One thing that I haven't seen anyone call out is how after Bakugou is rescued, the series starts constantly introducing new characters that we're expected to care about, ie they take a bunch of time. The big three, Sir Nighteye, Overhaul, Gentle Criminal, La Brava, Eri, Giantmachina, Lady Nagant, The MLA and Licence Exam both came with a bunch, etc. And I like a lot of them, but just so much time gets dedicated to these new characters.
Like did we really need real Camie, especially with how the League got slaughtered and it's treated like oh well it's for the best. Why would the League keep her alive if they are so evil that them dying is a good thing? Keeping her alive is a waste of resources right after they lost their source of cash, and if she escaped Himiko could have very well been caught. Why wouldn't the 'oh so evil' Toga just drain all her blood. But not only is she confirmed to be alive she gets to join Bakugou and Shoto in their make up classes for their licenses.
(I apologize in advance for this relatively short answer having so many footnotes.)
So, while I can see your point, @arceus-insanity, and I think it’s a valid view for certain takes on what the story could have been, for the story I wanted, I have to disagree.
I both like a lot of the new characters and think they deserved time—more than they got already, even. Heck, I wish we’d gotten even more new characters after the first war, rather than the story functionally locking the cast in place save for the Tartarus escapees that the story didn’t give a shit about anyway. The only other new characters were, what, Star and her crew, who do nothing that couldn’t have been written around in a hundred different ways, and a few conspicuously unnamed heteromorph characters to help shepherd that storyline to its limp conclusion? As I said here, I think it’s absurd that events as dire as Gigantomachia’s rampage and Shigaraki’s subsequent escape wouldn’t stir things up in the country so badly that new characters would be coming out of the woodwork!
But then, I’m also one of those people who does sincerely believe that the post-Jakku material needed to be at least as long as the second act.[1] Obviously that wasn’t feasible with Horikoshi’s health being what it was, but I do think my ideal version of the story would have had that kind of length. But then x2, I’m also one of those people who does sincerely believe that BNHA suffered tremendously when it became, at the dictates of its frankly absurd popularity poll results, The Stoplight Trio Show.
1: To me, the second act runs from the chapter after Deku and All Might meet again on the beach, with Deku reflecting about the end of the era of All Might, to the chapter that ends with Deku having left UA—so, Chapter 96 to Chapter 306, for a total of 211 chapters. Compare that number to the first arc’s 95 chapters and the final arc’s 117—or 124 if you include the full epilogue—and it’s easy to see where the greater bulk of the story lies.
I think BNHA really did cry out to be a true ensemble piece, rather than a story about, like, 3.5 kids and the intermittent adventures of some of their friends. A more expansive story in both its cast and its pacing would have served it much better, I feel, especially one that really forced the kids to step out into the world more independently, rather than retreating to the safety of the dictates of their mentors. Instead, we got a story that just kept getting bigger all the way to the climax despite the fact that the stuff to fill that story—both the cast to meaningfully contribute and the interesting worldbuilding ideas—stopped being able to keep pace with the story’s scope long, long before the end.
So yeah, Horikoshi certainly wound up with far more characters than he could handle, but for myself, I’d rather have had the story that was big enough to give all those characters ample room, rather than the story that was only big enough to accommodate the ones Horikoshi could coherently build a plot around. And if we couldn’t have either, well, I’m just as happy with the big cast. Most of my favorites are from those side character numbers, anyway.
As to Camie and Toga, while I think you’re right that Camie’s survival is a clear indicator that Toga was never as evil as a lot of the Heroes thought,[2] I don’t think I can bring myself to agree that the story treats the League’s deaths as a good thing because they’re just so evil. Rather, the story just has a much harsher view on criminal responsibility than I think a lot of Villain fans—myself certainly included—wanted or were expecting from the ending.
2: Sure, maybe the talking point is just that Toga kept her alive for a back-up blood supply, but given that it seems like Toga had no interest in an extended infiltration scenario, but rather just wanted was to crash the Provisional License Exam and leave immediately afterwards, it hardly seems like she’d need much back-up!
Camie’s a good example: Toga isn’t so evil that she would kill an innocent high school girl on a whim.[3] She would hurt an innocent high school girl on a whim, so she still has to be Punished (because this damn manga is so welded to the idea of not forgiving characters who did things wrong[4]), but because she wouldn’t kill for it, she doesn’t get an ending where the readers are cheering for her to get dropped out of orbit by Ochaco the Implacable or some shit.
3: The whim being wanting to meet Deku and Ochaco again. 4: Unless they were Heroes, of course. Authorial forgiveness for Heroes is limitless.
That is to say, the story doesn’t think it’s good that Toga dies, though it may think it’s “for the best” for the same reason a lot of people who were satisfied with her death identified: she’s too tragic and sympathetic a character for the reader to want her to be executed by the state or grow old and die behind bars, but she’s committed too many crimes for there to be other believable options.[5] I sincerely think that, for Horikoshi, the League gets the deaths they do because they’re not so evil that they deserve any of the story's alternatives.
5: For myself, I think if readers couldn’t believe in other options, that’s just a failure of the imagination, but it’s more on the story than the readers—it was Horikoshi’s responsibility as the author to set the boundaries of reader expectations.
But then you could also run that cause and effect backwards, too: because Horikoshi wanted to keep the League sympathetic, he would never let them go too far. If Horikoshi wanted gentler outcomes for his fully tragic characters but was terrified his readers would think he’s Soft On Crime, he couldn't risk alienating people by letting the League go so far that readers would get angry at his Heroes for wanting to save them.
The story just doesn’t have the courage of its convictions if those convictions run the risk of displeasing the readers. That’s why Toga dies anyway despite not being so evil that she’d kill Camie, and it’s also why we focus on the same handful of popular characters despite Horikoshi (judging by his obvious enjoyment of introducing distinctly designed new characters by the truckload!) clearly wanting to tell a sweeping ensemble story.
Though I had my quibbles, thanks for the ask!
