#onima

[grimmijaggers]

MHA OC Commission: Yearning for @ultimatefangirl-exe !

Nijiki has a crush on Burnin’ and used to have a crush on Touya, and they love each other. It’s the Happy Todoroki AU, not the Everyone is Happy AU lmao Poor Jiki. Meanwhile Kido and Onima are completely drunk beside her.

[class1akids]

MHA fanart by mangaka Ryosuke Takeuchi

[bnhaobservation]

BNHA and the brainwashing of children and its consequences

So not much time ago I wrote a post titled “Horikoshi and Shouto & Touya's relation”. Below it two readers wrote their comments and the question those two reply raised felt like a goldmine of points to ponder so I couldn’t help but make a post about them.

Was one of them brainwashed? Were they both? And what’s going in their fight that pushed them to act like that? What pushed others to act like that?

The answers, if you ask me, are not as clear cut as they might seem.

Now, to spare you from having to track down the comments they are as follow:

@crazy-1201 said:

I hated everything about the Touya and Shouto conflict. Dabi was written to be such a scapegoat it’s crazy- because he will say something that actually has valid points and criticisms, just for Shouto and Enji’s asskissing sidekicks to throw it back in his face that his opinions don’t fucking matter at all. It was never about saving Touya, it was about shutting him down- and that’s what makes all the supposed growth of the family feel like an absolute farce. Endeavor stays a narcissistic shit head who gets to throw himself a pity party, and Shouto comes off as a brainwashed clown.

@shou-chibi said:

He isn't a brainwashed clown wtf, he literally told Dabi if he ignored him and continued to be a hero anyway he would he a puppet. In the end Dabi ends up being a puppet of Endeavor because he does everything the old man wanted. That is the point of the story that Dabi thoughts about Shouto were wrong which is true.

Now, Shouto and Touya are two of my fave characters but the question those two reply raised is a goldmine so I couldn’t help but make a post about them. Was one of them brainwashed? Were they both? And what’s going in their fight that pushed them to act like that? The answers to me are not as clear cut as they might seem.

So let’s start with the discussion.

PART 1: DID ENJI BRAINWASH TOUYA AND SHOUTO WHEN THEY WERE KIDS?

I mean, for sure he wanted one of his kids to become the Hero who would replace him and surpass All Might but did he brainwash them?

Brainwash is a strong word, it means “pressurize (someone) into adopting radically different beliefs by using systematic and often forcible means” so we should ask ourselves “Was he THE SOLE REASON why they wanted to become Heroes or had he never interacted with them, they would have never harbored such wish?”

Hell no, BNHA presents us with an universe that has children from preschool to middle school declare they want to be Hero, ESPECIALLY TO BECOME A HERO LIKE ALL MIGHT (and surpassing him becoming even cooler than him). Being a Hero is the coolest thing a person can be, and all the children want to be cool and therefore want to be Heroes. We’ve plenty of instances in which we’re told an insane number of kids want to become Heroes, this is so much the norm that Dai is confused when, due to Hawks’ changes to the ranking, his classmates start wishing for works different from becoming a Hero because they’re presented with other works that are also equally cooler (note how all the kids who say they don’t want to become a Hero in his class mention that’s because they want to be like another person they judge cool, they don’t talk about them liking a side of that job or having talent for it, they just say ‘we want to be like this cool person’).

We only have few notable exceptions of kids who don’t want to be Heroes for very specific reasons (think Kouta who’s traumatized by his parents’ death… and then he will change his mind and go to U.A. high… or Eri who’s so impressed by Jirou that she overcomes her trauma and decides to become a singer).

When Touya expressed his wish to become a Hero he had no reasons to feel differently from the other kids his age. The most likely situation is that even if Enji has said nothing in this regard, he would have still wanted to be a Hero, especially because his father is a Hero and children that small (Touya is three before he starts to burn) would feel even more prone to become a cool Hero like their dad. Children that small are often prone to mimic their parents and think they wanna be like them. So yeah, Enji didn’t need to say the words or do anything, Touya would have still wanted to become a Hero like his cool dad with whom he had a very good relation at the start. Long story short, in regard to Touya Enji’s behavior very likely felt supportive and encouraging, but it didn’t dramatically change his mind and lead him to wish for something he would have never wished had his father been different. So, no, Enji didn’t brainwash him into wishing to become a Hero.

Shouto comes out a bit different. Maybe he started wanting to be a Hero same as all the normal children but then, at 5, we can see he is traumatized by Enji’s behavior and so he has a good reason NOT TO WANT TO BECOME A HERO like is absolutely not cool but very abusive father. It’s not Enji the one who changes Shouto’s mind and make him wish to become a Hero again, like any other child Shouto is impressed by All Might, he’s a fan of All Might and when his mother help him make a distinction, telling him he can be a Hero like All Might and doesn’t have to be a Hero like his father Shouto naturally returns to wish to become a Hero. Like All Might. Still, Shouto wants to be a Hero. Here, especially here, there’s no brainwashing from Enji either.

Thos two kids aren’t brainwashed by Enji, they don’t come to wish to become Heroes because he “pressurize them into adopting radically different beliefs by using systematic and often forcible means”.

He doesn’t need to, they naturally want to become Heroes.

So the kids aren’t brainwashed?

Hell no, they’re VERY brainwashed. By society.

In a normal world small kids don’t all wish to pick up the same job. They’ve different ideas of what they want to do once they’ll get big, of what they’ll like/will be cool to make. Some of them will assume their parents’ job is a cool option because many small kids want to do what mommy and daddy do, some will want to do the job of a person that seems cool to them, a sport star, a singer, the owner of the candy shop so they can eat all the candies in the shop (or so they believe), the teacher so they can tell other kids what to do, a manga/anime character and so on.

They don’t really have the ability to know what it means to do that job and if they’re cut for it, it seems cool to them and so they want to do it.

The norm would be that since children are different people exposed to different experiences in a class all the children would do different jobs, some might be a little more common but… all the children wanting to do the same job? That’s not normal.

BNHA, as said before, is a world that blast everyone with images of HOW COOL AND AMAZING Heroes are, they don’t just do their job, they do commercials, they’re on television, they’re overly paid, they’re praised at every turn as the coolest thing ever, the ones that can do everything, even use their Quirk openly and in a cool way, the ones that dress in those flashy costumes and are constantly praised, their billboard chart is a huge event, the sport festival of a Hero school is more popular than Olympic games.

Kouta, who doesn’t like Heroes, is viewed as strange until Midoriya is explained why Kouta doesn’t like them and then the story’s goal become to persuade Kouta Heroes are actually cool and he should like them more than focus on Kouta’s trauma.

Touya and Shouto grew up in a world that said that Heroes are the coolest thing everyone should aspire to be, people like Midoriya who are Quirkless and therefore get no right to aspire to be Heroes compared to people who have a Quirk that allows them to retract their own body parts into themselves, or to heal people with a kiss, because this sort of abilities undoubtedly allow you to defeat Villains in ways a Quirkless person could never do, are mocked and discriminated.

All this pressure brainwash them in the same way as it brainwash all the other children, they might also have what it takes, they might have the Hero spirit but the mass is brainwashed into thinking being a Hero is THE VERY BEST THING a child might long to become, that it’s odd not longing for it or not to like Heroes, that who can’t become a Hero is unfortunate or, worse, inferior.

Now… it’s true that we see that, in the last year of middle school the kids have to face such conditioning and see if they can realistically become Heroes, if they can be accepted into a school and which one that would be.

In Chap 1 we see that Midoriya’s class as a whole wants to become a Hero but only Bakugou and Midoriya will try for U.A. High as it’s too hard to get into a Hero school, chap 144 also shows Kirishima’s classmates reconsider their wish because they don’t think they’ve what it takes to become Heroes and the spin off “Team-up missions” Chap. 26 will show us kids going to the prospective students day at U.A. High and coming to term with the fact they are interested/have what it takes to go to U.A. High or not.

Society’s brainwashing of children is not so strong that they can’t realize they just can’t become Heroes because they don’t have what it takes or that they just aren’t that interested in becoming Heroes. “Team-up missions” Chap. 26 shows how Sanda Raito was told by everyone he should become a Hero so he went to U.A. High prospective students day thinking he would become one, only to realize he’s not really interested in such thing even if everyone is pressuring him in that direction.

After all society isn’t interested in brainwashing children that hard they won’t become anything else but Heroes or die trying, society needs people to also make other jobs but the fact that society is still SATURATED with Heroes, tell us that the pressure, the brainwash, is still consistent enough it lasts in many kids.

However coming to term with  their brainwash and let it lead their life or decide for another course was meant to happen later in the life of those two children had they grew up like normal kids.

However they don’t get that luxury.

PART 2: IF HE WASN’T BRAINWASHED WHAT LEAD TOUYA TO BECOME THE TOUYA WE HAVE IN THE FINAL ARC

Touya’s Quirk begins to burn him and Enji follows the doctor’s direction and agrees Touya can’t use his Quirk, which means he can’t become a Hero. From when Touya is three and a half to when he supposedly die on Sekoto Peak, Enji will, VERY, VERY POORLY try to persuade him not to become a Hero. It’s 10 years. If Enji had any ability to brainwash a child, Touya would have stopped wanting to be a Hero, he wouldn’t have continued wanting to be one. Touya’s most definite trait, something that’s even more obvious in the Japanese society is that HE REFUSES TO DO WHAT HIS FATHER TOLD HIM. He’s not brainwashed, he’s challenging his father’s authority. At three and a half.

But why is he doing this? Isn’t he doing this due to Enji telling him he has to surpass All Might?

It’s more complicate than that.

Part of the blame for Touya’s actions goes ON SOCIETY, society who told him that being a Hero was the coolest thing he could do, society that taught him all the normal kids wish to be Hero so not wishing for it is odd at best, abnormal at worst unless you’re in the Quirkless pitiable situation, society who likely pressured him, like it did with Tensei, in following his father’s footsteps because that’s what a firstborn do. Touya doesn’t live under a rock, he lives in that society that’s not supportive of people who can’t become Heroes.

The other part goes on Enji (and Rei), who doesn’t know how to properly handle the situation.

Yes, they had told Touya he was born to fulfill his father’s ambitions but that was the moment to backpedal from it, reassure him he was worthy even if he couldn’t and BE EVEN CLOSER TO HIM SO AS TO REASSURE HIM WITH ACTIONS HE HAD WORTH AND GIVE HIM SUPPORT FROM A SOCIETY THAT WOULD TELL HIM THE CONTRARY. Instead Enji, not knowing how to handle things, makes himself scarce.

Why?

It’s not just because he doesn’t know how to handle things, and it’s not because he doesn’t love Touya. The story wants us to believe he loves Touya even if he’s bad at showing it.

Enji believes that if Touya wants to become a Hero it’s solely due to him and completely misses how society around Touya is different than it was when he was Touya’s age. It was All Might who basically made everyone and their mom to wish to become a Hero… but Enji, despite being younger than All Might, it’s still old enough he spent his childhood without the symbol of peace. All Might went back in Japan when he was in middle school, Enji didn’t live the hype for All Might as a child, he grew in a society that was still struggling and in which being a Hero was very likely not as incensed as it was after All Might came back and began single handedly dismantle crime and Villains. He tells Touya to play with the other kids to forget how he wanted to become a Hero, unaware of how the most popular game among kids is ‘playing Heroes’. In this he’s like Kotarou, he doesn’t understand the pressure from society his kid lives.

Since Enji thinks he’s the sole influence in Touya’s life, by pulling out from Touya’s life he thinks this will be enough to dissuade Touya to continue. Enji can’t wrap his mind on how, despite him telling Touya to stop and Touya getting hurt, Touya insists in continuing to train.

He also misses how his pulling out of Touya’s life passes the wrong message. Instead than making his son feel free of pressure, it makes his son feel rejected. One day his father supported him and his dream and believes he would be able to do great things and would spend time with him trying to help him become a Hero… and the other he tells him he can’t become a Hero and doesn’t support him anymore nor spend time with him anymore.

Touya feels rejected, a child psychologically need his parents to pay him attention and now Enji isn’t paying him attention anymore. Touya lives the rejection poorly, it leads him to believe he’s rejected because now Enji thinks less of him, before Enji told him he would be the most amazing Hero now he tells him he can’t be… to Touya it’s like telling him he’s nothing, that he’s a failure even if Enji never tells him the worlds. He would have taken it bad even if he had never known his father wanted him to become a Hero, even if Enji never had other kids, those things only made it even worse.

The point was never to show Touya he can’t become a Hero (by having other kids who could), it’s to persuade him it’s okay not become a Hero, that he’s still valid, but Enji misses this, partly also because since he has his own psychological problems and feelings that make him feel he’s less.

So Touya’s goal begins to shift.

Before he had this childish idea he wanted to be a Hero because society told everyone being a Hero is the best thing ever and to him in particular that since he’s the firstborn of the Number 2 he should follow in his father’s footsteps and Enji encouraged and supported those beliefs, telling him he would be even greater than him, than All Might, then he just starts to wish to go back to what for him was ‘his normal life’, a life in which his father appreciates and encourages him and spends time with him and he’s a ‘normal’ kid who can aim to be a Hero.

It’s not because Enji brainwashed him in thinking he could be the best Hero, it’s because his father is neglecting him, it’s because society is telling him he is different if he can’t be a Hero, that he has no value, that he’s a failure. He’s a kid, he needs help in handling and overcoming this and he gets none.

Meanwhile he grows, he grows and begins to question things, to question his father, to question their Hero society. Those questions will grow up to shape his opinions about Heroes, which he will toss at his father in Dabi’s dance.

Isn’t Enji also at fault for not paying them attention just because he’s not perfect? Enji is obsessed with his role as Hero and made his children with a purpose, does Enji represent all the Heroes? Are they all like him? Enji doesn’t care for him, for his pain, which will lead him to think he doesn’t have an empathetic bone in his body.

Enji had them because he couldn’t stand being Number 2, which will lead him to think his father is addicted to the limelight.

Enji is focused on how he is a Hero, how he belongs to the Hero world and Touya isn’t, which will lead him to think he wallows in his own small-mindedness and self-importance.

Ultimately Enji won’t come to Sekoto Peak and won’t save Touya so he’s not a Hero. Heroes are fakes, as Stain said, they don’t exist.

Touya is not yet where he will be when Dabi’s dance will take place, but he’s walking that way.

He has lost his wish to be a Hero for the sake of being a Hero, he has lost faith in Heroes, in them being cool, in them being good. Yet he can’t stop.

Rei’s question is not so off the mark, he has probably stopped wishing to become a Hero since Heroes are so uncool, so cruel… but the other option is to accept he’s nothing, that his father will never look at him again, that society will never view him as more than a failure. He’s isolating from his classmates, he’s desperate to prove his worth, to prove he can be cool and worth of love too, not just Shouto.

Touya’s reply to Rei is all about social roles. Rei had to sacrifice and marry Enji because, as a daughter of the Himura family, she was expected to sacrifice for her family. Touya, as the firstborn of Endeavor, can’t just shrug it off the same way she couldn’t. Japan is big on children’s duties toward their parents, on the role of the firstborn.

Rei claims there are countless options for him but Touya can’t see them. She’s just telling him to give up on Enji’s love and appreciation, on the idea of being a normal kid with normal aspiration that society will, at best, look with pity, she can’t show him another path in which he could have all he had before.

Things aren’t as bad as Touya sees them, in truth it’s not like Enji doesn’t love him and society’s pressure will lessen as he grows because deep down society knows not everyone can be a Hero and that we need people who aren’t Heroes but Touya is too young to know it and in a too bad psychological headspace.

With Shouto her words worked because Shouto could see in All Might the person he wants to be and by seeing in All Might the person he wanted to be he would still be allowed to live inside what society appreciated, but Touya has nothing of the sort. It was his parents’ duty to provide him that and they instead just told him HE should search for it.

Ultimately Sekoto Peak will happen and Touya’s faith in any chance to get back what for him was the ‘normal life’ will break. He stopped believing he can win back Enji’s love and appreciation but this breaks him too, this leaves him with nothing, not even hope of happiness. In his mind Enji destroyed him so he’ll destroy him back and then… they can restart together. Touya is suicidal, he wants to die with his father and be reincarnated.

At this point none of the things Touya believed was something Enji willingly wanted him to believe and none of the things Touya is doing was something Enji wanted him to do.

Enji told him to stop, Touya not only never stopped but he became a Villain and is trying to destroy society and his family, starting with Shouto and finishing with himself and Enji. There’s no way Enji wanted any of this.

Touya is the opposite of brainwashed by Enji even though he’s obsessed with having back his father because that’s the only form of happiness he’d ever known. In a way the image we’re shown in chap 352 is wrong, deep down Touya isn’t a 13 years old boy, he’s still a 3 years old boy who longs for his father to love and validate him as he used to do back then.

PART 3: IF HE WASN’T BRAINWASHED WHAT LEAD SHOUTO TO BECOME THE TOUYA WE HAVE IN THE FINAL ARC

Rei had persuaded Shouto that it was okay for him to become a Hero because he could become a Hero like All Might but… then Rei snaps, scars him and then she’s hospitalized. If Touya’s trauma and leading force was his father’s neglect, Shouto’s trauma and leading force is being stripped of his mother.

He forgets he wanted to become a Hero like All Might and decides his life will circle around him rejecting his father, spiting him. It’s the opposite of Touya whose life circled around gaining his father’s appreciation, but both has stopped wishing to become Heroes for the sake of becoming Heroes and had started acting with a different goal that circles around Enji.

Touya’s plan to gain Enji’s love back was to prove his father he could become the Hero Enji wanted and go back on being taught by him, as he only wants to learn from him (because for Touya Enji’s training lessons are the moments he bounds with his father).

Shouto’s plan to get back at Enji is to prove his father he can become the Hero Enji didn’t want, a Hero who’ll surpass All Might using solely ice (when Enji wanted him to use his fire and wanted him to use his ice solely to cool down), a Hero who won’t learn anything from Enji (because for Shouto Enji’s training lessons are the moments in which he and his mother got abused by him).

Same as for Touya, that’s not what Enji wanted him to do, even if it’s similar to what Enji wanted him to do. This is moved by spite, not by brainwashing… but it’s not good for Shouto.

In attempt to deny Enji he’s denying half of himself, he’s denying himself possibilities and, at the same time he’s mimicking Enji’s behavior, his anger, the fact he refuses social contact with the others and measure all in terms of a race to the first place.

Again, it’s not due to brainwash, it’s more “He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.”

In order to fight Enji, Shouto embraces his mindset to use it to hurt him. Shouto is young, he doesn’t understand well what he’s doing and this is partially the result of Enji’s influence but the starting points were Shouto’s choices and goals, which are clearly not what Enji wanted.

It doesn’t last though. Midoriya gives Shouto a wake up call on how Shouto is forgetting he wanted to become a Hero (like All Might) and now is focusing solely on wanting to get revenge on his father.

While Horikoshi will go a bit back and forth with this, the idea is that from this point on Shouto will focus on his own wish to become a Hero like All Might and will try to do his best to let go of his anger toward Enji.

Ironically, in order to become the Hero he wants to be, he’ll have to accept he can learn from Enji how to be a Hero (I’m not really fond of how the story handles this but the idea behind it is not wrong per se) so he’ll intern under him. Twice. Which was what Enji wanted… but again, he’s not doing this because Enji wanted him to.

All this is not easy, Shouto fights and stumbles trying to find balance, trying to find a way in which his heart can cope with his negative feelings and march forward, trying to discover how to fully use his Quirk.

Should he use his ice? Should he use his fire? Can he use one and the other?

The very first battle with Touya shows him his fire isn’t up to the match, Touya’s fire is hotter. However at the same time Shouto finds a way to use his Quirk, it was never about using his ice or his fire or his ice and his fire but using them both at the exact same time. Phosphor is a mix of the two, a cold fire that allows him to keep his temperature stable while he uses his coldest ice.

If being a Hero is all about using their Quirk in order to do so, Shouto has finally found a way to use HIS power and therefore to fully accept himself and find his place in society.

Shouto doesn’t want to be Endeavor’s upgrade, he wants to be his own Hero. He wants to be ‘SHOUTO’. By using different abilities than his father he also remarks this.

A person observing from outside, a person who doesn’t get to hear Shouto’s thoughts, a person like Touya, might misunderstand.

Shouto is doing plenty of things that are exactly the things Enji wants or that Touya believes Enji wants (Touya believes his father AGAIN didn’t want to face him hence he sent Shouto) or that are done the same way as Enji would do them.

Touya legitimately thinks he’s doing them because he knows his father and sees how Shouto’s actions match and therefore comes to the logical conclusion that his actions are moved by him. It’s a possible conclusion.

However, just because he’s doing things Enji wants or in his same way, it doesn’t mean Shouto is mindlessly obeying to him. Shouto thought at all he’s doing and came to the decision that such things were also what he wanted. Rejecting someone completely to prove you’re different doesn’t mean you’re thinking for yourself, it means you’re still taking his thoughts and blindly turning them over in a failed effort to differentiate. Shouto thought things over and decided. He wasn’t being a puppet, he was taking his own decisions that accidentally match with Enji.

Ironically the one Touya blames him for is the only one that doesn’t match with Enji, Enji didn’t want Shouto to face Touya, this time he wanted to be the one to face Touya, Shouto had to persuade him of the contrary. Far from being a puppet, he took his own choice but, and here I blame Horikoshi, he didn’t explain it that well to Touya.

Shouto tells Touya he isn’t doing this on anyone’s order but made the decision to stop Touya. Skipping that it was decided (by Hawks) that Shouto should stop Touya and that if it had been decided differently Shouto would have obeyed for the sake of the battle, just Shouto’s words don’t really prove to Touya he’s not a puppet, who has internalized so much what Enji wanted that he thinks it’s his own wish to do so.

Shouto’s next sentence works better to prove he’s different from Enji.

What Shouto is fundamentally saying is he’s there because he wants to look after Touya, so as to stop him. Instead than just telling him to stop and leave like his father used to do, Shouto is there to stop him.

TOUYA ACCEPTS THIS REPLY, he accepts Shouto is there out of his own will. It’s all about his next speech, the mindless soldiers aren’t the movers and the shakers, this is about people having feelings and urges that starts firing off. He acknowledges that Shouto, like the League, has feelings and urges and that’s why he’s there.

The two will argue again, Touya criticizing Shouto, AND THIS TIME IT’S SHOUTO WHO AGREES. He agrees he had a time in which he had lost his way and had to fight to find it back. Shouto admits he’s not perfect, he made his own mistakes but now he has found his standing, his way.

Even if the two will keep on arguing, we can see that Touya accept Shouto is his own person, a person that’s very different from him but a person anyway. It doesn’t make them friends, it doesn’t make Touya like Shouto or Shouto understand Touya but at least they’re facing each other like two distinct persons who acknowledge each other as moved by their own wills, not by Enji’s will.

PART 4: WHAT THEN ABOUT THE POINTS TOUYA MAKES?

The problem is that the story doesn’t really care about the point Touya is making because it’s extremely focused in rejecting how he’s handling things, using the Heroes to do so, to carry on this ‘moral’.

This is a story that claims that when society kicks you in the nuts you shouldn’t complain but keep silent and be the best version of yourself and… bad things eventually will go away.

We see it MARKEDLY with the conflict with Spinner and Shouji in which Shouji insists the discriminated Heteromorphs should just put up with abuse or they’ll made matter worse and be the best version of themselves and not use their rage to rage against society but do like Shouji, wear a mask to hide his scars so as to put society at ease that he’s not angry about the abuse he received, accept someone might call him in gross ways, focus on the good moments and shine bright to illuminate society (because they might end up in class A who accepts them and will help them make tons of wonderful memories).

We see it with the conflict between Uraraka and Himiko where we’re told Himiko should have just put a lid on her emotions (because she might have met Uraraka who would have accepted her).

We see it with the conflict between Shouto and Touya where Shouto tell s him he should have just gotten angry with his family and not with society, that he needs to cool his head and stop (because unknown to Touya now all his family is ready to finally looking at him and showing him they care, though Shouto doesn’t tell him that).

We see it with the conflict between Tomura and Midoriya where Tomura is told to let go of his rage (because eventually Midoriya might have held his hand when he was abused and distressed).

So it doesn’t matter how right a Villain is in his complains, the story insists with a ‘it doesn’t matter, you can’t react like that, you should have put up with it’.

Again, this is not being brainwashed by Enji or kissing his ass, this is the message of the story that believes one shouldn’t rage, especially against society, but just put up with it until we wait for things to surely be better (or us to commit suicide or be killed or die. Whatever happens first).

Touya isn’t ignored because he’s being a scapegoat, no one is blaming him for the Todoroki family’s issues, or for society’s issues. They’re just saying it doesn’t matter his reasons, he couldn’t act like that. And while I agree no one can go around destroying society the option BNHA proposes, to just put up with abuse, pain and misery until they’ll magically go away just feel either absurdly naïve or disgustingly convenient.

PART 5: AND THEN WHAT ABOUT SAVING TOUYA?

It was all about STOPPING Touya, it was all about STOPPING Himiko, it was all about STOPPING Tomura, it was all about STOPPING the Heteromorphs. Saving was a bonus, Midoriya even say the possibility of killing Tomura isn’t off the table even if he doesn’t want to do it, but he insists he wants to understand what caused Tomura to snap. Uraraka also wants to understand what caused Himiko to snap and Shouto wants to know why Touya didn’t come back home. And that’s it.

Someone noticed right from chap 302 how in a manga that rambles so much about saving people, despite Horikoshi wanting to paint Touya’s family members as loving him and despite Touya being clearly suicidal and therefore in need of saving NO ONE TALKED ABOUT SAVING HIM, THEY JUST TALKED ABOUT FIGHTING AND STOPPING HIM.

The story prioritizes saving the nameless civilians over saving the Villains. The Villains are bad, they need to be punished, to suffer consequences for their actions, they can’t be saved, if not spiritually. This is the moral of the story. The Villains has crossed the Moral Event Horizon when they’ve attacked society, they’re past saving.

Also, @stillness-in-green has a wonderful post discussing how they’re past the age of saving.

Anyway, either because they crossed the moral even horizon or because they're too old or because their death is good for cheap emotional sadness, there’s no saving, if not of the spiritual kind.

And in a story that talked so much about saving and would like to claim it has a happy ending that’s not an uplifting at all, at least as far as I'm concerned.

[plxsultra]

my first mha oc sketch

miharayama kana is the scorched earth hero: scoria. she’s been one of endeavor’s top sidekicks for nearly a decade. she’s the oldest of the flaming sidekickers, sort of acting like the big sister in the group’s dynamic.

she has a lava quirk, officially known as magmatic pressure. her body works as a high-pressure furnace that turns minerals to magma for her to release or “vent” as she sees fit. it’s like a volcanic environment inside her and she has to find a way to release what she is generating.

BEHIND THE NAME:

“miharayama” literally translates to “three plains mountain” or “hole mountain”; referring to the central cone of the izu oshima mountain, mount mihara

“kana” meaning “powerful,” “capable”

scoria is a pyroclastic rock of basaltic or andesitic composition that comes from the ejection of lava from a volcano that cools rapidly.

(onima, burnin, and kido were traced, only my oc was drawn completely on my own. her design is inspired by starfire in the dc animated universe as well as lavagirl)

[autumnmobile12]

The Vanguard Action Squad, Plus Their Affiliates and Enablers

...

Out of context, this kinda looks like they're all mocking All Might's victory pose.

Twice be like, “Who farted! It was me!”

...

What’s funny about this is when I used the reference from the original Death Parade opening…

…I didn’t realize they were all crammed in the elevator going to Hell.  (Or the Void, you know what I mean.)

[everytsukauchi]

[spinji]

MHA Cheebs 16/45

More top 10 pros and the burning sidekicks 🔥

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[underratedmhapoll]

Every good hero needs some backup!

Best Sidekick

Sir Nighteye

Burnin

Centipeder

Sirius

David Shield

Bubble Girl

Kido

Onima

Voting ended onMay 9, 2024