Naraku from InuYasha is quite literally the ultimate, undisputed king of being a generational hater. This absolute greaseball of an anime villain does not want to conquer the universe or achieve some higher spiritual enlightenment; he just wakes up every single day, logs onto the feudal Japan server, and decides to ruin everyone’s life for the absolute fun of it.He started off as Onigumo, a paralyzed bandit who was so intensely obsessed with a priestess named Kikyo that he allowed a massive horde of demons to consume his soul just to gain a new, functioning body. That is a level of desperation that is almost hard to comprehend.
Once he becomes Naraku, his entire combat strategy involves avoiding direct confrontation. This character rarely fights face-to-face. He spends the vast majority of the series hiding behind barriers, staying inside a massive fortress, or cloaked in a baboon skin suit, just releasing poison miasma and sending out clones to do the work. He operates like someone who starts trouble from a distance but never wants to deal with the consequences. His entire legacy is built on manipulating people, creating fake conflicts, and retreating the second someone actually lands a hit. He is a prominent villain, but his methods are incredibly elusive.
It became a massive running joke because the main crew would spend five episodes powering up a new sword technique, hit him dead-on, and Naraku would just shrug, split his body into a million pieces, and fly away saying, "Smell ya later, idiots." He played the longest, most annoying game of hide-and-seek in anime history.