Enji's origin story is a story of self-abuse.
The cause of this tragedy wasn't any history of family abuse or childhood trauma (even though his father's death did traumatize him and intensified the damage in his already fractured psyche). The source of his tragedy was Enji's own impossibly high standards. His own perfectionism. His own worldview and his own ideals. And all of these things naturally developed through his own personality traits, his own temperament, his own life experiences, and his own expectations for himself as a highly driven and ambitious kid living in a hero-obsessed society.
But Hori didn't bring any abuse into it. And even the trauma of his father's death was treated as another piece of wood added to a very long wooden bridge (leading towards ambition/ruin), but not as the foundation of that bridge.
Enji was victimized by the toxicity of Hero society, and was traumatized by his father's death, but the main origin of his tragedy was fueled by his own self-abuse.
When someone naturally has perfectionistic tendencies, even small failures can feel catastrophic. Since perfectionism leads us to believe we’re letting ourselves down when we make any mistake, it often comes with a harsh inner critic. Add that to= living in a toxic environment that measures human worth by outward success + the trauma of seeing your father fail as a hero and die as a result... and you'll get someone like Enji: a person who can't help but view his own human vulnerabilities and human shortcomings as an ugly weakness that needs to be crushed.
Enji won't fully heal or help his family fully heal until he allows himself the mercy of accepting failure with grace and the mercy of self-compassion that comes with viewing yourself as a flawed human being who still has worth, not a perfect super-human or a heartless monster.
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