At 02:17 AM 2/5/2007, Matthew Robinson wrote:
From: Richard Ramos <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Chris Campbell wrote:
As I've said, I really liked SEED. It was a nice reimagining of
the original Gundam storyline, and Kreuze was a wonderful villain
(made all the more compelling by the fact that he was in a unique
position to judge the ultimate worth of humanity). I just think it
should have stopped there, as Destiny didn't really do anything to
advance the storyline.
Kreuze was one incredible character - I couldn't really define him
properly as a villain through and through, since he was a
disturbing mirror for all of humanity to look at. I found him more
interesting, in fact, than Kira.
Personally I just can't see Kreuze as far enough removed from
humanity to judge it as some sort of outside observer. IMHO his
mind and body are still human, and I'm sure he's hardly the first
person who was born for the purpose of being an heir, treated as
such to the point of abuse, and failed to live up to his creator's
expectations. I still look at himself as just another psychopath
with a lousy childhood and a huge ego, albeit with a slightly more
unusual origin.
But remember, he wasn't born; he was *created.* He wasn't a
legitimate human being, because he didn't have parents, friends and
family, and all that. He is a being created in the image of a human
being who isn't really human at all, and that's why his perspective
has some moral weight -- he's judging humanity from the outside, as
someone who never was and never can be a part of the human race, and
not as a member of said race who fared poorly.
In some ways Kreuze is like a living AI, and subject to the same
genre "rules."
I recall somewhere seeing a mention of some fans calling Kira almost
a "Mary Sue" type character like you'd see in a fanfic -- TOO
competent and exceptional. It may be a good thing for the rest of
the SEED universe that he grew up without knowing his full
potential; something tells me that growing up in the habit of
KNOWING you're at the absolute upper physical and mental limits of
the human form would turn most people into a royal asshole. Plenty
of people are insufferable just from THINKING they're the best. At
the same time, if the truth about Kira became widely known within
the SEED universe, I could see equal numbers of people wanting to
kill him, and forming an "Overman" cult around the poor guy. Let's
see him handle that...
Yeah. I think Richie's on to something with the Kira-as-villain
angle, but it would have a lot of logistical problems (if he's not
willing to kill, hard to make him all that unsympathetic; an
annoyance at best). If you could overcome those, though, and turn
Shin into a sympathetic character, I think it could work quite nicely.
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