Boring characters in animation

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Noel K

New member
Hey y'all,

OOC, does anyone have an anime or cartoon series where they find one of the main characters to be incredibly boring? Here's some of mine.

Lisa Simpson, as of the latest Simpsons seasons. She's just so boring these days, and even the bit about her becoming Buddhist hasn't shown.

Kenny, as of the later South Park seasons. While I certainly don't miss the gag of him dying every episode, it was pretty much what defined his character. He just hasn't been fun like he used to be of late.


Anime

Iori Hida, Digimon Adventure 02: To quote my friend:

"Oh, I have to be all proper and traditional and do kendo because Jinnai knows I have nothing else going on in my life. Oh, some kid made a grievous mistake and torments himself constantly over it, I must shun him now so the writers can develop my acceptance of him later due to a contrivance, instead of allowing me to use my empathy and logic to do so on my own. And some creepy guy knew my dad. That's important for some reason."

Anyone else have any incredibly boring characters they can think of?
 
I agree with Kenny. Ever since they stopped killing him he's been basically irrelevant.

I don't think Lisa is boring. She can be annoying at times, but not boring.

I think Chris from Family Guy is boring though. He's basically a less funny version of Peter.
 
Chris Griffin is as stupid as Peter, but he's more sensitive, caring and compassionate than his father is. In any case, I wouldn't say that Chris is a boring character. If he and Meg aren't interesting characters, it's only because Family Guy's writers didn't make them interesting. Characters are only as interesting as their creators/writers make them.

I can't comment on Lisa Simpson because I haven't watched The Simpsons in ages.
 
An example that I remember from my childhood is Tim from the Magic School Bus. He was the kid who can draw, and that was pretty much it.
 
I agree with you about Iori/Cody. That statement does pretty much covers the main problem with his character. While I'm not sure if I would label him as a boring character, I thought that last arc at least tried to make him a bit more interesting, he was still a fairly dull character to me and my least favorite of the new Chosen Children in 02. It also might help that his English voice was pretty flat most of the time.

The only other character that I can think of as a boring character one of the series I've watched is Chumley Huffington from Yu-Gi-Oh! GX. He was only in the first season, but he virtually useless. He mostly just hung around Jaden and Syrus, cheered for them during their duels and was kidnapped along with Syrus to force Jaden to duel the first Shadow Rider. He did have two duels, but he lost them and neither of them actually made him an interesting character. The last one did provide some growth on his character, but that didn't really change the fact that he had little to no importance in the show. The writers really could have gotten rid of him and it wouldn't have affected the plot. While he did give Jaden a card in season two that helped him win a duel, they could have either gotten rid of that episode or just have Jaden win in another lucky fashion.

Chumley could have been an interesting character since he was one of the two third year students in the main cast. Maybe if the writers focused more on him and/or gave him a more significant role for the show, then I would have liked him more. Though, as much as I love GX, one of the series main weaknesses was that it couldn't give a lot of development and focus to its characters.
 
I don't think Lisa is boring... She's just a little annoying to me... at least.

As for boring characters, Mai from Avatar is quite... bland to me. :sweat: I know its her personality and all, but she's not as great as people make her out to be. (I do love her fighting skills, though)
 
You're all going to hate me for this, but if you ask me, a series with boring main characters:

Naruto.

Seriously, in my humble opinion, the only main character with an interesting personality is Gaara. The rest are badly written to annoying - especially with the recent love triangle change.

Who do I find interesting in Naruto?

Akatsuki members.

And before y'all give me the whole "villains are supposed to die," "while, SOMEBODY had to beat them eventually," etc., thing - yeah, I know that. What pisses me off is that the only interesting characters in the series (in my humble opinion) are evil.

And before this becomes a huge argument over that:

Another character in Digimon Adventure 02 whom I found boring now is Hikari. The first season characters basically just faded into the background, but at least most (read: MOST) of them kept their original basic personalities - i.e., Jou still wanted to be a doctor, Yamato expanded his horizons a little with music, Koushiro was still a computer geek, etc. To quote my friend on how boring Hikari became in 02:

Everybody got a blind eye to Hikari in Adventure 01 for many reasons. 1) She was the perfect match for Takeru, so shippers loved her; 2) She was just a little girl, so she could be as random as she got, and 3) She only showed up on the end, never had any real time to develop. In Adventure 02 they had all the time in the world to develop her. And what did they do?

Well, she is afraid of some sort of Cthulhu entity who shows up once and never again. And then she has some sort of darkness phobia and, WHEN THE WRITERS FEEL LIKE, she has some sort of love for taking photographs. Other than that, she is the Mary Sue who keeps being disputed by two guys - nothing makes her stand out and even her design is boring. It's annoying how they could make Takeru to be at least a nice character in 02, but nothing to Hikari. Such wasted opportunities.

No, that's not my wording. It's a quote from a pal.

I also have to add, I was never a fan of Evo Nightcrawler. His voice was annoying, and he was never very interesting as a character. To me, anyway. :P

And in the far better (to me, anyway) TAS, I found Silver Samurai boring as a character. Yeah, he only had one appearance, but there was so much more that could have been done with him, even if he would only ever have a minor role.
 
I'm going to be murdered for this... Gaz from Invader ZIM. Yes, I know everyone LOOOOVES Gaz to death... but I find her character to be boring and very 2-dimensional. She likes video games and pizza a lot and gets mad about everything. There's really not much else besides that to her. Which makes her 'creepiness' come off as irritating most of the time.

Personally, a female character I did like in ZIM was Tak. She was only in one episode but managed to leave an impact that Gaz couldn't do for the entire show's run.

And speaking of characters who are loved and 2-dimensional... early season Stewie from Family Guy. I honestly like mid-seasons Stewie better since he had a personality, even though it mostly was used for gay jokes. Still, that whole "look at me, I'm an evil baby who wants to take over the world!" shtick kinda got old on me fast.


 
On the same note, Mandy from The Grim Adventures etc. She has to be one of the flattest, least interesting characters ever created. There's nothing to her but anger. She treats everyone like garbage. And she always wins. And... for some reason... we're supposed to LIKE her. We're supposed to ROOTfor her.

No.
 
Louis Griffin. By far the least interesting character in the Griffin household. The way i see it, Peter, Stewie and to a lesser extent Chris are the resident "joke machines" (and very good at it). And Brian, while not exactly the funniest guy in the universe earns his welcome in the crowd by having a bit more depth and being more relatable than the other characters (yeah, yeah, "liberal mouthpiece" and all that, but even so). And Meg, while (intentionally) a completely uninteresting character in terms of personality, is often a component in what i consider to be some of the shows funniest jokes, namely those that are based around how the other characters react to her.

Louis however is as far as i am concerned neither a funny character in her own right nor an interesting character nor a good veichle for other characters jokes.
 
Seconded. Gaz might have been an interesting character in a tamer show, but when surrounded by the likes of Zim, Dib, and GIR she seems pretty one-dimensional. I do like some of the episodes that star her, but it's usually in spite of her.





Ehhh.... Lois is not very interesting, but she at the very least has a great voice actress and a role that is ripe for parody. Chris has neither, and I honestly don't think I've ever laughed at him. I'd say he's the most boring FG character.
 
My personal feeling about character blandness is that if a character is boring, it's because their creators don't do anything interesting with them. You can't blame the characters themselves for that.

Having said that, my vote goes to Mickey Mouse. Yes, Mickey Mouse. He's a cute, friendly little guy, happy and fun, a living symbol and the character who built an empire. But he's just not very funny or interesting. And that's a shame, because Mickey started out as a rebel and a mischief-maker.
 
While he is boring, I always thought he was supposed to be like that by design. From the moment he opened his mouth and his dialogue sounded dead pan, I knew it had to be like that by design.

As whom I found boring, Apis from One Piece. While I did kind of liked the arc if only for the dragons and I thought the Marine they fought was pretty funny, I just didn't find anything about her special.
 
The game Epic Mickey promises to give him back some personality. The thing is, while I'd like him to be spunkier, I don't want him to become smart-alecky or mean. I like Mickey as a nice guy. I just want him to have a temper when he's pushed too hard. And I WISH he'd be drawn the way he looked originally. His modernized look is really bland.
 
Speaking of One Piece, Rob Lucci really didn't do all that much for me. As the major villain (or at least, the one that had to be overcome) of the Enies Lobby arc, he was seriously lacking in any real personallity outside being stoic and 'badass', and I didn't think his devil fruit power was all that interesting either.


Tracey from pokemon is another big one. There was very little about the guy that set him apart from any number of 'character of the day' types we'd seen, or indeed would see later down the line. It felt like he was purposely brought in solely so it wouldn't be just Ash and Misty on their own the whole trip, which was painfully evident by the considerable lack of focus or meaningful dialogue he recieved. And while I can appreciate an awesome artist...it just doesn't make for good tv.
 
He was probably the most boring character (main, anyway) the series had. I was glad to see him go at the end of the Indigo League...not that what followed particularly made up for it.

And before this turns into another "Pokemon-has-sucked-since-Johto" argument, I'll mention another boring character in animation.

Back in the day when she was on, I actually couldn't stand Ms. Choksondik. Her character was basically defined by how she appeared physically, which isn't particularly pleasant.
 
Oddly enough, I just finished watching the Orange Island season, but I still forgot about him. I agree that Tracey was the dullest out of all of the main characters. I still kind of liked him, which might also be why I didn't think of him before, but that was really because he was a fairly nice guy. Even so, I think Max from AG had more personality and importance during his run as a main cast member. His main purpose was to serve as a guide for the Orange Islands. Once that was done, I don't think that they wanted to keep him on the main cast. He did become Prof. Oak's assistant, which was pretty much what he wanted from the start of the season.

The only episode that did actually focus on him was when he caught a Scyther. While I didn't find him annoying or a pointless character, I was really happy when Brock came back.
 
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