(Content warning: mention of representations or hinted representations of rape. Spoiler warning for all of Vigilantes.)
Going through a Reddit thread clarifies why I don't like how both Pop and Makoto ended up at the end of Vigilantes.
Based on the newest episodes, the thread referred to Pop as excellent for giving instructions during emergencies, thanks to her voice, megaphone, and ability to attract attention such that she can direct evacuations.
That's kind of where the story fell apart over time: those core details about Pop disappear. Maybe it's supposed to be that way and too subtle for me to notice, as a way to show character progression or just Pop growing up: if she's no longer seeking the spotlight, then of course her voice is drowned out by everyone else, she puts away the megaphone to focus on her education, and she gets less attention especially when the store gala closes. Some people just fall out of their hobbies over time, and what may have been a talent early on just gets buried.
This should work, especially as it better clarifies why Makoto is her foil beyond the godawful and boring love triangle. The story tries to present Makoto as who Pop could be, maybe even aspires to be, but even as Pop is getting through high school, she just can't compete against Makoto's skills and accomplishments.
The problem is in part because the field of competition is over Koichi, with their competition over leading the gala being far less relevant (which is good, in most ways, because the first time the manga brings it up, Makoto's maturity puts a stop to that potential competition and has her and Pop working together).
But the gala itself becomes less relevant when Makoto just up and leaves and everything suddenly falls apart without her, so we don't even get to keep showing whether Pop can get better and reveal what talents she does have, with the dreaded time skip not helping.
(Granted, none of this is a fair assessment on my part: the story adds enough details to clarify all the other changes everyone else at the gala is going through where the gala is not their priority anymore, especially as the neighborhood has improved enough that they don't need the gala.)
My point being, Makoto has the voice that attracts attention and can command a megaphone to direct Celebrity what to do: she is the "better" version of Pop.
By the end of the series, that detail should get some closure, and it just doesn't. Could we show where Pop ends up? It's not terrible to emphasize, well, she's in her teens or maybe early 20s at the end of the series, and after all she has gone through, she doesn't need to have figured everything out or even be on the path towards something that the readers can obviously predict--but it'd still be nice to get some inkling where she is going to end up in her life, because that ending is one big pile of "well, that answered nothing." In the last arc of the series, we see the story try to find a new role for Pop in the story as she herself tries to find her career, who she wants to be with in her life, and how she wants to reveal her emotions in her music and to Koichi--and the story says, "Nah, your role is to be the damsel in distress with a good dose of more rape-victim imagery or literal mind-rape and potentially literal rape, because we need that throwback to Chapter 1 to really sell that bookend," and it's just so fucking gross.
We really couldn't end this series with Pop once against taking up the support role? Or, to make this a bit funnier, make her the hype man? Pop with a microphone talking up the Pro Hero like a rap battle is about to go down?
(Content warning: mention of representations or hinted representations of rape. Spoiler warning for all of Vigilantes.)
Going through a Reddit thread clarifies why I don't like how both Pop and Makoto ended up at the end of Vigilantes.
Based on the newest episodes, the thread referred to Pop as excellent for giving instructions during emergencies, thanks to her voice, megaphone, and ability to attract attention such that she can direct evacuations.
That's kind of where the story fell apart over time: those core details about Pop disappear. Maybe it's supposed to be that way and too subtle for me to notice, as a way to show character progression or just Pop growing up: if she's no longer seeking the spotlight, then of course her voice is drowned out by everyone else, she puts away the megaphone to focus on her education, and she gets less attention especially when the store gala closes. Some people just fall out of their hobbies over time, and what may have been a talent early on just gets buried.
This should work, especially as it better clarifies why Makoto is her foil beyond the godawful and boring love triangle. The story tries to present Makoto as who Pop could be, maybe even aspires to be, but even as Pop is getting through high school, she just can't compete against Makoto's skills and accomplishments.
The problem is in part because the field of competition is over Koichi, with their competition over leading the gala being far less relevant (which is good, in most ways, because the first time the manga brings it up, Makoto's maturity puts a stop to that potential competition and has her and Pop working together).
But the gala itself becomes less relevant when Makoto just up and leaves and everything suddenly falls apart without her, so we don't even get to keep showing whether Pop can get better and reveal what talents she does have, with the dreaded time skip not helping.
(Granted, none of this is a fair assessment on my part: the story adds enough details to clarify all the other changes everyone else at the gala is going through where the gala is not their priority anymore, especially as the neighborhood has improved enough that they don't need the gala.)
My point being, Makoto has the voice that attracts attention and can command a megaphone to direct Celebrity what to do: she is the "better" version of Pop.
By the end of the series, that detail should get some closure, and it just doesn't. Could we show where Pop ends up? It's not terrible to emphasize, well, she's in her teens or maybe early 20s at the end of the series, and after all she has gone through, she doesn't need to have figured everything out or even be on the path towards something that the readers can obviously predict--but it'd still be nice to get some inkling where she is going to end up in her life, because that ending is one big pile of "well, that answered nothing." In the last arc of the series, we see the story try to find a new role for Pop in the story as she herself tries to find her career, who she wants to be with in her life, and how she wants to reveal her emotions in her music and to Koichi--and the story says, "Nah, your role is to be the damsel in distress with a good dose of more rape-victim imagery or literal mind-rape and potentially literal rape, because we need that throwback to Chapter 1 to really sell that bookend," and it's just so fucking gross.
We really couldn't end this series with Pop once against taking up the support role? Or, to make this a bit funnier, make her the hype man? Pop with a microphone talking up the Pro Hero like a rap battle is about to go down?
You know whats even funnier? We never get to see Deku turn Ofa to his own power. He never achieves 100% with Ofa. He was only able to do it one time in the Overhaul arc with Eri's quirk but never reached that potential on his own. Then he loses Ofa after owning it for only a year or so. He then spends his 8 years of life quirkless while being a teacher. Then gets a powered suit at the end to become a pro hero but we dont even see him do active pro hero work in his suit because hori never shows it. We are just lead to imagine it in our heads.
People say deku became the number one hero for defeating shigaraki and inspiring the world but, he is never singled out in the narrative like that in the time skip. All Might still has the biggest statue out of others and is regarded as this amazing hero instead. We dont even see Deku being that popular except for one kid (Dai) recognizing him. Meanwhile we have a group of fangirls chasing after Bakugo and Shoto. Deku's name gets mentioned as one of the best heroes with the rest but isnt really singled out or given a special moment, but instead its treated like a group contribution. Heck even Monoma receives better recongition in some way as he has a specially made statue of him thats singled out.
Honestly Deku's ending is one of the most ass endings I have ever seen a shonen MC receive at the end. Dont know what Hori was even thinking. As it looks like all the other characters had better endings than him and Deku got the worst one. Was he trying to be different or something to subvert the shounen trope? But even then his ending just sucks in general. Deku's character doesnt even feel like a real character at his point.
I mean, you've said it, I don't think I have anything to contribute.
I'm ambivalent about some meta gags in My Hero Academia.
Some work, especially because the story doesn't suddenly stop to explain why this is happening: Izuku can just do All Might's face, characters bring up how All Might is "drawn different" depending on power set and years--they're gags. Maybe Bakugo's remark about Izuku's grimmer design sticks out too much, but it's so fast, who cares. None of these are integral to the plot that they somehow break the story.
And this is also why trying to explain the Quirk origins is tiresome: explaining it ruins why there are people who happen to have powers, birth names, and appearances that are so thematically appropriate, or how some characters look like they are out of the Golden Age of Superhero Comics, Tintin, Dragon Ball, and so on.
Are there any news on Hori doing something new after hero academia or reflecting on it or something or has he gone radio silent?
Given all the criticisms I have had about Horikoshi and My Hero Academia...
I mean, he just wrapped up a years-long manga while having to take breaks due to health in the already competitive, busy, and toxic publishing industry--I do not begrudge him if he isn't doing as much or saying as much as people hope because his health has to come first.
And with his major accomplishment, he can stop with whatever satisfaction there is that he did complete more than 400 chapters to finish a manga that is still popular, has a film out right now, is getting a US television live-action adaptation, will have a final season of its anime, is still having spinoff manga published, will continue on in merchandise and video games (although he likely is not getting as much money as he deserves from that merch when he created it)--yeah, go radio silent.
Again, I'm saying all of this as someone who criticizes Horikoshi's story choices, paneling, and clarity of action--he can take a break, he does not have to speak out about his works, and, as I'll say below, it's not as if anything he says would satisfy someone like me who is nitpicking every last thing in his series.
I am one member of the audience and not even in the age demographic. And while attention to United States readers is valuable, I'm not in Japan, I'm not in the initial demographic by nation and language to read the book--he doesn't owe me anything to reflect on the series. And even if he had something to say, I'm judging the work by the work itself, not by any attempts by him to reflect on it after.
...And I'm burying the lede on this: he has had some comments out there online after finishing the manga, and he is still posting a ton of artwork inspired by the series (link).
As for what comes next: I have zero idea. This is all conjecture, but ignoring economic realities, would he want to do another series? He had two previous series that didn't have complete stories, so maybe a fourth series would be given far more time to find its audience and reach its conclusion, assuming he wants to do another series rather than, say, be a character designer on some video games and TV shows, or contribute to spinoff manga, or whatever other creative and profitable outlet he finds.
I do wonder if MHA academia would work better as a show aimed at a much younger demographic - then the villians can do crime that doesnt involve killing, hence then there is more lenience in both in and outside the universe to redeem them and even have them join the heroes without worrying about having them go to prison.
Hell even Toga's blood thing wouldnt need to be totally censored - Avatar was a Y7 show on american TV and yet it still could deal with "bloodbending" - and vampires are a common enough trope in childrens media, that a charachter "drinking blood" could get through somehow - and in a more broader sense, a children show having the moral of "if we treat each other more kindly the world will be a better place" is more fitting than whatever MHA tried to be at certain moments...
Justice League Unlimited. You described Justice League Unlimited--which is a good thing.
Or, the new Batman animated series Caped Crusader is something that, despite how quote-unquote “adult” it is, in visuals and in plot and characterization and action is really not that much worse than when The Animated Series aired on Fox Kids in the 1990s.
In other words, you could totally do My Hero Academia but skewed to a younger audience without changing much in the plot, just in the visuals.
The thing is, though, I wouldn’t want to do that just for the sake of changing which crimes the Villains did to make it easier to redeem them--but I do think, if you tell us what they did and maybe don’t make what we see so graphic, it’d be easier to accept or tolerate their redemption.
I do wonder if MHA academia would work better as a show aimed at a much younger demographic -
I mean, this has as much to do with how what is marketed to a teen demographic in Japan tends to be much more violent and sexually open than what is marketed to a teen demographic in the United States.
then the villians can do crime that doesnt involve killing,
I bristle at this idea. I appreciate a story that has characters killed, even one targeted to a younger audience--just look at The Lion King.
But it is a point of how you stage it.
Lately I’ve had an aversion to certain stories that insist on making the content graphic to sell the point that someone was injured or killed. “But that’s not realistic--there would be more blood!” And I would counter that the violence already in My Hero Academia is not realistic yet still so over-the-top and violent that it can be distracting to watch. My criticism is personal and not at all objective: I’d rather My Hero be less bloody, I get why it isn’t. This is why I tend to agree with you that I would rather the series lean more into stylized violence for the sake of seeming to appeal to a younger audience despite how high the body count gets.
At the same time, to reiterate my point, I don’t want the story to get rid of killing. The stakes do need to increase as the story continues.
Sure, having people die randomly is not going to raise stakes: Midnight’s death did next to nothing to help the story, same with Crust--the former was so abrupt that it barely did anything to motivate the students more than they already were, and it did nothing to give insight into Aizawa and Mic.
But that’s the thing, the story already showed how well it could raise the stakes by killing someone off--and that was Nighteye.
Nighteye’s death was one that did have its flaws: we didn’t get to know him as well as other characters who could have died; killing him off in the same arc that introduced him was disappointing because, if this could have been improved, we would have introduced him at the same time that we were introducing Gran Torino, Nana, and David and Melissa.
And, while Nighteye should not have died, this was a story that pretty much said, as awful as this is to say, “Nighteye brought this on himself.” He kept trying to fix the future as something immutable, which helped drive the wedge between him and All Might that in turn did make things worse for Pro Hero society, with the Number One Hero hiding in his shell and not reaching out to people. He trained Mirio and pressured Izuku so severely that they didn’t save Eri when they had the chance. I do not agree with people that Toga had to die--but it’s that same mindset that happens with Nighteye, his death was tragic in the most classical sense because the actions he took brought him to this point, and it is a tragic death I can tolerate because he died with the peace of mind that Mirio would rise to the occasion as a true hero, he made peace with All Might and to some extent Izuku, and what came after, while still horrific, at least led to some good, as it was a sacrifice of his life that still saved others. I wouldn’t want to lose that by trying to appeal to a younger audience--but I know that appealing to a younger audience could still have the exact same plot description, just revising the visuals to suit that younger audience.
hence then there is more lenience in both in and outside the universe to redeem them and even have them join the heroes without worrying about having them go to prison.
Let’s set aside redemption for a moment. The thing is, things in this world are messy, and there are people who are going to be reintegrated into society despite horrible things they have done, and we are only going to get through this together by getting through this together. I just think the story failed at trying to reintegrate characters.
Now, as for redemption: I think it’s fine not to redeem every character, I think it would have been better if the story hadn’t been trying to redeem Shigaraki, Toga, Dabi, Spinner, and others. But that has less to do with the age demographic the story is targeting, and Horikoshi making storytelling decisions I personally didn’t enjoy.
But let’s say that we do want to redeem, not just reintegrate, into society: yeah, I think targeting this story to a younger audience could still make it work to keep the characters’ personalities the same, their struggles exactly the same, but change what they did for the sake of making their redemption easier to accept.
I know the worst people online will scream, “Ugh, what is this, Steven Universe, where we redeem all the fascists?” which, yeah, I’m not getting into that, I understand people wanting to redeem the villains there, but I’m also in the mood to punch some fascists, I’m not interested in tolerating their shit today.
And the worst people online will scream, “Ugh, My Disney Academia,” which, fuck off, I just pointed to Lion King, that film had Mufusa’s death, Scar eaten by hyenas, and fucking Nazi imagery to beat you over the head that “Nazis are bad, the hyenas are being led by the nose by Scar like Hitler leading violent motherfuckers around”--that was a dark movie that managed to do what it did because, first, it knew when not to cross certain lines visuals, and second, it didn’t shy away from scaring the young audience. (And, third, this was back in the 1990s when we fucking knew Nazis can go die and weren’t fucking role models to be admired by the Republican Nazi Party. But there I go being political.)
My point is, maybe you don’t have Shigaraki wipe out all of those people in the MLA. Maybe when skewing to a younger demographic, you still have Shigaraki’s family die, but we’re not having to see “meat chunks” to see them dying like that--shadows and silhouettes can communicate the same idea. The anime was less graphic when it came to Toga and, yeah, was censoring her so you don’t have a teenage girl running around naked--which, look to the video games, Toga’s transformations there don’t make her clothes dissolve, we can absolutely accept that she doesn’t have to be naked to transform, we don’t need to insist on “realism” just so the artist can keep drawing her naked.
Hell even Toga's blood thing wouldnt need to be totally censored - Avatar was a Y7 show on american TV and yet it still could deal with "bloodbending" - and vampires are a common enough trope in childrens media, that a charachter "drinking blood" could get through somehow -
I completely agree with these points.
Servamp is pretty violent with the vampire attacks, but it still visually skews younger than My Hero Academia.
The Brave and the Bold had Batman go vampire against the Justice League.
And I know Spider-Man 1994 gets crap because of how they changed Morpheus from sucking blood orally to sucking out plasma through his hands--but, first, that is such a disturbing image, and second, it helps mirror Morpheus’s plasma-sucking palms to Spidey’s web-shooters and his entire Ditko-esque body horror, and third, he’s still sucking blood no matter that you are calling it “plasma,” so get over yourselves, you thundering dumbasses.
and in a more broader sense, a children show having the moral of "if we treat each other more kindly the world will be a better place" is more fitting than whatever MHA tried to be at certain moments…
I agree. And like I said above, maybe that does mean you are redeeming these characters, or, as I keep putting it, you’re reintegrating them into society. I know that is a hard pill to swallow: Shigaraki killed; Dabi bragged out killing. And yet, the story shows what led them to awful actions, and to prevent the next Shigaraki and the next Dabi, you do need to figure out how you’re going to imprison these people, and rehabilitate these people, and if safe and ethical, how you’re going to reintegrate them into society without house arrest or imprisonment. I want a story that looks at the challenges of this world: I know we have complained that My Hero Academia worried so much about the worldbuilding, but I’m not talking about worldbuilding, I’m talking about the story about what you do with what comes after the war--I wanted My Hero Academia to continue in order to show us how difficult it is to have a world after war, after villainy, when there are no more heroes but just citizens and bystanders and people trying to live again.
Okay, more rambling below from earlier attempts I was making to respond to this question--and that means some of what I say below is going to contradict some of what I say above, so, sorry about that:
All of this being said, the goal should not be “target only a younger demographic”: the goal should be make it so that even the younger people can watch, even if some stuff goes over their heads, as opposed to “let’s throw in a lot of blood and naked people so that we keep the young people from watching.” (Granted, they’re still going to end up watching: parents aren’t paying attention, “it’s just a cartoon,” etc.)
Horikoshi seemed invested in giving just about every character a moment to shine in the final arc and to complete worldbuilding and the last bits of most important historical details and backstories. The problem was not intended audience, tone, or even trying to cover up the more violent aspects to his story; the problem, I think, was trying to respond to so many characters and worldbuilding details that the story comes across as unfocused.
(This is why I think having a second concurrent manga covering events happening alongside the current events in the main manga may actually have helped make the story more enjoyable. In other words, rather than the side adventures of Team-Up Missions or the earlier setting of Vigilantes, take the underbaked details for certain characters, and have their stories told in this second series--maybe it’s just about the Todoroki family, maybe it’s just the Villains’ side. But I don’t think that would have been as profitable and, even if this spinoff had someone else handling the scripting and artwork, that still would require Horikoshi’s supervision and still spread him too thin.)
What you’re describing sounds like the Bruce Timm DCAU--and even those stories, however much they suppressed or removed certain details to not be too adult (don’t call the obvious sex workers “sex workers,” leave the dialogue vague enough to not just come out and say “they had sex,” don’t show too much blood, don’t sever the limbs of too many main or supporting characters) still were something kids could and were watching because they got the broad strokes of what the story was saying, and many of them at that time or when they grew up started to realize the larger significance (“oh, this is about how relationships are hard,” “oh, this is an allegory about post-9/11 police state tactics,” “wait, what did Terry think Waller meant by Bruce leaving his DNA everywhere?”). In those series, people still died or were even murdered: Luthor had Mercy kill a scientist for leaking info about kryptonite to Lois; Joker shot Bonk dead (yeah, yeah, this was edited for the initial home video release); Despero turned into a fucking tree.
I can appreciate Horikoshi’s willingness to show that this world has horrible things happen in horrific ways. It’s one reason, as ambivalent as I am, I appreciate the story had characters with lasting physical injuries. But I still think many of those moments were either bandaged too easily (Bakugo’s physical recovery, Izuku losing his arms). Or they were needless and overly symbolic to the point that the characters are making foolish decision just to get to the symbolism (there is zero reason to have the Todorokis interfere with Endeavor’s attempts to stop Dabi when there is absolutely nothing their ice powers could have done--the solution always should have been that Endeavor and Shoto are the only ones there to stop Dabi, they don’t have the power to, but once the rest of the family shows up, even if they get scarred, it is enough to contain Dabi, because the point should be the family following Shoto and even Endeavor’s example, not just acting on their own and not doing something so stupid that was never going to work except get them all killed). Or they are largely not shown in cross-media content because we have to freeze these characters at one moment in time before their disabilities. (Are we ever going to get mainstream merch of Aizawa without an eye and a leg that will be more readily available than merchandise of him before his injuries? How likely is it that the production company wants to keep artwork of Mirko before she loses limbs due to a misunderstanding why her injuries are important to represent and to appease an audience that likely is horny on main and being disablist in the process?)
I appreciate your point that targeting the story to a younger audience would make it easier to swallow how adamant the heroes are at trying to rehabilitate the villains. The thing is, though, the story’s entire message is that there is no action that is too extreme that we should turn our back on someone else. At worst, as shown when Izuku tries to talk down Muscular, imprisonment should be when the person is absolutely not going to change, however impossible it is to fully determine that potential for change. Once you target all of this to a younger audience, now there is hardly any struggle: of course these criminals should be rehabilitate, it’s not like Dabi who is a mass murderer, Shigaraki who killed numerous people, Toga whose compulsions led her to kill people, Compress who…whatever the hell his deal was, the “Robin Hood” persona was never fully defined. My Hero Academia has had enough cases of people who were technically criminals who get redemption and rehabilitation; we don’t need to young-down the manga to get those stories, we had them already.
(And that’s not even getting into the side-step I could take with this discourse when trying to get through the weeds with the IDW Sonic the Hedgehog comics: Christ, how do you over-complicate a story about a freedom fighting furry to turn this into something the story is not?)
But yeah, in the end it is weird Hori focused souch on the "society" part in his story, when he didnt want to show any real change and keep the status qou.
Especially when he could just have it be a personal story of Izukus individual struggles (and a few of his classmates too) and then there wouldnt be this whiplash when there is no big change in how it all works at the end, just a feel good story of a kid archieving his dream
Not even saying I would find that really compelling just that it would atleast work, not like what we got.
But I think the real culprit of it all where some behind the scenes reasons that are hard to gauge - like was it the editors, was it the negative reaction of japanese fans to many events that demotivated Hori, was it his health and general fatigue that made him apathetic? We'll never know - well atleast if nobody spills the tea
The manga had a hard enough time focusing on the school part. I appreciate criticism that the manga would have become boring if each year repeated the same events--school orientation, sports festival, exams, school festival, graduation--and just add more and more characters that the story then can’t focus on. But also, I’m a greedy academic who wants my school story to be about teaching and learning.
I’m not sure how much I have addressed this already, but, yeah, a significant problem for My Hero Academia is that there was too much to tackle. It has to explain the setting, which means that, when little changes in that setting, it feels like a missed opportunity. There are so many characters in just Class 1-A that it doesn’t even feel like a Pixar film (I know I’ve brought up that comparison before) where each supporting character has an arc, however small, and gets one moment in the spotlight to help bring about the resolution of the story: the shoe-horning of Sero, Sato, and Ojiro against All For One felt like too little, too late.
And, spoilers for the fourth film, it doesn’t get better: is this really all we can show for each character’s desires? I appreciate giving Tokoyami a moment to shine, but it is so random that has to be him--and, in my cynicism, it is done just to prop up Hawks yet again when he doesn’t need it. Can we please have one film where the stars are not Izuku, Todoroki, and the angry explosion guy--there are other student heroes who could handle their own film.
So, yeah, maybe if more of Izuku’s storyline had a clearer narrative focus. Like I said above, the fourth film doesn’t really do much to state what his goals are beyond “be a hero like All Might”--he’s done that, over and over again--what is the next step for him? I don’t want to go back to the debate about whether Izuku becoming a teacher and supposedly single were good or bad for him--but it would have helped to have telegraphed this stuff earlier. Even Treasure Planet made sure to have Amelia mention quickly in passing she’ll recommend Jim for the naval academy so that we aren’t shocked why Jim returns home now as a naval cadet--we couldn’t have used that recent one-shot tie-in manga to the fourth film to have someone tell Izuku, “You should be a teacher” so that his post-Pro Hero life isn’t such a swerve?
As for focusing on just a handful of the supporting characters: I honestly wouldn’t mind if every last single character got their own arc--but Horikoshi didn’t have the time in one manga to do it, and unfortunately the spinoffs haven’t helped. Present Mic gets pushed to the side despite how integral he is to Aizawa and Kurogiri and Midnight’s stories. I’d even take something equivalent to the finale of Deep Space Nine, a montage that suggests we had meaningful arcs to the characters, even if we didn’t really: “Oh, yeah, I remember that one chapter of Team-Up Missions--huh, I guess that was a good encapsulation of this character’s entire arc, so, yeah, I got closure for them.”
We agree that Horikoshi did not show the kind of change to the status quo that we would want the story to show.
I guess I’m still confused why the status quo stays the same.
I wonder how much of this is, as I have argued before, because, as with numerous superhero stories, the status quo has to be maintained so that you keep having the same familiar characters who don’t get older, don’t get married, don’t have kids, and you can keep them in the same stage of life with the same adventures to sell the same merchandise.
Or, I wonder how much of this is because this is Horikoshi’s habit.
Granted, Barrage never had a decent conclusion, but from how My Hero Academia turned out, I would not be surprised if the monarchy persisted as it did since the beginning, rather than the story confronting that maybe the King and his soldiers like Tiamat were refusing to confront the need for change.
But then again, Oumagadoki Zoo seemed like a story about change. I mean, sure, the “deaths” of the animals (they sacrifice their ability to transform to re-empower Shiina so he can win the fight) were overturned almost immediately (Shiina just had to give the magic back--there, done). But the zoo went through changes, the animals from the other locations (the aquarium and the circus) showed the capacity for change, emphasized in the last pages when Hana sees Shikuma start to resume his human appearance despite his villainous nature.
And as you said, we have only conjecture as to what factors influenced Horikoshi and his editors to wrap up the manga as they did. I really hope it was not criticism against focusing on the Villains--which, if that was a factor, I can’t see it on the page, because even the final arc is so focused on wrapping up the stories for Shigaraki, Spinner, Toga, and Dabi that, at best, it’s giving me what I want to wrap up their stories (even if I don’t like how they wrapped up) and, at worst, a big middle finger for those readers who (wrongly) criticized focusing on the villains.
Maybe it's better to just leave things unexplained rather than insisting that the story explicitly explain every last bit of worldbuilding.
(I say this as much about certain popular stories, as I also say about my own desires, whether when I'm writing fiction or when I'm reading fiction, that the most important goals are plot and character, not every last detail as to how things in this setting work.)
I know calling it yuri bait sounds reductive, but with Hori literally giving Toga that sick anime hentai face (I would say look it up, but maybe dont...) and just framing Toga as some weird sadomasaochist fantasy (call me kinkshaming, but I think atleast we can all agree that it shouldnt involve minors in a story aimed at them...) for 90 percent of her screentime, makes me feel like that, especially when Ochako doesnt show pity but some form of overexagerated attraction - not even saying having a goody too shoes hero see the appeal of wanton hedonism no matter the cost as "liberating" sound interesting, but the way its framed and then the "burry your gays trope" seems like Hori said "ok I got my fun, sold more merchandise, now going back to the other points of the checklist"
My response is going to be lengthy again, so I will begin by summarizing the main points I want people to take away:
Writing about anything involving sex is going to be messy. I will not advise shying away from that, even when it is a story about teenagers, especially at a point where the goddamn book bans in United States public libraries and public schools are done only to purge bookshelves of books by and for marginalized people, not only LGBTQIA+ people but definitely them in no small part.
There has to be a space for teenagers to read stories about how sex stuff is messy, including just everything around Toga…
…but given Horikoshi’s perviness and male gaze towards underage girls, he is absolutely not the person I trust to write Toga’s story.
I think anything that perpetuates a misleading accusation of the story being yuri-bait is not because of Toga, who is literally an LGBTQIA+ character and an allegory for the experiences of LGBTQIA+ people as well, but because the story does not clarify any of Ochaco’s thoughts about Toga in that way which, I think, is what makes it seem like "bait"--
--and while I don’t expect this final arc to finalize a Toga x Ochaco relationship, not because of the tonal clash or the stakes but because of the time necessary to tease that out, I do think killing off Toga is fucking cowardice.
And there’s another reason it is cowardly to kill off Toga: the story is refusing to commit to just how exactly people reintegrate into this society after these experiences--that is a story worth telling--
--but, whoops, got to end this manga, let’s rush through the dialogue between Toga and Ochaco when that really needed at least two earlier instances (one of which should have been in this war because, you know, a war is a series of battles, not just one big battle at the end of the story). No wonder pretty much the only Villains that get reintegrated into society are La Brava and Gentle, who, first, are barely Villains, and second, while their relationship is valid, does kind of feel like a slap in the face that just about the only canonical romantic grouping in this story is the man and the woman.
Okay, onto the lengthy rambling.
Regarding “hentai face”: I mean, Toga’s face has always been that stretched-out smile--the point is that she maintains that same smile, she has to keep it right at this moment where her story is reaching its crescendo before we get falling action where she can lie down and die with a “normal” smile. Or, actually, it’s not even the same stretched-out smile--it’s now even more exaggerated, even horrific and sad when she’s forcing that smile while crying and exposing her emotions (symbolized as well by being literally naked), at this point that is the climax to her story.
I understand how, out of context, all of this looks awkward, and I’m not helping: I said she’s naked, and I am referring to this as a climax. I understand that this is sexualization that readers are going to apply to this scene and how discomforting that is--but also, that’s on those readers bringing that into the story, and I say that with no judgment, just because you see something doesn’t mean anything about you, I definitely see it, too, but context is key here. It sucks that the context also includes Horikoshi perving on underage fictional characters, but I’m doing my best to focus on what I can that doesn’t include Horikoshi’s bullshit, however near impossible that is. .
I don’t know what to do with any of this beyond shrugging and saying that just about any story dealing with LGBTQIA+ awakening with young people, including underage characters, is going to be messy.
And if we’re going to talk about what it means to be a teenager and grow up, that also means talking about the stuff that is really uncomfortable for underage people as they are going through it, and is going to come across as uncomfortable because it’s an adult writing and illustrating it (and Horikoshi’s male gaze on underage characters in his extra art pieces is not helping) and for adults reading it when this story is not targeted to them or when those adult readers feel uncomfortable because they relate to Toga’s conflicts because those adult readers went through it too at her age or are going through it right now.
This is the conundrum we’re not addressing well: how do you write fiction that is about what it means to be a teenager when that experience is going to have sex involved, whether the absence or presence of it, and how do we allow those spaces of literature to exist at a time when rightwing Nazi-level dipshits are demonizing anyone just talking about sex or LGBTQIA+ identity (and the fucking absurdity that every fucking asshole keeps saying “LGBTQIA+ stuff is just sex” when, no, it fucking isn’t)?
(And, one more tangent, as this is not the purview of My Hero Academia: why the hell is sex ed being so restricted? We’re putting such ridiculous restrictions on sex ed, even up into the college level--what the fuck do you mean we’re not going to teach consent and contraception?! Jesus Tap-Dancing Christ, we don't need more rape and more STIs and more unplanned pregnancies, fucking hell.)
We do need stories that are for younger readers about the complexities involved in LGBTQIA+, including being gay, lesbian, bi, pan, trans, queer, asexual, and more; I’m not interested in separating My Hero Academia out as something that should be shamed or put away just because it involves teens and sexual implications, whereas it is far easier for me to say, “Horikoshi should not have given Momo that costume,” “Horikoshi should not be identifying with Mineta,” “Horikoshi should not have drawn the extra artwork with non-invisible Hagakure.”
With sadomasochism, the story does indicate that what Toga did to Saito was wrong. But it is harder for some of us readers to appreciate what the story did to say Toga was wrong to Saito when we have to get to that point by working through all the other details, including the following: whether the artwork is eroticizing anything, and how much of that is on the readers; how does Toga’s story fit within the larger sexualized readings and nature of the vampire genre and how it is near impossible to divorce that sexual potential from that kind of a vampire story, and the really uncomfortable qualities of a lot of manga and anime sexualizing minors; and finally, who is to blame for what Toga did when it is not only her own agency in choosing to harm and even kill Saito but also her parents’ emotional abuse, her need to closet herself, and a society that has failed to determine how to integrate people with Quirks that, whatever threat those Quirks have for other people, are Quirks that are also are making that person’s own life miserable? In other words, Saito was not the first victim of Toga’s Quirk--Toga was the first victim of her Quirk because no one figured out the obvious ways to guide her impulses.
I’m still not convinced that Ochaco showed attraction to Toga, but that is up to how readers want to see her reaction and what meaning we want to give to one girl telling another girl that her smile is beautiful: how much do you read that as only attraction, how much do you read that as something that indeed can be said without any form of attraction (one person can absolutely say that another person is beautiful without having any desire to be with them, whether we’re talking being with them just for a fling, being a partner, or having any sexual orientation to that person), and how much do you read that as beautiful not in terms of ideal physical appearance or sexual or emotional attraction but as the fact that Toga has the drive to be free with how she feels and Ochaco finds that admirable to the point that is literally uplifting and hence the very definition of “beautiful.”
And Toga’s honesty with herself is what Ochaco finds beautiful when she herself has also felt suppressed or closeted or whatever we want to call it with regard to what she wants--to be more outspoken, to be honest with herself about her feelings towards Izuku even if she never asks Izuku out on a date, to be more honest that she got into Pro Hero work just to make people feel better (not at all bad, but also not the core ideal), to financially support her family, to be more honest how devastated she was at losing in the Sports Festival, and on and on.
But re-read that run-on sentence above: I just said that Toga, a bi/pan character who is also an allegory about being LGBTQIA+, is similar to what Ochaco went through--when this comparison is so tilted towards Toga and what Ochaco has suffered through just is not as bad. Toga has suffered; Ochaco just wasn’t honest with herself. I don’t dispute the validity of what Ochaco feels, but I also cannot act like what she is going through is devastating when it is manageable and correctable, whereas Toga has gone through trauma, took the wrong actions in response to her own trauma, hurt people, and is a complicated allegory for how do you go about living when you can’t be out and risk being ostracized?
This is why your last remark, that this is all like a checklist for Horikoshi, speaks to me: he totally just wanted a “good” representative for moving forward to a better future--Ochaco--and had to kill off the toxic one--Toga--to make that happen. Toga had to die so that Ochaco could do good in the world…What the fuck kind of fridging is this shit?
The more daring story would be what do you do when you have screwed up--and have to keep living? But this is a story that refuses to engage with that idea: as a sidebar, I get that the Todoroki family is a tragic story, but it sucks that the choice was to go with “tragedy” as opposed to “how do they go on with their lives?” And no, the last-minute remarks that info-dump on us--Natsuo is getting married, Fuyumi evidently lost her job in teaching with no good explanation offered but totally has a new job lined up already--is such a poor way to answer my question, how do you go on with your life after tragedy? But back to Toga: she screwed up--and she just dies because this story did not have it in it to show that maybe Toga’s future life is not going to be better, or a failure to imagine that maybe there is some point in the future where she is integrated into society. And what about the other Villains? Shigaraki screwed up (except those “screw ups” are also thanks to All For One being the Reverse Flash or Humpty Dumpty and controlling every last damn moment of his life--Christ, what a poor writing choice)--and he just dies with the hope that Izuku shatters the status quo, and then, whoops, Pro Hero worship persists, even if we see people willing to reach out to others and stop shaming heteromorphs, too bad you put your faith into Izuku, sucks to be you, Shigaraki. Meanwhile, Compress is still locked up, Spinner is still locked up--oh, but Spinner wrote a book that Compress gets to read, big deal, that still is not re-integrating them into society.
So, we didn’t see these Villains get reintegrated into society--but thank goodness Ochaco gets to do a lecture circuit--that we never get to hear to know how effective it is. How hard was it to give us artwork showing Ochaco, even without dialogue, consoling or counseling children with destructive Quirks? But no, we needed some silly splash panel to let us know that she, Jiro, Momo, and Iida are now adults--but somehow still look the same as they were teens with barely any changes to their uniforms. I know this is me being selfish and myopic, but who was yearning to see what each character looked like in adulthood? Because, if that is what the final chapter is going to deliver, how come none of them actually looks much different, even in costumes? Come on, give them something a bit more drastic but still looking like them.
This is me speaking as a cishet man, so my perspective is flawed and almost certainly wrong: it feels like this story goes from messy LGBTQIA+ people like Toga to “conforming” characters, where Ochaco is now held up as the “correct” type of LGBTQIA+ allegory. The braver action is to let Ochaco and Toga both survive this--and what happens now that the awkwardness sets in, not only because Toga is going to get rejected by Izuku so what happens if Ochaco does start dating Izuku, but also Toga is going to jail, but she can contribute to society, and we show there are models of identity that are messy and whether Ochaco is complicit in keeping that status quo for what is “good” representation. I know this sounds like fanfic material--maybe that’s what I prefer right now, to see how fans take what is here and run with it, but I’d rather read a fic about the awkwardness around Toga and Ochaco, even if they don’t end up in any relationship, because it would still be queer given that we have Toga and we have Ochaco having called her “beautiful” and there can totally be a queer platonic relationship here, but, nope, got to keep burying the LGBTQIA+ characters in this manga.
Also, yeah, none of this story has helped me with my regard for the merch: I don’t want to buy it, I don’t want to be reminded how sadly this story ended. I almost think letting Toga live would have actually helped my engagement with the merchandise: “Cool, I can look at this action figure and not feel sadness because she died for no good reason.” Now, I don’t want to pick up the video games again knowing, “Oh, yeah, none of this is going to end well for these characters, playing as Toga and embodying her in this game is going to hurt, I’m out.”
I'm going to rant about why Haumea doesn't work for me as a character.
Was Haumea's trauma ever actually foreshadowed before the last arc decided to make her the tragic victim that needed to be saved?
Or were we to read that given how obviously unwell she was (and simultaneously ignore how awful she was to other people, including whatever she was doing making Sho into her new dollie)?
Or was it not foreshadowed and just a drastic shifting of gears because the writer had no idea what he was doing?
Or is it that she does bad things and it is presented as bad, but we need to recognize that no one is wholly good or evil and that people in pain deserve to be helped regardless of what they did before?
Is she the Crona of this story? Because, for good or bad, I can overlook what Crona did when the story clearly communicates that they are part of a cycle of violence, whereas with Haumea, the late back story does not recontextualize anything when the horror of what she was doing to others was the first impression and not only never wore off but is still used in current promotional materials (the mobile app game just reinforcing her sexualized violence upon Arrow).
In other words, the story barely made it clear that Haumea was just "driven insane" and that's why she does what she does--which doesn't work: her being in tune with humanity's darkest thoughts does not seem to separate her from her own agency, as so much of the story presents her actions as out of a choice and agency, not even a choice within the limited options given to her.
I wish the story had emphasized some detail that clearly delineated that we are supposed to root for her recovery; even Shigaraki in My Hero Academia was a villain that the story was trying to make you root for being rescued, even if the cliches of reducing him to his child form as Tenko may be cliche or overlook, again, his own agency in the choices he made.
Instead, Haumea's conclusion just seems slap-dash and doesn't clearly telegraph an ending that says everyone deserves to be saved regardless what we may think of them. Would it have helped to info-dump all of Haumea's back story in the middle of the manga similar to how Tenko is info-dumped in the middle of My Hero Academia? I don't know.
Fire Force kept acting like this was a story about saving lives and property, and that firefighters don't see anyone as undeserving of rescuing...Too bad it also has Shinra and company resurrect even mass killers and ends up creating monsters and natural disaster then treats this as, "Oh, well, the world's more exciting like this."
Like, sorry for conflating people who deserve the chance to change with mindless monsters and destructive forces of nature, but the story never seemed to have the depth it was trying to telegraph in its ending.
This isn't even a problem of shonen as a demographic or this story as an action-adventure genre: it's setting up a question--"Does everyone deserve to be saved?"--and instead of answering with a resounding and obviously correct answer of "Yes!" instead overlooks what Haumea did, what Kurono and others did, and says to just have fun and not think about this because the world is now a zany cartoon known as Soul Eater (which, as I was trying to emphasize, did this entire plot better with Crona--a character who themselves didn't even apologize for their actions but at least said they had a connection to Maka and wanted to do what was right for her if for no one else).
And, just going to throw this out there: it's bothersome that Fire Force has an ending that acts like everyone, regardless of how wicked they were, deserves to be resurrected...while Crona (a victim of abuse who still did commit atrocities) gets to stay imprisoned on the Moon, Medusa is still dead, and Arachne is still dead. I would not be so insistent on this point because, hey, two different works by the same author doesn't mean that they have to be consistent just because it's the same creator. But when you then force the two stories into the same chronology and are trying to connect their morals--that the lessons learned in Fire Force created the world for Maka to learn her lessons--but those morals do not match up, then yes, I am going to criticize all of this as tonally inconsistent and having competing mutually exclusive morals.
Maybe so much of this would help if there was ever any sense of just how much agency Haumea had. The bread crumbs were not enough: she witnesses the Evangelist holding baby Sho, but she was the one who kidnapped him; she is suffering from the images of humanity's worst impulses, but we don't see resistance by her even when she seemingly gleefully is participating out of pleasure in harming Arrow and Sho, not to stave off the pain from those impulses or even to distract from that pain but just because she seems to really want to do it. Maybe I'm obtuse and need the story to hammer whether she really wanted to do this, or whether she changed her mind over the course of the story, and either case would require the story to actually let us into her mind--and by the time we get there, she has done enough that is too gross to think, "Oh, okay, now I get it." I can accept "she needs to be saved"; I can't accept "and you should agree that this doesn't still suck, doing the right thing."
Also: maybe if she wasn't given reality-altering powers at the end this all would have worked better. I understand that Crona having the power of madness and needing to be talked down means that they are still not being treated as a person to reach out to but as a force of nature that has to be stopped; I appreciate how that is a mixed message. But the thing is, I think most people like Crona, however much unfair derision will be made that we like them just because they are a "woobie." But with Haumea, the entire attempt by Shinra never felt like reaching out to Haumea as a person but just to convince her to go along with his plan to remake the world--that's it, a means to an end, a force of nature that is out of control and needs to be managed. And it makes Shinra resurrecting Charon seem less as a way to help Haumea continue to live and, again, just a bribe, an enticement like getting a kid to do their chores--it's condescending.
I guess to wrap up this rambling, Haumea never felt like much of a character, just "the antagonist" until the story needed sympathy for the devil to jerk out some tears from the audience that are not earned. I know all literature is just artificial constructions meant to imitate reality without ever entirely reaching reality and instead opting for just believability--but, damn it, this is not believable, and when the stitches in the plot are showing this obviously, the story is not working and comes across as a bunch of tropes stapled and taped together so badly that the staple and the tape are obscuring what I can see in the story.
Just going to reblog this post about Haumea in Fire Force over here as an example of how much worse Toga in My Hero Academia could have been written.
And to emphasize my point: I'm saying that Haumea's tragic backstory had near-to-no build-up, whereas Toga's at least had setup and payoff, and while both characters get these tragic backstories to clarify why they do the awful things that they do, I can sympathize with Toga (maybe because of the allegory?), whereas it is more difficult for me to sympathize with Haumea, in part because, again, the backstory is so late.
Interesting that you have read Barrage, I avoided it because the only feedback I heard was that it was bad and cancelles so yeah, but its interesting to see which strengths and flaws followed Hori till the end of MHA...
Like I said, Barrage has parts of it that I think have unfortunate implications and, had it reached its actual conclusion instead of being cancelled after two volumes, I think it would have had the same kind of ending as My Hero Academia, where the status quo is maintained.
That being said, it is only two volumes, the characters are appealing enough, and while the fight scenes and superpowers are not as inventive as My Hero Academia, I think the action is easier to read in Barrage whereas I could not track what was happening in the last chapters of My Hero Academia. And the artwork and character designs in Barrage are mostly cleaner than in Oumagadoki Zoo.
At only two volumes, it's worth reading. I just wish Viz included the bonus chapters, but you can get those in the two volumes.
(And as usual, I get a little annoyed with "this character totally looks like this character from My Hero Academia" takes. Chima looks distinct enough from younger Ochaco. If anything, it's more interesting that Jino resembles Izuku: here's this grown-up woman with the same freckles and "cry baby" demeanor, but obvious the two characters are different--it's the small details that they are similar, not literally just identical.)
Lol the "did Hori ripoff Crona and Maka for Toga and Ocho" ask got a lot funnier after somebody randomly redrew the "you have the cutest smile" scene from MHA with Crona and Maka😂
LOL, and it is good artwork. (Link)
I still stand by my point that the context is different--and even stariiberry's artwork is using the dialogue rather than forcing either Maka or Crona to have the same smiles and facial expressions as Ochaco or Toga. The dialogue stays the same, but who Crona and Maka are stays the same regardless because they are still drawn as the same characters, not simply forced to occupy the spots Ochaco and Toga are in.
(... ... ...Now, if you wanted to do something more thematically appropriate, it'd be Maka in the Toga role, doing the Madness smile at Crona--and Crona just so not into having to be Ochaco here, hesitantly and without any confidence saying, "Yeah, sure, cutest smile, whatever, please stop looking at me like that." Think this artwork by speedl00ver (link) and the actual facial expressions Crona made when Maka went mad (link).)
do you think MHA was inspired by Soul Eater? I dont have any direct proof, but the whole "you have a beautiful smile" thing between Toga and Ochako seemed like it was directly aping the Crona Maka scene from the anime sub, without getting why it works, turning it just into yuribait...
I received this question on October 1, 2024, before the finale of the Toga and Ochaco fight aired in the anime.
And this wouldn’t be me answering a question without being late to the response, rambling in circles for about 25 pages without just getting to the point, and going off on tangents about ten other things bothering me in general instead of just answering the question I got.
Shorter answer, before I go off on tangents:
I don’t think Toga’s question to Ochaco about her smile was directly imitating the Crona and Maka scene--or, rather, scenes plural: when Maka offered her hand to Crona in the Kishin Resurrection Arc, when Maka hugged Crona in the desert pit in the anime, or when Maka was cradling a bleeding Crona in the fight against Medusa in the anime.
I don’t think it’s imitation as I haven’t noticed obvious visual call-backs. As I will emphasize below, the staff are not the same even though Soul Eater and My Hero Academia are from the same studio.
As much as I enjoy Soul Eater, and although enough United States animated series invoke its visuals with obvious homages, I just don’t see much in that series ever being alluded to or imitated directly in Japanese animated series.
I think any similarities between Maka and Crona and Ochaco and Toga owes to what we see as viewers and the fact that both relationships are pulling from the same general archetype, that being the hero identifying with the villain and reaching out to them, with all the romantic potential that has.
And, as I’ll emphasize below, I’m not convinced it’s a great comparison as there is more different between the characters and relationships than there is anything in common: Maka is more self-assured and direct, Ochaco tends to waffle, Toga is acting out of self-determination even if she is denying how bad her choices are, Crona is largely without agency or at best so traumatized that they opt for inaction and have to be literally puppeteered by the antagonists because as they say they “can’t deal with this.”
And I don’t think Ochaco and Toga is yuri-bait. Or, rather, I don’t think the relationship works in canon, and I think the potential is there but not really actualized very well (at least compared to better fan works). And I don’t think it can be “bait” when Toga is canonically attracted to girls and outright is attracted to Ochaco.
The hinge to reading this as an LGBTQ+ relationship is what Ochaco thinks and wants--and I think her referring to Toga as having the most beautiful smile is so awkwardly placed that it disrupts the very relationship enough of us want to happen--it’s awkward, it’s messy in all the bad ways, it’s not even “tragic yuri” so much as “this really feels like you don’t want to commit to this relationship and are going to kill off Toga so that we don’t have to address what Ochaco meant by calling Toga’s smile ‘beautiful.’”
It works for discourse, especially as it is Ochaco speaking to “beauty” as being honest with your own desires and what you want to achieve.
You can definitely read Ochaco as attracted to girls. (Before I get remarks saying, “But she’s attracted to Izuku”: sexuality is fluid, bi and pan people exist, poly is an option, these are teenagers who are not dating yet and still trying to figure out who they are, being attracted to Izuku does not negate the potential for being attracted to anyone else whether with the idea of dating or a committed relationship or a sexual relationship or just the most superficial reaction of “this person is hot but I would never want to date them.”)
But her “beautiful smile” remark clashes with the fact that Ochaoc is not here to romance or date Toga but to first save her and second deal with all the other problems happening in this war and far, far, far down the list, like near the bottom, is being honest with her relationship with Izuku, and this story just hasn’t had it in it to explore poly relationships or even Izuku’s own regard, if any, for Ochaco.
We’re in the middle of an allegory about what it means to find someone who accepts you, which obviously has romantic tinges to it--but instead of talking about that, we’re going to refer to this as, on the one hand, “yuri bait,” or, on the other hand, “and now kiss.” And I hate both reactions: I hate dismissing this as “yuri bait,” and I hate “and now kiss,” because both feel like it’s taking his complicated scene and reducing it down to having to be cynical about it or obtuse and obvious in shipping--and it doesn’t work for me. This is the start of a potential relationship--the kissing can come much later (and I say that as someone who isn’t big on the Ochaco and Toga ship--but some of you aren’t up for who I think, if anyone, you should pair Ochaco with).
But, nope, got to kill off Toga, can’t have that, heaven forbid we have any LGBTQ+ characters who survive (Toga, Magne) or are in relationships (seriously, can there be one LGBTQ+ couple in this fucking manga that isn’t just that pair of girls holding arms in the background when Mirio and Izuku are on patrol in the Eri arc?).
*sigh*
Okay, now onto the much longer rambling and ranting.
I haven’t watched the episode Anon is referring to, and as I said another episode aired right after this question. Even though I haven’t watched the entire episodes, I can speak enough based on what little I have seen, what I read in the My Hero Academia manga, and what little I know about the production of Soul Eater and My Hero Academia.
From what little I’ve seen, I haven’t seen deliberate and obvious visual call-backs to the Soul Eater manga or anime. While Soul Eater and My Hero Academia are both animated by Studio BONES, each one comes from a different studio division and set of directors and animators.
The context in each case--Maka and Crona, and Toga and Ochaco--is different, if only because the characters and their relationships to each other are entirely different.
Maka is typically more outgoing and honest with her thoughts than Ochaco.
Toga, too, while suppressing a lot of what she actually thinks and feels, is definitely more explicit in saying something about why she does what she does, while Crona’s entire characterization initially is summarized by what they say, “I can’t deal with this”: Toga is taking an action, even if it’s not really helping her or what she really wants to do; Crona is about saying everything they don’t want to deal with and having to be compelled to act, or puppeteered by Medusa and Ragnarok to act.
Maka reaching out to Crona is not because she is finally being honest with herself--that is Ochaco’s thing: reaching out to Toga is about her being honest with her feelings, not suppressing her crush on Izuku, not suppressing any potential or just read-into-by-the-audience attraction to Toga, not suppressing her legitimate worry for Toga despite her being a villain.
No, Maka reaching out to Crona is all about overlooking what Crona did to her and Soul and trying to help another person.
That is pretty much what Ochaco does to Toga, but I think it works better with Maka and Crona because it is not weighted down by hundreds of chapters of the story spinning its wheels. Crona stabbed Soul, infecting him with madness; Maka sees what happened to Crona in the past; Maka is not about forgiving Crona but about helping Crona with friendship.
In contrast, we have to know all of this backstory about Toga, which is either awkwardly told at us or was going to be Curious’s tabloid story, and then have to wait another bunch of chapters for Toga to ask veiled questions to Ochaco that Ochaco is not going to understand, only to then have Toga repeat her life story to Ochaco and hence to the readers as well when we already know all of this, so we can then rush to have Ochaco tell Toga it is alright and that solves everything.
I can’t believe I’m having to say Ohkubo once again succeeded in spite of himself, but keeping the actions simple and compact makes each action land better: the initial attack, the reversal of Maka’s regard for Crona, and the emotional release of crying with Crona works.
By contrast, Horikoshi tends to think through every last detail of his story--and it overwhelms the emotional reaction. This is one reason why we have the worst people online screaming that Toga and Shigaraki don’t deserve forgiveness or redemption--because Horikoshi, intentionally or not, opens up those questions.
Meanwhile, Ohkubo side-steps that reaction to having the debate be not whether Crona deserves forgiveness or redemption but just having Maka befriend them, Lord Death initiates a trial enrollment, and the story moving forward from there. Soul Eater was such a cartoony series that you can accept a silly guy like Lord Death just ignoring everything Crona did and moving on: he does so later ignoring that Maka took out the book she wasn’t supposed to and now Kid is captured by Noah.
My Hero Academia wants to speak so directly about real-life issues that, despite good intentions, as is inherent with the structure of allegory, it’s hard to make that story still work both as fiction and as a treatise that will convince enough members of the audience. Soul Eater got to be goofy; My Hero Academia was trying to be poignant.
(Ohkubo then screws all of this up in the manga by having Crona just get brainwashed back into being under Medusa’s thumb, but we’ll ignore that and just appreciate the anime handling that storyline better by still having Crona, by their own choice, commit to following Medusa’s orders before realizing how much they screwed up.)
With all of that rambling out of the way, I’m now going to ramble some context where I’m coming from.
I haven’t sat through this season of My Hero Academia, if only because I already was disappointed with this final arc in manga format, so I have little interest in watching it animated just to again be disappointed with the same storytelling and characterization choices.
I don’t want to ignore what I would probably enjoy if I watched: I thought the paneling and artwork was too messy to follow in the manga, whereas enough reviewers said the animation made it easier to follow Ochaco’s movements and Quirk Awakening.
But I also don’t see much need to sit through an animated version of a storyline that I thought overall didn’t have the setup it needed, had a disappointing payoff, and did a fridging of an LGBTQ+ girl character--but I write all of that as a cishet man, whereas numerous LGBTQ+ viewers, for good reason, appreciate this story as an allegory about not being who you want to be and wishing that someone would reach out to you.
I guess my complaint is as much about how Toga didn’t get the better ending she deserved, and I don’t think this storyline works as a way to show how things get better when you’re killing off the character who functions as both the allegorical LGBTQ+ character (her compulsion, whether from her Quirk or not, read as having to closet a part of herself) and a literal LGBTQ+ character.
I’m taking forever writing this, so let me start to wrap things up by including earlier remarks I drafted and then delayed getting to:
It’s not impossible for the crew at My Hero Academia to have been inspired by the Maka and Crona scene, but I don’t see direct evidence to support that conclusion, or even commonality between the two anime in staff beyond both anime being made at the same studio. Episode 39 of Soul Eater, the one with Maka reaching out to Crona, was directed by Takefumi Anzai, written by Megumi Shimizu, and storyboarded by Takuya Igarashi. I haven’t seen any of them working on My Hero Academia. While both Soul Eater and My Hero Academia are made by Studio BONES, they are different crews, so unless I learn that the My Hero crew was inspired by that Crona and Maka moment, I don’t see evidence to suggest that inspiration beyond the similarities that you have identified but, given what you also say, not getting why it worked in Soul Eater and, yeah, I don’t think it works with Toga and Ochaco.
I’ve been wanting to write about the Ochaco and Toga final encounter since that “cutest smile” moment. But I was waiting until the manga ended--and then I still can’t quite figure out my reaction to the moment.
I don’t think it’s quite yuri-bait: Toga is already out, so the only bait is whether Ochaco is obviously identified as queer and whether they have a relationship. Seeing as Toga is dead, that throws a relationship out the window. Where I would be willing to call this bait is that the series overall has refused to commit to representing queer relationships. At best there were those two characters during Izuku and Mirio’s patrol that were holding arms that seemed to both be girls, a detail more emphasized in the anime adaptation. But if that is the best I can identify, then either I am missing all the more obvious examples, or this is just tossing bread crumbs to the audience.
What would make this work is if there were any same sex couples. I get that this story, for a lot of reasons, was not going to have that happen, whether due to persistent homophobia in both Japan and the United States (except, you know, all the other same sex couples that are in notable manga that are in the same genre, have the same popularity, cater to the same age demographic) or because of the realities of superhero work (except there are Pro Heroes who are married and have families: Endeavor is not a good example but we do have Rock Lock). And these points are thrown out the window when the story keeps trying to make Izuku and Ochaco into a couple because, you know, these are high schoolers, of course they will date. And even then the story tries to give in-universe explanations, whether due to personalities (Izuku and Ochaco cannot be honest with themselves) or awkward if believable and even realistic worldbuilding (Camie mentions that her school forbids dating--but, again, between boys and girls, not between boys or between girls--and yeah, Camie probably did mean any dating while pointing out that right now she wants to date Todoroki, but the point still stands). As I said earlier, maybe My Hero Academia would have been better if some of this stuff wasn’t explained, but that’s a whole other discussion about certain comics and their creators who get too fanfic-y in trying to over-explain stuff that doesn’t need to be explained, leave it to the fanfic writers to explain it, not the creator.
My point is, the yuri-bait accusation--which I think is a bullshit accusation--would be less prevalent if the anime itself had more and more LGBTQ+ relationships so that things don’t feel so straight.
Speaking as a cishet man, this is my problem of constantly yelling, “Just have your characters be out, why is everything so coded, just let them be out as gay, bi, pan, trans, everything.”
But my constant yelling is privileged; that take I just had, “add more relationships so things don’t feel so straight,” is not our reality. What I just was yelling is such bullshit to yell about because I’m ignoring that the reason these stories depend on coding is for the same reason people derisively call this stuff “yuri-bait”--it’s this pressure to perform a certain way or, more often, just stay closeted because of patriarchy, homophobia, biphobia, transphobia, all kinds of discrimination and bigotry on the basis of sexuality, sex, and gender.
It is easy for me, a cishet man, when engaging with this work for just entertainment: that is a lazy engagement. But it is irresponsible for me, a cishet man, to act that way because it makes me a poor ally; it ignores that these stories are speaking to people who are LGBTQ+.
Someone had to point out to me that the same storyline having Toga and Ochaco reaching out to each other in such a romantic or at least romantic-coded way also name-dropped the lesbian vampire story Carmilla. The thing is, while someone pointed that out to me to emphasize how queer this all was, I am still resisting because at the end Toga is still dead and the ending, or rather the fanbase’s reaction to the ending, something the manga cannot control, was fixated on whether Izuku and Ochaco would be a couple only to be disappointed that the confirmation is either vague (adult Ochaco wearing what looks like a version of Izuku’s Pro Hero mask around her neck; Ochaco and Izuku still in high school enjoying a winter evening stroll) or nonexistent (sorry, shippers, but I don’t think the manga ever confirms clearly that Ochaco and Izuku are a couple--this is worse than how badly Soul Eater trolled us who thought we were getting Maka and Soul confirmed explicitly as a couple rather than what we did get that confirms it to me but which is still so ham-fisted as to, again, just be trolling).
So, at long last, after months of delays on my part, I finally manage to write something about my conflicting feelings about how My Hero Academia handled the Ochaco and Toga relationship, the “most beautiful smile” moment, and killing off Toga and, to top it off, leaving her future romances vaguely defined, which both upsets the shippers and upsets everyone because it reduces her character arc to just who she hooks up like this is a nightmare out of that Louisa May Alcott bio-pic--just fucking super.
But I don’t want to end this ranting without offering how I would have fixed this. And as usual, I owe a lot of these ideas to getting to talk and plot out story ideas with elliotthezubat, so credit to them for a lot of what follows, both as someone who plotted this or who listened as I offered ideas and bounced them off:
First, don’t kill Toga. The idea that we need to see how Pro Hero society reforms depends as much on what happens to Villains who are rehabilitated and do re-enter society. We do not have to go with a full “Truth and Reconciliation” approach, but it is silly that no Villains survived to be released from prison. (I guess Gentle and La Brava were supposed to be our example--which, again, just super: someone who was recording videos exposing price gouging and his partner who was editing the videos--yeah, real supervillain criminal behavior there. Come on, Horikoshi--be daring, show us how on Earth Toga and Spinner persist even after what they did.)
Second, so much of the dialogue between Ochaco and Toga needed to be staged earlier. We needed these two interacting at least two more times--and no, Toga disguised as Camie and Izuku interacting with Ochaco don’t count. So much of Toga’s ranting after Compress died could have been cut and pasted to another fight we could have had earlier--but that would have required a whole new arc to this manga, and I appreciate that Horikoshi wanted to wrap up this manga already. And so much of what Toga says to Ochaco needed to be said earlier in this war arc. It bothers me, for how “grounded in realism” this manga tried to be, that we rush everything into two stupid wars: why did the Pro Heroes think storming the Doctor’s lab was a good idea when all it does is destroy a city and let Shigaraki lose instead of finding a more covert way of infiltration and immediate destruction of the lab, and why did the Pro Heroes think baiting All For One into one last stand was a good idea when that was going to wreck all of UA and let Dabi loose? We need this “war” to be an actual war--that means multiple battles, so have Ochaco face off against Toga between Shigaraki’s release from the Jaku lab and the final battle, then you can more of Ochaco and Toga’s talk be in this intermediary battle. No one is going to process everything these two are yelling at each other in the middle of a fight--that talk-heavy stuff goes in the middle, just structure a fight there for it.
Third, commit to a Toga and Ochaco relationship or don’t--make up your mind. This is as bad as not committing to Izuku and Ochaco in a relationship: no one walks away happy, so just commit to it or establish that while Ochaco keeps helping Toga that the attraction is one-sided.
