13-years-old on the outside but over 100 on the inside, we have Mavis, the co-founder of the Fairy Tail Guild. Due to circumstances beyond her control, her body is now stuck at 13-years-old. However, Mavis represents the wisdom kind of intelligence. Considering the years she has lived and the mistakes she has made along the way, it has appropriately made her wise but she is still quite eccentric. However, adding to her intelligence is how she is capable to adapt to her situations from time to time. For example, she taught herself how to use illusionary magic tricks, and is one of her go-to tricks during emergencies, and she exploits her self-taught skills effectively. As a combat leader, she knows how to use the abilities of her subordinates to coordinate battle plans and simulate them to perfection.

Tanya, the main character, is a reincarnated Japanese salary man who inhabits the body of a nine-year-old girl who is an officer of some magical empire. Don’t let her looks fool you, because she is a lean mean magical fighting machine! What makes her a formidable soldier is of course not her size, but her keen intellect. On the other hand, she uses that intellect for sociopathic tendencies in battle, but considering her situation, I think a lot of people would turn out the same way if the suddenly found themselves reincarnated as a nine-year-old in a world of magic at war. As a student, Tanya was top of her class and as a commanding officer, and tends to rely on calculations/statistics in regards to how she recruits her unit. Due to her excellent knowledge of statistics and economic values of human beings and how she applies it, she represents a very unorthodox sense of intelligent characters that can be defined as intriguing and yet frightening.

Satou, or Hat, is the main villain of Ajin. Do not let this unassuming elderly man fool you into thinking he is weak, but he is a deadly assassin with not just physical skills, but an intellect for carnage and destruction (and lets not forget he can paralyze people with his scream). Thanks to using his fragile looking demeanor to his advantage, he can flawlessly execute his killings due to his background of being a US Marine and as a covert assassin. Despite his sociopaths tendencies, lets say his intellect for killing equals that of John Rambo’s. As to how Satou fits into this list, you can call him serial killer intelligent, someone who gets the job done and doesn’t leave any evidence behind.

If any school/orphanage is going to have its overachieving valedictorian, it has to be Norman. Instead of being considered the valedictorian, he is one the school’s three “Premium Quality Goods.” Though his best subject is at math, he tends to get perfect scores on just about every test he is given. Not only is he smarter than his fellow orphans, he shows that he is smarter than a good number of adults as well. Not only does he study for the sake of passing, but for applicability as well in simple games such as tag. Heck, he’s so smart to the point where if you ask him a complex math problem when he’s not conscious, he’s still going to get the right answer! So, if you are looking for a tutor for the next big math test, Norman is the guy you want. Not only is he smart, but he is friendly and caring, too.

Oda Nobunaga may be one of Japan’s most controversial rulers in Japanese history, but in the world of Drifters, he is portrayed as a hero in a world of fantasy that he is trapped in after his death. With that world at war, he chooses to participate and uses his knowledge to help the oppressed elves and dwarves fight against the evil forces of The Ends. Thanks to Nobunaga’s battlefield accomplishments in his life, he can apply them in death. Like the real life Nobunaga, this version also likes to use muskets, but he is intelligent beyond that.

In his first battle where he is aligned with Toyohisa, Yoichi, and the elves, he uses their village as the perfect ambush to fight the elves’ oppressors by taking out the water, covering some of the ground with feces, and set it on fire to entrap them. The plan easily worked! After the Drifters are given more access to the magic of the Octoberist organization such as their communication orbs and paper charms that can turn into walls, he finds ways to use them in an offensive sense to coordinate attacks in a manner than the natives never thought of.

Kurisu is beyond being a genius. At 17, she already has a PhD! It was thanks to her that Okabe, the main character, managed to make time travel possible (despite saying it was impossible in the beginning)! Whenever Okabe or Daru could not figure something out, she was there to fill in the gaps. Thanks to her (reluctant) involvement, she helped Okabe discover what needed to be done to make the microwave/phone time machine to work. Due to being an accomplished scientist since she was a teenager, she has earned the disdain of other scientists, including her own father, which truly shows how much of a natural she is in the world of science, but the respect of the Okabe, aka the Mad Scientist Houin Kyouma.

Motoko Kusanagi is probably one of anime’s most iconic female heroes, and while she does kick ass, as for intelligence, that is probably one of her underrated qualities. Thanks to her intellect as a soldier, she is a very authoritative leader out on the field. No matter what incarnation you see her in, the Major shows she is very capable of handling herself in many operations without backup. She knows where her perp is running and can get to their line of escape before they are even there thanks to her smarts and agility.

Not only is she smart in terms of field tactics in law enforcement situations, but in most iterations of her character, she shows philosophical intelligence as well. This is demonstrated with her hesitance to use the Tachikoma tanks on the field after how she sees them developing a unique sense of sentience could compromise them in combat. In the second season of Stand Alone Complex, she demonstrates her intelligence as a detective as she deducts why the nation’s intelligence service is misusing her unit as she hacks into their computers and learns the truth about their motivations.

Returning from our previous list, we have Lelouch from Code Geass. Thanks to his royal upbringing, he certainly got the best education a prince could ever get, and he uses that to his advantage after he gains the power of his Geass from CC, which he can make anybody do anything he commands. Beyond his powers, he is very knowledgeable in context to guerrilla tactics and throughout the series, if his soldiers follows his instructions to a t, then they are guaranteed absolute victory. Though his Geass powers allows him to command people, he is naturally charismatic and persuasive (and manipulative) when he needs to be, as he demonstrates with Rolo, who he gets to work for him without the use of his own Geass power.

At a very close second, we have Narsus, Prince Arslan’s most valued advisor. If you were a prince of princess, or held any other kind of political power and needed an advisor, then Narsus is the perfect man for the job. Not only is he knowledgeable in diplomacy and strategy, he is also a master warrior who probably equals that to Daryun, Arslan’s bodyguard. If a problem needs to be solved by diplomatic measures, he can help you how to negotiate under the terms you want. If you have to resort to fighting, he can use every resource to your advantage for a guaranteed victory or your money back.

Not only is he intelligent, but he also has his morals. He was against the slave trade and did not like Arslan’s father’s way of doing things, which was why he was exiled. However, Arslan is the forgiving type and knew he was too valuable to look over. As to why he is a close second and not number one, if there is one talent he lacks according to the rest of the cast, it is that he is not the genius artist that he claims to be.

At number one, we have to give it to Yang Wen-Li, one of the Free Planets Alliance’s greatest admirals. He can instantly turn an impossible situation to a victory (whether moral or strategical) once you give him the authority to do so. Even if he cannot get a full victory, he will do what he can to save lives, which he demonstrates on the planet of El Facil early in his military career as a junior officer after his superiors fled the planet abandoning him and the planet’s civilians before an invasion by the Empire.

In this edition to the series, his greatest victory that demonstrates his ballsy intellect is how he got a small unit to seize the Iserlohn base, which is akin to the Death Star in Star Wars. So, how does he capture Iserlohn, in which seven of his predecessors failed? Instead or trying to take it from the outside, he uses an elite unit to take it from the inside by having them pretend to be Imperial soldiers who have highly classified intel that only the commander can have, and once they take him hostage, they can take the base. As it turned out, it worked!