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In season 1 episode 3, Midoriya is said to be placed last when compared to all other 20 candidates. Although I agree with him losing to most, I fail to identify how he could lose to a few of the candidates like Hagakure (the invisible girl).

I mean, which activity could she have done better than Midoriya considering that Midoriya had even trained for 10 months and that her quirk doesn't give her any apparent advantage in this test?

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  • They're probably more trial. In manga only 5 out of 8 trial are shown. Maybe Hagakure and others topped the other 3
    – Darjeeling
    Commented Jul 4, 2017 at 14:51
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    I agree Midoriya was shown excessively weak during these trials and that his training should have give him the upper hand on many of his comrades. However, we have to consider his nervous nature. Maybe the pressure and the fear of using his quirk or to loose without using it made him over thinking about it. This way, he lost his confidence and performed bad because of it.
    – Nevios
    Commented Jul 4, 2017 at 15:05
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    He also had to do all the trials with a broken finger and the pain that goes with it.
    – Alix Eisenhardt
    Commented Jul 5, 2017 at 7:55
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    Why wouldn't you assume that Hagakure did similar levels of training?
    – kaine
    Commented Jul 17, 2017 at 13:04
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    @Nevios Add that others had their quirk for several years giving them an advantage and this would be a nice answer :D
    – SK19
    Commented May 13, 2018 at 18:33

2 Answers 2

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We don't know for sure.

As far as I'm aware, this is never explicitly addressed later on in the series.

However, I think we can hazard a guess based on a few other factors seen during the quirk assessment test.

While Midoriya may have performed as well or even better than students like Hagakure that gain no real physical advantage from their quirk, we have to remember that Midoriya's quirk injured him severely during the ball throw. While it was not as bad as Aizawa may have expected (just his finger versus his whole arm) it's entirely possible that Aizawa deducted points due to this injury. This is a quirk assessment test, after all, and breaking a finger after merely throwing a ball is a severe disadvantage to a quirk no matter how you look at it.

Hagakure, meanwhile, may not have had any real major advantages like Midoriya, but her quirk had no disadvantages either. I would assume she's also fairly strong herself, as mentioned in the comments to your question, so it's not unreasonable to think she had a similar (or even better) performance when compared to Midoriya in the contests that neither had any advantage in.

This would apply to the other students with quirks that do not enhance their physical strength as well, like Koda, Shoji, or Jiro, among others.

Considering that Aizawa was going to expel Midoriya before he thought to use only his finger, I'd say Midorya actually did quite well to be placed last instead.

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My point here is, if Midoriya hasn't broken his finger on purpose, he would have beaten Hagakure without needing his quirk. Therefore, he never needed to break his finger in the first place, because he was clearly in a better physical condition than she was.

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  • Welcome to Anime & Manga Stack Exchange, a Q&A site about anime, manga, and related media. According to the other answer, Midoriya broke his fingers because he used his quirk, I'm not sure if that can be considered "on purpose"? Did you mean he shouldn't use his quirk during the quirk assessment test instead?
    – Aki Tanaka ♦
    Commented Jan 7, 2022 at 11:37

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