On Teranetza: The Useless Villain
As some of you may know after reading my review on May I Ask For One Final Thing? I did not like the main villain of the series. So I wanted to explore that and the idea of a useless/superfluous villain. Teranetza isn’t the first villain of this kind I have seen, after all I have played Final Fantasy, a series known for surprise last bosses that may or may not have anything tangible to do with the plot. But why is this bad?
My biggest reason is investment. If the villain is either a nothing character for most of the series or only shows up at the very end then we the audience have not had any time or reason to invest in this character. Why do we care? What motivates this person that stands against our heroes? Do they even matter? Using my primary example of Teranetza we do get a reason to care about her existence except not really. Her reason is a perception that the world is against her and she is the main character, which could be a great motivator but is undone when we see that she has no real reason beyond a goddess said so. And for if she matters, well that brings me to my second point.
Can I drop this character completely and the story still work? In Teranetza’s case the answer is a glaring yes. She literally has no reason to be here beyond the writer said so. Remove her and you still have an Inquisition which frankly would’ve made a much better enemy to the heroes in my opinion. Saint Diana can even keep her powers, since frankly that plot line is also kind of pointless. The Palmenians have a goddess they worship, that has given them gifts(later explained to be given by Teranetza but that just makes her a middleman). They have a reason to want to rebel against the Cult of Diana. Let them have that revolt, a holy war where they ally with outside forces to bring the kingdom down. Which is essentially the entire last half of the series as is, whether you have Teranetza or not.
Now this last point is just a personal gripe that also isn’t exclusive to this series. The villain was isekai’d because why not. I’ve seen this done in another anime recently as well and that character also was pointless to the story. And the thing is I love isekai. But I think anime is leaning on it too much when the writer can’t think of a better premise for a character or story. I mean hells, the writer here already had an amazing world and has already shown the gods giving normal mortals blessings. Teranetza could have been someone from the world, even a noblewoman with a vendetta against Scarlett. That would’ve been a good reason for her to exist. Instead we get a woman from our world who was shy, but instead of trying to reach out to people she blamed them for her problems and honestly the only reason she hates Scarlett is because of the second prince who quit even being a thing by episode 2. It’s frustrating because otherwise this story is still really good, minus a couple of plot holes here and there. Teranetza or the Inquisition could have been something much better, but one was nerfed and the other was forced to play a role she had no business being in. Without a reason to care, or even a reason to exist, villains lose the audience completely. I didn’t root for Scarlett to stop Teranetza, I rooted for Scarlett to stop the war and kiss a prince. I didn’t defeat Sorcerer A to suddenly have to confront God because the writer said so. Give me a reason to care about the villain being defeated. Otherwise they become a cardboard cut out to trounce and move on. I don’t need them to be great like Malificent or Darth Vader or Vicious, I just need them to have meaning to the story.