Summary
- Isekai features morally complex protagonists, like Takeda Junpei, who seek revenge through ruthless acts and cynical behaviors.
- Characters like Dwight and Hajime exhibit extreme actions in pursuit of revenge, causing harm to innocents and showcasing dark personalities.
- Antiheroes like Naofumi and Lugh carry out questionable acts, displaying selfishness, cruelty, and a lack of regard for others' well-being.
Isekai is easily one of the biggest genres within anime today with thousands and thousands of fans tuning in to watch the latest isekai titles. As Isekai has grown, so also has the variety of its characters, especially the protagonist. Generally expected to be model humans, protagonists are held to a high standard and are usually thought to have a moral code. But, there are quite a few of them that have deviated from this and are truly terrible human beings.
10 Isekai Anime & Manga Where The Protagonist Is Overpowered But Conceals It
These isekai anime & manga with protagonists that hide their potent powers and abilities.
From some truly despicable acts to complex moral characters, there is a world of isekai protagonists that one will not want to meet in a dark alley.
10 Takeda Junpei (Dungeon Seeker)
MyAnimeList Score: 6.56
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Takeda Junpei is an average high school student who suffers at the hands of a notorious bully. After being transported into another world and experiencing a rather painful betrayal, he now walks the path of revenge.
Junpei grows stronger and is able to achieve his revenge, but in the process, he carries out some pretty ruthless acts. His cynicism and brusqueness make him a character no one would ordinarily want to associate with. While he grows as the story progresses, he never quite lets go of his prickly personality.
9 Dwight (The Executed Sage Who Was Reincarnated As A Lich Started An All-Out War)
MyAnimeList Score: 7.15
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The sage from ‘The Executed Sage Who Was Reincarnated as a Lich Started an All-Out War’ has all the hallmarks of a revenge protagonist: he’s been betrayed terribly, is impossibly strong, and is willing to do anything to get his revenge.
Anyone can understand wanting revenge after being thrown into the valley of the dead and losing a loved one, but the actions Dwight takes to execute his revenge become more and more worrying. He destroys whole towns and villages and will not spare anyone including innocents.
8 Hajime Nagumo (Arifureta: From Commonplace To World's Strongest)
MyAnimeList Score: 6.71
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Hajime suffers the misfortune of receiving seemingly trash powers after being reincarnated in another world with his classmates. He is betrayed by a classmate and left for dead. He survives and seeks to find his way back home.
How to Get into Arifureta: Everything You Need to Know About the Anime, Manga & Light Novels
Arifureta is one of the biggest isekai anime around. Here's everything fans need to know about the light novels, manga, and anime.
Hajime turns from a normal kid to an absolute edge lord who has little regard for the people who accompany him. He’s a little mean, and nasty to deal with, which makes it all the more unbelievable that he would have so many who are willing to follow him wherever he goes.
7 Naofumi Iwatani (The Rising Of The Shield Hero)
MyAnimeList Score: 7.96
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Naofumi is a character that divides opinion. Some believe he is right in what he does, others are mortified by some of his antics. Also a victim of a lie and betrayal, Naofumi goes on to carry out some acts that make it very difficult to see him as a true protagonist. His purchase of Raphtalia for example, who becomes his slave, is a glimpse at some of the things Naofumi is capable of.
His anger sometimes feels irrational and his overwhelming need to get back at his detractors makes him a protagonist who is difficult to root for.
6 Inori Takafuji (Oversummoned, Overpowered, And Over It!)
MyAnimeList Score: 7.96
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Getting isekai’d might be a fun fantasy for the average individual, but it would be distressing if one kept getting summoned to a new world again and again. This was what happened to Inori in this story.
With each summoning, he gained new powers and lost a little bit of humanity. By the time he is permanently summoned to the Rising Sun kingdom, he is hardly what anyone would consider a regular human being. Inori is selfish, greedy, nasty, and uncaring. He pursues his ends to the end without a care who gets caught in the crossfire. While this makes for some fun reading, it can unsettle the reader as they watch scores of people who had no business dying, meeting their end.
5 Cid Kagenou (The Eminence In Shadow)
MyAnimeList Score: 8:30
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The supreme leader of the Shadow Garden group is a bombastic character with flashy abilities and some cringey lines. Cid leads a harem of high-powered beings to battle against a secret organization whose supposed imagined existence might not be as imagined as first thought.
As for Cid, he is a power-hungry leader who will use what he has to get what he wants. His obsession with his goals makes him a character that might be fun to watch, but hard to love. He cares only about the things he deems important and shows a high level of apathy towards anything else.
4 Lugh Tuatha Dé (The World's Finest Assassin Gets Reincarnated In Another World As An Aristocrat)
MyAnimeList Score: 7.35
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Once an assassin in his former world, a transfer to a new world after his death introduces the world to Lugh Tuatha Dé, an aristocrat from a powerful family.
Lugh is a good character, but, as someone who traded in blood in his past life, his old habits are impossible to shake off and follow him into his new life. This means that Lugh is ruthless and would not hesitate to make a decision that many would ponder for longer as long as the results go his way.
3 Kazuma Satou (KonoSuba: God's Blessing On This Wonderful World!)
MyAnimeList Score: 8.10
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After dying in one of the most pathetic ways anyone could imagine, Kazuma is transported to another world where he is accompanied by the ‘useless’ goddess Aqua, a masochist called Darkness, and a fire mage called Megumi.
Konosuba is a hilarious watch, but if given even more than a passing thought, something becomes quite clear: Kazuma is a terrible person. Kazuma is selfish and his commitment to ‘gender equality’ is hardly endearing. His cowardice means he would abandon his friends in a pinch and his laziness makes him someone no one should aspire to be.
2 Ainz Ooal Gown (Overlord)
MyAnimeList Score: 7.91
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Ainz is an interesting character to consider as he isn’t really evil on the face of it but becomes that way as a result of his circumstances. Trapped in the world of his favorite game, Yggdrasil, where he was an evil overlord, Ainz finds himself leading an evil empire toward a terrifying expansion.
Overlord: Ainz Ooal Gown's Most Powerful Abilities
As an Overlord and a powerful Necromancer, the anime's main villain Ainz Ooal Gown possesses vast magical abilities. These are his strongest powers.
Ainz has the propensity to be good, but as he continues to navigate his life and responsibilities as an Overlord, it becomes evident that Ainz is more and more comfortable with the terrible things he has to do.
1 Tanya Degurechaff (Saga Of Tanya The Evil)
MyAnimeList Score: 7.96
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Tanya Degurechaff is one of those characters that people either love or hate. However, no matter what anyone thinks of her as a character, most would agree that she is not a good person.
Reincarnated as a young girl with excellent military prowess, Tanya is hellbent on making her empire the most powerful entity on earth and the ways in which she goes about it would make anyone uncomfortable especially when considering the backdrop of the entire story. Tanya’s ruthlessness is so well documented to the point where she is known as the "Devil of the Rhine."
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