Organization XIII, They're the Bad Guys, Right?

Quite frankly, they are.
But you wouldn't think that going by most of KH's fanbase.
Everything from saying "sure, they did something bad... but it was because they wanted their hearts back!"
to saying "Sora is a racist ******* who just hates Nobodies for no reason and tries to kill them because he's the real villain"
And everything inbetween

Where do you lie on this spectrum? Because honestly? I can't see the Organization as anything BUT the villains. They constantly antagonize Sora and many people related to him. They are constantly enacting evil plans, even when they haven't finished their previous evil plans. It's almost unanimously the Organization members that start fights with Sora, not the other way around, even when people bring up the example of the 'innocent' Demyx.
So yeah
What makes them not that evil, anyways?

 

How are they not the villains?
Villains are villains.
Villains with sympathetic motives are still villains. Sora is the protagonist, the hero, and the Org are the bad guys he's fighting. Yeah they're cool characters, and yeah what they're doing is understandable (I guess), but they're still the villains.

How relatable/sympathetic the reader/watcher/player finds the villain to be has no bearing on their status as her or villain. If the story presents them as a villain, that's what they are. The character itself may not be that black and white, but the structure is.

 

I wouldn't say they're the bad guys, per se, but they are bad guys in terms of what they are trying to accomplish. I mean, Xehanort will do anything to achieve his ambitions, he's even said so, and we've seen what kind of things he's willing to do; he attacked Eraqus with no problem; tricked Maleficent to get what he wanted; used Ansem the Wise and even his researchers; destroyed the lives of 3 keybladers; and he's still going, no matter what, just to get the x-blade and get to kingdom hearts. The guy is so set on understanding the keyblade war he doesn't care what happens to others, and that's what really makes them bad. Even Namine said "bad, or good..." They weren't really in the wrong just trying to get hearts, but the whole thing behind how they were getting hearts is what really made that line a little more definitive. If they were trying to get their hearts back with other means that didn't put people in danger, I'm sure they wouldn't really be considered bad, but they were stealing other people's hearts and using them to make their owns hearts; as well as them kidnapping Sora just so Xehanort could have his Organization XIII again, and they just treat people as things. Even Young Xehanort said they "did what the keyblade did, and moved down the list". They treat other people as things just to get what they want, and they don't really care what happens. That's really what makes them the bad guys in this case. It's the way they're going at it that defines them as the bad guys.

 

Well, it's true that they want to have their hearts back, but it's how they will get their hearts back that makes them the villains. Organization XIII want to gain their hearts back by collecting hearts to form an artificial Kingdom Hearts. But the real villain here is Xehanort. Xehanort will make sure that his goals will be fulfilled, even if he is a Heartless or a Nobody. Xemnas manipulated the members for telling them that they have no hearts, but in fact that they do have hearts. It's just that they haven't been full developed yet. The bond between Axel, Roxas and Xion, and for the fact that they have been showing emotion when they die (Larxene, Demyx, etc.), states that they do have hearts.

 

I find it difficult to judge them collectively. Some of them are pretty rotten (Larxene, for one), while others fall more on the "in-between" scale of good & evil, to me (for example, Axel). They're of varying degrees, some of them more evil than others.

They do have a sympathetic motive, as Below states, which is why quite a lot of the fandom favors them, I believe. We pity them. For most of the members, I think what they truly want is a sense of belonging. The Realm of Light rejects them for they have no hearts, and so I think some of the more naive members (Demyx comes to mind, Roxas as well) may simply be following because they don't know what to do.

Xemnas, of course, is at the crux, with other motives (his connection to Xehanort). What most of them really want is just to be human and belong. I don't think we can completely label them as evil and slay them without considering that. It's an ethical & philosophical issue. Yes, they are accomplices to Xemnas's evil plot, which in turn makes them guilty as well, but it's a tough call. Some people do not cast blame on them for what they do, even if they acknowledge it as evil, because they believe they were forced to act out (hard determinism); others feel that, despite their lack of hearts and overall lot in life (or lack thereof), there is no excuse for evil (libertarianism). I don't believe there's any right or wrong answer--though I don't believe the games really want us to think too hard about it. Sora really doesn't.

 

What you're describing is the antagonist. From the definition of villain^●:

1. A cruelly malicious person who is involved in or devoted to wickedness or crime; scoundrel.
2. Character in a play, novel, or the like, who constitutes an important evil agency in the plot.

Even within the context of fiction, the term villain applies only to the methods, motives, or any other factors that constitute a character who is malicious, cruel, or wicked - in short, evil. So ultimately it has nothing to do with which side they're on, who the viewer is made to root for, etc. "Protagonist" and "antagonist" refer strictly to the relation between the perspective character and the forces working against them; hence, a villain protagonist can exist. For the reasons you gave the Organization most certainly are antagonists, but only because they oppose Sora. They'd have to be evil to be villains. So the real question becomes: Is the Organization XIII evil?

Simply put, yes. The collective Organization is put forth as ruthless, amoral, and inconsiderate of others, and the majority of its members actively demonstrate their disregard for human life throughout the course of the series. No matter how noble is their goal, they've gone off the deep end in pursuit of it. Part of this is because they were suckered by Xemnas into thinking they had no hearts and thus didn't have to care, but this hardly absolves them of their crimes; as you said, it only makes them sympathetic. The only exceptions to this are Axel, Roxas, and Xion, and Axel's case is dubious at best. At the very least, all of the others were willing to kill Sora or Riku.

 

They quite are the villains. Or perhaps they are pawns excluding Xemnas and Xigbar and maybe Saix. Perhaps they all seek out a false truth that Xemnes has implanted into their minds while he works on a greater goal. I still see them as the bad guys, but they may have some innocence.

 

They transformed other people in heartless to take their hearts.

 

Nobody is denying what they did, simply arguing the game isn't as simple as good guys & bad guys--which is great! The Organization does evil things, some members more than others (Xemnas), but they have a sympathetic motive (lacking hearts/wanting to 'belong'). That doesn't mean what they did isn't wrong, which I don't think anyone is trying to say, but rather, that it's not as simple as black and white.

 

They do evil things to worlds and people to achieve their goals, so they are evil, it is not even for the "greater good" or something like that, is for their on reasons... feel empaty for them does not excuse them for their actions. Sure many of them could have been misled to think they were doing the right thing (Like Roxas), but even then they are responsible for their actions.

 

Also, note how Roxas never actually does anything morally ambiguous? All HE spends his time doing in the Org is fighting heartless and saving people (albeti from the shadows)
The REST of the group suffers from a severe case of chronic villainy. They didn't NEED to do all the random stuff they did. They didn't need to mess with Beast's rose. Or steal Aztec treasure. They didn't NEED to randomly attack Sora constantly, they didn't NEED to get Roxas and Xion to try to kill eachother.
In particular their desire to turn OTHER people into Nobodies is BAFFLING because their end goal is just to become regular people again.
If the Organization had jsut let things be instead of constantly doing villainous stuff for seemingly no reason... they would have succeeded. Xehanrot would have his vessels

 

Yeah I don't understand Organization's actions sometimes... it seems they ENJOY what they do, and cause border in various worlds.

 

Good and bad is a matter of perspective. Bad guys are most interesting when they don't think what they're doing is wrong, which is the case here. You can sympathize with their goal, but it's the classic question of do the ends justify the means, but as hatok pointed out in this case, there's the problem of how do the means even get us to the ends.

 

They're definitely not bad. Now that they are all a piece of xehanort, I'd call them bad but their motives originally in Kingdom hearts 2 were not bad. They just were doing what they could to find a heart. Depends on which way you look at it, Is creating Kingdom Hearts just in attempts to regain a heart that bad? but I wouldn't know what Xemnas true motives were within KH2.

 

Trying to have a "heart" is a selfish reason, you are not making others lives better with it, so is not in any way a measure "for the greater good" (they couldn't argue that they are saving people or worlds with it). Being selfish by itself isn't bad, yet doing selfish things at expense of others is.. for their "selfish dream of a heart" they destroyed a lot of worlds, and made a huge number of people become Heartless and nobodies "Just because", and if they know that "being without a heart is bad" why they are making new nobodies? There is no way we could think them as good, feel empathy for their condition does not excuse their behavior.

 

This can be answered quite easily: the plot demanded it, for instance did they need to make xion absorb all of roxas's memories? no. they could have just let xion absorb enough to wield the keyblade and leave it at that then roxas and xion would have had no reason to rebel and xehanort would have his vessels nicely under his control, but nope instead he has to do something completely stupid because the plot needed to be moved.

 

That's not a reason that's bad writing

 

There's a word for this: contrivance. Something a lot of the KH games are guilty of having. Things happen for no other reason than they feel like it or they write themselves into a corner and have to do something that makes no sense to keep the forward momentum.