The end of My Hero Academia anime is here. Sadly, the anime is not off to a great start since the premiere was released late and without English subs (it got better). I’ll leave others to criticize Crunchyroll, though. The manga finished with some disappointment last year.
What makes My Hero Academia compelling? It has won multiple awards over the years, so it’s undeniable that it resonates with people. Let’s explore one of MHA’s strongest themes: heroism despite hurt. Overcoming adversity is a time-honored way of making characters interesting, and My Hero Academia ties pain, heroism, and its characters together well.
There will be some spoilers for previous seasons of MHA.
My Hero Academia’s World
Quick MHA introduction. In a world like ours, where humans have developed superpowers called Quirks, Izuku “Deku” Midoriya has no powers. Which sucks for him, because he has dreamed of being a superhero since he was old enough to know what dreams were. Luckily, his childhood hero All Might witnesses Deku’s bravery during an attack and offers him the chance of a lifetime: to receive his Quirk. Deku accepts, and after an entrance exam, is shipped off to U.A. High School to learn to be a superhero.
As a shounen anime, My Hero Academia is made up of a series of arcs and fights. Yes, there’s a tournament arc, but the plot arcs aren’t the point of this article. While shounen battles are fun, it’s the storytelling that is compelling. In My Hero Academia, the storytelling is carried by the larger-than-life characters.
Meet The Heroes
There’s Deku, of course. Powerless at first, he gains a form of super strength that can be passed down and which includes other powers; though Deku mainly uses the power of fists to fight. Keeps a journal of superheroes as a super fan.
Deku’s main rival is Bakugo. A hothead with an ignition power based on nitroglycerin sweat. He fights with explosions and has bullied Deku mercilessly since childhood. Admires All Might like Deku does, but wants to be a superhero to be the strongest.
Todoroki, by contrast, has both ice and fire powers, but is calm and methodical. When we first meet him, he only uses his ice powers, refusing to use the fire powers that came from his father. He wants to prove he’s a better man than his dad, which means being a better superhero.
What these characters have in common is pain. Specifically, they are hurt people. Damaged. Broken. Hurt in subtly different ways, they reflect on each other, and their dreams of being superheroes give them common ground for the show to explore.
The Truth of Hurting
Deku’s hurt is that of someone who can’t pursue their dreams. The hurt of failure and despair, through no fault of his own. It is personal and lonely.
Todoroki’s hurt is both physical and emotional. He’s been burned. But in exploring the depths of his backstory, we learn that his burns represent family trouble with his overbearing father and his abused mother, which resulted in his mother having a breakdown and pouring boiling water on him. He is isolated by power and society.
Bakugo’s hurt is the trickiest. As a bully, it’s harder to empathize with him. He’s damaged from being praised for his powerful Quirk in his early life, which he internalizes as a need to always win to live up to the assumptions of his genius. Meanwhile, when Deku enters U.A., Bakugo assumes Deku’s been lying about having no Quirk, and feels blindsided and tricked by someone he treated as weak. It feels to him like Deku had contempt for him, especially once Bakugo loses to Deku. Both pain points feed his superiority complex and isolate him as he’s too abrasive to his U.A. classmates to make friends at first.
The Hurting of My Hero Academia
Physical pain and emotional torment are both present in My Hero Academia. But it’s this hurt of isolation in well-intentioned kids that drives the story. Deku isn’t interesting because he gets beaten up. Winning and losing fights is mandatory in shounen. He’s interesting because he’s hopeful even when powerless. Todoroki is lonely and doesn’t give up on fixing his family. Even Bakugo works on his attitude and makes friends.
My Hero Academia is a case study in isolating emotional hurts and not surrendering to them. On top of persevering themselves, characters help each other succeed through teamwork or emotional support. While effort is part of not surrendering to despair, My Hero Academia also models what supportive friends and family should look like — and what toxic, failed support is like in contrast.
The Villainy of Hurt
This theme of hurt carries through into My Hero Academia‘s villains. Specifically, Tomura Shiguraki as a foil to the heroes, and All For One as the incarnation of harm.
Shiguraki is the more grounded villain. Recruited by All For One after his family dies, Shiguraki is what giving up on the world looks like. Like the heroes, he develops a found family over time. Like them, he’s an isolated soul because of Quirks: in his case, because Quirks destroyed his family. Instead of wanting to improve, Shiguraki wishes to destroy. He’s human enough for us to understand, but hard to empathize with, as he harms others in the same way he was traumatized. Shiguraki is what Deku, or any of his peers, could have been with an evil mentor and by wallowing in their hurt. He’s an extreme take on nihilism, but his exaggerations emphasize the heroism of the heroes in working through their pain.
Evil Incarnate
All For One, on the other hand, doesn’t represent someone who could have been good. No, All For One is the source of harm. Believing he’s the only person of value and that everyone else is weak and pathetic, he has no problems committing evil. Most importantly for My Hero Academia, All For One causes the harm experienced by the main cast. He steals people’s powers, leaving them Quirkless like Deku was. He is intensely powerful, representing the toxic mindset Bakugo could have fallen into. And he barely liked his brother more than other people, still seeing him as weak and pathetic for being less than him: a sharp contrast to how Todoroki wants to fix things with his family, despite his siblings being less powerful than he. He represents what characters overcome when they choose heroism daily.
Hurts So Good
Between these two main villains and the lesser ones, My Hero Academia presents characters who resemble the heroes thematically. It contrasts villainy with heroism, and hope with nihilism and despair. The villains want destruction and rage against a world that hurt them. The heroes want to fix and protect despite the ways they’ve been hurt. Time and again this is repeated. Villains are only redeemed by grasping hope despite pain. Good overcomes evil through effort and a mindset of never surrendering to suffering. Everyone has their scars, emotional or otherwise. Being a hero is not about superpowers; it’s about perseverance.
Character Driven Letdown
My Hero Academia is deeply immersed in the hurt of its characters and how pain drives them. Being spoiler-less and vague, this is partly why the manga’s ending was disappointing. With a time skip and a new status quo, it’s not believable for these characters — characters who’ve worked so hard on screen to overcome their hurt to improve the world — to seemingly give up in different ways once the main story ended. The one thing that defines Deku as much as it did Naruto before him was perseverance. Then the initial ending looked like he, and a number of his friends, gave up for years.
All’s Well That Hurts Less
The good news is that the anime has a chance to tweak the ending to sustain the theme of overcoming despite hurt. If you haven’t watched My Hero Academia and enjoy a hopeful shounen universe, then give it a try. It has flaws outside the scope of this post, but few shows are as aspirational, or use characters’ pain in such a compelling way. If you’re a long-time watcher, let me know what resonates with you in MHA.
And if you read the manga, share your dreams of an extended ending.
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