My Hero Academia Reveals One Villain's Abused Origins

07/16/2019 05:34 pm EDT

My Hero Academia's latest arc has been squarely focused on Shigaraki and his League of Villains as they take on the Meta Liberation Army, and it has revealed something new about each of these fan favorite villains with each chapter. But the latest chapter of the series went one step further and fully dived into the tragic, and abusive origins of Tomura Shigaraki. In a heartbreaking parallel to Izuku Midoriya, Shigaraki could have been a hero too.

In a harsh look back at Shigaraki's early family life, Chapter 235 of the series revealed that Shigaraki was abused by his father and constantly talked out of his heroic dreams after the disappearance of his grandmother, Nana Shimura.

Chapter 235 revealed Shigaraki, known back then as Tenko Shimura, was constantly getting in trouble with his father for "playing hero" with his childhood friends. His father, Kotaro, had a strict rule against talking about heroes in their house and would punish Tenko severely each time he broke this rule. Despite the rest of the family seemingly thinking he was being too strict, they went along with Kotaro's wishes.

When Shigaraki and his sister stumble into their father's office and find an old picture of their heroic grandmother Nana, Shigaraki was then inspired to become a hero once more. But this was too far for his father, who soon came home and beat him in front of the rest of the family. It's clear that he's hurt from his mother, who has since passed, abandoning him due to the threat of One For All, and he's grown to resent his mother for her heroic ways.

But instead of getting his son to understand this, Kotaro instead abused the young Shigaraki and forced him in the other direction. This final beating was one step overboard, and the end of Chapter 235 hints that his decaying powers are starting to develop as a result of the fierce trauma. Now the young Shigaraki is beginning to hate, and it's spurred on by the abuse of his father. It's a vicious cycle that sheds another dark light on Nana Shimura's shady past that has only been hinted at previously.

This fight with the Meta Liberation Army has sparked all sorts of these old memories in Shigaraki, and now fans can't wait to see what comes next. After teasing that Shigaraki is the one who killed his family, fans just might see it come to pass in a future chapter at the rate things are unfolding.

My Hero Academia 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 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. The series has been licensed by Viz Media for an English language release since 2015. My Hero Academia is gearing up for an even bigger end of 2019 with a new film in theaters later this year too.

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