#star rail remains infinitely superior in that regard

[hydrachea]

One day Mihoyo will let Genshin have a woman who's actually morally gray. Perhaps even evil.

[andysmetahell]

One for All and All for One: The study in complimentary and infinite (wasted) potentials

One for All and All for One: two Quirks whose history we can, in the universe of Boku no Hero Academia, treat almost as the history of society. Their users had left enormous impact on everyone in the series, and through hints we can see their influence stretching long, long back to the first appearance of the Quirks.

Neither Quirk can be considered ‘normal’, though: the ability to take away Quirks at whim and an ability to share Quirks with others (which would inevitably leave you Quirkless) are both complete anathemas to the society that by and large is half-in love with the idea of simply having a Quirk (which deserves a whole breakdown in on itself, but that’s not what I’ll be writing about here!). And yet, One For All users are all heroes, and All for One users are all villains as far as we know (written after the release of manga chapter 280).

How is that even possible? With how objectively similar they are, why aren’t they both heroes, or both villains?

Well, before we take a crack at how Horikoshi coded the Hero society that made this happen, let’s first take a look at just why I’m so surprised the two Quirks aren’t on the same ‘side’. Also, obligatory ‘spoilers ahead’ warning for everyone who’re anime-only watchers, or haven’t gotten past Meta Liberation Army arc in manga.

Purely from the activation/mechanics point of view, All for One and One for All are warped mirror images of each other. All for One functions on the assumption that a) the user knows the other person has a Quirk and b) the Quirk doesn’t have an inherent clause that disallows itself to be taken by force when it comes to taking it. One for All is the only Quirk so far that has shown the resistance to the b), as it is encoded in the very nature of the ‘share-along’ Quirk that forms the true base of One for All that it can only be given away willingly.

Why is this so important? Because All for One doesn’t only take Quirks, it’s also capable of releasing them and giving them to others, whether the recipient is willing or unwilling. In this regard, One for All is startlingly identical: it can be forced upon someone else, as long as the DNA is exchanged and the previous user is willing to give it away. This little fact is often overlooked (likely deliberately) by the existing canon in favor of emphasizing the ‘cannot be taken forcefully away’ which makes sense plot-wise, but not ethics and logic-wise.

But who knows, maybe Horikoshi is holding back on us, and One for All ends up being the ultimate villain of the story.

… yeah, not likely. But the idea is interesting, isn’t it?

Moving onto the way they interact with their users and other Quirks, One for All and All for One are again very, very different, but with a shared approximate visualization of usage behind it. The closest approximation of how they interact with other Quirks would be, in my opinion, be gravity – but two very different applications of gravity.

There are two relevant things you need to know about gravity: it is defined by the masses of an object interacting with another object, and every single object in the universe has its own gravity field. (thank you, Physics nationals I went to once, for forcing me to learn more about gravity!)

All for One is more akin to a star within a stable planetary system: it holds planets, satellites and comets (other Quirks) locked in its orbit, but any change can make all those objects lose their orbits and go wander in the deep space. Its hold is strong, but the fact still remains it can be nullified in order to give away Quirks. It’s also stable – its attraction/hold power doesn’t change with the number of Quirks taken, it simply gives it a bigger array of powers to work with.

One for All on the other hand would be closer to black hole: its gravity is so enormous even light, the fastest object in the universe, cannot escape it, and its mass (and therefore its gravity) grows stronger with every object it swallows. Once it grabs a hold of anything (its user’s other Quirk) it merges it with itself and keeps it for forever, with very little chance of it ever surfacing again as individual Quirk (unless your name is Midoriya Izuku). However, it heavily relies on the energy (other Quirks it merges with) to provide power-ups; hence the ridiculous difference between Izuku’s and Toshinori’s One for All. (also protagonst shenanigans, but we’re not going that far into metatextuality here – that needs its own essay)

So, concept-wise, One for All and All for One are again identical in the idea behind it, but drastically different in application – both still fucking scary, but what can we do here, our main protagonist and antagonist need to have OP armor around themselves.

This leads us to the probably the biggest spoiler I’ll discuss in this essay:

this panel.

In chapter 270 of manga, Shigaraki Tomura is revealed to have been passed All for One, which is a whole mindfuck in on itself that Horikoshi needs to explain stat because I’m going crazy over here with theories (!!!), but moving on. The short and extremely brief summary of what happens afterwards is: Heroes discover where Tomura is while he’s still being transferred All for One, they wreck the Nomus and facility, Shigaraki gets partial All for One and his original Quirk Decay goes absolutely nuts again, Izuku runs off to face him, and at one point point, while using Ragdoll’s Search, Shigakari utters a very strange sentence while seemingly under the influence of All for One (the Quirk):

“You will be mine… little brother.”

Moments later, Shigaraki snaps out of it and comments about Sensei (All for One) no longer being his puppeteer, that he’s making his own choices and not Sensei’s.

Here we get a stunning punch in the plexus about what we already have been hinted at during Izuku’s fight with Shinsou Hitoshi, during Kamino Ward and Joint Training Arcs:

One for All and All for One both retain the echoes of their past owners.

Now, here comes a million dollar question: is this something both the baseline ‘share’ part of One for All and All for One possess (which would further link the two Quirks, and also explain a lot of characterizations in the series so far), or is it an imprint of All for One on ‘stockpile’ part of One for All that ‘share’ part absorbed and made its own? Both possibilities are extremely intriguing and make any future possibility of unification (which was apparently Sensei’s original goal before, judging by that one panel) extremely volatile, and very intriguing if Horikoshi pursues that idea to its end.

Speaking of the man himself, now we arrive at the question that really started the whole essay here: how come it was All for One chosen to be the ultimate evil, and One for All to be ultimate good? As we’ve seen so far, both Quirks are startlingly similar; theoretically, could All for One be a ‘heroic’ Quirk and One for One for All ‘villainous’?

The answer is yes and no.

Yes, because theoretically, switching the two would still make the story work; it’d change the motivations of characters drastically, sure, and turn the story of generations of good trying defeat one evil into one good fending off generations of evil, but it’d work – and no, because that’d fundamentally change the society in which Boku no Hero Academia’s current time frame is, and society is the key underlying factor in this entire story.

Let me explain through the examples of three characters and a faction.

Midoriya Izuku is Quirkless person in a society who is, like I said at the beginning, half-in love with the idea of having Quirks – the fact that you have them makes you seem useful, someone with potential, no matter how objectively useless some Quirks inevitably can be in certain lines of work. By their standards, he’s without potential, and therefore is largely useless out of gate. Had All for One been in public eye and celebrated as Hero, he’d be the pinnacle of useful: there’d be no danger of bad reactions to donated Quirks in his DNA, and he, someone who wishes desperately for a Quirk, could easily be given a Quirk of someone who finds their life unbearable due to it.

Bakugou Katsuki, someone with extremely property-damaging Quirk, would constantly be told that if he doesn’t behave himself, he’d be sent off to All for One to have his Quirk taken away – in essence, he’d be no one special, just another kid with a Quirk. Since All for One is so visible, it’d be all too easy for parents and teachers to threaten their kids into compliance whenever they throw an over-powered tantrum with the removal of a Quirk; it’d also be a good deterrent for any Pro Heroes that existed there to not get too comfy with their jobs, because they could easily be taken out of it if they manage to anger All for One enough, which would deter some people from being Pro Heroes.

Shigaraki Tomura (Shimura Tenko), someone whose Quirk came in during an extremely traumatic event and left him so scarred mentally he was never quite the same again, could easily simply give away his Quirk and have something far less volatile and triggering if he wished so, and also have a chance of potentially one day seeing his Quirk in the hands of someone like Izuku or Melissa, who could use it to its full potential without being constantly triggered by it or being re-traumatized again and again by the society who would rail on him for having such a potentially devastating Quirk.

Meta Liberation Army (which is a poorly disguised Brotherhood of Mutants on Genosha in X-men cartoons, let’s be realistic – the whole thing about the superiority of fight-compatible Quirks was not subtle at all) would be a much smaller and a lot less influential group. The publicity of a Quirk being able to take away other Quirks would make the existence of Deika City clones very, very difficult; it’d take but one hint, one whisper of a fringe group amassing in remote location that wants to eliminate so-called ‘useless Quirks’ for All for One to act – as much of an asshole as he is, he was shown [cite] to like all kinds of Quirks, despite only keeping the ones he felt were the most useful to him.

OK, but what about them being on the same side? You might ask yourself. If they’re so similar, why not make them both on the same side?

One, drama is always more delicious if there are high personal stakes involved, and nothing gets more personal than family drama – that’s just a fact. (Kardashians, anyone?)

Two, this is shonen – openly bad guys being the protagonists isn’t often done (in mainstream at least).

Three: we need some material to make all those ‘Izuku’s related to All for One or One for All first user’ for our satisfaction before Horikoshi josses the whole thing, okay??

(no, this is certainly not a call for you to make more ‘Izuku is related to original two brothers’… but it’s heavily suggested lol)

Thank you for sticking around until the end of this essay! Have a cookie, and enjoy the hell my mind led me to during the binge-read of the last 5 released chapters of manga: