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Tragic Villain / Anime & Manga

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Tragic Villain in anime and manga.

  • Adolf Kaufman from Adolf. He was forced to go to Adolf Hitler Schule and became a true Nazi who killed without compassion. He crossed the Moral Event Horizon, which made him lose his friends and family. He realized at the end of the war that what he did was useless, but it was really too late for him to have any chance of rehabilitation.
  • Nike, The Ax-Crazy Dragon to Air Gear's Big Bad, fits this. While he's a mostly unrepentant jerkass who kicks the dog often and balances over the Moral Event Horizon, he does generate some sympathy. He's been used as a weapon for most of his life by the brother he looks up to and one of the characters harmed most by Nike even states that his brother kept him isolated from everything that could have dulled his edge. As a result, his life gradually lost all meaning outside of killing to achieve victory in battle. When he finally realizes how close everything that could have given him a normal life was, he seems to lament the fact that the other Gravity Children could have given his life meaning instead of just his bastard of a brother. However, he feels that even if he's finally realized this, he's come too far and that there is no way he would be able to live a normal life. The way the scene plays out, it makes it feel like he's a slave to his own need for victory.
  • Seryu "Ubiquitous" from Akame ga Kill! is an Axe-Crazy member of the Jaegers who believes the corrupt Empire is on the side of "Justice" and any who opposes it is evil without exceptions, and will often slaughter supposed criminals with a Slasher Smile and Evil Laugh. However, a look at her past paints a much different story than many of the series' generic villains. Her father who was part of the Imperial Police and the one who brought up in her a strong fixation upon "Justice" met his end at hands of revolutionaries, causing Seryu's extreme thirst for punishing evildoers. Her mentor and superior, Captain Ogre, who she highly respected was undeservedly (in her mind) killed by Night Raid that causing her lust for revenge. And Dr. Stylish, the one who to implant weapons into her body in order to make her stronger and who seem to be cared about her (when in reality, he just saw her as a willing experiment subject), also was killed by Night Raid that only accelerated her Sanity Slippage. Even Mine, the one who swears vengeance on Seryu for killing her best friend Sheele (and ultimately succeeds in killing her), admits to feeling some shred of sympathy for her before they fight to the death.
  • Calon, one of the two antagonists in the 1988 Appleseed OVA, is a tragic figure (contrasting his counterpart, who is just a anti-bioroid terrorist, driven to hate the supposed utopia of Olympus after his wife was Driven to Suicide by her belief that it was actually a Gilded Cage — and the bioroid governers kidnapping him and subjecting him to invasive Mind Probes to try and discover why his wife killed herself probably didn't help. Around the film's midpoint, he gives a lecture to the OVA's protagonists that, in hindsight, is a stealth Motive Rant, commenting on how the computer-controlled environment of Olympus, where all basic needs are dispensed by the government, is unnatural and antithetical to the basic human need to struggle and challenge themselves, and that only the bioroids, genetically engineered with reduced emotional output and lowered aggressiveness who make up 80% of the population, are actually "built" for such a life.
  • Attack on Titan uses this to twist the knife for both the audience and the characters themselves.
    • The Warriors, responsible for much of the death and destruction in the series, are ultimately proven to be incredibly tragic figures once their motivations are revealed. Reiner, Bertolt, and Annie were born in the nation of Marley, a military dictatorship that has oppressed and imprisoned their people in internment camps for the last century. Their parents were convinced to enlist their children in a Tyke Bomb program, having been promised better treatment in exchange for their children taking on a mission to "save the world". After a decade of harsh training and brainwashing, they were deployed on the mission to destroy the Walls with their families held as collateral to ensure their loyalty. Though they became close to their classmates over the years and realized they had been lied to, their fear of their superiors and belief the destruction of Paradis couldn't be avoided left them unable to defy their orders. By the time they were defeated, all three were traumatized and overwhelmed with self-hatred over their crimes.
  • Berserk subverts this with most of the demonic Apostles, the main villains of the series, were once humans who made a Deal with the Devil during a moment of ultimate despair, but due to their horrific actions they come across as completely unsympathetic. The only straight examples so far are the Count, Rosine, and the Egg of the Perfect World.
  • In B.Ichi, the Clowns must respect a specific condition in exchange for their power, or they will lose "something precious within them" (like "friendship"). Some conditions are rather harmless (like "eating only dried food"). Emine's condition is… not. He must commit "one evil deed a day", which prevented him from getting along with normal humans, as much as he wanted to. He ends up so desperate that several years later, he is determined to kill Showtaro and destroy the world. How did all this end? Who knows…
  • Hansel and Gretel from Black Lagoon. Make no mistake, they're Creepy Twins and are utterly despicable little monsters, but they have a DAMN good reason to be the way they are. Born in Romania and orphaned as infants, they fell into an orphanage which was eventually seized by the Romanian Mafia due to communism the country perpetuated, leaving them in the hands of psychopathic and sadistic killers and extortionists. From a disturbingly young age, they were forced to participate in disgusting paedophilic snuff films where they were forced to kill other children or be raped on screen, years of which turned them into sadistic, remorseless little psychos themselves. The two developed a sexual/romantic relationship, but while it is Squick to the maximum, it was their way of coping with the insane amount of trauma they fostered as children. The poor kids never experienced a moment of genuine kindness in their miserable lives. Their deaths are treated as justified, but also with the sympathy they deserve, with Rock himself mourning them for the victims they were.
  • The villains of Cardcaptor Sakura fall into this.
    • Eriol Hiiragizawa, aka the reincarnated Clow Reed, performs Necessary Evil to motivate Sakura into transforming the Clow Cards into Sakura Cards or they will lose their magic. The degree of his magic disturbances vary, but sometimes he has outright put Sakura and her friends in mortal peril. This nearly included drowning Sakura's friend Rika in a swimming pool (which he subtly apologised for) and ended up pushing Sakura too far when she tried to use the powerful Time Card in the middle of a blizzard. He doubles as a Well-Intentioned Extremist to ensure his creations survive beyond Clow Reed's magic, leading to Sakura realising Yue was fading away.
    • The sorceress in the first movie was imprisoned in another dimension by Clow Reed, who was her lover and taught her magic. She spent centuries trapped, unable to escape, and unaware Clow had died and she herself later on. Eventually learning the truth from Sakura, the sorceress dissolves into water and passes away.
    • The Nothing Card in the second movie. Her purpose is to act as a counterbalance to all the positive magic of the other Clow Cards with only negative energy, but she was so powerful that Clow Reed trapped her beneath his house for centuries with no connection to her friends. When she escapes, the Nothing steals the other cards one by one, but it causes parts of Sakura's hometown to disappear. Sakura then learns the only way to capture the Nothing is to sacrifice her feelings towards the person she loves most, aka Syaoran Li. When Sakura finally confronts the Nothing, she breaks down in tears, revealing just how lonely she has been, encouraging Sakura to sympathise with her and invite her to join her friends rather than catch her by force. As for the required sacrifice, a nameless card Sakura created through her love at the end of the series performs a Deus ex Machina, fusing with the Nothing Card to negate the effects of her capture and becomes The Hope Card, allowing both Sakura and Syaoran to maintain their feelings.
  • Accelerator from A Certain Magical Index is this at the beginning and after his Heel–Face Turn. He is desperately trying to make up for his very heavy sins.
  • In Code Geass, either Lelouch or Suzaku or both could apply for this: They've both done morally dubious things in the hope for a better world, they've both demonstrated a great deal of regret and guilt over what they've done, and yet they both feel that they have no other choice but to continue down their current path.
    • Continue, nothing. It is their tragedy that makes them start walking on that path in the first place - it is only after accepting that they have no choice but to walk the morally dubious path that they truly do things that would be regarded as villainy.
    • Mao may count as well, since the reason why he's a villain stems from the Geass he received at the age of six. Unlike most examples, though, he doesn't seem to be aware that he's evil.
    • For that matter, if one is to consider C.C. (the one who gave Mao and Lelouch their Geass) a villain, then she also qualifies, as she was an innocent girl who was tricked into inheriting the power of Geass and immortality.
  • Prince Richter of Daimos is one of the more honorable Balmlings, but he became extremely embittered against humans after he thought they murdered his father in cold blood, and his own pride as a Balmling did not allow him to seek compromise. Not helping his case was that any humans he encountered tends to be ones that are hostile, led by Miwa, which made him conclude that Humans Are Bastards. He was proven wrong about humans in the last episode, in addition of finding out that his regent was the one who killed his father. Out of shame of everything he did, he made a Heroic Sacrifice and left his sister Erika to lead their people (also, he knew that peace wouldn't come as long as he lived, because he's the face of the Earth invasion and not every Earthlings are going to forgive him, which may ignite another war.)
  • Digimon Adventure 02 has not just one, but two:
    • The Digimon Emperor at first acts like a total Jerkass and Insufferable Genius, treating his conquest of the Digital World like a game and showing no remorse for the cruelties he inflicts- until he reveals that he thought Digimon were "just" data, and the revelation that he was torturing living creatures breaks him. In "Genesis of Evil", we learn that Ken has a ton of issues stemming from his resentment and love for his genius older brother who died long ago. The reason he threw himself into the "Evil Emperor" schtick was to escape the feeling of loss from Osamu's death.
    • Yukio Oikawa at first seems like a perfect Man Behind the Man, orchestrating the events of the series to suit his own purposes. But his Freudian Excuse is that he was aware of the Digital World ever since childhood, and has been trying to find a way of accessing it, even though he was never made a Chosen Child. The loss of the only friend he had who shared this goal didn't help, and made him the Unwitting Pawn of Myotismon.
  • Beelzemon from Digimon Tamers is an almost-perfect example. He's pretty sympathetic for the first few episodes, given the events that drove him to villainy, especially since he didn't do anything in those episodes except ride around on his Cool Bike. Then came Episode 36, and he completely lost any sympathy both the audience and the characters had for him...until he was shown wandering aimlessly a few episodes later, so shocked, horrified and disgusted with himself that he tries to commit Suicide by Cop.
    • Also he subverts this trope. He's genuinely surprised when Renamon saves his life and offers him a second chance, and actually turns her offer down since he thinks death is all he deserves. After some persuasion on her part, he relents and becomes a Reformed, but Rejected atoner, although he still doesn't think he can nor deserves to be redeemed.
  • In Digimon Ghost Game, the various Digimon fought by the heroes are all Trapped in Another World, with the majority wanting to coexist with humans but not knowing how to.
  • Dragon Ball:
    • Androids 17 and 18. Before they became cyborgs, they were two teenagers who were kidnapped and used by Dr. Gero as experiments.
    • Vegeta was used by Frieza as a hostage and then had his father murdered and his entire race exterminated by Frieza, who continued to use him as a low-level enforcer afterwards. Goku eventually realizes that Vegeta was largely shaped by Frieza into becoming a remorseless killing machine.
    • Piccolo was one back in the original Dragon Ball. He grew up without any parent, giving him a strong hate for Goku for killing his father, King Piccolo, and a goal to fulfill his father's dream to Take Over the World. Gohan sympathises with him at the start of Dragon Ball Z, telling him that he is nowhere near as evil as his father (he did not take that very well). When sacrificing himself to Gohan, he tells him that he was the only one who has ever been nice to him, giving yet another reason why he turned into a cynical megalomaniac. Thanks to Gohan, anyhow, he is now a noble hero. He's so close with the main cast now that he's practically an uncle to Gohan's daughter, Pan.
    • DBS Broly is one in his movie. He became a Super Saiyan by losing his father in a way he thought that he was responsible. He had no idea that Frieza was responsible for his father's death.
  • Lucy from Elfen Lied is one of the prime examples of this trope: A broken little girl who became a murderous monster after she snapped at the world's relentless cruelty and her own budding insanity.
  • Fairy Tail:
    • Zeref. Life was not fair to him at all. A dragon attacked his home and killed both his parents and his younger brother. Then, one of the Jerkass Gods, Ankhseram, cursed him simply because he was researching a way to bring his dead little brother back to life. A curse of contradictions, as he long as he values life, everything around him dies; he can regain control if he stops valuing life, but because of this Lack of Empathy, he'll probably end up killing people anyway. The curse also makes him a massive Mood-Swinger, and he constantly contradicts himself — pointing this out will cause him a mental breakdown. He can't even find relief in death, as the curse makes him immortal so he can suffer for eternity. For this alone, he was labeled as the most evil wizard in history and ostracized by humanity, when a bit of conservation made it blatantly clear that he wasn't evil at all. All of this alone would be enough for a Start of Darkness for any villain — but Zeref didn't break until he met Mavis. She was the first person in centuries to ever show him kindness and see the good, but troubled soul he really was. When she too was cursed by Ankhseram, she proposed Eternal Love, and her empathy was enough for him to fall in love with her — but their first kiss kills her because, despite both of them being immortal, the curse they both have is ultimately to ensure that they can never be happy. Denied the chance to be with the only person who ever truly understood him, the only person who ever brought him a shred of happiness in his hellish existence, pushed Zeref beyond the breaking point, and led to his descent into evil.
    • Hades of Grimoire Heart was once Precht Gaebolg, one of the founders of Fairy Tail who, despite his social awkwardness, No Social Skills, and intimidating looks, was a legitimately kind and heroic person who was named the second Master of Fairy Tail by his friend Mavis and went on to teach Makarov the values their guild held dear. However, when Zeref left the seemingly-dead Mavis on Fairy Tail's doorsteps, Precht spent 30 years desperately attempting to revive her and inadvertently created an infinite source of magic energy in the process. At the same time, his research drove him deeper and deeper into an obsession with discovering the root of all magic and ultimately to find Zeref. By the time he left the guild and named Makarov his successor, Precht became the head of a dark guild that manipulated and slaughtered countless innocents in the name of reaching Zeref, having lost sight of the man he used to be in his obsession and betraying everything Mavis believed in.
  • Fate/Zero shows that Kotomine Kirei started off as this. Kotomine Kirei lived his life always trying to do what others and his society thought was good, because he found he could only find happiness in violence, destruction, and tragedy and despised himself for this. However, Kirei questioned if others truly were as good as they said they were but followed what he was told regardless, becoming an Executor (assassin) for the Church despite understanding the hypocrisy. When Kirei met Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh slowly convinced Kirei to stop hating his genius and to use it for what he truly enjoyed.
  • Fist of the North Star: Shin, originally Kenshiro's best friend, is tricked into becoming a Big Bad due to his weak heart by Jagi, who convinces him to kill Kenshiro to get his lover, Julia, whom Shin has long had a great desire for. He tries to please Julia with every luxury he gains with his bloody hands, but to no avail. When Julia commits suicide - or at least, she seems dead - to prevent him from doing it any further, Shin is left heartbroken, and finally joins her in the afterworld after his defeat in the hands of his former friend, Kenshiro.
    • Souther also qualifies as a Tragic Villain - a particularly cruel, tyrannical type. Overrun by the grief of killing his own beloved adoptive father and master, who instructed him to do it to complete his training, he goes insane and orders children to build a pyramid for his master without mercy until Kenshiro kills him, making him reveal his human side at his death.
  • Fullmetal Alchemist:
    • Scar used to be a kind and caring man before the Ishvalan Rebellion took his family and the most of his people away from him. He does make a Heel–Face Turn, though.
    • In their final moments, Envy turns out to be Exactly What It Says on the Tin. Edward's "The Reason You Suck" Speech about Envy's jealousy toward human strength drives them to suicide.
    • Most of the homunculi in Fullmetal Alchemist (2003), except Envy and Pride, count as this. Gluttony is much like his manga incarnation until Dante brain-washes him because of his attachment to Lust. Wrath was a sweet, normal kid when introduced. He eventually warps into an antagonist but he mainly just wants a mother. It isn't until The Movie that he realizes that he had Izumi the entire time, though by then she's succumbed to her illness. Lust and Sloth are both tormented by their nature as Came Back Wrong subjects and the lives they used to lead, with the former realising a want to be human and realising as she's killed that she's able to die as one and the latter lashing out at all the remains of her life before being killed by her own children in self-defence when she tries to murder them. Greed just wants to be left alone and free of his creator and commits Suicide by Cop when that is denied to him.
  • Gundam:
    • Stella Louissier in Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny, due to being a brainwashed Super-Soldier who was given Training from Hell since she was a young child and has a Control Word to keep her in line. The other members of Phantom Pain could also qualify, but Stella is the biggest example because of how childlike and broken she is, and her love for Shinn Asuka.
    • She is an Expy of Four Murasame and Rosamia Badam in Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam, who also suffer the same horrible fate and sacrifice their lives for their only redemption. Louise Halevy in Mobile Suit Gundam 00 is another example, only she got better in the end thank to Saji and Setsuna.
    • As you go down the line from the One Year War, you'll find Zekes and Feddies both that get caught up in a Cycle of Revenge as the previous wars left them scarred and without purpose but vengeance. The most recent example of this is Loni Garvey from Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn, the daughter of a former Zeon soldier who brought the remnants together, she lost her parents in a Feddie hunt for remnants and it has consumed her such that all she wants is vengeance for that.
    • Alus from Gundam Build Divers Re:RISE was once a benevolent Artificial Intelligence on Eldora's moon developed by the Ancient Eldorans and worked together with his creators to defend Eldora from any outside threats. When Hiroto and his team confront him, he's now a broken genocidal machine who was left to decay for eons. Even then, for all of his villainy, he's ultimately driven by a heartfelt, albeit misguided, goal to defend Eldora, and he yearns for his beloved creators' return to the exclusion of the new inhabitants of the planet.
  • Mewtwo from Pokémon: The Series is both the biggest instigator and victim of the first movie. Just before his birth, he had a telepathic connection with human girl named Amber and a trio of cloned Kanto starters. They shared fond connection in Amber's imagination, but due to them not surviving the cloning process, Mewtwo already felt the pain of mourning a loved one. Upon his birth, the scientists, instead of being happy for Mewtwo's birth and possible treatment of him as their child, were more happy for each other in succeeding in the cloning process. Mewtwo then felt that they didn't care about him as an individual but as a lab rat they could throw away. Coupled with the knowledge of his existence as a copy of another Pokémon, Mewtwo began to feel as though he didn't have an identity of his own. After killing the scientists that created him, Giovanni promised him to give him a place to be at home, but then Mewtwo figured Giovanni was using him to exploit of ther Pokémon, which cemented Mewtwo's hatred for humans, believing them to greedy oportunists that only care for personal gain. Then he hypnotized a Pokémon Center nurse to invite the best trainers in the region to his island, but it was a trap to take their Pokémon and clone them to prove he is the superior one, to then use his Poké-clones to kill all humans and the Pokémon that are loyal to them. When Ash sacrificed himself to save Pikachu and stop the fighting, and the Pokémon mourning him, this proved Mewtwo that some humans do care for Pokémon and he is acting like the humans that exploited him, so intead of killing the humans, he rather find a new home for himself and his cloned siblings.
  • Kagura from Inuyasha only serves the Big Bad Naraku because he holds her heart in his hands and can kill her at any time. She routinely helps out the heroes, and when she allowed Kohaku to escape she was killed.
  • The King of Night in Is This A Zombie?. He grew to hate his immortality and just wanted to die. However, Yuu saw him as a friend still and didn't want to kill him, so the King went out and caused everything that happened to get Yuu to hate him and thus kill him.
  • Precia Testarossa in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha The MOVIE 1st combines this with Fatal Flaw and Fond Memories That Could Have Been. As she falls to her death, Precia remembers that Alicia once wanted a little sister and realizes that she could've treated Fate as another daughter instead of a failed replacement for Alicia. Unfortunately, there is no longer enough time left to make amends or even apologize.
    "I never notice things before it's too late."
  • Subverted with Johan Liebert from Monster. He suffered extreme trauma as a child and it's clear that it continues to haunt him. However, others suffered similarly without becoming monsters, and Hartmann admits that he couldn't have crafted a monster like Johan. As the series progresses, it becomes clear that Johan's "trauma" may have been a self-induced situation, as it was his sister who suffered and he took those memories and ran them as his own.
  • In Moriarty the Patriot, William actively wishes he did not feel his crimes were necessary to help others, and the crushing guilt of his actions has led him to become a Death Seeker.
  • As the story of My Hero Academia starts to reveal the flaws of living in a superhuman society, many of the villains have begun to be portrayed in a more sympathetic light.
    • Tomura Shigaraki is revealed to be a big one as the series goes on. He originally used to be a Cheerful Child who desired to be a hero but the constant abuse he suffered at the hands of his father for his dream and his family's inaction to said abuse caused him to finally snap, RIGHT as his Quirk developed, causing him to accidentally kill his entire family. He wandered the streets wishing for someone to help him, but civilians just told him, "A hero will come". None did. And the person who actually came to help him? All For One, who proceeded to fuel Tomura's rage against hero society for abandoning him and turn him into the psychotic villain he is today. What pushes this even further is that the only reason All For One took him in is because he's the grandson of Nana Shimura, his former archenemy and All Might's mentor, just to spite his enemy and ruin her legacy.
    • Twice, who suffers from a severe mental disorder due to his Dark and Troubled Past. His parents were killed when he was young, forcing him to get a job to make a living. One day he was fired from his job for something that wasn't his fault and even gained a criminal record because of it. Feeling lonely, he used his Quirk to create multiple clones of himself just so he could have some friends. However, his own clones instead tried to kill him and each other to prove who was the "real" Twice. Utterly traumatized by the experience, Twice started to wonder if even he was real and is forced to wear a mask just to maintain his composure. He only joined the League of Villains because he thought it was a place where "freaks like him would be accepted", showing how truly lonely he feels. And to top it all off, his desire for friends is ultimately what gets him killed.
    • Gentle Criminal, who had a good heart and wanted to be a hero more than anything. However, he kept failing the extremely difficult and biased exams to become one and an accident in which he tried to save someone resulted in him being given a criminal record and kicked out of the house by his parents, causing him to live in poverty. Years later, he congratulated a former classmate for his success as a hero, only for the classmate to not recognize him. Because of this, Gentle ultimately became a villain just so he could receive a little bit of attention.
  • Naruto: As the series has progressed, a majority of the villains have turned out to be this.
    • Character Development revealed that Gaara's psychosis was a direct result of the actions of his own father's attempts to either turn him into a living weapon or kill him. Insanity and Shukaku's whispers were his last refuge from the bleak emptiness of his childhood. Thankfully, he does a Heel–Face Turn and life starts getting better for him.
    • Blood Knight Zabuza Momochi proved to truly care about Haku, and his death truly did break his heart and drove him to Suicide by Cop.
    • Mad Scientist Orochimaru lost his parents at a young age and desired immortality to see their reincarnations. Originally he wanted it for himself and the entire village, but eventually his increasing thirst for power and descent into insanity made him lose sight of his original goal and made him into what he is today.
    • In all actuality, the only real exception to this trope in Naruto is Hidan of the Akatsuki. He killed his neighbors and ditched his village because the village itself became a tourist resort and abandoned the whole ninja village thing. The lack of violence went against his religion.
    • Conversely, one of the most tragic is the Big Bad, Tobi, aka Obito Uchiha. Tobirama's revelation of how the Uchiha Clan's deep sense love is also the source of their "curse" and subsequent insanity changes the perspective of Obito's supposedly disproportionate reaction to Rin's death. The mental anguish truly was worse for him, and to see the girl he loved killed by his best friend was something his mind couldn't handle. In his disillusioned new views, all he cares about is a world where the people which he loved are alive and his former ideals of heroism are the norm.
      • This is shown while his soul was being devoured by the bijuu, which was represented by his genin team photo being torn apart and being reconstructed when he regained his sanity. Even after all he has done and said, his friend, his crush and and his sensei are his reason to exist.
      • His mental battle with Naruto twists the knife even more where Obito has a vision of what his life would have been like if he didn't let his obsession consume his soul.
      • His final talk with Madara plunges the knife all the way through, when Obito realizes, he never had a chance: Madara took away everything from him. He was orchestrating his downfall all along, and prepared for every possible outcome in order to Obito went along with his Moon Eye Plan
    • Even Madara Uchiha has shades of this. While no doubt one of the most villainous characters in the franchise—he could even be THE most if not for the existence of Kaguya, Zetsu, and the Otsutsuki clan as a whole, it was a result of a life filled with tragedy. He was born in the era of Warring Clans, one of the most violent periods of time in shinobi history. By the time he was ten, he had already lost four brothers, leaving only Izuna, and the constant loss and desperation caused a dream of peace, a dream he shared with Hashirama Senju, the future First Hokage and Madara's best friend. However, despite that dream, what Madara cherished most was Izuna, his only remaining brother — enough to willingly turn his back on his best friend and his dream for his little brother's sake. Hashirama believes that Madara's actions are a result of him lashing out in his grief over his brother's death. Which might actually be true, due to the "Curse of Hatred" that plagued the Uchiha clan (overtaking even the Deuteragonist of the series), which essentially says that the Uchihas love so deeply that the loss of their objects of affection can lead them to mental ruin—stronger than how it would affect any other person. Madara was no exception to this. Basically, Izuna's death, the death of the person that was implied to have been loved by Madara as much as, if not more so than Sasuke was loved by Itachi (which is no small claim for anyone to make), had been a catalyst to his downfall. Eventually, it trickled into a downward spiral because of his grief being amplified by a sense of failure over protecting his brothers, and therefore, his original dream. And the fact that he was a pawn used to revive his distant ancestor is just icing on the cake.
    • Neji was raised around people who convinced him that he does not decide his destiny. His father was the only one who did not tell him this, but when he died, he named himself the bird in a cage, and became like the rest - A cynic who annihilates people who strive for their dreams, constantly telling them that they could not ever fulfill their dreams, and though he put them through Domestic Abuse, he did not see it that way. In fact, he thought he was helping people that way. He even developed a murderous attitude towards his cousin Hinata, for being the head of the branch that was unintentionally responsible for his father's death (though he was stopped before it was too late). At least he gets a Jerkass Realization after Naruto shows him that destiny lies in one's own hands. He then sheds a tear when his father sent him a letter from the time he was alive, that he decides his own destiny.
    • Itachi Uchiha is among the most sympathetic Uchiha around. The atrocities he committed were all to protect Sasuke and his clan. Unfortunately both got in the way of the Leaf Village, so he shouldered the burden of becoming a traitor. Itachi never wanted to kill his people, the fact that the Hidden Leaf forced him to massacre his family. Became a reason for Sasuke to seek it's destruction later.
    • For all the evil, Kabuto Yakushi committed it was revealed that in the end. All he ever really wanted was an identity of his own. Growing up an Orphan, Kabuto only ever truly trusted his Caretaker. However when she was brainwashed to kill him, Kabuto could no longer bring himself to really trust anyone again. This led him to adopt multiple identities, becoming Orochimaru's spy and deceiving countless others, even himself as Itachi made him realize.
  • One Piece has a lot of villains that qualify for this trope, both canon and non-canon.
    • Bellamy becomes this in the Dressrosa Arc. While he was an all-around Jerkass in the Jaya Arc and later presumed dead, he did show a great deal of respect towards Doflamingo. He eventually returned with a new lease on life, respecting Luffy much more and having an even stronger desire to move up in Doflamingo's ranks. During the course of the arc, Luffy even comes to cheer Bellamy on during the coliseum match and call him his friend. Later on, though, he's given orders by Diamante to assassinate Luffy with the promise of an Executive chair in return (which is a ruse anyway since Diamante then immediately tells Dellinger to kill Bellamy, a fact that Dellinger does not mind slipping to Bellamy even before he attempts the assassination). Much later, when Doflamingo begins his "election game" demanding the heads of the Straw Hats and company, Bellamy approaches him alone to ask if he really wanted him dead; in exchange, Doflamingo beats him to a bloody pulp and leaves him at his feet for Luffy and Law to find later. Doflamingo then controls Bellamy and forces him to fight Luffy, which Luffy is hesitant against since he now considers Bellamy a friend, which moves Bellamy to tears. Eventually Doflamingo releases Bellamy from his control, but when Luffy attempts to go after him, Bellamy intervenes with his Spring Hopper technique, begging Luffy to fight him one last time. He still refuses to turn on Doflamingo even after all he's done, even admitting that he chose the wrong man to admire. While initially hesitant to fight him, Luffy eventually knocks him out in one blow (mirroring the way he took him out at Jaya), leaving him bloody and with tears running down his face; Bellamy's last thoughts before falling unconscious is thanking Luffy for call him a friend. Knowing that Bellamy was fighting out of honor for an honorless man causes Luffy to scream Doflamingo's name in fury.
    • The Vinsmoke children were all essentially Forced into Evil by their father, Judge. The Vinsmoke quadruplets, Ichiji, Niji, and Yonji were physically and psychologically altered in utero to turn them utterly remorseless killers that will lead Germa to greatness, which robbed them of all chances to become people the moment they were born because they literally couldn't feel and/or understand benevolent emotions such as love and compassion. Their older sister, Reiju, received similar modifications that left her unable to resist her father's orders in any way except Loophole Abuse - unlike her brothers, she had her humanity intact, but because she had the emotional capacity to understand her family's atrocities, she became so consumed with self-loathing that she feels the only way to atone for her actions is through death, as she sees both herself and her family as cruel murderers whose presence will only ruin the world they live in.
    • The Pirate Charlotte "Big Mom" Linlin is revealed to be one in her flashbacks. Born far larger and stronger than any other human (At age five, she easily outgrew her parents), she already suffered from Ambiguous Innocence and "hunger-rampages", which meant no one had any idea how to deal with her. Even her only role model, who seemingly understood her, was actually enabling her destructive behavior so she could sell Linlin into slavery. When said role model died "mysteriously", there was nothing to stop Linlin from going From Nobody to Nightmare. Ultimately, underneath all that power, influence, and cruelty is just a mentally unwell woman who's the victim of multiple outside factors beyond her control.
    • Her son, Charlotte Katakuri, is arguably the most tragic out of all the Charlotte children. Katakuri was very much like Luffy as a child, gorging on sweets and beating up whoever bullied him about his fearsome-looking mouth. But after he got careless and confident in his own strength, leading to one of his sisters, Brûlée, getting horribly scarred by the same bullies he beat up, he brutalized the bullies and hid everything he saw as a "weakness" away from the public eye so his family won't get hurt again. While it gave his family a powerful reputation, and praise from his siblings, he constantly has to work hard to keep things that way and his "snack times" are the only way he could relax. The moment he reveals his true self to Flampe in a fit of anger over her interfering with his fight with Luffy, Flampe ridicules Katakuri for being imperfect, disowns him as her brother, and has her crew take photos of his mouth so she could humiliate him in front of everyone.
    • Z, the main antagonist of Film Z, has been through so much that you can’t help but feel sorry for him. He joined the Marines in hopes of being a hero, but later found out that being one isn't just about being a hero. He later married and had a child, but both were killed by a pirate years later. He quit his position to become a trainer for the Marines but during a exercise, they were attacked and all of his students, save Ain and Bins, were killed. And his right arm was lopped off by a pirate, and said pirate became a Warlord of the Sea just a year ago. No wonder he left the marines.
  • The Promised Neverland:
    • Isabella is a ruthless and manipulative woman who is determined to find out and stop any children from escaping the orphanage. However, later chapters reveal that Isabella was a Grace Field orphan herself, that after realizing her friend Leslie was killed for food for the demons and that there was no means for her to go over the ravine, Isabella decided to live as long as possible as a means to spite the demons. Her coldness is a result of the cruel life she was forced to live and she never had a chance to be anything else if she wanted to survive.
    • Likewise, in some ways, Krone is just as trapped as the children. She was an orphan who was given the choice to either train as a caretaker for the plantations or be eaten by the demons. She chose the former. However, she has a microchip in her heart that would kill her if she stepped out of the farms. She wishes to dispose of Isabella as becoming a "Mother" is the best possible life she can have in her situation.
  • Puella Magi Madoka Magica The Movie: Rebellion turns Akemi Homura into one of these at the end. She takes Madoka's power to become a demon, partly because Madoka indicated she couldn't bear to give up her life with her friends and family—while not remembering the circumstances that led her to do just that, making the validity of her statement ambiguous—but also to rule over the Incubators with an iron fist so that (ironically) they could never again attempt to steal Madoka's power and remake the original Crapsack World. Superficially, she acts as if she enjoys her new role as supreme Evil Overlord of the universe, often sporting a evil grin, but she clearly doesn't. Despite declaring she did all this out of love for Madoka, she tearfully returns Madoka's ribbon, saying that they will be enemies from now on even as Homura continues to fight for her happiness. Both Homura and her familiars throw themselves off cliffs, indicating she hates herself for what she's become and likely did it in part because she thought everyone else should hate her, even as she improved their lives.
  • Helbram from The Seven Deadly Sins is presented as this. He was once a kind fairy who was fascinated by humans until he saw his beloved friends tortured and slaughtered, leaving him as a hateful shell of himself. His hatred for humans had swelled for years up to a point wherein he can no longer bring himself to stop killing humans despite his own desire to do so.
  • Some of The Undead in Shiki hate what they have become, but the pressure from other vampires combined with their uncontrollable bloodlust and desire to live mean that they can't stop themselves. The best example would be Tohru.
  • In Sonic X, Dark Oak, also known as Luke/Lucas, counts as one, as his tragic past happened during a war that took place on his former home planet of Seedrius-Flora/Greengate. Refusing to leave with the other Seedrians and abandon his home planet after having fought so long, he began using its Planet Egg to make the male Seedrians' transformations last longer to Hertia/Earthia's shock and dismay, forcing the females to destroy the males and leave them behind. But a few males survived and they became the Metarex. The motivation of Dark Oak and the Metarex is to erase all life of flesh and blood from the entire galaxy so that plants can rule, and therefore bring their own peace and tranquility to the galaxy, and they require the Planet Eggs and the seven Chaos Emeralds to do so. In the end, Dark Oak finally realizes the errors of his ways when Sonic and co. defeat him with help from Cosmo's Heroic Sacrifice - he realizes that Hertia/Earthia was right about his lust for power destroying his own people and him bringing nothing but pain and suffering to everyone. Hertia/Earthia appears before Dark Oak and gives him a second chance, and he happily reunites with her and they both depart for the afterlife.
  • Speed Grapher has a few of them given the setting and themes.
    • The Elite Mook Tsujido, the right hand man of the Tennozu Group's leader, was very young when he was sold as a sex slave to a paedophilic member of Yakuza. By the time Suitengu found him, he had been raped and mutilated (they cut off his nose) to the point he was almost dead while standing. His devotion to Suitengu is both out of loyalty (and most likely love) and a desire to put a stop to the ones who enabled his captors to inflict the pain he had to endure.
    • The Euphoric Miharu Shirumaku was a former actress with crippling trauma due to her past. Her mother (a mentally unstable woman) tried to drown both she and her daughter in a murder/suicide pact and while she survived (and her mother didn't) the trauma led her to becoming mute and she saw the depths of the water as a twisted substitute of her mother's embrace, which always led her back to the same place, where she began to drown any man who fell in love with her. This trope is in full force when she finally dies; her last moments are of her disappearing into the ocean, the image of her mother embracing her in her arms as she speaks for the first time in years: "At last, I can be with her". She's easily the most sympathetic of the Euphoric mooks.
    • Arguably the most tragic of all, Choji Suitengu himself. Born to affluent parents, he had a relatively carefree life and doted upon his younger sister Yui. However, his parents fell into tremendous debt and their inability to pay Katsuji Kamiya (the Prime Minister of Japan) resulted in them committing suicide, with Suitengu finding them hanging from the ceiling. The Prime Minister then had Suitengu sent off to the military and sold five-year-old Yui into sexual slavery. Forced to become a child soldier, experiencing copious deaths, brutalities and horrors just to fight in a fruitless war, he was brutally mutilated and left for dead on the battlefield, but was exposed to the Euphoria Virus during his time there. Doctors found him and experimented on him, attaching a new arm onto his body (which belonged to the scientist who discovered said virus) which gave him the Euphoric power over blood. Even worse is that after working his way to the top of society, he used his influence to track down his sister Yui, only to find that she had gone insane from decades of rape and abuse, rendering her barely coherent and unable to even speak properly, much less recognise her brother. With eyes full of bloodied tears he was forced to euthanize his once beloved sister using his Euphoric power. His ultimate goal is to climb his way to the top of the Japanese economy so that he can demolish it and utterly eradicate the corrupt elite that run the country and force those beneath them to endure horrors that he and others like him had to. At the end of the series his final moments are treated as a sympathetic but genuine win for the villains, as while he does die, he completes his mission and bankrupts the corrupt officials beyond repair.
  • Lunatic, or Yuri from Tiger & Bunny was eventually to be revealed to be this if you consider him a villain. After his father, Mr. Legend, started to lose his powers he resorted to drinking very heavily. This resulted in a nasty change in his father's personality whom before the power loss inspired him to seek justice for crimes committed against innocent people. Mr. Legend turned from a relatively nice man to an abusive drunk that would regularly commit every type of abuse on his wife and regularly beat Yuri as well. At one point when Yuri was a teen he tried to get his father to stop the horrible abuse by getting in the middle. This ended up being received poorly as Mr. Legend turned his rage on his son. To make matters worse Yuri's NEXT Powers awakened at that exact moment and his blue-green fire power ended up burning his father alive. Despite that Yuri's father just laughed and put his palm into Yuri's face before dying, permanently burn scarring him for life. As a consequence of this, Yuri's mother in the present is mentally unstable and delusional. She still thinks that her husband is alive and well and routinely has dinner table conversations with thin air. Every time she comes to her senses and remembers what happened after seeing the now adult Yuri she verbally abuses her son, thinking him as monster for what he did despite it could easily be seen as accidental and self-defense in a horrible situation. It's implied very heavily that this happens regularly. It's very obvious Mr. Legend's fall from grace and descent into depravity ended up twisting Yuri's view on justice, faith in heroes, and shaped him up as the brutal vigilante if not villain we see today. This is not mentioning that Yuri as an adult starts to show some level of mental instability over the course of the anime as he occasionally has delusions/visions of his asshole father mocking him for not being a hero.
  • Rumi Kobayakawa from Umi No Yami Tsuki No Kage initially seems to really enjoy her abilities and power to turn people into her mindless puppets, using it to mentally torment her twinsister and her boyfriend, who chose Ruka over Rumi by confessing. She even goes to far as to cause harm to the boyfriend's family as a middle finger for rejecting her. Further into the story, Rumi becomes more open about how the infection messed with her mind, and her pain over being rejected was twisted, to the point that she openly says that the hatred and desire to harm people is incessantly growing inside of her without her wanting it. The penultimate climax has Rumi outright make it clear that she's putting her last hope on a sense of returning normalcy onto a cure, only for that hope to be shattered where the cure doesn't work.
  • Prince Heinel from Voltes V is brought up hated as the son of a traitor so he goes about the business of invading Earth to redeem himself. After The Reveal that the Emperor he serves is a usurper, he is marked as a traitor, his loyal minions are killed and even though he gets his revenge he is Driven to Suicide after finding out three members of the Voltes team are his half-brothers, meaning he's been fighting against his own flesh and blood.
  • Lord Darcia III from Wolf's Rain only starts off as an antagonist to the heroes because while they want to use Living MacGuffin Cheza to find the way to paradise, while Darcia wants to use her Healing Hands ability to save his lover Harmona, who he's kept on life support for centuries while he's tried to find a cure for her condition. Darcia defeats the heroes without killing them, takes Cheza back to his castle... and finds that Hamona was murdered by her Evil Twin just hours before his return. We don't get to see the full effect this has on him until much later. In the OVA that finishes the series, we see that he's become an Ax-Crazy Straw Nihilist, and the hero's Evil Counterpart. What makes Darcia more sympathetic is that unlike her twin sister Jaguara, Hamona was a kind and gentle lady, much like Cheza herself, and was a Living Emotional Crutch to him.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh! has Pegasus, who was driven mad by the Millennium Eye, and his primary motivation for his subsequent villainy was the resurrection of his dead wife, Cyndia.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V has Dennis Mackfield While he's clearly on the side of the bad guys, he legitimately came to enjoy Entertainment dueling. While he helped orchestrate the events that led to Ruri's kidnap and attempted to kidnap Yuzu several times, deep down, he came to regret his actions. While he's best friends with Yuri, he doesn't take outright sadistic pleasure in his actions. Which makes his "suicide" by carding all the more sad when Yusho offers him to join their side; Dennis believes that he's too steeped in this sin to ever be forgiven for what he's done.
  • YuYu Hakusho.
    • The younger Toguro was the strongest man alive but made a Deal with the Devil because he was dying of an incurable disease. That and he couldn't get over the guilt of losing his students to a powerful demon.
    • Sensui came up with his elaborate Evil Plan to get Yusuke to kill him as atonement for all the innocent demons he killed and like Toguro above was dying of a disease, specifically cancer.

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