The One Guy

The one on the left.

That's short for "The one guy associated with a team otherwise consisting entirely of females." No need to get rabid jealous, though, guys—this isn't the Harem Genre. At the most, The One Guy will be in a committed relationship with one of the members—or he wants to be. His membership can range from loose ally to close friend to part of the actual fighting team. Either that, or just some guy who rarely ever actually does anything other than serve as eye candy for the female viewers. He will usually be involved in plots that require guys, as well as be a non-threatening and harmless crush object for the assorted cast as needed. Could become The Face of the group if they have exceptional social skills.

The Spear Counterpart to The Smurfette Principle. Occasionally The Ditz, or serves the same purpose of rounding out the cast as The Face, and for equally uncertain reasons is less likely to occur on evil teams.

Remember, not all characters who serve as the only male in the group automatically count for this trope. If he is the main protagonist, he does not count as this trope.

Not to be confused with That One Guy or Those Two Guys, and unrelated to My Hero Zero.

Examples of The One Guy include:

Advertising

• Orangina mostly always have females, with the exception of four species, and in true fashion, they enjoy a Shirtless Scene in the ads.

Anime and Manga

• Kyohei of Burst Angel: official Dude In Distress and Non-Action Guy, took a part-time job as the team's chef.
• Pictured: Mamoru aka Tuxedo Kamen of Sailor Moon: Sailor Moon's Mysterious Protector and official love interest.
  • The Black Moon Clan in Sailor Moon R is one of the rare examples of this combination with villains. Predictably, Rubeus uses his charms to deliberately twist his minions.
  • Subverted later, when Rubeus is killed and we get introduced to the brothers Demando and Saphir, as well as Wiseman.
  • Dr. Tomoe of Sailor Moon S also falls into this category - he essentially commands the Witches 5, as well as Kaolinite. In the anime, he turns out to also be possessed, and winds up the only survivor from the Death Busters
• Tokyo Mew Mew has Masaya Aoyama aka Ai no Kishi/Blue Knight
• Kaito Doumoto of Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch almost does the same thing... almost.
• Erio in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha Striker S, who is also the only nominal lead male in the entire main group, and even then he's just a cute little boy with at best chaste ties (unless you ask the Doujin writers) to the newly introduced pink-haired teammate.
  • There's also Yuuno and Chrono, but they were relegated to sidekicks (at best) in A's and only have a couple of cameos in Striker S, and Zafira, who doesn't count anymore because he had to spend all the third season as a dog.
• Mackie in Bubblegum Crisis. Sorta joined by Nigel in 2040.
• Coco and Nuts of Yes! Precure 5, when they're not the Talking Animal mascots. Season two adds Syrup, another shapeshifting mascot.
• Asuta from Kashimashi: Girl Meets Girl...er, ultimately.
• Yuuji in Bamboo Blade. Considering the only other males around him are Coach Koujiro and Dan, who has a girlfriend, he's mostly ignored, and he does lampshade this fact.
• There are several men on Martian Successor Nadesico, but only one, Jun Aoi, who is a regular member of the bridge crew (as opposed to a civilian who hangs out on the bridge giving Expospeak or looking ominous). Akito's also the only male member of the kitchen staff and, for about a third of the series, the only male pilot - however, being the male lead, he doesn't really fit this trope.
• Kyoutaro from Saki. He's the only guy in the Mahjong Club and, from what it seems, the only teenage male in the entire series. He's treated more like Yuki's errand boy, if anything.
• Azumanga Daioh's own Kimura-sensei.
• Akemiya from Sasameki Koto who also blurs this trope by being a Wholesome Crossdresser.
• Makoto from Amanchu, being Ai's hapless twin brother.
• Komachi from Chu-Bra. Thanks to his big mouth, he's the only guy in the Underwear Appreciation Society, and Nayu and her friends are clearly more interested in debating which type of panties fit them best than paying much attention to Komachi.
• Although he's the main character, Shinkuro of Kure-nai is also the only heroic recurring male character. All of the other major characters are female, of varying ages.
• Kada is The One Guy from the Koihime Musou anime. He shows up in a handful episodes during the second and third season and is the only character that is both heroic and male in the series. All other males are villains, mooks, or just not very good at fighting.
• Akira in Ai Ore Love Me is the only boy in an otherwise all-girls band. Ironically, he's the one with the most feminine looks.
• Mikiya is the only recurring male character among the protagonists of Kara no Kyoukai:. He's also a Non-Action Guy.

Comic Books

• Chase Stein of Runaways was the only boy in the group for a short time. Non-powered (after he lost the fistigons); drove the Leapfrog; dated Gert, the girl with the dinosaur.
• Hawk is the only guy in the 2010 relaunch of the historically all-female Birds of Prey. Obviously, it's because Hawk and Dove are a package deal and his bird motif certainly fits in otherwise.

Live-Action TV

• Buffy the Vampire Slayer played this to the hilt, with the Scooby Gang's makeup became increasingly female starting with Season 5. After Spike left near the end of Season 6, Xander was temporarily the only male Scooby in Sunnydale (until Giles returned in the last episode). The male demographic increased in Season 7 with the return of Spike, but the arrival of the Potentials permanently shifted things towards the female side.
  • Xander lampshades this in one episode when he says that the Magic Box is like "NORAD, and we're at DEFCON 1" and the room full of women just stare back at him, prompting him to sigh "I so need male friends."
  • Continued in Buffy Season 8, at which point Xander is pretty much the only guy in the gang—which now includes a whole bunch more women.
    • Plus Andrew and, albeit temporarily, Dracula of all people.
• Anthony Bouvier of Designing Women.
• VIP has Quick. Being black also makes him a Twofer Token Minority in that series.
• Leo from Charmed, sometimes (male police officers were sometimes prominent, and there was Cole whenever he was on the good side of the Heel Face Revolving Door.)
• Bosley in Charlie's Angels
• WWE's "Santina Marella" during the "Miss Wrestlemania 25" match.
• Cute Kipp, the only male member of TNA´s The Beautiful People
• Army Wives has four army wives and one army husband. But to be fair, the military husbands and military wife are prominent characters as well, so it feels more like an even gender balance.
• In Pushing Daisies, out of the main six characters, only two are male (although two of the women are missing from a fair few episodes).
• Henry Rush in the 1980s sitcom Too Close for Comfort. Subverted in the second season when Jim J. Bullock (Monroe Ficus) was promoted to series regular status.
• Warehouse 13 has a 2:4 ratio of men to women as major members of the recurring cast. Pete and Artie are the only regular men, in relation to Myka, Leena, Claudia, and Mrs. Frederic all as important female characters established in the series. As well, the council which oversees the administration of the warehouse is about an even split in genders.
  • Season 3 changes this ratio a bit, for a while.
• Wade of Noah's Arc. Though the cast is made up of guys, Wade is by far the most masculine and lacks the "girlfriends" dynamic that the rest of the group share. He's also used for fanservice VERY frequently, as opposed to the main four cast members. And he's in a relationship with Noah.
• Allen Anderson of the regular kids on Punky Brewster. He left at the start of season 3 (and boy, did it break Punky's heart).
• In New Girl Schmidt is this at his job. Rather than a dream job for him, though, his work is dismissed, he's sexually harassed by his superiors, and treated as being inferior to all the women at his job. Not played for laughs all the time.

Literature

• Theodore "Laurie" Lawrence of Little Women: next-door neighbor, in love with Jo, got over it (despite the screams of the fandom), fell in love with and married her sister Amy.
• Logan of The Babysitters Club: Mary-Anne's boyfriend.
  • And later, Ducky in the California Diaries. But he obviously didn't enjoy the fruits of a harem situation.
• Damian in The House of Night, who also counts as a Token Minority, since he's gay.
• The first series of Tamora Pierce's Circle of Magic quartet has Briar Moss as the only dude. They even live with two foster mothers, with Niko visiting only occasionally.
• The Gunnery Officer on the ScreeWee ship in Only You Can Save Mankind. Since ScreeWee gender politics are exactly opposite to human ones, he's inclined to over-compensate.
• In the Discworld book Monstrous Regiment, the lieutenant turns out to be the only male in the entire squad.
• Mark is the only boy in the family in Half Magic.

Video Games

• Touhou has such a powerful Fundamentally Female Cast that even these guys are marginalised. The only known males in Gensoukyou aside from briefly-mentioned background characters are Genji (Reimu's former assistant, hasn't been seen since the PC-98 games), Unzan (Ichirin's assistant, doesn't have a single line), and Rinnosuke (only appears in one Expanded Universe manga). Word of God is that there are plenty of males, it's just that most of them don't fight so the player doesn't see them.
• "Miss X" in SNK's Gals Fighter. He's really just Iori Yagami wearing a mask and a schoolgirl uniform. Nobody buys it.
• Emon Five, one of the selectable heroes in Otomedius, is literally the only male shown in the entire game. The other characters on the team don't seem to know why he's even there.
• Shikanosuke from Kira Kira and in the sequel, Curtain Call. d2b is an all girls band and he is forced to crossdress for most of the original game and at the end of the sequel
• In Final Fantasy V, Bartz becomes That One Guy of the party when Galuf is replaced by Krile.

Web Comics

• Zaebos from Earthsong.
• Nenshe from Rumors of War qualifies in the absence of Obadai, as the latter has yet to actively participate in the story.
• When Electric Wonderland began, the roster of main characters consisted of three women and one male: NJ. Two more males, Torro and Parker, joined in the second comic, but Parker got swiftly Put on a Bus. Also, Torro rarely contributes anything worthwhile to the characters' adventures, for being Too Dumb to Live. This results in NJ still holding this title most of the time.

Web Original

• Whateley Universe has Lancer, the only guy in Team Kimba, however there are plenty of reoccuring male characters outside Team Kimba. Also somewhat subverted in that Lancer used to be female.
  • Phase is another guy on Team Kimba, but most people wouldn't know that looking at him, due to his mutation turning him into an intersexed hot chick physically. He gets almost as much pronoun confusion as the J-Team out of it.

Western Animation

• Caleb of WITCH: The Sixth Ranger, Badass Normal love interest for Cornelia and in the comics, for Queen Elyon.
• She Ra Princess of Power featured Archer and Master of Illusion Bow. Bow is one of the only recurring non-villain male character, besides He-Man's frequent cameos. The vast majority of enslaved townspeople the Rebellion rescues are male. The Sea Hawk and his crew. And there's Kowl and Light Hope; none of them human and none of them even remotely likely to be Love Interest to anyone, but both of them male and both of them major enough characters to be explicitly mentioned in the opening.
• My Little Pony and Friends has Spike, at least until Danny comes along.
• My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic has Spike again, although in Season 2 Big Macintosh was promoted to share this slot with Spike, usually trading off. If one is missing chances are the other one is hanging around.
• Huckleberry Pie from Strawberry Shortcake.
• Rick in Polly Pocket. He's the only boy among Polly's closest friends.
• Tuck is the only male member of the Wonder Pets.