The World Of My Hero Academia Makes No Sense For This One Simple Reason

I’ll admit, I watched My Hero Academia first before I braved jumping into One Piece. While I had originally thought the quirks were pretty good, learning about the powers in the older anime made me start to realize how weakly described several quirks are.

When you compare the quirks of My Hero Academia to devil fruit powers, it’s readily apparent how one-dimensional the abilities in the MHA universe are. In One Piece, some of the powers are rather standard, such as controlling fire or ice, but there are more unique devil fruit powers than not. What makes the superhuman skills in this older show so amazing, though, is that they’re portrayed in ways I, and probably most fans, would likely never come dream up.

Take one of the main characters of One Piece, for example, Robin. She can create duplicates of any of her body parts within a certain range, which I believe is already a pretty interesting power. But then the show takes it a step further by showing just how many different ways a seemingly simple devil fruit power can be utilized, such as making wings, ladders, and shields to help her and her friends.

The quirks in My Hero Academia aren’t nearly as unique, nor do the users do much with them.

In my opinion, there are a lot of interesting aspects of the quirks in My Hero Academia, but the actual abilities and how they are used aren’t anything special.

For example, I find it interesting how genetics plays a role in quirks. By mixing a fire quirk parent and an ice quirk parent, you can create all sorts of combinations, as exemplified by Endeavor, who purposely tried to have a child with a dual fire/ice quirk.

Or, you can get someone like Bakugo, who makes explosions from the nitroglycerin that comes out of his hands because he has one parent who secretes glycerin and one who oxidizes sweat, which I see as a rather boring power, but a great background for how the quirk came to exist.

Even on the surface, the main villain and hero are of very basic natures. One For All has incredible strength, while All For One can steal quirks from people in a world where quirks mean everything. Yes, as My Hero Academia goes on, there’s more depth added to both of them, but I’ll be honest: 90 percent of the time, Deku and All Might just go “smash.”

Additionally, there are numerous quirks throughout My Hero Academia that are explained poorly, even if they are in the story for a while. Toga’s quirk, for example, allows her to take on the form of someone else.

Her quirk is one of the few that is fairly interesting and leads to countless questions, like how she figured out what her quirk was or how exactly the gray slime covering her body ties into the drinking of blood, but there was a lot left unexplained about these powers. At different moments, Toga is shown as only assuming the form of a person, but sometimes, she can even use their quirk with little internal consistency.

While quirks being open-ended and vague do allow for major upgrades in the future, they make for poorly defined abilities and plenty of questions in the meantime. All of this is without getting into the other strange part of My Hero Academia, which is the inconsistency with quirk appearances. Mina Ashido looks like an alien, but what does that have to do with her acid quirk?

Another big oversight with quirks is, as mentioned regarding Togo, the inconsistencies. For the most part, the people in the world of My Hero Academia get one quirk to use and can train to develop, and some are just inherently better than others (Sorry, Tatami, but it’s true).

However, the abilities they have don’t explain why people who can run fast or make explosions can also tank a super-strong hit with minimal damage to their internal organs and bones. I feel the extra strength, energy, and durability most quirk users have could easily be explained, and yet is never brought up.

Despite my irritation with quirks and the wish that they could be more defined, there’s still a lot to like about My Hero Academia. The world is interesting. However, with these abilities being a major focal point of the story, they should have been defined and discussed a little bit more.