What more unrelatable of a problem to a general audience than having their characters be too wonderful at everything? Maybe they are too beautiful. Too perfectly morally aligned. Just too good at everything they try that they keep being saddled with annoying praise or, more realistically, bothersome work. It may be an unrelatable problem, but the comedy of watching someone suffer from success is there. If you want to watch characters too talented for their world, we got anime recommendations for that.
Best Anime About Being Too Talented
The Disastrous Life of Saiki K.
There is no anime more quintessential suffering from success than The Disastrous Life of Saiki K. Saiki is an amazing psychic and has been since birth. However, after his powers keep causing him trouble, he actively tries to hide and not use them. While this series is legitimately an amazing comedy, it does have that air of melancholy about it sometimes when you realize how alienated he became at points in his life due to abilities that he didn’t even realize were that fantastic.
Didn’t I Say to Make My Abilities Average in The Next Life
After living a life as a prodigy that saw her alienated from most everyone else, the main character is reincarnated into a fantasy world and asks to be perfectly average. However, even then she is reborn into privilege and has high aptitude for magic. As such, she runs away and starts a new life pretending not to be amazing. This series is a nice light comedy where much of it is just cute girls doing cute things.
I’ve Been Killing Slimes for 300 Years and Maxed Out My Level
In yet another cute girls doing cute things, slice of life isekai, the main character doesn’t start off perfect. She is reincarnated and given immortality. She happily lives her work-free life killing slimes for coin to pay for living expenses while otherwise lounging around. However, that adds up after 300 years and she becomes legendarily powerful in her world. Much of the series is about her trying her very best to avoid being roped into adventure.
Haven’t You Heard? I’m Sakamoto
In a twist, Sakamoto is perfect and amazing, but he doesn’t really have any problems with his own immense perfection. Instead, the comedy here comes from the problems that everyone else has with him. They constantly try to see him fail or at least be imperfect for a moment, but there’s no tripping up Sakamoto!
Komi-san Can’t Communicate
This one is perhaps a stretch, but I thought to include it regardless. While Komi-san is beautiful, graceful, smart, and beloved by literally everyone – she isn’t perfect. As the title suggests, she can’t communicate, as in she has severe social anxiety that prevents her from speaking. However, she shares that main character slot with Tadano who helps her make friends and lends a voice to the comedy that can often be visual in nature.
These Problem Children Are Coming From Another World, Aren’t They?
The main characters here are prodigies and geniuses who, like many geniuses on this list, are rather bored by their surroundings. As such, they accept an invitation to another world that ends up with them playing a series of clever games. While that drives the plot in this series, rest assured that they take plenty of breaks for comedy.
High School Prodigies Have It Easy Even in Another World
The title says it all, really. They were prodigies. They were sent to a new world after a plane crash. Now they are tasked with not ruining their new world with their immense genius. That’s the plot and the comedy of the series comes from them often failing at not being too good at their given areas of talent.
One Punch Man
Not unlike many shounen anime series, One Punch Man is part comedy anime and part intense action anime. So maybe it is a stretch to include it on this list of “comedy anime.” However, the premise of it fits the bill rather perfectly. The main character trained so hard to be a hero that he can now basically beat opponents in one punch. As such, being a hero has become somewhat boring to him.
Mob Psycho 100
Much like One Punch Man above, probably because these series share a creator, Mob Psycho 100 weeble-wobbles between slice of life comedy about a very powerful psychic who just wants to live normally without using his powers and visually stunning action anime about him using those powers.
Clean Freak! Aoyama-kun
Sports anime series don’t necessarily have the biggest twists. They don’t really need them. However, Clean Freak! Aoyama-kun is more comedy than it is sports anime. The comedy comes from the titular main character who is amazing at everything, but with the one quirk that he is afraid of germs and thus over-the-top levels of clean. What drives the comedy is that he has a love of soccer, which, while not the dirtiest sport, is pretty dirty.
The Genius Prince’s Guide to Raising a Nation Out of Debt
This series takes the term “failing upwards” to a whole new level. It follows a prince who really wants to sell his poor kingdom after being forced to take control of it. However, he has to do it in a way that won’t be seen as treason. So he plans to fail in order to have an excuse to cede control, but keep failing miserably thanks to his innate genius. So, while his plans fail, his kingdom thrives!
Do you know more comedy anime recommendations where the characters suffer from being too good at something? Let fans know in the comments section below.
