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When you think of a shonen action show, you picture the protagonist being of the "It's over 9000" kind of hero. He has some secret/strong power that is imbalanced and makes him unique.

Examples could be Goku (the sourced of the over 9000 meme), current season's Asterisk war's Amagiri (his sister had to lock his power), Guilty Crown's Shuu, UQ Holder's Tôta, Ranma Saotome, etc etc etc...

But World Trigger's Mikumo is the exact opposite. He is weak, cannot defeat any but the weakest enemies by himself, and after 50 episodes even though he is a bit stronger now, he is still the weakest individual in his team and the weakest on his league.

Can he be classified as an anti-hero?

Mindwin Remember Monica
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  • He has heroic qualities, its just that he is weak, so it kind of contradicts the common definition of [Antihero](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antihero). – Astral Sea Nov 06 '15 at 01:20

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"An antihero or antiheroine is a protagonist who lacks conventional heroic qualities such as idealism, courage, and morality."-Wikipedia

Mikumo definitely does not fit this definition of an anti-hero. Those would generally be characters such as Deadpool, Punisher, etc from Western Comics. I feel this is probably the well understood definition.

Apparently (according to TVTropes which I gave into looking up) a Classic Antihero is plagued by self-doubt and a mediocre fighter. While Mikumo is brave when needed and clever, he clearly fits that (less familiar to me) definition. There are several more sympathetic heroes in Shonen who have uber super powered friends. In these cases, this definition would call this character (Elizabeth, Lucy, Ussop, Ganta, etc) the Classical Antihero while they have a contrasting Classical Hero (Meliodas, Natsu, Luffy, Shiro, etc).

kaine
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