Ten Protagonists That Make No Sense At All

Ryu

I’m talking about the protagonist in the Breath of Fire series here, rather than the Street Fighting legend of the same name. It’s a problem that pervades a fair few game series, but it seems improbable that so many Ryu’s can exist. I can stay open minded about the idea of multiple universes all existing coherently alongside each other, but there are just too many elements for it to be plausible. There’s far too much similarity in how all of them have blue hair and a similar build, are often struck with amnesia and can transform into dragons. There are too many differences though for them to all be the same person, with Ryu’s child incarnations in BoF 1-3 contradicting his teenage/adult age group in number 4, Dragon Quarter and the majority of Breath of Fire 2. Damn you Capcom, you cheeky chums.

Dante

This one eludes me to this day. Based on the classic Italian epic poem of the same name, Dante’s Inferno takes the basic narrative premise of the poetic works and completely misses the point. Initially described as a frail and cowardly poet who ventures into the netherworld to escape from the beasts that chase him through the forest, Dante is transformed in this mess of an interpretation into a stacked templar of the crusades who wields a massive scythe. How the hell is that supposed to work? Who thought this was a good idea? And Beatrice, rather than being an image of the ideal woman who was admired from afar by Dante, becomes Lucifer’s prisoner who Dante must rescue with his brute strength. The fact that such a bastardisation of the original protagonist of the Divine Comedy can exist at all is simply baffling, making this Dante one character who completely defies logic.

Link

Link has the same problem as Breath of Fire’s Ryu, existing in multiple instances in multiple worlds that have strange overlapping and conflicting elements. If you see Link as more of a metaphor for a courageous hero, rather than a specific individual, it makes more sense, but trying to make any sense of his place in the franchises in a chronological fashion is near impossible. Many have attempted to place the Zelda franchise into some form of foreseeable order, but it just doesn’t work. Link simply couldn’t exist in that many different forms, so there must be some explanation we’re missing.