The Scariest Anime Villains Of All Time

Every great superhero needs an equally memorable supervillain, and for Toshinori Yagi — better known by his hero moniker All Might — that villain is All For One. The overarching antagonist of the "My Hero Academia" series (which takes place in a world where the majority of people are born with powers known as "quirks"), All For One founded the League of Supervillains and terrorized Japan until All Might stepped in to stop him. The pair engaged in a legendary scrap that almost entirely destroyed the villain's face: he was left with no nose, no ears, and no eyes.

All For One makes up for that lack of vital features via his quirk, which allows him to steal the powers of others and use them as his own. He's a formidable foe willing to kill anyone who stands in the way of his search for One For All, the only quirk that truly poses him a threat (the villain murdered All Might's former mentor Nana Shimura, the seventh One For All user, in an emotional battle scene). He looks equally as terrifying in his black, skull-like mask, complete with a Darth Vader-style life-support system.

The anime adaptation of Hitoshi Iwaaki's hit horror manga "Parasyte" boasts an array of scary villains, but the story's big bad, Gotou, is by far the most frightening. He ends up being the arch-nemesis of Shinichi Izumi, a high school student who gets very lucky during an alien invasion. When a race of parasitic extraterrestrial worms arrive on Earth overnight, the majority of the human population are nothing but host bodies by the morning, though the worm that tried to hijack Shinichi's body panicked when he woke up and buried into his right hand, instead.

The alien takes control over Shinichi's hand (his name, Migi, means "right" in Japanese), but not his brain. The teen is able to maintain his free will as everyone around him transforms (though only at will) into vicious, contorted creatures with bladed appendages and teeth for days. What sets Gotou apart is that he's an experiment gone wrong: this super strong and super scary villain has five parasites in his body, not one. Even in human form, he's absolutely terrifying. In one of the show's most memorable scenes, he brutally dispatches dozens of yakuza as a form of practice, smiling politely as he turns their hideout into a bloodbath.

Another terrifying anime villain from the mind of Yoshiaki Kawajiri, Tessai is one of the Eight Devils of Kimon in the writer-director's bloody feudal-era epic "Ninja Scroll." This team of supernatural assassins works for the Yamashiro clan, which plans to overthrow the shogunate by importing advanced European weaponry. When a team is sent to investigate some suspicious deaths, the Devils dispatch them with ease, though Tessai decides to keep one of them (a female ninja named Kagero) alive as his plaything. Luckily, traveling mercenary Jubei Kibagami overhears what's happening and comes to Kagero's aid, goading the demon into a fight he seems destined to lose.

Tessai is twice the size of Jubei and carries a massive, double-ended blade that he uses as a lethal boomerang, cutting through trees and enemies alike. He's able to turn his skin to stone, though, as Jubei notes during his rescue of Kagero, he has one weak point — and the quick-thinking mercenary tosses a ninja star straight into one of his eyes, giving him and Kagero time to escape. Tessai gives Jubei one heck of a beating when he catches up with him later, though, as powerful and unbelievably scary as he is, the demon isn't quite skillful enough to kill the wily mercenary.

Based on Hajime Isayama's acclaimed manga of the same name, "Attack on Titan" wastes no time in introducing viewers to its terrifying villains, brutally killing off the protagonist's mother in the first episode. In Isayama's world, humans survive inside a giant walled city that keeps them safe from the Titans, massive humanoid monsters. A boy named Eren Yeager vows to bring the beasts down after they breach the outermost wall and leave him (and us) totally traumatized — a Titan eats his mother alive, right in front of him. He enlists in the military soon after and works his way up to the Survey Corps, an elite unit trained to tackle the Titans head-on.

What we later discover is that Eren's father secretly injected him with Titan serum, which allows him to take the form of a Titan himself. He takes part in some epic Titan battles, but the most terrifying of all his foes has to be the Colossal Titan, the primary antagonist of the first three seasons and the stuff of nightmares. The Colossal Titan is essentially a 200-foot tall man with incredible strength and no skin — and if that doesn't scare you, we're not sure what will. All those exposed tendons and muscles make for a truly terrifying villain.

Based on the novel "Demon Deathchase," the third installment in Hideyuki Kikuchi's long-running "Vampire Hunter D" series, 2000's "Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust" pits the eponymous character against an array of terrifying villains. Set in a grim, distant future where vampires sit at the top of the food chain, the film begins with D (who is half-vampire himself) being offered $20 million to rescue the daughter of a rich family. The beautiful Charlotte Elbourne has been abducted by vampire noble Baron Meier Link, but D's seemingly routine mission becomes complicated when he discovers that the human girl has developed feelings for her captor.

Link makes for a solid antagonist, but he's far from the scariest villain in this Yoshiaki Kawajiri classic. With D hot on his heels, the vampire seeks protection at Barbarois, a village of mutants straight out of a fever dream. All manner of disturbing creatures dwell here, though there's one in particular who lives long in the memory. Cloaked in black with a long white face and bulging red eyes, Benge is scary even by Kawajiri's standards. He's able to become one with the darkness, and if he plunges his knife through your shadow, you'll feel it for real. Maniacal voice performances from Keiji Fujiwara in the original and Dwight Schultz in the English dub make Benge one of the scariest anime villains to date.

Another classic anime that Hollywood got way wrong, "Death Note" follows a hyper-intelligent high school student who comes into possession of a book that allows the user to murder a person simply by writing their name in it. To begin with, Light Yagami uses the Death Note for good, taking out prominent criminals in Japan and further afield. As the deaths mount, the media starts to speculate that they are the work of an international vigilante. A cult following soon springs up around "Kira" (the name given to him by the press), but Light's handy work has caught the attention of Interpol, too.

Light's status as the hero of the story becomes blurry when he turns his attention to the equally intelligent detective that's hunting him, but the true villain of "Death Note" is Ryuk, to whom the titular book belongs. Ryuk is an apple-loving Shinigami, spirits of death from Japanese folklore that aren't too far removed from the Grim Reaper in their purpose. He decided to drop his Death Note in the human world simply because he was bored, and the results of his little experiment amuse him greatly. He watches on as Light grapples with the immense power at his fingertips, unable to be seen by anyone who hasn't touched the Death Note.

Set in a fantasy version of medieval Europe, "Berserk" is the story of a cynical wanderer named Guts, and he needs plenty of those to survive in this mad world. His backstory explains his bleak outlook on life: he was born after his mother was hanged by a lynch mob and raised by a mercenary, whom he was later forced to kill in self defense. He grew into a renowned mercenary himself, eventually catching the eye of the Band of the Falcon (sometimes translated as the Band of the Hawk in English subs and dubs).

The Band of the Falcon is a formidable force, but when they accidentally activate a mysterious relic known as a Behelit (a small stone object with a creepy little human face), they're transported to an astral dimension ruled by a group of demons unlike anything they've faced before. Known as the God Hand, they are all scary in their own right, though their leader and oldest member is designed to give you the heebie-jeebies for days. With his exposed brain and six-fingered hands, Void is frightening to behold, and a calm demeanor only adds to his eeriness. As old and wise as he is evil, he shows no emotion as he goes about trying to sacrifice their human visitors.