Those two sure know how heroes usually feel.
The world of My Hero Academia is quite an unforgiving one. Plenty of characters face this harsh world on a daily basis and some are even worse off than others.
Note: Spoilers for the anime will be unmarked. You Have Been Warned.
Iron Woobie
- Izuku Midoriya. Through all his life, nobody would ever believe that he had what it takes to be a hero, but even without a Quirk and being constantly harassed and bullied by his peers, he has never given up on his dream. He maintains a cheerful demeanor and a determined attitude even as he keeps facing his insecurities about whether he deserves to follow All Might and how One For All is a more troublesome quirk than first thought of.
- All Might. The man dedicated his life to save as many people as he could, but after a big, almost fatal injury, he starts slowly losing his powers, to the point of accepting the inevitability of his oncoming death. He is also shown to be having trouble to adapt to his new civilian life and becoming, from someone who saves others, to someone that needs to be saved. A few months after his retirement, society falls apart, civilians lose faith in heroes, and All For One resumes his reign of terror from the shadows.
- Yoichi Shigaraki, the first user of One For All. He was a sickly kid because All For One stole most of the nutrients from their mother. All For One only saw him as a valuable possession and would abuse him when he tried to stop him from doing malicious deeds. Yoichi then tried to teach All For One about having a strong sense of justice and a desire to help others when society was at its worst from the Captain Hero comics only for All For One to embrace being a villain because he liked the Demon Lord more, becoming a sociopath with a god complex who (at worst) tried to subdue him to his will by giving him a Quirk (At best, giving him the Quirk may have been in part to try and heal him). Yoichi then escaped from All For One's grasp with the help of his two future successors, Kudo and Bruce only for All For One to find him after two months and accidentally kill him in a failed attempt to reclaim him. His quirk would evolve and be passed on to Kudo to start a Heroic Lineage that would keep fighting against his brother.
- Nana Shimura, the 7th user of One For All and All Might's mentor. She inherited One For All while watching All For One murder her predecessor. Sometime later, she was widowed. In an attempt to save him from All For One, Nana gave up her only child Kotaro to foster care, which caused him to despise her for the rest of his life. Nana herself died fighting All For One while her best friend and her protege were forced to flee. After her death, All For One manipulated her grandson and groomed him to inherit his status. The only hopeful thing that happened to her was being united with the spirits of her predecessors within Izuku Midoriya.
- Mirio was told as a child that his dangerous and hard-to-control power made him unsuited to being a hero, but he optimistically persevered and worked hard until he became one of U.A.'s top students, declaring that he would save a million people. And then he loses his Quirk protecting a single little girl, but still stays optimistic until later that very same afternoon, when he finally breaks down after being forced to watch his mentor die. However, he's still committed to being a great hero even if he has to wait to receive his Quirk back. And it did pay off, thankfully.
- Class 1-A as a whole become this after the Paranormal Liberation Arc. After hero society falls apart, All for One breaking all of the villains out of Tartarus, seeing massive amounts of deaths from heroes and civilians, including their teacher Midnight, spending a month or so searching for Midoriya and finding about the Mole, one would think they would be emotional exhausted, as they are children being forced to deal with numerous traumatic events in a short amount of time. While Class 1-A notably looks less enthusiastic about hero work than before the war, they are also much more determined to save hero society and take down All for One once and for all. One must commend them for how hopeful and optimistic they still are despite everything.
Jerkass Woobie
- Tomura Shigaraki. He killed his maternal grandparents, parents, sister Hana and pet dog when his quirk manifested. His dog and sister were accidents. Though one remark makes it ambiguous, his grandparents and mother, coming out to see what the commotion was about, were mostly accidental as well. He was furious and confused at them for always siding with his dad and never protecting him,and he thought a villain was attacking, not his quirk. His father's murder was fully intentional. All for One gave him their hands to wear to keep him in a constant state of emotional and mental instability. His hatred of heroes comes from both AFO's terrible parenting and the fact that after his family died he wandered the streets looking for help and instead the civilians ignored him saying a hero would come. None did. This really isn't helped when All For One reveals that Shigaraki is actually the grandson of Nana Shimura, the previous bearer of One For All who trained All Might, a significant reason All For One took him on as his apprentice. Not only that All For One had been controlling his life from the very beginning, taking away his orginal Quirk Factor when he was born and given him Decay to start a chain reaction that would led Tenko to him to raise as a successor and vessel to accumulate his hatred big enough to steal One For All and then take over his body and destroy his consciousness when the plan is complete.
- Twice. Chapter 115 reveals that he suffers from depression and a split personality. He is constantly on the verge of a mental breakdown and still lives with the scars about what happened when he overused his Quirk and severe doubts on whether he even is real. He also blames Magne's death on himself, as he was the one who introduced Overhaul (who killed her) to the League of Villains. During the Paranormal Liberation Arc, he is distraught over trusting Hawks and dies by his hand.
- Bakugo. He may be a Grade-A dick at times, but when he learns humility, he often learns it the hard way. In the first chapter, he gets subjected to an Embarrassing Rescue after nearly being possessed by the Sludge Villain; an incident people will often bring up despite it looking very traumatic. At the end of the Forest Training Camp Arc, he gets kidnapped by the League of Villains. At the end of the Hideout Raid Arc, he gets rescued, but at the price of All Might losing his powers permanently. Chapter 118 later reveals that Bakugo blames himself for All Might's loss of power.
- Gentle Criminal. Even calling him a jerkass is a stretch. He had a good heart and always wanted to be a hero, but he kept failing the provisional license exam. The one time he tried to save someone it went horribly wrong and he was given a criminal record and kicked out of the house by his parents. Years later while in poverty, he congratulated a former classmate on getting his own agency, only for the classmate to have completely forgotten about him. Deciding that being a villain was better than being nothing, Gentle Criminal became obsessed with gaining fame and attention by committing small, harmless crimes. Thanks to his battle with Deku however, he realizes how far he's fallen and that he'd driven his sidekick La Brava to villainy, and subsequently allows himself to be arrested. However, things seem to be looking up for him by the end.
- La Brava. Her backstory reveals that she was often rejected by boys because of her height and later was accused of being a stalker and ostracized by everyone she knows, which got to the point where she contemplated suicide.
- Mineta. He is incredibly perverted, cowardly, insults his classmates, and has an inflated ego, but he has realistic reactions to being put into dangerous situations which often leave him scared and confused, not helped by the fact that he looks like a child. At the end of the Paranormal Liberation War arc he's horrified to see the aftermath of Gigantomachia's rampage and questions whether the heroes didn't just make things worse.
- Himiko Toga. Due to her Quirk being blood-based, she gained an obsession with blood, which caused her own parents to ostracize her and yell at her to fit it with what society deems acceptable, despite her Quirk being responsible for her blood obsession rather than any sort of mental illness. For several years, she suppressed her Quirk's urges and impulses until she finally snapped and embraced her Quirk by killing the boy she had a crush on and drinking his blood. And then later on, it gets worse for her after she loses her close friend and fellow League of Villains member Twice, causing her to snap and go berserk.
- Dabi, to an extent. Born as Toya Todoroki, due his Quirk's immense power, he was chosen by Endeavor to be his successor. However, the fact he inherited his mother's weak constitution ended up severely injuring him physically. Out of concern for his health, Endeavor stopped training him and decide to focus solely on Shoto. This led to him training in secret to prove to Endeavor that he wasn't a 'mistake', but was later burned at Sekoto Peak when Endeavor refused to meet him. He survived in the care of All For One in his orphanage but left to return home only to find that his family moved on from him and that his death didn't changed Endeavor and was still focusing on training Shoto. This broke Toya's mind and him becoming a villain with the goal to ruin his dad's hero career to make him feel the same pain he felt. Granted, there's zero justification for sending two villains to assassinate your father and killing over 30 innocent people, or trying to immolate your younger brother in a suicide attack, but it's understandable why he had such a dramatic Face–Heel Turn.
- Endeavor. Always the number two hero compared to All Might, his quirk's limitations meant he could never be the No. 1 Hero. As such, he married an ice-quirk user to hopefully get a child with a better quirk. This ended up being the case with his fourth-born, Shoto Todoroki (look lower to see how that turned out), and the training didn't do well for Shoto's perception of his dad. Why is he here? After All Might's battle against All for One left him functionally Quirkless, Endeavor makes it to the No. 1 hero spot out of technicality, meaning everything he did in the past was All for Nothing. He's attempting to become a better person (ironically enough, asking All Might for the first piece of advice), but nothing seems to be going right. The people's opinion on him is shifted (considering in-universe, All Might is a Tough Act to Follow) to say the least. His son Natsuo doesn't want to deal with him, while Shoto, while glad he's finally trying to set things straight, is still reluctant to forgive him. He's attacked by a Nomu and given a permanent scar, gets attacked by two more villains, and gets his ass handed to him by Shigaraki (though is currently holding on.) The coup de grace? The son who he thought he killed during his training, Toya, turns out to be Dabi, the Ax-Crazy villain who's killed 30 people and is allied with Shigaraki. When he reveals himself, he's broadcasting Endeavor's abusive history to Japan. Some may see it as karmic justice, but considering the man realized the error of his ways and actively tried to make amends, it hurts to see even his good actions being rendered in vain. Especially since Endeavor is absolutely gutted by what his son has become. Hard not to blame him for breaking down when he woke up in the hospital.
- Worse still, later flashbacks show that he accidentally contributed to Toya's breakdown and rebirth as Dabi by trying to push him away and discourage him following in his footsteps as a hero when it became clear his body couldn't handle it, with his coldness towards his son being in part due to an inability to figure out how to talk Toya off the path he was on.
- The series later reveals that the origin of Endeavor's obsession with being the strongest was witnessing his father try to save a girl, and not only fail to save her but be killed by a villain the process.
- Lady Nagant. Her backstory reveals that she was once optimistic and cheerful when she finally achieved her dream of becoming a hero for the Hero Public Safety Commission. However, after having to commit morally unethical deeds for the commission to preserve order, she started to grow more pessimistic and cynical about the society around her. When she attempts to call it quits, the Commission chairman subtly threatens to have her killed, to which she responds by killing the chairman, which landed her in Tartarus while she was instead alleged to have killed a hero to cover up the chairman's death. After being freed, she accepts All For One's offer to retrieve Izuku Midoriya, only for Izuku to realize she wasn't a villain at heart and attempts to convince her to change her ways. And when she's finally about to accept his help, All For One detonates a failsafe explosive on her, which leaves her in critical condition.
Stoic Woobie
- Aizawa. Though he doesn't look like a typical Woobie at all, Aizawa has been faced with many grievances, which includes getting his face smashed in at the USJ, his Quirk weakening due to it, nearly getting blown up by Dabi and having to admit that Bakugo's kidnapping was due to his incompetence. Despite all this, he remains mostly stoic and doesn't refer to any of the incidents, despite the fact that the USJ incident alone is enough to cause some trauma. Taken even further in the Paranormal Liberation Arc, in which Aizawa is forced to amputate his right leg and one of his eyes is damaged. And prior to that he learns that after his best friend from his time at U.A died, his corpse was used as a vessel to create Kurogiri.
- Made even worse when you find out why he decided to become an underground hero in the first place.
- Shoto Todoroki. Even though he doesn't let it on very much, he's been suffering a lot. He doesn't have the best home life. His father only trained him so that he could one-up All Might, and his mother poured boiling water on his face during her mental breakdown. And then later on, when Endeavor is starting to change for the better, his long-lost sibling Toya is revealed to have survived... as the mass-murdering villain Dabi, who destroys Endeavor's reputation (and the man himself, emotionally) and tries to immolate Shoto in a suicide attack as part of his revenge.
- Kurogiri/Oboro Shirakumo. Once an aspiring hero and best friend of Aizawa and Hizashi, He lost his life only to have his corpse stolen by All For One and turned into a Nomu with the sole purpose of serving as All for One's right hand man and Shigaraki's caretaker. The entire situation is made worse when it's revealed that Shirakumo still exists and recognizes Aizawa when he makes an appearance. Shirakumo is stuck in an I Must Scream situation while we have no clue how much free will Kurigiri has or even if he knows at all what he really is. Because this is such an Ambiguous Situation, we don't even know if they are aware of each other or if they are one being or if Shirakumo can ever find peace. Shirakumo can't tell us and Kurogiri never makes any allusions to it on his own, so unless you are able to cause Shirakumo to be stirred, you'd have no idea they have this baggage.
- Hawks. Although he seems pretty content with his life, he's secretly been through a lot. As a child, he was repeatedly abused by his criminal father and neglected by his emotionally discharged mother. Despite this, he still cared for them and never complained about it no matter how awful it was. One day his father was arrested by Endeavor, leaving him and his mother on the run due to harboring him. Wanting to help his mother, Hawks agreed to work for the Hero Public Safety Commission so they could both be granted a fresh start, even if it's implied he doesn't enjoy doing some of their work. And as of the Paranormal Liberation War Arc, he's forced to kill Twice, who he genuinely liked and saw as a good person. At the end, he's conflicted whether or not he did the right thing and wished he could have done more to save him.
The Woobie
- Seriously, can you say that you don't feel sorry for Midoriya when he was told that he would never have a Quirk? The kid's crying face is basically a huge "hug me!" button. Even after obtaining One For All, his path to become a Hero is anything but easy, and he gets put through the wringer in ways no teenager should, like being forced to repeatedly shatter the bones in his arm to use his new superpower.
- Inko. First, she has to deal with the fact that her kid won't be able to realistically pursue his dream due to being Quirkless. And then, almost like a miracle (as far as she knows), it turns out that he does have a Quirk and can attend his dream school. And then she finds out that each time he uses it, he destroys his own body. It hasn't even been a full year and yet her son has been in the hospital at least six times, with three of those being the result of villains targeting her son and his class. Imagine being a parent and watching your child go to such lengths for their dream that they wind up risking permanent paralysis in their arms. Is it any wonder that she doesn't want him going back to U.A.?
- Uraraka. She's got quite a bit of baggage for such a cheerful character. An omake reveals that her financial situation is so bad, that she has to skip meals and go to sleep often just to save money.
- Rei. While she clearly loved Shoto, Endeavor's abusive behavior slowly drove her insane leading to her disfiguring her own son. What's worse is that it's obvious she's in the middle of a breakdown when she does it as she is sobbing on the phone with her mother talking about how she can't take it anymore. Her actions land her in the hospital, which removes the sole good influence in Shoto's life.
- Eri. The things she has suffered at the hands of her adoptive uncle, Overhaul, border on the revolting. Chapter 135, that detailed exactly what those things are, has the whole fandom up in arms to adopt her and get her away from him. Later chapters show that she's such a Broken Bird that she's physically forgotten how to smile.
- Gang Orca. His character profile revealed that he actually makes children afraid of him and implies he has a hard time meeting new people because of his looks and the notes outright state he is not happy with this:Character Notes: He is suffering.
- Kirishima. After his backstory was revealed, and he has shown to have serious doubts about himself, Kirishima started taking this role. He has very deep doubts about his self-worth, whether he truly has what is needed to be a hero and whether he has the power for it.
- Amajiki. His self-deprecation and inability to see himself as a hero has given him this status.
- Mina Ashido. After witnessing the death of Midnight and many other heroes and civilians, as well hero society's collapse, finding out that Midoriya left U.A for a literal month, and about Aoyoma, she has become this. The trauma from these events prove too much for Ashido to bear, leaving her very weepy in terms of everything going on and full of resentment and hatred towards those who hurt the ones she loves, no longer the cheerful girl she once was before the incident.Mina: Midoriya! Enough with this being alone stuff. Please...come back to us...so we can have classes together again.
