MyAnimeList published a ranking of anime’s finest mentors. Within hours, the comment section was less a forum and more a controlled explosion. It wasn’t just a debate—it was a referendum on who actually paid for their wisdom with more than a cool entrance theme.
Ask a room full of people to name their favourite teacher, and you get polite reflection. Ask them to declare which fictional mentor is officially the best, and you’d better have a sturdy exit strategy. We didn’t merely watch these characters shape Naruto or Midoriya; we unconsciously internalised them as proxy supervisors for our own decade-long immersion in their worlds.
The Usual Titans Assembled
The list assembled the expected heavyweights, though the ordering had the subtlety of a ramen-fuelled brawl:
- Gojo Satoru — the blindfolded enigma from Jujutsu Kaisen, occupying a spot so prominent it could be seen from orbit
- Kakashi Hatake — permanently late and permanently profound
- Jiraiya — the sage whose pupils rewrote history
- Koro-sensei — smiling his permanent crescent smile from Assassination Classroom
- All Might — the symbolic colossus of My Hero Academia
- Shota Aizawa — lurking in the corner like the teacher who’d prefer a nap over a dramatic monologue
- Might Guy — the embodiment of sheer, unbridled effort
The Gojo Controversy
Gojo’s supremacy ignited a particularly British strain of consternation—a sort of “yes, he’s powerful, but is he mentally present enough?” scepticism. Entire keyboard battalions argued that Kakashi’s slow-reveal loyalty or Jiraiya’s bone-deep belief in a prophecy-ridden child had more tectonic weight.
Gojo can alter time-space, but could he write a trilogy of terrible novels just to stay near his godson? Checkmate.
The counterargument pointed out that modern mentoring isn’t just about long-term personal investment—it’s about shielding a student from systems so rigged that a deft flick of Infinity is the only sensible syllabus.
The Unforgivable Absences
The sharper wounds were for the missing. Names dropped with restrained fury:
- Reigen Arataka from Mob Psycho 100 — the self-proclaimed psychic who performed real miracles of emotional rescue despite having the most technically fraudulent business card in anime
- Eikichi Onizuka from Great Teacher Onizuka — a man who turned a school of damaged souls into a functioning support group using methods that would land a mere mortal in an unmarked grave
These were mentors who had to believe in a kid when all empirical evidence suggested that kid was a lost cause. That’s the actual definition of the gig: not polishing a prodigy’s technique, but finding the one functioning circuit in a broken device and gently breathing life back into it.
Why This Matters
These characters act as narrative shock absorbers—they provide laughter when a series gets leaden, and existential weight when it threatens to become just another superpower catwalk. From Koro-sensei’s relentless test prep for assassins to All Might’s skeletal shoulders bearing symbolic patriotism, the sensei archetype anchors the impossible.
An older generation might favour Jiraiya’s rugged, messy, lived-in compassion; a newer cohort sees Gojo’s distant, strategic genius as the more honest model. Neither is entirely correct—which is, of course, the point.
Behind every hero who punches a moon back into orbit, there’s a tutor who, at minimum, deserved far better remuneration, and at maximum, died to give that hero a personality upgrade we still haven’t finished processing emotionally.
The Question That Remains
What would the list look like if it were ranked not by the volume of a master’s roar, but by the quiet size of the hole they leave in someone’s heart when they vanish?
Does the teacher who never lands a single hit on camera sometimes leave the biggest dent in a student’s spirit?
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