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thrudgelmir2333 · 1 year ago

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About Phoenix Ikki

This post is partially copied from a response of mine on Reddit, but I thought I'd expand on it here on Tumblr, where I can structure my ideas better. There's some thoughts I've had about the character of Phoenix Ikki for a while that I wanted to get out there. If you ask around the Saint Seiya fan community which character is their favorite, there's a relatively solid chance they're going to answer 'Phoenix Ikki'. In fact, you might even get told Ikki 'inspired' a lot of Saint Seiya fans. He's one of those shounen symbols of 'badassary' and 'uncompromising attitudes', like Takamura from Hajime no Ippo, but also of emotional distance, like Itachi from Naruto. In a lot of ways, if you grew up with Saint Seiya characters, there's a powerful possibility you looked forward to seeing Ikki show up and beat the crap out of some villain for hurting Shun, his little brother. It was an effect intensified by how much Ikki was usually withheld from the story. The absence of Ikki in a lot of ways made you want to crave this supposed member of the protagonists to show up.

Shun himself reinforces this interest, being adoring and forgiving of Ikki and his distance in every instance. This means all the reinforcement you get as a reader/audience is that Ikki is someone you're supposed to admire, to look forward to showing up, to be an example of how 'brutal and badass but also protective' a Saint could be.

I'd like to offer an alternative point of view on all this. I think Ikki is, well, actually a bad character. I also think that his absence had more to do with that poverty of personality to his character than any kind of perceived 'coolness' to him.

Maybe I'm the one off here. Maybe I just don't identify anymore with this sort of character. If you wanna conclude that from my post, that's fair. But I wanted to ask, though, "Isn't it about time we acknowledge Ikki is... kind of a bad character? And a terrible role model for young boys? And probably a sign of things that were to come in anime fandoms, even in the early 90s?"

Pictured above; Phoenix Ikki, deeply contemplating how little effort he has to put into the story

First, let's talk some technicalities.

This is where you'll see most of what I wrote on Reddit.

First off, I'd like to establish that I think Phoenix Ikki, in technical terms, is NOT the worst Bronze Saint, but he's definitely the worst after Seiya. And also that the way some of the other Bronze Saints, mainly Shiryu, outshine Ikki as quality characters should really expose how poorly written Ikki is to more people.

People rightfully talk about how Seiya's character stopped growing after a certain early point in the story. There's no denying that. Ikki, however, as a character, doesn't trail far much behind Seiya in my opinion. This is such to the point that I got a theory that maybe somewhere in Kurumada's mind he intended to kill him off after the Black Saint Arc, or ideally against Shaka.

I believe this because all of Ikki's involvements in the story past his battle with Shaka (and perhaps some of them during the Silver Saint Arc itself) have been needless interventions that either only reinforce how his character hasn't changed from his Black Saint days or steal the spotlight away from other characters, usually Shun.

Before we continue, another important technical note, this time on action, and this one goes especially to those concerned about how can such a strong character like Ikki be 'needless'. One important thing to retain here is that action can be written in a lot of ways, which is to say SCALING OF FICTIONAL CHARACTER IS A FABRICATION YOU DERIVE FROM HOW THINGS ARE ALREADY WRITTEN and not some kind of result from a scientific analysis of inalterable story facts.

So its not that Shun needs Ikki to save him, but rather that a choice was made by a human being for Shun to be written that he needs Ikki to save him. He could have been written, instead, to do it on his own, and even then something ridiculous like winning the Japanese lottery, just to add to the triumph of, idk, beating Capella.

Sorry for the earlier caps, I just always feel I have to remind people of that important fact whenever discussing action, become some people think that the usefulness of a character is derived from fights they win. Like they're real life wrestling competitors or something. The reality is, Ikki interferes in the events he does because he's written as such and he gets the results he does because, likewise, he's also written as such. They are choices by Kurumada.

And the reality of those choices is that they are open to discussion on weather or not they caused more harm than good to the plot and its remaining characters. This goes beyond the mere antipathy aspect in Ikki; the character is flat in a CREATIVE sense, being what the author of Rurouni Kenshin called "a joker card".

This means a character designed to counter the villain's respective 'joker'. AKA, Ikki exists to not to advance the plot in important ways (slaying main villains, help friends overcome trials, add to the story message) but to occasionally show off during an episode or two to deliver the audience the red meat of a high-octane action scene against a giant ogre or something.

What does Ikki actually DO in the story?

To understand the reason why I call Ikki a 'joker card', it is important to put his character's role in review. If you do, you'll find that most of his interventions in the story don't contribute to the plot's overall progression or the development of any of the characters, including himself.

So, just to quickly sum up his role; in Sanctuary Arc, after 'sacrificing himself to defeat Shaka' (which is where Ikki's character should have come to and end) he battles Saga only to stall him so that Seiya, a worse character, can reach Athena's Statue. This is something that can easily be written around to bolster Seiya instead, or have the lesser Bronze Saint character group that had just rejoined the story take on (instead of sitting back 'guarding Saori'). Ikki then contributes to a combination attack against Saga, but its mostly done by lending his Cosmos to Seiya, which means in terms of a physical measurable character choice, it's too abstract a gesture to feel emotionally impactful.

Yes, that's all he does in Sanctuary after Shaka. He then fucks off cause he's too cool to hang with his little brother and his friends. Moving on.

He comes back in Poseidon to show off to Caça, saving Shun, Hyoga and Seiya's life from him. The battle climaxes with Ikki defeating Caça but declaring that "Caça would have won if he had used an illusion of Esmeralda instead". It sounds touching, until you realise that it shows how Ikki is STILL not over Esmeralda, this despite his redemption arc. This is because, without that permanent grief, Ikki has no good reason to justify being away from everyone else other than just that he's an anti-social douchebag. Then Ikki, again, contributes nothing to the battle with Kanon and Poseidon that Shun couldn't have been written to do on his own. All of his involvements are in Shun's presence and taking away opportunities from the story to write Shun heroically.

And then Ikki fucks off again after posing for the arc ending picture.

Notice how, once again, Ikki's appearance is entirely predicated on taking action away from the main characters against a villain written to be particularly dangerous. Caça and Kanon act as the Poseidon Arc's joker cards; characters designed to give the cast a big giant obstacle to look cool overcoming, except it's really all fed to Ikki instead, who looks cool doing it but otherwise does nothing in the plot.

Finally, he stays away from Hades for the most part, thankfully, only to then show up to get the story rid of Aiacos (which was written to the point of being a non-character at the time, just a big Judge Joker) and have a fruitless battle against a Hades-Possessed Shun that ONCE AGAIN is all about drawing tears from the audience about how Ikki can't get over himself and do his job.

It's Saori, the character EVERYONE calls useless, that actually saves Shun, not Ikki. If Saori is a "useless", like everyone always says, what does this make of Ikki?

Oh, and then Ikki returns in Elysium for one final coolness shot; he takes a blow from Thanatos so that the story can reinforce the idea of "Oh, no, trust me guys, Ikki is TOTALLY special. Thanatos says so. Cause he took a hit and wasn't written to just fall over."

And then the story ends with him contributing to another abstract combination attack, instead of making any character choices. We don't even get a personal confrontation between him and Hades for, you know, HAVING POSSESSED HIS PRECIOUS LITTLE BROTHER THAT IKKI IS SO MOTIVATED FOR.

Oh, and guess what, thanks to Next Dimension, we know that after all this, with Seiya crippled and Sanctuary in ruins, Ikki fucks off yet again, cause apparently nearly losing Shun to an evil God taught him nothing about the need to stay by his loved ones.

The Terribleness of Ikki

I don't know if you've noticed by now, but all Ikki ever seems to do is pop in front in the camera, talk about how cool he is, and then whine about how "Death Queen Island was SO hard" until he Genma-Kens someone. And then fucking off.

Does he have a life? Can we imagine that he goes to a bar or something to drink his sorrows, or works in a farm like Shiryu, when not fighting a Holy War? Or does he just stalk Shun, looking for opportunities to swoop in and look like the big pathetic attention-needing loser emo older brother that he really is?

It's almost like the character doesn't exist for any other reason other than to show up and look cool, like a decoration. Almost as if, bear with me, the story of Saint Seiya didn't really have anything planned for him past a certain point, so they couldn't give him any meaningful contributions to the story.

Meanwhile, just to compare, Shiryu has a whole character arc about overcoming his crippling blindness, which he manages to do:

A) Without using it as a prop-trauma for how cool he is;

B) Without pushing away his friends;

C) Without neglecting his duty as a Saint;

D) Without disrespecting all the struggles everyone else go through;

E) And without making it the sole defining characteristic of his personality, unlike Ikki "My-girlfriend-is-dead" Kido;

Which is frankly hilarious considering that the reason Ikki told off Seiya early in the story and left the group to be on his own was because, I quote "he doesn't work well in a team", cause he's such a hardass, right?

Sorry, Shiryu. You had that whole 'character development' thing going, but look how cool I look.

Yeah, well, everyone in Seiya's team does a better job at being a Saint than he does, so maybe Seiya was on to something when he almost punched Ikki that night for saying such a dumb thing. This, of course, without going into all the things Hyoga and Shun also go through to show upstanding and emotionally strong they can be. I only mention Shiryu because if I talked about them as well, I'd be writing this post all day.

So you might be asking "That can't be it, right? You have to be acting reductive, Thrud. This can't be the extenct of such an influential character's contribution?"

No, seriously, it really is. Ikki never grows past his distant, traumatised self, he never learns to overcome his pain and personality problems and all of his contributions to the story's challenges is to act as the sleeping giant behind Shun's smiley face.

We're pretty much at the end stretch of ND, and Ikki is YET to show signs of change. He's just done a bit of fighting and hasnt had any friendly interactions with anyone. It's 2024 and Ikki is STILL a giant asshole.

Even the thing he's most beloved for, his contribution to action, ultimately falls flat in story terms because most of the antagonists he takes on, with the exception of Shaka, are written to be just temporary obstacles to the story (like Aiacos) or are people Ikki saves Shun from (like Caça). Shaka has a whole thing involving challenging the Bronze Saints conceptions of evil, and in the manga he even has his manipulation of Ikki, but everyone else Ikki defeats look like they were written in just so that Ikki could have someone to look cool beating on.

Which is to say you could probably envision a version of Saint Seiya WITHOUT Ikki, and you wouldn't lose that much, story wise.

So why is Ikki so beloved? What is going on here?

Well, because simply put, the fandom identifies with how macho and action-oriented he portrays himself. They like him BECAUSE he's an anti-social prick who tells you "You can replace having healthy emotional development by just being a badass". And to some people, especially in shounen circles, that's the ultimate power fantasy, giving you a bigger trip than being reincarnated as the most overleveled slime demon princess.

But don't take my word for it, peruse the internet yourself and try to find someone defending him who doesn't talk about how "badass" he is.

The fact is, not just in anime but in media in general, a lot of people love identifying with assholes who put down everyone else's contributions to the group, act like they are above it all and fall back on a fantasy that "they don't need anyone" and "are secretly the best". They reinforce the idea you don't have to put in effort to make others like you, because you can just be violent and dismissive and that's somehow automatically worthy of admiration.

Yet, put anyone problem in the story that cant be solved with punching, or put anything too complicated in the story to solve with a Genma Ken, like Hades' possession and Poseidon about to kill Seiya at the Main Breadwinner, and chances are Ikki won't know what to do about it. His contribution will be to put a strong face about how he wishes he had a way to fix it, but what a shame, this will just be "another trauma to add to the pile, poor Ikki"

There are terms for these kinds of role models that teach you to dismiss emotional problems, that teach you to admire those who see their self-imposed solitude as a curse, or even strength.

They're called sigmas. You know, those assholes infesting male media who blame everyone else for their problems and think mysoginy is super cool? And look at that, people LOVE how Ikki told Pandora "he ain't feminist like Seiya and WOULD hit her if she stood in his way". What a badass! Ikki isn't gonna let this goth girl stand in the way of him... failing to save Shun anyway. Wow!

So cool, guys, right? Right?

This is where my point just devolves into a rant.

Ikki isn't just one of the worst Bronze Saint characters. He is, in fact, a terrible character just in general, who gets by on having a cool power suit and reinforcing his audience's pre-conceived notions about the world. Ikki teaches you from a young age that your problems are to be dug deep down, only to be brought up to shield yourself from criticism.

His staleness ends up rivaling Seiya's, and only fails to meet it cause Seiya's case is so comically bad. Ikki happens to make a good Bronze Saint action figure, so he remains popular.

But unfortunately his influence casts a long shadow. Saint Seiya isn't nearly as popular as it used to be, but there are tons of storytellers and story followers that have been influenced by him as a character. Bleach, by Tite Kubo, drew heavily from Saint Seiya in not just story telling, but story structure and characters.

Who do you think Byakuya, Rukia's stoic, overpowered older brother is modeled after, my lovelies? And look at that, he's just as overrated as Ikki is, to the point the author didn't have the courage to truly kill him off in his final story arc, even though his arc was done and done.

Rukia: Nissan, there's some weird guys in armor staring at us over there. Byakuya: Don't pay attention, Rukia, those are just the characters our author subconsciously based us off from. Just focus on your sand scuplture of how pretty I am.

And honestly, it's tiring to see people my own age still thinking and saying that the pinnacle of character design and development is characters like Ikki, and the long trail of 'stoic badasses' he has left behind.

I don't respect this kind of anti-social glorification any more. You might even say I think it's toxic. Obviously Ikki is just a character, a bunch of ink on paper, but when you take a step back and you look at the characters that have copied him, or the legions of people online making unhinged rants about 'strong masculinity' that would think Ikki IS inspiring (especially when he slaps the hell out of Pandora), and then you combine it with the 'hate' directed at the weak characters? Then he becomes more than that.

I just think that characters like Ikki make people miss the point of stories like Saint Seiya. And if you have a character that makes you miss the point of the story, who just stick around because their toys sell?

Then they're not good characters. Not in my opinion, anyways.

#saint seiya #los caballeros del zodiaco #os cavaleiros do zodiaco #phoenix ikki

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