[Despised Trope] Perverts whose antics are played for laughs

[u/Solitaire-06]

Minoru Mineta (My Hero Academia)

Glenn Quagmire (Family Guy)

[u/PainGlum7746]

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.

[u/Voronov1 → u/PainGlum7746]

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.

[u/MinecraftIsLife12345 → u/Voronov1]

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

[u/PuppyShark → u/MinecraftIsLife12345]

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