Villains

I just finished watching Utawarerumono, and it's one of the best anime I've ever seen. Here's why.

I've seen many, many movies spanning a plethora of eras and genres. I've watched a lot of TV shows, a lot of short films, and been subject to a great number of video game plots both good and bad. These things tend to have villains.

Generally a lot of authors try to make you despise their villains whatever form they take; some being evil masterminds, homocidal psychopaths, quiet assassins, malevolent gods or whatever else happens to be the flavor of the day. I tend to be very difficult to make angry, or otherwise incur an emotion of hate. As such, it is very rare that I can use such a word pertaining to any character.

The last character I hated was Shinji from Neon Genesis Evangeleon, but he was the hero so he doesn't count.

Watching Utawarerumono, there was a moment where I genuinely despised, scorned, hated, and personally wished eternal suffering upon a character therein. I won't spoil why this came about; Utawarerumono is far too awesome of an anime for me to give things away. What I will say is that I was staring wildly at my computer screen with an unspeakable malice towards this fictional person. There were active machinations in my brain calculating the most suffering that could be exacted before final termination was inevitable. I was that incensed.

I have to give credit where it is due. Utawarerumono was that awesome of an anime that it made me mad. I think that's saying a lot.