Book Dumb / Anime & Manga

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• Albegas: Main character Daizaku has bad grades and is often called a "ne'er do well" by his teachers. In part this is because he'd rather look at porn magazines all day (and imagine Hotaru's head on them) than study.
• Mira from Asteroid in Love needed to take make-up exams in her first trimester of high school. She is especially poor when it comes to anything mathematics-related, and she also needed to take make-up exams on English. Despite this, she's quite knowledgable when it comes to astronomy.
• Tomo, Osaka and Kagura from Azumanga Daioh all display this trope to some degree. The three of them are pretty much as intelligent as any high school girl, yet their test scores are so low, they once added them and got 104, or in American, an A++ (if Chiyo, Sakaki and Yomi did that, it would be roughly a 270 / AAA++++++). This is justified, though, because Tomo is a Genki Girl with the attention span of a squirrel, Osaka is a Cloudcuckoolander with the attention span of a squirrel, and Kagura is a Passionate Sports Girl with the attention span of a squirrel. In an ironic twist, all three of them manage to pass their entrance exams to college before the much more studious Yomi does (complete with a Lampshade Hanging from Yukari about how odd it is that they got into college at all).
• In Barrage, Astro thinks 7 minus 5 equals 3. He didn't even know what money or work is until he was taught by a passing alien named Black, but this is justified as Astro is an orphan growing up in the slums who had no chance at a proper education.
• A filler episode of Beelzebub reveal that the students of Ishiyama High hate studying 180% — so you can imagine their surprise when they are given an assessment test. The students of the school are so stupid that even Oga is stunned. "Good Night" Shimokawa couldn't even spell his trademark Catchphrase, and one student even cheated on filling in his name during the test; and the worst part was that the test was on elementary school subjects. At the same time, Oga was in a pinch during Beel's assessment test and was going to dump him off the smartest guy in the school — meaning the guy who got the highest score on the test. Luckily, he managed to pass that assessment test anyway because it turns out the smartest person at Ishiyama High was Furuichi, the only person in the school who isn't a delinquent. Though that was probably because the smarter characters didn't even try. Himekawa, perhaps the smartest person of the entire main cast, made no effort to try and cheated by taping some money to his paper as a bribe.
• Although a lot of it can be attributed to growing up in the countryside, Asta from Black Clover is unknowledgeable in many things. He doesn't know what a date is, table manners, the role of a Magic Knight (the position he aspired to become), and his brain overloads when the Witch Queen provides an Info Dump on the elves. Despite this, it takes him very little time to learn how to sense ki and he quickly grasps the mechanics of his Black Asta form. The Guidebook gives him a 4/5 in "Cleverness", showing that while he may be traditionally dumb he really can be clever.
• Inversion: Despite being an apparent delinquent and shonen lead, Ichigo Kurosaki of Bleach has one of the highest grade point averages in the school, to the chagrin of his normal friends who are upset that he betrays his stereotype. He replies that he gets enough flak from the teachers for getting into fights and his strange hair colour, so he studies hard to make sure that at least they can't complain about his grades. However, in battle he tends to charge in without a plan, and ignore his allies plans.
  • It's the same with Chad (who gets a higher score than Ichigo), except he's not so much of a delinquent anymore.
  • Then there's Orihime, who, despite her space-case tendencies, manages to get at least 3rd in their entire grade.
  • Keigo, however, is a straight example. He takes great pride in having low grades and being an idiot. However, Mizuiro once said that Keigo is actually very intelligent but is deliberately sabotaging his education. Eventually, he's revealed to be extremely good under life-threatening pressure when he's the only one to keep his head enough to make everyone take advantage of Aizen and Gin confronting each other and flee before Aizen can turn on them. He was also able to put together something he'd seen hundreds of chapters ago which made him realise that a shinigami's weapon was the only thing that stood a chance against a being like Aizen, and he was prepared to use the weapon in a Heroic Sacrifice to give his companions a chance to escape. Fortunately, the sword's owner turned up before Keigo died.
• Bloom Into You has Akari, a basketball player who gets the worst grades out of the entire school-age cast. A pentagon graph shows that none of her grades are above average, and the comments say that she's "decent at biology."
• Blue Exorcist: Rin Okumura, like most Shounen Protagonists, is this trope. Especially compared to his younger twin brother Yukio. However, like most book dumb characters he's shown to be Street Smart; on the field he's pretty quick on the uptake, he's very good at connecting to and inspiring others, and has shown some pretty interesting flashes of natural abilities, such as one instance of Stealth Hi/Bye in a room full of experienced exorcists. He just can't seem to connect to academics like his brother, though he did get a Junior High Diploma and manage to become an Exwire. The fact he, according to Word of God, sleeps eleven hours per day (possibly half because he's half-demon)probably doesn't help, and neither does his Locked Out of the Loop status before he entered cram school (which justifies his ridiculously low scores at the start). His Stepford Smiler status throws some doubt into just how "dumb" he is as well.
• Genta from Case Closed is not very good at school and has difficulty with simple basic Japanese and math. Although, he is a first grade elementary student.
• In Daltanious, Kento (who's an Idiot Hero) tells Earl that he's glad the Zaal Empire invaded because that means he doesn't have to go to school anymore. He neglects improving his skills as a pilot and learning Helios' cultural history in favour of playing with the Ragtag Bunch of Misfits and everyone else in the village. Earl lampshades this by asking why he can't be like the studious Manabu instead.
• Senshi from Delicious in Dungeon is Street Smart, but he doesn't read books much and distrust magic. He is even unaware that dragon carcass is very flammable due to its fuel-producing innards and tried to start fire nearby.
• Nobita in Doraemon is an extreme and somewhat exaggerated version of this trope. He literally keeps getting zeroes in his tests. Even the resident Dumb Muscle Giant gets some questions rights, Nobita just zeroes everything. On the other hand, he can be intelligent at times and quite cunning, usually when trying to get his hands on Doraemon's gadget.
• Dragon Ball:
  • Dragon Ball:
    • Son Goku grew up without a formal education, aside from learning basic reading and math while training with Master Roshi for a year. Before that he thought 14, not 12, came after eleven and afterwards it's revealed during his fight with Ninja Murasaki that he still can't count past 25. Even as an adult he still comes off as an idiot, even before factoring in the English dub making him sound reasonably smarter (it doesn't help that in the original Japanese he speaks with a downplayed Tohoku accent, a dialect that's typically associated with country hicks). As an adult, though he still can be naive and a little too willing to trust others, what keeps him from being an Idiot Hero is that he can show surprising wisdom and it's clear that his intelligence is focused on combat. When it comes to fighting, he's a genius, able to point to pick up on the strengths and the flaws of various techniques, outthink his opponents with good strategies, and he can learn and invent new techniques with relative ease.
    • In his debut appearance during the Tenshinhan Saga, Chaozu has trouble with basic math and can't tell left from right without pausing to think which hand he holds chopsticks in. Apparently, unlike Muten Roshi, Tsuru-sennin doesn't bother providing his students with basic schooling.
  • Dragon Ball GT: After reverting to a kid, Goku has seem to become even dumber than he was in his childhood, as he has trouble to count up to three.
  • Dragon Ball Super: Vegeta makes a mistake by suggesting a preliminary written test exam for the fighters of the interuniversal tournament. It's actually a simple test meant to keep out mindless monsters incapable of following rules. However, Majin Buu fails the test by writing his own name wrong and falling asleep, and Goku barely passes by reaching the minimum score. It is also implied that Magetta from Team Champa had also difficulty during the test, but still passes. Now, Team Beerus is forced to enter the tournament with only four people instead of five.
• In Failed Princesses, Nanaki Fujishiro and Miki are both gyarus with a knack for beauty and fashion, with Nanaki even appearing in a magazine. Unfortunately, they also have terrible grades, which results in them ending up in remedial lessons together some time after they end up feuding.
• Fruits Basket both subverts and plays this straight with a few characters.
  • Kyo is a subversion; he has the personality of a delinquent and is obsessed with martial arts, but he's actually a good student.
  • Played straighter with Tohru, who is highly emotionally intelligent and insightful when it comes to people's feelings, but struggles with her grades and often needs help with studying.
  • Hanajima is smart, but simply doesn't give a damn about schoolwork (except when faced with the threat of summer school in non-air conditioned rooms, when she makes sure to avoid failing grades).
• Miaka from Fushigi Yuugi is a borderline female example. You'd think that all the stomach thinking and putting herself needlessly in danger would reflect in dis-interest for studies, but her grades aren't abysmally bad and she's shown having an interest in studying so she can get in a good high school, like Yui. This is even more accentuated in the manga, where it's explained as her way to seek for the approval of her Education Mama. Ends up subverted at the end of the TV anime series, when it's revealed that Miaka passed the entrance exam to Jonan while Yui, who's more traditionally smart, did not. They both end up going to a different high school together.
• One of the rare female examples is Maya Kitajima from Glass Mask, who is able to memorize full scripts and acknowledges lots of acting techniques, but is barely average at school. She lampshades this by thinking she's just not interested in academic prowess.
• Hinami Ayukawa, the protagonist of The Girl I Want is So Handsome!, is bad at school, with her only good subject being Home Ec. The latter admission is something her senpai and teammate Rei Miyamoto finds hilarious. The trope is downplayed with Shiki, who agrees that math is her best subject, but only in comparison to her others, so while she can tutor Hinami, she's not a great student.
• The Guy She Was Interested in Wasn't a Guy At All has Mitsuki Koga. Despite being a music nerd who's quite knowledgeable about her subject, most of her grades are all over the place- 95 in English, 65 in Modern Japanese^note A score of 65 out of 100 is significantly better in Japan than it is in the U.S., 31 in World History, 29 in Physics and an 18 in Math- and it's clear that the bad grades outnumber the good ones.
• Hinata, Kageyama, Tanaka, and Nishinoya from Haikyuu!!. Hinata's test scores are so low he doesn't even know the passing grade and has once remarked that he'd never gotten a double-digit score in any exam. Kageyama, however, is the most surprising one. On one hand, he's known in-series as a volleyball prodigy, is on-par with arguably the most intelligent member of his team with regards to tactics, and has been shown to memorize volleyball signs in less than five seconds. On the other hand, his grades are catastrophically low, he thinks the brain is a muscle, doesn't know what veteran means... the list goes on and on.
• In Hori Miya, Miyamura is not as intelligent as people think despite his smartish looks.
• The iDOLM@STER — Haruka and Yayoi are both implied to be this.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
  • Jotaro Kujo from Stardust Crusaders is an outright delinquent who skips school regularly — although this may be because all of the girls at his high school can't stop fawning over him, and he can't stand most of the others — but despite his self-imposed lack of formal education, he has incredible intuition and deductive reasoning skills (which, in a rather odd Shout-Out, he attributes to his obsessive watching of Columbo as a child). Jotaro actually ends up being a marine biologist (of all things) later on, which goes to show he isn't as dumb as one might think.
  • There's also Narancia from Golden Wind, who has a pathetic mathematical skill. His Establishing Character Moment saw him calculate 16 x 55 = 28... despite having previously correctly writing down 5 x 6 = 30. He received a fork to the face from Fugo as a result. From the anime:
    Fugo: [after stabbing Narancia in the face with a fork] YOU STUPID DELINQUENT! ARE YOU MESSING WITH ME!? HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO TEACH YOU THIS BEFORE YOU LEARN!? YOU SHIT FOR BRAINS!
• Jonah in Jormungand may be one of the best and most badass members of the group but even though he can take down a whole camp by himself he still can't do basic multiplication. (The fact that he's still a 10- to 12-year-old kid who spent his entire life as a child soldier doesn't help.)
• This is actually a plot point in Kaguya-sama: Love Is War where Otomo had to change schools due to failing Shuchi'in's High School entrance exams, leading to a rumor that she transferred out of fear of Ishigami (supposedly) stalking her.
• Kill la Kill:
  • Mako. Aikuro is amazed she managed to get to high school. It's implied that she can't even read kanji. The fact that her "Hallelujah" speeches are full of kanji-based Visual Puns make this even more hilarious.
  • Ryuko as well. The first Drama CD has her boldly saying she'll spend a week in the town library to prepare for an upcoming test... only to do nothing but sleep and eat for the week and end up relying on Senketsu to answer the academic questions for her. She shows her street smart side by analyzing Satsuki's intuitive questions, like whether or not Satsuki's eyebrows are big and figures out that based on Satsuki's personality and the setting that her tester does not want to hear that they are.
• Hajime of The Kindaichi Case Files is a great detective with the IQ of 180. However, he is shown to be bad in school Performance with bleak prospect on college. The very first case, however, mentions that he gets the highest score in the entire history of Fudo High's entrance exam, indicating that he can make it if he tries to study. The thing is, he is not seen putting much effort in studying (as evidenced by him resorting to cheating at the beginning of Wax Doll Castle Murder Case) coupled with his growing game addiction. He is still able to answer questions that rely on logic though.
• In the sixth episode of Kotoura-san, it was revealed Hiyori failed most of the subjects, despite looking smarter than the local Idiot Hero Manabe, who barely passed.
• Kuroko's Basketball has Kagami, who is good at basketball, eating and not much else. He argues that, having spent his childhood in America, he can't understand enough Japanese to do well on his tests. Which would be plausible, except that he also does terribly (as in, scores only a few marks) in English. His excuse for this is that it's not actually English you use on a day to day basis. Aomine, being very similar to Kagami, is shown to be this as well (like Kagami, he's also only really good at basketball). Kise's grades are said to also be pretty bad, albeit slightly better than Kagami's and Aomine's. As for the rest of the Generation of Miracles, Kuroko's are extremely average, Midorima's somewhat intelligent, Murasakibara's aren't really talked about, and Akashi is a Teen Genius (though it's implied he's worked very hard with his studies.)
• Little Witch Academia: Akko has little knowledge about the magic world and tends to struggle a lot in academics, often sleeping in class due to boredom and getting poor grades for her lack of innate magic ability. In spite of this though, she's shown to be incredibly clever, creative and innovative at times, which has saved her and her friends quite a number of times, on top of solving numerous problems. She's also quite proficient with the Shiny Rod as well, despite being poor at magic otherwise.
• Lucky Star:
  • Tsukasa gets poor academic grades and is capable of sleeping from 10:00 PM to 2:00 PM. Despite this, she is shown to be an excellent cook.
  • Konata is such an otaku that she actually forgets to do her homework. In fact, Konata admits in one particular episode that she's perfectly capable of achieving high marks, but her obsessive and procrastination habits just fill in more than academics.
    • Konata got into this locally prestigious high school by the lure of a PS2 and a PC.
    • In one episode she demonstrates her ability to cram for a test with a single all-nighter; she manages to get the same good score as Kagami, despite of that the latter studied for the same test well over a week.
  • Misao is similar to Konata, but she's more inclined towards outdoor activities.
• Lucy-May of the Southern Rainbow: Upon moving to Australia from England, Lucy May starts third-year school. She finds math terribly hard, which Mr. Mackenzie very angry. In contrast, Kate is good at maths.
• Maken-ki!: In Takeru's case, it's mainly to facilitate exposition, by having the others fill him in for the benefit of the readers. But is still egregious since he's usually clueless about matters even a first-year student should know.
  • Himegami had to explain that the Tenbi region is essentially a small autonomous nation. And in Chapter 15, Haruko and Inaho had to tell him what Amanohara was, even though it's a landmark that's visible from anywhere on campus.
  • Takeru failed his mid-term with a score of only 20. So, during their cram session, Usui had to re-educate him on how Element works; which is considered basic at the academy.
• In Miimu Iro Iro Yume no Tabi, Daisuke has no problem following Miimu's scientific explanations; she even suggests he has the potential to become a great scientist himself... frequent poor grades notwithstanding.
• My Hero Academia:
  • Denki Kaminari and Mina Ashido are the two lowest-ranking students on the midterm, although they aren't completely stupid. Unfortunately, the final exams pit them against Principal Nezu, an Uplifted Animal with genius-level intellect, since the matchups are designed to force students to overcome their weaknesses. Kaminari and Ashido lose easily and are forced to take remedial lessons.
  • Mirio Togata. Despite getting poor grades before Nighteye's tutoring, he's an exceptionally talented hero who eventually mastered his Difficult, but Awesome Quirk and became the best choice to succeed All Might, even compared to pro heroes.
• Naruto routinely comes up with winning strategies for his squad, yet placed dead last in the exams (the databooks give his intelligence score pre-Time Skip as 1.5 out of 5) and one scene implied that he is barely literate. It seems he can only think properly under life threatening danger, but has apparently grown out of this after the Time Skip (said score has gone up to 3). (In fairness, he had no parents to teach him anything.)
  • Justified because, as Kakashi once stated, Naruto is a kinesthetic learner — the type who learns "with his body" or "by doing" — which didn't serve him very well during the mostly theoretical training at the academy. Once he actually starts doing missions and acquiring battle experience, he winds up mastering a handful of techniques that are well beyond a beginner's level, if, occasionally, in roundabout manners, and proves himself a very fast learner who somewhat overtakes the analytical and traditionally talented Sasuke until the latter makes a Deal with the Devil. They remained roughly on par ever since. Further justified in that Naruto is the host of the 9-nailed demon fox and the seal interferes with his ability to control his chakra properly.
  • Sakura's something of an inversion in Part I, as she aces every test in the academy, but rarely puts her intelligence to practical use in the field (for example, she doesn't see through either of the fake Narutos in the Forest of Death before Sasuke, who has 1.5 fewer intelligence points in the databook, pointed them out). She winds up becoming a mostly brute-force focused fighter as far as her strictly offensive capabilities are concerned. Her intelligence is ultimately put to use in medical jutsu.
  • Shikamaru's academy grades are not much better than Naruto's (mainly because he's so lazy that applying pencil on paper tends to be a drag for him and he sleeps through the exams), but he has an IQ of over 200 (which if he lived in the real world would make him quite possibly the smartest person who ever lived) and demonstrates his intelligence through his brilliant strategies. Even his intelligence has been admired by people like Kakashi and the Third Hokage. Sakura once said that Shikamaru is the smartest ninja in the Land of Fire.
• Yue Ayase from Negima! Magister Negi Magi is one of the smartest girls in the class, not counting the Mad Scientist or the Time Traveller. She adores reading, especially philosophy. It's just that reality is so incredibly pointless that she doesn't care to try at all, which places her in the lowest grade percentile of the class. (The so-called "Baka Rangers.")
  • Also fellow Baka Ranger Kaede Nagase, who actually seems to be a very wise girl for her age. Perhaps the Ninja training just gets in the way of her studies.
  • Both Asuna and Ku Fei (also of the Baka Rangers) have both shown impressive tactical skills and Asuna is very good at judging the emotions of others. Admittedly, Ku Fei has to work with the handicap of a less than perfect grasp of Japanese (you try learning to speak language A taught in language B when C is your native tongue), and it is widely speculated that what ever spell keeps Asuna from remembering her past also interferes with her general memorization skills. In fact of the five only Ensemble Dark Horse Makie is arguably just plain dumb.
• Luffy in One Piece is very book dumb when it comes to science and medicine — he once tried to heal a wounded Zoro by pouring booze on his face because "Zoro likes sake, so it'll make him better". One of the TV specials implies that he can't even read. However, he's extremely good at coming up with the best ways to use his Devil Fruit powers to their fullest in various situations. One that particularly sticks out is when he out-smarts Eneru's Mantra mind-reading ability... by out-dumbing him. He intentionally thinks of nothing (The name of said technique translated as "Gum-Gum Space-Out"). That trick actually fails, since Luffy realizes too late that he can't attack without thinking, but he then immediately starts bouncing punches off a wall. He has no idea of what the redirected punches will hit, making it impossible for Eneru to dodge them by reading his mind.
• Saitama of One-Punch Man. With his deity level strength, he should be in the S-class of heroes. But unfortunately he's not exceptionally bright. Scoring a perfect 100 on the physical portion of the hero test, but a meager 42 on the written portion.
• Pokémon: The Series:
  • Ash (Satoshi) inevitably ends up like this any time he's placed in a traditional school setting. An episode of DP has him failing miserably during a Pokémon quiz, leading another character to question how a trainer with such poor academic knowledge of Pokémon could have earned 6 badges. The episode eventually leads to an Aesop about how learning theory in school doesn't necessarily make one good at actually doing something in real life. The character who mocked Ash's low score gets curbstomped in a real battle against the Team Rocket trio, without any dirty tricks, because he had no actual experience and had no idea what to do other than list off attack names.
    • The Sun & Moon series shows him being fully aware of this; when struggling with an assignment to give an oral report on differences between Alolan and Kantonian Pokémon, he tells Professor Kukui that he thinks it would be better if Lillie or Sophocles did it instead.
  • Iris is revealed to be this when she returns to Opelucid City when it shows that she never performed well academically in school.
• Pokémon Adventures: A particularly interesting case is Odamaki Sapphire — the girl is almost illiterate to the point she had to ask an assistant how certain words sounded during the intellectual portion of Roxanne's qualification exam, but due to certain aspects of her upbringing she's much smarter than she appears. Roxanne lectured her on learning how to read after the test was finished... only for her brain to crack when she realized the girl scored the highest of everyone in the room! The look on Roxy's face was priceless.
• Pretty Cure:
  • Nozomi of Yes! Pretty Cure 5. When she finally gets her teammates together and they find out how poorly she does, Karen suggests getting together and studying. However, her implied Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny! makes it hard for her to get her head into the game and she ends up bailing in frustration. Coco's able to convince her to keep going and try again and she does better... but not that much.
  • Megumi of HappinessCharge Pretty Cure! gets the lowest scores in her class. Episode 12 focuses on Hime trying to train her to become a better student.
  • Hinata of Healin' Good♡Pretty Cure spends one episode trying to improve as a student after completely bombing a test, because she's afraid that Nodoka and Chiyu will look down on her for not being as intelligent, and they won't get into the same high school.
  • Manatsu of Tropical-Rouge! Pretty Cure gets terrible test scores; a Freeze-Frame Bonus in one episode shows that on one of her assignments, she actually got her own name marked wrong.
• Ermengarde in Princess Sarah, like her original incarnation, is portrayed as scatterbrained and scholastically backward; in a flashback, we also see that this may be related to neglect by her father, a university professor. However, she is also portrayed as good-hearted and generous, loyal to Sara even after she loses both father and fortune, and nurses Sara when she falls seriously ill. She also is the only person, apart from Sara, whom Lottie can relate to, at least to some extent.
• The Quintessential Quintuplets: As the Nakano sisters were all nearly held back a year before transferring schools, leading their father to hire a private tutor out of desperation to help whip the five of them into shape; which is where Fuutarou comes in.
• Ranma Saotome of Ranma ½. He's known for his success with on-the-fly solutions, though he's also capable of coming up with intricate plans, such as the one he used to get Happosai to change Pantyhose Taro's name. He's attentive and smart, to the point where he can reproduce a martial arts move after seeing it only once and then find its weak spot. Too bad he's kind of Book Dumb in certain areas.
  Akane: Ranma, you do know what Romeo and Juliet are to each other, don't you?
  Ranma: Father and daughter, right?
  • This is much more pronounced in the anime than the manga, where he's never shown to be having severe trouble with studies. The one time his grades came up, his only comment on seeing them revealed was "Hmm, not as bad as I'd thought."
• Tsunayoshi Sawada from Reborn! (2004). In the beginning, he's pretty much the school's Butt-Monkey that gets the worst grades. And for the longest time, it really did look like he was all-around useless. However, after the series got more serious, he's shown to not actually be stupid — when he's determined and tries, he's very smart about fighting and utilizing his abilities in combat. He still has bad grades, but it's shown that if people actually bother to help him, he actually can sufficiently well in class (e.g. the time when G disguised himself as Gokudera and tutored Tsuna, and he manages to solve a problem in class).
  • Yamamoto, though not as bad as Tsuna, is definitely smarter outside the classroom than in it. Interestingly, Troubled, but Cute Gokudera pretty much has perfect grades despite his delinquent appearance and attitude towards everyone but Tsuna.
• In The Red Ranger Becomes an Adventurer in Another World, Red isn't the brightest guy and the scenes of his life flashing before his eyes show him struggling to study. Despite this, he's a capable warrior and trope-savvy from experience thanks to his adventures as Kizuna Red.
• ReLIFE's Kaizaki Arata, who's stuck in an endless cycle of make-up tests. The other transfer student Onoya as well, though she was faking it.
• Rosario + Vampire: Kurumu Kurono is strong, beautiful, and has decent social skills, but does so terribly at her exams that, even after getting extensive tutoring from Yukari Sendo, she still flunked a big math test and had to go to summer school. Which she skips.
• The Royal Tutor has an extreme example in Leonhard, who has always struggled with academics. Because of this, he's been hit by previous tutors and has developed a fear of studying and refuses to have anything to do with it. This has lead to him not knowing what one plus one is (much to the the amusement of his brothers, especially Licht). It's shown that he's very athletic and is good at sword fighting and horse riding — more than anything else, it seems like it's the fear of being beaten that's hindering his studying than actually being dumb, although he is ditzy in general.
  • Eventually, Heine manages to convince Leonhard that he'll actually help him study and not hurt him, and Leonhard learns basic mathematics by being taught to visualise his favourite cake (for example, you have one slice. If you put another slice on your plate, how many do you have? Two slices). In a later chapter of the manga, Leonhard runs into one of his former tutors and becomes convinced that Heine will punish him for not getting every answer correct, even though he's fully aware that Heine's never done that before. Heine figures out what Leonhard's worries are and reminds Leonhard that he'd never physically hurt Leonhard or any of the others. Leonhard manages to (mostly?) get over his Heroic BSoD.
• Sailor Moon: While Makoto and Minako aren't good at studying either, Usagi's bad grades, unwillingness to study and constant running late to school are some of her most prominent character traits. It's also a Running Gag how she only ever writes in hiragana and still can't write in kanji at all (by Japanese standards, this means she essentially writes like a kindergartener since children start learning how to write kanji in elementary school). One letter written to her by her future counterpart is entirely in hiragana, and she begs the present Usagi to study hard.
• Sand Chronicles's Daigo is strong, athletic, good at hunting and has decent street-smarts, but he does terribly on his school tests and exams. He improves drastically in the last year or so of school (with the help of his friend Ayumu) so that he can go to the college he wants and become a teacher.
• Sekirei has the protagonist Minato himself who cannot do well under pressure. But give him time to think and he aces through tests and is actually quite competent in making up plans.
• Fuyuki Hinata from Sgt. Frog is an average student at school, but is an outright expert on occult matters, and even an Amateur Sleuth in the anime.
• A Silent Voice: Yuzuru is a skilled photographer and wins local photo competitions, but she rarely attends school. Later, after Yuzuru decides to become a regular student again, she reveals to Shouya that she's been failing her assignments and asks him to teach her how to study, which Shouya happily agrees to.
• Sayuri in Silver Plan to Redo From JK never paid attention to her studies during her previous, and even when she has a second chance and is trying to learn, she struggles. It takes the help of the best student in her grade for her to improve enough to actually pass exams. On the other hand, she has considerable street smarts due to having spent time homeless in her previous life.
• Silver Spoon: This is not uncommon, given the setting.
  • Tokiwa's book learning is... well, microscopically detailed when it comes to animal husbandry, and microscopic when it comes to anything else. Receiving a 10% grade on a math test makes him break down in Tears of Joy.
  • Aki is a downplayed example. She regularly scores in the 60%-70% range on tests. Not failing, but not enough to be considered "great" academically, and definitely not enough for the university and career she is hoping for.
  • Ayame is another textbook example, and even extensive tutoring by Shingo wasn't enough to bring her grades above "pass".
• A Slam Dunk episode features four members of the Shohoku Team failing their exams with ridiculous results. They had to stay up studying in Captain Akagi's house all night long. Hilarity Ensues there.
• Spy X Family: Anya is quite intelligent, and is an exellent observational learner, able to pick up skills quite quickly just by watching her parents, or even copying them from TV. Her grades however, are just scraping by at best, and simply not failing a test is considered grounds for celebration. It's a Justified Trope in this case, as she has a mental block against studying because it reminds her of her time spent as a human guinea pig. Futhermore, she grew up in an orphanage and didn't receive much in the way of an education, as opposed to her classmates from high class, wealthy families. There's also an implication that she's actually a year or two younger than she claims to be, which puts her a major developmental step down from the rest of the class.
• In Tokyo Ghoul, many Ghouls are either illiterate or read at a very basic level. This is because anything resembling a formal education is a rarity for them, with most instead learning survival skills on the streets and growing up to be very cunning individuals. When Touka begins attending school as a regular student, she often struggles in her studies due to having spent much of her childhood on the streets. However, she genuinely enjoys school and eventually states she would like to become a teacher.
• Yakitate!! Japan: Azuma Kazuma. While he is shown to be quite smart academically, he received next to no formal training in the art of baking. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, he manages to not only reinvent nearly every baking technique from scratch, he improves on them. He often doesn't even know the name of what he just did before an opponent or judge is surprised that he knew it. Which of course allows them to explain it to us.
• Yu-Gi-Oh!:
  • Yu-Gi-Oh!:
    • Besides being a slacker in school, Jonouchi (Joey) is often confused by cards everyone else knows about, doesn't understand how the game's chain mechanic works, and often has to count on his fingers to do math. That said, once he understands said cards/mechanics he becomes an extremely capable duelist, able to devise fairly complex strategies on the fly.
    • Yugi was shown in the manga to be a very poor student, despite being considered a gaming genius by the other characters. One chapter shows him make a Bingo game out of test score results, being utterly uncaring of the fact that he himself scored 372nd in the school.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh! GX:
    • Despite being in a school practically designed to take advantage of his abilities, Judai Yuki is perpetually stuck in the lowest dorm of Duel Academy due to his low scores... at least, with any of the written or studying parts; during the actual field exams, where he actually gets to duel, he excels greatly. This does appear to be partly by choice, as he's turned down promotion at least once on screen. Perhaps the writers just think he'd look horrible in Yellow or Blue...
    • This actually becomes a plot point in Season 3. Because he's widely regarded as one of the best duelists at the school, many younger students start emulating him — meaning they skip or sleep in class and don't study. According to Professor Satou, those students lack Judai's natural ability at Duel Monsters. Satou ends up forcing Judai into a duel with another student's life hanging in the balance — and somehow still pulls off being a sympathetic character. The whole ordeal functions as part of Judai's Deconstruction.
    • Sho was also like this for a while, being a fairly competent duelist and student whose fear of failure always sabotaged his efforts in Season 1. By Season 3, he is temporarily promoted to Blue, but goes back to Yellow because he doesn't believe himself worthy yet. In Season 4, though, he accepts the promotion.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL: Yuma is not only doing poor at school, he didn't understand how to play Duel Monsters properly even after several years. Once Astral shows up, Yuma finally learns to duel like pro.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V: Downplayed with Yuya in Arc-V, where he does mention having trouble in science and math, though generally subverts this due to doing decently in other subjects, and has much more average intelligence than Judai or Yuma.
• YuYu Hakusho features Yusuke, who is incredibly Book Dumb. He once got a twelve (yes, twelve out of 100) on a test. However, on the battlefield, he's a fairly competent strategist, and in one episode, he correctly applies the principle of light reflection to defeat Hiei. There's also Kuwabara, who starts out Book Dumb (he got a seven on that same test; Yusuke was bragging that he was smarter), and, as part of Character Development, studies hard and gets into a prestigious high school.

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