When it comes to great fictional characters, character design is king. If your character is cool enough looking hardly anything else matters. That first impression captivates you and keeps it a memorable bolt of lightning for the rest of your life. This can be said of both Kenji from Bloody Roar (also known as Bakuryu, the Mole), and Micaiah from Fire Emblem. Kenji is so cool looking in his black ninja outfit and red scarf, and Micaiah is so beautiful and saintly looking in her red dress and blue scarf, that you can't forget or ignore them no matter how much you try.
Furthermore, Kenji is a deadly effective warrior, combining wily and maneuverable tactics as a human and absolute speed and fury in his beast form. I loved playing Bakuryu in Bloody Roar II, even moreso than Uriko (which is why Kenji is in my hall of fame but Uriko isn't). By all rights he's also a nice, good guy, friends with other heroes and heroines like Yugo the Wolf and Uriko the Half-beast. So there's only good things to say about him.
Compare that to Mikleo, who is good looking and strong, sure, but is also a kind of boring personality, who seems to only have two states -- 1) agree and go along with whatever Sorey says, or 2) nag Sorey about something stupid that doesn't matter. He doesn't seem to have any existence outside of Sorey.
The reason Mikleo is in '100 Waifus' while Kenji isn't is not merit. The reason is Mikleo is related to Rose, a waifu, stemming from the same Tales game, whilst Kenji isn't related to anyone. Also Mikleo was a unique name but Kenji was a repeat name, and I wanted as few repeat names as possible to avoid confusion. These considerations don't apply in the new fictional character hall of fame.
Micaiah is an impossibly good girl, the host of a benevolent goddess, the savior of her country, the general of a liberation army, with magic that altruistically sacrifices her own health to heal that of others (showing the core of her personality), and eventually a holy relic that comes to the aid of an entirely different world and saves them too. Micaiah is the most powerful engage in Fire Emblem Engage due to her mass teleport ability (the key to all the difficult stages in the game.) The only reason I left her out of '100 Waifus' is I didn't want to say her source work, Radiant Dawn, was a great game, since it was really annoyingly hard. There was no rewind function in the Fire Emblems back then, but the stages were just as slanted against you, so I had to keep repeating the same stages over and over and over. Especially since Micaiah's forces were the weakest in the story, I had to repeat the stage most often when she was at the center of the action. Since '100 Waifus' is as much about introducing people to great franchises as great characters, I steered clear of endorsing a game I didn't much enjoy myself. But Micaiah herself is pure radiant light. And this is a fictional character hall of fame, not a franchise hall of fame, so now I can say what's in my heart. Besides, by including Mist, I already included the Radiant games, so at this point adding Micaiah is cost-free.
Dezel, on the other hand, was in '100 Waifus' due to his close relation to Rose, a waifu. It wouldn't make sense for Rose to be deprived of her partner Dezel so he was a mandatory decision. But now that we're talking about merit instead of who would serve best as part of a family, he doesn't measure up. Dezel has a dumb hat that obscures his eyes (the windows to the soul, half of all beauty starts there) and shark teeth that look disturbing on a human being. He's opposed to Rose and Sorey's romance which counts against him (who would oppose such a lovely couple?), plus he dies early in the game so there isn't much to say about him. Micaiah in contrast is the main character of her entire game and an additional side character in another.
As a side benefit this puts the Final Fantasy character count ahead of the 'Tales of X' character count, which is proper because FF is the better series. Not by much, but then again FF isn't ahead of the Tales character count by much either, so everything checks out.
My reread of '100 Waifus' rolls on, slowly but surely. I'm now at Chapter 34, still free and clear of any necessary changes. March Madness is almost here.
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