Exdeath

Exdeath
Final Fantasy character
First game	Final Fantasy V (1992)
Voiced by	English Gerald C. Rivers Japanese Tarō Ishida Naomi Kusumi
In-universe information
Race	Tree

Exdeath (Japanese: エクスデス, Hepburn: Ekusudesu) is a character introduced in the 1992 Square Enix roleplaying game Final Fantasy V, serving as the game's antagonist.

Conception and design

The name Exdeath derives from the term "one who transcends death". His name has been localized in some iterations to X-Death, Ex-Death, or Exodus.

With the release of Dissidia Final Fantasy, Exdeath was voiced by Gerald C. Rivers in English, and Tarō Ishida in Japanese, with Naomi Kusumi taking over for the latter after the actor's death. Ishida approached the role as if he was "a great tree" with its roots stuck into the ground, an approach Kusumi tried to emulate, though admitted he struggled with how powerful Ishida had made Exdeath's laughter.

Appearances

In the earliest drafts of Final Fantasy V's story, Exdeath was originally a much different character, a student of the sage Guido (who in this iteration was also a tree) and attempting to revive the being Enuo, an incarnation of pure evil that controlled the voice. A branch from Exdeath would enter Enuo's body in the climax, causing the creation of this version of Neo Exdeath who would have Exdeath's mind but Enuo's power over the Void.

Critical reception

Since his debut, Exdeath received mixed reception, in particular regarding to his role as a villain. Jason Schreier in an article for Kotaku criticized the character as "a being of pure, boring evil", and that while "looking cool" lacked the same appeal as later franchise villains Kefka Palazzo and Sephiroth. A similar sentiment was shared by Alana Hagues of RPGFan, who felt Exdeath lacked "any meaning other than being an imposing, all-powerful warlock", and without the grace or presence of villain characters in the franchise that came before him, it was primarily his henchman Gilgamesh that made up for his role as a "lackluster" antagonist.

Jonathan Remoiville in his book La Légende Final Fantasy IV & V described Exdeath as a villain that "not really a villain who plays on subtlety", and one of the last truly evil antagonists in the Final Fantasy franchise. He stated though this lack of nuance did not make the character uninteresting however, as during the course of the story he becomes a gradually growing threat, and once unleashed he proves to be a formidable and capable enemy. Remoiville noted that Exdeath even temporarily achieves his goal of reducing the world to nothingness, its restoration only capable due to the virtues the heroes represent. However because he was just an "unambiguous character, stupidly evil, totally nihilistic", Exdeath's presence invoked no questions or emotion from the player upon defeating him, and not only gave him no posterity but impacted response to the game itself. He felt for games to succeed they need not only strong heroes but also a strong villain, and that was not the case with Final Fantasy V.

Inverse's Hayes Madsen on the other hand praised the character, stating that Exdeath was a perfect example of a "villain who’s a real bad dude, nothing more". He noted that in terms of Final Fantasy V, his existence as a tree fit perfectly with how the game's story could be both lighthearted and serious at times. While Madsen noted that Exdeath lacked deeper motivations outside of destruction and evil, it in turn allowed him to be "the perfect foil" to the protagonists who he felt were also not developed much beyond simple themes. He further enjoyed the simplicity, stating that while "angsty villains" would always have a place in the franchise, Exdeath's character was closer to that of the Green Goblin in the Sam Raimi Spider-Man film, or the portrayal of the Joker in the Dark Knight Rises: characters that want to "see the world burn, and the fun is in seeing the depths the villains sink to in order to do that."

The character's themes were also explored by various publications. Despite his earlier criticism, Remoiville praised Exdeath's role as a "nature taking a monstrous form to attack humanity" for its overreliance on its resources and machines, a "form of irony" he felt series creator Hironobu Sakaguchi "mastered wonderfully". He compared Exdeath to Norse mythology's Yggdrasil as a sacred tree, and how the former became an "unholy tree which links the world of Bartz and that of Galuf to reunite them in death". Author Deanna Khamis in a paper examining the horror of time for the journal Benza praised Exdeath as an example of the Final Fantasy series creating villains more sophisticated than "the producers suspect", further describing him as a hollow but "richly decorated [...] perfect horror, empty and shapeless in essence, but defined or even overdefined by the colourful pink, green and golden shell" in titles such as Dissidia.