My Hero Academia revealed Nana Shimura’s most heartbreaking mistake with the newest episode of the anime series! The fifth season of the series is nearing its end by tackling a new arc focused on Tomura Shigaraki and the League of Villains as they battle a villainous new group, the Meta Liberation Army. Through this fight we have gotten a much better understanding of Shigaraki and the other members thus far as they have faced against their toughest challenges, and the newest episode provided the best look into Shigaraki’s past in the anime yet.
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After giving brief glimpses into Shigaraki’s origins with previous episodes of the anime’s My Villain Academia arc, the newest episode finally gave fans the full look at Shigaraki’s childhood as the young Tenko Shimura. By sharing this look at Nana Shimura’s grandson, we not only got to see some of the extended family she left behind but also saw that leaving from a much different and heartbreaking perspective. In fact, from her son’s point of view, it was a major mistake that Shimura never quite was able to make up for.
While it was previously revealed that because of One For All’s burden and mission, Nana Shimura ended up having to leave her son behind. She was constantly under attack from All For One, and couldn’t put her son in danger. This ultimately led to her grandson, Tenko, to be taken in by the villain years later. But as we see in Episode 111 of the series, Shimura made a major mistake in how she ended up leaving her son. Because not only did she end up having to abandon her son, Kotaro, but didn’t really explain the full reason why.
The episode Shigaraki’s father, Kotaro Shimura, reflected on how his mother left as he still kept the letter she wrote to him back then. Revealing that she had to leave him to “go fight some really bad guys” because those bad guys “might be mean” to him. So while she apologizes in the letter, it seems she couldn’t completely bring herself to tell him the entire truth. And because she treated her son with kid gloves (and eventually was killed before she could presumably tell her son the truth), Kotaro ended up creating a future villain.
He resented his mother so much that he came to hate the idea of heroes altogether as all he knows is that his mother had abandoned him to save others. This resentment turned into the full abuse of his son, and eventually led to the entire death of his family as a result of that constant abuse. Shimura left her son a broken person, and while we know why she had to leave, the fact that she seems to have done so in such a cold, and admittedly lying manner really harmed her son’s future despite her trying to save it by leaving.
It wasn’t intentional, but it’s clear that Nana deeply hurt her son by trying to save his life. But what did you think of this reveal? Does it make you see Nana Shimura in a new way? 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!
