Why would anyone like sephiroth? No, seriously, I don;t get it. There’s nothign ABOUT him that’s interesting.
If anything good came out of Dirge of Cerberus, it had to have been Reeve’s russian doll trick.
His long, luscious hair? 
I went with Barret. It’s hard to top having a gun for a hand in terms of sheer badassery - after all, it worked well enough for Mega Man :).
As for Sephiroth, most of the emokids have (thankfully) found other role models.
Although Kefka is still my favorite FF character ever. He really wasn’t into the whole ‘I lust for power’ or ‘I hate everyone’ or ‘I’m a misguided evil soul’ thing. He was just f—in’ crazy, and he was great at it.
What a new and original topic.
Faris 4 lyfe, yo!
No idea what version of Final Fantasy VII you have.
I agree. He’s actually a pretty shallow character. I never got the “Sephiroth is a badass” cult.
Tifa, duh. Boobies for win. “I’m life support for breasts”!
^And here I thought I was the only one who remembered that description.
Otherwise Marlene (cute little clown girl).
Sephiroth: Loooong sword (and it’s a katana). Long white hair. Commands Cloud in that flashback mission (nice gameplay mechanic btw). Regularly smacks him around during the game. Kills Aeris :biggrin:. Destroys Niflheim. Doesn’t get constrained by the power structures in the game. Gets enough power and almost manages to destroy the world. [STRIKE]Has a mother complex.[/STRIKE]
All in all, he’s portrayed as a badass. Teens like badasses, but replaying the game I thought Sephy suffered more than every other character, exactly because the badass part didn’t hold much allure.
Also, he’s largely ineffective. He fails to kills Cloud and Tifa before they’re really at all powerful, and then kinda sits in a crater and waits for you to kill him before destroying the world. I mean, the badass not only loses its luster, but wears thin.
I’d argue the insanity approach is a simplistic interpretation of the character; Kefka’s something of the postmodern devolution of Japan in the ‘90s, which was coming into the world’s cultural forefront like intellentsian Russia or post-fin de siecle France while recovering from a majour crises (social chaos/two world wars/economic crash) and running into the same walls and blockades where an honest attempt at villainy becomes difficult to explain and assess credibly given the lack of consideration in objective morals, especially the ones of the old world. This leads to, rather than a character who is evil, a character who matches the chaos of the world around him, and acts out of a somewhat existential questioning of the meaningfullness of all life. Kefka fights with the end goal of being defeated; he seeks to affirm life’s meaning by destroying it and denying it until he finds otherwise. He is somewhere along the absurdist an bitterly nihilistic characterizations of Raskolnikov or the narrator of Camus’ The Stranger.
Luca Blight was a badass
I’d argue the insanity approach is a simplistic interpretation of the character; Kefka’s something of the postmodern devolution of Japan in the ‘90s, which was coming into the world’s cultural forefront like intellentsian Russia or post-fin de siecle France while recovering from a majour crises (social chaos/two world wars/economic crash) and running into the same walls and blockades where an honest attempt at villainy becomes difficult to explain and assess credibly given the lack of consideration in objective morals, especially the ones of the old world. This leads to, rather than a character who is evil, a character who matches the chaos of the world around him, and acts out of a somewhat existential questioning of the meaningfullness of all life. Kefka fights with the end goal of being defeated; he seeks to affirm life’s meaning by destroying it and denying it until he finds otherwise. He is somewhere along the absurdist an bitterly nihilistic characterizations of Raskolnikov or the narrator of Camus’ The Stranger.
Pretty interesting, though I’m not sure if you’re being serious or not. One thing I think is serious is Japan’s obsession with neo-apocalyptic worlds/giant catastrophes, usually related to hubris, that inalterably change the world. I think those themes are pretty obviously tied to Japan’s experience of being firebombed/nuked/occupied in WWII.
I definitely have to agree with hades on this one. Now HE was a villain you loved to hate.
Overall, though, I still rank Pokey as one of the msot effective villains ever. I mean, he wasn’t insane - or at least, not blatantly so. He was just a jerkwad several magnitudes above anyone I could ever possibly meet. he only really seemed insane to me in Mother 3, when he was older than even he could figure out. He’s probably still in that Absolutely Safe capsule right now.
Oh, absolutely. The character of Kefka, though, has more to do with the world that evolved after the firebombings and occupation, I feel. The parallels are pretty direct, and I am serious about the resemblance to existential characters, in that his actions have a questioning tone, and I recall him even mentioning his actions were to prove life had no meaning; he set himself up as an ideological opponent. The literary analysis was half-joking, but I actually do stand by the baseline point that Kefka’s appeal results from that more complex inspiration; rather than being evil and nihilistic, he argues for evil and nihilism.
Hm, but what if he succeeded? If he’s absurdist then he won’t take anything for granted (e.g. his defeat).
To be fair, these are probably Bad-Guys-Union regulations.
Lavos was pretty effective him(/her/it?)self in the time-lines where he(/she/it?) wasn’t thwarted by a team of time-travelers as ‘The Space Parasite’ was rather successful at destroying the world and making utter tools out of humanity. Plus in at least one of the time-lines does it take two full games to fully defeat whatever Lavos is (depending on what you consider the Time Devourer to be).
There needs to be more giant alien parasite final bosses that can turn a generic evil overlord type into a complex anti-hero. :fungah:
Then life really does have no meaning; he was hoping to be defeated and thus proven wrong. This is more similar to the Raskolnikov argument where he secretly wanted to be shown the error of his actions, according to Dostoevsky, than it is to the Camus argument.
I don’t think Kefka wanted to be defeated. I really do think he was out to kill everyone and destroy everything.
However, the creator was obviously going for the point of view that he’d be proved wrong.
Better hope you don’t lose that last boss fight!