>>718112329 (OP)
The former of course
Though anime/vidya often handle it so poorly that I'd have preferred it if they'd just made the villain a moustache-twirling evil-lover. They'll frequently have a plot that requires the antagonist to do something absolutely awful (kill literally everyone) and shit out a ridiculous motive that comes nowhere close to justifying it (uhhh the villain is an environmentalist and thinks humans bad or something? idk lol).
And the former philosophy seems to make a lot of hack writers think the antagonist actually needs to be a goodboi who dindu nuffin, taking the most realistic motives completely off the table. The motives that actually cause most "villainous" behavior in real-life like:
>the selfish pursuit of money and power
>prejudice
>difficult-to-escape cycles of retaliation and revenge
Even a character primarily motivated by the pursuit of wealth/power can be interestingly written despite the motive being simple on the surface, if you just focus on aspects like their self-image and how they justify their behavior, how they treat those around them, and other mundane, relatable human shit.