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stillness-in-green · 1 year

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Chapter Thoughts — Chapter 386: I Am Here

Sorry for the lateness on this one, folks. This time it was less Life Happening and more trying to sculpt all of my many, many words about All Might and his mech suit into something at least kind of coherent. I've got a few asks and a meme I got tagged in I'm hoping to get posted before the next chapter, fingers crossed.

Hit the jump!

On “Everyone’s on their last legs” and “No heroes can possibly make it in time.”:

O I have… Some issues with these claims. Let me take the latter one first.

No one can make it in time? Really? Iida is being tasked with running across a third of the country in under ten minutes. Gigantomachia’s ludicrous turns of speed are well-documented. Okay, Machia’s incapacitated and Iida’s got something else to do, but even setting aside the two of them, Miss Joke turned up at the Villain Cave mere moments after La Brava determined Skeptic’s location because she and the Ketsubutsu kids “happened to be nearby.” Lady Nagant managed to get from Central Hospital to within firing range of UA, well over a hundred miles away, in what absolutely cannot have been more than two or three minutes. The supersonic American jets are still perfectly intact, too.

Distance between combatants has been a laughable nonissue for the heroes for this entire fight, but now we’re supposed to believe that travel time presents any sort of problem?

Further, the claim, “Everyone’s on their last legs” is certainly interesting, in that it rather strongly suggests that the villains are winning, or at least doing so much damage that even when they finally lose, it leaves the heroes who were facing them with no energy to relocate. Like, the travel time is an issue, but it doesn’t seem to be the primary issue; it’s not the one that’s brought up first. The one that’s brought up first, and twice, is that there’s no one in good enough shape for it.

And like, really? No one at all? None of the heroes at Machia’s containment facility, who should all be free at this point? No one at the arena fight where all the non-important villains were teleported? No one at the parking lot fight? No one at all?

Certainly it would be nice to believe that the villains at the other combat locations around the country are doing so well, but that sure hasn’t been reflected in the story thus far, which has been pretty insistent about heroes rather efficiently mopping things up everywhere but the AFO and Shigaraki fights.

I would like to take this as confirmation that Shiragiri did indeed dump a bunch of Himijins on more battlefields than just U.A. and Gunga, but we didn't see any at Kamino, so what gives?

On Dabi’s Immolation and the Evac Boxes:

O On the one hand, I really like the idea that Dabi is about to destroy himself because of the Phosphor move he copied from Shouto. It’s incredibly thematically sound!

Touya drove himself to destruction because he was trying to overtake his baby brother in their father’s eyes, despite not having a body type that can perform the types of moves said baby brother can. Shouto has learned to balance both sides of himself, has spent the whole series trying to come to terms with both the parents he inherited his dual elements from, while Dabi remains focused exclusively on his father’s fire, with absolutely zero concern for his ice side/his mother’s perspective/balance in the family.[1] Dabi is accumulating heat because he was never trained in how to turn that heat down and isn’t about to start now. Dabi is on a path that will destroy he himself (again) and destroy his family without intervention that Endeavor doesn’t know how to give.

Also, it’s just really great art of Dabi in general, dramatic tool (affectionate) that he is.

On the other hand, lololol imagine trying to convince readers that the police and their magic sensor machines can accurately predict when Dabi is going to explode. Dabi! The guy who survived for over ten years when Ujiko gave him less than a month to live! And who lived those ten years not even taking it easy, but obsessively training himself with the fire that was supposed to kill him! But sure, now we’re supposed to really buy that lifespan outlooks are going to be so very reliable. Okay, BNHA, whatever you say.

O It is entirely lost on me why Gun Head (no longer occupied with Bowl Cut spy dude, I see) thinks people would be less safe in the metal box that is quite some distance underground than they would be right at the surface when a 5km wide fire bomb set to “burn everything off the map” goes off. Maybe the idea is to just manually run and try to get out of range? But there are dozens of people in that box, including elderly and children. 5km is a bit over three miles—call it a mile and a half radius, then. How fast could you run a mile back in Phys Ed, and would you want your grandmother or baby sibling to have to match that time to avoid being killed in a catastrophic inferno?

Granted, Dabi may or may not be right on top of them, but even if they’re towards the edge of the range, 5km is given as the distance at which everything will be “wiped off the map”—the damage is going to be reduced beyond that range, but it isn’t going to just cut off in a perfect circle! Also too, if Tsukauchi is right and Dabi did get information from Skeptic, he might well be right on top of them! He has been chasing Endeavor through the woods for several chapters now—perhaps he knew the spot he was aiming for?[2]

On the other hand, there are already pieces of the ceiling falling and taking out chunks of the interior structures, so maybe the reasoning here is that if they stay, they run a chance of the whole thing collapsing on them and burying them alive? I dunno; I assume the real reason for getting people above ground is to facilitate the long overdue full Todofam reunion, but good lord, if what’s happening on the surface is so bad that it’s doing this underground, how could it possibly be safer to send people right up into whatever’s causing that damage?

O Of course, it’s fairly ridiculous to begin with that Dabi’s anywhere near one of these escape routes. As @itsnothingofinterest pointed out here, the heroes had complete control over where they set these battles. Why, other than the meta reason that it would be better for the battles to be set in places the audience would recognize, were any of them set anywhere near an evacuation route?

This becomes particularly egregious when you look at the battle map volume extra and realize that all of these combats are happening in a roughly horizontal band across the central, southern parts of the country. Why not move any of them north or much farther west? Also too, once those locations are chosen, why send any of those escape cubes on routes that would pass nearby? The cubes look basically as crowded as a random street scene—people gathered up in clumps in some areas with a lot of empty space in others—so why not just put more people in cubes that are headed on northerly routes?

I’m looking forward to the reunion, don’t get me wrong, but the seams are showing in ways that, taken at face value in-universe, reflect very poorly on the heroes.

On All Might, Quirklessness, and a Fight With AFO:

O GOSH THIS ALL MIGHT QUIRKLESS STUFF. Yes, even a quirkless person can be a hero, at least as long as they have millions of yen to burn on transforming mech suits!!!

And okay, maybe that’s reductive; I can see an argument that the point here is that even quirkless people can use what resources they have available to help! Except that All Might is, by any measure, incredibly wealthy and influential because of the 30+ years he spent being the number one hero with the most powerful quirk in the world. He has access to resources that no random quirkless kid—certainly not middle school Deku!—could hope to match! His mech suit car thing is basically a souped-up support item, and support items are strictly, intensely regulated, such that only two categories of people are allowed to utilize them at all.

One category of people is irrelevant for this discussion: people whose quirks interfere with their everyday life. If you don’t have a quirk at all, obviously you can’t get cleared for a support item through this method!

The other category, of course, is heroes. Could a quirkless kid get access to support items that way? Well, Deku seemed to believe, back in Chapter 1, that U.A. allows quirkless people to take its hero course entrance exam; hypothetically, then, a quirkless kid who got into a hero school would then be able to access support items to use in hero work. However, since they wouldn’t have that access until after passing the exam, they’d have to pass the exam with nothing but their own abilities.

Has that ever happened? Well, no—Deku clearly stated that there was no precedent. That implies that it’s not allowed at most schools—or has only become allowed very recently—and that, even at schools that do allow it, there’s never been a quirkless person who’s been able to pass an exam. Not at U.A., apparently not anywhere.

And that’s not really a surprise. Diminishing the agency and potential of quirkless people so thoroughly that they lose confidence in themselves is a well-established pattern! Mirio handily proves that a quirkless person with the right advantage—in his case, his training in Nighteye’s fighting style—is more than capable of facing down a threat even well-trained heroes would struggle against. Yet Mirio was still either allowed or required to withdraw from hero courses after losing his quirk.

I suspect it’s the same with support items: the right tool could make all the difference in the right hands, but if those hands are quirkless, no one bothers to give them the training or tools that would make that difference, nor do they themselves believe it’s even worth trying.[3] You see how that works? Quirkless people need support items to be heroes, but only heroes are allowed access to support items.

Remember, All Might himself said that it was a bad idea to rely on support items, especially if they’re such a central part of one’s persona/skill set that losing them would be cause for hopelessness. Even if he’s changed his mind since, it’s easy to imagine that that sentiment as being the party line on why quirkless people can’t use support items to become heroes: they’d be so reliant on them that they’d be “helpless” without them.[4]

With all that in mind, how exactly does All Might’s decision to face AFO in a mech suit like nothing the average quirkless person would ever have access to have any bearing on Deku’s question about quirkless people becoming heroes?

O I note, too, that this is all framed around the idea of “a quirkless person becoming a Hero,” and very much not about the idea of a civilian, quirk or no quirk, stepping up to take heroic action when necessary. We’ll get some of that in the next chapter, which is nice, but also very tied up in familial responsibility and parental duty, which is not equivalent to a stranger helping another stranger because they’re there and capable of stepping up. Stepping up with no power was framed as admirable when Deku did it, but his reward was not validation that quirkless people could be Heroes after all, but rather the gift of his very own quirk. Likewise, All Might stepping up is framed as admirable here, but it doesn’t answer Deku’s question any differently than All Might did the first time.

Back then, he said that, because of the dangers of the heroic career, only people with power can become Heroes. All this scene does is expand the definition of power to include mechanical augmentation that no one but a Hero would be able to access anyway. From the first chapter to today, the story is still telling us that being a Hero requires power beyond what a normal person can muster.

A reminder of how this issue reflects on another bedrock problem the narrative is presenting: if only Heroes are allowed to step up and make a difference, then Tenko is still walking.

O Because of how incredibly faulty I find the attempted callback to the question of quirkless Heroes, I’m torn about how I want All Might and AFO’s fight to go. On the one hand, I wouldn’t mind seeing AFO kick All Might’s ass for the sophistry of answering Deku’s Chapter 1 question with a mech suit! He could also defy All Might’s expectations and just fly on by, and that would be funny! On the other hand, there are a lot of good narrative reasons for AFO to, firstly, be tempted into stopping here to fight, and, secondly, lose.

There are several arguments I can see for that, many based in the concept of him being influenced by Shigaraki:

AFO cultivated Shigaraki’s hatred of All Might, carefully encouraging it for years for the sole purpose of stealing OFA. He only ever intended to use it as a tool; for that purpose, he intentionally warped his ward’s psyche. It’s karmically appropriate, then, that that wrongdoing plays into his undoing, with the hatred he created becoming a trap he can’t escape.

AFO making bad decisions based on emotions he can’t handle underscores the idea of Tomura’s willpower overpowering VFO. Shigaraki’s strong hatred was too strong for the vestige to handle, and merely moving the conflict to AFO’s mind instead of Shigaraki’s doesn’t change the outcome. (I also like that AFO falling more under Tomura’s influence reverses the progression that we saw in Jakku, of AFO’s influence gradually overcoming Shigaraki.)

Shigaraki’s hatred spreading down the mental link is a keen parallel to his Decay being able to spread to things beyond what he directly touches. Shigaraki destroys VFO; VFO is connected to AFO; guess what happens to AFO?

If All Might could beat AFO but get his suit taken out in the process, that would leave the rest of this story to the next generation, and it would be about goddamn time.

O Some of those points are in opposition to points that could be made in favor of AFO’s victory, though more in the sense of both being valid points rather than one being a counterargument that defeats the other.

For example, the idea of leaving the story to the next generation works if you believe that Shigaraki should be the final boss. I do, fiercely, but plenty of other people believe just as strongly that the last fight should be Deku (+/- Shigaraki) vs. AFO.

Likewise, there’s an argument that AFO will win here because the story has set up the idea that he has to give his quirk factor to Shigaraki, so it has to follow through on that plot thread. A fair point, but you could also say that we already saw Shigaraki defeat VFO and there’s no point in retreading that if the outcome will just be the same, so instead, we have Shigaraki’s hatred/will overcome AFO right here and now, resulting in him getting into a fight he can’t afford to waste time having with All Might.

…One argument I don’t have a counter for is that if a mech suit is all it takes to defeat Prime AFO, why didn’t Hero Society just do that decades ago? But I suppose Prime AFO wasn’t on a rapidly depleting life timer, so All Mech doesn’t need to be able to decisively defeat him, so much as just stall him.

O Some of those points are also banking on the AFO/Shigaraki mental bond having overcome the complication of distance. I mentioned that last time, so to elaborate slightly: in 340, All Might says that the minimum separation they need wrt AFO and Shigaraki is ten kilometers—a little under six-and-a-quarter miles. The distance from the villa to the spot where U.A. was, meanwhile, is closer to one hundred miles. Given how much Hawks and company had been managing to stall and delay, shouldn’t the distance at which AFO started mentioning his other self's influence still have been too great for their mind link (and thus, presumably, Shigaraki’s emotions) to be in effect? Pretty sure the characters would have mentioned it if AFO had managed to get that close all the way back circa Machia's arrival!

In that light, it’s interesting that there’s a conflict between what All Might says—that Shigaraki’s influence is what’s making AFO unable to suppress his negative emotions—and what the narration box says—that, according to Hawks’ report, the de-aging process is the culprit. I don’t know if anything will come of that discrepancy—Hawks has to be guessing, but when was the last time Hawks actually guessed wrong about anything?—but it might be worth pointing out anyway, in case it’s relevant to the theories about AFO having impulse control problems because of his quirk. Maybe All Might and AFO are just wrong about what’s going on in AFO’s brain!

(Note that a much simpler possibility is that splitting up AFO and Shigaraki was never about their mental link but simply about separating the enemy's two most dangerous combatants. The mental connection is mentioned, but it's not the sole cause for concern. But if that's the case, why mention such a specific distance as ten kilometers, instead of just trying to get them as far apart as possible? If them joining up at all is the problem, the distance is immaterial. So what else can the 10km be if not the maximum range of the mental connection?)

Odds & Ends:

O This is a really damn good sentiment that I wish the story would delve further into by letting its characters actually express more doubt. Like, fair’s fair, neither Shouto nor Uraraka have managed to cinch a victory against Dabi or Toga when their actions haven’t matched their desires��squaring up for combat when they want a more peaceable resolution. However, given that the full extent of doubt we’ve seen is Uraraka and Deku discussing, “Hmm, maybe I’m not feeling so great about beating the shit out of someone I have recently begun to suspect is a human person with human emotions. But maybe I’m just a big weirdo and I should forget all about that,” it’s pretty, uh, basic? Maybe we could take more than baby steps, is what I’m getting at here.

(Also, I note harboring that kind of doubt sure as shit doesn’t stop Deku from punching seven kinds of shit out of Shigaraki as long as he can still tell himself it’s AFO in control. So, you know, he’s doing just fine on the victory front so far, doubts and all.)

O Shouto’s emotional “stiff upper lip while his lower lip is going all wobbly from All Might praising him” face is cute.

O Iida clonking Shouto with his mask is also cute. But also, given that the distance is around two hundred miles—so Iida covering that distance in ten minutes will have him moving at roughly 1200mph—I can’t help but feel like it ought to take more than a face mask to protect someone who isn’t built for speed like Iida is from the wind intensity.

O I think a lot of people assume the “wayward child” Iida is referring to is Shouto, and that’s a fair interpretation, but given how much Shouto wants to find some way to come to terms with his brother, it’s really far more Touya who’s gone astray. Preventing that explosion means saving Dabi too, after all, so I think it’s maybe a bit more resonant if Iida is referring to the elder brother there.

O I say this in complete sincerity: Hawks clutching Tokoyami is a good, emotive panel. I also say this in complete sincerity: I dearly hope some Himijins catch up to them, STAT.

O Stain must have either immersion-breakingly superb hearing or an in on the police line if I’m expected to believe he could hear Shouto and Iida’s conversation well enough to render a value judgement on it from the distance he’s at. Maybe he’s just making some assumptions, since I trust he’s seen the Dabi broadcast like everyone else in the world at this point and thus can draw some basic conclusions from Dabi leaving via warp and Iida picking up Dabi’s brother piggyback-style.

O Speaking of Iida and Shouto leaving, I notice we got no input from Burnin’ this week or last. She was still standing last we saw her, so where’s she gotten to? Maybe she’s getting medical attention for Kido and Onima? We haven’t seen them since Dabi was doing a very good impression of burning them alive.

I will be shocked if Dabi managed to off a named character of greater significance and personal import to him than Snatch. Pleased, too—as I’ve said before, Dabi’s firepower gets talked up way too much for how ineffectual it tends to be in terms of concrete, lasting consequences, and I can think of no better candidates to correct that than one or two of Endeavor’s sidekicks. They certainly don’t deserve to be burned alive, but, well, them’s the breaks when you stand there flapping your gums to a murderous abuse victim about why you personally chose to stand with his abuser.

------------------- FOOTNOTES -------------------

[1] So naturally, he goes and gets ice powers next chapter. Sigh. We’ll see how I feel about that when I read the official release and start putting thoughts down in writing.

[2] As, indeed, it turns out he is. Mind you, typically the person with more control over where a chase goes is the one being pursued, not the pursuer. Dabi would need to nipping right at Endeavor’s heels to have much ability to turn him in a specific direction, or he’d need to be teamed up with a partner who could also direct Endeavor’s flight. So it’s actually pretty strange to suggest that Dabi/Skeptic had any hand in this confrontation winding up where it did. Endeavor is the one who decided to take off in this direction and not veer off in another at any point. A little more on this topic next time, probably.

[3] You could argue that Deku was an exception to this, but Chapter 1 Deku always comes off to me as someone who was pinning all his hopes on a Hail Mary without even considering his other options. He wanted to tell himself, At least I tried, but he was already pretty sure he was going to fail, so he wasn’t doing prep he could have been doing to maximize his odds, like exercise, martial arts training, looking into backup schools with easier exams, etc. I would be entirely unsurprised if Deku didn’t even contact U.A. to see if quirkless people are allowed to test for their Hero Course, or if that was just the earliest hurdle that would have felled him and left him thinking, Well, it didn’t hurt to try.

[4] As if that isn’t true for every hero who ever comes up against a villain that’s a hard counter for their skill set, like all those heroes in Chapter 1 who gave up on even attempting to save Bakugou the moment the “tools” they were reliant on—their quirks—were rendered moot.

#bnha #chapter thoughts #bnha 386 #bnha logistics problems #todotalk #bnha all might #bnha afo #bnha endgame #quirkless discrimination #you guys I deleted SO MUCH complaining about Mirio's withdrawal from the hero course #justice for Mirio's quirkless era

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donanimee · 1 year

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WARNING: MIGHT CONTAIN SPOILERS FROM MANGA SO IF YOU ONLY WATCH THE ANIME AND NOT THE MANGA THEN DON'T READ THIS.

Today the morning heavy rain that happened where i live fitted my mood from today and last week manga, because those two chapters really stabbed my heart and made me want more, especially from last week. Im talking about Chapters 385 and 386 of Boku no Hero Academia manga.

Ever since Chapter 386 many doors of possibilities were open and now many of us are uncertain of the fate of our favorite heroes, especially after, you probably know who :_( , lost his wings in order to protect his pupil, if it wasn't for him ( and Mineta which I have no idea where he came from) Dark Shadow woule have become an slave to that demon. Seeing how umpredictable this arc and Horikoshi are who knows who will lose either their quirk, a limb or their life next and what will become of them after the war.

Even when we not know what will happen next, the chapter from this week might gave us a guess and confirmation of the fates of some beloved characters, especially our favorite LOV generals, Dabi aka Touya Todoroki. And, even if it hurts me A LOT to say it, but now the chances of saving him are a lot lower than ever, especially after learning this:

Even if we had the hope of him surviving the battle, and maybe having his body rewinded by Eri (after all, NOBODY likes when a beloved character, whenever they are a hero or villian, from a beloved series perishes) , now the chances of him surviving are most likely 1%, but even now that only seems like false hope since any moment now, our beloved Touya will blow up into pieces destroying everything around him, which will probably be witnessed by Shoto and the other Todorokis, which will be a huge blow in their hearts having to lose a loved one twice and right in front of their eyes. Like a certain super pig once said:

"Miles, the hardest thing about this job is you can't always save everybody." - Spider Ham from Spiderman into the Spiderverse.

Which also brings a huge theory that came into my mind: Will Endevour live or die?

With how many ocs we have lost in the anime like Sir Nighteye, Magne, Twice, Gran Torino (probably), Midnight, the heroes at the paranormal front war, and sadly our explosion boy Dynamight who they are really taking their time to bring him back to life, we might see more sad deaths in the future, and with one possibly confirmed we may have two more as a probability, one being Endevour aka Enji Todoroki. Lets be honest here, besides Mineta aka Grape Juice, Endevour its one of the most disliked characters in the series because of what he did to his family, even in fanfiction he is a complete jerk or even 10 times worse than in the anime. Even so afrer becoming Number 1 and reflecting on his past kinda did a turning point on his development and made him determined not only to become a better hero but a better father as well, even if Shoto and Natsuo reject his attempts. No wonder Toshinori compared Bakugo to him since they are kinda alike. So its more of a conflicted though even though its a possibility especially since he is the one closest to Dabi who has literally become a living time bomb and doesnt know it. And even if he learns of it i dont think he will want to abandon his son again, even in his last moments and it may risk him his life.

And he already has been having thoughts of his family been better without him and especially with this hints from the series: his guilt and depression over Dabi's identity reveal and remembering what he did to his family in the past, he building a separate house for his family due to believing that they are better off without him, and most importantly his dreams of his family happily having dinner togheter only that he is not there. And i think he is really serious about stop running away from his problems and his own son even if it gets him killed. I kinda imagine it him saying meaningful words to Touya before he reaches his limit and hugging him in tears as he is about to explode while he apologizes to him, Shoto, and his family( if the last two get a glimpse or view of each other as it happens) and I even imagined his picture next to Touya's in the altar. So this is my theory.

So about the other loss im not sure it will happen but this really surprised me

I knew this guy wouldnt just sit still and do nothing, and it touched me how he remembered the words Izuku asked him in the rooftop and became inspired by them. And i never expected him and AFO to have a rematch after Kamino. But even so after seeing him defeat the heroes in the last battle the chances of All Might winning may be low but he still fights ( and I wouldnt be surprised if those Iron Man like support gear came from Mei Hatsume) even though seeing how AFO is being consumed by Tomura's wild negative emotions and if the tables get tuned, im not sure both lives will be spared in this match, either Toshinori reunites with Nana, his former mentor, right away after this or gets fatally wounded and we might get another sad hospital farewell like Mirio and Nighteye. We already saw how Izuku reacted to Bakugo's death, imagine how will he react when he learns of what happened, or might happen, to his mentor, idol, and father figure.

I really hope we dont have too many chapters left for this to be over, and that we dont get 1 week delays too ( even if we do need a break after each chapter release the closer sooner this is over the better). Wonder what next week will have stored for us, we'll have to wait and see.

#my hero academia #touya todoroki #bnha hawks #my hero academia hawks #mha takami keigo #dabi my hero academia #dabi #keigo takami #all migth #bnha toshinori #mha toshinori #endevour #mha endeavor #mha manga spoilers #mha chapter 385 #mha chapter 386 #enji todoroki

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