My Hero Academia is heavily inspired by western superhero comics but it actually has a big advantage over DC and Marvel that it needs to exploit.
Warning! Contains spoilers for My Hero Academia! Famous comics My Hero Academy is heavily inspired by classic Marvel and DC superhero comics, but it actually has one big advantage over them that it needs to exploit to turn its ending into a masterpiece. Mangaka Kohei Horikoshi has made no secret of his love for Marvel and DC superheroes, even admitting to having directly based the Spider-Man-based Sero character. But while the superhero comic and the characters that My Hero Academia inspired each have their own strengths, they also have a glaring weakness that the manga fails to emulate.
Western superhero comics are not designed to end. Writers and artists may finish telling a certain story they want to tell, but the characters they explore will inevitably continue under different creative teams. This can be a huge strength as longtime fans of DC and Marvel will be seeing exciting new interpretations of their favorite characters. But it also leads to the constant respawning of dead characters. Even deaths during major events like Superman’s Death will eventually be reversed. This can lessen the emotional impact when a Western superhero or supervillain dies because fans never really believe that the character is gone forever. This is where My Hero Academia definitely has the edge.
Unlike DC & Marvel, My Hero Academia Can Kill Its Heroes
While My Hero Academia is already popular enough to make its own spin-off title, it is a Shonen Jump series and thus ultimately designed to end. While there may be other side stories to follow and expand on it, like Boruto did for Naruto, there wouldn’t be an expectation that every character in the series would have to live to potentially be used again in the future. a day later. Even a manga like One Piece that has adopted that approach throughout its serialization has begun to permanently kill off its characters, and One Piece mangaka Eiichiro Oda has teased many deaths. than in the Final Saga. So it can be predicted that not every character involved in My Hero Academia’s final war arc will survive and with this knowledge their death will have much of an impact in terms of more emotional.
The series showed the power of this with Twice’s tragic death during the Paranormal Liberation War. That death was incredibly emotional, in part because it convinced fans that Twice would never return. While Toga brought back her power and appearance in The Last War, this is more of a part of her character arc than Twice’s actual revival. However, in Final War, Horikoshi also squandered this advantage when using Edgeshot to rescue Bakugo from a seemingly fatal wound. This completely removed the emotional impact of Bakugo’s massive death in My Hero Academia and made fans question whether the series could really kill its main characters.
The final arc of war is still ongoing, so it’s unclear how many of its most important heroes and villains will die. Horikoshi could certainly make for a satisfying ending where none of the main characters left died, but this won’t take advantage of the advantage it has over the inspiration. To make the ending as impactful as possible My Hero Academy need to make the most of his unique ability to destroy his superheroes.