SHIGARAKI TOMURA - A VERY HUMAN VILLAIN

Right now, people are speculating if tomura has lost his humanity which includes his attachment to the league now that he was awakened with his new quirk as a ‘transcendent being’. I wonder how he will interact with his team when he returns? Will he question how the heroes managed to get the jump on them? How will he react to twice’s death? To Dabi letting in a hero spy into their lair and causing this raid and twice’s death? Is the tomura we have seen grow disappeared or is he still the same?

SHIGARAKI TOMURA - A VERY HUMAN VILLAIN

People may question if Shigaraki Tomura has lost his humanity since acquiring AFO’s power, however I would like to point out that it’s a running theme in the manga for characters to frequently question the humanity of Shigaraki and see him as something less than human, or a force that only exists for evil and destruction. 

However, despite the fact that the heroes and Shigaraki’s enemies insist that Shigaraki has lost his humanity, the story shows the opposite. As much as Shigaraki has changed over the course of the story, he has also stayed the same. 

Shigaraki started out as a kid who wanted to be a hero who saved others, and specifically a kid who would go out of his way to play with the bullied kids. Everyone knows this by now, I would say however growing up in that household shaped Shigaraki to have core values that don’t really change no matter how much he changes as a person. 

Number one, the most important thing to Shigaraki is freedom. In a childish way he sees it as the freedom to do whatever he wants, because that is how All For One influenced him. 

All for One specifically told Shigaraki that being born with the power to destroy means that he should use it without restraint, and never try to hold himself back because in doing so he’ll only hurt himself. AFO tried to influence him to be an unstable manchild because that would make him more dangerous and fearsome to the general public.

However, Shigaraki’s destruction is always a response. He always destroys for a reason no matter how much he insists his destruction is completely random. One of the key themes of My Hero Academia is that in times of crisis you will remember your origin. Shigaraki’s origin is a household that oppressed him to the extent that he wasn’t allowed to become a hero. All he wanted was someone in that household to agree with him rather than deny him. He wanted people to stop telling him he was wrong. 

Shigaraki values freedom, specifically freedom from oppression. Oppression that specifically denies the needs of an individual just because they disrupt society. For example, the opppression that had Himiko’s parents turn abusive on her calling her a demon child because she was born with a strange quirk. 

In that way Shigaraki fights for a kind of true liberation, different from what the liberation force fights for. The Meta Liberation Army while wanting to overturn society also repeated several of society’s oppressive attitude, juding people’s worth based entirely on the strength of their quirk whereas Shigaraki is willing to accept people like Compress, and Spinner who do not have super powerful combat efficient quirks and value them just as much as all the other members from his team. 

Shigaraki also knows the feelings of someone who has not been saved. He’s reflected on this several times, even as early back as his conversation with Deku. He knows that the way the current society functions, it ignores the plights of victims like him that are either too inconvenient to save. 

It’s what Shigaraki says to Deku word for word: “I could hurt you right now and not a single person would come save you. They’ll all walk by and pretend it’s none of their business, because they all think a hero is going to come save them.”

Shigaraki is willing to give people like Twice a chance, even though he was insane and his quirk no longer worked as well as it once did. Not only that, but when people make mistakes Shigaraki never throws them away. Giran is captured and ratted them out, and Shigaraki went to go save them. Twice makes a mistake and because of that Magne is killed, but rather than get angry at Twice, Shigaraki simply asks Twice to do his best to make up for his mistake, and that he’ll be doing his best alongside him. 

Shigaraki understands the feelings of: “If only somebody had saved me” better than anyone else in the manga. This is something that even the kids don’t question. The kids in their complete and unwavering faith in the hero system can’t even respond to questions like “Who should you really be saving?” 

Shigaraki also goes out of his way to save people even after they’ve made mistakes, or betrayed the league. Giran ratted on them and got nearly every member killed, and yet not only did Shigaraki walk right into a trap to save him, he also took special care to make sure he was alive, and rescued safely when he was in the middle of getting pounded. 

The final is also somewhat of a paradox. Shigaraki has been manipulated to think that he hated his family, and  wanted to kill everyone. 

However, all of Shigaraki’s actions show the opposite. Not only does Shigaraki feel guilt for killing his family several years after the fact. Not only did he intentionally hold back his quirk at first because he was afraid of killing again. The words of his family stayed with him. Shigaraki only ever remembers his family in a mostly positive light. 

In his heart, Shigaraki holds himself accountable for what he did to his family even though it was an accident. At the same time, it’s revealed to us in his dream sequence that he already forgives his family for what transpired today, he remembers his grandparents being kind to him, he doesn’t resent his mom for just watching what his family did to him and even reassures her, he tells his sister he doesn’t care that she tattled on him anymore. 

His family is someone he can never forget in both senses of the word. He doesn’t forget the times his family household was kind to him, the genuine love his mother, grandparents, and sister all showed to him, and he hasn’t really stopped mourning them ever for a single moment. He even still keeps Nana’s hand, the last hand that wasn’t broken and wears it after his so called “liberation” from his past memories of them. Yet, at the same time he doesn’t allow his family to deny who he is. 

Shigaraki is someone who has been influenced by people all of ihs life, his abusive father, AFO, and then all of AFO’s constituents and the other villains he’s fought against so far. However, at the same time Shigaraki has remained the same kid throughout all of this. Always Shimura Tenko. Always the kid who wanted to play with the kids who got bullied. Always the kid resentful he didn’t get saved. 

2. Shigaraki is better than what created him

Eri is referred to as a cursed inhuman existence born only to destroy, simply because of the quirk she was born with, completely neglecting who Eri is as a person. Deku however says that just by slightly changing your perspective, you can see how kind and gentle Eri is. 

Shigaraki is a character much like this. The people around him, mostly heroes always insist that he’s inhuman and again and again that he can only want destruction because of his quirk. Yet, the people closest to Shigaraki know how kind, and gentle he can be. 

So we have characters like All Might, Mr. Completely Ignores Endeavor’s abuse of his own family, constantly saying that someone like Shigaraki can’t possibly have a cause for all of his destruction. Ignoring what Shigaraki says when he tells them that heroes can be violent too just like villains, their violence is just categorized differently. 

Shigaraki is continually told he has no reason for wanting to destroy things, that there could be no possible motivation behind his actions. This is something that even AFO himself said, that Shigaraki simply lusted for destruction because he was born that way.

Characters insist again, that Shigaraki isn’t capable of creating anything, or achieving anything because he can only destroy. This is an identity that’s forced on him by his environment ut it’s not who he is at the center of his being. Even when he’s getting the tar beaten out of him by Re-Destro what he thinks is not that he wants to destroy, but rather that he wanted his family to tell him it was okay for him to be a hero.

So we reach the most recent chapter with someone once again asserting that Shigaraki cannot possibly want anything other than to hurt the people around him, and destroy what he can.

Even ENDEAVOR (lol) of all people accuses Shigaraki of not fighting for the right ideals. Yet, Shigaraki has always shown to be fighting for something. 

People insist that Shigaraki was just born that way, that he just wants to destroy. Yet, there are very specific environmental factors that shaped him into who he is. Shigaraki who apparently has no reasons for doing the things he does, has the longest backstory in the series (four origin chapters in total if you count Shigaraki Tomura: Distortion). Shigaraki’s line against Endeavor also implies that Shigaraki has been fighting for the same thing from the start. That he’s always had a cause, something to fight for (or maybe even just fight against) and that he simply believed what other people constantly told him. 

So, no clearly the All For One quirk being given to Shigaraki has not changed who he is as a person at all. Shigaraki’s thoughts always rest with his friends and his family.  Shigaraki’s first literal action upon waking up is to call Machia to his side, and protect the league. Shigaraki’s actions also saved Himiko, because if Machia had not picked her up she likely would have gone on a suicide mission. 

So, there is one last point I want to make: The reason the plan is going so wrong right now is precisely because Shigaraki is someone who chooses again and again to put his trust in others. First, it went wrong because not only did he allow Dabi free reign to invite whoever he wanted to the league, but he also trusted Twice with his location. 

Shigaraki won’t throw Dabi out of the league for saying that he’s only here to use the league for his own benefit, because Shigaraki has always known this about Dabi and lets him work with the league anyway. Shigaraki is someone who puts his allies before themselves and gives them the freedom to be who they want to be. 

Shigaraki has said mutliple times the league can do whatever they want. He’s not really selfishly minded or motivated like AFO is. If anything, Shigaraki is much more likely to sacrifice himself, or put the group’s needs first. The Shigaraki that we’ve seen right now is the same progression of the Shigaraki we’ve always known: he fights on the front lines to draw the heroes away from his friends, he fights himself instead of needlessly risking his own allies, he needs his allies by his side. 

The raid happened because of Shigaraki’s trusting nature twice. Not only because he allowed Dabi to invite Hawks to the league, but also Kurogiri’s capture and betrayal someone Shigaraki was genuinely close to and listened to for counsel led to his location at the hospital being ratted out to both Eraserhead and Mic. So it’s not Shigaraki not trusting others that led to the Hospital Raid, but rather it’s because Shigaraki chose to trust others that this is all happening.

YET, when this happened last time with Overhaul Shigaraki didn’t stop trusting others. He didn’t throw Twice out. His choice back then was to take responsibility and trust Twice even more to fix the mistake he made. Which will likely be his response again. 

Shigaraki also fights against anyone who tries to control or oppress him the same way his father did once. When AFO tries to physically control his own body, he frees himself of the vestiges.

Shigaraki won’t lose his trust in other people, and won’t lose his close relationship with the league, because Shigaraki has already sustained this kind of loss before. Over and over again. He loses most of the Nomus, he loses Magne, he loses AFO. Yet, at those times when he loses these things Shigaraki’s response is always the same. 

Shigaraki is struggling to be better that the environment that created him. Shigaraki’s arc is not one of him losing his humanity, but rather Shigaraki keeping his humanity in the face of constant losses. 

His environment is really truly something that should have robbed him of his humanity. There are people like AFO who are out there to make him into a puppet, to rob him of all agency, and identity. Yet, Shigaraki always fights back against those trying to control him and tell him no.

Shigaraki won’t turn on the league, because his connections with the league are what make him human. It’s his connections with others he makes over and over again in the face of his extremely oppressive environment, first with Kurogiri, then with the league that allows him to stay the same at the core of who he is. 

While Shigaraki is constantly dehumanized by both the hero system and the villains he fights against, he’s actually one of the most human characters in the whole series. Not only is he very sympathetic and understandable where exactly he is coming from, but he’s also always, always, always, always, struggling against a set of very human flaws.