My vote for best anime antagonist would have to be Frieza, as Frieza as the only atagonist who was pure evil from day one. He wasn’t created evil, he just is evil, but he does evil with such dignity and flare and makes it an art.
The first time you ever see him in DBZ, if you never watched the show and know nothing about him, you hear about how powerful he is, but when you see him and see how small he is at first it defies expectations. Throughout all his forms he only grows more menacing and larger till he finally reaches his final form and shrinks back down in size, once again defying expectations. As the fight (though many many episodes) drags on, you are constantly at the edge of your seat throughout. Then once you think he is finally defeated by Goku’s spirit ball, he only comes back, once again, even stronger then before, then proceeds to kill Krillin and critically wounds Piccolo, The death of Krillin event is what triggered Goku to finally reach Super Saiyan for the first time. Even then both Frieza and Goku fight on equal grounds for a while before Frieza starts to lose stamina. at the end of the fight Frieza ends up being chopped in half by his own move on accident and even survives one final blast from Goku, and then entire planet Namek exploding with him on it! Frieza floats in the vacuum of space and till his father finds him, and has his scientists heal and repair him with mechanized parts. They heads to earth for revenge but only get met there by another mysterious Super Saiyan named Trunks and defeated easily. That was the last we heard of Frieza in Z until Dragon Ball Super.
Frieza up to that point had never trained a day in his life! Frieza upon being resurrected by the dragon balls in the Dragon Ball Super Resurrection of F movie/arc, in several pieces mind you, before being healed whole again with improved healing tanks. The first thing he does is decide to go train for the first time ever, knowing he is no match for a Super Saiyan and still wanting revenge. He trains for literally only 4 months and unlocked his golden form (he chose the color in particular to mock the SSJ transformation) and was able to catch-up and overwhelm God Form SSJ Blue Goku, that was until he started running out of stamina again. But to get that powerful in only 4 months, while it took Goku years/decades to get that strong! That shows how much potential Frieza has. If it wasn’t for the Angel Whis interfering with and reversing time, Goku and Vegeta would have lost that fight, as Frieza used a last ditch effort to blow up the earth which was reversed. While in hell (which Frieza’s personal hell looks like heaven to normal people, that should tell you how evil he really is) Frieza does to mental training to fix his stamina issue and finally learning from that mistake.
Frieza may be evil, but he does have his own selfish twisted sense of honor, and is a man of his word. When resurrected again for the Tournament Of Power by Goku’s request, Frieza proved his mental training in Hell had payed off as he was able to withstand a Hakai attack (a god of destruction power that erased objects from existence) against an assassin and from Top who was training to be a God Of Destruction. But Frieza was a man of his word and did not betray Goku and the others during the TOP and was one of the best allies on that team helping universe 7 win. Thus regaining his life as promised. Frieza while still evil at this point has a healthy respect for Goku and Vegeta and decided to leave Earth alone, though he is still evil to the core.
Spoiler Blur for the next part as the manga for this just releases in book form in the US this year!
In the manga He came back in at the end of the Granola arc in a brand new form, but before transforming, Frieza killed the Heater known as Gas with one shot, Gas at that point had wished to be the strongest person in the universe and was winning against Goku and Vegeta in their top forms. Frieza one shots Gas with one punch. Turned out Frieza was in another dimension at the time of the wish training in a room of spirit and time, where time passes much faster inside this dimension then on the outside world and had trained for 10 years inside there, (remember how strong he got in 4 months?) thus was not counted when in the universe when Gas made his wish.
Frieza then proceeds to transform into his newest form Frieza Black, and one shots both Goku and Vegeta at the same time when they are at their peak power! But Frieza was feeling generous and chose not to kill them and spared both Goku and Vegeta. I think mainly because while he still hates them to the core, he has a healthy respect for both of them at this point. That is the last we have seen of Frieza in the series.
Frieza, to me is the type of villain you love to hate, he does evil with class and that makes him the best antagonist in Dragon Ball, and possibly in my opinion all of anime!
Most villians in Dragon Ball were programed/created evil like Cell and the Androids, were tricked into being evil, turned evil due to tragity or whatever. Many of them redeemed themselves and became allies. Frieza is the only one in the series that I know of (maybe Moro as well) who chose on his own free will to be evil from day one, and stayed evil throughout the series never really becoming an ally (in the TOP he was a reluctant ally only to save his own skin as he didn’t want to be erased along with the universe, and the promise of resurection kept him in line.)
