Deconstructed Character Archetype / My Hero Academia

My Hero Academia

Deconstructed Character Archetype in this series.

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Heroes

• As the story progresses and Izuku Midoriya undergoes Character Development, it starts to deconstruct several of Midoriya's Stock Shōnen Hero traits, especially during the Dark Hero Arc.
  • The All-Loving Hero. Midoriya's kindness and empathy are his greatest strengths and it was these very traits that made All Might recognize him as his successor. The Dark Hero Arc shows that while these are great traits to have, they can be used against him. A major plot point his him wrestling with the possibility that he may have to kill Tomura Shigaraki even though he views him as a victim of All For One. During his rematch with Muscular, he tries to understand why Muscular is the way he is only to learn the hard way that not everyone can be reasoned with. Not long after that, All For One sends in Lady Nagant, a Hitman with a Heart who has a Dark and Troubled Past to capture him and has her explode right in front of him, knowing full well that Midoriya would try to reach out and try to redeem her.
  • The Ascended Fanboy. Midoriya has always admired All Might even before receiving his Quirk from him. However, at the beginning of the series, his idolization of All Might severely held him back as he tried too hard to mimic All Might's style. It's only after developing Full Cowl and later Shoot Style does he start to move away from imitating All Might and becoming his own hero. And then this trope rears its ugly head again during the Dark Hero Arc where his relentless drive to stop All For One causes him to isolate himself from everyone, including All Might and the Pro Heroes working alongside him, which is what All Might himself did during his run as the Symbol of Peace. It takes Midoriya's friends reminding him that he doesn't have to shoulder the burden alone and he should let his friends fight alongside him.
  • The Chosen One: After his attempt to rescue Bakugo from the Sludge Villain, he is recognized by All Might for his bravery and is chosen to be his successor. Later, after the Paranomral Liberation War Arc, he finds out that only the Quirkless can wield One For All's full power safely and with Quirkless people being less and less common, this makes him potentially the last wielder of One For All and the only one capable of stopping All For One for good. However, as Uraraka states when she defended him from the angry protesters who didn't want him to to rest in his own school, he may have the power to defeat All For One, but he is still a high schooler who has chosen to carry the weight of the world on his shoulders. Even as he is unlocking the true potential of One For All, the responsibilities it carries often overwhelms him and it becomes clear to Uraraka and Bakugo that Midoriya's power and ideals won't be enough. Instead, he has to put as much trust to his friends as he does himself and this power.
  • Determinator. Midoriya's determination is practically a Quirk in its own right. No matter how bleak the situation looks, no matter how stacked the deck is against him, Midoriya never gives up and keeps fighting even at a great personal cost to himself. The Dark Hero Arc takes it to its logical extreme. In his relentless pursuit to stop All For One, Izuku isolates himself from everyone. He leaves U.A High to fight villains and save people round the clock. He doesn't sleep, hardly eats protein bars, and ignores his wounds. And after barely escaping one of All For One's traps, Izuku goes as far as to isolate himself from All Might and the other Pro Heroes. Izuku's drive is so extreme, even his One For All predecessors are concerned for him. It ultimately takes an intervention from all of Class 1-A to bring him to his senses.
• The series uses All Might to pick apart the implications of having a superhero who's The Cape and the Big Good, in several different ways:
  • First off, All Might himself is actively putting on the facade specifically for the sake of giving people someone to look up to. He genuinely is a good person, but the pressure of having to uphold that image repeatedly causes him to doubt whether he really is as much of a hero as he makes himself out to be.
  • All Might essentially is the ideal hero... but this means that he may have set the bar for superheroism a bit too high. On the hero side, it means that other heroes end up with inferiority complexes and/or serious envy when they can't measure up, or worse outright misunderstand his ideals and twist them into something that completely misses the point of what he stands for. On the villain side, a number of villains do respect him, but think every other hero who doesn't stack up to All Might is obviously a false hero who must be eliminated. And then there's the fact that being the Big Good makes him a target for the villains who want to destroy the hero establishment.
  • When All Might retires after using up the last of his powers, it creates a minor crisis as there's nobody else capable of serving as the series' Big Good. Turns out staking everything on one ideal hero is a bit of a problem if said hero can't keep being a hero for whatever reason. In fact, the people responsible for the first Provisional Hero License Exam after All Might's retirement put a strong emphasis on teamwork so society would begin to focus on several heroes at the same time.
  • The above situation also shows a darker aspect of being the Big Good; namely, how while All Might's power was able to inspire righteous people into becoming heroes, it also resulted in people becoming complacent and putting far too much stock into heroes to save them, due to the status quo being seemingly perfect. As a result, not only do they get an unpleasant surprise after he retires, but it turns out this situation also resulted in many marginalized communities falling in between the cracks of the society All Might helped create and defended. People who could have been helped or saved if there was the will of other people to do so, but ultimately didn't occur because of the complacency of the status quo that All Might inadvertently enforced.
• Sir Nighteye deconstructs two things:
  • The Fatalist. He is a firm believer of You Can't Fight Fate; no ifs, ands, or buts about it, and he has a very cynical view of every situation and only sees worst case scenarios. He looks at Izuku as a Sketchy Successor for not having the noticeable heroic qualities and negatively compares him to Mirio, Nighteye's student and the one many believe would've been the next Symbol of Peace before All Might met Izuku. He also criticizes him for wanting to rush in to save Eri from Overhaul without thinking and jeopardize an investigation that's been going on with him. Consequently, his world view hampers his Foresight Quirk (which itself is responsible for his negative attitude in the first place). As he later found out, saving Eri in the first place would have solved all his problems in the big picture, since it would pretty much end Chisaki's operation without her as raw material for the drug fabrication. However, he is not above acknowledging this and he defends Mirio and Izuku from the accusations of a colleague since they were following his orders and thus it was Nighteye's responsibility. His own cynicism would indirectly lead to his own death as well the crippling of Mirio (due to a Quirk-neutralizing drug he was shot with). Furthermore, while Nighteye's caution is warranted given Overhaul's Quirk turns out to be very powerful, he was still alone and as we would later see, Mirio's own Quirk could counter it and along with having Izuku, they could've likely taken Chisaki in, cripple the organization and kept him from the Villain Alliance.
  • Nighteye also deconstructs The Chooser of the One, as he is absolutely insistent that he knows what is best for All Might's power. This leads him to repeatedly attempt to coerce Midoriya to give it up, so that a far "superior" candidate can be chosen instead with Mirio. This causes no shortage of emotional turmoil in Midoriya due to the former's lack of faith and willingness to even give him a chance, as well as proving to be a catalyst for All Might and Nighteye's friendship to go sour. Finally, it also doesn't factor in the reality that Nighteye never considered what would happen if Mirio didn't have any interest in One For All, when the latter chooses to turn down the power even after losing his Quirk.
• Katsuki Bakugo has a couple of these since his worst traits are actually portrayed fairly negatively.
  • Firstly, Bakugo deconstructs The Ace. He is good at almost everything he does, from sports to studies, and has a powerful Quirk to boot. Combined with lots of praise from everyone since he was a child and not enough (if any at all) reprimands considering his attitude towards others, it resulted in him growing up to be a massive Jerkass with a painfully fragile ego. It even results in him failing the Provisional License Exam, since his jerkassery managed to overshadow his skill display.
  • Bakugo also deconstructs Jerk Jock and The Bully pretty early on in the story. Since he has such an amazing quirk and talent with it, he is the most popular student in middle school and beloved by the teachers. This naturally leads to Katsuki assuming that he's better than everyone around him and thus being a total dick to his classmates, with Izuku simply being his most frequent target. Once he's actually in UA, his popularity quickly bottoms out since, instead of commanding their respect, his classmates find him rude, annoying, and creepy. The staff don't give him any special treatment because A. They don't know him and B. They see students with amazing quirks every day, so Bakugo just isn't that special. While Class 1A ultimately comes to accept Bakugo as a talented hero-in-training, they quite simply don't take him or his boasting seriously with only a handful of characters like Kirishima and Kaminari shown being friendly with him at all.
• Endeavor/Enji Todoroki, #2 Hero, deconstructs Unknown Rival. He is motivated by being the best and initially sought to become equal to surpass All-Might. Unfortunately, the physical limitations of his Quirk inhibit him, even after All Might's own crippling. He eventually turns to his children in the hopes they will surpass him and All-Might later on. His wife undergoes Sanity Slippage, injures one of her children and gets put into a mental institution; their eldest son, his initial successor, is heavily implied to be either dead or critically injured since despite his superior Fire Quirk, he inherited his mother's weaker constitution and thus could not handle his own Quirk; two middle children suffer from Parental Neglect (with the older of the two getting Promotion to Parent and becoming the only force that holds the remnants of the family together); and the youngest one, Shoto, is subjected to Training from Hell and isolation from his peers since he was 5, which in the long run leaves him with PTSD and No Social Skills. And to top it all off, Endeavor does become a #1 Hero... not due to his own accomplishments, but solely because All Might is forced to retire, thus making everything he subjected his family to All for Nothing.
  • Immediately afterwards, Endeavor deconstructs The Atoner. After winning the #1 Hero spot on a technicality, a heart-to-heart with All Might convinces Endeavor to reevaluate his life and attempt to fix his mistakes regarding his family. However, Endeavor quickly learns that there are some things that are impossible to reconcile. His wife still fears him, Natsuo still hates him, Fuyumi is willing to be civil for the sake of the family, and Shoto is still on the fence about actually forgiving him. It all boils to a head when Natsuo is attacked by the villain Ending. Endeavor realizes that the damage done to his family is irreparable and decides the best way for them to heal is to cut himself out of their lives. To that end, he moves his family to a safer location while he lives at their old house alone. But then things take a turn for the worst during the Paranormal Liberation War Arc where he learns that his son Touya is still alive...and has become the notorious villain Dabi. And worse still, Dabi has broadcasted all of his family's dirty laundry for all of Japan to see, effectively tarnishing Endeavor's reputation. A brutal demonstration that no matter how much you want to atone for your mistakes, the consequences of your actions will follow you wherever you go. It didn't help that Endeavor never went public with any of this before and simply hoped the past would stay buried. Had Enji been honest about his past sins, it would've thrown a wrench in Dabi's plans.

Villains

• Stain is the deconstruction of the Anti-Villain and the Well-Intentioned Extremist. He makes it clear that he only views All Might, and by extension Izuku, as the only one worthy of being called a hero, while the rest are fakes that need to be culled out. He fails to realize that while many heroes are egotistical, they are still very good at their jobs regardless and make civilians feel at ease. And he fails to even consider that Nominal Heroes might actually realize what they're doing is wrong and change their ways, so rather than using his charisma to inspire a more altruistic and less corrupt hero society he just murders any hero he deems "fake". More over, rather than inspiring heroes to do better, he instead inspires villains to follow in his footsteps and become every bit as ruthless as him. And considering that Stain hates villains as much as he hates "fake" heroes, that's the absolute last thing he would want.
  • There is also the implication that his firm belief in the fact heroes shouldn't be paid for being heroic would lead him to view Uraraka as fundamentally corrupted since she did enter the hero career in the hope to get rich, even though her actual goal of trying to support her family is actually quite noble, while also displaying similar level of altruism as Izuku otherwise.
• Kai Chisaki, alias Overhaul, is a deconstruction of Always Someone Better. Initially, Overhaul appears to be Shigaraki's better in every way: he has more resources, a larger force, is a more effective long-term planner, and his Quirk is even a better version of Shigaraki's Decay. By all accounts, he would have been the next Big Bad, reducing Shigaraki to a Big Bad Wannabe, but it's because of this that Shigaraki steps up his game and ultimately outgambits him. His scale as a potentially worse threat than the League drives both the heroes and villains alike to bring him down, ending with Overhaul's organization dismantled, and Shigaraki removing his arms to render him Quirkless and using him as a stepping stone by reaping the benefits of his life's work.
  • His character also deconstructs the concept of a Hate Sink. His arrogance, condescending treatment of his allies and willingness to kill them at the slightest mistake mean that the only people who are genuinely loyal to him in the Hassaikai are people so broken by society that they're desperate to find a place to fit in, and follow Chisaki's orders at the expense of their own well-being simply because he gave them a place to belong— Something Overhaul clearly only did because he had a use for them, rather than out of genuine kindness. The rank-and-file Mooks in the organization make it clear none of them hold any genuine admiration or respect towards Overhaul and the only reason they don't turn on him is that he would kill them easily if they did. His abhorrent actions in using Eri's body to make his anti-quirk weapons make it easy for Nighteye to arrange a joint multi-agency raid on his hideout in collaboration with the police, both because of the potential threat his plans could bring and because every one of them finds common ground in wanting to stop his horrific treatment of the innocent girl. His antagonism and brutalization of the League, including killing one of their members, fails to cow them into submission, and in fact galvanizes the Ragtag Bunch of Misfits into banding together and even working in tandem with their hated enemies' own attack on Overhaul to take him down, since he ultimately made himself too many enemies for himself to reasonably handle, especially since, unlike All For One, the series' other resident Hate Sink, he doesn't have the charisma to inspire Undying Loyalty in any but the most insane of his followers, leaving him fighting alone by the end.
• The deconstruction of Bad Powers, Bad People goes to Himiko Toga. She was ostracized by her own parents for her obsession with blood even at a young age, despite being specifically because her Quirk is blood-based rather than out of any innate sociopathy. The stress of trying to be "normal" and deny her urges eventually caused her to snap and become the Serial Killer she is today.
• Re-Destro deconstructs The Leader. At first, Re-Destro appears to be the ideal embodiment of the various qualities that go into making a good leader, especially when compared to the seemingly slipshod way that Shigaraki runs his operation. However, because the Meta Liberation Army rigidly revolves around the Cult of Personality built around its leaders, Re-Destro's subordinates are so lacking in initiative that when they come up against the much smaller organized but infinitely more resourceful League of Villains, what should be an overwhelming victory slowly gets dragged out into a war of attrition. Similarly, because of the constant pressure to try and live up to the image of the perfect leader since childhood, Re-Destro has come to find the role suffocating and stressful to the point that it contributes heavily to his decision to hand over leadership of the MLA to Shigaraki.
  • Later, Re-Destro ends up deconstructing the Handicapped Badass. The prosthetic legs he gets to replace the ones he lost in his battle with Shigaraki don't inherently make his Meta Ability any less powerful, but they do make using it difficult. When he and Dark Shadow come to blows during the Paranormal Liberation War Arc, Dark Shadow quickly gains the upper hand and is able to overpower him once Re-Destro's prosthetic legs snap under the weight of his own power.
• Lady Nagant
  • Her characterization deconstructs the Hitman with a Heart. She was used by the Hero Public Safety Commission as a hitman to assassinate potential threats to society even before they commit any crimes, depriving them of due process or even a right to a trial. At first she complied with her orders for the sake of protecting society, but soon the guilt and pressure began to eat away at her to the point of her suffering PTSD and she soon became disillusioned with Hero Society. It all boiled to a head when she confronts the president of the Commission, who not so subtly threatens to have her killed if she attempts to quit, prompting Nagant to shoot him dead and leading to her being the cold and cynical individual she is today. It's further deconstructed in that AFO is implied to have sent her after Izuku specifically because of this trait- not to beat the potential Spanner in the Works before he better masters his powers, but solely just so that Izuku would attempt to reach out to Nagant once he realizes what kind of person she was— and AFO could render his efforts pointless by detonating her right in front of him, using the tragedy of her existence and Izuku's failure to save her to further demoralize the young hero before their proper rematch.
  • Her quirk deconstructs Bad Powers, Good People. Lady Nagant's ability is an organic gun that comes out of her arm, which pairs with her secondary ability to create bullets from her own hair. So what does the government do with this extremely powerful weapon that can fire untraceable rounds which can curve and track a target? Put them to work putting down potential threats. The deconstruction comes in when Nagant, once a warm-hearted and friendly Hero is no longer able to consider herself a good person, instead just a blood stained killer forced to uphold a lie. Ultimately she succumbs to despair, and snaps under the pressure of trying to uphold a society she sees as corrupt.

All For One (Unmarked Spoilers)

Considering that the very existence of All For One is a massive spoiler and how connected he is to almost every other villain in the story as well as the Quirks he’s handled all spoilers on this folder are unmarked!

As the character of Shigaraki/All For One is explored throughout the series, particularly in the final arcs he's gradually revealed to be a deconstruction of classic supervillains such as Lex Luthor, Norman Osborn and the the Joker as well as various tropes associated with such characters.

• In general he’s a deconstruction of the Card-Carrying Villain who commits evil for no other reason than to do it, demonstrating just how depraved and monstrous someone would have to be to actually want to be a villain, exploring the reasons someone might be that way and the Logical Weaknesses that come from it. All For One freely admits one of his long-held goals is to be Hated by All as a testament to his thorough villainy and towards the Grand Finale the negative consequences of actually being such a despicable figure start reflecting back on him to his detriment.
• The Dark Hero Arc deconstructs All For One's status as The Sociopath. He's narcissistic, charismatic, manipulative, intelligent and utterly devoid of empathy. Ironically, it’s because of his sociopathy that he’s unable to accomplish his lifelong goal to steal One For All as it leaves him incapable of generating the emotional growth needed to overcome the will of its Torch Bearers. Hence his goal is to have his Quirk vestige possess his apprentice Shigaraki and use his boundless hatred for Hero Society to steal One For All. This ultimately backfires on him spectacularly during the Final War Arc when Shigaraki's emotional willpower proves stronger, allowing him to retake his body.
• All For One deconstructs the Invincible Villain and Smug Super. All For One is every bit a dangerous threat, however, the final arcs demonstrate his effectiveness is severely hampered by sheer hubris. Almost all of the setbacks he suffers are the results of him underestimating opponents and overestimating his abilities. The heroes even know All For One thinks he can't lose and exploit his arrogance at several points during the Final Battle. Being so used to things going his way leaves him flat-footed when taken off guard.
• Of The Chessmaster, Evil Genius and Diabolical Mastermind. All For One is clever and intelligent but also arrogant and self-absorbed. Just the concept that his enemies might be stronger or smarter than he thinks never even crosses his mind. When they spring a trap on him he can't comprehend how it's possible and finds himself unable to think on the fly.
• The final arcs, particularly his battle with Team Endeavor deconstruct the Ascended Fanboy, namely demonstrating the negative aspects of this trope. What do you get when someone who identifies with and aspires to be a demon lord from an Isekai manga is suddenly granted the power to live out his childhood fantasy? A dangerous megalomaniac with delusions of grandeur. Having been an avid fan of comics as a child, All For One seems to genuinely view the world as an actual comic book starring him as the unstoppable Demon Lord. Naturally this mindset backfires on him constantly as he keeps assuming events will proceed in a certain manner and learns the hard way that Real Life doesn't follow the rules of comic books or other media.
• The Generic Doomsday Villain is also deconstructed. His embracing the role of a villain because he wants to and refusal to grow and change as a person leaves him little more than a caricature of a living being, utterly lacking in depth or redeeming traits. The heroes make no attempts to do anything less than kill him by the time of the Final Battle and nobody truly supports him willingly, instead allying out of desperation and a need for the power he holds to try and make their own dreams come true. Even his vestige admits world domination is hollow and pointless as he realizes too late that his brother Yoichi’s vestige in One For All is long gone. Yet he still pursues this meaningless goal because he understands that villains are expected to do so.
• His battle with Team Endeavor deconstructs the Handicapped Badass and Dark Lord on Life Support. His first battle with All Might left him severely injured to the point he has to rely on life support systems and sensory Quirks to function. During the final battle the collective wills of those whose Quirks he stole start rebelling against him, leaving him open to an attack by Tokoyami that destroys his Cool Mask. Once his mask’s been destroyed his body begins shutting down, leaving him unable to defend himself from Endeavor who burns him alive with a point-blank Prominence Burn. If not for Eri’s Rewind Quirk he would've died then and there.
• The Bad Boss is also deconstructed. Though All For One claims to value subordinates he truly only sees them as tools to be manipulated and discarded at his leisure. And because of how cruelly he treats his underlings none of them are genuinely loyal, only serving him out of either fear or for their own ends and gladly turning on him when the opportunity presents itself. Aoyama and his family help the heroes lure him For One into a trap for the final battle and Lady Nagant, having survived his assassination attempt comes to Midoriya's aid by shooting Shigaraki's hand to prevent him from using his Decay Quirk. His abusive treatment of his underlings is so bad that even Gigantomachia turns on him despite having been the codifier for Blind Obedience towards his master up to that point.
• The Arch-Enemy is another deconstruction. All For One declares Izuku to be his new nemesis during the Dark Hero Arc and goes out of his way to destroy him so he can complete his long-spanning goal of stealing One For All. However, this hyperfixation on Midoriya as well as his sheer arrogance and obsession with comic books causes him to ignore other potential threats to his plans as he sincerely believes he cannot be challenged by anyone other than a user of One For All, viewing other heroes as "jobbers" who exist just to show off his strength. This costs him his life during his fight with Team Endeavor when they, with help from the collective wills of those whose Quirks he stole work together to destroy his life-support mask, allowing Endeavor to nearly burn him alive with Prominence Burn. He has to use Rewind on himself in order to keep fighting and confirms he's ensured his death sentence. More than that, Shigaraki is the one who comes to claim the position of Midoriya's true Arch-Enemy and the de facto Big Bad to boot by suppressing All For One's vestige and even when he regains control it's only because of Midoriya solely focusing on redeeming the Shimura out of Shigaraki. In the end his obsession with Midoriya is the only thing keeping him motivated as he lost everything else to everyone else.
• The Dreaded. All For One's immense powers, resources, imaginative cruelty and sadistic enjoyment of tormenting others makes him a fearsome enemy to all and his stated goal is to be the world's most feared and reviled villain much like the Demon Lord in the comics he read about as a child. However, his reputation as this ends up having the opposite effect as rather than run the heroes as well as former villains such as Lady Nagant and Gentle Criminal all team up to take him down once and for all. Also, as Inasa points out in the final battle, because he spent so long ruling from the shadows the passage of time has left him a non-entity to the present generation who see him as somebody clinging to his past glories in denial of his newfound insignificance.
• His rampant egoism ultimately deconstructs the Evil Mentor, especially in a series that has a Central Theme about succession. After his defeat at All Might's hands All For One decided to make Tomura Shigaraki his successor, taking great strides to help him grow from a Psychopathic Manchild into "The Symbol of Fear". However, it's eventually revealed that his idea of a "successor" is simply himself in Tomura's younger and enhanced body by having his Quirk and vestige possess him. Unfortunately for All For One, he did too good a job in teaching Shigaraki as the latter is able to bide his time and wait for the opportune moment to suppress All For One's vestige and retake his body for his own
• Unskilled, but Strong is another deconstruction. Despite having multiple Quirks and more than enough time to train them given his extended lifespan, All For One displays little finesse in actually using them, mainly mashing Quirks together for destructive combo attacks. This backfires on him constantly as those who have actually trained with their Quirks are capable of holding their own against him despite being weaker than him. Furthermore, him alone controlling multiple Quirks that he doesn't possess full mastery over means that his Ability Mixing tactic isn't truly working together in tandem to enhance each Quirk's maximum potential. This contrasts against Izuku's own Combo Platter Powers and the heroes combining efforts to buff up Dark Shadow to maximum output, overwhelming All For One because the power he wields alone cannot contest against powers wielded as a true unison. Furthermore, his focus on using ultra powerful quirks in tandem means that he hasn't made much, if any effort to learn how to fight without quirks, something that the depowered, but still combat-skilled All Might takes advantage of (with a powered suit on hand) to pummel All For One for a while.
• Personality Powers are also deconstructed through his titular Quirk. Having the ability to instantly steal the strength he needs to win from others has lead to All For One developing a dependence on this tactic to succeed in his plans. Despite being aware that the issue with absorbing One For All stems from his own lack of strong emotions, he instead embarks on a convoluted scheme to foster Tomura's hatred against the world to a level that he can then steal it and use it to finally assimilate One For All. This backfires from him trying to monopolize a force he implicitly groomed to be more powerful than himself, and finds it's too much to handle. Likewise, "stealing the strength to win" means that he lacks any true strength of his own, which is showcased in the Vestige Realm, a metaphysical location wherein All For One cannot monopolize any of his accumulated abilities to benefit himself, and suffers multiple setbacks and defeats from various parties because of it. These two factors ultimately result in his own Vestige getting suppressed by Tomura's to seize the role of Big Bad from him, and the only reason All For One later regains control is because Izuku unwittingly break Tomura's iron-clad willpower.
• His sadism and Hope Crusher tendencies get deconstructed as a psychological flaw. For All For One, it's not enough to just win, he has to completely crush his enemy's spirit so he can fully bask in his victory and gets irritated when his opponents do not show fear against him, leading to him making tactical blunders to prove them wrong, tossing away a pragmatic fighting style for the sake of making a dramatic statement. He tried to kill All Might with a warped version of his Signature Move, which just brought him into range for All Might's own Finishing Move, and he wastes valuable minutes of his Hour of Power trying to break the spirits of the 'side characters' fighting him, only realizing his mistake when he visibly de-ages into a young man.
• His younger twin Yoichi deconstructs the Living Emotional Crutch character. It's eventually revealed that underneath all the lies and falsehoods he gives about his motivations, All For One genuinely did care about his twin, and was emotionally devastated by their separation, especially since his own actions seemingly made it permanent. This is notable, as the narrative repeatedly enforces the fact that beyond Yoichi, All For One is absolutely incapable of considering others in any capacity, and actually revels in this as a strength. However, because All For One so adamantly believes Virtue Is Weakness, he's in self-denial about any positive qualities he may possess. This means that Yoichi's best efforts to make his brother understand that Good Feels Good were rejected out of hand, and his connection to Yoichi only made the latter a walking Doom Magnet for anybody that All For One saw as getting close to him or keeping them apart. Even when All For One lets slips in his final monologue that he committed so many acts of villainy because he believed it'd make him remembered forever in infamy, he still doesn't understand that he really wanted companionship and acceptance by others, being fundamentally incapable of recognizing his inner weakness because of his overblown ego. Only his vestige in Shigaraki realizes too late that without Yoichi by his side, world domination is a meaningless chore for a villain and yet is the only thing he has left since he destroyed everything else in his life.
• Whilst it at first seems to highlight his apparently-unstoppable menace, towards the final arcs his repeated recovery from presumed or definitely fatal losses gets deconstructed. All For One demonstrates the sheer elaborate and extensive planning that would be required to allow a villain to repeatedly recover from such losses as he begins to accumulate, and no matter how many fallback plans he prepares, eventually those too start to run out, leaving him with limited options despite his best efforts. Having the ability to endlessly recover from being dethroned as the main threat against the heroes also reflects badly on his "side" during the fighting, as it becomes apparent that no matter how blindly he rejects the reality, All For One simply isn't as much of a threat to the heroes compared to the new generation of Villains he accumulates to his side as mere "pawns" in his plans, especially Tomura. All For One hogging the position of Big Bad is such a detriment to the villains that the heroes actually planned on having him as their main target as a more manageable enemy than Tomura, and his spiteful final effort to utterly usurp control of Tomura's body during the final confrontation with Izuku just leaves him in control of a damaged, weakened shell of the "perfected Demon lord" he envisioned, when Tomura was decisively winning against Izuku on his own.