Natsuo is more like his father than he wants to admit...and it is both tragic and unsettling.
Disclaimer: Not a criticism of Natsuo. I actually like this character. It is just a comparison study and a commentary of actions vs reactions. Natsuo is NOT a bad person for any of his choices.
He does what he wants without regard for what the people around him want.
Sure, he'll go along with certain requests, like going to the family dinner because Fuyumi asked him to.
However, rather than be a polite host, he decides he'd rather embarrass his sister by being angry at their father all through said dinner and making things awkward for their guests. He didn't have to be there. Whoever he's talking to on the phone after the fact, maybe the girlfriend, he apologizes for bailing on their plans. He didn't even have to white-lie to Fuyumi. He straight up had other plans that night. So there are two ways you could look at this:
He conceded to a request to support his sister...then half-assed it.
Or he canceled his plans and went out of his way to be a prick.
He's not wrong for hating his father, that is 100% a normal reaction to an abusive parent, but he is wrong for not establishing his own concrete boundaries or respecting Fuyumi's.
Like Endeavor, Natsuo is pretty isolated within the family.
Mom’s out of the picture and contact with her is limited.
We all know what his relationship with his father is like.
His closest sibling 'died' when they were kids, but even then, Touya and Natsuo's relationship wasn't a good one. We know Touya spent years trauma-dumping on Natsuo, and little bro took it like a champ. Supporting one's siblings like that is admirable, but it does highlight a key difference between the brothers. Touya has memories of a happy childhood with their father. Natsuo does not. So he had to listen to his older brother crying for a past he knows nothing about, which had to have brought on a little resentment. "At least Dad loved you once. I never even got that much."
As stated above, Natsuo doesn't see eye to eye with Fuyumi. At least not enough that he respects her decision to forgive their father. Whether he supports that decision or not, he should love his sister more than he hates their father, and starting shit unprovoked over a dinner she asked him to be at is not a supportive decision.
His relationship with Shouto is hard to gauge. They were raised apart, sure, but they lived in the same house. So the fact that he didn't know Shouto's favorite food until he was fifteen is...odd. Natsuo never tried to have a conversation with him in passing? But I have a theory about that. With how Shouto behaved in the very beginning of the series, the mirror-image of their arrogant father, I think Natsuo had a, “Fuck, now there’s two of them," moment and actively avoided association with his younger brother. This may have contributed to him moving out even though he attends a college that's close enough that that he can casually stop by for dinner.
He Actually Does Get Violent.
Not with other people, thankfully, but he does slam his fist against the door in this scene, which is an act of aggression.
This makes for an intense moment in animation, sure, but if you saw a person do this in real life, you’d be nervous about where that fist is going next.
I already went over this in the Endeavor analysis that I made a few months back, but the gist of it is taking out your anger on inanimate objects is unhealthy because you're training your brain to associate anger with violence, which has the potential to make it harder to dissociate in the long run.
In his own way, he did abandon his family.
Fuyumi tells him to leave the family circumstances to her....and he just left her to it? She went to college to become a teacher and made a career work in spite of living in a volatile home. The series doesn't say where Natsuo is a student at, but he clearly lives close enough to home that he can drop by for a visit, so it's not like he went to some prestigious university out of town.
So yeah. Left his remaining brother and sister to their father.
The other point, though, is he's canonically studying medical welfare.
Medical welfare is the consideration of patient wellbeing, preserving individual dignity, promoting quality of life, and taking a holistic approach to healthcare that applies mental and emotional care to a patient, not just physical.
So it's ironic this is where his brother ends up and he says absolutely nothing about it. Nothing about promising to come see him, nothing about asking the staff if this really the best arrangement they could come up with, no promises to Touya that he'll figure something out. He just ghosts and, like their father, that is really hypocritical.
In the end, he puts his own hate and feelings above everyone else’s.
This one's pretty closely related to my first point, but it does bear reiterating for the finale. Natsuo's decision to never see his father again is ultimately going to hurt his family more than it's going to spite Endeavor. Going no-contact is a healthy choice and I don’t fault him for it at all. But if he sticks to it, it’s going to lead to some serious ramifications down the road.
If he's strict enough to refuse to be in the same vicinity as Endeavor:
He won’t attend Touya’s funeral and support his grieving mother and siblings if Endeavor will be there.
Since we see in the epilogue Rei stays with Endeavor, Natsuo visiting her is going to be complicated.
If Fuyumi gets married, she might want her father at the wedding. Is Natsuo going to skip his sister’s wedding out of spite?
If Shouto gets married and decides to let their father be there, same story.
If Endeavor outlives Rei, will Natsuo miss her funeral?
And finally, Natsuo might have to come to terms with the fact his own children may want to meet their grandfather, which is a decision he can only control until they’re legal adults. He can tell them how much of a monster Endeavor was all he wants, but those kids may still be curious about meeting the man in person, especially if they hear stories from other family members and know the former No. 2 and No. 1 is their grandfather.
I’m not saying Natsuo should forgive Endeavor, or even stop being angry with him because he has every right to his anger. But if he still wants a relationship with the rest of the family, he is going to have to exercise some form of compromise. Especially with his children because he unfortunately has all the hallmarks to become the next Kotaro Shimura. This is a society where kids want to be heroes, and then there's Natsuo who has a history with the dark side of hero society, no matter the good Shouto does.
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