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The only thing worse than being guilty is feeling guilty.
The Chaste Hero is a character, usually a teenage male, who is completely oblivious to embarrassment of women and to romance in general. Flirtation is dismissed because he honestly doesn't get it, and pushy insistence from the Bottle Fairy or Cool Big Sis is waved off with angry annoyance. This can be a paradoxically commentary on the character's lack of "maturity," but strangely, this rule does not necessarily mean the younger male characters of the cast won't react to attractive people.
The female version is usually tomboyish and a slightly dense jock slowly being cultivated into a budding Bottle Fairy.
One bonus from this is immunity from awkwardly placed falls, gestures, and hands that plague a lot of characters -- and, if it happens, no apologies for it, something the average male would be expected to do. Similarly, it pretty much allows him to interact and talk to any woman in the series, something another friend may be incapable of doing. This is especially useful if the writers are trying to avoid Shipping, simply don't want it to seem the guy is taking advantage of having many admirers, or want to set up a romantic admirer who just doesn't get that he just doesn't get it.
The Chaste Hero is very common in "juvenile" fiction, especially in the past. It gets rather annoying when he sometimes wonders why his close female friend is so nice to him.
Contrast with the Celibate Hero, who is not clueless but resolutely, actively shuns romance.
Compare Innocent Fanservice Girl and Ms Fanservice.
Examples:
- Negi Springfield from Mahou Sensei Negima. Since he is only ten years old, when he does get embarrassed, it's more out of being "improper" than any lecherous thoughts, so nobody takes him seriously. In addition, he associates anyone curvy and busty with his sister.
- Judai of Yu-Gi-Oh GX, not seen much only because there's only one female main character in his world. Of course, he's just as oblivious to the feelings of members of the same sex, anyway.
- Ash Ketchum would count as this.
- Ash Ketchum MORE than counts, he's damn-near the epitome of this trope!
- Makoto Kousaka from Genshiken partially fits this trope; he has a girlfriend, and is hardly chaste, but is otherwise a good embodiment, oblivious to flirtation even, most of the time, his girlfriend's, as well as embarrassment.
- This fully describes Senel Coolidge from Tales Of Legendia. There's even a point in the game where one of the female characters suddenly grabs him and pulls him into a deep, passionate kiss...twice. He, however, is completely unaffected both times.
- He's just too fixated on STELLAAAAAAAAAAA! to notice any other girl.
- Lloyd Irving from Tales Of Symphonia is much the same way. Observe the following exchange between him and Sheena in Flanoir:
Lloyd: "You and I are a lot alike Sheena. I think we could be great friends!"
Sheena: "Great... Friends."
Lloyd: "What, you don't wanna?"
Sheena: *Aside* "...Idiot!"
- Benton Fraser of Due South has skirted this trope more than a few times; while he has been known to take an interest in women, he can be astonishingly naive about sexual matters, and he is perfectly capable of carrying on a conversation with a half-dressed exotic dancer without even thinking of breaking eye contact. (Of course, the fans have a theory about this...)
- Lance-Constable Carrot in the Discworld novel Guards! Guards! never got The Talk, because his dwarf foster-parents think of puberty as happening in one's fifties. Amongst other things, his innocence leads to him mishearing "bawdy house" as "boarding house" and taking lodgings in Ankh-Morpork's most popular brothel without noticing anything odd, even though his letters home make it clear one of the girls is very flagrantly propositioning him. In his next appearance (Men At Arms) he meets Angua, falls in love, and it's stated he always knew the "mechanics", even if he didn't see how they applied to him, so that meant an end to conversations like this (note that Mrs. Palm is head of the "Seamstresses'" Guild):
"What's a virgin?" he said.
"An unmarried girl," said Colon quickly
"What, like my friend Reet?" said Carrot, horrified.
"Well, no." said Colon.
"She's not married, you know. None of Mrs. Palm's girls are married."
- Ang from Legend Of The Dragon is like this. He shows interest in a female once, but otherwise remains oblivious to the attentions of females.
- Dart is like this at first with Shana in The Legend Of Dragoon (not to be confused with the above show), but he warms up to her by the end of the second disc.
- Monk's title character, Adrian Monk is actually a widower, so he is presumed to have had a sex life once. But he's also saddled with plot-dependent OCD and phobias (which are implied to be so severe because of his wife's death). He's afraid of many things and disgusted by that which he isn't afraid of; so generally he does not consider himself available, nor is he generally considered worth approaching romantically by any female who happens to cross his path.
- More to the point, Monk thinks of himself as very married, and the mere fact that his wife happens to be deceased does not make it any less so. He dates occasionally and half-heartedly, and in the end always returns to his default condition of being in love with his wife.
- This troper remembers an episode of Monk where the topic came up. Monk and his wife never had sex.
- Shungo Ninomiya, the titular character from Goshuushou-sama Ninomiya-kun ("My condolences, Mr. Ninomiya"), is a martial artist with a Bottle Fairy big sis who knows kung fu. Because of his being more or less a Chaste Hero who also knows his way around a fight, and because his being Chaste makes him semi-immune to her out-of-control magical sex appeal, she saddles him with the task of trying to "heal" a young succubus's fear of men using shock therapy... or so they say. He's also pretty much the only one unaware that his rich admirer-turned-maid friend is head over heels for him.
- Robert A Heinlein's early "juvenile" science fiction has several examples of this.
- His Citizen of the Galaxy has the protagonist becoming friends with a woman who makes an enemy of her stepfather to help him, as well as being there for him all the time. For some reason he is mystified why she is so willing to help him.
- His Between Planets has the protagonist assisted by a woman who convinces her father to loan him money, despite the fact he has nothing to guarantee it. When he asks her to hold on to a ring for him (he thinks it has important secret information in it) she is startled about being given a ring and he doesn't understand why a woman would consider being given a ring something unusual. When her father finds out that the protagonist gave his daughter a ring, he questions it also, but the protagonist is still clueless about why it might be considered strange.
- Subverted in his short story The Menace From Earth where the female protagonist is sure she is just friends with her male friend...until he starts hanging out with an mature good looking woman and she realizes she is jealous.
- In Farmer in the Sky, Bill doesn't understand why Gretchen would get upset when she comes over to help him work and he immediately mentions they should also ask her sister to help. "Women are funny". When he is injured and she visits him in the hospital, "...[she] could hardly talk, which isn't like her".
- In fact Heinlein Heroes are so darn clueless one wonders why Heinlein Heroines bother!
- Sagara Sousuke from Full Metal Panic!, who doesn't recognize romance when it walks up to him and slaps him in the head with a Paper Fan Of Doom. Repeatedly. He eventually develops sufficient sense that he can recognize a 'this will make Kaname angry' situation about half the time -- as well as feelings for her -- but he's still mainly in the dark as to why or how.
- Tintin (Unlike other examples, however, it is unclear whether this is a character trait or a side effect of the lack of female characters in the series)
- As a somewhat unusual ero-game example, Shirou in Fate Stay Night remains comically oblivious to Sakura's advances for many years. He figures out Saber and Rin somewhat quicker.
- He does, however, find her attractive and wonders whether or not this makes him a failure as a sempai.
- Saber, for her part, is completely impervious to sexual or even romantic innuendo unless it's pointed out to her. This is a popular joke in doujinshi, where she usually thinks you're talking about food.
- Hilarously played by Ryusei Date in Super Robot Wars. His obliviousness on the crushes of Mai Kobayashi and Latooni Subota was apparently because he's too busy swooning over girl-shaped Humongous Mecha, as in he's more interested to those things compared to human girls. And even though Lamia is a Robot Girl, he's still not interested at her, because she's not THAT huge compared to her robot, which he swooned at too.
- This is also the trait of Masaki Andoh, who is just too oblivious that he has made himself one walking harem. It got worse that in his new home La Gias, polygamy was supported, and he gets confused on who to choose, so he probably picked none to avoid much confusion. His rival Shu Shirakawa also had a walking harem following him, but he playfully ignored them... to further antagonize Masaki and adding up with their Foe Yay angle.
- NeonGenesisEvangelion's Rei essentially has no soul, so she isn't the least bit fazed when she comes out of the shower and ends up with Shinji on top of her with his hand on her breast.
- Yuki Nagato from Suzumiya Haruhi No Yuutsu doesn't show any typical emotions, including sexual attraction, because she is an artificial human created by the Integrated Data Entity sent specifically to watch Haruhi.
- Lil Abner, before he got tricked into marriage.
- One could argue Abner's more Celibate Hero: He knew what Daisy Mae (and Sadie Hawkins) were about, and he wanted no part of it. YMMV as to whether or not Abner's ignorance was enough to bridge the gap.
- Truth In Television when a Geek or Nerd is somehow attractive in high school.
- In Namir Deiter, Blue's half-brother, Issac, appears to be completely oblivious to the effect he has on women, but not the "birds and bees" basics: When he inadvertently charms Blue into trying to kiss him (at this point, Issac hadn't told her who he was), he freaks and flees.
- The titular character of Hayate The Combat Butler. He lives in the house with a master who has a crush on him and daily interacts with her circle of female friends who all also have crushes on him, and never notices. He also completely misinterprets all attempts to explain him otherwise. The only black spot on his record is that he himself has a minor crush on the only woman in the cast who isn't interested in him -- but he has no idea how to act on it anyway.
- A use of the concept is found in Naruto, where the tituar hero despite his obvious crush on Sakura, completely misses Hinata's crush on him. This seems to be a matter of personality, as the loud and exhuberant Naruto is annoyingly persistent in his pursuit of Sakura, while Hinata is so painfully shy she faints if he ever got within two feet of her. So while Naruto understands romance (sorta), he has no concept of shyness.
- Not counting Sonic The Hedgehog 2006, this is Sonic's general attitude. Particularly towards self-appointed girlfriend Amy Rose. Awkward because he's saved her a few times in the past because... well, he's a hero, it's what heroes do, but she takes as evidence that he loves her.
- Number Six from The Prisoner takes this trope to its logical extreme. Created as a subverstion of the womanizing secret agent recently popularized by James Bond, Number Six is presented with numerous female guest characters over the course of the series, and the only time he shows any kind of sex drive is when his mind is in someone else's body.
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