Ochako Uraraka, one of the most popular students in My Hero Academia and a main love interest to the main character Izuku Midoriya, was originally going to have a much different design and set of powers. Many manga characters undergo changes from their initial conception to their first appearance on the page but few undergo as radical an alteration. Her initial character was so fully realized that she actually became a completely different character introduced in the first chapters of the series.
My Hero Academia is a manga series written by Kohei Horikoshi that takes place in a world where most people have a superpower called a Quirk. Given the proliferation of powers in the general public, being a professional hero is a respected career. The main character of the series is Izuku Midoriya, aka Deku, a high schooler enrolled in UA High, a school for teenagers who want to become professional heroes. Ochako Uraraka is one of the students in his class who has romantic feelings for Deku. She has the power to nullify gravity for any object that she touches. Over the course of the series she grows and learns to use her power in very creative ways in battle. Her original power would have made this development a bit more difficult.
In the extra pages of Volume 1 of the manga, Horikoshi revealed that Ochako’s role was originally going to be filled by Yu Takeyama, a character who in the final manga became the pro hero Mt. Lady. Horikoshi mentions that he decided against this initial plan because he thought focusing so in-depth on someone whose Quirk was only being able to grow their body would eventually become too dark. In initial sketches, Yu’s design was also different than how she would appear in the manga, and would eventually be given to yet another character, Yui Kodai a student in a different class from Deku and Ochako at UA.
This is a somewhat shocking revelation as Yu and Ochako are extremely different in many different respects. In terms of physical appearance, Ochako is quite small whereas Mt. Lady is somewhat tall and can grow to much larger heights using her Quirk. Their Quirks are extremely different as well, with Mt. Lady’s Quirk only affecting her own body and Ochako’s Quirk being able to affect anything she touches. This opens up Uraraka’s Quirk to much more flexible uses in combat scenarios, enabling her to act as both a support to her allies and an unpredictable fighter in her own right.
Surely, if Horikoshi went with his original plans for Uraraka, he would have been able to make her as compelling as the version that was ultimately included. However, the changes made to the character before the final version all seem to be very positive, letting Ochako be much more interesting and fun to watch than a version of Mt. Lady might have been in her place. But it is still interesting to imagine what My Hero Academia would have been like if Horikoshi had gone with the original version of Uraraka instead.
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Author: Benjamin Sockol
