The Chronic Underrating of Kuja from Final Fantasy 9 By Ryan Toscano5/28/2014
The Final Fantasy series is a video game RPG collection ripe with classic villains. Two of the most famous villains in the series are Sephiroth, from Final Fantasy 7 and Kefka, from Final Fantasy 6. Both of these baddies are very different from one another and are classics in their own right. These guys have received praise all over the internet, and I’m very happy for them, and Imma let them get their praise in here, but Kuja from Final Fantasy had one of the best villain performances of all time! And I have some video game facts to support it.
In order to fully appreciate what Kuja accomplished in Final Fantasy 9 we need to understand a little bit about what Kefka and Sephiroth did that makes them so memorable, because their villainy is by no means diminished because of how awesome Kuja is. Kefka is considered such a great antagonist because of exactly what he accomplished villainy wise in Final Fantasy 6, which is very similar to why I think Kuja is such a great villain. He actually won half way through the game and took over the world. When does that happen? He is also quite a sadistic villain. “I will destroy everything… I will create a monument to non-existence!” That is some pretty evil stuff. Plus he is basically a clown, and clown’s scare people. He is creepy and ruthless.
Sephiroth may not have actually caused much destruction, but he did kill the protagonists main love interest. That along with his awesome giant katana makes his appearance awesome. Final Fantasy 7 had great popularity; virtually making RPG’s not just for “nerds” anymore. Final Fantasy 7’s steam punk style was cool. Everything about Final Fantasy 7 was cool. Cloud was cool, the story was cool, and the main antagonist was cool.
Kuja, on the other hand, is generally held back because he is in Final Fantasy 9. By no means does this mean I think that Final Fantasy 9 is a bad game. In fact it may be my favorite in the series, but Final Fantasy 9 isn’t very popular; it came out on the Playstation during the end of its cycle. It isn’t fair to just blame the release date on Kuja’s lack of popularity. His design was done in a completely terrible way.
Kuja is in fact a male villain, but it wasn’t uncommon that his sex confused gamers all over. His skin was smooth and powdery, in his first cut scene he does a few girlish mannerisms, and he is wearing a thong. Why Square would make their main villain wear a costume like that has been a question many Final Fantasy 9 supporters have asked themselves. And yes it is a dumb design for your main villain, but what about the rest of his feminine features? He just always looked like a girl which threw off so many people. Maybe this was just a result of Final Fantasy 9 having better graphics. I mean let’s just take a look at what new images of Kefka and Sephiroth look like, along with Kuja in that ever so wonderful thong.
It is just more of the powdery, smooth, make up wearing skin that many gamers have plagued Kuja for. Final Fantasy had very good graphics, especially during the CGI scenes. What people forget is that Square is pretty much an anime studio. Look at newer Final Fantasy games like 13 and even 10. Many of these characters all have the smooth, anime style skin and features, an area that Kuja gets special bashing because he was really the first Final Fantasy character that was shown within that vision.
I know that this isn’t all of it. Sephiroth did kill Aeris, and Kefka did in fact take over the world and succeed in his plan. What did Kuja do that was so special that his name deserves to be mentioned with those two greats? Well I will tell you what Kuja has done, because it is a ton more than either of those two villains conjured combined.
Let’s start off at the beginning of Kuja’s journey. He single handedly manipulated a Queen, used her power to create a race of mages, mages that contained human emotions, that were characterized within the parties own black mage Vivi, and used this race to rage war amongst the three major Kingdoms on planet Gaia. He first attacked the Kingdom of Burmecia, almost destroying an entire race of rat-tailed humans. And then when the survivors of that attack fled to Cleyra, he had Queen Brahne destroy that too. And yes Brahne did do the action, but her actions were being controlled by that of Kuja, which gives him a similar quality to Kefka in Final Fantasy 6. He uses manipulation and other people’s greed to achieve his ultimate goal.
Kuja’s sites were then set on Lindbulm, the largest nation in Gaia. Once again he was using Brahne’s troops, but he was in total control of everything going on. Once he was done there, he used the power of Bahamut to take out Alexandria, the Kingdom he was working with throughout most of the game. So he may not have been in control of the world in the same way that Kefka was, but that was never his main goal. Destruction was what Kuja sought after. And destruction he undoubtedly caused. The goal of all the destruction was to repair the life force of another planet. Kuja then went to that planet, a planet that your main protagonist was actually from, and he destroyed that too. Yeah Kuja sent one world into complete disarray all to revive the people living on another planet, then once he was through accomplishing that, he scurried on over to planet Terra and completely obliterated it. Wiping out almost another entire race of people.
So all of this evil should, at least put Kuja on the same level of villainy as Kefka and Sephiroth. And his reign of evil actually still continues. Once you defeat his final form in disk four, he decides to use Ultima to blow up everything instead of bow out gracefully. When he does this he doesn’t only kill every single member in your party, but he also destroys a little known thing called the crystal of life. Yeah he destroys the crystal that maintains life. I know people have probably witnessed the end of Final Fantasy 9 and are saying, “Yeah but everything returns to normal in the end.” And I say “who cares” to that notion. If Necron wasn’t their because of Garland then everything would have just been thrown into the lifestream. Kuja can’t be blamed because Necron couldn’t accomplish a simple deed in killing the guys Kuja just killed.
So let’s recap. Kuja manipulated a Queen to basically become the ruler of that nation, then used that nation to create a new race of people for war, then he used that and some magic to destroy the two other major kingdoms, then he destroyed the kingdom he was previously working with. Kuja from there went on to destroying an entire planet, and then worked his way on to killing your entire party, and the crystal that creates life almost ending the world. Not just taking over the world, but almost stopping it in its tracks. I would say that Kuja is one of the best villains in video game history. And he is clearly chronically underrated.