Me and @HKelle have been watching Akagi together lately, and I think it is impressive how unsympathetic and evil the titular character is, even at the age of thirteen. The quickest way I can explain it is to say that he has both a Machiavellian Personality and hardly any emotions. If he does have strong emotions, he hardly ever shows them. It is hard to explain but he is just so uncanny.
Part of the reason I like him so much is that I rarely see such evil characters that don’t have a tragic backstory or a botched attempt at a redemption arc. Of course, that’s why my friends who watch it with me are basically cheering for him to die at the end. But this is actually a prequel series to another series called Ten, where Akagi is a major supporting character, so by that fact alone, he has to be alive.
If they murder someone for the fun of it. It can be the murder of random people or the murder of someone who deeply trusted them.
When they are caught, they don’t care and if they are given a chance to be freed, they would do it all over again without any thought. It’s not that they don’t have remorse. They really just don’t care. All they want to do is murder people.
These are the ones that can’t be redeemed, I think.
It is refreshing, isn’t it?
Too many writers want their precious characters to be likeable, they forget the fun of creating an irredeemable one.
I wrote one book that’s essentially a villain’s backstory from the villain’s pov and it was so fun to do.
In the villain’s eyes, she’s justified in what she does, but what she does is so clearly immoral or downright mean, you can’t excuse it. And her justification is also flawed since she doesn’t see how it was all her fault, she’s too much of a narcissist to see her own faults.
I never finished that book, and I’m on the fence if I want to give her a chance of redemption or if I want to give her eternal servitude as punishment. Both endings are tricky to pull off but I’m leaning towards an unhappy ending for her.
Nothing. There are redeemable qualities in every single being that has ever lived.
The way I put it in in Mini Moo
So when we argue the merit of saving someone from themselves, we look at the full potential of who they could be and argue that against the wreckage in their life. It’s unwinnable as everyone is worth saving, yet no one is worthy of saving.
What we do when we deem someone irreparable is weigh their potential against their failures, and really that’s a hindsight-derived judgement, when there’s no more potential left. That means we are constantly adjusting how redememable a character is with each chapter.
When dealing with the early arc of the story: finding out why they are the way they are, reasoning their behavior agaonst their past, we are still balancing that potential on the other end, but we are are also judging the justifications or excuses of the bad behavior.
So, we are constantly eyeballing this character until the end, even if we are rooting for them or condmening them early on.v
The problem comes in with something close to the concept of “unreliable narration”. Its “unreliable readership”. People who dont question morality in a read are more likely to be charmed by mannerisms and attractiveness than a strict wreckage-potential paradigm. And we all dump that to some degree, but the more severe it is, the more we have stories where the character isn’t overall redeemable, but is still loved, and others who have a chance but are ugly and lack charm. The whole industry is skewed by this.
Oooh, I totally believe there are people born without any empathy. It’s like the part of the brain that produces whatever chemical that causes empathy is damaged at birth, and they just couldn’t care less about anyone but themselves as a result.
Of course, I also believe there are people born with empathy but they suppress it for whatever reason. Maybe they have cruel, sadistic parents, so they ape their parents and start taking pleasure in causing other people pain and suffering.
What makes a person truly evil is cruelty and lack of empathy, in my opinion. There are no greater sins or flaws than these. (⊙.⊙(-̶●̃ₒ●̶̃)⊙.⊙)
I’ve never seen this show you’re watching, and it sounds like something I’d hate, but I agree that main characters don’t have to be redeemable, just interesting. I prefer my villains more conflicted, though. When a character is all good or all evil, it’s just boring to me, so I do like villians to have a redeeming quality, even if the author doesn’t redeem the villain at the end despite that. I like when we see the villain perform some small act of kindness that tells us he could be redeemed, but then at the end he goes the other way and embraces the dark side instead. But at least there were all those chapters where you wondered whether he might just turn to the light. It’s kind of dull to me when there’s no conflict in the villain and he’s just all one thing, no possibility of a redemption plot twist. ¯\_(ﭢ)_/¯
I do like the show because Akagi is terrifying realistic in a sense. He doesn’t care about anyone or anything, really, not even his own life! He is pure evil in a sense, but also you could make the argument that he’s mostly acting in self-defense.
Without getting into spoilers, it’s a batshit crazy anime.
After reading the plot summary on Wiki, it’s definitely not for me. But it sounds like the people Akagi’s up against are even more evil than he is, so maybe he has to be heartless and cruel in order to defeat them…?
