A bright computer screen illuminates a room. There are energy drinks strewn across a task. A silhouetted figure slyly pushes up their glasses as they begin typing way louder than any person should be able to type. They are the unsung heroes of every detective, science fiction, and high school anime. They are the tech-savvy anime characters.
Anime itself has already become near synonymous with technology, given their contributions to the sci-fi genre and Japan's various technological achievements. This culture feeds into their own special brand of the classic hacker/programmer archetype, where the nerds are not only really good at the computers but also look really good doing it. Here are some of the ones that "excel" above them all.
10 Nagato Yuuki (The Melancholy Of Haruhi Suzumiya)
Nagato Yuuki has an unfair advantage here. On top of just being a book smart, programmer, she also happens to be an alien creation designed by the "Data Overmind" to watch over Haruhi Suzumiya.
While she is equipped with the necessary enhancements and abilities necessary to handle any and all of Haruhi's high school delusions, she's also equipped with a supercomputer brain capable of analyzing any situation and piece of technology within an instant as well as download data. Her hacking skills are not only limited to computers but reality itself, as she manipulates the code of reality itself to teleport, change outcomes, and even be really good at baseball.
9 Milluki Zoldyck (Hunter X Hunter)
The Zoldyck Family is infamous for being some of history's most reliable and terrifying assassins. Their calling card is their superhuman strength, mastery of lethal combat, and deathly focus. Milluki Zoldyck breaks the mold, however, by seemingly having none of those traits besides focus.
Instead of taking on targets on the battlefield, Milluki is a technological prodigy and hacker who uses deadly traps and the power of info to take down his targets, all in an effort to limit the amount of time that he stays away from his games.
8 Hashida Itaru (Steins;Gate)
Steins;Gate within its own right is already full of technological nonsense. As one of the most prominent time travel stories out there, its eclectic cast is full of science-minded characters ready to solve the greater mysteries of life as well as the conspiracies haunting them.
While Rintarou Okabe, the leader of the Future Gadget Lab, is brilliant within his own right, he wouldn't be where he was without the technical genius and otaku fanfare of Hashida Itaru. In service to Rin's sci-fi efforts, "Daru" acts as the leader hacker granting him information and the lead engineer helping build some of his best inventions.
7 Takeyama (Angel Beats!)
It takes a pretty smart person to be able to hack a regular computer. It takes an outright genius to be able to manipulate the code of the heavens. Angels Beats! is about a group of newly deceased teens who find themselves in what they believe to be purgatory which oddly resembles a traditional, Japanese high school.
Not ones to still be confined by the rules in the afterlife, the kids rebel and try to do as they please, with Takeyama being one of their most essential assets. As an expert hacker and programmer, he plays a key part in debriefing mission plans, stealing information, and even cracking an encryption that should take longer than the age of the universe itself to hack.
6 Ritsuko Akagi (Neon Genesis Evangelion)
No mecha anime is complete without the standard scientist character meant to help fix the machines and help explain all of the weird, scientific nonsense. Ritsuko Akagi has an unenviable job of being that archetype within Evangelion's world.
On top of being responsible for the supercomputer system that controls NERV, her line of work involves working on a variety of high-tech weapons, maintaining the metal mounters that are the Evas, as well as somehow analyzing the mythical and psychological threat that are the Angels. Facing against supernatural threats that can attack with classical music and working on a likely sentient computer system, Ritsuko is one of the most hardworking scientists out there.
5 Ritsu (Assassination Classroom)
One would think that Assassination Classroom's Ritsu would be pretty good at working on computers given that she herself is literally a computer. Much like Nagato Yuuki, Ritsu, aka the Autonomously Intelligent Fixed Artillery, has an unfair advantage within the programming world by literally being a supercomputer meant to take on a seemingly unstoppable, alien threat. However, after getting a taste of another one of Koro-sensei's life lessons, she turns that cold, deathly monitor into a cute, deathly, anime screensaver.
Besides being equipped with alien destroying weapons, she also helps her class with various hacking and intel gathering jobs as well as a smile that no threat can touch.
4 Chihiro Fujisaki (Danganronpa)
Chihiro Fujisaki gets the honor of being Hope Peak Academy's "Ultimate Programmer." Unfortunately for him, this means that he was inevitably playing a part in Danganronpa's sadistic game.
Prior to the forced extracurricular, however, Chihiro had an amazing career as a programmer, turning to computers as an escape from bullying, Chihiro became a master programmer that even developed special A.I. for major companies. Within Hope Peak, he'd go on to occasionally monitor the school's server system and would even up develop an A.I. copy of himself to continue helping his friends after his death.
3 Kenji Koiso (Summer Wars)
Summer Wars' society has embraced technology within nearly every facet of its world, whether that means video games, public transportation, or even irrigation systems. When a nefarious computer program threatens to shut off the grid from the inside, the world's only hero is none other than a timid, math wiz.
Kenji Koiso is a mathematical genius and computer science nerd who choked during a math competition. However, when life and a pretty girl presents him with a chance to redeem himself, he uses that brilliant mind to hack and type his way to saving the world.
2 Lain Iwakura (Serial Experiments Lain)
Serial Experiments Lain takes the idea of technology taking over society to a whole new level. Lain Iwakura was once just a regular, albeit tech ignorant girl who finds herself thrust into everything digital after the death of a classmate.
From the first time that she interacts with a computer, Lain becomes a tech genius who begins to show more personality, confidence, and even arrogance within the digital world than in the real one. As she digs further and further into "The Wired," she slowly discovers how powerful she really is within the computer realm.
1 Edward Wong Hau Pepelu Tivruski IV (Cowboy Bebop)
Edward is one of the most iconic, tech-savvy characters within all of anime. Starting off as a lowly, orphaned child on Earth, Ed would use her computer genius to bargain her way unto The Bebop, solve various, government conspiracies, and even befriend an advanced computer system.
As part of The Bebop, Ed would be the group's primary means of gathering intelligence, either finding info much faster than Jet ever could or accessing data that the mass public just doesn't have access to. She doesn't play a stereotypical hacker, either. Ed is every bit as vibrant and playful as a child should be, giving a really animated flare to her computational efforts.