Most of the time heroes are praised and loved for the good deeds they do, but life is not always fair: many the best anime heroes have a bad reputation in their world. Maybe they get accused for something they didn’t do and no one will believe they’re really good people. Or maybe society is always determined to arbitrarily keep them at the bottom.
Either way, these heroes will have to struggle more than anyone else to get the recognition they deserve. At worst, they never could, and will go down in their world history as one of the bad guys. Ruining someone is sad enough, but ruining their reputation and even their memories is a completely different tragedy.
10 Kenzo Tenma – Monster (2004 – 2005)
Dr. Tenma may be the kindest and most incorruptible character in one of the scariest psychological horror anime, but that doesn’t always go well for him. His urge to save a child’s life instead of the life of a major donor to his hospital almost cost him his career. As it turns out, even the deaths of the doctors who were sabotaging him come back to bite him: young Johan has an interesting way of repaying Tenma for saving his life.
When the adult Johan returned to continue his murder, Tenma was blamed for it and had to continue on the run. Johan’s uncanny ability to leave no trace of his own existence can fool even the best detective in the world, leading Lunge to conclude that “Johan” is an alternate personality of Tenma. Tenma is cast as an unstable and unhelpful killer as he tries to stop Johan’s actual murder and help his victims.
9 Guts – Berserk (1997)
Itinerant mercenary Guts has one of the most tragic storylines in anime, as an orphan whose abusive adoptive father blames the plague that killed his adoptive mother. It doesn’t get better for him as he reaches adulthood. In fact, it could even get worse.
As an adult, Guts are still considered a harbinger of misfortune. Traveling around one of the worst anime worlds to live in, he regularly destroys powerful demons known as Apostles, whose fighters regularly destroy cities and lead to casualties. heavy. To boot, they can take on human form even after death, making it easier for the public to see Guts as the vicious, murderous Black Swordsman instead of a protector.
8 Kyo Sohma – Fruit basket (2019 – 2021)
Kyo may be relatively popular among his high school acquaintances, but he’s the ultimate scapegoat in his own family. As Cat, he is not considered an official member of the Zodiac, and as Shigure explains, being excluded is his role. The other cursed Sohmas might feel bad, but at least they could look at the cat and be relieved that they weren’t like it.
He is shunned and despised by most of the Sohmas, except for his adoptive father Kazuma and a select few Zodiac members. His biological father has a particular hatred for him, blaming Kyo and his much more monstrous “true form” for his mother’s suicide. Although angry at the abuse, Kyo resigned himself to lifelong isolation and found it difficult to accept Tohru’s unconditional love and care.
7 Kanade Tachibana – Angel Beats (2010)
When Otonashi first arrived in the afterlife, shocked and confused, he was told the rules of survival in this new world of existence. One of them is to never trust the mysterious, stoic white-haired girl, Angel. They say she seems innocent, but keeping her near you means being tricked into oblivion.
The more Otonashi questioned this idea, the more cruel they felt their boycott and destruction of Kanade became. It is revealed that Kanade is not really an Angel of Death, but a dead human just like them, who is just trying to help people move on and has trouble expressing his feelings, causing them all to her treatment for her efforts becomes one of the saddest scenes in isekai anime in hindsight.
6 Saitama – One Punch Man (2015 – 2019)
As the show’s title implies, Saitama is the strongest brawler in the world. Monsters and villains both fell before him with a single punch, no matter how strong they were. In any other show, he would go down in history as one of the greatest heroes of all time.
Unfortunately, One Punch Man is not that kind of show. Saitama was disparaged by the public and the hero community: no one believed that he was actually that strong, and he was famous for stealing credit for other heroes’ victories. Saitama’s loyal disciple, Genos, suffers about it far more than Saitama himself, who considers himself a “hero for fun” and actively cultivates this heel-to-heel personality to enhance his brothers’ reputations. hero of his colleagues.
5 Jinchuuriki – Naruto (2002 – 2017)
Naruto’s childhood was ostracized in Konoha for accidentally being the host of the most screened Nine-Tails Fox. But none of Naruto’s Tailed Beasts hosts had an easy time. They are considered to have the demonic traits of powerful beings within them, even sometimes considered one and the same as them, and responsible for the destruction and death they cause.
At best, most turn out to be loners and at worst, lonely, resentful bastards. For example, Gaara was never accepted by the Sand villagers because of Shukaku’s inability to control the sand, and survived numerous assassination attempts from his own father, causing his original bloodthirsty worldview. And they all ended up becoming targets for Akatsuki, who noted that most villages didn’t mind when their jinchriki were kidnapped and killed.
4 86 – 86: Eighty-Six (2021)
Officially, the battle against the Giadian Empire’s Robot Legion had no casualties on the San Magnolia side. This is because the ruling Alba has legally stripped District 86 of its right to exist, deeming its people inhumane and forcing them to do military service. The country’s continued existence rested on oppression and the premature death of 86 people.
Shinei Nouzen and his fellow pilots risk their lives to protect San Magnolia every day, knowing that no one will ever thank them for it. Even as they pride themselves on how their war keeps civilians alive, they live in terror of being killed in battle and join the countless dead souls that make up the Legion. Their manager Lena is the only Alba trying to connect with them like everyone else; the rest of her people openly despise them as “pigs”.
3 Grade 3-E – Assassination Classroom (2015 – 2016)
Parents of Kunugigaoka Middle School students know they are sending their children to one of the most difficult institutions in the country. However, they really don’t know the other half of it: the school is run according to a brutal hierarchy, which revolves around treating the students with the lowest grades as scapegoats. Class E is banished to a one-room school on the edge of campus, with staff and other students free to abuse them.
As Class 3-E became stronger students under Korosensei’s tutelage, the rest of the school only treated them worse, fearing what would happen if the ranking order changed. Not even important to the survival of mankind help their reputation. President Gakuho is still determined to stop them, knowing full well that the world will end if they can’t fulfill their mission.
2 Rin Okumura – Blue Exorcist (2011 – 2017)
Being the son of Satan always set Rin apart from everyone else, even before his abilities were awakened. When he first begins training as an exorcist at True Cross Academy, he must keep his legacy a secret from his new classmates, and for good reason. When they saw his demonic powers at work, they were all horrified and immediately saw him as a monster.
Even after Rin’s classmates accepted him back into the group and protected him as their friend, he still hadn’t come out of the forest. The Vatican still considers him a high-level threat to humanity by his very existence and wants nothing more than to see him die. Yukio, Rin’s older brother who has hidden powers far beyond Rin, is constantly caught between love and resentment for his twin in one of the best sibling fights in anime. .
1 Vash The Stampede – Trigun (1998 And 2023)
Vash has no evil bones in him. Not only does he refuse to kill anything, even with powers far beyond anything a human possesses, he won’t let anyone else kill someone if he can stop it. All he wants to do is find his place among humanity and spread love and peace as much as he can.
Unfortunately, Gunsmoke is not a planet as good as Vash is a human. Because of his amazing destructive abilities and the collateral damage often inflicted by those who hunted him for the bounty of his head, Vash was utterly hated by the entire planet. He is known and feared as the Humanoid Typhoon, and never achieves the rest and connection with the human he so desperately craves, instead finding only some of the most devastating moments. in anime.
Despite the rejections they receive, these heroes never lose their kind hearts and never stop fighting to do what’s right. The best anime heroes with bad reputation Their strength and kindness often pays off when they find like-minded souls who understand and accept them, allowing them to move forward with that love in their lives.
