The Death of 'My Hero Academia's' All Might

All Might is the central pillar holding up My Hero Academia. But he has death flags all over him and I have some conflicted feelings about this. First of all let me clarify things. Fear not, All Might is not dead. He is still alive in well in the manga, but throughout the manga there have been numerous times where his death has been not so subtly foreshadowed.

I feel a bit mixed about this because on one hand it feels way too obvious. I’m not against a bit of character death. One of my favorite scenes in One Piece is when Oda decided to kill off Ace. I was sooo pleased that Oda didn’t take the easy way out of just letting White Beard sacrifice himself so Ace could take over the White Beard pirates, which would have been the cheap and easy way to resolve things. But no, Oda had Luffy break in and out of Impel Down, face down the full might of the world government only to have him lose in the end as his indomitable shonen spirit of adventure met against the cold brick wall of reality.

And I loved every minute of it. One Piece has had so many fake out deaths that to see a huge consequential one that nearly broke Luffy completely was the best dramatic decision Oda could make and I’m so glad he didn’t back down from it, which firmly entrenched my eternal love for him and the series as a whole.

All Might dying could have even more weight than Ace’s death, but it needs to be handled very carefully just because at this point it feels so obvious that it borders on potentially being boring and predictable if and when it does eventually happen. So from now on, we’re going to get into spoiler talk. I’m not going to reveal anything huge, but I am going to talk about some minor details and clues from the manga in terms of how All Might’s death might possibly play out.

Now the biggest clue ties into the lineage of Tomura Shigaraki. The big revelation that All For One reveals is that Tomura is actually the grandson of Nana Shimura the seventh person to possess One For All. She left her child in a foster home because her husband was killed in super heroic violence and she didn’t want her child to suffer a similar fate.

We don’t have the full backstory of Tomura Shigaraki. At least not yet, but from the few details we do have we can make some educated guesses. Now I don’t want to offend anyone potentially watching this who comes from an adopted home or had a great experience growing up in a foster home, but statistically speaking adopted children generally tend to fare worse than kids who are still with their biological parents. Adopted kids have more behavioral problems and difficulty in school. This may not reflect the experience of all adopted or foster kids, but that’s how the stats hold up in most academic studies.

So using this information it’s easy to assume that Nana Shimura’s child didn’t do particularly well in the foster care system. Despite her efforts to shield them away from her superhero life style. We can only assume that they fell on hard times and went on the wrong side of the tracks in My Hero Academia’s super human society to the point where they wound up raising Tomura in a situation of complete poverty and despair. Like I said before, Tomura’ doesn’t really have much of a backstory yet outside of one or two intentionally vague panels. The only glimmer we get is seeing him living in squalor begging to be saved by a hero. But no hero comes, assumingly due to his destructive disintegration quirk which no one knows how to deal with. Except for All for One who takes great pleasure in molding him into a villain capable of killing all might.

When in prison All For One taunts All Might that his ultimate fate is to be killed by Tomura. Gran Torino warns him that if All Might doesn’t see him as a criminal he’ll be inclined to try and help him. Which of course will seal his potential fate and death. The other major death flag comes in the most recent chapters in the series.

Deku assumes an internship under All Might’s former sidekick sir Nighteye who has the quirk to peer into the future. He sees that if All Might does not gracefully retire this will ultimately lead to his decline and horrible death, but All Might refuses to slow down or heed his advice and this ultimately leads to their break up. So as you can see All Might is just riddled with death flags all over. It’s painfully obvious that he has to die at some point probably by Tomura Shigaraki’s hands.

I kind of don’t want to see it happen like that just because it’s sooooo obvious that if does play out like that it would feel incredibly boring to me as a piece of story progression. If Kohei Horikoshi really wants to have that moment have an impact, here’s how I think it needs to go down. So basically the emotional through-line that feels most comparable is Han Solo’s death from Episode 7. Now I’m not a huge fan of this scene because it’s so obvious. We’ve known for years that Harrison Ford wanted Han Solo dead. JJ Abrams foreshadows it in the most unsubtle way possible. When it finally does happen it feels more like an imitation of other big Star Wars movie moments then as a scene that actually managed to earn it’s dramatic catharsis. While the scene isn’t 100% successful on its own, the dramatic logic of it is sound. Essentially we see Kylo Ren waver in his conviction to completely go over towards the dark side, and there’s a small moment where Han Solo is able to connect through to him, before Kylo Ren makes his final choice.

Basically I think ALL Might is going to encounter Tomura and I think he’s somehow going to break through to him. He’s going to apologize for not being there for him when he was a kid, but he wants to be here for him now and help take on the burden of all of his pain. Tomura will break down emotionally. He’ll become vulnerable lowering his villain persona and his guard and regress back into the scared little child that’s dwelling at his core. After letting his guard down he’ll go up to All Might and hug him, looking for the love and affection that he never received when he needed it most.

But this is when tragedy will strike. Because Tomura let down his guard he’ll use all five finger to embrace All Might when they hug. He’ll realize far too late his mistake, but All Might will already be disintegrating. As All Might’s ashes swirl around him, this will only confirm Tomura’s conviction for following through his villain lifestyle and reaffirm his original belief that hero’s are false idols who can’t help save anyone.

That’s how I think you can have All Might’s death scene play out while feeling emotionally rich as opposed to something that’s stale and predictable like Han Solo’s super obvious death in The Force Awakens. Only time will tell if my prediction is as accurate as Sir Nighteye’s foresight quirk, but if I’m right, you heard it here first. All I can hope is that All Might get’s a death scene that lives up to the high water mark set by Ace and Whitebeard in One Piece, because the guy deserves it.