Shigaraki and Dabi: Death and Rebirth

Shigaraki and Dabi both have the most destructive quirks of the entire league of villains. Shigaraki’s Decay and Dabi’s Cremation are both quirks that quickly reduce people to ash, totally killing them. However, both boys also actively kill themselves every time they use their quirks. Both of them are covered in scars from the overuse of their quirks on their bodies.

Underneath the cut, an examination on how both Tomura and Dabi are dying due to their quirks, and how both of them might live. All of the things Dabi (荼毘) “Cremation” and Tomura (弔) “Funerals” or Tomurau (To Mourn) are connected to each other in death, and in life.

Neither Shigaraki nor Dabi go by their real names anymore. They both choose to go by aliases which both represent the deaths of their former selves by their connection to funeral services, Dabi for cremation and Tomura (Tomurau) for mourning as the one who who beckoms mourning.

They are named for both the cause and effect of death. Dabi cremates others effectively burning them to death. Tomura decays, which rots their bodies the same way a corpse would slowly rot until they are killed. They also are named for the effect of death, cremation is a funeral service done to a dead body the most common type of funeral in japan. Whereas Tomuraau “Mourning” is what is done at funerals. Both the death and the grief of death are represented in both characters.

At the same time, what Tomura and Dabi to to others they are also inflicting on themselves. They kill others, they kill themselves. They inflict pain on others, they inflict pain on themselves. Their names can serve as a symbol for what they have done to others, but also what has been done to them.

Just as AFO says, the original Shimura Tenko is long gone. Tomura was born from the death of his former self. The same way in which Dabi was only name from the “death” of Todoroki Touya. Both of them had to experience a death of their former selves to become who they are currently.

They also both experienced death, but in opposite ways. Tenko killed his own family by accident. Touya was most likely killed in a training accident (considering his family never mentions him they may even consider him death). Toua had death inflicted upon him by a family member. They also both experienced death in direct relation to their quirk, Tenko’s quirk decayed everyone he touched, whereas Touya’s body was not suited to his quirk at all and he himself was killed just by using it. They are also, children who were born with mutant quirks, Dabi is a failed hybrid who was intentionally bred for Enji’s sake, whereas Tomura’s quirk was a random mutation.

They also both use quirks which actively kill and harm their own bodies. They subject themselves to this pain over and over again. Dabi himself is burning up on the inside when he summons his flames, Tomura’s quirk decays his own body.

Both of them are active harbringers of death as well. Dabi’s falmes can spread like wildfire and kill everyone around him, whereas Tomura’s decay can spread to entire crowds of people. Their victims are reduced entirely to ash.

They both kill with little compunction or hesitation, but at the same time they also both overuse their quirks, and keep fighting with no regards at all to how their bodies are damaged by it.

Dabi will fight when his body is burning up and his stitches leaking smoke and keep pushing through, Shigaraki will have his hand destroyed, go insane in a middle of a fight, have his arms start to decay and still keep on fighting. Dabi is in stitches, Shigaraki is covered in scars, and yet they continue to harm themselves physically and also mentally. Both of them remark about the fact that they’re slowly going crazy from thoughts int their own head. They also both smile and laugh it off, because they both harm themselves in the same way, and they both cope in the same way.



Both Shigaraki and Dabi self destruct. They inflict death upon themselves, they self harm because of the harm inflicted upon them in the past. That is why they are so closely tied in with death, but how can two characters tied to death also represent rebirth?

1. Dabi is a Phoenix

Dabi immolates, burns, and cremates himself every time he uses his quirk. If he is Touya then we know, just like Shimura who suffered from a freak mutant quirk, he was “born wrong” in a way.

Endeavor knew about the weakness in his quirk, intentionally bred himself with an ice quirk knowing that he could also make children who suffer worse from the weakness of his quirk than he does, had three “failures” and then Todoroki. Not only does Touya represent death he’s also a “failure at life” having never been born in the first place, hence why his character necessitates a symbolic rebirth.

Their circumstances from “birth” were wrong from the start, due to their parents. While this is just speculation it was likely Endeavor’s special move “Flash Fire” which resulted in the burns on Dabi’s body. This is due to one, the burns are in the same locations that Endeavor’s flames come out of, and two Endeavor himself specifically mentions Touya when telling Todoroki he was going to pass on that technique and he had no choice but to learn it.

We have seen how actively harmful and abusive Enji’s training techniques are, and how he inflicts them on young children no older than five (around the same age Tenko was as well). Enji will push them actively beyond their limits, train Shoto until his entire body was smoking and he was vommitting from the pain.

Then, he will insist that they are capable of handling far more than this, they’re just pretending to be weak. That they should be able to handle the pain if they wanted to. When they obviously cannot stand up again like Enji commands them too, he then hauls more abuse on top of them for being weak and gets violent.

The thing about abused children is they may despise their abuser and try to be the opposite of whatever he says, but they will still internalize things from their environment. Especially if they are young, isolated (like Todoroki was from his other siblings) and are not exposed to anything else.

Not only does Enji physically beat these children, but he alsoactively encourages an extremely harmful mindset. That any show of weakness at all is running away. That if they can’t endure this pain, it’s their own fault. Every time they are in pain he insists they are just pretending and they can handle more if they really wanted to.

There is a studied link between Self-Injury and childhood maltrreatment.

One framework involves three different pathways that overlap and interact. These pathways are: regulatory, representational, and reactive. During child maltreatment, these pathways are not correctly developed and cause problems with adapting normally to life. These pathways are.



Regulatory: Disturbance created by trauma in cognitive and affective processing, thinking and feelings, and expressing emotional states. Representational: Self-injury could be caused by disturbances in child-caregiver attachment that has impaired working models of the self and others Selfinjury therefore could result from learning ineffective emotion management. Reactive: Neurobiological response to trauma is altered (excitatory and inhibitory processes). Children who have experienced maltreatment could have very high stress responses. [SOURCE]

In other words children who grow up in an environment of constant harm are more likely to self harm. While Dabi is fighting against Endeavor, he also harms himself in the way Endeavor harmed him, by pushing his quirk to his absolute limit and harming his body because as he was taught, if he shows any weakness he’s just pretending, he can’t run away from this pain. Dabi’s is clearly some kind of regulatory and representational, he cannot process his pain in any meaningful way, and he does not have a strong sense of self because he does not take care of himself at all and instead actively destroys himself over and over for the sake of an objective. (In my opinion, Shigaraki’s is probably a mix of that and also reactive due to his compulsive excoriation).

Touya was taught the only good thing about him were the same flames that actively harm him. The only way he can be strong is by hurting himself. He’s also taught if he was strong enough, he would not be in pain. Strength comes from harming himself, and strength is the only release from his pain. It’s an extremely unhealthy and self destructive mindset. There’s no future in that, we only see him burn away slowly trying to at least be a martyr and burn up in the name of some cause.

We see evidence again and again of Dabi fighting even when his insides are boiling. His response to pain is always to push himself farther past his limits, even as his stitches start to bleed and smoke pours out of them. In this case, overuse of his quirk is an act of self harm and one that he was taught.

It’s self destruction, it’s the death of himself. It’s a response to the environment he was raised in, Touya was born wrong, he was a failure, and therefore he never should have been born in the first place. The only thing his current self can do is hope to die and be reborn.

Dabi himself however, is tied to a symbol of death and rebirth.

Fenghuang or the phoenix is represented as a symbol of duality. It represents yin, and yang, black and white, death and rebirth. It also represents a union between a phoenix and a male chinese dragon. (Dabi’s skin is covered in scales and there’s several panels of him breathing fire). They represents opposites and dualities together, like sky and earth for exmaple (hawks can fly, Dabi cannot). Duality, rather than opposites the sets are believed to be part of a pair together with more in common than they have differences.

Dabi’s particular method of self destruction is to burn himself to death, death by flames. Which is the particular way phoenixes are thought to die and be reborn. Not only are Hawks’ feathers specifically colored in as red but we have also seen art of him and his feathers burning up entirely. Hawks’ feathers also regrow when they have been burnt off.

Other than Endeavor, Dabi is the most important character to Hawks arc. Other than Shigaraki, Hawks is the most important character to Dabi’s arc. The two of them are tied together by plot and by symbolism.

Dabi symbolizes death. On the path he is on, he will eventually burn up and die in the fires he himself stoked for some cause. However, in that burning death there is also a chance to be reborn. The same way that Hawks is foreshadowed to fall, Dabi is foreshadowed to be burned by his won flames but the both of them have a chance in each other.

2. Shigaraki is a Butterfly

In the latest chapter we see Shigaraki in the same mindset, desperate to destroy himself and emerge from the cocoon as something else, a butterfly.

For millennia, the world has latched on to the image of the butterfly: its metamorphosis from a caterpillar to a butterfly used as a metaphor for death and rebirth.



It is a spiritual symbol for life after death because of its metamorphosis, or transformation, from a caterpillar that crawls on the ground to a beautiful, almost ethereal creature that flies through the air. It has also become a symbol for personal growth and spiritual rebirth.



In killing themselves, both Dabi and Shigaraki are seeking what lies beyond their pain, that life for them can only come after their original flawed selves are completely destroyed. That their only escape from this pain is death, and they are both taught to feel this way, taught to exist in a cycle where they continaully harm themselves.

Just look at the way Shigaraki acts this chapter. As the doctor points out, Shigaraki has basically already won himself a victory, thousands of subordinates, and proven himself and yet that is still enough for him. He’s even significantly upgraded his quirk beyond its previous bounds which is so rare in the series its a once in a lifetime freak event.

Yet, that still is not enough for Shigaraki. Not because he is a pwoer hungry villain, but even now after having acquired so much he does not feel safe with what he has, he does not feel like he is enough.Because even with all of that strength, his body was still broken into pieces the last time he fought and yet he still believes it is going to happen again. He is taught to expect pain, pain is all he sees. He only knows how to fight and be strong by breaking himself again and again.

This is also an attitude he internalized the same way that Dabi did. Shigaraki has the idea in his head that he was born wrong. That it was his birth itself that led to the idea of his family being destroyed. That he wanted it. Therefore, to start out with he is someone who should have never been born.

He also existed in a household that denied his existence, and individual needs in the first place. And this was before AFO even entered the picture. Tenko was taught that he was the one causing the disturbance in this household, and he was the one provoking his father into harming him.

Therefore it’s a logical step that Tenko then makes the leap to assign the blame for a freak accident onto himself. They all must have died because he wanted them to. It’s not something Shigaraki takes pleasure in, he actively loathes himself for it. The hands are a reminder of his guilt and he is constantly mourning, so self disgusted to the point of nausea.

As much as he hates everyone else he hates himself. Tomura is sick of himself most of all. What he did against his family is something he not only continually punishes himself for over and over again, but he also keeps mourning them and never allows himself to heal. Tomura even mutters I’m sorry whenever his father’s hand is knocked off of his face.

All for One also reinforces Shigaraki’s self loathing. He tells him again and again that he was born a violent child, that he’s violent because he wants to be, that he’s someone who has a natural urge to inflict harm on others. In other words he was born wrong. Shigaraki’s guilt for destroying his family comes from the fact he’s been told over and over again, he wanted to destoy them, he was born a freak meant to ruin that house.

All for One even goes a step beyond and continually tells him that the pain Shigaraki feels due to his trauma is caused by himself. That he is inflicting it on himself by hodling back, the same way Enji said that Shoto was only pretending to be hurt and he could handle this.

That there is something inside Shigaraki that is always hurting him and that he can never escape from. All for One introduces the stressors to Shigaraki’s body that causes him to psychologically break down, the hands of his family, exposure to violence again and again, and then insists that all of this is Shigaraki hurting himself.

And then twists the logic around to make Shigaraki believe that this is what Shigaraki wants to do. He wants to be violent, he wants to cause death, on himself and others.

Tomura is encouraged to actively harm himself in order to be strong, overuse his decay quirk which is not suited to his body, and also to continuously hold onto feelings of grief that will only injure and scar his heart even more. All for the purpose of making him into a violent, unstable person.

Then, when Shigaraki is continuouly trapped within this cycle of violence which he can never escape from, Shigaraki is told that his only escape is to become stronger than everybody else. Shigaraki sees no future, no escape, he’s told again and again there’s no healing for someone like him, there’s no future. Just like Dabi the only future he sees is in death, which is why he does not think about the future at all.

Shigaraki is a bug, a worm in the dirt dying to be reborn as a butterfly. He’s glitchy, defective, born wrong someone who was born to curse and destroy his family.

The reason he wants to destroy everything is not because he enjoys destruction, but because he has been pushed to such extremes that he’s desperate for any kind of relief, and sees his only way to be free is to destroy absolutely everything around him. He believes he is so hopeless that there’s no way for him to live in the current world, only to die and be reborn.

Shigaraki has been taught, just like Dabi to continually harm himself to gain power, and that freedom from the pain will only come for him when he has power.

Which is what directly leads us to the latest chapter again. It’s never going to be enough for him. Shigaraki already gains power, and we see he falls into his pattern once more, he intentionally inflicts upon himself four entire months of pain, an unnecessary and risk of surgery. Because surviving unbearable pain is the only way he knows how to get stronger. He has subjected himself to pain over and over again, and continues to self harm even when All for One is in prison and away from him because it was all he was taught and therefore all he knows. He self harms to make up for the perceived deficiency in himself.

He has to enter the coccoon, because his new self is not good enough and it never will be.

Shigaraki, desperate to die in a cocoon and be reborn, Dabi desperate to die in flames and be reborn, but both of them were fine as they were. There’s still a chance for those children who believe themselves already dead to heal, and to live for te first time.