Satanachia, affectionately called Satania, is the comedic relief of the show. As a demon, she’s vain and proud, placing herself above others despite her humble upbringing. As one of the “antagonists” of the show, Satania often pranks both Gabriel and Raphael. However, her petty antics are hardly calculated, and the results are always the same: hilarious failure.

To say the least, Satania is gullible. Gabriel DropOut is a show where even angels aren’t exactly angelic, but Satania’s lack of awareness makes her stick to old stereotypes. Satania, despite being a demon, is hardly a villainous character. It’s her uselessness--her lack of actual evil--that makes her beloved by the cast and viewers. Even if Satania never produces good results, she produces the best laughs.

Contextually, it’s understandable why Emilia doesn’t do much in the animated series. Re:Zero is an isekai (transferred to another world) story, and within the medium of light novels, the isekai setting has really exploded. Re:Zero reverses common expectations of that setting, and one expectation is the blessing provided by a god--this strength provides protagonists the power to live a new life as a hero.

Emilia initially saves the protagonist. This one act of kindness sets the plot forward: his goal now is to reciprocate her kindness, to protect her. However, Re: Zero being what it is, the blessing he receives is also a curse and his adequacy as a hero is called into question. For this reason, Emilia is meant to be useless. The story cannot function as a critique if the main character is supported.

Emilia is also a candidate to become the king of Lugnica, but as a half elf, a race that’s highly stigmatized, it’s rare to see people accepting of her. Her position is thus a farce. The citizens won’t support her candidacy out of fear and ignorance. Just as the protagonist is useless, so is his foil, and beloved savior.

From the sky, a strange capsule descends and hits a prominent Yakuza member, Nitta. Upon opening the capsule, there is Hina, an esper whose lack of social awareness leads us into our journey of Hinamatsuri.

Hina is about as familiar with the world as you’d expect from a space alien--that’s pretty much what she is. Her explosive power is often used incorrectly, blowing up Nitta’s apartment or somehow ending (but more often causing) feuds between local yakuza. Throughout all of this, Hina is oblivious, and her upbringing from her wouldbe father doesn’t help either.

Attempts to socialize her are generally slow, and even her effort at school is hardly acceptable: sleeping in class, refusing to study, and eating outside of lunch time. However, despite her stoic expression, Hina does show signs of care, something that, despite her uselessness, helps viewers and characters recognize she tries to (and does) get better.

Chi-Chi is the daughter of the Ox-King and and princess of the Fire Mountain. In Dragon Ball Z, her tomboyish personality and fiery nature are still there, but much of her role and time is delegated to motherhood, as she raises Gohan and Goten through much of the Z series. While being a mother is certainly an arduous task, her position as a prominent character isn’t given much time.

Dragon Ball Z has its obstacles escalate, and whether that means the heroes will go to a different planet or the villains are more powerful than before, there is very little place for most non-fighters. Chi-Chi, while formerly a fighter, has to devote her time elsewhere, meaning she can’t train.

With villains being more powerful than before, it’s a race to match their strength, and thus, as a battle series, Chi-Chi cannot meet those expectations. In the grand scheme of things, her relevance to the plot is extremely little; so whether it’s lack of time or lack of investment by Akira Toriyama, Chi-Chi is useless to moving the plot forward.

Asuna is a popular character within Sword Art Online franchise. She is the main heroine of SAO, and as sub-leader of the Knights of Blood guild, she is well-known for her skills with the rapier, granting her the nickname of “Flash.” With so much setup provided to prove her worth, it’s unfortunate that she’s not often solving her own problems.

In particular, there are two major arcs in which her former glory leaves her. The infamous Alfheim Online arc where she is caged atop the world tree in game and bedridden in a hospital in real life and the Mother’s Rosario arc where Asuna becomes the protagonist.

In the former, Asuna is barely a main character, physically unable to act within the game and the victim of her “fiance’s” whim. In the Mother’s Rosario Arc, the viewers are given a personal look into Asuna’s life, one where it’s shown that her future was planned--down to her schools, her studies, and even her marriage partners.

For an arc that is about Asuna becoming her own person, developing her own relationships, and guiding others, there’s one particular scene that doesn’t sit well thematically. In episode 21 of SAO II, Asuna leads Konno Yuuki and her guild towards securing their name within New Aincrad by defeating a floor boss before other larger guilds.

Just as they are about to attempt the boss, other guilds ambush them, and instead of using this opportunity to show Asuna’s independence, Kirito comes to the rescue, opening up the way for them to attempt the boss. While there are many ways to read this scene, if the show had multiple instances of Asuna saving herself, this scene might have had a more positive connotation. Instead, Asuna, despite being so capable early on, is lacking that later in the series.

Nina is a troubled character, and in the context of Code Geass where viewers are rooting for the Elevens (a pseudonym given to the Japanese by Britannia), she’s certainly a hard character to support or like.

Nina, as her name implies, is a genius. While her shy personality pushes her away from making friends, she’s infatuated with the Britannian princess Euphemia, known for her compassion towards Britannia and Japan. All of this seems tame until Euphemia is, to say the least, out of the picture. This leaves Nina devastated, resulting in perhaps one of anime’s strangest faces known to this day.

The major reason for her dislike and the reason why she’s seen as useless comes from the aftermath. In order to get revenge for Euphemia, Nina creates and activates a nuke, destroying much of what Euphemia had originally defended. Nina’s hypocrisy and the direction of her woes ultimately prove fruitless, doing nothing to gain “revenge,” but instead defeats the very cause her crush had struggled for.

Sakura is the main heroine of Naruto and one of the main three characters of the Hidden Leaf Village. When compared to other stars of the village, Sakura is lacking presence as one of the main characters, getting overshadowed by Naruto and Sasuke. Sakura is placed in many important situations, contributing virtually nothing to the outcome despite her own belief that she’s gotten stronger.

Sakura is a character who continues to get overshadowed throughout the series, but it certainly wasn’t through lack of screen time. The unfortunate reality is that her development as a character started off from rather plain roots, a girl who was overly infatuated with Sasuke, and then grew very little from there. Her ability to differentiate herself from her colleagues (and even side characters), makes it difficult for her to stand out, and within a series with such a gigantic cast of noteworthy ninjas, Sakura is simply not up to par for the job.

Tea is Yugi’s childhood friend and love interest. During the English localization of Tea (Or Anzu in the Japanese version), her lines were often about friendship and the power of unity. While friendship is often a common theme within shounen stories, Yu-Gi-Oh isn’t exactly a team-based game. Her moral support is valued (or dreaded for some viewers), but when it comes down to her dueling abilities, she doesn’t shine quite like her Yugi, Yami, or unfortunately any of her companions.

Tea, unfortunately, is not given the same background and attention as the main characters. There is no bloodline of pharaohs, no past shrouded in mystery, nothing that really gives her much of a leg up against her opponents.

This reduces her role within the series to both cheerleader, and later, a strange love interest as she is confused on whom she finds attractive: Yugi, the person, or Yami, the alter ego. Tea, as far as useless characters goes, is another example of a character who can’t keep up with the cast around her. Their prestige and noteworthiness, either from talent or history, doesn’t allow much time for Tea to gain development in character or her skills as a duelist.

Yuki Cross is the main protagonist of the series and one of the school guardians of Cross Academy. While she’s known to most as a student, she is also a Pureblood, the highest rank amongst vampires--beings with no human ancestry, the very beings that nearly made humans extinct. Their power is leagues higher than vampires who cross breed with humans.

So, why is it then that Yuki does nothing? Despite how much emphasis is placed on the dangers of vampires and their power, Yuki is illogically incompetent. As a shoujo series, it’s understandable to showcase the cast, especially in relation to the main character, but when the majority of problems arise and the heroine is too incompetent to save herself multiple times, it feels like formulaic writing.

To add more fuel to the fire, Yuki is also indecisive, making it harder for viewers to accept her. She often flips between the two male leads Kaname and Zero. While drama can certainly help grow a story, Yuki’s previous incompetence influences viewer perception of her love life, making it harder to relate to her as a protagonist.

Aqua is something special. On one hand, she’s written purposefully--she’s meant to be a nuisance--on the other hand, she has all the powers of a goddess at her disposal and fails to do simple tasks. Her entire background is contrary to how she’s supposed to work, and that’s part of Aqua’s “charm” in Konosuba.

Konosuba is both a comedy and a parody of isekai conventions, and having a useless goddess goes contrary to isekai tropes. Aqua’s uselessness goes beyond doing nothing. Rather, she’s a constant problem. Kazuma and his eventual group of adventurers are all a bit of misfits, but Aqua manages to be the best… at being the worst.

Whether it’s flooding the entire town, causing debt unto the main characters, or being the chief reason why there is a quest to remove spirits from terrorizing the inhabitants, Aqua blurs the line between friend and enemy.

Ubukata is the manager of the soccer team that Jin and Tsukishi reside in for the anime Days. Of the duo, Tsukishi is considered to the talentless one compared to the genius playstyles of Jin. Hence, he receives much criticism from the majority of people around him at the start because there are many who think that Tsukishi shouldn’t even bother playing on the same field as Jin as he would only hamper him.

Instead of supporting him like a good manager should, Ubukata joins in on the berating and tells him to his face that he should quit as well. This is all due to her insecurities from her past. She had tried to write a novel at some point but decided to quit completely because she received criticism just like Tsukishi. Thus, she spends most of the season picking on the one guy who won’t fold at criticism like her. Even when she finally lightens up, she can’t even do her job properly and gets the names of players wrong.

Naho is the main character of the anime Orange. Which just makes it a thousand times more depressing to place her on this list. But if she’s useless, she’s useless. Have you ever regretted anything? Now don’t go full macho and state that you don’t know what regrets are. Just be real for a moment. Have you ever wanted to change anything in your past? If you had the opportunity to tell your past self-something like “Don’t go for that girl because she’ll break your heart.” Would you?

Naho has that very opportunity. And she does use it. The problem lies not in that she’s stupid enough not to take the opportunity. Even though it’s proven that the letter is completely legit and she should totally follow her own bloody advice, Naho acts like a dumb shit who never does what she is told to by her future self even if it’ll erase her regrets and possibly save the life of the boy she loves!

If you ever get this same opportunity, remember to ask yourself if you were just that stupid in the past. Communicating with the past you might cause more problems than solve them.

Darkness is one of the companions that accompany Kazuma on his dubious quest to slay the demon king and save the world. She boasts one of the stronger classes obtainable; that of the crusader. A crusader is able to hit hard and take many hits with their body.

That's where everything goes wrong.

Darkness is an extreme masochist who enjoys getting hit by strong attacks. Because of this, she invests all her points on endurance and refuses to raise her accuracy. Thus, she misses every single time she attacks, even at point blank range. It's debatable whether she or “one-shot” Megumin is more useless, but at least Megumin is accurate.

Darkness is so bad that the Internet has dubbed her as “critical miss!" to denote the magnitude of her uselessness in the series. At least she's funny and not frustrating to watch right?

The world of YGO is filled with countless duelists who pit their hand crafted decks against each other in a battle to see who is the best. The duelist that the series follows most of the time is Yugi Moto, the secretly reborn Pharaoh who can duel like nobody’s business. On the side, he has his childhood friend Tea Gardner, another supposed duelist.

Why supposed? She’s participated in maybe 1 or 2 duels even though the series has stretched on for a couple of seasons. Instead of being a driving force like Yugi or Kaiba, she ends up being the infomercial for the audience in explaining what the cards do. The very cards that have been explained a thousand times to us. As if we didn’t play the game already. If she explains what Pot of Greed does one more time, somebody’s gonna get a hurt real bad.

Death Note is about the death game between super detective L and super megalomaniac Light Yagami. So how does Misa fit into this? Well for one, she’s super in love with Light. And she’ll do anything for him like completely because he’s hot and stuff. Yes, they made the only female who got her very own Death Note a literal ditzy blonde bimbo who can’t think beyond her infatuation for a boy.

While Misa isn’t completely useless, as she makes a great tool for Light, she’s simply wasted potential. The first female Death Note user could’ve pretended she was a ditzy blonde idiot in love with Light but actually stabs him in the back later and takes his Death Note away from him, introducing a third player in the game. Instead, she becomes the only survivor of the game purely through her sheer stupidity.

Remember that one shoujo anime that everyone was really hyped about maybe 10 years ago? That’s either Vampire Knight or Skip Beat. Vampire Knight is about a vampire couple giving birth to a girl because their son needs someone to marry. You got that right. A girl was birthed to become the betrothed wife of her own brother. So that’s screwed up and all, but what makes her so useless?

She goes along with it.

Any other person would feel completely indignant or at least stop to question when presented with a story about their past like this, not go along with the flow! Not only that, she ends up following so many of the shoujo tropes by over relying on her man beefcake to take care of her throughout the series. She’s definitely one of the typical shoujo damsels.

Madoka is the stunning and gritty take on Mahou Shoujos by the esteemed Shaft studio. In it, magical girls are made like every product on the conveyor belts as sacrifices to the demons that they battle. First off, the girls are given a wish that they can use to transform them into magical girls. It can be any wish, and the stronger their desire for this wish, the more powerful they are as magical girls.

So with such a wish, what does Sayaka do with it? Does she wish for unlimited wealth or unparalleled beauty? No she wishes for the boy that she has a crush on, not one that she has a relationship with or any guaranteed future, to recover from his injuries. She had one wish, and she squandered it on someone who probably won’t even appreciate it at all. All because she suffered from boy fever.

Come on guys, girls don’t do that. Not all they think about is boys you know?

Zero no Tsukaima revolves around Louise, the zero of a mage who can’t cast any spells properly and her human summon, Saito. The two try their best to get along and discover why she sucks so much as a mage while getting into trouble all the time. Henrietta is the princess and later queen of Tristain, the country the Louise resides in. She also happens to be the childhood friend of Louise, and as such relies on her.

But maybe she relies on her a bit too much.

As the crowned ruler of a sovereign nation, you’d think she would have a bit more latitude to carry out her will or that of the people. Instead, we get arc after arc where the basic premise is “Henrietta has a problem so she asks her friend Louise, who can’t cast any spells, to go fix them.” There was even that little bit where she sides with her undead boyfriend controlled by the enemy and attacks Louise. You know? Louise? The one who was cleaning up her mess constantly?

Hoo boy. We’ve arrived at one of the most worthless females to ever exist in the Bleach series. Earlier in the series, she’s useless in the sense that all she can really do to contribute is heal the cast. That’s not the worst thing in the world, even though there’s an entire division in Soul Society dedicated to healing already. At least she’s being a support character.

But in the later part of the series, she gets threatened by Aizen. Either she goes with them or Aizen attacks her friends. Instead of realizing that he would’ve have attacked them anyway, she panics and leaves with Aizen, causing Ichigo and gang to go stir crazy and attack Aizen’s base to rescue her, nullifying the reason she went with them in the first place.

So okay, her amazing healing power isn’t just healing but the reversal of time itself. But is this godly ability used for good? No, she helps Aizen activate the goddamn Hogyoku, the damn thing that will help him kill her friends faster.

Anyone who has watched Code Geass to the end can tell you what the basic story is about. Lelouch, though angry at the Britannian Empire, is only fighting against the oppressors of the world because he wants to make a beautiful peaceful world for his sister, whom he loves dearly. To that end, he even makes the world fear him as the demon emperor so that they will be united against a symbol. At the conclusion of the series, it seems he has succeeded because Nunnally is the new ruler of Britannia and she is opening peace talks with other countries.

But everyone forgets the Fleija arc, and what she did during that arc. Remember that awesome brother who would do anything for her? Well she didn’t. When the cunning Schneizel approaches her with the “Your brother is evil please halp” proposition, she just goes “Yeah sure”. She then proceeds to take whole of the Fleija trigger, which is the equivalent of holding a few hundred nuclear missiles in your hand. And they are all poised to destroy her beloved brother.