‘My Hero Academia’s best ship is an intricately tragic romance

Shipping characters has long been an important part of pop culture fandoms, and that very much includes My Hero Academia. After all, with its huge cast, My Hero Academia is ripe for shipping. In the final two episodes of season 7, the anime finally confirmed the series’ first big ship.

This ship was included on very few clickbait-y lists, but now that things have come to this point, I can see no other path forward for these characters. Nothing as satisfying, at least. The first half of the season 7 finale was the culmination of years of careful work. When you tug at the thread, there’s a long trail there. It’s touching, it’s wonderful, it’s positively heartbreaking, and it makes a whole lot of sense.

I am, of course, talking about Ochaco Uraraka and Himiko Toga.

Spoilers ahead for the ending My Hero Academia season 7.

Sorry, Deku

Ochaco has a huge part to play in My Hero Academia right from the start. Izuku, AKA Deku, saving her in the entry exam is the reason he got into UA in the first place. Ochaco is the first girl Deku’s ever been on close terms with, and at the start, he gets flustered with anxiety whenever she talks to him.

All of this appears to be establishing a clear-cut, predictable formula. MHA sets the expectation early on that Deku and Ochaco will get together by the end of the series.

It’s technically possible they still will. Ochaco does have a crush on Izuku. In the final episodes of season 7, during their chat, Ochaco even tells Himiko that she’s in love with Izuku. Very much not incidentally, so is Himiko.

But the heart is messy. You can develop feelings for more than one person at a time. To her credit, Himiko knows this about herself. Ochaco is just learning it now because she was able to take one step closer to understanding Himiko—a step Izuku wasn’t able to take. Himiko confessed her love to Izuku hours before and he turned her down, saying he could never be with someone who murdered people.

Granted, poor Deku’s got a hell of a lot on his plate right now. He’s grappling with whether or not he’ll be able to save Shigaraki, or if he has it in him to kill Shigaraki if need be. What Izuku sees inside Shigaraki is very similar to what Ochaco ends up seeing in Himiko: a misunderstood child. In Shigaraki’s case, Izuku deems he needs saving. In Toga’s, Ochaco realizes she simply needs someone to understand her.

Because, as it turns out, Ochaco saw something different in that moment. You would expect Ochaco to feel jealousy about someone confessing to Izuku before she got around to it. But instead, as we find out in the closing episodes of the season, Ochaco saw Himiko’s smile. And, once Himiko’s own feelings toward her are finally made clear, Ochaco realizes she fell in love.

One hell of an ending

Of course, Ochaco and Himiko have had a long history of confrontations. Specifically in the Paranormal Liberation War arc, Himiko, mourning Jin’s death, kills a civilian woman to lure Ochaco into an abandoned house. Himiko just wants to talk, but Ochaco sees a murderer. When Himiko realizes Ochaco might kill her like Hawks killed Jin, she cries.

These tears haunt Ochaco. She’s still trying to figure them out in the immediate moments before the final battle. When Himiko so sincerely confesses her love to Izuku—at a time when most other people would think is inappropriate—the mysteries of Himiko’s character finally click for Ochaco.

Unfortunately, Izuku’s rejection piles on top of Ochaco’s rejection in the abandoned house, and Himiko goes fully on the murderous offensive to destroy heroes, thinking they’d never understand her. It’s the effect of a lifetime of trauma. Himiko was saddled with a Quirk which changed her view of the world. Her parents told her to her face she wasn’t human.

In her anger, she even stabs Ochaco. Fatally.

“I just wanted to tell you how beautiful your smile was,” she says, after desperately chasing Himiko through the sky, while actively bleeding out and dying. Conveying that emotion, in that moment, was worth more to her than her own life. And she finally reaches through to Himiko. For the first time in her life, Himiko finally has someone tell her she’s cute.

However, Ochaco and Himiko don’t get their happy ending. It is a tragic romance. But in sacrificing herself to transfer her blood over to the dying Ochaco, Himiko finds a peace and acceptance she’d never felt before. She finds a way to change the perspective on her obsession with blood into something given rather than received.

And that, through the tears, is some damn good shipping.