Shigaraki Tomura: Abuse and Victimhood
While Shigaraki is introduced to us the readers as an unstable manchild, bent on killing All Might the symbol of good in the manga for unknown reasons as the story delves more and more into Shigaraki’s background it becomes quickly apparent he’s not just some villain without cause to be a villain.
The stroy makes a clear case that Shigaraki is a victim of the system that fell through the cracks. However, he was not just neglected by the people and heroes who failed to save him, but also by his savior All for One, who adopted him solely for the purpose of becoming a villain. This post is going to be making the case that All for One is an abusive mentor, and Shigaraki is a clear victim of abuse who shows several traits of it in the manga.
The kind of abuse that Shigaraki endured is pretty much the reverse side of what Endeavor did to Todoroki. Rather than having a child for the sole purpose of becoming a hero to succeed him, and then forcing that child into training and raising him with the expectation of being a successor, Shigaraki went through the reverse being raised from the young age and put through dehumanizing training to be a villain. The difference being that Shigaraki’s story is mostly untold to the audience at this point unlike Todoroki who is one of the main characters the story follows, so a lot of the signs of abuse for Shigaraki are instead hinted to or eluded at for the audience.
Shigaraki is first presented to us as a very inhuman character. The traits that he’s shown having at this point are meant to otherize him, they are classical villain traits. Poor posture, creepy faces, lack of empathy.
Shigaraki jumps straight to violence towards children as an acceptable step to getting what he wants. He’s a very thorough other, as it will be elaborated on later by Deku in the manga he’s not really someone others can understand at this point, he’s just lashing out baselessly. Basically his way of thinking and his way of acting is meant to seem as foreign as possible to normal people, and his incomprehensibility is supposed to make him look like a villain in our eyes. Because at this point the audience does not know who Shigaraki is at all, he’s just some creepy guy who showed up to attack some kids. However, there are lots of hints at deeper characterization in this scene.
In his introduction scene Shigaraki’s childishness is demonstrated again and again as well. He refers to all the other low ranking villains he’s brought along as ‘playmates’.
When he’s faced with setbacks, Shigaraki seems to have no true method of handling his emotions and resorts to excoriation, self harm instead hurting his own skin to vent the frustration.
Excoriation disorder (also referred to as chronic skin-picking or dermatillomania) is a mental illness related to obsessive-compulsive disorder. It is characterized by repeated picking at one’s own skin which results in skin lesions and causes significant disruption in one’s life.
Shigaraki compliments his heroes too like a child would, praising how cool they are. He also compares the current scenario to a video game multiple times, referring to the Nomu as the final boss.
Attention is drawn over and over again to his sickly posture, and once more Shigaraki can’t handle setbacks or failure, and the negative emotions that come with those things at all. His first response is to self harm, scratching at his neck until he draws blood, his second is to resort to violence and threaten Kurogiri on a whim only barely restraining himself and his third is to give up. Once again employ the video game language.
When All Might interrupts we’re given further signs of Shigaraki’s instability. He addresses the hand on his face as father, the hand that grips his face almost violently, and not only that but he apologizes when it gets knocked away. This is another recurring trend his fixation on that one hand.
Here’s another important part to Shigaraki’s writing. Again and again he’s seen by the outside system as just another villain who enjoys violence. Shigaraki also accepts that categorization very readily. “People who fight for ideals have a different sort of fire in their eyes”, Shigaraki accepts the assertion that he fights for no reason at all very easily even though we find out later in the manga that is not the case.
He’s such a baby, really.
So, from this introduction scene Shigaraki seems like an extremely irrational villain out to kill All Might, and therefore a pure evil to fight the pure good who is All Might one of the most wholesome heroes in the series for no rational reason why. One with no morals or restraints willing to even attack children, and who is so irrationally violent he snaps and lashes out at the smallest of setbacks.
This is just the shallow lens we’re given to him at the start of the series however, because at this point we are only following the perspective of the heroes and not the villains, and Shigaraki is a definite outsider character. Most normal, rational people can find nothing to sympathize with in his mindset, nor can they understand him and that’s the deliberate point to his character. He’s mean tot be somebody who fell through the cracks.
If you read closer, Shigaraki is coded with a lot of traits of mental illness. First, whenever there is any kind of setback Shigaraki’s first response is to punish himself and self harm repeatedly. He can’t handle any stress at all without channeling it into some kind of violence and he’s just as willing to do it to himself as he is to others.
Next Shigaraki is so observant that even in the middle of a fight he can keep a running track of a deatil as small as the amount of time that Aizawa blinks. Shigaraki doesn’t have a specific disorder given to him by the author so I won’t go that far into depth about it, but it’s a common neuroatypical trait like that to be able to pick up on really fine details while at the same time seeming to miss out on a lot of obvious ones like social cues.
Thirdly Shigaraki is a giant man-child as emphasized over and over again above. Not only does he have almost no control of his emotions, falling into panic, getting nervous or upest easily but he also frames everything as a game around him. His most common way of dealing with those emotions is like a child to throw a tantrum about it and visibly lash out almost immediately rather than try to handle his upset feelings. He even has the body language of a child, posing meekly like this from time to time.
He dresses in sh a black shirt, black slacks or sweat pants, and bright red shoes which is not only meant to suggest a childish lack of care in his own appearance, but also is something that foils him to Deku a fourteen year old who dresses pretty much the same way. Shigaraki constantly gives shallow praise to the heroes he fights like “That’s cool” like he’s watching them on television. ANd he also is fickle like a child, giving up easily and lacking any kind of dedication and resolve. He also treats a life and death battle where he’s willing to kill kids to get what he wants like it’s just a game, not at all realizing the stakes. Which his complete and utter lack of empathy, not understanding the emotions of the other people he’s terrorizing or hurting to get what he wants is another childish traits as developmentally children are rather unempathic and have a self centered view of the world.
Now normally manchild has negative connotations as a man who deliberately chose not to grow up, and remains selfish, childish, etc. and hurts others with that irresponsible attitude there are also cases where victims of abuse grow into manchildren and retain childish traits into adulthood because they were not given any proper chance at all to grow up.
In that sense you can’t compare everyone with the same yard stick. While yes abuse is not an excuse out of responsibility for every single action a character takes, or their lack of personal self reflection or development there’s still a definite reason why Shigaraki exhibits all of these childish traits. From what we know of his backstory, he was taken in as a child and then raised in a hideout like the bar we see him in with Kurogiri, communicating not with a person who was raising him but rather a person on the other side of a monitor. Which means that it’s heavily hinted Shigaraki was raised with little to no human contact, and entirely outside of society.
So a lot of people don’t understand that developmental psychology is important for how a child grows and develops, especially in extremely divergent from the norm cases like Tomura’s upbringing. He’s basically conditioned to be a child soldier if you were to summarize his whole upbringing in more relatable real world terms outside of the MHA hero/villain dichotomy.
Basically everyone is expected to grow up yes, but there are important things like interacting with parents, interacting with children your own age, growing up in a consistently safe environment which encourages children to grow up healthier. Of course there will be people who refuse to grow up no matter how good their life is that’s what most people are referring to when they use the term manchild, but there are also people who don’t receive the ideal circumstances to grow up, and also abuse and harm can further damage these processes.
Most normal people grow up inside of society, they have friends, they go to school everyday and not only do they learn information, but they also learn socially. They learn to think critically about things and therefore are able to self reflect, handle failure, etc… They envision the emotions of other people because they interact with them on a day to day basis. Also they are raised in an environment that is generally secure for them.
Then compare this to Shigaraki, as far as we know he grew up with as little human contact as possible because All for One would not want anybody interrupting his pet project. Therefore he lashes out at his own allies and enemies equally. He did not go to school, he had no people he was attached to nor he saw on a daily basis. Most of all he grew up on the other side of the law so he was probably constantly in danger and his life was at jeapordy. So all of these things which are there to help children develop Shigaraki is cut off from. Basically the only things that All for One supplies are things that will make him into a better villain, Nomu, resources, and allies. A child basically raised in a villain’s evil lair their entire life who gets most of their social interaction through a voice coming to the end of a montior is going to have extremely low empathy because they were never given a chance to develop empathy. Which makes sense because a villainous mastermind is raising him to be a villain. What good would him hesitating to kill others, or worrying about the victims of his violence do a villain.
So Shigaraki already shows severe signs of neglect, he’s dirty, he can barely dress himself, he self harms and can’t handle his emotions and can barely interact with others. His hair and face are both a mess most likely due to complete lack of care, and his own tendency to self harm. These are all developmental problems connected with an abusive upbringing. How is Shigaraki meant to empathize and see the way society sees things when he has grown up entirely outside of society. Shigaraki has been thoroughly dehumanized and treated like a tool by the person who raised him, to condition him to dehumanize others and only see them as tools. Which will suit All for One’s plans for his sucessor just perfectly. Once again this is nothing that Shigaraki consented to as an adult. A child who was probably less than ten years old lost his only caretakers and then latched onto the only person who gave them any kind of support at all when everybody else passed him by. Shigaraki had basically no choice at all in this upbringing. He was moulded entirely by All for One’s desires.
So once again, Shigaraki can’t put his motivations into words because he’s not motivated by anything really. At this point he’s just lashing out, and trying to carry on the expectation that All for One put on his shoulder. Stain even calls him a temper tantrum throwing child, he’s lashing out because he has an underlying pain deep within him that he cannot address, heal or fix in any way so he’s trying to deal with the emotions through violence. He was also, taught most likely to deal with these emotions this way.
Yet we see All for One, Shigaraki’s primary abuser positioning himself as an educator helping with his growth. Even though Shigaraki would have grown normally if he had not grown up in such a remote environment and only interacted with in his growth and development as a hero. So, comparing Deku and Shigaraki right now Deku is also being mentored by another hero but Deku has a home life he can go back to, he has a mom that takes care of him, the mentorship and his growth and training as a hero is something he chose to do. Whereas Shigaraki had little to no choice, and he also has literally no life outside being a villain. Nor did he ever have one because since he was a child he was picked up by All for One and raised for this purpose.
Once again Shigaraki’s traits are still there. He basically has no reaction to violence done against him until somebody disturbs the hand on his face. He even laughs it off. Which you know, has implications.
Shigaraki was raised to hate All Might, but also his main conviction is lashing out society because he is not a part of it, and he never will be accepted into it at this point.
Stain even says, as irrational as he is his goal is to upset the status quo that Stain is discontent with which stopped Stain from attacking him any further. Even if they have completely opposite reasons for doing so. And for Shigaraki it’s a personal motivation, he fell through the cracks of society, nobody came to save him, and he wants to get back at it. He doesn’t like that everybody else has the comfort and security that he was denied.
Once again we see, Shigaraki has a tendency to lash out baselessly when he has to deal with any pain, or conflict at all. He has no idea how to handle it, he also wasn’t really raised to handle it.
So then the school trip arc comes around and we get more evidence of Shigaraki’s stunted behavior, immediately attacking new allies the moment he’s introduced to them, not able to socialize with them at all and resorting to violence because he’s in “a bad mood”. Kurogiri has to practically act like Shigaraki’s handler at this point because he can barely be trusted on his own.
In chapter 69 we get the first bit of self reflection from Shigaraki. When talking to Deku he’s honestly trying to figure things out about himself. So, the first thing he mentions is how everybody else unlike him is not living in constant danger and how that seems so odd to him. The peace and security everybody else is enjoying without him makes him very easy to imagine a scenario where he just throws all his carefully laid plans away and starts going into the crowd and going on a killing spree before he’s eventually put down.
This makes sense when you consider Shigaraki’s environment though, he’s one raised outside of society, peace, law and its comforts and denied those things and two he was not taught in any way to value human life at all. Now I argued earlier that Shigaraki is a character who is coded to be highly neurodivergent, and also mentally ill, but I want to clarify I don’t think this violence is a part of his mental illness. This violence is Shigaraki’s response to being raised in a violent environment, an environment of constant danger and then going outside and seeing how seemingly peaceful everybody else is. Shigaraki expects violence, it’s his number one solution to everything but he doesn’t see that in the society around him and he’s confused why he’s so different from them. It’s like if you were to take a solider out of a warzone and put them in a suburb of course they would get confused because their expectations for everything are different down to a sensory level.
Shigaraki as a person is constantly in a bad mood, doesn’t seem to enjoy anything about life, is constantly agitated and has no idea how to deal with those emotions. None of these are traits of a villain who was raised in a healthy environment or is particularly even enjoying it.
He’s also very attention hungry and wants people to see his villainous actions. He wants there to be a marked change in society from what he does, he wants to cause ripples. This attention hungry aspect and his inability to function when people aren’t paying attention to him is also another childish trait.
Deku even points this out about Shigaraki. That his mentality is foreign to most people, that people can’t understand why he thinks the way he does, or why he acts the way he does. If you know nothing about his background, he just looks like an irrational, violent, manchild. Of course Deku wouldn’t empathize with him he’s very scary and wanted to kill him, but the point is the default is most people wouldn’t empathize with him because Shigaraki is such an outsider who was conditioned and raised in a way so far outside of society nobody can really see him. He’s dehumanized so thoroughly to only play the role of villain. People have trouble seeing him as a victim of any kind because of how much of an outsider or an other he acts like. This is also something that will come up a little bit later.
Then we have Shigaraki’s rant which finally establishes what I’ve been saying all along that he resents the whole of society for being safe and secure when he is not, for being saved when he was not and we see him start to uncontrollably flash back to his past as he loses control of his behavior. That Shigaraki in the past either accidentally or on purpose killed his father with his own quirk and then only the hand was left behind leading to his fixation on the hand grabbing his face.
To the point where he carries the hand in his own pocket at all times and his hero disguise is to be have the hand grabbing his face.
Now Shigaraki’s costume design eludes to this abusive violence as well. As you can see the hand which he calls father is grappling his face. Allow me to make some rocket science level conclusions here, when a father or adult grips your face in such a manner its usually to be violent towards a child. Couple that with Shigaraki’s nonchalance when dealing with pain something that’s deonstrated with twice, when he was shot by a hero and then stabbed by Stain. Also that he chose to make his costume his entire body being covered by those disembodied hands, it’s likely the home that Shigaraki was rescued from even before All For One showed up and started influencing him was a violent one.
Shigaraki’s official art has him bring grabbed from every angle by other hands, some of them even manipulating his own hands. That’s pretty clear visual language for a loss of agency and an exploitation, not only violence. Hands covering a body have been used again and again for visual langugae for adult violence towards children in the past.
It’s pretty commonly used visual shorthand. So not only is Shigaraki’s costume representative of the violence he’s endured, and also he often self harms in response to any kind of minor stress at all, in Shigaraki’s next flashback we see more of the condition he grew up in.
Shigaraki was hunched up against a wall, in a phsyically dirty environment where nobody took notice of him. It’s highly likely he wasn’t living in a good place even before All For One showed up. Ye the only person who saw him and helped him was All for One, but that too the words he comforted Shigaraki with was an implicit manipulation.
Notice how the panel is framed. They’re encouraging words but rather than shown any kind of warmth or encouragement in the framing of the panel instead the entire background is white noise. This praise is meant to be seen as horrifying. Even though what he’s saying is pretty standard words of encouragement, from All For One’s mouth they’re meant to be read not only as dangerous but manipulative. It’s reminiscent of the second opening where Shigaraki is kneeling in front of a monitor and All for One’s hand reaches out and touches his head. A pat on the head is usually a gesture of praise but everything from Shigaraki’s posture of totally reverence to the point it comes out of a monitor is uncanny.
This is just more manipulation. Shigaraki is being raised to be entirely dependent on All For One, to exist for the sake of All For One, and being conditioned to think that he owes All For One for every single tiny inhuman scrap of kindness he showed him.
We’re shown a brief flash of child Shigaraki who is in the aftermath of whatever happened to his father. He’s dirty, his clothes are practically in rags, and the scars around his eyes and the one that splits his lip have already been formed and seem to be childhood injuries. Further hinting that Shigaraki came from some kind of abuse before being picked up by All For One. And it’s clear, Shigaraki latched onto the only kind of parental figure he has, All For One is the only person that Shigaraki shows any concern for their well being at first until he loses him. But that doesn’t necessarily mean All For One is a good parental figure by any means, but it does show how starved for affection and any kind of human contact Shigaraki is that he’s attached himself to All For One and is willing to carry out the rest of his ideals. All for One basically found an injured and battered kid and moulded him to think that he was his savior and everything he did, every manipulation, raising him outside of society as a tool for a sucessor was kindness and consideration on his part and Shigaraki doesn’t know better because he hasn’t been shown better.
And All For One makes it clear right away he didn’t save Shigaraki out of any altruism at all. He did it primarily to dick around with All Might and also to give himself a successor. It doesn’t really matter who Shimura Tenko is to All For One, just the fact that he carries the shimura bloodline is something that will mess with All Might’s head.
All For One even blatantly says he was raising Shigaraki to be fueled mainly on malice, hatred and his regrets towards society. Not to have any kind of healthy or rational means behind his actions. Also note how Shigaraki doens’t start improving mentally at all until he’s separated from All For One. So not only was Shigaraki raised and conditioned to be a crimminal, there’s not really an escape for him in the outside world. Gran Torino calls it foolish to see the boy as a victim.
Imagine if they said this about Eri. If Eri grew up under Chisaki’s violent abuse and then Chisaki passed the leadership of the eight precepts onto her, and then afterwards the heroes who were fighting her said “You can’t think of Eri as anything less than a villain, sure she was raised by the yakuza cut off from the outside world and experimented on everyday, but now she’s a violent crimminal so she can’t be seen as anything else.”
Shigaraki is dehumanized by not only the person who raised him but also society, he dehumanizes society in return and nothing is able to get resolved and no progress is made because the chain of abuse remains unbroken. Shigaraki will be a victim, even if he lashes out violently. There are very rare and few circumstances where children raised by adults who have all power over them conditioning them to be violent, and to grow up in a certain way entirely outside of society viewing no alternative for themselves are able to not be conditioned in that way. Even Eri saw herself as something horrible and ugly because Chisaki told her so every day and she had nobody else to tell her otherwise.
Shigaraki’s abuse is the same as the abuse Endeavor gave to Todoroki. He wasn’t raised as a child to be loved and grow up into their own person, but rather as a creation to inherit their father figure’s fight for them, and because of that they were cut off from the rest of the world socially as well.
Shigaraki was only ever intended to carry on All For One’s will and not have a will of his own. Not only does All For One not see Shigaraki as an indivdual, but he’s also tried to do the same thing in the past.
All For One is willing to go so far as to beat up, lock up and starve his younger brother to coerce him into seeing his side of things. In the case of the original holder of One for All it doesn’t work. It’s not a case of Shigaraki being a bad person and the brother being a good person though.
The brother was already an adult when this manipulation was attempted, which meant he already had his own set of ideals, was probably raised in a family, and knew what society was. That’s entirely different from trying those kind of techniques on a child who has one a complete power difference, two no positive ideals of their own, no positive role models, no critical thinking skills to question the information they’re being fed and four is completely emotionally, and in all other ways dependant on All For One. So yeah, manipulation techniques work way easier like this on children because children don’t have their own thoughts and idea formed yet.
Basically, All For One is shown to be completly willing to beat up, starve to death and abuse his own brother who he claimed to love, which must tell you how he feels about Shigaraki who he really only sees as a tool to one get back at All Might and two carry on his legacy for him. There’s a whole lot of implciations on how Shigaraki must have been treated which are not shown on screen but it is established that this is how All For One Manipulates people and gets their loyalty.
So, there goes my long winded analysis on what exactly kind of character Shigaraki is. He’s a victim of abuse, but he’s not a good victim, nor is he an excusable one. He’s the kind of victim that everybody will see as a villain, and that society can’t accept. He’s ugly, his way of thinking is not understandable to most people because he was raised so far outside of society, he lashes out at almost every given opportunity. Not only is he a victim, he’s a victim that won’t be saved by the traditional heroes. Twice puts it best.
The people the heroes save are always the good virtuous ones. However, considering how much of a victim Shigaraki is I hope rather than letting those who fell through the cracks fall further, the manga is shaping up to reform the hero system so that people who fell through the cracks can be recognized and saved by the heroes too. Which is why ultimately I believe Shigaraki is still a victim and also one in need of saving despite whee his current actions are leading him.
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