Sephiroth v. Kefka Palazzo

     It’s a great question that many Final Fantasy fans have pondered for over a decade.  Of the two greatest villains of the franchise, Sephiroth and Kefka Palazzo, which is the greater villain of the two?  In general, people fall onto the two sides of the debate depending on when they started playing Final Fantasy and their age.  Older players tend to prefer Kefka, while younger players tend to prefer Sephiroth.  That’s not true for everyone, though, so don’t take that as the end-all be-all.  Anyway, I’m going to analyze the two in a competition based on certain villainous criteria and see which of them is truly greater.

Concept: Sephiroth is an evil swordsman with genocidal tendencies and with an alien’s cells inside of him that give him massive power.  Kefka is a clown who was driven mad by Magitek experimentation who betrays everyone around him and gains the power of a god.  While the clown concept has been used before (Joker), I’d call this a tie.  Both sound pretty scary to me.

Looks: As you can see from the above pictures, drawn by Nomura Tetsuya, Sephiroth wears black, tightly fitting clothing with silver shoulderpads and sports extremely long silver hair.  He’s a bishounen with a very frightening face, when he’s angry.  Kefka is a colorful clown with one of the funkiest costumes I’ve ever seen.  And J-RPGs come up with funky costumes.  Here, Sephiroth definitely wins.  He’s darkly stylish, whereas Kefka just looks silly.  The only reason to be afraid of the latter is if you have a clown phobia.

Weapon(s) of Choice: Sephiroth has three weapons at his disposal: his massively long sword Masamune, the black materia Meteor, which will basically decimate the planet, and the Jenova cells inside his body that give him more power than anyone else.  Kefka has the magical powers given to him by the Magitek experimentation, the poison he used during the siege of Doma, and the godly powers he gets from the three Statues.  Both of them are perfectly capable of destroying the world, though Kefka can do it a bit more easily.  On the other hand, Sephiroth definitely has a cooler primary weapon, since no one can argue with a kick-ass sword.  Despite that, Kefka wins, since his godly powers basically allow him to do whatever the hell he wants.

Motivations: Sephiroth, after losing his mind from the revelation of his origins, wants to become ruler of the world.  We’re not entirely sure why, but it’s some sort of mixture of wanting to prove his own superiority, wanting to make his “mother” happy, and his own insanity.  Kefka is just nuts and wants to destroy everything… because he’s nuts.  That’s it.  Under normal circumstances, Sephiroth would lose.  But to be honest, Kefka’s motivations are kind of boring, especially considering the usual complexity of J-RPG villains.  Still, it’s barely a victory for Sephiroth.

Evilness/Malevolence: How scary are these people really?  Let’s see.  I think the famous Sephiroth in Nibelheim picture should tell you enough.  He’s super powerful and can pose like the best evil bishounen.  Sarcasm aside, he is freaking scary, and his malovelence even lets him bend the Jenova cells to his will.  That’s hardcore.  Kefka is less scary, since, especially during his speech before the final battle, he sounds like the most petulant god ever.  He’s trying to kill everyone, but everyone stands up to him, and he sounds a bit pathetic.  However, he does get props for his laugh, one of the great sound effects of the early days of gaming.  In the end, though, Sephiroth wins.  He’s way scarier than the Joker’s sad little cousin.

Success: Did they achieve their goals?  Sephiroth kills Aerith Gainsborough, which is one of the biggest shocks in video game history.  But Kefka destroys almost the entirety of his world’s civilization and becomes a god.  He’s got lasers that can break through the planet’s crust.  That’s tough.  They both do have their own cult-like groups, but I’d say that Kefka wins, since he actually remakes the world in his own image before the main characters manage to stop him.  Few villains ever get that far.

The Final Verdict: So, who’s better?  Kefka’s godliness is certainly great, but in the end, Sephiroth is scarier and far more stylish a villain.  He has a greater staying power than Kefka, especially when you compare Kefka to the Joker.  That doesn’t mean that Kefka’s not a great villain.  He’s the second-greatest villain of Final Fantasy.  But Sephiroth is… Sephiroth.  He even has his own kick-ass song, One-Winged Angel.  When you compare Kefka’s sad little theme song to possibly the greatest song in video game history, it’s clear which wins.  Nonetheless, I’d be scared to meet either of them.  Final Fantasy sure does know how to make villains.

A Proper Anthology Miniseries

     With Utopia chronicling the first major appearances of the Dark X-Men, Dark X-Men: The Beginning explains  just how its various members joined the team.  The first issue of this miniseries features stories about Namor, Mimic, and Dark Beast.  After the Dark X-Men’s debut, Norman Osborn catches Namor in the shower and asks him exactly why he joined the team, considering their angry confrontation shortly before.  Osborn tells Namor that Namor’s just looking for orders to follow, and when Namor erupts in his face, he states that Namor really isn’t sure why he’s there.  Ultimately, Namor agrees to fall in line, though somewhat reluctantly.  Mimic tells his life story to Osborn, explaining all the craziness he’s gone through.  He also says that Moira McTaggert diagnosed him with bipolar disorder and gave him meds to deal with it.  Mimic thinks that he is a bad person, but Osborn disagrees.  Lastly, Osborn arrives in his Iron Patriot armor on Dark Beast’s doorstep, looking for a techie to experiment on some mutants and, as we know from Utopia itself, design something to rob mutants of their powers.  Dark Beast agrees, while pointing out the advantages of staying true to his evil nature.  Dark Beast reminds Osborn that he is nothing more than a villain and murderer in hero’s clothing and tells him that he is his biggest fan.

     Now, I’ll admit that I’m no expert on characters who are normally as minor as Dark Beast and Mimic.  But this issue seems to be pitch perfect for basically every character.  It captures Namor’s inner confusion as to his identity (mutant or Atlantean), Mimic’s frustration with his mental problems, and Dark Beast’s insanity.  It’s easy to compare this miniseries with the two previous X-Men anthology series, X-Men: Divided We Stand, and X-Men: Manifest Destiny.  Without a doubt, this is the best of the three.  Paul Cornell and Leonard Kirk, the Captain Britain and MI:13 team, James Asmus and Jesse Delperdang, and Shane McCarthy and Ibraim Robertson all do great jobs on their individual stories.  Sure, Mimic’s story is a bit weaker than the other two, and Leonard Kirk’s pencils look a bit sketchy.  But unlike the previously mentioned series, this series focuses on the various messed-up personalities that these characters bring to the table, rather than inventing pointless stories that tangentially relate to the main subject of the anthology.  That’s why it’s so satisfying.  It’s fleshing out this great new subject matter.  Thus, this miniseries simply proves to me that Utopia is, thus far, the best story in the X-Men franchise since Messiah Complex and Matt Fraction’s revamp.

Plot: 8.8      Art: 8.4      Dialogue: 8.6      Overall: 8.7

A Team No More

     The latest issue of Incredible Hercules sees our hero locked in mortal combat with his mortal half, which had fallen to Hades after Zeus raised Hercules’ divine half to Olympus.  Evil mortal Hercules complains a lot about how cruelly he had been treated and how only Pluto was good to him.  Pluto tells Zeus what he would give to have the kind of devotion that Hercules has for Zeus, even though Zeus was just berating Hercules.  Hercules asks his mortal half why he sounds like someone from Shakespearean times, pointing out that they came well before he did.  Hebe goes to the old Avengers Mansion to look for help, but Wasp and Jocasta just ignore her.  Amadeus Cho meets with his parents and finds out that his sister is still alive.  Amadeus states that a subsidiary company of the Olympus Group was the one that sponsored the competition that led to his parents being killed.  Zeus willingly drinks from the River Lethe, and Hercules tosses himself (weird, huh) into the abyss.  Then, as Pluto becomes ruler of everything, the villains turn on him, since, as his powers over the dead came from Zeus, he can no longer control them.  And they want their revenge on their jailer.  Zeus appears as a young mortal with no memory of his past, and Cho tells Hercules to suck it, since he doesn’t trust Athena and wants to go find his sister.  Athena and Hercules decide to go meet with Thor, and Cho and Hercules angrily part ways.

     An actually exciting end to the most boring arc of the series thus far.  Which, of course, is still heads above many other series.  Now, the Cho/Hercules split is a bit forced, and it means that the series will now be split between the two of them.  Still, I’m not exactly mad about it.  And I’m interested to see just where Greg Pak and Fred van Lente go with the idea of a young, mortal Zeus.  When the solicitations for future issues came out, and he was on them, we all had no idea who he was.  Now we know.  Amadeus finding out about his sister and mentioning the Olympus Group is also interesting, since it puts into question Athena’s intentions and reminds us of the Secret Invasion tie-in, where she essentially allowed Amatsu-Mikaboshi to take control of all the various gods that the Skrull Pantheon had enslaved.  It’s a great, long-term plot thread that I can’t wait to see more of.  And this is Ryan Stegman’s last issue on this book, since he will be shortly replaced by someone else.  Once again, I wish we could have a longer lasting artist here.  Still, I’ve enjoyed all of them, and I trust Pak and van Lente to steer this book in the right direction.  The next arc will see Herc meeting up with his old Norse pal, Thor, and I’m excited to see where that’s going to go.  And I love the covers.  They’re way better than the cover for this issue, where Cho’s face looks like it’s pressed up against a glass window.

Plot: 8.8      Art: 8.6      Dialogue: 8.8      Overall: 8.8

I Just Don’t Get It

     One of the most classic of Kurosawa Akira’s films is The Hidden Fortress, upon which the Star Wars movies are famously based.  This movie is advertised as and seems at first glance to be the story of the princess of a clan during the Warring States Period, or Sengoku Jidai, whose territory has been destroyed.  She and her faithful retainer, Makabe Rokurota, try to get to the nearby territory of an ally while trying to evade enemy forces.  However, the story is really about two luckless peasants, named Tahei and Matashichi, who, after getting themselves into one unfortunate situation after another, join Rokurota and the princess on their travels and assist them in transporting a large amount of gold.  These two are complete and total idiots, and their bad decisions repeatedly get them and their companions in trouble.  They meet a peasant girl forced to work as a prostitute, get involved in a matsuri, and face off against an enemy general who is friends with Rokurota.  In the end, the group makes it to the allied territory, and the princess and Rokurota give the two of them a large gold piece as thanks.

     So, that’s it.  The heroes don’t really get a great ending, in that the princess and Rokurota are just acting almost as a “court in exile,” and dopey and dopier just get some money.  At the beginning, it takes a full hour for any sort of plot, aside from that there is a princess and gold, to even form.  For a good half an hour, all you get are the idiotic antics of Tahei and Matashichi.  They were cute for about five minutes, and then their continual inability to utilize good judgment just gets annoying.  The princess always talks really angrily, so at the very least, I can see a parallel between her and Princess Leia.  Likewise, the idiot peasants are R2-D2 and C3PO.  But she’s not very likable, since she’s always scowling and yelling, if she’s talking at all.  The only likable major character is Rokurota, brilliantly portrayed by Mifune Toshiro.  He does his best to portray the loyal retainer, and he does a dang good job.  But his only opportunity for bad-assness in a duel is thwarted by bad staging.  Instead, he and his opponent stare at each other forever, like in Dragonball Z, and feint a lot.

     So, there’s no action, three of the four main characters aren’t very likable (two complete and total morons and an angry princess), and the only likable one just gets to bark orders and have one failed attempt at a duel.  The staging is extremely weird, like how two soldiers die (who falls down dead from a bullet wound by spinning around and then falling?), the music is forgettable, it takes forever for a plot to form, and the cinematography is meh.  The cut-away scene transition is extremely familiar to those who have seen Star Wars, though.  So, I just don’t understand what’s good about this movie.  You can think I’m just trying to form an opinion contrary to the general consensus as much as you like.  But the truth is that I did not enjoy this movie.  I watched it in three parts on three separate days because it was too boring to do all in one sitting.  The one saving grace of the movie was the fact that Mifune Toshiro is one of the greatest actors in Japanese history.  Now, I’m sure that fans will disagree and say that this is one of the seminal classics of Japanese movie history.  But this is my opinion.  Please go ahead and try to explain to me what I’m missing here.  Because there’s only three possibilities: I’m missing something, there’s something about the movie that most people like that I don’t, or this movie is overrated.  And I really don’t know which it is.  But for now, my opinion is that this movie is terrible.

Story: 2.4      Cinematography: 3.5      Acting: 7.3      Soundtrack: 2.2      Overall: 3.0