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Convoluted analysis: Muraki Kazutaka
"Cackling overlords need a reason to be cackling overlords. People don't just wake up one morning, and go, 'I think I’m going to go out, and be a corrupt tyrant.'
Unless that morning tea is very, very special."
- therikkster on bad_rpers_suck.
I have Lapsang Souchong; don’t quite know if it counts though.
But anyway, I got up this afternoon and somehow in my puttering about to make tea and toast and reading the above on![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
bad_rpers_suck I got thinking about Yami no Matsuei. There was a slightly convoluted train of thought to get there, jumping from Serenity to the later DragonLance novels and then getting to Yami no Matsuei but it’s all essentially the same principle. Nominally evil characters need some motivation to do what they do.
In Serenity for instance the ‘bad guy’ believes in his cause to the exclusion of all else, even self really. It’s easy to class that has fanaticism and dismiss it but take that dedication to cause and mission and so on and switch it round to the ‘good guy’ and suddenly it becomes unwavering faith and raises him from the status of average warrior to holy paladin. He becomes an almost super-human character, imbued with the power of faith.
Take the DragonLance novels where the Solamnic Knights were figures of great heroism because of their faith and devotion to the gods. The bastion of the High Clerist’s Tower was purported never to fall as long as men of faith defended it and it was only these knights who could actually wield the fabled DragonLance. Of course once you hit the second generation stuff you have the High Clerist’s Tower attacked by men of faith in the form of the Knights of Takhisis who are the bad guys but with all the qualities of the Solamnic knighthood. They’re paladins just the same and men and women who respect their enemies and so on and it makes them an awful lot more complex than the hodgepodge of an army employed the first time round. And it makes them far harder to kill.
Either way, it’s a matter of idealism on both sides.
Now just where does Yami no Matsuei enter into the equation? From my brief skim of canon as far as I remember it there seems to be the idea that Muraki Kazutaka was just that sort of idealist: a brilliant doctor who wanted to save lives and so on and was so good at what he did that it got to the point where he started believing that medical science could solve everything. Unfortunately, medical science is fallible and discovering this something inside him simply snapped. It’s not to say that he didn’t know that medical science was fallible, only that he had never quite realised it in such a complete and absolute fashion and in the process of saving so many lives against all odds it was quite natural for him to reach the point where he believed that everyone could benefit.
Of course even with his ensuing dementia, he still seems to be continuing with his quest to find an end to all death.
It’s interesting since it seems that plenty of the time insanity is equated with babbling, obvious madness. It doesn’t need to be. Muraki Kazutaka is insane but that doesn’t make him either incompetent or incapable of functioning in society. In his case it’s a matter of his moral axis completely breaking down because previously he held to it so tightly. Nothing else has changed, he’s still a medical professional, an extraordinary doctor, a genius in his field but added to that the part that made him the idealist that he once was is broken. Nothing has been added, only taken away and that is what makes him a dangerous psychopath at the end of the day.
Unless that morning tea is very, very special."
- therikkster on bad_rpers_suck.
I have Lapsang Souchong; don’t quite know if it counts though.
But anyway, I got up this afternoon and somehow in my puttering about to make tea and toast and reading the above on
bad_rpers_suck I got thinking about Yami no Matsuei. There was a slightly convoluted train of thought to get there, jumping from Serenity to the later DragonLance novels and then getting to Yami no Matsuei but it’s all essentially the same principle. Nominally evil characters need some motivation to do what they do.In Serenity for instance the ‘bad guy’ believes in his cause to the exclusion of all else, even self really. It’s easy to class that has fanaticism and dismiss it but take that dedication to cause and mission and so on and switch it round to the ‘good guy’ and suddenly it becomes unwavering faith and raises him from the status of average warrior to holy paladin. He becomes an almost super-human character, imbued with the power of faith.
Take the DragonLance novels where the Solamnic Knights were figures of great heroism because of their faith and devotion to the gods. The bastion of the High Clerist’s Tower was purported never to fall as long as men of faith defended it and it was only these knights who could actually wield the fabled DragonLance. Of course once you hit the second generation stuff you have the High Clerist’s Tower attacked by men of faith in the form of the Knights of Takhisis who are the bad guys but with all the qualities of the Solamnic knighthood. They’re paladins just the same and men and women who respect their enemies and so on and it makes them an awful lot more complex than the hodgepodge of an army employed the first time round. And it makes them far harder to kill.
Either way, it’s a matter of idealism on both sides.
Now just where does Yami no Matsuei enter into the equation? From my brief skim of canon as far as I remember it there seems to be the idea that Muraki Kazutaka was just that sort of idealist: a brilliant doctor who wanted to save lives and so on and was so good at what he did that it got to the point where he started believing that medical science could solve everything. Unfortunately, medical science is fallible and discovering this something inside him simply snapped. It’s not to say that he didn’t know that medical science was fallible, only that he had never quite realised it in such a complete and absolute fashion and in the process of saving so many lives against all odds it was quite natural for him to reach the point where he believed that everyone could benefit.
Of course even with his ensuing dementia, he still seems to be continuing with his quest to find an end to all death.
It’s interesting since it seems that plenty of the time insanity is equated with babbling, obvious madness. It doesn’t need to be. Muraki Kazutaka is insane but that doesn’t make him either incompetent or incapable of functioning in society. In his case it’s a matter of his moral axis completely breaking down because previously he held to it so tightly. Nothing else has changed, he’s still a medical professional, an extraordinary doctor, a genius in his field but added to that the part that made him the idealist that he once was is broken. Nothing has been added, only taken away and that is what makes him a dangerous psychopath at the end of the day.
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