Not So Above It All / Anime & Manga

Characters who turn out to be Not So Above It All in Anime and Manga.

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• Air Gear gives us Ringo Noyamano. With the exception of her stint as Croissant Mask, which gave her eternal embarrassment, in earlier volumes, Ringo was always more levelheaded and normal than the entirety of Team Kogarasumaru put together and was typically divorced from their antics. However, in later volumes, she gives in and lets them sweep her up in their enthusiasm, showing herself to be just as weird as the rest of them and even getting involved in their team poses.
• Yuu Nanami from Asteroid in Love is not only serious compared to the other members, but she got into meteorology out of a sense of duty toward others, rather than genuine enjoyment of the subject. Despite that, when she sees a rainbow, she enthusiastically shares what she knows about it, indicating she may have genuine enthusiasm in the field.
• This happens to Yomi in Azumanga Daioh sometimes, most memorably when she tricked Osaka into eating spicy food that ended up giving her hiccups.
• Leo of Blood Blockade Battlefront has a moment in episode 6 where he yells at Zapp for getting Libra into the plot of the episode before betting on Klaus to win his bout in the fighting arena.
• In Blue Exorcist, Yukio is the serious, studious of the Okumura brothers, much different from his elder brother Rin. At times though, he shows that he does have a sense of humour; as his collection and love of gag manga shows, he has a well-developed sense of humour.
• Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo: After their initial appearance, the more "serious" characters such as Heppokomaru/Gasser eventually start slipping into bouts of silliness, not unlike that of the title character. Beauty being the sole subversion, with maybe one or two slips that she quickly recovers from.
  • In probably one of the fastest instants of the trope, Hatenko is introduced and he comes across as one of the few sane people in Bobobo, even expressing shock at how Bobobo could forget him so fast. And then he sees Don Patch and promptly loses it.
• Case Closed:
  • Conan once started screaming and yelling in celebration when his favorite soccer team won a big game, prompting Haibara to snark that "The master sleuth was just a jumpy little boy" when it came to soccer. More than once, it's also shown that Conan has picked up some of Kogoro's bad habits.
  • Ai Haibara is typically the single most serious and snarky member of the main cast, but there are scattered moments across the series where her face lights up when she sees animals or gets scared during a Kaiju movie. The biggest moment of this trope is the "Secret of a Big Couple" arc, in which Haibara's serious personality does a near 180 when she learns her favorite soccer player is rumored to be having an affair with a local idol singer. Her behavior throughout, including hiring Kogoro to investigate the affair and deleting all the singer's music from her phone, is more like a jealous fangirl or an actual child with a Precocious Crush than an eighteen-year-old Deadpan Snarker. When the rumors prove unfounded, she's happily singing the idol's songs and insisting on playing soccer even as the weather turns stormy.
• Doraemon:
  • Doraemon himself normally serves as the voice of reason for Nobita, but there are several times where he can be just as thoughtless or immature as him. He can't think rationally when there's the possibility to eat dorayaki, or when mice are involved or mentioned. He also tends to panic during emergencies. At times, he only agrees to give Nobita gadgets out of his own self interest (e.g. "Without this gadget I will be punished and mom won't buy the dorayaki for us next week!").
  • Shizuka is usually the calm, kind Only Sane Woman and moral compass to the rest of her friend group. However, she's been seen playing with her mom's lipstick secretly and munching on snacks while half asleep, proving while she may act mature for her age, she's still a kid, and therefore, is not as infallible as she seems. One chapter shows that when she's home alone, she takes the chance to stay up and watch television late at night, and she has been known to skip piano lessons by Playing Sick. There are also times when she is Innocently Insensitive, laughs at Nobita's humiliations along with Gian and Suneo, plays pranks on other people, or can be unreasonable when she gets angry. She has even been shown coveting some of Doraemon's gadgets along with everyone else, to the point of joining the resulting Big Ball of Violence to try and get her hands on them. However, this has become rarer later in the franchise, with some episodes in the 2005 anime series even removing or downplaying Shizuka's Not So Above It All moments that were present in the original manga.
  • Dorami is Doraemon's more reliable and more level-headed younger sister, but her over-eagerness to help can result in unwanted consequences at times. In a spinoff manga series, she is also shown to be more argumentative and short-tempered when interacting with her love interest, Dora the Kid.
• In Fairy Tail, Hades and Mavis are arguably among the most purely evil and most purely good (respectively) among any of the characters in the entire series. Both have moments of sheer oddball-ness that rank among the funniest quirks of anyone in the series. Both are former Fairy Tail guild masters. Coincidence?
  • Erza will often scold her guildmates for their constant brawling, and the ensuing destruction it causes. However, if anyone provokes her in the slightest way, she'll almost certainly jump in to join. Including one notorious incident regarding a strawberry cake.
• In Gakuen Babysitters, Inomata will often state how childish some action is or point out why people shouldn't be doing what everyone else is doing. However, later on, usually in the same chapter, she is either "forced" to do it by simply asking her, or is trying it out in secret such as pretending to ride a broom like a witch.
• Gintama: EVERYONE who tries to be the Straight Man is a victim of this trope. Examples include: Shinpachi's lust for Otsu, Hijikata's mayo addiction, Tsukuyo's drunk antics, Isaburo's cheesy mails, and the list goes on...
• Hiiragi from Hanamaru Kindergarten is a highly intelligent kindergartner who can read and understand adult literature. This does nothing to stop her lighting up at a chance to go down the big slide or being so overwhelmed by a compliment on her costume that she bursts into dance.
• Hare, the star of the anime Haré+Guu, is so normal and level-headed, compared to any of the other characters, that he eventually snaps at one point and erupts into a violent rampage. Granted, he was drunk at the time.
• Haruhi Suzumiya:
  • At the end of The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya Kyon admits to himself that he does, in fact, enjoy the crazy antics the SOS-Dan finds themselves in.
  • Yuki also has moments where she just gives in to blatant silliness, such as choosing a funny nickname for herself when Kyon blackmails Haruhi with one or wearing silly hats for no real reason.
• Hen Zemi: Nanako plays the straight man at the start, but as the show progresses, she realises that she isn't as different as she thought.
• Honoo no Alpen Rose: When Martha sees Lundi and Hans about to fight, she steps between them and tells them to stop. She then steps away and adds thay they can do what they want. Lundi and Hans have a brawl, which ends with Hans covered in injuries.
• Irresponsible Captain Tylor's Serious Business staff officers Yuriko Star and Lt. Yamamoto remain the sanest characters at the end of the series... but loosen up greatly between the beginning and the end, largely due to Tylor's cheerful disregard for rules.
• In I Won't Sleep With You For Free, Momoka Takanashi's mother is incredibly strict with her, so Momoka hires Miyako Kirishima to have sex with her during her zither lessons as an act of rebellion. After the two of them are done, they learn from the two family maids that Momoka's mother is currently having sex with her (female) guest and routinely has sex with the maids.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
  • Phantom Blood: During his younger years, Jonathan showed some traits that wouldn't be out of place with his descendants. He only mellows down as an adult due to his father's strict upbringing and the gentleman standards of his time period.
  • Battle Tendency: During Joseph and Caesar's first meeting over a game of cards, Caesar realizes Joseph's cheating and grabs his arm, shaking out several cards concealed in his wristband. A moment later, Joseph grabs Caesar's leg and yanks it up, revealing a mirror on his shoe - they were both cheating.
  • Stardust Crusaders: Avdol is very conscious of his image and outright says he's not happy being caught in sillier shenanigans when dealing with Mariah. However, he's shown to get angry easily, and as the battle with Cameo shows, he can do some pretty outrageous stuff (peeing into a Reed Snorkel) if he feels like it.
  • Diamond is Unbreakable: Rohan is 'almost' the Straight Man, but he doesn't hold back to gloat on himself winning a Rock–Paper–Scissors game, or resorting to committing acts of embarrassment when a Stand is attached to his back.
  • Golden Wind: After being accosted by a random rich guy for dropping wine on his shirt and knocking that guy out, Narancia accused that guy of being an enemy in hiding, which prompted Mista to join him in kicking the unconscious guy. Abbacchio looked at them and took a sip on a wine glass as if looking at the scene with disdain due to believing that such things should be beneath them... only to join the kicking in the next cut.
• Superintendent Akechi from The Kindaichi Case Files is initially introduced as a dignified, elitist Insufferable Genius who acts as Kindaichi's Stock Shōnen Rival. After acknowledging Kindaichi's skills (not that he'd admit it, of course), he mellows down a bit, and his rivalry with Kindaichi is treated as a petty/childish Vitriolic Best Buds bickering rather than any serious attempt to challenge or undermine Kindaichi's efforts.
• In Kyo Kara Maoh!, this happens to Gwendal periodically. He's The Stoic, serious and very dedicated to his duties as one of the demon king's retainers. He's usually left behind to manage the castle while the others go off and have adventures...along with Bunny-Ears Lawyer Gunter and Gadgeteer Genius Annissina, his childhood friend who just lives to test her inventions on Gwendal and Gunter. None of the rest of the castle staff are any saner, and Gwendal gets dragged into things far more often than he'd like.
• In The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords (2004), Vio tries to paint himself as cooler and more collected than the other Links, but he's just as smitten by Erune as they are.
• In the Beach Episode of Martian Successor Nadesico, Erina Wan starts handing out flyers about how to be safe at the beach, only to discover everyone slipped off while she was talking. She protests that they could have at least read the flyer, before doing a clothing fling, revealing she was wearing a swimsuit under her uniform and runs off to join the others.
• Centorea in Monster Musume is easily the most dignified and level headed of Kimihito's roommates (at least until Rachnera joins the harem). However, she's fairly dorky herself, and is frequently roped into the other girls' shenanigans. She isn't above using a situation to get intimate with Kimihito when she wants either. And while it's never shown on-screen, she makes numerous reference that show she's also a huge manga and RPG fan, like assuming that a slime will be easy to defeat because it's a low-level enemy in most video games.
• In the final episode of My-HiME, Natsuki steals Midori's thunder by calling out, "Hime-Sentai/Rangers, go!" There was an earlier hint, as, during the Karaoke episode, she was seen laughing long and loud at her arch-enemy Nao's skimpy karaoke outfit and lousy singing.
• Naruto:
  • In the manga, Konohamaru shows Naruto his new variant of the Sexy no Jutsu, featuring two girls in a ...''compromising'' position.◊ Sakura was less than pleased at the Jutsu until Konohamaru tried it on her using Sai and Sasuke instead. Worked like a charm on her, but then pissed Naruto off.
  • There's also the two anime episodes (the one from the original series and the one from Shippuden) in which Naruto decides to see what's behind Kakashi's mask. Sasuke gets a little too invested.
  • Kakashi shows this as well in the episode where he and Guy race across Konoha.
  • A filler arc has the Curry of Life, to which not even Neji is immune. Rock Lee, naturally, loves it.
  • Neji won't admit to lowkey participating in Guy and Lee's race from the Sand Village to the Leaf.
• This happens to Chisame in Negima! Magister Negi Magi frequently, but most notably when Poyo's Lotus-Eater Machine proves that, despite having been forced into a Fantasy Kitchen Sink, she's the happiest and most satisfied with her life of anyone in the group.
• Sakamoto the cat from Nichijou tries very hard to be the respectable adult in a household with an eight-year-old inventor and her one-year-old wind-up robot. This ultimately always fails when presented with anything he can bat around with his paws.
• One Piece:
  • Jimbei, who is The Stoic and badass fishman in likeness to Aquaman, has become skilled in the Wild Take since the Time Skip, first seen during his reunion with the Straw Hats and seen several times afterward to the end of the Fishman Island arc. Another example of it is when he carefully thinks up a complicated plan to save his beloved Fishman Island and King Neptune, who are nearly taken over by Hody Jones. However, he wastes time on one last detail: what name the plan shall take.
  • Trafalgar Law has been growing more and more like this. It starts in Chapter 700: the more he hangs around the Straw Hats, the less he can resist participating in their hijinks. And the more chapters that progress, the less he's able to suppress his emotions; Luffy and the others are just too much of an influence on him. There's also the fact that whenever he's with both Luffy and Eustace Kidd, especially during the Wano Arc, he gets caught up in competing who is the best pirate, whether playing chicken against Big Mom's fireball attack or taking the most risky path leaving Wano when goaded by Kidd.
  • Basically, every serious-minded character in One Piece are shown to have their quirks when they are fleshed out. Among the Straw Hats: Zoro is extremely serious but likes a good booze party from time to time, and that's not even mentioning his lack of direction, but that's more in the lines of The Comically Serious. Nami is generally one of the more sensible members of the crew, but when she smells money, she loses all her brain activity and will act stupid in even the tensest situation — and she also likes to party. Usopp is along with Nami often a Meta Guy, but he isn't at all above goofing off with Luffy and Chopper. Robin is generally seen as the most stoic and "normal" character, but she regularly falls into strange girl territory with things like her morbid comments and unusual Imagine Spots. Also, she rarely calls her more quirky members out on their wackiness, she just sits at the sidelines and smiles at them. And as of the Dressrosa arc, her crewmates' influence has finally gotten to her; she has begun using the Wild Take.
  • Perhaps the best example of this is the Davy Back Fight. Everyone believes Luffy's new afro has given him superhuman power. Nami can't believe it and turns to Robin for confirmation that she isn't the only sane one. Robin believes it too. Nami is absolutely dumbfounded (though Robin could've just been playing along):
    Chopper: Is Luffy gonna win?
    Robin: Of course. He's wearing an afro.
  • Used for heartwarming during the Post-Enies Lobby Party when she offers to take part in Luffy's "How much meat can you eat" contest, since it shows that she has come to fully accept the crew as her family.
  • Former Fleet Admiral Sengoku has been nothing but the Straight Man during the first half of the series since he's always anguishing over anything that threatens the Marines and World Government and is always working hard to counter the pirate threat. The only hint of quirkiness was that he brought his pet goat with him everywhere. But once he resigns, it is shown that he's not so different from Garp and is now cheerful and carefree, eating snacks while learning of world-shaking events like another Shichibukai falling, suggesting that his seriousness was nothing but The Chains of Commanding.
• Pokémon: The Series: Most of the main companions who are supposed to be Ash's senior and voice of reason suffer from this a fair amount:
  • Misty had to lecture Ash throughout most of his rookie tenure, and like Iris, thrives on calling out his idiotic habits. At the same time, however, she is near equally arrogant and short-tempered, and half her Pokémon have the same teething issues as Ash (most infamously Psyduck). Even Ash sometimes calls her out on how rude and bull-headed she can sometimes be. Word of God states that Misty was actually intended to be rather inept in reality.
  • Brock was the oldest of the companions, usually serving as the Team Dad and holding the most intellect and clarity over the gang's experiences. Whenever he saw a pretty girl, however, it all dropped in a flash.
  • Iris often calls people children and pointing out their mistakes, no matter how justifiable they are. (She shows Ash no sympathy for not knowing about Unova, despite him being a foreigner.) She's shown to be extremely immature by glomping Pokémon and hurting them by accident. Ash himself eventually stops giving into Iris's insults, which causes her to tone them down a bit. And while Iris herself is a competent Trainer, for the first half of her saga, her team is underdeveloped or disloyal.
• Promare: Kray Foresight blatantly demands Galo to cease his habit of making up random attack names while fighting him in their respective mecha. He then immediately after calls out his own mech attacks.
• Rooster Fighter: When toucan Zena offers Keiji food, he states that he doesn't deserve such kindness. Then asks for it when Zena tries to take the food back.
• Sailor Moon:
  • Ami is typically the most mature and responsible of the girls. When they all go to a dance with some English exchange students (French in The '90s English dub), all of the other girls want to dance with Haruka. When Usagi gets the first dance Makoto, Rei and Minako start playing Rock-Paper-Scissors to see who gets the next dance. When Usagi is finished dancing, we see in the background that the girls are still playing Rock–Paper–Scissors. And Ami has now joined in.
  • The infamous Snow White episode has the girls arguing over who should play the lead role. Ami believes that she could play the role since Snow White only has a few lines and even begs to at one point. The next few scenes then have her and the other girls arguing with each other, culminating with all of them, including Ami yelling at both Umino and Naru for intervening.
  • There's also another episode where she surprisingly agrees to stop studying for the day so they can all go down to a film shoot and ogle a famous movie star. She needs very little persuasion.
  • There's the episode in S where Makoto goes out of town to train. The girls decide to pay a visit to cheer her on. But there also happens to be a resort hotel with a pool nearby. Minako reveals she brought a swimsuit for the occasion. Rei reveals she brought one also, as does Usagi. Luna and Artemis moan that Ami seems to be the only one who only came to cheer on Makoto — until she sheepishly admits she brought her swimsuit, too. In the same episode, after Rei, Usagi and Minako start throwing pillows around in an argument, a stray pillow hits Ami in the face, and she escalates it into a full pillow fight.
  • And in the Season 1 finale, the other girls are talking about how they plan to have full-blown romances when the Big Bad is defeated. Ami — who is the least boy-crazy of them — remarks that she might get a boyfriend too. Cue everyone gawking at her and a Luminescent Blush.
  • In Stars, an incident involving Seiya and a short towel leaves all the girls shocked, and Ami seems to be peeking between her face-covering hands.
  • Luna gets a lot of moments like these as well. When Usagi freaks out about gaining half a pound, Luna sketches a fat caricature of her. When Artemis is having a bad day, Luna joins in with the teasing too (though does back off when she realizes he's legit offended). Also, Luna usually scolds Usagi for her Big Eater habits but in one episode she enjoys some of Ikuko's home-made treats — and complains when Usagi takes them to share with Rei.
  • Serenity is Usagi's Older and Wiser self. She is a regal queen most of the time, however, there are scenes that show that she's still Usagi after all. She still has some of her goofy qualities.
  • Related to the above, in one episode of SuperS has Diana reveal to Luna that whenever some royal meeting was supposed to happen the King and Queen (the future Mamoru and Usagi) would always get sick. Luna even comments, "The King, too?"
• In Saki, Teru is an emotionally detached Aloof Big Sister who appears completely humorless. But in the spinoff, Saki Biyori, a series of comedic 4koma strips, she goes along with the relatively silly Awai's suggestions.
• Nami Hitou of Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei is the dysfunctional cast's token normal girl. Unfortunately, she has a complex about being called normal because she equates it with boring.
• The entire life of Zelgadis from the anime Slayers. Originally a series villain who frequently switched sides to pursue his own agenda, he was derided for his stoicism and attempts to maintain a "cool and mysterious" image by the slapstick-prone cast and writers. By the second season, the damage was done and he was seen cross-dressing in a frantic attempt to enter a tennis doubles tournament with a mixed-gender teams requirement.
• Soul Eater: During the Lust chapter, Tsubaki is discovered to be much more perverted than anyone would have guessed (being the most perverted out of them, barring Blair, and narrowly beating Liz). Especially considering how she reacted to Black Star peeping on her.
  • Granted, when she would hit him, she berated him for getting caught...
• Spy X Family: Twilight, alias Loid Forger, is an expert spy who tries to maintain a stoic exterior at all times to avoid drawing unwanted attention to himself. But when part of Bond's fluffy fur catches fire and Loid frantically douses him with a bucket of water, Bond's soaked fur makes him look much skinnier than he usually does — a sight that is so ridiculous that Loid desperately tries to suppress his laughter in response.
  Loid: Twilight, no! A spy must maintain his composure at all times...hnrgh...
• In Sword Art Online, Asuna's mother, Kyouko, is a strict and serious Education Mama, albeit one who can lose her temper if her buttons are pressed. When Asuna convinces Kyouko to log onto ALO to see Asuna's house, Kyouko immediately notices that her avatar feels light. Asuna points out that this is only natural, since the avatar only weighs 40 kg (roughly 88 pounds, far less than what an average adult woman weighs), prompting Kyouko to chide Asuna and ask if she's gained weight. Asuna realizes that this is the first time in a long time that she and her mother have been able to have a conversation about nothing.
• In Wasteful Days of High School Girls, while Masatake "Waseda" Sawatari tries to be professional and stern at all times on campus, he couldn't help but whip out his phone to take selfies of himself with Baka and Yamai, who got their heads stuck in a huge cutout. One photo◊ even has goofy filters slapped onto every face, including his own.
• Straight from Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds, we have Jack Atlas. Yusei's rival who is a Kaiba expy, acts like a serious duelist and runs some fearsome monsters in his deck such as "Red Dragon Archfiend". However, type up "Jack Atlas Cup Ramen" and you will never see him the same way again.
  • From the same franchise, in Yu-Gi-Oh! SEVENS, we have Neiru Saionji, the calm and collected admin of the Garden of Providence. When, in “The Goha-Rush Tournament” Arc, the other characters and him go to a ramen restaurant, he declares ramen to be “a new Providence”, even skipping out on most of a duel so he can have more.
    • Roa, the charismatic and smooth-talking lead guitarist of Roa-Romin, tries to tease him about this… Only for it to be pointed out that he himself had visited the place five days in a row.
    • His cousin, Romin, usually acts as the Only Sane Woman of the main cast, but even she has moments of goofiness, like when she joined Luke in eating the monument made out of sweets.
    • We also have Neiru’s massage chair/butler (don’t ask) Sebastian. Despite claiming to lack emotions, he got very pissed off when Yuga managed to hold off his One-Turn Kill. It was quite terrifying. On a lighter note, he was clearly enjoying himself during his duel with Finger Chikako in episode 34.
• Kurama from YuYu Hakusho. He is the team's resident Smart Guy, is actually a Kitsune that is over a thousand years old and likes to act cool-headed, rational and intelligent. Then we get to see he is not above sarcastically teasing Yusuke or cheating at card games. Then the Chapter Black arc came along and we find out he is a huge video game nerd.

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