Izuku midoriya is actually uncomfortable with displays of emotion because his savior’s complex renders him only able to see them as cries for help, and when the emotion is just that. Emotion. He gets VERY uncomfortable.
!!!!!
let’s see two sets of scenes for example one, his reaction when he sees someone he can help crying. Uraraka in mha 428, on the ledge crying about toga. Izuku comforts her, telling her the whole class is there for her and taking her hand.
Aoyama during the traitor arc, crying as he was restrained to a chair, ashamed and broken, Izuku reaches out his hand, tells him that he can still be a hero, that the class wants him there.
the second set of scenes, shigaraki and izuku in the final battle, and of course most obviously mha 424. The only one I’m including a panel for because you just need to see… izuku’s reactions in this chapter… they’re almost diluted, numb. he’s trying to smile but it’s so detached
Another factor to this equation is that generally to me it seems that Izuku is uncomfortable with Katsuki specifically displaying emotions “unlike him.” He looks almost desperate to cut him off, horrified because this isn’t how it goes! (But that’s for another time…..)
Either due to the fact they’ve been familiar their whole lives, or that as he himself said, Katsuki is his symbol of victory—on a higher level than Allmight himself. And Allmight doesn’t cry, he smiles.
I don’t remember in which chapter, Izuku makes what sounds like a throwaway comment at first, where Izuku considers all of katsuki’s frankly terrifying grimaces… smiles.
Now, it starts feeling like izuku’s biggest heroes are always smiling. So, who is he if not a man built upon them? He copies them, he decides to smile and help and always always win.
and when he sees somebody who needs help, and HE can’t save them — he is overcome by guilt. I think nobody understands him better than Katsuki, because it’s as he said. although he never thinks about himself He somehow simultaneously doesn’t realize that he is not the only hero in the world. Not the only one who that burden falls on.
And when he does realize this?
When everyone becomes special, when the world is kinder and gentler and everybody helps one another, he believes it’s no longer something he should do, regardless of whether he wants to. He’s not needed, and he doesn’t even consider being wanted :’D
