Day 9: Anime Villains

Day 9: Best Anime Villain- 

Day 9: Favorite Anime Villain-

Day 9: Anime Villains- a discussion

Maybe it seems a little cheap to sort of cop out of this day of the challenge but I thought all day about who I thought the best anime villain was. I came up with nothing. It isn't that I don't think anime has some great villains because it honestly does. I just don't think I have any right to be choosing "the best."

My first thought for a solution was that maybe I would choose my favorite. This probably would have worked but I discovered I don't really have one. I think the entire point of a "good" villain is that you sort of hate them a little. But hating a villain isn't enough to make a good character. This brought me to here, writing a post late without any real answer to the question. *sigh* sorry guys. 

But what I can do is talk through the villains I was considering and tell you why I didn't choose them.

*****Spoiler Alert***** Read at Your Own Risk*****

Contender 1: Light Yagami- Death Note

Light starts off being what I picture when I think of a perfect villain. He thinks of himself as being the good guy, he is ruthless, keen, confident, and really plays the "two-faced" role well. The reason I didn't feel right choosing him as the "best anime villain" was that in the end, he becomes really pitiful. After L dies, he get's confident to the point of being lazy, so when Near comes into play he loses form. He becomes hasty and nowhere near as cunning and composed as he was in the first 2/3 of the show. A villain becoming more "insane" can be sometimes be a positive addition to a story but when it happens to Light, whose whole intrigue up to that point is his calm and collected demeanor, it feels sad. His fall into madness has a bunch of good messages about power and morals etc etc so I guess he still has that going for him.

Contender 2: Kayaba Akihiko- Sword Art Online

Kayaba Akihiko gets all sorts of gentlemen points for being one of the most fair villains I have seen. Although he completely doesn't care about any human life (including his own), Sword Art Online was a beatable game, he didn't really do much to get in the way of the players progressing, he accepted defeat gracefully, and he was even helping on the front lines himself (even if he made himself invincible until he fights Kirito) He also was a good "dark side" to Kirito, both sharing the traits of being skilled gamers, introverts, and intelligent with their major difference being Kirito's desire to protect others while Kayaba didn't care about them. I couldn't confidently choose him because he lacked a real "villain vibe", at the end of the day he was just a really apathetic guy who wanted to escape the world so made a difficult (and deadly) game. 

Those were the two closest I could think of but I am 100% sure that I probably missed many good ones. If you have a villain you think is the best let me know! I am really curious to see who other people think were good villains.