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Best and Worst additions to an existing cast in animated media? (Spoilers)

Godzooky the Thread

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https://youtu.be/oTItRfN-LO8
 
Not strictly as per OP but making Butters more than a nondescript background character worked out brilliantly.

Absolutely agree.

Yamato and Sai amounted to nothing in Naruto.

Sai's was worth it just for the moment near the end of the war when everybody's having a designated "awesome moment" and he leaps into the fray yelling "I'm a member of Team 7, too!" only to be swatted out of the air like a fly and left bleeding on the ground. End scene.

That's not even a joke or a comedic reduction. It seemed like the author was just torturing the character in a nod to the fanbase.

Actually Sai and Kankuro earlier got one of the biggest moments given to the supporting when they both defeat Akatsuki members joining Shikamaru.

They logically defeat their final bosses of ultimate artist and ultimate puppeteer. It was rushed through but it was one of the few moments I liked Naruto post-Pain arc.

Yamato is the one who got fucked over. Dude gets kidnapped, becomes a human experiment and they basically forget about him. He reappearnce dropping out of White Zetsu was the biggest fuck you.

Actually what happened to both is due to the bigger mistake in Naruto and that was giving Sasuke every other arc. He's hilariously dumb and doesn't go through any character development.

He even gets his own team which do absolutely nothing even though fish guy had an actually interesting backstory.


There are hilariously dumped by Sasuke and in Boruto are given the worst possible person to work under as a troll.

Toph is a great pick.

Beerus made me stop watching Super, though.

My pick for "Worst" would be basically every non-antagonist character added after the Soul Society Arc of Bleach. There were already too many characters with not enough being done with them, and none of the further supporting cast additions had sufficient value to make up for the fact they were cluttering up the place.

I don't like Beerus either. His way stronger than the protagonists and hangs out with them. It feels like its hard to have a completely unbeatable situation when he's there and could stop it if he wanted.

After Soul Society was a mess. Ichigo straight up beats Kenpachi without Bankai yet everytime he comes back he's stronger.

It should focused on Ichigo and the five others in his "group".

Death Note

Misa, Near, Mellow.

Just why.

I liked that Light won and L lost. The problem was that was too down an ending so they have Light lose by being double -teamed and by other's actions.

Lucky made me stop watching King of the Hell. Freaking hate him and he ruined Luann too.

I was fine with him in small doses but that Luann relationship was horrible. Worst part of the show.
 

Narroo

Member
So they added new characters to the Fairly Odd Parents? I thought that ended years ago. How many years did it take for them to do that?
 

Bulzeeb

Member
come on people, just type if your character is an example of best or worst, some of you are confusing me.

From recent memmory of worst chracter whatever her name was (I just remember her as Shark) from Re-Creators


She was kinda interesting I give her that but for whatever reason whenever she was on screen every other character in the area went full idiot mode and I hated that, in fact, by the end of season 1 everyone was acting so stupid that I lost my interest and never cared for season 2
 
Can't believe nobody mentioned cousin Oliver from the Brady bunch. You guys know what that is right? Please?
/Old man
Oliver was terrible.
 

jstripes

Banned
As much as I hate Scrappy, I always found Scooby Dum far more intolerable

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I dunno if you can count any post-Scrappies for Scooby-Doo, since the archetype had been set by him. Even if later additions were worse, they were just additional blows after the original sin.
 
Definitely Harley Quinn for best and Scrappy for worst. I swear I mentally block Scrappy from all my Scooby-Doo memories. Please tell me he didn't somehow appear in A Pup Named Scooby-Doo.
 
I dunno about bad additions, but my favorite would have to be Ai Haibara from Detective Conan.


Introduced over 130 episodes into the series, Ai has been an essential part of the main cast since then. She works as a fantastic foil to Conan since, despite going through the same thing he is, she's not afraid to call him out when he acts like a buffoon. Her deductive skills are not as good, but she sometimes works as a Watson of sorts due to her extensive medical knowledge. She helps to keep the Detective Boys (a trio of actual kid friends to these two) a bit more grounded and is pretty good as a mentor figure for them. She's also been the focus of a bunch of fantastic arcs throughout the series.

By far one of my most favorite characters across any kind of media in general.
 
Mari is a key component in Anno's mind games with the Evangelion fanbase.

When he created Evangelion he created characters with deep flaws who were essentially broken people. The otaku, however, fetishized the girls of Eva to a degree he hadn't anticipated or wanted, which upset him, because they didn't get the point of his story. (Of course, Gainax was more than happy to sell the merch.)

Rebuild 2.0 was written to give the fanbase "everything they wanted" (and 3.0 to take it all away), so Mari was intentionally developed to be waifu bait. That's why she adds virtually nothing. She has no purpose other than to appeal to otaku.

Took the words right out of my mouth. If you feel like Mari is pandering then congratulations, you understood the point of the character. She's virulent, obvious pandering that anyone but the most shameless otaku can see right through. Also, its a more personal interpretation but I like to think she's also a riff on Evangelion Fan-fiction OC, like Wesley Crusher but more mean spirited. She's the unique, fun girl who has her own custom mech and comes from the west who literally falls from the sky onto Shinji's head. It's like a million of these self-insert cliches rolled into one. But then subverted in that she doesn't actually do anything of note and is mostly just set dressing. As if Anno was saying "Yeah, whatever, you can have your OC but this isn't their story, stay out of the way. You can't just magically fix everything with a new character".

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Von Stroheim from Jojo's Bizarre Adventure Battle Tendency.

Does Stroheim really count? I mean, that's like saying The Pillar Men were just added to the story because Santanna was there first. He's about as close as you can get to a main character and he's in the story longer than Caesar is.
 
Yeah Tong is a great example, especially since his character didn't come off as a cheap attempt to add new "life" to the show or something. He was just introduced, and got his own mini-arc, fit right into the Avatar Airbender universe quite well.


Doesn't really count if you think about it, since it features an original cast, aside from Godzilla.

As much as I hate Scrappy, I always found Scooby Dum far more intolerable

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Scooby Dum was only in four episodes, and more of a guest character. He also a pretty good character in retrospect, being Scooby's "dimwitted cousin", who actually wanted to solve mystery. For a 1970's cartoon stock joke animal character, you could worse anyway.
 
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic added essentially a seventh main pony character with Starlight Glimmer, who has had pretty consistently great focus episodes, but the character herself is still love-her-or-hate-her. So instead I'll focus on another character added to the supporting cast: the Great and Powerful Trixie. Trixie is a wandering stage magician who pretends to be a powerful wizard, boasting of her skills and making a show of everything. The type that refers to herself in third person. She was actually introduced back in season 1 for one episode and was popular then, leading to her returning for an episode in season 3, but they clearly struggled on how to make her work as a recurring character, leading to her third appearance not being until season 6 (minus Equestria Girls). But after that episode, she pretty quickly became a major recurring character.

In truth, though she was popular among fans, I didn't particularly like her much. She was kind of amusing, but there wasn't much to her character. Fans often portrayed her as a Vegeta-style rival to the main character, Twilight Sparkle, which is what her season 3 appearance went with, having her come back with an evil amulet to boost her power and fight her, but it just didn't work. However, when she came back in season 6, they paired her up with Starlight as her girlfriend BEST FRIEND, and everything clicked. With both being former villains, Trixie could connect with her and thus could drop her guard, leading to great interactions and surprisingly natural dialogue between the two. She has also become more of a goofy character, which has done wonders for her.
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I second these answers, though I'm of the opinion that Glim Glam is pretty awesome.
 
Have RWBY on my mind so for best I say Qrow.


While he's mentioned a few times in Volumes 1+2 it's only in Volume 3 where he officially joins the cast and we find out he's a perpetually drunk troll of a mentor.
 

GamerJM

Banned
I dunno if you're talking about best or worst, but they were in the same, singular movie.

They come in halfway through the movie as an addition to the cast. OP didn't mention that it couldn't be within a singular movie. And the answer is obviously worse. Once these people come in the movie completely changes in tone for the worse.
 

Catalix

And on the sixth day the LORD David Bowie created man and woman in His image. And he saw that it was good. On the seventh day the LORD created videogames so that He might take the bloody day off for once.
Not strictly as per OP but making Butters more than a nondescript background character worked out brilliantly.
Conversely, pushing Tweek into the spotlight after Kenny "died" was a huge flop.
 

Linkark07

Banned
Best: the shinigami in Bleach.

Worst: everything else that came after SS arc. Including the vizards. None of them proved to be useful; instead, they were jobbers, incluiding Shinji and Kensei.

Another best example are the outer senshi in Sailor Moon, specifically Haruka and Michiru. It was great to have mature warriors who, while being sailor senshi too, were willing to do anything for accomplish their goal.
 

Exotoro

Member
There's a couple I can think of, hailing from one show:

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Fern the Human was added in Season 8 of Adventure Time and is pretty much the focus of that season. You would think adding a violent clone of the main character would be a huge flop, but he really stands out as his own character and has a really cool design. A natural extension of the Grass Sword and Finn Sword plotlines, I think Fern was a really good addition to the cast for that season.

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Likewise, Flame Princess. At first I kind of wasn't really on board with her character as pitting Finn up with a evil romantic partner seemed like more or less a repeat of Marceline's character arc but she really brought a lot to the show. Even after her arc has more or less ended, she still gets cool moments.
 

Veedot

Member
Best:

Janna from Star vs the forces of evil

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Upgrading her from a minor side character in season 1 to a full fledged supporting character in season 2 is one of the best decisions the show runners have made.
 

Fj0823

Member
Best:

Janna from Star vs the forces of evil

latest


Upgrading her from a minor side character in season 1 to a full fledged supporting character in season 2 is one of the best decisions the show runners have made.

Amazing Choice

How could I forget about her?

She replaced the worst characters in the show and elevated it so much.

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MC Safety

Member
Scrappy Doo is the obvious answer.

I would say the fourth Powerpuff girl, but someone probably just made it up to trick people into watching the new Powerpuff girl series.
 

Switch Back 9

a lot of my threads involve me fucking up somehow. Perhaps I'm a moron?
Frank becoming a regular on It's Always Sunny was the best thing to happen to that show. I can't imagine what it would look like without him.
 

LotusHD

Banned
Damn, y'all took all the good ones

Anyways, One Piece pretty much does this with a lot of characters, including obviously the people that end up joining Luffy's crew.

Since there's so many, I guess I'll give a special shoutout to is Robin due to how shocking it was at the same time:


She had randomly joined the crew despite being a (very recent at the time) antagonist. Both the Straw Hats (aside from Luffy) and viewers were understandably very skeptical of her intentions upon her joining. She quickly charmed most of them, but the audience remained skeptical, thinking she'd eventually betray them or something. Then we learned a lot more about her, in one of, if not the best arc in One Piece, and yea, she is quite beloved now. And since joining, she's been quite humorous too with her off-putting macabre sense of humor.

Honorable mention goes out to Law as well.

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I guess another good choice is Levi from Attack on Titan. I like his no-nonsense demeanor, how he's an incredibly adept fighter, and his quirk about hating germs.

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I can't really think of any examples of a terrible additions to a cast off the top of my head that hasn't already been listed. Well other than just saying Bleach again, but that'd be a pretty loooooooong list
 

Brewster123

Neo Member
For positive examples: Every character from Avatar: The Last Airbender. Not just Toph, even the villains, such as Azula, Tai Lee, and Mai, get fleshed out and become very interesting, memorable characters.
 

Fj0823

Member
Oh, I remembered an interesting one

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Equuleus Subaru in Saint Seiya Omega for worst

After a turbulent first season Omega dediced to add Subaru to the Main cast, initially a Steel Saint, Subaru's ambitions to become a powerful God made him an obnoxious show off in constant need of pep talks.

What's worse is that while the main cast had some fantastic moments in season 1 they were still in dire need of growing up a bit more. Wolf Haruto, Aquila Yuna and Lionet Soma being the most affected.

But the addition of Subaru to the team made every episode "Main Character teaches Subaru an important lesson about being human" making characters literally freeze their development to help Subaru's

Subaru's ambitions end up taking the best him and making him turn his back on his friend to achieve -more like reclaim his lost-Godhood, making him the final villain of the show in a not so surprising twist

In the end all the lessons he learned do have an impact on him leading to his God form deciding to spare humanity, but at the cost of every other main character in the show.
 

LotusHD

Banned
Oh, just remembered a new one, Team Rocket's Mimikyu, owned by Jessie:

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For those of you who are unfamiliar, it is a new Pokemon that got introduced with the latest games, Pokemon Sun & Moon. Its most notable quirk is that it hates Pikachus with a passion, due to the Pokemon's apparent popularity, to the point that it even attempted to mimic its appearance so that it can be beloved as well. This of course naturally applies to Ash's Pikachu as well, as Mimikyu loathes his very existence. And in general, Mimikyu is just very unsettling and creepy, even to Team Rocket. He's also surprisingly strong for a Pokemon owned by Team Rocket, so hey, good for them. Also it's pretty clever how his inclusion as a part of Team Rocket could be sort of considered as a monkey's paw type deal in regards to them finally obtaining a "Pikachu".

But yea, he's easily their best new Pokemon since Wobbufftet, and I hope he stays permanently. His presence has led to a bunch of interesting dynamics, with some of them being humorous, such as what happens to those unfortunate enough to see Mimikyu's real form.

Hint: It is not a good thing:

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I'm pretty sure this is an ongoing running gag, as Meowth has already "died" at least three times (from what I've seen anyways) by accidentally seeing Mimikyu's real body.
 
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