User blog:Red Chevalier/PE Proposal: Messiah

Alright, time for another Super Sentai villain.

What is the work?
Tokumei Sentai Go-Busters, the 36th entry in the Super Sentai franchise.

Go-Busters takes place in a future where most cities are powered by a new energy substance called Enetron. However, a mysterious evil organization of computer beings known as the "Vaglass" suddenly emerges and begins stealing Enetron to use for their own nefarious goals. In response, an elite team called the Go-Busters is assembled to combat the Vaglass and stop them from taking over the world.

Who is the villain?
While Enter of the Vaglass is often looked to as the iconic Pure Evil of Go-Busters, it's his superior and the leader of the Vaglass, the egomaniacal AI known as "Messiah", that I would argue is the most evil character in Go-Busters.

Messiah is a sentient computer virus that founded the Vaglass and created Enter and Escape. Believing itself to be superior to all beings, especially organic ones, and thus seeks to eliminate all life from planet Earth by absorbing everything on it into himself.

What does he do?
Messiah first emerged on Christmas Day in 1999 as a virus that mysteriously infected the computers of the Energy Transport Center. Seizing control of the complex, Messiah quickly became more powerful from feeding off the Enetron stored within it and attempted to hijack all of the worlds electronic defense systems in order to wipe humanity off the map so he could assimilate the world and take over. However, all of the scientists within the Transport Center chose to sacrifice themselves to prevent Messiah from getting out by teleporting the entire Transport Center into Hyper Space. However, while this prevented Messiah from taking over, this also left them all at the mercy of Messiah, who after evolving to be able to absorb organic matter forcibly digitized them all and trapped them within himself, using their collective data to create two servants to carry out his will, Enter and Escape.

In the year 2012, Messiah obtained the means to enable his agents to travel in and out of Hyper Space and thus had them mount a series of attacks in our dimension to steal Enetron to complete his revival. Despite the loyalty Enter and Escape held (or initially held in Enter's case) towards him, Messiah would frequently berate and mistreat them, blaming them for factors beyond their control. Eventually though, thanks mostly to Enter's skilled planning, the Vaglass finally succeeded in gaining enough Enetron to revive Messiah and grant him a whole new body as Messiah Cell. However, soon after Messiah was destroyed in a climactic battle with the Go-Busters (which was mostly done by Toei so they could reboot the show, as it wasn't doing to well).

After his apparent destruction, Messiah's data scattered but was backed up into the Messiah Cards by Enter, who spawned data monsters called "Messiah Metaloids" from them in order to gather enough data to fully revive Messiah once more. It's around this time when Enter begins getting desires of his own to become "the new Messiah" rather than revive the original. Pretty understandable considering Messiah wasn't exactly the best boss. His other "child", Escape, however, remained loyal to Messiah and was able to outmaneuver Enter, backstab and kill him, before gathering enough fully revive Messiah as the titanic Messiah Reboot.

Now, considering all the work Escape went through to revive Messiah, having to start from scratch to collect data and Enetron, not only go up against the Go-Busters but have to outsmart her comrade Enter as well, considering the unconditional loyalty Escape pledged to Messiah and how she greatly cares for him and sees him not only as her boss, but her father figure, what do you think the first thing Messiah would do upon being revived would be? Would it be to thank her? To congratulate her? Even though he's a homicidal AI, one would expect some gratitude towards a being he literally views as his daughter.

So what does he do almost immediately after being revived?

He absorbs her to obtain more power.

He devoured the one being in the entire show who cared for him, who dutifully served and worked her butt off to revive him. And yet he doesn't show any gratefulness, instead viewing her as simply a tool for him to dispose of, and eats her to gain more power.

Even Enter, the other PE in the show, at least cared enough about Escape to try to revive her even after she backstabbed him. Messiah, the being she looked up to, revered, and served unconditionally, cared about as much for her as he effectively did any other being on Earth: which is to say none.

Anyways, after Messiah Reboot absorbs Escape he fights the Go-Busters in Go-Buster Lioh. Then he gets destroyed and Enter returns from the dead to become the Big Bad again for the rest of the series. Despite not lasting up until the finale, Messiah's actions and the destruction he caused leave a mark that lasts for the rest of the series.

Heinous Standard
Messiah is a genocidal AI who sees itself as superior to pretty much every other being on planet Earth. While it's his subordinate Enter who comes up with the majority of the Vaglass' plans, since Messiah would rather boast about himself rather than come up with anything, its his destructive ambitions that are driving the Vaglass, at least until Enter takes over, and his extreme narcissism and complete lack of empathy for any beings other than himself, and the fate he gave to the scientists at the Transport Center, is enough to make him stand out even against the actions of his fellow Pure Evil subordinate.

Mitigating Factors
While Messiah began as a computer virus, he clearly demonstrates human emotions and grasp on his actions, though he also has the demeanor of a psychopathic manchild. He's not driven to villainy by some error in his coding, but by an ego that's the size of the moon.

Messiah also shows no care to any beings other than himself, seeing them all as inferior to him and only as tools for him to absorb to gain more powerful. As was discussed above, not even his own loyal subordinates are exempt from this, as he's perfectly fine with devouring them to gain more power.

At the end of the day, Messiah is a being only concerned with obtaining more power for himself, all other beings be damned, and with satiating his planet-sized ego by literally assimilating everything on the planet.

Final Verdict

 * He's basically what would happen if someone made an AI of Joffrey Baratheon, a psychopathic manchild who despises nearly all life. Definite yes.