Extra Content from Volume 42.
Assistants#
Iwaki
Ikeda
Koga
Mugino
Tono
Noguchi
Imamura
Iso
Tanimoto
Ashigaki
Matsui
Art Tribute by Yoco Akiyama#
My Hero Academia is over
Thank you for the ultimate manga
Yoko Akiyama
This comes from MHA: Team-Up Missions author Akiyama Sensei! Thank you!
Class 2-A#
The class's new room sign says "2-A (Temp.)" because it's a temporary classroom assignment, given the reconstruction being done on the building. Not that that would be obvious to anyone.
Eraser Head: Not obvious at all.
Mr. Eraser "Not Obvious at All" Head over here was annoyed by students unintentionally staring at his wounded eye, so he redirected their attention via close-ups of the opposite side of his face.
Teenage Hawks and Mera#
It was Mera who urged Hawks to become president of the Heroes Public Safety Commission. You may remember him as the commission employee who first showed up in volume 12. He was assigned to his post when Hawks was still a teen, and the two of them frequently chatted. Mera came up with improvements for advanced training, and his successes there led to him being put in charge of the hero licensing exam. It wasn't just Hawks's strong convictions and admiration of Endeavor that allowed him to perform his less-than-ethical work for years without feeling burned out by the constraints of the job - having genuine connections with people like Mera was also a big factor (according to Hawks himself). Anyway, "Yokumiru Mera" is a good name.
The kanji characters of the name, in order, mean, "good-see eye-good."
Spinner#
The sit-down with Spinner took place in the early morning, so the show on TV is something along the lines of The Morning Show, Live!
Spinner: My book should have... pictures. Yeah. Cuz pictures... are helpful if you're uneducated, or from a different country.
Kota#
If we go by his canon age (five years old in volume 8, six years old at the end of chapter 429), Kota shouldn't be in high school yet. Odd, huh... How did he get into high school anyhow?
That's right - he slyly manipulated his age to fool the system. The system being me.
Man, he really put one over on me. Remember what a little stinker he was? Of course he didn't give me an honest answer about his age. In fact, it's clear he fooled people into thinking he was younger than he really was.
Naw, he got me good. Like shooting fish in a barrel. Did we expect any less from Kota, the water-squirtin' kid? Apparently, his favorite good is saba misoni (mackerel cooked with miso). Eat your fill.
The Afterword#
In terms of actual substance, chapter 429 was the real final chapter, with chapter 430 being more of a curtain call. In video game terms, I intended it to be something like a bonus stage. My Hero Academia has come to an end. What I designated the "final act" sure was a long one · I could go over all the spots where I fell short or bungled it up, but then we'd be here all day. Nevertheless, I'm honored that you chose to read to the very end. I could never have written and drawn this story without readers who were willing to read.
Manga authors can come off as cookie-cutter creatures who inevitably sprout boilerplace niceties like "This success is thanks to your support," but I'm telling you - it's not just lip service. We say that stuff because it's utterly true. It's true in the sense of numbers, economics, boardrooms, and it's especially true on the psychological side, where reader support gives me an incredible power boost. Whenever I witness support and appreciation for the characters, it enables me to shift into a higher gear and be like, "You can do it, characters of mine! Try harder! Kick more butt!"
As I see it, MHA is a series where I sort of accidentally put out a wildly popular chapter 1 that in fact oversold my own capabilities. Sort of like Black Flash (from Jujutsu Kaisen). As such, I was suddenly put in a position where I had to keep producing work exceeding my talent, turning every day into a epic battle with my abundant self-consciousness. "Is this better than chapter 1?" "Can I ever really top chapter 1?" "People will stop reading unless I can keep escalating, right?"
I grappled with all that angst as I produced each weekly chapter. But I was able to forget it whenever I would read fan letters, which provided so much relief and joy. Or to be more precise, I swept the angst under the joy rug. That almost makes it sound like a drug I was dependent on, but I think of it more like gasoline for my gas tank. Like a cosmic voice telling me, "Hey, bud! You're doing fine!" The truth is, I'm a normal, weak person. It's like I ate the Weak-Weak Fruit, turning me into a loose stool logia who can't maintain self-confidence. But even a turd like that is apparently capable of creating MHA, given enough support from readers like you.
That should tell you something about the amount of power you wield, and your capability to grant that power to others. So thanks for those power boosts. Consider this afterword to be my fan letter to you.
MHA ran for around a decade, and if at any point during that run the series provided you with even a single drop of gasoline for your own life, then I believe I've proven the viability of a perpetual energy machine. Time to present my findings to the scientific community.
Thank you so much for reading, and for following along with these characters and their lives ·
-Kohei Horikoshi
P.S.: In chapter 431, starting on the next page, I aimed to bring the focus back down to earth and to liberate the characters from all the epic drama.
I'm grateful to them for continuing to do their best.