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bnhaobservation · 8 months

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What do you think the todofam will be like after the war?

It's something I've been wondering as well.

Let's start with a premise.

This story is aimed mainly to a Japanese audience which sees things according to their culture. Some things that for them are a given aren't for who's not Japanese and vice versa. So, it gets twice as difficult for us to follow the message Horikoshi wants to deliver.

Also... this is going to be long and actually should have been longer. I tried to keep it as short as I could but this might have caused to make it not perfectly clear so I apologize in advance.

Lastly, what follows are just my two cents, feel free to disagree.

Said so let's tackle the matter from a realistic perspective.

If BNHA were not a story but the real world, the Todoroki family is finished. Not because Enji abused his family, but because one of their members (Tōya) is a murderer.

A seinen manga "Theseus no fune" (テセウスの船) digs with what happens to a family of 5 after the father, Sano Bungo, was accused of murder.

The mother, who was at the time pregnant, was denied hospitalization to give birth to her child.

They had to hide their identity because each time it was discovered they were forced to move. People would also refuse to hire them if they were to know of it. The main character, the youngest child of the man, the one that was born AFTER his father was accused of murder, and who should have been named Seigi (justice) is named instead Shin (heart) because "there's no justice for the son of a murderer", has to take his mother's surname (along with the rest of the family), have to wear a mask to hide his face to work, so that he won't be recognized, had to give up on becoming a teacher and, although he managed to marry, his wife's relatives refused to accept the marriage. When the wife dies during childbirth, her parents attend tot he funeral but claim they couldn't tell anyone about it because otherwise people would know she married the son of a criminal. They also demand their grandchild to be handed to them because she can't grow up with the son of a murderer.

Note that said son of a murderer, never had any contact with his father as the man had been arrested before his birth, and therefore Shin clearly couldn't be responsible for his father's crime.

We see something similar happening in BNHA for people who're involved in minor crimes.

Tobita tried to help someone but failed and was accused of preventing a Hero from saving him.

He was expelled from school and his family was implied to be targeted with bullying (see the graffiti with insults on the gate?)

It got so bad even his family chased him away.

Jin goes through something similar. Due to being involved in an incedent he's fired and no one wants to hire him ever again so he ends up homeless.

It's implied the same happened with Himiko, though we don't know if she ended up on the run just after attacking Saito, knowing her parents wouldn't want her back, or after trying to go back home and being rejected.

While Himiko's house might have been further devasted AFTER she joined the league, we can see that the gate was already damaged when her parents still lived there just after she had attacked Saito.

Note that none of the three over mentioned characters had yet committed murder. Tobita wanted to help, and the man who he had been unable to save will recover in 6 months, Jin ended up running over a guy who ran in the street without warning but only broke his arm and, as far as we know, Saito didn't die due to Himiko's attack.

Yet, they're shunned by society and with them their families who turn their back to them.

Now picture how much worse this would be for someone who committed murder.

Tōya/Dabi himself touches upon how bad they should have it now.

'Hitotsu kikitēnda ga Shōto… omae ittai donna tsura shite? Obieru shimin to issho ni U.A. ni komotteiraretanda? ENDEAVOR no musuko Dabi no kyōdai yakusai no nikogori mite~e nate me ~e ga!!'

「一つ聞きてえんだが焦凍…　おまえ一体どんな面して怯える市民と一緒に雄英に籠っていられたんだ？　エンデヴァーの息子荼毘の兄弟　厄災の煮凝りみてぇなてめェが！！」

``I have to ask you one thing, Shōto... What the hell kind of face were you wearing? Were you able to stay holed up in U.A. with the frightened citizens? Endeavor's son, Dabi's brother, it's like a broth of calamity/disaster/misfortune! !”*

*okay, technically he says 'yakusai no nikogori' (厄災の煮凝り) which litterally is a "jellied broth of disaster/calamity", but the fact he chose the nikogori is also due to how the kanji used to write it are 'ni' (煮 "boil, cook") and 'gori' (凝 "freeze").

The people in U.A. should have wanted Shouto in it as much as they wanted Deku when he first showed up there, not even a bit, even though Deku did nothing wrong...

Something many fans often miss of this scene is that when Deku enters in U.A. all his classmates are there, except for Shōto, and that Heroes supporting Deku like Present Mic and Best Jeanist are there, but not Endeavor and Hawks.

Where are they? Just outside.

It will be Ectoplasm who will call them in when all is finished.

Why Shōto isn't with his classmates supporting Deku? Why Endeavor and Hawks remain outside?

It's not because they don't care but because they would make matters worse.

And Shōto, poor kid, is completely innocent, Enji might have responsibilities for what Tōya did but Shōto? Whatever he did wrong?

Yet, same Tamura Shin from "Theseus no fune", he's likely hold accountable for his brother and father's crimes as well as the rest of his family.

The story glosses it over, we see nothing being done against Shōto or the rest of his family, and his classmates act mostly supportive so he doesn't seem to have it bad, but the story likely doesn't show it because, for Japanese people, it's a given Shōto would have it bad, it's unnecessary to esplicitly show it and it would probably be too dark of a subject so Horikoshi skims on it, as in Japan it's public knowledge.

That's why Natsuo said all that awaits them is pure hell.

It was bad enough Tōya had killed people before but now he had attempted to nuke Japan and the Todorokis don't expect they will be 'forgiven' because they actually stopped him almost getting themselves killed in the process.

In a way Tōya has cornered them, their best option was actually to die with him.

So if we go for a realistic ending Enji will have to drop his job and the same goes for Fuyumi and Natsuo, Shōto should leave school, the family should live in hiding, being bullied and ostracized and this regardless of them having saved the day and of Tōya's fate (if he dies or lives, if he gets jailed, sentenced to death or spared due to his body condition being so disastrous he might end up needing permanently hospitalized... assuming they'll be willing to hospitalize him).

They would probably do better change name and country and attempt to start a new live under another identity and away from Japan... if the likely scarring burns they gained will allow them to live in hiding.

Now... this is a realistic fate for them.

BNHA however is a story, and it's a story which is also making a point of criticizing society. It doesn't hold just the Todorokis but also society as accountable for what Tōya did.

It's a story with a moral and if society doesn't get 'punished' or 'redeemed', or, more specifically 'atones', the moral ends up being that society can do any sort of thing to people and it will never be punished and if you retaliate you'll be squashed down. Not exactly an uplifting moral.

The League of Villains is born by society's sins. Generally for me the most meaningful thing is this scene.

Why? Because in my country if you are and adult and find on the streets an unsupervised kid of 5 and turn your eyes away, it's a crime even if he doesn't look in such a poor shape like Tenko.

All those people pretending not to see him would get in troubles. In Japan they aren't so strict but for me the scene looks particularly strong because it's basically a crime.

So I've really no sympathy for those people and, if the story wants to have an uplifting moral, society has to change, hold itself accountable for how it hurt Tenko and the others and atone toward them.

In the same vein society should reform and not mistreat the Todorokis the way it did with Tobita or Himeko's family but support them.

This however narratively presents some huge problems.

Society is a broad concept and BNHA didn't offer us one or more characters that could work as stand in for it.

The characters we get familiar with, often represent the best part of society.

For example we know there were corrupted Heroes, we know the HPSC had Lady Nagant kill corrupted Heroes but... did we ever met them? Nope.

Stain, who wanted to change society and erase corrupter Heroes who ended up attacking?

Some Hero who abused his power to commit crimes? Some Hero who actually was in league with criminals? Some Hero who actually was negligent in his work? Some Hero who, at least, throwed trash on the streets?

Nope. He attacks Īda's brother and Native... who overall seemed two decent guys.

This creates a clash of our perception in the story, the League attacked society but the characters we were presented with were usually great people.

The League undoubtedly perceives society as evil and worth being wiped out because they met the worse of it but... we didn't.

That's why many readers feel like the League should be jailed for terrorism but no one thinks the "Star Wars" rebels in the first trilogy should met the same fate for... the exact same crime.

In "Star Wars" first trilogy the empire is always represented as evil, all its soldiers are represented as evil and we've zero sympathy for them when they get wiped out.

But in BNHA society is not the empire, society is common people who've families and feel... innocent enough not to deserve what the League unleash on them, especially since BNHA had too few 'bad guys' among the good guys and, conveniently or not so conveniently, wiped out the HPSC before it could take the blame for many problems and we are instead way too often presented with 'good guys' characters.

So Horikoshi has to find a way to deliver the message that if said society ended up under attack, it was actually due to its shortcomings.

Tōya told Enji the past never dies and you reap what you sow...

...but this applied to society too.

In response later on Enji will realize he'll have to atone to him and apologize to him.

In theory society should do the same... so that the story could have an uplifting moral of society learning from its errors and never again repeating them so that people will be better and the League of Villain will never be reborn in the future... however... it's much easier for us to apply all this to Todoroki Enji than to the BNHA society.

It's very fairy tale to assume that society will say "hey but if we didn't mistreat those guys first, they wouldn't have done what they did, shouldn't we also make amends?"

I don't really know if Horikoshi will be able to pull this off in a convincing manner, or if he'll be allowed to do it because one of the problems in his story is he can't allow to come to pass the idea that what the League did was an acceptable response.

We see it in the attack at Central Hospital.

In theory the story should end with a similar situation.

Shōji acknowledged that the Heteromorphs were hurt and persecuted but turning to violence wasn't acceptable

...and then somehow the Heteromorphs changed their mind and stop fighting and the people said they heard their voices today and they're sorry for not realizing it sooner and everyone cries and all's well that ends well and many readers hate this arc (for which SO MUCH could be written) and label it poor writing and it's actually a very minor bit so...

I don't know if Horikoshi now has used the people's response to it to perfect his ending in a way that won't have backlash.

So back to your question, what about the Todorokis?

Hopefully since Horikoshi wants to go to a positive and uplifting ending, the Todorokis will be spared from a fate that will be hell.

After all they made a big deal of how things were being recorded on videos. Society might be impressed by how this family came together to save everyone and might feel bad for them as well as partially responsible.

If society will come together instead than ostracizing and mistreating people, the Todorokis might not be end up driven into a corner.

In the same vein the Todorokis will likely come together as a family.

That is because I'm assuming that the idea Horikoshi wants to come to pass is that you've to PREVENT people from going bad, not punish them once the deed is done and by coming together they prevent the situation from worsening.

So, I'm willing to bet the plan is that Natsuo is wrong and no, it won't be hell for them from now on, though it likely won't be easy.

I don't know if Tōya and the rest of the League will survive, because it would be damn convenient for Horikoshi to have them die, so that he won't have to face the whole punishment thing.

If they're dead they can't be punished nor society can be asked to atone to them for what they did to them, and so Horikoshi can focus on society coming together and supporting the people who're less 'cuplable' and reforming itself easily enough in such a way that would fit the kind of fairy tale nature of BNHA.

At the same time killing the league off is such a goddamn easy solution for the problem I really pray he won't go for it... but I recognize with the League he kept the bar really very high.

So I would love for Tōya to survive and heal and be given another chance and this time, with support from his family and society, become a better person, and the same goes for the rest of the League, but I don't know if Horikoshi can, is willing and will be allowed to pull this off.

We can only wait and see.

For now, I think it'll probably be safe enough to assume that at the end the Todoroki family will come together and they won't be in hell but Fuyumi will be allowed to continue to work as a teacher and Natsuo will be allowed to continue to study and will marry his girlfriend. I aslo think Shōto will be allowed to become a Hero. As for Enji he might retire. I know people would want to see him jailed for his family abuse but since no one in his family is willing to file charges against him I'm pretty sure this won't happen. Likely he also won't divorce from Rei.

Tōya's fate through remains a mystery.

I'd like for him to end up hospitalized and for his family to stay and support him, for Enji to atone to him and finally look at him but well, we can only wait and see for this.

As much as I hate the idea we were told Tōya (who shouldn't have managed to survive away from Garaki's support) survived till now due to his grudge to his family, if he were to let it go he might just die... albeith in that case he would probably die in peace because he would finally feel loved by his family. We'll see.

Thank you for your ask!

#boku no hero academia #Todoroki Enji #Todoroki Shouto #Todoroki Touya #bnha spoilers #Todoroki Rei #Todoroki Natsuo #Todoroki Fuyumi #Ask #Shigaraki Tomura #Toga Himiko #Bubaigawara Jin #Shouji Mezou

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bnhaobservation · 3 months

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Hi! I loved reading your analysis on the todorokis chapter, but there's one point I would ask some clarification: yes, in japan there's the death penality, but it doesn't seem to exist in the world of bnha? Unless I missed it, so I do wonder if your take on why they're not trying anything to save Toya is maybe different than the one you said (to exclude for him the execution) with this possible notion?

Thank you!

I'm glad you enjoyed my analysis!

Well, I would say this bit implies death penality exists in BNHA world too.

The officer in Tartarus expects All for One to receive the death penality but finds it an easy way out.

Support for capital punishment has consistently been high among the Japanese public so it's unlikely Horikoshi would remove death sentence in his story. It's something the public is okay with.

If anything you might say in Japan capital punishment isn't carried out quickly, the author of the Akihabara massacre was executed 11 years after being sentenced to death so in theory if the League has survived and were sentenced to death they could live for 10 more years... actually in some manga the death sentence is executed even more slowly, “Theseus no fune” (テセウスの船), a manga I mentioned in another post has the man accused of murder stay alive for more than 20 years, "Boku dake ga Inai Machi" (僕だけがいない街) sees 18 years go by so yeah, even if the League were sentenced to death they could still have time.

(Also we're told he was put into Tartarus without even a trial... which seems big to us but in Japan, if you're arrested, in the 99% of cases you'll end up in jail even if you're not a well known criminal like All for One so likely Japanese readers didn't see it as a big deal.)

Long story short... death penality exists in BNHA (though this scene is removed by the anime in which only All for One's speech remain) and considering how it's view in a positive light, Horikoshi had no reason to remove it, especially since he didn't save Tomura and is saying Touya is slowly dying.

However I don't think the Todoroki are just not doing anything to save Touya merely because even if they were to save him, Touya would be killed off later on just the same.

I think the answer to "why the Todoroki aren't doing anything?" is more Doylistic in nature than Watsonian.

Horikoshi wants him to die same as Tomura as it's the easiest and most ergonomic solution to deal with him. As a result he writes the family in a way that doesn't fight this end goal so as to push readers to also accept it. If the Todoroki family, who loves Touya and might have the money to offer him the best cures, gave up on saving him, then readers should as well.

He leaves to find a Watsonian reason up to the reader, the most likely being that the doctors told the Todorokis that nothing can be done to save him and they just accepted it.

Of course we can make up more (but I find them a lot more unbelievable than the doctor telling the Todorokis nothing can be done).

For example it could be said that the government decided they can't try to heal Touya (highly unlikely as there's no mention of this and Hawks is the president of the commission).

Or that Garaki killed himself off so his medical knowledge got lost (honestly I doubt it).

Or that to try and have Monoma use Overhaul Quirk would be too dangerous and could end up making more harm than good to Touya.

Or whatever stucks your fancy.

As I said in the BNHA world it seems weird they can't save Touya, but we're likely meant to repeat the MST3K Mantra and not question it.

Just to be clear... I'm not enjoying this. I didn't want Touya to die, actually I hate this development and I really would love if the following chapters were to prove he'll survive anyway, but I see it as unlikely.

For now we can only wait and see if Horikoshi will decide to save him... as the one who has the real power to save him is Horikoshi, not Touya's family.

Thank you for your ask!

#bnha spoilers #Todoroki Touya #Ask

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