If you stop watching My Hero Academia after the first episode of season seven, you can pretend that it never happened. But the death of this new hero is generally regarded by fans as one of the biggest fumbles in My Hero Academia’s story.
Star and Stripes was introduced in the best way possible in both the manga and the anime. Her arrival made manga readers hopeful. But after four chapters, manga readers were surprised that Star and Stripe was suddenly killed.
If this isn’t wasted potential, I don’t know what is. Even some minor Jujutsu Kaisen characters who were inevitably killed by Sukuna had more chapters. We could’ve at least seen Star and Stripe collaborate with the Japanese heroes against Shigaraki, but that wasn’t part of Kohei Horikoshi’s plans. Maybe the real reason she’s here is to show how powerful Shigaraki has become.
The first episode ended with Tiamat missiles coming after Shigaraki. Don’t be fooled, because that doesn’t mean Shigaraki dies or becomes heavily injured. He was able to evade those missiles by digging a hole, and then he leaped to touch Star and Stripe’s face.
Her quirk, New Order, is able to resist Shigaraki’s Decay. But in the end, she couldn’t stop Decay completely because of her quirk’s limits. New Order was also being stolen by Shigaraki. He didn’t win this fight either, since he couldn’t effectively take Star and Stripe’s quirk.
As she was decaying, Star and Stripe revealed that she had added a new rule to New Order. It would be unusable by Shigaraki because she commanded New Order to revolt against other quirks. Star and Stripe would die alongside her quirk, which couldn’t be preserved.
(featured image: Bones Studio)
