Updated September 7, 2022 3.4K votes 918 voters 33.5K views
Over 900 Ranker voters have come together to rank this list of The 15 Greatest Final Bosses In Anime History, Ranked
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In most anime where the heroes must defeat villains, they usually have to face off against a few small fries before they get to the final boss. Sometimes, they're exactly who you expect them to be. It's clear from the jump that Muzan Kibutsuji is the force behind the demon attacks in Demon Slayer. Because all the other demons nearly wipe out the slayers, viewers get excited thinking about how strong Muzan must be by comparison. Sometimes, it's a total surprise. Few people realized that protagonist Eren Jaeger would end up becoming the ultimate foe of Attack on Titan.Â
Who are the best final villains in anime? That's up to you.
Behind all the homunculi who plague the protagonists in FMA, there's Father. Father created the homunculi, and they're all expected to act according to his wishes. Father himself is a combination of Hoenheim's blood and the essence of the Eye of God. He hopes to fully control said Eye and become an immortal god.
Once he gets ahold of the power he craves, he's nearly impossible to stop. It takes nearly every character - including one of his own homunculi children - to destroy him once and for all.
In an unexpected twist, it turns out that the final boss of Attack on Titan is the original protagonist, Eren Jaeger. At first, Eren was a rage-fueled kid who wanted to destroy every Titan in existence for what they did to his hometown.
But once he learned where Titans came from and about the discrimination faced by the Eldian people, his destructive desires changed course. He decided that the only way for the Eldians to be treated like humans was to destroy everybody else on Earth - and he had a plan to make it happen.
The remnants of the Survey Corps don't want to sit by and watch him commit mass genocide, but stopping him won't be easy. Not only does it mean going against someone with the power of multiple Titans - it also means going against one of their closest friends.
Because Kentaro Miura passed away before he could finish Berserk, it's not clear whether another villain would have swooped in to supplant Griffith in the end. But Griffith is a fascinating character who served as the most important villain in the series, so we want to highlight him here.
Griffith and Guts were once close friends and fellow members of the Band of the Hawk. Guts cared deeply about Griffith and was willing to risk his own safety to help him. Griffith cared less about their friendship and more about attaining power. He sacrificed nearly the entire Band of the Hawk in order to join the God Hand and become Femto. He also assaulted Casca - his friend and Guts's girlfriend - right in front of him. That's some serious dedication to power - and a horrific betrayal of one's friends.
In some anime, you don't meet the final boss until much later. But in Demon Slayer, you encounter him early on. Muzan Kibutsuji is the strongest demon in the world, and the progenitor of all demon-kind. Originally, he was a human, but he transformed into a demon after he took a medication his doctor prescribed to help him with a potentially terminal illness. Though thrilled with his newfound strength, he loathes his new weaknesses, such as the inability to exist in the sun. His goal is to become a perfect, immortal being.
This might not be so bad if he didn't have to constantly sacrifice both humans and his own demonic allies to make it happen, but as things stand, Tanjiro and his friends have no choice but to take him down.
While the original Bleach anime ended with Sousuke Aizen as the ultimate foe, the manga soon revealed another more powerful final boss. Yhwach is the source of all Quincy and the Soul King's son. He hopes to destroy the concept of death by uniting the worlds of the living and the deceased. Nice idea, but some major sacrifices are required to get there.
With his ability to distribute his soul to others and to foresee and manipulate the future, it's hard to see how anyone could stop him.
Before Spike Spiegel was part of the Bebop crew, he belonged to the Red Dragon Crime Syndicate. The two of them were once friends, but due to a series of problems that included being in love with the same woman and disagreements over the future of the Syndicate, they ended up on terrible terms.
Spike spends most of the series engaged in various bounty hunting escapades that have little to do with Vicious. He focuses on those because he's trying to avoid the real problems he eventually needs to face from his old life. That's why Vicious is the ultimate foe of the series - not because he's necessarily more dangerous than the others or because he's connected to them, but because he's the person who Spike must overcome if he ever wants to be free of his past.
