Discussion of hot animated characters is a hallmark of millennial internet culture. As kids, most media targeted at us is animated, so it’s only natural that our first “what is this feeling, so sudden and new” tingles would come from cartoon characters.

You can try to deny it, but it comes for us all. My best friend from college always scoffed at the internet’s shared horniness for the likes of teenage Simba (Kovu from “Lion King 2” is hotter by miles, fight me) and foxy fox Robin Hood. But then! One fine day, we were planning to watch some old episodes of “Kim Possible” and she said, “Can we watch one with Shego in it?” Got her!!!

So naturally, I was curious who in the animated world the locals of Video Game Town had the hots for. Here’s what I discovered.

Katy Herman (Contributor, aka me): Seto Kaiba, ‘Yu-Gi-Oh!’

I don’t care that in the original anime (not the dubbed seasons that were on when we were kids) Kaiba had green hair and was irredeemably evil. Season 0 Kaiba, this ain’t about you. I also don’t care that in none of the many fanfics I have read — or written — about him is he heterosexual. (Watching “Yu–Gi–Oh!” as an adult means realizing he is madly in love with Yami Yugi. Diehard Prideshipper here, and here’s a resource if you’d like to go down a rabbit hole about the unhinged world of “Yu-Gi-Oh!” shipping, but that’s a topic for another article.) My love is unconditional.

Is the bad boy of Domino… my longest crush? Considering I find him as appealing now as I did when I was 10 (and my more innocent, chaste attraction to Fred from “Scooby-Doo” has faded since I was 5), I think yes. There is something about anime boys, especially anime boys with dark pasts, especially anime baddies who have a soft mushy spot for one person — like their little brother. Swoon.

If you agree this man was hot in the ’00s anime, you’ll need to put a towel down on your chair for the beautifully animated 20th anniversary movie “Dark Side Of Dimensions.” Phew. Just when you thought he couldn’t get more beautiful! I could wax poetic about this man longer than he could monologue about Blue-Eyes White Dragon, but I’ll conclude with something I’ve never told anyone and will now share on the internet: one of my earliest kind-of sex dreams that left me feeling some type of way when I woke up was when I was 10, and it involved Kaiba playing “Matter Of Trust” by Billy Joel on the guitar. You’re welcome for that image.

Jared Russo (Chief Content Officer, aka my fiancé): Rogue, ‘X-Men: The Animated Series’

I had a spiritual and sexual awakening as a child watching music videos of the Spice Girls on MTV. That’s when I knew I liked the ladies, but the ladies did not like me. And in the years to follow, that feeling deep inside of me would be doubled down thanks to a special VHS tape. It turned me into the heterosexual cisgender man I am today: Scrawny and horny all the same.

Pizza Hut used to sell “X-Men” stuff, and one of the items I received was the pilot to the “X-Men” cartoon series on two VHS tapes. It came with an interview featuring Stan Lee and Scott Lobdell, but I mostly want to discuss that two-part series premiere. “Night of the Sentinels” showed off Jubilee’s origin story as she ran away from home, being chased by Sentinel robots, and subsequently ran into many of the X-Men members at the mall. One of those was Rogue who was shopping and rocking a purple dress.

She remains super hot. I don’t need to elaborate any further. I knew what was up back then and I still do now. The accent, the power, the hair; Rogue is the bomb.

Editor’s note: Jared may not have wanted to elaborate further, but apparently, Grant did. It appears everyone is going Rogue!

Grant Brunner (Editor-in-Chief): Rogue, ‘X-Men: The Animated Series‘

While I don’t think I ever had a proper crush on any cartoon character, the ’90s animated iteration of Rogue is the closest I can recall from my youth. Her iconic streak of white hair, sick jacket, and form-fitting bodysuit obviously make her attractive, but that’s just the surface level of her appeal. There’s more going on there, and I’m not referring to her southern drawl.

Her ongoing romantic relationship with Gambit easily drew me in, but there’s a certain kind of erotic intrigue knowing that their lust simply cannot be fully consummated. Even a simple kiss is forbidden for poor Rogue, and that makes her even more appealing. My girl deserves to smooch that Cajun card sharp without worrying about straight-up murder. 

Jack Miller (CEO): Dorothy, ‘Goddess of Victory: NIKKE‘

When this the question was posed to me, it kind of left me at a loss. I don’t think there are any cartoon characters who I have a crush on, but as a child, this question was an easy answer: Kari from “Digimon Zero Two” and Raven from “Teen Titans.” But as an adult? I would have to say the closest would be Dorothy from the gacha game “Goddess of Victory: NIKKE.” (They have little anime shorts in the game sometimes, so I think this counts.) 

Dorothy, on the surface, just looks like your standard absurdly-proportioned anime waifu character in a waifu collector gacha game with her pink hair and princess dress by way of Adam & Eve. But underneath lies a truly deep character defined by her longing to return to a simpler time before human civilization was destroyed by the Rapture menace.

She was ultimately driven to the brink of madness by the betrayal of the Central Government and the loss of her “friend” — but let’s be honest, lover — Pinne. She now aims to destroy the Central Government and the Raptures to become humanity’s goddess of victory. Her determination, strength, hoity-toity personality, beauty, and many, many character flaws are what captured my heart. 

So if crazy pink-haired waifus are your thing, or you just want to truly understand the mind of a man who’s been in the gacha mines for way too long, you can check out her event story Over Zone in “Goddess of Victory: NIKKE.” I say this without any hyperbole or irony: Her event story is one of my favorite stories in all of fiction, and is the reason I love this character. To sum this up, my love for this mentally unstable woman who is essentially a sexy terminator probably explains a lot about why my love life has been such a mess, but that’s a story for my therapist.  

Nivi Chowdhry (Contributor): Obi-Wan Kenobi, ‘Star Wars: The Clone Wars’

In a galaxy far, far away, Obi-Wan Kenobi from “Clone Wars” was crowned the sexiest person alive, and he deserves the title in every galaxy. This is the guy who actually owns my dreams. When I first saw him, I was on the fence. Did I like beards? Not really. Did I think a prospective suitor should love his job more than he’d ever love me? Also no. Was I bringing in some weird baggage from how his character is portrayed in the “Star Wars” movies — particularly the prequels? Absolutely. 

But the beard really does it for me on him. If anything, Obi-Wan’s commitment to the Jedi order sets this up as a tantalizing chase. At some point, you start to wonder what those hands might look like if he ever took those gloves off. And then he cracks a joke in the middle of a fairly serious and threatening situation where you probably wouldn’t make it out alive, his intelligence, wit, and self-assurance hit you right in the no-no-square, and all you are thinking about is what those hands would feel like on you. If they put even one more of those “that joke was just for you xoxo” glances in each episode, they’d need to move that viewing rating up. Throw in a smolder, and the whole series goes to an entirely different genre. 

It’s possible that the most optimistic I’ve ever felt in my life was when Obi-Wan told Satine he would have left the Jedi Order for her, making it clear that there is a chance I, too, could have some very secret dalliance with this oath-bound Adonis — sort of like this. The only reason I maintain any sort of sleep hygiene is to catch this ever-fleeting chance of reuniting with the hottest of the entire Disney-verse. Speaking of which, there was once a BuzzFeed list about the hottest Disney “prince” (Shang from “Mulan” won), but at least now, somewhere out there, it’s been fixed. 

Bonus! Tamara Russo (sister of our Chief Content Officer, via phone interview): Johnny Bravo

Johnny Bravo, but let’s acknowledge that’s when I was closeted. The real answer was Debbie from “Wild Thornberrys.”

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Image credit: Marvel Entertainment