sky from a ship

Part One - Character Study

There are many discussions out there about how much quirks "control" or drive a person versus how much a person's personality and character at birth drives their quirk. The discussion is especially common with villains, but I think when it comes to AFO, it's largely irrelevant. He is more quirk than human to begin with.

AFO as a person has very limited emotional depth and personality (311). He consciously built his personality around a fictional character. He requires other vessels because he doesn't have enough emotion or strong will (305, 408). He only exhibits any emotion after we know he had been "contaminated" by his connection with Shigaraki. Before even getting into the theory proper, I want to point out that lacking a strong will is NOT merely a sign of being a villain. We have seen plenty of villains with extremely strong wills and feelings that have been acknowledged by the main characters. Giving villains a strong will and emotions are how Horikoshi humanizes them. AFO is unique in that he lacks these for the most part. From very early on, Horikoshi has very intentionally presented AFO as apart not just from the heroes but from any other significant villain with depth.

AFO does frequently present himself as something other than human, and while this could be wishful thinking or him trying too hard to be that "Demon Lord", there are plenty of instances in the story where it seems that he genuinely is not quite human. 1) This is even reflected in his appearance (entirely white and washed-out with blank, matte eyes without irises, etc) and his mannerisms. He isn't depicted with facial expressions or any semblance of emotions until he decides to be All For One, the Demon Lord as a teenager (407, 408). In fact, he seems to become MORE human once he decides to become the Demon Lord.

2) His choices and attitudes are completely arbitrary. All we have is "he was born with nothing and decided everything therefore belonged to him". There doesn't seem to be any deeper logic, some originating hurt, behind his behavior. He picked a goal and an identity that seemed entertaining and just went with it.

3) Total inability to engage with fiction in a meaningful way, and given how much of this narrative centers around "stories", this is noteworthy. He latches onto one particular element of Captain Hero as opposed to engaging with the story as a whole and getting any meaning out of it (193, 333, 407).

4) He lacks the most basic human emotions. Hawks' and Endeavor's commentary on how something missing in him were not merely "o he's a villain" comments, but a reflection on the character as Horikoshi writes him. He is fundamentally incapable of experiencing his own emotions (beyond limited ones) and therefore relies on others. We see him clearly excited in 333 when he is finally starting to feel something due to his connection with Shigaraki.

Despite the fact that he can objectively manipulate people, he has a very limited understanding of human relationships. This is seen not only in his constant surprise/confusion over totally normal human behavior by others, most notably by Machia (382/383), but in his very language. When he says he loves Yoichi (193), the Japanese he uses is abnormal: 愛する is VERY rarely used despite it being the most widely-known form of the word; it's like he just used whatever word he heard first without understanding the meaning behind it. The same goes for how freely he uses the word friend (193, 333).

5) He's been acting for most of his life, not just as the "Demon Lord", but as a human at all. There are suggestions that he tries to act like other people (116) and offhand comments about human behavior as if he has to study it (234). Granted, these could be interpreted as generic villain-esque statements, but they hold much more meaning given what we know of his backstory. While his brother made an attempt to be a normal member of society, AFO made zero effort there for quite some time. He acted like a wild animal, and given that his brother was raised in the exact same environment, it can't be said it's just because of their situation. The term "people suit" very much applies to him.

6) Moving on to physical elements, he's already been brought back to life once. We are initially led to believe that he somehow survived/escaped (57, 59), but we later learn that he did actually die and was clearly dead for hours if not longer (408). If Kyudai Garaki really could resurrect the dead as a general rule, I think that would be a bigger plot point, so this is clearly something with AFO, not with the doctor.

7) He can live without his body as long as the quirk passes on, which is so powerful that he can just hijack other bodies. It's not like other quirks which, when stolen or passed on, allow people to live on as helpless ghosts in someone else's mind when their bodies die. (I would love to add something about quirk copies here, but there's so little explanation of them in the manga that this is a bit too fanon, but I will say I suspect that his copies are unique in that he is just duplicating HIMSELF)

8) He has an abnormal ability to withstand extreme mental situations. Even though characters in this series have absurd physical limits, mentally nobody is depicted as really super-human besides AFO. Most people could not control their thoughts to the extent he does (116). He also must control what is likely hundreds of quirk vestiges at all times when awake, given that when he sleeps, they take over his nightmares (287) and when he's weakened (356/57, 409), they can rebel. (Worth noting that chapter 287 explicitly explains how it is not guilt or anything of the sort). I'd argue that this mental power level is inhuman even within the context of the manga because it requires such detachment from what is considered fundamentally human.

9) Furthermore, he was wholly sentient and aware from birth (407). AFO as a newborn infant thought and acted like a 2-year-old, and throughout his entire childhood he acted much older than he was. It's possible Horikoshi simply did this to make him more "creepy", but it's so utterly bizarre that I think there's more behind it.

10) AFO's backstory is unique among all characters in that he is presented more like a monster, for lack of a better word, than a human. Unlike all other villains given a backstory, there is no attempt made to "humanize" him. Considering the fact that even other "unforgiveable" villains like Overhaul were still presented as slightly tragic characters who had potential to be good and/or had some redeeming qualities, this is unusual. While the circumstances of his birth could be considered tragic and it's even stated that his own brother doesn't have any faith in him any longer (407), AFO was never portrayed as a victim, never presented as someone readers could be sympathetic towards or relate to.

That said, the base nature of his quirk is "emptiness". He has virtually nothing other than what he takes from others. Therefore, the argument can be made that he is "controlled" by his quirk and that he can't help it because his quirk compels him, but I believe he is a unique entity in that he and his quirk are one and the same. There's no internal conflict there.

I'm not claiming that he is wholly inhuman, as he does have some very basic human tendencies (needing attention, though arguably from him, it's rooted in an infant need to survival and not the kind of attention-seeking kids and adults want) I suspect that simply by living in the world, he does have some semblance of humanity, either from his connection to his brother or because he has been acting long enough.

AFO, as of right now, still does not have a name. 407 /408 made it very clear that "Shigaraki" was something he invented later in life (very likely with Dr. Garaki's influence given the similarities). He was the one to name his brother, Yoichi. I suspect that either: (a) he genuinely has no name other than AFO because I can definitely see Yoichi just not naming him back OR (b) Yoichi gave him a name in return, one he alone knows, and Yoichi using this name will be part of AFO's downfall. If he has a name, and Yoichi uses it, AFO will be called back to whatever slight sliver of humanness he has.

Part Two (theory, speculative territory)

There is a possibility that AFO and Yoichi are literally two halves of a whole, the human and the human manifestation of the first quirk. OFA is the ghostly remnant of AFO, and neither is complete without the other. Perhaps as the original quirk, it truly was meant to be "kind" as Yoichi said, but it needed a human element to function as such. Because they diverged in the womb, we ended up with AFO the person/quirk.

1) The terms "One for All" and "All for One" are generally said together as a single phrase outside of the manga, and this seems to be the case within the Captain Hero comic that AFO got the names from.

2) AFO is perhaps so obsessed with "owning" Yoichi because he feels incomplete without him. He might not know why, but he knows he needs to be with him, that without his brother, he's not "whole". The current known narrative is that he wants him back simply because Yoichi was the first thing he ever had or "owned" and therefore, he needs him back. I think we can all agree that he goes a tad too far there though (277), given that he seems to be having an ongoing narration to Yoichi in his head (333). As with other things, it could just be to up his creep factor, but it seems like there is possible something more going on.

3) AFO makes a comment about needing Yoichi in 409, though in the Japanese he explicitly says, "I can't do it without you" (my copy of Volume 40 is in the mail, so you'll just have to trust my memory on this until I get it and can update this post with an image). This could simply mean, "I can't go on without you", but it could just as easily mean that he needs Yoichi to be truly complete.

3) Their umbilical cords are connected to one another, not to the mother. This could simply be to demonstrate how connected by fate they are, but it could just as easily have a deeper meaning re: their individual identities.

4) The hand that grew over AFO's mouth in his new body is very likely Yoichi's (419). The 40th volume release included a note about how AFO kept Yoichi's hand for decades and carried it around. If this is the case, then Yoichi's hand grew from his own flesh. Yes, it seems like he chose to have his hand grow there, but if he can alter his appearance at will, then he would surely fix other issues with the body. This suggests, again, some deeper connection between him and Yoichi.

5) AFO's preferred vessels such as Nine and Tenko look very similar to his brother. He wants to inhabit a body that looks like Yoichi's, which is. Something. Sure, he did make an offhand comment suggesting he would have inhabited Hana's body if he got to her earlier, but narratively, the only definite examples we have are Yoichi clones. (just showing hrksh's Nine art here...we all know Shiggy)

Part Three (very speculative at this point)

NOW finally tying all of this back to the Singularity concept.

In chapter 193, Yoichi says we've already passed the singularity (特異点はとうに…過ぎてる), which is odd given that so many characters and readers seem to think we are moving towards that. This is well before Shigaraki's transformation, so unless he's referring to some yet-to-be-revealed secret about Deku himself, this is almost certainly referring to AFO, who Yoichi continues to have some weird mental connection with to some extent. If the singularity already happened with AFO, this probably happened either a) when he was brought back from the dead, or b) simply when he was born at all. Any understanding of the singularity has been misguided from the start.