Is Kamijou Touma a Bad Main Character?

[Dragonskyt]

Just like what the title says.

I won't lie, I got myself in a 'discussion' with some other folk here on the site about Touma.
They advised me to bring it somewhere else.

I suppose I can't fault them for that, I got a bit hot-blooded defending him from the apparent hate he received.

Therefor, I've decided to come here and hopefully ask some other members about their opinion about Imagine Breaker.

So, what do you think?

Love or Hate.
Like or Dislike.
What do you think about our Certain Unfortunate High School Student?

 

[RequiemZero]

He's a boring main character. If you can't get the audience to have interest in him, then yes he is a bad character.

 

[Roadie]

Painfully generic, wins fights by author fiat, his supposed "flaw" of bad luck has no real large-scale effect on him, etc etc.

 

[Dragonskyt]

Does anyone even look any further than his win record?

Cause if that's what people are all going to comment about, then you're obviously not to be taken seriously.

 

[RequiemZero]

Personally, I think the reason Touma gets so much flak, is because the author isn't invested in his characters. I mean there's like too many characters to keep track of, and you can't focus on every single one. Simply put, Index lacks Character Development. Touma himself just lurches from one incident to another. Kamachi needs to make his stories more emotion and character-driven, than plot-driven and character-driven.

 

[Roadie]

Does anyone even look any further than his win record?

Cause if that's what people are all going to comment about, then you're obviously not to be taken seriously.

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I don't care about his "win record". I care that apparently nobody in the setting is intelligent enough to bring in a couple of entirely mundane well-muscled jerks with baseball bats if they need to fight him.

 

[Q99]

I do feel him being externally rated as weak doesn't make much sense, and even in the first story it's quite clear his hand and powers is more than he thinks.

And I think Railgun is a more interesting protagonist.

That said- and I say this having only read the first story in manga form- I don't hate him either.

 

[RequiemZero]

Look on the bright side:

At least he's not Tatsuya Shiba.

 

[Elvarein]

Look on the bright side:

At least he's not Tatsuya Shiba.

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Onii-Sama will smite you ;p

In all seriousness though, while its true that he probably has pretty good fighting instincts and all that, a squad of people toting fire-arms will kill him really quickly. My real irritation with him is that even now the only thing we really know about him is that he is a person who has a saving-people thing. Other than that, we don't really know much about his hobbies or likes or dislikes.

 

[Aaron Peori]

I stopped reading the series at issue.. 3? Because I could care less about anybody in it.

What I have heard since has not overcome this reaction.

 

[SeptimusMagisto]

Generic Nice Guy Who Protects People

But since I don't have any problem with that character archetype, I always end up being genuinely blindsided by the vitriol.

 

[Malbutorius]

He's kind of meh to be honest.

 

[Ford Prefect]

If you can't get the audience to have interest in him, then yes he is a bad character.

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Touma is actually super popular back home in Japan. He's considered a great example of a male character with 'aura,' a difficult to define coolness value that is common in online discourse.

For me personally I can't say he moves me much, but I also sometimes find myself a little baffled about how much some people in the west dislike him, and amazed at the huge variety of reasons why.

 

[gotMLK7]

I can't comment too much as I'm only halfway through season 1 of Index but if his characterization remains consistent with what I've personally seen of him...I can't say I'm too fond of the guy. Note that I'm going to talk spoilers up to about episode 12 of the anime here.

He certainly has his moments. He can be decently snarky sometimes and I liked when he basically shrugged off a getting an arm chopped off long enough to complete his plan to beat the baddy before really letting it get to him. So at times I understand him.

But...he's rather uninteresting as a character. Things that feel they should affect him really...don't. I thought it was interesting that he got amnesia so early in the series after being introduced without it, but then it didn't really affect his relationship with any characters, he just sorta sized up their personalities after a moment of "Oh I know this person?" then continued as usual, it hardly feels like a conflict for his character to overcome. It's just sorta a thing he deals with and gets over as far as day-today life goes. In general things don't seem to affect him as much as I feel they should sometimes. He just kinda gets into a pattern of encountering thing, quickly getting used to thing, sticking up for someone to near death, winning conflict, and moving on. And he never seems to have much of a personal stake in things aside from meeting person and deciding to protect them. It feels like they were going for something like Vash the Stampede, the kind of guy with great power despite being kind of a loser but having a noble heart and a desire to help as many people as possible. But while Vash the Stampede had deep-rooted reasons for his creed and faced struggles in regards to it, Touma just sort of stubbornly refuses to budge until things go his way and doesn't have a ton of motivation behind why he does so in the first place. I know it's probably not fair to try and compare Index to Trigun but I do feel that Vash and Touma are characters that have a lot alike at a base level, but Touma lacks a lot of the reasoning and conflict that makes Vash such an interesting character despite the similar foundations.

Imagine Breaker...eh, it's so-so. It's a nifty power I suppose since it basically makes him solely defensive in exchange for getting around most powers but as a result it makes fight scenes dull. Maybe he adds more support later on but whenever he's the main force in a fight it's really rather uninteresting, especially compared to the likes of powers like the railgun. Again, I'm not far in the series so I can't judge too much, but the power seems it needs to be used more creatively than it has been to really be particularly cool, otherwise it's just sort of his personal deus ex machina.

So yeah I think there's hints of a decent character in him from time to time, but he's not characterized enough to be an effectively interesting character, and certainly not an interesting protagonist. I don't hate his personality enough to find him godawful, but he definitely lacks a lot as a character that could have been given to him had the show put less focus on how everything works and spent more time on writing a good cast. I'm not far in but if he doesn't start developing more than I don't think there's really enough for me to lean more towards liking him than disliking.

 

[Dragonskyt]

I see, so in the end, people don't really hate him as much. They just think of all his actions as convenient and because of plot-armor he gets away with it. Basically, they are bored of the Shonen trope.
It's easy to look at him as a reader and state that his power is a hack, the scenario's he waltzed in are made just for him and there is no suspense of him losing the fights.

Just wondering, but has anyone looked at him from a more in-universe point of view?
All I can see is a boy followed by misfortune, who tries to hide his amnesia for the sake of a single girl, while at the same time getting dragged into events that aren't any of his business. It all spirals into getting more and more involved, which over time he accepts as his role in the world.
He's forced to fight opponents a million time stronger than him, getting into mortal danger on a constant base. He's being used as a piece on a big game of chess, being a pawn that has to fight his way through the field to reach the other side so that he can finally get the strength to make a change.
The very world itself appears to have fixated the role upon him, causing people to blame him if precious ones aren't saved by him.

I don't care much about how he wins his fight, it should have been expected from the very start that a power to 'turn everything back into original form' is going to be central in defeating his opponents. Plot demands it that he wins those fights in unique and highly convoluted ways as is the way the trope works.

 

[Q99]

Generic Nice Guy Who Protects People

But since I don't have any problem with that character archetype, I always end up being genuinely blindsided by the vitriol.

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Part of the problem I think is in his internal monolog, he complains a lot about why does this have to happen to him and oh he's in so much trouble (and, like, when facing Misaka and such, not just villains), even though in truth, he has a really hax ability that he can use quite well to defeat most of the threats he's likely to encounter. Which might've worked when the series was just-just starting out to sell him as being in danger, but coming over from Railgun as I did, it's like, "Ok, if you fight *that* often and come out unscathed, your intimidation level needs to be recalibrated."

Of course, this is just internal, and it may come off differently in Japanese, but I can see how people are turned off by it.


Personally I put him in the 'eh' category. I don't hate him and enough other interesting stuff is going on for me to continue onward in the series, even if Misaka is better ^^

He's forced to fight opponents a million time stronger than him, getting into mortal danger on a constant base

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Well, here's the thing, due to image breaker, there's almost no such thing as a foe a million times stronger than him, because it's a "Set attack = 0" thing. And as-of the first volume, he seems to fully realize it, no matter the supernatural thing he's confident in IB's ability to nullify it.

Whiiiich doesn't make all his conflicts uninteresting to be sure, there are some dramatic and/or clever moments, but it does mean I do eye-roll a bit if his internal monolog is him being intimidated by a foe's power. It's like, if power were a problem for him, Misaka would've clobbered him.


And it is true that this stuff is just totally dropped in his lap, he very much didn't ask for this, and it's not hard to feel sympathy for him there.

 

[Dragonskyt]

Well, here's the thing, due to image breaker, there's almost no such thing as a foe a million times stronger than him, because it's a "Set attack = 0" thing. And as-of the first volume, he seems to fully realize it, no matter the supernatural thing he's confident in IB's ability to nullify it.

Whiiiich doesn't make all his conflicts uninteresting to be sure, there are some dramatic and/or clever moments, but it does mean I do eye-roll a bit if his internal monolog is him being intimidated by a foe's power. It's like, if power were a problem for him, Misaka would've clobbered him.


And it is true that this stuff is just totally dropped in his lap, he very much didn't ask for this, and it's not hard to feel sympathy for him there.

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I'm going to spoil this for you if you didn't know, but these days Touma is facing Magic Gods.

Magic Gods

No, their title is no boast. Touma is facing reality altering monsters of magic.

To make it even worse, they are stronger than whatever is inside Touma's right arm.

 

[Malbutorius]

I'm going to spoil this for you if you didn't know, but these days Touma is facing Magic Gods.

Magic Gods

No, their title is no boast. Touma is facing reality altering monsters of magic.

To make it even worse, they are stronger than whatever is inside Touma's right arm.

Click to shrink...

Wait a minute, didn't he face off against an effectively Omnipotent being and they were unsure if destroying the universe would get countered by his right arm or not? I heard somebody mention it once.

 

[Dragonskyt]

Wait a minute, didn't he face off against an effectively Omnipotent being and they were unsure if destroying the universe would get countered by his right arm or not? I heard somebody mention it once.

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Tell me who this Omnipotent being is, cause if you're talking about Othinus, as I expect you are, then that's one big can of worms to start opening up.

 

[Malbutorius]

Tell me who this Omnipotent being is, cause if you're talking about Othinus, as I expect you are, then that's one big can of worms to start opening up.

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I honestly don't know, I just heard somebody mention that the being could try blowing up the universe but they weren't sure if Touma's power would have stopped it or not so they attempted to convince him to kill himself instead.

 

[Dragonskyt]

I honestly don't know, I just heard somebody mention that the being could try blowing up the universe but they weren't sure if Touma's power would have stopped it or not so they attempted to convince him to kill himself instead.

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That's Othinus alright.

It should be said that although Imagine Breaker is strong, it still does have its limits.
Sufficiently overpowered attacks can only be deflected, not negated.

She was also afraid of destroying Imagine Breaker as it might end up losing the last connection she had to her own original world.
So yeah, she had the power to kill him whenever she wished to.
Hell, she did. Over and over and over and over again.

 

[Lealope]

Dude's just bland as unsalted oatmeal. That doesn't mean I hate him, I just think he's a terrible main character.

Also, his real power is plot shields. Grade-A, weaponised plot shields, which is part of why he's a terrible main character. The Chuunibyou Bender is a distant side note.

 

[Mistborn]

The problem with Touma is that not only is he an extremely bland character but he doesn't really fit in the stories Kamachi.exe wants to write. Imagine Breaker is not actually that strong of an ability and Kamijou Touma should pretty much never win fights against people who know how it works. So when the series has him win against increasingly absurd people many of whom know more about IB than Touma it's hard to take the series seriously. Like Touma as a character totally could be part of some good stories if you rethought a few of the series basic assumptions.

 

[Q99]

I'm going to spoil this for you if you didn't know, but these days Touma is facing Magic Gods.

Magic Gods

No, their title is no boast. Touma is facing reality altering monsters of magic.

To make it even worse, they are stronger than whatever is inside Touma's right arm.

Click to shrink...

See, that kinda highlights the problem. Due to his stuff with Index in the *first* arc, I pretty much already get the impression that magic stuff beyond the 'super hax god' level isn't gonna work.

I mean, it starts out with him vs Railgun and establishing he can consistently block that level of power. So, it establishes well that I don't need to worry about him failing to block stuff with Image Breaker until it gets to pretty high levels.

Heck, frankly, I think mundane fighters sounds more dangerous to him than magic god. Like, most 'oh you're screwed' moment in the first story? When he goes up against someone with a *sword*.

 

[Dragonskyt]

The problem with Touma is that not only is he an extremely bland character but he doesn't really fit in the stories Kamachi.exe wants to write. Imagine Breaker is not actually that strong of an ability and Kamijou Touma should pretty much never win fights against people who know how it works. So when the series has him win against increasingly absurd people many of whom know more about IB than Touma it's hard to take the series seriously. Like Touma as a character totally could be part of some good stories if you rethought a few of the series basic assumptions.

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How does he not fit the story?
Why does he not fit the story?
Again, there's Touma is bland this and Touma is bland that.
But what makes To Aru No Majutsu work is all because of Touma.
Because the only person who can win those fights with these odds is still Touma.
So if not Touma, then who?

Accelerator?
He'll just blow through everything, you will call him a Gary Stue.
Hamazure?
Hmm, it's food for thought. He's just a level-0, so no different from Touma in theory.
Misaka?
She'll do fine on the Esper side, but when it comes to the Magic side? She's also easily troubled and prone to depression.

Heck, frankly, I think mundane fighters sounds more dangerous to him than magic god. Like, most 'oh you're screwed' moment in the first story? When he goes up against someone with a *sword*.

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He's faced several opponents with swords and guns before. Yeah, his Imagine Breaker didn't do shit about that, but in the end his common sense still wins the battle. He's actually a pretty smart on-the-go plan maker, you know that right?