Kohei Horikoshi has always worn his influences on his sleeve. He’s an avowed fan of Western superhero comics, but the creative north star that helped define My Hero Academia came from closer to home: Eiichiro Oda’s One Piece, and especially Monkey D. Luffy.

The Arlong Park spark

Horikoshi has pointed to a single early One Piece sequence as a creative lodestone: Nami’s plea for help during the Arlong Park arc and Luffy’s immediate, unqualified answer. That blunt, undiluted promise became a blueprint. Horikoshi wanted a lead who would instinctively step forward for others, not after agonized debate, but with a reflexive commitment. Deku inherited that impulse: a kindness that reads as action first, self later.

Giving characters permission to speak

There’s also a stylistic lift. Horikoshi has said the way Oda’s characters externalize their thoughts—blurting out fear, resolve, or doubt—felt unusually direct when he first read it. He carried that forward, particularly in how Deku verbalizes his analysis and anxieties. Where an older shonen tradition sometimes tucked interiority behind stoicism, My Hero Academia lets characters say the quiet part out loud and then act on it.

Luffy and Deku: different textures, shared spine

Deku is not Luffy’s clone; he’s built from different raw material—self-critical, analytical, often nervous. But the moral architecture overlaps in key ways:

  • Friends-first priorities: both routinely jeopardize themselves to protect their circles.
  • Forward-only drive: both edge toward self-destruction when the goal demands it.
  • Plainspoken intent: both state what they will do, then move.

That alignment isn’t accidental. Oda has described Luffy as a projection of a worry-free self. Horikoshi shaped Deku by channeling his own social anxiety and habit of overthinking, then adding an optimistic bias toward action.

Borrowing One Piece’s stamina to build a bigger arc

One Piece doesn’t just influence characters—it sets a bar for scale. While planning what became the Shie Hassaikai/Internship arc, Horikoshi challenged himself to keep a single throughline running long enough to matter structurally, not just thematically. The result was a 41-chapter stretch, eventually bound across five volumes—at the time, the series’ longest sustained push. It later ranked behind the 54‑chapter Paranormal Liberation War and the 71‑chapter Final War, but it marked the moment My Hero Academia proved it could sit in a story for as long as the story needed.

Homage that loops back

The influence runs in both directions now. As My Hero Academia closed, Oda marked the milestone with a quiet nod: he redrew a Smoker illustration that a teenage Horikoshi once submitted for One Piece’s reader art. That cover wasn’t just a congratulations; it acknowledged a creative lineage—fan becomes peer, inspiration becomes exchange.

Where the styles diverge on purpose

It’s tempting to flatten the connection into one‑to‑one parallels—spotting panel echoes or reading new power-ups as direct riffs. But the differences are just as instructive:

  • Voice: Luffy’s simplicity is a feature; Deku’s running inner monologue is the point. One is pure intuition, the other is cognition under strain.
  • World logic: One Piece thrives on elastic physics and maximalist spectacle; My Hero Academia roots its escalation in rules and costs tied to quirks.
  • Structure: Oda’s saga sprawls by design. Horikoshi deliberately capped his story’s length and used a handful of marquee arcs to land his themes.

Friendly rivalry, real respect

The two creators have spoken about each other with open admiration. Oda once called Horikoshi “the next big superhero artist” and even floated a friendly Weekly Shonen Jump race. My Hero Academia has finished its run; One Piece sails on. The rivalry—such as it is—reads less like a leaderboard and more like a baton pass between eras of the same magazine.

The takeaway

My Hero Academia doesn’t work without One Piece’s example: the conviction to center loyalty, the permission for characters to say what they mean, and the confidence to hold a story thread long enough for it to matter. But it also succeeds because Horikoshi filtered those lessons through a different temperament. Luffy shows a fearless freedom; Deku demonstrates how bravery looks when fear is present and you go anyway. That’s not imitation—it’s evolution.

Tip: If you want to trace the dialogue between the two works yourself, revisit Arlong Park early in One Piece, then read My Hero Academia’s opening and Shie Hassaikai arc back to back. Watch how a single promise—help when asked—migrates across authors, genres, and generations without losing its force.