My Hero Academia Clues in on Shigaraki's Identity Crisis With Hidden Detail
My Hero Academia has clued fans even more in on Tomura Shigaraki's ongoing identity crisis with a hidden detail in the newest chapter of the series! The final battle between the heroes and villains has now officially begun as Kohei Horikoshi has kicked off a new phase of the Final Act, and Tomura Shigaraki has been successfully separated from All For One for the first leg of this new battle. Shigaraki's growing power has been one of the heroes' major concerns, but fans have also seen that he's begun to fracture mentally as a result of everything All For One has done to him.
As All For One's power continues to take over Shigaraki's body, fans have seen how the two villains are fusing mentally. Shigaraki has been fighting back against All For One's control, but the more he accepts its power the more he has been losing his central sense of self. Now in the newest chapter of the series it's revealed that this inner struggle has not only continued, but taken on a brand new shape as Shigaraki now sees that version of All For One within him as a different version of himself. A version that he emphasizes is separate from him, but still him.
Chapter 346 of My Hero Academia picks up right after the heroes successfully push the villains through Monoma's copied warp gates into completely separate battlefields. Shigaraki's battlefield is revealed to be a version of U.A. that has been sent flying into the sky in order to keep him as isolated as possible, and he begins to realize what kind of situation he's really in. As Shigaraki realizes he's alone, he importantly says that it doesn't matter. He even notably says, "Hey – Don't take over my head this time, Me." So he understands that All For One took over his body before, but now sees it as a version of himself that took over.
The fusion between the two villains has reached such a point that Shigaraki does view All For One as a version of himself, but he also is fighting back against it so hard that it's still a version of "himself" that is separated from his own consciousness. It's a complicated situation for the villain, and even more complicated for the heroes as now it's clear that All For One's influence has dug deeper into Shigaraki than they might have realized at this point.
Separating them physically might not have been enough if Shigaraki is thinking of himself in this way, but what do you think? How do you feel about the progression of Shigaraki's identity crisis? What do you think it means for Izuku's final confrontation with the villain in the future? 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!