Animation
Azula
Avatar: The Last Airbender · 2005
A fourteen-year-old prodigy who was raised as a weapon
Threat index 84
Fallen Hero · Anime
Light Yagami
A top student with a notebook and a god complex
Attribute scores
Power68
Intellect97
Menace88
Fear factor80
Cultural impact92
Charisma82
Editorial estimates on a 0–100 scale, calibrated against every other character in the index. Not official canon.
Who they are
Light finds a supernatural notebook that kills anyone whose name is written in it, and within days he has decided to remake the world as its judge. The series is almost entirely a battle of deduction between him and a detective, with no action at all, and it works because Light is genuinely brilliant and genuinely monstrous, often within the same scene.
Defining traits
Supernatural killing methodElite deductive reasoningPerfect public imageEscalating messianic delusionWillingness to sacrifice family
What makes them dangerous
He can kill anyone whose face and name he knows, from anywhere, without leaving evidence.
And what undoes them
Arrogance. He cannot resist proving he is the smartest person in the room.
Things you might not know
- The most tense sequence in the series is a conversation about a bag of potato chips.
- The character's decline is deliberately mirrored in the artwork, which grows harsher as the story progresses.
- The manga was temporarily restricted in several school districts after copycat notebooks appeared among students.
Why number 6 in Smartest
The series is almost entirely deduction, and he wins most of the exchanges. His mistakes come from arrogance, never from reasoning.
Why number 10 in Most Tragic
A gifted student handed unlimited power at eighteen. The story is careful to show that he was not a monster before he found the notebook.
Why number 12 in Animation & Anime
A series with almost no action that stays gripping for forty episodes because the villain is smarter than everyone and losing anyway.