Wolverine Publicity / Anime & Manga

• For Ah! My Goddess this is the norm, with the main character Keiichi rarely making the cover page.
  • That's a staple of any manga Harem Series (such as To Love Ru, which does the same). Probably because readers are more interested on the girls and the male leads are often kinda bland and intended as audience-surrogate characters. On that topic, if a girl is a bit more popular or more main, expect to see her about as much as all the other girls combined when it comes to official art, advertisements, and the like.
• In Gyo, the main characters only encounter a single infected Great White Land Shark. In the OVA Adaptation, several appear throughout the chaos.
• Most of the promotional art for A Certain Magical Index features Mikoto in a rather notable way, as if she formed a Power Trio with main characters Touma and Index. In reality, she only makes bit appearances on various episodes, the only notable ones being a Story Arc about her (Which she shares with one of her clones and Accelerator, with the clone having similar screentime and more Character Development) and A Day in the Limelight Ship Tease episode later on the season. Komoe and Kaori have as much importance than her if not more (At least in the anime first season), but they get very few appearances in the official art and tend to share them with Mikoto, despite never meeting in the anime (Stiyl, being a guy in a Improbably Female Cast, was never in the running, even if he's more relevant than any girl). This goes even more so for her roommate Kuroko, who is in most of the aforementioned art, but only gets 2-3 minor appearances with Mikoto and a Barack Obama gag, yet outdoes in appearances everyone else on the series but Mikoto and actual heroine Index.
  • Mikoto and Kuroko are also the focus of the artwork of the A Certain Scientific Railgun anime, their spin-off series', but at least there's it's justified: They're The Hero and The Lancer. Uiharu and Saten complete the Four-Girl Ensemble, but the artwork always makes them seem less important for some reason.
  • The second anime season took the same route as the first, with Mikoto (Kuroko too, but less so this time) being shoved in on nearly every official artwork, but she's only been a secondary character on Kuroko's arc, helped a little on the final arc and got another Ship Tease date, but she was never the main focus at any time. All her other appearances are Ship Tease cameos (Generally made up for the anime at that) with no relevance to the current arc. Oddly enough, official art is more likely to come out when she is around, so they have an excuse to stick her in pics every time, even if the arc has like 5-6 important girls. Meanwhile, more important or relevant characters get one or two pictures tops and barely any cameos (With one exception marked below). Remember, this is after Mikoto got her already mentioned Spin-Off with her on the lead and lots of artwork focused on her. At this point she may as well be the Index equivalent of Wolverine.
  • The exception is Itsuwa. She's had a grand total of three appearances, one in a mob with no lines, and two short ones where she gives the main guy a hot towel. Truly important things, which is why she appears the most in official art after Mikoto, Kuroko and Index. Never mind that the two arcs with Itsuwa had WAY more important girls (mostly Agnese and Orsola), Itsuwa gets all the art. Subverted in that she becomes more important on later novels, but that's hardly a justification to have her appear so much now, when she hasn't done a single thing, while the girls who actually do stuff get ignored. Funnily, there's a picture of her with Mikoto. They've never met, and on most of Itsuwa's screentime she was on a different continent than Mikoto. The preview for the second season also featured three of the four members of God's Right Seat, Vento, Terra and Aqua, which seems to imply that they had originally intended to go as far as volume 16, but apparently didn't get there. As a result, only Vento plays a role and Aqua puts on a brief appearance in the second-to-last episode, but otherwise...
  • Most openings and endings also emphasize Mikoto (Again, to Power Trio levels). The second season openings also highlights Accelerator (who has little screentime on the anime but is loved by the fans), as well as throwing in a Uiharu cameo, even though she's a very minor character on Index, but since she's a main on Railgun, there we go.
  • All in all, this is par per the course for J.C. Staff, which loves Pandering to the Base to Crippling Overspecialization and promotes the 1-2 most popular females while ignoring everyone else. Only that's usually the lead girl (Such as Shana or Louise), not a secondary character with little to no relevance on over half the arcs, making Mikoto's case stand out the most.
• Nearly all of the promotional art for Ergo Proxy solely features supporting protagonist Re-l Mayer, indicating that she is the main character. And, to the marketing team's credit, the first few episodes certainly make it look this way. However, once the series kicks into high gear, it becomes obvious that the true protagonist is the comparatively unassuming Vincent Law.
• This happens in the Gundam franchise, with none other than Char Aznable. The first opening credits sequence for Gundam ZZ features Char opposite the main character, and yet he never appears in the series.
  • Char's sister Sayla appears on the cover of the Laserdisc boxset for the second half of Zeta Gundam, but she only appears in one episode, with no speaking parts at that.
• In the Lyrical Nanoha franchise, whenever official art comes out and it's not from the manga spinoffs ViVid or Force, there's a 95% chance it'll be from the third season Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS, which came after a 10-year Time Skip that radically changed the appearance of Nanoha and Fate, the main girls, plus introduced a lot of new characters and got rid of several others. While this made sense back in 2007-2008, when Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS had just aired and was the Cool New Thing, nowadays we've had two movies retelling the events of the first two seasons, set before the big Time Skip, and a third movie with an original story set during the same time zone, manga adaptations of said movies and two Video Game adaptations set in the A's timeframe. (Though the second game has ViVid characters, but it's still mainly an A's game). Despite this the majority of fanart will depict Nanoha and Fate post-Time Skip (and often alongside their adopted daughter Vivio), or otherwise characters from the Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS period, with the usual exceptions being movie or spin-off advertisements. Likewise Nanoha and Fate tend to get the lion share of art even on the pics of said spin-offs, where they aren't the main characters or appear for long periods of time.
• Unusually, Nel's adult form from Bleach is featured heavily on manga covers and anime openings, despite only appearing in a few chapters and not really accomplishing anything important. Hitsugaya also gets this in spades, to the point where an official poster for The Hell Verse movie (the only one of the 4 animated movies where he does not have a notable or major role, and in fact only appears in two scenes to talk) features him alongside Ichigo and Kokuto - the two protagonists
• Naruto:
  • Despite Zabuza and Haku dying early on, they are so popular that they've got several action figures and merch, are featured on multiple DVD covers for the series, are featured in video games (with some that don't even cover the story arc they are from), and made it to the Top 30 in multiple popularity polls, even later on in the run.
  • Due to his huge fanbase, Itachi Uchiha is also featured on tons of merchandise and promotional material. He's got two novels plus an anime adaptation of them, a special OVA from Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm Revolution, and he is a popular Halloween costume among fans of the series. He's even featured on some covers for DVDs that don't even feature him. Even after his death in the series, they still didn't stop marketing him. Thing is, he's not featured in the show that much, and was only featured in a few arcs. And even then, he wasn't in them for very long.
• Fate/stay night and all of its related works in the Fate series have this with the insanely popular Servant Saber. She (or one of her incarnations) gets top billing in almost everything related to Fate, and even if she doesn't show up personally, you can bet one of her "Saberfaces" will pick up the slack. The page image for Fate/Zero (which was also the 1st promotional image released for its anime adaptation) is a perfect example: Saber is front and center in the picture and is illustrated in bright, eye-catching colors while everyone else is a mere silhouette (and while she is a major character of said series, she's not the main protagonist). This also applies to the greater Nasuverse, where there will inevitably be a crossover or event where Fate characters make an appearance — once again, Saber will be the representative.
  • The same can also be said of Shirou Emiya or his future self, Archer. In series where Saber does not even show up, he does instead, in one form or another.
• Puella Magi Madoka Magica:
  • Walpurgisnacht is the biggest, baddest witch in the series, so naturally SHAFT didn't stop marketing her even after the two episodes where she appeared and was Killed Off for Real — even in merchandising and promotional lines for Puella Magi Madoka Magica The Movie: Rebellion, where she doesn't even appear.
  • Charlotte also gets this treatment, and is a major character in said movie. In fact, she gets as much merchandise as Kyubey, the Series Mascot, despite only having appeared in one episode in the original series.
• Levi from Attack on Titan is a supporting character, but insanely popular with the fandom. This has resulted in official merchandise and promotional material frequently replacing the actual Deuteragonists of the series with him. Based on these, one might be surprised to learn that Armin is the third member of the Power Trio, and not Levi — who almost always replaces Armin in anime-related materials.
• Yu-Gi-Oh!:
  • Pretty much the only reason why Yugi Muto, the protagonist from the previous series, appears in the pilot episode of Yu-Gi-Oh! GX.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh! has an odd relationship with this trope: while Japanese products will generally keep things topical, Western releases will regularly heavily advertise characters and cards from the original series, because it was much more popular overseas than any of its sequels. This can get to rather corny levels: for instance, when the Duelists of the Abyss pack was released as Duels from the Deep in the west, the cover character was changed from Nash (a major character from Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL) to Mako Tsunami (a very minor duelist who appeared twice in the original show, yet was apparently still judged to be more recognizable). Special mention to the Western release of Yu-Gi-Oh! RUSH DUEL: Dawn of the Battle Royale!!, which features Blue-Eyes White Dragon, Dark Magician, and Red-Eyes Black Dragon front and center despite the game technically not even being about the card game they're from, with the Rush Duel signature monsters Sevens Road Magician and Multistrike Dragon Dragias awkwardly shunted to the side. (The original cover instead simply had the core cast of Yu-Gi-Oh! SEVENS.)
• Broly from Dragon Ball Z is among the most popular villains the series has produced, which is especially impressive considering he's movie-exclusive. He was so impressive, in fact, that unlike the other film-exclusive villains, Broly actually got two sequels. He also quickly became a mainstay of the DBZ video games, even ones set before the Namek saga. As of Dragon Ball Super, Broly not only has a canon female Expy, but he's finally become a Canon Immigrant himself. He's also so popular that, much like Wolverine in MVC2, two distinct playable incarnations of the character were featured in Dragon Ball FighterZ: A classic version based on his original appearance in the 90s Broly – The Legendary Super Saiyan movie, and a modern version based on his rebooted appearance from the 2019 Dragon Ball Super: Broly film.
  • Frieza himself has also become guilty of this, appearing no less than seven times in various animated Dragon Ball media, canon and non-canon, since Trunks killed him early in the manga's ninth arc. What's more, he's received a Captain Ersatz in the form of Frost in Dragon Ball Super and both have returned in the Universal Survivor Arc.
  • Before both of them however, there was Vegeta. It might not be so evident in Western countries where the manga's second half greatly overshadows the first due to being aired first, and Vegeta debuting in the "first" story arc. When compared to the overall series however, Vegeta debuted in the sixth story arc of the manga, but has gone on to eclipse every major character before him as the franchise Deuteragonist. He has become a secondary face of the franchise along with Goku.
  • An odd example with Majin Buu for Dragon Ball Super, as it was known for a while that he would be in the team representing Universe 7 in the Tournament of Power, and was broadly advertised as appearing in the arc. He then proceeds to fall asleep just before the tournament begins, being switched out with Frieza at the last second to fill his slot, leaving Majin Buu's role in the arc fairly minimal.
• For works by CLAMP:
  • Sakura Kinomoto of Cardcaptor Sakura is considered to be the most popular character and the Trope Codifier of Moe as she had an alternate version in Tsubasa -RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE- where she also made a cameo in the OVA and her Clow staff appeared in ×××HOLiC and had tons of merchandises compared to the rest of the CCS cast or any CLAMP character.
  • Asides from Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle, Kimihiro Watanuki of ×××HOLiC made cameos in several CLAMP works such as Drug & Drop, Kobato., and Blood-C. He doesn’t have the merchandising powers as Sakura, but every time you see in another CLAMP work, you know that he’s the bridge of the CLAMP multiverse.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
  • Jotaro Kujo from Stardust Crusaders and Dio Brando/DIO. Jotaro is the most popular Joestar in Japan and was not in just one but four different arcs (Stardust Crusaders, Diamond is Unbreakable, Golden Wind, and Stone Ocean) and plays a big part in three of the four of them. DIO is a cruel, conniving, and somewhat classy vampire whose anger gets the better of him easily and whose greatest rival is... Jotaro Kujo. Not Jonathan Joestar, the man he was raised with as a brother and the only man he could respect and even love as family (in a twisted sort of way), but Jotaro. Both of them have become the default hero/villain duo due to the massive popularity of their appearance in Stardust Crusaders.
    • For the 30th anniversary art exhibition, Hirohiko Araki (the creator of the manga) drew Jotaro and DIO invoking Raijin, god of thunder, and Fujin, god of wind respectively, saying they'd basically become "deified" characters at that point.
  • Stone Ocean: In the second episode batch of the anime adaptation, Foo Fighters/F.F. had died during the final few episodes, and as such, doesn't appear at all during the third batch. Despite this, F.F. is still heavily featured in the advertising for the third episode batch alongside Jolyne Cujoh's Significant Wardrobe Shift and Enrico Pucci's Power Makeover, likely owing to how not only were they one of the three faces of Stone Ocean during advertising for the first two batches alongside Jolyne and Ermes, but they're one of the most popular characters among fans despite the manga making them a Forgotten Fallen Friend.
• The Mysterious Cities of Gold: A weird example where the subject is an item, not a character. Ask any fan of the show what they remember of this series, they'll mention the Golden Condor almost immediately. It appears on most promotional art, is seen in the intro, is mentioned in the lyrics of the theme song in both French and English. Yet it doesn't actually appear until half way into original series.
• Akubi-chan from Hakushon Daimaō became such a popular character that Tatsunoko began promoting the show by using her over the main character Hakushon Daimao. She even got several anime series about her and manga comics published in children's magazines such as Otomodachi Pink.
• The Reign of the Seven Spellblades manga adaptation pulls this with The Lancer Nanao Hibiya: out of four covers at time of writing, she's front-and-center on three, while the actual primary viewpoint character Oliver Horn is in the background on volumes 1 and 2 and absent from volume 3. He's finally the focus of volume 4's cover.

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