by Roxy Stickland

If you’ve read the My Hero Academia manga, you would know of the big effects of the seemingly lacking villain, All for One. He may seem lacking at first sight, but there is more than what meets the eye. Warning as there will be manga spoilers ahead.

To start, All for One is from the generation that quirks or superpowers started appearing in. He has the quirk to take and give powers. From what we know he had an uncomfortable attachment to his sickly younger brother, Yoichi. Whenever All for One gave people quirks, there was always a chance of them becoming brain dead from having too many quirks as quirks are in genes. When All for One began gathering “comrades”, Yoichi stood against him. All for One in response locked him in a vault, where Yoichi would be kept for a long time.

One of All for Ones original comrades broke into the vault and helped Yoichi escape. All For One took this as a note and from what we can assume, killed Yoichi.

All for One took many powers for years to come, he even took powers that stopped him from aging completely. He eventually gained a work partner that he dubs “the good doctor”, this doctor worked with All for One to copy quirks that he stole and create bioengineered creatures called “nomu”.

These nomu used people as bases for the powers and usually could now think for themselves. Except for one for a long time. Shirakumo Oboro was just a 16-year-old when he was killed in a battle against a villain. This may seem like an accident when in fact it was planned out by the doctor. This doctor worked with hospitals, the very hospital Oboro was sent too.

Using Oboro’s body as a base, the nomu dubbed “Kurogiri” was created. A nearly free thinking nomu that was created to take care of a child named “Tomura Shigaraki”.

Tomura never was originally Tomura. He used to be Tenko Shimura, a small child that accidentally caused an accident with his power. Abandoned to the streets, All for One found the child. The question of whether or not the accident was caused by the 200-year-old villain is still up for question. All for One at least knew what to do with Tenko when he took him in.

All for One is obsessed with his brother as we know, this obsession goes so far that he even grows an obsession for Tenko as the two were very similar, from their manner of speech to their body language. This is what also most likely caused All for One to manipulate Tenko to be his “successor”.

All for One never wanted Tenko to actually be is successor though. All for One wanted a new body to inhabit as he knew he would be injured severely one day. He did inhabit it, convincing Tenko that he was in control of his actions when in reality… he was never in control, his fate was just to be a new body for All for One to control, a younger, healthier body.

When it comes to society, All for One was controlling small strings of it from the background.  Manipulating certain people so he could have people in his organization. Convincing others that his control over Japan would be a better future for them. He predicted everything, from his recent face injury to his arrest years later. He planned for it all, he knew everything that was happening and how to control it.

He tries to hide his horrible deeds behind lies that attempt to make them noble. He is aware however that these actions are not noble, yet he takes an almost smug attitude about his crimes.

By smug, I mean a taunting attitude with ego. He attempts to pretend to care for his successor and his subordinates. He never actually does; he only sees them as tools to use for his criminal empire.

Why does he do all of this? Money? A noble cause? None of those.  In the manga it explains how quirks can affect the personality or phycological state of a person. All for one, having a quirk that takes, only makes him wants to take, and take, and take. He takes just because, no cause, no empathy at all. He is essentially just a human representation of the deadly sin hunger.

Some may ask why not greed? Greed has a reason most of the time, hunger never does. All for One has hunger for power, for anything. He has hunger to manipulate and take, only take, never give without taking even more than he gave, sacrificing others without a second thought if he deems it good for his hunger.

With current manga events, we may get to know more about him, but for now this seemingly lacking villain has a lot more to him than personally told.