'My Hero Academia' Reveals How Shinso's Brainwashing Really Works

Shinso has one of the most intriguing quirks in My Hero Academia, but his brainwashing ability has a lot of rules that he needs to follow. The latest chapter of the manga further elaborates on this.

As the latest chapter explains exactly how Shinso's quirk works, the details prove just how effective of a hero he can be.

To get his brainwashing to work, Shinso first needs to focus on a target. If that target responds to one of his questions, then they are forced to do anything he wishes. It depends on the person's condition, and as Midoriya proved during the Sports Festival, the opponent can be knocked out of it with a big enough shock.

Shinso says he's never tested using it on multiple targets, and assumes it would just make him pass out, too. The quirk is limited to a single opponent at a time, and he can't make his targets do anything — like speak or use higher brain functions — to accomplish a task.

The example he uses for this is that he can tell his target to write out a person's name, but can't make them pull up the name from nowhere. As for how he deals with someone ignoring his ability, he now has his special Persona Chords, which changes the frequency of his voice with special plates in the mask.

Though Shinso uses his quirk to great effect in the latest chapter, Class 1-B is able to break from his brainwashing pretty easily. Shinso still has a lot of work to do in order to make his quirk truly battle ready, but with a mentor like Aizawa teaching him about the binding cloth, he has a chance to succeed. Fans certainly have their eyes glued to Shinso to see just how far he'll go.

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 super 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 collected into 19 volumes so far, and has been licensed by Viz Media for an English language release since 2015.