#not a total stranger trying to recruit an uninvolved and oblivious child into a cult

[stillness-in-green]

Hey, I was wondering. Did you also find it weird that the first time Yoichi talked to Deku he didn't properly introduced himself and jumped right into his backstory? He didn't even tell his own name. Not only that, but after finishing his backstory he took Midoriya's hand into his own. After he just talked to the kid for the first time. What makes it weirder is that, as stated, he didn't even introduce himself first.

Not—particularly?  Okay, so like, I love me a Creepy OFA and a Yoichi with some dark spots, as I’ll discuss below the cut, but my thoughts tend to go in different directions than this.  Forgive me if I’m misreading you based on my experience with fandom parlance, but your usage of “weird” here comes across to me as implying suggestive, even scandalous, motivations from Yoichi, a kind of sensationalistic Stranger Danger, and that’s just not a read I ever took from the scene in question.

Though Yoichi may not have known this, Deku didn’t need to be talked through who exactly he was seeing.  He figured out who Yoichi was within seconds of the dream starting, between already having been told the story of OFA’s origin with the two brothers, recognizing All For One’s voice, and AFO and Yoichi addressing each other as Brother.    

Yoichi said at the end that he wanted to show Deku more, but Deku was only at 20%.  Deku’s low integration with the power limited how much and how long he could interact with the vestiges—that limitation came back up in Banjo’s first appearance and was still in effect until Vestige!AFO “forcibly drew [the vestiges] out” during the war.  With the OFA vestiges stated to be far more latent and vague prior to Deku, the dream encounter was probably the first time Yoichi ever managed to directly address one of the bearers!  If that connection was still patchy and Yoichi didn’t have a lot of access to Deku’s mind yet, he might not even have known that Deku had already been told the story of OFA’s origin.     Presumably, then, Yoichi was trying to get as much across as he could in as little time as possible—hence leading with a version of the backstory that quickly communicated who he and AFO are, why AFO is a bad dude that Yoichi is against, and how One For All was first created.  He just didn’t have time for more details than that, and every second he wasted on introductions would cut into other things he could be showing Deku instead.    

I don’t think he shows untoward initiative in taking Deku’s hand.  Deku was already reaching out—indeed, he was reaching out for Yoichi, albeit the Yoichi of the past.  Deku also doesn’t drop his hand when the dream fades and Vestige!Yoichi staggers out of the dark, which he easily could have if he were feeling wary.  Instead, his hand is still extended when Yoichi reaches back for it, telling Deku both to be careful and not to be afraid.  I think the touch is intended to be reassuring.

No, it’s not how you’d want to behave with a stranger in real life, but the mindscape isn’t a real-life space and Yoichi isn’t some rando on the street.  He’s the driving voice of One For All, the fateful power entrusted to Deku, and a man who spent nearly his entire life under AFO’s thumb.  Given those factors, I don’t read Yoichi as being particularly suspicious there, or hold it against him that he gets right to business.

None of that is to say, though, that there’s nothing sketchy about Yoichi!  I think you can read quite a lot into him that the canon would rather you not, and can go even farther than that if you’re willing to put your own spin on things for AUs or the like.

(Hit the jump.)

For starters, I’ve never liked the tendency of the OFA bearers to refer to each other by number rather than by name, something that starts out kinda sporadic but gets exacerbated considerably in the endgame.  It makes them feel militaristic, even self-dehumanizing, which is particularly galling when Kudou starts intoning piousness about peoples’ quirks being embodiments of their individual wills and desires.  Hey, Second, if you think AFO should be afraid of quirks because of the people behind them, maybe try using those peoples’ names.

I also desperately wish we could have had a version of the story that was willing to explore Yoichi as a hardliner making sweeping proclamations about how an oppressed minority should use their meta-abilities when he himself doesn’t have one of those meta-abilities and therefore is at very little risk of being killed by an anti-meta mob. My ideal Yoichi would hear about Stain's crusade and say, “He's going a little too far, but he's not wrong.”

Seriously, I’d love it if BNHA would acknowledge Yoichi as being legitimately, admirably far-sighted about his brother’s machinations, but also that he only has the luxury of that long-term outlook because his brother is attending to all his basic needs.  Yoichi doesn’t have to worry about food or a place to live, he’s in no physical danger with his terrifying older brother looking out for him, and he has no dependents of his own.  That’s all because his brother is keeping him locked in a vault against his will, of course; I’m not saying he should be fawning and grateful to AFO!  It’s just that he comes across as very strict and inflexible when he fails to recognize that not everyone can take for granted the sustenance, shelter and safety he is so ready to reject.

I wish the story could acknowledge it as a character flaw, that Yoichi is so sheltered and isolated that he can’t empathize with people who will make bad bargains if it means helping their loved ones, people who are living every day in fear and are desperate for a way out of that fear.  Heck, I’d like it even more if Yoichi could empathize with that (he’s got all the reason in the world to both love and fear his brother, after all, and they did grow up on the streets!), but his own unbending viewpoint leads him to assert that it’s more moral to starve to death than accept a deal with the devil, and so that’s what everyone should be willing to do.

And of course, that’s all just about Yoichi as an actual person, which the thing in OFA definitively is not, no matter how the story treats him.  During the mindscape conference post-war, he says outright that he and the other ghosts within One For All are, with the sole exception of All Might, just quirk vestiges, not real souls.  Every day, I wish for a version of BNHA that was willing to take that distinction seriously!  I’ve got tons of thoughts on how OFA could have been made creepier and more of a challenge for Deku to overcome simply by treating it as a power instead of a person, a power with its own dictates and drives, a “will” detached from a conscience or true self-awareness.

As a bonus, this would also have let the endgame have its cake and eat it too with Demon Lord AFO.  Allow the real man nuance and affection for people, a motivation for his megalomania that goes beyond “Because that’s what my favorite comic book character did,” maybe even (how shocking!) a willingness to entrust his fortunes to his chosen heir.  Save the cartoon villainy for the quirk, which manifests with AFO’s face and mannerisms but is really just a mindless drive to consume, no more sapient than an AFO-themed chatbot.

That’s what I’d have liked All For One and One For All to boil down to, really:  one a quirk that exists to devour and the other a quirk that exists to destroy the devourer.  And somewhere in all of that, the Deku who wants to use One For All to save and the Shigaraki who wants to use All For One to destroy have to center and find themselves.

(Ahem.)

That’s my oversharey thoughts on Creepy OFA and Yoichi as an actual human being with objectionable traits and uncomfortable belief structures.  But canonically?

I suppose Yoichi and the others in OFA being hardline anti-AFO militants—which they sort of are and sort of aren't, because their writing lacks consistency—could feed into a willingness to come on stronger to Deku than is entirely kosher. I wouldn’t call that behavior “weird,” though; I’d call it “urgent,” or possibly “anxious.” If I wanted to argue that Yoichi willfully chose a narrative that would discourage sympathy for AFO, maybe I’d throw in some words like “peremptory” or “dissuasive of asking inconvenient questions,” but even those suggest a level of calculated, dogmatic malice towards AFO that I just don't read Yoichi exercising there. His focus is on explaining the origin of One For All, not demonizing AFO—he could surely dig up much worse memories, if that were the aim! If anything, the memories he chose gave more room for a nuanced AFO than the full story did!

Whatever I think of Yoichi's rhetoric, in any case, he certainly didn’t come off to me as some kind of closet pervert or underhanded groomer because he took the hand Deku had already extended towards him in a gesture of comfort and solidarity.

   

Apologies again if that's not what you meant in calling him weird, but please understand that these days that is the context I most frequently see people using “weird” to not-so-subtly imply.