The League of Villains from My Hero Academia didn't start out with a specific goal in mind, unlike other anime villain groups. They were an assortment of outcasts and ne'er-do-wells who were drawn to Shigaraki Tomura because they mistakenly thought he was connected to the Hero Killer, Stain.
Even though the League of Villains did not have adequate resources on their own, they at least managed to disappear completely from view. Here's why recent MHA anime Season 6 events demonstrate that they perform at their best when working alone.
Overhaul and the Shie Hassaikai in The League of Villains
The League of Villains managed to pull off major raids like the Training Camp Invasion with minimal casualties on their side, but even so, the heroes remained at a loss on how to track them down. Their small unit size meant they couldn’t afford to engage in reckless missions, but it also reduced the chances of making sloppy mistakes that would lead to their capture. Their evasive luck in My Hero Academia changed for the first time when they got involved with Overhaul and the Shie Hassaikai, an organized crime unit.
Associating with the Hassaikai wasn’t a decision the League took lightly. After losing All For One in the Kamino Incident, the limited resources the League had reduced to nearly zero, so Overhaul’s offer to incorporate the League into his outfit appealed to them. The League didn’t take the murder of their beloved Magne lightly, however, nor Overhaul’s superiority complex. When his experiments with the Quirk-erasing bullets and Eri attracted the Pro Heroes, they wasted no time in backstabbing the yakuza and were once again back on the run.
The Meta-Liberation Army was defeated by the League of Villains.
The League of Villains was content to slowly gather strength on their own, but the Meta-Liberation Army had other plans for them. Re-Destro provoked Shigaraki Tomura into a fight but, underestimating how much stronger the League’s months of being on the run had made them, ended up surrendering all his assets to Shigaraki once the battle was over. In one afternoon, the League had gone from a handful of members to commanding a force greater than even that of the Pro Heroes.
Once again, the League’s growing influence caught the heroes' attention. They quickly tasked the Number 2 Hero, Hawks with infiltrating the Paranormal Liberation Front, and succeeded in catching the giant operation unawares. A two-pronged attack designed at crippling both the League of Villains and the Paranormal Liberation Front was thus assembled. Interestingly, although the two villain factions are supposed to be one and the same right now, the original League members -- Dabi, Toga, Mr Compress, Shigaraki etc. -- are actually having the most success fighting back against the heroes’ invasion compared to the Liberation Front.
As MHA Season 6 continues, their success doesn’t look to be short-lived either. Shigaraki is finally awake and more powerful than ever as he wields All For One’s Quirk in all its glory. His first order of business was to summon Gigantomachia and his original team and begin their plan for total destruction immediately. Associating with larger organized crime groups never seems to end well for the League of Villains, and in a way it’s probably for the best. Each member is individually more interesting than most of what the Meta-Liberation Army had to offer, even if they might not be pursuing a “lofty” goal.
