*Cackles Manically* It is I, Skeletor!
Whoops, I was supposed to pick an anime. In case you forgot, here’s a quick reminder of the schedule and what’s already been done so far. For day 9 I’ll be talking about my favorite anime villain. I had to put a lot of thought into this day so I hope you find my final decision to be a good one!
My gut instinct was to talk about several anti-heroes, but those aren’t exactly villains. So I took a long, hard look at all of the anime I’ve seen before ultimately settling on Makishima from Psycho-Pass. I know this isn’t the most original or interesting pick but there just aren’t a lot of truly great anime villains out there for shows I’ve seen. Either I find them to be too much like anti-heroes or they come off as cartoonish in their evil-ness. However, this is not the case for Makishima.
Making for a great counterpart to Kougami, Makishima has great depth and is a formidable antagonistic force. Not only that, but he is a villain that can be understood and related to. Given the society that Psycho-Pass is set in, the reason why Makishima behaves the way he does makes sense. I’d go as far as to say it isn’t even necessarily “wrong” for him to desire the sort of changes he aspires to within that system.
In the end, Makishima is a twisted individual though. I’m not sitting there rooting for him to win or anything. He did some pretty messed up stuff all to prove a point. This is what allow him to sit comfortably in the villain category for me instead of jumping the line to anti-hero. I appreciate that the character is allowed to be cunning, intelligent, but not perfect. He makes mistakes and could be perceived as realistic.
So I’ll turn things over to you now. Who would you choose as the best anime villain? Let me know your pick and what you think of mine in the comments below. Join me once again tomorrow as I discuss my “favorite fighter anime,” which I’m going to interpret as an any anime with a TOURNAMENT ARC(™) in it. If you like what I’m doing here please consider offering me some monetary support by checking out my Ko-fi. As always, thanks for reading!
I “love” Johan Liebert from Monster… What a horrifically low-key villain. Just really messed up in such a frightening way… And (although I don’t know if he TECHNICALLY counts as a villain) but, I always think of Deus Ex Machina (the God of Space and Time in Future Diary (Mirai Nikki) pitting all of those people up against each other to just sit in the background and watch them kill each other…. That takes a certain sort of special!!
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Man, I /really/ wish I could watch Monster >.<
Yeah Deus Ex Machina isn't really the bad guy, that would be Murmur. She's the one who suggests the game and everything! I get ya though.
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True true!
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Makishima is such a great antagonist. I wish we had more villains like him in stories. I didn’t want him to succeed, but at least he seemed like he had a credible chance of doing so and was a real threat to the main characters. Something so many villains miss the mark on. Not to mention, he’s a reader. It might seem like a small thing, but there’s just something about characters who are genuinely well read (and not just one note references) that makes them more appealing.
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Yeah I’m with you on that. Having a well made villain with the all the extra little details coupled with the credibility makes him so much better!
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Skeletor is the man
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I know right? To bad I had to talk about anime. Who would have thought any anime challenge would want me to do that? XD
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