I don't really just wander the Hawks tags because I feel like it's like 80% HPSC President Hawks at this point and while if that works for people that's totally fine but it's not a timeline I'm terribly interested in. I'll be a "the HPSC are corrupt as fuck and need to be radically altered or abolished as an organization" truther til the day I die.
I still hate how that was set up and completely walked back like "nah, this whole government child assassin business is great and necessary actually, this whole ending should not leave you worried. Don't be depressing! There is nothing evil going on behind the curtain!"
Okay I caved and checked in real quick for the MHA ending specifically to find out if the hero ranking still exists and the fact that it does is what's really disappointing. From the beginning the theme was that hero society was corrupt because they were all focused on status and celebrity and wealth over helping people. The hero ranking was the prime representation of that. Logically speaking if the story was about improving society, I expected that ranking to be abolished by the end of the story. Even if the villains couldn't be saved and Deku can't be powerful again, maybe society can be changed so history doesn't repeat itself. But the fact that it's still there means no progress was made. The cycle continues
(video) Trick Weekes describes another rule they follow when writing Solas (which explains why players have had completely opposite reactions to him)(x)
like not to come on here completely unprompted at 3am local time but out of every dragon age protagonist, the warden fighting the actual apocalypse with a crew they ordered on fivver included, the inquisitor has to be the one with the most comically absurd tale out of the three. absolute buffoonery of events. you walk into a big corpo meeting after the pope got blown up by a blonde nurse and accidentally happen to grab some guyās super magically spicy ball and suddenly youāre jesusās spokesperon. also the bald dude in your camp will fucking steal your loot a week later because heās an old god. the spicy ball was his. insane
da2 isn't the best dragon age game *because* it's openly a tragedy, but being a tragedy forces a level of narrative coherence that the other games in the series don't have, and *that's* what makes it a better game.
okay, so. dragon age 2 runs on nested foreshadowing and a limited set of themes that almost every character and plot beat fall into: love is not enough, wealth is not enough, power is not enough, good intent is not enough. the problems you run into are structural, rather than individual, and your ability to resolve them as one person is strictly limited. the arishok is a central figure for this, because he prefigures every other tragedy and makes the game's thesis statement as clear as possible. he doesn't want to be in kirkwall, but he is compelled to remain until he gets back what was stolen. he doesn't want to lead a coup attempt, but he is compelled by qunari codes of justice to act. he does not want to die and fail his duty, but but he is compelled to by the other two impossible demands. every tragedy in kirkwall is the result of too many people with wildly different definitions of justice crammed into one place specifically designed to maximize human misery and suffering, and so you get a wonderfully nested narrative onion where each quest reinforces that idea, where there are no good options, just positions you can take āĀ even the affinity system plays into that, where constantly gassing up your friends or constantly pushing them to change are equally correct ways to go, but ones that won't ultimately make a huge difference in their lives or characters, because no matter how much they like you, they're not under your control.
this coherence is even justified by the framing device. of *course* the moral of the game is "insisting on a dogmatic, narrow idea of justice destroys individuals and societies," it's a yarn being spun by varric the con artist to a chantry cop!
neither origins or inquisition play with that sort of narrative complexity. origins is a jaundiced hero's quest, certainly, but it's still basically a hero's quest; inquisition has a number of characters who question what you're doing and why, but the multitude of voices pulls the game in too many potential directions. DA2 was so constrained in its production that it pulled on decidedly ancient theatrical traditions, and it worked so, so well
Sorry if this question rubs you the wrong way, but wouldn't going out of their way to try to help villains to the absolute extreme that you propose be a bit suicidal? I feel like trying to talk no jutsu criminals like Moonfish who's a serial killing canibal, or Muscular who doesn't have any actual reason for commiting violence against others other than he enjoys it, would end up getting people hurt or worse.
Idk, maybe my perception is skewed because my country has problems with the justice system being too lenient with criminals, but then striking hard against honest folk.
Like, let's say heroes try to talk to Muscular about his feelings and stuff, and he just beats them to death. So should they arrest him and take him to jail now, or should they respond "understandable, have a nice day" and let him carry on with his rampage and try to talk no jutsu him the next day?
Iāve had enough exchanges with you, rvg, to assume you donāt mean it this way, but I gotta say, this is an incredibly fallacious way to frame the ātalk to Villainsā discussion.Ā I wrote two responses to this, first a characteristically long and rambly response which you and anyone else whoās interested are free to read below the cut.Ā The second response is much shorter and is here above the cut, if only for those readers who think itās a waste of time to try and give a sincere answer to what reads like deliberate reductivenessāthough again, I donāt think thatās your intent.
Here is my model version of how Heroes should engage with Villains:
Step One: Heroes should put in a basic, good faith effort to defuse and de-escalate every Villain encounter they have with the tools and knowledge they have available; the ideal result is that the Villain will choose on their own to stop presenting a danger to the public.
āāāāā
Step Two: If that is not feasible for some reason, or if it is ineffective, then the Heroes should make all possible efforts to arrest the Villain with the minimal possible harm.
āāāāā
Step Three: If there is an immediate threat to the lives of bystanders and there is absolutely no way the Heroes can come up with to stop the Villain non-lethally, then there should, afterwards, be an investigation into the death of the Villain and all Heroes who were involved should have to face questions about their role in the situation and their decision to use lethal force.Ā Measures should then be implemented to help prevent the situation from arising again in the future.Ā A Hero killing someone should by default be treated as a punishable failure, not a victory.
Thatās it!Ā Thatās all there is to it!Ā Try talking first, then try arresting, and if killing is truly the only way, be ready to explain why. Ā That step-by-step should be the standard, and if there are going to be deviations from it, they should be exceptionally well-justified by both the characters and the narrative.Ā If thatās not the standard, then I think itās a key thing we need to see the protagonists confronting and changing.
Hero Society is obviously in the not-the-standard camp: most of the Heroes spend most of the series jumping straight to Step Two, totally skipping Step One; there are then multiple instances of Step Three being botched completely, with non-lethal tactics being discarded or ignored and lethal force being accepted without question or resistance.Ā By the end of the series, a tiny handful of Heroes are now hesitantly attempting what should have been their very first go-to, Step One, but their prior reliance on Steps Two and Three make the Villains much more resistant than they might have otherwise been, which reenforces the push towards lethal force in a society that will still not enforce any consequences for it.
This would all be more forgivable if not for the way BNHA positions its Heroes, as lawful defenders of the status quo in a basically modern version of Japanāi.e. theyāre cops but the story either doesnāt want to saddle them with the responsibilities real cops would have or else Horikoshi has some alarming views that treat said responsibilities as bothersome administrative red tape.
Therein is my fundamental complaint: BNHA makes the choice to frame its Heroes as being basically specialized police but then disregards or attempts to minimize how that framing colors the Heroes actionsā and decisions, especially with regard to the Villains. Ā My thoughts on what the Heroes āshouldā be doing are nothing more than taking that framing (Heroes = cops) to its logical conclusion and asking the story to treat the Heroes accordingly.
Below the jump, find the longer version of this answer, which contains more picking apart of the askās premise, more references to the canon and to real life, and an extended discussion about the non-Hero institutions in BNHA that are in some way responsible for Villains and what Heroesā obligations are re: those institutions.Ā It is, in other words, the version of this answer thatās 4000 words long instead of 500.Ā Reminder that it was the version of this answer that was written first, so pardon any recycled phrasing or reiterated rhetoric.
Iāll just start by re-pasting the questionā¦
What I think is that there is a lot of air between ābeating up Villains while being more concerned about the news camera catching your good side than you are about talking to the human being youāre pummelingā and ātrying to talk to the Villain but just shrugging and letting them carry on if it doesnāt workā.
A perennial response Villain fans get when they talk about this is an exasperated, even outraged, āWhat, so youāre saying Deku should just let Shigaraki kill him or innocent people?!āĀ And like, no, thatās not what weāre saying at all, and itās a really reductive, bad faith characterization of the argument.Ā So I want to talk first about what Villain fans are saying, and then Iāll circle back to your question about trying to talk no jutsu the really bad news Villains and what Heroes should do if that talk no jutsu fails.
First things first, and to get it out of the way, not all Villains are on the level of Muscular or Moonfish.Ā For the vast majority of the series, the numeric bulk of Villains are just street criminals.Ā It would not be a life or death struggle for Kamui Woods and Mount Lady to try and talk down a purse snatcher together.Ā There is so much room for positive change in how Heroes engage with street-level Villains that just gets glossed over entirely when people want to spin-kick the argument all the way to S-class threats like post-surgery Shigaraki.
Note how handily and briskly Hawks deals with the nudist flasher guy when heās walking around town with Endeavorāhe doesnāt even glance in his direction.Ā Would it have been so impossibly hard to use his feathers to pin the guyās coat back together and then cheerfully ask him why he went and did a thing like that?
So just keep that in mind, first of all: for the vast majority of what a Hero does day-to-day, especially the powerful ones who are way up near the top of the rankings, there are options available to them beyond āimmediately resort to extreme violenceā or āgive the Villain a thumbs-up and walk away, whistling to cover the sound of civilian screams.ā
But okay, how about with the more dangerous Villains?Ā Well, the point still stands: multiple heroic characters throughout the manga show themselves to be entirely capable of carrying on a conversationābe it with the Villains or with Hero alliesāwhile fighting.Ā Mirio is able to temporarily keep ShigAFO talking and distracted by simply asking him a few basic questions; he and Nighteye both are able to get at least some answers out of Overhaul(!) just by asking about his intentions. Ochaco and Toga have coherent conversation every single time they fight.Ā Hawks and Twice have a whole argument while fighting.Ā As soon as Shouto can be bothered to talk to Dabi, Dabiās eager to spill his whole backstory to him.
Shigaraki in particular comes off as desperate to share his grievances practically every time Heroes encounter him, and that only stops being true at the very endāand even there, it might be less true if that green twit fighting him could have been arsed to just fucking ask him, āHey, last time we fought, when we were in the same headspace, I saw an image of you crying with a dog.Ā What was up with that?āĀ Deku doesnāt have to stand there with his hands in the air while asking!Ā As all the examples cited demonstrate, Heroes are more than able to fight and talk at the same time.Ā So why donāt they try to make that talk a little more actually useful?
What Iām saying is simply that I would like it if less of that conversation were dedicated to Heroes giving moralizing sermons about how bad and unforgiveable Villains are and a lot more of it were dedicated to Heroes just asking why the Villains are doing what theyāre doing, and letting the conversation go from there, fighting defensively and keeping the Villain focused on them as much as theyāre capable of doing.Ā We see the results in the series when Heroes bother trying thisāthink Dekuās results with Gentle Criminal or Ochacoās with Togaāso itās damning that they donāt try it more often.
The likely explanation is that professional heroism as a matter of practice and culture does not tend to bother with de-escalation tactics; after all, while youāre standing there trying to talk to the bank robber, some other Hero could easily be coming in for the take-down, and then they get all the credit and glory and not least the pay.Ā The whole system is geared towards rewarding fast, uncompromising takedowns, ignoring the possibility of more peaceful, productive resolutions in favor of stopping the Public Disturbance as quickly as possible, because itās more important to stop random civilians feeling inconvenienced than it is to maybe try addressing a Villainās issues so they stand down themselves and are less likely to become hardened criminals.
Heck, even Deku really only gets anywhere with Gentle because his first instinctāshutting down the fight right away with a Smashāgets him rebounded off an air trampoline with enough force to knock him back nearly a neighborhood block.Ā The defensive, evasive nature of Gentleās power means itās difficult to hit him directly, and Gentleās personality was such that he kept talking while Deku was figuring out how to beat him.Ā That talking was really what gave Deku enough insight to trigger his empathy, so he started returning the conversation in ways that he never did against e.g. Stain, AFO, or in his first fight with Muscular.Ā He didnāt lead by asking why Gentle was invading his school, though; he just ordered him repeatedly to stop.
Heroes and, in turn, the kids, just donāt default to trying to talk to the Villains.Ā We see that they can, theyāre just not trained to, so it becomes a tactic of last resort, or of distraction, or, finally, as being the result of moments of connection that make them incapable of continuing to ignore the Villainsā humanity.Ā But when itās a last resort like that, when they donāt bother asking questions until after the Villains have been pushed past the point of wanting to engage, everything gets so much harder and more dangerous.
Look at Shigaraki and Toga.Ā When Deku and Ochaco initially encounter them, the kidsā first response is basically just revulsion and terror.Ā And like, okay, theyāre students, newly fledged Hero Course trainees.Ā They shouldnāt have been facing real life Villains for another two years, at least!Ā So itās not surprising that they donāt know what to do and donāt react in the most empathetic manner possible.Ā Iām not blaming them for that.Ā But I do want to ask what would have happened if their classes and the Hero culture were more focused on attempting dialogue with Villains.
All Might at USJ writes Shigaraki off as a faker with no real beliefs, and Deku at the mall calls him an incomprehensible cipher, but what if either of them had instead asked Tomura why he was there and what he wanted, then asked follow-up questions from there? Ā How much earlier might they have found out that Shigaraki had some tragedy in his past that he blamed All Might for not saving him from?Ā What might finding that out early on have led them to change about how they approached Shigaraki in subsequent encounters?
If Ochaco and Tsuyu had asked Toga why she attacked people, then followed up on whatever answer Toga gave about liking blood with some questions about consent, how much sooner might they have found out that Toga spent her whole life feeling ostracized and repressed because she was convinced by the adults around her that people finding out she craved blood would make her a freak in their eyes?Ā How might they have engaged with her differently if they realized her parents had been verbally abusing her since she was three years old?
But we also donāt have to stop with U.A. types!Ā Toga went on the run at only 15āhow many times did she have had close scrapes with arrest before the training camp attack?Ā How many other opportunities were there for someone to talk her down before she made it to the League?Ā Heck, even all the way to the end, if the green twit hadnāt just insisted on antagonizing Toga one last time for the roadāas if heād learned nothing at all since the mall scene!āhow much more easily might Ochaco have been able to engage with her?Ā Maybe if Toga hadnāt set her mind to embracing Villainy because Deku functionally became yet another person calling her a freak, Ochaco could have gotten to the breakthrough point before Toga stabbed her in the gut?
Iāve been talking about the more sympathetic Villains here so far, but all this goes for the rest of them, too.Ā Sure, Moonfish is a cannibal serial killer now, but was he always?Ā Or was there a time when he was just like Toga, a teenager wrestling with quirk-driven hungers who was abused and ostracized for them?Ā Iāve thought, from time to time, about the idea of a League ageswap AU, where Moonfish is that scared but defiant teenager whoās been pushed over the edge and done something violent, but is not yet past saving.Ā Conversely, itās all too easy for me to imagine a Toga who was never captured and never shown any compassion growing into an adult who fully embraced her vampire serial killer reputation and ādeviantā hungers to become just as much an alleged monster as Canon Moonfish.
How about Muscular?Ā Was he always a violent sadist?Ā Was it impossible that he could have grown up to be anything else?Ā Could that taste for violence ever have found an outlet other than murder?Ā Could he have gotten into underground fighting, like Rappa?Ā Could he have become a Hero like Mirko, always hungry for a better challenge than sheās getting?Ā Quite frankly, even if Imasuji Gouto was a violent little bully who killed neighborhood pets as a child, he still deserved some kind of interventionāpsychological counseling, medication, more acceptable outlets, etc.
How many Villains would HeroAca!Japan be spared if the people in power were more focused on intervention and rehabilitation at every stage of a Villainās life and career?Ā Why do Heroes think itās helpful or necessary to tell everyone in earshot their personal opinion about the unforgivability of their opponents?Ā Why is it such a problem for some readers when Villain fans point out that a lot of issues could be sidestepped entirely, and the HeroAca world considerably bettered, if the Hero Industry were less focused on showy grandstanding violence, less terrified of the optics of being anything other than maximally harsh on Villains?
That all said, thatās the nuance of what I want when I say I want more talk no jutsu.Ā But letās go back to your questionāwhat should Heroes do when they run into Villains who canāt be talked down?
Say that all the interventions and counseling programs have failed, and someoneāsome motherās son, some fatherās daughterāhas grown up to become a Villain.Ā And not just any Villain, but a really dangerous one.Ā What do?
Well, I do still want to see Heroes try to talk first, unless they have some reason to believe talking wonāt work, like knowledge that knowing that efforts in that direction have already been made and documented in previous encounters between law enforcement and the Villain in question.Ā Thereās also some flex here based on how capable of dragging out an encounter the Heroes on-scene are, and how much danger any bystanders would be ināI would want more effort from someone who can hold their own for long periods like Deku than e.g. Manual.Ā But like, anyone can yell a few basic questions about motivations to see what sort of response they get.
But say our Hero is up against someone like Muscular, who just laughs off questions like that.Ā What to do then?
Then arrest him.
Seriously, this is not that complicated.Ā Iām not asking some run-of-the-mill Hero to get their arms ripped off trying to give battle therapy to Muscular!Ā But I do want Muscular to get therapy, or at least be offered it, once heās no longer presenting an immediate threat and those conversations can happen in a safe environment.Ā And if he doesnāt accept it,[1] I still want him to be treated as humanely as reasonably possible in prison, with the therapy option always on the table if he ever wants to try it.Ā I also want his prison term (even if itās for life) to not involve methods of punishment that are considered by the United Nations to constitute torture, like Tartarusās apparent extended solitary confinement.
1: Perhaps because he would rather rip his own arms off than talk about his feelings or waste any more time getting analyzed by shrinks than he already has; pick your poison based on why and for how long you think heās been killing people.
I truly do not have any problems, ethically speaking, with Heroes arresting dangerous Villains.Ā My problem has always been that Hero Society is comprehensively awful in how it treats those who donāt fit neatly into societyās little boxes.Ā Their social support networks are full of holes, their law enforcement is financially disincentivized from attempting de-escalation, their judicial process is completely invisible, and their prisons are concrete holes that only serve to make people worse, as we can see clearly in the case of people like poor Endingāalready unstable when he was first arrested by Endeavor, but so blatantly suicidal when his sentence is up that the literal first thing he does after release is to investigate Endeavorās personal life so as to find a way to goad Endeavor into killing him.
Now, sure, Heroes are not responsible for prison policies and practices; those are under a completely different part of the criminal justice umbrella.Ā Nor is it up to them to determine how e.g. financial aid programs or family services work.Ā But I want Heroes to be better in the ways that theyāpersonally and professionallyācan be, and I want them to be cognizant of the flaws in the system they uphold.Ā I want them to have some basic intellectual curiosity about the Villains they fightāwhy they turned out like they did, if they can be helped, and whatās going to become of them after the Hero hands them off to the police.
Like, what is All Mightās opinion on Tartarus?Ā He spent 30+ years fighting for the society that maintains itādoes he think or care at all about the fact that some extremely damaged, abused people wind up in there after he gets done beating them up?Ā And if he doesnāt, what does that say about him?Ā What would Ochaco have done if Toga had lived and said sheād rather Ochaco kill her than let her go to prison forever?Ā Does Shouto think now about the family situation of every Villain he fights, or did his ability to care about āsome motherās sonā begin and end with his motherās son?
Obviously, Heroes stop Villains all the time; Iām not asking them to do deep dives into the history and treatment of each and every one.Ā I just want them to ask the questions they can while the Villain is in front of them, and to care about the state of both the systems that produce Villains and the ones tasked with their care.Ā I think that when handing people over to state custody, Heroes have a responsibility to be meaningfully confident that the state wonāt abuse that custodianship.Ā If they arenātāif they truly donāt give a shit about what happens to Villains once the police van door swings closedāthen in my view theyāre no different than any professional who shirks their duty.
So many people insist that the kidsāthat Heroes in generalāhave no duty to care about the Villains, but to me, this view comes off as wildly ignorant about the wide variety of jobs in the real world that do, in fact, confer a duty of care.
Ifā¦
ā¦a teacher sees a child with unexplained bruises but doesnāt bother to do their due diligence as a mandatory reporterā
ā¦a prison guard leaves a handcuffed inmate alone in a room with a fellow warden wearing brass knucklesā
ā¦a medic doesnāt speak up when a flight attendant asks if thereās a doctor on the planeā
ā¦a bartender just keeps on serving someone whoās obviously intoxicated and then lets them stumble out the door to the parking lotā
āthen they are shirking their duty.Ā There is no shortage out there of examples of this sort of responsibility, one that you can be held legally responsible for, one that you choose to accept when you sign up for the job.
Heroes are not Samaritans doing the work out of the goodness of their hearts; theyāre not vigilantes just trying to keep their own patch safe.Ā Theyāre government employees, crucial members of the lawful system they represent.Ā They have to careānot personally, not individually, but on a professional, structural level, they have to care about the people they fight because the system has to care about those people.Ā And if the system doesnāt care, the system has to be changed.
I'm segueing here into real life stuff, so let me note as a disclaimer that what follows is based on my cultural familiarity with American policies, as well as periodic research into that of other nations. I don't know what country you live in, rvg, so I can hardly speak to its crime-and-punishment situation. This is all a lefty American's opinion on what reading she has done about American, Japanese, and, in the case of this particular post, Scandinavian criminal justice systems.
That said: in real life, de-escalation works.Ā One of the things youāll often see talked about in police reform/abolishment circles is that the police are, quite frankly, doing too much work.Ā Or, more specifically, theyāre doing the wrong kind of work, work for which their training has not prepared them and which other groups would be far better suited to handle.
Hereās an article on offering a campus police force de-escalation training and the resulting 26-36% drop in injuries suffered by both civilians and officers; it also talks about how de-escalation tactics are used by SWAT teams but regarded with suspicion by patrol officers, with this quote being particularly telling: ā[Special operations] officers were taught to use time, distance and cover to their advantage.Ā For patrol officers, time was viewed as 'The more time you give a suspect, the more danger you're in.'āĀ De-escalation is not the usual training patrol officers get, so it runs against their gut feeling, despite its proven effectivenessācompare this to BNHAās repeated focus on speed in shutting down altercations.
Hereās an article on the results of a test run of a program in Denver, Colorado, in which police officers were completely removed from response teams to 911 calls about situations considered low risk (drug abuse, trespassing, welfare checks, etc); instead, teams of mental health specialists and paramedics were dispatched.Ā Reports of nonviolent crime dropped 34% over the course of the time the program ran, and the direct financial cost of the response was four times lower than sending police.
The classic dramatic image of this sort of thing is the hostage situationāand when I looked into it, numerous articles said that containment and negotiation tactics have over a 94% chance of resolving hostage crises without fatalities!
The common element in this sort of thing is refraining from showboating displays of force, loud assertions of power and authority, arguments, moralizing, threats, and so forth.Ā Far more effective is listening, active attempts to communicate and understand, not throwing one's weight around and not rising to aggression even when provoked.
Meanwhile, on the carceral side of things, restorative justice leads to greater satisfaction from both victims and perpetrators, more feeling that they were listened to and respected, and increased belief that justice was served.Ā While the evidence on its impact on recidivism is mixed, it certainly doesnāt seem to be less effective than traditional retributive justice, and may well be considerably more effective if combined with programs that focus more specifically on lessening recidivism than restorative justice alone (research is ongoing).
This article on how ācushyā Scandinavian prisons are far more effective at reducing recidivism than their much harsher, bleaker American counterparts argues that a crucial factor in reducing recidivism is minimizing the amount of resentment criminals bear towards the system.Ā When perpetrators can point at unjust or disproportionate punishments, cruel treatment by wardens, rejection by society, etc, itās much easier to stew on resentment, to turn nastier themselves, to blame outside factors.Ā Conversely, when life inside prison is made as much like life outside prison as possible with the key difference being the crucial deprivation of freedom, that resentment is defanged, leading to more more self-reflection and willingness to accept responsibility. And again, it works: Norway is a world leader, with their recidivism rate being a mere 20% compared to the U.S.ās nearly 77%.
The studies and the evidence for this stuff is out there, itās just fighting this huge, ugly uphill battle against people who care far, far more about inflicting punishment than they do actually improving outcomes.Ā And so much of that is based on cultural valuesāwhat people believe, what values theyāre taught. That's where pop culture comes in.
That last article I linked above talks about the efforts made in the U.S. to turn prisons into a for-profit industry, and how demonizing criminals to encourage maximum sentences helps that effort; hereās another on how U.S. police departments rehabilitated the popular image of the police in the early part of the 1900s as bumbling fools or a corrupt gang by consulting on the writing of police procedurals, most crucially starting with Dragnet in 1951, but continuing even today. Ā Hereās one on a growing concern in Japan about the relationship fostered between TV studios and police when police permission and cooperation is required for filming those popular reality TV police documentary programs.
Mass media and pop culture informs this stuff.Ā True, Horikoshi is not having to get his work cleared by a police PR department to publish it, but you can see from the above how the police have used and do use mass media to polish up their image; they see it as an effective tool to use because it is.Ā And the closer to our reality a work of fiction is, the more obviously it resembles the world around us, the more it seems to purport to moral instructiveness, the more true that becomes.Ā Thatās why I criticize BNHA much more harshly than any number of other manga or anime I follow where Good Guys Kill Bad Guys all the time and no one thinks twice about it: because those series arenāt parading the Good Guys out as Japanese citizens working with Japanese police under Japanese law to maintain the rosy image of the Japanese status quo.
Iām long past the point where Iām just rambling, so Iāll wind it down here by pointing out this: Horikoshi also thought that things in his world needed to change.Ā As much as I loathe BNHAās endgame and think much of its epilogue is trite shoulder-patting pablum that fails to meaningfully address the settingās real problems, multiple aspects of Hero Society were at least nominally challenged and subsequently changed: citizen inaction, the dominance of professional heroics as a career path, the diminishment of non-Hero careers, quirk-based discrimination.Ā As a direct result of the main charactersā efforts to address places where the old system was failing people, the incident rate of Villains is decreasing.
The fact that these changes are made provides in itself the evidence that they needed to be made. I think they need to go further still: my number one greivance with the epilogue is that we've seen all these changes aimed at reducing the numbers of Villains that arise in the first place, and that's nice and all, but we don't see any evidence that the Villains that do arise are treated any differently than they ever were, not even the common purse snatchers, much less the serial killers, the cannibals, and the terrorists.
So, should Heroes have to get themselves nearly killed trying to reform a Villain?Ā Ideally no, but that assumes a world where Heroes are working in concert with a bunch of other people who are also dedicated to preventing, reforming, or rehabilitating Villains.Ā If none of that other personnel infrastructure exists, then, well, to paraphrase Nedzu, someone has to take the first step.Ā Why shouldnāt it be the combat-trained professionals with shounen battle stamina who also happen to be the main characters?
I really feel like so many people who hate Vivienne for being power hungry do not fully grasp and appreciate the desperation that Vivienne feels because she conceals it so wellā¦ as little content as she got, she honestly is expertly written and presented and itās why it disappoints me so much when people hate her for surface level reasonsā¦ her writer deserves so much more appreciation.
I think it is subtle because she hides it and you really have to care about the character to seek out these threads and understand her motivationsā¦ she is in danger of total irrelevance, being cast aside by society (and history), and she is forced to ride the coattails of some upstart organization because all of the institutions she is invested in have either totally failed her or cast her aside.
She is clearly a prideful person who does not readily admit thisā¦ but her true talent is how clearly she can evaluate this and understand her own position. She suffers no delusions. She knows the Circleās standing in society is diminished to nothing if it doesnāt house and account for the majority of mages, and she is left with just meek Chantry loyalists and sycophants who are lost without her guiding hand, as even otherwise pro-Circle mages with any sense have abandoned ship and left both rebels and loyalists at this point to see where the chips fall (Ellandra) - and the Chantry itself has been all but decimated in terms of military and political power. The one lifeline she has is the Imperial Court, and the fickle nobility have moved on from her - the mages are now a threat that she cannot control or offer any meaningful opposition to, and Celeneās favor has turned to Morrigan, and Vivienne does not know if she will ever have it again. She knows Bastien is dying, and that all that she has left at court will be those who hold kind feelings towards her such as his family, and that is a position she can never accept - being at the mercy of others.
We meet Vivienne, this impressive, powerful mage, who has made a life for herself by maneuvering brilliantly, all to improve her own standing, at a point where she is in danger of losing everything she has. And she doesnāt let on, at least not explicitly, but she joins the Inquisition out of desperation - itās obvious she sees it as an opportunity, but the gravity of the situation for her isnāt clear from the start. She refuses to lay down and fade away. Vivienne would never had joined this fledgling upstart organization if she was in a better position at Court or there wasnāt a vacuum of power. She is very close to having nothing left, and starting over - and so she does. Before the rug can be pulled from under her, she gets out and sets off for herself again.
Vivienne, often accused of pride, privilege, and self importance, comes to the Inquisitor out of pure humility. She knows she is reduced. And her gamble ultimately pays off, and the Inquisition becomes the political juggernaut that it does, and she becomes more powerful and important than ever just by association. And I like to think, especially with an Inquisitor who respects and befriends her, that she plays no small part in shaping the organization.
I think this is also why, potentially, she plays it so cool at the Winter Palace. She doesnāt get involvedā¦ she doesnāt need to. Simply being present is a statement to the court, and she truly doesnāt care about who wins; itās not just the Game, itās personal, despite what she claims. That they cast her aside, and now they are interested againā¦ not necessarily in her, but still, she sees the paradigm shifting again. She is now a part of the organization who gets to change Orlais, and favor with the Inquisition is quickly becoming just as important as favor with Celene.
The whole arc is a subtle one as she really doesnāt get much attention, but if you pay close attention, it shows how expertly Vivienne plays politics. We already know she came from nothing and maneuvered into a powerful position. But I think not everyone realizes she is nearly back to nothing when we first meet herā¦ and through the course of the gameās events, by allying with the right people, she plays the game well enough to become an advisor to the most influential person in southern Thedasā¦ and potentially even Divine. But her initial plea to the Inquisitor, for all the great lengths she goes to keep up the appearance of strength and invulnerability, comes from a place of utter desperation.
One of the craziest things about Dragon Age (and this might help those of you who donāt go here kind of understand what people are yelling about in the coming months) is its lore. But I donāt mean that in the way youāre probably thinking.
I mean, quite literally, the way it presents its lore to you. In picking up notes and books as you go along and sifting through the codex, the game effectively asks you to act as an anthropologist. Youāre met with a host of primary and secondary sources, some many hundreds of years apart from one another, written by anyone from the highest Chantry scholar to John Farmer, and youāre meant to constantly be questioning every piece of information youāre given. What biases are present in what Iām reading? What is fact and what is complete fabrication and what is, potentially, a slightly twisted version of a fact? How does one source potentially contradict another? The lore is one giant mystery-puzzle that you get to piece together across three games, and what conclusions you draw are going to be entirely different from someone elseās, and so on.
And yet, the series still does something even cooler than any of that. You realize, at a certain point, that this idea you have been engaging with on a meta-level ā this idea that history is biased and fallible, that itās written by colonizers and conquerers, genocidal racists and religious zealots, that the ability to control historical narrative is the prize you win for spilling the most blood ā that idea is one of, if not perhaps THE most important, overarching theme of the series. The way that we remember history ā what we remember and what we donāt, and why ā and the impact that has on people on a sociological, political, cultural and psychological level, on both a macro and micro scale. Itās the entire thesis of the seriesā main villainās whole motivation.
And thereās gonna be a lot of people that donāt care about all that but me personally it makes me want to gnaw on a cinder block and scratch at my walls
So MHA has finally ended, and it was a little underwhelming to put it nicely. What I wanted to talk about was one smaller aspect of the issues of the story, and that was Lady Nagant. I liked her character, but I feel like the execution is an example of one the main issues of the story that stands out to me. If AFO possessing Shigaraki and Midoriya deciding to āsaveā him was when the story changed direction to the final arc, then Lady Nagant is one of the first examples of when Horikoshi decided to start rushing a little towards the ending and not fully acknowledging the deeper societal issues of the setting, instead focusing more on an almost blindly optimistic (though bittersweet, although there are issues with that) conclusion.
Lady Nagant is an interesting morally gray character in a mostly black and white world. Where the main characters already kind of border on child soldiers, she is one, scouted by the Commission at a young age and trained to become an assassin to deal with their dirty work (and I think itās implied that not all of her targets were guilty). Once she snaps and kills the president, the Commission tosses her into Tartarus, the prison for the most dangerous villains, and cover up what really happened.
The issues come from the response to this. When Nagant reveals this to Midoriya, he says that heās starting to see and understand the shades of gray in the world, and he reiterates the āreaching out a helping handā message of the story. Itās not an completely terrible response, but I feel like Midoriya is missing the point. Midoriyaās response is focused on an individualās/communityās responsibility to change things (and that is important), but he doesnāt seem to acknowledge the systemic issues. Nagant had her belief in the hero system exploited from a young age and was used to secretly āpreserveā the publicās blind trust and faith in that system. She is rightfully and justifiably angry at the system and doesnāt believe it will change for the better if it is brought back.
(Another detail that kind of bothered me is that Midoriya tells her she still has the heart of a hero, but she should understandably want nothing to do with heroes. This feels like a small flaw of Midoriyaās that isnāt fully acknowledged, in that he has a hero-centered worldview, which pops up with Bakugo, Endeavor, and in this instance Nagant. Shigaraki calls him out on it during their fight, accusing him of trying to fit him into his worldview.)
She is almost immediately redeemed by Midoriyaās and Hawkās optimism, which is nice but still doesnāt deal with the systemic issue of the Commission. In the epilogue, she stays in prison because her faith and trust isnāt fully reignited, and Hawks, the Commissionās other child soldier and Nagantās successor, is now the president of the Commission (which is another can of worms about how his character was handled, particularly his optimism and faith in Endeavor, one of the main examples of the toxic and corrupt hero system in the entire story).
Nagant says that history will repeat itself, and with the main heroes relying on a simple, individual/community focused, almost blindly optimistic approach of reaching out a helping hand, while seeming to miss the point and not questioning the deep systemic problems of hero society that led to villains like the LOV, I canāt help but feel that she might end up being right.
My Hero Academia spent its 10 year run concerned with the power of reaching out to others, but in the end, how powerful was it? Reaching out was not a miracle, it was not enough to save the people the climax concerned itself with. Even if it helped some characters along the way, at the peak of the narrative, it couldnāt do the job. What can reaching out do? Not a lot, says My Hero Academia, but maybe it can help in small ways. And isnāt that just anti-climatic. Of course the story feels unsatisfying; the thesis of the manga wasnāt even enough at the end.
Reaching out could have meant so much if Deku reflected on the power of extending your hand as Shimura Tenko stood beside him, alive and saved by that help. He could have continued a cycle of reaching out by continuing to be a hero to villains, coming to them with empathy and reaching out his own hand, finally able to save and heal instead of kill and destroy.
Instead, we learn that it might be enough, so long as it isnāt too late. Itās not just about the villains dying, itās about the core of the story falling completely flat.
The thing that doesn't make sense to me if Izuku resolved to kill is how it doesn't let them prove AFO wrong? AFO did his big reveal which only makes it clearer how deep the grooming went and it should've been time for Izuku to understand Tenko and Tenko to understand the abuse then reject the mindset forced onto him. But Izuku killing Tenko doesn't do that. Tenko just dies. It feels very wrong.
I guess Izuku just wasn't very interested in proving AFO wrong! Honestly, the only thing I immediately remember Izuku disputing the guy on was the same thing he disputed Shigaraki on: that he was anything more than a human being. AFO isn't a Demon King, but just a lonely man. Shigaraki hasn't transcended humanity; there's still a human somewhere deep inside of him. Izuku won't correct his allies' use of dehumanizing language for Villains, of course, but he's quick to push back when the Villains themselves self-aggrandize.
Sorry, I really only have withering disdain for Deku at this point. And I guess I don't really see any evidence that Deku was ever particularly driven by "proving AFO wrong." He wants to stop AFO, certainly, but that's because AFO is a monster who takes advantage of vulnerable people to maneuver them into doing Bad Things that advance AFO's Bad Plans and sets them onto Bad Paths that are difficult to walk back, not because he expressly opposes AFO on this or that ideological point about the nature of humanity and society.
(Hit the jump for the rest of a somewhat rambly reply.)
If anything, current evidence is that neither Deku nor the manga itself really do disagree with AFO about the frailty of humans, as expressed by Tsukauchi answering Deku's question about how to prevent future tragedies by shrugging and saying, "You don't, because life fucking sucks sometimes and that's just how it is. Our hands are completely tied on improving the system as we have it, so all we can do is punch out the Villains that appear in front of us to stop them from causing more harm."
That's also me being a bit harsh, of course. The fact that Deku is even still asking that question in the epilogue suggests that the manga hasn't reached its final answer yet, and maybe it will yet come up with something better! It doesn't have much time left, but it's still possible!
All the same, Deku is still having to ask that question in the epilogue because he never truly faced it over the course of the story. Never thinking about what Shigaraki as a person said in favor of fetishizing the Crying Child, never coming up with any kind of non-violent plan of attack or conversational approach, I have to ask what exactly about Shigaraki did Deku ever disagree with AFO on?
AFO, in the end, characterized Shigaraki as a puppet he molded exactly as he desired, a doll who he sculpted and programmed to act as he wished, a feeble child who has never made a single decision that AFO didn't cultivate him to make. So far as I can tell, Deku never really contested that framing. He didn't know the extent of it until the full reveal, of course, but Deku, like AFO, insisted on approaching Shigaraki solely through that "Crying Child" lens. He seemed to believe that nothing Shigaraki said or did on the surface really mattered (save as a reason that Shigaraki had to be stopped and potentially killed), that the "truth" of Shigaraki was that feeble little weeping boy who never grew up.
How could Deku possibly "prove AFO wrong" in that context? He doesn't even disagree with him! I mean, he's got some nice talk about how people deserve a second chance, sure; he says that people doing wrong doesn't make them Villains for the rest of their lives. What does do that, however - insofar as I can tell from how opaque the series keeps Deku throughout the final war - is refusing the hand out of the darkness. You stop being a victim and become a Villain for the rest of your life by choosing to remain a Villain even when offered an alternative (no matter how patently awful that alternative is).
Shigaraki chooses to remain a Villain and Deku doesn't have a counter for that because Deku never really got past the false binary represented by Villains and Victims to begin with. And I think the same goes for people who expected Shigaraki to just fold when he realized the extent of the grooming he'd undergone. Disallowing Shigaraki any agency in who he is and what he's done is defining him the same way AFO and Deku both did; when Shigaraki refuses to accept that framing, refuses to be a passive victim, the only thing left for him to be is a Villain. And when a Villain refuses to stop...
Well, Hawks already told us what the Heroes' answer to that is. "Someone has to die." As no one ever stepped up to prove him wrong, as far as the story is concerned, he isn't.
AFO always knew that victims can be turned into Villains with the right nudges; that's the whole reason for him cultivating "warped seeds" whenever and wherever he found them. Hero Society is - and always has been - much too rigid in its enforcement of the Hero/Villain/Victim narrative to effectively combat him. Crucially, Deku - the boy who wants to bring everything back just the way it was - doesn't disagree with him. He thinks AFO is an asshole for setting people up to fail, but he doesn't disagree about what failure means. So if AFO, Deku, and the story itself are all in agreement, what's even there for Deku to disprove?
Now, there is something that would prove AFO wrong, but it isn't something you can do while insisting on drawing lines to separate sad manipulated woobie victims who just need to be saved from awful unrepentant villains who just need to rot. It isn't something you can do while infantilizing Shigaraki Tomura.
The way to prove AFO wrong is to make room in society to help all Villains. Even if they aren't asking for it, even if they never ask for it, and even if they're jolly bastards who don't really deserve it! As long as there's a point at which it becomes okay to give up on trying to save Villains, Shigaraki will remain unsavable. He will insist on being unsavable. He could no more let that go than All Might could step aside and let AFO's attack kill an innocent at Kamino.
That's what it means to be a Hero for Villains.
Ultimately, what makes AFO right is that he knows that Hero Society makes it difficult if not impossible to uncross the victim-to-Villain bridge, and so anyone who does cross that bridge (with or without his influence) is that much more susceptible to him. Deku, in turn, thinks the only Villains he can save are those who drop everything and come sprinting as fast as they can back to the Hero side, so anyone who won't do that is someone he can't help.
Shigaraki refused to stop trying to create a better world for Villains. Toga refused to live in a world that would imprison her. Twice refused to give up on the friends no Hero would help. It's the same with every other Villain who refused to quietly endure their status quo: in a society that refuses to change how it treats Villains, anyone who won't submit to suffering in silence cannot be saved.
That's the paradigm AFO exploits, and Deku will never prove him wrong without resolving to change the paradigm first. We'll see if the last two chapters get him there.
This whole ending is just so bleak and depressing it's honestly starting to get to me. People are so angry and disappointed about it, and I really fucking get it, because the message we're essentially left with is "nothing is going to change". There will always be children like Toga who are villianised the moment they step out of the norm. There will always be young adults like Spinner and Twice, who are left to rot on the bottom of society due to circumstances they can't control.
Society is going to continue to have its black and white view on heroes and villains, which in turn, will get children like Tenko and Touya mixed up in cursed game, which have been decided for them before they're even born.
Apparently, the only villains worth saving are the villains who'll quietly agree to the suffering life has dealt them without acting out or demanding a change.
Just the simple fact that the Safety Comminssion (also that name in itself reads as some sort of cruel joke) is still operating as before is as much proff as any that nothing will change. Sure Hawks is president of it now, but we've already seen the lengths he's willing to go in order to keep up status quo, he knows the dark side of the hero society but he still keeps going with it because, what he's an optimist??
And in this story that is deemed a good attitude.
For 400+ chapters, 7 anime seasons and the real life span of 10 years we've been shown and told and shown again why this system doesn't work and how people suffers because of it. But for some reason wishing for major changes is apparently not what we, as an audience, is expected to do.
Idk what message this manga thinks it sends, but, as things stands, (and with only 2 chapters left) it's definitely not hope
see, the thing about Bakugou's death is that it is pretty damn well written. On it's own, it would have been a powerful move, story wise and as a motivation for the hero characters.
But not even a minute later, we are reassured this is temporary, he is not actually dead. The heroes' narrative operates on the logic of disney deaths and consequences. When Izuku had lost his arms, it was clear he was getting them back soon. This kind of play pretend kids friendly jumpscare followed by 'just kidding' and a pat on the head would have been fine on it's own if the story maintained it's structure evenly.
But the narrative is split into two parts, which operate on completely different logic. While the heroes live in a mickey mouse world where everything ends up turning out well no matter what the odds are, the villains are isolated in a grimdark 18+ horror seinen. When they die, they don't come back. When they are hurt, they aren't magically healed.
While the heroes' narrative reassures the readers right after the injury, the villains' narrative evades giving clear answers about their fates even two chapters before the end of the epilogue. All the hope we have are a few ambitious hints and our imagination. Is the black haired wandering boy Tenko? Might be him, might be not. Is Toga dead or alive? Might be dead, Ochako clearly is upset and traumatized after what happened, but the cameras being cut off and Ochako losing consciousness from the blood loss give Toga an opportunity for escape. Is Dabi going to die? Probably, but he was supposed to die 7 years ago already, this tough cookie avoids death on pure spite. Is Hawks going to visit Mister Compress and offer him a pardon from Tartarus? Who even knows, we have more important class 2a shenanigans to spend time on.
Yes I know I just did the AFO/Asano Meta, but I feel like I need to do this too
To clarify: this is not me bashing on Bakugou. I want to like Bakugou. If you like Bakugou, you aren't wrong. You just deserve better for him.
Let's begin.
For at least a week now, I have had a picture open in a tab on my browser. This picture is something that I was beginning to think was made up by an Ao3 author because I had only ever seen one mention of it. And now that I've found it for myself, I found myself holding on to it and trying to figure out how to feel about it.
But now that's led to me finally having a way to verbalize the issues I have with how Bakugou has been written throughout the series.
On paper, Bakugou has one of the most interesting character arcs in manga. He goes from being a self-absorbed asshole with a superiority-inferiority complex who only wants to be a Hero because they win fights to the genuinely Hero Midoriya believes he can be.
In practice... well.
Let's play a game really quickly. I'll describe a scene from My Hero Academia, and I want you to guess what chapter it is. It doesn't have to be exact, just a general idea. Here's the scenario:
Midoriya manages to use a Quirk that's destructive to him without seriously hurting himself, and is proud of this accomplishment. In response, Bakugou gets incensed and physically attacks him.
Thought about it? Got an idea? Keep that in mind for later.
So here is my issue with Bakugou: there are two Bakugous. I know that sounds weird but let me explain what I mean. I'll call them Interim Bakugou and Dramatic Bakugou.
Dramatic Bakugou saw his classmates at the Battle Trial and realized that he wasn't the Big Man on Campus. He was furious with Todoroki for not using his fire at the Sports Festival, and infuriated by his internship with Best Jeanist. Dramatic Bakugou was kidnapped by the League because he's an asshole. He blames himself for All Might retiring, and he failed the Provisional License Exam because he's a asshole. Dramatic Bakugou told a kid that he needed to acknowledge his own weakness, took a hit for Midoriya in the War Arc, and apologized to him.
Dramatic Bakugou is improving as a person and a Hero.
Dramatic Bakugou also barely appears in the manga.
We are instead left with Interim Bakugou, the Bakugou who exists in the interim between dramatic moments. Interim Bakugou has not changed from his first appearance on the first page of Chapter 1, when he was five, beating the shit out of Midoriya.
Interim Bakugou tried to attack Midoriya on Day 1, and tried to kill him on Day 2. Interim Bakugou listened in on a private conversation about how Endeavor's obsessions broke him and learned nothing. Interim Bakugou told the League of Villains that he wouldn't join them because he likes how Heroes look when they win. Interim Bakugou told the Help Us Company actors to fuck off. Interim Bakugou dragged Midoriya out to Ground Beta to beat the shit out of him because he was butthurt about his exam and making it all about him. Interim Bakugou won the Joint Training Battle because he wanted to be the Undisputed Best. Interim Bakugou never calls people by their real names.
Interim Bakugou called himself Great Explosion Murder God Dynamight. Interim Bakugou told the class that Deku is fucked in the head and doesn't care about what happens to himself, while ignoring that he called Midoriya 'Useless' so often Midoriya responds to it like his own name. Interim Bakugou uses Deku right up to the moment that Dramatic Bakugou apologized for inventing it in the first place.
Interim Bakugou never changes, no mater how much Dramatic Bakugou tries.
Here, let me prove it. You remember that game I had you play a few paragraphs ago, yes? What chapter did you say? Chapter 7, during the Quirk Apprehension Test?
Well, I have to admit that I lied a little. That picture I've had on my browser for the past week or so? It's actually a screencap of the manga.
This is from Chapter 253, after Midoriya shows his progress with Blackwhip.
This is five chapters away from the start of the War Arc.
This is 69 chapters before he apologizes, most of which aren't focused on him at all.
This is within the Final Saga, as Horikoshi puts it.
And Interim Bakugou is indistinguishable from Orientation Day eleven months ago
I will freely admit that this is clearly meant to be a joke, and that he did not hurt Midoriya as severely as the class is acting, but the behavior is still there. It hasn't changed a bit. Interim Bakugou hasn't changed a bit.
Dramatic Bakugou, in a flashback, confessed to All Might that he used to bully Midoriya.
Interim Bakugou still does.
This is why I don't like how Horikoshi writes Bakugou. I want to like Dramatic Bakugou and follow his journey, but for every step forward he takes, Interim Bakugou takes two steps back. All of his apologies feel hollow because Interim Bakugou is demonstrably the same.
And that's why his apology rings hollow. Here's a transcript of it from my fan translation of choice:
Do you remember what I told you after Shigaraki stabbed me? (...) "Don't even think about winning this alone!" After yelling that out, my body moved on its own, and I was impaled. Yet I knew that I had to tell you those words.
I always looked down on you, just because you were Quirkless. You were always far away behind me, yet, I felt that you were somehow miles ahead of me. I hated that. I didn't want to feel like that. And I didn't want to recognize that. It's why I grew so distant from you and always tried to beat you down.
I opposed you and tried to show my superiority over you. But I always lost. After entering UA absolutely nothing went as I thought it would. I spent all my days trying to figure out your strengths and weaknesses.
It probably doesn't mean anything telling you all this but that's what I really think. Izuku... I'm sorry for everything I've done up until now.
The path you took as a successor of One For All is exactly what All Might did. Your choices weren't misguided at all. But as of now, you can barely stand on your own. Your ideals alone can only take you so far. If you ever encounter a road bump, you can always count on us for help. To surpass All Might, your ideal Hero, we would all have to protect UA and the civilians in there together. It's the only way.
There are three parts to an apology.
You have to be sorry for the harm you caused. Bakugou says that he is.
You have to understand how you hurt them. Bakugou... acknowledges that he "grew distant" and "beat Midoriya down."
You have to either ask how to make it right, or promise never to cause that harm again. Bakugou... promises that they'll all surpass All Might.
Though I will give him credit for acknowledging the protection of civilians, good job Dramatic Bakugou.
Dramatic Bakugou seemingly can't apologize for Interim Bakugou, because Interim Bakugou isn't sorry. Interim Bakugou is the same as always.
So the truth is that I love Dramatic Bakugou's character arc, and I hate Interim Bakugou for not having one
Here's the problem: instead of reflecting on his actual character flaws, Bakugou doubled down and started viewing Izuku as an extension of All Might. His respect for Izuku was contingent on Izuku having "All Might's power" and All Might's belief in Izuku's value.
It makes sense given Bakugou's ideology and their society's victim blaming narrative why he would blame himself for All Might's retirement. And there was progress for his character in that Bakugou came to terms with the fact he wasn't currently the strongest. But even after his fight with Izuku, his entire value system was still built around strength.
He didn't reflect on any of what Izuku said before and during this fight. Bakugou was only willing to talk things out with All Might. He still had no respect for Izuku as a person outside of the power he potentially represented.
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