Villains in KHR

There’s a curious spectrum of villains in Katekyou Hitman Reborn. For one thing, as the story goes on, it’s made clear that even the good guys aren’t necessarily good.  Our core heros are the only really good people, and their support group consists of people who explicitly run gambling houses and protection rackets. Things just go downhill from there.

First we have the Interesting Villains, which are not uncommon in manga and anime. They are the people who have understandable reasons for what they’re doing and some shade of sympathy or even nobility in there somewhere.

Spoilers ahead!

Take Mukuro, for example. He thinks of people as toys, things he can break if he likes; prime villain material that we should abhorrer. But there’s a double-whammy in his background, counterbalancing that. One is his tortured early life as an experimental animal; this is the part that makes him understandable. Then there’s the care he takes of the very few people he identifies as his, his loyalty to them and theirs to him, even to the point that he will sacrifice his own escape to give them an opportunity to get free. This is the part that gives us some sympathy for him.

Squalo and, to a lesser extent, Xanxus, follow the same pattern. Squalo’s understanding of Xanxus both illuminates Xanxus’ reasons for us and makes Squalo more sympathetic by that loyalty and connection to another.

Given this, I’m kind of expecting Byakuran to turn up with some interesting background, too.

In addition to these villains, however, we also have the Disgusting Villains. These are the ones who are completely unredeemable, the unapologetic sadists and sociopaths, the ones who visibly get off on torture. They seem to be provided for two purposes. One, they act as canon fodder, fighters in the early rounds that we, the audience, will not mind seeing beaten or killed and will, in fact, probably cheer while it happens. Two, they serve to make both the good guys and Interesting Villains look better. After all, they could clearly be so much worse. This permits good guys to be ambiguous while still looking good, and the Interesting Villains to do worse things than are usually acceptable while still retaining some audience sympathy. Consider, once again, Mukuro. The things he does are despicable, but in comparison to the canon fodder who lead up to the fight with him, he seems far more palatable.

I have some suspicions that the Cervello will also benefit from this comparison. They have shown up twice on the bad guys’ side, but the first time they clearly had some kind of ulterior motive for orchestrating things the way they did. In comparison to the Disgusting Villains, that motive may well appear acceptable, if and when it comes to light.