#LoV meta

[ace-touya]

I really like how important friendships are in MHA, especially as an asexual person. And like - you can romantically ship whoever you want, I have my own headcanons about romantic ships that aren’t canonically romantic. But when looking at the canon, it’s nice to see how important platonic friendships are.

The league of villains are a found family.

Katsuki and Izuku are childhood friends (to enemies to friends) who mean the absolute world to each other.

Rooftop trio and the Pussycats are so close with their friendship groups that they made/planned to make their hero agencies together.

All of Class 1-A have a tight-knit bond.

The Bakusquad and the Dekusquad exist.

Ochaco, Izuku and Tenya became really good friends really quickly.

Having friends saved Shoto.

Aizawa and All Might go from being work colleagues to bring friends, and this makes a huge impact on All Might’s life.

Like Idk, I know the fandom tends to focus a lot on the shipping aspects, but I would love to appreciate the friendship more, because it’s so important to the characters, and, as an aroace person, it’s really important to me too.

[greenhappyseed]

do you think Midoriya agrees that he murdered Shigaraki, or that he just hadn’t come to argue with Spinner?

THIS IS SUCH A GOOD QUESTION! @granny-griffin I love the way you think! I’m going to answer in 2 parts: First, a close look at the factors that led to Tomura’s death, because a LOT happened in very few chapters; and second, Izuku’s conversation with Spinner in the context of the final battle, because there are continuing themes that are very consistent with how Izuku approaches Spinner. And finally, a lil Izuku appreciation because he does something very cool in 427.

I. How, exactly, did Tomura decay?

When Izuku held hands with Tenko inside their memories, Izuku cracked the hatred surrounding Tenko and let out Tenko’s core — the person who wanted to be a friend and hero to the LOV. When that happens, the “finger armor” on Tomura’s real body crumble too.

At that exact moment, AFO seizes his opening and re-emerges. AFO says that “Tenko’s spiritual defeat” damaged “his” body, which implicitly blames Izuku for the physical damage. But that’s just AFO’s narration, and AFO is a manipulative liar (even to himself and to MHA readers). We don’t know that Tomura’s body would have decayed if AFO hadn’t re-emerged. For all we know, once Izuku cracked the hatred, Tenko could have gone on to live a normal human life. But of course, AFO would never tolerate a normal human life in the “vessel” he spent years cultivating.

Without Tomura’s rage and hatred, and with AFO in control, AFO quickly “uses up” any remaining power in Tomura’s body. At first, hyper-regeneration doesn’t work, and as AFO uses more power he has to start using more quirks to hold his body together.

AFO’s greed burned out his own “vessel.” AFO’s overuse of his quirk condemned Tomura’s body, not Izuku.

Izuku knows exactly what’s happening because All Might warned him back in Chapter 2 about strong quirks coursing through limp noodle bodies.

But at this point, Izuku doesn’t know that Tenko’s spirit is still around. Izuku thinks he’s fighting pure AFO, and he sees a weakness he can use to end AFO. If Izuku doesn’t use this opening, then AFO will transfer himself to another person (which is likely to be Izuku himself) and begin all over again. Izuku knows this because AFO is screaming about finding a new vessel.

In the vestige world, when Izuku goes for the final strike, that’s when Tenko comes back and adds his fist to the vestige mega-punch. When Tenko comes back, which is itself an unexpected miracle thanks to Nana, there aren’t any “perfect victory” options — it was either smash AFO for good and let Tomura’s body crumble OR let AFO body snatch Izuku (or someone else) and hope that maybe Tenko’s spirit could overcome AFO in that new body — and that’s assuming AFO’s self-transfer would even include Tenko’s spirit. It’s an easy choice for Izuku to make, especially when Tenko himself chooses the smash option.

In the end, Izuku saved the crying little boy Tenko trapped under hatred and AFO’s lies. But Izuku couldn’t save Tomura’s physical body, and I don’t think there was any way he could have. It absolutely haunts Izuku right now — he wanted to save everyone with a smile and he held the strongest quirk in the world, yet he couldn’t make Tomura’s story end happily. Nobody could. To make it worse for Izuku, the world is probably celebrating the hero who destroyed the villain with a punch, because that’s what it looked like on TV. Only Izuku, All Might, and a few others know what happened in the vestige world.

II. What does Izuku think as he talks to Spinner?

Does Izuku think he murdered Tomura? Honestly no, I don’t think he sees himself as a murderer. And he’s NOT. He knows, logically, that AFO engineered a mutually assured destruction scenario with Tomura.

But does Izuku see himself as a failed hero? Yeah, I think so. That kid has so many self-esteem issues to begin with, and his whole self-identity is wrapped around being a hero like All Might. Remember how brutally All Might scolded himself in Chapter 1 when he was struggling to transform and save Bakugo from the sludge villain? I imagine Izuku’s internal monologue is something like that, cursing himself and holding himself to an impossibly high standard. It’s why All Might tried to reassure him in the hospital that he saved Tenko’s soul.

Still, I’m not at all surprised to see Izuku bravely committing himself to remembering Tomura and carrying out Tomura’s final wishes. When Izuku goes to see Spinner, he has to know Spinner will be angry over his friend’s death. And Izuku knows that part of a hero’s role is to validate someone’s pain, because he did that for Tenko.

A hero needs to SEE that crying child and be kind even when the child isn’t. A hero needs to let the child know they’re not alone.

Validation is what happens when Shoto uses Phosphor for the first time and tells Toya: “Dad was a madman! Our family was screwed up! …But you’re not taking any more innocent lives. Aim all your rage at us!” It’s what Shoji tells Spinner during their fight: “We’ve all got scars we carry.” It’s what Ochako tells Himiko: “Maybe this world isn’t a place you can be yourself…but being able to declare what you love, and do it with your whole face…that smile of yours is so perfect I’m honestly jealous!”

Izuku understands there’s no point in arguing with Spinner over who, exactly, killed Tomura. It doesn’t matter. Tomura is gone and Spinner is in pain. Spinner needs his anger and grief over Tomura’s loss validated. He needs his mistreatment as a heteromorph validated. He needs his abuse at the hands of AFO validated.

Izuku doesn’t just let Spinner call him a murderer; he lets Spinner call him a “sick puppy,” he lets Spinner talk about the destruction of Deika, he lets Spinner vent about how he had given up on life until he found Tomura. Izuku lets Spinner grab him and manhandle him so Spinner can finally express that, to him, Tomura represented hope for major change. Tomura’s death is the death of that hope. And in return, Izuku uses Spinner’s villain name (just as Tomura did). Izuku adds on to Tomura’s message too — he tells Spinner that Tomura wanted to be LOV’s hero. He tells Spinner how much Spinner meant to Tomura, which Spinner didn’t know before.

Simply by listening and sharing what he knew, quirkless Izuku validated Spinner and reached his heart, enabling Spinner to control his own raging quirk.

Izuku saved Spinner. No quirk needed.

And even if hero and villain will never see perfectly eye to eye, Izuku bonds with Spinner, encouraging him to write his book about Tomura to counter the popular media narrative (which winds all around the chapter). Izuku, who is possibly the most celebrated hero on the planet at the moment, encourages a book that will “stick it to heroes forever and ever.” Finally, Izuku promises Spinner that he will never forget Tomura. In return, Spinner finally softens and sends his own message of goodwill to Shoji.

Izuku may have been too late to save Tomura, but he will keep Tomura’s memory alive. In doing so, he saved Spinner and bonded with him, getting Spinner to implicitly admit that some heroes are good people. Izuku and Spinner, our two social outcast narrators, found common ground.

And that’s the beginning of a major change.

[gradelstuff]

[irontragedyreview]

I was waiting for the official translation of this chapter because I wanted to know what meaning they were going to give to this phrase and since I don't know Japanese the most accurate thing I will get is the official translation.

At first I was going to take just Shoto's panel but in the end I decided to also take the previous one because the phrase "there's sure to be a period of chaos the books don't talk about", this phrase plus the way Shoto talks about the lack of a symbol and how a person like Afo born or emerges from them, it’s something that left me thinking and a little uneasy, because while I understand what Shoto says, it makes me wonder how much these kids know about their history.

What I'm trying to get is that the concept of Horikoshi's pre-Quirk society isn’t original, in fact it can be found literally in the X-Men comics, I would even say that you don't even have to go to the comics, The X-Men movies of the early 2000s showed us the pre-quirk society of bnha, the first scene of that movie is Jean Gray speaking in front of Congress against the anti-mutant registry, throughout this debate the question that makes Jean's words lose power is "Are mutants dangerous?", the question itself is unfair because Jean answers is that everything has the potential to be dangerous, even a teenager driving a car, the reply is that those cases can be regulated but mutants are an unknown and therefore a danger as they can’t be controlled. The original trilogy has this presentation to a society fearful of mutants, the end of the trilogy is the invention of a cure against the X gene, which is discovered through the experimentation of a mutant child (Chisaki arc). This is later taken up in the films that focus on being prequels, in X-Men days of future past where we meet Dr. Trask whose introduction is him explaining how the evolutionary chain of the human being was, how those more evolved ended exterminated their less evolved ancestors, the mutants here are the next evolutionary step and all those born without the X gene are the least evolved, who in Trask's words will only follow the same path as their ancestors before.

Now, whoever reads this will say "why is this story important and what does it have to do with Shoto's words?" Well, it's that Shoto's words, plus the panel that refers to those events that are outside the books, they make me wonder how the UA students know history, because they live in a society where the supremacy of the quirk is what is imposed, they didn’t live in first stages and we know little or nothing about how this stage is told to the generations that followed. Afo, Yoichi, Kudo and Bruce were born in the first glimpses of quirk society, however there is something that is interesting and that is that Kudo doesn’t represent a front against discrimination to people with quirks, they were a revolutionary army againts Afo, Yoichi himself never thinks about the discrimination and mistreatment of quirk people in the society in which he grew up, which is incredibly strange considering that he witnessed his brother killing a group that planned to kill them for recognizing that Afo belonged to that new generation of people. The pre-Quirk society carried out practices of discrimination and perhaps even death of people they considered dangerous, the majority of quirkless people in the old society were terrified of the quirks and their response was to attack the unknown. Ofc, we can only talk about Japan since we don't know what happened throughout the world, from what we can see the glowing baby was not considered dangerous in China, or perhaps there were certain quirks that were less inconvenient than others but in Japan we can see that there were groups against people with quirks.

Now, returning to Shoto's words, the big problem of the society in which Afo was born is not the lack of symbols, the chaos of pre-Quirk society was based on fear and discrimination of an unknown other. The times after the first stages are unknown to all readers, we only know what Horikoshi said, we also know that the society where Toshinori grew up and decided to become a symbol of peace was also very different. All Might is presented to us in the manga as the first symbol not only of peace but also as the first symbol of society, although Banjo is one of the first group of heroes who aren’t what we know as vigilantes (please correct me if I'm wrong). ), it isn’t until All Might and his long career that the society of heroes as we know it now is consolidated. All Might is the symbol and only pillar where this society stands and that explains how weak a symbol that shapes society can be, because once AM can no longer act as such, that is when society breaks down. In the movie Catching Fire there is a very interesting conversation between Snow and Katniss, where Snow tells her that Katniss' behavior cannot be ignored, because if people thought they could face the Capitol without fear, eventually the system would collapse and Katniss responds "what a fragile system if it collapses because of a few berries"

With all this I’m trying to say that having a symbol or not does not end up being a factor of true stability, AM or rather Toshinori renounced every aspect of his personal life to become the symbol of peace and bear the weight of society, but his figure was the only thing that kept society in order, the symbol of peace was fragile and only hid a broken and corrupt society, this isn’t AM's fault, the problem is that when Shoto talks about the lack of a symbol doesn’t finish internalizing that society with a symbol didn’t work either, because the symbol was only represented in a man and when he could no longer take his place, Endevor could have been the number one hero but he isn’t a symbol at the level of AM, no hero could fill that place.

So, is it the lack of symbol that allows chaos to be generated? Or is the function of a symbol to create stability? What happens when the symbol is more revolutionary and generates chaos or confrontation? This is where I may sound controversial but Afo could have been a symbol for the people he "helped", in a twisted way he was a symbol of refuge for people who were rejected and found with him a place to belong or even a solution to be found, someone that could take away the quirk that made them different in that society, Tomura is a symbol for those who didn’tt fit into society, we saw that when in the previous chapters he said that he wanted to be the hero of the villains, when we saw panels of people who said "Yes, Shigaraki destroys everything", Spinner is a symbol for the discrimination of heteromorphs even though Horikoshi neglected the issue.

So, in bnha there are symbols, the problem is that the heroes lost the symbol that gave stability to the society that they know, the society was sustained by covering its problems and creating its villains through the rejection and indifference of those who didn’t fit. The society of pre-quirks didn’t become chaos due to the lack of symbols but due to the systematic mistreatment of a minority where fear led to violence, Afo knew how to take advantage of those expelled at the time. It’s for all this that I wonder how much the UA students know about history and the formation of society, of course there could have been sides represented, for example like Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr, who could be symbols in that pre-quirk society but these wouldn’t have avoided chaos, since it’s formed by the discrimination of others considered different. The society of heroes in bnha doesn’tt need a symbol embodied in a person, it isn’t the lack of a symbol that generates chaos but the system, symbols can often be functional to the perpetuation of the same, instead of corrections to their shortcomings.

[darkonekrisrewrite]

The Lov are the protagonists of this series

So spoilers.......Deku got (will get) his arms back in less than 10 minutes (not an exaggeration) after losing them.

And it occurs to me, that between the heroes and the villains (specifically the Lov) of bnha, only one side has gone through the full spectrum of what shonen protagonists usually go through in their journeys.

The tragic backstory:

The character development:

Forming positive emotional bonds with a tight group of found friends/family:

Physical harm that is not fixed and has lasting consequences:

And the loss of close friends along the way:

All things that the the whole core Lov has gone through and is still going through now, and all the things that most of the heroes don't have.

The focused group of the hero kids, being deku, ochako, bakugo and shoto have gone through character development and some arguably have a "tragic backstory" (mostly just shoto's could be considered tragic), but everything else listed above?

Not so much.

They haven't really ever lost anything, definitely no friends killed, and haven't had any kind of lasting consequences throughout everything.

And the rest of class 1A is in the exact same place as they were at the halfway point of bnha, nothing has changed for them.

That applies to the rest of the hero side too.

Mirio lost his quirk?

Rewound, back in business.

Aizawa lost his childhood friend shirakumo?

Back as a nomu and the open-ended possiblity of healing/some form of recovery. (Though aizawa did lose his leg, with Eri's quirk power being left ambiguous, who knows?)

The only heroes who have lost anything with any sense of pertinence are endeavor and hawks.

Having darker back stories and tangible consequences.

But they're also the only heroes that narratively had it coming, and even then it still doesn't reach the level that the Lov is at.

Hawks doesn't have any bonds with anyone, despite whatever's going on with him and tokoyami.

They worked a hero internship together and hawks said some vaguely inspiring advice to tokoyami, that's pretty much it.

And endeavor seems to have gotten everything that he ever wanted, just the opposite of how he wanted it.

To be the number 1 hero, to make his son(s) powerful masterpieces, to protect the next generation.

There's not an instance of the heroes in bnha taking a true loss, at least not a loss that wasn't then gotten back later.

Bakugo was lost/kidnapped but they got him back.

All-might lost his power and couldn't be a hero anymore but then he was given an Ironman suit with power that could rival All for one.

Everything is walked back.

But with the Lov, whenever they get hit, it always leaves a mark that stays with them, and they change because of it.

Their injuries don't just go away, leaving very visible effects.

Their back stories left scars on them that they still struggle with in the present.

And their present situation isn't great so they find comfort in each other and the bonds they made together to get by.

Lastly when they lost their friend/comrade, it was treated with the same weight as if it were a hero losing their close friend, including the rage.

The "hero's journey" that shonen heroes usually move through seems to be walked by the villains in this story.

The Lov.

[helga-grinduil]

Saw the most insane take on this chapter today, and I feel like I need to say something.

Toga decided to die… NOT because she accepted Ochako’s feelings and her ‘healthy love’. If you were to actually read the chapter with your eyes instead of your ass, this is what you would see:

The structure of Toga’s monologue (and the monologue itself) here mirrors Jin's monologue. The narrative is basically throwing it in your face that Toga is copying Jin, even if unknowingly. Her entire 'sacrifice' is a parallel to Jin, who also decided to sacrifice himself for the people who accepted him (The League in Jin's case, Ochako in Himiko's case) because he didn't really care about himself anymore and didn't think rehabilitation was possible for him. She's not doing this because she accepted the 'healthy' concept of love, she's literally copying Jin's version of love - self-sacrifice.

Toga literally gives us an actual reason for why she's doing it: she doesn't believe (yet) that the world can change for the better and that the society would try to work with her instead of completely supressing her. She doesn't believe that she would have a future if she'd allow herself to be captured by heroes. This entire thought process is coming from the core ideology of the League of Villains. Not believing that the world can change and help them so the only thing left is to either destroy it or die is Tomura's ideology.

(Destruction is the main point. Destroying as much as they can and feel like before they're killed off or before they're left with nothing but ashes is the real purpose behind this entire war.)

And even when Toga speaks about the League creating an easier world for her to live in, the flashback shows them before MVA - alive and well. Twice is dead. Touya (as she thinks) is dead. Compress was captured. Currently, as far as Toga is aware - only Shigaraki (who isn't even Tomura anymore, the last time she saw him), Kurogiri and Spinner are left standing (and Spinner is actually currently laying on the hospital floor, dying). Ultimately, the League creating that world for her is an impossible, unachievable dream by now - and she knows it. It's not something that is going to happen. She gave up on that idea. She doesn't believe that she has a future if heroes capture her, and she doesn't believe that she has a future if the League 'wins' (and she knows they won't).

She believes that dying is the conclusion all of them are heading towards, the League came there prepared to die - that's why she chooses to save Ochako (the person who accepted her and made her happy) and kill herself instead of getting locked up or dying in some other way. Dying on her own terms, dying by saving the only person who actually accepted her (like Twice did) is the only way she can see herself going out happily now. There is no other option left in her mind.

And hey! There is actually another huge factor at play here, which I feel like some people forget for some reason? Toga thinks that Touya is dead. Moreso, Toga thinks that Touya killed himself. Dying on her own terms, killing herself while smiling?

She is following in his footsteps.

That's why she 'asked' Touya if he'd managed to smile/laugh before dying, because *that's* what Touya's entire speech about laughter was about. Dying while having a fucking blast, dying while doing whatever they want and laughing at the world, accepting the fact that they will die, but at least they'll cause as much harm and pain to the world that hurt them as possible before that. Himiko has decided to kill herself while doing what she wants (sacrificing herself to save a person who made her happy) with a smile on her face.

It's not love & justice that lead to self-destruction, it's self-depreciation and inability to believe that things can get better that do.

P.S. She’s not dead btw.

[villainsandvictimsalliance]

Rereading the manga, I notice something really interesting. If you go back to chapter 59, you'll find All Might explaining how AFO and OFA as quirks were born. That's the first time Toshinori explains the history of AFO too.

The interesting part is the way he tells the story of Yoichi, the first user of OFA. It reminds me a lot of Tenko's story. It can be just me, but please read it for yourself:

" The man had a quirkless little brother / the man had a quirkless younger brother.

The little brother was small, and frail, but he harbored a strong sense of justice...! / This brother was small and fragile, but he had a strong sense of justice!

His brother's actions panged his heart... and he opposed him / and the deeds of his big brother pained him... So he opposed the tyrant. "

( A quirkless little brother asking why the world is so unfair finding out he actually has a quirk when he decides to oppose his abuser? Of course, here the difference is that Yoichi was older than Tenko when it all happened. He was not a confused 5 years old trying to understand why and how.... )

" Yes... He who was thought quirkless, did in fact possess one prior. / Yes... It turned out he hadn't actually been quirkless from the start.

Though neither he himself nor anyone around him had ever noticed / thought neither he nor anyone else has known it. "

That means there is a previous instance in which a young man thought quirkless had indeed a quirk: Yoichi himself!

It also makes me think about how Tomura/Tenko's control over decay depends on his emotional and psychological state.

The night his quirk awakened, we saw that Tenko had no control over it; everything that touched the ground he had contact with decayed. After he was "rescued" and after he was given the hands of his deceased family, AFO noticed that Tomura had unconsciously restrained decay so he would only affect the things he directly touched. Later on the story, Tomura was able to expand his quirk, evolving to decay without using all his five fingers during My Villain Academia. He was able to decay things at will during the War arc!!!

Could it be possible that Tenko had unconsciously repressed his own quirk for years before the night he killed his family?

Maybe when he tried to repress his own feelings about what was happening at home, Tenko also repressed decay without knowing. If he kept all his negative feelings in check as to not upset his family, it'd be an option.

If we wanted to reaaaally go crazy theorizing, we could even make a case about how Tenko having a previous quirk before AFO implanted decay on him is a possibility (within the frames of the bnha narrative). I'm not going there, but I think that fic authors would appreciate the prompt.

[abodeofhunter]

Heeeeey! Look what I've done here! What resins! I want to make either micro stands or keychains, or both. I could make a pack of them.

[inkwells-stuff]

"Curious was a valuable asset.. She didn't need to throw herself at the front lines" Let's see if this will get anywhere, the hair took forever to figure out-

[fanofflames]

Working on a Skeptic Funko Pop!

Sir Nighteye makes a great base lol.

[purringysalamiri]

killed a man and starts sobbing and crying (me too)

[greenhappyseed]

It hurts to see how damn close Toshinori was to becoming a Tomura or a Toya or a Himiko. Like Tomura, he lost his family when he was young, and presumably nobody came to help him since he took to the streets with a metal pipe and a fierce determination to stop villains from hurting others. At first, even Nana ignores Toshinori — she won’t turn around to look at him when he says his family is dead.

It’s also similar to how Enji won’t look at Toya or listen to his ideas. And, like Toya, Toshinori seems to have internalized that, because he lacked quirk power, he existed for no reason. Yet Toshinori’s mark on the world will be the symbol of peace, not revenge.

Toshinori never succumbed to the slowly building cycle of violence and hatred the way Tenko did. Toshinori wanted to break the cycle and have a world where revenge and hatred didn’t have a place.

I love the contrast of the overpowered man-child standing in front of a beautiful, pristine skyline, saying he took his power to destroy it all compared to the oversized quirkless boy standing in front of a wasted, destroyed cityscape, saying he has no role but is willing to step up if he had power. Power isn’t something Toshinori is owed; it is a gift he is given.

Like Himiko, young Toshinori knew damn well that buildings come and go, but they can never fix people’s hearts. But he didn’t turn that inwards — he always looked outwards and found joy helping others.

And boy, does that line about “new buildings” bring it all back around to Tenko, and the one thing he says will save him: The destruction of everything stemming from his father’s house.

[gradelstuff]

Dabi ate soba with the League of Villains once in bnha smash. I just noticed after re-reading the hiking chapter.

[strike-n-brawl]

@*#&vrbb×*&#sj ok👍

[darkonekrisrewrite]

The Villains (specifically the Lov) Are Right

Especially about the civilians in Bnha

(2 Part Meta Civilians and Lov) (Warning spoilers and long Meta Post) (Permission given to re-blog)

The Lov, specifically the core League of Villains, don’t owe any consideration, atonement or apologies to the civilians in Bnha. Because since long before the Lov had even become villains, even when they were still children, the civilians decided that they don’t owe them anything at all.

Most people I’ve seen in the fandom say something like “I don’t justify or excuse the villain’s actions.”, when it comes to the destructive/murderous parts of the villain’s deeds, which is very nice and moral of them to say.

But as long as we’re talking about the average Bnha civilian, I definitely justify/excuse the Lov’s actions.

Because the “innocent” people in Bnha are awful.

Part 1 The Civilians

That’s not even an opinion really but rather a fact that’s been presented to us clearly, over and over again, in Bnha’s story.

That’s partially why I believe that, even at their worst, the Lov are still worth more than most of the civilians that we’ve been shown so far.

See Past the Labels

“Heroes”, “Villains”, “Innocent People”. All labels that are used frequently over the course of Bnha, but seeing past these, looking beyond what we’re told by the story and instead seeing what we are shown by the story, that’s where the truth is in what these characters are and the effects their actions have on each other.

In Hero stories, saving the innocent/civilians is pretty much a guarantee at any point in time, it’s a prerequisite.

Where in most of those fiction, the civilians (or any large social group of innocents) are shown to definitely be people that should be saved, that it would be a tragedy if even some of them died, no matter the numbers.

But that’s not the case here, because the civilians in bnha aren’t like what you’d normally find in a hero tale, so much so that they’re nearly incomparable to any other series’ “Innocents”.

Looking at them as a whole, they’re more like what you’d find in a horror story.

Starting with one of the largest by the numbers examples:

They’re personifications of the bystander effect/syndrome, taken to the highest degree.

A truth that’s sometimes overlooked is that, while All for One and the Shimura family played a part in making Tenko Shimura the Tomura Shigaraki that he is today, so did all the civilians above. If even a single one of them had tried to help the child that would become the most dangerous villain, no matter how that would have turned out, the person Shigaraki is now would be different, maybe entirely.

Even just one true attempt to aid the scary looking child, instead of leaving it to the heroes who weren’t there, would have made a lasting impact. Just like the civilians choosing not to lift a finger to help left a lasting impact on Shigaraki in the present.

They condemn people for things that aren’t their fault, even when the individual hasn’t done anything wrong:

These are pretty self-explanatory in the point, but these aren’t just examples of ‘bad luck’, they showcase a callous legal system and civilians willing to throw a 16 year old kid under the bus for something that was in no way his ‘stumble’ or fault.

(First Side Point: Twice didn’t turn to a life of villainy because it was his “choice”. There’s been zero evidence of any social help for victims of hero society’s circumstances, so there’s no reason to assume that Twice had any help in supporting himself after his parents died. Twice then getting fired from his low level Job and having a glaring blemish on his record (as shown above ^) was a death sentence for a normal life right then and there, especially considering the setting in hero society (Japanese culture taken to its most socially merciless), it doesn’t really need to be spelled out any more than that why he turned to a life of crime against a society that screwed him over at every level and left him to rot. Between becoming a tragic statistic that the hero state didn’t (and still doesn’t) care about or becoming a villain for the chance at having some kind of life, it’s not really a choice at all. The saying ‘Cool motive still Murder’ comes up sometimes when taking about specific villains in Bnha and my response to that would be: ‘Then Suffer and Die Nobly.’ There is no ‘being better’ because if they were better in their current circumstances, they’d just quickly become a statistic.)

They’d rather someone, even their own children; suffer in silence than be seen as anything but their “normal”:

Toga’s parents might seem like a more ‘personal’ point but they’re actually a prime example of the standard bnha civilian, caring nothing about their own suffering young and only about their own lives and normalcy. Even when Toga was obviously self-harming due to her quirk, something that couldn’t logically have been hidden from them, there was no real attempts to help her with this other than rejection (as evident by the parents stopping taking her height down on the wall when her quirk presumably manifested, clearly meant to be a hint that it was the point that they stopped caring about her) and sending her to “Quirk Counseling”, taking no responsibility in helping their child and taking none after Toga was broken under the weight of what was normal after struggling to hold back for so many years.

This mentality extends past Toga’s parents to most of bnha’s civilians.

When Dabi revealed himself as Toya and exposed the Todoroki family’s past the world, nobody cared. At least not in any way that could be considered ‘caring’.

Endeavor bought and bred his wife, and it’s very debatable whether or not the later ‘child making’ could be considered consensual.

Rei told endeavor that it was “too much” and “too cruel”, all but saying that she didn’t want to have any more children, and in the anime it’s played even more clearly:

This ^ does not seem like consent.

Also letting his first born son burn himself to his apparent death because he couldn’t be bothered to care enough to prevent it.

Endeavor knew Toya was burning himself and he never got him any psychiatric help, even though Toya was already having extreme signs of mental breaks alongside the burning, he never even thought about it.

Even if this failed in stopping Toya, Endeavor just could have pulled some strings as the number 2 hero and gotten Toya Hero tech/equipment/suits, anything that might have helped.

But all Endeavor did was tell Toya to stop and do “other things” and when that failed he simply ignored him, even though he knew his child was literally burning himself.

(Endeavor could be considered an unreliable narrator, I think other great Meta writers have already called him on that, with him telling Natsuo that he never meant to neglect any of his children, which is evident (by how he treated Toya) as complete Bullshit.)

Now do the civilians know all of this down to a T?

No, but even before the Dabi reveal there was more than enough sketchy events surrounding Endeavor to raise eyebrows on anyone paying attention.

A son burning to death alone on a mountain, another son getting a burn scar on his face and a wife in a Mental Hospital, more than a little suspicious. Nobody ever looked into it.

And after the Dabi reveal, after Endeavor confirmed what Dabi said to everyone, this is the only Civilian backlash he gets:

Nobody cared what happened to the Todoroki family; they only cared about how it affected them. The first half of that anger wasn’t even about the Todoroki drama.

And while the mention of Dabi’s victims and their families might seem like consideration, paired alongside everything else the bnha civilians are/do, I really doubt that the line comes from a genuine place of sympathy.

They have no loyalty to their best Heroes:

After everything Deku did for them, they wouldn’t risk a single thing for him. Most of them don’t even look anxious or afraid, just angry at their lives being disrupted.

Telling the kid who nearly worked himself to death, fighting so that they could have their lives back to piss off, while danger sense was being activated implying that they did mean him very real harm.

 Another big point against the Civilians that’s brought up a lot:

They’re violently racist. (Quirk-ist? Anti-Mutant? Basically against anyone very different in their appearance and/or their quirks.)

Mutants are an obvious Allegory for the racism/minority angle of the story, and it never casts the majority of the civilians in a positive light when it’s touched upon.

(Second Side point: Revisiting the end of ‘Side Point One’ because it pairs perfectly here, Shoji Mezo’s “Answer” to the horrible treatment the Heteromorph/mutants face is the opposite of that, and by that I mean Shoji’s answer is pretty much: Aspects of Uncle Tom’s Cabin Syndrome (an American theory/term but a Universal Theme) mixed with the acceptance of hero martyrdom.

His words to the Heteromorphs are this: “Let’s use that light to change the people who hurt us. So that they’ll feel ashamed to ever raise their fists against us again.”

Very inspiring…or at least it would be, were his words not disproven by his own backstory. 

Shoji got his Scars ^ after he saved the little girl, in fact him saving her life was literally the cause of it.

There is no greater way to Shine or be heroic than doing what Shoji did, saving the life of a small child from drowning to death, and for that act the “Innocent People” gave him the Joker facial treatment.

Seriously if there’s a group of people who “don’t deserve to be saved” in Bnha; it is civilians like this.

Yet Shoji’s answer is still to “Be better than mere Avengers” and if they don’t the Heteromorph’s “Children will become the next Target!” as if they weren’t already??

None of it makes sense when looking at the whole picture and it’s clearly not a great plan, to draw another American based parallel that fits too well not to be noticed despite it being American; Shoji Mezo is basically Sturdy Harris from the Boondocks TV Series (freedom ride or die episode).

Look up the character’s wiki info or watch the episode, the fact that Shoji is willing to use violence in some extreme instances might seem a difference between them but the fact that he urges the other Heteromorphs to “be better than avengers” and “use their light to change the people who hurt us until they feel ashamed”, giving no thought as to whether or not his fellow Heteromorphs could even survive living by that standard like he can, fits the comparison to a T.)

Back to the final few points about the Bnha Civilians:

Are the Civilians in Bnha conditioned to be this way, products of influence and circumstance much like the heroes and villains are?

Kind of but not really.

While it is true that there are mountains of propaganda in hero society, there’s nothing specific enough to point to and say that this is why the Bnha civilians are this level of callous. They’re conditioned to love heroes and fear the violent villains they’re fighting, not to ignore the suffering of children (even their own) completely, and they’re definitely not compelled through propaganda to reject them or scar them, nothing in the series is evident of that.

And even worse, all of these examples of the people’s flaws/incidents (excluding the Ordinary Woman Heteromorph) happened during Allmight’s “Era of Peace”, so there’s no shifting the blame onto the villain’s current actions and even less excuse for things like these to be happening.

Why should the Bnha civilians have peace or justice if they’re like this?

If they show no more empathy or loyalty than the worst, most unsympathetic villains in the series (Like AFO) then maybe their point of view shouldn’t be considered any more than his. (And even AFO had some truth in his points: Failed social framework and the Quirk Singularity.)

To draw one final example for the Civilians with another Manga series that has pretty awful ‘ordinary people’ in it: Naruto.

But even in Naruto, the Author still showed that there were good people among the Civs. Population that weren’t like that and that did deserve to be protected and live peaceful lives, people who were outside of the Ninja system and just genuinely humane.

Before Naruto became a hero who saved the village multiple times, before he was even a ninja, they treated him like the human child he was.

These characters deserve their own Meta, other Naruto fans have probably written them already.

But suffice to say that the people who treated right the abandoned and hated child, host to a demon Fox that could casually level mountains, Teuchi Ramen (Owner and Daughter), are an excellent example of giving narrative motivation to “protect the people”.

There’s not much of anything like that in Bnha’s story, not anyone to point at and say; “They are worth saving/protecting!” and having it actually be true instead of just ‘What the hero is supposed to say’.

 And if anyone disagrees with this, I’ll ask: Can one instance of goodwill be pointed to for the Bnha civilians? Any act of compassion, bravery or selflessness from someone in Bnha who wasn’t in anyway associated with heroes?

And no, the Civilians letting Deku stay at UA does not count.

It wasn’t even framed as selfless or compassionate anyway:

This ^ is a deal more than anything else.

Because the heroes (Deku) swore they’d fix things and the people practically made him swear it before they were let in.

Kota and the Ordinary Woman running to stand by Deku was a sweet and great moment but considering that he saved them first, it seemed more like a ‘returning the Favor’ sentiment. Same with the rogue Civillian group helping Shindo after he fought Muscular, more a give it back than a gift.

 Part 2 The Lov

Even at their worst, the Lov still display humanity and redeeming qualities more than most of the civilians.

And I believe that this is 100% truth because Actions/Dialogue without reason for deception and inner thoughts, imply genuine Truth.

Actions:

This ^ scene is referred back to a lot because it’s a good showing of Compassion/Bonds, one of the first really, in the League of Villains, in Toga saving Twice from ‘coming apart’.

Toga has no real reason to comfort Twice as much as she does in this series, in this first instance and in later ones, because aside from one time (no matter how cool and heartfelt it was) in MVA when Twice saves her and the rest of the League, Twice kind of messed things up more than a few times for the Lov.

Bringing Overhaul to meet the Lov without precaution resulting in the death of Magne (even though she herself rushed in recklessly), Twice’s personal hang-ups limiting his Quirk lessening his value to operations overall (from a purely strategic standpoint), and trusting Hawks (because he felt bad for him) so much he gave out Info that definitely shouldn’t have been given.

Yet despite having one singular success in MVA that Twice really pulled through among many other shortcomings, Toga still cared about him. Enough to try to help him hold himself together during the Overhaul business and then later go on a violent, rage filled assault toward the Heroes during the MLA raid after Twice was killed, giving little thought to her own safety.

Dialogue without reason for deception:

While Shigaraki is definitely an unreliable narrator, as evident by the monologue ^ in the bottom panel clearly contradicting what actually happened during the death of his family, the middle panel where he states that he only wants “Them” (definitely the Lov) to live as they see fit seems like the truth.

Because why would Shigaraki lie here? In this time or place to Redestro, someone he presently had no reason to manipulate, as they were in a life or death fight?

Shigaraki couldn’t have known Redestro would surrender, at this point he was talking to someone he fully intended to kill, further dissipating any suspect of manipulation.

Shigaraki does care about his comrades, their wishes and while he hasn’t really kept the promise he made as of current Bnha, I think that’s a result of All for One scrambling his Brain so much during the Mental Fusion stuff, the true Shigaraki barely seeming to know what’s going on half the time and only able to think about his past.

Twice and Spinner: Basically everything about them.

They might not think things through that much, but there’s no doubt that Twice and Spinner were and still are devoted to who they care about, true loyalty in all its successes and faults.

Inner Thoughts:

Dabi is…kind of a dick most of the time, even to the Lov, just to a much lesser extent than to everyone else.

It makes sense that he’d act that way though, given what he’s been through and the end goal of his plans, it’s understandable why he’d want to push everyone away in some form and not let them get too close.

But even underneath all of that, Dabi much like the rest of the core Lov never blamed Twice for his mistakes, and since this is an inner thought and thus having no reason for manipulation, it does imply that this is his honest truth.

Knowing that Twice would blame himself, although he never said it out loud, maybe he couldn’t with all of his own personal hang-ups, Dabi inside probably did want to reassure Twice that none of this was his fault.

The Core Lov do have empathy towards others abandoned and hurt by Hero Society like themselves, and they do care about each other, that is as much as they’re able to care about each other while being weighed on by their own individual issues.

 The hero kid’s parents

Lastly for this Meta, there are parts of Hero Society that shouldn’t ever be destroyed, but they fall into small groups and come with their own faults.

The Hero Kid’s parents shouldn’t be destroyed just by virtue of being so close to the better/more heroic characters, but even they aren’t that great with possibly one exception.

Inko Midoriya has technically tried to protect Izuku but she never really helped him. She basically apologies for his existence in the childhood flashback, and until Izuku got a Quirk and became a Hero, she was never really shown to encourage him in anything, even to find happiness in other things.

Despite having doubts herself about saying the wrong thing to her son, Inko later tries to keep him from going back to UA for very good reason from a parent’s point of view.

But then she’s pretty easily convinced by a promise from Allmight, that wasn’t in anyway kept. Cut to the Dark Deku stuff later, she never calls Allmight out on this.

It’s the same story with little difference for all the student’s parents, they’ve never been shown to try to protect their children, especially at the UA confrontation with the Civilian Mob.

Inko, Bakugo’s parents, Ochako’s parents, and I’m just assuming the rest of them to cause it makes sense for them to be at the UA shelter, none of them helped.

I know Inko was being held back by Mitsuki because it was dangerous, but couldn’t she have shaken her off?

Kota did and ran to Deku to try to help him, and he was a little kid being held back Pixiebob (a Hero).

That probably wasn’t what Hori was going for or implying but that’s what happened.

Is this an illogical thought process that would be dangerous or harmful for the parents? Definitely.

But that’s the point. The parental instinct that goes beyond self-preservation and logic to protect their children hasn’t been shown for any of them.

Except one.

*Current Spoiler Warning*

 Rei Todoroki in the recent chapter stands apart and above in this aspect, although this depends very much on how it’s framed going forward.

A mother fighting to stop her child from killing himself more than trying to stop a Villain from killing. Both true but one has to take front over the other for it to be meaningful, for Rei to show that she will stop Touya from burning himself this time, unlike how she wouldn’t before.

That’s character development, that’s parental instinct.

*Very current Spoilers*

 Rei is there for Touya  :)  trying to save her son…and also Endeavor maybe?

Close enough (Double Thumbs UP!)

 The children

Another group that definitely should never destroyed is the Young Children of Bnha, Kota, Eri, the work studies Kid group.

I put them into a separate category than the whole of the Civilians but it would take a lot to explain why that is and why they can be viewed as their own separate group, so I’ll put it in the next Meta and expand on how they relate to the existential parts of Bnha.

Also same for the villains/heroes and finally getting to the Quirk Singularity Theory.

To be Continued…

[lgbtlunaverse]

A group of misfits outside of society

So I saw this post the other day talking about how toga is never truly treated as "the girl one" in the league despite, after Magne died, being the only female member. And it got me thinking about how no matter how endearing the protective found family dynamics in fics are, she's never actually treated like the baby of the group either. After mustard is arrested in basically their first mission, she is the youngest member by several years and the only one who's still a teenager.

But if you look purely at the league's interactions, you wouldn't really be able to tell? No one tells her to stay home for dangerous missions, no one babies her, she's never dismissed based on still being a child either.

This becomes especially obvious in her friendship with twice. Twice is only like a year apart from aizawa in age, and toga is in the age range of a highschool sutdent, but if you compare the relationship the UA kids have with aizawa to the one toga has with twice, they could not possibly be more different.

Jin and Himiko are not a mentor-student dynamic. These are two people finding understanding in each other when they've never gotten it anywhere else. Jin looks out for her not because she's under his care, but because they're friends. And Himiko does exactly the same.

Objectively it's... obviously kind of a bad idea to let a 17 year old go out into life threatening battles without even the minimum protection the hero students are offered, but the league is a supervillain group. They're committing murder and doing domestic terrorism. None of these people should be here, this isnt't safe for any of them. What this highlight is just what the league is for all the people in it: a place away from society. Not just from stigma around their quirks or from hero-worship, but ALL societal norms. Including ideas about gender and mental illness and about what teenager should or shouldn't be doing. That's why it attracted people like Magne, Twice, and Himiko.