This is my list according to the Anime I've seen so far. There may be plenty of villains who I will come to like but haven't been introduced to their series yet. When such a time comes this list will be edited to reflect that.
Just a heads up there are massive Manga Spoilers for Attack on Titan in this list.
Also for some reason the picture for the Major isn't working...sorry for that. For reference The Major is the main antagonist in Hellsing.
Griffith is such a great villain because his character has such depth. We see who he was before his transformation into Femto. We knew his relationships with those around him, his goals and ambitions and what he was willing to do to reach them. We can understand how his mind works. So his progression to a villain makes sense based on what we know about him as a person and the choices forced upon him. Before his transformation he was literally a husk of a man. The only choices left to him were to live out his days as an invalid, or to sacrifice the people who loved him to become a dark God and literally become the “author” of the world.
It was truly an amazing thing to watch unfold in a character. But another thing that really solidifies Griffith as my number 1 is the irony of it all. All of humanity basically sees him as a savior. He was a war hero before his transformation. And after he was reborn he gained a following of both humans and Apostles to destroy the armies of the invading Kushan empire. He fulfilled the requirements of the prophecies of the church and gained the fanatical devotion of the Pontiff after the latter received a vision of the hawk of light. And after the global interstice, he raised Falconia from the earth and is currently rebuilding humanity from the ground up. He received countless refugees and embarked on programs to improve their lot in life, enacted progressive policies for people of different nationalities and ethnicities. And at the same time lead raids and attacks against hordes of monsters that manifested in the wake of fantasia. He is literally seen as the Messiah of the world. Hell, even his physical appearance seems like he is part angel and otherworldly. He is the one person that every human feels they can anchor their hopes to, and only we the reader, along with Guts know that he is the one who orchestrated everything. The world sees him as Jesus Christ, while in secret he is quite literally the Devil.
Just listen to his final speech. God, that alone makes him a fantastic villain.
He takes fanatical pride in his humanity. He views his will as a human as the most precious attribute in existence, elevating it above the power of gods and demons. He hates beings like Alucard so much he started a fu$%ing war just so he could see him fall and all because he sees him as less than human. And he did it through the sheer power of human will! In the end, he died with complete satisfaction over what he had accomplished. In its own twisted way, his motivations were incredibly satisfying to watch play out. Human will power snuffing out beings who were thought to be beyond comprehension.
I view Eren as a villain protagonist. What makes him such a great villain is that for almost the entire story we viewed him as the hero. In the beginning he wanted to wipe out the Titans to save humanity. He wanted to be released from the cage that were the Walls because he values freedom above all else. We understand him as a character and for the vast majority of people, we agreed with his convictions, he was doing the right thing. Reiner and the others were evil and wrong for wanting to destroy humanity within the walls.
After finding out the difference between normal humans and Eldians, Eren along with the readers viewed humanity as wrong and Eldians as victims undergoing a holocaust. And we believed that Eren was going to struggle and fight to enact justice and free Eldians from their oppression. But that’s not what happened. Its true that now Eren has full control of the Founding Titan he is going to use it to save the people of Paradis. But he isn’t going to do it by simply protecting his people from the aggression of the outside world. He is currently using the millions of colossal titans now freed from the Walls to annihilate all life beyond the island, both human and Eldian. He is going to save his people not through defense, but through genocide on a level that has never been seen before. And watching our hero walk this dark path has been one hell of a ride.
Madara is my stupid fun villain. I didn’t find his motivations for leaving the Leaf village and scheming for the fourth shinobi war to be that great. But what I did love was how he flexed on every single mother fu$%er that he came across. As soon as he was resurrected he stomps hundreds of shinobi with taijutsu alone. When he uses firebreath it took dozens of shinobi using water jutsu just to match it.
The Tsuchikage caught his asteroid...
Madara: “No problem I’ll just throw another one at you.”
Itachi undoes the reincarnation jutsu.
Madara: “Nah fam.”
Madara gets bored of fighting the five kage
Madara: “ok I’m bored I’ll just summon five wood clones, now… do you want to fight them with or without Susanoo?”
Obito tries to resurrect everyone to atone for his sins.
Madara: “psych!”
When all nine tailed beasts try to eliminate him, Madara goes on to toy with them with no eyes! Then immediately seals them once he retrieves an eye. His flexes were on another level and the Black Zetsu back stab aside, Madara embodied the stupidly OP villain trope perfectly.
What makes Bradley such a great villain to me is that he doesn’t fit into the overpowered God mode villain trope. Not at all. He doesn’t have super strength or super healing or any other inhuman power possessed by the other homunculi. He got the short end of the stick. He even ages like a normal human and is well past his prime physically. But what he does have is a great tactical mind and is such a skilled swordsman that no one else can hold a candle to him. Even without super powers he was the the most difficult homunculi to kill and the most dangerous one to fight. Watching him cut through the good guys with skill alone was incredibly satisfying to watch. And the fact that we get in his head and can understand him to some degree makes him that much greater in my opinion.
Light is the epitome of the intellectual villain. His entire story revolves around battles of the mind. Having people killed while keeping his cover and “working” with the good guys to try and catch Kira. watching the mental maneuvering of each side to catch Kira and Light’s counter strategies to keep himself free of suspicion were fantastic to watch. And the absence of energy blasts and physical fighting was very refreshing story wise.
Hisoka lost all interest and is waiting for the day that he regains his abilities. He has a creepy obsession with Gon. And in my mind this is because Hisoka recognizes Gon’s incredible potential, and wants to fight him one day. This explains why this villain aids Gon as often as he does, he believes that by helping Gon when he needs it, Gon will grow stronger to the point that he will be worthy of testing his own strength against him and see if he can kill him at his best. And this is why creepy Goku is in this list.
He is without question a freaking psychopath, as well as narcissistic, a genius, has pedo-esque tendencies and is manipulative. Oh, and he’s literally a clown. He’s also an incredibly skilled fighter. And is so confident in his abilities that every chance he gets he reveals the characteristics of his Nen ability (which is a huge taboo in the world of HunterxHunter because it always puts one at a disadvantage). And the kicker is that his ability isn’t all that amazing on its face. But he’s so incredibly skilled that it doesn’t matter, he always ends up coming out on top.
His entire motivation seems to be to fight powerful opponents, like some sort of twisted, perverted version of Goku. He infiltrated the phantom troupe so he could get close enough to Lucifer to fight him, but when he discovered Lucifer lost his ability to use Nen, Hisoka lost all interest and is waiting for the day that he regains his abilities. He has a creepy obsession with Gon. And in my mind this is because Hisoka recognizes Gon’s incredible potential, and wants to fight him one day. This explains why this villain aids Gon as often as he does, he believes that by helping Gon when he needs it, Gon will grow stronger to the point that he will be worthy of testing his own strength against him and see if he can kill him at his best. And this is why creepy Goku is in this list.
I see Lelouch as being similar to Eren in this list. A villain protagonist. For the vast majority of the story he wasn’t fighting for the freedom of everyone else from his father’s tyranny. He started a world war for petty revenge against his father, sacrificing hundreds of thousands, if not millions to see it through. I think because I watched him on the ground level, and how brilliant he was outmaneuvering his enemies who were obviously “bad” I lost sight of it. And while yes he does “sacrifice” himself at the end for world peace, it doesn’t change the fact that countless people died for a war that was motivated by something as petty as a family argument.
Pain was great in so many ways. He had a very unique ideology. His backstory was tragic, and over time it tweaked his desire for peace into something more perverse and genocidal. Instead of aspiring for peace through negotiation and trying to understand each other, his goal was to use weapons of mass destruction anytime tensions rose to instantly quash any factions stomach for conflict. It was an...interesting approach to the dilemma of achieving peace. Additionally, the fact that Pain was also a student of Jiraiya, and in the end wants the same thing as Naruto makes for a really great foil between the two characters. And as an extra, the fact that Pain uses the corpse of his best friend as the face of the Akatsuki as a kind of memento/ memorial is...touching, in a really unhealthy way.
Pirate warlord, Celestial Dragon, usurper, underworld broker, psychopath. Doffy is all of these things and eyth are what make him so interesting. He grew up literally believing he was a God of the world and relished in oppressing those he believed were beneath him. Then one day it was all taken from him, his family left “Heaven” and just like that, he was just an ordinary person. Not only this, but his family was persecuted by the people he believed were beneath him. This made for one hell of a childhood and understandably exacerbated his nascent psychological issues.
He went on to murder his brother, usurped Dressrosa and inflicted untold suffering on its people without them even being aware of it. And instead of fleeing when they rebelled he tried to destroy the entire thing, literally, land, people and cities. He’s enacted some pretty evil shit in his lifetime. And his motivation seemed to be the destruction of the current world order. Not to replace it with something better, but simply to watch it all burn to the ground. He wanted to punish the Celestial Dragons for wronging him and destroy their “heaven” and he wanted everyone else to suffer because they were beneath him. Additionally, he was a down right bastard to take down, everytime Luffy and Law thought they had him beat he’d pull something out of his sleeve. Like sewing his heart back together or awakening his devil fruit. His arc was a long one, but it was one of my favorites.
