Some villains are born wicked. Others are forged in fire, molded by pain,betrayal, and the chaos of the world around them. In anime, the best villain origin stories are not just tales of evil, they’re stories of human fragility, of hope lost and ideals shattered.
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These eight characters didn’t start as evil incarnate. They were oncechildrenwith hopes, dreams, and the potential for good. Their transformations into legendary antagonists serve as cautionary tales about how quickly innocence can be corrupted when the world shows its cruelest face.
8Tomura Shigaraki
My Hero Academia
Before he was known as thesymbol of destruction, he was just a scared child named Tenko Shimura. His origin, unlike many other villains in My Hero Academia, isn’t rooted in ambition or ideology, it’s born from neglect, trauma, and a desperate need to be saved that never came.
Tenko was the grandson of Nana Shimura, All Might’s mentor, but he never knew her. His father, who hated heroes due to being abandoned by Nana, imposed strict rules in their home, most notably, forbidding any talk of heroes. Tenko’s dreams of heroism were met with abuse and disdain. He would often scratch his eyes uncontrollably, a nervous response to the stress.
One day, his Quirk awakened. It was called Decay.
He accidentally disintegrated his dog. Then his sister. Then his mother. And eventually, his father, his hands trembling, eyes wide, face soaked in tears. No one came to stop him. No hero. No neighbor. Just silence.
And then came All For One.
He offered Tenko a hand, literally and figuratively. He gave him a new name: Tomura Shigaraki. “Tomura,” from “tomurai” (mourning), and “Shigaraki,” All For One’s own last name. From there, the boy who wanted to be a hero became the face of villainy, built not just to destroy buildings, but the very society that ignored him.
7Sho Kusakabe
Fire Force
Sho Kusakabe was presumed dead during the tragic house fire that destroyed the Kusakabe family. But the truth was far darker.
Sho, just a baby at the time, didn’t die in the fire. He was taken by the White-Clad, a religious cult that worships destruction and the Great Cataclysm. They saw Sho as a chosen one, someone who could become a “Pillar” and trigger another cataclysmic event to reshape the world.
They brainwashed him, experimented on him, and trained him to wield his unique ability, time manipulation through thermal energy. While his older brother, Shinra, spent years believing Sho had died, Sho was being molded into a weapon.
The worst part? Sho didn’t even realize he had lost himself.
When the brothers reunite, there is no tearful embrace. Sho doesn’t remember Shinra. He doesn’t know who he used to be. All he sees is a threat to the mission drilled into him since infancy.
Griffith didn’t start off as a villain. That’s what makes his transformation in Berserk so difficult to stomach.
He was charismatic, beautiful, and driven by a singular dream, to rise above the filth of the streets and claim a kingdom of his own. Born into poverty, he climbed the social ladder not by fate, but through sheer force of will and brutal sacrifice. He built the Band of the Hawk from nothing and made them an army that won wars.
But ambition that burns too bright eventually consumes.
When he lost everything due to a single moment of weakness, being imprisoned and tortured after sleeping with the king’s daughter, Griffith faced a crossroad. A broken man with a shattered body and no future, he was offered a choice by the God Hand: to sacrifice the people who loved him most in exchange for his dream.
He chose the dream.
During the Eclipse, he offered up his friends, Guts, Casca, and the entire Band of the Hawk, as sacrifices. They screamed, they bled, and they died, all for the dream of one man who couldn’t bear to be ordinary.
It’s the story of someone who looked at the people who loved him and saw stepping stones.
Demon Slayer
Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba
Gyutaro’s backstory isn’t just tragic, it’s grotesque in how real it feels.
He was born in the slums of the Entertainment District, where his mother tried to kill him more than once out of sheer despair. His body was diseased and malformed, and people mocked his appearance from the moment he could speak.
The only light in his world was his sister, Ume. She was beautiful, everything Gyutaro was not, and she worked as an oiran in training. He guarded her with the ferocity of a starving wolf.
But one day, he returned home to find her being burned alive by samurai.
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That’s when he broke.
Covered in blood, holding Ume’s dying body, Gyutaro was approached by Doma, an Upper Moon demon, who gave him the chance to become powerful. Gyutaro accepted, not for himself, but to protect his sister.
The two were reborn as monstrous killers.
But even as demons, they remained inseparable. In their final moment, as they disintegrate in the afterlife, Ume tries to push Gyutaro away out of shame for dragging him down. But Gyutaro grabs her hand, crying, saying he was the one who dragged her into hell.
4Light Yagami
Death Note
When Light first finds the Death Note in Death Note, he’s not power-hungry or delusional, he’s bored.
He’s a genius high school student with a flawless academic record, a spotless family reputation, and no real challenges. The world, in his view, is rotten. Criminals walk free. Justice systems fail. Society rewards corruption.
So when Ryuk drops the Death Note, a notebook that kills anyone whose name is written in it, Light doesn’t see it as a curse. He sees it as a solution.
At first, he only targets criminals. Murderers. Rapists. Human scum. He believes he’s cleaning the world. But over time, his criteria widen. Anyone who challenges him, police, detectives, innocent people in the way, become acceptable casualties.
And the moment Light kills Lind L. Tailor on live television, just to bait out the real L, his descent is complete. It’s not about justice anymore. It’s about winning. About being God.
3Johan Liebert
Johan is the kind of villain that doesn’t need a blade. His weapon is words.
In Monster, his origin starts with an experiment. As a child, he was subjected to psychological reprogramming at Kinderheim 511, a secret East German facility designed to create the “perfect soldier.” The result wasn’t a soldier. It was a ghost, a boy with no real identity, no emotions, no humanity.
Johan’s trauma didn’t make him afraid of death. It made him fascinated by it.
He once stood at the edge of a building with his twin sister and asked her who should die. Just a child, asking a question soaked in existential dread.
He moves through the world like a phantom, whispering just the right words to push people to their breaking point. He doesn’t kill most of his victims himself. He just makes them want to die.
The worst part? He has no motive. He doesn’t want money, or power, or love. He wants to prove something terrifying: that life is meaningless, and anyone can become a monster with the right nudge.
And he’s usually right.
Naruto: Shippuden
Nagato’s story in Naruto Shippuden is one of the most emotionally complex in anime.
Born in the Hidden Rain Village during a time of war, Nagato lost everything. His parents were murdered by Leaf Village shinobi during a raid, and he had to bury them with his own hands.
Soon after, he met Yahiko and Konan, two orphans like him. Together, they were taken in by Jiraiya, who trained them in ninjutsu. They dreamed of peace in a land torn by violence.
But Yahiko died. And that broke Nagato.
He blamed the shinobi nations for their endless wars. For stealing Yahiko. For destroying hope. So he created a new identity, Pain, and built the Akatsuki as an organization to bring about peace through fear. Not by ending war, but by making it too painful to start.
Nagato wasn’t evil. He was exhausted. Tired of crying. Tired of burying friends. His logic was warped, but his pain was real.
When he faced Naruto, the same student of Jiraiya, he saw the possibility of a different future, and gave his life to make it happen.
1Donquixote Doflamingo
Doflamingo is many things, pirate, tyrant, manipulator, but before all that, he was a child begging for mercy.
Born as a Celestial Dragon in One Piece, he lived in absolute luxury atop the Red Line. But his father, Homing, gave it up all, believing they should live among commoners.
The world didn’t welcome them.
The family was hunted, tortured, and nearly killed by angry mobs who hated the Celestial Dragons. Doflamingo saw his mother die, watched his father be humiliated, and starved in the gutters.
He begged to return to Mariejois. They refused.
So, Doflamingo killed his father with a gun he found, carrying his head to the Celestial Dragons like a trophy. They still turned him away.
That’s when something inside him snapped. He vowed to destroy everything, nobility, poverty, the idea of justice itself. He built an empire of crime, controlled a nation, and supplied weapons to fuel wars.
To Doflamingo, the world was already broken. He just wanted to be the one holding the hammer.
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