Brain Chain / Anime & Manga

The Morons:

• The main lead of Angel Densetsu has his moments (it's more a combination of Nice Guy, The Klutz, and Selective Obliviousness actually), but then we have the most fearsome and brutal of the Shadowy seven: Hishida Haruka! Yep, she's The Ditz, and The Klutz, and almost a Pollyanna ...she's also the living embodiment of Confusion Fu, and she's not even aware of all the destruction she's spreading around.
• Asteroid in Love:
  • Several characters have bluntly called Mira dumb. For example, in response to her getting a cold, Mikage actually says she's "a genius in being stupid" to her face, due to her subverting Idiots Cannot Catch Colds.
  • And then when Sayuki "Eva" Ibe appears, Mikage decides she is even more stupid than Mira. How? Sayuri attempts to eavesdrop on the Earth Science Club to scoop on blackmailing material, but she operated in such an obvious way, that every member sees it, and when brought into the Earth Science Club's room, she pretty much mentioned her intentions without any prodding.
• Rino Rando from Best Student Council. Most of the smarts seem to have been given to her snarky hand puppet Pucchan.
• Buso Renkin: Kazuki Muto's younger sister Mahiro is a sweet girl, with Genki Girl tendencies, who is such a scatterbrain that when her brother and Tokiko invent the lie that they're siblings immediately believes them and is confused by the fact that nobody told her she had an older sister.
• Castle Town Dandelion:
  • Hikari is the most energetic among the siblings, but she seems extremely clueless about the consequences of her actions.
  • While Akane's most important characteristics are Justice Will Prevail and Shrinking Violet, as the story goes on it's quite clear that despite her own self-consciousness, she's utterly clueless of what's happening around her — like whether she's wearing anything on her lower body (Chapter 12/Episode 4A), or that everyone knows she is Scarlet Bloom (Chapter 21/Episode 9A).
• Code:Breaker: An extremely ditzy Re-Coder shows up. When asked how many people she killed, she says "One, two, three... Ten, I guess, because I have ten fingers! But I'm not in a counting mood, so now I'll kill you painfully!" She never lapses into a Slasher Smile but remains cheerful and perky throughout.
• The characters of Cromartie High School tend to pass the Idiot Ball around quite a bit, but Hayashida is particularly stupid. The Other Wiki describes him as "dumber than a gorilla" — which, considering a gorilla is actually part of the cast, is proven true in the show. In his defense, the gorilla is the smartest member of the class. Yeah. It's that kind of series.
• The frequent use of this trope as a Charm Point was parodied in a stinger skit in Daily Lives of High School Boys.
  • Yanagin gets her sempai to teach them how to be cuter, and the correct answer is...
    Yanagin's Senpai: "Pretending to be an idiot who doesn't even know common knowledge^note Like not recognizing Oda Nobunaga is what makes high school girls cute! Listen up, their brains and eyes are directed right here..."
  • Ringo-chan is a straight example; she's not the brightest bulb in town. In High School Boys and Panties it took her an hour to diagnose the reason for a network problem: the wire was never plugged on. Then she unwittingly flaunts her panties to Motoharu, the President and the Vice-President; fortunately for her, she doesn't get to see them in the act, much less their horrified reaction.
• Touta Matsuda from Death Note. Most of the time, anyway. In his defense, he is not so much a could-not-function-in-normal-society Ditz. Most of the time, he acts like a fairly normal (if somewhat impulsive and over-enthusiastic) young man. It's just that in a situation where one false move (like revealing your face to the wrong person) could mean instant death, any false move starts to come off as Too Dumb to Live. It also doesn't help that he's working with (or, as it turns out in one case, against) people like Light, L, Near, and Mello.
• The standout ditz of Don't Become an Otaku, Shinozaki-san! would be Akina's childhood friend Chigusa. She almost always has a dreamy look on her face and her likes are listed as "stripes". When boys would ask if she would go out with them, she'd respond with "go out where?", Oblivious to the fact they were hitting on her. Konatsu is also ditzy in the more Genki Girl fashion.
• Elfen Lied:
  • Deconstructed by Director Kurama's ditzy secretary, Kisaragi, who gets decapitated by Lucy in the first 7 minutes of the show because she's Too Dumb to Live. This is made better in the German dub, where she tells her colleagues "I just don't lose my head." moments before.
  • Anna (after she returned to normal) is another example, being unable to solve basic mathematical problems.
• The title character (and arguably most of the cast) of Excel♡Saga.
• Kousaka from Genshiken isn't quite as dimwitted as some; his ditz qualifications comes mostly from his utter lack of a filter between his thoughts and his mouth.
• Tomoko from Great Teacher Onizuka is clumsy, Book Dumb, and doesn't have any real friends when Onizuka meets her. In the manga, her classmates nickname her Toroko (Slo-mo-ko in English) since she's so "slow". She turns out to have Hidden Depths, though.
• Joshua Lundgren in GUN×SWORD straddles the line between ditz and Cloudcuckoolander. He once looked for Wendy by heading into every women's restroom in a train station, not understanding why the women were screaming until he got arrested for it.
• Satomi Ookuma of Handsome Girl and Sheltered Girl is the "Sheltered Girl" in the title. She's completely oblivious to how her friend at college, Mizuki Kanda, is not a man but actually an androgynous-looking woman, and thus the "Handsome Girl." It's implied that Ookuma's overprotective parents may be part of the problem, especially since they have some rather strange ideas; her father wants any prospective boyfriend to submit a resume to him.
• Shizuka Marikawa from Highschool of the Dead. Her entire character is practically this and Ms. Fanservice (though, to be fair, most of the girls in this series are that).
  • Literally pointed out in episode twelve.
    Shizuka: That's so cool!
    Saya Takagi: Ugh! You're such a ditz!
    Shizuka: Well, that is my character, after all.
• Italy from Hetalia: Axis Powers: the name of the series is even a portmanteau of the Japanese words for "hopeless" and "Italy". Italy is such a Distressed Dude that it's a wonder he survived until Germany formed an alliance with him. One notable example is when Germany tries to teach him how to throw a grenade. Italy throws the pin, leaving the grenade clenched in his mouth. He then just sits there blankly, while Germany screams at him to throw the grenade before they both get blown up. The one time Italy manages to plant a grenade correctly he stands there cheering... as a Russian tank comes up behind him. Romano later does the same thing, suggesting that this trope runs in the family, which in the dub Germany immediately lampshades. America is more of the 'lovable/obnoxious oaf' kind.
• Imaizumin-chi wa Douyara Gal no Tamariba ni Natteru Rashii: ~DEEP~: Ruri often forgets the point she's trying to make. Reina calls her having 30 IQ.
• Subyss from Innocent is a darker example. He is a Torture Technician with a sadistic streak a mile long, but he is kind of silly in an almost amusing way. He'll ask the wrong questions, get drunk at inopportune moments, is professionally unlucky, and is dumb enough to believe his job is something to be proud of.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
  • Suzi Q isn't exactly that smart, something that's best shown when Joseph Joestar arrives at his own funeral, learning that the rest of the cast spent the last few weeks thinking he was dead because Suzi forgot to send the telegram telling them that he's alive (Then again, there have been several moments that have shown she's actually Smarter Than She Looks, and it's implied that she acts like this to Troll Joseph).
  • Okuyasu Nijimura from Diamond is Unbreakable openly admits that he's not very smart. His ditz status is especially notable in a cast of intelligent, creative heroes, traits which are almost a requirement to make the most out of the more esoteric Stand abilities. By contrast, Okuyasu's Stand, The Hand, has the ability to erase anything with its right hand, is incredibly powerful and would be an outright Story-Breaker Power if Okuyasu was smart enough to use it more creatively (in fact, his Establishing Character Moment is managing to knock himself out with his own Stand).
  • L.A. Boom Boom of the Boom Boom Family from Steel Ball Run apparently inherited his not-so-great intellect from his mother, something his father and even his brother mock him for.
  • Hato Higashikata from JoJolion is extremely air-headed. Don't underestimate her in a fight, however.
• Nai is a boy version of this from Karneval, although he's really a cute little animal. Yogi is more of the "lovable oaf" kind when he's not being serious, which is often.
• In Kemono Friends, Hululu, the Humboldt Penguin member of the PPP, is both a ditz on and off the stage.
• Yayoi of Koi Koi 7 (the pink-haired one, not the one with the eyepatch.) When standing in the middle of a heated battle with the shots missing her, her only response is "Fireworks!"
• Shinobu of Kiniro Mosaic is hardly bright. One of the earliest strips showed her scoring zero in math, and despite her European Foreign Culture Fetish, she doesn't know much English (and tried to read an English paper!) and may or may not even know that England and France are part of Europe at all!
• Nadeshiko from Laid-Back Camp doesn't appear to be very bright; nearly the first thing we know about her is her not bringing a cell phone nor having any meaningful amounts of cash (just 100 yen) when she cycles in the countryside of a place she moved into a day ago.
• Tsukasa Hiiragi from Lucky Star is a sweet girl who's also airheaded, forgetful and regularly gets poor grades in school, putting her in contrast with her smarter and more responsible twin sister Kagami. Even mundane tasks like following a study schedule, reading a newspaper or finding her own cellphone number prove to be very challenging for her.
• Kanako from Maria†Holic is marvelously dumb. She flunked nearly all her exams and, when given notes that "even an idiot could understand" by Sachi, she fails to comprehend even that. She's so single-minded in her pursuit of finding girl-love that she's dim in everything else. Including the realization that liking girls makes her a lesbian.
• Papi of Monster Musume and her fantasy counterpart Aero of Deadline Summoner are both harpies, barely wear anything and have just as much upstairs.
  Kimihito Kurusu and Mamoru Onodera: She's a birdbrain!
• My Monster Secret: The entire point of the series is that it's a Romantic Comedy driven by a cast full of characters who are "just a little dumb" (in the author's own words); however, they're all depicted as lovable goofs or space cases rather than simply idiots. Special mention goes to the female lead Youko Shiragami, whose goofiness has more often than not put her secret at risk.
• Negima! Magister Negi Magi Konoka can also act ditzy, but it's almost certainly an act.
• Naruto:
  • The toad Gamatatsu is rather childlike and obsessed with food.
  • Naruto himself fits this in part 1, though it's really more a case of Book Dumb. He outgrows it after the time skip.
• Aoba of New Game! can be pretty spacey and oblivious at times, like forgetting her ID card multiple times, or failing to recognize that Sophia was inspired by her own appearance. In fact, when designing Sophia, she started to do a search for reference material on twintails — the style of hair that Aoba herself has.
• Himeko from Pani Poni Dash!. She's so dumb, she faints upon SEEING English letters, since her brain can't take it.
• Pokémon: The Series:
  • The Team Rocket trio seems to have become cursed to this position ever since encountering Ash, (with the exception of the Best Wishes series).
  • Misty's Psyduck stumbled from place to place with a vacant look on its face. He was also shown to be unable to swim despite being a Water-type. He is somewhat more competent in his return in a Sun & Moon episode, though.
  • May and Dawn when they first started as trainers — May was a bit less competent because she didn't really want to train Pokemon, which was before the anime introduced Contests. This even passed on to her starter Torchic, who Took a Level in Badass and evolved into Combusken in the middle of Hoenn, eliminating this trait.
  • Cameron from the Unova arc was ditzier than Ash was in almost the entire anime, as he practically had to be handheld as a Trainer through all of his appearances. In spite of all this, he beats Ash after bringing 5 Pokemon to a 6-on-6 Pokemon League battle.
  • Ash's Rowlet is shown to be this when it isn't asleep. Its first appearance in the anime showed it mistaking a wind chime for food.
  • Casey from the Johto saga is cute, but she's not the brightest kid. In her first appearance, she insulted Ash as a trainer despite only just starting her journey and having about a few days of being a trainer, and insisted on battling him despite this, which predictably ends with her losing miserably to Ash's Charizard. Being a huge fan of the Electabuzz baseball team, she also tries to sing their fight songs... and she really sucks at it. Misty once had to stop her because her singing was so terrible.
• In the Pretty Cure franchise, the pink-themed leaders might be the sweetest girls they can be, have nifty skills that set them apart and great leadership skills, they might not be the sharpest tools in the shed. Examples include Nozomi, who infamously got kicked out of every school club possible due to her clumsiness, and Ichika, who kept thinking the boyish girl was a handsome boy even when she transformed into a Cure herself.
• The Quintessential Quintuplets: Despite being the most enthusiastic in being taught be Fuutarou, Yotsuba Nakano also gets the lowest grades out of her sisters; her test grade in Chapter 2? Eight out of one-hundred. Additionally in Chapter 20, not only she has the lowest overall grades out of her sisters again, her score in mathematics is Nine out of one-hundred.
• The main character of Sailor Moon, Usagi "Dumpling Head" Tsukino. Her ditzy personality is tied together with the rest of her character.
• Tenma Tsukamoto from School Rumble. When you're the lead character of a Love Dodecahedron series, it just sorta comes naturally.
• Teasing Master Takagi-san: Mina doesn't seem to be dumb or anything, but she tends to overreact to things, and once walked into the toilet, saw Takagi and asked if she and Nishikata were dating (Takagi said no), left the toilet, ran into Nishikata and his friends and mentioned her conversation with Takagi, and then remembers she went to the toilet because she needed to pee. She also apparently once got hypnotized while watching a hypnotist on TV.
• Mihoshi, in the various Tenchi Muyo! television series (Flanderized from a Bunny-Ears Lawyer / Genius Ditz in the OVAs). She is an endless source of frustration and despair for not only Kiyone, her long-suffering partner in the Galaxy Police, but also Washu, whose projects are always being ruined by her stupidity.
• Yotsuba&! qualifies. Sure, she's five years old, but what kid that age doesn't even know how a swing works? She can also be led by the nose rather easily. Any moderately intelligent five-year-old would eventually figure out that Danbo is simply Miura in a cardboard box, for instance.