Let's open a can of worms.. Kefka = Sephiroth

[Forsaken Lover]

Kefka equals Sephiroth in they're both cosmically overrated.

Honestly. Kefka's motivation is...he's evil and insane. Whoopty-doo.

And so what if Sephiroth's look is a bit cliche? I'll take a big black coat and sword over this:
http://img4.imageshack.us/img4/8951/kefkas.th.jpg (http://img4.imageshack.us/i/kefkas.jpg/)

And people wanna call Seph a fag....

To be honest though they're both boring. Neither has anything special about them.

[Mirage]

kefka is crazier!

[Momiji]

Kefka was actually interesting.

And didn't fail to destroy the world.

[Christmas]

http://www.videogamesprites.net/FinalFantasy6/Bosses/40%20-%20Kefka.gif


Kefka had sexy muscles! :bigsmile:

[Forsaken Lover]

And didn't fail to destroy the world.

Define "destroy".

The world was still there at the end of the game, wasn't it? And did he not say himself:

Kefka: No! I'll destroy the entire world! There won't be anything left to dream about!

Seems to me the world wasn't destroyed according to Kefka himself.

[Momiji]

The world doesn't have to be obliterated to be destroyed, you know. 'Wrecked beyond repair' is more suitable.

[LunarWeaver]

There are good and bad things about both of them. Argh, boring neutral answer!

[VeloZer0]

Well, lets put it this way. Kefka got everything he wanted, then was defeated a year later. Sephiroth did not succeed in pulling off his plan.

[Forsaken Lover]

There are good and bad things about both of them. Argh, boring neutral answer!

Indeed. This thread was created to cause war and destruction and crying.
Your "reason" has no place here.

[Kyros]

Whats there to really argue about? On one hand you have some insane awesome villain and on the other you have some emo kid momma's boy whose sword could not be used by the main character b/c its apparently too good to allow the main chara to crit every turn...

[the AJman]

Honestly. Kefka's motivation is...he's evil and insane. Whoopty-doo.

To be honest though they're both boring. Neither has anything special about them.

Whats wrong with just a plain evil bad guy who wants to do evil things. I personally think that some of the best villians in pop culture are nothing more than bad people out to do bad things.

Though I will admit that these villians have a ridiculous fanbase, but to be honest I think these characters deserve it.

Oh and as a side note, if I'm not mistake an emo is someone who is overly emotional and acts or really is under depression. (the image of the typical augsty teen with overly tight pants, dark cloths, eyeliner, hair swept to one side covering one eye, and listens to 30 seconds to mars) If this is true than how can Sephiroth be emo, he clearly states in the game that he has nothing to be sad or mad about, in fact he states that hes quite happy with himself. Of course, this is after he went insane, but he's clearly no emo.

[Forsaken Lover]

Don't worry about details like that. I know people who constantly call this guy emo
http://i249.photobucket.com/albums/gg216/NikKingMan/Ulq-1.jpg

Most people don't have a clue what emo is. It's simply teh new Gay. It's just slang for "I don't like this character".

[the AJman]

You have a good point, I just don't get it because theres nothing in the game that indicates he's a depressed emo; infact its quite the contrary.

Oh and I have no idea who that character is that you post.

[Kyros]

idk maybe its b/c Ive never really found a ton of appeal with Sephiroth other than his Safer form's theme music, and you dont need to follow some kind of bad look to be considered emo.

[Raistlin]

Kefka was actually interesting.

Sephiroth actually had a fairly interesting backstory; it was just very poorly developed and explicated in the game. A large part of that, I think, was the utter failure of further developing Hojo, who had all the features of being a really hateable person.

Anyway, that being said, they were both decent villains in their own right. Sephiroth just has more annoying fans.

[Momiji]

Kefka was actually interesting.

Sephiroth actually had a fairly interesting backstory; it was just very poorly developed and explicated in the game. A large part of that, I think, was the utter failure of further developing Hojo, who had all the features of being a really hateable person.

Anyway, that being said, they were both decent villains in their own right. Sephiroth just has more annoying fans.

I suppose you have a point, but the fact that it was poorly developed doesn't help Sephiroth's case at all. :-\

[Kyros]

idc who did the work, you could argue Sephiroth didnt do most of the work either, he just ran around throwing his "mother" at your party and then summoned meteor after you did all the work for him to get the black materia. Personality makes the character for me, not what they did, and Kefka was so much more awesome imo than the obsessive Sephy

[The Man]

Both characters are given little in the way of motivation for their actions. Which is fine; it allows us to invent our own explanations for what could have driven the characters to commit such atrocities and also allows us more to focus on the acts of the protagonists. Besides, Iago wasn't given any real motivation for his actions either. The problem with Sephiroth is that FFVII tries to have it both ways: They give him a long and drawn out origin scene, but he's still a cipher. We're never given any inkling why learning about Jenova would push him over the edge to want to annihilate humanity. FFVI, by contrast, doesn't even bother to try to explain Kefka. The only place the game even comes close is an offhand remark made in an out-of-the-way Imperial café in Vector that most players probably never even visited. It's pretty obvious that Kefka isn't supposed to have any depth to his character, which is fine - that just makes a starker contrast to the heroes, who go through all kinds of soul-searching throughout the course of the game. Kefka is a sadistic sociopath; the heroes are good people. I honestly can't think of a more effective antagonist for a work like FFVI.

That said, I mostly agree with WesLY.

[Levian]

Allright, let's treat each other nice and stick to the topic.

*deletes some posts*

[black orb]

Kefka equals Sephiroth in they're both cosmically overrated..
>>> Is most like all the other FF villains are underrated..:luca:

[The Crystal]

Kyros

Sephiroth was controling Jenova's body, and the clones(including Cloud) through Reunion to bring him the Black Materia. He was the one pulling the strings.
On the other hand, Ghestal and the Empire would have gone after the Espers and the Warring Triad even if Kefka wasn't there.
For most of FFVI, Ghestal was the one pulling the strings and Kefka was just a pawn.

That's the difference between them.
Just because FFVI's world had a destroy-the-world-and-become-a-god 'button' named Warring Triad, and Kefka 'pushed' it, doesn't make him a more threatening or competent villain than Sephiroth.



But I have to admit that Kefka IS an entertaining character.

[RedPouch]

[LOSER-MODE]I have a really great idea for a unique villain that's never been done before. Are you guys ready for my really unique and original ideas? I bet you've never heard of these qualities before:

First, he's going to be genetically altered and/or experimented on in some project to make super-beings.

He is also the prototype for this experiment or at least one of the first ones made. Somehow, all of the products that come after this guy will never be quite as good, no matter how much they perfect this science.

Unfortunately however, he will later go insane because of the experiments done to him and betray the people be worked for/with.

He will then go even more insane and try to become all-powerful and destroy the world.

He will be a monotonic, apathetic, cold villain of few words and little to no personality.

He will have some loose connection to the main hero of the story.

And most original and unique of all, he will have long, womanly, silver hair to spruce up what would otherwise be a boring and uninteresting character. To top this off, he'll wear a black trench
coat thing! This definitely is not only badass but really original.



So what do you guys think of my new idea for a unique and never-done-before villain concept? Do you think it'll succeed and be praised for its uniqueness? I'm going to see if I can work this into a story and get it published in some fashion or medium.[/LOSER-MODE]



Even at the time of FF VII being released, these cliches were already old and overused in many anime/etc. It's highly irritating that he gets a lot of appraisal for said qualities by really annoying pre-mature fans, which makes me hate what I would otherwise find to be an uninteresting character all the more.

That said, Kefka is given a lot more personality and interaction than Sephiroth is, which makes me appreciate his character a lot more. Sometimes you can't avoid every cliche possible, but you can make up for this by giving said character personality and/or qualities and substance to compensate, making them interesting regardless. However, when a character has little to no personality or dialogue such as Sephiroth, and only has a design and background whipped-up from archetype-recipe no. 3 in "RPG-Making for dummies", then there is little to nothing to fallback on to redeem said irritating and overused/predictable qualities, thus making the character quite boring, expected, and plain lame, especially since it's obvious that it was a poor attempt to try and make a "badass".



At the moment, I'm having the same rants about the entire cast of Star Ocean 4, which happens to be a massive lightning storm of cliche [especially characters like Meracle, Arumat, Sarah, and Lymle, 'kay?] and annoyance. In short, I get really sick of these "extreme" archetypes that the Japanese seem to fallback on so often.

I am losing my faith the possibility of a well-designed and compelling story with well designed and developed characters coming from Japan anytime soon.
[!]<input id="gwProxy" type="hidden">[/!][!]Session data[/!][!]<input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden">[/!]