This is a rough chapter. Shigaraki is getting beaten to smithereens, tortured, and has lost half a hand - most importantly to him however, the hands of his family are also getting destroyed in the fray. This triggers a series of flashbacks where we not only see his sister Hana again, but his mother and maternal grandparents. What is interesting is that in every flashback panel, his family members are trying to cheer him up and comfort him. Most interesting of all however are Shigaraki’s final thoughts of the chapter. A very, very familiar train of thought.
what are the odds that, what Shigaraki wanted his family to say was
Let’s have a quick look at the flashbacks. Firstly, I think Hana’s are the most telling.
She asks whether Shigaraki has gotten scolded again. Remember in a previous Hana flashback several chapters ago, she was also comforting a young shiggy after he was scolded by their father, and she had snuck him into their father’s study to show him a picture of Nana, to show that there are heroes in the family. I think this strongly suggests that their father resented Nana for deserting him as a child to continue being a hero, and that he was against heroes in general, leading him to get angry about and discourage the idea of heroic ambitions in his own children.
This theory is reinforced in the current chapter by Hana saying “You should probably keep quiet about it. I just tell dad I want to be a bride when I grow up” - I think that this suggests that she is lying to their father about her true ambitions, and suggest that shiggy should do the same in order to avoid getting scolded again as it’s making him miserable.
What is also notable is that she is holding his hand - this is taking place before his quirk has fully manifested (although ALTHOUGH is that Hana’s thumb or shiggy’s lifted pinky!? I think it’s her thumb). Which makes the flashback to his mother also interesting in terms of the development of Decay.
Does this flashback suggest that the manifestation of his quirk was preceded by it’s secondary effects? Does his hair turn white during this period too? Is it something to do with Decay, like Eri’s rewind, being a mutated quirk?
Whether he is miserable from having his ambitions discouraged, or from the beginning effects of his quirk, or something else entirely that I’ve completely missed, his grandparents are also trying to cheer him up as best they can (this is so sweet and I want to cry when I think of the trauma shiggy eventually goes through).
This flashback leads to that oh so recognisable thought of “back then what I wanted them to say was” - we do not hear what exactly it was that he wanted them to say before the chapter ends, but, I am gonna bet that we’re gonna get a killer deku parallel here. Rather than just comforting him and accepting his father’s position, or perhaps thinking it unrealistic due to frailty brought on by the onset of his quirk, or some other third thing, I bet that what he really wanted was support, encouragement, to be believed in, to be told “you can become a hero”, which adds another layer to his current hatred of hero society.
Anyway I’m going to cry for ten thousand years. Shiggy is becoming the most sympathisable villain of all time. I’m looking forward but also emotionally dreading the climax of this arc next week – I think father hand is still intact, but if that goes too I bet we’ll get the flashback to end all flashbacks.
stormborns
kaledo-art
titsay
blakekathryn
turnnoffyourmind
