Forum - View topicVegeta, what does the scouter say about characters like you?
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Sword Magess
 Posts: 285 Location: 武汉 |
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For those who might not be familiar with the story of Vegeta from Dragon Ball Z, he started as a villain and evil opposite of the protagonist Son Goku, posing the greatest challenge to our hero in the arc where he was introduced. After a grueling fight, the Goku unsurprisingly defeats Vegeta but spares his life. Vegeta escapes, vowing revenge. After his return, a more powerful villain has been introduced, and various circumstances compel Vegeta to join forces with Goku and co. The situation repeats and, gradually, Vegeta grows to like the protagonists and becomes their at first reluctant then close friend, even if he retains his gruff attitude, and the reader gradually realizes that he may not be the bloodthirsty monster he appeared to be at first.
The character archtype can be seen in many places in shounen fighting series: Hiei from Yu Yu Hakusho, Kotaro from Negima, Kaiba from Yu-Gi-Oh, Renji from Bleach, Sesshoumaru from Inuyasha, etc. Even Piccolo from Dragon Ball is an earlier, and not often remembered as such, example. We can change some of the terms in the first paragraph. For example, change "spares his life" to "forgives him"; "villain" to "antagonist"; "fight" to "conflict"; etc, and eliminate the names, and we have a much more general description, which might be applied to categories other than shounen fighting series. For example, what would Vegeta's counterpart be in a shoujo series? Perhaps the class elitist, if there is some greater goal to be reached. We can see this pattern in Alice Academy and Kitchen Princess. The heroine transfers to a new school in order to pursue a lofty goal. A then popular girl of the class--spoiler[Sumire] and spoiler[Akane], respectively--, jealous of the heroine, picks on her, but it is obvious that she is merely one obstacle to be overcome in the heroine's path. Sure enough, a particular conflict brings the two together, and the initial rival then becomes the heroine's supporter. As the world is certainly not neatly divided into shounen and shoujo, and my example from the latter category is certainly not exhaustive, what have you observed, and how do you like such characters when you spot them? Last edited by Sword Magess on Sat Sep 05, 2009 8:56 pm; edited 3 times in total |
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egoist
 Posts: 7762 |
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Bad guys turning into nice guys huh, good topic. Even though we will need to use spoiler tags most of the times since just by mentioning their names would spoil the anime.
Well I can't really agree with Renji from Bleach falling in that category. He was a good guy from the beginning. Firstly, I'd name spoiler[Jeremiah Gottwald] from Code Geass.spoiler[ It felt really nice when he turned out to be on Lelouch's side, that was a really nice turn of events plus he turned out to be loyal to Lelouch.] Saitō Hajime from Rurouni Kenshin. I think that's the closest to Vegeta I could think of. Just like Vegeta, he could never really be considered an "ally" of the protagonist, just helping at his own whim. |
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Tuor_of_Gondolin
 Posts: 3524 Location: Bellevue, WA |
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Sword Magess, I think I'm going to quibble about your portrayal of Vegeta.
First of all, Goku does not directly defeat Vegeta. Vegeta beats Goku. It is only through the combined efforts of several people that Vegeta ends up being defeated (and just barely at that). Secondly, Vegeta definitely was a bloodthirsty villain at the beginning. He wiped out planets and enjoyed his work. He was arrogant, haughty, and completely ruthless. IMO, one of the most fascinating things about watching DBZ is not how Goku becomes ever more powerful, but rather how Vegeta's personality slowly changes over time, often in spite of himself. I don't think any other series has managed to pull this change off as smoothly as DBZ. Piccolo’s change was abrupt compared to the many seasons it took for Vegeta to finally come to grips with himself and become a generally good person (well, a good person in some respects, anyway). I think this is probably one of the main reasons why I regard Vegeta as my favorite DBZ character. |
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Sword Magess
Posts: 285 Location: 武汉 |
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For the first point, whether the protagonist wins the fight by himself or with the help or others is actually irrelevant to this discussion. The important event is that the protagonist bests the villain at an activity the villain considers himself to be the best. Vegeta himself certainly does not excuse his loss on Earth by attributing it to beating outnumbered; he singles out Goku as the rival. This is similar to the development with Kotaro from Negima, where Negi clearly had to rely on his student to gain the upper hand at any place in the fight. The second point is valid. It is better to write the description to show a change in character rather than a hidden character trait.
No, there is a more specific pattern than simply a villain who turns good. Your example does not fit the pattern, as spoiler[Jeremiah] never gradually progresses from antagonism to friendship--he simply jumps to the protagonists' side. spoiler[Ling Xingke] from the same series would be a better example, but he doesn't quite fit either, as he was never the primary antagonist for any arc. |
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DerekTheRed
 Posts: 3544 Location: ::Points to hand:: |
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The closest character I can come up with would be Jilas from the third season of Slayers. He starts out as the henchman to the main villain, then when the main villain dies he swears vengeance on Lina and becomes the lead antagonist for a while. He doesn't really qualify as a villain because he doesn't really ever pose much of a threat to Lina and company. Anyway, at some point, after having tried to kill Lina several times (and at one point believing he was successful) it becomes apparent to him that he should help her, the Monsters and the whatever-Almaiz-is to prevent the end of the universe. It helped a little that he started crushing on Filia and swore his service to her.
This doesn't fit all your criteria though, it fails in perhaps the most important one. Jilas is not very dangerous, and could have been killed basically at will. But killing comic relief characters is not the way Slayers rolls. |
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DuskyPredator
 Posts: 15596 Location: Brisbane, Australia |
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I actualy thought this would be about character duos similar to Vegita and Napa, such as in Bleach and those Arrancar were introduced. The big one kept asking about the strength of the enemy from the small one, it felt very familiar.
So can we classify Vegita as tsundere, rough character becomes nice. I am pretty dureit has a trope name in TV tropes. I would think in Bleach more along the lines of Uryū. Others I can think of are spoiler[Margery Daw] Sahkugan no Shana, spoiler[Elfriede] Moon Phase, and several characer in To Aru Majutsu no Index. There is also the moment where they are tested again such as in DBZ with the Majin buu saga. Actualy that reminds me of Hayate no Gotoku where Katsura-sensei who in first apearance was an enemy and at one point alowed her body get controled by an evil spirit because it promised one million yen and she even had a M on her forehead like Vegita. |
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Showsni
 Posts: 641 |
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Well, if you want a bunch of examples try http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HeelFaceTurn
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Dorcas_Aurelia
 Posts: 5344 Location: Philly |
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Tsundere defines a character's romantic relationship to a single other character. While characters can be described as tsundere without specifying whom they are tsundere towards, that there is such a person is implied in the word's usage. My opinion on such characters is that they can be a bit of a relief from the goody-two-shoes personality of the hero; a little rougher around the edges, sometimes arrogant, and a foil to make the protagonist stand out a little more. About half of the main team in Shaman King fall into this mold to some degree: Ryu starts off as a thug, although he changes on his own pretty quickly; Ren Tao is clearly Yoh's biggest rival, and he starts off rather villainous before Yoh befriends him; and Faust is downright evil when he first shows up, to the point where it takes most of the series for the good guy he tortured to not completely freak out when they work together. |
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Kimiko_0
 Posts: 1797 Location: Leiden, NL, EU |
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Or more precisely, TVTropes: Defeat Means Friendship. Examples aplenty. The first one listed is actually Vegeta from DBZ. |
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Zalis116
Moderator
 Posts: 6903 Location: Kazune City |
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http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RedOniBlueOni?from=Main.VegetaAndKakarot |
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Ktimene's Lover
 Posts: 2242 Location: Glendale, AZ (Proudly living in the desert) |
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Characters being bad at first then become good is a staple even in non-anime. Naruto has this with Gaara but I like the more murderous side of him better.
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ChronoBall X
 Posts: 389 |
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Interesting Topic,most characters from the Entire Kinnikuman Franchise fell victim to this
One example was during the first 18 episodes of the first season of Ultimate Muscle (Kinnikuman Nisei), when Checkmate started out as a villian at first when he was at first a member of the DMP untile Mantaro Kinnikuman defeated him winning his next match,than checkmate saw the error of his ways. another prime example would have to be in Digimon Adventure Zero 2 (digimon season 2), when Ken Ichijouji was at first the cruel Digimon Kaizer/Emperor when he thought Digimon were nothing but just data (I guess you can say mr Internet Tough Guy) because he uses the Digital world as an excuse at first to get away from his problems after his brother sam died,but after the season 2 Digi destin team defeated his Kiameramon,he finnaly saw the error of his ways. than once Ken found out he was being tricked by an evil force,and started to make things up for the error of his ways,his wormon was reborn and became an official digi destian. |
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