The Sociopath / Anime & Manga

The following have their own pages:

• Dragon Ball
• Gundam
• Ultra Series

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Other examples:

A-M

• Akagi has no regard for his own life, can't be threatened, doesn't care about rules, will cheat if he can and generally doesn't really care about other human beings. He isn't really malevolent, however, unless you manage to piss him off.
• Ana Satsujin has Rio Miyaichi, who is a mostly unrepentant serial killer and also our main character's new girlfriend. While she claims to only kill criminals, she also makes it clear that she's perfectly capable of killing anybody she feels like, and at one point randomly kills a police officer for no apparent reason aside from simply not liking his tone of voice while he was questioning her about another killer (while she herself wasn't under direct suspicion at the moment), and justifies her actions by saying that cops aren't people.
• Due to a car accident and resulting brain damage, including some brain removal during multiple surgeries, Kazuo Kiriyama of the Battle Royale manga cannot form meaningful connections to anything (a condition known as pseudopsychopathy in real life). The manga shows him mastering painting and the violin... and immediately throwing out both his artwork and his instrument when he's finished with them. He only associates with his "friends" because they won a coin toss; when they lose a second coin toss on the island, he slaughters them.
• Berserk:
  • Griffith is initially a subversion, as despite certain characteristic traits, he was been shown to be capable of care. His high intelligence and charismatic and charming nature allowed him to be quite ruthless behind closed doors, and he's fully aware of lines he crosses so long as it brings him closer to his goal. After sacrificing his entire army to the God Hand to regain a body after his is trashed, he becomes a full-fledged psychopath as Femto. He brielfy ceases being one in the final chapter, but this is only due to the residual emotional capability of the vessel he was sharing temporarily being manifested. Funny thing is that his counterpart, Guts, is himself a bit of a psychopath, but he has a working moral compass that prevents him from going that extra mile of no return.
  • Wyald is a far more low-functioning example than Griffith and Emperor Ganishka, as he is extremely impulsive and always pursuing instant gratification for himself with no respect for the lives or well-being of others, or even his own.
• Black Butler: The Doctor in the Noah's Ark Circus arc has absolutely no concern for the lives of others, seeing nothing at all wrong with using children's bones to make prosthetic limbs - as far as he's concerned, it's just better material than the cow bones he'd usually use. His only reaction when his employer is killed in front of him amounts to saying to Ciel, "Huh. Well, that sucks. Say, you got an opening for a good physician?"
• Bleach: In this series which features many characters of varying degrees of morality, the ones mentioned below stand out as having very little in the way of moral standards.
  • Mayuri Kurotschuchi introduces himself by blowing up his own subordinates, and then blowing up the one who didn't explode because "a bomb isn't supposed to come back". He then goes on to describe in horrific detail the experiments he carried out on the Quincies, right in front of Uryu. He's also heavily abusive towards his own daughter and creation, Nemu. He's sadistic, cruel, has no regard for others' safety and well-being, and only cares about something or someone if they pique his scientific interest, which is not a good thing. Despite all this however, it is shown that he does hold some degree of affection for Nemu, as he is shown to be distraught at her death.
  • Sosuke Aizen has all the traits of a classic sociopath. He puts up an affable façade to gain the trust of others. He is highly charismatic and manipulative. Aizen sees everyone around him, including his underlings, as little more than pawns to use and dispose of. He has no empathy whatsoever, harms people just because he can, and tortured and killed who knows how many Soul Reapers in order to create the Hogyoku. He is unbound by any form of honor, law, morality, or decency, and is driven by a desire to 'stand in heaven'. When invading Soul Society in the Deicide arc, Aizen carelessly walks through Karakura knowing that anyone who came into close contact with his Reiatsu would die, showing no emotion while doing so, and played a twisted game of cat and mouse with Ichigo's human friends with the intent of killing them and stringing up their corpses just to see Ichigo's reaction. Even when he is forced to join the heroes against a greater threat in the final arc, Aizen shows no remorse whatsoever for his past actions.
  • Nnoitra Gilga believes that Hollows are damned souls who shouldn't bother with things like "redemption" or trying to better themselves, and thus he sees nothing wrong with trying to kill anyone and everyone in his path as he seeks to become either the strongest around or gets killed in battle by someone stronger, both of which he longs for. He loathes Nel because she pitied him, and attempted to kill her and her Fraccion to achieve a higher rank in the Espada. He savagely attacks Ichigo, breaking his arm, and forces Orihime to watch Tesra give a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown to Ichigo, taking sadistic glee in their anguish. Even Ulquiorra, who is incapable of feeling emotions is disgusted with him when Nnoitra displays lecherous intent towards Orihime. The only person he's ever shown a smidgen of care for is his Fraccion Tesra.
  • Grimmjow Jaegerjaques believes that he is destined to become the king of Hollows and that anyone else is either a stepping stone or obstacle to get rid of, a follower who will serve him in reaching that point, or a rival that needs to be put down for getting between him and that goal. When his loyal Fraccion are all killed, he shrugs off their deaths rather easily and shows more anger about how his reckless actions got his arm chopped off and kicked off the Espada as punishment. As soon as Orihime heals his arm, he gleefully kills Luppi by impaling him through the torso and obliterating his upper body with a Cero. While he works for Aizen, he holds no loyalty to him beyond the fact that he isn't strong enough to take Aizen down, which greatly irritates him. He goes against orders on a number of occasions, and saves Orihime from Loly and Menoly only so that she can heal Ichigo so that he can have his showdown with him. In the final arc where he is technically on the same side as Ichigo, he makes it very clear that he is only helping him save the world from Yhwach to have his death match with him, and couldn't care less otherwise.
  • Just like Mayuri, Szayelaporro Granz does not view the people around him as living beings, but as research material. He sees nothing wrong with turning his own Fraccion into edible food sources to heal his injuries, nor does he see anything wrong with sacrificing someone else in order to use his Gabriel technique. When Renji assumes that he wants to avenge his brother Ylfordt, he laughs off the notion as to him, losing his brother would cause the same emotional reaction as to losing a box.
  • Shukuro Tsukishima is a disturbing individual who stands out as one of the most cruel and vicious characters in the series. The only person he has care for seems to be Ginjo to whom he has Undying Loyalty. However, it's implied he does care about Riruka as well since he was horrified he injured her. Despite those cases, he doesn't seem to care about anyone else. Tsukishima uses Book of the End on Ichigo's friends and sister to psychologically torment him. When Orihime and Sado start to break free from his control, Tsukishima messes with their heads for no apparent reason before he is stopped by Ginjo. It's implied that he has permanently broken many people's minds in the past. He's not just willing to break the minds of people but he thoroughly enjoys doing so.
  • Yukio Hans Voralberna likes to act like one, but is ultimately a subversion. Yukio claims to not have an emotional connection with anyone. He bemuses Jackie Taking the Bullet for Renji, boasts about driving his father to suicide, and seems to be fine with the prospect of Riruka dying. When he is fighting Hitsugaya, the Captain accurately surmises that he is actually pretending to be this trope in order to cope with his real feelings.
  • Giriko Kutsuzawa has no real regard for any human life, only follows Ginjo for the promise of power, and has an inflated ego. When he first achieved his Fullbring, his way of testing his powers was killing his wife. The trope was enforced by said ability when it made his eye explode for feeling bad about it and trying to bring her back.
  • The final Big Bad, Yhwach, is an incredibly ruthless and brutal psychopath who Yamamoto states has no compassion for anyone, not even his own men. Yhwach will not let anyone stand in his way and will cross as many lines as he feels is necessary to accomplish his goals without hesitation. Six years prior to the start of the series, Yhwach strengthens himself by using Auswählen, taking the powers of any Quincies he deemed "impure" or "unnecessary", including children, resulting in their deaths, showing no remorse for this act. Yhwach is also quite prone to violence, lopping off the arm of an Arrancar just to get his attention, and kills several Soul Reapers, Arrancar and Quincies alike in a calm and serene manner. When performing Auswählen for a second time on the Sternritter he left behind in Seireitei to revive the Schutzstaffel, Liltotto demands to know what the Sternritter were to him, and Yhwach replies that they are comrades helping him. Yhwach sees nothing wrong with sacrificing his own soldiers to empower himself, and expresses confusion at Ichigo's anger at the death of his mother, who was a victim of the first Auswählen, because in Yhwach's point of view, there is no greater honor than empowering him. He's also quite self-centered, outright stating that everything in the world exists for his taking, and can be pretty sadistic at times.
  • Tokinada Tsunayashiro, from Bleach: Can't Fear Your Own World, is a smug, arrogant, self-entitled, sadistic asshole who indulges his cruelest whims out of the belief that Soul Society is built on a foundation of lies.
• Candy's bitchy step-sister Eliza Reagan in Candy♡Candy has several sociopathic traits. She's wholly selfish and incredibly manipulative, feels no shame in hurting others for her own gain or amusement, and believes she's entitled to get whatever she wants, by any means necessary. Never in the whole series does she ever show any sign of caring for anyone other than herself — even her Villainous Crush on Terence was less about caring for him, and more about wanting a hot guy all to herself.
  • Her brother Neil is no better — not only is he just as selfish and uncaring about hurting other people, but toward the end of the series, he develops a Villainous Crush on Candy, and it's just as shallow and selfish as Eliza's on Terence, not to mention obsessive to the point where he attempts to lock her in a house and never release her until she agreed to be his lover.
• Code Geass:
  • Lloyd Asplund cheerfully refers to himself as a sociopath. However, he could be considered a subversion since he actually lacks many of the symptoms of true sociopathy (Lack of Empathy, chronic lying, and narcissism); he's just very indifferent to all the fighting, manipulating, and killing that goes on around him, and all he really wants to do is fiddle around with the latest high-tech gizmos For Science!.
  • A true sociopathic character from the same anime is Britannian Knight Luciano Bradley.
  • Prince Schneizel is an Affably Evil version. Lelouch points out towards the end of the show that Schneizel's inability to care about other people turns out to be his Achilles heel.
• Vicious from Cowboy Bebop. Vicious is a cold, ruthless, bloodthirsty, and ambitious man who prefers solitude. He's Chronic Backstabbing Disorder incarnate, ungrateful to everyone, even if that person gave their life to save his ass. He's also willing to sacrifice anyone to further his own goals, whether it be his men, mentor, or even his loyal bird. The only thing he seems to really care about is power and revenge.
• Embryo, the Big Bad of Cross Ange. He has all the hallmarks: Bad Boss, Ax-Crazy, Faux Affably Evil, Lack of Empathy, Evil Cannot Comprehend Good, Never My Fault, Control Freak and You Have Outlived Your Usefulness.
  • Ange's evil brother Julio is one as well. He is willing to do anything to get what he wants and ascend to the throne of Mitsurugi, which he considers to be his by right. Resenting his middle sister Ange for having been made heir, he outs her as a Norma during the crowning ceremony, causing her to become a pariah and be sent off to Arzenal to become little more than Cannon Fodder in a Forever War against the Dragons. He cares nothing for his mother's Heroic Sacrifice during the ensuing chaos, and later has his own father executed in order to solidify his rule, and manipulates his youngest sister Sylvia into blaming Ange for all of this. He also has a very poor impulse control, and whines like a spoiled brat whenever things don't go his way, taking increasingly extreme actions to destroy what stands in his way.
• Death Note:
  • Light Yagami, the Villain Protagonist, is a particularly interesting example, since Light acquires sociopathic/psychopathic characteristics when the notebook controls his life. invoked Word of God has explicitly stated that Light was not born evil or heartless, after all. However, as soon as the notebook controls his life and gets into the habit of killing people, he exhibits all the characteristics of a highly-functional sociopath: he displays highly developed social skills, is exceptionally adept at gaining the trust of relatively naive and/or stupid people (superficial charm), has an inordinate self-worth to such a degree to believe that he is a God and an excellent person, gets bored easily, frequently lies and cheats to achieve his goals, frequently manipulates and betrays; He lacks mostly empathy; He pretends to have feelings for Misa to manipulate her emotionally, tends to throw a tantrum or physically attack people when things are not going his way, and is controlling and possessive. Even Light's plan to establish a utopia is an absurdly childish and unrealistic goal, which is common for sociopaths. As it didn't directly effect his mental state, it's implied he's simply convinced himself to completely stop caring as opposed to being fundamentally unable to.
  • Higuchi, the arc villain of the Yotsuba Arc, is a much less involved and complex example, as he was already a sociopath prior to receiving the Death Note and murders competitors en masse out of Greed while displaying no remorse or redeeming qualities.
• Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba:
  • Muzan Kibutsuji, the first demon, is a cowardly man who views himself as a near-perfect being who kills his minions and humans at the drop of a hat. He cares only for himself only expressing annoyance at those who try to hunt him claiming that he was akin to a great calamity. His deplorable behavior is why most demons that he created out of his blood are just as twisted and as murderous as he is.
  • His minion Doma also qualifies. In Chapter 157 Kanao calls Doma out for all his attempts at emotion being farcical. Doma feels no emotions and can't feel them to where Kanae states she would feel sorry for him if she did not hate him so much. He's so detached that even while beheaded and dying, he doesn't really feel anything and doesn't mind. If anything, he seems almost disappointed that he can't even properly fake a Villainous Breakdown over his impending death.
• EDENS ZERO:
  • Drakken Joe is a powerful crime lord who outright describes concepts such as friendship and empathy as the most worthless things in the cosmos, won’t hesitate to torture and murder people who annoy him, viewing people as nothing more than a means to help him gain more money, power, and prolong his life.
  • Poseidon Shura is selfish, entitled, unstable, violent, remorseless, and willing to torture and murder anyone for either annoying him, out of boredom, or just to mess with his enemies. His disturbed behavior even manages to earn the hatred of Shiki, who refuses to befriend him for all his deeds.
• Izaku from Eternal Sabbath is an Artificial Human born with Psychic Powers that enables him to read and control other people's minds. Believing himself to be a genetically perfect being and superior to normal humans in every way, he uses his abilities to make people kill each other and/or themselves. He befriends a little girl, Yuri, and he helps her kill those she considers "bad people", but he also kills anyone who interferes with his plans, including a kind-hearted police detective who is suspicious about him. When Yuri begins to question his methods, Izaku kills her without a second thought by making her hallucinate about her mother (whom he already killed beforehand). Later, he discovers that he is dying, so he begins a rampage in the city and causing numerous death and destruction of property because bringing such chaos is the only thing that gives him any semblance of satisfaction.
• Agon Kongo of Eyeshield 21 is this, along with having every single trait that characterizes antisocial personality disorder. Fortunately, with the series' scope being limited to high school football and a shonen jump title, most of his truly horrendous acts are stopped before they could follow through.
• Fairy Tail:
  • The Sabertooth Guild Master Ziemma Orland only cares about his and his guild's own glory and in order to obtain it he's willing to enforce a Social Darwinist worldview on his guild, abuse and expel any guild members that fail him with no remorse at all, not even his own daughter was excepted from his abusive treatment and became just as cruel as he was. After their lose the rest of the guild grew out of his cruel beliefs, but Ziemma refuses and sticks to his ideals.
  • Jackal is one of the more sadistic members of the dark guild Tartaros, He enjoys blowing things up, doesn’t hesitate to kill innocent civilians, commits sadistic acts of cruelty, and he impulsively torments his opponents at any opportunity. Despite being criticized by his comrades for wasting time, he threatens to kill them with an explosive death simply for not allowing him to indulge in more carnage.
• Frieren: Beyond Journey's End: The demon species as a whole can be classified as sociopaths. They lack both human emotions and the concept of "family", but will pretend to possess both to manipulate their targets despite not understanding them. Demon children, for example, learn that "Mother" is a magic word that will make humans spare them. In-universe, it's speculated that demons are the product of convergent evolution, where human-eating monsters learned to mimic human voices in order to lure prey.
• Fruits Basket: Ren Sohma possesses several traits of this. She has no empathy for anyone, not even her own daughter Akito, who she mentally and emotionally abused into the psychotic Yandere she is today, all out of petty jealousy that her husband could love anyone more than her. She's also quite intelligent and manipulative, duping Isuzu into questioning her parents' love and later into stealing the box from Akito's room, both times knowing what the horrible outcomes would be and not caring, and possesses enough charm and charisma to sow a level of division amongst the Sohma staff, with an entire faction siding with her over Akito. As a whole, Ren is all of Akito's worst traits rolled into one, only amplified tenfold and minus any Freudian Excuse or anything remotely positive or redeemable, explaining where Akito got them from in the first place.
• Fullmetal Alchemist (2003):
  • Like Kimblee's anime counterpart, Frank Archer couldn’t care less about Ishbal's people, soldier or innocent. And when he's a cyborg, he didn't even care about shooting his fellow soldiers.
  • Envy. Sadist? Check. Consummate Liar? Check. It's All About Me? Check. Lack of Empathy? Double check!
  • Solf J. Kimblee is a very nasty, low-functioning sociopath. He's only in the army for the chance to kill people, and takes it well beyond even the most Sociopathic Soldier. He doesn't even have any real loyalty in him; he just likes to hurt people. He had no qualms blowing anyone up, even innocent Ishbalan civilians. This extends to women and children.
  • Dante has the superficial charm, grandiose sense of her own worth, Lack of Empathy, consummate lying and manipulation abilities, and irresponsibility.
  • Mugear, a businessman who was perfectly willing to poison a nearby town to make the Red Water, and had his lead scientist eliminated to keep that fact quiet.
• Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood (and manga):
  • Shou Tucker has zero empathy, a need for stimulation, pathological lying, and commits heinous crimes for the pettiest of reasons.
  • Solf J. Kimblee is a high-functioning and very self-aware psychopath with a decidedly unusual worldview. For all his sadism and disregard for human life, he does have some honor — largely based on honesty and duty — and abides seriously by it, to the point where he genuinely respects anyone who can consistently adhere to their own moral/professional codes, even those wholly opposed to his own. Indeed, by the end, he considers his own existence expendable, opting to distract Pride and subsequently have his own soul vanish rather than "live" inside of a hypocritical homunculus.
  • "Gold-Toothed Doctor" does horrible things For Science! and the Evulz without a shred of guilt, treats everyone else around him as pawns and as things for him to experiment on, has a grandiose sense of his own worth, and doesn't care if his allies seek to eradicate all of Amestris.
  • Father, a being who manipulated a king into destroying his own country so he could become immortal, then spent the next centuries creating a military dictatorship so that he could destroy that country to become God. He has no emotions because he cast them off into the Homunculi, and genuinely sees humans like they see ants.
  • The King of Xerxes, who was perfectly willing to go along with Father's plan to slaughter his people for immortality.
  • Barry the Chopper, a butcher who became a Serial Killer because he loved chopping meat that much, and saw his soul being bound into armour as an opportunity to kill more people.
• Nakago in Fushigi Yuugi will go to any means to achieve his goal of godhood, and manipulates anyone who can advance his goals, and kills them when they are of no use to him. He manipulates Yui into making him a god, and knows that she would be eaten by Seiryuu afterwards, and kills one of the Seiryu warriors when he has no other need of him.
• Happy Sugar Life:
  • The Manager of the Princess Imperial is initially presented as a gentle and caring boss, but hides a bloated sense of importance that cannot abide seeing others being more loved than she is. When Mitsuboshi asked Satou out on a date, she responded by kidnapping and raping him for a week as a way of rectifying that, while manipulating everyone else to bully Satou and making her work extra shifts with no pay. When Satou confronts her about this, she quickly tries to pass of the blame on Satou (for stealing attention from her) and Mitsuboshi (for falling in love with Satou), claiming that they "ruined" her empire.
  • Asahi's father is a low functioning example of a sociopath who wastes no time with wasting the money he received from his inheritance after his father's death to spend it on his hedonism. He lacks empathy for anyone he hurts, having raped his wife when they first met after she accidentally bumped into him.
• Quite a few of the "targets" from Hell Girl portray sociopathic traits, most commonly by being almost unimaginably self-centered. A prime example would be a teenage baseball player who beats one of his teammates to death with a baseball bat and frames another for it...so he could get out of playing a game and putting strain on his shoulder.
• Hellsing:
  • The Major is a classic sociopath. The Major is charismatic, manipulative, and wickedly intelligent, even through his batshit insanity, but is simultaneously utterly bloodthirsty and utterly devoid of anything remotely resembling empathy.
  • First Lieutenant Zorin Blitz. She's sadistic, arrogant, completely devoid of empathy and takes extreme pleasure in breaking her victims' psyches.
• Miki Kirishima from Hideout is a self-serving woman who paints herself as a grieving mother when her son died in an accident, but later displays disinterest in having another child and even coldly admits that she never wanted a son to begin with.
• There are many examples from Hunter × Hunter such as some of the Chimera Ant soldiers, and other characters fulfill some of the criteria such as the Phantom Troupe, but they don't exactly fit the mold of complete sociopaths as they actually care about one another, engaging is a hefty dose of hypocrisy, where they kill wantonly and without remorse, but become infuriated when one of their own is killed. The one character however, who fits the sociopath mold perfectly, is Hisoka. A man with a clown and magician theme, whose sole goal in life is to find strong opponents so that he may derive sexual pleasure from fighting, outsmarting, overpowering, and killing them. Everything he sees is viewed through the lens of whether or not they can stimulate and entertain him, as he spares absolutely no thought for regular people, and will kill those who disappoint him in combat without remorse. He has at times killed solely to satiate his bloodlust but exercises restraint at other points if he believes letting his opponent live will lead to them getting stronger, and thus, a greater fight and thrill for Hisoka himself. The fact that despite being in the series from the near beginning, he has never really changed his goals or mindset as well as his self serving goals makes Hisoka a darkly realistic depiction of a sociopath.
  • The only other character that could rival Hisoka would have to be Prince Tserriednich Hui Guo Rou of the Kakin empire. Despite his intellectual and cultured side he commits acts befitting to a serial killer such as dissecting women and collecting human body parts as if it were an art collection. Categorizes people into two categories, “useful trash and useless trash”. Like many sociopaths, he's in large part driven by a need for stimulation which he finds in murder. One of the reasons he takes to Nen training so well is because he finds Nen abilities incredibly fun and a worthy intellectual challenge for himself. The thought of him mastering nen and winning the succession will make anyone who knows his true colors filled with horror and fear.
• Big Bad Naraku from Inuyasha. As a conglomerate consciousness nothing about Naraku's psychology is normal, but he loves to manipulate people, play with their feelings and/or corrupt them, using them and later discarding them, without any remorse whatsoever.
• Hiro Shishigami, from Inuyashiki, is a textbook example of sociopathy: save for his own family and closest friends, he views other people as completely inconsequential to him, such that their deaths mean absolutely nothing for him. This is how he justifies becoming a Serial Killer with no qualms about wiping out whole families after Back from the Dead as a cyborg. It also gives him no qualms about attempting to completely depopulated Japan when those few people he cares for come to harm, and the only reason he consents to give up his life to save the Earth from a meteor is because of that connection to those same few people.
• Itsuwaribito has Gin Hobaku, the itsuwaribito who killed Utsuho's family in the past. A twisted sadist who enjoys using his charisma and intellect to gain other people's trust and manipulating them to do his bidding before callously betraying and killing them for his own amusement, he's built a reputation as a local hero and turns the entire town (and their army) against the heroes when Utsuho attacks him. When one of the royal guards starts suspecting him and goes digging around his room for evidence of wrongdoing, he takes his time toying with the man with shallow cuts and poison, before trapping him in a secret underground tunnel to make his body disappear. Later, when the man's nephew tries to confront Hobaku for his evil deeds, he hires thugs to attack the palace and pretend to be the former's underlings to frame the young man for treason. He later acknowledges that he could use his great talents to be a real hero, but thinks that he'd be getting the shorter end of the stick in doing so, since those other, lowly people can't benefit him the way he could benefit them — and, besides, where's the fun in that?
• From JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
  • Dio Brando. For starters, he is extremely arrogant, to the point where he'll reset the universe just to become its ruler. He also has a supreme Lack of Empathy, though he hides it very well for the sake of manipulating his minions, who revere him as a deity, even though they'll inevitably meet their ends at his hands. He treats dog-kicking as a hobby, and burned a dog alive just to mess up his adopted brother. Finally, his idea of love boils down to stealing the body of the ones he "cares about" and warping someone to become obsessively fanatic towards him. When he tries to use his abusive birth father to justify his behavior, Speedwagon responds with a Shut Up, Hannibal!, declaring that Dio is just straight-up evil and has been since the minute he was born; notably, Dio actually agrees with this assessment and fully embraces it.
  • Dio's minion Telence T. D'Arby exhibits many typical traits of a textbook sociopath, including a Lack of Empathy and manipulative nature. Kakyoin even calls him one in the English dub.
  • Yoshikage Kira, who has mental issues that give him the drive to murder. He knows that killing people is wrong, but he sees it as a bad habit rather than an amoral crime. While he prefers not to fight, he does so out of a need to protect his own identity, and will not give his victims a peaceful death. As Kosaku Kawajiri, he scares, emotionally abuses, and outright kills his "son" Hayato, and he's brought back to life, he turns him into a literal Tyke Bomb so anyone who asks him for Kira's real identity will painfully die over and over.
    • To drive this point even further, his fight against Stray Cat, in which his wife, or better put: the wife of the man he stole the identity from, gets injured from the attack. He instinctively shows worry for her, and tries to shield her. When he realizes he's starting to show a slight bit of empathy towards another person, he immediately refuses the call to Character Development and states in his inner monologue how someone like him only protects people when they're convenient.
  • Diavolo, whose introduction to Part 5 is dismembering a traitor to his gang, an act so gory the other traitor he had caught committed suicide. His defining trait is his extreme paranoia, preferring to run everything from the shadows and killing everyone that finds out his true identity. This trait is firmly established when it's revealed that he burned his hometown down, with the intent of being among the listed casualties. His other defining trait is his Lack of Empathy; he shows no remorse towards anyone, not even his split personality, and upon finding out he has a daughter, he has her sent to him with the intent of killing her, never mind the fact that, up until that point, she had no idea who he was, simply because he couldn't accept the chance that she might know.
  • The JOJOLANDS protagonist Jodio Joestar is a 15-year old clinical sociopath, having been formally diagnosed with Anti-Social Personality Disorder. His personality is fairly mundane compared to other examples in the series, as he's not a criminal mastermind or mass murderer but a sullen drug-dealing punk with an over-inflated ego and a poor sense of risk assessment.
• Juujika no Rokunin: All the bullies have shades of this, but Kyou Shigoku is definitively the one who is closest to a textbook example of a high-functioning sociopath. Not only Kyou suffers from a blatant Lack of Empathy, he is highly manipulative (to the point is heavily implied the other bullies turned out the way they did because of his influence), hides his evil behaviour behind a mask of superficial charm and has no sense of integrity or remorse from his many acts of evil. And like many high-functioning sociopaths in Real Life, Shigoku has no real Freudian Excuse and has been like that since childhood.
• The Kindaichi Case Files has Yoichi Takato, a Serial Killer who sees crime as a form of "art", and gleefully commits murders, or helps other people commit murder, for the sake of his "art" without any concern for the lives lost in the process. Oftentimes, he'd also enlist Kindaichi (and sometimes Akechi as well) because they're some of the very few people who can match his intellect and would be able to solve the mysteries he craft, as though the murders he committed are just a sick game hide and seek. He's quite a skilled actor too, being able to act as a clumsy, timid manager of a magician's troupe in the first case he's introduced in.
• Kill la Kill:
  • Ragyo Kiryuin shows multiple signs of sociopathy, possessing an extreme sense of self worth and ego and a total lack of concern about her offspring to the point of sexually abusing her elder daughter Satsuki and literally throwing her younger daughter Ryuko away in the trash when the latter was an infant. She also ordered the death of her husband, casually sacrifices her employees and innocent bystanders to further her goals, and outright rejects the concept of having empathy for anyone else. Her Leitmotif "Blumenkranz" outlines her thought process by comparing people to flowers, in which they will be immediately disposed of once they serve their purpose.
  • Nui Harime. Absolutely insane, disguises herself solely to manipulate others and take away their hope, loves it when people hate her, and considers everyone her playthings, all with a big smile on her face. Her Evil Gloating about murdering Ryoku's father in cold blood to her face clearly speaks for itself.
• Delphine Eraclea from Last Exile is a decadent aristocrat with zero empathy who manipulates everyone around her for her own amusement. As one person puts it, a beautiful, soulless beast.
• Lyrical Nanoha:
  • Quattro from Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS took great pleasure in torturing Vivio, called Dieci stupid for being bothered by it, manipulated Vivio into a fight to the death with her mother Nanoha, felt the need to taunt Nanoha, and spent most of the final battle calling her enemies and allies worthless. The only point she doesn't hit is a lack of attachment, since she's loyal to Jail.
  • Phil Maxwell in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha Detonation. Once the funding for the Eltria Reclamation project was cut he immediately had everyone murdered by Iris Units without even blinking an eye on the grounds that he was doing them a favor so that they wouldn't be assigned to more boring work. When Yuri confronts him he admits that he never loved Iris or anyone else; he just pretended he did because it produced results. And finally he has no problem destroying Earth, all in the name of profit, despite the billions of people living there.
• Magical × Miracle has Ardi, a wizard from a distant country who traipses into Viegald and immediately puts half of the population, including the King, under mind control. As a child, he hit a girl who tried to profess her love for him, and laughed at her tears. He also killed a fortune-teller and felt no remorse. And his motive for trying to take over Viegald? He wants to kill the famed Master Wizard of the land, whom he believes to be the only other magic wielder whose powers rival his own.
• Maria no Danzai: Nozomu Okaya is a monstrous sadist who only cares about himself and is only with his "friends" so that he can use them for his own benefit, completely apathetic of their disappearance or death. He does not feel any remorse for making Kiritaka's school life a living hell just because he didn't like his defiant eyes, and his only regret for unintentionally killing him is that he "let him escape", thus he can't torture him anymore. He is able to hide his demonic self by pretending to be a kind and helpful model student thanks to his charisma and superficial charming appearance.
• Mars (1996): The story revolves around Rei Kashino and Asou Kira's romance, but much of the plot focuses on Rei's struggle with what appears to be sociopathic tendencies. Going down the list, Rei explicitly does not care about the feelings or well-beings of others if they are not someone of importance to him. He goes as far as telling Kira that if she ends up killing her bullies by standing up to them, who cares. He has a need for stimulation and finds it hard to sit still; also explains part of his Speed Demon tendencies and his interest in motorbike racing. He has no care how people view him or think of him, though it doesn't much matter since he's the Lovable Jock in school. That said, Rei isn't a liar and in fact is almost brutally honest about his feelings and opinions. Moreover, he has shown remorse for some of his more egregious behavior, especially if/when they make things harder for Kira. Rei is an example of a person with the potential to fall into full sociopathy and may have done just that, had he not met Kira and had others in his life who cared for him.
  • Masao, on the other hand is Rei's Shadow Archetype and exists to show just what Rei could've become had he given in to his worst impulses. Masao feels no empathy or remorse over the fact he killed his former bully, tries to kill Kira, almost kills Rei. He skillfully lies to everyone, pretending to be much weaker and fragile than he is, and even manipulates his psychologists in order to be released sooner by fake crying in front of them. He allows people to inflict pain on him without showing a shred of emotion, indicating some of his need for stimulation and tells Rei that living normally is boring. Most importantly, he looks down on everyone around him; believing himself to be superior than them. Rei callously calling Masao the same as everyone else is the Berserk Button that makes Masao try to murder him.
  • And then there's Sei, Rei's deceased twin brother, who is revealed to have been one himself. From his little screentime given that he's a Posthumous Character, he is quite similar to Masao. He considers human beings to be just moving piles of meat and does not care for anyone except for Rei. However, he cares for Rei solely because Rei was useful to him: Sei found himself to be too weak to engage in violence so he manipulated Rei into becoming a Knight Templar Big Brother who would go berserk on anyone that seemed to be hurting Sei. To Rei he'd present a weak version of himself, but to those who knew him, Sei was a Knight Templar, who'd firmly assert his ideals to anyone. When looking at all of the portraits Sei painted of Rei, Rei comments that he feels as if Sei was only really painting himself, hinting at Sei's idea of self-importance. And finally, the reason behind Sei's suicide was to explicitly get back at Rei, who he viewed to have lashed out against him by spitefully telling Sei that they aren't their dad's children. Sei hoped it would drive Rei into such despair that Rei would end up killing himself too.
• Medaka Box: A lot of the characters are sociopaths to some degree (the title character narrowly escaped becoming one herself), but Ajimu takes the cake: not only does she regard people as things she's a Physical God. There's also Shiranui, who pitted her friends against an Irish wolfhound (a giant dog that was used to hunt wolves in Ireland) because it was funny.
• Johan Liebert, the titular character from Monster. Any description of his sociopathy would become a plot summary, but the best evidence comes from the clinical manner in which he commits his crimes — there's no emotion behind it, just cold calculation that the individual needs to be silenced and thorough follow-through on that assessment.
• Silas Edwards and Allen from Mother Keeper are both this, Silas buys slaves, drugs them and forces them to fight to the death for people's amusement. Allen was a part of this and kidnapped the person closest to one of Silas' slaves and forced them to fight to the death.
• My Hero Academia:
  • All For One carries all the traits of a classic sociopath: He has no empathy or remorse for all the things he has done, shamelessly bragging to his brother about how his followers had wiped out a faction of Quirk users who refused to join him. He views others as mere pawns to be used. He lies and manipulates others with ease. He's a Sadist who enjoys getting under other people's skin, often taunting All Might about the death of his mentor. He is incredibly arrogant and condescending to the point of megalomania and is charismatic enough to gain a loyal following of villains to serve under him. Even his taking in Tomura as his apprentice wasn't done out of altruism, but as a means of getting back at All Might by grooming Nana Shimura's grandson to be his successor.
    All for One: [in response to a Heroic Sacrifice] Thank you for such wonderful comedy!
  • Kai Chisaki, otherwise known as Overhaul, the main villain of the Shie Hassaikai Arc. He is ruthless, manipulative, and views others as a means to an end, especially with Eri whom he repeatedly uses his Quirk on to break her down and use her blood and cells to create bullets that disable a user's Quirk. He constantly calls Eri cursed and puts blame on her for the murders he commits. He has no care for his minions, killing them for failures, using them as human shields to survive and even fusing with two of them against their will. He even has the ability to "resurrect" people after dismantling them, once doing it to one of his minions five times. Whenever he kills someone, he only cares about not getting blood on himself rather than the act itself. While he believes himself to be well-intentioned and cares for his former boss, this did nothing to deter him from putting his boss into a coma when his boss was appalled with his experimentation on Eri.

N-Z

• From Naruto we have Hidan, who unlike most characters in the series has no positive traits and never did. He slaughtered his village simply because he was disgusted with their pacifistic way of life, and performed gruesome rituals to attain immortality for himself. He's also bloodthirsty and cruel for its own sake. On top of that, even the series itself seems to posit him as the most unsympathetic major villain, as he's exempt from the Cycle of Revenge Aesop pervading the storyline with his Fate Worse than Death (though it helps Shikamaru's case that Hidan has nobody who would care about his cruel fate barring potential allies, and also that just killing him would be impossible).
• One Piece:
  • Captain Kuro is exceedingly self-centered, views his crew as expendable, views people in general as pawns to be manipulated to suit his own ends, and unbelievably cruel.
  • Eneru’s personality traits is like reading a sociopath's diagnostic checklist: incredibly self-centered and arrogant, has an astonishing Lack of Empathy for everything around him, manipulates anyone as he pleases, and is driven by a relentless lust for power and control as well as delusions of grandeur.
  • Spandam is a vile, power-hungry bastard who would even sacrifice his own men if it will advance his own career or cover up his mistakes. He also takes great pleasure in making his enemies suffer, going out of his way to brutalize a defenseless Robin just because he can and looking forward to seeing Luffy's despaired expression when Robin tells him she doesn't want to be rescued.
  • The World Nobles tick every box, no empathy towards others; a need for stimulation; no remorse for their depraved acts; lie, cheat, and manipulate anyone for their own benefit; and the belief that everyone else is far beneath them.
  • Fukaboshi's description of Hody Jones fits the definition, as he's done many horrible things, including provoking the prejudice of humans by assassinating the queen and blaming it on a human he had hired to work for him only to betray him, and later taking over the kingdom and killing anyone who got in his way.
  • Caesar Clown caused an incident that made Punk Hazard into a wasteland, he kidnapped and performed experiments on children, he drugged those same children to prevent them from wanting to escape, he acts like a nice guy to his underlings only to perform more experiments on them later, everyone is just a means to an end to him.
  • Donquixote Doflamingo is manipulative like you wouldn't believe, extraordinarily selfish, possesses a complete Lack of Empathy, and is a violent sadist to boot. Even when he was young, his behaviour (which included asking his dad for a gun to kill someone over a petty argument) raised some serious red flags about his twisted mind and what he would go on to become and do.
  • Three of the four Vinsmoke brothers the exception being Sanji definitely qualify. They have a severe Lack of Empathy, using their cloned soldiers as human shields and casually abusing servants. They're also almost completely emotionless, to the point at which when they, their sister and their father are about to be killed by the Big Mom Pirates, they simply laugh and joke about it, not caring for their own lives or each other's. It's later justified — Judge psychologically altered them in-utero so they can become the emotionless killing machines that'll bring Germa 66 to greatness, except it backfires in the long run as it nearly leads to the entire family being wiped out.
  • Mother Carmel was definitely this back when she was alive. While she pretended to be a kind, grandmotherly nun to the children she'd take in, she was a remorseless human trafficker who'd sell the kids in her care (who she never really loved) into slavery. Her Consummate Liar skills allowed her to play everyone she met for total saps, and every good deed of hers was done with an ulterior motive in mind.
  • Reviewing the key personality traits of Kurozumi Orochi brings to mind a sociopathic checklist. Frighteningly, he displays the majority of them during the party we first see him in:
    • Superficial Charm: Even without noting his good mood, he displays this with his Catchphrase alone; since it can translate to either "Formalities aren't necessary" or "This pleases me", Orochi seems to hide his selfishness in plain sight. He only ever displays a charming façade again during the Fire Festival, implying he can only maintain it when partying, which leads us to...
    • Need for Stimulation and Lack of Impulse Control: Not only does he like to throw excessive parties, but he will also give not-so Rousing Speeches for his own amusement. His prime motivation, to get revenge on the descendants of those who hunted his family, just highlights this recklessness. He even refuses to let O-Toko's laughter slide not only because of this trait, but also for his...
    • Excessive Pride and Never My Fault Tendencies: When the inevitable consequences from his angry Disproportionate Retribution happen, he tries to pin the blame on poor Toko for laughing despite his officials having advised him she's only a child and the fact that he's responsible for her uncontrollable laughter in the first place. His meeting with CP-0 before we even see his face demonstrates both just how arrogant he is and his...
    • Shallowness and Lack of Empathy: He brags to CP-0 that he made Wano a paradise and "proves" it by saying there is no one not smiling, which is true thanks to putting the failed Smiles in Ebisu Town's trash. He also shows how selfish he is throughout the party just by greedily stuffing when Wano is currently living in poverty thanks to his own manipulations. This flaw get even MORE noticeable when he "mourns" Komurasaki for her superficial traits and celebrates Wano as a place of laughter, while the citizens of Ebisu Town laugh in mourning. His lash-out at Toko even becomes this in hindsight when it's revealed he put failed Smiles in Ebisu Town's garbage just to spite her father, Yasuie, and because their mourning bothered him; in other words, he's so superficial he judges others' emotions by what he sees on the surface! Come the Fire Festival, this trait indirectly gets him beheaded, along with his...
    • Lack Of Foresight: His attack on O-Toko during the party demonstrates how he can't process how such a lunge could ruin what reputation he has with the people of Wano, or how it could result in the death of another person he desires alive. He can make successful short-term plans concerning dealing with the enemy (or at least almost successful with the given information), but when it comes to long-term planning, especially when it comes to allying with an Emperor of the Sea, Orochi is far too short-sighted to plan ahead. When he and Kaido disagree on what to do with Wano on Onigashima, the latter decapitates him on the spot.
  • Like his fellow World Nobles, Saint Figarland Garling has absolutely no empathy towards anyone whose not a World Noble and no remorse for his depraved acts during the "Native Hunting Competition" at God Valley. The fact that he got "penalized" 10,000 points right from the start of the nobles' sick culling game by killing the country's king before the timer started yet still ended up winning in the end speaks volumes about how little human life that are not World Nobles matters to him — and even that will be rescinded if he deems a World Noble has "fallen" too low.
  • One of the Five Elders of the World Government, Saint Jaygarcia Saturn the Godhead of Science and Defense, has demonstrated zero empathy for anyone, has the expected Celestial Dragon perception of himself as above everyone else to the point they might as well be insects, and is able to appear reasonable when he needs to. He also rarely ever shows any emotion, fitting the shallow emotions aspect, committing many horrific acts, and seems genuinely perplexed by the mere suggestion he should consider the feelings of anyone he sees as inferior to him.
• Tokugawa Harusada of Ōoku: The Inner Chambers, in her childhood, regularly lied, framed her sister for theft, later pushed her to her death, and poisoned her own mother, all because she was bored. Since becoming mother of the shogun, she's poisoned a maid, gotten a senior councilor fired for not giving her a title, pitted her son's wife and concubines against each other, and killed her own grandchildren, all for her own amusement, and because the glory of sitting at the pinnacle of power wore off.
• Pokémon: The Series:
  • Grings Kodai from Pokémon: Zoroark: Master of Illusions. He fits all of the above criteria plus is one of the most sadistic monsters in Pokémon history.
  • Pokemon Hunter J also qualifies. She only cares about money, has no problem killing her own men or a child for that matter, and will work for and betray anyone to get what she wants, even assisting Cyrus’s plan for universal destruction.
• Shogo Makishima of Psycho-Pass is a charming, intelligent man who always has a bright white hue when analyzed by the Sibyl System's sanity detectors, even as he's slitting a girl's throat. Makishima also encourages other people to become serial killers and only views them as tools to be abandoned once they stop entertaining him.
  • More prevalent are the masterminds behind the Sibyl System, the Wetware CPU consisting of 'criminally asymptomatic' brains^note they are hard-wired to commit criminal acts but can hide their true personality from society. Sociopathy is literally a requirement to be recruited into their ranks, as they explicitly recruit from criminals who have a strong enough façade to fool the system; the only reason they don't hire Makishima is because he wants everyone to know what he has done.
• Puella Magi Madoka Magica: Kyubey (and his species by extension) convinces girls to form dangerous contracts with him, which will end up turning them into the very Eldritch Abominations that they're meant to fight. He doesn't lie, but he dodges around the concept of informed consent by leaving out crucial aspects of becoming a magical girl until the unfortunate contractors get a first-hand experience, excuses it by saying You Didn't Ask, and is utterly incapable of understanding why the risks of becoming a magical girl troubles his contractors. As long as he's met his energy quota, he doesn't care what happens to the Earth once the magical girls turn into witches. Kyubey is an interesting example as his species lacks emotions — thus, while he's trying to keep the universe running with the energy he collects, he cares not who gets harmed as a result of his actions as long as it's not him. This backfires on him when his attempts to turn Madoka around to his way of thinking give her the info she needs to thwart him and his system. He also shows signs of Greed in The Movie, trapping Homura and her friends inside Homura's own witch barrier in an attempt to reinstate the witch system so it can continue siphoning energy for itself. Once again, this leads to his downfall as Madoka outsmarts him a second time.
• Pupa shows that sociopathy runs in the family:
  • Maria "Ai" Imari is a researcher who creates a strand of the Pupa Virus solely to impregnate herself with it so she could birth a monster. She suggests that Utsutsu become Yume's meal due to his regenerative abilities, but she otherwise expresses no concern if Yume were to transform into a monster and go on a ravenous rampage. She also remorselessly assimilates Yume to complete her goal.
  • Genjurou Imari was Maria's grandfather who had the tendency of adopting orphan boys and then savagely torturing them for his art. He also psychologically warps Shiro's mind into believing that such violence was love.
• Redo of Healer: The Kingdom of Jioral has several up to and including:
  • Flare; prior to her being brainwashed and becoming "Freia," would physically and sexually abuse Keyaru to force him to use his healing power and if that didn't work, she would use drugs to make him more susceptible. The Kingdom doesn't see this side of her due to being superficially charming.
  • Her little sister Norn is even worse before also being brainwashed and becoming "Ellen". She had multiple "toys" that she abused for her own enjoyment. Once she got bored with them, they were discarded. She's also a manipulative warmonger who sees no problem with using violence and bloodshed to get what she wants.
  • The "heroes" Blade and Bullet: Blade is a Serial Rapist of women who would slip aphrodisiacs into their drinks and then take them to have her way with them. She is superficially charming to the girls she fancies, yet she only sees them as conquests as evidenced when one of the fathers of her victims approached her for revenge and she couldn't remember which one he was referring to. She also has a huge ego, taking offense at a disguised Keyaru bruising her "beautiful face." As for Bullet, he tries to pass himself off as a "Good Shepherd" to mask his shotacon fascination, and also sexually abused Keyaru.
  • Renard, the captain of Jioral's royal guard, had a sick love of raping women and giddily gloats to Keyaru about raping Anna all night.
• Region: Takada sacrifices his students to the rats to save his own skin and later condemns hundreds of civilians to become rat food after his plan of disposing of his remaining student failed.
• Rent-A-Girlfriend: Mami was the ex-girlfriend of Kazuya who dumps him in less than a month. She manipulates his emotions all while bad-mouthing him in public. Upon learning about Chizuru, she makes an attempt to "break them up" not because she wants to be with Kazuya again, but because she was enraged to see that he seemingly moved on after their breakup.
• Revolutionary Girl Utena: Akio Ohtori has a superficial charm, which he uses to hide his despicable nature under the guise of a charming gentleman from the public. He manipulates everyone around him, including Anthy and Kanae, as pawns to regain his lost power as Prince Dios by any means necessary. He is a textbook Domestic Abuser to Anthy, passing her around like the prize to whoever wins the dueling game, raping her weekly, and telling her that only he can love her. He never accepts responsibility for Anthy's original death, her continued suffering, or his statutory rape of Utena; he instead puts the blame on both of them, the world, the townspeople, even claiming that Anthy willingly continued being a Silent Scapegoat for him and that Utena is guilty of sleeping with an engaged man.
• Rosario + Vampire: Gyokuro Shuzen is completely incapable of caring about anyone but herself. Children by blood or adoption, lovers, subordinates... all of them are nothing but stepping stones to her and her quest for power and dominance.
• While the visual novel version of Makoto Itou could change alignments based on player choices, the anime adaptation of School Days very firmly establishes him as a high-functioning sociopath. He has a need for stimulation that he satisfies by attracting and sleeping with his classmates, even though he's already in a relationship with Kotonoha. He has enough superficial charm and deceit to present himself as an upstanding student and Nice Guy as well as conceal his sleeping around. He shows no lasting regret for the damage he causes, save Kotonoha, and even then only when she's in his immediate presence.
• A Silent Voice: Naoka Ueno, at least in the anime adaptation where she undergoes Adaptational Jerkass, is a low-functioning example. She shows no remorse for her actions, always feels entitled to attention from others no matter what, and instantly drops her friendly charade the moment she doesn't get her way.
• Medusa from Soul Eater proves to be a Consummate Liar who doesn't care about anyone else and has a charming facade that allows her to infiltrate the DWMA as a school nurse without anyone suspecting her before revealing her true colors. She. Her child, Crona, gets the worst of it (with the dub even having her call Crona "it" because of another trope) and she once locked Crona up when s/he was little in a dark closet with no food for five days when s/he refused to kill three rabbits in three different ways and subjected him/her to horrific experiments to make him/her a Humanoid Abomination.
• Talentless Nana:
  • Yuuka is revealed to have been a stalker obsessed with Shinji and was the one who started the fire at the movie theater concluding that she could make him her boyfriend by bringing him back as a zombie.
  • Tsuruoka is revealed to have established a child soldier program and places Nana into it after killing her parents. Despite claiming to be doing things out of her best interest, he truly views her as a useful pawn and had no qualms with ordering her killed for her insolence. He also promises her that he would help Michiru after she used up her life force to save her only to shoot her in the head two times to prevent Michiru from healing herself.
• From Texhnolyze: the two main antagonists. Yoshii not only kickstarts a civil war in Lux, but murders a prostitute he had seemingly bonded and sympathized with the night before for no conceivable reason. Kano takes this trope and ramps it Up To Eleven, revealing in the final episode that not only does he have no problem forcefully turning a little girl into a cyborg, but that he doesn't even believe that anyone in Lux actually exists, let alone count as actual people.
• Rize Kamishiro from Tokyo Ghoul appears to have been one. A beautiful young woman, she used charm and manipulation to lull victims into a sense of ease and then brutally killed them. Her appetite earned her the title "Binge Eater", for she frequently killed simply for the amusement while completely unconcerned about the consequences of her actions. Among Ghouls, she was infamous for moving into a Ward and throwing it into chaos with her sprees, then skipping town once her actions had brought in the authorities. If she had an ounce of empathy or compassion, she never showed it and stated she only cared about enjoying herself. Even other Ghouls found her selfish and cruel.
• Manjiro "Mikey" Sano from Tokyo Revengers embodies a disturbingly realistic and complex portrayal of an individual with evident antisocial/psychopathic behaviors, including impulsiveness, aggression, and a Lack of Empathy, guilt, or shame. Throughout the narrative, Mikey showcases a penchant for physical violence and appears devoid of remorse for some of his most brutal actions, often displaying a lack of concern for the potential consequences. However, despite his violent tendencies, Mikey possesses innate charisma and charm, and can be remarkably playful when he chooses to be, traits commonly associated with highly functional sociopaths.
• Millions Knives, Big Bad of Trigun seems to have developed this as part of his Face–Heel Turn when he went mad from the revelation that Humans Are Bastards. He Used to Be a Sweet Kid, though children are generally a bit patchy at empathy given they're not fully cognizant of other people as individuals. Given Knives went into his Roaring Rampage of Revenge when technically about a year old, he never seems to have gotten past this developmental stage, emotionally. Though in many respects he's a Magnificent Bastard.
  • As well as completely disregarding human feelings, which doesn't really count since he hates them, he mindslaves his psychic 'sisters' into a giant million winged angel without really noticing they didn't want to, and torments his twin brother.
• Welcome to Demon School! Iruma-kun: While it's revealed that the demons in the setting suffer a Lack of Empathy towards other demons not related to them or otherwise, these two exhibit an extreme case of sociopathy.
  • Ami Kirio appears to be a weak demon boy who befriends Iruma and his friends but is in truth a manipulative sadomasochist who got off on despair whether it be others or his own. He conspired with Baal to trap the student body with his barrier magic, the ultimate plan being to detonate a bomb to kill all the students and in that ensuing chaos, the students' families would be driven back to their primal states. Ami explains to Iruma that he became aware of his sadomasochism when he was sent to a rehabilitation school due to his low magical abilities and it was there he befriended a girl who loaned him her prized earring. When he accidentally destroyed it when trying to retrieve it from two bullies, he got a nosebleed from the sight of his former friend's grieving face.
  • Baal, one of the Thirteen Crowns of the Netherworld who had grown bored with the current state of the Netherworld and masterminded the attempted bombing of the demon school so that it would send the Netherworld back to its days of chaos.
• When They Cry:
  • Higurashi: When They Cry:
    • Teppei Hojo commits honey badger schemes along with abusing Satoko and Satoshi implying with the former he'd make her his wife when she got older.
    • The staff leader of the orphanage that Miyo Takano was sent to during her childhood. He forces orphans to eat ink and feeds the ringleader of a failed escape to the chickens.
    • Miyo's boss Nomura who's more than willing to kill thousands of citizens as a bid towards closing down a rival company.
  • Umineko: When They Cry:
    • The Witch of Miracles Bernkastel who is mainly driven to commit horrible actions largely for entertainment.
    • Black Battler is an evil version of Battler Ushiromiya whose hobbies include raping anything in sight.
• Wolf Guy - Wolfen Crest features quite a few examples, such as Yandere Nightmare Fetishist Ryuuko Kounuma, the Psycho Knife Nut Kuroda brothers, and especially the Yandere Haguro Dou.
  Narriation: Humanity is exemplified by the complex oscillation and delicate melody of its emotions; especially those of compassion. Haguro's emotions, however, [are] sounding more like a deafening, toneless din.
• Yakitate!! Japan has Yukino Azusugawa, the eldest daughter of Sadamichi Azusugawa, who is by far the nastiest character in the series.
  • She is a heartless woman who is implied to have murdered people to get her way. During the Rookie Tournament arc, she manipulates a Pantasia staff to sabotage Kawachi's bread and later murders the guy to cover up her involvement. A later bonus chapter flashback shows that she had attempted to kill Tsukino by pushing her into a well when they were both children, and Tsukino would have died of not for Azuma's bread.
  • She is a skilled actor, and can act like a kind — if eccentric — woman in public. Yukino had horribly mistreated Tsukino in the past, and still loathes her half-sister in the present; but when they reunite, Yukino is able to put up a friendly facade in front of her friends, and even fakes tears of remorse when they call her out on her past abuse towards Tsukino. Later on, while talking to her grandfather — the current CEO of Pantasia — she manages to pretend giving her support for Tsukino to become the bakery's next successor, thus convincing the old man that she is a selfless and considerate woman.
  • She is as sadistic and promiscuous as can be shown in a Shonen manga. She often walks around in public wearing Dominatrix outfit, and one Omake strip actually shows her walking around nude. Fittingly, when she is transformed into air particles after losing a baking battle against Azuma, she is temporarily placed inside an inflatable sex doll.
  • She has no loyalty to anyone, and later betrays her own family to join forces with Pantasia's greatest rival, St. Pierre. She seems to have an intimate relationship with the Big Bad owner of St. Pierre, but it's clear that their relationship is not born out of love, but their shared lust for monopoly and power.
• Sakyou from YuYu Hakusho is a textbook example. As a child, he lived a normal life and had loving parents and siblings, but later got a job in a pet store, abusing and killing animals for the hell of it. Then he became a gambler, and then a crime lord, and by the time of the series, has plans to open a portal linking Demon World to the human realm just because "life would be more interesting" that way.

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