User blog comment:JakCooperThePlumber/Types of Characters/@comment-18812574-20160125014456

Uhm, pardon me for being a bit blunt here, but I think you haven't really taken the time to properly analyze these character "types" to any notable depth here. You've given us a basic description of character types in regards to their superficial roles, but not necessarily what that means in a story-sense. Furthermore I think you have given out some misinformation here. Such as this:

"Furthermore, most stories tend to have multiple protagonists. In fact, I don't think I've ever seen a story that has only one protagonist, but I suppose it would be possible."

Yeah actually it's the opposite. A protagonist is the MAIN guy, the "hero" of the respective story, and while he may have support from other characters, while there may be secondary and even tertiary progagonists, typically there is only one person whose actions and decisions are directly tied to the plot of the story, whose story we as readers can most empathize with and/or follow. As taken from :

"The protagonist should be at the center of the story, should be making the difficult choices and key decisions, should be experiencing the consequences of those decisions. The protagonist should be propelling the story forward."

Hamlet is the protagonist (and anti-hero) in, well, Hamlet. Princess Buttercup is the protagonist in the Princess Bride. The Count of Monte Cristo is the protagonist in the Count of Monte Cristo. Frodo is the protagonist in the Lord of the Rings. Jean Valjean is the protagonist in Les Misérables. Luke Skywalker is the protagonist in Star Wars episodes 4-6. Ichigo is the protagonist of Bleach. Etc. etc. Any other character you could list from these stories and point to as being a "protagonist" is probably only a protagonist in the subplot sense of the word, or a protagonist who supports the main character without ascribing to another role such as Confidant, Mentor, Lover, etc. Stories with more than one protagonist are the exception, not the norm. (Baccano might be one notable example of an anime series with multiple protagonists.) Keep in mind that the protagonist is also normally our POV character: the character through which we see the story world. But that's not always the case. You can have a character who is both the protagonist and the villain (such as Megamind) or an antagonist who is a hero or whatever may have you. So please don't make this misinterpretation here. To use some of the examples you yourself gave, Light Yagami is the protagonist of Death Note, although he's certainly not a hero. (Actually on that point, I'd classify him as a tragic villain or a tragic anti-villain, not an anti-hero, although my reasoning there is sort of beyond the scope of the point I'm trying to make here).

You can also have a protagonist who is NOT the "POV character," ie, the narrator. Psycho Pass is a good example of this: Shinya Kogami I would personally say fits the role of a "protagonist" more than Akane does, as she services more as a POV character and narrator/introducer to the world of Sibyl, Enforcers, etc. etc. But who is it in the end who changes? Whose actions drive the majority of the plot? In this case Akane and Shinya are probably both protagonists (ahah, one of those elusive multi-protagonist series you were referring to) but Shinya is most likely the more compelling one. Shinya and Akane serve to contrast each other... but they aren't foils. Not in the traditional sense of the word.

A foil is something that is much deeper than a character who contrasts with another. They are representations of the same character: but from two different sides. They are people who, for all intents and purposes, could be seen as very similar, with similar goals, motivations, or what have-you. But in the end it is their choices that set them apart and contrast them. Back to Les Misérables, Jean Valjean's foil is Inspector Javert. They both circled closer and closer to each other over the course of the plot, and while Javert might have been seen as an antagonist he was also a foil: in the end Jean Valjean had found forgiveness, while Javert could not accept forgiveness and thus, quite literally, fell. In Psycho Pass Makishima is the foil of Shinya, not Akane. In fact their parallel cycles serve to drive them both towards self-destruction, and the end Makishima serves as a mirror that allows Shinya to see himself. Foils are frequently seen as "character types," but I think this is a misnomer, as they are more of a story device and, in my opinion, should be treated as such.