My Hero Academia: What Is All For One's Real Goal?

All For One's true goal makes him a meta-villain who knows he's the bad guy of someone else's story -- and he thinks that's so cool.

My Hero Academia is a superhero shonen anime that lays down clear, specific reasons why its main characters do what they do. Only with the most idealistic and worthwhile goals in mind will these heroes and villains fight hard and risk their lives to get something done, such as protagonist Izuku Midoriya striving to prove himself as the new symbol of peace or Shoto Todoroki aiming to escape his father's shadow. The villains also have well-established goals, such as Himiko Toga fighting to create a world where people can be their true selves without hiding in the shadows.

That leaves the mighty All For One, whose goals are loftier and more philosophical than any goals that Himiko or Tomura Shigaraki ever thought of. All For One clearly wants to destroy pro hero society and replace it with his own villainous society, but his goals go beyond "take over the world." In fact, All For One's goals are meta in nature, making him a villain on multiple levels.

All For One Dreams of Role-Playing Comic Book Stories

Unlike the other members of the League of Villains, who only became villains to accomplish a personally meaningful goal, All For One's aim really is "be a villain." That makes him the inverse of characters like Toya Todoroki/Dabi and Twice, who used villainy as the means to an end. Dabi went dark so he could tear down the hero world his hated father defended, while Twice found friendship and acceptance among his fellow outcasts. Meanwhile, All For One genuinely loves being a supervillain, and identifies much more strongly with it than any of his subordinates. Antagonists like Himiko Toga and Magne identify as themselves first and treat their villainous personas as a secondary priority, while AFO goes all in. It's almost like a game to him, and he can get away with it.

All For One explained his personal motives later in the My Hero Academia anime, and his inspiration to become a supervillain felt oddly juvenile and cartoony. When All For One and his brother Yoichi Shigaraki were young, they loved reading superhero comic books, which involved costumed heroes fighting powerful, intriguing supervillains. No doubt All For One saw variants of characters like Doctor Doom and Lex Luthor and decided to emulate them, thus creating his supervillain persona as All For One. It was like role-playing for him, except he didn't see it as a game -- it was a genuine goal of his to become a real-life comic book supervillain, and he dedicated his entire life to that twisted pursuit, eventually becoming the symbol of evil.

That kind of goal makes All For One's character a meta-villain, since he is actually in a superhero manga series that pays tribute to Western superhero comics like X-Men and Superman. All For One is all but breaking the fourth wall and acknowledging that he's in a comic book-inspired manga series, and he identifies strongly with it. He's a meta-villain who wants to become a supervillain because he already knows that character archetype exists. Some manga villains end up villains for personal, in-universe reasons and don't consider themselves villains or bad guys, but All For One views himself that way. He thinks it's his destiny to use his powerful All For One Quirk to become the world's strongest man and become the "demon king" he always had the potential to be. Comic book-style worlds like his are "supposed" to have such a charcter for the narrative's sake, and All For One is eager to oblige.

All For One's personal quest to become the obligatory demon lord also creates a bizarre paradox, or a chicken-and-the-egg scenario. Where does the idea of comic book-style evil come from? Ordinary street crime is one thing, but a demon lord-esque supervillain straight out of a comic book is a more unique idea that had to come from somewhere. All For One aimed to become a comic-style supervillain in the real world because he saw them in comics, but what, in turn, inspired people to design comic book villains like Doctor Doom and Magneto? Neither in All For One's comic collection or his world does villainy like that have a clear source of origin. It just exists, period, in a bootstrap paradox where AFO emulated comics, and people like him may inspire writers to create comic supervillains to comment on their world. With a meta-villain like All For One, it's not clear where true evil came from -- but he doesn't mind.

All For One's Secondary Goals Are Just the Means to an End

It isn't just All For One's meta-role-playing that set him apart from My Hero Academia's other antagonists. All For One's methods are what other villains consider their main goals, so what other villains strive to do, AFO merely uses as the means for an end. A major example is All For One's long-running campaign to use his namesake Quirk to redistribute other people's Quirks on request to improve their lives, thus reshaping society into one where AFO is a beloved savior. Takng over society by being the widely-supported king of Quirks would be a fine goal for other villains, but All For One is thinking on a more meta level. For him, being the leader of a society of fluid Quirks is just his method for becoming the comic book demon king. The same is true for being the League of Villains' leader, aiming to destroy hero society. AFO does these things because they're part of the meta-character he created for himself, nothing more.

All For One can only achieve his juvenile but terrifying dream if he has total freedom to do so, since hero society won't allow for the creation and existence of supervillains, meta or not. To function, hero society needs rules, norms, and a clear code of justice and ethics, all of which would prevent AFO from becoming the meta-villain of his dreams. That prompted All For One to greatly value personal freedom, dismissing ethics and justice as nonsense made up by people who are afraid of letting others realize their true potential. That gave All For One the secondary goal of enforcing maximum personal freedom for all, most of all himself. In so doing, he can "thwart" hero society as the meta-supervillain he was meant to be, and in so doing, he can fully realize his destiny and do what all those comic book stories expected of someone like him.