Magnificent Bastard/Anime/Digimon

The Digital World's most Magnificent Bastards, Digimon and human alike, can be found here.

Devimon and Myotismon from Digimon Adventure could be the first ever examples in the franchise.
- Devimon, as the first ever Big Bad, was behind all Black Gears and traps set for the children on File Island and rarely lost his composure, even while dying! Not to mention that he was probably the only Digimon villain who had some sanity in him, except the conquest thing. Even in death, he still pulls some strings behind the scene; by appearing before the Digimon Emperor he played on Ken's superiority complex into making him use some of his own data to create Kimeramon and so, Devimon had full control of it and gladly use Kimeramon against the Digidestined and the emperor.
- Meanwhile, Myotismon's entire scheme for traveling to the Real World is a gambit to kill the Eighth Child before she can fulfill her destiny and defeat him. He distributes mock crests to his minions so that they can tell when they're near the chosen child, and when that fails, he uses that child's potential partner to pick out the child for him (all while keeping the digivice and crest safely far away). He is charming enough to beguile human women so he can drink their blood in a weirdly sexual way, and his plans are shrewd enough to be frighteningly competent. And this is just the first season!
In the second movie, "Our War Game", Diaboromon proves that he's a clever bastard right out the gate by attacking the protagonists during their lengthy transformation sequence, and he doesn't let up: he prevents them from chasing him by messing with a bunch of phone lines, takes advantage of the satellite phone they use to track him by hijacking it and causing it to launch missiles at several cities, and even wastes their time by creating a bunch of clones that make it harder to find and stop the real Diaboromon. And even death doesn't slow him down, as he tricks them into reviving him in the sequel.
Yukio Oikawa from Digimon Adventure 02 masterminded pretty much behind everything that happened in the series, and he started it all with just a simple e-mail he sent to Ken Ichijouji, a young boy wretched with guilt over his brother's death that he blamed himself for, which tells him to use the digivice he found some time ago to travel into another world. Little Ken does so and ends up in the Dark Ocean, a world of darkness and negativity which corrupts Ken into the evil Digimon Emperor. Now with Ken as his unknowing pawn, he uses him to conquer the Digital World and set up Control Spires, obelisk towers of darkness used to weaken the Digital World's defences and, in the long term, the border between the Digital World and the Real World. However, when the Digidestined defeats Ken and cleans the Digital World of the spires, Oikawa sends his agents Arukenimon and Mummymon to kill them by transforming the spires into monsters, and to destroy the Destiny Stones in order to hasten the weakening of the border. With enough Destiny Stones destroyed, the border becomes so weak that Digimon invade the Real World in thousends, and with that as a convient diversion, Oikawa moves on to his next step. He and his minions recruits some lonely kids with promises of power and talents and then kidnaps Ken, copies the Dark Spore that was planted inside him, and transplats the copies inside the children. With time, those copies would grow into something so powerful that it would give Oikawa the final crack on the border he needed to enter the Digital World and claim it as his own. A simple goal which required complicated tactics and difficult planning to reach, and yet Oikawa pulled it all off like it was no problem at all. But then unfortunately for Oikawa, it's revealed that he was just a pawn of Myotismon all along, and that Myotismon is the true Chessmaster of Adventure 02.
AxeKnightmon of Digimon Fusion, whose magnificence is aided by being as Badass as his name would suggest. He spends years manipulating a meek Child Prodigy into thinking that the Digital World is a game where no one can die so that he'll willingly work for him and grant him access to DigiXros, then blackmails his sister into helping him too by using him as a hostage, neither aware of the other's true situation. While he is a servant (and younger brother) of the Big Bad, Bagramon, he poses as the leader of a rival faction for much of the series, and even spies on and sabotages the plans of the Quirky Miniboss Squad (partly to keep up the charade, partly to make himself look better, but mostly because it's hilarious). And in the end it turns out he really was working against Bagramon - he encouraged the protagonists to get stronger so that they would be around to attack Bagramon while he was focusing most of his power into his doomsday technique, allowing AxeKnightmon to stab him in the back while he's distracted and absorb him.
- The manga's version of Bagramon also qualifies. Rebelling against Homeostasis because of her plan to have Digimon branded as heroic or villainous, in a system that would result in his brother's death, Bagramon is defeated and exiled. Finding the remains of the digital deity Ygdrassil, Bagramon uses them to empower himself and begin his conquest, creating the Xros Loader and the powerful artificial Digimon Tactimon. He then rebels again with the loyalty of dark Digimons, defeating the Royal Knights and breaking the digital world. Manipulating his brother using two minions and some humans, Bagramon intends to judge humans and Digimons based on who wins between them. When his brother "wins" while losing his sanity, Bagramon cries for him before using him to recreate Zeed Milleniunmon, intending to use it to euthanize both the digital and human worlds and save them from decay. When he is proven wrong by the heroes, Bagramon cheers for them and dies saving his brother, encouraging him to be better.
Lucemon, leader of the Seven Great Demon Lords who embodies the sin of Pride, frequently walks the fine line between this trope and a Smug Snake in his various appearances throughout the franchise. His appearance in Fusion is particularly magnificent; a citizen of the Heaven Zone, Lucemon campaigns to be elected the Zone's next leader who, if elected, would embrace love and mercy as a policy as contrast to GuardiAngemon's extreme justice. When the Fusion Fighters are wrongfully accused of a crime and threatened with execution, Lucemon pleads for clemency to both them and the real culprit, Cupimon, and voices the importance of allowing citizens to speak for themselves, getting him popular support among those in the Heaven Zone. But once he's won and is to be crowned, he returns to his true self - an ally to the Bagra Empire and fellow Demon Lord Laylamon - and rips the zone in two, revealing the temple that holds the Code Crown and trapping it in a giant sphere of darkness. Even when it looks like Lucemon has been beaten, he survives the attack and returns to kidnap Nene just as she's transmitting the dark sphere's power to AxeKnightmon, making him an unexpected thorn in even AxeKnightmon's side.
The franchise's greatest example would be Millenniummon, since unlike all the others he ultimately achieved what it wanted: to become Ryo's Partner even though he would have also liked to start conquering the Multiverse immediately (note that he can wait for it anyway). His actions led to nearly everything that went wrong with Digimon Adventure and Digimon Adventure 02 (including those of the ones mentioned above), but because he managed to remain undetected and completely out of reach he became The Unfought. He also succeeded in creating himself without being noticed by an omniscient being. Details can be found in the series synopsis page.

Back to Magnificent Bastard

Back to Magnificent Bastard/Anime