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On Sunday, October 8, 2023, the Twitter account @NORBOLOGY (Jyv) shared the results from their Best Anime Villain poll, officially announcing Haikyu’s Toru Oikawa as the first-place winner. While Oikawa has an antagonistic presence, fans are now taking to Twitter to discuss whether or not he truly can be considered a “villain” of the series, especially considering his later role.
One caveat regarding this victory for Haikyu’s Oikawa stems from the fact that Jyv’s poll allowed users to implement AI bots, which would inflate the number of votes dramatically. This is also why nearly eight million votes in total were sent into Jyv’s poll when they only have just under 14 thousand followers on Twitter.
Likewise, the original post opening the poll only made roughly 610 thousand impressions on Twitter at the time of writing. With these key values in mind, it’s clear that the victory of Haikyu’s Oikawa was the result of those rooting for his victory choosing to flood the poll with bot votes rather than allowing the poll to progress naturally.
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Haikyu’s Oikawa defeats major anime characters for title of Best Anime Villain, but with a major caveat
Fan reaction
Understandably, fans are extremely perplexed over Haikyu’s Oikawa being crowned the unofficial Best Anime Villain via Jyv’s poll. Even Jyv references how Oikawa is essentially not villainous at all as a character relative to other members of the poll, pointing out how he commits “0 crimes” throughout the series.
This raises an excellent point, as while Oikawa is certainly introduced as an antagonistic presence, it’s hard to say that he truly is a villain in the series. This is especially true when considering the role he takes later on, becoming more friendly with his Karasuno rivals and even going further beyond this acquaintanceship as the series progresses.
Some of the more notable anime villains whom the Haikyu fan-favorite beat out for the top spot include Jujutsu Kaisen’s Sukuna, Naruto’s Madara Uchiha, and Chainsaw Man’s Makima. Death Note’s Light Yagami, Bleach’s Sosuke Aizen, Hunter x Hunter’s Chrollo and Meruem both, and One Piece’s Kaido were all also runner-ups to the high school volleyball athlete.
While many fans are admittedly very confused about how Oikawa won the poll, those who seemingly voted for him and set up bots to vote for him are extremely pleased with the results. Some are even going as far as to post edits of Oikawa shooting another character from the series, justifying his first-place victory with these obviously non-canonical crimes.
That being said, it’s understandable why the diehard fanbase of author and illustrator Haruichi Furudate’s Haikyu series would push so hard to secure Oikawa’s victory, even in this context. Oikawa is undoubtedly one of the series’ most beloved fan-favorite characters, arguably equivocal in that regard to protagonist Shoyo Hinata and deuteragonist Tobio Kageyama.
In any case, the victory matters very little in the grand scheme of things when considering the unofficial nature of the poll and the use of bots to inflate votes. Nevertheless, the Oikawa fanbase is reveling in their self-proclaimed victory over infamous anime villains such as Sukuna and Madara Uchiha.
Be sure to keep up with all anime, manga, film, and live-action news as 2023 progresses.
