Why do anime villians have such stupid motivations?

Cafe Society
21

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.

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.

22

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:

23

.

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)