Deku's ideals were never truly challenged in My Hero Academia, and it's a major problem

My Hero Academia's main protagonist, Izuku Midoriya, also known as Deku, is a character who strongly believes in the power of redemption. For him, no villain is beyond saving. This belief in redemption forms the core of his actions in the story. He shows mercy to every villain he fights, refusing to kill them if the moment calls for such a drastic action.

Even when presented with the opportunity, Deku refuses to kill Shigaraki multiple times because he believes that Shigaraki has the potential to be saved. Horikoshi misses the golden opportunity to truly challenge this belief Deku holds so dear, as his actions never end up having severe consequences for either him or the people fighting alongside him in a full-blown war.

Disclaimer: This article reflects the author's opinions.

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My Hero Academia: Why not challenging Deku's ideals was a major problem

Deku as seen in My Hero Academia (Image via Studio Bones)

Heroes can't save everyone and their struggle to try and do so is what makes their story compelling. When Spider-Man chooses between Mary Jane and a bus full of kids, or Batman between Rachel and Harvey Dent, the stakes rise. Failure to save someone teaches a hero what it means to be a normal human.

Deku had the makings of a great character, a young boy with dreams of becoming the No. 1 Hero, who wants to save people just like his idol, All Might. However, that is all he ends up being. Someone who wants to save everyone, no matter what the consequences are. For example, Deku refuses to kill villains throughout the series, receiving little to no consequences for his actions and beliefs.

Deku as seen in My Hero Academia (Image via Studio Bones)

There is never a moment when he needs to make the ugly yet necessary decision of killing a villain to save one of his comrades or to stop them from destroying multiple lives. Taking a page out of Batman's playbook, Deku follows the standard belief that heroes are all about saving people, not killing them.

However, unlike Batman, who had Joker as his enemy, Deku has a near-immortal maniac like Shigaraki as his main antagonist. He is given multiple chances in the series to kill Shigaraki and refuses to do so, clinging to his beliefs. This makes Deku a boring and conventional one-dimensional hero.

Deku as seen in My Hero Academia (Image via Studio Bones)

There was an opportunity in the Dark Deku arc for him to go rogue and deal with the villains more brutally, but he changed his viewpoint astonishingly quickly, following some heart to heart with his friends. Horikoshi's decision to never make Deku go against his beliefs and never face any consequences for them makes the story narrative generic and predictable.

Even when he faces the death of one of his closest friends, the friend comes back to life like nothing ever happened. He suffers no lasting consequences that might make him reconsider his stance. He does sustain some heavy injuries and loses his One For All Quirk, but in the long run, none of that impacted the person he became by the end of My Hero Academia.

Deku as seen in My Hero Academia (Image via Studio Bones)

He becomes a teacher at U.A. High School and utilizes the advanced support gear given by All Might to continue his heroic duties. That ending makes everything he faces meaningless because all his struggles lead him back to where he started, Quirkless and needing handouts from people who are better at the whole being a hero business than him.

Redemption is an admirable goal, but some people are way beyond saving, and no amount of reasoning can fix that. Many great heroes like Naruto and Tanjiro suffer from his habit of forgiving their enemies and it just ends up making their characters feel hollow and a childish fantasy of what authors believe real heroes are. If given an opportunity, more characters should emulate being like Luffy, beating the main bad guy to oblivion and then celebrating by eating chunks of meat.

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