Aaron C
Aaron C
Sep 7, 2018 · 1 min read

I have become a big My Hero Academia fan. I love Nana, but I’m not sure what to think about her role in the series. I realized that she is exactly the same character as Ur from the series Fairy Tail, point for point. Nana mentored All Might and gave him her powers, Ur mentored Grey Fullbuster (a main male character), and taught him her powers; both Nana and Ur gave their lives to save their protegés from an all-powerful villain; and the similarities go on. Fairy Tail has an orphan theme, so I just chalked up Ur’s story to that. However, I wonder if there is some deeper trope at work here. Both powerful female mentors had to die terrible deaths so that years later their protegés could be heroes. Fairy Tail has basically no female characters between the ages of 30 and 70; MHA has basically no female characters between 40 and 70 (I think class 1-A’s mothers and the Wild Pussycats are in their late 30s). The message seems to be that you can have a powerful and wise female mentor who represents the author’s vision of his mother in her youth; however, that woman can’t age into maturity because middle aged woman can’t be powerful and important in shonen series.

    Aaron C

    Written by

    Aaron C

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