Anime tends to create over-the-top characters who go to extremes in whatever they do, and mad scientist is the perfect expression of this. Over the years, anime (and manga) have featured some of the craziest scientists in fiction, as protagonists, supporting characters, and often antagonists.
The character of the mad scientist – whether their field is surgery, biology, psychology or sociology – has been a staple of fiction for centuries. From Frankenstein to Faust to Moreau, these characters defy all rules and push the limits of what is possible. No expense is too great if it means their research is successful. They will sacrifice their careers, their bodies, and their children for the sake of scientific progress, and when they do, it will certainly bring terrible things to everyone around them, if not to them all. world in general. These are the craziest and cruelest scientists in anime.
Before the mad doctor, there was the mad alchemist, pushing the boundaries of transformation as far as possible. Shou Tucker has no concept of boundaries that shouldn’t be broken, as the Elric brothers find out when he combines his daughter with his dog to create a sentient chimera in their darkest moment. by Fullmetal Alchemist. He did the same with his late wife and was determined to perfect his technique with the subjects closest at hand: those who loved and trusted him the most.
Although Shou rambles on about scientific progress, his raging ego and narcissism come out in every word he says. He has no concept of other people as worthy of consideration: they are only for his use. When he was caught, he had no remorse but was just bitter that no one understood his talent.
9 Cioccolata – JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure
Surgery is a sophisticated subject based on thousands of years of medical science. Cioccolata threw all of that in the trash even before he became an assassin and torturer for Passione. As a doctor, he deliberately misdiagnosed patients as needing surgery in order to get them onto the operating table, where he would cut them open with a botched anesthetic so they could awake and aware of the pain.
After being fired for “accidentally” killing a patient, Cioccolata completely turned to crime and joined the criminal group Passione. He expertly slashed Sorbet and Gelato, Passione members, on Boss’s orders, making the killing as long and torturous as possible. Even when Green Day is performing heavy lifting, Cioccolata uses his medical knowledge in battle, even cutting and suturing himself when necessary.
8 Akihiro Kanou – Tokyo Ghoul
Dr. Kanou is one of the best episodes with plot twists in anime and is an important turning point at the end of the Tokyo Ghoul manga. At first, the audience believes that the transplant of Rize Kaneshiro’s organs into the tortured Ken Kaneki was a last-ditch effort to save Kaneki from death. But Kaneki’s reluctant transformation into a vampire was intentional.
Traumatized by his mother’s fatal illness and determined to force humanity to evolve to overcome such things, Kanou is a human who joined the all-ghoul Aogiri Tree. Kaneki may have been his precious lab rat, the one he desperately wanted to successfully recreate, but he wasn’t Kanou’s only victim. He brutally tortured Takizawa and abandoned Kurona and Nashiro, who had allowed him to test them for loyalty, when they failed to meet standards.
7 Huey Laforet – Baccano!
Writer Ryohgo Narita has created many mad scientist characters, from Szilard Quates, Shinra Kishitani to even Izaya Orihara. However, none of them are quite like Baccano!’s Huey Laforet, whose centuries of life were devoted entirely to his sociological and alchemical experiments. Wherever Huey looked, he didn’t see other people, only raw materials.
Beautiful and charming, he was charismatic enough to make an entire cult believe that he would make them immortal and that his two daughters would obey his every command. Chane and Leeza are some of his favorite test subjects, from willingly agreeing to Chane’s request that her father take away her voice so that she can never reveal secrets of him, to Leeza being possessed by a homunculus that he also created.
6 Nina Einstein – Code Geass
At first, Nina was a smart but shy engineer who loved Princess Euphemia, but when she was killed in a disaster that changed anime forever, Nina was also irreparably broken. A shell of her former self bubbling with grief for Euphemia and hatred of non-British people, she embarks on the creation of a superweapon for revenge, able to generate devastating power from the simplest ingredients.
In the most horrifying way possible, Nina proves that she deserves her last name for sheer scientific potential. The FLEIJA missile she developed and Suzaku were forced to level Tokyo and kill 35 million innocent people. Although this awakens her to how terrible her research truly is, it is too late: while she is trying to make amends, Schneizel has connected his floating fortress Damocles to many FLEIJA missile.
5 Washuu Hakubi – Tenchi Muyo!
As beautiful alien women fill his house, Tenchi Masaki quickly realizes that the universe is stranger than he thought. One of the strangest of these is Washuu, a genius in several fields of science. For twenty thousand years, she did exactly what she wanted, regardless of the consequences, all for the sake of entertaining herself.
Even being exiled and imprisoned in a gem on an impenetrable ship wasn’t enough to rattle her. Washuu creates time and space wasting devices, galaxy-destroying weapons, and genetically engineered creations like her daughter Ryoko. In one continuity, she is even one of the goddesses who created the universe: she simply keeps evolving new things from it.
4 Doctors – Hellsing Ultimate
Taking terrifying inspiration from real-life mad doctors, The Doctor from Hellsing is cold, ruthless and ecstatic in creating the perfect weapons of war. With his surgical techniques, he created Millennium’s vampire super soldiers. He is also the reason the Major has a robot body and he himself has somehow maintained his youth for decades.
To fund his research, The Doctor will ally with anyone, including the Millennium Nazis. His lab coat is always covered in blood, traces of every atrocity he has committed, for which he shows no remorse. The lives of his henchmen are as meaningless to him as anyone else’s: if they fail, he uses the microchips he implanted in their brains to blow them up at the push of a button.
3 Orochimaru – Naruto
The name Orochimaru is hated and feared throughout Konoha for good reason. Yearning for immortality, Orochimaru conducted terrible experiments on his villagers. When captured and exiled, he only expanded his group of subjects, using the young shinobi he enticed to follow him and the smaller villages he conquered. His research delves into the darkest depths of Forbidden Jutsu’s abilities and at a terrible cost.
Orochimaru may have the highest body count of any mad scientist in anime. In just one experiment with the First Hokage’s cells, 60 kidnapped children died under his knife. What’s controversial is that Orochimaru is redeemed at the end of Naruto, and by the time Boruto takes place, he’s “simply” a strange man obsessed with science and a valuable ally to Konoha.
2 Mayuri Kurotsuchi – Bleach
The Shinigami of Soul Society were lucky that Mayuri decided to be on their side. From enemies turned allies to his own severely beaten daughter, he will happily subject anyone and everyone to painful experiments. Like Shou Tucker, he is confused by the idea that anyone could disagree with what he does: after all, he is a genius, so he can’t be wrong.
Mayuri belongs to the group of mad scientists who are also happy to experiment on their own. In pursuit of new discoveries, he amputated his own body parts, rearranged his own organs, and upgraded himself and his Bankai. He ultimately proved his superiority as Bleach’s alpha mad scientist by defeating rival mad scientist Szayelaporro Granz.
1 Franken Stein – Soul Eater
Ever since he was a child secretly dissecting his weapons partner in his sleep, Stein has made no secret of the things he loves most: dissecting, dissecting and more. In a world where Madness is a powerful physical corruption of the soul, those susceptible to it like Stein are in real danger of giving in and being irrevocably transformed.
Soul Eater is the genre of the series, Stein is definitely a good guy, more complex than the average mad scientist. Compared to the much more unstable mad scientist Medusa, Stein is essentially a good man, fiercely protective of his students and constantly fighting to maintain his own morality, no matter what. How difficult is it for him? When Medusa tortured her child Crona as a test subject, eventually dying from it in both the anime and manga, Stein was (hopefully) only joking about turning his and Marie’s child into a guinea pig.
Anime also has many “good professor” type characters who show us the wonders that science can perform and often act as mentors to the main characters. Instead, the characters on this list are people who remind us of the terrible things that can happen if science goes too far. There is no care and compassion for anyone else, these experiments mad scientist anime brings only death and destruction.