Creators Pet / Anime

• Baki the Grappler: Yujiro, Full stop. You could tell Itagaki completely fell head over heels for him the minute he started giving him Jerk Justifications in the later series. It doesn't help that he keeps upscaling the full scope of Yujiro's strength every arc. In the beginning, Yujiro went from being easily taken down by tranquilizer darts to shrugging off a literal bolt of lightning for up to five minutes like it was nothing. Then there's just the way Itagaki started downplaying all of the atrocities Yujiro committed over the years, where all his victims started forgiving him, and the story suddenly trying to make him seem like more of a wise and good person than he really is. What really cemented this in recent times were his actions in Chapter 100. See Crosses the Line Twice below for more details. The kicker? Baki's series-long goal ends up being all for nothing when he loses his final fight with Yujiro. Meaning all his crimes go completely unavenged, and the story acts like this is a good thing. No matter what the main characters do or how hard they train, none of them can ever hope to catch up to Yujiro's level. It gets really egregious whenever the story does introduce ancient characters like Pickle or Musashi, who actually can realistically beat Yujiro their fights with him are always cut short and never followed up on. Even his rape of adventurer Joe William is treated as okay, where the experience made Joe "realize the woman in him," and has been going on more dangerous adventures ever since to try and change that. Yujiro can do whatever he wants to whoever he wants because no one has (or ever will have) the strength to stop him.
• Bleach: A common accusation thrown against Nozomi Kujou from the anime. Kon's canon modsoul background was rewritten to justify Nozomi's existence, give her a hybrid version of Yumichika and Ukitake's unique Energy Absorption abilities (but stronger than either) and make her Kon's Love Interest (reducing Ichigo's role from Hero Protagonist to sidekick). Faster than even Ichigo's unique development, she took only about 36 hours to go from powerless to saving Yamamoto's life from enemies too powerful for even him to defeat. Writers also broke their own rules for modsoul death (instantaneous reversion to pill-state) to give her a protracted Heroic Sacrifice everyone could weep over. However, it’s also somewhat Downplayed and Justified for two reasons: One, she only appears for a single story arc, and then never shows up again, so unlike most examples on this page, at least she doesn’t end up doing this for the whole show (for context: the story arc in question is only 26 episodes long, which is a relatively small fraction of the anime, itself about 366 episodes long at the time). And two, it turns out that the story arc itself is centered around Nozomi and her connection to the Big Bad, and she plays a crucial role in the Big Bad’s plan, so in a metatextual context, it makes sense that the story would put a lot of focus on her.
• Code Geass:
  • During R2, Rolo was perceived as receiving more screen time in the early episodes over many other better liked characters. Apparently the female staff members were said to be especially fond of him. Subverted when he was ultimately Rescued from the Scrappy Heap via an awesome yet heart-wrenching Heroic Sacrifice.
  • Ohgi would also qualify. The most dramatic Ensemble Dark Horse fall from grace in recent memory, Ohgi went from a Voice of Reason to an ever-increasing liability, from his carelessness with Villetta who he was infatuated by, to his controversial actions towards the end of the second season didn't help at all, with his betrayal of Lelouch and selling out to his evil brother of all people. Unlike Rolo, the now more clearsighted Suzaku, and the remorseful, suicidal Lelouch, who was largely led to this point because of said betrayal, Ohgi changed for the worse and received a happy ending with the equally if not more culpable Villetta that many fans felt was neither earned nor justified.
    • If the third Compilation Movie is any indication, they might have listed to the fans' complaints by making some changes and/or removing some stuff for time in order to portray him and Villetta in a more positive light, making him act more like said Voice of Reason by being more reluctant about the betrayal, offering Lelouch a chance to explain himself (apparently not even buying his act of seeing them as pawns), and even trying to stop Schneizel’s men from shooting him anyway. Arguably making things more earned or justified for them, at least by comparison.
• Darker than Black: Suou Pavlichenko in the second season. She gets much more attention than the original protagonist, which is particularly jarring since Hei's personality has changed drastically (and not for the better) with the explanation relegated to the OVAs released with the DVDs. Suou herself doesn't have a very distinctive personality and is often used as a vehicle for lolicon subtext and fanservice, alienating viewers who aren't interested. Some go so far as to say she singlehandedly ruined what could have been an interesting story; others just feel some of her screentime could have been better spent focusing on established major characters like Yin, Hei, or Kirihara. She also breaks what being a contractor is like as she goes back and forth between being a contractor and a regular girl. She's a Magical Girl in a setting that doesn't have them.
• D.Gray-Man has developed their own Creator's Pet in the form of Johnny. Initially a very minor and forgettable character that would appear among the other members of the Science Department. But clearly through the power of the mangaka's love, Johnny's role in the manga increased tenfold after the arc with Noah's Ark, appearing more in the manga than the second main protagonists Lavi and Lenalee. And while he is supposed to be a normal human, he seems to live through several near death experiences and injuries that are fatal to more minor characters, much to the chagrin to the fanbase. When he isn't nearly dying, he is crying or thinking about Allen Walker (the main protagonist) in a very obsessive way. We're also supposed to assume that Allen and Johnny are close friends, though this friendship was never seen developed on screen even though 80-90% of the manga focuses on Allen's life and experiences in the Order. To find a fan who loves Johnny is extremely rare in the fanbase, most seem to simply wish for him to go away and for Hoshino to remember she has other characters.
• The Devil is a Part-Timer! has Chiho Sasaki. Though not an offensive character in of herself, being a nice schoolgirl who has a crush on the main character, she is favoured to a ridiculous degree by both the writer of the Light Novel and the director of the anime, at the expense of overall plot flow and the screentime of other characters. In the light novel, both the narration and characters (be it enemy or friend) will dedicate a page to praising Chiho's strength of character and generosity no matter the context of the narration or the topic of the conversation, even though Chiho's actions did not stray at all from normal everyday behaviour within modern society; which often slows the pace of the light novel to a crawl. In the anime, she was so favoured by the director that Emilia's (the other female lead) character was purposefully Flanderized to be more hateful overall so that Chiho would seem more like a saint, resulting in more detractors against Chiho.
• Agon of Eyeshield 21 became this to many fans during the World Cup. To elaborate, Agon's original purpose was to be the heel of the series. While every other antagonist was a lovably quirky Worthy Opponent, Agon was a completely unsympathetic Jerk Jock. Unfortunately, it seemed that Inagaki and Murata found his character to be Affably Evil and was thus promoted to Token Evil Teammate, and the was Character Focus of the arc (sharing the position with Gao). Regardless of whether you hated him, loved him, or loved to hate him, pretty much all fans agree that Agon shouldn't have gotten as much attention as he did (even more then the main character).
• Food Wars! has Asahi. Being suddenly introduced as a Romantic False Lead for Erina to force a lacklustre Love Triangle plot between him, Soma and Erina already meant that he's not going to win a lot of fans from the start, but the fact that the highly reviled final arc seem to revolve all around him—with almost all of the existing supporting cast getting shunted to make time for him and his goons—only makes things worse. He's portrayed as invincible and unbeatable from the start—everyone from his goons to the side characters to the Big Bad of the last arc shills him as the perfect chef, he curbstomps fan-favorites like Joichiro, Eishi, Soma, and Megumi, and he smugly rubs his effortless victories in everyone's faces. Not helping is the fact that his presence pretty much invalidates the Character Development Erina has from the last season, and his skills run on utter nonsense (the manga's chef consultant left at some point before the final arc, so the cooking aspect of the manga gets downplayed in favour of over-the-top gimmicks that makes no sense). Yet despite pretty much the cause of the manga's quality dip, the author favours Asahi, to the point that the manga's epilogue is dedicated to his development and letting him finally get what he wants instead of showing the growth of the actual protagonists. Also, the relationship between Soma and Erina ends in a vague Maybe Ever After, which exasperated many readers.
• The anime adaptation of Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? Sword Oratoria has Lefiya. She was not this in the original light novel, where she was simply a side character with occasional focus every now and then, but the anime turned her into a main character, cutting out important parts of Aiz's backstory to focus on Lefiya's not-particularly funny daydreams about her. The anime also flanderizes her obsession with Aiz and jealousy of Bell to the point where she's an obsessive stalker, but hardly any character in-series calls her out on that and instead heaps praise over her for her incredible strength and potential even though she's by far the weakest member of the party. All the while, the fans found her to be a worse version of Bell and thought it unforgivable that she basically demoted Aiz to extra in what was supposed to be her story.
• Magical Record Lyrical Nanoha Force had a rather bad case of both the protagonist and the villains being this, owing to all of them being newcomers to an established setting and with Anti-Magic that effectively made all of the previous characters powerless against them. Thoma was introduced in a particularly Remember the New Guy? way, and instantly liked by pretty much every member of Nanoha's team, which could be forgiven as protagonist privilege. The Hückebein, the villains of the piece, much less so: not only did they spend the entirety of Force being an Invincible Villain group with an excuse for villainy that didn't match their behavior, as well as a horrible habit of easily and insultingly beating established characters, but the author spent more time focusing on the Hückebein and their escapades than writing about Nanoha and Thoma. They were only surpassed late in Force's run by the introduction of an even more invincible villain above them. This trope being in play is widely considered to be a major factor in Force's cancellation, and subsequently the franchise being given a Continuity Reboot, to avoid having to answer how the heroes could have overcome a threat that the author had no apparent interest in letting them beat.
• An In-Universe examples appears in Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun. The tanuki mascot characters are an In-Universe example. Maeno pushes for them to be in every story Miyako makes, and she doesn't mind (to a certain degree). They are hated by everyone else, to the point where one is featured being violently destroyed by Sakura and Hori in the anime's opening.
• Sgt. Frog: Joriri, an anime exclusive character. An annoying, one note joke, poor role model who apparently taught many lessons to the young Keroro and friends. Did we mention he wasn't mentioned until 150 + episodes in? Fans tolerated his presence in the fan favorite flashback episodes...until he appeared in the present, bumming it in the base. That officially graduated him into Creator's Pet territory.
• Slayers has Pokota, a Bratty Half-Pint trapped in a Ridiculously Cute Critter form and who has an angsty backstory. His personality was said to be based on a character who appeared later on in the Light Novels. This might not have been so bad (though he IS still annoying), but Pokota just so happens to be a Black Mage on par with Lina Inverse and a Magic Knight wielding a replica of the Sword of Light. These two things, plus his bratty behavior and the fact that the plot of Slayers Revolution all but revolves around him definitely makes him a contender for being a Creator's Pet. The worst thing is that while many "guest stars" in the Slayers anime do share similar traits (Filia could be annoying and Xellos has Story-Breaker Power), Pokota largely isn't *funny* in a comedy show and yet gets a lot of screen time, a strong sign of a Creator's Pet.
• Transformers: Armada: Alexis, Rad and Carlos lived somewhere between Damsel Scrappy and The Kid with the Remote Control for most of the series, then quickly spiraled into Creator's Pet territory when they used their Super Special Awesome powers of Mini-Con communication to single-handedly bring down planet-eating Big Bad Unicron.
  • This extended into the sequel shows Energon and Cybertron. The former had Kicker, with a powersuit and the ability to both detect Energon and be free of any consequences of acting like a complete jerk. The latter went back to the three kid format with Coby, his little brother Bud, and Lori, who were basically the Autobot cheerleaders/Earth travel guides.
  • Some fans consider any puny human, or at least any puny human who threatens to be a significant figure in the continuity in question and takes away screen time/page count from the Transformers, to fit this trope (especially if what should be a minor subplot about Sam Witwicky's desire to engage in squishy human procreation takes over the whole movie). The only exceptions to this seem to be Stella Holley, Sari Sumdac, William Lennox and Robert Epps, Agent William Fowler, Cade Yeager, and Charlie Watson.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V has the legacy characters - characters intended to be alternate versions of characters from prior series, who began to appear over the course of the dimension-traveling later arcs. Of the five introduced, only Alexis is uncontroversially well-liked, and that's largely because she was the only one to not be a Creator's Pet. Crow was disliked for having been at best a Base-Breaking Character and Spotlight-Stealing Squad in his home series, Kite and Aster were disliked for being completely out-of-character and having incredibly rushed Character Development, and even Jack, who was largely identical to his popular original counterpart, got hate for taking up far too much plot to the point of being more the rival than the supposed actual rival. Despite this, all four of them were given a massive amount of screentime and focus in a series with a notoriously overstuffed cast, to the point of pulling attention away from the show's own characters who had been there from the beginning. They even took up most of the screentime in the defeat of the final boss! Crow and Jack in particular are constantly guilty of this, having some of the strongest decks, star in the longest arc, and get to beat very important characters, with Jack going so far as to have the second-last Duel in the series. The fact that director Katsumi Ono also directed their series is likely unrelated.

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