obviously, my favourite character in the franchise is bitway ozrock. aesthetically his design appeals to me (the teal shade of his hair is my favourite colour) and storywise, he shares similarities with my other top favourite characters of all time. all of my favourite characters share the trait of wanting to go home/losing their home somehow, and how each of them handle it emotionally is what varies. his handling of it is a rage boiling beneath the surface. spoilers ahead, though i can't imagine anyone actually getting into this series in this the year of 2023, so whatever. let's talk about bitway ozrock, inazuma eleven's cruelest deep-voiced alien mastermind.

circa 1800 in our calendar, the planet ixal was engaged in a war with falam orbius, a galactic superpower. the planet was blown to bits with only 184 escapees cryogenically frozen, but only eleven of those escapees woke up, one of them being bitway. angered and mourning the planet and all the people he's now lost, he seeks revenge. he learns of a planet named kiel under threat of being absorbed by a black hole, and that they've developed an anti-black hole cannon to keep this from happening. in short, he basically uses this device to hold over falam orbius' head when their own planet is under threat of a black hole.

of course, this is an anime about soccer. as i mentioned in my overview of each season, bitway has set himself up as a neutral party and organized an interplanetary soccer tournament, including earth. the winner of this tournament would be allowed to come colonize whichever planet they desired, and falam orbius were set up to be the ultimate winners of the tournament. naturally there were other parties involved with the main characters and one of them was the scientist from kiel who made the anti-black hole cannon. bitway kidnaps him and makes him work on the cannon for him.

the main characters' team of course wins all the matches in the tournament, and bitway finally reveals his plans and his own team - with the other 10 survivors of the genocide from 200 years ago. but bitway loses everything at the end, his revenge on this planet that destroyed his home has been all for nothing, and he is actually sentenced to death. but he receives pity from the queen of falam orbius and he and the ten others supposedly becomes her advisors. i'm unaware if there's any follow up to this in the game's story (which i haven't played, i don't own a japanese 3ds) but in the anime the last we see is him in handcuffs being escorted away into the shadows... so i've never really known what to make of his ending.

all in all, while he's not the most compelling character in anime or even in inazuma eleven, something about his story speaks to me and if i ever get back into inazuma, i think it'd be well worth fleshing out or rewriting. were this not a series marketed towards kids, i have a feeling this entire story arc would be incredibly compelling and well-received by many.