Quote Originally Posted by Rowan View Post
Sephiroth manipulated cloud and Jenova (supposedly). If it were not for his manipulation of cloud, sephiroth would have never gained the black materia, at least in the sense that could was the one who handed it to him, on 2 seperate occasions. Sephiroth took the form of clouds party members at the northern crater in order to trick them into handing over the black materia, which could be considered as both planning and a display of cunning.
Not the same kind of manipulation. Kefka used deception, trickery, lies, he exploited the human mind without having any direct control of anyone. Sephiroth's manipulation was direct imposition of his own will. He didn't waste time or energy trying to alter someone's will, he just replaced it with his own and did as he pleased. He didn't persuade like Kefka, he simply made you see what he wanted you to see. Even his mind games are very much a brute force maneuver. Kefka plants a seed and waits for it to bear fruit. Sephiroth shatters minds and uses the broken bodies as puppets. He definitely had the mindset to be a manipulator like Kefka, but his power made it unnecessary, leading to a very different development as a villain. He was a planner, and he was highly intelligent, but the way he approached things reflected his power moreso than his intellect. Because unlike Kefka, who needed to lie cheat and steal to gain power, Sephiroth had power from the beginning. That made him a very different sort of villain.

Going on a bit of a tangent there, lol. A true mad man does not take time to appreciate anything of the kind. A sadist on the other hand...
A mere sadist is nowhere near that. Sephiroth didn't just take pleasure in pain. He fed on it, it was his drive. His will was to avenge, to make the world suffer as he believed his people had. He didn't just enjoy their suffering, he was obsessed with it. He planned out his moves to maximize the suffering he caused. He could have killed Aerith at any time, but he wanted to wait and make Cloud do it. When Cloud resisted and thought he won, he made a point of stealing away his victory right in front of him. He knew just what to say to make it worse. Sephiroth has a unique ability to make others suffer. Kefka wielded pain as a club, wide, brutal strokes, effective, yet unfocused, messy. Sephiroth used it as a scalpel. Precise, sharp, penetrating, very specifically targeted.

I tend to believe revenge to be one of the purest of motivations, in the sense that it could never describe someone as being inherintly evil, or good in the eyes of anyone. That is something I always found interesting and mysterious about Sephiroths character.
Another defining element of his character. Kefka was definitely a villain, Sephiroth bordered on an antihero.