No Social Skills / Western Animation

Characters with No Social Skills in Western Animation.

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• Adventure Time:
  • The Earl of Lemongrab definitely fit this trope. Lemongrab has no social skills because he's mentally maladjusted from being the product of a failed science experiment and raised in isolation.
  • The Ice King was a once-ordinary man driven mad by a cursed magical crown. Now he's an ill-tempered, senile hermit who lives alone in his palace of ice with only penguins for companions, which has rather put a damper on his social skills. Finn and Jake develop something of a friendship with him, even though the Ice King gets on their nerves.
• Avatar: The Last Airbender:
  • Prince Zuko and Princess Azula were raised in a royal court and have little experience with casual interaction. Zuko, mainly through Character Development and the positive influence of Uncle Iroh, is better off, but Azula is far worse, to the point that it's almost painful to watch — she has NO ability to socially function outside of a battle or when not manipulating others. Aaron Ehasz states that if there was a Book 4, Azula would've had a Heel–Face Turn and received mental help, and she would've become the dorky variant of this trope (i.e. randomly spouting out how she feels).
    • While Zuko is much Older and Wiser in The Legend of Korra, he still has his moments, as shown in season three where he talks about the time he hired the Combustion Man to kill the former Avatar... in front of the current Avatar's father. Although he speaks about his assassination attempt against Aang at that time, given the nature of Reincarnation and how the show stresses how different yet so similar the Avatars are and generally all of them are the same person ever since Wan and Raava fuse together to create the Avatar Spirit, said current Avatar's father has every right to be feel uncomfortable.
    Zuko: ...It didn't work.
• Tina Belcher of Bob's Burgers is generally socially inept and doesn't fully understand the difference between appropriate and inappropriate behavior. "Human Flesh" shows several of the other Belchers outright admitting she's not good with customers (punctuated with Tina repeatedly scratching her crotch in public and Louise calling her autistic), and her tendency to write "erotic friend-fiction" weirds out everyone who learns about it.
• In Captain Sturdy: Back in Action, the hyper-intelligent hero Cerebro curtly says "You're old" to Captain Sturdy. Cyber Master explains to Captain Sturdy that Cerebro is lacking in social skills because he skipped a few grades as a result of his advanced intellect.
• In Castlevania (2017), after his family's defamation and exile by the Church, Trevor Belmont had spent much of his life since his early teen years wandering alone, and, as a result, developed a somewhat surly personality that tends to rub people the wrong way. Even his attempt to comfort Sypha when she makes the decision to separate from the rest of her family goes badly:
  Sypha: Isn't it silly? They're heading into who knows what danger, and I'm standing here sad and angry because they're together and I'm alone.
  Trevor: Hmm.
  Sypha: ...This is where you're supposed to tell me that I'm not alone, Belmont. You are really not very good at this.
  Trevor: I learned to travel alone early in life. Maybe I just got too used to it.
  Sypha: You had a family, though.
  Trevor: Not much of one, and not for long. Okay, look, I know a little bit about what you're feeling. I'm sorry, but we have a thing to do now. All I can do is try and make sure it doesn't get you killed so you can see your family again.
  Sypha: ...That's your encouraging talk?
  Trevor: Or, you get killed, and they get eaten in the forest, so none of you have to be sad. How's that?
  Sypha: I was right about you the first time, you know. You are rude.
  Trevor: I've been called worse.
  Sypha: Oh, I'm just getting started.
• Code Lyoko have Jeremie and Aelita, or 'Mr. and Mrs. Einstein' as some call them: both being very intelligent and not particularly socially skilled, if in different ways. Jeremie had no friends before the series began and struggled, particularly early on, with being anything but professional with them. Aelita meanwhile being believed to be an artificial intelligence who is quite unfamiliar with the real world. Aelita managed to grow out of this trope fully as the series went on, while Jeremie also improved if not to the same extent.
• The trio that is Ed, Edd n Eddy. All three are social outcasts who have difficulty mingling with the other kids.
  • Ed is a pretty nice guy, but he is also a large Cloud Cuckoo Lander who's rather lacking in book smarts and his interests (horror-themed comics and monster movies) don't relate to the others. He can often annoy the others with this, especially his sister Sarah and Eddy.
  • Edd is a sweet young man and the most endearing, but he is your classic nebbish and orderly intellectual. He can come as condescending at times, he's a neat freak and quite by the rules. So much so he can be lost in what the other kids like, even with Ed and Eddy.
  • Eddy is a bit of a mix. Due to his primary role model being his his bullying scam artist of an older brother, Eddy tries emulating him to earn the "respect" he believed his brother got. This along with Eddy's short temper and occasional abrasiveness makes him the hardest for the kids to get along with. On the other hand, he does have some measure of understanding how his peers work and outside his interests in scamming, is the most normal of the three (having a fair bit in common with Kevin even.)
• Gravity Falls gives us a bit of an odd example with Pacifica Northwest. Daughter of the wealthiest family in town, she seems to be your normal rich popular girl, but over time, it becomes clear that her background has left her with some social skills lacking. She has never had any real friends or enjoyed in doing acitvities such as sharing, which often means Hilarity Ensues when she interacts with her Sitcom Archnemesis turned friend Mabel. As such, while she seems capable in understanding how people work in general, she never really established bonds with people.
• Reagan Ridley of Inside Job (2021) is a Mad Scientist who graduated at the top of her class from MIT at the age of 13. She's also a Bunny-Ears Lawyer who's extremely competent at her job, but her abrasive personality and lack of social skills frequently alienate her coworkers, and it's implied that she may have some kind of disorder as well. It's for this reason that the charismatic Naïve Newcomer Brett Hand is brought on to help her improve team morale.
• Kaeloo: Kaeloo lacks the ability to properly socialize with people outside her close friend circle. Many people are put off by her extreme enthusiasm and smothering nature, and she has the unfortunate tendency to offend people without meaning to. For example, Mr. Cat had to teach her how to lie because her Brutal Honesty was alienating her friends, and her attempts to bond with the young spirit medium Lavanade over their "weirdness" ends up offending Lavanade because she doesn't see herself as weird and is angry that Kaeloo would call her that.
• The Legend of Korra: Avatar Korra who is Aang's reincarnation, was whisked away to a compound deep in the south pole where she could master the four elements in complete safety and security. The only problem? After coming to Republic City with only her best friend Naga (a Polar-Bear Dog), she is almost completely tactless when it comes to dealing with the locals of the city and proves to be Innocently Insensitive when she winds up involved in a Love Triangle. A lot of people are able to influence her because of this.
• Molly of Denali: Downplayed, but in "Fiddlesticks," when Molly tries to give Oscar a fist bump, he puts his hand over her fist, implying that he is not good with social skills.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • Twilight Sparkle starts out like this due to her voluntary asocial lifestyle. Half the reason she's in Ponyville is so she can learn about friendship. She needed a book to tell her what a slumber party was and how to throw it! In the episode "Baby Cakes", she casually (and innocently) tells Pinkie Pie that she pretty much expected Pinkie would be out of her depth caring for twin babies. She doesn't appear to notice that Pinkie is offended by this statement even as Pinkie kicks her out of Sugarcube Corner. She gets better as the series goes along.
  • And then you've got Princess Luna, though that can be excused for being sealed in the moon for a thousand years. She's bombastic, dramatic and a bit over the top, but she comes off as a big dork when she begins settling in. The comic books also add to this and we also see she was not as good with her subjects as Celestia was. Her lack of social skills, especially compared to Celestia's, when it came to interacting with their subjects and viewing them, may have been part of why Celestia was preferred to Luna.
  • As Discord never really had any friends, he does not have much social skills, being more socially awkward and acting outwardly strange and loud.
• The Owl House:
  • Played for Drama. Luz Noceda has a very poor sense of social conduct and socially acceptable behavior, and it's impacted her ability to make friends her age; the after-effects of this can be best seen by her fear of being made fun of by Amity for being too cheesy when she goes to ask her out. Her father's untimely death only worsened things, as her inability to cope translated into her interactions with others continuing to become increasingly desperate, to the point of acting out and misbehaving. Worse still, Luz's desire for any form of companionship, in part, resulted in the overly zealous displays of creativity that she hoped would prove her worthy of friendship or affection.
  • Amity Blight has some moments like this due to her wealthy status, and growing up thinking that she needs to be the best all the time has caused her to diminish her people skills. At the start of her arc, Amity is shown to be Lonely Among People, even though she longs for companionship. Ironically, her Alpha Bitch attitude sabotages any chances of helping her find genuine friendship. She also assumed that Luz's attempts at kindness were really Luz trying to annoy or torment her, even going so far as to view Luz's offering to help with the library kids or simply strike up a friendly conversation as instantly considered bothering her, even though Luz continuously tries to explain that her embarrassing Amity or getting her in trouble was unintentional, and Amity refuses to apologize to her, only focusing on her own predicament, and refuses to see that those incidents were largely her own fault, take responsibility for her actions, and own up to her mistakes.
• One episode of Police Academy: the Animated Series features a young man who was literally Raised by Wolves. Most of the episode is spent by the heroes teaching him human behavior or trying to find his parents.
• Mitchell from Ready Jet Go! is often shown to have a lack of social skills and can pretty timid and even robotic at times, especially in "Solar System Bake Off" where he acts awkward around the main cast while trying to gather information on their baking contest entry. Literally the first thing he says to them is "Hi, can I borrow a cup of sugar or salt, whichever is easier to borrow?" In fact, this is shown to be the reason why Mitchell acts the way he does — he doesn't know how to fit in. Luckily, he gets better.
• Rocko's Modern Life features Heffer the steer, who has constant trouble with social conventions. He was literally Raised by Wolves, in this case a dysfunctional family of lupine suburbanites.
• Entrapta in She-Ra and the Princesses of Power has very poor social skills, preferring to spend most of her time alone, making robots. She tends to mention extremely disturbing facts regardless of other people's feelings, gets distracted whenever she's around tech, likes getting into people's space and taking things without asking, never seeming to notice her comrades' frustration. However, it turns out she's actually well aware of her poor people skills and is insecure over her inability to maintain relationships, having been abandoned multiple times by her friends. Nonetheless, she decides to put her skills to use to help them in ways she can. Justified in that Entrapta has been confirmed to be autistic, and therefore has difficulty interacting.
• Steven Universe, Peridot has incredibly poor social skills in regards to humans and the Crystal Gems due to being new to the planet. She's revealed to not understand why she feels bad (small) when she accidentally hurts someone's feelings. She also doesn't understand why Garnet chooses to stay fused or why the others don't treat Pearl as she was taught a member of her Slave Race should be treated. Though it's shown that this is a result of her conditioning on Homeworld, as she quickly learns all of them spending time with the Crystal Gems.
• Teen Titans (2003) has Starfire. She is an alien from another planet and thus, Earth culture is quite new to her. Additionally, her people, Tamaranians, are quite open with their emotions and how they feel, so there's often a lack of subtlety in her actions. However, it makes her endearing, especially contrasting with her older sister, who while much more socially aware and seemingly cool, is a hedonistic jerk.
• Total Drama.
  • Courtney may be an effective competitor, but she doesn't really understand how to interact with people or make them like her. In Island, her bossy and uptight attitude only served to irritate her teammates until Harold rigged the votes to have her kicked off. When she later protested her unfair removal from the competition, Lindsay straight-up told her that she just would have been voted off later, because nobody liked her anyway.
  • In the first two episodes of Island, Ezekiel has trouble understanding social norms and is unable to tell what is and isn't appropriate behavior. His social skills improve during his stay at the Playa Des Losers, but not by much.
  • As an eccentric nerd that spews facts about things like an encyclopedia, this is a naturally given trait to have for a character like Harold.
• We Bare Bears:
  • Ice Bear almost never directly speaks to the other characters and is typically mute for most of the time. It's implied it may have been the result of his cubhood before meeting his brothers.
  • Charlie is unable to fully understand social cues due to the fact that he has always had to fear and run away from people all his life.
• Young Justice (2010):
  • Superboy is a clone of Superman who was grown in 16 weeks and fed information via telepathic genomorphs. Suffice to say he finds it difficult to deal with people, particularly his new teammates, when he's just beginning to adjust to life outside of CADMUS.
  • Also, M'Gann who had learned about Earth by watching TV and is ignorant of more common social behaviours and struggles to learn what is appropriate with regards to telepathy and privacy. This comes up with a case of Deliberate Values Dissonance when M'Gann shapeshifts into Black Canary while kissing Conner. J'onn explains that it's a common game on Mars to shape-shift for a partner, since everyone can read minds and wouldn't be confused. Black Canary is still very upset.

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