If you have not already listened to this category’s podcast, these are the final results, so this will spoil the course of the discussion on that podcast! Be warned!
Best Main Character Winner
Nico Wakatsuki (Witch Watch)
It’s hard to have an intro for a character quite as loud as a bubbly teenage witch crashing through a glass door on her broom, announcing her presence in the lives of those around her. Nico Wakatsuki is the star of the series Witch Watch, a romantic comedy about the daily life of a young witch trying to improve the lives of others with her magic. Hijinks ensue from that point, with Nico accidentally turning herself into paper, accelerating her friend to hypersonic speeds for a weekend, and so many other magical problems for her and her familiars to solve.
The really special thing that author Kenta Shinohara does with this character, however, is how much respect the story is willing to give Nico. Comedy shows that star women as the central character can sometimes fall into a trap of making said woman exceptionally dimwitted, shallow, or any number of toxic traits prescribed to them, especially if they are young. Witch Watch takes a page out of Hideaki Sorachi’s style of any given character in a scene capable of being the put-upon straight man or impetus of the jokes. As such, Nico is allowed the space to be a more layered character that a protagonist of a romantic comedy may initially let on.
Nico is dim at times, but she is also deeply compassionate, awkwardly romantic, occasionally weird, or just unabashedly funny. Rina Kawaguchi’s performance allows for Nico’s true colors to shine through, and I really cannot wait to see more stories from the manga to be brought to life. It’s hard to describe her as anything other than spellbinding.
-Kyrie
The Runners-Up
JC Denton (Deus Ex)
“Mr. JC Denton, in the flesh. As dark and serious as your brother,” one NPC observes upon meeting you.
No. What? What are you talking about? I guess maybe that was flattery? The protagonist of Deus Ex, JC, is a dork. He’s cyberpunk Butthead looking for his Beavis- a search that will prove tragically fruitless, because there’s no one in the game who’s as much of a dumbass as he is. A clone of his older brother, JC was created as a part of a fertility program to create the perfect soldier. Then his parents were killed, and he was shuffled off to secret Swiss school that trained agents for missions of international secret society conspiracy. He was crammed full of fifty billion dollars of experimental nanotechnology, and set upon the world to enact the agenda of his shadowy masters.
If at any point in that process they’d bothered to check his room, they would have no doubt found dozens of burned DVDs of Arnold Schwarzenegger actions films and Jackass, empty forties, and a skateboard he never learned to ride. Sure, he’s not a complete idiot. He can talk shop when he needs to, he’s capable as hell, and he’s unflinching in the face of danger. But give him the slightest opening and he quickly devolves into inappropriate one-liners, snark, and all other forms of quip that indicate a lifelong Spawn fan.
This goober is Deus Ex’s secret sauce. All signs point to the game’s creators not realizing it, but he’s not actually cool, and because of that, the game’s whole conspiracy nonsense becomes campy fun instead of just crap. I would not hang out with JC, because he would kill me and then joke about me having too many organs. But if I knew he’d be chill? Sure, man. Let’s play some STRAFTAT.
-Six
Inori Yuitsuka (Medalist)
Inori as the protagonist of Medalist is, on paper, not that unique in terms of sports manga protagonists. She is a precocious little girl with ambitions of winning Olympic gold in figure skating. But it goes deeper than that: while she shows an aptitude for learning new skills, she has a mountain to climb and no one seems willing to help her with. Her mother objects out of well founded fears for her safety, and she is several years too old to be seriously considered a competitor in ice skating.
She finds kinship with Tsukasa, her coach who himself fell short of his ambitions, and the two embark on the uphill climb where every step higher is fought for. Inori finds herself battling not so much other skaters but herself, both emotionally and physically, to push herself to greater heights. She often stumbles, plagued by self-doubt and injury that the story does not flinch to depict honestly. But in that struggle she has breakthroughs that bring the kind of joys only seen when young kids succeed.
You don’t want to tamper the dreams of children. They will encounter the harsh realities of the real world soon enough, and for Inori, that reality has already started to settle in. But the beauty of Medalist as a story is in the heartfelt ways it takes Inori’s ambitions seriously without denying the reality of competition and embracing the joys of mentoring young people. Few anime capture this feeling, and Inori as the star shines bright.
-Kyrie
Morgan (of the Devil)
Once the initial shock of “She’s a defense attorney and a serial killer?” wears off, you’ll find that Morgan is so much more than a simple inversion of the archetypal Ace Attorney protagonist. In a characterization choice that’s all too familiar for an autistic person like me, social cues don’t come naturally to her: unless she’s speaking with an old friend, she must put up a veneer of cluelessness and practiced “Dad” humor to navigate her way through conversations. And while she’s crueler to Serra, her designated Attorney Sidekick, than Phoenix ever was to Maya, her actions are equal parts tough love and recognition that they both share the same social handicaps.
When she’s on fire in the courtroom, cornering her opponent like a predator chasing down her prey, it’s easy to get caught up in the moment and cheer along. But it’s just as affecting when she silently watches her clients celebrate, unable to share in the joy of a job well done, or the catharsis when an innocent man goes free. All she can do is stare from the other side of an impenetrable barrier, recognizing these emotions that come naturally to everyone else are off-limits for her. And that hurts worse than a bullet to the heart.
-Jen
Best Side Character Winner
Shiho Kubota (Futari wa Pretty Cure)
It’s hard to stand out as a side character in magical girl anime. Mostly, the job is to complicate the protagonist(s) life/lives with mundane problems alongside the magical ones already on their plate. Your obliviousness and normalcy is the point, to contrast what they have going on. Anyone who shows signs of being a deep, interesting character… tends to get roped into the supernatural goings-on.
Shiho lives her life blessedly free of that. She is simply an enthusiastic, energetic girl whom the narrative feels no need to insert into Pretty Cure’s magic, but feels like one of the main characters when the everyday is occurring. And she’s just… charming. Would that I had half her enthusiasm and spontaneity.
–Six
Week three in the bag- only one next! Join us next week for our final two categories- Anime/Manga of the Year and Game of the Year!
Our art is a commission from GOMA on Bluesky.
