10 Best Anime Archers, Ranked
Bows and arrows are among the most used weapons in history, for good reason. No one would argue that getting up close and personal with an enemy is preferable when you can remain at a safe distance and still deal with the threat. When it comes to anime and most other media, though, it’s hard to argue over how generally cool swords and other melee weapons are. While bows often get left behind by swords, they are still an impressive and cool weapon in their own way, especially when wielded by archers who are very good at what they do.
While there are many characters in anime that practice kyūdō, the Japanese style of modern archery, a character that relies primarily on a bow in real combat isn’t as common as it seems. Still, many archers have left their mark on the anime community over the years, with some of them being completely inseparable from their bows.
Iruma Suzuki Found His Own Way To Fight
Welcome to Demon School! Iruma-Kun often gets overlooked as a series for many reasons. Whether it is the anime’s childish-looking artstyle, the series’ comedy-focused opening chapters, or the set-up that everyone has seen before, Iruma-kun rarely gets the attention it deserves. As a teenager, the anime’s titular protagonist ends up getting sold to a demon by his parents, and from then on attends a demon school in the Demon World, all while needing to hide the fact that he is a human.
Over time, Iruma has grown stronger and learned to defend himself in myriad ways, and one of those was by studying archery under Bachiko Barbatos, whose family excels in archery. The skills that Iruma develops, in addition to the bow that he creates for himself to use, are formidable and leave him in a position to move up in the school’s ranking system with his friends.
Asirpa Survived The Hokkaido Wilderness With Her Hunting Skills
Golden Kamuy’s Asirpa may not have magical power with her bow, but her skills as an archer, hunter and trapper are still undeniable. She is invaluable to Sugimoto throughout their journey due heavily to her wilderness survival skills, with hunting a big part of her foundation in the skill. While she may not be willing to kill people with her skills, she is no less skilled because of the limitation.
Her skills with the bow are also only a part of her general skill set. While archery is a big part of who she is, it is more deeply entwined with hunting as opposed to being a stand-alone skill for her. It pairs well with her skill at creating snares and laying hunting traps, not to mention her other wilderness survival skills like knowledge of medicines and poisons, and more generally, how to survive in the wild.
Yona Is Struggling To Survive For Much Of Her Series
Yona of the Dawn‘s main character, Yona, spends the vast majority of the anime as a somewhat traditional helpless maiden type character. As the princess of a deposed kingdom, she ends up on the run early on in the series with few skills to her name. Having grown up as a sheltered princess would, she is forced to take up some survival skills as she begins to travel with her childhood friend and bodyguard Hak, while they track down the “Four Dragons” that might be able to help her reclaim her place as princess.
Over the course of the series, Yona transforms from a sheltered princess into a rather talented warrior. The anime ends around the time that Yona truly comes into her own as a fighter, but she still ends the anime series as a talented archer. She works hard to develop the skill, eventually spending nights of practice shooting off two hundred or more arrows in a night, leaving her hands cut and calloused like any well-trained warrior. By the end of the anime, Yona is an archer and princess that is not to be taken lightly.
Uryu Ishida And The Quincy Are Powerful Archers
Bleach may be heavily focused on swords with all the Zanpakuto that are featured, but that doesn’t mean other weapons are completely ignored. Among Ichigo Kurosaki’s team is the Quincy Uryu Ishida, an incredibly powerful fighter who primarily uses a bow. The Quincy are generally focused on archery as their primary combat skill, which is then enhanced by their spiritual abilities beyond that, which allow them to move at high speeds or make their archery attacks more devastating to those hit by them.
Among Quincy, Uryu is particularly strong as well. Even early on in Bleach, his abilities are already dangerous. By the end of the series, he surpasses most, with his archery ability being beyond what most other Quincy are capable of. His abilities give him great control over his arrows, allowing him to curve shots mid-flight for greater control over a shot’s speed, power and accuracy. In addition, such heightened control gives him the ability to easily negate other projectiles and attacks with his own.
Yume Showed How Powerful The Hunter Class Can Be
Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash is an unusually darker take on the isekai genre that holds no punches against the main cast of characters. When the main party ends up in the fantasy world with little skills needed for their survival, Yume ends up becoming the party’s Hunter. While she starts the series as a terrible shot with the bow and needing to rely on her machete and close combat skills (which are still lacking, just less so), over time she becomes capable with not just the bow, but her entire class kit.
With Grimgar‘s fantastical realism put first, Yume indirectly shows the power of what a bow-wielder can really do. Despite being noted as being a bad shot and a general airhead, Yume is still able to take out enemies at a distance well beyond any of the others with her bow and Hunter skills, while remaining mostly self-sufficient on the battlefield.
Kazuma Found A Broken Build And Stuck With It
Konosuba is known very well as a parody of the isekai and JRPG genre of anime and games, but no character in the series lampshades it quite as well as Kazuma himself. While his party members are off doing stupid things and making them work because of their high stats, Kazuma is left on the other side of the spectrum, stuck trying to make his pathetically low stats work and relying almost entirely on his above-average luck stat.
As it turned out, Kazuma sort of fell into an incredibly useful build for himself that makes good use of his knowledge and abilities. With the basic Adventurer class, Kazuma is able to learn skills from most others, which he uses to become a jack-of-all-trades, but nothing fits his stat spread quite as well as what he picks up from Archer. Making him better as using bows is great, but what really makes his abilities work as an archer is the skill “Snipe” which increases the range and accuracy of his shots while making accuracy based on Luck. Together with his stats, Snipe makes him a terrifyingly good shot with a bow, especially when he needs it the most.
High Elf Archer Is Just A Very Talented Archer
High Elf Archer from Goblin Slayer, like many other characters in the series, is a straightforward character who is simply good at what she does. Goblin Slayer has a fairly standard fantasy setting, and few characters stand out in a way that sets them apart from what a viewer would expect, usually winning the day through basic skills and ingenuity rather than overpowering the enemy with abilities or magic. High Elf Archer is squarely in that category as well, simply excelling at her job as an archer.
High Elf Archer’s archery is great, allowing her to curve arrows or even shoot multiple arrows at a time, although she also insists that she’s not as good as she could be because she can’t shoot accurately and reliably while moving. In addition, as an Elf, she has a great sense of hearing that helps her scout ahead of her party and pick out targets at a great range. While she has a few extra skills that make her particularly noteworthy as a standout, her raw skill with the bow alone is simply undeniable.
Kagome’s Power May Be Inherited, But Her Archery Skill Is Earned
As the female lead of the early isekai-genre pioneer InuYasha, Kagome has several indispensable strengths that are honed over the course of the series. While she is granted most of her spiritual power through being a reincarnation of the priestess Kikyo, Kagome is still left to her own devices to become a talented archer. The two skills together are what truly unlocks Kagome’s power through the ability to infuse her arrows with spiritual power, making them incredibly powerful weapons for purifying demonic energy and destorying enemy spells.
Kagome may not have unrivaled accuracy or the ability to curve arrows mid-flight, but for what she lacks in finesse, she more than makes up for in raw power. Her Sacred Arrows are capable of overpowering most enemies and demonic powers in the series, and she regularly uses them to remove curses, purify demons, break through barriers and more. When paired with Inuyahsa’s attacks generated by the Tetsusaiga, the purifying power of her arrows can empower the attacks to be even more dangerous to the demons they fight than normal.
The Archer Class Is Sometimes Made Up Of Archers
Archer from Fate/Stay Night and the other main routes is a dangerous archer. Despite most often seen using his dual swords Kanshou and Bakuya, Archer’s ability with a bow is still his better skill, especially when summoned in the archer class. Notably, Archer is able to make use of his unique capabilities the best when using a bow, even when compared against his flexible fighting style in melee combat.
Because of his ability to create projected versions of legendary weapons that are often Noble Phantasms, Archer is able to call downgraded fakes of legendary weapons in battle. However, he is often not as capable of actually using them in a fight, much preferring his own melee weapons. Instead, he prefers to modify the weapons into arrows, such as the way he uses Caladbolg II against Berserker. His attacks using such Broken Phantasms are incredibly powerful, making leaving him alone at range a massive mistake for his enemies. And that’s without mentioning that his range with his bow is at least four kilometers.
Makoto Misumi Is A Quintessential Broken Main Character
Tsukimichi’s main character, Makoto, quickly becomes an overpowered protagonist once the series gets going. However, unlike many other series, Makoto doesn’t understand his own strength or recognize just how broken he really is. Makoto was a kyūdō practitioner before he was brought to the new world, and the skills that he picked up while training in the skill made him break the other world’s systems. Notably, while meditating during his archery practice, Makoto loses his sense of self and becomes part of the world itself every time he focuses on shooting an arrow during practice.
When he lets the arrow loose, his consciousness returns to his body, and in the process, he accidentally doubles his mana capacity and general power. However, Makoto doesn’t realize what is happening, and his allies at one point even forbid him from practicing because he his growing absurdly powerful, breaking the balance of the world he is in. Of course, the other half of this power is that, as an archer, his aim is literally one hundred percent accurate.
