Defeating the impossible
PostPosted:Wed Jul 18, 2012 2:34 am
While most manga generally involves fighting some impossibly powerful foe, usually the said impossible foe is really not that impossible to defeat. For example if you look at any enemy from Naruto they can usually be defeated by sending in more clones or use a more forbidden nijitsu than the last one you just tried. While there might not be anything deep about Naruto, there is also never any logical inconsistency. In fact, the recent arcs of Naruto reminds me of Suikoden 3 where you feel sorry for the bad guys who thought they even had a chance with their plan the same way Luc never seemed like he had any clue to get as plan working.
But occasionally you have some villians who are not completely brain dead and not dumber than a sack of bricks despite having superhuman or even unfathomable intelligence. I recently went back to read Dai-no-Diaboken. Vearn, the demon king, has at least passed villian 101 to know basic stuff like "always chop off the hero's head after defeating him, or he'll just stand back up after a flashback" and "don't save your ultimate move until you're about to die, use your ultimate move to kill the enemy first". He also knows how to work together with his henchman. In the story his defeat involved:
3 guys coming back from the dead
A legendary artifact that can deflect any spell
Dragonballs (twice!)
Three legendary weapons that can kill Gods
The hero transforming into a Dragon Demon, a transformation that should really go to the generic final boss transformation except the good guy gets it instead.
The hero obtaining photosynthetic powers and restore all his life via a flashback triggered by having sunlight shine on him (Vearn attempted to chop off the hero's head while he's down, but he's slower than the speed of the light/flashback)
In one of the liner notes the author wrote that he got inspiration for Vearn's tactics from Dragon Quest where the final boss casts his strongest hit everyone spells multiple times each round and kills your party, and then he realized that if any villian possessed the intelligence to simply use their best attacks continously it'd be extremely hard to defeat the said villian. His defeat was epic because you've a huge list of almost improbable events that had to happen to defeat him which made it very epic, and yet Vearn's base stats is always meant to be lower than that of a Dragon Demon (he said that it'd not be wise to fight a Dragon Demon even if you're immortal).
What do you think is the most powerful someone can be (relatively speaking) that can still be plausibly be defeated? Again, keep in mind of the world you're talking about. Every being in the Dragonball universe can be defeated by throwing a more powerful fireball and since there's no physical limit to how powerful your fireball can be, there's no real difficulty in overcoming any particular foe. Dai-no-Daiboken has my vote for the strongest villian that is still within the defeatable range. Vearn has your generic villian super powers, and his total stats is only second to a Dragon Demon. He has common sense and he stays with his henchman. He even throws incapaciated heroes into the X-Zone to prevent them from returning if he can't kill them at the time (though this was defeated by the Dragonballs). In short, he's a super villian with common sense, and that seems to be limit of how powerful super vilians can be before they're just undefeatable.
But occasionally you have some villians who are not completely brain dead and not dumber than a sack of bricks despite having superhuman or even unfathomable intelligence. I recently went back to read Dai-no-Diaboken. Vearn, the demon king, has at least passed villian 101 to know basic stuff like "always chop off the hero's head after defeating him, or he'll just stand back up after a flashback" and "don't save your ultimate move until you're about to die, use your ultimate move to kill the enemy first". He also knows how to work together with his henchman. In the story his defeat involved:
3 guys coming back from the dead
A legendary artifact that can deflect any spell
Dragonballs (twice!)
Three legendary weapons that can kill Gods
The hero transforming into a Dragon Demon, a transformation that should really go to the generic final boss transformation except the good guy gets it instead.
The hero obtaining photosynthetic powers and restore all his life via a flashback triggered by having sunlight shine on him (Vearn attempted to chop off the hero's head while he's down, but he's slower than the speed of the light/flashback)
In one of the liner notes the author wrote that he got inspiration for Vearn's tactics from Dragon Quest where the final boss casts his strongest hit everyone spells multiple times each round and kills your party, and then he realized that if any villian possessed the intelligence to simply use their best attacks continously it'd be extremely hard to defeat the said villian. His defeat was epic because you've a huge list of almost improbable events that had to happen to defeat him which made it very epic, and yet Vearn's base stats is always meant to be lower than that of a Dragon Demon (he said that it'd not be wise to fight a Dragon Demon even if you're immortal).
What do you think is the most powerful someone can be (relatively speaking) that can still be plausibly be defeated? Again, keep in mind of the world you're talking about. Every being in the Dragonball universe can be defeated by throwing a more powerful fireball and since there's no physical limit to how powerful your fireball can be, there's no real difficulty in overcoming any particular foe. Dai-no-Daiboken has my vote for the strongest villian that is still within the defeatable range. Vearn has your generic villian super powers, and his total stats is only second to a Dragon Demon. He has common sense and he stays with his henchman. He even throws incapaciated heroes into the X-Zone to prevent them from returning if he can't kill them at the time (though this was defeated by the Dragonballs). In short, he's a super villian with common sense, and that seems to be limit of how powerful super vilians can be before they're just undefeatable.