I've been working on an FF9 rewrite (game is great, my favorite of all time in fact, just think there are things it could've improved on), and in thinking about all the characters, it occurred to me that... Baku is abusive and kind of a dick, actually. And I don't like how the game handwaves these things or makes them seem okay.

1. He beats the shit out of Zidane - a then 15-year-old who is functionally his child - for running away from home when he comes back. It's played kind of for laughs, and Zidane's takeaway is that Tantalus is his home (which I think is such a nuanced and multifaceted issue where abused children/people often become attached to their abusers because they don't have anyone better to surround themselves with).
2. He's happy to leave a 16-year-old Garnet trapped in a forest of murder plants that kidnapped her, and betray Cid's orders, because "the boys come first", even though her situation is his responsibility (although it's also Brahne's, since she made the ship crash).
3. Speaking of 16-year-old Garnet, he straight-up calls her "babeilicious" at the beginning of the game. He is 44. That is pedophilia.
4. When Zidane begs him to rejoin Tantalus at the beginning of disc 3, he refuses, because "if you can't even catch a canary, you got no right to join us" - which is an obvious analogy for him failing to get with Garnet romantically, which in turn is objectifying of women and generally creepy with the comparison between finding a partner and being a thief who breaks into places and steals things.

With all due respect to FF9 and what it did very right, anyone also take years to realize this like I did? Or have any follow-up thoughts? I've gotten a bit of whiplash from this all lol.

(Definitely gonna address some of this stuff in my rewrite - it doesn't make Baku a bad character, but he shouldn't be treated as a purely good guy.)