Happy New Year! Today we cap off our list of 15 representative MGS men by looking at the five worst found along the spectrum.

As before, a lower value equals a better score, although at this point there isn't much that can redeem any of them.

Note: MGS4 spoilers are sectioned off with bolded warnings.

 

THE BOTTOM RANK

 


11. Hal "Otacon" Emmerich
Appears: MGS1, 2, and 4
Otacon in the bottom third? Really? Yes, really. While it's a wonderful thing that a man be in touch with his feelings, after nine years Otacon's feelings are still rather shallow and self-centered. The real nuisance to his minefield of angst is that it's all about women and what a tragic thing it was to him that they died. Here's a hint to all shy, sensitive guys who seem to inadvertedly lay a death curse on any woman in striking distance: when we die, we prefer to be the subject of your pity, rather than hear you whine about your own loneliness.

Otacon's self-centeredness extends even further than that, of course. In MGS1, Otacon, suffering from Stockholm Syndrome, begs Snake not to kill Sniper Wolf because, you see, she's a good person, really! Don't hurt her! She's harmless and she likes dogs! What Otacon is really doing is redefining Sniper Wolf in his head as a perfect, ideal woman, someone pleasant and reasonable, who might even have sex with him. Even as Wolf lays dying, urging Snake to finish her off and end her suffering like any warrior would do for another, Otacon is passionately trying to override her and and get Snake to ignore her wishes. He pleads with him to show this delicate little flower of womanhood some mercy (trans: let her continue suffering horribly), because it's too hard for him.

I don't think I need to go on at length about his sexual feelings for his step-sister, or how her death in MGS2 brought out more dirty laundry about his family than we ever wanted to know. But it wasn't until MGS4 that I finally lost all affection for Otacon.

The rest of this contains HEAVY MGS4 SPOILERS.

So along comes Naomi, poisoning wells like usual, and her idea of a clever plan is to seduce this guy, unaware of the death curse that awaits. And Otacon obliges, having sex with her not fifty feet away from where his best friend is trying to sleep. Even if you don't happen to believe something is going on between Sunny's two daddies, for Otacon to go and sleep with a woman he just met within plain earshot of his ailing friend and adopted daughter shows an appalling lack of consideration, especially for a supposed "former" otaku. And what do we hear when Naomi inevitably kicks it? "I thought I was ready to love!" Please die in a fire, Otacon.

If Otacon finds redemption, it's in the voice-only coda after MGS4's credits, where he pledges to continue living with Snake and Sunny. The scene starts out with Otacon bringing Snake his cigarettes and-- yeah, I don't need to expound on that, I think. I'm not sure it's the smoothest resolution. If you like your Otacon heterosexual, his whole arc becomes a downer: Otacon absolves himself of women without really learning anything about them. Conversely, if you believe, as even Yahtzee does, that Otacon has a romantic attachment to Snake, then you have to wonder if this resolution of his isn't coming about an entire game too late. There were plenty of scenes where it was obvious Snake was hurting emotionally and could have done with some support, and after nine years you'd think Otacon would have some idea how to provide it-- he just doesn't.

It also goes without saying that his parenting of Sunny is subpar at best. While he tries to be supportive of her, it's clear that he isn't making much effort to encourage her interests, such as in cooking. How quaint, a shut-in male who can't cook. Never saw that one coming. But you're a parent now, Uncle Hal-- could you please try a little harder than giving her a frilly apron to wear? Thankfully, someone else already went there about the whole lolicon thing, and while I don't think the Otacon-Sunny relationship is quite like that --he  doesn't seem able to control her even if he wanted to, and every child at that age is eccentric-- the future does not bode well if he descends into an even more disturbing state of mind following Snake's death. END SPOILERS.


12. James Johnson
Appears in: MGS2
An all-purpose tool, President Johnson will go down in history as the man who launched a thousand crotchgrabs. Players were left alarmed and personally violated when this President of the United States crossed a room to grab Raiden where most daren't. Just when you started to ease off with the knowledge that it was a misunderstanding, you learn that Johnson did it because he thought Raiden was a woman, namely Olga. Oh, okay... Wait, your first instinct at seeing someone you think is a woman is to GRAB THEIR CROTCH? Surely even the Patriots could have found a slightly more put-together stooge than this guy.





13. The Goons
Appear in: all games
If you want to judge the tone of a game, look no further than its canvas. The general enemies players encounter throughout the Metal Gear series are far from a credit to male kind: stupid, near-sighted, almost deaf, and with the critical thinking skills of sea slugs, they already earn a collective place in the bottom rank. But one quality in particular really debases them: the magazines.

Yes, this particular girl gamer found it the most hilariously awesome gimmick ever, distracting enemy soldiers with porno mags. At the same time, though, I was terribly offended on behalf of men everywhere. How dare a game insinuate that highly trained soldiers will unconditionally abandon their posts and peripheral vision at the mere sight of some fairly uninspiring cheesecake? Any male over the age of 14 should be embarrassed.

Not to mention, the general assortment of goons are seemingly 100% heterosexual, with only Raikov (who isn't a goon anyway) appearing capable of turning a blind eye to the things. Assumed heteronormativity is a blight upon games everywhere; was it too much to ask for a probability roll so that, oh, one in twenty guys fails to get sucked in?

MGS4 SPOILER: As a goon-turned-hero, Johnny Sasaki shows some appreciable signs of recovery-- after a fashion. Even after his first kiss with Meryl, Johnny takes some scolding to act like a decent human being around Mei-Ling, so it's hard to treat his sudden vow of monogamy as completely heartfelt. On the other hand, if any woman could enforce total devotion on pain of death, it's probably Meryl, so Johnny's probably going to turn out fine. END SPOILER.

14. Vamp
Appears in: MGS2, MGS4
I'm sure this ranking and the next one don't come to any great surprise. Vamp is unrepentantly evil, wantonly malevolent, and pretty much completely irredeemable as a person. (That doesn't stop him from being crazily awesome, but again, that's not what we're rating here.) At first blush, it might seem quite progressive for a game series to offer us this out-and-proud bisexual, but when you consider how that sexuality is depicted, well, I imagine many bisexuals would prefer the games had kept this detail to themselves.

What's wrong with it, you may be wondering? Oh, only that Vamp is representative of the other big GLBT cliche of these games: that of the classic Depraved Sexual Predator, meaning that his bisexuality is characterized as one of the many creepy, evil things wrong with him. And even though his former lover, Scott Dolph, completely tops this list for being both differently-oriented and well-rounded for what little screen time he has, Vamp seems to be by and large defined by his orientation. I mean, who names themself after their sexual appetite, anyway?

Note, as well, that even though Vamp is a major character in MGS4, there are no spoiler warnings in this entry. That's because Vamp has no arc. He is introduced as a monster, and a monster he remains.

On the plus side, Vamp does have one characteristic that sets him apart: body hair. I, for one, was getting bothered by the fact that every male in these games seems to come with a perfectly waxed and oiled chest, so it was good to see something different.

And the gold phallus of bad male characters goes to...



15. Yevgeny Borisovitch Volgin
Appears in: MGS3
Like I said: are you the least bit surprised? I mean, let's go through the laundry list of this guy's "character blemishes."

-Built like a Mexican wrestler but dumb as a post? Check.
-Bisexuality used to characterize him as a Depraved Sexual Predator? Check.
-Creepy sexual sadist who doesn't care if his partner is enjoying it? Check.
-Megalomaniacal, machismo-driven, torturing, murdering psychopath? Check.

The good thing about Volgin is that the game is quite explicit about how awful this guy is, so it's not like Kojima was expecting anybody to sympathize with him. Interestingly, Volgin does seem to legitimately care about Raikov, launching into a rage when he finds out that Naked Snake may have hurt him or worse. Nevertheless, this is one small drop of humanity in an ocean of hypermasculine he-man chest-beating.

Volgin is the embodiment of practically every awful, negative male stereotype, and men should really be getting together to vote this guy out of their side of the species. Actually, he should be voted out of the human race, period. BDSM is a completely legitimate bedroom behavior, but only when your partner is consenting to it. No, I don't care if he punches bullets.

 

This concludes the Top 15 Best and Worst Metal Gear Solid Men. My impression, coming away from writing this, was that there are actually not as many great male characters in this series as you might hope. In fact, proportionately, there is a far greater percentage of female characters who are depicted in empowering, progressive ways than there are male characters who manage to serve the same function.

Sexism and sexual stereotypes are not just problems plaguing women. Though Metal Gear Solid is wonderful at being a deconstruction of the "men's own" action genre and presents us with more than a few iconoclasts, it is not without its blind spots. I'm talking more Otacon than Volgin here: Volgin is a villain, but Otacon is supposed to be a hero, and heaven help you if you're a heterosexual male who considers Otacon's views on women the least bit noble.

Well! I had fun and learned a lot; how about you?

Source for Otacon image: Zarla

Previously:

The Top 15 Best and Worst Metal Gear Solid Men (Part 1)

The Top 15 Best and Worst Metal Gear Solid Men (Part 2)

The Top 10 Best and Worst Metal Gear Solid Women (Part 1)

The Top 10 Best and Worst Metal Gear Solid Women (Part 2)