Creator of My Hero Academia Kohei Horikoshi is celebrating the start of what he hopes to be his final year working on the series with a fresh new sketch focused on a few surprise characters.

Like some other mangaka, Horikoshi has gotten into the habit of creating and sharing themed sketches to celebrate holidays, offering a slightly different look at some beloved characters. Previously this year, Horikoshi had shared a sketch of the core League of Villains members for Halloween, and an image of Ochaco, Bakugo, and Todoroki doing a little present delivery alongside Hawks for Christmas. He also created a sketch for Shonen Jump's annual convention Jump Festa, as well as some to promote the release of the third My Hero Academia film in Japan back in August, although most of these weren't fully colored.

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The official My Hero Academia Twitter account posted the colored New Year's sketch that night in Japan. The image depicts professional hero Fat Gum alongside "Big Three" member Tamaki Amajiki, Class 1-A's Eijiro Kirishima, and Class 1-B's Tetsutetsu Tetsutetsu. All of the characters are adorned in some eye-catching tiger stripe patterns, in recognition of 2022 being the Year of the Tiger according to the Chinese zodiac.

While previous sketches have focused on the overwhelmingly popular characters, this New Year's artwork may leave some scratching their heads. As it turns out, the choice of subject is a bit of an in-joke: the character of Fat Gum is an Osaka based hero, which also happens to be his hometown. One of the things Osaka is best known for is their extremely successful baseball team, the Hanshin Tigers. Fans will often wear tiger stripes to support their team, so if any hero is likely to own some tiger-striped clothing, it would be Fat Gum. The three students with him in the image are those who performed their work-study at his agency, which was one of the most recent arcs in the anime.

While 2021 was a significant year for the series, particularly with the film's release, it's looking like 2022 will truly be My Hero Academia's make-or-break year. At the aforementioned Jump Festa event, a message from Horikoshi indicated that he planned to wrap the manga up by that time next year, making a final chapter release in 2022 a real possibility. The idea of the ending being so close has made some fans nervous, as there are quite a few plot threads left dangling, and the manga's approach to the long-hyped UA Traitor drama has created some concern that he may rush through the plot too quickly. On the other hand, Horikoshi also said that if he wasn't ending it by the time the next Jump Festa came around, he'd have the same message read, so it seems he's also prepared to go longer than he planned if that's what the story demands. At least for now, fans can take the well wishes from My Hero Academia's Osaka hero as a good omen for the series' progress this year.

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