Further Mutations Required

Even among the often-philosophical Final Fantasy series, Final Fantasy IX is frequently praised for its exploration of existential themes. While its cartoonish, chibi-style visuals and initially JRPG-typical “friends on an adventure” premise suggest a whimsical story without much philosophical substance, the later stages pivot sharply toward heavier questions of mortality, identity, and grief. By its climax, the game positions itself as a meditation on finding meaning despite death and embracing one’s existence in the face of inevitable loss. 

The problem arises at the point where, as is characteristic of RPG structure, a villain must be solidified both as a character and as an opposing ideology in preparation for the final confrontation. While Final Fantasy IX succeeds in positioning Kuja to fill that role structurally, it fails grievously in integrating his transgressions and moral position into the very themes it has seeded. When framing a “heroes versus villain” story through existential philosophy, it is crucial for the narrative’s intellectual integrity to justify why the villain has failed existentially, not merely morally. Here, Final Fantasy IX falters. The logic breaks down, and in doing so, the entire framework of its existential posturing begins to unravel. 

If existential messages surrounding mortality and self-prescribed meaning are to hold weight, they must be applied fairly and consistently, regardless of who occupies the role of hero or villain within the story’s structure. Final Fantasy IX, however, fails to apply its own existential logic to Kuja. Of all its characters, he alone is positioned without a win condition under the philosophy the narrative claims to uphold. His struggle for meaning, unlike those of his peers, is denied validation not by necessity, but by flawed narrative design. 

Protagonist-Centered Existentialism - Also Known As Determinism 

Although all major characters in Final Fantasy IX grapple with existential burdens, from coping with grief to defining themselves in relation to social roles, two characters are presented by the end of the story as the clearest representatives of its existential thesis. Zidane, the protagonist, faces a serious crisis of identity in the final arc when he is confronted with his artificial origins. Yet in his darkest moment, the narrative offers compassion: his friends intervene, leading him away from self-destruction and affirming his worth beyond his intended purpose. Likewise, Vivi, grappling with his artificial nature and severely limited lifespan, comes to terms with his mortality through acceptance. He chooses to find joy in fleeting experiences and creates meaning through his relationships and legacy, particularly among his Black Mage kin. Both characters are framed as noble, and their choices are celebrated as radical acts of existential courage. 

Fittingly, Kuja, who is poised to serve as the final antagonist, checks many of the same circumstantial boxes and is thus framed as their negative foil. Like Zidane and Vivi, he too is of artificial origin and ultimately forced to confront his own mortality. Yet while they are met with empathy and existential grace, Kuja is left to face his impending end alone and unprepared. The narrative establishes him early as arrogant and cruel, but only later will his fear of death, and his refusal to submit to oblivion, become his defining sin and solidify his role as villain. 

This is where the narrative’s existential logic begins to slip. A subtle yet insidious false dichotomy is created, and it is one the player is not immediately prompted to question. By the time Kuja and the heroes are headed toward confrontation, Zidane and Vivi’s sympathetic backstories are well-established. Both were designed as weapons, yet abandoned before that fate could be realized. Instead, they arrived as children in the company of loving and supportive adults. Zidane’s closeness to his found family in Tantalus, under the guidance of his surrogate father Baku, is given significant focus early in the story. Vivi, too, often recalls the brief but meaningful care of his adoptive grandfather, Quan. Both experience formative bonds that provide emotional intelligence, self-worth, and the ability to trust others. 

Kuja, by contrast, receives no such privileges. Only late in the story, during Garland’s terse and easily overlooked exposition, do we learn of his origins. Created as an adult, he was designed without the capacity for growth, bonding, or social integration. Garland openly identifies this as Kuja’s flaw: his design limitation, and ultimately, his narrative failing. He was not nurtured, but manufactured and discarded. 

The profound implications of this are brushed aside unceremoniously, and the narrative does not invite the player to reflect on how this frames Kuja’s ability to parse his impending mortality when it will soon become key to the plot. Instead, it quietly seals his fate, recasting existential failure as moral failure and, worse still, retribution. Where Zidane and Vivi had clear paths to "success" via connection, love, and legacy, Kuja was never offered a viable route. His design left him fundamentally unequipped to process mortality through trust or acceptance. 

Here, the narrative offers no grace. Kuja’s downfall passes without reflection or pause, his suffering treated not as tragedy, but as an inconvenient obstacle on the path to the heroes’ triumph. The player is not encouraged to linger in his terror or view him with pity; instead, the story permits his dehumanization, leaving his existential breakdown unacknowledged. By the time Kuja resurfaces later, resolved to destroy existence itself, the groundwork has already been laid. What began as despair is retroactively reframed as villainous defiance, and the story prepares to frame his annihilation as the rightful punishment for daring to desire personhood on his own terms. 

Zidane and Vivi are allowed to succeed because the narrative gave them the tools, the time, and the love to do so. This is not unique to them: nearly every major character is offered some measure of safety or healing. Garnet is orphaned as a child but later adopted and loved. Eiko is given the protection of her eidolon and family of Moogles. Even Beatrix, a former antagonist, is met with understanding and camaraderie and her wrongs are treated as misguided rather than immoral. By contrast, Kuja is denied any avenue for meaningful connection, and punished for breaking under the weight of its absence. 

What the story presents as existential triumph is, more often, the reward for narrative palatability: for characters whose pain is familiar, whose redemption is expected, and whose arcs align cleanly with the moral structure laid out for them. Final Fantasy IX does not uphold the ideals of existential freedom it celebrates, rather, it withholds them and calls the outcome justice. It rewards those born into meaning, and condemns those who must invent it. 

This is not existentialism. This is in fact the complete opposite: determinism. 

Post-Hoc Condemnation – Or, ‘He Was Asking For It’

Having already failed to apply its existential framework consistently, Final Fantasy IX compounds that failure by manipulating the player’s emotional stance toward Kuja through selective framing and symbolic shorthand. His downfall is not simply written, rather, the justification for it is reverse-engineered. Even before his motivations are fully revealed, Kuja is coded as untrustworthy and his design and behavior coded to discourage compassion and invite moral judgment. The game’s treatment of him relies not on clear ideology, but on a slow aesthetic and psychological indictment that erodes the possibility of sympathy before it ever begins.

Trauma-Coded Villainy 

From his very first scene, Kuja is constructed not to evoke empathy, but to deflect it. He is theatrical, self-isolating, and emotionally unstable, traits the story attributes not to trauma, but to ego and cruelty. Yet from a psychological standpoint, these behaviors are not evidence of malice. They read instead as maladaptive coping mechanisms: the classic survival strategies of someone denied attachment, stability, and any concept of safety. Kuja does not behave this way in spite of his origin story, but because of it. His emotional patterns are consistent, tragic, and entirely predictable, yet the narrative treats them as signs of an inherently corrupt nature. Worse still, it frontloads this interpretation so thoroughly that it preempts any honest evaluation of cause. 

Across the field of psychology, childhood is consistently identified as the most critical period in the development of healthy adult relationships, emotional regulation, and a cohesive sense of self. Trauma during this period is widely understood to produce long-term social dysfunction, often manifesting as withdrawal, aggression, and the construction of a false self to protect against emotional abandonment. The most damaging trauma often comes from parental rejection, which compromises the child’s ability to feel safe, wanted, or willing to risk the friction of connection. In such cases, survival takes the place of growth, and emotional needs are buried beneath whatever persona can endure the abuse. 

Every one of these conditions is present in Kuja’s construction. He is created with full awareness of his artificiality and utility, fashioned not as a person but as a weapon. His only paternal figure, Garland, shows no affection, no acceptance, and no intention of treating him as anything more than a tool to eventually be discarded. His survival depends entirely on performance. Worse still, Kuja appears to have lived for some time without sentient peers, precluding even basic social interaction. He is denied not only childhood, but the development upon which self-image is founded. He does not grow into emotional maturity, he is simply installed with intellect. The result is a being who suffers the tragedy of a child’s volatility trapped in an adult’s body, and who was never given the chance to become anything else. 

It is therefore no surprise that Kuja exhibits the profile of someone shaped by deep alienation. He performs cruelty, but cannot connect. He controls others, but cannot have a place among them. His flamboyance, detachment, and need for control are not tools of dominance, but rather they are stage dressing hiding a disrupted identity. The story codes these traits as villainy, but they align exactly with the psychology of someone wounded, hollowed out, and desperate to maintain some semblance of dignity. 

Kuja is not punished for being monstrous. He is punished for responding to trauma in a way the story refuses to read as even remotely sympathetic. 

What Are You, A Virgin?

While condemning mismanaged trauma already delivers a troubling message about what constitutes morally acceptable self-expression, the narrative of Final Fantasy IX takes this a step further by extending its judgment into the realm of gender and intimacy. It is no coincidence that Kuja’s presentation of masculinity stands in direct opposition to that of his protagonist counterpart, Zidane. The contrast between them is stark and deliberate. Zidane is portrayed as emotionally and sexually available, extroverted, physically expressive, and quick to form bonds, especially through romantic and flirtatious behavior. Kuja, by contrast, is detached, intellectual, aesthetically composed, and resistant to uncurated social contact.

Throughout the game, Zidane’s approach to intimacy and masculinity is consistently validated. His aggressive advances toward Garnet are framed as harmless flirtation, even in moments that violate consent, such as groping her during a compromising situation early in the story. His ease with touch, romantic pursuit, and social confidence are treated as signs of emotional health and leadership. Even when he falters, such as during the “You Are Not Alone” sequence late in the game, his vulnerability is framed through a familiar, culturally sanctioned model of masculine grief: the man who becomes withdrawn until coaxed out by friendship. Every aspect of Zidane’s emotional and physical fluency is either valorized or gently redeemed.

Kuja, in contrast, offers a radically different model of gender expression and intimacy. He is feminine-coded in both design and behavior: delicate in appearance, stylized in movement, and disinterested in physicality as anything other than performance. His sensuality is passive and constrained, never rooted in pursuit or participation. His use of magic, a role most often assigned to female characters within JRPG convention, further distances him from normative masculinity. Socially, he maintains no genuine connections, only strategic alliances, and there is no textual suggestion of romantic or sexual engagement. And where Zidane’s grief is stoic and rescuable, Kuja’s is explosive, uncontained, and ultimately fatal, coded feminine in its intensity, and dismissed as dangerous rather than tragic.

By the game’s conclusion, the story explicitly affirms Zidane’s mode of existence as the “correct” one. Kuja’s final concession to Zidane reads as narrative decree: a verbal endorsement of the idea that true personhood comes from social ease, physical availability, and emotional legibility. More troubling still, this implies that models of selfhood rooted in restraint, boundary, and non-normative masculinity are not just atypical, but incorrect. The story does not treat Kuja’s boundaries as a valid form of self-protection or self-authorship. It reads them as defects. 

The Aesthetics of Evil 

Unsatisfied with merely portraying Kuja as condemnable in disposition, the narrative further encodes his damnation in advance through motif and symbolism. Nowhere is this more apparent than in his visual and allegorical parallels to a distinctly Luciferian archetype. This is first asserted through his appearance: androgynous beauty, emotional detachment, and the arrested quality of eternal youth, which are traits associated not with mortals, but with angels in Western myth. The divine aesthetic extends into his magic, which is tied to celestial phenomena: stars, cosmic forces, and apocalypse. Even the unmistakable serpent is echoed in his affinity with dragons.  

These themes are showcased most clearly in the Desert Palace, a sanctuary of exile constructed in the image of a profaned cathedral and adorned with stained glass and holy architecture that suggest corrupted divinity. His role as villain is likewise aligned with this iconography: the deceiver, the warbringer, the manipulator of kings. His bestowed title, Angel of Death, makes the connection textual, and his jealousy and replacement by Zidane complete the picture of a classic fallen figure. His envy of his successor is framed as cowardly, and his refusal to submit agreeably as transgressive. 

Under scrutiny, this myth does not hold true to the character’s reality. Kuja is not divine. He is not a being cast from grace. He is not a prince of heaven whose pride drove him to ruin. He is an engineered and profoundly vulnerable creature, a mortal in the false guise of a god. Unlike Lucifer, Kuja was never given a place of glory to fall from. He was born apart, manufactured into disgrace, and denied even the most basic conditions of acceptance. His rebellion is not the overreach of ambition, but the desperation of someone who has always been consigned to the role of slave. He does not rise against Garland as a rival to the divine. He rises as someone pleading for the minimum required to be a person. 

Another subtler but clearly deliberate piece of aesthetic coding appears in the proverbial peacock, a symbol of shallow vanity that seeks admiration. This motif is embedded through his ornate design, flowing garments, performative grace, and feathers. The unintentional but sad irony in this indictment of ego is that in nature, birds do not display for praise or personal satisfaction. Their behavior is inherently social, serving as a means to bond, to be chosen, and to belong. Kuja is, by design, a bird without a flock, and this metaphor underscores his isolation with a cruelty disguised as flavor. Still, the metaphor becomes crueler: birds in literature and in captivity often serve as symbols of longing for freedom — something beautiful that was never meant to be caged. In Kuja’s case, the symbolism is inverted: his splendor does not invite liberation, but signals his fate as something ornamental, confined, and displayed only to serve someone else's design.

The final symbolic insult lies in how the narrative weaponizes Kuja’s own love of drama and myth against him. Throughout the story, his infatuation with the conceit of theatrics is not mere performative flourish, but his chosen method of survival. For a being who can neither control his own story nor feel genuine emotion, the emulation of fantasy is a shallow but understandable substitute. It is precisely at his lowest moment that the narrative cruelly turns this coping mechanism into spiteful irony. This defeat is staged as his final performance; not a moment of introspection, but a humiliation ritual. The true crime lies in the fact that presenting suffering as punishment is profoundly anti-existential, as it treats pain as something fate inflicts upon those who do not play by its arbitrary rules. This reframes despair as a sin, and casts Kuja not as a victim of design, but as someone who deserved divine punishment. 

Indeed, nowhere is this more explicit than in the moments following Kuja’s defiance of Garland. He has just killed his maker, rejected his role, and seized his first real moment of autonomy, only to be told it is too late. Garland’s voice returns from the void not to warn, but to mock. Kuja’s time is up, his body is finite, and his soul will soon be forfeit. The message is not that he has failed, but that he was never allowed to succeed. This is not a reckoning between equals, but rather a master speaking down to his creation — a final assertion of control disguised as truth. His struggle, his pain, even his desperate grasp for legacy are all waved away by a voice that condemns with the cold finality of the hand of justice itself.

This is not existentialism. It is yet another invocation of determinism, deployed in a narratively satisfying but philosophically dishonest fashion. 

Suffering As Sacred, Not Spectacle 

Within the field of existential thought, suffering is not viewed as a cudgel to punish those who fail to follow a prescripted moral code. Rather, it is seen as inevitable, and it is through suffering that man asserts his will by defining himself not by it, but in spite of it. Final Fantasy IX appears to understand this principle, at least in part. Characters such as Garnet and Freya experience the death or detachment of loved ones and must choose how to process grief in ways that allow for growth, healing, and movement forward. For Freya in particular, her character arc is shaped by unavoidable tragedy: the destruction of her homeland, and the slow heartbreak of being forgotten by the one she loves. Yet the narrative treats her sorrow not as a failure or a flaw, but as something worthy of dignity. Her suffering is honored; not erased, not mocked, not framed as condemnation. 

Although the narrative thoroughly establishes Kuja as a character whose circumstances preclude anything but futile suffering in a life he cannot meaningfully control, it nonetheless decides that his pain is unworthy of regarding as dignified or honorable in any sense. It offers no room for reflection, no suggestion that his struggle might hold value beyond failure. The tragedy of Kuja is not simply that he suffers, but that he attempts to create meaning from that suffering, and the story refuses to recognize it. 

Viktor Frankl, in Man’s Search for Meaning, defined the last of the human freedoms as the ability to “take a stand toward the conditions” of one’s existence, even when those conditions are cruel, unjust, or inescapable. Kuja does precisely this. In the absence of love, safety, or hope, he builds identity through performance, mythologizes himself to survive, and asserts control as a fragile form of meaning-making. His suffering, though unwitnessed and unacknowledged, is no less human and no less sacred. It is not monstrous nor hollow, but rather a testament to the will to endure. He is not passive in his despair. He resists it, in the only ways left to him.

And yet, the narrative does not acknowledge this as a choice at all. His acts of defiance are reframed as arrogance. His attempts at self-definition are cast as ego. His pain is stripped of dignity, his coping read as villainy. In doing so, the story violates its own philosophical premise: it punishes the act of taking a stand.

Frankl also warned, “No man should judge unless he asks himself in absolute honesty whether in a similar situation he might not have done the same.” Zidane eventually echoes this very idea, but only after Kuja has already been neutralized. His empathy arrives too late to offer grace, and serves less as a reckoning than as a moment of personal growth. It is a moral realization for the protagonist, not a vindication of the condemned.

Notably, Frankl also maintained, “No one has the right to do wrong, not even if wrong has been done to them.” But Kuja’s tragedy is not that he acted without consequences, but rather that the story never asked the question Frankl posed first. It judged him without imagining what it took to survive as him, and in doing so, refused to let his suffering mean anything. It is repurposed to serve the winners, not to elevate the dead.

Comparative Media – It Didn’t Have To Be This Way 

While this essay has thus far demonstrated why framing Kuja as both a deserving and inevitable villain is dishonest and deliberate, this line of critique can be taken a step further. Not only is a lack of empathy not a necessary treatment for such an archetype, it is in fact countered with humanity and grace in other media that wrestle honestly with existential questions of selfhood, connection, and trauma. Where Final Fantasy IX sterilizes and selectively applies these themes, Neon Genesis Evangelion and Pink Floyd’s The Wall confront their weight head-on, presenting these struggles as universal, uncomfortable, and deeply human.

Neon Genesis Evangelion 

A piece of highly existential media that predated Final Fantasy IX by only a few years, Neon Genesis Evangelion shares not only thematic ground but a cultural zeitgeist with the game. Aimed at a similar demographic, the series initially presents itself as a sci-fi mech anime, complete with high-stakes battles and a genre-typical “monster of the week” format. Yet, much like Final Fantasy IX, it gradually transforms from popcorn entertainment into a terrifying exploration of loneliness, trauma, and maladaptive coping in the face of social vulnerability and identity anxiety. As the narrative unfolds, the characters’ flaws are brought further into focus, and the viewer is gently, then relentlessly, invited to inhabit their fear and pain under increasingly unbearable psychological conditions.

The crucial difference between Evangelion and Final Fantasy IX’s handling of these topics is that Evangelion never seeks to lead the viewer into condemning its characters. Conflicts are given space to breathe, with appropriately timed pauses and respectfully framed glimpses into each character’s inner life. This creates an intimacy with the viewer that often borders on the voyeuristic. Rather than moral lecturing, the narrative’s goal is to invite the audience into the same mental and emotional space as the characters themselves. Silences, glances, and lingering still shots emphasize the reverent nature with which their suffering is portrayed.

Unlike Final Fantasy IX and its treatment of Kuja, Evangelion considers deprivation not only a point worth examining, but a central component in each character’s ability — or inability — to integrate into the world around them. The viewer bears painful witness as the characters self-sabotage, isolate, or construct false personas to either draw others in or push them away. Notably, Evangelion does not shy away from engaging with the suffering of characters who are not conventionally sympathetic. Instead, it asks the viewer to sit in discomfort with those whose unhappiness and identity crises are difficult to disentangle, whether as self-inflicted wounds or as logical outcomes of their circumstances.

Shinji Ikari, the character most closely followed by the narrative, is not presented as a typical protagonist in the shounen genre. He is soft-spoken, hesitant, and his responses to conflict are unromanticized and revealing. Rather than serving as a vessel for wish fulfillment, Shinji is shown to behave in ways that may frustrate or unsettle the audience. Within the first episode, we witness his estrangement from a cold and distant father who manipulates him into becoming a child soldier, exploiting Shinji’s desperate need for acknowledgment and approval. From this moment onward, the narrative remains unflinching, exposing Shinji not only to physical threats in battle, but to the far more insidious internal danger of emotional starvation. His growing need for validation, coupled with his inability to connect meaningfully to others, gradually isolates him until he begins to withdraw entirely into himself.

Both Evangelion and Final Fantasy IX culminate in a metaphysical confrontation with the death drive, a psychological and existential impulse to dissolve the self in order to escape suffering. In Evangelion, this takes the form of Instrumentality: the merging of all souls into a formless unity where pain, rejection, and individuality cease to exist. At the heart of this process is Shinji Ikari, positioned not merely as a participant but as the narrative’s avatar for this dilemma. It is through his inner world and conflict that Instrumentality unfolds, and it is his choice alone that determines whether the world continues.

What makes Shinji’s choice so narratively courageous is the depth of his despair at the moment he is asked to make it. By the climax of The End of Evangelion, Shinji is isolated, grief-stricken, and emotionally wrecked. He has witnessed the brutal deaths of those around him. He believes himself irreparably broken, unloved, and unworthy of existence. His lowest moment is not minimized; it is depicted with unbearable honesty, including a scene of sexual violation that frames his shame and alienation without absolution. And yet, in that moment, the story still asks him: Do you want to keep living?

The answer is yes, not because anything has been resolved, but because he chooses to embrace the uncertainty of life. He rejects the obliteration of self. He allows the world, and himself, to continue. The movie’s conclusion honors this decision not with triumph, but with quiet, haunting openness. In choosing life, Shinji reclaims it. That possibility, the possibility that someone who believes they are beyond saving can still be permitted a future, is what elevates Evangelion’s treatment of despair into something remarkably humane.

In Final Fantasy IX, Kuja arrives at a similar psychological and metaphysical threshold. He has endured the burden of an artificial existence, been used and discarded, deprived of connection, and finally confronted with imminent death. He too lashes out in nihilistic despair to destroy the Crystal, a symbol of the origin of life, in a final act that mirrors the logic of the death drive. But unlike Shinji, it is only Kuja’s despair that gets to play a role. The narrative does not center him in the resolution of his own crisis. Instead, it introduces Necron, a faceless embodiment of oblivion, to articulate the philosophy Kuja never gets to fully realize. The party defeats Necron in combat, and Kuja is quietly allowed to die off-screen. His existential pain is not interrogated, it is contained and erased.

While Shinji represents a human and familiar exploration of despair and identity acceptance, Evangelion also examines the experience of engineered humanity and instrumentalization. This is a theme embodied but never truly explored in Kuja’s origins. Rei Ayanami exemplifies the concept of a being created to serve no purpose of its own, destined only to be a tool. The parallel here is strikingly specific. Unlike Kuja, Rei spends much of her arc teetering on the edge of human connection, only to repeatedly fall back into fatalism and detachment. Through her growing bond with Shinji, and through observing his choices and pain, she begins to assert her own desires as the series reaches its climax. This culminates in a moment that mirrors Kuja’s confrontation with Garland almost exactly: Rei strikes out at her creator, Gendo Ikari, and initiates Instrumentality not as a tool, but as an act of will, guiding Shinji’s journey of self-determination.

Although Rei’s role ultimately serves to help resolve Shinji’s arc, she is never relegated to a prop or dehumanized in the process. Her quiet questions and subtle emotional shifts create a space in which Shinji can examine his own beliefs without being cornered by a moral binary. Crucially, Rei never dictates his path. She simply holds the door open. Because Shinji arrives at his decision through internal reckoning rather than narrative coercion, his choice to live feels sincere, not prescribed. Rei does not remain in the world after this, her role fulfilled, but her absence is profound. She leaves the viewer with the impression of someone not erased but sanctified, an almost holy figure who departed on her own terms.

Impressively, Evangelion even resists the temptation to tie up loose ends by punishing a designated antagonist for narrative catharsis. Even Gendo Ikari, the character arguably most responsible for the suffering of others, is not reduced to a stock villain. His emotional sterility, manipulations, and cowardice are not excused, but they are made legible. In his final moments, he is not indicted, but revealed: a man who, in shielding himself from pain, ensured he would never know love. His downfall is not vengeance but exposure, and the story offers no judgement beyond the ache of imagining what he might have been, had he chosen differently. This stands in stark contrast to Final Fantasy IX, which treats Kuja’s destruction as both inevitable and sufficient closure, not an opening for reflection.

Aside from its presentation of the characters, the contrast is starkest in the way these stories ask the viewer to internalize their central message about choice. In the original television ending of Evangelion, Shinji’s decision to accept himself and continue existing is met not with triumph or resolution, but with a surreal and symbolic chorus of “Congratulations”. Every major character appears to him and smiles, not because his pain is gone, but because he chose to live in spite of it. The moment breaks the fourth wall: the viewer is not just witnessing his decision, but being asked to affirm it. It is not narrative reward, but existential validation: fragile, strange, and sincere.

Final Fantasy IX offers a parallel in its “You Are Not Alone” sequence, in which Zidane, after discovering the truth of his origin, spirals into despair and isolation. One by one, his friends come to his side, refusing to let him give up. It is a powerful moment of emotional rescue. The party doesn’t fix his crisis, but they refuse to leave him in it. The player is invited to feel this support alongside Zidane, and the message is clear: his pain is real, but he does not face it alone.

The problem is that Kuja receives no such moment. Though he undergoes an existential collapse even more severe, the shattering realization of his mortality and disposability, no one follows him. No one answers his isolation with affirmation. While Zidane is pulled back from despair, Kuja is left to act on it, and his final gesture of help is acknowledged only in passing. The story frames one character’s vulnerability as worth saving, and the other’s as a footnote. The message is not “you are not alone”. It is: you must already be chosen to be saved.

Pink Floyd’s The Wall 

Speaking to the universality of the themes explored in both Evangelion and Final Fantasy IX, Pink Floyd’s The Wall provides a powerful Western counterpart. Released decades earlier and in a completely different medium, The Wall is a concept album-turned-film that traces the psychological deterioration of a man who isolates himself emotionally from the world through a self-imposed barrier. Like Kuja and Shinji, the protagonist, Pink, grapples with abandonment, emotional suppression, and the dehumanizing weight of being instrumentalized — in his case, by war, education, fame, and societal expectation. What emerges is a portrait of suffering not as villainy, but as the slow suffocation of the self.

A striking parallel emerges in the album’s opening track, "In the Flesh?", where Pink first introduces himself to the listener not with sincerity, but with bitter showmanship. He performs himself like a role, commanding lights, action, and spectacle, while simultaneously indicting the audience's ignorance of the truth behind it: "Tell me, is something eluding you, sunshine? / Is this not what you expected to see?" It is an accusation of both resentment and disappointment. Still, the track does not end on this note but rather invites the audience into the album as a means to uncover that truth: "If you want to find out what's behind these cold eyes / You'll just have to claw your way through this disguise". From here the album leads the audience through the slow construction of the metaphorical wall, approachable and human in its themes of familial trauma, troubled romance, and the double-edged sword that is fame. As Pink descends into the villainy of authoritarianism, the horror of it is treated not with condemnation, but the haunting question of its inevitability.

At its climax, The Wall offers something that Final Fantasy IX withholds from Kuja: the chance to be held accountable without being discarded. Pink’s internal trial is harrowing and surreal, but it grants him narrative subjectivity and a chance to confront his own role in his suffering without reducing him to a cautionary tale. Kuja, by contrast, is never offered this reckoning. Though his breakdown is grand and operatic, the story does not allow him to participate meaningfully in his own redemption. He is given no trial, no mirror, no honest path through his despair. His pain, like Necron’s philosophy, is positioned as something to be defeated, not understood. Where Pink’s wall is torn down, Kuja’s is buried with him.

These works, Evangelion and The Wall, demonstrate that suffering need not be sanitized, punished, or overwritten to be meaningful. They allow despair to speak, not for the sake of moralizing, but to honor the complexity of those who endure it. That Final Fantasy IX chooses instead to isolate and condemn its most tragic figure is not a necessity of genre or audience. It is a narrative decision, and one that stands in opposition to how these other stories approach the existential weight of suffering with nuance, respect, and grace.

Conclusion 

In the end, Final Fantasy IX does attempt to gesture toward meaning, but only after it has already erased the character most in need of it. In a quiet postscript, Mikoto offers Kuja a eulogy: “What you did was wrong… but you gave us all one thing… hope.” Her words attempt to retrofit the very grace the story refused to extend while he lived. It is not redemption. It is not reflection. It is a concession offered only once it is safe to grieve him, and once his challenge to the narrative has been resolved and cleaned up.

This contradiction reveals the core failure of Final Fantasy IX’s existential framework. If a story claims to examine mortality and self-prescribed meaning, it must allow all characters, even the antagonist, the conditions to choose meaningfully. Kuja is denied this. His pain is not explored. His rebellion is not contextualized. His collapse is not mourned. His arc is not allowed to mean anything beyond its narrative utility. And then, when it is too late, the story tries to reclaim emotional ground with a eulogy it never earned.

By contrast, works like Neon Genesis Evangelion and The Wall allow despair to unfold in its full, unbearable complexity, and still offer the possibility of grace. They do not withhold meaning until it is convenient. They do not erase characters in order to maintain ideological neatness. They extend the philosophical courtesy of subjectivity to those who need it most. They affirm that even the most broken, isolated, or antagonistic figures may still be allowed to choose and to be witnessed.

Even among the often-philosophical Final Fantasy series, Final Fantasy IX is frequently praised for its exploration of existential themes. While its cartoonish, chibi-style visuals and initially JRPG-typical “friends on an adventure” premise suggest a whimsical story without much philosophical substance, the later stages pivot sharply toward heavier questions of mortality, identity, and grief. By its climax, the game positions itself as a meditation on finding meaning despite death and embracing one’s existence in the face of inevitable loss. 

The problem arises at the point where, as is characteristic of RPG structure, a villain must be solidified both as a character and as an opposing ideology in preparation for the final confrontation. While Final Fantasy IX succeeds in positioning Kuja to fill that role structurally, it fails grievously in integrating his transgressions and moral position into the very themes it has seeded. When framing a “heroes versus villain” story through existential philosophy, it is crucial for the narrative’s intellectual integrity to justify why the villain has failed existentially, not merely morally. Here, Final Fantasy IX falters. The logic breaks down, and in doing so, the entire framework of its existential posturing begins to unravel. 

If existential messages surrounding mortality and self-prescribed meaning are to hold weight, they must be applied fairly and consistently, regardless of who occupies the role of hero or villain within the story’s structure. Final Fantasy IX, however, fails to apply its own existential logic to Kuja. Of all its characters, he alone is positioned without a win condition under the philosophy the narrative claims to uphold. His struggle for meaning, unlike those of his peers, is denied validation not by necessity, but by flawed narrative design. 

Protagonist-Centered Existentialism - Also Known As Determinism 

Although all major characters in Final Fantasy IX grapple with existential burdens, from coping with grief to defining themselves in relation to social roles, two characters are presented by the end of the story as the clearest representatives of its existential thesis. Zidane, the protagonist, faces a serious crisis of identity in the final arc when he is confronted with his artificial origins. Yet in his darkest moment, the narrative offers compassion: his friends intervene, leading him away from self-destruction and affirming his worth beyond his intended purpose. Likewise, Vivi, grappling with his artificial nature and severely limited lifespan, comes to terms with his mortality through acceptance. He chooses to find joy in fleeting experiences and creates meaning through his relationships and legacy, particularly among his Black Mage kin. Both characters are framed as noble, and their choices are celebrated as radical acts of existential courage. 

Fittingly, Kuja, who is poised to serve as the final antagonist, checks many of the same circumstantial boxes and is thus framed as their negative foil. Like Zidane and Vivi, he too is of artificial origin and ultimately forced to confront his own mortality. Yet while they are met with empathy and existential grace, Kuja is left to face his impending end alone and unprepared. The narrative establishes him early as arrogant and cruel, but only later will his fear of death, and his refusal to submit to oblivion, become his defining sin and solidify his role as villain. 

This is where the narrative’s existential logic begins to slip. A subtle yet insidious false dichotomy is created, and it is one the player is not immediately prompted to question. By the time Kuja and the heroes are headed toward confrontation, Zidane and Vivi’s sympathetic backstories are well-established. Both were designed as weapons, yet abandoned before that fate could be realized. Instead, they arrived as children in the company of loving and supportive adults. Zidane’s closeness to his found family in Tantalus, under the guidance of his surrogate father Baku, is given significant focus early in the story. Vivi, too, often recalls the brief but meaningful care of his adoptive grandfather, Quan. Both experience formative bonds that provide emotional intelligence, self-worth, and the ability to trust others. 

Kuja, by contrast, receives no such privileges. Only late in the story, during Garland’s terse and easily overlooked exposition, do we learn of his origins. Created as an adult, he was designed without the capacity for growth, bonding, or social integration. Garland openly identifies this as Kuja’s flaw: his design limitation, and ultimately, his narrative failing. He was not nurtured, but manufactured and discarded. 

The profound implications of this are brushed aside unceremoniously, and the narrative does not invite the player to reflect on how this frames Kuja’s ability to parse his impending mortality when it will soon become key to the plot. Instead, it quietly seals his fate, recasting existential failure as moral failure and, worse still, retribution. Where Zidane and Vivi had clear paths to "success" via connection, love, and legacy, Kuja was never offered a viable route. His design left him fundamentally unequipped to process mortality through trust or acceptance. 

Here, the narrative offers no grace. Kuja’s downfall passes without reflection or pause, his suffering treated not as tragedy, but as an inconvenient obstacle on the path to the heroes’ triumph. The player is not encouraged to linger in his terror or view him with pity; instead, the story permits his dehumanization, leaving his existential breakdown unacknowledged. By the time Kuja resurfaces later, resolved to destroy existence itself, the groundwork has already been laid. What began as despair is retroactively reframed as villainous defiance, and the story prepares to frame his annihilation as the rightful punishment for daring to desire personhood on his own terms. 

Zidane and Vivi are allowed to succeed because the narrative gave them the tools, the time, and the love to do so. This is not unique to them: nearly every major character is offered some measure of safety or healing. Garnet is orphaned as a child but later adopted and loved. Eiko is given the protection of her eidolon and family of Moogles. Even Beatrix, a former antagonist, is met with understanding and camaraderie and her wrongs are treated as misguided rather than immoral. By contrast, Kuja is denied any avenue for meaningful connection, and punished for breaking under the weight of its absence. 

What the story presents as existential triumph is, more often, the reward for narrative palatability: for characters whose pain is familiar, whose redemption is expected, and whose arcs align cleanly with the moral structure laid out for them. Final Fantasy IX does not uphold the ideals of existential freedom it celebrates, rather, it withholds them and calls the outcome justice. It rewards those born into meaning, and condemns those who must invent it. 

This is not existentialism. This is in fact the complete opposite: determinism. 

Post-Hoc Condemnation – Or, ‘He Was Asking For It’

Having already failed to apply its existential framework consistently, Final Fantasy IX compounds that failure by manipulating the player’s emotional stance toward Kuja through selective framing and symbolic shorthand. His downfall is not simply written, rather, the justification for it is reverse-engineered. Even before his motivations are fully revealed, Kuja is coded as untrustworthy and his design and behavior coded to discourage compassion and invite moral judgment. The game’s treatment of him relies not on clear ideology, but on a slow aesthetic and psychological indictment that erodes the possibility of sympathy before it ever begins.

Trauma-Coded Villainy 

From his very first scene, Kuja is constructed not to evoke empathy, but to deflect it. He is theatrical, self-isolating, and emotionally unstable, traits the story attributes not to trauma, but to ego and cruelty. Yet from a psychological standpoint, these behaviors are not evidence of malice. They read instead as maladaptive coping mechanisms: the classic survival strategies of someone denied attachment, stability, and any concept of safety. Kuja does not behave this way in spite of his origin story, but because of it. His emotional patterns are consistent, tragic, and entirely predictable, yet the narrative treats them as signs of an inherently corrupt nature. Worse still, it frontloads this interpretation so thoroughly that it preempts any honest evaluation of cause. 

Across the field of psychology, childhood is consistently identified as the most critical period in the development of healthy adult relationships, emotional regulation, and a cohesive sense of self. Trauma during this period is widely understood to produce long-term social dysfunction, often manifesting as withdrawal, aggression, and the construction of a false self to protect against emotional abandonment. The most damaging trauma often comes from parental rejection, which compromises the child’s ability to feel safe, wanted, or willing to risk the friction of connection. In such cases, survival takes the place of growth, and emotional needs are buried beneath whatever persona can endure the abuse. 

Every one of these conditions is present in Kuja’s construction. He is created with full awareness of his artificiality and utility, fashioned not as a person but as a weapon. His only paternal figure, Garland, shows no affection, no acceptance, and no intention of treating him as anything more than a tool to eventually be discarded. His survival depends entirely on performance. Worse still, Kuja appears to have lived for some time without sentient peers, precluding even basic social interaction. He is denied not only childhood, but the development upon which self-image is founded. He does not grow into emotional maturity, he is simply installed with intellect. The result is a being who suffers the tragedy of a child’s volatility trapped in an adult’s body, and who was never given the chance to become anything else. 

It is therefore no surprise that Kuja exhibits the profile of someone shaped by deep alienation. He performs cruelty, but cannot connect. He controls others, but cannot have a place among them. His flamboyance, detachment, and need for control are not tools of dominance, but rather they are stage dressing hiding a disrupted identity. The story codes these traits as villainy, but they align exactly with the psychology of someone wounded, hollowed out, and desperate to maintain some semblance of dignity. 

Kuja is not punished for being monstrous. He is punished for responding to trauma in a way the story refuses to read as even remotely sympathetic. 

What Are You, A Virgin?

While condemning mismanaged trauma already delivers a troubling message about what constitutes morally acceptable self-expression, the narrative of Final Fantasy IX takes this a step further by extending its judgment into the realm of gender and intimacy. It is no coincidence that Kuja’s presentation of masculinity stands in direct opposition to that of his protagonist counterpart, Zidane. The contrast between them is stark and deliberate. Zidane is portrayed as emotionally and sexually available, extroverted, physically expressive, and quick to form bonds, especially through romantic and flirtatious behavior. Kuja, by contrast, is detached, intellectual, aesthetically composed, and resistant to uncurated social contact.

Throughout the game, Zidane’s approach to intimacy and masculinity is consistently validated. His aggressive advances toward Garnet are framed as harmless flirtation, even in moments that violate consent, such as groping her during a compromising situation early in the story. His ease with touch, romantic pursuit, and social confidence are treated as signs of emotional health and leadership. Even when he falters, such as during the “You Are Not Alone” sequence late in the game, his vulnerability is framed through a familiar, culturally sanctioned model of masculine grief: the man who becomes withdrawn until coaxed out by friendship. Every aspect of Zidane’s emotional and physical fluency is either valorized or gently redeemed.

Kuja, in contrast, offers a radically different model of gender expression and intimacy. He is feminine-coded in both design and behavior: delicate in appearance, stylized in movement, and disinterested in physicality as anything other than performance. His sensuality is passive and constrained, never rooted in pursuit or participation. His use of magic, a role most often assigned to female characters within JRPG convention, further distances him from normative masculinity. Socially, he maintains no genuine connections, only strategic alliances, and there is no textual suggestion of romantic or sexual engagement. And where Zidane’s grief is stoic and rescuable, Kuja’s is explosive, uncontained, and ultimately fatal, coded feminine in its intensity, and dismissed as dangerous rather than tragic.

By the game’s conclusion, the story explicitly affirms Zidane’s mode of existence as the “correct” one. Kuja’s final concession to Zidane reads as narrative decree: a verbal endorsement of the idea that true personhood comes from social ease, physical availability, and emotional legibility. More troubling still, this implies that models of selfhood rooted in restraint, boundary, and non-normative masculinity are not just atypical, but incorrect. The story does not treat Kuja’s boundaries as a valid form of self-protection or self-authorship. It reads them as defects. 

The Aesthetics of Evil 

Unsatisfied with merely portraying Kuja as condemnable in disposition, the narrative further encodes his damnation in advance through motif and symbolism. Nowhere is this more apparent than in his visual and allegorical parallels to a distinctly Luciferian archetype. This is first asserted through his appearance: androgynous beauty, emotional detachment, and the arrested quality of eternal youth, which are traits associated not with mortals, but with angels in Western myth. The divine aesthetic extends into his magic, which is tied to celestial phenomena: stars, cosmic forces, and apocalypse. Even the unmistakable serpent is echoed in his affinity with dragons.  

These themes are showcased most clearly in the Desert Palace, a sanctuary of exile constructed in the image of a profaned cathedral and adorned with stained glass and holy architecture that suggest corrupted divinity. His role as villain is likewise aligned with this iconography: the deceiver, the warbringer, the manipulator of kings. His bestowed title, Angel of Death, makes the connection textual, and his jealousy and replacement by Zidane complete the picture of a classic fallen figure. His envy of his successor is framed as cowardly, and his refusal to submit agreeably as transgressive. 

Under scrutiny, this myth does not hold true to the character’s reality. Kuja is not divine. He is not a being cast from grace. He is not a prince of heaven whose pride drove him to ruin. He is an engineered and profoundly vulnerable creature, a mortal in the false guise of a god. Unlike Lucifer, Kuja was never given a place of glory to fall from. He was born apart, manufactured into disgrace, and denied even the most basic conditions of acceptance. His rebellion is not the overreach of ambition, but the desperation of someone who has always been consigned to the role of slave. He does not rise against Garland as a rival to the divine. He rises as someone pleading for the minimum required to be a person. 

Another subtler but clearly deliberate piece of aesthetic coding appears in the proverbial peacock, a symbol of shallow vanity that seeks admiration. This motif is embedded through his ornate design, flowing garments, performative grace, and feathers. The unintentional but sad irony in this indictment of ego is that in nature, birds do not display for praise or personal satisfaction. Their behavior is inherently social, serving as a means to bond, to be chosen, and to belong. Kuja is, by design, a bird without a flock, and this metaphor underscores his isolation with a cruelty disguised as flavor. Still, the metaphor becomes crueler: birds in literature and in captivity often serve as symbols of longing for freedom — something beautiful that was never meant to be caged. In Kuja’s case, the symbolism is inverted: his splendor does not invite liberation, but signals his fate as something ornamental, confined, and displayed only to serve someone else's design.

The final symbolic insult lies in how the narrative weaponizes Kuja’s own love of drama and myth against him. Throughout the story, his infatuation with the conceit of theatrics is not mere performative flourish, but his chosen method of survival. For a being who can neither control his own story nor feel genuine emotion, the emulation of fantasy is a shallow but understandable substitute. It is precisely at his lowest moment that the narrative cruelly turns this coping mechanism into spiteful irony. This defeat is staged as his final performance; not a moment of introspection, but a humiliation ritual. The true crime lies in the fact that presenting suffering as punishment is profoundly anti-existential, as it treats pain as something fate inflicts upon those who do not play by its arbitrary rules. This reframes despair as a sin, and casts Kuja not as a victim of design, but as someone who deserved divine punishment. 

Indeed, nowhere is this more explicit than in the moments following Kuja’s defiance of Garland. He has just killed his maker, rejected his role, and seized his first real moment of autonomy, only to be told it is too late. Garland’s voice returns from the void not to warn, but to mock. Kuja’s time is up, his body is finite, and his soul will soon be forfeit. The message is not that he has failed, but that he was never allowed to succeed. This is not a reckoning between equals, but rather a master speaking down to his creation — a final assertion of control disguised as truth. His struggle, his pain, even his desperate grasp for legacy are all waved away by a voice that condemns with the cold finality of the hand of justice itself.

This is not existentialism. It is yet another invocation of determinism, deployed in a narratively satisfying but philosophically dishonest fashion. 

Suffering As Sacred, Not Spectacle 

Within the field of existential thought, suffering is not viewed as a cudgel to punish those who fail to follow a prescripted moral code. Rather, it is seen as inevitable, and it is through suffering that man asserts his will by defining himself not by it, but in spite of it. Final Fantasy IX appears to understand this principle, at least in part. Characters such as Garnet and Freya experience the death or detachment of loved ones and must choose how to process grief in ways that allow for growth, healing, and movement forward. For Freya in particular, her character arc is shaped by unavoidable tragedy: the destruction of her homeland, and the slow heartbreak of being forgotten by the one she loves. Yet the narrative treats her sorrow not as a failure or a flaw, but as something worthy of dignity. Her suffering is honored; not erased, not mocked, not framed as condemnation. 

Although the narrative thoroughly establishes Kuja as a character whose circumstances preclude anything but futile suffering in a life he cannot meaningfully control, it nonetheless decides that his pain is unworthy of regarding as dignified or honorable in any sense. It offers no room for reflection, no suggestion that his struggle might hold value beyond failure. The tragedy of Kuja is not simply that he suffers, but that he attempts to create meaning from that suffering, and the story refuses to recognize it. 

Viktor Frankl, in Man’s Search for Meaning, defined the last of the human freedoms as the ability to “take a stand toward the conditions” of one’s existence, even when those conditions are cruel, unjust, or inescapable. Kuja does precisely this. In the absence of love, safety, or hope, he builds identity through performance, mythologizes himself to survive, and asserts control as a fragile form of meaning-making. His suffering, though unwitnessed and unacknowledged, is no less human and no less sacred. It is not monstrous nor hollow, but rather a testament to the will to endure. He is not passive in his despair. He resists it, in the only ways left to him.

And yet, the narrative does not acknowledge this as a choice at all. His acts of defiance are reframed as arrogance. His attempts at self-definition are cast as ego. His pain is stripped of dignity, his coping read as villainy. In doing so, the story violates its own philosophical premise: it punishes the act of taking a stand.

Frankl also warned, “No man should judge unless he asks himself in absolute honesty whether in a similar situation he might not have done the same.” Zidane eventually echoes this very idea, but only after Kuja has already been neutralized. His empathy arrives too late to offer grace, and serves less as a reckoning than as a moment of personal growth. It is a moral realization for the protagonist, not a vindication of the condemned.

Notably, Frankl also maintained, “No one has the right to do wrong, not even if wrong has been done to them.” But Kuja’s tragedy is not that he acted without consequences, but rather that the story never asked the question Frankl posed first. It judged him without imagining what it took to survive as him, and in doing so, refused to let his suffering mean anything. It is repurposed to serve the winners, not to elevate the dead.

Comparative Media – It Didn’t Have To Be This Way 

While this essay has thus far demonstrated why framing Kuja as both a deserving and inevitable villain is dishonest and deliberate, this line of critique can be taken a step further. Not only is a lack of empathy not a necessary treatment for such an archetype, it is in fact countered with humanity and grace in other media that wrestle honestly with existential questions of selfhood, connection, and trauma. Where Final Fantasy IX sterilizes and selectively applies these themes, Neon Genesis Evangelion and Pink Floyd’s The Wall confront their weight head-on, presenting these struggles as universal, uncomfortable, and deeply human.

Neon Genesis Evangelion 

A piece of highly existential media that predated Final Fantasy IX by only a few years, Neon Genesis Evangelion shares not only thematic ground but a cultural zeitgeist with the game. Aimed at a similar demographic, the series initially presents itself as a sci-fi mech anime, complete with high-stakes battles and a genre-typical “monster of the week” format. Yet, much like Final Fantasy IX, it gradually transforms from popcorn entertainment into a terrifying exploration of loneliness, trauma, and maladaptive coping in the face of social vulnerability and identity anxiety. As the narrative unfolds, the characters’ flaws are brought further into focus, and the viewer is gently, then relentlessly, invited to inhabit their fear and pain under increasingly unbearable psychological conditions.

The crucial difference between Evangelion and Final Fantasy IX’s handling of these topics is that Evangelion never seeks to lead the viewer into condemning its characters. Conflicts are given space to breathe, with appropriately timed pauses and respectfully framed glimpses into each character’s inner life. This creates an intimacy with the viewer that often borders on the voyeuristic. Rather than moral lecturing, the narrative’s goal is to invite the audience into the same mental and emotional space as the characters themselves. Silences, glances, and lingering still shots emphasize the reverent nature with which their suffering is portrayed.

Unlike Final Fantasy IX and its treatment of Kuja, Evangelion considers deprivation not only a point worth examining, but a central component in each character’s ability — or inability — to integrate into the world around them. The viewer bears painful witness as the characters self-sabotage, isolate, or construct false personas to either draw others in or push them away. Notably, Evangelion does not shy away from engaging with the suffering of characters who are not conventionally sympathetic. Instead, it asks the viewer to sit in discomfort with those whose unhappiness and identity crises are difficult to disentangle, whether as self-inflicted wounds or as logical outcomes of their circumstances.

Shinji Ikari, the character most closely followed by the narrative, is not presented as a typical protagonist in the shounen genre. He is soft-spoken, hesitant, and his responses to conflict are unromanticized and revealing. Rather than serving as a vessel for wish fulfillment, Shinji is shown to behave in ways that may frustrate or unsettle the audience. Within the first episode, we witness his estrangement from a cold and distant father who manipulates him into becoming a child soldier, exploiting Shinji’s desperate need for acknowledgment and approval. From this moment onward, the narrative remains unflinching, exposing Shinji not only to physical threats in battle, but to the far more insidious internal danger of emotional starvation. His growing need for validation, coupled with his inability to connect meaningfully to others, gradually isolates him until he begins to withdraw entirely into himself.

Both Evangelion and Final Fantasy IX culminate in a metaphysical confrontation with the death drive, a psychological and existential impulse to dissolve the self in order to escape suffering. In Evangelion, this takes the form of Instrumentality: the merging of all souls into a formless unity where pain, rejection, and individuality cease to exist. At the heart of this process is Shinji Ikari, positioned not merely as a participant but as the narrative’s avatar for this dilemma. It is through his inner world and conflict that Instrumentality unfolds, and it is his choice alone that determines whether the world continues.

What makes Shinji’s choice so narratively courageous is the depth of his despair at the moment he is asked to make it. By the climax of The End of Evangelion, Shinji is isolated, grief-stricken, and emotionally wrecked. He has witnessed the brutal deaths of those around him. He believes himself irreparably broken, unloved, and unworthy of existence. His lowest moment is not minimized; it is depicted with unbearable honesty, including a scene of sexual violation that frames his shame and alienation without absolution. And yet, in that moment, the story still asks him: Do you want to keep living?

The answer is yes, not because anything has been resolved, but because he chooses to embrace the uncertainty of life. He rejects the obliteration of self. He allows the world, and himself, to continue. The movie’s conclusion honors this decision not with triumph, but with quiet, haunting openness. In choosing life, Shinji reclaims it. That possibility, the possibility that someone who believes they are beyond saving can still be permitted a future, is what elevates Evangelion’s treatment of despair into something remarkably humane.

In Final Fantasy IX, Kuja arrives at a similar psychological and metaphysical threshold. He has endured the burden of an artificial existence, been used and discarded, deprived of connection, and finally confronted with imminent death. He too lashes out in nihilistic despair to destroy the Crystal, a symbol of the origin of life, in a final act that mirrors the logic of the death drive. But unlike Shinji, it is only Kuja’s despair that gets to play a role. The narrative does not center him in the resolution of his own crisis. Instead, it introduces Necron, a faceless embodiment of oblivion, to articulate the philosophy Kuja never gets to fully realize. The party defeats Necron in combat, and Kuja is quietly allowed to die off-screen. His existential pain is not interrogated, it is contained and erased.

While Shinji represents a human and familiar exploration of despair and identity acceptance, Evangelion also examines the experience of engineered humanity and instrumentalization. This is a theme embodied but never truly explored in Kuja’s origins. Rei Ayanami exemplifies the concept of a being created to serve no purpose of its own, destined only to be a tool. The parallel here is strikingly specific. Unlike Kuja, Rei spends much of her arc teetering on the edge of human connection, only to repeatedly fall back into fatalism and detachment. Through her growing bond with Shinji, and through observing his choices and pain, she begins to assert her own desires as the series reaches its climax. This culminates in a moment that mirrors Kuja’s confrontation with Garland almost exactly: Rei strikes out at her creator, Gendo Ikari, and initiates Instrumentality not as a tool, but as an act of will, guiding Shinji’s journey of self-determination.

Although Rei’s role ultimately serves to help resolve Shinji’s arc, she is never relegated to a prop or dehumanized in the process. Her quiet questions and subtle emotional shifts create a space in which Shinji can examine his own beliefs without being cornered by a moral binary. Crucially, Rei never dictates his path. She simply holds the door open. Because Shinji arrives at his decision through internal reckoning rather than narrative coercion, his choice to live feels sincere, not prescribed. Rei does not remain in the world after this, her role fulfilled, but her absence is profound. She leaves the viewer with the impression of someone not erased but sanctified, an almost holy figure who departed on her own terms.

Impressively, Evangelion even resists the temptation to tie up loose ends by punishing a designated antagonist for narrative catharsis. Even Gendo Ikari, the character arguably most responsible for the suffering of others, is not reduced to a stock villain. His emotional sterility, manipulations, and cowardice are not excused, but they are made legible. In his final moments, he is not indicted, but revealed: a man who, in shielding himself from pain, ensured he would never know love. His downfall is not vengeance but exposure, and the story offers no judgement beyond the ache of imagining what he might have been, had he chosen differently. This stands in stark contrast to Final Fantasy IX, which treats Kuja’s destruction as both inevitable and sufficient closure, not an opening for reflection.

Aside from its presentation of the characters, the contrast is starkest in the way these stories ask the viewer to internalize their central message about choice. In the original television ending of Evangelion, Shinji’s decision to accept himself and continue existing is met not with triumph or resolution, but with a surreal and symbolic chorus of “Congratulations”. Every major character appears to him and smiles, not because his pain is gone, but because he chose to live in spite of it. The moment breaks the fourth wall: the viewer is not just witnessing his decision, but being asked to affirm it. It is not narrative reward, but existential validation: fragile, strange, and sincere.

Final Fantasy IX offers a parallel in its “You Are Not Alone” sequence, in which Zidane, after discovering the truth of his origin, spirals into despair and isolation. One by one, his friends come to his side, refusing to let him give up. It is a powerful moment of emotional rescue. The party doesn’t fix his crisis, but they refuse to leave him in it. The player is invited to feel this support alongside Zidane, and the message is clear: his pain is real, but he does not face it alone.

The problem is that Kuja receives no such moment. Though he undergoes an existential collapse even more severe, the shattering realization of his mortality and disposability, no one follows him. No one answers his isolation with affirmation. While Zidane is pulled back from despair, Kuja is left to act on it, and his final gesture of help is acknowledged only in passing. The story frames one character’s vulnerability as worth saving, and the other’s as a footnote. The message is not “you are not alone”. It is: you must already be chosen to be saved.

Pink Floyd’s The Wall 

Speaking to the universality of the themes explored in both Evangelion and Final Fantasy IX, Pink Floyd’s The Wall provides a powerful Western counterpart. Released decades earlier and in a completely different medium, The Wall is a concept album-turned-film that traces the psychological deterioration of a man who isolates himself emotionally from the world through a self-imposed barrier. Like Kuja and Shinji, the protagonist, Pink, grapples with abandonment, emotional suppression, and the dehumanizing weight of being instrumentalized — in his case, by war, education, fame, and societal expectation. What emerges is a portrait of suffering not as villainy, but as the slow suffocation of the self.

A striking parallel emerges in the album’s opening track, "In the Flesh?", where Pink first introduces himself to the listener not with sincerity, but with bitter showmanship. He performs himself like a role, commanding lights, action, and spectacle, while simultaneously indicting the audience's ignorance of the truth behind it: "Tell me, is something eluding you, sunshine? / Is this not what you expected to see?" It is an accusation of both resentment and disappointment. Still, the track does not end on this note but rather invites the audience into the album as a means to uncover that truth: "If you want to find out what's behind these cold eyes / You'll just have to claw your way through this disguise". From here the album leads the audience through the slow construction of the metaphorical wall, approachable and human in its themes of familial trauma, troubled romance, and the double-edged sword that is fame. As Pink descends into the villainy of authoritarianism, the horror of it is treated not with condemnation, but the haunting question of its inevitability.

At its climax, The Wall offers something that Final Fantasy IX withholds from Kuja: the chance to be held accountable without being discarded. Pink’s internal trial is harrowing and surreal, but it grants him narrative subjectivity and a chance to confront his own role in his suffering without reducing him to a cautionary tale. Kuja, by contrast, is never offered this reckoning. Though his breakdown is grand and operatic, the story does not allow him to participate meaningfully in his own redemption. He is given no trial, no mirror, no honest path through his despair. His pain, like Necron’s philosophy, is positioned as something to be defeated, not understood. Where Pink’s wall is torn down, Kuja’s is buried with him.

These works, Evangelion and The Wall, demonstrate that suffering need not be sanitized, punished, or overwritten to be meaningful. They allow despair to speak, not for the sake of moralizing, but to honor the complexity of those who endure it. That Final Fantasy IX chooses instead to isolate and condemn its most tragic figure is not a necessity of genre or audience. It is a narrative decision, and one that stands in opposition to how these other stories approach the existential weight of suffering with nuance, respect, and grace.

Conclusion 

In the end, Final Fantasy IX does attempt to gesture toward meaning, but only after it has already erased the character most in need of it. In a quiet postscript, Mikoto offers Kuja a eulogy: “What you did was wrong… but you gave us all one thing… hope.” Her words attempt to retrofit the very grace the story refused to extend while he lived. It is not redemption. It is not reflection. It is a concession offered only once it is safe to grieve him, and once his challenge to the narrative has been resolved and cleaned up.

This contradiction reveals the core failure of Final Fantasy IX’s existential framework. If a story claims to examine mortality and self-prescribed meaning, it must allow all characters, even the antagonist, the conditions to choose meaningfully. Kuja is denied this. His pain is not explored. His rebellion is not contextualized. His collapse is not mourned. His arc is not allowed to mean anything beyond its narrative utility. And then, when it is too late, the story tries to reclaim emotional ground with a eulogy it never earned.

By contrast, works like Neon Genesis Evangelion and The Wall allow despair to unfold in its full, unbearable complexity, and still offer the possibility of grace. They do not withhold meaning until it is convenient. They do not erase characters in order to maintain ideological neatness. They extend the philosophical courtesy of subjectivity to those who need it most. They affirm that even the most broken, isolated, or antagonistic figures may still be allowed to choose and to be witnessed.