Yes, Shigaraki and Dabi are friends. And Tenko is a hero.
Originally, this moment in Ch.344 was a bit confusing. AFO!Shig seems to touch the ground but before he can activate Decay, he senses Dabi about to rush by and pauses. We know it’s Shigaraki in control here because we see Shig’s right eye and he uses the name “Dabi” instead of AFO’s preferred “Toya.”
Now in Ch.361, we see Tenko assert himself from beneath AFO’s distortions to tell Mirio he does have friends “worth keeping around.” This startles AFO, and he wonders where this voice is coming from now that Shig’s body is perfected and under his control. When AFO thinks about Tenko as the piece that’s not yet melded, AFO flashes back to this “Dabi” moment.
The only reason AFO would think of this moment and connect it with Tenko is if Tenko was in control then too. AFO must have noticed at the time that something went wrong. AFO!Shig was supposed to activate Decay and steal OFA, but Tenko called it off because Dabi ran wild. We know AFO stopped giving a damn about Toya’s life after Toya proved useless to him. But Tenko cared. He refused to let AFO destroy his friend, and in doing so, became a hero.
It’s a fun comparison to this scene from the Overhaul fight, where Overhaul is taunting Mirio about being a hero while undoing his destruction of the room. Meanwhile, quirkless Mirio thought of his friends and mentor to stay strong, protecting the little girl until backup arrived. (After this scene, Izuku, Aizawa, and Nighteye arrive, and Overhaul kills his “friend” so he can fuse their bodies together.)
So a lot of fans have taken Shigaraki’s outburst in the most recent chapter as Tenko Shimura, being a third, and seperate personality from both Shigaraki Tomura and All for One. As if Tenko is the third of three seperate individuals fighting for the body. However, that is one: AFO’s deduction as to what is happening, and AFO is not the most reliable source. In fact you might even call him an unrelaible source. His entire goal is to make Shigaraki Tomura’s body into nothing more than a vessel, so of course, he doesn’t see SHigaraki as a person outside of being anything other than his creation / his vessel. The second is that Shigaraki’s entire arc has been about first his own personal autonomy, and second the complex nature of his identity after being groomed his whole life so there is no simple answer on who Shigaraki considers himself to be.
However, as I said I think people are taking this too literally to be about whether there’s some vestige of Tenko seemingly still remaining in Shigaraki Tomura’s mind, seperate from the TOmura identity. I think the scene itself is rather symbolic, Tenko supposedly residing in Shigaraki’s mind is at both a representation of Shigaraki’s inner child, and also of the fact that Shimura Tenko at five years old was not saved, and since then society has done nothing to rectify the fact that he was not saved.
1. The Inner Child
Psychologist Carl Gustav Jung originated the concept of the Inner Child in his divine child archetype. While the “inner child” is a term often used in popular psychology, we’re here talking about the “Jungian Archetype” of the inner child. Archetypes are universal, primal symbols and images that appear in stories all over the world such as: the mother, the child, the trickster, among others.
The inner child is a visual symbol the story uses a lot already. For an example of its use in another character that foils Shigaraki, just recently during Shoto and Touya’s fight, images of their childhood selves appears at the finish of their fight. A symbol is an image that’s supposed to mean something in a story, why invoke childhood imagery here? It is symbolism and therefore up to interpretation, but among things it could mean that a lot of Touya’s current struggles come from the unresolved abuse of his childhood which has gone on so long for this very day, the way Shoto internally relates to Touya’s abuse which makes the action of fighting him both difficult to do and tragic (both brothers are crying, Toya while using his flames, and Shoto while fighting back against him).
In general, invoking this childhood imagery especially for the three UA students with villain counterparts (Shigaraki, Dabi, and Himiko) is a reminder that all of these villains were originally innocent childrens who were victims of some aspect of hero society, children who were not saved, and as they’ve grown up have gone unsaved. This also reflects one of the main wrongs of hero society, rather than view the complexities of villains as victims in some regard, most villains are only regarded as threats to be put down or contained (often in inhumane conditions).
Which is a conflict, because both the stated and idealistic goals of heroes, is to save citizens from the kind of circumstances that Shigaraki, Toga, and Touya all lived through. THe reason heroes are allowed to wield their quirks in public, fight as vigilantes somewhat outside of the law with specially obtained hero licesnses, is because it’s believed the overwhelming presence of heroes in society makes things safer for the individual citizen. It is a social contract, that heroes save people, and this social contract has failed several individuals.
I’m elaborating on this because the reoccuring imagery of both children who do not get saved growing up into corrupted villains after being pushed out onto the edges of society, is both a major theme that creates the conflict of the story which is why these villains are questioning heroes in the first place, and also what AFO himself the main villain of the story has taken advantage of. AFO knows society abandons these children, and has kept an eye on them and appeared just in the right time to radicalize them, he appeared for Touya, he appeared for Shigaraki. Toga might seem to break the pattern, but she was just a runaway middle schooler at one point after being thorwn out for one violent incident or psychological break, and only got further radicalized as heroes offered her no sympathy or place of return, and her only refuge became the league of villains. (IE: Toga is someone who in my personal opinion, a lot of the violence her character exhibits besides the one violent incident that came only after years of emotional abuse is not sociopathy, but rather the natural result of being a middle school aged girl, living on the streets of japan as a homeless runaway, and living on the streets as a runaway at just about any age is not a safe place to be).
All to say, the reason that we are not only given peaks in the childhoods of the main villains, and also we are often shown images of their childhood selves is not for “tragic backstory reasons” but to illustrate that these children should have been saved. There is also no fair reason that they weren’t.
"In a society full of heroes, I thought maybe the reason no one helped me was because I was being punished for killing my family.”
Tenko through no fault of his own, loses control of his quirk, and in one day loses his house, his family, and also his family dog and is thrown out onto the streets for an indetermiante period of time. It’s shown that Tenko was in one of the most populated cities, oversaturated with heroes, and yet a single one did not stop to look and help one lost child.
This incident isn’t just Tenko’s origin, it’s also at the center of what Tomura considers his ideals. He states as such, the last big confrontation where we see Shigaraki is completely in control of his body.
Shigaraki even flashes back to the old woman looking the other way. Another interesting tidbit is he says this directly to Endeavor, after Endeavor calls his ideals into question. Endeavor someone who in story, won’t face the son he not only didn’t save when he left him to burn alone in a fire, he also when given the opportunity to face Touya again several years later after he came back from the dead deliberately ignores him to continue his job as a hero in his confrontation against AFO.
It’s not just that these children weren’t saved, it’s that society rather than trying to address the injustices done wrong to them, instead blames them for their own fall. Society refuses to even look at the suffering of it’s most dowrntrodden members, it rejects them in order to maintain a facade that everything is alright.
This all comes back to the recurring symbol of the child.
Jung placed the "child" (including the child hero) in a list of archetypes that represent milestones in individuation. Jungians exploring the hero myth have noted that "it represents our efforts to deal with the problem of growing up, aided by the illusion of an eternal fiction". Thus for Jung, "the child is potential future", and the child archetype is a symbol of the developing personality.
You have children who are the main characters of the story, attempting to save other children who have grown up under more violent circumstances into dangerous individuals. The entire story revolves around the theme of all these societal problems who are handed to these children, and how they grow and adapt to it. Above all else, the society in MHA is painted as one that is dangerous and unfair to children. Not only in the way that children who become victims aren’t really treated fairly by society as a whole and are pushed to the margins, but also in cases of domestic family situations where chidlren are abused, abandoned, or otherwise neglected which always, always, always in story creates future problems down the line. IE: THe abuse of the Todoroki Family as a whole, and Endeavor using his children for his ambitions creating Touya. Nana Shimura’s decision to abandon her son, has a direct consequences in creating Shigaraki.
A lot of these enemies in society actually start small with household problems, that when unaddressed continue to fester until the rot spreads. This is also a storytelling device that Horikoshi uses a lot Domestic problems or HOusehold problems like the abuse in the Todoroki or Shimura household doesn’t just end in the house. Dabi after surviving his abuse into adulthood kills several people in an attempt to both discredit his father and ruin his status as a hero, get attention to his cause, and during his work with the league. IE: Endeavor cannot be a hero if he has a villain son with a body count, and one he created at that.
Now characters can say this is Dabi’s fault, he chose to get other people involved in issues inside his own household, but that’s against the oint of this story, that shows that these domestic issues always end up affecting the people around them as well. The problems in the micrcosm of these people’s individual households, also serves as a metaphor for the macrocosm of societal abuse. Tenko uses the metaphor of how the Shimura household was built to reject him gently, as a way to illsutrate how he feels that society also was built to reject not only him but people like him.
All of this comes to a head symbolically, in both Deku’s glimspe of Shimura Tenko still alive in the vestige world, but also in his chat with the vestiges after the war arc. THis scene is more than just Deku sympathizing with Shigaraki after seeing a psychic vision of Tenko, or even just beliving that Tenko Shimura is still inside Shigarki somewhere.
It’s also the metaphor come full circle. As in, what do you do with a child who has not only been victimzied in some form society, but is no longer an innocent little child to be saved and has even grown up into someone who is a villain. Deku’s answer for this question is that while some people are dangerous, and maybe there is no other choice but to put them down, the power he was given ALL FOR ONE, is not a power for killing people, but rather for saving them.
Which is also the central theme of the story. What do heroes use their powers for? Heroes are here to save people. All for One didn’t use his power to become the strongest hero, or even to defeat the most number of villains, his goal was to save as many people as possible, and to reassure them if they were ever in trouble someone was coming to save them, which is why All Might’s vestige cries when he sees Deku still trying to live up to that ideal.
2. Shigaraki’s inner child.
And here is the post where we briefly touch upon the messy nature of Shigaraki’s own identity. Once again, I’m going to say that the appearance of a “TENKO” vestige somewhere within Shigaraki’s mind isn’t a sign that the pure and uncorrupted Tenko is just going to take over at some point and both Shigaraki and AFO will disappear like they never existed.
Instead it’s Inner-Child symbolism, an image of the innocent child Shimura Tenko was, before his own traumatic upbringing and the grooming of AFO. I don’t think the point is to return Tenko to this uncorrupted phase of his life, because that’s completely impossible.
Rather, I think it’s there to essentially call out what has been a long thread of dehumanizing done to Shigaraki by the heroes, who conitnually despite making no real attempts to reach out for him dismiss him as an entirely lost cause only to be put out like a mad dog for the good of society.
The heroes would very convneintly like to assume, that there is nothing left of the victim Shimura Tenko inside of him. That Shigaraki is a heartless smybol of destruction, which is exactly what AFO both tried to make him into, and also how AFO wanted him to be perceived by others.
Basically, if there is no human being behind Shigaraki’s actions and destruction, then putting him down isn’t immoral, it’s also the best course of action. As I’ve said before the heroes have made several attempts of just, plain trying to kill him.
This is a society where crimminals like AFO, were arrested and held in confinement, and they were also not legally allowed to kill Gigantomachia despite the difficulties in containing him because of his huge size. Heroes are not supposed to kill according to their own rules, but to capture. If you imagine Shigaraki is’nt a human being, with friends, and more important feelings, then killing him suddenly becomes less of a moral dilemna.
AFO also, by suppressing Shimura Tenko / Shigaraki’s independent self, it makes it easier for him to take control over his identity. The more he becomes angry, volatile, destructive and acts as both AFO grooms him and wants him to act, the less agency and control over his actions Shigaraki has.
And this is basically a long running metaphor for Shigaraki’s entire character, him trying to find identity, agency, and where his sense of self lies despite being groomed for one thing by AFO his entire life and kept relatively outside of society, and also from forming connections to other people.
Which means the possession plotline by AFO is in fact, a culimation of a very longrunning plotline, where Shigaraki is in conflict with himself, how much of himself is created by trauma, how much of himself is TENKO the natural person he was born as? It’s a question of nature vs nurture that once again has no clear answer.
So heroes have this tendency to regard Shigaraki as an empty evil, who has no emotions, no friends, only a desire to destroy.
A bit hypocritical aren’t we, Endeavor?
Heroes tend to over and over again, insist that there is no human being that can be reached in Shigaraki, that there is no one there to save, therefore justifying the fact that they all rather quickly go for the kill.
THis is also, a theme which has escalated in the story. All Might just beat him down, but as Shigaraki’s violence gets worse, so too does the heroes own attempts to go for the kill, until we reach the point where they are quite literally shooting missiles at him from a plane.
However, I would argue that despite the heroes trying it over and over again, killing Shigaraki hasn’t only not worked so far, it’s literally never going to workj. It’s the entirely wrong approach, because it escalates the violence rather than de-escalates. The more violent people are towards Shigaraki, the more violent he is in return, and therefore the cycle continues.
This is taken to its literal extreme in the fight with the New Order quirk. A villain tries to kill “Shigaraki Tomura”, but it doesn’t work, and also, literally leads into an explanation of SHigaraki’s current identity crisis. New Order doesn’t work on Shigaraki, because the boundary between Shigaraki and AFO currently is too blurry.
But beyond that, in story reasons, the reason it doesn’t work, is because attempting to end the cycle of violence with even more violence, with SO MUCH VIOLENCE THAT ALL VIOLENCE THEREFORE WILL BE WIPED FROM THE FACE OF THE EARTH just doesn’t work with the themes of the story. Hating and dehumanizing Shigaraki at this point, just doesn’t work, and makes the problem worse because it aggravates him and pushes him to new extremes.
And we’ve had this established in the vestige world too, Shigarki’s hatred, and his desire for revenge is something that weakens his identity and makes hime asier for AFO to control. Even the heroes most recent strategy of fighting Shigaraki is to have everyone cooperate together... to build him a coffin in the sky. The heroes just keep coming up with more elaboarted and overkill ways of killing him.
Which eventually leads to this moment, Mirio’s rather dehumanizing statement that Shigaraki has never had any friends in his life. Which not only provokes Tenko, but also once again shows us the audience this flash of once again imagery that clearly indicates Shigaraki / Shimura Tenko is a victim even while all the heroes are teaming up to fight against him. If he’s just a bad guy to be destroyed, why this incredibly gruesome imagery of five year old child being groped, abandoned, mishandled and trapped within all of these hands.
To say once again, that the heroes image of Shigaraki is wrong. He does have friends, he has emotions, and even the ability to empathize with other people. Not only did Shigarki say at one point in the story, that there were things he wouldn’t destroy. Not only does Shigaraki pick a fight with the MLA and the Yakuza both for the sake of his friends, to save Giran, and avenge Magne respectively.
In this chapter alone we’re also shown that Shigaraki considers his allies differently than AFO does. After all, AFO referred to his friends as only cheap lighters to be used and disposed of.
Not only did Shigaraki defy his control and have an uncontrolled outburst at the accusation that he had no friends, AFO also lost total control much earlier, when Shigaraki emerged for a moment to try to warn Dabi that his skin was peeling off from him overusing his powe r because his skin was peeling off. He also called Dabi, Dabi, rather than Touya-kun like how AFO refers to him.
Which means what AFO refers to as Shimura lurking and lingering within Shigaraki’s consciousness, may in fact just be Shigaraki’s personhood and who he is existing outside of what AFO has tried to mould him into being. This person is also created, by the interaction of his friends and the league of villains, who created a much healthier environment outside of AFO’s iron fisted control of him. AFO even only got control and possession when the league itself was splintered both by the death of twice, and being forced to go on the run once again after the war arc.
In other words Shigaraki is a shonen protagonist, and he is at his best when surrounded by friends, and at his worst when isolated. All of this is to show that not only has Shigaraki been a person all along, but with the help of those friends it is possible for him to reclaim his personhood from AFO, rather than be destroyed or put out of his misery. There’s still someone to save in Shigaraki, and also someone worth saving, because deep down he’s someone capable of doing good and loving his friends.
