Even though My Hero Academia is considered one of the most popular series in the anime and manga community, the fandom can make the community a dangerous place. In case you missed what has happened last week, Bounding Into Comics has been writing some disturbing news in regards to the manga author and the fandom. (Minor spoilers ahead!)
Reported last week, My Hero Academia released chapter 259 and revealed a scientist named Maruta Shiga. This character is a scientist that created the Nomu monsters, the All for One quirk and experimenting on Tomura Shigaraki. This character’s name has sparked an outrage from the My Hero Academia fandom due. According to Bounding Into Comics, fans believe that Maruta is a reference to a World War II war crime in which a Japanese military unit would test biological experiments on political prisoners, prisoners of war and other human victims. This experiment group was called Unit 731 facility and they would treat humans as less. In results, they were sometimes called Maruta since they were treated as falling down trees with no human value.
Fans from China and Korea believed Kohei Horikoshi made a reference to a horrific WWII war crime and the fans has expressed great anger to the point of asking the creator apologize. Horikoshi responded to the hate and anger and wrote an apology and he and the team told fans that they will change the villain’s name.
However, despite Horikoshi trying to amend his actions, the fans are still showing anger towards him. The fans believe his apology wasn’t enough and they are willing to throw away their entire collection of My Hero Academia manga. To add more hate to the flames, fans have also started to hate the My Hero Academia characters because of the birthdays. Some of these characters share the same birthday as Germany Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler and Imperial Japanese officer Kenji Doihara. The fans are beyond furious.
What do you guys think about this news?
sources:
My Hero Academia issues apology for villain name
My Hero Academia fans destroy manga collection
Fandom continues to show backlash and make references to WWII birth dates
Matt-in-the-Hat 
Oh good grief! They’re upset because the mad-scientist villain behind the scenes, who does horrific things to humans and is responsible for a tremendous amount of suffering, has a name which reminds them of Japan’s shady history? I know it’s something of a Japanese cultural thing to pretend that the things which embarrass them don’t exist, but really? Really?!
I don’t know much about Japanese history in WWII but it feels like these people are overreacting. I would never thought a name like this character would trigger a multitude of fans.
I think they need to get a life that doesn’t involve fixating on WWII trivia.
I feel like they are just trying to find a reason to get mad. Something like getting mad over a name and birthday is waste of time.
It is also an attempt to assert power. If they can hurt him it is both a waning and a demonstration is of power
A variation on the “heckler’s veto” idea.
Yeah I noticed that. If they can force him to change the character’s name, I would be afraid else they can do. This shows that the fandom will probably try again and attack him for another change.
I don’t think it is fandom. It is just a particular group, sitting around and waiting for thing to get angry over. There are a lot of those groups. Fandom in general would never notice such things.
You might be right, These kind of people will find any reason and strike. It’s amazing to see that they go this far to even call out on the whole birthday details. It seems ridiculous that they would act like this.
Basically, the thought process “Japan can do no wrong so scrub it out as quick so not to destroy our rose tinted views of it” .
I can’t believe this piece of news would affect the fandom. I feel bad for the creator.