Wahahahahahaha, psycho villian par exellence, and he knows it! Power-crazed right to the end, and then some. Kenshin's successor as shadow Hitokiri, but was burned by the Meji government to seal his mouth about the assasinations he'd carried out. But the idiots failed and he survived to plan a coup.

I like him because he's amusing, even if he is insane. Heck, in this series, who isn't? He looks damn cool in the manga, even in the bandages and with all that sticky-out hair, but for some reason I can't put my finger on he just looks stupid in the anime. Yet another one of the failings of the anime. *sigh*

To me, he's the most impressive villian in the entire series; anybody who came before the Kyoto arc was a loser, and Enishi's Jinchuu was ultimately a private affair so it didn't have the scope and grandeur of Shishio's plan to take over Japan. Frankly I think he's stronger than Kenshin, if only because he's a bad guy and bad guys tend to be better at inflicting pain than peaceful wanderers.

My sister detected a minor loophole in the manga where Shishio is concerned, though. In Shingetsu village, when he was bathing in the hotsprings, we see Shishio without the bandages. He was bald. However, the Shishio we see normally has hair sticking out of the bandages. Heh.