25 Days Anime Male Challenge – Extra Days 2/3

What constitutes the difference between a “fighter” and a “hero”, anyway?

After thinking about it, “hero” probably means “superhero” more than anything (although you can interpret that to mean any protagonist you like), while “fighter” would probably mean a specific subset of shonen.

Day 25 (Extra Day 2) – Fighter

When you think “shonen fighter series”, you think of the pages of Weekly Shonen Jump…the Big 3 and its kin. However, I think you know me well enough to know I’m not going to pick someone from there, and so my choice will be Yato from Noragami.

Yato’s an interesting character – he’s one of those “two-sided” characters I like so much. He’s not only capable of being silly, but also kicks a heap of butt, regardless of who his Regalia is, as a god of calamity. On top of that, he has a good rapport with most Regalias he ends up with – notably, Yukine is pretty much his son by now while he had quite the “old married couple” thing going on with Mayu (Tomone). He’s also quite the optimist, as even on a 5 yen rate he was dreaming of a fancy-schmancy temple and lots of worshippers and thus, it was sweet when Hiyori gave him a small temple to call his own. It helps that Yato is voiced by Hiroshi Kamiya, and that’s one of the voice actor’s more known roles.

On a more shallow note, I could do without the tracksuit of his (considering that he has been around for a long time, a kimono of some sort would suit him better), but his eyes are pretty…

Since we’ve got Noragami here, I can’t help but make a bad Kyouran Hey Kids! joke to lead into the next category…”Tonight, we honour the hero!” and all that.

Day 26 (Extra Day 3) – Hero

I was thinking of having Bell from Danmachi in this category, but the definition I came up with didn’t match that, so I’ve shifted my choice to Origami Cyclone/Ivan Karelin. I’m only familiar with him from the Mizuki Sakakibara adaptation of Tiger and Bunny so I may not be saying everything correct in regards to his anime version…but it should be close enough to work.

Origami Cyclone is one of the more useless heroes in the show, but we are talking about a guy who can take on the appearances of other people/things, plus super photobombing skills, which is pretty much everything he needs in his particular line of work to keep his sponsors happy…and not necessarily for crimefighting. I seem to remember Ivan being a huge anime fan and Japanophile which was the explanation for his Japanese-style costume, but it’s been a while since I read the manga so I can’t say if that’s correct or not…

…Oh great, I picked yet another blonde. *facepalm* I really do need some more variety in my anime diet. Well, at least unlike Barnaby’s case, his good looks aren’t everything about him – I guess when you’re used to a character wearing a helmet, you don’t really think about the person’s looks anyways…

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Anyways, with the superhero boom from all the Marvel movies, there’s more than enough heroes to go ’round, whether they be from Japan or elsewhere! So, with the definitions in mind, who’s your favourite fighter and/or hero?

Here’s Mel, Arthifis and Lina’s posts on the topics. I’ll wager this week that there won’t be any double-ups, but at least one person will pick Genos from One Punch Man or one of the boys from Boku no Hero Academia…let’s see if I’m correct…(Spoiler/Update: I was correct…)