My Hero Academia Sparks Wild Theory About All For One's Origins

My Hero Academia's milestone manga chapter 400 contains a reveal that has sparked a wild theory about the origin of All For One, the series' big bad!

As the Final War Arc reaches its climatic final battle between Izuku Midoriya and Tomura Shigaraki, their respective predecessors All Might and All For One have been locked in on their final showdown. Even without his quirk powers, All Might has proven resourceful, fighting in an Iron Man-style suit loaded with technological adaptations of Class 1-A's various quirks. As the battle unfolds, All Might discovers a key detail about All For One: The Rewind quirk he's been using to restore himself to full power and vitality is getting stronger and stronger with each bit of damage AFO takes. In My Hero Academia Chapter 400, All Might pushes the battle to the point where All For One's physical form regresses back to the age of a young boy. 

However, when All For One's young form is revealed, All Might notes a significant detail about his appearance: "His whole body's glowing?!" 

MHA Theory: All For One Was the The "Luminescent Baby"

If you remember your My Hero Academia lore, then you may remember that the origin story of quirk powers started with a single child: The Luminescent Baby. That child (and the divine metaphor he represented) emitted a bright light from inside his body, signaling to the world that extraordinary powers were a reality. 

But how likely is the theory that All For One is The Luminescent Baby? 

On the surface, it seems like the timeline wouldn't fit – but that's not exactly a confirmed fact. As the lore of My Hero Academia goes, the Luminescent Baby's appearance sparked an entire wave of quirks appearing in the world. When criminals manifested powers, that first wave of supervillains, and fractured society with new prejudices between powered and non-powered people. Non-powered humans formed the first era of Vigilantes to battle the supervillains, while All For One first appeared on the scene as a would-be savior, moving quirks between people who wanted quirks and those who didn't, to create "balance" while also secretly building his own evil army. 

The exact timeline of all of the above events has never been concretely defined in My Hero Academia, so there is definite room for the twist that All For One is the same man for first started the entire process of quirks. However, it's unclear how that reveal adds any thematic weight to the story, other than making All For One's evil reign feel even more horrific and tragic, in his fall from being a cute baby full of light to an evil monster full hunger to consume all quirks. Do we really need that? 

My Hero Academia releases new chapters free online.