10 Terrifying Anime Villains That Gave You Nightmares

One episode is all it takes for a character to make their mark, and boy does Cowboy Bebop's Mad Pierrot make one heck of a mark in Pierrot Le Fou.

This well-dressed maniac almost single-handedly killed iconic anime badass Spike Spiegel within the first five minutes of the episode. Talk about making an entrance.

What gives Mad Pierrot a spot on this list, besides being totally mad, is that he genuinely feels out of place in this relatively grounded series. Pierrot is like a Looney Tunes character in the way he flies around and in his borderline inhuman grin. He doesn't fit in the world of Cowboy Bebop, and that's not a knock either, that's a compliment.

His cartoonish presentation is what makes him such an intimidating threat. How do you even begin to try and kill a cartoon?

In a series with a episodes as artistically melancholic as Ballad of Fallen Angels or Black Dog Serenade, Pierrot Le Fou is different beast entirely. Pierrot pushes Spike beyond both his physical and mental limits, making this episode the first time viewers see the usually calm and collected cool cat come to terms with his own mortality.

Pierrot doesn't do this intentionally however. As far as he's concerned, their life or death standoff is nothing more than a game.

A game everyone's favorite space bounty hunter almost doesn't come out of alive.