#please don't feel the need to reply to this post or to flood my askbox if you disagree

[thyandrawrites]

so i know you hate endwhore & i agree that he is a douche but what about mitsuki? i think that her way of parenting is abuse but i dont think she realises that, otherwise she wouldnt have hit katsuki when they were getting permission for the dorms. it did cause katsuki to have a flawed view of whats strong & whats weak and i do think they both need therapy so they can realise that way of parenting isnt normal but i dont think she was trying to be a bad parent. sorry this isnt villain related

I’m pretty sure that Horikoshi himself doesn’t know that Mitsuki’s parenting constitutes a form of abuse, even though it’s not nearly as explicit (or intentional on his part) as Endvore’s.

Given the way it’s framed, how it’s played for laughs, in Hori’s intent it was probably supposed to be read as lighthearted slapstick comedy. Japanese anime are full of that kind of humour. 

So you have characters like Iwaizumi from Haikyuu who literally spikes volleyballs at the back of Oikawa’s head and everyone finds it funny, or Kise who gets beaten black and blue on screen and it’s always framed as a funny thing.

The thing about those abovementioned examples, though, is that those dynamics are those of peers. Those shows of gratuitous violence cannot be read as abusive, and are indeed good examples of slapstick comedy, because there is no inherent power imbalance between the people involved. The violence isn’t used from someone who has the upper hand to make someone else submit to their authority. Those examples just show two friends roughhousing and letting things go a bit too far.

Mitsuki’s case reads a bit differently, and imho it’s just another proof that Horikoshi skipped his research on abuse, and most importantly, how to portray this sort sensitive topic in a respectful manner.

Mitsuki is a parent, not a peer. When she slaps Katsuki, she does so to “put him in his place” and/or make him behave. It’s an example of corporal punishment used as discipline. 

Now, I’ve seen fans before claim that this kind of “discipline” cannot be read as inherently abusive because it’s a common way of raising kids, in Japan as well as in other countries. Well, mine is one of those countries. As someone who grew up with temperamental parents, and with the constant threat of them beating the shit out of me if I misbehaved when I was a child, let me point out to you that just because a behaviour is normalized, it doesn’t mean it’s not harmful. Kids don’t have a way of defending themselves from an adult who looms over them with a wooden spoon. It’s a form of abuse. It shouldn’t be used as comedic fodder. Or as a way to raise children, because all it does is make violence pass as an acceptable tool to gain obedience in the eyes of the people who endure it.

Now, I want to reiterate that imho Horikoshi just intended to write Mitsuki as having the same short fuse as her son. He wanted to show that Katsuki had taken after his mother’s hotheadedness, and not just her looks. For the laughs. This shows through the recent omakes:

Notice how the emphasis is on the absurdity of the situation, rather than on the psychological effects or whatever. As I said, it’s played for laughs, and the reader is expected to find it amusing. 

But these are omakes. Let’s talk about the manga. Horikoshi even went as far as stating in canon that there is a clear difference in Todoroki and Bakugou’s upbringings: 

This is where I’m conflicted. I partly agree and partly disagree with this assessment. Taking a watsonian approach for a second here, rather than the doylist one I’ve been using till now, I can see that Mitsuki is a flawed person that is trying her best. She’s temperamental, and has an even more temperamental son. He won’t listen to a word she says, and she gets exasperated easily. That results in her losing her temper on occasions. But she’s not written to be an irredeemably bad parent. As a matter of fact, she didn’t use to beat Katsuki at first. Quite the contrary in fact. She used to be a doting parent. 

It’s stated in canon that the reason behind Katsuki’s over-inflated ego is the fact that he’s been smothered in praise a his life. This is clearly a result of the fact that their society has a bias towards strong quirk users and sort of puts them on pedestals like they hung the moon. Katsuki’s parents were no different. By Mitsuki’s own admission, they used to praise him so much that he became arrogant.

As a matter of fact, Katsuki was treated as a prodigy, as a natural born genius, so much that he developed a really inflated, really frail perception of self that didn’t allow him to have any weakness ever. He became highly averse to anything he wasn’t immediately good at (like compassion, a trait that he envied in Deku to the point of feeling threatened by him despite his quirklessness). There’s a really great meta by @linkspooky here that expands on how Katsuki based his entire sense of self on the (mistaken) belief that Deku was always gonna stay beneath him, and on how that explains his superiority / inferiority complexes to a t.

Adding on to this already big melting pot of toxic beliefs, Mitsuki seems to have the same mindset that most people in the bnha universe also share, the aforementioned individuality&strength associated with strong quirk users that I discussed in the meta linked above. (I highly advise reading that post if you haven’t yet, because the point I’m trying to make here will be a lot clearer if you do. Here’s another link).

So Katsuki had a strong power, explosive sweat, and good control since a very young age, so he was expected to be strong on his own. Because in their society, relying on others is for weaklings. People who aim at the top only ever work alone, because they don’t need anyone to assist them.

This is how we had Mitsuki offhandedly reprimanding her son for being “too weak as to let himself be kidnapped”. It almost reads as if she’s disappointed at him for inconveniencing the heroes who had to come to his rescue. 

But she also does believe him to be strong enough to become a hero, and has been shown to be fully supportive of his dream. So that scene also reads to me as if she wasn’t really thinking of the impact of those words on her son. Because she’s as hotheaded as him. But we also know, from multiple occurrences in which Katsuki explosively refused to accept help, that he does share her mindset. Whether he got it from her specifically, or from exposure to a society that seems to normalize going solo and being strong enough to handle trauma on your own, it’s unclear. 

Of course, that’s up for interpretation. Different people will feel differently about her, and I don’t blame those who feel uncomfortable with the way hori handled her character. People can see their own experiences reflected in the media they consume, and this is why Horikoshi as an author should’ve really paid more attention to the kind of message he wanted to represent whenever he portrayed violence in his work, imho