While My Hero Academia and Dragon Ball have very little in common with one another on the surface, they do have one glaring similarity. My Hero Academia's Endeavor follows a curiously similar arc to Vegeta, one of the Dragon Ball franchise's most famous fighters.
When Endeavor is first introduced in the series, he's shown to be obsessed with power and eerily obsessed with surpassing his rival. He has even shown to have a dark past, which included the death of one of his children that his family blames him for. The bits of Endeavor's past that have revealed have shown how little he cared for his family, which strikes a similar chord to Vegeta during Dragon Ball Z's "Androids Saga." While Endeavor had more children than Vegeta at the time, both of these fierce warriors were not concerned with actually protecting their families. Vegeta was willing to let Dr.Gero nearly kill Bulma and Trunks, not even so much as lifting a finger to try and save his future wife and son from death. Endeavor, on the other hand, was responsible for the death of his child, which makes his actions near unforgivable.
During this time, Endeavor was suffering from a maddening obsession with the unbeatable All Might much like Vegeta was when he was trying to catch up to Goku and his ever-increasing potential. For Endeavour, this obsession shaped his attitude and actions towards his family and the public as a whole. With a nonchalant attitude and enormous chip on his shoulder because of the insecurity of "feeling overlooked" by his peers and regarded as merely "second-best" by the rest of the world, Endeavor is almost like a shadow of Vegeta and his ambitions for more power.
The very next instance of when these characters shared two strikingly similar moments comes with their respective battles against High End and Majin Buu. In Dragon Ball Z, Vegeta finally exorcised his past demons when he selflessly gave his life to protect the people of Earth in a blinding flash of light intended to be a suicide bomb that would become his most memorable moment in the franchise's history. His last words, "Trunks...Bulma, I do this for you...and yes, even for you, Kakarot" symbolized that Vegeta was shedding the shell of the ruthless Saiyan Prince he once was. Now, he was fully embracing his role as a warrior who fought to protect the one thing he loved more than his pride -- his family. This was the beginning of Vegeta's journey to truly becoming his own character, finally detached from the shadow of Goku that shackled his development.
Endeavor's moment came during the My Hero Academia Season 4 finale in his fight with High End, a higher-tier of Nomu who could heal from any injury at an incredibly fast rate. Even after being chopped to bits, High End was still able to miraculously regenerate himself, much like Dragon Ball's Buu. Endeavor fought relentlessly, never giving up amd fighting past the excruciating pain, even to the point of surpassing his own limits in the process.
With the words, "Burn up...and be put to rest," Endeavor finally released himself from the ties that he once used to bind himself to All Might's legacy. These words were just as important as the words the new Number One Hero spoke before. which compared the power-hungry Nomu to his dark past self or a daunting alternate future before burning the creature to smoldering cinders. Fortunately, Endeavor was still standing and alive at the conclusion of his explosive "Prominence Burn" attack.
After these events, both of these characters continued to become better parents and make up for the sins of the past, which may have left any psychological scars upon their families. It also showed that both characters would have to forgive themselves first before they could seek the forgiveness of any other characters that they were connected to. However, both the Saiyan Prince and the Number One Hero were able to push themselves to new heights by releasing the demons of their past.
Even if Endeavor and Vegeta share all of these parallels, that doesn't make either story less compelling. Their redemption arcs are a big part of why both of these characters are among their franchises and in the larger world of anime as a whole, even if they resemble each other a bit.
