Why Modern Anime Villains Are Becoming More Interesting Than the Heroes

The Take

Anime villains are not automatically becoming better characters than heroes, but they are increasingly receiving the more interesting dramatic assignment. Heroes often begin with a moral position they must defend. Antagonists get to challenge that position, expose its contradictions and force the plot to move. In modern anime, they are also more likely to receive point-of-view scenes, intimate relationships, ideological arguments and elaborate histories—tools once reserved mainly for protagonists.

That shift has changed audience expectations. A villain who commits atrocities simply because they are evil can now be dismissed as shallow unless charisma, menace or thematic purpose fills the gap. Viewers increasingly want to know what broke this person, which institution failed them or what belief makes their actions logical from inside their own worldview. Put bluntly, many fans now expect villains to arrive with a fancy backstory and a good reason.

Otaku Insider’s take: that expectation has improved anime storytelling, but it has also created a trap. Explanation is valuable; absolution is not. A tragic childhood can deepen a villain, yet it cannot automatically excuse murder, abuse or mass violence. The most compelling antagonists make us understand their choices without demanding that we approve of them.

The Evidence

First, it helps to separate an antagonist from a villain. An antagonist opposes the protagonist; villainy is a moral judgment. That distinction matters in stories such as Attack on Titan: Final Season and Death Note, where the central perspective does not reliably belong to the most morally defensible person. When protagonists themselves cross ethical lines, the audience must evaluate competing objectives instead of simply identifying the designated good and bad sides.

Research supports the idea that viewers can identify with morally complicated antagonists. A peer-reviewed experiment involving 140 participants found that identification with such characters can occur and may influence attitudes beyond the story. The study also found a gender-specific difference involving when immoral information was revealed, although that limited result should not be generalized to every fan. Separate research into the appeal of dark fictional characters found that moral concerns, imaginative resistance and personality all affect audience preferences. In other words, there is no universal villain formula.

The clearest anime case study is the broader world of My Hero Academia. Its villains are not merely obstacles to be defeated; they are evidence introduced against the society its heroes protect. Shigaraki, Toga, Dabi and Twice are given personal needs and social grievances alongside their destructive choices. By My Hero Academia Final Season, the conflicts are structured as intimate pairings: Deku confronts Shigaraki, Ochaco faces Toga, and Shoto must reckon with Dabi. These battles ask whether saving someone means defeating them, understanding them or somehow doing both.

Popularity data does not prove that villains have overtaken heroes, but it demonstrates their substantial appeal. VIZ’s report on a 2019 Japanese character poll placed Shigaraki sixth and Toga ninth. In the English-language results reported alongside it, Dabi placed 11th, with Shigaraki, Overhaul, Toga, All For One and Twice also appearing. Polls are snapshots of participating readers rather than universal measurements, yet those placements show that antagonists are not peripheral curiosities. They can compete for attention with the heroic cast.

The reason is agency. Villains initiate crises, uncover hidden rules and force irreversible decisions. Heroes frequently react. An antagonist can therefore feel more dynamic even when the hero remains more likable. Shigaraki’s journey, for example, combines physical transformation, ideological development and escalating control over the plot. A morally stable hero must work harder to appear equally unpredictable.

Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Entertainment District Arc shows both the power and the danger of the tragic-backstory model. Daki and Gyutaro become more than visually striking enemies when their shared human suffering is revealed. A favorable 2022 review argued that their history made the conclusion more meaningful despite the recognizable sympathy formula. Their bond also mirrors the heroic sibling relationship at the center of the conflict, turning the battle into a clash between two possible outcomes of devotion under brutal circumstances.

However, the technique becomes less effective when the explanation arrives as an emotional receipt presented immediately before a villain’s death. A 2025 critique of the larger Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba formula argued that deathbed flashbacks can interrupt pacing and manufacture sympathy too mechanically. Both reactions can be true: the method is powerful when the backstory transforms our understanding of present behavior, but exhausting when tragedy is used as a substitute for development.

Jujutsu Kaisen Season 2 offers a useful contrast within one story. Geto’s radicalization is compelling because it unfolds through disillusionment, exhaustion and an increasingly absolutist answer to suffering. His ideology is horrifying, but the progression is legible. Other antagonistic figures generate interest through cruelty, confidence or unpredictability rather than pleas for forgiveness. In a March 2021 VIZ reader poll for Jujutsu Kaisen, Sukuna ranked ninth, Toji tenth, Geto 12th, Choso 13th and Mahito 15th. Sympathy clearly was not the only route to popularity.

Then there is Reze, whose appeal demonstrates how porous the protagonist-antagonist boundary has become. Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc presents her as a threat, an exploited weapon, an emotional connection and a person imagining another life. The film opened in Japan on September 19, 2025; its official site later reported more than 6.55 million admissions and ¥10 billion in Japan over its first 103 days. Those figures do not prove audiences attended solely for Reze, but the film’s identity and emotional structure were built around an antagonist functioning as co-lead rather than a disposable boss.

This is the modern advantage villains possess: contradiction. They can be sincere and manipulative, victimized and dangerous, loving and cruel. A straightforward hero may have fewer permissions because the audience expects moral consistency. The villain is allowed to surprise us.

The Counterargument

There is an obvious objection: complicated villains are not new. Hunter x Hunter, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood and Psycho-Pass all demonstrate different ways antagonists can carry philosophical or emotional weight. Earlier anime also understood that an enemy could be a mirror, a rival or the product of a broken system. What has changed is less the existence of complexity than its frequency, visibility and status as an audience expectation.

It is also wrong to insist that every villain needs trauma. Some antagonists work because they are terrifyingly direct. They need intelligible desires, behavioral consistency and meaningful pressure on the hero—not necessarily a childhood flashback. Sukuna’s appeal is rooted substantially in presence, predatory confidence and unpredictability. All For One can function as possessive control made human. Neither requires viewers to decide that cruelty was secretly justified.

Creator comments reinforce this distinction. Hirohiko Araki’s villain-writing guidance emphasizes the structural importance of powerful opposition rather than prescribing mandatory sympathy. Kohei Horikoshi has likewise discussed creating histories that he intentionally left unstated, allowing implication to stimulate the audience’s imagination. A fancy backstory can therefore be less effective than one revealing detail.

The real audience demand is not always give the villain a good reason. It is give the villain a reason that is dramatically coherent. Fans may reject an antagonist whose actions feel arbitrary, but they can also reject a tragic explanation that arrives too late or tries too aggressively to erase responsibility. Understanding should complicate judgment, not switch it off.

Heroes also remain essential. A great antagonist cannot sustain a story if the protagonist has no meaningful answer. Villains pose the question; heroes reveal the work’s values through their response. When the villain seems more interesting, that may indicate impressive antagonist writing—or expose that the hero has been written as a moral slogan rather than a changing human being.

The Conclusion

Anime villains steal the spotlight when they possess more agency, mystery and ideological friction than the heroes opposing them. Modern storytelling increasingly equips antagonists with protagonist-level development, while audiences have grown accustomed to motives rooted in trauma, discrimination, exploitation or failed institutions. That expectation can create unforgettable characters, but it can also produce compulsory sympathy and predictable last-minute flashbacks.

The best villains do not need the fanciest past. They need a clear dramatic purpose, a coherent desire and enough contradiction to challenge both the hero and the audience. Their history should explain the road they traveled without declaring every destination morally acceptable.

Otaku Insider’s take: villains are not becoming inherently more interesting than heroes. They are becoming more interesting whenever writers let them ask harder questions than the heroes are prepared to answer. The conversation worth having is not whether fans should like villains, but what kind of understanding a story asks us to extend—and where each viewer believes that understanding must end.