# Why do anime villians have such stupid motivations? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [July 29, 2017, 2:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-anime-villians-have-such-stupid-motivations/792360 "2017-07-29T02:38:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![marshmallow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/df705f/32.png) [@marshmallow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/marshmallow)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2017, 6:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-anime-villians-have-such-stupid-motivations/792360/21 "2017-07-30T18:25:28Z")
I’m only a casual anime viewer, but most of the ones I remember have the usual conquer the world or revenge plot, or something related to their weird setting. Here’s the closest I could think that matches the OP (spoilers, obviously): Neon Genesis Evangelion: Gendo Ikari - Enact the instrumentality project to join all human souls into a universal consciousness, and to join with his dead wife. Elfen Lied: Kakuzawa - Replace humanity with superior diclonius. Tenga Toppa Gurren Laggan: Anti-Spirals - Suppress and/or genocide spiral races to prevent the apocalyptic Spiral Nemsis from occurring. Trigun: Knives Millions - Exterminate humans to save plants. This makes sense because he’s a human plant thing who was experimented on by humans, or…[something.](http://trigun.wikia.com/wiki/Plant) * * * For nihilistic kill 'em all villains, that seems more like a video game thing, especially in JRPGs, like Final Fantasy and Kefka – but everyone loves Kefka. For the anti-natalist villain (kill everyone to stop pain) I can only think of a couple offhand, and they’re from Western video games: Kerghan from Arcanum Amon from StarCraft II, though it sounded more like a fig leaf for his revenge against the Xel’Naga. I couldn’t find a TV trope page for that. If one exists it might be helpful. ---
**Author:** ![BobBitchin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7ea924/32.png) [@BobBitchin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobBitchin)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2017, 10:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-anime-villians-have-such-stupid-motivations/792360/22 "2017-07-31T10:30:11Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > **BobBitchin’** , while those might be real motivations for individual acts, it takes more than just one act to make a villain. Have you ever seen those sorts of things as motivation for an entire nefarious scheme that needs heroes to foil it? No, I can’t make that leap:D It was just a small comparison between fiction and reality with no facts or terribly deep thought. Maybe ridiculous motivations are an exercise for writers. If they start with a crazy premise and or motivation and can still hold the audience’s suspension of disbelief and weave a compelling story, they find it to be a triumph. That’s the best I got:cool: ---
**Author:** ![epbrown01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7ba0ec/32.png) [@epbrown01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/epbrown01)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2017, 1:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-anime-villians-have-such-stupid-motivations/792360/23 "2017-08-03T01:25:53Z")
. > [@Alessan](#): > > Nitpick - Admiral Zhao (a straightforward ambitious and merciless would-be conqueror) was the villain of Season 1 of _Avatar_. Zuko was always more of an antihero. I don’t know about you, but I was waiting for his heel-face turn from the moment I first saw him. Really? To me, Zhao was so two dimensional he seemed more like an obstacle than a villain, along with being the uncle’s opposite number in terms of Fire Nation military leadership. And with Ozai as Fire Lord, Zhao was never going to be more than Henchman #1. (A job no one’s done better than Shego from Kim Possible, imo) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-anime-villians-have-such-stupid-motivations/792360.md?page=1)