Did My Hero Academia Just Confirm Izuku x Ochaco With an Easter Egg?

My Hero Academia is at the finish line, and even still, it is drawing all kinds of debate online. The hit superhero series has one chapter left to go. Creator Kohei Horikoshi has spent the last decade building up Deku’s journey, so as you can imagine, fans are pouring over every update from its epilogue. This truth put chapter 429 under a microscope, and fans are wondering if one clever reference from My Hero Academia just set sails for the Izuku x Ochaco ship.

Alright, let’s unpack the situation here. In the most recent chapter of My Hero Academia, fans are reunited with Izuku and Ochaco as they have a heart-to-heart. It is there Izuku confronts his best friend about putting others before herself, and he lets Ochaco leans on him after declaring her his hero. The entire exchange is moving, but many expected the moment to end in a confession. Ochaco has admitted her crush on Deku privately, and many fans felt Izuku was just the same. So of course, fans of the ship were left wanting after this encounter.

However, that may not be where the story ends. In the first few spreads of chapter 429, My Hero Academia fans spotted a curious panel. The shot shows a man delivering a recently shipped box of green tea. You may not think anything of this nod, but in Japan, it has another meaning entirely.

After all, the Izuku x Ochaco ship in Japan is often referred to as… green tea. The ‘midori’ part of Izuku’s full name means green in Japanese, and the ‘ocha’ in Ochaco translates to tea. If you put the two together, you get green tea, of course. My Hero Academia chapter 429 is a chapter all about these two characters, and it happens to feature a shipment of green tea? Well, fans of the manga think that reference is too much to be a coincidence.

Of course, nothing is made official in My Hero Academia chapter 429, so fans are left to interpret things for themselves. That choice in up to readers to make. And so long as now fan-wars crop up from the debate, we are sure Horikoshi would approve.

Want to know more about My Hero Academia? You can find the full manga on the Shonen Jump app. So for more info on the hit shonen series, you can read its official synopsis below:

“Izuku has dreamt of being a hero all his life-a lofty goal for anyone, but especially challenging for a kid with no superpowers. That’s right, in a world where eighty percent of the population has some kind of super-powered “quirk,” Izuku was unlucky enough to be born completely normal. But that’s not enough to stop him from enrolling in one of the world’s most prestigious hero academies.”

What do you think about this little cameo? Let us know what you think over on Twitter and Instagram. You can also hit me up @MeganPetersCB to share your take!