What are your thoughts on Chujin? Your posts don't really paint him in the best light (for understandable reasons)
I think he is a FASCINATING character. The living embodiment of the proverb "The road to hell is paved with good intentions."
The man loves his family, so much so that it inspires him to go out into the Underground and do volunteer work to make the world a better place for his child to grow up in. Yet, he also kills himself over his commitment to crafting a serum that would protect his daughter/monsterkind from humans and leaves his wife a widow and his daughter fatherless. According to Ceroba, he wanted to raise a big family with her, so he poured his all into building a massive, elaborate house for his family to grow up in. But that also blew through all of his savings leftover from his former job at the Steamworks and instead of taking up another job to support his family financially, that task fell solely onto Ceroba.
He also has quite a bit of an ego as well. He doesn't want Ceroba to think poorly of him for being fired, so he lies and says he retired. That ego blinds him to the fact that he isn't always right. He was the only engineer in the Steamworks who wanted to build guard robots. Fair enough since monsterkind did declare war on humanity and it would be good to have extra troops when the time came to break the barrier and start fighting. But as the failures piled up and each of the Axis models malfunctioned in front of Asgore -- sometimes in ways that were a danger to others -- he kept insisting that he would get it right. Asgore gave him eight chances (if we go by the idea that each iteration of Axis would be presented before the King before being rejected). Eight is an extremely generous number of chances to prove that Axis would be worth something, and when his final attempt lit Asgore's child's grave on fire, instead of reflecting on if his Axis idea was misguided or sympathizing with Asgore (since Chujin is a father himself, he should know how much that hurt), he asks for yet another chance. Then after he gets fired, he keeps working on Axis iterations in private because he's certain that he's right and everyone else is wrong. Did he eventually make a successful guard robot? Yes. Axis Model 014 works debatably well. But it cost him the respect of his colleagues and his job, which at the time was his family's only source of income.
And then there's the Boss Monster serum that he crafted. He was working solely off a theory, and when his experiments on himself started to kill him, instead of stepping back and reflecting on if making a serum that could turn any monster into a Boss Monster is feasible/questioning his methodology, he blamed the problems on the SOUL that he used being impure (with no evidence/explanation as to why "SOUL purity" was the problem, which to me feels more grasping at straws more than a well-founded conclusion). He gave his grieving wife the impossible task of:
Finding a "pure" human SOUL (humans rarely fall into the Underground, there's no guarantee that a human wouldn't dust some monsters while navigating the Underground, there is no guarantee that she'd be able to get close to them with the Royal Guard patrolling/attempting to capture them, what does it even mean to be "pure"? A human could fight their way through the Underground and spare monsters when they're weakened instead of outright killing them, would that still count as being "pure"?)
Killing that human (humans are notorious for being difficult to kill yet can easily kill monsters so reaping their SOUL is incredibly risky business. She would also have to take the life of an innocent person.)
Having a Boss Monster nearby to work with (Boss Monsters are incredibly rare, the only known ones are Asgore, Toriel, Asriel (who is dead), himself (who is dying), and Kanako. Also, even if Ceroba knew another Boss Monster, why would they be willing to be subjected to a science experiment?)
And she also has to craft the serum as well (Ceroba has no experience with SOUL science, she doesn't know what she's doing).
It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that Clover came into the Underground, ended up in the Wild East and remained a pacifist (in a Pacifist Run), and decided to travel with her. It was more likely that Ceroba would've spent the rest of her life unable to make progress on the serum and feeling like she failed her husband. As unintentional as it was, Chujin set his wife up to fail.
He also resents and fears humankind and that influences a lot of his actions and decisions. Chujin kept building Axis models, even when they would fail/be a danger to others, because he wanted a way to give monsters a fighting chance in the war. He crafts the serum because he wants to make monsterkind strong enough to stand up to humans. He leaves Kanako and Dalv behind to go fetch Axis and sicc him on Integrity instead of being there for a very sensitive time in her life (I assume that he only did that after it was assured that Kanako wasn't in any physical danger, but still. That's just an assumption. Also, that was a time when he should've stuck around and have been a comforting presence for her, not run off with his own agenda). While he was taken aback by how violently Axis killed Integrity and seemed somewhat remorseful, he still experiments on the SOUL of a human child. Instead of being proud of Martlet for getting a job as a Royal Guard and putting the carpentry he taught her to good use, he disapproves and is wholly unsupportive (I can understand him having reservations about his friend joining the Royal Guard as the job can be dangerous, but he could've at least been proud of her for accomplishing that/had some faith in Martlet's abilities). He calls humans incapable of decency in any form, yet hypocritically he acknowledges that it's possible for a human SOUL to be "pure."
What do I think of Chujin Ketsukane? He is complex and morally grey, and to call him entirely evil or entirely good does a massive disservice to his character. He did some really bad things but those bad things were done with good intentions. He did some good things (building Martlet's deck, the Honeydew Resort heater, likely the bridge between Starlo's farm and the Wild East, his family home, probably some other things, was working on methods to protect monsterkind) but that work came at the expense of his family. He never intended for things to go horribly wrong the way they did but he also didn't know when to back down. He was a kind individual and well respected by Martlet, Ceroba, Axis, even Starlo -- who doesn't like the man -- for a reason. He only ever wanted the best for his family, for Monsterkind. But at the end of the day, it's the actions that are judged. Knowing all I do about him, he is not someone I would call a good person.
There's another version of the proverb I dropped earlier that I feel suits him a bit better: "Hell is full of good meanings, but heaven is full of good works."
