15+ Manga Where MC Is A Villain (RECOMMENDATIONS)

Updated on: July 22, 2022
by Ernie

In Japanese manga, usually, the protagonists are heroes with good characteristics, etiquettes, and manners who are selfless persons. But in real life, we see people with offensive trait or behaviors.

Stories from villains’ perspectives are different from regular ones and tend to tell the stories of the villains’ side. Readers sometimes empathize with villains if the story is good enough. Some Japanese comics showed us that villains have some goals set to break the chains of society.

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Villains doing bad things to achieve something far greater are usually not considered villains. They are more considered anti-heroes or anti-protagonists. Their stories might represent evil but there’s a question left behind. Are the villains just plain evil or are they misjudged?

If you love questioning the norms of society and enjoy twisted-brainstorming stories, then you’ll love this list of manga. These are not just your typical Japanese comics, but every show on the list will leave some questions for you and your thoughts about anti-heroes.

Japanese Comics Where MC is anti-Hero!

16. Juujika no Rokunin

Villain MC	Character Writing	Art	Storyline	Total
12/20	8/10	8/10	8/10	36/50

Juujika no Rokunin is a mystery-dark psychological manga. The insanity level of this manga is extreme. But the story is enjoyable. The remarkable part of the manga is the art. Who wouldn’t enjoy tragedy in an aesthetically pleasing way? Right?

The main character, Shun Uruma, gets bullied by five of his classmates during his sixth grade. The bullies go so far as to disturb his family members. The story rotates around his vengeance against his bullies. The manga is a bit extra, so it’s better to read a censored version.

15. Brutal: Confessions of a hom***de investigator

Villain MC	Character Writing	Plot	Art	Total
13/20	8/10	8/10	8/10	37/50

The manga is globally known as Brutal: Confessions of a Hom***de Investigator. It’s about a Hom***de Detective called Hiroki Dan. The story follows Hiroki Dan providing justice to the ones who are so powerful that even laws can’t touch them.

Hiroki Dan has some weird sense of ethics and moral codes. His decisions and ways to bring peace to the world will make you question your morality. You will at least, for once, ask your sanity of what’s right or wrong. The main character seeks vengeance on criminals by making them suffer.

Although the manga is very slow, it’s very underrated and the scenes are intense and full of action. It is recommended that you read the censored version if you are sensitive.

14. Prison Lab

Villain MC	Character Writing	Plot	Art	Total
14/20	8/10	8/10	8/10	38/50

Kangoku Jikken is another manga where the main character is a villain or an anti-hero. It’s globally known as Prison Lab. The main character, Eyama Aito, is a high school student who gets bullied. He became depressed and anxious because of the constant bullying.

Everything takes a turn of events when Eyama Aito receives an invitation to a confinement game from a letter from his last class before his summer vacation. The game is actually a twisted one involving anything other than murder. For the game, Eyama gets to choose anyone, who will be prisoned for a month and he will be allowed to do anything other than kill them.

The plot of the manga set a very high bar for the character developments to move forward. But the character developments are a bit bland compared to the plot. It is such an amazing one. It has a few interesting scenarios, so once again it’s recommended that you read a censored version of it.

13. funouhan

Villain MC	Character Writing	Plot	Art	Total
14/20	9/10	8/10	8/10	39/50

The story of Funouhan (Impossibility Defense) revolves around a mysterious man at a certain park who works as a hired assassin. The man is described as someone with a black suit and red eyes. The person is without any database or unknown to all. He has no past nor future. He is called Tadashi Usobuki.

The methods of Tadashi’s executions are extraordinary. He doesn’t have any weapon nor use force to assassinate. He either suggests his contractor some ways that will leave no trace back to them or he hypnotizes his targets to end their own lives.

12. Aozora to Kumorizora

Villain MC	Character Writing	Plot	Art	Total
15/20	8/10	9/10	8/10	40/50

The most important thing about Aozora to Kumirozora is its art style. The art style is so soothing and calming to the eyes, even though the drawings are not really detailed, you will feel the aesthetic vibes from the chapters.

The story is about a girl who realizes her whole body is being controlled and she only has access to her mind. The one who is controlling her body aims to kill her and leave no trace, making it look like suicide so that none pursues her death.

The protagonist is called Azure. Azure is suffering from severe depression and is on the verge of killing herself. When the one who was controlling her body felt that she had no problem dying, he refrained from killing her and started using her for his own cause. He is known as Claude.

After spending some time with Azure, Claude realized she is not what she seemed to be. And they have more similarities of morality and thoughts than he ever thought they’d have.

11. Desert Punk

Villain MC	Character Writing	Plot	Art	Total
16/20	8/10	9/10	8/10	41/50

Desert Punk is a manga about post-apocalyptic conditions in Japan. In the manga, it shows that Japan has become a huge pile of sand. In that wasteland, there is a bounty hunter who roams alone with considerable power. He is called Kanta Mizuno, also known as Sunabouzu (Desert Punk).

After the blast, the whole world became a desert. The survivors of the apocalypse try to sustain themselves in the desert with so little as they have. The story mainly focuses on the return of the dark ages and the rule of the Oasis Government. The main character is full of sarcasm and dark humor.

10. Dead Tube

Villain MC	Character Writing	Plot	Art	Total
16/20	9/10	9/10	8/10	42/50

The name Dead Tube was formed from the mixture of the fiction-based Dark Web and Youtube. The name explains a lot about the series but there are a few mind blowing twists in the manga. The protagonist, Tomihiro Machiha, gets a chance to film the school idol, Mai Mashiro, and her daily lifestyle.

The recording continues for two days, until Mai Mashiro decides to get rid of someone on camera and uploads it in the social media platform called Dead Tube. In Dead Tube, people pay to see all kinds of creepy events. At first, Tomhiro got scared. Then slowly, we get to know the psychopath he truly is.

9. Ushijima the Loan Shark

Villain MC	Character Writing	Plot	Art	Total
17/20	9/10	9/10	8/10	43/50

It’s as the name suggests. The manga is about a guy named Ushijima who is a loan shark. He lends money to anyone who would do absolutely anything to return the money. He has a high interest rate of 50%. The twist is that he does unimaginable things to the ones who can’t repay his debts.

8. Overlord

Villain MC	Character Writing	Plot	Art	Total
17/20	9/10	9/10	9/10	44/50

The story of Overlord started from the light novel and then the anime came out. The manga is the icing on the cake. Although it didn’t create so much hype like the anime, it’s quite an interesting read for the specific fans out there.

The artwork would seem very bland at the beginning but it improves later on in the story. The strongest perk of the manga is its characters. The characters are quite interesting and unique from a point of view. The protagonist Momonga gets trapped in an MMORPG where he plays the role as the strongest wizard of the game and slowly, he starts his conquest to world domination.

7. Akumetsu

Villain MC	Character Writing	Plot	Art	Total
17/20	10/10	9/10	9/10	45/50

Akumatsu takes place in a near future timeline where Japan hits an economic collapse due to the high level of corruption of banks. Shiina Nagasawa discovers our protagonist, Akumetsu, as her classmate, Shou Hazama. He starts killing the corrupt politicians one by one until he is killed.

Even though Shou Hazama died in front of Shiina Nagasawa, she finds him well and alive the next day of school. The mystery starts here with our anti-hero Akumetsu and it tells about how he cleaned Japan from the hands of dirty politicians by any means possible

6. Death Note

Villain MC	Character Writing	Plot	Art	Total
18/20	10/10	9/10	9/10	45/50

A lot of people heard about Death Note. Many watched the anime and some read the manga. But the manga has an artistic vibe to it. As Ryuk from the Shinigami world drops his notebook to have fun with people in this world, Light Yagami finds it. Ryuk explains to him how it can kill people by just writing their names on it.

Light Yagami, the son of a police officer, who was bored of regular life, gets the idea of creating a perfect world by killing all the bad people. In his new world, he aims to be the new God. But his plans get paused by a prodigy detective, L Lawliet.

5. Shamo

Villain MC	Character Writing	Plot	Art	Total
18/20	10/10	9/10	9/10	45/50

Shamo is a dark-action seinen manga, it also has a movie adaption. The manga is about a martial artist. The protagonist, Ryo Narushima, is charged with the crime of killing his own parents. He is also a martial artist with by-born talents and instincts. The most interesting part is from childhood, he doesn’t feel any remorse for his actions. On top of that, he keeps his spree ongoing.

4. Homunculus

Villain MC	Character Writing	Plot	Art	Total
19/20	10/10	10/10	8/10	47/50

The story of the manga is about a 22-year-old medical student, Manabu Ito, and a homeless man, Susumu Nakoshi. Though in reality, Nakoshi is not actually homeless. He is just obsessed with his car so much that he decided to live in his car beside a park.

Manabu is very rich and deeply interested in medical surgeries. He paid Nakoshi to become his test subject for a trepanation surgery and Nakoshi agreed to become one. As Manabu started the operation, Nakoshi unlocked his sixth sense and time travelling abilities.

Then the story fully focuses on the powers of Nakoshi and what he tends to do with it. The story will leave you in a grey area where you just won’t be able to decide what should be done.

3. Code Geass: Lelouch Of The Rebellion

Villain MC	Character Writing	Plot	Art	Total
20/20	10/10	10/10	8/10	48/50

From the success of the anime, the manga of Code Geass was released. The hype was so high that people, in general, had a higher expectation than the story of the anime itself. But the story was actually the same as the anime. I’d say other than the art, nothing was a disappointment.

The Holy Empire of Britannia conquered the whole world with its latest addition, Japan renamed as Area 11. The conqueror, along with his son, gained power from a weird character called C.C. The power is called Power of the Kings or Geass and once cast on someone with an order, they do it no matter what. Lelouch uses the power to rebel against his father and tries to free Japan from his terrors.

2. Hellsing

Villain MC	Character Writing	Plot	Art	Total
20/20	10/10	10/10	9/10	49/50

Hellsing is a Japanese comic and animated show that revolves around an organization in England that fights evil with evil. That organization is called Hellsing. Their leader is Sir Integra Fairbrook Wingates Hellsing. Her greatest weapon is Alucard, a genetically modified vampire with super vampiric strength.

A new threat appears in the world, controlled by a mastermind. Alucard is ordered to stop it and destroy the monsters with the help of Seras Victoria, Alucard’s vampire partner. On his journey, he also has to deal with one of his greatest rivals from Iscariot, a Vatican Priest, Alexander Anderson.

1. Monster

Villain MC	Character Writing	Plot	Art	Total
20/20	10/10	10/10	10/10	50/50

Arguably, the best villain in all manga history resides in the Japanese comic called Monster. The story includes a Japanese neurosurgeon called Kenzou Tenma. The story is in between the timeline of 90s and 2000s.

With a turn of events, Tenma gets to choose to operate on the mayor or an orphan boy once. He decided to operate on the boy, which left the mayor dead. Political pressures made the director of the hospital punish Tenma. So, he fired Tenma. But some turn of events prevented this from happening.

From the hospital to the end of the manga, there are stories spread like spider webs. When all are connected, the main character of the show will be revealed.

Comment Down Below

Sometimes people get bored with their regular lives. They seek some thrill in their life. So, they start looking for things outside the box. Thus, the creation of controversial protagonists. Most of the manga with an anti-hero as a protagonist is intellectual art and hard to understand for everyone.

Sometimes people learn about human psychologies from reading these kinds of stories. Because if these stories are thought and written from a human mind, these can also be implemented by ordinary people in real life too. Once this thought is processed in someone, they start liking the anti-hero shows

Also, not all the evil-doers from manga have selfish goals. Most of the characters have a much nobler cause to create such chaos. Maybe villains are not bad in reality. They are just normal people who thought they had enough and they had to change the bad things of this world by using force or any means.

Although, some villains are plain evil and they harm others and do evil just for the fun of it. They might be mentally ill too as they enjoy the pain of others. Maybe the evildoers are somehow mentally ill from some traumas.

2 thoughts on “15+ Manga Where MC Is A Villain (RECOMMENDATIONS)”

Farys
September 5, 2022 at 3:38 pm

In Moster mc isn’t villian, he is 100% hero, lol

Misaki
September 4, 2022 at 5:33 pm

After ravaging through the internet for the best anti-hero mangas… I’m glad to find a non generic list, you’ve clearly read a fair share of manga and I absolutely love each entry on this list! Thanks again

15+ Manga Where MC Is A Villain (RECOMMENDATIONS)

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