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spinji · 3 months

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How old is AFO and OFA

[Mile long post incoming]

Long story short this is a theory/headcanon/thought exercise to keep my brain busy while I'm bored at work. I wanted to figure out a more precise estimate for how old All for One is since his birth is essentially the earliest moment of quirk society emerging and so his life spans the entire timeline of this story which I find interesting. And then the whole thing spiraled into a full One for All timeline of headcanons, so enjoy that.

To start though, it would be easy to guess that he's 120-and-some-change because of Garaki. Mic claimed Garaki would be about 120 (and we're just assuming he's exactly right instead of guesstimating for the sake of things) and Garaki confirms that his quirk allows him to live longer than a regular human lifespan, and when they met, All for One was given a copy so he could also live absurdly long. But I want to try a more exact method to ensure that his generations of adversaries could have actually reasonably worked time-wise. So, we can use Garaki's age to check our work but, reasonably, All for One should fall somewhere in the 120-140 range.

Right off the bat, we do have a frustrating lack of information regarding ages and time passing but there are a few things we can establish. Firstly, we know AFO and Yoichi are twins, so when determining age we can start both AFO individually and the OFA users as a collective at the same point. Secondly, Yoichi and AFO are shown to be the first people to have developed a quirk in the way we see in current time. There were vaguely quirk like mutations in people before that (like with their mother) but quirks as we know them are presented to us as originating from these two twins.

I bring this up because while Yoichi, Kudou, and Bruce are all in the same vague realm of "adult" at the same point in time, Yoichi has to be the oldest of the three. Even if it is only by a few years, Yoichi and AFO preceed any characters with a quirk. And while we're on the topic of Kudou and Bruce, we can safely say Kudou is the older one of the duo. He's confirmed to be the head leader of the resistance group against AFO and Bruce is second in command, so, frankly it would just be bizarre if Bruce was older in age but lower in rank. That being said, I don't think their difference in age would be significant.

Exact ages is where things get vague and headcanon-y. There isn't really any hard evidence I can point to other than "that sounds about right" and "I guess they look about that age" in an animation style that is notorious for just slapping a, borderline arbitrary, age on any design regardless of logic. So, rather than trying to justify it too much, my personal choices for their ages are, at Yoichi's time of death, Yoichi is 32, Kudou is 28, and Bruce is 27. At this point in the story AFO has been amassing power and followers for a while now, long enough for a resistance force to rise up against him but not long enough that he's considered it more than a nuisance for other people to handle until now. Early thirties seems pretty reasonable, possibly a bit too young but this man has also been killing people since he was 0.

For Kudou and Bruce I aimed for the older side of military age. Old enough to lead an operation like this but still young enough that AFO's rise to power was during most of their lifetime. Also, there's the issue of the age ceiling. Thanks to Shinomori (who I will get to), users 2 through 7 cannot have lived to be over 40 years old. That is a hard, non-negotiable cap on their ages as the strain of OFA alongside a different biological quirk drastically shortens a person's natural lifespan.

Anyway, back to AFO's age. If Yoichi dies at 32, this would also make him 32 (duh) and given the climate of the world at this point, I think Kudou lasted the shortest with OFA, personally. He receives the quirk immediately upon Yoichi's death after getting his blood in his mouth (Yoichi probably thought of him in his dying moments aww) and likely a week or two later is when Kudou and Bruce find out about it. The chapter frames Kudou finding out Yoichi carried on into him at the same time AFO has the same epiphany so, generously?? I give Kudou a year. Max.

All for One is now filled with seething hatred for Kudou specifically after Yoichi's death, so everything has been put on the back burner so he can both take the quirk from Kudou to get his "possession" back (ew) and to kill Kudou along with everyone he ever knew, loved, spoke to, looked at, or had any genetic lineage with. Even for a guy this powerful that is going to take a bit. A year gives AFO time to find information and strike down the entire resistance and time for Kudou and Bruce to think of a counter strategy and gain an understanding for how OFA works. So, Bruce takes the quirk at 28, Kudou dies at 29, and All for One kills him at 33.

After Kudou's death is a very big blank spot where I need to unfortunately just blindly headcanon again, so bare with me. Kudou and Bruce's plan was for Bruce to take the quirk and slip away from the massacre of the resistance to build OFA stronger and come back to finish the job. I believe that Bruce met Shinomori while he was lying low. Judging by the one image we have of Bruce confronting AFO, he did seemingly attempt to rally people together to defeat him, which would have taken a bit longer than when Kudou was leading an established resistance, since he didn't already have people under him. But he clearly thought to pass the quirk on again as a backup in case he lost, which is why he chose Shinomori to take it. With time needed to plan this attack and also get AFO's sights off him, I'd give it about five years between AFO's fight with Kudou and his fight with Bruce. It's estabished that Shinomori takes the quirk at 22 so, Bruce dies at 33, and All for One kills him at 39.

Shinomori is actually a very clear-cut piece of the timeline. He takes the quirk at 22 and dies at 40, having passed the quirk to the next user shortly before that because he realized his health was rapidly declining. He keeps the quirk for a total of 18 years, making All for One 57 at the time of his death. Judging by how the flashback panels are structured, AFO has received Garaki's quirk by this point.

Also, we have reached the point where every following user of OFA has been a professional hero, so I think it's safe to assume that each link in the chain met through either being colleagues or possibly through a sidekick internship. I doubt All Might was the first one to think of scouting hero students for successors. I'm going to assume that users 5, 6, and 7 were somewhere in the 16-24 range when they received the quirk for that very reason.

Moving on though, Banjo is the next user. I do think Banjo knew Shinomori for a somewhat significant time before his death. Banjo clearly knows about Shinomori's reclusive nature in some level of detail based on how they interact as vestiges and while it is possible for the already deceased OFA users to peer into the thoughts and memories of the current user, it doesn't appear to be the same retroactively, unless it's something the vestiges want to show the current user. All this to say I came to conclusion that Banjo was already likely a pro hero when he recieved the quirk from Shinomori. Shinomori realized what was happening and reached out to one of the few trusted friends he had to carry on the burden because he knew he could handle it. So I'm going to peg Banjo at being about 22 when he took the power as well. Old enough to be experienced as a pro with enough time to have actually met Shinomori before he died. Just like all the others, Banjo died to All for One after being trapped under rubble and gave the power to En just before he croaked. Given his bordering-on-middle-aged appearance, I'm going to put forward Banjo dying at 37 and All for One killing him at 72.

En also has very little information on him but since we only have speculation to work with, might as well stop apologizing for it. En appears to be significantly younger than Banjo, so I suspect he was an internship student to Banjo while he was a pro. Putting En at 17 when he recieved the power is both enough time for them to meet and get to know each other with En having to take the mantle from him sooner than either of them anticipated. En's appearance is still quite young, but he was confirmed to be a pro hero for a time, so he didn't have as short a run as Kudou. Nana was also already some level of hero (whether student or pro is unclear) at the time she recieved the power. Rather than mentor and student I believe they were fledgling colleagues, since Gran Torino fills the role as Nana's older pro mentor. All of this makes me vaguely place En dying at 25 and All for One killing him at 80.

I already mentioned Nana potentially being colleagues with En as their way of meeting. I still think she may have been younger than him at the time but not significantly so. En is another user that is shown passing on the power while at death's door and the following panel that shows Nana accepting it doesn't make her look significantly younger than how she does in any given scene in the series. So I don't think she was a child when she took the quirk but I'm going to set my guess at 20. But! While Nana is another character without a listed age, surprisingly, we can figure it out a good guess with actual evidence this time. Her son Kotaro, grandson Tomura, and pupil All Might all have stated, confirmed ages that we can use to make a feasible timeline for Nana.

Currently, All Might is 57 and Tomura is 21, meaning All Might was 36 when Tomura was born. Kotaro was killed at 32, when Tomura was 5, making him 27 when Yagi was 36. Nana died when All Might was in his last year at UA, making him 18, meaning Kotaro was 9 at the time. Nana gave All Might OFA when he was in middle school, judging by his uniform, so we'll assume he was 14 and Kotaro was 5. When Nana and All Might first meet, Nana states that her family is all dead, in a cold and distant manner. But that wouldn't be true if Kotaro was still in her life. This would mean that she met Yagi after the death of her husband and after Kotaro was sent away. And I'd wager to bet it was very soon after. Assuming Nana gave birth to Kotaro at around 25 years old (perfectly reasonable) then she would have passed the quirk to All Might at 30 and died at 34 after having the quirk for 14 years, making All for One 94 at the time of the transfer.

From here things get a lot less speculative. All Might is listed as 55 at the beginning of the manga, adding on Izuku's last year of middle school and first year of high school puts him at 57. We already established he received the quirk at 14, meaning he held the power for 42 years + 1 year quirkless before All for One was finally killed at the grand age of 136. Which would mean that quirks have existed for just shy of one and a half centuries now and we fit comfortably inside our estimate goal!

Now, I'm one of those bad at math gays so if you have other thoughts on this, feel free to speak up. And you're more than welcome to adopt these age headcanons if you want. Later.

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