Captain Hero

Captain Hero is a long-running comic series that follows its namesake through a war with the Demon Lord. The villain does succeed in seizing the world at one point in the story, and the hero has to fight through considerable pain before he finally puts his enemy down and rescues everyone. Its existence can be traced back at least to the childhood of Yoichi Shigaraki and his older brother, All For One, who read the issues side by side.

The comic works less as an object than as a blueprint for two opposing worldviews. Yoichi rooted for the title character; his older brother preferred the Demon Lord. Yoichi read the run to its conclusion and watched the villain lose. All For One quit after Volume 3, put off by what he saw as a tired, predictable resolution to the whole hero and villain business.

Those choices hardened into ideology. All For One came to want the Demon Lord's role for himself and a world shaped to match the comic's darkest chapters, while Yoichi took up the hero's cause and spent his life trying to stop his brother. All For One also had contempt for the series' filler antagonists, dismissing them as jobber characters written only to make the Demon Lord look strong.

All For One and Yoichi Shigaraki are the two readers the series is known through. The comic first appears in chapter 193 of the manga and episode 90 of the anime, with further references in chapter 333, episode 140, chapter 354, and episode 147.