SPEAKER_01 0:01

Welcome back, everyone, to the Blurred Spectrum Podcast. This week we have a very a very interesting, intricate, very uh devilish, uh dark, uh, very uh near and dear to your souls and your spirits type of topic. Uh not for your uh PG 13 crowd. It's uh no, I'm joking. Um this episode is about who is your favorite villain and what makes them effective. Uh everybody, I believe, has seen some type of cartoon anime, uh, read a manga, played a video game, watched a TV show, a drama, any type of movie. And there's always some level of a protagonist and antagonist. Well, we're trying to figure out who is our antagonist and what makes them the most effective. And we're going to be talking about each, each of us are going to be talking about our individual antagonist or villain of choice. Uh, and we're gonna post these when the uh episode drops on our social media accounts. So if you have one uh that may not be on our list, or if you agree with one of ours, feel free to send a message to our mailbag or comment on the post when you see it. So, first I'm gonna introduce our panelists for today, uh, starting with myself, Suchino Shogun. Uh, we have shampoo bracelets. I thought it was one person, but it seemingly it's two bracelets, okay? Uh we have the doctor, we have the black McCoy, we have Sayone, we have Kaze. And this week we have two new panelists, uh Talonflame and Prince Kuzan. Hope I said that right. All right. So uh I'll go ahead and just jump right into it. So I'm going to start with someone who a couple weeks ago kind of embodied uh an Empress of Darkness, even though she was a sister, but you know, not a black sister, you know, a sister of the claw, you know, married to Christ. Anyway, so I'm gonna start with Say Yone, your villains, please.

SPEAKER_03 2:11

Yes. So they're more so anti-heroes, so to speak. Um, I love Kuchki Maria from Bleach. Um because he is the epitome of chaotic neutral. He didn't care about saving anybody, he didn't care about being the hero. He would do anything just to progress in science. He just wanted to see the evolution. He didn't care if he had to slap a bitch, he didn't care if he had to kill a couple people, he didn't give a shit. Right, he's literally slapped the bitch a couple times.

SPEAKER_10 2:47

So but um, oh my god. Was that necessary?

SPEAKER_03 2:57

Yeah, he was a little hardcore, he was sadistic, and um, but he was hot. Like, I I don't know what it was. I I like twisted, demented characters. You saw him when that paint was off his face with that blue hair and that dance thing? Bitch, what I was like, ooh, wasn't wasn't ready. Yes, he he was just a mad scientist, and you know, I love it because I'm you know, science is my field, and and I love the experimentation, even though it was not ethical at all.

SPEAKER_10 3:27

But you know minor details, you know. The IRB absolutely would not approve, right?

SPEAKER_03 3:36

You know, just minor dismemberment here and there, you know, a head here, a leg there, a foot here, you know, who cares, you know, all for science. Um, all for science. But yes, I loved um Maria Kuchiki. I don't know, I'm fucking up his name, but uh this is how it's gonna be today. And um I love Dave from Prometheus. Um he was an anti-hero. He wasn't, you know, he didn't have evil intent. Then again, he just didn't give a fuck. He wanted to progress, evolution, and he would do anything. He had to uh, you know, get people uh contaminated. He just didn't fucking care. He just wanted to see, you know, little face higher explode out of your stomach and be like, oh wow, that's beautiful. Move on to the next. So um, those are my two favorite um villains slash anti-heroes slash chaotic neutral people that I love.

SPEAKER_01 4:38

Fantastic. Okay. So let's uh slide over to uh another man of medicine or science, the doctor.

SPEAKER_09 4:50

All right, so my favorite villains. Um I have to say my number one favorite villain has got to be Kefka from Final Fantasy VI.

SPEAKER_01 5:00

I knew Kazi would clap.

SPEAKER_09 5:15

One thing I like about him a lot is how he strikes this balance between being, oh, you're kind of goofy and funny and he's comic relief, but he also does horrific things that keep you like kind of keep reminding you like, yeah, this is a person's actually a threat. But then in the second half of the game, he kills the main the person you think is going to be the main antagonist, the emperor, and he basically becomes the god of the universe and destroys most of the world. And so when you see this aftermath of like, oh, what if the villain actually did destroy the world? Like, what would that look like? Well, that's the entire second half of the game. So I love that you get to see that part of the, you know, that kind of part of a villain's success in their plans. Like, what happened to villain one? And he's a good example of, well, this is what happens. Like, most of the people are dead, and you have to rebuild your party, but you know, he he got what he wanted for the most part. You know, he became the guy he wanted to be. And so I love Kafka. Um, the other one who I also really like, who I think interesting does strike that balance between comic relief and to an extent threatening, but not as much. Um, Dr. Eggman from the Sonic series. He's still often kind of, you know, the goofy, you know, I'll get you Sonic type of one, like, you know, just you know, he's laughable and whatnot, but he has a lot of power. I think it's easy to underestimate how powerful he is. Like, this is someone who has massive, multiple cities that basically worship him. Like his image is everywhere, and like he controls so much of that universe. And it's easy, like, you know, we usually only see the comic relief side of him, but he's really a successful villain in a lot of ways. Like, he's I mean, he's his wealth's insane. Like, he's you know, a bit of like Lex Muther type wealth, you know. Like that's where we are with him. So yeah, like I think those two have got to be my favorites. I really love that whole balance of comic relief, but oh, you are actually a serious stud in a lot of ways, too.

SPEAKER_01 7:21

Yeah, Eggman is, in my opinion, is like one of the most that that's a great villain. Like he's so interesting because like the even the reason why Sonic is mad at him isn't really a viable reason. Some of the reason is because, you know, he destroyed the the uh the village where, depending on, you know, the iteration, destroy the village where his you know his friends and family are, or destroy the forest where he lives, or you know, things that had to do with the chaos emeralds, or you know, it made it it's normally because Eggman was minding his business, doing a bunch of things, and it's just so happened to interject with whatever Sonic was doing. And Sonic was like, oh no, you gotta stop, even though Eggman still has countless other things going on all over the world. Like a point, like has an entire entire cities, he's like the president or emperor of wherever, you know, whatever city it is, and Sonic is just trying to stop like a single thing, uh iota of all the stuff that Eggman is doing. Excellent.

SPEAKER_02 8:18

Yeah, I I don't I'd argue that uh that robotnik is even beyond the concept of wealth because I don't think anyone else in that universe owns anything. Like, you know, like you use wealth to exchange for something, he doesn't need exchange for anything. He owns the workforce and he owns the resources. Wow. So really anything he wants or needs is just really just a matter of time.

SPEAKER_10 8:39

What Robotnik has become capitalism? What actually is the he is the video game embodiment of all that we care that we explain to to loathe and hate?

SPEAKER_01 8:58

There's one iteration of Sonic where he um um the president of that entire the universe at the time, like he knows Eggman is doing what he's doing, and he still calls Eggman and says, Oh, we need you to build something. And we're like, Eggman's the villain, right? Why why are you why is he your chief scientist? Why is he like building rockets to go to the moon? It's because they know without Eggman, society can't continue, which is the sad part.

unknown 9:26

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_09 9:26

I love how um in science adventure games, Eggman clearly has a better military than the government.

SPEAKER_10 9:34

Probably because it's artificial. Yeah, until Metal Sonic.

SPEAKER_06 9:44

Let's do Metal Sonic Man.

SPEAKER_01 9:48

Um I'm not touching Metal Sonic, that's a whole nother conversation. Metal anti-heroes. Anyway, so uh let's move on. Uh I don't know if you guys is are together, but I will send it over the shampoo bracelets.

SPEAKER_00 10:02

So um I got a couple. Uh uh because I I naturally I won't be out, I naturally like villains more than heroes. Yep. I just like like uh my favorite villains, and I'm not even gonna really talk about them too much, but like the Joker. I like his back his backstory when I actually first read the last laugh and saw his whole backstory, how he lost his family, how he was just struggling to make a way for his pregnant wife and try to get money so he can get out of the shitty neighborhood. I almost cried reading that comic book.

SPEAKER_06 10:37

Oh, like last laugh.

SPEAKER_00 10:40

Yeah, like that was that was deep to me. So I uh so I actually the Joker's one of my favorites. But from an anime perspective, if I have two people who just caught me off guard and I did not expect to like, one being from Iron Blooded Orphan, um Fareed McGillis, or McGillis Fareed, I think it is. He was I I would he was calculated as hell first and forbidding. Like this man had a good decade of a plan. Like it was like he knew he was gonna get outside. He looked like he looked like um uh red, what is it, uh, lightning dude from previous uh Gundams. Like he was, I can't remember his name right now, but it was like he had so many plans to try and take down the corrupt government that he was not a part of. He grew up from being an orphan, a poor orphan who lost his family and was taken in by one of the wealthy families who was part of the hierarchy that pretty much controlled the military and the universe, so for so to speak. And he saw the corruption from the bottom up. And uh, you watch him plan out not only his own death, his friends' death, he planned out who his enemies were gonna be before they became him, who his friends are gonna be before they came here. It was just like he I think he got a little cocky towards the end, but also because he knew these were the sacrifices he had to make for the greater good. And anybody who has a story like that, like I have to, I have to love them. It's just watching him come up, and even to his death, I was like, Bravo, man, it makes all sense as well. But other but the other person here is daddy flame balls from a comic got killed. I don't know how many people.

SPEAKER_10 12:31

Remember why you had to open that wound back up?

SPEAKER_00 12:33

The dude with the mask and the flamethrower. If you watch the comic got killed, the dude with the mask and the flamethrower. Reason why I love him is because when you find at first you just think he's just your average big ass bad guy with a flamethrower that really don't know anything. And then you got to find out this man has a whole family. He's actually the only family man on the whole team. Wow. Um team. He got a whole family, they find him funny. Like he's he's a like he cooks, he you know, cleans, he's a whole entity.

SPEAKER_10 13:09

He's a whole person. I mean, if we're gonna be real, Ozai had a family too. He was not the best father, but he had a family. Okay, okay, he had children and a wife. But Ozai had assets.

SPEAKER_07 13:45

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 13:45

Like they was coming home. Bose eye, they were just like, oh shit, he's here. Like, like, you know, it was different. Like Bowles was that dude. And to watch, you know, what made him affected really was just his slave fellow. That was it. Uh like his love for his family and friends, and his lame fella. Like he was he was pretty much another one piece character. It was kind of like, it was just like that's the truth. That's the truth.

SPEAKER_06 14:17

You're not disagreeing.

SPEAKER_10 14:21

I was like, it was an enigma for the whole first season. And then you find out, oh, you really didn't give a shit about nobody except Azula, and you just barely gave a fuck about her.

SPEAKER_05 14:32

Oh, can I go in now? Because that was mine. Listen, go, go, honey. So hi. Hello. So my number one, my number one major favorite villain is Azula. Straight up, right?

SPEAKER_10 14:49

I'm naming I'm naming a child Azula, so go, go, go off. Go off.

SPEAKER_05 14:54

I am, thank you. So first off, Azula, like it's Azula, right? She's the only one in the entire series that has blue fire for whatever purpose, right? But second off, there's nothing that she didn't ever actually do that she didn't do wonderfully, right? Like she embodied the idea of like divine ruling, like the the divine right to rule, right? And which is like a very inherent thing in Asian culture is this divine rights rule. And she did embody that. Now, was she a monster and she a horrible human being? Absolutely. But like in terms of in terms of villains, she was she had strong ass belief, right? She had a belief system that like was not going to be shaken, and she really did believe that the fire nation in its entirety was better than the rest of the world. And like at that point, kind of was just heck. But Azula what also creates like this whole dynamic between Azula and Zuko is that like they didn't actually hate each other. Like when you see that in Ember Island, where they like they they work well together, they understand each other. So she's it's not that she's devoid of human emotions, it's more so that she's uh she's been conditioned and uh her only source of love was towards this person, Ozai, who is inherently like the sociopathic killer, right? And she saw like her brother get burned in the face for speaking out of turn. Uh so that's my first one. My second one. I know, okay. And also everyone talks about like how Zuko mastered all like or how uh Avatar Aang uh mastered all four levels of bending. But like if you actually look at a Zulus fighting style, a lot of it is waterfalls, like a lot of it is really just going around it and finding a way to attack. She never actually like embodies a full scope of like fire bending of going straight through somebody's attack. But anyways, um so the second person is Heyo from uh Shaman King, who straight up, like from before birth, all the way through his whole life was literally to become God. And like out of everything, he literally did end up becoming God. Like he won. Like at the end of the day, he won. He had followers, even if he didn't win, he was still a force to be reckoned with. Um, that's two fire people in a row.

SPEAKER_06 17:12

I know.

SPEAKER_10 17:15

Fire is a very difficult elemental control.

SPEAKER_05 17:18

And then last but not least, uh Lex Luther. Right? Because everyone loves to talk about how Joker is this great like I idealism and this great like person, right? But Lex Luthor literally goes against a God every day. Literally goes against God. Uh and like in all intents and purposes, he is he has had to work for the majority of all his skill sets. Like, he is a ridiculously like sound villain. There is absolutely nothing impeccably wrong with his stuff. And I think one of my favorite lines of all time of his is that like I'd have to lose power to become the president.

SPEAKER_06 18:00

And I was like, that's just out of that.

SPEAKER_02 18:09

Oh, oh, and and he said it while laughing too.

SPEAKER_05 18:12

He did, he didn't and he still did it because he wanted to. And so like it uh he does while Superman embodies the idea of like anyone become can become like the a a good citizen, right? Like Suther embodies the idea that like if you put your mind to it, ambition can get you anywhere. Um, and I think that's kind of like a concurrent theme between all of my villains is that like if you have the ambition and the the will to do it, go do it then.

SPEAKER_01 18:38

So yeah, thank you for letting him share nice. Welcome to that. I have to allow shampoo braces to finish. So go ahead.

SPEAKER_03 18:49

You're fine, you're fine, you're fine. Um, I think originally my first villain that I was gonna talk about was Harley Quinn. But then while Mark was looking up something, I remembered that wasn't the first villain I actually fell in love with. My first villain that I fell in love with was Poison Ivy and the Batman. Yeah, like I replayed it, like I get it, it wasn't the best movie, but right, to see the way that she was moving and how she can entrance men to do whatever she wanted by just making a potion and you know, just be dripping diamonds. What girl wouldn't want that?

SPEAKER_10 19:24

Yeah, amen.

SPEAKER_03 19:25

Which, let's be honest, was more than was actually necessary, but was it it was she had to show off her power in such a way, you know what I'm saying? And then mission to be on top trying to take off Mr. Freeze's wife, I'm gonna be the HBIC in charge.

SPEAKER_01 19:42

As I told Lady Freeze before I pulled the plug, this is a one-woman show. Giggity. I love it.

SPEAKER_03 19:51

No, that was the first villain that I fell in love with. Um, recently, my new favorite villain is Ezek from Acommon Got Killed. Um, just from her upbringing to, you know, the weak will be trample while the strong will prevail. I think we've all had that talk where we were growing up where your parents are like, don't show any type of weakness to anybody. If you gotta cry, go cry, you know, somewhere away from everybody. At least that's how I was raised.

SPEAKER_06 20:22

Or don't cry.

SPEAKER_03 20:23

Yeah, or don't cry at all. You hold it back, suck it back, you make it look like nothing's wrong with you. So pretty much resting bitch face at all times.

SPEAKER_10 20:31

I mean, I feel like you learned that after your first whoop in where you just be like, no, fuck you, nigga. Get away from me.

SPEAKER_03 20:39

So I think as she grew up, she always she kept that mentality, and I think she was more so we said chaotic neutral. It wasn't that she wanted to start a war, she just wanted to fight somebody that was worth a damn. Like, give me a challenge. Like, you can start a war over here. I will fight your war, but can it be something that'll entertain me at least for a couple months? I think uh I was sad that she died the way she did. Um, of course, the manga and the anime, she still died by um Akame, but you know, there's a slight difference.

SPEAKER_10 21:16

Yeah, there is nothing in anime that can defeat the plot armor that is your name being the title.

SPEAKER_03 21:24

I wanted to add in on what yeah, I wanted to add in what uh Shampoo bracelets was saying about Ezeth. I loved the character as well because it really showed nature versus nurture as well, because it went back into um her past with her father, you know, that that she came from a very strong tribe, and and when the father and she thought that her father was fucking untouchable. You know what I'm saying? And so when he died, you know, and I think she was about to show emotion, he was like, Nah, suck that shit up, bitch. Like, nah, like people. Like I'm a business one, I got my ass hated and we do not waste a tear from my weak ass. Right. And you know, like if I'm dead, I'm weak. And it's like, you know, she was trained to have that type of mentality. She wasn't, she wasn't, you know, born that way, which was interesting. So we, I think, with especially with, you know, black people, people of color, how we were brought up. We were brought up to just kind of hold things in and just deal with it, you know. I'm saying, just power through. But sometimes we really do need to kind of show emotion to let that shit go. So it was just interesting seeing her because she had so many different layers to her. You know, she she wanted that affection. She wanted, she wanted that intimacy, you know what I'm saying? And that's why she really loved that basic ass nigga.

SPEAKER_10 22:51

She was like, The basic ass nigga. That's the most basic type of her character for me. She's stepped literally stepping in and stepping on top of them and subjugating them literally down to the ground to the point where she had them as pets on leashes without their consent and enforced her will to the point where they believed themselves that that is where they belonged in comparison to her, and in comparison to all the power that she held. But then you have this basic ass nigga who she inevitably fell in love with. He banahimes where Fire Force. She fell in love with him. And although it was unrequited, it was still something that was overly ex, it was something that was just as forceful as her um, as her like drive to enforce her will and her power over other people who couldn't do the same. So it was like she had encountered someone who could in turn enforce some degree of power over her, but it wasn't any sort of like physical force. It was something that was much more intangible, which I thought was interesting to her character.

SPEAKER_03 24:10

Yeah. She fell in love with him because he told her no. And wasn't scared to tell her no. So he was really the first person to ever stand up to her, which I think in her mind she shot.

SPEAKER_10 24:28

Come on, wet ass pussy over a nose.

SPEAKER_03 24:44

Yeah, because I I look at dudes kind of like that. Like how you said, like, they have a friend and slash cousin that I kind of bitched out my whole high school year.

SPEAKER_04 24:53

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 24:55

Um, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 24:57

So right.

SPEAKER_01 25:11

So on that note, um I will give my uh my villains uh I actually have three and then an honorable mention, but I only do three. Um because I'm still like going back and forth between uh I already know which one is like my top villain. Uh no, I don't. I actually have a tie for top. Okay, so I'm gonna say one of my uh favorite villains is uh Shinobu Shensui from Yu Yu Haku Show. Um uh if you've seen all the way to the end of Yu Haku Show, because some people only stop like at the dark tournament, nobody continues, some people didn't continue on. Uh, but if you get past there, uh Shinobu's like um Shinobu, in my opinion, is like that individual who is working at a company and they find out like the dark side of the company and they're still working there trying to figure out why they're still there, and they're like, wait a minute, have I been doing this all along? Like this, like your company's actually like producing this trash. And then you go and you try to like well, not everybody destroys the company from the ground up, but that's pretty much what Shinobu did. Uh right. He's like, he saw the black tapes, and I'm not gonna say the Japanese version of it, but he saw the black tapes, and the black tapes pretty much show showed the dark side to humanity. Um, it showed him, it showed him um everything that humanity had to offer on a negative level. Like, I've been destroying all these demons, killing all these monsters for years to only find out that humanity is has the capacity of doing things far darker than any demon he has ever seen. Um not only to demons, but also to humans as well. Uh, shoot, you know, there's there's watch the six o'clock news, you can see some of the stuff the Chernobyl probably saw in that tape, to be completely honest. Um, and just just because of that, watching that tape, and because of the realization and kind of the mind, the mind fuck pretty much, his uh he was he was able to like see all of these different things happen, and it changed his entire perception of reality. He became pretty much what some of you have said, the anti-hero. He was the spirit detective at first, and then he became the anti-hero. Not even the anti-hero, he pretty much became a sociopath, a quintessential sociopath, where he was like, Yeah, nope, nope, I'm done. And everybody needs to go with me. I don't care who it is. Like, and then to the lengths of how he uh kind of manipulated each of those psychics, uh, that child psychic, that really got me. What was it, the game master? When that child didn't know he was gonna die in that game at the end of that thing, in his territory, I was like, yo, he just told this five-year-old to play against these people without the knowledge that he was gonna die if he loses this game. I never wanted to be in a video game for the rest of my life. That was one of my childhood dreams. I want to be in a video game. But yeah, Shinobu, hands down, one of my favorites. Um, and now my tie for first, I I'm not sure how to pick between the two, but I'll just say both. Uh, so one is the Sybil system from Psychopaths. Now, not many people have huh great choice. I love Psychopaths. It's one of the anime that I watched years ago when it came out. I think it was what 2000. Uh I don't know. I forget 2003, maybe. I'm probably wrong. It's probably not 2003, it's probably later than that. But anyway, I watched it a while ago, and I watched it all the way through. Even the second season, not many people liked. And uh the civil system uh was an amalgamation of uh the brains uh of psychopaths, murderers, villains, and criminals uh placed into this uh uh algorithm where they were to determine individuals' criminal capacity. So what would happen is each person, each human being has like a cloud, a density or a color. And each color will tell how capable you are at committing a crime. So you're the the main thing about the system was they have different cameras, different uh security systems and guns that will scan your body to determine how thick and how dirty your cloud is or your fog is. If it's a certain level after like white or blue, you're you're higher, you have a higher chance at becoming a villain or killing people. And if that is the case, there's like almost no redemption. You need to die on the spot. It was, it was, it was, it was, it was just man, it's so beautiful. And like the way the reason why the civil system is my villain is because it it was a it was a a chamber or an algorithm full of murderers. So it was like some of them would literally be thinking on top of the other one, like, well, no, this person needs to die. Well, why does he need to die? Well, I don't think he's a villain, but he could become a villain. How can you tell? Why why is it your choice? Why are you the one who's judging all these other people? And the doctor, you had something you were about to say.

SPEAKER_09 29:58

Oh, like so. I completely agree. Like, I absolutely love psychopaths, and I love how the civil system had this veneer of oh, well, this is to protect people, and this is how we keep people safe, and that's why we have to do this, but they suppress so many natural human emotions in the process of that. But oh, you can't get too mad, or you know, your coast can get cloudy, and you know, you might get arrested for that, or oh, you can't get too, you know, you get too angry or sad, like this might happen. And so it's really just this entity that enforces social control.

SPEAKER_08 30:34

Yes.

SPEAKER_09 30:34

I mean, really with the need of crime or like trying to put you know protect people from crime, but you know, it's just completely suppressing and controlling the population at large. I think that has a lot of you know alleged reality, to be honest, you know, with many systems that I was just about to go there.

SPEAKER_01 30:56

Like it's it's like a combination of like what we're going on, what's going on right now, and Pleasantville. I don't know if anybody's seen Pleasantville back in the day. I didn't even know I was forced to watch the movie. Oh, my Pleasantville is like you have to keep your calm. You have to be polite, you have you can't be rude, you can't raise your voice, uh, no vulgarity. Uh you you pay for everything you owe, you give change, all that jazz. There can't be, it's kind of like a lot of people's, you know, uh Instagram messages or tweets right now where they're like, well, if you just follow the law and you you don't do anything illegal, you'll be fine. If you just listen to the police officer, you'll nothing will happen to you. If you, you know, uh when the police officer says, Yes, man, no, sir, that's all you have to say, and you'll live. Literally, how psychopaths was. You off the line. And the thing is, you could literally walk up on wake up on the wrong side of the bed and have a headache. And let's say somebody cuts you off, any spike of anger, the system will detect it and the police will come and find you. And you'll have to explain to them why you were upset. And if it's if you're still upset at the point where they scan you, there's a there's a grading level. There's like a yellow. If you're a yellow, they'll say, Okay, we'll we'll detain you for a week. And after the week, if you've calmed down, we'll let you back into society. But if at any point you're a red or higher, you're automatically a threat. You need to be put down at that moment. So, like, eight murderers, I haven't child molesters, all type of people were like obvious the ones. But then, and the I'm taking so much time, I'm sorry, but but then the main part is there were certain individuals who were always clear, and and that's that's how you like when you're clear or when you're below white, that's uh it's it's when the the system can't detect that you have any ranging emotions. And there were certain psychopaths, psychopaths, not psychopaths, not psychopath psychopaths, but certain psychopaths or sociopaths who literally could kill, like there was one scene where one of the people who could have been the antagonist of the uh of the anime shot somebody in the head while the uh the civil system was scanning him and there was no fluctuation. He said, I'm angry, I'm upset, this person needs to die. Shot him several times, no, no increase at all. Matter of fact, it said he was almost not there.

SPEAKER_03 33:14

Yeah, it was it was decreasing, yeah.

SPEAKER_10 33:17

So I haven't seen psychopaths like at all. But the given like the context of how it kind of has this relationship of distinguishing this kind of Hobbesian versus Lockean um state of nature sort of perspective, and and trying to assimilate that into a more, I'll say contemporary idea of what it means to have an AI assimilate what it means to be a be chaotic or be murders into some sort of system that's supposed to bureaucratically order those things in order to designate people who are supposed to fall into that paradigm and thus eliminating or containing them in some way and isolating them from the rest of society is supposed to be somehow a benefit of society and how it ultimately fails in one way, shape, or another is interesting to me because um, for those of you who don't know, sorry, I just kind of went to a philosophy right now, but Hopkins, a lot the most basic explanation about the Hobson state of nature is that nature is natural state of every every every man for himself, right? Every person for themselves. And people will naturally, you know, take advantage of or kill or murder other people if it gets them to the next place that they need to be. Um, Locke is on the other spectrum of you know, people naturally want peace and society and cohesion so that there is no danger. Um and when I think of the civil system, as you all have been explaining it, as this more kind of bureaucratic um structure to kind of alleviate both of those perspectives, kind of mediate between both of those perspectives, it puts me in a place to think that, or it reminds me of, I should say, that when it comes to what it means to invest in something that's structural, something that's systematic and bureaucratic, um, something that, as um the doctor talked about, being more devoid and divorced from human emotion, it's just as flawed and it's just as it's just as dangerous as any other perspective. Because now it's it has something that it can't completely account for, but it also has something that it finds to be negligible for as far as information is concerned. And when you and it also makes me think that when it comes to things that are systematic or structural, they are what's what I'm looking for, they're just as um, they are just eh, I'll just stick with dangerous, they're just as dangerous as everything else, because ultimately what they end up doing is having systems that can account for the inconsistencies in their own thought. Because systems and structures and ideological manifestations of themselves in that way have a have a habit of continuing along a line of uh quote unquote logic or reasoning that can ultimately be um tautological or solipsistic or self- self-contained in such a way that completely undermines the the the the more the the more random aspects of cause and effect. Like you say that there are characters in there who could literally would shoot someone in the head, but they would completely fall under the radar of the civil system. And it's the same way when it when you're examining actual human beings. It's something that was so far removed from the human experience, but the human experience in and of itself has invested in it so much that they will put it, they'll use it as an authority figure to how they designate other human beings around them, that ultimately they have made, they have allowed for this gap to appear within that structure and within its relationship to the human experience, that they have put themselves in even more danger because now they're relying so much on this more authoritative other that they have divorced themselves from what it means to associate to another individual and understand that individual and understand what it means for them to have a more salient relationship to this kind of um what's what I'm looking for, not existential, but more organic humanoid experience. Sorry, that was a lot.

SPEAKER_05 37:34

To add on to that, actually. Oh, to add on to that, like the whole, I think the part of that makes that terrifying is that like it uh it removes the idea of what the purpose of our uh society is. So like taking in the Lockean uh perspective, like the whole purpose of us even coordinating together is so that we can build something greater than the individual can build. Um and then it also like divorces the idea of what Hobbes is thinking of because like the whole purpose of us coming together was so that we don't kill each other, right? Is that we so we don't like we don't express our own freedom, um and so we we remove that freedom from each other in order to to basically have security so that we have this continuous balance of security versus freedom. And there it's it's it's utilizing that idealism and taking away the idea that like your life isn't your life is more of a threat to the the major of people majority of people when in actuality that may not may not or ever be true. Um so it does take out the idea of like random theory or uh the the concept of what could be, um which, yeah, as you said, is very much like removing the human experience. By existing, which like is terrifying, especially like today's culture, because like people of color. Right. Boom.

SPEAKER_01 38:48

Yeah, and I was I was just about to say, and I don't want to, you know, this isn't the psychopaths episode, but I just want to make sure I say, like, based off of you both of your analysis of it, it's it it's scary because looking back at psychopaths now and how the police officers who were given the civil system in handheld guns and in scanners to go out and you know uh de-escalate situations or arrest individuals who are causing issues, they completely relied solely on the civil system to, you know, pretty much be God and be executioner and the fight final decision. Like there was no court cases. It was pretty much the civil system scans you in that moment, you're guilty or you're not guilty. That's pretty much it. And then it will, you know, it'll execute you if that's the case. So similar to what's going on right now, is it it makes you or makes me think like maybe there is a civil system, maybe they're actually in these moments where they're scanning individuals and they're like, maybe you're a threat, and I need to put you down now, regardless of what this obvious situation is. Because there were there were cops in the moment or in the anime that were like old school cops who observed the situation, uh uh examine what was going on, actually used detective uh uh skills to determine whether or not an individual was actually deducing uh deduction skills to determine whether or not somebody was actually in the wrong and would not use the civil system directly. They'll say, okay, let me try to diffuse this before I point the civil system at this person. They'll try to calm the person down, then scan them so they can take them in from the one-week calm down before they just execute them on the spot. But then there's like the renegades, uh, the new, you know, new recruits that were like, hey, civil system, check it, bow, you're done, and then move on to the next person. But like I said, I didn't want to go too far into that because it's not an episode, it's about civil systems.

SPEAKER_03 40:39

It sounds like minority report. You remember that?

SPEAKER_01 40:41

Yeah, I was about to say it.

SPEAKER_12 40:46

I was ready for it. Yeah, very minority report and very uh like fair hype 451. Yeah, yeah, fair hype 51.

SPEAKER_05 40:54

Has anyone actually watched the minority report series? Is it series? And it made me so angry because all the people were people of color and they all just were shitty. Sorry.

SPEAKER_03 41:10

But yeah, Minority Report, also Oblivion, it was a trash movie, but it just kind of reminded me, you know, Minority Report Oblivion, it kind of was, you know, putting, I guess, putting um mechs in a way, or putting something that was engineered um as the overseer of human life, which is really interesting. Uh, like again, Oblivion was trash, but it did remind me Psychopaths was kind of like a a good um combination of minority report, which I loved. It was, I think it was so ahead of its time. Like I it should be redone because it was just brilliant. Um, you know, but there was something in this kind of left field. I was watching a show called Night Flyer uh with Talon last night. It's fucking fantastic. It's called like it is really good. Like, you know, sci-fi nerds, please. I highly, highly suggest. Yeah, it's on it's on um Netflix uh and it's a series.

SPEAKER_10 42:15

I like that. Yeah, I'll give you my Netflix login today. But um another letter soul gave it to me on my okay.

SPEAKER_03 42:25

But you know, that so Nightflyer, um, and there's another movie actually called The Titan. And there was another, I guess the theme of villain is humans, which was interesting when it comes to to the world. And it was like, you know, humans have fucked up the earth so bad that people now have to find another world to screw up. So, you know, since we done screwed this up, and it was just very interesting that you know, all of our advancements and you know, but everything that we do actually hurts the earth, so to speak. And um, you know, overpopulation, you know, again, this is not for me as a human being, you know. I live on this earth, you know, whatever. But it's more so as if I was the earth itself, it probably hate us. Like the earth can't stand us, it wants to completely annihilate us, get us out because we are a virus, we are a disease, we are killing the earth in a lot of these shows, a lot of these movies that are sci-fi or trying to find another planet is because we don't fucked up our own home and now we got to go find somewhere else. So it's just interesting that we are, you know, so to speak, humans, Homo sapiens are the villains in those shows, you know, things that we don't even think about, but you know, give us maybe about 200 years, are we really going to have an earth to be on? You know, everything that we're doing isn't really causing all this havoc. And that's why they have recycling and all these things. And, you know, you have the greenhouse effect and the ozone layer, but a lot of it is because of human nature. Even with coronavirus and you know, all the quarantining, you could tell how the atmosphere was actually healing. You see lions chilling on the ground. Right. You know, you see in like monkeys on top of cars partying. You know, it's straight Jamunji right now.

SPEAKER_06 44:17

In the best way.

SPEAKER_03 44:18

So it was just interesting. That's just a common theme that I've noticed in a lot of these sci-fi uh exploring that, you know, a lot of times humans are the villains, the ultimate villains.

SPEAKER_10 44:29

I can I can kind of like sense this switch in the show because they're be like, we need to move on to the next thing. But like one thing that I wanted to kind of like interject before that's something you really brought up, like it's really important that we kind of talked about in the She-Ra versus um Steven Universe episode is that um given how time has progressed, we did land, we demand, excuse me, a lot more from our villains. Like we don't want someone who's just inherently doing whatever they're doing for whatever selfish or you know money-driven reasons or whatever. Like we expect a lot more character growth, we expect a lot more empathetic, the and we expect a lot more empathy, a lot more relatability to our villains. We expect to be able to understand why they're doing what they're doing, which further leads to these kind of like not necessary divisions, but understandings as to while even when we talk about adventures in to me work, it's the most immediate immediate example that I have in my mind right now. Like we understand why Thanos was trying to do what he did. Although we can also understand there are other means he could have taken. Like the reason why he wanted to, you know, enact a snap, as it's been, as it's been called, is because he saw the inequality, he saw the lack of resources, he noticed the the suffering that was happening in the universe, and he wanted to do something about it. And given the person that he you know saw himself to be, he was the only one who had the enough will, enough power, and enough drive to go about, to devote himself to and enact what he saw needed to be done. And even given what the Avengers did to you know reverse time and that which way or another to kind of stop to stop him, he still, even with that knowledge, knew that he had to continue moving forward because what he needed to do for the benefit of all beings in the universe needed to be done so that there could be more flourishing than suffering. Um so I think that as we talk more about these villains, as we kind of you know really go through them and like continue to have our more diverse conversations about them more, we understand that ethics and morals become that much more poignant as we move forward than you know, some of the Disney villains that we know and love, or some of the hero, the villains that we know and love from the past, that you know, outside of anime, I will say, um, who had drives and aspirations and desires that were more understandable and more palpable to us as an audience, because and I uh I forgive me for talking so much because the ethics and morals are like the area of philosophy that I adore the most. Um being able to really connect to the reasoning and the logic used and why people act in the way that they do allows human beings to make things that much more justifiable. If one can justify the actions of another, then they remove, then they, in my personal opinion, find themselves able to remove themselves from a situation enough to say that, okay, well, you know, I understand why this is done, but that doesn't necessitate that that thing was right or just or correct in doing so. Um, and I often think that sometimes that that degree of thinking has the precariousness of putting people in the position to give certain actions a pass or give people leeway um ethically or morally or socially in ways that do not contribute to a larger, um, I'll say health a larger, healthier way of establishing themselves as moral or ethical agents as we continue moving forward.

SPEAKER_03 47:59

Such a scholar, give us scholarship. I feel like I need to take out my textbook and write all the shit down. Please give me knowledge.

SPEAKER_05 48:10

I'm here for it.

SPEAKER_01 48:11

I'm not even sure how to follow that.

SPEAKER_05 48:12

I mean So to add on to that really quickly, uh it also does. I think if you actually do look at the framework of villainy and like the ideas that come along with it, it also like the idea of like there's a lack of resources or the uh the idealism of like why this person is justifiable also causes like this whole rise in what could be like it's not necessarily evil in that moment. So you're starting to create a baseline that is more so understanding and it's starting to blur the lines it creates a larger shade of gray rather than keeping these definitive black and white situations, right? Um and so like you see that also as like uh catcher, like this is what like this is what the issue is, this is what she wanted, but like it creates this blurred line of like what is she doing, what is she doing wrong or right, right? Um I don't know, I think uh you also have to be like very specific about like the people that you begin to vilify, right? Um, because even in old school like Disney movies, right, all the villains were like homophobic, like homo homosexual in some sort of form of way.

SPEAKER_10 49:20

Oh, I learned that that was called the City Villains rope, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It had a whole name. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 49:26

It was it was a way to like enforce like that like gays were vilified or like that uh any type of like feminine man was vilified. So like you have Scar, you have uh you have Jafar, who was like who in all in all reconciliation should have been the ruler of the the the nation, right? Albeit he did horrible things, yeah, but like no one gets to power without doing some form of horrible thing, right? Um and then you have uh Ursula who has literally more power than the actual king, yeah, right? Um and should on her own right have been, but because she was vilified as like this drag queen, you create this like dynamic of like this is the villain, this is how you uh perpetuate the idealisms. And I think that's how we train our young, like as a as a young person. Um and I think that's part of the reason why like the X-Men is such like a great idea, right? Because it's a way to create a consumable way for children to understand, or really anyone to understand um the paradigms of what's happening in culture now. Um so X-Men was just like uh was Stan Lee's way of uh of creating like a consumable way for kids to understand the civil rights movement, having like the paradigms of uh Professor X and Malcolm uh Magneto paralleling uh Martin Luther King and uh uh Malcolm X, right? Um and so like that created uh a culture where they kids who us essentially on this Zoom call can understand like on a at a fundamental level like what this means. And so I think we have to be very understanding about like what villains we create and like how we perpetuate certain idealisms by the villains that we chose. So yeah.

SPEAKER_02 51:05

Okay, uh Frieza Frieza's another good example.

SPEAKER_10 51:08

Yeah, Frieza was another one who follows the C Villanter as well.

SPEAKER_03 51:13

Was Frieza Femme like Frieza was femme, but I I didn't know as a kid if Frieza was you know cis male or cis female or just femme.

SPEAKER_02 51:25

I I I didn't know as a kid, but then I didn't care because I mean Frieza, yeah, Freeze Frieza was always like male, but in the Japan in the Japanese version, he uh he was he was voiced by a woman, just uh further like put forward that uh you know the more the more blurred that that that gender line gets, the more uh, you know, just to show you how evil I am.

SPEAKER_10 51:46

And even in even uh the American dub, like Frieza still had a much more feminine voice. Yeah. Um, and continued to kind of exude these kind of qualities that were, in my in my personal perspective, you know, wants to be, you know, adored. But like I think it was I think it was like it wasn't until like Goku went to go get Frieza before the tournament of power because they because Majin Bu fell asleep and they couldn't get that nigga to do shit. Um where like I was like, so Goku or Frieza probably just need to fucking get it over with.

SPEAKER_07 52:28

That seems like don't let Gigi know.

SPEAKER_10 52:35

Like they came and tried to kill him and Goku to try and keep them from getting in tournament of power, and Frieza had somehow been able to not, I think, I can't remember exactly. I don't know if it was master but be able to control like the destruction power that the gods of destruction were able to use and push it back. But they were like, they literally punched each other in the stomach before they fought together, and the way they talked to each other was homorotic enough to the point where I'm like, y'all have this tension between you that's been going for literally decades. The meme's mysterious.

SPEAKER_02 53:08

Right.

SPEAKER_03 53:10

There has been like hentai of Frieza and Goku, for all that I know. Like, that was the hentai of Dragon Ball Z, was those two. So I was like, oh, they got they got it more often than Chi Chi. I'm like, damn, I'm like, you know, okay.

SPEAKER_10 53:30

It's like Frieza's just racist enough to like probably be fetishizing the fans.

SPEAKER_01 53:39

Like fucking goddamn monkeys, but as you said before, before we on a tangent, go ahead and give uh talent flame the opportunity to give his villains.

SPEAKER_11 53:52

Alright, uh, one of my first ones is Aizen.

SPEAKER_12 53:56

I like how he flipped the script.

SPEAKER_11 53:58

Oh no, look at that.

SPEAKER_10 54:00

He flipped his sex away, too.

SPEAKER_06 54:01

That was a nice oof.

SPEAKER_05 54:05

No one ever knew that pushing your hair back will make you look great.

SPEAKER_06 54:08

Listen!

SPEAKER_05 54:11

Boom, and a whole new sex.

SPEAKER_11 54:16

Oh, hey, hey Isaac. Yeah, he has some finesse, and that they forgot, like I think, you know, amongst the fighting, we forgot that the whole reason why he did this was actually to get at God. There's a whole door in the Soul Society with somebody who controls everything, but they do nothing all the time. So I thought I thought that was cool, even though they shut that shit down. But yeah, I I thought it was cool what he stood for. Um, another one would be probably a zir. How he naturally wanted everything to work out, there's no more kingdoms. He's like, the world will take care of itself. We don't need an avatar.

SPEAKER_10 55:02

Okay. Zir was a good one. Yes, true. All right.

SPEAKER_11 55:07

Uh, who else? I kind of like Venom. I don't know if you guys are into comic books, but like Venom has like a whole kid now.

SPEAKER_10 55:18

I've never gotten that deep into like Venom, but I know there are multiple symbiotes, so like what's the reason for Venom?

SPEAKER_11 55:24

Oh, so um I don't think we can do that in an we don't have enough time for that. Yeah, that's the big one. Okay, like Cliff Note. Okay, Clantar race, found Spider-Man, Spider-Man rejected him, beef on site, found bro, beef on site. We're gonna skip ahead. We're gonna skip ahead, and then from there he became the anti-hero that, well, you know, I'm not gonna kill just anybody. If somebody robbing somebody, okay. They selling crack to somebody's mom, okay. Then he'll let the symbiote eat those people.

SPEAKER_04 56:06

Yep.

SPEAKER_11 56:07

And then it was a linear path. When he had a kid, he stopped killing people completely.

SPEAKER_04 56:11

Yep.

SPEAKER_11 56:13

And eventually he didn't want the symbiote anymore because he didn't want any more negative tendencies to show his son. So Eddie Brock came a long way. Yeah, feels full circle.

SPEAKER_06 56:25

Growth. Gross. Right.

SPEAKER_02 56:31

And it was and it was a beautiful thing, like, cuz uh, because like Venom had that uh like that sense of like rejection just like just from Spider-Man, which and it was such like uh it was such a biological thing because it was like his his purpose is to bind to this person and become their other and better half. And then they threw him away and he couldn't fathom, he couldn't understand, yeah. He couldn't fathom why. And then and then Brock had all this personal shit against Peter. For no reason, I do. Yeah, and then you know, and then they found each other.

SPEAKER_10 57:03

He was a hair, that's all. It was like professional, it was professional Delzy.

SPEAKER_02 57:08

For no reason. Like, you know, like what about one of my favorite scenes from the show is like Shirley at the middle of found Brock, and like and Brock, and Brock was a bench pressing, and uh, and he was just going over like all the things that Peter did to both of them. He was like, shit, I'm gonna and like and and you saw Brock Brock's body, he was gaining muscle like per pop of the things, and he was getting big as shit, and I was like, Oh, oh, he's about to find out. Only it was that easy. Only it once in a while.

SPEAKER_05 57:44

I would go to the gym once a month.

SPEAKER_01 57:46

Listen. Okay, well, I mean, Kazi, since you began, why don't you continue with your villains?

SPEAKER_02 57:54

All right, all right. Uh oh.

SPEAKER_01 57:58

Oh no.

SPEAKER_02 58:07

All right, before I actually go to my actual things, I just want one more thing about uh Frieza. This how this how powerful the imagery of uh we we we didn't we we didn't see uh Frieza stand until he was like well into his last fight, like like the amount of bodies Frieza had before someone made him get out of his chair.

SPEAKER_08 58:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 58:37

Oh, for you gonna make me stand up.

SPEAKER_07 58:38

Oh my chair.

SPEAKER_02 58:46

But um, but yeah, as far as like my uh my actual choices, uh it was a lot of deliberation. Uh for the sake of the podcast, I decided to live myself to like uh anime and manga villains because it was almost impossible to uh narrow every narrow everything down. Um but I say uh my uh first uh uh my first choice uh is uh Griffith from uh from the I knew it would be and I thought it would say your name was I knew Kazi would do it if she didn't.

SPEAKER_03 59:25

Fuck Griffith and his white horse that he rode on.

SPEAKER_02 59:36

Oh man, and uh I and and and given and given some of the choices that's uh come up, I wish he was my main choice, but he's not. But just uh, you know, the uh Griffith's like this imagery, this the this like this the flipping of like you know, Griffith like being being on this like white horse and he having the you know the white like Griffin wings and like you know and and guts is like dirty and he got the black berserk armor and he's always just drenched in blood, and it's just and it's a really interesting like dichotomy. Um and like and and berserk just does an excellent job of getting into you know showing where Griff came from, getting getting into his uh mind. Uh I and I think like a really you know uh strong line that runs through a lot of effective villains is just like strength of will. And like, you know, like there's like there's rules and there's laws and there's all these obstacles put in place, and and it's like the and the thing that matters about you as a person is is your ability to power through all these things. And if not destroy them, then bend then bend them to you, you know, to your will. And like and and uh and gri and Griffiths like you know, his his whole his his whole thing was he had a you know he had a dream to uh one day to make his own kingdom. And and uh and and as a you know, and coming up as a as a poor person, you know, that was impossible in the in the world he grew up in, so he had to change the world he grew up in, and like and his you know, and his will to uh make a place of his own, like it eventually like out outstripped the the entire world in a natural order. Like he, you know, he he he he he became he uh he went beyond human and sacrificed everything you like close to him and dear to him to you know to get what he wanted. And I think, you know, and I think one of the uh you know most powerful uh scenes in the show is when uh is that like guts guts followed Griffith because you know because he was strong and because he thought they were friends. And and uh and the closer he got with Griffith, the uh the more he realized that like Griff Griffith Griffith is so focused that uh that he can't, you know, he can't he can't have friends. Everything within reach has has to be spent to push him towards his purpose. And Gus realized that that that included you know himself. And and he realized that to become equal with with Griffith, he had to uh he he had to he had to get away from him because the because to be next to Griffith was to be behind him. Um that was a good line.

SPEAKER_06 1:02:33

Someone write that down on the phone on the blunt next to me.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:37

Where's that big book that Kaize flipped on the table?

unknown 1:02:46

I knew it would be that big.

SPEAKER_06 1:02:56

Daily meditations.

SPEAKER_10 1:02:58

I feel like that's the we didn't award for that. That was a good line.

SPEAKER_06 1:03:02

Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:03

But like, and then and you know, and then and then like and then and then like and then the middle the midpoint of the story, like uh, which is really just uh, you know, the the end, because the you know, because the story starts pretty much in the past, and like and before like we do our little time skip to show you like what's happening with guts, like Griffith does probably like the one of the most horrible things I've ever seen in any, you know, in a thought fiction. This like yeah, he sacrifices his band. Uh yeah, the when he he rapes Casca. He sheds his humanity like in every way possible.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:44

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:46

Um and then and and he puts the curse mark on on gut on uh guts uh just to make the rest of his life a live in hell and to bring and ultimately bring him back back to him. Uh yeah, the graph of the sis.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:01

Have you seen Hellraiser? Because that's exactly the the vibes that um Berserk gave me was Hellraiser vibes the entire time.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:10

The uh the movie with like Spikehead apparently. Yeah, so yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:16

Because um if in Berserk, all of his minions, even the chick that came that kind of that was kind of like sexy but evil, she had like snake or like kind of like um little tentacle hair. Um, I forgot what they called them in um in Hellraiser, but they were like megabytes or something like the apostles or something like that. But each apostle looks damn near identical to each person in Hellraiser, which I thought was very interesting. And I think even with uh Berserk, the creator of either Berserk or Hellraiser, they were like influenced by each other, kind of like how Farscape and um my gosh, uh that movie with everybody in space. Um the one with death and sorry, um Geth and Asari, the one it's like a oh god, it's like the one in space, Geth and Asari and the blue chick that could read mine. Mass Effect, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:05:21

Um, explanation of Mass Effect.

SPEAKER_10 1:05:27

But we got there, that's what matters. We got there.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:30

We made it there. I thought you were about a show because I was lost, but I was like, I know what a guest is.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:35

Right, guess like, but yeah, so um, you know, to piggyback on what you're saying about berserk, it was just interesting because, you know, in a in a in a previous video, we were talking about how color palette in shows are so important when it comes to who is the villain, who is the hero. And I loved seeing something different. First of all, we had a first black anime character that was a woman. She wasn't blonde haired. This bitch was black. Okay. She was black. And she was, you know, she was strong and she didn't need nobody to tell her nothing. You know, so Berserk was just so brilliant. And then also the colors. You know, we're so used to seeing, you know, like Miyazaki, you know, I love the work, but I'm so sick and tired of seeing the dark character be bad. You know what I'm saying? No face was black, and no face was the villain of sorts in the, you know, in the movie. Even in Howls Loving Castle, you know, you had so many different uh colors that were played to for you to say, okay, the black guy is bad, and the the pretty pristine one is the hero. No, and berserk they said, fuck all that. That nigga, the the the pristine, clear looking one, he the villain. And guts who's dark and grungy and look like he's gonna eat like a lion, which he probably could, he's actually the hero.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:05

He's looking like that.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:06

Um yeah, even in Devil Man Cry Baby, Satan.

SPEAKER_10 1:07:15

Yeah, they made Satan look like the fallen angel that they that he was. And I would even go so far as to say Digimon in season four Lusamon, they created this this imagery of an angel, this more pristine figure that wasn't that pristine, that ultimately ended up being a different. I mean, given the different form changes Lusiman went through, ended up looking like this, you know, very like dark-looking dragon creature. But ultimately, that's what Lusiman became. Like Lusiman was this little angel. Then I think the next form was Lusiman, like his like angel and like devil, like it manifested himself in both colors, or both, you know, both different kinds of iconography, and then ultimately just went all the way to one side. But um, yeah, no, you're you're absolutely right.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:59

Yep, yeah. All right, in the in the you know the rest because I ain't started yet.

SPEAKER_07 1:08:02

You're right.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:04

Uh my second one, I'm gonna be quick. The second one uh is uh Maryland from uh Hunter Hunter.

SPEAKER_07 1:08:10

Damn it, you took Oh shit, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:16

You haven't gone yet. No, even better. So I'll I'll leave Meryl. I'll just say that out. No, go for it.

SPEAKER_10 1:08:20

Keep going.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:21

No, because I'll just add more. I mean, same with my last one. But uh yeah, I just I just I just love that uh what is it? Um I I love that Merriam like that ultimately Merriam did nothing wrong. Merriman is is the just logical conclusion of what his race was. He he was a bug. And world strongest ants. And uh and and his whole and his whole purpose was to protect his kind and spread their influence and pretty much take over and you know devour everything that they were strong enough to. And and that ended up being almost everything, which is which you know wasn't his fault. And and uh and and I love like the depth that they gave Namaram because it because like because of his uh interactions uh with uh I I forget her name. Yeah, thank you with yeah, with uh Kamugi.

SPEAKER_10 1:09:24

I would call her cleaneth commercial for sure because her nose is always running.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:27

Always running. But like I love I love how like he like slowly slowly dawned upon him, like, oh, these these like you know, slow, stupid, weak things like actually have like some redeemable value. And like, you know, and I love and I love a story that like like most, you know, most stories like since like they're from our point of view, they just automatically want to centralize the importance and the inherent just uh goodness of like the human race. Androcentrism.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:58

Okay, no, it's let me get let me get a textbook and write all these big ass.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:05

And you know, and I and I love that Marilyn like eventually, you know, like saw like you know, up our purpose and a use and saw our redeeming qualities, but it really wasn't that obvious because we're really fucked up. And I love how like it kind of came to him eventually, but it was something he had to like grow, you know, grow to come to see. Um, and like, you know, and I also love that like one of the best fights, not only in the series, but in all of anime, he spent pretty much like you know, uh, you know, traiting belows getting hit and then sitting down. And it was like, whenever you're ready to talk, uh, we can do this. And like it was his it was everything. But you're gonna make me watch that last them last few episodes all over again. It's worth it. It's so fair. But my uh my my main my main choice, uh, which has already been touched upon, is uh Mr. Sosuke Eisen. Um Eisen. Uh he was so effective in so many ways. He's he's he's the impetus for pretty much the whole story starting. Um his existence more more or less kept the uh kept the main uh the the main actual villain like at bay and he took part in in uh in the in beating that actual villain. But like uh like you know, like uh like talent like Tyler Flame said uh Iizen learned that God was pretty much dead. Um, God was a system of, you know, Ryatu was pretty much spiritual energy and the you know the energy that makes everything run. It was pretty much just a system of Ryatsu that ran and kept everything going, but the consciousness that was tied to it died a long time ago. And and and and all these systems and the powers that be just kind of just glued everything in in place and kept like the status quo. And Eisen just saw that as ridiculous. And and as a person who grew up uh like the his you know his strength and his intelligence and created such a gulf between himself and everyone around him that um that he was he was just truly and always just like alone. And and not only that, but everything that uh everyone everyone else like depended on, which was just like laws and friendship and love. He just you know all he saw was how those things felt them. Uh like so I've I have a I have a um bunch of uh oh oh no, I have more. I have I have a book.

SPEAKER_10 1:13:07

Uh we know we heard it.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:11

But uh and another thing I think that made Isa so effective is that um I I I think like his his his like villain turn was like one of the like most effective ones. Like like like this, like he was the kindest uh one he was just like one of the kindest, like just he just gave off this like silent strength. Everyone loved him, everyone trusted him. And uh and especially and especially his uh I forget her name, but uh the member that looked up to him and loved him.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:42

And uh that was crude and unusual punishment that Momo did not deserve.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:50

Yeah, like just we we they they did a really good job of putting the audience in her eyes and just putting Aizen on this pedestal. And so like, and when he like when he like stabbed her after coming back from like faking his own death, like it was just like Yep. Uh oh, like you you like you felt that shit. And and like and and Aizen is like so he he is he is so perfect at like under like because I think I think where a lot of villains fuck up um is is where they're like they uh they get so full of themselves that they uh that they stop paying attention to all the beings that they see themselves as like being over. But Eisen was a scientist, he didn't he didn't ignore them, he studied them. He knew what made them tick, he knew what drove them, he knew how to manipulate them, and and he used all those things to get get him exactly what he wanted and uh and and to achieve his uh ultimate purpose. Um now that and and his purpose, of course, was to take uh to uh to take God's place because uh because the person there was obviously unfit for the job.

SPEAKER_07 1:15:02

But uh, you got some scripture? We got the number of preaching now, already all right.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:12

So what one is uh all right, so the first one is uh I guess it's only natural for inferior beings to write on the coattails of their superior counterparts. If they wish to keep their lives, they have no choice but to obediently comply. It's just a never-ending chain. As the ones who are burdened with that trust, in order to escape that burden, seek to find someone even greater than themselves. Uh, these greater beings then seek even uh other greater things than themselves to shelter them. This is how kings are born, and this is how gods are born. But make no mistake, they all still abide to me because from this point forward, you witness firsthand the power of the God that they foolishly place their faith in. I will come that God which they have no choice but to believe in.

SPEAKER_07 1:15:58

And just oh, poetry, yes, honey.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:02

Yes, and uh, and the one I should have read first, but it's related. But uh, but it's like since the beginning, no one has ever stood in the heavens, neither you nor me, not even God Himself. But that unbearable vacant scene, the throne of heaven shall be filled, and from this way forth I will stand, I will stand in heaven. And uh, and and probably and probably my uh my uh favorite quote, which I'm uh summarize, but it was it was his uh it was his vice captain again who uh who uh who could you knew couldn't be trusted.

SPEAKER_10 1:16:34

Yes, which is the snake guy with the clothes eyes and eyes and is always grinning for some reason.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:15

It's the it's the angle, it's the angle. You gotta put it in this little curve on the on the slice. Literally make a mouth.

SPEAKER_05 1:17:25

No, it's an age, and like people love to develop an age and cooling, okay?

SPEAKER_10 1:17:39

Okay, I don't trust people who can't smile like a circle. Like, if that shit looks like a triangle, I have a problem.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:48

And also Vin's Vin's obvious you know villainous uh design made his double double turn uh even better. Cause I I ain't see I ain't see that shit covered. But um oh, but yeah, and and and uh and my other favorite quote which is from Gen, which I'm gonna uh summarize, is uh it was uh he was just kind of he was just kind of chatting, chatting with somebody while the uh bigger fight was happening, and uh and he and he heard them like trying to strategize, and he just kind of popped up um beside them and he was like, and he was like, Oh, you're uh you're putting in like all this work to uh to overcome uh Eisen Sheikai, which was uh you know his first his sword's first ability, which was complete hypnosis, which which was one of the most broken things in any concept. But like, you know, anyone who had uh laid eyes upon his sword, uh Isen then had complete control over all their senses forever. I mean those who aspirates to ascend to Godhood, and then hey and um and and I and I and I love and I and I love how his uh how that that power just like aligned with like what he believed and like because you know because like all the you know he he he used he used that power to turn everything that that uh that we people depended on to you know turn them towards his purpose. Um but but again but again was uh big began to explain to him there was like even if Aizen didn't have this Shikai, you you would you wouldn't be you wouldn't be like strong enough like to beat him. Even if you somehow like amassed enough power to overcome him, you still wouldn't be able to reach him. Like the the distance between you and Aizen is a difference, is the distance between like heaven and earth. And and if uh and attempting to plan to like make a plan to beat him is akin to making a plan against the sky falling or the earth swallowing you. You know, he's a concept that you can't understand. Um because he's like so far, like you know, beyond you. Um and I had another one, but I lost it. But uh oh oh I wrote them.

SPEAKER_10 1:20:22

What did we say?

SPEAKER_03 1:20:23

Right, that's that's the book.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:25

Wait, let's not think it's that book, and uh, but there's a there was a there was a uh a part towards the end where he was uh well I'm so bad with names, but uh the what's the uh stripe, the stripe hat dude, the other smart one? Keyskey? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:20:47

My favorite character in bleach.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:49

Yeah, or it's amazing. But uh but Urhaw, uh you know, they were discussing God, and and Urahar was like, I mean, you know, the the Soul King is the linchpin of our system. We did that's just that's just how things are. And I and Eisen like got pissed, and he was like that, he's like, that's the theory of the bank of the vanquished. Victors must always speak of the way the world should be and not the way it is. And it was this, and uh, you know, and he and uh and another and another thing he said was that uh reason exists solely for those who must cling to it to survive. And uh and it was, you know, and he was really just saying that like you know, people like accept things and justify things because they have to, because they're not strong enough to uh make you know wait to materialize whatever they will. And uh and another really interesting thing I said is he said was that uh is that admiration is the furthest thing from understanding. And and I and that and I thought that was such a fascinating thing because him him as a character, he he he trusted no one because no one ever lived to his expectations, including God. Like, I mean, if you just if you don't if if you don't trust God, like who could you know who you know you know who the fuck is everybody else? And like, you know, and it and it's and it's in the and it's true, and it's true in the sense that uh that uh like you you did you know you put a distance between you and the things that and the things you believe in and the thing you follow because you think it's better than you. You know, that that line like really uh made me just think about just throwing up and like you know, kind of like this like losing your innocence as you like learn more about the world, like you learn that your parents aren't perfect, and like you know, and they become like they let they shrink as these like entities that I mean, assuming you like your parents. Uh or but but you know, but good and evil, they shrink as these like all-powerful entities that shape your lives and they become more human. And and uh and it's and it's almost like uh you know, as you grow up, you you you gain the ability to become friends with your enemies. Because like I'll you know, like I mean friends with your parents, because like a like back of the gripper thing, it's kind of like I can't be friends with you if I'm following you. But you know, but as you become more you know, closer to equals, you know, that's you know, that's you can uh you can actually like you know relate to your parents, but but but as equals you could you see all the things wrong with them, you see the mistakes they make. Um they you know then they're like no longer like perfect. So it's like it's like that distance, you know, create it there's a distance required for like uh you know for for admiration a lot of the time for a lot, just the false sense that uh that every you know everything that's like running your life is as it should be. And that you know, and the same thing like goes with like you know, the world you live in, the laws. Like, you know, I definitely have a far different uh concept of uh America and the world we live in now than than when I was a kid. But you know, so I just I thought that line was really uh um interesting and powerful and really, you know, and was super really in line with uh who Aizen was and what and what he believed in. Um and and out of all like the shown and villains, I think, I think he was just really successful in the most ways. Like he made me like you know, feel the most. Like he made me like I was scared, I was scared of him the most. Um and like and uh and and honestly, like the way that uh Kubo like wrote him, he kind of wrote himself in a corner because they shouldn't have beat Eisen. Eisen was way too strong, he was way too smart, and he was way too patient. Um, but uh, but um but but ultimately pretty much just lost his mind because his because his strength and intellect was absolute for for thousands of years. And and for s and for someone to be stronger than him was was such a foreign concept that um that you know he lost. And eisen losing was really just him being stuck to a chair for a while till they needed him later. They couldn't kill him. He's he he is immortal, and he's still one of the strongest things in the fucking show. So it's um you know Isa's loss is was still isn't that much of a loss. Like he's he can he can show the fuck back up. It was more of a stalemate. Uh yeah. But uh yeah, that's that's that's pretty much it.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:35

Okay, so we will hand it over to the black McCoy to wrap up our villains.

SPEAKER_10 1:25:40

Oh, cool. Um, so I'm gonna go ahead and start with the one that has already been mentioned, Medwim from Hunter Hunter. Um, the one of the things that I love about Medwim from Hunter Hunter is not only that it so I'll go ahead and like pre-preface this kind of explanation with something that Talent Flame, no, not Talent Flame, I'm sorry, that Louis kind of put out there that the these all of these characters have this kind of divine right to rule embedded within there, embedded within them and written within them. And Medwim was one of those characters. Um as soon as he was born, he knew exactly what he was there to do. He knew exactly what he wanted, he knew exactly what he needed, and he didn't take any shit from anyone in the process. Um, the moment Medwim came out, the pr the the mother who had done so much and given so much of herself to birth him into the world was now obsolete. She didn't, he didn't care about her, she didn't matter because all that he was there on that planet to do was to rule. And even as Kazu explained, he went through this kind of more evolutionary process of not necessarily being humble. I would say he was humbled in a way by Komugi, because Metroim was one of those characters who was overpowered. He was he was overpowered physically, he was overpowered mentally, but then he met this person, this human being who he saw as meek, frail, and inferior to him in every possible way. But because there was no possible way he could ever beat her in one game that was nothing but strategy, and there's one and it turns out one episode, the one strategy that he did use to try and beat her, he couldn't beat her in because it was the strategy that she herself had come up with. And mind you, this is a girl, this is a little girl who was of no use to her own family, and the only value that she had to her family was the fact that she was good at this game, and she was blind, so she couldn't see, so she was disabled in almost every way possible in comparison to this individual who was written to be everything that the world needed or could not compare itself to, both intellectually and physically, and yet somehow seen as inferior because he was an insect, he was an ant. And his existence in and of itself. To other human beings, even Neturo, when Neturo went to fight him, was it shouldn't have happened. Like at the end of the day, Neturo still said to him, like, you're an insect. That like you will be treated as such. You're not a human being. Therefore, you don't deserve the rights of what it means to be human. So, like as Kazi was saying, where Metroim was would go with toe to toe with Neturo without even putting forth any real effort and say, when you're ready to talk, we can sit down and talk, was one of my favorite things about him. And the thing that also made Medouim that much more poignant of a character for me, a poignant of a villain, was not simply that his growth or his evolution as a as a creature was um was characterized by his relationships to this other human being, this like much more meager human being, and how he understood humanity as he moved forward, but how it was also juxtaposed to the main character of the series. Because if you examine the beginning of the the Chimera and arc in the Hunter Hunter, where Gone is and where Metroom spawns himself, they're at two separate ends of a spectrum and they in they move to the opposite end of each other's spectrum. By the time Gone has completely lost his shit, and is really they just kill pet kill Pito for what she did to um for what he did to um to kite and where Meterum ends up when it comes to this fight with Netero. Because at the beginning, Meruim is this character who's ruthless, who doesn't give a fuck about anyone, only what he wants, and only what he knows he's there to do, which is his inherent divine right to a rule, which he's birthed to do, which even surpasses the authority that his creator, i.e., the the original chimera started all this bullshit, had given him by birthing him in the first place. And Gone has progressed from being this compassionate, understanding individual to being this creature who literally cares nothing more, cares about nothing else but vengeance about power, about achieving the ends of which, achieving the ends in a very linear way, than a more nuanced way than he was before. Um, so that is one reason why I love Medrum. That's why Medrum is one of my favorites. Um I'm I'm struggling between who would be my top, but my top, my top character, excuse me, um be my top character because of this kind of distinction. But the next character I'm gonna put is Darkseid from DC Comics. So Darkseid is one of those characters for me that embodies absolute power. And it's not even so far that he was born with it, Darkseid being one of the new gods, actually took the power that he was going after because Darkseid was before he was Darkseid, he was um Prince Uxus and he had an older brother, and they were going after the Omega Effect, but he basically killed his older brother and took the Omega Effect for himself and thus became Darkseid and became more powerful than pretty much, in my personal opinion, any DC character should truly be. One of my favorite Darkseid monologues ever, but I'm not gonna recite it. But because I do know it by heart, but um, but it was just that to kill Darkseid is unfathomable because Darkseid himself has so much it doesn't even exist, is it's too powerful to actually exist in the planes in which normal human consciousness can even fathom in the first place. He's fifth dimensional, right? He's fifth dimensional. So for him to even put his whole body into the dimensions in which Batman and Superman and Wonder Woman would exist would literally destroy the entire it would it would destroy their existence, it would destroy reality. So he can't do that. So the things that the people have, the things that these heroes have difficulty dealing with are simply projections of his own existence and not even extremely powerful ones. They're simply just avatars that he throws out there to make sure that he can appear somewhere. Because if you if actual dark side were to come to a boom come through a boom tube, he wouldn't be even be able to fit in that universe. So, and I think that my relationship to Darkseid being this very arrogant and intelligent and powerful figure who knows how powerful they are, and knows that at the end of the day, they only have one particular, i.e., the anti-life equation, that they're after, and no one really being able to stop them. Like the only real barrier, in my personal opinion, to dark side and the anti-life equation is him not knowing where it is and him not being able to find it. Otherwise, there's no one who can truly stop him, and any like visual impediments that come, visual impediments that he deals with are simply by virtue of whoever is writing at the time, i.e., whatever God is, you know, dictating what the universe looks like for dark side, and whoever's going against him at the time. Um, my last, my last villain, and I'll try and keep it brief, is from my favorite anime, One Piece. Um, and that one, it it was a it was a tie, but I I had to admit that this character did it better. It was a tie between Crocodile and Don Quixote do Flamingo. And please say Crocodile. It is Do Flamingo. As much as I love Crocodile, because he did it first, I have to admit that Do Flamingo did it better. Because he did. He did. Because both of them achieved the same thing. They managed to completely take over a monarchistic state and completely undermine the entire history that preceded before. Well, actually, no. They undermined the history that preceded it, but Crocodile simply took over and had his own organization, had his own organization, Baroque Works, come in and do his bidding while he sat at the top and ran everything. But Do Flamingo did that, but he took it even further because Do Flamingo not only took over a state, but he managed to take over the state in such a way that he made the people turn against the monarch that they loved for decades prior to him even getting there, made himself look like the savior, and then made everyone in the country was had so much, had so much power and influence within his crew that he was able to make everyone in the country completely forget that the shit even happened, as well as rewrite the completely rewrite history of the rewrite the history of that monarch, on top of making people forget their loved ones who sided with the monarch in the first place, completely erasing any any possibility of some sort of rebellion, of some sort of like fanatical influence that would go against him, on top of already genetically, inherently being of divine, of this kind of like divine um personage by being a celestial dragon, which not a lot of people knew in the first place, or no one really knows, because he kind of keeps that shit under wraps. And then on top of that, he ran a complete underground operation um with an alias, no, i.e. with an alias being Joker, to have to create artificial devil fruits that he sold off to um, or that he made sure that um the Emperor Akaido had access to and had so many ties to Caesar Clown, who was also helping produce these artificial fruits in the first place. Like he didn't stop at taking over a country. He took his experience, his traumatic experiences from being raised as a celestial dragon and his radical rebellion from his father's much more, I'll say Lockean perspective of peace and understanding of other beings, and not exerting this kind of oppressive force. But he was more along the lines of Azula who took hold and like vehemently took hold of this divine right of what it means to be the ruler, to be the king of the powers, to be the king and ruler of the world, and exerted that force in so many different ways, but still at the same time was brilliant and strategic enough to know his place to the point where even when after Lupi defeated him and he was captured by the Navy and taken into custody, he still wasn't worried because you saw they had a whole scene where this man was tied up in sea prism stone and was laughing because he knew he had enough brilliance to understand what was going to happen next. Because now he he understood where he fell as far as the pecking order of the pirate world, but he also had enough intellect to understand the enough intellect to be able to have the foresight necessary to look for it and be like, I know exactly what's about to happen. And now that I have been removed from this particular process, because uh because it was interesting because even in that entire arc of Dress Rosa, he knew that once his plan fell apart, which was in his mind, I guess a you know, uncompletely improbable. Um he knew what once everyone remembered what happened and everyone had knowledge of what happened, his solution wasn't to try and undo all of it. He had enough power, he had enough intellect, and he had enough strength, both internally and externally, to completely annihilate all of Drust Rosa. He used the power that he had accumulated on like within himself, not due to his entire crew, but the power he had solely of his own of his own knowledge and embracing of his own devil fruit power to completely destroy an entire island and wipe it off the map and make sure that history never remembered that everything that he did on that island even happened, which is something that you only saw happen as far as the world government was concerned when they used the Buster Call to destroy, completely annihilate entire civilizations and islands and histories so that no one knew what exactly happened. So they make sure they can continue to control the narrative of history. And that to me, I guess that might put him at my number one because he is the only character within the three that I named who had not only the power but the intellect to be able to mimic that of an entire system or structure or um yeah, system or structure on his own. Because not only do you have a character who can completely take over a government and undermine the entire history that came before it, but he also has the power, like an entire naval, an entire naval fleet as well as the world government itself, to make sure that whatever mistakes that have been made are known to no one, and is willing to do what it takes to make sure that if there is any if there are any survivors, which is why Nico Robin was, you know, a wanted woman in the first place, if there are any survivors that know the truth, they need to be sought out and they need to be snuffed out. And that's all that Doflamingo needed to do that Doflamingo needs in order to be the brilliant villain that he was. Mind you, he was overpowered by Luffy, who of course is the main character, so inevitably he has to go. But but ultimately, he so far in the series of One Piece has been the best villain for me because he's not an emperor, he was just a warlord, but he was a he had more power to he had, in my opinion, more power than the the warlords ever would have had because he was able to mimic that which opposed them in the first place, which was the world government and the navy.

SPEAKER_01 1:40:25

That's good. We let you go last. That was a beautiful exhortation. 100%.

unknown 1:40:30

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 1:40:31

So it seems based off of what everybody has said, we have a great list of villains, both you know, leading from sociopaths to uh, you know, grade A murderers to dictators to uh people who end civilizations with a snap of their fingers, um just a large camaraderie of different types of beings. And uh uh as I said at the jump of the podcast, you know, those who are listening, if you have someone who you also think should, you know, maybe have been um added to one of our lists, or uh maybe someone who could comparatively be, you know, better than one of the villains that we've named, uh feel free to send the message to our mailbag, uh which is the blurred spectrum at Umbralstarcade.com, or when the episode drops, uh just reply to our post on any of our social media platforms. Speaking of social media, Umbralstarcade is on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Twitch. Uh, does anybody else have their social media handles that they would like to state?

SPEAKER_03 1:41:37

Yes, Sionay cosplay on Facebook, Sionay underscore cosplay on ID, Silene cosplay on uh what what is that? What is that thing that I never use? The TikTok. Ha! So don't follow me on the code.

SPEAKER_01 1:41:52

It may not exist really soon. It may not exist anymore. So it's a moment in time.

SPEAKER_07 1:41:58

Right. I'm not really doing nothing on there.

unknown 1:42:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_10 1:42:01

Anyone else? Yeah, I'll go ahead and throw the black McCoy out on Instagram and on Facebook. Um, since TikTok probably won't live any any longer. Go ahead and find it. I mean, you know, it posted Instagram automatically anyway. So I mean it doesn't really matter. But um, yeah, yeah, those those are the two. Those are the two. Again, I I don't get my Twitter because you don't need to follow me on there for reasons.

SPEAKER_01 1:42:23

Um awesome, awesome, awesome. So uh thank you all for listening. Uh be prepared for next week. Uh just just like we said, you know, this week was uh uh villains, next week is heroes, but not the way you think. It's going to be heroes, our favorite heroes, or you know, just heroes that we like. Why aren't they so great? And we'll see. We'll see where the where the conversation goes from there. So uh we'll see you all next week. Bye.

SPEAKER_06 1:42:52

Bye.