Ambiguously Human / Anime & Manga

Ambiguously Human characters in Anime & Manga.

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• In Anpanman, despite their appearance compared to the other characters (especially in a world full of animals and object-headed characters), characters like Uncle Jam, Batako, and Dr. Hiyari are actually NOT humans, and are instead fairy-esque creatures. However, humans do exist in the Anpanman universe, only none of them are in Anpanland themselves.
• Berserk:
  • Guts consistently identifies as human, but there's been something off about him practically from birth (literally; he was born from the corpse of a hanged woman). He's superhumanly strong and resilient to the point of absurdity, his ears have points, and he seems to carry a lot of strange supernatural characteristics, including a Superpowered Evil Side. At least a chunk of this is credited to him being "between worlds", as a result of having been one of the only people to ever survive an Eclipse event, slaying many demons in the meantime, and wearing the cursed Berserker Armor, but enough of this stuff was true even in his youth that it definitely makes one wonder.
  • The Great Goat, an antagonist of the Tower of Conviction arc, is the leader of a strange demonic cult, but little is known about him. He only becomes an Apostle Spawn later on, but before that happens, he's clearly off. He's unusually tall and lanky and has six-fingered hands, and he spends all his time wearing what is apparently a very realistic mask based on a goat head, but elaborate enough that one could easily be convinced it's his real head (not to mention, we never see him take the mask off). A man under the effects of a hallucinogen sees his penis as a snake's head and neck, and it's never quite clear if what he's seeing the result of the drug or what it actually looks like. He could be a deformed human, a human altered through some unusual methods, or a member of some other race entirely.
• Bleach: Quincies may or may not be human. There are four soul-races, Humans, Hollows, Shinigami and Quincies. Humans and Hollows are opposites, and Shinigami and Quincies are opposites. Hollows are opposite to Quincies and possibly Humans and Shinigami, but the relationship between Humans and Quincies is unstated. When Ryuuken mentions the concept of "human power" he puts Ginjou (substitute shinigami), Sado (fullbringer) and Orihime (shaman) under that umbrella. While he includes his mixed-blood Quincy son, Uryuu, he excludes himself (a pure-blood Quincy) and admits he's stretching the definition of "human power" to include Uryuu at all. He doesn't explain that comment, not even to explain what the definition is.
• Cafe Kichijoji De is a Slice of Life manga set in the normal world. However, chef Hifumi Minagawa frequently dabbles in black magic, achieves things that shouldn't be humanly possible and is described as "A questionable human being" in his character profile.
• Freddie from Cromartie High School is huge, rides an even huger horse, never speaks, and looks and acts exactly like Freddie Mercury. It's unknown if he's the same Freddie, undead or otherwise, but whenever animals are discussed, he tends to be included among them. Weirder still is his American counterpart, Mr. Mercury, who also looks like the deceased singer but can speak and has a distinct personality.
• Date A Live: Early in the series, a few characters have considered the notion that Shido Itsuka might not be entirely human, given that he can seal and use Spirit powers. Further muddying the issue was the revelation that Spirits themselves used to be normal humans. Volume 17 reveals Shido used to be a regular human, until he was killed by Isaac Westcott and the First Spirit recreated him as her surrogate child.
• Dragon Ball:
  • In the beginning of the series, the sapient population of Earth consists mostly of regular humans, Talking Animals, and monsters, but there are some that don't fit clearly into any of them.
  • Although Goku is well-known nowadays for actually being an alien, it was unclear for a long time (and often questioned in-series) whether his tail, immense strength, and turning into a giant ape were from some non-human origin or just some inexplicable unique qualities of his. We find this out when Dragon Ball Z came along.
  • Tenshinhan is a regular human except he has a Third Eye. Chiaotzu looks like a painted doll version of a Chinese Vampire that has Psychic Powers and looks like a child even after getting a decade older. Mr. Popo has jet-black skin, Pointy Ears, and eyes like a Slime from Dragon Quest and has apparently served as assistant to the World's Guardian for hundreds and hundreds of years. Word of God has it that Ancient Astronauts landed on Earth long ago and interbred with early humans, and most humans have a little alien genetics, just not enough to be physically apparent. Those with more alien genetics than average sometimes manifest alien physical traits.
  • Pilaf, the very first Big Bad of the series and eternally recurring character, is a blue-skinned midget with pointy ears and no nose. It's never stated what he actually is, nobody ever comments upon his appearance and no other beings like him are ever seen.
  • Most of Doctor Gero's creations are pure robots (16 and 19), pure organics (Cell), or cyborgs (himself). Then there's 17 and 18, who are clearly enhanced humans, but how human they are is tricky to figure at first glance. It is confirmed that their bodies include some kind of "infinite engine" and once contained deactivation mechanisms, but they also have enough standard biology that 18 was able to give birth to an apparently normal girl. They're also designed to have a slightly Uncanny Valley appearance and do not appear to age while their strength, unlike Cell's, is not steeped in Ki Manipulation, but unlike most purely robotic characters, they also have the ability to train, increase their power, and learn new techniques, which wouldn't make sense if their abilities were purely mechanical. The fact that the official translation translated "Artificial Human" as "Android" only increases the confusion; depending on who you ask, they're anywhere between Ridiculously Human Robots to biologically-enhanced humans with a handful of robot parts.
  • In Dragon Ball Super, Goku Black is an antagonist who looks nearly identical to Goku and has a moveset that is similar, but the derogatory, observational way he talks about Saiyans and other mortal races, along with his odd fascination with Saiyan abilities, indicates that he probably isn't one himself. Goku and Whis speculate that he's a copy of Goku made by Zamasu using the Super Dragon Balls, after originally thinking that Zamasu will become him in the future. Eventually, it turns out that they were almost correct: Goku Black is revealed to be an alternate version of Zamasu who used the Dragon Balls to swap bodies with his timeline's Goku, making him a Kai in a Saiyan body.
• Fly Me to the Moon first introduces Tsukasa Tsukuyomi to the story by having protected her future husband from a fully speeding truck using her own body, and even when covered in her own blood, is able to get back up and walk away just fine. Her second meeting with Nasa, which presumably takes place just minutes after the truck hit on the two of them, shows her completely clean and uninjured, as if Tsukasa never got hit by the truck in the first place. The story itself gives out a lot of signs that Tsukasa's true identity is that of Princess Kaguya from the 10th century Japanese folk tale, The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter. She isn't. She's the daughter of Iwakasa, the Emperor's subordinate who was ordered to dispose of the elixir of immortality Kaguya left behind. He gave the elixir to his daughter to save her life.
• GA: Geijutsuka Art Design Class has "Professor" Miyabi Oomichi, whose emotionless nature, high intelligence, incredible hand coordination, Selective Magnetism, ability to communicate with birds, ability to breathe underwater, odd behaviour during thunderstorms, and stiff joints during humid weather are traits that wouldn't be out of place in a Robot Girl.
• Gakuen Babysitters: Saikawa is a super Stoic and hypercompetent butler who seems to do everything really well, but tends to suddenly freeze when he's unwell. Hayato and Usaida wonders if he's a vampire/demon or robot because of this.
• If you do a screengrab of Peppo in Gankutsuou and then clone her skin tone in MS Paint or a similar program, it suddenly becomes noticeable that her skin is mauve. Then you add in that manga!Peppo lacks nipples, in a canon that doesn't usually eliminate those (though that might also be intended as evidence of body-modification, as it's strongly implied that Peppo is transgender).
• The members of the Heaven's Design Team look and act human, but given that their role is to design and build living creatures for God Himself, it does make their actual "race" suspect. They're clearly not angels either, as they are treated as a separate group who serve as a liaison between the titular team and their client.
• Isabelle of Paris: Thiers, (yes, that Thiers). During Andréa's death scene, Thiers suddenly materializes out of nowhere. He laughs endlessly, for several minutes, as one by one, all of Andréa's comrades are shot one by one, until finally, Andréa himself is killed. The whole sequence looks like a terrible acid trip, and has to be seen to be believed. There's also his green skin, which for some reason, no one else mentions.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
  • Mannish Boy from Stardust Crusaders, outside of being a Stand User, seems to be an otherwise normal baby. However, given the fact that he has fangs, golden eyes, and unnaturally high intelligence for a baby (even for one that's a Stand User), it's quite possible that he's not human at all.
  • The story arc "I Am An Alien!" from Diamond is Unbreakable revolves around the character Mikitaka Hazekura (or Nu Mikitakazo Nshi as he calls himself) who makes the titular claim. On the one hand, he has pointed ears, breaks out in a rash when he hears sirens, can apparently stand perpendicular to walls, and his ability Earth Wind and Fire can transform him into any simple object he wants; on the other hand, he has no concrete proof of his species (he claims he traveled alone to Earth to assess its suitability for his kind, and his ship is too far away to call down), people with similar abilities through Stands are a dime a dozen in this setting, and we meet his mother, whom he claims he has brainwashed into thinking she is his mother; on the gripping hand, he can't see Stands (which is an ability universal to Stand Users), and Earth Wind and Fire never manifests as a separate entity outside of Mikitaka's body, though there are other Stands, such as Oingo's Khnum, that are apparently fused to the user's body. Not to mention every rule about how Stands work has been broken at least once in the franchise by some particularly abnormal Stand. When Yoshihiro Kira tries to shoot him with a Stand Arrow (which had apparently chosen him to be a new Stand User), the arrow bounced off him, leaving only a small scratch and Yoshihiro completely baffled (and the reason why it happened is never explained). So either Mikitaka really is an alien as he claims, or he's an alien-obsessed Chuunibyou who lucked out into getting a Stand that's perfect for pretending to be one. Araki offered a Shrug of God on the issue, saying that he felt introducing genuine aliens was just on the border of too outlandish for the world of the series.
  • Golden Wind:
    • Polpo is a massive towering blob of a man (at least 10 feet tall, when even the biggest Gonks in the series tend to have more realistic heights) with Black Eyes of Evil, able to disguise himself as a bed or a wall, and at one point even appears to eat his own fingers, though they're suddenly fine a moment later (none of which has anything to do with the ability of his Stand, Black Sabbath, either). The anime doesn't help matters by giving him a double-octave voice.
    • The Part's Big Bad, Diavolo, rather fitting for a character whose name is the Italian word for "Devil", is a complete oddity of a character. He is able to physically alter his own body when switching between himself and his Split Personality, who is also apparently a completely different soul who just so happens to inhabit the same body as him, his father died two years before he was born, and according to the anime, his mother apparently showed no signs of pregnancy until the night of his birth. The anime also adds a shot of the infant Diavolo's eyes changing color. Despite all this, he was still somehow able to father a child who, by all appearances, is a completely normal human girl.
    • To make matters worse, it's not made clear if his Stand, King Crimson, is just a mouthpiece Diavolo used while he was hiding his identity or if King Crimson is actually the true Diavolo, being a sapient Stand and using a host in order to interact with the world. Whenever Diavolo speaks to Doppio, it's usually King Crimson talking rather than Diavolo's shadowy silhouette. During the time of the body swap courtesy of Chariot Requiem, King Crimson, rather than the now-revealed Diavolo, is the visual POV of the character, whenever it's their internal monologue or when forced to expose himself to Giorno and the gang. The English Dub muddies the waters even further by having Diavolo outright refer to himself as King Crimson.
• In Kyo Kara Maoh!, there is no way to tell between demons and humans by looking at them. (Lampshaded in the anime when Yuri's mother is disappointed her husband and children don't have wings.) The only difference between them is their aging process, so in order to see if someone is human or not you just have to lock them up for a decade or two. Or ask them.
• In The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (2005), Ganondorf is shown in a flashback, and while he is never called a Gerudo, he has the typical round ears. On the other hand, he also has fangs and claws even before becoming Ganon.
• Isis Egret of Magical Record Lyrical Nanoha Force, who appeared to be a normal human at first until the point where she took a super-powered axe blow that explicitly broke her neck and still continued fighting, a feat limited to the hardier Artificial Humans of the setting. The only thing revealed about her is that she's the daughter of a famous family, which... doesn't say much about what she is considering how many people in this setting have adopted Cyborgs, Ridiculously Human Robots, Pure Magic Beings, and other seemingly human beings as family members.
• In Metal Fight Beyblade, Ryuga is possessed by the Forbidden Bey, L-Drago before being defeated and freed. The following seasons, Metal Masters and Metal Fury show him displaying a number of unnatural traits that no other blader does; being able to teleport anywhere via lightning and red Glowing Eyes of Doom that completely takes over his eyes just to name a few. In his first Bey battle after appearing again and purging himself and L-Drago of the dark power, Rygua himself claims that he "became one with the vast power of the cosmos that that fragment of a star originally hailed or the first time."
• The Medicine Peddler from Mononoke has facial markings, pointed ears, sharp canines, eternal youth, and flashy exorcism powers — and an alter-ego specifically designed for the purpose. Though his actual species is never revealed, it's rather obvious (to the viewers anyway) that he isn't a normal human. Not that it stops him claiming to be.
• Played for Laughs briefly in Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun when Mayu collapses on the floor as a reaction to his phone dying from low battery. All his nearby classmates, overhearing he's out of battery, decide to help out by... attempting to "plug" him with their phone chargers. Here, Kobayashi realizes that his classmates don't see Mayu in a flattering light.
• Nearly everybody in My Hero Academia is supposed to be human, including the half-frog girl, the bird-headed guy, the pink-skinned horned gal, the masked man with six arms and the living pile of sludge. Quirks can cause odd appearances, and it's mentioned that when they first appeared society was forced to reevaluate the definition of "human." The one exception is the school's principal, Nezu, who's some kind of animal with a Quirk that gives him Super-Intelligence.
• As they were originally planned to all be inhuman monsters, whether or not some of the members of Akatsuki in Naruto are human isn't initially clear. Kisame is a shark man, Kakuzu is a living rag-doll that steals people's hearts and can split demon-like creatures off from himself, and Zetsu is a Venus flytrap man with a Literal Split Personality. Later chapters and supplementary information show that Kakuzu is a human who modified his body with forbidden ninjutsu, Kisame is just a weird looking human, and Zetsu's white half is an artificial creation of Madara's made from the first Hokage's cells while the origin of his black half is the creation of Princess Kaguya, who is of unknown origin and is a Physical God.
• Negima! Magister Negi Magi:
  • Chao takes every opportunity to let the group know she's a "Martian" but doesn't clarify whether that means alien or just human living on Mars (she's also from the future), which got more complicated after it was revealed the Magical World is on Mars. She also claims to be Negi's descendant, which if true would also not necessarily make her human, since later in the manga Negi is no longer entirely human himself and one of his potential love interests is a vampire.
  • The demonfolk girl Poyo is introduced as the older sister of Zazie, which must account for something to do with the latter's anatomy.
  • All the residents of the magic world are apparently human but for, say, pointy ears, or dragon horns.
  • Chachamaru went comically unnoticed by most of the rest of the class (apart from Chisame), and has become more so with the addition of Synthetic Skin. This has reached the point that, where once it was obvious due to mechanical limbs, it's only the antennae that really distinguish her as an android anymore.
• One Piece:
  • It's no secret that the series has a lot of Gonks and generally strange-looking people, but Gecko Moria seems too weird for even these. He is the tallest non-giant seen in the series, he has pure white skin, very sharp teeth, pointed ears and horns and generally looks like some monster clown devil, not really traits you connect with your average guy. Word of God has at least stated horns (which Hannyabal also has) are something some people naturally have in the story's world.
  • The Straw Hats are definitely human (except Chopper, Jimbei and, depending on how you look at it, Brook) but after the time skip, some commoners tend to doubt it in-universe, crediting them with powers they aren't capable of. This tends to be true of all pirates with high notoriety. In Sanji’s case, the question over how exactly human he is actually was well founded when the Transhuman origin of his birth is revealed in Whole Cake island, though granted it took another arc for said metahuman genetics to really kick in.
  • Kaido, of the Four Emperors, tends to get this due to his impossible resistance and strength even by Emperor standards, plus his odd size and horns. It's already implied in his title of "World's Strongest Creature" (which was already in action while Whitebeard was the World's Strongest Man), and more directly referenced when fellow Emperor Charlotte "Big Mom" Linlin refers to him as "that thing". It's currently unknown if he's really got nonhuman blood in his veins (be it giant or otherwise), if he's got a particularly strong/weird Zoan fruit, or if that's just the One Piece universe's Bizarre Human Biology at work again; other confirmed humans have had horns like that, and both Whitebeard and Big Mom showed some completely ridiculous strength and toughness as well, and neither of them is ever called anything else than human (though Big Mom is acknowledged as a bit of a freak of nature). A conversation between him and Big Mom reveals that he ate a Mythical-Class Fish Fruit, though whether or not he's still human is still up for debate. Conversations in flashbacks with his son Yamato also has him describe them as oni and they both do have some oni traits (particularly the horns), but he might have been speaking metaphorically.
  • The Gorosei/Five Elder Stars were an enigma for most of the story, and information on them is absurdly scarce, to the point we don't even learn their names until the beginning of the story's Grand Finale - but the more that we do learn about them, the more unclear the topic of their humanity becomes. Their ages are the start: in every flashback they show up in, no matter how much time has passed, they always look exactly the same (Saint Jaygarcia Saturn in particular looked exactly the same - like an old man - almost forty years before the story began). And when St. Jaygarcia Saturn decides to take matters into his own hands, he's summoned from a pentagram of all things, and reveals something that is assumed to be an insanely powerful Awakened Mythical Zoan fruit that comes with outright supernatural abilities. For example, blowing people's heads off with a look, and a Healing Factor that outright removes injuries rather than healing them, including missing limbs. However, it says something that even World's Smartest Man and greatest Devil Fruit expert in the world Dr. Vegapunk cannot be sure this is a Devil Fruit at work. And then, the other four are similarly summoned by Saturn with pentagrams of their own, and all show similarly monstrous supernatural transformations, sharing the exact same Healing Factor (when an identical shared power like that is usually impossible with Devil Fruits)... and their introductions point what these creatures are out directly, rather than revealing these are Devil Fruits of any kind or model (for example, the information panel for Jaygarcia Saturn simply says "Gyuki" instead of something like "mythical Spider Spider Fruit, model: Gyuki"). All in all, it becomes increasingly uncertain whether the Elders are ancient humans that ate ultra-powerful Zoans and possibly had the Perpetual Youth Operation performed on them, or if they are something closer to actual demons merely pretending to be human.
• Petit iDOLM@STER:
  • The Puchidols look and act like little Super-Deformed girls - specifically, super-deformed versions of 765 Pro's idols, who happen to co-exist with the actual idols. In addition, they have odd powers, only talk in Pokémon Speak, and are treated as magical creatures by the story.
  • The Producer has a giant yellow P for a head, which all of the idols and Puchidols treat as utterly normal. It's the fact that he'll pull on a human mask to meet outsiders they find weird.
• Most, if not all, of the children in Rebuild of Evangelion. Shinji, Asuka, and Mari no longer age as a result of contact with the Evas, Kaworu is an angel in human form, and Rei is implied to still carry Lilith's soul.
• Remina: The lead cultist is revealed at the end to be Goda, the president of Remina's fan club, which would make it clear that he's human if it wasn't for the scene where he licks Remina's face with an inhumanly long tongue identical to Remina's.
• Soul Eater:
  • The only indication that Death the Kid is not a member of one of the 'verse's common races (Human/Weapon, witch) is his black-and-white striped hair. Unlocking his Power Limiter reveals only a few differences, and these are temporary (his healing ability on the first occasion, and Exotic Eye Designs when the limiter is removed completely). It turns out that he's a Humanoid Abomination who's essentially the Anthropomorphic Personification of OCD.
  • Crona is implied a few times to be an Artificial Human of some kind. Their mother, Medusa is noted to be a Mad Scientist and a Wicked Witch rolled into one and she only ever alludes to having "created" and "made" Crona as opposed to giving birth to them.
• In Spirited Away, the bathhouse is full of employees who look human, but the shocked reactions to the definitely-human Chihiro being in their world indicate that humans being around is a very rare thing. All of the employees are supernatural beings transformed for the job, but what they all are is unspecified. We learn that Haku is a river spirit, but that's it. The owner of the bath house, Yubaba, is just as uncertain. She appears human save for a large head (which could be chalked up to odd anime design style) but can perform magic, transform into a birdlike creature, and has a baby that also appears human but is as large as she is and can talk like an adult. Her twin sister, Zeneba, looks identical, also has magic powers, and lives in what's implied to be the world of the dead.
• Chizuru Aizawa of Squid Girl is an in-universe example. Her brother and sister don't appear to be anything out of the ordinary, but Chizuru is notably faster and stronger than the human norm (and also faster and stronger than the titular Squid Girl), enough so people are suspicious about her (she's not happy about this, because she thinks of herself as a normal girl). There are also suspicions about Ayumi, given her ability to understand animals.
• Inaba is a minor character in Urusei Yatsura who appears to be a handsome young human man dressed up in a full-body rabbit costume. However, he works for the Fate/Destiny Management Bureau, an organization that exists in an otherworldly dimension and creates futures for humanity. If he is human, it's unknown how he came to work with them, or why he's able to slip between dimensions the way they do (though the latter part, in the manga, is attributed to his "uniform"). Even the rest of the Bureau is ambiguous; they appear to be man-sizd anthropomorphic rabbits, but in several panels in the manga, it looks almost like that at least some of them are humans in rabbit costumes, like Inaba himself.
• World Trigger: Neighbors. They're referred to as beings from another dimension, while being perfectly human in appearance. Kuga is the son of a human, but is considered a neighbor himself, suggesting the distinction is entirely a matter of nationality. At the same time, there's been no explicit reference to the idea, and a common origin seems implausible at the current point in the story. Kuga fulfills the trope on a personal level, with minor super strength, non-human mannerisms and ignorance of Earth culture that all hint at his origin before he's revealed as a Neighbor.
• In Yu-Gi-Oh! GX, after Tanya of the Seven Stars loses to Judai, she relinquishes her Shadow Charm necklace, and transforms into a white tiger, similar to the pet one she has. It is not known whether the tiger or her human form is her true form. One could've assumed she needed the necklace to maintain human form, but she reappears human again in the third season. However all her Season 3 appearances are in one of the many Spirit Worlds.