 He gave Tsubasa multiple rivals with differing traits to make his matches more challenging.Jun Misugi was at first a superior player to Tsubasa but Takahashi made Misugi suffer from heart problems to bring more conflict into the match between the two players.Fans had pointed out that Tsubasa's teams always tend to win or tie but never lose; Takahashi stated that to make the story longer, he had to make the protagonist's team participate in more matches and that readers want strong characters, which resulted in Tsubasa being a prodigy.