My Hero Academia Reveals Eri's Tragic Origin

While My Hero Academia's Shie Hassaikai arc has been largely focused on the terrifying presence of the new villain Overhaul, the one at the center of it all has been the mysterious young girl Eri. She has been the focus of Season 4's ending theme sequence, and has quite a few shining spots in the opening. The crux of Deku and the other heroes' attack on Overhaul has been to save her, too. But even after all of that focus, her actual identity has largely been a mystery until the latest episode of the series.

Overhaul revealed in a previous episode that Eri wasn't his daughter, and that story was just a lie to cover it up, but there's been a mystery as to how she ended up in the clutches of the Hassaikai group in the first place. But as it turns out, she's related to the real head of the group and Overhaul has taken her as part of his big takeover from his former master.

As Deku continues to fight Overhaul in order to save Eri for good, Episode 76 of the series reveals Eri's origins. She's the former Hassaikai boss' granddaughter, and a flashback reveals that she was abandoned by her mother after her quirk went out of control. Saying that Eri was cursed and caused the death of her husband, Eri was left in her grandfather's care. The father vanished completely as a result of her quirk, which was a mutation that made her quirk different from both the parents.

The former boss was trying to help her figure out how to get control of her quirk, and hoped Overhaul could find out as his quirk was similar. But as fans would come to learn, Overhaul instead became obsessed with Eri's power. Finding that her power was much stronger than his own, he wanted to use her as the focal point in creating weapons for both heroes and villains.

His plan was to help the yakuza take control of this trade, and when Eri's grandfather refused, Overhaul removed him from the situation and took Eri into his own troubled care. But with Overhaul now officially out of the picture thanks to Deku's fight, Eri has a bright future on the horizon that's far less tragic than her past.

Are you glad Eri's safe now? Hoping to see more of her in future episodes? Let us know your thoughts in the comments or talk to me directly about all things anime and other cool things @Valdezology on Twitter!

My Hero Academia was created by Kohei Horikoshi for Shueisha's Weekly Shonen Jump in 2014. The story follows Izuku Midoriya, who lives in a world where everyone has powers, even though 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. If you wanted to check it out for yourself, you can currently find the series streaming on Crunchyroll and FunimationNOW. Funimation will also soon be bringing My Hero Academia's second big movie, Heroes Rising, to North America on February 26th.