The Rabbit Hero: Mirko has a devil-may-care attitude towards her work, but it’s led her to take a lot of serious injuries. She’s been bruised, impaled, and even lost chunks of flesh. She’s also lost the use of her left arm, though the anime and the manga differ in how this is depicted.
In the My Hero Academia manga, Mirko’s arm was removed completely. In the anime, however, her arm simply gets mangled. This is an odd choice as both paths are eventually supposed to lead to her getting a prosthetic limb to replace her now-unusable limb. If the animw wants to hold this coyrse, it will have to be sure that its narrative can still line up with the manga’s.
What Happened to Mirko’s Arm?
Mirko originally lost her arm in Chapter 262, “Mirko, the No. 5 Hero.” While the Rabbit Hero was fighting Dr. Garaki’s High-End Nomus, one of them used an unknown Quirk to warp the space around her arm. When it was done. the only things that were left were some blood and a stump where Mirko’s arm used to be.
The fate of Mirko’s arm was changed slightly in Season 6 Episode 2, also called “Mirko, the No. 5 Hero.” In this version of the story, the Nomu only succeeded in mangling the Rabbit Hero’s arm; it remained attached to her body. However, like in the manga, she’s lost her ability to use it.
This change was made to adhere to Japanese television broadcasting and entertainment standards. Japan is averse to depicting amputation and dismemberment. They’ll leave it in material that’s aimed at older audiences. However, for a series aimed at kids and teenagers like MHA, they’ll remove it where they think they can.
As for whether amputation censorship makes sense in Mirko’s case, that can be determined based on the last time the anime did this. Shigaraki was supposed to have his fingers pinched off by Re-Destro, but in Season 5, they remained attached to his hand; the scenes that followed continued to make it seem like his fingers were attached. However, Season 6 corrected this censorship by removing Shigaraki’s damaged fingers completely. Mirko, like Shigaraki, has likely damaged her arm beyond repair and will be fitted with the appropriate prosthetic in the future.
It’s also worth noting that Mirko, despite not losing her arm, still tied herself off to prevent blood loss. This seems like an inconsistency, but it’s still the right thing to do. If she ruptured a major artery in her mangled arm, which she probably did, she’d still have to cut off circulation to that area or risk bleeding out.
This is an odd choice, but it still works with the story that’s being told. Mirko has effectively lost the use of her left arm in both the anime and the manga; nothing she says or does contradicts this point. If it’s revealed in the future that she still has her am and it functions perfectly, that’s when it will become a true inconsistency.
