Ensemble Darkhorse Discussion - Television Tropes & Idioms

Fandom favourite? launched as Ensemble Darkhorse: From YKTTW

Lale: Sasuke of Naruto, Zuko of Avatar, Kaiba of Yu-Gi-Oh, Edo and Manjyome of GX, The Lancer of each season of Digimon... there's a pattern here of which character in anime ends up the Ensemble Darkhorse/ Draco In Leather Pants. What's the secret?! Besides being loners and "bad boys," what do they have in common?! And does anyone know of a show where this character type is the main protagonist?

Aquillion: Well, in videogames, Disgaea (and the anime based on it), certainly. DeathNote, maybe? Berserk!!, too, although some of these are not so much troubled loners as they are complete raging psycopaths. CowboyBebop sort of fits, come to think of it, as does SamuraiChamploo... many Western or Samurai-themed shows and movies have a troubled lead of debatable morality. It's actually pretty common, come to think of it... but it becomes harder to do when you make them the main character.

Charred Knight: People love Lancers, its as simple as that. Ironically I hate Sasuke, and Zuko. Sasuke because his a whining loser, and Zuko because I hate the fangirls.

H. Torrance Griffin: Urusei Yatsura is an interestingly successful example of the retooling mentioned. Shinobu was to be Ataru's main love interest while Lum was a one-off guest (it is widely beleived that Takahashi intintionally made Shampoo as malevolent/unlikeable as possible to avoid similar pressure in Ranma 1/2).

Ununnilium:

Eh. It wasn't that bad. Now Maes Hughes, on the other hand...

Conversation In The Main Page'd!

That Other 1 Dude: Debated:

Prince Zuko from Avatar The Last Airbender primarily served as the main antagonist in the first season, popping in every now and then to cause the main heroes conflict. In the second season, however, his sister replaced him in this role, and he had almost no interaction with the main protagonist. Instead, he and his uncle received their own side stories, with their b-plots usually being the more interesting, eventually culminating in his own "All-Zuko episode". Despite retaining his iniquitous nature at the closing of the second season, Zuko remains the series's most developed, sympathetic, and well-liked character by both the staff and fandom alike.

This interview

has them stating that Zuko was planned to join the group since the beginning.

Charred Knight: That doesn't matter. If you think that main characters don't count than Zuko should have been disqualified right off the bat. It was obvious that a show like Avatar was planned well ahead, and the creators are good enough not Pander To The Base. My personal opinion is that characters intended to be main characters like Zuko or Sasuke shouldn't count. Its like saying that the second best team in the league was a dark horse. The Gaints winning the Superbowl? Darkhorse. The colt's winning the Superbowl? They where the second best team in the league and had a great chance to upset the Patriots.

Rebochan: Sasuke definitely belongs here. His role considerably beefed up when his popularity skyrocketed. While he's still a main character, its obvious he's seen a lot more screen time because of his popularity, to the point where he's starting to become the center of the universe in the show's history.

Ununnilium:

Oh, geez, even Urkel being a Wacky Neighbor was a sign of his Ensemble Darkhorse nature. He wasn't even supposed to be a recurring character at all — he was supposed to be a single random one-time character in one episode. The character was created in an episode where various of Laura's friends and acquaintances set her up with multiple blind dates for the prom without telling her, in a comic misunderstanding. Her ditzy best friend, for instance, sets her up with a smooth-talking ladies' man. Her father, by contrast, sets her up with the single most harmless, nonthreatening guy he can possibly find, a ridiculously klutzy and sexually inexperienced nerd who wouldn't know what to do with a girl unless she fell in his lap. Of course, Jaleel White as Steve Urkel stole the show from his first appearance — the studio audience fell in love with his character, laughed uproariously at the way he *entered the room* (a la Kramer from Seinfeld), ate up all his lines and by the end of the episode were chanting "URKEL! URKEL! URKEL!" on his entrances. When the director found himself forced to send White out for a bow at the end of the episode with the main cast, the producers basically found their hands tied, and in the very next episode Urkel was retconned into being the Winslows' next-door neighbor and his temporary excitement at getting a date *at all* in the original episode had morphed into an intractable, incurable longing for Laura Winslow. Family Matters, a lackluster and probably-soon-to-be-canceled formulaic family sitcom, skyrocketed in the ratings and became ABC's flagship show. Probably *the* textbook example of a Breakout Character.

...ow. Editing this down.

Chris X: Would Tomoyo Sakagami from Clannad count here? The Tomoyo After game would be the proof, by default, only the heroine Nagisa gets an After story, packed with the normal game. And Tomoyo seems to be... more popular all around between the Clannad girl cast. But I'm still rather doubtful about this. Discuss?

Ununnilium:

A weird case of Ensemble Darkhorse can be found in the L-Block in Tetris. For having no personalities at all, it managed to win a Character Battle Contest in Gamefaqs... beating out the likes of Cloud, Link, etc...

This wouldn't really count. It didn't beat out main characters Left-Facing Z-Block and Long Straight Block for its popularity, after all. It's more like a Companion Cube.

Ta: Hey, I know this probably marks me as a Clueless Contributor, but I added the example about Figwit. Mentioning poor Camel-Capsed Bret Mc Kenzie seems to trick the wiki into thinking his last name is an attempt at Wiki Words. Is there any way to specifically mark something as not Wiki Words?

That Other 1 Dude: Moved

Kamina from Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann was something of a spoof of this — he wasn't the main character, but from the start he was given a lion's share of the attention, culminating in a scene designed to punch you in the gut...
- Lampshaded in an Omake in the manga.

That sounds more like a spoof of a Spotlight Stealing Squad.

Dausuul: Removed Hiro Nakamura and Peter Petrelli from the "Heroes" examples. As two of the leading "heroes," they are by definition not Ensemble Darkhorses - the Darkhorse is a secondary character who becomes unexpectedly popular. (One could, for instance, argue Ando as an Ensemble Darkhorse.)

Chris X: I don't have anything against Happiness!. But considering the recent events and how he was written here, shouldn't the caption be about Jeremiah Gottwald/Orange-Kun?

Lee: Done. I would like to dispute the quote that the Wiki Magic settled on though. Orange-kun is nothing less than 100% fresh squeezed. I have corrected this mistake.

Be: Up for debate:

"* Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War drastically raised the popularity of alien races amongst fans of Warhammer 40,000, much to the dismay of Games Workshop, who prefer such races to be used as cannon fodder to make Space Marines look better. Games Workshop nonetheless insisted that Relic make Space Marines the focal point of Dawn of War 2."

Setting aside my own personal bias towards the Marines, the lack of examples makes me think is just complaining for the sake of it - not least because it's unlikely Games Workshop care which races are the most popular as opposed to the popularity of the product as a whole. Clearly this edit was the work of the Ruinous Powers, out to besmirch the good name of the Adeptus Astartes

Ulti S.: Cutting some natter and other stuff that doesn't fit.

Oh? Nice surprise, gotta say, since This Troper has only seen people bashing Senna and calling "Canon Sue! Canon Sue! Canon Sue!"
Senna is probably popular not only because she starred in Bleach's first movie, but because she's one of the few "cheerful and innocent" characters that the show sorely lacks.
Both those characters made their debut in New X-Men, which is notable for this. While everyone knows that the mutants that kept their powers after M-day are mostly fan favorites, New X-Men's entire cast is, well, new. The survivors were all the fan favorites. Those that were depowered were Put On A Bus. The the bus was blown up. Just to make sure that no one thought these guys would come back.
Not entirely true. Anole debuted in New Mutants, which was rebooted as New X-Men. He was actually supposed to be killed as a result of anti-gay violence, but editorial wasn't cool with that. He eventually developed into a fan-favorite character.

Spider-Man made his debut in the last issue of a failed series, quickly got his own comic, and became Marvel's most popular and enduring character.
- Spider-Man only fits the definition if you think of his "Ensemble" as "Characters published by Marvel Comics in 1962." But from his first adventure in Amazing Fantasy #15, he was a lead character, and always envisioned as a solo star.
  - Not to mention being Eddie Izzard's uncle in real life.
  - Also Ewan Mc Gregor's uncle.
- A lot of Jedi and Sith from the Expanded Universe.
- This troper actually recalls reading somewhere that Jack Sparrow was originally intended to be more like Will Turner's sidekick, but he ended up stealing the show from poor Will.

That one is under Spotlight Stealing Squad, I think.

Arguably, Dean himself. The writers have said that he was originally meant to be the wacky sidekick, but they found out that they could rely on Jensen Ackles for pretty much anything, and now some fans say that they've given Dean too much of the characterization and Sam not enough.

That doesn't fit the trope of a secondary character who grows popular with the audience.

Backup: I have an example, but I'm not sure if I should classify it as Theatre or Real Life. See, I was in a production of The Robber Bridegroom that had two runs. One person played Airie, a relatively minor character and was only listed in the chorus during the first run, but proved so popular with the audiences that during the second run that she actually was listed at the bottom with the other main characters. So. Theatre Ensemble Darkhorse or Real Life Ensemble Darkhorse?

Chris X: Now that the page is separated into several sections, anybody agrees that the Jeremiah pic is better moved to the anime section?

Caswin: I'm a tad confused on one point. What does the title of the page itself refer to?

The Nifty: Cut this:

Every single character on Gaia Online. Literally every single character. At one point, there was a fanthread for a nameless vampire wearing all gray who appeared for all of two seconds before getting kicked in the face, and there is currently a fanthread for a character's pet owl.

Because seriously, what the hell? I get that you love Gaia Online, but you can't list EVERY SINGLE CHARACTER as the Ensemble Darkhorse just because each character has fans. That's a), really fucking stupid, and b)true for every character on every show - even scrappy-doo is somebodies' favorite character.

Caswin: Sounds less like a case of loving Gaia than... well, a legitimate point. Name-calling won't help.

Midna: This trope seems to have de-evolved from being "minor or one-shot character who gets unexpectedly popular with the medium's fanbase" to just being "fan favorite". Osaka is listed as an Ensemble Darkhorse on Azumanga Daioh's page, but is a cast regular. Meta Knight is listed in the video games subsection of this article, but is one of the series' most-seen antagonists, barring Dedede. Midna is listed as an Ensemble Darkhorse on The Legend Of Zelda Twilight Princess's page, but she's who the plot revolves around! I sense a lack of knowledge of what exactly this trope is.

Westrim: Okay, IP banning for trying to work on a couple page images without even a warning or something isn't very cool Janitor. I am perfectly willing to talk about whatever issues you have with the images I contributed, but that's rather difficult if I can't edit or even see any pages, including talk pages, without using a (iffy and very cumbersome) proxy server. And even then, I can't make a forum thread to go over this or do anything related to my username. I've been a steady editor and contributor to the wiki for close to a year now. Can we please go over whatever I'm doing that you feel warrants a banning right at the beginning without warning me or something? EDIT: I'd really appreciate a response here of some sort, if only so that I don't waste my time in the vain hope of constructively editing the Wiki again.

Dolt Boy: Seconded here. Sorry I'm kinda just coming into this discussion from nowhere, but the fact is, Janitor, you did delete his edits multiple times without any listed reason. All it said was "No image needed, thanks. Turns into fandumb", but who are you to decide that? Sure you may be an "admin helper" or whatever, but how are we supposed to know that just from your edits? Because at first it appears as if you're just a Jerk Ass who is deleting his edits just to do it. Anyway, just saying...

Janitor: I own the site. I really don't have time to go back and forth with people over a decision that has been made.

Westrim: Then I'll accept your decision on the page image here. However, I'd really like to continue editing the rest of the Wiki at home and college, so I'd really appreciate you lifting the bans on those I Ps. I promise to do nothing further to this page, or any others you want to throw in. But being kept from even looking at the site without going multiple steps through a proxy, having my bookmarks rendered moot, or not having the resources available to a named editor because I crossed the wrong person over one issue is saddening.

(Update) It's been nearly two weeks and I still haven't received a response of any sort; as far as I know your comment was about the page image, not my ban. If you want to not talk this over on a public discussion page my email is westrim4@gmail.com. If you are having difficulty with the I Ps, they are 68.105.173.119 and 76.93.112.128 If all you have to say is "stop bothering me and stay away from the site", I can abide by that, but as is I'm in limbo here. I've been a conscientious and constructive editor, with several launched articles and several YKTT Ws currently languishing and hundreds of edits over a span of 14 months. I'm not some troll that came in to screw things up, I'm trying to help. Please, respond.

Baby Moondancer: I can't for the life of me decide what Sheldon Cooper is. He can't really be an Ensemble Darkhorse or even a true Breakout Character, because he was intended to be a lead actor from the get-go. The thing is, he was only intended to support The Galecki (Leonard). Instead, he ended up kinda-sorta eclipsing him. He's most likely a mere Fan Favorite. (But that doesn't make him any less AWESOME!!)

Let me put it this way: One of the trainers at my gym states that The Big Bang Theory is his favorite show. And I quote: "But I don't call it 'The Big Bang Theory'. I just call it 'Sheldon'."

Some Sort Of Troper: Well, I'm not really sure if I agree with how much they didn't intend for this role but just going but the way you put, that's an Ensemble Darkhorse - character in an ensemble was meant to have slightly more sidelined role but ended up being brought to the for- just not to a strong degree. Tropes Are Flexible.

Man Without A Body: Why did someone add Beowulf to this list? He's The Hero.

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