Writing Prompt #55: Mr. Perfect

The one thing every book on writing agrees on is this: when you're creating a protagonist, you can't make them perfectly good and they can't be good at everything.

The writers of Code Geass blatantly ignored this when they created Suzaku Kururugi.

This guy has no character hang-ups. At all. If he has a flaw, it's that he is too self-sacrificially good. Cats hate him, but he loves them anyway. The nation scorns him for his racial heritage and he loves and serves it anyway. His goal in life is to make peace so no more people have to die in war.

And it works, because he's the antagonist. It works because Suzaku's skills are all pitted against the side that we're rooting for. It works because he's so different from the hero we're watching throw people's lives away. It works because they use his self-sacrificing nature against us, and we hate his do-gooding because we love him too much to see him die.


How can you use a character who is intensely, overwhelmingly "good"?

Alternately, can you create an antagonist who we can root for as much as your hero?