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red-sneakers · 5 months
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The official translation missed the callback to Katsuki’s apology
The way 405 is officially translated, Katsuki sounds like he’s belittling Izuku again:
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He’s NOT belittling Izuku. He’s making good on his promise to have Izuku’s back.
Here is the literal translation (courtesy of the amazing @pikahlua):
1
OFAに拭えねーもんは
あいつにぬぐえねーもんは
aitsu (kanji: OFA) ni nuguenee mon wa
"What he (read as: One For All) can't handle..."
2
こっちで拭うってなぁああ!!!
こっちでぬぐうってなぁああ!!!
kocchi de nuguu tte naaaa!!!
"I'll handle right here!!!"
And here is the part of the apology scene Katsuki is referencing:
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And here is the fan translation:
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Do you see how Shonen Jump missed the point???
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thinkin’ about how izuku hasn’t said/thought katsuki’s name (well, kacchan, but katsuki just said that’s his name so…) since the final war started.
in fact, whenever he thinks about katsuki, he actively changes the subject of that thought to something related to katsuki.
this isn’t a new thing for izuku. he is the unreliable-est of narrators. especially when it comes to his feelings—other than platonic admiration—for katsuki.
so, lets look. [spoilers for chapter 362+]
izuku’s reaction to katsuki’s death is wordless. very par for the course with izuku. this boy does not explicitly describe his feelings very often (if ever). [367]
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—however, it is powerful. izuku doesn’t need to say anything to convey how he feels in this moment.
but that’s not the moment i’m most interested in. [379]
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that tomb. no one else is dead atop the UA battlefield. it is a tomb because katsuki is lying dead on it.
these are both events that you’d need plenty of context to fully understand. izuku makes us do mental gymnastics to understand how he feels.
but who doesn’t do that?
katsuki.
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just another example of them approaching their relationship exactly how you’d imagine the other one acting.
the kind sweetheart should be the one thinking about the boy he loves despite staring death in the face.
and the cocky asshole should be the one suppressing his feelings out of shame.
the kind sweetheart should’ve been the one to take the near-fatal stabbing for the boy he loves.
the cocky asshole should’ve been the one to then go on an almost murderous rampage following that.
they’re turning into each other.
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Kirishima to Mina:
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Yoichi to Kudo:
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Interesting parallel between two pairs who have a lot in common with our main characters. Something you want to tell us, Horikoshi?
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bkdkhopeful · 4 months
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Oh… OH!!!!!
Love all of the details and parallels in Hori’s art! Excited for more BKDK moments ✨🧡💚
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z-mizcellaneous-z · 11 months
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Deku's possessiveness V.S. Kacchan's protectiveness
Bkdks. We've all read countless fics with bkdk pining after each other, of them getting jealous and whatnot. Usually, the fandom labels Kacchan as the possessive one and Deku as the protective one, but I (respectfully) disagree. I say that Deku is the possessive one and Kacchan is the protective one.
Now, when I say Deku is possessive and Kacchan is protective, I'm not saying that they don't have the other trait. bkdk are both protective and possessive of each other. HOWEVER, the way I see it is:
Deku is possessive. When he gets possessive, it feeds his protectiveness.
Kacchan is protective. When he gets protective, it feeds his possessiveness.
When you read fics from Deku's POV and he's seeing Kacchan being happy with someone else (both platonic and romantic), he gets possessive. Why not me, why THEM, I know him better, I've known him for LONGER, etc. There also is a kind of "indulging" in the "selfishness" of wanting Kacchan all to himself if that makes sense. Like yes, he'll feel bad about being jealous over Kacchan having friends, but also he can't bring himself to stop being jealous/possessive of Kacchan. Deku's possessiveness has the message of "I know Kacchan better than anyone else ever has/will, I've worked hard to stay by his side and I'm not gonna let some EXTRA take him from me."
However, when you read fics from KACCHAN'S POV, and he's seeing Deku being happy with someone else, he gets protective. He also kind of attacks himself in the sense of "I want the best for Deku and I am not the best. I hurt Deku countless times in countless ways, [person] hasn't hurt Deku like I have, and [they] will make Deku happier than I ever could. If they ever hurt him though [they]'re dead." Kacchan's protectiveness has the message of "I want Deku to always be happy. If he's happy with someone else, then I'm happy."
Again, Deku does have moments where his protectiveness shows more than his possessiveness. A prime example is the training camp arc, when Kacchan is kidnapped. It starts as possessive, with Deku basically going "Give my Kacchan back!" and Compress commenting on this and saying that Bakugo doesn't belong to anyone.
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However, as his possessiveness increases, Deku's protectiveness also increases. He's a lot more self-sacrificial and desperate in reaching Kacchan to save him. To protect him.
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On the other hand, Kacchan also has moments where his protectiveness gives way to more possessiveness than usual. The first example is when Kacchan is stabbed by Shigaraki. He sees Deku about to get severely injured, and he becomes protective and takes the hit instead of Deku. However, after getting stabbed, he says "stop trying to win this on your own." This is where his possessiveness shows, in which he's trying to fill the role of being a Symbol of Victory. "Let me be YOUR Symbol of Victory."
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There's also the fact that Bakugo carries guilt because of his actions from the past. This has him being more prone to leaning away from being as possessive as Deku is because "I hurt Deku. I don't deserve him. Deku isn't mine. He doesn't belong to me, he never has." Because of this he leans more towards protectiveness in the sense of wishing for him to be always happy in the ways that he prevented when they were younger and whatnot.
Of course, during his apology, he also expresses how they all will help him. However, you also have the moment where Izuku stumbles and falls. Kacchan's protectiveness comes in as he rushes to grab him and hold him steady. Izuku apologizes for the things he says, and Kacchan says "I get it." Not we, because his possessiveness comes forth in that moment. It also comes forward when he talks to Class 1A and Endeavor.
"You know nothing about Deku."
"I know Deku more than anyone else."
Those are very possessive statements, which are very similar to Deku's possessive mentality.
However, Deku doesn't carry guilt. This has him lean more towards being possessive of Kacchan. "I've ALWAYS stuck by Kacchan, you must be stupid if you think YOU can take him from ME."
However, I also think that once bkdk enter a relationship and Kacchan truly, wholly believes that he is worthy of Deku's love and the relationship in general, he'll allow himself to be a lot more possessive. Like once he's had the realization of "Izuku deserves the best and he chose ME, and I trust his judgement so that means I'm the best for him," he'll go, "Anyone who tries taking him from me will lose a couple fingers. I bite bitch," which is how I feel a lot of people think he's like from the get-go, when that more blatant possessive comes later on.
Again, it all circles back to the good old "bkdk are two halves of a whole, they complete each other."
Win to save, save to win.
Victory and peace.
Protectiveness and possessiveness.
Anyways.
Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk, bkdk is canon I will kill AND die on that hill and I do not take criticism. Have a great day.
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ace-touya · 4 months
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I really like how important friendships are in MHA, especially as an asexual person. And like - you can romantically ship whoever you want, I have my own headcanons about romantic ships that aren’t canonically romantic. But when looking at the canon, it’s nice to see how important platonic friendships are.
The league of villains are a found family.
Katsuki and Izuku are childhood friends (to enemies to friends) who mean the absolute world to each other.
Rooftop trio and the Pussycats are so close with their friendship groups that they made/planned to make their hero agencies together.
All of Class 1-A have a tight-knit bond.
The Bakusquad and the Dekusquad exist.
Ochaco, Izuku and Tenya became really good friends really quickly.
Having friends saved Shoto.
Aizawa and All Might go from being work colleagues to bring friends, and this makes a huge impact on All Might’s life.
Like Idk, I know the fandom tends to focus a lot on the shipping aspects, but I would love to appreciate the friendship more, because it’s so important to the characters, and, as an aroace person, it’s really important to me too.
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greenhappyseed · 2 months
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I posted this image last night from MHA 412 — with Izuku down on the ground, literally in All Might’s shadow — and HAD to talk about it more. See, Izuku is remembering himself in All Might’s shadow, but that’s not how the scene actually looked. Izuku is the one imagining that shadow. Nobody is thinking or expecting him to be All Might 2.0 except himself.
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Way back in Chapter 97, All Might thinks how Izuku WAS walking in his shadow, but isn’t any longer. And that fact excites him — by the time we get to Kamino, All Might doesn’t WANT Izuku in his shadow. However, All Might doesn’t tell this to Izuku.
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When Izuku offers OFA to Mirio, All Might doesn’t interrupt OR say anything to Izuku afterwards. He won’t demand that Izuku be like him or keep OFA. (Also notice Mirio saying Izuku would be sad without his quirk.)
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All Might is proud when Izuku learns parallel processing from Endeavor and masters Blackwhip, something All Might never had to contend with and that is unique to Izuku. (Also notice the flashback to All Might saying Izuku earned OFA by being heroic.)
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But Izuku doesn’t know any of this. What about when All Might DOES talk to Izuku? WELL IT DOESN’T MATTER BECAUSE IZUKU DOESN’T UNDERSTAND! Going back to the ultimate moves lesson, All Might advises Izuku that he’s stuck trying to emulate All Might (which is the same thing Gran Torino told him before). But our big-brained chosen one MC [affectionate] STILL STRUGGLED FIGURING OUT WHAT ALL MIGHT MEANT. It was genuinely hard for Izuku to grasp All Might’s intent.
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You’d think this moment would give Izuku a clue, but no. Izuku’s moves continue to be derived from All Might, and he continues to think he’s “not just copying.” It culminates in the Dark Deku/Villain Hunt arc with Bakugo calling Izuku an All Might wannabe, and Izuku telling 1A that they can’t join his fight because they can’t keep up with the likes of him, Nana, All Might, and Shigaraki. Since then, Izuku has promised not to do things on his own, but we haven’t gotten an update on the idolization front.
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Izuku’s idolization and imitation of All Might remains strong even after hearing it directly from Gran Torino and All Might and Bakugo and 1A. It’s obvious to everyone, including All Might, but it’s just … not … to Izuku. What’s truly hilarious is that Izuku will talk back to the vestiges — he mouths off to Second and Fourth, and he withstands Nana’s challenge to kill her grandson (twice as of 412!!). Izuku also challenges Tomura, and even All for One. But not All Might.
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After everything, Izuku STILL envisions himself in All Might’s shadow from the moment All Might said he could be a hero and offered OFA to him. For all his status and his “triumphs,” Izuku sees himself as a nerd who needs a quirk — who would be sad without a quirk just like Mirio was — and THAT is what Izuku has yet to overcome. Izuku has never heard anyone tell him very bluntly and directly that he CAN be a hero without a quirk. (And that kind of blunt communication is exactly what he needs because, well, he’s a little slow to change his self-perception. Remember when Toga said she liked him?)
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Even though Izuku has seen quirkless Mirio protect Eri…and watched Iron Might and practically quirkless Aizawa fighting…and he knows quirkless Ragdoll helped with planning, and La Brava is playing her role as a computer expert (unrelated to her quirk)…Izuku is going to need to hear, plainly and bluntly, that he IS a hero without OFA. He’s BEEN a hero. He earned OFA “fair and square” in the first place BECAUSE he was a hero. If All Might was a madman for fighting quirkless and being willing to sacrifice his life to live his dream, then Izuku will have to be the craziest hero ever to put his quirk, his life, AND his dream on the line. I’m hoping we get some blunt verbal Izuku appreciation from All Might, Bakugo, 1A, and others so Izuku KNOWS, once and for all (ha!) he is a beloved friend and hero without One For All. Then he can go on to save Tomura (and the world).
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legendoftherisingtide · 4 months
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I will probably write a whole essay about this later but,,
The fact AFO is attacking Bakugou with the language Bakugou would use to demean people. The way that the downfall of AFO would be the very attributes that Bakugou had to relinquish in order to beat him. The way that he is not only fighting the big bad but is also fighting his past. The way he is again sacrificing his everything to win and for Midoriya. The way he is hearing that he is an extra, that he is a nobody, all of the things he has told everyone else, and has not only accepted it but is embracing it: He is here to support Midoriya, he is the one who needs to get out of Midoriya's way, he is not the main character of this story. And he has wholeheartedly embraced that.
He has not only taken the hand of others and realized he can't do it alone but has found the strength in doing so.
He has learned that the world doesn't revolve around him. He has learned that he needs to know when to get out of someone's way.
But not for AFO. Bakugou will still never back down from a fight. He still will not go down swinging. He will not move out of the way when it comes to an enemy.
But he has realized Midoriya isn't an enemy. Izuku never was.
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commander-revan · 4 months
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I was thinking about how much the LoV lost during the Paranormal Liberation War. Besides Twice dying, Compress sacrificing himself, losing their base and their army; they also lost their home. Possibly the only sense of domesticity any of them ever had.
The League had been on the run, squatting in abandoned apartments or warehouses for months before merging with the Meta Liberation Army. Touya has been homeless since he was sixteen. Him, Tenko, and Toga all grew up in abusive homes. Jin had been lonely and struggling to get by financially for most of his life. Spinner was a recluse who didn't leave his house much due to all the discrimination he faced in his hometown. None of them (besides maybe Compress?) had a decent home life.
But, after they win against the MLA, for the first time, they have a consistent place to stay, their own rooms, with access to decent food, and a level of control over their environment they didn't have growing up. They were even leaders over different units in the PLF. This was probably when they were all at their happiest, or at least most content. Even if they didn't have Shigaraki around, they still had each other. And sure, Touya still had a death wish, but he wasn't planning on going after Shoto or his father for a while. They felt safe, for possibly the first time in their lives. And they only get about 3-4 months of that before it all falls apart again.
I wish we got to see more of that time, what their daily life was like, the shenanigans Twice and Toga might have dragged the rest of them into, if Spinner got any of them to play games with him since Shigaraki was out of commission, etc. I imagine they all had rooms on the same floor, and would all kind of hang out during their down time like they were already doing when they were on the run. Maybe someday we'll get lucky and they'll do a LoV focused light novel or Team-Up Missions volume.
But hopefully, they all get to experience that sense of peace, of home, again once the war is over. They deserve it.
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linkspooky · 6 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
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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quirkwizard · 6 months
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While I do have my complaints with the most recent chapter, I do want to give praise where it's do.
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Now, I would joke that Sir Nighteye is nagging Toshinori from beyond the grave, but I do like what is being done here. Nana and Sir Nighteye are two of the people closest to Toshinori. They are also the people that Toshinori feels the most guilt over. He wasn't ready to fight All For One when he attacked, leading to Nana dying in a fight she couldn't hope to win. He pushed away Sir Nighteye for years, barely having a chance to reconcile and only doing so moments before Mirai's death. I've always believed that a lot of what All Might has been doing in the post-war era is coming to peace with his perceived failings. So far, he's tried to come to terms with his failings as a teacher and his inability to act as a hero.
As this is preceded by Stain's message of living on, I believe that this is meant to punctuate the whole journey Toshinori is going on by having him face his regrets. This could tie into him defying his fated death, having a near-death experience, and facing past loved ones. Not only is he fighting against his guilt, but he is not giving in to his fate as well. He's met by the ghosts of his past, with Nana cheering him on with her optimism while Sir Nighteye tells him that there isn't any point in fighting anymore, but Toshinori doesn't deny either. Yeah, he is damaged beyond belief, and his odds are bad, but he will keep on going. So him getting up off the ground and proclaiming he isn't dead and will still live and fight as a hero works as a really strong moment for the character.
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thinkin’ about this panel today
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i came up with what i’m about to say while watching the the dub, which phrases it like “if i looked down on you, i’d want nothing to do with you. but i’m still here.” my thoughts still work with the translated manga, tho.
this is the beginning of izuku’s response to katsuki accusing izuku of having looked down on him their entire lives. he goes on to say what boils down to: “i admired you anyways, so i wanted to see what you’d become.”
katsuki admits to having looked down on izuku their entire lives, but only because katsuki’s inferiority complex perceived izuku’s innate heroism as a threat. katsuki wasn’t really looking down on izuku when he bullied him, but—in some fucked up sense—he was defending himself.
so, even if it was bullying, katsuki spent time with a guy that he believed insulted him. katsuki should’ve wanted nothing to do with izuku, but his insecurities made him feel like he needed to assert himself.
but katsuki wouldn’t have any need to assert himself if he hadn’t subconsciously viewed izuku as superior to him; someone worth admiring, even if katsuki couldn’t do so back then.
so, back to what izuku said.
izuku admired katsuki despite his flaws.
katsuki admired what he pretended were izuku’s flaws. (which later became his actual flaws, but that’s for another time.)
katsuki never looked down on izuku. he looked down on himself for not being like izuku.
because if izuku’s compassion for others wasn’t something katsuki felt could challenge his ability to be the best hero, why the fuck was he so surprised in this panel?
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could it be that katsuki genuinely thought that izuku got into UA quirkless? that izuku’s heroic personality alone got him into the hero school?
could it be that even when izuku’s mom, all might—and izuku himself—had no faith, some part of katsuki always believed that izuku could become a hero without a quirk?
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yeah.
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Thinking about the plot parallels in bnha again, this time as they relate to Izuku's goals--because he's had a specific goal for a long time, and it's not just being the number one hero. Saving is Izuku's half of heroism, after all, and yet from his perspective, it could be said that he fails in one continual regard: saving Katsuki.
It seems to start with the sludge villain. He doesn't exactly fail; he has a positive effect on the situation, at least physically, and Katsuki survives unscathed and more or less emotionally intact. From a literal standpoint, Katsuki has been saved, but Izuku isn't directly the one to save him (and is indirectly the one who put him in danger).
Then training camp happens, and Katsuki is a victim again. And Izuku is frozen there in the forest, unable to keep reaching for him. (And when he plots the rescue, he can't be the one to enact it.) Katsuki is rescued in the end, but Izuku doesn't save him before damage is done--because this time, Katsuki is physically okay, but the psychological effects make themselves known at Ground Beta.
Then there's the next time. Katsuki takes the hit for Izuku, and this time, although he survives, he sustains physical harm. It isn't as though Izuku can prevent this, but Katsuki's only there because Izuku told him about OFA, and is only putting his life in danger because of Izuku. From Izuku's perspective, he hasn't protected Katsuki.
And then there's the final battle, a bigger, more catastrophic reflection of what happened before. Except this time, Katsuki doesn't survive. And once again, Izuku hasn't saved him.
Izuku wins to save; saving is what motivates him. And although he's been victorious time and time again, he has never decisively saved Katsuki from a true threat. This is a pattern his entire life.
His entire life, because it didn't start with the sludge villain.
It started with the river. Katsuki didn't take his hand, and Izuku wasn't able to help him. It's the start of Katsuki's internal conflict with weakness and victimhood, and the start of Izuku trying to be there for him.
Katsuki has to contend with needing to be saved. Izuku has to contend with failing to save him.
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Toga’s Love/Quirk Theory;
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‘I love Tomura-kun and Touya-kun too, but their quirks won’t come out like Jin-kun’s or Ochako-chan’s. I also tried it before this battle...and they wouldn’t come out! Even though I love him... Even though I can become someone I ‘love’... Even though Jin-kun could make them come out... ‘
Translations made in here by @pikahlua​.
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Recently in chapter 382, we see Toga’s unable to become people she loves (Tomura and Dabi), despite the fact that she became Ochaco and Jin and used their quirks and i would argue that problem is not that she didnt love them enough. (This scene also remind me of the time La Brava gets depressed when her love quirk isnt powerfull enough and she questions her love, kinda parallels.)
But i dont think thats the case. Not after Shigaraki became the first person who believed in her, gave a place she belong to her and everything he did for her and not after Dabi and Toga recently connected through Jin’s death and we even get a official art of him imitating Dabi, more details in here.
I believe in you, Toga, that your love for them is geniue too.
So what’s the problem?
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I think its no coincidence that the people whom she couldnt use their quirks happenned to be Shigaraki and Dabi. Suicidal brats who is full of hatred and have personal agenda in league the most, unlike Toga who wants to live, even if its her own way and she is living for love.
Toga cant fully become them because she cant understand them. She doesnt understand whats going on their head. She cant relate to their hatred and she doesnt understand their thoughts.
Compared to this;
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Uraraka is Toga’s foil. She is someone who is just like Toga. This is exactly why Toga ran away to talk with her. Because they are similar. Their feelings, the way they tried to shut their feelings down because Toga did the same in the past, the good girls who repress their needs and they both want to become their crushes. This is why Toga thought if its Ochaco, then she can understand her and they could talk about love.
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In Jin’s case, he is Toga’s bestie and someone she cares as big brother. They have many similarities, they both live for the connections. They both felt lonely. They both were abandonded by society and they wanted to live easier life. They saw league as home and they wanted to do their best to help people they care about.
Basically, Toga can understand their inner thoughts and relate to their inner feelings. I dont blame Toga for this really. Shigaraki and Dabi are too complicated to understand, especially if you dont know their story and inner thoughts. And they dont even talk about their past to connect with league so it makes sense why Toga cant use their quirks.
Well, you could say Toga cant become them because she doesnt want to become them? But i kinda disagree with that. There is a theory made in here by me and several people already mentioned that Toga is imitating Shigaraki and she seems to wanting to be more like him. I would even argue that when she says ‘Even though I love him... Even though I can become someone I ‘love’’, she is talking about Shigaraki.
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‘I loved people’s happy faces. That’s why, for that girl, I won’t turn a blind eye to her tears.‘
Toga is a character who geniuely want to connect with people she care about but key point of love is understanding the person you love. I guess it happens to be good time to talk about love. And last panel with Uraraka and Toga is parallel with Deku’s last panel with Shigaraki, that they wont turn a blind eye to crying face, even though they are villains, they want to save them. So good luck, Toga and Ochaco.
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darkonekrisrewrite · 11 months
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The Villains (specifically the Lov) Are Right
Especially about the civilians in Bnha
(2 Part Meta Civilians and Lov) (Warning spoilers and long Meta Post) (Permission given to re-blog)
The Lov, specifically the core League of Villains, don’t owe any consideration, atonement or apologies to the civilians in Bnha. Because since long before the Lov had even become villains, even when they were still children, the civilians decided that they don’t owe them anything at all.
Most people I’ve seen in the fandom say something like “I don’t justify or excuse the villain’s actions.”, when it comes to the destructive/murderous parts of the villain’s deeds, which is very nice and moral of them to say.
But as long as we’re talking about the average Bnha civilian, I definitely justify/excuse the Lov’s actions.
Because the “innocent” people in Bnha are awful.
Part 1 The Civilians
That’s not even an opinion really but rather a fact that’s been presented to us clearly, over and over again, in Bnha’s story.
That’s partially why I believe that, even at their worst, the Lov are still worth more than most of the civilians that we’ve been shown so far.
See Past the Labels
“Heroes”, “Villains”, “Innocent People”. All labels that are used frequently over the course of Bnha, but seeing past these, looking beyond what we’re told by the story and instead seeing what we are shown by the story, that’s where the truth is in what these characters are and the effects their actions have on each other.
In Hero stories, saving the innocent/civilians is pretty much a guarantee at any point in time, it’s a prerequisite.
Where in most of those fiction, the civilians (or any large social group of innocents) are shown to definitely be people that should be saved, that it would be a tragedy if even some of them died, no matter the numbers.
But that’s not the case here, because the civilians in bnha aren’t like what you’d normally find in a hero tale, so much so that they’re nearly incomparable to any other series’ “Innocents”.
Looking at them as a whole, they’re more like what you’d find in a horror story.
Starting with one of the largest by the numbers examples:
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They’re personifications of the bystander effect/syndrome, taken to the highest degree.
A truth that’s sometimes overlooked is that, while All for One and the Shimura family played a part in making Tenko Shimura the Tomura Shigaraki that he is today, so did all the civilians above. If even a single one of them had tried to help the child that would become the most dangerous villain, no matter how that would have turned out, the person Shigaraki is now would be different, maybe entirely.
Even just one true attempt to aid the scary looking child, instead of leaving it to the heroes who weren’t there, would have made a lasting impact. Just like the civilians choosing not to lift a finger to help left a lasting impact on Shigaraki in the present.
They condemn people for things that aren’t their fault, even when the individual hasn’t done anything wrong:
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These are pretty self-explanatory in the point, but these aren’t just examples of ‘bad luck’, they showcase a callous legal system and civilians willing to throw a 16 year old kid under the bus for something that was in no way his ‘stumble’ or fault.
(First Side Point: Twice didn’t turn to a life of villainy because it was his “choice”. There’s been zero evidence of any social help for victims of hero society’s circumstances, so there’s no reason to assume that Twice had any help in supporting himself after his parents died. Twice then getting fired from his low level Job and having a glaring blemish on his record (as shown above ^) was a death sentence for a normal life right then and there, especially considering the setting in hero society (Japanese culture taken to its most socially merciless), it doesn’t really need to be spelled out any more than that why he turned to a life of crime against a society that screwed him over at every level and left him to rot. Between becoming a tragic statistic that the hero state didn’t (and still doesn’t) care about or becoming a villain for the chance at having some kind of life, it’s not really a choice at all. The saying ‘Cool motive still Murder’ comes up sometimes when taking about specific villains in Bnha and my response to that would be: ‘Then Suffer and Die Nobly.’ There is no ‘being better’ because if they were better in their current circumstances, they’d just quickly become a statistic.)
They’d rather someone, even their own children; suffer in silence than be seen as anything but their “normal”:
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Toga’s parents might seem like a more ‘personal’ point but they’re actually a prime example of the standard bnha civilian, caring nothing about their own suffering young and only about their own lives and normalcy. Even when Toga was obviously self-harming due to her quirk, something that couldn’t logically have been hidden from them, there was no real attempts to help her with this other than rejection (as evident by the parents stopping taking her height down on the wall when her quirk presumably manifested, clearly meant to be a hint that it was the point that they stopped caring about her) and sending her to “Quirk Counseling”, taking no responsibility in helping their child and taking none after Toga was broken under the weight of what was normal after struggling to hold back for so many years.
This mentality extends past Toga’s parents to most of bnha’s civilians.
When Dabi revealed himself as Toya and exposed the Todoroki family’s past the world, nobody cared. At least not in any way that could be considered ‘caring’.
Endeavor bought and bred his wife, and it’s very debatable whether or not the later ‘child making’ could be considered consensual.
Rei told endeavor that it was “too much” and “too cruel”, all but saying that she didn’t want to have any more children, and in the anime it’s played even more clearly:
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This ^ does not seem like consent.
Also letting his first born son burn himself to his apparent death because he couldn’t be bothered to care enough to prevent it.
Endeavor knew Toya was burning himself and he never got him any psychiatric help, even though Toya was already having extreme signs of mental breaks alongside the burning, he never even thought about it.
Even if this failed in stopping Toya, Endeavor just could have pulled some strings as the number 2 hero and gotten Toya Hero tech/equipment/suits, anything that might have helped.
But all Endeavor did was tell Toya to stop and do “other things” and when that failed he simply ignored him, even though he knew his child was literally burning himself.
(Endeavor could be considered an unreliable narrator, I think other great Meta writers have already called him on that, with him telling Natsuo that he never meant to neglect any of his children, which is evident (by how he treated Toya) as complete Bullshit.)
Now do the civilians know all of this down to a T?
No, but even before the Dabi reveal there was more than enough sketchy events surrounding Endeavor to raise eyebrows on anyone paying attention.
A son burning to death alone on a mountain, another son getting a burn scar on his face and a wife in a Mental Hospital, more than a little suspicious. Nobody ever looked into it.
And after the Dabi reveal, after Endeavor confirmed what Dabi said to everyone, this is the only Civilian backlash he gets:
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Nobody cared what happened to the Todoroki family; they only cared about how it affected them. The first half of that anger wasn’t even about the Todoroki drama.
And while the mention of Dabi’s victims and their families might seem like consideration, paired alongside everything else the bnha civilians are/do, I really doubt that the line comes from a genuine place of sympathy.
They have no loyalty to their best Heroes:
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After everything Deku did for them, they wouldn’t risk a single thing for him. Most of them don’t even look anxious or afraid, just angry at their lives being disrupted.
Telling the kid who nearly worked himself to death, fighting so that they could have their lives back to piss off, while danger sense was being activated implying that they did mean him very real harm.
 Another big point against the Civilians that’s brought up a lot:
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They’re violently racist. (Quirk-ist? Anti-Mutant? Basically against anyone very different in their appearance and/or their quirks.)
Mutants are an obvious Allegory for the racism/minority angle of the story, and it never casts the majority of the civilians in a positive light when it’s touched upon.
(Second Side point: Revisiting the end of ‘Side Point One’ because it pairs perfectly here, Shoji Mezo’s “Answer” to the horrible treatment the Heteromorph/mutants face is the opposite of that, and by that I mean Shoji’s answer is pretty much: Aspects of Uncle Tom’s Cabin Syndrome (an American theory/term but a Universal Theme) mixed with the acceptance of hero martyrdom.
His words to the Heteromorphs are this: “Let’s use that light to change the people who hurt us. So that they’ll feel ashamed to ever raise their fists against us again.”
Very inspiring…or at least it would be, were his words not disproven by his own backstory. 
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Shoji got his Scars ^ after he saved the little girl, in fact him saving her life was literally the cause of it.
There is no greater way to Shine or be heroic than doing what Shoji did, saving the life of a small child from drowning to death, and for that act the “Innocent People” gave him the Joker facial treatment.
Seriously if there’s a group of people who “don’t deserve to be saved” in Bnha; it is civilians like this.
Yet Shoji’s answer is still to “Be better than mere Avengers” and if they don’t the Heteromorph’s “Children will become the next Target!” as if they weren’t already??
None of it makes sense when looking at the whole picture and it’s clearly not a great plan, to draw another American based parallel that fits too well not to be noticed despite it being American; Shoji Mezo is basically Sturdy Harris from the Boondocks TV Series (freedom ride or die episode).
Look up the character’s wiki info or watch the episode, the fact that Shoji is willing to use violence in some extreme instances might seem a difference between them but the fact that he urges the other Heteromorphs to “be better than avengers” and “use their light to change the people who hurt us until they feel ashamed”, giving no thought as to whether or not his fellow Heteromorphs could even survive living by that standard like he can, fits the comparison to a T.)
Back to the final few points about the Bnha Civilians:
Are the Civilians in Bnha conditioned to be this way, products of influence and circumstance much like the heroes and villains are?
Kind of but not really.
While it is true that there are mountains of propaganda in hero society, there’s nothing specific enough to point to and say that this is why the Bnha civilians are this level of callous. They’re conditioned to love heroes and fear the violent villains they’re fighting, not to ignore the suffering of children (even their own) completely, and they’re definitely not compelled through propaganda to reject them or scar them, nothing in the series is evident of that.
And even worse, all of these examples of the people’s flaws/incidents (excluding the Ordinary Woman Heteromorph) happened during Allmight’s “Era of Peace”, so there’s no shifting the blame onto the villain’s current actions and even less excuse for things like these to be happening.
Why should the Bnha civilians have peace or justice if they’re like this?
If they show no more empathy or loyalty than the worst, most unsympathetic villains in the series (Like AFO) then maybe their point of view shouldn’t be considered any more than his. (And even AFO had some truth in his points: Failed social framework and the Quirk Singularity.)
To draw one final example for the Civilians with another Manga series that has pretty awful ‘ordinary people’ in it: Naruto.
But even in Naruto, the Author still showed that there were good people among the Civs. Population that weren’t like that and that did deserve to be protected and live peaceful lives, people who were outside of the Ninja system and just genuinely humane.
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Before Naruto became a hero who saved the village multiple times, before he was even a ninja, they treated him like the human child he was.
These characters deserve their own Meta, other Naruto fans have probably written them already.
But suffice to say that the people who treated right the abandoned and hated child, host to a demon Fox that could casually level mountains, Teuchi Ramen (Owner and Daughter), are an excellent example of giving narrative motivation to “protect the people”.
There’s not much of anything like that in Bnha’s story, not anyone to point at and say; “They are worth saving/protecting!” and having it actually be true instead of just ‘What the hero is supposed to say’.
 And if anyone disagrees with this, I’ll ask: Can one instance of goodwill be pointed to for the Bnha civilians? Any act of compassion, bravery or selflessness from someone in Bnha who wasn’t in anyway associated with heroes?
And no, the Civilians letting Deku stay at UA does not count.
It wasn’t even framed as selfless or compassionate anyway:
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This ^ is a deal more than anything else.
Because the heroes (Deku) swore they’d fix things and the people practically made him swear it before they were let in.
Kota and the Ordinary Woman running to stand by Deku was a sweet and great moment but considering that he saved them first, it seemed more like a ‘returning the Favor’ sentiment. Same with the rogue Civillian group helping Shindo after he fought Muscular, more a give it back than a gift.
 Part 2 The Lov
Even at their worst, the Lov still display humanity and redeeming qualities more than most of the civilians.
And I believe that this is 100% truth because Actions/Dialogue without reason for deception and inner thoughts, imply genuine Truth.
Actions:
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This ^ scene is referred back to a lot because it’s a good showing of Compassion/Bonds, one of the first really, in the League of Villains, in Toga saving Twice from ‘coming apart’.
Toga has no real reason to comfort Twice as much as she does in this series, in this first instance and in later ones, because aside from one time (no matter how cool and heartfelt it was) in MVA when Twice saves her and the rest of the League, Twice kind of messed things up more than a few times for the Lov.
Bringing Overhaul to meet the Lov without precaution resulting in the death of Magne (even though she herself rushed in recklessly), Twice’s personal hang-ups limiting his Quirk lessening his value to operations overall (from a purely strategic standpoint), and trusting Hawks (because he felt bad for him) so much he gave out Info that definitely shouldn’t have been given.
Yet despite having one singular success in MVA that Twice really pulled through among many other shortcomings, Toga still cared about him. Enough to try to help him hold himself together during the Overhaul business and then later go on a violent, rage filled assault toward the Heroes during the MLA raid after Twice was killed, giving little thought to her own safety.
Dialogue without reason for deception:
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While Shigaraki is definitely an unreliable narrator, as evident by the monologue ^ in the bottom panel clearly contradicting what actually happened during the death of his family, the middle panel where he states that he only wants “Them” (definitely the Lov) to live as they see fit seems like the truth.
Because why would Shigaraki lie here? In this time or place to Redestro, someone he presently had no reason to manipulate, as they were in a life or death fight?
Shigaraki couldn’t have known Redestro would surrender, at this point he was talking to someone he fully intended to kill, further dissipating any suspect of manipulation.
Shigaraki does care about his comrades, their wishes and while he hasn’t really kept the promise he made as of current Bnha, I think that’s a result of All for One scrambling his Brain so much during the Mental Fusion stuff, the true Shigaraki barely seeming to know what’s going on half the time and only able to think about his past.
Twice and Spinner: Basically everything about them.
They might not think things through that much, but there’s no doubt that Twice and Spinner were and still are devoted to who they care about, true loyalty in all its successes and faults.
Inner Thoughts:
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Dabi is…kind of a dick most of the time, even to the Lov, just to a much lesser extent than to everyone else.
It makes sense that he’d act that way though, given what he’s been through and the end goal of his plans, it’s understandable why he’d want to push everyone away in some form and not let them get too close.
But even underneath all of that, Dabi much like the rest of the core Lov never blamed Twice for his mistakes, and since this is an inner thought and thus having no reason for manipulation, it does imply that this is his honest truth.
Knowing that Twice would blame himself, although he never said it out loud, maybe he couldn’t with all of his own personal hang-ups, Dabi inside probably did want to reassure Twice that none of this was his fault.
The Core Lov do have empathy towards others abandoned and hurt by Hero Society like themselves, and they do care about each other, that is as much as they’re able to care about each other while being weighed on by their own individual issues.
 The hero kid’s parents
Lastly for this Meta, there are parts of Hero Society that shouldn’t ever be destroyed, but they fall into small groups and come with their own faults.
The Hero Kid’s parents shouldn’t be destroyed just by virtue of being so close to the better/more heroic characters, but even they aren’t that great with possibly one exception.
Inko Midoriya has technically tried to protect Izuku but she never really helped him. She basically apologies for his existence in the childhood flashback, and until Izuku got a Quirk and became a Hero, she was never really shown to encourage him in anything, even to find happiness in other things.
Despite having doubts herself about saying the wrong thing to her son, Inko later tries to keep him from going back to UA for very good reason from a parent’s point of view.
But then she’s pretty easily convinced by a promise from Allmight, that wasn’t in anyway kept. Cut to the Dark Deku stuff later, she never calls Allmight out on this.
It’s the same story with little difference for all the student’s parents, they’ve never been shown to try to protect their children, especially at the UA confrontation with the Civilian Mob.
Inko, Bakugo’s parents, Ochako’s parents, and I’m just assuming the rest of them to cause it makes sense for them to be at the UA shelter, none of them helped.
I know Inko was being held back by Mitsuki because it was dangerous, but couldn’t she have shaken her off?
Kota did and ran to Deku to try to help him, and he was a little kid being held back Pixiebob (a Hero).
That probably wasn’t what Hori was going for or implying but that’s what happened.
Is this an illogical thought process that would be dangerous or harmful for the parents? Definitely.
But that’s the point. The parental instinct that goes beyond self-preservation and logic to protect their children hasn’t been shown for any of them.
Except one.
*Current Spoiler Warning*
 Rei Todoroki in the recent chapter stands apart and above in this aspect, although this depends very much on how it’s framed going forward.
A mother fighting to stop her child from killing himself more than trying to stop a Villain from killing. Both true but one has to take front over the other for it to be meaningful, for Rei to show that she will stop Touya from burning himself this time, unlike how she wouldn’t before.
That’s character development, that’s parental instinct.
*Very current Spoilers*
 Rei is there for Touya  :)  trying to save her son…and also Endeavor maybe?
Close enough (Double Thumbs UP!)
 The children
Another group that definitely should never destroyed is the Young Children of Bnha, Kota, Eri, the work studies Kid group.
I put them into a separate category than the whole of the Civilians but it would take a lot to explain why that is and why they can be viewed as their own separate group, so I’ll put it in the next Meta and expand on how they relate to the existential parts of Bnha.
Also same for the villains/heroes and finally getting to the Quirk Singularity Theory.
To be Continued…
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selenestarmoon · 4 months
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It's quite curious how AFO is more yandere than Himiko in the sense that AFO, unlike Himiko, does everything a yandere would do:
-He is possessive of Yoichi.
-He is aggressive towards anyone who hurts Yoichi.
-He locked Yoichi in a vault.
-He got angry with Yoichi for abandoning him.
-He hates Kudo for "taking" Yoichi away from him and for "causing" his death. He literally said that if Yoichi couldn't be his then he wouldn't be anyone's and accidentally killed him out of jealousy.
-He is obsessed with getting Yoichi back. Literally the entire plan he's made for years to get One for All is to "get" Yoichi back.
While Himiko wants to become Ochako and be Izuku's girlfriend because she perceives them as the type of person that she is not and wants to be in addition to the fact that she never showed possessiveness, obsession and jealousy with Twice and the League.
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