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Obviously Joseph Robinette thinks everyone lives in single-family homes in nuclear family units & if you are one of the many people whose communal living arrangement looks like "a regular house rented as separate units but not zoned as apartments" or "an illegal basement" or one of the other myriad ways landlords artfully dodge property taxes / avoid dotting the i's & crossing the t's of municipal bureaucracy, good luck & godspeed. Please pass this on!
Chapter 321 is beautiful for so many reasons, starting with Tenya. He started out admiring his brother Tensei so so so much
and wanted so desperately to carry on his fallen brother's legacy
that he became consumed with rage and sorrow and pushed others away
until Izuku and Shouto reached out and literally saved him from himself
and now that the roles are reversed and Izuku needs to be saved from himself, Tenya is right there
using his brother's hero name. Tenya became the very person his brother admires.
And this also all ties in with the reoccurring mention of children in bnha. The narrative keeps establishing that they're something precious that should be protected.
There are children who weren't treated right but have found healing, who were misguided or lost and hurting but have found their way back. Children like Shouto, like Kouta, like Tenya.
But there have been children who were lost who haven't been recovered yet. There are children who weren't protected, weren't valued, weren't seen, weren't understood, weren't wanted, weren't saved. People who are now adults, walking around with wounded inner children who need to be saved from themselves and their pain: Toga, Tenko, and Touya.
Chapter 321 is so beautiful because Tenya's story has come full circle and the author's intentions are becoming clearer by way of Ingenium's admiration of those who save lost children: a true hero steps in when they're needed, and it's never too late to save someone in need.
• If he punctured his engine would it heal or would he weld it?
If it's a biological thing, which I think I should assume it is since it grows out of him, then it would heal.
What if it's a Bakugou thing, like how Bakugou doesn't sweat nitroglycerin, he sweats nitroglycerin like sweat. What if it's not metal, it's just a metal-like skin.
Wait is Testutestu actually metal or is it hardened skin like metal?
I bet he isn't sure if it would heal or he'd need to weld it and this keeps this man up at night. He asked Midoriya his opinion but Midoruya just mumbled to himself for hours until he was distracted because it is now midnight and Iida asked him at lunch.
• Those are blue flames we see coming from those engines are known to go into overheat and to my knowledge, he has normal skin around that so that would hurt right??
THE NERVE DAMAGE THIS MAN MUST HAVE???
He has insanely high pain tolerance to deal with this stuff and it's really a detriment. He can get stabbed in the leg and not know unless he looks down because he legit just doesn't feel anything.
He has a bunch of scars around his calves too from scrapes he didn't really think were that deep, so when he thought they were healed enough he'd pick the scab off thinking the skin was grown fine underneath it but no. Picking the scab makes it look like a murder scene with all the blood. That was an interesting night when he had to explain why he had blood on his hands to Tensei who walked in on him by the sink.
• And how does fuel work?? again those are B L U E and purple flames! you need a lot of fuel and gas for that stuff?
Wiki says "he drinks orange juice as a source of fuel for his Quirk, while carbonated drinks make him stall" so it's like Momo's quirk but then what the fuck is his stomach doing?? (Also why doesn't he have Orange Juice or capri suns on hand then??? Give him compartments in his suit for orange juice if that is his literal fuel????)
Poor doctors in mha, 1. Mutant quirks change anatomy so much, the organs have to change too, so things are probably never in the same place, and what if they find a new organ then don't know what is or why it's there?? Same goes for emitter quirks, different things are gonna be different specialised to each individual, AND TRANSFORMATION QUIRKS. DOES IT ALL CHANGE?? DO ORGANS AND BONES AND STUFF ALL JUST CHANGE?? WHAT IF THEY NEED TO GO SURGERY BUT THE DOCTORS DONT KNOW WTF THEYRE LOOKING AT??
• He's a try hard nerd jock so I bet he chugged gasoline one time to see if it would make him run faster.
I bet he did all the maths, all the equations and probabilities, and he still drank it. Tesei saw, took pictures and hangs them up around the house to forever use as blackmail.
• Back on about the Orange juice thing, if the fuel is made of that, then does he leave CO2 or nah? Does it smell of Oranges? Is it a nice smell? Is he just a walking fragrencer?
Because it would be warm oranges because y'know it's fire. Would that smell good? are there fumes with it too? is it like flatulence and oranges? because you do need gas for those blue flames.
Iida has been around the smoke from his engines all his life so he's gone nose-blind toward it and no one gives him a straight answer when he asks if it smells of anything. Uraraka said burnt marshmallows, Tensei (who is also nose-blind to it) said pineapple, Izuku took a whiff and got high. No one is allowed to purposefully whiff it anymore.
• This man needs more leg support damn. That much thrust from his calves can not be good for his knees. I know he's grown up with it so he's used to it, and he either has the strongest knees in existence from all that endurance or his knees dislocate every other time he uses his quirk.
He has so much joint pain. He wants to get a walking stick for his joint pain and it confuses villains because they think that must mean he's out of commission but no, he can easily withstand the pain, the cane just helps. And can also be used as a weapon. The aesthetic bastard probably makes it look like a sword to match his aesthetic.
• Speaking of aesthetic, he saw Denki playing portal 2 one time and saw the characters long fall boots and instantly fell in love with them (he wants to commission Mei to make them but is honestly too scared to,)
He runs so quickly, if he goes up a ramp he will go flying and when he lands, having those kind of boots to cushion the fall wouldhelp exponentially. Also it'll make him even taller and I'm all for that. They also fit his aesthetic!
• More speaking of his aesthetic. I get the whole knight shtick is a family thing and it is also very endearing. But the wind drag. Wind resistance isn't really a problem for us because we go at human speed. He goes at human speed but the human has engines in his legs. That much clunky armour is good for protection since he works up close but There is gonna be so much wind drag. And here's where I'm torn, because he's a rich kid who is proud of his family so wants to carry on the tradition, same hero name, same hero aesthetic, same stuff like that, but should that really go above functionality? I'm not saying to minimise wind resistance he should wear a leotard or speedo or something with no armour like that, and idk the materials used, but that armour looks heavy.
He has so much inner turmoil about this. He always has an identity crisis when this is brought up.
• This bitch's metabolism tho. Orange juice is one fuel, what are the others? whatever they are, he should be eating a lot of it because that stuff gets burnt up so quick. He wouldn't be chubby, because all of his running, and he already looks like a big sturdy guy, I'm just saying, for efficiency, he should look like how Russian Women Who Fight Bears, or a Viking, that kinda physique, strong as hell, big and sturdy.
• He should have prescription goggles instead of glasses. Or. Y'know. CONTACT LESNES. SO YOU DONT HAVE TO WORRY. ABOUT YOUR GLASSES BREAKING. OR FALLING OFF WHEN YOU ZOOM. But I do understand it's for the nerd-jock trope. Guess he cares about aesthetic more than functionality 😔 but goggles can keep wind out your eyes if tho. He looks like a lovable doofus either way.
Uraraka recommends contact lenses since he forgot those existed.
He cries that day. But he was wearing the goggles so the tears kinda just stayed there.
Well, his armor does provide benefits other than aesthetics, which are 1. general physical protection and 2. ability to bludgeon people with hard surface. He would've either hurt himself or had trouble breaking Stain's sword with a kick if he was wearing a leotard.
I feel like Iida being a speedster hero doesn't necessarily mean his costume should focus on maximizing pure speed. It looks like the Iidas rather decided on the philosophy of “Well, we got plenty of sheer linear horsepower. I think we can afford to sacrifice a bit of acceleration in trade for not dying from a failed turn and being able to punch/kick/ram into things with a bit more confidence.”
WHAT THE- WHO THE HELL IS THAT? BECAUSE IT CERTAINLY ISN’T KNUCKLEDUSTER
MORE LIKE KNUCKLEDAMNSTER
EVEN MAKOTO AND MOMICHI ARE ALREADY THIRSTING FOR GRITTY GUMSHOE OVER HERE
WAIT, ARE YOU TELLING ME THAT KNUCKLE ISN’T A GARBAGE MAN? HE WORK IN SOME OFFICE TO BE DRESSED LIKE THAT? WHAT? FUCKING WAHT?
AND THAT BITCH IS ALREADY TELLING MAKOTO TO GIVE UP ON KOICHI BECAUSE HE’S NOT GOOD ENOUGH FOR HER, HOW FUCKING DARE HER, THEY ARE PRETTY MUCH THE SAME AGE
Chapter 293 gave us another great speech by Dabi, filled with all kinds of information. Similar to my post for the previous chapter, the official translation for chapter 293 has, unfortunately, once again made some changes in regards to Dabi’s speech due to its bias that I would like to share and explain here to give a better understanding of Dabi’s actual character rather than just leaving it at his American version.
Because Dabi said so much in this chapter and we will be comparing the panels from the Japanese version and the official English translation and taking apart the Japanese phrases, the rest of the post is under the cut (this post may or may not be just below 6k words)
I also read Japanese and follow lots of Japanese fans for their reactions, and setting aside the points I think are subject to interpretation I'm gonna point out one thing I'm pretty sure about.
According to my understanding and what seems to be the absolute majority of Japanese reactions (i.e. all I've seen), 悪が栄えるんじゃねェ！does have the negative applied to the prosper of evil. That sentence could never be "Evil will prosper, won't it?", imo, because the negation is just slapped onto the 栄える instead of being separated in any measure. It's true that the official translation failed to capture the nuance though, because that line is more like "It's not that the evil will prosper!". The key here is that it's paired with the next sentence, 正義が側板するだけ！ which is, as you said, "Justice will only collapse!". So the point of that line is to emphasize that justice will just crumble by itself even without "outside" attack from evil.
hot take here but the way people talk about “redemption arcs” and how they require that the sinner repent, debase himself, and then atone for his sins in order to be accepted back into the warmth of readers’ love, but there are some unforgivable sins for which no atonement is enough
Another fascinating thing about responses to this post: whether they’re agreeing with me or disagreeing, whether they think people’s insistence on this arc is good or bad, a huge portion of people use the word “forgiveness” and center their entire response to this post around it.
Please observe that I never once used the word “forgiveness” - although I should have, because the idea that forgiveness is a necessity for ceasing-to-be-a-sinner, and indeed that forgiveness is the primary goal, is itself christian.
I have at no point in the original post or in any of my further discussion of it said that the end goal, or even a significant feature of, a villain-to-hero arc was forgiveness.
Yet everyone who thinks this arc is indeed the only valid option phrases their arguments in terms like “Would you forgive someone who didn’t…”
Maybe I would - maybe I wouldn’t! But I never said anything about forgiveness being a requirement!
And everyone who wants to tell me that Christians Don’t Think Like This, Actually, says it in terms of “But Jesus forgives everyone, all you have to do is repent and you will be forgiven.” …okay great who says the characters need to be forgiven, why is it RELEVANT whether Jesus would forgive them or not - unless you’re operating in a Christian framework where God’s Forgiveness is a central feature of your belief system.
People who agree that yes, this is a culturally christian thing, and further believe that another form of arc would be superior, are saying “you should be able to just stop doing bad things and only do good things, and that should be enough for you to be forgiven” - okay you got the spirit but why do we have to be forgiven.
Forgiveness - as least as it is being used in this context - is someone else granting salvation to you. It is someone else absolving you of your guilt. It is you having shown someone else that you are worthy now, and them casting judgement upon you, and then agreeing that you are enough better than you were before.
Why does someone else get to sit in judgement and decide if you’re a good person now? Who besides a god stands in that position of omniscience and moral superiority and moral infallibility?
What if a character chooses to end his life of villainy, anonymously transfer all his ill-gotten gains to those he harmed, and devote the rest of his life to curing cancer alone in a lab on a deserted island, finally releasing his cure anonymously on his deathbed. No other character even has any idea this has happened; they all figure he just died or went into hiding. No one has forgiven him. Does that mean he’s still a villain?
What if all the other characters have hardened hearts for whatever reason, and no matter how much penance the ex-villain does, even if he only did one tiny bad act and then spent years in pain in punishment and then spent decades saving the world over and over at great personal cost, they will never, ever forgive him? Does that mean he’s still a villain?
What if everyone he personally wronged died in an accident, he was the only survivor, it was that shock that caused his change of heart, so everybody he knows now loves him and knows him only as a hero, but the people he hurt can never forgive him? Is he still a villain?
On the other side, if, say, a child continuously forgives their abusive parent, does that mean the parent isn’t a villain?
Forgiveness does not have a one to one correlation with goodness. In either direction.
I am concerned that what people are doing is translating “…in order to be accepted back into the warmth of readers’ love” as “be forgiven by the readers” (which is not inaccurate, in terms of the christian framework) and then all agreeing that yes, that should indeed be the central goal of every villain-to-hero arc. Which opens a WILD can of worms.
Because that means - We, as the readers, are in the position of gods to the characters, casting judgement upon them, looking into their hearts and deciding whether We will grant forgiveness to the characters for the wrongs they have done to others.
Like. Aside from all the other implications. At the point where you are granting someone forgiveness for something they did to someone else, something’s gone very wrong. Assuming you’re not, in fact, actually yourself a deity.
But also for people to make translation of “…warmth of readers’ love” to “readers’ forgiveness” you have to already be assuming that we can’t love a character if we haven’t forgiven them for every wrong they’ve done. And that wouldn’t even be true if they were a real person, and super duper isn’t true if they’re fictional. I love my mother with all my heart. I’ll also never forgive her for what she did to me and my brother. Forgiveness and love are two separate emotional axes and one does not imply anything about the other.
Look. Here’s some advice for actual real life. You don’t need to forgive someone to let them participate in society. You don’t need to forgive someone to love them. And you DEFINITELY don’t need to forgive them for them to be a good person. Whether they’re a good person is in their heart - not yours.
This post just blew my mind. Not because it revealed some truth I was unaware of, but because it finally made it click for my why so many people in BNHA fandom are pissed off about Endeavor’s redemption arc.
(Sorry to hijack this post to talk about a specific character/fandom.)
Can we have your opinion on the fifty or so points of discourse that have sprung up since the chapter leaked? Sooth my heartburnt head with your Colgate cool takes!
well all right then, I’m just going to run through some of these very quickly. and standard disclaimer, these are just my own opinions, blah blah blah, everyone is welcome to disagree on any or all points.
“Best Jeanist is an abuse apologist” - nah fam he’s just mad that Dabi is deliberately using his admittedly-fucked-up family history in order to attack not just Endeavor, but all of hero society.
“okay but hero society is bad and needs to be taken down anyway” -- well okay, but whether you think that’s true or not, the fact remains that Jeanist isn’t condoning Endeavor’s abuse here, he’s simply pointing out the hole in Dabi’s argument. that, and also, two wrongs don’t make a right. and the destabilization of society as a whole, coming right on the heels of a devastating attack in which the heroes were decimated and god knows how many civilians died as well, is not a great situation any way you slice it, and is going to lead to more harm in the immediate aftermath; Jeanist is not wrong about that.
“the other heroes watching the confrontation aren’t being sympathetic enough to Dabi’s tale of woe” -- the tale of woe in which he bragged about plotting to kill Shouto and Natsuo?? also, he set their friend on fire. he tried to set all of them on fire. people generally don’t like people who try to set them on fire, just as a rule.
“Shouto shouldn’t be taking Endeavor’s side” – Touya. tried. to set him and his friends on fire. plus, again, there’s that whole “plotting to kill me and my sibling” thing. but mostly it’s the “trying to murder everyone in the immediate vicinity” thing which is really forcing him to step in here and take action, guys.
“boooo, Mirio” -- what are you all talking about Mirio is great.
“what if Mirio is really Toga” -- or, hear me out, what if Mirio is really Mirio. I mean okay look, I’m not trying to bash on anyone’s theories. but from what I’ve seen, this particular notion mostly seems to revolve around people just really not wanting it to be Mirio. which is kind of rude to poor Mirio. plus, couldn’t we say this about any character pretty much any given week. what if Jeanist is secretly Toga. what if Burnin’ is Toga. I guess if nothing else, this theory is ripe for Among Us jokes.
“Eri getting control of her quirk makes her too overpowered” -- okay but it’s still not a magic “fix everything” switch, on account of she has to recharge it in between uses, which takes months. so that’s going to keep it in check imo.
“Eri is being used like a pawn/puppet by the heroes” -- Eri wants to use her power to help people. she spent her whole young life believing she was cursed, and it’s only recently that people have helped her to understand that that’s not true and that her power can be a gift. she is a sweet and loving child who wants to help others, especially the people who have sacrificed in order to help her, like Mirio. Eri restoring Mirio’s quirk is a development which gives her more agency, not less, because it means she’s finally learning to control her abilities. and she’s not being manipulated or taken advantage of in any way you guys, it’s clearly her choice.
“Horikoshi did Hadou dirty” -- actually agree here lol. but to be fair, she’s not the only one who got injured in this battle; everyone there has pretty much gotten their shit wrecked by this point, except for Iida. and I’m sure she’ll be fine, Horikoshi’s not going to kill or permanently injure her in any way. but I would have liked to see at least one female character still participating in the battle here and that’s pretty much out now, so boo to that.
“it’s bad writing, Jan” -- while you are by no means obligated to like any of these developments, disagreeing with something that happens in the manga does not automatically make it bad writing. also fwiw, I’m kind of boggled by the fact that not one month ago there was discourse about the Touya reveal being bad writing specifically because it was too predictable and everyone saw it coming. and now the fact that the Mirio twist came as a surprise to everyone somehow means that it’s bad writing as well. I’m just saying, lol; Horikoshi just can’t win here apparently.
“everyone just needs to chill” - actually this one’s not wrong! anyway so I guess I’ll end it on that.
Previously on BnHA: Gigantomachia, who had done nothing but mindlessly rampage about for the past few chapters, to the point where I honestly forgot that he was actually a sentient thinking person and not just a big dumb pokemon, suddenly became strangely chatty and very calculatingly homicidal, and nearly killed poor Mina. Thankfully Kiri dove in and stopped her from being squished by him which WOULD HAVE SUCKED A LOT, and to make a long story short he successfully fed Machia the sedative, which he technically did with Mina’s help, so it was technically a tag team effort, if a bit of a controversial one! But anyway, so Machia was all “itadakimasu”, and hopefully he’ll finally go to sleep soon now that everyone’s favorite Guy We’ve Heard A Lot About But Have Never Seen In Action, Majestic, is also on the scene! The chapter ended with Tomura weirdly monologuing about his dad right in front of Endeavor while possibly turning into a big moth monster. I’m not really sure lol. We’ll see where this goes.
Today on BnHA: Would you believe me if I told you that the pro heroes found a way to fuck it all up again. Would that surprise you in any kind of way. I’m sorry, were you expecting Endeavor’s attempt to light Tomura on fire to be any more effective the seventh time around? If at first you don’t succeed, right. Were you expecting Tomura to suddenly become less unkillable than he’s been for the past dozen chapters. Were you expecting them to not stand around for pages on end listening to him rant and watching him grow more Transcendent by the second and doing absolutely nothing about it. What manga have you been reading. Well let me just tell you, they certainly do fuck it up. And Gran Torino is probably more paste now than man, but the dust hasn’t cleared yet so that angst is on hold till a later date! Right now we have more pressing things to deal with, like the fact that Tomura finally remembered he has Quirk-Be-Gone bullets in his pocket, and is FINALLY PULLING THEM OUT, and so alas, the time has finally come for A CERTAIN SOMEONE TO LOSE THEIR QUIRK LIKE I’VE BEEN SAYING THIS WHOLE TIME, and in related news I am seriously considering booking an Airbnb cabin somewhere in the woods with no internet service just so I can avoid spoilers next week sob.
I also felt that Tenko being ignored by EVERYONE in the flashback was kinda hamfisted and that it felt different from how MHA society has been portrayed so far. Sure, I can believe that no one went all the way to extend TLC to this random creepy bloody child, but I can’t believe that no one even freaked out and called police (who calls in heroes in the area, as explained by Gunhead during the work experience week) if only because they were scared of the creepy bloody child. This is a world where people come in all sizes, who knows if that little guy is even actually a child?
And my way of reconciling this in my head is that this is actually not about “masses depend on hero too much and become complacent bystanders” problem that AFO insinuated was the cause. Because timelinewise, this was somewhere around 10 years before All Might busted AFO’s head. I think the heroes didn’t have good enough grip on the society for the masses to go all “Eh heroes will do something about it.” at this point.
I feel like the actual problem was that because organized crime was very much alive and villains were more active, people were more scared to get involved in anything that smelled criminal or dangerous. You know how they say that in crime and corruption-laden places it’s in your best interest to just ignore the injustice and shadiness because otherwise it could literally endanger you and your family? I feel like that’s what was going on. While the heroes including All Might did make it much more safer, the masses 15 years ago still didn’t feel safe enough that their self-preservation behavior from the more chaotic era still lingered. So when they heard “villain attack!” everyday citizens (that are not heroes or hero-inclined) tried to get out of there unnoticed by the villain instead of gathering around and whipping out their smartphones.
So basically, people were reluctant to help Tenko not because of heroes, more because of AFO lol. It’s almost the polar opposite of what has been implied so I’m trying to not hold expectations but frankly this is the only way it makes sense in my brain. And it’s totally in AFO’s character to twist things around to fit his own agenda so.
I find the psychological implications of this chapter very interesting, and it makes me sad that most people probably won’t fully grasp its complexity. First of all is the fact that we’ve got an unreliable/biased narrator, considering he’s been manipulated into leaning toward some very twisted conclusions about himself and his experiences, and he’s never gotten therapy to clarify the the events that led to his current state of being (not to mention he just fully remembered these things for the first time in fifteen years right now).
When it comes to a traumatic event, especially one in which a person has any level of agency, no matter how small, it can be easy for the person to blame or vilify themselves for what happened. “I think I realized what was going on at some point in the middle; I wasn’t innocent.” “I hated them for letting me down, so I probably wanted this.” “I killed my father on purpose, and it felt really good.” This can either lead to a ton of guilt or to acceptance and embracing of the notion that one is a bad person. The latter can feel deceptively freeing, considering crushing self-hatred is the other option. But that doesn’t mean either are the truth.
The truth is that Tenko harbored hurt and resentment toward both his abuser and his family that failed to help him, who seemed to take his father’s side. That resentment gradually turned into hatred and bubbling rage, as it felt things just kept getting worse or more intolerable. He felt trapped in a world of abuse and denial. Then his quirk manifested, possibly fueled by his overflowing negative emotions.
His dog fell apart into chunks, and he was stricken mute by the shock and horror. He had no idea what was going on, thought he was being attacked by some villain. He reached out to his big sister for help, to be saved for once, but (understandably) she freaked out and tried to run. He tried to grab her, not wanting to be abandoned again, and she fell to pieces, too. At that point, he might have started to suspect it was him causing this, but who can think calmly and rationally in a situation like this–as a five-year-old?
And who could have expected his quirk would split the earth and destroy his mother and grandparents from afar, as he was reaching out for his mother’s embrace? He was mad at them, but he also still needed love, still wanted support and saving; there are very mixed feelings in having a family both who you are quite close to and who has let you down. So recognizing that anger, analyzing the event 15 years after the fact, he figures he must have wanted to destroy them all, deep down.
Then his father appears. Tenko clearly feels incredible guilt realizing he was the cause of this, and he’s probably afraid of his father’s reaction. He apologizes in a sobbing panic. His father, seeing the extreme danger his son poses and the fact that this child has just murdered the entire rest of his family, acts on adrenaline. Grabs a gardening tool and tries to knock his son unconscious. Nurturing and loving? Not at all. Practical? Possibly. He’s clearly not trying to punish or damage his son for no reason; he’s yelling at him to stop. It’s a panicked moment, not a revenge moment, it seems. If he knocks the kid out, his quirk might stop, and he can address the situation with whatever is needed in a less immediately deadly environment. Argue there might have been better ways, and he might have been (understandably) upset, but you try making a panicked, emotional decision in split second, facing your death along with your family.
But obviously, his son isn’t seeing from that perspective. Tenko sees his father yelling at him, beating him in the face with garden shears, and reaching for him with the hand that hits him. In an adrenaline-fueled response of rage and self-defense (from his father for all times, not just this moment; he’s not taking the abuse anymore), he reaches out to intentionally kill his abuser. And feels amazing finally having the power to get rid of the person who’s tormented his life the most. It’s a rush. So after that intense stress buildup and mind-breaking trauma, he laughs, unhinged, at the relief of pressure, decides, for that moment of euphoria, that he’s glad all this happened. That decision made in an unstable state of mind sticks in his head for fifteen years. That if he felt good about it at that point, that makes him 100% responsible, guilty, naturally evil.
Even if him previously wishing for his family to die or vanish as a child were even remotely true to some generic, un-detailed level…this did not begin intentionally. And the realization came gradually, with much panic and confusion. Most importantly, the impulse control area of the brain of a five-year-old is highly underdeveloped. They can be literally incapable of stopping themselves from acting on an urge. Furthermore, a five-year-old is not capable of fully rationalizing the heavy consequences of their actions on their future (nor are they yet able to grasp the entirety of life, death, murder, or morality to their full extent), especially in a moment of incredible trauma and stress. The problem is, a 20-year-old will look back on the event with a 20-year-old brain and figure, “I consciously went with it, so I must have wanted it.”
Put that sentence in any trauma victim’s mouth, and you know they need therapy (any trauma victim needs therapy, but I’m just saying). This wasn’t some permanent, cathartic relief, wasn’t his fulfilling raison d’etre. It obviously wasn’t great for him, wasn’t what he wanted, because he was sobbing the whole time, hardly able to speak from the shock and terror. It was so horrific to him that he ran away afterwards, completely repressed the memories from his consciousness, and lived as a “hollow shell” until All for One took him in. When he was told what he had done, he immediately had a panic attack, got physically sick from the flashes of vague memory, and started sobbing, holding the remains of his family close in shock.
This is trauma, not fulfillment. But instead of helping Tenko heal, getting him therapy, All for One took that trauma, that confusion and questioning, and intentionally made it stick, ingrained it into Shigaraki as something to hold onto no matter what, a permanent part of himself. “Yes, you wanted this to happen, you killed them on purpose, you were happy about it, you are twisted; this is who you are.”
And this is why Shigaraki thinks this is his villain origin story. Because he thought he must be bad for what happened, and All for One, the one person who still seemed to support him, claimed that distressed child’s self-condemnation was his personal truth.
Going to say it one last time: Shiro deserves to be with the Black Lion. No matter what happens in canon, he’s always going to be the One True Black Paladin in my mind.
Backtracking for a second but that reminds me, technically she has two Quirks. One is looking like that, the other is her powers. Just having a different appearance is considered a Quirk, right? Makes me wonder if Birdboy’s parents are a person that looks like a bird and then a humanoid with shadow powers.
Or are appearances not considered Quirks? Because while most of the people in the early street shots looked human, in the stands they all have physical appearance Quirks. Here she could have up to, I have no idea, four Quirks? Being pink, having horns, having her eyes like that, and the acid. Those all seem like separate things. Since using Quirks on other people without their permission seems to be taboo, I wonder if people with appearance Quirks are looked down upon based on how much they deviate from average human appearance, because there is no way of knowing whether or not they are actively using their Quirks.
I think all those would technically count as part of a single Quirk. Because a Quirk is typically an set of multiple properties anyway. For example, take Tsuyu’s Frog Quirk. She can stretch her tongue, has whatever physical modifications that allow her to scale walls, jump high, and swim well, and can also throw up her stomach and secrete mucus. All those things by themselves could count as a separate superpower but we just lump them together as one Quirk because they occurred naturally in a single person. Bakugou’s explosion also consists of multiple parts, such as nitro-sweating sweat glands and whatever mechanism that allows him to ignite those at will. Jirou has the physical alteration of Earphone Jacks, ability to manipulate, elongate, and shrink them at will, ability to pick up sound from those appendages, and ability to output heartbeat soundwaves through those as well. And there are the numerous required secondary powers too.
So a lot of Quirks are composite Quirks to begin with anyway. And I propose that: when someone has collection of traits that don’t all blend together well under a single theme, they end up focusing on the most memorable and interesting thing and naming the Quirk after just that one. Ashido’s one Quirk would be “Horns and Pink Skin and Black Eyes and Acid Secretion” to be precise, and in principle, that’s no more complex than what Tsuyu has. But that’s just a mouthful, so in cases like hers and Tokoyami’s where there’s no one good word or phrase to encompass all their oddities, they just focus on the functionally meaningful parts, because other parts are just passive appearance and not as interesting. If Ashido didn’t have the acid powers then she still would not have counted as Quirkless, and her Quirk would’ve been named to describe her appearance.
(It seems that it’s usually very unlikely for Quirks to have multiple “superpower” functions that fall under totally different themes, though, judging from the way All Might was surprised that Noumu had BOTH shock absorption and regeneration. Maybe Quirks like Todoroki’s Half-cold Half-hot, that have multiple functioning superpowers that are thematically unrelated, are just biologically less viable and very uncommon?)
Have you seen the post about hori saying that he forgot about the traitor theory at a panel?
I have and it’s bs and not true at all.
1. Panels are an American thing. Manga authors typically don’t give panels in Japan. They give interviews to magazines, but not panels. Hori gave a q and a panel at comic con this year and that’s the only panel he’s done, if I remember correctly. His latest interview I believe was in wsj a month or two back and that was also translated. Traitor theory has never come up. More typical topics are character design, inspiration, and how the author relates to and writes specific characters (most commonly izuku and bakugou. They’re the most popularly talked about in interviews)
2. That post was an anonymous ask sent into a meme blog. There’s no sources. No one has found any sources. That’s because they don’t exist.
3. The aoyoma arc was meant to be a traitor scare. Go back and re-read it, especially the beginning of it soon yuuga sneaking into izukus room and watching him at night. It’s supposed to make the reader uneasy and suspicious and one of the biggest reasons to be suspicious is the idea of a traitor. In that way, the traitor theory was brought up again, but more of in a meta-like way.
I think we’re all forgetting that the traitor theory could possibly be a red herring, too. On the other hand, Hawks is a double agent- a fake ‘traitor’, one might say. The idea of there being a traitor is just now prevelent now that we know Hawks is a double agent, because it brings up the possibility of there being other double agent who are secretly working for the villains but pretending to be heroes or heroes in training
Not going to reblog that same post all over again, since OP’s gotten enough eyeballs already. Breaking out @coffeerebagels‘ response to here:
…there’s still something about Shiro that stops me from putting him higher in my rank of perfect characters. I hope I don’t get hate for this: he’s too perfect. Look, don’t get me wrong, I really like Shiro and he’s very very likeable but, I don’t see a single thing change in his character. Yeah, if we count the healing arc with the Black Lion that is a change, but what I’m saying is that I don’t see any flaws in Shiro. Literally everytime I analyse him I can’t find a single flaw, and that’s kind of unrealistic for me, you know? … Shiro is likeable, but he doesn’t seem real (except for what he’s been through and his determination to overcome all odds), it feels like I don’t know his character well or that he is perfect.
I think this could actually be argued about nearly every character except possibly Allura, who does get penalized by the narrative (and regularly, too) for her decisions. That’s because from pretty much the very beginning, the narrative has consistently skimmed past calling any character on their actions. It rarely uses subsequent or contrasting events to bring attention to a character’s mistakes, nor does it give screen-time to addressing the few flaws any given character is allowed to have.
The narrative is the story’s source of validation. Many stories have bullies, abusive, bigots, etc, among the characters. The difference between glorifying vs decrying is whether the narrative lets things go unremarked.
In text, you use word choices, give more time to reaction dialogue, or (if not writing single-POV) you cast the scene from the POV of another character whose negative reaction becomes front-and-center for the reader. In visual media, you do it by framing (who’s centered and who’s off-center), what reactions are verbalized or shown, and so on.
