My Hero Academia Explores Overhaul's Motives in New Flashback

The battle between Overhaul and the heroes has come to an end with the latest episode of My Hero Academia, and as the fight rolled on it became increasingly clear that Kai Chisaki was a deeply troubled individual. He seemed like he had tight control on things throughout the entirety of the Shie Hassaikai arc thus far, but he began to unravel as quickly as his big plans did. Fights against Mirio and Deku began to strip away his facade, and he was forced to truly reflect on his actions with Eri thus far.

Overhaul stated towards the beginning of My Hero Academia's fourth season that his plans were all in service of restoring power to the yakuza in this increasingly heroic and villainous world. But with previous episodes revealing his orphan origins, all of this came together to reveal that his motives were a bit more childlike. Albeit with a much more twisted perspective, he wanted approval.

Episode 76 of the series dives into a flashback in which Overhaul first met Eri. As the Shie Hassaikai leader's granddaughter, she was left in Overhaul's care so that he could help her learn how to manage her quirk. But seeing how powerful her quirk actually was, Overhaul began to desire more. But while it seemed like he was motivated to get the Shie Hassaikai a better reputation and name in the criminal underworld, it seemed like he wanted his father figure's approval instead.

Taking the results of his experiments to his adoptive father figure, he was proud of his new plan to put the Hassaikai on top. Using Eri's blood, he would create a weapon to remove quirks and sell it to the villains. Then he would sell an antidote to reverse this to the pro heroes, and thus create a whole new market in which they were in control of using Eri's body. His boss completely denied this plan due to how barbaric it was overall.

Getting denied, Overhaul instead used his quirk to harm the Hassaikai boss and is keeping him in a vegetative state until his plan comes to fruition. His adoptive father figure denied all of Overhaul's plans, and Chisaki instead saw them as a denial of himself. He's been carrying a chip on his shoulder ever since he was a child, and thus has been hoping to prove himself to this new father figure.

Getting denied so outright must have hurt his pride even more considering how little he viewed of Eri at this point. Suddenly his boss' flesh and blood was more important than Chisaki's plans, and his idea of "repaying" his father figure for once taking him in wasn't enough. So he was going to do so by any means necessary. But what do you think? Was Overhaul just essentially having a temper tantrum? 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.