I find the topic of characters who become as popular if not more popular than the main character of the franchise to be an interesting one. Because there are so many examples of this.

Now the ones you listed I do agree with, but I still have a bit of a... well I'm not sure I would call it hatred, but I ate extreme disliking for Kaiba

Understandable

Kaiba is my second most disliked yugioh rival. I understand he's a good duelist and the deck that he uses is quite strong especially by today's standards. But there's one thing I really did not like, it was a rival character who was completely narcissistic and constantly belittling. Don't get me wrong, having a "jerk rival" is good, but you have to give him some kind of redeeming qualities. The only thing he gets is that he loves his brother, but you don't get anything else from that