User blog:DeltaHorizon020/PE Proposal: Juzo Mido

Alright, time to propose one of the characters from the video games that I brought on TV Tropes and got approved at the end. The proposal will copy-paste a bit from the original proposal but with several changes as I'm the one who approved him on TV Tropes. And who is character in question? Well let's find out!

What's The Work
So, the video game in question is called Code Vein. It's basically a passion project video game created by Bandai Namco Entertainment and Shift (The studio best known on creating God Eater franchise). Anyways, basically the game is Dark Souls anime version and you'll get the picture on how it looks like. The actual story? I'll just copy-paste it from TV Tropes:

"Set in a post-apocalyptic, dystopian future where the world has been destroyed by a cataclysm of a very obscure nature, many of the surviving humans have transformed into vampires known as Revenants in order to stay alive. Among the Revenants lies a hidden society known as Vein, a group dedicated to saving what remains of society from the Lost, Revenants who have transformed into fiendish ghouls by fully giving into their bloodlust. The player takes on the role as a member of Vein exploring the ruined, Lost-populated world, with the aid of their companions."

So...Before the humanity being sealed by the Red Mist, there's actually an incident caused by an entity called QUEEN. However, there's one person who nearly responsible for the mishaps that happen in the game. Our candidate today? Say hello to Bondrew...I mean Juzo Mido everyone!

Who is He/What Has He Done
Alright, basically, Juzo Mido is a bootleg version of Bondrewd from Made In Abyss although in the story proper? Mido himself is a Researcher of the Revenants and one of the key figures of Project QUEEN. Now, long story short about Project QUEEN? It's actually a project created by both Mido and a former soldier, Gregorio Silva, to create the ultimate Revenant and remove their abnormality of tasting blood. To that end, Gregorio's daughter, Cruz Silva, participates in that experiment so that humanity would be saved.

Except...The experiment went haywire because well...It's soon revealed that Mido put her through torturous experiment which resulted on Cruz becoming an entity known as QUEEN, a destruction incarnate who is devoted to destroy everything in her path. This of course, resulted on Gregorio and other Revenants fight against the QUEEN during the Project Queenslayer and after the Queen is sealed for good, her body were split into pieces and getting fused with individuals with high affinity known as Successors.

Now, speaking of Successors. This is important to one of the story for Mido because in the past before the event known as "Great Collapse", Mido adopted several innocent orphans and it was soon revealed that he conducted several horrific experiments on them. One of the orphans being one of the main protagonist, Yakumo, and Yakumo's friend, Emily Su. Now, what happened to the orphans? They ended up getting sold into slavery and were used as Tyke Bombs for battle.

Speaking of Emily, he conduct several torturous experiments on her so that he could turn her to become the Successor of the Flame and at one point, she orders Emily to protect himself from The Lost otherwise he will dispose all of her friends who were unconscious back then and were going to be revived as Revenants.

When we first encountered Mido, he's just sadistically mocks the heroes about what happened when the heroes tamed the Successor of the Flame. (And yes, I need to note that Successors were driven insane by something known as The Relics) and then antagonizes Jack Rutherford who is Mido's partners in crime when trying to search for Successor's new vessel by saying that he turned Jack's companion, Eva Roux, into becoming a Successor just like Emily.

When we encountered Mido for the final time, he then tries to pit the heroes against one of the Revenants he experimented with and it was soon revealed that he already gained several datas from The Queen and then kills all of his henchmen to steal their relics so that he could turn Gregorio into Skull King and tried to disable the Red Mist that had been imprisoned them so that he could evolve all of the mankind and pit them against an even larger threat. Fortunately however, during the battle, Mido was killed once and for all but the damage has been done because due to Mido's final actions, Gregorio Silva now became frenzied Successor known as Skull King and he must be stopped at all costs or else all humanity is cursed to become Revenants, which are then cursed to become Lost.

Freudian Excuse/Mitigating Factors
Alright, I'm not gonna downplay this. Mido claims that all of the immoral actions that he had done is to save all of the humanity from the greater threats that lives outside the Red Mist. Except... Let me tell you that most of his rhetoric is complete bullcrap because Mido completely shows a complete callous disregard to everyone he experimented on and then there's the fact he got called out by the protagonists by saying that they will avenge the Successors that were experimented on by Mido, whose origins really demonstrated the man's cruelty. And then there's the fact that he said this quote once the protagonist called out his bullshit:

"A pity... Those who are too weak to keep up with the speed of progress do not deserve to live!"

Yea...I think in the end, Mido just cared about his twisted view of how evolution works. Nothing more, nothing less.

Heinous Standard
Now this is where it's going to get interesting. Anyways, the reason why I want to determine if the game is standalone or not is because the interesting revelations that happened in the end. If we judge the game by it's own standalone merit? I'd say Mido's obliterate the standard pretty nicely due to the horrific experiments he conduct while showing callous disregard around people he experimented on and his attempt to turn all of the humanity to evolve to suits his own whims is pretty awful on it's own.

Except, there's also this revelations about the monsters that were rampaging outside the Red Mist. You see, these monsters that appeared around the end of the game is called Aragami and his name is Dyaus Pita. Now, basically Aragami are the monsters that you have to face in God Eater franchise and as a result, many people said that Code Vein is the Stealth Sequel to God Eater.

If it's true, then this comes across as problematic for Mido to qualify because we need to compared him to villains from God Eater and I'd guarantee that Mido flunks the standard badly if we decided to tie Code Vein with God Eater because two of the villains that came from the franchise, Johannes von Schicksal and Rachel Claudius, are attempting to cause Devouring Apocalypse which would destroy humanity. Now, I'll admit that Rachel was one of the candidates that I want to propose for CM thread and yes, she's awful just like Mido with her attempt at creating Devouring Apocalypse and the experiments she conducted with the orphans? Yea...Except that she doesn't count at the end because she said that she freed herself from the control of the Restless God.

Now, I think there are some arguments to rebuff the "Code Vein is actually a stealth sequel of God Eater" debacle. link title According to one of the posts of Code Vein reddit, it is stated that the director or the producer did say they want to make it a unique IP that can stand on its own and then there's also the post via the TV Tropes thread of Code Vein that calling Code Vein a Stealth Sequel is extremely flimsy with some things that don't me properly and a completely different style of gameplay. I also watched the game cutscenes and I'm not even sure that there is even a connection towards God Eater universe at all besides the Aragami monster design that threatens the outside world of the mist.

So in the end, you're going to be the judge on this if we decided to tie Code Vein with God Eater franchise or not because I'm having a headache to decide to judge if Code Vein should be judge in it's own self-contained universe or not.

Final Verdict
Honestly, I would love to keep this Bondrewd impostor and he would count easily if we judge the game in standalone merit. But given that some of the examples on Code Vein page in TV Tropes said that the game is a Stealth Sequel of God Eater? This kind of skews the heinous standard a bit for Mido to qualify as one. If you decided we should tie in the game with God Eater or judge it with standalone heinous standard, I'll let you guys decide on this one.