'My Hero Academia' Reveals One Villain's Shocking Origins

My Hero Academia has a whole buffer of backstories to tell these days. With so many heroes and villains under its wing, the popular manga can spout off an origin story with ease, so it takes a bit to shock readers of the series. However, that is exactly what happened when My Hero Academia published its most recent chapter.

So, obviously, spoilers below!

Not long ago, Shueisha put up the latest installment of My Hero Academia. Weekly Shonen Jump housed chapter 179 of the manga, and the update caught up with Izuku as the hero-in-training continued his fight with Gentle. After getting a short power-up from La Brava, Gentle was left to face Izuku and looked like he was about to lose to the exceptional high schooler. However, he caught his second wind once he thought back to his backstory and why he became a baddie to start with.

As it turns out, Gentle was not always so nefarious, and his origin story has fans everywhere pitying him. The boy grew up as Tobita, an enthusiastic boy who wanted nothing more than to please his demanding parents by becoming a hero. The man was able to attend a hero academy in his teens as he strove to become a hero, but nothing went his way. Tobita failed classes left and right, leaving him on the verge of expulsion.

Things finally snapped in half for Tobita as he made his way home from school. The boy ran into a rescue operation, and Tobita was too invested and tried to save a man who was falling from a building. However, his preemptive actions ended up injuring the pro hero at the scene and left the civilian critically injured as Tobita's Quirk ended up backfiring. His academy was quick to expel Tobita for his blunder, and the kid's parents cut ties with him for embarrassing them.

After a few years, Tobita ran into a former classmate of his to congratulate him on becoming a hero, and the pro said he had no clue who Tobita was. The encounter was the final straw that broke the boy's back, convincing him he was not meant to be a hero. And, after an indeterminable period of time, Tobita traded in his heroic dreams to become a viral villain.

For those unfamiliar with My Hero Academia, the series was created by Kohei Horikoshi and has been running in Shueisha's Weekly Shonen Jump since July 2014. The story follows Izuku Midoriya, who lives in a world where everyone has super powers but he was born without them. Dreaming to become a superhero anyway, he's eventually scouted by the world's best hero All Might and enrolls in a school for professional heroes. The series has been collected into 15 volumes so far, and has been licensed by Viz Media for an English language release since 2015.

What do you think of this surprising backstory? Let me know in the comments or hit me up on Twitter @MeganPetersCB to talk all things comics, k-pop, and anime!