The dumb symbolic keychain is back. Toga takes the keychain in a move to try to get Ochako to understand how it felt to lose Twice, as the keychain symbolizes Ochako’s feelings for Izuku. Notice that Toga doesn’t destroy it when given the opportunity. This Toga deeply cared about Ochako’s feelings, or at least Toga’s perception of those feelings, so she gives up the keychain even after Ochako rejects her. Despite the violence she associated with love (as she believed there was no other way people would let her take the blood she needed), she was delicate with Ochako’s feelings even in her grief.
Do you think All Might would have given Izuku a different answer in chapter 1 (about if he can be a hero without a Quirk) if he was still in his buff form and didn't turn skinny?
It depends on if he still “killed” All for One in this alternate universe. If All for One was still out there, All Might probably would have clung to his Symbol of Peace persona and said something encouraging but empty. He wouldn’t have shown the vulnerability or attempt sympathy in the way All Might does during the canon rooftop scene. The rejection wouldn’t have been so harsh, but All Might likely would have said something inspirational without sincerely addressing Izuku’s concerns.
If All for One was dead but All Might avoided the injury, it’s hard to predict what All Might would have done. All Might’s goals were establishing peace as a symbol through a show of strength and ending All for One. In canon after he believed All for One was dead, All Might had to scramble for the next five years to avoid losing the symbol status he built. All Might was never in his symbol position without the specter of All for One or his career ending injury.
He might have voluntarily started to pull back as a symbol and look for potential successors if he didn’t feel so constrained in his choices by the injury. If he tried and attempts to transfer One for All went poorly because he went for giving it to someone already in a hero course, he might have been receptive to trying with a quirkless person instead.
Or All Might might have insisted on continuing in his role as symbol for an extra decade or so. Perhaps he gives Izuku empty hopeful words without sincerity or commiseration. Or maybe, in a world where everything in his pro hero career went his way, All Might may have genuinely encouraged Izuku considering the miracle that happened to him despite his quirklessness.
If you mean everything from canon is the same but All Might still had time left before turning skinny, yes All Might would have said something similar to the canon rooftop scene. He was feeling bitter and powerless, and he was going to project those hopeless feelings onto Izuku regardless of form. It might have been a crueler conversation without All Might’s honesty about his own weaknesses.
As much as Ochako and Izuku misunderstood Toga, in retrospect it’s clear how little Toga knew about Izuku and Ochako despite her infatuation with them. Because with both she approaches them with the aspects of herself that they could relate to the least.
Here, Toga seeks understanding by starting with how her quirk affects her relationships with others, how she is negatively affected by the full suppression of her quirk, and that she used Ochako’s quirk to survive when someone tried to kill her after making a mockery of her life.
Ochako was not predisposed to feel any sympathy for Toga based on this information. Ochako had a praiseworthy heroic quirk that didn’t affect her relationships with others. She had such a safe upbringing that heroism felt like an entertaining spectacle rather than real conflict until UA. The idea that someone would need to use deadly force to survive in a society full of heroes to protect others was anathema to Ochako, so she assumes Toga was inherently in the wrong.
On the other hand, this approach would have been more effective with Izuku. Izuku has personal experience with being ostracized due to quirk status. He is also a quirk nerd who could have figured out that Toga was trying to say that the full suppression of her quirk led to violent outbursts. He could have reasoned that she was unable to integrate with society without the loosening of quirk use restrictions for non-heroes because of the negative consequences of full suppression.
Izuku also may have been more sympathetic to Toga’s self-defense argument concerning her fight with Curious. I’ve mentioned it before that Izuku was more willing to use deadly force/use his quirk before having a license generally because of his unconscious lack of faith in the hero system. Those who fit the mold would not think to use lethal force because obviously a hero would always come to save the day. Izuku, however, was a quirkless person whose life was seen by many as not having any value. Unlike Ochako, Izuku could reasonably believe a non-hero could be put in a situation where their life was at risk without a hero saving them.
But Toga led with her romantic feelings for Izuku when she confronted him in Act Three. Izuku did not have the self-worth to believe someone would love him or seriously consider pursuing anyone else, so this approach was alien and off putting to him. Meanwhile, to Ochako, having a less than ideal crush on someone she admires and feeling social pressure to suppress it is normal. Starting with the emotional repression based on admiration would have been a better way to bridge the gap of understanding between Toga and Ochako.
Tl;dr: Toga would have had better luck if she led with telling Ochako that she loved/admired her and telling Izuku about how the society imposed suppression of her quirk put her health and safety at risk.
Iida just never stops being funny to me. In episode 123, when asked why he was tagging along with the heroes running to support in the fight against Shigaraki, despite not having a flying quirk, he legitimately responds with, “two of those students in the fight are my treasured, cherished friends. The other one is Bakugou”
Hi, I really like your analysis and character perspective. Are you planning on analyzing just BNHA, or do you have plans for other manga?
Thank you, I hadn’t thought about it until you sent this ask. Honestly, I didn’t expect to get this far.
This reread works because BNHA sits at a sweet spot between compelling ideas and characters with some mediocre writing. So there’s enough interesting ideas to write about but also plenty to critique. It also has a decent sized fandom without much comprehensive meta (not in the moment reactions/review) in comparison to its size.
Vigilantes is better written but less compelling, so I doubt I’d be able to get through a reread. Some fandoms already have plenty of well thought out meta where I don’t think I’d have enough fresh ideas to do something like another reread. I also like the back and forth that comes with an active fandom. I’ve certainly learned things and rethought some of my views on BNHA in response to the discussions started here.
Right now, Seraph of the End feels like a good fit for a future reread. I have a lot of thoughts about it. The manga plays with many interesting concepts but makes some deranged writing decisions with increasing frequency. A large chunk of the fandom misses most of what the manga is trying to say because of ship wars. It actually has some interesting, well written women who are crucial to the plot and themes. I could change my mind if I hate the ending enough though.
Whatever it is, it does need to be a work in its final arcs or completed, or it’s not really feasible to do a reread like this. It’s a bit difficult to comprehensively discuss the effectiveness of themes or character arcs when they are still being set up.
It’s important to note that both Toga and Ochako hardened on their self-identification with their roles as villain and hero in response to trauma/loss. Toga’s journey is more straightforward because she began to see herself as a villain in response to the death of her close friend Twice. In contrast, Ochako did not personally know Sir Nighteye. However, in their society, heroes are meant to be responsible for the wellbeing of everyone else. Toga’s loss had to be more personal because villains are not expected to be responsible for the lives of others.
Regardless, both doubled down on their roles as their fantasies/individual perceptions crashed into the reality of their situation. Heroism was not a play for making the public happy anymore. To this arc’s Ochako, focus on anything other than saving as many civilians as she could was out of the question after experiencing the deadly consequences of failure. And for Toga, she learned that regardless of her resistance to the villain label, she was perceived by others as villainous, and therefore she was not a person deemed worthy of saving by hero society.
This was Ochako’s response to Toga’s “what do you want to do to me” question. Both sides were unable to understand each other here. The every life Ochako wanted to save did not include Toga at this point. Ochako didn’t realize that doubling down like this reasonably led Toga to believe that Ochako wanted to kill her. On the other hand, Toga’s expectation of salvation from someone she was actively harming was foolish. Ochako disregarded Toga’s life here, but Toga simultaneously disregarded the lives of almost everyone else. The lack of responsibility Toga felt for her actions caused Ochako to take on further heroic responsibility in response. The burden of that responsibility then made it near impossible for Ochako to see the crying girl in front of her.
Toga and Spinner’s interactions, and the underlying conflict between them, are such an underrated dynamic. In essence, Spinner and Toga (and Dabi) in Act Two were jockeying for the true meaning of Stain’s legacy.
Toga liked Stain’s goal of a better future, his dedication to his cause to the point he would get beaten to a pulp, and that he acted outside of pre-set roles of hero and villain. Touya liked the visceral condemnation of current heroes, especially Endeavor. Spinner’s admiration of Stain was more aesthetic than truly ideological. Spinner felt empty as a person and rejected by society, so he emulated someone who he saw as becoming someone by opposing that society. Toga and Dabi incorporated parts of Stain into their pre-existing ideological frameworks, while Spinner attempted to graft Stain’s ideology onto what he believed was an empty vessel.
In this context, it is significant that Spinner was the one to reach out to Toga in the aftermath of Twice’s death. He previously shut his eyes and placed a mask barrier between himself and Toga when faced with Toga’s divergent interpretation of Stain. This time, Spinner didn’t turn away from Toga’s feelings. He acknowledged her grief and her modus operandi of doing as she pleased without criticism this time. However, he assigned the villain label to Toga’s way of doing things when Toga was resistant to the villain label. Spinner was trying, but they continued to fundamentally misunderstand each other.
It seems like Spinner was attempting to fill Twice’s role of the heart of the League in the aftermath of Twice’s death. He dropped the Stain competition here to emphasize their similar circumstances that led them to the League and that they found a place to belong inside of it. Spinner ultimately failed at fitting into Twice’s shoes because of his self-perception as an empty person that led to the goal of finding a charismatic leader to give him meaning. Twice’s reasons for staying with the League were also more personal than ideological, but Twice was primarily motivated by seeking connection rather than Spinner who was looking for a grand purpose. Twice would have been satisfied with anything as long as they were together, while Spinner’s trajectory was grander and grander displays of destruction of society and themselves together.
Well with this, I'm at the 2/3 mark for this reread, so it's about time I put together another character post ranking.
Izuku Midoriya: 604 posts
Katsuki Bakugou: 267 posts
All Might: 227 posts
Tomura Shigaraki: 223 posts (+2)
Shouto Todoroki: 216 posts (-1)
All for One: 197 posts (-1)
Endeavor: 148 posts
Himiko Toga: 107 posts (+2)
Ochako Uraraka: 103 posts
Hawks: 99 posts (+2)
Touya Todoroki: 91 posts (+2)
Tenya Iida: 89 posts (-4)
Eraserhead: 61 posts (+2)
Overhaul (-2) and Eijirou Kirishima: 59 posts
Yuuga Aoyama: 58 posts (-4)
Mirio Togata and Nana Shimura (+6): 49 posts
Yoichi Shigaraki: 48 posts (+2)
Eri: 47 posts
Sir Nighteye: 42 posts (-2)
Twice: 41 posts (+7)
Rei Todoroki: 40 posts (+3)
Momo Yaoyorozu: 39 posts (-2)
Spinner: 35 posts (+7)
Hero Killer Stain: 34 posts (-3)
Gentle Criminal (-2) and Neito Monoma: 28 posts
Kotaro Shimura: 26 posts (new)
Natsuo Todoroki: 25 posts (+6)
Inko Midoriya (-2) and Hitoshi Shinsou: 23 posts
Tamaki Amajiki (-4) and Kurogiri/Oboro Shirakumo (new): 21 posts
Fumikage Tokoyami (-2) and ReDestro (new): 20 posts
Fuyumi Todoroki: 19 posts (+4)
Lady Nagant: 18 posts (+2) (despite no introduction)
Mina Ashido (-1) and Garaki Kyudai (new): 17 posts
Gran Torino: 16 posts (-3)
Yaorashi Inasa (-6), Minoru Mineta (-3), Kendo Itsuka (-2), and Kudou (-1) (despite no introduction): 15 posts
Curious: 13 posts (new)
Nedzu (-5), Kota Izumi (-3), Tetsutetsu Tetsutetsu (-3), Fatgum (-1), and Present Mic: 12 posts
Tsuyu Asui (-5), Naomasa Tsukauchi (-4), Kyouka Jirou (-4), Magne (-3), Tensei Iida (-2), and Nao Shimura (new): 11 posts
Denki Kaminari (-2) and Mr Compress (returnee): 10 posts
Mei Hatsume (-4), La Brava (-4), and Hana Shimura (new): 9 posts
As usual, Bakugou critical posts count towards Bakugou’s numbers. Asks are counted, but reblogs are excluded. I plan to do the next one of these at the 3/4 point at chapter 323 (around Ochako’s speech).
Miscellaneous Commentary
For the first time, there was a shake up in the top four. Shouto’s rank fell due to Shigaraki, and I don’t think he’ll recover the spot given how the Hellish Todoroki Family subplot starts to shift focus away from Shouto at this point.
As expected, Iida lost his top ten spot. At least he probably won’t fall any farther given his role in Villain Hunt, but he is never getting that top ten spot back.
Despite not doing much between 216 and 287, Ochako surprisingly didn’t lose any ground. This is probably because of her parallel with Toga, who had key moments in MVA and the PLF War Arc. Ochako has some good moments in the next few arcs, but I anticipate that she temporarily loses her place in the top ten due to Touya and Hawks.
My prediction that Twice and Spinner would make the biggest improvement was correct. Although, other than Natsuo, the other members of the Hellish Todoroki Family didn’t rise as much as expected. Inasa had the biggest fall from relevance this time, which makes sense as he has been entirely absent and not thematically relevant.
The characters new to the rankings this time include the members of the Shimura Family (especially Kotaro), Kurogiri/Shirakumo, ReDestro, Garaki, and Curious. Most of the MLA characters were a bit of letdown in terms of lasting relevance other than ReDestro and surprisingly Curious despite the fact that she dies within a few chapters of her introduction. Geten might barely make it by the end of the reread, but for now he’s too irrelevant for the list.
Mr Compress has returned after falling off the 1/3 list. The characters who fell off the list entirely this time are Shouji, Nejire, and Camie. Which given the heteromorph plotline, Shouji’s irrelevance is particularly inexcusable. But the complete lack of focus on one of the Big Three also stings a little.
Less than one arc before Villain Hunt, it’s a problem that more than 25% of Class 1A is still so irrelevant that they haven’t been included in 10 posts two-thirds of the way through the manga (Shouji, Hagakure, Ojiro, Satou, Kouda, and Sero). It undermines the resolution of Izuku’s runaway arc if we barely know these characters.
As for predictions, Lady Nagant, Rei, and Kudou are going to see the most improvement this time. Sir Nighteye will fall out of the top twenty (I’m not sure how he is still there). The remaining One for All wielders and Best Jeanist will finally become relevant enough to make the list.
There's an obvious hypocrisy in Toga opining on the cruelty of the heroes while watching a giant kill people indiscriminately as he barrels through several cities. Toga wanted to be someone who could be saved despite not valuing the lives of those she didn't personally like.
To some extent, it goes back to the roles set by hero society. Heroes are those who save people. Toga might have been reluctant to identify with the villain label, but as a non-hero, it was not her responsibility to help other people per society's rules. Heroes are those who save people, but heroes killed Twice. Therefore, her conclusion was that heroes don't see villains as people (who deserve saving). Self-defense might have been a good line, but it doesn't apply to this situation. Toga's question here about where heroes draw the line carries more weight given that Hawks killed Twice by stabbing him in the back while he was running away.
Toga's goal was a world where it was easier for her to live. To that end, she avoided the villain label. However, one of the flaws in Toga's logic was that she didn't take it one step further to conclude that all of these roles should be discarded, and people should have mutual responsibilities towards one another. Toga's core trauma was that she was discarded for failing to play a role, but she crashed out in Act Two in part because other people (heroes) did not play their roles properly by killing and failing to recognize her as someone who wanted to be saved. Toga's true hypocrisy was that she wanted to deconstruct villainy without deconstructing the role of heroes as those solely responsible for the safety of others. (This oversight makes sense given that she was a Stain fan).
Her retreat to the villain role in Act Three makes sense in the context that she believed that the people she loved were going to kill her and inherently didn't view her as a person. Twice was killed by a hero he knew and cared about, so Toga feared the same fate.
It’s not surprising that Yoichi backed Izuku’s choice to try to save Shigaraki. The first thing Yoichi said to All for One after his death was to confirm that his brother chose to oppress Shigaraki like he did to Yoichi in the past. He knew All for One well enough to know he would never entrust his legacy to a successor. Unlike Izuku, Yoichi did not look at all surprised by the truth of Shigaraki’s circumstances. So by “next in line”, he meant as next in line to Yoichi as a victim of All for One. And while All for One had many victims, Shigaraki and Yoichi stand out in terms of the level of control and entitlement All for One had towards them. Yoichi and Shigaraki were the two characters that All for One sought to fuse with his own will (Shigaraki as a means to an end and with Yoichi to stop his opposition to All for One).
In retrospect, All for One probably came up with the idea of tormenting Shigaraki within his own subconscious from his nightmares of the vestiges of the quirks he stole. Also, does All for One really feel discouraged from random people yelling at him in his dreams, or do these nightmares affect him because they include his mother or allies he betrayed?
All for One loses in part because he attempted to become something separate from (his own) humanity. In particular, he doesn’t have a good grasp of his own emotions. So he fails to realize that attempting to absorb the vestiges of several people who dedicated their lives to killing him was not advisable when All for One couldn’t handle the ire of mostly average people he robbed of their quirks. Giving his brother who opposed him the keys to the guilt button doesn’t seem conducive to his alleged goal of becoming a demon lord.
On another note, it would be interesting if more people gain the ability to perceive vestiges as quirks become more complex. All for One and One for All are not the only quirks that interact with other quirks. Among others, Toga and Monoma’s quirks theoretically could have similar potential.
Is Toga the best written LoV member overall? If we count her backstory, emotional arc, ending all together?
That’s a controversial question. In a vacuum, there are other villains who arguably have more compelling writing (particularly Touya). However, in the context of BNHA’s overall narrative, Toga’s arc is a foundational pillar. Toga provided a broad structural critique of hero society that isn’t muddied by prominent hero/villain blood feuds and believed in the creation of a better future.
No other character fulfilled this crucial role. Shigaraki and Touya’s structural critiques are harder to generalize because their origins are too intertwined with the machinations of a powerful villain or hero. Their themes also largely overlap, so despite the time spent on their writing, one of them could be removed from the story without destroying the structural integrity of the manga.
Twice might be Toga’s closest competitor as a pillar needed to hold up the themes of BNHA. He overlaps the most with Toga in the broader criticism of hero society, but crucially he is distinct because Twice did not believe in a better future and identified with the villain label. Twice’s arc has the advantage of ending prior to the Act Three decline in BNHA’s writing. However, Twice’s arc doesn’t touch on how hero society conflated a person’s moral character/worth with their quirk or the flaws of hero society’s social contract of quirk suppression of non-heroes in exchange for order, so Toga is arguably more central to the themes of the manga than Twice.
Horikoshi’s chosen societal reforms (improved quirk counseling) at the end of the manga lack any weight without Toga. She was the villain most harmed by the prior quirk counseling system, to the point that it damaged her ability to connect with others and made villainy or death inevitable for her. Ochako’s saving of Toga and the mutual understanding they reached in their fight was the most compelling of the savior squad and their villains. It was Toga who provided the clearest example of a villain who could have reformed and the potential benevolence of a “villainous quirk” when someone finally acknowledged her. She chose to save Ochako of her own volition while using the blood affinity used to condemn her to save someone else.
She was key to the manga’s choice to go beyond hero society’s narrow definitions of who was worthy of saving. Because the rest of the League didn’t believe in a future, the villains’ perspective on saving is mostly lost without Toga. Izuku also brought the idea of saving villains to the forefront with Shigaraki, but Ochako’s arc considered the saving of heroes (Izuku) and villains (Toga) in a more comprehensive way.
Tldr: In a vacuum, Touya or Twice could compete with Toga’s writing. But to the extent the best writing means most indispensable for the story’s themes to make sense, the ideas presented in and execution of Toga’s arc are a foundational pillar to BNHA more than any other individual member of the League.
It’s interesting how All for One perceived Shimura as the ghost of a dead person while somehow believing Yoichi was alive and retrievable. Especially considering that Yoichi’s “death” in Act Three supports the conclusion that Yoichi’s vestige wasn’t functionally different from the other vestiges.
Anyway, this really is the All for One mansplains One for All chapter. Not that all of his explanations are incorrect, but his assumptions that he created One for All and it rightfully belongs to him led him to some incorrect conclusions. For example, part of the reason All for One believed that Shimura was particularly incompetent was because she successfully deceived him with the One for All embers. She seemed weaker than the others because she tricked him with the embers for years, while most of the other wielders only recently transferred it when they died. Part of this mockery was also a strategy to overcome One for All’s will (All for One’s choice to call Izuku “worthless” knowing of his former quirklessness makes this clear), but to some extent it was based on All for One’s ignorance concerning how One for All actually works.
This entitlement to One for All was also why All for One thought he had the right to judge Izuku as a worthless successor. Yoichi supporting Izuku was an act of defiance not only to prevent his brother from obtaining his power, but to defy his brother’s attempts to define One for All’s purpose and legacy.
The layers of symbolism of the abuse All for One inflicted on Shigaraki depicted in these void chapters have been talked to death, but All for One goes beyond all the previous abusers in BNHA by making even Shigaraki’s unconscious mind an unsafe place where he has no autonomy or control.
There’s an additional layer of irony to All for One’s dialogue after Tenko’s quirk was revealed. Shigaraki only needed All for One’s help to avoid plummeting to his death because All for One stole Tenko’s ability to fly. He was only in a situation where All for One’s power was needed not to burn to a crisp because All for One’s will steered him away from attempting to capture Izuku to immediately moving to steal One for All despite Shigaraki’s incomplete body and understanding of One for All. One of the most frightening aspects of All for One is how convincingly he makes absolute control feel like freedom to those under his influence.
Your post about Bakugou's thoughts about One for All as a cursed power reminded me that, on that same page, he also flashes back to when Deku is on the ground backed up against the wall after he blew up his desk in Chapter 1. This one of three flashbacks he has to that moment and in each flashback Deku's facial expression becomes more clear and I'm interested in hearing how you interpret that progression (if that's the right word to use here)?
I was about to discuss that, yeah. Izuku has no face in Bakugou’s memory here. Bakugou is a status quo thinker (younger Bakugou even more so), and in their society, a person is their quirk/individuality. Drawing Izuku without a face illustrates that a quirkless person like Izuku didn’t even register as a distinct person to middle school Bakugou. He looks more like a dekunobou puppet with a blank, wooden face rather than a person. The “Deku”moniker became something tangible that colored his perception of Izuku’s value/personhood.
As for why this scene repeats with Izuku’s face becoming clearer over time, it likely represents Bakugou’s understanding and acceptance of Izuku over the course of his character arc. Bakugou felt guilt for his past actions in the latter half of Act Two, but his guilt didn’t immediately lead to a meaningful bond with Izuku. Bakugou failed as an osananajimi not only because he didn’t understand Izuku’s true feelings, but because he put a blank mask on Izuku himself.
Therefore, Bakugou needed to put in the work to understand Izuku’s pov to remove the barriers Bakugou created between them. He started this journey by acting before he could think to save someone. For the first time, Bakugou approached saving without the expectation of victory. Izuku set the pattern of moving before he could think in chapter one when he ran to fight the Sludge Villain to save Bakugou, despite his lack of a quirk. Ochako emulated this in the Joint Training Arc after moving beyond hero society’s limitations on who can be saved. And Bakugou modeled Izuku’s heroism when he challenged his own heroic ideal (All Might’s version of One for All as an all powerful hero who always wins alone).
Since you're still covering the Hawks and Twice fight, I wanted to ask more broadly about how it went down. Hawks didn't follow the standard model of taking down a villain ASAP, despite speed being his thing. He cornered him with feathers and taunted him with that "you didn't suspect a thing" line. I can read this 2 different ways, but I don't feel confident in either
He's trying to convince himself that rejecting/apprehending his friend is the right ("thats how this works" line, leaning into the hero-villain dynamic). But this doesn't make sense with the way he approached him.
He was trying to bait a violent reaction out of him to justify his murder, but got cold feet (when his face stops being in the shadow). Character-wise, this wouldn't make sense as his decision, but would if he was ordered to (but why would he be ordered to?)
So how does any of this really make sense? What was Hawks actually trying to achieve, and what was he trying to get out of Twice? Was this all his decision, or was the Nagant reveal meant to recontextualize this fight? I'm coming at this with the assumption that, if all he wanted was for Twice to be in jail, he could've knocked him out before he had a chance to react.
Well, let’s pretend I answered this ask in a timely manner while rereading Hawks v. Twice. You can square the circle of Hawks’ logic if this fight was about Hawks trying to restore his own sense of equilibrium. Twice being a kind person interpersonally made Hawks feel unsafe because it challenged the conditioning he received from the Hero Commission. Hawks wanted to stop that perceived loss of control by retreating to the safe roles of heroes and villains. He wanted Twice to act like a villain in order to justify his role in capturing him, so Hawks played up the power disparity between heroes and villains. Perhaps it was also his hope that if he played the hero role well enough (to break to spirits of villains before they harm anyone), he wouldn’t need to kill Twice.
I think you’re right that he could have kept Twice alive by knocking him out at the beginning and talking after apprehension. But this power dynamic inherently undermined his friendship with Twice, and Hawks couldn’t help wanting to be reassured by his only friend even as he betrayed him. Hawks’ guilt in betraying Twice was ironically what prevented him from making the decision that could have saved him. Hawks found both comfort and fear in his friendship with Twice, so he retreated to familiar roles but also broke character multiple times because he wanted to make the impossible choice of both his hero role and his friendship with Twice. It was Hawks’ inability to make that choice or change hero tactics to something beyond suppression (because that model is not useful for saving villains) that made Twice’s death inevitable.
The framing for why Bakugou believes One for All is cursed is pretty interesting. It’s not because the past One for All wielders were hunted to the ends of the earth by All for One. It’s not because the quirk saddles its wielder with a burden too heavy for one hero to bear. No, to Bakugou, One for All is cursed because (1) it comes from All for One and (2) it allows for use of multiple quirks, a characteristic of a villainous quirk.
Bakugou tends to be a status quo thinker. These panels aren’t meant to demonstrate Bakugou’s particular bigotry as much as explain how an ordinary person would view One for All if given the facts of its origin and true nature. This chapter shows how Bakugou overcame that automatic aversion to One for All by thinking about what All Might meant to them (both Bakugou and Izuku) during childhood.
In retrospect, the six quirks plotline adds to the themes of the manga concerning the condemnation of the idea that quirks are inherently heroic or villainous, and people are heroes or villains based on a quirk assigned at birth. It was already established that One for All was born from All for One’s quirk, but that connection is more meaningful to BNHA’s themes if Izuku’s power also has “villainous” elements in common with the quirk that accidentally created it.
