#bias against 'villain' quirks

[bibibbon]

Overhaul (and partially Tomura) viewing being quirkless as worse than death is kind of just glossed over.

In their return, you'd think a lot villains against OFA would be frustrated that Izuku & All Might were handed their Quirk.

If what you say is correct anon than this has been glossed over so well that I can't even remember it.

When were first introduced to overhaul he held the strong belief that quirks were basically illnesses and mutated diseases that tainted mankind.

Overhaul isn't actually confirmed to hate or like quirkless people and individuals. Now that I think about it overhaul and what he does is actually hypocritical and that's and integral part of his character. To that one anon who compared spinner and amon I think a much more better comparison is amon and overhaul!!

I would expect overhaul to probably like and tolerate being around quirkless individuals a lot more since they are free of the disease that he claims to be quirks but you can argue that even overhaul sees quirkless individuals as useless seeing his expression as he himself became quirkless due to shigaraki.

I would imagine that overhauls reaction to learning about izuku and his situation would be one where he thinks that izuku has been infected by the disease that is quirks and not him outright hating izuku for formerly being quirkless (that's not saying that he likes izuku quirkless though)

Shigaraki on the other hand doesn't cannonically have a problem with quirkless individuals. Like @mikeellee mentions that shigaraki actually uses a lot of quirkless/ pre quirk fashion and stuff. Mikeellee also mentions a scene where shigaraki found out that Izuku used to be quirkless and simply didn't have a reaction of hatred or disgust so I doubt that shigaraki would hate Izuku for his past or for him gaining OFA.

However it can be argued that the idea that the quirkless are useless is very popular within the MHA society and that it creates heavy bias and probably a strong foundation of quirkless discrimination if done right

[donkeys-waffles]

Okay, listen I'm not all that convinced AFO is completely gone. And let's put DFO aside for a moment. His and Yoichi's story feels uncomplete, there are certain elements that were given the time to be graced on but never really elaborated on. Like for example, that possibility that certain elements of AFO's backstory were fabricated to accomplish a certain message.

It's very easy to read over his backstory and gather the idea that he was born evil. But after a deeper look, it's very clear that was the purpose. We are meant to believe AFO is evil because that's what he wants us to believe, that's what he sees in himself. I feel bittersweet towards his supposed 'end'. Because I hate how Bakugou delivered that end, for one. But on one hand I enjoy how he mentioned needing Yoichi, it starts with denial and ends with recognition. And even if this a hot take, I think it's a beautiful, emotional end to such a messed-up individual.

However, I have a weird feeling about two things. First, I'd like to say, one thing I've noticed in writing is if something is brought up randomly, it'll generally come back to bite you later. Nothing is left unsaid, otherwise you have plot holes.

I found it interesting how it's mentioned AFO wasn't able to use his last trick up his sleeve, without any elaboration as to what that would have been. And I would say this was done on purpose, maybe just used as another example of every dream he wasn't able to accomplish before he died. But bringing light to this does nothing to strengthen the impact of his death on the narrative. Another interesting detail was Yoichi's wish. His dream of AFO being the kindest quirk in the world, which I can see being used to cause a reaction in the reader, as if trying to make them feel some heartache for such a bastard. But even with that reasoning, that sentence in the end feels so empty. unfulfilling, and almost lack-luster. It seems odd to be brought up and this could be bias, but I feel like that sentence had more importance than just literary cannon fodder.

We know AFO's main goal, make everyone love him like Yoichi, and his midterm goal was to steal his brother back through OFA. Makes sense.

But I still have questions. I understand why he took Tomura, to get a strong enough host to steal OFA, makes sense. But how does leaving Gigantomachia in the mountains have anything to do with such a goal? For what? Retirement? What did that achieve, wouldn't it better if he kept him around? If he was planning on moving his consciousness to Tomua later, then keeping him around would be better, right? Afterall, he'd be able to meet the child and possibly have a better understanding of the situation. Gigantomachia is an incredibly strong asset (look how he took down SO many heroes in the first war); he could have possibly even used him as backup during his fight with All Might.

And why keep OFA at a distance when his entire goal is to steal said quirk? I'm referring to that one panel in Vigilantes. Thats the entire opposite of his entire 200-year-old goal.

And that whole thing with his copy of rewind... This man is 200 years old, with an extremely strong villain empire, who has earned the respect of a genius scientist... You don't achieve any of those things by being stupid. And now I'm not normally one for completely trusting the MHA Wiki, but I can't blame them for giving him a 6/5 intelligence. He's a genius, and is spectacular with quirk analysis, it's his thing ya feel me. But it does show his lack of self-preservation, which is against what he's supposed to be angry at All Might for.

All Might took his health and his empire; we know he didn't really care about his empire as much from Spinner. (I mean lack of self-preservation because he's using a quirk that will eventually rewind him out of existence, whether he transfers his quirk to Tomura entirely or not. There's a possibility that it won't work, he failed to take complete control the first time remember. Is that what this supposed 'trick up his sleeve' was supposed to remedy? This is the same man that gave himself immortality, the same man that ran away from All Might for years, the same man that has shown to rely on the strength of others instead of dealing wounds himself. And might I add the same man that is supposed to be angry about his health being diminished. Afterall if not his health or his empire what could he possibly be angry at All Might for that's so special, so unique compared to his predecessors?)

This brings me to my last point. Since when the hell did this bitch care about THE CHILDREN! This man literally stole quirks from children, killed thousands, and turned a crap tone into braindead nomu. And he's angry on behalf of the children. Are we ever going to get an explanation for that?

Like I would understand if he killed the children that he apparently gave heroic ideals to. Like Ha! You will pay for passing on your ideals to children by watching me steal their quirks and kill them. But that's not what he means, or he would've stolen Tokoyami's quirk, killed Jiro instead of leaving her with a broken eardrum, and blasted Izuku away with deadly force instead of holding back in the first war. We have no answers for such behavior from a man known for exhibiting zero humanity (and making that behavior his ENTIRE personality.) Need I remind you this man stole Tomura (possibly gave him the quirk that killed his entire family,) and groomed him just to possess him later alright. He also turned Tsubasa into a nomu for shits and giggles, which we have never talked about once! Tsubasa, need I remind, was a small child and was the Doctor's grandson (which you'd think give him immunity to this kind of sick shit but apparently not.)

There are so many questions left unanswered, many of which Yoichi himself can't even answer. Like with all their human experimentation they do on a daily basis, the clone theory wouldn't really surprise me. It would make a lot of sense for his character as well. And even if that theory doesn't pan out, the vestige behind the locked door (which is entirely separate rant honestly,) or even Tomura's AFO vestige maybe. Though I feel if Izuku really saves Tomura in this war, then we might never hear much of anything from that vestige. Especially since their first priority would be to cancel it out as soon as possible. A lot of people bring up how the story is almost over, and they are probably right. But the end date was supposed to be 2022 originally, right? Then it was moved to 2023, now it's 2024-2025. Like yeah it is almost over, but there's still story that needs wrapping up clearly because that deadline has been pushed back multiple times. Too many times to make it a valid counterclaim anymore. Either way, I don't think we are in the clear of the Demon King's superiority complex anytime soon.

[deusvervewrites]

I was wondering that outside of Early Installment weirdness with early MHA and Hori's bias to Bakugo, why would Aizawa canonically be bias for Bakugo in the first place? I can understand why Aizawa would be against Izuku given that at first glance, Izuku didn't train "his Quirk" and that Aizawa doesn't read the student profiles, but doesn't explain the fact that Bakugo gets away with everything.

The only thing that I think would justify the situation is that Aizawa was a victim of Villainous Quirk abuse from when he was younger and he has a bias towards such Quirks to support them and that Explosion does seem like a villainous Quirk and Bakugo's personality does seem like that as a response to abuse(even though he's probably one of the most spoiled kid in the class).

So this brings into a thought question, UA investigates the social media profiles and schools to determine if there are issues with certain. This is because some schools and jobs actually look at the person in question to see if they bring out their true character and reject them(or adjust their assessment) because of their bad attitudes. If UA actually does this to determine why a school has a potential student with the most in only Villain points and a potential student with the most in only Rescue points, would Aizawa's assessments of Bakugo and Izuku change because he was directly told about their actual character? I have no doubt that Aldera would try to fluff up Izuku but actually seeing in action?

This is a bit complicated, mainly in that Aizawa isn't meant to be read as biased towards Bakugou. Aizawa is supposed to be seen as the hardass gruff but caring mentor figure that Midoriya looks up to, as Midoriya describes during the War Arc.

Aizawa being biased towards Bakugou is a reading of the text based on some of Horikoshi's... interesting creative decisions that isn't necessarily supported by a Good Faith interpretation but to be clear that does not make it any less valid.

As for Aizawa being biased towards Bakugou because he assumes Bakugou faced discrimination for having a Villainous Quirk, might I point you in the direction of We're Not Friends, Kacchan, a fic where that is a large part of the plot, or more accurately, Aizawa recognizing it and course-correcting is a large part of the plot.

As for social media, we actually see it surprisingly rarely in MHA for a series that talks about toxic celebrity culture a whole lot. Nor do we see much in the way of any kind of background checks for any characters, actually. Though if I were to personally do anything with that premise, I'd make it so that Midoriya doesn't have social media at all because of either cyberbullying or the threat of cyberbullying.

[class-1b-bull]

What would be your in-depth headcanons for the class 1b students as to why they want to become heroes?

Not proofread we die like men

Awase - i like to think he has a strong older sibling or somthn that inspired him to be a hero. His older sibling probably isnt a pro but he wants to make them proud.

Sen - probably something basic like he looked up to pros or he wanted to save people lol

Kamakiri - people with mutation quirks are often seen as scary or villainous and his personality doesn't really help his case but he wants to prove the people that think like that wrong

Kuroiro - he wanted to be cool. His entire personality is just him being a big dork that tries a little too hard to be edgy and cool. So I wouldent put it past him to become a hero on the prospect of wanting to be cool.

Kendo - shes always been the older sister/ protector type of person to everyone she met so becoming a hero simply matched her personality well.

Kodai - she just felt like being a hero would be something she would be good at. Yea she wants to save people and shes looked up to heros before but i dont think she would be trying as hard as she is if she didnt think she would make it far.

Komori - she wanted to be a hero for two reasons. 1. To make money because those cute dresses she buys are hella expensive. 2. To show off, not in like a mean or snarky way but she genuinely thinks her quirk is cool and wants other people to think its cool too <3

Shiozaki - she wants to save people. The world is full of all sorts of evil and she wants to bring peace of mind to the innocent. Its mostly because of her ideals.

Shishida - he gives me pristine rich boy vibes. He was probably told by his father or someone to either be a buisnessman or a pro hero and Shishida picked what he was more interested in lmao

Shoda - he wanted to be helpful. Hes to shy to be in the spotlight all that often but at the same time he wants to save a bunch of people. Thats why his quirk is perfect for him. It lets him help big time pros while staying in his introvert corner

Pony - because it looked fun. Thats it. She thought running around and fighting villains and saving people would be hella fun (and shes been having the time of her life so far at ua)

Tsubaraba - it probably started off as him becoming a pro to meet cute girls or smthn but he ends up actually having fun using his quirk and getting stronger.

Tetsutetsu - either he wants to be a hero because he essentially has the same backstory as kiri (becoming a hero wise i mean) or because a little kid (or elderly) he helped out once said hed be a great hero.

Tokage - she wants people to be happy. She believes in a life full of happiness is the true way people should live and its kinda hard to be happy when you arnt safe ya know.

Manga - its cannon that he became a pro because he loves kids and wants to make all the kids in the world smile. (I think thats also why his hero costume has so may colors)

Honenuki - he wants to travel the world. He became a hero for the funds and because pros already get to go to some other countries for missions. Seeing the world is a dream of his i think

Bondo - for reasoning similar to Kamakiri probably. He knows the world is full of an unfair bias against people with mutation quirks so he wants to bring a good light to people with those types of quirks <3

Monoma - he was bullied a lot as a kid because of his quirk and how it worked so he probably wants to be a hero to prove the people that bullied him wrong.

Reiko - she honestly thinks her quirk is cool and wants to see all the different ways it can be used. And most people cant do that unless they become a hero. But now she slowly wants to see just how strong she is.

Rin - he wants to protect people but more importantly he wants to be able to protect the people close to him. He wants his friends and family to know their safe by his side. <3

Ive been re watching bnha and ive honestly been on my phone instead of actually watching because im just waiting for when class 1b shows up lmao.

[delawaredetroit]

The messaging surrounding Shinsou's plight is annoyingly inconsistent. His flashback implies discrimination against villainous quirks, but the heroes are all for Shinsou becoming a hero without hesitation. There clearly is a structural bias against non-physical quirks at least at UA considering their entrance exam, but the extent of that beyond UA is never really addressed. It's frustrating because Shinsou's character has an excellent concept and good introduction but the execution falls flat

(Also, what do they mean by "such a large gap in their battle experiences". The first years have only been in the hero course about a month and Izuku isn't from a hero family so they wouldn't expect prior training)

[theuntamedangel]

The longer BNHA goes on, the more I start to ask this question.

Is this a story worth telling?

It brought up some interesting things to think about like what it really means to be a hero and if villains really are evil or people that society failed.

But then comes the muddled messages, characters that barely do anything significant other than to be plot devices, the overhyping of one character that ruins the purpose and development of the main character, and the inconsistencies and conclusions that characters come to that makes little to no sense.

Then you just have a story that just goes NOWHERE!

Because let's be honest, how much will society actually change by the end of it all? How will it treat quirkless and those with less than stellar quirks? And will they actually allow people like Bakugou to become heroes all because they "try really hard"?

Hi there, @theloganator101 First off, thank you for the question.

Also, TLDR.

Long before, I had made a somewhat similar post, talking about the same points. What makes a hero a hero? Because it's more than wearing a cape and punching issues and problems into submission. Bad guys simply go to jail and rot till their dying breath. And why is the world of BNHA so black and white? So 'this is good and this is bad'? We have a very compartmentalized version of human society. But you and I both know very well that human nature, human social interactions are the most complex and difficult things to understand. And even though I had seen these flaws in the series much earlier, I was still forgiving of the author because I genuinely thought he would eventually come around and explain why things are they way in the BNHA verse. But that NEVER happened at any point in the series so forget about Hori addressing these issues now because BNHA as a whole doesn't matter.

It's a no brainer to say that the job of a 'hero' is to save the day. But what about those who are the victims of school bullying? (cough cough BkDk is a totally normal and a healthy relationship, you're just a homophobe if you dont ship them) or those who had to keep their voice and entire existence heavily suppressed because your marriage was just a means to an end? (Endeavour is a loving husband, a doting father and a hard working hero) What about those kids who are victims of child abuse, child neglect and discrimination? (the Todoroki kids, Shigaraki, Toga and heck, even low key Spinner grew up in loving and healthy households). The Creature Rejection Clan was created to combat racism and All Might, someone who's name itself reduced crime in Japan by a half simply by existing, did NOTHING against the CRC. I thought 'heroes' were meant to protect the weak and deliver justice to the evil doers irrespective of who or what they are. I thought that's what's really meant to be a hero, to be defenders of mankind. Because lets face it, what's the difference between a villain who kills and a hero who abuses his family members on a physical, mental and an emotional level? What are the required criteria to judge these very two damnable actions with a bias attitude?

Which brings me to another question: Why are the students at UA high only taught martial or physical training? Don't they have special classes where they have to moral education classes or something along those line? Besides the rigorous physical training they need to fight against heroes, they have normal, regular-degular academic curriculum. These so called heroes-in-training are well educated in the art of understanding the topography of a battle field but the system has FAILED to educate the kids to understand why villains are the way they are. The entire system, the root itself, the very foundation of the hero society, FAILED to protect what they claimed to be. People like Toga, Dabi, Overhaul, Spinner, Shigaraki, Twice, Stain, Magne, are all nothing but the products of the hero society, the actual end result of this superficial, celebrity-like lifestyle of hero worship. But many fail to see beyond the stars and shimmers of this artificially constructed world.

The above points are heavily tied to Stain's ideologies. He didn't put up arms and struggles against the hero society for nothing. He knew what he was doing.

This may not be the answer that you're looking for but the way I see it, the MHA story shows us a horrifying representation of our already dark and twisted world but that's where it stops. It wants to do nothing with it because the story doesn't know where to go with it and how to go about doing it. It started something it couldn't finish. It created issues it couldn't solve. So the plot choose a different path to tread upon: focus on the popular people from the hero society who are highly questionable and romanticize their words and actions. It doesn't matter if you faced quirk discrimination or worse, became a butt of ridicule for not having any quirk at all. So long as a bully has given a half baked ''apology'' and works hard to be a hero to satisfy their own ego, it's all good at the end of the day. Self worth issues, self inflicted bodily harm, lack of self worth received by the victim (definitely NOT Izu because Bk treats him with utmost respect and comradery), all melt away due to the power of 'apology' and friendship. It teaches us that celebrity worship, fake sense of heroism, the desire to be the top at the expanse of others are to be treated with normalcy because the show must go on no matter what. The other message is that it's ok be a wife beater and a bully so long as you're doing it for heroism, name, fame, recognition.

Our priorities in the MHA universe are all messed up. We don't even have an inkling of a thought about how Izu feels about quirkless discrimination and the manga is wrapping itself up. So all the answers we can provide ourselves with regarding the matter will be head canon.That's why the main message of the story is that it fails on so many levels in terms of writing a morally upright story. The main hero of our story is nothing to offer, no words of hope and encouragement. That's the other message it has conveyed to us. I'm not saying this, the manga has proven to us time and again what i just said. The other thing it hammers home is the fact that, so long as you're a hero, your unjust behavior will be swept under the rug by your school and higher authorities. The message that MHA time and again conveys is that it loves hypocrisy and double standards. These are the solid reasons as to why the plot cannot logically and cohesively march forward.

"With great power comes with great responsibility" and the MHA verse failed to understand this concept by becoming the very thing the villains are condemned for in this series. That, my friend, is the general message of the story. That, my friend, is the moral lesson of the MHA verse.

#MHA critical thinking #bk is a bully #Izu deserved better #Izu is the protagonist not Bk #Izu matters Bk doesnt #Hori cant write shit

[stillness-in-green]

More and More on Mina, Machia and the MLA

For my readers other than @randomvongenerico, please have this peremptory list of this very lengthy post's contents to help gauge your interest:

Some more discussion on what is or isn’t, would or wouldn’t be blameworthy about various characters’ actions (or hypothetical actions) during the war arcs.   

More discussion about Mina, chiefly about how (and why) her acid powers are handled compared to all the male characters with fire powers, and the way her plot points are poorly set up by the narrative, with the result of shortchanging her development.   

Yet More Complaining About How The Story Is Handling Heteromorphobia, this time featuring a compare and contrast on quirk-based bias as it might affect Mina, Bakugou and Tokoyami, as well as a dissection of Shouji’s contention that the only possible way to know about the violent bigotry in the rural areas of the country is to be from them.   

Some fairly extensive spitballing in response to questions about how I would have handled the scene at Machia’s prison compound if I were writing it, as well as why I have trouble conceiving of anything Hero Society could do to Hose Face for killing Midnight that would actually feel like justice.   

A little bit of basic talk about Tumblr, its functionality and some relevant slang.   

Buried at the very bottom, I stand up in front of God and everyone and explain in brief why Kaminari is a worse character than Mineta, with some particular focus on Kaminari as emblematic of the conflict between what the series tells us versus what it shows us about the legality of quirk use in careers other than heroism.

Hi again, rvg.  Because it's been forever since our last post exchange, let me say again that I appreciate the apology and want to thank you for being such a good sport about it.  Last time I had something like your initial response, that person told me straight out that they’d been condescending and antagonistic on purpose, though they regretted having done so after my reply.  I appreciated the regret, but would have preferred they take a day or two to cool off in the first place!  That’s the experience I was bringing to your comments, but I’ll keep in mind what you said about lack of experience with initiating chats and Tumblr in general.

For what it’s worth, yeah, there is a character limit on both asks and replies, so that’s the trouble you were running into there!  You might also consider using a cut next time before a really long post, though if you’re on mobile, I recall that being a difficult-if-not-impossible feature to find, and it’s not as important as it used to be ever since Tumblr’s started adding default Expand drop-downs on long posts.  That aside, welcome (belatedly) to Tumblr!  I hope you find some good people to chat fandom with; I’m always open to some back and forth about things I know well enough to talk about, though I’m, er, decidedly unprompt with replies.  And, as noted, definitely more of a villain fan, so probably not the most fun person for discussions on the kids.

That said, to your replies!  Other readers should note that, while I wrote all this roughly in response-order to rvg’s points, I reorganized everything after the fact to group together the broad topics.  I’ve tried to provide some bare minimum context for anything that would otherwise be too much of a zero-context non-sequitur, but if anyone wants to see rvg’s comments in their intended order and context, their reblog can be found here.  Otherwise, hit the jump!

  

Would You Have Held It Against ___?

But would you hold it against Mina if she had actually done more substancial damage to Machia? Let’s say, not the face, but Machia’s fingers instead of his claws. Machia still doens’t feel any pain. Would you chastise Mina for it? Even though she’s actively saving Mt Lady by doing that?

It’s hard to say for sure, since I imagine that if Mina’s acid had hit Machia’s fingers instead of his claws, we probably would just have seen them abraded and singed, like how Dabi’s fire damage was drawn on Hawks, not with chunks of skin melting off and exposing naked bone.  Physical damage in BNHA just doesn’t work like that, at least not against named characters.  If Mina were doing realistic damage, I imagine everyone else would be too, and then I’d be criticizing all of them, because, holy shit, that is not okay to do to people, any people, and especially not when you’re acting as an agent of the state.

But hypothetically, no, I think I would be more lenient even if she did do concrete and permanent damage to Machia’s hands, and it’s because she’d be doing it to save Mount Lady.  Shinsou could have taken control of Machia and then just had him lie still while whoever was in charge of this facility redrugged him,[1] and that would have been fine by me—disappointing, sure, but only because Machia’s interesting and I’d like to get more on him than we do, not because I’d be critiquing Shinsou’s actions.

It’s specifically Shinsou and the rest choosing to weaponize Machia against AFO that I object to.  Mina harming Machia would be taking that action herself, to protect someone that’s right in front of her, risking no one’s life but her own in doing so.  Shinsou throwing Machia up against AFO—which he’d made the decision to do before hearing Machia’s angry grumbling—is risking Machia’s life, without Machia’s consent.  And it’s not even for the sake of saving anyone, at least not anyone that’s right there in that moment—AFO is fleeing.

Sure, he still presents a huge threat to lots of people, but given that we’d just seen proof that AFO did not know about Shinsou’s power,[2] they could also have used Machia to, for example, rapidly transport the heroes to some place they could set up a second ambush to trick AFO into responding to Shinsou.  I mean, good god, AFO’s the chattiest villain in the comic; Hawks lured him into at least two extended conversations even after he’d resolved that he needed to leave.  He’s a Demon Lord and thus categorically incapable of shutting up.  And that would have been that, really.  Take control and let the clock run out; end of problem.

It would have been anticlimactic as hell, so obviously that was never going to happen, but there’s no reason the heroes couldn’t try for it, you know?  Instead of the bone-headed decision to just hand AFO his most loyal soldier on a silver platter on the thin chances that they could either prevent the brainwashing from being broken at all or that Machia’s upset would translate to both the capability and willingness to attack his master.

I’ve observed this problem in a few different areas, that Horikoshi sometimes writes the heroes, particularly Hawks, as not taking actions or drawing conclusions that, from their perspective, should seem sensible, well-reasoned, and with solid chances of success; instead, they simply disregard possibilities they should logically be considering but which the reader knows are dead ends, or they benefit from things they could not have known at the time they acted.  That hurts immersion because it gives the heroes victories, both tactical and moral, that they simply haven’t earned.  Shinsou’s control of Machia is a particularly egregious example.

  

Speaking of Monoma. Since we were talking about the morality of Shinso’s Quirk. Would you say Monoma using his Quirk to copy a villain’s Quirk and use it on him and his allies, would also qualify as something that should be criticized? I’m curious.

Nah, I don’t think so.  Taking an opponent’s weapon and using it to subdue him is a perfectly valid tactic, especially since Monoma’s method doesn’t actually deprive his opponent of their weapon, just replicates it for his own use.  It really all does boil down to Shinsou’s method forcing people to fight and hurt their own allies.  Mina causing Machia physical harm, Monoma using a villain’s own weapon against them, even the heroes’ surprise attack: none of those are remotely on the same “holy shit that is a literal war crime” level as what the heroes planned in advance to have Shinsou do to Machia, and what he willingly agreed to do well before he found out that Machia was not as opposed as the heroes thought.

  

I mean, I get what you’re getting at. I’m just wondering. If the heroes hadn’t launched a suprise attack, and had left the villains do the first move and come to them, would you then be criticizing them for being irresponsible and incompetent instead? Sorry for going on a tangent, it’s just something I’ve noticed when it comes to readers criticizing the heroes. It’s either people complaining that the heroes are too ruthless, or that they’re too nice, naive or not pragmatic enough.

(This is in response to some discussion of the heroes' actions in the first war arc's raid on the villa+hospital lab, not the second war's divide and conquer plan.)

I actually don’t really have a huge problem with the surprise attack in principle—I might criticize Cementoss ripping the building in half when there could well have been people on those upper floors, but otherwise, it’s hard to imagine what else the heroes could generally have done to deal with the numbers they were dealing with.  I mean, it’s basically just a scaled-up version of the attack on the Hassaikai base, and I don’t have any moral quibbles with the way the heroes and police handled that.

Rather, my problem with the raid is that I thought the heroes were too effective given the way their forces and those of the PLF had been set up.  It’s not the tactic itself that’s the problem (though individual acts of worse violence within the attack, like Hawks killing Twice or the attempts to outright murder Shigaraki in the tube, are still an issue), it’s the finality, the totality, of how effective the attack was.

To be brief about it (because I’ve talked about this at length elsewhere), I don’t think the heroes should have known where all the PLF bases were, I don’t think they should have been as effective in disordered mass combat as the PLF, I think the advisors should have put up a better fight in all cases, and I think there should have been enough members of the PLF in significant positions of influence or power that the HPSC couldn’t uncover them all, leading to complications when those members realized their organization was under attack.

As it is, the heroes handily win every fight they have with the sole exception of Gigantomachia and Shigaraki.  The PLF is neatly swept off the table save for a few “remnants,” with no attention given to the practical difficulties of detaining tens of thousands of combatants with no motivation to let themselves be quietly arrested, much less how the justice system is going to handle trying and sentencing them all.  That has repercussions going forward, as well: heroes clearing the board of all the (named) PLF members save Skeptic leaves the bulk of villain forces in the subsequent arcs to be prison escapees, and man, if the PLF’s moral nuance has been squandered, the depiction of the prison escapees is even worse.

The raid is, of course, only the first of two big surprise attacks the heroes manage.  I have significantly more issues with the second one, but most of that boils down to the fact that the divide and conquer/Tempt and Trap plan feels crueler, meaner, and much more openly aimed at extrajudicial murder.  And like, that would all be fine and in-character for Hero Society in general and Hawks, the main planner, specifically, but with Deku, Shouto and Uraraka all starting to think Save Villains thoughts, and fresh off the traitor reveal, the kids should never have been as collectively okay with the second war’s tactics as the story has presented them as being.  To echo an older complaint, good god, what universe is Horikoshi living in that he thinks the people that converted a place of learning into an arena they call a “coffin in the sky” are the heroes?

  

I was under the impression Midnight was off to the side from where the MLA minions were passing by, and the Skull Mask guy took a detour to kill her.

I’m not sure from this if you’re explaining how you read Hose Face’s attack on Midnight at the time, or if you’re maintaining that that’s an accurate read, so just to clarify, here are the panels in question:

As you can see, the PLF guys’ path through the woods has them coming in from directly behind Midnight.  Hose Face calls out that he’ll take care of her once they get close enough for the reader to make out who they are, at which point he gets out in front of Scarecrow and hits Midnight from the same direction as their initial approach: directly behind.  He most certainly doesn’t take a detour of any kind, but rather chooses the action that is going to get his group through the obstacle with the least amount of time and effort possible—entirely his prerogative as the highest-ranked member of the Guerilla Warfare regiment on-scene.

  

But if we classify this entire conflict as a war, wouldn’t that mean that both sides are free to use whatever tacticts and methods they feel like as long as it’s not a war crime?

If we classify it as war is irrelevant if the side aligned with the current ruling authority hasn’t done so themselves.  I imagine the Japanese government is in no hurry to validate the terrorists on an international stage by acknowledging that they’re numerous and dangerous enough to declare actual, formal war against!  Calling it a war drags in a whole pile of wartime conventions Japan has signed numerous treaties about; it grants the opposing side some legitimacy as a cohesive, organized force that will need to be negotiated with down the line.  As long as you’re calling it a police action, you don’t have to negotiate shit until you get to the plea deals!  Team Hero never declared war here, so yeah, I still expect them to carry out their plans and actions accordingly.

Also, in the thematic/meta sense, I expect the heroes to either conduct themselves as heroes—admirable, upright, heroic—or face the narrative consequences when they fail to live up to that ideal.  The hyper-encapsulated version of this conundrum is the recurring idea that attacking Shigaraki never actually prevents Shigaraki from coming back worse and more dangerous next time; the heroes are never going to achieve a different result by attacking him again but harder this time, and that’s why Deku is set up to finally try something different.[3]  I would just like it if what’s true on the micro-level could even be attempted on the macro-level.  Or, in other words, if the narrative is going to tell us that saving villains is the correct path, it can’t only demonstrate that for the villains with known-to-the-heroes sympathetic backstories.

  

General Mina Points

Regarding your analysis about Mina’s acid being underpowered because it’s harder/less believable to downplay the effects of acid than fire/explosions/etc. in Shounen Damage Logic, I think we’ll have to agree to disagree.  I don’t see anything wrong with just showing the Nebulous Abrasion Damage that’s the ubiquitous, default mode of illustrating nonspecific injury in this comic for Mina’s acid the same way we get it for the boys.

I can see your argument, but like, just for example, when Endeavor first encounters a Noumu, he bathes it in fire under the assumption that it’s a normal villain and then says he’s surprised it’s still up because he’s never seen anyone stay conscious after that attack.  Bathing someone in flames in real life is not a “knock them out” kind of attack; it’s a “severe burn ward for months” kind of attack.  If Endeavor’s been throwing that around at random criminals for thirty years, we are plainly very far away from realistic damage, and I’d be perfectly satisfied with treating Mina’s acid the same way.

If I had to take a guess as to why Horikoshi’s so staunchly avoided letting Mina cut loose—other than regressive gender politics—I’d say it’s that acid simply feels nastier or more morally dubious than fire.  Fire has positive as well as negative connotations; acid’s a lot more, shall we say, unilateral in the collective imagination, especially given what’s going to turn up if you run a web search for “acid attacks.”

To look at it in JRPG logic (and I don’t care if AFO’s admiration stems from a comic; that comic was clearly playing with Dragon Quest tropes), acid is pretty much the same thing as poison, and poison effects are chiefly the realm of enemy characters.  It smacks of underhandedness or cowardice in anything more cognizant than roving toxic plants or venomous beasts.  Certainly you see the occasional party member specialized for status effects who can inflict poison damage on enemies, but I can’t readily think of a main character that does.[4]

Perhaps, then, because readers are somewhat conditioned to think of acid as particularly dangerous and nasty compared to fire, and because there’s a limit to how morally dubious Horikoshi is willing to (consciously) write the students, especially the girls, Mina’s sharply limited in how she’s allowed to use her acid.

That said, I got a very hearty laugh from, “Just look at Dabi.  He can’t even kill himself with fire,” so thank you very much for that.

  

It’s as if Horikoshi only ever figures out what to do with Mina retroactively instead of in the moment (e.g. there were no interactions between Kirishima and Mina until AFTER Kirishima’s backstory, we never got any hint that would connect Mina’s and Midnight’s characters until AFTER Midnight died, when Mina speaks about not giving in to vengeance she references SHOJI’S WORDS which happened in HIS FLASHBACK, and then this whole chapter is technically a flashback too when you think about it).

That’s a big oof, all right.  I know about the Midnight non-connection and the issue of Mina’s anti-vengeance words having first been delivered by Shouji and relayed to the audience by Koda (it being his flashback, rather than Shouji’s), but I didn’t know there was no indication of Kiri-Mina connection until after his flashback.  Wowzers.

  

But also, in one of my comments I had left a link to a post analizing Kirishima’s and Mina’s characters and their dynamic. I don’t know if you checked it out or not, but it was a pretty interesting read. If you did read it, let me know your thoughts on it.

Apologies for not responding to that; I hadn't clicked it because I just wasn't terribly interested in the topic. Having checked it now, I can say that I'm unlikely to read it because I've encountered this person's meta before and, even at a glance, found it to be flawed for reasons I am not comfortable gabbing about in a public space. I'm sure they make some valid points, but I will have to respectfully bow out of reading and commenting on it here.

  

But what about Mina telling Kirishima that “now they’re even” though?

(This is re: my contention that Mina saves Shinsou, not Kirishima, from the Sludge Villain, and that Kirishima was never in any danger from the Sludge Villain.)

I mean, she can say it, but that doesn’t mean I have to believe that she/Horikoshi are accurately portraying the stakes involved.

  

Just for the record, you’re not saying that Mina not giving in to revenge isn’t noble in and of itself. What she does is indeed good.  You’re saying it doesn’t have any emotional weight because Mina has always been a morally good character, so you never thought she would ever give in to revenge in the first place. Correct?

Correct!  As I’ve said, Mina has perfectly healthy emotional regulation: when she experiences negative emotions like anger, guilt, or grief, she doesn’t dwell on them; she vents them to friends and finds healthy ways to channel them into bettering herself and the world and people around her.  She’s got a great head on her shoulders!  But all of that means that her giving into anger about Midnight’s death was never a remotely convincing threat to me.  Of course she wouldn’t; there’s never been a moment that foreshadowed that she was in the slightest danger of harboring that kind of obsessive, vindictive grudge.

That being the case, it feels unfair of Horikoshi to pin a big dramatic monologue on a desire for revenge which Mina was never shown to possess to any greater degree than any of her classmates.  She’s one of the last hero-aligned characters I’d have guessed if you’d asked me who was going to get a beat like that in the endgame.

(To anticipate the obvious question, Aizawa would have been my first guess; he’s even been written for it properly in the way he and Mic have responded to Shigaraki—clearly holding a grudge for something that would have happened to their classmate when Shigaraki was all of six years old.  Conversely, while plenty of the 1-A kids could have believably carried a “struggling with vengefulness” plot if they’d been written with it from earlier on, I don’t think there’s a single one of them who feels like a good match for it in their current incarnations.  Iida’s moved on from his Stain days too smoothly to buy it from him, Bakugou’s only real obsession is Deku, and Deku already had a whole arc of being obsessively negative and driven by dark desires to find and deal with a villain.  If any student was going to show up to the fight with bloody-minded revenge on the brain, it should have been Shishikura.)

  

But What About the Heteromorphobia, Tho’?

(Warning: Incoming off-topic harping about Shouji and the inane resolution of the hospital attack.)

I have even seen someone make a post on Reddit arguing that Shinso being discriminated for his Quirk makes no sense because it’s not villanous, and that it makes more sense for characters like Bakugo, Mina and Tokoyami to be discriminated because they have more villanous looking Quirks. I don’t really agree with everything that guy said. But he did bring up a good point. How come Mina doesn’t get side eyes from people due to her Quirk like Shinso does?

I will have to disagree with Reddit User That Guy that Shinsou’s quirk should be viewed as less villainous than Bakugou’s.  It sounds like he was conflating heteromorphobia with the bias against villains/"villainous" quirks, and while there is overlap, they’re still distinct categories.  Shinsou’s quirk inherently subordinates one’s physical body, allowing him to force his targets to act against their will, or potentially take the fall for things they didn’t willingly do.  Of course people are nervous about it or think it’s more villainous than heroic!

Conversely, the Number 2 Hero has been attacking criminals with fire for decades now, so I think the BNHA general public is more than ready to accept a hero whose quirk lets him fire off explosions.  The commonly accepted idea in the fandom is that “flashy and offensive quirks” are the ones most valued in heroes.  I think that’s a bit oversimplified—Crust was the Number 6 Hero and his quirk was neither—but it’s certainly true that purely elemental quirks (fire, lightning, wind, earth-shaping), no matter how damage-dealing they are, don’t tend to get treated as villainous in nature.  The real “villainous quirks” in the series tend to be the ones that are more creepy, dark, invasive, or impure.  Even Dabi’s fire is that ethereal blue, like spirit fires, instead of everyday orange-red!

Bakugou’s quirk is much closer to the “pure elemental” category than anything very villainous and, indeed, when he got kidnapped from the training camp and that one journalist was suggesting that he might have turned to villainy already, he based that suggestion on Bakugou’s behavior, his conduct during the Sports Festival.  Nothing was said about his quirk at all, but rather his recent public demonstrations of violence and “mental instability.”  That’s perfectly consistent, I think, with the biases we see elsewhere.[5]

Tokoyami has the potential to get hit by both the villainous quirk bias and the heteromorphobia, but I think Japan seeing ravens as emblematic of wisdom rather than death and rot would mean his bird head is less ill-seen there than it would be in the West.  I don’t think it would take much more than the proverbial One Bad Day to get him to a very bad place indeed, though—there’s a reason Mr. Compress judged him a good potential recruit!  Tokoyami was rescued before it became an issue, but if he hadn’t been, I’m sure we would have seen the same journalist mentioned above making similar statements about Tokoyami and his dark quirk/mien.

Mina’s an interesting case study in not experiencing a lot of the same sorts of discrimination others in similar situations do.  She has three distinct heteromorphic traits—her skin, her eyes, her horns—as well as having a potentially extremely deadly quirk which, as I discussed above, could easily attract judgmental side-eye because of the cultural view of acid.  So why doesn’t she seem to face discrimination?

As I said in the post you’re replying to—and as you mentioned is a common headcanon—I think a lot of it boils down to her relentlessly chipper attitude.  If she had, for example, Mustard’s personality, or Muscular’s drive to violence, would people be quicker to say that her Acid is a “villain quirk”?  If she glared more, would people be more creeped out by her eyes?  It’s possible, I think, that we would actually see her facing some of this if we spent more time with her, but the narrative doesn’t make that time, at least not anywhere Kirishima can see it.

  

Well, if I had to guess, I’m sure you would say that would make her a more interesting character. You might get to be interested in her character, which then would probably mean you would be even more upset and disappointed with this chapter.

Ahaha, very fair.  Honestly, Class A would have benefited tremendously from more kids with bite to them.  A Mina whose competitiveness had some real fervor to it, or a Mina who had some heaviness in her backstory she was faking her way through dealing with, would have been a good contribution to that.

  

It really sucks that Horikoshi had to justify Shoji being the only one to experience prejudice by clarifying that heteromorph discrimination is only still prevalent in small villages. I feel like it robbed characters like Tsuyu, Mina, Tokoyami and Koda of being part of an actual narrative and get more depth and development.

Before I talk about this, let me clarify something: Shouji’s line about what his classmates know about heteromorphic discrimination is an example of very crucial nuance being wildly different between translations.

The fan scanlation suggested that Tokoyami and Koda, who grew up in cities, must feel like such violent heteromorphobia resembles something out of a textbook, with the implication that the textbook in question is a history book.  They’re presumed to think that blood-cleansing rituals and children with scars like Shouji are artifacts of a terrible past, not a modern-day concern.

The official Via release suggested that Tokoyami and Koda could know that stuff like this still happens in rural areas because they might have read about it in textbooks.  They’re presumed to know that such rituals and scarred children do exist as modern concerns, but only out in the boonies.

Those are completely different propositions!  Which one was accurate was far beyond my capability to judge, but the official translation did feel a little off to me, so, as I usually do in such situations, I brought it to my trusty Translator Sis.  For possibly the first time ever,[6] she told me that Viz had this one wrong—that Shouji’s implication, to her eye, was indeed that T&K would think such violence was limited to the past, not that it was limited to rural areas.

That established, I was actually talking about that line from Shouji with a friend the other day!  I was aggravated that the writing would portray city-born heteromorphs as so oblivious to the problems facing them in other parts of the country when that seems so counter to my (American) perception of the ways members of threatened groups communicate danger to one another.

My friend reminded me that silence is a much more common Japanese way of addressing (or attempting to address) minority discrimination: trying to make a problem go away by starving it of conversational oxygen, treating oppression like an infection that needs to be quarantined until it dies out on its own.  In that light, it’s entirely possible that Tokoyami and Koda might not know this stuff because no one around them thinks it would be helpful to tell them if it’s not a problem they’re directly dealing with.  A lot of people propose the same approach to burakumin issues in real life, for example.

Also, technically Shouji doesn’t say that Koda and Tokoyami don’t experience heteromorphobia at all, just that the idea of fear and hatred that extreme, that violent, must seem like something out of a textbook, rather than something that happens here and now in certain parts of the country.  Also too, Tokoyami and Koda are teenagers; I can forgive them not having much understanding of life outside their own circle of experience.

That all said, it still feels more than a little telling that Horikoshi thinks everyone in Shouji’s whole class, including and especially all the other heteromorphs, could never have heard in their entire lives about acts of bigotry-driven violence against heteromorphs being carried out in the here and now.

While it’s true that silence is a widely accepted way to address these sorts of issues in Japan, they’re hardly universal!  Activist groups are out there trying to raise awareness, trying to get their issues on the floor of the Diet in hopes of getting laws passed about them.  There’s not some kind of media blackout on talking about it, and, indeed, I’ve read any number of articles from Japanese publications online covering such topics.

In BNHA, however, silence does seem to be universal.[7]

No one but Shouji is from a remote enough place that they knew about violent heteromorphobia.  No one recognized it as a thing that e.g. disadvantages heteromorphic heroes in the public approval ratings.  No one tripped over a magazine article about it and got curious enough to look the topic up online.  No one’s heroic mentors or family members have talked to them about it (particularly egregious with Koda, given the fairly strong implication that his own mother suffered it).  No one had a patch of morbid interests (Tokoyami) that led them to dabble in reading about real-life horror stories of human hatred, or an interest in how their society came to be that might have led them to reading about the CRC and realizing it still exists in the modern day.

They attend a hero school, and yet Shouji seems to be the only one with an inkling that there are heteromorphs out there who need, and have been needing, heroes.

That’s all a lot to ask of the reader, but what really pushes it past plausibility to me is what happened with the Ordinary Woman.  How close to the surface must violent heteromorphobia be even in the cities if the current state of Japan brings it all right back into the open in a matter of weeks?  That none of the students other than Shouji have ever even imagined that heteromorphs can still be victimized in this way represents an over-the-top ignorance that I have to read as either a bleak condemnation of the shallow focuses of heroes or reflective of Horikoshi’s own beliefs about discrimination and the understanding of it possessed by those who aren’t immediately threatened by it.

Whichever is the case, and with Spinner’s higher brain functions out of commission, it leaves Shouji carrying the whole plot on his back and he just can’t do it, both because the audience hasn’t had enough time with him to buy it and because the answers the series uses him as a vehicle to deliver are facile, victim-blaming nonsense.

...And here’s where I admit that even if the hospital attack had climaxed with a whole bunch of heteromorphs from Class A and B and the Pro Hero ranks acknowledging the mob’s feelings while pleading with them to not give into hatred and to stand down, I would still have issues if the resolution didn’t involve concrete suggestions and promises about how the heroes would address the mob’s grievances going forward.  Which canon very much did not, and just adding more voices to Shouji’s wouldn’t have changed that.  But my whole rant about that can be found in the relevant chapter posts, so I’ll not repeat it further here.

  

How Would I Have Done It Instead?

Let’s be real here for a second. Even if Mina had been the one to stop Machia. How would she even do that? I remember back when people were talking about when Mina would get her moment to shine, and that it would involve Machia again, I had serious doubts about that idea ever becoming true because I couldn’t think of a single thing she could do against him. I thought for sure Mina’s moment was going to be relegated to fighting Midnight’s killer, since that seemed more within her capabilities. In the end her shinning moment did indeed involve Machia, and no one really had a confrontation with Midnight’s killer. I actually want to hear your thoughts, if you happen have a thing in mind that you think Mina could’ve done to be the one to stop Machia. I’d love to hear it.+ Btw, since you brought it up, in what way could she have defeated the Sludge villain that would’ve been witty, or skillful? If you don’t have any ideas you don’t need to answer. It’s not that important. I’m just curious of the posibility.

Okay, so, this is the part that hung me up for the longest, because there are a few wildly different possible answers here.

The real truth is, if I had been writing this whole shebang from the start, this confrontation would never have happened this way at all.  Just off the top of my head, I think there’s no compelling reason AFO couldn’t have sent Toga into the hospital to activate and retrieve Kurogiri weeks ago, and with Kurogiri back in play, getting Machia would obviously have gone differently.  I would also never have disposed of the MLA as comprehensively as Horikoshi did; I would have had at least one or two instances where an MLA member who didn’t get uncovered by the HPSC in time was in a position to shift the balance in the villains’ favor—maybe one would have been with the police somewhere.

Barring a top-to-bottom rewrite of the whole arc, however? Well, I'd still say that, feeling as strongly as I do about how morally dubious this whole second war has been, even if I were telling this scene with the same components, I probably wouldn’t be writing towards a hero success because I don’t think the heroes have earned it.  The baby steps the kids have taken towards Saving Villains don’t go far enough for me to want to see the villains defeated here.  The biggest changes there would have been twofold:

1) Shinsou’s voice changer play shouldn’t have worked on Machia.

Machia has a sense of smell so incredibly acute that, if I were trying to logically explain how it worked, I’d make it a psychic ability that just happened to manifest as scent-based.  We’re talking about a guy who could track down Shigaraki after a teleport of over 270 miles, who could smell AFO’s vestige stirring from almost fifty miles away.  There’s absolutely no reason he should think for even a second that AFO is standing right outside his prison.

Now, we do know replications of AFO’s voice has an effect on Machia—we saw as much as the beginning of MVA!  But I would contend that back then, he didn’t have a big loud response to the recording, just curled up around his radio and started loudly purring.  In the scene with Shinsou, he actually responds as though he thinks AFO is there, but again, I don’t buy that Machia should have fallen for that, especially since he was woken by Hose Face’s device emulating AFO’s voice, which would have given his unbelievably keen senses enough time to register that it’s only the voice, not the man, that he's hearing.

But, with Machia up and not immediately prey to Shinsou’s ploy, the other big change I’d make with him becomes apparent.  The series has proved willing and eager to shitcan everything Shigaraki gained in MVA, but not me.  Shigaraki won Machia’s loyalty at the end of MVA, and if Machia’s cranky with AFO for leaving him behind again,[8] that doesn’t mean he couldn’t still have loyalty to AFO’s successor.

Given that his loyalty to Shigs is predicated on his loyalty to AFO, it might seem logical that AFO squandering the latter would free Machia of obligation to the former.  That’s a fair take.  But if it were me, I’d capitalize on Machia’s keen senses and what he was present for in MVA—Shigaraki saying that his followers should do whatever they want.  Hell, if the endgame likes flashbacks so much, let’s have a flashback of Shigaraki and Machia actually talking in ways that would let Machia distinguish Shigaraki and AFO.

In other words, I think Machia’s loyalty should supersede his anger.  If he gets free, his first reaction should be to go to Shigaraki, not to focus on his anger.  That way, it’s not a hero win rewarding their gross sky coffin tactics, but AFO doesn’t get quite what he wanted out of it, either.  This would be one part of focusing the narrative back on Shigaraki and his allies, rather than ruining Shigaraki’s hard work by letting AFO take over and piss it all away.

Incidentally, I will concede that, just because Machia shouldn’t have responded like a dupe to Shinsou mimicking AFO’s voice, that doesn’t mean Machia might not have responded at all—he could have rebuked Shinsou for trying to emulate Master, and that would have worked for Shinsou’s purposes just as well!  So to avoid that, I would add one more element to a flashback showcasing Shigaraki and Machia’s relationship post-Deika: have Shigaraki showing Machia a picture of Shinsou and warning him to be on the lookout for this kid, and to not respond to anything he says.

Horikoshi loves to tie back plot beats to pre-established elements, and one such element is, as I footnoted earlier, that AFO and Shigaraki watched the U.A. Sports Festival together, so they should both know good and well who Shinsou is and what he can do.  Knowing Shinsou’s SF-era capabilities doesn’t predict the voice changer, of course, but it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that, if the heroes are pushed to a point of desperation and they have access to a brainwasher, even a non-licensed one, they will try to use that brainwasher on whoever they think is their highest priority target.  Quite frankly, all of the higher-ups and key players should have known about Shinsou.

2) The kids shouldn’t have been tipped off that they were facing Midnight’s killer, or it should have come up in a different context.

Nothing interesting comes of the way the canon deploys it, thanks to Mina’s vengeful feelings having no grounding in the story, and the blunt way it’s brought up serves only to make Hose Face easy for the reader to write off.  As I said in the chapter post where he brought up “that U.A. teacher,” there’s no real reason for him to be focusing on Midnight specifically unless he has a personal reason to think she’s emblematic of the things about Hero Society he hates, or unless he was tuned in enough to U.A. personalities (knew who was teaching there, watched the Sports Festival to get a handle on its students, etc.) to realize that he was facing students he could potentially rattle by bringing up their teacher’s death.

The latter would offer a less awful read on Hose Face’s personality: He’s not bringing up the death out of pure sadism, but as a psychological tactic.  The former would give him some real characterization and motives while also giving the kids something to argue against, rather than the easiest possible reaction of, “Hay did u kno Might Makes Right iz bad?”

Alternatively, if Hose Face has nothing personal against Midnight at all, and doesn’t have an encyclopedic memory of hero wannabe high schoolers, he has no reason to specifically mention Midnight.  Even if the narrative must see her death “answered” in some fashion, it still doesn’t follow that the kids must get emotional closure for someone they lost to the undeclared war they were drafted into.  The audience can take some solace in perceived karma, but lacking a naturalistic way for Mina and the rest to connect those dots, the kids should just have to deal with him as they would any other opponent they come up against, because, surprise surprise, when you’re fighting in a war, you’re not guaranteed to see and know who’s on the opposite side of the gun that just shot down your best friend.

As another alternative, if we go with the idea that Mina was struggling with dark desires for revenge, maybe she should have brought it up!  Not as an accusation—again, she has no way of knowing she’s facing Midnight’s killer without him saying it—but just out of generalized fury with her opponents as a group, the same way Aizawa and Gran Torino hold the pain of their loved ones against Shigaraki when Shigaraki is not the one responsible for causing that pain.[9]  Maybe a more openly vengeful Mina could just freely state that her aim is to take down the PLF to avenge Midnight, only for the enemy in front of her to answer, “Midnight?  You mean that woman I killed in the woods on the day of Liberation?  Here’s your chance, then, girl.”  (Or whatever.)

Of course, Shonen Jump is not in the habit of validating heroes craving revenge, so Mina in that scenario would fail because rage would make her sloppy, same as with Deku, Iida, and so on.

So, in a scenario where Machia is up and not falling prey to Shinsou, but rather prioritizing getting to New Master Shigaraki, and the PLF is likewise loyal to Shigaraki and not AFO, I’d just let it work, because I’d be slanting this whole combat towards an overall heroic loss.  Give Mina a face to obsess over until next time but also let Kirishima get a good eyeful of it so he at least knows there’s a serious problem with his best friend and one of his hero inspirations.

Mineta would have a chance to weigh in, too, as he's a good middle ground: he's got his own anger about Midnight, who he adored, but he's also worried about how that anger looks on Mina. Mineta always worries about his classmates, but he's shared a pretty fair amount of incidental screentime with Mina specifically over the course of the series, ranging from her sweetly offering to put a harem moment into the band performance just for him to stuff like the Clockwork Orange gag, as well as more serious stuff like Mineta being the first one to ask aloud if Midnight's dead, with Mina warmly, and with a confidence it turns out she doesn't truly feel, reassuring him that Midnight's fine.

(I've said before that Mineta should have had more to do in the confrontation with Midnight's killer, but that's not just about his fondness for her. It's also about him being the first to question if the heroes didn't just make the whole situation worse, and, if Mina really took Midnight's death so hard it had her thinking about revenge, it should also have been about Mina and Mineta's shared experience surrounding that death.)

That all said, I suspect that what you really meant is, how would I have handled this scene if I had to use all the same pieces and be writing towards a heroic victory?  So let me at least touch on that.

As far as Hose Face goes, I actually think Kirishima might have been better suited to talking to him?  Like, Mina’s been friendly with people, sure, but I don’t really buy her most pivotal, “shining moment” scene being a bunch of talk about the strength of the weak coming together.  As best I recall—though do correct me if I’m wrong—it's never been shown that Mina regularly struggles with feelings of weakness or inadequacy.  It would be perfectly natural for her to do so after flubbing against Gigantomachia, to be sure, but the series doesn’t make the time to show it, so her lines about forming packs with others does not feel like a natural evolution for her arc.

Likewise, while she’s obviously been depicted as friendly and sociable from the beginning, her lines in 383 suggest that her sociableness has, and always has had, an ulterior motive: covering for her perceived weakness.  The lack of focus on her relationships from her own perspective makes that impossible to verify or even predict, so it just feels like it comes out of thin air, grabbed almost at random by the author in his attempt to find something, anything, Mina could say that would give Hose Face even a moment's pause.

Kirishima, on the other hand, has had a focus on his relationships, places where they’ve been pivotal to his own arc and the greater plot.  (I’m sure I don’t need to harp on this to you, rvg, but I’ll go over it to lay out my perception of these things.)  His relationship with Mina—the ways he’s trying to live up to her example, as well as his desire to support her when she falters—is a profound motivator for him, something we see much more explicitly and from his own perspective than we do Mina's feelings about him.  Meanwhile, while his relationship with Bakugou isn’t given that level of psychological exploration, it’s a critical factor in Bakugou’s rescue at Kamino, and we also get that bit of Bakugou specifically giving Kirishima some advice that leads to the latter’s Unbreakable mode.[10]

So like, we do get an angle on Kirishima and his sense of his own relationships with others.  That awareness allows him to demonstrate what is, I believe, the first unabashed moment of empathy for villains that a hero demonstrates in the entire series!  Specifically, I’m talking about that low-level gang mook he comes up against during his internship with Fat Gum.  That guy does a bunch of yelling about things that speak to Kirishima—fears of weakness, desire to be stronger, a need to help his “bros”—and Kirishima tries multiple times, even after being attacked, to express his understanding and sympathy for the man.

That being the case, if anyone were going to be able to make an impression on Hose Face via appealing to his sense of camaraderie and desire for strength, it seems to me that Kirishima has the better groundwork in place to sell the moment, regardless of whether he could successfully “reach” Hose Face in the way that’s being attempted with Shigaraki/Toga/Dabi.

As to the Sludge Villain, I’d probably either not have him there at all, given how much he claims he just wants to pretend to fight for a minute before getting the hell out of there.  He very much seems like he didn’t want to be here to begin with, so I can only assume that, despite AFO claiming the jailbreakers didn’t need to do anything for him but rampage, he very much did summon a bunch of them back anyway[11] for his final dramatic attack on Deku and Hero Society.

Assuming we’re stuck dealing with him, I’d probably let the Class B kids do it.   Have Mount Lady—who was there for the Sludge Villain’s rampage using Bakugou, and therefore knows what Sludgey looks like and that he can possess people—yell for people to stay away from him.  Let there be a moment of panic and confusion, where it looks for a moment like a repeat of the mess in Chapter 1 where no one had the exact right answer to deal with him, so no one’s willing to step up.

Then, in a 1-2-3 combo move that reminds everyone why Class B is said to have advanced more quickly than Class A, and just as Sludgey lunges for someone, have Yamagi use Poltergeist to manipulate him into a steel drum barrel being held by Yui, let her shrink it down to a good tight fit before dropping it, then have Juuzo soften the ground to half-sink it, top down, then resolidify the earth, trapping Sludgey for later removal.  Ta da, a neat demonstration of the next generation outperforming the old generation when it comes to on-the-fly teamwork and decisive action even when no one individual has the perfect quirk for solving a problem.

…This, of course, is assuming there’s no good way to actually get the Sludge Villain to talk in more depth about why he didn’t want to be here from the beginning and had to be threatened into doing it at all.  It would be nice if someone could broach that topic!  Maybe a quick not-too-serious handful of lines from Mineta, who has his own history of running in terror from fights he doesn’t think he can win.  But even with some sympathy, I imagine Sludge Villain would try to run away regardless, on the (well-grounded) suspicion that heroes are going to want him to go back to prison and finish his sentence, and that’s when B-tachi could step in.

So that just leaves Machia, Mina, and Shinsou.  And honestly, rather than having to power through it, I’d rather see Mina, in particular, talk her way out of it.  This draws on two things.  First, there’s the fact that she’s one of the kids who failed her Final Exams, with her and Kaminari being unable to figure out how to utilize their strengths to get out of Nedzu’s rat maze.   I’d love to see her demonstrate that she’s grown from having no plans but to brute force her way through obstacles!  Second, there’s this sequence:

This is a bit exaggerated, obviously, but the quick demonstration of how quickly and smoothly Mina is able to approach, scold, bond with, then deescalate people in tense situations is rightly portrayed as remarkable.  But where is that facility in real confrontations with villains?  Nowhere, really, save that airless stab at remarking on common ground with Hose Face and the PLF.

I obviously don’t expect her and Machia to wind up breakdancing together when the stakes are as high as they are, but Mina would have at least a bit of an opening—her encounter with Machia in middle school wherein she lied to him about where the Springer Agency is.  I don’t for a moment think that Machia’s forgotten her smell—I doubt he forgets anyone’s, though he may or may not care about them otherwise.

For this version of the scene, I’d probably play Machia as more ambivalent—tired of being abandoned over and over again by the people he’s tried so hard to be loyal for, so not immediately inclined to run off after them, open to a bit more dialogue.  He doesn’t fall for Shinsou for the same reasons I outlined above, so Shinsou and Mina have to talk Machia into acting—or at least stop him from just rumbling off to bury himself under a mountain for the next decade or two.

I don’t know how they’d go about making that argument.  Honestly, I don’t really think there’s anything in the story for Mina or Shinsou to fall back on (by which I mean earlier panels Horikoshi’s assistants can look up and copy/paste into the storyboard to accent a dramatic speech).  Maybe they could ask him why he’s so loyal to All For One and find some commonality, either through heteromorph discrimination or bias against villains.

Maybe Machia is torn on his loyalty, betrayed by AFO one too many times to want to help him but not sure where that leaves him on supporting Shigaraki.  Hearing this, Mina brings up that AFO is threatening Shigaraki right now, but also that a friend of Mina’s is trying to stop AFO/help Shigaraki,[12] so maybe Machia could help them with that and then decide?  Machia doesn’t trust her due to the Springer Agency thing, but that same experience does lead him to believe her when she says she just wants to help people, not hurt them.

That last bit has the benefit of providing an explicit reason for why Mina uses her quirk nigh-exclusively as a watery defense barrier or to take out inanimate objects: She long ago made an active choice not to use her acid against sentient people.  This would give her some room for a little motivation-establishing flashback of her own—maybe canonize that theory about her chipperness being at least in part a front!—and provide a nice alternative to the current state of Mina’s narrative, which has spent nearly 400 chapters refusing to allow her the same free hand people like Bakugou and Kaminari take with their quirks for no established reason.

This doesn’t give Shinsou much to do, but that’s okay: his moment comes against AFO instead.

I realize that Mina's fans want her to have a big badass moment, and simply talking down a confrontation is not the kind of thing that tends to get viewed as "badass" in a shounen battle manga. Sorry about that. She can still jump around and dodge a lot while giving her pitch? Maybe she could get a big badass moment later on? I dunno; that's just what I would do, and obviously my priorities for what it would be cool for the kids to do are not the same as the broader readership's.

I'm also not sure where that leaves the confrontation with Midnight's killer; I suppose that depends on how things go between him and Kirishima in this scenario. Maybe they leave without him when he tries to protest Machia accepting the temporary alliance, or maybe he's soldier enough to take the help where he can get it and worry about later conflict later. Obviously, at any rate, this is happening in a scenario where he hasn't immediately blabbed that he killed Midnight; that can come up as a nasty surprise later on.

  

But does that mean you think Midnight’s killer should totally get away with it scott free and suffer no consequences?

Hnnnngghh that’s a tricky one because I am an unabashed MLA stan and villain supporter and therefore deeply biased about this.  Like, I don’t think soldiers should be put on trial for killing enemy soldiers, no, even high-ranking officer-types.  Obviously it’s different if they attack civilians or are otherwise breaking the codes surrounding conduct during warfare, but I do think Hose Face killing Midnight was basically a soldier killing someone he perceived as another soldier, with no undue cruelty or misconduct.

However, obviously the series itself—and the state authority the PLF is openly trying to tear down in-universe—would disagree with me!  In that context, I can’t even really call the guy “a high-ranking officer” because that would, as mentioned earlier, convey more authenticity to his position than his government wants to grant him.  As far as they’re concerned, he’s probably more like “a key figure in the recent anti-government actions carried out by the terrorist group calling themselves The Paranormal Liberation Front.”  People like that tend to get executed in prison a few years after their short, perfunctory trials.

I suppose the problem for me is that the series wants me to believe that the MLA is Very Bad and they all deserve to be Locked Up Forever, whereas I want more nuance from them than that?  Even setting aside the probable cult upbringing, I have significant trouble unabashedly blaming the PLF for their actions because the series has done nothing to convince me that less drastic avenues for change are available or even survivable for them.

This was a huge issue with the hospital attack sequence, but it applies to all sorts of the setting’s problems: Other than, “Insist that victims of oppression should focus on providing a good example to future generations,” what methods for addressing inequality does Hero Society have?  I want to know what the villains should have done, what they could have done, about systemic inequalities and repression that would have been effective against a government that employs agents like Lady Nagant and Hawks.

The picture Nagant paints is of a society waging a war against anyone who sought to change the Hero System, a war that many people who sought change never even knew they were already in.  The examples she provides of her targets are, of course, corrupt heroes and would-be terrorists, but what her HPSC President said was even farther reaching: that the purpose of her killing was to “preserve hope and faith” in heroes.

The HPSC legitimately does not seem to believe that any system other than the current one is feasible for maintaining stability, and that any attempt to shake or besmirch that system is no different than throwing the country back into the chaos of the advent of quirks.  What’s a few missing activists or tragic accidents compared to that?

Horikoshi seems desperate to have us pretend he never told us that the government his protagonists are defending actively grooms assassins to enforce the status quo, but that’s not a genie he can put back in the bottle.  I see the current events of the series as, in some form or another, basically inevitable because of Hero Society’s active, even violent resistance to change.  Midnight’s death for that cause is thus something I have tremendous difficulty thinking of as a crime that needs to be punished.

Does that mean I think Hose Face should get off scot-free?  Eeehhhhhhhhnnnngh I hate to say it this plainly, but…

Maybe it does?

The thing is, I know that Hose Face is, canonically, a quirk supremacist trying to violently overthrow the rule of law.  In real life, I have no sympathy for people trying to institute fascism, regardless of whether they’re using legal mechanisms or armed force.  But in the fictional world of BNHA, I have nothing but disdain for the way the MLA has been turned into a caricature of themselves in this final arc.  In that sense, my dissatisfaction with Hose Face’s treatment is really based on the ideal version of him and all the rest of the MLA I have in my head—the MLA that’s allowed to have nuance behind their extremism, the one overflowing with members motivated by their lived experience with the flaws in Hero Society, with a generous helping of radicalization from the fact that they’re a cult as much as they are an army.

BNHA has scrapped all that potential and left us with nothing but naked quirk supremacy to fill the void.  In an endgame that’s trying so, so hard to sell the readers on Saving Villains, that’s just poison to the story’s themes, and my villain stanning comes directly from that issue: demanding consistent treatment for the characters whose tragic backstories we haven’t been permitted to see.

Hose Face is clearly a bad person—heck, I was headcanoning him as a hard-edged, ruthless killer even when all we had to go on was him killing Midnight, long before he showed up to espouse open quirk supremacy and gloat about killing a schoolteacher, so it’s not like I ever thought he was a super nice dude or anything!  But I guess I just have trouble with the idea that the current system deserves to be the one to decide his fate, when it has, to all appearances, gone to extreme lengths to stamp out any perceived threats to itself, to the point that the narrative itself is now openly delegitimizing everyone who might otherwise offer cogent critique.

It would be different if we had never seen the dark side of the status quo and the villains really were all just shallow, two-dimensional monsters.  It would be different if the narrative had shown us legal, nonviolent and effective avenues for protest and change.[13]  It would be different if Hose Face had killed some rando uninvolved civilian.

As it is, though, Midnight was a combatant for a terrible, terrible status quo.  She might not have been using lethal means herself, but she was defending a demonstrably lethal, openly acknowledged as repressive, system.  I just can’t find it in myself to demand justice for the fact that she died for it.

But with all that being said, I also don’t think Midnight is a bad person.  She never knew about the government assassins, after all; she’s a member of the system she grew up in, the same way the kids are.  She presumably never saw the extent of the system’s flaws because she was never victimized by them.  At the end of the day, she still deserved to be properly mourned and remembered and it is a crock and a crime that we never got to see her funeral.

If anything, I think Midnight’s funeral would have been an excellent setting for a scene where the protagonists start asking questions about how things came to this, what went wrong and where, that their teacher had to die.  What is it about Hero Society that’s led to tens of thousands of dissidents, and why haven’t they ever heard of this discontent before now That would have given us considerably better set-up for a nuanced PLF, an opening to talk about Shouji’s experience of heteromorphobia, foreshadowing for Lady Nagant, and, to bring this back on-topic, the opportunity to really show Mina struggling with everything that happened as set-up for her later confrontation with Midnight’s killer.

  

Tumblr, How Does That Work?

Honestly I was expecting some sort of notification about your answers if and when you replied to me. Is that not a thing?

Making my reply a fresh post, or just posting replies in the comments section of the post you originally commented on, would not have notified you without me specifically tagging you, which at the time Tumblr wasn’t letting me do.  This problem seems to have cleared up, so you should have gotten a notification about this post going up because of your name being tagged at the very beginning!

What you see for people answering asks depends on a few things. If you send asks anonymously, you won't get a notification if/when the person answers them; you'll just have to keep an eye on their blog. If you send them with your name attached, as you did originally for me, I could choose to answer those asks privately, sending my replies back to your Inbox, or answer publically, posting my replies to my blog. Either way, you'd be notified!

For this round of responses, if I'd just replied to your reblog in comments as you did with my original post, or reblogged your reply with a reply of own instead of staring a new post, you’d have gotten notifications about either!  But I don’t want to put this much wall ‘o text on my followers’ dashboards without a cut, so I haven’t been responding directly, for which I apologize.

(Disclaimer: Notifications can be configured in your Settings menu; you can toggle them on and off for loads of stuff! You might wish to check what you currently have them set for rather than just taking my word for it.)

On the topic of cuts, I mentioned at the beginning that the cut option is hard to find on mobile, but just for reference, it looks like this in the post editor on desktop:

It's the same icon on the mobile post editor, it's just on the far right of the bar of icons along the bottom of the app. My screen cuts it off, so I have to scroll the bar over to find it.

Like I said, the Expand dropdown button Tumblr instituted a little while back has reduced the need for this somewhat, and you can certainly do whatever you prefer, but as I believe having the Expand dropdown automatically clip long posts is still an optional configuration in Settings, I'd feel better about reblogging from you directly if you put the bulk of your reply under a cut.

  

Don’t know what “blorbo” means. Kinda sounds like a demeaning term, but I’m going to assume it’s not.

Sorry, it’s not intended to be demeaning!  It’s just a slangy affectionate term for “character you really like.”  In my experience, I’d say it also has a connotation of protectiveness or self-identification, though I can’t speak for the whole of the internet.  I like plenty of characters, but I wouldn’t call them all my blorbos, just the ones that I really and truly love and want to explore/share/defend their honor to the death.

  

Thanks...? Is, is that a compliment?

(Re: my telling rvg that we seemed to have similar issues with the way Mina was being handled, but they were more willing to do the mental legwork on her than me.)

It’s mostly just an observation, but not a critical one!  As someone who’s very ready to read into the canon every little drip of information the canon will give me And So Much More, I have a tremendous amount of fellow-feeling for people of like minds, even if our taste in characters is different.

    

Buried At The Bottom, Why Kaminari Is A Worse Character Than Mineta, Yes I Said It And I’ll Say It Again

>>I have observably positive feelings for about a third of Class 1-A and only particularly negative feelings about Deku and Kaminari. What’s up with Kaminari?

My irritation with Kaminari boils down to two main things—and forgive me, I know you didn’t ask about Mineta, but Mineta’s pretty important to my feelings on Kaminari being what they are, so he’s a part of this answer.  This is all going to be pretty openly dismissive of Kaminari, as a fair warning, on top of being based on not-exactly-rigorous familiarity with the student material, so apologies to anyone who likes him and finds him an enriching, valuable character. But man alive, that is not me.  And but so:

1) Kaminari is a watered-down Mineta, with watered-down versions of all of Mineta’s flaws, but because he’s watered down, the growth he experiences stands out less than Mineta’s.  More on this in a second.

2) Despite Kaminari being a redundant character who brings virtually nothing to the table that other characters don’t do better—with the only things that are unique to him going underdeveloped in canon—fandom loves Kaminari.  (Disclaimer: I obviously don’t spend much time in the hero-fan circles of the fandom, so this is just my perception.  I’d be curious to get your perspective of Kaminari’s relative popularity, rvg!)

To hit the second point first, Kaminari has a more conventionally attractive cute anime boy face than Mineta, so Kaminari’s pushing of his female classmates’ boundaries gets mostly ignored, while Mineta gets so many fics written about him dying that there’s a dedicated Dead Mineta Minoru tag on AO3 with almost 350 hits. 

Fandom built a whole tottering edifice of fanon about Traitor Kaminari despite the howling absence of compelling evidence in the manga[14] for, so far as I can tell, the sole reason that people wanted the cute anime boy to have crunchy angst.  Then, when the actual traitor reveals landed (first the fake-out and then the real one), fandom deemed Hagakure an ungrateful bitch and Aoyama a whining coward.

So like, the fandom discrepancy is what pushes me over the edge from the bottom end of neutral into active dislike.  But I would be awfully close to it anyway for the whole “redundant-ass character who contributes nothing to this story we couldn’t get better from someone else” thing.

Kaminari being kind of leery and unpleasant about his female classmates would be a lot more glaring if it weren’t stacked up against Mineta’s actual sexual harassment, even though Kaminari is a frequent co-conspirator!   

Kaminari has a brief tussle with fear at the beginning of the war arc, but it’s neither as sustained nor as convincing as Mineta’s frequent wrestling with cowardice, present from USJ all the way up through his terrified confrontation with All For One.   

Mineta is frequently, openly envious of his classmates, a whole extra flaw that Kaminari never demonstrates in more than fleeting glimpses.   

Kaminari’s quirk is redundant next to the other high offense types in the class.   

Kaminari’s personality is not distinct enough to add anything irreplaceable to the classroom dynamic.  That’s not to say he brings nothing to the web of relationships amongst the students or the ways the class as a whole reacts to the events of the series, just that what comes to mind for me is mostly extra layering to existing dynamics, not anything truly original and unique to him.  Which would be fine—I love extra layers!—if he were contributing more as a character on literally any other fronts.

I can think of only two things that Kaminari uniquely brings to the table, but both of them are mentioned once and then never come up again.  Firstly, he’s the only one in the class to voice open admiration for Stain, a willingness to admire cool traits in Villains that never leads him to any interesting conflicts with people (classmates or otherwise) who hew to the more standard flat refusal to consider that a Villain might have or express positive aspects.

The other thing is less about Kaminari himself and more about how he’s one of three places where the story brings up the idea of people using their quirks for non-hero jobs and then refuses to develop that premise.[15]  It’s interesting worldbuilding, but as far as I’m aware, it’s never directly shown—everyone we see using their quirks (legally) in the series is doing it as a hero.  We never get much sense of what other options there are for quirk use because heroism and villainy are the only contexts we ever see it in!  This would be a little annoying on its own, but I also find it undermines a lot of other established facts and characterizations.

(Bear with me and I promise I’ll loop this back around to Kaminari.)

My interests being where they are, the biggest problem for me with the fuzziness about the legality of quirk use is that it leaves Destro and the MLA with no coherent cause.  They want free quirk use, but are they really so incredibly averse to just getting a license that they’re willing to become terrorists over it??

You could argue that naked quirk supremacy is what the MLA is currently after, and that’s obviously incompatible with the laws as they stand, but Destro Classic is never really framed as a quirk supremacist, so why did he so virulently despise the quirk use prohibitions if all they really did was require people to get a license to use quirks in public, no different than a driver’s license or a permit to serve alcohol?  Sure, you get small clutches of people sometimes with that kind of “any government oversight is bad government oversight” black-and-white thinking, but the original MLA was a powerful enough force to stand against the government for years, which doesn’t exactly scream “a handful of malcontents” to me.

Rendering the MLA’s cause mindbogglingly asinine is my biggest problem with the “other jobs can get quirk-use licenses too” tidbit, but there are also things like how totally invisible the entertainment or sports industry is.  That would make perfect sense if quirk use is illegal in those fields—people want to see cool superpowers getting used, so industries that bank on public attention dollars but can’t have their celebrities use their quirks are going to decline when they can’t compete with industries/celebrities that can.

If quirk licenses can be gotten for all sorts of jobs, though, then why have sports and entertainment become so invisible?  If “frivolous” fields like those are not aren’t seen as “contributing to society” enough for quirk use permits, then which fields do?  Why does HeroAca!Japan still mostly look and behave like IRL!Japan if quirks are in use in “all manner” of industries?  And if it isn’t the case that heroism—a dangerous job which sometimes gets people killed and which generally requires cultivating a socially demanding public brand/identity—is the only path to being able to use the special power you were born with to earn a livelihood, why does every single middle-schooler in Deku’s class and countless other classes across the country want to become a hero?

I just feel like the way the world looks and operates, the kinds of repressiveness described by even the heroes, the structures that drive people into heroism and villainy alike—the former because they don’t see any other viable way to achieve the happiness they’re looking for, the latter because they can’t become heroes but still have desires that their quirks could help them achieve—all of that makes much more sense in a world that has super powers but has tightly restricted their use to a single job class of person.

So, tying back, obviously that’s not a fault of Kaminari’s, but he is the character where that gap is most apparent.  If there aren’t many lightning heroes because lightning is in high demand in other industries, it would shed significant light on who Kaminari is as a person if the manga would tell us what those other industries are. 

What other paths could Kaminari have chosen?  What’s so much better about those other industries that people with quirks tailor-made for heroism,[16] in a society that worships popular and powerful heroes, are so willing to choose those other industries instead?  Why did Kaminari not make that same decision?  What does heroism mean to him personally that he chose it when so many others in his situation did not?

Kaminari could present a huge in on that angle of the worldbuilding, but instead he’s a complete dead-end.  Mineta’s motivations are base as hell, but at least we know what they are!  Further, it tells us interesting (uncomplimentary, but interesting!) things that people like Recovery Girl and Deku hear said motivations from Mineta’s own mouth, and shrug and accept them as perfectly valid.

And that’s just his professed motivations!  His final exam scene actually drops an early hint about the admiration for Deku he’ll later wholeheartedly declare in the 1-A vs Deku fight!  I don’t remember Kaminari ever getting anything a fraction so revealing; he just coasts through the story contributing nothing unique or meaningful.  He’s hardly the only 1-A character with that particular lack of depth—Sato, Sero, Hagakure and Ojiro are all similar blank slates in terms of their motivations or histories—but then, none of them are a fraction as popular as Kaminari is in the fandom as I experience it, either.

So to sum up, I dislike Kaminari because he’s a wishy-washy nothing of a character, a generically Inoffensive Anime Cutie Boy adored out of all reasonable proportion compared to more compelling and equally underdeveloped classmates alike.  Mineta is, by any measure, more problematic, and it's even worse that U.A./Aizawa are so blasé about him, but, at least from where I’m standing, he’s still more layered, more compelling, more dynamic, and speaks in more interesting ways to the world around him than Kaminari ever comes close to matching.

(…Kaminari’s thing with Jirou is fine.  Perfectly reasonable character relationship building material.  I just don’t count it one way or the other because it’s a self-contained relationship dynamic that has no bearing on the way either character engages with the broader world/system the series’ overarching narrative is challenging.  They motivate each other in small ways, but that motivation doesn’t lead them to truly grow or change as people, only to overcome modest internal confidence hurdles blocking them from things they already wanted to do anyway.)

--

And that's it! Thanks for forging through, good lord, over twenty pages of this, rvg and anyone else who did! I hope you were at least moderately entertained, give or take my blatant Kaminari slander. See you next time, and enjoy the Footnotes.

---------------- FOOTNOTES ----------------

[1] We’re not shown any personnel or drugs or anything, but I assume they’ve been keeping Machia drugged since Jakku, same as Kurogiri in between interviews.  It’s the only thing that worked on Machia before, so why wouldn’t they have more on-hand?

[2] Despite watching the Sports Festival with Shigaraki, natch.

[3] I would like it if he would do that with a lot less insufferable power scaling bullshit, you understand, but I’m spotting the comic its plot arc here.

[4] Outside of, say, the Persona games, where the MCs can change ability sets by swapping out what companion spirit they’re packing, but even that doesn’t make them specialized for status effects, merely capable of using them.

[5] Interestingly, while Bakugou fought off the villainous sales pitch with as much verve as he brings to all his fights, if he had fallen off the righteous path there, we might have observed that his pridefulness was explicitly fostered by the people around him giving him excessive praise for his powerful quirk and ignoring his resulting violent arrogance.  That is to say, Bakugou would have fallen under the same, “Villains are created by the failures in their society,” pattern that BNHA applies to all of its sympathetic villains.

[6] There was one other instance, but iirc it was an error in the translation C.Cook had done for the BNHA databook.  It would not surprise me that he was being less careful or was more pressed for time when translating the reams upon reams of text in one of those.

[7] At least until the fifteen-thousand-strong mob shows up.

[8] Which frankly should be all he’s sore about.  As others have pointed out, Machia’s anger about being abandoned is kind of incoherent.  Yes, AFO left him on the battlefield, but he didn’t exactly leave him to rot in prison forever.  The moment AFO made his big push, he sent people to spring Machia, so in what sense exactly does Machia think AFO abandoned him?  If it was just the last straw after a string of abandonments from both AFO and Shigaraki, the manga could have stood to make that much clearer.

[9] AFO and Ujiko created Kurogiri out of Shirakumo—as a babysitter for Tomura, yes, but Tomura didn’t choose that.  And as to Shigaraki’s very existence trampling on Nana’s memory and causing All Might pain, well, Shigaraki didn’t ask to be brought into the world, abused by his father, neglected by his family, and then raised by a supervillain, did he?

[10] And speaking of Unbreakable, compare how explicitly we’re shown Kirishima’s growth and the foundations of it with how the inspirations for Mina’s attacks are relegated to passing mentions, not direct depictions.  She just casually tells Kirishima that his Unbreakable inspired her Acidman, and likewise only internally reflects on asking Bakugou and Todoroki to teach her their training method, which let her develop her Max Power Acidman Alma move, without so much as a single scrubbed in doodle depicting said training assistance.

[11] Somehow.  The story is unclear on whether he disseminated threats, contacted them directly, or just used the combination of Search+Warping to drag them all back into his presence, and that last option in particular runs into complications given the limitations of both quirks.

[12] In this AU, we would have gotten to see the class have an actual discussion about Saving Villains, prompted by the way the reveal about Aoyama solidified Deku, Shouto and Uraraka’s desires to help their respective villain foils.  The class would carry that resolve forward not only for those three villains alone, but also Shouji for Spinner, Kirishima when talking to Hose Face, Mina, here, with Gigantomachia, etc.

[13] None of the things I can think of that might be considered evidence of protest meet all the criteria.  The original MLA became violent, Harima Oji was a lawbreaker and also ineffective in the long term, the small group that yells at Endeavor and the rest in Chapter 311 is not portrayed as linked to any broader efforts to unseat “fake heroes,” and the group that “condemned” the newscaster Miyagi Daikaku was ineffective and didn’t even seem to rise to the level of open protest.

[14] "His grades are poor but he namedrops a Hemingway novel! He must be concealing the fact that he's actually super-smart!" "He's doing a Liberation salute! He must be the traitor, even though the Liberation salute uses the other hand, and Kaminari has been using finger-gun gestures to fire off his lightning attacks since at least the License Exam if not earlier, and the League had no connection to the MLA at the time when the traitor was most active!"

[15] A blurb about Kaminari in, iirc, one of the volume extras, Suneater’s flashback to a teacher telling his class that they can “make fine use of their quirks at any number of jobs,” and Uraraka’s early mention that she’d considered “getting permission” to use her quirk to help with her parents’ construction business.

[16] See the previous discussion about the kinds of quirks that are popularly accepted as “good hero quirks.”

[princess-of-the-corner]

Amnesia!Dabi: Like, interviewing Himiko makes sense, right? Figuring out what the LoV was doing. Except, they don’t think about the fact that "this isn’t a criminal, it’s a fifteen-year-old with trauma", & they send the guy they would've sent to make the Sludge Villain talk. Dabi's also pissed, cause like, oh, of COURSE the one they choose to interrogate is the kid with the "villain" Quirk, not the son of Endeavour. There's clearly NO bias here at all.

Oh yeah the risk they took was calculated but boy are they bad at math because uh.

Himiko is underage, which means that she must have a legal guardian in the room with her during interrogations. They might break some rules, but they'd never be able to get past that one.

They forget that as Himiko is an underage Villain in custody of Heroes while working on a legal case against her biologial parents, this means that fucking /Endeavor/ is considered her legal guardian in this case.

And Enji is all sorts of not taking the Commission's bullshit anymore.

[lostinlands]

My brain isn't done marinating on the last few words of Tomura and the meaning behind his actions and words and how being a Sudaca influences my opinion on Tomura, (but that's a post for another day) but I was thinking about how theres is this kind of divide? Between people who like Tomura and those that like Tenko.

"But dude, those are the same!"

Yeah, no.

Most moments where the divide is made or is very clear that they mean one over the other instead of just jumping from name to name is on the debate of salvation, The Crying Child VS The Symbol Of Fear type of situation.

The thing that bugs me about that is the simple fact that I've been a fan of Shigaraki Tomura since he was first introduced to us in the manga, and that might have something to do with the fact that I am a Sudaca, 27, and also have always been in support of the villains when it comes to mangas because I feel like the heroes/protagonists are 9/10 times blinded by survivor bias.

I've been fan of Shigaraki Tomura since he was first introduced, and then we saw him change his final goals, his ambitions, and even his stance on his group/his friends. And still during all of that Tomura was unashamedly a villain. He didn't give a fuck, he was going to kill as many as necessary and force society to change because society needed (and at the current moment of the manga STILL NEEDS) to stop being so complacent to the status quo.

He showed us how fucked society was due to their own passivity, and that was all Shigaraki Tomura. There was not a hint of Shimura Tenko in the person fighting against the Shie Hassaikai, it wasn't Tenko the one who promised Himiko to let everything she liked untouched, it wasn't Tenko the one who internalized the fact that Mr.Compress wanted Sushi and the first thing he did when he got money was GIVE HIM SAID SUSHI (And also unsure his allies were in positions of power in the new military-like structure of the meta liberation army)

You could argue that "it was Tenko" the one that cared enough to pass on a last message to Spinner (However that point is immediately Decayed to the fact that the last phrase is "Tell Spinner that SHIGARAKI TOMURA fought till the end to destroy."), or the one that cared enough to try to advise Midoriya ("Oh yeah? That depends... on what you people decide to do tomorrow. Make sure... you do your damn best.") on making sure there are no consequences that might create a new League.

However, we go back to the fact that things are argued to be separated. Its not Shigaraki Tomura the one that deserves to be saved because: He's a villain and a murderer! But it IS Shimura Tenko, the perfect victim, the one who deserves a chance at salvation.

And in the fucking end Izuku saved nothing. He didn't save the crying child because the Crying Child had already become Tomura, and he didn't save Tomura because BNHA showed us time and again that the villains didn't deserve salvation.

"But what about Himiko? She got a redemption arc!" By sacrificing herself for Ochako. Her redemption arc was her death (Allegedly, who the fuck knows, maybe we'll tune in after Hori's break and Himiko is gonna be a new member of 2B since Hitoshi is the new member of 2A) in the name of saving someone she loved and who, if she had not been actively fighting a war, would've been saved in Tomura's worlds because she was one of Himiko's beloveds and as such one of the people Tomura promised not to hurt.

"Well, What about Dabi?!" The Todoroki's don't give a fuck about DABI, they are trying to save TOUYA (oh hey, ANOTHER CASE OF DUALITY!) and also being thrown into what looks like a giant cooler isn't exactly salvation and by how his wounds ended up at the end of his fight it might just be more merciful to kill him.

"Well, what about Spinner!" In jail, probably, and also his brain overloaded with Quirks so there is a big chance he's just straight-up brain-dead.

"Kurogiri was saved before by Mic and Eraser!" Kurogiri is a corpse. Even if he wasn't, we go back to the theme of how the heroes are trying to save one part of a duality by Mic and Zawa trying to save OBORO and not KUROGIRI.

"Mr. Compress then!" In jail! which BTW has been shown to not be a "rehabilitation" center to help villains stop being villains but just.... just jail. Also Compress lost all his friends, and all the people he had grown to care about. It's the same for all the villains that are still alive, they are in Jail and if I remember correctly Tartarus wasn't exactly... up to the Geneva Convention. What the fuck is that solitary confinement-looking shit.

Anyways this post was about the duality and how most people who expect Tomura to be alive are either hoping or expecting it to be Tenko instead of Tomura, and it's understandable, I'm not judging.

I'm also not in agreement.

I read either here or on Twitter that Tomura's death felt hollow and basically pointless, and how it would've been more enjoyable to see how a redemption arc could've been tackled with an unapologetic villain like Tomura. And while I agree that it would've been an incredibly challenging redemption arc I am actually happy with the fact that they didn't suddenly pull a "Yeah no now Tomura is good and agrees with Heores and saw the error in his way" out of their ass.

Tomura Shigaraki exists as a character to force the hero students and THE CIVILIANS to see the fact that society is currently fucked up and they can't depend fully on "Dogs of the state" without them doing anything. Sure yeah, people can depend and hope on cops (which is what heroes basically are), but that doesn't mean you are blind and deaf to the person being murdered next to you.

It's like this image from Club Penguin!

In the middle of the fight Tomura tells Midoriya and AFO "Everything I witness in this world of ours... led to the existence of that house." because Tomura only saw compliment people who's only solution to the abuse that Tenko was experiencing was "don't cry, it makes us sad".

When Midoriya wins, he insisted that the things that caused Tenko's house to exist have already been destroyed by Tomura himself, and that's when Tomura tells him "Oh yeah? That depends... on what you people decide to do tomorrow." but the next fucking chapter is them returning to school and telling us how Nedzu is basically president and helping with the rebuilding.

At the end of the day, the death of Tomura serves to show US the AUDIENCE that nothing has really changed, and the new character that we see basically crawling out of a destroyed house in a place that is NOT undergoing reconstruction efforts is the perfect visual representation of that.

Here is another Perfect Victim.

Now where are his heroes?

[thyandrawrites]

An & appreciation of you.

Hi Thyandra, I hope you're doing well. I've noticed you've changed from 28 to 29. Guessing that's your age (assuming that your birthday was a few days/weeks ago). If it's true, happy belated birthday. Here's to growth, and wishing you write a book someday. Tbh, it's my wish to read your own book.

I know you write a lot about the Todofam and Hawks, but what do you think of Monoma of Class B and his role in Deku's and Shinso's growth?

Hi! Yeah, I had my birthday in september. Thank you for the well wishes! It's really kind of you to send me such a sweet message :') it's doubly heartwarming when I hit a bit of a low point a couple of weeks back, so I wanted to tell you how grateful I am for this. As I grow older, I'm trying to become more patient with myself, so here's to growth indeed! One day, maybe I'll even believe in myself enough to write my own stories :') but thank you for believing in me in the meantime. It really means a lot to me. More than I can put into words 😭💙

Anyway, to answer your question: I've never written anything about Monoma myself. I'll admit I never focused on him hard enough to develop complex thoughts on his role in the story. But I've always found him an interesting character. I think that many fans tend to dislike him because they read him as a one-dimensional bully with a superiority complex, but it's actually more layered than that, and it ties really neatly into the worlbuilding of quirk discrimination and hero vs villain prejudices.

My friend Link once wrote a beautifully put analysis on this, and while it's now fairly old, I still think it's well done and that it aged well. Even now, in the present arc, Monoma is playing a support role. To build off Link's point, while hero society idolizes and puts on a pedestal self-reliance and an individual's skills at the punchies, and tends to look down on team players because they can't excel on their own... It's actually Monoma, a team player who is "useless" alone that does more to keep ShigarAFO subdued than Bakugou, the hyped-up, individualistic-type of hero. Thus proving that society's bias for lone, flashy fighters is inherently flawed, and often leads to more harm done than good.

I always like the little tidbits and backstories showing us the people who fell through the cracks of the hero system, or otherwise got the short end of the stick. I always find myself sympathizing for them, and I love when the story goes out of the way to prove that bias against them wrong. It really shows that Hori has a certain fondness for underdogs, and I sometimes wish he was allowed to explore their side of the hero utopia more

[saltydumplings]

SOBS. WELL THAT WAS HEART-SHATTERING. IN A GOOD WAY. BUT STILL. NOW GIVE ME PART TEN??? ELEVEN??? I DUNNO. JUST GIMME. PLS. go back to your cell. right now. get back in that cell sweetheart|

Snippet #9.10

Part 10

HERE, HAVE SOME HORNY TO MAKE UP FOR THE SAD. And no: I will n-not be going back into that cell again. How about y-you go back to your cell, darling!

Cw: suggestive.

"What if I became a vigilante?"

A few weeks had passed since their rescue and the hero was sat in the safety of the villain's bed, back resting against the other's chest. The sidekick had left the day the villain proved they could get up the stairs unaided - though admittedly a little slowly - and so it was just the two of them now. The hero had recovered fairly well too, slowly coming to terms with the sudden shift in their life.

Behind them the villain tutted and poked their side. "So you're still insistent on causing trouble for me then?"

"Of course," the hero said. They placed down the book they'd been reading and turned to face the villain, giving them a small, teasing grin. "Though, perhaps, I may be a little biased at times...I guess it will depend on my mood."

"Oh?" the villain said with interest.

The hero merely hummed, going to pick their book back up only for the villain to take it from their hands and put it aside.

"Hey--!"

Soft lips pressed against the back of the hero's neck, the villain's breath ghosting along their skin. "I take it this bias will work in my favour then?" the villain asked.

"N-Not necessarily," the hero responded.

The villain stopped.

When the hero turned to look at them they saw the other pouting and laughed, turning themself fully and straddling the villain's thighs.

"A vigilante is meant to be on the side of justice, and you - charming as you are - do a lot of things that don't exactly align with the law," the hero explained. "Not to mention you ate the last blueberry muffin this morning: a true criminal offence if ever I've known one."

The villain huffed, unamused. Their hands found the hero's waist and pulled them closer, noticing the slight hitch in the other's breath as their mouth returned to their neck. "Could you be persuaded?"

The hero blushed. "I, um, a-a little. Perhaps. B-But not all the time."

The villain hummed in acknowledgement, kissing their way down to the hero's shoulder before nipping lightly.

"What about a deal?" they proposed instead, one of their hands venturing upwards to claim the hero's chin and ensure they had their focus. "Let's talk business."

"Business, huh?" the hero said. They quirked their brow as their arms looped behind the villain's neck, letting out a small moan as the other leant forward and kissed them - the villain's tongue demanding entrance into their mouth and the hero more than happy to oblige.

A minute or so passed and the villain leant back again, pulling up the hero's shirt and tossing it to the side before letting their lips venture down the hero's chest.

"I know some people who are proving to be quite troublesome to my investments. Now I never minded a little competition but it's starting to get rather annoying..."

"Oh wow, you really are talking business," the hero said in disbelief.

The villain chuckled and placed another kiss upon their lips. "They're a small group," they continued. "Nothing you couldn't handle by yourself, what do you say?"

A pause.

The hero cocked their head to the side, curiously. "What would be in it for me?"

The villain smiled. "Oh, Hero..." The villain's hands moved from the hero's waist to their hips, fingers dipping below the waistline of their pyjama bottoms. "Everything you could possibly want."

The hero bit their lip, shiving at the villain's touch.

"And more blueberry muffins," the other added as an afterthought. "Perhaps some pancakes for breakfast tomorrow morning too."

"Hm, sounds pretty promising," the hero mused. "I'll think about it."

And they'd fully intended to - the only problem with that being the fact that the villain wasn't a particularly patient person...

Ten minutes later and the hero was screaming their answer, unable to resist as the villain put their skills of persuasion to good use.

Part 12

[deusvervewrites]

Future Toga: Just realized how entitled and ridiculous Shinso comes off as in this universe when he first appears. He complains that you can't pass the entrance exam without a flashy combat Quirk and about the bias against villainous Quirks, and we've got an invisible gorilla, a guy with a tail, and Toga Himiko who passed said exam.

That problem exists in canon as well, but Future!Toga specifically being there really doesn't help his case

[thatringboy]

So the post that said that Spinner and Iida are each other’s hero/villain was onto something

Engine is 100% a mutation quirk. Iida and his family grow the engines themselves and they’re always there, but Iida Tenya’s can be hidden. They’re out of the way and not shoved in anybody’s face. He had never faced discrimination for being a mutant because it is easy to forget that he is one

and the post I’m referencing is a lot more coherent than I am because I’m typing on my phone in an area with shitty service (and i cannot for my life find that post i am so mad) but Iida is a privileged mutant. He fits in in areas that people like Tsu or Mina or Tokoyami or Shoji or Bondo or Manga or Gang Orca or Hound Dog or Spinner don’t. The heroes [in training] get passes into these social areas because they’re heroes and have fought their way to being at the table, but people like Spinner and the tall fox girl Deku befriended don’t get that

which is why Spinner is so important, which is why his dedication to Stain/a complete societal rewrite is so important, which is why Iida fighting Spinner is so important

Iida’s foil is with Stain because of Tensei and all the other heroes Stain killed. Iida’s foil is also with Spinner, the manifestation of society’s inherent bias against mutants

and don’t try to tell me that the bias is black and white and that all anti-mutant people are obviously bad people and it’s bot society’s fault because i have two examples of beloved major characters unconsciously being demeaning to mutants

During the sports festival, Present Mic - on international tv - called Sero’s elbows “creepy”. Sero is one of his own students and he just called his quirk “creepy”! Everyone laughed it off because it’s just a joke. It’s just a joke, right?

Example two: Todoroki calling the Hosu police chief a “damn mutt” after the fight with Stain. I don’t feel like I should have to explain why what Todoroki said was fucked up but the chief has a dog head and Todoroki called him a “mutt”.

It’s a systematic type of discrimination that mutants face in this world. It’s in the jokes people make, it’s in the insults people throw, its in the buildings they are allowed to go into (ser tall fox girl and all the homeless shelters she was kicked out of) and our boys Spinner and Iida Tenya are byproducts of this society, one that it failed and one that it loved.

[eri-cheri]

Now that we have reached the last chapter of the year. It is time to do a 2020 roll call of what I like to call, “State of the Shippers”:

1. IzuOcha. Status: Placated.

-IzuOcha’s could celebrate several cute tidbits throughout the year. Mini moments as they say.

Anime Highlights: The OVA’s came in clutch with moments for shippers all around and IzuOcha is no exception. We got a cute tidbit where Izuku and Ochako bumped into each other and were flustered.

Manga Highlights: Christmas kept on giving to this fandom as the AM doll Izuku gave Ochako made many appearances. A cute fist bump between the two was also exchanged and Mina was right there bouncing with y’all.

Heroes Rising: Izuku super man carried Ochako to safety. And was Angy she was injured. Fans could enjoy the small Lois Lane moment.

Troubling Signs?: Ochako said “I would like to be excluded from this narrative” when it comes to her feelings for Deku. She’s a hero damnit! So if they are in for something, probably won’t be while they are still in school.

II. DabiHawks. Status: Yikes.

- Dabi and Hawk’s very public breakup set this fandom in disarray but also kind of disayay?

Anime Highlights: None yet. This fandom was cruelly cock blocked by Bones. Sorry DabiHawks stans.

Manga Highlights: Where to begin, my goodness. With these fans, I guess the good and the bad is a plus in this homoerotic double agent relationship. We have the notion that Dabi may have known Hawks when they were kids, which may be a positive? Hori sure loves his childhood friends. Other than that. The GIRLS WERE FIGHTIN’. Hawks is now permanently scarred by Dabi and I don’t think it was kinky folks. Tokoyami inserted himself in the middle to White Knight Hawks, Dabi broke up with him via YT expose and overall, shippers could anguish in the absolute MESS that this ship endured this year. But I’m sure that’s part of the appeal. So...yay?

Heroes Rising: They were both in it.

Troubling Signs?: The entire relationship is a troubling sign which again, is part of the appeal. Maybe Hawks will cuddle up with Dabi’s father after the war. That’s troubling! Speaking of...

III. EndHawks. Status: Yearning and Burning.

-If there’s one thing Endeavor couldn’t stop worrying about, it was his hot (in more ways than one) new side piece who probably should have looked at the fine print when signing a contract to be a recurring guest star on “Keeping up with the Todoroki’s”.

Anime Highlights: A fateful meeting finally in high definition for all our eyes to see! Hawks’s unwavering support of his biggest hero was endearing to watch and their shenanigans together spurred the anime onlies to finally jump on the biggest May-December ship in the series.

Manga Highlights: Endeavor’s admiration and concern for Hawks seeped through the pages as we entered our most exciting arc in the manga yet. Fate split these two up yet entwined their downfall together. And that Fate’s name was Dabi...or should I say ⚫️⚫️⚫️⚫️⚫️ or should I just say Touya!

Heroes Rising: “Don’t bite my head off, Endeavor.” Geez, can you flirt a little less loud Hawks?

Troubling Signs?: They say never meet your heroes and Hawks is in for a rude awakening. We shall see just how deep his admiration runs or if Endeavor’s past will split our dynamic duo up for good.

IV: TodoDeku. Status: “Precious”

-Shoto’s “Midoriya is in Danger” radar was highlighted in both manga and anime. 4th User’s quirk, who?

Anime Highlights: “Midoriya hasn’t returned yet.” “Where’s Midoriya?” “Midoriya! Grab my hand!” “Have some of my Soba Midoriya.” Shoto gets it. His emotional support friend is a danger magnet. TodoDeku’s also enjoyed tiny tidbits in the OVA such as a hand grabbing scene. Gotta hold tight to those crumbs.

Manga Highlights: Two Words. “Precious Friend.” Deku comes in w/o arms or legs fighting for Shoto and Shoto’s honor. These two spent the entire year worried sick about each other, and going against all odds to save each other. Precious Friends indeed. TDDK fans ate.

Heroes Rising: Shoto kicks some dog ass and then faints thinking of Deku (and Bakugo but shh. Let the shippers rejoice.) On the bright side, we have a 3rd movie coming featuring “The Three Musketeers” so shippers of TdDk can HOLD TIGHT to what’s to come.

Troubling Signs?: Shoto still doesn’t know about OFA and he’s gonna have LOTS of questions after this arc. Will Deku finally tell him? If not, it could make or break the ship.

V. TodoBaku. Status: “Shining through the city with a little funk and soul.”

-Who knew the greatest comedy duo we needed was Shoto and his hot headed “friend” or not friend? It still remains unclear to Shoto. Regardless, these two had a fun year.

Anime Highlights: “I wanna see your cute face”, disco dancing, and more fun in the provisional license training. Plus the OVA added some cute moments between the two such as Bakugo staying behind to save Todoroki during a dangerous excercise and his adorable plan neatly animated for us. I’d say TodoBaku’s really were resurgent and energized this year!

Manga Highlights: Shoto, that is not how you properly Catch a Kacchan, I’m sorry. But at least you did it you mad lad. As with Deku, Shoto spent the year worried sick about Bakugo. While the anime let us have our fun, these two were suffering in the manga.

Heroes Rising: Again, Shoto put a dog down and then fainted with Bakugo on his mind (and Deku but we ignore that. Shush.) TodoBaku’s have the 3rd movie to look forward to which is bound to have some amazing content!

Troubling Signs?: They have a lot of trauma to deal with. And a lot of Deku to worry about. I also imagine Shoto will be hurt about being left out of the OFA secret. We shall see what 2021 has to offer.

VI. KiriMina. Status: Unbreakable.

-Changing your hairstyle to match the gal who inspired you in middle school? Sorry y’all but if Mina were a guy, I’d say that’s gay af.

Anime Highlights: We got that backstory Bois. Red Riot’s origin might as well make him be called Pink Riot. Again with Hori and the childhood friends though I wouldn’t exactly call them friends. They just went to the same middle school but Kirishima was highly influenced by Mina’s Chivalrous spirit! A ship is born!

Manga Highlights: The influence is mutual! Mina creates a move based on Kirishima’s unbreakable and we all let out a collective “awwww”. Also in the war arc, we got Kirishima making sure Mina’s chivalrous spirit shines through right into Gigantomachia’s mouth! KiriMina may just be the unsung MVP’s of this arc.

Heroes Rising: They were in it.

Troubling Signs?: I can’t think of a single one. KiriMina’s can enjoy a peaceful sailing.

VII: KiriBaku. Status: Crumb Collectors.

-2020 was an uneventful year for KiriBaku but Bones made sure there were crumbs aplenty! Thank God for OVA’s!

Anime Highlights: KiriBaku’s did thrive in one episode! Kirishima reflects on the sludge incident and evolves his quirk based on inspiring words from Bakugo! Hooray! KiriBaku’s can thrive in their blossoming friendship. The OVA also has Kirishima (and Kaminari but shh) once again following Bakugo’s lead when it comes to the training excercise. How can you not? He’s so manly!

Manga Highlights: Not gonna lie. There is nothing much here this year. I did find a teeny tiny flake in Aizawa’s flashback. Kirishima and Bakugo are sitting next to each other. Oh! And at the hot pot gathering, Bakugo sits next to Kirishima! Eat your crumbs KiriBaku’s! There’s always next year!

Heroes Rising: Kirishima hangs with a lazy Bakugo and delivers the most hilarious line in the whole movie. “Silly Bakugo, there won’t be villains here!” Hahah... Silly Bakugo. Oh you~ KiriBaku’s can inhale the fact that those two sure love to hover around each other!

Troubling Signs?: With great crumbs come little responsiblity. No trouble if there’s no content! 🤔

VIII: KamiJirou. Status: Singing their hearts out 🎶

-If there’s any ship that’s coming close to canonization, I think this is it, folks! “Think of the person most important to you!” Can’t argue with Midnight!

Anime Highlights: Kaminari does non stop encouraging of Jirou and her hobbies! He works super hard to learn guitar for her sake! We love a king who can encourage his queen!

Manga Highlights: Kaminari thinks of the most important person to him and surprise! It’s Jirou! All of the feels can commence.

Heroes Rising: They were in it!

Troubling Signs?: Kaminari does love his women. And men. Kaminari overall is a huge flirt. But Jirou appears to have his heart strings. ❤️

IX: BakuDeku. Status: Rising. 👑

-Alternative Statuses include Winning, Thriving, Soaring. It’s just been non stop content this year. 2020 is truly the year for BakuDeku. The shippers can rejoice.

Anime Highlights: Three words. Be. My. Cane. The OVA’s helped fan the flames of the BkDk hearts with a surprise! Deku tops! Not only that, we got a lovely shoulder tap of encouragement in the canon material. While in season 4, Deku’s primary focus was Eri. Bakugo and Deku still had their moments to be hella gay.

Manga Highlights: Where do I even begin? I guess we’ll just cut to the chase with Bakugo Katsuki: Rising. We finally saw Bakugo’s true feelings manifest for Deku and if getting stabbed for him isn’t the ultimate showing of love, then idk what is. BakuDeku’s rounded out the year with the Volume 29 cover AND the volume 29 cover drafts to eat at our heart strings. Overall, their relationship got the spotlight in the manga this year. And we’re bound to start 2021 with a dramatic confrontation. Hand holding seems to be the key with these two and it didn’t stop with Heroes Rising...speaking of.

Heroes Rising: The entire movie. Like....yeah. That’s it. [OP, your bias is showing. You have to be SPECIFIC.] {But random criticizer in my head, if I lay out the entire plot of the movie, my post will be too long} [OP....] UGHHHH Okay okay. The POPSICLE MELTING. THE HAND HOLDING. THE CHARACTER DESIGNS OF WHAT MIGHT AS WELL BE THEIR LOVE CHILDREN. Did I mention? “It’s fine if it’s you?” CAUSE YEAH. Oh and All Might randomly officiating their wedding in their heads like idk. Isn’t it just simpler if I say the whole movie??!

Troubling Signs?: Well these two’s relationship is extremely delicate and while it has non stop soared this year, Deku might not take too kindly to Bakugo almost dying for him. Will they stop pushing each other away? Time will tell.

That’s all for this year folks! Happy Shipping and good luck to everyone next year!

[problemswithbooks]

why did some people get mad at all might when he called dabi crazy? /gen

A while back I read a post suggesting that All Might gets more negative attention from people due to ableism. As in people see his disabilities and have an inherent bias against him. To an extent I think there is some truth in that, but I also feel like it's a bit more complex of a situation.

Many of the people who criticize All Might have favorite characters, like Dabi, Shigaraki, or Aizawa who are similarly injured and disabled. They will get mad at people who take away scars and are quick to call out ableist behavior. So, I don't think it's pure ableism that causes them to dislike All Might.

Instead what I think what happens is that All Might's disabilities more affect his appearance then other's in the Manga. His Small Might form is based on a skeleton and he is draw far more cartoonish then others. His character model is not traditionally attractive, which doesn't make people out right hate him, but does maybe reduce the number of people who would have him as a favorite character.

People are far more willing to understand and go to bat for their favorite characters. For whatever reason their mind has latched onto that character and they spend hours thinking about them and their stories. What makes them tick, why they act the way they do, inferring things about them that canon doesn't specifically state, or isn't even in the original material. I know I do this myself.

Also, if a character does something that can be seen as a slight against someone's favorite character, it's doubtful that offending character will get similar levels of understanding and thought as the fav. The less liked of the two, who the person hasn't spent hours upon hours thinking about will instead be viewed in a more negative light.

All Might is a pretty important character in this story. He has effected almost everyone, even if he hasn't personally met them. Because of this he has far more opportunities to end up slighting someone's favorite character, even if it's in a really minor way. People who love Izuku will dislike him for how he endangered him by giving OfA (even though they also say AM is bad for telling him he couldn't be a Hero without Quirk which would have been equally as dangerous). Bakugou and Shoto, or really any 1A fans dislike him for ignoring them in favor of Izuku. The Villain fans dislike him because his time as #1 is seen as the cause of them not getting saved and becoming villains in the first place.

All Might, due to his relevance/ perveance in the story can be blamed for, or seen as being an asshole to almost anyone's fav. With his less conventionally attractive body, he was less likely to become people's favorite character, so people are less inclined to spend time diving into his character. So in the end he gets very black and white criticism for things that aren't even that big of a deal, like say calling Dabi crazy, which was not in anyway shown in canon to be a flaw of his character. Yet in fandom spaces is held up as All Might's refusal to get with the program and sympathizing with all the villains. Or as him hurting Shoto's feelings, even though Shoto didn't care at all.

And I'm not saying that All Might hasn't made mistakes--he has, that's kind of the point of his character. But I do think his flaws and mistakes are seen through a much harsher lens when he's not someone's favorite character. I have seen countless people defend and explain in excruciating detail why Shigaraki is killing people, but still needs to saved. Why Dabi being racist to Spinner is actually Endeavor's fault, so you can't really blame him. How Aizawa might want to kill the LoV now, but he's just traumatized/ brainwashed by Hero society and will come around eventually and be adopting the LoV as his kids by the end.

Meanwhile, people either want All Might to die, or have Izuku scold him about how awful a person he is once he's saved Shigaraki (and for him to stay as far away from Shigaraki as possible because Shigaraki is just to traumatized by him). In some ways All might's possible endings are as harsh as Endeavor's even though he is by far a better person, and despite his mistakes has helped a lot of people. Plus, the narrative by no means condemns his actions the way it does Enji.

So, simply put All Might having less attractive disabilities -> Less people choose him as a fav -> less thought goes into his charter -> his mistakes are seen as personal slights on the readers favorite characters -> he gets hate for calling Dabi crazy one time, where the narrative doesn't even imply this is bad.

And it's not as if I'm saying those people have to love All Might. My main issue with the hate All Might gets is similar to how I feel about Endeavor or Hawks hate--that it generally is from people who will talk about how other character's bad actions have deep complex reasons, which means they deserve sympathy, but for the characters they don't like, that same understanding is thrown out the window or presented in as negative a light as possible. Or any little thing is blow way out of proportion, like All Might calling Dabi crazy means he's a terrible person actually.

[stillness-in-green]

Idk if my other ask went through but it was What do you think of the AFO saved Touya and nudged him to the path of villainy theory? Or something like that I forgot what I said exactly. I don’t think it’d be as explicit as Tomura more like AFO saved Touya and he, or Garaki more likely, somehow let Touya see what Endeavor was saying and doing at home with Shouto. And Touya is like F that and stays away all depressed until he was inspired by Stain. Giran the memory guy probably had something to do with him too.

(Sliding this in the day before Leaks Day, so laying out the clown costume in advance.)

Thanks for the question, anon! Though as a note for context on my perspective in the rest of this post, I admit that I’m unsure what you mean about AFO and Ujiko showing Touya what Endeavor was saying and doing with Shouto at home. After all, the canon suggests that mostly what Endeavor was doing in the immediate wake of Touya’s disappearance was…looking for Touya. Usually when I see people suggest this theory, it’s based on the idea that AFO and Ujiko somehow misled Touya into thinking that his family didn’t care that he’d gone out and self-immolated, not that they showed him some horrible truth. I rather doubt there’s much they could truthfully reveal to him about Shouto’s situation that a) he doesn’t already know and b) would change his mind about any of the extremely negative conclusions he’s already come to.

So that angle, the idea that AFOUji somehow manipulated Touya towards villainy, is what I wrote the bulk of this response in regards to.

Spoilers: I don’t much care for it.

Hit the jump for the rest!

I certainly recognize why it exists: Dabi’s missing ten years raises eyebrows because he had to have been hideously wounded, and we know Endeavor kept looking for him for some while after the fire, and he was all of thirteen years old, yet even with all of those factors in play, he was somehow never found, and just vanished for a full decade. It’s a puzzle whose answers require resources, medical care, and, some people believe, a desire to twist Touya towards hatred.

Personally, I don’t really think the child we saw in the flashbacks needed much help to get to where we find Dabi psychologically. The resentment, the violent tendencies, the misanthropy; it’s all there.(1) And Toga was only two years older when she went on the run—less than two, even, since Sekoto Peak happening in the winter would have meant Touya was right on the cusp of his fourteenth birthday.

There’s really no getting around the need for medical care, though, and the number of people we already know who have both the skill to save Touya and the willingness to keep his identity a secret is pretty much one.

That said, seeing as my primary interest in the manga is the way in which it depicts Hero Society as a flawed institution that creates its own monsters, I would really prefer Ujiko and/or AFO to not be involved at all, or at least for their involvement to be as minimal as possible. Shigaraki is one thing, but the people he has attracted to his cause (such as it is) are quite another, and every speck of the blame that you allow to fall on All For One is another handwaved excuse for Hero Society to refuse to examine itself and change its ways.

And okay, All For One isn’t terrible as a metaphor for the dark forces that prey on vulnerable people when law-abiding, “normal” society fails them, but the trouble is where the story's focuses lie, and what it presents as the proper way to resolve its ultimate battle. There is an inestimable difference between a final battle against Shigaraki that revolves around saving him while also confronting his truths and a final battle against AFO that revolves around saving his voiceless and subsumed victims from him before defeating him once and for all. Saving Shigaraki in a battle against Shigaraki means acknowledging that he is his own person, with his own motivations and his own crimes, and that he deserves to be saved anyway—that he always deserved to be saved, because everyone deserves to be saved. Conversely, saving Shigaraki in a battle against AFO prioritizes saving people from villains without ever acknowledging how society wronged them for them to wind up in a villain’s hands to begin with.(2)

To bring this back to Touya, if AFO is in some fashion responsible for making him, it reduces the weight of Endeavor’s sins and those of Dabi himself. It puts the blame on some outside force and lets people get away with saying, “If it weren’t for him, poor innocent Touya would never have become the villain Dabi!”

But that’s dodging a much harder and crueler truth. The actual message of making AFO responsible for Dabi while simultaneously focusing the endgame solely on defeating him is, “If it weren’t for him, poor innocent Touya would never have become the villain Dabi—because he would have died on Sekoto Peak.”(3)

In both scenarios, Dabi was empowered by someone, and he’s sympathetic either way. However, the scenario in which he finds his voice because Stain/Shigaraki stood up to draw society’s malcontents out of the shadows allows Dabi to be sympathetic while preserving his agency and the accusations he levels at Hero Society. It asks the heroes and the readers alike to consider the question, “How did this innocent child become so warped as to become such a dangerous villain?”

The scenario in which Ujiko and All For One set him on the path to villainy, meanwhile, maintains the sympathy but throws the rest in the garbage to instead say, “This innocent child became so warped because these villains did it to him.” It conspicuously avoids forcing the heroes and readers to confront the question, “And what would have happened if they hadn’t?”

Shigaraki just gave Touya a platform; what he said once he got up there was all him. But in the scenario you’re asking about, All For One didn’t give Touya the platform; he handed him the speech. And if Hori tells the audience that Touya’s words are All For One’s words after spending two hundred and ninety chapters telling us that All For One’s words are nothing but manipulative lies meant to lead people astray, it strips those words of all but the barest veneer of their power.

I pretty much laid all this out here two years ago, and, barring us having more information on Mr. Compress now than we did then, and me having adopted a more nuanced view of what quirks are valued in HeroAca!Japan’s heroes,(4) I still stand by that post. AFO shaping Shigaraki is one thing, but the more he’s involved with the backstories of everyone else, the more it undercuts the legitimacy of the villains’ grievances. I see no reason for Dabi to be the exception.

All my ranting about the narrative themes of the series on the whole aside, Giran’s quirk only affects five minutes on either side of him making physical contact with the victim. Not to say you couldn’t do some damage that way, certainly, but it would hardly have let All For One reshape Touya’s entire mental landscape according to his nefarious whims. At most, if AFOUji kept the contact short and had Giran on hand to begin with, they could make sure Touya couldn’t remember their faces clearly—but then where’s the guarantee that anything they revealed/manipulated him to believe would stick, either? Again, he could have been involved, and one might even say, “Why tell us his quirk if it’s never going to be relevant?” but all the scenarios I can imagine off the top of my head seem awfully convoluted.

Sorry if any of this came off as too negative! It’s tied into a lot of the places where I am most Ornery and Opinionated about this series and how it handles its villains. But thanks again for the ask!

---

1: Which is not to say that I think Touya was born twisted or anything; that’s 100% on Endeavor’s head.

2: Much like All Might being completely ready to beat Shigaraki into a paste right up until the instant he finds out Shigaraki’s real name. Or Deku seeing inner-Shigaraki as the crying boy clutching his dog instead of the furious boy covered in his father’s blood. Or Deku blaming All For One for Lady’s Nagant’s fate while disregarding the fact that it was the HPSC who set her on that path to begin with. Or lots of things, many of them about Deku, that have me very worried about where this story is heading.

3: An outcome people like Gran Torino clearly and explicitly would have preferred.

4: I used the phrase “flashy and offensive” because it’s pithy and I was seeing it around everywhere, but these days I tend towards thinking it’s overly reductive. Crust alone disproves that you need a flashy or offensive power to be a top hero.