Warning: Spoilers for My Hero Academia Chapter #430
Summary
Like many fans, I couldn’t wait for theMy Hero Academiamanga finaleto finally be released. It’s been a long journey, following the series for years, but despite my impatient urges to peek at leaks, I managed to wait for the official translation on August 4. And, after seeinghow many fans have reacted to the fan translation of the finale, I’m extremely glad that I did.
It’s not uncommon for new chapters ofShonen Jumpmanga to leak online early, translated rapidly by dedicated fans, and then spread around the internet several days before the chapter is set to officially release. That was the case forMy Hero Academiachapter #430 as well, but this time,something went wrong.
Fans who read the leaks were distraught,believing that Deku had been abandoned by his friends, and was left to flounder, isolated and alone while working a fairly ordinary job as a teacher, while everyone else had gone on to become great successes as heroes. If that were really what happened, there would be plenty of reasons to be upset,but that wasn’t the case at all.
The My Hero Academia Leaked Translations Were Just Plain Wrong
Trusting Fan Translations Can Be Risky Business
The fan translations misinterpreted a few key lines, giving the chapter a much more morose tone than that of the official translation. Chief among them is a moment in the official translation when Deku admits that he misses hero work, even though he enjoys what he’s doing now (working as a teacher at UA). However, the fan translation translated this line as “Do I feel lonely? Yeah, I admit I feel lonely sometimes.” Obviously,the context of the line in the official translation is completely different; it’s not people that he misses, it’s the job of being a hero.
This one line, combined with some of the other moments in the chapter (such as Deku lamenting that it’s harder for the class to get together as adults) led many fans who read the fan translation to believe thatDeku was almost completely forgotten by his classmates, as they all went on to live big lives as pro heroes while he was left stuck as a teacher. This is a completely wrong interpretation of the chapter, and this mistake sent a surprising number of fans on a rampage, claiming that the ending was terrible and absolutely destroyed the entire story. These fans are upset about something that just didn’t happen.
Fan translators almost never have professional translation experience, nor do they have access to the kind of resources that an official translation might have. Whilethe officialMy Hero Academiatranslationcan and occasionally does have problems translating things accurately, these problems are far, far rarer than the fan translations having issues, yet for some reason many fans trust the fan translation over the official one.
The Truth of Deku’s Fate in My Hero Academia’s Ending
Deku Was Not Forgotten By His Friends
Deku is perfectly happy being a teacher at UA. He sees it as a way of paying it forward, helping to give his students the kind of dreams that will drive them to be great heroes.
In the official translation, the lines about it being more difficult for the class to meet up is obviouslya simple acknowledgment of a truth of growing up. When everyone gets older and has different jobs, especially demanding jobs with unusual hours like a pro hero, it’s only natural that it would be harder for them to see one another than it was when they all went to school together and saw each other every day.
This is another example ofthe realism that makesMy Hero Academiaso good. The characters have moved on from their school days, so Horikoshi chose to depict the struggles of adult life, even if briefly.It’s meant to be realistic, not depressing. The fact that the class still strives to meet up on a regular basis even in spite of this difficulty should be proof enough that they still care for one another.
The official translation also makes it very clear thatdespite it not being his childhood dream,Deku is perfectly happybeing a teacher at UA. He sees it as a way of paying it forward, helping to give his students the kind of dreams that will drive them to be great heroes. He’s putting his experience and skills to use to train the next generation, and instilling in them values that are befitting of a pro hero. Fans denigrating Deku’s choice to be a teacher as a “boring normal job” are being wildly disrespectful of the career of teaching to boot.
Fan Bias Led To Misinterpretation
Fan Translation Is Not the Only Thing to Blame
Lastly, of course, there are the final pages of the chapter, wherein Deku is gifted an advanced variety of super suit, designed to allow even a Quirkless person to perform hero work.This grants Deku the chance to be a hero again, and he’s thrilled by the opportunity. Even in the fan translation, it’s very clear that this suit was created and funded by his former classmates, proving once and for all that nobody “forgot” about Deku at any point. Deku was always on his friends' minds, even when they couldn’t always be there physically.
The sheer value of that gesture has escaped many fans' minds. That suit must have cost millions, and in the series, heroes don’t have access to unlimited money, not even those who saved the world. This means that Bakugo and the other have actually worked hard and saved a huge amount of money for eight years, only to give their friend a chance to be a hero again. Still, some fans decided to ignore thisto confirm their biased view of an “unfair” ending.
In some cases, there is no official translation, so the only translations that exist are those done by dedicated fans. In those situations, the only reason an English fan base can even exist is thanks to the hard work of those translators. This is even true for relatively popular series likeJojo’s Bizarre Adventure, which still doesn’t have an official English translation of part 9 at this time. However, readers of fan translations should always keep in mind that this is (largely) the work of non-professionals, and Japanese to English is a particularly difficult translation to do, even for experienced translators.
Long-time anime and manga fans (like myself) still remember a time when official English translations were little more than a pipedream, so there’s a tendency to go with what they’ve always gone with the fan translations. But fan translations are more likely to make mistakes, and as seen withMy Hero Academia, those mistakes can sometimes completely alter the tone of a chapter.
Still, it’s impossible to only blame the mistaken translations. Some anime fandoms can be extremely toxic, andMy Hero Academiahas been the target of such behavior in the past. A lot of the criticism the final chapter received was based on comparisons with other series, but fans who believe this claim should re-read not just the chapter, but the entireMy Hero Academia, to understand how Horikoshi was able to pursue his vision of storytelling all along, and perfectly bring it to its natural conclusion.
My Hero Academia
My Hero Academia is a multimedia franchise that follows a young boy named Izuku Midoriya, who dreams of becoming a hero despite being born without superpowers. These superpowers, known as “Quirks” are found in most people after birth, but Izuku wasn’t so lucky - until a fateful encounter with All Might, Japan’s greatest hero, Izuku inherits his Quirk and enrolls in U.A. High School to learn the true meaning of heroism. Alongside his classmates, each endowed with unique abilities, Izuku faces rigorous training and lethal threats from villainous forces.
