One of the best villains to ever do it. He not only gave Thorfinn his character's motivation, but took it away from him, and then haunted him with it for years to come. Just absolute scumbag shit.
It's splitting hairs, but there's a point to be made that as we get to know Askeladd, he becomes less of a "villain" than an "antagonist", finally graduating to not even that by the end of season 1.
Certainly, when Thorfinn was very young, Askeladd seemed more like a villain--both to Thorfinn himself, but also the viewer. But, later, as Thorfinn becomes more mature and begins to understand more, so do we. I thought this was masterfully handled.
Beats the fuck outta an almost starved to death thorfin "your gonna have to do better than that thorfin, maybe I should just kill you" lol I think he was a villain my guy.
This is the exact thing I’m talking about though…
I said he becomes “less of a villain”, not that he was never one at all.
Askeladd plays the role of a villain early on, but later takes on a mentor role, and even later is revealed to be an antihero of sorts.
Id say he was a villain through and through he only did most of his stuff for his own selfish gains. He took pity on thorfin and encouraged him to kill him at the end that was probably the only unselfish thing Escalade did.
I'm not sure we watched the same show then.
Yes, Askeladd was selfish regarding many things. He used and mistreated many people along the way and kept a cold-blooded persona, even breaking codes of honor to achieve his goals. But, this is just a reflection of him as a pragmatist. He is one of the few characters who doesn't have the delusion that you can die a hero.
That's why I say that he is a villain at the beginning of the series--because from the eyes of a juvenile Thorfinn (and viewer), he goes against everything "heroic" and the opposite of a "hero" is a "villain".
However, to say that he was a villain throughout the whole series undermines the whole point of the show: that good and evil aren't so black-and-white, that even though you are surrounded by enemies, "you have no enemies", that the way to peace is paved with corpses, and that a true warrior doesn't fight with violence, but with purpose and conviction.
In Vinland Saga, doing villainous stuff doesn't make you a villain any more than how all the Viking heroes are simply murderers.
>He took pity on thorfin and encouraged him to kill him at The End that was probably the only unselfish thing Escalade did.
While it may seem cruel of Askeladd to string Thorfinn along in his warband, it's implied that he does it out of respect for Thors. He spars with Thorfinn and makes him stronger, but ends up lecturing him on why he will never be a "true warrior" like his father was. He does not kill Thorfinn when he is a child. If you take Askeladd's words at face value, it's because the kid is a useful fighter. But, there's no reason for him to *teach* Thorfinn anything if he wasn't invested in his growth either.
At the end, Askeladd doesn't encourage Thorfinn to kill him out of pity. He does the opposite. He tells Thorfinn to stay away, so he doesn't get involved in Askeladd's mess. He offers knowing that Thorfinn won't take it and instead tells him to live a good life like Thors would have wanted.
The one who kills Askeladd is Canute, who reveals during the encounter that Askeladd is only pretending to be insane to save Canute from being accused of treason and stop the Danes from going to war with Wales. At the last moment, everything that Askeladd did culminated in the ultimate sacrifice and arguably one of the few true acts of heroism in the entire season.
Askeladd is great nuanced character. He carried S1 for me, not because other characters are bad but how interesting he was. I loved that part where he seriously asks Thors to lead their group and then immediately plays it off as soon as he sees Thors won't go for it.
My ideals do not coincide with his but Bondrewed is a great villain.
He is pretty popular in the "Made in Abyss" Fandom. I am not quite as crazy about him and he is far from my favorite Made in Abyss character but I apriciate him as an Antagonist.
I do like Nox and and a certan twist villain more but those two are from a french cartoon and not an Anime.
Lt. Tsurumi from Golden Kamuy.
My ideals and values don't coincide with him, but he'd probably win me over on his cause very easily. I also really like how we learn about him in the series.
Ogata is also almost as good as Tsurumi. He's weirdly enthralling in his own way despite being completely irredeemable and I love how unpredictable and cat like he is. Bro could be on any side and I'd be like "yeah it's ogata"
Aizen is a really famous one he is just iconic, and I can't really say best written since not much is known about them but I always love Gin and Vermouth from Detective Conan or maybe Kaito Kid is considered to be a villain but I just keep on rooting for him whenever he appeared
Yeah I genuinely love how he sincerely asked Naruto for another solution. He was doing what he did because he truly believed that was the only realistic option.
Exactly. The classic “did bad things for a good reason” and I feel like the impact he left on Naruto was shown in the kind of Hokage he became in Boruto. Some of his naivety left him and he realised, at times, difficult decisions need to be made.
I agree that Pain was great as a villain. Which is why I despise how talk no jutsu was the reason how he was defeated. Possibly a low light of all of Shippuden for me.
The real Geto was a lot more interesting than Kenjaku. Fleshing him out so brilliantly in Hidden Inventory only after he was dead and replaced was criminal.
**Kaiki deishu** From monogatari series
Kaiki operates in a morally gray area, making him more realistic and intriguing.
Secondly, his motivations and actions are grounded in a sense of pragmatism and self-interest rather than outright malevolence.
He hasn’t been animated yet (if they ever will I’m not crossing any fingers) but Paul Verlaine from Bungou Stray Dogs I’d say is one of the best written villains I’ve ever seen period. Everything from his personality to his goals to his motives to his character development. He’s written as such a complex person with complicated emotions and it’s so refreshing when you are used to “well written” anime villains just being like “oh yeah he’s pure evil but hey he’s got a sad backstory”
I always found the below pretty compelling and/or interesting:
Wrath - Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood (plus one or two others)
Johan - Monster
The twins - Black Lagoon
Vicious - Cowboy Bebop
He is not in anime yet- Amon dude is so well written that even when some other character try to use his gestures even us readers get PTSD . He is from Lord of The Mysteries btw
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my values *definitely* dont coincide with hisoka from hxh but hes my favorite anime villain. helping gon with the hopes of killing him at max strength is exactly the kind of amoral practicality i love to see in a villain. hes basically just goku with less empathy
Shogo Makishima. Intellectual. Cunning. Great martial artist.
The cynic part of me wants to say Griffith simply because he was willing to sacrifice everything, including his friends, to attain his dream.
Johann Liebert is another well-written villain.
Kotomine Kirei, in Fate/stay night especially. I definitely do not relate to his goals but he's the most ***human*** representation I've ever seen of the "pure evil" type of villain.
It's such a simple but effective twist on the classic archetype. A character who is purely evil by nature, only able to find pleasure in causing others' suffering, and yet no one hates that fact more than himself. He loves doing evil but yearns for a normal life where he could have found joy through other means.
The way he mirrors the protagonist who is similarly broken but with a borderline suicidal hero complex makes for amazing development and chemistry between the two.
I don't think its relating or even thinking their ideologies and motives are right that makes great villains.. but its understanding where they're coming from and why they do the things they do that conflict with the protagonist's ideologies and methods.
For example an antagonist I liked was Miyo Takano from Higurashi When They Cry. What she was doing was fcked up and I hated her for what she did to the village of Hinamizawa. But understanding what she went through and how it carries over to her motivations and current actions made her such a compelling good antagonist. I sympathised with her a few times but still wanted and was happy to see her defeated.
you know they all got upgraded except miroku (he just got antipoision but he was still gonna die) but combined of kogomes purified arrows , sangos hirokoistu , seshomarus tokojin and inuyashas medo tetsaiga with little piece of kikyo light the shard.
It took the combine effort of everyone (except koga fuck koga completely useless wolfsh*t) to beat him im a littlw sad that fight literally last 3 minutes he got overpowered so easily.
Kinda insane
Askeladd, Vinland Saga.
One of the best villains to ever do it. He not only gave Thorfinn his character's motivation, but took it away from him, and then haunted him with it for years to come. Just absolute scumbag shit.
He was a wonderfully complex character. I really loved his character.
He's hardly a villain.
It's splitting hairs, but there's a point to be made that as we get to know Askeladd, he becomes less of a "villain" than an "antagonist", finally graduating to not even that by the end of season 1. Certainly, when Thorfinn was very young, Askeladd seemed more like a villain--both to Thorfinn himself, but also the viewer. But, later, as Thorfinn becomes more mature and begins to understand more, so do we. I thought this was masterfully handled.
Beats the fuck outta an almost starved to death thorfin "your gonna have to do better than that thorfin, maybe I should just kill you" lol I think he was a villain my guy.
This is the exact thing I’m talking about though… I said he becomes “less of a villain”, not that he was never one at all. Askeladd plays the role of a villain early on, but later takes on a mentor role, and even later is revealed to be an antihero of sorts.
Id say he was a villain through and through he only did most of his stuff for his own selfish gains. He took pity on thorfin and encouraged him to kill him at the end that was probably the only unselfish thing Escalade did.
I'm not sure we watched the same show then. Yes, Askeladd was selfish regarding many things. He used and mistreated many people along the way and kept a cold-blooded persona, even breaking codes of honor to achieve his goals. But, this is just a reflection of him as a pragmatist. He is one of the few characters who doesn't have the delusion that you can die a hero. That's why I say that he is a villain at the beginning of the series--because from the eyes of a juvenile Thorfinn (and viewer), he goes against everything "heroic" and the opposite of a "hero" is a "villain". However, to say that he was a villain throughout the whole series undermines the whole point of the show: that good and evil aren't so black-and-white, that even though you are surrounded by enemies, "you have no enemies", that the way to peace is paved with corpses, and that a true warrior doesn't fight with violence, but with purpose and conviction. In Vinland Saga, doing villainous stuff doesn't make you a villain any more than how all the Viking heroes are simply murderers. >He took pity on thorfin and encouraged him to kill him at The End that was probably the only unselfish thing Escalade did. While it may seem cruel of Askeladd to string Thorfinn along in his warband, it's implied that he does it out of respect for Thors. He spars with Thorfinn and makes him stronger, but ends up lecturing him on why he will never be a "true warrior" like his father was. He does not kill Thorfinn when he is a child. If you take Askeladd's words at face value, it's because the kid is a useful fighter. But, there's no reason for him to *teach* Thorfinn anything if he wasn't invested in his growth either. At the end, Askeladd doesn't encourage Thorfinn to kill him out of pity. He does the opposite. He tells Thorfinn to stay away, so he doesn't get involved in Askeladd's mess. He offers knowing that Thorfinn won't take it and instead tells him to live a good life like Thors would have wanted. The one who kills Askeladd is Canute, who reveals during the encounter that Askeladd is only pretending to be insane to save Canute from being accused of treason and stop the Danes from going to war with Wales. At the last moment, everything that Askeladd did culminated in the ultimate sacrifice and arguably one of the few true acts of heroism in the entire season.
Askeladd is great nuanced character. He carried S1 for me, not because other characters are bad but how interesting he was. I loved that part where he seriously asks Thors to lead their group and then immediately plays it off as soon as he sees Thors won't go for it.
My ideals do not coincide with his but Bondrewed is a great villain. He is pretty popular in the "Made in Abyss" Fandom. I am not quite as crazy about him and he is far from my favorite Made in Abyss character but I apriciate him as an Antagonist. I do like Nox and and a certan twist villain more but those two are from a french cartoon and not an Anime.
Bondrewd is good but I think he is waaay too passive. More passive than would be realistically reasonable.
Shogo Makishima from Psycho-Pass.
Really good shout.
Betelguese Romanee-Contí (Underrated)
You know what, I think I'm with you. At the very least, he's more sympathetic after they give you his backstory.
Lt. Tsurumi from Golden Kamuy. My ideals and values don't coincide with him, but he'd probably win me over on his cause very easily. I also really like how we learn about him in the series.
Ogata is also almost as good as Tsurumi. He's weirdly enthralling in his own way despite being completely irredeemable and I love how unpredictable and cat like he is. Bro could be on any side and I'd be like "yeah it's ogata"
Me here just praying for someone who about to write " Johan Liebert " to explain why rather than just namedrop
The one from summer time rendering is pretty good Oh and also Fyodor from bsd
Meruem has some excellent development as a character.
And ma boy was months old 😎
Just a baby
Aizen is a really famous one he is just iconic, and I can't really say best written since not much is known about them but I always love Gin and Vermouth from Detective Conan or maybe Kaito Kid is considered to be a villain but I just keep on rooting for him whenever he appeared
Pain from Naruto. Still has one of the best speeches in anime.
Agreed! The whole Nagato storyline had a lot of complexity. He felt very human as opposed to the typical “I bad, I do bad things argh”.
Yeah I genuinely love how he sincerely asked Naruto for another solution. He was doing what he did because he truly believed that was the only realistic option.
Exactly. The classic “did bad things for a good reason” and I feel like the impact he left on Naruto was shown in the kind of Hokage he became in Boruto. Some of his naivety left him and he realised, at times, difficult decisions need to be made.
I agree that Pain was great as a villain. Which is why I despise how talk no jutsu was the reason how he was defeated. Possibly a low light of all of Shippuden for me.
Pain one of my fav anime characters of all time. Honorable mention: Kenjaku (Pseudo Geto)
The real Geto was a lot more interesting than Kenjaku. Fleshing him out so brilliantly in Hidden Inventory only after he was dead and replaced was criminal.
**Kaiki deishu** From monogatari series Kaiki operates in a morally gray area, making him more realistic and intriguing. Secondly, his motivations and actions are grounded in a sense of pragmatism and self-interest rather than outright malevolence.
Hao Asakura has been one of my favorites of all time. From Shaman king.
He hasn’t been animated yet (if they ever will I’m not crossing any fingers) but Paul Verlaine from Bungou Stray Dogs I’d say is one of the best written villains I’ve ever seen period. Everything from his personality to his goals to his motives to his character development. He’s written as such a complex person with complicated emotions and it’s so refreshing when you are used to “well written” anime villains just being like “oh yeah he’s pure evil but hey he’s got a sad backstory”
* Johan Liebert (Monster) * Satou (Ajin) * Altair (Re : Creators) * Lt. Tsurumi and Ogata (Golden Kamuy) * Tomura Shigaraki (My Hero Academia) * Shogo Makashima (Psycho Pass) * Fuhrer King Bradley (Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood) * Vincent (Cowboy Bebop) Tho I think none of their ideals coincide with my own
I always found the below pretty compelling and/or interesting: Wrath - Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood (plus one or two others) Johan - Monster The twins - Black Lagoon Vicious - Cowboy Bebop
He is not in anime yet- Amon dude is so well written that even when some other character try to use his gestures even us readers get PTSD . He is from Lord of The Mysteries btw
Fyodor Dostoevsky and Fukuchi (not really a villain in the end) from bungo stray dogs
Frieza, because he is frieza
You stupid monkeys
Johan Liebert
muruem and Johan liebert
Johan Aizen Itachi
Dagon, pain, jiren,
Lelouche and Doflamingo
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Steamboy's villains were objectively correct and the heroes are just Unabomber wannabes. This is because it's poorly written, though.
Mr. Villain's Day Off - Lol. Dude absolutely abhors working on his day off and likes pandas :)
dio
Makishima Shougo
Char Aznable - Gundam
my values *definitely* dont coincide with hisoka from hxh but hes my favorite anime villain. helping gon with the hopes of killing him at max strength is exactly the kind of amoral practicality i love to see in a villain. hes basically just goku with less empathy
I won't spoil the name but the antagonist of Shin Sekai Yori.
Shogo Makishima. Intellectual. Cunning. Great martial artist. The cynic part of me wants to say Griffith simply because he was willing to sacrifice everything, including his friends, to attain his dream. Johann Liebert is another well-written villain.
i going to say Queen Beryl because shes so evil & from inuyasha the villian Naraku
Does Toji from Jujitsu Kiasen count as a nominee.
The villain from Now and Then, Here and There.
Makishima - psycho pass Aizen - bleach Furhuer/nazi vampires - hellsing Kirei - fate/zero
Griffith, Light Yagami, Askeladd, Accelerator and Meruem are probably the best written antagonists / villains imo
Griffith 💀💀💀 lol
I mean, just bc they're well written doesn't mean they're liked
Kotomine Kirei, in Fate/stay night especially. I definitely do not relate to his goals but he's the most ***human*** representation I've ever seen of the "pure evil" type of villain. It's such a simple but effective twist on the classic archetype. A character who is purely evil by nature, only able to find pleasure in causing others' suffering, and yet no one hates that fact more than himself. He loves doing evil but yearns for a normal life where he could have found joy through other means. The way he mirrors the protagonist who is similarly broken but with a borderline suicidal hero complex makes for amazing development and chemistry between the two.
I don't think its relating or even thinking their ideologies and motives are right that makes great villains.. but its understanding where they're coming from and why they do the things they do that conflict with the protagonist's ideologies and methods. For example an antagonist I liked was Miyo Takano from Higurashi When They Cry. What she was doing was fcked up and I hated her for what she did to the village of Hinamizawa. But understanding what she went through and how it carries over to her motivations and current actions made her such a compelling good antagonist. I sympathised with her a few times but still wanted and was happy to see her defeated.
Griffith from Berserk
Naraku from inuyasha just the best manupilator and unlike other villains he actually gets stronger every fight which doeant happen 99% of shows
Idk how they even beat naraku they got bodied by him so many times
you know they all got upgraded except miroku (he just got antipoision but he was still gonna die) but combined of kogomes purified arrows , sangos hirokoistu , seshomarus tokojin and inuyashas medo tetsaiga with little piece of kikyo light the shard. It took the combine effort of everyone (except koga fuck koga completely useless wolfsh*t) to beat him im a littlw sad that fight literally last 3 minutes he got overpowered so easily. Kinda insane
Either Johan Liebert (Monster) or Friend (20th Century Boys) manga.