The latest season of My Hero Academia may have given the fans more reasons to love the series' titular heroes, but it also gave plenty of spotlight to some new and dangerous foes. The first half gave a hearty arc to one of the darkest, deadliest, and edgiest villains yet, Overhaul. He's the leader of the Shie Hassaikai and led a drug/weapons trade that threatened heroes everywhere.
The second half of the season gave a total tonal shift as it focused on the hilarious and eccentric styles of Gentle Criminal. He was a failed to-be-hero who turned to a life of crime to feed his ego and took on the help of a lovable sidekick, La Brava, to help along the way. This list will be looking at a few key reasons as to why Overhaul was the villain of the season and a few reasons why Gentle Criminal deserves the Oscar.
10 Overhaul: Darker
It's no secret that teenage boys are gonna be having more posters of Overhaul in their rooms than Gentle Criminal for the next few years. That's not to knock the aesthetic sensibilities of the clearly more stylish villain, but Overhaul gets major points for being the edgy bad boy.
Everything about him appeals to the modern standards of a good dark villain: short, dark hair, distant stare, an intimidating look and tone. Beyond all the action and gore of his arc, what really sells Overhaul as the darker villain is his groups' clear homage to the plague doctors of the 17th century. If there's one thing that makes a person edgy, it's death.
9 Gentle Criminal: Flashier
With that being said, there's no harm in having some color either. Gentle Criminal is someone that just grabs the audience's attention. Whether it's his costume, his distinct mannerisms, or his booming voice, Gentle Criminal is grabbing eyes and ears and keeping them with his entertaining persona.
While he may not be all doom and gloom like Overhaul, the lighter touch may be what keeps fan loving him over the long line of edgy villains of anime and comic book's past. He may very well be bringing back Silver Age silliness, and everyone is happier for it.
8 Overhaul: Deadlier Quirk
There's a lot of factors to consider when thinking of who would realistically win in a fight, but the answer would probably be Overhaul. That isn't to say that Gentle Criminal isn't a tough cookie, but he was taken down by Deku with his base skills. It took a group of heroes and a supercharged Deku to actually keep Overhaul down.
Much of that has to do with Overhaul's overpowered Quirk...Overhaul. This faux alchemy allows him to disassemble and reassemble things at just a touch. The disassemble part is already horrifying to see, but seeing how this guy can reassemble things to magnificent shapes and literally absorb his own comrades into his body gives him major points as a villain.
7 Gentle Criminal: More Creative Quirk
Gentle Criminal may not be able to kill people with just a touch, but that won't stop his Quirk from just sticking to people's imaginations. Gentle has one of the most unique powers seen in any superhero medium. With Elasticity, Gentle is able to give nearly everything a solid yet elastic state of being.
This means that he can shake the ground like a moon bounce, bend steel beams like rubber pencils, and even make the air his own personal trampoline. This created plenty of unique moves that no anime fan has seen before and created one of the most creative fights of its anime season.
6 Overhaul: Gang Leader
What Overhaul lacks in flash and polish, he more than makes up for in muscle. And while his Quirk and tenacity are already strong enough, he has an entire gang of powerful and deadly hoodlums at his disposal. Overhaul is the successor to one of the last remaining gangs in the My Hero Academia world, the Shie Hassaikai.
He's not only looking to help reassert criminal activity in a post-All Might world, but he had an entire plan to make the Shie Hassaikai the leading organization behind the evil revival. With a thug's brutality in one hand and a criminal mastermind's precision in another, Overhaul is making sure that everyone locks their doors at night.
5 Gentle Criminal: Dynamic Duo
Though Gentle's forces are nowhere near as large and organized as the Shie Hassaikai, they more than make up for it in personality. In addition to bringing back the quirks of Silver Age comic book villains, Gentle Criminal is also bringing back the rapport and eccentricity of villainous duo.
With La Brava at his side, Gentle Criminal had the perfect partner to compliment both his lines and his dastardly deeds. That's not to mention a complex relationship that is one part endearing for a couple of outcasts and two parts creepy for its toxic undertones.
4 Overhaul: Anti-Quirk Weapon
Gentle Criminal is far from being the nicest guy on the block, but he wasn't exactly the priority for all of the heroes of this season. There's a new bullet being passed around the street that can erase a person's Quirk in their entirety. This immediately made the Shie Hassaikai one of the most dangerous organizations in a world where policing forces kind of require having Quirks.
To further add even more evil to the infamy, the manufacturing of these dangerous weapons involved some outright terrible parenting to be explored later on this list.
3 Gentle Criminal: Heartfelt Backstory
Gentle Criminal stole fans' hearts in more ways than one. While his panache and style could make him lovable for a variety of other reasons, he managed to become even more endearing and understood by the fans with his touching backstory. Gentle Criminal was once an aspiring hero like Deku but was told bluntly by the Hero Course that he wasn't fit for that future.
When the news came down on him at this lowest, Gentle saw an opportunity to save a falling person. However, he only got in the way of another hero and inevitably made the situation worse. Bogged down by fines and reparations to the poor victim, Gentle got kicked out of school, got kicked out of his house, and had to stew in his own loneliness before eventually turning to crime.
2 Overhaul: Irredeemable Father
As stated earlier, Overhaul was manufacturing a newfound weapon capable of neutralizing any Quirk, immediately making the Shie Hassaikai a direct threat to the hero world. However, as the heroes got into their investigation, they learned of the dastardly origins of his weapons.
Overhaul was in fact harvesting the neutralizing traits from the DNA and flesh of his own daughter, Eri, who had the ability to revert anything to a previous state. That is to say that she could even revert Quirk users' DNA to being human again. While any other villain would just try and convert her to the dark side, Overhaul did the worse thing and pricked and prodded his daughter's body to make his Quirk-Destroying Drug.
1 Gentle Criminal: Honorable Gentleman
While Gentle Criminal is far from being an irredeemable monster, that's not necessarily what makes one a better villain. Sometimes a better villain just means being more memorable and lovable across a story and not just cartoonishly bad, and Gentle certainly was the former. Though he turned to a life of crime, he did so with principle.
He never aimed to hurt people and often returned the money that he'd steal from stores (if he even took it at all). When Deku managed to finally catch him and La Brava, he even pleaded to Deku to let La Brava go. Despite taking her in as his partner, he never wanted La Brava to be his accomplice and did everything he could to keep her from ruining her own future. This may not make him more evil, but it definitely makes him the better character.