Anime like any other form of entertainment follows a wide gamut of tropes that are put to work to provide a story with more depth and nuance. Tropes are meant to enrich the plot of a manga or anime and supplement it. However, any trope loses its effect, and catalytic strength if it is overused. One such trope that is being heavily overused by manga authors is that of villains with tragic pasts. A lot of the recent manga and anime (even the Manga that are yet to be animated) follow the same trajectory of overusing this trope resulting in the exhaustion of this trope. The urgency is for the use of a fresh or a traditional trope in the new Manga and anime.
The trope of a villain with a tragic past was fresh some years ago, but it is causing mediocrity in the quality of manga especially, shonen manga now. An antagonist is a crucial element of any story especially when it is a shonen manga or anime. Half of the burden of a shonen story lies on the shoulders of its antagonist, and if the antagonist is similar to the one that the fans read in some previous manga then, the story just becomes dull for them. Hence, this trope needs to be put behind the curtains for some time and replaced with something better.
Changing Norms
The traditional trope of villains or antagonists suggests that they are supposed to be evil, nefarious creatures (human or non-human). This trope was used back in the initial years of cinema and anime but then, it became a stale thing, and this led to the creation of a new trope that explored the past of the antagonists. This trope gave a fresh breath to the stories used in manga and anime too as it allowed the viewers to have a glimpse of the making of a villain, an answer to the questions of why and how a villain becomes a villain. Audiences enjoyed this trope for a long period, but it has just become a dead horse now. Almost all the recent manga and anime antagonists are shown to have a tragic backstory to justify them becoming evil like the upper and lower moons and Muzan Kibutsuji in Demon Slayer; Jiren and Broly in Dragon Ball Super; Eren Yeager in Attack On Titan; etc. Antagonists do not necessarily have to be evil because of a tragic past, they can be evil just for the sake of it.
Pure Chaos
Sometimes all a story needs is a powerful antagonist not just in terms of power but also in terms of the amount of evil in their character for it to become enthralling. It would be a good change for the audience to get to witness an antagonist with no tragic or dark past to justify their wrong deeds and evil behavior.
It would be wrong to think that such an antagonist is going to work in a modern-day shonen story on the contrary modern-day stories can use a villain who is driven by utter and pure chaos, hate, greed, and anger just like - Cell from Dragon Ball Z (DBZ). DBZ's success and Cell saga being considered to be if not the greatest then at least one of the greatest shonen anime arcs of all time proves that an anime villain without a tragic past can be a big hit if utilized properly in a story.
Villains Are Meant To Be Evil
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The character of the antagonist and the overall idea of antagonism has gone through a big change in the past several years in the world of anime. The character of an antagonist is often attached to ideas of someone who was not loved by anyone in their lives or whose loved ones were taken away from them or attached with some trauma related to their past. But what about the characters who took up the mantle of villains because they wanted to be one, they enjoyed being a villain. The anime characters (or at least their emotional sides) are somewhat inspired by the humans and their emotional sides, and personality traits, and there are people in real life as well who are just downright bad for no reason at all.
Some of the greatest antagonists of all time in anime (shone or otherwise) and other forms of entertainment like cinema, and literature have been based on the idea of just pure evil. It would not make sense if Akira Toriyama mentioned that Frieza, Majin Buu, and Cell were villainous because they had a tragic or traumatic past, would it? A backstory can sometimes ruin an antagonist's mysterious aura, eventually making them a bit less intimidating. And this goes for shonen anime antagonists as well. Besides, if manga authors keep using the same trope for each of their bad guys, the story will get boring quickly. Therefore, the currently overused trope of a villain with a tragic past in shonen anime needs to be put on hold for some time and replaced with something different or better.