Well, like I said in the recent “Edens Zero” dump: I am currently Sans-Job. Now finding myself with time on my hands, I figure “Eh, might as well do a little bit of catching up on my blog.” I haven’t reviewed a chapter of “My Hero” in a minute, so I figured I do some catching up while looking for a new job. Hopefully one with Better Scheduling and closer proximity to where I live. Dollar General was close but not “Close” if that makes sense. And I AM looking for another job; this isn’t exactly “paying off” like I hoped. And I gotta live, so yeah. And until I get into the “swing” of things at whatever job I’m working, I should probably stay on Hiatus. How long will that take? Eh, depends on the job. Right now I’m hoping this hardware store across from the Food Lion is hiring. Or Food Lion itself; either or. I’m mainly looking at the hardware store because it’s a different kind of store; you don’t go in just to “look around” or “pick up something before heading home-” you either know what to get or bring someone who does. 

You don’t go in to “Shop” or “see how much you can get with a little bit of money;” you go in to get what you need and expect to pay a certain amount. And hopefully the location is enough to deter the “Ballsier” thieves. Just a………. different kind of store, you know? Huh, that got oddly in-depth. Um………… I don’t have a segue point now; posts like this don’t need planning. And I tend to “ramble” when I don’t have a plan. Then again I do that even with a plan. If this is how the OPENING looks then I can’t wait to see the “Closing Thoughts” section. Let’s just get into it already…………

Chapter 407: “An Exceptional Child“

ALL FOR ONE AND YOICHI ORIGIN STORY CHAPTER!! They’re mother was– put kindly- A Sex Worker, living on the streets drinkin’ booze. And for about a year, she had been growing these “hardened growths” on her left arm. But she either can’t afford to or doesn’t want to go to the hospital to get it checked. Which is also how she was unaware that she was PREGNANT with TWINS for the first 8 months. And thus unaware that one of her “Lovely children” was slowly but surely stealing her very life force- so many nutrients were taken from both her and the other twin, resulting in the twin being a runt of a thing and her DYING upon giving birth at a riverbed. There the twin boys laid at the riverbed next to their Mother’s corpse, waiting to devoured by a pack of rats. But the LARGER twin REFUSED to let them eat his Mother- that was his job. In short: She was in possession of the quirk “Spearlike Bones” quirk All For One used in Kamino(for a quirk that didn’t even get bolded in when it was revealed, it’s crazy we’re getting a origin story for it; the first quirk he had ever stolen), which the infant All For Nothing used to grow Fangs out of his newborn gums and…………….. drained the last bit of her nutrients before he and his brother were washed away. 

This is a trait of All For One from the get-go; “All Within Reach Were His ‘Possessions-‘ anyone who did not offer value to him was worthless.” Except for his brother, Yoichi, whom he never let go of even in the crashing waves of the river they got washed away in. “Yoichi,” containing the characters for “Bestow” and “One-” the first “thing” All For One was ever given. There was no emotional connection between the 2; Yoichi was one of his possessions- something that he wasn’t gonna let go of easily. About a year later: The “Advent of The Exceptional;” A Glowing Baby and the rest was “History.” And along with it came………… well, Anarchy; all it took was one scientific study suggesting it was a mutation of some disease, or that those with abilities were a “Human Subspecies.” Either way– People became Divided into those “With” power and “Without.” A random faction is about to attack a group of “Exceptional” to “eradicate the disease” when they see…………. a Kid wearing a cloak. Fearful of “contamination,” they ignore him. Big Mistake- you offer him nothing then you don’t deserve life. 

The sickly, nutrient deprived little Yoichi wants his brother to not hurt people, but……… too small and weak to do anything so he just gets kicked in the gut. Time Later: They’re living in some abandoned building, and Yoichi explains that he’s been learning to read and to speak from That Comic Book Series They Keep Talking About. And he tries to get his brother to read along and absorb some of the author’s “hope” and change his ways because he still remembers his brother holding his hand. Poor B@stard was so full of hope. 3 Years Later: That Glowing Baby became the leader of a Movement in support of the Exceptional, gaining 10 Million Supporters. So All For One Swiped The Sh!t Out Of His Quirk And Killed Their @$$; HE was the first “Exceptional-” not some Overgrown Glowstick. Why? What HE Took From The Series: 

“One For All” and “All For One-” Words To Live By. The Hero Had To Hide His Identity And Fight In Solitude, While Everyone Paid Tribute To The Wicked Demon Lord Out Of Fear. Just As You Were Inspired, I Now Want A World That Exists For My Sake And Mine Alone.

I’ve Found My Own Dream

–All For One Shigaraki

Flashforward: Remember when Kudo reached out his hand to Yoichi? The continuation of that: All For One dusted Yoichi, refusing to let him leave his side. Some twisted sh!t right there, eh? 

Chapter 408: “The Eyes Tell All!!“

Yoichi’s Dead By His Brother’s Hands. And upon seeing the man who would dare to ATTEMPT to take his “beloved” brother away from him; the eyes that had been soulless since birth became………….. well, his expression never changed, but we can assume he’s furious. Time Later: We see where he got Tomura’s “motif-“ he had already done it before with Yoichi’s hand, keeping it with him just say he still has it. PROBLEM: The quirk he had thought he gave Yoichi is now gone altogether; it’s not present in the hand. But upon further examination, he not only finds that the “Stockpile” power is gone, but that Yoichi already had one- an “insignificant, nonfunctioning, incomplete” factor that even he didn’t recognize. Over with Kudo and the 3rd Holder “Bruce;” Bruce tells him that there is in fact something off with his body right now- he’s in possession of his own quirk, plus and “unformed dud” of a factor. And then it starts clicking: Yoichi never had a quirk because he didn’t have enough of the nutrients to do so- All For One steal all their mother’s strength left none for Yoichi, and thus his actual factor was incomplete. So when All For Nothing foisted a power on him- it made up the difference. Thus creating “One For All-” and the 100 Year Struggle that would follow. 

All For One would chase after the last trace of his brother- trying to take it for himself to make sure Yoichi would never leave his side again. But it always eluded his grasp; passed on either before or during the battles with the past wielders. Then along came All Might who- and this has got to be, without reservations, one of Horikoshi’s Coolest Choices– 

Hit All For One So Hard His Face Exploded.

Dr Ujiko would retrieve him from the morgue and save his faceless @$$, leading into the present day of the story where he’s so rattled by EVERYTHING going on around him(and within him) that he’s screaming at a man long dead. He begins to wonder if Bakugo is a descendant of Kudo, but recalls that he made sure to squash that entire bloodline before any of them ever came looking for revenge. But then it hits him like a ton of bricks: His Eyes– those same defiant eyes of Kudo’s have “crossed space and time” just to thwart him in the here and now. But he doesn’t have time to violently tear out those eyes; he’s still rewinding, and he’s gonna need all of that remaining time to bind Tomura again. He thinks about using “Mud Warp” to send Bakugo away, but the furthest he can be sent right now is either to Tomura or to All Might– who aren’t that far away to start with. So– He Makes A Gamble: Activate Every Single Quirk In His Arsenal, hoping to accomplish the goal of ending that look in Bakugo’s eyes, reaching Tomura, and successfully taking over Tomura’s body all in 1 shot. Despite his ingenuity and creativity, even Bakugo wonders how he’s gonna stop this one…………..

Chapter 409: “Quirk: Explosion!!“

Flashback Openings: Bakugo is born– his parents so happy; the aftermath of his second bout with Izuku when he vowed to become stronger; one panel from a chapter I can’t find at the moment and don’t have all the time in the world to look for it but will definitely link to it when I find it for the sake of my OCD in which he says that “Explosion” can do anything he wants it to; and chapter 1 when he’s standing over Izuku, culminating in the present in which he’s standing against All For One’s Final Gambit, vowing to not get in Izuku’s way any longer. All For One goes into motion, and Bakugo floats there calmly. The plan: During their initial collision, Bakugo had put into place a “Contingency Measure-” he- SOMEHOW- found a way to coat his explosive sweat in his regular sweat, and launched some into All For One’s mouth. 1)Gross. 2)I mean, he never shuts up; there’s probably not better place on his body to plant a bomb. All Bakugo had to do was wait for something at all to detonate them. Once again: Man couldn’t keep his mouth shut to save his life. This gag being made very little because of the context of the story. 

All For One then begins to realize that the more he rewinds- the more control he loses on these quirks. But he’s not backing down; he refuses to lose to an Extra. But he is– in the form of several double page spreads that continue to show how great of an artist Horikoshi is even after all the health problems. And showing that All For One is really off his game. We have ONE Keigo Takami to thank for that; much like Star’s vestige and Jiro’s quirk, his vestige manages to rally all of the other Vestige’s against All For Nothing. Once again: His own greed brought to him a quirk he couldn’t control- and made him lose control of everything. I’m seeing a trend here…………. In whatever case; he’s taking a lot of damage………….. Wonder how young he’ll be when we see him next……………

Closing Thoughts

He tried to control Yoichi and he defied him; he chased down One For All and it cost him his face; he stole “New Order” and it’s just about cost him a new body and a handful of quirks; and now the “trash” he stole from Hawks is about to cost him his last chance to claim victory. His Greed Is What’s Leading To His Downfall; he refuses to learn from past experiences. It’s part of what makes him an inferior villain to Tomura: Every experience Tomura went through taught him something, building upon itself and making him the Villain he…………… was– nowadays he………… he’s…………. just a whining child created by………… A Dying Old Man Who Just Wants People To Pay Attention To Him; the proverbial “Old Man Yelling At Clouds.” What was once a story about “The Evolving Concepts Of Justice” through Tomura’s origin and All For One’s much more “hands off” role in the story became……………………………. flanderized; the most “Base Level” of what concepts they represent.

Kind of the Heroes, too; Izuku’s just………….. kind of boring– he got on this “I wanna talk to villains to see how to they came to this point” and then- at some point during his stent as a Vigilante–  just kind of…………. stopped and just took out the assassins All For Nothing sent after him. And then he’s trying to do that again with Tomura– which we aren’t seeing at all. That’s the other thing: We’re seeing glimpses of their “Long Awaited Final Bout,” but all it is is the “in between” discussion– we haven’t seen these guys punch each other or nothin’. And we’ve been seeing this, that, and some other sh!t not one cares about! It’s just……………. Dragging. I feel like the poor reception to the Villain Aca arc hurt Horikoshi a lot; that was an arc he pushed to have happen- the editorial staff didn’t want him to! But he fought for it- it’s something he wanted to do. So it’s failure- HURT. The series regressed; any concept he wanted to build upon came to focus with that arc. But since people didn’t “vibe” with it, the character’s important to said ideas were made………….. “simpler,” thus……………… Whiny Little Touya Todoroki; “It All Goes Back To All For One;” Heteromorph racism and all that other sh!t.

Though………………. Continuing to talk about all of that feels like beating a dead horse with the same rusted crowbar in the same building. It doesn’t feel like it matters at all anymore; it’s……… already written. And unlike that…………….. NAIL IN THE COFFIN– there’s literally no going back without…………. what; scrapping the whole series and going back to basics? You’d have to rewrite the whole series from the get-go just to make it better at this point; this “Final War” began in chapter 343. We are at 409 and we still got this, its epilogue, the Sero area, the Aizawa/ Shirakumo thing, the “convergence” that brings everyone together for the finale, and- if my speculation proves correct– like 3 more events before we actually get the Finale and Epilogues. This series is probably going to end with like……………… I’ll say somewhere between 425 and 440 chapters. He says have once believed that the series would absolutely finish in 2023.

Man, back when I saw still getting into the series; I had actually thought that this series would go on for 96 volumes before it ended. 96. Can you even conceive of content that would facilitate this series being that long? Even if the series did what I thought it would and have the Heroes taking out the League of Villains one at a time before finally converging on Tomura(complete with a time skip, plenty of “Side Chapters” about these people in their daily lives, and maybe another Villain arc somewhere in there); that probably wouldn’t even come up to 81– which is the number of volumes I thought Black Clover would end up having. And to my credit- with the “Quarterly” serialization(4 chapters a year) with about 28 pages per chapter(chapter 369 coming out on December 25th has a page count of 28)- probably more than 42 I had come up with when Noelle re-entered the series. Something about that just made me feel like this series was gonna be “just long enough-“ something like Dragon Ball in terms of length. 

Getting All For One and Yoichi’s origin story was…………… it feels like it WAS a “Big Deal,” but…………… nothing we couldn’t have gathered from context clues in the stories. Which is by no means a “bad thing;” the best mysteries are the ones you’ve figured out just before the reveal. All For One glowing in chapter 401 was a pretty good misdirect; using that quirk to make us think he was the original “Glowing Baby.” Turns out he WASN’T- but he was the FIRST Quirk User. Or, well; his mother might’ve been. Then again, she contracted the disease from someone else. And since she’s a…………. well, call a spade a spade: She was a pr0stitute and it was likely an STD of some manor. At least that’s what I’m getting from her being a “Sex Worker” that developed a quirk. It could always be a regular disease she contracted, but I don’t see why he felt the need to specify her job then- you could have just said she was “homeless doing whatever she could to get by” and left it at that. The only other thing I can gather from her being a Sex worker is that All For One and Yoichi’s father was just……………. some guy scummy enough to pay for sex. And likely held the disease. 

The reveal of their mother implies that she- though probably not being “Patient 0” in all of this- was spreading it around(I TRULY do not mean anything by that- I promise; no one should have to do what she’s implied to have done just to live day to day). I’ve always kind of speculated that whatever continuation of the series is planned(because this series is too popular to ever TRULY end) would delve into the true nature and possibly even origins of quirks; not outright time travel, but learning about who first had a quirk- whether the main cast learn to story or not doesn’t really matter. The Straw Hat’s don’t know the whole story of Kalgara and Noland, right? That’s how I feel about learning who the first quirk user was. But they WILL learn what quirks really are and how to Evolve them– take them to their Zenith. Then again, these days; I feel like this series might just do better continuing as an Anthology series rather than a full on serialized story. If there’s no confidence in the concepts it was going for- no confidence in the choices made, then in all honesty- it’s better off a “Villain Of The Week” type of story. 

We can still do the “Truth of Quirks” as the thing tying all these plots together, and if Tenko does end up 10th One For All user, then he can pop up in a number of chapters to give the illusion of progression without really doing anything until the series starts…………… catching eyes. You know how when a series is over and has an ending people don’t like; the Video Essay people come out to call out the short comings of the series? Something like that; just something that feels like it matters when it kind of doesn’t. And yeah: I Think Tenko and “Tomura” will separate, and Tenko will be given One For All- the chance to be a Hero he never got. He’s only 5 still, so he could “grow into it,” and he’s got enough people around him(Bakugo, Uraraka, Shoto, Ilda, and likely just the entirety of Class 1A) to teach him how to use the quirk. And time to spare before he becomes a pro hero on top of that. He’ll be a really good One For All user is the point- likely better than……………… really All Of Them due to the “stress” taken off of him by All For One’s death, the sheer number of “Great Heroes” there keeping society safe while a number of them dedicate time to training him properly. I think you’re all getting the picture I’m trying to paint with Tenko: 

“One Punch Man” In “My Hero Academia.”

The continuation opens- rather than with kids so we can do all that school sh!t we didn’t like the first time– start with Tenko as a Pro Hero. Let the Epilogue/ Final Chapter show him getting accepted into UA, and just tell us how much of a Beast he was in High School. With him around- The League Villains or anything like is functionally stopped before it ever gets to the USJ, leaving plenty of narrative room for exploring quirks. Just a thought. One of several, now that I think about it……………

I was just lying in bed the other night(this part being written Wednesday, December 13th, 2023, around 7:00 pm- the day before the 2nd Pokemon: Scarlet And Violet DLC pack “Indigo Disk” releases), and I realized: There’s A LOT I Would Change About This Series If Given The Chance. I’d change the Dark Deku arc and the fight with Class 1A; send Izuku off to the states to lie low away from All For One- staying with his dad and graduating from High School, as well as probably going to college; take out the League Of Villains individually rather than………. jump across a whole bunch of nothin’; show Izuku and Uraraka get together as adults who can communicate and have time for all that romantic cra@p rather than Teenagers dealing with something a SLIGHTLY More Important than “Does He Think I’m Cute?;” Have Bakugo as the Number 1 Hero for a while before Izuku takes that spot- if for nothing more than not letting this character development and determination go to waste; just………….. take everything the series looked to be doing before and actually DO something with it instead of letting it go to waste, ya know? 

I think Horikoshi wanted to do some of that, but the failure of the fist arc he pushed to get printed made him………… Rethink all of it and………… doubt himself. Maybe that’s why the “Fake Out Deaths” are becoming so frequent: He’s Doubting Himself Every Time He Makes The Choice. Not a good look for any writer; If you have no faith in your own writing, then why should I? If you don’t think you can pull it off, then don’t do it. ‘Cause it gets old at best and…………….. Outright Stupid at worst. That’s……………. that’s all I got to say at this point. I could go further, but all of that could be a whole other post at this juncture and I’ve already taken enough time writing at this point. 

Conclusion

Ah…………… D@mn it, I don’t have a good ending planned out. Eh, I got to use some images taking up space on my computer at this point, so that’s a plus. It took me longer than I was expecting to write this one out because there was a lot of stuff going on around me that I had to do; Job Applications, helping my dad with his T Shirt Business(which is about to take up a lot of my time, let me tell you now!), and other sh!t beyond my control. Or, well……….. I have “control,” but not “control,” if that makes sense. Good LORD am I spent with this post. Let me know what you guys think in the comments; which chapter is your favorite, and what would you change about this series if you could? I’d love to hear it. ‘Til next time, all; Stay Safe- Stay Healthy- Stay Magic. Later!!