Manga
‘My Hero Academia’ was a huge bet for the author, and its success saved him from abandoning manga
Kohei Horikoshi created one of the most popular manga and anime series of the last decade, ‘My Hero Academia’, and now that it’s over he takes a look back at how it all began.
The ‘My Hero Academia’ manga is now history, a work that for a decade has filled the pages of Shonen Jump, quickly becoming a worldwide success. Now, with the anime still in production, the series will be here for a while, but all of this was close to not being the case, and the fact is that its author, Kohei Horikoshi, saw the series as a huge bet with himself, revealing that he was willing to leave the manga industry if ‘My Hero Academia’ had failed.
Kohei Horikoshi was recently interviewed by ComicBook, confessing that he considered abandoning his career in the manga industry: “I don’t want to sound self-pitying, so I don’t want to say too much, but when my second serialization was canceled, I thought, ‘I’ll never be able to draw manga again.’ I drew My Hero Academia thinking that if this didn’t work out, I would quit drawing manga. That is why I have drawn My Hero Academia with the intention of making it a story, which will encourage people who had mistakes in the past or had their hearts broken will want to try again.”
‘My Hero Academia’ and its global success
A success with audiences and sales, ‘My Hero Academia’ has transcended its originalmedium and reached others such as anime and the video game industry. Its proposal around superheroes but with a very marked shonen character was a breath of fresh air that amazed people from all over the world.
Regarding the ending of the manga, Horikoshi noted that “The story ended up in that direction based on my experiences, but I’m sure everyone’s been through a situation they regret. It could be that my theme was relatable for many readers, but I was really developing the story based on my feelings without forcing anything, so I wasn’t deliberately choosing to depict the characters’ flaws either.”
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