Crimson Riot

Spiky red hair juts forward in a single point and sweeps backward in two more, above a sturdy build. A three-piece metal mask covers his mouth and nose.

The rest is crimson. He wears a long red cape with a collar that rises high and spreads wide, its edges ripped. His Quirk leaves a visible mark of its own when he uses it, since hardening his hair blackens whatever part he has hardened.

Willpower outranks everything else in his thinking, including the Quirk a person happens to be born with. The word he reaches for is manly, and he is careful to define it: for him the term describes a state of mind, meaning determination and courage, so it carries no gender at all and turns up in women exactly as readily as in men.

Underneath that conviction sits an old wound. Early in his career he hesitated for a moment and civilians died because of it. The experience left him more frightened of watching innocent people die than of dying himself, and the irony is that heroics powered by that particular fear built him a name as a fearless man who never hesitated to run at danger.

Eijiro Kirishima reaches his lowest point after failing to help two schoolmates menaced by a gigantic villain. Seeing his own cowardice for what it is, he abandons the idea of becoming a hero. At home, furious with himself, he hurls a book at his bookshelf; another book topples off and knocks a hologram projector to the floor. The device opens, and Crimson Riot appears in a recorded interview.

In it, the hero dismantles his own daredevil reputation. He admits he feels fear whenever he puts his life on the line and has no patience for anyone who claims otherwise, then says the face of a dying person frightens him considerably more. His earlier failure to save lives that were within his grasp, he explains, is what keeps him from ever repeating the mistake. Asked by the reporter what a manly spirit means to him, he answers that it is the attitude a person carries in their soul and has nothing to do with confidence or the absence of fear. He saves people because that is what a Hero is, and having made the decision he has to see it through whatever gets in the way. A manly spirit, he concludes, is a life lived without regret. Eijiro takes the words to heart, resolves to fix his attitude, and tries again rather than let fear rule him.

The debt surfaces later during the Vs. Hero Killer Arc, when Class 1-A choose their hero names. Eijiro picks Red Riot. Midnight catches the resemblance at once, and Eijiro confirms it is a tribute, calling Crimson Riot old school but a man among heroes.