Warning: Major spoilers from My Hero Academia's The Final War Arc ahead.
The Final War Arc of Kōhei Horikoshi's My Hero Academia manga series is certainly living up to the dark implications of the final arc's title as the battle between the heroes and archvillain All For One and his protege Shigaraki raises up the stakes as they claim some victims.
In My Hero Academia Chapter 362, Bakugo, pro hero Best Jeanist, and U.A.'s Big Three squad are the only ones remaining to hold All For One-controlled Shigaraki until Izuku Midoriya arrives with the power of One For All. Unfortunately, their defense wasn't enough to hold the line, and tragically, Bakugo loses his heart.
Based on spoilers from the manga revealed online, Bakugo looks clearly dead, and the manga doesn't leave much room for interpretation. However, some fans think that there's someone who might be able to bring Bakugo back to life, and that character is Eri.
So, can Eri bring Bakugo back to life? Before we dive further, let's take a look at Eri's abilities and whether or not her Quirk can actually bring a dead person back to life.
What are Eri's abilities?
Eri's Quirk is Rewind, which allows her to reverse a living person's body back to a previous state, allowing her to make her target physically younger, undo bodily modifications, and heal injuries. She has ever shown the power to rewind someone's body to a point before they existed.
The source of Eri's Quirk's power is found in the horn on her head, and the size of the horn determines the strength of her power. Her Quirk is considered to be an accumulation-type, which means the power it emits has to build up over a period before she can use it.
As a result of Eri's Quirk mutating her body, her bood is able to attack someone's Quirk and negate its activation by reversing the target's evolution before the point of the Quirk phenomenon.
According to Eraser Head, her Quirk can even rewind the bodies of indviduals who have lost their Quirks and restore them. However, Eraser Head explained that the Quirk only works on people, not on things, so that means that Eri cannot use her Quirk on time as it's not a living thing. This also means that it's not something that can be easily trained.
Eri used her Quirk when she erased her father from existence, "healed" Deku to a point where One for All hadn't damaged his limbs in his battle against Overhaul, and when she brought back Mirio's abilities following the erasure of his Quirk.
Can Eri's Quirk bring back the dead?
Eri's Rewind Quirk is capable of reversing the state of any living being to an earlier point in existence. In Chapter 161, Aizawa mentioned that her Quirk can only affect an individual's physical state, so she can't meddle with spiritual entities. However, to many fans, this still remains unclear as the world of My Hero Academia might have a different set of rules compared to reality.
It's known that her Quirk can only affect the physical state of those she is in contact with or within her vicinity. If a person does have a soul, can her Quirk change their state? Would their soul still be near its physical body upon death? Or will they be near enough to be affected by her Quirk?
However, assuming that an individual does not have a soul and death is just another physical state of the body in the world of the shonen series, then theoretically she could.
Although we've seen Eri's Quirk erase a person's existence completely, as revealed in Chapter 156, when her father accidentally touched her, she hasn't shown that her Quirk can bring back dead people back to life, so at this point, it's still unclear if Eri's Quirk has the power to bring back the dead.
Will Eri bring Bakugo back to life?
My Hero Academia fans believe that if there's one character who can bring Bakugo back to life, it would be Eri. However, at this point, we still don't know if Kōhei Horikoshi will take his shonen story to this direction.
The manga made it clear that Bakugo is actually dead, but will Eri's Quirk be able to bring him back to life? As mentioned above, that would depend on the physical rules of the world of My Hero Academia. Since Eri's Quirk is known to only work on living indviduals, and Bakugo is no longer "living", then it's probably impossible for Eri to bring Bakugo back to life.
However, if Bakugo is still somehow in the process of dying, and there's still a glimmer of life in his body, then Eri's Quirk can probably save him.
For now, we'll have to wait for the next My Hero Academia chapter to come out to find out more.
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