Every Kakashi Copycat In Anime, Ranked by Intelligence (Including Qifrey from Witch Hat Atelier)

Kakashi Hatake from Naruto established a distinct character archetype that remains prevalent in anime. There are many characters who follow the same template of specific visual markers, character profiles, and even what their role is in the story. A common pattern is that the character would be really strong, but not the strongest – the same can be applied to intelligence.

Furthermore, while many of these characters serve as mentors, the archetype is so compelling that it is occasionally used for the main protagonist to ground them in a sense of mystery and veteran experience. Let’s explore 10 such characters and rank them by their intelligence.

10 Kaneki Ken from Tokyo Ghoul

The visual overlap of both characters is exact. The white hair that he awakened after his transformation and his single hidden eye directly mirror Kakashi’s design. Furthermore, Kaneki wears a signature combat mask that covers the bottom half of his face, though unlike Kakashi, he remains unmasked in his daily life. Additionally, while he shares the aesthetic, Kaneki is the protagonist of his story, embodying the archetype’s tragedy rather than its mentorship.

However, Kaneki ranks at the bottom of this list due to the lack of objective reasoning. He is academically good, reads a lot, but he couldn’t apply his intelligence in areas where it really mattered. His decisions are most of the time driven by his emotions and trauma. His effectiveness comes down to just his combat ability and rapid regeneration.

9 Enjin from Gachiakuta

Enjin is the boss of the Cleaners. While he doesn’t look like Kakashi, he serves as a mentor figure for the protagonist, Rudo, and maintains a relaxed and unbothered attitude in most situations, which is very much like Kakashi. He guides the younger generation while withholding specific details regarding his own motivations and past history.

During combat, he shows high environmental awareness and intelligence. However, his intelligence is mostly reactive, which falls short when compared to other characters higher up in this ranking.

8 Levi Ackerman from Attack on Titan

Levi Ackerman is a squad captain who mentors the main trio in the anime: Armin, Eren, and Mikasa. He is highly lethal, just like Kakashi, and carries significant trauma for his life in the underground world. While lacking the specific hair color or masked identity, he still feels really similar to Kakashi due to the mentioned reasons.

Much like Enjin, his intelligence is also very reactive. Levi was born in a world where it was survival of the fittest, so he learned how to live in that world and often had to kill others for that. During combat, he shows his battle intelligence that comes from his childhood experience. However, unlike most characters further up in the ranking, he lacks the general overarching intelligence.

7 Gintoki Sakata from Gintama

Gintoki Sakata runs an odd-jobs business and employs two younger characters. He has silver-blue hair, projects severe laziness, and is a veteran of a major war. Gintoki shares the silver hair and the traumatized veteran background with Kakashi. He lost his own mentor and failed to protect his comrades, mirroring Kakashi’s backstory.

He uses a comedic, apathetic persona to distance himself from his violent past, yet he remains highly protective of his new subordinates. He frequently outsmarts enemies who rely on predictable logic. This combat intelligence is higher than characters such as Levi and Enjin, but he falls short when planning long-term.

6 Xerxes Break from Pandora Hearts

Xerxes is one of the central characters from Pandora Hearts. He has white hair, lacks vision, and is very eccentric in nature. Furthermore, his eccentric and candy-loving personality is deliberately used to obscure his past and destructive nature. He acts as a mentor while maintaining his own hidden agenda.

He is a capable manipulator who often takes advantage of people at their breaking points to get what he needs. However, he often holds back in his schemes so as not to hurt the people he truly loves. Furthermore, his plans have been countered by other protagonists and antagonists in his franchise.

5 Shota Aizawa from My Hero Academia

Shota Aizawa is the homeroom teacher for the main cast in class 1A. His similarity to Kakashi comes from the fact that he is a strict but protective teacher. His lethargic demeanor mirrors Kakashi’s initial appearance in the anime.

While not the most similar to Kakashi when compared to characters such as Kaneki in terms of visual appearance, he ranks higher because of his intelligence. He formulates strategies that maximize his students’ utility on the field while also making sure they are not hurt.

Furthermore, his ability is related to his eyes, that allows him to disable the powers of other characters, but after that, he has to rely on his intelligence to neutralize the threat, as he is not that strong physically.

4 Qifrey from Witch Hat Atelier

He is one of the most similar characters to Kakashi. He has white hair, hides his right eye, and harbors an obsession with a faction of dangerous magic users due to his past with them. Qifrey also matches the mentor profile with Kakashi, as he is a teacher to 4 witches in training. Furthermore, he also hides his dark traits behind his persona.

Qifrey possesses exceptional academic and theoretical intelligence. He understands the ins and outs of the magic in his world, which allows him to become an exceptional witch. Furthermore, he does not limit himself to the conventional means of casting magic.

The conventional means of casting magic during combat is to have it drawn beforehand, as the magic is drawn in this world, but Qifrey draws the magic on the spot, and that too, perfectly. The reason that he sits this high in the list is because of his being exceptionally intelligent in his own world, which comes from years and years of training.

3 Kisuke Urahara from Bleach

Kisuke Urahara is a former military captain who acts as a mentor to the protagonist. He wears a striped hat that hides his eyes and acts as an eccentric convenience store owner. He utilizes the goofy, harmless persona to hide his immense power and intellect. Furthermore, he carries a dark past involving exile and betrayal, matching the tragic backstory of Kakashi.

In the anime Bleach, Urahara is the smartest character both within and outside Soul Society. Most of his intelligence can be seen through scientific inventions, deductions like Sherlock himself, and combat tactics that allow him to counter characters who may as well be physically stronger than him.

2 Gojo Satoru from Jujutsu Kaisen

While not ranked highest in intelligence, Gojo Satoru is the character who is most like Kakashi Hatake. He has white hair, he is a teacher to three students, he hides his eyes, which gives him special abilities, and most importantly, he is strong yet goofy. In fact, when Jujutsu Kaisen first aired, his being a knock-off of Kakashi was the primary discourse.

He was born as a genius, who is described as someone who can do anything. That fact alone sets him apart in terms of intelligence. Furthermore, he was one of the primary characters to figure out that there was a mole among them. The only reason he is not at the top in terms of intelligence is that he is held back by his own emotions, which allowed other characters in his own anime to outsmart him.

1 Dazai Osamu from Bungou Stray Dogs

Out of every character in this ranking, he may be the least visually similar to Kakashi. However, there are certain traits that he has that are parallel to Kakashi. First and foremost, he is the mentor to the protagonist in the anime and constantly nudges him in the right direction. Initially, as a 15-year-old, he too used to cover his face, but that’s something that he stopped doing when he grew up.

Dazai ranks first because he is also the most intelligent character in his franchise, and can be considered in the list of the smartest anime characters of all time. He was smart enough to become the youngest executive of one of the biggest and most dangerous mafia organizations in his universe. And then, he was also smart enough to betray them and oppose them.

Dazai anticipates the actions, reactions, and contingencies of multiple enemy factions simultaneously. He maps out conflicts in advance and manipulates variables so that his victory is fundamentally guaranteed.

While these ten characters share identical visual designs or mentor roles, their intelligence is not the same at all. As the ranking shows, characters who are more emotional rather than being logical, like Kaneki Ken, fell at the bottom of the ranking. In contrast, characters such as Dazai are the ones who can separate their emotions from logic and get the outcome they want.

Which one of these characters do you think embodies the Kakashi template perfectly? Let us know in the comments.