#i really appreciate any manga that actually has good female characters but bnha isnt one of them

[todomitoukei]

Please, give us your feelings about BNHA's female characters. Tbh, I just don't care about them? Even Toga-and I consider her the best female characters. Imho it's not that they are all bad... it's just they are so flat and who was Midnight again? The one with thi scandalous outfit that was just plain bad? Like it wasn't even funny it was just a nope for me.

Alright, here are some thoughts I have about the female characters, or rather how Horikoshi writes female characters. Disclaimer: this post is going in all sorts of directions, mainly because there are so many ways in which Horikoshi manages to write awful female characters!

The problem starts with the fact that the bar for female characters (especially in shonen) is very low. For some reason, many if not most stories seem to be unable to include female characters that are more than just fan service or just there to serve the male characters. Despite the fact that bnha does have both fan service and characters that are far too flat, some people in the fandom don’t think so?! Anyway, let’s look at some of the reasons why the female characters in bnha are not as progressive as some people claim they are (under the cut because there is just too much):

Okay so, out of all the female characters I honestly only somewhat care about Toga, Momo, and Jirou, and it’s even difficult to care about those three (minus Toga) because they just aren’t included enough in the story to leave a big enough impression or stand a chance at getting a lot of character development.

Jirou I mainly love because I love the whole rock vibe, so I’m biased with her. I do think she’s a cool character, but I also feel like a lot of her lines/appearances are tied to Kaminari. Although he is supportive of her, there is one thing that bothers me about the scene where he encourages her to perform at the festival, which I will mention a little later. 

I do like that she has an interest outside of hero work (aka music) and that it stems from her parents, who are both musicians. That small scene we got of her parents showing their full, unconditional support when she tells them that she wants to be a hero is a cute scene, and I love that she is later shown to teach some of the girls how to play instruments. The problem is that those scenes are very few, and we already get so few appearances of her (won’t forgive them for not even including her in the newest OVA).

Momo is another good character - she is smart, strong, and brave. She also has the most amount of relevance out of all the female students, especially with her being involved in rescuing Bakugou. Momo has a lot of potential, but there are three main issues that I have with her character though. 

One, her hero outfit. It makes zero sense. You’d think her outfit needs to show skin due to her quirk, but then we get scenes that make it even worse, like during USJ when she created that large sheet through her back, which resulted in her outfit ripping apart and almost exposing her in chapter 61:

^also it’s panels like this where some people praise Horikoshi for giving her a realistic stomach?? Please raise the bar a little bit

And in regards to her boobs... that outfit is not supporting them at all??? It would make far more sense to just give this girl a sports bra and pants. Anywayyy, let’s not forget she is a teenager so maybe also give her a shirt? Even a loose shirt would make sense, so she could have larger creations come out of her stomach/back area without ruining her clothes every time. 

Two, her quirk is far too strong, but because this is a fictional story, it doesn’t get used in the most efficient way. As other people have already joked about, the story could be told in one season if Momo was the main character and just went wild with her quirk. Horikoshi doesn’t really make an effort to explain to us why Momo doesn’t just wrap this all up real quick. You can talk about how overpowered Green Ketchum trying to catch all quirks is, but he has nothing on Eri and Momo.

Three, after the sports festival, Momo had an issue with her self-confidence, similar to how Jirou didn’t feel confident enough to perform at the festival. And similar to how it was Kaminari that first made an attempt at boosting Jirou’s confidence, it was Shouto who helped out Momo. Now, I don’t have a problem with guys supporting girls - it’s just annoying when female characters aren’t allowed to be confident or find confidence on their own, or with the help of other female characters.

I get that she was comparing herself to him, so him showing her that he believes in her is the most helpful for her, but it becomes a problem when this is the biggest character development she gets. It’s almost like after this scene, she’s cured. And whenever a tiny hint at self-doubt crosses her mind, she just remembers that Shouto believes in her, and then she’s back on track. Not great.

Because of this, it’s really nice whenever we get a scene of just the girls hanging out, the problem is simply that those scenes barely exist because most of the female students are each tied to one specific male character: Jirou to Kaminari, Momo to Shouto, and Uraraka to Deku. Out of the three, Uraraka is the most unfortunate one, mainly because she is tied to the protagonist, so he’s always going to play a bigger role for her character than she will for him.

I think Uraraka, Momo, and Jirou all have a lot of potential and could be really interesting strong female characters. I even really love Uraraka’s motivation for becoming a hero, since she wants to help out her parents. This is actually a very selfless reason, despite the fact that most of the fandom constantly paints her as someone who would do anything for money. People even make it seem like her doing this for money is selfish, even though the money isn’t supposed to be for her, but for her parents?! And to be honest, even if her motivation was to get money for herself, can we please stop claiming that doing something for money is selfish?? Like hello? We all live in capitalist hell. We all have to work and make money to live, so please stop pressing that idea of everyone having to be passionate about their jobs. It’s okay if you hate your job, we can’t all get paid for things we’re passionate about. And guess what? It’s okay because you can still have things your passionate about outside of work and just do your job to afford shelter, food, and your hobbies! 

Anywayyy, whenever people aren’t claiming that Uraraka is just after money, her other personality trait is Deku. This mainly started when Aoyama claims that she has a crush on Deku in chapter 67:

Ever since, whenever she looks, thinks, or mentions him, she can’t think clearly anymore. No matter what she does, she seems to always think: “What would Deku do?” - instead of just asking herself: “What would I do?” To be fair, this expands to other characters as well - Bakugou and Shouto both have that same problem of constantly bringing Deku up, so this is just a problem in general with bnha, where somehow everyone is obsessed with the protagonist. The difference is just that characters that aren’t Uraraka have more to them than just Deku (Bakugou being on thin ice though).

You know what other female character has no personality outside of Deku? His mom. I know that this one might not matter as much to other people because she is a supportive mom and we love to see supportive parents, and she just doesn’t get enough screentime to give her a personality that doesn’t revolve around Deku. And I’m not saying a woman can’t just dedicate her life to her child - but since we’re already talking about female characters in this story that fall flat, could you name me anything about her that has nothing to do with Deku? What’s her hobby? What are her dreams? Yes, she has the role of mom in this story and that is her purpose, but she would just feel a little more human if we knew a little more about her. We know more about Jirou’s, Bakugou’s, and Shouto’s parents. But what about Inko? What does she do all day long?

Also now that I mentioned mothers... a big debate in the fandom (for whatever fucking reason) is whether or not Bakugou’s mom is a good mom (she isn’t). I don’t know how Horikoshi manages to write a story where one of the character’s whole plot is all about his abusive upbringing, and then he turns around and writes Mitsuki as some sort of comedy relief??

^Here in chapter 96, we have Aizawa and All Might making the home visits because of the dorm system U.A. wants to implement. Despite these two Pro Heroes seeing her smack Bakugou and call him weak, thus blaming him for having gotten kidnapped, they don’t do anything about this. They never bring this up again, or even ask if Bakugou is okay; but that’s a topic for another day. The point is, Horikoshi doesn’t seem to put much thought into his female characters as individuals but rather writes them for the sake of one of the male characters. In this case, I assume, his thought process was: I want Bakugou to be a rough character, what could possibly be a cause for that? Oh, right, how about his mom?

How we’re supposed to view the characters just depends on what their overall role is - while the Todoroki family is all about the horrors Endeavor has done to them, Bakugou’s mom doesn’t get addressed as such in the story. The only time this sort of gets brought up is during the remedial course in chapter 165 when Bakugou says violence is okay because “that’s how I was raised” - to which Shouto responds by telling him there are better ways:

Hell, even this little Monoma lookalike can understand that Bakugou’s upbringing wasn’t normal:

But despite the fact Horikoshi brings this up here, it’s overall never mentioned and I’m not sure if that will ever play a more significant role, despite the potential.

I absolutely understand that parents that don’t play an actual role in the story, are going to be written with the characterization of their kids in mind - yet it’s not great to just include an awful mother without properly addressing this and instead, making it seem more like “Oh, that’s just how mothers are, nothing wrong here” - which is something a lot of people in the fandom say btw. Please note, it is not okay to hit your child. Bakugou easily could’ve been given overly supportive parents, and yet Horikoshi looked at his creation and thought: I’m now gonna create a horrible mother for this child.

It just shows that it doesn’t actually matter what female characters are like; they are solely an extension of a male character and thus it doesn’t matter at all what they are like, what they say, or what they do. There are no consequences for characters like Mitsuki because her only purpose is to explain to us why Bakugou is the way he is. But his character is about how his obsession with Deku negatively affects his life and so since his family problems are not the focus of his character, the story doesn’t bother telling us that she is bad or that she should apologize to Bakugou and better herself.

Aside from the female students and mothers, we get the Pro Heroes. Midnight and Mt. Lady are two of the female Pro Heroes that come to mind first. The problem? They don’t get along because women can’t ever be supportive of one another<3 

Aside from that toxic stereotype that girls are always gonna be jealous of another and can’t ever be supportive, we also have their hero outfits, which are pure fan service. And if that wasn’t enough, we get panels like this one from chapter 241:

that are drawing even more attention to their boobs and butts because that is all more important than them being heroes. Could you name me a single male character that was mainly reduced to fan service? Like yes, Dabi is serving looks all the time, but he also has a personality, motivations, goals, etc.

Aside from Horikoshi deciding to objectify them most of the time, he shows us that he is a multitasking king by also making them predatory adults who should not be around kids (and with that, should also not be heroes or teachers), like later on in that same chapter when Mt. Lady is talking to Shouto:

And because we - much like Horikoshi wants us to - find Shouto’s reactions/responses so funny, it distracts from the weird comments Mt. Lady makes, like “if a looker like you suddenly showed up, I think my heart would burst out of my chest” and “he’s cute. I want him” - please stop. You are literally an adult. I get that his inability to understand social cues can make him seem really cute and funny, but there are more appropriate things to say. Or to quote Mr. Compress (once again proving that the League has more standards than the heroes): “What an odd thing to say. [He] doesn’t belong to anyone.”

Similarly, we also have this panel from chapter 67 of Midnight talking to Mineta:

Like... what the fuck?? Who thinks this is okay??

I know all of this is supposed to be for comedy purposes, but this is just outright disgusting, especially when it comes from an adult and is said to a minor. 

The female characters already get treated awfully, no reason to make them weird too.

Another thing that is common in bnha in regards to female characters is how they are treated in comparison to the male characters. There is already an obvious trend of treating the villains worse than the heroes, by having villains either receive long-lasting damage (i.e. Compress losing his arm during the Overhaul arc and now losing even more of his body; Dabi’s body constantly being burned more etc.) or just get killed off altogether (i.e. Magne and Twice). The heroes, on the other hand, constantly survive everything (i.e. Twice died from being stabbed once, whereas Bakugou essentially survived the same kind of situation). That same logic also gets applied to gender: of course the male characters also get their fair share of damage, though this is more due to the fact that they make up the majority of characters and get more involved in fights than the female characters, who are usually not part of the big/boss fights. However, the women get treated a whole lot worse - out of all the heroes that got hurt during the current arc, Miruko was the most explicit one, where we get panels of her losing her limbs, whereas several chapters later when Aizawa cuts off his own leg, we only see the knife being moved toward his leg.

We also constantly get very questionable panels for the female characters, like this one of Tsuyu from chapter 66:

This panel of Toga from chapter 226:

Or him just straight-up including a panel of a naked Toga, aka a minor, earlier this arc when she met up with Uraraka.

Speaking of Toga, she really is the most interesting out of all the female characters - she isn’t just a one-dimensional character, but one with her own deep backstory: judged for her quirk by everyone in her life, forcing her to pretend to be someone she isn’t until she couldn’t hold it in anymore. The League is her family and her home because they are the people that always accept her. She plays a big role in the League and gets plenty of action and screen time; she is significant during every part that includes the League. While Dabi, friendly as he is, calls her crazy (an attitude that isn’t just limited to her), they all respect her and never judge her for her quirk or treat her as less. Although much like Uraraka, she has an annoying obsession with Deku, she is still mostly shown to have other significant people in her life (= the League) and even earlier this arc when she wonders whether the heroes saw Twice as human or not, she wants to ask this question, which is very important to her, to Uraraka - not Deku. 

To kinda sorta sum it up: Toga feels like the most realistic out of all of them because she has equal screentime to the rest of the League. She has her own reasons, ambitions, and dreams. Yes, she likes to talk about her love for Stain and Deku, and that is due to Horikoshi adding a bunch of stuff for comedic purposes, even though they do more harm than good. Toga as a character is written really well, but even she can’t escape Horikoshi’s inability to not be a creep about female characters.

As for the adult women, in cases like Mitsuki, Midnight, or Mt. Lady it’s absolutely fine apparently for them to be inappropriate with kids because those words and actions are all supposed to be funny. Even Mineta gets constantly called out for being inappropriate, but none of the female characters seem to matter enough to Horikoshi to actually put thought into them and call them out for weird behavior.

There’s probably a whole lot more I could say here, but that’s what I could think of at the top of my head (which is far too much btw).

I really wish Horikoshi would put more effort into writing layered female characters that aren’t just there for fan service, comedic purposes, or exist for the purpose of male characters and their development. I wish he would stop being creepy about them and drawing weird panels of them, or more explicit panels of them than the male characters. Yes, he draws them with slightly different body types, but that’s really not enough to claim that he is good at writing female characters, especially when there is so much evidence against it.