This contains spoilers for the opening of Suikoden II, the identity of the villain in Suikoden III, and seasons 3 and 4 of "Xena."
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Just got a fanfiction.net personal message that I can't wait to read in its entirety. One of the things the author mentioned was that she was afraid that she'd made everyone sympathetic. I wonder if that isn't the way of the world, though. Very, very few people consider themselves to be evil.
A good example of an unashamedly evil character in Suikoden is Yuber. He's not human (actually, up to the point I'm at, I'm not sure if we ever learn what he is ... some minor creation of a rune, I guess?) He strikes me as more of a Chaotic Evil character from Dungeons and Dragons -- he wants chaos for chaos' sake. He likes screaming and bloodshed and anything that makes the world less ordered. He doesn't have a sympathetic side.
Alti is the "Xena: Warrior Princess" equivalent. No one sympathizes with Alti. She says things like "I want to reach into the heart of darkness" and goes around in black eyeshadow reaching into the spiritual realm to dredge out the things that will cause the most pain possible. I've had a few people on the "Xena" boards comment that season 4 lost something because it didn't have a believable villain. The thing is, though, I think Alti is a good example of a very real danger out there -- when power becomes so much an end in itself that nothing else matters, that is what you can become. But there's no saving Alti. (Weeeelllll... that's not entirely true. I know a heck of a lot of "Xena" fans who think you can save Alti by putting her in a hot tub with Callisto. But it's very hard to take them seriously.)
The absolute coolest thing about the opening to Suikoden II is that you're on a completely different side than you were on in Suikoden I. So some of the heroes you knew before become villains now, and vice versa, without anyone switching sides. This seems to me to be the embodiment of the way that sometimes it is simply impossible to tell which side is "right" in a conflict. This isn't a spoiler since it happens at the very beginning of the movie -- at the beginning of Kenshin: Trust and Betrayal, Kenshin is instructed to stay with his sensai even though he has the skills to start fighting already because he does not yet have the wisdom necessary to choose a side. Your character in Suikoden II, Riou, starts the game on the Highland side, but completely gets roped into the City-State side. His adopted father (you learn later) initially started on the City-State side but has been on the Highland side all of Riou's life, and was not a traitor. The backstory is intriguing, and it just gets more so with every playthrough.
Callisto is easily the most popular villain in "Xena." (That may have something to do with Hudson Leick, who is just all-around brilliant -- who can be wise and insecure and slightly scary and little-girl all at the exact same time.) Callisto's my favorite, too, and not only because of Hudson. The concept behind Callisto is that she started out as a normal girl. Xena's army burned her village, and (contrary to Xena's explicit instructions) started a fire that got out of control to kill women and children as well as warriors. Xena didn't deny it; she just had other things on her mind. Callisto dedicated her life to becoming good enough in combat to take Xena out. At least, that's what she says, but (unreliable narrator) -- it's possible (and I think) that Callisto just wants to die in battle and she wants Xena to be the one to kill her. She does some truly horrible things. I think that blaming it all on Xena the way she does is unjust, but there's always still that nagging thought: "who would Callisto be if Xena hadn't done what she did?"
Everything was destroyed, including the soul of one young innocent girl, who'll never be able to reclaim her childhood and will never know what the Fates had planned for her, if not for me.
--Xena, "A Necessary Evil
Luc has become my favorite character in the Suikoden universe. He is a clone created to house the True Wind Rune. The Rune reveals to him that the earth is on a path toward perfect order (which means a quiet, sad world without people). Luc decides to do something to throw the world toward chaos: destroy the True Wind Rune itself (blowing up an entire continent in the process, including himself). He's the one you work to stop throughout Suikoden III. And he's someone you know from the very first game, a friend at whose side you have fought. His intentions aren't evil, even if he has to be stopped from, as Leknaat puts it, playing God and throwing away the lives of millions.
One last similarity: I think in the end, both Callisto and Luc achieve forgiveness. Not through dying, but ... maybe ... they couldn't have learned what they needed to learn in order to make the final choices they did without having died. One of my favorite lines in all of Suikoden is Leknaat saying to Luc at the end that he is her human child and can rest.
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