My Hero Academia Fans Need To See All Might's Original Cowboy Design
In the original version of My Hero Academia, All Might was almost unrecognizable. Many serialized manga are developed from one-shots, which are essentially stand-alone stories. My Hero Academia is no different, being adapted from mangaka Kohei Horikoshi’s similarly titled story My Hero, which was vastly different from the modern version of the series, but still features many recognizable elements.
Whereas in the world of My Hero Academia most people have superpowers, it seems that in My Hero this is much more rare, although superheroes do exist. Perhaps due to this difference, while in My Hero Academia the heroes fight various supervillains, in the one-shot heroes protect society from inhuman monsters called Aberrants. These Aberrants resemble the Nomus of the final series, and mindlessly feed on humans. An adult version of Deku named Jack desperately wants to become a hero and protect society from these monsters, but he is too weak to do so. Jack looks up to the hero Positive, who fills a similar role to All Might in the one-shot. In My Hero Academia, All Might is the number one hero who inspires people with his presence. However, Positive has seemingly gone missing before the events of the one-shot.
Over the course of the one-shot, it is revealed that after a particularly bad fight against an Aberrant, Positive became afraid of Aberrants and decided to completely change his costume and name. While Positive looked kind of like what would become Iida’s final design in My Hero Academia, his new persona of Snipe looks like a cowboy with a gas mask. He even wears a cowboy hat in his civilian identity, fully committing to his new look. In addition, Snipe acts completely different to Positive, being a lot more negative, especially towards his past self. While his design and personality are almost completely different from the character All Might would eventually become, the characters do have some important thematic similarities.
Both All Might and Positive inspire Midoriya to try to become a hero despite not being cut out for it. Both also receive a wound in battle that prevents them from continuing their heroics. In All Might’s case, this wound makes it harder for him to fight and maintain his heroic form. In contrast, while Positive’s injury doesn’t cause him any physical difficulty, it does induce a sort of mental trauma that prevents him from getting close to Aberrants. This forces him to retire his Positive persona and become a much less inspiring hero. However, both heroes are inspired by their respective Deku figures to overcome their difficulties and regain their former glory.
The original All Might’s character design would be carried over into the main series in the form of another character named Snipe, a minor pro hero who teaches at UA. While Snipe’s character design is only really carried over from the one-shot as an Easter egg, his larger character journey is the clear blueprint for All Might’s character arc. What is present in the My Hero one-shot are the essential traits that make All Might All Might. My Hero Academia fans should check out the original version of All Might not only to see how crazily different his character design is, but also to gain an insight into what lies at the very core of the character.