I know you already did an analysis on dabi in the flashback seqence but i was wondering if you would elaborate on his character in the flashback sequence.
mmh I think the only angle I haven’t yet analized is the “motivation” front.
Dabi gets introduced in the story as not only a follower of Stain, but also as someone who seems deeply set on picking up where Stain left off and succeeding where Stain failed.
He pretty much takes it upon himself to fill that role. Yet, fast forward to the present arc of the manga, he’s not the one who starts questioning Shigaraki about their lack of distinct goals or motivation to move forward, as one would expect. That role gets filled by Spinner instead.
It is questionable whether there were traces of Stain left to begin with, but it has become more and more apparent that as of late the League hasn’t made a single step towards the end goal of destroying the status quo.
Their last biggest showdown was against the Eight Precepts of Death, and mostly it entailed containing the fallout of a failed partnership with bad parties. The League ended up getting ownership of the quirk erasing drug, but it was a tool they couldn’t put to use properly, unless someone truly studied its composition and managed to duplicate it.
So this arc shows possibly the lowest point the League has ever hit. Kurogiri and Afo are both gone, they’re out of funds, they’re basically scraping by, and no one is working towards a goal anymore.
It’s interesting to me how Horikoshi decided to use Spinner as the voice of that dissatisfaction, of those doubts. Up until now, Spinner had always been treated as a supporting character, someone who appeared frequently on the sidelines but was never quite the focus. With the only exception of the training camp arc, whenever Hori wanted to bring back Stain’s ideology in-universe, it was always through Dabi. Dabi was the one who gave edgy speeches about the corruption of the hero society:
Dabi was the one constantly facing off against pro heroes, and with his repeated taunts he established himself as the voice of Stain, as the one who had taken his mantle:
And yet, he’s not the one who starts questioning his place in the League the more time goes on without them ever getting anywhere with Stain’s prescribed purge. Odd, isn’t it?
One might even start to wonder if all his “Stain this, Stain that” isn’t just a way to cover up his own personal agenda.
Notably, when the League is finally doing something that aligns with Stain’s ideals, meaning, when they’re killing a bunch of nazis who preach racial purity and quirk-based discrimination, Dabi isn’t even there.
Instead, what the heck was he busy doing?
Now, narratively speaking, Dabi being away from the rest of the League always serves a purpose. As I explained in this post here, imho his absence always underlines a certain trait of him that we’re meant to pick up on. To quote from that meta:
- He was absent from the entirety of Chisaki’s arc, an arc focused on the growth of the League as a group of comrades instead of pawns that could be sacrificed for a distant goal;
- He’s now absent again in an arc meant to solidify the League’s loyalty towards Shigaraki;
His absence from the raid at the CRC’s headquarters imho is also something we should be reading into, because not only was he MIA, he was also off doing his own thing. And usually, when a character is being repeatedly singled out from a group that is otherwise cohesive, it’s with purpose. So what’s Horikoshi’s intent in making him skip out on that particular narration?
Well, my guess has always been that Dabi is not so much an ideology-driven character, but rather a revenge-driven one. In my opinion, Stain did not appeal to him because he believed in his ideal of reforming society by only letting the good heroes live, but rather, because he was the first person to address that there were bad heroes.
(One bad hero in particular)
So then on the one hand we have Spinner who follows Stain’s wishes like a guideline to the point of choosing them over Shigaraki’s explicit orders, but still somehow sees himself as part of the League. His adherence to those rules is exactly what ultimately makes him realize the gap in motives between himself and the rest of the League. He sees himself as ideology-driven, but comes to question if he really should stick with the lov once he realizes that they aren’t driven by the same thing.
On the other hand, we have Dabi who literally never showed neither the same fervor, nor the intention to stick to Stain’s rules as closely. Dabi, who deliberately often acts on his own and with an agenda that occasionally distances him from the rest of the League. It’s debatable even how much he cares about his comrades, having basically left them to fight an opponent who vastly overpowered them all for a month and a half. Dabi’s individualism and his resolve to stick to his own agenda rather than accepting the lov’s collective objective are made painfully clear when the topic of Shigaraki’s goal is brought up, and Dabi just goes: well I don’t care about any of that and I’m still gonna do things my way. That cool with you, boss?
Interestingly, Horikoshi decided to frame this arc in such a way that Spinner ended up voicing his doubts to Toga, rather than Dabi, because, once again, Dabi was absent:
when between the two of them, Dabi is very obviously the one who’s still to a certain degree fighting for (a simplified version of) those ideals.
Now, I wouldn’t be stressing this if it wasn’t a deliberate choice on Horikoshi’s part. The fact that he didn’t get to question Dabi sounds like just another way to hide his real intentions to us readers.
Does Dabi not care about Stain’s ideology at all, then?
… that doesn’t seem to be the case. Interestingly the only part of Stain’s ideology he consistently sticks to, is the bit about gauging people’s worth on a case to case basis, and then purging without any mercy all the ones who don’t make the cut.
That’s right. His cleanse seems to be methodic. There’s this great meta by @ echodrops that analyses how Dabi responds negatively to people using senseless violence, and in general seems to value people according to his own personal standards and morals:
as op puts it in their post,
Are they garbage because they all had weak quirks and Dabi somehow sensed that–or are they garbage because Dabi’s standard for “worthy” is based on his ingrained personal values, some of which might (ironically) have to do with how people treat others? At the very least, it’s kind of interesting that the generally pleasant Twice recruits an absolute monster, while the only person Dabi’s even close to recruited for the League is a hero.
And that brings us back to the topic: what has Dabi been up to, after ditching the rest of the League? Fittingly, he took the proffered opportunity to act on his own agenda.
