SPOILERS Is the Remake Hojo Out of Character?

Celes777

Celes777

Pro Adventurer
AKA
...
One of my friends is pissed because she thinks Hojo is OOC.

I don't really feel that and I can't really understand her reasoning...
Somehow she thinks it is gross that Hojo mentioned to have Aerith mate with someone else.
I mean didnt he suggest that in the OG as well...？
 
Odysseus

Odysseus

Ninja Potato
AKA
Ody
The only way I could see you making him out to be out of character is that he has a more actively antagonistic relationship with the party than he did originally. He's pretty much the direct enemy in chapter 17, and is very much out to get the party. That's a role he never fulfilled in the original, he was a lot more ambivalent towards them there. Even at the mako cannon he was still not directly acting against the party until they try to stop him. I'd say he's still very much in character in the remake though, always out to experiment.
 
Ite

Ite

Save your valediction (she/her)
AKA
Ite
He's only out of character here because he wants to mate her with a SOLDIER (sensible!) instead of a long-lived species "who could withstand our research for a long time." (insane!)

That said, taunting Aeris with knowledge about dissecting her mother was brutally Hojo.
 
Glaurung

Glaurung

Forgot the cutesy in my other pants. Sorry.
AKA
Mama Dragon
He was in every sense in character. Heck, they even cranked his creepiness into nightmare fuel. The OG had the limitation of the blocky characters and the animation, now we have, for better or worse, full realistic facial animations and goodness, how they have used them.

The only out of character thing was, as Ite said, that he intended to mate her with a human being, first thinking about Class S or G SOLDIER, and then planning to convince Sephiroth to do it instead. And, according to what he was talking to himself about planning to drug her first, I'm afraid it's probable that he wanted it done in the "traditional way". Very much in character, indeed. Wonder if he also wanted to record it :/

Can't wait to kick his ass.
 
Misterbadguy

Misterbadguy

Phantom Lord
AKA
METEODRIVE
I never once got the impression that Hojo wasn't true to his character, in fact I never got that impression from any of the core cast at all. He's still very obviously unhinged and obsessed with his own research, Shinra's corporate goals being unimportant to him (aside from the funding they give him presumably). The lines about Ifalna's remains were a testament to that.
 
Clean Cut Chaos

Clean Cut Chaos

Pro Adventurer
AKA
Cub Chaos
When he started telling Aerith what all he did with her mother after retrieving her body I remember thinking "damn, was he always this nasty?"

He always came off as "evil" because he didn't give a damn who his research hurt in the name of getting his results. I didn't see him as much as someone who would go out of his way to make someone feel miserable in such an actively aggressive way.
 
youffie

youffie

Pro Adventurer
I think Hojo was a very hard character to nail because he’s supposed to be both creepy and over the top, and I was a bit worried about him. You don’t balance that right, he may come off as merely annoying or plain stupid, and it’s especially tricky when you add in face expressions and a voice. So that first exchange with Aerith sealed it for me: this is a guy I can find absolutely terrifying, disgusting, and ridiculous depending on the circumstances.

Perhaps it’s not so much that he goes out of his way to make others feel miserable, it’s just a nice perk that comes with the job. You don't torture all those people and living beings for decades if you don't get even a small bit of enjoyment out of it.
 
Cannon_Fodder

Cannon_Fodder

Pro Adventurer
Hojo is torturing Aerith for science, not for the pleasure of it. He says in the board meeting he wants to secure her cooperation through "forceful" means, and it's better to "scar the psyche rather than the flesh." So I always took his excitement as being scientific (like, "the sooner she breaks the sooner I can conduct experiments!" or "it's so interesting she reacts like that!") rather than enjoyment of the cruelty itself.

If anything, the only thing that seems weird is that Hojo knows people well enough to perform psychological torture in the first place.
 
LicoriceAllsorts

LicoriceAllsorts

Donator
I'd have to play the section again to be sure, but I definitely got the impression he was enjoying her emotional pain as he described how he took her mother's body apart. OC Hojo I always understood to be somebody who wouldn't have been able to do that because he didn't allow for human emotions. He wasn't a sadist; he seemed neither to know nor care that people had feelings. Remember his line, "there's so many frivolous things in this world"? Human emotions were frivolous things to OC Hojo.
 
Magos-Dominus

Magos-Dominus

Rookie Adventurer
AKA
Magos
Hojo is a delicate blend of ridiculous and horrifying. It's a largely 50/50 split in the OG, partially due to graphical limitations and the maintenance of the late-90s-anime tone and presentation meaning there's so far you can get with delving into the awful.

Remake bumps it up to about a 30/70 split, at least, with the more realistic graphics amplifying the creep-factor of his casual awfulness, and the added bouts of deranged psychopathy to the script.

Real question is do we still catch him tanning on Costa del Sol?
 
LNK

LNK

Pro Adventurer
AKA
Nate
With what we saw of Hojo, in the remake, I don't see him chilling on the beach like we did in the OG. It would be awkward to not attack him.
 
LNK

LNK

Pro Adventurer
AKA
Nate
Clean Cut Chaos said:
When he started telling Aerith what all he did with her mother after retrieving her body I remember thinking "damn, was he always this nasty?"

He always came off as "evil" because he didn't give a damn who his research hurt in the name of getting his results. I didn't see him as much as someone who would go out of his way to make someone feel miserable in such an actively aggressive way.
Click to expand...
Maybe we'll battle an experimented on Ifalna, sort of like
Daemon Ravus
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom