Animated Villains

[Daikun]

Villains are an interesting breed in fiction. They can be awesome or they can be lame.

List your favorites and least favorites in animation. They can be from any studio or any medium. (TV, movies, anime, web shorts... Your pick.)

[gunswordfist]

Favorite: Two-Face. I forgot to mention him in the favorite characters thread. He's at the top because Harvey's dark side's self-titled episodes are easily my favorite BTAS episodes.

Least: Azula. There's worse than her but she stands out for being very overrated and for having a prominent role in one of my favorite cartoons. The fire princess is one dinensional and well...a cliched evil princess. She's predictably heartless and almost always gets her way until she starts to become an emo.

[The Shadow Gentleman]

Tv:

Heart of Ice, man. Heart of Ice.
Anime:

An interesting villian with a genuinely tragic backstory and unique abilites? In a shounen fighing series? Who woulda thunk it!

Film:

There's a reason he's my namesake. Like most Disney villians, Facilier is more style over substance, but man does he have style. And an awesome song, too.

Favorite: Two-Face. I forgot to mention him in the favorite characters thread. He's at the top because Harvey's dark side's self-titled episodes are easily my favorite BTAS episodes.

Least: Azula. There's worse than her but she stands out for being very overrated and for having a prominent role in one of my favorite cartoons. The fire princess is one dinensional and well...a cliched evil princess. She's predictable heartless and almost always gets her way into she starts to become an emo.

Two Face is a very close second for me. Freeze just barely passes.

And I completely agree with you on Azula. She's supposedly very manipulative and cunning, but just uses heartless threats to get what she wants. Such a waste.

[Avaitor]

I'll third in the dislike towards Azula. For a villain who was built up to be such a cunning, malicious monster, she always fell flat to me.

Then again...



This is my favorite.

Also,

[The Shadow Gentleman]

Also,

Doh! I forgot the Beast. I'll say John is tied with Sensui.

And I'm really glad I posted that gif on the top anime thread. Really captures the character.

[gunswordfist]

I can smell a 300 page essay on Shinobu from EK coming on...

I expected Azula to be defended. She's loved by Avatar fans for some reason.

I still need to finish watching BTAS. Two-Face's therapy session scene is quite possibly my single favorite BTAS scene. I wish youtube had that part by itself so I can post it. I also would say that the TF episodes contain the best villain origin out of any medium. Well I can't really say that because there's still lots of mega popular villains whose stories I need to see but Two-Face currently wins by a landslide for me.

[Grave]

I expected Azula to be defended. She's loved by Avatar fans for some reason.

For me, if it weren't for her and Toph I probably would've dropped Avatar long before season 2 ended. Truth be told I'm not even a big Avatar supporter, but I do like Legend of Korra.

Anyway

Favorites
Joker
Darkseid
Madara
Vicious
Legato

Least
DBZ villains
Knives
Gluttony

[The Shadow Gentleman]

I expected Azula to be defended. She's loved by Avatar fans for some reason.

I tend to avoid most Avatar fans these days, so I wouldn't know for certain. But from what I can remember, she's one of those characters that is in fact extremely overrated by the fans. Just like Toph.

Knives

[Avaitor]

The Fire Nation is by far my favorite part of the show, but Azula never registered with me. I'd even take Mai and Ty Lee over her any day.

As for Ozai, no real problem. He isn't especially interesting either, but he was never meant to be a well of personality. Mark Hamill gave him the range he needed to, and that was that.

[The Shadow Gentleman]

The Fire Nation is by far my favorite part of the show, but Azula never registered with me. I' even take Mai and Ty Lee over her any day.

As for Ozai, no real problem. He isn't especially interesting either, but he was never meant to be a well of personality. Mark Hamill gave him the range he needed to, and that was that.

This is pretty much what I think.

[Rynnec]

Knives

To be fair, Knives does come off as underwhelming compared to the more chilling Legato, despite having more fleshed out motivations.

As for me:





&



I don't know if I'd call them my absolute favorites, but they are really effective villains in different ways. I like both Megs' for having that right balance of charisma and menace (their VA's also voiced them wonderfully) and I like Vicious for being...well, vicious.

Honorable mentions go to Kimblee (Mangahood version), Makoto Shishio, and Light Yagami.

And agreed on the Azula hate. It felt that the writers were trying too hard to make her seem threatening, that she came off as irritating instead. Also, the more I think about it, the more her taking control of the Dai Lee makes no sense.

[The Shadow Gentleman]

Knives

To be fair, Knives does come off as underwhelming compared to the more chilling Legato, despite having more fleshed out motivations.

True. And I do think Legato is the better villian.

And agreed on the Azula hate. It felt that the writers were trying too hard to make her seem threatening, that she came off as irritating instead. Also, the more I think about it, the more her taking control of the Dai Lee makes no sense.

The Dai Lee should have kicked her ass.

[gunswordfist]

I expected Azula to be defended. She's loved by Avatar fans for some reason.

For me, if it weren't for her and Toph I probably would've dropped Avatar long before season 2 ended. Truth be told I'm not even a big Avatar supporter, but I do like Legend of Korra.

Anyway

Favorites
Joker
Darkseid
Madara
Vicious
Legato

Least
DBZ villains
Knives
Gluttony

I wanted to mentioned Legato. ...and I hated Gluttony too...

And Toph is my 3rd favorite Avatar character and probably my favorite little girl character.

[gunswordfist]

Knives

To be fair, Knives does come off as underwhelming compared to the more chilling Legato, despite having more fleshed out motivations.

True. And I do think Legato is the better villian.

And agreed on the Azula hate. It felt that the writers were trying too hard to make her seem threatening, that she came off as irritating instead. Also, the more I think about it, the more her taking control of the Dai Lee makes no sense.

The Dai Lee should have kicked her ass.

Legato is a better villain than Knives. Earlier this week, I was thinking about how annoying it was that the Dai Li leader just disappeared after Azula beat him with a few sentence. He could have at least fought her or ended up being her bodyguard or something. He went out with a fizzle and then vanished.

The Fire Nation is by far my favorite part of the show, but Azula never registered with me. I'd even take Mai and Ty Lee over her any day.

As for Ozai, no real problem. He isn't especially interesting either, but he was never meant to be a well of personality. Mark Hamill gave him the range he needed to, and that was that.

Yeah, Ozai didn't need a character arc because he was the final villain and Zuko getting character development was more than enough anyway. I like how they just plain didn't understand why Ozai became anyway instead.

[LumRanmaYasha]

To be fair, Knives does come off as underwhelming compared to the more chilling Legato, despite having more fleshed out motivations.

He's certainly underwhelming in the anime, but he really is quite well-characterized and developed in the manga, which helps make his confrontation with Vash there way more meaningful.

Oh, god. Making a list for my favorite villains is so hard. It'll have to be a top ten, with one honorable mention. In a later post I'll explain my choices, but for now I'll just leave you with a picture and a short clip.

Honorable Mention:

Spoiler

CLIP: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9PFxIPmCsM

Victoream, from Zatch Bell!

[close]

And now for my Top Ten favorite villains:



CLIP: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfuDltug3oY (I wish there was a better clip up on Youtube, but alas  )
10. Captain Battleship, from Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo



CLIP: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rh8qgKoWKAA (Couldn't find a better clip...again  )
9. Poison Ivy, from Batman: The Animated Series


CLIP: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljKe-lg2qT0
8. Alex Rosewater, from The Big O



CLIP: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5F0z5nuBmw
7. Donquixote Doflamingo, from One Piece



CLIP: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PysRhr7-IlQ (this will have to do... )
6. Medusa, from Soul Eater



CLIP: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAao9QIbWUc
5. King Bradley (Wrath) from Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood



CLIP: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKEfoC4tvJg
4. The Joker, from the DCAU


CLIP: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGMkqbp8hAM
3. Shinobu Sensui, from Yu Yu Hakusho


CLIP: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqNksmIXUUg
2. Lex Luthor, from the DCAU

And my favorite villain is...


CLIP: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAtlla_G1Dg

1. Legato Bluesummers, from Trigun


As for my least favorite villains, only five in particular come into mind right now, and I'll explain why I hate them and might add on more to my list later:

5. The Penguin, in any animated incarnation of Batman
4. Ulquiorra, from Bleach
3. Ginjo, from Bleach
2. Aizen, from Bleach
1. Sauske, from Naruto and Naruto Shippuden