My Hero Academia takes place in a future setting where superpowered Quirks are the norm worldwide, but these Quirks do more than enable My Hero Academia's excellent shonen combat system. These myriad Quirks often serve as metaphors for real-life issues of discrimination, inequality, societal pressure to succeed and more.
In this world, powerful Quirks are lauded while weak Quirks are often a source of disappointment or even ostracization, such as with mutant-type Quirks. One example is the raven-headed Tokoyami Fumikage of U.A.'s class 1-A, and his avian form has many intriguing implications. He's no ordinary boy, even in class 1-A.
Tokoyami Fumikage May Have Coping Mechanisms For Intolerance
Rarely are My Hero Academia characters seen facing open discrimination or mistreatment based on unusual Quirks or body shapes, but it's clear that this is a common societal ill in the story, and no doubt Tokoyami Fumikage has gotten some dirty looks for his inhuman form. In this future world, people take Quirks very seriously, and most forms of discrimination and bigotry have evolved to match. Now, people are mocked or derided not for their ethnic origin or religious faith, but the nature of their Quirks, especially where bodily mutations are involved.
Children and adults alike are quick to find fault in each other's Quirks or their own, and bullying is sure to follow. The villain Flect Turn internalized this and decided to wipe Quirks off the map entirely so that no one would have to suffer as he did. Tokoyami Fumikage wouldn't do such a thing, but he probably sympathizes more with Flect Turn than most of his classmates.
Little to nothing is known of Fumikage's childhood, but his fondness for all things goth might be a hint. His fixation on dark and dramatic things may be more than just personal taste -- it could be his way to cope with the mild but constant discrimination based on his raven head and terrifying Dark Shadow Quirk, reclaiming his dark identity and making it his own. If everyone else views him as a strange and dark creature, he might as well be one and have fun with it -- hence his goth-themed bedroom and dramatic speech, as well as his superhero theme as a shadow warrior.
There are many real-life examples of reclamation among various groups, and Fumikage sets an example of how people with villainous Quirks and body shapes handle such things. Thematically, Fumikage has the head of a bird, so he can show viewers what a constructive response to intolerance and mockery looks like, to the point that Hawks himself sees fit to train him and help him realize his potential.
Fumikage's Bird Head May Be His Real Quirk After All
An interesting fan theory posits that Dark Shadow is not Fumikage's Quirk; instead, it's his bird head. This means that Fumikage has a mutant-type Quirk rather than an emitter type, changing his classification entirely. Instead of having a bird head to match his Quirk, Fumikage's Quirk only affects his appearance, and Dark Shadow is in fact his long-lost twin.
According to this theory, Fumikage had a twin whom he absorbed in the womb, and that twin, rather than vanishing entirely, was embedded inside Fumikage to become Dark Shadow, hence its ability to think and speak like a person. That twin's powerful Quirk is Dark Shadow and Fumikage is the carrier, making him almost like a JoJo Stand user or a Pokemon trainer. If this prenatal fusion never happened, Fumikage would simply have his own Quirk and be a raven-headed boy with no particular aptitude for heroics. Instead, it would be his twin who would have the Quirk strength necessary to get into U.A. and fight as a living Dark Shadow.
Perhaps a bird theme runs in the Tokoyami family and it only affected Fumikage's head, while the other Tokoyami sibling was enshrouded in a bird-shaped cloak of supernatural darkness. Since the twins are now two people in one, Fumikage is like a bird in two different ways, who passes off his twin as his Quirk to avoid messy complications with his classmates and teachers. At his twin's expense, Fumikage became far stronger than his genes ever intended, and this double-Tokoyami is ready to become the hero of darkness.
