as much as I love antagonists who respect you and want a good fight, there's also something about the guys who just fucking hate you. this post was mostly brought to you by g5 iguazu but I'm gonna throw some crimson 1 and genichiro ashina in there too.
iguazu in particular fascinates me because he knows he's bad at killing you. he's not even really in denial about it. he doesn't try to pretend he didn't lose, or that he's figured out how to win this time. he just keeps coming at you over and over because one of these days it's gotta work. his AC is just the trainer AC with a shield slapped on because he doesn't have to acknowledge it's a skill issue if his build sucks. he's not above calling on outside forces to help him. he just wants you dead.
but the best fight he ever gives you is when he's alone. phase 3 of the allmind fight is the best boss in ac6 and it is a tragedy that it's locked behind phase 1 of the allmind fight. iguazu gets so pissed off that he takes over coral skynet and powers his AC with pure salt. he finally has to use a build he actually likes and he's damn good with it too. I have no shame in admitting that it took me three hours of nonstop attempts to get through this fight, I finished it with no repair kits and only 2000 AP left, and when I was done, all I wanted was to be able to use those claws myself. he tries to kill you one more time, admits he had a skill issue, curses your name, and you do the coral release. it's fun. I kinda wish he didn't die, just because this fight was the only time I actually cared about him in any capacity, and all my enjoyment of him aside from that was retroactive. he isn't a great character until you know what happens to him. it's a bold choice, but I think it works.
then we have crimson 1, who is like if iguazu didn't have any of those redeeming qualities. he can't admit he has a skill issue but he can't pretend it's anything else either. he wants to say he's the best but he needs a fucking nuclear powered death machine just to stand a chance. he doesn't fight any differently. he wasn't stuck flying a plane he didn't like, he wasn't trying to force something to work when it clearly wasn't. he just tries throwing more missiles at you until one of them hits. it's a fantastic reflection of who he is as a character, because fundamentally... he's nothing. he's the face of the federation, but what does that even mean anymore, now that everyone hates the federation's guts? and yet he cannot imagine meaning nothing to someone. he can't comprehend the idea that he's just the next in a long list of enemies, so he kills everyone until he's your only enemy. I didn't spend three hours on his last fight. I think he took me maybe two or three attempts. because he's the same dumbass he always was, and he won't change until you change him into target practice. 10/10 no notes.
and then there's genichiro. he's dead!
jokes aside genichiro is weird because he really does have a noble goal at first. he wants to preserve the legacy of a man who is so much better than he'll ever be. isshin ashina is the coolest old man in the universe, so legendary that no one dares to invade his country until they're 100% sure he's dead. and genichiro has to carry the legacy of that guy. it's no wonder he'll do anything to prove himself.
he does horrific stuff but he says it's all to preserve ashina. he eats centipedes. he feeds centipedes to children. he kidnaps other unrelated children. it's really all centipedes and children with this guy. and then you crawl out of the well he's kept you in for years, go head to head with him at the edge of the country... and he kicks your ass. you lose your arm. he gets the kid. of the three people this post is about, he is the only one who gets to win even once. so that's something.
you get your arm fixed, fight your way through his army, and come back to his castle. he thinks he's gonna beat you again because what can that prosthetic do, throw fireworks? that's nothing to him. and it actually is, you can't beat him with cheap tricks, you just have to be better than he is. you just have to block his attacks and stay in his face until he stops moving. you break his armor off and he calls upon heretical lightning to kill you, only for you to literally throw it back in his face, and this makes him so mad that he doesn't even show his face again until the very last room in the game. sekiro forgets about him. severing immortality is just more important than genichiro is, so if genichiro isn't going to get in the way, why bother to chase him?
ashina is burning. the interior ministry is here. isshin is dead and they can finally invade without getting torn apart. genichiro cannot stop them. he waits for you in the last room, because god dammit, even if he can't save the country, he's gonna steal this kid again. he does it offscreen but he has to make sure you know he stole the kid, because he hates you, because you're better than him. because in the process of getting to him, you shred half the interior ministry's invading force and that's mostly because an optional superboss took care of the other half. not only can you defeat genichiro, you can save ashina better than he can. he won't stand for this.
so you kick his ass. he's a joke. he's so much of a joke that most people can beat him without even taking damage. he has a new trick, a blade that can open gates to hell, but it's not hard to dodge because he's pathetic. you kill him, he cuts himself open and isshin crawls out of hell through his neck to be the final boss instead. he fought so hard for a legacy and he gets to be a footnote, an occasional mention as "that guy before isshin". at least iguazu and crimson got to be cool before they died.
all of these assholes made me like the hateful antagonist, but none of them made me love it. no, no, the last character in this post isn't even a character. it's a real guy. a real guy whose name I forget, whose ass I kicked so thoroughly in the armored core 6 arena that I'm pretty sure I erased all traces of them from the universe, or maybe I'm just bad with names. someone I remember only as Bad Minigun Guy. if you use double miniguns in AC6 pvp and you've gone up against someone named kitdriveyards who uses an AC named ONE MIND, comment on this post I guess. anyway.
it was a dark and stormy relatively clear night, and I am one of two people online in armored core 6. the other is Bad Minigun Guy, formerly known as Bad Thermal Lance Guy. Bad Thermal Lance Guy goes up against me, is predictable, dies. I try to matchmake again, get matched with them again, win again... but this time I actually had to use my pulse shield at one point. I have no idea what Bad Thermal Lance Guy was thinking at this point, but presumably it was something along the lines of "I'm going to use pulse shield because she did it and she won", because next match they're using two miniguns and a pulse shield. very badly.
I do not know what the newly-named Bad Minigun Guy was thinking in this moment. I won't pretend to. but I was definitely imagining them malding because it was really funny. next match, I win again but they actually get me once. hopefully that gave them some much-needed happiness before our final encounter. I get enough arena points to escape unranked. it's the promotion phase. other people are finally online. I lose one match against a build I forget, win one against another. there's no way I'm not getting promoted, but I fear I shall never see Bad Minigun Guy again.
I click the matchmake button. I load into the arena. the camera pans over ONE MIND and I feel nothing because I've seen ONE MIND a million times, it's what I beat iguazu with, it's what I beat half the game with. the camera cuts to my opponent. my opponent is Bad Minigun Guy. I laugh my ass off. I take more hits than I should because I can barely concentrate on the match due to how hard I'm laughing. I win, two to zero. we never meet again. I will never forget this.
so that's what got me to love the recurring villain. the guy who just never stops trying to murder you, who does it not for the love of the game but for the hatred of you specifically. not any of the wonderfully-written characters in the first part of this post, but a complete stranger in the armored core 6 pvp arena whose name I don't even remember, who never said a single word to me, nor I to them. I've had nights like that again since, where I'm one of two people online and we just keep beating the shit out of each other until someone finally gets bored, but I've never had a night like that again. maybe one day they'll become Good Minigun Guy and get to C rank so I can fight them one more time.