I remember the ending to Samurai 7 affected me more than Akira Kurosawa's actual piece. While both versions of Kikuchiyo get their honorable death and do manage to finally prove their worth as samurai, the original piece never really managed to make me feel like Kiku could muster more than clumsy humour or blustery indignation. In the Anime, I found myself really drawn to the tale of this poor peasant boy who ends up trapped into an adult-sized Steampunk samurai android and who desperately tries to fake some sense of maturity and importance.
As could be expected, it only works out once everything rests on his shoulders, while you do spend most of the series seeing Kiku try and juggle juvenile good humour with a pretty serious dose of understandably righteous indignation.
Otherwise, I'd say Saints Row IV was oddly bittersweet for me. I'd grown fond of the Boss as I'd designed her, I'd managed to balance silly laughs and more touching or character-revealing moments with my former presidential staff, but the biggest hit had to be Zinyak's death.
He's an asshole, yes. He's a dictator and a mass murderer. Absolutely. He's a self-centered egotistical fuckwad. Check. But he revels in all this to such an extent that it goes well past hamming it up for the sake of hamming it up, and makes him an honestly affable villain. However comedic his analysis of the Boss' actions was in one of the early Rescue missions, it was on-the-nose.
Emperor Zinyak was an asshat and a giant stereotype on two legs - and I loved him to bits for it. He died leaving me wanting more gentlemanly and eminently educated scathing commentary in regards to my character's sociopathy; a lot like I ended up missing Handsome Jack's jeers after killing him.
As could be expected, it only works out once everything rests on his shoulders, while you do spend most of the series seeing Kiku try and juggle juvenile good humour with a pretty serious dose of understandably righteous indignation.
Otherwise, I'd say Saints Row IV was oddly bittersweet for me. I'd grown fond of the Boss as I'd designed her, I'd managed to balance silly laughs and more touching or character-revealing moments with my former presidential staff, but the biggest hit had to be Zinyak's death.
He's an asshole, yes. He's a dictator and a mass murderer. Absolutely. He's a self-centered egotistical fuckwad. Check. But he revels in all this to such an extent that it goes well past hamming it up for the sake of hamming it up, and makes him an honestly affable villain. However comedic his analysis of the Boss' actions was in one of the early Rescue missions, it was on-the-nose.
Emperor Zinyak was an asshat and a giant stereotype on two legs - and I loved him to bits for it. He died leaving me wanting more gentlemanly and eminently educated scathing commentary in regards to my character's sociopathy; a lot like I ended up missing Handsome Jack's jeers after killing him.
