EDIT REAL QUICK LMAO

You know what's really funny to me? The trope of Bakugou in canon being super talented at everything that he does. In canon it's supposed to be for laughs when he's good at random shit, but I don't understand how it's supposed to be funny when the funnier route would have been that this guy has dedicated himself to nothing else but being extremely good at fighting with his quirk and to be a hero that he's actually super ass at everything else. But I guess having a complex version of Bakugou where he learns that there's more to life than heroics and maybe is way less of a demon isn't something that would have been interesting. ALSO ALSO, genuinely I'm confused as to why people think Bakugou is super smart. Like I get that he was excelling at school and was taking mock UA tests and shit, blah blah blah, but:

A) I can totally see his marks getting doctered by Aldera

B) Passing the UA exam doesn't tell me shit about his intelligence, since people who are "dumber" (Kaminari and Ashido) than him also passed the same exam. Without even knowing the proper format of the test (keeping in mind it's also a standardized test) there's no real way to gauge how "intelligent" someone has to be to do well. Also there's a bunch of General-Ed students who passed that test so again, doesn't tell me much.

C) For all the praise that he receives, there's nothing really like "intelligent" or complex about the plans that Bakugou comes up with when people suck him off for being such a good tactician. He fully somehow thought he could overwhelm fucking ALL-MIGHT with his explosions alone, if he's such a good tactician why would he all of a sudden fuck this up? Also, his "counter" to Uraraka's plan was just do bigger explosions, so again, nothing to do with his actual intellect, it's just his quirk. Which brings me to,

D) Bakugou fully should have been taken out by Uraraka's plan. I get that she was tanking hits and he wasn't, but he suffers no backlash at all from unleashing his quirk all day, and is even able to fire off massive explosions no problem. I don't care what bullshit excuse Horikoshi or the fandom comes up with, unless Bakugou has a second quirk that makes him indestructible or lets him cancel out forces, those massive explosions would have shattered his arms and legs from the recoil. But nooooooo, Todoroki suffers from acute frosbite and Midoriya shatters himself when he uses OfA. But Bakugou? Ah well, sometimes we'll remember that he's running out of sweat or his wrists will hurt a little or sumthin.

E) Why is Bakugou (and I guess Kirishima by extension as well) more ripped and buff then Midoriya when canonically somehow managed to balance a fucking small pick up truck on the last pile of garbage that he stood on when he cleared the beach. Midoriya should be jacked and stacked like Jotaro fucking Kujo in part 3 and be an immovable object, yet some how Bakugou is shown to be physically stronger than him??? Midoriya should be casually lifting couches with the entire class sitting on it so he can vaccum underneath.

PS. I think it would've been exponentially better to have IZUKU be the one who is good and talented at random shit. Like the kid who didn't have the one thing that is required of all heroes (a quirk) and tries to overcompensate for his "uselessness" by being insanely talented and skilled at tons of different hobbies would have been an awesome angle, he's genius enough to pull it off. Not only would it give us more insight on his life before All Might, but it would also make Bakugou less of a Mary Sue (seriously, the narrative bends over backwards for him) and Izuku less of an untalented loser (again, the narrative loves shitting on him, sweet Jesus). Having Bakugou be terrible at everything besides heroics and Izuku being good at everything "besides heroics" might've made for an interesting character parallel that Hori insists on shoving down our throats for 400 chapters straight 😒

Hi @stormiclown 👋

💯. I completely agree with this.

Bakugou being ass at everything that doesn't involve his quirk would have been much funnier, and it would have made more sense narratively for the reasons you listed.

In a good story, that fact would have also forced Bakugou to grow and realise that in UA, he's no longer a big fish in a small pond - he's just one of many talented children.

As you rightfully pointed out, it would have made much more narrative sense for IZUKU to be the ripped one, to be the talented and intelligent one. He would have felt like he would have had to prove he wasn't useless growing up, so it would have made more sense for Izuku to have dozens of hidden (and developed - where did Izuku's quirk analysis go?!) talents.

Then, for Izuku to feel jarred by the amount of praise and appreciation he is getting now, he isn't "useless quirkless Deku" that he felt like he was at Aldera. Then for Izuku to flourish and grow as a result.

Sorry for not being on in, like, forever. Life’s just gotten in the way.

Anyways, that’s not what I wanted to talk about today. What I really wanted to focus on is something I’ve been thinking a lot on lately, and that’s the idea of asshole characters.

Obviously asshole characters come in all shapes and sizes. Each have their own motivations for being an asshole and/or unfriendly individual. Katsuki, Shota, and Hitoshi are asshole characters themselves, but why is it that I dislike them so much?

At first I thought I didn’t like asshole characters in general. However, I then remembered that there are several characters people would classify as assholes/unfriendly individuals that are characters I adore. Lysithea from Fire Emblem 2 Houses and Natsuki from Doki Doki Literature Club are characters who are rough around the edges and aren’t nice to people immediately. The reasons behind their behavior aren’t too far off from why Shota and Hitoshi act the way they do, that being trauma, so why am I able to look past their behavior and not that of Shota and Hitoshi? With Katsuki, it’s obvious, but the other two had me scratching my head for a bit.

The answer, outside of the fact that Lysithea and Natsuki are multi-layered characters written far better than Shota and Hitoshi, is that the girls are REACTIVE assholes while Hitoshi and Shota are ACTIVE assholes.

What do I mean by that? Well both Lysithea and Natsuki for the most part keep to themselves. Something that someone does ends up causing them to snap. For Lysithea, it’s when she feels that her time is being wasted after someone approaches her about something irrelevant. For Natsuki, it’s a defensive mechanism triggered by a perceived attack on her character. Now, is that an excuse for their behavior? No. There are better ways to defend yourself and to get people to stop talking to you, but it’s at least understandable that they’d snap due to their traumas.

Katsuki, Hitoshi, and Shota aren’t like that. When they’re an asshole, it isn’t because they’re provoked into being one by someone else’s actions, but because they’re the ones doing the provoking. Katsuki’s rude and aggressive to everyone around him, choosing to make the life of another boy absolutely miserable without any provocation. Hitoshi decides to mock 1-A and issue his “challenge” not because anyone approached him, but because he himself is looking for trouble. Yeah, Katsuki gave off a shitty first impression, but Hitoshi already was planning on challenging 1-A from the beginning. Shota’s the one who controls his teaching style and is a position of authority. Rather than do his job, he’d rather tear someone down.

Am I supposed to sympathize with these so-called heroes? I for the life of me can’t seem to do so. Meanwhile, with characters like Lysithea and Natsuki, I can because they don’t mean to be an asshole, it’s just that they want to be left alone.

Now, am I saying reactive assholes are better characters than proactive assholes? No. Proactive assholes can have great character development. The problem is that proactive assholes are tougher to warm up to, especially when they’re meant to characters the audience is meant to root for. MHA’s writing does nothing TO make people want to root for these guys. They’re just assholes who wanna throw their weight around and never receive punishment for it/are called out for it. Hell, MHA seems to think these characters ARE in the right for being the way they are and/or doesn’t take the fact that they are assholes seriously (looking at you Katsuki).

Anyways, I thought I’d write this up to really explain more of my thought process and why Katsuki, Hitoshi, and Shota bother me so much whereas I find myself adoring characters such as Lysithea and Natsuki.

💀

Let's talk about Spacetoons Mineta...

Spacetoons is an arabic channel that semi-recently dubbed MHA. Some may call it "Arabic 4kids," but as someone who watched a substantial amount of shows in a 4Kids dub. (namely SonicX), that's not a fair comparison. The only 4 kids dub I actually enjoyed was that of "Kirby: Right back at ya"

Anyway, the BokuNometaAcademia sub brought to my attention the way that Mineta is written here. I have always hated how Hori used Mineta to live out his weird fantasies. The inclusion of Mineta's "comedy" turned a lot of people, me included off and honestly, why wouldn't it.

Spacetoons is more child-tuned so they did a lot of censorship, for example, look what they did to Momo

(They also greatly improved her character)

You may be asking, "What did they do with Mineta?" Valid question considering 70% of his character is horny jokes. Well, the completely removed the perv aspect and made him a loveable kid who wants to fight his insecurities and be great hero.....

I have always said it, Mineta holds some great potential. His moment during the USJ arc was a great stepping stone for some great character growth. The idea of a coward pushing to become a true hero is so different from the norm, but as we know, when it comes to MHA, potential don' get used.

From what I hear from spacetooneta, he is actually really likeable. He is so different from Canoneta that people mistaken him for a girl. The scenes where he is being pervy are either edited out completely or altered convincingly.

They changed the scene from season 3's filler episode so that the context is as follows:

Kaminari and Mineta want to goof off at the pool

Mineta has overheard that the girls have booked the pool too

They convince Izuku to come w/them so that they can get there before the girls

Izuku invites Tenya and the others and Tenya makes them train instead of goofing off

The girls are here, goofing off while they have to train

The most nuts part is that viewers of that dub absolutely LOVE HIM. He suprassed Bakugou in popularity even. This shows that Hori could have made one of the most loveable characters in Shounen. Think about it, his design is already cute, just slap a cute personality on and everyone would love him. But no, he had to be a creepy perv.

Canon Mineta sucks man

there was entirely too much effort put into this and now all of you have to look at it

I hope that after MHA ends, the rose-tinted glasses of the fandom drops and the rest of the fandom can realize how badly written Bakugo is as a character, and how he pretty much ruined the entire story in multiple ways.

I pray this is the case.

Werewolf boyfriend

MHA has a gender problem.

Before I begin unpacking my thoughts, I would like to make clear that I am aware that Shonen is a genre which caters to boys. I do not think that a genre catering to a specific demographic excuses poor writing choices.

I am not by any means the first person to make a case for the importance of well-written female characters, however, as a lifelong anime fan, poorly-written women are a consistent issue in many anime/manga. The treatment of female characters in MHA limits the story's potential and at times makes the manga utterly unbearable.

MHA presents us with an unequal society, however, in the world of MHA, women uniquely lose out. In the hero world, women are sexualised and clearly provided with fewer opportunities than men. This is reflected in both the gender distribution of the classes at UA as well as the hero rankings themselves. There are six girls in both class 1a and class 1b and there are only two women in the top 10 of the hero billboard chart, those being Mirko and Ryukyu. The costumes which female heroes in the story wear are often highly sexualised and impractical, and on numerous occasions in the story the sexualisation of these women is openly demonstrated to the watcher/reader. In our first interaction with Mt Lady, she is sexualised with her butt being focused on.

Need I say much more.

This isn't the only example of the sexism within the narrative. During the internships following the sports festival, Momo and Kendo internships with Uwabami, and instead of gaining valuable experience they participate in a hair commercial. To make matters even worse, the message that Uwabami imparts to them is that keeping up appearances is crucial. Here, Momo and Kendo are deprived of gaining training and development and the harsh reality of what the hero world is like for women sets in. This experience is humiliating, and the narrative plays this off as joke.

Beyond these two examples, other sexist things occur within the narrative which are barely commented on. There's a headline in a newspaper which references a rescue that Tsuyu and Uraraka are responsible for which refers to them not by name but as "two cuties". Endeavour literally purchases Rei to be his wife and domestically abuses her (let's not even get into the horrific power dynamics here). The women in class 1-a are sidelined and frequently saved by their male counterparts. Mineta frequently sexually harasses and violates women in the story (grabbing Tsuyu's chest in the USJ arc comes to mind here). Momo is made to wear a revealing costume because she wont be able to phase the items she creates through the fabric but Mirio's costume can stay on as the fabric in his costume is interwoven with his own hair.

Additionally, power scaling in this manga is gendered. The majority of female characters have non-combative quirks, and the female characters who have combat-oriented quirks are usually weaker than their male counterparts. Ryuku for example, struggles to take down Rikiya Katsukame in the overhaul arc and has to utilise her three student interns to accomplish this. In the overhaul arc, the girls are majorly sidelined and are thrust into a support role. Many of the women in the manga are sidekicks, and a lot of the female pro-heroes don't have heavy-hitting quirks. When characters do have heavy-hitting quirks, Horikoshi's poor power scaling becomes most obvious. For example, Mina's quirk allows her to produce acid capable of melting metal and she isn't regarded as having a formidable quirk within the story. Similarly, Neijire's wave motion quirk is under utilised.

Most disturbingly, though sexism is deeply entrenched throughout the story, none of the female characters acknowledge its existence and this is a bad writing choice because it is antithetical to the values held by someone who is pursuing a career as a hero. In the MHA universe, heroism is pursued to help others and to achieve justice within society. Within the story, heroes are presented as the protectors of the weak and the facilitators of order within society. Thus, as a reader it is hard to believe that women who are pursuing heroism as a career path would be content with their own oppression. The women in the story also do not strive to be at the top, save for Mirko who is the main exception.

UA is the top hero school in the country and has a highly selective admission process. It is astounding that the majority (if not all) of female students that we meet are comfortable with becoming support or rescue heroes. In classes 1a and 1b there isn't a single female student who has the ambition of becoming one of the school's top three. The female students are not as ambitious or competitive as their male peers and are forced into gendered rivalries with other women in the story (see the Kendo and Momo rivalry, Ochacho vs Toga).

The inclusion of moments of critical reflection by the female characters within the story would have made them feel more three-dimensional. If Momo's self-doubt during the final exam arc had been the result of being chosen for an internship due to her looks rather then her hero ability, it would have made her self-doubt more understandable and would have demonstrated her discontent with her physical appearance being valued over her talent. If Tsuyu and Uraraka had been disheartened that the major takeaway from their rescue was the result of their physical appearance, this would have added another dimension to these characters. Hakagure having to be naked all of the time is played as a joke at her expense, but understanding Hakagure's thoughts and feelings about this would have allowed us as an audience to greater empathise with her rather than viewing her as a spectacle.

Ultimately, MHA's depiction of women is disappointing and a lot of potential is wasted here.