Kohei Horikoshi’s My Hero Academia is a hugely popular series that’s quickly taking over the world as one of the standout manga series in Shueisha’s Weekly Shonen Jump. Each new chapter of the series continues to surprise fans as it is at a much different place than where the series began. But the roots of the series goes much farther than that as My Hero Academia was much different when Horikoshi originally conceived the idea.
In an interview for Shueisha’s Manga Plus, the first two editors for the series — Mr. Koike and Mr. Monji — discussed much about the series’ origins from its original pitch, concept, and superhero origins.
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Mr. Koike revealed how My Hero Academia got its start as a much different one-shot, but the story had held a special place with Horikoshi so they fine tuned it for serialization, “After [Horikoshi’s] second series ended, the name ‘Boku no Hero’—a completed one-shot story which remained in Horikoshi’s heart—came up when we were talking about what we should write for his third series…After some polishing, the story was finally serialized.”
When talking about the series’ superhero influences, Koike mentioned Horikoshi’s love of heroes, “I heard that [Horikoshi] really likes Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man…I believe the influence of American comics, and works such as Ultraman, or Kamen Rider contributed to his ‘love of heroes’.”” Koike elaborated to say the concept was pretty much set from the start, but had some alterations, “…Horikoshi already had a concept in his mind..there were many story patterns which got rejected… many were changed during our meetings, and Horikoshi also dismissed many ideas on his own.”
But even with these humble origins, the series was accepted all around when Koike and Horikoshi presented the first three chapters in the pitch. Mr. Monji did elaborate that there was only a slight bit of hesitation, but everyone agreed the story was interesting, “Although everyone agreed that the series was ‘interesting,’ the opinions were divided into ‘the series needs corrections group’ and ‘the series is good as it is group.’ I believe no one said the series wasn’t any good but there were some who thought the series needed some work.”
Fans are definitely glad the series worked out, and eventually became the huge success it has been. It’s such a huge success, in fact, that the franchise will be getting the fourth season of its anime later this October and its second theatrical release this year too. It’s huge now!
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.
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