Unpopular Opinions You Hold About Anime

[LumRanmaYasha]

I agree. The early parts of both series have great character building. Though, I could see how some don't like the first few chapters of the YYH manga, since the first two volumes of that are practically gag-manga that isn't anything like the rest of the series.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I'm tired of seeing so many 1-dimensional villains in so many shounen manga. Don't get me wrong, a lot of manga I like have this problem, such as One Piece, Magi, and....well, those 2, anyways. I even like some villains from One Piece like Sir Crocodile and whatnot, but it now seems to be a staple of shounen to have villains who are 1-dimensionally evil in not only their ambitions, but their personalities as well. I hate it even more when the only way they get expanded upon is by giving them some cliche tragic back story that poorly develops them and is meant to make us care about them (Naruto in particular has abused this trope to hell and back).

I just kind of which we had more complex villains, like Toguro, Sensui, Chrollo, Pakunoda, Meruem, Shishio, Enishi, and so on. Togashi is one of the only mangaka who still knows how to do villains right and makes them interesting.

Or hell, sometimes we don't even need a villain at all, at least not in the traditional sense. Sports manga in particular could benefit from this. I mean, almost every shounen sports manga that I've read seems to boil down to some dude being a fucking prick for no reason other than he's better than everyone else, and then only seems to grow some more nuanced features to his personality when he gets beaten. Kuroko no Basket has done this a bit too much, for my liking, but almost every other shounen sports series is guilty of this to some degree as well. That is all of course for Ashita no Joe, which has no villains, at least not in the traditional sense (the closest we ever get are those corrupt managers who run the JBC behind the scenes, but they don't last for long). I'll give some props to Eyeshield 21 since it's more comedic in nature and seems self-aware of the trope, even mocking it to some degree, but overall there are just too many series that blindly follow this trope.

I just want interesting villains again. And like I said, you don't have to be super-complex to be great. Even villains like Dio or Fieza, who aren't incredibly nuanced, can still be fun based on their engaging personalities. But most shounen manga these days even lack that much, since they seem to think that being evil in and of itself counts as a defining personality trait.

[LumRanmaYasha]

I notice you only listed villains from Yu Yu Hakusho, Hunter X Hunter, and Rurouni Kenshin. It's sad that three manga, two of which by the same author, seem to offer the bulk of the most interesting villains from the entire battle shonen genre.

The way I see it, writers should approach creating villains by making a character first, one that has layers to his personality and feels like a genuine person. I think Togashi understands that better than anyone working in shonen manga right now, which is why the majority of the important villains in his series have layers to who they are and how they behave and sometimes even have their own character arcs in the story. There is nothing wrong with super evil villains, but what makes characters like Dio and Freeza work is that they have strong, well-defined personalities and, in fact, even while their motivations are one-dimensional, aspects of their personality, like Dio's respect for Johnathan and Freeza's pretense of being a gentleman, help give them an identity on which to understand and appreciate them. I feel that a lot of writers nowadays just think up a cool character and make them cruel or whatever and make them a villain. Villain teams are comprised of tried and true stereotypes done to death existing only for the protagonists to each get their own one on one in the arc. That is not a good approach. Ideally, every villain, both the big bad of an arc and his subordinates, are all good characters in their own rights and serve a purpose in the story. Sometimes the JoJo's approach of an endless string of villains with crazy powers works, but with that series it's the craziness, originality, and ingenuity that goes into it's battles in addition to a well-rounded cast of main characters and main villain that make it the glorious entertainment that it is most of the time, and most shonen mangaka could never replicate Araki in making a series like that. So instead, I think most mangaka should make villains that behave like actual people, rather than caricatures of people.

I think  there are two major villains in modern shonen manga that I am particularly fond of that illustrate my point.

First, as far as Magi goes, I thought Matal Mogamett was a great character. Despite his kind, caring personality and dedication to helping Magicians he harbors deep-rooted resentment of non-magicians (goi) and several bad, unfortunate experiences in his past made him come to hate them, that same hatred also driving him to want to create a Magician's country. Mogamett's interactions with Aladdin and Titus show that he can be selfless and understanding when it comes to fellow magicians, but he's come to the point where he can't even see non-magicians as human beings anymore and the entire class and magic system of Magnostadt reflects that, as non-magicians, the majority of the people of Magnostadt, are forced to live in underground dwellings as basically cattle for rukh gathering. Mogamett, through his skewed reasoning, is even able to justify this as a mutually beneficial arrangement despite all of what we see and know is wrong about it. But, despite this, it's implied that Mogamett is deep down ashamed of this viewpoint, or at least regrets that things have to be this way in order for Magnostadt to be viable as an independent country for magicians. He outright admits that the happiest time of his life was in the past, when he was helping people, both goi and fellow magicians, with his magic, but he came to a point where he could not live that way anymore. In the end, I believe Mogamett died regretting the way a lot of things in his life turned out, but not creating Magnostadt itself, which he hopes can change and rebuild itself as a better place for both magicians and goi. I just felt that Mogamett was a well-rounded, interesting character through and through and certainly the best "bigoted" villain I've seen in anime/manga. He's honestly a lot of what made the Magnostadt arc great to me, actually.

And then there's Midora from Toriko. Though essentially the big bad of the series for the "Human World" portion of the story, he never made an appearance until towards the end of the Cooking Festival arc. But in 20 chapters, he showed more character and humanity than pretty much any villain in Naruto has ever. He did have a backstory, but it was only four chapters long, and unlike other backstories in stuff like Bleach what it reveals is genuinely revelatory in terms of how this character came to be and his behavior, but actually set up a major thing that would happen later in the arc proper. Not to mention the fight between Ichiryu and Midora is incredibly personal as it is brutal, and ultimately tragic, and it's clear in the final moments of it that both characters regret that things turned out this way...and Midora decides he doesn't want to end it this way, and though this act proves to be in vain, what he does for Ichiryu in the aftermath is honorable. Midora just feels fresh among the kind of cackling-asshole-ruthless-villains I've often seen, not only because of his sense of honor, but also his humanity and the respect he shows to other people. He left me wanting to see more of him, and though it'll be a long ass time before that happens (probably), the fact the character could leave such a strong impression in a short amount of time is commendable.

As an aside, I also like Starjun from Toriko. I don't think he's particularly complicated myself, but he acts like a genuine person with his own interests and desires outside of what Midora wants but it's still clear he is very loyal to him and his comrades. He has great character interactions with others and moments where you can even root for him even though he never does anything particularly "good" in the moral sense, and coupled with a badass personality it makes him a really cool character that I love seeing show up every now and again.

I'd love more villains like Midora and Mogamett rather than Madara and Ywach. Even though manga can be plenty fun without any complicated villains, like Seven Deadly Sins, I'd rather read stories about actual people, both good and bad, then just carboard cutouts of the same character types again and again.

On a side note, I don't think Shishio is a particularly complicated character. As in, in terms of his personality and actions I never felt he showed much humanity and mostly was single-minded in his goal or revolution. That said, what makes him interesting to me is that he's a direct contrast to Kenshin, a character that has remainded static as he clings to the past Edo era, while Kenshin is a symbol of the future, and has changed from his experiences and represents the change brought on by the Meji era, and that's what made Shishio and the final showdown really interesting to me. Symbolically, I love Shishio, but I feel as a character himself he's kind of shallow, though even then he has a strong enough personality on par with villains like Freeza and Dio to make him fun to watch.

As far as sports manga go, I'm just going to say I fucking hate Akashi. He might possibly my least favorite antagonist in manga ever, honestly, because he continually ruins my enjoyment of the series whenever he appears doing annoying, dumb stuff like trying to stab out Kagami eyes with scissors or making people kneel before him and babbling his inane "better than you" bullshit dialogue. The exception was the Teikou arc, which was before he adopted that personality, and then I guess the last two chapters now that he's switched to his other personality (which still doesn't make him a better character because the circumstances leading up to it lacked strong enough emotional tension to make it a rewarding development, imo). It was bad enough that the Seirin vs. Rakuzan match has been shockingly devoid of the raw tension and passion it really should have, but it was even worse when it was coupled with Akashi being a shallow asshole. The last few chapters have started to be a bit better, but overall this match is easily the worst in the entire series so far, imo.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

My problem with Mogamett is that the way his hate for Goi was executed felt very jarring with the rest of his personality. Yes, I get the idea of it just fine, but it felt like two separate characters to me, rather than a flawed character. What I mean is that he was clearly kind-hearted and understanding and even patient with any magicians, even those who didn't agree with his view points. But then he's, for lack of a better word, over-the-top cartoonishly evil in his resentment of Goi, even going so far as to kick around a little girl. While the concept of his character is great, the execution kind of took me out of it  through I will say that he's still the closest to a 3-dimensional villain that I've seen from Magi, yet.

With Shishio, I do think there's a bit more to his character than just wanting to stick to the old ways. It's subtly implied, but while the character himself would never admit it, his hatred of the Meiji Era government is deeply personal as well. Think about it in the sense that he basically did all of their dirty work for them during the old era, but once they had no more use for him in the wake of the new era they outright betrayed him and ordered a hit on him, trying to execute him by burning him alive. When he mentions that par of his back-story in passing, I get the sense that he's (rightfully) really pissed off about just that, even if he also has his greater ambitions and ideals driving him. He also isn't 1-dimensionally evil like most other shounen villains. He's doing what he's doing because he genuinely believes that the old samurai way of life is the right way of life. Deluded as he may be, it's not like his ultimate goal is causing chaos just for the sake of it. He is very prideful of the era that he grew up in, and more than just being a symbolic contrast to Kenshin, he's utterly devoted to restoring Japan to what it once was, which in his eyes is a necessary thing. And even when not being looked at symbolically, he's still a classic villain in terms of charisma and personality, easily on par with Dio or Freeza or any number of classic shounen villains. It's true that he's not nearly as complex as any Togashi villains, but in could never even begin to compare him to the likes of the 1-dimensional turds that you get in 95% of modern shounen series.

[Spark Of Spirit]

Kubo and Kishimoto are responsible for a lot of this. Because they are so popular, most manga tend to emulate their bad guys. Oda suffered from this early on, with only Arlong and Baroque Works being decent villains and the rest being rather dull. But these are the most popular currently running series, so it would make sense, business-wise, to do it, but personally I want more characters like Enishi who are spurred on by misdirected anger and pure emotion or Sensui who are completely upside down yet completely logical about their ridiculous goals. You don't see either much anymore.

I mean, there are people who think Aizen was a legitimately good villain. His reveal was a surprise, but that doesn't make him inherently a good character. Not to mention most of his screen time amounted to either being cocky or "Oh you got me I'm deadno actually I'm right behind you." He never really did anything other than because he was the bad guy, so why not?

I'm surprised nobody mentioned Death Note or Bakuman. Now there's a team that know how to write characters. Characters like Light or Nanamine might not be deep, but I never tire of watching them figure out better ways to get ahead. They're actually entertaining to watch.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Kubo and Kishimoto are responsible for a lot of this. Because they are so popular, most manga tend to emulate their bad guys. Oda suffered from this early on, with only Arlong and Baroque Works being decent villains and the rest being rather dull.

Alright, I'm going to have to kind of call you out on this, because unless you've a actually seen Enies Lobby and the Marineford arc, I can't accept that statement. But I will say that all of Oda's post time-skip villains suck balls. I definitely don't think that he took any influence from Kishimoto or Kubo though. In addition to OP starting before either of those series, his villains are also nothing like the pretentious convoluted drek that you find in those other 2 manga, even the worst of them (like Hodi).

But these are the most popular currently running series, so it would make sense, business-wise, to do it, but personally I want more characters like Enishi who are spurred on by misdirected anger and pure emotion or Sensui who are completely upside down yet completely logical about their ridiculous goals. You don't see either much anymore.

Or they could start out 1-dimensional and develop into complex and even somewhat likable personals, such as Meruem from Hunter X Hunter (minus the pointless child butchering for cheap shock value).

I'm surprised nobody mentioned Death Note or Bakuman. Now there's a team that know how to write characters. Characters like Light or Nanamine might not be deep, but I never tire of watching them figure out better ways to get ahead. They're actually entertaining to watch.

Well, I kind of think Nanamine is an idiot, and I'm not sure if it was intentional on the part of Ohba to write him that way. But I do enjoy reading/watching Light. Oh, make no mistake, he's a completely shallow character, and is intentionally written that way, but it's entertaining to watch him think and get himself into insanely complex situations, and then proceed to make the disadvantages of those situations work in his favor through good scheming.

Stepping out of the realm of anime just for a bit, I wish more anime would do villains similar the the type you find in GOT. Most of them like Cersei, Tywin, Baelish, and so on are very morally gray. Yes, you have completely evil bastards like Joffrey, but he's really one of the few exceptions, and I like that even the other villains on his side are disgusted with him, personally (it's part of what makes Tywin so enticing for me, since he keeps Joffrey under control). That's another thing, in that the villains have such an interesting dynamic with each other which is another thing that many shounen manga lack. and yes, I know great Seinen manga like the stuff that Urasawa writes has those kinds of complex villains that I'm looking for, but I'm specifically talking about shounen, here.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Oh, and on the subject of Kishimoto, I can't stand the people who support his writing in the last several hundred chapters and think that his villains are legitimately great and complex. The only complex thing about them is how ridiculously inconsistent their writing is in terms of their personality (or lack thereof) and ideologies. These are by far the most pretentious characters that I have EVER come across in fiction. Seriously, this series need to die, soon. I've never said that about anything, before, but it's long overdue for it, and I think that Ben most of its sane fans would agree that ending it soon would be a mercy kill at this point.

[Spark Of Spirit]

Kubo and Kishimoto are responsible for a lot of this. Because they are so popular, most manga tend to emulate their bad guys. Oda suffered from this early on, with only Arlong and Baroque Works being decent villains and the rest being rather dull.

Alright, I'm going to have to kind of call you out on this, because unless you've a actually seen Enies Lobby and the Marineford arc, I can't accept that statement. But I will say that all of Oda's post time-skip villains suck balls. I definitely don't think that he took any influence from Kishimoto or Kubo though. In addition to OP starting before either of those series, his villains are also nothing like the pretentious convoluted drek that you find in those other 2 manga, even the worst of them (like Hodi).

Oda suffered from this early on, with only Arlong and Baroque Works being decent villains and the rest being rather dull.

Of course he didn't copy Kubo or Kishimoto, I just said meant that he had similar problems at the start.

Nanamine IS an idiot, incapable of thinking ahead at all, that's why I thought he worked so well. The fact is that he was so invested in getting ahead of everyone else that he never stopped to try and just do it the right way. He was fun.

But, hey, not every villain can be Johan Leibert.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

My bad. I missed that part.

[LumRanmaYasha]

My problem with Mogamett is that the way his hate for Goi was executed felt very jarring with the rest of his personality. Yes, I get the idea of it just fine, but it felt like two separate characters to me, rather than a flawed character. What I mean is that he was clearly kind-hearted and understanding and even patient with any magicians, even those who didn't agree with his view points. But then he's, for lack of a better word, over-the-top cartoonishly evil in his resentment of Goi, even going so far as to kick around a little girl. While the concept of his character is great, the execution kind of took me out of it  through I will say that he's still the closest to a 3-dimensional villain that I've seen from Magi, yet.

He didn't kick that little girl, he just briskly shoved her off when she was clinging to him, in a fashion to like what I've seen a lot of uncaring people do to grabby begger children in India. There really wasn't any point I felt that his resentment of the goi was cartoonish in any way, myself. His treatment of them was out of his deluded reasoning molded from several bad experiences that made him see them as lesser beings. There are real life parallels to people who think and behave like Mogamett, and I thought, overall, he was a very balanced character.

With Shishio, I do think there's a bit more to his character than just wanting to stick to the old ways. It's subtly implied, but while the character himself would never admit it, his hatred of the Meiji Era government is deeply personal as well. Think about it in the sense that he basically did all of their dirty work for them during the old era, but once they had no more use for him in the wake of the new era they outright betrayed him and ordered a hit on him, trying to execute him by burning him alive. When he mentions that par of his back-story in passing, I get the sense that he's (rightfully) really pissed off about just that, even if he also has his greater ambitions and ideals driving him. He also isn't 1-dimensionally evil like most other shounen villains. He's doing what he's doing because he genuinely believes that the old samurai way of life is the right way of life. Deluded as he may be, it's not like his ultimate goal is causing chaos just for the sake of it. He is very prideful of the era that he grew up in, and more than just being a symbolic contrast to Kenshin, he's utterly devoted to restoring Japan to what it once was, which in his eyes is a necessary thing. And even when not being looked at symbolically, he's still a classic villain in terms of charisma and personality, easily on par with Dio or Freeza or any number of classic shounen villains. It's true that he's not nearly as complex as any Togashi villains, but in could never even begin to compare him to the likes of the 1-dimensional turds that you get in 95% of modern shounen series.

Those are some good points, and perhaps it's just that, unlike other villains I'm fond of, Shishio never seemed to care about anything or anybody outside himself and his goal (I know he did love Yumi, but he didn't hesitate to sacrifice her nor mourn her much either), and focusing on that I overlooked other valuable elements of Shishio's personality.

personally I want more characters like Enishi who are spurred on by misdirected anger and pure emotion or Sensui who are completely upside down yet completely logical about their ridiculous goals. You don't see either much anymore.

I actually think this can also describe Midora and Mogamett respectively.

I mean, there are people who think Aizen was a legitimately good villain. His reveal was a surprise, but that doesn't make him inherently a good character. Not to mention most of his screen time amounted to either being cocky or "Oh you got me I'm deadno actually I'm right behind you." He never really did anything other than because he was the bad guy, so why not?

Not to mention Aizen's goal was never clearly defined nor was his motivation. He was always a flat character and all the twists he pulled in the series are essentially ret-cons to allow Kubo to do what he wants and forget something he previously established. Not to mention he loses because of the dumbest, not-set-up at all reasoning there ever was.

I'm going to have to second E-K that I always fond Nanamine kind of an idiot, and while I really enjoy his character in his first arc, his second one was one of the low-points in the series for me.

As far as Kishimoto goes, the story of the manga is completely irredeemable now thanks to the Kaguya twist and it's baffling that the two fucking villains that started this conflict are now accepted as good guys now and are on the heroes' side. The worst part is that all five major villains in this conflict (Obtio, Kabuto, Madara, Black Zetsu, and Kaguya) are terrible characters with nonsensical goals, cliche tragic backstory, or in the case of the latter two, completely lacking in personality or charisma. I think the series is worse than Bleach at this point, which is saying something.

Oh, and that reminds me of another thing, I hate it when villains reform because of bullshit reasons like "friendship" or because the main character beats him into accepting his reasoning or something, like as so often happens in Fairy Tail and Naruto. If a villain is going to change and become a better person, that should be through a natural character arc, like Vegeta or Sesshomaru's, and not some flip of the coin thing that happens just because they got beaten in a battle, like with Laxus or Obito.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I'm talking about that scene where Mogamett was about to use that device that summoned monsters made out of Black Rukh. A girl came up to him and he kicked her to the side and proclaimed his hatred for the Goi. Maybe it was different in the manga, but that's what I recall seeing in the anime.

As for Shisho, yes, he wasn't as caring as some other villains, but I do believe he had a level of respect for Kenshin, at least as his predecssor, and I do think that part of him genuinely wanted to convince Kenshin that his old ways were right, and that he should not have embraced the new era as he had. Don't forget that he also took in and personally trained Seita, even giving him the courage to stand up to his abusive caretakers (albeit by killing them all, but still, it was a terrible life for him), so at the very least I would never think of him as a self-centered villain, myself.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

In regard to villains reforming into good guys, I always loved Piccolo's character arc with Gohan, which I find to be really underrated since nobody ever bothers to mention it. I liked it just as much as Vegeta's character arc, myself, and to me it never felt rushed or corny in its execution. It felt very genuine, and by the end of the Saiyan arc when Piccolo made his sacrifice, I could genuinely believe that he'd developed a fatherly sort of bond with Gohan, and Gohan looked up to him like both a mentor and a 2nd father figure. Hell, even TSF acknowledged in DBZTAS that Piccolo actually makes a better father-figure than Goku, even if it was just a parody.

[LumRanmaYasha]

Piccolo's character arc is one of my favorite parts of the series, actually, and his relationship with Gohan and his role as a mentor figure for him, and later Goten and Trunks in the Buu arc, as well as his growth as person, are pretty much why he's my favorite character in Dragon Ball.

I'm talking about that scene where Mogamett was about to use that device that summoned monsters made out of Black Rukh. A girl came up to him and he kicked her to the side and proclaimed his hatred for the Goi. Maybe it was different in the manga, but that's what I recall seeing in the anime.

I just looked at that scene again, and I think context is important here. The war with Reim was going badly and Mogamett was infuriated and desperate at that point, and this got him to reflect on his past and his bad experiences again. Not only that, as he was walking through the Goi living areas, the people were hounding him about what he was going to do and how it was magicians' fault that this was happening and that magicians had a responsibility to protect and keep the goi happy. If you remember Mogamett and his fellow Magicians were horribly exploited in the past by goi rulers who saw them as nothing as disposable tools for their benefit. This mistreatment is a huge part of what made Mogamett resent and despise the Goi. So at this point, on top of being burdened by the war, furious at how many of his kin were lost in this battle, angry thinking about how he wanted to protect all people in this past with magic and how things have turned out now, and being insulted and pressured by Goi citizenry in a manner that brought up old wounds and seemed to reconfirm his long-held belief that the goi were selfish beings that would just abuse magicians if they were in charge, it was only natural he would break down under pressure and scream out his detest for the goi in a manner unbefitting of normally calm self. His reaction after that, when he sees the faces of the people he's just yelled at, he clearly feels ashamed at what he's just but thinking about this irritates him more.

He didn't kick that girl for some cartoonish reason. He was at an emotional breaking point brought on by stress and guilt, and his boiling, deep-rooted anger and self-loathing finally erupted in that particular moment.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Perhaps I'll re-watch the arc someday and see if I can look at Mogamett from a different viewpoint. At any rate it's not like I thought he was a bad villain to begin with. I was just pointing out a problem that I had with his character portrayal, but overall I still did think he was the best "villain" from Magi so far.

I also never gave much thought to who my favorite DB character is, but now that I think about it, I think I can agree with Piccolo consistently being the best. Even in the Cell and Buu sagas which were dominated by SSJ characters, he still proved to be useful in some way, and his relationship with the other characters, especially Gohan, always made for interesting dynamics.

Now that I really think about it, here are my top 5 favorite DB characters:

1. Piccolo
2. Krillin
3. Future Trunks
4. Tien
5. Vegeta

For as much as I didn't care for the Cell Saga, I must point out that I REALLY liked Future Trunks as a character, and his character arc in terms of learning who his father really was, and in a large way contributing to Vegeta's own character arc in terms of helping him develop.

Tien I like more from the DB anime, in particular, and while he didn't get a lot of screen-time later on, his character arc was one of the best  by far.

[Rynnec]

I still stand by what I said about Kubo and Kishimoto being better at writing sub-villains than main villains.  Characters like Grimmjow, Starrk, Nnoitra, Deidara, Hidan, Tobi etc. were always more memorable and entertaining than the likes of Aizen or Obito. The former always had at least some bit of charisma or badassery to them that made them legitimately cool villains, wheras the latter always seemed like they were trying too hard to make them seem powerful, smart, or evil.