#speak-n

analysis? insane ramblings?? me looking too deep into things??? these all can be true. let’s just get into the meat and potatoes of this first and foremost.

quirk awakenings in my hero academia are usually defined by a quirk either gaining new abilities or going beyond the original scope of the quirk. an example of this is when toga found out she could use the quirks of people she transformed into, or dabi finding out he also had an ice aspect to his quirk similar to shoto. these awakenings are extremely rare, are only seem to happen during traumatic, life threatening circumstances.

one of the most recognizable things about aizawa is how his hair and capture weapon will float whenever he uses his quirk, and something i don’t think i’ve seen anyone else point out is the fact that in vigilantes, during the school days arc, teen aizawa’s erasure doesn’t do this at all.

these are two of the instances where we see teen aizawa use his quirk, and his hair and capture weapon don’t levitate like they usually do. “maybe they forgot,” and here’s the thing, i don’t think that’s the case? like i said earlier, aizawa’s floating hair and scarf are one of the most recognizable aspects of his design, to the point that in universe deku even points it out. betten court, the artist of vigilantes, had been drawing aizawa for 50+ chapters at this point, so i sincerely doubt he genuinely forgot to add this.

even here, for a second you think that his hair is floating here, but then you see that he’s actively moving and that’s why he’s hair is flowing backwards. almost like they’re tricking you into thinking that it’s floating before showing you what’s actually happening.

so, basically, back when aizawa was a teenager, his quirk didn’t do any sort of levitation effect. which, eventually, leads to this.

the first time we ever see aizawa’s quirk do the levitation effect, it’s during one of the most traumatic moments of his life, the garvey fight. this was specifically after he had witnessed shirakumo’s death.

and when do quirk awakenings usually happen? after extremely traumatic experiences. which was what aizawa had experienced just seconds before. keep in mind that aizawa was so on edge during the fight that he (supposedly) hallucinated shirakumo’s voice cheering him on. there was most likely multiple other physical things going on as a result of the stress and adrenaline rush, so a quirk awakening isn’t exactly too extreme here.

how does this aid his quirk? i dunno, but it falls into the quirk awakening category by virtue of the fact that it wasn’t something his quirk was thought to be capable of doing prior to the event. we aren’t sure if erasure worked differently when aizawa was younger.