A hero is only as good as the person standing across from them. These 9 lost but they made a case and some of them made a better one than the hero did. A few of them never lost at all. They weren't right. I just understood them.
Read this with its other half too. My heroes list drops the same week.
Spoiler warning: this list gets into big reveals from every show on it.
Madara Uchiha (Naruto Shippuden)
The legend who came back to prove it.
Madara gets brought back from the dead and immediately takes on all five Kage at once. Then he wins. His plan is to end war by ending free will, which is insane. However his read on the shinobi world, a system that eats its own children, is not.
Why I rooted: He wasn't wrong about the problem. Just the fix.
Frieza (Dragon Ball Z)
The boss of bosses.
Frieza blew up a whole planet and talked about it like a scheduling issue. Polite, petty and committed to being evil with his whole chest. Every transformation raised the stakes for a generation watching after school. And he keeps coming back, now he trains.
Why I rooted: Nobody enjoys being the villain more.
Sosuke Aizen (Bleach)
The long con.
Aizen fakes his own death, lets everybody mourn him and then reveals he's been running the whole board from the start. Every character in Soul Society was a piece he already moved. The reveal is so clean it turned into a meme format that is never going to die.
Why I rooted: Competence is attractive. Even when it's evil.
Meruem (Hunter x Hunter)
The villain who became a person.
Meruem is born to rule and sees humans as food. Then he loses at a board game to a blind girl named Komugi, again and again and something in him changes. By the end he's asking questions no villain is supposed to ask.
Why I rooted: By the final episodes I just wanted him to have more time.
Ryomen Sukuna (Jujutsu Kaisen)
The King of Curses.
Sukuna lives inside the main character and treats it like a waiting room. When he gets the wheel in Shibuya the series shows you exactly what unchecked power looks like. Malevolent Shrine is one of the scariest things animated this decade, period.
Why I rooted: He's the only one in JJK having fun.
Griffith (Berserk)
The dream.
This is the one that hurts because I was rooting for him first. The Band of the Hawk, the charisma, a commoner reaching for a kingdom. You believe in him the same way Guts does. Then the Eclipse happens and he trades everyone who loved him for the dream.
Why I rooted: He made me want it too. That's the betrayal.
Dio Brando (JoJo's Bizarre Adventure)
The drama.
Dio is theater in a villain body. The poses, the speeches, stopping time, dropping a road roller on somebody. Two whole parts of JoJo run on the pure energy of a man who refuses to be anything less than the main event.
Why I rooted: He's having more fun than anyone else in the show.
Pain (Naruto Shippuden)
The argument.
Pain flattens Konoha and then explains why. War made him, loss made him and his whole philosophy is that people only grow up once they feel what he felt. It's one of the few villain speeches that actually sticks with you after the episode ends. And when Naruto actually listens, he undoes it.
Why I rooted: His pain was real. The village did deserve the question.
Johan Liebert (Monster)
The quiet one.
No powers, no transformations. Just a charming young man who makes people destroy themselves. The doctor who saved his life as a kid spends the whole series chasing what he let back into the world. Johan is the scariest name on this list because he's the most possible.
Why I rooted: Honestly? You shouldn't have. That's the point.
The mirror
The best villains hold up a mirror. Madara shows Naruto the system, Frieza shows Goku his limit and Meruem shows everybody what it means to be human. The best anime understands the bad guy has to be worth listening to.
Now go read the other side, the heroes who made me cry harder than I'll admit. But first, which villain was actually right?
Your call
Did I get this ranking right?
In this story
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