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kharmii · 3 months ago

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I love this fandom because I've read more of these interesting analyses here than any other.

Did Enji atone to Touya (and his family) and stepped up on his role as a father?

Boku no Hero Academia has a grave 'flaw'. The fact that's strongly tied to Japanese culture and Buddhism makes it a very interesting work but also makes it a hardly international work because way too many cultural things are left unexplained because they're assumed to be a given. Only they're not when the work is read by foreign readers. And this lead to confusion.

The Todoroki plotline is an example of this.

In the west many feel Enji did nothing for Touya or did too little because the little he did is a given in the west. The point is... it's not a given in Japan. In Japan is a BIG DEAL. So let's go though it.

First, the fact that he doesn't want to kill Touya even though he's a criminal

Todoroki Enji ‘Ore wa ikinobite mo... ENDEAVOR wa shinda. Tairyō satsujinsha (read: musuko) to tatakaenai.’ 轟炎司「俺は生き延びても...エンデヴァーは死んだ。大量殺人者（むすこ）と戦えない。」 Todoroki Enji “Even if I survived... Endeavor is dead. I can't fight against a mass murderer (read: my son).”

Let's compare it to these two scenes of "Death Note" and see how Yagami Soichiro, a policeman, is taking the idea his son might be a killer and how, although Misa protests, the story doesn't present it as him being crazy but as it being his duty.

That's why Hawks doesn't want to send Enji, who's on an atonement path, to face Dabi, because Enji might end up in a situation in which he would have to kill his son and he would refuse... which is more or less what happens.

Second, Enji acknowledges that what Touya said is true, Touya is his son and Enji did what he did. In such a situation many would lie. Dabi's video proves nothing. He is a Villain, they had a doctor in the team who could create Nomu, the paternity test could be fake, even if Dabi were to provide a sample of his blood or skin they could insist that's fake.

Society didn't want the truth, they don't want Enji to confess, they wanted him to reassure them, they even commented he should have lied because yes, that's what's done often.

Basically he put his honor on the chopping block. A public apology like this one is a BIG DEAL in Japan. It's much more serious than in western countries and he does it when he could have spared himself and say Dabi lied but that would have meant to deny his son.

Third, it connects to the first in a way. While Enji is unwilling to kill Touya, he's willing to die with him. It's ‘shinjū’ (心中 Lit. “Mind/heart center/inside” but more likely means “oneness of hearts”, probably reflecting a psychological link between the participants) and it’s a word used in common parlance to refer to any group suicide of two or more individuals bound by love, typically lovers, parents and children, and even whole families. People who commit shinjū believe that they would be united again in heaven, a view supported by feudal teaching in Edo period Japan, which taught that the bond between loved ones would continue into the next world, and by the teaching of Pure Land Buddhism wherein it is believed that through shinjū, one can approach rebirth in the Pure Land. By volunteering to die with him, Enji is basically agreeing to remain with him in their next reincarnation.

For us it's crazy, it's Enji giving up on saving him. In Japan it sounds like 'I love you and I want to be with you'.

Forth, he'll apologize to Touya. As said before it's a BIG DEAL, especially since Enji is the family head and, although for us most of what he did is wrong, in Japan most of what he did is well within what he can do. Marrying a woman you don't love in a combined marriage to expect the child who'll be born from it will fulfill your ambitions and not really bothering to raise it because that's a mother job, well, things are changing in Japan but none of the above is a crime. In a not so distant past it was actually the norm. Yet Enji apologizes even though normally a family head wouldn't.

Fifth it's a bit in the first point and in the second but it'll drag on through all the story, Enji won't reject Touya. He's the only one (except Fuyumi who however doesn't get to say much) who never calls him Dabi after the reveal, and he won't strike him out of the family register but will keep on considering him his son.

Look at the Tobitas instead and at how they kick their son out.

Don't think Hawks is cutting strings with his parents solely because they were abusive, the Tobitas show us how you should just cut strings with a criminal. Same as the Togas.

Have "Theseus no fune" in which a man accused to be a murderer, send a birthday gift to his son and watch the reaction of his wife.

They don't want to keep contact with a criminal. It's scary because they'll be mistreated if they are discovered to be related to him.

And, in this vein, the fact he wants to go see him, that he'll keep on seeing him till the end instead than turning his back on him, is seen as important. It's seen as him being his father.

To many of us it seems as if he's forcing his presence upon Touya. Actually, from a Japanese perspective he's instead not abandoning him like many others would.

And since Touya is dying, very likely the talking will be the talking that's done in a Buddhist culture when someone is dying. Death should occur in a calm and peaceful environment, with close friends and family in attendance. Together they should reflect on the good deeds the dying person has done throughout their life, in the hopes it will help them in their next reincarnation. Additionally, family and friends can perform good deeds on behalf of them, which they believe will be of merit to the deceased.

So, since Touya is dying he won't get a scolding like Chisaki, they'll all only tell him nice and soothing things so he'll die peacefully.

Now... in the west all this is absolutely way too little, and in some points even feels wrong. Dying together instead than insisting in trying to save him? Deciding unilaterally to show up every day? Not our thing...

We can totally say 'thanks, I hate it' because we grew up with Darth Vader who instead gave his life to SAVE his son. All this accepting that Touya instead is going to die so Enji can at best die with him or keep him company until he does... well, it's mostly not our cup of cultural tea.

In in Japan though, all Enji does is important. Enji is doing something for Touya as a father, something important many fathers wouln't do for their sons.

Does it would satisfy a Japanese audience? They'll get the message better than us... but things are changing and anyway it can still feel too little. "Death Note" is dated 2005/2006 and back in it Misa was already questioning the idea of a father killing his son and then killing himself. BNHA is more innovative as Enji doesn't think to kill Touya but he still goes for the 'let's die together' route... and Horikoshi subtly criticizes it by having the rest of the family decising they'll try to stop the fire before just giving up. They're willing to die, but not before trying.

Enji represents plenty of old theories after all, which Horikoshi acknowledges were moved out of wrong beliefs, not moved by mean intents... which, is possible, would still not be enough for Japanese readers either because among teenagers, the target audience, there's an increasing number of teen who, in Japan, are forced to leave home (the Toyoko Kids) and often ends up committing crimes to survive and the league seems to be based on all the kind of homeless people Japan has.

While for a kid at home with a loving family being told that your father will die with him if he messes up instead than just dumping him might be comforting... for a kid that was abused and forced to leave home this might feel not enough.

People want to be saved, being told it's too late to save them, might be a lesson for those who hadn't done anything wrong yet so that they won't do it, but it's surely not a hopeful message for who instead got himself into troubles.

But well, that's something for the Japanese audience to ponder.

There's also to point out that, even though the message is not hopeful, Horikoshi is seeing the homeless people and acknowledging they should be helped.

Japan in regard to the Toyoko kids is mostly like the old woman who pretended not to see Tenko but that, in the end, helps that new boy.

I think Horikoshi's message desperately wants to be hopeful even for them, that he wants BNHA be like Midoriya's final stand, something that will push people to acknowledge they exist and reach out to help them.

It just that... it gets lost in what I'll call the 'litteral translation'.

No one explains us how we should jusge the scenes and, since we lack the cultural background, to us they are perceived differently because to us things work differently.

And, personally, even when I think I figured out the author's intent and can see the positivity of it, the cultural filter is still too tick and the picture gets blurried.

It's like being beginner at speaking a foreign language and having to constantly translate it in your head. The message loses its natural beauty, get simplified and not fully grasped.

I think I understand how Enji's atonement work in regard to Touya... it still doesn't feel fulfilling to me. But enough about Touya.

'Now,' you might rightfully say, 'fine, I'll bite, let's assume what Enji has is an atonement arc for Touya. It doesn't work at all in the west but let's give it a pass. What about his other kids?'

Natsuo and Fuyumi's wishes are in conflict.

Fuyumi wants the five of them to be a family (at the time she doesn't know Touya is alive), Natsuo doesn't want to be part of a family with Enji.

Enji's solution is giving Fuyumi a house in which she can welcome her mother and live with Natsuo (and Shouto when he comes home), while he removes himself from the equation. The solution fulfills Natsuo's wish of not seeing Enji because it makes him feel bad. It only partly fulfil Fuyumi's wish because it'll allow her to have her mother back (Rei couldn't bear meeting Enji either) and to stay with her siblings... but Enji takes responsibility for it, he doesn't tell her it's due to Natsuo that he can't live with them, so, in theory, it won't be Natsuo the one who's stressed to be at home when Enji is there and the one who has to leave home because he can't stand the sight of Enji.

There are many things I can say on how this is not a good solution (it doesn't make Natsuo feel better, it just stops him from feeling worse), but there are two points to consider. The first is that Enji is getting old and it would be his children's duty, due to filial pity, to take care of him, instead he's basically giving them the means to leave and take his wife with them.

Actually, since Natsuo is now the oldest MALE, it should fall on him specifically. Yes, Enji always intended to have Shouto inherit his mantle but this doesn't free Natsuo from his duties. Instead Enji is letting all his children free.

Even with Shouto, he doesn't insist anymore for Shouto to learn Flashfire Fist as his heir but just as an intern.

I take this is big in Japan.

Here again, not so much, especially in the countries in the west that think kids should leave their parents' home as soon as possible and we don't think our children are obliged to inherit our mantles.

Note how the story implies that this was meant to be the end for the Natsuo/Enji arc.

Natsuo made clear he didn't want to meet Enji again, he does it solely because they've to stop Touya and, once they've stopped Touya, he makes clear he doesn't want to see him again.

If we want though, the fact he's leaving the family can be seen as a concession in a way.

Since apparently Rei wants to stay with Enji (and likely their old house was devasted because that's what happens to relative of criminals) Enji can now move with Fuyumi and Rei and Natsuo won't have to see him because he'll leave home... to make his own home.

As for Shouto... Horikoshi answered his request by basically showing him Enji being a father for Touya and then promising he would protect them from the fiery fallout, which Horikoshi doesn't show at all because it's another thing that's a given in Japanese culture, it'll be hell for Enji to protect them, but not for us.

Just to get an idea of the fiery fallout here are some images from "Theseus no fune" again showing you how bad is this sort of thing.

Back to Enji, Horikoshi gives us verbal confirmation that Enji is now being a father by being willing to do this, by having Natsuo, who never called him as such, calling him father for the first time.

For Horikoshi that's Enji being a father.

Again, we've no idea of which hell Enji will suffer because that's not part of our culture. I've posted above screencaps of "Theseus no fune", that's how the fallout should be so not pretty at all.

So the fact that Enji will try to protect them from it is, again, BIG.

So yeah, Enji did do BIG things to atone and keeps on doing them and if he'll ultimately get forgiven by Natsuo (the rest of his family wanted to forgive him way before he were to do something), that's up to Natsuo... Horikoshi likely left this as open ending because he wanted to let it up to readers so as not to make them feel they were forced to forgive Enji.

In the general hopeful theme of the manga and with Natsuo acknowledging him as a cool father I guess his idea is that Natsuo too will eventually forgive him because he's kind.

I don't want to say that Natsuo forgiving Enji would be a culture clash because there's people even here that forgive their horrible parents and that's valid. Forgiving is a personal choice and one has the right to make it even if said horrible parent did nothing to deserve it.

It's up to you.

But sure is, if again we take the story at face value and not in its cultural contest, we can't see what Enji does to atone, because for us is nothing big.

It's even made worse by how Horikoshi doesn't show at all the hell Enji will go through (as for him is a given) so for us IT DOESN'T EXIST. We see Enji as having it easy, talking big but not having to face anything at all.

Honestly though... I think this is a bit of a flaw of the manga as a whole.

Way too often it prefers to focus on the good than on the bad so that the bad gets sidelined to much to the point people forget it.

There were horrible Heroes who committed crimes and had no intention to repent or stop... and we never met them. Nagant killed them off but we never met them.

Mountain Lady, who became a Hero for money and fame, then sticks to the job even when it's bad. Desugoro, who left the job when it turned bad, then came back to help. Enji is on an atonement path and, anyway, on work he was always a good Hero.

In the same way Horikoshi prefers not to show Enji's hardship but focus on how he'll have the support of his sidekicks, driver and Hawks... partly also because it ties in so well with the general message of everyone reaching out.

The result is that the Midoriya plotline of everyone reaching out becomes more important of the Enji atonement arc and overshadows it.

Enji's atonement arc ends in 426, chap 430 doesn't feel the need to tell us if Enji is keeping up with it despite the hardship, nor how his family is doing. It feels the need to reassure us that people will reach out for him even if he's in hell, that even if he had to give up on his family, he now as a new found family.

It's thematically consistent with the theme of reaching out but... the fact it overwrites the atonement arc honestly FOR ME doesn't work so great.

I think it's an overall problem of the 'reaching out message'.

While in itself is beautiful... it saves nothing I was lead to care about.

In Enji's case I was interested in his atonement arc, in how he could help his kids. I wanted more of that, partly because his atonement arc is so far from my culture, partly because it touched characters I cared about, I wanted to be reassured he would keep on working on it and that his family would be well.

Yes, he should be in hell, but the story didn't really work hard on trying to make me worry for him as it established already a support network for him. The story made me worry for the kids, for Touya, who was dying, for Fuyumi, who wanted back her family and won't have it, for Natsuo, who's marrying an unknown character so young, for Shouto, who has to cope with the loss of the brother with whom he wanted to connect.

I don't really care Burnin, Onima, Kido and Hawks are willing to continue to protect Enji, to reach out to help him, I knew they would, I wanted to be reassured Enji's kids are safe, well and protected. I wanted to see ENJI reach out and help them.

In this vein I don't really care the old grandmother saved a nameless abused kid, or, at least, not as much as I cared for Tomura to be saved. It's nice she saved him, it's nice he gets to live the life Tomura was denied but honestly, he's a mob character with a super tragic backstory created deliberately to force us to emotionally connect to him.

The message he now will be saved is good, but my emotional investment to him is too little.

The same applies to Uraraka's Quirk counsueling program, we knew next to nothing about the Quirk consueling previous program beyond that it didn't work (a real problem in Japan as they have a school consueling program that didn't work... and changes are in progress) and that now it supposedly does.

To how Shouji now solves peacefully plenty of conflicts caused by Heteromorph discrimination, which Horikoshi tossed in later and never really showed how to solve (and, don't take me wrong, it's not solved even by Shouji, he just solves peacefully the conflicts, how is up to everyone's speculation).

Long story short, I think Horikoshi worked really hard for BNHA to have an optimist, hopeful message... but part of it goes lost in cultural differences and part of it goes lost in how the story didn't try to get me invested in the things it's now saving.

So yeah, I'm still sad for this little panel in chap 430

I guess I'll eventually get over it. Today though, it's not that day.

On a positive note... if we count the pages of all the chapters that should go in vol 42 they're only 132. The chapters that were meant to go into Vol 39 had 165 (which yes, Horikoshi further expanded once the volume was released).

So yeah, unless Vol 42 will be slimmer than usual or that he'll add to it some sidestory or extra story, it's possible we'll get more plot in terms of epilogue. We'll see.

(also yes, I'm not touching Rei in this post. Rei is another can of worm entirely and one, I fear, Horikoshi doesn't care about. The poor woman doesn't even get a profile while Ikoma Komari does. And really, I do think Rei is much more important than Ikoma Komari)

#endeavor #enji todoroki #rei todoroki #shoto todoroki #fuyumi todoroki #touya todoroki #dabi #natsuo todoroki #Yagami Soichiro #honest analysis #lemgthy boi #theseus no fune #tobitas

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bnhaobservation · 10 months ago

Note

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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