Dragon Ball 25 Villains Ranked From Least Menacing Looking To Most

The key to being a devastating villain is in the look (and having an immense amount of power you want to show off to the world).

The Dragon Ball series has been around forever. Each new series brings exciting new villains and obstacles that our favorite anime heroes struggle to overcome in order to save the day. The story writing and interesting premise has gathered a loyal following -- especially for those who love to watch awesome fights. We’ve known some of these Dragon Ball battles to go one for episodes at a time, and they’ve practically become legendary in the anime community. These fights would never be this good if it wasn’t for one thing: the villains. Without good villains, the fights would drag on and be nowhere near as entertaining, meaning the Dragon Ball franchise would have been out of style long ago.

The villains of the show are always incredibly powerful and difficult to beat. Whereas it may take other series an episode or two to defeat their villains, it takes heroes like Goku much longer. However, there’s one thing our heroes are missing out that the villains could probably beat them every day. The fashion and design of the Dragon Ball villains is impressive. From alien layouts to demon designs, there’s a lot of cool looking villains to choose from. The creator was always really inventive with the kinds of species and fighters we would be introduced to in the world, which always made for the crazy villain designs that anime has been particularly herald for. While not all of them have been winners, we’ve found some of our favorites. Here’s 25 of our favorite ranked on how menacing they look!

25 GOKU BLACK

We have to admit, Goku Black was pretty good looking. If you’d ever wondered what Goku would look like had he become a villain, Dragon Ball Z and Dragon Ball Super is here to answer your question. Looking exactly like everyone’s favorite anime hero, he now has an evil hint in his eye and a whole new black wardrobe.

Technically, he is Zamasu in Goku’s body -- he stole it so that he could end the lives of mortals. Other than the dress and evil face he’s always making, you can also tell it’s Zamasu by the similar earring he’s wearing on his ear.

24 BROLY

Broly has been a stylish villain in multiple segments of the Dragon Ball franchise, and he isn’t very hard to look at. Since he doesn’t seem to favor shirts, we can see that he definitely has been working out, as most Saiyans do. But what makes him look lavish is the golden jewelry and gems that he’s always wearing -- they really seem to style his simple, baggy red pants.

We originally see him as a docile sort of Saiyan, which seemed to go along with his comfortable appearance, until he undergoes a personality flip to show his joy of fighting.

23 GINYU FORCES

The Ginyu Forces, as a collective team, deserve to be recognized not only for their character designs but also for that loving teamwork you can only get between villains. They’re actually color-coded warriors that often have silly, yet coordinated, poses and role calls.

It may come as no surprise then that their layout was actually based off of shows like Super Sentai and resembles other power team groups like the Power Rangers. While they’re often used for comedy purposes, we still love their dedication to style.

22 KING PICCOLO

Wanting nothing more than to turn the world into complete chaos, King Piccolo has always been a very crazed villain in the franchise. A lot of his design is primarily goblin-like, but he’s supposed to look a little divine when we’re first introduced to him. In fact, he was one of the largest villains in the original Dragon Ball series, making him an intimidating opponent.

When you think of green men with little antennae poking out of their head, you might think of the original bug-eyed aliens from your childhood. King Piccolo took that to a whole new level by being the alien of fever nightmares.

21 DABURA

Dabura, king of the Demon Realm, looks exactly like what you’d expect: a devil. If the red skin, horns and on-point goatee weren’t enough to convince you before, perhaps you should read the title again. His outfit is also fairly out there too, considering just how puffy his shoulder pads are and the fact he wears a cape almost everywhere.

While he looks rather intimidating, Dabura is actually very well-mannered -- which makes the sadism he brings to the battlefield all the more horrific.

20 ANDROID 17 & 18

The androids in this series are pretty cool looking. Considering that they’re supposed to look just like humans, the one thing they seem to succeed at is wearing punk-style clothing that we’re all too familiar with from the '90s. And while we know these too eventually switch sides to suit their own interests, we have to admit they do have style.

Considering the time of Dragon Ball’s creation, the loud colors and edgy style really fit the theme. If it doesn’t make you want to bust out your old clothes, you’ve clearly not enjoyed this nostalgia enough.

19 SYN SHENRON

Perhaps one of the craziest-looking members of the Shadow Dragons, Syn Shenron has a pretty out there design. All white, save for a few blue spaces and black horns, he looks like a solid muscle. If someone has literal spikes coming out of their elbows, you know you’re not in for a fun time.

One of the most interesting features about him, outside of the strength he puts on display, is that his mustache isn’t hair -- it’s actually made up of small feelers that just make it look like facial hair.

18 ZARBON

One of the most fabulous villains in the entire Dragon Ball franchise, Zarbon is pretty special. Out of all the characters on this list, Zarbon is the one who puts the most effort into his appearance. Just look at that braid and those pearls!

He seems to be ready for a night out. However, when we see him in his more reptilian form, he’s not nearly as handsome. Unfortunately, beauty doesn’t always equal the most intimidating as a villain, and therefore he doesn’t rank quite as high on our list.

17 RADITZ

We needed to add the older brother of Goku -- after all, he is super evil and added a lot of drama to the series when it was revealed he also survived when their homeworld was destroyed. Oddly enough, he looks very little like Goku and more like Vegeta with his hair grown out.

He also wears less battle armor than some of the other characters we see, including fellow Saiyans. It would appear he doesn’t need it as much considering how powerful he is.

16 CAPTAIN GINYU

Captain of the Ginyu Force, he’s definitely worth pointing out on this list. While his comrades are equally strange looking, and coordinated, Ginyu is worth his own entry. Not only is he in charge, but he’s also the one that looks the most like alien-like.

Ginyu wears the classic battle armor and complete outfit design that we would expect any Dragon Ball character to wear, but the horns and purple skin give him a touch of something extra. He’s creepy looking, and that’s why we like him.

15 JANEMBA

The antagonist of the movie, Dragon Ball Z: Fusion Reborn, we’ve seen Janemba appear a couple of times in the overall franchise. Originally, we see him as a giant yellow sort of monster.

In this form, he has a few holes in his belly that allow him to shoot ki blasts as well as a couple in his arms and shoulders; which seems like one of the few characters whose design correlates with their abilities. When he becomes Super Janemba, however, his colors change to purple and red and he’s more or less the size of the average human.

14 HATCHIYACK

You may have seen Hatchiyack in a couple of the movies and video games -- he’s a pretty interesting character that has a lot of alien/monster influences to his design, not unlike Cell. He was made as a massive super computer by Dr. Lychee in order to amplify the power of hatred and anger.

Originally made for Tuffles, the plan backfires and Hatchiyack absorbs the negative energy himself. It makes sense considering his red color scheme and powerful form. His design seems to showcase his anger and, as a weapon made to defeat the Super Saiyans, he certainly looks powerful enough.

13 OCEANUS SHENRON

Oceanus is perhaps one of the most interesting character designs on this list. In particular, when she’s in her true form, she looks like she belongs to her namesake. A part of the Shadow Dragon team, she is the aspect of water and wind.

In some aspects, she looks like the Dragon Ball version of Squid Girl, considering the shape and design of her hair. Her dress and golden jewelry seems to really match her theme. Overall, she’s a relatively cool character -- just don’t ask how she was created.

12 TOWA

We get to see Towa a lot in the computer game, Dragon Ball Online, seeing as she’s the main antagonist. Her design is pretty cool, which it needs to be considering she’s from the Demon Realm. As befitting of a demon, she has an interesting haircut, her dress is red and she has a spear -- but don’t think to lightly of her.

Towa is ruthless and one of her favorite pastimes is to brainwash people. Like any other villain, she’s cold and cruel, but what else could you expect from someone with who can use dark magic?

11 KING COLD

King Cold is perhaps one of the best fighters in the entire Dragon Ball franchise. That’s to be expected after being the father of both Cooler and Frieza and the king of the universe. To match such large titles, he needed to have a cool look.

While lookswise, he matches up much like the rest of the Frieza race and wears the regular battle armor we see in the Dragon Ball franchise, but he is one of the largest characters in the series. The cool part about him is that we never see him transform during the series.

10 BLACK SMOKE SHENRON

The final villains of Dragon Ball GT, the Shadow Dragons are characters created of negative energy that has been building up over the course of the series. These villains all came from one place; the dark dragon, Black Smoke Shenron. His design should look familiar, as he looks like the dark version of the original Shenron we all know and love.

The only difference is now he looks as though he’s completely evil, which is, not surprisingly, a cool look for a dragon. How can we not include such a, literally, large character on our list?

9 COOLER

If you were wondering what a larger, purple Frieza looked like, you’ve come to the right place. When we’re originally introduced to this character, we can tell that he’s clearly a part of the same group as Frieza from his original design. But when he tranfosrms he’s almost unrecognizable.

Already being much buffer than Frieza, his muscles expand greatly when he transforms and his entire look is completely new. We especially dig that new white mask with the red eyes he's got, all of which makes him extremely menacing.

8 ZAMASU

Zamasu is particularly memorable from the series, whether that’s because he literally has green skin or because he’s probably the only person in that series that could pull off a white mowhawk -- we’re not exactly sure.

His outfit is styled much like the rest of the characters in any of the Dragon Ball series, but what we love about his design is that he looks extremely cool and calm at all times. The design is very befitting of his personality, which is surprising considering how loud most of the characters are (and look).

7 FROST

Part of the Frieza race and emperor of Universe 6, Frost’s design is akin to Frieza’s first form when we initially meet him. In fact, all of his forms after also seem to be akin with Frieza’s. If you’d never seen the series, you might mistake him for the main villain whenseeing him for the first time.

The difference to note in their respective design is not only the color scheme, but also the fact that Frost is much shorter and less powerful than Frieza overall. Despite this, he’s still a very cool version that we enjoyed seeing in the series.

6 IZE

The son of Frieza, Ize has a pretty trippy design. In a lot of his forms, you can see that he got a lot of basic looks from his father, but his color scheme is very different from the previous villains we’d seen earlier in the series.

He sort of has the looks of Frieza combined with Jigsaw from the Saw movies, but we’re going to guess he’s not here to play a game. You can see this crazed character mostly in the New Dragon Ball AF manga series.

5 SUPER/MAJIN BUU

We all know about Good Buu, a large pink fighter with a relatively high pitched voice. After using fission, he was able to split himself in to good and evil halves -- which is how we end up with Super Buu in the first place.

Super Buu becomes a reality after eating Good Buu while he’s in a chocolate form. While most of the Buu forms and characters look very much alike in basic design, Super Buu is particularly fit and relatively terrifying.

4 BEERUS

Beerus is literally an anthropomorphic purple cat, so there’s no way we wouldn’t have him on our list. His design in total is extremely cool looking and it makes him not only very intimidating, but also exceptionally worthy of being close to the top of our list.

Beerus was actually designed after Toriyama’s favorite cat, Debo! Despite not being purple, the cat also has large ears and appears to be hairless, much like Beerus’ design calls for. That’s a real love for your pet when you decide to put him in your ultra-successful manga!

3 CELL

If you think he looks cool in the show or manga, you should see some of the cosplays out there of him! Cell is exactly what you’d expect from an alien in his most popular form; a strangely shaped face and matching orange beak makes him quite intimidating.

What more could you expect from someone who was made with the cells of fighters like Goku, Vegeta, Piccolo, King Cold and Frieza? With the best fighters in the series in his genetic arsenal, you knew he was going to be difficult to beat in fighting skill and looks.

2 ANDROID 21

Android 21 is fairly new to the Dragon Ball scene, as she was first revealed in Dragon Ball FighterZ as the main antagonist. In her human form, she looks like your average human with a funky nerd/punk style. However, her true form makes her look a little like a female Buu.

In fact, much like him, she also has a thing for confections. The only difference is that she has no control over her hunger and needs to be fighting continuously to stop herself from eating others. Out of all the other Buu forms though, she’s definitely our favorite purely from a style standpoint.

1 FRIEZA

We have to put Frieza at the top of the list because not only was he the strongest baddie in the entire series, but he also had some of the most stellar looks. Throughout all his forms, he’s always been a little extra and that’s why we like him.

His original form and look was inspired by what the creator thought monsters looked like when he was a child. The final form was meant to be far less intimidating, making for a sleeker villain.

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