Emiya Shirou from Fate/Stay Night. People despise him as a main character and writers will even be re-writing him a bit in the new F/SN anime ufo-table is animating, but I think he's kind of perfect the way he is. People that complain about his misogyny and white-knighting are kind of missing the point of F/SN - it's basically showing you that people who cling to the kind of 'heroic' ideals that Shirou does do not lead happy lives and, in reality, often meet with terrible ends.
The Fate series basically rails against the idea of hero worship and Shirou is the personification of this, although I can understand how people who have only watched the anime and not read the visual novel don't get this. Where does his white-knighting get him? Not very far at all, and everyone else constantly calls him out on it as well. It's made even more obvious when...
He is confronted with a future version of himself, Archer, who has chosen to kill his past self in order to erase his own existence, the existence of Emiya Shirou, entirely. His future self literally comes out and tells him that if he continues down the path he is currently on that not only will things not end well, but they will become much, much worse. Obviously the whole 'hero' thing doesn't work out too well for him.
Shirou is basically a critique on shounen protagonists in general, and rather than hating him for it, viewers/readers should use their dislike of him to further absorb the series' message and apply those dislikes to protagonists from other shows who have similar values.
The Fate series basically rails against the idea of hero worship and Shirou is the personification of this, although I can understand how people who have only watched the anime and not read the visual novel don't get this. Where does his white-knighting get him? Not very far at all, and everyone else constantly calls him out on it as well. It's made even more obvious when...
He is confronted with a future version of himself, Archer, who has chosen to kill his past self in order to erase his own existence, the existence of Emiya Shirou, entirely. His future self literally comes out and tells him that if he continues down the path he is currently on that not only will things not end well, but they will become much, much worse. Obviously the whole 'hero' thing doesn't work out too well for him.
Shirou is basically a critique on shounen protagonists in general, and rather than hating him for it, viewers/readers should use their dislike of him to further absorb the series' message and apply those dislikes to protagonists from other shows who have similar values.
