Clueless Chick Magnet

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A character who is his own worst enemy when it comes to love. In fact, he's pretty much his only enemy in this arena.

Bob doesn't know what love looks like, so he doesn't realize that the strange behaviors Alice is exhibiting are attempts to gain his love. It seems that no matter how much she tries, she can't feel Bob reciprocating her feelings. When Alice asks him out on a date, he figures that she just wants to go on a walk and spend the day with him like the friends they are, so when she thanks him for the date, he's confused. He might think on it, but then waves it aside. It couldn't possibly be a date, could it?

Usually deliberately designed to be Mr. Fanservice. Contrast Celibate Hero, who avoids romantic involvement that might interfere with The Cause, and Chaste Hero, who's too young, dumb or asexual to even be interested. See also Chick Magnet (of course). Remember that this character does not have to be male, although it usually is.

Examples of Clueless Chick Magnet include:

Anime & Manga

• Mahou Sensei Negima - the titular teacher has this bad, as at least 15 girls, and the only two that he's aware of. Those are the girls who have just told him to his face that they loves him. Naturally, this usually causes all sorts of problems, as he's extremely prone to I Didn't Mean to Turn You On type actions. To say nothing of the time when he accidentally leads on one of his students while she thinks that he's his own cousin. Chisame even points out that he's going to make a lot of girls cry in the future. Oh, and did we mention that he's still just 10-years-old?
  • The scene that show this the best is when Akira tell him about some girls that like him, and he is completely shocked.

Akira: At this rate, I guess he doesn't know about Class Rep...

• • Kotaro has a case of this; even while still in his Girls Have Cooties phase he still has 4 girls, although he is starting to be aware that one of them might like him.
• The titular character of Hayate the Combat Butler is an interesting case: He's not a Chaste Hero, in theory—he understands the idea of romance and attraction, and even has a couple girls he's pining after, but he doesn't notice that every girl he meets falls in love with him. Yes, including the two he's in love with. The guys at school call him the Airhead Gigolo because of this: Part is his personality, part is just dumb luck, and there's even a little bit of Friend to All Living Things thrown in just for the hell of it.
  • It's shown that he is somewhat aware of his affect on girls and can actually play it up when he wants something, similar to his 'business smile' that he uses periodically. This often includes conjuring up Love Bubbles and Bishie Sparkle for extra charm. Possibly an extension of this is Hayate's 'Serious Mode' which ramps up his charm and charisma ten-fold and is even said to change the air around him with his confidence. To date it has been used exactly once; to make sure his date with Hinagiku was a complete success.
  • 13-year-old Wataru's doing pretty well himself. He has, mostly unwittingly, gathered the attention of several girls (Saki, Sonia, Aika, and possibly Sakuya), all of whom are older than he is.
    • Well, an exception is that Wataru has been made all too aware about Sonia's affection for him.
• Yoshii of Baka to Test to Shoukanjuu has three girls pining after him: Minami, Himeji, and Minami's little sister Hazuki. At one point, Minami uses the threat of death to blackmail a date out of Yoshii, and Himeji makes lunches for him every day (which is a very bad thing, but its the thought that counts). Yoshii never notices. Ever. He does know that Hazuki loves him, but that's because she loudly insists they're getting married when she grows up.
  • Another notable one was when Yoshii's sister noted in front of Yoshii, Minami, and Himeji that Yoshii seems to only read porn about busty women in ponytails. Himeji immediately ties her hair into a ponytail, and the next day Minami (who always has a ponytail) comes to school with some sort of inflatable inserts. He still doesn't notice.
  • Should note there are subtle hints in the novel that Hideoyoshi might have a small crush on Yoshi too...
    • Kubo too.
• Kämpfer: The densest material ever: Senou Natsuru.
  • The best example has to be Senou's date with Shizuku. He assumes its Not a Date... but she corrects him that no, it really is a date. He assumes she's joking. Cuz she does that all the time.
    • Which then causes Mikoto to give him a couple of Megaton Punch attacks. Even Akane goes to his house afterward to find out why he took Shizuku out on a date, forcing him to take her on one as well in the next episode.
• Shinji Ikari from Neon Genesis Evangelion. Somewhat subverted in that all of his potential romantic interests have major issues as well, which would make starting anything with them difficult in the best of cases. That being said, Shinji could stand to be a LOT more assertive himself.
• Kamijou Touma, protagonist of A Certain Magical Index. Between his heroic tendencies and misfortune, pretty much every girl he meets falls for him in short order. But because of the aforementioned misfortune, he just assumes they're all screwing with him. Or doesn't notice at all, though that one is at least a little justified by the fact that he lost his memory and didn't have the heart to tell anyone.
• Ichigo Kurosaki is this to an extent in Bleach. Orihime Inoue is madly in love with him, and he cares for her a lot, but as a friend. Other woman have also shown interest in him (perhaps not romantically, but flirtingly) but he remains completely oblivious. He also exhibits signs of being a Celibate Hero, which makes him an interesting case.
• Kotetsu from Tiger and Bunny is more of Tsundere magnet than an actual Chick Magnet, but he is nonetheless oblivious to this ability. He just wonders why certain girls [namely his wife-to-be (during their high-school days) and Karina (during the course of the show)] keep acting all weird and contradictory around him.
• Makoto Ito from School Days, and especially so in the anime series, where it sometimes gets hard to keep track of all the girls he gets with.
• The Title Character of Naruto can come off as this, especially in fillers with the countless Girl of the Week that start to like him.
• Shuto Katsuragi, the titular Anti-Hero/Anti-Villain known as Ratman, is completely oblivious to the idea that his classmate Mirea Mizushima (who is part of the "evil" organization who turned him into Ratman) and Rio Kizaki (daughter of the Hero Association's president) are interested in anything more than being nice and friendly to him.
  • This even extends to a Ho Yay version where Shiki constantly calls him cute and has No Sense of Personal Space, he just sees him as a friend and doesn't even seem to notice Shiki is disturbingly rather close to him.
• Rail Wars!: Lead character Takayama is a Rail Enthusiast who has caught the attention of every woman on his team, his Unlucky Childhood Friend, and an idol singer -- not that he's noticed. When Takayama casually mentions to Action Girl Sakurai that anybody who would hope to date her would have to be athletic enough to keep up with her, implying that he wasn't in the group of people who would hope to date her, even his male teammate Iwaizumi (who usually only cares about food) winces in sympathy with Sakurai.

Comic Books

• Where does one begin with Spider-Man? From boyhood he seemed to have the amazing ability to make extreamly pretty girls fall in love with him only to be completely oblivious to it half time and have his secret ID ruin it for him anyways once he finally manages to figure it out.

Film

• Pirates of the Caribbean: Will wastes all his frustrated energy on swordplay because he's about the only person who can't see that Elizabeth is ready to jump his bones the minute she can get him alone. Jack Sparrow even lampshades this at one point.
  • Granted, he may be aware of it; he just thinks that due to their difference in social class (he's a blacksmith's apprentice and she's the governor's daughter), it would be downright disrespectful of him to have feelings for her. This can be seen in his refusal to call her anything but "Miss Swann" for most of the movie, even though she keeps telling him to call her Elizabeth.

Literature

• A Princess Of Mars: John Carter just could not get it through his Heroic Skull that the most beautiful woman of two worlds was head over heels for him. She pretty much had to beat him over the head with an "I love you" stick.
  • John Carter frankly admits he doesn't understand women but he does become clued in enough to recognize when other women fall in love with him - as they do with monotonous regularity to his considerable embarrassment. He develops an interesting strategy for dealing with the problem; he takes the girls home to Dejah Thoris. She apparently befriends them and sees to it they meet lots of attractive and available men until they find one that makes them forget John Carter.
• The Sharing Knife

Dag: Among Lakewalkers, a woman invites a man back to her tent...
Fawn: Among farmers, the boy asks the girl...
Dag: Really...How much time do you think we've wasted here, Spark?

• Oddly gender-flipped in L. M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables series. Anne has such a warped, idealistic view of what love and romance is that she doesn't realize that there are half a dozen men waiting in line to marry her. Including her former enemy turned friend, Gilbert Blythe.
• Derek of the web-novel Domina is continually blind to everyone's affections for him. Once, when two girls are having a heated argument over who gets his First Kiss, he thinks they're screwing with him.

Live-Action TV

• Simon Tam of Firefly, who is too focused on his medical career (and later, helping his Brainwashed and Crazy sister) to have much luck with the opposite sex (especially Kaylee, who has a crush on him from the beginning of the show). This leads to In Vino Veritas.
• Sheldon Cooper of The Big Bang Theory, who is unable to comprehend social niceties and appears to have no interest in the opposite sex at all.
  • And yet, has managed to pick up five girls and a guy so far.
• Angel turned out to be this trope in his own show. Justified because before meeting Buffy he spend one hundred years as drunk homeless guy and a century before that as soulless demon guy. And he doesn't have a reflection.
• Poor boy genius Spencer Reid of Criminal Minds is like this. In one episode, he gets hit on and kissed by a movie star he is protecting, but writes it off as "transference". Later, while questioning witnesses to a crime, Hotch laments that they didn't get any information, but mentions that Reid was "propositioned by every prostitute we talked to".

Reid: [Re: his odd interests] Do you think that's why I can't get a date?
Elle: Have you ever asked a girl out?
Reid: ... no.
Elle: That's why you can't get a date.

• This trope is Played With in Season 2 of Glee with Blaine, the cute, openly gay prep school boy that Kurt has a crush on from minute one that he sees him. It's seems fairly clear that something's going to happen with them - they go every where together, Blaine has Kurt's coffee order memorized, they sing an incredibly flirty duet of "Baby It's Cold Outside"... Only to find out that Blaine honestly had no clue that Kurt had a crush on him, has never had a boyfriend before, only really been on one date with a guy who was really just a friend which ended up with him being beaten up by some guys for daring to go on a date, and so, because of his inexperience, really doesn't know the signs of someone showing romantic interest in him. This cluelessness is finally subverted by hearing Kurt sing, of all things, Blackbird by The Beatles while in mourning for a pet canary. It Makes Sense in Context and is absolutely adorable!
  • Taken to the next level with Coach Beiste, who has a huge crush on a college football recruiter but cannot fathom him being attracted to her. His many attempts to ask her out or otherwise show interest are completely rebuffed because she has no clue that's what they are.

Video Games

• King's Quest‍'‍s Alexander is a gentlemanly Tall, Dark and Handsome Prince Charming, who is often described as good-looking or even beautiful, and frequently has women (even non-human ones) gushing over/flirting with him. But he reacts to the attention with genuine embarrassment, bewilderment, and/or self-depreciation, as while he recognizes their interest he doesn't understand why, as he doesn't think he's anything special. And when he falls in love himself, he worries incessantly that the girl won't find him attractive/appealing.
• Tatsuya Suou from Persona 2. The boy is absolutely oblivious to the affections of his childhood friend Lisa Silverman - who he sees more as a Clingy Jealous Girl. His cop brother's not exempt from this, either. This even while they are both head over heels with Maya Amano.
  • Word of God confirms that his canon love interest is the very male Jun. It's part this, part he's simply not interested in Lisa like that.
• The Legend of Zelda: When Link isn't depicted as a flat-out Chaste Hero, he's sometimes depicted as being receptive of female attention but unable to detect any sort of romantic element in it (even though said element is painfully obvious to the player).
• Ryo Hazuki blows all other competition out of the water in this regard. He could practically receive a concussion from all the girls beating him over the head with their attraction to him, and he just. Doesn't. Get it.

Western Animation

• Donald Duck: Although in his youth, he was a bit of a Casanova, now he seems to have eyes only for his girlfriend, Daisy. But, in one cartoon, "Double Date Don", Daisy's neighbor Clara Cluck falls in love with him, with him mostly trying to fend her off and finish building Daisy a brick wall. This seems to happen in a few other cartoons as well. And in the comics, especially Double Duck and Paperinik New Adventures (more prominently in PK 2) Agent Kay K and his friend's love interest, Stella from their respective comic both flirt with him a little or praise him. And he doesn't quite know what to do with the attention.
• Although he occasionally plays the role of a Kidanova, Bart Simpson is usually surprisingly clueless about the effect he seems to have on girls, some of which are quite a few years older than him.