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.

Isla Doesn't Give Me Any Feels

Android girls are nothing new especially with emotions but Isla doesn't do anything for me.

Giftias are androids with human emotions with a strict lifespan of 81,920 hours, which roughly translates to about 9 years and 4 months, after which they lose their memories, breakdown in personality and go rogue leading to a potentially life threatening scenario. (Spoilers it rarely happens)
The lead characters work for the Terminal Services that retrieve Giftias nearing the end of their lifespan. Isla is a Giftia who eventually falls in love with lead character Tsukasa but is nearing the end of her own lifespan and inevitably this is how it ends, hardly a spoiler as it's the only logical end to a story like this as in keeping with the Anime's Universal Law.
Where I lose attachment to the character of Isla is for four reasons.
1. For the most part particularly early on, Isla still acts like an android, other androids with emotions like in Mahoromatic and Saber Marionette act human.
2. Even when she does start acting more human over the course of the story, her voice and cute actions fail to win me over, there's way too many comparisons between her and characters like Rei Ayanami and Ruri Hoshino.
3. The ending depending on your interpretation essentially retcons the whole anime, making her deactivation kind of meaningless.
4. You'd think a company like SAI Corp would improve the lifespan of their androids over the span of a minimum of at least a decade.
I mentioned Mahoromatic earlier that shares the same plot, Mahoro also has a limited lifespan which is more emotional for two reasons.
1. You always see a countdown no matter if the episode is comedic or serious.
2. The tragedy is way more impactful when it does happen and completely changes Suguru's destiny, something that Tsukasa never suffers from, he got his job by good connections rather than being qualified for the job and while it is sad to see Isla go, his whole job is essentially recreating the same painful scenario of losing a loved one with every Giftia they retrieve, Tsukasa will not be any different when he returns to work apart from being a little bit wiser.
A better ending for Plastic Memories would be seeing Isla go rogue and Tsukasa having to destroy her, this isn't me being cruel, I just want a better ending.

Aqua is Actually Brilliant, She's Just Lazy

Time to put to bed an old trope.

Aqua is the one who redeploys Kazuma into the new world but her arrogance and teasing get turned against her and she's dragged into the world to play the Isekai game, she still has her powers though which make her more useful than you think.
As her name suggests her affinity is water and her powers are mostly support and healing, in every world she's a useful asset but having been brought up in a domain that ultimately looks down on humanity, the goddess is too lazy to be useful and knows next to nothing about how RPGs work.
Aqua is far from useless but may as well be for her lack of empathy, any wonder she barely has any worshippers.

Darkness Would Never Survive in a Different World

I guess I'm doing the main four of Konosuba then.

Darkness is a high level knight in the world of Konosuba but for all her high stats her battle abilities are terrible.
But being a masochist, she takes pleasure from being beaten to the inch of her life, half the reason she joins Kazuma is his brutally honest way of speaking triggers her in a good way.
So having a tank is useful but in any other universe, she'd be dead by the end of the first dungeon.
Yes, I know, parody is part of it and at the very least she's more useful than Megumin and still hilarious to watch but I'm guessing no serious adventure groups want a death on their record which is why Darkness was never picked, bad for business and all that.

Megumin is Just a Discount Lina Inverse

This is a hot take that needs to be said really.

Megumin is a high ranking mage from the world of Konosuba, she has the power to level entire towns with a massive explosion, she has a complex about her body type and has an appearance that looks more like she's make believing she's a mage as she shares a basic design build of Chunnibyou characters right down to the eyepatch.
In reality she's a poor imitation of Lina Inverse, anime's most powerful mage and easily top ten most powerful anime characters of all time.
The effort it takes for Megumin to summon one explosion, Lina can casually cast Dragon Slave, an attack with the same destructive capabilities but way more powerful, just to rub it in, she can cast Explosion Array with no effort, a low level explosion attack for casually taking out bandits.
I get that the joke of Konosuba is that Megumin's powers are impractical for any fantasy party but her popularity is undeserved considering that older anime characters trump her in everything.
Still not convinced?
Lina Inverse's Giga Slave can wipe out the entire world if she fails to cast it properly, when she succeeds, all final bosses are instantly killed, the only side effect is being drained of Magical power.

Hikaru is an Otaku Done Right

It may surprise you that the concept of Otaku is not as well respected in Japan as you might think, especially in the 90s.

Hikaru is an aestavalis pilot recruited alongside Ryoko and Izumi onboard the Nadesico, she's an avid otaku of in-series anime Gekiganger, more so than Akito and Gai, doing everything from shipping characters, drawing doujinshi and building dioramas and models. She's portrayed as an extrovert which fits in well with the straight talking Ryoko and the more sarcastic dry whitted Izumi.
But like everyone on board the Nadesico, it's not so clear cut as she has a deeper back story, while spending time building models with Seiya the resident head engineer, she turns him down when the subject of relationships is brought up, an unresolved history between her and her ex-boyfriend being the cause, it's never made clear what those issues are but the lack of romantic interest in anyone implies that she was hurt emotionally and hasn't gotten over it.
It was often too easy to say that all Otaku are society's rejects back in the day, Japan is no different to the west in that regard, but Hikaru is portrayed in a way that makes her likeable and sympathetic.