Welcome to the Anime Walk of Fame, a series of retrospectives on the many characters of the anime world. You'll see all your favorites along with a few that deserve more than their reputations give.

So sit back relax and enjoy the show.

Chocolove's Past Covers a Very Real Problem

Spoiler warning is in effect.

Chocolove was a late comer to the Shaman King cast after Lyserg deserted the group in favour of the X-Laws, he's introduced as a jokester with a firm goal of saving the world through comedy, a memento from his mentor, sadly as with most comedians, the smiling mask is often next to the tragic mask. Choco's parents were murdered on Christmas Day leading him to being raised by the Shaft Gang, unhinged and full of rage he murdered anyone who crossed him or his gang, even innocent bystanders in the wrong place at the wrong time, even after learning a different path from his mentor, his gang would later murder him as well, awakening to a new goal in life.
The sins weighed heavier as he would confront the children of the father he murdered and only through Yoh's heavy handed talk on the cycle of revenge that Choco would survive the encounter.
To pay for his sins, he gave up his sight and even after the world was saved, Choco willingly turned himself in to serve jail time for his crimes.
Gang land violence is all too real and it speaks volumes about Hiroyuki Takei's writing that he was able to show it's brutality and how easy it is for anyone to fall into it.

Is Tao Ren Supposed to be Intimidating?

While HoroHoro is a victim of a bad first impression, Tao Ren is just down to unfortunate design.

Tao Ren is a rich Chinese boy brought up in a family of assassins all his life and brutally conditioned into a harsh upbringing that ultimately failed to make him the villain he was originally introduced as nor the anti hero he became later; might be because he's 4ft 9inches making him the shortest in the group and his starting outfit, the prep school uniform doesn't shout Vegeta or Hiei but Ciel Phantomhive trying to learn Chinese Martial Arts in a foreign exchange program, he's about as threatening as a yapping Chihuahua.
The single spike hair and his grander forms of dress clearly compensating for something as well.
Not off to a good start with the cast but I assure you the next character is a doozy.

Why is HoroHoro a Snowboarder?

Taking a little break from attempting to dissect characters I don't like anymore for a Shaman King special, I'm looking at doing five characters starting with HoroHoro.

Usui Horokeu or HoroHoro is an Ainu Shaman from the great North of Hokkaido, his goal is to save the Koro Pokkuru "Minutians", a tiny spirit people. As part of this goal, he intends to plant a vast field of Butterbur, the leaves of which are used by the tiny Koro Pokkuru.
He's an environmentalist at heart and takes the role very seriously despite not looking the part as he's introduced as cheerful and a bit of a goofball.
He does take the Shaman Fight more seriously as it goes on even confronting some of his troubled past and building his dream with his own two hands at the end.
But why he's a Snowboarder, is completely baffling.
With how his character develops as the series goes on, it becomes increasingly obvious that his design would never support the radical extreme sport persona we were first greeted with, I'm aware there's a section of that community that are more in tune with nature and would share that interest but HoroHoro is not Californian, Hawaiian or Australian nor is he a surfer.
4Kids didn't make it any better by giving him an embarrassing nickname and a voice that's trying too hard, early 00s Tony Hawk skater culture I suppose.
The updated retelling of the anime is a little less cringy but the snowboard is still there.

Three Seasons of Digimon Couldn't Help Mimi

The digi-destined are well regarded as one of the finest teams in anime, pity Mimi didn't get nearly enough positive development.

Mimi is one of three girls in the Digi-destined, while Sora grows from her tomboy phase into a feminine lady and Kari along with TK inherit the leadership from their older brothers (Davis doesn't count) Mimi on the other hand moved away to America and was very much absent from the cast over the 2nd season.
It wasn't any better for Mimi in the 1st season, she played princess to a bunch of digimon letting her vanity take control, she refused to fight for a time which cost some Digimon their lives and her goodbye to Palmon was needlessly drawn out.
But the real kicker was her return to Japan in season 3, taking her American outlook into Japan which took her sincerity for which she represents to some of it's worse traits becoming much more selfish as a result, even blowing a chance to help relieve Digimon's worsening reputation in the human world.
A rollercoaster ride for Digimon's weakest character.

Leena is Absolutely Useless

When it comes to hero teams, I like to see each team member pull their own weight and as much as it memes to lump Sakura from Naruto into this category, Leena Toros is way worse.

Leena, also known as Rinon in the Japanese, is a member of the Blitz team, a Zoids fighting team in the New Century timeline, she's hotheaded and approaches combat with as many guns as humanly possible starting with a Dibison which is way more suitable for heavy weaponry, she provides the raw power to the agile Brad and the versatile Bit Cloud, except she's terrible at combat, she's usually the first to fall and even when she switches Zoids to a Gunsniper, she does even worse as the heavy weight armaments don't suit a Zoid designed for moving quickly and sniping, it is not designed to hold more guns than an army platoon, at this point I'm just embarrassed for her and the only reason she's not replaced is because 1. Her father owns the team and 2. The only other heavy unit is Liger Zero's Panzer armour which is too experimental to use effectively and renders the Liger Zero practically immobile, so yeah, not really a good character.