So Few of the TM! Villains With Sob Stories Deserve any Sympathy

[جبريل 無道]

I'm thinking it may be something about the Japanese mindset, or maybe people in general.

1.  Haruna.  Okay, she dies on Yosho's ship on the way to earth.  And?  After keeping Tenchi in her world for like six months, erasing his mind and raping him, at the very end, her little ghost story is vindicate her somehow?

2.  Yuzuha.  She goes on a rampage and kills 3 Jurains.  By her confidence throughout, it wasn't her first time doing this.  Then she meets Yosho for the first time and schedules a date or something for later.  When that comes, the Jurain guards capture her, kill her, and send her back to her own dimension.  Like ANY NORMAL society.  They made it seem like some great tragedy play in this movie.  Oh, and abuses her own daughter and denies the girl her humanity.

Mayuka isn't really bad, but just creepy.  She looks 15, older than Sasami but act way younger than her, like 5.  Borderline retarded.  Considering the sexual advances on Tenchi, just creepy writing by Hasegawa.

3.  Yuugi.  Same thing as Yuzuha + Haruna.  Little psychopath destroying Jurai, Jurai takes her out.  Abuses her own creation.  Creation drags Tnechi away from girls to Tokyo (recurring theme) and at last battle her revealed story is supposed to be some sympathy card.

I LIKE the male villains in TM! much more than the female ones.  All the female ones seem to get a last minute sob story to rectify what they've done.  It's actually pretty demeaning to women in general, when the hasty explanation pretty much boils down to "No wonder she's acting this way, the woman is hysterical because someone was mean to her once".

OTOH, Kagato, Dr. Clay, even the 1-dimensional character Kain.  No lame sob stories that don't compare against what they've done.  Just honest villains, around for themselves.  Not every damn villain needs a sappy backstory to lamely try to explain or justify themselves.

Unfortunately, Z kinda went for the sob story route which I didn't like much, although it kinda fit him.  The only villain in TM! who I thought deserved sympathy was Yakage, and his backstory isn't a "Woe is me" tale trying to elicit total forgiveness or excessive guilt in Tenchi for standing up to him, etc but more like "Huh, sorry the fates had to match you two up this way" type of thing.  Of course, his redeeming qualities came to the front way before the showdown, in how he treated Minagi.

[Dr.Soviet]

OTOH, Kagato, Dr. Clay, even the 1-dimensional character Kain.  No lame sob stories that don't compare against what they've done.  Just honest villains, around for themselves.  Not every damn villain needs a sappy backstory to lamely try to explain or justify themselves.

How about Villains that have a better reason for fighting than the heroes? 

[جبريل 無道]

Who's that?  Iron Man?

[Dr.Soviet]

Who's that?  Iron Man?

Doctor Doom  <----

[shades of blue]

Who's that?  Iron Man?

http://www.youtube.com/v/NvE09BZtqlg

[Harls]

"Where I come from, a lab partnership is a sacred trust. One is always suppose to look out for one's lab partner."

[Tenchi Ryu]

Who's that?  Iron Man?

Pray Lord Doom has mercy on your soul....

[جبريل 無道]

I never read comic books and only know the ones from the movies.

So can we get back on topic please?

[Gaston]

Personally, I found Yuzuha better written than Haruna. I mean, at the end she is killed by Tenchi when she attacked him and Ryoko so for me she paid for her crime. For me, this is as if the writer said you can feel sorry for Yuzuha, she still did something bad (unlike with Haruna where she is present as a saint).

BTW Jibril, you forget Yume. We are suddenly suppose feel sorry for her because....huh....because....huh....just because !

[Morgeil]

Delurks to talk about TM (try not to die of shock).

I have very strong mixed feelings about how Yume was handled.   I took a strong liking to her because 1) she didn't fall into the usual tropes a lot of female antagonists have fallen into prior (women from Yosho's past and a preoccupation with Tenchi) and 2) she and I share a base personality type.   She's almost an exaggerated, camped up villain version of me with an extra large helping of jerkass and no concept of morality to speak of...

However, I HATED how the consequences of her actions were completely ignored.   Yes, good, she started to finally realize the horrible things that were happening because she just didn't give a damn.   Doesn't that mean she deserved to be let off scott free?   HELL NO.   As someone who partially identified with her personality and flaws, exaggerated though they may have been... I wasn't impressed by that at all.  Okuda could have done a lot better.

I also wasn't really impressed by Tsunami only being brought in to wave her magic wand and make everything all better.  Lazy ass writing... and I actually like the Okuda manga at lot of the time.

I agree Yakage was definitely the best written of the manga villains.  I'm also partial to Dark Washu.   But yeah, there's a really bad handling of the female villains in the TM franchise in comparison the males overall.

[For Washuu]

Okay, my turn.

Name: Yugi.
Age: 6.
Race: Jurian.
Oddity: Given insanely huge amounts of power.

Just step back and look at it from her perspective for a second.  The girl has no clearly defined parental figures and is genetically engineered to the point where reality becomes a game.
So... she plays the game.  She plays god because in the moment she is god.  She makes her toys and keeps and discards what of her world (the planet Jurai) she likes, because she has no concept of perspective on what she's doing.

To a child like Yugi, being hurt is being made an enemy, and so when she was locked away without even being allowed sleep (as she was at the end of the series), it was like torture to her.
"I DON'T WANT TO BE ALONE!" because she was always alone, she was always hated, she was always hurt by everyone in her world.  It had to be that way, because she didn't have the maturity she needed to be able to handle the power she was given.  This is why Empress Hinase pitied Yugi when she sealed her away.

Skip to late 90's Tokyo.  Yugi awakes, sees a world full of (seemingly) the same sort of people that imprisoned her (which, again, was basically unintended psychological torture for her for 3,500 years) 
For all she's learned, they will hate her just like the Jurians did.
"Why not just clear the playing field and make my own world?  I can do that." she thinks (it's not stated quite that clearly in the series) and then sets out to take out the one thing standing between herself and her own peaceful playground called Earth.

She had thought that everybody hated her and was mean to her, making Sasami an exception.  That's why she tried to protect or blind Sasami from what she was doing.

The reason why she breaks down more and more from the second half of ep. 25 and in ep. 26 is because she's seeing the exact same thing that happened 3,500 years before: someone stronger than her is (seemingly) mad at her and is destroying what she's created for herself AND is coming after HER.
What is she to think but that Tenchi is coming to lock her away in the dark again? (It's a childish line of thought from a childish child.)

So we have a villain that is alone, scarred by 3,500 years of silence and darkness, and who fears any authority because the previous authority in her life had to hurt her to keep their civilization alive.

Conclusion:  Blame the idiots who thought of altering a 6-year old in the first place.

See also: Mad Pierrot Le Fou, Cowboy Bebop ep. 20.

[Tenchi Ryu]

Unfortunately, Z kinda went for the sob story route which I didn't like much, although it kinda fit him.

Z wasn't really looking for sympathy though. In fact, Z wasn't really a villain. In his eyes, he was actually a savior of sorts. Not only did he not have malice towards Tenchi, he actually was trying to help him. Z had a legit and reasonable arguement for wanting to kill Tenchi, even to the point where Tenchi considered his offer before Ryoko came storming in with Ryo-Ohki.

He wanted to kill Tenchi to make him free of the hassle of being an anomaly like he is, and in essence allow him to be able to live a normal life without Tokimi always causing problems (she does this when creating anomalies). Z just wasn't aware that Tenchi is way more than just a 3rd dimensional anomaly.

Haruna can't really be defended, she just did wrong. Indirect Kidnapping and Rape just doesn't really do a good job trying to garner sympathy. In the end you can see why she did it, and even forgive her after she's been put to rest, but key phrase is AFTER she's been put to rest.

Yuzuha simply fell in love with something she had no business falling in love with. Even though she was infatuated with Yosho, she just ate 3 of his friends no less than 2 minutes before he showed up. Everyone wants to be loved, but I just can't see it working, just too different cultures and lifestyles that's not blending IMO.

Yugi on the other hand is different. She has power and reign, but in the end she proved what she really is, a child. She did a lot of foul things, but its to be expected because she likes the maturity to handle adversity. She literally messed with Tenchi out of pure jealously of what Tenchi has established as well as her beef with Jurai. She just needs to grow up, figuratively and literally.

[جبريل 無道]

Haruna can't really be defended, she just did wrong. Indirect Kidnapping and Rape just doesn't really do a good job trying to garner sympathy. In the end you can see why she did it, and even forgive her after she's been put to rest, but key phrase is AFTER she's been put to rest.

If Haruna was a guy and did what they did with one of the girls, the fandom would be screaming for his blood and not talking about forgiveness.  (Of course, he's have a following of fangirls no doubt, like Sephiroth or Draco Malfoy or something).

BTW Jibril, you forget Yume. We are suddenly suppose feel sorry for her because....huh....because....huh....just because !

I always felt that Yume was a bad Naja knock-off made furry just to differentiate her.

[Tenchi Ryu]

If Haruna was a guy and did what they did with one of the girls, the fandom would be screaming for his blood and not talking about forgiveness.  (Of course, he's have a following of fangirls no doubt, like Sephiroth or Draco Malfoy or something).

Handsome and smooth dead Juraian King comes back to life, comes and pulls Ryoko and Ayeka into his world. Has sex with both of them every night, even anal, and makes them completely forget or care about Tenchi effectively making them brainwashed whores. Make this at the time shipping wars was at an all time high in the early 2000s.

Yea.....That would be one thread right there...

*15 mins after being in the thread

[Dr.Soviet]

Handsome and smooth dead Juraian King comes back to life, comes and pulls Ryoko and Ayeka into his world. Has sex with both of them every night, even anal, and makes them completely forget or care about Tenchi effectively making them brainwashed whores. Make this at the time shipping wars was at an all time high in the early 2000s.

Yea.....That would be one thread right there...

*15 mins after being in the thread

I smell a new Doujin in the works.