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Anime villains through real criminology: from Sukuna and Muzan to Makima or Funny Valentine, what drives them and which theory explains them.
41 articles
Balance de controlWho is the villain of Chainsaw Man? The one holding the leashMakima is the answer; Katana Man, Reze and Santa Claus are arc villains. Tittle explains what happens when someone controls everything and no one controls her.Read →Critical criminologyWho is the villain of Fullmetal Alchemist? Father and an entire stateFather pulls the strings, Bradley signs and Envy pulls the trigger. But wiping out Ishval took more than homunculi: it took a state willing to follow orders.Read →AttachmentWho is the villain of Monster? Johan, and the adults who made himJohan Liebert is the monster of the title, but Monster never stops asking who made him that way. Bowlby had an uncomfortable answer, and Nina half refutes it.Read →NeutralizationWhy Gin and Tōsen betrayed the Soul Society: two kinds of revengeBoth left with Aizen, and neither did it for him. Gin hid his revenge for a century; Tōsen gave his the name of justice.Read →NeutralizationWhy Itachi killed his clan: the order, the lie and the billA village made him choose between two massacres. He chose one, left his brother alive to hate him and carried all of it alone. The Leaf carried nothing.Read →HypoarousalWho is the villain of One Punch Man? None of them measures upBoros, Garou, Dr. Genus: every arc brings a new villain, and nearly all of them go down to a single punch. The enemy Saitama cannot beat is boredom.Read →Positive devianceZagato and the Pillar: is saving the one you love from duty a crime?The villain of Magic Knight Rayearth locks away the princess who holds the world together. Once we learn why, the question is no longer who the bad guy is.Read →Evolutionary criminologyDante Zogratis and the Dark Triad: is evil human nature?The ruler of the Spade Kingdom says humans are evil and runs a man through to prove it. The science of violence proves him half right.Read →Moral disengagementWho is the villain of Attack on Titan? It is the protagonistMarley has reasons, Paradis has reasons, and so do the Warriors. Apply the test of who decided, knowing, and at what scale: whose name is left?Read →Moral developmentThe problem with Gabi Braun is not cruelty: it is certaintyGabi Braun is twelve, shoots a woman in the back and expects to be thanked. What makes her dangerous is certainty, and certainty is taught.Read →LabelingWilly Tybur did not declare a war: he premiered one on a stageWilly Tybur picks a festival, a stage and the international press to name Paradis the enemy of the world. Why did he plan to die that same night?Read →NeutralizationThe executioner who apologises: saying sorry lets you carry onBertholdt weeps as he breaks the wall, and breaks it anyway. His guilt does not stop him: it certifies him as decent, and that is what lets him carry on.Read →Critical criminologyHow a genocide begins: what happens years before the first deathBefore the first death come lists, armbands and a new vocabulary, all of it in public. Why does almost nobody recognise a genocide while it is being assembled?Read →Social disorganizationWho is the villain of Tokyo Revengers? Takemichi already ran the testTakemichi travels back, removes a villain and returns: the tragedy has happened anyway, under another name. What if the question itself is wrong?Read →Moral disengagementWho is the villain of Dan Da Dan? The respectable village familyTurbo Granny ends up in a lucky cat and the Evil Eye goes to school. Why does the series recycle almost every monster except the Kito family?Read →LabelingTurbo Granny: the urban legend that manufactured its own monsterIn Dandadan, a yokai's power depends on what people say about it. The tunnel legend does not describe Turbo Granny; it manufactures her.Read →Vergüenza reintegradoraWhy Dan Da Dan's villains end up on the sofaTurbo Granny lives in a lucky cat and the Evil Eye goes to class. That is not soft writing: it is a method that has had a name since 1989.Read →Antisocial personality disorderInfinity Castle: every Upper Moon fails in its own wayMuzan finds his demons broken and offers them his blood at the worst minute of their lives. Even so, not one Upper Moon ends up a copy of its master.Read →Criminal personalityAntares and the god complex: the tyrant who mistakes might for rightAntares never bargains or explains himself: his strength, he believes, entitles him to everything. What goes on inside a mind that sees others as insects?Read →Relative deprivationKaigaku: the envy of the eternal runner-up and relative deprivationKaigaku and Zenitsu had the same master and the same scarcity. One chose to protect; the other drank Muzan's blood just to stand above him.Read →Rational choiceThe demon who sets a price: Macht, rational choice made monstrousMacht doesn't threaten: he proposes. He offers gold and coexistence in exchange for obedience, and feels nothing when he collects.Read →General strainThe Hero Hunter: Garou, the boy who always had to play the monsterIn schoolyard games, Garou was always cast as the monster and took the beating. How does that humiliation turn into a crusade against heroes?Read →Delinquent subcultureThe clan's blade: Katana Man and revenge as a code of honorKatana Man doesn't hunt Denji out of personal hatred, but to collect his clan's blood debt. When does a group turn revenge into a duty?Read →NeutralizationFunny Valentine: when patriotism becomes the perfect alibi for crimeFunny Valentine steals, orders killings and sleeps soundly. How does a president commit atrocities without guilt when he believes it is all for his country?Read →Rational choiceThe strategist in the shadows: Kisaki Tetta and the calculated crimeAlmost everyone in Tokyo Revengers fights with their fists; Kisaki Tetta, with a board. He is the villain who gets the least dirty and does the most harm.Read →Class conflictThe utopia that kills: Lucius Zogratis and forced equalityLucius Zogratis is right to name inequality as a source of suffering. His cure is to kill whoever doesn't fit his world of equals.Read →Anomie / StrainEat or be eaten: Diego Brando, unbridled ambition and Merton's anomieA stable boy who watched his mother work herself to death enters the race of the century with a single creed: eat or be eaten.Read →PsychopathyThe faceless Boss: Diavolo and the psychopathy that erases identityNo one in Passione has seen their Boss's face, and whoever does dies. What kind of coldness leads Diavolo to order the death of his own daughter?Read →Moral disengagementEnrico Pucci: the faith that rebrands a genocide as heavenA soft-spoken priest prays before he kills and smiles as the world crumbles. He does not do evil in spite of his faith, but through it.Read →Frustration–aggressionThe stolen brother: Izana Kurokawa and displaced aggressionIzana grows up an orphan, finds a brother in Mikey and feels someone else has stolen that place. Why does he wage war on people who never hurt him?Read →Social learningThe weapon that fakes love: Reze, Chainsaw Man's Bomb GirlA café, a first love and a plan to run away together: it was all an operation. The Bomb Girl was trained from childhood to seduce and detonate.Read →Criminal personalityAura the Guillotine: the tyrant who cannot imagine losingAura enslaves forever anyone who loses a contest of will against her. What leads her to challenge Frieren without even imagining she could lose?Read →Social learningReiner Braun and child soldiers: how a perpetrator is manufacturedBy nine he had been taught whom to hate. Reiner Braun is at once the victim of one crime and the author of others, and neither cancels the other.Read →LabelingMy Hero Academia: the villains society manufacturesTenko Shimura cried on a street where no hero stopped. Before he was Shigaraki, he was a child the society of heroes let fall.Read →Born criminal / AtavismSukuna, the pure monster: why science buried the born criminalSukuna is cruel with no trauma to explain him and no redemption to save him: the pure monster criminology has spent 150 years trying to bury.Read →Social controlMakima: why social control with a friendly face is scarier than forceMakima doesn't shout, hit or threaten: she hands out measured affection and promises a future. By the time you see the cage, the door has been locked for years.Read →Criminological eugenicsYhwach and the Auswählen: the eugenics behind Bleach's villainWith a single gesture, Yhwach decides which Quincy deserve to go on living. His ritual has a German name and a real precedent that cost millions of lives.Read →PsychopathyThe myth of the feelingless psychopath: what psychopathy really isThe movies sold us the psychopath as a machine incapable of feeling anything. Is that what science actually measures, or is something far more specific missing?Read →Frustration–aggressionThe cycle of violence: does child abuse create villains?Toya Todoroki burned himself training so his father would look at him, and became Dabi. Does child abuse create villains, or is that just what fiction tells us?Read →LabelingLight Yagami: Kira and labelling theoryLight Yagami writes a name in a notebook and a man from the evening news dies. His power is not killing at a distance: it is deciding whom to call a criminal.Read →LabelingFive anime that are really five theories of crimeIs evil born or made? Can justice become the worst of crimes? Five anime that dare to ask without a safety net.Read →