Thread:AustinDR/@comment-26205772-20160228093928/@comment-26205772-20160229001748

Alright.

I'm quite sad to say that Buppa, is in fact, not a candidate. He's beyond heinous enough, but he's kept off this trope by the fact that he genuinely loves his son N'koi. N'koi's death absolutely breaks him and he spends his last moments sobbing and crying about he'll never forgive his murderer (Mera). It's a shame, because he really would have made an excellent candidate.

N'koi isn't a candidate either. He's exempt from any redeeming qualities (he plans on betraying his father) but he doesn't go quite far enough and dies before he can really do anything major.

Now, Skunk... Skunk, I'm not sure about. Skunk goes from a sycophantic servant of Mera's to a power-hungry schemer to the Big Bad of the series, after he codifies the Skunk Kingdom (he gets a Hitler-esque makeover, at that). After he becomes the biggest threat, he's responsible for cultivating a destructive takeover of Tokyo and waging war against every tribe in the city, killing everyone that gets in his way and generally destroying a lot of the city in the process. He also deals with the resident Bigger Bad of the setting, the Daishisai (apparently the Emperor of Asia) who wants to capture his niece Erika, who is hiding in Tokyo under the guise of a prostitute named Sunmi. Skunk desires to take over all of Asia - and according to one of his comments, the world - by delivering Erika to the Daishisai and reaping a massive reward in exchange. He's responsible for many petty deeds of his own accord; slicing a guy's throat after questioning his leadership, shooting two bodyguards after they forbid him access into Buppa's palace, gathering up women from the areas he's conquered and putting them into forced prostitution (something Buppa is also guilty of, but Skunk is implied to be doing it on a much larger scale), trying to force Erika into giving him oral sex, initiating a destructive street war when he's still Mera's associate, shooting Mera near the end of the series when his back is turned, and most heinously, forcing the leader of the Machido Thugs watch at gunpoint as one of his female subordinates is raped in front of him.

With all this said, I think Skunk is heinous enough. There are a few qualities that make me question him a little bit though; how seriously he's played and how heinous he is compared to Buppa. Skunk's basically a midget; he's about four-feet and he looks ridiculous (imagine a Chinese stereotype and you're close to what he looks like) and he's often treated, even after his takeover, like sort of a joke. The problem with this is that Skunk can be treated quite seriously when the time is right. More than a few times when Skunk is being treated like a joke, Skunk responds violently and that's shown with appropriate pathos. While he's ultimately nothing more than a slinking opportunist who got where he is through a combination of luck and deals with peopple stronger than him, Skunk and his tribe - the NEO Wu Ronz/the Skunk Empire - are ultimately treated as threats even greater than Buppa in the series. As for how heinous he is compared to Buppa, Buppa has a lot on his sheet; raping a person to death, killing Mera's parents, the aforementioned forced prostitution, and cutting off people's limbs and keeping their bodies in suspension in a sort of decoration room. I will say this, however; what Skunk does ultimately has a much wider effect than Buppa. While Buppa is a lot more personally depraved, Skunk's actions have a much more devastating effect on Tokyo and he's likely got a much larger body count by proxy of the war he initiates on Tokyo. So I think Skunk may be able to be measured on a different level than Buppa, because he still has a lot of stuff on his hands both on a wide scale and on a personal scale.

He's also got some form of an excuse; he was formerly the friend of Mera when Mera was still part of a group that consisted of him, Skunk, Kai (the protagonist) and his love interest Fuchio (or something close to that name). Skunk was eventually pushed aside by Kai and Mera's friendship, and after Fuchio committed suicide by hurling herself into the way of a train, Mera dragged Skunk with him. Skunk eventually betrays Mera after it becomes apparent that Mera no longer cares for him. This excuse is weak for two reasons; one, Mera doesn't mistreat Skunk. At all. He's cold and aloof, but never once does he show that he actively doesn't give a damn about him. Two, and most damningly, Skunk isn't acting out of the excuse. They fail to justify his actions because Skunk is instead acting out of power lust instead of a personal vendetta. Never once is the excuse played sympathetically and Skunk is ultimately a slimy coward who's willing to take whatever opportunities he can to seize power.