My Hero Academia's leading heroine, Ochaco Uraraka, is a sweet girl determined to earn enough money as a pro-hero to allow her parents to have a comfortable retirement. Bubbly, kind and determined to help all her classmates in need, she seems to fit well into the standard shonen mold for heroines. But unexpected facets lurk beneath her cute girl persona. Specifically, that Ochaco secretly loves to munch on...locusts.
This revelation all started with My Hero Academia Smash!!, a comedy spinoff series written by Hirofumi Neda. Though Kohei Horikoshi — the creator of My Hero Academia — confirmed himself that locusts are among Ochaco's favorite foods, it was Neda that broke the news in Smash!! Volume 1. Neda was tasked with writing up an official My Hero Academia quiz to be included as a bonus for the volume. Little did he know that the silly, one-page quiz would end up contributing to the overall canon of the series.
As a comedy writer, Neda of course took a humorous approach to writing the quiz. The overall tone is facetious, with questions including things like "how does Tsuyu 'Call Me Tsuyu' Asui prefer to be addressed by her friends?" The multiple choice options for many answers are similarly un-serious, which gives a bit of context for what Neda's mindset was when he wrote the fateful Ochaco question.
Ochaco is well known in the main series for her love of food — especially mochi — so writing a quiz question based on this is par for the course. In the quiz, Neda asks, "which of the following items would Ochaco Uraraka prefer to eat? You are not limited to a single answer." The possible answers ranged from serious options to (what he assumed were) jokes, including mochi, haggis, 1,000 yen bills, Surströmming, Texas porterhouse steak, grilled eggplant and of course ... locusts.
After writing this quiz question, as Neda explains in the answer key, he texted Horikoshi to confirm which answers were canonically correct. To his shock, Horikoshi texted back that the correct answers were mochi, grilled eggplant and locusts. Neda admits to regretting accidentally causing Ochaco to become a locust eater, but says that because Horikoshi confirmed it, "It's canon. Deal with it."
As uncomfortable as some fans may be with the mental image of Ochaco happily swallowing down squirming locusts, in a way it's possible to imagine why Horikoshi decided this was canon. Ochaco is known to come from a poor family struggling to make ends meet. It's portrayed in the main series in a variety of ways, from Ochaco's love of good food when she actually has the chance to eat it, to being the only one among her classmates with a flip phone. Perhaps poverty led her to acquire a taste for the creepy-crawlies.
Whatever the reason for her love of snacking on locusts may be, it's a fun little addition to her character and something that would be fascinating to see animated one day.