#get wrecked afo

[marimeeko]

I love this chapter I love Kacchans smile, I love him saying that he's there to take on what Izuku can't handle,

But I love horikoshis portrayal of Katsuki going from this

To this

In just a few panels

Horikoshi gave him so much range lmao

[smolthealmighty]

[polysyndetonaddictsupportgroup]

pez dispenser debris for the fic ask thing? 👀

As much as this is my “kill no darlings you will get EVERY flashback” fic, there’s overarching sociopolitical backstory explaining why Izuku and the rest of class 3A exploded in the public eye that I don’t think I’ll ever fully fit in.

It’s a combination of it being more of a meta analysis than anything and also requiring information from a perspective that I know will never appear in the fic. Like, the fic still gets the different moments that make up this analysis, but there’s no explicit connecting thread to show how they all locked together to create this sort of global cult following of class 3-A. I almost put in a little fake news article opinion piece that was meant to sort of walk the reader through why society is Like This, but I decided it was too heavy handed and deleted it.

Everything that I’m going to reference has already appeared in pez dispenser debris to some degree, and none of it will ever actually materially impact the plot. They may receive a little more detail down the line if they’re mentioned in passing in the fic, so out of an abundance of caution, I’ll stick it below the cut so people can avoid this, but I don’t personally consider any of this spoilers.

Izuku and the rest of the class are famous in pez dispenser debris in a way that’s pretty much unprecedented for students. Canonically, not even all might had a name for himself until after his graduation. Pretty much everyone from class 3A are public figures, with Izuku specifically being considered a major global figure.

In my mind, there was this perfect storm right during their second year that catapulted them into fame. The class personally has varying levels of awareness of why they got so popular, but there was this perfect cross winds of societal unrest and fear that made them household names.

There was an approximately one month span in their second year where they were just hit one after another with a major firestorms of events: The UA Sports Festival, the Sidekick Strike, and the Tartarus Prison Break/Desertion of Yokohama.

The UA Sports Festival is the one that the kids attribute this most to, because so many of the news articles that followed referenced their performance in it. But it probably gave them less mileage than what the other two events did.

What the UA Sports Festival did was showcase their skills to the world in a venue designed to show them off. The public was already on edge. All Might had retired, crime rates kept going up, and people were rapidly losing confidence in existing heroes. Class 2A made such an insane showing of skill in the second Sports Festival that it made the public rave about them for weeks after. It was extremely reassuring to Japan that they had such powerful heroes in the barrel and would soon be on the streets. But that attention probably would have died down had it not been for the Sidekick Strike and Yokohama.

The Sidekick Strike actually had nothing to do with them. But it undermined the public’s faith in heroes at just the right time.

The Sidekick Strike is just one of those things that I have no POV that would even tangentially be involved in it so we’ll get a few passing references in media clips and it’ll never be discussed in depth. Which is a shame because it’s such an interesting conflict to me.

The Sidekick Strike was heavily inspired by the 1919 Boston Police Strike. Effectively, it was the height of the labor rights movement, and police officers got together and went on strike to get the police union recognized. They had tried to negotiate and negotiations failed, and so they all walked off the job. The city descended into lawlessness, the national guard was deployed, it was a whole thing. Famously, Calvin Coolidge fired the entire police force over it on the grounds that there was no striking from public safety.

I thought it would be really interesting if there was something similar that happened with the sidekicks. The thing is that the heroics structure as it stands really incentivizes abuse towards sidekicks. We have a society where there’s a decent amount of heroes who are only in it for the fame. A not insignificant amount of money must come from marketing deals. And it’s a ranked system, so they’re all in competition with each other.

Heroes wouldn’t be incentivized to showcase their sidekicks—they’d be incentivized to take advantage of them and take credit for their work.

Like, think about the work-study experiences. Momo didn’t even officially work for the hero she studied with. She wasn’t getting paid. An adult woman used her for a shampoo ad. Who wants to bet whether Momo saw a dime from it? It’s probably very predatory because the nature of the system incentivizes predation.

I thought the underlying legal issues would be interesting and complex. Who owns a sidekick’s image—the agency or the individual? Who gets the proceeds of their brand deals? This all would be governed by their employment contracts, and sidekicks just starting out have very little leverage compared to big name heroes. And those heroes would want to keep their sidekicks names small and theirs big. The rankings are competitive, after all.

It’s a situation where I do think that like. The sidekicks would have a point in unionizing. The use of their image, appropriate compensation, and proper credit for their busts would all be like, very legitimate concerns in a normal employment context.

I see agencies like Idaten settling immediately with the union and having their sidekicks back on the street before the day is out. In my mind, idaten is considered the gold standard for sidekick jobs already, and their employees mostly did it out of solidarity with the people they worked alongside of. Like, Idaten was already doing most of the union’s demands and signed off very quickly on the remaining ones. If it was just about the Idaten sidekicks, none of them would have gone on strike, but they had a lot of colleagues who they depended on in the field who were in terrible situations. What were they gonna say, sorry, sucks to be you, I got a great gig though so condolences? These were the people keeping them alive. They went on strike because they knew Idaten would publicly settle before the day was out and set an example for the rest of the agencies. Hopefully it would help other agencies follow their lead.

But that didn’t happen. Some agencies, like Endeavor’s, fired everyone immediately. And I think a lot of agencies spent a long time picking over every line item in prolonged negotiations. It dragged out.

And that went over fucking terribly.

All Might just retired. Crime is up. And their sworn defenders are bickering over who gets what cut of the action figure line. Like I think the public would have fucking hated this in a post-All Might world. It would have seemed like the only real hero just medically and irreversibly retired and the rest of them are squabbling about whose turn it is in the spotlight.

I also think that the villains would have taken advantage of it.

The Tartarus Prison Break in pez isn’t the one that happened in canon. Here, the League of Villains attacked Tartarus and set everyone loose. In the process, they made a very clear stance: they are going to leave with All for One, and they are not going to attack any civilians. They won’t fight at all unless attacked first.

All of the horrible and sadistic villains they just let go have not made the same promise.

They chose to do this now because of the Sidekick Strike. All their heroes don’t give a fuck about protecting them, so they’re strapped for staffing. So they’re taking back their leader and going back to ground, and the heroes are free to immediately go after and contain all those bad bad villains who just escaped. And those guys are headed to the heavily populated mainland, so better be quick.

The whole world knew that was their explicit reasoning and promise. Because Himiko fucking lived tweeted the escape.

The Sidekick Strike took the hit for a lot of the blame, but I do see all the sidekicks breaking strike lines to go respond to the crisis. But response times were severely handicapped by the fact that most if not all of them were cut off from their agencies. It was just a complete systemic breakdown.

And then there became the question of what crisis do you respond to: All for One’s escape, or everyone else’s?

I mentioned in one of the little fake tumblr posts that the Tartarus Prison Break was seen as Endeavor’s greatest failure. And part of that is because he chose to sacrifice the nearby area, Yokohama, to contain All for One.

I am one of the biggest haters of Endeavor’s later arc, specifically because it required going back on the nature of the abuse he had subjected his family to that was already established in canon, but that’s a different rant. This is not canon endeavor. I hate what they did with canon endeavor.

That being said, I do think that the self doubt weighed on him once he became number one. And this was the moment of his career where it really crushed him.

All for One had escaped. So had every other villain from Tartarus. He should go after the most immediate threats. He knew this. It was basic triage.

But they would never have a better chance to stop All for One.

Prisoners in Tartarus aren’t exactly hitting all their macros and micros or training daily. They are not adherents to the Bakugou Katsuki Fitness Lifestyle. All for One was coming off spending the last few months drugged up to his eyeballs and strapped to a chair in a straitjacket with at least fifty guns pointed at him at all times. The man has not scratched his own nose in weeks. He’s weaker now than he’ll ever be again.

It was their best chance.

If he escaped, and he went back to ground, he’d have the time and space to get as strong as he wanted, and then he’d come back for real. And he’d be coming back for everything.

Stopping him the first time had cost them All Might.

And Endeavor simply was not All Might. And he still wouldn’t be All Might when the next fight came.

It really was the hardest decision of Endeavor’s life. He had to admit to himself that his own inadequacy was going to cost them countless lives. But he thought it was a hard decision he had to make. He was losing the battle for the barest chance at winning the war.

So he made the call that all heroes were to respond to All for One. They had to hit the league of villains now with their full force if they were to stand a chance. They could not afford to divide their already sparse forces. They’d respond to Yokohama when AfO was contained.

He was also the one who made the call to broadcast the warning message that we hear in the Twitter post. He thought it would give civilians their best chance. He didn’t want them to act with the expectation of the heroes being en route.

Of course, that meant that the entire city got fucking sirens going off and a message telling them that the heroes were not going to save them. Which, as you can expect, did not do a lot for public morale.

In my head, Tartarus is like, the equivalent to Gotham’s Arkham. It’s borderline an institute for the criminally insane. You don’t end up there unless you did something super fucked, are super dangerous, and have extreme violent tendencies. It’s exclusively for the most dangerous and indiscriminately violent criminals in the country.

The entire world was watching in real time while the tragedy unfolded. A lot of people were livestreaming after the emergency broadcast dropped, because they didn’t want the government to be able to handwave away how terrible their death was, or because they didn’t know what else to do, or because they just didn’t want to be alone. The full expectation was that it’d be a massacre.

But it wasn’t. Because Class 2-A responded instead.

The Class 2-A defensive efforts were discussed in one of the silly little fake tumblr posts and in the fake twitter post. In those, we find out that 1) Class 2-A, along with Lemillion, Suneater, and Nejire responded to the scene; 2) the entire class rolled out of Mirio’s fucking mom van and tamaki and nejire’s cars like they were fucking clown cars; 3) the HPSC claimed it was a legitimate operation blessed and coordinated by them; and 4) a lot of people think this was a lie, in part because videos leaked of Aizawa bitching them all out in the street afterwards. We also see Izuku’s green lightning at the end of the twitter video, showing him responding to the scene just as the first villains hit the mainland.

This fight has a lot of names in the backstory that lives in my head. It’s called the Tartarus Prison Break for obvious reasons. It’s also been called in some circles the Desertion of Yokohama, because of the call Endeavor made.

But it’s also called the Battle of Yokohoma. And it’s ranked alongside the Battle of Kamino as one of the finest acts of modern day heroics. And that’s because of Class 2-A. If it hadn’t been for them showing up, it would have gone down in history as the Massacre of Yokohama.

Like. It kills me that I can’t include the full details of what happened, but there’s just too much to make in a flashback. It’s a fic in and of itself. But it really was the fight that made Class 2-A.

It was the first fight where they were really the only heroes that could be counted on. Granted, they’d had to fight for their lives alone, but this wasn’t just their lives. These were thousands of terrified civilians who all thought they were going to die.

It was the first true test of them as heroes in the world. And they actually rose to the occasion. They didn’t just fight the villains—they realized that they needed to get emergency services working throughout the city if everyone was going to make it. Momo and Tsuyu conducted a mildly hostile take over of the emergency call center so they could coordinate relief. They had fucking Tokoyami and Dark Shadow single-handedly holding the line on the hospital while Kaminari, Shoji, Jiro, and Sato all learned to drive for the Very First Time while commandeering the city’s fucking ambulances. They were fighting and containing villains, performing emergency aid, putting out literal fires, everything. It was the hardest fight of their lives.

There was a hot second where Class 2-A was The Moment. Like. The entire world was watching them during this fight, and they had no fucking idea until it was over. People lost their minds when the first footage made it out of Yokohama of a bunch of teenagers showing up and immediately throwing hands with S-Class villains.

It was global news. Think of the kind of media attention that was received by the search for the Titan, the Tham Luang Cave Rescue, the Suez Canal getting blocked by the Ever Given (rip queen you will always be famous to me), that kind of thing. Class 2-A was fighting for their fucking lives and then found out three days later while they were all still in the hospital that there was a prayer vigil going on in Portugal for them during the battle and CNN had 24 hours live coverage of the fight that had so many viewers it outnumbered the population of Finland. Like what do you even do with that information.

The world expected a massacre. They didn’t expect a bunch of footage of high schoolers kicking the shit out of superpowered murders and personally ferrying the injured to the hospitals they were also defending.

The other part about this fight that really made them permanently part of the public consciousness is that it was not lost on everyone that every single person who responded to that fight did so at the risk of their license.

All of them had provisional licenses, save Lemillion, Suneater, and Nejire, all of whom went AWOL from the explicit directives ordering them to respond to the fight against All for One. The operation could not have been less authorized. They had to steal their gear and jimmy the UA fence to even get out. The explicit plan was to steal one of the UA buses and have Bakugou fucking drive them to the fight (he also did not know how to drive but he seemed the most likely of them to break literally every single motor vehicle code to get them there but still be naturally talented at it enough to not kill them) but Izuku told Mirio what bullshit they were up to and Mirio, who was with Tamaki and Nejire when the news broke, immediately decided he would be on that bullshit too and pulled up in his mom van.

In my mind, there were strict rules around provisional licenses and how they could be used, and they broke pretty much all of them to respond to Yokohama. It would have been grounds to revoke their provisionals and permanently bar them from heroics. Lemillion, Suneater, and Nejire could have all lost their licenses for helping them and for going AWOL.

The HPSC fucking fell over themselves to legitimatize the entire operation. They knew they were utterly fucked if they didn’t. These kids already had murals being painted of their faces in other fucking countries. There was a little old lady in Kyoto livestreaming herself working overtime to embroider Iida’s face onto a cushion because that lovely young man saved her darling granddaughter from *checks notes* horrible and painful death directly caused by the failings of the current HPSC administration. There were multiple trending posts online agreeing to fucking riot if those kids got in trouble for this.

Every single actual hero in the immediate vicinity of this disaster had responded to fight a villain who wasn’t actually attacking anyone. And then they fucking lost. They publicly broadcast a message saying Good Luck Champs Because We’re Not Going To Save You. It was an actual PR nightmare that they had a bare chance of salvaging if they just latched onto these kids like an aggressive parasite and that is exactly what they did.

They totally knew. Actually, it was a joint operation coordinated by and between UA and and the HPSC. Why would the kids be in trouble?? They had responded because the HPSC told them to.

UA gave it a week of dead silence and then issued a short statement praising the bravery of their students in a recent HPSC approved mission, and then they never said another word about it. They didn’t have any choice but to go along with the HPSC’s story. If they contradicted them, all of class 2-a would find their licenses pulled by the end of the day, and lord knows they wouldn’t wait for the court of public opinion to work its magic and would just all go out and become fucking vigilantes, because why not. Aizawa has aged 100 years since he got this class. Every single day he thinks of how it was a 50/50 shot between him and Vlad.

No one in the class is fully aware of just how famous they were in the immediate aftermath, because the school bent over backwards to try and shield them from it as much as possible. Like, they have an idea, but none of them saw the full explosion firsthand because of just how hard the school worked to keep it from them. Aizawa confiscated the internet router and told them it was punishment for whatever the fuck they did to the buses (thank god Mirio was just as crazy as them because they were NOT GOOD at hotwiring cars) but really it was to try and insulate them from it a little bit. Like. Japan’s Imperial Family wanted to do an official visit. The White House offered to host them. They received interview requests from every major talk show on the planet. Buzzfeed wanted to do a puppy interview with them.

Right now, Aizawa’s terrified for Midoriya’s graduation, but in the aftermath of that, he was breathing into a paper bag about all of them. Society had sort of latched onto them like they were the last life raft on the titanic. All for One was back, and All Might wasn’t, and the heroes had publicly broadcast a message saying they were useless, but don’t fucking worry, fifteen year old Iida Tenya is on the case. Society will be upheld by Kaminari Denki, currently viral for driving a real life city ambulance one hundred miles per hour down the street while screaming “WEE WOO BITCH.” And don’t forget the pillar that will be Mina Ashido, who rushed over to him earlier that day to show him her extra sparkly pink nails. And if you have a major fight that needs to be won? Don’t fucking worry, just send out bone-breaking boy wonder Midoriya Izuku and his equally reckless brother Toogata Mirio, because their dumbasses managed to take down an S-Class villain team that only All Might could defeat the first time around. Don’t worry about the multi week hospitalization they needed after, because that’s an acceptable burden to put on children.

When Aizawa started this job, he promised himself he would never send a student out to die. Some of them would die. But it would be tragedy, not damnation. He’d have given them their best chance. Part of the reason why he made that promise was because he sort of felt like his teacher sent him out set up to die, and it’s only luck that he made it through his first couple of years.

He has gone to the funeral of every single student he has ever had who did not make it. He goes back to their graves every year.

He was fucking petrified after Yokohama that society would push these kids too far too soon. Every single one of his classes before them had gotten the benefit of being practically unknown their first few years. They didn’t have the world talking about them like they were already the top heroes. He was terrified they wouldn’t have the space to learn and grow when they started.

A lot of teachers would have tried to mine the notoriety of Yokohama to hard launch their students’ careers. Aizawa told Nedzu point blank that he would quit tomorrow if he did not help him quash this thing as much as possible, and nedzu agreed.

This world killed its real heroes. It sucked them dry and left them like All Might, and he just needed fucking time. He needed fucking time to let them be kids and maybe they’d survive.

Izuku ended up being the one who escaped the aftermath of everything the least. His Quirk was too much like All Might’s for the world to let go of him easily.

And then Stain got fucking dogpiled by idaten in the aftermath of the Tartarus prison break and implied he considered Izuku the only true hero in the absence of all might and everyone started asking super inconvenient questions like “how does stain even know you exist” and “no really he called you by your actual legal name how does he even know that” and it just. It didn’t help things. Izuku’s suffering.

So yeah. There was just this absolute collision of a total lack of faith in current heroes combined with a huge swell of public trust in class 2-a that led us to being in the landscape we are now. All of the currently licensed heroes said that they wouldn’t be there to save the public, and then Class 2-A immediately hit back that they would be there. Actually, they’ll risk everything to be there. They’ll die to protect the public and they’ll risk the entire future they had been trying to build and they will fucking be there to save them.

There’s a lot of people that never forgave the heroes for deserting Yokohama. And there’s even more people who have absolute faith in Izuku and his classmates because they didn’t. That’s why the world is watching them so aggressively. These kids are the most trusted heroes in Japan right now.

I wish I could fit in more about what happened, because I love this backstory so much, but 1) some of it absolutely requires POVs like Endeavors, which we won’t get in pez dispenser debris, 2) there’s no one POV that could tell the full story via flashback and 3) it’d just be too long of a divergence. Like. It really is a whole fic of its own. I’d love to write it one day but I probably won’t have the time

[capesch-arts]

This is probably the second time I've drawn this man. This time I actually have references for his face because he's no longer a 'tater head

Anyways old supervillain go brrr

(the only crime Horikoshi did was NOT making him stay old 🥲)

[drindrak]

gotta say, pretty funny to see afo failing so hard he tries his final gambit against a literal child lmao

[villainsandvictimsalliance]

Horikoshi giving hero tropes to the villains is probably my favorite part of bnha.

He presented us with a nervous wreck of a boy at the beginning of the manga. Look, he seemed to say, isn't he creepy? isn't he evil? He met Tomura in his most lanky form. Malnourished, neglected, real dead hands all over his body and blunt nails digging mercilessly in his skin.

Sure, the story paints him as a real villain. He is there to kill kids, after all. He wants to kill the light of the hero society, to spread violence and hatred all around. He's also very very suspicious. You get that feeling that there's more to the story. It's in the way he acts, his desperation. He looks sick. What is he making him so? What is his story?

Tomura is a loser. A failure since the beginning, if you follow the narrative. Characters like Stain, Overhaul and Redestro point it out: Tomura isn't the best strategist per se, they can't understand his reasons to do what he does, there's something wrong with him in villain terms.

That's when the brain starts to pick up the signals and plants the doubt. Many people don't notice it, but something in the story gives away that he is a very special type of villain.

We see him alone in his dark messy room, staring at a screen. We see him drinking alone in a bar as he sits on his misery. Over and over, we see that evil boy and his burdened stance. Only Kurogiri is there. His master only talks to him through some radio. He doesn't mention anyone else. No one else seems to live in that bar but Kurogiri and him.

Back then, when Tomura was all about AFO and All Might and no one else, he felt hollow. Rotten.

We first saw him approach someone for help and some company after the first LOV members were introduced. We meet Toga and Dabi, then Tomura goes to find Deku. Is he still creepy? Yes. Is he still evil? Also. We have Giran talking about Tomura with the fondness you reserve for a spoiled child. The way Kurogiri and Giran talk about it, it's more like Tomura needs to make some friends. He's not used to it, so he's being rude to them.

He's a chosen one reluctant to make friends, since he's used to doing things on his own— or at least with people he didn't care about. Next time we see him, his telling Kurogiri that he doesn't want them to die, he wouldn't sacrifice them for a goal and he actually wants them to succeed. He talks like a leader, he considers them important.

When they show us the LOV around Tomura as he talks to a kidnapped Bakugo, there's something in there already. How they worry when Bakugo hits Tomura and knocks the hand out of his face. They humanize Tomura, which is a lot to say when AFO did everything he could to dehumanize him. They make Tomura be more mature, more responsible and more capable. While AFO paints Tomura as a foolish child that cannot get things right until he's guided there, the LOV trusts Tomura to take care of himself and guide them.

That's when the hero tropes with villains started.

A quick list from the top of my head:

Twice overcame his trauma mid-battle in order to save Toga and then the LOV.

Tomura was tempted by Overhaul to betray the LOV in exchange for power. He pretended to agree, only to backstab Overhaul because Tomura would never forgive those who hurt his friends and would never betray the LOV.

Magne went to attack Overhaul for offending her and her friends, defending their ideals and their right to exist 'til death.

Mr. Compress took the leading role in many dangerous situations to assure that the LOV would get their win, but also to assure they'd make it out alive.

Tomura would forgive people not on his behalf, but for the benefit of the LOV.

Giran refused to sell any info about the LOV and laughed in his captors face because he was not so important to them. Turns out he was bluffing about it being all business, since we know from Twice's flashback that he did it also for the fondness he felt towards the LOV and the LOV went there to rescue him.

The LOV rushing through a battlefield the size of a city while desperately trying to find a way to save Tomura.

Twice and Mr. Compress refusing to leave Tomura fighting Gigantomachia alone and taking the burden of his training with him.

Dabi doing all he could to save Twice and snapping when he realized Twice was dead.

Mr. Compress worried about Toga and her solo mission.

Spinner telling Toga that she needs to come back safe and sound to them.

Tomura refusing to die or give up while the LOV still needs him (to be a hero).

Twice already dead and still moving because he needed to save Toga.

The entire LOV refusing to even consider defeat because they blindly believe that there is no way Tomura can lose.

And there's so much more...

The LOV made Tomura act heroic. They gave him a reason to want to save and protect, instead of just wanting to destroy.

The power of friendship but for evil.

Isn't it the best thing ever?

[gentrychild]

BNHA 407 : AFO is a lying liar who lies

Today is a very sad day because I am about to do something I genuinely dislike: I am about to defend All for One. In order to cope, I shall make fun of him the whole time.

AFO and Yoichi's backstory is finally out, with AFO narrating it, and there are two possibilities: he is either completely lying about it (boring) or he is lying a little about it (very in-character for him) because he is also lying to himself.

Lie number 1: AFO was born evil.

The narrator (AFO, seriously, it's AFO) says things such as "The baby drained the lifeforce of both his mom and his brother.", "It was born an arrogant baby." and such but it really reads at AFO villifying himself to add to his own legend.

That's what babies do. Children, before they're born, kinda have to take their strength from their mother. That's why pregnant people aren't supposed to do anything taxing.

AFO and Yoichi's mother didn't die because baby AFO drained her like a vampire. She died because she was a homeless woman who had access to nothing and had to go in labor alone.

Same thing here: during twin birth, a twin is often bigger than the other (well, probably not to extent of Yoichi and AFO, but you get my point).

Lie number 2: AFO, as a demon baby, is shown killing for no reason, just because he can.

(First slaughter by Baby AFO shown in that chapter.)

There are two things that are strange in this scene (apart from... you know.... a baby murdering people...)

AFO had no reason to go after them because they don't have any quirks to steal.

It makes no sense for someone to attack a group of people with nothing to gain. I doubt that's the kind of behavior you have when you're in survival mode as you're barely surviving in the street.

However, a previous panel points at some context we might be missing.

The same panel that indicates that those guys don't have a quirk to steal also shows that they are wiling to do some "preventive attack" on a bunch of quirked people who might or might not be those who assaulted a protest group (reminder that in this context, that protest group are protesting the rights for quirked people to exist).

I could be wrong but odds are that they did something to be qualified as a threat to All for One and we are missing the additional context.

(Second slaughter by Baby AFO shown in that chapter.)

Now, the poor souls who just got absolutely wrecked by a toddler wearing what I suspect to be a garbage bag have quirks, which makes more sense than the previous scene.

However (and thank you for @aimportantdragoncollector for pointing that out to me), we also have this panel.)

Yoichi is shown with bruises on his face and might be broken teeth.

Probably because those same people AFO is shown killing attacked him.

Lie number 3: AFO never loved Yoichi because he can't love, he just considered that he was his. That's all. Nothing more.

(Just... Just ignore the rats.)

AFO didn't care about Yoichi so much that the very conscious first act of his life might have been to swim a river upstream while dragging his brother above the surface with what must have been the deathgrip of all deathgrip.

AFO didn't care about his brother so much that Yoichi was fed and clothed by an AFO who was malnourished enough for his ribs to show and who wore what's basically an improvised toga.

But he just keeps sacrificing what little he has for someone he doesn't care about one bit, that's just his first possession. Nothing more.

Okay, I am going to be clear: anyone who sees that panel and thinks that it's the proof AFO didn't like his brother... You just outed yourself as an only child.

Siblings punt each other for no reason. (There is a reason why the first recorded murderer was an older sibling.) In this case, the reason was Yoichi throwing a can at him.

AFO: "You're not inviting me to a fun activity? You're leaving me out, in the cold, unable to partake in brother bonding activity? Oh, vault for Little Brother! Vault for Little Brother for one thousand years!"

AFO: "Nevermind, we're reading together. All is well, I guess."

Lie number 3: AFO killed the glowing baby for power, because he could, or because the Glowing Baby didn't deserve it

Still laughing about AFO's flawless reasoning... "Comic books heroes' life suck. Better to be a villain. I already did the whole struggle thing, I want an easy life."

AFO killed the glowing baby because he was jealous. It's as simple as that. The glowing baby was considered the first official quirked individual (even though it's not true), was protected by his family (if I remember correctly, the mother of quirks was his mom) while AFO and Yoichi had no one but each other (EDIT: I was wrong, the Mother of Quirks was Destro's mother. thanks to the people in the tags), and had a ton of people following him (while, for some strange reason, people start running away screaming when AFO shows his quirk... What a mystery...).

The last panel was basically AFO saying "I want to be loved' but not having the frame of reference to even know what love is.

In conclusion...

While AFO is definitely a bad guy and a monster, he didn't begin his existence as one. He just wants people to believe that. Because his pride and his ego can't allow him to admit that he lived a childhood full of horrible trauma where he was a victim abandoned by society (to an even greater extent than the LOV) or he would probably combust out of rage and mortification.

Ergo facto, AFO is a lying liar who lies, especially to himself.

[codenamesazanka]

What Deku doesn't understand is that the “League of Villains” encapsulates exactly who Tenko - the Crying Child Deku was so adamant about saving - is. He thinks reaching out a hand, smashing that hatred, and saving Tenko means getting Tenko to abandon the League. He is completely wrong - and he would've realized this if he just talked to Shigaraki in all the time he fought against Shigaraki. And listened to what Tenko said in Chapter 418.

The League of Villains is the group Shigaraki Tomura created in order to wreck shit and kill All Might and bring down Hero Society. Shigaraki picked the name and picked the purpose and picked its members and he leads them towards the apocalypse—

—and this is also the group of outcasts that are his comrades and friends; that he gathered and created a place for, where they can be themselves in a society that ruthlessly denied them that. He accepted Twice without care for his insanity and inability to use his quirk, never pushed Twice to do more than he was able to. He accepted Spinner despite being a Stain fanboy and having a weak, nearly useless quirk, and promised him the destruction of the world that hurt him; for all of League. When Toga was pushed by the other members to choose a Villain name despite wanting to live as herself, as Toga Himiko, Shigaraki spoke up in indirect defense of her choice, providing himself as an example of someone who didn't use a Villain name, and who can override the boss' words? Dabi was allowed to come and go as he pleased, and although he was the most aloof member, by the end, he was declaring the world burn for "our" sake - plural; the League's. Mr. Compress believed in Shigaraki enough to entrust an ancestor's dream and family legacy to him; when surrounded by Heroes at Jaku, he was willing to die to save Shigaraki, to let him escape.

The League is a collection of people that Shigaraki cares for - that he saved. That was always the surest sign that ‘Tenko’, sweet and kind and hero-aspiring boy, was alive inside.

Without the League, without having seen the time Shigaraki spent with the League, a reader can just write off Shigaraki and say there’s nothing left in there worth saving. The League is literally the evidence for Tenko have still existed and that Shigaraki was "worth" saving, long before we ever saw ‘Inner Tenko’.

But Deku doesn't understand that.

To go further: outside of the League, Shigaraki still had his distorted but undeniable kindness and fairness. I've spoke about it before, and sorry for repeating myself, but even towards his Villain enemies, he gives them consideration: Shigaraki left Overhaul crippled, but 100 chapters later, he's still continuing Overhaul's work - the quirk erasing bullets - and even laments that Overhaul would be disappointed when Shigaraki sees some of the bullets destroyed. All For One at Jaku tries to take over his body, at the time seemingly only a phantom voice in his head, but Shigaraki still acknowledges that he's grateful AFO took him in. It's only when AFO oversteps that again and again, taking possession of his body, that Shigaraki would tear the AFO vestige from inside out and mock him when the opportunity arises.

And there's ReDestro, and the importance of the ending of MVA. RD and his army picks a fight with Shigaraki - something that Shigaraki explicitly points out; the blame for what happened to Deika is on largely them. RD challenged Shigaraki and the League; blackmailed them, kidnapped their broker, and attacked their pitiful 6-member team with a town-sized militia; insulted Shigaraki, destroyed The Hands, tried to kill him. Shigaraki had every reason to just dust RD while the man was sitting there bleeding out with his legs cut off. Just finish him off without even giving the guy last words. It was more than fair.

But Shigaraki didn't. He went and talked to RD. To mock him for picking this fight, but it was still a talk. And when RD acknowledge his defeat and kowtowed, Shigaraki let him live. Took over his army and resources, but RD was still alive and even made lieutenant.

Without this - if Shigaraki had just dusted RD after defeating him - we would have only seen Shigaraki as a conquerer and not someone who can be reasoned with. He would just be AFO with different minions. And Shigaraki wasn't.

He can be brutal, and he seems like he's destroying for evil fun; but Shigaraki has his compassion and justice. A Villainous Hero for the Villains. It's why he destroys; it's why he doesn't regret his actions, why he wishes good luck to Deku to continue it, even after Deku smashed his core of anger and hatred. Shigaraki saved his League, and he refuses to disavow doing so. Because he shouldn't.

And Deku just doesn't understand that.

[lacunammmm]

the dark deku arc is where he should have failed the most! what’s the point of it if not to show where he went wrong?

The author can't help himself. Deku has to be really cool, even at his lowest point. One of the reasons I like MHA is because when you ask "what if?" it creates some excellent answers. A textbook story beat for when the hero leaves his friends behind to keep them safe is just for the bad guy to target his friends. AFO is notorious for going after people's loved ones. Attacking Deku a lot himself is a good strategy, but doing both is great. Imagine if the final war arc happened mid Dark Deku arc when AFO pulls the trigger on invading UA with the League by having Aoyama sabotage all of the security and the anti League measures they had in place. The heroes get caught entirely with their pants down, not even having seriously entertained the idea of there being a spy in the first place. Deku shows up to find the place is getting wrecked and realizes that "Hey, maybe wandering off from the place that counted on me as its greatest defender wasn't a good idea!" Izuku sees then that the "assassins" were never meant to actually take him down: just distract him from the invasion that would take out his allies and support base which he foolishly abandoned. He only knew this was happening because UA happened to be in the range of his danger sense. Or you could go further. What if it wasn't? What if AFO, like the genius the story pretends he is, watched Deku during the Dark Hero Arc and he plotted? How Far exactly is Danger Sense's range? What does it detect? How likely is Deku to follow it if he's already preoccupied? How sensitive is it? Here's a ham fisted experiment. Say you had some boys kidnap a civilian and tie them up on the ground, then they sit and wait and watch. If Deku shows up, they'll blast on him with guns + their long range quirks. For every 15 minutes Deku doesn't show up, they fire a non lethal attack into the civilian to cause them pain. They'll kill the civilian after an hour and repeat this process with another captured civilian. Can Danger Sense detect the fact that this is a trap? Does the threat of loss of life of the civilian send Deku rushing in to help? AFO doesn't know the rules of Danger Sense like we do, but with tactics like these, he'd learn them. And Deku doesn't exactly have the luxury of NOT showing up to save people. AFO doesn't care about any of the pawns he sends at Deku and each provides an extra data point to figure out how his abilities work. The most basic application of this knowledge? Leading Deku further and further away from UA and into another city where he believes AFO to be hiding.

Imagine a universe where the Dark Deku arc ends with an angry group of UA kids finding him. He tells them to go away and back to safety because he left to keep them safe. He remarks about how there's only 10 of them there, so clearly not everyone was committed to bringing him back. Only for them to explain that actually, everyone else is dead. UA has fallen, turned to dust by Tomura's power. The people here are all that's left of Japan's defenses. The only pro heroes left are people who either quit before or weren't at UA when it got dusted. Izuku is absolutely gutted inside. Funnily enough, Aoyama is also with them. The guy helped destroy UA and he's still working for AFO. He joins the underground guerilla force Deku forms with Gentle Criminal and Nagant and acts as a mole even there. The reveal of Aoyama being the traitor comes when AFO enters their base with his goons and nomu and reveals who his little "Friend" was.

Do you remember when Ojiro asked Aoyama what he'd have done if he wasn't discovered, but Aoyama wasn't forced to answer that? The answer in this universe, is continue to spy and put his life and his family's life first.

The hero victory in the final war arc was a miracle that entirely hinged on Aoyama getting all the villains into one spot, Shinso being able to fool AFO and Monoma having Kurogiri's power. Remove one of those elements and it all collapses. It's fun to think about, MHA universes where the heroes don't get as much plot armor.

[itsnothingofinterest]

You know I’ve been finding the recent suggestion that is Tomura comes back, he’d take the name Tenko Shimura, somewhat perplexing. Because I have to ask, like, why would he?

To distance himself from his villainy? Probably not, he never really got any reason to think he was wrong or to regret what he did; my guy went out thinking he was doing all he could to save the villains and was never really fought on that or given the impression he should've done something else.

To distance himself from AFO’s influence maybe? That seems backwards then. While we can’t prove he named Tenko the way he did Tomura, AFO’s fingerprints are otherwise all over his early years. Dude orchestrated his family life, his social life, his dreams, his quirk, his very birth! At least as Tomura, he had time as just himself.

Really, his time with the League is pretty much all he had to hold onto now that AFO has undermined the entire rest of his identity (with Deku's help). If he wants to distance himself from AFO's influence, then he has nothing left but the League. And they know him as Shigaraki Tomura.

Eh, maybe it wouldn’t matter as long as he’s brought back and that one aspect of this train wreck ending salvaged, need to count our blessings and all. But while we're still discussing it as a hypothetical, I just don’t get the reasoning behind this hypothetical decision.

[sadlittleratboy]

So I actually enjoy the AFO gave Tomura his quirk plot, mainly because I foresaw it ages ago and felt like the story built up to it fairly well, but I wanted it to be handled like the ending of Mama. I don't know how well known this 2013 (seemingly) forgotten horror film is, but I LOVED how they handled the ending.

The plot is basically the ghost, Mama, raised two little girls whose father brought them to her cabin to kill after killing her mother. She disposes of the dad and takes care of the girls for years until the dad's brother finds them and brings them back to his home to take care of alongside his girlfriend. Mama haunts them, etc.

Near the end of the movie they reunite Mama with her baby, who she lost when she fell to her death, in an attempt to get her to leave the girls alone. Mama cradles the body for a moment, looking lovingly down at what is left of her baby, and then suddenly tosses the remains of her child behind her to keep coming after the children she adopted. Mama chose to keep coming for her living daughters. In the end, one daughter chooses to stay with the brother and his gf, and the other chooses to leave with mama. It made me cry.

I wanted Shigaraki to feel his loss, to hate AFO and honestly? To wreck his ass because he deserves it. Then I wanted his tossing the baby behind him moment. The moment when he realizes that yeah, he didn't have to become this, but the pain he felt was real, and his points still stand. He still needs to be a hero for the villains. I want him to turn to Izuku and say "this changes nothing". Maybe he even thanks Deku for helping to free him of AFOs shackles before going back to their fight. I want Deku to have to address his points, to see that this is more than AFO (who is a prima donna honestly, like everything is NOT about you).

Honestly I think there's a chance we'll still get this, but I'm worried I'll be disappointed 😅

Anyway, my thoughts at AFO coming back are literally just:

[musicfeedsmysoul12]

I don't believe the hpsc sending hawks to butter up izuku for persocoms would result in much besides hawks letting some of the more outgoing persocoms use his feathers as air surfboards, signing a couple autographs for some students who happen to catch him on campus, inadvertently make mezu more suspicious of the hosc then usual, and leave the thought "damn this kid treats his robot buddies with more respect and care then my handlers give me" to ferment in the back of his mind next to "why don't the cops bother trying to solve crime anymore?" And "what happened woth lady nagant". He might get a sweet little robobird from ozuku after helping expose the hpsc after the war

You're not wrong. I mean, I can easily see sort of a mentor/big brother thing happening since Hawks would want to foster it.

We as a fandom woobify Hawks a lot, but it takes a LOT for him to break away from the HPSC in canon, so I can see him shoving the thoughts aside as long as possible, which does lead to Nezu digging further and further into the HPSC because he would.

I do think Hawks eventually realizes how fucked things are, but it's like halfway through the 'War' Arc (which is mostly just Shigaraki and the MLA wrecking shit on opposite sides since without AFO in Shiggy's head he isn't charming enough to woo them) not right away.

[shih-coulda-had-it]

I’ve lied, I actually do have some thoughts about a Redwall-esque AU. I have many thoughts. wc: ~640

//

AFO and Yoichi are albino weasels. AFO leads a gang of ne’er-do-wells, raiding Mossflower Woods and/or Salamandastron. Yoichi wants out of the gang, but given that a significant number just splintered (this is Kudou and Bruce’s rebel faction), AFO is keeping Yoichi under obsessive lock and key…

Until Kudou (a fox) and Bruce (a sea otter) lead a raid and find Yoichi. They kidnap him. Despite a rocky beginning, they come to an agreement that AFO ought to be stopped. But the rebel faction isn’t enough, and after it’s clear that AFO is rampaging in order to get Yoichi back, the first three members of OFA (they’ve rebranded the rebel faction) flee...

And encounter Hikage, a solitary wildcat. Hikage looks extremely intimidating, but he’s easily spooked. For whatever reason (Bruce threatens him), Hikage takes them to Salamandastron where Daigoro (he’s a badger. I don’t know what you were expecting) rules. Everyone looks sideways at how Hikage and Daigoro interact. If there was ever a star-crossed cross-species romance…

Daigoro, being a badger of Salamandastron, agrees to lend martial aid to OFA’s cause. But it’s not enough to simply wreck AFO’s gang/headquarters, and Yoichi’s soft heart won’t let Kudou and Bruce (and Daigoro) commit to scorched-earth tactics. Fortunately! Daigoro's hosting a little red squirrel from Redwall Abbey, En!

En can't really speak for Redwall, but he can promise to lead them to the Abbey so they can talk with... honestly, whoever's in charge over there... It's probably Nedzu. Hikage stays behind in Salamandastron because much of Redwall's population would abandon ship if a wildcat + a fox + a white-furred weasel strolled up to the door. Daigoro won't let them go alone, though.

He sends two hares with them: Nana and Sorahiko. They are, separately, fantastic at their jobs and keeping it professional and courteous. They are, together, infuriating. The sparring sessions from Salamandastron back to Redwall are the stuff of legends. This merry band is traveling through the countryside, bickering and bantering, when they stumble across a ruined home and an orphaned mouse.

They intend to entrust Toshinori to the Abbey, but Toshinori bonds with Nana and Sorahiko rapidly, and the little scrapper wants to stay with OFA. Anyways, so OFA rocks up to Redwall Abbey, and what do they get caught up in? A riddle!

Much like I am, practically none of the present members of OFA are inclined to solve riddles. Fortunately, there is an extremely precocious Dibbun who's been on the case: Izuku (he's also a mouse). Izuku, for reasons of being Baby, is not allowed back to the trip to Salamandastron, but he is integral to OFA unearthing star-metal (meteorite).

The trip back to Salamandastron is not without trouble, however. AFO's gotten word about this rebranded rebel faction, and the white weasel that leads them (Yoichi: WHY AM I BEING CALLED OUT, I LITERALLY CALL KUDOU 'LEADER'), and his gang ambushes them. They recapture Yoichi, give Kudou the scar on his face, and then... I don't know. Injuries for all, even Toshinori! Coin-flip on whether AFO kidnaps Sorahiko, too.

Everyone (save for Yoichi and probably Sorahiko) limps back to Salamandastron. Daigoro forges weapons and various pieces of armor; Hikage absolutely does not want to be involved in this final battle, but he's the most familiar with Mossflower Woods, and Daigoro sweet-talks him into a scouting mission.

Nobody wants Toshinori to go with them to the Woods. He may not be as Baby as Izuku, but he's like, Just-Graduated Baby. En volunteers to babysit at Salamandastron (he is NOT a warrior like the rest of them!!), but Hikage raises a fuss about not being one either, so Daigoro throws his paws into the air and says, "We're all going! I'll take a reserve guard from the Long Patrol, and that's it! We're all going!!"

Cue final battle.

[blackberreh-art]

first off!! your toshi fangs and the way you do his hair is incredible and i love love love it! second off....AFO/AM shipping has given me brainrot and now i just need AFO wrecking toshi. absolute smithereens. 'get him pregnant' levels of destroying him.

Thank you!!!!!

Boy do I have a spinoff to Old Man Yaoi AU for you!!

[princess-of-the-corner]

You mentioned Chloe getting Eri away from Overhaul, and I'm just picturing Chloe kneecaping Overhaul with a shotgun (likely stolen from the police because it's really hard for civilians to acquire real guns in Japan) before grabbing Eri and just GTFO.

firstly, my brain went 'Ah yes AfO and Yoichi's younger sibling: GTFO'

Secondly: Chloé clearly got the gun from Snipe.

Thirdly: she doesn't go full 'wreck him' because this is the original scene with Izuku and Mirio but with Chloé added in so while she does know Overhaul deserves to be kneecapped, she can't explain to her companions /why/ so she just scoops Eri up and is like "Well this child clearly needs medical attention and you're shady af so if you're really her legal guardian you will have no problem picking her up at the hospital!' and fuckign BOOKS IT

[mettywiththenotes]

Why do people refer to the fusion at the UA battle and war arc as Tomura?

"I can't believe Tomura killed Bakugou" but he didn't though. That was AFO. AFO possessed his body and then stabbed and killed Bakugou

Like maybe you could say it was both of them at UA, they were a mix of each other at the time, but Tomura was not the only one wrecking shit from in there

Even Izuku gets it right, telling AFO to shut up in the war arc, addressing AFO in the UA battle, yet the fandom seems to just ignore this