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A League of Heels - The Spices Behind Sports' Best Baddies

Midousuji...stripping his teammates of his names

I think my favorite sports manga baddie is Agon Kongo from the gridiron football manga Eyeshield 21, because he's such a bastard and also because he emphasizes the manga's themes so well.

Kongo is incredibly arrogant, looking down on everyone around him, but what's infuriating is that he has more than enough skill to back up his boasting. He's not just a great player, he's hands-down the single best player in the entire league. He's so skilled he can play ANY football position better than almost anyone else, and his team is undefeated despite most players other than him being average at best. In most other sports manga, he'd either be the rival character, or the final opponent of the entire series. But he's neither. In fact, his team is only the third opponent our heroes play against.

How does it make sense, narratively, for the strongest enemy in the series to show up so early? Because Eyeshield 21 rejects the idea of a single star athlete carrying a team. The whole series is about gathering team members to fill certain positions and working to create a balanced unit together. It becomes clear early on that even though Sena is the title character, just letting him do everything would doom his team. Sometimes the play calls for one of the other players to step up, frequently it requires all of them to coordinate a play together, and some games are won without Sena doing anything notable at all.

Meanwhile, Kongo thinks the whole idea of teamwork is stupid; he believes other players just get in his way. He even rejects the idea of training his teammates to improve their skills, because none of them will ever be as good as him. And that's why, despite having the highest power level, Kongo isn't worthy of rival or final boss status: he's trying to be the do-everything star player in a sport that's built on teamwork. So when Sena's team, the Devil Bats, play Kongo's team, they manage to beat him by taking advantage of the fact that Kongo can't be everywhere at once; he might be a monster, but his teammates all kinda suck, while the Devil Bats are a well-oiled machine and have multiple players who can score reliably.

Kongo stands out in my mind as a great sports villain because he breaks the standard manga power scaling rule of saving the strongest opponent for last, communicating to the reader that no single player can ever matter as much as the team. It turns out that the real power level was the friends we made along the way.