My Hero Academia is a smash-hit superhero anime series where brave pro heroes and scheming villains alike are seen fighting in the streets. This all happens while wearing unique and colorful costumes, both to enhance their Quirks and capture the public's imagination. Villains tend to have dark and strange costumes, but Shigaraki Tomura's goes even further, actually involving severed body parts.
Shigaraki's hand-based costume is, on one level, a reflection of author Kohei Horikoshi's fondness for drawing hands. For Shigaraki himself, however, those hands are personal, tying into his family's troubled relationship with heroics and his connection to the dreaded All For One. Along with providing a memorable look for the audience, they are the key to unlocking great power.
How Shigaraki Tomura Awakened His Decay Quirk
Shigaraki's hand-based villain costume ties into the Shimura family's strained relationship with the world of superheroes. Years ago, One For All's 7th wielder, Shimura Nana, hid her son Kotaro away from All For One to protect him. She succeeded, but at the cost of Kotaro hating his mother for abandoning him -- he aggressively projected this anger and resentment onto his family, especially his son Tenko.
This abuse pushed Tenko to the limit, and after a violent scene one night, the boy snapped and his Decay Quirk finally activated. He accidentally killed the family dog with it, then his sister Hana. Tenko's other relatives soon followed this sad path as he went on a rampage, making sure to kill his father last. Now alone, Tenko was vulnerable as All For One adopted him as a dark mentor.
All For One noted Tenko's natural urges to kill with his Quirk, almost like an addict, so he encouraged him to freely use his Quirk as desired. Words alone weren't enough, however, so the mentor assembled the severed hands of the Shimura family's members and attached them to Tenko, constantly fueling the boy's rage and bloodlust. This also ensured that Tenko only felt negative emotions, and allowed him to use his Quirk and satisfy his brutal urges. All For One shaped the boy into his heir as the symbol of evil and granted him a new name: Shigaraki Tomura, the boy who will cause everyone else to mourn.
Shigaraki Tomura's Hands In The Present Day
Shigaraki made a strong early impression in My Hero Academia when he led the League of Villains into battle at the USJ compound, offering no explanation for the severed hands all over his body. By this point he was completely used to their effect on him, though in a sense they still represented his training wheels. Shigaraki needed the hands to keep his mind focused on his purpose, suggesting he was still heavily dependent on All For One and hadn't yet fully matured as a supervillain. That changed during the "My Villain Academia" arc, when Shigaraki became a chilling protagonist in his own right.
He confronted both Gigantomachia and the entire Meta Liberation Army, and after luring the former to the battlefield, Shigaraki personally defeated Re-Destro and lost nearly all his costume hands in the process. Despite that loss, Shigaraki was still focused intently on his ambitious goals, with only a single hand remaining to cover his face. This was a symbolic turning point for him, where he could command the entire Paranormal Liberation Front without All For One to back him up; in fact, All For One remains in the Tartarus complex, unable to guide him at all.
In a way those hands were a cocoon for Shigaraki, with his boyhood self being a helpless caterpillar and his newest self emerging from the cocoon to take flight. As My Hero Academia continues into Season 6, he will challenge the world of heroes not with his family's severed limbs, but his own two hands.