Chapter 235 began the long-awaited backstory of Shigaraki and so far it’s been every bit of heartwrenching as I expected it would be. It’s revealed that Shigaraki’s prime cause for becoming as twisted as he is was due to the physical abuse he suffered from his father, Kotaro Shimura, who rejected the idea of him becoming a hero. Despite these horrible actions, I ended up feeling sympathetic and heartbroken for both Shigaraki and his father because of what they both had gone through. Kotaro was the son of Nana Shimura, All Might’s predecessor. She ended up leaving her son in order to fulfill her duty as a hero and did not survive. Similar to Kota’s bias against heroes, Kotaro feels as if Nana prioritized saving complete strangers over her own family and thus refuses to allow any kind of benevolence towards heroes in his household. The chapter then climaxes with Kotaro striking Tomura after he discovers that his sister and he had gone through his belongings and discovered photos of Nana and Kotaro. Hana places the blame entirely on Shigaraki where he is then left outside alone at night where he comes to the realization of him detesting the world and discovers his quirk by seemingly murdering his family’s dog while petting it.
The subtext of Shigaraki wanting to destroy what has been built up really caught my eye while reading this chapter. Multiple times within the chapter he refers to his home as ‘The house my father built up.’ He despises his father for creating an environment that suppressed him for aspiring for what he truly wanted to do. Because of Kotaro’s sternness, we also see how this has affected everyone in the family to not directly intervene when Kotaro abuses Shigaraki which further contributes to his growing hatred for the world around him. We can see how this later manifested to where Shigaraki in the present fully accepts that he all he is good for is destroying which then sparks the conflict between him and Re-Destro. I also have a theory that Hana is the first person that Shigaraki killed with his quirk. Her hand was the first one that Shigaraki recognized and is what triggered the flashbacks and given her actions towards him, it makes sense as to why she would be her first target.
This chapter also puts Nana Shimura into a new perspective with the goodbye letter that she wrote to her son. We’ve only seen glimpses into what Nana was like as a person but it’s clear that she genuinely cared about her child and was heartbroken when she had to leave him. It really did feel like she would do anything to be able to raise him the proper way but ultimately had a greater duty to uphold as a wielder of One For All. It’s ironic how the actions of Nana ultimately led towards her own grandson becoming aligned with the force that she fought to stop.
The art in the chapter is fantastic as always. The emotion and sadness in each character’s expression really sold how grim of a backstory this is. Re-Destro’s design when he uses his quirk continues to look absolutely menacing at the beginning and the chapter overall had a nice flow to it. The new colored page spread was also a great treat and may be one of my favorites yet.
Shigaraki hasn’t been a character I was completely fond of for the majority of the series but with the recent buffs he’s been given on top of his backstory so far, I’m really starting to grow more attached to Shigaraki as a villain. It looks like the seriousness of this origin story will only ramp up as it continues so come back on July 21st for my impressions of Chapter 236 of My Hero Academia when it releases on Shonen Jump.
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