The last third of bnha is wild in its unintentional doubly-self-contradicting tone and messaging. It also tries to convince you that enji should still be around and not dead in a ditch when much less insufferable members of the extended cast have croaked.
The fact that the overall social implications of quirklessness get ignored by the story not only at the beginning but get neatly swept away AGAIN with aoyamas arc is baffling to me considering how perfect that would have been to set up both internal conflict for izuku and larger conflict overall when put in relation to quirkist sentiments around mutation-type quirks (beyond the tiny bit during the vigilante arc)
What an overall surreal fumble
the last third of bnha is so atrociously bad that it actually makes it difficult to engage in literary criticism. Like you’re just left gesturing vaguely at this steaming pile of shit and being like “idk all for one baby fight speaks for itself”
When it comes to literary criticism, I personally distinguish between criticism of the form of “the writer did this badly” and “I wish the writer wrote a different story entirely.” I think the former is fair game, but the latter is generally flawed. Like, there is a difference between a story being poorly written and not being the kind of story you wanted to read. If it’s the latter, you should go write what you did want to read, but it’s not a proper criticism of the merits of the story before you.
The issue with my hero academia is that it pivots so hard during the last third of it that I often find my own criticism devolving into “he should have written a different story entirely,” which, again, I’m generally against, because it’s so riddled with flaws that there’s not really anything there to salvage.
The thing is that stories exist as a whole. You want to lay the foundation of the end at the very beginning. There is a very small window at the beginning of the story to establish what you want a story to accomplish.
I’m not saying that you can’t introduce ideas or concepts as the story progresses. Overhaul did not have to be in the pilot for him to be a character later. But stories are supposed to be about something. Your foundation needs to have the seeds of the overall thematic heart of the story.
And my hero academia seemed to do that really, really well at first. There was so much substance to what they had in the first few arcs. But then after Kamino it started shifting, until suddenly it was like a different story entirely. Thematically, bnha feels like a dislocated joint. It’s all held together by the same overall sleeve of narrative, but the thematic message got suddenly disconnected after Kamino. And Endeavor and quirky-based discrimination are some of the biggest examples of that.
Bnha began as a social commentary in the best sort of way. Bnha is far from the first narrative to try and discuss structural abuse through a superhero model, but it did it in a way that was fairly balanced and nuanced. I personally enjoyed the way that my hero handled its criticisms more than a show like The Boys, because while The Boys was interesting and fairly well executed, it’s a bit too grimdark for my own personal preferences.
My hero portrayed a superhero system that wasn’t actively malicious or evil, but at the same time, wasn’t good either. It was flawed in the way humans are. The society itself is suggested to have been built on the back of discrimination—cities fell to chaos over fear of the quirks that were appearing. Quirked people used to be a persecuted class, and then as the population shifted, so did sentiments. At its core, this society has never cured its foundational issue of discriminating based on quirks or lack thereof, and so many of the cracks in the system stemmed from that.
My hero also portrayed heroes as a deeply flawed class in a way that was interesting and believable. So much of the early narrative is spent laying the foundation to show how the heroic model had bred complacency and abuse. Momo’s mentor during work studies cared about shampoo commercials and meeting with her fans. She was a celebrity, not an emergency responder. The pilot episode opens with a fight that’s more heroes squabbling for publicity than anything else.
That first fight between Mt. Lady, Kami Woods, and the gigantifying rat villain is actually a goldmine of social commentary to me. Kamui Woods is playing this shit up for the camera. He is dramatic. He is pulling out ultimate moves. He has some line where he calls the villain—who, if I recall correctly, is a purse snatcher who panicked—pure evil. Then Mt. Lady rushes in not because backup is needed, but because she’s trying for a big debut. As soon as she smashes through the villain, she’s posing for the camera.
These heroes are pointlessly escalating this conflict for the sake of the camera and the crowd. Like holy fuck, while Kamui Woods was also guilty of needlessly escalating shit, at least he was trying to restrain him instead of smashing him against the public transport and causing massive damages.
Emergency situations should not involve first responders trying to steal the moment out from under each other. The more people you have, the more you risk needless escalation. These heroes are like cops who pull a gun at the first fucking excuse, but it’s not even all about the power trip for them. They are putting on a show because law enforcement is now a performance.
There’s another interesting aspect about that fight, and that’s what happens after it ends. There is a scene where you have the villain trussed up and gagged in massive restraints. He looks like a fucking Christmas ham that committed war crimes. And Mt Lady is posing with him for the cameras.
That shit is unethical to me. It is egregious. That isn’t law enforcement—it’s public humiliation. There is absolutely no reason to have done that. They should have had his ass in a police car and on the way to the precinct the second he was restrained. They should not have turned that into a fucking photoshoot.
We know next to nothing about that guy. We know he was a purse snatcher who had obvious physical mutations and panicked when cornered. But he’s not exactly the fuckin’ bastion of evil over here—no matter what Kamui Woods says for the cameras.
We don’t know if this guy has some tragic backstory, but if he’s snatching purses as a guy with visible mutations in a world shown to discriminate against people like that? It’s possible he’s got some kind of issues that led him to decide that snatching purses was his best option. We don’t know for sure, but neither does Mt. lady.
Him having a tragic backstory does not mean that you let him go or call it a whoopsie. He’s still committing crimes. But it does mean that you take it in consideration with how you handle his case. Don’t turn his arrest into a fucking tabloid piece—tragic backstory or no—and try and address the underlying issue. Then maybe he doesn’t go out and reoffend.
There needs to be dignity in the criminal process for everyone. But there was no dignity in that arrest. It was all just a performance at his expense, and it’s one that he likely walked out of angrier and more resentful at society than ever.
Early act BNHA is full of potential like this. And Endeavor is one of the biggest examples of that.
Endeavor as he’s first presented is less of a character in earnest and more of a symbol through which the audience can engage with the social commentary. I do not mean that in a bad way. Using characters like that is just fine as a plot device.
Endeavor when he’s first presented is given no redeeming qualities. There is no nuance or equivocation in his characterization. He is a jealous, bitter old man who views shouto as his creation to defeat all might. He goes stomping about like an asshole with his burning facial hair shouting loudly about how he sees his son as a tool to overcome all might.
And it’s important that he himself is the one letting this particular freak flag fly. We cannot take shelter in the harbor of the excuse that is “Shouto is angry at his dad and may be an unreliable narrator of how his father is.” No, Endeavor is fully owning what a piece of shit he is. If I recall correctly, All Might comes up to him for fuckin teaching advice thinking they’re like, work colleagues and Endeavor is like, to his face “my greatest creation shouto will soon overcome you which is what I had him to do” or something. I can’t remember exactly what he said but I remember watching it and being like “oh so you just admit why you did it out loud huh.” All Might walked away from that like “what the fuck was he talking about”
Endeavor is just not initially presented as a nuanced or complex character. And he does not have to be when he’s just presented as a vessel for social commentary.
After Kamino, Horikoshi pivots fucking hard trying to make him a complex character. My best guess as to what happened was that he got there and decided that the number two hero having spent his life jealous of the number one hero only to grapple with his own inadequacy when he found himself in the hot seat would be an interesting story line. And hey—that actually could have been.
But the Endeavor that he wrote in the early acts was not the character to do it with. If he wanted to do what he did with Endeavor, he needed to start way, way sooner. He needed to make him a flawed but complex character from the start. Because as it stood, Horikoshi was left breaking his own neck trying to retcon his depiction of Endeavor.
Endeavor’s arc fucking infuriated me because of how it tried to hurriedly reframe what had already been established in a kinder light. There is an exact moment that made me fucking enraged with how it did this.
Endeavor’s struggling with heat exhaustion, and in his internal monologue, he says something like “that’s why I sought out Rei’s Quirk. I wanted my child to not suffer from the same weakness as me”
And this is where literary analysis gets kind of tricky. Because normally, I’d be totally fine with that line. Just because a character says it does not mean the author or the narrative is promoting it. That sounds like the kind of line an abuser would have to justify their own actions to themselves. If this was the first time endeavor was showing up, I’d even think that that line was a good choice, because it’s how he lies to himself to make himself more comfortable with what he’s doing.
Except he’s already appeared during the sports festival, and he could not have bodied what he did harder. He doesn’t need to lie to himself. He stomps down the bleachers shouting that Shouto is his creation who he made to surpass everyone. He’s got no shame or need to justify what he did because he had already fully accepted why he was doing it.
At the end of the day, the reason is actually the same. “I didn’t want my child to suffer the same weakness as me” still presumes that he needs the advantage to fight as a hero. It doesn’t fucking matter if Shouto’s got Emdeavor’s weakness if he grows up to be a librarian or accountant or some shit. It’s really “I didn’t want my child to suffer the same weakness because I’m only having him to surpass All Might as a hero.” Shouto has no agency in the decision to pursue heroics because it’s presumed. The first part of the sentence just cushions the truth of the second half with nicer, kinder packaging.
But the first time Endeavor is shown, he is fronting the second half of that sentence. He doesn’t hide behind the cushion. What he did is framed in an ugly but truthful light. Then, he’s supposedly seeking atonement. But what he did is now presented through only the cushion.
He’s supposed to be changing, but that line is a half-step backwards. He’s no longer bodying the ugly truth of what he did whereas he used to before. Even though it’s not inconsistent with what’s already been presented, the sentiment is still somewhat dishonest.
As a result, that kind of line becomes a magic trick. It’s a shell game. It is not strictly inconsistent with what’s already been presented in the story, but it is still trying to trick the audience into thinking the ball was left somewhere else. It is harder to get the audience on board with Endeavor’s atonement if endeavor has the same harsh honesty around why he did this as he already had. So the story fronts it in more likable terms than before to shift it just enough that it’s the same thing portrayed in a more sympathetic light, but the consequence of that is that Endeavor’s somehow regressing in his arc after he’s accepted that he was wrong. At least sports festival endeavor was honest about why he did what he did.
Endeavor’s arc overall was just so fucking dishonest to what was already established that it pissed me off endlessly. Horikoshi does this thing where he takes likable or sympathetic characters and uses them to package the message he wants the audience to take away from it, as if this character saying it makes the meaning true.
And this is, again, what I mean when I say that bnha became so bad that it becomes difficult to engage in literary criticism. Normally, I wouldn’t agree with construing a character’s words as the actual message the author wants you to take away. Because if you’re writing well, then you’re not using a character’s words as a vessel to get a message across.
Characters are supposed to be inherently unreliable. If a character says something, it does not mean the author agrees and it does not mean that the story is trying to push that same message. In my own writing, I often write what (I think) are very convincing arguments for a given character’s position on something even though I don’t actually agree with it.
Because it’s about making the character’s voice realistic to the character, not about making them the Voice of God. So normally, I would never even try to say that an author is pushing a specific idea based off of a sympathetic character’s words. Because I know that I’ve got plenty of sympathetic characters in my own writing saying objectively wrong things that the narrative will ultimately deny.
But with bnha, the narrative doesn’t ultimately deny it. It bends over backwards to affirm what the Sympathetic Character said as gospel.
With Endeavor, bnha is frankly fucking rife with this, but the two biggest examples come out of Hawks and Rei.
When the new hero ranks are released, Hawks is introduced with a speech on Endeavor. And he says, critically, that Endeavor is the only one who never stopped trying to catch up to all might.
But this is objectively false. Endeavor gave up trying to catch up to All Might so long ago that he had enough time to buy a wife and have three adult children who hate him over it, plus a teenager who wants him to choke. Yeah, Endeavor fucking gave up trying to catch up to all might. The only reason why his children exist is because Endeavor fucking gave up trying to catch up to all might over twenty fucking years ago and decided to make a kid that could do it for him.
And the thing is? Hawks could 100% say that and just be wrong. He doesn’t have all the information. He could just be talking out his ass and be dead fucking wrong about his conclusion.
But the narrative breaks its own fucking neck trying to affirm Hawks’ claim from that point out.
The Endeavor glazing just became intolerable. Suddenly, it’s all about how Endeavor works harder than anyone to be a hero. About how he’s got all these skills and how he’s an amazing teacher to learn from, even better than All Might. I actually got upset by how badly they pushed this idea that, despite knowing everything he did, Todoroki, Izuku, and Bakugou all wanted to learn from him because he was an amazing hero who could teach them a lot despite being a known abuser.
Being a hero is about more than just technical skill. It is about ethics. It is about how you treat the people you fight. The closest equivalent we have to heroes in the real world are police officers. So say there is a police officer who is great at the technical aspects of the job. Really knows how to put up that police tape and take those fingerprints.
He also has a history of beating his wife and kids at home.
Do you want that guy training the fucking rookies? Fuck no. Because it is not about the fucking technical aspects of the job. It is about treating people in positions of authority to not abuse it.
A profession that includes first responders who have to engage in active combat fucking breeds a collegiate mentality. It makes it so quickly into Us v. Them. Cops are told that they need to have each other’s back over anyone else, because that’s the guy that has your back in the field. And that is how you end up with cops who close rank around the guys who murder people under the color of authority. Because the system drills into rookies that you need to have your fellow officer’s back above all else.
You cannot separate Endeavor as an abuser from Endeavor as a hero. He had authority and abused it. He is not the fucking guy to be like “yeah he’s an abusive piece of shit but I can learn so much about being a hero from him.” Because I guarantee that someone who is abusing his power at home is doing it to some degree at work. He is going to corrupt the entire goddamn well for the next generation when it comes to acceptable behaviors for heroes.
But no. We are fucking killing ourselves to make Hawks right about the fact that Endeavor is the only one who didn’t give up on catching up to All Might, even when the premise of his fucking character is that he gave up over twenty years ago.
Horikoshi does a very similar thing with Rei’s character. She is sitting with Natsuo and Fuyumi and talking about how Endeavor isn’t running from what he did with his family and is trying to make amends, in his own way. She talks about how he brought her her favorite flowers, which she mentioned liking one time while they were dating and he remembered. He’s come to check in on her at the hospital many times, but he’s never actually gone into her, because the doctors told him it wouldn’t be good for Rei and he respected that.
This is 1) a load of shit, and 2) simplifies the fuck out of Rei’s character to make Endeavor’s atonement easier.
We see Endeavor after Rei is hospitalized. He is not worried about her. He is bitching to Shouto, the child she mutilated, about how she’s a stupid woman who damaged his greatest creation. But instead of accepting that characterization of him, this new narrative pivots to make him into the kind of man who remembered her favorite flowers after one mention while they were dating and respected her enough to stay away so she could heal. And what dating, he fucking bought her
The narrative just tries to gloss over the Endeavor that was already established. Suddenly, he hasn’t visited Rei in years out of respect for her. But canon already made it clear that she was a means to an end that he did not give a shit about. He beat her. When she had to be hospitalized, he only cared about the damage she did to his masterpiece. But suddenly, that same man has been concerned for years and had a henceforth unmentioned respect for her boundaries.
It’s dishonest to the narrative already established. The Endeavor we see in the Sports Festival flashbacks is physically abusive to her. He is verbally abusive to her. It is very heavily implied that he raped her to make Shouto. He’s grappling with his newest failure, looks out for the corner of his eye at Rei, she looks at him in open fear, hard cut to Shouto crying as a baby. That is not the same man we see after Kamino. And I’m not talking about him “changing”—I’m talking about how the narrative frames how he used to be.
And it makes for a huge disservice to Rei’s character.
Out of everyone, she had the most right to be mad at Endeavor. She was physically and verbally abused by Endeavor. It was implied that he raped her. She thought her eldest child died because of him. He sent her into such a brutal mental breakdown that she mutilated the child that she had been trying to protect from him, and then she didn’t get to see that child again for ten fucking years.
But she’s the first one to encourage the rest of her family to give Endeavor a chance. She doesn’t get to be angry. Her anger would have been the biggest hurdle for endeavor to overcome, and so it’s just nonexistent to make it easier for him.
And normally, I’d say that Rei’s reaction could have been a decent writing choice. People in abusive relationships very often let their abuser off and make excuses for them. But the narrative doesn’t treat Rei’s reaction like the product of years of abuse. It affirms her words, again and again, to enable Endeavor’s own arc in a way that is borderline irresponsible. Don’t worry, honey, one day he will wake up and decide to fucking change, so don’t give him any goddamn trouble when he does.
You said it perfectly: the narrative is desperate to convince its audience that Endeavor should still be around, to the expense of more interesting characters. Horikoshi started seriously struggling with crowd control in his writing in the last third, and he ended up wasting his narrative space on Endeavor’s arc to the expense of everyone else.
So much of Todoroki’s own character and development became chained to the fucking cement shoes that was Endeavor’s arc. Dabi’s entire backstory and characterization was 1) so fucking stupid and 2) designed to make what happened to him easier on endeavor’s own atonement, to the point that it was just fucking money left on the table. Bnha spent so much goddamn time talking about Endeavor that a lot of the more interesting characters almost disappeared entirely from the writing.
Ultimately, the issue with bnha is that it started telling a different story entirely after Kamino, and that’s what makes it so fucking hard to engage in literary criticism of it. There is little to nothing salvageable after the Shie Hassaki arc, to the point it becomes “I wish the author had told a different story.” But it’s really “I wish the author kept telling the story he had already set up instead of changing it halfway through.”
The same issue of changing it halfway through happened with the discrimination discussion. It, again, was framed as a systemic issue. This society is fucking quirk obsessed. It will discriminate against those without good quirks and obsess over those with good quirks, to the point where all heroes are grossly over dependent on their Quirks and many of them are acting more like celebrities than heroes.
But suddenly it turned into the Everyone Is Doing Their Best And I Must Catch Up To Them Show. Oh my fucking god, if I had a genie I would make one of my wishes that animes only got to use the lines “Everyone is Doing Their Best” and “I Need To Catch Up To Them” a maximum of three times in the course of their entire narrative. It can’t be that everyone needs to catch up with everyone else someone has to be at the front of the fucking race.
The previously flawed characters, like Mt Lady, were suddenly pure of heart and Doing Their Best. It lost the fucking thread on the societal issues and imperfections. As a result, we need get a social restructuring that’s desperately needed. Fuck it, everyone’s going to be thrilled at the first Quirkless hero. Let’s never ever address the discrimination against people with obvious mutations. The best we’ll do is have one character start a quirk counseling program and change or challenge nothing about this society instead of actually fucking addressing the underlying structural corruption.
