Waku Waku 7 is one of the most entertaining and funky fighting games on the Neo Geo - A platform renowned for it's abundance of fightgames to begin with. One of the most charming aspects of the game is that it is incredibly silly. Silly in ways that other games just wouldn't want to be. Of course, these days there are many more games that are arguably much more silly, so Waku Waku 7 might not feel quite as wacky as it did in its heyday. So let's all remember that the characters in Waku Waku 7 crawled so Neco-Arc could run.
What I propose to do is rate the characters of Waku Waku 7 on an inherent Goofus Scale, to determine their outward and latent silliness. Each character will be rated in three individual categories.
Silliness: How inherently goofus the character is by design or behavior.
Goofus Awareness: How aware the character is about their own silliness, and additionally, the goofusness of the world of Waku Waku 7 at large.
Overall Goofus-tude: A final rating combining the previous two, while taking other factors into consideration.
Please note that this post is very long, and extremely pointless.
Let's begin!
Rai
Silliness: 6/10
Rai is the token shonen protagonist of the game. With a cocksure attitude and overblown confidence ripped directly from the pages of manga and/or the screen of anime, he radiates with stereotypical adolecant hero energy in every regard. This also makes him an overwrought caricature of cartoonish heroism and ambition. He's very silly by virtue of his hitting every trope imaginable in character design, right down to his ridiculous scarf and constant yelling.
A very solid silly.
Goofus Awareness: 3/10
Rai is practically unaware that he is a goofus, but this is not out of any sense of denial or discomfort. He's merely dumb. Furthermore, the idea that he could be silly in any regard is antithesis to how cool he thinks he is, so he cannot acknowledge this fact in the least. He is mildly aware that the world around him is crazytimes Goofusberg, but if and when he ever acknowledges this fact, it's always a passing feeling, and it's always someone else's problem.
Overall Goofus-tude: 4/10
Rai is solidly middle-of-the-road Goofus. Not nearly as wacky as his compatriots, and only lightly aware of his surroundings being silly, Rai is hardly the strongest Goof in the crowd. Nevertheless, his ridiculous attitude and the sheer force of shonen tropes give him a solid silly foundation.
Slash
Silliness: 0/10
Slash is not silly. Slash is not goofy. Slash is dead serious about anything and everything he does, from the moment he wakes up in the morning to the moment he goes to sleep at night. Every battle is a chance to prove his skills. Battle is the only thing that matters. And if he cannot wield the sword, he considers himself worthless.
Slash is the kind of guy who shows up to your friendly, casual MvC 2 game night and then berates everyone else for not choosing Magneto, Storm, and Sentinel.
He only reads non-fiction. He never goes to the movies. He only eats edamame and lightly grilled fish. He wakes up at 5:00 AM every morning, and goes to bed at 9:00 PM every night. He spends the entirety of every day training.
He watches Lupin the III frequently, but finds the show absurd. He scoffs at the antics of Lupin and considers the titular character weak and frivolous. He finds nothing about the anime amusing - but he keeps watching because he has a massive crush on Goemon.
Slash had fun once. It was awful.
Silly Awareness: 10/10
Slash is painfully aware of any trace of silliness within himself, the world, and the universe at large. Silliness makes him superbly uncomfortable, utterly paralyzed with fear. His innermost quest is to remove all silly from existence, and particularly to remove all wackiness from inside himself. This means that, while Slash is not particularly a Goofus externally, he is hyper-vigilant to the qualities of what makes a Goofus. Even the slightest thing out of the ordinary will earn his disdain and contempt.
There are few people more aware of silliness than is Slash. And yet, for all his knowledge and awareness, he cannot leverage this skill into anything but his own discomfort. Unlike other characters who learn to embrace and mold silliness to their advantage, Slash withers and dies at the merest jape, and as such, his knowledge of silly is ultimately a weakness to him.
Overall Goofus-tude: 3/10
While Slash is not outwardly or internally silly himself, and while he is on a quest to destroy all silly everywhere (particularly within himself), he is nevertheless slightly a Goofus for one reason.
In the universe of Waku Waku 7, Slash is a premium target to fall victim to wackiness and assorted hijinks. This is specifically because, when he is so beset by goofitude, it is absolutely hilarious. Everyone loves watching Slash have to grapple with the silliness around him, because his inevitable overreactions are 100% pure, refined silliness, and funny as hell.
In the world of Waku Waku 7, Slash is the straight man.
(Which is ironic, considering I'm still pretty sure he's massively gay for Goemon).
Politank Z
Silliness: 8/10
I'm not going to lie: Politank Z has one of the wackiest, goofiest character designs you're going to find in a fighting game of this era. A tiny man and dog, crammed into a tiny bipedal tank? The constant self-congratulatory, egoistic trumpet fanfare that is diegetic and annoying? The utterly goofball design of their supposed super-weapon? I mean, look at that thing! That's not a weapon, or armor, or even practical! That's what you'd get if you asked a 3-year-old to work with DARPA to make something for crowd control. The protruding cone-nose spews out too-large projectiles and explosives. The thing poops bombs.
Just look at how the tank flails its little arms while dashing! That's silly!!
Beyond design, Politank Z is behaviorally silly in most every regard. The fact that the piloting duo are constantly calling their shots, celebrating their hits, and that the dog even moons you? Excellent wackiness. But not because they are, themselves, delightfully silly. Rather, because they are self-important bullies who are unaware that they are full of themselves, and therefore it is extremely fun to watch them suffer.
Silly Awareness: 0/10
Politank Z, both the tank and the pilots, have zero idea of what silliness is. Their goofus-ness is entirely incidental, to be viewed and identified by external participants, and is mainly derived from a vibe similar to seeing someone in a position of power get hit in the face with a pie. They are inherently silly - but only so because of their ineptitude and misfortune. Their failures are silly and hilarious in spite of their intentions, not because of them.
Politank Z is like the asshole teacher who stands on the playground during recess to make sure no one has fun at all. Sure, it's funny when a bird shits on them and they get upset. And it's funny as hell to laugh at their stupid sweater-vest that's three sizes too large. Or laugh really hard at how they treat their dominion over third graders as some kind of absolute and ultimate power structure. But at the end of the day they're still a killjoy.
Politank Z are utterly unaware of wackiness in the world, or in themselves, in any regard. They have zero sense of humor.
And this is largely because...
Overall Goofus-tude: -1/10
Politank Z is a cop.
Cops ain't wacky.
ACAB (All Cops Are Boring)
Dandy J
Silliness: 7/10
Dandy J is, at first blush, another self-serious curmudgeon. The initial impression is that he is always and in every way dire - But this is, in fact, not true.
Dandy J strives instead to always and in every way be cool.
His loosely-veiled Indiana Jones shtick might appear to be another boring tough-guy routine, but the fact that he takes it so far makes it hillarious. Look at the way his idle animation plays out, with his body rising and falling, muscles rippling. Look at the way he uses his whip in impractical and over-the-top ways. Admittedly, Dandy J gets the vast majority of his silly points from the fact that he is constantly traveling with Natsumi and Ranpoo. The three really come as a single unit, and the fact that Natsumi will toss in Ranpoo - Or more wacky, that Ranpoo will toss in Natsumi, adds some considerably clown-clout to this mix.
Dandy is always willing and able to go the extra mile for his treasure hunting, and in doing so, he gets silly in an over the top manner. Just like Indiana Jones selling these fine leather jackets, Dandy J's pursuit of adventure is one in which he'll be as silly as it takes, even if he has a low ceiling for "silly".
Solids marks.
Silly Awareness: 5/10
Dandy J is a seasoned treasure hunter who is well familiar with the spirit of the world in Waku Waku 7. He understands the overwhelming goofitude of the universe around him as a consequence of his many adventures and extensive travel to all corners of the globe. However, he largely just accepts this silliness as the way things ought to be. To him, the world is wacky, so what?
That being said, his ability to understand that he, himself, is a silly-billy largely escapes him. Dandy J is more or less numb to the fact that he's a part of the silliness around him. Yet even if he catches a glimpse of himself being a goofball, he doesn't mind in the slightest. He'll roll with that to get to the treasure. So he won't be paralyzed by this knowledge, as would Slash. But neither is he empowered by it.
Overall Goofus-tude: 5/10
When it comes to overall Goofus-tude rating, you'd be hard pressed to find a more middling goofball than Dandy J. He neither fights against, nor embraces, the wackiness around him. In so doing, he really hurts his final rating, because for all his bravado and excessive trope-leverage, he fades into the background of Waku-Wackiness.
There are bigger goofballs out there, but Dandy J is no stranger to calling for his trusted pet cat use his adopted daughter as a projectile to zone out his opponents.
Arina
Silliness: 6/10
Arina has an absolutely great design with a lot of high points for silly. First off, she's a bunny-girl, and she's a bunny-girl in a way that few other anime girls have been to this point. She's lop-eared, she has a cotton tail, and she's remarkably cute. None of these things are overwhelmingly silly in their own right, but I've gotta mention that because it's good.
Arina's style is, however, very notably silly. The flight goggles and bomber jacket on a highschool girl are top notch. Like, you know she's not logging hours in flight school, right? But she still shows up to her calculus class wearing those goggles, and when the teacher tells her to take them off, she erupts into a pillar of fire and the entire class gets nervous. That's pretty silly!! Plus, check out those fingerless gloves!! Too good.
Her fighting style is similarly solidly silly. Her projectile attacks might as well be trademarked by Lisa-Frank for all the stars and sparkles, and her flourishes are loud and completely showy.
She can, however, stomp a mudhole in you at a moment's notice. She's got cool moves, and a flashy style, and a move called the Arina Carnival. And I'm afraid that doesn't make her silly, it makes her cool. And while characters like Rai and Dandy J try so hard to be cool they come off silly, Arina is just plain cool enough that it actually reduces her silliness. You can even see this in her theme song, which when you first hear it inspires the thought of "Oh no, what is this pap", but by the end of it has you wanting to get up and dance like a goofus yourself, because it is a genuinely great song.
She's silly, but she's just too cool to be exceptionally silly.
Sorry, Arina.
Silly Awareness: 7/10
Arina is completely aware that the world around her is goofy as can be. She's also keenly aware that she's silly herself, but she doesn't care. In fact, she almost kinda leans into it! You can see this in the way she goes super, and practically embraces the Magical Girl transformation trope in the process. She knows this is anime cartoon shit, but she's going to wreck your face with it.
Also, her reactions to the zaniness of the world around her are so exaggerated and beyond reason that she's got to be in on the joke. When Arina gets big mad, she gets big mad for the audience, because she knows that the world around her has certain expectations of wackiness and she's going to deliver on those expectations.
Overall Goofus-tude: 6/10
Arina is easily the silliest character we've encountered thus far. Importantly, she manages to awaken an element of silliness that we will see in full force further down the roster: Embracing the Wacky. While Arina doesn't take this to the same extremes that some of her compatriots do, she nevertheless uses her understanding of silliness to amplify her abilities and soar above the mediocre goofuses below her.
Her design both helps and harms her in this ranking. While her over-the-top magical girl approach to fighting and stellar wardrobe choices push her further up the wacky ranks than most, her actual freaking sweet execution of a unique look make her just too awesome to be truly silly.
At the end of the day, Arina is a cool girl first, and a goofus second. Which works really well for her.
Tesse
Silliness: 9/10
Oh, now here we go.
Tesse is perhaps one of the strongest contenders for silliness by design. What you need to appreciate about the fighting game scene in 1996 is that, with a few notable exceptions, almost every character in every game was very much designed for maximum agression. The egdey ego blitz of the mid-90s was in full swing, and design notes were still trying to make everything seem like an action movie. This was long before any Gears felt Guilty, so out the gate the concept of a Shy Robotic Maid was already swinging for the fences (Also, yes, I'm aware of Darkstalkers coming out before Waku Waku 7 here, but the point still stands).
And what a damned home run they hit. Tesse is cartoonish and ridiculous in a world of silliness. She's always floating. She has deely bobber antennae! She'll throw a barrage of dishes at you. Her lower half will turn into a bell to smack you upside the head. She'll pull a person-sized syringe out of nowhere to drain you of blood.
Her HaruHaru move is basically to turn into an orbital death laser and blast you so hard you become nothing but atomized carbon.
And all the while she's shy, diminutive, and apologetic. She gives the impression she's just doing normal maid stuff while she turns you inside out due to clumsiness, and that's hilarious!! The entire concept is so silly!!
Tesse is near about the silliest design you can manage, and only slightly loses points because you can tell she's holding back.
Silly Awareness: 7/10
It's hard to fully parse Tesse's silly awareness due to her reticence and relative shyness, but if you watch her in action, it's pretty easy to tell she's fully in on the joke. She's unflappable in every circumstance, and plays it absolutely deadpan when a massive purple creature shows up on her doorstep, but then she's tripping and spilling a stack of dishes on that creature so hard it eats 1/4 of their life bar. You get the sense that Tesse's dry reactions aren't ignorance of the situation, but rather, tongue-in-cheek humor designed to play to the audience.
Tesse is fully aware that the world around her is silly. She doesn't quite understand the depth to which everything is silly, but she's no stranger to any of it. Furthermore, she's absolutely in on the joke that being a tiny robot maid should make her the most harmless character in the game - and nevertheless she can easily smash anyone into a pile of mangled bits using 100% pure pratfall.
Overall Goofus-tude: 8/10
Tesse takes what we observed with Arina leveraging goofus-awareness to the next level. Tesse is incredibly strong, even amid a pack of muscled strongmen and shonen protags, specifically because she is wacky as all get out. And Tesse knows that this is the source of her power, so can direct and focus it in ways that are devastating to her opponents. When Slash shows up in her courtyard and interrupts her sweeping with his self-important "Oooh, look at me, I'm a big anime sword dork" routine, Tesse become infinitely stronger simply because her Yamcha'ing Slash is fucking top tier comedy.
Superlative Silly.
Do not mess with the maid.
Mauru
Silliness: 10/10
Look, in the ranking of "silly things in silly games" just about nothing is ever going to come even remotely close to Gigantic Hilarious Creature.
Mauru is, perhaps obviously, what you get if Totoro from My Neighbor Totoro entered a martial arts tournament. I mean, right out the gate that concept is silly, just in principle! But the design takes it a step further, with this gigantic fluffy hugbeast of a friend coming out swinging in ways that defy your expectations. Mauru feels to be about as much muppet as he is Totoro, if I'm honest, and that's a +4 bonus to silly in every circumstance.
Mauru's behavior is soft and gentle at first glance, but then he winds up with a Popeye-style punch that nearly drills through his opponents. He does head-over-heels flips that hit for multiple consecutive blows. He curls into a tight little sphere and rolls at you! His DokiDoki move is essentially him becoming a goofy little helicopter and spinning around so fast he attains liftoff.
And then, just when you think you've seen everything this cuddly forest creature has to surprise you, he picks you up and repeatedly bitch slaps you back and forth as his grab move. That's remarkably unexpected in a very silly way!!
Beyond that, Mauru just emotes larger than life in a way that charms and amuses. When he gets smacked his expression of shock is superlatively big. When he loses round 1, he slams his fist on the ground repeatedly. And when he inhales in preparation of his HaruHaru attack, you get the feeling that he's sucking in the entire world, and is about to spit it out at you.
Excellent Silly Design. No notes.
Silly Awareness: 1/10
Mauru may be somewhat aware of his surroundings, and consider the oddness thereof, but he's also inherently unaware of what silliness even is. He's a creature on a mission, to return a lost child to her parents, and that's about all that fits into his brain. Mauru isn't dumb or stupid, it's just that he's never had to think about these things, never had to consider the goofitude of the people around him, because usually there aren't people around him. As such, he's not even all that aware of how remarkably silly he is himself.
This is not a knock on Mauru, for Mauru is perfect the way he is. But it inevitably put him at a disadvantage when compared to some of the deeper and more aware silly
Overall Goofus-tude: 7/10
This is a hard one to rate. Honestly, Mauru feels like a character from the upper eschalons of wackiness just from the word go. And certainly, Mauru is much more silly than Politank, Rai, or god forbid, Slash. However, while Mauru exudes sillitude in droves, his relative inability to exploit that fact means that he simply doesn't compare to Tesse or beyond.
Also, Mauru doesn't really care about what people think, nor does Mauru care about silly rankings. So maybe Mauru is the secret winner in all this? It's up for you to decide.
At the end of the day, my ranking for Mauru's goofus-ness is carried on strongly by his overwhelmingly delightful and wacky character design. That he can score as high as he does in the overall ratings while still ranking so low on Silly Awareness is a testament to his Silly Strength.
Bonus Kun
Silliness: 10/10
Imagine if you will, a character more serious and more humorless than Slash.
Imagine if you will, that you take the serious and humorless demenor of Ryu and concentrate it until it is nothing but the pure, undisturbed notion of "Water without any ice". Imagine, the absolute distillation of every aspect of the prototypical shotokan, including the pained devotion to training and the honor of the fight.
Then stick that shit into a talking training bag. A deadpan serious talking training bag, who beats your ass to a pulp, and then turns with his back to the camera so his headband can flap dramatically in the breeze.
Bonus Kun is nearly the absolute height of silly in Waku Waku 7.
There's very little you could do to improve upon his design in any way, shape, or form. The utter simplicity of Bonus Kun's shape, the inversion of expectation borne from having the training bag fight back furiously - It's utter brilliance in its abject silliness. Bonus Kun arrives as a mid-game boss by dropping out of the sky in a flaming blaze, landing directly on his head, and then (somehow) picking himself up off the ground to challenge you with the most serious and dire expression you've ever seen. He spits his fireballs directly from his mouth. He tosses himself end-over-end during his DokiDoki move. His OTG attack is to literally fall forward on you. And his Tatsumaki somehow involves him bending and spinning while levitating. All while determined and severe.
Bonus Kun is absolutely hilarious, and utterly silly.
Silly Awareness: 9/10
Bonus Kun is absolutely and totally aware of the silliness that abounds in the world of Waku Waku 7. He also knows that he is one of the most ridiculous parts of said world. The mere fact that he fights as proficiently as he does without limbs speaks to his confidence in his ridiculousness, but the way he approaches every battle with stonefaced seriousness says everything you need to know about his view of himself in the Waku Waku heirarchy of goofability.
Bonus Kun understands that his opponents are goofuses of the highest degree, but he also realizes that his ripping them a structurally superfluous new backside is even wackier, precisely because he is so ridiculous himself. He recognizes the strength that being an abjectly absurd goofus imparts upon him, and so he has embraced it to such a large extent that his entire being is the pure realization of silliness via context.
Bonus Kun knows how absurd he is, and that is what makes him dangerous.
The only reason that Bonus Kun does not score a 10 in this category is that he takes himself just slightly too seriously. He is liberated in his knowledge that he is silly, but at the same time he refuses to weild this power in any way that isn't an over-the-top too-serious parody of martial arts.
Overall Goofus-tude: 9/10
Bonus Kun is one of the most powerful and overwhelming enemies in the game - not only because his design is silly, not only because his overly-serious nature is silly, but because he knows he is silly. His dire, solemn exterior is borne from a confidence founded on the most wacky hijinks imaginable. He understands how ridiculous he is, and this gives him strength.
The ability to overcome Bonus Kun practically requires an existential crisis of silliness for his opponent. Each combatant confronted by Bonus Kun must experience a fighter's ego death as they realize: Here it is, the hardest challenge you've ever faced so far - And it's a training bag. After all your toil and struggle you are right back where you started. The training bag is kicking your ass. Time is a flat circle. Your abilities are nothing before him, and even after your long journey here, you must train more. The world crumbles before your eyes into so many pratfalls and slapstick japes.
Bonus Kun cuts to the bone of silliness, and does such in a serious way.
Fear the training bag.
Fernandez/Fernandeath
Silliness: (Honking Horn Noise)/10
In the midst of a world of silliness, each individual must decide for themselves how to wield the power and influence of the goofus. Some choose to embrace ridiculousness to potent extent, while others fight against it in the name of something more predictable. In the end, it is up to each combatant to decide how to express silliness.
Except Fernandez.
You see, Frenandez does not simply wield silliness.
FERNANDEZ IS SILLY INCARNATE
Liberated entirely from the constraints of sensible anatomy, freed from any notion of explanation, living in utter contempt for anything as mundane as the suspension of disbelief, Fernandez is an inky black and lightly-anthropomorphized sphere, grinning with the largest smiley face you've ever seen. They can take any shape, grow to any size, and do practically anything through the power of silly.
They duck by clipping through the floor. They attack with tiny sphere-limbs that sprout into bean-laiden cat paws, which subsequently hit you with enough force to splatter you against the nearst wall. They sport tiny, ineffectual wings - And yet when then descend from a mighty jump, Fernandez grows a parachute to carry them down to earth - And the parachute is clearly too small to support them!!
Fernandez has an unsettlingly unhinged smile permanently plastered across their face, cackling madly at all points. They will turn into an elaborately spiked ball of death at the drop of a hat. Or perhaps, just roll forward as a massive, unstoppable orb. They will sap your life with extendable, stretchy, kissy-lips. Or unleash a hellfire of energy bolts at the drop of a hat.
Fernandez has no reason. There is no law governing their behavior or ability. Fernandez can do anything.
Fernandez is the font of silly, from which all goofuses gather their wacky-tude.
Silly Awareness: (Gigantic Kissy Lips)/10
Is a mountain aware of its size?
Is the ocean aware of its depth?
Is a black hole aware of its power?
Measuring the silly awareness rating for Fernandez is a fool's errand. Clearly, Fernandez understands that silliness is power, but at the same time, Fernandez cannot be separated from that very same silliness. His unmitigated aggression and utterly unstoppable power seem to move in service to some manner of coherent goal - Perhaps conquest? Perhaps destruction for destruction's sake?
But truly, Fernandez is so warped, so consumed, so united with silliness that he is one with the source of all wacky.
To speculate further would be futile.
Overall Goofus-tude: Yes/10
Fernandez is the epitome of silly made power. Whether this is an intentional manipulation and use of wackiness by a talented goofomancer, or merely an unthinkable manifestation of natural goofitude is irrelevelant. What matters is that in Fernandez, there are all things silly, and all things goofus.
They are the ur-Goofus. Silly equals very yes.
If you made it this far, thank you for joining me on this strange and very silly journey. May your life be blessed by the power of silly, in exactly the manner that benefits you most!
