Quirks are the main way My Hero Academia’s characters define themselves. In the series’ superhero-obsessed world, one’s quirk can decide their entire life trajectory, and their chances of survival.
While even some heroes don’t have the most impressive quirks, the strongest among them wield quirks that would give any marvel hero a run for their money. Easily one of the strongest quirks introduced in the series, however, ‘new order’, belonged to a sadly short lived character, Cathleen Bate, better known as Star and Stripe.
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Basics
Star’s quirk is easily one of the most absurd in the entirety of My Hero Academia. Most of the quirks in the series have some biological explanation or basis that makes them somewhat grounded. Endeavor’s ‘hellflame’ quirk, for example, takes into account his body overheating and the risks that come with it. Star’s quirk however, rejects notions of being grounded, and goes to levels more common in series like Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure or Jujutsu Kaisen.
New order’s basic function is allowing Star to apply a rule to anything she touches. The rules can be almost anything, as long as she knows and says the name of what she's touching. These rules can range anywhere from being used to change an object’s physical properties, to creating a cause-and-effect rule the object must obey.
For example, when a laser beam is fired at her, she touches it with her hands, and applies a rule to it that makes it holdable, thus allowing her to catch it. Later on, she attempts to apply a rule to Shigaraki that would make his heart stop if he moved, showing that she’s used rules like that in the past.
Limitations
Besides the requirement of her touching and saying the name of an object, Star is also limited on how many rules she can apply at once. She is able to apply only 2 of new order’s rules at once, meaning that if she has to apply a third rule, she has to cancel one of her other rules.
She also can’t apply rules that would affect things she hasn’t touched by proxy. So for example, she couldn’t touch the air then make anything the air touches die. The rule would only be able to affect the air itself.
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When dealing with living beings, she also has to understand what they think about themselves. If she uses a name for them that they don’t recognise as who they are, her quirk won’t activate. This means she needs prior information on any human opponents in order to use her quirk directly on them.
The quirk also has limits on how strong it can make her directly. So while she can apply a rule to herself to make herself physically stronger, she can’t make herself unbeatable.
Achievements
Using this quirk, Star and Stripe was able to become the undisputed number 1 hero in the USA, mirroring her mentor All Might’s achievements in Japan. It’s unclear how quickly she earned this spot, but at the age of 42, she has seemingly held this position for a long time.
New Order is so powerful of a quirk, that even All for One was wary about it, considering its neutralization to be a vital step in his plan to conquer the heroes. And when Star eventually faced Shigaraki, she was able to almost defeat him, despite his strength at the time rivaling All for One’s.
Potential
Star’s quirk was impressive from the start, but how quickly it was removed from the story is an indication of how much it would have broken the story if left alone. In her final moments, Star was able to apply a rule to the quirk itself, causing it to act as a virus in Shigaraki’s body, outright destroying several of the quirks he had been given. This means that her rules are applicable to something as immaterial as a quirk, so could possibly even affect things one wouldn’t expect.
While the rules have some limitations on them, their sheer flexibility makes the quirk’s limits almost limitless. Had Star managed to team up with the heroes of Japan, her quirk may have shown even stronger abilities when used in combination with other heroes.
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