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bnhaobservation · 3 months ago

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Do you think Afo was really that influential of Koutaro’s abusive behavior?

Honestly, Afo or not Afo, the Shimura household seems still pretty dysfunctional to me.

The supposedly “well nurtured” Hana already knew at her young age not to show her true colors to her parents, because clearly in that house you’re accepted only if you’re good at making up for father’s delusions. And the other THREE adults in the house seem to just expect literal children to be understanding of their father’s harmful behavior. Just looking at Hana, it looks like Koutaro’s advertisememt like family dream was being imposed on his children even before Tenko and the whole hero thing.

Because it was never about heroes, really. It was about Koutaro who didn’t have a normal family growing up. Afo stirring up his hatred for heroes just added to problems already existing.

But what do you think?

It's complicate.

Let's start with a premise.

Many western readers often don't know that in a traditional Japanese family the father is the one who's higher in hierarchy, the one who sets the rules and the one the family should humor and obey at.

Things are changing, in the sense that husbands/fathers are getting ‘soft’ and don’t demand anymore what is still considered their social right and a wife/child obligation.

So Kotarou or Enji setting the rules of the house and wanting to force their ideas/ambitions on their children is technically considered their right, the family should just adapt. The fact that they impose their own rules and the wives (and in Kotarou’s case the in-law as well) don’t oppose but tell the children they should just play along is not due to some psychological disorder Enji and Kotarou have and due to a particularly weak/submissive will that their wives/in-laws have, it’s a cultural problem that gives them power over the rest of the family and that tell the wives (and the in-laws) they should obey.

Things like Sanjū Shitoku (三従四徳 “The three obediences and four virtues”), a set of moral principles and social code of behavior for maidens and married women in East Asian Confucianism where, in specific, the three obediences instruct that a woman is obligated not to act on her own initiative and, at home, she must submissively obey or follow her father’s orders before getting married, her husband’s after getting married, and her sons’ after her husband’s death and Oyakoko (親孝行 “filial piety”), an important Buddhist virtue of respecting and caring for one’s parents and that therefore requires the children ‘to be good’ to their parents, often through acts of great respect, kindness and support which might sound nice but, although things are changing currently, in the past this meant doing what the parents wanted, including marrying who they were to pick up for you, provide them with grandchildren who would continue the family line, pursuing the career path they wanted (usually continuing the family business), fulfilling their ambitions, carry on their grudges or even avenging them, plus taking care of them when they’re old, handling their funeral and taking care of them through Butsudan in which they would be enshrined are influencing those families and the family dynamics.

This part is not the Shimuras or the Todorokis being dysfunctional families, this part is the whole family following those traditions, cultural beliefs, religious principles.

The real problem of those two households though is that the family heads are both psychologically unhealthy people who have too much power over the other family members.

Make a psychologically unhealthy person as your emperor and you might end up with a horse as a senator.

In Kotarou’s specific case he lost first his father, who got killed and then his mother, who abandoned him in what’s likely an institution, apparently also erasing him from the family Koseki so that not only she doesn’t have a son anymore but Kotarou doesn’t have a family anymore. This resulted likely in a mix of PTSD and abandonment issues, which the institution to which he was entrusted likely never properly addressed so that he was never helped to heal. Also it seems AFO found Kotarou after Hana was already born and has already manifested her Quirk, so he couldn’t take it away like he did with Tenko and give her Decay or she would have been his first choice. This means he couldn’t be Kotarou’s ‘shoulder devil’ for most of Kotarou’s life and could only directly affect him for more than 5 years.

Now, what can abandonment cause in a child once he grows up (mind you, all this is not mandatory)?

Many things as it impacts on the development of the brain, among which attachment issues, fear of abandonment, need to control others, hypersensitivity to criticism, increased mistrust, poor impulse control, and poor emotional regulation which are factors that could end up creating violent responses… in short they can generate a propensity for abusive behavior.

To put it simply, even before meeting AFO, Kotarou was more predisposed for violent/abusive behavior than your everyday guy.

So is AFO’s ‘innocent’?

Well, no because AFO is the one who created the reasons due to which Kotarou ended up losing his father, being abandoned by his mother and growing up in an institution, which ended up causing in Kotarou psychological consequences. Even if he and Kotarou had never met in their whole life, he still stamped his mark on Kotarou’s psyche in form of giving him the traumas that damaged his brain and, consequently, his psyche.

We don’t know if just this would have been enough to make Kotarou abusive, if he would have abused Tenko even if he had never met AFO.

It’s possible he wouldn’t have been abusive, it’s actually likely since, despite AFO’s influence, it’s implied until that fateful day he wasn’t violent with Tenko (Nao and her parents claim they won’t support him if he beats Tenko so before he should have stopped himself before striking him), he just left him in the garden. Which no, it’s still not a good thing, psychologically he’s kicking Tenko out of the house, which is harmful for Tenko’s psyche, but Kotarou might not realize this.

Without AFO’s influence it’s also possible he could have managed to control himself much better and, while I doubt he would have been the best parent, he might not have been so bad.

In short, before meeting AFO he was probably ‘better adjusted’ than we saw him being after more than 5 years of having to deal with AFO doing his best to poke at Kotarou’s psychological wounds and encouraging him to act at his worst. He was likely the equivalent of bringing full open bottles of while to an Alcoholics Anonymous reunion, tempting Kotarou to stop resisting to his worst impulses, giving him good, logical reasons to do so (hell, it seems it's him who suggested Kotarou to have Tenko so that Hana would have a sibling that would support her because Heroes never show up when you need them).

We saw how he was with Tenko.

Picture him having similar conversations with Kotarou.

“Tenko makes me so very angry when he insists talking about Heroes, even though I told him I don’t want to hear his speak of such topics. To control myself I’ve to leave the room or I fear I might lose it.”

“Shimura-san, you’re approaching this in the wrong manner. Not only Tenko is in the wrong because he’s disobeying you and challenging your authority… but what if he were to put his faith in a Hero and end up horribly betrayed as you were? Or worse, what if he were to become a Hero and then abandon his family? No, Shimura-san, you can’t escape this, you can’t act weak willed toward this, as the family head you’ve to face this and correct Tenko’s behavior, quickly and firmly.”

“But I don’t want to hurt Tenko, he’s young and…”

“Shimura-san, you rightfully set the rule in your house people must not talk about Heroes because you want to protect your family from the pain you felt due to your irresponsible mother, because you don’t want anyone of your children to follow in her footsteps and end up horribly killed. If your son doesn’t feel like respecting the rules that exist in his own house for his own safety and protection, he can try spending some time out of it, in the garden. Some corner time never killed anyone.”

And then, when the same thing comes up again AFO is there, encouraging Kotarou to be even strict, and when Kotarou gives in and punish Tenko and this solves nothing AFO encourages him to be even stricter, that it solved nothing because Kotarou was being still too soft, Tenko needs a firm hand if Kotarou wants to avoid the worst, he’s doing it for Tenko, for his family, he surely doesn’t want them to hurt as he does, do he?

And so on and on and on.

Hana is a little older than Tenko, I wouldn’t say much, maybe a couple of years (but being a couple of year older than a child of five makes a big difference), possibly less driven to be a Hero, and, when AFO start to press on the issue and things start to worsen, she catches up fast. She’s not well nurtured, she’s just more prone to adapt to her father’s behavior. Dad doesn’t want to hear such thing, he’ll gets really mad if he does and repercussions are nasty so we don’t let him hear such things and act behind his back (which is a signal Hana too is starting to show the strain of living in such household and might eventually develop psychological problems).

Tenko is younger, very driven (AFO even encouraged such drive behind Kotarou’s back!), less good at controlling himself but at the same time he psychologically resents even more of Kotarou’s behavior because it makes his house an unsafe place to express himself, something a child of his age desperately needs, hence his ‘allergy’ which is just a psychosomatic sign of distress.

The family swallows Kotarou’s excuses, which he learnt straight from AFO. They probably make sense and anyway they know they’ve to indulge in his whims because he’s the family head and hey, Kotarou knew a Hero up close and it was horrible for him, poor Kotarou, no, we don’t want either Tenko to end up suffering the same or becoming such a person, do we want Tenko to die like Nana? No, of course not, Kotarou must be right, he knows better but… well, Tenko is small and so sad, Kotarou might not be wrong but a gentler hand wouldn’t hurt, but well… Kotarou is the family head and it’s not like he’s physically harming Tenko, Tenko has to understand his father is right and obey so…

And so the family don’t really fight Kotarou directly, they don’t sit him down and give him a talk because they believe he’s right and he’s in the right to do what he does.

We hear it from Kotarou ‘He hasn’t manifested a Quirk to his age yet… if we don’t make him understand, then Tenko is the one who’ll suffer. Aspiring to be a Hero will only cause suffering.’

We hear it from Nao ‘your father doesn’t hate you, he just know how hard it is for Heroes’.

The family buys Kotarou’s excuse that it’s for Tenko, they try to suppress that sense of unease that tells them that no, this is not right, Kotarou is going overboard.

Remember. Kotarou is the family head, they and Kotarou’s children should obey to him and humor him. They’re actually shown strong determination and love for Tenko, when they say they refuse to support Kotarou if he beats Tenko. Socially it’s a big step for them.

So yes, AFO really had a big part in how Kotarou turned out, first because he made him a man who received psychological damage bad enough to be more prone to be abusive, second because he ‘cultivated’ said damage so that Kotarou would go overboard with Tenko in an attempt to force Tenko to repress his own wishes and dreams and feelings until, due to the stress caused by the activation of decay, they would go overboard and Tenko would lose control.

In other cultures though, cultures that think parents are of equal value, that children and their own dreams and wishes needs to be nurtured, what happened to Tenko could not happen equally as easily because, assuming Nao and her parents were psychologically well adjusted people, Kotarou would have less decisional power and they would have more instruments to judge what he’s doing to his son is psychologically wrong. They would be more prone to ask for psychological counseling (where in Japan the idea of receive psychological help has a strong stigma) for Tenko and for Kotarou, which would give AFO less ground to influence Kotarou, actually it might even expose him as a negative influence.

Of course it could still happen, abusive parents are all around the world, Japan isn’t the sole country who has them, but it would be harder.

That’s why you might find fans who paints the Shimura even worse than what they are, because they adapt them to a different social context. Nao and her parents become either more passive or less caring or even scared of Kotarou, because otherwise it becomes harder to explain why, if they’re at the same level as him, they would let him dictate the rules of the house, they would ignore well known theories about child rearing and clear signs of psychological problems, Kotarou becomes even more psychologically unstable because otherwise he wouldn’t feel so free to go that far and his family wouldn’t feel so hesitant to stop him.

So you’re not wrong, this is also about Koutaro who didn’t have a normal family growing up, but this situation was caused by AFO, who also further influenced him, and this is also about Kotarou having a role that gives him too much power for which he’s not suited due to his psychological damage, and in this there’s society to blame and AFO, who knows how society works, likely took advantage of this too to create a very fertile soil for his own purposes.

Long story short, while it’s possible Kotarou would have ground up to be an abusive father even if AFO had never contacted him, even if AFO had never killed his father and lead to his mother’s abandonment, the chances in this case are much lower. AFO indirectly and directly, ruined Kotarou and used the ruined Kotarou to ruin Tenko as well. His chances of failure still existed… but were really low, he made it so the odds were all in his favor.

You might say in another country AFO wouldn’t have the advantage of terrain, and blaming AFO doesn’t mean Kotarou, or the Shimura in general, are completely innocent but really, the odds weren’t in their favor. AFO is the main culprit, they’re more like unwilling accomplices. They’re to blame but they didn’t have the intention to harm, they weren’t even fully aware they were causing harm, so I wish Tomura had got the chance to punch AFO much more than he did. He deserved it.

At least… that’s what I think. Others can, as usual, disagree. THANK YOU FOR YOUR ASK!

#boku no hero academia #bnha meta #mha meta #bnha spoilers #Shigaraki Tomura #Shimura Kotarou #Shimura Hana #Shimura Nao #All for One #Ask #paesagex

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