Quote:
Originally Posted by Marcus H.
Most light novels have this concept, actually. There's Yuji from Shakugan no Shana, Touma from Toaru Majutsu no Index, Saito from The Familiar of Zero and Kirito from SAO — all Badass Normals. However, I think this is just a side-effect of adopting too many light novels, actually.
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Agreed. It really feels like a light novel thing. Mangaka have much more fun with snazzing up their protagonists. Though of course the light novel is a large market in Japan and there is much genre diversity, even if the rom-coms are the most adapted.
As for why it's such a light novel thing, I'd conjecture it has a lot to do with the first-person perspective of these novels. It's much easier to write a slightly exasperated and very familiar voice of the common mind than it is to delve into madness, ambition, or alternatively the empty heads of them shounen protagonists -- especially if you're just writing a romantic comedy, where the girls are the ones who get most of the crazy-and-interesting quotient. They're almost a literal lightening up of the venerable genre of literary Japanese I-Novels (where self-depreciation, self-reflection, self-I-suck-and-is-less-than-imperfect-I-am-No-Longer-Human predominates).