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In the last episodes of season one _Boku no Hero Academia_ , the League of
Villains attacks class 1A while they are at the USJ building. A fight breaks
out, and Shigaraki Tomura is about to use his quirk on Tsu's face, Midoryia
jumps into action and is about to hit Shigaraki when Nomu appears in the way.
The thing is, Midoryia hits Nomu with 100% of One For All and it does nothing
to Nomu and there is no backlash to Midoryia's arm. I know that one of Nomu's
many abilities is that he has "Absorption", which explains why it had no
effect on Nomu, but what made no sense was the explanation of why it didn't
affect Midoryia's arm. Midoryia thought it was because he was fighting a live
being, but I immediately regard this as illogical because in season two, there
are numerous occasions when he's fighting a person and he goes all out and
still harms himself. This is all before he figures out how to sustain the use
state of One For All at 8%(Full Cowling). So, I was wondering if someone could
shed some light on this. Anything would be appreciated.


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my-hero-academia
Why did Deku's arm not break when he hit Nomu?


This is a fair question…

My own interpretation is that Deku's assessment of his output is not to be
taken completely at face value. Compare with the related question regarding
his 1 million percent output against Muscular later on in the series: [How
could Deku hit 1000,000% One for All punch when he had no memory of
it?](https://anime.stackexchange.com/q/47125).

What I take away from the incident with the Nomu at USJ is that, in that
crucial moment, Deku somehow found the knack of how to output _his_ maximum
power — note, _not_ OFA's maximum power — with the constraint of not breaking
his body when he releases it. After all, when All Might battles the same Nomu
with "merely" the embers of OFA left within him, his blows are still on a
different level compared to Deku's punch.

It's significant within the story because it shows that Deku _can_ use OFA
without breaking his body, and, crucially, he can do it in battle.
Furthermore, it gives him a "sense" of what it feels like to use OFA without
breaking his body, a point that he brings up later in conversation with All
Might, IIRC. Importantly, Deku uses these kind of experiences to build his
understanding of OFA and improve his usage of it, so it serves to setup his
growth, from the standpoint of the story's progression.

(Although this might be getting tangential, the notion of developing a "sense"
or "feel" for one's quirk is echoed by other characters who train Deku and his
comrades, including Endeavor in season 5 of the anime. So, it's not entirely a
one-off occurrence.)


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I would suspect that it is more of due to him unconsciously holding back the
power of OFA.

He mentioned to All Might that he felt as if it was like an egg in the
microwave which does not explode (correct me about this quote if I am wrong).
An egg tends to explode in a microwave but it will not if there is not enough
heat; similarly, it could be perceived that the egg is Midoriya's body while
the microwave is the overwhelming power of OFA. Due to the 'microwave' not
producing enough heat, which is OFA's power in this case, it also resulted in
the 'egg' not exploding, which is Midoriya's bones not breaking. This thus
proves the point that Midoriya was indeed holding back his power.

There are many possible explanations as to how he held back his power without
knowing, but I feel that the most plausible explanation for this would be that
Midoriya's adrenaline 'controlling' him. As seen in his fight with Muscular,
Midoriya was somehow able to use 1,000,000% despite never using it before, and
also felt no pain from his injuries. It was then mentioned by Aizawa that
Midoriya was running on adrenaline. It could be possible that the rush of
adrenaline he felt from almost dying by Muscular and him picturing Tsuyu dying
by Shigaraki caused him to bring his power to new levels, or hold the power
back from hurting him too much.


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Fairly simple answer, really...

_**Nomu's Quirk,[Shock
Absorption](https://myheroacademia.fandom.com/wiki/Shock_Absorption),
prevented Midoriya's arm from breaking.**_

As Tomura Shigaraki stated, Nomu had a number of Quirks, including [Super
Regeneration](https://myheroacademia.fandom.com/wiki/Super_Regeneration) and
Shock Absorption. This means the shock from One-For-All that would usually
"recoil" and destroy Midoriya's arm was completely absorbed by Nomu. The shock
delivered was well within the Nomu's capacity, as seen when All Might had to
strike him over 300 times at maximum capacity before subduing the villain.


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Midoriya used One for All as quick as he could and knew a life was at stake
and then his mind was cleared. So, when he punched, he wasn't thinking and
ended up with a perfectly intact arm.


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