Villains—them with their evil plots and their torture of heroes—always up to no good, but does that make them undeserving of love?
No, of course not. Well, maybe some of them.
Regardless, anime has recently embraced villainy as a prime target for romance. Everyone loves a bad boy or bad girl, and everyone one loves to watch them be slowly worn down into a quivering mass of emotions by someone far too pure for them.
If you are looking for romance anime recommendations where a villainous, evil person ends up falling in love and is all the better for it, head on down below.
Romance Anime Where Villains Fall in Love
Love After World Domination
In probably the most literal interpretation of villains falling in love, Love After World Domination serves up a romantic comedy twist on Super Sentai tropes.
This series follows the “love at first sight” love affair that blossoms between the Red Ranger of a Super Sentai hero group and a feared villainess/general in a evil organization that is as powerful as she is super cute.
The charming thing about this romance is that it keeps what could be a complicated romantic connection saccharine sweet. The main couple gets along great, and the comedy of the series comes from the lengths they go to in order to do normal couple things together while still hiding their relationship from their peers.
7th Time Loop
7th Time Loop is a regressor anime that takes things to the natural next extreme—multiple attempts at life instead of just the one.
In this series, the heroine is now on her seventh life after being stuck in a cycle of having her engagement to the prince broken off, becoming passionate about a variety of professions, then being brutally slaughtered in the war five years later by the evil emperor of an enemy nation that threw the world into chaos.
Now, on her 7th Time Loop, things go a bit differently. Instead of fleeing her noble life and finding a new profession, she ends up engaged to the very man who would slay her, or at least be responsible for her death, in the following five years.
Unfortunately, this particular shoujo romance goes a little light on the “romance” bit, choosing to instead feature the heroine solving the problems of a variety of men she respected in her previous lives.
I’m Giving the Disgraced Noble Lady I Rescued a Crash Course in Naughtiness
While the innate charm in romancing villains is that it is absolutely adorable to see ostensibly evil men acting like a lovesick teens, there are few romances as cute and wholesome as I’m Giving the Disgraced Noble Lady I Rescued a Crash Course in Naughtiness.
The series follows a self-proclaimed demon lord—who is really just a powerful mage that lives in a mansion in the woods—who finds a noble girl forced to flee her home after being framed for a crime she did not commit. The noble girl was raised by her abusive family in a very Cinderella sort of situation that makes her naive and incredibly innocent. As her idea of fun is cleaning and staring at the floor, the demon lord decides to teach her how to be naughty.
Of course, “being naughty” to these cinnamon rolls too pure for this world means doing things like staying up late, playing video games all day, or eating snacks too close to meal times. While doing all this, as well as solving their own personal problems, the pair grow increasingly close.
The Foolish Angel Dances with the Devil
In it’s less-than-great initial episodes, The Foolish Angel Dances with the Devil seemed fairly predictable. An angel brings a devil under her command, but while he obeys, he can easily slip that leash. With them displaying love at first sight feelings for each other, you know that their battles in the shadow war between angels and demons happening on Earth will cause their love to slowly bloom.
However, at about the mid-point, The Foolish Angel Dances with the Devil walks off the well-tread path of predictability and wades into deeper, darker waters than you were not expecting with its plot. Furthermore, it goes to great lengths to develop both characters in the main couple into complex people while not forgetting its fair share cute romantic moments between them.
Sacrificial Princess and the King of Beasts
If you are into villain romance for swoon-worthy moments and sweeping declarations of love, Sacrificial Bride and the King of Beasts may not be for you. While it is a romance between the King of Beasts and the human girl that the human kingdoms regularly send as a sacrifice to him in order to keep the peace, the romantic element between them is rather smooth.
The king had secretly been letting these girls go, but he is taken with the heroine’s lack of fear—ultimately deciding to make her his queen instead. The rest of the series is the main couple getting along quite well—and everyone else in the world having a problem with that.
I’m the Villainess, So I’m Taming The Final Boss
Well, you heard her. She proclaimed it all right there in the title.
I’m the Villainess, So I’m Taming The Final Boss follows the normal plot in the increasingly growing little genre of otome game villainess anime, which is following a villainess who, spurned by the prince of her kingdom, decides to find happiness elsewhere. In this case, the villainess main character is spurned by the prince and decides to romance his evil brother, the Demon Lord, who will kill her in later events of the game if left to his own devices.
What is particularly refreshing about this particular villainess romance anime is that there is no wishy-washy reverse harem to it. It is a singular romance, and has all the romantic progression you could hope for.
An Archdemon’s Dilemma: How To Love Your Elf Bride
As An Archdemon’s Dilemma involves a man essentially purchasing an elven slave girl he fell in love with at first sight to be his bride at what was essentially an estate sale, it may not be a set up that is to everyone’s tastes.
That said, it does provide one of the more simple, straightforward villain romances of the lot, offering both very sweet romance and surprisingly good magical action.
In An Archdemon’s Dilemma, the main character is a powerful mage who lives in seclusion. After the death of an Archdemon, one of a group of 13 powerful mages, he is invited to join their ranks to replace the member that died of old age. After buying a rare eleven slave the deceased man had in his possession upon falling in love with her, he realizes that he was in seclusion that he doesn’t really know how to interact with a girl like a normal person.
If you like watching powerful men turned into a quivering mass of anxiety as they try to flirt with emotionally muted sweet girls, An Archdemon’s Dilemma has got you.
Maoyu – Archenemy and Hero
Heroes fighting demon lords has been so done to death in anime that, these days, it is more common to see a demon lord subversion than a proper fantasy story about it. However, Maoyu subverts the story while still being a proper heroic epic.
In Maoyu, the hero rushes to the Demon Lord’s castle to finally face his nemesis and put and end to the war between human and demon kingdoms. However, he finds not a Demon King, but a Demon Queen who is already pretty smitten with him. She makes the proposal that they team up so they can end the war without either side having to fall into utter ruin.
Now, in terms of “evilness,” this Demon Queen has none. However, her minions do tend to make up for it as well as humans with nefarious greedy goals in the human kingdoms. If you don’t mind a story that is often more kingdom management and improvement than romance or action, Maoyu provides a surprisingly detailed narrative.
Chillin’ in Another World with Level 2 Super Cheat Powers
It can be said that when the female love interest of a romance anime is a villain, then it doesn’t so much make for a compelling evil romance, and the reason is pretty perfectly presented in Chillin’ in Another World with Level 2 Super Cheat Powers.
In this isekai series, a man is isekai’d from his home fantasy world to another one to be the hero for the human kingdoms in their war with the demon army. As these things sometimes go, two heroes were summoned, and they preferred the other guy. As such, the main character was sent packing.
Given a piece of land no one wanted since it was blighted by demons, he goes there and meets the demon that blighted it. After swiftly kicking her butt with overpowered abilities he didn’t know he had, she is suddenly absolutely enamored with him.
The series goes from there. You watch him intervene in any problem brought to his doorstep as he tries to live his life and his new self-declared and easily accepted demon wife thrusts upon him her obsessive, possessive affection—among other things.
As far as isekai adventures go, Chillin’ in Another World with Level 2 Super Cheat Powers is a pretty pleasant one that skillfully threatens a harem, but avoids as the other women all fear his powerful demonic wife.
Inuyasha
For many, romance alone is not enough of a selling point to invest them in a series. However, it was Inuyasha who really cemented the market for action romance anime where the love story is just as big of a part of the overall plot as the exciting action.
Inuyasha follows the lengthy journey of a teen girl accidentally sent to Feudal Japan—which is overrun by demons—trying to get back a powerful sacred jewel that she accidentally shattered. With pieces of jewel flung all across the country, she needs to travel with a contentious half-demon to fight demons and humans alike corrupted by the intense power of the jewel shards.
Of course, while evil-adjacent at first, the titular half-demon Inuyasha is more tsundere with a difficult past than an earnest villain. While romance seems distant at first and even like it would be unhealthy if it were to happen at all, Inuyasha is a long journey full of character growth and deepening feelings.
Kamisama Kiss
Kamisama Kiss follows a homeless girl who ends up accidentally living in a shrine and assuming temporary Land God duties. Unfortunately for her, the handsome kitsune familiar that also lives there is not so thrilled about it.
While at first, the male love interest is grumpy and not especially evil, his reputation as a fiercesome murderous bad boy comes to light over the course of the series. So, while the male love interest is not evil in the present day of the series, you still get little nuggets of it when he needs to do some good old-fashioned shoujo heroine rescuing and protection.
While not perhaps as evil-aligned as some may prefer, his grumpy nature sure does make the perfect compliment to the heroine who is dripping with good nature.
Love of Kill
While the term “villain” when used in anime often evokes visions of a medieval fantasy setting, there are villains—and romance—to be found in all settings. In Love of Kill, you find it happening between a pair of assassins who are slowly falling in love.
Love of Kill starts off a bit aggressively with a male assassin of some renown falling in love with a rookie female bounty hunter at first sight. He then does that typical lovesick puppy thing—you know, following her around and killing all her marks before she gets to kill him, and of course she is a bit miffed about it. However, between his mysterious past connection to her and the sincerity of his affection, she is slowly worn down to his presence in her life.
While certainly not without some problematic romantic elements, a romance between villains need not always be wholesome.
Yakuza Fiance
If you are going to do a romance between yakuza, there is no rule that says it needs to involve a villain or even have toxic relationship dynamics, but Yakuza Fiance offers both in the most alluring way.
If your interest in evil-aligned romances in anime comes from a desire to see sexy, flawed bad boys that you want to see some girl try to fix—Yakuza Fiance is it.
The premise of Yakuza Fiance is pretty straightforward. Two powerful clans have called a truce, and that truce is cemented by the engagement of the two high school-aged grandchildren of both clan leaders. Of course, the heroine has a fierce and fiery exterior that protects a gooey, vulnerable center while her love interest is psychopathic, slutty, and damaged underneath it all.
Legend of Basara
It is a true shame that the distinctly old school shoujo art style of Legend of Basara made it so unappealing to consume in animated form, for there few storytellers in the shoujo genre as detail-dense in their world-building as Yumi Tamura.
Regardless, Legend of Basara, while a well-aged anime at this point, really committed itself to building a romance between the heroine and the cruel, seductive son of an oppressive emperor.
The series features a prophet declaring that a boy will free the world from the emperor and his four cruel sons, but when one son shows up and slays the boy, his sister decides disguise herself as a boy and take up his destiny. On that path, she unknowingly meets the man that killed her brother, and the pair—not knowing who each other is—carry on a building romance during their clandestine meetings.
The Devil is a Part-Timer
In the beginning, The Devil is a Part-Timer didn’t seem like it would have a robust romance element. It kind of seemed like it was just going to be jokes about a demon lord sent to our world and forced to be chronically poor working his McJob.
And The Devil is a Part-Timer very much was that for a long time.
However, The Devil is a Part-Timer did the unthinkable by not only manifesting a more concrete plot throughout the series, but also pushing a number of blooming romantic feelings between the demon lord and his co-worker as well as between the demon lord and the hero that was trying to defeat him in his home world.
The Magical Girl and the Evil Lieutenant Used to Be Archenemies
While most magical girl genre subversions go dark and feature cute girls maimed horribly,The Magical Girl and the Evil Lieutenant Used to Be Archenemies subverts the genre in a very similar way to what Love After World Domination did to Super Sentai—it’s about a magical girl and a villain falling in love.
Alongside being pretty light on any actual action, The Magical Girl and the Evil Lieutenant Used to Be Archenemies leans more on the comedy end of the romantic comedy spectrum. However, what you get is a very simple setup and a very sweet slowly building relationship between a girl who is not all that good and a guy who is not all that evil.
Do you have more romance anime recommendations where an evil villain (or villainess) falls in love? Let fans know in the comments section below.
