Board 8 > Most Evil Fictional Character: Dio Brando vs. Bondrewd

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Welcome to the 2023 edition of Most Evil Fictional Character, a single-elimination tournament to determine the most evil fictional character of all time!

Here's the bracket:

https://www.bracketmaker.com/tmenu.cfm?tid=477621&tclass=

And here's the discussion topic:

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/8-gamefaqs-contests/80568652

And here are the rules:

-First and foremost, YOU MUST BOLD YOUR VOTE FOR IT TO COUNT. The reason for this is that these topics encourage a lot of discussion and debate, and it helps me to distinguish a vote from simple discussion if all votes are bolded. So, I state again, ALL VOTES MUST BE BOLDED FOR THEM TO COUNT. I reserve the right to be lenient in early topics if people just aren't getting it, but for the most part, IF YOUR VOTE ISN'T BOLDED, IT WON'T COUNT.

-You must vote for which of the two characters you honestly believe to be the more evil of the two. You can determine this via any method you like, use your own morals and judgement, read all the arguments made to determine your choice, or however you choose to make your pick, but you must only vote for the one you truly believe is the most evil. This isn't a death battle, or a popularity contest. You're voting ONLY for the most evil character out of the two choices presented.

-While on that subject, remember that because this isn't a death battle or a fighting tournament, do your absolute best to consider the two characters as if their power levels were equal (either the weaker character brought up to the level of the strongest, or vice versa, or both if you want to consider both possibilities). Therefore, just because, for example, one of the characters blew up a planet and the other one merely kicked a puppy, doesn't necessarily mean the planet killer is more evil than the puppy kicker. Consider the characters as if they have the exact same capabilities and what they might do in that scenario.

-You can make any arguments, debates, etc. you want in this topic. Discussion is STRONGLY encouraged, a fun debate about which of the two characters is most evil is exactly what these topics are for. Just don't make it personal, no insults or flaming, keep things civil even if you disagree. Also, no vote rallying, if you want to encourage people to vote for your character you need to at least make some semblance of an argument as to why, even if it's just "Character X did (really dastardly thing), I can't believe no one's voting for them!"

-Voting will continue for exactly 24 hours after the post is made. If there's a tie, there will be a new 24 hour topic. This will continue indefinitely until a winner is determined.

-YOU MUST BOLD YOUR VOTE FOR IT TO COUNT.

-

The following write-ups will contain untagged SPOILERS for Jojo's Bizarre Adventure and Made In Abyss. Proceed at your own risk!

DIO BRANDO

Dio Brando is the primary antagonist of numerous Jojo's Bizarre Adventure series.

Per the JJBA Wiki, Dio is a cunning villain of little conscience and has an insatiable hunger for power. After becoming a vampire and later a Stand user, wielding the all-powerful The World, Dio has gathered many minions around him and is responsible for many major events of the series. Dio is consistently manipulative and violently domineering, and has repeatedly shown a lack of conscience and empathy. Dio set for himself the goal of becoming the richest, then the most powerful being on Earth. To do so, Dio used anything or anyone that he could in order to further his goals, disregarding any kind of morality that would restrain the range of actions available to him. Using either manipulation, seduction, or plain violence, Dio constantly sought to become more and more powerful. Throughout his life, Dio has tended to surround himself with witless cronies and later minions, who were attracted by his natural charisma. Not thinking much of them at first, he then selected those he deemed as particularly evil, claiming that an evil person wasn't bound by rules such as honor. Naturally, Dio is an incredibly selfish person, only looking over his own interest and overlooking those of others at best, trampling them on the ground at worst. Due to his composed nature, Dio can and will manipulate and take what he can from all sorts of people, using any method, as long as the person suits his present desires because he is primarily interested in their capabilities. Dio is the type who is incapable of loving another person wholeheartedly. His natural ruthlessness is exposed very early when plans to exploit the Joestar family despite them being kind enough to adopt him. In order to place himself in a better position to replace Jonathan Joestar and obtain the Joestar family fortune, Dio used the most underhanded means to break him mentally. These methods included: humiliating Jonathan in public sport fighting, ostracizing him from his friends, and finally stealing Erina Pendleton's first kiss to drive a wedge in their budding relationship. When he is eventually foiled, Dio opted to slowly poison George Joestar I and kill Jonathan with the Stone Mask to make both deaths seem natural and accidental. Dio's lack of empathy is also apparent, since despite having lived for years with the kind Joestars, he never thought of them as anything more than obstacles, and is hinted to utterly resent the upper class he frequents. Dio had been maintaining a facade of a charming and agreeable person to everyone save Jonathan, yet never came close to anyone. Overjoyed to have changed into a powerful vampire, Dio spent his battles taunting various humans about their weaknesses and belittling them in favor of the apex predator vampires. Dio also sadistically changed a mother into a zombie just to watch her devour her own baby. When in a position of strength, he also tends to torment them further, such as sneakily sticking his thumb into Jonathan's eye during a punch. Dio shows a lack of restraint in his violence, and is prone to murderous outbursts even as far as his childhood, notably trying to stab Jonathan when he beat him up, and violently slapping Erina. He was also incredibly cruel to Jonathan's dog, Danny, going so far as kicking him on their first meeting. When Dio was defeated by Jonathan, Dio secretly had Danny incinerated. Dio has expressed hatred for dogs, considering them vermin.

vs.

BONDREWD

Bondrewd is the primary antagonist of Made In Abyss.

Bondrewd is a man who values knowledge above else, even in the wake of whatever moral issues that may occur from his actions. He is willing to sacrifice anyone and everyone in the pursuit of it. At some point before the manga began, Bondrewd was convicted of an unspecified crime, with a bounty placed on his head. To escape his fate, he became a delver of the abyss, and funded his research with the sale of illegal substances. He had no sense of ethics, going so far as to use small children for his research. He moved them around various areas of the abyss as a way to test the various effects of the Curse on the human body. At some point in the series, Nanachi and Mitty were included in these experiments. While Nanachi was blessed with a body similar to a rabbit or a viscacha, Mitty's body was broken down, and reduced to an abomination without the ability to move, speak, or presumably think. Eventually, his research led him to develop the cartridge system, a method of mitigating the effects of the Curse. In this process, people (in this case, presumably children) are reduced to their most bare essential organs, and stuffed into a small box, about the size of the average cigar box. Keeping them alive allows Bondrewd to transfer the effects of the curse into the still-alive cartridge, rather than suffering the effects himself. Eventually, this research comes to a head when he reduces his own daughter, Prushka, to a cartridge, and utilizes her in the fight against Regu.

Bondrewd

Dude (or whatever he is) uses children for experiements, goes as far as to make them unrecognizeable creatures that can't speak and can't...die. The ultimate suffering

Nanis23 posted...

Bondrewd

Dude (or whatever he is) uses children for experiements, goes as far as to make them unrecognizeable creatures that can't speak and can't...die. The ultimate suffering

Make sure you bold your vote.

You thought this would be a Bonedrewd vote but it was I, Dio!

RySenkari posted...

Make sure you bold your vote.

Fixed

Anyway I doubt Bonedrewd has anything on the level of telling a mother hell kill her baby unless she lets him turn her into a zombie, turning her into a zombie, then letting the zombie eat the child. That was pretty messed up.

Going to wait for more arguments before putting vote in, but currently leaning Dio. Its been awhile since I looked through both, but doesnt Bondrewd genuinely care for/love those in his care and believe he is doing good? I mean I guess you can argue the evil level being worse in that sense but I dunno. Also didnt he also ultimately help the protag group, gave them his blessings, and even found the shit going on on the floor below a bit fucked?

Just feels like it deduces the overall evil points too much against someone like Dio, who while not on the level of Ciccolata, was still a massive dickhead like the mentioned zombie thing.

Though Dio arguably also has moments that subtract from his evil level like him healing Pucci's foot, respecting Vanilla Ice to the point he wouldnt drink his blood to heal himself, his plan to unite humanity/move them forward in his diary, and loving his mama.

Tentative Dio Brando vote

Dude is completely heartless and has the ridiculous Jojo writing to give him lots of ways to display his ruthlessness. He does have moments where he acts honorable would be the only knock against him.

It says the other guy is driven by knowledge-- while Dio is driven by the pursuit of power I would argue Dio does a lot of extremely terrible things just out of hate with no actual purpose behind it but hate which to me puts him soundly above the other guy based on the write up.

But yeah open for arguments. Don't know Bondrewd beyond the write up so if he has a lot of vile things not described there...

I think tone makes the vote harder than it should be.

Made in Abyss is a very depressing series with a very dark undercurrent even during the more humorous moments. It's going out of its way to upset you a lot of the time, in a good way, and Bondrewd is only one of the series' many agents in achieving this.

Meanwhile, JoJo is often comical in its exaggerated presentation even during the darkest times. When bad things happen in JoJo, it's more likely to split a laugh than any serious emotional reaction, and I say that positively.

When you actually put the cards on the table, Dio Brando is definitely the more villainous character with more atrocities to his name, but should the actual presentation of the franchise account for something, or should we be looking at these crimes as if they were words on a list in a Wikipedia article?

I don't know the answer....so I guess I'm not gonna vote lol.

As exaggerated as JoJo is, it takes acts of evil pretty seriously and they are supposed to make you hiss at the villain for being vile. Its not like in say South Park where its all a big joke, even though its really over the top. Its more like a melodrama taken to the extreme.

Bondrewd

That writeup does not do his depravity justice at all. This is a guy who adopted a small child and raised and gaslit her into loving him unconditionally with the explicit end goal of murdering her later on for research. His manipulation was so extreme that she continued to love him even after being dissected and having her flayed chucnks of flesh stuffed into a jar.
To Bondrewd, love is just a means to an end or something to run experiments with. Any supposed kindness shown by him is akin to a farmer fattening a pig for slaughter. The dude is a psychopath.
If given the resources of someone like the High Evolutionary, I could easily see him matching or even exceeding that man's atrocites.

I think presentation matters to a point, but ultimately this is a contest about who's more evil. I feel like a Most Hateable Character contest would be interesting. Because while some characters are super evil, you don't really hate them, and while some characters are mildly evil, you just want to punch them in the face.

Also one of Dios first actions is to put a dog in a furnace so it burns to death. He even gets in on the gaslighting by pretending to be a loving brother to Jonathan while waiting for the time to murder him.

Bondrewd

He experiments on, tortures, and kills a massive number of children. Giving a girl a body that feels agony at all times and also making her immortal is pretty harsh.

Dio

I think his evil outliving him pushes it over.

I wish I could've seen Bondrewd vs. Yawgmoth as a match. Similar mindsets with vastly different consequences.

Imma have a child and raise her for 8 years with love, just to test if the fact the child loves me as a father increases the superpowers given to me when I cut her limbs and organs off on a surgery table, while keeping her awake and unsedated for the whole procedure, then stick what's left in a cartridge so I can use her as a receptacle to the abyss's horrible curse.

Bondrewd

The fun part is despite being a more hardcore version of nazi doctors, Bondrewd still manages to induce massive cognitive dissonance by just refusing to antagonize the good guys or show any anger or malice in his speeches. In fact, he even cheers the good guys up as they land hits on him and says how he is proud of them.

He doesn't do it because he wants to hurt people, he is just incapable of prioritizing anything above scientific progress. He completely lacks humanity both in the sense of good feelings and bad ones. So he is even less human than a psychopath, who at least can feel anger or bloothirst.

Bondrewed is both less evil because he doesn't feel any of it, and more evil because his lack of feelings drive him to some of the most evil actions ever witnessed in fiction or real life. His entire existance is a study on how intent vs actions define one's morals.

UshiromiyaEva posted...

I think tone makes the vote harder than it should be.

Made in Abyss is a very depressing series with a very dark undercurrent even during the more humorous moments. It's going out of its way to upset you a lot of the time, in a good way, and Bondrewd is only one of the series' many agents in achieving this.

Meanwhile, JoJo is often comical in its exaggerated presentation even during the darkest times. When bad things happen in JoJo, it's more likely to split a laugh than any serious emotional reaction, and I say that positively.

When you actually put the cards on the table, Dio Brando is definitely the more villainous character with more atrocities to his name, but should the actual presentation of the franchise account for something, or should we be looking at these crimes as if they were words on a list in a Wikipedia article?

I don't know the answer....so I guess I'm not gonna vote lol.

I actually thought about this in the Cartman match
Despite being one of the most popular SP episodes of all time, I never watched "Scott Tenorman Must Die". I read that episode name mentioned A LOT, but never watched it.
So when you read his character bio and read something like how he killed (or was responsible for) killing the parents of someone that made fun of him and let him eat them, I thought that was way way too much fucked up, even for South Park
But (and, again, I didn't watch it) I assume the episode showed it in a over the top and "funny" tone.
Like, someone getting shot and killed is followed by a running gag of "omg you killed Kenny you bastard" you know it's not really a show to take seriously

Bondrewd does heinous things in the pursuit of knowledge and doesn't consider the morality of it. Dio does things that aren't quite as bad, but still pretty bad and he has the malice Bondrewd lacks. Also worth noting that his hatred for the Joestar family is so intense that he survived as a severed head under the sea for 100 years, despite George and Jonathan having shown him only kindness while Dio and Jonathan were growing up.

I've seen enough. I'm satisfied. Dio

I've never heard of Made In Abyss before this topic but I think I have to go Bondrewd after reading all that

Dio, but this is crazy for a first round match.

I agree with Gavs' reasoning. Dio's evil just has more malice behind it whereas Bondrewd is more driven by intellectual curiosity, even if he does horrible things. Actually, now that I'm looking at his wiki page, apparently Bondrewd remembers the names of all of his sacrifices, which I guess shows that he cares a little?

I'm gonna go with Dio

tentatively voting for dio but holy fuck this is a wild match

Bondrewd

Bondrewd based on arguments.

Mmm...going with Dio

Bondrewd

probably the most uncomfortable Ive ever been watching an anime