Have you ever wondered how the creator of My Hero Academia comes up with his villains? Well, we know he looks to the likes of DC and Marvel when designing heroes, but in terms of villains, Kohei Horikoshi chooses to use a different method, and it seems to have worked out just fine.
The creator of the popular manga and anime series revealed his secrets in an interview with Shonen Jump. In the interview, Horikoshi chose to use Shigaraki as an example, and you know what? It makes sense.
You see, one of the main design aspects of Shigaraki is for him to be feared among readers. So to make this possible, he chose to make this villain faceless. Doing that also made it difficult for readers to understand the character.
To make things even more interesting, Horikoshi says he thinks heavily about how he can make readers feel disgusted with villains in My Hero Academia.
Here is the full statement translated into English from Japanese:
"For Shigaraki, I wanted him to be a character that instills fear among readers, much like how he did to Deku and the other students when they first met him. I thought about how I wanted to create that type of impact upon first meeting this villain, and that helped mold his character. For All For One, I wanted him to be a character that readers could not understand, so I made him faceless. When creating most of my villain characters, I think about how I can bring out a sense of disgust for these characters among the reader's psyche. I've always been a fan of horror and slasher films, and that aspect interests me a lot. On the other hand, Toga is a character that can mix into society and continue living, and even if she was on the Protagonist's side, I wanted her to have a cuteness that wouldn't be unsettling."
Not every writer possesses the ability to manipulate the minds of readers on a broad scale, but we can say for certain that Horikoshi is one of them.