2016 My Hero Academia Episode 5 “What I Can Do for Now” Original Production Storyboard

My Hero Academia reached its fifth episode on May 1, 2016. Kohei Horikoshi's manga had been running for two years, and the series had not yet become the worldwide success it is today.

It marks the first appearance of Shota Aizawa, Eraser Head, who emerges from a sleeping bag to tell a room of teenagers that the world is unfair and they will have to go beyond. It is also where Izuku Midoriya first works out how to use his power without destroying himself. Given a single throw and the threat of expulsion, he concentrates One For All into a single fingertip. It works, breaking the finger instead of the arm. The series would go on for seven seasons and four films, and become one of the defining shōnen series of its era.

This lot is the final confirmation storyboard for Episode 5: the version circulated once the boards had been signed off and the episode locked. It is printed double-sided, an unusual format for anime storyboards, which are typically printed on one side so that pages can be laid out, viewed, and worked across simultaneously.