#bnha critical

[mettywiththenotes]

It's actually fucking crazy how most of the league of villains are dead

I'll be honest, when Tomura died, I was very sad but I also thought that, narratively, if at least one of the other main villains were alive, preferably Toga or Dabi (because they are the only other two who have had more time invested in them by their heroes prior to the final war arc. thought was actually put into who they are as people), then the theme about everyone being saved including the villains who may need it can still mean something. Even with Tomura dead, something can still come from this

But then it was revealed Toga is dead. And then Dabi died too. Well, shit. Do we have any other villains left who can still make up the theme of "villains can be saved too"? Hmmm, let's see. Twice is dead. Kurogiri is dead. Stain is dead. Spinner is alive! Oh but there's no actual redemption for him and he's writing a book about the League's legacy. And maybe there's some hope there because he wished Shouji good luck, but, again, last we saw him he was in police custody, which doesn't really say anything good. Aaand Compress is in jail. Amazing (/sarcasm)

Actually, the only villains who could still carry along the theme of "everyone can be saved (villains too)" are Lady Nagant, Gentle Criminal and La Brava. They had redemption arcs and were somewhat saved by a hero, or at least they have a connection to him, and they survive until the end of the story

However, these are characters we don't know as well, aren't as relatable and don't show up continously like the League did. If you like these characters, that's great, but as characters who really only show up TWICE in the whole 430 chapter story (and remember, prior to the final war arc, they had only shown up once. ONCE. before being put aside for the end), it isn't as hard-hitting as it would have been with the League, and for a story like this that hinges on the implication of "but what about the villains who should be given the chance to have someone reach out and save them?", with an already full cast of main villains who absolutely had the narrative opportunity to be saved being killed off or imprisoned, it just doesn't. land well

Honestly it would have been all good and fine if these 3 were the only ones left to be saved, if they had had more appearances rather than just being one-arc opponents. Genuinely, if they had shown up more and had a bit more depth and insight into their characters or connections with the mc, I would have accepted it. Albeit sadly, since the lov would still be dead and I loved them, but I would still think "at least the theme still has meaning to it. at least there are still some villains who did get that redemption and tied it all in with reaching out for people who need it"

But that's not the case. With only having one other appearance before their last ones in the final war, in connection to the theme, it's just. weak. It's handled weakly, imo. Especially when, yknow, you kill off or put away most of the villains who could have been saved

And, actually, let's talk further about this. Because even though Lady Nagant is somewhat saved, survives and helps out the mc, she doesn't offer a good message at the end of the story. It's quite a shaky message tbh. To paraphrase, she basically says "I know I have the choice to go back into society now but honestly I don't trust it's not gonna be the same way it was again so I'm choosing to stay in jail and see what happens.". Which. I mean I guess it's something, in the face of her whole "AFO is bad but at least he means what he says" thing from before, at least now there's the implication that she's gonna wait to see how things go instead of jumping to work for a supervillain now that she has free choice again, but when the ending of your story is "things are going in the right direction" and you choose to have one of the only surviving villains who follows one of your themes stay in jail instead of returning to society or even just not living in jail but still watching what happens from afar is very. weird

And though it's a weird decision, I think the thing that would have made me feel better about it is seeing her out of jail in the future. At least just one panel of her, maybe somewhere in the background walking around the city or something. It would have made sense for her to initially be like "I'm nervous about the future and how things could change or not change at all" and then have her free in the outside world, showing that she overcame that fear of being used again after seeing how things supposedly changed. I get that this is probably something that's supposed to be left up to interpretation, but as a villain who actually made it and connected with one of the heroes, I think it would have meant something for her character, for what the heroes were trying (or saying they were trying) to achieve

Which leaves us with Gentle Criminal and La Brava. On the whole, these two are the only villains who get a redemption arc, survive the story and clearly go on to live their lives happily in society

And again, this would have been great if we had gotten more time with them. It would have been great if we had actually seen more of what their lives were like after the war, building their new business together instead of returning to villainy, instead of just having One (1) panel to show us they're alive. It would have been great if we didn't just have most of the villains, who we had more time with, who were pretty sympathetic (not that Gentle and Brava didn't have their moments but still) killed off or imprisoned without any deeper thought. But that's not the case, so it just sort of falls flat for me

Unless you're a Gentle and Brava stan and shipper, in which case congratulations. I like them too, they're cute! But it is insane to me, given everything

So I mean. Yeah. The only villains who really make it, who really add anything to the theme of "everyone can be saved even villains who may need help", are Gentle Criminal and La Brava

(and Nagant if we're giving the benefit of the doubt to the weird decision of her panels in jail being the last time we ever see her. I'm aware she's in prison just like Compress and such, but at least she has a choice whether she stays or goes, meaning she may get out in the future of her own will thanks to Hawks)

[class1akids]

Was Bakugo’s unofficial villain Kurogiri, like outside of AFO?

Kurogiri is clearly Aizawa's villain.

But I do think that in the USJ arc, Kurogiri wasn't written yet as Shirakumo - that's something that came later when they were outlining Vigilante.

So that's why there seems to exist 2 versions of Kurogiri - one, created in Vigilante, with strong emotional ties to EraserMic and another one that was just a programmed villain nomu that Bakugo failed to kill at USJ but did in the end.

I think the way Hori failed to fully merge these two versions and especially the way he made that Bakugou's contribution to the final moments of the battle was one of the worst of the long line of bad writing choices in the endgame.

[arceus-insanity]

Dead on, his behaviour doesn't change, it just gets treated like he's joking, he's not he's just a spoiled rotten brat who gets even more privilege

i haven't watched mha in its entirety so correct me if i'm wrong but bakugou started off as a good example of how privilege can turn people into absolute assholes.

because guess what? bakugou doesn't have a tragic backstory. he doesn't have abusive parents or a dead lover or a torturous childhood. he was, in fact, the "gifted child". people constantly praised him for having such a powerful quirk. his parents seem decent enough. there is no inkling of trauma there, just a man who was so used to being on top that he developed a huge inflated ego and hubris.

and this would have been a good critique of how privileged people often take their experiences for granted, and feel threatened when minorities actually stand up for themselves or gain some attention (see: cishet people complaining about how they didn't get a "straight pride month").

but then the author went and ruined it by not addressing that narrative at all and instead coddling bakugou and having all the other characters put up with his violent tendencies. i don't care if he apologized to midoriya, the fact that it took the author so long to even think of it is bad enough. and the fact that the teachers never try to stop bakugou from bullying the other students, and he apparently goes right back to being an asshole after the apology.. yikes.

there was so much potential to make him interesting character and to address a common social issue, but of course you had to prioritize fanservice instead.

[embers-of-the-league]

Okay, so here's where we're at apparently

Tomura is dead

Toga is dead (or, let's just call it as it is, she committed suicide) - this is despite the fact that if she died other characters (read: heroes) should have died as well, but didn't (Bakugo and Edgeshot for example)

Dabi is presumably still in the hospital (since we didn't see a funeral), unable to move or do anything on his own

Spinner wrote his book, but where he is and how he's actually doing is unknown - presumably he still has to deal with multiple quirks that aren't his own and are tearing at his body

Compress is alive but where he currently is is unknown - he read Spinner's book (and that's it)

Kurogiri exploded?? And nobody has bothered to mention anything about him since

Twice has been dead for a while, but his murderer is not only free of charge but also the head of the HPSC (which still exists btw)

Other things:

The hero ranking system still exists

Seemingly no real changes have been made which would help victims like the LOV before they felt like they had to turn to villainy to be heard/seen/understood

Deku gets to be a hero again by the power of ~technology~ - kinda making the whole deal about him losing his quirk feel pointless

Not from this chapter, but I still feel like it's very important to point out that it's heavily implied that Rei is just gonna take care of Enji (her abuser) now and probably for the rest of time

The few good things:

Ochako bringing more focus on mental health

That was it, I have nothing else

[nagitosstolenhand]

i don't like the growing opinion that people are being 'too hard' on deku for his failing to save shigaraki.

i've seen quite a few people complaining that a lot of the bnha-critical crowd are being too mean to deku for getting tomura killed, arguing that it isn't really his fault, and that hes a 16 year old child soldier who's been failed by almost every adult in his life, why should we be putting all of this on his shoulders? hes just a kid after all?

and the truth is, they're right. deku IS a 16 year old boy whos had the fate of the world thrust on his shoulders. but the story itself just plainly refuses to acknowledge this.

the narrative doesn't acknowledge how fucked up having a school that trains literal children how to be combo cop-celebrities is. it only tentatively acknowledges the fact that a universe having combo cop-celebrities is fucked up, and even then the only people who ever point this out are antagonists, who are portrayed and treated in-universe as untrustworthy. the narrative doesn't care how fucked up dekus circumstances are. the narrative treats deku like hes a fucking messiah here to touch the hearts of the evil depressed villains with his magical empathetic heart of gold before they get blown up or just sent to fucking superhell for daring to challenge the status quote.

deku isn't a person. he's barely even a fucking character at this point. he's a plot device, and a mouth piece for the objectively shitty themes bnha is trying to spout. the themes that tell you that if you're mistreated by society and want to do something about it, you're a villain. that disrupting the status quote and refusing to repent to some random teenage boy spouting empty platitudes at you means you deserve to get sent to fucking superhell. the themes that portray people fighting for civil change as mass murdering supervillains. the themes that look the audience dead in the eye and can call deku the greatest hero to ever live.

deku, who barely spared a second thought to lady nagant telling him the truth about the hero commission. who spouts meaningless platitudes about heroism and morality at nagant, and aoyama, and toga and shigaraki, when even the thought that he should question the world around him comes up. who's constantly talked about as this truly kind, empathetic person, but hasn't spared an empathetic thought to literally anyone who is classified as a villain. who listened to every authority figure around him except the ones who asked him to question his worldview. who saw la bravas tears, shigarakis various breakdowns, himikos plead for understanding, chisakis catatonic state, lady nagants truth, and barley batted a fucking eye. deku, who killed tomura shigaraki.

people don't criticize deku for failing shigaraki because they just hate deku. people criticize deku because of what he represents. because hes a mouthpiece for the atrocious morals and themes of this ideologically rotten manga. because any character he had was chopped up to bits in favor of the incomplete husk we have now. people criticize deku because hes the main character of my hero academia. theres nothing more damning then that.

[writerswho]

Aizawa is a terrible teacher. I love Aizawa, but I love the fanon version of Aizawa. Even when he's a bad teacher in the fanfics, he's still better than the canon. But what made me realise what a crap teacher Aizawa is was Kalego. After watching Iruma-kun and starting to read the manga, I realised that Kalego, the uptight, grumpy, tired and kind of sadistic teacher who gives his students extra work just because he can, is everything Aizawa tries to be, but isn't. Because Kalego cares about his students in a way canon!Aizawa would never. Like, yeah, Aizawa would die for his students, but that is not due to the fact that his a good teacher. It is because he is a hero and that is what heroes do. While Kalego would also die protecting his students and even kill for them, he also pays attention to their needs as students. Half of the 1-A need help with their regular grades and the other half need help finding ways to use their quirks without hurting themselves. We all joke about Midoriya and his bone juice, but why does nobody think about giving that kid some extra help? Why didn't his homeroom teacher try to find a way for him to use his quirk without blowing himself? Or a way for Kamimari to use his quirk without frying his brain? Aizawa ignores de most basic things about his students' needs, like finding ways for them to use their quirks without damaging their bodies and health. Or the way Midoriya is around Bakugou, who tried to attack him on the first day and almost killed him on the second day. Kalego-sensei, on the other hand, took his time to make a personal notebook for each of his students and worried about finding ways to utilise their strengths regardless of how seemingly meaningless or nonsensical they may be and so many other things. Kalego-sensei cares about his class, about their growth and their future and is trying to find the best alternative for them. Everyone talks about what a bad teacher All Might is, but All Might is a rookie teacher with less than a year on the job (and nobody knows if he has a teacher's licence or not) while Aizawa is believed to be one of the oldest people on Nedzu's payroll. I am comparing Aizawa to Kalego because when I first saw Kallego, I thought he was the demon version of Aizawa. I now realise that if Aizawa were a third of the teacher that Kalego is, maybe these child soldiers would have a chance. When Iruma tried to do everything by himself/messed up, Kalego scolded him, obviously, but he made it clear that if Iruma had another problem, he could ask for help. Because Kalego is his teacher, and he's there to help him in any way he needs. But when Midoriya messed up/did everything by himself, well, they just yelled at him and made him feel guilty, and think that the solution isn't to ask for help or trust the adults next time, but to find a way not to get caught. Aizawa should spend a few days with Kalego and learn to be a real professional and a teacher who does what's best for the students.

[denkisauce]

my growing collection from redacted dot com 🥲

[solitairedeere]

i was never as optimistic about the ending of bnha as some villain stans were, but i never thought it'd end so badly it left me wondering why horikoshi ever bothered to humanize the villains or make them complex characters at all.

like-- i expected that at least 1-2 of the 3 villains who were heavily foreshadowed and outlined by the narrative as people to be saved would be, you know, actually saved. i didn't think that was a high bar. i've been let down before in fandoms where everyone was certain a character would live and then they didn't, so i tried to keep my hopes low. AND YET.

what happened to tomura was upsetting, but i wasn't that shocked after how disinterested the manga has seemed to be in him for like, the past 100 or so chapters. a bit surprised, because you'd think if anyone would succeed in the 'saving' mission it would be the MC, but whatever. dabi, well, they've spent a lot of time showing the way his quirk destroys his body even before this arc, so that also sucked but at least it didn't feel completely out of left field.

........but they're not even letting toga live???

i just-- what have we even been doing here? when zero out of the 3 characters that were marked out for saving were actually saved, you have to acknowledge that something has gone seriously fucking wrong with the storytelling. not even just from the perspective of a villain fan but from the perspective of someone who likes stories to be thematically consistent or satisfying in any way.

you can set up an expectation of these characters being saved and then subvert that and turn it into a tragedy- if done well that could even be worthwhile and interesting. but you can't turn it into a tragedy and then just... keep trucking along with the happy ending messaging and act like anything in the manga has been resolved and that the characters have somehow successfully completed their heroic origin stories.

like, maybe i shouldn't have expected this much from a shounen- at the end of the day it is still a shounen so i didn't expect to feel that it truly satisfactorily wrapped up all the themes it brought up around societal ills. but i expected it to at least resolve those things in a shounen-y way where they punch the problems and help these specific people and then you can feel good assuming that the state of things will continue to improve in the post-canon world of the manga.

instead we got... uh, none of that. the story refused to answer a single one of the larger questions it's been outlining for the past 400+ chapters. in the end, it was all flash and no substance, which again could've been fine, if it weren't for the way the story seemed to spend significant chunks of time trying to delude you into thinking it had substance.

truly makes me wonder what horikoshi thought he was doing the entire time. can it really all be blamed on burnout? the most that can be said for this ending is that it is, well, an ending. fuck dude, it is that.

and that's just... such a sad way to end a project that took up 10 years of your life.

[tardigradetheking]

I actually feel sick to my stomach about what happened to dabi. I'm not being hyperbolic. I was never abused but the fact that Dabi's abuser gets to visit him even though everyone knows what that man did is sick. Endeavor gets to stare at him through a pain of glass like dabi is a goddamn monkey in a zoo and dabi is too weak to even object.

[sanjipussyindulgence]

i havent caught up with bnha in a while but after hearing about the ending... i think we can all safely agree its the naruto of this generation. they both got too distracted writing an accidental gay love story for the ages to fix the fucked up corrupt society that uses child soldiers.

[teapetal44]

TW: ABUSE, CHILD ABUSE

“He wants to air this dirty laundry to the world does he…? Dabi, you fiend…you’ve been waiting for this moment…when they couldn’t prevent mass destruction…and faith in heroes is wavering.” - chapter 292

I truly, wholeheartedly, believe that MHA as a story upholds the myth of the perfect victim. I do not want to discuss if Horikoshi did that on purpose, or subconsciously because of inner bias – I find no meaning in doing so. For me the execution of an idea, in the grand scheme of the narrative, holds more value than the intention of the author. I’ve also had my fair share of people infantilizing Asian authors in the anime community for their poor writing decisions for one lifetime. It’s patronizing to both the author and the people reading it. Whether or not Horikoshi intended for his themes of abuse to paint the picture they did does not matter, because that’s how it reads as.

MHA puts victims of abuse in narrow boxes and softly dictates what’s an acceptable reaction to said abuse. Victims are continuously walking a tightrope between being deserving of compassion and sympathy and being unredeemable monsters who are too far gone and are only good for martyrdom after being put down.  

Eri fits the clean cut depiction of abuse victims that media usually gears towards. She is untouched by the cruelty around her - she preserves her innocence and kindness. She isn't assertive, but rather meek and passive. She doesn't fight back with force. And when offered help, she is receptive to it. That is not to say that Eri's depiction doesn't have a place in fiction, or that her portrayal can't be representative of the experiences of some - as we all deal with trauma and the inhumanity people throw at us differently. We see the same thing in the portrayal of Fuyumi, who shares many of the qualities discussed above. The same thing applies to her - i personally love the idea of all the siblings having different reaction to their childhood trauma and abuse. It shows that victims are not some type of monolith.

But the narrative treats the "forgiving" or "receptive to help/support" victims of abuse with more grace and with much more kindness. if you are willing to forgive, or the very least be quietly tolerant, the story grants you a happy ending. Forgiveness isn't a bad thing, it is an individual choice - but an abuse victim shouldn't have to do it for them to have a happy ending.

In a vacuum Eri and Fuyumi's character arcs and depictions of abuse are good but it becomes a problem when that's the only experience and type of victim we ever hold in high value or recognize as valid and deserving of compassion. Which the story reinforces.

Touya and Tenko's backstories aren't pretty nor comfortable or easy to sit through. Their responses to abuse aren't either. Reactive abuse is very much real.

[gece-misin-nesin]

The fact that Horikoshi had ALL the opportunity to have a "power of friendship" moment with the League coming together and breaking Tomura out of the possession/mind control and going on to band together against AFO but instead chose to kill them off or imprison them without any closure is my villain origin story

[haine-kleine]

ignoring canon so hard because if I start thinking about Touya ending up as a plot device, a simple prop for Enji's character arc and getting no future beyond being the highlight of his abuser's change of heart, I will set myself on fire

[arceus-insanity]

You are dead on, right on the nail. His behaviour never actually changed, he's still treating everyone around him like shit, calling them demeaning names, it's just that it's treated as a joke. It's not. It's just him getting even more privileges

i haven't watched MHA in its entirety so correct me if I'm wrong but bakugou started off as a good example of how privilege can turn people into absolute assholes.

because bakugou didn't have a tragic backstory, he didn't have abusive parents or a dead lover or a torturous childhood. he was in fact the "gifted child", praised at every turn for having such a cool quirk and told repeatedly that he would have a great future. his parents seem decent enough and there is no inkling of trauma there, only a man who was praised by everyone to the point that he developed an inflated ego.

this was, in theory, a really good base for a character. it shows how privileged people often take their position for granted and feel threatened when minorities actually start to stand up for themselves or gain attention (see: cishet people complaining about not getting a "straight pride month").

but then, the story ruined it by coddling bakugou and never having him learn his lesson. i don't care that he apologized to midoriya in the manga, the fact that it took so long for him to do that is bad enough. and the fact that none of the teachers stopped bakugou from bullying his classmates, especially midoriya, and he apparently goes back to acting like an asshole after the apology.. yeah. yikes.

you had the opportunity to create a really interesting character and address some important social issues, but you completely ignored it in favor of fanservice.

[commander-revan]

Can't believe Toga became the exact martyr that Curious was going to turn her into.

[redphlox]

Bnha 429: The moral of the story is that you have to be a good victim. When someone reaches out their hand to help you, you need to stifle your anger and actually take it and whatever else you can get. You need to make your rage and mental illness and feelings of injustice palatable for others for you to be worthy of saving. Be a pleasant, agreeable victim.