10 Greatest Ever Anime Villains
9. Hero Killer Stain (My Hero Academia)
The best kind of villains are the ones who find a way to hurt the heroes even when they've supposedly been stopped. There was no more frightening scene in Red Dragon - after all - than when Hannibal Lector found a way to harm the hero's family from inside his jail cell. And in that same vein, even though Hero Killer Stain was brought down two seasons ago, you still feel his presence to this day through the world of My Hero Academia.
Stain's whole shtick is right there in his title. He is a serial killer who specifically targets superheroes. He believes them to be consumed by the ultra-capitalist and consumerist society they protect, too focused on mere profit and personal gain, and ultimately have betrayed every heroic ideal they claim to uphold. And what makes him so effective is that he isn't wrong, because the show has been showing us practically since episode 1 with vain characters like Mt. Lady that the superhero community IS overly concerned with their image and payment and so forth.
Sure the fact that he is taken down so early in the show kinda knocks him down to where he is on this list. But Stain's impact on the show, and the way his martyr-esque defeat in season 2 has rocked the superhero and supervillain worlds to their respective cores has more than cemented his spot on this list.