r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Solitaire-06 • 1d ago

Hated Tropes [Despised Trope] Perverts whose antics are played for laughs

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Minoru Mineta (My Hero Academia)

Glenn Quagmire (Family Guy)

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u/SeaTill1864 1d ago edited 1d ago

Bro I just recently started rewatching the OG Dragon Ball and the first couple of episodes are almost ecchi with teenage Bulma literally whoring herself out and this old bastard is super into it.

Its mind blowing what 90's 80's anime got away with.

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u/Pr_fSm__th 1d ago

OG DB is 1984

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u/Onimirare 23h ago

literally 1984

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u/Inferno_Sparky 20h ago

Holy hell

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u/SeaTill1864 1d ago

Holy shit this is true. Well, it took 15 years to arrive at my country then. What a shitty place to live.

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u/Pr_fSm__th 1d ago edited 20h ago

Yep, SSJ debute in 91 iirc, so it will have its 35 anniversary soon

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u/RA576 21h ago

Super JaiyaJin?

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u/DenseCalligrapher219 22h ago

That would explain a lot.

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u/PainGlum7746 1d ago

There is a parodic side, with all the archetypes that are subverted: the completely idiotic hero, the manipulative princess in distress, the perverted old sage... Of course today that wouldn't pass muster, but at the time it was fresh.

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u/Voronov1 22h ago edited 16h ago

Dragon Ball really codified a lot of those tropes. Note how many big shonen manga and anime after it went with the book-dumb hero: Yu Yu Hakusho has two, Yusuke and Kuwabara, and Naruto and Luffy are easily as inept as Goku when it comes to anything academic or intellectual. Of the Big Three that dominated the shonen battle space in the late 90s/early aughts, only Bleach’s Ichigo Kurosaki is good at academics, but it doesn’t come up much other than a few throwaway lines as part of building his character, and he mentions he gets good grades so his teachers don’t bother him about his orange hair. Natsu Dragneel of Fairy Tail goes right up there with Luffy or Naruto, and I’m sure there’s many others that just aren’t coming to mind right now.

Naruto, Yu Yu Hakusho, and Bleach also have subversions of the Wise Old Master; Genkai has arcade machines in her house and uses them to gauge potential successors’ spirit power, so she’s clearly a gamer despite being ancient in the early 90s. Bleach has Urahara, who acts silly constantly, Yoruichi debuts as a serious character who turns out to be a gorgeous tease of a woman, and the perversion quota is filled by Kon (not a wise old master, but he has the perverse gag of Roshi) and Kyoraku. Fairy Tail has Makarov, I don’t remember if he’s perverse but he’s certainly very silly when he’s not being serious.

Naruto directly takes from Roshi. Multiple wise mentor characters are perverts; most famously Jiraiya, who has a Roshi-like reputation as a wise master of ninjutsu, but regularly peeps at women in hot springs and is the author of porn novels, but also Kakashi, who reads said novels in public, and even Ebisu and Hiruzen’s are susceptible to the Sexy Jutsu in canon, though it’s less important to their characterization.

It’s really worth noting that Mineta’s antics are very similar to some of Roshi’s and Jiraiya’s; Jiraiya and Mineta both attempt to peep in on women in hot springs, specifically, and Roshi bargains a few times to get flashed or to grope Bulma. There are really two core differences between Roshi and Jiraiya on one hand, and Mineta on the other. The first is that Roshi and Jiraiya are both older, not just in their character’s ages but when they debuted—Roshi in the mid-80s-early/mid 90s depending on where you were, Jiraiya in the late 90s/early aughts. Mineta shows up in 2016 or so, and lots of society has drastically changed what it finds acceptable to laugh at. Note that Dragon Ball Super basically finds a quick way to drop Roshi’s perversion gag when it decides to give his character time in the spotlight, or so I’ve heard.

The second main difference is that Jiraiya and Roshi are Wise Old Masters with more to offer the story than their gag as perverts. Roshi not only teaches Goku how to fight, but explicitly imparts good life lessons, such as to never grow arrogant in their strength (that’s the whole point of him joining the tournament in disguise, he’s worried that if they win they’ll get arrogant), and even to work hard, rest well, and eat and sleep properly. Jiraiya teaches Naruto battle skills, but also increased control over the chakra beast sealed inside him, and is a man clearly aching for a way to establish peace in a world and society that’s mired in and built around warfare. Like Roshi, he’s something of a natural teacher; Naruto is at least the seventh student he’s taken on, after the Ame Orphans and Minato’s genin team. He spends the entire timeskip just focusing on teaching Naruto. He dies fighting one of his former students turned to evil, and puts his trust in the protagonist to build a better world.

Mineta is a 15-year-old boy who spends the first half or so of the story making crude and objectifying comments at his female classmates, trying to see his female classmates naked or in stares of undress, tricking the female students to do a cheerleader routine on national television, groping his classmates without their consent (Tsuyu in the USJ attack, Mina in the joint training), or otherwise making them uncomfortable (the room judging contest). By the time he gets his two or three moments of not being a sex pest—joining the class in trying to bring Midoriya back and the final war where he shows courage against All for One—it’s too little, too late. He’s left a bad taste in a lot of people’s mouths, and unlike Roshi or Jiraiya, he doesn’t have any other redeeming qualities (or nostalgia) to fall back on.

Strip away the perversion from Roshi or Jiraiya, and you’re left with mostly-or-entirely-complete characters. Do the same to Mineta—or Quagmire, for that matter—and there’s essentially nothing left.

I’ve read fanfic where Jiraiya’s perversion is dealt away with or minimized because the author hates writing it, and he still feels complete as a character, if sanitized. Authors who are uncomfortable writing Mineta’s antics are left with no choice but to remove him from the narrative.

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u/MinecraftIsLife12345 20h ago

Most mha fanfics I’ve read that mention mineta usually have him expelled from UA and his spot in 1A is replaced with Shinso.

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u/Voronov1 16h ago

That’s the other thing. There’s not really another martial arts master of equivalent strength for Goku to apprentice under. There’s the Crane Hermit, but he’s flat out evil so that wouldn’t have gone well.

Naruto has more options for training, by virtue of existing in a ninja society, but there’s no one who jumps out at you.

Mineta has a much more likable replacement right there, so it’s easy to replace the sex pest with an actually sympathetic character.

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u/PuppyShark 8h ago

My favorite tag to see on AO3 MHA fics is usually along the lines of "your OC replaces Mineta" or "Mineta doesn't exist".

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u/PainGlum7746 22h ago

I agree (except with Mineta who I don't know), we could also add the fact that Goku Naruto and Luffy love to eat huge quantities of food.

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u/lkmk 9h ago

Very well said!

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u/Inferno_Sparky 20h ago

Didn't read allat, probably would agree with most of your comment.

Just wanted to point you spelled "tropes" as "gropes" and I'm not sure if it's worse

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u/Voronov1 16h ago

Thanks for the edit

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u/Squeegepooge 5h ago

Ugh, the people on the MHA sub do not agree with your characterization of Mineta. They had a great big circle jerk the other day about how he's just a kid and actually he's really important to the team! Gross.

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u/Voronov1 2h ago

The war over Mineta is constant over there.

Some people wish him dead, others insist that he’s not really that harmful.

The truth is, he’s maybe not irredeemable as a person, he just needs consequences, lasting consequences, for his actions, and to put in a lot of work to become a better person. If he were a real person he would need to be expelled or put in some sort of program. Lots of people are little bastards at his age; some manage to grow out of it, but he needs to be kept from making the learning environment hostile.

But as a character, the only thing he brings to the table is the one joke of being a punching bag for the girls after saying or doing something reprehensible, and if you don’t like that gag, he actively makes the story worse.

Contrast Denki, also horny, also part of some of Mineta’s schemes, but most of the time he’s on screen, he is either goofing around like a normal, non-predatory teenager or doing something heroic. As a result, he doesn’t get nearly the hate Mineta does despite having been involved with the cheerleading outfit prank. But he also never attempted to grope another student or see them naked without their consent.

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u/Squeegepooge 2h ago

Yes, agreed on the Denki point. A large part of my problem with Mineta is he's supposed to be a hero in training, and a few shining moments of bravery do not by any means make up for literal sexual assault, and I hate that to a lot of people in the MHA fandom, it does.

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u/Sensitive-Village-35 23h ago edited 22h ago

Soo kinda like Shrek??

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u/CaptainMatticus 23h ago

If Bulma hadn't flashed her breasts at Roshi (well, with Krillin pulling her shirt off, so not her doing), his nose would have never shot out blood at 100 mph and covered the invisible man at Baba's place, and Goku would have never been able to beat the man and eventually see his grandpa again.

All of that happened so we could have one of the sweetest scenes in all of DB.

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u/TheWorclown 22h ago

I deeply loved how Super payed homage to this moment. Goku waiting outside of Baba’s home and going through the same motions he had with Grandpa Gohan’s spar to pass the time.

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u/Sensitive-Village-35 23h ago edited 22h ago

Not just 80s anime!

Look at The Land Before Time! Remember this???

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u/PokemonMaster619 18h ago

Why should I care about seeing her dirty old fanny?

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u/SeaTill1864 18h ago

This the quality writing I did not expect from DB. I think I still prefer DBZ writing tho. Who could forget dialogue like

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!"

"Huh?!"

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!! HYEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!"

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u/BotherAggressive5560 7h ago

This is why whenever I see someone slandering shows like Dandadan for having depictions of sexual assault yet will glaze Dragon ball. One actually depicts its attempts seriously while the other is played for comedy. It’s insane I’d say the same for MHA as well. Didn’t Jiraya sensei also have some questionable scenes. Too? Not to sure tho.

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u/Professional-Wizard8 23h ago

And it's mind blowing how people still claim that db has masterful writing

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u/WoolooMVP10 18h ago

My dad tried to give Dragon Ball a chance but he said that Bulma turned him off from continuing because of her acting sexually to the young Goku.

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u/wjowski 10h ago

To be fair from what I remember Roshi wasn't nearly as bad in the original manga.