I just saw the worst takes about bnhaās ending on Instagram (three days ago now, as of posting this). So, today weāre gonna talk about Izuocha, shonen homoeroticism, and fandom⦠not in that order thoughā¦
Fandom culture for all media has basically always been a war zone that you have to actively avoid, usually with two defining sides: people who try to enjoy media the way they want to enjoy it, and the people who say that everyone is wrong and attack others who they donāt agree with. There are shades of gray on both sides, but in general this is usually the case. Itās never been āāalphabet mafiaā vs ānormalāā or āfanon vs canonā or āright vs wrongā⦠I almost always see people having fun being attacked unwarranted (I am not saying that people being legitimately problematic shouldnāt be called out, pls donāt get me wrong. Iām talking about innocent fun!). And Iām not just talking about dudebros attacking shippers, Iāve seen a lot of shippers attack non-shippers/other shippers of a different ship, and itās almost always people just saying āyouāre wrong, Iām right, and your take ruins this media piece of media for everyone else.ā That being said, I wanna talk about the highlighted parts of these comments, okay? But first I need to explain the video that these comments were on.
It was a video by @/d_rich7 on Instagram, a big anime creator, talking about this tweet:
To summarize the video, he went on to say that heās not surprised because bnha has the worst shipping community since Naruto and how Horikoshi probably felt forced into not confirming any ships because of āthreats and hate mailā that he got from his fandom. Iāll come back to that but first Iāll talk about some of the comments:
āAt least, they can say they werenāt the reason for the downfall of their anime.ā
I've seen this take from different parts of the fandom, whether it was in regard to ships, todofam, or the villains. Just because the narrative of a story ends up matching the theories of people you disagree with, doesn't mean the story is going through a downfall. Just accept that you were wrong and move on. It is okay to not like certain aspects of the story and it's okay to discuss and criticize it, but pinning the blame on people who just happened to be right, no matter how much you hate it, is not okay.
āPeople need to stop demanding the literal CREATOR of a series to do things how they want it doneā¦They to learn itās not their story to tellā¦ā
āā¦like I donāt get how people who have no impact on the writing of a story get mad because the CREATORS donāt wanna use their personal ideas.ā
āā¦from now on imma blame the fandom for fucking up the anime/manga, we couldāve had a better ending if it wasnāt for themā¦ā
Outside of the context, I actually agree with the sentiment that fans shouldn't feel so entitled that they think they have any control over the media they're consuming. But, the commenters don't realize that they're doing the exact thing that theyāre talking about. They're convinced that the queer shipping community is the reason the creator decided not to confirm any relationship and are pissed off that the ship they were rooting for, didn't happen. Why are they exempt from this rule? Because straight ships are supposed to happen and queer ships aren't? Because the boy is supposed to win the girl at the end in order to develop a good shonen? I'll go into the misogynistic implications of that later.
Other than that, I have seen a lot of people on tumblr get mad about other things, like before, regarding to the villains and todofam drama to the point that they started insulting Hori. Like I said, it's okay to be mad. Being mad about something doesn't make you a bad person but it was never our story to tell. Criticism and hate, are two different things and come off very differently.
āMHAās fandom is filled to the brim with toxic, no shower taking, furry loving, lgbtq idiotsā¦ā
Honestly I added this one because he's right. We're here, we're queer, and we're idiots in the best way possible. However, I think this also says the quiet part out loud when it comes to the hatred towards bnha and it's fandom.
Shipping communities in other fandoms don't get anywhere near as harassed as often as the shipping communities in the bnha fandom despite not being much different. The difference is, a lot of us identify as and are recognized as queer and Hori himself even recognized that the LGBT community especially took a liking to his manga. But, in other fandoms, it's only okay to consider queer ships if they're recognized by the cishet audience.
Most people in the aot fandom don't have an issue with eremin because it was something recognized and memed by straight men, even if it was mostly as a joke. The kny fandom doesn't care about inotan because it was also recognized and memed by straight men. Narusasu doesn't get much hate anymore because the straight men of their fandom also started to recognize the characters weird obsession with each other and it became more difficult to ignore the ship since there was literally multiple accidental kiss scenes--one of the few times where the source material actively encourages shipping. I can keep going too.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, non-shonen animes with majority cishet women as their audience, no one bats an eye at their ships either, because there's not enough men in their communities to tell them they should feel ashamed for their fanon content and their words hold no weight⦠and thereās a lot less queer people in those fandoms. You see the trend, right? It's almost like queer shipping is perfectly okay and mostly accepted as long as the community is either majority cishet men, or those men grant permission/approval for the specific ships or the piece of media wasnāt āmeant for men.ā Otherwise, it's seen as gross and cringe.
There was one other community that was kind of similar to bnha in a sense that it was mostly consumed by queer people and cishet men, where there was a lot of discourse on whether the two main characters were queer or not⦠which is the Buddy Daddies fandom. When the show was airing, those two sides that I talked about earlier were pretty apparent, with people having heated arguments about whether there were queer undertones or not. The cishet men of the fandom didn't give their approval to ship Rei and Kazuki, so it became an issue. Same with JJK now, more so with itafushi though. SatoSugu was given a somewhat stamp of approval but itafushi is still seen as taboo.
However, for some reason, every queer ship and character (even if it's canon) in bnha is seen as something shameful to recognize which I think is very telling considering how large the queer and disabled part of the fandom is. Minorities are being punished for relating to a manga with discrimination as one of it's core themes. Do what you want with that...
āā¦hate-mail just pushed him over the edge so he just scrapped everything just as punishment to spite themā¦ā
This kind of references rumors from a few years ago about the shipping community sending hate mail and death threats towards Horikoshi and everyone just running with it without doing their research.
Horikoshi did receive death threats but it was about Dr.Garaki's original name which you can read about here. It was mostly the eastern side of the fandom being aggressive, even going as far as posting videos of them burning the volume where Garaki's name was revealed which isn't okay. However, everyone blamed it on the western shipping community... for whatever reason...
There was another instance where people in the western fandom started sending Horikoshi death threats on his twitter because of a chapter about Endeavor getting attacked by Dabi and an Nomu and the Todo family being worried about him, people claiming that Hori "deserved to die" for romanticizing and glorifying abuse (when that wasn't at all the case, I'm genuinely confused on how they interpreted that...). This came out six years ago but somehow is still narrowed down to the queer community and women being toxic... like what? Do you see my point now of it feeling like we need to be granted permission to do certain things in fandom if we don't want to be punished?
Also who was Hori punishing by not confirming any ships? If anything, Iāve seen most shippers appreciative than notā¦
II: Ochako Uraraka and her relationship with Izuku Midoriya
Back to that point about misogyny that I mentioned earlier...
"...I would have lowkey wish we got to see deku and ochaco end up together since their relationship was hinted from the beginning..."
Quick warning... this is gonna be a long point.
Yes, they were attracted to each other at the beginning, no one is denying that. No one is denying Ochakoās crush either. Izukuās nervous around her for the first like 50-ish chapters because he's still used to having friends (especially a girl. If you think about it, if his childhood friends were the only friends he had ever had before getting shunned by his community, then he had never had a girl as a friend before... ever) but their relationship eventually mellows out into a normal friendship. Given Ochako and Toga's arc, I don't think Izuocha was ever destined to end romantically.
Toga was desperate to be loved by someone who accepted her for who she was while Ochako was desperate to be able to show love to someone who she truly admired. Ochako wanted to be like Deku and tried for a while until she realized that she couldnāt and shouldnāt want to be like Deku. She thinks heās amazing but she realizes that she canāt strive to be like him because sheās already like him but wants to change.
(this is kind of off topic but I just want to point out what Ochako said about Toga being sad about not being able to totally become Jin. Correct me if I'm remembering wrong but, Toga was only able to ever transform into Ochako completely, quirk and all. I think there's an analogy there, where her being able to be just like someone possibly means she's in love with them but she convinces herself that she loves everyone equally. I think it's supposed to be saying that "even though you can't be him completely, doesn't mean you don't love him, you just don't love him in the way you thought you did" and I think Ochako realizes that because she possibly had the same realization with Izuku. Becoming him didn't work out for her because she didn't love him the way others told her she did... I guess it wasn't off topic... oh well.)
The highlighted parts can apply to Ochako too if you replace ābloodlustā with āenvyā. She suffered the same issue that Toga did with other people telling her how and who to love which made her feel like she was supposed to be jealous.
She didn't like these feelings of jealousy, so she began to unintentionally be like Deku and hide them. I don't think she ever had an issue with loving Deku but she had an issue with the way she convinced herself of how she loved Deku made her feel. It made her feel like she was hiding something because I think she felt conflicted for not loving him the way everyone expected her to. All the way up to her final fight with Toga, we were only getting intel about her crush from other characters. Not her.
There's a lot of Mina just telling her what her feelings are despite Mina canonically not knowing much about love. Her crush has always been projected onto her which is why she's able to relate to Toga so well and wants to be more like her since Toga is able to live as herself so comfortably and broke away from conformity and what's expected of her.
Ochako's crush is only there because it's expected to be and her arc is meant to prove that she can be more than just the MCs love interest. Ochako's projected crush is Horikoshi trying to prove a point about basic shonen tropes which he's done time and time again throughout the story. SHE WANTS TO LIVE AND LOVE HOW SHE PLEASES WITHOUT SOCIETY TELLING HER HOW TO JUST LIKE TOGA WAS ABLE TO DO! I WILL KEEP SAYING IT UNTIL MY THROAT IS RAW AND DUDEBROS BEGIN TO FINALLY UNDERSTAND AND NOT VIEW FEMALE CHARACTERS AS NOTHING MORE THAN EYE CANDY FOR THE MALE CHARACTERS!!!
In the epilogue. she hides her feelings with a smile because she doesn't want to worry anyone (sound familiar?) so it only makes sense that it was Deku who pushed her to let out her feelings despite not practicing what he preaches. So, she embraced her inner Himiko and let out her feelings with her whole face. Those feeling just weren't for Deku... and they shouldn't have to be.
I genuinely feel like (especially with the way dudebros hate queer ships in this fandom) if Ochako was a boy, her arc wouldn't have been so widely misinterpreted. Because if he had talked about how amazing Izuku was and Mina came in and still said "It's love!" most fans would've taken it as a joke and/or even going as far as pointing out that the crush wasn't real because he didn't actually admit to it and it was projected onto him by other characters. But, the world ain't ready for that conversation.
"...I saw it as the fandom tryn to force their ships into the story 100% ruining key moments..."
I mainly added this quote because I thought it was so absurd. How do you see class-a coming to support Ochako as "omg it's the fandom forcing their agenda and controlling Hori through mind control to force their ships into the story and ruin this key moment,"??? Like, is it really so unthinkable that Horikoshi can have creative freedom outside the norm of treating girl characters as a trophy for the MC? You expected Izuku to marry her on the spot while she's having a mental breakdown? It's just... anyways...
III: Old-Gen Shonen Homoeroticism and it's Relation with Internalized Misogyny and how New-Gen is Changing That
The Shonen genre - especially old gen - is notorious for it's accidental misogyny, queerphobia, and racism. It got to the point where it's just kind of expected at this point.
The main one is usually misogyny. A lot of shonen mangaka like to write women as nothing more than eye candy and when they are actually given a personality and power, their character arcs are suddenly ignored/neglected and turned back into eye candy. Take Tsunade and Nezuko for example. We're told that they're important and powerful and yet they rarely do anything and almost never get important speaking lines and when we get to see them in action, the author makes sure to highlight certain parts of their bodies. Nezuko I think is an especially obvious one, being literally muzzled for most of the story, and when she powers up, she grows up and is suddenly given huge boobs...
Almost every shonen girls' character arcs revolves around a man and if not, then their existence is for the sake of a male character. I will say, I havent watched much shonen because of this aspect that's always apparent, but almost every older shonen I've watched, read, or seen other people talk about, it rears its ugly head at least once.
Because of that, most love interests werenāt given enough personality to actually form a meaningful relationship with the MC that the audience - especially female and queer audiences - can connect to. More often than not, itās āI like her cuz sheās prettyā or āI like her cuz she likes meā and itās irritating. And since these relationships are so shallow, authors are forced to create an interesting bond between the MC and a different character which usually ends up being the deuteragonist who is usually another boy more often than not. And boys in media written āfor boysā are almost never neglected the way a girl would be, which is a sad truth.
These relationships almost always end up feeling like theyāre passed the point of friendship and because of that, a lot of women and queer people end up shipping them instead of the canon love interest. Because their relationship being romantic actually makes sense most of the time.
BakuDeku, Eremin, KilluaGon, NaruSasu, ItaFushi, SatoSugu, IsaBachi, HideKan, GenoSai, LawLight, the list can go on for fucking ever.
However, in bnha and BakuDekuās case, especially when the ācanonā relationship with the ācanonā love interest wasnāt really developed at all, and we never got a hint from Deku that he liked her, I donāt think this homoeroticism wasnāt intentional. Like with a lot of new-gen, there wasnāt really blatant misogyny towards the ālove interestā present to explain away the closeness between the two male leads.
All of the roles a love interest would usually have, were given to Katsuki. He was damseled for Deku to save, he was Dekuās biggest cheerleader, he risked his life to save Deku, he died in Izukuās honor, he showed up for Izuku when no one else thought to, he showed up to his hospital room and cried over the condition he was in, and then he devoted nearly a decade of his life trying to bring Izukuās dream back into fruition⦠He cares so fucking much and Izuku cares right back. And no one can convince me that it was accidentally gay, because Horikoshi literally felt the need to tell AND remind us that Katsuki doesnāt like girls. Plus, like I said before, all of that was done without neglecting Urarakaās character arc.
But even though all of that is in text, I think shonen bros just expect it while also expecting the main girl and boy to be together⦠because thatās how it always used to be. It wasnāt until new-gen - starting with mha - started to purposely parody dated shonen tropes and twisting them into their own stories that shonen bros began to feel threatened by queer ships. Because they know that thereās actually a chance of them happening now, and I feel like IzuOcha not being canonized is the beginning of a new trend. And misogynistic anime fans already hate it.
In conclusion, fandom culture kinda sucks because of unexpected reasons, Ochakoās character arc is ignored for the sake of men wanting her to be Izukuās prize and itās irritating as fuck, and I think previously accidental homoeroticism in old-gen shonen is becoming purposeful in new-gen shonen as new-gen slowly becomes more progressive and less misogynistic. Oh and bkdk canon ig (I donāt think Iāve ever said that before, strangely enoughā¦)