I see. So since they are nobodies we shouldn't care about their demise? Then in that case no one should care about Namine, Roxas, Xion(sorta) or Axel. They are only nobodies after all.
That's not exactly what I was saying. =/
What I meant was, from the perspective of the characters in the game at that point in time, Nobody life was valued at practically nothing. Since Axel's a Nobody and therefore doesn't have a conscience to help him make moral decisions, this is important - he didn't really have much of a reason to think that killing other Nobodies is wrong.
As an illustration, imagine Player A is playing a videogame and gleefully killing off NPCs - only it turns out they're actually capable of conscious thinking and feeling. Oops. Player A definitely did a bad thing, but I'm pretty sure you'd judge him less harshly than Player B, who knew that the NPCs were people all along and gleefully murdered them anyway. Which is the point I was trying to make - Axel's actions are evil, but he's not deliberately doing something he knows is wrong.
Axel was a traitor the moment he stepped in that castle. No, even before that. The second he joined the organization .Or did you forget his and Saix plan. Axel didn't let Namine go because it was the right thing to do. He did it for his on sick amusement.
Yeah, Axel's always been a traitor - but he certainly wasn't about to act against the Organization's interests when he didn't have anything to gain by it. And allowing Sora and Namine to leave Castle Oblivion with DiZ certainly wasn't part of his plot with Saix, considering the fact that Axel didn't let Saix in on the fact that he was the one who let them get away.
Letting Namine out of Marluxia's clutches wasn't done for any reason like it being the right thing to do, I agree. But that's not what I was referring to - I'm hard-pressed to think of what Axel would have gained by letting Sora and Namine leave the castle unhindered after all of the other Organization members in the castle had been killed.
Hard to justify? Try impossible. You and I both know that if someone had done that in real life we would be screaming for his blood,but since it isn't, and it's Axel the bishie with a 15 year old lover(using fan logic here) it's okay. Axel crossed the moral event horizon with that one act for a lot of people including me. He went from being a badass manipulative ******* with a soft spot for Roxas to being a monster in an instant.
Yeah, I know it's an understatement. That was kinda the point.
The real life equivalency doesn't really work, in my opinion, because the fact that the characters involved are both Nobodies changes things so much. And that particular scene was Axel at his most Nobody-like, when he had no moral frame of reference for dealing with other Nobodies, whatsoever.
And I'm not saying CoM Axel was a good person, by all means. He did things that were, quite frankly, terrible. However, the deficit in information does somewhat mitigate the judgement that can be made about his character as a whole - I find it difficult to call a person evil when they can legitimately say "If I had known more, I would not have committed this evil act." And the fact that Axel
is able to grow past his amoral Nobody nature is the entire point of his character arc in 358/2 Days.
There is one very important difference between Sora destroying a member and Axel doing it. Sora did it in self defense. Axel did not. If he wanted to off Vexen and Zexion there were more humane ways to do it instead of killing them while they plead for their lives and were weak and defenseless with a sadistic smile on his face. He could have fought them when they were at their full strength like he did Marluxia being one way.
Did I ever imply that what Axel did was morally equivalent to what Sora did? o_0 Axel's actions were bad. They just don't make him an evil person (kind of like how the bad things that Riku did don't make him an evil person).
Axel
did need to take Vexen out right then and there, though. He couldn't exactly be all too picky about how he would kill Vexen when he was about to tell Sora about Roxas. As for the way he went about it, I'd imagine that a lot of that was for Sora's benefit - it's certainly an effective way of establishing people in black coats as dangerous and in need of a Keyblade to the face.
Oh and let's not forget he sent the Riku replica merrily to his death even after said replica helped Sora and Namine. Also don't tell me he didn't know the replica was his own person. His secret report blatantly says that he did.Read day 194. He simply didn't care that it was now a person or that treating it like garbage was wrong until he actually befriended one, and then it was like oh golly gee I treated another replica like a tool,but now my best friend is one opps!
Day 195 makes it pretty clear that he hadn't ever really considered whether or not Riku-Replica was worth anything up until that point, I thought.
Plus, he's a Nobody. The fact that Axel is drawing that conclusion at all is progress, even if he is a bit late about it.
I don't think I'm misinterpreting him at all. Axel wanted his fill like a heart drug to stay so he deliberately kept the truth from him. His lies and selfishness ended up hurting more than it helped. Roxas begged Axel to tell him the truth. Axel wouldn't budge so Roxas told him off and left. He should have respected Roxas and Xion enough to tell them the truth and then let them make their own decisions about their life and the life of another they were keeping from waking up.
How can you have played 358/2 Days all the way through and still think that Axel thought of Roxas as a "heart drug?" o_____0 It's pretty clear that he still felt like he had a heart when Roxas and Xion took off. He just felt like he had a heart that was being violently torn out. He wouldn't have been in nearly so much pain if his friendship was the sham you're trying to make it out to be.
Yeah, the lies ended up causing Roxas to leave anyway. But considering how things had been going, there
was no good solution anymore. The likeliest result of telling Roxas about Sora would be Roxas deciding that he had to see Sora and ignoring the part where meeting Sora means no more Roxas.
And remember, Axel did decide at several points that he would answer some of the questions Roxas and Xion were asking about themselves and each other. Axel answered Roxas' question about Xion the day before their big confrontation, after all. Roxas didn't get it, and it just made things worse.
Hmm Staying in captivity in a cheerful, if fake, life or going back to the dark organization to do some more inhumane things. Not to mention he was put there so he could join back with Sora. Where he belongs.
"The roxas I knew is long gone." No **** shelock. Why would the Roxas you knew be willing to come back to the organization when the roxas you knew is the one who hauled a** away from them in the first place?
He was trying to take him back against his will. Again stop trying to sugarcoat.
I am positive that non-brainwashed Roxas would never have chosen the simulation. He wanted his life back, above everything else - the idea of having his personality replaced and being forced to live a fake life until it came time for him to give that up, too, would have horrified him.
Considering the state that Roxas was in, Axel really had no other choice. He could either kidnap Roxas against the constructed personality's will, or watch as his best friend walked unknowingly to his doom. The question of whether Axel would have forced the
real Roxas back against his will doesn't enter into the equation at all.
(Personally, I think the real Roxas wouldn't have fought so hard against Axel. He didn't want to rejoin the Organization, obviously, but he had little reason to avoid being taken in when that meant he'd get a perfect shot at Xemnas)
Saix could have been lying. However using the novels which Nomura has pretty much said are published fanfiction is not going to prove that. The final mix scene showed her leaving with Axel. Who knows were they went or if she even stayed with him. The next time we see Axel, Namine is know where to be found, and the next time we see her is at the end of the game.Axel forced Kairi to come with him. Where I'm from that's called kidnapping. Going by what was said in the game, and what was shown Axel doing right before that, and keeping in mind that Axel was pretty obsessed with Roxas, well actions speak louder than words.
That wasn't the Final Mix scene I was referring to. I was referring to the scene on the Clock Tower, when Axel and Roxas met up for the last time. Roxas said that he was going back to how he was, and Axel responded that Namine had said the same thing. It really felt like he was showing a familiarity with her that never developed on-screen, but fit in perfectly with the alliances from the novels.
Besides, Axel kidnapping Kairi to force Sora back into a Heartless just doesn't fit his character at all, especially the way he interacts with Sora. He
apologizes to Sora for kidnapping and losing Kairi - but that makes no sense if he wants to turn Sora into a Heartless. He could easily use the fact that Sora thinks he has Kairi to lead him into a trap, or to try to force him into despair, but he doesn't. And apart from kidnapping Kairi, Axel doesn't take a single action in the entire game that could even potentially be a step towards the goal of turning Sora into a Heartless.
Saix, on the other hand, has every reason to lie. The novels might not be canon, but when they bring up an option that makes so much more sense than the original assumption, I don't see why we shouldn't believe them.
Hmm, So you're saying Roxas and Namine aren't innocent just to make Axel look more so. How does that work? They are more innocent then Axel will ever be. You use Roxas willing to fight Axel as a excuse. Axel was trying to force him to do something he didn't want to or kill him take your pick. It's called self-defense. Roxas did nothing wrong at all in the situation. Namine was forced to do what she did to Sora. However, she did show a small bit of selfishness when she clearly wanted Sora to keep his memories of castle oblivion of her, but that moment was fleeting and she did what Sora wanted which was the right thing to do. I pity Roxas and Xion. They only wanted to be their own people. However, I side with Namine on this. They, like all nobodies/replicas, are a abomination against nature. They were keeping Sora a human from waking up so they had to go. Xion knew her ceasing to exist was the right thing to do, and Roxas figured that out fully by the end of Kh2 as well.
I can't understand how you can admit re:com axel was evil and afterward selfish, but still be a good person that can be put in the same category as Roxas, Xion,and Namine. I mean it just doesn't compute, and you can't see why I don't think Axel is a good person because he was a bad as the rest of the organization and well as a poisonous friend, but more like an anti-hero by kh2. We're just going to have to agree to disagree.
Hmm, you seem to have gotten the wrong idea. I wasn't trying to tar Roxas and Namine to make Axel look better - and I'm certainly not trying to say that Axel is just as good as either of them. I just find them more interesting when they're allowed to show the kind of moral ambiguity associated with Nobodies, rather than flattened out into complete innocents.
What I
am trying to say is that, if we're going to stick Axel into a category, it'd be better to stick him in with Riku than with Xemnas. They both did really bad things early on, and are still willing to do bad things (like, say, kidnapping) out of desperation to fix their friends - but if they weren't in such crazy circumstances, they'd probably both be fun to hang around with.
I guess that's the distinction I really want to make. Calling a person evil implies, to me, that they're
innately evil. The Disney villains are innately evil. The Xehanort incarnations are innately evil. No matter where you stick them, they'll end up hurting people, because that's just who they are. Axel's evil actions are circumstantial - if he wasn't involved with the Organization, he'd probably turn completely into the friendly big brother figure he is when he's around Roxas and Xion. (Note that I can very easily see Demyx and Luxord being the same way, though neither of them get much of a chance to show what that other side would be like)