I'll go through my top five characters, then, and explain why I use each of them.
My favourite Nintendo character of all time. Pit is everything I dream of being: cool, adorable, heroic, friendly, whimsical and strong; and simultaneously, everything I am: shy, clumsy, awkward and dorky. The fact that Pit gets trod upon by every character in the story and still carries on with his mission out of nothing else but a deep-seated, profoundly altruistic sense of justice endears me to him in ways that surpass mere appreciation of his gameplay. Pit is a deconstruction of the archetypal hero: though presented as a brave and powerful champion of hope and justice, he is in reality a foolish, blundering, snarky and hilariously tragic soul, constantly teased and berated by those he serves and regarded as a dancing buffoon by his nemeses. Pit begins as the puppet on a string that dances and jigs for his master's satisfaction, and it's not until he cuts those strings and learns to fly on his own two wings that he truly becomes his own hero. His stand against Palutena is a testament to his courage and his unfaltering honesty in the face of adversity: he stares into the abyss and, though it stares back at him, he leaps in anyway and fights tooth and nail to drag his loved ones out of hell and into the light of the skies once again. Pit is riddled with problems, both physical and emotional, and he persists in that most thankless and difficult of tasks because he knows it's the right thing to do. Pit grows, he weeps, he bleeds, he becomes stronger for it. He has slain gods and defeated legends, he has fought the forces of hell itself and saved his greatest friend and his own people from destruction too many times to recall, and he has never once frowned at the thought of being the hero or resisted the call to action. Though he can be high-strung and violent at times, even to the extent that he unwillingly partakes in such heinous crimes as mass genocide and spiritual terrorism, he nevertheless atones for his crimes by recognising his faults and promising to make better his folly in the future. To me, Pit epitomises the old saying, and the reason I love him is because he always reminds thus: "There is good in the world, and it is worth fighting for."
Next to Pit, my favourite Nintendo character and my most-wanted character in Smash 4. If Pit represents the hero, then Palutena represents the force of good itself, the good that the heroes fight for in the first place and the light of hope and justice that ignites a fervent passion in the souls of the righteous and the honest. And yet, for all her beauty and wonderment, Palutena is still just as boorish, crude, snarky and vindictive as the humans that serve her; she is not some all-powerful, omnibenevolent deity of sacrosanct morals and illustrious ethics, she is just as prone to the basest of emotions and as utterly, characteristically flawed as anybody else. She is selfish, mean, spiteful and cruel, but that is why I love her. Were she an all-virtuous paragon of supreme divine authority, unblemished by hatred and scorn, I would find her a rather dull character altogether. Paltuena, in my eyes, represents
true good: not the good that we paint on ourselves and pretend to be, but the
real good that exists beyond the surface good and beyond even the evil that dwells inside of us all. Beyond good and evil, I believe, there is the true soul of purity, the driving force of good that inspires and impels all things - and Palutena is the manifestation of that. Even when she loses her sanity and embarks on a bloodthirsty campaign of carnage against the living masses, and even when she realises the full extent of her wrath and folly, that good persists. It is not the work of some divine authority of the agency of a wondrous moral hand that saves her from herself, of course: it's Pit. Pit sees through the projected good and past even the darkness and the evil inside of her and into the true good, the real good, the light of life and the fire of hope that burns deep in her soul and inspires hope and courage in all that behold her. There is a reason why Pit would and does follow Palutena to the ends of hell and back and why, above and beyond everything else, he will always strive to help her and do the right thing: it's because, at the end of it all, Palutena is the good in the world and she is worth fighting for.
Let me preface this by saying that I am androgynous. It is exceptionally rare to encounter a character in a work of fiction that I can relate to and empathise in this respect, as most characters in fiction are - for better or for worse - presented as possessing a binary gender, and there is little room for maneuver in between those two rigid definitions. And then Lucina comes along with her soft features and her ambiguous clothing, her deep voice and her proud morals, and I see that this is a character I understand and I love and respect because of that. Lucina is biologically female, that much is self-evident, but her gender identity remains utterly, wholly ambiguous and is never really dwelt upon. And I love that. It demonstrates that it's not necessary to have a definite gender, that there's more to the human soul than what body you have and how others perceive you. Lucina is beautiful and inspiring, she carries off an effortless air of grace and debonair without ever needing to feel beholden to either her femininity or her masculinity: she is quite simply beautiful because there is profound, wondrous beauty in her. She is, of course, a hero in her own way too, and she represents what I believe to be the greatest and most powerful of all emotions: hope. Lucina sees the world and her loved ones torn asunder and slaughter before her very eyes, yet she does now cower and shirk her duties. She is the first to, in her own words, "Grab a sword and
fight!" She is the one who, when all else is reduced to so much ash and ruin, stands against the oncoming chaos and holds her blade out, confident that, if she is to die, she will at least die doing what she knows to be the right thing to do. And yet, for all her charisma and bravado, there is a real sense of suffering and anxiety within herself. When she meets Chrom for the first time and is finally able to have a filial heart-to-heart with him, the traditional boundaries of leader and soldier dissolve and are replaced by something truer and purer: it is the relationship between father and daughter, a bond that transcends space and time and becomes something far greater and more powerful than any evil or terror can ever even conceive of being. When Lucina cries and embraces Chrom for the first time, it becomes clear just how profound and beautiful she is, both as a character and as a person. She is truly beautiful and a champion of hope.
I think that every character I play says something about me as a person, and Robin is no different. Being totally blunt and self-aggrandising about it, I am an intelligent person; I have always been praised for my intellect and my learned profundity, though I often question where it leads me and consider how much of a task it is to live up to such lofty and high-brow expectations. Robin reminds me that it's okay to be smart and that, at the end of it all, what people value the most is not what you know or how you can express yourself, but who you are and why you do the things you do. Robin, again, is an aspirational figure to me: beautiful, intelligent, charismatic and helpful. She is a paragon of intellect and virtue, knowledgeable in all fields and possessed of a ruthlessly sharp wit that cuts through even the fiercest of difficulties. She drifts through life, it seems, with ease and aplomb, and nothing phases her. Except it does, it breaks her heart to see such pain and suffering in the world, and for all her snark and witticisms, she just wishes for the world to be a better place. Robin is not one to hold her punches and she does not shirk from her responsibilities, which I find to be of the utmost admiration as a person and as a leader: she's quick to praise those that have earned her blessing, but equally quick to call people out on their nonsense if she feels it's just. She makes no pretensions about being a
wunderkind or a prodigy, and in spite of her vast intellect and tactical prowess, she is still just as confused and perplexed as everybody else in the army. Her supports with Chrom only indicate just how human she really is, and how she would do anything for the sake of those she considers friends and allies. Robin, to me, represents the bonds between friends and family, the bonds that neither time nor difficulty can destroy, and the absolute aspiration that dwells within the soul of man.
I've always had a soft spot for this little guy. And it's precisely because he's just that: the little guy. R.O.B. is the underdog of the roster, the wee fellow that nobody thought would ever have a chance and whose appearance shocked everybody. A sentient piece of plastic with gleaming eyes and whirring circuits hardly seems like an appropriate challenger in Nintendo's all-star smashfest, now does it? And that's the unspoken, subversive brilliance of R.O.B., both as a character and as a symbol. R.O.B. is more than just a tiny shambling toy: he's our childhood made manifest. R.O.B. is symbolic of the toys we loved to play with when we were little, the bountiful and boundless love and affection that we felt for them that never dies, even when we grow up and move onto bigger and better things. That nostalgia can never die; we will always love our toys. R.O.B. is the unsung hero of Nintendo, a tiny champion of hardened plastic and whizzing electronics that nevertheless stood tall and helped to save the entire video game industry as we know it - and where is he now? In the hallowed halls of Nintendo's biggest and brightest all-stars? No, R.O.B. does not need fame and fortune. he is content to sit and watch as new generations of gamers emerge and something wonderful happens before his very big, shiny eyes. R.O.B. is content to be the silent witness to aeons of endlessly unfolding history, the champion of the ages whose noble and unspoken efforts helped define the very thing that we now know and love today as the video game culture that we are all so proudly and wondrously a part of. His role in the Subspace Emissary only further highlights this: silent and serene, he watches as his brethren are subjugated by a malevolent will and torn apart by cynicism and coldness until, finally, he rises up and saves the day. After countless years of sitting on the sidelines, watching and waiting, embracing generation after generation of aspiring young Smashers, Nintendo has finally deigned it fit to reach out and take the little robot's stubby plastic rotor arm and lead him into the annals of the all-stars. R.O.B. is the manifestation of Nintendo's rich and colourful history and the living proof that you don't need to be great and powerful to be a hero: you just need to have the heart to do what's right and the courage to live for the things you love.