‘My Hero Academia’ Teases Midoriya’s Connection to Toga’s Past

My Hero Academia‘s latest arc has seen more of a focus on the villains as the manga introduces a huge villainous new faction: the Meta Liberation Army. Shigaraki has been building up the League of Villains following the wake of the Internship arc of the series, and the series has been teasing more of an exploration into each of the League of Villains members. And like Shigaraki before, fans got to learn a little more about Toga.

As Toga fights an investigative reporter who leads part of the Meta Liberation Army, part of the new foe Curious’ tactics is that she openly talks about Toga’s past and those reveals lead to a unique connection between Midoriya and Toga’s life before becoming a mass murderer.

Curious openly details Toga’s past before she became a murderer in Chapter 225 of the series, and fans realize that Toga is 17 an ran away from home just after graduating middle school. Curious says that the press interviewed Toga’s family and friends and they all wondered why Toga “did what she did.” Curious asks why Toga abandoned all “hope of a normal life,” and while the answer isn’t directly stated there is a vital clue as to why Toga became murderous. And this is where the Midoriya connection kicks in.

Chapter 225 features a dialogue-less flashback in which Toga is standing with a bunch of laughing schoolmates. Her face itself is blocked out with a “mask” of sorts, and a quick glimpse reveals an injured student that looks just like the scruffy haired Midoriya. He seems to be fighting someone while everyone else laughs, and this presumably is what causes Toga to crack.

Later in the chapter, the mask itself breaks as Toga’s now infamous smile appears while she holds a bloodied box cutter in her hand. So seeing this kid who looked like Midoriya hurt in some way is what caused her to presumably commit her first violent act. Though fans are still waiting to see more of an exploration into her psyche, this does explain some of her actions in the past.

Her closeness when she attacks Midoriya, and her crush on him more specifically, seemed like they were branches off of Hero Killer Stain’s mentality. But this look back into her past reveals that the connection is much deeper than a strange obsession. She sees this past figure in Midoriya, and hopefully fans will find out more about that connection soon.

My Hero Academia was created by Kohei Horikoshi and has been running in Shueisha’s Weekly Shonen Jump since July 2014. The story follows Izuku Midoriya, who lives in a world where everyone has powers, even though he was born without them. Dreaming to become a superhero anyway, he’s eventually scouted by the world’s best hero All Might and enrolls in a school for professional heroes. The series has been licensed by Viz Media for an English language release since 2015.

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