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This Week in Anime - Akane is the Real Protagonist of SSSS.Gridman

I don’t think that if Akane is the local demiurge and got the POV episode, then this makes her a “real protagonist”. This isn't the Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, when Haruhi was also a title character and main girl. So, if you really want to prove that your "best girl" is better and cooler than the local shonen ordinary student, then this is not the best choice, lol.

In most cases, “Hero,” “Main Character,” and “Protagonist” are the same character.
Seriously, you can stop reading now. Here’s a nice article about raising orphaned squirrels.

Now, for readers who are still with me, let’s try to come up with more specific definitions for these three terms, and explore why they may apply to different characters in certain stories.

Hero
My incredibly-simplified definition: this is the character who you hope to see “win.” While it’s fine to think of Superman, or Aladdin, the hero doesn’t have to be noble, or courageous, or especially talented. As long as you’re rooting for him, that’s what matters.

Main Character
Just what it sounds like: this is the character who the story is mostly about. Confused? Often his or her name is in the title: Shrek, King Arthur, Tootsie, Citizen Kane.

Protagonist
The character who changes over the course of the story, travelling from Point A to Point B, either literally or figuratively. She learns and grows as the story progresses. Generally, Protagonists want something at the start of the tale, and discover they need something else.

But with haruhi what happens in the end is that the author gets tired of she it and is oriented more towards Nagato beyond what the normal narrative would propitiate, which is a bit frustrating since I love the character of haruhi as many animes always paint a main girl being also the one who dominates on the cover of the show, but this is only the partner of the boy who is the real protagonist which It is thousands of times less interesting in both personality and design. It seems to me that many writers are guided by the structure or formula of an old anime as it could be evangelion or urusei yatsura where we have this same, depending on the type of history this may work, but from another point of view they seem a parasite character since everything the plot revolves around another.

The problem is that when it comes to LN, especially strictly romantic, MC often only plays the role of self-insert the audience, as if you were playing visual novel. It is so common that even partially influenced the development of CGDCT and the popularization of yuri in general, as the audience is tired of using mediocre protagonists only as a reason for a bunch of cute girls together.

But on the other hand, it motivated many people to create well-written protagonists, for example, Jum Maeda is well known for this. Or you can also recall works like Oregairu, whose MC can compete with his girls in terms of popularity.

The difference is that I also find her fascinating, and the greatest sin a main antagonist can make in a show is NOT be interesting. Akane doesn't do that. She's been both the show's protagonist and antagonist right from the beginning, and she's been a delight to follow. That said, I do hate her guts.