#horikoshi I will find you

[cherrytenko]

I’m not kidding if that’s how shiggy’s story ends, I’m gonna be so let down. He could’ve done so much more y’know??? Like… r you telling me he suffered all that time just for his ending to be *****. Like, it seems to be a trend with the villains that their ending is to just *** as if that’s fair and disappointingly predictable

[haine-kleine]

If Dabi's confrontation with Enji didn't happen after Shouto put him out with Phosphor, his condition wouldn't be so bad he has to be on life support, with only months left to live after the battle.

If Bakugou didn't attack Kurogiri, he would have saved Shigaraki from Deku, the hero who set out to save Shigaraki.

If Ochako didn't engage with Toga, she wouldn't have killed herself by giving Ochako all of her blood.

Hawks killed Twice, stabbing him in the back despite Dabi doing everything he could to save Twice's life.

The heroes were the ones who put Kurogiri in the hospital despite knowing full well the League would be getting him back, endangering the lives of civilians.

[stillness-in-green]

Finding Fascism in My Hero Academia (COMPLETE)

The final part (and the longest, thanks to an extended ramble about language usage on the last point) is now public on the Patreon! Find the links to all parts below, or hit the jump to read a final round of excerpts, including the final tally and a bit from the conclusion:

PART ONE PART TWO PART THREE PART FOUR (<- New!)

Point 12: Machismo and weaponry.

The major exception to the rejection of modernism—fascists are boys who love their toys.  Looking for ways to carry over the national-scale preoccupations with strength and warfare, these values are recreated on the smaller and more personal scale via an obsession with masculinity, virility, and martial prowess.  This leads to a disdain for femininity (fascism is frequently patriarchal) as well as non-standard sexual habits (chastity, homosexuality, etc.).  The constipation about sex also leads to a lot of that energy spilling over/being displaced into the fascination with weaponry, giving the relationship of the fascist to his weapon(s) a sexual charge.

Meta-Narrative: It’s probably the case that a solid majority of Shonen Jump manga are a little (and sometimes a lot) dysfunctional about women and sexuality, and if MHA is better than some of them, well, it’s no great accomplishment to be less sexist than Death Note.  While I don’t think Horikoshi intends to be disdainful of women or femininity, the pattern of the work is clear in terms of the attention and effectiveness MHA’s women are allowed to enjoy.

Meanwhile, the story pokes fun at Deku’s idea of romance as being ill-informed, but its own most overt engagement with the fact of human sexuality really only comes in one flavor: predatory.  While it’s treated with different levels of seriousness—we might posit a spectrum between Mineta and Toga, with Midnight holding down the middle—the story is, by and large, totally at sea on how to depict healthy, reciprocal sexuality, so it either turns it into a joke (Mineta, Midnight), makes it terrifying (Toga, also Midnight), or buries it (Ochaco’s repression plotline, throwaway nods to the romantic entanglements of non-Class A characters).  As was much joked about on Twitter, the relationship that provides the main romantic throughline of the entire series concludes with a dap-style handshake!

—(…)—

Point 13: Selective populism./Delegitimization of parliamentary government.

Individuals within fascism have no rights and no ability to exercise political will.  They can only act as a theatrical monolith; the Leader interprets the “will of the people” and any people/institutions who disagree with the Leader are targeted for failing to represent said will.  Leads to hostility towards elected/representative groups as being corrupt or illegitimate.  For those in the U.S., consider every attack ad you see during election season about how this or that politician is a slave to the “swamp” and not what their constituency “wants” or “needs”; even more prominently, consider Donald Trump’s constant attacks on the legitimacy of any election or lawsuit he loses.

MLA: There are definitely shades of it—the MLA certainly doesn’t operate as a democracy!—but it’s not “populism” as defined by Eco because no one is really pretending to speak “for the people.”  Rather, they’re all pretty clear on following the will of one specific person, that being the great Destro (as interpreted by his descendant); Destro’s will does represent an ideal future for “the people,” but Re-Destro makes no pretenses of speaking for the people as a collective right now.  While we could make some attempts to tie their ideal of Liberation to selective populism—would their talk of people being free to use their meta-abilities to become their truest selves make room for people whose goals and dreams have nothing to do with their meta-abilities at all?—evidence from the canon is conflicting.

(...)

As to the delegitimization of parliamentary governments, well, Trumpet is the parliamentary elephant in the room.  The PLF’s plan per Hawks is to at least undermine the legitimate government, though it’s unclear whether “storm the political world” means carrying out some sort of populist coup or just using the tidal wave of changed public opinion to sweep the next election.  In Eco’s definition, the whole gist of this point is stripping the public at large of any ability to meaningfully self-govern, both by depriving them of their right to make their voice heard politically and by undermining the public trust in fairly elected government representatives.  It’s hard to gauge the MLA or Heroes on this because the story skittishly avoids depicting representative government of any kind.

—(…)—

Point 14: Newspeak.

From the Orwell concept, Ur-Fascism limits the vocabulary and syntax of its members, preferring hot button code words and simplistic rhetoric, thus making complex thought and critical reasoning both difficult and inherently suspect.  Commonly cited examples are Orwell’s IngSoc and the huge amount of Nazi terminology that—like IngSoc—has the explicit intent of obscuring the meaning of words, especially in ways that downplay the severity or atrocity they’re being used to describe.  I recently saw the ever-popular “unalive” described in this way as well; though words like that began as a way to allow people to discuss serious topics in spaces that are unfriendly to such discussion, popularizing them beyond such spaces has the effect of diminishing the seriousness of the realities the words describe.

Team Hero: (...) Nearly as foundational as Hero and Villain, there’s the term for the setting’s superpowers themselves—originally meta-abilities, now quirks.  In-universe, the change came about specifically as a way for a struggling government to make something many people still saw as unacceptable, acceptable.  This is an issue particularly because the term chosen was used to justify legislation that directly opposed the spirit of that same term.  A word intended to describe meta-abilities as just another aspect of a person, one they should be able to live with freely, was instead used to help pass laws restricting their use.  Further, a very descriptive word for a phenomenon that still had not reached popular acceptance was replaced with a cuter, more familiar, more casual word that totally sacrificed descriptiveness in favor of attempting to force a top-down reframing of that phenomenon.

—(…)—

FINAL SCORES: MLA 4.5 | Team Hero 4 | Meta-Narrative 6.5

Conclusion: The aspects of the Meta-Liberation Army that obviously say “fascist” to the audience—the militancy, the contempt for the weak, the willingness to murder people who disagree with them—are all very easy to recognize and, moreover, recognize as Bad.  Conversely, the fascistic traits of the Heroes—and they hit many of the same ones as the MLA!—are much less visible.  This is in large part due to the meta-narrative: where its sympathies lie and how it guides the reader’s expectations, especially readers who are not used to applying this sort of Doylist scrutiny to their media intake.

For example, I said when talking about the “Action for action’s sake” criterion that its particular brand of anti-intellectualism is relatively common in shounen comics.  Sure, it’s nice and obvious that anti-intellectualism is Bad when it takes the form of Scarecrow telling the mob not to collect themselves, but Scarecrow’s words, functionally speaking, are little different than All Might praising Deku’s brainless, unthinking Heroic Instincts—if anything, I’d say All Might is worse!  The difference is in how the story frames them: Scarecrow is somehow both raving zealot and calculating bad faith actor, and he winds up arrested and forgotten about, while Deku follows All Might’s encouragement all the way to a climax in which he murders Shigaraki for lack of any effort put into thinking about how to save him, and this act of “heroism” changes both the weather and the world.

———

Read the rest here!

Thanks for reading along with these, everyone - or for reading it now, if you were holding off until the whole thing was available! If you enjoyed it and would like to support me in further endeavors like this one, my only current paid tier is only $3, or you can drop something over in my ko-fi. (And to the kind strangers who have done the latter over the last few weeks, thank you very much for your kindness and support!)

[obsessive-dumpling]

Is it just me or can you see each other's names on their lips?

"Kacchan"

"Izuku"

[xoxcrushedstars]

I AM NOT HAVING IT

[yonkokraven]

Writing a fanfic (not fix-it) makes me realize how wasted the concept of the Nomu is.

The fandom doesn't take into account the infinite possibilities they can have. Yes, they are corpses assembled with quirks and bioengineering, but they are alive as new entities and limited to the orders of Shigaraki and AFO.

The higher the quality and category of a Nomu, the better their reasoning ability is, literally there they have the next stable step of humanity and very possibly the solution to the growing problem of the singularity of quirks.

And Horikoshi only used them 6 or 7 times as the league slaves and the Fandom either treats them like pets or as a direct bridge to angst or shipping.

[call-me-copycat]

I just need to take a word and say just how much My Hero Academia means to me

I can't believe it's been 10 years, I remember practically growing up with it, so it's always been a large influence on my life (〃´∀`)

It's how I met the majority of my friends here, and it's what kept me drawing and writing (and what influenced me to want to become a mangaka sometime in the future ˶˃ᴗ˂˶)

I know it's dying down now that it's ending, along with various complaints about the current plot or the animation, but I will always be biased in a way since I can't find it in myself to dislike it despite (´∀｀)

It's always and will always be my favorite anime, happy 10 years MHA! ٩(ˊᗜˋ*)و

They created a special short film for this, and it honestly only drills in the love I have for this show

Just wanted to share the link to the film, it's really touching and I wanted to spread the word

その先へ！ プラスウルトラ、僕のヒーローアカデミア！(๑•̀ㅂ•́)و✧

@tired-teacher-blog

@geekandafreak

[gece-misin-nesin]

bnha au except the league is a theatre troupe. they all have the same backstories as canon.

[grimalkinmessor]

The way that I—

[hellohellowelcome]

Anyways Katsuki taking inspo from Shoto's foodie era and getting really serious about cooking and, idk, getting his life together bc it didn't end at 17 when he bled out on a battlefield thinking about his childhood friend

[hydrasaura]

when i said that mha ripped off naruto (which i said only to piss off mha stans anyway) I didn't mean to sound like i was praising naruto. it was actually more like a sigh of disappointment, a reaction to seeing that all the problems that naruto had as a show transpired trough mha too and i was tired because watching naruto was enough for me but then i realized that my problem actually is that i can no longer stand watching shonen anime and i chose not to tire myself by cringing at the repetitive tropes and cliches anymore

[my-queer-o-academia]

hey. hey guys. I’m rewatching my hero rn and.

do you think tomura ever looks at toga and is reminded of- *gunshots*

[satosktty]

if u hate shoko for what she did in 261 but u like geto we need to #haveaconversation

[cyyb3rspace]

m-my collection as of now!

[kaistarus]

Why am I crying on this would have been fine early morning because of the final MHA manga cover reveal?

[call-me-copycat]

Currently reading Ichi The Witch (Spoilers I guess?)

Apparently in this world you have to acquire magic (which they call Majik lol) to become a witch

But in order to acquire this magic (Majik) you need to pass the trials the magic (Majik) gives to you, because apparently they're alive and have to allow someone access to them. Interesting

But I suppose there are also some magics (Majiks) that don't want to be acquired? Because there's one that just overall hates humanity and is unfortunately super powerful as well

The witches (those that passed a trial and acquired a Majik) are hunters apparently, who go on hunts for more Majik

I'm a My Hero Academia fan, so in a way they're sort of like the Pro Heroes of the world (⁠๑⁠¯⁠◡⁠¯⁠๑⁠)

I really like the main character, he's a little ditzy but in an endearing way, he reminds me of a mix between Shirakumo and Luffy lol. He's very intelligent though when it comes to hunting

Still reading now, apparently that huge powerful Majik that didn't want to be acquired defeated a lady who was called "the most powerful witch", and it was weird that the Majik kept saying that since she was a woman she couldn't defeat him

The main character came out of the bushes and saw a giant thing attacking people, and since he seems to really really like hunting things, he got excited and defeated the Majik after it fell into his trap - it was funny seeing the Majik panic and go "wait you can't do that!"

It's that same Majik pictured above earlier by the way

However since he defeated the super powerful Majik, he absorbed it's powers and became a witch - which he had no clue would happen, as he's just a guy who liked to hunt animals on his little mountain

The Majik he acquired turned into a wizard/witch gown and hat on him, and it's very funny seeing him so confused because everyone else is standing there shocked that he took that Majik guy down like it was nothing (that Majik was highly sought after I guess)

Still reading on ( ¯꒳¯ )ᐝ

So it seems that only women were expected to be able to acquire a Majik, and that it was impossible for men to do so because it's never been seen before. However, there's an exception for this because they said if a man happens to run into a Majik that happens to be extraordinarily powerful, who also happens to only accept men, then there's still a 0.001% chance it would be able to take even after all that

So the powerful witch lady told him to be careful right after he absorbed the Majik, and to not say anything that might come off as a chant - right off the bat he says "oh? Like this?" and tries to copy her chant she said when she was fighting that Majik, only for him to accidentally shoot off a massive beam of light lol

I'm really liking Ichi ﾌｯ(⸝⸝⸝≖ᴗ≖​⸝⸝)‧⁺✧*

୨୧┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈୨୧

That's chapter 1! It seems pretty nice already! So far Ichi is my favorite, I really like his character ('∀`)

I can't promise I'll read through the whole thing, but here's my initial thoughts ^⁠_⁠^