I don't think I should be the one to explain how Kirito is somehow blamed for the people who misinterpret him. Kirito is a deconstruction of reformist mentality, and how martyrdom and titles can ruin a man. Yet, all they see is the 'OP everyman', despite the fact that his W/L is actually not that great.
I've ran my mouth off about Kirito before, and I won't repeat myself.
That's precisely the issue, a lot of people completely miss anything Kirito may have going for him as a character and they just stick to the hype moments, stuff like his early victories, his popularity among girls and whatnot. This not only goes for detractors, a lot of his fans just stick to his escapist aspects.
Even in other works you can see the issue with other authors of manga and especially light novels themselves, you have characters that clearly resemble him in design, have generic personalities to try to be easy to project into, but without any sort of depth or development to be interesting, and just get a checklist of power fantasy tropes (overpowered, harem, center of the story, all enemies are strawmen he puts in their place, geeky references, melodrama, etc.)
Something I've read around is that SAO actively tried to work and improve the flaws of the earlier parts later on in the story. But this is something most would miss, as the general impressions stick to Aincrad and the second season of the anime.
This is why the success of Iruma-Kun and Ichi the Witch are refreshing to me. The first follows a kid who's had a god-awful life yet is highly emotional and caring to other people, to the point where he has a god-damn demon fanbase that hype him up as if he's Saitama (he ain't). While Ichi is commonly referred to as a dog-person given his animalistic tendencies and how he can be genuinely kind and simple towards people yet still be a intimidating hunter towards threats to them.
you know people should like Stardust, not because she is badass, but because she is a determinator who is also a all-loving heroine that basically accepts that the universe has bad things, but it also had good things, and is worth going for the bad things to see the good things.
sometimes the villains who fall from pain and the tragedy, decide to be horrible and treat others badly for not accepting their own pain (or because their own pain is so great, that they will rather let others suffer and not be the only one who does)
Issue is... overpowered characters or edgy characters, hype and aura, and whatnot are not inherently wrong or negative qualities in writting. Like everything else they are tools and they can be used for an interesting individual. Same way a kind and caring character can be botched if handled poorly (from the top of my head, being preachy to the point of coming as insufferable or being emotional to the point of coming as whiny.)
I just think there needs to be more to a "cool and badass" character. What annoys me is how so many people just care about cool traits to live a power fantasy through their characters and diss any attempt at writting that does something different, or just ignore any traits of them and simply stick with "he's badass, she could beat Goku and Superman, they have hype". I mean, I shouldn't judge a reason why anyone likes any character, but when they start trash talking others that don't fit into their preferred archetype it gets grating.
I know I'm getting pretty obnoxious with this, but after years of defending guys like Cloud Strife, Megaman X, Luke fon Fabre for not being as perfect, badass or cool as the likes of Zack Fair, Zero or Yuri Lowell, insisting on how Guts is much more than a musclebound, macho anti-hero that kills demons, and especially not wanting to stick to the overpowered MC tropes of nowadays when writting for my college manga magazine and getting crap from it... this has become a pretty sore spot.
<_<;
Yeh... sorrry, won't derail the thread anymore with this.