My Hero Academia’s Final Volume Honors One of Shonen Jump’s Best Traditions

With the final volume of My Hero Academia set to finally release in Japan in December 2024, fans are more excited than ever to pick up the book an say their final farewells to Class 1-A, their mentors, and every other person who influenced the events of the series. The final volume promises 38 pages of brand-new content to help tie together any loose ends left behind from the manga’s serialized release, but that’s far from the only bittersweet detail in the final book. In true Shonen Jump fashion, My Hero Academia‘s final volume honors an age-old tradition for collected, final volumes from the magazine.

Many fans caught on to how well Volume 42 of My Hero Academia mirrors its first rather quickly, but actually putting the two books together is a truly bittersweet experience. The shonen demographic often tells coming-of-age stories, and in many ways, seeing how much each character has grown leading up to the grand finale is a perfect bookend for whatever journey they’ve endured. My Hero Academia isn’t the first series to take part in this tradition, but seeing just how much respect and love Horikoshi has for the medium through his participation is extremely heartwarming.

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My Hero Academia Isn’t the First Manga To Honor Its Journey Through Cover Art Parallels

While My Hero Academia‘s final volume beautifully pairs its first by showing the students from Class 1-A – and even a few important faces from Class 1-B – all grown up and living their lives as pro-heroes and mentors guiding the next generation, other Shonen Jump series have had similar bittersweet cover parallels. One of the more recent examples of this is the cover art for Volume 45 of Haikyu!!, which is a 1:1 recreation of its first collected volume’s cover, featuring Hinata and Kageyama all grown up, still wearing the same determined faces that they had at the beginning of their journey. Gintama‘s final volume also mirrors its first, but, instead of depicting the series’ protagonist, Gintoki, by himself, he’s instead surrounded by every friend he’s made over the course of the series.

Shonen action series aren’t the only series taking place in the trend, however, with the classic romance manga Nisekoi having a similar cover art parallel on its final volume, which released all the way back in October 2016. The series’ 25th and final volume features the main characters in the exact same pose as Volume 1, but showed off how much Naoshi Komi had grown as an artist throughout the series’ publication. In many ways, the My Hero Academia Volume 42 artwork takes a bit of inspiration from each of these. Not only does the cover art show how much Horikoshi has grown as a manga creator, it also shows how much each of the main cast have grown since the first chapter of My Hero Academia originally began serializing. By putting Deku in the same position All Might was in Volume 1, it truly shows that Deku has managed to live up to the expectations he set for himself, and has truly become a mentor and inspiration for younger generations.

H/T Oricon on X (Formerly Twitter)