Ok, so we know that evil characters redeeming themselves or otherwise turning into good guys is a staple of basically all fiction ever, it's a bit more prominent in Anime where it is expected from basically any give villian to variable degrees of suspension of disbelief, sometimes it makes sense, sometimes it leads to things like this:
So you can all argue to the end of times if Vegeta was left off the hook too easily or if Viral truly deserved to partner up with Simon as Kamina's replacement, but that's thinking too low on the "unforgivable acts" scale.
I was musing earlier about the Venture Brothers given the recent new episode and i began thinking about Sgt. Hatred, which currently is one of the good guys and has a somewhat lovable personality.
And this is where it gets hard to assess when is a character so far away from redemption.
Sgt. Hatred was initially introduced as a Pedophile, it was even implied that at one time he molested Hank or both venture kids, it was supposed to be some sort of edgy joke and he was just obsessed with tiny feet or something (which takes us to the also problematic element of his once wife, "Princess tiny feet", a character in stereotypical native american costume), he was supposed to be a one time joke and people would move on.
The thing is, VB loves to pick up throwaway jokes and inserting them back into the plot (as an example, see the last episode's ending) and they brought back Hatred to be the Venture's new arch nemesis because The Monarch wasn't allowed to arch anymore, during his stint as the Venture's nemesis Hatred has an existential crisis around the same time Brock also is having a melt down that causes the later to quit and the former to become the new venture Bodyguard, so for those keeping the score at home, a character that was introduced as a pedophile joke is now the bodyguard of a family with two underage boys.
So at this point it's when the creators realized it was mildly fucked up i guess because they began poking around the backstory of Hatred, he was experimented by OSI (a GI JOE parody militar organization) to become a super soldier, but supposedly a side effect of the super soldier serum was precisely his pedo urges, they go out of their way showing that he is not happy about those urges and taking medicine to suppress them. Eventually he is "cured".
The thing is, the character is written in an endearing way, he's just a guy trying to do his best now and he has a genuine care for the people he's in charge of guarding, not to mention he's often portrayed as the more level headed for a former super soldier/super villian with PTSD and recovering pedophile, you can tell the character is written for the viewer to like him and be a good guy.
But can we really take him as a good guy? Is pedophilia something we can really forget in favor of a character redemption arc? Do the writers retconning his behavior into being a chemical imbalance caused by experiments make it forgivable? If so, then where is the line of what's irredeemable?
Are there any villians you felt didn't deserve being forgiven by the heroes?
So you can all argue to the end of times if Vegeta was left off the hook too easily or if Viral truly deserved to partner up with Simon as Kamina's replacement, but that's thinking too low on the "unforgivable acts" scale.
I was musing earlier about the Venture Brothers given the recent new episode and i began thinking about Sgt. Hatred, which currently is one of the good guys and has a somewhat lovable personality.
And this is where it gets hard to assess when is a character so far away from redemption.
Sgt. Hatred was initially introduced as a Pedophile, it was even implied that at one time he molested Hank or both venture kids, it was supposed to be some sort of edgy joke and he was just obsessed with tiny feet or something (which takes us to the also problematic element of his once wife, "Princess tiny feet", a character in stereotypical native american costume), he was supposed to be a one time joke and people would move on.
The thing is, VB loves to pick up throwaway jokes and inserting them back into the plot (as an example, see the last episode's ending) and they brought back Hatred to be the Venture's new arch nemesis because The Monarch wasn't allowed to arch anymore, during his stint as the Venture's nemesis Hatred has an existential crisis around the same time Brock also is having a melt down that causes the later to quit and the former to become the new venture Bodyguard, so for those keeping the score at home, a character that was introduced as a pedophile joke is now the bodyguard of a family with two underage boys.
So at this point it's when the creators realized it was mildly fucked up i guess because they began poking around the backstory of Hatred, he was experimented by OSI (a GI JOE parody militar organization) to become a super soldier, but supposedly a side effect of the super soldier serum was precisely his pedo urges, they go out of their way showing that he is not happy about those urges and taking medicine to suppress them. Eventually he is "cured".
The thing is, the character is written in an endearing way, he's just a guy trying to do his best now and he has a genuine care for the people he's in charge of guarding, not to mention he's often portrayed as the more level headed for a former super soldier/super villian with PTSD and recovering pedophile, you can tell the character is written for the viewer to like him and be a good guy.
But can we really take him as a good guy? Is pedophilia something we can really forget in favor of a character redemption arc? Do the writers retconning his behavior into being a chemical imbalance caused by experiments make it forgivable? If so, then where is the line of what's irredeemable?
Are there any villians you felt didn't deserve being forgiven by the heroes?
