Top 30 Final Fantasy Villains - #7

#7 - Seifer Almasy

(Final Fantasy VIII)

One thing I never understood about this series was why Kain from Final Fantasy IV is so popular. The concept behind his character is cool- a friend and comrade to the main character who allies with the villain and becomes a recurring antagonist. However, the way Kain was implemented, he had no personality of his own, and the game went the easy route and had the villain mind-control him. In my opinion, Seifer from Final Fantasy VIII is this idea done right.

Seifer is the rival to the protagonist, Squall, in trying to become a SeeD (read: a pretentious sci-fi mercenary title). At Balamb Garden, the military academy they attend, Seifer is the head of the disciplinary committee, and uses his authority to push around other students. However, on the final exam mission, Seifer defies orders and as a result is unable to graduate, while Squall and his comrades do. In his moment of weakness, he is given an offer by Edea (who was possessed by Ultimecia at that point) to become her personal knight errant as she overthrows the world. Eager to one-up his rival, Seifer accepts, and falls headlong into his heroic knight fantasy.

What I like about Seifer is that there’s no mind control involved in his personal arc, at least not at first. Him agreeing to serve Edea is perfectly consistent with his personal motives, and his insanity is a gradual thing. He is established to have bad blood with Squall in the early game, but it never escalates to the point of bloodshed until he becomes the Sorceress’s Knight. And heck, in that earlier part of the game, he gets some great interactions with the rest of the disciplinary committee that flesh out his character and provide some excellent comic relief (On a side note, if you want to know what I think about his cohorts: Fujin is great, Raijin is annoying).

He also provides some of the most intense and awesome fights against the heroes, with his first and fourth/final standing out. On his first battle, he has a 1 on 1 duel against Squall that comes at a point where the early plot has escalated to a fever pitch, so it feels like something big is going down. His final battle is memorable for one reason and one reason only: he slices Odin in half. Yes, the if you got the recurring summon, Odin, and brought him into battle with you, he tries to pull his one-hit-kill shtick on Seifer, who, in a move never before seen nor repeated, beats Odin to the punch. Or the cut, as the case may be.

A lot of times, rivals in video games and anime have this bad tendency to be seen as losers since they can never get the upper hand over the hero, but Seifer toes the line between loser and legitimate threat quite nicely, and we see his delusions of grandeur get worse and worse as the game progresses, subtly reflected in his jacket getting more and more torn up as the game progresses. (Though he does lose points for his design looking a little too much like Rufus Shinra.) He was entertaining enough at the start, but the scene where he tortures Squall for information is probably the point I saw him as anything more than Draco Malfoy with a sword.

All in all, I didn’t expect to be so invested in his character when I went into Final Fantasy VIII. Kind of like the entire game, now that I think about it. In any case, the charisma and personality he brings to a stale and often derided archetype land him high on the list, above his master even.