TL Note: The following passage is comprised of the unintelligible ramblings of a perverted man-child whose brain has shrivelled up like a raisin left out in the sun due to over-exposure to cartoons about little girls. Proceed only with extreme caution.
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It's one of those things that everyone hates, am I right? So very, very many animu are stricken with this core problem, this one annoyance at the very centre of the show. The stupid asshole who always makes it so you have to like a show despite its protagonist, rather than because of him. Kyouka-sama almighty, do male protagonists always have to be so useless and annoying?
This is nothing new, of course, but at the end of this summer 2013 season, it strikes me particularly deep how ridiculous this problem is. After all, it's this season that we got the second run of OreImo, and once again got to bathe in the glory of Okazaki (read: Kyousuke), who is, as always, saikou. Yes, Okazaki is the sort of generic male protagonist that, surprisingly, you don't hate with every fibre of your body. He's the nice guy, the one who tries his damnedest to understand the other characters in the show, and of course, the unlikely master of a bizarrely large harem of animu girls. It's the exact same situation as every harem animu under the sun, except for one, minor detail.
YOU DON'T HATE HIS FUCKING GUTS!
Okazaki plays the nice guy. He does the same schtick as every other character like him and tries to please everyone. The difference, however, is he handles things like a person with a fucking brain would. He wants to do right, but that doesn't mean that he doesn't have his own views, and his own interests. He puts himself on the line for the people he cares about, but at the same time, he doesn't completely neglect his own desires.
The sad part is that you'd think this should be the way things always are, right? You write a normal guy to act like a normal guy, right? It's too fucking bad that most series feel the need to blank-slate their protagonists to the point where they become completely devoid of any inkling of character.
Another recent example: Kodaka, most recently doing nothing in the (unimpressive) second season of Haganai. This guy is... useless. Useless as useless gets. All the action in the series happens around him, but that's literally as close as it seems to get―around him. Mahiro, out of Nyaruko, also exhibits this bizarre desire to avoid actually doing anything at all costs. No matter how much the girls in these characters' harems make it abundantly clear that they want some, these would-be protagonists have a disturbingly strong desire to maintain the status-quo and do ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.
Though you can't really blame these characters for being so useless, can you? Truthfully, their inability to do anything isn't just a problem with them―it's a symptom of deeper problems in the writing. Really, it's not so much that the writers don't want these characters to do anything, it's that they don't want them to change anything.
How about another male protagonist who has been consistently annoying for a good, long while? Hello there, Mister Kamijou, Touma! Yes, Index's protagonist certainly does more than your average harem lead. Indeed, instead of doing zero things, he does two things. He gives long speeches and he punches people in the face. That's infinitely more than Kodaka does. Yet clearly, this does not save him.
The problem is that these characters refuse to let things change. Perhaps that's the wrong word. These characters refuse to let things develop. Kodaka can't do anything because it would upset the balance of the club. Mahiro can't do anything because it would change their situation. Touma keeps doing the same thing over and over again, no change, no growth.
So like, what's with the big aversion to development? It's really just an attempt to keep the story going for no reason other than to keep the story going, isn't it? After all, it should be obvious to any writer that you can only run the same schtick for so long before it starts to get stale, and when you're running a scenario tread over so very, very much by so many, many series, that generic protagonist wears out his welcome immediately. Seriously, you've seen this guy before, dozens, maybe hundreds of times!
So just fucking do something! It really isn't that hard. For starters, why not be like Okazaki? How about, when your male protagonist receives a confession from one of his many potential love interests, he actually considers it, and hell, maybe he'll even go for it! My god, what's everyone going to do now? How will the others react to this? What road will this decision take the series down? Just think of all the possibilities!
Actually, no, scratch that. We don't want possibilities. We just want to keep writing the same old, same old. Kyouka-sama forbid that anything change in the established situation. After all, if we have development, that means we have the intent to build towards something, and if we do that, our series might actually have to end!
Oh wait, the OreImo light novels did end? Oh. Wow, that makes a lot of sense, doesn't it? No wonder the protagonist is allowed to do things and share dynamic relationships with the other characters―the series ends. Again, you'd think this would be obvious. But no. Stuff has a tendency to perpetuate simply because it can. Money, I guess.
So perhaps, more than just being an annoying prick, the problem of the generic male protagonist is really just an indicator of whether a series wants to tell a story, or if it just wants to keep flapping its lips. If a story needs to get from point A to point Z, characters will generally have to evolve with it. If a story feels too comfortable at point A, or didn't bother setting a destination before sailing out from port, you're bound to get these lazy protagonists who either do nothing or do nothing differently. That, or whoever's holding the pen just has no idea what to do with the character. Regardless, it comes down to poor writing.
So farewell, Okazaki, and thank you for putting in the hard work to move your story forward―you will be remembered as the generic nice guy who could. While a series can certainly be enjoyable despite having a useless protagonist, isn't it so much better when you like him? Sure, you might want to sit and enjoy the status-quo in the scenario you've developed for a while, but don't be afraid to let it change! If you have any confidence that you can convince an audience to like your characters―which must be a general assumption, otherwise there'd be no point at all in these sort of situations―then just write those characters and let the story take itself wherever the characters take it!
tl;dr
Just let characters do the things they'd want to do!
