So an anti-hero is someone who does mostly good deeds for malicious reasons?What are the names of those who have equal amounts of good and evil at the end of the work? I think the individualistic approach is to blame here. In the Soviet Union after World War II, the realization came that the enemies in the Civil War were not so bad and this resulted in the creation of books and films where the White Guards were portrayed as likable. And then for ambiguous heroes the terms were used: "one of our own among strangers" and "a stranger among our own" emphasizing that their was an exception to the rule. In general, Lewis spoke about this even earlier in the last book about Narnia: ?If you do good in the name of evil, then you serve good. If you do evil in the name of good, then you serve evil.

Well yeah, an antihero's reasons are malicious at worst, opportunistic at best. For people with equal amounts of good and evil actions, I think they'd either be an extreme antihero or an extreme antivillain, defaulting to the side that's closer to their motivation. It's true that sometimes there's a difference of perception, as evil people who rely on good publicity will depict themselves as good and their enemies as evil, which is of course called propaganda. This can be seen from Lyon Arkland in 01hers, where he points out that "malice" isn't hip and that "justice" is a more sympathetic word and thus more successful in manipulating the good-identifying civilian majority to support an evil cause. A euphemism is a powerful weapon.

The statements "don't judge a book by its cover" and "appearance matters" are both correct. The conundrum of life. Haha.

This makes sense, yet it still doesn't close the logical gap. If Isaac is actually an alchemically-enhanced AI, then Sabimaru as its creator should've had total control and knowledge in how it'd behave. So, if Isaac's strange behavior has been due to his inadequate programming/alchemy skills (although he's shown as very skilled in both fields), then at least he should've been aware that what he made could've been a faulty product. Isaac could be a proto-Chemy of some sort, hence why it behaves more random and uncontrollable than what he thought it'd be. Or, someone secretly tampered with Isaac and altered his alchemical programming to include spying and psychological manipulation activities.

I concur. A friend of mine joked that antiheroes and antivillains were heroes and villains with thicker makeup.

Ethical alignment can also be static. In this case, the antiheroes' and antivillains' true selves, motivations, and ethical alignments are often masked by their actions. A person's ethical alignment can be anywhere within the ethical axis (completely benevolent or completely malevolent), yet when put into context, his actions often result in outcomes that don't necessarily align with his ethical alignment, or even result in outcomes that are the complete opposite. A person with good intention can create a bad outcome, and vice versa. A text should be interpreted within a context. Very often, the context matters more than the text itself.

Stories often initially show a character as a hero or a villain, and then gradually reveal his true self through conflicts and choices he has to make. One of my favorite (anti)villains is Ozymandias from Watchmen (2009), who was revealed near the end of the story to be the mastermind of the plot of the film. His motivation was pretty simple and selfish and often categorized as villainous, yet when put in the context of the story, the final outcome that resulted from his actions did prevent the greater catastrophe. Another character with static ethical alignment is Takatora Kureshima/KR Zangetsu from KR Gaim, who was initially shown as a ruthless villain/manipulator, then was gradually revealed as anti-villain, then anti-hero, then hero. His motivation was actually as heroic as Kouta's, yet when its put into the context of his limited knowledge about Helheim, he was forced by situation to take extreme measures that to an outside observer did look villainous.

Like I stated in the previous paragraph, the age-old adage "the road to hell is paved with good intentions" doesn't exist for no reason. I strongly believe that the true direction of a person's moral compass is mainly determined not by what he thinks is right or wrong, but what is right or wrong in a particular context. Outcome must also be taken into account to determine the direction of a person's moral compass. In other words, risk is an inherent, inseparable component of ethics.

This. This quote pretty much sums up my points above about the relationship between ethics and risk.

Yeah. There was something very genuinely charming and chill about Fourze. Everything, from the characterizations, to the interactions between the characters, to the conflicts, to the humor, felt genuine without even trying. It was probably because it didn't take itself too seriously. I believe that Fourze is the Napoleon Dynamite of the KR franchise, haha.

Well obviously these are good things to do, though these seem to be all something reactive to visible bad. Other than stopping what's already bad, trying to prevent bad things to happen again is also important though, what causes those criminals to emerge, or the creation of that totalitarian dictator. Examining and addressing the root cause in a flawed system where society may create its own monsters. Though of course the method used to do this shouldn't be an extreme one.

Also about a visible bad, there may be bad things which is subtle and perpetuated because it's normalized over time by people who do not think about things from the standpoint of others - evil becomes commonplace; it becomes the everyday. Ordinary people going about their everyday lives become complicit actors in systems that perpetuate evil. Such as for example, abusive parents, teachers, or other authoritarian figures who excuse their actions as giving "tough love" and have the public buy their words, or undermining bullying and depicting it as "passage of life", or getting mental issues like depression stigmatized, making those bad actions swept under the rug.

Dealing with kinds of above one may need to have someone challenge the principles those people have inherited, to ensure they stand up to their individual scrutiny, becoming more aware of biases and learned behaviors? But this may be what's seen as "moral policing", unless this is also what you also have in mind and maybe have other ideas to deal with. There are also people who'd dismiss and shut up those who bring up about something terrible being normalized, which'd further let these f*cked up stuff perpetuated as the one who brought that point up is the one who takes blame.

A help being "needed" or not can really vary between person, circumstances, etc. Like one may excel through a quiz while someone else struggles with it. It can't be known if a help is needed (including their response afterwards) or not unless someone shows concern and tries to offer help. I'm also someone who don't like being helped and want for my abilities to be acknowledged, but then again, still I can't really hold it against those who display concern on me, and I shouldn't discourage that good deed even if I personally don't like it. If one don't want help, I think it's fine if they relent their offer and acknowledge it, but that can be known by offering them.

Regulating and solving all their problems... actually there can be complaints that feel Ace does too little to utilize his powers to make everything better, such as only providing some assistance (e.g. to Kousei) while watching over rather than directly intervening to save Neon and eliminate Beroba, describing that as being cold and unfeeling. Dunno if regulating behavior is exaggeration here, as it seems that what he did other than fighting parts, was only to return the memories of each person deprived by the DGP, because brainwashing is wrong, and the 'policing' was only done once to Keiwa who lost his way, not others like Michinaga or Win.

As you said, the sugar is on the outside, and sugarcoating term is usually used to refer when someone lies about something a person have being bad to prevent hurting their feelings, praising them (sugar/garnish) instead of addressing their problems (bad taste), which leads to them being stagnant in doing those mistakes. And by this it's common for people to elevate rude assholes, particularly if they're "proven", as being just "brutally honest" and "speaks their mind" without mincing words, which seems to just practically encourage people to be toxic to others with aformentioned excuses. I've brought up "honesty without tact is cruelty" in this website but it got shot down. There are also cases when the book's cover is something outside their control though, like for instance, a person's physical looks, like them being "ugly" or short, which can get people to look down on them if they're shallow.

There can be characters with equal amount of good and evil and they may be those who constantly change alignments, but I'm just being wary of these assessments because many just cherry pick and/or exaggerate good or evil stuff in each character depending on who they're and treat both sides as equal when they're not, typically to make a hero look bad or a villain look good. Otherwise, being heroic or villainous is determined by action first, then characterization afterwards (not that they're unimportant though), which is why doing evil in the name of good is still being (anti-)villainous, because as said there, your actions are evil, regardless if people'd support "good intentions" more, and many can't differentiate between good intentions or good actions, likely thinking that for those having good intentions, anything they do is good by default. And organizations shouldn't be valued over people (as shows like Saber teaches), it really varies between each person, there can be those who are not so bad, but there also can be those who truly believed in twisted, sickening ideologies and propaganda, not merely following orders while being conscience-stricken.

A hero or villain fitting anti category isn't necessarily about reasons though. Anti-hero is a hero with unheroic traits, and anti-villain is a villain with redeeming traits, and what fits those can be more than reasons. Being overly violent, doing pay evil unto evil stuff in dealing with villains would also count as unheroic traits in a hero that makes them anti-hero even if their intention is altruistic. A villain can be anti-villainous if they have honorable traits or lines they won't cross even if their goal is self-serving such as to satisfy bloodlust in fighting. Dunno what kind of 'malicious' reason you refer here, because fighting a bad guy doesn't make someone good, there can be cases of evil vs evil like Eternal vs Eyes Dopant, bad guys can fight each other.

While it's important for someone to think about long-term consequences in how their actions may impact others, outcome is still a circumstance out of your control. Sometimes good things can come out of a bad situation or a bad thing, or even due to someone doing something knowing full well it's wrong and will cause harm. However, people should not misconstrue that just because something good was born out of something bad/evil, does not make that something good, just because the end result was good does not mean that the bad guys did something good. The opposite is also true- you can act with the intention of trying to make things better but because of things you cannot change, what you did actually make things worse, that does not make you a bad person.

People's alignment can change, not that they're always "misunderstood" if they have good traits and aren't all bad. Takatora is one of the redeemed (anti-)villains. Regardless of his intentions, his planned action is to commit genocide the rest of 6 billion human race (other than 1 billion saved with Sengoku Driver) with Scalar System in the name of 'saving them', though better than Helheim, it's still the lesser evil to it to kill most vs Helheim's kill all. He stops being villainous when he abandons that and agrees to work with Kouta in negotiating with Overlords instead and cleaning up what Yggdrasill has done in the end.

Continuing this topic, I was reminded of Lenin’s quote: “In a personal sense, it is very important whether a person harms you from evil motives or from good ones. But in practical terms, there is not much difference.” Transferring this from reality to the show, we can conclude that the prefix “anti-” is the prerogative of important and/or interesting characters for the plot/viewers. That is, no one would call an anti-villain a kaijin for an episode of the Showa era, even if there are reasons for this in his motivation. Therefore, different viewers may have different views on some characters. That is, it is obvious that Takatora was a villain at the beginning of Gaim and became a hero at the end, but his intermediate stages may not have been noticed by everyone.

Whaaattt??? Since when could Takatora's intention be disregarded? Since when did he do everything he did to commit genocide? He did what he did out of necessity. He did what he did out of an ethical dilemma that resulted from his limited logistic, and more importantly, his limited understanding of Helheim, NOT out of a malevolent intention to commit genocide on 6/7th of the Earth's population. The resulting depopulation (which you labeled as genocide) was a known, expected, necessary consequence that resulted from the very limited amount of the rare metals required to manufacture the generic version of Sengoku Driver, and probably also after taking Yggdrasill's manufacturing capabilities into account. He knew very well the good and bad consequences of his actions due to the aforementioned limitations.

If he had access to higher amount of the rare metals, then he'd have definitely planned and done things differently. If he had known that Helheim wasn't just a virulent, supernatural flora, then he'd have definitely planned and done things differently. If he had known about the existence of Overlords and that Helheim could be controlled by Overlords, then he'd have definitely planned and done things differently. If he had known that Helheim would give the ultimate control to the sole challenger who managed to be the victor, then he'd have definitely planned and done things differently. He was willing, but unable. If he had had access to sufficient logistic and knowledge, he would've saved all humans, and the majority of events in Gaim wouldn't have happened. It would've become humans vs Helheim/Overlords war, not humans vs humans infighting with Helheim invasion looming behind the scene. What kind of villain do you think Takatora was? A Geats villain? LOL.

Just because people can change doesn't mean that everyone changes. Some people change, while some other never change. Takatora was never a villain at heart. He never had any malevolent intention. His intention was heroic, but in the context of the situation at the time (his limited knowledge and logistic), it resulted in bad outcomes. He's what I call an apparent villain/faux villain. His villainy was only an apparent one that arose out of necessity due to an ethical dilemma, not a true villainy that arose out of malevolent intentions. Even then, a malevolent intention, when put in the right context, can sometimes results in a greater good, like what I explained in regards to Ozymandias. This is what I meant by putting intentions in the context of a situation.

Oh, and have you noticed the striking similarity between Gaim's and Zangetsu's designs? From the motif of the undersuits, to the transformation scenes of the Orange and Melon armors, to how strikingly similar the shapes of their helmets were. Those were the visual clues that show that both Kouta and Takatora were actually two people with similar intentions and ideals in two different contexts and vantage points. It took several moments of conflict until they realized and uncovered how similar their goals actually were.

Things aren't always what they seem.

As I expected, you view yourself as some kind of moral warrior who has the authority to fix all root of all problems and imperfections in the world. You view yourself as the white knight, the messiah, or the savior who can save humanity from itself. You view your one-size-fits-all solution as the ultimate moral panacea that can cure all ills of the society. You think you're in some kind of crusade to realize a grand, moralistic utopia of some kind. You view yourself as the real world version of Ace Ukiyo. No wonder you idolize him.

Like I stated before: "The road to hell is paved with good intentions". You better tone down your white-knightism/hero syndrome, unless you want the society to shun you and view you not as a hero, but alas, a villain. That's why I said that you should watch Fourze episodes 23-24. If you choose to be the real world Ace Ukiyo and continue your moralistic crusade, then go ahead. It's your life. Just wait until reality comes knocking on your door. It seems like only the severe pains of real life can knock some sense into your head.

If you're not naive, you can often tell which one is which. And, more importantly, it's one thing to offer good deeds, it's another thing to enforce good deeds. What a nosy, moralistic, self-righteous busybody moral warrior/white knight is doing is virtually enforcing good deeds. You basically view yourself as a moralistic god who has the authority to enforce good deeds on others and enforce the same rule on society. An offer is vastly different from an enforcement. See the simple difference there, Ace Ukiyo? Smh.

Can't you see it already? The majority of those Redditors probably have the same white-knightism/hero syndrome that you do. That's why they wanted everything to be better. That's why they wanted Ace Ukiyo to create a world where everyone could be happy.

To say that Ace Ukiyo's moral policing was behavior regulation is a very very very severe understatement. What he ultimately created was a world where he had a total control as a God. No, not just a god, but a literal God with a capital G who could manipulate everything without exception. He ended up as a God that exerted his divine, absolute powers on mere mortal humans (aka the Sims/the inhabitants of DGP's world simulation). A God that exerts his powers on puny, weak humans is just a weak, coward God that deserves no worship. He was a villainous, totalitarian God. He ended up as an even bigger villain than Sueru had ever been. That's the ultimate irony that seemed to go waaaayyyyy over the writers' heads.

Perhaps Yuuya Takahashi has never heard of this famous adage by Lord Acton:
"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

Don't worry. It's not all bad news though. A real human from Sueru's real world can simply press a button to reset or turn off DGP's world simulation, and Ace Ukiyo's reign of moralistic terror will end in an instant that no one inside DGP's world simulation can even realize what's happening, including Ace Ukiyo The God himself. Gigantic LOL @ Geats. Haha.

Whaaattt??? Outcome is still a circumstance out of your control? *facepalm* Some things are out of anyone's control, but NOT everything is out of control. Some things are within control. Know which one is which and don't conflate each other. You must take full responsibility of all the consequences of your actions, be it good or bad, whatever your initial intention is. You can't bask in your self-righteous, moralistic light of glory, and yet when it comes the time to assess your accountability, you run away and shout "Outcomes are out of my control!" as an excuse. That's pathetic. Avoiding responsibility and accountability is the main sign of cowardice, weakness, and ethical immaturity.

You seem to have some kind of victim mentality where you view everything is outside your control. If you do think that outcome is out of your control, then you'd be more cautious and prudent in your actions, NOT recklessly and mindlessly applying your extreme moralistic mentality on everything. If outcome is out of your control, then you should be more careful, NOT careless. Smh.

If the bad things that result from your naive good intentions only happen once or twice and or have minor negative consequences, then you could probably use your favorite "I'm not a bad person."/"I'm just a person that wants to do good deeds."/"It's a coincidence."/"The outcome is beyond my control."/etc lines as excuses. On the other hand, if your naive good intentions often result in frequent screwups and or create major, serious, irreversible negative consequences, then I bet that no one in their right, sane mind will ever buy your favorite excuses.

Robert Hanlon postulated Hanlon's razor aka his famous adage that stated: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." In real life, however, malice is often hard to distinguish from stupidity. If you screw up several times and is still unable to read between the lines and is still unable to connect the dots from your intentions to your actions to your consequences, then only one conclusion can be taken: Your stupidity equals malice. This is what people mean when they ask "Is he a crook, or is he just a fool?" every time a screwup happens. This is just a reworded explanation of my previous points about the relationship between ethics and risk.

It seems like your main (or perhaps, only) motive to do good deeds is to be seen as a good person by other people, not because you want to do the right thing. It seems like you gain some kind of gratification or pleasure from being viewed as a good person by other people. Yet, when it comes the time for evaluation of the actual consequences of your seemingly good deeds done out of seemingly good intentions, you avoid it by using your favorite excuses above. It seems like, to you, the end is achieved by doing good things, not doing the right things. That's why you avoid responsibility and accountability at all cost. Maaannn... Doing good things is not necessarily doing the right things.

See? This is what I meant by your severe inability to understand context and nuance. Just because I said that consequences matter, doesn't mean that you can easily disregard intentions. Put intentions and consequences into their own contexts. Smh. It seems like you're living solely inside your head. It seems like you've never experienced unintended negative consequences in real life. Of course in your imagination everything is always perfect, simple, and straight forward. Of course in your imagination all problems in the world can always be solved with good intentions and good deeds. Real life, however, is not perfect. Real life has 10 ways to turn your one good intention into 100 royal screwups. Real life has real consequences which can vastly differ from what you think inside your head. Never assume that what's inside your head will always congruent with what's outside your head, ever. In real life, a line from point A to point B is often not a straight line, but an ultra-curved, ultra-tangled line that can also give rise to other ultra-curved, ultra-tangled lines, and create a positive feedback loop that a small input in the name of good intentions can be amplified and give rise to huge, unexpected, negative outcomes that can destroy the whole system. In the real world, there's no Goddess of Creation. In the real world, there's no Power of Creation.

"Welcome to the real world, Ace Ukiyo."
~ Morpheus, probably. LOL.

I don't think that you're unable to understand my points. It's more like you're unwilling to understand my points. So, I better stop my response here. Let me end it with one sentence:
Good luck with your (real) life, Ace Ukiyo.

I agree, especially with the quote. In real life, it's often very hard to discern between good and bad intentions, especially when a screwup happens. When something is screwed up, people usually do their best to save their faces and transfer responsibility and accountability to anyone they can sweep under the bus. It's every man for himself. Not a fan of Lenin though. Haha.

Takatora is what I call an apparent/faux villain. His villainy didn't result from malice, but from a situation he was in that was completely beyond his control. His faux villainy was gradually deconstructed, layer by layer, as the story progressed and revealed new informations about the nature of Helheim and Yggdrasill's plans as necessary responses. I don't think that he became a hero. He was already a hero, in the sense that he made the right choice out of a common ethical dilemma, and carried all the ethical burdens by himself. He made the right decision in a situation rife with limited (and hidden) informations, and more importantly, under uncertainty. His decision was rational. And of course, like any rational humans would do, he changed his view of Helheim once he gained new informations from Kouta.

This kind of ethical dilemma is actually quite common in real life. What Takatora did was basically what a decent, rational human would do in real life if he's forced by situation to make a decision under uncertainty. Takatora's trope was basically a personification of the idea that the average people's heroism often means making the best decision in a bad situation, and accepting the burden of responsibility of any bad outcomes that may result from it. Noblesse oblige, as he said.

Cool motive, still murder. As have been stated before, "the road to hell is paved with good intentions".

What do you think the Scalar System is for? Takatora plans to distribute 1 billion Sengoku Drivers to people, then kill the rest to reduce the risk of them becoming Inves in the face of Helheim. I guess I shouldn't use the term genocide here then, but I meant for it as him wanting to do mass killing (thought genocide is for that but I'm mistaken perhaps), of 6 billion humans.

Two things can be awful at once, even if one of them is more bad than the other. Either all humans perish due to Helheim, or majority of humans killed off due to Project Ark. Not to mention, there's the complicated matter of deciding which people "deserve salvation" and which ones get screwed over, which is usually part of such extreme solutions. Implementing a solution where you have to decide who gets sacrificed, what gives Takatora a right to decide for the rest of humanity?

Explains about the misuse of anti-hero term before, to refuse to call out those that don't have malevolent intentions. Yes, anti-villain is for those who aren't villain at heart (their redeeming qualities), but they still perform actions like villains. Bad actions aren't solely driven by malevolent intentions, and moreover, there can be those who deny their malevolent intentions and make excuses. And is everyone else just supposed to shut up and fall in line against people like Takatora, even if the solution is morally unacceptable to them? Just because there's a time crunch, they're just supposed to resign themselves to having to doom some to save others?

If you think that good intentions absolve them from their actions as it'd be only about necessity, let's say, for your examples before of opposing a criminal that hurt your friend/family, or a totalitarian dictator, if they're claiming they do what they do for good, like the criminal claiming they want to get you prepared in dangerous situation, or the dictator claiming they do things like that to preserve peace, then would they still be worth opposing or they're heroes already?

If you'd insist that these well-intentioned extremists aren't bad because they wouldn't have done that if they know better way.... They can also choose to refuse to accept that anyone suffering is a viable option, that there is always another way if they try hard enough, that something better can be achieved if they fight hard enough for those ideals. To not accept whatever cards reality/fate/destiny/etc handed to them. People like Kouta are being like that, to refuse anyone being victimized, be it few, or many, not that few/many lives can be treated like a cattle in the face of many/survival. It'd may be what's called as naive, by in-universe people or fanbase, but dunno why the well-intentioned extremists are believed to guarantee making things better.

Even the criminal or dictator you mentioned as the example of who to oppose, can also make claim like that, where if you'd oppose their actions, they can also claim that you're meddling in other people's (their) business. What to do if the ones who you can act against is the one making claims like that? If it works they'd be free due to them feeling conflicted to intervene or not, it can be also used to gaslight and guilt trip someone.

Creating something doesn't mean one has total control of it? Humans also can create something and their creations can be those that are inanimate objects which control is only about the person who is using it, not its creator. And... the creation is done as a response against Suel trying to erase the world via Grand End. What is supposed to be done then?

Just full of your accusations on me in this part on bad faith. To talk about the consequences being out of one's control, I'm using event scenarios for examples not my personal experiences. Like for example, if a pupil of a martial artist master turns out to using his skills to commit crimes after he trained there, particularly if he has long left said place. There can be room of improvement for the master to take countermeasures to prevent that but doesn't mean that the master is similar to someone who deliberately raised and groomed someone to be a criminal doing their dirty work. Or if someone generously feed a homeless and unknowingly made them sick due to the food being actually expired (e.g. a mistake in the clerk shop). While they can improve by double checking things more, doesn't mean that they're similar to someone who deliberately harmed others, regardless of reason.

Both are the cases of someone trying to do good but unwittingly cause bad outcomes, doesn't mean they're doing bad stuff. For opposite case, there can be cases when someone ends up causing something good, like if someone bombs a building which explosion radius caught a criminal on the run, knocking him down and allowing him to be arrested. Doesn't mean that the bomber did something good, it's unexpectedly accomplishing good by pure chance of a criminal happening to be nearby.

Well, as far as I can judge, in the stories the heroes perceive such cases as their responsibility and strive to correct them. "The Hunted" with Tommy Lee Jones and Benicio del Toro is the first thing that comes to my mind. In real life, too many people are involved and, by and large, everything is decided individually. One teacher feels responsible for his students throughout their lives, another forgets their names immediately after graduation. But in the example with food, I am sure that if you bought the food, and a homeless person was poisoned, then the police will have complaints against you until there is evidence that the food was poisonous even before the purchase.

*facepalm*

My final response: