Heroes can’t stay in the spotlight all the time: the best anime also gives villains time to shine! Many of the best anime episodes are villain-focused, telling a story dedicated to one or more villains with no protagonist in sight. Even more fun are the times when an episode focuses on not just one villain, but an entire team of them, allowing fans to get a much better sense of the villains’ dynamics and relationships with each other. While it’s not always done, well, when it is, the result can leave viewers with a lot more sympathy for the antagonists.
The tones of these episodes can be extremely broad. Some of them can be funny, showing a previously intimidating villain relaxing and having fun in his free time. Others flesh out characters in the spotlight in the most heavy-handed way possible, perhaps showing a tragic backstory or revealing parts of their personality that they would never reveal to anyone, let alone the heroes. The best villain-focused episodes give fans a better understanding of who the heroes are up against and can even invoke sympathy despite the evil they represent.
10
Terror in Arlia
Dragon Ball Z Episode 11
Dragon Ball Z features some of the franchise’s most iconic villains and anti-heroes, notably Vegeta, who would become as much of a face of the franchise as Goku. But in his first few episodes, he and Nappa caused trouble before they even arrived on Earth. They are captured on Arlia to have a front-row seat to the planet’s turmoil, involving a tyrannical king, an Arlian-eating monster, and two lovers separated by the regime.
Vegeta and Nappa kill the king and free Arlia. Nappa reflects on how they became the planet’s heroes, but Vegeta, still light years away from his famous redemption arc in the latter parts of Dragon Ball Zdecides he’d rather just blow everything up. The episode’s dark comedy tone reaches its darkest point when Arlian’s estranged lovers finally reunite in its final seconds… just before Vegeta’s debut Galick Beam blows them and their entire world to pieces.
9
Gathering of the Fallen
Fullmetal Alchemist Episode 35
The lack of subsequent manga to adapt allowed the original 2003 adaptation of Fullmetal Alchemist to be freer with your character interpretations. This is especially true with regard to Homunculi, which, instead of originating directly from the villain, are the twisted results of human transmutation. Despite having the form and memories of the person to be resurrected, they will never fully be that person, causing pain to them and the alchemist who summoned them.
Unlike her manga incarnation, who died cursing Roy for killing her, the more Lust learns about her human life, the more she longs for death. Helping a village suffering from a fatal disease, while her fellow Homunculi want to destroy it in an experiment, brings back her memories of the alchemist who resurrected her. By the end of the episode, Lust is shaken enough for the seeds of rebellion to be planted within her for the first time since her rebirth.
8
Hol Cavalo and Boingo
JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure – Episode 53
While Yoshikage Kira’s solo episodes from The diamond is unbreakable, “Yoshikage Kira Wants to Live Quietly” and “Cats Love Yoshikage Kira” are strong candidates for the award for best villain episode of JoJo go for some much dumber people. Oingo and Boingo don’t exactly rank among Dio’s strongest or scariest minions in JoJo’s Bizarre Adventurebut they don’t know that. His truly sincere efforts to defeat the Stardust Crusaders are more foolish than actually harmful.
In “Oingo of Khnum and Boingo of Thoth”, the pair attempt to assassinate the heroes by poisoning their tea, planting a bomb in their car and disguising Oingo as Jotaro, which none of his friends notice. They achieve as much success and as many laughs as Wile E. Coyote hunting the Road Runner. Thanks to Thoth, the super-powered comic book, they even manage to change the show’s credits to their own style!
7
Clash in the Shadows: Marik Vs Bakura
Yu-Gi-Oh! Episodes 96 and 97
Most of the best duels in Yu-Gi-Oh! These are the heroes’ moments of victory (or, in very rare cases, of crushing defeat). However, this episode of the Battle City Arc is an exception to the rule. After planning the entire season in the background, Yami Bakura, Marik and Yami Marik put all their cards on the table in a duel with deadly stakes in one of the arc’s many two-part episodes.
Forced out by his worse half, the real Marik has no choice but to team up with Yami Bakura in an attempt to regain his body, in a partnership that was short-lived but interesting enough to hold fans’ attention for years. A brief fight with their Millennium Items emphasizes how ruthless the two duelists are before destroying each other’s souls with their Monsters, with an explosive finale courtesy of the Winged Dragon of Ra and its secret effects.
6
The Itachi Shinden Arc
Naruto Shippuden episodes 451-458
With the amount of character-centric filler and backstory episodes naruto is stocked, there are several types of villain episodes for you to choose from. It also has short arcs dedicated to some of the particularly important ones. Famously, Itachi Uchiha is not the villain he pretends to be, and his filler arc, “The True Story of Itachi: Book of Light and Darkness” lets his true personality shine: broken and grieving rather than cold and sadistic.
Despite his reasons being entirely different from public history, Itachi was still the one who massacred his clan and repeatedly turned his brother Sasuke’s mental health into fine dust. What led him to make such horrible choices was a childhood traumatized by war and violence, and his prodigious skill made him a tool for both village and clan. The shinobi world itself takes innocence and good intentions and turns them into brutality, and Itachi is far from its only victim.
5
Mr. Villain’s day off
Based on the manga by Yuu Morikawa
This amazing, laid-back anime takes the premise of these types of episodes and expands it into an entire series. Most shounen anime and tokusatsu TV shows (the latter of which this story is heavily based on) feature a team of rangers fighting to save the world from an evil, often alien or supernatural, organization. This is what the leader of one of these organizations does when he is off duty.
The General of the villainous forces is arrogant and intimidating on the battlefield. But outside of his armor, he is quiet, introspective, and slowly but surely falls in love with all that Earth and humanity have to offer, which he could never have dreamed of on his home world, despite his insistence of that all these things are just trophies. for when he conquers the planet, even the heroes recognize that their greatest enemy has a soft side.
4
My Villain Academy
My Hero Academia Episode 108
Fan favorite My Hero Academy League of Villains characters had their own dedicated arc in Season 5 of My hero academy. The gang of villains abused and abandoned by a hero-loving society aims to destroy that society, and their efforts make them the AU’s most powerful enemy. In this episode, they must test their strength against the Meta Liberation Army and another sect of All For One’s minions.
The challenges they face are quite interesting, especially with the Meta Liberation Army’s equally sympathetic motive of wanting freer use of oft-maligned Quirks in a world where your Quirk makes or breaks your entire life. But what really gets fans excited about this episode and its successors is how thoroughly the League tackles them, crushing every opponent in their path and showing what a truly massive threat they are to the protagonists.
3
Crisis in Tokyo
Lupine III Annual Special 10
Sometimes a lucky villain will receive not just one episode, but an entire annual special of attention. Inspector Zenigata is the most persistent enemy of professional thief Arséne Lupine III, and he usually can’t think of anything other than sending Lupine to prison. This particular adventure begins with Lupine and friends trying to steal the keys to find the Tokugawa shogunate’s hidden treasure, and one of anime’s best detectives trying to protect them.
The situation escalates out of control and Zenigata is suspended from the police force, teaming up with a psychic reporter to pursue the case vigilante style and facing off against an entire laboratory of secret super soldiers to take down the real culprit. The special showcases Zenigata’s most notable characteristics: his determination to surpass Lupine and, perhaps even more than that, his compassion and determination to protect those who need his help.
2
Chain of Sacrifice… Harribel’s Past
Bleach episode 284
Tier Harribel may be one of the scariest sharks in anime, but she is also one of the most pacifist of the Arrancar. Protective of her fellow Hollows and determined to create a more just world for them, Harribel lives up to the title of her story episode. She gathers followers of other forgotten Hollows, becoming strong enough to challenge even the most arrogant of her kind. and willing to accept the risk to her life she is taking to do so.
The most touching part of the episode is how deeply loyal Fracción de Harribel became to her, despite them insisting that they wouldn’t stick their necks out for anyone. They follow Harribel’s strict code of honor, and Harribel will eliminate anyone who threatens them without mercy. She is even willing to attack Aizen when he trivializes the lives of those under his command.
1
Stunned training
Episode 12 of the Pokémon Chronicles
As some of anime’s best comedic characters, Team Rocket is featured prominently in many episodes of the long-running series. Its best episode comes from Pokemon Chronicles, a whole spinoff telling the stories of the secondary characters while Ash is doing his thing in Hoenn. “Training Daze” is about Jessie, James and Meowth telling the story of how they joined Team Rocket and became partners.
At first, the trio didn’t get along after being assigned to a team. However, after going through a series of grueling tests and training missions together, they begin to become the close friends fans know and love from the main series, even willing to sacrifice themselves for their teammates instead of screw them. The focus on all three puts it above other Team Rocket episodes like “Go West, Young Meowth.”