To all the anime boys we’ve loved before

polygon.com:

On this day, the day of love, we want to take a moment to reflect on the anime boys who have our whole hearts.

When one looks upon their list of fictional crushes, one may spot a trend emerge. For three Polygon staffers who really wanted to interrogate their anime crushes, we decided to really interrogate what our taste says about ourselves and take a moment to reflect. (Or we just wanted to put a bunch of our favorite characters on a list — but that’s classified information).

The characters we love vary greatly, but in the spirit of Valentine’s Day we’ve decided to single out some of our favorite anime boys and define what really makes them shine.

For whatever reason (you can psychoanalyze me later), the characters I find most interesting tend to be little shits with secret hearts of gold or stoic, brooding fellows who are actually have a lot of feelings deep down — or inversely, nice fellows who have a mischievous or edgy streak. There are some exceptions, but usually, it comes down to the way I like boys who are much more than they appear. My shortlist:

Suga probably fits the archetypical description of Best Boy (ie; good, wholesome) more than anyone else on my list, but I cannot emphasize enough that he’s also a cheeky little shit. It took a bit for me to zero in on him as my favorite character, but the minute I realized there was more nuance to his niceness, I knew he was the one. He’s basically the Team Mom of the Karasuno High School Volleyball team, providing emotional support and encouragement to the players — while also teasing his teammates and performing embarrassing cheerleading moves for them. Sugawara also personally resonates with me because his experience on the team reflects my own athletic