There was a time when the anime world was dominated by three series, but that time has passed, and a fresh group of series has risen to the top. My Hero Academia has achieved a great deal of success in a short amount of time, and much of this success can be attributed to the popularity of the superhero genre. My Hero Academia tells a great and emotional story about a group of teenagers who are trying to become Pro Heroes.
When they become Pro Heroes, they will be expected to fight Villains-who use their Quirks to commit crimes. Like most stories, many of MHA's characters have a backstory, but they are not all pleasant. A number of Pro Heroes and Villains have sad backstories, but there are a few that really stand out.
9 Shoto Todoroki
Shoto's hair is evenly split-with the right side being all white and the left being crimson. This gives him one of the more unique anime character designs of all time. The left side of his face also has a large burn scar which was given to him by his mother. He inherited his father's fire Quirk and his mother's powerful ice Quirk.
This made him the child that his father always wanted-one who could eventually surpass All Might. His father put him through brutal training every day, and his mother tried to stop it. She loved Shoto deeply, but the constant abuse from her husband caused her to have a mental break, which led to her throwing boiling water at Shoto's face.
8 Spinner
Discrimination is always terrible, and it certainly exists in MHA's universe, especially when it comes to individuals with Mutant-type Quirks. Spinner's Gecko Quirk gives him a lizard-like appearance, and this caused many people to reject him, including his own family.
He started to believe that society would never accept him for who he was, so he became a recluse who did nothing but play video games. It was not until he heard Stain speak out that he decided to change his life around. Fortunately, he found acceptance with the League of Villains.
7 Dabi
Dabi is one of the strongest members of the Paranormal Liberation Front, but he also happens to be Shoto's older brother. His real name is Toya Todoroki, and he inherited a version of his father's fire Quirk which allows him to create blue flames. Unfortunately, he never developed his father's resistance to fire.
This means that he could not use his Quirk without hurting himself, which made him a failure in his father's eyes. He told Dabi that the only way to earn his love was to be strong, so he continued to train. That training left him with terrible burns all over his body, and his entire family believed that he died when he overheated his body to roughly 2,000 degrees.
6 Hawks
Hawk's Quirk gives him a pair of large red wings, and they make him one of My Hero Academia's fastest characters. He is the No. 2 Pro Hero, which is amazing considering his background. His father had killed several people, and from the moment he was born, he and his family were in hiding.
In order to keep their secret, his parents never allowed him outside, and they were verbally and physically abusive. The only fun he had was watching Heroes on TV. When his father was finally caught, he and his mother continued to hide because they had been harboring a criminal. They were homeless for quite some time.
5 La Brava
La Brava is a Villain who is allied with Gentle Criminal, and she has a Quirk that gives a power boost to whomever she loves. In the first year of middle school, she wrote a rather long love letter to a boy she liked, but he did not reciprocate her feelings. In fact, he made fun of her and made her out to be a stalker.
This level of rejection and mockery caused La Brava a great deal of pain, and she fell into a severe depression. It got to the point that she no longer believed in anything, and she was close to taking her own life. Luckily, she found Gentle Criminal online.
4 Twice
The 22nd episode of MHA's 5th season focused on Twice, and it is arguably one of the anime's best episodes. When he was a child, his parents were killed by a villain, and he was forced to look after himself. He found a job, but when he accidentally hit a man with his motorcycle, he lost the job and obtained a criminal record.
He wanted some company, so he used his Quirk to create copies of himself, and it did him a lot of good at first. In the end, he created so many clones that he lost his sense of identity, to the point he no longer knew who the original was. His clones eventually attacked and killed each other, and this left him in a broken mental state.
3 Kota Izumi
"Water Hose" was the Pro Hero team name used by Kota's parents, and they both died while fighting the Villain Muscular. When fans first met Kota, he was just five years old, which means that he barely got to spend any real time with his parents.
Kota resented his parents because he thought they cared about their careers more than him, and he believed they sacrificed themselves for nothing. The boy became very depressed, and the devastation caused by their loss made him unable to connect with anyone until Izuku Midoriya came along.
2 Eri
When Eri's Rewind Quirk manifested, she accidentally used it on her father until he vanished. Her mother had no idea what to do, so she gave Eri to her grandfather-who happened to be a Yakuza crime boss. When Overhaul learned of her Quirk, he placed her grandfather in a comatose state and subjected her to terrible experiments.
These experiments were extremely painful, and it was all done to create a drug that destroys Quirks. Eri's early childhood was filled with pain, and the mental scars are still there. The poor girl was terrified, but she managed to survive, which makes her one of MHA's bravest characters.
1 Tomura Shigaraki
Tomura's Decay Quirk allows him to destroy anything he touches, making it one of MHA' s most overpowered abilities. He is also one of the series' most ruthless characters, but that is understandable considering his upbringing. Tomura's grandmother was a Pro Hero, and she spent a lot of time away from her son-Tomura's father.
His father hated Pro Heroes, and he became verbally and physically abusive with Tomura whenever he mentioned them. Tomura manifested his Quirk shortly after one of his father's outbursts, and after accidentally killing the family dog, he kills the rest of his family. The event left him traumatized, but All For One found him and took him under his wing.