My Hero Academia Artwork Gives Bakugo A Dragon Ball Z Makeover

My Hero Academia is at a much different place now than it was when the manga first began five years ago, and the similarities between it and other action series running in Shueisha’s Weekly Shonen Jump have fallen by the wayside. But when the series began, fans couldn’t help but make connections for the rivalry between Izuku Midoriya and Katsuki Bakugo and another famous rivalry in Akira Toriyama’s Dragon Ball franchise.

Artist OrngeStar took that connection one step further and imagined a whole Dragon Ball Z style makeover for Bakugo that gives him an eerily appropriate angular look. Check out the work shared to Reddit below!

Giving Bakugo Vegeta’s larger forehead hilariously does wonders for the character. Not only is a great representation of how Bakugo’s personality mirrors Vegeta’s, but it’s also a good example of how malleable Kohei Horikoshi’s original character designs are. The fact that someone like Bakugo could be bent in this way to look more like Vegeta and still look very much like himself makes for a strong character in both design and personality.

Fans have already taken this connection even further by imagining just how this mash-up would work. With Bakugo’s fierce demeanor, he’d probably fit right into the powerful world of Dragon Ball’s fights. Shouting things like “Dekurot,” there’s a good chance that Bakugo would win himself some World Martial Arts Tournaments. But given that the Dragon Ball fighters are used to dealing with all kinds of abilities, there’s a good chance that they’ll have some tricks up their sleeves to deal with Bakugo’s explosive quirk.

But he’d probably fit better than Izuku Midoriya, whose One For All quirk use would leave him with quite a few openings considering he doesn’t incorporate many actual techniques into his direct punches and kicks. The heroic training might make for a fun looking bouts, but they’d have some work to do in the Dragon Ball world.

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 both a fourth season of the anime and second big anime film too.