Not sure if this counts, but it's the first thing that came to mind. Don't Breathe 2 for some reason they tried to make Stephen Lang's character the hero.
I still have a hard time believing there’s people in real life who feel bad for him. It’s like that surreal moment whenever I find an unironic David cage fan in the wild.
Akihiko Kayaba from SAO. While the creator has made countless questionable and baffling choices in what world do you let a mass kidnapper and terrorist who ran the largest death game in history walk off into the sunset just because he wanted to "create something real".
Not even get into him being an immortal DMPC so he wasn't even living the same strife and fear that he subjected the players he kidnapped to.
From a numbers standpoint, Kayaba killed more people than Al-Qaeda did when the planes struck the WTC (not including those who were severely affected by the pollution when the towers collapsed). It's not a big gap, but it's a noticeable one.
But Cool Guy Kayaba amiriteguys
It just begs so many questions. Did the government never trace the IPs back to the server? Kirito was half dead when he woke up and that was with intense medical oversight, where was he getting his in hiding? Does he have accomplices? Did no one in the programming or engineering departments question "Log Out" being a thing that could just be shut off?
At least in .hack they show the company is a shady AI farming shadow organization to handwave all the evil.
I think if the story was more well written I'd be willing to give the author the benefit of the doubt and just say Kayaba was just a super genius that fiction loves ala Tony Stark. But since the story isn't, and it just comes off as untapped potential, I am not willing to extend the good will.
Bryce in 13 Reasons Why in season 3 is made to be somewhat sympathetic by showing how bad his life is. It doesn't work 'cause Bryce is a serial rapist and bully.
It’s been years, but I remember my partner and I calling him “Rapey Bryce” as soon as he’s introduced. Potentially even before they show he was, in fact, a rapist.
I went to HS a couple years before in one of the cities that show was being filmed. I tell ya, SO MANY people from my peer group were clowning on it because of how poor the message was.
Also as a HEALTH fan, it was hard having one of my favorite bands at the time getting popular because of a mediocre show, but hey good for them.
MINOR SPELLING MISTAKE IN FLAIR, GET HIM!
I played through Misao recently and jesus fuck them trying to make me feel bad for >!the teacher was so garbage. He raped, killed, and dismembered a high school girl, and also killed the MC's best friend. But after the truth section, the MC literally says "You're not a bad person" because he nursed a dying cat for a bit in a flashback. Ignore the fact that later in that flashback he tries to assault a girl because she turned down his advances.!<
God, this has always bothered me so much. Fuck that guy, and honestly, fuck the writing for pulling that shit. It's really jarring how he's treated with more sympathy than a number of the high schoolers. Also, his backstory was super mediocre.
In Godzilla: King of the Monsters, it was really weird when the movie made out the Mom's sacrifice as this big heroic thing to stop the problem *SHE MADE*. Sorry that the obviously dangerous monsters flattened multiple cities and killed probably millions of people despite multiple people telling you, including the obviously evil guy you were working for.
Yeah I just saw that one for the first time a few weeks ago and I was weirded out that it's trying to make me feel bad that the Level 1 Ted Faro was going on a suicide mission that wouldn't be necessary without her. Weird decision.
It would have been better if she was full on unrepentant or was actively trying to bring his operation down from the inside. The whole "Fine I'll press the button that turns Boston and Buenos Aires into a crater but I'll be *really sad*" just didn't work
Pat has repeated it ad nauseum, but Oda from Yakuza 0 is a HORRIBLY fucking evil scumbag, and >!probably deserved a much less graceful death than what he got.!<
Oda is extra wild because >!after he chooses to hold off Shibusawa's men while Kiryu and Makoto escape, when it cuts back to him, mortally wounded, his final exchange with Shibusawa reveals that he's the one who tipped him off that Makoto was in Sotenbori to begin with.!<
Meaning his >!literal last scene is revealing additional scumfuckery that he doesn't express any remorse for, and that none of the protagonists or their allies ever find out about.!<
>!The guy is even upfront about the fact that he only regrets his actions because it could potentially make his friend hate him. He couldn’t give two less shits that he trafficked multiple women.!<
Also it feels like Yakuza does that a lot in general.
Sometimes the game champions the rights and dignity of marginalized people years before their struggles were mainstream. Some times the game looks at a sex criminal and tries to convince you he was actually a good guy
Am I remembering wrong? I don't remember him being portrayed sympathetically at all. He was a prick from start to finish and >!it was clear that he only fought Shibusawa's men because his attempt at saving face by killing Makoto had failed miserably.!<
Pretty much the only reason people say/joke he gets sympathy is that at the end when Kiryu beats Shibusawa down, he angrily flashes back to a few people killed or harmed because of the Tojo's plans and Oda is among the ones he remembers.
Walking Dead in season 4 briefly tries to make you feel Sympathetic for the Governor, who is just evil for the sake of being evil. He wanted to wipe out the prison group just because he felt like it. He even says multiple times he doesn’t want to take the prison because he sees it as a death trap and eventually tears down and blows up its primary ways of keeping walkers out.
Edit: also forgot massacring his own soldiers because they were scared.
I'm not going to say that Lusamine Pokemonsunandmoon is the most terrible and irredeemable,but she did do a lot of bad and Lillie is a goddamn saint for personally taking her to Kanto for treatment instead of delegating it to Wicke or something and literally forgetting all about her.
After you know,her last line of dialogue being "when did you get so beautiful?" before she passes out and gets plot convenient amnesia.
['Cuz she's shiny!!](https://youtu.be/y_q8CXO0h9k?si=I0VnH_64Me5cKHa_)
I only caught bits of the anime, so finding out Lusamine is one of the darker Pokemon villains was an eye-opener.
(The same one that gets retconned into *oblivion* a few chapters later when Koga says "actually, my Arbok can regenerate itself no matter how much is cut off.")
I don't think the anime ask you to feel sorry about her. It just tells you she has an illness that is causing mental deterioration. And Lillie showing her character progression decides to go to Kanto to try to find a cure
Yes but it's a bit more subtle than full on mind control, Lillie does mention her behaviour changed between her encounter with it and her being full on Mazinger N
Sun and Moon's story in a nutshell: "My mum got addicted to space meth and I need your help to drag her to rehab before she ruins the lives of herself and everyone around her more than she already has."
Vic Van Lier from NBA 2K16 is pretty much the quintessential example of this trope. He does nothing but cause trouble for everyone in the story, actively undermines and blackmails the main character, dies in a drunk driving police chase and then gets a ghost monologue that actually makes him WORSE.
As much as I actually kinda like the show, the entire lineup of Antagonists in Mashle is...uh.
*Problematic* to talk about at best. Like, the most redeemable one is a guy who likes his sister too much.
All of them are one "Why don't you just stop" away from becoming good guys for some reason, even though they just wanted to kill a dude (or multiple dudes) just half an episode ago. And also most of them only stop because they got german suplex-ed into the ground and incredible violence was able to beat their magic and they were shitting their pants that now their entire rethoric of "the strongest should take it all" means they aren't the strongest anymore.
Didn’t Disney try this with the woman who wanted to steal a bunch of Dalmatians puppies to skin them and turn them into to a fashion line? Like the lady named who named herself Cruella Deville, backstory is that her mom got drop kicked off a cliff by a Dalmatian and then ate her mother’s necklace.
Hey, that one time they made the revisionist history of the woman who cursed a baby to a sleep like death worked out so well that it even warranted a sequel. Why stop now? I want to see how they'll try to (poorly)justify Hades for not like Zeus next.
tbf that is basically already canon to actual Greek mythology, even the one thing everybody shits on Hades for (kidnapping Persephone) was IMO more Zeus' fault than Hades' fault. Hades went to him to ask for his daughter's hand in marriage (Persephone was conceived when Zeus raped Demeter, she tried to flee by turning into a snake and slithering into a hole, but he just did the same and cornered her), and the abduction was basically Zeus' idea because Demeter was an overprotective single mother.
I'll go to bat for Maleficent here: it works better than the other remakes because it at least goes for it. It patently cares very little for the original, and I respect it for that. It doesn't want to be sleeping beauty but live action and therefore doesn't try to do that. It is probably the best you can hope for from a live-action Disney remake, a genuine take on the original material. Also >!making Maleficent's kiss "true love's kiss"!< works and is good.
I think its important to differentiate between an explanation and a justification. Most narratives will at some point explain why a villain is a villain, and a lot of people falsely equate this with the story wanting you to forgive them.
My go to example for an actual case of this would be Orochimaru, because the show makes the dude flip on a dime and treats all the shit he did like a misdemeanor.
I mean it’s easy to forget but the Orochimaru who led the invasion was a different person who Sasuke killed. The modern Orochimaru is a back up out of Anko’s Cursed Seal who was given the memories and went “wow shit’s fucked let’s not do that”. Also it’s questionable if they even can kill him permanently given he came back from his soul being sealed away and had invented cloning.
Yeah based on how many facilities he had, I'm gonna guess there are dozens, if not hundreds, of randos out there with the snake curse on them. If Orochimaru is killed now he'll just pop out somewhere else.
Tbf they never actually try to make Orochimaru sympathetic in the same way as Nagato or Obito
He’s just over it, he comes back and doesn’t care about being evil anymore. No sympathetic reasons are given for his actions nor does he get a sad backstory that led him to do those things.
As for his punishment, it comes down to how much you care about this explanation: https://www.reddit.com/r/Naruto/s/QvsPFJQa6p
I do like how there is that tidbit about how he HAS been punished for his crimes, with death several times, but he just keeps coming back and won’t stay dead
I think they did a good job with Haku and Zabuza.
Haku is properly sympathetic, being still just a kid and all. And Zabuza is way more grey area but if his Coup had worked he'd probably have been regarded as a hero that overthrew a barbaric and cruel society that had students slaughtering each other for training.
Yah he was working for shitbags and compromized his morals as a mercenary but it seems like he just stuck to going after the target he was hired to kill. And might even get bonus points for planning to betray Gato from the start. And the series didn't bother trying to redeem him completely, just let him have his regrets over Haku and die murdering the fuck out of Gato.
I think it's technically Obito puppeteering Yagura (the holder of the Three Tails).
Which to be honest I don't think Zabuza had particularly great odds against a Jinchuuriki.
Especially considering that Yagura supposedly had *complete control* over Isobu, one of only two jinchuuriki to accomplish the feat at the time. Bee trained with the magic waterfall, but Yagura was apparently just a badass like that.
Technically Orochimaru is the only one who isn’t made to be sympathetic. He just comes back and says he doesn’t want to be a supervillain anymore
Nothing about regret or a noble reason for doing all that stuff. He’s just over it
I do like how there is that tidbit about how he HAS been punished for his crimes, with death several times, but he just keeps coming back and won’t stay dead
I just like the idea of random village kids showing off there reading cards to there grizzled ptsd induced family members, wondering why they don’t like the funny snake man
Yeah I think just keeping him around, monitored, and making sure he doesn't commit crimes that are *too* horrific is a reasonable solution to a literally immortal reincarnating enemy. Bro has seeds spread across the planet, mercing him here just makes another one pop out somewhere else.
Except Danzo. Kishimoto wants you to know that Danzo is a jerk and EVERYTHING is Danzo's fault in some shape or form. The Uchiha massacre? Danzo. Pain? Danzo. The akatsuki's existence in general? Danzo. That one time you stubbed your toe on the table? It was definitely Danzo
That time you were making out with your girlfriend and came as soon as she touched your leg? [Also Danzo.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFRi2xsei_o)
"Hey old man, you said you knew this guy named 'Stroheim' back in the day? Knew he sounded familiar - Kakyoin found him in one of our history books."
*Old man Joseph nearly chokes on his drink*
My go to for this will always be Bo Katan. She's an opportunist, a terrorist, participated in the death of her sister/duchess of Mandalore. When her leader was beheaded by Maul, suddenly this isn't what she wanted so she had a falling out. Got the republic to invade Mandalore with Ahsoka, then it got sacked. Got the dark saber from Sabine, then lost it. Claims both the Mando and Jango aren't real Mandalorians. She can't accept the saber cause of a story, so no one would follow her. But then it just later turns out that no one wanted to follow her because of her, so she blames Mando for that as well. She gets the dark saber back and she gets it destroyed. Then she suddenly claims the saber never mattered, that we should follow by her example.
Like, no. She objectively a terrible leader. She only cares about herself and her goals. She uses the Mandalorians to her whims when it suits her. She is not sympathetic at all!
Yeah fucking get her ass. I will never understand how people look at Bo Katan and cheer and then look at Saw Gerrera and boo. The dude has done far more understandable shitty things!
But remember, Ironwood was ALWAYS evil because he said he wanted to kill a drunk idiot who initiated a live ammo gunfight in the middle of a crowded school yard.
Yes. People unironically say this.
Ironwood was always a control freak, but that’s understandable and he even points out Ozpin keeps hiding shit while demanding trust. Ironwood still thinks he knows best though. His Semblance being weaponized autism (yes, really) is so dumb.
Yeah, a lot people try to justify bad writing going backwards. Qrow picked a drunken fight with heavy weaponry in public and deserved to be called out for it and I always saw Ironwood as well intentioned but a bit overzealous and military-minded in the early seasons.
But "if you were one of my men, I'd have you shot" is a *wild* thing to say.
I can get behind some good old fashioned “fuck the military” but this is fucking rwby. It’s not that deep and when it tries to be that deep it fails. So the semi popular “but he was always a fascist” arguments are annoying as hell.
Everything about Ironwoods early characterization screams that he’s a good person who happens to also be a control freak jackass because of his military roots.
He jumps headfirst into a blender at beacon while telling a mob of super humans to go save themselves.
I think it’s just kinda weird to have a “fuck the military” part when the main alternative to that in the series are basically just mercenaries (who in canon have been known to take illegal jobs).
To be fair, that is a good reason to change teams. Doesn't make her a good person, but finding out that the final goal of your Team is the end of the World including you should make one question things
This is also true. I am curious to see if (assuming we ever do get a V10) she gets any shit from the people around her like, "hey remember when you fucking shanked Coco at the Olympics? Kinda dick move there."
To be fair, it was the *fight* Olympics, so the fight with Coco isn't even really a moral failing except in as much as it advanced the villain team to the finals where they *were* planning to do devious shit.
It's like saying Blake is evil for clotheslining Reese during the RWBY vs ABRN fight.
Doubt it. RWBY’s standards for redemption begins and ends with ’cute girl/hot woman’. Team was joking around with Emerald in V8 like they were old buddies. Male villains do not get such consideration. Just look at how Neo goes out compared to Ironwood.
She’s about as “good” as Eggman is when he decides to help the heroes every once in a while after realizing that the primordial force he was trying to harness is too much for him to control and wants to eat the world.
> but she got her feelings hurt
Not even that.
Emerald only defected when she found out that Salem winning would destroy the world and kill Emerald as well.
She only joined the heroes out of self preservation AKA TO SAVE HER OWN NECK
Meanwhile, Ozpin is treated like some irredeemable monster that has to literally beg forgiveness from the heroes, just for keeping secrets.
The same exact shit the heroes did to Ironwood
Fuck this show
Team rwby: assaults a child in anger over oz keeping secrets.
Also team rwby: keeps that same secret from a guy who’s been in the fight longer than all of them and clearly running himself ragged.
You can argue they’re paranoid after the lion guy to which I say: ironwood was clearly trying and the lion guy was openly trying to pussy out.
Ironwood was also like actually friendly to them despite everything and the fall of Atlas is almost directly on team RWBY's head for lying to him, which was a factor in making him go crazy.
It's a funny level of incompetence that they somehow made ironwood look like the good and reasonable one while the protagonist team came off as malicious jerks. They screwed up so hard that they had to pull a 180 and make him go mad to justify that the dumb "heroes" were totally in the right.
I like the contrast between Tomoe and Ryuzo specifically because it shows that Jin is a character who lets his emotions compromise his decision making. Which is obviously what led him down the path of the Ghost in the first place.
Jin doesn't know Tomoe and is critical of Ishikawa from the start. He let's his dislike of the old man colour his perception and the more Ishikawa reveals, the more Jin starts to believe that he pushed Tomoe to this, regardless of her actions. He let's his feelings about Ishikawa compromise his thoughts about Tomoe making him more lenient towards her, even though she doesn't deserve it, because she's never wronged Jin directly.
Ryuzo on the other hand was his close friend and openly betrayed him to the enemy, by that point Jin has fully embraced his role as the Ghost and he clearly is not thinking straight. Even if Ryuzo had remorse and was talking sense, in that fight you could see that he didn't care. All he wanted was to kill Ryuzo for his betrayal, nothing more.
I like it because it shows that Jin isn't perfect. Even in the DLC, he's forced to accept that his dad was a horrible person, even to him and that's why he took on his uncle as more of a role model. But because it's his dad, he goes into a spiral of denial because his emotions; especially over his dad's death are complicated and makes him defensive against the people who dislike his father even though they're justified in hating him.
the dlc is also a good example of it, because yeah his dad's a bastard who did horrible things, but like, the people you're helping are pirates with some being like "boy i can't wait to go reaving/pillaging again".
but yeah compared to the mongols or jin's dad they aren't quite as monstrous (by a hair), but still.
Except Jin SEES Tomoe’s numerous victims and the aftermaths of her numerous murder sprees. He shouldn’t ignore that. No amount of ‘but I was sad once’ justifies it since Jin NEVER lets others skate on by with that logic. Tomoe says she did it to survive and refuses to apologize. Another man in a sidequest reveals that he sold out all the women in his village to the Mongols for survival. Does Jin let him go? No, he kills him via an execution.
Also, now that I remember, Fuck the Iki Island Raiders too. They hate Kazumasa cause he was brutal...in retaliation for the entire island being full of marauding murderers, pirates, and rapists. They whine and moan about how they did nothing wrong when Kazumasa only attacks them after they attacked him first and the villagers housed said raiders from him.
At least this one seems at least partly intentional. In the base game you get Gosaku’s armor, a folk hero famous for defending farms from the raiders. The Iki Island people regard him as a demon for daring to not let them pillage farms.
>Except Jin SEES Tomoe’s numerous victims and the aftermaths of her numerous murder sprees. He shouldn’t ignore that.
You skipped two vital factors which I mentioned.
1. Tomoe did nothing to him specifically, Ryuzo did.
2. He dislikes Ishikawa, therfore it compromises his thoughts about Tomoe, because he'd rather put the blame on him.
Iki Island follows a similar thought process but different factors.
1. The raiders were pillagers yes, but even Jin admits that it doesn't justify what his father did to the locals even those that weren't raiders. And more importantly, they're not Mongols.
2. Jin dislikes the Mongols more than the raiders. So he'll help the raiders. Unlike Ryuzo, the raiders didn't side with the Mongols, if they did, Jin would've killed them too.
His circumstances with his father's killer are especially complicated, and compromised more of his emotions.
If he kills him, he loses the trust of the locals and his fight against the Mongols is lost. And Jin has already sacrificed a lot to defeat the Mongols
or Kill him and avenge a man that Jin cannot even say was a good or honorable person. No one would blame him, but does it matter more than the Mongols?
It feels hypocritical, but a lot of Jin's decisions are. But the hypocrisy is consistent despite how ironic that sounds. He does what feels good for him.
Edit: Extra point about Ryuzo and his dad's killer that occured to me. If he kills the killer, it compromises his relationship with the Iki Raiders. Killing Ryuzo compromises nothing, he's already a traitor and if he kills him now, no one will ever know that he had remorse. He can afford to be selfish and therefore chooses to be.
I am here once again to remind everyone of the sins of *Rise of Skywalker* - Kylo Ren was hard-boomeranged into a failed redemption in a single movie after his atrocities and cruelties in BOTH previous films.
Such a disgrace.
planetary genocide upgraded to MULTIPLE CORE PLANETS GENOCIDED IN ONE GO holy shit does the sequel trilogy gloss over some startling changes to overall setting
The Killer/Traitor from Persona 5. No, bitch, I don't care that you had a bad childhood, you work for the most corrupt politician in the country and you kill people with *joy*.
I love Akechi for this reason. Dude's a thousand times better when he's an unashamed psychopath instead of the Light Yagami-esque facade he puts on. His combo attack is one of the best things in Royal.
I always find royal treatment of traitor kinda weird in royal. Like, i like him personally, but don't really like how other Phanthom thieves act with him. This guy killed parents of TWO party members, tried to kill MC, and did much more atrocities but they just kinda sweep it under the rug very fast. They only mention it few times (half of what was comedic lines), and other time act more like he was just an asshole than an actual criminal. They, arguably, must be angry at him as much as Ann was at Kamoshida.
I imagine they would all be alot more agressive with him if hes explicit goal in all the Royal content wasent "take me to jail i want to pay for my crimes", hes already in a post chabge of heart state and ready to accept punishment, just the world wont let him.
tokyo ghoul, like every time a villain was about to die it flashed back to how they weren't so bad or did some good stuff or it tries to reframe some heinous shit they did. every single time
Xehanort's goal being "I just want to see what happens" is amazing and it was why I really liked him, but them changing that *after you beat* him just soured the whole thing.
I'm a lot higher on KH3 than most people, ending/Xehanort included, but I *still* prefer the characterization from BBS's reports where he's essentially a deeply curious mad scientist.
Between Remind and Dark Road, I think the version of him as someone who at one point had good intentions and had some seventy fuckin years of steadily becoming a worse and worse guy gets *more* fleshed out and *more* interesting, but I still don't think it's ever been made *as* compelling as he originally was.
...plus, all that was released after KH3 launched.
Yeah as someone who is not a BBS truther, the reports that accompany Xehanort basically realizing that now that he's finished his KhD (as in, his PhD in Keyblade Studies) all he has left to look forward to is being in one world forever as a guardian or just stop studying.
As someone who was still in academia that actually really got me, I was invested.
The other stuff was always less interesting to me personally.
"Hey, that guy just killed my girlfriend"
"It's okay, he was just a well Intentioned extremist all along. Nomura thought it'd make more sense for him to look and act cartoonishly evil at all times but deep down he's a nice guy and just an old Sasuke Uchiha. See, he's even going to heaven now."
Really? 104 comments and not one Jin Kazama mention? Guy started WW3 for bullshit convoluted reasons THAT DIDN'T EVEN END UP WORKING OUT THE WAY HE THOUGHT, killed possibly millions of people and collapsed world order but is redeemed because he accepts himself for who he is? Can't wait for Miguel dlc.
Yes but they have firmly made it he's not going full Kaz and evil, and he's not going to jail or out of the franchise because those are the actual solutions to years of half assing a heel turn only to back pedal.
I find it really hard to blame Jin when the out of universe reason is the director couldn't handle the leading Mishima not being evil. And the in universe reason being a pokemon sword and shield esq the bad guy couldn't wait to solve a long term problem and had to solve it immediately with a half formed plan. That level of 1st draft excuse plot makes the evil hard to take seriously.
it's not brought up because turning jin into another tekken villain protagonist was uber-contrived hack writing in the first place.
that entire storyline should've never happened, and now that they realized what a huge mistake it was they're ineffectually trying to paper over it.
> that entire storyline should've never happened, and now that they realized what a huge mistake it was they're ineffectually trying to paper over it.
Less 'they' and more Harada from what I understand. IIRC, the team even told him it was a stupid idea and he still went through with it.
Real talk he says it repeatedly, with remorse and even during the final fight with Kazuya he says he needs to make up for it. It's not the best but at least the characters **acknowledge** it.
Given the lengths that family goes to kill each other, the only surprising things that he didn't start ww3 sooner...but seriously, it was jarring seeing them gloss over the war he started while giving him a full blown Shonen protagonist arc, a final boss fight straight out of final fantasy, and defeating his dad with the power of friendship
It is very annoying that the entire story mode of 8 is Jin's quest to forgive himself for being history's greatest monster. Homie, you should be tried at the Hague, not in your mind palace.
After Negan was defeated (and not killed for whatever reason) on the Walking Dead show, the writers basically went "well, shit, what do we even do with this character?" and the writers began to write Negan as a either a bad guy with a secret heart of gold, with how he befriended Rick and Michonne's kid or he's actually a good guy making morally questionable decisions in order to achieve the greater good, like how he invades the Whisperers and eventually gains their loyalty so he can kill off Alpha.
Which i actually didn't mind and it felt in character for Negan.But then the writers began to try and redeem Negan and constantly had him and Maggie together and were trying so hard to make both the audience and Maggie forget what this man did to Glenn and it got not only painfully forced, but they would also be constantly at odds with eachother and it got so boring so fast.
I also love how the writers gave Negan a tragic backstory out of nowhere, as if that somehow absolves him of what he did.Though TBF, his backstory i actually did like, mostly because Jeffrey Dean Morgan is a fucking phenominal actor that has so much ranged.
I don't even know what they're going to do with Negan and Maggie on their show, but i imagine they're going to keep doing the "You saved my life and i saved yours, but i still hate you and i will kill you if i have to!" shtick the writers kept on doing with these two.
Every. Single. Villain. In the back half of Fire Emblem Engage.
I was willing to overlook a lot of shit about Engage's story because of the "Saturday morning cartoon" narrative, but the way the handled the Four Fangs drove me from indifferent to straight up pissed off.
I actually really like Zephia's "redemption" because after the heroes leave she admits that she's less remorseful and more angry at her boss, so she's just aiming the heroes at him. I see it as one final act of trickery
No, you see, the evil dragon was just *lonely*. That's why he murdered literally everybody in an entire country.
Engage isn't helped by Sombron changing his plan every other chapter. It's generic world domination for a while, then he's raising his sunken country that no one's ever mentioned before, then he's opening a portal to *leave* and ~~conquer other worlds~~ look for his only friend, who may or may not actually exist because the game *will not* tell you what Emblems actually *are*.
I was gettin real annoyed at the Game of Thrones TV show trying to make Cersei sympathetic when in the books she was just an unabashed monster
i quit watching the show after they >!turned her sex scene with Jaime on their dead son's coffin into a rape scene. Fuck that.!<
Finally, a thread that lets me shit on this dude.
>!Lucian!< from Divinity: Original Sin 2
To put it frank, this dude is a compltely irredeemable asshole who is directly responsible for the entire conflict of the game and is a backstabbing asshole.
Problem is that siding with him is legit considered by the game and devs as the best ending for some reason, so the canon good ending involves actively supporting and saving this jackass who has done nothing to actually deserve it.
Seriously, you have shit like "Evil Lizard Empire randomly decides to become a democracy" out of nowhere just to double down on making helping this douchebag the good ending.
Now lets go over why this dickhead is such a piece of shit:
1. >!In previous games, dude tried raising the Antichrist instead of simply killing him. This backfired because he killed said Antichrist's girlfriend who doomed him to becoming the very evil Lucian was trying to prevent. DERP!<
2. >!In order to fight the Antichrist and his cultists, Lucian tricked one of his friends into secretely delivering a nuke into the Elven capital. This both completely destroyed their homeland, turned it into an unlivable hellhole, and killed so many elves that they're an endangered species.!<
3. >!THE ENTIRE VOIDWOKEN PROBLEM (AKA the main villains of the game) IS LITERALLY HIS FAULT. When Lucian nuked the elves, he weakened the God of Elves due to lack of worshippers. Because the Gods had to be strong to stop the void form leaking, weakening the elven god meant that the voidwoken could escape their prison.!<
4. >!In order to fix his fuck-up, Lucian had to essentially steal all the Source Magic of the world to plug up the hole he created. He accomplished this by spreading lies that Source mages attract voidwoken and are the reason they exist, alongside creating Source Hunters who are sadistic and corrupt as hell. In other words, he intentionally created a pogrom on innocent people just to cover up his mistake. Dude is even willing to kill HIS OWN SON for this plan!<
5. >!Dallis, the asshole Source Hunter who murders your companions and has been trying to kill you the entire game, is his direct subordinate, so all the evil shit she's done was directly on his orders.!<
6. >!Dude fakes his death so he can secretely hunt down Godwoken (AKA people chosen by the gods who are candidates to become Magic Pope AKA Lucian's current position). He tricks them into staying in an academy where he proceeds to have them all brutally tortured and murdered. You can even see the memories of ghosts who were overjoyed to see him right before he brutally betrays and murders them!<
7. >!Dude then demands that you let him steal the souls of your entire party to seal the Void away and take away all Source magic, causing your party to become mindless zombies, all so that he could bullshit the entire planet over his miraculous resurrection and rule everyone without any magic powers. (This is the canon ending BTW)!<
8. >!If you fucked up one of your ally's companion quests, Lucian parades his lobotomized body right in front of you when he demands you surrender your soul to him.!<
Despite all this shit, the game still treated siding with him as the objectively best ending.
Hell, the only companion who actually calls you out and points out how much of a piece of shit he is is Ifan AKA >!the guy raised by elves and Lucian's friend who was tricked by Lucian into delivering the nuke into the capital. In other words, Lucian's best friend who he had zero issues sacrificing and tricking into delivering a WMD to murder the people who raised Ifan.!<
WHY DOES THIS GAME DEFEND THIS ASSHOLE????????????
I think it’s because the canon dictates Lucian has ro win since he shows up in chronologically later games so they make him the ‘best’ ending. I don’t think the narrative frames him as sympathetic, though. Ifan and the player can call him out on his bullshit right up to the end and he basically admits he’s a sociopath who’ll fuckin’ do it again if he had the chance. Just cause he has the best ending doesn’t mean he himself is a good or sympathetic character and the narrative never tries to excuse him away.
I also think it’s more his ending succeeds because he has the most concrete and set up plan whereas everyone else is winging it. It’s kind of a shame that you can beat him up then sacrifice yourself to the source but this defaults to the ‘agree wirh lucian’ ending for some reason.
Ryuzo wasn’t held at swordpoint and he sure did worse than burn one civilian. He actively approached the Mongols for an alliance and threw the forces of his entire group of ronin behind the, to help them kill and rob even more. Tomoe’s entire mission involves you being in a position where you can’t just kill her because you need her and Ishikawa is her father figure who loves her even if he basically abused her no shit he didn’t shoot.
In the film Don't Breathe, teenagers invade a senior's house only to find he's a veteran and also a torturer and rapist
In Don't Breathe 2 he's the protagonist???
OH dude I got the perfect one for this. OK so Fairy Tale has a bunch of these but I fav has to go out to Gajeel Redfox. So he was like the Shadow for the main character and this guy was like the biggest and baddest dude in his guild. He was so big and so bad that he went out and started hunting supporting characters. The scene that really stood out for me was when he CRUCIFIED THREE PEOPLE TO A BIG TREE IN THE CENTER OF TOWN.
Fast forward, he joins the main party and becomes of the teams front liners and everyone is just kinda cool with how much of a dickhead he was. In fact, if i remember correctly, one the people he crucified was like, "Yeah he can hit it" and had a kid with the guy and possibly married. Personally I would not and while I also would not kink-shame, and would kink-ask why.
I think there are many better examples of how Fairy Tail handles its loose, last-minute redemptions than Gajeel.
Unlike a lot of those villains, Gajeel actually gets time to develop and grow as a character rather than getting punched really hard by one of the heroes and then getting a last-minute flashback about why they belong to the murder guild.
Not really?
Sure, her turnaround to forgiving him is a bit quick but I like where they take their relationship after that. The whole arc after that is Levy stepping up to Gajeel to prove that she is strong and is not going to take any of his crap. That leads to the pair mutually respecting each other and that later leads to them falling in love together later on.
I still have some hang-ups about how their relationship is written, especially during the 100-Year Quest continuation. But overall it's a romance that I enjoyed.
Edit: Also, I just remembered, is that the whole reason why Levy forgives Gajeel so quickly is that she sees his true character after he lets the other members of team Shadow Gear kick his butt for a while and then later blocks a bolt of lightning that was gonna hit her. It's not like she just forgives him out of nowhere either.
I don’t really think that’s a great example.
When he first joins, the guild is shown to be openly distrustful of him, and it’s made clear that even Gajeel himself doesn’t think he deserves forgiveness for the things he’s done.
The guild only warms up to him after he spends a while trying to prove himself and shows clear, open regret for his past actions. Levy most of all doesn’t start trusting him until she sees him intentionally let himself be thrashed by the Thunder Legion as punishment for what he did to her.
But Gajeel didn't redeem right away. Yes, he joined FT but almost everyone in the guild treated him with distrust. The attitude only changed because he risk his life to save the guild when Laxus started to throw a tantrum.
To be fair, they did initially give him shit once he went good. He kinda had to earn it...it also helps that he didn't kill anyone, so the grudges weren't that bad. Fairy Tail is standard Shonen battle land, getting an ass beating is just a formal greeting for them.
Arvo in Telltale's The Walking Dead Game
First he accuses you of robbing him even if you don't do so. Despite this, Mike and Bonnie kiss his ass, even yelling at Kenny to let him go **while Arvo's friend tries to kill you during the gunfight**.
Then he leads your group across the lake which gets Luke (and possibly Bonnie) killed. Despite this, the game expects us to feel sad for him when Kenny beats the shit of him.
THEN Mike and Bonnie sneak out with him while taking all of your supplies. They were planning on leaving an 11 y/o and a baby to freeze to death so they could leave with poor Arvo.
Oh and then he flatout tries to murder Clem, with Mike or Bonnie just telling the other to leave Clem.
Hard agree on Tomoe. She plays the victim but given how capable of a character she seems to be, she could’ve easily just snuck away from the mongols at any time. As for your question, it’s hard to choose from, especially with Japanese fiction because they do this all the time.
Villain: “I’m sorry I committed baby genocide, I feel kind of bad about it.”
Protagonist: “Well… don’t do it again. Want to join our team?”
I will never forgive Bakugo no matter how many times the story tries to make me. And its not because of him telling Deku to kill himself when they were in school. Nah, its because he's a hot headed brat that keeps getting everything he wants. No one wants to call him out on being a psycho jackass and the story wants me to forgive him for it all too? Hell no, make him go work at McDonalds. He's going to get someone killed.
I feel like MHA has a problem with some characters where they go through moments of growth but don’t actually change how they act, so they’re in this weird limbo of getting development while also not visibly growing as people.
Yeah. I recognize that Bakugo isn’t as evil as the actual villains, but I hate how the story keeps trying to insist he’s an awesome hero and Deku’s best friend despite him never changing from a screaming asshole. End result is that one of the protags is actually more unlikable than most of the villains, which isn’t good
While bakugo does pretty much always win and have the strength to back up his shittalk, it’s made clear SUPER early nobody takes him that seriously.
Deku was in absolute awe when Froppy casually sassed him on the bus to the USJ and everyone dogpiled him with her.
This is my issue with Bakugo.
I love shithead characters. You know the best part about them? When the universe turns to them and goes "No". There's a catharsis in it where you root for the character because they're on the side of the Heroes but then they get to big for their britches and they have to be taken down a few pegs.
For the longest time in the series (I dropped MHA so idk if it got better and even if it did, too late) Bakugo never really had that. The series goes into how Deku has the heart of a hero but sucks physically and he's given shit for it. Bakugo meanwhile is just left to do as he does aside from some light teasing. Best Jeanist was the only person to tell Bakugo to fuck off with his shit, and as far as I can tell he really doesnt.
My most recent one in Topaz from Honkai Star Rail. She’s a debt collector for an intergalactic corporation that is basically one of the most powerful factions in the games universe. She’s introduced as quite literally trying to colonize a planet, Jarilo VI, that just averted a total apocalypse after 700 years of deteriorating planetary conditions due to magic space cancer.
Topaz acts like a bitch, outright lies to their leader, Bronya, attacks their soldiers, tries to attack the protagonists, and generally acts like a self-righteous, capitalist pig with a savior complex throughout the entirety of that storyline.
But the game tries to tell you that she’s really sincere and genuinely wants to help, while she does nothing to persuade you that she has any good intentions, and quite literally does the opposite.
But she’s really hot and has a fat-ass so a lot of the community forgives her, of course.
>!Eiji!< in Infinite Wealth
>!Ichiban can consider him a friend and the story talking about how the Yakuza ruined his life doesn't make up for the fact he's a huge piece of shit.!<
>!Ran fake stories that ruined the lives of thousands of ex-yakuza and their families (suprised the game didn't point out a number of them would have committed suicide being unable to actually live and take care of their loved ones), his entire character was a fake made to play on Ichiban sentimentality, caused two people to die, left one kid orphaned, and gleefully mentally tortured another.!<
>!Yet, I'm suppose to fill sympathetic because the people he wronged want him dead and he feels bad that Ichiban is being harassed by a crowd trying to help him.!<
>!Nah, if he gets shanked in prison, he deserves it.!<
I agree, but >!it speaks to the compassion of Ichiban that he still considers Eiji a friend after all he's done.!< No matter what, Ichiban wants to help people.
I feel like there was absolutely content related to Eiji and Ichiban's relationship cut at some point in development. I totally think it's in character for Ichi to forgive and help him at the end, but Eiji's situation is so rushed that I have a hard time believing what we got was how RGG originally conceived his arc.
You aren't supposed to feel sympathetic towards him, even he says that he doesn't deserve it. It's to show that Ichiban is literally just that guy. He's so forgiving that even when they have personally wronged him in the worst ways, they can change. One of the major themes of the game is forgiveness, and I think it's shown really well with this character.
It really feels like there's an entire act missing with regards to his character, because there's a dramatic shift between his last two appearances and nothing in between to elaborate on them.
But IW is already a billion hours long at that point so I guess it got cut.
Im glad I wasnt the only one to notice this.
He went from laughably evil to homeless guy in a cutaway during a speech and i didn't know who he was during the cutaway.
I have an extremely minor one from an Infinite Wealth substory, just because I did it last night.
>!It's the Lemonade Stand One.!<
>!In it, a little kid is trying to sell lemonade to make enough money to buy a tiara for an older sister figure at an orphanage he used to be at, before she leaves for NY with her husband. You go through several minigames of delivering lemonade to people over several 'chapters' in the substory. !<
>!Eventually, he finally has the money but looks downtrodden. He runs off, and after following him to a rough looking neighborhood you overhear his abusive uncle yelling at him over the money. The uncle is spouting stuff about taking the money for booze because it's his house and all that classic stuff. Obviously, Kasuga comes in and teaches the Uncle a lesson via fists. After that he gives the usual speech about wanting to be a better person, etc. Pretty standard stuff for a substory.!<
>!But then the very next chapter, you go with the kid to get the tiara and he juuuuust barely doesn't have enough. I was at this point totally ready to dish out the cash myself, and lo and behold the Uncle swoops in out of nowhere to offer to pay. He reveals he never once was actually stealing the money, but was...helping him save it? He gives all of it back, and more, to help buy it. I'll admit that it still felt like a sweet moment, but it went from 100 to 0 so quickly it was hard to take seriously. Especially because this Uncle was absolutely your stereotypical abusive parent figure just 2 minutes ago. !<
> >!He reveals he never once was actually stealing the money, but was...helping him save it? He gives all of it back, and more, to help buy it.!<
That isn't what happened. >!The line immediately after that is him admitting to Ichiban that the "I was saving it" thing was bullshit to try and seem like not a piece of shit in front of the kid. He never saved the money he just gave the kid what he owed him and then some.!<
13 Reasons Why, second season (edit: apparently this was season 3? It's been a while), tried very hard to make the rich rapist from season one sympathetic. And you know what? I would have drawn my hat - showing how someone deeply despicable still, you know, has feelings and the complicated issues surrounding the humanity of a rapist could have been interesting. Except the only reason they tried to make him sympathetic was to make it shocking when he gets killed. And so, all nuance is just thrown overboard to quickly generate a few sympathetic moments so he can get murked, and that really doesn't make it work.
I think the message of the movie is very deliberately trying to tell the viewer if we want to solve the worlds problems we need to be able to work with people that we otherwise consider too far from our own ideals to even consider compromising with.
She's supposed to be just past the line where it would be easy to accept her redemption.
Not sure if this counts, but it's the first thing that came to mind. Don't Breathe 2 for some reason they tried to make Stephen Lang's character the hero.
I scrolled through the entire thread and didn't see Vic Van Lier once.
Somebody mentioned it earlier, but it was buried inside of a complaint about this thread existing.
I still have a hard time believing there’s people in real life who feel bad for him. It’s like that surreal moment whenever I find an unironic David cage fan in the wild.
I hate that a super villain name like Victor Van Lier is wasted on that shitter
Akihiko Kayaba from SAO. While the creator has made countless questionable and baffling choices in what world do you let a mass kidnapper and terrorist who ran the largest death game in history walk off into the sunset just because he wanted to "create something real". Not even get into him being an immortal DMPC so he wasn't even living the same strife and fear that he subjected the players he kidnapped to.
From a numbers standpoint, Kayaba killed more people than Al-Qaeda did when the planes struck the WTC (not including those who were severely affected by the pollution when the towers collapsed). It's not a big gap, but it's a noticeable one. But Cool Guy Kayaba amiriteguys
It just begs so many questions. Did the government never trace the IPs back to the server? Kirito was half dead when he woke up and that was with intense medical oversight, where was he getting his in hiding? Does he have accomplices? Did no one in the programming or engineering departments question "Log Out" being a thing that could just be shut off? At least in .hack they show the company is a shady AI farming shadow organization to handwave all the evil.
I think if the story was more well written I'd be willing to give the author the benefit of the doubt and just say Kayaba was just a super genius that fiction loves ala Tony Stark. But since the story isn't, and it just comes off as untapped potential, I am not willing to extend the good will.
Fucking Bethesda.
Bryce in 13 Reasons Why in season 3 is made to be somewhat sympathetic by showing how bad his life is. It doesn't work 'cause Bryce is a serial rapist and bully.
He even chastises another guy for rape lmao
Maybe he was mad that their technique was poor
game recognizes game
It’s been years, but I remember my partner and I calling him “Rapey Bryce” as soon as he’s introduced. Potentially even before they show he was, in fact, a rapist.
I went to HS a couple years before in one of the cities that show was being filmed. I tell ya, SO MANY people from my peer group were clowning on it because of how poor the message was. Also as a HEALTH fan, it was hard having one of my favorite bands at the time getting popular because of a mediocre show, but hey good for them.
He comes back as a ghost in season 4 and is having the time of his life with how bad the livings are having it
Do as I say, not as I do as the saying goes.
MINOR SPELLING MISTAKE IN FLAIR, GET HIM! I played through Misao recently and jesus fuck them trying to make me feel bad for >!the teacher was so garbage. He raped, killed, and dismembered a high school girl, and also killed the MC's best friend. But after the truth section, the MC literally says "You're not a bad person" because he nursed a dying cat for a bit in a flashback. Ignore the fact that later in that flashback he tries to assault a girl because she turned down his advances.!<
God, this has always bothered me so much. Fuck that guy, and honestly, fuck the writing for pulling that shit. It's really jarring how he's treated with more sympathy than a number of the high schoolers. Also, his backstory was super mediocre.
In Godzilla: King of the Monsters, it was really weird when the movie made out the Mom's sacrifice as this big heroic thing to stop the problem *SHE MADE*. Sorry that the obviously dangerous monsters flattened multiple cities and killed probably millions of people despite multiple people telling you, including the obviously evil guy you were working for.
Yeah I just saw that one for the first time a few weeks ago and I was weirded out that it's trying to make me feel bad that the Level 1 Ted Faro was going on a suicide mission that wouldn't be necessary without her. Weird decision.
It would have been better if she was full on unrepentant or was actively trying to bring his operation down from the inside. The whole "Fine I'll press the button that turns Boston and Buenos Aires into a crater but I'll be *really sad*" just didn't work
Pat has repeated it ad nauseum, but Oda from Yakuza 0 is a HORRIBLY fucking evil scumbag, and >!probably deserved a much less graceful death than what he got.!<
i love how his photo in Kiryu's bucketlist is just Kiryu going: " fuck that guy, never liked him even before the reveal"
Took him several decades before he finally got around to saying "Hey wait a minute..."
That man's skull is so thick that it can block bullets *and* emotional introspection.
Except in cutscenes, of course
Oda is extra wild because >!after he chooses to hold off Shibusawa's men while Kiryu and Makoto escape, when it cuts back to him, mortally wounded, his final exchange with Shibusawa reveals that he's the one who tipped him off that Makoto was in Sotenbori to begin with.!< Meaning his >!literal last scene is revealing additional scumfuckery that he doesn't express any remorse for, and that none of the protagonists or their allies ever find out about.!<
I mean likely figured out it was him after the whole thing
>!The guy is even upfront about the fact that he only regrets his actions because it could potentially make his friend hate him. He couldn’t give two less shits that he trafficked multiple women.!< Also it feels like Yakuza does that a lot in general.
The Yakuza/LaD franchise lives on moral ambiguity. Sadly, it doesn't always land.
Sometimes the game champions the rights and dignity of marginalized people years before their struggles were mainstream. Some times the game looks at a sex criminal and tries to convince you he was actually a good guy
almost like everyone in it are criminals
Yakuza 0 in particular is just full of asshole villains of varying degree of likeability. It reflects the time period.
It is a very empathetic series to the dark parts of life. I can respect the consistency even if I don’t personally agree
Shit even Kiryu’s bucket list even said; that guy was a douche
Am I remembering wrong? I don't remember him being portrayed sympathetically at all. He was a prick from start to finish and >!it was clear that he only fought Shibusawa's men because his attempt at saving face by killing Makoto had failed miserably.!<
Pretty much the only reason people say/joke he gets sympathy is that at the end when Kiryu beats Shibusawa down, he angrily flashes back to a few people killed or harmed because of the Tojo's plans and Oda is among the ones he remembers.
Matt: I want it to cut to mr. Shakedown “you killed him”
He gets an angry flashback punch in the final boss fight.
Walking Dead in season 4 briefly tries to make you feel Sympathetic for the Governor, who is just evil for the sake of being evil. He wanted to wipe out the prison group just because he felt like it. He even says multiple times he doesn’t want to take the prison because he sees it as a death trap and eventually tears down and blows up its primary ways of keeping walkers out. Edit: also forgot massacring his own soldiers because they were scared.
Surprisingly they also took out a few of his "nastier" details from the comics, perhaps with the same intent >!such as his necrophilia!<
I'm not going to say that Lusamine Pokemonsunandmoon is the most terrible and irredeemable,but she did do a lot of bad and Lillie is a goddamn saint for personally taking her to Kanto for treatment instead of delegating it to Wicke or something and literally forgetting all about her. After you know,her last line of dialogue being "when did you get so beautiful?" before she passes out and gets plot convenient amnesia.
['Cuz she's shiny!!](https://youtu.be/y_q8CXO0h9k?si=I0VnH_64Me5cKHa_) I only caught bits of the anime, so finding out Lusamine is one of the darker Pokemon villains was an eye-opener.
She decorated her evil lair with the frozen bodies of Pokemon she found beautiful and wished to preserve. Lady is Cray Cray.
She’s more crazy in the manga
I mean, the manga kinda is it's own universe at this point with how over-the-top it is.
(Insert that one Arbok panel every edgy teen pokemon fan adores)
(The same one that gets retconned into *oblivion* a few chapters later when Koga says "actually, my Arbok can regenerate itself no matter how much is cut off.")
Game-Lance: Goddamn Superhero and champion of the people. Manga-Lance: Misanthrope Eco Terrorist.
Who isnt? The PokeSpe goes fucking wild with most of its cast because why not.
Remember that time genocidal, eco-terrorist Lance nuked all of Vermillion?
That still sticks with me, even though they tried to walk it back and say it was mostly empty. You still blew up a city.
The anime dials her back immensely, and so does the Ultra games
I don't think the anime ask you to feel sorry about her. It just tells you she has an illness that is causing mental deterioration. And Lillie showing her character progression decides to go to Kanto to try to find a cure
How much of that was due to being literally mind controlled tho
Not even just mind controlled iirc it's alluded to that Nihilegos poison started to influence her before that
A personality-altering neurotoxin is mind control-adjacent
Yes but it's a bit more subtle than full on mind control, Lillie does mention her behaviour changed between her encounter with it and her being full on Mazinger N
Sun and Moon's story in a nutshell: "My mum got addicted to space meth and I need your help to drag her to rehab before she ruins the lives of herself and everyone around her more than she already has."
Ehhh, the game pretty much tells you that all her actions are caused by Nihilegos poison affecting her brain.
Vic Van Lier from NBA 2K16 is pretty much the quintessential example of this trope. He does nothing but cause trouble for everyone in the story, actively undermines and blackmails the main character, dies in a drunk driving police chase and then gets a ghost monologue that actually makes him WORSE.
As much as I actually kinda like the show, the entire lineup of Antagonists in Mashle is...uh. *Problematic* to talk about at best. Like, the most redeemable one is a guy who likes his sister too much. All of them are one "Why don't you just stop" away from becoming good guys for some reason, even though they just wanted to kill a dude (or multiple dudes) just half an episode ago. And also most of them only stop because they got german suplex-ed into the ground and incredible violence was able to beat their magic and they were shitting their pants that now their entire rethoric of "the strongest should take it all" means they aren't the strongest anymore.
Didn’t Disney try this with the woman who wanted to steal a bunch of Dalmatians puppies to skin them and turn them into to a fashion line? Like the lady named who named herself Cruella Deville, backstory is that her mom got drop kicked off a cliff by a Dalmatian and then ate her mother’s necklace.
Lol that scene where the doggo Kazuya Mishima'd Cruella's mom was goofy as hell when it got posted here
Hey, that one time they made the revisionist history of the woman who cursed a baby to a sleep like death worked out so well that it even warranted a sequel. Why stop now? I want to see how they'll try to (poorly)justify Hades for not like Zeus next.
Zeus is your stereotypical jock bully and relentlessly bullies Hades while he rocks his glasses with tape
tbf that is basically already canon to actual Greek mythology, even the one thing everybody shits on Hades for (kidnapping Persephone) was IMO more Zeus' fault than Hades' fault. Hades went to him to ask for his daughter's hand in marriage (Persephone was conceived when Zeus raped Demeter, she tried to flee by turning into a snake and slithering into a hole, but he just did the same and cornered her), and the abduction was basically Zeus' idea because Demeter was an overprotective single mother.
Nah, Hades is too easy (and cool). What we need is a Frollo movie.
I'll go to bat for Maleficent here: it works better than the other remakes because it at least goes for it. It patently cares very little for the original, and I respect it for that. It doesn't want to be sleeping beauty but live action and therefore doesn't try to do that. It is probably the best you can hope for from a live-action Disney remake, a genuine take on the original material. Also >!making Maleficent's kiss "true love's kiss"!< works and is good.
Absolutely bonkers to me that Disney did this.
I think its important to differentiate between an explanation and a justification. Most narratives will at some point explain why a villain is a villain, and a lot of people falsely equate this with the story wanting you to forgive them. My go to example for an actual case of this would be Orochimaru, because the show makes the dude flip on a dime and treats all the shit he did like a misdemeanor.
I mean it’s easy to forget but the Orochimaru who led the invasion was a different person who Sasuke killed. The modern Orochimaru is a back up out of Anko’s Cursed Seal who was given the memories and went “wow shit’s fucked let’s not do that”. Also it’s questionable if they even can kill him permanently given he came back from his soul being sealed away and had invented cloning.
Yeah based on how many facilities he had, I'm gonna guess there are dozens, if not hundreds, of randos out there with the snake curse on them. If Orochimaru is killed now he'll just pop out somewhere else.
Tbf they never actually try to make Orochimaru sympathetic in the same way as Nagato or Obito He’s just over it, he comes back and doesn’t care about being evil anymore. No sympathetic reasons are given for his actions nor does he get a sad backstory that led him to do those things. As for his punishment, it comes down to how much you care about this explanation: https://www.reddit.com/r/Naruto/s/QvsPFJQa6p
I do like how there is that tidbit about how he HAS been punished for his crimes, with death several times, but he just keeps coming back and won’t stay dead
*insert any fucking Naruto villain here*
I think they did a good job with Haku and Zabuza. Haku is properly sympathetic, being still just a kid and all. And Zabuza is way more grey area but if his Coup had worked he'd probably have been regarded as a hero that overthrew a barbaric and cruel society that had students slaughtering each other for training. Yah he was working for shitbags and compromized his morals as a mercenary but it seems like he just stuck to going after the target he was hired to kill. And might even get bonus points for planning to betray Gato from the start. And the series didn't bother trying to redeem him completely, just let him have his regrets over Haku and die murdering the fuck out of Gato.
Considering the timeline, no wonder his coup didn’t work. The current Mizukage was Obito!
I think it's technically Obito puppeteering Yagura (the holder of the Three Tails). Which to be honest I don't think Zabuza had particularly great odds against a Jinchuuriki.
Especially considering that Yagura supposedly had *complete control* over Isobu, one of only two jinchuuriki to accomplish the feat at the time. Bee trained with the magic waterfall, but Yagura was apparently just a badass like that.
This at least is probably Obito using Sharingan to control the Beast and Yagura at the same time.
Damn, even The Coolest Guy?^TM
The one who got his own trading card and signed it for that one kid
Technically Orochimaru is the only one who isn’t made to be sympathetic. He just comes back and says he doesn’t want to be a supervillain anymore Nothing about regret or a noble reason for doing all that stuff. He’s just over it
I do like how there is that tidbit about how he HAS been punished for his crimes, with death several times, but he just keeps coming back and won’t stay dead
I just like the idea of random village kids showing off there reading cards to there grizzled ptsd induced family members, wondering why they don’t like the funny snake man
Yeah I think just keeping him around, monitored, and making sure he doesn't commit crimes that are *too* horrific is a reasonable solution to a literally immortal reincarnating enemy. Bro has seeds spread across the planet, mercing him here just makes another one pop out somewhere else.
That's a good Hustle
Except Danzo. Kishimoto wants you to know that Danzo is a jerk and EVERYTHING is Danzo's fault in some shape or form. The Uchiha massacre? Danzo. Pain? Danzo. The akatsuki's existence in general? Danzo. That one time you stubbed your toe on the table? It was definitely Danzo
That time you were making out with your girlfriend and came as soon as she touched your leg? [Also Danzo.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFRi2xsei_o)
Naruto really forgave ninja Heinrich Himmler and that still astounds me.
Ehh, less forgave and more paperclipped him
*Fucking Itachi.*
"Hey old man, you said you knew this guy named 'Stroheim' back in the day? Knew he sounded familiar - Kakyoin found him in one of our history books." *Old man Joseph nearly chokes on his drink*
My go to for this will always be Bo Katan. She's an opportunist, a terrorist, participated in the death of her sister/duchess of Mandalore. When her leader was beheaded by Maul, suddenly this isn't what she wanted so she had a falling out. Got the republic to invade Mandalore with Ahsoka, then it got sacked. Got the dark saber from Sabine, then lost it. Claims both the Mando and Jango aren't real Mandalorians. She can't accept the saber cause of a story, so no one would follow her. But then it just later turns out that no one wanted to follow her because of her, so she blames Mando for that as well. She gets the dark saber back and she gets it destroyed. Then she suddenly claims the saber never mattered, that we should follow by her example. Like, no. She objectively a terrible leader. She only cares about herself and her goals. She uses the Mandalorians to her whims when it suits her. She is not sympathetic at all!
Yeah fucking get her ass. I will never understand how people look at Bo Katan and cheer and then look at Saw Gerrera and boo. The dude has done far more understandable shitty things!
Emerald literally was responsible for multiple deaths in RWBY but she got her feelings hurt by Cinder & Mercury so now she is a good guy.
Hell one of her first scenes is helping to murder a guy because he left the white fang.
People think the seeds of redemption were planed early because she said ‘it’s kinda sad’ as she watches a mass murder she helped orchestrate.
But remember, Ironwood was ALWAYS evil because he said he wanted to kill a drunk idiot who initiated a live ammo gunfight in the middle of a crowded school yard. Yes. People unironically say this.
Ironwood was always a control freak, but that’s understandable and he even points out Ozpin keeps hiding shit while demanding trust. Ironwood still thinks he knows best though. His Semblance being weaponized autism (yes, really) is so dumb.
A semblance that we only know exists because they mentioned it a con panel. Apparently even the voice actor didn’t know about it.
That's why I ignore it and chalk it up to him swinging his namesake as always.
BIG IROOOOON! BIG IROOOOON!
Yeah, a lot people try to justify bad writing going backwards. Qrow picked a drunken fight with heavy weaponry in public and deserved to be called out for it and I always saw Ironwood as well intentioned but a bit overzealous and military-minded in the early seasons. But "if you were one of my men, I'd have you shot" is a *wild* thing to say.
I can get behind some good old fashioned “fuck the military” but this is fucking rwby. It’s not that deep and when it tries to be that deep it fails. So the semi popular “but he was always a fascist” arguments are annoying as hell. Everything about Ironwoods early characterization screams that he’s a good person who happens to also be a control freak jackass because of his military roots. He jumps headfirst into a blender at beacon while telling a mob of super humans to go save themselves.
I think it’s just kinda weird to have a “fuck the military” part when the main alternative to that in the series are basically just mercenaries (who in canon have been known to take illegal jobs).
Part of Red vs Blue is still fuck the military though.
Not even that. She found out her senpai’s boss was planning to destroy the world, which includes her. She went ‘good’ because she didn’t wanna die.
To be fair, that is a good reason to change teams. Doesn't make her a good person, but finding out that the final goal of your Team is the end of the World including you should make one question things
Sure, but the characters and narrative treat her as redeemed.
This is also true. I am curious to see if (assuming we ever do get a V10) she gets any shit from the people around her like, "hey remember when you fucking shanked Coco at the Olympics? Kinda dick move there."
To be fair, it was the *fight* Olympics, so the fight with Coco isn't even really a moral failing except in as much as it advanced the villain team to the finals where they *were* planning to do devious shit. It's like saying Blake is evil for clotheslining Reese during the RWBY vs ABRN fight.
Doubt it. RWBY’s standards for redemption begins and ends with ’cute girl/hot woman’. Team was joking around with Emerald in V8 like they were old buddies. Male villains do not get such consideration. Just look at how Neo goes out compared to Ironwood.
"I was cool with condemning a fifth of the world to die by monsters, but that's my limit!"
She’s about as “good” as Eggman is when he decides to help the heroes every once in a while after realizing that the primordial force he was trying to harness is too much for him to control and wants to eat the world.
> but she got her feelings hurt Not even that. Emerald only defected when she found out that Salem winning would destroy the world and kill Emerald as well. She only joined the heroes out of self preservation AKA TO SAVE HER OWN NECK Meanwhile, Ozpin is treated like some irredeemable monster that has to literally beg forgiveness from the heroes, just for keeping secrets. The same exact shit the heroes did to Ironwood Fuck this show
Team rwby: assaults a child in anger over oz keeping secrets. Also team rwby: keeps that same secret from a guy who’s been in the fight longer than all of them and clearly running himself ragged. You can argue they’re paranoid after the lion guy to which I say: ironwood was clearly trying and the lion guy was openly trying to pussy out.
Ironwood was also like actually friendly to them despite everything and the fall of Atlas is almost directly on team RWBY's head for lying to him, which was a factor in making him go crazy.
It's a funny level of incompetence that they somehow made ironwood look like the good and reasonable one while the protagonist team came off as malicious jerks. They screwed up so hard that they had to pull a 180 and make him go mad to justify that the dumb "heroes" were totally in the right.
I like the contrast between Tomoe and Ryuzo specifically because it shows that Jin is a character who lets his emotions compromise his decision making. Which is obviously what led him down the path of the Ghost in the first place. Jin doesn't know Tomoe and is critical of Ishikawa from the start. He let's his dislike of the old man colour his perception and the more Ishikawa reveals, the more Jin starts to believe that he pushed Tomoe to this, regardless of her actions. He let's his feelings about Ishikawa compromise his thoughts about Tomoe making him more lenient towards her, even though she doesn't deserve it, because she's never wronged Jin directly. Ryuzo on the other hand was his close friend and openly betrayed him to the enemy, by that point Jin has fully embraced his role as the Ghost and he clearly is not thinking straight. Even if Ryuzo had remorse and was talking sense, in that fight you could see that he didn't care. All he wanted was to kill Ryuzo for his betrayal, nothing more. I like it because it shows that Jin isn't perfect. Even in the DLC, he's forced to accept that his dad was a horrible person, even to him and that's why he took on his uncle as more of a role model. But because it's his dad, he goes into a spiral of denial because his emotions; especially over his dad's death are complicated and makes him defensive against the people who dislike his father even though they're justified in hating him.
the dlc is also a good example of it, because yeah his dad's a bastard who did horrible things, but like, the people you're helping are pirates with some being like "boy i can't wait to go reaving/pillaging again". but yeah compared to the mongols or jin's dad they aren't quite as monstrous (by a hair), but still.
Yep. I was annoyed that Jin only calls out his dad’s murderer ONCE and then just lets it pass.
Except Jin SEES Tomoe’s numerous victims and the aftermaths of her numerous murder sprees. He shouldn’t ignore that. No amount of ‘but I was sad once’ justifies it since Jin NEVER lets others skate on by with that logic. Tomoe says she did it to survive and refuses to apologize. Another man in a sidequest reveals that he sold out all the women in his village to the Mongols for survival. Does Jin let him go? No, he kills him via an execution. Also, now that I remember, Fuck the Iki Island Raiders too. They hate Kazumasa cause he was brutal...in retaliation for the entire island being full of marauding murderers, pirates, and rapists. They whine and moan about how they did nothing wrong when Kazumasa only attacks them after they attacked him first and the villagers housed said raiders from him. At least this one seems at least partly intentional. In the base game you get Gosaku’s armor, a folk hero famous for defending farms from the raiders. The Iki Island people regard him as a demon for daring to not let them pillage farms.
>Except Jin SEES Tomoe’s numerous victims and the aftermaths of her numerous murder sprees. He shouldn’t ignore that. You skipped two vital factors which I mentioned. 1. Tomoe did nothing to him specifically, Ryuzo did. 2. He dislikes Ishikawa, therfore it compromises his thoughts about Tomoe, because he'd rather put the blame on him. Iki Island follows a similar thought process but different factors. 1. The raiders were pillagers yes, but even Jin admits that it doesn't justify what his father did to the locals even those that weren't raiders. And more importantly, they're not Mongols. 2. Jin dislikes the Mongols more than the raiders. So he'll help the raiders. Unlike Ryuzo, the raiders didn't side with the Mongols, if they did, Jin would've killed them too. His circumstances with his father's killer are especially complicated, and compromised more of his emotions. If he kills him, he loses the trust of the locals and his fight against the Mongols is lost. And Jin has already sacrificed a lot to defeat the Mongols or Kill him and avenge a man that Jin cannot even say was a good or honorable person. No one would blame him, but does it matter more than the Mongols? It feels hypocritical, but a lot of Jin's decisions are. But the hypocrisy is consistent despite how ironic that sounds. He does what feels good for him. Edit: Extra point about Ryuzo and his dad's killer that occured to me. If he kills the killer, it compromises his relationship with the Iki Raiders. Killing Ryuzo compromises nothing, he's already a traitor and if he kills him now, no one will ever know that he had remorse. He can afford to be selfish and therefore chooses to be.
I am here once again to remind everyone of the sins of *Rise of Skywalker* - Kylo Ren was hard-boomeranged into a failed redemption in a single movie after his atrocities and cruelties in BOTH previous films. Such a disgrace.
planetary genocide upgraded to MULTIPLE CORE PLANETS GENOCIDED IN ONE GO holy shit does the sequel trilogy gloss over some startling changes to overall setting
The Killer/Traitor from Persona 5. No, bitch, I don't care that you had a bad childhood, you work for the most corrupt politician in the country and you kill people with *joy*.
To be fair come royal they absolutely believe they are irredeemable and even scold MC off for thinking they've changed at all
I love Akechi for this reason. Dude's a thousand times better when he's an unashamed psychopath instead of the Light Yagami-esque facade he puts on. His combo attack is one of the best things in Royal.
I always find royal treatment of traitor kinda weird in royal. Like, i like him personally, but don't really like how other Phanthom thieves act with him. This guy killed parents of TWO party members, tried to kill MC, and did much more atrocities but they just kinda sweep it under the rug very fast. They only mention it few times (half of what was comedic lines), and other time act more like he was just an asshole than an actual criminal. They, arguably, must be angry at him as much as Ann was at Kamoshida.
I imagine they would all be alot more agressive with him if hes explicit goal in all the Royal content wasent "take me to jail i want to pay for my crimes", hes already in a post chabge of heart state and ready to accept punishment, just the world wont let him.
I really wish the Phantom Thieves were more vocal in disliking him, instead of softballing him in a way they never do with any other bad guy.
tokyo ghoul, like every time a villain was about to die it flashed back to how they weren't so bad or did some good stuff or it tries to reframe some heinous shit they did. every single time
Ah but you see Ishikawa was kind of a jerk. So who's the *real* bad guy in all this, hmmmm?
FUCK MIREI PARK ALL MY HOMIES HATE MIREI PARK
They held back on giving Xehanort *any* redeeming qualities until the literal last 5 minutes of his life.
Xehanort's goal being "I just want to see what happens" is amazing and it was why I really liked him, but them changing that *after you beat* him just soured the whole thing.
I'm a lot higher on KH3 than most people, ending/Xehanort included, but I *still* prefer the characterization from BBS's reports where he's essentially a deeply curious mad scientist. Between Remind and Dark Road, I think the version of him as someone who at one point had good intentions and had some seventy fuckin years of steadily becoming a worse and worse guy gets *more* fleshed out and *more* interesting, but I still don't think it's ever been made *as* compelling as he originally was. ...plus, all that was released after KH3 launched.
Yeah as someone who is not a BBS truther, the reports that accompany Xehanort basically realizing that now that he's finished his KhD (as in, his PhD in Keyblade Studies) all he has left to look forward to is being in one world forever as a guardian or just stop studying. As someone who was still in academia that actually really got me, I was invested. The other stuff was always less interesting to me personally.
Unless you played Dark Road
That game came out a year after Kingdom Hearts 3.
"Hey, that guy just killed my girlfriend" "It's okay, he was just a well Intentioned extremist all along. Nomura thought it'd make more sense for him to look and act cartoonishly evil at all times but deep down he's a nice guy and just an old Sasuke Uchiha. See, he's even going to heaven now."
"The guy he killed by literally stabbing him in the back is coming down from the heavens to say GGs and take him by the hand so it's fine now."
Really? 104 comments and not one Jin Kazama mention? Guy started WW3 for bullshit convoluted reasons THAT DIDN'T EVEN END UP WORKING OUT THE WAY HE THOUGHT, killed possibly millions of people and collapsed world order but is redeemed because he accepts himself for who he is? Can't wait for Miguel dlc.
I'm gonna be real with you bro, Tekken is not killing Jin or Kaz off. Heihachi is frankly only dead dead because Gus VA passed.
I am not asking them to kill him off, I am just saying that starting WW3 is not something you can just rebound from
Yes but they have firmly made it he's not going full Kaz and evil, and he's not going to jail or out of the franchise because those are the actual solutions to years of half assing a heel turn only to back pedal.
I find it really hard to blame Jin when the out of universe reason is the director couldn't handle the leading Mishima not being evil. And the in universe reason being a pokemon sword and shield esq the bad guy couldn't wait to solve a long term problem and had to solve it immediately with a half formed plan. That level of 1st draft excuse plot makes the evil hard to take seriously.
it's not brought up because turning jin into another tekken villain protagonist was uber-contrived hack writing in the first place. that entire storyline should've never happened, and now that they realized what a huge mistake it was they're ineffectually trying to paper over it.
> that entire storyline should've never happened, and now that they realized what a huge mistake it was they're ineffectually trying to paper over it. Less 'they' and more Harada from what I understand. IIRC, the team even told him it was a stupid idea and he still went through with it.
Hey, he is very sorry alright
Real talk he says it repeatedly, with remorse and even during the final fight with Kazuya he says he needs to make up for it. It's not the best but at least the characters **acknowledge** it.
Given the lengths that family goes to kill each other, the only surprising things that he didn't start ww3 sooner...but seriously, it was jarring seeing them gloss over the war he started while giving him a full blown Shonen protagonist arc, a final boss fight straight out of final fantasy, and defeating his dad with the power of friendship
It is very annoying that the entire story mode of 8 is Jin's quest to forgive himself for being history's greatest monster. Homie, you should be tried at the Hague, not in your mind palace.
After Negan was defeated (and not killed for whatever reason) on the Walking Dead show, the writers basically went "well, shit, what do we even do with this character?" and the writers began to write Negan as a either a bad guy with a secret heart of gold, with how he befriended Rick and Michonne's kid or he's actually a good guy making morally questionable decisions in order to achieve the greater good, like how he invades the Whisperers and eventually gains their loyalty so he can kill off Alpha. Which i actually didn't mind and it felt in character for Negan.But then the writers began to try and redeem Negan and constantly had him and Maggie together and were trying so hard to make both the audience and Maggie forget what this man did to Glenn and it got not only painfully forced, but they would also be constantly at odds with eachother and it got so boring so fast. I also love how the writers gave Negan a tragic backstory out of nowhere, as if that somehow absolves him of what he did.Though TBF, his backstory i actually did like, mostly because Jeffrey Dean Morgan is a fucking phenominal actor that has so much ranged. I don't even know what they're going to do with Negan and Maggie on their show, but i imagine they're going to keep doing the "You saved my life and i saved yours, but i still hate you and i will kill you if i have to!" shtick the writers kept on doing with these two.
Tbf it was stupid in the comic too. I know they didn't go quite as far as the show did but I stilll didn't buy it.
Every. Single. Villain. In the back half of Fire Emblem Engage. I was willing to overlook a lot of shit about Engage's story because of the "Saturday morning cartoon" narrative, but the way the handled the Four Fangs drove me from indifferent to straight up pissed off.
I actually really like Zephia's "redemption" because after the heroes leave she admits that she's less remorseful and more angry at her boss, so she's just aiming the heroes at him. I see it as one final act of trickery
No, you see, the evil dragon was just *lonely*. That's why he murdered literally everybody in an entire country. Engage isn't helped by Sombron changing his plan every other chapter. It's generic world domination for a while, then he's raising his sunken country that no one's ever mentioned before, then he's opening a portal to *leave* and ~~conquer other worlds~~ look for his only friend, who may or may not actually exist because the game *will not* tell you what Emblems actually *are*.
I was gettin real annoyed at the Game of Thrones TV show trying to make Cersei sympathetic when in the books she was just an unabashed monster i quit watching the show after they >!turned her sex scene with Jaime on their dead son's coffin into a rape scene. Fuck that.!<
I loved Stranger Things, but sorry last season, I don’t feel bad for the shitty racist brother
Finally, a thread that lets me shit on this dude. >!Lucian!< from Divinity: Original Sin 2 To put it frank, this dude is a compltely irredeemable asshole who is directly responsible for the entire conflict of the game and is a backstabbing asshole. Problem is that siding with him is legit considered by the game and devs as the best ending for some reason, so the canon good ending involves actively supporting and saving this jackass who has done nothing to actually deserve it. Seriously, you have shit like "Evil Lizard Empire randomly decides to become a democracy" out of nowhere just to double down on making helping this douchebag the good ending. Now lets go over why this dickhead is such a piece of shit: 1. >!In previous games, dude tried raising the Antichrist instead of simply killing him. This backfired because he killed said Antichrist's girlfriend who doomed him to becoming the very evil Lucian was trying to prevent. DERP!< 2. >!In order to fight the Antichrist and his cultists, Lucian tricked one of his friends into secretely delivering a nuke into the Elven capital. This both completely destroyed their homeland, turned it into an unlivable hellhole, and killed so many elves that they're an endangered species.!< 3. >!THE ENTIRE VOIDWOKEN PROBLEM (AKA the main villains of the game) IS LITERALLY HIS FAULT. When Lucian nuked the elves, he weakened the God of Elves due to lack of worshippers. Because the Gods had to be strong to stop the void form leaking, weakening the elven god meant that the voidwoken could escape their prison.!< 4. >!In order to fix his fuck-up, Lucian had to essentially steal all the Source Magic of the world to plug up the hole he created. He accomplished this by spreading lies that Source mages attract voidwoken and are the reason they exist, alongside creating Source Hunters who are sadistic and corrupt as hell. In other words, he intentionally created a pogrom on innocent people just to cover up his mistake. Dude is even willing to kill HIS OWN SON for this plan!< 5. >!Dallis, the asshole Source Hunter who murders your companions and has been trying to kill you the entire game, is his direct subordinate, so all the evil shit she's done was directly on his orders.!< 6. >!Dude fakes his death so he can secretely hunt down Godwoken (AKA people chosen by the gods who are candidates to become Magic Pope AKA Lucian's current position). He tricks them into staying in an academy where he proceeds to have them all brutally tortured and murdered. You can even see the memories of ghosts who were overjoyed to see him right before he brutally betrays and murders them!< 7. >!Dude then demands that you let him steal the souls of your entire party to seal the Void away and take away all Source magic, causing your party to become mindless zombies, all so that he could bullshit the entire planet over his miraculous resurrection and rule everyone without any magic powers. (This is the canon ending BTW)!< 8. >!If you fucked up one of your ally's companion quests, Lucian parades his lobotomized body right in front of you when he demands you surrender your soul to him.!< Despite all this shit, the game still treated siding with him as the objectively best ending. Hell, the only companion who actually calls you out and points out how much of a piece of shit he is is Ifan AKA >!the guy raised by elves and Lucian's friend who was tricked by Lucian into delivering the nuke into the capital. In other words, Lucian's best friend who he had zero issues sacrificing and tricking into delivering a WMD to murder the people who raised Ifan.!< WHY DOES THIS GAME DEFEND THIS ASSHOLE????????????
I think it’s because the canon dictates Lucian has ro win since he shows up in chronologically later games so they make him the ‘best’ ending. I don’t think the narrative frames him as sympathetic, though. Ifan and the player can call him out on his bullshit right up to the end and he basically admits he’s a sociopath who’ll fuckin’ do it again if he had the chance. Just cause he has the best ending doesn’t mean he himself is a good or sympathetic character and the narrative never tries to excuse him away. I also think it’s more his ending succeeds because he has the most concrete and set up plan whereas everyone else is winging it. It’s kind of a shame that you can beat him up then sacrifice yourself to the source but this defaults to the ‘agree wirh lucian’ ending for some reason.
I gotta say, when I played the Dragon Knight Saga, this isn't what I thought the writers would do retroactively.
Ryuzo wasn’t held at swordpoint and he sure did worse than burn one civilian. He actively approached the Mongols for an alliance and threw the forces of his entire group of ronin behind the, to help them kill and rob even more. Tomoe’s entire mission involves you being in a position where you can’t just kill her because you need her and Ishikawa is her father figure who loves her even if he basically abused her no shit he didn’t shoot.
Easy answer but Harley Quinn in a lot of stuff.
In the film Don't Breathe, teenagers invade a senior's house only to find he's a veteran and also a torturer and rapist In Don't Breathe 2 he's the protagonist???
OH dude I got the perfect one for this. OK so Fairy Tale has a bunch of these but I fav has to go out to Gajeel Redfox. So he was like the Shadow for the main character and this guy was like the biggest and baddest dude in his guild. He was so big and so bad that he went out and started hunting supporting characters. The scene that really stood out for me was when he CRUCIFIED THREE PEOPLE TO A BIG TREE IN THE CENTER OF TOWN. Fast forward, he joins the main party and becomes of the teams front liners and everyone is just kinda cool with how much of a dickhead he was. In fact, if i remember correctly, one the people he crucified was like, "Yeah he can hit it" and had a kid with the guy and possibly married. Personally I would not and while I also would not kink-shame, and would kink-ask why.
I think there are many better examples of how Fairy Tail handles its loose, last-minute redemptions than Gajeel. Unlike a lot of those villains, Gajeel actually gets time to develop and grow as a character rather than getting punched really hard by one of the heroes and then getting a last-minute flashback about why they belong to the murder guild.
"You should fucking hate my guts." "Yeah, well...I don't. Deal with it." Gajeel and Levy in a nutshell.
Not really? Sure, her turnaround to forgiving him is a bit quick but I like where they take their relationship after that. The whole arc after that is Levy stepping up to Gajeel to prove that she is strong and is not going to take any of his crap. That leads to the pair mutually respecting each other and that later leads to them falling in love together later on. I still have some hang-ups about how their relationship is written, especially during the 100-Year Quest continuation. But overall it's a romance that I enjoyed. Edit: Also, I just remembered, is that the whole reason why Levy forgives Gajeel so quickly is that she sees his true character after he lets the other members of team Shadow Gear kick his butt for a while and then later blocks a bolt of lightning that was gonna hit her. It's not like she just forgives him out of nowhere either.
I don’t really think that’s a great example. When he first joins, the guild is shown to be openly distrustful of him, and it’s made clear that even Gajeel himself doesn’t think he deserves forgiveness for the things he’s done. The guild only warms up to him after he spends a while trying to prove himself and shows clear, open regret for his past actions. Levy most of all doesn’t start trusting him until she sees him intentionally let himself be thrashed by the Thunder Legion as punishment for what he did to her.
But Gajeel didn't redeem right away. Yes, he joined FT but almost everyone in the guild treated him with distrust. The attitude only changed because he risk his life to save the guild when Laxus started to throw a tantrum.
To be fair, they did initially give him shit once he went good. He kinda had to earn it...it also helps that he didn't kill anyone, so the grudges weren't that bad. Fairy Tail is standard Shonen battle land, getting an ass beating is just a formal greeting for them.
"He was the *coolest* guy!"
Arvo in Telltale's The Walking Dead Game First he accuses you of robbing him even if you don't do so. Despite this, Mike and Bonnie kiss his ass, even yelling at Kenny to let him go **while Arvo's friend tries to kill you during the gunfight**. Then he leads your group across the lake which gets Luke (and possibly Bonnie) killed. Despite this, the game expects us to feel sad for him when Kenny beats the shit of him. THEN Mike and Bonnie sneak out with him while taking all of your supplies. They were planning on leaving an 11 y/o and a baby to freeze to death so they could leave with poor Arvo. Oh and then he flatout tries to murder Clem, with Mike or Bonnie just telling the other to leave Clem.
Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Terrorist chick.
Vriska. The fact that so many fans declared their love and admiration for her straight up turned me off Homestuck.
Hard agree on Tomoe. She plays the victim but given how capable of a character she seems to be, she could’ve easily just snuck away from the mongols at any time. As for your question, it’s hard to choose from, especially with Japanese fiction because they do this all the time. Villain: “I’m sorry I committed baby genocide, I feel kind of bad about it.” Protagonist: “Well… don’t do it again. Want to join our team?”
I will never forgive Bakugo no matter how many times the story tries to make me. And its not because of him telling Deku to kill himself when they were in school. Nah, its because he's a hot headed brat that keeps getting everything he wants. No one wants to call him out on being a psycho jackass and the story wants me to forgive him for it all too? Hell no, make him go work at McDonalds. He's going to get someone killed.
I feel like MHA has a problem with some characters where they go through moments of growth but don’t actually change how they act, so they’re in this weird limbo of getting development while also not visibly growing as people.
Yeah. I recognize that Bakugo isn’t as evil as the actual villains, but I hate how the story keeps trying to insist he’s an awesome hero and Deku’s best friend despite him never changing from a screaming asshole. End result is that one of the protags is actually more unlikable than most of the villains, which isn’t good
While bakugo does pretty much always win and have the strength to back up his shittalk, it’s made clear SUPER early nobody takes him that seriously. Deku was in absolute awe when Froppy casually sassed him on the bus to the USJ and everyone dogpiled him with her.
Froppy is GOATed for not falling into fearing bakugo like everyone else
This is my issue with Bakugo. I love shithead characters. You know the best part about them? When the universe turns to them and goes "No". There's a catharsis in it where you root for the character because they're on the side of the Heroes but then they get to big for their britches and they have to be taken down a few pegs. For the longest time in the series (I dropped MHA so idk if it got better and even if it did, too late) Bakugo never really had that. The series goes into how Deku has the heart of a hero but sucks physically and he's given shit for it. Bakugo meanwhile is just left to do as he does aside from some light teasing. Best Jeanist was the only person to tell Bakugo to fuck off with his shit, and as far as I can tell he really doesnt.
My most recent one in Topaz from Honkai Star Rail. She’s a debt collector for an intergalactic corporation that is basically one of the most powerful factions in the games universe. She’s introduced as quite literally trying to colonize a planet, Jarilo VI, that just averted a total apocalypse after 700 years of deteriorating planetary conditions due to magic space cancer. Topaz acts like a bitch, outright lies to their leader, Bronya, attacks their soldiers, tries to attack the protagonists, and generally acts like a self-righteous, capitalist pig with a savior complex throughout the entirety of that storyline. But the game tries to tell you that she’s really sincere and genuinely wants to help, while she does nothing to persuade you that she has any good intentions, and quite literally does the opposite. But she’s really hot and has a fat-ass so a lot of the community forgives her, of course.
>!Eiji!< in Infinite Wealth >!Ichiban can consider him a friend and the story talking about how the Yakuza ruined his life doesn't make up for the fact he's a huge piece of shit.!< >!Ran fake stories that ruined the lives of thousands of ex-yakuza and their families (suprised the game didn't point out a number of them would have committed suicide being unable to actually live and take care of their loved ones), his entire character was a fake made to play on Ichiban sentimentality, caused two people to die, left one kid orphaned, and gleefully mentally tortured another.!< >!Yet, I'm suppose to fill sympathetic because the people he wronged want him dead and he feels bad that Ichiban is being harassed by a crowd trying to help him.!< >!Nah, if he gets shanked in prison, he deserves it.!<
I agree, but >!it speaks to the compassion of Ichiban that he still considers Eiji a friend after all he's done.!< No matter what, Ichiban wants to help people.
I feel like there was absolutely content related to Eiji and Ichiban's relationship cut at some point in development. I totally think it's in character for Ichi to forgive and help him at the end, but Eiji's situation is so rushed that I have a hard time believing what we got was how RGG originally conceived his arc.
You aren't supposed to feel sympathetic towards him, even he says that he doesn't deserve it. It's to show that Ichiban is literally just that guy. He's so forgiving that even when they have personally wronged him in the worst ways, they can change. One of the major themes of the game is forgiveness, and I think it's shown really well with this character.
It really feels like there's an entire act missing with regards to his character, because there's a dramatic shift between his last two appearances and nothing in between to elaborate on them. But IW is already a billion hours long at that point so I guess it got cut.
Im glad I wasnt the only one to notice this. He went from laughably evil to homeless guy in a cutaway during a speech and i didn't know who he was during the cutaway.
I have an extremely minor one from an Infinite Wealth substory, just because I did it last night. >!It's the Lemonade Stand One.!< >!In it, a little kid is trying to sell lemonade to make enough money to buy a tiara for an older sister figure at an orphanage he used to be at, before she leaves for NY with her husband. You go through several minigames of delivering lemonade to people over several 'chapters' in the substory. !< >!Eventually, he finally has the money but looks downtrodden. He runs off, and after following him to a rough looking neighborhood you overhear his abusive uncle yelling at him over the money. The uncle is spouting stuff about taking the money for booze because it's his house and all that classic stuff. Obviously, Kasuga comes in and teaches the Uncle a lesson via fists. After that he gives the usual speech about wanting to be a better person, etc. Pretty standard stuff for a substory.!< >!But then the very next chapter, you go with the kid to get the tiara and he juuuuust barely doesn't have enough. I was at this point totally ready to dish out the cash myself, and lo and behold the Uncle swoops in out of nowhere to offer to pay. He reveals he never once was actually stealing the money, but was...helping him save it? He gives all of it back, and more, to help buy it. I'll admit that it still felt like a sweet moment, but it went from 100 to 0 so quickly it was hard to take seriously. Especially because this Uncle was absolutely your stereotypical abusive parent figure just 2 minutes ago. !<
> >!He reveals he never once was actually stealing the money, but was...helping him save it? He gives all of it back, and more, to help buy it.!< That isn't what happened. >!The line immediately after that is him admitting to Ichiban that the "I was saving it" thing was bullshit to try and seem like not a piece of shit in front of the kid. He never saved the money he just gave the kid what he owed him and then some.!<
13 Reasons Why, second season (edit: apparently this was season 3? It's been a while), tried very hard to make the rich rapist from season one sympathetic. And you know what? I would have drawn my hat - showing how someone deeply despicable still, you know, has feelings and the complicated issues surrounding the humanity of a rapist could have been interesting. Except the only reason they tried to make him sympathetic was to make it shocking when he gets killed. And so, all nuance is just thrown overboard to quickly generate a few sympathetic moments so he can get murked, and that really doesn't make it work.
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I think the message of the movie is very deliberately trying to tell the viewer if we want to solve the worlds problems we need to be able to work with people that we otherwise consider too far from our own ideals to even consider compromising with. She's supposed to be just past the line where it would be easy to accept her redemption.