So, you all know what headcanons are: those versions of your favorite stories that include some really important and fitting details that, somehow, the author forgot to mention. Or, worse, got wrong. That’s right! YOU know better, and in your head you know how it was really supposed to go, if only the author had put as much thought and love into the story as you have!
Cue the Cranberries: “In your head/In your head/It’s all in, all in, all in, in, in, in your head…”
So here’s my confession when it comes to headcanons: You know anime endings? The little music videos that play after the episode as the credits flow past your eyes like paint down my wall in the heat of summer?
My headcanon is that those tell the real story, and that the episode I just watched is all the characters’ imaginations.
That’s right, what we think of as the episode is, according to my headcanon, none other than the protagonists’ own headcanon!
Example 1: My Hero Academia
Season 2 introduced us to the marvellous “Datte Atashi no Hero“, sung by the renowned LiSA. The ending video portrays the MHA kids as characters in a fantasy setting. Which works. Somehow.
Don’t tell me you’ve never wanted to see Bakugo flying a fire drake. See? Now you can’t get that image out of your head. Or Midoriya as a hobbit? (That’s how he appears to me, anyway.)
Think Game of Thrones, but with Quirks!
And after a day of slaying evil monsters, they all gather back at the hearth and weave epic yarns about a strange fictional land without magic or dragons, called… Japan. Where students meet at a place called an “academy “…
Example 2: Black Clover
This one’s sort of the opposite from the previous example. Black Clover is set in a fantasy Ireland world, but the series’ fourth ending (appropriately named “Four”) places three of the young women as students in a modern high school.
So you’ve got three beauties who, between classes, have fantasies about… men in a fantasy. Tada! The entire BC story is their collaborative fiction about their ideal knights, literally!
Example 3: Rage of Bahamut: Virgin soul
Ready for my favorite? Here goes: The ending to the second Rage of Bahamut series puts our main character, Nina, in the role of Cinderella.
You all know the story. Girl gets treated like slave. Girl meets Fairy Godmother. Fairy Godmother turns pumpkin into UFO. UFO abducts girl and takes her to the disco. Disco includes a breakdancing zombie hand. You know, classic fairy tale stuff.
Where does the official Rage of Bahamut story fit into all this? While doing the housework, Cinderella tells herself stories to keep her mind occupied, naturally.
And now, you will think of this the next time you watch an ending, and your own cracked headcanon shall be born!