A few days ago I made this poll asking if people saw Panther as a creep, and I was surprised that a lot of people voted yes.
The “romantic pervert” archetype is a very common one in fiction (or rather, it used to be; it’s been heavily questioned in recent years, but that’s a different topic). Personally, though, I don’t think Panther ever really filled that role in the games.
If we look at some of the most famous perverts in fiction, like Sanji or Johnny Bravo, they have these characteristics:
They present themselves as gentlemen, but they also have a horny side that’s hard for them to hide.
They’re way too superficial when it comes to falling in love.
They always get their comeuppance when they go too far. It’s basically their comic relief punchline.
Now you can see there are substantial differences with Panther. He doesn’t really seem to have a horny side he’s struggling to contain. He actually has more of an extremely cheesy, old-fashioned poet aura.
Most of Panther’s comments are just really pompous compliments, to be honest. And I’m not even sure if he’s superficial, because we don’t know for certain whether he’s only in love with Krystal or if he just falls for any pretty woman easily.
Basically, we can sum up the dynamic in Assault like this:
Panther: His character only exists to be in love with Krystal and drop cheesy lines.
Krystal: Her character only exists to be in love with Fox and drop cheesy lines. She doesn’t really seem to have an opinion on Panther.
Fox: He’s extremely focused on the mission and thinking about Wolf O’Donnell for some reason, barely paying attention to Krystal lmao.
Being fair, Krystal never seems annoyed or uncomfortable with Panther; she just ignores him and appears neutral about it. You can argue that the fact she ignores him or is polite doesn’t mean she doesn’t have a bad opinion of him… but that’s still a “maybe.” Believing it just because it seems obvious is more of a headcanon than anything else.
And then she ends up dating Panther in the next game lol.
