A Japanese streetwear label just handed Chinese social media a fresh reason to get loud, and My Hero Academia is once again standing right in the middle of it. WEGO announced a collaboration with the hit anime, complete with six newly drawn characters splashed across apparel and accessories, and set its window display to go live on September 18.
That date isn’t a coincidence to anyone who knows Chinese history, especially during the World War II era. Within hours, screenshots of the announcement were racing across Weibo, dragging up a controversy this anime has never quite managed to shake off with its Chinese overseas neighbour.
WEGO Chose the One Date That Guaranteed Outrage in China
On September 18, 1931, Japanese troops blew up a stretch of railway near Shenyang and blamed Chinese soldiers for it, using the staged incident as cover to launch the invasion of Northeast China. Nearly a century later, that date still carries enormous weight, which is exactly why WEGO’s timing landed so badly. According to screenshots circulating on Chinese platforms, the brand’s now-deleted X post laid out the collaboration in detail: six characters, fresh artwork, and a window display rolling out at select stores starting on the anniversary itself.
Chinese users didn’t take long to connect the dots. Comments piled up accusing WEGO of picking the date on purpose, and plenty of people said they’d stop buying from the brand altogether, whether or not that was ever the intention. The backlash grew heavier through Thursday, spilling from overseas social posts into a livestream on WEGO’s Taobao store, where shoppers kept pressing the same question the brand never bothered to answer. By Thursday evening, the original post had quietly disappeared.
Neither WEGO nor My Hero Academia‘s team has said publicly why September 18 was chosen, and that silence has only fed the speculation further. WEGO runs physical stores in Shanghai and sells through Chinese e-commerce platforms alongside its Japanese business, so the argument that this was purely a Japan-only release hasn’t convinced many skeptics online.
A commentary in the Beijing News put it plainly (via BJNews, translated from Simplified Chinese to English): “for a brand actively courting young Chinese anime fans and ita-bag culture, translating a product page into Mandarin isn’t the same thing as actually understanding the customers reading it, or respecting the history they grew up learning.”
This Is Not the First Time My Hero Academia Has Touched This Nerve
Kyudai Garaki (with the controversial manga name) from My Hero Academia | Credits: Shueisha
None of this would sting quite as much if My Hero Academia didn’t already carry heavy baggage on this exact subject. Back in 2020, the manga revealed the real name of a recurring villain, previously known as Daruma Ujiko, as Maruta Shiga. It seemed harmless enough until readers realized what it echoed: Maruta was the word Japan’s Unit 731 used for the prisoners subjected to its wartime human experiments, a grim euphemism built on the unit’s cover story as a simple lumber operation.
The surname wasn’t free of controversy either, drawing a line straight to Japanese bacteriologist Kiyoshi Shiga. Unit 731 killed more than 3,000 Chinese, Korean, Soviet, and Western prisoners of war and civilians through brutal experiments carried out during Japan’s occupation of Northeast China. The character was written as a scientist who experiments on people to build monstrous soldiers for the story’s villains. Creator Kohei Horikoshi and publisher Shueisha apologized once the parallel spread online, insisting there was no intent behind it, and the name was quietly changed for future printings and reprints.
But the damage stuck around anyway. My Hero Academia was pulled from major Chinese streaming platforms that same year, and it has never fully returned to the good graces of Chinese audiences since then. A tie-in with Detective Conan drew fresh criticism as recently as this past February, reopening a wound that never really closed in the first place. Against that backdrop, the WEGO drop reads less like an isolated misstep and more like a franchise that keeps wandering back into the same minefield, year after year.
What are your thoughts on the controversial take between China and My Hero Academia? We’d love to know your opinions in the comments below.
All Episodes of the My Hero Academia anime are available to watch on Crunchyroll.
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