Izuku Midoriya: Best Boy of 2017

Last year, Crunchyroll had their first annual Anime Awards for 2016.  With the anime awards, there was a clear winner for a specific category called Best Boy. With this category, Izuku Midoriya aka Deku, was robbed. This was no surprise to anyone that keeps up with anime on a seasonal basis that Yuri Katsuki of Yuri!!! On ICE received this title. Unfortunately, this was mainly due to the overwhelming popularity of Yuri!!! On ICE. Now that My Hero Academia has begun its run of the second season, this is the best time to present my case and fight for Deku to win the title he so rightfully deserves for Anime Awards 2017.

Okay. If you are reading this, I assume you have an idea of what My Hero Academia is about and who Deku is, as a character. If not, you can always check out an article I wrote about My Hero here.

SPOILERS AHEAD! You’ve been warned.

Deku has so many great qualities. Many individual qualities that you would see in the main protagonist of other great shonen anime. What makes him different? He was a superhero nerd that kept composition notebooks filled with stats and details regarding the superheroes he has encountered/seen. He had no powers and no chance of attaining a quirk to lead him to become a number one hero. What he did have was the determination and hope to become a hero, not for glory and fame. His ambition was to save people with a smile on his face. When someone, who constantly attempted to destroy any possibility of Deku becoming a hero, finds himself in a life-threatening situation, Deku charged in. Hit the ground running with no real way to save him.

Deku isn’t just heroic but overall one of the most selfless heroes we’ve seen in anime BY FAR. Throughout this series, he has been fighting to prove his worth as a hero. Not just him but all of the classmates he meets along the way. At this point in the anime, at the time of this article’s release, Deku is in a battle within a tournament with one of his classmates named Shouto Todoroki. This classmate is what some would call a prodigy and happens to be the son of the number two hero in the world, Flame Hero Endeavor.

Todoroki is a product of a number 2 hero who is sick of being number 2. The only way he knew his legacy would be able to overshadow All Might, was to take part in a Quirk Marriage. Below is a definition I grabbed from the My Hero Academia Wiki.

“Quirk Marriages are marriages that had began to appear after the manifestation of Quirks. It began during the second and third generation of Quirk users. The purpose of these marriages was choosing mates for the sole purpose of enhancing a specific Quirk to be inherited down the bloodline.”

His mother had an ice quirk while his father had a fire quirk. Each side of his body allows him to use either his ice or fire. He refers to his right as the ice and his left as the fire. Because of how his father treated his mother, she became disgusted with Todoroki and threw boiling water at him as a child. With everything that has happened in his life, he decided to never use his left out of pure hatred and disdain for his father. I know this was a lot to take in, but I really want you to understand and feel what happens next.

Before Deku walks into the ring, he bumps into Todoroki’s father, Endeavor. After talking to him he truly see’s what kind of person he is and how he treats Todoroki as an object he created specifically to pass All Might. As much as Endeavor knows that Deku is somehow connected to All Might, Deku has but one answer for him.

This is nothing very different from the Naruto and Sasuke dynamic in Naruto but the battle itself takes an interesting twist. As much as Deku wants to win the match and prove himself in front of All Might and the world, he works hard to push Todoroki to use his left. In order to help Todoroki find his true purpose and become himself, disassociating his left to his father, he taunted him. Making sure he understood that using only one side is limiting him and the only way to defeat Deku is to use both sides together. The only other time I’ve seen something like this was in Dragon Ball Z when Vegeta told Cell to go get Android 18 so he can get stronger, ultimately being defeated. Well, obviously this isn’t the same but you understand what I mean.

Deku’s constantly impressing me as the viewer. I can’t help but feel destroyed when there’s a possibility he will lose. When he wins, I just want to jump from my chair, flailing my arms like a mad man. You want to see him succeed since he works so hard. He manages to deal with his limits fairly well and still show that he can compete with the best. Deku is a model hero to all. No scratch that. Deku is a model character. He should be someone that others strive to be. Selfless, passionate and hardworking. Someone who works hard to save a friend over a chance of a lifetime to present your worth to the world.

This article may be one of the longest articles I’ve written on our site, but after the last episode of My Hero Academia I was motivated immensely. I strongly feel that Deku really deserves more attention this year. I’ve never been this impressed with a character in a short amount of time. Let me know what you guys think below in the comment section. Thank you so much for reading my article and leave a like to show me that you like articles such as this one.