The Nerd Next Door

A few weeks ago, I talked about damsel's in distress and when they are particularly insulting. During that time I mentioned that the main hero of Sword Art Online, Kirito, was, and I quote myself, "the most boring character devised in anime." I still hold that opinion because he is, but the more I thought about it I asked what made him boring? Why did I hate this kid so much? Well the more I thought about it, the more I realized that he problem I have with Kirito can be applied to why a lot of old classic characters can be perceived as "boring." Simply put Kirito is flawless, he shows up, kills all of the bad guys, and gets all of the ladies without applying any charisma or effort into it. As far as I'm concerned you should have one of three essentials to make a good character: underdog, where we see the character rise from adversity; flawed, where a character is competent but struggles with a flaw that either affects their actions, destroys them, or ...

The Damsel in Distress, a tale as old as time, a beautiful maiden, a ferocious monster, and the dashing knight in shining armor come to save the day, whether due to a sense of duty or emotional reasons (okay, that take is as old as feudal Europe but you get the point). For a while, it was just sort of the default for female characters, particularly in the early days of film, comics, and video games. But recently (if the 80's counts as recent) there's been a push against that being the default for female characters, new characters like Samus Aran, Ellen Ripley, and Spider-Gwen have all made names for themselves kicking ass and taking names and even previous notorious damsels in distress have been either kicking a lot more ass or are just better written in general. But in turn there has been another type of character, the "action girl" who is built up as a fighter and a warrior but turns out to just be a damsel in distress and utterly helpless in spite of the build...