Who is the main villain in Naruto?

Naruto is a fictional manga series written by Masashi Kishimoto. The manga was released on September 21, 1999. Due to its popularity and overwhelming manga sales, it was later adapted into an anime series with the same title, Naruto, and its sequel Naruto Shippuden.

Although Naruto starts as a heartwarming story about a kid with a dream who wants to become strong and be recognized as a strong Ninja, it soon turns into a tale of godlike warriors with unreal abilities. As the story progresses, the viewers are taken on a rollercoaster of emotions. The philosophical viewpoints of many characters, especially villainous characters, leave the fans in awe and make us question whether they are villains or just someone who was hammered past their breaking point in their life. Out of all the other antagonists, Black Zetsu can be considered the main villain in the series due to his selfish goal and lack of a profound reason for all his evil doings.

Since the beginning of the series, there have been a lot of villainous characters in the series. Orochimaru was the first antagonist introduced in the series. Fans believed that he would be the final villain of the series. As it turns out, the reason for his evil nature was that he was tired of losing the people close to him, and started to believe that there was no meaning to life. As a result, he started his pursuit of immortality. Later, he cleaned up his ways and proved to be a vital character in the series.

In the series, the author tries to relay that no one is evil by birth, and they all have reasons for behaving the way that they did. Pain (Nagato Uzumaki) wanted to initiate war to bring peace to the shinobi world. Madara and Obito wanted to trap everyone in a dream of the world (Infinite Tsukuyomi), to let them escape from the cruel world they lived in and give them a chance to live happily in their dream life.

In the end, most of the villains introduced in the series wanted to bring peace to the shinobi world and end all the unnecessary bloodshed, in their own twisted way.

Even Kaguya Otsutsuki, who was considered pure evil who wanted to devour everything, wanted to protect the planet from her clan members who wished to destroy it by consuming the entirety of its life force. Although this is the case for most antagonists, some are exceptions, like Black Zetsu.

Black Zetsu is a controversial character. He was the will incarnate of Kaguya Otsutsuki. He is the one who orchestrated every significant event in the history of the shinobi world since the beginning. He initiated wars and created conflict between Indra, Ashura Otsutsuki, and their respective reincarnate. As it turns out, he did everything to revive Kaguya Otsutsuki, who he considered his mother. Although it is not as profound a reason as the others had, and though it was selfish, he did whatever he did to bring back his mother, which could be out of his love for her or just obedience.

At the end of the series, after Kaguya and Black Zetsu were sealed, Sasuke Uchiha revealed his intention to destroy the current system and bring everything under his control. He stated that he was going to kill all of the Kage and get all of the Tailed-Beasts under his influence to bring an end to the current system. He goes as far as to try to kill NarutoUzumaki so that there would be no one left to oppose him.

He later reveals his reasoning for such actions. From his journey as a little kid who wanted to kill his elder brother, to becoming a demi-god fighting Kaguya Otsutsuki, he realized that the current village system and their petty differences had caused all the wars. The only time everyone worked together was when they had a common enemy. He then decides to destroy everything and shoulder everyone's hate, to unite everyone by giving them a common enemy to fear. The only way he could achieve something like this is by standing at the top, unopposed. For this reason, he even tries to kill his best friend, to bring peace to the world in his own crazy way.

All the antagonists in the series did whatever they did for what they believed was the greater good. They shouldered all of the hatred of the others with proper reasons, except for Orochimaru, Kabuto Yakushi, and Black Zetsu, who had their selfish reasons. Ultimately, we think it is safe to say that Naruto does not have villains, just broken heroes.