Sorry for having not had the time to do much wiki editing lately, but here's a character that I firmly believe deserves a place on the wiki: Enel (or Eneru/God Eneru in every official translation), the self-proclaimed God of Skypiea and the main villain in the Sky Island saga of One Piece
What's The Work[]
One Piece is a fun, very long-running anime following Monkey D. Luffy, a young man made of rubber, and his friends who form the Straw Hat Pirates, and the show is about their quest to find the One Piece (the treasure of Gol D. Roger, the former pirate king), so that Luffy can become King of the Pirates.
Who is the Candidate?[]
Enel is a man from the sky island of Birka, who approximately seven years prior to the start of the series ate the "Rumble Rumble Devil Fruit", which gave him the power to become and to control lightning and electricity. Seeing the almighty potential of this power, he believed that he had become God, and as a demonstration of this power, he obliterated his home island of Birka, murdering thousands of people on it (everyone except for those who didn't follow/worship him), before setting off with his cultist "priests" to invade the Island of Skypiea for its city of Gold (which he planned to use to build a ship to take him to the Endless Vearth (The Moon), which he saw as the true worthy home of God.
Overthrowing Skypiea's God Gan Fall, and taking Gan Fall's army for his own, Enel became a monstrous, controlling overlord, using his powers to hear everything that the people of Skypiea and the surrounding Sky Islands said, and to rain lethal electric blasts onto anyone who spoke out against his oppressive rule. In short, he controlled the populace by extreme oppression, forcing all of them to acknowledge him as God.
At Eneru's core was one firm belief: that humans should not live in the sky, as the sky islands themselves weren't natural. From the beginning, it had always been his intent to massacre all of the thousands of innocent people living on the Sky Islands, using giant, city-sized balls of lightning (he partially succeeds in this goal).
When committing these atrocities, Eneru shows not even the slightest hint of remorse, and is even willing to kill children (as shown when he attempts to kill Aisa, a Shandian girl trying to rescue Luffy) with a bolt of lightning, and always shows a crazed smile during these acts. He also has no compassion for even his closest allies, not caring when his priests were defeated in battle, and even personally killing all of his attendants in the Upper Yard when his goals looked to be in sight.
What they did[]
For the sake of simplicity, here are some bullet points
- Mass murder (no. 1): Murdering everyone on the Sky island of Birka
- Invasion of Skypiea, including the removal of Gan Fall from power, the overthrowing of Upper Yard, and (despite this), continuing the long-standing war between Skypiea and Shandia by still hording the treasures of Shandora
- Oppression and mass murder (no. 2): Controlling Skypiea's population using his power to terrify everyone into worshipping him as a God, Enel murders thousands of people who speak up against him
- Serial murder: Every outsider from the Blue Sea, with the exception of the Straw Hat Pirates, who manage to defeat him, is murdered by him according to his "judgement", i.e. by massive lightning blasts. He also kills his own employees at the Upper Yard for no clear reason when his plans near completion
- Attempted child murder: Enel sends a bolt of lightning towards Aisa when she tries to rescue Luffy while riding Gan Fall's bird
- Assault: Enel non-lethally attacks several of his enemies, even if they weren't resisting, with lighning, apparently out of the sadistic pleasure of watching them writhe in agony
- Wholesale destruction: Enel rains lightning across Angel City, destroying enormous amounts of property and likely killing hundreds, forcing the surviving population to flee via ship. He also kills hundreds more and obliterates the city in a massive lighting ball blast.
- Attempted Genocide: Enel attempts to use an even bigger ball lightning blast to obliterate not just Skypiea, but all of the untold thousands of innocent people who were trying to escape
Freudian Excuse/Mitigating Factors[]
None shown. Enel/Eneru is an outright psychopath who believes himself to be God and takes extreme pleasure in wholesale destruction and murder.
Heinous Standard[]
Admittedly there are plenty of very cruel villains in One Piece who are also considered Pure Evil, but that's hardly surprising given the over 900-episode length of the series. As I am only 203 episodes in, I can't say anything about how the heinousness standard of the work continues, but I do believe that Enel's actions are easily on par with other major villains in the series, if not eclipsing them. For example, his goals are far loftier than Captain Kuro and result in far more innocent deaths. His actions and power-level are approximately on par with Crocodile, the war-mongering leader of the Baroque Works who stole a whole country's water in order to create a civil war for which he would take control of the country... Except, I would argue that Enel is worse than Crocodile, because while Crocodile wants control over people, Enel tries to murder everyone in his domain, indiscriminately just because he can.
Final Verdict[]
I firmly believe that Enel is a very firm contender for Pure Evil, given his immense cruelty, complete lack of empathy, and the horrifying extent to which he mercilessly uses his powerr