Villains in anime do what they do for different reasons; some want world domination, while others want revenge. And then there are those motivated by ideological and physical evolution... or at least a terrible misunderstanding of it.
These villains think that only they hold the key to helping mankind reach its truest potential and surpass its limits. The price for this, of course, is countless dead and committing the worst atrocities imaginable.
WARNING: Spoilers ahead.
10 Kabaneri Of The Iron Fortress — Biba Amatori Thought A Zombie Invasion Would Strengthen Society
Ideally, the warriors who operate the armored trains in the obvious Attack On Titan clone Kabaneri Of The Iron Fortress keep the kabane out of the walled nation-states. The Hunters' leader, Biba, has other plans, as he wants to bring the zombie apocalypse to the last bastions of civilization because he believes the survivors would bring forth a stronger mankind, with the weak being left to die.
Biba's twisted ideals were born from his fathers' attempts to assassinate him and being the sole survivor of an anti-kabane operation gone terribly wrong. Now, he's intent on making everyone else see the world through his eyes. He actually got what he wanted in the end, but Biba was left empty and unfulfilled after the capital fell to the undead.
9 Legend Of Galactic Heroes — Rudolf Von Goldenbaum "Purified" The Galactic Empire
The Galactic Empire was a fascist regime fanatically devoted to keeping its people morally and physically "pure" so that it may give rise to a generation of heroes and perfection, and its founder, Rudolf von Goldenbaum, saw this through. Through legislations and brute force, Goldenbaum rid his empire of whoever he deemed "unfit."
Goldenbaum's most evil act was the Inferior Genes Exclusion Act, which condemned billions of people to forced sterilization and death. Even after his death and the New Galactic Empire's usurping of the old regime, the IGEA's effects were so severe that an estimated 4 billion people were murdered and mankind's birth rate only recovered by about 12%.
8 Tokyo Ghoul — Dr. Akihiro Kanou Saw Ghouls As The Superior Beings
Nobody really knows much about the Ghouls, but as far as Dr. Kanou is concerned, they're the next stage in human evolution. The doctor hated humanity, who he saw as weak and trapped by the confines of nature and society. Ghouls, meanwhile, are everything people are not, and are more than capable of breaking out of man's prisons.
Hoping to push humanity to its Ghoul state, Dr. Kanou experimented on people and Ghouls by splicing their organs. His greatest experiment was Ken Kaneki, who he put a Ghoul's organs into, accidentally created the most powerful human/Ghoul hybrid ever. Unfortunately for Dr. Kanou, Kaneki used his newfound abilities to crush his dreams.
7 Naruto — Orochimaru Saw Immortality As Humanity's Next Stage
After his parents' death, a young Orochimaru was comforted when he was told that he'd meet them in another life. However, Orochimaru took this parable of reincarnation too literally and sought immortality so that he'd live long enough to see his parents again. As the centuries went by, his original goals were warped into an endless desire for power.
In his quest for eternal life, Orochimaru tested countless techniques on himself and others, killing many and driving himself mad. It's been theorized by characters and fans that Orochimaru was so broken by his parents' death that he resented mankind's fragility, hence his desperate search for the species' only logical evolutionary point: immortality.
6 Bleach — Sosuke Aizen Artificially Evolved Shinigami, Hollows, & Himself
From a very young age, Aizen knew he was practically a god among Shinigami thanks to his immensely powerful supernatural energies. Thing is, he had yet to find a way to assert his godhood and maximize its potential. To this end, Aizen spent centuries testing various theories on himself and anyone he either convinced or got his hands on.
The fruits of Aizen's labors included the humanized Hollows like the Arrancars and the elite Espada, the Hollow/Shinigami hybrids called the Visored, and bringing himself to a godlike state. At the height of his godhood, Aizen easily defeated half of the Gotei 13's top captains and vice-captains, and it's implied that his already godlike power level could still increase.
5 Serial Experiments Lain — Masami Eiri Wanted To Realize Posthumanism Through The Wired
For the characters of the mind-boggling Serial Experiments Lain, The Wired is more than just an early speculative version of what the internet would eventually become. To its creator, Eiri, The Wired was the next step in human evolution that would theoretically bring everyone to the next plane of existence by connecting all minds digitally.
To bring forth this digital utopia, Eiri threw himself in front of a train to kill his physical self, which he no longer needed after he uploaded his mind to The Wired. Eiri declared himself the God of the Wired, only to realize that he was just the placeholder for Lain Iwakura, the true inheritor of The Wired and the guide of humanity's next stage.
4 A Certain Magical Index — Aleister Crowley Founded Academy City To Make Mankind "Outgrow" Magic
To be fair, almost every Academy City scientist in A Certain Magical Index (which may get a Season 4) is obsessed with human and Esper evolution, especially those seen in the spin-off anime A Certain Scientific Railgun. That said, these mad scientists are little more than pale imitations of Aleister Crowley, the city's founder and current overseer.
Crowley used to be one of the most powerful magicians around, but he grew disillusioned with the supernatural when he saw how mankind was chained to its fate and whims. Besides turning his back on magic by throwing himself into science, Crowley created Academy City to one day find a way to erase magic and help mankind realize its true potential.
3 Code Geass R2 — Emperor Charles Zi Britannia Tried To Make Mankind Surpass Itself Through Ragnarok
After barely surviving a rough childhood that was filled with political backstabbing and familial betrayals, Charles grew up into the bitter and jaded 98th emperor of the Holy Britannian Empire. Charles despised mankind's squabbles for power and the world of lies they thrived in, and he sought to make man outgrow them through the Ragnarok Connection.
Using his mind-wiping Geass and the Britannian empire to access the Thought Towers scattered across the world, the emperor hoped to make humanity evolve into a singular being and abandon their petty worldly desires. His equally smart and cunning son Lelouch, however, saw right through this and called out his selfishness before killing him to stop the Ragnarok.
2 Neon Genesis Evangelion — SEELE Saw Instrumentality As Humanity's Only Acceptable Endgame
In Neon Genesis Evangelion, humanity is actually the eighteenth Angel and a freak of nature that broke off from a singular Angel. SEELE believed that reuniting all people into one consciousness isn't just the only way to end man's penchant for self-destruction and inescapable loneliness, but the species' logical evolutionary end.
This is the true goal of the Human Instrumentality Project, which SEELE used not to avert the Third Impact but to end the world on their terms. Following the Dead Sea Scrolls' prophecies and believing that humanity has stagnated for far too long, SEELE successfully forced man's final stage during The End Of Evangelion.
1 Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann — The Anti-Spiral Dedicated Its Existence To Stopping Human Evolution
While the Anti-Spiral from the eternally quotable Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann is obsessed with human evolution, its goal isn't to usher it in by force but to prevent it no matter what. Mankind and other sentient beings are known as Spiral Races, and if they multiply and evolve beyond a certain point, their inherent Spiral Powers will expand at such a galactic scale that they'll end reality itself.
This cataclysm is known as the Spiral Nemesis, and the Anti-Spiral did everything in its power to stop it from happening. In Earth's case, the Anti-Spiral broke Lordgenome's resolve and got him to brutally keep mankind underground. As a result, the human population's numbers were always in check, and its evolutionary progress was kept at a limit.
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