Top 10 Anime Badasses

So, this is a remix of an old post of the same name.  I looked at it, and I realized that I didn’t really think it through in a substantial way.  It was one of the first of these Top 10 posts, so I was new to it.  But now, after putting in a lot of thought to this concept, I have come up with a new list.  These are the ten anime characters who, when I first saw them, I thought to myself, “man, what a badass!”  They have been in some pretty sweet shows (except for one), and I hope you enjoy.

10. Rika Nonaka
Digimon Tamers
A lot of you might be wondering – what the hell?  Why is she on this list?  Well, when I first saw her in the show that she hails from, she automatically appeared totally badass to me.  Rika is a character who wants to be the best.  Rather than try and capture Digimon, like most Tamers do, she chooses to simply have only one.  She wants to train Renamon into the ultimate warrior.  She doesn’t accept weakness, in either herself or her Digimon.  She has a severe need to be the best, and she will do whatever it takes to get there.  I really liked her personal journey.  Even after she gets more in touch with her softer side, her need to kick ass and take names is still there.  This was a really underrated series, and looking at her character, you can see why.  Definitely the best of the bunch.

9. Lucy
Elfen Lied
Lucy isn’t like any of the characters on this list.  For one thing, she’s one of the few female badasses in anime.  I will admit that they have a ways to go in that department.  But man, she is a total badass!  Not only does she have no problem with killing and mutilating anyone that she doesn’t like, but she also has a very disturbing way about her.  A head injury causes Lucy to become two people.  The first is a mentally handicapped female who is kind of creepy, but very kind-hearted and nice.  The second is a well-oiled killing machine, unafraid of anything.  She can stop bullets.  She can stop other Vectors (invisible hands that can totally destroy matter).  She will fuck you up and find it all quite satisfying.  The levels of satisfaction that she gets from carnage are profoundly disturbing.  And her back-story is very tragic as well.  All in all, a great character from probably one of the most disturbing shows that I have ever seen.

8. Alucard
Hellsing
Alucard is one of the most amusing badasses on this list.  He is unique in that he doesn’t just fuck your shit up.  He will fuck your shit up and mock you, endlessly.  Who exactly Alucard is is a point of great contention among anime buffs.  Myself, since those people annoy me, don’t look into it.  Nor do I care.  He comes and goes as he pleases, wields two giant guns, including one with the words, “Jesus Christ has died and is in Heaven now” written on the side in gorgeous lettering.  The reason that he is so low on this list is that while he is a total badass, Alucard is also a rather shallow protagonist.  They never gave him that much of a back-story, which is a bummer, because I would have loved to have known the reasons where his origins were.  Sadly, they didn’t get into that.  So, while he is an awesome badass, he is pretty low on the list.

7. Roy Mustang
Fullmetal Alchemist
Let me first say that I am focusing on the Mustang from the first series.  I didn’t like Brotherhood.  It moved WAY too fast and tried to pack in WAY too much into too short a time frame.  But in the original, Mustang shined.  He is a man with a past he tries to forget, and is forced to play within the rules of a system he despises.  Eventually, he throws that all away, in order to finally get revenge for not only the people he had killed before, but for his best friend, who was killed because he got too close to the truth.  Mustang is not only a guy with a badass history, he is just bad ASS!  He can snap his fingers and make fire.  He is a man who can make things explode with ease.  Totally cool under pressure, nothing seems to phase him.  He doesn’t get many fight sequences, but when he does, they own!  Definitely made the first series better.

6. Mewtwo
Pokemon: The First Movie
So, I will say up front that I thought that this was a dumb movie.  To be honest, this guy was the only redeeming quality of it.  And man, what a redeeming quality he is!  The same reason that I love Shere Khan, I love Mewtwo.  Mewtwo is the biggest badass there is, and what’s more, he knows it.  He knows that there is no legitimate challenge to his authority.  And unlike Shere Khan, where you kind of have to take that on faith, and he does have a very commanding presence, in this, you get to see it.  Mewtwo goes up against the best of them.  He doesn’t just take on one Pokemon in one-on-one battles.  He sometimes will go up against an entire horde of them.  His power is undeniable, and eventually, he comes to realize that even humanity is lesser to him, and needs to be destroyed.  How he talks is so badass, how he looks isn’t, but that is one of the things that is cool about him.  Nobody takes him seriously at first, but they quickly realize that they can’t afford to do that.  Oh yeah, and he isn’t afraid to kill people, either.  He brutally murders all of the scientists and the criminals in two separate scenes where places are destroyed.  Definitely was the only redeeming quality of these films.

5. Wufei Chang
Gundam Wing
Now, this one was difficult to choose.  This series had a lot of badass characters.  For me, it was a choice between Zechs Marquise and Wufei.  I chose Wufei for a couple reasons.  The first is that he is a warrior driven by integrity.  He wants to prove his own strength.  He looks down on people who don’t have strength.  A lot of people say that he is sexist, because he has made sport of women from time to time.  But he’s not.  He doesn’t hate women.  He hates weak women.  Women who let their emotions get the better of them, or let personal insecurities hurt them.  He respects women of strength, like Sally Poe.  She is a soldier who will keep fighting, no matter how stacked the odds are against her.  The second reason I picked him is because he mental fortitude that most of the others don’t.  He was another of the pilots who was able to conquer the Zero System.  That’s no mean feat.  He was tough, strong, and didn’t accept weakness, in either himself or others.  Oh, and he kicked a lot of ass too.  That definitely helps.

4. Lelouch vi Britannia/Zero
Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion
Before I talk about this character, I think I should make a comparison to another similar character from the show Death Note, Yagami Light.  Both are very similar.  Both are incredibly intelligent young men who excel academically.  Both are dissatisfied with the state of the world.  Both want to change it.  Yagami gets the Death Note, and uses it to kill the world’s criminals.  Lelouch, on the other hands, gets a hold of a power called a Geass.  His Geass allows him to take over the mind of anybody around him, so long as he has direct eye-contact.  With this power, he starts a campaign to bring down the totalitarian dictatorship of the Britannian Empire.  The difference between these two is that while there is some sense of twisted nobility to Light’s plan, most of it feels selfish and ego-maniacal.  He immediately becomes consumed by his role with hardly a look back.  Lelouch, on the other hand, is very slowly corrupted, by his power, and while he does use people in horribly awful ways, there are many times where he does look back and you can see that it causes him some inner turmoil.  A character who pursues a selfish goal, even at the cost of his own soul is always going to be interesting, but it is more interesting when they have some awareness of it, and affects them on some level.  Still, both are awesome characters.  I just like this one a little bit more.

3. Sebastian Michaelis
Black Butler
What is so cool about Sebastian is that he is a character who never seems to let anything get to him.  His only mission is to serve his master, and to be the best butler that he possibly can be.  Sebastian is a demon.  He made a pact with his master, Ciel Phantomhive.  In exchange for helping him get revenge against the people who killed his family, Sebastian would then get the young man’s soul.  Not only is this guy just too cool for school, but you get a lot of looks into how demented this obsession with getting a tasty soul is for him.  There are a lot of points where you get to see just who this man dressed in black is, and it is both very cool and profoundly creepy at the same time.  When the angel is torturing him, and offers him a whole buffet of souls instead of his, Sebastian turns her down, saying that he was tired of all the worthless souls.  He wanted “ambrosia.”  He has a very twisted dedication to Ciel, though you do see that it is all because he doesn’t want to lose out on his meal.  Right up to the very end, he is loyal to him.  Though the end of the entire series doesn’t play out just like he imagined.  Still, he is poised, he is professional, and as he has said, he is “simply one Hell of a butler.”

2. Spike Spiegel
Cowboy Bebop
What sets Spike apart from all the other characters on this list is that his point of view is profoundly different than everybody else.  He was a totally badass warrior, who used the same style of martial arts and Bruce Lee.  He was also a really cool gunfighter, able to match up with the best of them.  But what I loves most is that life seems to mean absolutely nothing to him.  Whether he lives or dies is immaterial.  He grew up in a life of crime, and is trying to leave it all behind.  Unfortunately, he finds that the farther away he runs, the more his past runs to catch up to him.  Not only one of my favorite anime characters, but also one of my favorite anti-heroes, there is something about his rather cold view on life that just clicks with me.  In the end, he realizes that the only way that he can move on with life is to find out if he is still living or not.  I won’t say what answer he comes to, if you haven’t seen the show.

And the top anime badass may just surprise you.

1. Zuko
Avatar: The Last Airbender
Say what you want, but man, was this guy badass!  The fallen prince of the Fire Nation, Zuko is trying to reclaim his honor.  As the series progresses, he realizes that the only way to get his honor back is to get it back from inside.  It can’t be given to him.  It has to be something that he finds for himself.  Not only was this guy a totally awesome fire-bender, but he also was a pretty awesome swordsman.  What’s cool about him is that he can use one without the other, but when both are combined, Zuko is a powerhouse like nobody else.  Through the entire series, this is the character who goes through the most change.  Lots of others have some personal transformations, but I think he was the one who grew the most.  He accepts his past, embraces his future, and finds his honor again.  What’s not to like?

Until next time, a quote,

“My father says that my sister was born lucky, and that I was lucky to be born.”  -Zuko, Avatar: The Last Airbender

Peace out,

Maverick

Top Ten Anti-Heroes

Okay, the fact is that unless a hero has a very prominent dark side, they are BORING!  I hate them, for real, I do.  I hate Superman, I hate Spiderman, I hate most of the X-Men.  I hate almost all the big heroes, save Blade, The Punisher, Elektra (not the Jennifer Garner film version), and others who are not above spilling some blood once and a while.  Anti-heroes are always going to be interesting.  This is a fact.  These are characters who have the makings of a hero, but are unable to reach that status due to some pretty major character flaws.  Here is a list that gives, what I believe, to be the top ten anti-heroes.

10. Batman
Batman: Arkham City
One of the things that always interested me about this character was the fact that Batman always seemed like kind of a thug to me.  Sure, he won’t kill anyone, but he has absolutely no qualms about anything up to that point.  He will totally destroy your body, believing that seeing violence as the first and only solution is correct.  But none of the films or TV series have really acknowledged this, and that always bugged me.  This game, on the other hand, fully acknowledges what this character is.  The Batman of this game sees violence as the first solution and isn’t apologetic when he hurts people unnecessarily.  He will beat up anybody and it even looks like he will Harley Quinn when she is defenseless and on the ground.  They even acknowledge how far he has fallen when he is willing to let all the inmates of Arkham City die to go and rescue his girlfriend from Joker.  To me, this was the best representation of this character, and part of what I love so much is how in the end, he is carrying Joker out of the theater and not the woman he claims to love.  It’s an awesome character, in an awesome game.

9. Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock
There have been a lot of really good versions of this character in a lot of shows and movies.  Robert Downy Jr. played this role very well in the Guy Pierce movie, and probably will again in the new one that is coming out.  However, it is this incarnation that I think deserves a spot on the anti-hero list.  This version of Holmes is played by Benedict Cumberbatch.  It is a modern interpretation of the title character.  He is much more like an anti-hero than the other versions (and I think more on par with the novel character) because while he does good things, he is not motivated by good in the slightest.  He is motivated by the search for a puzzle.  Doing good is just a by-product of his work.  He is not above doing bad things if it gets the job done.  He also seems to not care for the victims of the crimes, and also for the feelings of others.  He only cares about the work.  It is a really interesting character to watch, and remarkably likeable, even though he is also a manipulative and often cold-hearted bastard.

8. Jimmy McNulty
The Wire
Now, while Jimmy McNulty, played by Dominic West, is kind of a bit of a cliche by this point, this series made use of the archetype to its fullest.  McNulty is a detective in Baltimore.  He is a good cop, but has a problem of having little to no respect for authority.  He doesn’t follow the rules whenever it suits him, and while he doesn’t brutalize prisoners, he isn’t above bending and breaking the procedures everywhere else.  But he has a very strong sense of justice.  If one were to look at the scale of what his character is, he would be chaotic good.  To accomplish his sense of justice, he will do whatever it takes, regardless of the consequences.  But where McNulty has good qualities, he also has a lot of bad ones.  He is a hardcore drunk, complete womanizer, and is so out of touch with what the rules actually are that he has a genuine lack of understanding when he does something wrong.  A running gag in the show is people getting pissed at him and McNulty asking, “what the fuck did I do?”  But all of his flaws aside, he is still trying to do good, and is one of many characters who make this show the masterpiece that it is.

7. Spike Spiegel
Cowboy Bebop
I love this show.  This character is what makes it so good to me.  Spike is a interstellar bounty hunter who is trying to run away from his past.  He used to be a member of the a crime syndicate, but left when he was betrayed by the woman he loves.  He now works with a man named Jet, and over time, gets new crew members on their ship, Faye Valentine, Ed, and their dog, Ein.  While Spike seems to not notice Ed especially much, it is shown that he does look out for her.  Faye, on the other hand, is one of the points of contention in the show.  It is hinted that Spike likes her, and that she may do more than like him.  But his is an interesting character.  He has no real concern for his own life, seeing death as just something that is coming.  He actually looks at life as something to be overcome, that death is the ultimate end, and what he seeks most.  He does good things, but at the same time, he is motivated by the need to pay the bills.  Were it not for money being involved, he would likely not care about the problems of others.  He is a tragic character in a tragic show.  Check it out, if you have time.

6. V
V for Vendetta
V is an interesting character.  His is a character who originally started with no goodness to his plan at all, but over time grew to gain some.  The backstory to this character is shrouded in mystery.  He was an ordinary man who was rounded up during the crackdown of the fascist government that rules England, and then given some kind of injection that turned him into a badass killer.  A fire at the institution (arguably caused by him), burned him beyond recognition, but he survived.  Now, many years later, he is back for revenge against those who did this to him.  By chance of fate, he meets a woman named Evey, who unlocks the goodness that he had locked away for so long.  This character is not only badass, but he is cool.  Well-spoken, thoughtful, intelligent, and very dark, his is a character who you grow to like a lot, even though he does do crazy things, and sometimes he even sounds a little nuts.  Check out the film, if you can.

5. Lelouch vi Britannia/Zero
Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion
I have already talked about this character in great detail in another post, where I compared why I favor Lelouch over the anime character Yagami Light from Death Note, so I won’t say too much here.  Lelouch is a young man who, by sheer chance, comes into possession of a Geass.  This power is different for everybody who has it, and in Lelouch’s case, it allows him to give an order that somebody must absolutely follow, so long as he has eye-contact with them.  What makes his character so much better than Yagami is simply the fact that Lelouch does horrible things, but he has genuine remorse for his actions sometimes, and that is a good thing for a character who does do horrible deeds, and use people in cold ways.  The dual-nature of his life, between the rebellious hero who is trying to destroy an empire, to the loving brother who is trying to look after his sister, is one of the charms of this character.  It is worth checking out, and although I like Death Note more, this character is worth it.

4. Alan Shore
Boston Legal
The Practice (Season 8)
This is a character who I will always adore because of how well he was played.  James Spader plays the brilliant Alan Shore.  He is a lawyer in Boston who not only has little to no regard for the rules, the idea of breaking them and suffering intense consequences appeals to him.  He has a very strict code of justice, but he is most certainly not above doing really awful things to get to that point.  He is a womanizer of the worst kind, and while he has an attraction to older women, he will sleep with younger women to satisfy his insatiable appetite.  His strategy in the court-room is to identify the underlying failing of society that got his client to that point, and use that to sympathetic juries.  He is often victorious.  While he is quite the ladies man, he generally is disliked by the men that he works with.  His lack of tendency to follow the rules puts him at odds with all of his bosses.  But despite his lack of respect for authority, he often gets his goal, and rarely ever feels the hammer come down on him.  All in all, a good character of a show that ended way too fast.

3. Gregory House
House M.D.
Here is a character who I will always love.  A lot of people are saying how his character has gotten kind of stale, but I am not among them.  I think this guy is cool, no matter what he does.  He is a character who can keep charming, regardless of what he is doing.  Played by Hugh Laurie, his is a character a lot like Holmes above.  He does good deeds, helping the sick, but he doesn’t do it because he cares.  He does it to feed his quest to find a puzzle to solve.  He is a brilliant doctor who also has little to no regard for authority.  No amount of authority scares him.  He sees it all as a game.  While most people believe that he not only doesn’t care about his patients, he doesn’t care about anybody else, his best friend, Wilson, knows otherwise.  Part of the reason the two have stayed friends is that Wilson can tell that there is a good man underneath the cold, but he hides it well.  This has been a good show, and I will always be a fan, because of the awesome antics of Greg House.

2. Dexter Morgan
Dexter
Here is a character who is unique among the anti-heroes on this list.  All of the others have goals, and are willing to do extreme things to get there.  Dexter, on the other hand, his goal is to do extreme things.  He is a serial killer, but unlike normal serial killers, he was trained by his adoptive father to channel his need to kill into something less heinous than it otherwise would have been.  He finds and kills killers who have fallen through the cracks of the justice system.  Granted, he does sometimes engineer their falling through, but always with the intention of taking them out himself, and he only does it when he really believes that this killer shouldn’t suffer in jail.  That death should be their inevitable end.  This is a remarkably likeable character, despite his proclivities.  But it isn’t really his killings that are the interesting part.  Not to me, anyway.  Dexter is interesting because he does make genuine attempts to connect with his species, from having a girlfriend, to trying to make friends, to even having a best friend.  But every time he does, his demons destroy the lives of everybody that he comes into contact with.  I think most people can relate to that problem, of trying to find somewhere to belong, even though most of us are not serial killers.  We are able to relate to him as he makes his way through life.

And the number 1 Anti-hero is…!

1. Omar Little
The Wire
It had to be Omar.  Omar really is the personification of what an anti-hero is supposed to be.  He lives completely by his own rules, and doesn’t care at all about what the rest of the world wants, or about the games that the rest of us play every day.  He is a character who lives in the slums of Baltimore, robbing drug dealers.  He has a reputation of shooting those who do not cooperate with him, but while he comes off as a thug, Omar has a very strict code that he lives by.  The first part is that he never swears, ever.  His grandmother raised him and gave him that strict code.  And while he isn’t above blowing somebody’s knee out with a shotgun, he will never raise his weapon onto a person who isn’t “in the game.”  And when people step outside of that code, he does get very upset.  He lives by the law of the old west, where the way of the gun made right.  He regularly walks the street with his shotgun hanging from his side, and he never goes anywhere unarmed.  Given that he has been in the game for some time, he has to always watch his back.  Omar is a very intelligent character.  He can plan and change up plans on a moment’s notice.  He will stalk out the place or person he is after, and make sure he knows everything about them.  This character was incredibly well-written, and if you have a chance, check him out.  Omar is the kind of character that we needed – an old west outlaw in modern times, who lives by the gun, and inevitably dies by the gun.

Anti-heroes are always going to be interesting, and I recommend you check out all of these.  So, what should I do in my next top ten?

Until next time, a quote,

“Don’t get me wrong, I done some dirt, but I ain’t never put my gun on no citizen!”  -Omar Little, The Wire

Peace out,

Maverick

Lelouch vi Britannia vs. Yagami Light

I decided that I would do a character comparison.  Don’t ask me why, the idea just came to me.  Now, I thought about these two characters because not only is their character archetype similar, but the very series that they are in and the plot points are similar.  But there are some comparisons to be made, and it seemed a worthwhile thing to me to do.  Before I begin, let me say that both of the shows that these two come from are shows that I genuinely love.  They are brilliant done, visually arresting, and both of them will keep you at the edge of your seat until its over and you are able to take a breath.  The two characters that I am comparing are Lelouch vi Britannia, from Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion, and Yagami Light, from Death Note.

First, let’s introduce these characters.  The first we’ll talk about is Lelouch vi Britannia.  He is a prince of the totalitarian empire of Britannia.  However, he, and his little sister, Nunnally, are in hiding in Japan, which is renamed Area 11 after Britannia conquers it.  Lelouch hates the Britannian empire, because they have a doctrine that only the strong should be allowed to survive, which means that people like his little sister have no place in the world.  One day, by chance, he is given a special power.  It is called a Geass.  His Geass gives him the power to give an order to another person, so long as they are making direct eye-contact, and they will obey it.  This is absolute.

With this power, Lelouch is able to begin his efforts to destroy Britannia.  Over time, Lelouch becomes corrupted by his power, and he begins to care very little about the people who follow him.  He starts making very heartless decisions that often hurt those who follow him very substantially.  He assumes the identity of Zero, and forms the group The Black Knights, who actively fight against Britannia.  However, he chooses to keep his identity a secret, even from his closest comrades.  This inevitably comes back to bite him.  Eventually, he uses his power, and more that he gains from his actions, and takes over Britannia.  I won’t spoil more from there.  It is very, very cool how he eventually proves that he truly was the smarter of anybody with his last plan.

Next up, we have Yagami Light.  He is very similar to Lelouch.  He is a student in Japan.  Like Lelouch, he is also extremely dissatisfied with the state of the world.  He looks at the legal system, and how many criminals get out from under the system, and is deeply upset by this.  He is looking to becomine a detective, like his father.  He wants to make the world a more lawful place.  By sheer chance, he comes into possession of a Death Note.  A Death Note is a kind of notebook.  It allows the holder to kill anybody that they see, as long as they have a name and a face.  He assumes the identity of Kira, and begins killing off the world’s criminals, en masse.  This quickly attracts the attention of the world’s greatest detective, who goes by the name L.

The cat and mouse game between Light and L is nothing short of brilliant.  It was a perfectly made series.  Light and his cold-hearted usage of people, become a brilliant character to watch grow.  Also, the character relationship that grows between him and L is also a very deep and emotional.  The very noire feeling of the series is very cool, and makes the audience feel very captivated, like they cannot escape.  Light is an almost perfect character.  He wants to be a god of the new world.  I won’t say how the cat and mouse game between L and him turns out, but I will say that it is definitely worth checking out.  For somebody who enjoys this genre, it is almost perfect.

Now, the similarities of these characters are very obvious – they are both young men, both exceedingly excel academically.  Both of them are horribly dissatisfied with the state of the world, and chance brings them into possession of a way to become major players.  Both of them end up using people in openly cold and calculating ways.  They both end up accomplishing great things, and both of them leave a mountain of bodies in their wake.  But the differences are the more interesting parts.

I favor Lelouch over Light, and people seem to feel that I need to justify this.  Well, to be honest, it is pretty simple.  Light is a fascinating character.  I am torn to think that Death Note is the superior series, but only because some of the imagery is better, and the game between him and L is very, very edgy.  However, his corruption by his power is ridiculously immediate.  He never really looked back.  He jumped into his role and decided that he would be a God.  He would lord of his new world, and it would be what he wanted it to be.

Lelouch, on the other hand, wasn’t immediately corrupted by his powers.  Sure, he did use people, often in extremely cold ways, but he often looked back on what he had done, and there were times when he felt genuine remorse for his actions.  You see, the way I see it – a character who will work toward a single goal, regardless of how it affects others is always going to be fun, but with Lelouch, he just had more depth to him, because he didn’t immediately lose his humanity.  He saw the ability to change the world, and he took it.  Another point of interest was some of the things that Lelouch said.  His monologue about how pointless his life had been prior to the obtaining of a Geass was actually one of my favorites in a TV series.  His character had a much grander scale to work on.  Light wanted to be God of the world, but he worked alone, doing everything he could to avoid a human connection in his efforts.  Lelouch had a small and arguably elite army.  He had to think critically, and the battles that his genius intellect won him were very interesting.  Discovering how his astute mind had gotten him there was moreso.

Look, both of these shows are incredible, and I recommend them both, but you see, Lelouch just seemed to be the more interesting character.  For real, check them out, if you have the time.  Animation shouldn’t shy people away from something, and it isn’t all made for little kids.  A kid shouldn’t watch either series, really.  Both of them are horribly violent, often personally gruesome, and some of the character interactions are just a little too hardcore for kids to understand.

Check them out.  Both of these shows are AMAZING.  I think that both of them are almost perfect.

Until next time, a quote,

“A character who obsessively pursues a single goal, at the cost of his own soul, and the detriment of those around him is always going to be interesting, but I think it’s more interesting when they have some awareness of it, and it causes them some inner turmoil.”  -TJ Kincaid, Top Ten Anti-Heroes 

Peace out,

Maverick