User blog:Red Chevalier/Pure Evil Proposal: Masamune Dan

Alright, time for a Proposal I've been working on for a while.

What is the work?
Kamen Rider Ex-Aid, the 18th installment in the Heisei Kamen Rider series (and 27th series overall).

The show tells the story of Emu Hojo, who transforms into Kamen Rider Ex-Aid to combat the Bugster Virus, a sentient computer virus that has the power to infect humans and cause video game characters manifest in real life from them. Over the course of the series, many twists and turns occur as Emu and his fellow Doctor Riders uncover a deeper conspiracy behind the Bugsters and the video game company Genm Corp.

Who is the villain?
Masamune Dan, the founder of Genm Corp and the real real main villain of the series. He is the true mastermind behind the Bugster outbreak. Seeing those around him as nothing more than pawns, Masamune seeks to become the controller of life by trapping everyone inside his "ultimate game", the augmented reality game Kamen Rider Chronicle.

While he was CEO of Genm Corp, his son Kuroto Dan also worked there as its lead programmer. While working one day Kuroto discovered the Bugster virus as a glitch born from the Y2K bug and reported it to Masamune. Without anyone else knowing, Masamune injected a portion of the virus into himself in order to develop the "ultimate antibody" within him.

Years later, Kuroto Dan triggered a Bugster virus outbreak from 10 Genm Corp games in development that claimed the lives of many people, including notably the girlfriend of Hiiro Kagami, Saki Momose. These events would later become known as Zero Day. Kuroto pinned the outbreak on his father Masamune and got him arrested so he could usurp control of Genm Corp. Secretly, Masamune was aware of Kuroto's actions and stayed silent, allowing himself to be imprisoned so he would be absolved of guilt for the events that would follow. It is not known if Masamune actually played any part in Zero Day though he seems to have known about it and allowed it to happen to further his plans.

What does he do?
Eventually, after Kuroto's own crimes come to light and he had been taken into custody by CR, Masamune was acquitted and let out of prison. Now that the Bugsters and Kuroto had completed Kamen Rider Chronicle for him, Masamune put his plans into action. He makes his reveal as the true mastermind by interrupting the final battle between the Doctor Riders and the Bugsters by transforming into Kamen Rider Cronus and swiftly defeating both sides.

Possessing the power to revive those whose lives were claimed in Zero Day, Masamune blackmailed Hiiro into betraying from the Doctor Riders and turning his side by offering to revive his girlfriend Saki. After Hiiro steals Emu's Gamer Driver, Masamune revives Saki as he promised, but as an empty shell, lacking Saki's personality that can only repeat her final words, in order to force Hiiro to keep working for him. When the Doctor Rider, Taiga Hanaya required a life-saving surgery, Masamune instructed Hiiro to sabotage the surgery, threatening to permanently erase Saki's data if he didn't.

Despite the threat of Saki being lost forever, Hiiro could not bring himself to go back on his integrity as a doctor and successfully performed the surgery. In response, Masamune deleted Saki's data right in front of Hiiro out of spite.

Masamune later reprograms the final boss of Kamen Rider Chronicle, Gamedeus, to instigate a global Bugster pandemic and infect everyone on Earth. After this scheme was foiled by the Doctor Riders, Masamune finished off Gamedeus himself before the Riders could destroy it and merged with Gamedeus's remains, becoming Gamedeus Cronus. Masamune then instigates another worldwide pandemic of the Bugster virus to digitize everyone. The pandemic was ultimately foiled by Cyber Response, but at the cost of the lives of Poppy and Parado.

Now separated from Gamedeus and back to the form of Cronus, Masamune was brought down by the Kamen Riders. As a final act of spite, Masamune took his own life with the Kamen Rider Chronicle Master Gashat to prevent them from saving any of the lives claimed by game disease.

Heinous Standard
Masamune caused the deaths of thousands of people, used the life of Hiiro's girlfriend as leverage to blackmail him, and prevented thousands more lives from being saved, all in pursuit of his goal to become the controller of everyone. While his son Kuroto did comparable and arguably worse things, Masamune lacks none of the redeeming qualities or noble motives that Kuroto did.

Mitigating Factors
Alright let's get into this. While Masamune isn't given any redeeming qualities within Ex-Aid itself, in the Another Ending trilogy of movies after the series, Masamune is revived by Kuroto to extract the Bugster virus from within him and the movies actually try to redeem him. Some have dismissed these movies as being non-canon though there's no confirmation as such and they fit in fairly well after the end of the series. But, while they do try to redeem Masamune, because it's Masamune, these attempts contradict Masamune's character in Ex-Aid and only make him seem more hypocritical.

First off, they reveal that apparently Masamune loved his wife Sakurako, who also lost her life to the Bugster virus. Despite this, Masamune never tried to revive her after he had control of Kamen Rider Chronicle, even though he easily could have done so, and even hindered any path of reviving her with his death. If Masamune loved his wife at any point, that supposed love was gone by Zero Day. Not to mention he doesn't show any care for the still-alive members of his family in the Another Ending movies, openly calling his own son Kuroto an abomination and saying he should have never been born. (Granted, Kuroto was in the process of causing another outbreak when he said that, but that's still pretty harsh.)

After hearing of Kuroto's plans to cause another outbreak with his new game Zombie Chronicle, Masamune is shocked and outraged. Except, Masamune was literally trying to do that exact same thing in Ex-Aid, so his objection seems more about the fact that it's Kuroto who's the one doing it and not what Kuroto was doing. Though he helps the Doctor Riders against Kuroto, Masamune doesn't ever repent for his own actions and comes across more as a massive hypocrite rather than someone looking for redemption.

Ultimately, the character reveals about Masamune in Another Ending only contradict his actions in Ex-Aid and don't line up with his actual character, thus they should not be taken as an actual "redemption" of him.

Final Verdict
Pretty decisive "yes". The dude was partly based on Tenjuro Banno for Gaim's sake. He definitely deserves a spot along with the other Kamen Rider villains.