The Saga of Tanya The Evil

*Spoilers Ahead*

Was Tanya Truly Evil ?

My honest opinion is that she was more ruthless, than evil.

As a somewhat new person to anime, I tend to land on the dark, and thought provoking anime. For example "Death Note". "Death Note" was suspenseful, dark, and intriguing. It pulled you into the story, and there was no escape till it was over. I also have a love for evil villains. Not that MCU bull crap where the villains have good intentions the entire time. Give me the evil villains that started out good, and became evil. Give me the evil villains that are just plain evil for no reason. Those are the villains that I love. Basically give me the villains that need evil in front of it.

My top Five Evil Villains (Not Limited To Anime):

1. Shuu Tsukiyama/The Gourmet, Tokyo Ghouls
2. Hisoka, HunterXHunter
3. Light Yagami, Death Note
4. Evil Loki(Yes there is a difference), MCU/Thor
5. Heath Ledger's Joker, The Dark Knight

Tanya on the other hand, doesn't even crack my top 10. Hell if I had a top 20 she wouldn't be there either.

Tanya's Characteristics:

• Selfish

• Strategic

• Powerful

• Persistent

• Determined

• Smart

• Insane in the Membrane

• Stubborn

• Ruthless.

• Insane in the Membrane... yes again

Tanya's ultimate goal was selfish. Her ultimate goal was to be off the front lines to survive her reincarnation. Sure she plotted a little to push things into her favor, but when it didn't work she buckled down, and got the job done. She did what needed to be done, and followed orders.

I do think in the beginning there was an attempt to make her character ruthlessly evil. For example, she stationed soldiers somewhere she knew they would be killed. Sure that can be considered evil, buttttt she initially wanted to send them home for disobeying orders. It was their decision to once again disobey orders, and tell their Lieutenant who happened to be a 9 yr. old girl that they refuse to go home. Sooo... was that truly evil ? No, not really. Disobeying orders in the military is serious stuff.

Moving on to when Tanya was given the mage battalion. She once again did something self-serving by making the training close to unbearable. She put her troops in life, or death situations as a form of training. She wanted them to quit, but she put effort into making sure no one died. She pulled them from the snow when she could've left them there. Whether she did it to look good, or because she truly cared, who knows. That was never made clear by the writers. When the soldiers wouldn't quit, she accepted her fate by creating a bad ass battalion.

Those are just two examples of what could've been great opportunities to really write some evil actions to support this supposedly evil character. Instead the writers missed it. Honestly a better name for the show would've been " The Saga of Tanya The Villain". You don't have to be evil to be the villain in a story. Also stubbornness to not follow a "God", while being a hard ass in the military does not make a character evil. At this point the title of this anime is misleading, and laughably so.

I honestly feel like the creators depended a lot on Tanya's insane facial expressions, and not enough on writing a truly evil character. If the writers spent as much time writing an evil character, as the artist did drawing an evil character, then I would be happy to add Tanya to the list of my favorite evil characters. Alas they did not. I do like her crazy though. She can definitely join the list of my favorite CRAZY characters.

To sum things up, Tanya didn't come close to making my list of "Top Evil Villains".

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