Boku no Hero Academia 59 Review: The Story of All For One & Mineta's Perversions

Boku no Hero Academia, Chapter 59: Know Your History

Holy shit backstory! But first we get some more school related fun stuff as we skip away from the training and straight to the aftermath with Mineta apparently not having sworn off women after her traumatic experience with Mount Lady. Mineta goes on this hilarious freakout about finding a 'sawshank asshole' (okay, translators, chill...) peephole, and talks about how his "little Mineta" is already a crime, then lists the specific... assets of the girls he wants to see... before getting ear-jacked in the eye by Kyouka.

(Convenient that Kyouka just got a profile in this chapter, eh)

And hilariously, apparently Kyouka is more than a little miffled that Mineta didn't mention her as being desirable to peek at.

What a strange power, those earplug jack things.

But that's not the point of the chapter. The point of this chapter is the conversation that Midoriya has with All Might about the origin of One For All... and its counterpart, All For One. At the beginning, All Might discusses the fact that Stain has licked some of Midoriya's blood and that might be constituted as Stain ingesting Midoriya's DNA... which I never ever considered before. But All Might confirms that One For All cannot be forcibly stolen -- only forcibly passed on. The original owner of One For All must wish for the quirk to be passed down.

All Might then tells Midoriya about the originator of One For All... which is All For One, a quirk that can absorb and steal (permanently) the quirks of other people, but also transfer them to other people. Got a bit of a Juhabach vibe from the latter power, but I do like how rather seldom-seen the permanently-steal-a-power, well, power is. It usually has some form of limitation like a time limit or an amount limit. The granting-powers quirk, however, requiers people with strong bodies, otherwise they lose their mind and bascally become Noumu.

All Might then gives some backstory, and apparently during the beginning of the quirk phenomenon, some big X-Men shit went on where the normal humans strongly opposed the people with quirks and really that situation looked like something straight off an X-Men comic. Apparently it was so bad that civilization's progress was halted considerably by the fighting that happened during that period. And during that time, the original owner of All For One (hereon out termed Anime!Magneto until he has a name, because 'the original owner of All For One' is a handful to type). Anime!Magneto gathered a Brotherhood of Mutants large army by stealing othe people's quirks and stockpiling an army of super-powered people loyal to him. He basically took over Japan as a dictator by that point.

Also apparently this uprising by Anime!Magneto was reduced to urban rumours and is sort of purged from history textbooks.

Anime!Magneto's All For One power has a side effect of causing some quirks to mutate and blend together. Anime!Magneto had an apparently-quirkless younger brother who opposed him, and ended up forcing a quirk that stockpiles power onto his brother. This stockpile-power quirk combined with the brother's hidden quirk -- a meaningless quirk that could grant itself to another. That sounds a bit weird -- so the quirk can just hop around like a harmless parasite that does nothing? In any case, it combines with the stockpile-power quirk and formed One For All.

Anime!Magneto apparently gained some kind of immortality quirk from the many quirks he had absorbed, so I guess he's more Apocalypse than Magneto. The brother entrusted One For All to successors, and over time and wielders One For All accumulated power until All Might himself was apparently able to defeat Anime!Magneto... or so he thought, because naturally Anime!Magneto was the mysterious person on the TV controlling Shigaraki Tomura and the Villain Alliance.

All Might hints on the big final battle between Midoriya and Anime!Magneto, and for a page he kind of fails to say something which he knows he has to say to Midoriya but can't spit it out. Maybe when you pass down One For All completely, you'll die? That seems to be the one, because Midoriya keeps saying how All Might will always be by his side. And this scenario would fit well into why both All Might and Gran Tourino knew they had to tell it to Midoriya but they both find it hard to do so.

Back to class with Eraserhead, who informs that the class is going to a summer break forest lodge if they pass the end-of-term test. Mineta is like "HOLY SHIT OPEN BATHS" and "give it your all, girls!" even until the next page, which I naturally find hilarious. Midoriya's basically just back in class no problem all Harry Potter style even though, y'know, Great Fateful Battle of Mighty Evil.

Meanwhile, we actually cut to Anime!Magneto, who is being all Aizen and notes how everything is going as planned -- even if Stain's capture was not foreseen. He talks a bit about what we learned two chapters ago about using Shigaraki and Stain to gather manpower for the Villain Alliance. Anime!Magneto talks with a bearded doctor (who addresses him as 'sensei') who is of the opinion that Anime!Magneto could've stepped in earlier, but Anime!Magneto notes that the doctor needs to patch him up faster and the quirk Super Regeneration he stole was too late because his wounds have already healed after All Might's battle.

He outright says how Shigaraki is meant to become the new "him", so maybe he has a way to transfer All For One to Shigaraki. And, well, his eyes and nose are all gone and replaced with scarred tissue and he's got all kinds of medical tubes running into his neck.

Well, main villain -- or the first main villain! We all know how the first awesome main villain doesn't always turn out to be the Big Bad in the end, yeah?