My Hero Academia: The 10 Grossest Anime Super Powers

The world of My Hero Academia sounds deceptively tame, especially if you're a fan of American superhero comics. The idea is that everyone in the world is, essentially, born an X-Man. People who don't have superpowers--or "quirks" as they're called here--are actually more rare than people who do, and as such, the world is populated by people with powers and abilities that seem completely bizarre--and occasionally downright disgusting--even by Marvel or DC Comics's standards.

To make things even stranger, the commonality of quirks in My Hero's society means that things like scientific augmentation are pretty rare. No one is getting Adamantium surgically grafted to their skeletons--instead, if they have metal parts, they're simply born with those metal parts. And, after generations, people's quirks have only gotten weirder, more specific, and of course, more horrifying.

We're taking a look--in no particular order--at the 10 grossest, most uncomfortable, or downright strangest quirks My Hero Academia has to offer.

Iida Tenya's quirk may run in the family (get it? Because he runs really fast?) but there's something inherently disgusting about being born with actual, real-deal engines embedded in your body. More than just exhaust pipes sticking out of his calves, Iida has spoken several times about his ability to "modify" the capacity of his engines--as if they were car parts and he was a mechanic--even though it apparently causes him a huge amount of physical pain. Yikes.

Sero's gimmick and hero name (Cellophane) are actually pretty cute--who wouldn't want to be saved by a tape-dispenser themed hero? But if you really think about it, the logistics of shooting "tape" (or a tape-like substance) out of your elbows is actually pretty disgusting. Not even getting into the nitty-gritty about what the tape is actually made from--what happens when it runs out? Can it run out? What do Sero's elbows look like on the inside? Just thinking about it makes our skin crawl.

We're really, really glad Shishikura isn't a student at UA, so we really don't have to think too much about him. Maybe one of the most disgusting quirks in the My Hero Academia universe, he can manipulate meat--as in human flesh--and reform it into Play-Doh-like clumps. Doing this apparently doesn't kill the person he balled up, even if it does apparently remove all their bones and organs for however long they're in meatball form. But still, it's flat out horrifying.

Tamaki may be the world's shyest and most easily embarrassed UA student, but that doesn't prevent him from having a really flashy and ultimately pretty gross quirk. His "manifest" means he can transform parts of his body to have characteristics of things he just ate--his fingers can become octopus tentacles or his palms can become clamshells, and so on. There are a lot of possibilities here and all of them are pretty unpleasant to look at and worse to think about.

Who doesn't want to watch a guy in a straight jacket grow his teeth out into giant, body-weight supporting blades?

The intent of Setsuna's quirk is obviously a nod at real-life reptiles and their ability to drop their tails when threatened, hence the "lizard tail splitter" name, but the translation doesn't really happen. Instead of an innocuous defense mechanism, Setsuna can split her entire body into individual pieces and control them--it's just really disturbing to look at.

It's lucky that Taneo decided to become a photo-journalist because his quirk is so insanely specific, and insanely gross, it wouldn't be good for much else. He can manifest camera lenses all over his body and then print out the images from a slit in his chest. If this is anything like Iida's engines, the lenses are just full-on mechanical and would probably cause him pain if they were tampered with.

Imagine a man that is also a centipede. Now make that mental image somehow even worse. Now you've got an idea of just how horrible it is to look at poor Juzo, aka Centipeder, who really is a very nice guy, but we absolutely do not want to think about what the rest of his body looks like when his head is an entire coiled up centipede.

Mezo's quirk is pretty specific--and not one that seems like it would be all that useful--but he's proven time and time again that that's not the case. The unfortunate part is that, in doing so, we've had to watch him wiggle his boneless, webbed up "tentacle" arms around all over the place. And if that wasn't bad enough, the fact that he can just manifest any body part he wants instead of hands, is pretty rough. Looking at arms that inexplicably end in an ear or a mouth is unpleasant to say the least.

Kirishima's quirk may not be that graphic--he can harden his body into an unbreakable state, vaguely reminiscent of X-Men's Colossus, except without the metal coating. The problem is that when he does harden himself up, his skin starts to look like it's stretched over rocks. This gets exponentially worse whenever he hardens specific parts of himself--like his eyes, for example--or when he enters his "final form" stage where even his teeth turn jagged and crystalline.