While I haven’t watched every single anime or played every single video game, I’ve come to realize as I matured that for a memorable story the villian can be more important than the hero. Growing up we have been conditioned to accept most good vs evil stories as the villain wants to take over the world and the hero goes to stop them. Nothing really else to it. Then after hearing the villains plan, the hero finds a way to thwart it.
But long gone are the days were we take stories with surface level villains. We’ve graduated from this type of thinking. This might still work for those still young enough to watch shows like Power Rangers, where most of the conflict is resolved in the episode. The villain shows up, cause havoc around the city, the rangers show up, fight and lose to the new villain, regroup, and then use their Zords to finally take them down. This type of villain is fine for this type of show, as it doesn’t need to be any deeper.
When it comes to anime though, part of the great storytelling is having a great villain that you can sympathize with. This villain will make you think twice about whose side you really want to be on. The villain with the extreme but logical ideology like Stain from My Hero Academia or Garou from One Punch Man. When I was just barely into anime, characters like this use to frustrate me, because they were so different as villains and I didn’t want to agree with the villain. Of course I see things differently now, but that was still a process of maturing and consuming better stories.
I have a dream of writing my own anime. There are so many points to take away from these kind of villains. However I think the most important is that the better your villain, but more they can reveal about your hero. No one (except Dragon Ball Z fans) want a stagnant hero. Most people want to see how the hero develops and how she goes from being a novice to a master. As I see new anime come out and I have the opportunity to watch I will definitely be taking notes on all I’ve learned.
That’s all I got today! Peace!
Image by ErikaWittlieb from Pixabay
