This reading of Dedede is somewhat inconsistent with the anime and modern games.
In general, Dedede comes across more as someone who is rather selfish and has a huge rivalry with Kirby, yet still makes some attempt at occasionally being responsible and adventurous. He comes across less as being anything like "evil," but is still selfish and vengeful.
Now, this might be more as a result of a change in directors; after all, Sakurai was less involved in these later projects than in the earlier ones (Dream Land style games not included) and was also in direct control of Brawl.
At the same time, Brawl doesn't necessarily contradict the anime and modern games either. After all, Dedede is known to be a great planner (even if, er, they depend a bit too much on monsters clobbering dat Kirby), so his master plans involving those badges in Brawl is similar to his other plans where he does something seemingly "evil" but turns out to not be later on (KA and potentially Dynablade). As for hugging Kirby, that could be similar to how Dedede sort of nods/waves at Kirby after Nightmare is defeated in KA (he's overjoyed that the true enemy was defeated long enough to not care too much about his rivalry).
lol that wasn't even the point of your post, was it
but that continuity seems pretty tenable either way
In general, Dedede comes across more as someone who is rather selfish and has a huge rivalry with Kirby, yet still makes some attempt at occasionally being responsible and adventurous. He comes across less as being anything like "evil," but is still selfish and vengeful.
Now, this might be more as a result of a change in directors; after all, Sakurai was less involved in these later projects than in the earlier ones (Dream Land style games not included) and was also in direct control of Brawl.
At the same time, Brawl doesn't necessarily contradict the anime and modern games either. After all, Dedede is known to be a great planner (even if, er, they depend a bit too much on monsters clobbering dat Kirby), so his master plans involving those badges in Brawl is similar to his other plans where he does something seemingly "evil" but turns out to not be later on (KA and potentially Dynablade). As for hugging Kirby, that could be similar to how Dedede sort of nods/waves at Kirby after Nightmare is defeated in KA (he's overjoyed that the true enemy was defeated long enough to not care too much about his rivalry).
lol that wasn't even the point of your post, was it
but that continuity seems pretty tenable either way