Kohei Horikoshi, the creator of My Hero Academia, spoke about how his story only really took shape after he gave up on it »Luffy-like heroes« to create. We summarize the details below.
Creative dead end
The relevant statements were made in a conversation between Horikoshi and “Kagurabachi” author Takeru Hokazono, which was printed in the current fall 2025 issue of the seasonal “Jump GIGA” magazine.
Horikoshi explained that after completing his second manga series, “Barrage,” he wanted to create a character who had the same charisma and energy as Monkey D. Luffy, as he had long admired the “One Piece” hero. But this approach quickly led him to a creative dead end.
He found that despite all his efforts, he was unable to reproduce the unique charisma that Eiichiro Oda created with Luffy. The realization that “Luffy isn’t inside me”was a turning point for him and ultimately motivated him to write a story in his own style.
Long planning time
In this context, Horikoshi revisited his previous works – in particular the one-shot “My Hero” from 2008. In it he recognized the great potential of the protagonist and decided to use this idea as the basis for a new project. However, the development was very time-consuming:
»I think it took about a year from the initial idea to completing the storyboards for the first chapter until everything came together. I’ve written several initial drafts, but haven’t decided on the characteristics of the characters yet. But after I quickly got to the stage where the character All Might was created, I thought: If this guy is in it, then I can do it.”
“My Hero Academia” finally started on July 7, 2014 in Shueisha’s “Shounen Jump” magazine and ended ten years later, on August 5, 2024, after 432 chapters.
The anime implementation is now also on the home stretch: The eighth and final season has been running on Japanese television and on Crunchyroll in simulcast with German subtitles since October 4, 2025.