Thread:TornadoMan.EXE/@comment-1672596-20200824004738/@comment-1672596-20200824012815

TornadoMan.EXE wrote: But in the end, Pride tried to kill the only force standing in the way of Gospel. Even after KnightMan was defeated she still tried to continue the plan. A strong counter to her being anything but a villain in this scenario was her lack of any regret. She didn’t care. The only thing that stopped her was the castle’s traps backfired on her.

As for villains knowing they are villains, do note that the likes of Sigma, Copy X, Master Albert, and etc. do genuinely believe their actions are for the better of the world. Copy X was straight up crazy yet one of the last things he said was “I was supposed to be a hero.”

A strong theme in the Mega Man franchise is asking things like “which way is the right way?”, “what must be done to make progress?”, “does the ends justify the means?” And etc. Mega Man villains actually tend to have a good bit of depth to them. Sigma is a shining example. Maybe in the first game, Sigma did genuinely believe he was doing good, but the next few games, particularly X5 and arguably X4, it's extremely unlikely he even cared whether he was doing good for Reploids or, heck, doing good, period (heck, in X4 and X5, he by that point was going to blow up or at least cause severe damage to the world, most likely wiping out any and all Reploids, Maverick or otherwise, which obviously can't even REMOTELY be considered for the best of Reploids since they'd be extinct, and in X5 it was all solely to awaken Zero's true power, didn't even GIVE the pretense of wanting to HELP Reploids during that time anyways.). I'll give you Copy X and Master Albert (well, possibly regarding the latter. There's also evidence that he just had a god complex similar to Weil and especially Redips and wanted to remake the world so he could rule over it even if it's a hell world. And he certainly was perfectly willing to kill Grey and Ashe [well, sort of regarding the last bit], even when they're literally his heirs and specifically designated at least Grey to take over if he failed in any way, simply to ensure he alone was the Ultimate Mega Man and thus could remake the world.).

And while it is true that several main Mega Man villains generally had some altruistic reasons for becoming villains or doing villainous things (even Dr. Wily was established in Mega Man 11 to initially want to actually make a robot a hero), there are also plenty of villains who up and out became villains without even the slightest care about doing good as a pretense. Aside from the obvious example of Dr. Weil and Omega, there's also Prometheus and Pandora (though in their defense, they were too far gone from Albert's genuinely horrific treatment of them), Redips (clearly only desired to become a god for his own sake), Lumine (even HE admitted he was pretty much a psychopathic nutcase from the start), Gate (pretty much wanted revenge over his career being destroyed), and even Mega Man Juno (who went as far as to outright defy the Master's wish to preserve the Carbons) and Seta (all her actions were out of pure jealousy and spite towards Trigger for being Master's favorite). Also that witch Maverick from Xtreme 2 (the fact that Sigma of all people actually THANKS X and Zero for stopping her should be a big hint she was not good at all). Oh, and also Frost Walrus (pretty much psychopathic from the start, and pretty much the only Repliforce member to be a genuine Maverick) and Vile (honestly, he's pretty much the original version of Broly or Kid Buu in overall personality, if slightly more talkative). And that's just for the Classic timeline. For Battle Network, we've got Beast Man's operator (who basically is a lesser version of Dr. Weil who's more than content of showing dominance via controlling animals), the guy who ran Magnet Man, Regal, and Mr. King. Even Lord Wily skirted the edge since he was motivated more by being a sore loser over losing a contest than anything else. And I'd argue that he had even LESS of a reason to become good at the end of MMBN6 than Princess Pride did in MMBN5 (especially when his last onscreen moments clearly had him embracing his hatred to the very end. In fact, Chaud saying he all of a sudden renounced his hatred and started making amends comes across as a little bit unbelievable.). And don't get me started on Mr. Match, who was pretty much a pyromaniac (and he actually becomes good in MMBN6, despite already faking becoming good once before and actually manipulating Lan into committing cyber-arson against his dad's lab).