#eri meta

[narwhalsarefalling]

wait hey. i have an idea. they split someone elses quirk in half, and gave the destroying half to tenko, right?

(we know that this is chisaki because this panal is cut directly from chapter 158)

well. i think i know where the healing half went. it went to eri.

think about it- everyone said her quirk was a sudden mutation unlike either of her parents quirks.

i think eri and a few other children like touya and chisaki were backup plans. we already know touya was one of those 'backups,' and we have evidence of chisaki being the source of the destorying/repairing quirk that was split.

eri was just a more recent backup plan in case things went south at the LOV attack at USJ. since AFO was arrested shortafter, she kind of got lost in the shuffle and was just written off to be a similar "seedbeds of ferocity and hatred" as she grew up under chisaki's care.

she even has a similar backstory to Tenko already, having killed a member of her family by accident

that could be why her quirks so weird to- it takes time for it to remember how to "fix" things since its also not "destroying" things as a blueprint. since the quirk is split, it doesnt know how to "fix" things because theres nothing"destroying" things. so it has to rely on time itself to "fix". thats how i think overhaul's quirk works anyway- something needs to be ''destroyed" before being "fixed". its even said that her quirk is similar to chisaki's.

she also suffers from the same control issues tomura had. i bet that her being placed in the care of someone suspected to be another AFO project was not a coincidence. she could have been a very fitting replacement for tenko- she killed her parents with her quirk and was raised in an environment where she was seen as nothing more then a tool for things to end. it was only her determination that she was able to escape his grasp.

just like how chisaki was saved from the same place where Touya woke up from. I wonder if Touya's breakout triggered Chisaki's escape and into the hands of the yakuza.

and of course, saving Chisaki from an even worse fate

[blood-starved-beast]

There's so much to unpack from this convo bruh.

How Moros's the most unsure - makes sense, cause he's the one with a net negative relationship experience. No bitches. But also you can see the hesitancy to approaching these feelings. This is a new unfamiliar experience for him.

Also I see that deflection there Nem. You're not avoiding talking about your feelings this time! I think Nem's still burned out from the fallout with Artemis, but also. Nem doesn't want to disrupt Mel and her task. 🥺

Also Nem implying that Mel plays dumb about these things. I don't think she plays dumb per se. I think Melinoe's deal is that she's so busy atm, she simply doesn't have for all that romance rn. So she just ignores it/puts it off. And we see that a bit in how she engages with that here. She's very emotional unavailable in this convo - "If you wish to know me better, wonderful." Girl how many hearts have you broken before this and walked it off??

And we know she did. That one convo with Dora that implies Mel has past casual sexual relationships, and we see that casualness here. I do believe Mel has a casual hookup culture going on (Aphrodite calls her a heartbreaker upon first meeting and compares her to herself) and combined with her whole autism blasting + insecurities, doesn't realize the extent of the effect she has on people. Or the breakups for that matter. Hooks up with people for stress relief, then thinking anything more serious isn't needed or isn't something she can get, ends it. Or simply it's as Mel says - she's someone who doesn't like to be bound, so she prefers more relaxed relationships perhaps? Or maybe even more than just two 👀. Again, the Aphrodite parallels.

I think Nem is aware of all that hence why she approaches Moros especially with how 1) Nem herself is jealous and has past relationship issues 2) it's part of Nem's domain and 3) Moros has no idea bout all that with Melinoe. Either way both Nem and Moros are not happy with the outcome of this convo so I suspect future drama.

And also.

The way the stars aligned in my file that out of all Eris convos to get at the same time. I get this one

And Eris sounded so despondent beforehand. A very sad hooray - that's what she said. It's like she overheard what her older siblings are talking about and got both upset but also!! She needs to get in on the action too! Get Trouble for herself!! Insane.

Then I walk over to Hecate and:

Hecate's out here teasing her about this. Melinoe literally cannot catch a break in my file 😭

[helga-grinduil]

It's so weird to me that a lot of Shigaraki/LOV fans somehow overlooked and didn't get the fact that chapter 237 was all about AFO convincing Tenko that he has an innate desire to destroy and kill due to his quirk, and that this is why society would never save or accept someone like him (but he would). That THIS is why he believes that he wanted to kill his family, since he must've had that impluse when he destroyed them.

'It's more ReDestro/MLA stuff' - oh, I wonder who could ReDestro possibly be a parallel to? A child who was brainwashed into being a future cult leader and was raised to be the next coming of a great villain of old?

Forget ReDestro, think about ERI. ERI, who is the most blatant, clearest, closest parallel to Shigaraki a character can get. Remember why exactly it was so hard to rescue her? Why Deku and Mirio had to convince her that she deserved to be saved? Because Overhaul taught her that her quirk was cursed, and she was cursed for being born with that quirk.

[darkwing-ramblings]

What makes a happy silmaril?

For context we must consider that the silmarils are written as living is not intelligent beings in a way and that they were derived of trees and so are a probable never-before-seen-gem-plant-hybrid-creature-with-opinions-just-no-mobility. Also I am @darkwinganimus by another name, to be clear, and this moves a previous discussion @eri-pl and I were having in the replies of one of their posts over to a format with no restrictively frustrating word limitation.

As @eri-pl puts in their Silmarillion reread part 6: "They loked like diamonds, so canonically white-ish. their fire is made of mixed Treelight, so I would assume warm white is canon.

They shone like stars of Varda but had real life inside — I really need this in English! OK, I googled it.

OH. Something else but: "he pondered how the light of the Trees, the glory of the Blessed Realm, might be preserved imperishable" — It may be me jumping on things + Tolkien's poetical wording, but this seems like a strong suggestion of "Fefe wanted to jump higher than his head" (he was not the first one) and sheds a light (pun intended) on his sttitude towards the Silmarils later.

Anyway back to that part about life: "and yet, as were they indeed living things, they rejoiced in light" So they are living things, not just "like" living things. Silmarills = baby Trees is canon! (OK, somewhat canon? but they *are* alive, and by logic they must be bred not made-in-the-strict-sense by Feanor)

So they glow by themselves with warm white, but also they are iridescent like diamonds. Beautiful indeed."

(Opinions such as disliking Morgoth then Carcaroth enough to burn him when the former wore them in his underground torture fortress Angband and the latter rudely ate them).

Anyway, the discussion points I actually want to raise are below, now that the nature of the silmarils are established as probably-living- beyond the possibility of poetic and figurative language along those veins merely sounding cool- is explained:

@eri-pl Hmm, okay, so per your reply attached to this post "Melkor (to be precise this was his name at that point :D ) wanted to kill Feanor anyway. He thought Feanor would be home too, iirc from the book. And still, Fefe could have worn them to a well-guarded situations, at least. But he was too paranoid." let's imagine Feanor takes the measure of no vault and just wears the silmarils everywhere, because he's pretty sure no one else distrusts Melkor enough to be sufficiently on guard. Melkor now has no reason to attack Formenos during the party so I don't know waits to ambush Feanor travelling on the road back from it, directing Ungoliant at the trees for a distraction etc and stealing the silmarils+killing Feanor as planned. Good for Melkor he achieves all his goals.

I humbly ask how this then might end up in your opinion better for the silmarils in question, aside from more time outside out and about Aman in sun years per your "Feanor wearing them might have ended up better for them anyway. At least he could have worn them to well-defended occasions (like That One Party), but he didn't because he was paranoid about the normal Valar too.". Because without Feanor and with Finwe alive there a question of if the flight of the noldor even happens afterwards- which they were agitating let's assume so and skip the how-that-happens/goes for now- and about the oath.

Now the oath is terrible for most beings involved, yes, but is it terrible for the silmarils themselves? It's a force of dedicated warriors specifically trying to retrieve them from Melkor their evil abductor- a force of dedicated warriors who make their retrieval from Morgoth so fraught a topic Thingol invokes it in an arguably rash and spur of the moment to Beren arguably meaning "I-would-see-you-dead-before-I-give-permission-for-you-to-marry-my-beloved-daughter-go-die-to-Morgoth-and/or-the-feanorians-over-a-silmaril".

It sees one of them get out of Angband in the hands of Beren and Luthien and enjoy free-range-ish years in the open then ultimately make it to Earendil upon Vingilot's prow. Earendil and Elwing's arrival with said stolen silmaril also helps petition aid from the valar in the war of wrath successfully leading to one ending up in the ocean (not terrible for pseudo-plant-gem-creatures as an environment) and a random volcano that maybe also got swallowed by the sea (at least there's no Melkor and it has possible gem-friends in its volcano). If there is no oath all of the latter is in question and whilst things could end better for the silmarils probably (and definitely those who died because of the oath on both sides, but that's not the focus here) they could also end up worse.

Now, Feanor's son's swear the oath of their own initiative when he begins to but on their own with him dead it's not exactly assured say Kanafinwe is going to see to it a very similar one is made.

I understand entirely that it is a lot of words however so won't be offended if you'd rather call it a day/don't actually read this all. Either way putting it together in one place has pleased me greatly whether any response, staggered yay or nay, results.

[sobasluuurp]

you know, aside from the fact that I fully believe that All Might living would be 100% more interesting and is backed with past foreshadowing and theming, there's another factor that points to that outcome.

The only other time Nighteye's prediction has been wrong was back at the Overhaul battle, in which Deku used Eri's quirk to prevent himself from sustaining injury. At the time, fans speculated that the true reason that Nighteye's prediction didn't come true was because her quirk messes with the natural flow of time, thus negating Nighteye's ability to accurately view what was in store -- in other words, her quirk's ability to literally undo what would've happened in any other situation distorted the vision that Nighteye saw because, well, she undid it before it could happen. And you know what quirk is yet again in play now that All Might is in his would-be final battle? It's Eri's (reverse-engineered) quirk again.

Perhaps if AFO wasn't rewinding indefinitely -- if he was at his full power and maturity -- he would've been able to easily kill All Might here. But instead Rewind is coursing through his veins, and whatever might've happened without it is doomed to never be. He's missing quirks he gained later in life, he's impulsive and desperate, and All Might is just as determined as ever. He's got this, and he'll live.

[nyc3]

One thing that is now unfair to ask is...what is Nine's name? Look hori treated him as an afterthought but his lack of origins works better than the comical twnko's origins.

Yes his family was all killed thanks to him but ...I can't help to think that scene was too ridiculous.

We never saw anyone mentioned them again, not even shig. (He remembers them in MVA and we do see the disgusting human puppet hori flay around) But that's it.

So Nine...

Im not one of those people who think a new character needs to be related to a pre stabelished one. Nine doesn't need to be a Todoroki, Shimura or hell even a lost Midoriya (hahahahahahaha as if hori would care for this family)

But ....imagine if Nine was related to Oboro, somehow, wouldn't that be interesting?

Maybe, maybe not.

Oboro's character became a thing to turns Aizawa into a better character...and fails. Kuro was sacrificed for nothing.

The thing about Shigaraki/Tenko backstory is that it feels... a bit overdramatic?

Well we can say that about his whole character, but the part of his backstory in particular when he kills his family is so exagerated for the sake of shock value that it kinda feels comical.

Horikoshi tried a bit too hard on make MVA feel like the edgier and "different" arc of the series, but the contrast in so big that I can't take it seriously.

Especially when Hori already nailed a dark tone without being super explicit or over the top.

Take the simplicity of Eri's backstory for example:

No blood, no unnecessary violence, just two panels giving a basic idea of what happened to Eri's father and yet the image of those clothes lying on the floor is much more haunting and eerie than the enterity of Shigaraki backstory.

Why Horikoshi stop being subtle with his storytelling?

...

Anyway going back to Nine real name, or the lack of one, I think it's interesting how that aspect of his character adds to the underlying theme of how AFO and Garaki dehumanize people, especially the ones that are part of their experiments.

We know very well how AFO doesn't view other human being as persons but rather objects that belong to him. This starts with his very own twin brother, which name Yoichi means something like "my first possesion".

And just like Nine, number 6 from Vigilantes was a child which whole life was modeled by AFO. They both are just numbers without a real name.

In this case the idea is presented even more explicitly because Six was a child who suffered some kind of amnesia and couldn't even view himself as a normal human with a face.

He even died as a monster without ever know if he had an identity outside being the number 6.

It's funny how you mention the idea of Nine and Shirakumo being connected somehow, as isn't the first time I've hear that.

It's interesting notice how they share this common theme about sky and clouds as part of who they are (Nine's name also is supposedly a reference to the term "cloud nine") both Nine and Oboro are individuals willing to sacrifice their own lifes for others, and ironically both of them ended being experimented by Dr Garaki.

I even have the headcanon of Kurogiri being the "Number 7" in this line of experiments were Nine and Six belong, as sort of missing link between Six and the sentient nomus.

I probably should make a post later explaining better this idea.

And yes for Horikoshi, Shirakumo was just a diposable character to make Aizawa look cooler and more edgy.

While the author of Vigilantes clearly invested a lot of effort on making Oboro a real and memorable character which complements Aizawa rather than just being an accesory. But that topic deserves it's own post as well.

P.S: I have an idea of what real name we could give to Nine, but I keep it for me at least for the moment.

[thesustainedworldatransverse]

Crack theory: AFO/OFA and the two parts of Overhaul's quirk

I'm refusing to believe it's over for Tomura/Tenko so here's why everything is going to be just fine for him:

AFO gave the other half of Overhaul's quirk to Eri. Think about it. Both Decay and Rewind are described as "mutant" quirks, ie, not similar to any of their parents' quirks. Now we know why for Tomura/Tenko. Grey hair and red eyes? They're quirk-siblings, your honour.

Deku's temporary arm loss was an excuse for him to have some of Eri in him when he transferred OFA to Tomura/Tenko. Unlike being Rewound by Eri in person, stabbing Deku with her severed horn would put some of her DNA in his body. OFA is transferred through DNA. OFA defeats AFO, Rewind merges with Decay to and becomes a complete Overhaul quirk. Tomura/Tenko's body Rewinds with AFO gone forever. He's fine, everything is fine. Plus I understand that the name Tenko means something like "turning point"? So don't go sending Horikoshi-sensei death threats yet.

Kurogiri is also fine, because of reasons.

[swallowerofdharma]

So, what is Berserk about after all?

Please be considerate to me, don’t repost this, don’t share it outside of tumblr, don’t copy parts of it, thank you.

I have read really funny critiques and reviews of Berserk. Often they would refer to Miura supposedly saying that he didn’t plan everything out and they would use this statement to support their argument that after the Golden Age arc the story just looked like it dragged on. One, don’t ever fully believe what artists and writers say about their work. Second, without a proper conclusion it is impossible to make that kind of judgement and the story is ongoing. Then, not having a plan or having just vague ideas and taking inspiration here and there isn’t how manga works or how it gets published. When asked in an interview why he started creating Haibane Renmei as a doujinshi, Yoshitoshi Abe replied: “With mainstream publishing, it would've been difficult to do it with that avenue because of this particular approach with everything being adlibbed. I don't know how the story will be developed, how it's going to end up, or what the ending's going to be. If you go to a mainstream publisher, by their general approach, they have to know what the characters are, who they are, what the story's going to be, and how the story's going to develop so they know if there's going to be a serial, continuing storyline. They need to know how it's going to go”. Even though plans can be renewed and renegotiated, Miura still needed to make solid advanced plans and decisions and respect deadlines and page quotas. Even without considering this, the world building of Berserk seems too intentional and coherent to me to think that he didn’t really know how the story would go. Granted he created a reality that could be changed and bent by the human imagination and psyche, from the inside. This happened to be a brilliant choice for a long project like the Berserk manga.

I once read a review that pointed out the weakness of the later arcs and episodes, making the hypothesis that Miura was influenced by the success of stories like One Piece and Pirates of the Caribbean. I can’t really say that I share this opinion, either. Reviews like these make me smile, because they reveal how people missed a very big clue that Miura never really hid. Berserk was inspired by the story of Peter Pan as told by J.M. Barrie and reinterpreted in several different ways, not only visually. He went as far as dedicating to it the Lost Children chapters, immediately after the Eclipse, when the tension of the story was higher than it ever had been. We should read the Lost Children as an homage to the story of Peter Pan and Wendy that plays into the already disquieting themes of the original in darker tones and with much more horrifying elements; but we should also pay great attention to the Lost Children chapters as an important recontextualization of the events of the Golden Age arc. While I want to dedicate proper analysis and attention to this, I am going to add here that in Peter Pan we already had the pirates, the islands with hidden caves and the mermaids. The journey to Skellig island and Elfhelm had to be long enough for Moonlight Boy to make an appearance at least twice before the big reveal of his full identity the third time, and since he can only appear on nights of a full moon, Miura had to make the readers feel that time had passed. But Guts had always belonged in Neverland.

In my rudimentary outline of various elements that contributed greatly in building the world and story of Berserk, I actually ran out of space. And I want to properly address the various points and develop them more. For the moment I just really wanted to show that Miura had a very strong grip over the story and that he was really attentive to nuances. I said to myself, if I want to criticize the writing in Berserk at least I have to make sure I understand it to a sufficient extent.

Also I really wanted to at least give an idea of how important a role Shōjo manga had to Berserk. I hope to be able to fully explore this element soon.

[deusvervewrites]

Remember 1-A used their quirks in their concert?

How do you think Eri's Rewind would work in a musical performance?

I don't know if the Quirk itself would be useful but if she could control it than she could use the glowing effect of her horn

[olenvasynyt]

This is more of a rant than an actual question but I need Lucien to KNOW he is not Beron's son. I will never be able to reallistically believe he is as smart and clever as SJM has hinted at if he DOESN'T know! Plus, if Lucien is Helion's Heir he'd have to have SOME day court powers and he'd probably had to hide them in Autumn and how would he do that if he didn't know he was helion's son/not Beron's son?? I've never bought the theory that eris and his mother "binded" his powers, i truly think he's hiding them on purpose just like Aelin buried her fire magic so deep inside her when she was afraid of it

I feel like he knows he's a bastard, actually! I think there's a lot of hints to it. When we see this thoughts in ACOWAR we see him think about his mother and that he kept some things about her a secret because they were personal and irrelevant.

"I am Lucien. Seventh son of the High Lord of the Autumn Court." And a whole lot of nothing. He'd told the shadowsinger all he knew--of his surviving brothers, of his father. His mother...he'd kept some details, irrelevant and utterly personal, to himself.

His might be that he knows LoA had an affair, but it could also just be about the abuse she recieves from Beron. But we later discover secrets his mother has been keeping. And I also think "a whole lot of nothing" is interesting to say too, because saying he's the seventh son to Beron is "a whole lot of nothing".

And we also understand how the High Fae magic develops in their youth because of Mor. He probably had his Day Court powers develop as his Autumn Court powered developed, but LoA and Eris might have told him to suppress it.

I don't think he has had the room to explore his Day Court powers. He keeps a lot of things suppressed. And when he breaks free from Hybern's spell at the end of ACOMAF to get to Elain, that was a sudden, in the moment thing fueled by his anger and the mating bond. We don't know his thoughts and feelings about that moment and how he was able to free himself, so it's hard to say.

And I think Lucien is smart enough to figure out that Beron mistreating him might be for a deeper reason. And he does have darker skin than his brothers. Yes, that's technically a retcon because there's signs that this wasn't what SJM intended in ACOTAR because he's decribed to look like Beron UTM, but anyways lmao.

I don't think he knows he's Helion's true son though, mostly because SJM will want the dramatic reveal! He could fully think that LoA had an affair with a random Day Court male. I do have theories that it could be possible Lucien knows Helion is his father based on how the High Lord's powers transfer to the next person and how the heir has to hide their powers--we see this with Rhys and Tamlin.

I feel like there could be a lot of signs that he knows he's a bastard, but think SJM has retconned a lot of stuff surrounding Lucien and his true heritage so it's hard to come up with actual theories. She said that she didn't go into Lucien's full backstory until ACOMAF, so honestly, a lot of potential "hints" in ACOTAR are a bit irrelevant now. But I'm also pretty cynical of SJM tbh lmao and I enjoy coming up with headcanons to fix the holes she left.

[quirkwizard]

I'm kind of confused by how they deal with Eri. Correct me if I’m wrong but her quirk lets her rewind living creatures to a previous state. She’s proven that she’s skilled enough that she could give Lemillion back his quirk. So why do injuries mean anything any more? Aizawa lost his leg but it feels so unimportant because Eri can just fix his injuries. Why would it even matter that he lost his quirk if she can just give it back to him? It just really feels like the show put her in there for the Overhaul arc, fixed Lemillion, and then they just didn’t know what to do with her. I want to say, “It takes time for her to charge up between uses.” but I’m pretty sure they said something about it being months after she gave Lemillion his quirk back and Aizawa is still hurt. Is there something I’m missing here? Can she only use her quirk once or twice per year or something?

Small aside, Aizawa didn't lose his Quirk, but it's now extremely taxing on his one eye to the point of near uselessness.

While you are correct in that "Rewind" is an exceptional healing power, there are a lot of caveats to it. First and foremost, I believe you are underestimating just how dangerous this power is. This Quirk is in the hands of Eri, a small child with no prior training and a lot of difficulty in practicing with it because it can only work on biological targets. If anything goes wrong, she will kill them. I can't say I would feel comfortable having her try to heal people. Heck, the only successful cases it has was with Izuku, who worked around it by damaging himself faster than the Quirk could heal him, and Mirio, whose affliction was from a drug with a basis in Eri's power and under the supervision of Aizawa. Second, the Quirk isn't limitless. Eri has a specific resource that she needs to gather up over a period of time. This is signified with her horn changing shape throughout the chapters. Healing Izuku and Mirio took a lot of out of her. It's why she couldn't heal Aizawa or Sir Nighteye. She had basically run out of juice, and pushing it any further will make her feverish. Heck, it was an entire month from the PLF War to the Final War, and she barely got enough back to heal Izuku's arms.

It's these two factors that make Eri unreliable at best and dangerous at worst when it comes to healing. And honestly, I'm glad it was written this way. Because back when it was implied that Eri could heal people without risk, I had a lot of the same worries you mentioned. If the heroes had Eri around to heal them, it would have removed a lot of the stakes and consequences of the series. It's why I think that healing powers are so rare in the setting and why the few we have seen are so limited. Having a prevalent healer works in something like Jojo, where Araki doesn't want to kill his characters off but instead to torture them as much as possible. Less so in MHA because Hori wants there to be long-term consequences for the characters', especially with their injuries, to either show growth for the characters, to push a certain plot point, or both. It's why I think he made the decision to remove Eri's horn during the eleventh hour of the Final War and the implication that doing so removes her power, at least for a time. That there would be lasting consequences for the characters after this massive war and that what had happened couldn't be undone with a wave of her hand.

[shadowed-dancer]

Of course Izuku will want to save Shigaraki, that sort of theme has been ingrained in the series since the first chapter.

When we think about important moments in the series (and especially chapter 1) we often think about "you can be a hero" and "my body moved on its own". But think about it; what prompts both of those? What is the single moment that spurs the entire series into action?

It’s Bakugo being in danger and Deku rushing to save him.

Deku, a quirkless kid who has been relentlessly bullied for the past 10 years, rushes into a life-threatening situation in order to save the boy who bullied him. His instinct is to save a person he has every right not to save, but he does it anyways because that’s who he is. He’s a HERO (not the profession, simply a true, good hearted hero).

So yeah, I think it’s very poetic that 400+ chapters later, Deku is once again faced with a character he has every right not to save, but he decides he has to anyways because this person is in pain. This person has suffered and needs help.

And Deku is a hero.

[blood-starved-beast]

It's pretty obvious from Eris's design she's meant to be a Punk, counterculture, and anti-establishment. She definitely seen and is treated like an outsider from the rest of the Unseen. We learn that Eris used to be one of Hecate's "disciples" before leaving to do her own thing. But instead of taking off the sigils when she left the Unseen Eris instead flips the Moon Sigil on her forehead and then scratches the one on her gorget out.

Now that's punk I'd say.

[77dekiru]

MHA 415: What Will Eri’s Role Will Be? (Theory)

Disclaimer: This is my own personal theory for what will be happening with Eri, and a decent portion of it will be speculation, but I will be including evidence that supports it as well. I’m unsure if I will be correct in the end, but I still think it’s worth putting out there!

Anyways. Since the cliffhanger from the latest chapter dropped, I have seen the majority of people speculate that Eri will be rewinding Tomura back into Tenko, but at this point, I genuinely don’t see that happening.

((Izuku can’t only save “Tenko” because Tenko and Tomura are the same person. No matter what Izuku, the Vestiges, and All For One think, they are not two separate people. If Izuku wants to save “that crying little boy” then Izuku must do so as Tomura still being Tomura.))

Instead, I think that Eri will have a quirk awakening.

(Quirk awakenings have been shown to happen during times of crisis, and while I don’t think that anything bad will happen to Eri, this is still a crisis situation for her.)

Instead of rewinding time with her quirk, I think that she will accelerate it instead.

Eri has a direct connection to the Quirk Singularity theory, (after Ujiko mentions her in his recording that he left AFO) and she is the character that has been chosen to represent this concept.

This was done for a reason.

The Quirk Singularity theory has been consistently brought up, over and over again throughout the series, and soon we will be reaching the climax of that plot point as the series comes to an end.

One For All has already passed the point of singularity, but we still haven’t seen the climax of that yet. I might just be forgetting something, but I don’t believe that All For One (quirk) has been said to have passed the point of singularity (yet).

It’s only been shown that Tomura’s body has been modified with counteracting the effects of Quirk Singularity in mind…

If Eri tries to use her quirk on Tomura to help Izuku, and she accidentally accelerates time instead, I think that Eri’s quirk will be what finally causes All For One to reach the point of Singularity, and will be what finally merges both One For All and All For One together.

((Not to mention, even if Eri doesn’t have a Quirk Awakening, All For One has already been consistently taking damage due to the transferring of the Vestiges.

Tomura can (probably) counteract the regular effects of her quirk, due to his body modifications being made with the effects of Quirk Singularity in mind.

Rewind will just be what weakens All For One enough for One For All to break through the current barrier that’s between both quirks.))

Anyways. A lot of this is speculation, but now that Eri will be playing an active role in this battle, this is the most likely scenario, in my opinion.

[siflshonen]

Trauma Doesn't Make Someone Right or Wrong but It Does Make Them Easier to Manipulate: Tomura Shigaraki and All for One

I decided I should talk about the MHA villains more, particularly Shigaraki.

BNHA presentations masterpost

BNHA presentations on Ao3

Let’s mosey under the cut.

The color key is not necessary, exactly, but I will be referencing my other posts with similar color keys. I thought it would be helpful to give a quick visual refresher to what they are. I’m going to referencing the other stuff I’ve written a lot in this one when it’s time to get into the details, so please be aware of that.

Regular white text can also be neutral and mean none of these things, but I think you’ll see what I mean by including All for One on here when you see the graphics.

There is Tenko Shimura and there is Shigaraki Tomura. One of them is the scared child who looks like the perfect victim in need of saving. The other is the obstinate, stubborn, short-sighted and naive social deviant shaped by his trauma and grooming. The only thing he seems to exhibit individuality over is his love of video games and which kinds he prefers.

They are the same person. Traumura Shigaraki. Tenko Traumura. 

Shigaraki is sometimes hard to pin down as a character because his individuality beyond his PTSD is rarely allowed to shine. However, I do believe that there are common threads between Tenko Shimura and Tomura Shigaraki. He sincerely wants to make connections, and he sincerely wants to do right by those that accept him, though his own desires and emotional responses often get in the way - as do the desires of another teeny, tiny influence upon him.

His fucking Master, All for One.

Part of what inspired my initial Bakugo presentation was showing how he breaks down the tropes of “hero”, “antihero” and even “antagonist” in shonen manga. The entire cast of Heroes and Villains (remember, they are also social designations and legal definitions in the world this manga) are doing this to some extent. Shigaraki, in particular, is headlining how there is nothing inherently special that makes someone a villain or hero. The determining factor is the perspective of the observer (or affected society.)

Shigaraki may be an antivillain in this story, but to him, that makes him appear the hero of his own story - all while still wearing the self-determined label of “villain”.

Arguably, the actions he chooses to take as a result of his trauma and fear of rejection also make him the villain of his own story at the same time, but we’ll get into that later.

Deku also has at least one mentor (in the Second User) that makes no bones about telling him that his life and well-being is less important than achieving the goal of stopping All for One. But at least he is honest, I guess.

Still destructive, though.

Most of the characters act truly heroically not in moments of glorious victory, but moments of pain, suffering, or even failure (Early-series Deku does this a lot, like when he falls to earth after heroically saving Ochako in the entrance exam. Bakugo, who is sent crashing to the ground in the ironically-named “Katsuki Bakugo: Rising” chapter after putting himself in harm’s way to save someone else, also has a habit of doing this over and over again), which is not the expectation for an archetypal hero in a storybook or comic.

Shigaraki’s glorious rise with cape, model hair, and awesome suit is likewise a moment that does not bode well for him, though he doesn’t know it in the moment.

I don’t make a slide for it, but as he ascends, Shigaraki becomes, well, ethereally beautiful. As his post-family-death amnesiac self, his suffering made him more fragile, frayed, and conventionally ugly in appearance. But after going through All for One’s training and modifications, he was given a new, beautiful facade.

But he was still on the fast track to misery either way.

This discussion isn’t super duper political, but this is your heads-up that many of these “big presences in power” characters also stand in for political ideologies or even entire countries, in some cases.

Endeavor is, roughly, the Japan before modern foreign influence. I’m sure Horikoshi could give us the specific party or movements he had in mind, but he’s not the focus of this post. If you want a more in-depth breakdown of Endeavor and the Todoroki family, please see this post. 

The Kirishima Presentation post I made has the most relevant information to the topic of Westernization’s impact on Japan’s attitudes and military power, though it isn’t quite for the same approach and purpose.

All Might, the “band aid” on the My Hero Academia society, is a Japanese guy wearing the appearance of the West while wielding a power that was given to him by someone else, and at seemingly random from an outside perspective. While Toshinori’s true heroic qualities have nothing to do with his nationality (and neither do the features and purpose behind One for All or All for One, when all is said and done), it is important when understanding what Toshinori represents to Endeavor and how he views him.

Both the Heroes and Villains in this series make an entire journey and daytime soap opera of fucking themselves over, honestly.

All for One doesn’t just want to be a dictator or tyrant or king. No, he wants to be the ultimate evil and unapologetic about it. He is the big bad and he is reveling in it. He is going to make himself a cartoon, and then he is gonna rule this cartoon world. Why? We’ll find out eventually. But maybe we’ll never know! I don’t really care. He’s meant to be a static evil.

Naruto tried to be real cool by having their big bad talk about how they were gonna take over the world through hijacking the economy and using that as their in to take over all the Ninja Villages and be real fascists or whatever, but My Hero Academia jumps over that angle by taking a more emotional and universal storybook (or comic book) approach. I greatly prefer it.

I also prefer that the story is blatantly framing the movement it opposes by calling it out as a fucking cartoon villain, though there’s also a twist to this that I think Horikoshi has very intentionally performed.

Fascism most recently swept over Japan as a result of influence from the West. Bam. Easy. So it’s no surprise that, regardless of where he is from, All for One doesn’t just look like a white guy, but like fine art of a white guy from the West. Pretentious. But it’s also kinda funny since he looks like a Greco-Roman god and is trying to flatten his marble curves into lowbrow comic form.

Nazi Germany and the Italian flavor of fascist regimes dressed snappy and loved their high art. Surely y’all know how Nazi Germany defined and tripped all over themselves at the idea of an Aryan race.

Meanwhile, American comic books are a Jewish invention. Superman and Captain America were staunchly anti-Nazi, anti-fascist, anti-all that. For All for One, icon of the type of art branded as “Aryan”, to do what he’s doing in the form of a comic book and saying he likes them is... oh, it’s truly disrespectful of him, to put it mildly. It reminds me of the discussion and fallout surrounding Captain America being part of Hydra for some issues.

Anyway, All for One is rebranding again to sneak into the hearts and minds of those with more modern sensibilities (read: “lowbrow”) to do his same routine. It’s truly villainous, selfish, and disrespectful. Fuck this guy. Rip him apart.

...All of this is a compliment. A hateable static big bad is a good thing when it is what the story wants to achieve.

One could split hairs and say, “All for One’s approach doesn’t resemble fascism! It’s like X!” And if you want to do that, great. Pick your poison of specific flavor of awful Authoritarian or Totalitarian movement that causes extreme suffering. Go nuts. I chose this one because I think a broader approach is more applicable - All for One is a timeless, recurring evil with worldwide reach.

I’ve taken the qualities of Ur-Fascism, or “Eternal Fascism”, listed above from this article, which is also an abbreviation of a longer work on the topic by Umberto Eco. I don’t want to regurgitate the whole thing here, so I encourage you to read it. I did incorporate two of the 14 qualities into other items on this list, but I think you’ll find that All for One checks all of these boxes.

If you read the article or essay, please pay attention to language used like “in the name of liberation”, or how these movements tend to start in another movement with one similar ideal or begin to absorb other movements. Think about how that relates to what happened to Re-Destro’s group and ambition, and the fate of the Liberation Army as it was absorbed into Shigaraki’s/All for One’s. Think about how fascism is contradictory in many ways, but still considers itself a single movement.

For more further reading - @transhawks​ hits the nail on the head regarding what the League of Villains are in relation to Hero Society and All for One. They’re not really revolutionaries or a unified band of anything standing against their evil government for ideological reasons. They’re being used. If you want to enter a more extreme political pick-apart or commentary of this series, this is a good place to look and a crucial thing to understand.

It would be real cool if the USA was truly a well-meaning, if hasty, rude, and entitled do-gooder superhero, but, well, this is a comic book. Y’all know that Star and Stripe is meant to be the idealized USA rooted in Democracy and Liberty and all that stuff, right?

But even the superpowered and ideal version of the USA can be corrupted. The USA has neo-Nazis (and a total shitshow political scene, particularly conservatively but not exclusively limited to that party, currently) and stuff, too. The “We Are All for One” sign in the My Hero Academia panel of violence and chaos in the United States’ establishing shot is a good way to represent how the conditions for All for One to take control can come about anywhere.

This dude, and the fascism he represents, is a parasite.

Anyway, that’s all big-picture stuff. Let’s talk about All for One’s specific approach to getting his hooks into Shigaraki and the League of Villains.

Public opinion is one of All for One’s most important tools, especially when starting out.

Again, All for One is a parasite. And I think the moth wings Shigaraki sports in figurative representations in the manga are meant to suggest the lower two of a Death’s-head hawkmoth, which has an association with death in Japan and some other cultures. I’m not totally sure about this, though.

As for me, personally, I am familiar with this genus of moth because I grew up with the Five-Spotted Hawkmoth’s larvae, which we called tomato hornworms, in the garden. Parasitic wasps like to lay eggs in the backs of the hornworms and then the larvae in the eggs eat the hornworm from the inside out before maturing. I don’t know if Horikoshi had those in mind when he made this manga because I think they’re only in North America, but, well, I thought about them.

My point: Shigaraki was an easy target and a natural choice for All for One.

Tenko fucked his whole family over when his quirk destroyed everything. The damage was not limited to his father. His family may not have stopped his father and maybe could have done more to try and stop him (and Hana could have not sold out Tenko and blamed him for their intrusion into their father’s office), but killing them didn’t exactly help anyone.

As @transhawks​ pointed out, the message of “destroying the existing system (house) to root out the existing power causes more sacrifice than it is worth” is a comparatively moderate one.

But for a boys’ manga series, the major idea that, “hey, maybe try to help one another and don’t act in negative emotion - and DEFINITELY don’t become a fascist ‘cause it’s a trap” is perhaps a more immediately relevant one for that audience than a more complicated political critique. The readership of a boys’ manga is at (or about to be at) high risk for becoming the vulnerable youth Shigaraki, Spinner, and perhaps even Dabi or Toga represent.

Sometimes, things can be as simple as the story of a shitty dad doing shitty things to his family because he sucks. Sometimes, this story can also be an allegory at the same time, if it helps your cause. Dabi certainly thinks about it like this!

Shigaraki seems to flip-flop between these hikikomori and NEET categories.

The Kirishima Presentation post talks about this in great detail with more articles.

When I think about this turn of phrase, I think about Princess Mononoke and how the musket ball inside the boar god is what turned him into a monster and sent him on a rampage, and then infected Ashitaka. There’s a lot to unpack here about that, but this is long enough.

It seems that quirks, while not a definite indicator of what a person is like, has an impact on these characters’ individuality, themes, and preferences in the story.

He rises from the ashes always, it seems. And this isn’t even his final form.

“I hurt, so I want YOU to hurt!” If you don’t know much about folks affected by Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD, well, Shigaraki is pretty much a perfect textbook example.

And you could have it all... my empire of dirt... I will let you down... I will make you hurt!

People are individuals. Degrees of and conditions for suffering are all unique. But the end result of trauma upon people is the same. They hurt.

So, I think now is a good time to link to this discussion regarding Tenko’s name.

I don’t know if this alike-sound is obvious to the Japanese readership or not, or if it’s just an English speaker’s ear making the observation in similarity between words. Sometimes, what sounds like a pun to an English speaker is not a pun to a native speaker. I really do not know because I am not a native speaker. But even without knowing that for certain, it’s interesting to think about and good, relevant information regarding some of Japan’s general history. If anybody knows, please let me know.

For the longest time, I thought his name was ironic because “ten” sounds like “heaven/sky” and “ko” like “child”, so he would be named “heavenly child” or “child from the heavens”, which contrasts with his “villain” status, though remains accurate because of his incredible, otherworldly power and appearance by his transformation’s end. But it’s not written like “heaven child”. I asked. But I still think it’s funny.

Anyway.

This is a story, so I literally cannot do anything about this situation except say that I am certain that a hero will come for him. I know it’s a cop-out and I am no different than the old woman who left Tenko on the street, but, well, that’s all I’ve got.

I hope they reach him soon.

[yellowbluemoonshine]

You Lift The Fire In Me

Both Shouto and Touya used same phrase to express their feelings, using the fire metaphor. But they used it different way. For Touya, it was the cause of his pain and for Shouto, it was his salvation.

Endeavour lifted the fire in Touya but the fire Endeavour lifted is destructive, it is out of control and made Touya burn and later became the reason he became villain. Deku lifted the fire in Shouto. He remind of his passion to him. The fire Deku lifted is warm, healing and remind Shouto the reason he wanted to be hero. Fire is good metaphor to explain their pain.

Shouto was repressing the fire (his pain, his anger) and it lead Shouto to freeze. Freezing fits Shouto's feelings because he was stucked. He was mentally in prison. His expressions are faint. Like a robot. He is still not sure about what he wants to do and who he wants to be. He is stucked. He is frozen and thats why the gentle fire Deku lifted in him is his healing. He awoken the fire inside of him.

In Touya's case, fire is out of control. He even says "fire dont go away". It is there and he cant stop it. Maybe, the reason his fire is blue is another way to show how unstable his mental state became. (Also, i love to see Touya origin music slowly turning into Dabi dance music because he is loosing it.) Compared to Shouto who is freezing and cant move, Touya is full of tension and cant stand still. This is why what Touya needs gently put out the fire. He needs his fire to calm down so that he can heal, like Shouto is.

Another difference is Deku's fire made from his desire to help Shouto, it is a selfless wish and even lead him to loose fight he desperately wanted to achieve because Allmight told him to.

While Endeavour's fire made from his ambition, it is from his selfish desires, he had many chances to stop to fire but him constantly putting his own desires above the well being of his family, neglecting and abusing them made it even worse. He didnt just  ignore the fire, he also put oil into it.

Fire and ice are not really bad thing, what makes it worse is that when it is extreme. It can be good thing, depends on how you use it which we saw it with them. Shouto used to see his fire (his anger) as bad thing. (For Touya, fire was good amazing to him at first, he most likely view it as bad like Earlyroki did now). He later learnt to use them to help children. He used his ice to make playground and he used his fire to warm the little girl (and other children). Even with Dabi when he burnt the house Toga was abused, he used his fire to rebel against abuser and comfort the little girl. It is also parallels in a way.

It is about how you use it.