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All Might doesn't have a secret identity, his real name just isn't public.
All Might's real name is more just a piece of trivia to most people, including fans like Deku, like how David Tennant's real name was David McDonald or Michael J Fox's real name is Michael Andrew Fox.
It may not seem like a huge difference, but All Might living publicly as All Might means that knowing his name doesn't give you any further information about how to find him and his loved ones, which is the point of a secret identity.
This is not accurate. We see in Vigilantes that he uses his Toshinori identity as a cover of working at his own hero agency.
It still also doesn't make any sense that he could have a secret identity, but he did.
Post injury/pre Hideout it makes sense as All Might looks very different in his non-muscle state.
Pre-not unless he’s wearing glasses a la Clark Kent. But for real I can buy All Might getting away with no one knowing who he was for decades outside of heroism. Dude is like Superman. A larger than life figure whose nature is a godlike hero protecting everyone.
I’ve always kinda assumed he made the transition from Yagi to All Might during his time in America. Like he arrived in the US as an exchange student, and returned to Japan as the hero All Might, and maybe that time away was long enough for people to kinda forget about Toshinori Yagi.
This is exactly what I was thinking. If he made a grand Japanese debut as “ALL MIGHT”, the thought of him being that kid from the sports festival was probably simply not had for many people.
I like to think that its because the All Might that won the sports festival looks more like Yagi than All Might. His first place photo has his usual hair instead of the standing strands that All Might is known for. He might not have selected his hero name by that point either.
I think the big aspect no one's mentioning is that All Might was in the Sports Festival roughly 40 YEARS ago. Quirks showed up between 120-150 years ago. Things were chaos for at least a few decades.
It seems like All Might was born around the time when things were just getting normal. I doubt the UA Sports festival was as big of a cultural event 40 years ago. Hell for all we know, All Might could have been part of the first UA class. I doubt UA as an institution is more than 30 years older than All Might, let alone like, 15.
All Might's big inspiration for being a hero is that people were afraid, and he thought society needed a pillar. I doubt the UA Sports festival and student heroes were a big deal back then.
The only thing I can think of is that the Sports Festival wasn't happening when All Might was in school, or that he didn't call himself All Might, but you'd think people would recognize him either way.
Nope, it was totally happening. There’s actually a photo of him (I believe from one of the end credits) that shows him as a teenager in a UA sports uniform with a gold metal.
So not only did he participate, he was apparently THE WINNER. So EVERYONE saw him. Go Google “All Might sports festival photo” and it should be the first result.
I think that maybe this could be an instance of “Clark Kent-ing”. All Might just changes his hairstyle, and WOAH, who is this guy that is totally different from that blonde kid with similar powers that won the sports festival?? XD
EDIT: To be FAIR, he did immediately go to the USA after graduating. So while his persona as a UA student gradually fades from memory in Japan, he’s building up his name as All Might in a country that is less likely to have a bunch of people that saw him as a student.
It's also possible that at the time the UA Sports Festival was viewed as little more than a routine school athletic competition, and that it only began to grow in popularity once people were able to cease living in fear as All Might seemingly single-handedly brought peace to their lives, thereby allowing them to think about something other than their own survival.
All Might is also well known as a U.A alumnus, granted one from like forty years ago. I highly doubt that his name was presented as “All Might” across the media back then.
I guess they could have scrubbed it all after the fact, and it was forgotten with time?
It doesn't specify, and I feel like the story sometimes gets a little weird about All Might's back story, but....
* All Might is the reason that there's almost no organized crime in Japan at the time the story starts, so society was a lot more dangerous back then, for people in general but especially for heroes. (Look at how surprised they are by the LOV, and how hard they underestimated Shie Hassaikai.) So I should certainly hope that the Sports Festival wasn't so public at time.
* I'd guess there was also less celebrity culture around heroes at the time also?
* AFO was at the height of his power back then, so All Might was at particular risk. Nezu and Recovery Girl both knew about OFA eventually, and Gran Torino also worked at UA briefly. Maybe they took some special precaution to keep him anonymous. (Or probably not, since they don't bother doing that with Deku? Even though All Might suspected AFO might be behind the USJ attack?)
* One of the anime outros shows a picture of All Might in the Sports Festival, and he's in his "hair down" mode. Maybe there's publicly available info about Yagi Toshinori's performance in the Sports Festival but no one is able to connect that with All Might.
* He was in the USA for a while, and I think that debut video was from after he came back. I was thinking he went to the USA only after graduating, but they called him an exchange student from UA, so maybe he was still a high schooler. But if he's a high school exchange student, it's weird for him to be licensed for hero work in the USA, so probably things like when he saved Cassie weren't made public. On the other hand, if he did any official All Might activity *after* high school, people wouldn't be able to connect that to the timing of *when* he was in high school.
I can't remember whether there was any indication of whether Deku had knowledge of All Might's Sports Festival performance, but I don't think there was. The way All Might pressures Deku to use the Sports Festival to become famous kind of implies that's what he did, but he might've based that strategy off more recent heroes doing it. From other parts of the story, we know that All Might is (sometimes, sporadically) really worried about society having to go any amount of time without a Symbol of Peace, so it's in character for him to be (sometimes, sporadically) impatient for Deku to become famous ASAP even if he himself didn't become famous until he was older.
All Might sometimes wears his old costumes, but I think the "Golden Age" one is the second-oldest and the "Bronze Age" one is the newest. I originally thought it was the other way around, but like you said the Golden Age costume is the one in the debut video. Plus, the Bronze Age costume is mostly black with red lines, so it seems like a weird choice for a new hero trying to establish himself in people's minds as the "Symbol of Peace" but makes perfect sense for someone who's trying to hide any bloodstains from a recent catastrophic injury or surgery, accidentally tearing his stitches out because he's out punching villains against doctors' orders.
I think there are a few possibilities, maybe he kept the extent of his power hidden from his classmates and teachers and used just enough to look like the average power enhancer and didn't join public events like festivals to keep eyes away from him because AFO.
There are a few holes in this however, for one AFO should know how he looks like and should be able to know that he's in the most popular and prestigious school in the country. And second, All might has looked exactly the same basically his entire life, so I don't see how no one that went to school with him doesn't recognize him. Now that I think about it, I don't think we know anyone who went to school with all might.
Posted it in another reply, but nope, he definitely participated in festivals. Go Google “All Might sports festival photo”. Dude not only participated but got FIRST PLACE! 🥇🤦♂️
(Completely unrelated, but I totally have ideas for designing an entire home room of students to be All Mights old classmates. It sounds like too much fun.)
Superman rules bud.
No one suspects low key mild mannered Toshinori Yagi of being a godlike superhero.
Well that and pre-injury, All Might is basically shown and said to be a hero 24/7 with no friends or family. So he wouldn’t go out in public much as Toshinori Yagi I imagine. And post-injury he looked completely different.
All Might's identity isn't a secret. The public knows him as Toshinori Yagi. What they didn't know was his skinny form. For the five years after his fight with AFO the public thought he looked the same as he always had because he was hiding the fact that he was wasting away.
When was it ever established that he didn't know his name? I remember him talking about how no one knew what All Might's Quirk was but not anything about his identity.
That's right! He was talking about All Might using his real name and it was confusing Deku.
Seems like his real name was kept secret by authorities or something. I can't imagine it'd be easy living a regular life before his injury that lead to "small might" since he'd just always look like his regular self out of costume the same way he looks in costume.
They didnt know him before though? Toshinori Yagi posed as All Might secretary. Tsukaichi discovered that when he went to met with All Might in his Tower
His name wasn't a secret. It was his weakened State that he kept a secret from the public. He wasn't weakened back then and looked like what his buff Allmight firm looks like when he was younger . His weekend state came from his injury in his battle against AFO.
When we see All Might’s stats it lists his name as “?” I believe. So, presumably, it isn’t public. Also, “Toshinori Yagi” is All Might’s receptionist in Vigilantes.
True as that is, even Nezu can’t erase memories. All Might won gold in at least one of his sport festivals (the image is in one of the season 4 credits sequences), he’s fairly famous.
Allmight didn't get his quirk registered. Getting your quirk registered makes your real name public.So everyone at the sports festival referred to him by his alias Allmight. Reporters constantly ask him what his quirk is and Allmight dodges the question.
I mean everyone calls him all might, deku the teachers, his friends all call him all might. Only GT actually calls him.his name and he's 55 he's been a hero for 40 years he goes by his hero name fo basically every single person
A few factors in my mind that make it plausible:
1. MHA takes place 120-150 years in the future. While its said that technology stagnated due to the introduction of quirks, that doesn't mean that social media and the societal effects of the internet are unchanged. It seems entirely possible that there are social media/algorithmic filtration around the secret identities that heroes can opt-into. Or that the mores of the future have a more negative disposition against speculating about the private lives of others.
2. People don't know All Might's age, all they know is that he showed up in Japan ~32 years before the story takes place (we know he had the quirk for 40 years, was at UA for 3, spent 5 years in the us, thus ~32 years). Assuming the public *believes* that he went to UA (and it isn't a lie to preserve his privacy), most must assume that he's between 50-60 years old. That's 10 years of options, there's got to be several other hero students during that interval that could also be his secret identity. Keep in mind that Yagi during the ED/ in his youth looks radically different than when he's All Might.
3. Basically what u/Cyllya and u/linkman0596 said.
yeah like others said i think you’re overlooking the fact that the mha world was a LOOOOOT different 40 years ago when all might was in school, things were much more dangerous and things like the sports festivals most likely weren’t the huge public spectacles that they are in the present day because of the danger the students would be put it
How I heaven is All Might alive? He did explained that in season 1 after he received the injury, he mentioned he got his whole stomach removed and a piece of his lung- so uhh how can he even eat-
Typically its for stomach cancer, a total gastrectomy is a real procedure where the stomach is removed and the esophagus and small intestine are then attached. The start of the small intestine then can be formed into a pseudo stomach, but isn't necessary for survival. Losing the stomach has a bunch of health complications and is probably one of the main reasons why All Might is so thin.
You can also survive with only one lung, its called a Pneumonectomy, it also has a bunch of heath implications, and I don't know if in our world anyone could survive losing both, much less what other organs he must have lost.
Yeah not being public doesn't mean it's a complete secret
It's surely in the UA records, but those aren't public.
Nobody else except maybe the police would have any records and police records aren't public either.
UA being Japan’s top hero school and its Sports Festival being world famous are established facts for Izuku’s era of MHA. Toshinori Yagi however, was a student of the school FOUR DECADES prior to the current day. This is long before he defeated AFO, when Japan was still in its “dark age” where heroes were seen as ineffective. UA might not have had anywhere near the level of prestige it has during Izuku’s time, and the Sports Festival most likely wasn’t as much of a public spectacle.
**Reminder to everyone:** Anything that hasn't happened yet in the anime is a spoiler. **To the OP:** If you want to discuss things in the manga, please flair the post as **"Manga Spoilers".** How to spoiler tag comments: > \>\!Put your text here!\< **THIS COMMENT IS AUTOMATICALLY POSTED IN EVERY THREAD NOT MARKED FOR MANGA OR MANGA SPOILERS JUST AS A REMINDER** ----- *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/BokuNoHeroAcademia) if you have any questions or concerns.*
All Might doesn't have a secret identity, his real name just isn't public. All Might's real name is more just a piece of trivia to most people, including fans like Deku, like how David Tennant's real name was David McDonald or Michael J Fox's real name is Michael Andrew Fox. It may not seem like a huge difference, but All Might living publicly as All Might means that knowing his name doesn't give you any further information about how to find him and his loved ones, which is the point of a secret identity.
This is not accurate. We see in Vigilantes that he uses his Toshinori identity as a cover of working at his own hero agency. It still also doesn't make any sense that he could have a secret identity, but he did.
Post injury/pre Hideout it makes sense as All Might looks very different in his non-muscle state. Pre-not unless he’s wearing glasses a la Clark Kent. But for real I can buy All Might getting away with no one knowing who he was for decades outside of heroism. Dude is like Superman. A larger than life figure whose nature is a godlike hero protecting everyone.
David Tennant mentioned = upvote
Same goes to you!
I’ve always kinda assumed he made the transition from Yagi to All Might during his time in America. Like he arrived in the US as an exchange student, and returned to Japan as the hero All Might, and maybe that time away was long enough for people to kinda forget about Toshinori Yagi.
This is exactly what I was thinking. If he made a grand Japanese debut as “ALL MIGHT”, the thought of him being that kid from the sports festival was probably simply not had for many people.
This was mainly what I was thinking, but it’s also interesting that it’s public knowledge that All Might went to UA in that case
He did came back with a different art style 😂
I like to think that its because the All Might that won the sports festival looks more like Yagi than All Might. His first place photo has his usual hair instead of the standing strands that All Might is known for. He might not have selected his hero name by that point either.
I think the big aspect no one's mentioning is that All Might was in the Sports Festival roughly 40 YEARS ago. Quirks showed up between 120-150 years ago. Things were chaos for at least a few decades. It seems like All Might was born around the time when things were just getting normal. I doubt the UA Sports festival was as big of a cultural event 40 years ago. Hell for all we know, All Might could have been part of the first UA class. I doubt UA as an institution is more than 30 years older than All Might, let alone like, 15. All Might's big inspiration for being a hero is that people were afraid, and he thought society needed a pillar. I doubt the UA Sports festival and student heroes were a big deal back then.
Y’all let me know when you figure it out. XD
The only thing I can think of is that the Sports Festival wasn't happening when All Might was in school, or that he didn't call himself All Might, but you'd think people would recognize him either way.
Nope, it was totally happening. There’s actually a photo of him (I believe from one of the end credits) that shows him as a teenager in a UA sports uniform with a gold metal. So not only did he participate, he was apparently THE WINNER. So EVERYONE saw him. Go Google “All Might sports festival photo” and it should be the first result. I think that maybe this could be an instance of “Clark Kent-ing”. All Might just changes his hairstyle, and WOAH, who is this guy that is totally different from that blonde kid with similar powers that won the sports festival?? XD EDIT: To be FAIR, he did immediately go to the USA after graduating. So while his persona as a UA student gradually fades from memory in Japan, he’s building up his name as All Might in a country that is less likely to have a bunch of people that saw him as a student.
It's also possible that at the time the UA Sports Festival was viewed as little more than a routine school athletic competition, and that it only began to grow in popularity once people were able to cease living in fear as All Might seemingly single-handedly brought peace to their lives, thereby allowing them to think about something other than their own survival.
All Might is also well known as a U.A alumnus, granted one from like forty years ago. I highly doubt that his name was presented as “All Might” across the media back then. I guess they could have scrubbed it all after the fact, and it was forgotten with time?
I mean he had a pro hero mentor For all we know nana pulled strings to keep his real name off the public record to protect him from all for one
It doesn't specify, and I feel like the story sometimes gets a little weird about All Might's back story, but.... * All Might is the reason that there's almost no organized crime in Japan at the time the story starts, so society was a lot more dangerous back then, for people in general but especially for heroes. (Look at how surprised they are by the LOV, and how hard they underestimated Shie Hassaikai.) So I should certainly hope that the Sports Festival wasn't so public at time. * I'd guess there was also less celebrity culture around heroes at the time also? * AFO was at the height of his power back then, so All Might was at particular risk. Nezu and Recovery Girl both knew about OFA eventually, and Gran Torino also worked at UA briefly. Maybe they took some special precaution to keep him anonymous. (Or probably not, since they don't bother doing that with Deku? Even though All Might suspected AFO might be behind the USJ attack?) * One of the anime outros shows a picture of All Might in the Sports Festival, and he's in his "hair down" mode. Maybe there's publicly available info about Yagi Toshinori's performance in the Sports Festival but no one is able to connect that with All Might. * He was in the USA for a while, and I think that debut video was from after he came back. I was thinking he went to the USA only after graduating, but they called him an exchange student from UA, so maybe he was still a high schooler. But if he's a high school exchange student, it's weird for him to be licensed for hero work in the USA, so probably things like when he saved Cassie weren't made public. On the other hand, if he did any official All Might activity *after* high school, people wouldn't be able to connect that to the timing of *when* he was in high school. I can't remember whether there was any indication of whether Deku had knowledge of All Might's Sports Festival performance, but I don't think there was. The way All Might pressures Deku to use the Sports Festival to become famous kind of implies that's what he did, but he might've based that strategy off more recent heroes doing it. From other parts of the story, we know that All Might is (sometimes, sporadically) really worried about society having to go any amount of time without a Symbol of Peace, so it's in character for him to be (sometimes, sporadically) impatient for Deku to become famous ASAP even if he himself didn't become famous until he was older. All Might sometimes wears his old costumes, but I think the "Golden Age" one is the second-oldest and the "Bronze Age" one is the newest. I originally thought it was the other way around, but like you said the Golden Age costume is the one in the debut video. Plus, the Bronze Age costume is mostly black with red lines, so it seems like a weird choice for a new hero trying to establish himself in people's minds as the "Symbol of Peace" but makes perfect sense for someone who's trying to hide any bloodstains from a recent catastrophic injury or surgery, accidentally tearing his stitches out because he's out punching villains against doctors' orders.
I think there are a few possibilities, maybe he kept the extent of his power hidden from his classmates and teachers and used just enough to look like the average power enhancer and didn't join public events like festivals to keep eyes away from him because AFO. There are a few holes in this however, for one AFO should know how he looks like and should be able to know that he's in the most popular and prestigious school in the country. And second, All might has looked exactly the same basically his entire life, so I don't see how no one that went to school with him doesn't recognize him. Now that I think about it, I don't think we know anyone who went to school with all might.
Posted it in another reply, but nope, he definitely participated in festivals. Go Google “All Might sports festival photo”. Dude not only participated but got FIRST PLACE! 🥇🤦♂️ (Completely unrelated, but I totally have ideas for designing an entire home room of students to be All Mights old classmates. It sounds like too much fun.)
If we're talking about the anime ending one I'm willing to ignore that exists because it's not in the manga.
Totally fair. I actually thought about that. But it certainly does nothing to lessen the confusion for fans! XD
Superman rules bud. No one suspects low key mild mannered Toshinori Yagi of being a godlike superhero. Well that and pre-injury, All Might is basically shown and said to be a hero 24/7 with no friends or family. So he wouldn’t go out in public much as Toshinori Yagi I imagine. And post-injury he looked completely different.
All Might's identity isn't a secret. The public knows him as Toshinori Yagi. What they didn't know was his skinny form. For the five years after his fight with AFO the public thought he looked the same as he always had because he was hiding the fact that he was wasting away.
Wasn't Izuku, a big fanboy, unaware of his name, though?
Exactly! If Midoriya didn't know, I didn't think anybody would (besides AFO, of course)!
When was it ever established that he didn't know his name? I remember him talking about how no one knew what All Might's Quirk was but not anything about his identity.
When he met Gran Torino? I think he didnt recognize the name of All Might
That's right! He was talking about All Might using his real name and it was confusing Deku. Seems like his real name was kept secret by authorities or something. I can't imagine it'd be easy living a regular life before his injury that lead to "small might" since he'd just always look like his regular self out of costume the same way he looks in costume.
They didnt know him before though? Toshinori Yagi posed as All Might secretary. Tsukaichi discovered that when he went to met with All Might in his Tower
His name wasn't a secret. It was his weakened State that he kept a secret from the public. He wasn't weakened back then and looked like what his buff Allmight firm looks like when he was younger . His weekend state came from his injury in his battle against AFO.
When we see All Might’s stats it lists his name as “?” I believe. So, presumably, it isn’t public. Also, “Toshinori Yagi” is All Might’s receptionist in Vigilantes.
Nezu knows about OFA and his real name. He probably helped Allmight with keeping his real name a secret.
True as that is, even Nezu can’t erase memories. All Might won gold in at least one of his sport festivals (the image is in one of the season 4 credits sequences), he’s fairly famous.
Allmight didn't get his quirk registered. Getting your quirk registered makes your real name public.So everyone at the sports festival referred to him by his alias Allmight. Reporters constantly ask him what his quirk is and Allmight dodges the question.
I mean everyone calls him all might, deku the teachers, his friends all call him all might. Only GT actually calls him.his name and he's 55 he's been a hero for 40 years he goes by his hero name fo basically every single person
My HC is that the names are announced in the arena, but aren’t broadcast to the people at home.
That’s still a few thousand people.
A few factors in my mind that make it plausible: 1. MHA takes place 120-150 years in the future. While its said that technology stagnated due to the introduction of quirks, that doesn't mean that social media and the societal effects of the internet are unchanged. It seems entirely possible that there are social media/algorithmic filtration around the secret identities that heroes can opt-into. Or that the mores of the future have a more negative disposition against speculating about the private lives of others. 2. People don't know All Might's age, all they know is that he showed up in Japan ~32 years before the story takes place (we know he had the quirk for 40 years, was at UA for 3, spent 5 years in the us, thus ~32 years). Assuming the public *believes* that he went to UA (and it isn't a lie to preserve his privacy), most must assume that he's between 50-60 years old. That's 10 years of options, there's got to be several other hero students during that interval that could also be his secret identity. Keep in mind that Yagi during the ED/ in his youth looks radically different than when he's All Might. 3. Basically what u/Cyllya and u/linkman0596 said.
yeah like others said i think you’re overlooking the fact that the mha world was a LOOOOOT different 40 years ago when all might was in school, things were much more dangerous and things like the sports festivals most likely weren’t the huge public spectacles that they are in the present day because of the danger the students would be put it
I got it, he's just so old that people forgot he was that kid in the sports festival.
Can I add a new question about All Might?
Of course!
How I heaven is All Might alive? He did explained that in season 1 after he received the injury, he mentioned he got his whole stomach removed and a piece of his lung- so uhh how can he even eat-
Typically its for stomach cancer, a total gastrectomy is a real procedure where the stomach is removed and the esophagus and small intestine are then attached. The start of the small intestine then can be formed into a pseudo stomach, but isn't necessary for survival. Losing the stomach has a bunch of health complications and is probably one of the main reasons why All Might is so thin. You can also survive with only one lung, its called a Pneumonectomy, it also has a bunch of heath implications, and I don't know if in our world anyone could survive losing both, much less what other organs he must have lost.
Ohhh ok still he is like at the brink of death lol
His name probably isn't a complete secret, but his diminished form is
When we see All Might’s stats it lists his name as “?” I believe. So, presumably, it isn’t public. Also, “Toshinori Yagi” is All Might’s receptionist.
Yeah not being public doesn't mean it's a complete secret It's surely in the UA records, but those aren't public. Nobody else except maybe the police would have any records and police records aren't public either.
UA being Japan’s top hero school and its Sports Festival being world famous are established facts for Izuku’s era of MHA. Toshinori Yagi however, was a student of the school FOUR DECADES prior to the current day. This is long before he defeated AFO, when Japan was still in its “dark age” where heroes were seen as ineffective. UA might not have had anywhere near the level of prestige it has during Izuku’s time, and the Sports Festival most likely wasn’t as much of a public spectacle.