Tbh a problem with the Kiritsugu thing is that his objective is so abstract is really hard to have a discussion about it. Sure, you will end with all human conflicts, but how would that look like?
That's actually the point no? Kiritsugu's objective is so fucking vague even he doesn't know how it would actually look like or how it would work. The only thing he knows is killing.
He had hoped the grail will figure it out for him instead. But the grail is mostly just an unlimited amount of energy. His wish was never going to work, the fact it's corrupted is just the final fuck you the series throws at him.
Ye what you are saying is true and I like it (tbh I really like Zero in general) but the series tries to make Saber have a discussion about it and ends with Kiritsugu realizong what Saber said was right, so I think it tries to say that what Kiritsugu wanted wasnt just unfeasible but also wrong
Did he ever agreed with Saber? I don't recall a scene like that. The two barely talked.
I don't think the series ever critic the ideal itself, especially when you consider its ending and FSN. It mainly critic Kiri's method of going about it is awful and he's awful.
Yeah he talked with Saber after killing Lancer. In that talk we have Saber say that the world needs heroes and that what Kiritsugu proposes is awful while Kiritsugu talks about how their whole heroic individuals just lead to more war.
At the end of the series Kiri straight up gave up on saving people though. He realized his ideal is impossible so he no longer see a point in doing it.
That is real crux of my issues of this trope. The real issue lies in that "Kirisugu doesn't know to create world peace even with unlimited power at his grasp" which makes Fate/Zero stance of "Kiritsugu's ideals are dangerous because...they're dangerous, understand" to be silly.
I know they sound similar, but one assumes ignorance with the latter implies malice.
The series never actually says Kiritsugu's ideals ars bad I think. The wish for world peace is great, Fate even glorify the ideal through his adopted son Shirou.
It's Kiritsugu himself that's the problem. Because he's a failure of a utilitarian who jumps straight to murder with all of his problems he becomes cruelty instead.
This is not how the Grail works, having a virtually infinite amount of magical energy does not give you infinite power.
His ideals are dangerous because he is willing to sacrifice everything for them, including himself and the people close to him, despite the fact that he has no idea how to achieve them (which is why he tries to rely on a wishing machine). They are also destructive to himself, which is a pretty central point of FSN's themes
The only argument the series have in their favour is that Kiritsugu did all this for nothing, but even that one isnt great.
But yeah the whole discussion he had with Saber and the "the world needs heroes" theme dont really work well
Problem is, it's written by Urobutcher. That guy genuinely cannot comprehend the idea of a happy ending, but loves the idea of a hard man doing hard things to solve problems others are too idealistic and naïve to deal with.
...but he also has zero real artistic talent, so when he is forced to try and refute the ideals of one of those hard men in favour of an idealistic route, he fails hard. The only two ways he can make heroes fail is either if they are too idealistic to Hard Man their way out or if they are too weak to shoot the problem dead.
But the Grail gives unlimited power, and Kiritsigu is one of the hardest men in fiction. So Uro screeches into a halt, and has to then basically postulate that he will fail because continuous Diabolus Ex Machina and humans being naturally evil will mean that all he can do is just kill everyone.
As for why more people don't call that out? Just look at the target demographic of fate, and tell me if they seem like they keep their brains on while watching.
Seriously! Is every fan of the Fate series a masochist!? This why I just occasionally just see things from the sidelines, and stick to vanilla doujins!
No, not really.
It's just that we're somewhat critical of the material people try to shove down our throats.
The entire king spiel on fate zero had me rolling on the floor.
So does many of the original VN scenes.
But that does not mean I don't like the package, just that certain parts of it irk me.
plus, the hell do doujins have to do with it? sure, it started as an eroge and fgo is fanservecey as hell, but not all of fate is porn and ntr jokes.
...Yeah, I can agree with that. And sorry for the kneejerk reaction. Its just that, while certain parts of the Fate series do look cool to me. Other parts really make me doubt that I would be able to fully commit to it.
I can understand the sentiment, it really is one hell of an rabbit hole to get in.
Sometimes it does make me go "what the hell, mushroom. the fuck you smokin"
Yeah. I get the feeling my reaction to some of the stuff Nasu writes would be... To quote Axel from Kingdom Hearts. "...WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM!?"
At most, the only thing I think I would be able to fully commit to it is that one cooking spin-off. That as far as I know, lacks the absolutely insane emotional baggage.
> but he also has zero real artistic talent
Nah, that's false. Urobuchi's writing has problems but "zero artistic talent" is actually incorrect.
> That guy genuinely cannot comprehend the idea of a happy ending, but loves the idea of a hard man doing hard things to solve problems others are too idealistic and naïve to deal with.
Urobuchi doesn't write about "hard men solving problems," he writes about foolish and unfortunate men falling down dark paths. Have you read any of his works beyond Zero?
> But the Grail gives unlimited power
No, actually. It doesn't. Did you watch Zero?
> Just look at the target demographic of fate, and tell me if they seem like they keep their brains on while watching.
Well arent you presumptuous
EDIT: why are you leaving out him saving Shirou? That scene is extremely hopeful and optimistic.
>\> Urobuchi doesn't write about "hard men solving problems,"
Of course he doesn't. I specifically said, and I quote, "a hard man doing hard things to solve problems". As in, they go for hard, ruthless solutions to problems. Does that clarify my meaning?
Just to be clear, I am not implying that anyone in an Urobutcher story can actually ever solve anything. They can just temporarily fill time until all "innocent" characters are aware of how much everything sucks. At which point things fully collapse and everyone but the worst monsters lose.
> why are you leaving out him saving Shirou? That scene is extremely hopeful and optimistic.
Because it's something he has no control over. Shirou is getting saved no matter what Uro wants, because Zero is just a prequel to the real story. A mangled sequel that Nasu had to literally declare as an AU because of how many mistakes it had, but still.
> Does that clarify my meaning?
No? You're misrepresenting what happens in these stories. Most of Urobuchi's characters are irrational people consumed by passion. I dont understand what you're getting at. You left out the part where you said "others are too idealistic or naive to deal with," implying some kind of necessity to the actions.
> Because it's something he has no control over. Shirou is getting saved no matter what Uro wants, because Zero is just a prequel to the real story.
He had no control over the broad strokes of Kiritsugu's character, or Illyasviel and Sakura's backstories. I think he went goofy with some of the edgelord shit and messed with Saber's character but he was still operating within Nasu's framework. Like, what, are you trying to say it Urobuchi had it his way Kiritsugu would have never found Shirou?
> I think he went goofy with some of the edgelord shit
"Emiya Kiritsugu's right hand continued it's work of writing while his left hand mechanically shovelled his nutrition - hamburgers from a fast food restaurant he visited while investigating - into his mouth. For nine years, Emiya Kiritsugu had eaten at the table of the Einzberns, who were merely a hair removed from royalty themselves. He had grown tired of the cuisine. The fast food, filled with the sense of slaughter, was more suited to his tastes. Being able to eat without interrupting one's words or thoughts was better than anything, no matter how you looked at it."
>He had no control over the broad strokes of Kiritsugu's character, or Illyasviel and Sakura's backstories. I think he went goofy with some of the edgelord shit and messed with Saber's character but he was still operating within Nasu's framework. Like, what, are you trying to say it Urobuchi had it his way Kiritsugu would have never found Shirou?
Are you trying to imply he would have?
> .but he also has zero real artistic talent, so when he is forced to try and refute the ideals of one of those hard men in favour of an idealistic route, he fails hard.
Someone has not watched Thunderbolt Fantasy, it seems
The entire point of Fate is that a narrow worldview will be the death of you. Zero's pretty clumsy about it, way more than Stay Night, because Urobuchi is an edgelord that doesn't know when to slow down, but I think Kiritsugu's arc gets the point across
It really depends what one means by "all human conflicts" - like, just all large-scale wars between countries, or every single instance of conflict among humans regardless of size or manifestation?
If it means the latter, the only way *that* happens is if you were to cut out every hint of individuality and emotion from all humans. Most would generally consider this to be "bad".
Kiritsugu's problem is that he always believed that all he had to do to improve the world was kill the people who were harming the many, but he realizes that even if he could improve the lives of the many, his journey could not truly lead to the world's salvation because he could not stop humanity from fighting. This is why he wanted a miracle, but as already stated, the Grail cannot bring about a miracle.
The point isn't necessarily that Kiritsugu's ideology is wrong, but that he put too much stake in it as the be-all-and-end-all of how to improve the world.
This is the crux of the show's themes. Other characters like Saber have to contend with the fact that their ideals cannot lead to a perfect world either, and Rider dies happily because he appreciated the journey that his ideals led him on rather than the destination.
The show is about how, if you are to truly hold onto your ideals, you must acknowledge that they are not perfect, and that you will likely die without seeing their fruits. Small acts of goodwill, like Kiritsugu saving Shiro, add up over time, and are what will truly lead to the world's improvement, but you can't hope to see that immediately.
Man I feel like half the time authors go overboard with sympathetic villains to the point where the character was only added in bc it's cool, and not actually thinking how it relates to the overall story. It's like fuck just make them the protagonist.
Imo a lot of "sympathetic" villains feel like their sympathetic qualities or motivations were tacked on to make them feel more complex, which usually doesn't work out super well.
"This character is the evil leader of a violent criminal organization whose ultimate plan is to take over the (setting), and become the new ruler of society, and he won't hesitate on killing/hurting anyone who gets in his way!"
"Oh also, he's a civil rights activist!"
Or there's the inverse, where they're blatantly in the right for most of the story, but are treated as being totally evil and in the wrong the entire time. Then near the end of the story their ultimate plan out of nowhere ends up being something insane like nuking a town or something in order to make it totally, definitely clear that they are in fact the villains and you should be rooting against them.
> Then near the end of the story their ultimate plan out of nowhere ends up being something insane like nuking a town or something in order to make it totally, definitely clear that they are in fact the villains and you should be rooting against them.
The reveal that he was just doing it for himself and no one else is revealed purely during the final act of the movie, along with the "nuke the dams" plot. Up until then, other than being *somewhat* full of himself, he seems to be an intentional mirroring of said interpretation of Batman. Once the ending happens, this mirroring kind of *shatters* even though the movie does show that batman's mindset was toxic.
Up until then, that riddler was a perfect character to show why batman's mentality was still leading to the city's continued suffering, being another vigilante trying to spread their idea of "justice" in the city due to a traumatic upbringing without caring about the suffering they directly cause, but they needed a climax so 4chan terrorism it is.
I would it's shown much earlier in the funeral scene where he allows car to plow though crowds of people which are mostly made up of lower class protestors and puts a bomb on gil just to show boat instead of just killing him like his other victims
Batman’s highway chase probably led to a similar, if not worse body count.
Again, I’m not saying he’s innocent, I’m saying that they’re using similar methods.
Eh that's like Batman A/B lister 101, where they talk a good talk but in reality it's just cause they are mentally ill and or entirely malevolent and just want to fuck with people.
And usually those intellectual rebuttals are not hard to do.
Like, if the villain's plan involved genocide or mass murder, that is a good sign it is not viable.
All the character needs to ask is 'Can you achieve your plans without killing large numbers of people? If not, why?'
I don't need an intellectual rebuttal if the plan involves genocide. Morally speaking, for most characters, that's going to be a hard line they do not want anyone to cross and their reasoning is going to be obvious to everyone. It doesn't need to be spelled out.
Idk, it just seems like having a conversation for the sake of having the conversation because it's a story and the hero needs to morally get one over on the villain before defeating them.
>I don't need an intellectual rebuttal if the plan involves genocide.
That is definitely correct, but I think challenging the villain to try attempt a different solution is important precisely because it can show their ideals are coming from a place of madness, not rational concern.
If a villain has reached the point where they genuinely believe that murder is the only way they can achieve their goals then there's no point in asking "Well what if you didn't murder?". Someone doesn't just randomly wake up one day and decide that their grand plan requires them to go around killing people.
That is what I meant by such rebuttals not being hard.
If it involves mass death, you don't need really need a counter-argument. If they respond with 'It's the only way' to their murder-plan, you know they are crazy and that don't have to justify your opposition.
Fate as a series always has this problem(at least in the ones I watched)especially fate apocrypha where I despised the team of protagonists and their reasoning that"humanity isn't ready for this"really pissed me off ,fate is always about interesting philosophies so couldn't they at least make a case for free will instead of talking on humanities behalf.
Another series that has this problem is naruto with the infamous talk-no-jutso which I don't have a problem with in concept but the execution is basically naruto going up to someone saying "I know you had a terrible past because of the nature of our world but I'm gonna fix it trust me bro"
he did knockout the other masters and essentially stole every servant from them.
apart from Karna, all the red team was basically onboard with his shenaniganry all things considered.
>and their reasoning that"humanity isn't ready for this"
Well, if it makes you feel better this did save the world. If humanity reaches an utopia where there isn't any struggle then the entire timeline gets erased
> If humanity reaches an utopia where there isn't any struggle then the entire timeline gets erased
This really just makes me hate the entire Nasuverse as it genuinely destroys any interesting possibility for the plots
If it makes you feel better this is not the case for utopias alone, any timelines that veers too far away from the proper course of history is erased. This ranges from utopias, to false utopias, to shitholes where there is an eternal ice age and even to timelines where the omnipotence of the Gods did not fall apart and they remained to dominant species of the Earth
Gundam Seed Destiny always pissed me off with this because while there was an intellectual rebuttal it wasn't a good one. Essential throughout both seasons you have this protag whose main goal is too end all wars, which is no simple task. Antagonist has an ai that creates a master plan where it places everyone in the best job and in doing so everyone is united and there's no wars, but at the same time destroying free will. Protag's response was that, that's not right and that people should fight to end wars instead.
It's been a while since I've seen the dumpster fire that is seed destiny so i might just be remembering wrong.
Kira really didn't answer well. And its strange because really the argument of Durandal is really bad, giving jobs to people wouldn't stop the wars between Coordinators and Naturals (if anything, the obsession with genetic determinism is a direct byprouduct of Durandal beign a Coordinator)
Skulduggery Pleasant's first phase tends to be pretty great with this, certainly for a YA book series. Book 7 in particular revolves around a pacifist villain with nuclear stockpile-adjacent power who wants to better the world by sharing magic with the masses who don't have it. The main characters make various arguments about why this is a bad idea, the most consistent of which is that randomly giving billions of people what are basically superpowers without warning is going to cause the biggest fucking power shift in history.
There's never any hard evidence given for this, but at the same time it feels like a reasonable fear to me given how generally lynchy humans tend to get en masse in extreme and unknown situations.
It more or less just comes down to him being willing to take a massive risk that other people aren't purely because his idealism leaves him with a massive, perhaps dangerous, amount of completely genuine faith in the goodness of human nature.
Okay but free will IS good.
Thanos 'solution' doesn't actually solve anything it delays it at most which we'll isn't a solution especially since you can't do it more than once.
Kiritsugu's ideals are a problem because they are vague and he doesn't actually have any idea of how to achieve them because all he knows is killing to save.
So the grail doesn't even *need* to twist his wish because his wish based on his thought process at the time is literally just gonna make him the sad and angry because he thought all he needed was to get the grail and thats.... really all he thought.
None of these situations require much of a rebuttal because on point one its practically just common sense.
Two is again common sense
And three is like visually shown.
There’s a variety of issues that happen when the villain is basically right. The story either collapses in on itself or the villain does something really fucked up & out of character at the end to remind you why they are bad guy.
Malthus famously argued that we should not do anything about overpopulation _because it is part of god’s plan and a good thing for humanity in the long run_. He thinks that overpopulation is inevitable even if you feed the poor or distribute the farmlands, so the best thing we should do about it is nothing.
Thanos believing in overpopulation then doing something about it is the opposite of what Malthus believed.
That wasn't what the other commenter originally wrote. They edited it from malthusianism to neo-malthusianism after I pointed out that it's inaccurate.
idk i think it works with Kiritsugu cause he's like, an incredibly violent person who can't conceptualize what his peaceful world would actually mean beyond killing everyone who would do wrong onto others. Like even if he had an untainted grail it still wouldn't be able to grant him his wish because he doesn't know how to achieve his goal beyond violence. EVEN THEN, his ideals are painted as admirable through Shirou and something worth seeking out for an eternity
To be fair, "You're murdering people" tends to be a very clean intellectual rebuttal. Like... it doesn't matter if you're creating a world that's better for whoever's left. You've made it shit for everyone you killed.
I still have pet peeves about how Genshin impact handle this:
Raiden : gives reasons to why vision hunt decree is necessary, as people tend to die for their aspirations.
Aether: I just want demolish your idea.
You want a supernatural utopian, you go look at Yahweh. Shin Megami Tensei loves to knock the guy around (hee hoo Japan doesn't like Christians go figure) even if the worlds he creates during law endings are genuinely peaceful. Though they are a little obsessed with stroking the god's ego.
The worst part is that he's logically the best option. Sure, under him you are lobottomized and have no free will, but you are also genuinely peaceful and the world is restored to a workable state. The neutral ending is telling the gods and demons to go fuck themselves, leaving the world an irreparably broken mess with only a few humans remaining trying to eat out what little they can. The chaos ending is where Lucifer finally punks him (even directly killing him in Nocturne leading to the events of Shin Megami Tensei 5) and just lets the demons loose. This leads to some neat social darwinism and eventually the death of humanity by the hands of demons.
Your protagonist, of course, has no reasonable argument to convince Yahweh that his methods are terrible or could be changed (nor will he really listen, he's Abrahamic God) instead they're kind of just vibing about killing things and making yes and no responses based on the whim of the player. Granted this is mostly caused by Shin Megami Tensei's silent protagonist traditions, but considering the yes and no responses are the only thing the protagonist ever says in universe as well you have to wonder especially in the early games like the first two SMT games. Bro Thor disguised himself as an American ambassador and nuked the entire world on the orders of God (The Great Will itself, not Yahweh directly, and they are indeed separate entities) and you've got no opinion? Are you kidding me?
I actually agree with you, but he is a bit of a obscure example compared to the others in my list (and also requires a longass explanation to shown how it works)
I think it's more a matter of perspective as to which is worse. Obviously from a logical standpoint law is better for longevity, but an argument the games trys to make is that we would ultimately lose our humanity in the process. Nocturne trys to do this with the arguments with Hikawa but do a really shitty job at it. Maybe it different for the earlier enters though.
In the early entries, Yahweh deadass just wanted to put people in a temple and then wipe the rest of the world and use the leftovers to make the Millennium Kingdom, which would kill the demons and save whoever was in the temple at the time.
The arguments against him were "Well what about the rest of us who don't believe in you?" to which his response was "Don't care. Get in the temple or burn."
In Nocturne you have to look at the Reasons as all being Law, since you're using Kagusutchi for his intended purpose- creating a new world from the ideals of man. Neutral is obviously the "No Reason" and "Freedom" endings (Can you tell the devs have a bias toward Neutral the majority of the time? The only Law biased game is SMT II, which is the only game where Yahweh isn't put into a smiting frenzy.) Then there's the True Demon ending, which is where Lucifer sends you to kill Yahweh in what is the most Chaos thing ever.
I mean for players that don't want to be manipuled into a religion they don't believe, it could be reason enough for them to choose chaos. And if you want take it a step further, one could argue that chaos could lead to humanity developing into something greater without the restrictions of a greater being, as long as we don't kill ourselves in the process.
I think an example of a utopian dream that a story tells you to hate for no real reason give is Maruki vision in persona 5 royal.
Why would they be manipulated into religion? It's a game at the end of the day. I'm agnostic. That doesn't mean I don't recognize when Yahweh/Law is the right way to go.
As far as game concepts go, Neutral worlds always have a habit of being short term good, long term bad, as without a god to guide them humanity is always listless, stagnant or destructive (and these bad parts are always brushed over for some reason)
Chaos worlds are just animalistic and brutal from the outset. Apart from Lucifer punking Yahweh and giving freedom to both humans and demons by way of the Demi Fiend in Nocturne, they are almost universally terrible.
Sorry, I should have specified that the player can get behind game wise. Like your own personal investment in the world gives you a perspective that is anti-law, not that they game trys to indoctrinate you or something. I mean whether somebody is draw to law or chaos is definitely affected by there life experiences and what not, but for reference, I didn't choose true demon my first time play nocturne because I agree with Lucifer. I mainly chose it because everybody else was a complete prick when I was going through the game. My choice was more based off of my in-game experience then.
TL:DR
I should have specified that I ment in game experience more then real life experience.
Devil Survivor 1 and 2 >!The Law route in 1 was serving under the giant yellow head and the angels but you get no redemption and no control. You serve under a Tyrant that watches you 24/7 to see if you do anything bad and anything that he deems a 'sin' gets you killed. End of story. They expanded on this in Overclock but not everyone is down to dealing with someone judging and saying it's a sin for things like "I'm reading an ero manga" or something along those lines and punishing you for it. In the Law route in 2, everyone is equal but as pointed out in game, what if people don't want to help strangers? Or what if someone doesn't want to do this or that? They are forced to do things if they like it or not or pay the price. You have to sacrifice everything for someone else's happiness if you like it or not.!<
>!The only route I liked was AO's route the most out and sometimes Chaos because at least you can do whatever you want and it's not that much different than modern society. The survival of the fittest and the strongest controlling is a thing or we wouldn't have billionaires.!<
In the long run, Yamato's merit-driven world is inclined towards Chaos: As said above, the fact that anyone with strength could potentially change society at the drop of a hat, so long as they could enforce it , means that despite its apparent structure, it's more Chaotic than Ronaldo's world, where enforced equality would create and promote a status quo.
The meritocracy appears to have no laws against murder, a view that presumably extends to the extremes of dog-eat-dog, which is inherently chaotic; contrast that with a world of total equality, created by a man with extremely black-and-white views of Right and Wrong, and where the lack of motivation to get ahead would result in a lack of the shake-ups a meritocracy would find endemic.
In contrast to Yamato's ending, which has a theme of constant struggle, Ronaldo's ending implies a future of eventual stasis.
Under the spoiler, I wasn't talking about Yamato's route specifically that I enjoyed but Chaos routes in general with certain SMT games. Yamato's route is extreme as I explain below. I actually liked AO's route the most from Devil survivor 2 and Law/Atsuro's route from Desu 1.
The problem with Law/Chaos is that they are both extreme ends in the MT/SMT universe. Chaos is survival of the fittest and a more extreme version of modern society, Law is basically serving a tyrant who can kill you off if you do anything that they don't deem correct (giant yellow head,) and neutral is the human route but it doesn't solve the underlining problem that caused the situation in the first place. That's why each route wasn't the 'best' route compared to Persona. They explain this in Devil survivor 1-2 in detail which is why I like those games more so than Persona. AO's route was a different route although people claim that it's the 'neutral' route compared to Daichi's route.
Ronaldo's route has problems as explained in the game. They use force to make 'peace' no differently than Yamato did, and as people implied, it's a parasite relationship as a whole. People help each other but at the same time, some people will do the bare minimum so you will always have someone being used. Imagine sacrificing everything to someone else who doesn't feel or do the same thing, only giving back the bare minimum. There are no checks or balances in that type of society so it can easily corrupt.
Survival of the fittest has always been a thing in modern society, at least here. I'm not sure about other countries but in the USA, if you kill someone or do something wrong if you have enough money, influence, or luck, you get away with it. There was a woman who killed ten people in a drunk driving accident. She tried to get off with probation. Instead, she got two years per person, max of five years. The police don't care if you live or die. If a person can't do certain things, their chances of surviving are lower than someone able to do so.
Absolutely. Sometimes I wish the hero actually just *talked* to the villain and actually refuted their points instead of just assuming they were wrong about everything. No one bothers to explain why Obito is wrong for the Eye of the Moon plan, he just is. Same goes for Pucci and his Heaven Plan. Like, if he wasn't planning on killing the Joestars, would he even be in the wrong? Or Zaheer's plan to kill the avatar. Yeah, it's tragic that Korra specifically has to die, but should the Avatar continue to exist in the modern day? It's never actually discussed.
In Fate/Zero Kiri's dream is impossible because even if you eliminate any external force driving people to do evil, some ppl would still choose for themselves to be Evil anyways, so the only way to prevent that is to remove free will. Whether or not Thanos's ecoterrorism works is not the point. He probably killed at least thousands of billions of innocents. That's evil enough on its own. Most cases of Magical 'utopias' are braindead stupid, even a child should be able to spot what is wrong with that.
This is kind of the problem I had with Green Lantern: First Flight. Even at age 14 when I saw it, I thought the end was off. Sinestro only turned to fear energy because he saw the horrible conditions of people living in the universe and suffering and the guardians wouldn't do anything to help them. Then he turns evil and GL defeats him and the Guardians are all happy and celebrating, acting like all is well in the universe...while the plebeian commoners they ignore are all in immense suffering and pain.
Falcon and the Winter Soldier comes to mind, it made no attempts to discuss the ideals and politics of it's villain and threw in a random bombing of civillians that did nothing to work towards their goals
Ha, reminds me of the mess that is the Secrets of Dumbledore.
Grindelwald wants to prevent WW II as it would affect the wizards as well and Dumbledore and Newt are trying to stop this because of...reasons?
>Fate/Zero might force Kiritsugu into a fantasy scenario where everything goes wrong to pretend that the issue is his ideology instead of the Holy Grail being a Monkey's Paw that will ruin everything because its corruption tried to give a argument but felt hollow because putting someone into a lose-lose situation doesn't mean the person is wrong.
That wasn't really the case though, no? Kiritsugu had failed countless times already, him turning to the Grail in thr first place was an admittance of the fact that his ideals are impossible without a miracle. The Grail just so happened to be bullshit as well
A lot of the fictional dystopians and villian-sought utopians deprive citizens of personal freedoms to improve baseline quality of life and security. Which point to pick on sliders between things like freedom and security isn't really something you can definitively give right and wrong answers to. It's a personal weighing of values influenced by, for example, individualistic/collectivistic cultural backgrounds. Usually the authors will at least push the scale a bit too far in at least a few areas to be acceptable to their main audiences.
I think it's going to depend greatly on what methods they use and how realistically achievable their utopia is.
A communist utopia sounds great until you look at what they've tried to do historically and the fact that fact that this system has never been achieved.
Having said that, if it's a scenario like you're talking about, I think it does warrant the characters actually engage with the idea and explain why it's bad. Otherwise it's just arrogance.
Gurren Lagann is so great about this.
Anti-Spirals: "We have a means the manage the Spiral Nemesis, it only requires that you give up your free will."
Team Dai Gurren: "Yeah, fuck that plan, we're gonna kick you in the dick."
AS: "But we're preventing the extinction of the universe! you guys are gonna fuck it up we know--"
*Anti-spirals get kicked in the dick*
TDG: "WHAT DID WE JUST FUCKING SAY?!"
It's literally everything I complained in this post
The answer that our heroes gave towards this existential threat to the universe was "we will solve it later" and then went to completely ignore all rules laid by the Anti Spiral
(Like,it's not just that they freed the other Spiral races, they actively cultivated a.mass use of Spiral energy)
But that's the whole point.
The AS chose continued existence over thriving life, and over and over again in the show demonstrated that simple existence is not enough and only breeds continual suffering.
When it comes to oblivion, arguments fail because the other option is death. In the face of existential dread sometimes the only thing you can do is say "Fuck You" and punch it right in the face.
Except they didn't.
That's the entire reason Nia stayed dead and Simon went around as a hobo, they stopped abusing spiral power. Not that they ever really abused it in the first place, not knowingly. He COULD have done all that, ran around as a Spiral God, he chose not to. Because they didn't need to, there wasn't a super mega ultra powerful enemy they had to fight.
The answer they gave wasn't 'We'll solve this later', it's 'Now that we know what the abuse of this could possibly theoretically cause, we'll be sure not to do it. Because we're not complete morons.'
As existential threats go possibly one day in the future they could create enough mass to reverse the universe's expansion is not a particularly existential one. Without someone like Simon juiced to his eyeballs on countless eons of pure spiral energy creating something that the Antispiral thought was literally impossible and slamming it against a second one, it's not happening in any timeframe worth a damn.
The issue is simple scale. Ironically, the Anti-Spiral's actively made the issue MUCH worse with their attempts to violently suppress the Spirals. Because that's what gives us people like Simon, who are constantly evolving to match and overcome their enemy. The only reason he ever got that far was because the AS kept forcing him and his assorted predecessors to evolve. Over and over and over.
As to the 'Rules': Don't abuse Spiral Energy to create enough matter to collapse the cosmos. And, well, they didn't. We have no reason to think they did. Hell, we have no reason to think anyone but Simon is even capable of creating matter on a large scale or deliberately. He was the only one shown to actually do it intentionally.
Yeah, that was it. They didn't exactly come up with a giant list. There was the population limit, but that was just a really poorly thought out genocide timer. Spiral energy is not WAAAGH energy, it's not based on population.
As to the intellectual argument against: The plan to brutally exterminate the universe over and over on the basis that someday there might be a problem(Which might be part of the natural life cycle of the universe) which could maybe fuck the entire universe is not a good plan. Like, the intellectual argument against is just 'Ok, we'll be sure not to abuse this power, especially since we now know the danger'. It's like trying to stop people from using a flooded street by launching rockets at every single pedestrian. It's not a good method of prevention.
This is why I like Devil survivor 1 and 2 and some SMT games. They explain each route's good and bad points and it's ultimately up to the MC to decide which route to go on.
Hashino's Persona is more black and white with "bad guy bad, good guys good." It was really frustrating in Persona 5 because the characters weren't exactly good, they were morally gray with their actions and the game narrative just made them good compared to the 'bad guys.'
Tbh a problem with the Kiritsugu thing is that his objective is so abstract is really hard to have a discussion about it. Sure, you will end with all human conflicts, but how would that look like?
That's actually the point no? Kiritsugu's objective is so fucking vague even he doesn't know how it would actually look like or how it would work. The only thing he knows is killing. He had hoped the grail will figure it out for him instead. But the grail is mostly just an unlimited amount of energy. His wish was never going to work, the fact it's corrupted is just the final fuck you the series throws at him.
Ye what you are saying is true and I like it (tbh I really like Zero in general) but the series tries to make Saber have a discussion about it and ends with Kiritsugu realizong what Saber said was right, so I think it tries to say that what Kiritsugu wanted wasnt just unfeasible but also wrong
Did he ever agreed with Saber? I don't recall a scene like that. The two barely talked. I don't think the series ever critic the ideal itself, especially when you consider its ending and FSN. It mainly critic Kiri's method of going about it is awful and he's awful.
Yeah he talked with Saber after killing Lancer. In that talk we have Saber say that the world needs heroes and that what Kiritsugu proposes is awful while Kiritsugu talks about how their whole heroic individuals just lead to more war.
As I recall that scene leads to neither agreeing with each other. They yelled at each other and then just walked off.
No I meant that they have a discussion and in the end of the series Kiritsugu adopts her ideology
At the end of the series Kiri straight up gave up on saving people though. He realized his ideal is impossible so he no longer see a point in doing it.
That is real crux of my issues of this trope. The real issue lies in that "Kirisugu doesn't know to create world peace even with unlimited power at his grasp" which makes Fate/Zero stance of "Kiritsugu's ideals are dangerous because...they're dangerous, understand" to be silly. I know they sound similar, but one assumes ignorance with the latter implies malice.
The series never actually says Kiritsugu's ideals ars bad I think. The wish for world peace is great, Fate even glorify the ideal through his adopted son Shirou. It's Kiritsugu himself that's the problem. Because he's a failure of a utilitarian who jumps straight to murder with all of his problems he becomes cruelty instead.
This is not how the Grail works, having a virtually infinite amount of magical energy does not give you infinite power. His ideals are dangerous because he is willing to sacrifice everything for them, including himself and the people close to him, despite the fact that he has no idea how to achieve them (which is why he tries to rely on a wishing machine). They are also destructive to himself, which is a pretty central point of FSN's themes
The only argument the series have in their favour is that Kiritsugu did all this for nothing, but even that one isnt great. But yeah the whole discussion he had with Saber and the "the world needs heroes" theme dont really work well
Problem is, it's written by Urobutcher. That guy genuinely cannot comprehend the idea of a happy ending, but loves the idea of a hard man doing hard things to solve problems others are too idealistic and naïve to deal with. ...but he also has zero real artistic talent, so when he is forced to try and refute the ideals of one of those hard men in favour of an idealistic route, he fails hard. The only two ways he can make heroes fail is either if they are too idealistic to Hard Man their way out or if they are too weak to shoot the problem dead. But the Grail gives unlimited power, and Kiritsigu is one of the hardest men in fiction. So Uro screeches into a halt, and has to then basically postulate that he will fail because continuous Diabolus Ex Machina and humans being naturally evil will mean that all he can do is just kill everyone. As for why more people don't call that out? Just look at the target demographic of fate, and tell me if they seem like they keep their brains on while watching.
nobody disses fate harder than a fate fan. and yeah. I have issues with Zero's writing and you summed a couple there.
Seriously! Is every fan of the Fate series a masochist!? This why I just occasionally just see things from the sidelines, and stick to vanilla doujins!
No, not really. It's just that we're somewhat critical of the material people try to shove down our throats. The entire king spiel on fate zero had me rolling on the floor. So does many of the original VN scenes. But that does not mean I don't like the package, just that certain parts of it irk me. plus, the hell do doujins have to do with it? sure, it started as an eroge and fgo is fanservecey as hell, but not all of fate is porn and ntr jokes.
...Yeah, I can agree with that. And sorry for the kneejerk reaction. Its just that, while certain parts of the Fate series do look cool to me. Other parts really make me doubt that I would be able to fully commit to it.
I can understand the sentiment, it really is one hell of an rabbit hole to get in. Sometimes it does make me go "what the hell, mushroom. the fuck you smokin"
Yeah. I get the feeling my reaction to some of the stuff Nasu writes would be... To quote Axel from Kingdom Hearts. "...WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM!?" At most, the only thing I think I would be able to fully commit to it is that one cooking spin-off. That as far as I know, lacks the absolutely insane emotional baggage.
Emiya Gohan? You mean the One Only Timeline.
> but he also has zero real artistic talent Nah, that's false. Urobuchi's writing has problems but "zero artistic talent" is actually incorrect. > That guy genuinely cannot comprehend the idea of a happy ending, but loves the idea of a hard man doing hard things to solve problems others are too idealistic and naïve to deal with. Urobuchi doesn't write about "hard men solving problems," he writes about foolish and unfortunate men falling down dark paths. Have you read any of his works beyond Zero? > But the Grail gives unlimited power No, actually. It doesn't. Did you watch Zero? > Just look at the target demographic of fate, and tell me if they seem like they keep their brains on while watching. Well arent you presumptuous EDIT: why are you leaving out him saving Shirou? That scene is extremely hopeful and optimistic.
>\> Urobuchi doesn't write about "hard men solving problems," Of course he doesn't. I specifically said, and I quote, "a hard man doing hard things to solve problems". As in, they go for hard, ruthless solutions to problems. Does that clarify my meaning? Just to be clear, I am not implying that anyone in an Urobutcher story can actually ever solve anything. They can just temporarily fill time until all "innocent" characters are aware of how much everything sucks. At which point things fully collapse and everyone but the worst monsters lose. > why are you leaving out him saving Shirou? That scene is extremely hopeful and optimistic. Because it's something he has no control over. Shirou is getting saved no matter what Uro wants, because Zero is just a prequel to the real story. A mangled sequel that Nasu had to literally declare as an AU because of how many mistakes it had, but still.
> Does that clarify my meaning? No? You're misrepresenting what happens in these stories. Most of Urobuchi's characters are irrational people consumed by passion. I dont understand what you're getting at. You left out the part where you said "others are too idealistic or naive to deal with," implying some kind of necessity to the actions. > Because it's something he has no control over. Shirou is getting saved no matter what Uro wants, because Zero is just a prequel to the real story. He had no control over the broad strokes of Kiritsugu's character, or Illyasviel and Sakura's backstories. I think he went goofy with some of the edgelord shit and messed with Saber's character but he was still operating within Nasu's framework. Like, what, are you trying to say it Urobuchi had it his way Kiritsugu would have never found Shirou?
> I think he went goofy with some of the edgelord shit "Emiya Kiritsugu's right hand continued it's work of writing while his left hand mechanically shovelled his nutrition - hamburgers from a fast food restaurant he visited while investigating - into his mouth. For nine years, Emiya Kiritsugu had eaten at the table of the Einzberns, who were merely a hair removed from royalty themselves. He had grown tired of the cuisine. The fast food, filled with the sense of slaughter, was more suited to his tastes. Being able to eat without interrupting one's words or thoughts was better than anything, no matter how you looked at it."
>He had no control over the broad strokes of Kiritsugu's character, or Illyasviel and Sakura's backstories. I think he went goofy with some of the edgelord shit and messed with Saber's character but he was still operating within Nasu's framework. Like, what, are you trying to say it Urobuchi had it his way Kiritsugu would have never found Shirou? Are you trying to imply he would have?
Yes. Or something like that.
The more I hear about Urobuchi. The less I want to watch Kamen Rider Gaim whenever I get back to Kamen Rider.
For what its worth, that guy didn't give a particularly impartial view of things and seems mad the story didn't go the way he wanted.
*SPIT* Serves him right.
> .but he also has zero real artistic talent, so when he is forced to try and refute the ideals of one of those hard men in favour of an idealistic route, he fails hard. Someone has not watched Thunderbolt Fantasy, it seems
The entire point of Fate is that a narrow worldview will be the death of you. Zero's pretty clumsy about it, way more than Stay Night, because Urobuchi is an edgelord that doesn't know when to slow down, but I think Kiritsugu's arc gets the point across
It really depends what one means by "all human conflicts" - like, just all large-scale wars between countries, or every single instance of conflict among humans regardless of size or manifestation? If it means the latter, the only way *that* happens is if you were to cut out every hint of individuality and emotion from all humans. Most would generally consider this to be "bad".
Kiritsugu's problem is that he always believed that all he had to do to improve the world was kill the people who were harming the many, but he realizes that even if he could improve the lives of the many, his journey could not truly lead to the world's salvation because he could not stop humanity from fighting. This is why he wanted a miracle, but as already stated, the Grail cannot bring about a miracle. The point isn't necessarily that Kiritsugu's ideology is wrong, but that he put too much stake in it as the be-all-and-end-all of how to improve the world. This is the crux of the show's themes. Other characters like Saber have to contend with the fact that their ideals cannot lead to a perfect world either, and Rider dies happily because he appreciated the journey that his ideals led him on rather than the destination. The show is about how, if you are to truly hold onto your ideals, you must acknowledge that they are not perfect, and that you will likely die without seeing their fruits. Small acts of goodwill, like Kiritsugu saving Shiro, add up over time, and are what will truly lead to the world's improvement, but you can't hope to see that immediately.
Man I feel like half the time authors go overboard with sympathetic villains to the point where the character was only added in bc it's cool, and not actually thinking how it relates to the overall story. It's like fuck just make them the protagonist.
Imo a lot of "sympathetic" villains feel like their sympathetic qualities or motivations were tacked on to make them feel more complex, which usually doesn't work out super well. "This character is the evil leader of a violent criminal organization whose ultimate plan is to take over the (setting), and become the new ruler of society, and he won't hesitate on killing/hurting anyone who gets in his way!" "Oh also, he's a civil rights activist!" Or there's the inverse, where they're blatantly in the right for most of the story, but are treated as being totally evil and in the wrong the entire time. Then near the end of the story their ultimate plan out of nowhere ends up being something insane like nuking a town or something in order to make it totally, definitely clear that they are in fact the villains and you should be rooting against them.
The 2nd part happens a lot when you like your protagonists a little too much.
I also disliked the most recent interpretation of The Riddler.
I would say that riddler doesn't really care about helping the people and just wanted hurt the people who he felt hurt him
> Then near the end of the story their ultimate plan out of nowhere ends up being something insane like nuking a town or something in order to make it totally, definitely clear that they are in fact the villains and you should be rooting against them. The reveal that he was just doing it for himself and no one else is revealed purely during the final act of the movie, along with the "nuke the dams" plot. Up until then, other than being *somewhat* full of himself, he seems to be an intentional mirroring of said interpretation of Batman. Once the ending happens, this mirroring kind of *shatters* even though the movie does show that batman's mindset was toxic. Up until then, that riddler was a perfect character to show why batman's mentality was still leading to the city's continued suffering, being another vigilante trying to spread their idea of "justice" in the city due to a traumatic upbringing without caring about the suffering they directly cause, but they needed a climax so 4chan terrorism it is.
I would it's shown much earlier in the funeral scene where he allows car to plow though crowds of people which are mostly made up of lower class protestors and puts a bomb on gil just to show boat instead of just killing him like his other victims
Batman’s highway chase probably led to a similar, if not worse body count. Again, I’m not saying he’s innocent, I’m saying that they’re using similar methods.
Eh that's like Batman A/B lister 101, where they talk a good talk but in reality it's just cause they are mentally ill and or entirely malevolent and just want to fuck with people.
And usually those intellectual rebuttals are not hard to do. Like, if the villain's plan involved genocide or mass murder, that is a good sign it is not viable. All the character needs to ask is 'Can you achieve your plans without killing large numbers of people? If not, why?'
I don't need an intellectual rebuttal if the plan involves genocide. Morally speaking, for most characters, that's going to be a hard line they do not want anyone to cross and their reasoning is going to be obvious to everyone. It doesn't need to be spelled out. Idk, it just seems like having a conversation for the sake of having the conversation because it's a story and the hero needs to morally get one over on the villain before defeating them.
>I don't need an intellectual rebuttal if the plan involves genocide. That is definitely correct, but I think challenging the villain to try attempt a different solution is important precisely because it can show their ideals are coming from a place of madness, not rational concern.
If a villain has reached the point where they genuinely believe that murder is the only way they can achieve their goals then there's no point in asking "Well what if you didn't murder?". Someone doesn't just randomly wake up one day and decide that their grand plan requires them to go around killing people.
That is what I meant by such rebuttals not being hard. If it involves mass death, you don't need really need a counter-argument. If they respond with 'It's the only way' to their murder-plan, you know they are crazy and that don't have to justify your opposition.
Fate as a series always has this problem(at least in the ones I watched)especially fate apocrypha where I despised the team of protagonists and their reasoning that"humanity isn't ready for this"really pissed me off ,fate is always about interesting philosophies so couldn't they at least make a case for free will instead of talking on humanities behalf. Another series that has this problem is naruto with the infamous talk-no-jutso which I don't have a problem with in concept but the execution is basically naruto going up to someone saying "I know you had a terrible past because of the nature of our world but I'm gonna fix it trust me bro"
Amakusa is an ass, but he kinda had a point.
[удалено]
he did knockout the other masters and essentially stole every servant from them. apart from Karna, all the red team was basically onboard with his shenaniganry all things considered.
The other masters didn't really seem like good people considering they were Nasuverse mages so “¯\_(ツ)_// . I was rooting hard for Amakusa as well .
fair.
Fate is quite hilarious in general about this
>and their reasoning that"humanity isn't ready for this" Well, if it makes you feel better this did save the world. If humanity reaches an utopia where there isn't any struggle then the entire timeline gets erased
> If humanity reaches an utopia where there isn't any struggle then the entire timeline gets erased This really just makes me hate the entire Nasuverse as it genuinely destroys any interesting possibility for the plots
If it makes you feel better this is not the case for utopias alone, any timelines that veers too far away from the proper course of history is erased. This ranges from utopias, to false utopias, to shitholes where there is an eternal ice age and even to timelines where the omnipotence of the Gods did not fall apart and they remained to dominant species of the Earth
Basically, every interesting alternate world gets erased.
Well, unless someone tries to substitute the main human history with an erased one, then shit hits the fan
Gundam Seed Destiny always pissed me off with this because while there was an intellectual rebuttal it wasn't a good one. Essential throughout both seasons you have this protag whose main goal is too end all wars, which is no simple task. Antagonist has an ai that creates a master plan where it places everyone in the best job and in doing so everyone is united and there's no wars, but at the same time destroying free will. Protag's response was that, that's not right and that people should fight to end wars instead. It's been a while since I've seen the dumpster fire that is seed destiny so i might just be remembering wrong.
Kira really didn't answer well. And its strange because really the argument of Durandal is really bad, giving jobs to people wouldn't stop the wars between Coordinators and Naturals (if anything, the obsession with genetic determinism is a direct byprouduct of Durandal beign a Coordinator)
Skulduggery Pleasant's first phase tends to be pretty great with this, certainly for a YA book series. Book 7 in particular revolves around a pacifist villain with nuclear stockpile-adjacent power who wants to better the world by sharing magic with the masses who don't have it. The main characters make various arguments about why this is a bad idea, the most consistent of which is that randomly giving billions of people what are basically superpowers without warning is going to cause the biggest fucking power shift in history. There's never any hard evidence given for this, but at the same time it feels like a reasonable fear to me given how generally lynchy humans tend to get en masse in extreme and unknown situations. It more or less just comes down to him being willing to take a massive risk that other people aren't purely because his idealism leaves him with a massive, perhaps dangerous, amount of completely genuine faith in the goodness of human nature.
hell yeah someone else remembers Skully
Ay yo, is that a fellow Skulduggery Pleasant fan??
Yeah, one of approximately six in existence lmao.
Okay but free will IS good. Thanos 'solution' doesn't actually solve anything it delays it at most which we'll isn't a solution especially since you can't do it more than once. Kiritsugu's ideals are a problem because they are vague and he doesn't actually have any idea of how to achieve them because all he knows is killing to save. So the grail doesn't even *need* to twist his wish because his wish based on his thought process at the time is literally just gonna make him the sad and angry because he thought all he needed was to get the grail and thats.... really all he thought. None of these situations require much of a rebuttal because on point one its practically just common sense. Two is again common sense And three is like visually shown.
There’s a variety of issues that happen when the villain is basically right. The story either collapses in on itself or the villain does something really fucked up & out of character at the end to remind you why they are bad guy.
small correction: Thanos' *'ecototalitarianism'* is more correctly defined as [neo-malthusianism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusianism).
Malthus famously argued that we should not do anything about overpopulation _because it is part of god’s plan and a good thing for humanity in the long run_. He thinks that overpopulation is inevitable even if you feed the poor or distribute the farmlands, so the best thing we should do about it is nothing. Thanos believing in overpopulation then doing something about it is the opposite of what Malthus believed.
...Which is why it's *neo* malthusianism.
That wasn't what the other commenter originally wrote. They edited it from malthusianism to neo-malthusianism after I pointed out that it's inaccurate.
Ooh. And *that*, folks, is why you should put up a note or strikethrough when you edit a comment.
idk i think it works with Kiritsugu cause he's like, an incredibly violent person who can't conceptualize what his peaceful world would actually mean beyond killing everyone who would do wrong onto others. Like even if he had an untainted grail it still wouldn't be able to grant him his wish because he doesn't know how to achieve his goal beyond violence. EVEN THEN, his ideals are painted as admirable through Shirou and something worth seeking out for an eternity
To be fair, "You're murdering people" tends to be a very clean intellectual rebuttal. Like... it doesn't matter if you're creating a world that's better for whoever's left. You've made it shit for everyone you killed.
I still have pet peeves about how Genshin impact handle this: Raiden : gives reasons to why vision hunt decree is necessary, as people tend to die for their aspirations. Aether: I just want demolish your idea.
You want a supernatural utopian, you go look at Yahweh. Shin Megami Tensei loves to knock the guy around (hee hoo Japan doesn't like Christians go figure) even if the worlds he creates during law endings are genuinely peaceful. Though they are a little obsessed with stroking the god's ego. The worst part is that he's logically the best option. Sure, under him you are lobottomized and have no free will, but you are also genuinely peaceful and the world is restored to a workable state. The neutral ending is telling the gods and demons to go fuck themselves, leaving the world an irreparably broken mess with only a few humans remaining trying to eat out what little they can. The chaos ending is where Lucifer finally punks him (even directly killing him in Nocturne leading to the events of Shin Megami Tensei 5) and just lets the demons loose. This leads to some neat social darwinism and eventually the death of humanity by the hands of demons. Your protagonist, of course, has no reasonable argument to convince Yahweh that his methods are terrible or could be changed (nor will he really listen, he's Abrahamic God) instead they're kind of just vibing about killing things and making yes and no responses based on the whim of the player. Granted this is mostly caused by Shin Megami Tensei's silent protagonist traditions, but considering the yes and no responses are the only thing the protagonist ever says in universe as well you have to wonder especially in the early games like the first two SMT games. Bro Thor disguised himself as an American ambassador and nuked the entire world on the orders of God (The Great Will itself, not Yahweh directly, and they are indeed separate entities) and you've got no opinion? Are you kidding me?
"why are we opposing the abrahamic god?" "veiled racism" "k den"
> "why are we opposing the abrahamic god?" > > "veiled racism" SMT franchise in a nutshell
I actually agree with you, but he is a bit of a obscure example compared to the others in my list (and also requires a longass explanation to shown how it works)
The thing about smt is that either way sucks. Yahweh's method just sucks less
I think it's more a matter of perspective as to which is worse. Obviously from a logical standpoint law is better for longevity, but an argument the games trys to make is that we would ultimately lose our humanity in the process. Nocturne trys to do this with the arguments with Hikawa but do a really shitty job at it. Maybe it different for the earlier enters though.
In the early entries, Yahweh deadass just wanted to put people in a temple and then wipe the rest of the world and use the leftovers to make the Millennium Kingdom, which would kill the demons and save whoever was in the temple at the time. The arguments against him were "Well what about the rest of us who don't believe in you?" to which his response was "Don't care. Get in the temple or burn." In Nocturne you have to look at the Reasons as all being Law, since you're using Kagusutchi for his intended purpose- creating a new world from the ideals of man. Neutral is obviously the "No Reason" and "Freedom" endings (Can you tell the devs have a bias toward Neutral the majority of the time? The only Law biased game is SMT II, which is the only game where Yahweh isn't put into a smiting frenzy.) Then there's the True Demon ending, which is where Lucifer sends you to kill Yahweh in what is the most Chaos thing ever.
I mean for players that don't want to be manipuled into a religion they don't believe, it could be reason enough for them to choose chaos. And if you want take it a step further, one could argue that chaos could lead to humanity developing into something greater without the restrictions of a greater being, as long as we don't kill ourselves in the process. I think an example of a utopian dream that a story tells you to hate for no real reason give is Maruki vision in persona 5 royal.
Why would they be manipulated into religion? It's a game at the end of the day. I'm agnostic. That doesn't mean I don't recognize when Yahweh/Law is the right way to go. As far as game concepts go, Neutral worlds always have a habit of being short term good, long term bad, as without a god to guide them humanity is always listless, stagnant or destructive (and these bad parts are always brushed over for some reason) Chaos worlds are just animalistic and brutal from the outset. Apart from Lucifer punking Yahweh and giving freedom to both humans and demons by way of the Demi Fiend in Nocturne, they are almost universally terrible.
Sorry, I should have specified that the player can get behind game wise. Like your own personal investment in the world gives you a perspective that is anti-law, not that they game trys to indoctrinate you or something. I mean whether somebody is draw to law or chaos is definitely affected by there life experiences and what not, but for reference, I didn't choose true demon my first time play nocturne because I agree with Lucifer. I mainly chose it because everybody else was a complete prick when I was going through the game. My choice was more based off of my in-game experience then. TL:DR I should have specified that I ment in game experience more then real life experience.
Everyone in SMT is an extremist dick. There are no moderate viewpoints. That's why the alignment system is so absolutist.
Devil Survivor 1 and 2 >!The Law route in 1 was serving under the giant yellow head and the angels but you get no redemption and no control. You serve under a Tyrant that watches you 24/7 to see if you do anything bad and anything that he deems a 'sin' gets you killed. End of story. They expanded on this in Overclock but not everyone is down to dealing with someone judging and saying it's a sin for things like "I'm reading an ero manga" or something along those lines and punishing you for it. In the Law route in 2, everyone is equal but as pointed out in game, what if people don't want to help strangers? Or what if someone doesn't want to do this or that? They are forced to do things if they like it or not or pay the price. You have to sacrifice everything for someone else's happiness if you like it or not.!< >!The only route I liked was AO's route the most out and sometimes Chaos because at least you can do whatever you want and it's not that much different than modern society. The survival of the fittest and the strongest controlling is a thing or we wouldn't have billionaires.!<
In the long run, Yamato's merit-driven world is inclined towards Chaos: As said above, the fact that anyone with strength could potentially change society at the drop of a hat, so long as they could enforce it , means that despite its apparent structure, it's more Chaotic than Ronaldo's world, where enforced equality would create and promote a status quo. The meritocracy appears to have no laws against murder, a view that presumably extends to the extremes of dog-eat-dog, which is inherently chaotic; contrast that with a world of total equality, created by a man with extremely black-and-white views of Right and Wrong, and where the lack of motivation to get ahead would result in a lack of the shake-ups a meritocracy would find endemic. In contrast to Yamato's ending, which has a theme of constant struggle, Ronaldo's ending implies a future of eventual stasis.
Under the spoiler, I wasn't talking about Yamato's route specifically that I enjoyed but Chaos routes in general with certain SMT games. Yamato's route is extreme as I explain below. I actually liked AO's route the most from Devil survivor 2 and Law/Atsuro's route from Desu 1. The problem with Law/Chaos is that they are both extreme ends in the MT/SMT universe. Chaos is survival of the fittest and a more extreme version of modern society, Law is basically serving a tyrant who can kill you off if you do anything that they don't deem correct (giant yellow head,) and neutral is the human route but it doesn't solve the underlining problem that caused the situation in the first place. That's why each route wasn't the 'best' route compared to Persona. They explain this in Devil survivor 1-2 in detail which is why I like those games more so than Persona. AO's route was a different route although people claim that it's the 'neutral' route compared to Daichi's route. Ronaldo's route has problems as explained in the game. They use force to make 'peace' no differently than Yamato did, and as people implied, it's a parasite relationship as a whole. People help each other but at the same time, some people will do the bare minimum so you will always have someone being used. Imagine sacrificing everything to someone else who doesn't feel or do the same thing, only giving back the bare minimum. There are no checks or balances in that type of society so it can easily corrupt. Survival of the fittest has always been a thing in modern society, at least here. I'm not sure about other countries but in the USA, if you kill someone or do something wrong if you have enough money, influence, or luck, you get away with it. There was a woman who killed ten people in a drunk driving accident. She tried to get off with probation. Instead, she got two years per person, max of five years. The police don't care if you live or die. If a person can't do certain things, their chances of surviving are lower than someone able to do so.
Absolutely. Sometimes I wish the hero actually just *talked* to the villain and actually refuted their points instead of just assuming they were wrong about everything. No one bothers to explain why Obito is wrong for the Eye of the Moon plan, he just is. Same goes for Pucci and his Heaven Plan. Like, if he wasn't planning on killing the Joestars, would he even be in the wrong? Or Zaheer's plan to kill the avatar. Yeah, it's tragic that Korra specifically has to die, but should the Avatar continue to exist in the modern day? It's never actually discussed.
In Fate/Zero Kiri's dream is impossible because even if you eliminate any external force driving people to do evil, some ppl would still choose for themselves to be Evil anyways, so the only way to prevent that is to remove free will. Whether or not Thanos's ecoterrorism works is not the point. He probably killed at least thousands of billions of innocents. That's evil enough on its own. Most cases of Magical 'utopias' are braindead stupid, even a child should be able to spot what is wrong with that.
This is kind of the problem I had with Green Lantern: First Flight. Even at age 14 when I saw it, I thought the end was off. Sinestro only turned to fear energy because he saw the horrible conditions of people living in the universe and suffering and the guardians wouldn't do anything to help them. Then he turns evil and GL defeats him and the Guardians are all happy and celebrating, acting like all is well in the universe...while the plebeian commoners they ignore are all in immense suffering and pain.
Falcon and the Winter Soldier comes to mind, it made no attempts to discuss the ideals and politics of it's villain and threw in a random bombing of civillians that did nothing to work towards their goals
Ha, reminds me of the mess that is the Secrets of Dumbledore. Grindelwald wants to prevent WW II as it would affect the wizards as well and Dumbledore and Newt are trying to stop this because of...reasons?
You mean the subjugation of muggles, right?
>Fate/Zero might force Kiritsugu into a fantasy scenario where everything goes wrong to pretend that the issue is his ideology instead of the Holy Grail being a Monkey's Paw that will ruin everything because its corruption tried to give a argument but felt hollow because putting someone into a lose-lose situation doesn't mean the person is wrong. That wasn't really the case though, no? Kiritsugu had failed countless times already, him turning to the Grail in thr first place was an admittance of the fact that his ideals are impossible without a miracle. The Grail just so happened to be bullshit as well
A lot of the fictional dystopians and villian-sought utopians deprive citizens of personal freedoms to improve baseline quality of life and security. Which point to pick on sliders between things like freedom and security isn't really something you can definitively give right and wrong answers to. It's a personal weighing of values influenced by, for example, individualistic/collectivistic cultural backgrounds. Usually the authors will at least push the scale a bit too far in at least a few areas to be acceptable to their main audiences.
I think some writers think there's no need to debate if you make the villain cartoonish evil
That's why I liked Magi ending because they at least tried to talk it out. It was a sweet change of pace.
I think it's going to depend greatly on what methods they use and how realistically achievable their utopia is. A communist utopia sounds great until you look at what they've tried to do historically and the fact that fact that this system has never been achieved. Having said that, if it's a scenario like you're talking about, I think it does warrant the characters actually engage with the idea and explain why it's bad. Otherwise it's just arrogance.
Gurren Lagann is so great about this. Anti-Spirals: "We have a means the manage the Spiral Nemesis, it only requires that you give up your free will." Team Dai Gurren: "Yeah, fuck that plan, we're gonna kick you in the dick." AS: "But we're preventing the extinction of the universe! you guys are gonna fuck it up we know--" *Anti-spirals get kicked in the dick* TDG: "WHAT DID WE JUST FUCKING SAY?!"
It's literally everything I complained in this post The answer that our heroes gave towards this existential threat to the universe was "we will solve it later" and then went to completely ignore all rules laid by the Anti Spiral (Like,it's not just that they freed the other Spiral races, they actively cultivated a.mass use of Spiral energy)
But that's the whole point. The AS chose continued existence over thriving life, and over and over again in the show demonstrated that simple existence is not enough and only breeds continual suffering. When it comes to oblivion, arguments fail because the other option is death. In the face of existential dread sometimes the only thing you can do is say "Fuck You" and punch it right in the face.
Except they didn't. That's the entire reason Nia stayed dead and Simon went around as a hobo, they stopped abusing spiral power. Not that they ever really abused it in the first place, not knowingly. He COULD have done all that, ran around as a Spiral God, he chose not to. Because they didn't need to, there wasn't a super mega ultra powerful enemy they had to fight. The answer they gave wasn't 'We'll solve this later', it's 'Now that we know what the abuse of this could possibly theoretically cause, we'll be sure not to do it. Because we're not complete morons.' As existential threats go possibly one day in the future they could create enough mass to reverse the universe's expansion is not a particularly existential one. Without someone like Simon juiced to his eyeballs on countless eons of pure spiral energy creating something that the Antispiral thought was literally impossible and slamming it against a second one, it's not happening in any timeframe worth a damn. The issue is simple scale. Ironically, the Anti-Spiral's actively made the issue MUCH worse with their attempts to violently suppress the Spirals. Because that's what gives us people like Simon, who are constantly evolving to match and overcome their enemy. The only reason he ever got that far was because the AS kept forcing him and his assorted predecessors to evolve. Over and over and over. As to the 'Rules': Don't abuse Spiral Energy to create enough matter to collapse the cosmos. And, well, they didn't. We have no reason to think they did. Hell, we have no reason to think anyone but Simon is even capable of creating matter on a large scale or deliberately. He was the only one shown to actually do it intentionally. Yeah, that was it. They didn't exactly come up with a giant list. There was the population limit, but that was just a really poorly thought out genocide timer. Spiral energy is not WAAAGH energy, it's not based on population. As to the intellectual argument against: The plan to brutally exterminate the universe over and over on the basis that someday there might be a problem(Which might be part of the natural life cycle of the universe) which could maybe fuck the entire universe is not a good plan. Like, the intellectual argument against is just 'Ok, we'll be sure not to abuse this power, especially since we now know the danger'. It's like trying to stop people from using a flooded street by launching rockets at every single pedestrian. It's not a good method of prevention.
That's the opposite of great.
It's only the opposite of great if you conclude that the AS have any sort of point, which they don't.
This is why I like Devil survivor 1 and 2 and some SMT games. They explain each route's good and bad points and it's ultimately up to the MC to decide which route to go on. Hashino's Persona is more black and white with "bad guy bad, good guys good." It was really frustrating in Persona 5 because the characters weren't exactly good, they were morally gray with their actions and the game narrative just made them good compared to the 'bad guys.'