It is not always pure strength that wins the day; occasionally, a little intelligence is required to outmatch brawn. As a result, when it comes to anime villains, the sharpest ones are always the most terrifying yet enthralling to watch. No matter how pumped up a hero is, it’s all for naught if they don’t have a plan to defeat their highly intelligent antagonist.
This list includes the smartest anime villains of all time. They aren’t just among the finest anime villains; they are antagonists who are constantly two steps ahead of their opponents, relishing their deadly game of wits. That’s not to claim these villains are unbeatable, but when faced with an impossible circumstance, they always manage to discover some minor element to exploit for victory.
Whether it’s preying on their sufferers’ vulnerable emotions or sacrificing as many pieces as required to declare checkmate, these cunning villains are a force to be reckoned with.
Sailor Galaxia – Sailor Moon
She was perhaps the most talented soldier in the entire universe, and she believed she was capable of containing Chaos within her own body. As the darkness descended, Galaxia may have realized that it wasn’t such a bad idea after all.
Galaxia was more than just a formidable combatant. She was also a meticulous strategist and an effective commander, so she came close to subjugating the entire galaxy. In the midst of all this painstaking planning, she forgot about the core of her own soul, which had taken the form of a child named Chibi-chibi and had journeyed to Earth in search of Sailor Moon’s protection.
Check Out: Best 90’s Anime You Should Watch Today
Father – Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood
The oldest homunculus known in history is Father, the true evil mastermind in Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. He commands his seven Homunculus children, all of whom are descendants of the vices he expelled from his body years ago. Father is a living and breathing Philosopher’s Stone, capable of violating all of alchemy’s rules and exceeding its bounds. He utilizes his vast knowledge to manipulate humanity for his own personal advantages, such as staging wars and the Genocide of Ishval, in order to become the world’s new God.
Check Out: 30 Most Popular Anime of All Time, According to My AnimeList Members
Dio Brando – JoJos Bizarre Adventure
They will not allow any moron to become a meme. Yes, everyone remembers the line “It was me, Dio!” from Season 1 of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. However, Dio Brando is more than just snatching a kiss from his stepbrother’s lover. Dio took the life of his alcoholic and abusive father as a child and spent the rest of his life abusing his younger stepbrother, Jonathan Joestar. His diabolical plan included becoming a vampire and hiring Jack the Ripper as a zombie henchman.
Check Out: 25 Best Beginner Anime on Netflix (Part 2)
Shinobu Sensui – Yu Yu Hakusho
Shinobu Sensui, Yusuke Urameshi’s predecessor, was the former acting spirit investigator chosen by Koenma to monitor the border between both the living and spirit worlds. Sensui was a valiant protector of humanity, gifted from an early age with heightened spiritual awareness, whose strength and charisma drew admiration from allies and foes alike. Sensui’s major flaws were his strong sense of justice and unwavering moral compass between good and wrong.
Sensui, who was obsessed with purpose, believed that humans were purer than demons, who by nature were regarded as scourges worthy of annihilation. That is until he observed the Feast of Human Vices, a bacchanalian event in which humans mistreat and take the lives of demons in the most heinous ways possible. Sensui snapped, taking the life of everyone in the room as his mind splintered as his guiding principle was upended. Sensui fled into seclusion, manifesting numerous split personalities, each with their own set of unique abilities, only to resurface years later as a key antagonist with a scheme to destroy the world he had sworn to safeguard.
Check Out: 22 Best Shounen Anime – The King Among Shonen
Muzan Kibutsuji -fallen angel Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba
Demon Slayer watchers understood Muzan was the real deal after witnessing his merciless and cold personality when annihilating the Lowerfallen angel Moons. He is not only the most powerfulfallen angel in existence, but he is also extremely intelligent and perceptive. This is reasonable given his age of approximately 1000 years. Nothing seems to bother him because he is fast at devising strategies. Furthermore, he is incredibly manipulative and crafty, making it nearly impossible to defeat him at his game.
Check Out: 25 of The Most Visually Stunning Anime Like Jujutsu Kaisen
Harry McDowell – Gungrave
Harry McDowell began as a low-level street hustler, squaring off in back alley brawls over pockets of territory and swindling paramours in order to bask in the glow of a fortune that had always escaped him. Smart, smart, and ambitious—Harry has always aspired to be more—he dreams of rising to the top and lifting those closest to him with him.
Check Out: 14 Gruesome Anime Like Berserk
Gendo Ikari – Neon Genesis Evangelion
We really do not see Gendo very often in Evangelion. Part of the drama of the story is that he is unable to have interactions with other humans, notably his kid. Although he is always an unsavory character, the audience is led to believe that he is, at most, an aloof genius and that the Angels are his true adversaries.
It isn’t until the end of the series that we discover Gendo was the supreme puppet master the entire time, manipulating all the threads from the start, 15 years after the First Impact. His brains eventually get the best of him. He believes he has perfected his human-angel clone, Ayanami Rei, until she states that “she doesn’t belong to him,” and neither does the power of creation.
Check Out: 30 Of The Best Mecha Anime
Naraku – Inuyasha
Naraku, the main adversary in Inuyasha, is a shape-shifting half-demon. He is the offspring of a human who struck a bargain with multiple demons. Naraku took over the human body and suppressed the man’s awareness in order to pursue his own goals. The half-demon exudes evil, and he will never hesitate to exploit someone for his own advantage.
Check Out: 9 Of The Best Anime InuYasha
Meruem – Hunter x Hunter
Meruem, as King of the Chimera Ants, is a fearsome anime villain-and a clever one at that. He can learn new things at breakneck speed and excels at strategic games. In just ten matches, he can master any type of board game. And don’t forget, he’s just a year old!
Check Out: 9 Of The Best Anime InuYasha
Makoto Shishio – Rurouni Kenshin
If you ask a Rurouni Kenshin fan what their favorite tale from the anime is, chances are they’ll choose the Kyoto Arc. This tale arc is so captivating because it features Shishio Makoto, a mummified swordsman who survived a fiery assassination at the hands of the Meiji government. His recipe for evil included not just pointless killings but also carrying out a political attack that would bring down Japanese regimes.
Shishio, unlike other villains, had a solid reason for leaving combat to his crazy army: his lack of sweat glands meant he could only fight for 15 minutes before his body temperature rose to lethal levels and he combusted.
Check Out: 20 Of The Best Anime Sword Fights To Watch
Johan Liebert – Monster
Johan Liebert is a young, beautiful, and very intelligent man who knows how to influence others in order to achieve his goals. Johan’s razor-sharp mind and dark heart are all he requires. He may persuade anyone to lose one’s life in his name or drive them to taking their own lives by depriving them of all reason to live. It is not surprising given how he was raised to be the next Adolf Hitler. Johan has little regard for human life, merely stating a wish to be the last person standing when the earth burns.
Yubaba – Spirited Away
Yubaba is a character who appears to have complete control over everything. She is not just a formidable witch, but she is also the manager of a vast spirit bathhouse and the surrounding stores and restaurants designed to accommodate the visiting gods. As the narrative progresses, we learn that Yubaba has a sinister grip on her employees, binding them to her service with tricks and magical spells.
This all appears to be extremely brilliant until the honest and tenacious Chihiro shows up and exposes her deception. Instead of becoming simply another mindless employee, Chihiro assists in the release of Yubaba’s most faithful slaves and enlists the assistance of the witch’s twin sister Zeniba in defeating the bathhouse’s boss.
Check Out: 21 of The Best Anime for Kids
Dante – Full Metal Alchemist
The manga is significantly different, but in the original Full Metal Alchemist anime from 2003, we discovered that nice old shut-in Dante was the ultimate evil all along. She developed the majority of the homunculi and others she groomed to do her bidding.
She had several tremendous created-humans doing her bidding during the height of her power, which seems like a good strategy, but that’s exactly how things went wrong. Gluttony is changed to his baser instincts so he can consume Eduard and the Philosopher’s Stone he’s carrying, but the monster turns on her and eats her instead.
Sibyl System – Psycho-Pass
The Sibyl System is the status quo in Psycho-Pass. The Sibyl System, an autonomous computer network that assesses each individual’s susceptibility to criminal intent, serves as the ruling authority of 22nd-century Japan, managing all administrative and judicial responsibilities across the country. Though promoted as a perfect, unbiased A.I. designed to improve the lives of all members of its society, the Sibyl System is in actuality a digital hive-mind of sociopaths who, existing independently from the system’s judgment, see themselves as the system’s vital purveyors. There’s something to be said about a society controlled by takers of lives, inflicting their collective cruelty on an unsuspecting public under the guise of not only neutrality but empathy.
Check Out: 40 Of The Best Psychological Anime That Will Mess With Your Head
Yurimaru – Ninja Scroll
Genma was the leader of the Eight Devils of Kimon, but his first lieutenant was the cunning and lethal Yurimari. Yurimari’s special skill centered around his capacity to generate and conduct electricity with a simple line of thread. It was elegant, lethal, and allowed him to stay informed on the other devils while dispatching his sufferers quickly.
Unfortunately, Yurimari was not as wise as he should have been in keeping his professional abilities apart from his personal life. Out of petty jealousy, he dispatches one of his own allies and is completely unprepared when another does the same to him.
Griffith – Berserk
Despite his lack of riches, prestige, or tremendous physical power, Griffith was able to turn his mercenary company, the Band of the Hawk, into a respectable army recognized by the monarch. How did he manage to do that? He is, after all, a superb military strategist as well as a deft and charming leader. Despite the awful things he’s done, his knack for manipulating everyone else to the point of idolization is part of what makes him such an appealing villain.
Check Out: 14 Gruesome Anime Like Berserk
Yagami Light – Note
As the old adage goes, “the road to the nether region is paved with good intentions.” Light Yagami was a boring high school student until he discovered the Note. If you write a name in a notepad and draw a picture of that person’s face, they will lose one’s life in 30 seconds. Yagami may have had good intentions when he first started using the Note to eradicate the world of evil, but as the story went on, he devolved into a cold and calculated serialtaker of lives with a Messiah complex.
It wasn’t just Light’s employment of the Note that made him such a terrible adversary. For years, Light was able to keep his true identity hidden from the police while planning unfathomable ways to take the life of everyone who came close to the truth.
Check Out: 9 Must Watch Anime After You Finished Note
Gaku Yashiro – Erased
Gaku Yashiro is an elementary school teacher with a shady past. What makes him so disturbing is that he appears quite normal and kind on the surface. Yashiro, who is fascinated by human psychology, learns how to lure very young girls into circumstances where he may take their lives. He discovers the delight of taking the life of children and framing others at a young age. Yashiro has been on a taking the life of rampage for over two decades, and no one is the wiser. He even advances to high political office while maintaining a positive public image.
Check Out: 13 Anime Like Erased: Must Watch Anime If You Love Erased
Sosuke Aizen – Bleach
Sosuke Aizen is playing 3D chess with a regular chess board while the other Souls Reapers are playing tic-tac-toe. It took Aizen a hundred years to devise the ideal strategy for overthrowing the Soul Society. He spent his time acquiring information and recruiting suitable persons for the job. He drowned his erstwhile friends in theories and paranoia, causing them to battle amongst themselves long before they became suspicious of him.
He faked his own by hypnotizing the eyewitnesses to see what he intended them to see. Even without his hypnotic powers, Aizen easily dispatched Ichigo and the other Soul Reapers once the horrible truth was revealed.
Check Out: 15 Of The Best Anime Like Bleach
Laughing Man – Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex
The Laughing Man is not to be taken lightly. The Laughing Man, easily the most iconic villain from the Ghost in the Shell anime series, is a corporate terrorist hacker who is madly in love with J. D. Salinger’s literary work, most notably his renowned novel, The Catcher in the Rye.
The Laughing Man’s hacking abilities are unfathomable. He has the ability to hijack numerous live streams at the same time, as well as cybernetic brains and pupils. Because he was able to access any footage of himself and substitute his portrait with his trademark smiling logo, The Laughing Man’s secret identity remained hidden for so long. Section 9 was so taken with The Laughing Man’s hacking abilities that they offered him a job, which he respectfully declined.
Check Out: 50 Of The Best Female Anime Characters Of All Time [ Updated 2021 ]
Shougo Makishima – Psycho-Pass
Shogo Makishima is simply a self-assured humanist who adores dystopian fiction and the overthrow of Japanese civilization. Makishima is undoubtedly a troubled young man preoccupied with reintroducing individual thought into the futuristic world of Psycho-Pass. He will resort to any brutal methods necessary to achieve his goal. While Makishima’s charisma is appealing, his obsession with the worst qualities of humanity causes him to be a disturbed individual.
The Major – the nether regionsing Ultimate
The Major from the nether regionsing Ultimate is a well-dressed connoisseur of war who graduated from Adolf Hitler’s School of Dictatorship. To say the Major enjoys battle is an understatement. Victory means nothing to him; all he wants is a lengthy, bloody conflict rife with and destruction. He launched a terrorist strike on London, taking the life of three million people solely to eliminate his vampiric enemy, Alucard.
Check Out: Top 20 Vampire Anime Of All Time
Izaya Orihara – Durarara!!
Izaya Orihara’s affection for humanity is akin to a snake’s desire to swallow living mice. He’s a devilishly cunning con artist who delights in putting his sufferers in perilous circumstances to see how they react. You won’t see him on the frontlines since he’ll be watching the pandemonium from afar. With his mocking personality, Orihara knows exactly which buttons to press. He also has the ability to charm people when necessary.
Isabella – The Promised Neverland
Isabella (AKA Mama) is the principal caregiver at Grace Field House, and she hides a horrific secret and identity: she raises orphans at Grace Field just to sell them as food for the demons. Her extraordinary intellect is part of what makes her such an interesting and terrifying adversary. It’s no wonder that she’s constantly one step ahead of the trio, as the lady responsible for creating and nurturing such great minds as Norman, Ray, and Emma. Isabella’s struggle with the main trio was a mind-blowing battle of wits that matched Note’s Light Yagami and L.
Check Out: 13 Dark Anime Like The Promised Neverland
Dr. Tenma – Astroboy
Negligent and absent fathers are prevalent in all kinds of anime, but particularly in the “shonen” type of action-adventure and martial arts-focused shows. Dr. Tenma, by virtue of his seniority, ranks among the most despicable and horrifying fathers worthy of condemnation in anime. Tenma, a great scientist, and robotics engineering pioneer, is the creator and “father” of Atom, or “Astro,” the titular protagonist of Osamu Tezuka’s seminal 1980 manga and anime series of the same name. Tenma, in the depths of despair after his son Tobio is took the life of in a car accident, pours the whole total of his anguish and ingenuity into resurrecting him in the shape of a robot, Atom, whom he subsequently adopts and raises as his own. However, after several seemingly happy years together, Tenma becomes disheartened and resentful that the boy robot, no matter how advanced his intelligence and empathy, could never grow or age like a real child, thus serving as a painful reminder of Tenma’s own inability to fill the void left by his son’s .
Nakamura – Ghost In The Shell
Here’s one that’s simple to overlook because the film purposefully misleads the audience into believing the enemy is somewhere else. The majority of the novel leads us to assume that the Puppet Master is the evil guy and that the characters representing the police, particularly Section 9, are the good ones.
When the Puppet Master reveals himself to be a sentient life form produced by the government, the tables are turned. The Major comes to the conclusion that the government’s political arm, Section 6, commanded by a corrupt representative named Nakamura, was not only the mastermind behind the Puppet Master’s creation but had also been using Section 9 to do their dirty job and cover it up. The worst that can happen to him is a forced resignation, which is characteristic of a failed political power move.
Alphard Alshua – Canaan
Alphard Alshua is more than simply a gorgeous face in a crowd. She is the commander of Snake, the terror group responsible for the Shinjuku and Shanghai confrontations. She appears dispassionate to the outer world, yet she understands how to manipulate such feelings for her own benefit.
When it comes to her archenemies, Canaan, on the other hand, Alphard is preoccupied with proving to her that anger is the only power that matters.
Alphard will try to corrupt Canaan’s pure spirit in whatever way she can, both physically and mentally.
Kyubey – Puella Magi Madoka Magic
Kyubey is a cat-like being with high technology that serves as an incubator. The incubators’ answer to the entropy problem is to open up the universe’s closed system by channeling a renewable supply of energy from outside of the universe back into our own. This energy is generated by emotion, and because Kyubey’s species is incapable of feeling emotion, they set out to find a species that can. In Madoka Magica’s fiction, the species is mankind, more specifically adolescent human girls. The incubator’s solution is to enter into contracts with young girls, granting their “wishes” in exchange for them becoming “magical girls,” pitting them against “witches,” and ivating their emotions to be harvested as energy.
Check Out: 30 Best Magic Anime Full Of Sorcery, Enchantments, And Spells
Frieza – Dragon Ball Z
Frieza isn’t the most intelligent villain on our list, but he thinks he is. Granted, most of Freiza’s brainpower stems from his own superiority mentality, but being a clumsy oaf doesn’t exactly qualify you to be the master of the universe. He’s articulate and clearly has some deep thought processes. He’s one of the new bad guys in Dragonball Z who isn’t just taking the life of machines of pure evil, and he’s important to Goku’s past; therefore, he’s the series’ primary villain.
Frieza’s confidence in his own abilities is exaggerated, as he boasts, lashes out in panic, and creates his own enemies. He destroyed Planet Vegeta in response to the Super Saiyan tale, almost as a mocking attempt to assuage his own paranoia. As a result, the survivors, most notably the series’ hero, Goku, vowed vengeance.
Check Out: 22 Of The Best Anime Duos Of All Time
Medusa Gorgon – Soul Eater
Based on the brutal punishments she inflicted on her kid, Crona, so that the progeny may become the ultimate taking the life of machine, Medusa Gorgon could win the prize for Worst Mother of the Year for nearly a decade. Medusa is a cold and manipulative woman, yet she has feelings. There is some remorse for mistreating her kid, but Medusa only shows her motherly love when Crona comes to complete their psychotic change.
Kabuto Yakushi – Naruto
Kabuto Yakushi appears to be a harmless four-eyed ninja at first glance. In actuality, Kabuto is a wolf disguised as a sheep. He’s a spy for Orochimaru, acquiring information for his boss. He investigates Sasuke as a possible new host for Orochimaru and plays a key role in launching the attack of the Hidden Leaf Village.
Check Out: 12 Of The Best Anime Like Naruto & Naruto: Shippuden
So, there you have it, anime fans. 30 smartest villains in anime history. With the list above, we hope you were able to see that intelligence is a really important factor in anime villains. This may not be a complete list, so don’t send your zombie minions out just yet. We know there are other smart anime characters out there and would love for you to share which ones they are with us!
