@Temperans Thanks for the insight!
The way you phrased it makes the reasons for liking Makima appear very depended on the individual readers perception of her.
Like, for me she appeared very shady right from the start. I felt like she was trying too hard to appeal to Denji and on top of that she did it in a very mechanical way, like she tried to appear human. I already got stuck really early on the assumption that she's either not human or a psycho- or sociopath. Then again, a lot of the cast appear emotionally scarred in one way or another, so Makima only appeared slightly more weird than the rest of the crew, which didn't make her stick out too much.
As for the great villain part, I'm not sure yet. She does seem good at playing a long manipulative game, but it's kinda hard to gauge how much credit she should get for that, because her control powers just seem so immensely powerful right now. I'm still wondering what forces opposed her so that she had to play this long game instead of just curb-stomping everyone in her way. There are a lot of puzzle pieces already to answer that question, but I can't really put everything together yet.