Why powerscaling ruined Stain in My Hero Academia, explored

Modified Feb 06, 2025 22:30 GMT

My Hero Academia, like most battle shonen series, has a significant portion of the fanbase that focuses greatly on powerscaling and gauging the strength of its main characters and villains, leading to a lot of interesting discussions. In that regard, there is one character whose role perhaps was undermined because of power scaling and didn't get the credit he deserved, Stain.

While Stain has a somewhat medium role to play in the My Hero Academia series, presenting his extreme ideology and the problems in hero society, his feats as a fighter have never received the credit he deserves. Moreover, it also shows how the series' power scale went off the rails during the last portion of the story, to the point that this character's demise wasn't even properly addressed.

Disclaimer: This article contains spoilers for the series. Any opinion expressed here belongs to the author and not Sportskeeda as a publication.

Explaining how powerscaling affected Stain's character in My Hero Academia

Stain as seen in the anime (Image via Bones).

While Stain is mostly remembered in the series because of his antics and disdain of modern hero society, claiming that only All Might lives up to what heroism should be, a lot of fans have undermined his feats and accomplishments as a fighter. It is true that Stain perhaps doesn't rank very high in terms of sheer strength but still managed to do a lot, all things considered.

The first major feat of his was how he managed to kill several heroes to the point of becoming an urban legend and even got to keep Tomura Shigaraki on the line at the beginning of the story, which is still impressive. Stain, while having his Blood Quirk, is by and large no different from a regular human, so the way he managed to keep up with more powerful individuals is quite surprising.

This is further emphasized when Tenya Iida, Izuku "Deku" Midoriya, and Shoto Todoroki had to work together to take him down, which was even viewed as a disappointment at the time given his status as the hero killer. However, when considering the powers these three characters have, it is still amazing that he managed to keep up with them.

The ups and downs of Stain's character

As mentioned earlier, Stain has somewhat of a major role early in My Hero Academia since he is one of the few antagonists not connected to All For One and has an ideology that makes him his own man. While Stain's morality is certainly damaged as he kills heroes for not living up to his standards of the profession, he also serves as a way to highlight how society in the series has been corrupted.

Moreover, his admiration for All Might and his short scene respecting Deku as a hero gave him a certain complexity that was fun to watch. However, as the series power scale went off the rails during the tail end of the story, Stain's contributions and role in the manga became less notorious, perhaps meaning that he peaked too early in the plot.

Final thoughts

Stain has a very peculiar role in My Hero Academia in the sense that he doesn't appear much but contributes greatly to establishing a major plot point. However, the ever-increasing power scale of the series undermines some of his feats, making him a somewhat undervalued character as a whole.

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Edited by Tiasha