Hero Analysis for the Future

Izuku Midoriya keeps a running series of notebooks, at least thirteen of them, filled with what he makes of the heroes he watches and the Quirks they use. Class 1-A eventually joins the roster of subjects alongside the professionals.

The writing is thorough enough to leave an impression on All Might, who needed only a quick flip through volume thirteen to see it. The physical books come from the Kokuyo Campus line, rendered in the series under the altered names Campos and Kukuyo. Volumes one through twelve turn up in THE DAY and in Episode 13.5, and by the time of I a notebook labeled No. 42 sits on his desk, a nod to the count of manga volumes.

Observation is only half the purpose. Izuku also drafts his own future onto the pages: costume concepts, ways to approach a fight, moves he might one day finish building.

Later entries turn stranger and more personal. Ahead of the Final War he admits that he had been imagining what he would do with each classmate's Quirk if it were his to use.

The books belong to Izuku alone, and he guards them, since they hold years of study on heroes he looks up to. Katsuki Bakugo opened the series by seizing the thirteenth volume, scorching it, and throwing it away in front of him, though Izuku recovered it. That same battered notebook later received All Might's autograph after the Sludge Villain rescue.

Their contents surface repeatedly. In the mock battle against Katsuki, Izuku reveals he has the pages memorized, which lands badly with a rival who remembers the book and resents being outmaneuvered by someone he once dismissed. At the Sports Festival his classmates learn he has documented all of their Quirks, and the sheer detail unsettles most of them enough that they refuse to take any advantage from it.

Eight years on, Quirkless once more and teaching at U.A., he is still writing, turning the same attention now onto his own life and what his years as a hero taught him.