My Hero Academia is quickly coming to its climatic moment, where Izuku Midoriya has to put it all on the line to defeat Tomura Shigaraki, while somehow still “saving” the soul of Tenko Shimura inside of him.
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In My Hero Academia Chapter 413 we see Deku and the past users of One For All put their do-or-die plan into motion. (SPOILERS) Shigaraki’s All For One theft of Fourth User Hikage Shinomori and his danger sense exposed OFA’s potentially fatal weakness that the rival AFO power (backed by Shigaraki’s will) could finally exploit: picking OFA apart one quirk at a time.
With that harsh reality on the table, the spirit of Second User Kudo takes command just as he did in the prior war against All For One. Thanks to some remnant of Star and Stripe still being alive inside of Shigaraki, All Might can confirm and pass along the info that there is indeed some small crack in Shigaraki’s soul where “Tenko” might still be reachable. The key is breaking that gap open when “Shigaraki” has fortified his soul in the shell of hatred and rage.
Kudo uses the tragic loss of Shinomori as a teachable moment; he deduces that if AFO can pierce into OFA and pull out one user’s quirk/soul at a time, then Deku can also transfer OFA one individual quirk at a time. The previous users all argue about the nature of transference for a bit, but Kudo’s end theory is that the transfer of power doesn’t have to be passive – it can very much be wielded aggressively. By hitting AFO Shigaraki on a spiritual/metaphysical level, Kudo theorizes that they can destroy the unstoppable supervillain in a way he can’t regenerate from.
This latest turn in My Hero Acadeamia’s Final War is the metaphoric climax that many fans figured creator Kohei Horikoshi would go for, in some form. The twin powers of OFA and AFO will presumably cancel each other out (or achieve balance, depending on your view); Izuku will likely have to expel many of the users and quirks inside of him in order to get at Shigaraki’s core, while Shigaraki’s spiritual “redemption” will likely bring AFO and its voracious hunger for stolen gifts to an end.
It’s a sensible outcome that would presumably leave Deku still active as a hero, just less powerful, while a renewed Tenko would have the opportunity to consider something more noble than a life of hatred and destruction. Since One For All is also an echo of trauma across generations, it only makes sense metaphorically that the bulk of that trauma (Yoichi Shigaraki, Kudo, Bruce, Hikage, Nana Shimura – even All Might) gets expelled along with AFO’s dark stain. It’s even more important that Izuku finally let go of the past generation (and his duty to All Might) and truly became a new hero for his generation.
My Hero Academia is releasing new chapters free online.
