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Friday Five: Five+ Favorite Anime Heroes

Cartoon heroes might seem, um, two-dimensional, but that’s only until you really get to know them. Anime and manga boast some of the most intriguing heroes around. No single medium has a monopoly on good characterization—or sexy guys. These are just a few of my favorites.

Alucard (Hellsing)
Yes, the name is Dracula spelled backwards—no spoilers there. But this isn’t your grand-anything’s Drac. Alucard takes the stuff Bram Stoker was afraid to talk about and takes it beyond the limit. In theory, Alucard is bound to the Hellsing organization’s leader, Integra Wingate Hellsing, but it’s more of a courtesy—from a being who doesn’t believe in the concept. Alucard can summon every drop of blood he ever spilled and shape it to his will. To call him a demon is inadequate, and nobody but nobody rocks a red trench coat the way he does. Plus, he’s got a really great gun.

Colonel Roy Mustang (Full Metal Alchemist)
Roy owns the biggest little black book in the nation, he looks great in a uniform, promotes women officers, and he’s the hottest fire wizard around. (No kidding. They call him the Flame Alchemist.) What more could a girl ask?

Alex Rowe (Last Exile)
Alex is the classic wounded hero, scarred by the loss of his fiancé and dear friends, he survives to become the scourge of those who caused their deaths. His passion, concealed between an exterior colder and harder than the black skin of the airship known as the “Kill ‘em All Silvana”, is destined to remake a world. But not without a terrible sacrifice. Still, you’ve got to hand it to a guy who, impaled on a tree of roses, still manages to off the villain with his bare hands.

Sesshomaru and Miroku (Inuyasha)
This is a two-fer, but in a sense, you can’t have one without the other. They are such diametric opposites. (Yes, I am a little schizophrenic when it comes to what I find attractive in a guy. What was your first clue?)
Tall, elegant, aristocratic and ruthless, Sesshomaru is the full-blooded demon son of the great Dog Demon Fang. Sesshomaru has nothing but contempt for anything human. Then “Fluffy” (as fans call him) gets adopted by a little girl named Rin. He tries everything he can think of to persuade her to leave him alone, but the next thing you know he’s saving her life, dressing her in pretty clothes and letting her boss around his demon attendants. (To be fair, even at eight, she’s brighter than his valet.) She intends to marry him when she grows up. Sesshomaru may have poison claws, a sword made of demon bones and the ability to transform into a humongous demon dog, but my money’s on Rin.
Miroku, on the other hand, is as human as human gets. He’s a scalliwag, a scapegrace and a terrible flirt. He’s also the brains of the party (always a plus in my books). A peripatetic young monk apparently unacquainted with any notions of chastity or head shaving, he wants to kill the series villain in order to lift his family’s curse—a void or “wind tunnel” in his right hand, which is great for Hoovering up bad guys but which will one day swallow him whole. Since he doesn’t expect to live to see twenty-five, he’s very eager to leave a little piece of himself behind and asks every pretty woman he meets if she’ll have his children. Naturally, the only one he really wants is the sweet and serious demon hunter he never asks. After all, they have no future, and he’s everything she hates in a man. You’ve seen that story before too.

Spike Spiegel (Cowboy Bebop)
The twenty-six episode anime series Cowboy Bebop is as cool as science fiction gets. The “cowboys” are a ragtag group of interplanetary bounty hunters—a former cop, a naughty card sharp, a 13-year-old hacker genius, a “data dog” and Spike—aboard the good ship Bebop. Their adventures, comic and tragic, play out to a soundtrack by Yoko Kano which distills everything you ever loved about mid-20th century rock and jazz. Then there’s Spike, the coolest smart-mouthed slacker romantic who ever lived. He can make a purple suit seem like a totally rational fashion choice. He’ll convince you a pink spaceship is as macho as it gets. Spike is so damn icy cool, Keanu Reeves—Neo himself—wishes he was him. And he doesn’t stand a chance. Nobody does.
Characterization doesn’t get much better than that. The anime was so perfectly realized, the prospect of turning it into another medium promises only disappointment.