#but i am tired of bakugo and how he doesnt actually develop

[mexicancat-girl]

Sooo I read your take on the bakugou vs uraraka in the sports festival. i personally agree that you’re right when it comes to bakugou being overpowered (like when he fought todoroki, his quirk shouldn’t have worked at all with all the ice) and the fact that the females here are underrated and are not written well enough. Also I hate that fan service scene with the cheerleading outfits. However when you called him entitled and said that the narrative is favoring him, i dont agree there. horikoshi has made it blatantly clear that he wrote bakugou with the intent of making fans hate him on purpose. It’s why he’s portrayed as such a asshole in the first place, then horikoshi proceeds to show us that bakugou has complexity later on. He basically wants to humiliate him and make him slowly see his errors, and then basically give him slow character development, which is apt for bakugou since he’s been like this for 15 years. Like you said, bakugou logically should have been tired out near ochako’s fight, owing to quirk weaknesses and all, but honestly, it would also be unlikely for bakugou-trained-since-the-minute-i-got-my-quirk to also lose to ochako, owing to the fact that she wasnt as experienced as him or as physically fit, also for her to win by fighting a “weak” bakugou would make fans claim sexism too due to the fact that he still had to be weak for her to win. Also having him win again would have the same issue. So I didnt mind bakugou winning, and appreciated that ochako did her utter best to do so and nearly won, which I felt was a realistic move by horikoshi to avoid as much as possible a sexist situation. Tho not gonna lie, why isnt there another female like bakugou or todoroki in this class? Makes me upset thinking about it but like you said, horikoshi cant write good female characters, so he does as much to avoid so.  Unlike miraculous ladybug which has so much crap going on with so called female strong leads and is slowly becoming so cringey to watch.

Horikoshi may claim he writes Bkugo for fans to hate him…But Bkugo is literally a fan favorite. He keeps getting top 3 in the popularity polls, if not outright winning them. 

Bkugo is Izuku’s childhood friend/rival, making him a core part of the series. He’s inescapable if you consume the media (manga, anime, promo materials). He’s presented as an equal to Izuku, and yet never once actually respects Izuku as a person. But Izuku keeps making excuses for him, as do the other characters, painting him in a better light than what’s actually shown.

Bkugo keeps having very small glimmers of moments where it seems like he’s learning from his mistakes. But then he goes right back to square one. 

(rest under cut)

During the license exam, he storms off on his own because of his belief he’s better by himself. He ends up having a plan to work with Kaminari and Kirishima, but only because they followed him and put themselves in a dangerous situation alongside him. Then during the last phase of the exam, he tries to take things on his own again, which results in him not getting his license. 

Which is a great moment, it seems like he’s getting actual development here! He has to work on remedial exams, puts some ounce of teamwork into getting his license…but it’s all for his own benefit. Everyone praises him over out of their asses over how he’s changed during the training with 1-B, but he still treats everyone like shit. He just sees the benefit of using people on his teams to help him instead of tearing them all down, because he can’t win if he does that. 

He still makes everything about himself. Even when something doesn’t revolve around him, he keeps inserting himself into the narrative. He forces more of Izuku’s secrets from him, forces himself to be there when Izuku talks to All Might about One For All, not for Izuku’s benefit, but because he feels entitled to know about Izuku’s quirk. Even during a discussion which should center around Izuku asking questions and finding out more about his legacy and quirk, Bkugo takes the reigns and takes nearly all agency away from Izuku.

As for the Sports Festival, Bkugo would get more humbled by losing. It would show both Bkugo and the viewers that not just offense-based Quirks (or the male characters) are capable of winning fights. Things like planning and pacing yourself can help just as much. Which would tie into Izuku not knowing how to control OFA during that stage as well, using his mind and ingenuity to get himself to the Third Round without needing his Quirk. It would’ve worked really well narratively! And tied things together!

It also would’ve provided more tension for Bkugo if he’d lost the Sports Festival. When he’s kidnapped, the LOV could’ve used that loss in order to entice him to join them. The only reason he didnt join was because he thought they were ‘losers’, both because All Might stopped the USJ attack and Bkugo has a strong quirk that won him the Sports Festival. If he’d lost, he’d be vulnerable and have had do show some struggle over whether he was going to take up their offer, and gotten some character growth from that. Because he’s cocky and strong, we already know from the beginning he isn’t going to actually accept their offer in canon.

As for Horikoshi’s lack of female characters–especially those that actually battle or do anything significant to the plot–I’m not 100% surprised. Shonen anime in general has a bad track record of writing female characters, if they’re included at all in the narrative. 

My problem is that Horikoshi has a decent cast of female characters with unique powers, and he goes out of his way to sexualize them and make them damsels/nearly useless in fights and scenes that actually further the plot. Just. Goddamn, let the female characters actually do something instead of standing around being support for the male characters, or having catfights with female villains (ala Ochaco with Toga). 

Even Ochaco, the main female character of the series, barely gets any development other than “struggling with crush on Izuku” and “I saw someone die and don’t want that to happen again”. Izuku, Shoto, and Bkugo get entire character arcs and countless chapters devoted to them, and we only get a few pages for Ochaco, if we’re lucky.

Miraculous Ladybug is another beast entirely ngl. I’m not going to touch that for now.