He showed a lot of potential, but it was never realized.
Spoilers ahead!
Summary:
- Tomura Shigaraki is the final antagonist of MHA, but he’s not a very well-written villain.
- He’s incompetent and prone to anger attacks.
- He had a lot of potential, but is now losing fans because he never really got more interesting.
Tomura Shigaraki is very likely to be the final antagonist of the My Hero Academia manga (the current fight against him is probably the final one in the series). He has become a successor to All For One, and right now is in the middle of his confrontation with Deku — and fans are making theories about how it is going to end.
Many, however, don’t feel that Shigaraki is an exceptionally great villain. When he was initially introduced, he was creepy and mysterious — however, many chapters later, he proved himself to not be as great as fans hoped him to be.
He showed so much promise
Shigaraki was a promising character with a complicated past that could have been tied into the main story of My Hero Academia perfectly. After all, he is a grandson of one of the previous One For All wielders.
While that’s a major plot point in the series, it doesn’t actually go anywhere — outside of his background, Shigaraki is a very shallow villain.
He’s just not interesting at this point
He’s not just shallow: he’s not very likable and, according to many fans, very incompetent. Yes, his character design looks pretty cool — but his behavior leaves a lot to be desired. Tomura is a very troubled individual who is prone to anger attacks.
His lack of self-control made him look threatening at first, but fans began to grow tired of it later on. He never really improved on it, either: his anger issues only became worse throughout the manga.
During the My Villain Academia arc, Shigaraki spends a lot of time doing essentially nothing. He’s not a good planner and not a good leader, and many speculate that he was only chosen to be All For One’s successor due to his devotion to his cause.
At this point in the manga, Shigaraki only cares about destroying everything and defeating Izuku. There’s hardly any complex motivation left for him. Some fans speculate that his personality was warped after his merge with All For One — yes, Shigaraki seemingly regained control of himself, but it’s hard to know how much he changed exactly.
Many fans don’t like him anymore
At this point, Shigaraki is losing a lot of his fans. He just didn’t do enough to be threatening, and being obsessed with a single goal while being incompetent at everything else certainly doesn’t do him any favors.
He can’t even be likable because of his tragic backstory: it doesn’t excuse many of his actions, as they were his own choice. Perhaps his potential would’ve been shown better if Horikoshi chose a different path for him in the manga.