[Sh Ranger]

Quote:

Originally Posted by DreadBringer

No offense but, I feel that you're elevating Otoya's morality way higher than he should be here. I'd think that if you talk about music, it's about his skills, which I'd not think it's related to morality, albeit yeah I'd cite Otoya redeeming Oomura as one of his most moral moments, because Oomura is a male AND a Fangire. Not Otoya, but there's many outright villainous characters who would be incredibly skilled/knowledgable at art, like Aizen from Bleach being instructor in caligraphy; traits like passion or determination isn't related to moral (there're determined villains who wouldn't give up to defeat like Masamune in Ex-Aid). About redeeming others, I don't think that you'd necessarily need good traits to achieve that, like in Ex-Aid, the one that softens.. uh... Taiga (don't be confused!) is Nico, who although developed to be better too, is someone who is spiteful, petty, selfish, obnoxious, bratty, etc. And even then Nico developing better can be applied to this as well, as Taiga's the reason for it, which is (he's used to be nice in the past, but still he's totally changed) someone selfish, arrogant, downright unpleasant and couldn't care less about any of the patients the Bugsters infected. I'd like to point out too that, Jiro and Otoya is fully friends now, but Jiro trying to kill Otoya before wasn't a one-sided conflict, it was mutual, Otoya had a bone to pick with Jiro as well before, for his behavior to women or being a rival for women's affections. To a lesser extent, he refused to help the Arms Monsters before unless it involves Yuri, though of course they're fully brothers in arms now, but taking long time for that speaks for itself to me.

I'm not really elevating Otoya's morality, by saying that his compassion is one of his greatest qualities. It's just that it stands out in contrast to his more frequently seen flaws. Maybe that's why Otoya and Jirou are such good friends, cause they both started out as pretty terrible people and their friendship grew out of a rivalry which came to mutual respect. They both had their own flaws to overcome as well, like Otoya's resistance to marriage and Jirou's yandere behavior. Terrible people can help each other become less terrible, like your example of (Hanaya) Taiga and Nico. But just as everybody has flaws, those terrible people aren't without merit either, they have hidden qualities and redeeming factors and those qualities I believe should have recognition. I definitely don't think Otoya is some kind of saint or anything like that. I mean, it's hard to believe that when his argument against Wataru being his son was that he couldn't have a son that tall. That has implications.