Meta Knight!
Took long enough, but we've finally arrived to Meta Knight! Considered one of the main characters of the series, although his early beginnings were fairly interesting! Technically he was just one of the "regular" bosses in Kirby's Adventure, although even in that game he was treated with a sense of significant, popping up throughout the game to send his crew, the Meta-Knights, to fight Kirby, as well as occasionally helping Kirby by giving him Invincibility Candies. His ambiguous morality started early! He would then go on to have a major antagonist role in Kirby Super Star's "Revenge of Meta Knight", introducing his ship, the Halberd, and his one-time attempt to take over Dream Land to put an end to it's lazy lifestyle. After failing that plot, Meta Knight would go on to have a more heroic role throughout the series, most of the time stepping up to help save Popstar and it's inhabitants, and often joining Kirby along the way, or appearing as the occasional brainwashed boss fight, although not nearly as much as his friend Dedede. There's always been something about this guy that's really appealed to me though, if you take him at face value he's fairly straightforward, just kind of a stoic masked swordsman whose kind of a good guy I guess. But the more you dig into his history and various depictions of him, he starts to feel fairly fleshed out as far as Kirby characters go, and it becomes pretty easy to get attached and start trying to figure out who he really is on the inside. Sure, he's still usually depicted as the stoic masked swordsman, but every once in a while you get a hint of something more, and I always find that endearing. I'm still counting the days until HAL finally locks in and makes a standalone Meta Knight game, because I truly believe he has what it takes to take the role of the main protagonist on his own adventure. One day I swears....
Also, I made some alts! One with his wings out instead of his cape:
And alts of him with his mask off! He always sports this surprised expression when his mask breaks before running away, but I'm waiting desperately for when they finally subvert expectations and let Meta Knight keep fighting even after losing his mask, it'd be awesome to see his true expressions. Maybe some day!
