Anime's Biggest Franchises Already Prove How My Hero Academia Can Continue After its Ending (2024)

While Kohei Horikoshi's My Hero Academia is drawing to a close, fans need not worry about any abrupt disappearance of the immensely popular superhero manga. Though it is winding down with its epilogue section, it's hard to imagine Shueisha closing the book on one of its most popular properties to date. If nothing else, the likes of Gundam or JoJo's Bizarre Adventure prove that such IPs can find more life outside the manga format.

Fans of My Hero Academia are likely to feel trepidation at the manga's impending completion and future. However, given the number of spin-offs it's already received, it's unlikely the publisher will allow it to fall out of attention so soon.

While it's too soon to predict a full-blown sequel, My Hero Academia will likely see itself expanded in a variety of semi-canonical media to keep it going.

My Hero Academia Is a Goose with Plenty of Golden Eggs Left

Novel Spin-Offs Are a Common Way to Maintain Interest

Of the current shonen series in recent history, My Hero Academia stands out for having several manga spin-offs that ran in concert with Horikoshi's, such as Vigilantes and Team Up Mission. This is a strong indicator of the interest and investment publishers have in the setting that they'd go so far as to commission other authors and artists to keep building on it. In other words, while even the most successful of manga, like Fullmetal Alchemist, tend to finish and stay finished, Shueisha has already shown a history of pushing hard for My Hero Academia side stories.

While the exact nature of a post-manga continuation is up for speculation, one obvious avenue is novels. Several other big-name franchises have used this medium to provide informal sequels. JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, for example, has several short stories set after the conclusions of each Part, most significantly Purple Haze Feedback, set after Vento Aureo. The Gundam franchise, meanwhile, is rife with various novels, many of which even made the jump to animated form, such as Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn, and Hathaway's Flash. Even works like Chainsaw Man, of all manga, are afforded at least one novel to drum up interest.

My Hero Academia Is Already Too Big to End Forever

Popular Franchises Now Have a Tendency to Linger

While not advertised explicitly, it's clear that Shueisha still sees My Hero Academia as a golden goose franchise, and has no reason to forego further commercialization. On the contrary, with the manga essentially being "finished", the publisher is likely more invested than ever in expanding the series, now that it is no longer in danger of an early cancelation or rushed conclusion.

It must be also considered that the manga and anime industry has changed significantly over the past decade, becoming an unstoppable entertainment juggernaut. It's not a coincidence that all the biggest franchises of the recent past, Dragon Ball, Naruto, and Bleach, have given birth to sequels or continuations of some sort, so it's safe to say that their "successors", including My Hero Academia, will do the same.

With the manga possessing some of the most recognizable characters in the industry today, the natural business decision would be for My Hero Academia to see more prequels and continuations to cash in on their widespread popularity, novels or otherwise.