Discussion Characters / BloodstainedRitualOfTheNight

Sasquatch X removed the following entry:

• Villainous Underdog: She is one of the most powerful characters in the setting, but nowhere near as powerful as [[spoiler:Zangetsu, who would absolutely wreck her like nobody's business if he ever caught her, which is why she continuously avoids him. It's also questionable whether or not she's stronger than Miriam, but she did require Gebel to weaken Miriam before she could attempt possessing her. And lastly, Gremory gets handily defeated by Miriam wielding the Zangetsuto, despite the blade not being anywhere close to its full strength without its true owner.]

For the following reason:

• "That's a nope. The Zangetsuto is her Kryptonite, but without it, Zangetsu gets dragged off to an Uncertain Doom pretty handily. Zangetsu isn't uber-chocolately-infinity more powerful, the problem is his sword, hence the point of handing it off to Miriam."

I argued against this edit reason in a PM, stating that the Zangetsuto being Gremory's weakness doesn't change the fact that we're specifically told that Zangetsu would have wrecked her if he caught her, and thus she avoided him the entire game.

Sasquatch X replied:

• "In a situation where a single weapon is the make-or-breaking point for a villain's odds where they otherwise are holding all the cards —control over Gebel, the deal with Dominique to revive Bael, Miriam unsuspectingly running headlong into a planned trap— that is by no means an "underdog" scenario. Misuse of trope...Not that the justification adds much, the bulk of that inclusion was just comparatively wanking Zangetsu when it was blatantly shown how quickly he went down when confronted by Gremory without her weakness."

---

Setting aside how rude it is to call the entry "wanking Zangetsu", the fact remains that Zangetsu is portrayed as so strong within the story that he would have easily resolved the entire plot if he had managed to catch Gremory. This isn't "wanking" the character any more than his bio in the Bestiary flat out telling us that he's the strongest demon hunter, the fact that he deals hundreds of damage to Glutton Train while Miriam can barely do single digits, or the fact that Miriam herself tells us that the man could have easily killed her any time she wanted. The entire story repeatedly "wanks" about Zangetsu's power. Troping the fact doesn't mean we're doing it too.

Disregarding Zangetsu's power just because he derives most of it from his sword is like saying Sportsmaster isn't an underdog if Green Lantern takes his ring off. Zangetsu is a samurai, a class of warrior that ENTIRELY derives their power and identity from their sword. To the degree that Zangetsu is a Legacy Character who got his name specifically BECAUSE he had the sword. The fact that he can't beat Gremory without it doesn't change the fact that, with the weapon that literally defines his identity, she ran away from Zangetsu the entire story.

The hostile/sarcastic tone in Sasquatch X's responses strike me as having some sort of personal dislike for this narrative, but that has no regard on the facts that we're presented with in the story.

Edited by NubianSatyress Hide / Show Replies

Most of the Expy entries on this page are somewhat concerning, given that Expy is a trope where one character is clearly and deliberately based on a character from another work. The entries as given here are simply "this character has something in common with these other characters" with what they have in common mostly being common tropes in the series or genre. O.D. being an expy of Dio Brando, okay, way too much for it to just be a series trope or a reference, but the rest?

I'm pretty sure that these examples don't qualify even by a loose use of the trope ... but not 100% sure, which is why I didn't remove them.

Hide / Show Replies