AO3: Popular ships in MHA
In this analysis I wanted to visualize what are the most popular ships on ao3 and in general how the works are distributed, so I collected some simple ao3 data as a start. For more in detail analysis check the other stats ships links!
When I collected the data there were 164620 works on ao3 in the BNHA fandom and this data has been collected the 7 April 2021. All the numbers are in percentages. |
Almost half of the stories are in the M/M category, as expected by a Shounen anime. F/M fanfics and Gen fanfics have comparable numbers, with F/F having the least amount of fanfics (just 6.01%).
The first 10 most popular ships are nothing unexpected, but keep in mind that many of these ships have such high numbers because often tagged as secondary ships. I’ll add something more about this when checking the F/M fanfics, but just know that here Izuocha is the most popular F/M ship, but mainly because it is tagged alongside other ships (probably M/M, and probably as a secondary ship of the story).
Top 3 ships overall: Bakudeku is the most popular ship in ao3, with 21% of the fics in the top 10 ships category, followed by KiriBaku and Tododeku.
The first 10 most popular ships are nothing unexpected, but keep in mind that many of these ships have such high numbers because often tagged as secondary ships. I’ll add something more about this when checking the F/M fanfics, but just know that here Izuocha is the most popular F/M ship, but mainly because it is tagged alongside other ships (probably M/M, and probably as a secondary ship of the story).
Top 3 ships overall: Bakudeku is the most popular ship in ao3, with 21% of the fics in the top 10 ships category, followed by KiriBaku and Tododeku.
When comparing the whole of the BNHA works (164620), Bakudeku is the tag in 22914 of them (1.39% of the total BNHA works, and still the biggest ship).
When investigating only M/M ships I selected for the M/M tag and then taken out (EXCLUDE) all ships that did not fall in the category, until I could list only M/M ships.
The top 10 M/M ships are distributed as such:
When investigating only M/M ships I selected for the M/M tag and then taken out (EXCLUDE) all ships that did not fall in the category, until I could list only M/M ships.
The top 10 M/M ships are distributed as such:
You can see here the percentage on the total of the works tagged for one or more of these 10 ships. Bakudeku is confirmed as the most popular M/M ship and there is no big surprise here, but half the fanfics are composed of Bakudeku, KiriBaku and Todobaku.
The top 10 F/F ships are distributed as such:
The top 10 F/F ships are distributed as such:
In this case, MomoJirou counts for almost half these top 10 F/F’s fanfics alone (44%). So there is a lot less variety than F/F. It is also pretty interesting to see that Miruko/Fuyumi is among these 10 F/F ships, even if the characters never interacted.
The top 10 F/M ships are distributed as such:
The top 10 F/M ships are distributed as such:
Kacchako, Izuocha and Todomomo takes a little more than half of all the top 10 F/M ships. Admittedly I was pretty surprised KamiJirou is just 10% of F/M top 10 fanfics.
Now, there is another surprising percentage here, which is the flip between Kacchako and Izuocha. In the general top 10 fanfics, we have Izuocha being the most popular F/M ship, while here we have Kacchako at 29% (of the top 10 most popular F/M ships) and Izuocha at 22%.
Looking into this, I went to the tag IZUOCHA. There are 5435 works. A quick glance at the first page confirms that some of these works have Izuocha as one of the many side ships, instead of a main ship. This might be one of the reasons for this discrepancy.
I was a bit curious to see how many “single ship” fics are there and what is the difference between ships that are tagged only Izuocha or only Kacchako. I checked these two ships and excluded all other ships, so I went to look at the pure numbers of fics with Izuocha as the only ship tag or Kacchako as the only ship tag. I continued until I encountered an error, so this is an estimate that could have +/- 6 (mostly related to non BNHA ships from crossovers).
The results are Izuocha 1392 fanfics and Kacchako 2458. I think this confirms that Kacchako is the most popular F/M fics.
READER/BNHA CHARACTER
There are also a bunch of fics dedicated to ships/interactions between the reader (a self insert character) and BNHA characters. To check the percentages within the top 10 of these reader ships I checked the tag “Reader”.
Bakugou is the most popular character in these Reader/character ship, followed by Hawks (11.03%), then Aizawa and Todoroki with minimal differences.
Now, there is another surprising percentage here, which is the flip between Kacchako and Izuocha. In the general top 10 fanfics, we have Izuocha being the most popular F/M ship, while here we have Kacchako at 29% (of the top 10 most popular F/M ships) and Izuocha at 22%.
Looking into this, I went to the tag IZUOCHA. There are 5435 works. A quick glance at the first page confirms that some of these works have Izuocha as one of the many side ships, instead of a main ship. This might be one of the reasons for this discrepancy.
I was a bit curious to see how many “single ship” fics are there and what is the difference between ships that are tagged only Izuocha or only Kacchako. I checked these two ships and excluded all other ships, so I went to look at the pure numbers of fics with Izuocha as the only ship tag or Kacchako as the only ship tag. I continued until I encountered an error, so this is an estimate that could have +/- 6 (mostly related to non BNHA ships from crossovers).
The results are Izuocha 1392 fanfics and Kacchako 2458. I think this confirms that Kacchako is the most popular F/M fics.
READER/BNHA CHARACTER
There are also a bunch of fics dedicated to ships/interactions between the reader (a self insert character) and BNHA characters. To check the percentages within the top 10 of these reader ships I checked the tag “Reader”.
Bakugou is the most popular character in these Reader/character ship, followed by Hawks (11.03%), then Aizawa and Todoroki with minimal differences.
I was wondering if this follows the order of popular characters in general, but it looks like while the TOP 10 for the Reader/Characters are:
Bakugou Katsuki/Reader (1580 = this is the total number of fics)
Takami Keigo | Hawks/Reader (811)
Aizawa Shouta | Eraserhead/Reader (788)
Todoroki Shouto/Reader (784)
Dabi (My Hero Academia)/Reader (762)
Midoriya Izuku/Reader (714)
Kirishima Eijirou/Reader (527)
Shigaraki Tomura | Shimura Tenko/Reader (465)
Yagi Toshinori | All Might/Reader (462) Shinsou Hitoshi/Reader (457)
The TOP 10 characters in general actually are: Midoriya Izuku (83020); Bakugou Katsuki (79728); Todoroki Shouto (49553); Kirishima Eijirou (44463); Aizawa Shouta | Eraserhead (40874); Uraraka Ochako (33438); Kaminari Denki (30907); Yagi Toshinori | All Might (27666); Ashido Mina (22905); Dabi (16894).
The main difference is definitely Hawks who is a popular character, but not popular, but is not as “ship popular” as other characters, while still being incredibly popular in the reader/hawks category. I suspect this might be because of the influence of Yagami Yato’s popularity.
Bakugou Katsuki/Reader (1580 = this is the total number of fics)
Takami Keigo | Hawks/Reader (811)
Aizawa Shouta | Eraserhead/Reader (788)
Todoroki Shouto/Reader (784)
Dabi (My Hero Academia)/Reader (762)
Midoriya Izuku/Reader (714)
Kirishima Eijirou/Reader (527)
Shigaraki Tomura | Shimura Tenko/Reader (465)
Yagi Toshinori | All Might/Reader (462) Shinsou Hitoshi/Reader (457)
The TOP 10 characters in general actually are: Midoriya Izuku (83020); Bakugou Katsuki (79728); Todoroki Shouto (49553); Kirishima Eijirou (44463); Aizawa Shouta | Eraserhead (40874); Uraraka Ochako (33438); Kaminari Denki (30907); Yagi Toshinori | All Might (27666); Ashido Mina (22905); Dabi (16894).
The main difference is definitely Hawks who is a popular character, but not popular, but is not as “ship popular” as other characters, while still being incredibly popular in the reader/hawks category. I suspect this might be because of the influence of Yagami Yato’s popularity.