![]() ![]() Here is where the story diverges: instead of meeting and befriending the mad priest Abbé Faria, Dantes instead forges a blood pact with demonic Gankutsuou, offering up his body and soul as its host in exchange for granting him the wealth and means through which to enact his revenge. Branded a conspirator, Dantes is condemned to a lifetime sentence in the hellish pits of the Château d’If. Edmond Dantes, accomplished sailor and fiancee of Mercédès Mondego, is betrayed by his close friends and stripped of his title and assets. Mahiro Maeda and Shuichi Kouyama’s 2004 anime is an inspired take on Dumas’ original a science-fiction drama rendered in a style of gilded psychedelia worthy of Gustav Klimt. A classic of french adventure literature, the novel has gone on to inspire over forty screen adaptations since it was first serialized in 1844, each of them reenacting Edmond Dantes’ sordid odyssey of love, betrayal, perseverance and revenge. The Count of Monte Cristo is one of Alexandre Dumas’ most celebrated works, and for good reason. Series: Gankutsuou: The Count of Monte Cristo (2004) If you haven’t watched these anime yet and are skittish regarding “spoilers,” bookmark this for later and come back when you’re finished watching. ![]() One final preface: In order to meaningfully discuss the merits of these characters, this list will contain key revelatory details concerning these villains’ actions, motives, and conclusions. Ultimately, the purpose of this list is not only to rank some of the most iconic and inimitable malefactors in all of anime but to interrogate, tangentially if not directly, what the concept of “evil” and its depiction means with relation to these series and films. And finally, “Quintessential Sociopaths” refer to those villains who represent some of the most heinous, malevolent, and unsettlingly “intimate” acts of cruelty and barbarism depicted in the canon of anime. “Existential Antagonists” refer to those villains whose very existence or ideology poses a severe conflict of conscience or psychological challenge to their heroic counterparts. “Archetypal Adversaries” are those villains whose appearances and arcs within their respective series represent not only a milestone in anime’s aesthetic maturation as a medium, but to the medium’s growing intersections within a broader literary context and cinematic lineage beyond anime. With that in mind, here are our three categories. In the interest of curating a more holistic and fair-handed representation of anime’s greatest villains, we’ve limited the pool of inductees to one villain per series or film. ![]() Instead, for the purposes of this list, we’re going to break down these villains from a personality-focused perspective, divided into three categories based on their place not only in the medium of anime, but in the larger scope of literary and pop cultural significance. Speculative comparisons of hypothetical power levels have no bearing on the rankings of these villains, as those traits, while memorable to audiences worldwide, are ultimately superfluous to the qualities which make these characters so fascinating in the first place. There are many, many lists of what could be considered the “top” villains in the canon of anime.Īnd while those other lists might go about the task of ranking anime’s most nefarious adversaries by what could be basically boil down to a popularity contest, we’ve gone about our approach to this a bit differently. Villains serves not only as the catalyst for a hero’s journey, pushing them to the peak of their potential by way of their own devious ambitions, but often represent the core thematic message at the heart of a series or film by way of their ideological opposition to the protagonist. With so much of anime being heavily focused on coming-of-age stories centered within action-adventure premises, it’s no wonder that villains are often some of the most widely recognized and, curiously enough, celebrated characters in anime fandom. This is as true for anime as for any other form of entertainment, but especially in the case of anime. ![]()
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