Vintage anime gets a lot of love, especially the titles that exploded into the scene and took the art form into the mainstream in the 1990s. A lot of those older shows are getting some nostalgic love recently in the form of OVAs, remakes, sequels, and remastered versions. The fans ravenously consume almost anything from these beloved properties, which includes merch as well as on-screen entertainment, but they have to admit that these shows are dated in some ways. In this case, we're talking about the villains.
It's ironic because part of the reason these shows were popular and remain so is because of the interesting bad guys that were often seen as eccentric, quirky, or unorthodox in some way. With the age of experimental television over, however, some of these antagonists don't have the same impact that they did two decades ago. In fact, some of the anime villains from the 1990s just wouldn't work today.
10 Team Rocket, Pokémon
Here's a fad that's not going anywhere anytime soon. Although the vintage anime gets less play than it used to, that's how the Pokémon trend got traction in the North American media scene. As much fun as Team Rocket was, that was the problem; they were bumbling goofballs, and they never really posed much of a threat to Ash and his friends.
They couldn't hack it either as legit opponents in the world of battle pets or at the underhanded, nefarious stuff that other anime villains do. It was cute then, and fit with the colorful, family-friendly tone of the original anime, but it's just boring and silly now.
9 HIM, Powerpuff Girls
Here's a unique entry on the list that blurs the line between animated shows from Japan and other shows from North America that were using the same aesthetic at the time. Powerpuff Girls was a direct parody of shoujo anime, right down to the style of the animation and the weird, monster-like weekly enemies, some of them as recurring characters.
Enter HIM, the villain with the eerie voice, makeup, and high heels. A disturbing detail includes his crab claws in the place of his hands and that he's depicted in some kind of Santa suit. The name itself, a male pronoun, seemed to be a joke. What would just seem like a scary mash-up of random nightmares then looks like a bad caricature of an LGBTQ character now, and we've moved past that stereotype.
8 The Amazon Trio, Sailor Moon
The world's favorite magical girl anime, Sailor Moon, has a lot going for it when it comes to positive LGBTQ representation, but the opposite seems to have happened with the Dead Moon Circus story arc. To be fair, this was more of a problem with the English version of the show and not the original.
The Amazon Trio was slightly different in the original Japanese version, and to soften the sensibilities of Noth American audiences who still had unhealthy hangups about gender-fluid characters, they underwent a few changes. One character was changed to a female and the other two were edited to be less effeminate. These days we know that an honest portrayal would have been much better.
7 Buggy the Star Clown, One Piece
Buggy is a great villain, and we appreciate the atmosphere he brought to one of the best shonen anime of the late 1990s, One Piece. We've seen so many angry clowns since then, the image has run its course. Granted, we still have clown-like villains like Terrifier, but those stark, "clown-like" portrayals have little in common with the cartoons of the 1990s.
The recent live-action Joker was steeped heavily in realism, for example. Yes, it is possible to get tired of clowns and there's only so much you can do with a red nose and stripes, and modern clowns look a lot different from Buggy because that design just doesn't work anymore.
6 Dilandau Albatou, Vision of Escaflowne
The only reason Dilandau Albatou ever worked was that he was in an anime that was so complex and beautiful that it distracted from how impulsive and insane he was. This villain was both selfish and incompetent along with being crazier than an outhouse rat, and we loved to watch him wreak havoc as the commander of the Dragonslayers while he wrestled with the trauma from the past.
He was both brash and cowardly. Today, the contradictions in his character and his weird obsession to hold certain grudges would just be annoying instead of intimidating.
5 Griffith, Berserk
Even people who don't watch anime are familiar with the endless, fierce discussions that whirl around Griffith's moral choices, mainly that he did nothing wrong even though he did some of the most horrible things than anyone could imagine. The image of a character that could be so polarizing was great for the 1990s, and that medieval motif was the icing on the bloody cake that was Berserk, but a villain like Griffith wouldn't work today simply because it's not unique anymore.
The multifaceted, sympathetic villain will never go out of style, but that's part of the problem. More recent shows like Game of Thrones have done this concept to death, and the medieval aesthetic went down in a pile of smoldering ash with Season 8. The more recent entries in the Berserk franchise have done away with this image of Griffith for this reason.
4 Genma Himuro, Ninja Scroll
Remember that infamous fight scene from They Live that lasts way too long? Well, the animated equivalent can be found in the movie Ninja Scroll, which featured this overpowered villain, Genma Himuro. This movie was noted as one of the few anime imports that was not about big giant robots or set in a cyberpunk world, and the Eight Devils of Kimon are villains that look great in every decade.
Their silent, shadowy leader, however, wouldn't work in today's anime. He's more like a stereotypical Bond villain the way he mumbles everything in a monotone voice and hardly ever appears on screen. When he does, he looks more like something out of Jojo's Bizzare Adventure, and it's only to wail on the hero for about 20 minutes.
3 Gendo Hikari, Neon Genesis Evangelion
Back in the 1990s, society was more tolerant of the aloof and often cruel genius as long as they were producing the software and programming codes we needed to keep society running. That was essentially Gendo Hikari of Neon Genesis Evangelion, and at the time it made sense for him to be a highly respected and powerful person, and even sympathetic, in spite of some glaring character flaws.
Gendo was constantly abusing and alienating his own son and seemed to care about nothing else than his pet project to end the world. It's twenty years later, and now that a few more people know how to code and program software, we don't have to tolerate or respect people like Gendo anymore.
2 Frieza, Dragon Ball Z
We're all impressed by Frieza's long resume of evil accomplishments and dastardly deeds, but it's the design that doesn't work anymore. He's supposed to be a scary alien and given his past and the things he does through the Dragon Ball lore the audience understands that. Twenty years later, after we've seen an updated Godzilla, Jurassic Park has morphed into a franchise, and after years of Teletubbies, he just looks like a big purple dinosaur.
This isn't to say that Frieza has a place among the greatest anime villains of all time, not even just the ones from the 1990s. However, there's a reason that a villainous character with the same likeness hasn't appeared again.
1 The Puppet Master, Ghost in the Shell
It didn't start the cyberpunk genre, but Ghost in the Shell proved the setting and plot could not only work but also be as economically viable. While the philosophy and themes of the film remain timeless, the characters haven't aged as well.
The "hacker" program that was the film's main antagonist was a product of the digital world and human data manipulation. A few years later, we know the possibility isn't really viable, and it hurts the immersion factor of the original movie. It's still an interesting concept, but given how technology has evolved in the last few years, the future envisioned by one of the most influential anime of all time seems less likely. The Puppet Master is still just as interesting, but not as realistic as he used to be.