#I still can't fathom how endeavor is so apathetic about parenthood itself

[quality-chaos-and-other-qcs]

Probably Infrequent but Not Necessarily Unpopular Opinion on BNHA Characters

So, look, about that thing I said about Mount Lady during the Bakugou rescue.  Which, by the way, was meant to say ‘tanking a projectile villain to the face’ but I was sleepy and somehow forgot to put in the word ‘villain’.

Here’s the thing.  On a personal level, I wouldn’t say I hate (that’s more investment than I care to put into antipathy) Minoru Mineta or Katsuki Bakugou as people, but I have very severe antipathy towards them.  If this upsets you, please hang on, there’s a lot more to this than that.  I mean, I shouldn’t have to ask people to not flip out right away (and I probably don’t) but I don’t trust that I can manage to phrase things quite how I mean them in shorthand.

So where was I?  Right.  I have a lot of antipathy towards Mineta Minoru and Katsuki Bakugou as people.  Very specifically.

As characters, I think their presence in the main cast of HeroAca is very, very important, and their existence is a very good thing.  Similarly, despite the way that Mount Lady acts rather shallowly a lot of the time and I don’t like that at all, I think her presence in the tertiary is a very good thing too.

Now, I have to put a couple qualifiers on here:

* I don’t read/haven’t read the HeroAca manga.  I repeatedly intend to do so and then don’t because absentmindedness/busy.  So all I have to go off of is the three seasons of anime, and I can’t refer to any manga scenes that happen not to show up in the anime.

* I grew up in the U.S.  For various reasons I haven’t really been exposed to other cultures, so if the meaning I ascribe here is an unintended consequence of something completely else, so be it.  I guess it’s a happy coincidence then, but I still think it’s important.

At any rate.  While I don’t like Katsuki or Minoru or Yuu (huh, didn’t know that until just now) as people, I love that they’re in the cast.

Why?

Well, because it’s really good to realize that it’s possible to be a reprehensible, unlikable, or willingly faulty person without actually being evil, or ‘bad’.

I do not like Bakugou.  I do not like his attitude, I do not like his perspective, I do not like his behavior.  Everytime someone talks about their ‘angry boi’ I am absolutely baffled that someone can like him as he is.  Bakugou is an asshole, and he’s an asshole who’s only barely above being an outright bully, and that’s only because he’s improved over the course of the series.  Sometimes willingly, sometimes unwittingly.

You couldn’t wipe the grin I got when he told the League of Villains where to stick it off of my face with an entire mountainside.

Minoru is awful.  He’s a horrible lecher who can’t seem to ever put his mind anywhere that doesn’t involve womens’ personal space.  His entire reason for wanting to be a hero is, in my eyes, horribly flawed, and I would never want to spend even ten minutes in his presence.

I’m horribly disappointed every time someone says that he should be removed from the series entirely, either directly by stating so, or indirectly by writing a fanfiction that includes him dying or being written out just because they don’t like him.

Yuu mostly just leaves me disappointed in her failure to deliver on the promise implied in her appearance and concept.  Her visual design is excellent- a full-body spandex suit that calls back to the earliest of superhero comics, a goofy domino mask with a couple of horns, a very unusual color palette that nevertheless is striking without being garish and a fun power to play around with (I can’t help there, I need at least two lanes!) and she’s clearly not only relatively shallow, but also cheap, frequently lazy, and often seems completely uninterested in doing anything that can be labeled ‘heroic.’

Butt she makes a stupid pun in her first appearance, and then during the Bakugou Rescue, after being essentially curb-stomped by All For One, she pulls herself back together, waits for the right time, and then gets herself knocked the fuck out by tanking a high-speed villain to the face to make sure the rescue is successful.

This shallow, self-invested, gloryhogging lady deliberately Titan Cliffed herself into a chance (however remote) of permanent facial scarring just to be absolutely sure those kids got away, on a moment’s notice.

So I think about that.  I think about that a lot.  Because that’s important.  That’s a good moment of selflessness.  That’s a really big (ha) thing she did that contrasts a lot with her typical character.

Because as much as I would spend literal days kicking Endeavor in his stupid shins for absolutely and completely fucking up his chance to be a good parent, as much as I hope Minoru never, ever succeeds in his attempts to perv, as much as I fervently wish that Katsuki never, ever places best again until/unless he improves himself as a person, as disappointed as I am that Mount Lady is so very, very shallow...

It’s really, really important to remember that you don’t have to be a near-perfect cinnamon roll like Midoriya-san or a Good Girl like Uraraka-san or an honorably-flawed-but-well-intentioned straightlace like Iida-san to find and take a chance to do something that is good or selfless or helpful. 

I know a few people who are awful to be around but still accomplish good things and aren’t actually evil or intentionally harmful.  It’s nice to see that reflected in characters in ways that are on the same scope as the major protagonist/antagonist conflicts.