Interview with MHA Editor – Volume 4
The Honyasan bookstore mobile app in Japan released part four of their interview series with My Hero Academia’s editor on August 1st, 2019. It’s part of their campaign to celebrate MHA’s 5th Anniversary. Translation below!
Highlights include confirmation about Detnerat being a RAT origin of Quirks reference, the “transformation” theme of the Intern Arc, and famous soccer players Messi and Ronaldo being story and piercing inspiration for Hawks.
There’s also a video of the interview on YouTube and the text in the article is pretty much a direct transcription of the video.
Interview with MHA Editor for Honyasan App MHA 5th Anniversary Project – Volume 4 – August 1, 2019 (Translated):
Can you tell us any trivia, behind the scenes information, or never before released information?
I’ve got a few I can share, I’ll start with something really minor and kind of hard to explain. Each of the comic volumes has a different character under the dust cover on the back, they take turns, and Mr. Horikoshi draws them all to match. I don’t think many people actually take the cover off and look, but they all have an original drawing there with a different character each time, and they’re all made to match.
Also, this might be so minor no one knows, but there’s an organization called Detnerat Company that has recently appeared in the manga. The president of the company is a bad guy, and is part of a military group called the Meta Liberation Army.
The motif for the company is a rat. This comes from the theory that the origin of Quirks was a rat. Even the company name “Detnerat” is “Talented” spelled backwards and with the L replaced with an R so the end spells RAT. This company was meant to be an organization obviously associated with the Meta Liberation Army.
Even more minor, in volume 23 there’s a scene with Endeavor capturing some villains and one of them has the same rat logo as Detnerat on his jacket, even though Detnerat hadn’t shown up in the manga yet when that chapter happened. Reading the comic volume it’s so small you can’t really see it, I didn’t know about it either at first and it was just something Mr. Horikoshi secretly decided and added in himself. He fools even me sometimes.
Also, apparently Mr. Horikoshi often decides on a theme when drawing an arc– for example, the Intern Arc. The Intern Arc is kind of like a novel in itself depicting the first real battle, but apparently the theme of this arc was “transformation”, so the characters that appear in the arc were purposely made to change their appearances. Deku crackles when powering up and at 100%, the villains change shape too, there’s a lot of characters that can transform. Kirishima visually gets super tough too, it started with Mr. Horikoshi just wanting to make the characters change a bit and then the theme grew from there to encompass the whole arc. He apparently tries to get a theme like that in mind as he writes.
But when asked about now, he replied “That reminds me, I don’t have a theme” so I think it really just comes to him in the moment (lol).
Additionally, I mentioned the character Hawks in an earlier interview and have some information to share about him too. I think this information is also telling in regards to what kind of person, what kind of writer, Mr. Horikoshi is and what makes him unique. Spoiler warning, but in order to have the Public Safety Commission guarantee/protect his identity/self, Hawks choses to accept a position where he becomes a spy and a yesman for the Commission.
You might be familiar with the overseas soccer player Lionel Messi, but his backstory is that at a young age he was scouted by Barcelona and joined. His father had lost his job and couldn’t afford the hormone medical treatment Messi needed for his illness, but thanks to his talent for soccer FC Barcelona agreed to cover the medical expenses for them. In exchange for receiving that money, Messi had to agree to live in Spain and only play soccer from a very young age.
During the World Cup I told that story to Mr. Horikoshi. I love soccer and when Mr. Horikoshi found out he started putting on the World Cup whenever I was there waiting for the manuscript and such. While watching it, Mr. Horikoshi himself slowly started getting interested in soccer too, and when I told him about Messi he told me he thought it was an interesting story. The next week, or maybe the week after that, Hawks’ story was born. So it’s kind of a modification, like he kind of wanted to make the other party seem a bit bad, that kind of thing.
Another thing, Hawks has piercings, and those were also inspired by an overseas soccer player– Cristiano Ronaldo, who represents Portugal. He saw Ronaldo’s piercings and thought they looked cool, so although Hawks’ are not exactly the same he got inspiration from them and gave Hawks piercings. I’m really amazed at the speed in which Mr. Horikoshi absorbs and inputs new things. I can see him noticing something and then projecting it into his own work right in front of my eyes, and I think he’s really good at it. I think it’s amazing he was able to flesh out a character like this just by watching the World Cup… so there’s some information about Mr. Horikoshi himself!
Vol. 5 of this interview will be posted on August 9th and we asked the editor to share a message for people who have never read MHA and to the regular readers! Next is the final interview, be sure not to miss it!
We’ve also uploaded a video of this 5th Anniversary! Part 4 “MHA Editor Discusses 5 Year History” interview on the Honyasan Youtube account!! Check it out at the link below!! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1DuxHrfGwE
The fifth and final part of the interview came out on August 9th and a translation has already been posted. Hope you enjoyed these interviews!
PS – In this interview the editor mentions a “rat” mark on the jacket of a villain Endeavor has captured in chapter 23. This has previously been pointed out as looking like “CRC” (the other organization we see the LOV raid) and after this interview came out a lot of people looked over it again. Hard to tell if it’s really a rat, seems possible that the editor confused the CRC and MLA… not sure.