Villains are the folks fans love to hate. When it comes to anime, bad guys come in all shapes, sizes, and species. One series my see its antagonist take the form of a catty high school boy while another focuses on a space gangster who holds entire colonies hostage. Anime fans are always down to root against these bad guys, but there are some villains who audiences can never forgive.
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Just… try to think about Fullmetal Alchemist and not get angry when you think of THAT man.
Yes, anime has its villains, but it also has a slew of characters fans just hated inside and out. There are few – if any – points of redemption for these rogues. Some of them gain their status from bloodshed, others take up the title thanks to their trashy personalities. Only one thing stays the same with these low-lives, and that is how much the fandom abhors them.
Here at ComicBook, we are breaking down ten of the most hated characters to ever grace an anime. You can find all our unsavory candidates in the slides below, but be warned! Even just thinking of these guys may get your heartburn or make you want to toss your laptop out the window!
Did your number one anime enemy make our list? Let me know in the comments or hit me up on Twitter @MeganPetersCB to talk all things comics, k-pop, and anime!
Kyubey
Who hasn’t dreamed of becoming a magical girl? If you are a fan of anime, you must have seen Sailor Moon and wondered what it would be like to become her. The dream is an impossible one even for anime heroines much of the time, but Kyubey revealed that was not the case in Puella Magi Madoka Magica.
However, girls would much rather be powerless than to live under Kyubey’s psychotic thumb.
The adorable creature may look cute, but Kyubey is stone-cold to the core. He is meant to save the world from entropy, and he will do whatever it takes to succeed. To keep the universe balanced, Kyubey tricks naive girls into becoming magical girls and corrupts them so they become witches. His next group of magical girls will then come in to kill those witches, and the cycle continues. Kyubey siphons emotional energy from those gory battles, and he uses it to keep the universe from imploding upon itself.
Marshall D. Teach
One Piece is filled with law-hating pirates, so villains are easy to come by. Even its main characters like Monkey D. Luffy could be considered baddies, but fans love each of the Straw Hat sailors. However, the same can never be said about Marshall D. Teach. Blackbeard is just that disliked by the entire fandom.
Fans will know Teach for his trademark laugh and willingness to betray anything in the name of power. Long ago, Blackbeard willingly killed his comrade Thatch over a Devil Fruit, and he is became Whitebeard’s greatest enemy afterwards. The man is also directly responsible for the death of Ace. After Luffy’s adopted brother was captured by Blackbeard’s crew, Teach turned Ace over to the World Government and set off the Summit War without any remorse.
Makoto Itou
High school is a tough and confusing time for anyone. With hormones running wild, academic troubles can become the least of one’s worries when love is in the air. And, if you are Makoto Itou, all those romantic problems are compounded since you are a scummy human being.
On the outside, School Days may look like a cutesy anime, but it is anything but. The series focuses on Makoto as the cold-hearted student tramples hearts and schmoozes with any girl who will lie with him. Eventually, he begins a three-way affair with Kotonoha Katsura and Sekai Saioniji once they confess to him. The volatile love triangle is made all the worse because Makoto is a spineless coward who’s turned on by sexual violence. So, when he blames one of his mistresses for getting pregnant, fans aren’t too sad when she stabs him to death.
Naraku
There are plenty of villains in Inuyasha, but there is one guy you have to hate right off the bat. The series is filled with all sorts of grotesque demons, but none of their putrid schemes come close to being as gross as the ones which Naraku cooks up.
If there is a tragic backstory in Inuyasha, you can be sure Naraku had a hand in it. The smooth-talking demon is the one who killed Kikyo, slaughtered Sango’s family, sealed away Inuyasha, and made it a mission to kill Kagome. The half-demon will do anything to gain the Shikon Jewel and become a full-blooded monster, but he is fine with letting his minions do all the work. He doesn’t have the time nor courage to face off with Inuyasha’s gang nine times out of ten.
Light
Death Note is a complicated series, and its greyed moral code makes it hard to dictate which characters are right or wrong. However, Light Yagami and his ever-growing god complex made it easy for fans to label him a villain. No, not even his protagonist status could redeem him and his once well-intended dream.
Light is revered for his wits, but his tragic spiral is a warning to everyone. When the boy stumbles upon a death note, Light learns from a shinigami he has the power to kill anyone by writing their name in the book. After realizing his gift, Light wanted to nip corruption in the bud, but he became drunk with power. Light came to see himself as a god and decided to make a world filled with only those he approved of. However, the boy got a dose of reality when his shinigami overseer killed him in the end.
Titans
Can you hate something who does violent acts without meaning to? Well, if you have seen Attack on Titan, then you know that answer is a resounding yes. The series has a slew of human baddies, but no threat is as great as its Titans. The ever-hungry monsters will lay waste to any human they come across, and they do so without any thought.
According to Attack on Titan, the Titans which fans have come to hate aren’t in their right mind. The creatures brought mankind to its knees as they apparently ate much of its population like our modern-day zombies. When the Titans break into humanity’s final fortress, fans watched as Titans mindlessly chomp down humans on a whim, and poor Eren Jaeger saw one of them chow on his mother during the siege.
Yakumo Oomori
It is easy to hate characters who come straight from your worst nightmares. When baddies have no moral code, your gut instinct is to shame them, and Tokyo Ghoul has its share of villains like that. However, none of them can hold a candle (or knife) to Yakumo Oomori.
When you see Yakumo, you know he’s not someone to mess with. The man, who is best-known as Yamori, is a member of the the deadly Aogiri Tree gang. A lover of all things torture, Yamori goes around wearing a Jason Voorhees mask and kills without any care. When the villain got his hands on Ken Kaneki, he brutally tortured the protagonist for ten days straight, and Yamori sent the hero into a psyche break after killing two innocent characters in front of him.
Danzo Shimura
When you live in a world of ninjas, it is hard to know who you can trust. Naruto Uzumaki dealt with his share of betrayal growing up, but the generation before him was even more fickle. So, when fans met Danzo Shimura, they suspected the shady character was up to no good. However, no one could have guessed how much they would hate him.
Danzo was known as a high-ranking member of the Leaf Village, and he even advised the Third Hokage. However, the man believed his home had become soft and worked from the shadows to create a personal army known as ROOT to fight for the Leaf at the cost of their humanity. He aligned himself with Orochimaru to strengthen himself, and it turned out Danzo was the man who secretly ordered Itachi Uchiha to massacre his clan.
Nobuyuki Sugo
You may think it would be fun to live in a video game, but Sword Art Online proved that reality wouldn’t be so fun. The franchise follows hundreds of gamers after they get stuck in the world of Alfheim, and the deadly plot was orchestrated by one demented busybody named Nobuyuki Sugou.
So, yeah — he’s a jerk.
The character may look harmless, but he is no better than any mass murderer. Sugou was the director of a tech firm and wanted to research memory alteration. The man chose to do his experiments on 300 gamers who he trapped in a game, and Sugou ruled over the world with an administrative fist. Oh, and he also tried to focus Asuna into marrying him. Not cool, man — not cool.
Shou Tucker
There are thousands of evil anime characters out there, but none of them are half as hated as our top pick. When otakus talk about pure evil, they don’t think of the devil or any anime serial killers. No, they kind of a quiet father with glasses who used his precious daughter in one horrifying alchemy experiment.
Yes, Shou Tucker is anime’s most hated character by far. Though he is a minor player in Fullmetal Alchemist, the damage the State Alchemist did is beyond compare. The man was famed for creating a talking chimera that could talk, but the creature passed away after begging for death. Determined to recreate his success, Tucker used his adorable daughter Nina and their pet dog to create another chimera after he made the first using his wife. The ungodly act hit fans like a punch to the gut, and Tucker’s lack of remorse made the dark moment all the worse.
