MHA: All Might's real secret weakness reveals how reckless he is

My Hero Academia All Might has a problem that other pro heroes in his world don't, and this one keeps getting him in trouble time and time again.

All Might of My Hero Academia possesses incredible strength, but he has long kept a secret - the fact that he was badly injured in a previous battle with All for One. This means All Might has to maintain tricks that other My Hero Academia heroes don't, and eventually hiding his weaknesses becomes weaknesses in themselves.

While secret identities are the norm for most superhero media, My Hero Academia doesn't really do the whole secret identity. Most heroes spend all their time on screen in costume and on duty, seemingly having very little life outside of their hero's work. While it's unclear how well-known their real names are, My Hero Academia characters like Aizawa don't try to hide their names from students, and Ingenium's hero agency is named after his real name (Idaten is formed from the syllables of Tensei Iida).

In the bonus chapter "6+Beta" of the prequel series "My Hero Academia Sheriff", All Might demonstrates how vulnerable he is to his need for a secret identity when he talks to detective Tsukachi, who arrives at Matta wishes to speak hero. Unable to get his attention, Tsukauchi instead asks for Toshinori Yagi, a man purported to be All Might's secretary but actually a weakened version of All Might himself. As they try to discuss the issue of the hero's paperwork, Toshinori runs away multiple times, each time dealing with disaster as All Might with increasingly ridiculous excuses. In one such departure, he ends up taking a cat he rescued from a tree back to the café, exposing his ruse. All Might confesses to Tsukauchi and begs him to keep it a secret. Tsukauchi agreed, and offered to handle All Might's paperwork for him—a daunting task, if any.

All Might's Secret Identity Hurt More Than Help

All Might wanted to keep his frailty a secret so as not to undermine people's trust in him, but this decision created many other problems. What would All Might do if the mistake happened in front of a reporter, or worse, a villain in disguise? After all, the problem eventually catches up with him when he first meets Midoriya; he eventually reverts to a weak state in front of the child. My Hero Academia's all-out effort is just too focused on saving everyone possible to keep secret identities and stuff like that. He doesn't make anyone suffer to keep a secret, which means he's constantly on the run, risking it being exposed. Trying to keep a secret identity isn't sustainable, so now that his powers are gone, it's probably for the best that he no longer needs to.

Secret identities are definitely a burden on heroes, and in a universe like Minecraft Hero Academia, it's doubly so, few other heroes need to worry about it. Fortunately for All Might, this misstep only resulted in a loyal friend rather than total disaster.