Sasuke is less sympathetic because he is a whiny ***** whose character development is hackneyed and stupid, and Azula's genocide is more reasonable. More horrible sure, but it makes sense why she suggested it.
Because she is insane. Burning the ground of an entire continent isn't even helpful. Only someone who was insane would do that. Sure, it kinda makes sense since she is insane but that doesn't make her sympathetic.
What does? Well, she was "raised" to be a psycho though that was probably more just Ozai nudging her in that direction and gleefully going that way. She thought her mother hated her but deep down knew that wasn't true. She lost her two minions but she treated them like shit anyway so I'm more happy for them than sad for her. And her dad made her a person who had authority second only to his(really, she was already this) and somehow this more than anything else set her down the crazy road.
Sasuke's track record makes this seem absolutely pathetic.
Zuko: The Earth Kingdom's people are strong and brave. They will never give up.
Azula: Oh, we should just kill them then.
That makes perfect sense, albeit it also makes her a sociopath.
Speculation implicitly contradicted by the series. Azula clearly, near the end of the series, begins to show guilt over the monster she was molded into, and regret over how (In her mind) it made her mother despise her.
It is a comparison between subconscious thoughts and that of an unstable fourteen year old girl. Subconsciously she knew Ursa loved her, but Azula couldn't accept that, probably because she couldn't bring herself to accept that someone could legitimately love someone like her.
You are unable to comprehend that a character can get what they deserve yet still be sympathetic and tragic (The closest Naruto equivelant is probably Danzo... But then you're the guy who thinks he is a complete monster).
Also Azula's treatment of her friends, Ty Lee in particular, is the kindest she has ever been in the series. Also TyZula is hot.
[quoe]And her dad made her a person who had authority second only to his(really, she was already this) and somehow this more than anything else set her down the crazy road.[/quote]
The implication is that he is giving her a position he is about to render meaningless five seconds later because he is discarding her as a tool that has no purpose. It was another form of betrayal, and affirmation of her (correct) belief that her father never truly cared about her.
Sasuke's life has been more traumatic, but his butthurt and whiny handling of his situation as well as inferior writing make him the less sympathetic character.
Azula actually admitted to not being perfect to Ty Lee and asked her for advice.
She might as well have sucked her dick.
Less crass version: Azula clearly did care about her friends and although she treated them somewhat poorly and was kind of a huge dick this is entirely to do with her 'Trust is for fools! Fear is the only reliable way.' schtick thats tied into her paranoia and self-image.
Also you are being massively unfair here. Azula is a fricking villian, of course she is evil. That doesn't exclude her from being sympathetic or understandable any more than it does any of the countless sympathtic villians in fiction.
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Last edited by Nephthys on Apr 15th, 2012 at 08:15 AM
Burning an entire continent to the ground does not make sense. It really serves no purpose. Sure it gets rid of the enemies but it gets rid of the land too. Least for a while.
And despite her guilt did jack shit about any of it. She didn't try to change into a nicer person. She just kept acting cold as usual.
Or it's just a rationalization on her part and she wants something to blame, i.e mom.
He is giving her a position of power second only to him. It was literally what she was since the beginning. She'll be serving under him just like she was. She just has a new title.
So let me get this straight....
Azula feeling slight guilt over her own actions(not doing jack shit to make herself better just feeling guilty) makes her more sympathetic than the guy who has literally been tortured by what can only be considered divine intervention, to the point where he has gone from cute lovable kid to a raging psycho that has just stopped caring about anything.
The tragedy of Sasuke's character is his fall from grace and how circumstances have literally put him on a path of pure destruction. Worst of all, he has just come to the point of accepting it. He knows it's not going to make him happy, he just does it because what's the point? Every single time he has thought he found a kind of happiness, SOMETHING always gets in the way. He strikes me as a character who has just flat out given up.
I really don't think I am. I like sympathetic villains. Azula just really isn't one for me. She had parent issues but other than that was the most pampered person in the world and could literally get away with murder. Hell, if the Fire Nation had won she would have gone down in history as the princess who took down Ba Sing-Se single handily. She is a psycho, was one since she was little, and seemed to enjoy it until she realized that being a psycho really can make people turn on you, which was the case. Like I said, she has made her bed and can lie in it for all I care.
I like characters who are victims of circumstances. Light Yagami would have become a brilliant and righteous detective had he never laid eyes on the Death Note, though admittedly he probably had psychological issues before hand. He kept them in check though. Lelouch was born into a family of cut throats but didn't really seem to start going for blood until his mother was killed, his sister was screwed up, and his dad abandoned him. Even then, he showed himself to be a far better person that Azula ever could be. And yes, even Sasuke showed he was a better person than Azula, before the timeskip at least, and arguably afterwards since he had a code against wasteful killing. I mean now, yeah they're about even, though Sasuke may be worse considering he has literally gone so crazy that nothing seems to even affect him anymore.
And here I think it just comes down to a matter of taste. You clearly just weren't affected by the writing and sympathetic scenes that were shown in the Sozen's Comet episodes like we were. Which is fine, you're allowed to have different tastes. But I still do think that you're being unfair to her.
And Azula could have been a noble princess if her mother had stuck around to influence her better or if her father wasn't such a sociopath. And your objection to Azula being pampered could just as much apply to Light as her.
Lelouch is an anti-hero protagonist rather than the villian, so of course he is more moral than her.
When has Azula killed anyone wastefully at all? She tried to kill Aang because duh he's the Avatar, but other than that she's only ever seriously tried to kill Mai (maybe) when she betrayed her. She even says she'll get Zuko medical attention after she zaps him in the last fight (perhaps flippantly). You could argue about the Sozen's Comet plan but Zuko had just said that the Earth Kingdom would never give up.
Actually in these recent chapters with Itachi, Sasuke isn't acting like a crazed lunatic anymore. I really hate that, how he can just flip the **** out and go batshit after the Bee fight for no reason and then just become sane now, again for no reason.
Nah man. I laugh when she breathes fire at the end. It amuses me.
Really I doubt that. This is the girl who bullied her friends and gleefully told her brother that their dad was going to kill them. There is only so much I'm willing to believe can be blamed on Ozai. And Light was pampered, though what makes him sympathetic is not really related to his home life like the case with Azula, so it's not as big a deal.
He is still someone that I would say did bad things that got what he deserved. He would agree.
"Maybe you should worry less about the tides, who've already made up their mind about killing you, and worry more about me, who's still mulling it over." Do I think she would kill the guy? If he made her mad enough. She is like Sasuke I guess: Both try to kill good guys but just suck at it I guess. Though the excuse that the Earth Kingdom would never give up doesn't call for a razing of the entire continent.
Well I guess it depends on how you look at it. Sasuke could have become so mentally unstable that he will often change his mood. I think what happened with the Bee fight was that Sasuke realized he was growing closer to Taka before reasoning that there really isn't any point in trying to be happy with team members after the fight. This goes along thematically with the whole "My eyes don't see light anymore" thing. He got to a point where he stopped caring. But then he now has to deal with Itachi being alive so he has some questions, which is actually kinda sad really. His treatment of Kabuto makes sense regardless of Sasuke's mental stability.
Which makes her a bully and a jerk, not a monster. Plus she was 9 at the time, kids can be assholes at that age because they just don't understand the consequences of their attitude. You aren't just born evil, theres a good chance she could shape up as she grows up. I'm sure you know someone who was an ******* at that age who grew into a good person. I know I was and I feel that I am. But I guess we'll never know with Azula.
I wouldn't. Lelouch deserved better than that.
Firstly the guy was obviously a moron who needed to learn to just stfu and follow orders seeing as they both did successfully dock and he ****ed up her plan by opening his mouth. Secondly we don't know what she would have done, but Azula hasn't ever killed a single person in the show, even enemies like the Kyoshi Warriors and Long Feng, or traitors like Iroh and Mai/Ty Lee, all of which she took down non-lethally and didn't execute them when they were at her mercy. The Fire Nation in general doesn't execute people wastefully judging by the captured Earthbenders, Waterbenders and Black Sun army.
She was obviously just intimidating him anyway, tying back (again) to her 'Fear is the only way' thing.
Its extreme (because shes a villian) but its understandable why she would suggest it. They have been fighting the Earth Kingdom for 100 years afterall and were experiencing widespread rebellions in the areas they controlled. As Zuko pointed out the Earth Kingdom wouldn't ever stop resisting them. At that point its believable that they would just say '**** it'.
Basically Azula made an (arguably) practical suggestion for the betterment of her country on how to deal with a war and rebellion, whereas by your own admission Sasuke is just a mad dog who's going to keep killing because he's insane.
I know which I see as more reasonable.
I think you're reaching here. None of this is suggested in the manga to my knowledge. Sasuke goes from saving Karin to trying to kill her with little reason for his suddenly leap off the slippery slope as far as I can recall.
Though I feel the need to step back and say that I don't think Azula is supposed to be a massively sympathetic character like perhaps the impression I'm giving off suggests I do. I think that we're supposed to be able to feel pity for her and understand why she became like she is, but in the end she isn't Zuko and she isn't going to Heel-Face Turn without serious help. I think she is a sympathetic villain with strong characterisation on par with the rest of the Avatar cast, except that her mental breakdown was extremely well done, especially for a kids show.
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Last edited by Nephthys on Apr 15th, 2012 at 10:54 PM
"To all visitors from Transylvania looking for the head of Voivode Dracula: Yes, we have it. Yes, he's dead. No, you cannot see it. No, he will not return and invade you again. It has been over thirty years, please stop pestering us."
It serves the purpose of destroying their enemies in one fell swoop. And I doubt every resource of the Earth Kingdom would have been destroyed.
She didn't do anything about it in a span of two days because Avatar's characterization is much stronger than Naruto's, where you get jackasses like Sasuke changing personality depending on the time of day.
She blamed her mother for seeming to hate her as a monster (She didn't, obviously). She never was shown to blame her for her own sociopathy, and never rationalised that on-screen.
You find Light more sympathetic than Azula?
Only, after the betrayal of the closest things she had to loved ones, she wanted/needed someone to care about her, and in her mind (And she was right about this) Ozai's actions showed he didn't care at all about her as a person.
Yes.
No the tragedy of Sasuke's character is that his development is so inconsistent and unbelievable that it ruins any chance for sympathy. I am seriously starting to think the dude might have ****ing Dissociative Identity Disorder. Which would go a long way in actually making him sympathetic.
Bahahaha irony.
Word of Mike and Brian is that Azula is not naturally evil or a sociopath, and in time could change to be a better person.
Which means that it was indeed Ozai who caused her sociopathy.
Yep. Ozai was the cause of every single problem in Azula. Without him she'd shit rainbows. I'll stick to the series that can actually show me the villain being good and a victim(I really question how much of a victim she is) of circumstance rather than telling me about it. I'm not going to feel sympathetic for Azula just because apparently she had the potential to be better. If she does, great for her. If she doesn't, all the better for the rest of the world.
A series can be subtle enough to get its point across without having to make it explicit. Avatar did this with Azula, implying that Ozai was the cause of her super sociopathic silliness.
Whereas Light... Is just a total shitbag who becomes a megolamaniac when given the power to make it come true.
Or it just doesn't provide enough and we have to be told that "Yes she would have been a good person if not for dear old dad." Keep in mind, being explicit enough that people can actually seetheeffect of the circumstances on the characters is kind of a good thing. I'd certainly rather have it that Azula's "I'm a bit of a *****, maybe I should change...moment's gone!"
And keep in mind the argument of "If X had been loved by their parents, they might not have turned out so bad" was something that was almost said word by word about this fine piece of work in one of the books but I've never heard of him being considered sympathetic or tragic. Cause he's really not. I don't feel sorry for him, he's evil. I don't feel sorry for Azula, she's a psycho.
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Apr 15th, 2012 06:53 AM
