Tomura Shigaraki/Tenko S. – Toxic Individualism, Social Desensitization and Systemic Apathy
We all know that Tenko turning into Shigaraki is mainly due to AFO’s manipulation of his quirk and life trajectory from a young age, yes, but hero society still plays a major role in AFO being able to do all of that. Right after losing his whole family and turning into an orphan due to a quirk awakening incident, Tenko walks the street bloodied and confused, looking onto passers with the hope of anyone reaching out. What does every single adult that walks past him do? Ignore the obvious child in distress and with clear signs of abuse or having suffered some incident. This isn’t some bad luck moment, no, this is a result of a society being completely desensitized to suffering and loss.
The fights of Pro Heroes are televised and shown to the public at all times, they have become accustomed to horrific images of human suffering. They don’t feel distress or urgency in front of such an image of a child confused and bloodied. And that mirrors our own reality perfectly. In this modern age where you open and scroll past tragedy like entertainment, injured kids, war footage, violence, literal genocides being shown live on tiktok, and we react with a swipe or like as if it’s normal, desensitization is becoming a bigger problem than what we’re comfortable to acknowledging. But back to Tenko. Not only is that an issue, but the heavy reliance on heroes from the civilians has created a toxic individualism and apathy in front of scenes of distress. They are indifferent to suffering because they feel no obligation to intervene. This apathy isn’t natural, it’s taught. Society trained people to look away and wait for someone else to act. People don’t step in because they’ve been conditioned to believe someone else, someone more “qualified” or “authorized”, will handle it. Even those with the urge to actually help end up backing away, thinking to themselves ‘the heroes will handle it’.
And I do understand that, even if someone had reached out and tried to help Tenko, AFO would’ve still found a way to manipulate the situation in his favor and create Shigaraki. Still, that doesn’t take away from the obvious social flaw and systemic issue existent within hero society. That scene serves not only for AFO to weaponize Tenko’s rage and pave his path towards the Symbol of Fear, but it also serves as a social commentary.
Another prominent theme with Tenko’s character is the metaphor of predatory forces preying onto vulnerable children and exploiting their isolation. It’s directly stated in the anime that AFO groomed Tenko, and while this can be linked directly to child predators in real life, I also believe that it can be compared to institutional grooming. Cults, extremists groups, criminal networks, and even governmental entities. They prey on people from backgrounds of poverty, marginalized communities and much more. They recognize and validate their pain, but they don’t actually offer a support system, but rather weaponize said pain to manipulate those individuals. I mean, just look at how many minorities enlist in ICE, for example. These systems don’t look for evil; they look for lonely, angry, abandoned people searching for meaning. This is the exact same procedure that AFO utilizes with Tenko.
(TW: SA) Regarding AFO’s grooming of Tenko, I want to point something else, even though this isn’t really a social critique. I wanted to do this interjection mainly because I’ve seen another creator on tiktok point it out (I don’t have their username, sorry:( )and get attacked for it, and it's the fact that the hands holding onto Tenko can also be interpreted as an allegory to SA. I think the main reason as to why that creator had gotten attacked was because people seem to confuse allegories with explicit acts. An allegory isn’t telling you that it literally happened, we’re not saying that Tenko was sexually assaulted in the literal sense. We’re saying that it’s a representation of sexual assault metaphorically. An allegory is a storytelling technique where characters, settings, or events symbolize deeper ideas. Instead of stating the message directly, the story makes you interpret the underlying meaning through the symbolism. Hands touching you everywhere and holding you has always been a popular allegory to sexual assault in media for themes like violation, unwanted touch, and loss of bodily autonomy. No one is sexualizing their relationship, people are just interpreting the scene through a lens of critical analysis.
But back on track. Aother aspect to note is how Shigaraki’s existence as a villain exposes a core flaw within hero society: viewing morality as binary. Villains bad, heroes good, and the line is drawn and reinforced constantly. No matter what, this is how it will always be. And while, yes, Shigaraki is objectively a terrible person, that still doesn’t erase the fact that this black and white view of morality takes accountability away from society. Once people plaster the ‘villain’ etiquette on someone, they no longer feel the need to neither humanize nor contextualize said person’s existence. This labeling removes the need for accountability or reflection, no one feels the moral obligation of assuming the collective blame for what Tenko became, even though their apathy and indifference made them complicit in the creation of Shigaraki. The same society that ignored Tenko as a grieving child later mobilizes its full force to suppress Shigaraki as a threat. But because they never addressed his trauma, and only reacted to the symptoms after they became dangerous, the system becomes complicit in creating the very thing it fears. They don’t want to address the underlying issues that create villains, and would rather treat them as isolated cases instead of systemic failure, a core theme with every single character of the LOV.
Tenko’s arc critiques the failure of societal structures that prioritize image, self-interest, and superficial heroism over genuine care and accountability. There is no community, each person looks out for themselves and relies on heroes in order to come and save the day. Shigaraki is not simply the victim of one manipulative villain, but the outcome of a society that outsourced compassion, normalized apathy, and abandoned vulnerable people to predatory systems. He is not “pure evil” like Izuku described in the first season, he’s a product of societal failure.
