YMMV / My Hero Academia

YMMV tropes for the My Hero Academia series

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Sub-pages

• Adorkable
• Alternate Character Interpretation
• Base-Breaking Character
• Broken Base
• Draco In Leather Pants
• Ensemble Dark Horse
• Fandom-Specific Plot
• Fan Nickname
• Fanon
• Friendly Fandoms
• Harsher In Hindsight
• Memetic Loser
• Memetic Mutation
• Narm
• Never Live It Down
• Ron the Death Eater
• Ships That Pass In The Night
• Shocking Moments
• They Wasted A Perfectly Good Character
• Woobie
• Woolseyism

A-B

• Abandon Shipping: Not as drastic as expected, but some Inko Midoriya/All Might shippers jumped ship when the former's character bio revealed that she was still married, and the reason why her husband, Hisashi, hasn't appeared yet is that he works abroad. The same applied for those who pictured All For One as Izuku's father. Of course, Hisashi still gets Die for Our Ship to make Inko/All Might happen in fics.
• Accidental Aesop:
  • Bakugo and Endeavor's Character Development can be seen as a story not about rejecting anger, but learning to focus it. Both characters develop into more heroic figures, but they are only slightly less angry than before, they just learned to focus it on their hero work, instead of misdirecting their anger and frustration towards other people who have nothing to do with it (in Bakugo's case, Midoriya, and in Endeavor's case, his family).
  • A recurring takeaway from multiple villains' backstories is "marginalization leads to criminality". Spinner was victim of prejudice for being a mutant, it's implied the same thing happened with Magne for being transgender, Twice was dealt a bad hand and had to live on the fringe of society alone and in poverty for years, and something similar happened to Gentle and La Brava.
• Accidental Innuendo:
  • Aoyama's Quirk. While it's been stated that the blast comes from his belly button, when seen at the wrong angle, it looks like it's coming from his crotch. It gets even more equivocal in Chapter 256. Aoyama can now concentrate it in a "saber" poking out. Then Hagakure, using a new ability of hers, manipulates it.
  • Mineta's not only a source of loads of intentional innuendo, he's a source for some that seem to be accidental as well:
    • His Quirk lets him make sticky balls.
    • "Mineta" is Polish for "cunnilingus". This is the reason why most Polish fans prefer referring to him by his first name. It's also very similar to the word "minet", which is Russian for "blowjob".
    • When everyone is coming up with their super move, we see Mineta connecting several of his balls together to use as a rope or whip, but it also looks suspiciously like anal beads◊. This is probably intentional though, due to how perverted Mineta is.
  • Kirishima's Quirk is referred to as "Hardening", which is what it sounds like in the most literal sense. While Tetsutetsu's similar Quirk, "Steel", is slightly better, they're still guys who have getting hard, as in being extremely durable, as a superpower. Additionally, Tetsutetsu suffers from metal fatigue.
  • Chapter 193 ends with Aoyama hearing a loud noise coming from Midoriya's bedroom and waking up. He rushes over to learn what's going on and finds Midoriya's Quirk went off in his sleep, shredding his bed covers and pillow to pieces. Midoriya is frantically clutching his right hand as it throbs with energy. Someone had a nocturnal Quirk emission, and boy, it was a doozy.
  • Kojiro Bondo's Quirk, Cemedine, lets him spray a sticky white substance all over the place. Some fans have christened it "Gluekakke".
  • Chapter 217 has Tetsutetsu and Kirishima training together a bit. The former then mentions that the latter is getting harder every time he gets hit, referring to his Quirk.
  • Best Jeanist has his initials engraved into his belt buckle. So, he has "BJ" written near his crotch.
• Americans Hate Tingle:
  • Endeavor is a far more controversial character in the West than he is in Japan. In the West, he is generally seen as a despicable patriarch and Domestic Abuser with no redeeming qualities whatsoever. In Japan, however, people are more neutral about his behavior. This only got worse after Endeavor has a Heel Realization and actually tries to be a better hero and father. The West feels like he doesn't deserve any type of redemption and that Kōhei Horikoshi shouldn't even be attempting to do so, with fans going so far as to post death threats and wishes on social media to try and dissuade him from doing so. Japanese fans actually like how he is trying to change his ways, enough so where he made it to 8th place on the 4th popularity poll, surpassing All Might himself.
  • Mineta, while not exactly well-liked in Japan, is even more hated in the West, as perverted characters are much more controversial there thanks to the #MeToo movement taking place, making many Western viewers see his perverted actions as outright sexual harassment rather than typical teenage buffoonery.
  • Hisashi Midoriya is a rare example of an unseen character getting this. In Japan he's not really thought of much, as the fans in Japan have no problem with a father working overseas to support his family and not interact with them that much. In America however, where this is much less common and absent parents are seen with a lot more suspicion in general, he's typically written as having divorced or abandoned Inko and Izuku, often relating to the latter's Quirklessness, and he's treated less like a hardworking family man and more like a deadbeat and a source of pain for Inko and especially Izuku. It's telling that the more sympathetic Hisashis in Western fan talk tend to be dead or the 'Dad for One' theory where he's All for One.
• And You Thought It Would Fail:
  • When he first released the first chapter of his third manga series, Horikoshi felt it might not stay popular, but carried on with it because he enjoyed it. The series ended up becoming one of the most popular mangas of the modern age.
  • On a character-related note, Horikoshi has admitted that he never expected Inko and Bakugo to become popular within the fandom. In Bakugo's case, he believed that everyone would hate him, so he was surprised when he saw him winning the popularity polls.
• Anti-Climax Boss: Setsuna in the Joint Training Arc was built up as one of the strongest members of Class 1-B, and Monoma predicted she had the best chance of defeating Bakugo. Her team lost in the shortest match of the arc, without capturing or defeating a single member of Bakugo's team.
• Applicability:
  • Destro's philosophy where a belief in a basic human right or a way to benefit society turns into violence and terrorism has been discussed between fans that can be applied to many political views through history, including Communism, Nazism, and so on. Fans are heavily debating on whether Destro's group and his views are meant to represent any real-life counterpart philosophy or political view or not and even then, which view is exactly being represented.
  • One can make an overlap between the conflict of the use of Quirks by civilians and real-life gun use and ownership laws. Quirks are heavily monitored and controlled, in line with Japan's own restrictive gun laws. The discussion also mimics real-life debates, where you have characters saying Quirks should be free to use as their users see fit and are a must for protection and self-defense, while others are wary of the problems that can be caused when little or no control is put on something that can cause harm, even when being used for defense. Chapter 300 has a particularly poignant scene where it shows Wash finding an area destroyed because civilians got ahold of support items and tried to fight villains on their own, destroying property and hurting both the villain and other civilians, as the narration mentions the danger of the untrained and unskilled use of Quirks.
  • In the aftermath of the Paranormal Liberation War arc, the backlash against heroes over the heroes' failure to capture Shigaraki, the massive collateral damage caused by Gigantomachia and scandals involving high-profile heroes can be compared to controversies over law enforcement in America, and whether the approach to police work should be rethought.
• Arc Fatigue:
  • A good amount of fans feel that while the Internship Arc is good, it dragged out for too long compared to previous arcs. For comparison, the arc finally reached its end in Chapter 162, for a total of 41 chapters, making it nearly twice the size of the previous longest arc, the U.A. Sports Festival. Among the chapters, it takes a while to actually get to the important parts and several battles are chapters long due to flashbacks being placed in the middle of said fights to explain Tamaki, Kirishima, Mirio and Overhaul's backstories. Even Horikoshi himself noted near the end of the arc that it had dragged on for an unreasonable amount of time. The anime inherited this problem, though to a lesser extent as multiple chapters are adapted in each episode, so an arc that is 41 chapters in the manga is around 17 episodes in the anime. Still, you'll find plenty of fans, particularly anime-only fans, complaining that Season 4 is weaker than the previous three.
  • Rather than a single arc being the blame, some fans call the entirety of the arcs of 2018 to be at fault of this, due to the year being far too heavy on school and Slice of Life themed arcs that do little to drive the plot forward, such as the U.A. Cultural Festival Arc essentially just wrapping up plot points introduced at the end of the Internship Arc and the Joint Training Arc showcasing the skills of various students and giving Shinso and Class 1-B a long deserved focus, but having almost no stakes and connect very little with the ongoing plot. A very big complaint is that the arc that most moved the story forward, the Pro Hero Arc, was an arc focused on Endeavor and Hawks that lasted only about 10 chapters.
  • All For One's long tenure as the central villain has received criticism for this. While initially beloved due to his status as an Evil Counterpart to All Might, a badass Predecessor Villain and Creepy Awesome nature, many thought his arc ended well with his defeat by All Might. However, All For One later proceeds to return to the story in flashback, before breaking out of Tartarus at the end of the Paranormal Liberation War storyline, as well as taking over his protege Tomura Shigaraki's body. Ever since, he's reigned as the leading villain once again, lasting multiple arcs and clashing with characters both old and new. Suffice it to say, by the time the final arc began, many were desperate for All For One to finally go down and let another villain take center stage.
  • The U.A. traitor sideplot was first introduced in Chapter 83, but it took until Chapter 336 for the traitor's identity to be revealed, with very few clues until then. There is some justification for this, as All For One was imprisoned and unable to give the traitor orders, but many readers felt The Reveal was delayed too long to be impactful. Doesn't help that fans have much disagreement over The Reveal, particularly whether the payoff was worth it.
  • Some fans are beginning to feel this starting to happen with the final battle arc against the League of Villains. While the early chapters were rather fast paced, the pacing began to slog down starting at Chapter 347 when Izuku was Put on a Bus when he's inadvertently teleported to the wrong battlefield. Afterwards, the next stages of the arc were dominated almost exclusively by the battles against Shigaraki, All For One, and Dabi, with none of the other remaining League or Class 1-A characters getting a chance to shine. And to make things worse, after the battles against All For One and Dabi both climax and the two villains are apparently defeated, they both power up meaning their fights will drag on even longer. Part of this can be attributed to the manga going on break almost every other week due to Horikoshi's health around the time the arc started, slowing the pacing down with several breaks in between chapters that often fell far below the usual page count.
    • The subplot focusing around Dabi and the Todoroki family in particular has been met with frustration, as many fans have felt it had dragged on for far too long, taking the lion's share of the final arc and delaying more highly anticipated fights like Deku vs Shigaraki, Uraraka vs Toga, and depowered All Might vs All For One in his prime, especially since Dabi and Shouto face off against each other twice in the same arc. While the second time has more emotional weight by bringing the whole Todoroki family together to stop Dabi, Shoto’s finisher is the exact same move that was supposed to have beaten him the first time.
• Ass Pull:
  • How some feel about the Midoriya vs. Shinso match during the U.A. Sports Festival Arc. The only reason Midoriya was able to break out of Shinso's brainwashing Quirk is due to Midoriya's Quirk suddenly activating on its own, which allowed Midoriya to hurt himself and thus break free of Shinso's control. There's no explanation given for why this happens during the arc proper, with All Might even lampshading that fact ("Don't get too hung up about it!"). While the reason behind this strange event, the fact that One For All has the vestiges of past users embedded into it, does get explained later in the series, that only happens 160 chapters after the battle had already occurred.
  • While All For One hijacking Shigaraki is a controversial plot twist on its own, the idea that Shigaraki was always intended to be his vessel falls into this, as many of his actions (e.g. talking to himself about Shigaraki needing to succeed on his own, dismissing Best Jeanist's Quirk as too complex for Shigaraki, and having Shigaraki tame Gigantomachia) make no sense if he was just planning to take control the whole time.
  • The time left before Shigaraki became a complete vessel for All For One is abruptly reduced from a month to just three days, contradicting both the Heroes' and Villains' predicted schedule, right before the debut of Star and Stripe, whose brief tenure in the story ends up serving little purpose beyond bumping it back up to a week.
  • During the Final Battle arc, Spinner is sent to retrieve Kurogiri. His mission fails because the tape he was supposed to play is destroyed. But then he gets the idea to press the last of the severed hands of Tomura's family to Kurogiri's face. Then it's revealed All For One predicted he would do this and implanted a microchip inside said hand that'd relay instructions to Kurogiri. There's absolutely no reason for Spinner to think this would work or for All For One to think Spinner would do it in the first place^note While Spinner did do it for Tomura back when he fought the heroes, it only worked because said Tomura always wore the severed hands of his family to keep himself calm. Therefore, there was no indication such would work for Kurogiri or even any indication Spinner still had the hand in question[[note]].
• Awesome Art: Applies to both the manga and the anime:
  • The series is praised for its detailed art. A notable aspect being how Horikoshi gives even background characters detailed, individual designs. Fans that are artists themselves always point out how absolutely floored they are by Horikoshi's unique skill at drawing hands, mentioning his hands are heavily expressive and realistic and use him as reference for their own art. Funnily enough, the author's note of volume two actually had him discussing drawing hands and how important he feels they are for "showing expression and character."
  • The anime is done by Studio BONES, well-known for their beautiful animation, and unlike many anime adapted from Weekly Shōnen Jump is released in seasons (or cours) rather than weekly, meaning the studio has far more time to plan and animate each episode. And while it looked good from the start, it has improved considerably since Season 1. The action scenes, in particular, always look amazing, with All Might vs. Nomu, Todoroki vs. Midoriya, the Stain fight, All Might vs. All For One, 100% Deku vs. Overhaul, Endeavor vs. Hood, and Midoriya vs. Lady Nagant being stand-outs.
• Awesome Ego:
  • Some of Bakugo's fans tend to think of him as this, since he's fully willing to take on any opponent no matter how strong they are and actually has some of the skill to back it up. However, to his detractors, he can come across as more of a Smug Super.
  • All For One is a narcissistic psychopath who aims to be the greatest villain of all time. However, it's not hard to see why he might believe that he is. He plays everyone around him like pawns, curb-stomps several high-ranking heroes with little effort, and is single-handedly responsible for forcing All Might into retirement. Not to mention his incredibly useful superpower to both give and take away Quirks.
• Badass Decay:
  • Re-Destro was an incredibly powerful Arc Villain who maims Shigaraki and only loses after the latter's Decay elevates to city-wide levels of destruction, which leads to the Meta Liberation Army being rebranded to the Paranormal Liberation Front under the League of Villains' banner. This causes Re-Destro to become far sillier by becoming a giggling Yes-Man underneath Tomura. His closest allies even point out how disgusting it is to see their leader become such a mess. By the Paranormal Liberation War Arc, his relatively frail prosthetic legs leave him far less imposing, and he's defeated and arrested without much fanfare.
  • An unusual example with All For One. While he becomes an even bigger threat during the final arcs of the series, in which he forms one half of the Big Bad Duumvirate alongside Tomura Shigaraki and uses Eri's quirk to rewind himself back to his prime, some fans felt that he came across as less impressive than he originally did after his true personality is revealed to be a Psychopathic Manchild who throws a tantrum whenever something doesn't go his way, as well as some of his plans coming across as Ass Pulls. While it's possible this trope may have been invoked to contrast Tomura Shigaraki having taken a level in badass and going on to prove himself to be the one true Big Bad, it's still not a great look for someone who claims to be "the Symbol of Evil".
• Better on DVD:
  • Or tankobon, in this case. A major complaint about the divisive Internship Arc is the fact that it took an entire year to end, with more than once a delay between chapters due to the health issues of both Horikoshi and his assistants. Defenders of the arc claim that the plot can be better appreciated on a second reading now that the entirety of the arc is available, and that in this second reading, a lot of the problems the readers have are alleviated. In fact, a good portion of the defenders of the arc weren't accompanying it from the start and caught up with the manga midway through the arc.
  • Horikoshi adds a lot of sketches, fun facts, corrections about mistakes etc in extras that appear after every chapter in tankobon. For example, one note explains what sort of unauthorized Quirk usage would get people in trouble with the law, and Tiger's character profile mentions him getting gender reassignment surgery.

C-D

• Cant Unhear It: The English dub is pretty much iconic at this point, with many of its voices being stuck in fans' heads as they read the manga. Special credit goes to Justin Briner as Midoriya, Christopher Sabat as All Might, Clifford Chapin as Bakugo, David Matranga as Shoto, Patrick Seitz as Endeavor, Zeno Robinson as Hawks, Eric Vale as Shigaraki, and John Swasey as All For One.
• Captain Obvious Reveal: In Chapter 290, Dabi is revealed to be Toya Todoroki. It had long been considered very obvious to a large section of the fanbase that Dabi and Toya were one and the same due to overwhelming evidence (his fire Quirk, his self burns and poor battle endurance being consistent with Endeavor's descriptions of Toya's weaknesses, his cryptic remarks to Endeavor and Shoto, his generally similar face & hair to both Shoto and a young Endeavor, etc).
• Cargo Ship:
  • Many fans have declared the Endeavor/Silver-Trophy joke from the show's So This Is Basically... entry as their OTP.
  • Midoriya has been shipped with a delicious pork cutlet bowl. It's also popular to ship him with a hospital bed.
  • It's not uncommon for fans to ship Todoroki with zaru soba.
  • For some reason, Mineta has been shipped with LSD. Yes, the drug.
• Catharsis Factor:
  • Bakugo losing to Midoriya in the Battle Trial Arc. After he had been treating him like trash for years and was extremely smug in his abilities, it's extremely satisfying to see Bakugo's smug grin completely vanish when Midoriya finally gets a win against him. This even jumpstarts Bakugo's Character Development down the road.
  • Midoriya punching Bakugo during the Final Exams Arc. Up until that point, Bakugo had been an obnoxious jerk with full intention of failing both himself and Midoriya merely because he refuses to accept his rival's help. The punch not only saves Bakugo from All Might, but knocks some sense into him.
  • Midoriya using 1,000,000% Delaware Detroit Smash to defeat Muscular is particularly satisfying as the villain proved himself to be utterly despicable by gleefully admitting to murdering Kota's parents and then attempting to kill him just for fun. Not only does this save Kota, but it also ends his hatred for heroes.
  • All Might smashing All For One into a pulp is easily one of the most pleasing moments, considering how the Symbol of Evil quickly established himself as one of the most reprehensible characters in the series.
  • Mirio pounding the living shit out of Overhaul, even after losing his Quirk. There's also much catharsis in seeing 100% Full Cowl Midoriya, aided by Eri, beating the shit out of Overhaul soon after. Not long afterward, Shigaraki attacks the convoy transporting Overhaul where Mr. Compress severs one of his arms. This is followed by Shigaraki using his Quirk to amputate Overhaul's other arm, thereby preventing him from using his Quirk. Shigaraki then taunts Overhaul, relishing how he now has the upper hand over him and lets him live as a crippled and broken man. It's a rather satisfying dose of Laser-Guided Karma for one of the more monstrous villains in the series.
  • Although he was trying to become a better person, it's still satisfying to see Endeavor get a merciless beatdown by Hood and receive a nasty scar on the left side of his face, similar to the one he indirectly inflicted on Shoto. The latter even makes a snarky remark about it. And to top it off, he gets a scathing Calling the Old Man Out from Natsuo, another one of his children, about his awful behavior.
  • In Chapter 322, Bakugo finally apologizes to Midoriya, even using his real name, for all the hurtful bullying he put him through over the years. The fact that the culmination of his Character Development is not some great triumphant battle against a powerful villain, but rather bowing his head and saying sorry for his actions and admitting that he was wrong, more than any other moment he has had, this proves Bakugo has truly changed and become a better person.
  • The Final Battle Arc undoubtedly has several moments:
    • After spending the entire manga being The Chessmaster who's always in control, All For One having a complete Villainous Breakdown when Star and Stripe's Heroic Sacrifice completely screws him over is awesomely satisfying.
    • Jiro managing to spur the Vestiges inside All For One to start rebelling and breaking his mask alongside Hawks after hearing the villain call the team weaklings and only existing for him to crush in order to show how powerful he is. Even better is, while All For One was already having a Villainous Breakdown, this makes it the most obvious as All For One can only internally rave in frustration about how this shouldn't be possible. All with a shot of his normal Slasher Smile replaced with a forced, frustrated one as he tries to maintain his composure.
    • After seeing Bakugo utterly wreck All For One, All For One's final moments aren't spent as a cunning mastermind, but as a literal baby throwing a temper tantrum as he de-ages into nothing. After everything All For One has done, seeing him die such an Undignified Death is extremely satisfying.
• Character Perception Evolution:
  • When Hitoshi Shinso was introduced in the Sports Festival arc he quickly became a massive fan favorite, since fans loved his backstory as somebody who wished to be a hero but failed the entrance exam due to his Quirk not having any effects on robots, on top of suffering discrimination for said Quirk being perceived as "villainous". Back in the day it was easier to list the fanfics that didn't expel Mineta and replace him with Shinso, and non-fans could be forgiven for thinking that he was a major chraracter. However, his ubiquity caused many people to grow weary of the character, which in turn prompted fans to reexamine him in a more critical light, and began to contest the idea that Shinso deserved to be in the Hero course, such as not doing anything to improve his poor physical shape—not helped by Aizawa mentioning that Shinso was barely passing the General Course's Physical Ed—or bothering to learn proper fighting skills, instead relying entirely on his Quirk to fight. While Shinso still retains quite a lot of fans to this day, the days in which he was near-universally popular are long gone.
  • Stain, the infamous Hero Killer, was initially an extremely popular villain thanks to his general badassery, his awesome fight with Midoriya, Iida, and Todoroki, and actually having a few good points about the inherent flaws of hero society. His popularity got to the point where some actually confused him for the Big Bad, with a vocal number of fans even wishing he was. However, as the series went into more depth about the nature of hero society and what truly makes a hero, along with Stain's origins as a villain-killing vigilante being explored in Vigilantes, he became a Base-Breaking Character due to some fans taking a more critical look at his ideology and labeling him a complete hypocrite with little to no ground to stand on, along with finding the narrative vindicating some of his beliefs to be absurd. While still fairly well-regarded as a character, many fans now find his ideology to be far from flawless. The fact that Tomura Shigaraki, the series' actual Big Bad, would go on to be Rescued from the Scrappy Heap and become very popular in his own right also means that Stain is far less likely to be mistaken for or desired to be the main villain nowadays.
• Cliché Storm: Some have pointed out that the manga's overall plot and format matches up pretty cleanly with the rest of Shōnen Jump's repertoire. However, Tropes Are Tools, and it may make My Hero Academia all the better for it. For examples, look at this page.
• Common Knowledge: Statistics regarding the Quirkless population are often misinterpreted by a sizeable portion of the fanbase. Many people believe that the "20% of the world population is Quirkless" means there's a 20% chance of being born Quirkless. The series, however, implicitly states that it's the actual population, not the birth rate, showing that Quirklessness becomes more and more rare with each passing generation (All Might stated that being Quirkless wasn't uncommon back in his day, and the number of truly Quirkless characters in Izuku's generation can be counted on one hand- Izuku himself, Melissa Shield and Yuga Aoyama), and at one point it's stated that they will eventually disappear completely, since no more Quirkless persons will ever be born.
• Complete Monster:
  • All For One, the Symbol of Evil, was a nameless child born with the power to steal Quirks. Forming an egotistical belief that all life existed only for his benefit, he killed his way through countless innocents while stockpiling their Quirks and building a criminal empire to become the ultimate "Demon Lord" from the comics of his youth. Murdering his own brother Yoichi in a fit of rage for defying him, All For One annihilated the rebellion against him while erasing entire bloodlines to stamp out any hope of rebellious sparks. Killing numerous successors of Yoichi's Quirk, One For All, All For One was ultimately defeated and seemingly slain by the great hero All Might. Surviving in the shadows, All For One steadily corrupts youths to serve as new villains, using some as experiments to create monsters and later dispatches his legion to murder an entire class of young students. After supposedly elevating the traumatized young Tenko Shimura/Tomura Shigaraki as his successor, All For One plans to possess and erase him. Upon the final war, All For One abandons even some of his most loyal henchmen to death while attempting to take a powerless All Might and break him before the entire world he intends to model after his own twisted fantasies.
  • Goto Imasuji, better known as "Muscular", is a sadistic supervillain with a Quirk that allows him to control his muscles and augment his body. Caring only for bloodshed and murder, Muscular attempted to massacre a town before being stopped by the hero duo Water Hose. Torturing and killing the two, Muscular later tries to murder their young son Kota for fun. Later released from prison, Muscular attempts to rampage across numerous towns and cities to massacre any civilian he can find, rejecting any overture from Izuku Midoriya and stating he only cares about indulging his appetite for murder.
• Crack Ship:
  • Fans have shipped Midoriya with Mitsuki Bakugo, considering how attractive she is, due to the easy interpretation that she could be a cougar, and for the sheer hilarity of imagining Bakugo's reaction.
  • In a similar vein, people have also shipped Kaminari with Bakugo's mom, in a sort of "Stacy's Mom"-style crush. This ship was popularized, if not started, by Kaminari's English VA on TikTok.
  • Due to some various theories about Midoriya's father, specifically that he is the son of a villain, some people started shipping Inko/All For One and Inko/Dabi, following the theory that Midoriya is the son of one of them.
  • Despite the fact that the mere existence of the idea is pure No Yay for most of the fandom, there are a number of fans that legitimately ship Mineta with some of the female characters. The most popular characters shipped with him being Yaoyorozu, as she's the most attractive student in the class and near-constantly shows off skin, and Tsuyu, as early on the two had a decent number of interactions between them.
• Crazy Is Cool:
  • Midoriya earned the title of "The Absolute Madman" for his capacity of withholding inhuman amounts of pain to come up with insane plans and moves in order to defeat his opponent. In-Universe, there have been times where characters question his sanity based on his crazy plans that always end up working, especially considering he is willing to destroy himself in order to help others. A special mention goes to using Eri's uncontrollable rewind Quirk to use One For All at 100% and hurt himself in the same speed she is rewinding him, therefore suffering no injuries while neither being erased from existence.
  • Hatsume is a borderline Mad Scientist who dedicates every waking moment to the creation of machines that would be better fitting on a giant robot series than this one. This is amazingly shown in her fight against Iida, where she manipulates him into using her inventions and drags the fight to show everything off while making him dash around the area like a puppet.
  • Mirio. He's a bit of a goofy weirdo but he's an absolute beast when it comes to combat, giving out a Curb-Stomp Battle to all of Class 1-A, and later to the monstrous Overhaul even after losing his Quirk. What else do you call a guy who indirectly saves the day by mooning the bad guy?
• Creator Worship: Horikoshi has received high amounts of praise for his outstanding writing, to the point that some fans considered him the author that was going to set the ground for or completely eliminate the clichés that several fans disdain in shonen, though this level of hype died down as the series went on and many of the writing decisions became more contentious.
• Creepy Awesome:
  • Pretty much the entirety of the League of Villains, most prominently Shigaraki, Dabi, Toga, and Twice.
  • Overhaul, and his soft-spoken, intimidatingly callous ways of taking apart every molecule from a target in the area and forcibly remerging them together with his own bare hands, also counts.
  • Rikiya "Re-Destro" Yotsubashi of the Meta Liberation Army has this in spades. He has proven to be an unsettling, yet formidable opponent for the League, right down to his unsettling personality. From killing his own assistant to cutting off Giran's fingers, he's got it all. And we're not even talking about the way he and his MLA allies knows of the League's whereabouts...
• Crossover Ship:
  • It's not uncommon to find fans who ship Akko and Midoriya together given the similarities between them and their series.
  • Due to a particularly popular crossover fic with RWBY, My Huntsman Academia, Midoriya/Yang became one.
  • After a Twitter user made a crossover with Attack on Titan, where Midoriya and Eren befriend each other, the two became one.
  • Some pair Mei with Entrapta, seeing them as basically sisters.
  • Following both series seeing them riddled with scars in the final acts and both proving to be iron-willed determinators, the pairing of Midoriya and Maki Zenin began to crop up more often.
• Cry for the Devil:
  • Tomura Shigaraki at first appears to be a psychotic, heartless monster. However, once his horrific past comes to light and it's revealed All For One molded him into his successor simply because he was his nemesis Nana Shimura's grandson, it's not hard to see how he turned out the way he is. Even Midoriya feels sorry for him. It doesn't help that it's implied the real reason All For One took him in is so he could possess his body.
  • Dabi gets a bit of this once he's revealed to be Toya Todoroki. All he ever wanted to do was to impress his father Endeavor by surpassing All Might as the number 1 hero. However, when it was revealed he didn't possess his father's constitution, Endeavor cast him aside in favor of Shoto. Toya attempted to prove to his father that he could still become the number 1 hero, but an accident covered him in scars and resulted in his family thinking him dead. Becoming Dabi, he vowed to ruin Endeavor's life to make him feel the same pain he felt.
  • The end of the Shie Hassaikai Arc and his entire appearance in the Dark Hero Arc actually manages to do this for Overhaul. Although what he did to Eri was absolutely monstrous, it's surprisingly hard not to feel a little bit of pity for him. His foster father, the one person he truly cared for, is stuck in a coma, albeit the one he put him in, and he can no longer take him out of it due to having lost his powers. Upon realizing this after losing his arms, all he can do is scream in agony and sadness. In prison, he's been reduced to a shell of his former self: a weak, broken man who only wishes to apologize to his foster father. Him breaking down crying while wanting to see his "pops" again actually manages to be rather sad despite him bringing it on himself.
• Designated Hero:
  • Mineta, while a hero-in-training and treated as one of the good guys, showcases no heroic traits whatsoever, even less than Bakugo. He only wants to be a hero so he can be seen as being cool and get girls, is inappropriate to his peers, especially the female ones, he isn't courageous, altruistic, smart, charismatic, kind, or any of the traits that the rest of the class is praised as great heroes to be for having, even though he keeps being lumped together with others in this category. Many fans wonder how he got into Class 1-A and why no one has kicked him out yet. The fact that his 5/5 Intelligence stat, higher than Genius Bruiser Bakugo and Badass Bookworm Midoriya, and second only to Yaoyorozu's 6/5 Intelligence has been of no use whatsoever (or even showcased past Informed Attribute) does not help his case.
  • Aizawa is seen as this by his detractors. He's a deconstruction of the Sink or Swim Mentor, but a lot of people see his methods as either ineffective or downright cruel. Despite valuing logic, his own actions as a teacher and a hero make him come off as inconsistently written at times. He calls out Izuku for his inability to use a quirk without rendering himself useless, but characters like Kaminari and Aoyama carry similar weaknesses throughout the series with minimal improvement along the way and aren't subjected to the same lectures. He also doesn't put much effort into mitigating the downsides of his own quirk, such as seeking medical help for his dry eye rather than relying on drops or cutting his hair after Shigaraki identifies it floating upwards as a signal for when his power is active. He is willing to expel entire classes, and has done so before, should they not meet his standards, and would have done the same to Midoriya had he not impressed Aizawa at the last minute. While it's later revealed that the expulsions were temporary, they still go into the student's permanent record. He repeatedly uses "rational falsehoods" to get the students to work harder, but it in turn just scares the crap out of them. He's so incredibly militant about stomping down on all hope or love for the job for the sake of trying to adapt his class to the harshness of Hero life (read: it may get them killed and "sometimes you can't save them all") that when other teachers arrive the kids look like zombies, so dour he's made them. He tends to miss important details regarding the behavior of his students or punish them when he does notice.[[note]]Including failing to notice Iida signed up to intern in Hosu, where Stain was last sighted (especially considering that someone who made it to the semifinals of the sports festival could have gotten a more prestigious hero agency than Manual's); thinking Midoriya and Bakugo would become Fire-Forged Friends by facing All Might only for their relationship to remain volatile and All Might almost crippling them; failing to notice Bakugo suffered issues from being kidnapped and being made to take a test that replicated the Kamino incident leading to his fight with Midoriya, then punishing both of them for the fight. He also perpetuates the controversial aspect of hero society by threatening to punish the students for acting without licenses, namely by saying he'd have expelled the entire class outside of Bakugo, Jiro, and Hagakure for either attempting to rescue Bakugo themselves or for knowing about the attempt and not stopping them. Many end up seeing him as both a horrible teacher and a Knight Templar Rules Lawyer in the process. He even mentions that Vlad King, the homeroom teacher for Class 1-B, is a far better teacher than him, as Class 1-B's teamwork is on par with Class 1-A's despite the former's relative lack of life-or-death experience.
• Diagnosed by the Audience:
  • Midoriya has many behaviours and personality quirks that lead a number of fans to headcanon him as autistic. These include an almost-obsessive focus on a singular interest (superheroes, particularly All Might, in his case) that he has devoted considerable time and energy into over the course of his life (as indicated by his myriad notebooks with detailed information and statistics on heroes), a self-admitted difficulty in understanding humor and social interaction, stimming behaviours (mild exercises, muttering to himself, and rocking in a chair as a child), a natural affinity for patterns (especially noticing them), and hyperempathy. Others wonder, given his Heroic Self-Deprecation, whether he has impostor syndrome. He never seems to consider himself a true hero or a worthy successor to All Might, no matter how many people he saves, and part of the reason he's so willing to break his body to use his quirk is that he genuinely considers himself as less important than his peers.
  • Mei Hatsume has been intepreted as autistic due to her hyperfixation on inventing, her difficulties understanding social norms or cues such as personal space, and her tics that some view as stimming.
• Die for Our Ship:
  • Bakugo gets this the most. If Uraraka, Midoriya, or Kirishima aren't being shipped with him, then he is often an abusive jerk who can even take pleasure in their misery and constantly push them towards Midoriya, Todoroki or Kaminari's arms, respectively. At worst, there is plenty of rape-related material of him, particularly with Midoriya. This treatment and especially the rape fics are a bit of a sore point to Bakugo/Midoriya shippers.
  • Although far rarer, Midoriya can get this from those who ship Bakugo with other characters (particularly Todoroki, Uraraka and Kirishima). He is either an annoying Gary Stu that Bakugo is justifiably pissed at, a possessive and aggressive Yandere for Bakugo seeking to end all competition, or just a past relationship that severely messed up either Bakugo or whoever he is trying to date. In Bakugo/Uraraka fics, while he isn't often depicted as a jerk, he is sometimes portrayed as underestimating Uraraka and not fully respecting her capabilities in an Innocently Insensitive patronizing manner.
  • Todoroki gets this from Bakugo/Midoriya. Though he isn't portrayed as an outright jerk as much as someone so protective of Midoriya, he gets in Bakugo's way. Particularly, he is prone to believing Bakugo is abusing Midoriya in one way or another and get in fights with him because of it.
  • Hisashi gets this a lot from All Might/Inko shippers. He is often a man who abandoned Inko and his own son rather than just working overseas, leaving a depressed Inko behind to care for their Quirkless son, and All Might comes up to pick up the pieces and become the father the family needs.
  • Kaminari got a bit of this from Jiro/Yaoyorozu shippers in the leadup to the war against the Paranormal Liberation Front. After Midnight tells him that if the thought of protecting everyone is too difficult for him to wrap his head around, he should instead think about protecting the person dearest to him, and Jiro immediately comes to his mind. While the Kaminari/Jiro pairing had existed before then, it wasn't seen as that much a threat to the Jiro/Yaoyorozu pairing due to Kaminari often only being teased by Jiro. After this bit of obvious Ship Tease, however, many fans of the former pairing began subjecting Kaminari to this thinking that the series was heading towards the latter pairing.
• Dry Docked Ship: Endeavor/All Might, in no small part due to some beliefs that they studied together, and Endeavor had an obsession with him starting there.

E-F

• Epileptic Trees:
  • Speculation about the identity of the U.A. traitor ran rampant, with fans pointing at a large number of suspects due to a lack of strong clues. Nearly every teacher (other than All Might) has been treated as a suspect, and so have many students: Kaminari,^note Exacerbated by him seemingly doing the Meta Liberation Army's hand sign in Chapter 241, and his freakout over finding himself among the heroes on the front lines in 259. Shoji, Hagakure^note Due to her Invisibility Quirk being very useful for sneaking around and gathering info, and Uraraka^note Due to being treated as a major character on a meta-level despite being severely Out of Focus in most arcs. The Wild Mass Guessing page even lists the potential candidates among the tropers. That's not even getting into the theories that the traitor plot is a Red Herring concept being used to drive the heroes into paranoia. This only died down after it was revealed that Aoyama is the traitor.
  • Another popular theory is that Dabi is one of Shoto's brothers, specifically the unseen yet mentioned Toya Todoroki. The first hint is his Playing with Fire Quirk. The second hint is that he shares the same haircut as one of his siblings seen in the flashback from his childhood, though a different color. The third hint is that he's rather adamant about not using his real name, and that it would make sense that somebody from a family as prestigious as the Todorokis would hide his identity. The fourth hint is that during the Forest Training Camp Arc, he had a rather specific interaction with Shoto, almost like as if they've met before. The fifth hint is him sharing the same greenish-blue eyes as Shoto's fire side. Some speculate the reason he worships Stain is because having Endeavor for a father would twist his view on heroes, and that the reason Shoto didn't recognize him is because he dyed his hair and his patches made him harder to recognize. Finally, it's revealed that Toya had a fire Quirk even stronger than Endeavor's, but was too physically frail to use it to its full potential; Dabi's Quirk uses blue flames, indicating they burn hotter than Endeavor's, and Dabi's biggest weakness is his physical frailty and lack of resistance to his own fire. It was eventually confirmed that Dabi is indeed Toya Todoroki, Endeavor's eldest son, who has returned to destroy the Flame Hero.
  • Another prominent theory is that Midoriya wasn't actually Quirkless. Instead, his Quirk was stolen by All For One. All For One's back alley doctor's silhouette highly resembles Dr. Tsubasa, the doctor who told Midoriya that he was Quirkless, and it was later revealed that Dr. Tsubasa is actually the grandfather of the winged boy, Tsubasa, in Bakugo's Gang of Bullies, who was heavily implied by Horikoshi to be the Winged Nomu that grabbed Midoriya during the Field Training Arc. This creates a huge degree of Fridge Horror, since it effectively insinuates that Dr. Tsubasa either lent a helping hand to All For One in having Tsubasa's Quirk stolen, or he allowed Tsubasa, his own grandson, to be turned into a Nomu. The anime further fuels this theory due to Dr. Tsubasa and All For One's shadowy doctor having the same voice actor in both the Japanese and English versions. Revelations later in the manga made this theory stand out much more heavily, with it being revealed that Ujiko, said shadowy doctor, did manage to steal Quirks before All For One helped him out, meaning it's entirely possible that this theory is more likely true than before. The fact that Dr. Tsubasa is just a pseudonym that Garaki uses only adds more fuel to this theory.
  • Virtually everything about Hisashi Midoriya, due to his absence from both Izuku and Inko's lives and the narrative leaving many things open about him:
    • Some believe that Hisashi is the reason why Izuku doesn't have a Quirk, due to some unexplained issue with him, and wonder if his distant relationship with his family is connected to that. The very disturbing idea that he might actually be Dabi is also brought up, too, considering that Dabi has not revealed his true name and possesses a strange fire Quirk, while Hisashi is said to be a fire-breather by his wife, though this theory has slowly died down as the "Dabi is a Todoroki" theory increased in popularity. The Reveal that Dabi is in fact Toya has officially killed that idea.
    • There are theories suggesting that Hisashi is All For One himself, based on small oddities, the inspiration that All For One visibly takes from famous Big Bad Dad Darth Vader, and the one partial shot of his intact face in profile — the only view of his pre-injury face we are ever given - which reveals facial features eerily to Izuku's and similarly messy hair, in an otherwise Cast of Snowflakes series. Some have taken this theory and ran with it in regards to fanfics, such as the Conversations with a Cryptid series.
• Estrogen Brigade: Quite a few male characters have strong female fanbases, no doubt due to 90% of the male characters in the show being absolutely ripped. From Class 1-A there's Midoriya, Bakugo, Todoroki, Ida, Kirishima, Kaminari, Ojiro, Sero, and even Shoji. Despite not being in Class 1-A, Shinso is also extremely popular. On the pro-hero's side there's All Might (in his muscle form), Eraser Head, and Hawks.
• Evil Is Cool:
  • Endeavor can count as an anti-heroic example. He has an awesome design, a deep voice, an intimidating presence, and is legitimately competent at his job despite how much of a Jerkass he can be. However, some of his more despicable actions can lessen his standing.
  • "Hero Killer" Stain is basically the embodiment of a '90s Anti-Hero, except he's a villain. He's a vicious Knight Templar who's convinced that none of the current group of Heroes barring All Might (and later, the main character Deku) are "real heroes" and need to be purged. He's also a complete psychopath with a warped view on what being a hero is and has no compunctions against murdering teenagers. However, because of his design, weapons and powers, he'll keep on fighting, (after being defeated, he still continues trying to fight against the other heroes with a punctured lung and scared them enough to make them flinch before he passed out, while standing up) earning him admiration both in-universe and out.
  • Tomura Shigaraki evolves into this after his talk with Midoriya and realizing his own convictions, kickstarting his development from a Psychopathic Manchild into a genuinely cunning and dangerous villain. For any that still had doubts about him, his focus in the Meta Liberation Army Arc seems to have done the job of truly establishing him as a terrifying villain to rival All For One.
  • The League of Villains get this in spades, being a group of really badass fighters with plenty of style and charisma who go through quite an amount of Character Development and want to purge society of "fake heroes" and reshape it In Their Own Image, gaining them lots of fans, some of whom even want them to succeed in their goals.
  • Muscular, despite being an Ax-Crazy Blood Knight (or maybe even because of it), has some of this going for him thanks to his cool Quirk and awesome fight with Midoriya.
  • All For One, as the opposite of All Might, also has his own fan following, as he was the only one who could devastate All Might so much that All Might actually became the Handicapped Badass in the start of the series, and he lost his Quirk during his second fight, even though it ended on All For One's defeat. His Establishing Character Moment where he appeared as a synonym of Death itself also didn't hurt.
  • Gentle Criminal can qualify despite not truly being evil. After all, he's a charismatic and sharp-dressed Gentleman Thief with a sympathetic backstory who uses his wits to commit small acts of villainy and is actually capable of going head to head with Midoriya. Amusingly enough, he's trying to invoke this In-Universe…with not much success. Which is also why after being Put on a Bus he returns in Final War Arc to help heroes in battle.
  • Re-Destro, a charismatic, Affably Evil Father to His Men who is able to use his Quirk to transform into a giant capable of going toe to toe with the aforementioned Shigaraki. The fact that he's a Villain with Good Publicity and has an interesting ideology further this.
  • Gigantomachia, considering he's practically the series' version of Godzilla. Although he's not the sharpest tool in the shed, he more than makes up for it by being one of the strongest characters in the entire series, tossing the heroes around like it's nothing and trudging through whole cities like a Kaiju. And that's when he's not even trying to fight back. When he is… basically nothing can stand in his way.
• Fan-Preferred Couple: All Might/Inko became a popular pairing after Chapter 97 after the former admitted he admired her, not only for her resemblance to his deceased mentor, but her personality too. Despite Inko being canonically still married to Izuku's father, several fans prefer to simply ignore this fact either by portraying All Might as Izuku's father or Inko as being divorced. This is helped by said father being The Ghost.
• Fan-Preferred Cut Content: Yaoyorozu's Quirk turns her body fat into solid objects, such as blankets, radios, and cannons. As a result, her hero costume needs to be skimpy. In the finished product, this is a costume with a Navel-Deep Neckline, with the logic that she has enough exposed skin to pull out decent-sized objects. This design has proven controversial, as she's a teenager and the costume comes off to many as being too sexualized. Many fans find her original sports bra and shorts-like design to be a lot cooler and more appropriate, making them wish it hadn't been changed.
• Fans Prefer The New Him: While it's not a largely-held opinion, some fans actually preferred Izuku's Darker and Edgier costume in the Dark Hero Arc, seeing it as frighteningly badass. This is in spite of the fact that it's meant to show his worsening mental state due to all the stress put upon him by his Chronic Hero Syndrome.
• Fandom Heresy:
  • Disliking Midoriya or calling him a bad protagonist because he "cries all the time" quickly became this for fans, with many clarifying that he rarely ever cries in later arcs except for when it's deemed appropriate, such as Sir Nighteye's death. Even though he did cry quite a bit in the first few arcs, him crying was quite understandable given the treatment he had to endure for (initially) being quirk-less, which can make some of the criticism lean uncomfortably close into the Men Don't Cry stereotype that ends up promoting toxic masculinity.
  • Calling out Inko for having gained weight since Izuku's childhood. A lot of fans don't take kindly to people saying she has become ugly or unattractive due to gaining weight and put down those who say it by pointing out that it would be perfectly normal for a (technically) single mom to do such a thing.
  • Saying that you like Mineta, or at the very least saying that you think he's a good character, will get you no shortage of death glares from the fandom since he's widely seen as The Scrappy of the entire series, as well as one of the most notorious scrappies in manga and anime in the last few years.
  • Do you like Overhaul? Do you think he's cool? Do you want him to be redeemed? Congratulations. You now have the entire fandom's undying hatred. Even feeling the slightest amount of sympathy for him in his current state is enough to set some fans off.
• Fandom Rivalry:
  • An interesting case happened with the fandoms that were rivals to the Naruto fandom. Because of the manga's status as the Spiritual Successor to Naruto, fans who disliked the manga tend to associate both way too much and believe that My Hero Academia has the same problems Naruto had despite never reading it. Additionally, there are some former Naruto fans who feel that this series executes the tropes the former tried to pull off much better.
  • As the two works competing for being the post-Naruto new apple of Shōnen Jump's eyes, Black Clover fans tend to have a bone to pick with My Hero Academia fans, generally accusing the latter work of having just as many clichés. This was intensified when the former work got an anime that started being heavily pushed by Crunchyroll to become the next Naruto, while said anime also got a lot of nasty commentary and was criticized for its unhinged use of shonen clichés and Asta's voice. Black Clover has gradually come to be seen as "the new Bleach", which has only furthered the rivalry.
  • A really unusual case with Boruto: Naruto Next Generations which, much like its protagonist, has gone to painstaking efforts to make it clear that while it is a successor to Naruto, it is a distinct entity with its own way of doing things. While most people were perfectly content with this, a number of Naruto fans within the My Hero Academia community began taking shots at Boruto for being inferior to My Hero Academia, which they view as a more faithful successor. This has since instigated a larger mutual rivalry between fans of both series.
  • Crunchyroll's Anime Awards would cause many fandoms to turn against the My Hero Academia fandom, believing the series to have an overblown and unearned popularity that doesn't reflect its quality, which causes the series to earn many awards despite other shows deserving it more. In 2018, Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai's fandom was particularly angered at My Hero Academia for feeling that their protagonist, Sakuta, was infinitely more deserving of the Best Boy Award that ended up going to Midoriya. Some of My Hero Academia fans argue that at least this series has more staying power than others, and dismisses them, as well as their fandoms and complaints, as passing fads that are forgotten by the next popular anime of the following year.
  • A rather fierce one with Jujutsu Kaisen has been occurring due to both manga being in their final arcs at the same time. And due to different perspectives on how each series is handling said final arcs, there tends to be a heavy Culture Clash in what either side thinks is better in terms of character handling, plot, and combat if they aren't a part of the Friendly Fandoms portion of the two fanbases. In the particular case of character handling, as of this writing, harsher fans of My Hero Academia tend to accuse Jujutsu Kaisen of being a hopeless case of Too Bleak, Stopped Caring for being way too willing to kill off a lot of major characters and making it hard to care about any of them, while harsher fans of Jujutsu Kaisen proclaim My Hero Academia as a childish case of Sweetness Aversion for being willing to not kill a lot of major heroes and claiming a lack of stakes as a result.
• Fanfic Fuel:
  • The universe of the series is a rich and fertile soil to create OCs of both pro heroes and students.
  • As of Chapter 96, all students are being asked to move in to the school dorms. Essentially, this opens a huge space for slice-of-life and ship related fanfics as the students from Class 1-A are now dormmates.
  • For the second popularity poll, Horikoshi drew the top 10 characters in a fantasy theme across a large two page spread. The image quickly caught on with the fandom, and gained even more popularity after it was used as a basis for the third ED of the anime. As a result, numerous amounts of fan art and fanfics were created of the characters in an RPG-esque fantasy setting. Subsequently, the AU became a sort of recurring thing in the official material, it was the setting for a chapter of the spin-off light novels and the theme again for the fourth popularity pool drawing, as well as getting a shout out to it in the anime itself.
    • Subsequent popularity polls that depict AUs have also become a popular source of inspiration for fanart and fanfics. This is the case for the 6th and 7th polls in particular. The seventh depicting characters in a Steampunk setting, with Bakugo and Midoriya often being portrayed by fans as engineers of some sort. The sixth portrays characters in some sort of snowy/snow desert setting each accompanied by massive animals. Horikoshi's promotional movie art of Midoriya and Bakugo as kaijus also generated some fanart.
  • A few promotional images in the Halloween showcased several characters in costume outfits.^note Midoriya as a ghost, Bakugo as a werewolf, Iida as a Frankenstein's monster, Uraraka as a witch, Todoroki as a vampire, Kaminari as a devil, All Might as a skeleton and Aizawa as a mummy. This has become a source of fanart and fanfics of the characters wearing these outfits in halloween or an alternate universe where they're all these kinds of monsters. Sometimes this even happens together with the fantasy-themed fics above.
  • How is the rest of the world handling Quirks? You tell us!
  • It's mentioned that Aizawa's been teaching at U.A. for five years and expels any student he doesn't think has potential, including an entire class the year before the current Class 1-A. What happened to those students? Do they resent Aizawa and/or U.A. in general for not giving them a chance? Could Aizawa have unwittingly created a villain by telling a kid they didn't have what it takes to be a hero?
  • The Bunny Deku meme inspired a lot of risqué fanart of Midoriya.
• Fanon Discontinuity:
  • The fact that Inko is still married to Izuku's father is a fact known, but mostly ignored, due to a large preference for Inko to be with All Might. Others also add in their theories about Izuku's father being a villain, possibly even All For One himself, to explain why she wouldn't be with him. It also helps that Hisashi has been a non-entity for the entire series, making it easy to ignore or forget that he existed.
  • A lot of fanfic writers ignore the revelation that One for All will cause Rapid Aging on those who already had a Quirk on the basis that the human body isn't prepared to house two Quirks (with the exception of those with Required Secondary Powers such as All for One), given how popular is among fanfic writers to give Izuku a Quirk on top of One for All, or give One for All to a (non-Quirkless) character other than Izuku.
• Foe Yay Shipping:
  • Bakugo/Midoriya is this since Bakugo played the Arc Villain early on and was his rival, though this no longer applies. The same logic can be used on Todoroki/Midoriya, for Todoroki's part as the rival in the U.A. Sports Festival Arc.
  • Bakugo/Todoroki, who are shipped in spite of Bakugo being constantly angry and outright hating Todoroki, while the latter more or less considers him an everyday annoyance.
  • Midoriya's status as Launcher of a Thousand Ships, besides the popular Alternate Universe of him as a villain makes ships of him with members of the League of Villains, including Shigaraki, Dabi, Toga and even Stain and All For One.
  • Fans have taken up shipping Bakugo/Toga, though it doubles as a Crack Ship due to the fact that they haven't directly interacted during his kidnapping. This is probably due to their polar opposite demeanors.
  • Uraraka/Toga is a popular pairing due to Toga's one-sided Villainous Crush. It even has official artwork. And then there's their final battle and its resolution, where Uraraka offers to donate blood to Toga for the rest of her life, says her smile is the most beautiful she's ever seen, and tells her that she thinks she's "the cutest girl in the whole world". To say the pairing became even more popular and widespread after this would be an extreme understatement.
  • All Might/Endeavor is sometimes shipped, despite the fact Endeavor despises All Might.
  • Midnight/Mt. Lady, who are known to have gotten into a Cat Fight on TV, are shipped together due to their fiery dynamics.
  • Hawks/Dabi, which was surprisingly popular even before their actual interaction in Chapter 190/191, was only furthered when they actually showcase a very antagonistic relationship.
• Franchise Original Sin:
  • At the beginning of the manga, a lot of praise was given to the manga's pacing, with villain-centered arc driving the plot forward interlaced with school-centered arcs that drove the characters and the addition of a multitude of vibrant, interesting characters in each arc. Eventually, some fans started to complain about these exact elements. These fans believe the amount of school-centered arcs has led to the plot advancing at a snail's pace and leaving enough unresolved plot threads to weave a blanket, while the sizeable cast has become sizeable enough that most characters will never get any focus, no matter how much fans want.
    • Ironically enough, this has started to go in the opposite direction, as while the story is moving at a faster pace after the Paranormal Liberation War arc, it has also resulted in a lot of story concepts and characters feeling extremely rushed or woefully underexplored. Some examples include the evil side of the Hero Safety Commission via Lady Nagant's backstory, the developing of One For All's other Quirks and their relation to Deku's emotional state (with each subsequent Quirk after Black Whip being developed at increasingly absurd speeds despite their initial difficulty), Deku's solo vigilante arc and his degrading mental state from his self-destructive behavior, the loss of the Hero System, etc.
  • Some of the more contentious points of the Internship Arc, such as most of the cast being pushed aside in favor of new characters, were present in the Field Training Arc. Back then, however, it wasn't as much of a problem because that arc was much shorter, most of the cast who wasn't shown came back having learned new things in their absence, and there were fewer new characters.

G-H

• Genius Bonus:
  • In Chapter 172, Tokoyami briefly mentions with sadness about his failure to master the F Chord. The F Chord is a very difficult chord to be played by people who are just learning to play guitar, as anyone who has tried to can say.
  • The types of mushrooms Komori grows during her fight in Joint Training Arc:
    • Ionomidotis Frondosa and Coprinopsis Atramentaria are mushrooms which are completely black and partially black, respectively, which makes them a perfect hiding place for Kuroiro.
    • Schizophyllum Commune is known to cause diseases affecting the Respiratory System, and it's what Komori grows in Tokoyami's throat.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff:
  • While the manga is already popular in its native Japan, it's much more popular in North America, thanks to being a perfect mix between Japanese battle shonen and American superhero comic books, where it's one of the few mangas to have reached mainstream popularity.
  • In regards to characters, both Gran Torino and Stain placed noticeably higher in the American popularity poll than in the Japanese one.
  • Hatsume is an example of this. In the Japanese popularity poll, she ranked lower than Kendo, a character who at the time had less screentime than her. In America, however, she's a favorite among fan artists.
  • There's Toga, who placed 19th in the second Japanese poll, but 3rd in the U.S. poll.
  • Shoji's reception in the West is far better than in the East, largely related to fans thinking that he's a bizarre version of sexy and Freaky Is Cool.
  • Mirio is way more popular in the West than he is in Japan. In the 3rd and 4th popularity polls, he ranked 41st and 26th, respectively, whereas many Western fans have him on their list of favorite characters of the whole series. The latest Western popularity pool ranks him on the 9th place, 17 positions above his ranking in Japan.
  • Arc-wise, the Meta Liberation Army Arc was much better received in North America than Japan, likely because the arc's complete focus on the villains instead of the heroes was seen as unique for a manga series and the League of Villains' backstories revolving around the flaws of society came across as more sympathetic to American audiences. It got up to the point where many American fans rank it as one of the best arcs of the series.
• Gotta Ship 'Em All: Due to a large cast, and them all frequently being paired up with each other in various battles and activities, shipping has run pretty rampant in the fandom with sexuality rarely being a consideration.
• Growing the Beard:
  • The series starts to pick up steam with the USJ Arc. For others, the U.A. Sports Festival Arc is where it started because of the Character Development that occurred. For how the villains were written, the Forest Training Camp Arc helped with that.
  • Season 2 is definitely when the anime started to get more popular. While Season 1's ratings were good, Season 2's ratings for the most part kept landing it in the top ten spot, with a recap episode actually having better ratings than the final episode of Naruto: Shippuden. On top of that, the series' burgeoning popularity was so strong that Season 2 was doubled to a 26 episode run as opposed to a fleeting 13 for Season 1, appeasing viewers who got annoyed with the idea that they were waiting a year for only 13 more episodes to come out. And the announcement of Season 2 immediately followed the end of the Season 1 finale to keep viewers invested and assure them the series was not going to be dropped. Moreso, it coincided with the return of the equally wildly popular Attack on Titan, which had the opposite fate — shaved down to a half-length season (though with the other half airing next year as a guaranteed third season to get a rhythm going again after a four-year deep freeze on production). Viewers of that series were consoled by the fact My Hero Academia would fill the void and flocked to it.
  • While the series hasn't shied away from portraying its antagonists in a sympathetic light, the Meta Liberation Army Arc completely eschewed whatever was left of its original Black-and-White Morality in favor of a more mature, nuanced worldview. In the process, the League of Villains has developed into protagonists in their own right. Subsequently, the manga had a darker tone and a tenser atmosphere that many fans saw as a great improvement over the arcs with divisive receptions that happened before it (like the Internship, U.A. Cultural Festival, and Joint Training Arcs).
• Heartwarming in Hindsight:
  • The flashback of Inko and Izuku playing together when Izuku was a little kid was considered one of the cutest scenes in the manga and in the anime, but it reached new levels of heartwarming when Horikoshi admitted that the scene was inspired by his own time playing with his mom as a little kid and that he cried while making that scene.
  • Two things from All Might's speech to Midoriya at the start of the series became this after Two Heroes:
    • All Might made an offhand statement that the man who designed his costumes is his hero. In Two Heroes, it turns out to be David Shield, an old friend of All Might's.
    • Telling Midoriya to give up on heroism and focus on a job he can do without a Quirk was harsh, but it worked out very well for Melissa, who is Quirkless, as well as David, who has an entirely useless Quirk.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • In a karmic sort of way if you think about it: Aizawa expelled his entire class last year just because they didn't live up to his standards, even if it was only to make a point, and he soon re-enrolled them. He got a little more than he bargained for the next year when his class includes the apprentice of the #1 hero and the son of the #2 hero and, overall, his entire class is quite possibly the strongest U.A.'s ever seen.
  • All of the comparisons to One-Punch Man became this when Iida's Japanese voice actor, Kaito Ishikawa, provided the voice of Genos in the anime adaptation.
  • Like any other series out there, My Hero Academia has plenty of gender flip art. Then comes Mitsuki Bakugo, who looks just like a female version of her son. When Horikoshi drew a picture of what he'd thought some of the characters would look like as the opposite gender, Bakugo's gender-bend looks almost exactly like his mother as well.
  • Todoroki's first interaction with Midoriya is stating that I'm Not Here to Make Friends and that he will beat Midoriya at the U.A. Sports Festival. The hilarious part comes from the fact that, by the end of that arc, Midoriya would become his Only Friend and he would also open up to people in Class 1-A and even befriend Yaoyorozu after a while.
  • Prior to the airing of the anime's third season, some videos cut footage to mimic the trailers for Avengers: Infinity War. And then an actual, official collaboration between the anime and the movie was announced on April 11, 2018.
  • The Midoriya/Bakugo ship became this when Cardcaptor Sakura: Clear Card's dub has their English voice actors playing Touya and Yukito, an Official Couple of Childhood Friends.
  • Texas Smash is the first Smash All Might uses in the series. The license of the anime would be picked up by Funimation, a company that's based out of Texas.
  • This isn't the only time Christopher Sabat voiced a powerful muscular blonde with something that has been passed down for generations. Or a character that put a young protagonist through Training from Hell.
  • A kid, whose name starts with "E", with low self-esteem issues, takes a level in badass, dyes his hair and changes his hairstyle to distance himself from his past self, becomes close friends with the main characters in the same place where he learns to be a badass. Are we talking about Eijiro Kirishima/Red Riot or Eli Moskowitz/Hawk?
  • In the English dub, All Might is voiced by Christopher Sabat and one of his pupils, Bakugo, who hero worships him is voiced by Clifford Chapin. This becomes hilarious when Chapin is cast as Cabba in Dragon Ball Super, who also forms a mentor-student relationship with Sabat's character Vegeta, except, the personalities of the characters voiced by each actor are polar opposites of each other. Even better, Justin Briner, Deku himself, voices a younger version of Vegeta in episode 6.
  • Back at the Internship Arc, Eri's Quirk had been revealed to be so powerful, that she accidentally erased her dad from existence. Such death also happened to All For One, when he uses the Rewind in the "Quirk Destroyer" bullets to scratch off any more injuries. He also knew that he couldn't stop the process, making him progressively younger as time went on. So come to think about it, Eri's Quirk also wrote Japan's Shadow Dictator to non-existence as well. Well, at least from his original body.
• Hollywood Homely: Midoriya is described in-universe as very plain looking and someone who people wouldn't look at twice. However, to many fans, he's at worst quite cute, and some fans think he is pretty attractive or even downright hot, specially as he keeps getting more muscular and collecting rugged scars. Yo Shindo, who is considered pretty In-Universe looks almost exactly like Midoriya, the only difference being he is taller and lacks his Youthful Freckles.
• Hype Backlash:
  • With many proclaiming it the "perfect shonen" and praising it as an amazing anime, many come in with high expectations of it. While many are satisfied, others don't see the appeal and consider it another Cliché Storm at worst, So Okay, It's Average at best. Not helping matters is that for many, the start of the series' Growing the Beard is the U.A. Sports Festival Arc, which doesn't occur until Season 2, meaning some drop it before they get to where the anime's praise genuinely comes from. This got more pronounced as the series went on due to controversial writing decisions in the later arcs.
  • Character-wise, Tsuyu has been criticized due to how much hype and attention she receives. While not outright disliked, there are those who don't consider her any better than the other side characters.
    • Similarly, Shinsou has received a backlash from fans who believe he receives too much attention in fan works, overshadowing much more important characters. Some argue that his canon personality isn't that interesting and that most portrayals of him in fan works invent a new personality and backstory for him.
  • Thanks to the series winning a large glut of awards during the 2017 and 2018 Crunchyroll Anime Awards, many fans of other series were not amused. It got to the point where detractors accused the awards of rewarding popularity over quality.

I-L

• Idiosyncratic Ship Naming:
  • Midnight/Mt. Lady is referred to on Tumblr as "M'Lady".
  • "Mighty Family" for Inko/All Might.
  • Kaminari/Ashido is known as "Battery Acid".
  • Bakugo/Kirishima is "Pop Rocks"
  • Kaminari/Jiro is known as "Lightning Cable/Lightning Jack".
  • Bakugo/Ashido is "Acid Bomb".
  • Deku/Uraraka is "Green Tea". ^ExplanationIn Japanese, Ochako's name includes the kanji for "Tea" (茶) while the name Midoriya includes the kanji for "Green" (緑)
• I Knew It!:
  • The fanbase predicted that All Might and Midoriya's Quirk, One For All, would have an Evil Counterpart called "All For One". Its power was predicted to be stealing other Quirks. In Chapters 57 and 59, this was proved correct.
  • Despite being voiced by Yuichiro Umehara in the VOMIC, many had thought that for the anime adaptation Bakugo would be voiced by Nobuhiko Okamoto. They ended up being right when his casting announcement came around.
  • For the Vigilantes spin-off, a few readers predicted that Knuckle-Duster was Quirkless.
  • Many have predicted that Toga has a shape-shifting Quirk and that she was posing as Camie during the Provisional Hero License Exam Arc.
  • Several readers had guessed correctly that Eri's real father is the previous Hassaikai boss. Though this was subverted when Chapter 156 adds that the previous Hassaikai boss is Eri's grandfather.
  • While this was more of a joke among fans than anything, quite a few guessed correctly that part of the reason why Hawks hired Tokoyami as an intern is because both are bird-themed heroes. Hawks says this is 20% of the reason of the hiring.
  • Going back to when the explanation of what One For All is and how it came to be was given, many fans speculated that anyone with a Quirk before receiving One For All would also pass on that original Quirk as well. This is confirmed in Chapter 213.
  • Although it was more of a crack theory than anything, some fans correctly guessed that Kurogiri is Aizawa's deceased best friend, Oboro Shirakumo, that was brought back to life by All For One.
  • Pretty much everyone and their mothers foresaw the reveal that Dabi is Toya Todoroki, Endeavor’s long-thought deceased son.
  • Many people theorized that Doctor Tsubasa and Kyudai Garaki were the same person, and eventually they were proven right.
  • Although the theory wasn’t that popular, a couple of fans expected the reveal that Decay isn’t Tomura’s original Quirk, but rather the one he somehow received from All For One.
• Improved Second Attempt:
  • The anime's adaptation of the U.A. Sports Festival Arc basically did this for Yaoyorozu by actually showing off her overwhelming loss to Tokoyami, which was only a single uninformative panel in the manga. This was due to Horikoshi discovering that the length of the arc was ballooning from what he originally intended and cut out some things intentionally because they were one-stroke battles and having them all chew up pages in weekly chapter format would let down the readers. However, while nearly all of the fights Horikoshi cut out are inconsequential, Yaoyorozu's defeat has lasting consequences. Originally, many readers of the manga felt that her broken confidence in the Final Exams Arc came out of nowhere since they never got to see what it was that turned her into a Broken Ace.
  • For the Bakugo vs. Uraraka fight in the manga, many fans didn't understand why the crowd suddenly turned on the former for full-on attacking the latter despite there being four mixed-sex battles beforehand. This was because the manga didn't show enough to justify this reaction. In the anime, it's shown that the previous fights were a lot more even and in two of them, the girls won pretty easily.^note The notable exception is the Iida vs. Hatsume "fight", which is nothing more than a glorified sales pitch for the latter. In the Tokoyami vs. Yaoyorozu fight, it's shown that the former deliberately attacked in a way that would get the latter out of the ring without hurting her. In Bakugo's case, it appears that he has a significant advantage over Uraraka. However, since he doesn't go for a quick ring out, the crowd assumes that he's just taking pleasure in hurting someone who is weaker than him.
• Informed Wrongness:
  • All Might is portrayed as wrong for telling Izuku that he couldn't be a hero without a powerful Quirk, but he later admits he was wrong when he saw Izuku running into danger to save Bakugo from the Sludge Villain while the heroes present there didn't do anything because their Quirks weren't fit for the situation, delivering the message that to be a hero determination and a heroic spirit is more important than having a powerful Quirk. Sounds really good and uplifting... except the series would then go on to repeatedly show that All Might's initial statement was right: Not only would Izuku get into dangerous situations where he would have died if he didn't have One for All (The USJ attack, the confrontation with Stain, the battle with Muscular, etc), but every important hero or hero student, such as the heroes of the Top 10, Bakugo and Todoroki, UA's Big Three, etc... all have immensely powerful Quirks, while characters with weak Quirks such as Hagakure or Mineta are considered Joke Characters. So while determination and selflessness are important traits to be a hero, they pale in comparison to a powerful Quirk.
  • At the end of the Provisional Hero License Exam Arc, Todoroki is one of three major characters to fail to pass the exam, the other ones being Bakugo and Yoarashi, with the reason being that his I Work Alone attitude and him getting into an argument with Yoarashi that almost resulted in Unfriendly Fire towards another student. However, Todoroki comes across as less deserving of the criticism compared to Bakugo and Yoarashi, who failed for similar reasons. To begin with, Todoroki worked alone specifically because his powers could risk Unfriendly Fire if he used them in a careless manner, so it isn't like he's running off and being an ass like Bakugo did, as Todoroki was trying to be as safe as he could. In the case of his argument with Yoarashi, it wasn't like Todoroki instigated it, as Yoarashi was continually harassing him for petty reasons, and was getting in Todoroki's way by using his wind Quirk when Todoroki was using the fire part of his Quirk. The worst thing Todoroki did was respond and get distracted, which while his fault, was only because Yoarashi was instigating it to the point that Todoroki, who had actively done his best to ignore it, could not longer reasonably do so any longer. The fact the instructors said the intent of the exam was to get heroes to work together also comes across as biased on their part towards people who have powerful but hard to control Quirks like Todoroki's.
  • It's VERY minor considering how much of a Hate Sink he is, but Overhaul receives scorn from Toga and Twice for misgendering Magne and is partially treated like a Politically Incorrect Villain because of it. While their anger at Overhaul is justified considering he killed their teammate (albeit in self-defense), his tone makes it clear that he genuinely thought Magne was a man and had no intention of being transphobic, even quickly correcting his mistake. It doesn't help that several newcomers to the series have made the same mistake as Overhaul and confused Magne for a man due to her masculine physical features.
  • Hawks is shown to be in the wrong for killing Twice, something that civilians call him out on and Hawks makes clear he feels was wrong as well. But... what was he supposed to do? Tragic backstory and mental instability aside, Twice was a literal One-Man Army who could possibly single-handedly kill all enemies of the League of Villains and was completely loyal to them. And due to Twice's powers, it would be rather hard for Hawks to try and take him down non-lethally and he even tried to reason with him (even if it somewhat comes across as Condescending Compassion). As tragic as Twice's death is, it's hard to see Hawks being completely at fault for it when he tried to talk him down.
• It's Short, So It Sucks!:
  • Deku's escapades as a vigilante away from UA lasts a paltry 11 chapters (22 if you include the battle against Class 1-A that brings him back to school). Most readers tend to believe that a whole saga could have been based around this, such as seeing more of the world from Deku's vigilante viewpoint, rather then just a couple fights against several villains in his homeland before heading back.
  • Many felt that adaptation of fan-favorite Meta Liberation Arc was very rushed, while also having many important scenes cut out such as Spinner's change of worldview to be more fit with Shigaraki than Stain or Re-Destro killing his secretary. It only consisted of five/six episodes in total. In comparison, previous Joint Training arc got ten episodes, and the fact that both of the arcs got similar amount of chapters (Joint Training Arc — 24 chapters, Meta Liberation Arc — 23 chapters) doesn't help.
• It Was His Sled:
  • Due to the fact of the importance of the Shimura family on Shigaraki's character, it's hard not to spoil that Shigaraki is Nana Shimura's Grandson.
  • Since All Might vs. All For One is one of the most iconic fights in the series, it'll also be hard not to spoil that All Might retires because he can no longer use One For All.
  • Since it was pretty popular as a fan theory some people spoil without marking that Dabi is Toya.
• It's Popular, Now It Sucks!:
  • This is the general consensus of the series' detractors due to Hype Backlash.
  • How some (especially his haters) feel about Bakugo. For them, watching him constantly winning the popularity polls is just irritating.
• Jerkass Dissonance: Despite Bakugo being a Jerk with a Heart of Gold in his best days (and even then, mostly with Kirishima), his fans like to portray him as a Misunderstood Loner with a Heart of Gold, a Tsundere or someone with a Sugar-and-Ice Personality. While his behavior is later given an explanation, it's never justified, he doesn't feel remorse for bullying Midoriya, at least until Chapter 322, where he does make a genuine apology towards Midoriya for his harmful behavior and actions towards him nor has his behavior in general gotten better towards anyone but Kirishima and Midoriya. Despite that, he has a large number of fans for a variety of reasons, Draco in Leather Pants and Jerkass Woobie being some of them. Some of his fans though do admit that he is not a nice person or someone they would like to meet in real life, but like him for being a complex, well-written take of the Stock Shōnen Rival trope.
• Jerks Are Worse Than Villains:
  • Despite the series having a gauntlet of villains who range from mass murderers to Omnicidal Maniacs, Endeavor is particularly despised by a significant portion of the fandom for what he did to his family. He put his five-year-old son Shoto through such hellish training that the boy was left vomiting and crying on the floor. And he mistreated his wife to the point where she snapped and scarred her son by pouring boiling water on his face. These fans reject Endeavor's Character Development and hope Dabi, a known mass murderer who has since been revealed to actually be his thought deceased son Toya himself, slowly and painfully burns him to death.
  • Despite being one of the heroes, Mineta is more reviled by the fandom than any of the villains. He's a shameless pervert who constantly makes unwanted advances on his female classmates — harassing them, spying on them, groping them, and so on. At one point, he even goes so far as to make a pass at a traumatized 6-year-old. Despite not being a villain, Mineta's slimy, lecherous demeanor makes him come off as a more realistic individual to hate.
  • A major reason why Katsuki Bakugo is a Base-Breaking Character lies with this. For the half that dislikes him, they are repulsed by his treatment of Midoriya early on in the series, which involves bullying him, blowing up his belongings in broad daylight, and suicide baiting him in the very first chapter. As a result, numerous popular fanfics have author bents that vilify or otherwise brutally punish him under the belief that he's a Karma Houdini even after his Character Development from a Jerkass into a Jerk with a Heart of Gold. Some writers even have his quirk stolen by All For One, resulting in some cheers despite the latter's reputation as a Card-Carrying Villain who murders For the Evulz.
  • Although he's the true Big Bad of the entire series and is responsible for grooming Tomura Shigaraki into the hero-hating monster he is today, All For One is still less hated than Kotaro Shimura, Tenko Shimura/Tomura Shigaraki's abusive father. While All For One really isn't that much better of a father figure to Tenko/Tomura, he's still an Evil Is Cool villain who is an amazing planner and strategist, so it's hard not to admire his villainy even in spite of his actions. Meanwhile, Kotaro is much more realistically despicable as his abuse of his son is responsible for getting his entire family killed and allowing Tenko to fall into All For One's arms in the first place. While a grand Card-Carrying Villain such as All For One wouldn't likely exist in real life, people such as Kotaro definitely do and have ruined lives due to their mistreatment of their family.
  • Twice's fans are not fond of Jin's boss who fired him in the past and pretty much ruined his life making his former employee homeless. He appears later in Dark Hero Arc within the mob of angry civilians, still being a Jerkass who helped create one of Japan's most dangerous villains who even after his death left a major impact on society, demanding heroes to clean up the mess.
• Just Here for Godzilla: Even some of the series' most vocal detractors have their favorite characters they cannot hate and are willing to engage in the material to see even if they dislike or do not care for the rest of the content. Examples usually include Aizawa, Hawks, Toga, Shigaraki, Dabi, Midnight, Mirko, Mt Lady, some of Class 1-A members such as Tsuyu, Kyoka, Mina, Kirishima or Tokoyami, Gentle Criminal, Stain and especially All Might, who just like In-Universe is very popular even after his retirement for being simply so awesome.
• Launcher of a Thousand Ships:
  • Midoriya. There isn't a member of Class 1-A he hasn't been shipped with, Uraraka, Ashido, Tsuyu, Yaoyorozu, Bakugo, Iida, Kirishima, Tokoyami, Aoyama, Jiro, and Todoroki being the most popular. Outside of Class 1-A, he also gets shipped with Shinso, Hatsume, Melissa, Mirio, Shigaraki, and even All Might. If you'd rather have some completely off-the-wall ships, you can find Midoriya being shipped with Mitsuki, Endeavor, Tokage, Midnight, Aizawa and Mirko. He also has a few Crossover Ships with Akko, Eren Yeager and Yang Xiao Long. It's fair to say that, even if the popularity of the ship doesn't really take off, someone will ship Midoriya with every newly introduced character. And if Midoriya being a guy doesn't suit you, there are plenty of female Midoriya fanfics out there to satisfy you that are just as diverse in said pairings. Midoriya's popularity is enough that there is something called "Dekubowl" in the fandom, which are fics/stories where several characters are fighting for Midoriya's affection or merge the usual plot of the series with Harem Genre elements.
  • All Might shows what happens when an All-Loving Hero is Loved by All. At some point, he's been shipped with almost every adult hero including: Nighteye, Endeavor, Aizawa, Midnight, Present Mic, and Nana Shimura. Besides established heroes, All Might also gets shipped with: Tsukauchi, Inko, Izuku, David Shield, Shigaraki, and even Stain.
  • Bakugo, particularly with Midoriya, Kirishima, Todoroki and Uraraka. Shipping him with Kaminari, Camie, Yaoyorozu, Toga, Ashido, Tsuyu, Mirko, Fuyumi, and Jiro has gained a certain popularity as well. Bakugo's ships tend to be more numerous, especially in Japan where his behavior is interpreted as him being a Tsundere so he's considered rather cute there and got him a lot of Yaoi Fangirls that love to see him with other guys.
  • Jiro, being the "kuudere" of the class, gets shipped with her fair share of characters. Particularly with Yaoyorozu, Kaminari, Koda, Bakugo, Todoroki, Hagakure and Midoriya.
• The Law of Fan Jackassery: While not as bad as its primary influence, Naruto, expect to find plenty of people bashing or refusing to watch the series due to the infamously toxic shipping wars that go on in the fandom.
• LGBT Fanbase:
  • Unsurprisingly, there's a good amount of Bara fans that like the manga, since every male character is built like a brick wall with Midoriya, Bakugo, Iida, Kirishima, and All Might being among the favorites. Endeavor deserves special mention for being the subject of most bara fanart of the series and has become somewhat of a Bara icon for artists.
  • Trans fans have really shown approval of Tiger, a trans man and member of the Wild Wild Pussycats. Magne being a trans woman was also well received, especially in regards to how her voice actor is supportive of her and Twice angrily calling Overhaul out for using the wrong pronoun for her.
  • There are a good portion of fans from the LGBT community that interpret that characters such as Kirishima and Jiro and Aizawa and Present Mic are actually gay, with some fans believing and cheering for them to come out, as a result, both have gotten a considerable following of gay fans.
• Love to Hate:
  • Some actually see pre-Character Development Bakugo as this. He's a massive douchebag for sure, but his explosive temper and extreme arrogance can be very entertaining to watch.
  • Neito Monoma. He's a giant jerk to Class 1-A and is obsessed with proving that Class 1-B is superior, but he's so over-the-top and smug that fans find him hilarious for it. However, the hate eventually went away by the final arc of the series, which showcases him as a Jerk with a Heart of Gold who is instrumental in helping the heroes win.
  • Endeavor is an awful person, effectively being the Token Evil Teammate for the superheroes. He's abusive towards his family, rude towards just about everyone else, only saves people for the fame and glory, is childishly jealous of All Might, and has done more evil than some of the actual supervillains. He's also widely beloved as one of the best antagonists in the series; his despicable behavior really makes him stand out and he's legitimately badass, with a great design. Once he began undergoing a redemption arc however, the reaction was... mixed to say the least.
  • Muscular only had a major appearance in one arc, however, he's usually seen as an example of how to make a one-shot villain both threatening and memorable.
  • All For One is one of the most evil villains in the entire series, yet he's incredibly calculating, managing to execute his plans with swift and utter ease, and a truly intimidating villain who takes the dark side of the series much higher than usual whenever he appears.
  • Overhaul as well. Unlike All For One who at least has Evil Is Cool going for him, Overhaul is just an all-around awful person with no cool qualities whatsoever. However, he really stands out due to his horribly vile actions and seeing him get his well-deserved karma is absolutely glorious.

M-N

• Magnificent Bastard:
  • Atsuhiro Sako, better known as Mr. Compress, is one of the most composed members of the League of Villains. During the attack on the Training Camp, he successfully kidnaps Katsuki Bakugo and even tries to kidnap Fumikage Tokoyami for the sake of converting them to the League. Compress is skilled in using his Quirk to seal any object or person into a marble and carries multiple with him for almost any situation. During the Paranormal Liberation War, he breaks out of Best Jeanist's bind by putting his clothes in a marble and even maims himself to free his arm. Using this opportunity, he saves his beloved friends from capture, allowing them to remain at large to ensure that they see his vision of a better society come to fruition. Willing to risk his life for his allies, Mr. Compress stands as one of the narrative's bravest villains.
  • "Gentle Criminal", real name Danjuro Tobita, wanted nothing more than to be a famous Pro Hero. When he failed in his goal and was abandoned to poverty, he decided to become a villain instead. Gentle Criminal successfully commits thefts and evades the law for six years with the help of his partner La Brava, who he cherishes and supports, never killing anyone in the process. Unable to gain the fame he desires, Gentle devises a brilliant scheme to break into U.A. High for fame. Facing down against the teenage Hero Deku, Gentle gives him a hard battle, creatively combining his otherwise weak power of Elasticity with a keen analytical mind. Upon his apparent defeat, Gentle uses La Brava's powers to restore and enhance himself, giving Deku an even more intense battle. Even upon truly losing, Gentle manifests the last of La Brava's Quirk using sheer willpower and creates a last moment scheme to ensure La Brava avoids punishment, which Deku goes along with out of genuine respect and sympathy toward him, and ultimately goes down a path of redemption, becoming a Hero like he always wanted.
  • Rikiya Yotsubashi, codenamed "Re-Destro," is the leader of a terrorist organization known as the Meta Liberation Army. The descendant of the famous revolutionary Destro, Re-Destro seeks to achieve his goals of a world where Quirk use is treated as a human right. Running a worldwide empire, Re-Destro takes on the League of Villains. Kidnapping their broker Giran, Re-Destro effortlessly tracks down the League, recovers information on them, and challenges them to all-out war in the Liberation Army's home city. When they arrive, Re-Destro unleashes specifically tailored threats upon them, expressing genuine care for his personal lieutenants when they take on League members. Re-Destro engages their leader, Tomura Shigaraki, in single combat. When Shigaraki wins after gaining newfound resolve, Re-Destro realizes Shigaraki would be a superior leader, and abdicates leadership of the Meta Liberation Army to Shigaraki, helping him form the Paranormal Liberation Front and loyally fighting for his cause in the ensuing conflict.
  • Miss Curious is the head of the Meta Liberation Army's propaganda branch. Having recruited countless members through her propaganda, Miss Curious jumps at the chance to interview League of Villains member Himiko Toga. Confronting her about her traumatic past and trying to martyr her by making her soldiers' blood explode and taking advantage of Toga's own powers, Miss Curious uses her tactics to overwhelm the young League member, all while keeping pace with her in the fight. When Toga gains the power to levitate Miss Curious, Miss Curious fondly comments on the amazing headline before being smashed against the pavement, proving a true journalist to her very last breath, that made huge impact on Toga's even after her death.
  • My Hero Academia: Heroes: Rising: Nine is a cold and calculating terrorist who attempts to cure his disease using a Cell Activation Quirk in order to create a strong world, targeting the island of Nabu to get the quirk off of Katsuma Shimano. A perceptive and capable leader, he cuts off access to the mainland as he has his men go and create chaos while he finds the kids. Showing himself to be capable of thinking on the spot, Nine misdirects and uses his multiple quirks to his advantage to block and get away when the situation calls for it. During the final battle, despite Class 1A's strengths, Nine easily storms through most of them with ease, and is only defeated once Deku shares One For All with Bakugo. Nine shows even in the face of death at the hands of Tomura Shigaraki to not give up in persisting his goals and still attempts to go back and fight.
• Memetic Badass:
  • Mirio Togata almost immediately became this after he gave a seriously awesome No-Holds-Barred Beatdown to Overhaul after losing his Quirk. Several fans have stated, jokingly or otherwise, that if Mirio had been the one to receive One For All, then the series would have ended much quicker.
  • Any character with a very cartoony Nonstandard Character Design is typically turned into this by the fanbase. Wash, for example, has gathered quite a few readers that joke about them being super powerful, despite their little screen time.^note Having a major villain named Stain helped push the joke as well. Slidin' Go has gotten a similar reaction due to his Seth MacFarlane-like design.
  • Thanks to My Hero Academia: Abridged, Backdraft has become a small source of hype in the fandom despite his very limited screen time.
  • X-Less, originally an unnamed background hero who participated in the Hideout Raid, had a brief but glorious stint as this after his proper introduction much later in the series. He takes part in the Hospital Raid during the Paranormal Liberation War Arc with several other heroes and ends up in the unenviable position of securing Shigaraki's comatose body, making him an obvious Red Shirt who would be the first killed the moment Shigaraki wakes up. However, several chapters go by without him waking and X-Less quickly gained a reputation in some online communities as the man who refused to stop living despite already being dead. With every chapter his legend grew, to the point that some jokingly speculated that his true Quirk was to cheat certain death. Sadly, he is dusted the moment Shigaraki does wake, but his legacy continues to live on after Shigaraki claims his cape for his own and starts wearing it as he begins to cause untold destruction.
  • Neito Monoma got this thanks to the Final Battle showcasing him as a major part of the heroes' plan by copying Kurogiri's Warp Gate to break the villains up, near single-handedly giving the heroes a fighting chance. He even laughs right in All For One's face!
  • Kinoko Komori is this due to her extremely lethal and just as underutilized power which allows her to grow Mushrooms anywhere. Including inside your body. She can give you literal brain rot by growing mushrooms on your brain. Or stop your heart by clogging every artery in your body at once. Horikoshi himself seems to have realized just how much potential Mushroom has to be a Story-Breaker Power, which is why in the finale he has Kinoko matched up against Dabi, who is able to take advantage of her quirk's only meaningful weakness, which is that her mushrooms can't grow in high temperature environments.
  • Eri, thanks to how much of an impact her powers have on the plot, especially in the final arc. From inadvertently bringing All For One back to his prime to restoring Deku's arms, plenty of fans figure she could easily end the series on her own, either by healing All Might or rewinding Shigaraki back to a baby.
• Memetic Molester:
  • Mineta is a sexual harassment suit waiting to happen. He barely even requires the "memetic" qualifier, given that he spouts inappropriate comments about women practically every time he opens his mouth.
  • Toga. She has a resting rape face, has No Sense of Personal Space to anybody covered in blood, regardless of gender, and appeared to Midoriya posing as a naked Camie. You also have to wonder what she does to her victims.
  • Bakugo occasionally gets this from the fandom due to his extremely aggressive personality. Some go so far as to have him downright rape Midoriya and/or Uraraka in fanfics.
  • Due to JelloApocalypse's So This Is Basically..., Shigaraki has been nicknamed "Bad Touch Man." His near obsession with Midoriya doesn't help.
  • Midnight. This one probably doesn't need much explanation, given that she wears a rather…revealing outfit…including around high-school students.
  • Pixie-Bob, thanks to her blatantly pulling a Jail Bait Wait on Midoriya, Iida, and Shoto, calling "dibs" on them and saying that she hopes to meet them again in three years.
  • Mount Lady got hit with this when she flirted with Shoto, a minor who's eight years younger than her, causing fans to start joking that she only appeared as a guest speaker at UA to flirt with younger men.
  • Stain. Given that he is a Serial Killer, it's not entirely implausible to see where this comes from. His Overly-Long Tongue which he uses to lick blood off his blade to paralyze his victims (including teenagers) has led a few dirty-minded fans to make jokes as well as comparisons to Patrick Star and Bruno Bucciarati.
• Memetic Personality Change:
  • Izuku Midoriya/Deku: As described in Memetic Loser, he is frequently depicted as far more Prone to Tears and an Extreme Doormat who accepts any abuse he takes without fighting back. He is also depicted oftenly as being a Nervous Wreck, stuttering a lot, and having issues such as social anxiety or suicidal tedencies. His Awesomeness by Analysis is also bumped to Child Prodigy levels, with many people convinced he could have skipped a LOT of grades if nothing was holding him back. In canon, Izuku tends to cry only during emotional moments (such as heart-to-heart talks with his mom), his academic achievements are rivaled by quite a few people in his class, his social skills rapidly improve, and he does have a temper that comes out during intense moments. Basically, fanon latches on (parts of) his chapter 1 characterization.
  • Shoto Todoroki: As a prime example of Never Live It Down, Shoto's Memetic "Izuku is All Might's secret lovechild" theory has made fans depict him as a mildly unhinged Conspiracy Theorist, down to owning a conspiracy board, and being convinced that everyone has a secret lovechild. He is also depicted as being overly stiff and polite. In canon, Shoto only expresses a "conspiracy theory" once, and it was actually a logical conclusion based on what evidence he had available. Also, his lack of social skills means that he speaks in a rather rude and blunt tone instead of being so polite.
  • Todoroki Enji/Endeavor: While he is an Abusive Parent, fans tend to depict him far worse than he is, giving him traits that either never show up in canon or outright contradict it. According to fanon, he has absolutely no regard for civilian casualties or property damage, is prone to Fantastic Racism, incredibly sloppy in his job, has a massive ego with no respect for anyone at all, focuses on beating villains in spectacular ways instead of saving people, and wouldn't mind if any of his children other than Shoto died. In canon, he never shows any kind of Fantastic Racism (he did try to create the "perfect quirk" but he never shows any discrimination towards different types of quirks), is very intelligent to the point that he's the only character in the series to understand Izuku's Technobabble, is ironically a very good teacher, ensures that there are minimum casualties and property damage while he is around, doesn't care about his public image, and does value the lives of his family - especially after his Jerkass Realization. Part of the reason behind his fandom depiction is that his Character Development takes the course of several months In-Universe, and a few years for readers, so many of these views were established before the manga started looking deeper into his character.
  • Keigo Takami/Hawks: Fandom likes to think that he would become a villain or at least turn his back on heroics if given a real chance, and that he sees the world with Jade-Colored Glasses. Instead, Hawks has a self-admitted case of Chronic Hero Syndrome which started when he was still a young child, and confesses that he's an optimist. He would never give up on heroics and saving people.
• Memetic Psychopath:
  • Thanks to his Hair-Trigger Temper, obsession with being the best, and tendency to lack empathy towards others, it's not really a surprise that Bakugo is often portrayed by the fandom as a raging psychopath who will brutally maim or even kill others if they piss him off too much.
  • While he's already an Abusive Parent, fans tend to take this several steps further and portray Endeavor as a reckless, egotistical, sadistic sociopath who cares for no one but himself and is perfectly fine letting civilians die as long as he still manages to look good.
  • Even Izuku himself somehow gets hit with this. While he's one of the kindest, most pure-hearted characters in the entire series, it's common for some fans to portray him as an edgy, ruthless villain in fanfics, a la the many "Villain Deku" fanfics. Unlike most examples however, this one mainly seems to be out of curiosity rather than anything else, exploring the idea of what Izuku might have become if no one believed he could be a hero. A few others enjoy portraying him as a villain purely out of irony, because they think it's hilariously ridiculous for someone as dorky and innocent as Izuku to turn into a dark and brooding psychopath. The Dark Deku arc likely added fuel to the fire, even though Deku was a vigilante during it, not a villain.
• Mentor Ship:
  • In spite of the moral questions it raises and the Squick some fans feel towards it, All Might/Midoriya has a certain following, especially in Japan.
  • There are some fans who believe All Might had a crush on his own mentor, Nana.
• Mexicans Love Speedy Gonzales: Himiko Toga fits the Depraved Bisexual trope in a series with very few confirmed LGBT characters, being an Ax-Crazy Psycho Knife Nut and Yandere with a stated "love" for both Izuku Midoriya and Ochaco Uraraka (or at least their blood). However, she's mostly well-liked by LGBT fans due to her Cute and Psycho characteristics and Hidden Depths. It certainly helps that her backstory of being mistreated due to her quirk and told to just ignore it and act "normal" struck a chord with quite a few people on the spectrum.
• Mind Game Ship:
  • Most of the Villain!Midoriya ships have shades of this, especially if it is with other villains.
  • Shinso/Midoriya gets this quite a bit, particularly due to how Shinso's power basically allows him to force others to do whatever he wants and Midoriya being naïve enough to never avoid an opportunity for Shinso to use it on him.
• Misaimed Fandom:
  • Some fans seem to think that Midoriya uses the hero name Deku because of Bakugo, when actually, he states in the manga to use the name because Uraraka changed the meaning of it for him ("Deku" can be read both as "Useless", which was what Bakugo meant by it, and "Never give up", which is what Uraraka means by it). Deku was a name Midoriya was embarrassed of because it was a way for Bakugo to bully him, he gladly accepted the name after Uraraka started using it more respectfully.
  • Some of Rei Todoroki's Ron the Death Eater status came from the fact that people accuse her of being too mentally unstable to become a mom, completely ignoring that her worst moment in her mental health came as direct result of the abuse she suffered at her husband's hands.
  • Some fans love to portray Dabi as a loving older brother to Natsuo, Fuyumi and Shoto, who team up to play pranks on Endeavor. This is completely ignoring the fact that Dabi, even when he was still a kid (known then as Toya Todoroki), hated Shoto from day one, seeing him as his more successful replacement and while he did have some love for Natsuo in his childhood, as an adult, he is more than willing to murder him in cold blood too if it means it'll cause Endeavor grief. In fact, in the canonical manga, the Todoroki siblings, and matriarch decide to work with Endeavor to stop Dabi, instead of the other way around.
  • There are fans who unironically quote Shigaraki's rant at the USJ about how heroes are are no different from villains for using violence to stop them and see it as a Villain Has a Point moment. While Shigaraki does later in the series make some valid points against hero society, this is not one of them and the narrative purpose of the rant was to show how childish and illogical his worldview was at that point. It cannot even be counted as a Strawman Has a Point example since he is basically suggesting that heroes using non-lethal violence against murderous villains when they often don't have any other options to stop them is somehow morally equivalent to villains committing (often lethal) violent acts unprovoked, not to mention he is blurting out this speech in the middle of a terrorist attack with full intent to maim or kill teenagers to draw the attention of All Might.
• Mis-blamed: In the anime, the last parts of Mirio's fight against Overhaul are shown via a slideshow with very little movement. This led to some criticism that the anime was skimping out on the animation during a very important scene, including some accusations that My Hero Academia: Heroes Rising was eating into the budget. However, the manga also used only a handful of text-only panels for this scene, meaning that the anime actually showed the fight in even more detail than what would have been necessary.
• Moe:
  • A lot of the Class 1-A students come across as such due to a variety of reasons. The prime examples are Midoriya/Deku, Uraraka/Uravity, Iida/Ingenium, Todoroki, Tsuyu/Froppy, Jiro/Earphone Jack, Yaoyorozu/Creati, Tokoyami/Tsukuyomi, Koda/Anima, and Ashido/Pinky.
  • A very hearty number of fans have also fallen in love with Eri. Opinions range from sweet little girl to downright adorable and precious. This is especially apparent after the Cultural Festival, and how her true personality has shined through ever since.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Shigaraki crossed the horizon during the USJ Arc when he tried to kill the U.A. students in an attempt to lure All Might out.
  • Stain crosses it in his introduction when he attacks Tensei Iida and permanently cripples him. Despite Stain's claims that he only went after heroes that don't adhere to All Might's ideals, several scenes reveal that Tensei was a Nice Guy.
  • Muscular already crossed it when he beat the hero team Water Hose, Kota's parents, to death for fun. And Muscular wants to do that to everybody he beats up, including their young son Kota. It's also implied that the villain tortured Water Hose before he killed them For the Evulz.
  • All For One crossed it when he killed Nana Shimura, All Might's predecessor, and then took her grandson to train him to be his successor.
  • Overhaul's horrifying treatment of Eri cements him as true evil: in order to produce his Quirk erasing bullets, he repeatedly used his Quirk to disintegrate her, extract her blood, then reassemble her, a process which is described as extremely painful and left Eri traumatized. There's also him destroying Mirio's Quirk and murdering Sir Nighteye.
  • Skeptic of the Meta Liberation Army's attempt to "recruit" Twice, by using his puppet-making Quirk to psychologically torture him over his severe issues from an incident where his own doubling powers went horribly wrong. His attempt comes down to creating puppets that look like Twice, having some of them hold him down and have others try to kill Toga in front of him, and breaking Twice's arms when he tries to stop them.
  • Trying to murder his baby brother and killing over thirty innocent people in cold blood is bad enough but Dabi officially crosses it when he treats Twice's death as nothing more than an inconvenience and frames Hawks as having murdered Twice for no reason, completely disrespecting his fallen ally’s memory.
• More Interesting as a Villain: While you'll be hard pressed to say that the protagonist Izuku Midoriya is universally disliked, he is a very common target of Villain AUs in the fanfiction community. Him giving up on the greater good due to his natural Quirkless physiology and the lack of positive influences growing up are pretty similar to the backstories of some of the actual villains in the main story; and people like playing with his ability to analyze heroes or how his relationship with All Might (his idol) and Bakugou (his childhood bully) would change in this setting.
• Most Wonderful Sound:
  • Whenever you hear "You Say Run" start up, expect epicness.
  • SMAAAAAAAAAAASH!
• Narm Charm:
  • As shown above in Narm, Shigaraki's design can look pretty unintentionally hilarious to some people. However, others find it to be genuinely creepy and say that it actually works with his character. The fact that the hands come from Shigaraki's dead family also helps.
  • Endeavor constantly being on fire may look a little ridiculous, but many fans love it because it makes his design stand out and actually fits his character. It helps that it's implied he does this to look vigilant and intimidating as a hero in public, as when he's home the fire is mostly nowhere to be seen.
  • All Might's finishing blow attack announcements, usually "[random American state] Smash!", are pretty ridiculous, but they're delivered with such seriousness, and in such climactic moments, that, at least after the first couple of times, it's hard not to like them. Especially once Midoriya starts imitating them, and in the especially dramatic case of All Might's final One For All powered punch, "United States of Smash," used to take down All For One. More goofy Gratuitous English, but it also makes perfect sense as the culmination of everything he's fought for, bringing together the strength of all his predecessors and supporters.
  • Midoriya fighting Gentle so that the U.A. Cultural Festival won't get shut down would seem like it's narm because it sounds like Skewed Priorities, but it reaches this when you remember it's because he wanted to let Eri have fun after the hell she went through. It also comes after several arcs of the class struggling to survive and progress in their education, making it one of the few moments of an In-Universe breather arc that would justify his drive to ensure the class succeeds.
  • Dabi breaking into a "Happy Dance" after revealing his true identity as Toya and successfully exposing the truth about Endeavor to the public can be a little goofy, especially since he starts hamming it up like there's no tomorrow, however it greatly succeeds at showing just how far gone he really is and how much he absolutely loathes his father.
  • The stage play series, The Ultra Stage, transforms the series into a live musical. While the premise is bizarre as can be, the earnestness and energy the actors bring to the stage make it a joy to watch. It also proved so successful that it had a sequel that goes all-out with the practical effects, including Bakugo's explosions, Kaminari's sparks, and Shigaraki destroying objects with his Decay quirk.
• Nausea Fuel: Seiji Shishikura's Meatball Quirk, as seen in Chapters 106 and 107. Lovecraftian Superpower doesn't even begin to describe it. It transforms the victim into an immobile, yet still conscious lump of flesh.
• Not-So-Cheap Imitation: My Hero Academia was primarily influenced by Naruto. However, many critics prefer My Hero Academia to Naruto for deconstructing some cliches the latter played straight.
• No Yay:
  • The first villain Midoriya and Bakugo encounter has rather uncomfortable subtext with them. It comes from being a slime villain with a habit of trying to take teenage boys' bodies.
  • Toga with anyone she fights against, particularly Midoriya, Tsuyu and Uraraka, all of whom she appears to be crushing on. However, she has full intention of murdering everyone she got a crush on, even Stain, take their blood and ultimately, take over their life by using her Quirk to take their appearance.
  • Some people think that Shigaraki and Stain's interest, bordering on obsession in Shigaraki's case, towards Midoriya has strong undertones of this.
  • Mineta with anybody is seen as this, likely owing to his Scrappy status.

O-R

• Older Than They Think: The motto "Plus Ultra" is the actual national motto of Spain since the 16th century. It even appears on the coat of arms of its national flag.
• One-Scene Wonder:
  • The Winged Nomu from the Hosu attack, due to the implications that he might be one of Midoriya's companions from childhood. Horikoshi provided a "hint" image of the boy in question in the manga volume.
  • Mitsuki Bakugo only shows up for one scene in the aftermath of the Hideout Raid Arc (apart from yelling at Bakugo off-panel after the U.A. Sports Festival Arc, and a brief appearance when Bakugo nearly dies fighting Shigaraki in the final arc), but has gained memetic infamy as Katsuki's surprisingly hot mom. It probably helps that she looks exactly like Katsuki as a woman.
  • Snatch is a pro hero who briefly shows up at the end of the Internship Arc, when the League of Villains attacks the convoy transporting the arrested Overhaul. He manages to give Shigaraki a surprisingly tough fight due to having a Quirk that's a good counter for Shigaraki's. He even gives an Armor-Piercing Question to Dabi before the latter kills him with Mr. Compress's help.
  • One nameless hero revealed to be a Pro Hero named “Eel Boy”, one of the first heroes Ochaco ever saw in action at a young age who shows up in the Paranormal Liberation War Arc catches Mr. Compress and Toga in his Quirk, all while delivering a short but effective statement of how the villains' troubled pasts don't justify their crimes. He's only thwarted by Twice's final clone stabbing him in the head, thus killing him.
  • Cassie Bate, codename Star and Stripe, shows up for a single (admittedly multi-chapter) fight with All For One in Tomura's body and absolutely owns in said fight, posing a massive threat to the Symbol of Fear himself, displaying a ridiculously powerful Quirk that could rewrite reality to a limited extent, nearly scoring a highly improbable win, and ultimately performing a Heroic Sacrifice by rewriting her own Quirk to sabotage All For One, doing what seemed impossible and driving the seemingly unflappable villain to panic. Despite having only one scene to her name, a fight scene at that, Star made quite the splash.
• One True Threesome:
  • Due to Midoriya being the Launcher of a Thousand Ships and a Gotta Ship 'Em All situation in the fandom, you can basically pick two characters and throw them on Midoriya and it would work. The most popular are Todoroki/Midoriya/Bakugo, Iida/Midoriya/Todoroki, Uraraka/Midoriya/Tsuyu, and Iida/Midoriya/Uraraka. Bakugo/Midoriya/Kirishima and Bakugo/Midoriya/Uraraka became popular soon after. To a less popular degree, Kaminari/Midoriya/Kirishima and Yaoyorozu/Midoriya/Todoroki also exist.
  • Dabi/Shigaraki/Toga is not unheard of. Specially since they are three of the most popular villains and their introduction shows some tensions between the three of them.
  • Kaminari/Kirishima/Bakugo has a surprising amount of fans, both due to Kirishima/Bakugo already large fanbase and Kaminari's popularity and proximity to the both of them.
  • Todoroki/Yaoyorozu/Jiro is another surprisingly popular ship, due in part to the popularity of both Todoroki/Yaoyorozu and Jiro/Yaoyorozu and as a means to combine them so as to solve shipping issues.
  • Mirio/Tamaki/Nejire has sparked in some circles. They are shown to be really close friends, Mirio and Nejire have served a bit of fanservice and the trio's general popularity as characters.
  • Among the adult characters All Might/Aizawa/Present Mic has a certain following.
  • There's also Aizawa/Midnight/Present Mic, since the three are friends and Midnight is the one that recommended Aizawa become a teacher in the first place.
  • Above the value of three, there are OT4s and so on. Midoriya/Bakugo/Todoroki/Shinso, Midoriya/Bakugo/Kaminari/Kirishima, Midoriya/Todoroki/Iida/Uraraka, etc.
  • Mirko/Endeavor/Hawks got popular as a source of lewd fanart and fanfics.
  • While Midoriya/Uraraka/Toga was already a moderately popular OT3, it gained a lot more support coinciding with the events of the latter two's final battle, said battle being absolutely laden with Foe Yay Shipping between them while having Uraraka openly admit she's in love with Midoriya still, and the scene playing out like a tragic love confession culminating in Toga giving her life to save Uraraka's. Fans of Midoriya/Uraraka that now loved Uraraka/Toga but didn't want to abandon the former either instead opt for the three together instead.
• Overshadowed by Controversy: At least in China and South Korea. Chapter 259 revealed the Doctor (the evil scientist assisting All For One and Tomura Shigaraki)'s name to be Maruta Shiga. While the name "Maruta", which can be translated into log, fits Horikoshi's tendency to give his characters punny/meaningful names (since the doctor is as round as a log) it was noted that the term unfortunately referenced project Maruta, a project done by Unit 731 of the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II that involved inhumane experimentation on various people which included live vivisection, weapon testing, and forced pregnancies which was given the cover story as a lumber mill to disguise the atrocities. Fans were very upset with the idea of a character as vile as the Doctor being named after the victims of a horrible experiment instead of the perpetrators, especially the ones from China^note it even led to the series being taken down online there and South Korea where the scars are still prominent. Horikoshi later apologized for this on his Twitter account, where he clarified that the reference was unintentional and proceeded to change the Doctors name to Kyudai Garaki, which fits the Meaningful Name theme that Horikoshi was going for without the controversy, in the updated Chapter 259 and all future chapters.
• Paranoia Fuel: Toga. She is capable of taking the place of anyone she takes the blood from. She was able to pose as Camie for a few days, meaning she was around the latter's friends and family without no one realizing the real Camie was somewhere, with god knows what was happening to her during this time period. Even worse, Toga can now turn into Uraraka and Midoriya, two people she made sure to know they were trusted and loved by their peers before taking their blood, therefore, she is now capable of infiltrating Class 1-A. During the Meta Liberation Army Arc, she got a power-up allowing her to replicate the Quirk of whoever she impersonates, which transformed her from a medium threat in the League to one of its strongest members.
• Periphery Demographic: Women felt really attracted to the manga, due to its highly respectful portrayal of women for shonen manga standards. Not only are all girls of Class 1-A confirmedly badasses, but none of them ever get the Faux Action Girl treatment or gets reduced to a source of fanservice. Yaoyorozu, the resident Ms. Fanservice, not only has the fanservice justified, but also is a fully fleshed out character, even getting Character Focus on her self-worth issues during the Final Exams Arc. The other source of fanservice, Mt. Lady and Midnight, both have it fairly downplayed or even Played for Laughs, such as Mt. Lady using her sex appeal in order to get free food. Another point that women love about the manga is that the bodies are realistic and don't have the absurd waist-to-chest ratio that puts most women off in other manga. For those that don't mind a bit of manservice, it helps that a lot of the male heroes have that classic superhero definition built into their suits (or lack thereof in some cases).
• Platonic Writing, Romantic Reading: Gran Torino and Nana Shimura were Platonic Life-Partners before her death, but a line from Torino saying that placing her son in foster care was their collective choice had some readers and viewers mistakenly believe they were a couple and Gran Torino is the father of Kotaro and grandfather of Shigaraki.
• Popular with Furries:
  • The series is quite popular with furry fans due to characters such as Tsuyu, Tokoyami, Selkie, and Gang Orca, whose Quirks give them animal-like traits or make them outright anthropomorphic animals.
  • The tall, nameless mutant civilian that Midoriya saves in Chapter 310 (officially referred to by Horikoshi as "Īppan Jōsei", which roughly translates to "Average/Ordinary Woman") is also quite popular with furries despite her minimal screen time. Horikoshi claims he had purposefully gave her a "striking appearance" to gain readers' attention, and it seems to be working. He even calls her the cutest in the series.
• Portmanteau Couple Name:
  • Midoriya/Uraraka: Dekuraraka, Izuocha, Dekuravity, Izukuraraka, Midoraka
  • Todoroki/Yaoyorozu: Momoroki, Todorozu, Todomomo
  • Midoriya/Bakugo: Izukugo, Bakudeku
  • Midoriya/Todoroki: Tododeku, Midoroki
  • Ashido/Kirishima: Kirishido, Kirimina
  • Uraraka/Asui: Tsuraraka, Tsuchaco, Urarasui
  • Bakugo/Kirishima: Kiribaku
  • Bakugo/Uraraka: Kacchaco, Bakuraka
  • Ojiro/Hagakure: Tojiro, Ojitoru
  • Ashido/Uraraka: Minaraka
  • Asui/Midoriya: Midoriyasui, Midotsuyu, Midotsu
  • Jiro/Momo: Jiromo, Momojiro
  • Aoyama/Midoriya: Midoriyama
  • Jiro/Kaminari: Kamijiro
  • Aizawa/Hizashi: EraserMic
  • Aizawa/All Might: EraserMight
• Questionable Casting: The general consensus for the Latin American Spanish dub of the series is that the Florida side of the cast is a disappointment within the fanbase compared with the Movies' cast done in Mexico City. Not even the international collaboration with the rest of the countries can save the dub.
• Realism-Induced Horror: Himiko Toga's backstory is eerily reminiscent of a child suffering from an undiagnosed disorder and inevitably snapping and lashing out when they're not given the help they need to cope with it. To put it in perspective, she was once an innocent little girl until her Quirk manifested and she gained a fixation for blood because of it. Her parents however were disgusted by her and told her to stop it as it wasn't normal, even bringing her to a Quirk counselor who agreed with them and told her to simply suppress her impulses for the sake of looking normal. While her classmates all thought of her as a bright and happy young woman, she was really only wearing a mask until the day she snapped, unable to hold back her impulses any longer. This caused her to stab the boy she had a crush on, then drink his blood with a straw as she cried Tears of Joy. In real-life tragedies similar to this, such as school killings, several of the perpetrators aren't too different from Toga in that they eventually had enough of being forced to blend in with the rest of society and end up giving into their dangerous impulses because they were never given a better alternative than "just ignore them".
• Recurring Fanon Character: Mikumo Atakani was the original design for Izuku. He is a character in many fanfics, sometimes as an alter ego or alias for Izuku, and other times as his brother, clone, or alternate universe counterpart.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap:
  • The Character Development Bakugo undergoes throughout the Paranormal Liberation War Arc managed to drastically improve his standing with readers who were formerly his staunch detractors: he acknowledges that the reason he harassed and bullied Midoriya was because of his own insecurities, and he later ends up Taking the Bullet for him. The first thing he has to ask when waking up afterwards is if Midoriya is okay. He proceeded to get even more of this when he finally apologized to Midoriya about bullying him and admitted he was wrong about almost everything ever since he got into U.A.
  • Tomura Shigaraki got this hard thanks to a truckload of Character Development. He was initially very divisive due to a lot of fans finding him a weak, ineffective, and incompetent villain whose Psychopathic Manchild shtick annoyed rather than terrified, especially in early arcs where his attempts to attack the main characters were mostly pushed forward by All For One than by his own hand. However, many of his detractors eventually warmed up to him and came to see him as a worthy Big Bad when he became a far better leader and planner, some of his traits considered to be annoying were toned down or disappeared, and his tragic backstory was revealed. He's now considered to be one of the best written characters in the entire series by many.
  • Minoru Mineta arguably has the largest hatedom in the entire franchise because of his perverted behavior and smarmy attitude. However, the Final War arc has him making a hopeless, but still daring stand against All For One in a desperate bid to prevent him from stealing Dark Shadow from Tokoyami and making an already awful situation even worse, which led to All For One deciding to retreat without stealing any other Quirks but Hawks' with the realization he failed to break any of the heroes' spirits. Such a display of genuine courage went over quite well with several readers, especially since Mineta mostly remained a Dirty Coward up until that point. While it's not enough to actually have him be rescued, at best he's a Base-Breaking Character with a majority of opinions still leaning towards The Scrappy, it's notable in that it's about the only time in the entire series where fans were actually rooting for Mineta.
• Rooting for the Empire:
  • Gentle and La Brava became such likable villains, there was a fraction of fans hoping they would win the battle against Midoriya, or thought that he was being an asshole for not letting them get away scot-free. After the fight, Midoriya does have enough sympathy for the two to downplay the fight as much as possible, and the aftermath of the arc seems to imply they'll both get off very lightly.
  • While not villains, Class 1-B are something of a Friendly Rivalry Opposing Sports Team and anytime they a pitted against Class 1-A, you can find more then a few fans hoping to see Class 1-B come out on top. This is helped by Class 1-B seeming more like the underdog in face-offs compared to the heavily praised and battle tested Class 1-A.
  • Everything the League of Villains has done since All For One's arrest counts as this. They're regularly losing members to the law and other villains, basically public enemy number one, and only seem to have each other, yet there's something just extremely compelling about seeing them struggle against these odds, take these licks, and survive. In their focus arc, they're pitted against the Well-Intentioned Extremist liberation front, slaughtering them in droves, and one can't help but cheer for them all the way as they try to rescue their captured Giran. Shigaraki, especially, people are really looking forward to the much foreshadowed day he finally truly succeeds his master. This only expanded in the final arc, when Shigaraki spent most of the final fight body-jacked by All For One— fans erupted with joy when he finally tore the bastard from his system and followed it up with a vicious Redemption Rejection that sets up his true final battle with Izuku.
  • Anyone going up against Endeavor was bound to get this from his detractors, but suffice it to say many fans wanted to see Dabi turn Endeavor to ash during the Paranormal Liberation War, seeing him as the logical consequence for Endeavor's abusive actions. This is likely why Dabi's Revenge by Proxy goal is so heavily emphasized — even fans who don't like Endeavor aren't likely to support the murder of Endeavor's children for deeds they had no part in. That doesn't stop many fans from hoping he takes Endeavor out along the way.

S-T

• Salvaged Story: One of the biggest criticisms of season 5 was how it Adapted Out important moments from the Meta Liberation Army arc, most notably the League raiding a mansion belonging to an anti-heteromorphic Quirk Cult, the poor state the League was in at the start of the arc, and Spinner confronting Shigaraki. Though there are still important moments from the arc that remain unadapted, Season 6 adapted the aforementioned content in the form of a flashback in its 13th episode. While fans are still frustrated over how those parts were not adapted in the right order, they are relieved they at least got adapted after all and find it a decent attempt at damage control.
• The Scrappy: Mineta has a sizable hatedom and tends to rank low on popularity polls. This seems to be attributed to his perverted antics, which to a lot of fans comes across as annoying and/or gross rather than funny, every scene with him repeating the same joke every time, and his arrogant attitude and looking down on others (like Todoroki or Bakugo) despite bringing nothing substantial to anything himself. There's also the fact that his character is painfully underdeveloped compared to others, yet, Horikoshi confessed that he is one of his favorite characters, due to being easy and fun to draw, so he tends to get a lot of screentime and page-time compared to other "side characters" in the class. It doesn't help that he's had virtually zero plot relevance at all since his introduction and has very little character development or exploration in the class. Many fans desperately wish for him to leave Class 1-A, usually to be replaced by Shinso (which often happens in Fix Fics).
• Self-Fanservice:
  • Midoriya's body is up to interpretation depending on who is making the fanwork. He looks skinnier in typical Eastern yaoi, but can also look even more muscular than normal if he is intended to look more like a top in a Ho Yay pairing. In the typical Western fandom, there's a considerable amount of care in making him look both lean and muscular. Similarly, the fandom also tends to believe he has freckles all over his body, even though he had a Shirtless Scene early on in the manga that proves his freckles are only on his face. In addition, the Bara fandom often speculates whether or not Midoriya is going to be able to hulk out like All Might does when he activates One For All, leading to fan art of him being absolutely shredded and bulky as a more experienced hero. In the Western fandom, there's a lot of fans who like to portray Midoriya as having sun-kissed, or at least naturally tanned skin. A later trend after Midoriya started focusing on kicks which focused on his legs and either has or will get thick, muscular thighs.
  • Yaoyorozu's hero costume get a lot of fan redesigns as a segment of her fanbase, mostly her non-Japanese fans, doesn't feel that her actual outfit is age and/or character appropriate. Her fan designed outfits tend to cover her up more or provide as much coverage as her actual outfit but in a way that are less sexualized. Some fans contribute outfits that are even more revealing, and thus more practical for her powerset, but which reveal skin in a less sexualized manner. Many of these designs amount to a stylized sports bra with shorts, or a sports bra with her existing skirt design, which was actually how her original design, as shown by Horikoshi's early concept sketches, would look like.
  • Uraraka is often shown as chubbier than what she actually is. It should be noted that this has some justification in-canon. In an interview, Horikoshi mentioned that Uraraka is plump◊ but only by Japanese standards, which is a size that usually falls in with normal body weight to Western viewers, who are the ones who usually draw her as being more heavy-built.
  • Shigaraki is subjected to this, especially after the Shigaraki/Dabi ship started attracting fans. He has a lot of marks on his face, from his cracked lips to his wrinkly eyebags which give him the appearance of a shut-in who doesn't get a lot of sleep, and a disturbing smile which is overall far from a pleasant sight. His deformities are often toned down to dark circles around his eyes, some random marks, and scratched lips, keeping a kind of dark alternative to the Bishōnen style.
  • Tsuyu is often drawn to be more human-looking in fan art with sometimes her figure getting a bit more emphasis.
  • While Aizawa doesn't look bad by any means, fan art tends to clean him up to make him look less of a groggy mess and more put together.
  • Hatsume gets this sometimes, mainly wearing more flattering/less clothes and her face being drawn in a more standard style.
  • Some depictions of Fat Gum combine elements of both his fat and skinny forms (and make his design rather less cartoony) to make him a more handsome Big Beautiful Man.
• Ship Mates:
  • One of the reasons for Todoroki/Midoriya and Kirishima/Bakugo's amazing popularity is the fact that they are this. Besides them, Jiro/Yaoyorozu and Tsuyu/Uraraka ships are also this.
  • On the other hand, Todoroki/Bakugo and Kirishima/Midoriya shippers are always close by, though neither ship is exceeding popular.
  • Iida/Uraraka and Tsuyu/Uraraka are popular shipmates for Bakugo/Midoriya or Todoroki/Midoriya.
  • The most popular het ships on the fandom are this which includes Midoriya/Uraraka, Midoriya/Tsuyu, Bakugo/Uraraka, Todoroki/Yaoyorozu, and Kaminari/Jiro.
  • In the event Bakugo is paired off with anyone else or is just flat-out left alone, then Kirishima is often paired with Ashido.
• Ship-to-Ship Combat:
  • There is a large group of shippers and even fans who don't ship any couple at all that dislike and often openly attack Bakugo/Midoriya. The groups accuse fanworks of that ship of Romanticized Abuse since it depicts a victim falling in love with his bully and the fans have the general belief that there is no possible healthy outcome for a romantic involvement between Midoriya and Bakugo. Some shippers are particularly fond of giving Bakugo the Ron the Death Eater treatment in their works. These shippers in particular point out how difficult their current relationship is and how hard would it be to create something healthy out of it. Midoriya/Bakugo shippers, on their part, defend the ship by claiming Bakugo has indeed improved and that it seems that their relationship has improved as well, also stating that Bakugo/Midoriya revolves around Character Development, on both sides. Many often try to work the issue in their fan works, use and abuse of Alternate Character Interpretation to explain the character's actions and often just create and entire Alternate Universe Fic to create a romance in a situation where the bullying never existed.
  • Another popular ship that rivals the hatedom of the Bakugo/Midoriya ship is Bakugo/Uraraka. Disliked by Bakugo/Kirishima shippers, Midoriya/Uraraka shippers, and the above mentioned Bakugo/Midoriya shippers alike, many have claimed that Uraraka dislikes, if not outright hates Bakugo, and it seems to be the same on Bakugo's part. Also, Bakugo and Uraraka haven't had a major moment between each other since their Sports Festival fight, if zero at all, which was also the first time onscreen they've encountered face-to-face, and it wasn't even by choice; the fights were selected at random. Fans of the ship says that during their fight, which seems to be the main source defense for defenders of Bakugo/Uraraka shippers, Bakugo sees something in Uraraka, that she isn't a frail schoolgirl and he acknowledged her determination. The only popular ship that doesn't outright attack them is Midoriya/Todoroki, causing them to be Ship Mates.
  • Hawks/Endeavor vs. Hawks/Dabi shippers. The latter thinks that the former are forgiving Endeavor too easy and shipping Hawks with an certified Domestic Abuser (and Endeavor being in his late forties while Hawks is the same age as his second eldest child), while the former point out that the latter are shipping Hawks with a certified Serial Killer and Hero Killer and accuse them of hypocrisy for it, claiming neither ship is perfectly functional, but at least in canon Hawks hates Dabi and likes Endeavor and between the two, Endeavor hasn't tried to and nearly succeeded in murdering Hawks unlike Dabi.
• Signature Line:
  • "I am here!"
  • "You can be a hero."
  • "SMMMMAAAAAAASSSHHHHHH!!"
  • "Go beyond! Plus Ultra!"
• Signature Scene:
  • Midoriya breaking down crying as All Might tells him the one thing he's always wanted to hear: "You can be a hero".
  • Midoriya using One For All to destroy the Zero Point Robot.
  • All Might's battle with Nomu at USJ, especially the anime version, which expanded the fight from a mere slugfest into a brawl that sent them crashing all throughout the complex and had "You Say Run" blaring the whole time.
  • All Might's "United States of Smash!!!" during his fight with All For One, followed by "You're next."
• Signature Series Arc: Several of the series' arcs are popular but three stand out in particular:
  • The Sports Festival Arc, which is considered the point where the series started Growing the Beard by fleshing out the extensive cast of characters, especially Shoto, its well-done fight scenes, and being a rather unique take on the Tournament Arc.
  • The Hideout Raid Arc, which is fondly remembered for the absolutely epic battle between All-Might and All For One, the sheer amount of emotion involved in the fight, and being a major turning point in the story where All-Might retires.
  • The Paranormal Liberation War Arc, which is easily the biggest, most intense arc of the series, being an all-out war between many of the series' heroes and villains, featuring many great fights and character interactions and basically serving as one giant Wham Episode.
• Signature Song:
  • "You Say Run" and its variations.
  • All Might's theme "I Am Here". Orchestral and triumphant song that trully shows that's everything's going to be alright, because All Might arrived.
  • "Hero Too" by Chrisy Costanza as Jiro, the song performed on School Festival.
• Spiritual Adaptation:
  • It's a pretty good manga adaptation of Sky High. Both deal with a world where superhumans are commonplace, with the main character starting off as a Badass Normal who eventually gains superpowers, and taking place in a superhero magnet school that has the world's equivalent to Superman as an alumnus.
  • It's a softer and brighter manga adaption of the Wild Cards series. Both take place in worlds where the vast majority of the human population possess a superpower with the majority of them worthless (Deuces), some of them turning people into physical mutants (Jokers), a selected few into winners with an actually useful power who can become "heroes" (Aces) and a small percentage of the population without a power altogether (Nats/Quirkless). The only difference between them is the absence of "Black Queens" (aka the mortality rate) in My Hero Academia.
• Spiritual Antithesis:
  • Of Naruto. Examples include:
    • Both are about underdog students with some relation to the resident World's Best Warrior, and their ongoing quest To Be a Master. That said, while Naruto has themes based around The Power of Friendship, and how you don't have to bear your cross by yourself, My Hero Academia is more based around individual success, and having the power to achieve your goals with your own two hands.
    • The Hideout Raid Arc is a perfect example of this, being one for the Sasuke Retrieval Arc: while the Naruto arc ends with Sasuke Uchiha deciding once and for all to become the Rival Turned Evil in his constant quest for power so he can fight his brother and turn-coats from Konoha to Orochimaru's side (even nearly killing Naruto along the way), the My Hero Academia arc has Bakugo deciding to defy the League of Villains' proposal and fights them, showcasing that while he's a jackass so colossal that people in the Academy actually ''expected'' him to turn villain if given a proper chance, he's still a stalwart supporter of the ideals people like All Might follow. Additionally, while the mission to bring Sasuke back was officially sanctioned by the Hokage herself, Bakugo's rescue mission is unauthorized, and results in Aizawa claiming he would have expelled everyone who participated or knew about it if not for All Might's retirement.
  • My Hero Academia is pretty much the perfect counter-argument to The Boys:
    • The Boys centers around a rogue cell of the CIA whose sole job is to humiliate and quietly murder completely amoral superheroes. The "supes" themselves act less like defenders of justice or protectors of the innocent, and are more like superpowered celebrities who — even the widely beloved Superman Substitute — do nothing but indulge in every hedonistic vice imaginable — including rape and murder — and look good when cameras are around. There are a few Wide-Eyed Idealist heroes every now and then, but their spirits are usually crushed under the sheer hopelessness of the world around them.
    • In contrast, All Might, the Superman Substitute is a through-and-through Cape and Big Good who has created decades of peace from rogue superhumans and inspired a new generation of young heroes through his sterling example of ideal heroism. There does exist commentary on celebrity-culture like in The Boys (here more comparable to the Japanese "Idol Worship" phenomenon) with the less-than-ideal heroes in the business — ranging from simple divas to fame-obsessed domestic-abusers — but they still are good people who are passionate about their jobs, they have an undeniable positive effect of society, and they help whenever they can because it's literally their job to do so. While The Boys mocked the very idea of superheroes by showing they'd be laughably incompetent in high-stress situations, and never really do anything beyond sell merchandise or host orgies. Meanwhile, the very premise of MHA are superheroes-in-training so that they can properly use their powers in a crisis, and supervillains are a very real daily threat in a world where anyone can be born with dangerous powers, so there will always be a need for protectors. And, rather tellingly, the people who espouse viewpoints that are very similar to those of the titular Boys are the League of Villains or the Hero-Killer.
• Spiritual Successor:
  • To Naruto. Horikoshi himself stated that he was inspired by Naruto, which explains the similarities of certain aspects of this series. Although My Hero Academia was already very popular when Naruto was still in Weekly Shōnen Jump, this series' popularity increased even further after the latter ended. One fan even submitted Naruto's name in a popularity poll, in an obvious nod at this.
  • It can be seen as one for Tiger & Bunny. Both cover similar themes, like the commercialization of superheroes and rankings, and both Wild Tiger and All Might gradually lose their powers over the course of the series.
• Squick:
  • Consuming a One For All user's DNA in order to inherit their powers. Let's be glad that hair can be used and not say, bodily fluids.
  • Midoriya constantly destroying his arms and legs is bad enough in the manga, but it takes a whole new level in the anime watching them sickeningly flop around like empty gloves. He didn't just break his bones, he pulverized them. And that gets taken even higher in the tournament, where he does the "breaking their limbs" things with his wounded fingers over and over again.
  • The effects of Shigaraki's Quirk on Aizawa's elbow in the USJ Arc. In the manga, it seemed bearable, but compared to the anime, it's much worse.
  • Mineta saying that he can't wait to meet Eri in ten years. Besides sounding gross, it was beyond inappropriate.
  • It's been known since the Field Training Arc that the Iida family's engines are Organic Technology, possessing parts such as radiators and exhaust pipes. In the Joint Training Arc, Tenya and Tensei are also seen having mufflers, which the former tears out of his legs so that new ones will grow back in order to make his Quirk stronger. This is roughly equivalent to cutting out a piece of bone in the hopes that you can run faster when it heals. And again: they grow back.
  • One villain Kirishima fights has a Quirk that lets him spawn blades from his body. That might already be squicky to some people it gets amped up a notch when after the villain boosts his power with the trigger drug he spawns blades through his eyes.
  • Shishikura's Quirk, Meatball allows him to manipulate his own flesh structure, along with his opponents'. The result usually turns them into an unholy 'meatball' mockery of themselves, with eyes, body parts and all sticking out of it at some very gross angles.
• Starboarding: Considering Midoriya's status of Launcher of a Thousand Ships, it's common to make fanfics of several people competing for him, but ultimately, only one of them winning, leaving all the others heartbroken. Particularly, Bakugo is the one most often portrayed as being in love with Midoriya, but due to his bullying, their relationship is forever screwed up. Shinso is another favorite to have feelings for Midoriya that won't be returned, if they are even acknowledged, being a common Romantic Runner-Up in fanfic.
• Strawman Has a Point: While the crowd booing Bakugo at the Sports Festival does him and Uraraka a disservice by assuming that he'll perform a brutal No-Holds-Barred Beatdown on her, it's not hard to see where they're coming from, given Bakugo's violent and aggressive nature. It doesn't help that Bakugo ends up winning somewhat easily after he thwarts Uraraka's desperate gambit (proving that Bakugo was at an advantage), or that Midnight later has to sedate him with her powers to prevent him from attacking an unconscious Todoroki.
• Superlative Dubbing: The dub is universally praised, particularly for the performances of Christopher Sabat as All Might and Justin Briner as Midoriya. Many consider All Might to be Sabat's best performance of his career (the above mentioned Big "NO!" is much less Narmy in the dub), while Briner's performance as Midoriya is considered by many to be better than his Japanese voice actor, Daiki Yamashita.^note Yamashita's performance has been praised as well. Sabat himself considers All Might to be his greatest role.
• Tainted by the Preview:
  • When the anime was first announced, fans were skeptical since at the time, the manga wasn't even two years old and many thought that it was too soon for an anime adaptation. There were worries that it would overtake the manga and have a lot of filler. However, this was quelled when the anime took a seasonal approach.
  • Some weren't happy about the announcement of the live-action movie adaptation due to how other live action adaptations of popular manga/anime series have been poorly received. This increased after it was announced Netflix would be producing the film due to the company's infamously poor track record with live-action anime adaptations.
• Take That, Scrappy!:
  • Those that still dislike Bakugo due to his horrible Establishing Character Moment consider his humiliating defeat by the Sludge Villain as this; it's even brought up by certain people in-universe who best know him as "that one hero-in-training who got embarrassed by that one villain". His haters also enjoy seeing how he was one of the only two Class 1-A students who failed the provisional hero license exam.
  • The Scrappy Mineta may be, but a Karma Houdini he is not. Nearly all of Mineta's perverted antics end with him on the receiving end of some sweet justice:
    • During the USJ incident, Mineta takes advantage of being rescued by Tsuyu to grope her breasts. She responds by violently dropping him into the boat, instead of putting him down gently like she did to Midoriya. And when he does it again while they are in the water after taking out the villains surrounding them, her response is to hold him underwater.
    • Mineta notices a peephole in the locker room, which would allow him to spy on the girls while they're changing. It turns out to be a trap set by Jiro, who uses her headphone jack to poke him in the eye.
    • One particular moment where Mineta gets punished for trying to peep on the girls in the hot springs helped propel Kota to minor Ensemble Dark Horse status. Even better, it turns out that Mandalay had Kota stand guard on the wall because she'd gotten a tip from Aizawa that one of his students was a pervert, meaning that Mineta's reputation is catching up to him.
      Kota: Before you become a hero, you should learn how to be a good human. [shoves Mineta off the dividing wall]
    • During the final fight of the joint training exercise, Mineta comes up with a strategy that has him bounce around using his sticky balls as springboards. He specifically calculated the trajectory so he would also end up bouncing into Ashido's breasts. Not only does she call him out for this, accusing him of being the worst member on the team, she is also later seen subjecting him to the Ludovico Procedure. After this, Mineta pretty much stops his perverted antics and keeps them to minimum.
• Tear Dryer: Pretty much any fight where things don't go easy for a character, but they're able to fight back with Heroic Second Wind. Thanks to this, fights like Deku vs Muscular or All Might vs All For One are well remembered and well liked for many fans.
• Testosterone Brigade: On the other side of the spectrum, quite a few female characters are popular with male fans. From Class 1-A there's Uraraka, Yaoyorozu, Ashido, Jiro, and even Asui. Despite not being in Class 1-A, Hatsume is also rather popular. On the pro-hero's side there's Mt. Lady, Midnight, and Mirko.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: The anime's decision to adapt the Endeavor Agency Arc before the much-hyped Meta Liberation Army Arc caused a big uproar in the fanbase for obvious reasons. While some were okay with the switch, arguing the Meta Liberation Army Arc works better than the Endeavor Agency Arc as a climatic ending to the season and that the switch added a sense of mystery for anime-only fans, many found the switch unnecessary and problematic due to the switch spoiling the ending of the Meta Liberation Army Arc for anime-only fans and breaking the intended pacing the manga set up. Not helping matters is the anime's decision to add in a filler episode in the Endeavor Agency Arc to set up the third movie, which itself is often blamed for the switch by detractors.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • More than a few fans have stated they wished that Midoriya had never gained powers and that the series was about him becoming a hero despite his lack of a Quirk. Horikoshi stated that this was indeed the original plan for the manga, but it was scrapped because he felt it would be too unrealistic for him to keep fighting enemies with increasingly outlandish and overpowered Quirks, which All Might explains to him at the beginning of the manga.
  • The Paranormal Liberation War Arc would have been a potentially good opportunity to show a student dying in the line of duty as a way of underscoring the dangers of hero work. Despite that, while several students are injured and Midnight, a teacher at U.A. is among the dead, all the students make it out of the war alive.
  • For a series that centers around a hero school, it doesn't take advantage of such a setting all that much. This becomes a lot more obvious later on with the confirmation that the series has entered into its final arc. A final arc where Midoriya and company still haven't even completed their first year at U.A.
  • Relating to the above, the non-combat aspects of heroism take a backseat to fighting villains much of the time. Establishing a unique persona, setting an example for the public, and how to manage your own agency are all things we’re told are important for heroes, but only get explored during OVAs or blink and you’ll miss it scenes between major plot points. Even pros who behave and get treated more like celebrities such as Hawks and Mt. Lady are shown doing field work more than anything else. Given the nature of the show’s genre this is to be expected to a degree, but it’s odd to establish and reiterate these elements without having them play a more central role in the story. This becomes even more obvious when public relations between heroes and the public go sour after the villains' plans begin to take off and there's no mention of hero management trying to repair their reputations, despite that being their job. This actually receives some light Lampshade Hanging in the final arc, where after receiving basically zero focus throughout the series, the students in U.A.'s management classes take a stand to livestream the final battle and show the world that they're still trying to fight, and admit that they really should have done something to support the heroes before now.
  • The possibility of U.A. having a traitor was brought up by the teachers, but quickly forgotten about. Between that and the time that Aoyama was revealed to be the traitor, he hadn't taken any further traitorous actions, and none of the staff nor students were shown doing any investigation. Not helping is the way the traitor was discovered: Tooru (a minor character) just happened to be looking for him and coincidentally found him with his parents begging him to go along with All for One.
  • Tamaki's hyped-up ultimate all-out attack ends up doing jack squat to the powered-up Shigaraki, leading to Bakugo's Heroic Sacrifice. Sure, he's not a major character and this just shows how grave of a threat Shigaraki is, but a great percentage of readers wished that he could have done at least some damage, considering how awesome and potentially powerful his Quirk is.
  • The discrimination towards those who had their bodies morphed due to receiving heteromorphic Quirks (an issue that revolves around the League of Villain's Spinner) had a lot of potential for some interesting storytelling. However, said discrimination has just been something that goes on in the background as it was never given a Story Arc to truly delve further into this overall issue. This comes to a head during the Final Battle where Spinner is seen leading the charge for his heteromorphic brothers against the heroes, which left many readers feeling that there was no build-up whatsoever for this plotline to have gotten to this point. Thus, leaving people feeling no investment in it. Adding to this is the two lesser developed heteromorphic Class 1-A students, Koda and Shoji, facing off against Spinner during this battle, which similar to the original issue, people were left feeling that they would be more invested in these characters had Spinner, Koda, and Shoji all received development earlier that delved into the discrimination towards heteromorphic people.
• Too Cool to Live:
  • Nighteye, who as All Might's former student acted as an excellent counterpart to him. Where All Might is loud, bombastic, and used his strength to steamroll threats, Nighteye preferred to use his cunning to gather intel and create detailed plans. However, Nighteye's Foresight quirk was what made him an incredible threat to the villains and he could have potentially dismantled future plots by the Meta Liberation Front and League of Villains, which is why he ends up dying in the same arc he's introduced in.
  • Star and Stripe is basically a Distaff Counterpart to All Might and embodies all of his ideals, having been saved by him in the past as a young girl. Star and Stripe's New Order quirk rivals both All For One and One For All in power given it has the power to literally warp reality, and All For One even acknowledges that if Star and Stripe is allowed to team up with Midoriya, he has no chance of winning. This basically guarantees Star and Stripe dies in the same fight she's introduced in.
• Toy Ship: In response to the Fanon of Eri being rescued after the Internship Arc, Eri is often paired with Kota though they have yet to interact. This is likely due to both being roughly at the same age group.

U-W

• Ugly Cute:
  • Often how Todoroki's scars are interpreted, especially since the manga never really draws his scar in a particularly detailed manner.
  • How some view Tsuyu's mother and Inko, if they don't find them just plain cute.
  • All Might's extremely emaciated true form has glimpses of this, whenever he puts on a brave smile, or embraces Midoriya.
  • Shoji has been considered by his fans some sort of ugly sexy. Despite his tentacle motifs, with his tentacles becoming mouths, ears and eyes, he has a quite nice musculature and a very fit body, so some fans think his weird looks actually add up to his charm. These fans are particularly fond of shipping him with Tokoyami.
  • Koda is surprisingly adorable for someone with a Rock Monster-like face. It helps that he is often surrounded by adorable animals and is clearly stated to have a liking for cute animals, even having a small rabbit in his room and that he is a Shrinking Violet.
  • John-chan is weirdly as close as a Nomu can get to a Ridiculously Cute Critter. He has odd proportions and an exposed brain, but his big eyes, cutesy name, duck bill, and a pair of tiny sneakers combined with being tiny enough to sit on Ujiko's lap like a cat made a lot of fans declare him oddly endearing. There's also the similarly designed Mocha, which appears to be a Distaff Counterpart to John-chan.
• Unintentional Period Piece: The franchise is set 20 Minutes into the Future, but everything is pretty much in the late 2010s-early 2020s. Not just the technologies, vehicles and fashion, but everything else as well. This is somewhat explained in universe when Midoriya mentions that nearly all technological and social development pivoted to be centered around Quirks shortly after they manifested in humanity.
• Unintentional Uncanny Valley: Any character with a hyper-realistic animal head (like Tsuyu's best friend Habuko) can end up as this, because the style clashes so much with the rest of the art.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
  • The police force in the Field Training Arc. While they are meant to be seen as people just doing their job and keeping the law, fans feel that they are ungrateful for Todoroki, Midoriya and Iida catching the Serial Killer that they have not managed to, and have to leave with none of the glory for their job.
  • Some fans didn't take kindly to Aizawa scolding Midoriya for using his Quirk against Muscular in the Forest Training Camp Arc. Not only was Midoriya simply protecting Kota at the time, but if Midoriya hadn't gone as far as he did, Muscular would have killed both Midoriya and Kota. This, combined with him threatening to not only expel the five students who went to rescue Bakugo, but also the twelve who didn't report it, can make it seem like Aizawa is less of a tough but fair Reasonable Authority Figure and more like someone who perpetuates rules that keep people's hands tied in dangerous situations.
  • In the aftermath of the Paranormal Liberation War, many civilians lose faith in their heroes, angrily calling out the heroes for their failures and misdeeds (Endeavor's abuse of his family and role in creating the villain known as Dabi and Hawks killing Twice), take up support items to fight villains themselves and protest against letting Midoriya back into U.A. until Uraraka speaks up on his behalf. The narrative seems to portray them as having a point, since the heroes don't completely begrudge them for their complaints despite finding the situation unfortunate, but many viewers have no sympathy for them whatsoever. Said viewers note that the civilians are not only Ungrateful Bastards toward the heroes, but they do nothing but make the situation worse by demoralizing heroes and causing them to resign, leading to collateral damage when untrained civilians fight villains, and nearly throwing Deku to the wolves when he, exhausted and injured, finally decided to accept his classmates' help.
• Unpopular Popular Character:
  • Outside of Kirishima, Uraraka and Midoriya, nobody seems to like Bakugo, yet, he's won three popularity polls in a row. This is lessened later in the manga, in which while not many characters seem to particularly like him, nobody pushes him away either, and he manages to live together with others (though it's more because they don't take his anger and brashness seriously than him being civil with them), plus he's starting to show he does care for his classmates, like being angry at the way the rest of the U.A. students are treating them after the League of Villains attacks and agreeing to participate in the band with Jiro.
  • Anyone who gets to know Neito Monoma for more than five minutes usually ends up staying away from him due to his unhealthy obsession with Class 1-A. His classmates tend to knock him out to shut him up while Class 1-A has outright wondered aloud about if something goes wrong with his mental state. However, he has no shortage of loyal fans who adore him for his over-the-top Anti-Hero personality and Hidden Depths beneath his jerkass attitude, turning him into the most popular student in Class 1-B.
  • The League of Villains has many fans, but in-universe they obviously don't, and not even they seem to be quite able to deal with each other without wanting to cut throats at first. They do eventually get closer by the Internship Arc, as Overhaul pissed off the entire group by killing Magne and led to Shigaraki offering to Toga and Twice they avenge her death by sabotaging his plans, but since they are still villains this doesn't help them much here.
  • Gentle and La Brava are comical villains who consistently see a combination of universal dislike and disinterest from viewers when they attempt to unload their crimes online. Out-of-universe, they're very beloved and are considered to be a breath of fresh air following the Internship Arc.
• Values Dissonance:
  • The way bullying is treated in the manga makes sense to Japanese readers. In Japan, bullying is an issue rarely brought up with teachers and where the bully will rarely face consequences. Although there are initiatives to deal with the issue, it's still a large problem in Japanese schools, with the manga showing that Bakugo really does gets away scot-free with his bullying, but it's shown he faces other consequences because of his bully-like attitude in high school. To Western readers, however, Bakugo seems like too much of a Karma Houdini, exactly because of how subtle the narrative is in punishing him and how they never caused him to question his heinous actions towards Midoriya in the past, with the Western fandom believing that this is a situation where he needs some karmic retribution.
  • Twice, who is revealed to be 31 in the Volume 24 extras, developing a crush on the teenage Toga would be considered Squick for American readers. This is especially true to a piece of teasing official art featuring him measuring her naked body. While she makes a duckface.
  • Similar to the age issue above, Yaoyorozu being the main source of Fanservice is a bit of a hot topic of debate among Western fans due to her being still a first-year in high school, while Japanese fans are mostly accepting of it.
  • Also related to sexuality issues, Mineta's perverted antics are much less warmly received by Western fans, due to a culture where sexual harassment is no longer Played for Laughs. Western viewers tend to view him as less of a harmless nuisance and more of a sex offender in the making who deserves official punishment for his perversion. One thing some viewers find odd is how Aizawa, who's rather strict, hasn't done anything about Mineta's perversion apart from warning him not to try anything.
  • Aizawa's very strict method of teaching is viewed with much more skepticism in the West. While in Japan, it would mainly just be seen as "harsh but fair" as he's genuinely trying to help his students succeed, in America and other western countries, his treatment of them would likely be considered tantamount to abuse and result in him being fired, regardless of good intentions.
  • Hawks' father having been a murderer is something that he tries to hide as best he can and is considered a scandal when it is revealed to the public, casting further doubt on his status as an upright hero of justice. In the West, this would be a non-issue, or even a point in his favor, as his refusal to be defined by his parentage and rise above his indigent early life to become the #2 hero would be inspiring (and the fact that he tried to hide it from the public would be similarly non-damaging, as it would be considered personal information irrelevant to his status as a public servant). As it's also possible that Western audiences would be more inclined to find Hawks' killing of Twice as justified, Dabi's attempts at smearing Endeavor by associating him with Hawks would likely have gone over like a lead balloon in many places outside Japan.
  • The overall concept of armed citizens protecting themselves once the authorities have failed is seen much differently in America and some other western countries than in Japan, ranging from sympathetic to actually being praised. In the series, however, the fact that the citizens do that is only proof of how bad things have gotten, and is generally seen as causing more harm than good.
  • Japan in and of itself has a more conformist culture than the West where criticizing society and its norms is generally considered not just acceptable, but required in order to fix problems before they become untenable. This leads to a disconnect between the story and themes of the series where a Japanese society of superhumans is shown having systemic problems, but said problems are viewed as something to be worked around and those who are dealt a bad hand have little recourse but to put up with it at best or become villains at worst. Discourse in the western fandom tends to focus on these issues and will be more critical of supposedly heroic characters never calling out the more problematic aspects of their civilization that cause the emergencies they constantly have to save people from.
• Vanilla Protagonist: While he certainly has a personality, Midoriya is, at his core, a formerly Quirkless Pro fanboy who is suddenly gifted One for All by the Big Good and begins training to be a hero. The series has a Cast of Snowflakes with very distinct personalities and superpowers, whereas, in comparison, Midoriya is a fairly straightforward Shounen protagonist who is described as "plain" in-universe. He's very much a point-of-view character who familiarises the audience with the world of Pros and Quirks thanks to his obsession with them.
• Viewer Gender Confusion: Magne is a trans woman, but apart from her long hair, she lacks general feminine features. The facial hair doesn't help matters.
• Viewer Name Confusion: A good deal of English-speaking viewers seem to think Tenya's last name is Lida instead of Iida because of the uppercase I and lowercase L looking almost identical.
• Viewer Pronunciation Confusion: English-speaking viewers are likely to pronounce Fumikage Tokoyami's first name as "Fumi-cage", but the correct pronunciation is "Fu-mi-kah-geh".
• Vocal Minority:
  • Midoriya's haters compose a minority, but a vocal amount of that minority think he's among the worst protagonists ever put to manga, as they believe he is a Vanilla Protagonist (at least, compared to Bakugo and Todoroki) with a boring Character Arc since he's barely changed since the start of the show aside from having better control of his Quirk and crying less.
  • The fourth and fifth seasons of the anime gained quite a bit of criticism from fans for an alleged drop in animation quality, particularly the Mirio vs. Overhaul fight, thanks to the animation team splitting up to work on the movies. However, the seasons were still quite popular in the anime community and many fans liked them regardless. This is especially true of anime-only watchers who didn't notice the differences between the manga and the anime's art quality of certain scenes or know (in season 5's case) that there was content Adapted Out.
• Win Back the Crowd:
  • For the fans who were displeased with how seasons 4 and 5 were handled, the 6th season was seen as a return to form for the anime adaptation, with its Paranormal Liberation Arc having many epic moments and great fight scenes that were for the most part beautifully animated, showing that the tons of episodes preparing for it were worth it. Also helps that its 13th episode did some damage control from the 5th season via showing some of the Adapted Out content from the Meta Liberation Army Arc in a flashback.
  • While it was not without its complaints, most arcs beginning with the Meta Liberation Army Arc have been considered to make up for a very divisive middle section of the story with a faster pace, a focus on several interesting characters, and the arrival of much build-up reveals and conflicts. This is especially the case for the previously mentioned one, the Paranormal Liberation War Arc, Villain Hunt Arc, and the Final War Arc.
• Writer Copout: The latter half of Mirio's fight against Overhaul, due to how lopsided the matchup seems for a Quirkless Mirio. Overhaul's ability to heal himself, pop anyone he touches like a zit, and reshape an entire battlefield already makes him a Superpower Lottery winner. Adding in that mortally wounding Eri would be an Instant-Win Condition for Overhaul, and Mirio continuing the fight for even five minutes becomes outright miraculous. Many fans felt more than a bit cheated that what was sure to be an impressive battle, showing Mirio's potential to become a hero without his Quirk, was almost entirely skipped over outside a handful of panels. This was especially underwhelming in the anime, as the climax of Mirio's character arc became a slideshow of stills essentially cut right from the manga.
• WTH, Costuming Department?:
  • Mineta's hero outfit includes what looks like a diaper in its design. Given his status as The Scrappy, you can expect to often see his detractors use this as part of their insults towards him.
  • Slidin'-Go's hero costume, as at first glance, his costume looks just fine, but once you start looking below the belt...
  • Midoriya's first suit was made by his mother... and it shows. While it has some emotional value for Midoriya, a lot of fans think it looks like a poorly made cosplay suit with low budget. Thankfully, it goes through Costume Evolution after it gets partially destroyed following his battle against Bakugo and starts looking more and more badass.

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