Ask John: Why Are Insects Associated with Villains?

Question:
I’ve been wondering for a while about why anime seems to have a lot of villians or other characters that are, or look like, bugs. Shows like Inuyasha and Blue Seed have villians that are bugs, and Blue Gender’s story is about the earth being invaded by giant insects. I just wondered if there was a reason that insects seemed to be a recurring theme in some anime.

Answer:
Insect collecting is a traditional hobby of Japanese children, and is frequently cited as one of the reasons why Pocket Monsters was so embraced by the Japanese social consciousness and so quickly became intermeshed with contemporary Japanese pop culture. But if bug collecting is such a favored past time, it wouldn’t really make a lot of sense for insects to be so frequently associated with negative or evil values, or personified as villainous characters.

In the absence of logical basis in Japanese culture, that I’m aware of, I can only guess that the reason why bugs and insects are sometimes associated with evil in anime is because they evoke a natural revulsion. Humans instinctively dread and fear insects because they’re such total opposites of humans and mammals. Insects are creepy and unsettling, so associating these characteristics with antithetical characters enhances the evil or antagonistic impression that anime villains are supposed to project.