My Hero Academia Explains the Dark Truth Behind One For All’s Past Users

My Hero Academia explained the dark truth behind One For All’s past users with the final episode of the anime’s fifth season! Season 5 of the series evolved both the heroes and the villains in some very interesting ways as they prepare to clash in an even bigger fashion than ever before with the next season, and while the final episodes focused on the villains, the actual finale reunited fans with Izuku Midoriya. The season began with Izuku unlocking a brand new power within One For All and here he realized it carried many more secrets than he ever could imagine. 

After realizing that not only will he gain access to more quirks thanks to One For All’s evolution, but he’ll find out more about those who held the power before him. In the final episode of the season, All Might reveals some of the more darker truths behind the power and it’s explained that those who previously held it weren’t exactly chosen to be successors much like Izuku was. In fact, the power was just passed onto someone nearby as part of the never ending battle to keep the One For All power away from All For One. 

When Izuku learns that the next quirk he’ll be learning belonged to Nana Shimura, and learns more about the fifth user Daigoro Banjo’s Blackwhip ability, Katsuki Bakugo asserts that they were weak quirks. While this seemed like yet another way that Bakugo was trying to keep Izuku down, All Might ends up agreeing with him and says that those who had the power before weren’t exactly the strongest out there. This was actually something born out of necessity during the peak of All For One’s tyranny. 

All Might explained that All For One was so obsessed with finding One For All that we would completely destroy any seemingly strong person that popped up. To keep the power away from the villain, the past users just kept passing it along to one another as much as they could. So it’s not like they were sought out as successors for their strength, each of them happened to be someone who could be entrusted to carry on the power as long as they could before All For One took them out. 

So unlike All Might and Izuku, who had been able to practice with their abilities and work under their masters, the previous users were stuck in such a brutal fight that passing on the power to someone they could trust was the last move each of them could make with their lives. But we’ll be seeing more about this in the next season, so what did you think of this reveal about One For All’s past? Let us know all of your thoughts about it in the comments! You can even reach out to me directly about all things animated and other cool stuff @Valdezology on Twitter!