Curate, connect, and discover
One For All - Blog Posts
⚠️ MHA MANGA SPOILERS ⚠️
We should all just be delusional and draw different versions of pro hero deku w/ One for All AND being a teacher because yk free will exists.
Might do this soon, actually (when I finish my other 17 WIPs)
|| Haha I saw this on Twitter and thought it was a good idea to share here too ||
|| The truth is I always thought it was a reference to either All For One or One For All or both combined at the end of everything ||
Popularity poll poster
So, i can't stop thinking about popularity poll art by Horikoshi.
We can see Class 1a riding small dragons whild on the background flying gigantic green-white dragon. So why it is interesting to me?
1. We know from 1 chapter that Hisashi has firebreathing quirk. And Firebreath is mainly dragon thing to do.
2. Dragon not only huge and has red eyes.(i thing red eyes is pretty ominous) But also has THE SAME COLOR as Izuku. Same green shade.
3. Dragon seems looking at Izuku. And Izuku looks at dragon (or Shoto)
What could that art mean ? Please lets have discussion.
@diamondcz27 @vam1mav
And others please write your opinion
|| THEORY TIMEEE ||
|| Soooo, I saw a comment on one of my previous posts that reminded me of a theory I made a few years ago about Dad For One and now I would like to share it! (although of course I edited it a little so that it is more subdued with what is currently happening in the manga-) ||
|| The theory goes that basically, Izuku WAS planned to be a vessel, but not for Afo, no, he was supposed to be the vessel for Yoichi's consciousness. ||
|| With how Afo is, it wouldn't seem strange to me that he wouldn't be satisfied with just having his brother's quirk and only talking to his ghost/conscience, once he had One For All, he would look for someone, someone who was the most similar as possible to Yoichi, both in appearance and goals, but when he couldn't find that someone, he probably thought : Why not create him? Why not create that person? ||
|| Furthermore, if he created that person who was going to be a vessel, he would not only be blood-linked to him (as he is with Yoichi) but he could also obtain a Quirk in the process, it was a win-win for HIM!! ||
|| But after this, although we don't know what happened, we don't know why he only let Izuku have a normal life (It could be that Afo became attached to Izuku or the experiment failed, but hey, that part will be confirmed to us by Horikoshi in some chapter) ||
|| But well that was the whole theory, if you want you can add things to it if you like :p ||
"When All For One heard the sound of Yoichi's vestige shattering, his world lost its colors. He gave up his ambitions and then no attack from Deku could overcome the pain of losing him."
|| WOW ||
|| There's no sign of the Dad For One Theory becoming canon (yet) but at least we know the motherfucker has emotions! ||
(Although, of course, he could be faking, but I don't think that's happening here)
///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Oh well now that I've read the chapter I have nothing else to do so if you'll excuse me I'm going back to my hole until the next chapter comes out the next week-
CRRYYYIINGG
I had a vision
WHAT IF SHIGARAKI IS THE REINCARNATION OF THE FIRST OFA USER????
Like, what if since Nana was an OFA user, that her children/grandchildren also had a small connection to it, and somehow through that connection, AFO’s brother was reincarnated into Tenko Shimura? Think about it. Other than being Nana’s grandson, Tenko wasn’t exactly special, but AFO still helped him and took him in as his successor. It could’ve been to spite All Might sure, but AFO knew who Tenko was, so why didn’t he go for any of the other Shimuras before Tenko’s quirk formed if AFO knew about them? There’s also the theory that AFO gave Shigaraki decay, if that’s true, then why did he go for Tenko and not, say, Hana? And if so, then Tenko might have been quirkless, like everyone believed AFO’s brother to be. And look at how SIMILAR they look!
This is just some theory I had at like 2 am, but what do you guys think? If you want to dig deeper into this theory, go ahead
Shinsou Hitoshi 2.5" Charm
Midoriya Izuku + OFA Holders 4" Charm
Preorders open ‘til Aug. 7 💜 Addt’l. allowance for cat needs would be helpful so, with the help of @/jollyduckclub’s Merch Mart event (ft. 90+ other artists all in one store), I've made BNHA merch! Can’t wait for my own cat to play with Shinsou-kun. Please make my kitty’s dream come true! 🐈 Plus, I’ve always wanted merch of the OFA Holders throwing their full support behind their Ninth, so I made one. 💚Check out my stall for more! Signal boosts appreciated!
Huge thanks to @fedzkun for brainstorming the preview dialogues with me!
Izuku talking to the Vestiges: so what was your favorite moment before you died? It has to be the closest to when you died though.
Nana: my very last moments when I flipped off All for One and gave a sassy hair flip, just before he crushed me with a giant bolder.
Banjo: That one time when I dropkicked All for one using my blackwhip
2nd, still in the corner: I made All for one cry once
Yoichi: when I escaped the vault and left a recording of my voice that was triggered by the vault door opening that had me cursing him out and telling him that next time he wants to keep someone in a vault to take care of their mental state too, because I'm coming for him.
Everyone: silence
2nd: when did this happen?
Yoichi: I had it recorded for a while, it was supposed to be either for my funeral or for a last message when i got out sort of thing. I set it up while you guys were getting some stuff to take with us back to camp but I had almost nothing to pack so I just did that and then shoved everything I owned into a bag.
Izuku: that sounds fun.
Aizawa, walking in on the conversation: Izuku who are you talking to?
Izuku, looking him dead (haha) in the eyes: dead people. They are talking about the best experiences they had before death.
Aizawa, tired: and why does that sound fun?
Izuku, forgetting to give Aizawa context: well, the one who is all for one's brother left him a voice recording telling him off once he was able to escape the vault he put him in, that's what sounds fun. Not being in the vault, but the voice recording.
(I will let you continue this before I get out of hand and use too much space for the ask space to handle)
(im just laughing my ass off at this it's funny as fuck thank you for the ask!)
aizawa sitting down next to izuku : okay so... what else was the others best moments?
izuku : nana flipped him off and did a sassy hair flip! Banjo drop kicked him with the help of blackwip! second made him cry! ans ofc yoichis! so someone else go!
aizawa pale : how did they die again?
izukj : all for one. they all died to him apart from the 4th!
aizawa : Oh....
en: I mean I told him to go suck a rubber duck before throwing a bunch of them at him..
izuku snorting laughing : YOU DID WHAT?
aizawa : what they do?
izuku : en threw a bunch of rubber ducks at all for one while telling him to go fuck himself with them!
aizawa chucking : okay that's good.
third : I gave him a clone nose and wig and told him to go be with his brethren
izuku : WHAT... HAHAHA FUCK OFF REALLY?
aizawa : care to share?
izuku : pffttt 3rd gave him a clown nose and wig and told him to be with his brethren!
aizawa snorting a little : pfft that's amazing
izuku nodding : well now I feel like I gotta step up when I die.
aizawa : no.
one for all users : absolutely not.
izuku : dahm shut down so fast....
Izuku: Dad, I talk to ghosts
Aizawa: so, you aren't just talking to Hagakure when I find you out past curfew?
Izuku: no, I'm talking to dead people. One of them looks like Kacchan and he keeps standing right next to him to freak me out and it's not nice and all of them need tharapy.
Aizawa; why do they need tharapy?
Izuku: one of them became a hermit and lived in the woods, and the rest of them were murdered by All for One.
Aizawa: *speechless* how have you lived with them?
Izuku: starts crying
(I don't know if you could bounce some ideas off of this but I appreciate the quotes you do. I think talking to ghosts in front of people is extremely funny especially when it's your adopted dad.)
(okay first off thank you for this omg! I'm crying but I have something in my drafts that's something like this that I wanna turn into a story so I might take some of this as inspo but! onwards to the qoute!)
aizawa : Oh shit uh! don't cry? idk? uh?
Nana Shimura : dahm he's bad at comfort isn't he?
izuku still sobbing : Hes trying his hardest nana!
aizawa : WHAT???
Izuku : one of the ghosts!
aizawa : I'm so confused and concerned for your health right now.
one for all users threw izuku : haha mood!
aizawa :OH WHAT THE FUCK HELLO?!
izuku still crying : that was them!
aizawa : uh okay uh right so my son talks to dead people okay cool cool I can deal with this.... WAIT IS THIS WHY YOUR ALWAYS FREZZING TO THE TOUCH????
izuku wiping his eyes : mhm they're clingy! it gets cold when they hug me or be around me rather then in my mind!
aizawa in shock : i need to sit down. I adopted one child but got.... how many?
izuku :... 7 and a half...
aizawa nodding : I adopted one child and got 7 and a half dead people for free.... whag type of deal is this?
izuku laughing a little : you and me both. I thought I was just getting a quirk but I got funky ghosts and 7 more quirks!
aizawa : i need a drink to even think about prosessing this.
one for all users threw izuku : our bad sir if it helps we were all heros and vigilantes..... except two of us
aizawa : Oh.
some crack idea with the ofa vestiges and izuku +some aizawa
-----
izuku calmly talking to the vestiges in the living room fo the dorms : and then he said
yoichi : wait I head something....
Hikage Shinomori : yeah... nine hold on for a second
Daigoro Banjo :OMG WHO CARES I WANNA HEAR THE REST.
En :...its a person... who'd be up at 3am?
aizawa who's hiding behind the wall confused as fuck : what the fuck
izuku without missing a beat : aizawa sensei.
aizawa panicked even more because what in the fuck is going on : WHAT THE FUCK
I love the idea that midoriya can talk and see the previous users of one for all. Like the second user standing next to Bakugou when Midoriya is half asleep just to fuck with him and Midoriya doesn’t know which ones which.
The parallels between Shigaraki and Deku make me SICK to my stomach. Tomura is the personification of that quote,
“You robbed me of my life. I could have been human—I could have been alive.”
They so easily could have had their roles switched. Two vulnerable children who wanted to change the world for the better, but were denied because of society placing expectations and limits upon them. Both of them deemed worthless by someone they look up to (Bakugou and Shigaraki’s family), when all they needed was someone to give them that external validation they craved.
You could have been alive, Tomura. But you fought to the end, in the hopes that you could be a hero for the outcasts who needed it. A stopped heart once beat just as furiously as a live one. Even when you refused to be saved Tenko, your body simply moved on its own, didn’t it?
...And They Were Narrative Foils
Shigaraki Tomura and Izuku Midoriya are characters who have far more in common than they have differences. They even have the exact same origin point as a kid who wanted to become a hero more than anything else, but was told by everyone around them they couldn’t be on. The difference between them represents the inherent unfairness of the world, Midoriya was saved and Shigarki wasn’t. However, rather than working together to try to fix the flaws in the unfair world that hurt both of them Shigaraki and Midoriya are forced to fight each other due to the mistakes of their predecessors forcing them into conflict. This is a meta on their extremely unique relationship and why they need to come to an understanding in order to fight the real enemy.
Keep reading
Yo guys follow my other account if you want, I'll be posting about Ofa users but they're in memes.
The Demiurge of Destiny
The silence seeps out of the earth and into her bones.
The darkness creeps, it creeps close and into her soul.
She stands still, unyielding but nonetheless alone.
Her strength comes from those who live down below.
Living in an idyllic fantasy, free from any woe.
As she lifts with her petite hand, the shield to palisade,
The mephistophelian misery that obscures their fate.
She receives no recognition, for in history she has never been portrayed.
She adorns no gowns, no ornaments present in her locks that cascade.
Yet, her eyes they hide behind the vizard as she attends the ephemeral masquerade.
To watch her principles, to keep them safe.
The fires burn bright inside the ostentatious room.
Yet, in her veins, the cold blood morbidly looms.
She makes herself unobtrusive to the human eye.
As she stares at the cacodemon, its flesh charred and dry.
They battle fierce and they battle fast.
Each time they clash, one of them nearly falling apart.
Both fought the other trying to outlast.
The hellion sneers and questions her act, it taunts her, it taunts the people behind her back.
'You fight for them? These people there?
Who burnt your home without care?
Who turned the forests dark with despair?
Who'd agonize in the hurt ne'er?'
She inhales closing the apertures of sight,
Her heart in agony, her mind in plight.
Yet, her body stands, it stands to defend,
Staring at the demon she wills to rend.
'It matters not what my heart decides,
It matters not if the rivers run dry.
Gods are gods till the men decide.
And for these men, I shall lay down my life.'
The night dawns as she enters her hearthstone.
Blood trickles from her side as she suppresses a groan.
Shadows that loom chilling her down to the bone.
Fatigued and weary as she looks at the moon that shone.
She fights her battles, she sits on her throne.
She looks after the humans like they're young saplings she had sown.
She looks out to the horizon and into the unknown.
Shield in her hands, protecting on her own.
holy shit this is fucking amazing
thank you for the food😩🙏🏻🙏🏻
guess who started writing again harharhar in-depth character analysis of katsuki, Izuku, and ochako is next
tryna decide if this should be a quick oneshot or a multichapter over 8 yrs his time
I had an idea (which was as chaotic as usual)
I randomly thought “huh, how cool would Izuku look if his eyes were white and his pupil green (so that his pupil and eye color were switched)
after a little bit of editing
I lowkey have zero regrets
He looks pretty dope ngl
(edit: I gave Yoichi the same treatment, here’s the link:
Finally Caught You, Little Brother
This is literally AMAZING 🔥😱😱😉👍🏻. Tumblr has some of the most talented people.
I love her
Bnha rant #16
Ayo ayo!! Today I bring to you another specimen to dissect with me :) Today? We're talking about One for all/All for one!
Canon showcases that you cannot have more than one quirk in your body without it causing some form of harm to you mentally/physically. This is showcased with the Nomus (there is probably some addition I'm missing to this seeing as I'm an anime only with the occasional spoiler thrown in there but for now this is all based on the anime). Nomus have more than one quirk -forcefully-and are barely capable of critical thinking/other qualities that separate [humans] from non-humans. This is due to the fact that they all had more than one quirk forced into them.
Now, how does this relate to One for all and All for one? Both of those quirks are quirks that give the user the ability to have more than one quirk at once. For All for one its the fact that the user can take multiple quirks and for One for all its the fact that the user can use other peoples quirks. Both quirks give the user more than one quirk than they were born with.
With the aforementioned fact that having more than one quirk forced into your body, All for one and One for all realistically should cause some form of brain damage.
TLDR: One for all and All for one should cause the user brain damage due to the fact that canon states that having more than one quirk forced into your body causes the user to revert to their animal brain.
rip ofa vestiges u would've been a great idol group
All for one: finalmente, he logrado inutilizar al poseedor de One for all, obtener la peculiaridad y poseer por completo a Tomura, he ganado, hermano.
Yoichi con una hacha y ganas de matar: si, no lo creo, hermano.
Kudou tiene una pistola y Bruce un lanzallamas, esto no terminará bien.
What’s your guess to the year? Keep in mind that Tiger was born on a leap year and Hawks said that quirks have been around for the past 2 centuries.
Incredibly belated answer on this, but it, uh, turned into a project. Because of course it did. Hope you find the result interesting, anon!
To get started, the Tiger thing is easy to look up, which I did, but does anyone have a citation for this Hawks line? I feel sure I would have remembered it; it’s exactly the kind of worldbuilding detail my HeroAca chat would have jumped all over. On the other hand, we might not have heard about it if it was in e.g. the World Heroes’ Mission movie or TUM or something. (To be clear, if that is the case, I’m probably going to disregard it. Vigilantes is the only spin-off in my heart, and I certainly value it above the material the anime sees fit to thoughtlessly tack on.)
That aside, I did actually hammer out a timeline for myself back in 2020, in which I set BNHA’s current action (designated as Deku starting UA) as kicking off in 2180, with the glowing baby born somewhere around 1980. I peppered the time between with significant births, deaths and events, generally giving myself an unofficial “these dates rounded to the nearest five years” sort of leeway.
Back in 2020, however, we hadn’t yet had that Oji Atsuhiro reveal, nor the tidbit about Shinomori being, at eighteen years, the second-longest bearer of One For All. I’ve been needing to revise for a while now, being something of a pedant about my MLA timeline, so this ask was a good opportunity to revisit it.
Hit the jump to join me on a ~magical number-crunching adventure~!
Note that this is a cleaned-up and formatted version of what started life as me brainstorming and hypothesizing until I arrived at my conclusion. It has a few detours and cul-de-sacs because I was working it out as I went. If you just want the TLDR, it’s as follows:
Having considered all the new evidence, I would put the glowing baby’s birth circa 1985 and Deku’s freshman year in 2139.
Front-End Dating
Let’s look at the beginning of the timeline first, as it’s the one that involves somewhat more guesswork. There are a few reference points in looking at the timeframe for the glowing baby, if you’re willing to get unbelievably anal about worldbuilding details Horikoshi may or may not have even thought about. I am absolutely willing to be that person, so when I first started ironing this all out, there were two hard dates I went looking for right off the bat: the invention of the taser, and the first Japanese publication of Marvel comics.
Point 1: Tasers
The existence of tasers is mentioned in a stray comment during Deku’s dream flashback to All For One and Yoichi: the quirkless man who gains a spike quirk from AFO is mentioned as carrying one for self-defense. Tasers were invented in 1993, ergo, that scene must have taken place sometime after 1993.
It’s possible—even probable—that the scene could take place significantly after 1993, for two reasons. First, we don’t know how long it took quirks and the chaos they brought with them to become widespread. If it took decades for the world to realize what it was dealing with, the taser could have existed for years before the scene in question. There’s also the matter of the technological crash brought on by quirks. If said crash took place over an extended period of time during which tasers were still in development, it’s possible that they wouldn’t have been completed until sometime after 1993, taking even longer to reach civilian/black market availability.
Could the advent of quirks have sped up the development of the taser, answering the suddenly widespread demand for a self-defense/less lethal police weapon? I could see it, but it would be a departure from what we’re told about other technological developments in that period. it’s also worth noting that the very first taser available for sale, circa 1976, used gunpowder as its propellant, leading to it being classified as a firearm. It’s therefore unlikely that Japan, with its extremely stringent gun laws, would have had much access to it at all that far back. The 1993 date refers to the modern, non-firearm electric taser. 1976 is an interesting date, though, as I’ll discuss in the next section.
The taser gives us a starting point. Assuming that its development wasn’t an aberration in a time of collapsing norms, the OFA scene post-dating it must be likewise post-1993.
Point 2: Japanese Publication of Marvel Characters
If you look at the narration about the origin of quirks in Chapter 1, you find a handful of silhouettes, fictional characters who represent the “fantasy” that became “reality.” Since the narration is delivered by Midoriya, not an omniscient narrator, we can assume that those media properties did exist in-universe and, further, that all of them were viewed as fantastical prior to the advent of quirks. Therefore, even the newest of those characters must have first publication dates that predate the Advent.
Of the lot of them, the Marvel characters are the newest.(1) Spider-Man’s first appearance was in 1962; Wolverine’s (if the figure with the sideburns and claws is intended to be Wolverine) in 1974. Marvel comics were even being localized and published in Japan by the early 70s, which would have begun familiarizing at least some people with those particular “fantasy” characters by that time. Ergo, quirks must not have come about before the mid-1970s.
Knowing that also helps shore up the taser point by keeping the historical timeline on track up at least through its initial 1976 creation.
Heretofore Unnumbered Point 3: The Technology Crash
My last consideration when I was originally running the numbers was the developmental crash brought about by the Advent. Specifically, the world of My Hero Academia generally reflects a modern-ish Japan, so I default to wanting modern technology—and modern social reforms—to still feel modern to the characters. Thus, the point at which society stopped developing needed to predate the full flush of the Digital Revolution, which really began to hit its stride in the mid-to-late-80s. It could perhaps be the case that some developments were brand new and subsequently lost along the way, or simply never reached their full potential due to the spreading chaos of mysterious superpowers, but modern digital technology needed to not exist in any widespread form prior to the bottom falling out.
That’s my working window for the start: The glowing baby should be born no earlier than the late 1970s, the world should be recognizing the danger and starting to turn its attention towards the new problem by the late 1980s, slowing the development of other technology, but with total collapse not yet having come about by the early 1990s.
That’s the front end. Before I get to the back end, let’s look at the middle: How long after the glowing baby’s birth was All For One’s?
Bridging the Gap
The Shigaraki Brothers & Captain Hero
All For One provides an immediately accessible reference point for the timeline at large. He’s over a century old, so quirks must be so as well. However, we can assume that he isn’t past or closing in on two centuries, else that’s how Gran Torino, in talking about him, would have described him. Whatever AFO’s age is, it needs to be something that’s in keeping with that estimation.
One thing to emphasize here is that we don’t know how long it took quirks to become a widespread, fully acknowledged issue. If they started appearing all over the world in large numbers within a matter of months, that makes my calculations different than if it took years for enough quirks to surface in enough countries for them to become the subject of widespread panic.
Another thing that’s unclear is whether the brothers are themselves in the first generation—and therefore that they grew up watching the world spiral out of control—or whether quirks had already existed for quite some time before they were born, and they never knew anything but that widespread chaos.
One thing that gives us a lens on those issues is Yoichi’s beloved Captain Hero comic. While the Captain could be from any number of periods in which that image of an American-style superhero exists, the Demon Lord is a bit more specific.
Particularly in Japanese media, that fantasy Demon Lord (Ma-oh/Maou) archetype was basically invented wholecloth by Dragon Quest, especially Dragon Quest III and its villain Zoma. DQ3 came out in 1988 and had manga tie-ins in print that same year, therefore we can assume that comics inspired by this type of villain have to post-date 1988.
The Captain Hero comics are also another example of a piece of media described by a character (AFO) as “fantasy” that is now being reflected in “reality.” Because of that fantasy/reality proviso, we can further assume that heroes as a job class didn’t exist at the time of the manga’s publication—which would make sense, since AFO in the dream flashback highlighted that the world was totally without order, whereas heroes being codified were a sign of the chaos beginning to settle somewhat, so obviously they wouldn’t have existed at the time of the flashback.
This gives us a somewhat limited window. If the comics can’t predate 1988, but I still want to stick to my guns on the, “Panic about quirks superceded the nascent Digital Revolution,” qualifier, it pretty much dictates that the world was in full-tilt collapse by the end of the 90s. This also lets me scrape by on my taser window of 1993.
In any case, seeing as Captain Hero depicts a pre-quirk vision of popular J-fantasy, to say the least, the comic’s fairly retro by the time the brothers are talking about it as adults. I might even go so far as to say that they probably weren’t new-new when the brothers were reading them as kids. They have the feel of something old, like maybe a collection the brothers’ father owned, or that they bought on the cheap somewhere just to have some meager entertainment in their lives.
Where does all that leave us, then? I would probably call the Captain Hero comics something that came out in the late 80s/early 90s, some publisher’s attempt to capitalize on Dragon Quest’s popularity and those American superhero comics that had been floating around the edges of the zeitgeist for a decade or so. They were probably published right in that nebulous period when the glowing baby had been born, and there was growing unease with the mysterious powers popping up around the world, but since there wasn’t yet a mass panic, entertainment companies were still trafficking in a lot of their usual fare; elsewhere, the taser reached mass market readiness.
Then, the bottom dropped out. Media pivoted to be about what meta-abilities were and what they meant; old-fashioned things like Hero vs. Demon Lord comics plummeted in popularity and wound up in bargain bins(2) or put into storage. In this fashion, some of them eventually find their way into Yoichi’s hands. If he or his big brother actually bought them, they’re probably no more than a few years old—say maybe 3-5, which would put Yoichi reading them in the mid-to-late 90s. If they’re something of Yoichi’s parents’, and AFO and Yoichi were born quite some time after the glowing baby, that could make the comics older, anywhere from a decade (if Dad was still around collecting when the brothers were very young) to closer to 30 or 40 years, if Dad bought them in his own childhood and just held onto them).
For myself, I prefer a read that the collapse was pretty fresh when the brothers were growing up, and some math further down the line in this analysis has led me to the conclusion that AFO and Yoichi were pretty early in the history of quirks, meaning that the collapse had to be pretty rapid in order for both of those things to be true.(3) That being the case, let’s go with the more conservative read and say those comics were less than a decade old when the brothers picked them up. That, then, leads to the next part of this analysis: How old are the brothers?
Back-End Dating
I’d peg AFO as being in his early 30s during the flashback, and Yoichi in his late 20s; I assume that at that point, both of them were still appearing as their natural age,(4) which gives us AFO as 30-something during the events of dream sequence when he forces the quirk on his younger brother—the genesis of One For All.
One For All’s Age
I’m going to jump around somewhat here, broadly working backwards, but circling around as necessary and tallying as I go.
Bearer 9, Deku
Easy-peasy. Deku has carried OFA for a year and change—he received it in late February and the manga is currently in late spring/early summer of the following year.
Running tally for age of OFA: 1 year.
Bearer 8, All Might
All Might has carried OFA for 40-ish years—possibly a few more, but not so many that Yoichi, talking about this in Chapter 304, would be better suited to say, “For over 40 years, Yagi maintained his grip on One For All,” instead of simply, “For 40 years, (...).” All Might’s in his mid-to-late 50s now; he was still in school when he got it from Nana. He was possibly in middle school when they first met, judging by his uniform, but presumably he wouldn't have been able to go to UA without it, so he must have had it by the time he started there at 15. He was clearly seeing himself in Deku, so it wouldn’t surprise me if he was exactly 14 when he met Nana, and 15 when he got OFA just in time for entrance exams.
Running tally for age of OFA: 41 years.
Bearer 7, Nana
Nana carried it for at least a few years, but we've never been explicitly told which she got first, OFA or her husband and kid. You can make a good guess if you do the math, though, so here's some math+guessing:
The mothers in the series whose ages we know (the mothers of Deku, Bakugou, Tsuyu and Jirou) all had their first child in their early-to-mid-20s.(5) Let's assume Nana was the same and put her at, say, 24 when Kotarou was born. He then died at 32 (having turned so only recently), meaning that, had she survived, she would have been around 56 at the time of his death. Tacking on the time since the Shimura Massacre using Shigaraki's age, that would put Nana at 72 today.
All Might, again, got the quirk ~40 years ago; if he was echoing his own experience in the way he raised Deku, he would have been 15 at the time. That would have made Nana 32—and Kotarou 8—at the time she gave Toshinori OFA. She was killed when he was 18, his senior year.
Kotarou looks noticeably younger than 8 when we see him as a kid being given up. He looks much closer to Tenko's ago, or his obvious parallel Kouta's, those ages being 5 and 6 respectively. So I think we can assume Nana gave up Kotarou at least a few years before giving Toshinori OFA, which would certainly explain her surety, in the letter, that the fight would be the death of her. If Kotarou was, say, 6, that’d make Nana 30 at the time she gave him up.
We don't have any further idea how long Nana was carrying OFA herself before the transfer, only that it was less time than Shinomori, and not long enough to start taking a heavy toll on her(6) despite her being several iterations down the line from him. I would guess it was fewer than 10 years, as 10 would put her at only 22 when receiving it, and I would tend to think that she wouldn't have had a kid if she'd known the full extent of what she was dealing with—she obviously saw the state En was in when he passed it on, after all.
So, let's assume she'd already been a hero, trained and licensed, and already married with a young son when she came across En and didn't realize the extent of what she was getting herself into. Some time between Kotarou's birth and turning let's-call-it-6, she takes the quirk, gets the world’s worst wake-up call when her husband is killed, and gives Kotarou up to the state.
Let's say it takes a year or two to realize the full extent of excrement you've stepped in with AFO. Two years with a mysterious new quirk she got off a dying stranger before the mess led her to give up her son (at 30) would put her at getting the quirk at 28, when Kotarou was 4ish. If she gave Toshinori the quirk around 32, that means she would have carried OFA around 4 years.
Running tally for age of OFA: 45 years.
Bearers 6+5, En and Banjou (Take One)
En and Banjo are big question marks. We have no idea how long they each carried OFA, other than, again, "for less time than Shinomori." So to start narrowing down a timeframe for them, let me look to something else: heroism in general.
We know that Banjo, two bearers previously to Nana, was a professional hero—Lariat. Heroism, then, must have existed in his era.
We don't know specifically how long Pro Heroes have been established in Japan, but we can make at least one educated guess: Harima Oji was active when, quote, "the present system was just beginning to settle into place." Thus, heroism has been around for the generations following him, as well as some years prior to his own vantage point. That factoid gives us four generations (his child, grandchild, great-grandchild, and finally his great-great-grandchild, Sako Atsuhiro) plus however many of Harima’s own years heroes have existed for.
A generation is usually considered around 25 years, which tracks with the known parental ages in the series. So if the stretch of time between Harima's child's birth to Sako's birth can be estimated to 75 years, plus Mr. Compress's age of 32, that means it's been at least 108 years since Harima's child was born. We don't know when said child was born relative to his criminal activity—maybe Harima had already become a father by the time he was thieving; maybe the family came later. Let's just round it to 110 years that we can say with relative confidence included heroes in them.
Heroes have existed for at least/around 110 years. Our estimate of OFA's lifespan, meanwhile, currently stands at 45 years. As noted earlier, it seems pretty apparent that heroes did not exist at the time One For All was first created; AFO’s climb to the top happened in those early chaotic years before the legislation of heroism. So that leaves us at least 65 years we need to fill between Nana getting OFA and the very first licensed hero, and then an uncertain number of years between that first licensing and OFA’s creation.
Keep that 65-year figure in mind; we’ll be using it going forward. For now, let's put a pin in En and Banjo and move on.
Bearer 4, Shinomori
Shinomori is easy. He carried OFA for 18 years, and says his own times were awful—he must, then, have been much closer to those chaotic years (which would track with Shinomori’s direct successor Banjo saying that the Japan Deku’s sojourning in post-Jakku reminds him of his own time). 18 years off our remaining 65 leaves us with 47 years OFA must have existed such that it at least parallels (and ideally predates) the Hero Institution.
Running tally for age of OFA: 63 years.
Bearers 2+1, [?] and Yoichi
Skipping Bearer 3, another big mystery, for a moment, if AFO would rather his brother be dead than free, and if AFO wanted to both take back that power and take some really horrible revenge for stealing his brother away, I'd be shocked if Yoichi and Strawberry Bakugou made it as much as a decade between them. Let's call it a decade for ease of rounding, though, and add 10 years to our tally.
Running tally for age of OFA: 73 years.
This brings us down to the three bearers we have the least information on: #3, Banjo and En. We still have 37 years to account for to get us in the ballpark of that Year 1 of Heroism, and more would, again, be welcome, as I assume the first hero didn’t get sworn in on the very eve of OFA’s creation. (It might be thematic, but it runs you square into Destro and the original MLA, and evidence I’ll go over later would put them later in the timeline.)
Moving on, let’s take a brief aside to consider the vestiges’ appearances. It might seem likely that none of the early bearers carried OFA for very long, given that they all look the same in the OFA mindscape as they do in the scene where 2nd and 3rd kick down the vault door hiding Yoichi, suggesting they died without having the chance to get significantly, obviously older than they were in that moment.
On the other hand, we don’t know enough about quirk metaphysics to say that the appearance of the vestiges would match their living appearances. Given that we know there's a certain amount of connection between All Might and his vestige, it could be that the vestiges mirror their living selves' appearances until the end. We can't really call Vestige Might definitive, though, because he's the only one that isn't a quirk vestige, but rather just an impression of All Might's (literal) personality.
Perhaps, then, the others’ appearances are imprinted when they're first incorporated into One For All and then they just stick that way? Or is it more about their self-image, the age they tend to think of themselves as being? Or is it the age that marked the most important part of their lives with OFA? The lines beneath Nana’s eyes kind of come and go, but they’ve never been consistent enough that I’d call them a definitive sign that the vestiges’ appearances are fluid.
Deku’s fluctuating appearance—both how much he’s covered in mist and even his age, as shown when he talks about how he wants to save the little boy he felt inside Tomura’s rage—would seem to point towards a fluid manifestation, but Deku also can’t be considered definitive because he, like All Might, is both still alive and not appearing in the mindscape via his quirk, because he doesn’t natively have one.
So comparing the bearers’ appearances in flashbacks versus their mindscape selves is a dead-end. What else do we have?
Bearer 5, Banjo (Take Two)
I might guess that since All For One seems to have largely lost track of the bearers during Shinomori's time—seeing as he died of "old age," rather than at AFO's hand—it's possible that Banjo had a very good run before AFO caught up to him. OFA was weaker back then, so the effect it had on Banjo's power levels might not have been so noticeable in a sea of heroes that it jumped out right away, especially with Yoichi's "voice" still being ill-formed. Banjo's also by far the oldest looking of the lot, give or take Shinomori's difficult-to-measure signs of age. That being the case, let's give Banjo 15 years—fewer than Shinomori, but long enough to take a good chunk out of our remaining span.
Running tally for age of OFA: 88 years.
Bearers 6+3, En and [?] (Take Two+A Tweak to Nana’s Numbers)
That takes us down to 22 years to split between En and Mr. Fa Jin to get us to the bare minimum point where heroism would be brand new circa OFA's creation. It's pretty much a toss-up, how one imagines that going. My last point of evidence to consider, then, is Banjo’s statement that AFO tried to steal OFA from both him and En, and it didn't work. They clearly survived to pass on the power, however, and not to anyone under AFO's direct control. So, is it possible that, by this point, AFO was coming to understand that he couldn't just neatly steal OFA? That he needed to adjust factors somehow?
That being the case, while I expect he would have tried to keep Banjo and En around (the better to have them available to test out new methods on!), he might not have been in full search-and-destroy mode, because he didn't have a solution yet, so it didn’t really hurt him to let OFA's bearers run about for a while, meaning En could have had a pretty good stretch of time with the power. Heck, that might even have had an effect on the amount of time Nana had as well! I estimated two years between getting the power and realizing the extent of her danger, but if AFO was in full cat-playing-with-its-food mode by then, it might well have been longer.
On the other hand, if AFO lost track of Fa Jin-san such that he was able to pass OFA to Shinomori without being detected, it would seem he slipped AFO's net as well, so he could also have had a pretty solid run.
Twenty-two years left, but En—if his appearance is even remotely relevant—is the clear youngest outside of Izuku, and I don’t see him and Banjou having a senpai/kohai relationship if En was a literal child at the time. So to avoid having to hang too much time on him, let's wick a year or two back to Nana, reflecting that perhaps AFO’s danger was not quite so immediately apparent as I first supposed, and make her OFA run 6 years instead of 4.
Running tally for age of OFA: 90 years.
That gives us 20 years remaining between En and 3rd that we know need to exist to get them back to even Harima Oji's time.
Let’s go ahead and assume that En was at least 18 when he got the power from Banjou—while we can imagine situations outside of official, professional relationships, Banjou was a hero, and En called him senpai, so the Occam’s Razor explanation is that En was also a licensed hero when they were forming that relationship. If En was a licensed hero, he’d need to be old enough to be issued that license. Even if he didn’t go to a hero school—that many years in the past, did hero schools even exist?—I have to think he’d need to be at least 18. And we see how old he looked at the time of his death: exactly the same way he does in the mindscape. I’d guess he’s around the same age as e.g. the twenty-somethings in the League, so at best I’d call him 25 at the time of his death, giving him a maximum possible run of 7 years.
That leaves Fa Jin-san 13 years with OFA to meet my scaffolded-out-into-thin-air bare minimum.
Running tally for age of OFA: 110 years.
So, OFA has to be at least 110 years old to even get the point of its creation back to Harima Oji, and that’s reachable while staying within the bounds of what we know. I personally still think it’s still a bit on the short side, however. Again, the OFA dream very much gave the impression that AFO was running around attracting the masses in the full-tilt chaos years, not the ones where the Hero System had already been adopted and was beginning to settle. So let's bump it back 10 more years—before Harima, and anywhere between that same 10 years to only a few years prior to Destro and the original Meta Liberation Army, depending on how contemporaneous Harima and Destro were. We can scratch those 10 years together from, for example, stretches of months (like Deku’s three months on top of his base year) that the above analysis is too broad-strokes to cover, as well as granting an extra year or two here and there to bearers whose numbers we can only guess at.
FINAL TALLY FOR AGE OF ONE FOR ALL: 120 years.
Shigaraki Yoichi and AFO’s Ages (Interim Answer)
Recall that I estimated Yoichi at the time of the dream as being in his late 20s. Tack that onto our age of OFA, and we get just a bit shy of 150 years from the time of Yoichi's birth to Izuku entering UA. This would make AFO a few years over 150—over 100, but not so close to 200 that you’d expect Gran Torino to say that instead.
Putting It Together
I estimated the Captain Hero comics as being from late 80s/early 90s and supposed that they were less than a decade old when Yoichi and AFO first picked them up. Chapter 333 gives us a quick flashback from AFO to Yoichi reading them; Yoichi in that panel looks less than 10 years old himself. So let’s ballpark the comic and Yoichi as being around the same age and put their publication and Yoichi’s birth in 1990. Adding on the previous ballpark of “a bit shy of 150 years” to get from Yoichi’s birth to today, that puts us at “a bit shy of 2140”—or of 2141 for the manga’s current events!
Now we can use Tiger’s age+birthday to settle on a final number. Tiger’s birthday is, as stated, February 29th—he’s already had his birthday for the year and is currently 32. If 2141 were exactly correct, that’d put him being born in 2109—not a leap year. Luckily, the estimation is “a bit shy of 2141,” so let’s bump that birth year back by one to have him being born in the nearest leap year of 2108. 32 years later, he and we find ourselves in…
|| The current year is 2140, with Deku’s first year at UA being 2139. ||
Going back to the beginning, then, to try and backdate the glowing baby, my suppositions are as follows:
• AFO and Yoichi are from relatively early in the Advent period, within the group of people deemed the first generation. • “A generation” can be ballparked to 25 years. • Yoichi was born in 1990. Being of the same generation as the glowing baby means his birth needs to be within 25 years of the baby’s birth. 25 years back from Yoichi’s birth would put us in 1965, which is much too early, so it must be a narrower window. o We also know All For One is younger than the growing baby, if possibly by very little. If AFO is 3-5 years older than Yoichi (again, early 30s versus late 20s in the flashback dream), that’d put him being born sometime in 1985 to 1987. o I don’t want to push the baby’s birth any further than 1985—the collapse being rapid means I need to keep it as close as I can to my taser datum in 1993—but let’s aim for a middle way and call AFO 4 years older than Yoichi, born in 1986. That puts us with a final analysis of…
|| The glowing baby was born in 1985. Quirks are 155 years old. ||
Checking My Math With Doc Ujiko
If AFO is currently 154, then even assuming Ujiko’s Life Force quirk had a retroactive effect, AFO should look in his mid-70s, which he clearly doesn’t. However, I’ve long figured that AFO had to have been running on a life-extension quirk of some kind even before he met Ujiko. Even just working with what’s explicit in the manga, he looked more or less the same when he fought All Might as he did when he fought Nana 40 years prior, and more or less the same as that when he created One For All far longer prior still! A simple “2 years lived=1 year aged quirk” wouldn’t explain that continuity of appearance, and AFO certainly doesn’t seem to suffer from Ujiko’s reduced vitality.
Also, Ujiko is, per Mic, over 120 (thus presumably under 130). He presented his Paranormal Singularity Theory to the world 70 years ago, during a time when the world was “struggling to end the turmoil and reclaim peace.” Assuming my numbers are right, 70 years ago would put AFO at 84 years old. One For All would have been created 50 years prior. This makes AFO around 30 years older than Ujiko.(7)
A (New) Finalized Rough Timeline
Note: Years are estimated, favoring five-year increments for ease of calculation. Most events could be tweaked earlier or later by a year or two. It does not include the One For All bearers; recall that I wedged in an extra decade to their time, to be distributed in chunks of months or more generous year allotments than my first pass. Not having specifically divvied out those years, they’re not represented below.
1985: The glowing baby is born
1986: The child who will become All For One is born.
1990: Shigaraki Yoichi is born.
~2015: The child who will later call himself Garaki Kyudai is born.
2020: One For All is created.
~2032: Harima Oji’s child is born.
2070: Soon-to-Be-Garaki Kyudai presents his Paranormal Singularity Theory.
~~~generations pass~~~
2139: Midoriya Izuku receives One For All; begins first year at UA.
2140: Manga current events.
...Et voilà!
P.S. If the Hawks line turns out to be in the main canon, I will cry. And then I will do my best to adjust this accordingly.
-------------------------------
1: Of the ones I could identify, at least. Others include Superman, Ultra Man, Devilman, Kikkaider, etc.
2: Entertainingly enough, this would offer a parallel between Yoichi clinging to his reduced-price comics and young Takami Keigo with his clearance-bin Endeavor plush. Sometimes, it’s not what a thing is, it’s what the thing represents that makes all the difference.
3: Specifically, I’d initially wanted AFO and Yoichi to be at least in the second full generation, with the collapse happening gradually over the course of the first generation and accelerating into full meltdown as the second generation began to appear. I would later roughly define a generation as being 25 years, however, and a 25-year gap between the glowing baby and AFO proved to be flatly irreconcilable with the math that came out of backdating One For All and the history of professional heroism.
4: Since Yoichi was never under the effects of an anti-aging quirk, if AFO already had one back then and Yoichi didn’t, Yoichi would have appeared to be the elder of the two. That Yoichi still looked younger suggests that, if there was an anti-aging quirk on the table at that time, it was still very new. More likely, though, AFO simply hadn’t found one yet.
5: In order: 26, 22, 26, and 21.
6: At worst, she looks to have just started developing lines beneath her eyes, visible in some of the scenes of her towards the very end of her life and not present in her younger days.
7: Ujiko would have been in the vicinity of 55 at the time, and thus physically appearing merely in his upper 20s. About the same age Yoichi was, way back when…
⚠️high volume warning
This is a silly little animatic I made a awhile ago, I’ve always wondered what the vestiges did when they were not being plot-relevant.
Sitting inside the endless void has got to be a little boring at times.
(The audio is from TheOdd1sOut)
What did an One For All user say to the person they wanted to forcibly pass One For All to?
"I'll make you an OFA you can't refuse."
Bruce Fanart
now, how many of you actually know who Bruce is?? 💀 LOOK IT UP!! (basically, he was one of the OFA users🤩) Anyway, I saw this by @hotpotatopotat (🎉) and decided to draw Bruce haha, I need to learn to shade 😭
People seriously sleep on how much attractive and fine looking All Might was as a teen...
I mean:
Big pretty blue eyes, tall, tan skin, golden hair.
Also the hairstyle sures help.
Weird how his old and skinny look seems to have more simps than the younger versions lmao.
one could almost believe that yoichi birthed nine himself (afo fathered him)
I do believe it, hard to not when Nine looks like they got mixed into one person.
Most perfect genetics ever!
This is the real Dad For One theory right there.
I am in love with making these two veat the shit out of one another. https://www.patreon.com/AytheToon