Rehabilitating the Enemy

All the Cures have been freed from being transformed into babies, prepared to fight. All, except for one. Cure Yell. But the rest of the Cures quickly realize that Yell is alive and well, hanging onto Miden’s inner self for dear life while he fights to throw her out. The rest of the Cures know what they have to do, defeat the swarm of Mini-Midens to weaken him enough so Yell can break through to him. After what is one of the coolest, most nostalgia filled action sequences they defeat all of them and Yell finally walks through a crack in Miden’s personality to find the real him. Then… what? Some spectacular explosion? Some even crazier action? She opts to go with the most astounding display of power and... simply hugs him. This moment is easily one of the most satisfying climaxes in recent memory. Miden was not some justifiable villain that was trying to change the world to create something better, he was unrelatable, selfish, reactionary and yet we didn’t want him gone. Defeating him would have been easy, but hanging on through the fight until he was ready to be seen was harder. Rehabilitating him was the hardest choice for the girls, and for the writers, but by doing so we are given a fantastic ending that gives us a more in depth understanding of Miden and all the girls. Rehabilitating the villain, as opposed to defeating the villain, creates a much more interesting story and should be something used more often than it is.

The most constant problem I’ve seen is a villain written purely as an obstacle to the main character’s goal. While a villain can be any combination of infinite possibilities, it ends up being rather boring if the villain only exists as something to be overcome by the hero. Even in stories where the goal is something else entirely the villain is a whole character and should be treated as such, with motives and goals of their own. When the goal of the hero is not to defeat the villain, but to rehabilitate them this brings in much more depth to the villain as an identity. With the villain more three dimensional, they can better force the hero to make harder decisions which draws out both the best and worst of the hero, pushing the narrative along and giving us a better understanding of the hero. With this better understanding of the hero the stakes become clearer and higher to the point that even small things seem massive. In Mob Psycho 100, Mob consistently tries to befriend and teach these villains which makes him one of the most endearing characters I’ve ever seen in anime. But in season 2, he’s subjected to several horrible people that makes him question his capacity for both good and evil, one of the driving conflicts of Mob Psycho as a whole. We see him struggle with this thought about what would happen if he ever lost control, which would not have nearly as much of an impact on the viewers had we not seen him struggle to rehabilitate the villains throughout the series. Because we understand the motives, goals, and thought processes of every single character we run into, they all serve as a mirror for Mob for him to compare himself and look to different possibilities of his own story.

If Mob wasn’t so empathetic and sympathetic towards his villains, then this inner conflict would be played as some b-plot to stand as a minor tie in while we wait for the animators to rest up and make some fight sakuga. We miss out on so much potential world building, character development and progression, and most importantly, we miss out on ways to propel the narrative forward in meaningful, interesting ways. By treating a villain as a character with their own goals and motives, it creates a fantastic dynamic where the purpose of the villain is mirrored upon the hero. Villains are there to challenge the hero, forcing them into harder and harder decisions that force them to grow and progress while developing them more and more as characters with their own identities. In this way, the heroes are the villains in the villain’s story. Through this lens, the villain should be growing alongside the hero and facing their own struggles, suffering their own losses, and earning their own rewards. This is so prevalent in magical girl that I would almost call it one of the conventions that define it as a genre. Symphogear, Precure, Princess Tutu, Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, Granbelm, Revolutionary Girl Utena and Puella Magi Madoka Magica are all great examples of this. In all these the villains don’t just give up, they try different tactics and strategies. We learn about them and see them fail and succeed on rare occasion, we see the girls affect and change the villains while the villains reciprocate that effect upon the girls until eventually one side caves to the other. One part of the Precure formula is the heel turn face that occurs because one of the villains realizes she’s in the wrong after half the series of our heroines convincing her she could be more than what she is. Every single conflict Nanoha has with Fate forces Fate to soften ever so slightly and give Nanoha more and more resolve. Each variable that doesn’t go according to Akio’s plan forces him to readjust his angle of attack on Utena until he very nearly has her at the climax of the story; and he would have had her had she not also been learning and progressing as a character from his very attacks on her. By not treating them as a character with real depth and goals, we completely lose out on this avenue of story telling and not only that but we miss the very core of the problem.

Treating the symptom of an illness does not cure the problem, merely represses a part of it. Something Kunihiko Ikuhara excels at is pointing out the flaw within society and showing how simply getting rid of the result of the flaw does not do anything to the flaw. If the dam is leaking, you can bail the water back to the other side of the dam, but there’s still a crack and the water will just continue to flood through. In Hugtto! Precure: All Stars Memories, Miden could have very easily just been blasted off the face of existence at the climax. After everything he had done to the girls, all the suffering he forced on the world, it would have been justified and spectacular. The gang at Toei could have made one giant attack from all the Cures that would have just blown away every kamehameha from Dragon Ball Z. but they didn’t. Instead Cure Yell hung on to him, and saw the real him. The pitiable, pathetic, weak, small, and lonely Miden. In the cold tear-like rain, Yell walked close to him, didn’t offer any scorn or judgment after all he had put them through, but instead told him softly that he was really strong to have survived like this. To still want to change after suffering so, before embracing him in a warm hug that shattered his world. There, among friends he never had and a future full of memories, he returned to his original form and in that form he was able to make the lives of all these characters better. This is one of the most emotionally satisfying endings I have ever seen and it’s all because the core of the problem was Miden’s loneliness and lack of memories to call his own, this was identified and resolved. Miden was treated as someone that did not need to be defeated, but rehabilitated. This type of writing where the core of the problem is addressed makes the viewer take a more critical introspective look at themselves and an extrospective look at society. This opens the story up to many more layers worth considering and lends itself to more revelatory analysis.

By simply energy beaming Miden to oblivion, the world would have returned to a neutral balance after removing his negative value. However, by going through the harsh and strenuous task of changing him, of making him believe in hope, the world came out with a positive at the end. Having a definitive value at the end tends to be much more satisfying than only returning to the status quo. Even ironic endings that have a mixed value of positive and negative like Mawaru Penguindrum, Puella Magi Madoka Magica and the like are more satisfying because there has been a shift in value, progress and closure.

Finding the core of the problem and resolving it is hard for both the hero and the creators. On both accounts they are required to have both the willingness and determination to delve deep enough into all the characters and pull a reason why everyone should be saved. Not everyone should be saved, not everyone can be saved; and that’s fine if the story necessitates it. However writers that go the extra mile to treat characters as if they are worthy of being saved end up creating stories and worlds that capture us and make us think deeper into not only the moral standing of the rest of the cast, but in ourselves and the world around us. Director Hiroshi Miyamoto and writer Junko Koumura were able to go that extra mile and despite being under what must have been an inconceivable amount of pressure to create such an utterly fantastic experience.