#sorry this got so long adkfldjgl;afdf

[herrscherofmagic]

im a bit late to this, but since I voted for Sa i thought i'd give my 2 cents on it!

note that I haven't done most of the recent fu hua arc yet, ik Sa shows up and maybe present-day Sa is less insane or whatev- but I'm mostly referring to the OG Vita in the last days of the original Venus civilization so i don't think that'll be an issue? i hope x-x

this'll get long 'cuz i have a lot to say so apologies in advance for that

TL;DR: OG Vita knew her actions were likely to ruin her entire world, but she refused to listen to Dr. Marah and acted out of line in order to try and desperately grab a pyrrhic victory against Honkai. She didn't just enact the "worst" plan, she actively rejected the other, better plan and immediately went to desperate measures. everyone else on the list has eccentricities and has done questionable things, but none of them (not even Dr. MEI) would've done what OG Vita did on Purusha with the Soul system.

Sa keeping her coworkers as pets and dehumanizing them was evil, but I wouldn't say that's what makes her an unhinged scientist. What I think truly makes her absolutely insane is that she willingly annihilated her whole planet because she refused to compromise and hold onto hope. She lost her mind before activating the soul system, and Dr. Marrah failed to stop her in time.

The thing is that Venus' civilization would've fallen to Honkai, but just like the PE of Earth, Finality shoulda done its thing and a new civilization should have arose. But when OG Vita removed the limits of the Soul System and caused the "Tsunami", the resulting cataclysm didn't just kill off her civilization- it irreparably ruined the planet's biosphere and even changed its rotation. Venus will never see life again, short of some miraculous terraforming project by Earth's civilization. Even the worst of Project Stigma wouldn't have done that to Earth.

Project Stigma was considered the worst of the worst solutions and left as a back-up if all else failed. Even then, Dr. MEI had contingencies (tasking Su to stop Kevin), and Kevin himself was willing to hold on and suffer to give the rest of humanity a chance to prove him wrong. Kevin wouldn't compromise because he needed the new generation to prove themselves capable, not because he believed they were fundamentally misguided.

But when Dr. Marah suggested their own version of Project Ark, OG Vita became furious, refused to accept it, then came up with the idea of unleashing the Soul System. OG Vita was given a clear opportunity to give at least part of her civilization a chance to survive, and she passed it by to instead jump to the most extreme measure. She "succeeded" in that Honkai disappeared... but only because she destroyed her own planet so thoroughly that even the Cocoon couldn't give a damn about it.

I feel like that absolutely blows anyone else's actions out of the water. Mobius acted immorally but always did measured and careful actions and was wary of its consequences, even finding MEI's Project Stigma to go too far. Dr. MEI herself knew she was planning the worst-case scenario but still found ways to give the next generation a chance to make a difference. Vill-V... well she's certainly crazy, but aside from the one rogue/evil personality, all of her actions still had some logic behind them. Vill-V as a whole wasn't unhinged, only certain aspects of her which the rest of her mind sought to rein in.

finally, i'll quote the actual conversation OG Vita had with Dr. Marah since it was a pretty brief part of a very action-packed and dense story, and i imagine most people have forgotten the details by now. Because it's so long I'm making it a post on my own blog and it's linked here.

So yeah... Sa/OG Vita was a bit more than unhinged imo

Ultimately it's an arbitrary description, it's not like we can quantitatively measure "unhingedness", so i can't claim that Sa is 100% the most unhinged doctor on that list. But I do feel like people tend to gloss over just how terrible her actions on Purusha were.

Everything in HI3rd's story is about fighting to give all of humanity a chance, giving it everything you got, and to avoid making extreme sacrifices in the name of victory. Part 1's finale was all about stopping Kevin from enacting the "worst plan". The whole point was to stop one person, Kevin, from taking the fate of the world in his hands... and even Kevin himself gave the protagonists a chance to prove him wrong.

Sa/OG Vita was the person that looked at her own world's "worst plan" and didn't reluctantly accept it... she ran at it with arms wide open and fervently embraced the possibility that her entire world would be annihilated. I'd say her destruction is objectively worse than even Finality itself because even the PE Herrscher of Finality didn't wipe out all life on Earth. And she didn't hear Marah out or give her civilization a chance to prove her wrong... she went and did what she wanted knowing how risky it was, and now her world will never be able to sustain a single living being ever again.

Taking that into account, I'd say she's probably one of the top most evil/insane of all Hoyoverse characters...