I love Mary Sue/Gary Stu protagonist!

[Echimera]

Here’s the character I like.

- Takumi Usui from Maid-Sama!
- Yuuji Kazami from The Fruit of Grisaia
- Anos Voldigoad from The Misfit of Demon King Academy
- Sasuke Uchiha from Naruto
- Kazuma Yagami from Kaze no Stigma
- Hajime Nagumo from Arifureta

Imagine if one of these characters is the protagonist of some Japanese isekai harem story, it would be quite enjoyable~

A lot I haven't seen or read, but the ones I have do not trigger my Gary Stu alarm bells:
Sasuke is arrogant and so consumed by his vengeance that he almost ruins everything for everyone multiple times throughout the series.
Hajime is also extremely arrogant and uncaring towards basically everyone, and a huge part of the story is him (re)growing as a human. Not that he gets all that much nicer towards people outside his family.

Your last sentence is funny, given that at least Arifurety is a Japanes isekai harem story, though one that breaks from a few of the prominent tropes with a main character that is aware that the girls like him as opposed to being as dense as a neutron star, and a canon harem ending (decided before the last chapter even) as opposed to the open end we often get.

 

[Mysticant]

Are there anyone like me? If there are then, can you recommend me some story from any mediums at all with such character? Thanks in advance~

So which braindead xianxia mc do you want me to introduce to you? Or should I just recommend Ark or LMS? The MCs operate with the brain of a middle schooler while the rest of the cast did not graduate from kindergarten.

And do you know why I say this? It is very hard to make your MCs and villains smarter than what you as an author are, but it is freaking easy to make the rest of the world dumber.

 

[Anon_Y_Mousse]

And do you know why I say this? It is very hard to make your MCs and villains smarter than what you as an author are, but it is freaking easy to make the rest of the world dumber.

Actually, it's quite easy to make characters appear smart when the entire game board is basically laid out by you. Whether it's pulled off correctly, I can't say.

 

[Mysticant]

Actually, it's quite easy to make characters appear smart when the entire game board is basically laid out by you. Whether it's pulled off correctly, I can't say.

But yeah, that is basically plattering your MC/villain without buffing any of your side characters. It is not that bad. But you will realise that the next step is to make the rest of the cast ignorant of certain facts, whilst the main characters have the board vision. Isn't that somewhat of what I mean that your MCs are just middle schoolers with god's revelation while the rest of the world are just ignorant buffoons with an IQ of 30 and EQ of 0?

It is a slippery slope. Even if the other cast is ignorant, they aren't usually dumb enough by real-world standards to not have fallback plans and support et cetera, well unless you are willing to make them that dumb.

 

[Anon_Y_Mousse]

But yeah, that is basically plattering your MC/villain without buffing any of your side characters. It is not that bad. But you will realise that the next step is to make the rest of the cast ignorant of certain facts, whilst the main characters have the board vision. Isn't that somewhat of what I mean that your MCs are just middle schoolers with god's revelation while the rest of the world are just ignorant buffoons with an IQ of 30 and EQ of 0?

It is a slippery slope. Even if the other cast is ignorant, they aren't usually dumb enough by real-world standards to not have fallback plans and support et cetera, well unless you are willing to make them that dumb.

I don't mean the MC plucking facts out of thin air. I mean that the MC and antagonist have "pieces" that they can play and hidden "pieces" they want to find. It's like a game of chess, the MC could bait the enemy in a way that isn't obvious so they lose an important piece. As a writer, you already know what they are and it only takes creativity to place everything in a way that doesn't make the antagonist blatantly stupid. Like if a character goes to a brothel in a disguise on Tuesday at around 15:00-17:00 and tends to prefer chamomile tea, it's not something that characters will generally know. An intelligent MC could exploit multiple small facts against the antagonist, not just one big fat weakness that was somehow kept hidden for ages.

 

[Mysticant]

I don't mean the MC plucking facts out of thin air. I mean that the MC and antagonist have "pieces" that they can play and hidden "pieces" they want to find. It's like a game of chess, the MC could bait the enemy in a way that isn't obvious so they lose an important piece. As a writer, you already know what they are and it only takes creativity to place everything in a way that doesn't make the antagonist blatantly stupid. Like if a character goes to a brothel in a disguise on Tuesday at around 15:00-17:00 and tends to prefer chamomile tea, it's not something that characters will generally know. An intelligent MC could exploit multiple small facts against the antagonist, not just one big fat weakness that was somehow kept hidden for ages.

I mean that is already part of your wits as an author to develop such a scenario. Please do not downplay your own intelligence. But my counterargument to this would be, so why would the side characters not be able to see this board and hide their own pieces as well? You get what I mean? You may seem to inherently give your MC/villain an advantage, but have you not thought that this conversely makes your side characters more one-dimensional?

So let us say the villain for example goes to drink chamomile tea on Tuesdays at 15:00-17:00. The MC can somehow pick this fact up from the bellboy who tells him this casual fact despite there being hundreds of other customers having different habits out there which could be suspicious. Let us say that the lady next door smokes her pipe with lavender incense, she is involved with a guy who runs the mafia and mixes a certain drug with a certain smell that mixes with that incense. The lady was also present that day. Now that is a red herring. Then did I mention that the bellboy, was also an orphan whose mother was taken advantage of by the villain? He paid extra attention to the villain and thus tipped the MC about the scenario.

That is my small example of a somewhat level playing field.

 

[Anon_Y_Mousse]

I mean that is already part of your wits as an author to develop such a scenario. Please do not downplay your own intelligence. But my counterargument to this would be, so why would the side characters not be able to see this board and hide their own pieces as well? You get what I mean? You may seem to inherently give your MC/villain an advantage, but have you not thought that this conversely makes your side characters more one-dimensional?

So let us say the villain for example goes to drink chamomile tea on Tuesdays at 15:00-17:00. The MC can somehow pick this fact up from the bellboy who tells him this casual fact despite there being hundreds of other customers having different habits out there which could be suspicious. Let us say that the lady next door smokes her pipe with lavender incense, she is involved with a guy who runs the mafia and mixes a certain drug with a certain smell that mixes with that incense. The lady was also present that day. Now that is a red herring. Then did I mention that the bellboy, was also an orphan whose mother was taken advantage of by the villain? He paid extra attention to the villain and thus tipped the MC about the scenario.

That is my small example of a somewhat level playing field.

Well, that's just a part of the execution. I can't say how exactly to develop such as scene because it would be different in every novel. I mean there could be a hundred different situations where the MC could find out such as the villain being one of the patrons that give good tips, hence the staff would obviously pay special attention to them. The circumstances and the direction where the MC wants to go also matter. So there's too many factors that only the author will know what to do about.

 

[Mysticant]

Well, that's just a part of the execution. I can't say how exactly to develop such as scene because it would be different in every novel. I mean there could be a hundred different situations where the MC could find out such as the villain being one of the patrons that give good tips, hence the staff would obviously pay special attention to them. The circumstances and the direction where the MC wants to go also matter. So there's too many factors that only the author will know what to do about.

I mean I agree with your point that you as the author set out the board and could choose who gets to see what. But in the end, how you execute changes the type of novel the readers are reading. Are you willing to only shower the love onto your main characters, or will you also bless your side cast? Even more so, are you going to curse your side cast and make them dumber than expected? Each question is a step-by-step process. Still, your creations tend to not exceed your baseline intelligence or skill of writing unless well that character or plot was not created by you in the first place.

 

[Anon_Y_Mousse]

I mean I agree with your point that you as the author set out the board and could choose who gets to see what. But in the end, how you execute changes the type of novel the readers are reading. Are you willing to only shower the love onto your main characters, or will you also bless your side cast? Even more so, are you going to curse your side cast and make them dumber than expected? Each question is a step-by-step process. Still, your creations tend to not exceed your baseline intelligence or skill of writing unless well that character or plot was not created by you in the first place.

Eh, I guess so, I mean I suck at detecting social cues and doing puzzles irl, so I don't think writing intelligent characters would directly translate to irl EQ/IQ. It's kinda like how historians can accurately judge the mistakes of intelligent and talented generals, hindsight is 50/50 after all. Still, this does make me want to create a character with an intelligence debuff field, and to make it even more insane it debuffs the author too making the writing style get shittier whenever they're around.

 

[BlackKnightX]

A lot I haven't seen or read, but the ones I have do not trigger my Gary Stu alarm bells:
Sasuke is arrogant and so consumed by his vengeance that he almost ruins everything for everyone multiple times throughout the series.
Hajime is also extremely arrogant and uncaring towards basically everyone, and a huge part of the story is him (re)growing as a human. Not that he gets all that much nicer towards people outside his family.

Your last sentence is funny, given that at least Arifurety is a Japanes isekai harem story, though one that breaks from a few of the prominent tropes with a main character that is aware that the girls like him as opposed to being as dense as a neutron star, and a canon harem ending (decided before the last chapter even) as opposed to the open end we often get.

I used the word Gary Stu in this thread mainly because I don’t know any other better words to describe what I was looking for. What I really want is the story with protagonist similar to these:

- Takumi Usui from Maid-Sama!
- Yuuji Kazami from The Fruit of Grisaia
- Anos Voldigoad from The Misfit of Demon King Academy
- Sasuke Uchiha from Naruto
- Kazuma Yagami from Kaze no Stigma
- Hajime Nagumo from Arifureta

I don’t care if they’re Gary Stu or not as long as they’re the character similar to these.

And I do know that Arifureta is already a harem isekai story with the protagonist that I like. The point is, do you know anything similar to this? If you do then please recommend.

(Just like in Arifureta, it‘d be best if the mc is OP or badass and doesn’t try to hide their power. They can be arrogant and don’t care about anyone other than their family. That’s exactly what I want.)

 

[SailusGebel]

I used the word Gary Stu in this thread mainly because I don’t know any other better words to describe what I was looking for. What I really want is the story with protagonist similar to these:

- Takumi Usui from Maid-Sama!
- Yuuji Kazami from The Fruit of Grisaia
- Anos Voldigoad from The Misfit of Demon King Academy
- Sasuke Uchiha from Naruto
- Kazuma Yagami from Kaze no Stigma
- Hajime Nagumo from Arifureta

I don’t care if they’re Gary Stu or not as long as they’re the character similar to these.

And I do know that Arifureta is already a harem isekai story with the protagonist that I like. The point is, do you know anything similar to this? If you do then please recommend.

(Just like in Arifureta, it‘d be best if the mc is OP or badass and doesn’t try to hide their power. They can be arrogant and don’t care about anyone other than their family. That’s exactly what I want.)

It's called edgy characters. Some of them are op which doesn't necessarily equal being Gary Stu.

 

[BlackKnightX]

It's called edgy characters. Some of them are op which doesn't necessarily equal being Gary Stu.

Yeah, I guess that’s the word. I found it very enjoyable to watch or read story with mc like that. Mc with a few screws loose like Accelerator, but deep down still considered a nice person.

Or maybe just a normal person who’s very competent and considered perfect in every way, like Takumi Usui from Maid-Sama!

But, if I have to choose, I lean more toward the later.

​

 

[Echimera]

Any other preferences?
Are evil MCs OK?
Are non-human MCs OK?
Stuff you've looked into but found not to your liking?

 

[BlackKnightX]

Any other preferences?
Are evil MCs OK?
Are non-human MCs OK?
Stuff you've looked into but found not to your liking?

Do you know Izayoi Sakamaki from Mondaiji tachi ga Isekai Kara Kuru So Desu Yo??
I want an mc like that, not just his OPness but also his personality. (Hedonistic might be the best word to describe, I guess.)

 

[EternalSunset0]

Do you know Izayoi Sakamaki from Mondaiji tachi ga Isekai Kara Kuru So Desu Yo??
I want an mc like that, not just his OPness but also his personality. (Hedonistic might be the best word to describe, I guess.)

Speaking of Izayoi and Mondaiji. No Game No Life is up your alley, I guess.

 

[BlackKnightX]

Speaking of Izayoi and Mondaiji. No Game No Life is up your alley, I guess.

Already rewatch it a million times. Thanks for the recommendation though.