#yotsubashi rikiya

[yotsubashis]

how i love you so 💚

[shih-coulda-had-it]

twins redux

bonus sketch but it's indicative of my same face doodle issues

[bnhaobservation]

Overall, do you think Tomura is a well written character? And a well written main Villain?

Honestly the only criticism I have against him is that he doesn’t seem the threat the story portrays him as, but that’s really on Horikoshi and his refusal to let the Heroes face some long lasting consequences.

But, for real, I think Horikoshi’s decision to go with such an unconventional antagonist was his strongest card, both in originality and thematically. (Until he blew it).

I have seen people complain that Nine was a better Hero to the Villains, as he had an established, coherent goal from the start and was stable enough to actually pursue it, but for me Tomura’s madness and instability, his pain and raw anger, are much more compelling.

All of who he is is a manifesto of what happens to people who are discarded by society.

He’s a victim who won’t let what happened to him go, everyone will pay and see the consequences of his suffering. His untreated trauma and its effects, both for him and the environment around him, aren’t softened in any way.

However, he’s also shown to be able of improvement and change through the bonds he formed with the league. He had a sincere desire to make them justice hidden under the lump of hatred and sadness. But, (as much as I hate the whole afo/ofa psychic connection), he wouldn’t have ever seen his own growth and humanity without the hero who tried to save him, Deku. (Can’t believe I’m giving Deku credit.)

Nine, or someone more like him, could have never represented such a middle ground, because Nine was already able to save himself and others. Nine didn’t need society or a hero to help him, therefore society was not in need to be challenged to improve and become more inclusive.

Tomura learned to express real, heartfelt criticism of hero society, but that didn’t dismiss the need for heroes to save him from himself and his abuser.

He established valid thematic points without dismissing the heroes’ role in helping out victims, even the bad ones. He was perfect for the point MHA was making (or pretending to make).

But I don’t know, what do you think?

Sorry for answering you so late but not only I was away form home but, as usual, I planned for a short reply and ended up writing a long post analyzing Tomura.

Sorry about this but I should probably admit I do love Tomura so I’ve tried extra hard to be impartial, listing his good points and the flaws.

LET’S TALK ABOUT CHARACTERIZATION

For me the final idea behind Tomura’s character is great, he’s basically the mirror image of the main character, down to the red shoes. Both he and Midoriya start out Quirkless (Midoriya is born as such, Tenko had his own stolen). Midoriya is bullied outside his house but his mother loves him, Tenko has friends outside his house but his father makes said house unsafe. Then someone gives them a Quirk (that destroys Tenko’s family and Midoriya’s body) and offers to mentor them. Unluckily for Tenko it’s AFO while for Midoriya it’s All Might so Midoriya gets to have his ‘Hero story’ in which his actions inspire All Might to act, where Tenko murders his whole family.

And the two grow and Tenko is taught the downside/dark side of the Hero world, while Midoriya enrolls in U.A. high and learns of the bright side of it and then the two clash and Midoriya learns Hero society isn’t as perfect as he believes but decides to save Tenko, basically wanting to teach him the upside/light side of the Hero world.

This is the basic idea behind the two and it’s VERY GOOD.

Tenko/Tomura is perfect as a foil to Midoriya, he’s even given companions that match/mirror Midoriya’s friends: obviously Touya/Shouto, Himiko/Uraraka but, in a way, also Kurogiri/Bakugou (relationship from childhood) and if you really wants to pull things Atsuhiro/Iida (the families shaping them), Shuuichi/Shouji (the Heteromorph drama) and Jin/Aoyama (the betrayal plot). As you can see each of them has a point of similitude that however goes opposite to the other, same as Tomura and Midoriya.

Tenko/Tomura is given an intriguing backstory, an evolution, flaws, companions, a mentor figure, a starting point, an inner research for a goal that’s more than just ‘I’m evil’, an evolution and an end.

All this is very, very good.

What’s not so good is how the story handles all this.

Tomura’s evolution and inner world don’t get enough screentime.

In the first part he’s a certain kind of person that threatened Kurogiri, didn’t care for the Villains who carried with himself at the USJ and would have murdered Touya and Himiko because they annoyed him. Having a talk with Midoriya is a good idea to start to change him… but sadly despite Midoriya having PLENTY of screentime, the talk doesn’t equally affect Midoriya (why should we care? Because it would be important to have them affect each other instead while Midoriya does ask to All Might if there was someone he couldn’t save, this doesn’t really change his approach to things much).

Still, like Midoriya as a Hero, he’s not really much of a Villain (even though the police and the Heroes make an overly big deal of him) but it fits, because as Midoriya’s foil he can’t be too good.

Then we have the ‘Forest Training Camp’ arc and the ‘Hideout raid’ arc. Tomura somehow decides to put Touya in charge and target Bakugou. The story doesn’t explain how he came to the decision Touya was the one more fitting to lead the team which is a flaw in writing because all of sudden he considers the League his comrades and somehow it will be implied he knows their backstories (except maybe Touya’s) as he’ll claim each of them have suffered.

The story doesn’t even quite goes on why he wants Bakugou, does he see him as a fellow victim or just as an useful pawn to attack Hero society? Is he trying to be a manipulator solely for his own convenience or he’s genuinely trying to offer Bakugou a way out from a society that would chain and muzzle him?

Each one can have their own theory but the point is the story doesn’t really tell us what he felt for Bakugou and when they’ll confront again he’ll claim he lost interest in him… but he’s possessed by AFO so who knows.

All those plot/characterization holes are here because Tomura will move to his… ‘next stage’.

After AFO is jailed Tomura is characterized as someone who cares for the League. They’re now “friends”, “companions”, “allies” or, to use the word he uses ‘nakama’ (仲間), which is a word that implies a stronger bond that casual friends, they’re friends and colleagues/allies, they share with him something. He tolerates their weird behaviors, he wants to avenge Magne, he doesn’t mind if Himiko points her knife at his throat. I love this characterization and we can of course assume this is the natural evolution of him losing AFO and having to spend time with them so he grew close to them (as h e shows no care for Muscular, Moonfish, Mustard), but the story doesn’t portray this, it just jumps from a point to the other.

Kurogiri is whisked away by the plot, so that we can’t see their relation evolve.

Tomura though, is very interesting and promising as he deals with Overhaul, but also totally different from how he was before, he stays calm, he doesn’t get upset with Jin, he tries to protect the League, first telling Atsuhiro to wait, then jumping on the battleground when he doesn’t. Later he’ll negotiate with Overhaul calmly getting info out of him and sets up a way for them to take advantage of him. Ultimately he’ll destroy Overhaul and steals his bullets.

It’s a completely different Tomura if we compare him to the one who would throw a tantrum when things didn’t go his way, be it when All Might got in advantage, when he interacted with Stain or when Touya annoyed him. It’s a great Tomura and yes, as said before he could have changed naturally due to losing his mentor but… the story just change him without exploring the transition.

This is bad and sadly a recurring problem in the story. Characters change and WHY they did so isn’t explored or it is explored only vaguely so that it feels as if their character is retconned.

Now, people can change. They won’t do it overnight as it’s a pretty difficult process.

In theory times went by so yes, Tomura could change and his change would make sense and I can construct an (I hope) good argument on why he went toward this direction… but as the slow shift isn’t represented in any way, it might feel an abrupt shift to a reader.

The new Tomura block starts with ‘My Villain academia’, which more or less continues the new characterization of Tomura as someone who cares about his friends but also as someone who knows how to be a leader, making it even more marked. In fact he puts up with Shuuichi’s criticism, he goes to rescue Giran, he promises the League they can get what they want, he lets Touya free to do as he prefers, he opens up about his past, he handles Garaki and Re-Destro without losing it, gaining a commanding presence, he doesn’t coldly murder Re-Destro and his allies but becomes their ruler, he remembers what the League wanted to eat…

The change is now less abrupt compared to previously, it actually comes as a more smooth evolution of his character, plus the story gives him drama, finally revealing his past and helps us make sense of his motive.

In fact Tomura’s motive is now more ‘his own motive’, he has a target, he has decided to destroy all he hates so as to free himself from the weight in his heart where before, with his claiming he wanted to question society and that was it, he seemed to have less of an aim and just parrot AFO’s teachings.

All this is good and interesting to me, on the other side, Horikoshi never develop Tomura’s relation with Machia or with the Meta Liberation Army so it feels like he’s just using them and this is not so great. Credits when it’s due there wasn’t much time to explore it, as Tomura soon ends up in Garaki’s lab but it still feels a wasted chance considering in the end he’ll claim he wants to be ‘a Hero for the Villains’.

Again, the readers can try and connect things but the story doesn’t bother. Tomura gets a last moment of glory when he wakes up and fight the Heroes. He’s great in his characterization, the way he takes care of the League, of how he spares the High Ends so that they can use them, how he interacts with the Heroes, how he explains them the difference between Heroes and Villains, how when Midoriya complains he won’t forgive him, he calmly answers he won’t forgive them either, how he tries to resist to AFO’s possession, at first in a friendly way only to change tone when he realizes AFO has been using him, that’s a great Tomura.

Then he gets possessed and possessed Tomura is nowhere as interesting as we don’t get him react to anything that’s going on (Twice’s death, Touya’s revelation, Atsuhiro and Machia being arrested and so on…). Credits when it’s due, the story hardly focuses on the League at this point because the new antagonist is AFO and his band of merry escaped convicts/assassins.

Tomura ‘comes back’ for the battle with Midoriya. They don’t really talk much. Tomura has some good moments of characterization but, for being a moment I had long awaited, it mostly managed to disappoint me and it comes with characterization downsides too.

I tend to think at that point Horikoshi really wanted to end the manga and that was a huge part of the problem but I might be wrong. It’s fitting he feels suicidal in the way he attacks, I liked his monologue with Midoriya in the OFA space and, later, that’s nice he cares about Shuuichi but what about everything else? The fact he gets again possessed and psychologically shattered but no, he’s saved by Nana but he doesn’t get a meaningful talk with her or All Might and he’s fine entrusting everything to Midoriya when he first said the Villains needed a Hero… as if he thinks Midoriya can be a Hero for the Villains too… honestly doesn’t work well for me. Again the evolution feels forced, jumpy, Horikoshi wants him to say something and so he complies.

So, on the long run, Tomura’s characterization (as far as I’m involved) has up and downs that other Villains don’t have because they get less screentime so Horikoshi sticks to just a characterization for them.

It’s still an interesting characterization, one that could have been amazing if Horikoshi had just taken care to smoother some transitions and one I love even if I’m the one who has to do the work to connect the dots.

LET’S TALK ABOUT HIS GOAL

At first Tomura’s goal is hard to understand.

When facing All Might he claims he’s angry because both Heroes and Villains thrive on violence but they’re still categorized in good and evil, All Might is called a symbol of peace but he’s just a tool for violence made to keep Villains down, however violence can only breed more violence and he plans to show it by killing All Might. [Chap. 19] All Might shoots his motive down claiming he’s not an idealist but someone who’s enjoying himself, which Tomura confirms. All Might will later call him a man-child.

When he confronts himself with Stain he summarizes his goal is ‘kill All Might and all he doesn’t like’ [Chap. 47] which leads Stain to label him as a temper tantrum kid claiming he has bloodlust without conviction. Pressured by Stain, Tomura insists he has no conviction but he’s still driven by All Might and the society that worship him and that he wants to crush, so that can be his conviction. Stain is impressed and agrees they’ve in common the wish to destroy the status quo and that Tomura actually has a seed of conviction. [Chap. 49]

Tomura is not quite sure, when wandering before meeting Midoriya he insists he and the Hero Killer were just ‘destroying the things they hate’ and, talking with Midoriya he claims he hates everyone and everything. His words also hint he’s upset society isn’t noticing him but they’re focusing on Stain. After his talk with Midoriya though, his mind clears up even though is explanation isn’t so clear. He claims he’s angry at Stain and Midoriya and at society because they’re all thinking about All Might, smiling wide and thinking there’s no one All Might can’t save while, at the same time, remembering how All Might didn’t save him. Moments later he’ll claim he’ll create a world without All Might and cause enough destruction to show everyone how fragile their justice really is. [Chap. 69]

When facing Bakugou he observes how everyone is giving a hard time to Heroes because their job is to protect people but they did too little, too late and  screwed up, but everyone can do it yet people expects them to be perfect. He then claims his war is based on a few simple questions: ‘What is a Hero? What is justice? Is this what society’s really supposed to be like?’ He also points out that all in the League have different stories but they’ve all suffered thanks to other people, to rules and to heroes and felt suffocated. [Chap. 85] Tomura is pointing out society is, in a way, reacting like him. The Heroes failed to save them and they turned against the Heroes, he’s NOT different from them and they’re not different from him. It’s just that they’re so stuck on how Heroes are perfect they don’t think Heroes can fail and create people like him, but have Heroes fail them and they turn against Heroes just the same as him. And this is what Tomura wants, he wants them to feel his own desperation, he wants them to notice he’s desperate and needed help and no one helped him.

When confronting Overhaul, he claims he’s collecting people to annihilate the Hero society and the latter scolds him about Tomura not having a plan, not knowing what to do once he has expanded, how to use the people under him. [Chap. 125] The two of course couldn’t be more different, as Overhaul wants to profit from the destruction of Hero society, while Tomura doesn’t. He’s not in for the money. In the following confrontation with Overhaul he’ll agree to join him as long as they won’t work under him as they’ll do what they want, when and how they want.

When confronting Garaki Tomura defines his goal better. He claims he can’t remember his past but he feels his rage boil when he wears his hands… and we’re starting to get better hints about how Tomura’s ‘rage’ is a cover, a reaction, a copying mechanism to Tomura’s suffering, to his trauma of killing his family, to how he wasn’t helped, no Hero coming to save him, how he was abandoned, people not caring about his misery until AFO found him. AFO called it frustration, rage, but it’s actually trauma and pain. Tomura concluded he’ll never feel good again, even if society comes crashing down, even if I rise to rule the underworld, the weight in his heart is never going to go away so he hates everything and wants to destroy everything, thinking this will lead him to a beautiful horizon. It’s at the same time a desperate attempt at destroying what pains him and a request for help, or, at least, a request to be understood because if everyone is miserable like him, his situation will then be ‘normal’. [Chap. 222] At the same time though, he won’t deny his allies the chance to get what they want.

Re-Destro will also question him, asking him what burdens he bears and what does he seeks to build, as all he can see is a hollow man who creates nothing and indulge in destruction. [Chap. 234] Tomura will agree with him that all he can do is destroy. [Chap. 235] He then will claim he views the future (for himself) as unnecessary but he wants the League to live as they see fit [Chap. 237]

Then we’ve Tomura answering to Endeavor who claims he can gather all the power he likes but without ideals, Tomura’s hollow destruction won’t bring down the Heroes. At this Tomura answers his father told him that Heroes hurt their own families just to help complete strangers. He then points out how he always had ideals and explains how Heroes pretended to be society’s guardians, but also how they pretended not to see those they couldn’t protect, sweeping their pain under the rugs, tainting everything they have built, so their system is rotten from inside. It built up little by little, they’ve the common trash dependent on being protected and the brave guardians who created the trash that needs coddling in a corrupt, vicious circle. Tomura claims everything he has witnessed, the whole system they have bult has always rejected him so he’ll reject it too and that’s why he destroy, why he took power for himself. He doesn’t care if they don’t understand, this is what makes them Heroes and Villains. [Chap. 280/281] There’s a tiny bit that I like to consider part of Tomura’s mindset. Midoriya jumps on him (after Tomura has hit Gran Torino) claiming he won’t forgive him and Tomura answer back he won’t forgive anyone either.

The story also begins to imply Tomura wants to destroy all that comes from his birth house. [Chap. 292]

Later Tomura will remind Midoriya they won’t sit down for a chat as he’s his Villain [Chap. 378] which hints at how he gave up on being understood by Heroes. He’s a Villain to them, that’s all there is. Then he’ll claim his heart isn’t wavering and that everything he witnessed in the world lead to the existence of ‘that house’ (as his family house) so as Shigaraki Tomura and Shimura Tenko he only has one hope, to destroy everything connected to that house and that’s the only thing that’s going to save him. [Chap. 379] As Shigaraki himself is connected to that house, this is also a suicidal declaration.

The last bit we have is inside Tomura’s mindscape. Tomura insists the destruction of his family was his own choice because otherwise why does he has such hands? In case someone forgot about it, people connects Quirks with character, even Re-Destro did claim Tomura was only capable of destroying. To cope with what happened, which, at the beginning, HE CLEARLY DIDN’T DO ON PURPOSE (he was actually freaked out and scared and it was only because his father rejected him that he connected the dots that it was him causing destruction and killed his father) he decided it happened due to his own will and used rage as a copying mechanism to deal with his grief. No one helped him and this made matters worse. Tomura accepted being a Villain because society cut him out from its circle and, at the same time, the fact he was a Villain, gave him another group. He couldn’t be All Might, he couldn’t be a Hero for society, but he can be a Hero for the people like him, Villains who were chased out of society and are miserable and rejected. All Tomura has his his pain covered up by his hatred but even if his hatred were to be taken away from him and he were to end up hollow, the ‘Villains’ (aka the people society crushed), needs him to be a Hero for them so he wouldn’t stop because THEY are ‘his society’ a society that stands opposed to Midoriya’s. [Chap. 418]

So where all this leads us?

Tomura is pretty solid in his motive/goal, even if, at the start, he doesn’t know how to verbalize it well. Hero society destroyed him. It twisted his father, it didn’t save Tenko, made Tenko a Villain unworthy of their help (as in refused to help him when he wandered through the city, which Tenko interpreted as rejection due to what he caused to his family), it let him fall prey of AFO so that ultimately Tenko accepted/embraced being a Villain, being Shigaraki Tomura. Society hurt him, it continues to hurt him by merely existing and not caring about him and, in the same way as Midoriya can’t forgive him for hurting the people he cared about Tomura can’t forgive society for hurting him. Tomura knows destroying society WON’T FIX HIM, it won’t make him happy, but it’ll stop extra pain to be thrown at him… or at the other people who are with him which society labels as ‘Villains’. While he doesn’t believe he can be happy destroying everything, himself included, he thinks they might have a chance.

It’s a good motive and one that’s not so common for an antagonist/Villain.

LET’S TALK ABOUT WHAT IT TAKES TO BE A VILLAIN

In the story all it takes is to use your Quirk unauthorized, generally to commit a crime so I think we should probably dig in him being a danger.

Tomura is a work in progress, same as Midoriya, he grows in his Villain role, even though the police makes a big deal of his right from the start. During the war he has gained power and a army and he’s VERY, VERY dangerous.

He’s also someone who plans to destroy society, in the sense he’ll shatter its beliefs in Heroes, it’s faith, so yes, he is a great Villain by the end.

Some think a Villain has solely to be evil, someone who takes pleasure in hurting you, someone you want to see murdered, but I’m not of that group, for me that sort of Villains were the ones of child tales, like the evil witch of Snowcone, the bad wolf of Red riding hood. Different tastes, I guess.

I do like how Tomura is a person, a person society destroyed because originally Tomura wanted to be like All Might and then things went wrong and he became a Villain because ‘all it takes is a single bad day’ (actually a series of bad days in his case but you get what I mean). I like the idea what happened to Tomura could have happened to everyone had they gone through what he went through.

To me it makes him more scary exactly because he isn’t the guy born evil, he’s the guy who was born just fine like any of us but then life twisted him. He’s the warning we can become like him, that we can create him by causing someone to go through what he went through.

And yet Tomura remains human, because even though what he does is terrible, in the end he’s not a monster, he’s just a human like us.

LET’S TALK ABOUT TOMURA AND NINE

The two are similar yet different.

In the short stories its implied Nine knew pain and viewed his men as comrades same as Tomura. However Nine has a Darwinistic idea of how society has to be, with him at the top and strong Quirk users below him but still high in power. This doesn’t necessarily means Villains, Endeavor and All Might have strong Quirks themselves… though of course they wouldn’t agree with Nine’s plan, which will likely set them up for elimination. Nine’s idea is similar to the one of Re-Destro. This means Villains like Spinner, who aren’t lions, don’t have a place in Nine’s project.

On the other side Tomura wants to include in his project all of those who are mistreated by society, strong Quirk or not but his idea of ‘mistreating’ seems rather broad. However Tomura is more of an anarchic, he plans to destroy society but not to rule it, and, as I said in another post, anarchy tends to have short life. Someone will come and take the reins of what Tomura left behind.

Now that someone might have learnt the lesson and create a better society… or he could just be Re-Destro or one of his affiliates and create a different kind of superpower society that still will mistreat someone else.

In itself there’s no such thing as ‘perfect society’, because there are not perfect people.

So there’s not really between them a ‘better Hero for the Villains’ because they’ll go at it differently. Nine plans to rule society, so he’ll be around maintaining his rule, which however will benefit only a certain kind of Villains.

Tomura believes his actions will benefit all the Villains which mistreated by society but doesn’t plan to be around to ensure things will go well AFTERWARD and, even if he were to survive, he thinks his role is merely to destroy what would oppress them.

There’s also something else to say… Nine seems older than Tomura, and he wasn’t kept immature, isolated from people and manipulated like Tomura was at the start. It makes sense he has a better idea of what he wants (especially because in a movie you can’t give him the time to clear his mind), one Tomura will reach with time.

Everything else is a matter of preference.

Even in the Hero camp there’s who prefer Midoriya and who instead thinks Haimawari (the main character from Vigilantes) should have been the main character of BNHA because he’s a better protagonist. At each his own.

To sum it up, yeah, I do think Tomura is a good character (but he could have been better had Horikoshi paid him more care) and a good Villain who can be a Hero for the Villains but that’s just me. If someone prefers Nine to Tomura, that’s fine.

Thanks for your ask and sorry for the late and long reply!

[crim-alley]

Age analysis:

- Meta Liberation Army -

(Please ignore all my spelling mistakes, I overthink too much)

Skeptic/Tomoyasu Chikazoku:

- I've noticed that he really doesn't have any major aging lines or details in his design, although his eye bags and chin details could be seen as his aging, it just seems that they are just part of his face shape and his working habits.

Ex: His eye bags would probably form from his time in front of computers and in dark rooms

My age guess for him would probably be his late 20's, maybe 27 or 28

----------------------

Trumpet/Koku Hanabata:

- Trumpet is very obvious not young, a lot of his dialogue is very formal and he does say "My, is that what the kids are saying these days?" + He's a political party leader, where you would have to be a certain age to legally be a party leader. He very obviously in either his late 30's or early 40's. He also has obvious aging lines in the manga. Eye lines and forehead lines are apparent, but I hate how they took them away in the anime, but all of the MLA got screwed over by Bones

Age Guess: About 42 or 43

----------------------

Curious/Chitose Kizuki:

- It's obvious that she's aged, she has the same eye lines in the manga, so I couldn't find any more description or design for her age. But it's very clear that she is over the age of 30. Eye lines are very common aging factors and by her small flashback with Re-Destro, she was definitely around her 30's cause of Re-Destros design at the point

Age Guess: Around 41, possibly 42

----------------------

Re-Destro/Rikiya Yotsubashi:

- We all know our favorite silly old man. He has very very clear aging lines, along with stress lines as well (his ability side effect). Also considering he's a CEO of Dentrant, the grand commander of the MLA, and his speech pattern, he's finely aged.

Age guess: Around 45, possible 46.

----------------------

Geten:

- Geten is very obviously not aged at all. He has a young character design, but it's said that he never went to school, and ran away from his family young, cause fuck his family (they are so gross and what they did to Rei ruined her life.)

Age guess: Around 20 or 21. I really don't think he's older than that, still very young by MLA standers

[gghoulish]

my top ten my hero academia characters (part 2) / yotsubashi rikiya, todoroki enji, magne, bubaigawara jin, and sero hanta.

[super-paper]

MVA Appreciation Post? MVA Appreciation Post.

Rereading MVA with the benefit of some hindsight really makes me appreciate just how well-crafted it is as a story arc. Like, pretty much every aspect of it was tailor-made for the sake of exploring Tomura (like....!! even the conflicts & themes explored thru other characters are still ultimately written to service Tomura's character in ways that only a completely insane person can appreciate, lol.)

Mostly just listing some observations and things I like abt MVA that I feel lay the groundwork for Tomura's entire character + arc:

There's a lot of significance to Tomura fighting quirk based cults back to back in the same arc that delves into his own upbringing under AFO, I feel! There's also significance to his indoctrination into villainy under AFO mirroring ReDestro's indoctrination by the Meta Liberation Army. Both Tomura and ReDestro are framed as believing that they made a personal "choice" to walk this path, when in reality they were both groomed into their respective roles by predatory adults.

Underrated and potentially devastating detail that I (a known sicko) enjoy : Tomura and ReDestro aren't even allowed to choose their own villain names after being baptized into villainy.

This part is especially glaring when you contrast it with the earlier chapters, where Class 1A is actively encouraged to *choose* their own names and really think about what sort of hero name best represents them. Even when the kids ultimately choose names that others gave them (Izuku), and even when they resolve to take up the mantle of their family names (Iida)-- the distinction is that they are still very much naming *themselves* and not being named by other people. They are all allowed to assign their own meaning to their chosen hero names. There is a choice.

In contrast, Tomura and ReDestro's villain names are not an expression of their identity, but a suppression of it.

The idea of inheriting a "will" or "name" that completely consumes your own is already in play, and it only gets worse from here!

Masks are also a big theme! MVA literally opens with the LOV wrecking a group of fantasy bigots who hide behind masks.

Spinner doesn't hide his own identity behind a mask, rather, he hides his lack of identity through cosplaying as someone else.

Jin and Himiko have their "masks" forcibly removed during their respective battles-- Jin is able to verify and assert his own identity, which allows him to discard his mask for the remainder of the battle. Himiko instead scrambles to put her "mask" back on in response to Curious claiming that she's secretly miserable.

Compress gets half of his mask shattered at the same time that his aloof "we're villains not a friendship club!!" façade begins crumble, and he becomes more and more vocally concerned for Tomura's safety. This bit of symbolism is repeated again during the PLW, where the whole mask comes off once he finally admits he loves the LOV and very nearly kills himself in an attempt to save them.

AFO's face is constantly obscured by shadows, but it otherwise remains completely uncovered-- indicating that the "kindly face" he shows to Tomura is, in fact, a mask in itself.

And here's where Hori's brilliant art direction comes into play! Tomura decays Kotaro's hand-- the very symbol of his own rejection and suppression that he has worn as a mask since his debut-- but he does not embrace his identity as Tenko. The blood from Tomura’s head injury now creates the visual of a mask as he instead embraces his identity as "Shigaraki Tomura", the symbol of fear who exists to beckon acts of mourning into the world. (and the blood mask also resembles the dark shading that constantly obscures AFO’s true face in the flashback chapters! ...as does the creepy permasmile Tomura has for the rest of the arc! :D )

Visually, it also resembles the way ReDestro's (stress-powered!) quirk starts spreading across his face like a mask whenever he starts vomiting up MLA propaganda and ranting about the """glorious""" burden he inherited from the original Destro. (😬)

The mask imagery is even more explicit in the anime, where the red really makes the whole thing pop:

lowkey it's hilarious that a good chunk of Tomura's story is told through a mix of visual story telling and symbolism, but he also happens to spend half his screen time shirtless and distracting ppl from said symbolism with his eight-pack.

Seriously tho', it's little stuff like this that really cements MHA as a story that's even more enjoyable when you reread it. Moving on!

Curious 🤝 AFO, Being creepily affectionate with the victim whose story you plan to rewrite and exploit for your own gain

Toga’s failed/rejected martyrdom at the hands of Miss Curious foreshadowing Tomura’s successful martyrdom at the hands of the PLF and AFO-- the inherent dehumanization that comes with martyrdom and turning others into a "symbol", the lack of actual care for the martyr/symbol as an individual, and the idea that Tomura has always been a sacrificial lamb that's lurking just below the surface of every aspect in this narrative. Curious wants Toga to die to fit the MLA’s narrative, AFO wants Tenko to die to fit his own personal narrative— neither Curious or AFO care about Toga or Tomura as individuals, nor do they care about saving them from their circumstances. Because to Curious and AFO, their only value lies in fulfilling a certain narrative-- and that narrative is only fulfilled through their deaths. Both AFO and Curious WANT these stories to be tragedies, and you only beat someone like that by refusing to follow their script.

"Let's turn your death into a tragedy! You'll become a martyr whose tale serves as a parable for the ages!" "I'll shape him! Mold him! He will be a symbol of fear who lusts for destruction!" Toga and Tomura are both depicted as lacking agency in how their respective stories are told-- Toga manages to lash back against Curious' attempts to commandeer her narrative, but Tomura ultimately finds himself written into a corner by AFO.

The manipulation of media and the '"truth" being a reoccurring theme in MVA through both Curious/Skeptic, and this being foiled with the way Tomura’s own memories/perceptions of his past are called into question multiple times throughout the arc. In the same chapter where Skeptic discusses his plan to edit the footage captured in Deika to make the LOV look like they're the aggressors and the MLA look like brave heroes, we have Tomura lamenting how his memories are like a busted movie recording. He compares his memories to film snippets at the start of the arc, too.

Tomura's perception of his past being directly influenced by his traumatic upbringing under AFO is something that goes without saying at this point, so I won't beat that dead horse any further-- but it's legit fascinating how Hori lays out the groundwork for the readers so that we naturally reach the conclusion that Tomura's recollection is something that we are meant to doubt.

Yet another notch on the long list of Tomura wearing clothes that other people chose for him, reciting words written by others as if they were his own (.....l-literally reading from a cue card lmfaoooo it could not be any more on the nose if it tried 😭😭😭)

but seriously i could write a a ton on how Tomura's lack of agency with his own clothes is Very Much a Thing in The Story, and how him no longer bothering to self-style after MVA and just letting others dress him up however they want (or y'know... just not bothering with clothes at all!) is one of the best stealth indicators of where his mental state is actually at.

(tl;dr tomura asserting that he's "definitely his own person" and that he "controls himself" when he doesn't even have the agency or energy to dress himself the way he wants and is constantly getting treated like a life-sized dress-up doll by other villains is another one of those understated parts of the series/tomura's character design that makes me Big Depressy)

But!! When Tomura DOES actually add his own flair & individuality to his fashion, he generally accessorizes with things that tie him to the hero side and his identity as Tenko (red shoes as a connecting thread to Izuku, long flowing capes that connect him to heroism)

What "liberation" does to a mfer

As an aside: ReDestro feeling liberated from his stress as Tomura starts laying waste to the MLA/Deika (but still failing to break free from his grooming despite this!) serves as a dark parallel to Tomura “breaking free” from vestige!AFO during the final war, but still insisting that destruction is all he wants. Both Tomura and ReDestro have been prisoners their whole lives, and thus, have no frame of reference for what true freedom is. They both come so close to having a Realization About What They Truly Want™ only to immediately fall back into what they’re familiar with (ReDestro has always been a follower of cult forced to masquerade as its leader, Tomura still thinks that he wanted his family to die and takes the catharsis he felt from destroying his abusive home as evidence that he was always secretly bad). Hori is horrifyingly realistic in his depictions of the hold that grooming has on people.

Like. It's also the way that Tomura and ReDestro’s quirks are both powered by their misery, but they're surrounded by people who fail to see this as a bad thing and instead choose to romanticize their strength as something they can use to make their "dreams" into reality (and the unspoken question: is it really a "dream" if chasing after it makes you completely miserable? We have a different word for dreams that hurt you, boys!).

I'll stop here bc this is already too long, but man, every time I revisit this arc I notice something new (and horrifying) about Tomura's character. It's literally the gift that keeps on giving.

[stillness-in-green]

Months later and still kinda salty about the Advisers treatment in S6 since its very clear they were not on the team's mind: not including Bindi with Amplivolt against Edgeshot, not including Hole guy's panel about to ambush Orca (so he just got beat out of nowhere), not including the panel of Cabbie Hat and Fox guy running off, Hose Face not speaking before he killed Midnight, heck even messing up who gets captured in the end. I know they aren't super relevant, but S6 didn't help them either.

Man, I completely fell off of watching the anime even for the purposes of criticism, so thank you for this update to clarify for me that only disappointment waits if and when I ever bother.  I did get curious and look up who gets captured in the end, and wow, they really did comprehensively fuck that up, didn’t they? I know you know because you wrote me this nice ask about it, but for everyone else, take a look at this nonsense:

(Note that, as ever when I'm replying to asks from my dear fellow advisor fan @shockersalvage, the PLF codenames below are pure headcanon.)

I am agog at how huge and accessible and openable those windows look. Why on earth would you use vehicles like that for prisoner transport?) Are they just packing dangerous terrorists back onto the same buses the Heroes used to get up here, or what?

Comparing that to the equivalent shot in the manga, they didn’t get any of these people right. (Excluding the Heroes, who get relatively faithful if slightly less detailed renditions.  Because of course they do.)

Look at the windows on these transports and laugh with me about how ridiculous the ones in the anime are in comparison. Also, I notice that while the anime got Tartarus Hat: The Capture Tape Hero's look right, they did fail to notice that the restraints dangling loose from his wrists are the same as those the PLF captives are bound with.

Not every person on the ground here is tentatively identifiable as a ranked advisor—only, you know, five out of seven of them, the entire middle group.  The two on the back right are really obviously Galvanize and Piercings Dude (Compress’s #1 and Dabi’s #3), and given the visual similarities and the grouping, I’m pretty confident the others are Fray (Toga’s #3), Red (Skeptic’s #1) and Band Jacket Guy (Compress’s #2).

Yet even given the anime’s sloppy, ugly coloring decisions for the advisors they did show, they didn’t even accidentally get any of these right.  Band Jacket Guy and Fray are both dark-haired in the anime, while Red’s honey blonde and Piercings Dude is silver-haired with a striped coat jacket.  I would almost venture to guess that the anime intended the dude they gave the handlebar mustache to above (Galvanize in the manga, as apparent by his forelock and forehead scar) to be Sanctum, save that they didn’t those colors right, either!  They have Sanctum in white in the opening attack scene and in blue in Twice’s imagine spot.

Just an impressively thorough failure to realize the manga’s intention.

One thing you didn’t mention that I wondered about was Scarecrow’s first scene of note, so I also looked that up—I wanted to see if he had a voice actor yet, given how important his voice would turn out to be! 

Lo and behind, I find that the anime—while at least including Scarecrow, absolutely not guaranteed, as the above dissection shows!—gave what I had always assumed to be his dialogue to Re-Destro instead.  Which, I guess, looking at the manga again, could be the intention?  But I don’t really read it that way.

It’s certainly flowery enough to be Re-Destro!  He definitely talks like that!  But, as we later find out, Scarecrow absolutely talks like that too.  And here, looking at the paneling and the way the talk bubbles fall within it, we can see that Re-Destro’s obvious dialogue (“What did you pesky Heroes do to our savior and liberator?!”) breaks out of the panel binding, overlapping into the scene change to Gigantomachia’s rampage.

That’s what I would expect to be the case if the next line (“After Gigantomachia, Liberation warriors!  Our revolution is at hand!”) was also meant to be his, ringing out so loudly over the battlefield that even out in the forest, it’s still audible above the sounds of pitched, widespread conflict.

Instead of being overlaid across the panel borders like the others, though, it’s fully contained within the panels, visually implying that the line is being delivered by someone within that same scene/panel, for which the most obvious candidate is the guy prominently foregrounded in it.  I suppose the counter-argument is that there aren’t any obvious tails to the talk bubble that would link it to him, as with the bubbles in final panel with Kamui Woods and Midnight, but then, Re-Destro’s shouting doesn’t have any tails, either!

Overall, I guess it’s a valid read, but I frankly just don’t like it as much as I do the dialogue serving as an early indicator of Scarecrow’s personality.  Also, while it surely pleases me to contemplate that Re-Destro loves Shigaraki so much that he’d order a sizeable chunk of his own army to abandon him in favor of going to his savior and liberator, I have to think that if he did give that order, considerably more than a piddling 132 out of 17,000 people at the Villa would have successfully prioritized escape!

Sorry for taking so long with this one, shockersalvage!  My plan was to respond to it when I got back to PLF Spotting posts, but I just don’t think I can be arsed with those at this point. I kind of unreasonably hate the stupid puce-colored arm the anime saddled Shigaraki with for some godforsaken reason, and I’ve not yet forgiven the show for giving Re-Destro an anime-original scene but fucking it up by having him identify Destro Classic as his literal father. Also, while the anime transparently doesn’t care about the PLF, it’s only emulating its source material in that regard, so it's hard to muster up too much righteous indignation on the manga's behalf.

Regardless, thank you as always for the ask and your patience! Please do feel free to report back in with any further PLF Erasure Crimes the anime commits; I'm not expecting to pay it much attention at this point save probably ducking in to watch Scarecrow's wonderful rooftop speech at the hospital riot.

(You know, assuming they let him keep it.)

[yotsubashis]

in all the world there is no heart for me like yours in all the world there is no love for you like mine 💚 c : effasempai