Hump Day Husbandos: Issei Hyoudou (High School DxD)

All Articles Anime Ecchi Features Headliners Hump Day Husbandos Manga
Conor Evans
November 24, 2021
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Oh well, would you look at that… It’s Hump Day Husbandos time, and today I will be talking about Issei Hyoudou, the main protagonist of the glorious ecchi series Highschool DxD. Ah yes, the best day of the week has dawned upon us once more and it’s time where we’re all here to appreciate all of the wonderful men and women of the anime world — which should honestly just be the case every day as far as I’m concerned.

If you’re all the cultured ladies and gentlemen that I know you all are, then you can find many, many more of our waifu and husbando articles here on Rice Digital.

Humpday Husbando: Issei Hyoudou(High School DxD)

Who is Issei Hyoudou?

Issei is the main protagonist of High School DxD. He starts off as just a regular high-school student who would admire the school’s legendary beauty, Rias Gremory, from a distance, but one night Issei had a run-in with the supernatural. The events that followed this would change his life forever and start him on his journey as a harem protagonist — the dream.

Now, I grew up on harem series in the vein of To Love Ru where the main male lead is typically a bit of a coward when it comes to the advances of some of the more confident female characters in the series. Issei is the total opposite of this — he’s almost so perverted to the point where it gets him into trouble. Issei is the harem protagonist that we all wish we could be.

Issei’s encounter with the occult starts when he meets a girl who asks him out on a date. Unknown to him is her secret identity as a fallen angel, and in revealing this secret to him she suddenly kills Issei. In his dying moments, he manages to summon Rias Gremory. By using her Evil Pieces, chess pieces given to high ranking devils so that they can reincarnate others into Devils, she manages to save his life and turn him into one of her followers: the strongest pawn.

Why we love Issei Hyoudou

Unlike a character such as To Love Ru’s Rito Yuuki, Issei Hyoudou is the kind of harem protagonist that I enjoy and find to be both funny and likable. Not only is the typical harem protagonist of old frustrating and rather boring, but they are also downright rude! These girls are opening themselves up to you and you keep on dodging them, man! Have a spine!

Issei is very aware of the characters who are attracted to him, and he makes it crystal clear to the girls he is attracted to that he likes them. Even though Rias Gremory has been the girl that Issei has idolised the most and previously saw as this unattainable beauty, he still lets her know his feelings for her very early on.

On the other hand, though, their relationship still takes a fair amount of time to grow, be nurtured, and eventually flourish into something more serious. These are two characters that have been attracted to one another from the beginning of the series, but their slow-burning relationship is a wholesome element to a predominantly ecchi series.

Why you will love Issei

I grew up on shounen anime, but when I started to get much more into anime on the whole I found myself coming back to series like Highschool DxD — you could call it my guilty pleasure anime. They’re easy to consume, and generally fun viewing experiences that don’t require too much from you as a viewer. Of course, that’s not to say there isn’t anything to get emotionally attached to or invested in, just that your enjoyment of the series isn’t paramount on that being a factor.

It helps massively that all of the characters, or at least the characters that I really like, are all entertaining and enjoyable to watch. Issei is that type of harem anime protagonist that I like to see; he is interested in all of the girls around him sexually, but he isn’t pouncing on them and being overly perverted about it. Of course, this is a harem show, so there will be a fair amount of ass-pulls that the genre is known for — but nothing that is too overbearing or that takes away from the enjoyment.

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