THE DARK SIDE OF EVERYONE

"If all the wicked people on Earth were black, and all the good people were white, what colour would you be?"
Sounds like an interesting rhetorical question...
Well, there is an anecdote about a little girl who was asked such a puzzling question, and she innocently replied: "Half black, half white!"
Fifty-fifty. That's actually what every person endowed with a free will (even the "infallible" Pope of the Catholic Church) would be.
I'm currently following an exciting mahou sentai (magical girl squad) series titled Dokidoki Pretty Cure ("Dokidoki" means literally "Lubdub", like the sound of a beating heart). I came because the leader was, for once, both athletic and intellectually gifted (unlike the stupid losers we usually see in this role). But I stayed for the Jikochus ("Selfcenters"), the aptly named "freaks of the week".
Now there is something you must know about mahou sentai shows. In every episode until the season finale, when the heroes show up to whip up the bad guys (here I mean the leading antagonist's lieutenants), the minions come up with a monster/creature of some sort, called "Freak of the Week" in general by fans of the genre, and retreat back to headquarters, leaving the FotW behind as decoy for the heroes to fight and defeat.
The FotW can fall into any of these three cathegories:

1. summoned from another dimension (generally, through tarot cards).
2. created from an inanimate object, animal, or plant (generally an object, such as a camera or a piano).
3. created from a human bystander, a "one episode wonder" shown not to be that perfect.

My favourite kind is the one I mentioned last. There is a difference: a camera or a tarot card has no free will. It can come to life à la Killer Tomatoes, but there would never be such emotional and philosophical load as when a person is targeted and turned evil. I like calling type 3 of FotW "Monster of the Victim" (henceforth, MotV).
A Jikochu is such a MotV. The basic idea is that people's psyches are heart-shaped organs within their chests.
A pure psyche looks like a pink heart with angelic wings:

That's a nice psyche! Now, when a person makes a selfish and/or unrealistic wish, thinking only of instant self-gratification, revenge, despair... a dark spot appears in the psyche:

This psyche is still inside its owner's chest. Now, if s/he thinks realistically and altruistically, the dark spot will fade away. But the minions don't want that! Instead, they whisper in the victim's left ear, much like Iago or the shoulder demons of classic cartoons, "I'll make your wish come true!", as they snap their fingers.

The psyche blackens completely as the owner suffers from searing chest pain (like a heart attack), as it grows vampire wings, and finally detaches from its owner's chest:

A heart-shaped hole is left in the unconscious victim's left breast, as the minion either makes the emancipated psyche grow until it explodes, creating a weaker animal- or object- shaped Jikochu whose appearance and powers are related to the thoughts behind it... or shrinks the psyche to the size of a pill, gulping it down and becoming a more powerful Jikochu.

Here's a detached dark psyche, held by Ira ("Anger": the villains are themed after the seven deadly sins!), one of the three lieutenants who appear the most in the series. Notice that he is extremely humanoid, human if it were not for the silver white hair (how many white-haired human teens without powdered wigs have you ever seen?), the honey eyes (too bright a shade of honey), and the vampire wings behind his ears:

Once the Jikochu has been defeated and purified by our all-female team of heroines, it becomes dazzled by light, with hearts in its eyes, and goes "Love, love, love!"...

...before turning back into a pure psyche and returning to its proper place.

 In this picture, you can also see the hole the psyche made as it got out. It heals, and the victim (here, a pop star eclipsed by a more popular rival) comes to, perchance with memories of the battle as a dream:

As you may imagine, these entities feed off of passion. It's the source of their life.

Episode 12 was rather interesting. The victim du jour was an effeminate and reserved classmate of the heroines', interested in beauty and gardening. Shy and sensitive Jun admired Mana, the leader (an overconfident top-notch sportswoman and A student, class president and always ready to help someone in need), constantly following her like a newly-hatched chick and offering her his aid whenever possible. When she gave him some constructive criticism, he felt like she had rejected his offers, considering him a disturbance ("maybe she thought he annoyed her?", thought Jun). Locked target. His introverted and sensitive personality made him prime Jikochu material, or not? 

Once his psyche had burst out, it refused to fight Mana, who had consequently become his enemy, much to the lieutenants' chagrin. He still admired her, and he had turned evil for her sake (he was too emotional and too innocent, and thus an easy prey). 

So he was nearly killed by the minions, before being purified by the heroines and becoming more confident. There you have, like in Desdemona, another proof that the primrose-lined left-hand (or sinister) road to Hell is paved with good intentions, like that to Paradise (his dark psyche turning humanoid, with vampire wings and shut eyes, gives the impression of being in a trance), and that there is good in human hearts: if we can do wrong, it doesn't mean we can't do right.

Shugo Chara (Guardian Characters), notable because the team of heroes is mixed instead of all-female, attracted my attention during my high school years. The premise states that the hopes of us humans are located in eggs in our hearts. A hopeful heart egg is white with angelic wings:

Despair makes the egg blacken and a cross appear on it (Cross Egg)

While doubt turns the heart egg crimson and makes a question mark appear on it:

The Easter Corporation, the villainous organization du jour, knows how to enhance the feelings of its targets. In Season One, its minions use manipulation to induce despair. This lass wanted most of all to be a professional musician, but she felt that she didn't live up to it, and she didn't want to trade her freedom of expression for the filthy lucre (the artists' eternal dilemma, ever since the Victorian era). After being given some "Easter Therapy", her heart's egg burst out of her chest, like a dark psyche in Dokidoki Pretty Cure, when her despair reached a point of no return:

Then, the egg hatched and out came a Cross Character, representing her failure and endowed with powers illustrative of the shattered dream. In her case, it was obviously a female conductor, with sound-related powers. A Cross Character looks like a cute but naughty black pixie with a red cross on its brow, dressed in a manner illustrative of the shattered dream:

While the Cross Character remained detached and before being purified, her body remained in a state of trance (eyes without twinkles or pupils symbolize, in anime, unconsciousness with open eyes: an obvious reference to changes in the eyes of intoxicated drug users):

Once purified, the white egg returned to her heart, and she accepted the sacrifice of freedom that it takes to be a pro (So many times, it happens too fast, you trade your passion for glory... Don't lose a grip on the dreams of the past: you must fight just to keep them alive!)...

In Season Two, Easter turned to doubt instead of despair as a way to corrupt its intended targets. Skilful and cultured, savvy French henchwench Loulou de Morcel, with her "Magical Jewel", actually a high-tech ruby locket (she has crafted it by hand herself) that boosts a doubting victim's self-confidence to sky-high levels, without concealing the doubts within, making the victim "drunk on self-confidence" (do you know anyone ostensibly confident, concealing internal agitation and insecurity? This is it up to thirteen!) and acting on impulse with newly-acquired powers (in the sense that they are born from doubt and wishful thinking rather than from despair, they resemble the Jikochus much more).  Here's Loulou with her Magical Jewel:

This lad wanted to confess to his sweetheart, but alas! He was, obviously, too shy to confess:

A reserved suitor has always been an easy person to use and abuse, and Loulou obviously knows it. She comes to him with her locket, saying: "This is a Magical Jewel. It will make your heart's desire come true". 

If there's something you wanna do, then do it to your heart's content!!" (Yataro kotobai yapare ekage!).

Loulou uses the necklace and her Character Change to encourage a target to do something they are normally too insecure to do in their normal state.

The ruby necklace then enables them to Character Change and Character Transformation while in a corrupted state.

The light of the ruby gets into his eyes, and he is soon under Loulou's thumb, bereft of his own free will:

I don't have images for what happens next, so you have to imagine it. The crimson Wishing Egg bursts out of the victim's chest, it grows to a size slightly larger than his/her whole body, the dot under the question mark turns into a broad Cheshire Cat grin and, thus, the huge egg swallows him whole as Loulou takes French leave (no pun intended) of the heroes. The egg subsequently hatches, and what comes out is this:

Much more humanoid than a Jikochu or Phage (when we get to Phages, you'll see the difference), a Doubtful Character looks basically like what the victim was unsure s/he could be (in this case, a confident suitor), with a question mark on his/her brow. The rose bouquet is his weapon: he uses it both as a mace and as a throwing hammer.

Once purified, I suppose the victims must have vague, foggy recollections of the battle they lost to have learned a relevant lesson. Our lad finally proposed to his beloved (and he even got through the fact that she had already got a sweetheart!):

This lass wanted to become a pâtissière, but she always did something wrong when making cakes:

She met Loulou, stared into her ruby, got gulped by her own heart's egg, (same as our suitor before), and turned into this:

The reason why I didn't eat cake in a week. Yes, she attacks with explosive pastry, making Marie Antoinette's alleged quote on her subjects' welfare ("They can't afford any bread? Let them eat cake!") take a different meaning.

The root of the matter is that Loulou herself is troubled, and thus enjoyed manipulating others. As the only child of a veteran actress (think Helena Bonham-Carter or Kate Winslet nowadays), she grew up admiring her mother: when Madame de Morcel was dethroned by other film stars, or rather when she retired from the film industry and from stardom to raise a family (mostly, in order to spend more quality time with her daughter), Loulou felt confused and powerless: she wanted her mother to resurrect as an international celebrity, but she felt too young and humble to challenge the media industry. She felt that her mother leaving show business was a disgrace to Mme. de Morcel's reputation, and thus, it became her goal to restore her mother to her former radiance, which in turn began to strain their relationship. In this predicament, poor Loulou was approached and recruited by the Easter Corporation, finding there a new identity and a new lease of life.

However, sooner or later, she had to snap, and when she snapped, she became the ultimate MotV:

In the end, she saw the light even before being defeated and purified. And she obviously reconciled with her mother, both realizing that they loved each other, warts and all:

The two were able to come to an understanding and rekindle their relationship.

Madame de Morcel and her daughter, prejudice laid aside, can finally live in peace.

" It is not the wishes themselves that are problematic. We should have dreams and wishes.  What is problematic is when these wishes only relate to one’s own personal well-being without considering the group or the society."

But the show that started the MotV trend was 1992 classic Sailor Moon, the series that codified the mahou sentai genre and one of my childhood favourites. In particular, the second half of Season One (Pretty Soldiers) and the whole of Season Five (Sailor Stars). Both the "Monsters" in Pretty Soldiers and the "Phages" in Sailor Stars are distinctly "uncannily humanoid", with sculpted physiques, eerie skin tones, sometimes age dissonance (a fifty-something Austrian conductor, surnamed Kajaran as a shout-out to Karajan, becomes a shocking pink thirty-something Phage, as you can see below). 

 

Gender is the only variable not to change: female humans become female Monsters or Phages, and the same principle applies on the spear side.

There is one sole exception of a victim of another species: a white Persian cat (called Rhett Butler, and owned by a girl called Scarlet O'Hara!). But all others are Homo sapiens.

The Monsters are created by Dark Kingdom lieutenants Zoisite and Kunzite (who, aside from being my favourite SM minions, are in love with each others... which clashes with their loyalty to their queen!). 

Zoisite is the blond, effeminate one, while Kunzite is the suntanned and broad-shouldered one:

Essentially, they seek humans (and the occasional cat) who were connected with the Dark Kingdom, their homeland, in a past life, and whip them with electrically loaded lashes. The lightning awakens their past self, and they change skin colour and personality (Rhett the cat was such a Monster!)

Zoisite attacks with wave-like lightning, while Kunzite uses a whip. Zoisite shouts his short battle-cry: Zoi!

The victim (here, a homely and reserved illustrator who felt insecure about her appearance and hid behind her beautiful works of art) falls unconscious and suffers from searing pain, as a hole opens in the middle of his/her chest. A Rainbow Crystal is revealed, and it's Zoisite's for the taking. Long story short, he simply removes it:

And she becomes this gorgeous green-skinned fallen angel (she uses her feathers as projectiles, and to draw weapons as well):

Once defeated by the Sailors and purified by their leader Usagi (a clumsy and stupid loser, but a shoulder to cry on), she returns to her usual self, and we spectators learn, like the artist, to be contented with our own image:

If you wish to see Rhett as a tomcat and as a Monster, then we'll show him as well:

 

In the end, having failed too many times and finally sided with the Sailors, Zoisite is slain by his queen (she didn't need a traitor anymore...). He dies a painful death, cradled in his beloved Kunzite's arms.

"Don't you fret, Monsieur Kunzite... I don't feel any pain... a little fall of rain can hardly hurt me now... the pain will go away... and rain will make the flowers grow..."

The fact that Kunzite was endowed with a free will, and thus, that he was able to betray his liege, is something that mustn't be overlooked.
Pretty Soldiers is about evil in general, but the enemy in Sailor Stars is, more specifically, the evil within. Which leads to some interesting constellations of relationships between conscious mortals and the enemy within.
The premise in Sailor Stars is that every person's soul exists in the form of a so-called "star seed", an octahedral organic crystal located usually in the person's brain and less commonly in his/her heart:

Most people's star seeds are "ordinary" and darken after a few seconds of exposure to the elements. Like this one:

Only Sailor Soldiers have got seeds that do not darken, with one remarkable exception.
The goal of the organization Galactica, operating from a Japanese TV studio, is to "Magdeburgize" (violently massacre) Earth to obtain all its star seeds, having alredy submitted other planets populated by sapient species to the same extreme treatment.
It all started when Sailor Galaxia, the Guardian of the Milky Way, could no longer endure the existence of evil/chaos in the universe.

She decided to use her own body as a kind of "counter-Pandora's box" and trap all chaos within, taking the convenient risk that her mind may be corrupted and she might become the only single cause and agent of evil in the universe. And so it was. She claimed all star seeds in the universe and decided to take every single one of them for the keeping. And to do so, she decided to conquer all populated planets that there were. There was no end to her craving for star seeds or to her imperialistic ambitions:

And so,  the Galactica Empire came to Earth. Their MO is kinda simple: Galaxia, who stays in her throne room, is in tune with the most talented people on Earth (who said that the Net couldn't be used for evil aims?) She sends her field agents to look up such a talented person in particular. Then, the Galactica agent shoots two spheres of concentrated light from her cuffs:

One of these spheres of light hits the victim in the chest, as the other one hits him/her in the back. Searing pain and loss of consciousness ensue:

Then, a golden bud appears on the victim's brow (or, less commonly, his/her chest), revealing a glittering star seed:

After some seconds, the star seed blackens, as the Sailor Soldiers appear on the spot. As Galaxia's lieutenant retreats in a TARDIS-like booth, black lightning flashes from the blackened star seed around the unconscious victim, and s/he is surrounded by slick black tendrils, that wrap around his/her lifeless body like a cocoon or like a macabre, larger than life, star seed bud:

The cocoon bursts and out comes a Phage, a Sailor Soldier parody with an uncanny skin colour and powers related to his/her field of expertise as a human (to see a Phage, look above for Kajaran!). The Phage is defeated by the Sailor Soldiers and subsequently purified by Usagi with her sceptre attack, Starlight Honeymoon Therapy Kiss:

A burst of pink healing light and white angel's feathers surrounds the Phage, and s/he is once more seized with searing pain, while shouting: "Lovely!":

After the feathers have scattered, the Phage returns to human form, his/her star seed bud appears once more, and a crystal clear star seed enters the victim's system through the closing and disappearing bud:

Then, obviously, the victim comes to, perhaps with vague recollections of the battle fought and lost.

An interesting part of the premise is that Galaxia's lieutenants, who are responsible for the capture of star seeds and the creation of phages should they prove defectuous, rely on their cuffs not only for stunning their targets, but also, and most importantly, for life support. Once they were powerful Sailor Soldiers, who had their star seeds removed by Galaxia. And, knowing that star seeds are souls, it comes as no surprise that death is an immediate consequence of star seed removal. So their new leader cuffed them to resurrect them. The cuffs do both resurrect a late Sailor Soldier and bind her to Galaxia's will, forcing her to do nothing but take and obey orders. But, what happens if one only cuff should break?

This was Sailor Tin Kitten before losing one of her shackle-like cuffs in battle:

And after losing her right (the right one!) cuff:

The right side (the right side, the dexterous side!) of her battle costume has turned white, as she develops a free will of her own, realizes how much suffering she has given others, suffers from a loyalty crisis, and finally sides with the good Sailor Soldiers, having defected from Galactica. When Galaxia finds out, she has no other choice than offing the traitor by removing her left cuff as well:

The death of Tin Kitten marks the start of Galaxia's final internal breakdown: all of that star seed-craving chaos finally seizes control of her, making her insane and changing the colours of her battle costume:

When Usagi finally defeats Galaxia, she isn't able to get rid of the chaos within (think of her as the "counter-Pandora's box" she had become, and that evil needs to exist!), but to exorcize her and drive all the chaos 

out of her tainted body, scattering it throughout the universe. Galaxia is not purified, but exorcized. Like Jun, like Loulou, Zoisite, and Tin Kitten... and the spectators of shows with the Monster of the Victim premise. 

The metaphor is powerful and speaks latently to any single person able to do wrong... and to do right as well.