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Chaser1992 — Designated Hero
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Published: 2014-10-24 04:25:36 +0000 UTC; Views: 8112; Favourites: 49; Downloads: 1
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(I'm only going to a few more of these for now.)A Designated Hero is a character who the story is sure that they are the forces of good and that they are the people you should be rooting for. However when you stop and look at there actions they look more like the villains. As one would expect these characters are often hard to sympathize. A they often become the series Scrappy.
Note this trope is about characters who act like anti heroes at best, villains at worst. Characters who are recognized as anti heroes don't qualify.
The flip side is known as Designed Villain
Examples.
The title character of Johnny Test.
As beloved as they are, the Animaniacs are this.
depending on the writer Jerry the mouse from Tom and Jerry often ends up as one with Tom being the design villain. How ever this is not always the case. In fact there are a few episodes where Tom is clearly the instigator and manages to have the last laugh.
Parodied in The Simpsons with The Itchy & Scratchy Show; most of the time Scratchy is doing nothing wrong and Itchy brutally butchers or beats him for no reason.
Pretty much all the "heroes" of Classical Mythology lack any of what modern viewers would consider heroic traits.
The Greek Gods come a cross as childish spoiled brats to most viewers.
Zeus especially who is both a rapist and a massive hypocrite. He's a massive jerk at best a psychopathic manchild tyrant at worst.
Achilles is not only this for modern audiences but also medieval ones.
Bella Swan from Twilight. Also Edward Cullen. In fact the Cullen's in general.
Sam from iCarly.
Puma Man. Is incidentally the god of this. Though its more to do with being useless then ambiguously evil.
The main character of Jurassic Park Lost World (with the possible exclusion of Ian Malcolm who just wants to get off the Island. Though even then he still might qualify.) They are responsible for almost every death in the entire movie (albeit indirectly.)
For many Star Wars fan Anakin Skywalkers one. Between all the whining, and inflated ego it not really any wonder this guy fell to the Dark side. However the CGI Star War the Clone Wars cartoon trys very hard to advert this trope. It dose a pretty good job at it.
Many people considered The Jedi Order to be hypocritical, Lawful Stupid, Knights Tempers. Who are just as responsible for Anakin's trun to the Dark Side as Anakin himself. This is even referenced in The Last Jedi. This is only made worse in the old legends continuity.
Also the Galactic Republic (in all incarnations). In that it's incredibly corrupt and incompetent. And the was well on its way to becoming a Empire any, even without sith intervention.
Danny Zuko in Grease is sexist, self-centered, distant and an all-round horrible boyfriend.
Patroklos from Soul Calibur V. He claims to be fighting For Great Justice when really he's a self-absorbed, cocky, naive, ungrateful, revenge-seeking, racist jerkass who just wants to find his sister Pyrrha and kill all Malfested who are unfortunate enough to be standing in his path. His Establishing Character Moment is killing an innocent bystander simply because he believed this poor guy was a Malfested.
Depending on the writer any comic book character can be this thanks to the jerkass ball's and idiot plots being thrown around.
The Inhumans are see as this for a number of reasons. They practice Eugenics and maintained a sub-race of deformed, genetically engineered slaves, the Alpha Primitives. Their internal culture is a mess of class divisions despite their comparatively small population. making them more like charterers from Crusader Kings rather then true heroes. Even their status as Mutant analogues is dubious, since the majority of their mutations are activated deliberately via Terrigenesis, and if they were to forego the desire for superhuman powers they could still be Badass Normal types like Karnak even without it! Thus any Body Horror or Power Incontinence actually are their faults because, unlike Mutants, they get to choose to play the Superpower Lottery. Though much of their "less-than-stellar" aspects have been retconned, destroyed with the crashing of Old Attilan, or dissolved as part of Character Development.
Batman in All Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder (aka Crazy Steve.)
Many consider The Fixer from Holy Terror (aka Not Batman) to be just as bad if not worse then Crazy Steve.
The Teen Titans Go! Derails the Titans into this. It got so bad that it landed all five of them on The Villains Wiki (Which is for villains)
The title characters of Codename Kids Next Door in the early episodes
Kevin in Ed Edd and Eddy. While originally some what of a hero antagonist. He become more and more of a jerk and crossed over into bully territory.
SpongeBob SquarePants, Depending on the Writer, is occasionally thrown the Idiot Ball and/or Jerkass Ball.
Also Mr. Krabs. It used to be that he was a bit greedy, but eventually he became Flanderized to the point of psychotically spending a full episode trying to get a single penny from SpongeBob.
Also Patrick post-Flanderization. He has a deep Lack OF Empathy for others, views objects more important than his friends, seems to take delight tormenting his supposed best friend, and he does things that anyone knows will not help so he could watch them fail for his own amusment. And it's implied that he's been feigning his stupidity (or how dumb he really has become) solely to torment SpongeBob, Squidward, and Gary. And he's supposed to be SpongeBob's best friend.
Fin in Adventure Time Depending on the episode. Also Princess Bubblegum comes across as this.
The main character's of the abomination of a webcomic known as Sonichu. Especially it creators author avatar.
Very common in bad fanfiction. especially if there any Draco In Leather Pantsing going on.
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Imperium of Men, and the Emperor, possubly go here too.
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it depends on who is writing the episode some episodes will have them as outright heroes.
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OK I disagreed with SpongeBob and Patrick but the rest totally true also isn't Owen the main character of Jurassic World
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Let's get a few more in.
As I said, virtually any anime or manga protagonists are trope definers of Designated Hero. They almost always act on their impulses and emotions, never think things through (and in some cases become flat out angry when told to do the logical thing), solve every problem with their fists, swords, ki based powers, or if they're shoujo protagonists, their 'love', poorly communicate with their teammates, never save innocent lives out of the goodness of their hearts but only because somebody in the crowd has become their 'friend' (carrying the terrible implication that one should never assist anyone with anything unless they personally know them, even if their life could be in danger, grand scale margin or not), fight fair and square against all villains using traditional martial arts like Karate and Kung fu, even describing their styles and techniques to the villains no matter what their profession (would you see a USA Marine or an Israeli Mossad agent do that on a mission in the Middle East or back in Vietnam? I'm truly asking you for a reply), and shove the Everybody Has a Sympathetic Backstory That Redeems Them Despite Being a Serial Child Rapist shit down our throats. Also, for some reason, there are never any police around in any of these universes, even the real world ones, and when they are, they're either corrupt, incompetent, or both, and serve only as a body to be killed.
Special Award of Designated Hero goes to Tohru Honda of Fruits Basket and the entire Sohma Clan of Fruits Basket. People love to point fingers at Akito and Ren for what they did to them. Unfortunately, Tohru is so overly sweet and submissive, believing love and compassion works with everyone to the point where she'd give Josef Stalin and Kim Jong Un a hug and an affectionate cry combined with everyone's (Tohru's included) unspoken but definite belief that What Goes On In the Family Stays in the Family make them all out to be pretty terrible. As always, anime covers up its ugly side with sexiness. The fact that Japan (and the entire East in general) has always and still does have the attitude that nobody, not even police, can interfere with their families, they must solve their problems on their own, and anyone who gets help is stripped of their human rights (and in the more rural areas, can be killed) is not even played for social commentary. All anime writers really proclaim to us that this is how we should be running things without a hint of irony or bitterness, and they are angry at us for getting help. Look it up if you don't believe me.
Ryuichi Kaizu of the very obscure (and very angry) OVA Aoki Honoo (Blue Flames) is one of the most badly written Designated Protagonists to the point where even before the internet existed, either nobody knew about him or more likely nobody wanted to remember him. An ambitious and cold social climber whose sole goal is to get into Tokyo University, his soul is filled with 'blue flames'. In Japan, people boast that they have 'fiery spirits' which means they are passionate and hot blooded, willing to go to great lengths to get what they want and work hard. By having flames of blue, Kaizu's soul burns hotter than everyone, since blue fire is much hotter than red. However, to do so, he cheats on his girlfriend who he only sleeps with for money (she's basically a hooker), tricks a young heiress into sleeping with him so he can extort her family into paying him to stay away from him, and when he gets the money he wants, he breaks up with her just to make her attempt suicide. Predictably, he then rapes her unconscious body. Later, he tricks one of her lovers into beating him up just to get the guy expelled from school because he had pissed him off for some minor reason, abandons his loving (but gullible and naive) family just for the fun of it, rapes his girlfriend who figured out what he was doing into 'submission', and spends the remainder of the OVA beating popular people at tennis and traveling to high end clubs where he can pick up women to sleep with or rape. It all ends with him running his Designated Rival off the road to his death, and driving off into the sun with his happily broken girlfriend, accomplishing his ambition. The End.
Here's what makes Kaizu more bad/unbelievable than bad/designated hero. First off, he has no motivation or backstory to his actions. It doesn't need to be tragic. He's just ambitious and evil for the sake of being ambitious and evil. Second, he's flat. He has no charisma, no emotions, not even an expression change. Even when he orgasms, he's just, "Meh..." Not helping is the entire music score in the OVA which sounds like something out of All of My Children or Days of Our Lives (I hate Soap Operas, by the way). Third, how am I supposed to feel sympathy or pity for everyone who crosses his path when they are equally bland and lacking in motivation or intelligence? The heiress he charms? She falls in LITERAL LOVE with him after only one brief conversation. They don't even tell each other anything about their interests, histories, families, hobbies, plans for the future, anything. It's just, "I think you're pretty." "Y... You do...?! But... But I'm not! I'm..." "I like you. Will you see me tomorrow?" "Yes...! Yes, I will! I never thought I'd be so lucky!" Even in anime, where just a pet on the head equals romance, you'd have to be pretty stupid to fall for that. Nobody in Aoki Honoo thinks at all.
Here's pretty much the only thing that slides Kaizu into Designated Protagonist, and just barely: The OVA does not paint anything he does in a negative light. In fact, it seems to praise him so much that Aoki Honoo seems to be an author tract for how men are supposed to behave. There's no confirming if it is an author tract. We can say for certain they aren't saying this is a warning NOT to do this, and it isn't postmodern, either. But who in their right mind would believe this is how you should live?
Enough of my ranting.
Any character that Mark Millar designs in his original works-Kick Ass 1 and 2, The Unfunnies, Wanted, the list goes on and on-are designated heroes taken to an absolutely disgusting level. Some notable examples include Big Daddy (the comic version), Wesley Gibson, and Moe the Crow. People tend to prefer the movies of Kick Ass because they are HEAVILY toned down from the comics, even modified to be less bitter and angry. I didn't, though.
In my opinion, Mark Millar is definitely one of the most mean spirited and sick writers in terms of violence with works full of Designated Heroes, yet he's still not as bad as Frank Miller. Mark Millar's works are a lot gorier and cruel, certainly. They're still only violent for the sake of violence. Frank's stories delve into author tract mode with his Designated Heroes giving TERRIBLE lectures on subjects ranging from how men and women should behave, to how society and governments should be run, and in his worst comic of all, how the War on Terror should be fought. As people have noted through history: Misinformation is much worse than no information at all.
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I think the biggest one ever for me in terms of Japanese media is Kaneda from the manga version of "Akira". Even when the stakes grow to the point where humanity itself is at risk and other characters are putting aside differences for a common and greater cause, Kaneda is still motivated to the end by two things: sexual attraction to Kei and revenge for his gang. He starts off the series as a self-centered, hedonistic, somewhat-obnoxious, violent gang leader and, at the end, he's pretty much more or less the same character. About the only thing that's changed is he respects certain individuals he hadn't before. I honestly think the fourth manga compilation is my favorite out of the series because he's absent for almost all of it, and part of the reason Kei ends up looking like a good character is because she's his foil through most of the story. Heck, part of the reason Tetsuo, for all his violence, despicable behaviors, sadistic tendencies, and almost total lack of morals, looks better than he should is because he's his antagonist.
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You could apply the same qualities to most of the Dragon Ball cast. Or the Naruto characters. Or One Piece. Or a lot of other shonen and seinen manga. All you need to do is adjust certain qualities to higher or lower settings and you can count them all as tribalistic beings who don't give a flying fuck about anybody but their own agenda.
You want the ultimate example of a Designated Protagonist? Watch the Blue Flames OVA by Kimio Yanagisawa. In fact, here you go. Watch it and see what would happen if Goku or the other characters I rant about were played straight.
Warning: There are no tentacle monsters or bloody martial arts battles in this. You will still end up being disgusted by this for reasons which are all too apparent.
Blue Flames: www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJo4F8…
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Wow, what a shocker.
For the Fruit Basket example, it makes me wonder why Japan even has police to begin with.
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Meh. Not to sound jingoistic, but there's one thing I take pride in as a Westerner: Our society isn't based around shame. If we hear somebody laughing in the cubicle or at the table next to us we do not automatically assume that they are laughing at us. The majority of us are able to laugh at our faults, both personally and heritage wise, and we aren't afraid to disagree with our superiors. Yes, we have many problems, too, and in some very remote, isolated areas of the United States some of this attitude is present (in fact during older times, the South carried a few of these traits). We are still more free thinking and willing to help anyone, not just people who are close.
And forgive my reiteration, but I am aware we have a lot of problems now. But we're far from fallen. As I say: We're not perfect, but we work.
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I see. That's what I would say.
It's fine, it happens.
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Ahh, this trope.
A lot of anime and manga characters could fall into this category. Baki Hanma from Baki the Grappler would qualify. His entire life is dedicated to killing his father and earning the love of his dead mother. Yujiro, his father, also killed his mother. It sounds reasonable until you realize that Baki's mother was a yandere on an immeasurable level that wanted Yujiro to love her more than her son. When Yujiro thought Baki was weak, he rejected her, saying that he was disgusted with her for bringing a weakling into the world. This resulted in her insulting Baki to his face and saying that it was his fault for Yujiro hating her. One _could_ argue that she redeems herself by singing a lullabye to Baki as she dies. This is not the case. And Baki is so fanatical about keeping his promise that he doesn't realize the idiocy of his promise.
There's more. Yujiro is capable of stopping earthquakes with his bare hands, enslaved the USA by defeating its army with his bare hands (in the anime George W. Bush is his driver out of pure terror), and kills people on a whim. Baki himself is also quite aggressive and headstrong, determined to keep his promise instead of give up.
Harry Callahan from the Dirty Harry films, while certainly doing the right thing, is not doing the legal thing when it comes to criminals. Sure, we love to see him stop monsters like Scorpio. If he really pulled any of this, he'd be in prison for a long time, or at least out of a job forever. Because Dirty Harry does not target innocents, will not sacrifice civilians to solve crime, and is meant to make a point about the legal system, he is both Designated Hero and Antihero, leaning more toward the second.
Travis Brickley from the Karate film Best of the Best. Unlike the other four main protagonists who are all hard working, humble people, Brickley is aggressive, arrogant, and a very poor loser. Whenever somebody defeats him in combat, he lashes out at them blindly, even against teammates. He also does not take part in some of the training sessions with his team. Brickley is not completely a Designated Hero, being more of an Antihero, as he is shown to have positive qualities toward the end of the film. He sticks up for another member when they are disqualified for leaving to visit their son, and he acts humbly during the award ceremony. Finally, he is shown to work just as hard as everybody else.
In the mainstream Marvel comics, the Punisher is a tragic antihero. The MAX comics jack things up to crazy levels. In the MAX comics, Frank was obsessed with vigilante justice as a child, entering military service with the intention of killing evil. He killed both his own soldiers and Vietnam forces because a voice whispered to him that it would let him fight an eternal war against evil if he would make a 'deal' with it. After Vietnam, he settled down with his wife and had two children. The voice whispered to him that he should enjoy them 'while he could'. The implication is that while he loved his family, he sacrificed them to the mob on the day they were shot so he could use the pain of loss as a justification to kill evil for the rest of his life.
Pretty much any HBO live action shows consist of Designated Heroes.
And if there is any character who is the definition of Designated Hero, the award goes to The Fixer from Frank Miller's utterly _atrocious_ Holy Terror. Need I say more about that one?
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Add in the "protagonists" from Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series.
Same as the villains minus the rape, and if you disagree with them you deserve to die. So sayeth the author.
Actually just add all protagonists in Objectivist fiction. It's called sociopathy.
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I've never read the book though I heard it was bad.
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Noah from the movie "Noah" would also qualify as well.
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In addition to examples I've listed from almost two full years back, I think the Stargate from Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time could qualify as he was so jerkish towards Luigi, if you don't understand, just look at the Stargate's scrappy entry here: tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php…
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I hate this trope. I want to KILL IT WITH FIRE. (it might be why I never got into Kids Next Door).
Also, regarding Zeus and the other Greek gods, it kind of sucks that Hades, in almost every movie about Greek mythology, is made into the antagonist (while he wasn't exactly....saintly in the myths, he was certainly one of the less-poorly behaved gods, especially compared to some of his siblings).
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i hate johnny test x kill hero
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I don't hate the character, I just don't see him as a role model.
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Not neccessarily. A designated hero is a character who is presented as heroic, but is an arguable villain. His acts demonstrate that his or her heroism is arguable at best.
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Johnny Test and Anakin Skywalker are both good examples. However, I will give them some credit for some of the heroic acts they've done.
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An example of a Designated Hero is Lana Lang from Smallville. Even in the earlier seasons, she was very selfish. She betrayed Clark and company more than once but was seen as a heroine by them. Her worst moment is when (spoiler: she kidnapped Lionel Luthor).
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I wouldn't consider this Lana has a heroine.
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That's the point.
Other examples are Patrick Star and Mr. Krabs of Spongebob Squarepants.
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Patrick maybe. Mr.Krabs, I agree 100%.
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Kaiser from the banned episode "The Legend of Dratini" could qualify as he is cited to be the major reason why it was banned, I mean seriously, who would point a gun at a kid who just uses Pokeballs to catch Pokemon.
You can see more details here.
Leena Toros from Zoids: New Century might also be this as to quote the Scrappy page for Anime:
"She attacks Bit for the slightest infraction, from breaking his back for setting her up on a date with Harry to attacking Bit with her Zoid for accidently walking in on her in the shower, and attacking her own teammates so that she is the sole winner of the fight."
◦In fact, who's to say that a tsundere can be a designated hero when her harsh tendencies are taken too far?
Adam Malkovich was, by my argument, derailed into this in Metroid: Other M as he Samus quitting a job she didn't like a an irreparable black mark , threatening to court martial her if she disobeys orders, such as having her go through a hostile environment without the protective gear for it, and shooting her in the back to keep her from going into Sector Zero instead of asking her nicely when there was a hungry Metroid at arm's length.
Lately steps have been taken to so that Spongebob, Patrick, and Mr. Krabs stop being this trope after what happened in the post-movie episodes prior to Season 8.
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Would Bugs Bunny apply in some cases?
I think this one is becoming more frequent. As you noticed in posts about Eric Cartman, it's now considered "a funny and endearing trait to be a jerky a-hole to everyone". Makes me sick.
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Bugs does have a habit of being this much like Jerry the Mouse. Though in his original appearances Bugs Bunny was not only clearly the villain but also the antagonist.
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You know, I never really faulted Tom as a "villain" or praised Jerry as a "hero". Oh, there's a good number of episodes where Tom's simply "torturing Jerry", but for the most part he's just "doing what cats do", kind of like how the Coyote trying to eat the Road Runner was always "doing what coyotes do". Can't really call that "evil". And frankly, Tom had a hard time since it's been demonstrated on more than one occasion Jerry is physically stronger than him (even without the episodes where he takes some elixir or something that makes him even stronger)...which was always weird.
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Hum this is kinda true, like the Warners from Animaniacs they do make people crazy but to only people who have provoked them. With a lot if these characters it's the fact that when they beat the bad guy it's that they have so much fun doing it.
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I know the Animaniacs actually made a point in one episode where they couldn't bring themselves to physically attack (even with a gag) one character because all she did was be overly nice to them, which itself isn't "a crime"...but that doesn't change the fact they immediately tried to provoke her into yelling at them or being mean to them so that they COULD.
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They only tried to provoke her because she was so overly annoying and she was in there home so they couldn't just leave like they tried to do with Pip, if someone wouldn't leave me alone I would do worse to get them to leave me alone. Especially if they came into my home, they're like bugs bunny but he just takes more provoking than the Warners
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