Omae Part 2 Electric Boogaloo
Tomorrow is the one-year anniversary of my post Omae: Complexity of Self-Expression and Intimacy in the Japanese “You.” In honor of it, I’m doing a follow-up post.
Why? Because I made two claims in that post:
“as far as I can tell, Izuku is the only person Katsuki has ever used the pronoun omae (おまえ) towards in-canon”
“Furthermore, he has only used omae towards Izuku on three occasions.”
I prefaced both with “as far as I can tell” because I had some doubts that Katsuki’s use of omae was exactly that exclusive, but I knew it was pretty damn exclusive, so I went ahead and wrote the meta anyway. And I still stand by my assessments of how he uses it and what those moments mean.
But I was wrong on both counts.
Katsuki has used omae towards people other than Izuku.
He has used omae towards Izuku on five occassions, as of chapter 409.
Of course, chapter 409 wasn’t released until months after I wrote my pronoun meta, but at the time of my post, I had in fact missed one pivotal omae directed at Izuku that occurs much earlier in the series.
I wanna talk about those two extra omae towards Izuku and who else he has used omae towards. Much like Katsuki, I am a perfectionist, so if I'm gonna revisit this topic, I'm gonna go all the way.
So, I went through 409 chapters and catalogued every single time Katsuki uses a second-person pronoun.
STRAP IN, BUCKOS.
An Exhaustive Analysis of Bakugou Katsuki’s Second-Person Pronoun Usage
These are all the “you” pronouns Katsuki has used in the manga. We’ll go over them one-by-one and talk about who he uses them for, when, and my thoughts on why.
First, a note about rudeness: In many languages, and certainly in Japanese, familiarity and rudeness go hand-in-hand. In dictionaries and on grammar websites, you’ll see advice about using a term only with “people above you” or “people equal to or below you.” In general, you are either talking up to someone (polite speech) or you are talking down to them (casual speech). Excluding outright derogatory language, talking down to someone is the same as treating them as your equal.
Talking up creates or maintains distance between parties. Casual speech, familiar terms, and directness are nuances that generally get introduced into relationships as they deepen. Basically, being close to someone gives you the “right to be rude” to them. To speak this way with a stranger or people who are your hierarchical “social superiors” is considered rude in part because you lack an established (or equal) relationship with them.
I mention this because I think some people are under the misapprehension that for Katsuki to show someone he cares, he would have to speak respectfully towards them—that is, talk up to them. That simply isn’t the case, and in fact such behavior might convey callous indifference instead, because switching from casual speech to formal speech with someone you have history with puts distance between you, pushing them away.
Instead, there are more nuanced ways to connect and affirm bonds. Katsuki using omae rather than temee, for example, is not him being more polite, he's just being less insulting. He is still talking down, and one could argue that by refusing to talk up to anyone, Katsuki treats everyone equally. I mean he is still a foul-mouthed little monster, but you know, at least he’s consistent about it.
Anyway, keep this “right to be rude” in mind.
As mentioned in my first post, temee is basically Katsuki’s default second-person pronoun. If he’s addressing someone directly and he isn’t using one of his mean nicknames, it is almost guaranteed to be this word. This graphic is the only one that is not exhaustive, featuring just the top three.
Temee is derogatory; it is often translated as “you bastard,” and even when it’s not, its presence encourages translators to slather a veneer of rudeness across the sentence as a whole. Unlike the other pronouns we’re going to talk about, there is basically no scenario where you could use temee and not come across like an asshole. You could use it with friends or family to joke around, but you’re still being an asshole, just a funny one.
And... can we just acknowledge the vast gulf between Izuku’s 62 and runner-up Todoroki’s 14? Obviously Izuku is the protagonist, so it makes sense that much of the dialogue we are shown from any character is about him or directed at him. But it’s also just really funny.
No single use of temee is particularly notable since it's so common, but it is obvious why these two are at the top of the list: Katsuki has a lot of scenes with them, and he considers them his rivals. As a result, they tend to throw him into a tizzy often.
Anta is a contraction of anata. If avoiding a “you” pronoun entirely is the most polite way to refer to someone, anata is arguably the next most polite way. It is considered polite towards someone of “equal or lower status,” but can seem distant—you hear it in commercials when the narrator has to address the audience, “you, the customer.”
Anta strips away that distance and expresses either familiarity or contempt, depending on how you want to read it, which makes it pretty fucking funny that Katsuki uses it for his mentor figures. It is worth noting that anta is significantly less offensive than his typical temee and arguably even omae. A normal person would never use anta towards their boss or teacher—or their lifelong idol, for that matter—because it is talking down, which puts them on your level. But Katsuki’s whole persona is built around rebellious superiority, so out of all the options, he affords All Might and Best Jeanist the least offensive pronoun he can stomach using. Essentially, “I’m not gonna be fuckin’ polite but god, fine, I’ll be LESS rude, I guess” while still maintaining plausible deniability.
I also wanna note that there are instances where Katsuki technically uses temee towards All Might and anta towards Izuku, because he uses them in the plural form to refer to both of them at once. It’s actually pretty interesting to see who is framed as the “primary subject” of his scolding based on which pronoun he uses.
Chapter 257
All Might is the one droning on and on, so Katsuki’s response pluralizes his All Might pronoun anta into antara, lumping Izuku in with him. Basically: “stop wasting my time and get to the point (and that goes for you, too, Deku).”
Chapter 202
Here we’ve got him pluralizing temee and, between All Might and Izuku, it’s definitely more the Izuku pronoun. So this reads a little like “dammit Deku you kept this secret so badly I found out and then you swore me to secrecy but you’re STILL UTTER SHIT AT HIDING IT so you are MAKING MY LIFE EVEN HARDER (and you, All Might, don’t you fucking know better??)”
Aaaand now we’re at the good shit. Okay, let’s break it down.
Ochako
Chapter 36
Katsuki addresses Ochako with omae at the very start of their Sports Festival battle, and this is in fact the first time he addresses her personally with a second-person pronoun. It’s a great writing choice: unlike every other fight we’ve seen Katsuki in so far, he isn’t busting out his typical boisterous insults. Rather, what he says reads as a measured assessment of her as a threat, and omae contributes to this. Had he used temee, he might still have come across this way on the whole, but the use of omae as the first word out of his mouth—when the audience knows he uses temee—sets this moment apart even more.
The text of Uraraka vs. Bakugou isn't ambiguous: Katsuki takes Ochako seriously, immediately, when no one else does. This is of course a rejection of sexist assumptions about girls, but it is also because Katsuki is smart. Kaminari’s battle is the foil to this fight. Where Bakugou succeeds, Kaminari failed, having been too sexist, cocky, and just plain dumb to properly assess his opponent and the danger they pose to him.
I said in my first post that Katsuki’s omae towards Izuku immediately after Deku vs. Kacchan 2 reads as him addressing Izuku as an equal, and I would say the same is true here.
After Ochako tries to execute her plan and Katsuki accuses her of colluding with Izuku, he uses temee towards her. It’s his standard choice, of course, but the change feels a little loaded in hindsight. She might have been afforded a different pronoun once, but she quickly gets lumped into the temee pile at least partly due to Proximity To Deku.
Katsuki talks the most shit when he’s on the ropes—a strategic, cocky camouflage for his vulnerability. We know from his thoughts watching Todoroki vs. Midoriya that at this moment, he was pretty worried he was at his limit. But Katsuki also likes a good challenge, and he respects people who can give it to him, so in gearing up for the climax of this fight, he calls her by her surname.
The progression: omae + mean nickname → temee → surname.
In later scenes, he addresses her with his typical temee, which just goes to show you that Katsuki really picks and chooses his moments.
Or, as All Might put it:
Speaking of picking and choosing his moments, this next one was a delight to discover.
Jirou
Chapter 182
As with Ochako, this is the first time Katsuki uses a "you" towards Jirou personally. To be precise, what he uses is a sound-shifted variant of omae pronounced omee (written variously as おめえ, おめー, and おめぇ). We’ll talk about whether that means anything later.
This occurs during the school festival when Jirou belts her heart out suddenly. Katsuki thinks back to how the band had criticized his improvisation and her specifically telling him not to do it during the show. So he says out loud, to himself, “omee ga surun kai,” for which I think the funniest translation would be, “OH BUT YOU CAN DO IT, HUH??”
The official English translation is “hypocrite!” which isn’t bad, but yeah, he is being such a grumpy little sarcastic baby about it, it’s very funny. Just muttering complaints under his breath, with no actual ill-will attached. The fact that he uses omee reinforces the sense that this is not a serious complaint; it’s good-natured ribbing and contributes to the reader’s awareness that Katsuki likes and respects Jirou.
While Kaminari and Sero mischievously try to trick him into participating in the festival, Jirou earnestly asks for his help while acknowledging his skill.
Chapter 171
On top of outright asking "onegai" (please, but literally: "a request"), the verb construction she uses (やってくれたら, yatte kuretara) frames his participation as a favor; kureru is basically “to do for the benefit of someone else [often to your disadvantage or inconvenience].” And then she personally works her ass off to make their performance the very best it can be.
Later during the Joint Training Battle, Katsuki relies on her, uses a nickname for her (to her annoyance), and saves her. Kirishima and Kaminari both astutely comment that the festival band reinforced Katsuki’s trust in his classmates and his willingness to work with them towards success.
In this moment during the festival, Katsuki is letting Jirou shine, because each of them doing what they do best is what makes the performance a triumph in the first place.
But the boy’s still gonna be a bossy little tsundere about it.
4th Grade Bullies
Chapter 62
In Izuku’s flashback, little Katsuki uses omaera (plural form) towards the 4th graders who pick a fight with him.
You might be thinking, “Hang on, haven’t all the omae uses so far been for people Katsuki likes or at least respects? So why is he using it for these two?” And you’d be right, at least when it comes to present-day, teenage Katsuki using omae, because it’s no longer his default.
Flashbacks to Katsuki and Izuku’s childhood tell us that Katsuki’s default peer address as a kid was most likely omae, and that he switched to temee as he got older and became more of an obnoxious little shit. I emphasized in my first post that omae seems softer coming from Katsuki because it’s a departure from his normal way of speaking. The flashbacks show us a time when he was... kinda just a regular kid using language common among boys his age.
Still, there is a “cool tough guy” air to this moment, because omae can also come across as contemptuous—which is how Izuku uses it towards villains in present-day. Izuku uses boku for himself and kimi for peers, the combination of which tend to be seen as kind of soft and boyish, rather than macho and cool. Little Katsuki uses the boastful pronoun ore for himself and omae towards the bullies, who are both older and therefore technically "above" him.
So Izuku marvels at Kacchan, who talks big and tough like a grownup. Kacchan who can do anything, who stands his ground, fights to win, and invokes the heroic ideals of All Might.
Izuku
Chapter 9
The first time we see Katsuki call Izuku by his name is when we learn the origins of the nickname Deku. It also happens to be the first time we see Katsuki address someone with something other than temee. This scene shows us a glimpse of what their relationship looked like before it totally fell apart: before Katsuki nicknamed him Deku, he called him Izuku. And before Katsuki started hurling insults and screaming “you bastard” (temee!) at Izuku all the time, he used a different “you” word for him, too. Little Katsuki addressed him as a little boy would address a peer or a friend.
It made me wonder… is the aftermath of Deku vs Kacchan 2 the first time Katsuki has addressed him as an equal since they were little kids?
And, furthermore, little Katsuki uses the sound shifted variant, omee.
You might be surprised to learn that temee itself is a sound shifted variant of temae (手前, てまえ). Temae literally means “before the hand” and historically, it was a humble first-person pronoun, meaning “me, who stands before you.” Omae (お前) literally means “the one before [me],” it was historically very polite and only used for extremely high-class people. Somewhere along the way, temae became a second-person pronoun like omae, and both started to be perceived as quite rude.
Tough guy Japanese speech patterns are epitomized by sound shifts and bitten off words. Supposedly, this dialect originates in Tokyo’s historic Shitamachi area, which is characterized as rough and working class in sharp contrast to the wealthy, high class Yamanote area.
So, does omee mean something different than omae? Maybe, but not always. Does it mean something different when someone says “Thank ya” rather than “Thank you”? Or when someone says “y’all” rather than “you all”? Not exactly, but… does it feel different? It can.
Little Katsuki’s sound shift links this moment to our last example:
Chapter 409
As you acquire language, you develop a personal relationship with it informed by your experiences. More than just dictionary definitions, you gain cultural and emotional associations, and that impacts how you interpret media and other people. I don’t think anyone can say that omee definitively conveys something different than omae, but I do know that when I personally read Katsuki use it in 409, the shift feels like casual fondness. Like letting down your guard. A reassurance spoken softly. It somehow feels just a bit softer than if he had enunciated omae.
Years ago, Katsuki used it to tease Izuku about how he can’t do anything. And four hundred chapters later, he uses it to say “I won’t get in your way anymore.”
You should read pikahlua's really, really good meta about what this line means.
Whether it was intentional on Horikoshi’s part or not, I think it is a meaningful callback. These are the only two times Katsuki has ever used omee towards Izuku. It emphasizes how he has changed, yes, but it also ties in the context of his own past "uselessness" and how he has surpassed it, that he won't ever again be "a weakness others can exploit" to get to Izuku. But also, as pika says:
(And I read that he’s ready to let Izuku be the main character.)
The only other time Katsuki has used omee is towards Jirou, when he affectionately teased her for being a hypocrite while also making sure she got her time in the limelight.
And what does Katsuki think in the next chapter?
“Izuku, do your best.”
Izuku gets his time in the limelight. They each brought their own strengths to this final battle, and Katsuki has held up his end. He wasn’t a burden, he didn’t hold Izuku back—he came back from the dead, saved their hero, and took out All For One. Now Izuku has to do what he does best.
A lot of the things I said in this post simply reiterate the meaning of the text itself, and that's because the nuances in Katsuki’s dialogue support the narrative. They reinforce what the story tells us about him and his relationships, and I think that's pretty amazing.
