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TopicSave My Favorite Final Fantasy Characters Special Edition: Day 6 [smfffc]
LeonhartFour
07/11/18 11:07:17 PM
#74:


Good job on the exact match, everyone!

20. Zell Dincht (Final Fantasy VIII)

The Good: Zell is the comic relief character who winds up being the butt of most jokes in the main game (read: the non-Laguna sections) of Final Fantasy VIII, and I love him for it because he's hilarious. Even Squall gets in on the action from time to time. All the various permutations of the other characters seeing Zell's room for the first time are amazing (Irvine's is probably my favorite one), and his sidequest with the girl with pigtails is great, too. On a serious note, Zell is a good foil for Squall (and I love me some foils; FFVIII might as well be called Game of Foils). Squall is basically everything Zell wants to be but isn't (with the added irony that Squall doesn't even want it for himself). He really wants to be a hero and a leader, but it rarely seems to work out for him, so I feel good for him when he succeeds when he's in charge of a task, like driving Galbadia out of Balamb.

The Bad: Zell's recklessness and inability to control his emotions often causes trouble for himself and others. The entire arc of Galbadia firing missiles at the Gardens is set in motion because Zell blurts out that they're SeeDs in front of President Deling when Seifer takes him hostage. The reason he ends up getting picked on so much is because he takes himself too seriously and can't help overreacting to the teasing of others. He's kind of a deconstruction of the hotblooded shounen hero archetype in that the tropes that usually fuel the hero to success tend to backfire on him.

The Best: Two words: Armageddon Fist. I love using Zell in battle. You can do crazy amounts of damage if you know what you're doing, and I love how over the top his Limit Breaks are. I mean, the dude literally runs right past the enemy, runs all the way around the world, and then punches them right in the face. I also love that bringing Zell to the Deep Sea Research Center makes that sidequest play out differently (as well as proving that he's not quite as tech savvy as he claimed!). Plus, the climax of the hot dog running gag is emotionally very satisfying in the ending...! Zell finally got those hot dogs, but even then, true to form, he finds a way to screw it up. Then he makes up for it by landing a direct hit on the camera.
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