Most Entertaining Villains

 

This is my second of three blogs analyzing the three metrics I judge villains by and listing the characters I rated as the top tiers of each category. This blog is about being Entertaining. Entertaining is not the same as "Funny" though often that's how it's used. Entertaining as a villain metric refers to how much fun or interesting the villain is to watch in action. It's a combination of how unpredictable their actions are and how much fun the consequences are to watch.

A villain who's not very Entertaining is a villain who can't really hold a scene by herself or himself. They're rather predictable or the ways they're unpredictable don't create many fun story opportunities. Not all good villains need to be personally entertaining. If you have an evil Dark Lord who sits in their castle menacing they don't need to be personally very interesting so long as they are menacing, especially if their minions are of the more Entertaining type. However, being entertaining means a villain can be a lot more memorable and has a lot more potential things you can do with them. It gives them a certain versatility. 

A villain who is High in Entertaining is a villain with a lot of stage presence, as opposed to the narrative presence of Threatening. They are captivating to watch and can easily hold a scene by themselves. Even watching them do normally mundane actions like making breakfast or going to sleep would be entertaining due to the style in which they do so. So these are the seven villains I gave a maximum Entertaining score, in no particular order.

Harley Quinn (DC Comics): Harley Quinn is a really fun villainess as she has a similar versatility as the Joker yet is more sympathetic in both her motive and means. As a result, even when she was a villain she was much more light-hearted to read or watch about than the Joker, yet has similar versatility as an insane manipulative trickster villain. I think Harley is funny and fun to watch, especially because most of her schemes do make a bizarre sort of sense in the pursuit of love, just a very impulsive love and without regard to legal or ethical standards, but it's this that allowed her to eventually have a redemption arc. 

GLaDOS (Portal): GLaDOS is another really funny villainess, though in an entirely different way, through sarcastic snarky wit, a mixture of extreme intelligence and control with a lack of understanding of humans. She's almost entertaining in the exact opposite way of Harley. She has twisted Rogue AI motives and incredible intellectual and physical capabilities, but her manipulation and insults are so blatant despite their attempted passive-aggressiveness. This dichotomy is funny in the same way despite being the opposite of the cuteness of seeing a small innocent thing try to do something big and impressive.  It's seeing something grand and murderous try and fail to do something human and petty while you interact with her. 

Sailor Galaxia (Sailor Moon): I mentioned Galaxia's my favorite villain because she's the only villain who is top tier in all three regards. Galaxia is entertaining in her sheer larger-than-life scope and cosmic grandiosity and ego. Galaxia roams around blowing up planets to boring her and proving unworthy, speaks in a cosmic grandiose tone, and is constantly unpredictable, breaking all the conventions of the story so far, and arguably the genre. She's got a regal and exaggerated air to her that fits the feel of a cosmic royalty villainess and ultimate enemy to a cosmic superhero story. 

Sensui (Yu Yu Hakusho): Sensui is a wonderfully complex villain, and probably my favorite example of the "villain being a shadow of the hero" trope. Sensui brings with him a ton of interesting philosophical questions, representing an extreme and total nihilism and cynicism yet is full of interesting contradictions. And he feels it, his actions are constantly unpredictable yet make immediate sense both literally and thematically, whether it be sacrificing one of his seven minions to see if Yusuke is willing to kill, or retreating from a fight into a crowded city street so Kurama can't fight without risk of harming civilians. And yet despite all this, he's also weirdly vulnerable both physically and emotionally, with Yusuke actually being stronger than him at first and his insults actually angering Sensui, a level of vulnerability diametrically opposed to the prior enemy Toguro. Sensui is such a dynamic and interesting villain. 

Drosselmeyer (Princess Tutu): Drosselmeyer is a very engaging villain for the same reason in and out of universe, his desire to create a good story. His machinations are the dynamic force of the story as he manipulates the events to create his tragedy, but he is very fallible as his psychological manipulation more often fails due to his detachment from reality and the desires of others. Drosselmeyer's tragedy-loving spirit bleeds into the very story as he directs it and is unpredictable yet when exercised is instantly recognized in the tragic effects it causes on the story. 

Seto Kaiba (Yu-Gi-Oh!): Probably my favorite "Rival" character in fiction, depending on who you count, Seto Kaiba is a hilarious extreme ego, mixed with just the right amount of actual competence and power, a mixture of financial power, social power, and dueling skill (Which is the symbol of power in-universe.) Mixed with his grey morality and his status as a villain slowly turning into an anti-heroic figure over the course of the story means that whenever he's on screen, he's a break from the usual black and white morality of the story. He's also just so fun to watch with his arrogant declarations that destiny and God mean nothing to him, matched in his game strategies focused on pure and raw overwhelming power without tricks or frills. 

The Narrator (The Stanley Parable): Similar to Drosselmeyer, the Narrator is functionally the only character in the Stanley Parable being the narrator of the story the player is trapped in, yet is so entertaining that he can maintain the story and fill it with humorous delight, artistic complexity, and memorable moments, purely through the force of his personality. The Narrator is a fun personality that's exaggerated to just the right extent that he can alternate in different playthroughs from horrendous villain to compelling and understandable persona to an egotistical pretentious artist stereotype all while keeping the same style and cohesion.