My Hero Academia Creator Explains How He Crafts the Villains
My Hero Academia has some of the most memorable villains in action manga and anime today, and the creator behind the series opened up about his approach to bringing villains to the series! Kohei Horikoshi's long running manga franchise is now in the middle of its Final Act as the heroes and villains are now heating up in their final battle in the series overall. Before the final battle, fans got to see the heroes and villains prepare for this final conflict in their respective ways and it was clear that the villains are bringing just as much baggage to the finale as the heroes are.
As fans have seen through many of the past arcs of the series focusing just as much on the villain perspectives on the situation as it does the heroes, series creator Kohei Horikoshi has a strong grasp on the villains for each of the battles. Explaining about how he comes up with new villains for the series in the latest issue of Shueisha's Jump GIGA magazine (as spotted by @Atsushi101X on Twitter), Horikoshi remarked that he creates villains with an easily recognizable visual motif of some sort at first before moving forward.
Elaborating on this further, Horikoshi gave an example with Toga's hair. Noting that her design makes her hair resemble a Spider Lily, he makes sure they each have a noticeable visual motif so that if you are not fully aware of what makes a villain tick, at least with that notable visual even casual fans will be able to remember each of the villains. Like Toga's hair, Dabi's scars, and more. That can be seen in especially the main members of the League of Villains before they became a much larger unit, and it's hard to deny that each one is visually gripping.
While each of the villains can be lost in the shuffle for much of the series when it really gets going, it's hard to argue against the villains for each of them when compared to many of the other villains seen in the rest of the pages of Shueisha's Shonen Jump magazine. It's a shame that each of their focused arcs had to be cut so short before the grand finale, but what do you think? How do you feel about My Hero Academia's villains compared to other action series? 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!