100 Favourite Characters Meme Day 2: Kayaba

[moon_blitz]

Why do all the crazy ones look completely normal?

BEWARE! Massive spoilers beyond this point for Sword Art Online!


Name: Akihiko Kayaba/Heathcliff
Age: Unknown, probably early to mid-thirties
Nationality: Japanese
Appears in: Sword Art Online
Voiced By: Koichi Yamadera (Kayaba), Toru Okawa (Heathcliff)

Kayaba is a villain. He's a man with a god complex who trapped 10,000 helpless people inside a death game so he could be their god. And yet...and yet he's not completely evil, and while I'm not entirely sure the phrase 'favourite character' completely applies to him, he has become someone who I rather respect. Granted, this is mostly because he helped the main character of Sword Art Online utterly destroy someone who was completely insane (and who had also hijacked the game system Kayaba designed to use for their own twisted purposes), so the little redemption Kayaba gets comes mostly after his death. Here's his introduction as the faceless GM in the first episode (skip to about 11:20):

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But within the game of Sword Art Online itself, he doesn't leave the players completely in the lurch - he disguises himself as the player "Heathcliff" and helps them to slowly clear the game. Yes, he twisted the rules to give himself immortality - what good is a being a god if you're mortal? - and made himself the strongest player in the game, but I believe that he truly thought he was doing the right thing by doing so. And possibly even regretted some of it, if I'm reading the final conversation between him and the main characters correctly.

So while Kayaba is a first-class jerk, I have to give him points for not only designing the first virtual world, but also having the guts to go through with trapping a whole bunch of people inside it. He must have known that people were going to hate him and want him dead, and what did he do? Outsmarted them all by killing himself once his game had been beaten. And then made himself into a digital ghost. Clearly, the computer nerds are going to rule the future.

Favourite Pairing(s): None present in the anime, and he's too aloof to really be paired with anyone.