How tall is Katsuki Bakugo?

Katsuki Bakugo's official height: 172 cm

Katsuki Bakugo, the explosive rival at the center of Kōhei Horikoshi's My Hero Academia, is listed at 172 cm (5′8″). The figure comes from the character profile printed in Volume 1 of the manga (published in November 2014), which collects the July 2014 opening chapter that introduced him as Izuku Midoriya's aggressive childhood friend. Converted precisely, 172 cm is 67.7 inches, or 5 feet 7.7 inches, which rounds to 5′8″.

That number has stayed in place through the rest of the franchise. Shueisha published three official character guidebooks during the serialization, including Ultra Analysis, released in Japan on October 4, 2019 and in English by VIZ Media on November 2, 2021, and the anime ran for eight seasons ending in December 2025. None of those changed Bakugo's listed height. When the manga finished on August 5, 2024 after 42 volumes, 172 cm was still the official figure, and it is the one this site uses.

A teenager who was already above average

Bakugo's 172 cm is an adult-looking number attached to a very young character. In the first chapter he is a third-year middle school student; by the time the story settles at U.A. High he is 15. Compared with real Japanese students, that makes him tall for his age.

Japan's Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) measures schoolchildren every year. Its fiscal 2025 School Health Statistics Survey gives these average heights for boys:

At 14, Bakugo is about 6 cm taller than an average boy his age, and his height already exceeds the average for 17-year-olds who have nearly finished growing. Unlike some series, My Hero Academia never published a later "grown-up" height for the U.A. students, so 172 cm is the only canon figure even though Bakugo realistically might have gained a little more during high school.

Bakugo next to Deku and Todoroki

The rivalry triangle at the heart of My Hero Academia has a clear height order. This site lists Izuku Midoriya at 166 cm, Bakugo at 172 cm and Shoto Todoroki at 176 cm.

Bakugo and Deku

The 6 cm gap between Bakugo and Deku is part of their story from the first page. Wikipedia's article notes that Bakugo bullied Deku as children and gave him the nickname "Deku," and the early chapters frame Bakugo as physically bigger and more confident, looming over a smaller, Quirkless Izuku. Six centimeters is not a dramatic difference in real life, roughly the gap between an average Japanese 14-year-old and an average 17-year-old, but Horikoshi's art plays it up through posture: Bakugo leans forward and shouts down, Deku hunches.

As the story progresses, the article notes, Bakugo's loss to Deku in training changes how he sees him, and their rivalry grows into a closer friendship. The height gap never closes on paper, but the way they are drawn together shifts. By the final war arc, the two stand side by side as equals, and the 6 cm difference stops reading as dominance.

Bakugo and Todoroki

Todoroki's 176 cm puts him 4 cm above Bakugo. The two clash repeatedly, from the U.A. Sports Festival final onward, and the provisional hero license exam pairs them as the students who failed and had to retake it together. Of the three central boys, Todoroki is the tallest, which matches his cool, aloof design and contrasts with Bakugo's restless energy.

Bakugo next to the rest of the cast

The table below uses the heights this site records for My Hero Academia characters, drawn from official volume profiles and other Shueisha publications as recorded in the site's character data.

Kirishima and Kaminari: the "Bakusquad"

Bakugo's closest friends in Class 1-A are both a little shorter than him. Eijiro Kirishima, whose Quirk Hardening makes his body rock-solid, is listed at 170 cm, and Denki Kaminari at 168 cm. In group shots of the three, Bakugo sits at the top, which fits his role as the loud center of the friend group.

All Might and Endeavor

The pro heroes who shape Bakugo's story are far larger. All Might, Bakugo's childhood idol, is 220 cm in his muscle form, 48 cm taller. Bakugo's admiration for All Might's way of winning is one of the character's founding motivations, and Horikoshi draws All Might as a towering figure that the students literally look up to. Endeavor, under whom Bakugo interns alongside Deku and Todoroki, is listed at 195 cm, 23 cm above him.

Hawks: the same height

The winged pro hero Hawks is listed at 172 cm in the Volume 20 profile, an exact match for Bakugo. They are a useful pair for anyone who assumes that top heroes must be physically huge. Hawks, the No. 2 hero for much of the series, is no taller than a 15-year-old student.

Manga, anime and the epilogue

Studio Bones' anime adaptation follows the manga's model sheets, and no anime guide has published a different number for Bakugo. Differences you may notice between the two are about drawing style, not height: the anime tends to keep characters' proportions more consistent from scene to scene, while Horikoshi's manga panels exaggerate posture and perspective for drama. A low-angle panel of Bakugo shouting can make him look taller than Todoroki even though he is 4 cm shorter on paper.

The manga's final chapter jumps forward several years to show the cast as young adults working as heroes. That epilogue gives readers a glimpse of an older Bakugo, but it did not come with a new character profile or an updated height. Until Shueisha publishes one, the Volume 1 figure of 172 cm remains the only official measurement, and it describes a 14-year-old.

That matters for comparisons. When fans set an adult Bakugo against adult characters from other series, they are usually using a teenage measurement. Real Japanese boys still grow a few centimeters between 15 and 17, according to the MEXT table above, so an adult Bakugo could plausibly be a little taller than 172 cm. The canon number, however, has never changed, and this site does not guess beyond it.

What a 6 cm gap looks like

Six centimeters is about the difference between the average Japanese 14-year-old boy (166.1 cm) and the average 17-year-old (170.6 cm) in the MEXT survey above, plus another centimeter and a half. In other words, Bakugo standing next to Deku looks roughly like a high school senior standing next to a first-year, which is the dynamic of their early confrontations. Against Todoroki the direction reverses: Bakugo is the one looking up, by 4 cm, a difference small enough to be hidden by his spiky hair in most panels.

Height, Quirk and design

Bakugo's power has nothing to do with size. His Quirk, Explosion, lets him detonate a nitroglycerin-like sweat from his palms. Wikipedia's article notes that overusing it causes pulsating pain in his arms and shoulders, and the manga shows him using blasts for mobility, flying and changing direction in midair. That makes him one of the most vertically mobile students in Class 1-A, so the battles he wins depend on speed and control rather than reach.

His design reinforces the personality instead. Spiky ash-blond hair adds visible height, and Horikoshi often draws him mid-snarl, chin up. Wikipedia notes that in the first draft of the series Bakugo was a genius with a nice personality, an idea Horikoshi scrapped as too boring before rewriting him as ruthless and ambitious. A character who looks like he is always about to explode needs to feel bigger than his 172 cm, and the hair, gauntlets and body language achieve that.

His chosen hero name, "Great Explosion Murder God Dynamight," which Japanese sources render as 大・爆・殺・神ダイナマイト, fits the same attitude: everything about the character is turned up beyond his actual size.

Popularity and why fans care about his height

Bakugo is one of the most popular characters in the series. Wikipedia notes that he has consistently ranked in the series' popularity polls, most commonly in first place, and that Horikoshi was surprised by this because he had not expected the character to become popular. With that popularity comes a steady stream of height questions, especially comparisons with Deku and Todoroki, and the answer is always the same three numbers from the early volume profiles: 166, 172 and 176 cm.

He is voiced by Nobuhiko Okamoto in Japanese and Clifford Chapin in English. Neither performer's height has anything to do with the character's canon figure. The same goes for the stage-play and musical adaptations: casting for live performances depends on many factors, and an actor who is taller or shorter than 172 cm does not change the official number. When you see a different height quoted for Bakugo online, it almost always traces back to an actor, a fan estimate or a misread panel rather than to anything Shueisha has published.

What 172 cm means for a real person

As an adult measurement, 172 cm is close to average for Japanese men. This site's Japan average height page, based on NCD Risk Factor Collaboration data, puts Japanese men born in 1996 at about 170.8 cm. So while Bakugo is tall for a 15-year-old, if he stopped growing at 172 cm he would be only slightly above average as a Japanese adult. Globally, Our World in Data's summary of the same research puts the average man born in 1996 at about 171 cm, almost exactly Bakugo's height.

Real people at or near 172 cm on this site include:

• Cillian Murphy, listed at 172 cm, the same as Bakugo.
• Tom Holland, listed at 173 cm, 1 cm taller.
• Robert Downey Jr., also listed at 173 cm.

You can put Bakugo next to Deku, Todoroki or any of these actors in the height comparison tool, and the My Hero Academia character hub has the full Class 1-A lineup with heights.