That Toga scene in 229 was creepy and it’s okay to think so
So, yesterday, when the leaks were posted, they were intentionally manipulated to look extremely suggestive via 4chan; cropped and darkened in ways that made the actual content even more shocking - probably for the amusement of the people on the site. However, even without that, those specific panels are still disturbing and despite the violence being (narratively) non-sexual in nature, there’s a reason why the initial reaction was kind of correct.
I’ve grown up with shounen and seinen - and often times with certain mangaka, there’s clear depiction of idealized sexual forms or actions. To put it simply, like with other mediums, we can honestly sometimes just know that the author has certain fetishes because they keep putting them into their work. This is very much known as the ‘Tarantino has a foot fetish’ effect; because the director in question clearly has a foot fetish and has devoted screentime to it. TV Tropes calls it Author Appeal and there’s a good amount of examples for both manga and other mediums of how this works, and quite a bit of them are sexual, which is the focus of this ‘essay’.
Horikoshi has outright admitted that some of his own sexual desires are mixed into the work; and, truthfully, this isn’t necessarily ‘bad’ or whatever, humans who can feel sexual impulse and attraction tend to incorporate it into their creative work. However, it’s clear what Horikoshi’s kinks are, and, well, its absolutely okay to feel put off by their content.
One of the most sexualized characters in this show, besides Midnight or Mount Lady, is specifically Toga, who of the two women in the League is the one who is a minor. And her being a teenage girl is kind of a big deal - she wears her old middle school uniform, she’s introduced as a ‘high-school cutie’, there’s repeat emphasis on her being a deviant schoolgirl. She’s seventeen, which, almost an adult in quite a few prefectures of Japan, but there’s a particular fixation on her girlishness. Heck, we had a whole fight devoted to reminding us she’s a young girl who should be in school.
And her deviance is very much fetishized. The constant ahegao faces in reaction to sexualized violence, Horikoshi for some reason choosing to depict her changing out of her quirk into nudity when, as we found 100 chapters later, that was unnecessary. With the existence of Midnight, it’s not too far off to say that Horikoshi has a kink for women dominating or emasculating men, and Toga’s a part of that (there’s also that infamous drawing of Mina scolding Horikoshi).
But, there’s also the trend of her being hurt far more physically than most characters.
I’m not posting images from 229 because they are disturbing, but there’s been repeated highlights of Toga’s pain being sexualized. I made a fuss over this with two shots of her throwing up black goo - spaced with over 120 chapters between them, same face each time; it doesn’t look pleasant and it honestly looks like a money shot from porn, let’s not mince words. Even the way the goo wraps around her is a call out to more suggestive works.
And then we have this week’s chapter, where she isn’t being sexually assaulted but it sure looks like it. There’s little argument otherwise - we have an unconscious bloodied teenage girl being gripped by several men who are trying to strangle her. The fact we get several panels devoted to her being held down by a far larger group of men than Twice is, shaded in with her being hoisted and gripped around the waist by them is clearly meant to invoke images of the way sexual assault is portrayed in less ‘family friendly’ manga. Yes, she’s being strangled rather than groped, but the image there for a reason.
And from a narrative standpoint - it makes sense! Twice, whether platonic or, unfortunately, romantically, loves Toga. She is kind to him when he hasn’t gotten much kindness from the world. He cares for her and seeing his worst nightmare, his clones, himself, hurting her - like that - it’s meant to invoke emotion and reaction. Having a male ‘protagonist’ (in this case) find his resolve and quell doubts because a comrade, especially a ‘defenseless’ female ‘love’ interest is in danger is a very common trope in written and visual mediums.
That doesn’t make it okay.
Horikoshi could have made the attempt at strangulation shown in other ways that didn’t involve her being held down by various men in suggestive poses.
To put it simply, it’s there to heighten both Twice’s panic, since he’s going through something similar AND…author appeal. There was no need to draw in that way without wanting to suggest something darker.
Horikoshi drew Toga’s strangulation like a gangrape scene because he simply wanted to.
I know that’s blunt and harsh, but that’s the reality of how he deals with female characters in his work. It’s why Momo’s power conveniently needs her scantily clad, it’s why Toga’s shown practically getting off to beaten men, it’s why so many of the costumes are far more suggestive - because, at the end of the day, any narrative justifications are there to justify what the author wants.
And, further more, it’s okay to be upset about this. There’s quite a bit of jeering about this on reddit, about the ‘overreactions’ to the leaks and how ‘silly’ we are for them. But this is the take that comes from lay readers with little desire to look at BNHA as a whole. But we know BNHA has an issue with this, we know that there are countless examples of women’s objectification and sexualized violence in this manga. This is not hysteria, nor is it me rallying on about some abstraction like ‘purity culture’.
I merely just want to provide space for readers to be upset about this. It’s there, and you have every right to be upset and air those feelings out. If those scenes disturbed you, like sexualized violence against minors generally does, I want you to know you are not wrong for this, nor are you ‘over-thinking’ this.
Horikoshi draws what he wants, but we’re free to discuss and express disgust over it.
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