I’ve always liked teams more than I like solo heroes… So when Karandi posed the question – who ya gonna call?, my thoughts turned towards assembling a team of anime characters.
So, who would I call? What characters would I choose to form a dream team to face a threat to the anime multiverse? Hit the jump and find out!
Deku (Midoryia Izuku, My Hero Academia).
If I could, I’d arrange it so he was the leader. Not necessarily powerful on his own, even though he’s somewhat mastered All For One Full Cowl… His greatest strength is actually his ability to strategize and to inspire others. Every team needs a thinker and a leader, especially one willing to lead by example, otherwise it’s just a mob. Deku is that catalyst on my team.
In her reply to my comment on her post, Karandi correctly questioned whether Deku was a good solo choice. But in terms of team dynamics, he’s a no brainer.
Trust me, this isn’t a wasted pick.
Kirito (Kirigaya Kazuto, Sword Art Online franchise).
Given his avowed status as solo player, Kirito might seem an odd choice… But it is shown on multiple occasions that he’s more than capable of working with a team at need. His greatest value to my team though is this – he’s a fire and forget weapon. Once he knows what’s right and what needs to be done, nothing, but nothing will stand in his way. In terms of absolute steely eyed determination to get the job done, almost nobody is his equal.
Yuuna (Yuuki Yuuna, Yuuki Yuuna is a Hero).
Measured by sheer grit and willingness to go to great lengths to defend her home and her friends, there’s nobody more determined than Yuuna. Her flaw however, is that she needs that inspiration to fight. Though with Deku on the team inspiration will not be lacking. This is not to downplay one bit the combat power she’ll bring to the table, because she has that in spades. Whatever threat they’re facing, it would do well not undervalue Yuuki just because she hangs back a bit before committing… Because once she does commit, she’s all in. Game Over bad guys, Game Over.
I also considered Fu Inubozaki and Miyoshi Karin for this slot, but as the rest of the team came together I badly needed a stable team player for balance. Taking that into consideration, Yuuna is the perfect choice.
Railgun (Misaka Mokoto, A Certain Magical Index franchise).
Alongside her raw power and creativity in combat, Misaka brings badly needed ranged combat capability to the team. But, if Yuuki is a Hero, Misaka is a Problem. Prickly and fiercely independent, she is decidedly not anyone’s idea of a team player. But, like Kirito, she’s not incapable of cooperating at need – and that’s what I’m counting on.
My nightmare scenario is Kirito and Misaka pissing each other off and both leaving the team. But this IS television after all, the heroes are always there when it really counts.
Ichijo (Shizuku Ichijo, Alice & Zouroko).
It took a bit of thought, but Ichijo was the final piece of the puzzle. She’s older, a seasoned combat veteran, and brings a certain calmness and gravitas to the table. Not to mention nearly unbridled ferocity and an awesome array of combat powers that she wields with great skill. She’s a Mama bear to beat all Mama bears.
I originally considered Sana for this slot, but her youthful impetuosity was a poor fit in a group with such strong willed solo players as Kirito and Misaka. Of the Alices, Ichijo is probably the most reliable and rock steady.
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Man… this was not as easy as I first thought. And I just want to keep going, but I decided to limit myself to just five characters. (Gotta have some arbitrary limit after all.) And I can’t believe I didn’t put in any of the 00 Cyborgs. (I couldn’t pick just one.) And no Julis Alexia van Riessfeld either… With the other fierce independents, the team couldn’t handle a tsundere despite the firepower she wields. And… so many others.
Still, it’s a powerful and well-rounded team. If they can work together, a bad guy would have a difficult time standing against them.
What would your dream team be? Let me know in the comments!
Apprentice Mages Lounge. 
Kirito/Misaka might bring open conflict potential, but Deku/Kirito is going to bring out Kirito’s passive aggressive side. Deku’s too naive to adapt, and he quite openly and enthusiastically exhibits the sort of geekery that lies at the heart of Kirito’s insecurity…
Your team may work depending on the threat but has way to many openings and little defense against psychological warfare. Put someone like Orihara Izaya in their way, and if they don’t shoot on sight, they’re basically screwed. You need someone with cunning and people skills. Your team needs to hope that Ichijo learned a thing or two from her boss.
On the other hand, Deku and Yuuki Yuna should make an awesome team, having a highly compatible ideology and temperaments that compensate for each others weaknesses pretty well. Ichijo should make for a good babysitter to compensate for a lot of potential tensions, though I’m not convinced she has the patience required.
What you consider Kirito’s greatest strength is only a strength if you get Kawahara Reki to write the story (that would give your team the advantage of a lame threat to overcome, too.)
As for my own team? None. In my current mood, I’ll just let the world burn.
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Ouch, that stings. :) :)
Orihara Izaya doesn’t seem to rise to the level of threat that would trigger the summoning of such team, though I had to look him up having never seen Durarara!!. Can he really be that serious a threat? I was thinking more along the lines of a true supervillain, like Dr. Doom or Lex Luthor.
Good thoughts on the Deku/Yuuki Yuna pairing… And you’re right, they’d definitely need a certain level of adult supervision, which is why Ichijo is on the team in the first place. Overall, anime is lacking in more mature heros and if I hadn’t gone with her, one of the 00 Cyborgs (probably 002 or 008) would have taken that slot. I very seriously considered 002.
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Izaya isn’t a threat in himself. Think Magane from Re:Creators, only you don’t ever have to meet him to cause trouble. He’s the sort of person who plays both sides of a game of chess with an entire city for its pieces. Doesn’t care who wins. Doesn’t care who leaves the board. Just as long as the constellations are interesting. The problem is that your team has no defense against really smart nutcases who meddle just because. You’d need someone like L from Deathnote or Houtaro from Hyouka to counter that. Someone smart who does nothing but hang back and watch. Most of your team “leads the charge” so to speak. Your team can’t really counter cunning or randomness and has little of it itself. They’re generally fine for your garden-variety super villain. You wouldn’t want send them against the Joker, though, if you get my drift.
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OK, fair point.
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See now I’m going to have to do a follow up post in a few weeks proposing anime teams because this looked like a lot of fun putting different skill sets and personalities together. Thanks for sharing this and for the link to my post.
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It was a lot of fun, and it got me out of the rut of the posts I should be working on not coming together. :) (And if you’re like me, having a post idea in the queue is a Very Good Thing.)
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Wow, interesting topic! Not something I’ve ever thought about before. Love having Yuna on the squad, and Kirito and Misaka are…interesting choices, to say the least. I think you’re right about the oil-and-water potential there, but OTOH there’s also plenty of “vitriolic best buds” potential there too, which is comedy gold when it’s done right (see: Spock and McCoy).
Now I’m going to have to think about what kind of team I’d want to put together, but I know right off the bat that I’d definitely want Nanoha as my long range/aerial combat specialist – and she should have no trouble fitting in with any team assemblage, especially if it’s the adult Nanoha from the StrikerS era, who has the benefit of years of military training and experience to go with her massive raw combat power.
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My thought was the oil-and-water would be balanced by Kirito’s sense of mission and Misaka’s desire to protect… Yuuna? Dangit, now in some ways I really wish I had put 002 in. Despite her (very useful) abilities, she’s nearly defenseless and would engage both K & M’s protective instincts. But I hate intentional weak characters. (Especially after she gained such agency in Re:Cyborg, one of the few good parts of that piece of trash.) It could also bring out the Dramatic Return of The Hero after one or the other bailed. (The heroes are always there when it matters.) It’s an old trope, but very effective when done right. (Karin’s mankai scene is a variant of that trope.)
I’d say if you have a character that undergoes significant changes, you’d have to be sure and specify which variant.
Though I guess Kirito could be a little problematic in that respect, none of my lineup really has to be considered that way. (Yuuna’s mankai is latent in the character, not a later powerup.)
I’m very interested in seeing your team!
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Okay, here’s what I’ve got. I originally wanted to make a six-member team, but I can’t think of anything else this team is missing, besides maybe a field medic, and what kind of superhero team brings a medic along?
Miria, from Claymore. Very fast, powerful, dangerous swordswoman. She’s also a natural, charismatic leader, an excellent strategist, and cares a lot about the people under her command and keeping them alive, not just winning the battle. My choice for team leader.
Nanoha Takamachi (adult version), from Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS. She has some extremely powerful projectile attacks like her Divine Buster and Starlight Breaker, and between her Wide Area Search magic and her ability to fly, she’s also the best team member for long-distance scouting and reconaissance.
Beet, from Beet the Vandel Buster. He wields several different types of long-range melee weapons, including spear, lance, battleaxe, and gun, but his main combat role is being this team’s “tank;” he has insane stamina to go along with his multiple weapon skills, and few enemies could match his endurance.
Yuki Nagato, from The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. She’s capable of fighting offensively or defensively as needed, but her supporting skills are why I really want her in this team, especially her ability to transmute objects, which makes her a natural at filling a blacksmith/craftsman/engineer type role. Some of her other abilities like luck manipulation, memory alteration, etc., could also be situationally useful.
Shikamaru Nara (adult version), from Naruto. Who better to fill a stealth/espionage/information-gathering role than a trained ninja, especially one of the most intelligent ninjas in the entire anime-verse? I’m also making him second-in-command and Miria’s chief advisor.
I like the potential dynamics of this team, and the situational flexibility they have to partner up in a variety of roles. Four of the five have experience working in combat teams, so they should be reliable teammates, and the one who doesn’t (Yuki) isn’t the type to go rogue. All of them have shown respect for human life and a willingness to fight to protect people, so there shouldn’t be any serious philosophical differences. The biggest potential challenges that I see are that Miria and Shikamaru will have to learn how to work together at strategizing, and everyone will have to be willing to accept Yuki’s lack of social skills.
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Looks like you put a lot of thought than I did into missions and roles… I’ll have to take your word on the characters though as I haven’t seen any of the relevant anime.
My team was built along the lines of a classic 70’s team – basic operating philosophy “there’s a bad guy, let’s thump him until he’s no longer a problem”. (No surprise since I am a child of the 70’s!) Because I find them interesting, I paid more attention to team dynamics than anything else.
Your team seems to have been inspired by… I can’t quite put my finger on it, RPG’s maybe? Your discussion of archetypes/roles sounds an awful lot like some of the more cerebral discussions on team-building we’d have on the City of Heroes forums back in the day. Which is a compliment, playing on a team where every member had been picked along those lines (and taking the player behind the keyboard into account*) was an awful lot of fun and we’d steamroller bad guys that on paper should have wiped the floor with us.
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I hadn’t thought about that at all, but you’re probably right. I was an 80’s kid rather than a 70’s kid and was honestly never much of a comic book reader, but I have years of experience playing RPGs, both in real life and video games. And most of my favorite RPGs like Mage (tabletop) and Persona (console) are ones that reward teams who have complementary skill sets and use those skills creatively, over teams who just load up on offense and try to bulldoze through the game. So you taught me something about myself, too! Though I will admit that Dawnstorm’s comment about needing to be able to fight a Chessmaster-type villain also influenced my decision to include Shikamaru, at least.
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Heh, I’ve also been a teen in the 80ies, and I’m also very familiar with RPGs. But I’m (was) also a hobby writer, and generally I’ve always seen the teams that bulldoze everything with sheer force as boring (and as I grew up, more and more as a threat in themselves), to the extent that I began to root for villains. As a child/early teen I would root [i]a lot[/i] for villains over the heroes. At least they were smart (though usually not smart enough to hire competent henchmen – one of the things that drew me towards anime during the early 80ies was competent villain teams…).
I’m Austrian and the 70ies and 80ies were still in the thrall of “Vergangenheitsbewältigung” (which means “coping with the past”, which means the Austrian responsibility for our part in World War 2 genocide). So a hero with a conviction of steel who uses brute force to achieve his/her goals wasn’t exactly attractive. Sure, the villains were killing people left and right, but, hey, it’s fiction. (When I was watching wrestling in the 80ies, I was also rooting for the rule breakers, for similar reasons.)
A hero with a strong conviction and the willingness to use violence to achieve his “justice” is something inherently distasteful for me. It’s not like I can’t suspend that feeling of distaste or that it automatically ruins things for me. And sometimes shows can by-pass this entirely; I’m not sure how. But as a tendency I perceive such heroes as fascist figureheads. It’s overblown, I know, but I can’t help it. I’ve always been like that.
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My team relies on brute force, yes, but that’s not the same thing as strategic or tactical simplicity though… A wedge and a sledgehammer are both brute force, but they operate in different ways.
And yeah, what you learned as a kid can shape you for life, even if you unlearn most of it later on. My upbringing (in the American South) hasn’t always done me any favors.
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Isn’t that the fun part of these discussions?
Chessmaster type villains and the psychological manipulators didn’t become a comic book staple until long after I’d quit reading comics. (About the same time I quit reading fiction, too much non fiction to keep up on!) I wouldn’t even know how to build a team to defeat them.
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I would include one punch man!
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“I have an army.”
“shrug We have Saitama.”
I guess with him on the team, you don’t need much of anyone else!
And thanks for stopping by the Lounge! Hope you drop by again.
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I’m already one of your followers! And I agree with you on Saitama.
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It’s easy for Deku to work with others, but difficult for him to be in charge. Kirito and Misaka are both independent alpha types. Kirito might be more willing to follow Misaka’s lead than the other way around, but, then again, she follows her crush’s lead often enough, so maybe they’ll manage to make it work somehow.
I’m reminded of a basic setup for teams: leader, rogue, tank, blaster, and wizard. There are other types, like healer, support, backup, etc. but the five main roles involve: 1) to coordinate, make decisions, and give orders which are obeyed, 2) work independently and attack from the sides (like Batman or the Flash), 3) give and take massive amounts of damage (like Superman), 4) move quickly and hit hard (Hawkgirl), and 5) adapt to a variety of situations and unexpected obstacles on the go (Green Lantern). Now, leadership does not exclude any of the physical roles, and some characters can fill multiple roles in a pinch, so it can be interesting to find out what physical role the leader ends up filling. Some groups manage to get by, at least for a short time, operating on a consensus instead of with a single leader, but that generally won’t last.
Taking in your lineup at a glance, I’d say you have rogues and blasters aplenty but not much else. Your team severely lacks in both defense and leadership, but there might be potential.
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Deku isn’t a leader in a formal sense, but he is an inspiration. Heck, in the Deku+Bakugo x All Might fight last week, he manages to get Bakugo to cooperate with him. In my book, that counts as leadership and is as good if not better than the more ‘normal’ kind.
As far as how my team is set up, as I explain in one of the replies above, it’s based more on a comic book line up than the ‘basic’ line ups of fantasy & RPG’s. (The latter stuff didn’t come out until I was in my late teens.) From that POV, defense is much less of an issue.
And welcome to the Lounge, thanks for dropping by! Why don’t you tell us your team?
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Heh, most comic book lineups actually fit the standard fantasy lineup and then some. Avengers, X-Men, Justice League, they all have the basic roles covered, with a bit of nuance to back each other up when needed.
Deku is inspiring, and he has good potential to become a leader. Not quite there yet, but I can easily see it happening.
As for my team, I may need a bit to think about that. ;)
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Looking forward to it!
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How the heck did I miss this delightful post when it went up! I love this idea and now I wanna think up my own team…
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Dunno… But I look forward to your team!
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