My Hero Academia: Heroes Rising, the second stand-alone film in the franchise, contains a major spoiler from Volume 23 of the manga, which is Viz Media’s most recent English release of My Hero Academia. Based on the manga series by Kohei Horikoshi, Heroes Rising jumps ahead of its source material and debuts a twist before its natural reveal in the Japanese anime series.
Heroes Rising follows Izuku Midoriya (Justin Briner) and his classmates from U.A. High School as they undergo their first real job as professional heroes and run a hero agency on the peaceful Nabu Island. As class 1-A enjoys the rewarding and challenging experience of professional hero work, a group of villains led by Nine (Johnny Yong Bosch) suddenly appear on the island intent on stealing the quirk of the young boy, Katsuma Shimano (Maxey Whitehead). As Izuku, or as he’s known by his hero name “Deku,” attempts to protect Katsuma and his sister Mahoro (Dani Chambers) from the villain, Nine reveals some information about Deku that is formerly only disclosed in Volume 23 of the manga.
About halfway through Heroes Rising, Deku has his first solo fight with the villain Nine, who due to quirk enhancement experiments, is able to steal and hold up to nine quirks at a time. As Deku attacks Nine using his quirk One For All, Nine analyzes how Deku’s ability gives him super strength and decides to take it for himself. As Nine tries to steal Deku’s quirk, Nine has a vision of all of the past bearers of One For All and comes to the realization that he won’t be able to steal the quirk because he doesn’t have enough space to store all of the abilities within One For All. “I don’t have enough space for all of them,” says Nine. “Something is off. It seems like this kid might have more than one quirk as well.”
Paired with the image of the past bearers of One For All, Nine’s statement reveals outside of the manga/ anime timeline that One For All has traces of all of the quirks that formerly belonged to its past bearers, and that those abilities were also passed down to Deku when he inherited One For All. In Volume 23 of the My Hero Academia manga, the same information is disclosed in a more shocking way. During a training exercise between class 1-A and 1-B at U.A. High School, Deku experiences a malfunction with One For All as one of the quirks belonging to the former bearer of One For All, Daigoro Banjo, is uncontrollably activated, revealing that Deku has multiple quirks.
For readers of the manga, this reveal came as quite a shock since there had been no prior allusion to Deku having any other ability beyond One For All’s super strength. The way in which this information is disclosed in Heroes Rising is relatively anti-climactic in comparison to the manga and will lessen the impact of the reveal for fans when it debuts in the future within the anime TV show.
Including the spoiler within Heroes Rising not only seems like a lateral move for the series, but it wasn’t entirely necessary for the film to divulge the information, since it also created a minor plot flaw. When Nine tries to steal One For All, Nine couldn’t take the quirk because he didn’t have the storage space, but All Might (Christopher Sabat) has previously stated within the series that One For All can’t be taken by force. Having Nine discover this limitation within My Hero Academia: Heroes Rising would have been enough information to satisfy the viewer that One For All simply can’t be stolen and would have saved the twist for its natural reveal within the franchise.
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