User blog:AustinDR/PE Propopsal: Grings Kodai



Could've sworn that he was on the Approved Evil Navigation template, but I guess not. While he is already listed under "Pure Evil," here we go.

What is the work?
Pokémon: Zoroark: Master of Illusions, is an anime film based on the Pokémon anime where Ash, Dawn, and Brock go to Crown City to attend a world cup tournament.

Who is Grings Kodai?
Grings Kodai is a wealthy businessman who was also the founder of the Kodai Network of Crown City. Twenty years before the events of the film, Kodai discovered a Celebi exiting a Time Ripple. Kodai touched it, and this granted him the power of future sight. However, this also caused the vegetation in Crown City to wither and die from "negative time." From this, Kodai used his new abilities to accumulate mass wealth for himself.

In the current time, Kodai kidnaps a Zoroark and her adoptive son Zorua and forces Zoroark to use her illusionary powers to make it seem that Crown City was being attacked by the legendary Pokémon trio Entei, Raikou, and Suicune under the threat of harming her son. Zorua would inevitably escape, but Zoroark is further pushed to continue the plan with Kodai essentially blaming her for the attacks. Kodai later foresaw Ash and his friend coming to stop him, so he has them imprisoned in electrified cages, the intention obviously being to dispose of them after he retouched the Time Ripple. He also goes as far as to strangle Celebi to get him to comply with his demands.

Zorua tries to use his illusionary powers on Kodai again, but is recaptured by the businessman who then threatens Zorua's life. He demonstrates this by horrifically shocking Zorua to the point of near-death, and even claims to have gotten a kick out of it. While collecting the Time Ripple's power, Ash tries to tell him that he'd kill the vegetation in Crown City, but he scoffs claiming that he had done so twenty years ago, and he was more than willing to do it again. Unbeknownst to him, he was really drawing power from a fake Time Ripple which gave Ash and the team the most opportune time to record his confession. Enraged that he had been tricked, he tries to electrocute Zorua again only to mortally electrocute Zoroark instead. The real Entei, Raikou, and Suicune arrive and Kodai is prevented from escaping. With the last of her strength, Zoroark creates a final illusion to make Kodai fall off the stadium.

What happens afterwards varies. In the film, he regains consciousness only to realize in horror that his confession was being widely broadcasted to the citizens of Crown City, and he gets promptly arrested for his crimes. In the manga adaptation, he just falls to his death. But whatever the case, the asshole got what was coming to him.

Freudian Excuse? Mitigating factors?
He tries to make himself appear to be a benevolent businessman who expresses concern towards his fellow citizens, but in actuality, he is a sadistic sociopath who is willing to destroy an ecosystem for his own personal gain.

Heinous standard
The Pokémon anime has a pretty big heinous standard with a few villains (Cyrus, Lysandre, and Xerosic) respectively who had attempted to destroy the world, or in Cyrus' case, destroy everything and recreate it in his own image. Or then you have lesser villains like Hunter J who places Pokémon in And I Must Scream situations and also a high attempted body count (aside from Ash, she also tried to cause the pit of her ship to open up which would kill her own henchman; and she also became employed under Cyrus being fully aware that he plans on committing omnicide). Or there's Jarvis who committed mass brainwashing and then trying to destroy the plateau outright.

With Kodai, he has resources, but what I feel makes him stand out despite being lower-class in comparison to the arc villains is the fact that he electrocutes a baby Pokémon to near death. No one else in the anime had crossed that point of depravity. And then saying that he got a thrill from it before mortally electrocuting his adoptive mother to death. Feel that, compounded with the kidnapping and orchestrating attacks on the populace and the willingness to destroy the vegetation of Crown City again makes him cross the baseline. Not amazingly so, but he does cross it.