With what you just said, it seems far more likely Kano fits the bill for survival of the fittest than Kira, whom seems to follow some form of chivalry according to you, and I don't see how you can interpret that. And the Black Dragon has nothing but bloodthirsty nutcases. Nothin' but killers and criminals.

I don't disagree in the grand scheme of things Kira is unoriginal, but I'm arguing that in Mortal Kombat she is not original. Raiden isn't that original either if I we're going to encompass all media ever, but I'm not doing that. That's irrelevant.

I'm unsure why you bring up Smoke. I'm not arguing whether you should like Kira or not. I don't really care if you do or don't. I'm arguing that she isn't original, and if you like her because she is original you're liking her for the wrong reasons. If you like her because she's unoriginal... well, more power to you I guess.

And I didn't know Smoke was considered original. Only thing original about Smoke is that he is literally smoking, which I guess looks cool if nothing else. Perhaps his popularity comes from the fact he was the first playable secret character in a Mortal Kombat game and everyone has a nostalgia boner for him because of it.

All I'm trying to prove is that she's a character with merit. That she doesn't suck and deserve to be thrown to the wayside in future games like Kobra or Hsu Hao. I only brought up Smoke because he was a good example of my point, which all comes down to "a character can be based on another and still be good."

You're the one who made a big deal about the word "original". In the post this all started from, I didn't even really use it the way you mean it. I just used it to mean "new", to seperate the characters Vogel created for DA and Deception from returning characters that Tobias created.

As far as whether Kano believes in "survival of the fittest", I think you and I interpret it differently. To you, "survival of the fittest" seems to mean "kill or be killed" and nothing more than that. Caveman mentality, basically. The fact is, Kano doesn't believe in ANYTHING. He's not the type of person to HAVE a philosophy. If he follows survival of the fittest at all, it's only by default as part of his pirate-y life of "amass wealth and power and step on everyone in my way".

The kind of "survival of the fittest" I'm talking about when I describe the philosophy of Kabal and Kira, takes the CONCEPT of "kill or be killed" and turns it into a belief system. The X-Men villain Apocalypse is probably the most mainstream example in fiction, that I can think of, of someone who does this, treating "survival of the fittest" as a code to live by, wherein if you fail, you must acknowledge that your opponent is "the fittest" one, and they deserve to survive, not you.

So...yeah. Two different ways of thinking about the same term. Either is valid, I suppose, but I can see why we won't agree on this one.

Anyway, you made your point, that Kira is derivative, and I made mine, that she's still a good idea and deserves to return in future games and be fleshed out further. No harm, no foul.

true for game up to mk3

I think you are just mad that you can't play the good old days of MK anymore. I agree. I prefer the one sided fight thing, having Ed bring the MK series into the next generaton sucked, if only Saibot could come back, then we could have a fighting force that could even topple Halo(unlikely still with the genre they have to work with). I wonder what made Saibot leave anyways?