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The French are often seen as romantic, polite, and proud, and these traits are often represented in the French characters that anime chooses to portray. While French characters are few and far between in the anime landscape, there are quite a few who’ve managed to earn a place in the minds of anime fans, through their compelling personalities, or simply how aggressively French they are portrayed.
7 Edmond Dantès – Gankutsuou: The Count Of Monte Cristo
Originally a legendary novel by French novelist Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo was adapted into an anime series in 2004. In this version of the story, The Count is still falsely imprisoned, but instead of a fellow prisoner, he meets the demon Gankutsuou, who he allows to possess him in order to achieve his revenge.
The anime version of Edmond has a unique, crystalline appearance due to the demon living within him, and actually acts as the antagonist of the story, as opposed to the heroic role he played in the original tale.
6 Pip Bernadotte – Hellsing
Hellsing is a series that takes vampire hunting to the extreme, with the war against vampires turning into an international conflict, due in part to “Millenium,” a Nazi group seeking to use vampires to conquer the world. While the Hellsing organization is formidable, they eventually enlist the help of the Wild Geese, and their leader, Pip.
Pip comes from a long line of mercenaries but is unfamiliar with the existence of vampires until he is hired by Hellsing. Once involved in the conflict, he becomes a valuable ally against Millenium, managing to take out vampires many times his strength with cunning and skill.
5 Laurent Thierry – The Great Pretender
While much more recent than other characters on this list, Laurent manages to make himself quite difficult to forget. The Great Pretender is fittingly a series all about liars, scammers, and thieves, and Laurent is the most refined and cunning of them all, with schemes so complex that even the audience feels like they’ve been scammed.
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He serves as the mentor figure for the Japanese protagonist Edamura, despite his young friend’s constant insistence that he never wants to see Laurent again. Under all his eccentric plotting, Laurent is also a character who hides a lot of pain and regret that will surely come to head if TGP ever gets a second season.
4 Oscar François de Jarjayes – Rose Of Versailles
While often overshadowed by the shounen genre of anime and manga, shoujo is a popular genre nonetheless. Within the shoujo world, arguably no series (other than maybe Revolutionary Girl Utena) is as influential as The Rose of Versailles, a historical drama centering on Marie Antoinette and the commander of her royal guard, Oscar Francois de Jarjayes.
Raised as a boy by her father, Oscar grew to be quite the swordswoman and was eventually tasked with the protection of Marie. Oscar is not only notable for being one of the protagonists of this series, but also a very early example of LGBT+ representation in anime, as she not only plays with gender roles but is also romantically linked to both men and other women.
3 Tamaki Suoh – Ouran High School Host Club
Ouran High School Host Club is a well-known shoujo harem series that sees Haruhi Fujioka being thrust into her prestigious school’s host club. Within the club, she meets a host of handsome young men, several of which begin to vie for her attention once they realize she’s a girl.
Tamaki is one of the more prominent of the boys and is the one who ultimately develops a romantic relationship with Haruhi, ultimately marrying her, despite Haruhi originally viewing his arrogant demeanor as off-putting. He’s canonically half French and half Japanese.
2 Jean Pierre Polnareff – Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure
It’s hard to find a more quintessential Frenchman in all of anime than Polnareff. He makes his first appearance in Jojo Part 3: Stardust Crusaders, where he arguably steals the limelight from Jotaro for much of the series, and manages to stay alive till the end, despite being hilariously accident-prone.
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Polnareff not only has an aggressively French name but also features several stereotypically French character traits, while still being extremely charming. He’s a suave lady’s man, uses french phrases often, and his stand even takes the form of a rapier-wielding knight.
1 Arsene Lupin III – Lupin III
As boldly French as Polnareff might be though, there is a character that has him beat in terms of icon status. So, stealing the top spot is the world’s greatest thief, Arsene Lupin III. Lupin is the protagonist of the Lupin III series, a long-running manga with many popular anime adaptations, the most recent of which was a 3D project in 2019.
Lupin is conceived as the grandson of the original Arsene Lupin, a gentleman thief who was created by French author Maurice LeBlanc and starred in a multitude of novels.
Lupin III traces his French ancestry to his grandfather but is also half-Japanese. He’s seen many iterations over the years but is consistently presented as good-natured, crafty, and delightfully goofy. Along with his team of thieves, there’s seemingly nothing Lupin can’t steal when he sets his mind to it.
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