Cloning Blues: Difference between revisions

{{quote|''"I am a clone, I am not alone...

''If you had ever seen us you'd rejoice in your uniqueness

 

In [[Speculative Fiction]], being a clone absolutely ''sucks''. It's enough to make a clone sing the blues.

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{{examples}}

* ''[[Tenchi Muyo!]]'': in the manga, a villain grows a Ryoko clone named Minagi who has a nearly opposite personality from the original, being very sweet and kind (though no less brave than Ryoko). Minagi suffers the requisite existential angst in the beginning, but gets over it and goes off to live her own life, reappearing in the manga occasionally as Ryoko's "sister." Her biggest problem is being a dead ringer for a notorious [[Space Pirates|Space Pirate.]]

* ''[[Gundam Seed]]'' had direct cloning be highly illegal, in contrast to simple genetic modification, though it didn't stop a powerful politician from cloning himself several times, believing the clones would be superior successors to his biological son. At least three have been seen, and of those one became a manipulative nihilist that attempted to wipe out the human race, and another became a pawn of the secret [[Big Bad]] of the sequel. All of them apparently suffer from birth defects that prematurely accelerate their aging and cause intense pain if not treated with medication.

* ''[[Neon Genesis Evangelion]]'': Rei Ayanami is a tragic cocktail. She's a [[Half-Human Hybrid]] with [[Easy Amnesia]]. Her isolated upbringing with Gendō Ikari left her with [[No Social Skills]]. Her Male Counterpart, Kaworu Nagisa is a mysterious cocktail of [[Dissonant Serenity]], [[Ambiguous Innocence]], and [[Half-Human Hybrid]]. Then again, everybody in that mess of a show a tragic cocktail of at least three different tropes, clone or no clone. And she hates it to boot. After being cloned (again) she is just pissed off and tired, wanting to die. But she isn't allowed to.

** The second ''[[Rebuild of Evangelion]]'' film even has a scene of Rei floating in an LCL tank, wearing a collar engraved with "REI-02".

* ''[[RahXephon]]'' has {{spoiler|Isshiki Makoto, who, in both flashbacks and his final breakdown, is shown to take the fact that he's an inferior clone...rather hard, to say the least. Indeed, he almost directly causes humanity to lose the Human-Mu war out of a need to prove that he was more than an imperfect copy of his "father"}}

* In a truly staggering example of the clone inferiority complex, after the villain of first season of ''[[Slayers]]'', Rezo the Red Priest, makes a [[Heroic Sacrifice]] and dies on the apocalyptic magics of the protagonists to allow the destruction of the demon he was host to, the clone created by his spurned former lover becomes obsessed with convincing the same protagonists to use the exact same potentially world-ending spell on him so that, in the unlikely event of his survival, he can claim to have achieved something the original had not. The dubiousness of trying to one-up a self-sacrificing gesture by surviving your own is apparently lost on the mind of a megalomaniac.

** And then there's the fact that the children of his clones are also considered clones of him. Jamie found that out the hard way when he accidentally absorbed the baby one of his clones had with Siryn, to her obvious horror.

* ''[[Transmetropolitan]]'' uses braindead clones for rather...[[I'm a Humanitarian|specific purposes.]]

* Also from the ''[[Superman]]'' mythos, Superboy (Kon-El/Conner Kent) is a clone made from half-Superman's DNA, and half Lex Luthor's DNA (before this was revealed, there were some...''complications''). That's right, ''Superman and Lex Luthor technically had a kid.'' This is the stuff ''[[Smallville]]'' shippers live for... Superman was dead at the time

** Superboy also has a clone called [[Evil Knockoff|Match]]. That's right, ''a clone of a clone''. He started out as a [[White-Haired Pretty Boy]], but suffered [[Clone Degeneration]] and now looks like a Bizarro version of Superboy who uses Bizarro speak and is falling apart.

 

 

* In [http://www.demando.net/ Meredith Bronwen Mallory]'s rather disturbing little ''[[Star Wars]]'' fan fic ''[http://www.fanfiction.net/s/913328/1/Deep_As_You_Go Deep As You Go]'', Darth Vader has utilized the cloning facilities at Kamino to clone his late wife Padmé. [[Wife Husbandry|This]] goes [[Replacement Goldfish|about as well]] as [[What Have I Become?|one would expect]].

{{quote|''"Are you an angel?" his voice is the sound of leaves brushing over a tombstone. This the awful question, because if he hadn't asked it, he would still love her. His eyes are so blue, so strange set into the roped scars on his head.''