I'm not counting MotWs, although Wizard did have better kaijin designs than OOO, hands down. I'm talking generals; Phoenix, Medusa, Gremlin, and (at least conceptually) Fueki were all better villains than the Greeds and Dr. Maki.

Maybe but one thing to admit is that Medusa was beautiful.

Okay true but in my personal opinion Kazari had a good design. I am probably only saying this because I like tigers and he reminded of predator with the dreadlocks. Also Medusa is beautiful, now I am just being a pig.

I kinda miss the simpler designs found in the previous shows, like Blade and Agito.

We have had some really good and heavy on the color designs for the last couple of years, I kinda wanna see a great use of darker color tone in the upcoming season.

Toqger had some great monster and villain designs.

I was also talking about the generals. Fueki was better than Dr. Maki, yes. But Phoenix, Medusa, and Gremlin? Really?

(RANT INCOMING)

Villains are only what their intentions and schemes make them. The Greeed had an actual, justifiable motive and a clear goal: they wanted to be restored to their complete forms, and ultimately to survive.

What did the Phantoms want? More Phantoms? Great. Human eradication? Cool. Then what? Outside of their POWAR LEVELS!1!!1, Medusa and Phoenix were very rarely an actual threat. Maybe they'd be more practical if even a single victim actually despaired and became a Phantom, but no. Every time, Wizard stopped them and they lost a number, so what was even the point? (Yeah, yeah, Fueki was using them, but they didn't know that.) In the end, Wizard was ultimately too overpowered compared to the lackluster villains for them to have ever been a real problem. On top of that, the show was too caught up with pretending (and failing) to be "mysterious" that it never revealed if the Phantoms had a bigger motive or not. As far as we knew, there really wasn't much of a reason for them to want the things they wanted.

Also, If not for his shoehorned final boss status, Gremlin is basically just Cazali only ten times more annoying.

And so kombat begins, it seems

Dude, the Greed were designed to evolve the more medals they took or lost. I love Wizard, but better kaijin designs goes to OOO. They planned out every little feature that would appear or disappear as the Greed gained or lost power. Phoenix got CGI wings as an upgrade.

That's subjective bull. You're allowed to like who you like, but using "I find this person more attractive" isn't at all required or wanted in a discussion on why one monster group are better villains that another.

Kazari had what exactly as his motivation again? Besides being a dick to Maki's doll and taking the other Greed's medals for shits, giggles, and SCIENCE (except not really, he just wanted to be a dick and get more power. Which is, you know, a boring villain motivation). Seriously, what was wither Kazari or Uva's motivations besides more power? Survival doesn't require taking your fellow Greeds medals, that's just being a dick for spite. If they actually wanted their medals that badly, they would have regularly teamed up against OOO and finished him off. Instead, they went about making Yummy's to obtain more power, and playing with human emotions here and there for kicks.

Sure, Mezool had her "wanting to know what love is?", but all we got from that was pretending to care about Gamel for most of the season, then dropping him like a hat in her last appearnce and kidnapping some mothers and their kids. Really great character arc there.

Gamel was just an innocent fool with evil powers and a slightly selfish attitude, like that of a kid. That's it.

Maki was a straw-nihilist with an artistic bent.

Wizard's monsters don't get a free pass either.

Phoenix was rival material, and a punk, who's only interesting character piece was that, oh hey, his past life self was a nice flower guy. Too bad we don't see that change, we're just told it.

Medusa thinks she's a complex Xanatos villain, but she basically spent the last arc running away before Wizard could activate All-Dragon (not that he would, Toei being cheap and all). She also got unceremoniously killed off by her boss. Neat.

Gremlin at least had the nice twist of explaining why he's different from the other Phantoms, he was already an asshat as a human, so whatever odd rules that the Phantoms play by went "fuck it, he's already evil, just leave him be". But yeah, other than being Carnage in green and with magic scissors, there wasn't much too him besides the fact the writers let him last long enough to be the final boss. Not that that paid off to well.

So both of these season's main villains are as great as fans make them out to be. Fun to watch, sure? Great? They're freaking kid show villains, have we forgotten what we're watching? We're seriously debating whether a Doctor who can't speak without a Satanic doll sitting on his shoulder or a clear Saruman expy who didn't learn from the Elric's mistake is the better villain?

Also, if Wizard was overpowered, he would have finished off Medusa the next time he met her after killing off Phoenix. Instead, she forced him back almost every time they encountered each other.

But yeah, the mysterious part fell flat on its face, and went nowhere.

I never said they stuck to their plan, but at the very least they had one from the beginning. Their nature as what they are - power mad, greedy monsters - obviously evolved the motivation beyond what it started out as being. Just because Cazali was a wildcard and maybe had different intentions from the rest didn't change the collective motivation from the start.

There was much more of a natural progression between wanting power to become whole, wanting power to defeat OOO, and wanting power for the hell of it - why stop at becoming whole? On top of that, that progression was hinted at from the beginning. By the time that whole scenario began going nowhere, Maki had already started to manipulate them, leading up to an actual climax for the series.

Also, the fact that what they needed to defeat OOO and what OOO needed to defeat them were the same things was a super compelling element to the Greeed as villains. The villains had an active contribution and a direct connection to the hero's power.

Keep in mind the original argument was not that the villains in OOO were great (as you said yourself, they're freaking kids show villains) but that they were better than the ones from Wizard. As far as I see, the Phantoms were just "~generally eeeevil, and poooowerful, and scaaaary!~" without any credible evidence that they were as much of a threat as they claimed to be. What does it matter if they are powerful and able to beat Wizard in a skirmish from time to time if that gets them nowhere as far as their goals are concerned? On top of all that, they lacked any charm or heart that might make them identifiable.

I just meant in terms of suit design. I always thought OOO had pretty subpar monster suits.

Yup. It started to become annoying once they mixed the Core Medals of different Greed. Instead of getting one good suit based on one animal we got a weird Frankenstein of two and it looked really bad. Also OOO heavily relied on CGI for some Yummies, which looked bad not only because of CGI but the designs themselves were lackluster.

I like the monster suit design in Wizard, the villains themselves are meh though. Phoenix had huge potential of going rouge against Carbuncle and becoming a chaotic factor that wasn’t part of the White Wizard's plans, much like Gremlin, but unlike Gremlin Pheonix actually had a great setup and motivation.

I was so happy when they had the the focus on Phoenix and Rinko finding out about his former life as a Gate, and when they sat down and talked and Phoenix said it helped him realize something I was really happy. I thought he would abandon the other Phantoms and try to go after Carbuncle to become free or something, but when he immediately was like "I just destroy more stuff" I was so disappointed.

Phoenix, Medusa and Gremlin could've been great characters but they are just so poorly executed.

Eh, all this OOO discussion wow, on a Drive episode, maybe we should just stick to that. Take this whole OOO vs. Wizard monster discussion on the General Questions thread or something.

^ This.