The Top 10 Best OP Anime Characters
OP Anime Characters are A Dime A Dozen, But These 10 Are On a Different Level!
One cliché every otaku is familiar with is OP anime characters. If you happen to have a life outside of imported Japanese cartoons and aren’t sure what an OP anime character is, it is a character that is so strong that every fight is one-sided in their favor. Every one of them possesses unparalleled strength, and on the rare occasions they meet someone who might actually be a threat; they rejoice at an opportunity to stop holding back and reveal their true power! It’s absolutely absurd how powerful these characters are and there’s no shortage of them in anime, which made them the perfect subject for a top 10 list. So, I scoured the depths of the world of weebs to find the greatest OP anime characters of all time. As I mentioned, anime is flush with these tropes, so I limited it to one entry per series and looked beyond those who simply “punch stuff real good.” The end result is a list of undefeatable OP anime characters who could crush any challenger.
10. Yujiro Hanma- Baki and Baki The Grappler
Kicking off this list of OP anime characters is a guy who is pretty lonely on Father’s Day. That’s not for lack of offspring, it’s just that he’s a total dick. The Baki series is full of insanely overpowered characters that pull off impossible feats as though physics “ain’t no thing.” However, even within that world, Yujio Hanma is a man with whom the world actively avoids starting a fight. That’s because he’s a sadistic psycho who believes the strong has the right to rule. His reign of terror in this world earned him the nicknames “Ogre” and “The Strongest Creature on Earth.” Notice they call him “the strongest creature” and not “the strongest man,” which implies even those capable of Herculean feats don’t consider him to be human. Hanma’s physical strength is compounded by his mastery of every known form of hand-to-hand combat no matter how obscure and has earned him recognition as a national power. Yujio Hanma is the ultimate bully, but there are a few on this list who could stand up to him.
9. Alucard- Hellsing
Can you guess the true identity of the next entry on this list of OP anime characters? I’ll give you a hint: One look at his name, and Alucard’s physician, Dr. Acula, would diagnose him with dyslexia. Give up? Seriously? At least try… Fine, he’s Dracula! As in Bram Stoker’s lord of vampires, Count Dracula. The dude is a heavyweight when it comes to classic monsters, but the anime version is even out of his weight class. He’s got all the powers that come with being a vampire, superstrength, speed, senses, durability, etc, but his abilities don’t stop there. The one that earned him a spot here though is his ability to regenerate from essentially any injury no matter how severe. Toss in his tendency for sadism and masochism, and Alucard seems to enjoy giving his enemies a glimmer of hope that they might survive the battle before snuffing it out and consuming them in unending darkness filled with insanity. His apparent immortality makes him nearly impossible to defeat unless your last name happens to be Van Helsing.
8. Shigeo Kageyama- Mob Psycho 100
When it comes to OP anime characters, brains quite often are greater than brawn. No, I’m not talking about smarts, that’s a subject for another Top 10 list. I’m referring to Esper abilities, which is the anime way of saying a person with extrasensory abilities and essentially applies to anyone with inexplicable superpowers. One of the most powerful of all time has to be the lackadaisical goofball, Shigeo Kageyama AKA Mob. There’s no telling what the upper limits of Mob’s power are since he seems capable of just about anything. He only has two weaknesses: 1) the dude has no confidence or clue just how strong he is and 2) when his stress builds up to 100%, his powers erupt in unpredictable ways. Those weaknesses though might simply be because he’s just an “ordinary” high scholar. Who knows what he might be capable of once he grows into himself. While Mob might not make it into the top 5 (yet), his creator, ONE, has a character from another series of theirs that did.
7. Saiki Kusuo- The Disastrous Life of Saiki K.
It’s hard not to see the similarities between Mob and Saiki K. They’re both OP anime characters with limitless ESP abilities and both are socially awkward teenage boys in high school. While Mob is a submissive dolt who avoids confrontation, Saiki is a self-absorbed savant who avoids people. The other big difference is that Saiki has a deeper understanding of his abilities that gives him the kind of control that can alter the fabric of reality itself. In fact, it’s suggested that the entire anime universe was created by Saiki just to avoid anyone noticing how different he was from them. You know all those crazy dye jobs characters have? Saiki did that so that his own pink hair wouldn’t stand out. His insane strength and resilience lead to him giving everyone else super-durability. The guy can even rearrange DNA to cause mass evolution! Saiki K. is essentially an apathetic God who simply doesn’t want people bothering him, which makes him one of the more low-key and benevolent characters on this list.
6. Gilgamesh- Fate/Stay series
I’m a big fan of the Fate/Stay franchise, which is filled with awe-inspiring fighters with remarkable skills and abilities. There are a lot of OP anime characters in the series, but one that shows up repeatedly is the great Gilgamesh. Fate/Stay revolves around a recurring battle between sorcerers who summon heroic spirits from throughout history to fight on their behalf. Those history buffs around you probably know that many scholars believe that Gilgamesh might have been the first mythological hero in recorded history. That makes him the OG heroic spirit and explains his title of King of Kings. What sets him apart though is his “noble phantasm.” Every heroic spirit possesses a noble phantasm, which is an enchanted item of theirs used to do battle For example, King Arthur would have Excalibur. Gilgamesh’s noble phantasm is an armory full of them, that he can retrieve at will or simply have fired at his opponents like a volley of arrows. While he hasn’t flat-out won the Holy Grail Wars, he’s made it out alive.