I’m fully expecting that most people won’t care about this
article, but since February 20
th is my birthday, I figured this
would be a good time to just do something personal. So, this purely personal
piece will be talking about some of my favorite characters from large media
publishers and why I like them and their franchises so much. I may do a later
piece talking about my characters from smaller publishers depending on how I
feel. (
It’s a personal article so I can say that here.)
Figuring out who your favorite characters are can be a
loaded question for someone with a lot of interests spread across media, so I’ll
be laying down a few rules for this. This list will consider not just the
character or the series that they’re from, but also the publisher as a whole. Regarding
the characters, only one character per publisher and generic creature species aren’t
the same as actual characters, and as such, don’t count for this list, unless
it’s a character within the species. Regarding the companies, they need to have
made or currently own at least three series that I am interested in to make
this list. Also, I won’t count subdivisions of the company as separate unless a
certain studio within the company is significant enough, with enough of its own
distinct franchises to set it apart from the main company. (You’ll see what
soon enough.)
So, here are my Top 10 Favorite Characters from Big Media
Publishers.
-=-
10. Lucio Correia dos Santos (Overwatch –
Activision-Blizzard)
Honestly, if Activision and Blizzard didn’t merge into one
company, I don’t know if I’d be talking about Blizzard in this list today. Overwatch
is really the only Blizzard game I’ve played a significant amount. Apart from
that, Blizzard hasn’t had much of an impact on me. I only ever played a little
bit of Diablo III, World of Warcraft, and Heroes of the Storm, and none of
those kept my attention. I haven’t touched any of their other games either,
like Starcraft or Hearthstone. After they merged with Activision, they got a
bit of a signal boost for me from franchises that are ever present whether you
engage with them or not like Call of Duty or series I actually pay attention to
like Crash or Spyro.
Overwatch though was the real massive hit for me. I found
the characters and the world so engaging, creative, and interesting. Then, when
I played it, the gameplay was quick, snappy, and varied. I was never bored
playing in my matches and the characters even gave me a bunch of inspiration
for some of my own ideas.
And of the different characters in Overwatch, the one that
stood out to me the most was the cast’s music meister, Lucio. In the world of
Overwatch, he’s a world-famous Brazilian electronic DJ who uses a sound gun and
hard-light skates to fight against oppressive corporations and killer robots,
he’s revered as a local hero in the story, and in the game, his music is able
to speed up his teammates or restore their health depending on which song is
playing. He’s like a futuristic version of an RPG bard. His personality is
great too; his positive attitude and determination to see things through to the
end can really motivate a team to keep going. (Just move to the beat!)
-=-
9. Johnny Cage (Mortal Kombat – Warner Bros.)
If it weren’t for WB buying Midway, I’d probably be talking
about a different character in this slot. Warner Bros. has made a lot of good
movies and TV series over the years and some of their old Kids WB series especially
have been really stand-out and imaginative to me, but when WB bought Midway,
they acquired a game series that had an even bigger impact on me.
I’m a big fan when it comes to fighting games and Mortal
Kombat has been one of my long-time favorites. Seeing all the characters do so
many crazy moves was a big thing for me and when you get pieces of personality
and backstory from the characters as they fight, even better.
There are several Mortal Kombat characters that I like, but
after giving it some thought, Johnny Cage is the one that stands out to me the
most. When you think about the cast, it has supernatural ninjas, fiery martial
artists, celestial beings of the elements, highly-trained military personnel, and
ferocious monsters. Then, you get a Hollywood movie star wearing sunglasses and
sneakers, with his name tattooed across his chest (in the later games anyway),
and he’s surprisingly able to keep up with everyone. He doesn’t fit in, yet at
the same time, he fits perfectly. His obnoxious personality and fighting style get
on the nerves of just about every other character, but despite that, the other
heroes keep him around, because they know that he actually can fight as well as
he says.
It’s not bragging if you can back it up.
He also has one of the best story arcs in the entire series.
In the first timeline before WB bought Midway, he was treated as a throwaway
joke character who kept getting killed off and brought back. From the MK9
reboot onward however, when the games became more cinematic with their story
modes, Johnny got a lot more development, managing to survive a lot of the
dangers of the series, become a less annoying, more mature person, and
eventually marrying and having a daughter who would go on to follow in her
parents’ footsteps. The guy’s come a long way.
-=-
8. Alan Gado (Bloody Roar – Konami)
I feel bad for anyone who’s a big fan of franchises owned by
Konami. When they decided to leave the gaming industry in favor of gambling machines
(apart from the occasional phoned-in release that is), they took with them a
lot of beloved franchises. Even when they decide to do something with their stable
of series (
even if it’s just a pachinko or slot machine), it’s more likely to
be one of the big-ticket ones like Metal Gear, Castlevania, Silent Hill, or if
they’re feeling nostalgic, Bomberman or Contra. If it’s something more obscure,
it’s as good as dead.
Which, to me, means rest in peace Bloody Roar.
To those unfamiliar with this series, Bloody Roar is a 3D
fighting game similar to Tekken, but with the added twist that all the
characters can transform into half-animal Beast forms in the middle of a match,
giving them a completely different set of moves. The story deals with the
people with these abilities, called zoanthropes, trying to achieve equality in
a society that fears them as monsters while an evil corporation seeks to
exploit them. The cast includes a werewolf as the Ryu of the game before diving
into different sections of the animal kingdom for the rest of the roster,
including jungle cats, birds, reptiles, rodents, insects, a gorilla, a fox, and
even a couple of monsters just to mix things up.
It’s basically X-Men but replace “mutants” with
“were-creatures”.
My favorite of this zoo crew is the Lion, Alan Gado. First
of all, lions are just cool. Second, he was always one of my best characters in
the game. He’s one of those characters that can move fast and hit hard,
especially when transformed and he’s slashing with his claws so much, you’d
wonder if he mistook the opponent for a gazelle. Finally, he has an epic
backstory. He’s a former mercenary and military strategist who was injured
during a mission and, afterwards, went out to seek revenge against the people who
attacked him and killed his best friend. After that, he becomes a commissioner
for the United Nations trying to broker peace between humans and zoanthropes. He
can be a fierce warrior or a peaceful negotiator depending on what is needed and he seems to fit either role well.
Talk about a dynamic character.
-=-
7. Bill Cipher (Gravity Falls – Disney)
You’d be hard pressed to find a person today who hasn’t seen
at least some Disney content. One of the oldest media companies to still
operate today, Disney has a humungous catalogue of TV and film franchises to
dish out to viewers, and that’s not even counting the ones they’ve acquired
from other companies. With so many series, they have given new life to older
stories and created a lot of memorable heroes, sidekicks, romances, and
villains.
It’s in that last one that we find the character for this
entry.
A long-lived being from another dimension with a look
reminiscent of the Eye of Providence, Bill Cipher is an evil and chaotic
reality warper whose main goal seems to be to spread his chaos across all of
creation and revel in how little sense such a multiverse would make. It is
pointed out throughout the series how much of a threat he is; he is a clever
manipulator, can possess people, alter an individual’s mind, and affect a
person’s perception of reality, and that’s all before he manifests in the
physical world. When that happens, his power is basically limitless. Unless you
take specific precautions, he can do anything he wants to you and the
environment around you. Don’t expect mercy either because he has no empathy for
anything other than himself.
All this and the people we’re expected to see stop him are a
pre-teen mystery solver, his hyperactive twin sister, and their con artist
uncle?
Good luck, guys. You’re gonna need it.
-=-
6. Beast (X-Men – Marvel)
This is what I meant when I was talking earlier about
subdivisions within companies. Even though Marvel is technically part of Disney
now, they have enough of their own distinct properties that they can
technically count as their own thing, and so many of their franchises have
caught my attention over the years. These series have included Iron Man, The
Avengers, The Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, and especially X-Men. The idea of a
world filled with colorful characters where someone could just wake up one day and
suddenly have superpowers or find some piece of alien technology or whatever
really sparks the imagination, whether they use it to help the greater good or
help themselves.
A lot of those points relate to my previously mentioned favorite
Marvel series, X-Men. There are a lot of characters to love here with way too
many heavy hitters to list in a small section of an article. Even some of the
lesser-known or lamer characters have their own charm to them. (Any Dazzler or
Jubilee fans out there?) But you know your favorite X-Man when you see them and
for me, that one is Hank McCoy, The Beast.
What I like the most about Beast is the big contrast going
on with his character. In early depictions, when he was still human-looking,
even then, he had a sort-of gorilla-ish look to him with his big muscles and
enormous hands and feet. His early comic costume even left him barefoot because
of how dexterous he was with them. However, he was also a brilliant scientist,
knowledgeable in different fields, and was one of the smartest guys on the
team.
Then, he took a serum he created that he thought would
suppress his mutant genes and make him more human, but it wound up doing the
exact opposite. He grew claws, fangs, blue fur; anything that would let him
pass for human gets thrown out the window. In battles with villains after this
change, watching him fight was like watching an animal pounce on its prey. It
was easier to notice how strong and agile he was now that he was literally a
beast. Some of his comic stories even dove into how he feels about this change
and struggles with coming to terms with the new him. But despite this, he’s
still the brilliant mind, the inventive scientist, one of the X-Men’s go-to guys
when a problem needs serious brainpower. He’s smart but strong, savage but
calm, an animal on the outside but a person on the inside.
-=-
5. Static (Static Shock – DC)
From one of the major comic publishers to another, we now
switch over to DC. Along with Marvel, DC was one of the biggest providers for
imaginative action series for me growing up, from individual heroes fighting
their rogues’ galleries like Batman and Superman to the huge team ups like
Justice League and Teen Titans. To me, comparing Marvel to DC was like
comparing Coke to Pepsi. They both offered the same kinds of worlds and
characters, but one just had a slightly different vibe from the other.
Of the different flavors of hero available from DC, my
favorite is one of their lesser-known heroes, though you wouldn’t think so if
you remember when the show was a big hit. I’m referring to Vergil Hawkins,
a.k.a. Static. Looking at the world, or more accurately, the city that the
story takes place in, Dakota City is like a smaller scale version of the world
of X-Men. After the Big Bang, where who knows how many people breathed in some
special chemical gas as a result of police trying to stop a huge gang fight, people
all over the city manifest strange new powers or mutations, and not all of them
come in at the same time. In one episode of the show, someone turns into a big,
purple werewolf in the middle of a music store, in broad daylight, surrounded
by lots of people. In another, a bunch of people are getting on a bus when one
of them suddenly turns into a being of pure energy. It’s the kind of place
where anything can and does happen.
That brings us to Static himself. He starts off as a regular
high school nerd until the night of the Big Bang, where he gains electromagnetic
powers, like if Magneto was a young black guy. He’s got no problem making quips
and jokes in the middle of a situation and in his normal life, he deals with a
lot of problems that normal teenagers his age deal with. He’s like Spider-Man
with a different power-set. To someone like me, the world around Static showed
that anything can happen while Static himself showed that anyone can be a hero.
-=-
4. Usopp (One Piece – Shonen Jump)
The only anime and manga producer to make the top ten and
it’s arguably the biggest. Shonen Jump really knows how to nail it with
imaginative, original worlds and crazy yet complex characters, from critically
acclaimed series like Death Note and JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure to huge fan
favorites like Naruto and Dragon Ball. They’re so major and influential that a
lot of their stuff is practically recommended, maybe even required, viewing for
budding anime fans. For me personally, my top series from them is one of their
longest-running series, the action-packed pirate adventure, One Piece.
I wouldn’t say One Piece is my number one anime or manga, but it’s
definitely in my top five. The locations have as much character as the actual
characters, the fights are huge spectacles, the humor is actually pretty good
at times, and at any moment, anyone can pull out some crazy superpower, strong
weapon, or fighting style and it fits in perfectly. It looks like nothing is
too crazy for the world of One Piece, except maybe aliens and giant robots. And even then, it’s
only a maybe.
This seems like a world where even if you’re not one of the
main characters, you still have a chance to see some crazy adventure thrown
your way and you can reasonably figure out how to power through it. To me, no
one embodies this better than one of the main characters, Usopp. He started the
series out as just a cowardly, lying trickster and while he still is that
through the rest of the series, if anything, he’s figured out how to use that
to his advantage. He’s fought against powerful characters and managed to defeat
them not by overpowering them, but by outsmarting them. In a fight against one
particular character, he beat them by scaring them into unconsciousness,
tricking them into thinking that he was about to hit them with a super-heavy
hammer and kill them when, in reality, the hammer was just an inflatable toy.
He weaponized trolling. You stand no chance.
That’s not to say he can’t fight for real. Despite being probably the physically weakest of the Straw Hat Pirates, what he lacks in strength, he
makes up for in smarts. He is a gadgeteer who makes a bunch of different items
to use in combat, even creating the main weapon for fellow Straw Hat pirate
Nami. He is also a skilled marksman, who can accurately hit targets using
anything from slingshots to cannons. (Did I mention he’s the gunner for the
Straw Hat crew?)
This guy is proof that, if you’re clever and careful enough,
anyone can make it in such a crazy world.
-=-
3. Futaba Sakura (Persona – Sega/Atlus)
Despite the struggles they’ve gone through in the current
generation, Sega has made a lot of games over the years that have grabbed my
attention. Some are long-running series that are still somewhat relevant today
while other series I and several others are still waiting for them to continue.
(Still waiting on the next Jet Set Radio, Sega.) This attachment has grown
since their acquisition of RPG maker Atlus and their franchises including Shin
Megami Tensei and its spin-offs, including Devil Survivor, Demi-Kids, and of
course, Persona.
Admittedly, I’m a newcomer to the Persona series. Persona 5
is the only game so far that I’ve actually played, while I’ve only read or
watched videos about the other games in the series. That said, Persona 5 was a
massive attention grabber. The story was expansive, complex, and imaginative,
and the same could be said about the characters, from the villains and the side
characters to especially the heroes.
Two characters especially stood out to me from this game to
stand over the others from both Sega and Atlus, Ryuji Sakamoto and Futaba
Sakura. While I like how Ryuji’s story played out, Futaba beat him out by just
a little bit. Within the Phantom Thieves of Hearts, she’s the group’s hacker
and cyberspace expert and this can be seen in both her civilian clothes (where
she has a kind of nerd/punk vibe to her) and her Phantom Thief costume (which
puts her in a Tron-style bodysuit with a mask that looks like a VR headset).
While she isn’t one of the frontline combatants, she is basically the group’s
mission control, providing support and buffs to the group through her Persona,
Necronomicon.
Her backstory also struck a few personal chords with me.
After suffering through past trauma, she wound up becoming a shut-in, closing
herself off in her bedroom. The only solace she found was in exploring the
Internet and making more use of her computer skills. After an intervention from
some loved ones, she slowly starts to open up again and realize the world isn’t
as harsh as she thought it was. Without getting too specific, I went through
something similar to what I just described. Thankfully, it wasn’t anything as
harsh as what she went through, but still, I had a bad time in my life where I
basically spent all my time in the house because I didn’t trust the outside world
anymore. Fortunately, I’ve gotten over it, but still, that extra layer is what
really makes Futaba appeal to me more.
I feel for ya, girl. Believe me.
-=-
2. Jon Talbain (Darkstalkers – Capcom)
Yet another video game company with several franchises that
have caught my interest over the years, Capcom has given a laundry list of hits,
most notably among their fighting games, but in other genres as well. I have so
many favorites with this company, I could probably make a list of just my
favorite Capcom games or Capcom characters. But for now, let’s just focus on my
biggest one from one of my favorite franchises, a little fighting game series
called Darkstalkers.
After a semi-successful run in the 1990s, the monster and
horror focused fighting game Darkstalkers was mostly put on the backburner by
Capcom. They tried to gauge interest in the franchise a few years back with
Darkstalkers Resurrection and last time I checked, it sold well, but not well
enough according to Capcom’s standards. So, aside from one, two, or maybe three
other characters from the franchise popping up in a crossover here and there, they’ve
had no interest in even looking at the series. Even then with those crossovers,
there have been characters that have just been ignored for the popular faces.
It’s usually Morrigan as the main character with either Felicia, Hsien-Ko, or
Demitri, while others, most notably the more monstrous guys have been left in
the dust.
Who else wants a certain wolfman to make a comeback?
Jon Talbain is several levels of cool. He’s a werewolf
trained in the art of kung-fu who can attack with swift and strong punches,
kicks, and nunchuck swings as effectively as claws or fangs and that training
is what centers his mind enough that he can control the monster within and not go
berserk when when he goes beast. Gameplay-wise, he’s a fast fighter, able to
zip across the ground quickly to dish out the hits. Like the Street Fighter
characters, he can also deliver ki-empowered strikes with his special moves
like his Ki-enhanced flip kick, the Climb Laser, his ki-aura creating tackle,
the Beast Cannon, or his strongest attack, the Dragon Cannon, which can summon
a spirit dragon blast for massive damage to the opponent.
Despite his monstrous appearance, he is also one of the few
outright heroic characters in the setting. Jon only wants to be able to live in
peace and control his inner monster so that he won’t attack innocent people,
but events conspired to bring him to fight against beings threatening the
safety of the world and using his skills to fight for humans and monsters
alike. For all of these reasons, I’m glad to main Jon Talbain in all the
Darkstalkers games and he’ll probably continue to be my main if Capcom ever
makes Darkstalkers 4.
Please Capcom? Please?
-=-
1. Sir Aaron’s Lucario (Pokemon – Nintendo)
I know what some of you are thinking. “But this is a movie
character! He wasn’t in the games!” That doesn’t matter. It’s still Pokemon and
it’s still Nintendo, so it still counts.
Nintendo has been a large part of my life for several years.
From classics like Super Mario and The Legend of Zelda to more recent hits like
Splatoon and ARMS, Nintendo’s software and hardware have done a lot to shape me
as a creator and as a person. This is another case where I could fill a list
with just games and characters from this one company, but we’ll just focus on
the top one here, and of all of Nintendo’s franchises, Pokemon is the one that
had the most impact on me.
I’ve been a huge fan of the games, the show, the few comics
that have come out, and lots of other things associated with the franchise
since it came to America. Even now, it still plays a big influence in how I
create my own stories. With as big of a franchise as Pokemon is, with hundreds
of creatures and countless important human characters, picking just one
favorite out of a crowd this big should be an enormous crowd. If we were just
talking about Pokemon species, someone completely different would be in this
spot. (Zoroark is criminally underrated IMO.) But since we’re talking about
characters, I have someone else in mind.
Yes, it’s the character that created a thousand furries.
Appearing in the anime movie Pokemon: Lucario and the
Mystery of Mew, Sir Aaron’s Lucario is the character that cemented the species
status as Pokemon mainstays. He showed just what these jackal creatures are
capable of; aura sensing, strong combat skills, telepathy in some rare cases,
and its powerful signature move, the Aura Sphere. Shown with these and more
abilities, this black and blue bipedal canine can manipulate its inner aura
energy and hone its fighting skills to be an effective force on the battlefield,
a force strengthened in later generations with its ability to mega-evolve into
a more powerful form.
Moving back from the species to the character himself, Sir
Aaron’s Lucario carries on the heroic spirit from his old trainer. Even after
believing he was betrayed by him, he still wished to do good by the humans of
the modern age he now finds himself in. From large moments like fighting off the
three Regis to keep Ash and company safe to the small moments like learning he
has a fondness for chocolate, Lucario does a lot to get us attached to him,
which makes his departure at the end of the movie a sad thing to see. (No
further elaboration due to spoilers.)
=
What did you think of this list? Who are your favorite
characters from these or other large companies? (Does anyone know where I can
find a good replacement series for Bloody Roar?) Make your voice heard in the
comments below.
Thanks for coming!
