Man, I've been noticing lately that a bunch of characters in anime love to go sicko mode and this was all too apparent with last week’s episode of Jouran: The Princess of Snow and Blood. Uh, for the uninitiated, whenever Kinky and I are watching an anime and someone starts going absolutely crazy… You know the stereotypes, they get wide eyes, massive edgy vibes, start yelling, say shit like “That’s it! I’ll crush you here and now, you dumbasses!!!” we say they’re going sicko mode as a play on psycho and the song. It’s outdated I know, but the point is god damn we’ve been saying that a lot recently. 

For some more context, a character in Jouran, Tsuki, finally went all out sicko mode this week and used the forbidden blue crystal power to turn into a monster. We then got the classic dialogue of “THIS IS SO FUN, I LOVE FIGHTING YOU” and “MORE! SHOW ME MORE!”. Up to this point the character was one of the more level-headed ones of the group and there really wasn’t much setup for this drastic change. This is a real issue, because it seems to me that writing a character going sicko in a believable way (or at least a logical one) is important. If you do it right, it can add a lot to a piece and make people love the character way more than usual. The Persona series had sicko mode villains for both 4 and 5 in the form of Adachi and Aketchi, and both those characters turned out to be pretty popular among the fans despite their absolute batshit craziness. Meanwhile the reception of this Jouran episode appears to be pretty lukewarm at best according to some review articles that popped up in my feed with most disappointed at how Tsuki was handled.

I should of known. Anyone who makes a pun like that is a certified psychopath.

I’m trying to find out if this is a new trend in anime or if there was almost always a character that had to go massively dark and say the most Sasuke-like shit. Maybe some of the older anime fans can help me with this one. Everytime I turn my head these days someone is going crazy. Dr. Stone had Hyoga. Fire Force had Yona. Beastars had Riz. Runaway Girl had a crazy rapist boy. Fumetsu no Anata e appears like it will have a crazy short haired girl. Jujutsu Kaisen had Mahito. The list goes on and on. Hell even in the recent Demon Slayer movie, the main villain utilizes dream powers and is basically a sicko mode “I LOVE WATCHING THE HUMANS SUFFER IN MENTAL AGONY IN THEIR DREAMS HAHAHA” type of villain without much else behind them. Now don’t get it twisted, just because an anime has a crazy character that’s bloodthirsty and loves “the darkness”, that doesn’t mean it’s a bad anime or that the character is boring. Mahito is about as crazy “I want to kill people and laugh while doing it” as it gets, yet he can still bust out some philosophy on why he’s correct in doing so and has much more engaging dialogue than spouting out bullshit about loving darkness or wanting to see more blood. I mentioned these anime simply to show how frequent the quantity of the sicko mode archetype has become in anime, not to speak on their quality or lump said quality together.

Oof, talking about a selection of the human race? That's when you know they're going sicko.

At the end of the day I’m completely fine with crazy characters as long as the writers do something to make them interesting. There’s only so many times you can see someone repeat the same empty motivations of “I want to kill people, CAUSE I LOVE KILLING HAHAHAH YES, LET ME FEEL MOOOOOOORE DARKNESS!!! THE POWER!!! I AM A SUPREME BEING HAHA” before it feels like you’re watching the exact same damn villian over and over again. To summarize, utilizing a known popular archetype doesn’t excuse a lack of character depth, yet it’s not a death sentence for a character’s quality either as long as the archetype is expanded upon in some way. This is where I need you older anime fans to hop in the comments. Have you noticed a rise in crazy characters in anime? Has this archetype always been around and kicking? Be consumed by the darkness in the comments below!