Naruto is a legendary shonen anime featuring an expansive cast of memorable characters who rank among the bravest, coolest, and most creative in all of shonen anime. This includes Naruto's many villains, and these characters are far more than just bosses for Naruto Uzumaki to defeat. They are well-rounded people with pretty cool designs.
An anime villain may be considered pretty cool if that villain has a scary and unique fighting style, for example, or if that villain has a stylish, intimidating visual design or cool dialogue. Cool anime characters also tend to be confident and have fascinating, insightful quotes and philosophies that really make viewers think.
10 Kakuzu is The Akatsuki's Frankenstein's Monster
Kakuzu's sadistic partner, Hidan, is among Naruto's most disliked characters of all, but Kakuzu himself is a different story. He is a brutal mercenary obsessed with money, and that makes him unique among the Akatsuki's members. He also has more hearts and elemental releases than anyone expected.
This slick villain is a self-made Frankenstein's monster, sewing together different body parts and hearts to gain access to most elemental types of chakra, making him a whole platoon in one. He's really cool and scary to watch in the Naruto Shippuden anime, and Kakuzu has a menacing aura to match.
9 Kisame Hoshigaki Is A Terrifying Brute
The shark-themed Akatsuki member Kisame Hoshigaki is a rogue Mist Village ninja and a brute-force fighter who can stand up to tailed beasts. He's the one who wields the living sword Samehada, a weapon that can eat enough chakra to make Kisame like a tailed beast himself.
Kisame's aggressive, confident attitude as a king shark makes him pretty cool, and he's got more than a few surprises up his sleeve, too. He also has an amusing rivalry with the taijutsu master Might Guy, and it's a thrill to watch these powerhouse ninja clash time and again.
8 Sasori Is The Master Of Puppets
A variety of shonen fighters use weaponized puppets to battle their foes, and no one does it better than the stylish, insidious Sasori of the red sand. This twisted ninja took puppet jutsu to a terrifying but impressive extreme, usually by killing powerful ninja and retooling their bodies into deadly puppets.
By Naruto Shippuden, Sasori had a collection of 298 puppets, including one of the famed third Kazekage. Sasori even turned himself into a deadly living puppet with his chakra-infused guts in a container, making him Naruto's version of a D&D lich.
7 Kabuto Yakushi Is A Rogue Surgeon
Some works of fiction twist doctors and surgeons into cruel scientist types, turning something benevolent into something monstrous. Such is the case of Kabuto Yakushi, a Sound Village ninja who uses his chakra scalpels not to heal, but to destroy.
Kabuto is a smart, confident, and sinister rogue surgeon who can use his scalpels to disable his enemies from the inside, and he can also use advanced medical jutsu on himself. It's little wonder that this cool villain is Orochimaru's right-hand man.
6 Zabuza Momochi Is A Classic Assassin
One of the first villains to appear in Naruto is also one of the coolest of them all - Zabuza Momochi, the demon of the bloody mist. He is a quintessential ninja, using stealth, tracking, and ambushes to strike his foes when they least expect it. Most of his battles are thus rather short and one-sided.
Zabuza is pretty cool that way, and it helps that he also has a slick visual design and a menacing aura as a deadly rogue jonin. When he first appeared, Sasuke Uchiha himself was paralyzed with fear, and anime fans thought that was way cool. Clearly, Zabuza is the real deal.
5 Gaara Made For A Super-Cool Villain
In the long run, the character Gaara is more of a hero than a villain. Still, during his time as an antagonist, Gaara definitely ranked among Naruto's best. He was the beast of the chunin exam story arc and was also a terror in the battle for the Leaf Village when Orochimaru launched his assault.
Gaara chilled anime fans with his cool, bloodthirsty attitude, a tortured boy who only found purpose in crushing other people to death with his sand. He had a menacing aura to match Zabuza's, plus a cool outfit, complete with a giant gourd to hold his sand. He is the wrath of the desert personified.
4 Kimimaro Has An Amazing Kekkei Genkai
One of the last villains to appear in the pre-Shippuden story is the kekkei-genkai-wielding ninja Kimimaro Kaguya, one of Orochimaru's most talented and loyal followers of all. He was dying from an illness, but that didn't stop him from fighting Naruto, Rock Lee, and Gaara on Orochimaru's behalf.
Kimimaro impressed Naruto fans with his cool confidence and unshakable loyalty. Most of all, fans enjoyed Kimimaro's ultra-cool fighting style - a bizarre, deadly, and graceful whirlwind of sharp bones that not even Rock Lee can overcome. Then, his curse mark's second stage dials all that up to an 11, a dire threat even to Gaara.
3 Madara Uchiha Was A One-Man Army
The ultimate Uchiha, Madara himself, was hyped up to be Shippuden's final boss battle, and he delivered. Similar to his villain peers All For One, Sosuke Aizen, and Meruem, Madara is a cool villain because of his sinister, unshakable confidence and his tough-guy dialogue.
Not to mention, his formidable combat skills. Madara is a one-man army, and the Naruto fandom went wild when he cockily took on the entire shinobi coalition on his own and massacred everyone. That was when the stakes in Naruto hit an all-time high.
2 Pain Had An Interesting Message To Share
The Six Paths of Pain is famed for being one of the coolest, strongest, and most thought-provoking villains in modern shonen. This terrifying foe used to be one of Jiraiya the toad sage's students, determined to end the cycle of hatred and violence.
Now, Pain will use his incredible jutsu and his bloodsoaked manifesto to force peace upon the world and teach it the true horror of pain, and only heroes like Naruto Uzumaki can stop him. It's no wonder the Pain saga is one of shonen's coolest and most memorable.
1 Itachi Uchiha Is Sasuke's Tragic Brother
Like Gaara, the powerhouse shinobi Itachi Uchiha is a hero in the long run, but in much of the story, he was actually an antagonist, an ultra-cool one at that. Itachi was a menacing but stylish antagonist from the very start, from his ice-cold glares to his fearsome Sharingan powers and his cool dialogue.
Itachi was the bane of Sasuke's existence for years, looming large as the final enemy for Sasuke to face in the name of vengeance. Itachi also had cool jutsu and combat strategies to his name, from his neat genjutsu tricks to his fireball jutsu and, of course, the horror of the Magekyo Sharingan.