Dangerous Characters: Naraku

It's about time we put a villain in the gallery. This guy's even got an appropriately snow-white outfit for the holiday season (sure it's the skin of a baboon, but who cares). Coming all the way from Feudal Japan (a highly fictionalized version of it anyway), this partial demon put together from various lesser demons has been actively working to ditch his human heart forever so he can lose his lust for a woman who's no longer alive. He enjoys anything that makes others suffer and uses his manipulative ways to attempt to physically and psychologically destroy any enemy (or innocent bystander) who is unfortunate enough to cross his path, and even some of his own allies. We now introduce Naraku, from Sunrise's anime Inuyasha, based off the manga by Rumiko Takahashi.

This is a character whose reputation is much lower than most of characters we've introduced so far. While most of the others are here mainly for negative affects they unintentionally visit on others, like most true villains, Naraku will go out of his way to royally screw over anyone who he perceives could be a threat to his interests, which are to possess the complete Shikon jewel (a very powerful magicky-type plot device/Mcguffin), become a full demon, and to have the priestess Kikyo for his own (or kill her, depending on how crazy evil he is at the time. This last one is made even weirder by the fact that she's already dead. It's complicated.). He is well known to be quite creative in making others suffer too. Among other things, he has the brother of one of the series' supporting characters under amnesia and mind control, and cursed another supporting character with what basically amounts to a carnivorous black hole in his hand (actually called a wind tunnel in the series) that persists through generations. He is also personally responsible for getting the titular character of the series, Inuyasha pinned to a tree with a cursed arrow, and causing much psychological trauma for both him and his late ex-girlfriend, the same priestess, Kikyo. He has a special place in his heart for causing Inuyasha and his party as much pain as he possibly can, however, his ire is not limited to the main cast. Most of the people around him are equally susceptible to his wrath and he certainly has no qualms about destroying whole villages and castle towns to get his way. Thanks to his dangerous tendencies, which create a completely new category of "totally evil" to add to our previous set of parameters for an entry on the list, Naraku is truly a very dangerous character. Happy December!

Image taken from Inuyasha.

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