Hardening the Blow: Kirishima as the Ultimate Narrative Human Shield
Kirishima is Bakugo's training wheels friend so Bakugo could learn how to actually be a person.
The author realized he had a problem: There is zero reason any human beings or the audience reading the story would have to root for or want to interact with Bakugo. He made his character TOO toxic.
Enter: Kirishima "Shitty Hair" "He's not so bad when he's not hitting me" Eijiro.
Bakugo doesn't have friends, he's apart of Kirishima's friend group.
Bakugo is the cat they non consensually adopted and continue to feed.
Kirishima is tossed from that dynamic once Bakugo 'graduates' to the new big 3 and spends all his time with Midoriya and Todoroki.
Poor viewers, right? We expect far too much from these cardboard cutouts who are props for people the author actually cares about.
It's why we're eternally disappointed. We have expectations that characters will have character. But let's take a step back and examine who the story tell us Kirishima is supposed to be.
In middle school, Mina Ashido was the one naturally intervening when underclassmen were being bullied, and she was the one who bravely stepped between her friends and a literal monster (Gigantomachia). Kirishima, meanwhile, froze in terror.
Kirishima’s entire foundational character arc—the reason he dyed his hair red, changed his hair gel, and adopted the "Crimson Riot" ethos, was based on the intense guilt and self-loathing he felt for standing by and doing nothing while people were being harassed. His core resolution was: “I will never stand by and let someone be bullied or victimized again.”
Cut to U.A. High School. Kirishima walks into Class 1-A, a newly forged man of chivalry, and immediately meets Katsuki Bakugo.
Bakugo spends the entire first semester:
Screaming at Midoriya.
Physically lunging at Midoriya during the Quirk Apprehension Test.
Actively trying to blow Midoriya’s head off in the Battle Trial, forcing All Might to intervene.
Threatening his classmates and calling them "extras."
If Kirishima’s backstory actually mattered to the narrative, Bakugo is the exact type of person Kirishima should despise. Kirishima should have been the first person stepping between Bakugo and Midoriya, crossing his hardened arms, and saying, "Picking on the smallest guy in the room? Not manly, bro."
But he doesn't. And it doesn't.
Everything Kirishima is, exists in service to his utility to Bakugo and softening his early series solipsism and sociopathy.
It's part of a three step program.
Phase 1 (Solipsism): Bakugo hates everyone and operates in a vacuum of his own ego.
Phase 2 (Domestication): Kirishima forces a one-sided friendship, acting as a PR manager to prove to the audience that Bakugo is capable of basic human attachment.
Phase 3 (Integration): Now that the audience accepts Bakugo has a "soft side" (hidden beneath ten layers of screaming), he is allowed to narratively graduate. He can now stand next to Midoriya and Shoto without looking like a primary antagonist.
The fact that his quirk is Hardening and he laughs off Bakugo exploding him isn't subtle at all.
Kirishima can't stand up to Bakugo, because if he drew a firm boundary, it would force Bakugo to actually face a consequence.
If Kirishima said, "Stop screaming at people or I'm not hanging out with you," Bakugo would simply tell him to die and walk away. The narrative cannot afford to isolate Bakugo again, so Kirishima is forced to be infinitely, uncharacteristically submissive to a bully. It completely contradicts his entire "chivalrous, manly" ethos just to keep Bakugo in the room.
He exists as a literal and metaphorical punching bag to be sacrificed on the altar of his explosive, arrogant god and was discarded to a bit part the moment the narrative no longer needed him.
This manga takes on an impossible task convincing me Dabi’s the ultimate evil when they placed him in a forest of trees and children, and all he did was toss a match at it and walk around ominously.
His flames are probably burning between 3,000- 5,500 degrees, he’s a walking crematorium and easily could have slaughtered everyone in that forest in about ten seconds flat from either straight up incineration or smoke inhalation. Hell, Mustard had half that forest filled with, likely flammable, gas. Twice was there to make as many clones of him as he wanted. That forest should have been lit like the Fourth of July in Missouri.
And yet there’s not a single casualty. Imagine that.
Dabi is the most Nerfed overpowered character of all time. If you wanted him evil he should be god tier levels of scary- and yet every single thing that happened in this series continuously reinforces to me that his character ethics backslid spontaneously just to flatten his nuance.
MHA wants to have the aesthetic of a gritty show where the villains are the darkest of evil and are very dangerous and serious.
While also having the villain characters be incompetent, utterly pathetic losers who can't kill their way out of a paper bag.
While also having the main characters always win in the end and absolutely nothing in the story can't be undone or have them get a second try.
So you have utterly asinine scenes like people standing near blue flames like it's a pleasant afternoon trip to the beach. Because apparently thermal radiation doesn't exist in this universe unless the author wants it to.
The utterly random nameless losers Dabi kills do a LOT of heavy lifting for his street cred.
You would think that the man who can instantly reduce human beings to chunks of carbon, a level of heat that takes hours to accomplish IRL, would be one of the most dangerous people on the planet.
Keep in mind that Tomura needed to touch you for most of the series to hurt you. Dabi just had to raise a hand and flames cover you and you're dead.
I'd like to explain something REALLY, REALLY important about a realistic application of Dabi's quirk: YOU DON'T DODGE IT.
Just standing within twenty feet of Dabi when he ignites should flash-fry a person's lungs and cause third-degree burns from the radiant heat alone. Blue fire is hot enough to melt steal near instantly. We've seen Endeavor himself do this with orange fire.
Dabi's flames are hotter than his. The argument of "It's just anime physics!" no longer applies when the source material canonically applies them for a cool fight scene.
PEOPLE are less durable than buildings, steel, and trees!
If Dabi shoots blue fire at you, even physically avoiding the flames still means he most likely either kills you or inflicts third degree burns on your body that cause catastrophic damage.
Blue fire burns upwards of 5,000 degrees, which means even if you successfully dodge roll ten feet away from his blast, the extreme UV light and ambient thermal radiation will permanently blind you before you even hit the ground.
A fire that hot acts like a massive welder's torch, emitting a UV flash so intense it causes immediate photokeratitis, while the radiant heat,traveling at the speed of light! instantly boils off your eyes' protective tear film. Because the human blink reflex is far too slow to beat the speed of light and heat, the ambient air temperature would literally cook the proteins in your corneas, turning them cloudy like egg whites hitting a hot skillet.
Dabi doesn't even have to try to blind you; permanently boiling your eyeballs in their sockets is just the passive, unavoidable side effect of standing in the same zip code as a walking blast furnace.
A man who can casually set an entire forest on fire, which killed absolutely no one, by the way, is not a person that you try to dodge roll like a dark souls boss.
This is one of the weakest elements of MHA. It has a bloated cast of characters who do absolutely nothing and serve no function other than being props for merchandising with a comparatively tiny cast of antagonists who never achieve anything of real value until the plot is ready for them to succeed, and no one the audience could possibly give a shit about is allowed to die.
Zero stakes. Zero fear on who will live or die. Zero reason to care.
A gentle correction.
You are right in spirit, you just used the wrong argument.
MHA explicitly addresses the systemic discrimination faced by "heteromorphs" (people with physical, mutant-type quirks).
Entire character arcs for Spinner and Mezo Shoji revolve around the violent prejudice, lynch mobs, and societal rejection that heteromorphs face, particularly outside of major cities.
There is literally an extremist hate group in the lore called the Creature Rejection Clan. Because Chief Tsuragamae is a heteromorph, targeting his animal features absolutely taps into a history of systemic in-universe bigotry.
Now, if you wanted a bulletproof argument, you could have said:
"The story doesn't treat it like a slur because it constantly lets Bakugo get away with the exact same behavior."
That would be much, much stronger.
The narrative wants to have its cake and eat it too. On one hand, it wants to tell a serious, heavy story about systemic prejudice against heteromorphs. On the other hand, it wants to use Bakugo’s aggressive, boundary-crossing behavior as a recurring gag.
Bakugo constantly reduces his classmates to their physical traits—calling Mina "Raccoon Eyes," Sero "Soy Sauce Face," and Tokoyami "Birdbrain." He is not reprimanded for this. No one gets especially offended.
So why are Bakugo's constant microaggressions meant to be fine and tolerated but Shoto doing it would be bad? It's similar to when Dabi called Spinner Lizard and Spinner got upset. It's like when Shinso called Ojiro a monkey and that made Midoriya crash out.
Are Dabi, Shoto, Shinso and Bakugo users of micro aggressions? Did they all say things they shouldn't? Is this behavior reprehensible?
The story refuses to pick a lane and commit.
Give me your most scorching hot, hot take about MHA. The one condition is that it just has to be something you never spoke of before.
Okay then.
One for all is overrated and boring.
It feels like hori was trying to turn it into the quirk equivalent of the sword in the stone and turn izuku into "the chosen one". Everything added to it from the vestiges, the the fact that it can't be stolen or replicated just made me further lose interest in it.
I much prefer quirks that seem simoleni. Concept but are much more formidable than at first glance.
It lost me when it became the answer to every single problem.
Izuku gets mind controlled and shows a lack of emotional control. How's he get free? OFA bails him out. Shinso had him dead to rights but the story needs Izuku to win so the ghosts give him the W.
Izuku hurts himself constantly and is warned he'll lose his arms. What'll become of that? Nothing. His body adapted to it. He later loses his arms and gets them back because a first grader mutilated herself to restore him. Losing his arms had nothing to do with OFA.
Izuku can't control his full power, and he needs to grow into All Might's shoes. How's he gonna handle that? He actually doesn't. He becomes Spider-Man for a bit and never actually masters his strength. He uses ad hoc methods to try and grasp 100% but is never strong enough to do it. The only time Izuku tastes full 100% power in this series are when a child clung to his back. We saw his MAXIMUM POTENTIAL way back in the Overhaul arc and the never again.
Izuku's ending up with lots of new quirks! I bet they'll be so cool and unique! How is he going to master these when he already struggles to deal with the ones he's got? I bet this is going to be material for lots of chapters/episodes, right? Nah. He fumbles a bit at first and then gets to the point where he starts mastering new powers immediately after getting them. His development happens offscreen. Also, the powers are all mid, Spider-Man cosplay, or tools that exist solely to enable Izuku to use more strength than he ought to because the author crammed the series into 1 year of events.
OFA is a big secret he has to keep. What goes down with this? Nothing. He spills the beans assuage Bakugo's feelings after the guy lost a school game, causing Bakugo to eventually piece things together. He then spills the secret to all of his classmates and absolutely nothing happens. Then the quirk is destroyed.
Oh, wow! The Second And Third OFA users REALLY HATE Izuku! I wonder what their points are and what issues they have with the guy? Does he work hard and earn their trust? No. Yoichi does the work for him. And they never actually had a point, they were just being butt faces for no reason. Also, that door inside of OFA they were allegedly guarding? It didn't mean anything.
And here's the one that ruined OFA for me.
It's a death curse. It kills its users. If someone gets the quirk and they have a quirk, it will eventually take them out. We saw the Fourth user die of old age at 40 from the quirk. The quirk is exponentially stronger than it was before when he held it.
So Izuku isn't special because he's the coolest, or the bravest, or the most empathetic. It's because he was born quirkless so he's the best, and honestly, only possible vessel.
Unforgivable.
The author lacked confidence in his character so much that he couldn't even have him be chosen for his own merits. I don't have words for how damaging that was for his character.
They took our down on his luck everyman hero and turned him into a boring chosen one archetype.
Despicable.
If it took place in MHA, assuming he was a pro hero, Daredevil wouldn't get in trouble in the first place.
They'd cover it up as long as he was useful. You get punished if you go against the system while outside the system. Someone who wants to protect the system within the system is protected by the system.
The pro-heroes would attack Spider-Man because he helps the system without being apart of the system. It questions their legitimacy.
The way you become a hero is to beg the government for permission to use a power you were born with.
You are a servant of the status quo. That's what a hero is.
So he'd be an even bigger threat than the League in some cases. The League are bumbling fools and monsters to fight. They're, even though they want to destroy the system, apart of the system.
There's a protocol for them. There's a response for them. They're a problem to be solved.
An actual hero like Spider-Man, though, makes heroes look incompetent. He's not doing this for fame, or for money, or for power, or to rise in rank, or for toy deals.
And that makes him dangerous.
And that's exactly why you'd never see someone like him in MHA. The setting simply cannot survive the mirror he'd hold up to it. It's internals and logic are too ugly to combat anything other than unambiguous monsters.
They'd have to write Peter as a secret cannibal or something just to give the main characters some way to refute him, because they have nothing.
Great analysis but only thing I have to point out is daredevil isn't a pro hero. He's a vigilante, and like spider man, he goes against the status quo a lot. Which shouldn't be surprising given who his archenemy is.
Shouting at your spiraling child after completely stripping them from any kind of identity and then proceeding to shut them out completely is not good parenting, actually.
(Aka: explaining Enji’s abuse towards Touya)
Enji’s abuse towards Touya is often reduced to a simplistic argument by the fandom: Enji told Touya to stop training, Touya refused, and therefore Touya is the sole responsible for his own ‘death’ and suffering. But this argument fails both morally and psychologically. Touya’s self-destructive tendencies were not born out of ‘defiance’ or ‘stubbornness’, they were manufactured through years of ideological indoctrination, emotional conditioning, identity abuse, and parental neglect.
From the very beginning, Touya’s existence was shaped by Enji’s eugenicist worldview. Enji never laid the foundations for a loving family, he laid the foundations in order to create a successor. His marriage with Rei was completely transactional (never mind the fact that he bought as if she where an asset and not a human to sexually exploit her), built on the idea that combining their quirks could create an heir capable of surpassing All Might. That’s textbook eugenics right there: engineering a specific situation to produce a ‘perfect’ child by selecting partners for their genetics rather than other factors like genuine love or care, turning a marriage into a breeding program. The moment Touya’s quirk manifested, his body and said quirk were no longer his own, they became an instrument for Enji to accomplish his ambition. Touya had never been seen as a person or child, but as a means to an end (all the Todoroki children had been dehumanized that exact way, actually). Touya’s value was never inherent. It was conditional and based exclusively on his physical performance. That alone makes Enji not a good father from the very beginning.
This conditioning led to what can be best described as identity abuse (not sure if that’s the actual definition/term, but it is how I’ll be referring to it). Enji builds Touya’s entire identity to revolve around his own selfish dream: surpassing All Might. Touya is being told that his existence and value as a person is completely tied to whether he’ll accomplish that goal or not, and as a result, every personal desire or aspiration he might have is dismissed or reshaped to fit that imposed purpose, leaving him unable to form a sense of self independent of Enji’s ambitions. He doesn’t exist outside that goal.
Touya is taught that being loved means progressing and training harder, becoming stronger. He isn’t deserving of love and care because he exists as a person, but because of his achievements. When Enji later tells Touya to stop training after discovering the incompatibility of his body to his flames, the psychological damage has already been done. The order to just “stop” can’t undo years of emotional and psychological indoctrination that had made him equate success with affection.
After his body fails, Enji doesn’t replace Touya’s old purpose with a new one. He doesn’t help rebuild his son’s concept of identity, and neither does he reassure him of unconditional love. Quite the opposite, actually. He withdraws and completely shuts Touya out. Touya is left with a specific message: the reason he existed is no longer valid, he failed. That’s not good parenting, like a lot seem to claim, that’s straight up abandonment. Telling a child to stop pursuing the only identity trait they have ever been allowed to possess is psychological erasure, not “concern”.
This argument of ‘Enji told Touya to stop’ completely collapses when looked at through a psychological trauma lens. Children don’t develop values and attitudes on their own. They mirror the habits and behaviors imposed on them by, you guessed it, their parents (or the closest figure to a parent that they may have). Touya continuing to train in secret is a survival response. He is not disobeying his father out of “rebellion”, he is just desperately attempting to reclaim his place in his father’s world after being taught that success was all that mattered.
Enji is pretty much aware that Touya’s quirk is self-destructive and dangerous, both to himself and those around. He also has access to the highest medical resources in hero society (hell,he was literally THE #2 Pro Hero at the time!), and yet he gives Touya no safety gear, nor access to any kind of support system (like therapy, for example). Touya is left alone with a body that burns itself, with nothing but a warning that literally contradicts a lifetime of indoctrination. That is negligence towards Touya’s emotional and physical needs.
Like we all know, Shoto’s birth was the main catalyst of Touya’s mental spiraling. And that’s because Shoto isn’t introduced to Touya as a brother, but as a replacement. He embodies all that Touya isn’t and that Enji searches for. Touya isn’t given a new role within his father’s world wither, he gets completely shut out and replaced. In a way, Shoto's existence confirms Touya’s deepest fear: he is no longer needed, and therefore not wanted by his father. Touya doesn’t just lose his father’s approval, he also loses his reason for existing. Enji builds Touya into a tool, discards him when he ‘fails’, and then acts surprised when the discarded child attempts to destroy himself (and those around) trying to become useful again.
Claiming that Enji was a ‘good father’ to Touya, or that Touya (a spiraling five year old with no support system or guidance) was the issue all along completely misses the entire nature of their relationship and quite literally goes against canon material. Enji is and has always been the sole responsible for all of the Todoroki family’s problems. Shifting the blame towards the others (literally the exact same thing that Enji does before the ‘atonement arc’ that everyone claims is the ‘best written’ part of the entire anime) goes to show how many of you Enji fans don’t even understand your favorite character.
The mental gymnastics is takes to put the blame on a child in an abusive environment is insane. The blame is solely on the ADULT and Endeavor proceeded to repeat the same cycle with no remorse. He legit viewed his sons as "tools," says so to both, legit had Shoto solely to replace the one he deemed "failed/broken" and shifted from one extreme form of abuse to another with Touya (grooming to neglect/abandonment, just like you said).
You know what is even weirder about them? They’ll all acknowledge and understand that Tenko had been groomed (as any normal person should), but the second you bring up Enji also grooming Touya and drilling in him the obsession that led to him burning alive in the first place, they’ll flip tables and call you an ‘illiterate fangirl’ (no jokes, I have been told off by Enji anime dudebros because apparently I don’t understand the anime’ and ‘just like Touya because he’s hot’. The blatant misogyny and sexism that I’ve received from Enji fans is baffling, honestly). It’s actually quite concerning how they can’t seem to grasp the nuances of abuse and how it doesn’t need to be physical harm (as in hitting someone) for it to be completely valid.
Touya being both a vicitm and later on becoming a horrible person seem to not be able to coexist in their minds, as if those two things were mutually exclusive and his status as villain erased the abuse or absolved Enji of his crimes (also, this is something his fans refuse to accept too. Enji is a literal criminal by the law and should’ve been prosecuted after the war). I’m a firm believer that had Tenko’s life trajectory not been 100% manipulated by AFO (as in, had Tenko still held some sort of autonomy over his actions) and they’d be quick to also deny his grooming.
Because in these people's minds, Endeavor was a "good" parent once upon a time. Acknowledging that what he did to Touya was no different from what was done to Tenko means acknowledging that they were wrong and that Endeavor is just as much of a monster as All For One.
"But he's a hero" as if "hero" isn't just another word for "cop" in the MHA universe. That's what they are and the parallels in that only adds to my disgust of Endeavor and pretty much every defender he has. Like, if we put it in a real world comparison - police officer of familial wealth and high rank buys a wife to make the perfect heir, abuses, grooms, and neglects his children. Then he'd be irredeemably. Throw that "hero" title on him and people get blinders!
Endeavor should have gone to prison based entirely on how he knew Touya was playing with a dangerous quirk and he let that boy burn himself to death on a mountain.
Even putting aside the human trafficking, the martial rape, the spousal abuse, the abuse of his children.
What he did to Touya was extra neglectful.
He KNEW:
-Touya's quirk was dangerous.
-Touya's power was strong.
-That he didn't teach the boy how to turn his quirk down, just how to turn it up.
-That the boy was practicing with it to impress him. He saw the burns. He yelled at him over it.
-That the boy told him he had a surprise for him and that he needed to come to the mountain to see it.
He's 100% guilty of:
Contributing to the Destruction of Property / Environmental Damage
His son took a mountain with him. That environment is never going to be the same again. They're just lucky no one else (but AFO) was up there when he went up.
Involuntary Manslaughter (or its equivalent)
His son BURNED TO DEATH! They all believed Touya was dead at the time! All they found was the fragment of a jawbone!
Criminal Negligence / Reckless Endangerment of a Child
As a parent, you have a duty to care. Endeavor failed that in every conceivable way here.
Not so friendly reminder that treadmills trigger Todoroki because Endeavor used to make him run until he collapsed.
So when pushing the concept of Endeavor having had a proper redemption arc, kindly fuck off. That monster is a special kind of evil and should've been locked up in Tartarus for all the things he's done to Rei, Touya, Fuyumi, Natsuo, and Shouto.
And don't start arguing that he isn't evil either - he is and no amount of tears or half-assed simpering will change that.
Daily reminder that Endeavor is quite literally a criminal by law and should’ve been properly prosecuted and imprisoned post-war. No, I don’t care if he helped save Japan and stop the LoV, his actions don’t erase his crimes and he should’ve been charged and jailed (fuck the institutional immunity heroes have, and fuck the weird state propaganda that Enji’s character practically shoves down the viewer’s throats).
His arc was said to be about "atonement" not redemption because what he did isn't redeemable and he shouldn't expect to be forgiven.
It then turned into watching this man cry about his mistakes and have his victims solve his problems for him while he runs away from responsibility.
He's then never formally charged for anything he did while he got rich, famous, and so powerful no one would stop him based entirely on arresting criminals while terrorizing his own family when he got home from being a super cop.
Best written character in the show, by the way, according to his fans.
If it took place in MHA, assuming he was a pro hero, Daredevil wouldn't get in trouble in the first place.
They'd cover it up as long as he was useful. You get punished if you go against the system while outside the system. Someone who wants to protect the system within the system is protected by the system.
The pro-heroes would attack Spider-Man because he helps the system without being apart of the system. It questions their legitimacy.
The way you become a hero is to beg the government for permission to use a power you were born with.
You are a servant of the status quo. That's what a hero is.
So he'd be an even bigger threat than the League in some cases. The League are bumbling fools and monsters to fight. They're, even though they want to destroy the system, apart of the system.
There's a protocol for them. There's a response for them. They're a problem to be solved.
An actual hero like Spider-Man, though, makes heroes look incompetent. He's not doing this for fame, or for money, or for power, or to rise in rank, or for toy deals.
And that makes him dangerous.
And that's exactly why you'd never see someone like him in MHA. The setting simply cannot survive the mirror he'd hold up to it. It's internals and logic are too ugly to combat anything other than unambiguous monsters.
They'd have to write Peter as a secret cannibal or something just to give the main characters some way to refute him, because they have nothing.
the flaming sidekicks protected Shouto so without them he be dead lol
Logically, this is 100% correct.
Dabi is the product of eugenics and has a power directly stated to be stronger than Endeavor's. We saw Endeavor rip a building to pieces in seconds with fire whips during the Hood fight.
Anything, Endeavor can do, Dabi can do better. At the cost of his health, but that doesn't matter because his opponent will be dead.
But...and it's a very big but.
He's Dabi.
The scrub stamper. The guy who kills people who don't matter and never get any backstory.
See: Snatch, all those random men he killed, the handful of MLA people he torched during MVA.
Dabi's kill count is around 40 if we include movies. All of them were people without names or were Snatch.
If there's a fight, and you don't know who'll win...and Dabi is one of the combatants and his opponent doesn't have a name...always bet on Dabi.
But if they have a name and weren't created just to be killed by him...he's cooked.
See: How he turned Onima and Kido into crispy black BBQ but they survived that and apparently made a full recovery.
You have so much more faith in Dabi's ability to kill named characters than I do.
He's only important to the story because horikoshi has made him important, not because he is inherently irreplaceable from a plot mechanics standpoint.
Yes, the sludge villain scene is powerful because it’s Katsuki — the person who’d belittled Izuku his whole life. Izuku saving him isn’t just heroism, it’s narrative irony and emotional payoff. If it were a random kid, the moment loses that personal weight.
But after that? Katsuki often feels inserted rather than integrated. It’s not that he’s useless to the plot, but it’s clear Horikoshi has a soft spot for him, to the point where he gets pushed into arcs and fights that don’t always need him.
And his dynamic with Izuku's forced because characters like Todoroki or even Tenya(If hori didn't make him to be almost a comic relief) could serve better purpose as rivals.
Midoriya's entire character is that he'd kill himself to save random strangers.
This is why Kota's critique resonates because it's something directly related to to the main character, All Might, and the lived experience of Nana Shimura. A hero, in Kota's eyes, is someone who dies to protect strangers while abandoning their family.
The person in your screenshot intentionally is missing the point. It could have been literally anyone held in that sludge villain's grip and Izuku would have run in to save them.
To say he only did it because it was Bakugo makes you question everything about Izuku's heroism. Because since when does he NEED it to be someone he knows to lend a hand? He doesn't know the victims most of the time: he just acts.
I don't believe Izuku would have just stood and watched someone die if it didn't happen to be his childhood friend.
What's your beef with Kirishima? Everyone wants to know
It's me, I'm everyone
To put it simply, kirishima is a fraud with a capital f.
The series tries to make him out to be this uber cool and manly guy that stands up to bullies and someone we should all be like!
The only problem?
He's best friends with a bully. Anybody with common sense and functioning eyes and ears could tell that napalm-breath is a bully, in every sense of the word. Yet somehow, kirishima continues to not see the writing on the wall, cmand constantly enables and kisses up to bakublowhard.
And mind you, kirishima has gotten on mineta and monoma's cases for their behavior, but has hardly ever called out he-who-shall-not-be-named.
But that's not even the worst part, you wanna know the worst part?
Kirishima knows what bakugo did to izuku before ua. That's right. In one of the light novels, kirishima encounters bakugo's old cronies when out studying, and they basically yell him what bakugo put izuku through during their childhood(which includes the "swab dive" comment.). And his reponse to this? "Forgiving is just a small deed for midoriya."
...
Kirishima. You shark-toothed clown, you phony redhead, you shirtless buffoon. Go screw yourself.
I'm actually furuous about that. How can this putz call himself "red riot" and simultaneously be the biggest bootlicker in ua?
Screw kirishima, screw his fake red hair, and screw his performative manliness.
Kirishima's entire character exists for Bakugo's benefit. He's Izuku, but with a "weak quirk." Instead of no quirk.
Essentially, he's a training wheels version of the main character. You'll notice the series mostly discards him later.
It's in favor of creating The New Big 3. The Trio, of Bakugo, Shoto, and Izuku.
Being more cynical, I suspect this may be the entire reason Mirio had two friends to begin with. The story never cared about Suneater or Nejire. They were set dressing for Mirio, and bodies to fill out the Big 3 and introduce the concept.
You're meant to feel sorry for Izuku that Bakugo took Kirishima's hand and not Izuku's.
Bakugo needed to learn to be a better person and Kirishima is his proving ground. And, quite frankly, source of friends.
It's not really the Baku-squad as fanfics will have you think. It's the Kiri-squad.
Bakugo is a cat they non consensually adopted who sticks around because he's fed. Kirishima is the social lubricant needed to bridge the gap and make people in the class actually want to be around Bakugo.
If he's championing the guy and talks about how great he is, then it's far easier for the other characters to fit in the "team."
Bakugo, in hero society and the series represents the natural peak of what a quirk user can be without any sort of AFO/OFA meddling.
Something I've always found interesting is that Bakugo treats the people closest to him the worst. The privilege of being Bakugo's friend is that you're first in line for his verbal and physical abuse.
A number of things about Kirishima make a lot of sense when you think about the fact that he's designed for his utility to Bakugo's story and existence.
His quirk literally lets him take the beatings.
When the guy is a living stress ball meant for Bakugo to use to cool off and sand down his rough edges, why is it a surprise he'd have any morals that go against his primary purpose? He's a function first, a character second.
I'd like to also point out that he serves the same purpose to Bakugo that Uraraka does to Izuku. They're both the first REAL friends these people have.
Izuku never had friends because he was bullied relentlessly.
Bakugo never had friends because he was a user. He didn't even remember the names of the extras in his life, nor did he care about them after he graduated middle school.
Both work to ease the two of them into the broader hero community. Both provide the support and encouragement the boys need to grow into who the people they later become.
It's still insane to me that there was an anti-heteromorph KKK group running around killing mutant types, and the only people who actually did anything about it were the League of Villians. At no point in the story do we ever hear about a single Pro-Hero, even a heteromorph one, talk about the CRC and the danger they pose. Not even a passing acknowledgment of the League killing them. The League is directly responsible for taking out an in-universe supremacy group, and no one takes even a single second to go "huh, maybe they're not completely irredeemable monsters."
Actually they 100% did. This isn't the only time this has happened.
Had the League never existed, the hospital riot wouldn't have happened, so Shoji wouldn't have been able to end racism off screen because the heroes didn't know about the problem of discrimination.
The League's actions were the catalyst for every event that led to a better outcome for hero society.
They:
Assassinated the HPSC leadership which was corrupt. The heroes NEVER would have done anything about that.
The League activity led to Stain meeting Tomura and eventually being captured. Had Hosu not been burning to the ground, Izuku wouldn't have noticed Iida was in danger. The guy would have been murdered, Native would have been murdered, and Stain would have gotten away. Knowing that Endeavor is chasing him means he skips town. He doesn't get caught.
The attack on Endeavor by Hood/High End directly caused Endeavor's popularity to rise after he became number 1 hero. It was one of Dabi's biggest missteps. The public saw Endeavor as a poor replacement for All Might and that trial by fire caused them to see him as a real hero.
Took out the CRC. If the heroes didn't acknowledge discrimination, why would they be focused on a hate group?
Caused the MLA to come out of hiding. Had they not taken the terrible plan of confronting the League, they could have done a stealth takeover of society. Once the MLA becomes the government, the heroes become their employees.
Their arrest led to Garaki's arrest. Garaki was a respected doctor who owned multiple orphanages and worked in hospitals. His income wasn't related to League activity and presumably he controlled AFO's income streams. Left to his own devices, he'd have done mad science forever.
Machia was a threat who could destroy entire cities who could have marched on UA himself at any moment to hunt down and kill All Might for getting AFO arrested. And god help whoever is in his way when he does. The heroes would NOT have been prepared for that.
Scissors boy escaped his family's basement because of their chaos. Without League activity, he either dies down there or does a violent escape that eventually leads to him becoming a villain.
Uraraka would never decide to "be a hero for the heroes" without the League. Nor would she realize she needs to play with kids without having met Himiko.
Gentle Criminal remains a petty nuisance because 1-A not getting attacked means he has no reason to care about UA.
This is the consequence of the author not allowing any major lasting negative events from the villains uprising. It just makes them a net positive for the world.
What did they lose, in exchange for this? Snatch, Midnight, a handful of heroes who got killed by Machia, a few cities that got broken and in which no one died in them because they were evacuated. And then the whole country was rebuilt in some months like nothing happened.
They also lost OFA, but what impact does that have at all? Nothing! The world is safer and more secure than it was with All Might at his prime!
They should all thank God for the League. God Bless the League of Villains. God Bless all of them.
I love how the more I poke at and analyze Dabi the more of a shameless raging apologist I become.
1. A lot of his most evil actions are the result of REALLY shitty writing or had extenuating circumstances people don't bring up (IE him being Literally 8 Fucking Years Old when it happened)
2. Yes I know he Did A Lot Of Murder I simply do not give a fuck and think he deserves to be treated like the special princess he is and get spoiled forever
If the story wanted us to care about Dabi's murders, they should have had us actually kill people the audience cared about.
You can't have a series that shows us villains aren't really people and the characters lock them up and never think about them again unless said villains happen to be people they can empathize with. Named villains, sometimes, get to be people. Generic mooks are just bad guys. No one cares what happens to them.
So what does it matter if Dabi decides to burn a bunch of them to get himself some street cred? And then we're meant to think that means anything? It means nothing!
Now, if Dabi burned down Shiketsu with everyone in it, and we watched Inasa be consumed in flames and die screaming, then I'd be like "Wow, Dabi is a real villain."
Murking an entire hero school that's allegedly as strong as UA is ungodly levels of aura.
it cements Dabi as the ultimate menace.
But to be honest, I'd rather he make it more personal. What do the Flaming Sidekickers ever actually DO in this series?
Like if Dabi went ham and he took out every single one of Endeavor's sidekicks, professional friends who work with him on the streets, and even took out the guy's driver, that's a heck of a lot more personal.
If you're gonna murder people, murder people the audience knows about. And who matter to the main characters.
You could straight up have the Endeavor Agency Arc end with them coming back from getting crepes to seeing the building on blue fire and scores of burnt corpses on the streets.
And it's like, "Holy shit!"
You could actually just have Deku say that. Bakugo is too shocked to even say anything.
Have Shoto cover his mouth, Bakugo covers his ears, and Deku covers his eyes immediately upon seeing this. You stunned these boys.
And Endeavor can dramatically drop his groceries and the bag of sports drinks falls onto the ground. He can roar "Nooooooooooooo!"
So when the reveal that Dabi is Touya comes in, Endeavor is like "I'm going to avenge my homies!" But then Dabi is like "The person who slid on your crew was me, father! I was the one who slimed your squad! I, your son, have made it my life's mission to destroy your life's work! I'll take EVERYTHING from you!! Your agency, your legacy, your pride! And then, only when you're begging for death, will you have my permission to die!"
And then Dabi does his dance. He says that Endeavor's agency got the first one. And now Enji can get the second dance, in hell. Enji is stunned. He can't believe it. When he's later crying in the hospital about how fucked this is, you'd be able to maybe empathize with him and not just see him as a big blubbering baby.
What's wrong, wife beater? Is abusing your family not so fun anymore when one of them actually hits back? Boo hoo. Poor diddums. I have no empathy for Endeavor whatsoever because he created his problem and then he cries about having to fix it. While, of course, everyone around him offers infinite support, shares in the responsibility, and takes on his burden.
Since the flaming sidekickers accomplished nothing in this series and existed just to be background to show Endeavor is wildly successful, no, I don't think sacrificing them to give Dabi more aura and credibility in the show is a bad thing.
Literally the only one anyone would even pretend to care about is Burnin', because she's a beautiful woman. Does anyone care about Onima or Kido? No, of course not. But the people in the story would care, and the audience would feel that.
No, canonically Dabi killed a bunch of bums. F rank villains who we know nothing about and were, given how things usually go for villains, probably homeless. He was being a bully, not a menace.
Also, a side benefit. In death, the sidekickers never have to acknowledge Endeavor being an abuser, since they'd be dead.
They don't have to later justify why they still stick with the wife buyer, child abuser who let his son burn to death on a mountain despite knowing he was training with his self damaging quirk when he wasn't supposed to be.
We don't need to have Burnin' awkwardly go "Well, he's a really good hero, so him putting his wife on the floor every so often with a two piece is just the price of doing business, Touya. Listen, he gave me a bonus and I was able to buy a new car. I've got a toy line. A branding deal! He's just so very...useful."
My problem with Hawks losing his wings as a symbol of ‘liberation’
Recently, on tiktok (like always lol) I entered a debate with a bunch of Hawks fans that were hellbent into claiming that him losing his wings was symbolism to him becoming ‘free’, and while the OG creator blocked me, I can’t stop thinking about it. It genuinely left this weird taste in my mouth and I NEEDED to rant about it.
One thing that’s always bothered me about the “Hawks loses his wings and stays with the Commission, but he’s finally free because they can’t use him” is how easily it shifts the blame. On the surface, it reads as symbolic: wings as chains. But narratively, it ends up placing the weight of his exploitation onto his quirk rather than the institution that deliberately stripped him of agency in the first place. Because once you frame his loss of autonomy as something that happens because of his wings, you subtly imply that the wings were the problem. And that’s… just not it.
Hawks didn’t lose his autonomy because he could fly. He lost it because the Hero Commission made an active, conscious decision to weaponize a vulnerable child.
If Hawks hadn’t grown up in poverty. If he hadn’t been neglected. If he hadn’t lacked any form of protection or adult supervision. Would he have been utilized the way he was?
It genuinely doesn’t mattered what quirk he had. Wings, fire, speed, something flashy, something discrete, etc. none of that changes the outcome. He wasn’t molded into a hero because of his quirk. He was molded into a tool because he was available, disposable, and easy to isolate.
That’s the part that gets erased when the narrative leans too hard into the wings-as-chains metaphor. The Commission didn’t exploit Hawks because he was useful. Plenty of children have quirks that make them useful, some even more than Hawks’. They exploited him because he was usable. Because he had no safety net. Because no one would question where he went or what was done to him. Because he could be trained, controlled, and emotionally conditioned without resistance.
His wings made him useful. But his vulnerability made him controllable.
So when the story frames the loss of his wings as the moment of “liberation” or “freedom,” it completely destroys the social commentary it’s supposed to represent (even if it had been an accidental commentary, which I believe it was, with how inconsistent Hori is). It suggests that removing the power (his quirk) solves the problem, when the problem was never the power: it was the system that decided some children are resources instead of people.
Keeping him with the Commission after that, especially without directly interrogating that power dynamic, risks turning institutional abuse into a kind of tragic inevitability. Like this was always the cost of being Hawks. Like the system didn’t choose this. Like it couldn’t have gone any other way.
Hawks’s story is only meaningful as social commentary if we keep the responsibility where it belongs: not on his wings, not on his usefulness, not on the symbolism, but on the institution that saw a child in crisis and decided to sharpen him into a weapon.
Taking away his wings doesn’t undo that. And pretending it does lets the Commission off the hook far too easily.
There's the implication here that All For One is somehow granting Hawks freedom, despite the fact that the Redestro clone already did that before when he assassinated the HPSC.
It also has implications that if Dabi had successfully burned his wings off, he'd also be free.
Why does Hawks need to lose his quirk to retire? Why can't he just choose to stop being a hero? Are people implicitly saying that he'd never want to "step down" to be the leader of the HPSC if he still could be out there as a hero?
I'm aware that people want their symbolism but the idea that Dabi or AFO would be the ones to grant it when Hawks could just make the choice to stop being a weapon is ridiculous.
Hawks previously joined an organization that touted quirk liberation for the purposes of destroying it from the inside. He's been able to touch liberation if he wanted to. There was also nothing stopping him from leaving. He could have left to be a hero elsewhere, and what could the government have done about it, if he was willing to leak some of the stuff he did to the public if they didn't let him go?
Nothing, because unlike Nagant, they'd never catch the guy if he didn't want to be caught.
He was already free, he just made the decision to stay. That's what his infiltration of the PLF and assassination of Jin symbolized. He was given the choice to escape "the cage" but decided to stay and polish the bars.
Ask from Anonymous (that I accidentally posted early, thus the reformat, sorry!):
Some months ago I saw someone saying how amputee representation in mha is awful. I was busy back then so it kinda slipped my mind, until 2 days ago. And I haven't been able to stop thinking about it. There are many things that I criticize about mha but it seems like I've been so focused on other things I missed how mha treats amputee representation. Since I agree with many of your takes, I wanted to know your opinion about this.
Now I haven't finished mha yet I'm still at season 5, so I haven't seen everything. I did spoil myself tho so kind of know what happens in later seasons.
Hi, thanks for the ask. Sorry it took me a while to answer, this post turned out very long.
Mutilation and limb loss is exceedingly common in Mha. When talking about amputees I will include characters that lose limbs or facial features, but also characters that lose physical quirk factors or lose limbs in ways that wouldn't be possible in real life. I chose to exclude amputations on characters with established, inherent regenerative or growth abilities like Shoji or the Noumu.
Also disclaimer that while I am physically disabled, I am not an amputee. Please take everything I say with a grain of salt.
Mha contains a lot of disabled characters and amputees make up more than half of them. Generally, it's good to represent a demographic with more than one character, but Mha also steps into several pitfalls common to amputee protrayal in sci-fi/fantasy media.
The main manga contains 14 characters who experience one or multiple amputations, 13 of which spend considerable time living as amputees and 10-11 of which remain disabled for the rest of their lives. You can already see the issues here.
I made an excel table to give everyone an overview. It also functions as a decent TLDR:
Most characters lose their limbs/ facial features in active combat. Others choose to amputate their own limbs to prevent (a from their perspective) worse disability or death, like Aizawa and Re-Destro. Others have that choice taken from them.
Oddly, characters that lose human extremities only experience above-the-elbow and below-knee amputations respectively.
A surprising amount of characters either do not use or abandon prosthetics. Dabi was on death's door and Tartarus reduces prisoners quality of life as much a possible, so I doubt they offered any to Overhaul. But Endeavour, Giran and Tomura (post-vat) ostensibly had the means to acquire prostheses yet chose not to.
This might not be what Horikoshi intended to portray but complex prostheses often come with a high learning curve. Some can be uncomfortable or painful to wear. Having some amputees use none is realistic.
Of characters that do use prostheses, those with lower limb amputations use myoelectric* and mechanical legs while those with upper limb amputations use cosmetic and multi-articulated myoelectric hands.
*type of prosthesis with sensors in its socket that converts muscle movement in the residual limb to according movement in the prosthesis.
Bnha is a high tech fantasy dystopia. This setting often comes with unrealistic depictions of prostheses and their users.
For example even the destitute League can afford a myoelectric prosthesis for Compress. Present day myoelectric hands can grip, point, turn, flex, flip you off and even hold an egg without breaking it. The way Compress uses his prosthesis isn't inherently misleading. Its movements in the anime are just far more fluent and precise than anything available to amputees today.
Compress however struggles maintaining it while on the run. His arm does look a little cruder than current models but most myoelectric prostheses (especially ones without protective cover) are easily damaged and not waterproof. Once the League gains access to the MLA's funds he upgrades it to a version that can store and release his marbles.
Though, even when supplied by a company specializing in support items, prostheses are not perfect. When Re-Destro fights Dark Shadow, his new legs break under the strain.
On the hero side, Miruko loses three of her limbs but she's arguably one of the characters least affected by their disability. Like Compress, she uses a myoelectric upper limb prosthesis, albeit a much sturdier model designed for combat.
For her missing leg, she wears a running blade. It's a type of prosthesis with high shock absorbtion and fitted for running and flexibility. It adds a little realism that even the No. 5 Hero doesn't have access to Winter Soldier level prostheses and uses comparatively low-tech but effective aides.
Peg legs are another prosthesis type included in Mha. Ectoplasm is a minor side character but also a cliché for lower limb amputees. However the story doesn't draw much attention to him. He loses his legs before the start of the manga and you only notice his disability by paying attention to his gait or the few panels that show his prostheses. Unlike other stereotypical protrayals, his disability doesn't define him. He's just the kids's slightly intimidating math teacher.
Hawks installs prosthetic feathers into his remaining wings. They allow him to keep working as a hero but, like Re-Destro's legs, they're not a perfect fix: He can fly but he's much slower than he used to be. When Afo mocks him for it, he crudely jokes about them being the same.
Hawks' quirk manifests through additional limbs. For him losing/damaging them is synonymous with losing/damaging his Quirk. For non-heteromorph characters, losing the quirk is treated as more impactful than the correlating limb.
E.g. Aizawa remains a critical part of the Hero forces, but after losing an eye, he needs the support of a student to keep using his quirk.
Despite the heavier focus on Erasure, Aizawa is the only amputee character Mha shows to have an extensive recovery period. He implies that he struggles to adjust to his disability (it's unclear whether he refers to pain, struggling with his prosthesis or both) and suffers significant loss of mobility.
It's never explicitly mentioned but he appears even more tired than before his injury.
Aizawa stands out in that he actively chooses and accepts his disability. He cuts off his leg and remains disabled in favor of taking advantage of a 6 year old girl and her quirk (again).
Both Overhaul and Hawks (at least before Afo takes his quirk entirely) lose their limbs/part of their limbs after killing a member of the League.
Overhaul is the character most severely affected by his limb loss. Without his quirk (and Eri) he lost his means of producing quirk erasing drugs and, most importantly, waking the Shie Hassakai's old boss from the coma he forced him into. He's resigned, desolate and full of guilt. Not for what he did to Eri, but for irreversibly damaging and failing the only person he cares about.
As he doesn't receive prosthetics, he needs Nagant's help escape Tartarus. Their dynamic arguably characterizes him as helpless and dependent. He still negotiates with her to take him to his old boss in exchange for information on her target, Izuku.
Although he loses his arms and quirk as a punishment, his disability doesn't change what he did to others. The narrative stresses that to atone, he needs to be sorry for hurting Eri, too.
Hawks, who also loses his quirk entirely by the end of the manga, does stick to his goal of creating a world in which Heroes have more time. He turn to the political and organizational side of Heroics.
Enji becoming disabled and losing an arm at the end of the series is often interpreted as part of his "punishment" too. Just like with Hawks and Overhaul, this framing is problematic.
The idea of disability as a consequence of personal failures is a pervasive and harmful stereotype. By blaming disabled people for their own disabilities, ableists justify abuse, discrimination, and withholding of accessibility and support.
The number of amputees and other disabled people in Mha alleviates some of the issues within individual portrayals though.
On their own, characters like Overhaul, Endeavor and Hawks reinforce the notion of disability as a punishment. But Mha has enough counter examples to show that disability happens to good and bad people, Heroes and villains alike.
Overhaul on his own would send the message that it's impossible to thrive after amputation. Someone like Miruko or Compress disproves that.
Miruko (or hell, even Afo) on the other hand could be read as inspiration porn, but is contrasted by other Heroes either requiring extensive support or choosing to leave the Hero profession entirely.
None of the above characters are reduced to their amputation. Except for Overhaul whose dreams relied on the use of his quirk, amputees keep pursuing their goals either through changing their approach, assistive technology or support from others. All of them keep their established personalities, lowercase q quirks and personal struggles.
Others treat amputees with the same respect as their able-bodied and otherwise disabled peers. Only villain-framed characters like Tomura and Afo mock others for their disabilities.
Even when Twice dramatically bemoans that Giran won't be able to smoke his cigars anymore - it doesn't evoke pity, at least to me. Giran is covered in blood but keeps a grin on his face after withstanding several days of torture to protect the League. The entire scene frames him as extremely fucking cool.
There is however one scene in which a prison guard refers to Afo as "decrepit" in a way that definitely comes across as pitying.
Overall, Mha doesn't mention the emotional toll that comes with readjusting your life after limb loss. Next to Aizawa, Overhaul might be the only exception, though Tomura and Compress did take his hands with the express purpose of causing him as much psychological pain as possible.
Although characters use different types of prostheses congruent with their own needs and current medical advancement, many of them function more like natural limbs than pieces of technology that malfunction or need repairs. This can give abled and disabled people alike unrealistic expectations and diminish the severity of losing a limb.
However Mha's biggest issue are characters being "cured" of their acquired disability. This trope is heavily associated with the idea that disabled lives are not worth living and abled people trying to remove disabled people and the challenges they present.
Most disabilities, whether acquired or congenital, are permanent. Focusing on a "cure" distracts from efforts to materially improve quality of life of disabled people.
To be honest I spent a long time worrying whether to even include Edgeshot. He technically loses all of his limbs and is clearly affected by it. It just happens in a way that is ridiculous and impossible in real life.
Mha establishes early on that certain Quirk factors can regenerate. Shoji or Hawks are examples of that. Edgeshot's entire body(?) is his quirk factor. Characters like him and Hawks show clear limits to how much damage their Quirks can repair. At some point, Edgeshot receives treatment that, I assume, stimulates the regeneration of his Quirk. I honestly don't know how the amputee community feels about regenerative powers in general. I don't think I'm qualified to form an opinion on this.
After losing part of his left hand, Tomura initially wears what looks like a cosmetic prosthesis. It's strapped to the remaining part of his hand with little belts and the prosthetic fingers never actually change position. He still uses the prosthesis to scratch his neck and move Father(?) away from his face. The anime chooses to animate it as fully articulated. I just doubt this was Horkikoshi's original intention since the prosthesis' design and presentation are completely different from the usual portrayal of myoelectric prostheses.
Somewhere in between Tomura agreeing to the afo-ization procedure and being set up in the vat the doctor exchanges his previous prosthetic with a protective brace. Neither Tomura nor Afo bother replacing it with a functional prosthetic.
Tomura's situation is Weird because even though he gains nearly infinite regeneration powers after leaving the vat, Horikoshi lets him keep his disability. He doesn't even forget about it. After the PLF war he replaces his damaged, melted brace with a new one. Then he suddenly experiences a quirk singularity and starts regrowing his fingers. Sure, Horikoshi frames it as something horrifying, violating(?) happening to Tomura, but it doesn't change it being part of the aforementioned trope.
Afo rewinding his body to its abled form during the final war isn't even the main problem. At first, he presents it as the ultimate ace of his sleeve. Then, it turns out to be an elaborate plan to dispose of his disabled body and replace it with Tomura's.
He doesn't technically "cure" himself but he is framed as a parasite taking advantage of someone with a (more) abled body. Mha includes about two dozen disabled characters, many of which are multiply disabled as well. Though, Afo might be the the most severely impacted of them. He's also the only one actively seeking a "cure" .
Afo did set the plan to take over Nana's grandson in motion over a decade before becoming disabled, which muddies the situation. Despite being dependent on life support he is actually driven by the prospect of gaining a body capable of containing more quirks*. The optics still aren't great though.
*based on the quirk singularity theory that asserts that bodies become more resilient to stronger quirks with every generation. Tomura proves it true
This leaves Izuku who I feel like people were the most angry over. And I admit, Tenko disintegrating his arms only for him to regain them moments later is. not an impressive writing choice. It's not just ableist but also stupid.
Eri rewinding Izuku is at best a grossly clumsy attempt at giving her a moment during the final war arc and at worst a cop-out turning a life-long disability into cheap shock value.
Izuku by far isn't the first character to lose one or more limbs on an active battlefield. Mha having several amputees including two other characters with bilateral above-the-elbow amputations, actually makes the scene look worse: What's good enough for the dark skinned woman clearly isn't good enough for the cutesy, light-skinned male protagonist.
Mha establishes time and time again that becoming an amputee is not a death sentence. You may struggle and have an extensive recovery period or new limits but people will care about you all the same and - obbligatory addition since this is Mha - You can even stay a hero.
But I guess Horikoshi needed a functional protagonist for his manga's epic boss fight.
//
All of this leaves me... mostly annoyed. Horikoshi shows that he isn't incapable of putting thought into his amputee characters. Of course there are issues, but in my opinion they pale in comparison to a quarter of all amputees being magically "cured".
All instances of this problematic trope do occur in the final 100 chapters. You could try to attribute those to the general deteriorating writing quality at that point, but even then, I don't think Horikoshi ever actively intended to contribute to disability representation in media.
Mha's greatest strength in terms of representation is a strength in numbers. Horikoshi is a decent enough writer and does enough research to write a few okay-ish amputee characters. But he's not socially aware enough to think about the implications of what he writes.
I strongly agree. The idea that Endeavor being horribly wounded and left with lifelong injuries at the hands of AFO being his punishment for being an abuser is ridiculous.
That would imply that Bakugo being a bully means he deserved death. Or that Mirko did something to deserve her injuries.
Wounds just happen in battle with powerful enemies. AFO tried to kill everyone who fought him. He'd kill you if you're a saint and he'll kill you if you're a sinner. It doesn't make a difference to him.
Is Kyoka (who is such a minor character that your list forgot to include her) being punished for something by having part of her ear and quirk be destroyed? No. What did she ever do to anyone? Nothing!
Did Stain and Machia die at AFO's hands because it was punishment for their previous crimes? No, they just were in AFO's way.
Did freaking Nana Shimura die because she abandoned her son and being killed was her punishment? Was ALL MIGHT being punished for something so AFO wounded him?
So yes, I agree. The logic is absurd. Endeavor got hurt because he fought a top tier in the universe. AFO is not the universe's arbiter of justice.
It's like how some people believe Bakugo getting captured by the sludge villain was his punishment for bullying Izuku. It wasn't, but it's the same logic.
The premise is that if a bad thing happens to someone in the series, and they previously did a bad thing, it's because they did bad things.
It just falls apart when you look at people who didn't do anything bad but they still got hurt.
I've actually seen the sentiment that Endeavor got punished because he was hurt and in a wheel chair after the war. Which...no.
Ask from Anonymous (that I accidentally posted early, thus the reformat, sorry!):
Some months ago I saw someone saying how amputee representation in mha is awful. I was busy back then so it kinda slipped my mind, until 2 days ago. And I haven't been able to stop thinking about it. There are many things that I criticize about mha but it seems like I've been so focused on other things I missed how mha treats amputee representation. Since I agree with many of your takes, I wanted to know your opinion about this.
Now I haven't finished mha yet I'm still at season 5, so I haven't seen everything. I did spoil myself tho so kind of know what happens in later seasons.
Hi, thanks for the ask. Sorry it took me a while to answer, this post turned out very long.
Mutilation and limb loss is exceedingly common in Mha. When talking about amputees I will include characters that lose limbs or facial features, but also characters that lose physical quirk factors or lose limbs in ways that wouldn't be possible in real life. I chose to exclude amputations on characters with established, inherent regenerative or growth abilities like Shoji or the Noumu.
Also disclaimer that while I am physically disabled, I am not an amputee. Please take everything I say with a grain of salt.
Mha contains a lot of disabled characters and amputees make up more than half of them. Generally, it's good to represent a demographic with more than one character, but Mha also steps into several pitfalls common to amputee protrayal in sci-fi/fantasy media.
The main manga contains 14 characters who experience one or multiple amputations, 13 of which spend considerable time living as amputees and 10-11 of which remain disabled for the rest of their lives. You can already see the issues here.
I made an excel table to give everyone an overview. It also functions as a decent TLDR:
Most characters lose their limbs/ facial features in active combat. Others choose to amputate their own limbs to prevent (a from their perspective) worse disability or death, like Aizawa and Re-Destro. Others have that choice taken from them.
Oddly, characters that lose human extremities only experience above-the-elbow and below-knee amputations respectively.
A surprising amount of characters either do not use or abandon prosthetics. Dabi was on death's door and Tartarus reduces prisoners quality of life as much a possible, so I doubt they offered any to Overhaul. But Endeavour, Giran and Tomura (post-vat) ostensibly had the means to acquire prostheses yet chose not to.
This might not be what Horikoshi intended to portray but complex prostheses often come with a high learning curve. Some can be uncomfortable or painful to wear. Having some amputees use none is realistic.
Of characters that do use prostheses, those with lower limb amputations use myoelectric* and mechanical legs while those with upper limb amputations use cosmetic and multi-articulated myoelectric hands.
*type of prosthesis with sensors in its socket that converts muscle movement in the residual limb to according movement in the prosthesis.
Bnha is a high tech fantasy dystopia. This setting often comes with unrealistic depictions of prostheses and their users.
For example even the destitute League can afford a myoelectric prosthesis for Compress. Present day myoelectric hands can grip, point, turn, flex, flip you off and even hold an egg without breaking it. The way Compress uses his prosthesis isn't inherently misleading. Its movements in the anime are just far more fluent and precise than anything available to amputees today.
Compress however struggles maintaining it while on the run. His arm does look a little cruder than current models but most myoelectric prostheses (especially ones without protective cover) are easily damaged and not waterproof. Once the League gains access to the MLA's funds he upgrades it to a version that can store and release his marbles.
Though, even when supplied by a company specializing in support items, prostheses are not perfect. When Re-Destro fights Dark Shadow, his new legs break under the strain.
On the hero side, Miruko loses three of her limbs but she's arguably one of the characters least affected by their disability. Like Compress, she uses a myoelectric upper limb prosthesis, albeit a much sturdier model designed for combat.
For her missing leg, she wears a running blade. It's a type of prosthesis with high shock absorbtion and fitted for running and flexibility. It adds a little realism that even the No. 5 Hero doesn't have access to Winter Soldier level prostheses and uses comparatively low-tech but effective aides.
Peg legs are another prosthesis type included in Mha. Ectoplasm is a minor side character but also a cliché for lower limb amputees. However the story doesn't draw much attention to him. He loses his legs before the start of the manga and you only notice his disability by paying attention to his gait or the few panels that show his prostheses. Unlike other stereotypical protrayals, his disability doesn't define him. He's just the kids's slightly intimidating math teacher.
Hawks installs prosthetic feathers into his remaining wings. They allow him to keep working as a hero but, like Re-Destro's legs, they're not a perfect fix: He can fly but he's much slower than he used to be. When Afo mocks him for it, he crudely jokes about them being the same.
Hawks' quirk manifests through additional limbs. For him losing/damaging them is synonymous with losing/damaging his Quirk. For non-heteromorph characters, losing the quirk is treated as more impactful than the correlating limb.
E.g. Aizawa remains a critical part of the Hero forces, but after losing an eye, he needs the support of a student to keep using his quirk.
Despite the heavier focus on Erasure, Aizawa is the only amputee character Mha shows to have an extensive recovery period. He implies that he struggles to adjust to his disability (it's unclear whether he refers to pain, struggling with his prosthesis or both) and suffers significant loss of mobility.
It's never explicitly mentioned but he appears even more tired than before his injury.
Aizawa stands out in that he actively chooses and accepts his disability. He cuts off his leg and remains disabled in favor of taking advantage of a 6 year old girl and her quirk (again).
Both Overhaul and Hawks (at least before Afo takes his quirk entirely) lose their limbs/part of their limbs after killing a member of the League.
Overhaul is the character most severely affected by his limb loss. Without his quirk (and Eri) he lost his means of producing quirk erasing drugs and, most importantly, waking the Shie Hassakai's old boss from the coma he forced him into. He's resigned, desolate and full of guilt. Not for what he did to Eri, but for irreversibly damaging and failing the only person he cares about.
As he doesn't receive prosthetics, he needs Nagant's help escape Tartarus. Their dynamic arguably characterizes him as helpless and dependent. He still negotiates with her to take him to his old boss in exchange for information on her target, Izuku.
Although he loses his arms and quirk as a punishment, his disability doesn't change what he did to others. The narrative stresses that to atone, he needs to be sorry for hurting Eri, too.
Hawks, who also loses his quirk entirely by the end of the manga, does stick to his goal of creating a world in which Heroes have more time. He turn to the political and organizational side of Heroics.
Enji becoming disabled and losing an arm at the end of the series is often interpreted as part of his "punishment" too. Just like with Hawks and Overhaul, this framing is problematic.
The idea of disability as a consequence of personal failures is a pervasive and harmful stereotype. By blaming disabled people for their own disabilities, ableists justify abuse, discrimination, and withholding of accessibility and support.
The number of amputees and other disabled people in Mha alleviates some of the issues within individual portrayals though.
On their own, characters like Overhaul, Endeavor and Hawks reinforce the notion of disability as a punishment. But Mha has enough counter examples to show that disability happens to good and bad people, Heroes and villains alike.
Overhaul on his own would send the message that it's impossible to thrive after amputation. Someone like Miruko or Compress disproves that.
Miruko (or hell, even Afo) on the other hand could be read as inspiration porn, but is contrasted by other Heroes either requiring extensive support or choosing to leave the Hero profession entirely.
None of the above characters are reduced to their amputation. Except for Overhaul whose dreams relied on the use of his quirk, amputees keep pursuing their goals either through changing their approach, assistive technology or support from others. All of them keep their established personalities, lowercase q quirks and personal struggles.
Others treat amputees with the same respect as their able-bodied and otherwise disabled peers. Only villain-framed characters like Tomura and Afo mock others for their disabilities.
Even when Twice dramatically bemoans that Giran won't be able to smoke his cigars anymore - it doesn't evoke pity, at least to me. Giran is covered in blood but keeps a grin on his face after withstanding several days of torture to protect the League. The entire scene frames him as extremely fucking cool.
There is however one scene in which a prison guard refers to Afo as "decrepit" in a way that definitely comes across as pitying.
Overall, Mha doesn't mention the emotional toll that comes with readjusting your life after limb loss. Next to Aizawa, Overhaul might be the only exception, though Tomura and Compress did take his hands with the express purpose of causing him as much psychological pain as possible.
Although characters use different types of prostheses congruent with their own needs and current medical advancement, many of them function more like natural limbs than pieces of technology that malfunction or need repairs. This can give abled and disabled people alike unrealistic expectations and diminish the severity of losing a limb.
However Mha's biggest issue are characters being "cured" of their acquired disability. This trope is heavily associated with the idea that disabled lives are not worth living and abled people trying to remove disabled people and the challenges they present.
Most disabilities, whether acquired or congenital, are permanent. Focusing on a "cure" distracts from efforts to materially improve quality of life of disabled people.
To be honest I spent a long time worrying whether to even include Edgeshot. He technically loses all of his limbs and is clearly affected by it. It just happens in a way that is ridiculous and impossible in real life.
Mha establishes early on that certain Quirk factors can regenerate. Shoji or Hawks are examples of that. Edgeshot's entire body(?) is his quirk factor. Characters like him and Hawks show clear limits to how much damage their Quirks can repair. At some point, Edgeshot receives treatment that, I assume, stimulates the regeneration of his Quirk. I honestly don't know how the amputee community feels about regenerative powers in general. I don't think I'm qualified to form an opinion on this.
After losing part of his left hand, Tomura initially wears what looks like a cosmetic prosthesis. It's strapped to the remaining part of his hand with little belts and the prosthetic fingers never actually change position. He still uses the prosthesis to scratch his neck and move Father(?) away from his face. The anime chooses to animate it as fully articulated. I just doubt this was Horkikoshi's original intention since the prosthesis' design and presentation are completely different from the usual portrayal of myoelectric prostheses.
Somewhere in between Tomura agreeing to the afo-ization procedure and being set up in the vat the doctor exchanges his previous prosthetic with a protective brace. Neither Tomura nor Afo bother replacing it with a functional prosthetic.
Tomura's situation is Weird because even though he gains nearly infinite regeneration powers after leaving the vat, Horikoshi lets him keep his disability. He doesn't even forget about it. After the PLF war he replaces his damaged, melted brace with a new one. Then he suddenly experiences a quirk singularity and starts regrowing his fingers. Sure, Horikoshi frames it as something horrifying, violating(?) happening to Tomura, but it doesn't change it being part of the aforementioned trope.
Afo rewinding his body to its abled form during the final war isn't even the main problem. At first, he presents it as the ultimate ace of his sleeve. Then, it turns out to be an elaborate plan to dispose of his disabled body and replace it with Tomura's.
He doesn't technically "cure" himself but he is framed as a parasite taking advantage of someone with a (more) abled body. Mha includes about two dozen disabled characters, many of which are multiply disabled as well. Though, Afo might be the the most severely impacted of them. He's also the only one actively seeking a "cure" .
Afo did set the plan to take over Nana's grandson in motion over a decade before becoming disabled, which muddies the situation. Despite being dependent on life support he is actually driven by the prospect of gaining a body capable of containing more quirks*. The optics still aren't great though.
*based on the quirk singularity theory that asserts that bodies become more resilient to stronger quirks with every generation. Tomura proves it true
This leaves Izuku who I feel like people were the most angry over. And I admit, Tenko disintegrating his arms only for him to regain them moments later is. not an impressive writing choice. It's not just ableist but also stupid.
Eri rewinding Izuku is at best a grossly clumsy attempt at giving her a moment during the final war arc and at worst a cop-out turning a life-long disability into cheap shock value.
Izuku by far isn't the first character to lose one or more limbs on an active battlefield. Mha having several amputees including two other characters with bilateral above-the-elbow amputations, actually makes the scene look worse: What's good enough for the dark skinned woman clearly isn't good enough for the cutesy, light-skinned male protagonist.
Mha establishes time and time again that becoming an amputee is not a death sentence. You may struggle and have an extensive recovery period or new limits but people will care about you all the same and - obbligatory addition since this is Mha - You can even stay a hero.
But I guess Horikoshi needed a functional protagonist for his manga's epic boss fight.
//
All of this leaves me... mostly annoyed. Horikoshi shows that he isn't incapable of putting thought into his amputee characters. Of course there are issues, but in my opinion they pale in comparison to a quarter of all amputees being magically "cured".
All instances of this problematic trope do occur in the final 100 chapters. You could try to attribute those to the general deteriorating writing quality at that point, but even then, I don't think Horikoshi ever actively intended to contribute to disability representation in media.
Mha's greatest strength in terms of representation is a strength in numbers. Horikoshi is a decent enough writer and does enough research to write a few okay-ish amputee characters. But he's not socially aware enough to think about the implications of what he writes.
I strongly agree. The idea that Endeavor being horribly wounded and left with lifelong injuries at the hands of AFO being his punishment for being an abuser is ridiculous.
That would imply that Bakugo being a bully means he deserved death. Or that Mirko did something to deserve her injuries.
Wounds just happen in battle with powerful enemies. AFO tried to kill everyone who fought him. He'd kill you if you're a saint and he'll kill you if you're a sinner. It doesn't make a difference to him.
Is Kyoka (who is such a minor character that your list forgot to include her) being punished for something by having part of her ear and quirk be destroyed? No. What did she ever do to anyone? Nothing!
Did Stain and Machia die at AFO's hands because it was punishment for their previous crimes? No, they just were in AFO's way.
Did freaking Nana Shimura die because she abandoned her son and being killed was her punishment? Was ALL MIGHT being punished for something so AFO wounded him?
So yes, I agree. The logic is absurd. Endeavor got hurt because he fought a top tier in the universe. AFO is not the universe's arbiter of justice.
Ok here the hot ask: does shig has any canonical beliefs? Bc to me, and I blame Hori,he is just a man, a puppet of afo who is shouting he will destroy all. MVA is a great arc but it cements to me how shig only thinks his worth is tied on destruction.
Saw many back and forth about how shig wanted to created a society for LoV. And sigh, I may be alone one this, but a society for villains is not as cool as some fans think ....it means crime is legal. (I have saw people, linked to politics, wanting to do that, the people weren't happy)
I can't see shig as a revolutionary, at least not without Izu. Strangely enough, I can see they working: Izu wants to help people, Shig wants to destroy...destroy HC and make smth better.
But shig with canon LoV? No. He is just destruction.
To me, the way I see it: shig never had an ideology aside "destroy all" hori never allows it, same how Izu never changes it. Shig can't change, bc the villain can't be right, not by this conservative writer with very conservative ideas (shocked he didn't went and say how doing crimes against humanity is not that bad in his manga! Bc why not? His message is awful as it is)
Shig never saw a future for himself.
Shig never had a chance. Afo all along makes sure to clear all the civilians who didn't help Shig ....bc if they did afo would have killed.
Shig is a puppet first and foremost. Even if afo is clearly not giving a fuck about him...the puppet remains.
I just think Shig is dumb, has to be dumb.
This is not hate towards him. I do think he had potential to explore in fics, but in canon...I just feel bad for him, but he is a punching bag of the author as Izu is too.
Shigaraki IS a revolutionary.
The thing about revolutions is that they don't necessitate you build something after doing it.
It's just that when you make the decision to do one, you decide that what currently exists is so intolerable that you must tear it all down.
It could be decades, as history has shown, before something better, if at all, is built in its place.
His goal was destruction. He'd tear down everything except what his allies wanted preserved.
In practice, this probably meant he'd have spared a section of Japan with cities and farms, took out all of the heroes, and then chilled.
It's anarchy, but it's anarchy he rules. He and his friends are on top.
The MLA people folding into his group gave him an "after." It's full of professionals and people with resources who could move into the places he emptied out. They become the new ruling class because they're the strongest and have his favor.
We, sadly, don't get to see what ELSE he was thinking because he spends so much of his time possessed.
His point, and the League's point, is that the society they lived in rejected them.
Discrimination, in the case of Spinner.
A criminal record ruining his life, for Twice.
Compress never believed in the system I guess.
Toga suffered quirk repression until she has a psychotic break and then went from there once unleashed.
Touya is the product of eugenics and was created as a monument to the corruption and a desire to beat a single man.
Shigaraki himself is the result of being abused in his home, with his dad doing so because he was traumatized at his mother dying.
Even if we take AFO out of the equation with Shigaraki's absolutely ridiculous backstory with this guy planning out everything.
Kotaro still abused him. And Kotaro did it because he was maladjusted after Nana Shimura died. There was NO help for Kotaro. There was no punishment for Kotaro when he hurt his family. He lived in a society that, as it dealt with Kota, would tell him that his mother died heroically and for the benefit of society. They glorify his mother's death even though the hero system cost him both of his parents.
Does this justify his abusive behavior? No. But hero society creates lots of Kotas, lots of Kotaros. And has zero protocols for how to deal with them beyond telling them to suck it up.
People DID ignore Tenko as he walked down the street. Society saw a bleeding boy who looked "creepy" in their eyes and ignored him, thinking he was someone else's problem.
Now, would AFO have killed anyone who did try to help him? Absolutely. Garaki stated that he can alter memories. AFO would have engineered Tenko's walk so that it turned out exactly as he needed it to.
But he didn't have to. The bystander effect was in full effect for Tenko. None of those people were AFO plants or controlled by AFO or AFO in disguise. Just everyday citizens who saw a child in need and kept walking.
The people Shigaraki associates with are the dregs of society. The people who exist to be fodder for heroes to beat up.
I'll actually approach this in a direction other people don't talk about.
Hero society is a death cult. Or, if you'd prefer a different term, an institutional death spiral. Or a permanent branding.
Which is to say, the pipeline is as follows:
Commit a crime and get a conviction (even a minor one, as we saw in Twice's example and with Gentle Criminal) -> Become unable to work because of your criminal record -> Turn to crime -> Get arrested -> Be branded a villain -> No one will rent to you or hire you and people also vandalize your home -> go back to crime -> get arrested -> repeat until you either: kill yourself, get killed by a villain, get killed by a hero, get arrested and end up in tartarus for life, or be executed by the state. To be a villain is to eventually be killed. Your life is over at your first conviction.
The rare few who manage to break that cycle only do so if they can solve the economic issue there. They need food, shelter, and a job.
But hero society isn't actually designed to fix any of this.
The system is setup for more and more people to become heroes. Which requires more villains. If there are fewer villains, it means less work and less money for heroes. You struggle to rank up with fewer villains.
So why would hero society want to reduce the number of villains?
You have to think about the fact that this is a business and heroes are products.
How many other businesses run on the backs of heroes? Analysts, managers, support gear engineers and companies, prison owners, sponsors, merch producers, politicians.
Reduce the amount of income to heroes, and what happens to all of them? The money starts to dry up.
Something else you have to understand which MHA acknowledges in practice but would never state out loud, is that the most powerful man in the world is not Izuku or All Might. It's a man in a suit who controls Izuku and All Might. Men in suits control the world. Men in suits tell them what to do, who to fight, and what the laws are.
Heroes are tools of the state and they enforce the state's will. The only time the League struck at the right target was when that Redestro clone blew up the HPSC. And then, not really. The HPSC aren't the government. They're a government agency. Killing Madam President is not assassinating the Prime Minister.
The PM can just assign a new leader, and presumably did: Hawks.
The series has the League focus on Heroes, but the League could have collapsed society within a day if they did a terror attack on a diet meeting. Take out the head of state and all the big decision makers, and what happens? There's not even anyone left to declare martial law. No one knows what to do. The heroes don't get paid anymore. The country descends into tribalism as heroes defend only their own territories while they wait for orders that aren't coming.
That's how they could have won, and it's precisely why it would never happen in this series. It's an attack heroes are entirely unequipped to handle.
I showed you my essay before.
https://www.tumblr.com/lacunammmm/793227125744418816/examining-the-premise-of-hero-society-can-you
The way you solve crime is by investing in social safety net programs.
If Twice could have gotten a job, he would not have been a criminal. Let that sink in. If the government had assigned Twice a job after his legal troubles and he could work a 9 to 5, then one of the greatest super villains of all time would still be a courier. Or a postal worker.
In a world where mutant discrimination was punished properly, Spinner would be a regular guy. In a world with better mental health care and where crazy people like Toga's parents aren't allowed to demonize her quirk, Toga is a regular high school girl.
Are there still going to be some people who become villains? Yes. But the number is greatly reduced.
All For One himself wouldn't have been the demon lord if his homeless teenage prostitute mother hadn't died down by the river by herself giving birth.
If he grew up with a normal life without discrimination, he'd have still been a self serving man. But becoming the ultimate super villain? Traveling to another continent to assassinate someone just because he was upset people liked the glowing baby more? Deciding to LARP as a comic book character since he likes being feared and respected? No.
Most likely he'd have been a more mundane or banal evil. Or he'd have become a hero and been used as an instrument of the state to control the quirked. What better deterrent is there, to quirked criminals, than a man who can take your power away and use it against other people?
There wouldn't be any One For All, that's for sure. Hero society would never do this. Its focus is on creating more heroes. Demonstrably, heroes do not prevent crime, they react to crime.
After All Might's retirement, there were more heroes than ever before at that exact moment, and yet, a crime wave started because All Might wasn't a hero anymore. All Might was the crime deterrent. The other heroes were not.
Well, up until the narrative cheats and decides to gift the heroes an unearned utopian victory where magically crime has become rare despite them changing nothing.
So, in a better story, Shigaraki would lay out what I just described. He can't, because opponents of hero society have to be unreasonable or blatantly evil. The system can't handle valid criticism that isn't instantly walked back or superficially solved.
I believe I talked about somewhere else how Shigaraki exists to be scaled to the level of the story where he has to lose to 15 and 16 year old children.
So he needs to be a problem that can solve. His ideals are simplistic, his strength can be countered, and everything can go back to normal after he's defeated.
Your instincts about Izuku working with Shigaraki track. Because Izuku himself never self actualizes.
Izuku Midoriya does not work to be the best Izuku Midoriya, Deku, he can be. He's trying to be All Might all the way to the end. He finishes the series' final battle in an All Might t-shirt. Because the series is telling us that All Might's ideology is correct.
Izuku can't grow up, he can't be his own person, he can't question anything and he can't change, not himself or the world around him. Because becoming a better Izuku means becoming more than the system. It means doing something different.
The system doesn't want to change. Izuku's goal is to be a pillar: which is to say, he wants to maintain the status quo exactly as it is.
This is why his character stagnates at around the sports festival.
He doesn't have anymore growing to do because he's a complete character. A fake paragon archetype.
He wants to BE the state. Its ideals are his ideals. He questions nothing and wants to change nothing because society is already perfect.
He's the good boy victim who was rewarded via nepotism, by the ultimate state actor and chief commander, All Might, and given a seat at the table.
Why does he never think about or seem to care about the quirkless? Because the status quo doesn't. They're completely irrelevant. Sociey does not venerate anything about the quirkless. They are non-factors.
Being quirkless was just a flaw he solved so now he can be a hero. It's set dressing for his backstory. With his problem fixed, now he can be a hero.
So when you think that they should save society together, it's you completing the circuit.
Shigaraki, with his god like power and access to immense resources and talent, finds something worth creating after the destruction.
And Izuku takes a look at the world he lives in and decides he wants to do better than All Might.
Izuku is the system's perfect heir. Shigaraki is its ultimate reject. For them to collaborate, one would have to fundamentally betray their core: Izuku would have to critique the institution, or Shigaraki would have to seek to reform it. The narrative cannot allow either.
This is why they could never be friends or understand each other in canon, and why Shigaraki could not be saved.
To justify his entire existence, and that of the universe he lives in, suffused with a conservative, authoritarian worldview where the institution is sacred and the only acceptable change is a change of personnel within it, Izuku must kill Shigaraki.
