My Hero Academia’s Aizawa Just Proved That He’s UA’s Best Teacher

Warning: contains spoilers for chapter 340 of My Hero Academia

In Weekly Shonen Jump’s latest character survey of My Hero Academia fans, U.A. High School teacher Shota Aizawa places seventh. Aizawa was the first teacher chosen and the only teacher in the top ten. Aizawa’s popularity is not new. Since Weekly Shonen Jump and its American sister publication Shonen Jump began surveying the manga’s fans in 2015, Aizawa has always been ranked in the top 20, and consistently ranked within the top five among fans in Japan and America. So, what is it about Class 1-A’s homeroom teacher that makes him so popular?

Before becoming a teacher, Aizawa was a Pro-Hero known as Eraser Head. Aizawa’s quirk was the ability to incapacitate an opponent’s quirk by simply looking at them. After incapacitation, Aizawa does not need to continue to look at the opponent, which allowed him to disable the quirks of multiple opponents at the same time. However, an opponent would regain their quirks when he blinked. With the combination of his quickness, expertise in hand-to-hand combat, and his unique “binding tool” Aizawa could quickly subdue opponents, especially those whose abilities were specifically tied to their quirks. In his prime, he was one of the more formidable Pro-Heroes around and still can beat down a villain when necessary.

Most likely, however, Aizawa’s popularity likely stems from the fact that despite his aloof and cold personality, few teachers seem to care so deeply about the development of their students into physically capable, mentally tough, and spiritually dedicated Pro-Heroes. This aspect of Aizawa was most perfectly expressed in his Chapter 340 conversation with Yuga Aoyama. Aizawa visited Aoyama, who had recently been outed as All for One’s mole in U.A. High, in detention. Aoyama was distraught and fearful over the pain he had caused his classmates, and the retribution he expected All for One would level against him. Expressing these emotions to Aizawa, Aoyama confessed to just wanting to find some dark corner of the world to roll up in and be forgotten.

Aizawa refuses to have his student simply give up on himself, refused to accept Aoyama’s mindset. While he stressed that Yuga Aoyama must take responsibility for his actions and accept whatever punishments will be imposed; he should not run away from the situation. Rather, he should own his mistake and use it as a platform to push himself to heights he may never have realized had he not made a mistake. That is, he stressed that Aoyama should not give in to failure. Aizawa promised that if he were to follow this path, his true friends would never leave him and would forgive him.

While manga is so filled with stories of redemption that it has almost become cliché, Aizawa’s description and explanation of it to Aoyama was different. It was done in a way that fans can truly envision a caring teacher talking to a troubled student. It was tough, direct but heartfelt and warm. It is also a reason why fans consistently rank Shota Aizawa is one of their favorite characters in My Hero Academia.

About The Author

Marcel Green
(136 Articles Published)

Marcel Green is a comics news writer for Screen Rant. A lifelong comic fan who originally was a “Marvel Only” collector, he has matured into an “independent” fan of all things comics, manga, cartoon, and anime. Happy to finally be able to put all those hours reading comics over the years to good use.

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