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My Hero Academia Manga Updated With Villain's New Name

The digital version of Weekly Shonen Jump updated last week's chapter with villain Daruma Ujiko's new name following backlash that led to the removal of the manga and anime series in China. The character's real name was changed to Kyudai Garaki in the update. The new name maintains elements from creator Kōhei Horikoshi's original name; "Kyudai" is written with the kanji for "ball" and "big" and "Garaki" takes the last three syllables of the villain's mentor's name "Shigaraki" while also including the kanji for "tree."

The character's original given name was revealed in the magazine last week as "Maruta Shiga," reopening wounds in China and Korea that lead to the series' manga and anime being pulled from bilibili and Tencent and the possible cancellation of the mobile game My Hero Academia: Strongest Hero by Chinese studio Xin Yuan.

"Maruta" was the code-name for human experimentation undertaken by the Imperial Japanese Army's Unit 731 during the Second Sino-Japanese War of World War II. The Chinese victims of the experiments were called "maruta," the Japanese word for "logs" as a reference to the facilities cover story that it was a lumber mill. Victims, including children, the elderly, pregnant women, and the mentally handicapped, were purposefully infected with diseases, dissected, lobotomized, and amputated while still alive. The manga villain was shown to engage in human experimentation himself.

Shueisha and Horikoshi both apologized on Friday and Shueisha promised that "going forward, we intend to devote our energies toward deepening our understanding of a variety of historical and cultural matters." Both the publisher and creator reiterated that the reference to war crimes within the character's name was wholly unintentional.

As of this writing, the My Hero Academia manga and anime are still unavailable on Chinese digital platforms.

Source: Caleb Cook