My Worst Anime Villains

A few years ago, I did a Top 20 Anime Villains list, which I'll provide a link for here, because anime is packed to the brim with fantastic antagonists and enemies, like Younger Toguro, Medusa Gorgon and Lord Frieza. So of course, I thought about doing the exact opposite and finding 10 terrible villains I've come to hate, one per series as always. Unfortunately, I've found myself surprisingly struggling to find 10... so here, enjoy me hating on the few I could find! And don't worry, Jellal isn't here.

6. Near

Let's get one of the most obvious ones out there quickly, get it over with. You like Death Note, I like Death Note. We all love Light Yagami, Ryuk balancing both dread and levity with ease, the fascinating music, the chilling plots, that terrible second opening that's so ill-fitting it's hilarious, and we all loved L, the rival detective of Light. And damn, we were all shocked and saddened by L's eventual defeat. It was a truly chilling moment that solidified Kira/Light's victory over mankind, and would be the beginning of huge change for the world in years to come... 

Oh but don't worry. We have an L 2.0! Yes, just like Ace and Sabo, we have a newbie called Near to show up out of nowhere and replace L for the rest of the series, alongside another antagonist called Mello (but I don't care enough about Mello to even talk about him so...). Near would be fine if L didn't exist and fans weren't told to replace L with him, but we were, so we ended up disliking him. He's nowhere near as interesting as L, he's somehow even more brilliant than L in every way, and the story is no longer well-written enough to justify the amount of time we spend with him or the other new characters. The ending arc of Death Note just isn't enjoyable, minus the fantastic final episode, and unfortunately, Near represents all of it. 

5. Éclair Tonnerre

I've already written about Ouran Highschool Host Club's ending before, (link here), and a major part of why I hated it so much was the appearance of the unnecessarily cruel and tone-breaking antagonist of Éclair, the estranged fiancé of protagonist Tamaki. An anime-only villain created to give Ouran a dramatic season 1 finale, Éclair is everything wrong with a lot of comedy anime finales.

Éclair is a mean, manipulative character that sets out to control Tamaki's life so she can get the honour of marrying him, and is willing to say anything to his friends to make that happen. After episodes of fun hijinks and heartfelt discussions, ending it all with this type of character feels so... wrong and uncomfortable. Her redemption at the end feels half-hearted as well, as if the writers became aware we were running out of time and needed the episode to end now. They couldn't kill her off in a fiery explosion, that'd be wrong for this kind of show. So she suddenly decides Haruhi is awesome and lets Tamaki go. Whatever. A great anime with a terrible anime-only finale, as I've said many times before.

4. Faris

Look, I love Fairy Tail but I knew someone from there was going to end up on my list. Jellal? Nah, he's only annoyed me when he's not a villain. His villainy was actually great. Franmalth or Marin Hollow? Annoying, yes but not major enough to make me feel they deserve a spot here. No, to end up on my list, you have to actually be significant. Hence why Faris, aka the White Wizard, is easily on my list. Who is Faris? The first true villain of the sequel, 100 Years Quest, that's who! Except not really because... ugh.

Long-time readers of my "work" will know I was fairly enjoying the sequel when Faris was the enemy, because she was actually a legitimate threat and schemer. She felt like a good way to balance out the series' power levels without going full force DBZ, and her motivations were unclear but her behaviour was interesting enough to make me want to find out. But then... you can guess what happened next. It happens too often.

Yes, there was some contrived reason why Faris was good all along. She wasn't evil, she just caused destruction and stole magic and lied and manipulated for good reasons, no really. One contrived excuse after another follows to turn Faris into a friend, to act like all the brainwashing of Fairy Tail or the chaos of Mercphobia was because she's a heroic character! It's a complete reversal of the character that just annoyed me in the end, and the more I think about it, the more disappointed I get. It's probably one of the reasons I'm currently so bored with 100 Years Quest as is...

3. Yhwach

You filthy anime-only watchers must be shocked to see the newbie Yhwach on this list, and that's why I implore you all to skip ahead and ignore the paragraphs about what makes me hate Yhwach because, as of writing this article, Bleach has not yet reached why I hate the villain so much. So this is your warning; Run. 

Are you still reading because you know the entire story already? Good. I would hate to ruin it for you. Anyway, Yhwach is so damn annoying that I want him to fuck off forever and let Aizen reveal his Bankai instead! Initially starting off as an intriguing villain, with his imposing design, calm smirk and loyal army of not-Nazis, Yhwach slowly begins a painful descension into utter nonsense, and that all begins when we find out what power the "A" stands for. The "A" is fitting because he clearly pulled this power out of his Ass!

You see, Yhwach has the Almighty, a power that can predict the future. Ok, that's simple enough. But instead of just seeing what will happen, Yhwach can see literally everything that will happen in every possible timeline. Not only that, he also (checks notes to make sure I got this crap right) can manipulate the past to make things happen so he can decide which future he wants will also happen. At this point, what does his personality matter? What do his schemes or connections matter? Yhwach is the epitome of nonsense, a "deflect anything shield" character, and a completely boring one because of it. I just stopped enjoying Bleach because of this guy, because every time they tried to do something to him... nuh-uh! Almighty!

2. Kaguya Otsutsuki

She sucks. Here's why. I'm done going on about her, so just... here. Read these. My feelings haven't changed since I wrote them.

https://otakunuts.blogspot.com/2014/08/kaguya-otsutsuki-good-bad-and-ugly.html

https://otakunuts.blogspot.com/2020/05/how-i-came-to-hate-otsutsuki.html

1. Bio-Broly

I adore the new Super incarnation of Broly, from his design to his backstory to his personality. He's such a breath of fresh air that fits so naturally with the characters around him, and I pray the franchise feels ready to introduce him and his entourage to Bulma and the others soon. However, one of the reasons I love this Broly so much is because of how much I hated the original Broly, and what happened to that version by the end was abysmal.

In his first movie, OG Broly was intimidating but ridiculous due to a crying baby backstory and a lack of personality. In his second movie, Broly got peed on and failed to kill literally anyone, including Goten, Trunks and Videl. In his third movie, Broly was cloned, and gooped on until he became the hideous disgrace that is... Bio-Broly! Clearly meant to reference classic horror movie monsters from decades ago, like the Tar Zombie, Bio-Broly is disgusting and horrific, but with even less personality and reason to care. 

Whatever little there was to like about OG Broly in the first place is completely gone by this point. He smashes, he roars, he does nothing of note. His design is terribly bad, and OG Broly looks nuanced by comparison. I don't even like OG Broly but I feel bad for him when he's reduced to this, so I can only imagine what fans of him felt back in the day. Boring, stupid and a waste of time. Still, at least he fits the film he's in, since the Bio-Broly movie is itself boring, stupid and a waste of time.