My Hero Academia Theory Sets Up All For One’s Poetic Downfall

My Hero Academia is in the heated throes of its Final War Arc, and for the first time since the series began, we may have our first hint as to how the villain overlord All For One will meet his final downfall. A lot of fans have always thought that it was Izuku Midoriya and/or All Might’s destiny to bring down All for One, but thanks to the latest chapter of My Hero Academia’s manga, it seems more likely that the person who actually defeats All For One will be… himself. 

WARNING: My Hero Academia Manga SPOILERS Follow! 

In My Hero Academia Chapter 355, the pro hero team is focusing in on their main objective in the Final War: stopping All For One, once and for all. All Might’s ambitious divide-and-conquer plan put All For One on a battlefield facing the top pro heroes Hawks and Endeavor – but the heroes’ best soldiers still weren’t enough. 

Hawks and Endeavor needed a last-minute save from Class 1-A’s Fumikage Tokoyami and Kyoka Jiro. During that rescue, Jiro revealed a greater power than anyone ever expected from her: the young hero’s sound powers were turned against All For One, and instead of doing physical damage, Jiro’s powers awakened the souls of the quirks All For One had stolen and stored up inside of himself. Suddenly, the AFO armada of stolen quirks is looking like the key to the big villain’s fall! 

That would certainly be poetic: All For One’s character has been defined by the horror he’s caused by hunting down and stealing power from quirk users for decades, turning their gifts into perverse weapons for evil. Through Deku’s story with the One For All power we’ve come to learn that quirks are more than just powers – they indeed have traces of the user’s “soul” imbedded in them. So the horror All For One has caused has never ended for victims – but now they can find their own justice, rather than having a hero “save” or “avenge” them. 

This is pretty much everything the story of My Hero Academia has been building toward all along: a thematic point that only together through collective, unified, action can we “save” society, the world, or ourselves. All For One has always been selfish above all else – even his parental bond with Tomura Shigaraki was a farce, as All For One just wanted to eventually possess the young boy’s body for himself. Meanwhile, Izuku has had to learn and embrace that stopping the villains isn’t his sole destiny, but that the collective efforts of OFA’s previous users and all the school and/or pro hero friends Izuku has made are the real key to stopping All For One. 

At this point, there’s pretty much no one left who doesn’t want to take All For One down (execpt his most loyal and crazy lieutenants). But it’s going to be sweet if all the villain’s many years of making himself indestructible from the outside is undone by all the rottenness inside of him. 

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