Ever since My Hero Academia has smashed its way onto bookshelves and television screens everywhere, mangaka Kohei Horikoshi has been thrilling readers and viewers alike with some of the most unique and powerful heroes and villains to have ever been created. The thing that makes Horikoshi’s characters so interesting is that they don’t necessarily have weaknesses like most heroes. Superman has kryptonite. Martian Manhunter has fire. Batman has being a total nutcase.
The characters in My Hero Academia, however, are usually held back by some aspect of their own power, which makes it all the more interesting when they’re forced to overcome their flaws. There are some immensely powerful abilities throughout the series, but which ones are weighed down the most by their flaws?
10 Dabi - Cremation
Like the rest of the heroes and villains featured in this article, Dabi has some truly impressive power, but that power comes at a great cost. Perhaps more than any other individual featured in this article, Dabi has paid a very heavy and personal price for his quirk.
Though the high-temperature flames that Dabi is able to so easily control by the time he is introduced in the series have a devastating effect on anyone he chooses to aim them at, he likely always hasn’t had such great control over his quirk. This simple fact can be witnessed in the patches of seared flesh covering a substantial portion of the young villain’s body.
9 Tomura Shigaraki - Decay
While Dabi has paid the price for his quirk with his own body, Tomura Shigaraki was forced to make his family pay the price for his quirk. When his quirk manifested, Shigaraki accidentally killed every single member of his family. His father, mother, maternal grandparents, and sister all paid the price when the young villain accidentally killed them.
Though his family had stood by while his father regularly abused him, Shigaraki was still devastated by the loss of his family. So much so that he took their hands, the only remaining pieces of his family, and continues to wear them on his body.
8 Aizawa Shota - Erasure
Though Aizawa has become an incredibly successful hero and teacher, it didn’t always come so naturally to him. In fact, during his time in UA, Aizawa was uncertain if he even had what it took to become a hero.
While his quirk allows him to deactivate the quirk of anyone he looks at, it comes at a price. First, he must continue to look at the person who’s quirk he wishes to stop, which means it only works on one person at a time. Next, in order for his quirk to work, he must all be able to actually see his opponent, which means that should he blink, be blinded by smoke or anything else, his quirk will deactivate and he will be left vulnerable.
7 Thirteen - Black Hole
Though Thirteen’s quirk, Black Hole, is an incredibly powerful and devastating force, it certainly comes at a cost. With just the power of one finger, Thirteen could cause untold damage to not just the city around them, but the citizens within it. Thirteen likely had to work incredibly hard to get to a point where they could master their quirk enough to actually be useful as a hero.
The fact that Thirteen is never seen outside of their suit, and the fact that when her suit is destroyed when the League of Villains attacks UA, has some very strange implications about what their quirk has done to their body as well.
6 Toru Hagakure - Invisibility
Though she is not a professional hero yet, Toru Hagakure has clearly experienced the downside of her quirk, Invisibility. For starters, when it comes to Hagakure’s quirk, there is no on and off switch, she is simply invisible all the time, which would become mentally tough for anyone in that same situation.
Beyond that though, in order for her quirk to work with maximum efficiency, without the help of some high-tech hero support equipment, she must remain entirely nude. While that fact likely makes it very uncomfortable for her as a hero, there are also the ramifications of situations where extreme weather conditions are present (as witnessed when she is paired up against Todoroki during the training exercises).
5 Kaminari Denki - Electrification
While Kaminari Denki’s quirk, Electrification, may be devastatingly powerful in its own right, it comes with some pretty massive setbacks. The first of which is the fact that Kaminari has very little to no control of what happens once he unleashed his quirk.
Unlike Todoroki who can control whether or not his ice attacks his comrades, Kaminari is unable to display that kind of control. The second and biggest flaw of his quirk is that when overused, his quirk short-circuits his brain and leaves him utterly defenseless. This means that should Kaminari every go out with full force and not defeat his opponent, he’ll be left completely at the mercy of his opponents.
4 Mirai Sasaki - Foresight
Otherwise known as Sir Nighteye, Mirai Sasaki’s quirk, Foresight, while very powerful comes at quite a price. While he can see the entire lifespan of anyone he touches, he can only do so for an hour after touching that person. Alongside that, however, is the fact that after Sir Nighteye has used his quirk, it has a cool down period of twenty-four hours, leaving him without the power of his quirk should he need to use it again.
An incredibly powerful quirk, yes, but with a cooldown that long, plus the fact that he has already been traumatized by quirk, makes it rather difficult for the hero.
3 Moashi Juzo - Centipede
Though his quirk (Centipede), which has altered his body and limbs into the shape of several centipedes, has made it rather easy for him to become an incredible sidekick to Sir Nighteye (perhaps on of the greatest heroes alive), it certainly couldn’t have been easy for Moashi Juzo to get to that point.
For instance, there must have been a point, before his quirk awakened, that he was just a regular boy, right? This means that the boy woke up one day in a real-life version of Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis. Also, it can’t be easy trying to get a date when he’s essentially just a bunch of centipedes in a suit.
2 Eri - Rewind
With her quirk, Rewind, Eri is capable of rewinding a person’s body to any point which it had previously been. That means that she can heal injuries for people like the injury-prone Deku.
However, what it also means it that this young girl was capable of rewinding her entire family out of existence before she even knew what was going on.
On top of all that, her abilities only work on human beings, not objects. This means that it’s incredibly difficult for Eri to practice using her quirk without the risk of rewinding them right out of existence.
1 Izuku Midoriya - One For All
Though One For All is perhaps the most powerful quirk in all of My Hero Academia, for Izuku Midoriya at least, it is a source of great injury almost every single time he uses it.
While he has gotten better about the level of power he outputs during his strikes, Deku has repeatedly broken his body to the point of almost causing permanent damage (even after being heling by the school nurse’s kisses). While One For All is slowly beginning to awaken through Deku’s use, it still remains a power that his weak body cannot fully control.