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Anime can be more than just pretty animation and epic fights. The best anime – or any media out there, really – helps bring us together and shows us something good in the world. Maybe that is why the story of one My Hero Academia fan who shared a birthmark similar to Shoto Todoroki’s facial scar became one of the most heartwarming and special stories from the 2025 convention season.

It started, like many things do these days, with a viral TikTok video of a young girl embracing her favorite anime character in plushie form. See, four-year-old Winry was born with a mole that covers much of her face and bears a striking resemblance to the trademark scar on Shoto Todoroki’s face in My Hero Academia. “He matches me!” Winry exclaims as she walks with her Todoroki plushie.

The video eventually caught the eye of Galaxy Con, who happened to have David Matranga, the English voice of Todoroki, in attendance this year. Soon Winry and her family were on a flight to Raleigh, North Carolina where she got to meet her anime hero in the flesh. The moment was special for the little girl but also for Matranga himself.

“You’re doing it in kind of a vacuum,” he explained. “You don’t know how it’s being received, always you don’t know as you’re doing it what the impact will be, so when you have something as direct as this, it’s really special.”

The final season of My Hero Academia airs in October 2025, but we suspect that won’t be the end of Winry’s love of the series or Todoroki.  

Each week, Popverse's resident anime expert Trent Cannon runs down the latest and, dare we say "greatest," in anime and manga in Popverse Jump. Some recent columns have included... 

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