#loopy watches mha

[loopy777]

You're completely correct about how most mangaka treats their secondary spin offs... But MHA is kinda the exception, cause Hori pretty much puts in ALL of the main spin offs as canon. ALL of the current movies are canon, as we see just by the fact he included their secondary casts amongst the shots of the world reacting, not to mention so much that we take for granted about the main series originated in vigilantes.

Kurogiri's ENTIRE backstory and his relationship with Aizawa and Mic is a storyline from vigilantes, Koichi(the MC of vigilantes) is amongst the heroes who shows up to rebuild japan in 424, the drug trigger, and the way external drugs and treatments(and how AFO was developing them in preparation for Shigaraki's eventual rebirth) can permanently alter quirk factors and the like all showed up in Vigilantes, long before it became relevant how that storyline would eventually lead to the later development of nomu and shigaraki supermode.

Keep in mind that though these are spin offs, theyre not spin offs in the sense the new author had free reign. Hori gave him the story drafts, character outlines, etc. And the mangaka worked from there. Just like he had a huge role in making the movies. Hence why it all fits together.

Hell, this goes for the non-canon gag, parody MHA Smash too. Its for the most part a non serious comedy, but now and again you get these moments where its painfully obvious Hori basically wrote this section himself to explain stuff he never got around to in MHA proper(mt lady's backstory, how bakugo's parents met and married, why bakugo likes mountain climbing, etc). He later explained and expanded upon these ideas in supplementary stuff, like explaining more on the details of what sort of work the bakugos had when they hooked up, etc.

Not to say everything is canon(the games certainly are not) but Hori is way more entertwined with secondary stuff than, say, Oda is.

Fair point! I enjoyed the Movie Character cameos in the manga.

I'm going to have to read the Smash comics now, huh? I can't say I'm unhappy about that.

[missmorosis]

aw really? i’m sorry to hear that! are you done with your classes now?

omg i bet 😂 but zentangling looks really cool so i’m sure it was at least a little bit worth losing a few brain cells to make hehe

aw thank you so much! 💗 how has your day been? and how are you feeling?

FDSJJ UGH I DONT END UNTIL EARLY JULY 😭😭 but YES technically its the weekend so i dont have classes today ayee

ZENTANGLING DOES LOOK COOL BUT IT TOOK YEARS OF MY LIFE

I SWEAR I DIED EVERY TIME I DREW A LINE

BUT HDFSHFSD- MOONIE I WOULD LIKE TO THANK YOU BC I STARTED WATCHING FRUITS BASKET JUST FOR YOU

i finished the 4th?? season of mha and I WAS LOOKING FOR SMTH ELSE TO WATCH AND I REMEMBERED "oH MOONIE WAS WATCHING FRUITS BASKET MAYBE I SHOULD TOO"

AND DSFFSDSDF ITS GREAT SO FAR 😭😭

IM FEELING OKAY!! significantly better but my mood is REALLY INSANELY LOOPTY LOOPY IF THAT MAKES SENSE AHBHAHARH- I FEEL FINE ONE SECOND AND STRESSED THE NEXT YKYK??? BUT WOOO I AM IN A GREAT FANTASTIC ENERGIZED MOOD :D

HOW ARE YOU MOONIE???

[jutsei]

Lowkey kinda wanna make a MHA AU of Aria for some reason, just watching the dub of MHA and I just imagined like

Her quirk being called “Mad Sword” as in, she can conjure anything that looks like a sword but the downside is they all talk to her and beg her not to use them so it makes her kinda loopy.

... Not even sure if that can even be  a quirk so shrug

[loopy777]

thoughts on the way MHA ended? Lots of people absolutely pissed that izuku x uraraka was sunk rather decisively(im as well, but thats more because i now know sitting through 428 chapters of their boring ass romance was an objective waste of time) just so Kohei didnt have to deal with an ending that actually had ships sail, and the fandom reaction to that.

For me, i am absolutely gonna use Uraraka's canon wishywashyness to the bitter end, not having the guts to confess for 8 years after the final battle, to shit on her mercilessly in my own stories XD

Wow, harsh. Deku could have asked her to dinner some time in 8 years! What's a girl to think when a guy doesn't go on a single date from age 14 to 22? XD

Anyway, shipping aside, I am quite pleased with the ending. I thought we got good resolutions for more characters than I expected, and I really like not just that last-second twist but how it's done. All Might's eyes are freaky-looking, though.

Since I'm not really a MHA shipper, I thought it odd that we don't get a single romantic confirmation, but I think it's left open enough that there could be romance going on with whatever pairing a reader wants. Perhaps that was a deliberate, cynical choice. I do think there's a lack of payoff in the romances, as we have Deku, Uraraka, Kaminari, maybe Kirishima, and Yaoyorozu all having crushes that provide inspiration at critical character-growth moments, but none of them take the next step. It feels like all those subplots just stop before any climax. We don't even have Kaminari asking Jiro on a date and getting shot down. It feels like there's something missing in terms of the shape of the story.

However, I recognize that Romance is always awkward with these epic coming-of-age tales, especially one in a 'modern' setting like MHA. For something like AtLA, in an 'old' fantasy setting where older teenagers are considered full adults, especially one without formal schooling, I can buy someone marrying a love interest they meet at age 14. For something like MHA, though, it feels more unrealistic since most of us do not know someone who married their first high school sweetheart.

So, normally, I wouldn't dock MHA many points for these no-payoff romances. It could have done a lot worse by attempting the payoffs and fumbling them.

Unfortunately, in the wider context of the MHA, I think this is a fatal flaw that makes me unable to recommend the series to anyone.

No exaggeration. Explanation below the cut.

So, how many actual romantic relationships are there in this story, including the adults? Not that many, if we go by what's on screen. I mean, we had to get out-of-story clarification that Deku's father is still married to his mother. And of the relationships we actually see, how many of them are alive and functional and not something awful like Todoroki's backstory?

Bakugo's parents

Gentle Criminal and La Brava

???

That's all I can think of.

And then I've noted that none of the student crushes get any payoff. We're very clearly shown that these kids have attractions to each other, but at best it becomes a kind of unspoken courtly love. What's up with that?

Well, you could argue that MHA's intended audience is 12-year-old boys who don't want to see kissy romances. And normally, I'd consider that an acceptable answer. It's all over shonen anime/manga: feints towards romance (because boys like the idea of attracting pretty girls) without any actual depiction or fulfillment that could turn off squeamish immature boys. Some of this may be influenced by Japanese society overall, as my understanding is that displays of physical affections overall are rarer there, but I don't think that's the primary factor. Certainly, there are shonen stories where a boy and girl have an actual ongoing romantic relationship, and sometimes there's even kissing.

MHA doesn't have that, though. It has broken relationships, comedic relationships, and unfulfilled crushes. Even among adults.

What else does it have?

Fan-service outfits. Sexual assault played for laughs. Several instances of leering teenage female nudity.

Yeah, I've talked before about how Mineta is the worst part of the show because of how much fun the story tries to make them, and you don't have to go far on the internet to find people who think MHA's depiction of female teenagers is pretty gross, but pair this with the overall story's notable lack of any actual serious romance. That is not a great look. It says the only interest MHA has in romance is for the sex.

Now, I don't know that this reflects Horikoshi's actual feelings or psychology. Maybe this is an unfortunate mix of a juvenile sense of humor with a cynical ploy to avoid ticking off any shippers. But, thanks to the Death Of The Author, the overall message of MHA is that romantic love is equally powerful but less fulfilling than molesting your female classmates. Remember, Kaminari may have found his motivation to help take down some villains thanks to his love for Jiro, but Mineta found the strength and strategy to ace his practical exam thanks to his horny obsession with Midnight.

So the end result is that MHA is decidedly icky about this, and while it's a great superhero story and shonen, IMO, I couldn't recommend it to anyone without a major warning about this aspect of it.

[loopy777]

So something I just realized while planning how for my MHA/KLK fic Monoma would go through a mutation that allowed him to copy quirks on a permanent basis(With the obvious caveat that he has to stick to one permanent quirk at a time), MHA actually left open a huge hole, and get out of jail free card regarding every injury the cast has accrued, other than losing One For All.

Monoma, even as he is now in canon, could copy Overhaul's quirk(Which he still has, he just cant use it), and after a bit of practise on animals, he could fix literarily every single injury the cast sustained over the course of the final arcs.

There are literarily no downsides to this, and it's pretty obvious Hori didn't realize this was an option(though to be fair i didnt until just today).

Your thoughts?

I've had similar thoughts about Eri. Once she gets full control of her power and isn't a four-year-old, she can fix every physical injury ever. She can also probably reverse aging. And then of course her blood was used to create anti-quirk bullets, so theoretically she could take away people's quirks.

If she's on something to boost her quirk like Trigger, she might even be able to raise the dead. She might not even need Trigger for that.

But yeah, both Overhaul and Monoma are a solution for all the injuries that don't even need to wait for Eri to grow up. The only question is if and how quickly Monoma can learn the fine control for type of repair. Making him an idiot might be the 'fix' for that.

[loopy777]

1/2 Yeah, those final pages were really sweet. They may or may not have made me tear up a little xD And before that I also thought it was sweet how they brought back that little kid who can throw plates from his hair. I immediately recognized him as the kid from the start of the liberation war arc. Back then I remember thinking his design was too distinct and wondering if Horikoshi had something in store for him or if he had just forgotten about him. Let's just say I was pleasantly surprised

I admit I didn't recognize him when I first read it, but yeah, it's nice to see a callback like that. I also forgot the basement kid who Granny helped had appeared prior to that. And the only reason that I noticed the reappearance of The Funny Looking Guy (who talks with Deku in the first few minutes of the first episode) was because my brother and I had just rewatched that episode. Clearly, I have an eye for the recurring extras. XD

2/2 I have however seen a lot of people who didn't like Deku being a teacher and waiting so long to be a hero again. They used to accuse Deku of being a nepo baby cause his quirk was a "handout" from all might and now they're doing it again cause he waited years until he was given another handout (the suit) to resume his hero work. I feel like those criticisms are disingenous though so I try not to engage

Deku-

-is a nepo baby-

-despite All Might not knowing Deku prior to a demonstration of his character and being completely unrelated to him.

Yeah, 'disingenuous' might even be understating it.

[loopy777]

Sadly, I'm going to have to close the discussion of My Hero Academia's ending battle and the shonen genre. It's okay to disagree -- note that there's not much I've agreed with thekingofwinterblog on here when I actually have knowledge of what we're discussing -- but I'm starting to get heated anon asks that are not going to lead to nice places.

Let it suffice to say that there are a variety of different opinions about MHA's final chapters and Bakugo specifically, and I'm generally positive about both, but I can see room for disagreement based on what any individual audience member has been seeking from MHA.

[loopy777]

Yeah thats kinda the problem with following genres. Because they are living, breathing things that change, follow trends, rebel against trends, deconstruct their mediums, reconstruct their mediums, and are vastly different from decade to decade.

Thats one of the reasons the movie superhero craze is effectively over at this point. Just like Westerns, the market became oversaturated, but it's also become almost impossible to just watch superhero movies just on the face of them anymore. There is never going to be another superhero movie that isnt going to be affected, in one way or another, and judge to the entire infinity saga.

Superhero movies will now always be judged whether they are trying to recapture the feel of the previous MCU, is it rebelling against that, is it doing its own thing? Is it trying to deconstruct the formula Marvel set up? Is it a throwback?

We'll see more cycles as time goes on, just like the superhero golden age gave way to the silly silver age, the bronze age followed after that trying to be more serious, the dark ages took that idea and ran it into the ground, the following age came as a response to that, which in turn ended at one more day, qfter which it all just eventually began to permanently fall apart as the years went on, and readers as a whole left the medium for other pastures.

And thats just one medium and genre, all built on top of what came before in one way or another.

But in regards to MHA, its actually an interesting study in how different people can take something completely different from the same medium, because not everyone has been following the same things.

For example, you yourself noted that you thought of MHA as a reconstruction of the superhero genre.

I however, can tell thats not quite the case... Oh it certainly does reconstruct the Superhero genre, that part is absolutely true... But MHA is pretty much a very thorough deconstruction of all the many, many shonen series that followed in One Piece and Naruto's wake, that tried to copy them.

I wont repeat what i said about how OP unfortunately destroyed the way shonen handled death and injuries, but thats hardly where it ends.

Bakugo was originally imagined as this nice guy rival... Because thats what the series that followed after One Piece and Naruto did. As such, the way he instead went the completely different direction was a direct respone/challenge that entire idea.

Izuku being nervous and shy, but also reliant on a massive intellect rather than just massive physical combat talent was also a direct response to the countless stupid but confident shonen heroes that Dragon ball began, One Piece perfected, and so many other series has just produced bland, and very bad leads trying to mimic what Oda and Toriyama did.

Inko's entire existence and the fact she's still a part of her son's life is pretty much alien to the way the vast, vast majority of shonen handles parents, especially female parents by for all intents and purposes not being part of their kids lives, or more commonly just dead.

The mentor All Might being a proactive and active part of the story, and not dying midway through is again, pretty much the opposite of how shonen series does things. Killing off the obi-van/big good, is so standard in shonen that even One Piece, champion of never killing anyone, did it. And what few series does not, eventually just makes them completely useless to the narrative, as it's clear they never had any plans for how to handle said character surviving.

World building, and in universe politics, and how the setting worked is brought up front and explained from day one, and having characters lives being directly affected by it, is a response to series such as One Piece, Fairy Tail, and many others that gives the premise, but takes a long time before it really explains the powers that rule the world, in favor of character development.

The tournament arc ultimately ended up being completely meaningless in terms of rewards, and the hero didn't even win it, nor tie fighting his big rival. Needless to say, that's not how shonen lately tends to do it.

I could go on, but you get the gist. A LOT of how MHA is built is deliberately because HORI structured it that way, having learned from his orevious works, Barrage and Oumagadoki zoo. Both were completely bog standard shonen manga that while not bad, didn't really manage to attain actual success.

Zoo was a more episodic comedy manga with a supernatural element, that changed over to being a battle manga when that didn't pan out, then got canceled. Meanwhile, Barrage was a far, far more competently put together battle manga, that took all the tropes One Piece had popularized and used them to tell a story... That completely flopped, because while it was genuinely good, there wasn't much that made it stand out amongst the crowd of other shonen.

And so, when crafting MHA he did so with the mind set of telling a good story, while also deconstructing and then reconstructing so many of the shonen tropes that was popular in shonen as MHA was released.

Izuku was a genuinely wimpy, but kindhearted kid who wanted to be the most inspiring hero in the world, not the worlds strongest "insert whatever profession here" in a genre where powerful, but idiotic, and supremely ambitious anti-heroes like luffy that though had a good heart, was not exactly a traditional hero, reigned supreme, that was genuinely fresh, and had solid foundations to built a good character off of.

All Might was the great power of his world, but unlike One Piece's Whitebeard, the shadowy and in the background strongest pirate in the world, who's role was effectively to have the entire political status quo of the world disintegrate after he died, All Might's role was to be the Main characters mentor and friend who gave him advice, wasn't alway right, and would go on to lose the power that defined him and his world. Again, a subversion, but one with well planned foundations.

The world of Heroes is explained in very huge detaol from day one, unlike One piece and fairy tail, and so many others, including Barrage, because Hori knew from personal experience that trying to take your time on explaining the world could very, very easily backfire if the readers didnt get invested in it from day one.

All of this came together to create a very good deconstruction and reconstruction of the entire Shonen genre, which as you pointed out, also worked great as a reconstruction of a lot of the aspects that the superhero genre that Hori decided to set his world in, had forgotten or left behind for such nonsense as deals with the devil, multiverses, massive crossovers, abandoning of true heroics, and so on.

Its also telling that the one place where hori decided to just follow the standard Shonen formula of the day, Izuku relationship with his love interest Uraraka, is far and away the most boring part of the entire series.

Overall though, it managed to hit the homerun that is the best of two worlds. It managed to hit the world wide appeal that so many modern series sacrifices everything to appeal to just by being a good story, and it managed to appeal to japanese manga fans who were hungry for something else that was not just following in One Piece's or Naruto's footsteps.

The huge backlash the arcs post the war arc has gotten, is very much a further response to that, as the series that once prided itself on NOT playing all the shonen tropes straight, began to do exactly that, and is now in the middle of a drawn out, slog of a final that so, so, so many other shonen series had fallen victim to over the years.

Heh, don't tell my brother that the Deku/Uraraka romance is the most boring part. It's one of his favorite parts. He think it's criminal what an Uraraka figma is going for on the secondary market.

You have a good analysis of the ways MHA builds on the shonen genre, and I didn't mean to imply that it was exclusively drawing from superhero genre. As you note, there's a good fusion going on there, and I think that speaks to a larger point about genre in general- it can be strengthened by blending it with other genres, or at least lessons learned from other genres.

I think it's notable how controversial you've revealed to me the final battle to be, given its context in the shonen genre, and there's no specific equivalent in the superhero genre for me to draw on as an example. Superhero comics don't end- at least not outside AU graphic novels, and those largely all draw on The Dark Knight Returns for their formula, so they're more like a dark epilogue to superhero's story rather than a culmination. Superheroes can have final confrontations with an enemy or two in movie adaptations, but there's no "Final Battle of the Justice League" where all their members fight all their villains. (The closest thing I know of is Kingdom Come, but again, that draws heavily from The Dark Knight Returns, and so we have the JL coming out of retirement in a post-modern world to make a statement about 90s comics.)

The only comic I can think that really tries to be a definitive ending for a superhero is 'Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?' for the Silver Age Superman. And, because it's Alan Moore, almost the entire cast dies. So that's not much help to MHA. And it struggles under the burden of those Silver Age Superman comics not having an ongoing story or links between its villains. As we all know, manga is a very different animal in terms of structure than Western comics because of being able to tell a single story with a singular creative vision, no matter how drawn out it may be.

Anyway, I guess I'm saying I hope MHA provides some lessons to the next work that tries to bridge Eastern and Western comics, on both sides of the Pacific.

[loopy777]

Actually the shonen genre is infamous for the vast majority of it's series NOT killing off its hero character no matter how much sense it makes, and as such one of the big reasons why so many fans are pissed off about Bakugo surviving is that MHA, which is a series that has prided itself on not breaking away from exploring and deconstructing the various shonen tropes, is not able or willing to break away from "Almost none of the heroes ever dies no matter how much sense it makes storyvise" trope that has plagued Shonen manga for over 20 years now.

There are exceptions, but as a whole Shonen Manga are terrifying of ever allowing Heroes to die, no matter what.

It wasn't always this way, but ever since July 22, 1997, when One Piece was first published, the Shonen genre has been plagued with a very, very specific formula of "Heroes has something horrible happen to them and will most definitely die, no actually they survived, rinse repeat, over and over again, until any tension is dead."

The exception is flashbacks, where Oda realized he could get away with the absolute most horrific and terrible things happening to characters, without having to deal with the consequences of stuff like Genocide, mass death toll, maimings, etc, and not have to deal with it happening in the present, and thus directly affect the main cast and have them deal with it.

Meanwhile in the present oda has demolished the messages of entire, multi-arc storylines just so that none of the named good guys died.

He once devoted an entire arc to the rather simple but effective message "people die in war", and wrapped up that entire arc's emotional climax with one character making the ultimate sacrifice for the greater good, going out in a blaze with the force of a small nuke, only to have him survive afterwards with no explanation.

He once had a character with sensory power explicitly state that she could sense that lives all across her homeland was snuffed out one by one... only for everyone to be revealed to be fine once it was all over.

And im not even going to go into every single time characters make far, far more seemingly decisive character sacrifices than bakugo ever made, only to turn up fine in the end.

Because if i did, i would find literarily dozens of examples, though few are as INFURRIATING as the one i listed off first with the nuke. Oda really obliterated the emotional development he had built up for 4 consecutive arcs, just so that a character that never did anything of note, ever again didn't die.

In the most recent arc of one Piece, there was a guy who was shot through the head, and left to lie in a pool of his own blood and brian matter, and i shit you not, the fans reactions was not "holy shit he just died!" It was(mine included), "eh i wonder how he's gonna be revealed to still be alive."

The fact he actually did die in the end, was ultimately a way bigger shock than the sudden and brutal manner he died from. And that speaks volumes.

Oda has abused the same storytelling method that Hori used with bakugo(Which Oda himself popularized) so many times that those tiny, insanely rare moments good guy characters does die, you can literarily count a hundred named characters who SHOULD be dead as well.

So that is one reason so many manga fans have NO CHILL about Bakugo pulling through. My Hero Academia is a series that before it reached a certain point was generally very clear that actual damage was for keeps... So seeing Bakugo(A character a lot of fans DESPISE) survive not one, but two instances of this trope that everyone is sick to death from, from One Piece popularizing it far and wide(and OP STILL being around a continuing to use it every chance it gets), in a manga that was supposed to be better than this, is infuriating.

Addmitingly thats not my main reason for being annoyed(I just genuinely think Bakugo dying as "his body moved on its own" was the single most poetic and fitting way for his story to end) about it all, as i do still love one piece despite this giant, gaping flaw.

I do however, as a shonen reader who saw this trope development happen in real time, understand perfectly why so many people have just had enough of it.

So what I'm hearing is that I made the right choice in watching a shonen once a decade so that I can enjoy them or not on their own merits. Good to know.

I'd also make a quip about Once Piece, but you noted that you like it despite this nonsense, and it was for a completely different kind of nonsense that I happily gave up my own attempt to read it.

[loopy777]

to be honest with bakugo at the war arc, it probably made WAY more sense for him to die back then. it was his character coming full circle, and frankly he had come as far as he would ever go. something the final arc hammered in quite well. I honestly wonder if the only reason he survived that was due to editorial interference as is likely the reason he didnt outright get an ending tha confirmed that yes, he did truly die during the sky battle. Shonen editors are infamous for not letting popular characters be killed off despite those deaths being the centerpieces of entire story arcs, or character arcs.

Regardless, i feel like if there is one character who's entire arc needed a heroic death ending, it was bakugo. which is why i genuinely thought he did die back during the war arc for quite a while. honestly, Deku's actions in the arc afterwards makes way more sense if you assume that yeah, bakugo was supposed to die and serve as this big turning point where he went off on his own so no one else would die or get hurt, before the rest of the class brought him back to his senses.

Makes sense, and if it's true, I think I prefer the change. I love that Bakugo actually apologizes to Deku and eats humble pie, and I'm also fond of him being the one to call out Endeavor and Hawks for not realizing how self-destructive Deku would become during the Dark Deku arc. Dying because of the "my body moved on its own" moment would have been a neat bit of poetry, but I think they've really made the most of making Bakugo doing his actual redemption without the benefit of the standard sacrificial death.

[loopy777]

1/2 Sooo chiming in on the MHA discourse, one of the complaints I see most often regarding this final arc is people being disappointed by the fact that Bakugo didnt die and that he will most likely survive, a complaint I don't get. I agree with what you said about the kids inhereting the world, but what really rubs me the wrong way is how shounen fans want so badly to see kids dying in their favorite manga. I've seen it with MHA, Jujutsu Kaisen, Attack on Titan, etc.

2/2 And when kids don't die or they survive impossible situations, they call the author a "coward." Idk, it's not that I'm against kids dying in a story, but if an author wants to convey an idealistic message and doesn't want to kill a literal child in the process, I think that's perfectly fine. Insisting that Bakugo should die feels a little too edgy and cringy to me

For my part, I'm a little nonplussed by Bakugo's fate because he's already had a big sacrifice-himself-oh-no-wait-it's-a-fakeout moment, and the anime adapted it in the latest season. So we're sitting here waiting to find out whether Bakugo survives, only to be reminded that we just did this recently (in-universe timescale, anyway). So I can see the complaints coming from the repetition.

But yeah, I agree that idealism and not killing kids are not surprising things to be the subject of a superhero story that's done a pretty good job of reconstructing the archetype. Typical shonen stuff kills people off, probably (I admit that FMA: Brotherhood is probably my only other extensive experience with the genre), but in superhero media (which I am much more knowledgeable of), familiar characters dying used to be a once-in-a-decade event. Sure, the 90s happened, as well as the Woman In The Refrigerator trend, but overall MHA has pulled a lot more from the Silver Age despite the violence it indulges in.

But most people watching MHA are probably more accustomed to those shonen tropes rather than American Superhero Comics, so the swerve feels off. And it doesn't help, I'm sure, how much MHA throws around violence and sexualization with these teenagers, so they might come across as more adult characters than they really are, and subject to more adult themes like War & Death & Stuff.

That's one reason why I really liked it when the Ultimate Spider-Man comics would have Peter wearing his school backpack when in costume, and the Spider-Verse movies when Miles wears his hoodie and/or Nikes. The addition of those elements really helps visually sell that these are teenage superheroes, when superhero art otherwise tends to idealize the body so much that it can be tough to convey age.

[loopy777]

Ultimately the problem with the whole AFO and OFA BS is that they just go too powerful for their setting.

AFO far moreso though.

The two single worst problems battle shonen manga and anime has in terms of combat, is regeneration, and super durability.

Regeneration is the fucking worst, because it means that the character can just take damage after damage, after damage and get back on their feet, until suddenly THIS new attack is for all the marbles. There's nothing wrong with a healing factor that allows speedy recovery, but when everything can be healed up in a minute or instantly, it never fucking works.

The ONLY way to do a villain with regenerating as one of their main features, is if there is some sort of weakness that shuts the regeneration off cold, like Heracles burning the Hydra's head stumps, order of the stick dealing with a hydra by letting it grow too many heads for it to function, or Disney's Hercules to drop that mountainside on top of it, crushing the entire beast, and not just the Hydra's heads.

Meanwhile there is the invulnerable villain, that will take stupidly powerful attacks, and then the dust cleared and they were completely fine and unharmed.

This was popularized by Dragon Ball, and unfortunately became a mainstay of that series, but at least DB has the advantage that the characters in that series has the excuse that they became stronger than most real life religious pantheon's as the series went on. The fact god like beings can shrug off bullets or low level lasers kinda makes sense.

In fact one of the dumbest moments in the terrible sequel Dragon ball super, is when one of the strongest beings in existence is shot through the chest by a common ass laserbeam, which might sound fine on paper, but the rules of the universe at that point had so clearily established that it wouldn't work, so when it did it just made everyone facepalm.

Mha though, is not a series about the exploit of godlike beings. It's a series of what is the superhero equivalent of a low fantasy series, where while there was incredible power and force thrown around by the likes of all might and AFO, injuries(barring that damn regeneration quirk) actually mattered.

Compare Shigaraki's beating in the war arc, and how he left that fight as a broken shell, with the way every single character has been throwing everything at him and AFO and you see how the way battle has shifted so hard.

To be blunt, hori wrote himself into a corner by giving the villain group so few actual henchmen compared to the heroes, which means that now at the endgame, other than a chosen few MC's, EVERYONE has to be fighting AFO or Shigaraki.

And it doesn't help that the manga devoted way too damn much time to the wrong things too.

The entire fight at the flying school ended up being a complete nothing burger where the heroes weren't able to score a single good hit in, in exchange for bakugo maybe dying, and Mirko losing more limbs, and everyone else taking a beating.

There is a very, very specific fight from dragon ball that this sequence was trying to copy, a fight against a character called nappa, where the heroes are just trying to buy time for the MC Goku to show up.

And that worked. The crew vs Nappa is a great fight, but the reason it worked was because it was used to drive home the point of just how fucking screwed the heroes were.

Every single one of those guys except for two of the weaker members, died in that battle, and that was the entire point. They went to their deaths just to buy some time, and the entire narrative was framed around that fact.

The problem with the sky fight is that it did not successfully frame it in the same way, just copying the steps, without understanding the tempo or music that made those steps work to begin with.

Goku returning at the end was a glorious moment in dragon ball, the triumphant return of our hero, the proof that the cast's sacrifices were not in vain, and even after that, the two surviving characters from the nappa fight went on to play immense importance in the follow up fight as Nappa is defeated, and his buddy and boss Vegeta takes center stage to fight Goku head on.

By contrast, Izuku showing up at the end has none of that weight. It's not a glorious turning point, it's just another step of a fight that is already dragging on way, way too long.

The way to fix this is simple.

Characters REALLY needed to die in this fight, and they needed to have spectacular deaths. As old Julio scoundrel said, it doesnt matter if you win or lose... So long as you look really cool doing it.

They needed to get in solid, genuine hits that clearly affected Shigaraki, all the while the realization that pretty much all of them were going to die here began to set in with every single death... And yet marching on anyway. By not havi

I'll be honest, if i had been writing this story, i would have killed off every single hero in that fight other than lemellion, Mirko(Her giving up all her limbs in exchange for holding off Shigaraki for just a while longer works just fine, it just needed better focus) and maybe anteater.

As for the whole AFO shit, the problem ultimately is the same, only here there is a much easier, and less bloody solution. Take away his limbs for each hero encounter.

AFO is living on borrowed time anyway at this point... So why not embrace that? Have him take these stupidly enormous hits... And it actually does ginormous damage to him. By the time he reaches All Might, he should be on his last metaphorical legs, one arm, no legs, one eye, etc. All the while he regresses in age.

These changes would fix all the problems, but it would have given the big, slog that is the final battle here some much needed progress, rather than endless, no progress battle, after endless no progress battle.

Well, I admit I'm not as down on it all as you are, as I have been enjoying the individual character moments, even if the battle has kind of been treading water. But I'm not sure I agree with your proposed solutions.

Having more mooks probably would have had diminishing returns, as there are only so many characters who can be developed into something worthwhile in a story with an already large cast, so that defeating them will feel properly triumphant. As it is, I don't think I've ever cared about Spinner.

And killing people off would make the final fight feel more epic and worthwhile, but I think it would undermine the more important part of the story, that of the next and better generation inheriting the world and trying to do better. If the whole next generation is dead, it doesn't matter that Deku survives and is the greatest hero, because we saw that making a single person the Symbol of Peace isn't sustainable. Given a choice, I'd trim the fight rather than lose out on that theme. But I do like that all the students get a chance to get a hit in on OFA, even if it's not effective; they're participants in striking back against the shadow of the legacy of the previous generation.

My own proposed solution is to scrap the idea of a giant fight altogether. Have a complicated mission where everyone's powers are needed to find the Thing that will turn off OFA's power so that someone can one-shot him. Thus they all get to contribute, and we can throw in some nice battle moments for people while keeping up a propulsive heist-style mission.

But I think the Shonen Jump editors would fire me for that, so what do I know? To paraphrase a business adage I've heard, "No one ever got fired for hiring IBM imitating a decades-spanning hit manga/anime franchise."

[loopy777]

So one of the more ambiguous parts of later MHA is Dabi's actual relationship with the league, and how he truly thinks of them, especially Twice.

In particularly, his extreme reaction to Twice death serving as the decisive turning point where he once and for all went completely off the rails as utterly nuts, leaving any bit of sanity behind, can be read two ways.

Either his words can be taken at face value, and he never gave a damn about the league, and was only pissed because twice was the single biggest ace in the hole for his ultimate goal, and his death put a massive dent in it, or he is simply coping with suddenly feeling real sadness and despair by distancing himself from Twice by saying of course i didn't care about him, of course I'm not in any emotional pain right now, and by extension emotionally distancing himself from the rest of the league(Who's potential deaths could hurt him just as much).

Adding fuel to this is how he seems to emotionally get and connect with Toga while burning down her childhood home.

Of these two interpretations, it's one or the other.

In any case, which do you find to be the more likely one?

I've wondered about this myself, and had to discuss it with my brother because I'm so conflicted about it. The thing that really stands out to me about the whole matter is that Dabi doesn't seem to blame Twice for falling for Hawks' deception and even tries to comfort the guy. I mean, in that situation -- Twice falling for a second time for someone who exploited his trust to hurt the League, and this time so disastrously that it might lead to the end of everything -- I'd probably have a level of anger at a friend for doing it, but Dabi purely blames Hawks and even acts like he's there to support Twice in the wake of the betrayal.

At the same time, I don't feel like Dabi is merely covering up his hurt at Twice's death. I think Dabi really is obsessed with his whole revenge quest, and he has such a degree of emotional detachment from other people that I don't believe he's capable of forming bonds and friendships the way normal people can. I don't think he could be such a proliferate murderer, and so blase about it, without that dysfunction. Honestly, I don't think Dabi values human life enough to make real friendships; I don't think he even fully values his own life, never mind that of his buddies in the League.

So I guess I'm splitting the difference and saying that Dabi is complicated in a very messed up kind of way, where he really is capable of seeing similarities between himself and others who aren't standing in the way of his goals, and can identify and express sympathy when they're hurt, but at the same time he doesn't really value those people enough to feel hurt from losing them. He's not a chess master considering other people as resources, he just has no capacity for grief.

Maybe the key comes down to Loss. Dabi no longer responds to it, perhaps because he already feels like he's lost everything, so all the comings and goings in his life are just rounding errors.

He can look at someone like Twice or Toga and say, "Hey, we were all hurt in the same way and that makes us cool (as long as you don't get in my way), but all of us are just dead men walking so I'm not going to climb out of my grave to attend your funeral."

Anyway, that's just my speculation. I think it's great that Twice's subplot climaxes in such a way that is so rich and rewarding for all the characters entangled in it. It makes us ponder them all in new ways, and so might be one of the best in all of MHA.

[loopy777]

but wouldnt you agree its a little lame that Deku went on to become a teacher when we know you can still fight villains without quirks? and all of the teachers always juggled teaching with being heroes. i think that does go against mha's themes of heroism and going the extra mile to help people

I don't personally think so, no. I think it plays very nicely to the theme of heroism being more than just fighting villains, just like Hawks never getting his quirk back but doing good as the head of the Hero Commission. It goes well with the development that villain appearances are decreasing because of the non-fighty efforts of the new generation of the heroes. Deku isn't just becoming a teacher- he's becoming a teacher at UA and training the next generation of heroes; he's still heavily involved in the whole scene, and probably accomplishing more than Sugar Man. :P

Honestly, I'd think it contrived and and more thematically hollow if Deku is still a hero but he's some kind of special non-combatant adviser or something.

But if that's how you feel, then I think this particular point is a fair criticism. I just don't agree with it at all.

[loopy777]

I was kinda joking, but honestly this entire back and forth has been facinating.

Because there IS a divide within the fandom between those that looks at the ending the way i've described it all, with reactions ranging "this is dumb, to "fucking terrible, breaks the themes of the series wide open", and those who dont who generally think it was somewhere vbtween average, to okay, to amazing.

They just dont see it and think the other side hating it are making a mountain out of a molehill, or seeing things that arent there.

But its not like the people who hate the ending are some fringe minority either, as from what i've seen it could be anywhere from 10% to half the readership, its kinda hard to get an exact gauge, other than it seems to be a huge section of the fandom.

So clearly the issues they see is something that ressonated(in a negative way) with a lot of people, while others just arent able to see it this way, and gets anywhere from confused(you) to angry(i had one guy yesterdays who essentially called me a uncultured swine incapable of good story analysis) when exposed to this viewpoint.

I honestly find that a rather facinating divide.

Well, I'm not engaged much with the anime fandom, but from what I've heard, the MHA fandom is considered especially toxic. I don't know if that leads to this kind of nitpicking, but it wouldn't surprise me.

I've personally always made it a specific policy, even when I absolutely loathe the work in question, to avoid nitpicking (and personal attacks on the creators). I could dissect Gene Yang's AtLA comics panel-by-panel finding something to complain about, if I wanted, and I'm pretty sure there would have been an audience for that back when they were coming out. But I refrained and stuck to criticisms of problems that come together to bring the work down as a whole. I also make a point of calling out stuff I like in my critiques, even if it's minor, and try not to turn it into a backhanded compliment (but I admit I might not succeed at that last goal consistently).

I'm not saying this to congratulate myself or anything like that. I just feel like staying above that level of toxicity makes for a much healthier, productive, and informative atmosphere. I'm not saying it's more engaging, because Hating is a lot of fun in its own way and I suspect that's why it eventually becomes self-sustaining, but Hating also burns a lot of energy, and I'd rather be lazy.

Anyway, I guess I'm saying not to put too much stock into fandom reaction. I mean, going by the fandom reaction to LoK's finale, the last-minute Korrasami was the biggest writing failure in the entire show, and that ain't even close to true. And now it's considered the best part of the entire series, but I don't think anyone is arguing that the writing around it somehow became good since it aired. ;)

[loopy777]

Huh. I see i was wrong, saying "one of us, one of us" regarding being an anime fan in general XD

That sort of hyper overanalyzing endings for both themes, characters and what ways it could have been better is kinda what we do.

Then again, Anime and Manga havs a rather well deserved repuation for average to terrible endings as the norm, to the point where great endings really stand out, so it's not like it's a thing for no reason.

Well, it's not like I'm against over-analyzing. I mean, I've been talking about Avatar for over a decade and a half. XD However, I can admit that I'm probably not an "anime fan." I likely qualify more as what I believe is called a 'tourist.' I watch some anime, but I don't seek any of it out specifically because it's anime, and I'm very disdainful of some of the stuff that's considered to be inherent to the feel of it.

I guess I just feel like critique should speak to the actual functioning of the story. Saying something could be interpreted a certain way seems like nitpicking to me when the real intent is so visible. In contrast, Legend of Korra's first season is so sloppily constructed that even the people who love the ending disagree on what's actually on the screen. In the case of something like that, then sure, let's throw this corpse on the table and start the exploratory surgery.

I even think it's fair to say that MHA's ending is weak because it's rushed, focused on the wrong things, too distracted by setting up a twist that it undermines itself, etc. I wouldn't personally agree, but I could respect that opinion, at least, if it's an honest reaction.

But saying that the most uncharitable reading could be taken isn't saying anything at all, IMO. Saying that the "Deku's friends ditched him" reading is the strongest interpretation is where I think the discussion would become worthwhile, but is anyone actually saying that?