There are plenty of anime villains who seek world domination, destroy and reform the world, or subjugate everyone alive. These villains try to enact plans that are nearly impossible to accomplish. However, some anime villains are just not trying to tackle such monumental feats. Some villains just have simple goals.
Whether it is just to make some money or to get revenge on one person, sometimes villains just have a one-track mind that is leading them to nowhere grandiose. This does not mean their goals are not harmful or impactful, it is just that these villains' goals are not that deep.
10 In JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, DIO Was A Brilliant Villain Whose Only Desire Was To Be The Most Evil
Dio Brando only had one real goal. Destroying the Joestar family was only a means of achieving this goal. His goal was to out-evil everyone. It all came about because of his father, who he saw as incapable and pathetic. If his father was evil, Dio was going to be the evilest.
When Dio uncovered the stone mask's power, this feat was within his reach, but Jonathan sent him to the bottom of the ocean. Luckily for Dio, he was uncovered, and when he returned, Stands began to pop up, his being one of the most powerful. Being the evilest is kind of a hard feat to achieve for anyone other than Dio, but it was simplistic in its tunnel vision.
9 Keicho Nijimura Just Wanted His Father To Die In Diamond Is Unbreakable
Another Stand user, Keicho Nijimura became a primary antagonist after Dio's defeat. His goal was to create new Stand users until he found one with the power to kill his father. His father had been rendered an unkillable monster by Dio before Dio's defeat.
Keicho just wanted to end his father's pain, and by extension, his pain. However, he could not do so himself, so he had to create Stand users, and some of those Stand users became even more villainous. It was not a lofty goal, but it led to a domino effect.
8 Team Rocket Just Wants Pikachu In Pokémon
Team Rocket wanted to steal Pokémon for their leader. Their main target for most of the series was to capture Pikachu. Of course, they never did. If they did get their hands on Pikachu somehow, they were quickly thwarted. The same goes for a vast majority of the other Pokémon they tried to steal.
They never got much better at their thievery, and they never came out on top. Most of the time, they were sent blasting off again by the very Pokémon they tried to steal.
7 Zabuza Just Wanted To Make Some Money In Naruto
Zabuza and his companion, Haku, were rogue ninja originally from the Hidden Mist Village who had been through a lot of trauma and strife. The Hidden Mist had a lot of shady practices during that time in the series, and this duo had enough of it.
So, they became rogue mercenaries whose primary goal was to make money and live to fight another day. Sure, they were bloodthirsty and posed a threat to Naruto and the rest of Team 7, but they were just trying to live a simple mercenary life.
6 Cowboy Bebop's Vicious Wanted To Get Spike Back For Stealing His Girlfriend
Vicious was the evil leader of a huge crime syndicate that lived up to his name, and while being a crime boss was a goal he achieved, as far as the events of the show are concerned, his main goal was getting revenge on Spike for stealing his girlfriend and leaving the organization.
While there is more to Spike and Vicious' relationship than first meets the eye, it boils down to jealousy and perceived betrayal. It does seem a petty vendetta when all is said and done, but then again his name was Vicious.
5 Kimimaro Is Only Concerned With Doing What He Is Told In Naruto
Kimimaro was "saved" by Orochimaru when he was little and left to his own devices after living a pretty difficult childhood. He had been imprisoned and abused for his power. However, many argue that what Orochimaru did was not much different.
Still, Kimimaro was manipulated by Orochimaru, and so his only goal was to help Orochimaru achieve his dream. It was a simple existence that required only doing what he was told with no questions asked. It was certainly not as ambitious as his powers could have made him.
4 Lord Daigo Wanted To Keep His People Safe During A Time Of Incredible Violence In Dororo
Lord Daigo is certainly villainous for gifting his infant son's body parts to demons, leaving him a limbless, skinless orphan, but the reasons he did so were simple. He lived in a war-torn Japan that was under constant threat of famine, death, and extreme violence, and he just wanted to keep his lands and people safe.
His goal was not to rule all of Japan or to take over the world. It was not even to kill people. It was to trade a life for many lives. However, it was not his life to barter with, and Hyakkimaru (his son) was rightfully enraged.
3 Rui Was Only Trying To Make A Family In Demon Slayer
Rui was a spider-like demon who created a false family of other spider demons. His desire stemmed from his time as a human. He was frail and sick, and by becoming a demon he was able to thrive. Unfortunately, his parents tried to kill him because he had gone evil, and this gave Rui a complex.
While Rui was one of Muzan's list of superpowered demons, Rui mostly kept to himself and stayed with his warped family of coerced spider demons. Eventually, he and his family were killed by the Demon Slayer Corps.
2 Deadman Wonderland's Shiro Just Wanted Her Childhood Friend Back
Shiro was experimented on, tortured, and left to rot in Deadman Wonderland. Because of this abuse, she unknowingly created an alter ego called the Wretched Egg that took the form of her childhood friend's favorite hero. She then went and framed that friend for murder when she brutally killed all of his classmates and got him sent to Deadman Wonderland, too.
It took Ganta a while to figure out that Shiro was evil, even if it was because of her trauma and abuse. In the end, he found out her goal was to have him stuck in Deadman Wonderland with her.
1 Koro-Sensei Wanted To Be Killed In Assassination Classroom
Koro-sensei's goal for the entirety of Assassination Classroom was to be killed, and he achieved this goal, however sad that was. It was all for the greater good, though. He trained the kids to become assassins that would be capable of taking him on, and he wanted them to win because losing would result in the world's destruction.
Koro-sensei's status as a villain is debatable. He did not want to destroy the earth, it was simply inevitable. He had to die before then. However, he was an antagonist, and he did not let anyone simply kill him.