How Naruto’s most legendary antagonist went from god-tier menace to the biggest fumble in anime history.
A few well-known anime missed chances come to mind when you think of the best ones. One is Season 2 of The Promised Neverland. There may be no worse fumble than that of a bad guy who had everything: appearance, power, and a reason for being. A figure whose story was meant to be great but was ruined by the people who made it. That bad guy is Madara Uchiha. He could have been the best example of Naruto’s themes, but instead, he became one of the most tragic characters in anime history.
No one could match Madara’s potential. Two things stood out about him right away: he didn’t trust anyone but himself to save the world, and he wasn’t as smart as he thought he was. These traits made a lot of interesting options possible. He could have been the anime’s Doctor Doom, a genius whose mind was captured by his vision, or the Riddler, whose mind was fixated on power. It looked like Naruto had it figured out for a while.
Early on, Madara’s characters were a good mix of cocky and idealistic. He did what he did because of what he had been through and what he had lost. We disagreed with his choices, but we understood them. That empathy—that’s what makes a great bad guy—made him seem so real. For hundreds of episodes, he was just a story told out of fear, and in the world of ninjas, his name was as scary as Voldemort’s.
When he finally showed up during the Fourth Great Ninja War, he did even better than everyone had said he would. His entrance was like something out of a movie. He quickly got away from Edo Tensei’s control, destroyed armies with taijutsu alone, called up meteors, and killed thousands of people without any trouble. Madara’s attitude was one of complete power. That was the start of one of the most famous anime series ever.
He was one of the most interesting villains.
But to understand why Madara fell, we need to look back at his origins. He was born during the Warring States period and lost three brothers before they turned 18. When his brother Izuna was the only one left, Madara quickly learned that power was the only thing that counted. Naruto’s past is built around his friendship and rivalry with Hashirama Senju, which was both sad and inspiring.
It was like a Shakespeare play. They both wanted peace, but they had different ideas about what it meant. Madara liked being in charge, while Hashirama liked working together. Even though they had other ideas, they became friends and built the Hidden Leaf Village, which was a promise of peace that could never really last. Madara lost all faith when Hashirama was picked as the first Hokage instead of him. The friend who used to be a sign of hope turned out to be proof of betrayal.
It got worse for Madara over the years. He figured out what the Uchiha Stone Tablet meant and found what seemed to be a history of constant war. He left the town he helped build because he felt abandoned by his people and let down by his friend. Every attack he led against Konoha failed, and in the end, Hashirama beat him and killed him. But Madara was already planning ahead, even when he was dead.
A crazy genius who was killed.
Madara’s backup plan showed how crazy smart he was. He used a banned jutsu to ensure he would return to life and created Black Zetsu to carry out his plans. His plan, called the “Eye of the Moon,” was to keep people in a dream world where they would not feel pain. While it was highly flawed, it was also very interesting: peace through illusion. He affected many generations, controlling Nagato (Pain) and Obito and changing the whole Akatsuki.
When Madara was finally brought back to life, he showed again how powerful he was, like a god. He beat the Five Kage, made it through Might Guy’s Eight Gates, and even betrayed Obito to take charge of the war. Despite all the odds, he succeeded. It was time to finish the Eye of the Moon Plan. In his own very wrong way, peace had been reached.
After that, everything fell apart all at once. Madara thought Black Zetsu was an extension of himself, but he stabbed him in the back, showing that he wasn’t even Madara’s creation. Instead, he was a worker of Kaguya Ōtsutsuki, the mother of chakra. In a matter of seconds, the man who had defined hundreds of shows became unimportant. His success, his beliefs, and his whole character arc lost all meaning.
The end of Madara doesn’t make any sense.
Madara’s fall might have worked. His pride and loneliness made his treachery poetic from a thematic perspective. He thought he was the only one who knew the world, but it turned out he was just a pawn. His story had built up to the execution, though, it all fell apart. His ideals weren’t tested by Naruto or Sasuke like every other great Naruto bad guy was. Instead, a cosmic plot twist brought him down.
That was not a character, Kaguya. She was part of the story. She had nothing to do with the story on an emotional or moral level. At first, she switched moral struggle for spectacle. This was terrible for a show about the human cost of power and peace. It wasn’t clear how Madara felt about his moral conflict—he thought that control was the only way to peace. The story never proved him wrong; it just got rid of him.
Madara’s story should have been the right ending for Naruto. He was in charge of the Akatsuki, Obito, the fall of the Uchiha, and even the creation of the town. He held the story together. All of that being thrown out in one twist was more than just disappointing; it was a breach of story ethics.
Even his grandest plan, the Eye of the Moon, falls apart when looked at closely. It talked about peace, but it was based on the works of an old con artist who never really wanted peace. Madara failed not only in how he did things, but also in how he thought about them. His faith in himself kept him from seeing the irony as he built a heaven on lies.
That’s what makes him great, though, and also sad. Naruto’s story is unforgettable because it shows the contrast between idealism and reality, friendship and philosophy, and peace and control. But the anime didn’t let that story end with meaning; instead, it added aliens and energy blasts.
Madara Uchiha was the bad guy that Naruto needed; he was also the bad guy that the manga needed. That being said, his ending shows us that bad choices can bring down even the best stories.
The biggest mistake in anime.
Madara was strong, honest, and terribly human—everything a good bad guy should be. He had history, a reason to do it, and disaster on his side. But when Kaguya took his place, anime lost one of its most interesting characters because of a last-minute change.
It wasn’t that he failed that hurt. It was that his success, his reputation, his ideas, and who he was didn’t matter. After decades of being built up, Madara Uchiha went from a god-level bad guy to being forgotten. His fall is still the biggest mistake in anime history, just because of that.
