Well, I’m back again for another entry in this thought-provoking prompt series, and boy is this a challenging subject. Villainy in storytelling can be extremely subjective; when a villain’s motivations are known and their character reads as sympathetic, their status as an iconic, cackling villain doesn’t always pan-out. Yet if the character is a mustache-twirling baddie who does terrible things for no good reason whatsoever (beyond acting as something for the “good-guys” to battle against), that usually feels unsatisfying. It’s the rare character that fits the stereotypical “villain” mold and yet is still nuanced enough to be worth talking about. It’s a conundrum, to be honest.
The more I’ve thought about the “best” (worst?) anime villain, the more my mind has been tempted to go abstract. I don’t think I could narrow the concept down to one character anyway, and considering the types of series I tend to gravitate towards (slice-of-life stories, or character dramas), my selection pool isn’t that great to begin with. So I thought I’d use this as an opportunity to talk about something I’ve been meaning to for a while – toxic masculinity.