My Hero Academia‘s latest manga chapter has made the case (better than ever) for why the franchise needs a prequel series after the current series completes its final arc(s). In chapter 310 of the manga, My Hero Academia finally made the crucial reveal of how the power of One For All really came about. That backstory included the reveal of just who All For One’s brother is, and why he made the choice to pass down OFA to its second user. We also finally got to meet OFA’s Second and Third users, and learn all about the dark time they came from.
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…And it’s that exact time period that would make for a great My Hero Academia prequel series.
(Warning My Hero Academia Manga SPOILERS Follow!)
In chapter 310 “Masters and Pupil” we finally get the key flashback to when Izuku Midoriya was comatose, following the battle with All For One during the War arc. We knew that Izuku was transported into the realm of OFA while in his comatose state, where the previous users sat him down for a discussion about donating their full support to Izuku. OFA’s originator Yoichi Shigaraki gets the support of most of the other users (Hikage Shinomori, Daigoro Banjo, En, Nana Shimura, Toshinori Yagi), but the Second and Third users were the big final holdouts. Now we know why.
In the latest chapter, Deku has a flashback to how his meeting with OFA’s Second and Third users ultimately played out. What we learn is that the Second and Third users were heroes from the dark era where All For One and his cult of evildoers reigned over society, and the heroes of the time battled fiercely to stop him. It was during that war that two heroes discovered Yoichi Shigaraki being held captive by his brother, and made the world-changing decision to embrace their enemy’s brother as an ally.
This reveal about OFA is significant for My Hero Academia’s story of Izuku’s rise to become the greatest hero of his generation. However, it’s also a big window into a time period that could definitely sustain its own series focus. A prequel about Yoichi allying with the heroes of the ‘Dark Age’ (for lack of a better term), would be backstory – but in some ways, it would be even more timely than the current story.
Exploring how society was seduced and brainwashed by a villain like All For One is a great metaphor for how so many different cultures of the world are currently dealing with radicalization and violence. It would also be a drastically different vision of the world of quirks that Kohei Horikoshi has imagined – even different than the “early days” before the main series, which has been explored in the Vigilantes spinoff.
But unlike Vigilantes, this prequel about the era of the Second and Third OFA users would have much more direct ties to the main My Hero Academia story – albeit with a much more adult tone. These heroes (by the admittance of OFA’s Third user) would kill just to stay alive, and we already know there would be some very tragic deaths along the way. There’s already a core friendship (Yoichi and his two successors) to anchor that tragedy, and a great family story (Yoichi and All For One) to create the emotional core.
We would love to see the early days of One For All’s rise explored in a My Hero Academia prequel series – how about you?
My Hero Academia releases new chapters Free Online weekly.
