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My Name is Enoby: On Mary Sues in 2026

My Name is Enoby: On Mary Sues in 2026

Stephanie Liu
March 27, 2026

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It’s been about a day since the Code Geass and hololive collaboration event launched in the Japan-exclusive mobile game, Super Robot Wars DD, and Japanese Twitter has been in an uproar. The source of the controversy lies with the addition of VTuber Takane Lui (in-game as Lui Hawkeye) as a playable character. Because so much of what goes on behind the scenes to develop and write the game are unclear to us outsiders, Takane Lui, as the face of the collaboration, is bearing the brunt of the blame.

Here is a quick breakdown of the main complaints from fans. To start with, the in-game profile for Takane Lui states that she originates from Code Geass R2. This is pretty interesting, because Takane Lui debuted as a VTuber in 2021, and Code Geass R2 aired in 2008. I was watching this in high school, and I certainly do not remember a Britannian operative acting as an undercover agent in Ashford Academy resembling her. This on its own might be a minor fumble unworthy of any hullabaloo, but what really rubbed fans the wrong way was the writing in the event.

Comparisons have been made to self-insert Mary Sue fanfiction that a middle-school girl would write. The writing in the event is weirdly mean to Suzaku, belittling him in a way that makes Takane Lui look “better.” Lelouch also takes a shine to her as a person rather than an asset, which many fans decry as out-of-character for him. Indeed, the idea of Lelouch liking someone because they’re “interesting” seems odd; it would feel more natural for him to like a stranger based on their usefulness. Though Takane Lui is fictional, the person behind the VTuber model is a real person. Between that and whatever contract it has with Cover, it’s possible that there were restrictions in place limiting what they could and couldn’t do with the character.

VTuber collaborations are, whether you like them or not, a thing now. They’re popular and marketable, and their anime designs allow them to be easily slotted into a 2D or 3D setting without sacrificing too much of the worldview. Take, for example, the Nijisanji collaboration in Romance of the Three Kingdoms XIV. Heck, you don’t even have to see the character or model. They can just appear as a voice actor in something, and that will generate buzz. Inazuma Eleven: Victory Road and Digimon Beatbreak are two examples that easily come to mind. Sure, some people might complain about these, but the discourse has never been as loud as this Code Geass one.

The reason is so simple. It’s just the writing. No one really likes Mary Sues. It feels like they were a lot more common, like, fifteen or twenty years ago just because the Internet was less of a panopticon as it is today. Unfortunately, and this is definitely not a good thing, I feel like a Mary Sue fanfiction would be torn apart by the wolves on social media if someone finds one, screenshots it, and it so happens to go viral. I have vivid memories of Mary Sue self-insert fanfiction for fandoms like Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy, and Naruto. The overpowered and special aspect of the Mary Sue might not be so jarring, if it isn’t usually accompanied by the neutering of existing characters and canon to prop up this person. Great fun for the writer, perhaps, but not so much for the reader.

Someone wanting their favorite fictional characters to fawn over their OC is harmless. It’s a different story when it occurs in something official. The decision to include complaints about VTubers that actually do exist in real life—either as lampshade hanging to acknowledge criticism before anyone else can use it to attack them, or as an attempt to show the audience how “ugly” it is from an objective standpoint—also gave many netizens the ick. Is the lesson to just not write VTubers into things anymore? Well, maybe, but I don’t think that solves the actual issue, because the backlash to Takane Lui isn’t the fact she’s a VTuber. It’s how poorly Bandai Namco balances marketing her while inserting her into the established canon of Code Geass.

Again, though, it does suck that Takane Lui is the one who has to suffer the anger of the audience. She can’t even talk about how much she likes the manga version of Dragon Ball without people replying to her or QRT-ing her, telling her to stay out of Dragon Ball and not collaborate with it. You guys, I seriously don’t think she was in the writing room and telling them what to do.

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My Name is Enoby: On Mary Sues in 2026

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