Summary
There is not much more satisfying than hearing the revealed plans ofhighly intelligent characters, or better yet, figuring out their plans along the way as you watch. Smart anime characters rarely fail to dazzle viewers with their long-term schemes and quick-thinking minds.
Where intelligent anime characters shine the most are in the series, which have a psychological theme to them. In shows like this, the intellectual muscles can be flexed to their fullest, with the potential for mind games and mystery greatly increased. Here are 5 of the best characters who fit the bill, smart characters who rage psychological warfare on those around them.
5Friend
The World’s “Friend”
A mysterious cult-like figure in the world of20th Century Boysand its main villain. A charismatic man with a far-reaching plan and an identity hidden behind a mask with the symbol of his cult - an eye wide open and a finger pointing to the heavens. The villain who our group of friends, the main characters and the eponymous 20th Century Boys, have to figure out the plans of, and how to defeat.
With just his knowledge of how to charm and influence others into following his will, it showcases Friend’s status as an intellectual psychological powerhouse. Throughout the 20th Century Boys manga we see the effects of his level of charisma and the ‘acts of magic’ he commits that make his followers willing to stab others, risk their freedom, safety, and lives to follow his orders, and help him create a brand-new type of world in the image of his visions for life.
As an egomaniacal dark messianic figure, this hidden antagonist holds the world the main character lives in, in an iron grip. He has a plan for all situations and is rarely ever caught out. He lies to the world and the world eats up these lies, trusting he has their best interests in mind. Trusting that he truly is the world’s ‘friend’.
4Kiyotaka Ayanokoji
Argos-4
Kiyotaka Ayanokoji was ‘created’ in the White Room, an institution with the goal of molding those with average genetics and making them as close to perfect humans as physically possible. In a way, Ayanokoji’s development was both a failure and a success of the White Room. On one hand, Ayanokoji’s natural talents, including his memory, showed him to be an anomaly and far from average. On the other hand, they wanted to create a near perfect person, and they achieved that with this high intellect machine of a young man.
The Tokyo Metropolitan Advanced Nurturing School is populated by only the most intelligent or capable teenagers in Japan. Yet even among a school of kids with such great talents, Ayanokoji stands out to a higher level. He initially wanted tofly under the radar, but in some of his efforts to do so, his excellence shines through. He scored perfect half-marks on a test in order to not draw attention to himself, but the fact that he was able to get such a perfectly average score revealed to a teacher his true hidden intellect.
Classroom of the Elite showcases Ayanokoji going through various strategies to achieve his goals within the school, always managing to outplay even the most brilliant of his fellow students.
3Yuichi Katagiri
The Devil Of The Friends Game
As the main character of an anime that revolves around a high-stakes game with major debt and money on the line where you have to outsmart and outplay other players, Yuichi being a master of psychological tricks, is no surprise. The first psychological trick audiences see him having already played, is when he reveals his true identity to his friends. That he is not just a normal high school student. He is a master of manipulation, capable ofacting like a devil.
Yuichi is an expert at deploying the exact type of tactic needed duringthe Tomodachi Game, that will get his opponents to falter and crack. He knows the exact buttons to press to wreck somebody’s mind and make them act in the way that suits him and his friends, and he is willing and sometimes even excited to try them out.
But one thing that is commented on throughout the series is that it’s not just his natural intelligence that makes him such a good player. Above his intelligence, it’s his skill for psychological torment that makes him so effective at beating other players. In spite of his protectiveness over his friends, Yuichi has a skewed moral compass and would have no qualms about committing ‘monstrous’ acts to secure a win.
2Light Yagami
The God Of The New World
During the start of the series, Light Yagami proclaims himself to be among one of Japan’s best and brightest. His actions throughout the series, evil or otherwise, prove this to be an undeniable fact. Part of what made Light give in so easily to self-corrupting narcissism is his great levels of intelligence. The same intelligence that made him theperfect holder of the Death Note, as Ryuk once commented.
Light was able to get perfect scores on his high school exams, entering one of the best universities in Japan as its freshman representative. With his ties to the police, he would have gone on to be one of the best genuine detectives in the world. But when he got access to a book that finally allowed him to kill the criminals of the world through just writing their names, he had different plans for his life.Light Yagami became the judge, jury, and especially executionerof his world, killing those he saw as unfit to live in his righteous world.
The same intelligence he would have used to help the police had his life gone down a different path, he used it to evade justice as he killed off as many criminals as he possibly could. He outplayed and killed the world’s greatest detective, fooled the police for years, and had multiple countries bend to his will, all due to greatly superior intelligence.
1Johan Liebert
The Nameless Monster
Monster is a deep psychological anime that carefully walks the line between being slow-burning and very intriguing. Such an anime would need a very deep and interesting main character, which it does in Tenma. But it would also need to have an even deeper, more strange and interesting main villain. And it does with Johan Liebert - The Monster.
Johan is as mysterious and mercurial of a figure as a person could ever be. He is highly charismatic to the point of having supernatural persuasion abilities, able to convince others to be his puppets or to end their lives as easily as if he was asking for the time on their watch. His identity is clouded in a shroud of mystery, and anyone who seems to know anything about Johan does not live a long life. He is a ghost who has been using his almost superhuman levels of intellect and charm to play with the lives of others in schemes and games that often end up with everyone else but him dying.
Johan is the most puzzling of public figures, capable of using his persuasion to influence a nation with strange goals that range from being the last man at the end of the world, or achieving the ‘perfect suicide’ . Some consider Johan to be mythological, finding it less believable that a normal human could be as odd as he is and ascapable of doing what he does on a regular basis.
