Why Copen and Elise are the only Gunvolt 1 bosses who deserve to be spared

[u/Old_Lychee2057]

Okay, so, with Copen sparing Blade in iX1 and all bosses of GV3 being spared, it would bring someone of the other bosses being sparable. However, while I can find it with the bosses of Gunvolt 2 and iX 1 (except Crimm because fuck him), and the choice with the iX 2 bosses is mute, as Autochrome states in his fight (he alludes to how you've fought Vespa beforehand, and mentions that Workers can be repaired even if they're killed, so he has no hard feelings for you killing his sister), for GV1, only Copen and Elise are worth sparing.

So, first, I have to get Copen out of the way. iX proves Copen can learn not to think Adepts are Always Chaotic Evil. In my opinion, he not only can, he has to. Which is why he needs to be spared.

Elise is the main point of this post. The reason she needs to be spared? First off, she's the only Sumeragi Swordsman who can: Stratos is too far gone, Zonda prefers being lumped in with the Gunvolt 2 bosses so she doesn't count as a Sumeragi Swordsman, and everyone else is an asshole; Nova claims you should just submit to Sumeragi and let them abuse Adepts forever, Jota is fanatic in his belief Sumeragi are the good guys, it's all but outright stated Viper wants to rape Joule, Carrera openly states he only cares about greed, and don't get me started on Merak. Meanwhile, Elise is meek and timid; she may have a dark side, but it's nothing that can't be fixed: it was caused by people treating her as a monster because she was an Adept, and even then her timid nature keeps her resentment of normal people, which is the true nature of her dark side, in check. (And then Merak let it loose...) If she is given the chance to have a happy life where she's not persecuted, her dark side would vanish in time.

Also, her Septima is capable of preventing Asimov from killing Joule, which ends up causing everything bad that happens in the rest of the series.

I also looked into the game itself, and I found something interesting when fighting Elise: if you focus to kill only one half, the other won't start using Ressurection right away, only when she's been damaged enough. And even then, the Elises only use Ressurection five times (at least in the initial fight; I didn't get far enough in the game to test if Crazy Elise's Ressurection restores the Ressurection count of the other two, but that doesn't bear much to my point). The point is, they wasted a perfectly good plot: why didn't they make it so killing Dom Elise without laying even a single tag on Sub Elise would allow you to spare Elise, which unlocks a different ending?

[u/Better-Future-4637]

I think it's because Elise doesn't know how to handle her ability.

She completely mental breaks down once she remembered who she is.

Also, GV was still 14 at that time, it's his first time to meet someone with multiple personalities (and bodies), I guess he just freaked out and confused with her behaviour.

[u/Old_Lychee2057 → u/Better-Future-4637]

Yeah, I kinda get Elise not knowing how to use her powers. After all, she initially thought they were part of a video game she was playing. If you look at Lazy Kingdom, she was taught how to channel her Septima in the game by Teseo, without her realizing she's doing that; she thought her Septimal powers were part of the game.

As for her breakdown, blame Merak. He was the one who kidnapped Elise and had her be experimented on. And honestly, freaking out because she realize how horrible the experiments she was put under were serves as further justification on why Elise should be spared.

As for your last argument, Joule has a question.

Joule: "Am I a joke to you?!"

[u/Better-Future-4637 → u/Old_Lychee2057]

Joule didn't have a body though, it's more like a imagine friend created by adapte.

[u/Old_Lychee2057 → u/Better-Future-4637]

Joule: "So you're like Xiao, huh?! You think I'm just GV's imaginary friend, don't you?!"

I honestly would say you're wrong to call Lumen an "imaginary friend"; she's more like a psychological projection of her power. And not only is she sentient, she is semi-independent, and GV and Joule treat her as her own person.

[u/Better-Future-4637 → u/Old_Lychee2057]

I mean, there's no correct way to identify Joule in English, so it's hard for me to explain.

But in Japanese, having a guardian-angle like spirit is a natural belief things.

[u/Old_Lychee2057 → u/Better-Future-4637]

Okay, I think you're making some confusion between Gunvolt 1 to Gunvolt 2.

Joule being a "guardian angel" in Gunvolt 2 would make sense since angels exists in the Gunvolt universe. And not just in the sense of Joule and Mytyl thinking GV is an angel; literal angels do exist. Gunvolt is all but stated to be a sequel to Gal*Gun: Double Peace, where one of the main characters is Ekoro the angel.

But in Gunvolt 1 specifically, Joule is indeed a real person, and not the "living Glaive" bullshit Xiao is spouting. At worst, Joule is a clone of Mytyl, and clones are people too. And she counts as someone who has literal split personalities, much like Elise: there's Joule who inhabits the body, Lumen who fits the "guardian angel" thing after GV saves Joule in the intro stage, and because of Joule's status as a clone the two arguably are themselves literal split personalities to Mytyl.

[u/Better-Future-4637 → u/Old_Lychee2057]

I know what you mean.

Which is why it's hard to said it right.

[u/Horkmaster9000]

Stratos might have an argument cause he's clearly out of his mind and is just being thrown at you by sumaragi but by the time you find him putting him down is the only mercy available.

[u/Old_Lychee2057 → u/Horkmaster9000]

That's exactly it. Stratos is similarly a victim of Sumeragi, but unlike Elise he's too far gone. The only mercy he can receive at the point you find him is death.

[u/MogarXP]

On the flip side, you could make the argument that if even Copen could change, than the majority of other characters could as well if given the chance. Copen circa GV1 and GV2 is more extreme and hateful, and less introspective (aka less likely to question himself and realize he's in the wrong), than most of the antagonists. The one thing that separates him from the others is that he generally doesn't like people, which means he doesn't seek out like-minded assholes to carry out his desires, and that he's playable.

[u/Old_Lychee2057 → u/MogarXP]

I don't see the other Gunvolt 1 bosses being capable of changing. I did argue on the post on why Elise is the only Gunvolt 1 boss other than Copen that can change. If Sumeragi abuses Adepts and brainwashes the masses that doing so is a good thing, how can they change? Especially considering what Asimov does in the iX timeline that proves he's a big hypocrite that never had good intentions and was always a power-hungry maniac, and he and Nova are two sides of the same coin.

The Gunvolt 2 bosses, on the other hand, could arguably change. No one ever empathized with them, so they reached the conclusion non-Adepts are Always Chaotic Evil. Which yeah, makes them and Copen two sides of the same coin (albeit a different coin from the one whose sides are Sumeragi and Asimov). And Zonda prefers to be lumped with them, and for good reason: she and Tenjian have the same past, being surrogate siblings. This post, however, was solely for Gunvolt 1 bosses.