Can に be translated to "be"?

Question

I've been trying to learn Japanese for a little over a month now which let me finally read this little tag line on a My Hero Academia poster I have 「最高のヒーローに」

Once I looked up the meaning of each Kanji I gathered that is meant something along the lines of "the best of heroes" or just "the best hero." When I checked, I found out it translates to "be the best hero" so I was close. Awesome.

However that に at the end started messing me up when I thought about it. Thanks to my lessons, Google and other questions on here, I've seen that the particle に is used for stuff like destination and time, being translated to "to" or "at" but I don't get it here. Can it be used for stuff like "I'm going/want to be" or to mark goals too?

Answer 1

Yes, ～に roughly means "to ～", "at ～" or "for ～". Here, a verb like なる ("to become") is omitted, and に indeed adds the nuance of "I'm going to be" or "I want to become".

Catchphrases and news headlines often end with a particle, leaving out the corresponding verb for brevity. You have to infer the omitted verb, which is not really difficult once you've got used to common patterns.

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