Despite My Hero Academia officially coming to an end in August 2024, fans are still celebrating the legacy that the series is leaving behind. With the release of the manga’s final volume right around the corner, it’s been officially announced that My Hero Academia will be getting a brand-new art exhibition in summer 2025 with a hauntingly stunning new illustration of Deku and Shigaraki being released to promote the event. The illustration depicts Deku and Shigaraki sitting side-by-side in the same outfits they wear during the final arc of the manga, looking forward.
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You can check out the promo here.
The piece boasts other small details, too, including showing Deku’s eyes being illuminated by sunlight while Shigaraki’s remain in the shadows. While it may not seem like much at a glance, the piece perfectly illustrates the dichotomy between the two characters, and how they serve as natural foils to one another in the series, and ultimately serve as a continuation of the villainous rivalry between All For One and One For All that was established when the series began. While most My Hero Academia fans would likely agree that Bakugo ticks the box of being the perfect rival archetype – in the same vein as Sasuke Uchiha in Naruto – Shigaraki fills another vital niche that’s strangely overlooked in the modern age of shonen manga.
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The Relationship Between Deku & Shigaraki Plays Into a Classic Shonen Trope in the Best Way Possible
In My Hero Academia, the story initially opens by introducing its main character: Izuku Midoriya. Quirkless but filled with passion and a yearning to become a hero himself, Midoriya goes against everything society has told him he should be capable to rush into the face of danger and rescue his childhood friend and bully, Bakugo. From that point forward, Izuku – dubbed Deku by Bakugo – is drawn into the world of heroes and villains. Shigaraki is introduced to readers for the first time in Chapter 11 of the manga, titled “Bakugo’s Starting Line.” Though ambiguous, his introduction immediately challenges the core message of My Hero Academia, as Shigaraki’s goal is to “snuff out” the light that heroes emanate to give the general public hope. Shigaraki slowly begins to appear more and more throughout the manga, and once the series begins to reach the “final war” arc, fans finally get to see why Shigaraki is the way that he is.
As revealed in the manga, Shigaraki, who was originally named Tenko Shimura, grew up in a completely normal household and generally lived a normal life. One day, he came into contact with All For One, who stole the boy’s original quirk, ultimately making him Quirkless. Unlike Deku, though, All For One orchestrated Shimura’s upbringing from the very beginning, with aims to turn him into a perfect vessel. While Shimura was a devoted fan of heroes, another similarity shared by Deku in their youth, his family often shot down his ambitions instead of nurturing them. This ultimately culminates in Shimura committing a selfless, heroic act to save his friends. He’s taken home by All For One who transfers the Decay quirk to Shimura before handing him off to his parents. Shimura’s father is angered by his sons heroics and pulls him away to punish him; Shimura eventually retaliates by activating Decay, which tragically kills his entire family. The moment radically changes the young boy, and All For One takes him in as his “disciple.”
Deku and Shigaraki’s backstories, unsurprisingly, perfectly mirror one another. Where Deku was nurtured from a young age to pursue his passions regardless of the hand he was dealt, Shigaraki was instead ridiculed by his own father and groomed into becoming a monster by All For One. Hero society isn’t perfect, and those harsh societal issues are things that All For One was able to prey upon when orchestrating Shigaraki’s existence from a wonder-filled child into the perfect, malicious vessel. To return to the Naruto comparison, the dichotomy between the two characters is similar to that between Naruto Uzumaki and Gaara in Naruto. The two young men had extremely similar backstories that only deviated due to one actually being lifted up by those around him. Unlike Gaara, though, Shigaraki was far too gone to be saved.
