My Hero Academia: Horikoshi changing Hawk's original design saved fans from a nightmare

My Hero Academia's Wing Hero: Hawks is quite popular amongst fans. While many fans seem to like him because of his contribution to the series' storyline, others love him for his character design. The latter set of fans have a lot to be grateful for as Hawks' original design was nowhere close to what it is today.

The character Keigo Takami was first introduced after All Might lost his quirk entirely, i.e., after the battle against All For One. Since then, the character has made recurring appearances in the series, working as a double agent for the League of Villains. Such actions have seen him become popular amongst the fanbase.

However, some credit for the popularity has to be given to his final character design, which saved fans from what many might consider a nightmare.

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My Hero Academia: Why Hawks's design change was appreciated?

As shown in My Hero Academia, Keigo Takami, also known as Hawks, is a man of average height with wings granted by his quirk. Essentially, his entire character design makes him look like a human being, except for his wings.

This character design has proven to work wonders for the character as fans love his cool persona. This is evident from the character's ranks in the series' popularity polls, ever since its fourth round.

Background character as seen in My Hero Academia: Two Heroes (Image via BONES)

Hence, when one fan, X user, @_wikkk revealed the character's original design by manga creator Kohei Horikoshi, others were left bewildered. The original character design saw Hawks as a heteromorph. The character design basically looked like a humanoid bird, similar to Class 1A's Tokoyomi.

Surprisingly, despite the character design not being used for Hawks, it did appear in the anime, i.e., My Hero Academia: Two Heroes movie. The character design was incorporated as a background character in the movie.

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How fans reacted to the comparison between Hawks's old and new character designs

Since many of the fans loved the character due to his design, they seemed to dislike the original design for Hawks, shared on X.

Hawks as seen in My Hero Academia (Image via BONES)

Some fans even exaggerated that if Kohei Horikoshi had not changed the design, they would have done something irreversible to themselves.

"WHAT IS THAATTT," one fan exclaimed.

"if the first one had been his design i wouldve k*lled myself," another fan said.

Meanwhile, some other fans had mixed ideas about the character design. They liked the idea of more heteromorphs in the series, however, after knowing Hawks for so long, they could not see him in his old character design.

"Current hawks is hot but I do also love the idea of having more heteromorphs in the series," a fan said.

"The old design is cool too, I could imagine him being Hawks's sidekick. But I'm glad the Hawks we know exists," another added.

"The one on the left goes gard though," another fan said.

As for other fans, they thought that the character design was cool. However, they would have rather seen the character as a sidekick to the Wing Hero. That said, some fans loved the character design and would have loved to see Hawks donning the same look.

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