Anime is unquestionably one of the world’s most popular kinds of entertainment. It attracts a wide range of viewers thanks to its diverse cast of characters, intriguing storylines, and eye-catching aesthetics.
Furthermore, the most engaging characteristics of the anime medium are the character personalities and the overall vibe that anime characters exude. Anime has provided us with some of the strongest anti-hero characters we’ve ever seen in any genre of entertainment.
As a result, today, we’ll be focusing on the strongest anti-hero anime characters of all time. The characters in this story range in age from young to adulthood. In their universe, there may be good and bad people, but they’re all unique in their own right. They do, however, share one characteristic. They’ll blow your mind with their personalities and vibes. So brace yourself for a path littered with the anime’s most powerful anti-heroes.
So, without further ado, here are the Top 15 Strongest Anti-Hero Anime Characters of All Time.
15. Tanya Degurechaff (The Saga of Tanya the Evil)
Tanya von Degurechaff is the main protagonist of the light novel/anime Youjo Senki: Saga of Tanya the Evil. Originally a salaryman who was murdered in 2013, he was reborn as a girl living in an alternate version of Europe during the late Interwar period.
At just nine years of age, Tanya enters the Empire’s Mages troops and is promoted to Second Lieutenant. Her talents, strategies, efficiency, and ruthlessness make her a useful asset for the Empire and a threat on the battlefield.
Since she graduated from the War College as one of the twelve knights, she’s been granted the title of von. Moreover, she leads her own newly formed mage battalion, known as the Imperial Army 203rd Air Mage Battalion.
RELATED: Top 13 Must-Watch Isekai Anime & Manga !!
14. Sebastian Michaelis (Black Butler)
Sebastian Michaelis is the titular deuteragonist of the manga and anime series Black Butler. He is the butler of the Phantomhive household and acts as Ciel Phantomhive’s bodyguard and butler, two jobs that he is completely devoted to.
Sebastian takes on the appearance of a tall, handsome adult with black hair, red eyes, pale skin, and black fingernails. The back of his left hand contains the mark of his Faustian contract with Ciel Phantomhive. Sebastian is devoted to Ciel Phantomhive. He faithfully carries out every one of Ciel’s orders while ensuring that the Phantomhive household runs smoothly as the head butler.
13. Revy (Black Lagoon)
Revy, sometimes referred to by her full name Rebecca, is the main female protagonist of the manga/anime series Black Lagoon. She does most of the fighting for The Lagoon Company. Revy is a Chinese-American, slightly tan-skinned woman of approximately moderate height in her mid to late twenties with burgundy hair.
As a person, Revy is a troubled, loud, rude, sarcastic, deadly, competitive, short-tempered, cynical, confident, and considerably aggressive nihilist (a person who believes that life is meaningless and rejects all religious and moral principles) who also exhibits a wild temperament.
12. Scar (Fullmetal Alchemist)
Scar is an antagonist turned anti-hero in the anime/manga series Fullmetal Alchemist. His alias is derived from the prominent X-shaped scar that decorates his brow.
He is introduced in the series as a serial killer who targets State Alchemists as revenge for the genocide of his people and for breaking an Ishvalan taboo against the use of alchemy. Although he is not a prime antagonist in the manga, Scar establishes himself early on as one of the most frequently encountered dangers by the Elric brothers.
11. Kiritsugu Emiya (Fate franchise)
Kiritsugu Emiya is a major character in the Fate franchise, serving as a minor character in Fate/Stay Night and the main protagonist of the novel prequel Fate/Zero (although as the story is told from seven different perspectives, this status is fairly debatable). He is the biological father of Illyasviel von Einzbern and the adopted father of Shirou Emiya. Before that, he was a freelancing mercenary and assassin of heretical magi, which made him infamously known as the Magus Killer.
Although the main protagonist, he’s mainly an anti-hero/anti-villain, as he has several personality traits commonly found in villains, such as ruthlessness and having a belief that there are no rules in battle beyond doing whatever is necessary to win. However, he is very tragic and not particularly proud of his methods, merely seeing them as a means to an end.
10. Spike Spiegel (Cowboy Bebop)
Spike Spiegel is the main protagonist of the anime series Cowboy Bebop. He is a former member of the Red Dragon Crime Syndicate, who left by faking his death after falling in love with a woman named Julia.
After leaving the Syndicate, Spike became a bounty hunter and the partner of Jet Black, the captain of the Bebop. Spike and Jet pursued criminals across the populated planets and moons of the solar system. His ship was the Swordfish II.
During his adventures on board the Bebop, Spike is drawn back into a bitter feud with Vicious, a rival from the Syndicate who seeks to kill him.
RELATED: Top 17 Best Gunslingers & Gunmen from Anime World
9. Mugen (Samurai Champloo)
Mugen is one of the main characters of Samurai Champloo, along with Jin and Fuu. Both Mugen and Jin accompany Fuu in her search for “the samurai who smells of sunflowers.” Jin serves as a foil to Mugen in terms of personality and disposition. His fighting style is characterized as being reckless and erratic.
As a person, Rude, lewd, vulgar, conceited, temperamental, and unhinged—Mugen is something of an antihero. He is fond of fighting and has a tendency to pick fights for petty reasons. In several episodes, it is made clear that Mugen is a womanizer, and his libido often gets the better of him.
8. Hyakkimaru (Dororo)
Hyakkimaru is the main protagonist of the Dororo series from 1969 and was labeled as an anti-hero in the remake of 2019. He is a ronin who has been cursed to not have body parts or limbs and has become a human/demon hybrid by his father and archenemy, Daigo Kagemitsu. He was abandoned by his father during his birth as well as set out to kill him for foiling his ambitions and deemed him a threat.
Not only is he born without body parts or limbs, but he is born with demonic powers. He was raised and trained by Jukai for his journey to kill the 48 (12 in 2019) demons to regain his body parts and return to his homeland. He travels with a little girl who is dressed as a boy named Dororo.
After learning the truth, Hyakkimaru vows to kill his father, Kagemitsu, for the suffering he caused him and his mother, Nui No Kata, and cause the entire land to be in turmoil by unleashing demons and monsters festering on the land and wiping out humanity. He was going back to his homeland to kill his father, Daigo Kagemitsu, but gave up as his father was dying of the side-effects of his pact with the demons.
7. Johnny Joestar (JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure)
Johnny Joestar, born Jonathan Joestar, is the protagonist of Steel Ball Run and a minor character in JoJolion. He is the seventh JoJo of the JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure series.
He is a former horse-racing prodigy turned paraplegic. Johnny joins the SBR race to find out the secret behind Gyro Zeppeli’s Steel Balls, as they’re the only thing capable of healing his legs. Over the course of the race, Johnny becomes both a spin user and a stand user when he acquires Tusk.
As a person. Johnny Joestar is a depressed ex-jockey who clings to his hope of regaining the use of his legs through the Spin and then the Corpse Part throughout Steel Ball Run.
6. Guts (Berserk)
Guts, famously known as The Black Swordsman, is the main protagonist of the manga series and anime adaptations of Berserk. In the series, Guts is a former mercenary and branded wanderer who travels the world in a constant internal struggle between exacting revenge on Griffith and the Godhand and protecting those dear to him.
At one time driven solely by his will to survive during his days as a mercenary, Guts finds a purpose in life upon joining the Band of the Falcon after being defeated by its leader, Griffith, greatly helping in the mercenary band’s storied successes during the Hundred-Year War as captain of the band’s raiders.
5. Lelouch VI Britannia (Code Geass)
Lelouch vi Britannia is the titular main protagonist of the anime series Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion. He is the Eleventh Prince of the Holy Britannian Empire and the son of the 98th Emperor of Britannia, Charles Zi Britannia, who was exiled after his younger sister, Nunnally vi Britannia, was blinded and crippled in an ambush that caused the death of his mother, Marianne vi Britannia.
After being exiled to Japan by his father to cover up their own plans for global conquest, he changed his name to Lelouch Lamperouge in order to conceal his identity and embraced Japan as his true home. However, Lelouch is left traumatized after witnessing Britannia’s conquest of the country and vows to destroy it.
After gaining the power of Geass, the power to compel people, from the mysterious C.CLelouch becomes the vigilante Zero and leader and founder of the Black Knights, the Japanese resistance, to overthrow Britannia and create a better world for his sister and friends.
4. Alucard (Hellsing)
Alucard is the main protagonist and anti-hero of Hellsing and serves as the Hellsing Organization’s trump card. One of the most powerful vampires in the entire series, Alucard is Count Dracula, who in his past life was Vlad the Impaler, before becoming a vampire and coming to be known as Count Dracula.
He is extremely loyal to his master, Integra Hellsing, a longtime friend of Walter C. Dornez, and is affectionate towards his fledgling Seras Victoria. He is a vampire hunter due to being the servant of the Hellsing family and has been modified to stand against his own kind.
Although considered to be an anti-hero, Alucard is a remorseless and pitiless vampire who has no qualms about being a monster and taking the lives of innocents (even nonchalantly stated by himself).
3. Light Yagami (Death Note)
Light Yagami is the protagonist and antihero of the Death Note franchise. He was a Japanese high school senior who found a Death Note, a mysterious notebook that would kill anyone whose name was written in it. Light decided to use the notebook as a murder weapon to eliminate all crime, create a utopia with only the law-abiding people he accepted and make himself the proclaimed God of this new world.
Throughout his journey, he became globally known as “Kira” and continued his work for the next few years, while trying to evade capture. Obsessed with his goal, he used and even murdered a lot of innocent people.
Although Light got most of the world under his control, his reign came to an end when he got cornered by the Japanese police, and eventually, Light died of a heart attack when Ryuk wrote his name in his Death Note.
RELATED: Top 15 Smartest Anime Characters of All Time
2. Sasuke Uchiha (Naruto franchise)
Sasuke Uchiha is the deuteragonist of the Naruto franchise and one of the main supporting characters in the Boruto: Naruto Next Generations anime/manga series. Sasuke is the best friend and rival of the titular protagonist, Naruto Uzumaki. While remaining as the overall deuteragonist in the series, he serves as the main anti-villainous antagonist from the final arc of Part I until the end of Part II, before redeeming himself.
As a person, when he was a child, Sasuke was very kind and loving towards his parents and older brother, and respectful to his fellow clansmen as well as his teachers. Sasuke’s ideals and personality changed drastically due to him suffering his clan’s curse and becoming cold, indifferent, cruel, cynical, callous, somewhat arrogant and unreasonable.
1. Vegeta (Dragon Ball franchise)
Vegeta is the deuteragonist of the Dragon Ball franchise. He starts as the main antagonist of the Saiyan Saga, but as the story progresses, he becomes one of the heroes of the Z Warriors. He is the prince of the warrior race known as the Saiyans. He is Bulma’s husband and the father of Trunks and Bulla. He also has an on-and-off rivalry with Goku, but they are usually on good terms.
As a person, Vegeta is a cold and disdainful man, as well as bitter about the destruction of his people and their time under Frieza’s boot. Because of his title as a prince and his Saiyan heritage, he feels that he is superior to almost everyone else and thinks Saiyans are the strongest race in the universe.
RELATED: Top 15 Strongest Z Fighters Of All Time In Anime, Ranked!
What is your reaction?
