New My Hero Academia Villain Draws Major Comparison to X-Men’s Storm

My Hero Academia will soon be launching its second feature film effort in Japan, and in this will be a new villain experimented on by the same doctor that oversaw All For One. At the center of My Hero Academia: Heroes Rising is the villain Nine, a mysterious individual who has nine quirks in his body. While many of the details behind this new villain’s power and motivations are still a mystery as of this writing, with the film holding a special premiere in Japan now new details have begun to surface that draw close connections to the Marvel hero, Storm of the X-Men.

The special manga companion releasing alongside the film in Japan revealed new details for Nine’s abilities (as spotted by @aitaikimochi on Twitter), and confirms that his main quirk is controlling the weather. Able to conjure rain, tornados, and lightning, it’s much like the Marvel hero Storm.

X-Men’s Storm has the ability to command the weather and conjure very much the same types of bad weather than Nine will be able to, and considering that she has very little limits to her power it makes Nine all the more fearsome. Especially now that he’s got a powerful base quirk on top of eight other powers still hiding within his body. This isn’t the only comparison to the Marvel universe in the new film either as the villain Slice also shares some similarities to the hero Medusa.

My Hero Academia has had a lot of connections to Western superheroes, and the X-Men tend to be one of the more popular choices as its base premise of a world full of superpowered people is a perfect parallel to My Hero Academia’s. My Hero Academia: Heroes Rising had a preview screening on December 5th, but will be opening in full December 20th in Japan. There’s no confirmation of an English language release for the film just yet, however.

The film is currently described as such, “A must-see story full of passion!! In this movie, Deku, Bakugo, Ochaco, Todoroki, and all the other members of Class A will make an appearance! Even though All Might was admired by [many] all around the world, it was with a sad heart that he had to give up his hero role as the Symbol of Peace. Because of this, a dark force who was moving behind the scenes, a villain named Nine who can be considered the greatest villain thus far.”

The film will be directed by Kenji Nagasaki, who has directed the four seasons of the anime and first movie, with character designs from Yoshihiko Umakoshi, Yosuke Kuroda will be providing the script, Yuki Hayashi will be composing the music for the new film, and like the first film, series creator Kohei Horikoshi will be contributing new character designs and acting as creative supervisor.