My Hero Academia Season 5 Breaks Hearts with Aizawa’s Emotional Breakdown

My Hero Academia broke fans’ hearts with Shota Aizawa’s emotional breakdown with the newest episode of Season 5! Before the anime can officially kick off the final arc of the fifth season focusing entirely on what Tomura Shigaraki and the villains have been up to all this time, the newest episode of the series had to wrap the final events of the Endeavor Agency arc with a breakdown of the surprising past between Shota Aizawa, Present Mic, and the League of Villains member Kurogiri. Because as the two of them distressingly discovered with the newest episode of the series, Kurogiri is actually a Nomu based from their former high school friend.

Aizawa had learned that Kurogiri was formed with the base of his friend Oboro Shirakumo, who had died during one of their work studies. Aizawa and Present Mic had been brought to Tartarus in the first place in the hopes of somehow breaking through Kuorgiri’s Nomu programming and trying to get some data on the League of Villains’ whereabouts, and in doing so, Aizawa’s usually cool facade begins to crack under the pressure of his past as he ends up in tears:

Episode 107 of the series reveals that Kurogiri was their former friend Oboro Shirakumo, a friend who had inspired Aizawa in his hero work in the first place. He and Present Mic had planned to work with Shirakumo after they graduated, but Shirakumo was suddenly killed by fallen rubble before they were ever able to do so. In finding out that Shirakumo’s corpse was used as the base for series of quirk experiments to build the Kurogiri Nomu, Aizawa and Present Mic tried everything they could to break through to him.

What really started to make him shed tears, however, was when Shirakumo seemed to start to break through Kurogiri’s facade. Not only did Shirakumo’s face briefly appear, but they started to notice their old friend’s personality within the Nomu. Aizawa broke down in one final plea to somehow save their friend, but deep in his heart the true tragedy is that he knows there was never any real way to bring Shirakumo back anyway.

But what did you think of this heartbreaking Aizawa moment with his old friend? Did you enjoy seeing this glimpse into his past? Let us know all of your thoughts about it in the comments! You can even reach out to me directly about all things animated and other cool stuff @Valdezology on Twitter!