Sometimes, we see tropes over and over again and gloss right over them, barely even noticing that we’ve seen the same archetype a hundred times before. Other times, something is just enough the same or just enough different that we sit up and take notice.
The particular trope I want to take a look at today is that of the “normal protagonist.”
While the normal protagonist archetype takes various forms, such as the much decried blandly nice guy, the “ordinary high school student” monologue, the clueless harem lead or the personality-less main character (or the “generic brown-haired/blue-haired MC), this particular pattern appears in numerous anime, sometimes explicitly, sometimes not. Examples follow:
Kajimo Touma, A Certain Magical Index
Shu Ouma, Guilty Crown
Honoka Takamiya, Witchcraft Works
Mage in a Barrel 