My Hero Academia gave us one of the great modern superhero stories, and creator Kohei Horikoshi has revealed an iconic Marvel movie helped him shape the narrative.
The My Hero Academia ending has come and gone, revealing how Deku and his Class 1-A friends all ended up. The decade-long journey was a defining force in manga, spawning one of the best anime of the current era.
In the wake of new movie My Hero Academia: You’re Next, Kohei spoke about his influences for the franchise. It turns out what might be the best superhero movie ever actually provided some good perspective: Spider-Man 2.
“There is a scene in Spider-Man 2 starring Tobey Maguire, in which Spider-Man stops a runaway train,” he told Comicbook.com. “There, ordinary passengers see Spider-Man’s true face. But then a child hands him the mask he found and says, ‘I won’t tell anyone.'”
He added: “I think that scene depicts the answer to the question, ‘What is a hero?’ A hero is a person who helps ordinary people, and ordinary people who help them in turn.”
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A poetic moment, from a momentous film that stands as one of the greatest adaptations of a comic book or manga ever. Spider-Man 2 was directed by Sam Raimi, and it was a watershed moment for Marvel films, since the studio’s track record was spotty to that point, Blade and X-Men notwithstanding.
Kohei’s comments are apt – Spider-Man 2 analyzes heroism, pushing Peter Parker to his limit against Alfred Molina’s Doctor Octopus. You can feel echoes of it in Deku vs All For One and Shigaraki. My Hero Academia even has its own latent romance in Deku and Ochako’s relationship.
That’s without mentioning Deku’s father. There are a lot of parallels, and if you’d like to analyze further, our guide to Season 7 will tell you when the next episode arrives.