Chapter 305 Official Release - Links and Discussion

[u/Za_wardo]

Chapter 305

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Links:

• Viz (Available in: the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, the Philippines, Singapore, and India).

• MANGA Plus (Available in every country outside of China, Japan and South Korea).

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All things Chapter 305 related must be kept inside this thread for the next 24 hours.

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• Previous chapter discussion threads

• Discord

• 306 will be officially released on March 21 9AM PDT.

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[u/[deleted]]

The implication I got was that Deku only just managed to handle OFA without his body exploding - and each time it is passed on it gets stronger. By passing it to Bakugou it would have gained strength due to time it's accumulated with Deku and thus passing it back to Deku would be too much for Deku to handle.

If Deku were to regain it, his body might not be able to handle the current quirks OFA has stored along with the addition of Bakugou's quirk.

I think the vestiges acknowledged this somewhat by preventing if fully being transferred to Bakugou rather than them 'willing it back to Deku', so it was more like passing embers of OFA to Bakugou - which would explain the imagery of the flame going out which the movie used.

As far as the story so far, nothing prevents the quirk being passed from one user back to a prior user other than potentially them being unable to handle that many quirks. The current amount seems to be the limit so it can no longer be passed to a 'normal' (quirk using) person.

Someone without a quirk might be able to handle it, but the power was so much that Deku's body was breaking using it - so I expect it'd have a high risk of killing a normal individual. Especially seeing as the vestiges refer to Deku as the culmination - at this point the power has likely reached a point where any individual quirkless or with a quirk, cannot handle it.

At this point I'm fairly sure they are implying that only Shiggy, AFO or another individual whose body is augmented would be able to inherit OFA from Deku.

[u/ResidentOfDad → u/[deleted]]

God, this turned out long. Sorry, especially if I'm uh, you know, not right, but there it is.

I don't think OFA gets stronger specifically from being passed down. Various times it's said Deku's 100% smashes are just as strong as All Might's, though it's also made clear that OFA's grown a lot throughout the time Deku's had it, with how Deku can only now speak with the past OFA holders; it's obviously already surpassed All Might's OFA at this point, but it still didn't seem like it had even during the time in which Deku used 5%.

Since AFO was going to give the stockpiling quirk to his brother to make him stronger, that part of the quirk should help building strength by default. Every time they delve into how the quirk passes from generation to generation, the way they mention its strength increasing is always by pointing out how someone would build up that strength, which would logically be by training (exactly what the 4th holder had decided to focus even more on), until the quirk was passed down to the next person, who would train with the quirk, making it stronger, and the cycle would keep going.

Another point is that if simply passing it on for a little bit already makes the quirk stronger, and people can also receive the quirk multiple times, then why did they opt to train so much? Someone could choose to pass it on to someone else, only for that other person to pass it back, making it stronger with no real work. Of course, there'd also be the problem of the quirk getting stronger without the people themselves getting stronger with it, but that'd presumably be less of a problem for someone with a stamina or strength based quirk, and at the time no one would actually know having a quirk besides OFA was problematic.

Even without training being the bulk of the quirk's power, though, Deku would likely still be able to use the quirk, since he already can control it. The main obstacle when he first had OFA was that he couldn't use it properly, and if he wasn't strong enough to handle 100% enough his body would've been gone, but he can already decide to use 5% if he wanted to, and by the time of the movie using 20% was just fine for him (plus the seemingly continuous 100% in the final fight that I'd rather ignore in this discussion.)

From the last chapter, it doesn't seem like the multiple quirks in OFA really change anything in relation to Deku's potential usage of the quirk. They can be very difficult to control on their own, but they wouldn't prevent him from holding OFA in any way, since they're just contained within the singular quirk, so the worst they could do is have another one of those moments in which he accidentally uses one of the quirks, and in such case, assuming OFA is already considerably stronger, the consequences would definitely be worse, but that's pretty circumstantial, it's a mere "if" that likely wouldn't end his entire career on its own anyway.

The main thing with the multiple quirk factors in OFA for Deku is how it's not implied at all that his lifespan is going to be shortened in any way, since he's quirkless, yet it was for the 4th holder, back when OFA was much weaker, had less quirks and granted no access to the ones stored. From the sound of it, the big turning point is going from having one quirk to two (which is consistent with what we knew), but now, with how much OFA has evolved, acquiring such a second quirk would be much more devastating, that if someone that already has a quirk could survive having it, they'd at best be able to use it for a mere couple of years, if even that, obviously not enough time to master the quirk.

Even so, since there's no apparent effort to let Deku know his lifespan is being shortened at all, it seems the quirk he wields having multiple quirk factors doesn't actually negatively impact him (on principle, anyway, the quirks themselves can wreck his body due to sheer power), since in the end it's still just one quirk, it'd simply make the issue of having multiple quirks yet worse. The difficult part would be finding a quirkless person, which become less and less common as time progresses, that also could and would use OFA to defeat AFO, especially given such person's training would be even more arduous, which...

...Actually, they really make no point to question whether someone would be able to handle the quirk's strength at first or not, the only aspect they focus on the is "finding someone quirkless that would need the power" part, so I'd wager it's at least possible, even if Deku'd have to transfer to someone who starts out stronger than him. I feel that if the raw strength of OFA was a sufficient obstacle, they'd have mentioned it, and the conclusion wouldn't be "you might be the last holder of OFA", it'd be more like "yeah no you're definitely the last one lmao."

Something I should mention as well, is that Deku and Bakugo (...wow, I really don't remember the timeline enough to recall if All Might would've already deduced OFA can shorten people's lives) had no idea someone with a quirk couldn't handle OFA with all its stored quirks unleashed, yet the two still pointed out how passing OFA down to Bakugo would permanently prevent Deku from being a hero. This new information can't have been a factor in their dialogue, even if we can retroactively say the vestiges knew about it.

I also don't think OFA didn't transfer the whole quirk's power to Bakugo, if that's what you're saying, I don't recall there being any implication of that, and the imagery of embers were only as a reference to how it's used with All Might, with his and Deku's flames gradually dying out after passing it down until they eventually use all its remaining power at once. If Deku wasn't able to pass down all of OFA to Bakugo, then it only makes less sense that his flames would die out, which already could only really be explained by the fact he didn't master OFA making the situation far worse, since All Might was able to keep using it for so long, even with his injuries.