paying attention to his character arc in the first season made it clearer how much of a raw deal he got, and I now find him more likable and interesting.

Lelouch Vi Britannia: I’ve been all over the place with this guy, overall loving him but feeling like he was terribly mishandled after the first season (and even at places in the first season) and that he doesn’t deserve the fandom and alternate canonical glorification he gets.

DC MEDIA:

Clark Kent (Smallville): At first I found him to be one of the most interesting portrayals of Clark Kent, particularly a young Clark discovering his heritage and powers and calling in life, but seasons of poorly written decisions, a blander personality, constant character growth regression, and pulling off Superman exploits without flights and tights put me off of him, to the point where he could valdidly be called the worst character on his own show.

Lana Lang and Chloe Sullivan (Smallville): I once found Lana okay and thought Chloe was great, but Lana’s character took such a downturn not even halfway through the show that I was on the “Lana bad, Chloe good” train...until Chloe was outed as Krypto freak, fell in love with Oliver Queen, helped cause the Doomsday shit and the death of that fake Jimmy Olsen, was a poor copy of Lois Lane who was right fucking there now, and in general acted like a horrible person who got away with being one. Looking back, I can see the great points in Lana’s character in the first three seasons and the potential she was brimming with even afterwards, and can see the faults in Chloe that were there since early on. I’ve decided I ultimately like them both overall, but shit that happened with their actresses makes that sort of a guilty feeling.

Raven (Teen Titans): I never disliked her but she was at first my least favorite of the five Titans, making the insane amount of popularity she had in the fandom confounding and excruciating to me. Season 4 flipped my perception of her on its head and now I love her just as much as I love Starfire and almost as much as I love Terra.

Beast Boy (Teen Titans): By Season 4, Beast Boy displaced Raven as my least favorite Titan, and while that’s technically still true, AGAIN, anything I didn’t much like about him got flipped on its head by Season 5, which right out the gate reveals him as an abuse victim with a poor self image who’s been learning to cope with himself and bond close to others in his life. By the end of the show he’s matured and I can see him as a good character.

DANGANRONPA:

Mikan Tsumiki: Her clumsy chew toy status and fanservice antics got real grating really fast, with her emotional outbursts not helping, and then Case 3 happened. “FORGIVE ME!” No, I did not forgive her. Except then I decided I did forgive her, and getting more charm, depth, and humor from her character in free time events and the later spinoffs, and even some actually great, creepy moments from her during her culprit reveal, gave me a whole new appreciation for Mikan, to the point I can say she deserved better.

Kokichi Ouma: I liked him in the first half of V3, but the second half put me off him completely. Looking back, I realized there was a lot of potential to appreciate in him even in the second half, that he could’ve really been something had they not shoved him into a Nagito shaped hole to make him the Designated Villain in contrast to Maki’s Designated Hero.

DANNY PHANTOM:

Vlad Masters: I once thought of him as a cool villain with a fairly sympathetic backstory, a humanizing longing to be a family with Maddie and Danny plus understandable resentment of Jack for ruining so much of his life, and a negative character arc that ended in perfectly fitting tragedy, all sold by Martin Mull’s voice acting. While the “cool villain” part is still mostly true, I realized he was also a complete buffoon one time too many, a simping incel for Maddie who felt entitled to being family with her and Danny and resented Jack despite never being honest with him and being a scheming snake-in-the-grass false friend plotting to destroy his life all the time, and one character among many botched by the third season who well deserved the end he got, the tragedy element of which was ruined completely by an out-of-nowhere comical death!

DEATH NOTE:

Kiyomi Takada: I found her the blandest and most forgettable Death Note using villain in the series, and felt nothing for her death sans contempt for Light. The Last Name movie and the truncation of her role in L’s Successors warmed me up to her, and now I can see a lot more potential in her character and the status she held, like she could be a slightly more symapthetic version of Diethard from Code Geass in her media manipulation for an ingenius villain’s cause, and the Foe Yay between her and Misa is limitless in potential!

DIGIMON:

Sora Takenouchi & Mimi Tachikawa (original Adventure series): I always liked these two, but Sora was infamously Narmy and whiny in the dubbed version of her biggest character episodes and moments, and Mimi was pretty shrill and annoying in general especially early on in the dub. Nowadays I see them as two of the strongest heroines the franchise ever had and adore them both, individually and together.

The 02 DigiDestined: I liked them fine as a kid, but after Tamers, when comparing them to the casts before AND after them, the shine wore off on all but Ken. Then Tri happened and we were all horrified at the disrespect given to them out of universe AND in universe. While they’re still lacking, I appreciate Davis, Yolei, and Cody so much more nowadays.

BlackWarGreymon: His cool design, badass abilities, Steve Blum’s awesome voice, and the pathos of his character offset any problems I had with him and his arc back in the day. This did not age well, and nowadays I see him as wasted potential; a wangsty Digimon who did bad things too often for no good reason and ultimately had a meaningless existence in-narrative and in-universe.

Marcus Damon: I wasn’t really the biggest fan of him at first, as he was such a big departure from past “goggle boy” leaders. Then I realized wait, that big departure makes him stand out and made so many awesome moments with him possible. My liking of him increased when I realized Masaru Daimon was ultimately a shallow character in the original, so the dub scripting and Quinton Flynn’s voice acting actually improved him tremendously.

Akihiro Kurata: I appreciated the idea behind him but didn’t quite *get* him at first: why he factors Digimon so much into his plans when he hates them and wants to genocide them, why he despised Spenser Damon so much, why he wanted to rule the world, etc. Once I finally did *get* him, all those things that used to bother me about him became some of his most interesting facets.

DRAGON BALL:

Son Goku: Bringing him back to life in the Buu Saga never felt right after his death in the Cell Saga, and everything to feature him as the lead like GT and Super have just reinforced how not as interesting or enjoyable he is, especially with his humanizing qualities diluted. He’s now just a one dimensional fighter of strong guys!

Vegeta: Like Goku, him coming back to life in the Buu Saga after his death in that very saga felt off, and him becoming the spotlight stealing Lancer to Goku in everything afterwards diminished a lot of what used to be special about his character. That said, whenever that spotlight allows him character development, he’s still a way more compelling character to lead the cast than Goku.

Bulma Briefs: My first exposure to her was through the Namek Saga in the anime. Yeah, you can see the problem there. Thankfully she has such a long, rich history and resume of appearances throughout the franchise and unlike other of its female characters is still going strong, that I just adore her nowadays.

Tien Shinhan: I used to not give a shit about him at all and only came around to liking him better when John Burgmeier started voicing him. His development in pre-Z Dragon Ball and the Saiyan Saga, plus his epic self sacrificial stand against Cell in the Cell Saga, really raised my respect for him. He’s not a fave, but he’s definitely one I like, unlike his creepy little buddy Chiaotzu.

Master Roshi: I liked him well enough as a kid, but as I got older, the Dirty Old Man trope that he codified in shonen manga/anime just got more excruciating and made me glad it was toned down and censored in the TV dub. Recently I found that while his earliest material is still dated, he did become a much better character with true merit to him at around the 22nd Budokai and King Piccolo sagas, and like him for that, and enjoy whenever his pervert shtick is met with immediate comeuppance rather than him being allowed to leer at younger women for any longer than he should.

DREAMWORKS:

Puss In Boots: He was a great “haha, funny Zorro parody” character in Shrek 2, but making him such a major sidekick to Shrek afterwards never quite felt right and it was oversaturating the character. He got really cool again in his own movie, but again stuff like the spinoff series felt like more oversaturation of him. Then The Last Wish was made, and now he truly IS a legend. One of the best Dreamworks protagonists ever, pure boy, we love him and must protect him.

FINAL FANTASY:

Lightning Farron: Was not a fan of her as a character at first, though she wasn’t one of the worst XIII had to offer. Several appearances in other games later, I realized none of what went wrong with her and her role as a heroine was really her fault, modern Squenix incompetence screwed her over and set her up to falter at every turn. She’s a cool character, and she deserved so much better!

FRUITS BASKET:

Kagura Sohma: I am so all over the place with this girl. First I thought she was just alright, then the reality of her abusive behavior and actions set in and I disliked her immensely, then I loved her again in the 2001 anime but loathed her again in the 2019 anime, but then the 2019 version became likable to me in the following seasons!

FUTURE DIARY:

Tsubaki Kasugano: Her mini-arc was so sabotaged and her whole deal delivered so distastefully that I was put off of Tsubaki. But not only was her World 3 outcome and follow-up in Re:Dial and her showing in Paradox a marked improvement, looking back at the sheer amount of potential her character and the cult had prior to it all getting sent off the rails gave me more appreciation and even liking for the poor girl.

GRAVITY FALLS:

Mabel Pines: I don’t dislike her at all, but I had the same critical re-evaluation of her writing and handling as many did.

GURREN LAGANN:

Kamina: I am split right down the middle on this dude. At first I enjoyed him and found him the undisputed shining star of the show. Then I learned what toxic masculinity was and the glorification of his character began to feel wrong to me. Upon rewatching, I could enjoy and appreciate him again because the toxic masculinity was unintended on his part but intentional in the writing as something he was growing out from by the end of his life and that was re-shaped into something healthier and truly inspirational by his friends as his legacy after death...but this gets blurred in the time-skip episodes where characters like Simon and Kittan end up worse off for following in Kamina’s footsteps, so he becomes a Gwen Stacy type figure who gets a lot less interesting and more insufferable after he’s dead.

HARRY POTTER: Hermione Granger: Movie Hermione was a Canon Sue, and while book Hermione’s a great character, she inherited some unsavory traits from her author that never really got accounted for.

Draco Malfoy: I hated his character for most of the series and the Draco In Leather Pants trope he named, but the last two installments plus The Cursed Child made him so much more interesting, so I can appreciate and respect his character more with that destinaton.

Cho Chang and Marietta Edgecombe: I only felt more and more sorry for the raw deal they got as the years went on. They deserved better!

INUYASHA:

Kikyo: For a while, Kikyo was emblemetic of Rumiko Takahashi’s problem with keeping a constantly lingering status quo, as she refused to stay dead, dammit! Over time, the interesting facets of her character and the complex relationship she has with Inuyasha and Kagome won me over to her and she’s one of the few characters I’m glad had her story play out for as long as it did, as it ended up reaching a perfect conclusion.

Miroku: At first he struck me as one of the coolest characters in the main cast. Years later I realized: fuck this loser!

KIM POSSIBLE:

Kim Possible & Ron Stoppable: Yes, both of them. Was not a big Kim fan and thought her a Mary Sue, but over the years I realized how cool, funny, and effectively humanized character she is in spite of her unrealistic “can do anything” perfectionism. On the flip side I was far more partial to Ron, but his voice became a lot to take in and when he became Kim’s boyfriend, he got way over-emphasized in the final season to the point of stealing the show from Kim in the grand finale of her own series! I still really like him in the earlier episodes but am not as big a fan overall anymore.

LOVE LIVE!

Lanzhu Zhong: I was in the “not a fan” camp regarding her as an antagonist in ALL STARS, bemoaning the potential that was squandered by bad writing. The anime version totally salvaged the character, and now I imagine if THAT characterization had been applied to her more villainous ALL STARS role from the start, she’d be so great. She’s now overall one of my favorite school idols ever.

MARVEL MEDIA:

Mary Jane Watson (The Spectacular Spider-Man): When she first showed up I really liked her and thought her a great portrayal of the MJ character. By Season 2, she was such a nothingburger of a character aside from a subplot with Mark Allen that I looked back and realized the faults in Greg Weisman trying to replicate her 616 comics character arc and having her be like college-aged MJ as a high schooler, so nowadays she’s a standard of what NOT to do in an adaptation that could run a limited lifespan.

Liz Allen & Sally Avril (The Spectacular Spider-Man):. Liz was just kinda there and average to me at first, and Sally was annoying and unlikable. By Season 2, Liz had become a lot more likable and sympathetic to me and Sally was so over-the-top an asshole that she was hilarious and endearing. By the end, the two of them honestly stand out more than MJ did.

Michael Morbius: I couldn’t get enough of this guy as a kid watching the 90′s Spider-Man series, since I loved me a tragic but creepy and badass vampire as a Spidey rogue. Years later I got wise to his needless overuse and the ridiculous censorship around him, making me like him less. But later on I ended up loving him all over again BECAUSE of his ridiculousness, culminating in the Morbius movie and all the Morbin’ memes it gave us!

Miles Morales: I was not a big fan of Brian Michael Bendis’ creation and found there were better Spidey successors than him. The 2017 show, the Insomniac games, and especially the Spiderverse movies turned me around on him and now I cannot love and appreciate the kid enough!

MIRACULOUS:

Gabriel Agreste: For a good many years he was a villain I cared nothing for, being a poor man’s Norman Osborn with a formulaic Magical Girl Villain shtick. Then in 2020, watching the show during quarantine, I was won over by him being so entertaining as a villain and interesting as a character, compounded by Keith Silverstein’s voice acting. But his Villain Decay in Seasons 3 and 4, contrasted with his efficiency in the Miraculous World specials, followed by Seasons 5, made Gabriel an irredeemable tumor on the show who went out in a horrifically glamorizing way. At the same time, the new movie version of the character was great, salvaging my love for him.

Chloe Bourgeois: I never liked her in canon to start with and further canon did not make my image of her any better (to put it lightly), but the sheer hatred her creator has for her and the character degradation he put her through, plus some of her earlier more humanizing bits and her amusing dynamic with Lila give me some degree of pity and acceptance of her, and I think she deserved better.

Lila Rossi: I knew her at first as a poorly written caricature of a lying, fake ass teenage bitch who let everyone down in “Volpina” and made the fandom rage in “Chameleon.” But I couldn’t help but be drawn to her when I found the potential for deliciously devious and effective villainy plus interesting character dynamics were so abundant in her, not to mention the humor value in how over-the-top she takes her lies and evilness and the way she trolls others, including the audience. While the writing ended up leaning a bit too much into ridiculousness with her by Season 5, she’s still one of the characters I’m least bothered by compared to so many in the cast.

Luca Couffaine: I found him not that interesting in Season 2, particularly compared to Kagami. In Season 3, he became a fuller character and was easier to like and enjoy. Late into the show, he’s become one of the most decent people in the cast and a guy I’d have much rather seen Marinette hook up with than Adrien.

Marinette Dupain Cheng: In Seasons 1 and 2, I loved this girl, and in Season 3 while I tired of the constant selective, degrading, abusive treatment of her by the narrative and other characters, it wasn’t exactly her fault and she was still the most decent character on the show no matter how much it shit on her. Then she became the Guardian, and broke up with Luka, and reaffirmed herself as a yandere for Adrien, and made fail after fail after fail all the way to the Season 5 finale, where she ends up lying to Adrien about his father just to spare his fee-fees from being hurt. Pre-Guardianship Marinette is still great and she’s great in the movie too, but I am beyond done with her in the show now.

The Class / Friends: I still overall like many of their characters, Alya in particular, but they just got worse and stupider since the days of “Chameleon”, and they well deserve all the salt they’ve recieved.

NARUTO:

Naruto Uzumaki: He was the scrappy underdog hero who was abused by his village for being born with a demon inside him and would work hard at realizing his dream, except then he is a CHILD of PROPHECY, and it’s hard to state all the ways he became the most despicable, unlikable protagonist in the world who only ever got worse and worse as the franchise has gone on. Believe it! Sasuke Uchiha: He was never a likable character to start with and he just kept on geting worse. His character in Boruto is surprisingly better than how Naruto turned out, but it fails to endear me to him after how badly he was portrayed in the original series. Sakura Haruno: I liked her in Part 1 mainly for what she had the potential to blossom into, plus some genuinely strong and entertaining moments here and there, and defended her from the amount of hate she’d regularly get until by mid Part 2 I just could not with her anymore. There is a REASON she’s cited as a definitively bad shonen manga/anime heroine. Every damn thing about her ultimately amounted to JACK SHIT. I feel sorry for her and she deserved better, but I can no longer defend her. Kakashi Hatake: He was one of my favorites early on, but he became more and more of a boring sensei and eventually a disaster of a temporary Hokage, and the more I looked back, the more I started to question what the point of him even was when Iruka-sensei had so much more promise as a character.

Hinata Hyuga: It was all downhill from her after she survived her death at Pain’s hands, with her reaching the point of no return when her cousin Neji died and she still cared more about holding onto Naruto-kun’s hand! Like Sakura, she deserved better, but her trajectory towards becoming Hokage Naruto’s submissive yet neglected waifu is indefensible.

Shikamaru Nara: There just came a point where he stopped being funny and just got downright douchey, yet he’s given so much attention and glory that he did not earn.

Orochimaru: He was a perfectly decent villain, really elevated by the creepy visuals and theme music that accompanied him in the anime... What the fuck happened to this guy? He’s become an absolute joke in the franchise these days!

The Akatsuki: They went from showing promise to shake things up in the narrative to being just a bland Organization XIII copycat)

Tobi: From a semi-sincere and affectionate “Tobi Is A Good Boy” to a derisive, sarcastic “Obito Was The Coolest Guy!”. That says it all.

Itachi Uchiha: It honestly would’ve been better if he WAS the cold-blooded monster he appeared to be to Sasuke, as everything regarding him after his own death has made him an unintentionally unsympathetic dum-dum!

Tenten: Everything she could be given flak for ended up being the very things that she could be commended for later into the series. Kishimoto ignoring her as often as he did meant she was spared from the level of sexist writing that befell the female characters he DID put his attention to! Later showings like in Rock Lee & His Ninja Pals and Boruto made her easily one of the best heroines in this entire franchise!

Neji Hyuga - The arrogant, self-serious douchebag who actually grew as a person and sufficiently redeemed himself for his past mistakes, yet THAT NIGGA DIES! Thank God for Rock Lee & His Ninja Pals, where he’s even more endearing a character.

Rock Lee: My liking for him grew the more screwed over he got, and it paid off when he starred in Rock Lee & His Ninja Pals and out-foxed Naruto as the superior protagonist!

Gaara: The more time went on the more it became clear that the series peaked with Gaara as the antagonist, and his later character development was astonishingly good by this series’ standards.

Iruka Umino: In retrospect, he was the heart of the series as it started out, so when he was lost to it, so was the series as a whole lost.

Tsunade: Out of all Hokage, Tsunade was the most preferable option - the first three Hokage already laid a lot of the groundwork for the problems Tsunade had to deal with, Minato’s fuckups were so heinous, including being Naruto’s father, that it squanders his legacy, Kakashi was abysmal, and Naruto’s somehow even worse! Come back Tsunade, all is forgiven! In terms of both small and further-reaching achievements, she actually has all other Hokage beat, and her most major failings really came directly from Kishimoto writing her to be so easily kowtowed by the wants and requests of Naruto and his friends out of biased favorability. Not to mention she’s one of the few females in this series allowed to be the least bit powerful AND fully developed as a character the whole way.

Ino Yamanaka: I always loved her, but man, she ended up there with Tenten as one of Konoha’s best kunoichi, far better than Sakura!

Kin Tsuchi: She at first came off as a straw female misogynist who Sakura would have to prove wrong about her. Long after she’s dead and buried, it becomes clear that she was the epitome of “Why are you booing me? I’m right!”. She deserved better, fuck that loser Orochimaru for offing her like he did!

Pain/Nagato: He didn’t impress me much as a villain or as a character when he was around. Following antics from Sasuke, Obito, Black Zetsu, Madara, and the random woman final boss, it became clear that Pain would’ve been so much better as the Big Bad here!

Karin Uzumaki: Her whole character was a back-and-forth, but in the end, she at least managed to surpass Sakura in that she found REAL self respect and didn’t get with the asshole who tried to kill her.

NISEKOI:

Hana Kirisaki: Happened in real time, where you’re made to see her as an abusive mother to Chitoge only for the truth to come out that she’s just an emotionally incompetent woman-child who felt she’d made her daughter dislike her and thus thought she was doing her a favor by being in her life as little as possible (and Raku does NOT let her off easy for these colossal parenting fuck ups). In all of Hana’s later reapparances, she and Chitoge are super close and I’m able to better appreciate what a badass girlboss Hana is.

Raku Ichijou and Kosaki Onodera: I liked these two as characters quite a lot in the anime, though in Raku’s case he got notably Flanderized in Season 2 compared to Season 1. In the manga, their stagnant attitudes and relationship got so insufferable that they were the weakest part of the series, with Raku absolutely ruining the flow of the narrative when his character reached new heights of self absorption and became all about being in love with Chitoge while completely oblivious to every other girls’ feelings for him, Kosaki’s included. By the end, Kosaki felt screwed over, and the only thing that narrowly saved Raku was not only commitment to becoming Chitoge’s lover but the narrative unintentionally coming clean about him being a bad person by having him reject his earlier civil servant dreams in favor of being a crime boss who works with government.

NEON GENESIS EVANGELION:

Mari Illustrious Makinami: I did not care for this character or understand her inclusion in the Rebuild movies at all when she came in for Movie 2. But everything she went onto feature in endeared me more and more to her, to the point where I am fully welcoming of her in the main Eva cast whenever she turns up.

ONCE UPON A TIME:

Mulan: She was the weak link of Team Princess for me in Season 2A, but later appearances by her and certain developments with her (or without her in the case of her relationship with Ruby) just kept on vindicating her, with the final straw being the 2020 live action remake of Mulan. Jamie Chung is remains the definitive live action Fa Mulan.

OUAT Robin Hood: I did not care for his introduction in Season 2, but I liked him in Season 3 + OUATIW and liked Sean Maguire in the role. But then Season 4A just absolutely butchered him. Season 4B and Season 5 put me off him further by making me feel too bad for him, making him such a miserable presence on the show with an ultimately meaningless life!

POKEMON:

Misty and May: Basically the same as what’s on the TV Tropes page.

Brock: Went from being glad he came back for Johto after Tracey temprorarily replaced him to wishing he’d stayed gone the first time given the amount of times he came back into the main group for no good reason and just got staler and staler as a character! Like Misty, he was best off NOT with Ash anymore!

The Sensational Sisters: Their valley girl voices, lax management of the Cerulean Gym, hostility towards Misty in their first appearance, and status of being non-existent in the games made me dislike these three at first. Over the years those factors bothered me less and I began to see how interesting the four sisters family dynamic was, found their personalities funny and endearing, and came to appreciate the stuff they were good at, with Daisy even becoming her own character. To top it all off with a punchline of sorts, as of Let’s Go Pikachu and Eevee, now they ARE existent in the games!

Giselle: She was a memorable character in the anime, but I saw her as a Mean Girl. Years later the nostalgia she gives me only got stronger, she reached Memetic Sex Goddess status, and in that single episode she is well developed, entertaining, and not even as mean-spirited as I’d remembered. To top it all off, Sun & Moon ended up proving her approach was right all along!

Drew: He came off as just the Coordinator version of Gary Oak at first, but developed into a more distinct character as the show went on. After the varying degrees of how rivals were handled in later series’, I came to look back at Drew with more fondness, thinking of him as one of the best PokeAni-original rivals.

Lyra: Anime!Lyra annoyed me until she suddenly crossed the line into being hilarious with her shipping goggle vision and calling Dawn “Dane”. Game!Lyra also endeared herself to me in Pokemon Masters EX, where she and Kris get to co-exist and be a friendship team!

Marina: I didn’t get why she was so typically girly, spacey, and fame-hungry to the point of being narcissistic, and her damsel in distress stint was offputting; it felt like a bad representation of the Kris character. With more context for why she turned out that way (Kris was still a not fully formed rough draft at the time this got made), seeing how awesome and competent she was outside of being a damsel, and even learning she’d realized her dream by becoming Johto’s Top Coordinator gave me new respect and appreciation for her, to the point where I’d say she was a better heroine in a single special than Serena would be for the entire XY&Z series!

Clair: She was one of my less liked Gym Leaders in Gen 2, but her Gen 4 reinvention shot her up in my favor considerably more.

Cyrus: I liked Cyrus as an IDEA for a villain in Diamond & Pearl more than I liked how he actually was as a villain in practice. Platinum took all that potential in the idea and tried to more fully realize it, to a considerable degree of success as far as 2D Pokemon game villains go, making him one of my favorite villains in the entire franchise. Since then almost everything to feature him has only solidified this, with Pokemon Adventures and Pokemon Masters EX in particular giving him some of the most compelling writing of any Poke’ villain.

The Aether Family: When Sun & Moon first came out and I got to experience them, I loved these characters. But the more I let their story sit, the more flaws I began to pick up on, until I wanted them to FUCK OFF! Ultra Sun & Ultra Moon, the SuMo anime, and Pokemon Masters EX brought me back around to loving them, their character growth, and the all the heavy drama potential in their story, and I find them some of the most interesting human characters in the franchise.

PUELLA MAGI MADOKA MAGICA:

Homura Akemi: Homura was my least favorite of the Quintet, as I felt we didn’t really get to know much about her character pre-meeting Madoka, and so much of her motivations revolved entirely around her fanatical obsession with Madoka with her underlining darker side and morally questionable actions getting swept under the rug in the end, making her not that interesting. Say what you will of Homucifer and there was a lot that went wrong with how that twist got implemented, but Rebellion actually made me understand, appreciate, and even love Homura more, with her main series character being stronger in retrospect and she’s now constantly fighting Sayaka and Kyoko for the second or third spot.

SAILOR MOON:

Chibi Usa/Rini: I was frequently annoyed by her in the DiC dub (that grating, shitty ass voice acting!) and by Super S I was just sick to death of her. But the years have made me kinder to the poor kid, especially with me getting to re-experience R with Sandy Fox’s delightful voice acting in the Viz Dub and seeing her stronger points in the original manga and Crystal. She’s so precious to me now! <3

The Death Busters: They were my least favorite villains out of the four seasons that got dubbed (even weaker than the filler alien duo!), with only Professor Tomoe standing out as a great villain. I still think the anime did them dirty, but I gained new appreciation for Eudial’s competence and Mimete’s comedy, and the entirety of the Death Busters were infinitely (pun intended) better portrayed in the manga and Crystal Infinity.

SONIC THE HEDGEHOG

SatAM!Robotnik: His imposing figure, mechanical dictatorship aesthetic, and Jim Cummings’ voice acting made me think him a cool and scary bad guy when I was a kid. But not only did his “in name only” relation to Robotnik bother me more and more over time, what really soured me on him was his own character’s lack of solid consistency. Compared to Julian Kintobor of Archie Comics, this Julian is a boring old bastard who mooched off of the works of others in order to get ahead, and who constantly lost cred as a villain culminating in an underwhelming final defeat in the last episode.

Geoffrey St. John: Basically this one post.

STAR WARS:

Qui-Gon Jinn: I took Qui Gon and Liam Neeson in the role as the standout good quality of The Phantom Menace aside from Padme and the always reliable Palpatine/Sidious. But while I still like the character overall, him in The Phantom Menace speficially now feels off, like time and a role that should’e gone to Obi-Wan got usurped by this doomed character who barely leaves an impact on the saga going forward, not to mention how his very existence contrdicts Yoda’s status as “the Jedi Master who trained Obi-Wan.”

Darth Maul: I took Maul, meanwhile, as one of the biggest letdowns in The Phantom Menace, ultimately one of its weaker aspects. After his character got resurrected and developed into one of the all time great Star Wars villains, I looked back at The Phantom Menace and realized he lucked out in getting less exposure and dialogue when seeing what other characters were saddled with, and that duel of him against Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan was so fucking good, even better than I remembered. So for me, Maul Was Always Cool.

TORADORA:

Taiga Aisaka and Ryuji Takasu: Prior to the show being dubbed, I thought them the weak links of the cast and their love story was something I was least interested in seeing play out. Taiga pissed me off with her violently tsundere jerkassery in the first cours, and Ryuji pissed me off with his wishy washiness in the second cours. Then Cassandra Lee Morris and Erik Scott Kimerer voiced them in the dub, and everything about them took on a whole new life, to the point where I Toradore their characters and relationship these days.

WHEN THEY CRY:

Dr. Irie: What’s funny is that my outlook on him hasn’t actually changed, I still find him quite an interesting character - a man who strives to do good despite his dark past and how messed up inside he is. It’s just that the negative qualities in him get that much more negative when I look back, especially in the anime where he’s actively predatory towards kids on top of being an aspiring groomer. Everything he says regarding Satoko paints him as a horrible person.

Satoko Houjo: I loved this character to start with, but somehow the recent content that ties her more to Lambdadelta and deepens her relationship with Rika, even with the Gou/Sotsu anime butchering her in the execution of it, makes me love her even more. There’s a reason she is now more recognized as a gaslighting gatekeeping girlboss than she ever was as an innocent victim to be saved.

Teppei Houjo: Ihought I could not loathe this man more if I tried, but then I learned that in the original VN he was a straight up misogynist who had sexual urges towards his young abused niece and was grooming her for when she’d be old enough to “satisfy him sexually”. For reals, FUCK this ANIMAL. And yet somehow that wasn’t the end of it, as later Teppei content in Gou/Sotsu, Meguri, and Mei stressed the fact that yeah, he’s a horrible human being but that’s still a human being, and there was now more range in stories that could be told for him, including one where he actually turned his life around for the better and atoned for his past sins. While my default stance on Teppei is still “fuck him”, I tolerate and appreciate his character more, and it somehow makes the enjoyment I get out of watching bad karma befall him in any given loop an even more satisfiying feeling.

Battler Ushiromiya: I saw him in the anime first and he was horrendouly depicted as a character, with even the Metaverse Purgatory version of him I came to enjoy more ending the series an irredeemable fuckup. Then I got the real stuff in the manga and VNs.

Maria Ushiromiya: I could hardly stand her in the anime at first, where both her pwecious persona and her creepy child persona were way exaggerated. Halfway through, she grew on me. And then I got the real stuff in the manga and VNs. Maria is a truly precious neurodivergent minor who must be loved and protected.

Rosa Ushiromiya: think most people go back and forth on how they feel about this character. She’s a child abuser and I fucking hate that about her, but she’s a very tortured and complex character as well, and the Chiru arcs do a lot to redeem her, even more in the manga.

Rudolf Ushiromiya: This is the only one of Kinzo’s four adult children where my negative impression of him only got worse. Even during his “redemptive” parts in the final arc, I could not ever fully forgive him because the nature of the sins he’d committed was so disgustingly horrible and yet he has the gall to take an almost victim blaming stance towards his daughter for shit HE caused!

Kinzo Ushiromiya: The things about him that grated on me at first - him being such a comically horrible old man, his occult fixation, and his “OOOOOOOH BEATORICEEEE!” freakouts - became the very things I came to enjoy about him, they are hilarious. I also thought Chiru let him off way easier than it should’ve given what a horrid person he was and the heinous things he did, but the manga rectified this with its portrayal of Golden Land Kinzo. The only thing I hate about him is the presentation of his backstory, which is a slog to read in VN and manga form.

YU YU HAKUSHO:

Younger Toguro: I hated the guy for backhanding Yukina, killing Genkai, fake-killing Kuwabara, and being so damn hard to beat and kill, with his later justifications for the shit he pulled failing to move me much, especially since so much of his backstory relied on left field information that wasn’t build to. Upon later rewatches, I realized he was quite sympathetic, having more visible self loathing yet committment to his own honor code than I’d given him credit for. While I still find Sensui a better villain, Toguro was a far better tragic figure in terms of being able to like and feel for.

YU-GI-OH!:

All Filler Characters in Duel Monsters: I like Rebecca Hawkins, Raphael, and Vivian Wong more than I first did, came to like Anubis, Dartz, and Valon less than I first did, and my negative feelings for Noah Kaiba, Alister, and the Von Schroeder Brothers just got worse (though Zigfried is closer to liking due to how funny his badness is). But overall I cannot say that I hate any of them.

ZATCH BELL:

Suzy Mizuno: She was a Scrappy when I first started watching the show, but as it went on, her comedy started feeling less intrusive and more show stealing in its genuinely hilarious delivery, and she even had some depths outside of her comic relief role that showed what a generally nice, decent person she was, and now I just love her for it.

Character Perception Evolution

Sometimes, believe it or not, I change my views on fictional characters.

This post will be updated with any example of such characters I can think of.

Keep reading

#characters #opinion #criticism #character perception evolution

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