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nanaosaki3940 · 1 year

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Dabi/Touya Todoroki: A Virgin, The Purest

I know a lot of Dabi/Touya Todoroki fans tend to think of him as this sex god or a manwhore or a sex icon or a kinky dude, etc... But MHA: Smash!! manga says otherwise though...

Chapter 77 (Part-1)

He doesn't get why Big Sis Magne is attracted to him.

Chapter 77 (Part-2)

He doesn't notice Magne ogling him from head to toe.

Chapter 77 (Part-3)

He doesn't get why Magne's being all clingy and touchy-feely.

Chapter 85

He's clueless about Magne's love and concern for him.

In conclusion, Dabi is just as clueless and virgin as his younger brother Shoto. Being awkwardly clueless is such a Todoroki genetic thing lmao.

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tawney · 2 years

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I am a heavy multishipper, and I respect every ship I see as long as it's not romanticize anything bad (like inc3st and p3dophilia)

I love Izuocha as much as I love Bakudeku, but it's so funny seeing other izuocha shippers saying that its so obviously endgame cause it shows they're not actually paying any bit of attention to the manga.

I'm not even mentioning the bakudeku and togachako hints going on in recent events; there is a full scene of Ochako addressing the possibility of her admiration of Deku being mistaken for attraction, and putting away ideas of romance so that she can make herself a hero instead of being Izuku's shadow like she's been doing. People have to recognize and understand scenes like that, even if it goes against their ship or they don't like alternative ships.

Adding on to this put into perspective the fact that Izuku literally lost control of his heart over Katsuki 3 times, and the villain goes after Katsuki to get to Izuku (just like he did to Nana's husband) verbally stating that he's "Closest to Izuku". Now take all of this to account and imagine Izuku and Ochako getting together. You see how that would be a strain? Platonic or not Katsuki would be above anyone else to Izuku, and that's going to mess up any romantic relationship Izuku might have. Ochako probably wouldn't want to go in a relationship knowing the childhood friend would be his first.

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myherobotle · 1 year

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Chapter 389 Reactions

I don’t have my laptop with me so I can’t do spoilers under the cut this time- be careful!

What a exciting panel to start off this chapter!

(Holy shit I didn’t realize how big the explosion bubble thing was)

The Todoroki’s!!! All of them are burning up, it’s amazing though how much they can endure though. (So I guess it is confirmed that Natsuo has a ice based quirk?)

Touya continues to break my heart while endeavor looks like a fucked up thumb. No but seriously what the fuck horikoshi having Touya say “if it was so easy to do, why didn’t it happen sooner” BREAK MY HEART AT 12AM WHY DONT YOU

I don’t have much to say about this panel (sorry I don’t really pay attention to ochacos fight) but I’m happy to see her, I was wondering what her reaction would be cause she’s at Gunga too.

Edit: tumblr mobile is making it look like every image is endeavor looking ugly so I’ll post the real one tomorrow!

#this is a gag post #just because tumblr apparently really wants to see endeavor looking like a thumb panel #bnha 389 #bnha 389 spoilers #mha 389 #mha 389 spoilers #my posts #manga spoilers #bnha manga leaks #bnha leaks #mha leaks #I’ll post my real post tomorrow when I have my laptop

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emile-hides · 1 year

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What surprised you most about Fairy Tail that you didnt expect from what it is? (Classic shounen)

The amount of Lesbians??? Can I say the amount of Lesbians because I am really not joshing you here Zayne there are so many more canon lesbian women than you'd expect???

Other than that, nothing. Absolutely nothing. It is the most cookie cutter shounen anime I could have imagined.

It's got; Power of Friendship, will they won't they Main Character Heterosexual ships, treating women like secondary pieces with no agency of their own, horrible costume designs, that fucking guy who can kick anyone's ass and not die, fat shaming, a plot full of holes, entirely too many fucking characters, accidental homosexuality, fight scenes that last a minimum of 3 episodes each, death is never permanent, that Little Guy just there to sell marketable plushies, a really bad case of Power Creep, genuinely very cool characters that are super underused, incredibly funny filler episodes, and of course, fan service.

There's a reason this isn't my genre.

#Thankyou for asking #This one I am NOT putting in the main tag because it is just straight negative #And no one needs that #look I knew what it was walking in there wasn't anything amazing or out there to put it above any other shounen #This is how this genre of anime is and it's fine I get it #The best episodes are the fillers because they're really light hearted #Personal opinion #About halfway through I realized I'd like Fairy Tail more if it was a gag manga #Like MHA Smash and such #Because then the humor which is the best part would be front and center #Instead of trying to tell a deep plot with power of friendship plot armor #Also I'm FINE with power of friendship plots I watched MLP it's cool

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linkspooky · 7 months

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Dr. Venture vs. Enji Todoroki: How to Write Bad Dads

This is a post comparing two shows about two abusive dads who are the main characters instead of their children. My Hero Academia is a Shonen jump manga that takes inspiration from American comics and shonen manga. Whereas The Venture Bros is an adult swim cartoon that started out as a parody of Johnny Quest, and grew into a seven season long character study of former child star Rusty Venture.

The idea for this post came from the fact that I've noticed a common hot take from MHA fans that Endeavor's redemption arc is bad because it's wrong to make an abuser the main character.

I've always disagreed, and used The Venture Bros as an example of a show where making an abuser the main character works. Rusty is actually a well-liked character in the venture bros fandom. So my question is if these characters are both abusers why is one of them generally accepted and the other one so controversial?

Before we begin I want to say this is a story with fictional characters. Don't bring real life into the equation. We are doing literary criticism here and only talking about the events that happen in the story.

Anyway, My Hero Academia and The Venture Bros seem like the weirdest shows to compare but they are actually pretty similar. They are both comic book shows that are commentating on the comics they're inspired from.

What My Hero Academia is to Spiderman and Dragonball Z, Venture Bros is to Tom Swift Novels, the Hardy Boys, and old Hanna-Barbera Cartoons. They also make the decision to focus on the characters as people rather than heroes. They are telling the stories of real people that exist in a world overflowing with both heroes and villains.

1. Meet the Venture Brothers

If you've heard of the Venture Bros then you've probably heard of the premise that it's an adult parody of Johnny Quest. Johnny Quest for those of you who have a life and therefore haven't seen every old Hanna-Barbera Cartoon like I have is a show where eleven year old Johnny Quest travels around the world with his super scientist father Dr. Benton C. Quest and their bodyguard Race Bannon, going on adventures in Jungle Ruins or fighting villains.

In the Venture Bros the main character Dr. Thaddeus Venture is an emotionally abusive and neglectful father who constantly exposes his sons to danger in his trips around the world. Their bodyguard Brock Samson is a ultra violent and is basically a thirteen year old's idea of what a cool manly man is. The titular Venture Bros, Hank and Dean Venture are sheltered children who are constantly being chased around by men in costumes trying to kill them.

So the basic premise of the show lies in it's dark deconstruction of shows like Hardy Boys, Johnny Quest, these Tom Swift-esque stories where young boys go on adventures by showing the real dangers that children would be exposed to in that kind of life.

Between Johnny Quest, the Hardy Boys, and Tom Swift, what is up with these pie-eyed youths chasing pirates and international diamond thieves and stuff like that? They would get their throats cut the minute that stumbled upon a hideout. And that would be the gag. - ART AND MAKING OF THE VENTURE BROS.

The show does explore Hank and Dean's trauma, but despite the title of the show they are not the main characters. The protagonist is Doctor Thaddeus Venture who himself is other victim of the Boy Adventuring Lifestyle.

Dr. Venture: "Who was, for 43 years, the only son of Dr. Jonas Venture? Who, from the ages of 3 to 17 accompanied him on hundreds of adventures the chilling memories of which rouse him from sleep in a cold sweat to this day?"

Thaddeus used to travel around the world with his father the super scientist Dr. Jonas Venture who was a far more successful super scientist and hero. He's the former star of the "Rusty Venture Show" a cartoon based off of his travels with his father.

Jonas who continually neglected and gaslit him throughout his childhood to the point of not allowing him to go to therapy. He gaslit him so hard there's a scene where he literally pretends to be Rusty's therapist to tell his son to stop complaining.

Rusty: "So I don't know. Sometimes I wish I could just be a normal kid and go out and play with kids my own age and stuff. The only people I get to hang out with are grown ups. The only time I get to leave the compound is to go someplace creepy, like the Bermuda triangle, and then I get kidnapped, by grown ups. And I'm not even sure I want to be a super scientist when I grow up anyway, but I feel all this pressure because of my fa-It feels weird telling you this stuff." Jonas: "Remember Rusty, in here I'm your doctor not your father. Now let's get back to it shall we. You were telling me how you're ungrateful for all the opportunities your father's given you and you blame me for all your problems."

Rusty is both a washed up child star, and a faiilure to his father's legacy. He never formed an identity outside of being the star of the Rusty Venture show or the son of Jonas Venture. He drags his kids all around the world on crazy super science adventures because that's what he knows.

The central premise of the Venture Bros is that Rusty is basically stuck and cannot meaningfully grow up into an adult and his own person, despite the fact he is now a single father trying to raise two sons. The central theme is about three generations of one family, and what it says about the complicated nature of family itself,

As Rusty is both the victim and the perpetrator of the abuse it makes sense he is the main character the story centers around because he's the central link between Jonas and the Twins.

The themes can be summarized in one line said towards the end of the show:

BEN "Just a watch. Tells the time in two time zones. That fourth hand there? Little date window? Those are called complications. Complications make a watch special. More complications the more value. Read the engraving Jonas put on the back there. Elige Tua. It's Latin for Choose your family. Blood doesn't make a family, love does. Choose your family and remember that complications make it special."

In other words it's a seven season long show on how family is complicated.

2. Keeping up with the Todorokis

My Hero Academia is about a lot of things, but the central premise is that in a society where he quirk you were born with can determine a lot about your life, one boy without a quirk sets out to prove that anyone can be a hero.

If Complciations make it special is the central theme of Venture Bros, then the central theme of My Hero Academia is two sentences. "All People are not created equal" and "Anyone can become someone's hero" both said at different points in the story. The story itself is about Deku's attempts to overcome the first statement, that he was not born equal but he deserves to be a hero as much as anyone else because he represents the true spirit of heroes. That heroes don't just show up to beat the big bad, a hero saves people.

The story isn't just about Deku though. We're not even going to talk about Deku in this post, but rather the Tritagonist Todoroki Shoto.

Todrooki is introduced as a foil to Deku someone who is born with an extremely powerful quirk, but who's been groomed from childhood to be a hero.

Shoto's father Enji Todoroki is All Might's ultimate rival. In the world of MHA hers are highly commercialized and ranked by popularity and achievements and Enji has been number two his entire life. He decided to conceive of an heir that could surpass All Might instead.

He purchased a wife with an ice quirk for an arranged marriage to selectively breed for a child with a fire and ice quirk. When Shoto was born he raised Shoto up as a hero, forcing him through grueling training sessions from a young age, and beating his wife when she tried to intervene for Shoto's sake.

That's a lot and I didn't even cover all of it. After this reveal of Shoto's backstory, Enji seems like he's only going to be a one note abuser to give Shoto a tragic backstory to angst over.

However, later on in the show Enji ifinally becomes the number one hero only to realize how empty his lifelong dream has been. He feels remorse for the family he destroyed in pursuit of that dream and starts wanting to make ammends. After this , Enji basically becomes the second most important character of the "Todoroki Family" arc. . A lot of focus is put on Enji's attempts at atonement to the point where some accuse him of stealing the spotlight from his victims.

These two families have a lot in common. They are basically families who are not allowed to have normal lives because the patriarch of the family is a costumed hero. The hero is also someone who is generally well-respected and is considered extremely successful in their chosen career, but are terrible to their family members. They are a hero to the world and a villain to their own family.

If there is a central premise to the Todoroki Family outside of MHA's analysis of what exactly makes a hero, it's this:

Todoroki Shoto: "As a hero this endeavor guy is pretty darn amazing. But it's just like Nasu said. I'm not ready to forgive you... for abusing mom. So, heroics aside. What sort of dad are you going to be? That's what I want to find out?"

The challenge is if Endeavor can choose his family over being a hero.

You can se the parallels in Venture Bros, as Rusty's main struggle is to try to be a father to his twin sons and help them grow up while at the same time struggling in this dangerous worlds of super science. Rusty is a super scientist constantly getting chased around by guys in costumes, but he's also a normal father trying to raise two sons into adulthood with basically no idea what he's doing because he doesn't have a frame of reference for how fathers are supposed to act or what a normal childhood would even look like.

The comic book super scientist, and the comic book hero are expected to act like real fathers to their sons.

However, as I said above in Rusty's case it's pretty uncontroversial that he is the main character of his story, whereas Enji starts fights within the fandom very time he appears onscreen.

Why is this exactly?

It's not because it's offensive to have an abuser be the main character, but rather how these characters are written and how well they fit into their stories. As I said Rusty is naturally the main character of his story because he's the central link in the chain of abuse, but should Enji be the main character of the Todorokis? Does he fit as well as Rusty?

3. Who's your Daddy?

So as stated above Enji and Rusty simultaneously exist in worlds where heroes exist and yet they are also normal people who are expected to provide for their families and raise their kids. They both exist in what is basically the marvel universe, though in the case of Venture Bros it's the Marvel Universe fused with old Hanna-Barbera cartoons.

Because of this world some of the things both Enji and Rusty do are things that have no real life parallels. For example Rusty once created a machine using the soul of a dead orphan as a power supply. You can't do that in real life so I'm not going to use that as an example.

Both of these stories are drawing on real life parallels of parental abuse I'm going to be talking about those to tell what kind of neglectful parent each is.

Rusty raised Hank and Dean Venture as a single parent with the assistance of their body guard Brock Samson. They live on the Venture Compound and only leave when Rusty needs to take a trip around the world. Obviously, there's not many real life examples of parents taking their kids into egypt to fight mummies.

However, Rusty's main flaw as a parent is how much he shelters his children not allowing them to make their own choices. They are homeschooled until they are eighteen and almost never allowed to leave their home unsupervised. Rusty could be compared to a helicopter parent that feels the need to micromanage every aspect of their child's lives, sheltering them so much they're unprepared for the real world.

Rusty is a weird combination of controlling and neglectful, because while he doesn't let either of his childre go to public school aor interact with kids their own age, he constantly exposes them to danger. He is often disinterested in his kid's lives and puts most of the burden of protecting them and raising them on his bodyguard Brock, while he chases after whatever super-science project is occupying him at the moment. He's neglectful to dangerous extents too considering they're always getting cahsed around by crazy men in costumes.

Also, he lets them die a lot.

Hank and Dean have died several times over, only to be replaced by clones that Rusty grew in a lab with all the same memories. Once again there's no real life parallel to this, but it's interesting in the context of the show itself.

How do these children survive being chased by villains and constantly kidnapped? The answer is, they don't.

They die, and then Rusty just clones a new pair of boys. That in itself should make Rusty irredeemable but the show presents it in a more ambiguous light.

Dean: "You're telling me I'm a clone, that I'm not even Dean, that I'm some stupid science experiment." Ben: "No, no, no. You're Dean. There's no other Dean, you're it, flesh and blood. Look I was conceived in the back seat of a packard, you were conceived in a tank. So what?" Dean: "So I have no mommy? No nothing!?" Ben: "Dean, you have it all wrong. You have a mommy, and your dad is your dad. They made you by getting drunk and forgetting to wear a condem like everybody else, and your dad loved you so much that when you got a boo-boo, he kissed it and made it all better and made it go away." Dean: "You brought me back to life." Ben: "Yeah okay, well you and your brother had some pretty big boo boos. Have a kid one day, Dean. Hold it's lifeless body in your arms, and then tell me how wrong it is. Jonas, me, and yes your dad, saw it as nothing more than a fucking band-aid for a really big boo boo."

In the story itself it brings up the argument that if any parent was holding their dying child in their arms they'd want to bring them back somehow. That in the logic of the show it's the same as using magic to revive someone from the dead. At the same time it's not because Rusty's let his sons die multiple times and never changed his lifestyle because he can just keep replacing them with clones.

Super-science aside, it is kind of a metaphor for Rusty's parenting as a whole that his sons have been cloned and replaced so many times they're perpetually sixteen and never allowed to grow up. Rusty's so neglectful he's never taken an interest in raising them and this is the result, they literally do not grow up.

It's also probably relevant to mention that Rusty himself is a clone and died and was replaced multiple times much like his sons, and the technology for cloning Hank and Dean was invented by his father Jonas.

However, after season 3 the cloning lab gets destroyed, and the body guard Brock leaves the family. With the safety net removed Rusty actually starts taking a more active role in both of his child's lives. This is basically a mirror to Endeavor's moment of realization after getting number one hero that his entire family has grown up without him and they all resent him.

Season four onwards Hank and Dean develop into their own people outside of Rusty. He responds to them in different ways but he's actually parenting them this time instead of shoving them away like annoyances. Hank becomes rebellious and fights back against Rusty for a long time after Brock leaves because he no longer has a role model and Rusty's response is to always get strict and punish him.

Whereas when Dean rebels not only does Rusty tolerate it, he also spends a lot more time in Dean's life trying to push him into the direction of being a super-scientist like him, supporting his efforts to go to college, while basically ignoring Hank. It's a running gag in the show that Dean is obviously Rusty's favorite, but even when playing favorites Rusty by this point in the show has reasons for why he's making those parenting choices.

Rusty: "Dean believes in this crap! He should have been Rusty Venture, Boy adventurer. Hank got this life thrown at him. And he fights against it. Just like I did."

Rusty playing favorites comes from an attempt to overcorrect for both children. He rejects Hank because he believes Hank doesn't want to be a boy adventure and therefore pushing Hank away from his family and the Venture lifestyle is what he needs. Whereas, he believes that Dean embraces the super scientist lifestyle and he tries to mentor Dean into another scientist like himself therefore he gives Dean most of his attention because he thinks Dean needs that guidance from him.

Of course, Rusty is totally wrong about his sons. If anything Hank is the one who wants to be an adventurer whereas Dean just wants a normal life away from his crazy family but parents often misunderstand their children. He's not actively malicious, he's just misguided in what he thinks is best for each of his sons. He's not really even playing favorites in this case he's choosing to parent his sons differently based on what he thinks is best for each of them, it's just in this case father doesn't know best.

Rusty isn't a stagnant character, but also there's no big redemption arc for him the way there is Endeavor. Rusty never narrates about how he needs to atone for his past mistakes. The result is Rusty is a far more amoral character than Endeavor because he's not trying to atone but the narrative also isn't trying to spin Rusty in any way. It's just showing you Rusty as he is, and with all the bad things he does he's still capable of loving his sons.

The question isn't really "Is Rusty redeemable?" but "When is Rusty gonna grow up?"

Then there's Endeavor (everyone starts booing) who is simultaneously a much better, and far worse person than Rusty.

Enji is honestly more comparable to Jonas, an incredibly successful hero who built a career and an empire in heroics and fame and then tried to force his son into that same lifestyle.He's the exploration of that same idea a supposedly great man with skeletons in his closet. Enji technically has saved thousands of people (such as Hawks one of the other main characters). A person who is so good at playing the role of a hero no one would ever expect there are skeletons in his closet.

"Rusty's father was more successful than you could ever imagine. Jonas Venture Sr. was a manipulative narcissist admired by the world for his scientific accomplishements and his hyper-masculine James Bond meets Doc Savage public persona. He's a geniuine villain who was able to take everything he wanted from the world by seamlessly fitting into the role of everyone's hero." [Source]

Jonas is like showing everything nasty about using someone like James Bond as a male power fantasy. He treats women like objects, he thinks he's aboe good and evil, he's effortlessly charming and suave and uses that to get what he wants out of people. Enji similiarly is everything that is wrong with the ideals of hero society. A society that glorifies flashy, strong quirks that are the best for taking down villains. The only person who even seems to care that he's number two is Enji himself, beause Enji is otherwise rich and succesful, a pillar of the hero community, and allowed to get away with a lot because of his position and influence.

Enji is at least a better hero than Rusty, because Rusty is an incompetent mad scientist who does stuff like mutate college interns into four armed freaks and build death rays.

However, as a parent strip away his status as a hero and Enji is little more than a show parent, pushing his children into a life they don't want in an attempt to live vicariously through them. Once again, resembling Jonas more than he really does Rusty. As Jonas forced Rusty to be a boy adventurer, and then made a cartoon out of it to make money like any show parent.

It's also the idea that generation put that kids into films and it was a very horrible selfish thing to do, they were doing trying to live out their own lives through their kids. That didn't exist before that was something that boomers brought to the world. "Oh I can't be these fun new things I'll make you be it." I think Jonas was a pioneer of throwing his kid at the world. I think Jonas was something of a boy adventurer himself, and made his kid be it. But also put his kid on TV to cash in the residuals. Jackson Publick, DVD Commentary

As stated above Enji gave up on his ambition to be the number one hero and so he decided to create a son with the right quirk to surpass All Might. He then pressured a woman into an arranged marriage, basically purchasing her from her parents and conceived four children until he got his designer baby.

Chapters 301-302 the wrong way to put out a fire, detail the slow descent of the Todoroki Household from Enji entering an arranged marriage with bad intention to create an ideal child to be heir to his legacy, into a full on child abuser. Enji is written like a normal person falling into a cycle of abuse, he never intended to hurt his children at first. Abusers aren't evil monsters, they're just people. Most abusers don't even think of themselves as abusers.

In fact he's shown positively bonding with his first born son who seems eager to learn to use his fire based quirk. He even mentions that he was alright at the time with the idea of Toya being the one to succeed him and letting go of his quirk experiment.

Enji only had kids to carry on his legacy, and only bonded with Toya because Toya was eager to participate in the training and become his heir. However, to give Enji some backstory it's quite clear the death of Enji's own father at a young age left him with no idea on how a father should act.

At a young age Enji witnessed his father attempt to save an innocent girl only to end up a burnt up corpse, and probably at that point conflated strength with being a good father. If his father had been strong enough he would have survived and continued to be a father to young Enji. At that point it's almost understandable that Enji thinks in his mind that earning his keep as the patriarch of the family, and being a powerful hero who will come home alive is the same thing as being a good father.

So Enji conflates masculine ideals of strength and heroism with being a good father, all the while not actually showing up to parent his kids. When Toya seemed like he could live up to Enji's expectations and be strong as a successor everything seemed fine.

However, Toya turned out to be disabled at which point everything in the household began to spiral out of control. After learning Toya could not use his quirk without burning himself, Enji tossed Toya aside and left raising him entirely up to Rei and then pressured her to have more children until one with his ideal quirk would be born.

Toya did not like his father ignoring him and began acting out for his attention. The response of everyone in the household was to politely tell Toya to shut up, because Enji while not being a parent is the money maker and authority in the household no one can stand up to him. When Toya's acting up got too out of hand, Enji would even hit Rei instead of just personally dealing with his son.

At the same time Shoto was finally born and being given his perfect heir after four attempts, Enji eagerly began training him. When Shoto resisted him, Enji stepped up to threats of physical violence and long grueling training sessions to force him to learn. All the while Toya continued to mentally spiral.

One day after his flames turned blue Toya asked his father to meet with him on Sekoto Peak. However that day Enji didn't show up, and Toya lost control of his flames starting a massive forest fire that killed him. Rather than changing anything after his firstborn's death, he doubled down and pushed Shoto even harder.

While being a far worse person, as a parent Rusty is far less malicious. He neglects his kids similarly to Enji at first, but when the safety net is removed and he can't keep cloning them anymore he actually does start taking a personal interest in their lives. Maybe it's too little too late because it's the 14th version of Hank and Dean but he does hear the wake up call and change his ways as a parent.

Enji always doubles down on ignoring his sons in favor of heroics when given the chance to be a father.

Even post redemption arc Enji behaves in the same way. There is no point in the story so far where Enji actively chooses to help or be a parent to one of his sons, when he can choose to be a part of a big important battle instead. Let me break out the list:

In the Pro Hero Arc Shoto sets the challenge for Enji to show what he can be like as a father rather than a hero.

In the internship arc Enji trains Shoto up as a hero but not a father. When he brings the family home to dinner they're attacked by a villain and Enji stands and watches as his son Natsuo gets kidnapped y a villain because he felt like it would be too awkward if he saved Natsuo because then Natsuo might feel inclined to forgive him.

In the War Arc aftewards Toya is revealed to be alive the entire time, and when given the chance to see his dead son come back to life, Enji not only does nothing but he sits and watches as his oldest son tries to kill his youngest without trying to talk to or appeal to Toya.

After the war arc, Enji doesn't bother looking for Toya and goes back to his job as a hero hunting down AFO. He also makes a promise to Shoto that they'll search for Toya together, only to break that promise multiple times.

In the second war arc, when Enji is given a chance to face Toya face to face, he instead sends his other son Shoto to fight him, while Enji fights against the big bad instead as the number one hero.

When Toya is literally dying and about to burn himself alive in front of him, Enji who has chosen to run away from Toya too many times by this point picks the murder suicide option and chooses to try dying with his son in a heroic sacrifice.

Every single chance he is given to act like a father, he acts like a hero instead. Enji Todoroki never steps out of the role of the hero Endeavor. Internally he's changed, yeah. He's remorseful now and realzies what he's done wrong. However, externally he hasn't. He doesn't do anything different. He neglected his family for his job his entire life so his way of making it up to them is... to keep going to his job.

The problem isn't whether or not he deserves to be redeemed, but rather that there's no change in his actions. Endeavor at the beginning of the story would have shown up to fight AFO in the war arc too, because being the hero is what he does. It's the only thing he does. The story never asks him to be anything other than a hero.

Which is I think a fundamental difference in Rusty and Enji in how they're written. Rusty is a flawed parent, but he's still a parent.

He does favor Dean over Hank, but that favoritism takes the form of him giving Hank more chores when Hank acts out, but when it's time for Dean to rebel giving him space and letting him have his own separate room in the attic. It's Rusty letting Dean have access to the family checkbook so he'll have spending money at college, but cutting Hank off from the checkbook because they agreed if Hank didn't want to go to college he needed to find a job to support himself.

Rusty is parenting these children. He's parenting them very badly, but he's still their parent. Enji never wanted to be a parent to begin with, he wanted to be his kid's abusive gymnastics coach. He wanted a prodigy that he could push and push until they won gold at the Olympics.

If you ignore the fantasy elements then you're left with how these men are shown interacting with their kids in their day to day lives.

Rusty has absolutely no idea what he's doing, so even when he has good intentions he screws up. However, he is making an effort to guide these kids.

Enji was an intentional manipulator more in line with Jonas. He controlled everything in the household, and was actively trying to groom Shoto into someone who would obediently carry on his legacy. He made the choice to isolate Shoto from his siblings so he'd have more control over him. Rusty keeps Dean and Hank away from kids their own age and from having a normal life because he never had a normal life. He doesn't even know what a normal life looks like.

Enji for most of his life didn't want kids, he wanted heirs. He even purchased a woman so his heirs would turn out with the right genetics, and tossed aside the ones that were disabled or born with the wrong quirk.

Rusty made the decision to become a parent on his own. In the last twist in the series it's revealed Dean and Hank had no mother. They were conceived in a test tube, raised in an artificial womb by Rusty himself. He is both their father and their mother. Kids were a deliberate decision on his part. He wanted to have a family, probably because his own childhood was so deprived of any familial love.

Dean: Okay, so who is our mom? Rusty: Seriously, Dean haven't we had enough family history for one day? I don't even know who my mom is. All you need to know is that the person who gave birth to you. I promise they do.

Remember as stated above the central thesis statement of Venture Bros is "Elige Tua - Choose your family". Rusty chose to bring those kids into the world because he wanted to be a father, it's an active choice his character makes.

Whereas the central statement of Endeavor's arc is "So, heroics aside. What sort of dad are you going to be? That's what I want to find out?" but we never witness Enji doing anything outside of being a hero.

Even post-redemption the only time he ever spends with Shoto is when they're either doing quirk training or working as heroes together. Toya as a character presents this challenge to him, because he's Enji's son, but he's also a villain who's killed innocent people. If he's acting as a hero he has to put a stop to Toya, but a father is supposed to put the safety and well-being of their children above everything else.

We never see Enji make that choice to be Toya's father over a hero. Which is why in story he comes off as a worse father than someone like Rusty, because he never makes any attempt to emotionally bond with his children.

Rusty will sit Hank and Dean down and tell them stories from his childhood. He'll find common ground with his sons to bond over because they've both been subjected to the boy adventurer lifestyle.

Rusty: Dean what are you doing? Dean: Hyperventilating into my knees. That smell a little like spit up... because I spit up a little. Rusty: Dean, you just baby burped onto a speed suit. Not a super scientist alive that hasn't coughed a little acid onto his speed suit. Dean: Really? Rusty: Why do you think these things are like 95 percent polyester? You can clean off fear-vomit with a wet nap. Dean: I thought you were used to this. Rusty: Dean I remember when the action man would wake me up with a gun pointed at my head. He'd just hold it there and pull the trigger. I'd hear the click really loud because it was right against my forehead. Dean: So it echoed. Rusty: Right, it sounded like he snapped one of my teeth out. Click! Then he'd go, "Not day Rusty. Not Today." Dean: Golly, and you took it because you had to? Rusty: No Dean, I took it because I was Rusty Venture. Boy adventurer. I didn't ask for this life, Dean, but it's mine. Sure, I fall down in the Speed Suit but I get up and Wet-Nap my puke off.

We never get any moments like this with Endeavor and his kids.

He only goes so far as apologizing for his past abuse. Yes, maybe it's cathartic hearing an abuser apologize for what they've done but that's not the question the story was asking. It wasn't asking "Can Endeavor be forgiven?" It was asking "What sort of dad are you going to be?"

The narrative challenged him to learn to act like a father to his family, and he never did. He stayed in the role of hero from beginning to end. It might be cathartic for his victims to hear him say sorry, but it's not good for Endeavor as a character because he hasn't changed and we've learned nothing about him. We already knew he was sorry at the beginning of the arc. Endeavor is sorry and knows he's done something wrong has already been established, but by Endeavor stepping out of the role of hero and acting like a father we could have learned something new about him or his character but no he stays the same from beginning to end.

They're both awful people but at the end of the day Rusty is a father, and Enji is not.

Stories are kind of like essays your English teacher used to force you to read. You need to make a thesis statement in the story itself, and then have evidence to support that thesis statement. The theme of Venture Bros is choose your family, and family is complicated, and in support of that theme we have Rusty choosing to connect with his sons. Jonas is basically nothing more than Rusty's biological father. Rusty's chosen a different way to connect with his sons, and he is their dad, and they can bond about the complicated lifestyle of being a Venture together.

The actions Enji takes in his story don't line up with his thesis statement. The Todoroki Family subplot is supposed to be about how one family was messed up because Enji only chose to have a family to further his career as a hero, and choosing his career again and again made things worse. The thesis statement was that Enji needed to choose to be a dad, but he's never shown doing that in the story.

So Enji as a character seems like he doesn't fit in with his narrative. Which is what I said at the very beginning about Rusty and why he works as a main character. Rusty is the center, because he's had this horrible life inflicted on him by his father, and he's in the process of raising his sons but he still has a chance to choose to be better.

Enji could also work as the center of his story, he has a chance to choose his family over his work as a hero, but he's ultimately not the one who does that, it's Shoto. Which yes Shoto is the main character of the Todoroki plotline, but by the end Enji's gotten as much screen time as his son. If the plot was going to focus on Shoto and his choices to begin with then he should have been the central point. You spent a lot of in story time asking this question with Enji on whether or not he's going to be able to choose to be a father over a hero, and who Enji is outside of being a hero only to not give the audience any answeres.

This again has nothing to do with Enji the person and whether I think he's likable or not, because Enji's a fictional character. He's an idea. If writing is communication, then a writer is trying to communciate some idea with every character in their novel. We're asking what is the author trying to say with Enji, and do they do a good job of getting that message across?

4. What's the Big Idea?

So the above section was mainly about the personal arcs of each characters: How do both of them fail at fatherhood and do they learn to be better fathers over the course of their narratives?

However, these characters are part of a much bigger world. How a character interacts with both the world around them, and the extended cast of characters is another way a story relates it's theme.

Venture Bros and My Hero Academia both exist in comic book worlds. There are people running around in costumes calling themselves heroes and villains and fighting each other on the streets.

In My Hero Academia heroes are basically professional athletes who sell sports drinks and pose for ads and compete for rankings on a big board, and heroics for the most part has been reduced to a day job for people with particularly powerful quirks. Heroism is an entire industry that's for profit, and run by the shadowy hero council who has far more power over their society than they let onto. You could compare Endeavor being the top hero to him is like a combination of being the best pro athlete, and also the best salaryman ever.

Ironically, the worldbuilding of Venture Bros is pretty similar. In Venture Bros. the villains are all unionized. There is a super villain trade union. It's a secret organization known as the guild of calamitous intent, which makes villainy into a bureaucracy.

All villains in the world have to register with the guild. If you're a part of the guild you receive the protection that the guild offers, as long as you follow the guilds rules and regulations. There's lots of small rules, like you can't torture someone who's having a medical issue, and if you're fighting a good guy and they have a doctor's appointment you have to let them go.

They even rank heroes and villains by their threat levels called "EMA LEVELS (equally matched aggression) and then assign you a hero who's about your equal so you won't get killed by someone way stronger than you. The guild basically decides who you're allowed to fight as a villain and picks a hero for you. The act of being someone's arch villain is called "arching" you show up to harass them once a week like a Saturday morning cartoon villain, fight them, then do it again next week. You're not allowed to kill your hero and you're supposed to follow specific rules. The tradeoff is the heroes won't kill you either, because you have guild protection.

The Monarch: I don't know, just keep it cat and mouse not cat and missile. JJ:: So it's a game? We fake fight? That's ridiculous. The Monarch: No, it's like fencing, it's about the art of the fight. JJ: Well, I'm about to deliver my killing stroke. Then what? Dr. Girlfriend: Then the guild steps up their game. You throw a rock, they throw a knife. You throw a knife, they come to your house when you're sleeping and murder your family. The Monarch: Look Dr. Venture you call the guild and you get the damn rulebook, I'll be waiting.

The justification for why the guild exists is that in world if you didn't give the villains a system with a bunch of rules, then you'd have a bunch of crazy people in costumes running around causing havoc.

Brock: You wanna what? Shoot him? And all his men and his wife? You could steal his cattle, too. Maybe burn his village down? JJ: It's an antiquated system. I mean my father did this fake arch enemy nonsense in the sxities. Maybe my brother is good with this namby pamby guy in a costume chases you around nonsense, but I'm not. Brock: Hey no disrespect Jonas, but it isn't so easy. These guys like their system. It's what they do. You take that away and you're looking at a bunch of pissed off nut bags with ray guns, and giant -- i don't know, a giant octopus / tank with laser eyes.

The villains and the OSI (who are like the GI JOE) of this world have signed a very long and detailed treaty that keeps both sides in a cold world stalemate and lets them fight every week like how the good guys and bad guys fight constantly while maintaining a status quo where neither side wins.

In MHA heroics is a commodity. It's commercialized and sold to the public. Heroes are like professional athletes selling you sports drinks, it's a spectacle to the public, and it's even intentionally made to be that way by the Hero Commission who use heroes as a bright shining light to distract the public while they do shady things like assassinate antigovernmental protestors from behind the scenes. The entire of hero society in MHA is built on the spectacle of heroes.

In Venture Bros heroes and villains are a spectacle too. It's just a job to them. Heroes and villains both show up to work, get in their costumes, fight each other and then go home. In Season 6 of Venture Bros, a parody of the Avengers is actively charging people to provide their services as heroes in the city of New York and you have to sign up for a protection plan if you want to get saved. Then the local mob boss takes a cut of the protection money they're charging.

In both settings the ideas of heroes exist, comic books exist, but the heroes themselves are incredibly mundane, they're just people showing up to jobs and making money for the most part. The only difference really is that in MHA the villains are societal rejects and trauma victims, whereas in Venture Bros they've unionized. In Venture Bros the villains and heroes basically fake fight under strict rules. Even in MHA though the villains need to exist in order to give the heroes someone to fight in front of the public. "Villain" is an actual legal term for a certain kind of quirk criminals with more than three strikes who gets sent to a super max prison if they're caught.

Both of these works are making comic book heroes and villains seem a lot more mundane by deconstructing them with this layer of realism. By making the roles of "hero" and "villain" seem much more mundane, and therefore more human, it also asks us to look at the characters who call themselves heroes and villains as human beings.

The Venture Bros like many richer takes on superhero stories really likes to play with the concept of identity. It's the idea that Good and Evil, Heroes and Villains, are just roles we play. They're not something fundamental or innate they're constructed by the world around us. In the show the main villainous organization the GCI is really just a bureaucracy of larpers sustaining their violent rolelplaying through organized crime. Rich and powerful lunatics who built the world around a game they wanted to play. There's really nothing of substance keeping Rusty on the "Good Guy" side. The good guys are also a mix and match. Shield, GI JOE, FBI. Another exmaple of people who never grew up. Only these people are running things, playing out their childhood power fantasies. They're barely less insane and blood thirsty than the bad guys. So what's even the point of being a good guy in the first place? That's the world Rusty is caught between...[x]

MHA and Venture Bros are both works that feature societies that divide people into two distinct categories "hero" and "villain" and then go on to show that these two categories are not as black and white as they would like us to believe.

Venture Bros features Brock Samson, a character who is ostensibly on the side of the good guys who also highest body count of nameless henchman who we see him gleefully kill onscreen over and over again. There are members of the OSI who are just as trigger happy as the guild so what's the difference between them besides what they've decided to personally identify as? On one side you have the Larpers who are roleplaying villainy, and on the other you have the military soliders who think they're real life GI JOES.

In My Hero Academia you have heroes who are essentially state sponsored peace keepers who suppress anyone who disrupts the status quo with violence, and villains who are rejected from that status quo who eventually turn into violent terrorists. While yes heroes have the responsibility of protecting innocent civilians, most of what heroes do is fight villains, in fact heroes with quirks suited to rescuing people aren't nearly as famous as ones with flashy violent quirks like Endeavor.

You have two sides and one calls themselves villains and the others heroes, but they both use extreme violence as a way to accomplish their goals.

Rusty and Enji are two characters who are caught between these two categories which aren't as distinct and separate as we'd like to believe they are.

Enji is basically the first deconstruction of heroes in MHA. He's a hero who's not interested in saving people, but instead wants to be the strongest and does everything in pursuit of selfish glory.

He's simultaneously the hero with the single most resolved cases in history, but at the same time he's always number two to All Might because he's not "super" enough of a super hero. In a manga where Deku's natural desire to save others make him a candidate to b ahero even without a quirk, we have a character who's a hero for purely selfish reasons. One that only cares about having the strongest quirk because being the best is all that matters to Enji.

In many ways the way Enji treats his family is more like a villain than a hero. Main villain AFO himself comments at one point he wasn't able to manipulate Toya, because his father did too good of a job manipulating him already. In fact you can draw a parallel between his actions of manipulating and grooming Shoto to be his heir, to how AFO raised orphaned child Shigaraki Tomura as his successor.

This is a good use of Enji's character, because making it hard to label him as hero and villain makes us think about who he is as a person instead.

There's an entire episode of Venture Bros dedicated to a villain Mentor named Dr. Henry Killinger, showing up and basically mentoring Rusty Venture when he's at a low point. He gives Rusty money, workers, gets his business up and running again and at the very end reveals that he's setting Rusty up to be a villain to arch his brother as a hero. Rusty is tempted with the idea that he'd make a much more successful villain than he ever would be a hero (because as a hero he's kind of just a loser) but he still chooses to be a hero at the end of the story because he doesn't want to fight his brother.

At which point his mentor, all his hired men, all just walk off and he loses all the money he would have gained and he goes back to being a mediocre super-scientist.

"Doc has the whole thing laid out for him clear as day. This role is here for you. Waiting for you to claim it. You have your nemesis. You have your means. You have the ability and the pain. You can do this and you'd be good at it. And Rusty can look at all of that, everything he's been through and say, "Yeah... but I don't wanna be evil." [x]

Rusty walks away from the chance to be a villain, but he's not exactly a hero either. He runs illegal cloning farms, he does lots of unethical scientific stuff and he's not even remotely the hero his father was considered to be.

Because he doesn't fit well into the category of hero or villain, the show instead asks you to evaluate who Rusty is as a person. He's one of the few characters in the show that's capable of stepping out of those categories.

"That's the great thing about him. Sometimes being disillusioned just means you can see through the whole thing. Sure the whole super science villain game feels stupid. It's not going anywhere. No one's accomplishing anything. It's all violence and roleplay. But at the end of the day it's still real. And it still means something to us. Choosing to be a villain means choosing to be a bad guy. It means relinquishing the premise that you could ever do better, ever actually help anyone. And that's not who Rusty is. He's a scum-bag, but he's a grown up. Even in a show with brilliant characters, old pros, and actual supermen, Rusty is the adult. And adults don't put on rubber masks and terrorize people for fun because that would be fucking silly." - [x]

Rusty spent his entire childhood being terrorized by guys in costumes, so he's now the cynical straight man pointing out how ridiculous this all is. He's the one normal person among the crazies.

Rusty is just too incompetent to ever be like his father. Jonas Venture is scum bag, but he's also a well-respected scientist and a world wide hero. Everyone in the scientific community thinks that Rusty is a joke, and his friends just barely put up with him

Jonas gets away with it because he perfectly fit what society's idea of a hyper masculine strong hero was, and no one questioned it or how he treated his son, whereas because balding, impotent, pathetic Rusty falls so short of toxic masculinity's standards he doesn't get the same respect or leeway that Jonas did. Jonas Venture continually got away with murder, and Rusty can't get away with anything.

He's a pill-popping, middle aged man who ran his father's business empire into the ground who continually gets laughed out of any scientific conference he tries to attend.

He can't be a hero. He can't be his father. He fall short of toxic masculinity's standards. He falls short of everyone's standards. The only way in which he's better than Jonas is that he's a much better father to both of his sons. His greatest triumphs as a character come from bonding with Hank and Dean. Jonas for all his accomplishments wasn't capable of bonding with Rusty because he didn't really care about anyone but himself. Jonas Venture is someone who perfectly fit society's standards of toxic masculinity, but he wasn't a person outside of that.

"Jonas Sr realized this too, but to him, it was a joke. To him it meant being above everyone. Rusty can't be above everyone so he has to meet them at eye level. Part of the bitterness of growing up is realizing that we're all just chidlren who got old. No one knows what they're doing and when you come to terms with that you can look down on people or give them the respect everyone deserves. How you treat children says a lot about how you treat people which in turn says a lot about you." [x]

Now returning to Endeavor we run into the same problem that we did earlier. This whole post is comparing Rusty and Endeavor because they are the protagonists, but Endeavor is far more like Jonas. He's someone who sees through the hero system and only cares about climbing to the top out of his own self interest. He knows it's a game, but he wants to win at the game.

Enji even sort of looks like Jonas.

They're both extremely bulky men at peak levels of physical fitness. Meanwhile Rusty is a balding, short and out of shape middle aged man.

In story Jonas is still widley beloved by the public and is constantly praised, while no one but Rusty is aware of his faults, but there's a reason for that. Jonas is someone who is basically allowed to do anything he wants, because the patriarchy means all of society is built around letting men like Jonas succeed.

Jonas is also someone who literally uses his position as a hero to manipulate people into getting what he wants and glorify himself.

Jonas can casually destroy people's lives, all while still believing he's the good guy because in his world being good guy is just a role to play and he plays it well. One of the best three episodes of the series is the Morphic Trilogy, the opening to season 7 where some of Jonas's past crimes are revealed.

In the past he tricked a married man into making a sex tape with him, and then when that man Don Carraldo aka the Blue Morpho turned out to regret that, he used the tape to constantly blackmail him into doing his dirty work. Killing people in secret while Jonas Venture remained Squeaky clean. After years of being forced to act as a mercenary for Jonas, the Blue Morpho died in a plane crash. Jonas then revived his best friend as a cyborg. He got bored of his new cyborg within a few months and reassigned him to babysit his son Rusty. The cyborg glitched and started to strangle Rusty and then he snaps his friends neck, and throws the cyborg away in the garbage.

Jonas can just completely destroy a man's life because he can. Because everyone around him enables him and no one is going to stop him. Because this is how people in power act when they're given too much power. Because might does not make right.

He's the gold standard. He's the ideal. Who would question him?

Enji occupies a similar position in the story, where he fits the role of a hero so well that even when his family abuse is revealed to the public basically every character and their mom is tripping over themselves to defend him.

Jonas is constantly praised in story years after his death and every bad thing he's done is swept under the rug, but that's because number one Jonas was a manipulative monster, and number two it shows toxic masculinity is a false ideal. This is how Jonas who everyone thinks is the ideal man's man, really acts. This is what he gets away with it, because the thing society glorifies are toxic and bad.

When people bend over backwards to defend Endeavor what does it say exactly? Because we're supposed to believe that Enji's willing to work for redemption even if people don't forgive him. We're not supposed to think Enji is a manipulative monster intentionally twisting people around his finger like Jonas was.

There are some ways Enji is like Jonas, especially in his backstory. He did use his money and influence to buy a woman. Rei was definitely not going to get the option of divorcing him if she actually wanted to leave.

However, in the present time we don't see Enji doing the kind of manipulation that Jonas does, because really he doesn't have to. Hawks does it for him. There is a character in the narrative named Takami Keigo / Hawks who is a little boy that Enji indirectly saved as a child by putting his father in prison. Because of this he is obsessed with making Endeavor live up to the hero he imagined him to be when he was young, and does everything he can to prop Enji up behind the scenes and make him look like that hero to the public.

Hawks is a whole other can of worms, but in effect what this means is there is someone manipulating public opinion in favor of Endeavor so he'll be able to shine in spite of the numerous skeletons in his closet, it's just not Endeavor himself. Hawks also takes away a lot of the active decisions on Endeavor's part. When Endeavor chooses to ignore Toya in the latter part of the story, it's not Endeavor's choice, he's just following Hawks plan to fight AFO. When Endeavor makes a public apology, Hawks is the one who wrote it for him.

The result is that Endeavor comes off as less of a Jonas, after all Hawks is the one manipulating his public image. On the other hand, he's also less good of a character because he's not making choices anymore. It'd be better If Enji was trying to manipulate the public into forgiving him in the wake of his scandal, because that'd be an active choice on his part. When a character makes a choice it tells us something about who that character is.

Horikoshi doesn't want us to think that Enji is the kind of selfish monster that Jonas is, but then who is he supposed to be?

The entire point of this post is to compare Enji to Rusty, but Enji's far too successful to be Rusty. Rusty is a failure in basically everything he set out to do in life. He's the butt of the series jokes. He's the victim in as many ways as he's the perpetrator. He had a lot of money and then wasted it all. None of his inventions are succesful. The scientific community thinks he's a joke, or they don't even know who he is. Women won't even go near him. No one ever defends him. At no point in the story does someone stop and say "Hey, Hank I know your dad's an asshole but he's really good at science so that makes it okay."

Rusty's such a failure at being a hero that he's forced to be a person. He's as equally narcissticic and toxic as his father, he treats women like objects for sex and comfort like his father does, he just doesn't get away with it. You can't point to some heroic feat of his that justifies his toxic behavior because he doesn't have any.

The story however can't stop singing Enji's praises for what a good hero he is. He's never forced to step out of the role of hero and be a person like Rusty is, and because of that the message of his character becomes confused.

Are we supposed to think he's a manipulative narcissist like Jonas is? Are we supposed to think he's an incredibly flawed individual trying to figure out how to be a father late into his kid's lives like Rusty?

Rusty has a clear role in his story, and what the author wants to say with Enji is unclear.

Everyone praises Jonas to death and no one can see him for the terrible purpose he is, because that's the point. Venture Bros is about failure. It's about the death of the space ag optimisme. It's about how much the boomer generation sucked.

From the Radiant is the Baboon Heart Commentary. Question: Did Jonas only keep Rusty around for the press and his cloning tech or did he actually care about him? Answer: . The show has a villain called the monarch, but if you watch all the show the villain is Jonas Venture Sr. He is a bad dad. What you need to realize is that in this kind of baby boomers gen x millenials kind of thing we are of the generation that had bad parents. For the good and the bad of it. The good was we were all left alone by our parents, and we had a freedom in our thought that I don't think the millennials have. Because we made the millennials, and we were like You know what Our parents suck and we're gonna be great parents." And they helicoptered them and they gave playdates. [...] I did hate the boomers, they were awful fathers they were terrible people they did horrible things to our world, and at the time they were celebrated as good people. They were a bunch of hippies and they failed and they did everything wrong that they wanted to fix [...]. You and I are lost people we observed our generation. We are fully aware of it. We observed our parents generation. My actual father was a classic distant father, very bright had a lot of work to do, but I observed that generation and the way that toxic masculinity was set in stone. Just branded onto their tombstone. Toxic masculinity. Our generation grew up wanting to be adults, childhood was something that was not examined. When people were growing up we wanted to be grown ups, we wanted to wear suits, it was something you guys don't have. It was a very different way to grow up. So we wanted to be like this generation that immediately we looked at and went oh my god they're monsters. So Jonas Venture Sr. is a monster.

Jonas is a commentary on how much the boomer generation is glorified, and how much they suck if you look at them critically at all. It's written by authors who were observing basically three different generations of parenting, the way boomers parented, the ways Gen-Xers did in response to that and now the way millennials act as they reach adulthood. Rusty can't escape Jonas' shadow because Toxic Masculinity is set in stone.

The role of Jonas in the story is to serve as an antagonist to Rusty and be the cause of Rusty's struggles, and also his impetus to change because Rusty doesn't want to be like his father. Rusty and Jonas both exist as characters to show the author's observations on parenting through the generations, and yeah it's a very american idea of parenting and family but it's you know... a cartoon made in america.

What is Endeavor's role of the story? If he's a criticism of toxic masculinity he's not criticized enough, because the story spends just as much time glorifying him his obsession with strength and power as it does criticizing him. There's no scenes like this for Rusty to show off how cool he is, or how determined. The story wants you to believe that there's something redeeming in the fact that Enji is always struggling to be the greatest, even though his obsession with being number one is what caused him to abuse his family in the first place

It's criticizing and praising Enji's obsession with power in the same breath, because My Hero Academia can't fully deconstruct toxic masculinity the way that Venture Bros can. It keeps trying to find something redeemable in Endeavor's toxic pursuit of power, but that's the whole point. Toxic masculinity isn't redeemable, because toxic masculinity is toxic. There's nothing wrong with masculinity itself, or the values people traditionally consider masculine but the kind of hyper-aggressive pursuit of physical strength Endeavor chases after is toxic masculinity. In Endeavor's mind men are warriors, protectors and providers and nothing else, and he never learns to be anything else either.

MHA would never treat Endeavor the way Vbros treats Rusty, constantly humiliating him or making him the butt of jokes. It would never make Enji out to be weak or pathetic the way Rusty is.

The central concept of Endeavor is struggle. His chosen hero nae "Endeavor" means to try hard to achieve something. His entire character is based around the concept of struggle. His central struggle is that he's a normal guy trying to compete with a superhero like all might, and everything he does he struggles with even if that struggle is pointless.

However, in the actual narrative itself he doesn't struggle. He definitely doesn't struggle the way Rusty does. Rusty's a lazy, incompetent, and entitled man sitting on a pile of money he didn't earn who thinks he's entitled to more who fails at all he sets out to achieve. Rusty never gets what he wants, and even when he does get what he wants like when his brother leaves him a billion dollar corporation in his will, he bankrupts that company in two seasons. Struggle means that the world isn't going to give you what you want and you keep trying anyway.

Endeavor's never subjected to nearly the same amount of narrative punishment that Rusty is. He's still well-respected. People defend him. He fights in all the major battles of the series and gets victories. No one's disgusted when they hear that he's a wife beater. We are told that he struggles, that the central concept of his character is struggle, but the narrative keeps handing him wins and cool moments.

As I've said above several times, Enji's never really forced to step out of the role as hero because he's not a failure the way Rusty is.

My Hero Academia hits some of the same notes as Venture Bros. It's criticizing apanese hegemonic masculinity, specifically that of salaryman masculinity and the way men in japan completely put their careers over their families. Read about it here in this convenient power point presentation. Enji is essentially an incredibly successful salaryman who has completely disappeared from his kid's lives in order to earn money and success and believes that he's still entitled to be a father because he's performed adequately in his role as earner of the household.

The story does show how giving too much power to the patriarch of a household can cause a house to fall apart. It shows that traditional family roles aren't all they're cracked up to be. Enji is assigned the role of father but he doesn't live up to it. The very rigid and traditional Todoroki Household crumbles because basically everyone fails to live up to their roles. The father isn't present. The mother isn't a good caretaker. The first born is defective. The youngest is given all the responsibility of the first born. No one is able to live up to those roles because maybe those rigid set in stone roles shouldn't exist in the first place.

Once again though, that's all in the backstory. Enji never changes from the Pro Hero Arc to his last showdown with Toya. The story never tells us anything about who Enji is as a person. Therefore, it also never comments on Enji's role as the patriarch. What is Horikoshi using Enji to say about patriarchy besides... it exists?

The story shows you how destructive the idea of patriarchy that Enji represents can be in the backstory, but because Enji doesn't do much for 90 percent of the story it never says anything about how Enji can learn to be a father or if it's even possible for him to be a father this late in the game. Because Enji's story isn't about fatherhood ultimately, it's about him becoming a less selfish hero.

Which might just be a problem with the whole of MHA. Venture Bros is about who the characters are outside of their identity as heroes and villains, but MHA is ultimately more about the optimism of heroes and what it means to be a hero than these characters personal lives.

Rusty is never going to be as sucessful as his father. He's always going to be mediocre, ad even if he's sympathetic he's still a scum bag. However, Rusty has one thing his father doesn't have which are his two sons who he made a deliberate decision to get closer to. Unlike a serial user of people Jonas, Rusty has the ability to actually love and care for people and he chooses to make those connections.

Endeavor never chooses to be a father. He didn't choose to go to Toya's side. He was too busy being a hero and fighting the big bad. As a result of that we never learn anything about Enji as a character outside of being a hero because he never chose to be anything other than a hero.

He also never failed. As I said the narrative kept handing him wins. You'd think never choosing to see Toya would mean he can't save Toya in the end, but in the end of the story Toya's just fine. There are no consequences to his choices. He's revealed to be an abuser to the public but he gets to keep being a hero. Enji never really fails in some big way that forces him to rfelect and change on his actions, so he just keeps doing the same thing from beginning to end.

Which is why Enji doesn't work as a character compared to Rusty. He doesn't fail. He's supposed to be a flawed protagonist struggling against himself, but he never really loses. He's too much like Jonas and not enough like Rusty.

"I think Jonas was something of a boy adventurer himself, and made his kid be it. But also put his kid on TV to cash in the residuals. He was just a shitty parent. When he went to bed he was just, he was moral, and he was fighting the good fight. When he woke up he ignored his son and made his son do terrible things. He voted for nixon like a good american. He was a winner and our show is not about winners. Our show is about losers and people we love." Jackson Publick. n

#venture bros #enji todoroki #mha meta #bnha meta #my hero academia #i put so much effort into this post only two people will read #rusty venture #doctor venture #doctor thaddeus venture #endeavor

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bibibbon · 3 days

Text

MHA CH 421 rambles

Ok so this was a chapter ok. Iam personally not a fan of what happend here but you do you.

I hated AFO's little monologue. introspection thingy and to be honest sukuna does it better. Look Iam critical of both jjk and MHA as they fail in their own aspects on certain things but dam I couldn't care less for AFO and his monologue I seriously couldn't. Yoichi as already dead and if AFO's goal was to be a supervillain from a comic and to reunite with yoichi then why not just idk get the doctor to do it for him or just die to reunite with AFO 🤷‍♀️. His whole thing about tragedy making people stronger or him not feeling anything didn't even hit well because his development sucks and him coming back feels repetitive anyway

Sero getting to respond to the things about tragedy felt so underwhelming I didn't like it. Sero throughout the whole and entire series lacked any screentime and development for him to be getting a big moment that should be given to another character feels like a horrible move. We seriously don't know of anything that has affected sero aka hurt him directly in the manga (aka something just him) so it all feels underwhelming and disappointing. Unironically, I feel like sero should of been one of those characters who left the story or just stayed as a minor character because hori is trying to develop and give him importance way too late into the story.

Where is inko?!?!?! So we see everyone heck we see the civilians, gran Torino, Kota and Eri all comment and hope for izuku to do something but inko his own mother isn't present. Now this probably means something bad is happening or will happen to inko but if nothing happens and she isn't present then dam classic neglectful inko strikes again ig or if they make it a gag that she fainted out of stress i will just hate it even more

I hate that this is something out of the endgame and if hori was trying to be like gege by making everyone join it felt rubbish. Iam not a fan and I mean it I HATE the whole everyone joining in to fight AFO together type thing and I just do. To me it's Izuku's time to shine and people take down villains and do their jobs in other areas at this point everyone is doing more damage to AFO than Izuku who hasn't even landed a hit on izuku. Also why is it that character like Todorokis who have had their big moments here?!?!? It seems like this is a fight where hori is trying to make everyone have a moment before Izuku lands the final hit which doesn't sit right with me. Like there are characters here who have already had their moments like jirou, camie, yuuga, asui, mina and way more but they're here to ... Assist in the fight have another big moment and make AFO more of a potato character then a proper scary villain

present mic is back which I love. One of the good things is that present mic is alive, it's good to have confirmation of that

Even though I think erasers writing is heavily flawed at least someone is holding Izuku. At least izuku is getting something , some comfort out here at least someone is holding him but dam this seems like a disservice all of this seems like a disservice to izuku. Like I wonder do the civilians feel guilty does anyone feel sad or guilty for having this 16 year old child fight something way bigger than him in the name of peace and other peoples safety?

I think the whole thing with Izuku getting that guy's shirt is rubbish and underwhelming. It just doesn't sit right with me, that guy's shirt would of probably been dirty as hell considering it's the only thing we have seen him wearing. Like @mikeellee told me it would of been more impactful if the shirt was given to izuku and that guy had a healing quirk or helped izuku more directly. Now I get that this is supposed to make the guy more likable and show that he ahs developed which we can see and dam hori can actually give some decent development when he wants to but it all falls flat and doesn't do much for me. Also I have seen someone say that izuku wearing this shirt and it covering his upper half is showing how he is losing his ability to be a hero and dam that breaks me.

I can't with the Izuku running to the battlefield and the parallels kill me (we haven't really developed/moved on from chapter one considering the story just loops around itself). Izuku running towards danger quirkless thinking that it's his job because people who were supposed to help and protect him failed. Izuku now quirkless with only the tiny and fading embers of OFA thinning trying to defeat OFA with the damage of kudos quirk still effecting him. All of this to protect others to help them something he never got during the past. This fight will probably parallel all might but all of this happening and I feel nothing all of it falls flat and I feel bad for izuku that's it.

It was a chapter and considering how I hated previous writing decisions I was also gonna hate on the developed/expanded writing decisions either way

#mha critical #bnha critical #mha #hori is a bad writer #horikoshi critical #izuku deserves better #bhna critical #bnha #mha 421 #bnha 421

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animebw · 7 months

Note

*patiently waits for the list of titles you're giving a chance this Fail season*

WELL WAIT NO LONGER MY FINE FRIEND

Must-Watch

The 100 Girlfriends Who Really Really Really Really Really Love You

Listen, do you know how good a harem anime has to be for me to recommend it? This was one of the funniest manga I've read and the adaptation does it justice and more.

Frieren: Beyond Journey's End

Yeah, it lived up to the hype. Let's see if it can match the strength of those incredible opening episodes for its whole run.

Spy x Family Season 2

THEY GOD MASAAKI GODDAMN YUASA TO DO THE NEW OP WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME

Runners-Up

Firefighter Daigo: Rescue in Orange

I guess Brain's Base has decided that making Kennjirou Tsuda narrate everything is a recipe for success, lol. But this is shaping up to be a really strong mix of character drama and disaster movie, with the courage to really take its time and let the weight of its sequences settle.

Migi and Dali

I don't think I can properly describe this one except to tell you to watch the first episode knowing nothing about what to expect.

Overtake

Good season for adult workplace drama between this and Daigo. More of an inspirational sports story for F4 racing, but done really well so far.

Ron Kamonohashi's Forbidden Deductions

Honestly the detective side of this one is kinda weak so far. Thank god the characters are so entertaining and the production is so wonderfully energetic so you barely mind.

Shy

I was initially gonna recommend just reading the manga on this one, but then the second episode turned out lightyears better than the first, so hey. If you're looking for a superhero show to tide you over until MHA's next season, put this on your list.

Undead Unluck

Now this is a much better use of Fire Force's director than Fire Force was. Also, I have it on good authority that the gross groping gags vanish pretty quickly into the manga, so breathe easy on that front.

If You Have Time

Arknights: Perish in Frost

I'm still waiting to see if this can follow up on the first season's actually really good finale or if it'll settle into being just kinda boring again. Fingers crossed!

I'm in Love With the Villainness

I remember bouncing off the manga for this one, and the adaptation isn't exactly a stunner. But it's breezing through the most annoying parts of the opening chapters at a strong clip, so here's hoping it gets to the good stuff soon!

Stardust Telepath

Look, the main character's voice being really squeaky and annoying is usually a dealbreaker for me, but this has enough charm for me to stomach it for now. Love seeing CGDCT shows with this much energy in the production.

Uma Musume Season 3

I'll admit, that was probably the strongest opening episode we've had for an Uma Musume season. Will this be the moment the weird horse idol show finally clicks for me? Let's find out!

On Thin Ice

Ancient Magus Bride Season 2 Part 2

Ugh, this is really turning into a drag. I want to be on board with more Magus Bride, but the increasingly limp production and complete lack of focus on the main relationship are running my interest into the ground.

My Daughter Left the Nest and Returned an S-Rank Adventurer

I would very much like the main female character to gain a second personality trait beyond loving her daddy please and thank you.

Shield Hero Season 3

I... have no excuse for myself.

Already Dropped

16Bit Sensation Another Layer

Like I said:annoying squeaky moe voices are usually a dealbreaker for me. I made it seven minutes into the first episode before I couldn't stand listening to the protagonist for another second.

Bullbuster

I'll give you this, Bullbuster, it takes effort to take a premise like mecha vs monster battles filtered through realistic corporate and engineering bureaucracy and make it boring.

Faraway Paladin Season 2

God, did I really use to like this show? I'm sure I did, but this first episode really make me question what was ever interesting about it

Vexations of a Shut-In Vampire Princess

It took all of five minutes for the show to get into an extended sequence of the main character almost peeing herself in her pajamas. Hard pass.

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emmaelix · 2 years

Text

Someone Call Keigo; Hawks x Reader

I DO NOT OWN MHA THE ANIME OR THE MANGA. NONE OF THESE CHARACTERS ARE MINE EXCEPT FOR Y/N. MEMES ARE NOT MINE.

Full Title: Someone Call Keigo: Hawks X Pregnant Wife! Reader

Y/n: Your Name. Y/L/N: Your Last Name Y/H/C: Your Hair Color. Y/E/C: Your Eye Color. Y/S/C: Your Skin Color

Ships in This One-Shot: Keigo Takami (Hawks) X Reader/ You, Mineta X Trash

Your Quirk: You're basically Mic but with quieter powers. Your quirk is called Megaphone, it allows you to yell at amplified levels. The only problem? You can lose your voice very quickly.

It wasn't that Y/n resented her husband for being a Pro Hero. She always wanted to be one but had found her quirk more useful in the Disaster Squad, a set of five or six individuals with quirks that could help in a large-scale emergency. She had created it with the help of her husband, Keigo Takami. Aka, Pro Hero Hawks.

She also didn't resent his trainee, Fumikage Tokoyami, for asking Keigo to help him train. That was kind of his job, after all. And she was glad she was currently in the main dorms of UA. Because she really needed their help.

Y/n was eight and a half months pregnant. That, in itself, was her problem. Because her water had broken early. This was her first baby, so she had no clue what to expect. Fortunately, Momo Yaoyorozu had gotten a hold of Todoroki's older sister, Fuyumi, who thankfully was off of work today.

"Just breath," Fuyumi said as Y/n sat distressed in a chair. She hadn't gotten any contractions yet, but what really worried her was that Keigo wasn't picking up his phone. At all. And Y/n knew that Keigo wouldn't break his word to her and go on patrol, would he?

"Momo, can you call Tokoyami for me? Kei isn't picking up his phone," Momo looked confused for a second before registering that Kei meant Pro Hero Hawks.

"Okay, he should have his phone on," Momo said, clicking a button on her phone as it began to ring. Soon after, a voicemail message played. Hello, you've reached Fumikage Tokoyami. Please note that as I have not picked up the phone I'm probably on patrol. Please leave your name and number and I will try to get back to you as soon as possible. Click!

"Tokoyami, this is Momo. Call me back when you can," Momo said before hanging up.

Fuyumi's phone began to buzz. "Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry, but this is my principal. He's probably calling about one of my students, I should-" Fuyumi started before Y/n cut her off.

"I get it, it's work. Go talk to him, and if you can come back, please do, if you can't I understand."

Fuyumi smiled slightly before picking up her phone and quickly walking out of the room.

The reason Y/n was even here was because of her work. She was here talking to the students about her program, which Momo and Ochaco had already been helping her with. However, she still didn't know everyone in Class 1-A.

A small boy with purple balls on his head walked in and immediately stopped when he saw Y/n and some of the girls from 1-A. Is this a teacher's child? She wondered as he walked towards them.

Momo made a gagging sound at the sight of the boy. "Mineta, get out. We have better things to do them be harassed."

Harassed? "Momo? Who is this?" Y/n asked the teen next to her as Momo glared, slightly uncharacteristically at Mineta.

"A perv who unfortunately goes to UA."

"And who might you be, pretty lady?" Mineta asked, walking up to the chair Y/n sat in.

"Someone you don't want to mess with. My name is Soundclap, but you might also know me from my husband. Pro Hero Hawks," Y/n said, glaring daggers at Mineta. If the girls she worked with didn't like him, she didn't like him either. Mineta yelped and ran away. Momo laughed.

"Thank you, Sensei Sou-" Before Momo could finish her sentence her phone began to ring. "Oh! It's Tokoyami. Hello?"

Momo put Tokoyami on speakerphone. "Momo? What's wrong? I got your message. Sensei Hawks and I are on patrol."

"Well, he's not supposed to be," Y/n said, lowering her voice and clenching her fists.

"What? Why?"

"Because I'm in LABOR!" Y/n yelled through the phone, using her quirk at the end of her sentence.

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

"Because I'm in LABOR!" Whoever was on the phone with Tokoyami, Hawks could hear them yelling through the phone so loudly that Tokoyami had to remove the phone from his ear and put it on speakerphone.

"AND BESIDES THAT, THE FLYING ASSHOLE WAS SUPPOSED TO HAVE HIS PHONE ON AT ALL TIMES! ESPECIALLY SINCE I'M IN LABOR AT THE UA DORMS WHILE HE'S ON FREAKING PATROL!" Suddenly, Hawks realized who was on the phone. His wife.

Tokoyami looked from his phone to Hawks with fear in his bird-like eyes. Hawks was frozen in place. "Did she say... labor?" He squeaked. "Y/n's gonna kill me," He muttered to himself as he walked in circles. He picked up one of the unconscious villains in the alleyway.

"I'm not gonna see my child because my wife's gonna kill me!" He shrieked to the man he held by the collar. Hawks' wings furled and unfurled with his heavy breathing.

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

"Well, I thought you were dead already since you weren't picking up your phone! But now I guess I get to do the honors!" Y/n yelled as tears started to run down her cheeks. If Keigo was here right now he would stroke her cheek and kiss away her tears. But he wasn't here, he was on patrol, which he promised he wouldn't do until the baby was born. He had made that promise almost a month ago. Did he really just forget that quickly?

Momo seemed to notice her distress. "Do you need me to talk to him?" Y/n sighed and nodded, knowing that overstressing would be bad for the baby.

"Listen, Pro Hero Hawks. Your wife is a crying mess, and she might have a child - your child - at any point. So I don't give a damn if you're on patrol or if you have villains to fight. Give me your coordinates, I'll gladly fill in, but you need to be here with your wife," Momo paused before she picked back up the phone. "And furthermore she told me you broke a promise you made to her? Wasn't that promise you wouldn't go on patrol in the first place?"

Hawks was stuttering on the other end of the phone. How was it, Y/n wondered, that a sixteen-year-old girl commanded so much authority? "I'm sorry if I overstepped any boundaries, but I felt it needed to be said," Momo said, smiling softly and picking the phone back up as Tokoyami picked up the phone.

"I think your little chat worked, Momo, Sensei Hawks is having a nervous meltdown, I think. Or breakdown? Anyway, I think he's going to get us back to UA."

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

I really enjoyed writing this. It won't be a regular theme, but it's still fun.

#hawks x reader #mha #my hero acedamia #mineta's a perv #pregnant reader #hawks x pregnant reader #mentions of labor

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communist-ojou-sama · 3 months

Note

Something I’ve noticed with popular shounen is how hard people go for shounen that’s slightly less misogynistic than your average one, and it’s annoying because it’s not even dudebro fans doing this. I remember when people absolutely meatrode JJK a couple of years ago because the author didn’t sexualise the female characters much or have pervert gags, but now people feel the opposite for it.

It’s like that with Chainsaw Man now. I have nothing against the manga itself but treat the author like he’s some ultra-feminist revolutionary because… Asa is ‘relatable’? Because women have more agency than in Naruto and MHA? And people give him a pass on things they’d absolutely roast other mangaka alive for. Again, it’s not the series itself but it annoys me because female authors are just expected to write good characters while male authors are praised to high heavens when they’re not being ultra sexist.

Oh yeah you absolutely see this all the time and it can be really irritating (I do love CSM though ngl) sadly it also often just comes with the territory of manga made for a teenage male audience, which is why I implore people to watch anime that's actually made for adults and has adult complexity

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nerdranttheories · 8 months

Text

Toshinori Yagi is a Heteromorph, but Quirkless

Nerd rant of the day! I’ve seen many different takes on All Might’s muscle form, arguing about whether it’s a part of One for All, is just a visual gag, or it’s a separate quirk entirely, that’s purely cosmetic in Toshinori’s case. I’ve had this theory for a while, but after seeing some videos on TikTok disagreeing over his secondary form, I’ve decided to publish this headcanon. I also have proof for this idea, so hold, please.

Firstly, I want to address the idea that All Might’s secondary form is just a visual gag, and not an actual thing that happens within the canon in the series. I can see why this would be an accepted headcanon, as it’s hard to explain this ability of All Might’s, when it has little to no explanation within the series. The often comedic times in which All Might changes also lend themselves to this idea, and make it hard to take his transformation seriously. However, there are instances where attention is called specifically to the transformation All Might partakes in. Well, and the gush of blood from his mouth every single time he reverts to his smaller form prove that there’s definitely a physical change going on.

With the idea that the transformation is a canon thing he does in mind, I want to address the idea that All Might only recently started doing this transition, since his injury. Boku no Hero Vigilantes disproves this as we see a young All Might do the signature transformation. (However, I’m not sure of the canonicity of ‘Might Ears’ so perhaps this can be taken with a grain of salt.)

So what is this transformation? Izuku doesn’t do it so it’s not a part of One for All. Here’s where my theory comes into play.

We see several heteromorph characters, even within Izuku’s class. Shoji, Tokoyami, and Koda are the ones I am going to specifically refer to. There are other hetemorphs, like Ojiro and Hagakure, but in their case, their different anatomy is their quirk. To some extent, so is Shoji’s and Koda’s. However, Shoji’s unusual facial proportions aren’t connected to his quirk “dupli-arms”, and while Koda’s ears seem to play some factor in his “ani-speak” ability, from a scene later in the manga. (I won’t add it just in case for spoilers?) but his overall shape doesn’t seem to affect his ability much. And of course, Tokoyami’s ability is Dark Shadow, which really doesn’t explain why his head is shaped like a bird’s.

As such, my guess is there is some kind of classification system in place in the MHA society that places heteromorphism as a quirk or not, most likely due to usefulness. Hawk’s wings allow him to fly, while Tokoyami’s head doesn’t seem to give him an advantage in any way.

Having said all that, I think All Might’s transformation, as well as his eyes, place him as a heteromorph. The eyes I’ll explain a different day, so as not to clutter this post too much. Flexing muscles does make them stronger, but in Toshinori’s case it may be that the transformation doesn’t add any extra strength outside of that, and so he’s considered quirkless. It’s only with One for All that he gets that super-strength. But his different biology may be part of why he was able to accept OfA without the same difficulties Izuku experienced, because it’s never mentioned that All Might has the same toe thing Izuku does. (You’d think if he did, his tailor (and David Shield!!!) would have noticed (which of course could just be the author forgetting but for now I’ll use it as support)) which adds even more to the idea that he’s a heteromorph, just not classified as having a quirk.

#all might #yagi toshinori #smol might #shadow might #midoriya izuku #bnha headcanon #mha headcanon #I don’t know why tumblr changed this to being mature it’s literally just a mha analysis lol #nerd ramblings #my post

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bicheetopuff · 2 years

Note

Hi! I just read your reply to mhatheoriesbrainrot's ask about Bakugo and staying true to manga. I'm an anime only and am curious about what you meant regarding Bakugo's character development. I'm still on the fence if should I read MHA's manga or just stick to anime.

I'm placing my whole trust into you. So if you think that it's more worth it for me to read the manga myself then I accept your opinion and thank you for your time. But if you think that it's not worth it to read the whole manga just because of this (not mentioning that anime hasn't covered all of the published manga) then I'll be glad if you could explain how anime "messed up" Bakugo's character development. Thank you so much in advance ❤️

I’m glad you trust me! However this response will kinda be based around my own experience with the manga and anime. Personally, I think reading the manga was just an overall more enjoyable experience and I highly recommend it but I’ll still explain myself.

I’ll start off by saying I’ve only been into mha since the end of last year. There’s a lot of things I didn’t get to see “live” so to speak and I didn’t get to feel frustration or malice towards the studio when they did weird things in other seasons or movies so I was kinda late to the party but I’ll still voice my opinion on everything despite that.

The first three seasons of the anime are great. There’s a few parts here and there where Bakugous characterization specifically is kinda wonky but I think that’s mainly the result of the anime studio putting on kid gloves. To be more specific and to answer part of your question, I’ll elaborate.

During the Quirk Apprehension Test after him and Deku race

(This screenshot is recycled so excuse the highlighted part)

In this scene he thinks to himself about how he uses his quirk and actually shows curiosity about Deku. Kinda keeping a close eye since he’s still not sure how he made into UA at this point. There’s not really malice coming from Katsuki here.

However in the anime, this scene he says out loud “my quirk has more uses than anyone else” making him seem a lot more arrogant than he was. At this point in the story, it was only a few chapters in so yea he was arrogant and cocky but that part of his character has never been a constant. In the anime it’s a constant.

Another scene would be from the sports fest arc right before him and todoroki fight. He goes into the wrong waiting room and kicks the table in front of todoroki out of frustration but, in his own way he reiterates what Deku told Todoroki in their fight (it’s your quirk not his; don’t fight with half of your power; don’t quote me on these, I’m going off memory lol) but in my opinion the anime made this scene seem more like an angry and comedic gag instead of a reaction stemmed from Katsukis frustration with Dekus growth. It’s one of the few times we see Katsuki attempt to mimic Deku to get what he wants and failing and the anime doesn’t make that part very clear.

This one isn’t really a scene but Katsuki is not a casual touch kind of guy and doesn’t just let people touch him. But the anime kinda forced Kirishima onto him where he’s constantly touching him casually? This isn’t like a bias thing cuz it also happens in season 5 with Deku. In the manga when they’re all in the car with endeavor and he complains about having to be so close to Deku and leans really close to the door. The anime changed that and actually made Katsuki lean more onto Deku.

And then there’s the final exam arc where him and Deku have to fight All Might and a lot of his dialogue just gets… cut out. Also after their match Deku sticks around with Recovery Girl to watch what’s left of the other matches (this arc was formatted differently from manga to anime. Instead of each team taking turns, every test was happening at the same time and Deku didn’t watch a majority of them. I think the anime mainly added that format so Deku could see Uraraka freak out about Aoyama accusing her of liking Deku).

It really doesn’t get irritating until after the end of season 3 with Deku vs Kacchan 2. I have no complaints about DvK2, I actually really like the animated fight, it’s mainly how the anime studio deals with Katsukis character after DvK2. He doesn’t have anger outbursts anymore and he actually becomes almost playful with Deku. He worries about his well being and he helps him train with no complaints (more like aggressive criticism) but in the anime they kinda made it so training with Deku was more of a burden for Katsuki in season 5. Him acting annoyed and bored in the one scene we see them training together but in the manga… it’s not that different but the manga kept the playfulness there.

There’s a particular part in season 5 that’s a lot more obvious than the other things I talked about and that’s match 4 of the class A v class B exercise. Manga to anime contradicts each other. 1) before his match starts in the manga he says “follow my lead” but in the anime he says “stay out of my way” which contradicts what he says later on about helping him when he’s in trouble and him doing the same for his team. And 2) there’s this particular scene after Monoma notices Bakugous change in attitude.

The pan to deku was completely cut out. So it just seems like senseless praise from Kirishima in the anime. It’s not connecting the two dots that Bakugou is changing and that change ultimately stemmed from Deku.

I’m mainly pointing out some of the differences because you asked but I personally don’t care all that much about what the anime studio does because the manga will always be home base for me. However I’m assuming you’re also wondering about the second episode of season 6 which is what everyone’s been talking about.

This… did kinda disappoint me.

I can’t compare this from manga to anime cuz this entire scene is filler. It wasn’t in the manga and didn’t really have any business being added to the anime. And that goes back to the anime putting kid gloves on the story, none of the characters knew what was happening at the hospital. They were told to evacuate the city incase of a fight. And them finding out about the hospital this earlier is gonna make another scene kinda… lose its sense of dread.

But the way they handled Bakugou specifically in this scene was just kind of gross and contradicts him learning the importance of saving people throughout season 5 and season 6 is supposed to be a really important developmental arc for him. He’s so important in this arc and his attitude changes a lot so him whining like a brat about having to evacuate civilians feels like 2 steps backwards. He doesn’t think he’s better than everyone anymore and he hasn’t for a long time. So it just feels like a throw back to season 1x

There’s other things I could say about the anime like how Uraraka also isn’t done Justice and their inability to take serious topics seriously. The studio focuses more on “hey don’t forget this is a shonen” instead of being faithful to the source material and they just use Bakugous character as comedic relief and have no idea how to characterize him accurately (same with Uraraka) unless Hori is involved (which is why I think the first and third mha movies are garbage). All of that might be a different post but might not be because I don’t really take the anime seriously anymore.

Tl;dr

The anime is the manga with kid gloves. They put the story through a strainer and can’t keep up with characterization very well because of how complex Hori likes to write them. If you want the story unfiltered in its full glory, I highly recommend the manga.

I hope this helps calla but whether you wanna read the manga or stick the anime is completely your decision. The anime isn’t bad by any means it’s just a different experience from the manga.

#ask puff #puff answer’s #bakudeku #bkdk #bakugou katsuki #bnha #mha #boku no hero academia #my hero academia #bnha meta #kinda but not really #bnha manga #bnha anime #i don’t hate the anime but I much prefer reading the manga #also Horikoshis art style is really beautiful #if you do decide to read the manga I think you’d enjoy it :)

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mikanlardyclinic · 5 days

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I was doing fine checking mha art enjoying some gag mangas and then saw how incredibly kinky midnight's beta design was..

And holy hell.. The muzzle her basically just wearing belts.. And a corse. What if she ripped all the belts and corse with flab and the remains of it were the only things keeping her decent. And what if her jowls and cheeks were leaking through the muzzle while she chugged lard.. That would be cute i think..

#mun ramblings #not my art #Artist:Sociuscomrade #Midnight cute..

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fuumoksun · 1 month

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MHA x Reader - The tiger and the hawk

❥ Read on Ao3

content warning : language, post canon events, mangas spoilers, insert fem reader (try to make it as gn as possible)

[...]

The street was busy, illuminated by neon lights casting hues of pink, purple, and yellow. Grandma poured everyone a glass of her personal sake stash, "Kanpai!"

"Ahh... Today was a good day for business," She smiled, surveying the lively street.

"Yeah, it was busier than usual... Damn, I still can't believe we met Red Riot and Dynamight," Geto chuckled, handing you a cigarette, despite your recent decision to quit. You comtemplated the idea for a moment before refusing.

Grandma chimed in, her brows furrowing with worry. "Is there something on your mind, kiddo?"

"Nah, It's nothing..." you admitted, your voice tinged with frustration. There was more than a few things on your mind but you couldn't share any of it with them.

"When you say 'nothing'..." Geto air-quoted, "Are you referring to Dynamights fine ass?"

"W-What?!" You choked on your drink, "No! What the hel-"

"Come on Y/n~ Your eyes were glued on him the whole time-"

"BE-CAUSE! He was being a jerk to Gran' and you!" You shot back, "tch, can't believe you even let him treat you like that..."

"I mean, did you see the guy? I'll let him treat me however he wants." He wiggled his eyebrows.

You feigned a gag, "ugh... I thought Red Riot was your type?"

"He is." He shrugged, "But I'm not that picky you know."

"Oh, I know-" You rolled your eyes at him.

The topic changed course abruptly, giving your mind a short rest while your heart already felt a bit lighter. Time seemed to slip away as you enjoyed the company and the calming atmosphere. As people passed, you couldn't help but overhear snippets of conversation, most of them centered around a certain vigilante who seemed to be gaining popularity in the neighborhood

[...]

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nanaosaki3940 · 1 year

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Dabi-chan!!

Okay, so in one of my previous posts, I talked about how Dabi/Touya Todoroki is a clueless virgin according to MHA: Smash!! manga...

In the official Viz translation, Magne calls Touya "Dear, Sweet Dabi" but in the fan translation, Magne calls Touya "Dabi-chan". And this is important because in the fan translation, they always keep the character's names and honorifics similar to what it's written in the original Japanese version. So, in actuality (if we think about the original Japanese version), Touya's called "Dabi-chan" by Magne in this gag manga and my headcanon is that maybe in the canon storyline/canon manga, Magne did use to call Touya "Dabi-chan".

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anti-katsuki-lounge · 1 year

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I find it odd that how it is normalized to hate Endeavor but not Bakugo.

Don't get me wrong, Endeavor deserves to be hated by readers because he isn't doing all that much to be forgiven by his family and when people learn about his abuse, they don't react accordingly. But at least the majority of the audience points the blatant downplay of abuse and has criticisms for Endeavor's redemption arc. Which is wonderful and should be the expected reaction.

But when it's about Bakugo, why is it so unreasonable to hate his redemption arc? Why do people ask us if we even actually read the manga as if they possessed reading skills superior to ours? Is it because he's a minor and therefore gets a slap on the wrist? I never found Bakugo's character charming or interesting to say the least. I really do want to understand, but the more I see his Stan's brush off the bullying, I go back to disliking him as a character. (I know that there are people who do like Bakugo but still hold him accountable for his bullying, which I'm happy to see). I would go as far to say that the real reason why I begun to dislike Bakugo is the blatant favoritism almost everyone seems to have for him. Before I really began to immerse myself into the fandom, I sort just thought everyone didn't like him. I couldn't be more wrong.

Because from my perspective, abuse and bullying are both horrible things to do. While, bullying is less serious in comparison to abuse, I don't understand how it's easily brushed aside. Maybe other people just don't find bullying that serious of a problem, but I do and I will never not bring it up if someone were to ask me why I don't like Bakugo. I'm not going to forget it just because it happened in the past (chapter 1 as some like to say). Which is incorrect because Bakugo had continued bullying Izuku even after they entered U.A. Before someone tries to bring up how in the first few chapters, Izuku mentions Bakugo stopped bullying him, I think it's necessary to mention that Izuku is an unreliable narrator. Furthermore, bullying does not only include physical bullying, it also includes verbal bullying, which Bakugo still does by yelling at Izuku for the most pettiest reasons. The severity of Bakugo's actions are masked by the fact that these interactions are depicted as gag scenes, which does not make me laugh in the slightest. Imagine the gag scenes were depicted in a serious tone. Would it be funny then? I think not.

Also, I do believe that one of MHA's theme is that past actions have consequences. Which is what Endeavor and Bakugo are supposed to represent. But do you really expect me to be satisfied with this. While Endeavor's abuse is revealed by Dabi, he only faces disgust from their society for little bit of time. It wouldn't have been more effective if Endeavor had been the one to reveal his past, rather than his son forcing him to confront it. But at least the society he lives in knows of his horrible abuse. Bakugou on the other hand apologizes in front of his classmates, whom know nothing of his past and have this misconception that his relationship with Izuku is sour is due to the fact both of cannot make up due to their differences. And the cherry on top is that Izuku doesn't say anything against him. I just can't look at his scene and still take Bakugo Stan's seriously. How could they look at this scene and think that Bakugo's redemption arc is great. Clearly both Bakugo and Endeavor's redemption arcs are horribly written, yet calling out Endeavor's is the only acceptable thing. Wish I could understand why Bakugo is so beloved in this fandom, but it seems that I can't do that.

But, hey, at least found a community in which I can share these thoughts.

I really do think it’s cause he’s a minor and the narrative sympathizes with him. I personally agree with what you’ve said about Endeavor and I feel his story should’ve been done better, but the narrative at least tells you he was wrong to treat his family the way he did. Yeah, there’s some backpedaling, and yeah, the reactions from others are relatively tame compared to what they should be like, but the narrative does tell us that Endeavor was a bad person and now he’s making up for his sins. With Katsuki, after the USJ, they narrative is constantly sucking him off and trying to hammer that he has good traits and that he is “redeeming” himself but his actions show otherwise. When watching something for fun, it’s easy to let the narrative influence your thoughts on the series, but once you take a step back and analyze things, you might notice some inconsistencies. That’s pretty much the case with Katsuki.

#anti katsuki bakugou #anti bakugo katsuki #anti bakugo #anti bakugou #mha critical

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kiisaes · 1 year

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Hey! So I read your post about my hero academia, the one where you talked about having a weird fatherly connections towards it and I wanted to ask you about what aspects you don’t like about the series? I share a lot of your sentiments but I do think it’s probably more than mid series? A lot of the details and writing I like and I think is considerable better than other shounen mangas. Anyways sorry for rambling. I just wanted to know what aspects you liked on the series and the ones you didn’t like.

Also complete side note: I absolutely love you’re art it’s so beautiful you’re and really skilled drawer!

sure! and thank u anon!

i want to preface this by saying that everything here is my opinion. media analysis is inherently subjective and something i think is bad might be something you think is good. considering how mha is not a shounen that's universally applauded for any or all of its writing choices, it's expected that you and i may perceive this content differently. doesn't mean i'm right and you're wrong and vice versa, it's just a different individual take on the source content.

also, even though i think mha is "mid to mid-good" (as quoted from my textpost) i don't use "mid" as either an insult or in a "it's so average it's bad" way. i know that word has been fucked over bc ppl automatically assume that something being mid means something is bad or bland or boring. it's a middle of the road series with a good share of flaws and strengths, and it doesn't particularly stand out as anything incredibly amazing or awful. just an average to decently good story, and its level of quality fluctuates throughout its run.

at the end of the day, i do like mha. despite what i think of it, it's a series i hold close to my heart and one i can enjoy even without a critical eye. if i didn't, i wouldn't have been making content for it for 2, almost 3 consistent years.

anyway, stuff i like + stuff i don't like under the cut: (warning: VERY LONG)

mha stuff i do like:

deku. he is my little boy

for the most part, horikoshi's character writing is one of his strongest abilities. characters like bakugou, shigaraki, and dabi (and honestly the todoroki family as a unit) are some of the most compelling characters in a story like this. they're allowed to be complex, dynamic and a blend of virtuous and damning traits. they match the overall themes of mha, which is that the sheer concept of "good vs evil" is surface level at best, and that placing people into strict boxes blocks them from everything else that they are. basically a complete "fuck you" to viewers who must condemn a morally grey hero/villain, for example. even less morally grey characters like ochako (imo) are still fun twists and explorations on their given character stereotypes. however i'm obligated to say "for the most part" because hori's superb character writing only matters when he gives those characters time to breathe and actually exist. i'll get into this more later

horikoshi's art is fantastic and undoubtedly his greatest attribute as a mangaka. i firmly believe that, as far as shounen art goes, there aren't any that can rival mha that are also at its global reach. there's never a single moment where i read a chapter and go "wow that art wasn't incredible" because that's not possible. he utilizes his art knowledge so effortlessly and brings out so much in every panel he makes. the manga art never feels dull. i'm so insanely jealous and in awe of him. i guess i could be biased when making this point but i find it hard to genuinely hate his art. it's so polished every time

this is a smaller point that adds to the last one but i do appreciate how he draws women. not when he's using them for uncomfortable gags, but just in general. there's like, actual meat on their bones. they have realistic body proportions (for his style). many of the women are "chubbier" than other shounen women, and a good amount of them are buff as FUCK. it feels like hori puts the same amount of effort into drawing his female characters as he does his male characters, even if he might not dignify that writing-wise

as a fellow comic artist, i absolutely love his understanding of comic language. it's small details like his onomatopoeia reminiscent of western superhero comics that really tie the presentation together. each panel is full of life, with characters and backgrounds working together in the most effective ways. i can't remember what tumblr textpost brought this up, but he also loves playing around with panel borders. he spices them up by using different subjects or objects to split up panels. and this was more of a strength earlier in the series imo, but his pacing was also pretty quick and resourceful. it shows to me that he truly loves creating manga and knows when it's the right time to visually deviate from the norm. again, i'm truly envious of how he can do this. i only hope to reach his level someday ...

this is definitely a biased point, but some of the series' arcs/storylines are some of my favorite ones in fiction. these include the tournament arc, the kamino rescue arc, the overhaul arc, twice's death, and anything relating to the todoroki family. obviously i'm only listing a handful of examples here because i think nearly every arc has its good moments that i can comment on. but when i think of good mha storylines, i think of these first

i also think that mha as a whole is a fun series that knows how to laugh at itself. there's nothing more awkward than a story that takes itself way too seriously, but the content itself is poorly written or not interesting. thankfully, horikoshi doesn't really fall into this issue

there are canon lgbt characters in this series. even if that's kind of a low bar atp (considering how only 1 out of the 3 play a consistently important role), a win is a win is a win. especially in mainstream shounen, beggars can't exactly be choosers.

mha is a story about systemic societal injustice, which is a lofty concept to tackle. thankfully the story is about powers being the norm so the whole "i'm born better than you because i have abilities" is less of a status quo rejection and more of a status quo enabler. as a story concept, it's a good basis, doesn't seem too hard to comprehend, and opens the door for nuanced storytelling and discussion. i think hori does this well at the start of the series. but as the story goes on... uhhh. i'll talk about it.

mha stuff i don't like:

man do these women have basically nothing interesting to do. i complimented how they're drawn earlier, but with the exception of a few notable ones, a lot of their characters pale in comparison to the men. it's even sadder considering that the amount of women in mha is significantly lesser than, so 5 important female characters is like, 1/4 of the female cast. 5 important male characters is like, 1/12 of the male cast. idk i didn't count the amount of characters in this series but it sincerely feels this way, especially if you remember that there are definitely more than 5 important male characters at any moment throughout this series. and when female characters do have their time to shine, there's a 50/50 chance that they die, get gravely injured, or lose limbs. which normally isn't an issue in a battle shounen like mha, but out of the important character deaths in this series, a fair amount of them are women. midnight, magne, and star and stripe have pretty anticlimactic deaths too, to add insult to injury. lady nagant talked her shit then exploded. she's still alive but like ... what? did these characters have to be treated this way? i can't really think of any important male characters who get introduced then axed from the story like this, except for maybe stain (though he's a far more important character narratively). the reason why i bring up this really lengthy point is not because i think horikoshi is actively misogynistic. i just think he falls into the trap that many shounen mangakas face, which is that male characters are more interesting to a male dominated audience. hence, female characters usually get thrown to the side. there are some important women in mha that stand toe to toe with male characters, like toga and ochako, and there are definitely certified girlbosses like mirko and yaoyorozu. but god do i wish i could add more women to this list without having to think really really hard.

and to add onto the previous, shallow, unimportant characters only gain backstories when the narrative demands for it. horikoshi used to write characters revealing their intentions and history in relatively natural ways, like with ochako and her goal to become a hero for money. it kind of came out of nowhere, but it's a valid conversation a teenager would have with other teenagers. in context, it was revealed normally. i'm not sure when these reveals turned forced, but i remember seeing kirishima's backstory and being like "well .. would this have ever been told to us if kirishima wasn't a main character in this arc?" this isn't against kirishima's character; i love the guy and i think his history was short but contextualized his personality really well. but with the recent shoji backstory reveal i could only think, "wow. horikoshi must be really glad he made a mutant character to project this theme onto, huh." it didn't feel like shoji was ever meant to have a backstory — not to mention a very depressing one — but he got one this late in the series run because it was convenient for the plot. perhaps i'm a cynic and this isn't an issue for others, idk. that being said, i think characters like shoji and even star and stripe and lady nagant could have benefited from more natural character developments, maybe with more time given so it doesn't feel like a weirdly convenient reveal.

i just really fucking wish mineta would die already. like get kicked into the sun or blown up with TNT or run over by a car or something. he's less of an openly creepy loser than he was in the beginning of the series, but i'm sure that's because he literally doesn't have the luxury to be creepy at the moment. he's one of the least appealing gag characters that never grows and changes as a person. and he got a backstory before kaminari. can you fucking believe this shit? why does horikoshi keep entertaining this bullshittery— oh yeah. i just remembered that the girls were perved on quite a bit in this series, which wasn't funny and moreso uncomfortable for a lot of readers. like, i know it's shounen, it's animanga, fanservice is kind of the unfortunate norm. but by god, do we need a series poster child for pervy, male-gaze behavior?

i commented earlier about mha's themes and that i think, at least at the start, hori had a good grasp of what he was writing. framing society's systemic flaws and failures in a wacky superheroes vs villains story is not only clever, but makes this actually serious topic accessible to those who might think social-cultural politics are too intimidating. he sets this up starting from deku and bakugou (oppressed and privileged), then adds onto it with stain (heroes who retain the status quo by seeking money and status are not true heroes, because they don't help those in need). shigaraki is thrown into the mix along the way (society fucks over the underprivileged, even those who want to do good, which breeds more villains and in the real world, more criminals) and his little league of villains all have their own stories (spinner: those who don't look like the masses are cast aside, harassed and villainized; dabi: if you don't live up to cruel expectations established by society and parroted by those in your life, you might as well be worthless; toga: any unconventional worldviews and actions are deemed scary and evil; magne: trying to conform to a rigid society as a queer person is fucking hard, man). there's also endeavor (even though you're in a position of power and respect, it doesn't automatically make you a good person). these are all GREAT, and are super compelling set-ups for mha's overall themes: that society should change somewhat, villains are a product of this flawed system, there aren't fully good people nor fully bad people, rehabilitation/growth is good, and true heroes aren't identified by title, but by actions.

these themes are quite apparent throughout mha's entire run. but i feel like the further it goes, the less horikoshi knows how to verbalize them. the latest mini arc dealt with spinner vs shoji in a strangely awkward clash of ideals. spinner is seen as a martyr who really just wants mutants to be accepted into society, and his status rallies up those who have also been hurt. shoji retaliates by... telling them to stop? by saying this isn't the right way? because he was fortunate enough to be in this position, he suddenly has the authority to tell those like him to find a better way to get their voices heard? what, should they all just become heroes? haven't we established that the society they all belong in is fucked up, and that drastic change must be made? i understand what horikoshi is trying to say but it's... off. like the point is there, but the execution is clumsy. shoji even says something like spinner's revolution setting them back 30 years, which is so fucking bizarre to say, and would certainly raise eyebrows in the real world. it sounds like villains can express their grievances with society but they can't dare revolutionize. otherwise, they'll be silenced/ignored again. it's the whole "violence breeds more violence" belief, but there's more to that that should be explored. man, i dunno.

i'm harping on this one story instance but recent mha is riddled with well-meaning but clumsy storytelling like this. and since the narrative relies on these complex, nuanced themes, it's jarring when the nuance falls through. if mha is about breaking harmful norms, why do they still dictate the execution? hori did it so right with deku and bakugou, their relationship being a definite high in the series. but i truly don't how he'll treat the villains at the end of this arc

ok tumblr's telling me to shut up anyway these are my thoughts. again, even though i've rambled so much about my dislikes, i think mha is still a fun and enjoyable series. it misses the point sometimes, but it doesn't detract from its successes. either way my opinions should not rule over how you consume the series. it's always important to form your own opinions!!!

#asks for becki #SORRY FOR THE LONG LONG LONG POST #long post #i love hearing the sound of my voice so much i end up saying nothing of value #hope ppl understand my pov. it's also ok if u don't. peace and love #bnha #mha #becki rambles about stuff

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