Why is It So Hard to Write an Actually Smart Anime Character?

Summary:

• Many fans want to see more anime with smart or even genius protagonists, and it’s understandable why.
• It’s hard for an author to write a good character who’s smart without making it feel like omniscience.
• Some viewers criticize smart characters for not knowing things that they’re not supposed to know.

Many fans express the opinion that they want to see more smart characters in anime. It’s an understandable demand: it can be very annoying to see characters acting in ways that are suboptimal and illogical.

That’s partly why anime like Code Geass and Death Note are so popular: watching geniuses orchestrate everything is just extremely fun. However, there’s a reason there aren’t many of those — and some otaku even argue that the characters aren’t as smart as they feel like.

It is not easy to write a smart character without falling into any traps

It’s really hard to write an intelligent character for an author. The author knows more than any of their characters — and as such, they might often forget that the character they’re writing might not necessarily know the necessary information.

Any “smart” conclusions they come to might feel like omniscience or magic, and the character won’t necessarily be smart — they’ll just feel like they’re coming up with solutions without anything to base them on. On the contrary, some authors might want to avoid this too much, and as such, characters’ intelligence might not feel out of ordinary.

Many characters feel more intelligent because their opposition is not smart

Many otaku have actually complained about another issue that the supposedly “smart” characters have. Yes, some characters might seem intelligent, but that might only be because the other characters are just dumb.

This is especially prevalent in JoJo, and one example is Part 3, where Alessi was outsmarted by a 7-year-old Polnareff — who isn’t even that smart himself. As such, many are wondering whether Lelouch, for example, is actually a genius: many of his opponents aren’t exactly smart (though many others are).

Some fans have unreasonable expectations from the characters

In the end, it’s very hard to write a character smarter than the author. And with so many supposed geniuses in anime, a lot of them are probably not just that smart. However, it is important to remember that it’s easier for a viewer to point out mistakes the character makes.

After all, the viewer, just like the author, has a lot more information than the character, and that might cloud their judgment. Death Note is often praised for its mind games between Light and L. These two are an example of two great characters in the same anime who are both intelligent — and their interactions feel like a true battle of wits of two geniuses.