It is very hard to take Dr. Robotnik seriously as a video game villain. Saying “Ganondorf is coming to kill us!” or “Sephiroth is attacking an orphanage!” or even “Mother Brain is eating all the cupcakes and leaving none for the rest of us!” will garner something of a reaction from the knowing gamer, because these figures have been established as legitimate threats capable of destroying planets and becoming Gods. But to say “Dr. Robotnik is coming!” will doubtlessly result in laughter and have the same reaction as saying that the Tetris blocks are having a revolution. The man simply cannot conjure the same kind of fear and instant dread that his video game peers might. His appearance is clownish, with an impossibly goofy orange mustache and a perfect spherical body that suggests he once had a past life as a bowling ball. He is constantly upstaged by woodland animals in spite of the fact that he has an arsenal of tanks and machines at his disposal. And if you were really cynical, you might ask “Exactly what are you a Dr. /of/, Mr. Robotnik?”
Yet, once you get beyond the silly image and cartoony off-kilter behaviour of the good doctor, Robotnik really is quite terrifying. In fact, he has more power in his villainous acts than perhaps even he knows. Far from being an impotent baddie, Robotnik can do something which many villains cannot: he can destroy a person. And not just in the sense of rending the body and killing it: he destroys the very meaning of what it is to /be/ a person. Worse, he can inflict this state of not-being on a person for an eternity unless the gamer stops him via blue hedgehog. With enough deconstruction of what it is that he does, Dr. Robotnik stops being awfully goofy and becomes awfully, well, awful.
One of the things that can make a villain truly ominious and threatening is the size and scope of his potential destruction, how many people he can affect, and whether the gamer can see himself or herself as a potential target of this action within the context of the game. Try though he might, Bowser will never be the most horrifying of villains, because his targets are always focused on a very small group of people: even in “Super Mario Galaxy”, when Bowser finds the ability to control the universe, he still only uses his cosmic powers to nab Peach and temporarily inconvenience Mario. Compare this to Ganondorf in “Ocarina of Time,” who steals the Triforce, the very essence of the Goddesses, and in turn becomes himself a God of sorts, taking complete control of all of Hyrule and leaving literally no person in this world untouched. Even the relatively insignificant Lon Lon Ranch receives the brunt of Ganondorf’s malice. Worse still, he’s taken over the Sacred Realm, which can be read as Hyrule’s equivalent of Heaven, and corrupted it: the very promise of goodness and transcendence has been twisted by Ganondorf’s evil. You then have a sort of spectrum where on one end, you have a villain who effects only a small group of people (whether it be by stealing their purse, murdering a significant other, or kidnapping a princess), and on the other, a villain who affects everyone and everything, from people to plants to time and space. This, in turn, affects the gamer and how they identify themselves with the events in the game. Bowser might kidnap Peach, and while Mario might lament the loss of his girlfriend, the love interest is so ultra-specific that the gamer, unless they have secret fantasies about Princess Peach, does not feel that their own love life has taken a blow as a result of Bowser’s actions. Conversely, in the case of Ganondorf, the villain has taken away everything good that the world has to offer and replaced it with his own evil version. If the player has placed themselves in this world vicariously, then it doesn’t matter who they are or what they do, they’re still affected as a result of Ganondorf’s actions.
Where, then, does Dr. Robotnik fall in this spectrum? First, let’s look at what it is Robotnik does as a villain. The good Doctor acts as the threat of Man vs. Nature, in which Man is trying to destroy all that is good and wholesome about Nature, usually by exploiting its resources, rending the landscape, and replacing it with some kind of man-made structure or creation (be it building a house or pollution). Robotnik takes this to the cartoon extreme, however, in that there does not appear to be any economic or functional payoff to his wanton destruction of the environment, merely doing it because he’s a jerk like that. The key word in that sentence is “cartoon,” because the near randomness of these actions undermine the threat they might have. Surely, the destruction of the environment on a scale this massive is good for no man, if only because the air and water quality have been decimated to the point where even the most animate right-wing party member would have to call foul. Thus, the tentative argument could be made that Robotnik’s actions are indeed affecting everyone on a grand scale vicariously. Yet there are no real discernible benefits for Robotnik to go about doing this: being human (presumably), he would suffer the same detriments of this mass pollution as anyone else, so to have environmental destruction on this scale is nonsensical in terms of personal gain. You could argue that the mad doctor is, well, mad, in that there is no logic or reason to his actions, and that he is partaking in meaningless, anarchistic action, yet there seems to be some kind of rhyme and reason to his deeds: he obviously does not appreciate Sonic attempting to stop his mass pollution, indicating that he has an end goal in mind, even if said goal is just pollution for pollution’s sake. So the threat that Robotnik might provide on the environmental scale, while potent, is undermined by the sheer ridiculousness of it.
Second, Dr. Robotnik is trying to nab the Chaos Emeralds in order to help him take over the world. What exactly he plans on doing with said Emeralds is ambiguous. We know that when Ganondorf steals the Triforce, he gains control over everyone and everything. It’s none too clear as to what Robotnik hopes to do with the Emeralds in the event that he gets them. All they do for Sonic is turn him a sparkling yellow and give him the ability to fly, which, while cool, wouldn’t really do much to make Robotnik more terrifying. In fact, the sight of a roly-poly man flying about the sky like a deranged superhero would be kind of funny. So nothing overly threatening there, aside from speculation on what Robotnik /might/ do with the Chaos Emeralds.
But then you get to an aspect of Robotnik’s evil actions that isn’t so laughable. In fact, I would say that it’s not only potent, it’s threatening on a certain level that other villains can’t quite top. He takes sentient creatures (in this case, anthropomorphic animals) and turns them into robots.
This warrants some deconstructing. Ultimately, what Robotnik is doing is taking one thing and turning it into something completely different. This is nothing too shocking if all you’re doing is taking a toaster and turning into a door stop, but in this case, it’s being done with a sentient being, presumably against their will. What’s more, in the case of the toaster-to-doorstop, all that’s really changed is the function of the item and how its being used. The toaster is still a toaster, in that it looks like a toaster, is built like a toaster. All that’s changed is that it has stopped being used as a toaster. With the case of robotization, the person or thing being transformed retains nothing of what they were prior to being a robot. If a person (I’m going to use the word “person” just because it seems more, well, personal than saying animal) becomes a robot, they have essentially lost everything that made them a person in the first place. “What does it mean to be a person?” one might ask. There are enough tomes out there on the subject to sink the Bismark, and I’m not game enough to try and tackle the whole issue here. A few simplifications for the sake of argument might be made. First, there needs to be some kind of anatomy and bodily systems that make the person alive, allowing us to make a distinction between a person and a rock. Second, there should be some kind of sentient awareness of one’s own existence (or at least, the potential to have such an awareness), coupled with a brain capable of thought process, allowing us to make a distinction between a person and a flower.
But what happens when a person is robotized? The anatomy is altered entirely, the switching of essential vital organs over to machine parts, and the bodily functions and systems that made a person distinct from a flower (or brick or any other non-living item) have vanished. The higher brain functions, unique to humans (or the anthropomorphic equivalent thereof) have been replaced with circuitry and pre-programmed thought, further removing distinction of what it means to be a person. Robotnik has taken the very essence of what it means to be a person and made it nil: there is no fundamental difference, in terms of existence, between the robotized person and an inanimate object. Moreover, if we refer back to the toaster example, the toaster, even it has ceased functioning as a toaster, still retains some kind of identity of being a toaster in a past life: if someone were to see it being used as a doorstop, they would be more likely to say “What’s that toaster doing down there?” instead of “Nice doorstop.” The person who has become a robot has lost that identity entirely: it retains nothing of its past life, having lost the very essence of what made it what it was before. Any attempts to view the robot as the person it was in the past are superimposed, for the very ability to /be/ a person has been removed altogether. They cannot fundamentally be the same person they were five seconds prior to becoming a robot.
Not only has the subject been stripped of its status as a person, it’s lost its status as an individual. Personality, will, and thought are all things which differentiate one person from the next. Yet upon becoming a robot, no one person is any different from the next. Certainly, the form and shape might be different (you might be turned into a Caterkiller or a Motobug), but those are merely cosmetic differences. Everything that makes you /you/ has been rendered moot. Ideas and thought have been preprogrammed, free will replaced with systematic obedience.
If they cannot be a person, then what can they be? Simply put: a machine. The robotic body is all that’s left. Everything else has been stripped away. The subject in question has no choice in the matter as to whether they want to be a machine or not, because they no longer have the ability to be a person at all. They cannot be what they were, and thus their status as a person has been altered beyond reconciliation. The example might be stretched beyond just becoming a robot. Say Robotnik’s gimmick was he turned people into planks of wood, or marbles. He would still have the ability to shift the fundamentals of what it means to be one thing and convert it into the fundamentals of being another thing. In having this ability to upheave existence on every level, Robotnik have made the idea of being anything somewhat arbitrary: it doesn’t matter what you are now, because you can be easily made into something else. The existence of the person as a person, then, doesn’t matter, because Robotnik has managed to destroy the essence of /being/ in any meaningful fashion.
That’s not bad for a guy with a silly mustache.
With this in mind, Robotnik manages to stand up a little better when compared to Ganondorf. Ganondorf has made the existence of every Hylain miserable; Robotnik has challenged existence itself. He can make a person /not be/, essentially erasing everything about them from the world. The fan might then point out: “Yeah, that’s a little rough, but he’s still not out there killing people.” It’s a good point, to be sure, but more deconstructing is still required. Robotnik isn’t killing people, but by /not/ killing the people he robotizes, he might be doing something worse. With the death of a character, there’s at least some kind of closure. Either they go to the afterlife of their choosing, or simply die and go nowhere, or wait around in their spirit form until Yuna or some other summoner comes to Send them. If nothing else, there is an end of some kind provided for the character. This is not the case with Robotnik’s robots. Evidenced by the cute animals that hop out of the robots after Sonic jumps on them, the creature that has been robotized is still alive after the process. But what if Sonic does /not/ destroy their robot form? The state of non-being as previously described remains imposed on the creature perpetually. They are not allowed to live, but they are not really allowed to die. They don’t get to go on to a better place after Robotnik is done with them: they stay in their metal prison, still without identity, free will, or personhood. If one is inclined to believe that nothing happens to you when you die, and that you enter a state of non-being anyways, this might not be as horrifying. If it is believed that there /is/ an afterlife when you die, however, then Robotnik is committing a terrible crime: he is denying the soul to pass on. The soul present in the creature is trapped in every sense of the word: the physical body is contained, and the mind has ceased to be relevant. There is nothing left of the person for the soul to inhabit, but without the person actually being dead, the soul is unable to go anywhere and remain in robotic limbo. Robotnik has rendered the soul nil.
Tying this back to the scope of villainy, Robotnik’s status seems to grow. A good villain is measured by the size of the threat he offers, and how many people it affects. Robotnik threatens identity, existence, and the soul, threats which affect every living being. He does it on an industrial scale, mass producing robots out of sentient creatures, meaning that he can affect many people in a quick and efficient way. With the ability to destroy what it means to be a person, and do it on a grand scale, you’d best believe that Dr. Robotnik, silly mustache and all, is indeed a threat to be reckoned with. If Sonic does not defeat him, then the people he has robotized are doomed to not-be, and to not-be for eternity.
So the next time you’re zipping through Green Hill Zone and you run into the bald red-head in his drill-tank, your reaction should not be laughter. It shouldn’t even be considering how easy it is to just jump on his noggin multiple times and render his take useless. You should look at Dr. Robotnik and think about all those critters he has put into a state of non-being, and how they are doomed to a worthless existence (if they exist at all) unless you put an end to his machinations. You should feel that same hate that you feel when you walk into Hyrule Castle Town and see it overrun with Redeads. This is a video game villain that is worth your time. Every time you blow up one of his ridiculously extravagant machines, be sure to shout “I EXIST!” into the wind. That’ll show him.
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