Misc. League of Villains screencaps from the Season 7 ending "Rokutousei"
In case it wasn't obvious by now, I was very invested in the Todoroki family storiline and one of the things that sadden me the most about chap 430 is this image.
We've Enji, or maybe I should say Endeavor, Rei is pushing his wheelchair as he goes somewhere, we don't know where, some want to think he's visiting Touya but it's not said and, around him there are 3 men and a woman.
It's not his children, it's his sidekicks and Hawks.
The final chapter doesn't touch what happened to Natsuo and Fuyumi, we've to assume Fuyumi is happy with her work and Natsuo with his marriage.
We don't know if Touya is still alive but, anyway, he's going to die. Even if we assume he died happily he had said smiling was why they lived their lives. He could keep on living out of anger and grudge but not out of smiles and happiness?
Fuyumi has fought for all those years so hard because she wanted back her family and she basically get nothing, not her old family as Natsuo leaves and Touya dies and it's not even hinted she has a new one as it was Natsuo the one who got a girlfriend as soon as he entered university and marries her basically a year and a half later.
Natsuo is just rushedly married to this character of which we don't even know the name. We don't know if, in the end he visited Touya again or not, we don't know if he ever managed to overcome all the anger and pain he felt inside for how his father ruined the family.
Shouto became a Hero, but his mother is not with him to support him but she is with his father. We don't see his siblings around him, cheering for him. We don't know which effect had on him to reconnect with Touya only to lose him. We're only told he became a good Hero so people don't call him anymore Endeavor's son, forgetting people also looked poorly at him for being Dabi's brother. How did he overcome that? Evidently it somehow disappeared as all the first years are already all his fans and even Dai said all the kids wanted to be like Shouto... but, at the end of the day, we aren't shown Shouto having a good moment with his family, his good moments come from being a Hero and being with his friends.
Even if we assume that, despite having to marry Enji out of duty to help her family, Rei had fallen in love with Enji while their family was having a good time before he turned abusive, and now that she had forgiven him and he stopped being abusive she's glad to be back with him... skipping this was very vaguely constructed she lost 10 years in a hospital and we can't see her with her children. She's supposed to be happy being with him with one of her children dead and one of her children keeping away from his father because just being in the same room with him makes him feel bad.
Mind you, I'm not saying Natsuo should forgive Enji or force himself to be with Enji or whatever but having a person that's related to you that makes you to feel bad just by being in the same room with you so that you've to avoid that person, is not something that's good. If Enji and Rei live together and Natsuo wants to visit his mother he has to make sure to do it when his father is somewhere else. In the past Rei was split between taking care of Shouto, who couldn't be with her other children, and taking care of Touya, Fuyumi and Natsuo, with the result Natsuo felt neglected because he was very small when all this happened and needed his mother... but likely she ended up neglecting Fuyumi and Touya too because you can't be in two places at the same time. Now, instead than having to take turns with Shouto, Natsuo have to take turns with Enji.
Ad for Enji... all his atonement for what? He doesn't manage to rebuild a relation with his children, apparently his sidekicks and Hawks have replaced them, they're conveniently of the right number. His children would have gotten where they were even without his atonement because all we hear is about others helping them, he only get the cool sentence, we see nothing of his struggle. But this is also supposed to be a happy ending for him. Who care if he doesn't have his kids? He has his sidekicks and Hawks his newfound family he would have had anyway had he focused on his work only.
The story tried it's hardest to make me think he cared about his family but then I'm supposed to think he's happy not having any of the sort apart for Rei and a new found family.
Horikishi had already established in the previous chapter Enji would have his sidekicks and Hawks' support, I didn't need a reminder of that.
I needed to see THIS image at the end...
...maybe including Natsuo's girlfriend as he could have introduced her to the rest of the family... or him holding his firstborn and letting Rei see her grandchild.
I needed to see Fuyumi finding someone with whom to form a family since she can't have her own back and she wished so badly for it.
I needed to have this being shown to me...
...or at least to see Touya out of that contraption as he died in peace, a smile on his lips since happiness somehow couldn't save him but grudge could.
I needed to be told something that Enji did that HELPED his kids, that made them be better. Not something vague, I need something concrete. Even if they would never be with him, since he's supposed to atone to them, I need him to make something more than just give them a new house and pay for the bills because he'd been paying bills through all his life so that's not new.
I would have been fine with him watching them smile from a distance or hearing from Rei how they were doing and smiling.
Mind you, I'm willing to believe in Horikoshi's mind Enji now is a changed man and very sorry for what he did and loves his family and yadda yadda but there's a reason why we say 'show, don't tell' and so far Horikoshi is more interested in telling than showing.
I get that in his mind Enji is a character more important than Rei, Fuyumi, Natsuo or even Touya, I would have been fine with all that I've mentioned being shown through his perspective because he cares about his family and so he's happy if they're happy.
If, in all that talking Midoriya does about reaching out to others, what he wanted to point out was Enji had continued to reach out to help his family even if they had cut him out of their lives.
But no, the good part is that his sidekicks and Hawks are reaching out for him. Okay, I can take this as the test trying again to point out Enji will never be a Hero, in the end he's not the one reaching out but the one others have to reach out to help but, again, it was established in the past chapter so I didn't need a reminder and it kind of steps all over his arc of trying to reach out for his family.
In the end the most he does is to just take it when they want to yell at him and let them live the live they want... I do think it's a great thing if an abuser were to realize what he had done to his victims and try to atone. It's kind of a miracle turned true... but there's just too little of it in this story.
Maybe I'm missing some deep cultural context, maybe Enji is doing something AMAZING for his family that Horikoshi thought he didn't need to show because it's obvious to Japanese readers but... but I wish he had shown it. Instead the moment Enji finally stop being a Hero and could do something for his family, the manga ends with his family disregating but I'm supposed to see it as a happy ending.
I prefer it had just been called a sad ending. Bad things happen, I can stomach them but honestly "Ano Hana" makes a much better work at portraying grief and atonement and the same goes for "Koe no katachi".
Horikoshi knew he was selling this manga also to foreign readers. I'm not saying he should have made his manga thinking to them but, if this atonement arc was so important, maybe he should have made it more understandable for us as well. This makes the diffference between a national mangaka and an international one.
me: chapter 10 shouldn't be too long, it's mostly dialogue and exposition for the future also me: *make it over 4k words long*
i love dabi's identity reveal, it's the most dramatic thing he could have done and i love him for that.
but
i wish it had a bigger impact. of course this is obviously bc horikoshi decided the end of the todoroki storyline needed to focus on endeavor. but let's ignore that and pretend it's just because this reveal happened in the middle of a national crisis.
so what if touya had decided to do his identity reveal on a random day?
think about it. the sun is shining, the birds are singing, everything is fine. and then, out of nowhere, every single billboard and tv channel broadcast dabi's video (same as canon, without the "hawks killed twice" thing, perhaps replaced by dabi revealing he's been in contact with hawks or something). it only takes mere minutes for everyone to be aware of what's going on, and now all eyes are on touya.
1-A is in the dorms when this happens, it feels like a repeat of the endeavor vs high end fight. shouto is a mess, no one understand what's happening, even aizawa is confused as fuck.
meanwhile, endeavor is in his agency. he's watching the whole video from his computer, completely flabbergasted. even if he wants to claim dabi is a liar doing this for attention, but he knows deep down he'd be lying to himself.
hawks is watching everything too. he feels like his entire life has been a lie. the hero who saved him for his abuser ends up being an abuser too. (can you tell i hate how hawks always remains a endeavor fanboy in canon?)
during this shit show happens, dabi wanders around, burn a ything with endeavor's face in it, and watches how civilians are reacting. he's focusing on that while deciding if he'll go to endeavor's agency right after the end of his little broadcast, or if he'll let the information sink in.
it took 24 years but he finally got what he wanted. all eyes were on him. no one would ever be able to throw him aside and ignore him. he stills wants to keep on his suicide mission - it's either him or endeavor - but at least he got to enjoy having the attention for a while.
so yeah, touya is a dramatic little shit who wanted the attention that he deserved.
[i might turn this into a fic if i ever get the time]
maybe it's just a translation issue but why are quirk names so stupid? 😭
"explosion", "frog", "acid", "erasure", "blue flame", "meatballs"????
i'm sorry but they're so silly
and there's no way at least 10 people don't have the same quirk name
drew this for pride month and forgot to post it here, oopsie
My heart is breaking in a million pieces because Tomura thinks he can destroy the world and go back to the League, but he doesn't know that most of them are either dead or terribly hurt.
He doesn't know Twice died because he refused to betray them. Tomura doesn't know that Mr. Compress sacrificed himself to save him, doesn't know about the way that Compress screamed he loved the League as he went down. He has no clue about what AFO did to Spinner in Tomura's name, the way Dabi explained so perfectly to Shouto the LOV and their philosophies because he always paid attention even if he said he didn't, Tomura wasn't there to witness Toga's breakdown over not being able to use the Dabi's flames or his decay even if she loved them so much.
At his absolute worst, even once the worst of his own past is over, the thought of them keeps him going.
He wants to destroy the world for them.
His League of Villains.
They love him so much. He loves them so much.
They can only imagine it, but they. don't. know.
i regret making shouto a science nerd now that i'm having vivid flashbacks of my middle school science teacher