[Locke]

Only Showa I have seen is Black, but I have a hard time believing there could be worse villains than Golgom, who make ridiculously elaborate plans without ever actually having goals. It is almost impossible to articulate how baffling they are if you haven't seen the show, they just do 'stuff' and you think their random actions will mean something but it never does, gaaaah.

I can't comment on Heisei yet.

In terms of Neo Heisei, I've not had any good villains yet out of the shows I've watched. Gamou and his Horoscopes became less and less important as their show progressed until you realised no one actually had a plan and no one knew what they were doing and it all fell to bits.

The Greeed did NOTHING until like the last five episodes of the show before they lined up to get knocked down and this was often after recently returning 'from the dead' after being written out of the show for a majority of it.

And the Phantom's are kind of a blend of the two, no one seems to really know what they are doing, everyone largely lurks in the background until they step forwards to be killed off.

Out of the three though I'd still say the Greeed were the worst offenders, as at least some of the Horoscopes were cool and did some cool stuff, and at least Gremlin had a cool backstory and Medusa and Phoenix had cool send offs. The Greeed were just too many, boring, pointless and ultimately pathetic and useless.