Summary
Some of the best parts ofanime,and the writing that goes into it, are the very well crafted villains of the story. Oftentimes, these are individuals within the manga and anime universe with unprecedented power or intellect, which allows them to ruthlessly dominate others, forcing them to submit to their will.
However, sometimesthe true villainof the story is not so clear. There are a lot of stories out there where, even though there is a blatant antagonist, the actions taken by the assigned protagonist of the show are so corrupt, thatthese main characters could be considered the story’s villainsin their own right. Here are five characters who showcase this phenomenon as morally-corrupt main characters.
Tomodachi Game
He’s been called a devil and a monster by other characters for a reason. Though some might say this is a good thing when they’replaying theTomodachi Game.Yuichi’sstatus as a devil is part of what makes him such a good player.
When viewers first meet Yuichi Katagiri, he seems to be a standard survival game protagonist. A kind, humble high school kid who was broke, tired, and wanted nothing more than to just be around his friends. However, they’ll soon learn that Yuichi is the opposite. He only performs the role of a nice, humble, hardworking high school student with not much about him. In reality, Yuichi is a master of manipulation and trickery who is willing to throw away any and all moral values if it means he will win. He will resort to the lowest of tactics to succeed, includingblackmail, life-ruining schemes, violent threats and, at some point, risking someone’s life by shoving them off a cliff.
There was one thing that made Yuichi seem not that bad, the one part of his high school persona that was not faked. Yuichi truly does care about his friends and will do anything to support them. The only issue is, ‘anything’ often involves boundless cruelty enacted on others.
Classroom of the Elite
The young man who was trained to be adept from an early age could possibly be and, as a result, became a cold machine of a person. The archetypal super-intelligent anime character who can do absolutely anything required of him inthe psychological competitionthat is his high school life, and with a blank expression on his face the entire time too.
Ayanokojiattends a school meant only for the mostelite students in Japan, in which everything from the tests to the field trips are steeped in intense competition where the winners can increase their spending power and class rank. Ayanokoji wants to live a normal high school life and, despite his amazing skills, is fine with barely competing and letting his class remain in Class-D, the lowest rank. However, a series of circumstances doesn’t allow for that, leading to Ayanokoji having to work to improve his class rank and violently compete against the other top students in the school.
The same grueling childhood training that made him so intellectually and physically capable also made him an emotionless being who only sees other people as tools to be used for his goals. In spite of the many friends he makes, Ayanokoji seems incapable of truly bonding with anyone, using them all as pawns in his game. At one point in the manga, he makes a girl fall in love with him and dates her despite having no feelings for her, just to experiment. Though he’s usually either heroic or neutral, he often comes across as one of the coldest, most sociopathic characters in the series.
Lelocuh Lamprouge, orLelouch vi Britannia,was a Britannian royal who was banished after calling out his country’s rulers for causing the death of his mother and the disabling of his sister. He swore revenge on the Britannian Empire for these reasons while he hid in Japan. He was finally able to enact this vengeance once he received an ability that allowed him to convince anyone to do whatever he wanted, but just once in their lifetime. It is clear to see how a heroic character with such a background might often behave villainously.
Manipulation and lies are Lelouch’s modus operandi, using his natural charisma, Geass power, and military genius to bend others to his will. A brilliant chess player,Lelouch treats life itself as if it’s a chess game, one in which he sacrifices many pawns for the sake of his greater goal. He would do anything to secure a brighter world for his disabled sister to live in. This includes the countless people he killed on his journey to become emperor of Britannia, as well as his efforts to become as ruthless of a dictator as possible, in a gambit that would unite the world in celebration once he died.
One could argue the many villainous things Lelouch did were worth it, considering by the end of the series, he had achieved his goal of establishing this brighter world. But some could say the good does not wash out the bad.
Potentially the most obvious example ofa villain protagonist in anime, the charming, intellectual, and narcissisticLight Yagamiwent from honorable high school student to righteous megalomaniac much quicker than most people would expect.
Light Yagami was a genius who found everything in life far too easy. His boredom as well as the great distaste he had for what he saw as a crime-infested world are what drove him towards his liberal use of godly powers. When Light received the Death Note, it allowed him to act on his goal of building a better world by killing as many criminals as he could. That was how it started, at least. Very soon, Light started to kill anyone, be they innocent or not, if they either stood in his way or disobeyed his rule as God. Yes, God. That was how Light began to see himself. As far as he considered, anyone who tried to stop Kira as God was a blasphemer who must be killed. Be it detectives like L, police officers, or spouses of FBI agents.
At some point, he considers not just killing criminals to create a better world, but also killing off the lazy and idle. Ever since Light took hold of the Death Note, his moral descent was palpable.
The maniac who, with nothing but a burning passion in his heart, declared he would kill all the Titans, the cannibalistic monsters that ate and maimed his people.Erenstarted off as a heroic, albeit incredibly aggressive and explosive type of person. The heroic side of him did not last.
To be fair to Eren, it could be argued that a person of his immense number of passions and regularly developed Titan-shifting powers wasbound to become a villain in such a world. His lands were beggared by human-eating monsters that killed family members and many comrades. He, a thorough enjoyer of freedom, was forced to hide with the rest of his people behind walls for years because of these creatures. So when he got the power to enact revenge and learned the rest of the world was to blame for his people’s plight, he went full throttle.
Eren Yeager went down in the anime history books as one of the deadliest mass murders of all the time. He orchestrated the Rumbling, a march of Colossal Titans across the world that ended up killing 80% of the population. Like other entries on this list, Eren committed a truly evil act to preserve a better future for those he loves, but many have argued that such a motive is not noble enough to excuse such cataclysmic levels of killing.
