Woke Up, Still Obsessed With Sinners.

Lookalikes…

The Rengoku Family Tree from The Pendulum Keeps Swinging!

Rengoku Shinjurou - born 1873, married in 1891; current head of household; former Flame Hashira

Rengoku Ruka ( nee Kūran) - born 1873, married in 1891, died 1904; wife of Shinjurou and mother of 2 children

Rengoku Kyoujurou - born 1895; first son; current Flame Hashira

Rengoku Senjurou - born 1899; second son

Rengoku Tokujurou - born 1843, died 1891; former head of household; alcoholic; former Flame Hashira; second son of Kinjurou (see below)

Rengoku Yua - born 1845, died 1889; miko prior to marriage; wife of Tokujurou and mother of 3 children

Rengoku Tsuyojurou - born 1861, died 1899; first son of Tokujurou; former Flame Hashira; married to Kamai Akane (1859-1881) who passed away from maternal death along with their child

Rengoku Ryoujurou - born 1863, died 1889; second son of Tokujurou

Rengoku Kinjurou - born 1822, died 1860; former head of household; former Flame Hashira; second son of Yūjijurou (see below)

Rengoku Sayuri - born 1823, died 1855; was killed in the Edo earthquake of 1855; wife of Kinjurou and mother of 5 children

Rengoku Takujurou - born 1842, died 1854; presummed dead by 23 December 1854 Tōkai Tsunami; first son of Kinjurou

Rengoku Haurjurou - born 1845, died 1859; third son of Kinjurou

Rengoku Yorijurou - born 1846, died 1855; was killed in the Edo earthquake of 1855 with his mother; fourth son of Kinjurou

Rengoku Shunjurou - born 1847, died 1855; was plagued with illness and died due to it; fifth son of Kinjurou

Rengoku Yūjijurou - born 1799, died 1826; former head of household; former Hashira; former head of household; deaf in left ear and blind in right eye; third son of Tōrujurou (see below)

Rengoku Tsubame - born 1798, died 1845; wife of Yūjijurou and mother of 2 children; raised her children by herself after husband died from a Lower Moon Demon

Rengoku Rinjurou - born 1821, died 1837; was killed by the Tenpō famine; first son of Yūjijurou;

Rengoku Tōrujurou - born 1774, died 1817; former head of household; former Hashira; was gallantly killed in battle via a Demon who could change senses;

Rengoku Chie - born 1779, died 1824; wife of Tōrujurou and mother of 4 children

Rengoku Norijurou - born 1796, died 1819; married but no children; twin of Nobujurou; could never fully grasp all the forms of Flame Breathing, altering forms with twin

Rengoku Nobujurou - born 1796, died 1819; married but no children; twin of Norijurou; could never fully grasp all the forms of Flame Breathing, altering forms with twin

Rengoku Toyojurou - born 1798, died 1813; was killed in Final Selection

Direct Ancestor: Rengoku Hirojurou - the Demon Slayer who had helped out Yoriichi after his wife and unborn child died; would eventually become the first Flame Hashira

i don't like the growing opinion that people are being 'too hard' on deku for his failing to save shigaraki.

i've seen quite a few people complaining that a lot of the bnha-critical crowd are being too mean to deku for getting tomura killed, arguing that it isn't really his fault, and that hes a 16 year old child soldier who's been failed by almost every adult in his life, why should we be putting all of this on his shoulders? hes just a kid after all?

and the truth is, they're right. deku IS a 16 year old boy whos had the fate of the world thrust on his shoulders. but the story itself just plainly refuses to acknowledge this.

the narrative doesn't acknowledge how fucked up having a school that trains literal children how to be combo cop-celebrities is. it only tentatively acknowledges the fact that a universe having combo cop-celebrities is fucked up, and even then the only people who ever point this out are antagonists, who are portrayed and treated in-universe as untrustworthy. the narrative doesn't care how fucked up dekus circumstances are. the narrative treats deku like hes a fucking messiah here to touch the hearts of the evil depressed villains with his magical empathetic heart of gold before they get blown up or just sent to fucking superhell for daring to challenge the status quote.

deku isn't a person. he's barely even a fucking character at this point. he's a plot device, and a mouth piece for the objectively shitty themes bnha is trying to spout. the themes that tell you that if you're mistreated by society and want to do something about it, you're a villain. that disrupting the status quote and refusing to repent to some random teenage boy spouting empty platitudes at you means you deserve to get sent to fucking superhell. the themes that portray people fighting for civil change as mass murdering supervillains. the themes that look the audience dead in the eye and can call deku the greatest hero to ever live.

deku, who barely spared a second thought to lady nagant telling him the truth about the hero commission. who spouts meaningless platitudes about heroism and morality at nagant, and aoyama, and toga and shigaraki, when even the thought that he should question the world around him comes up. who's constantly talked about as this truly kind, empathetic person, but hasn't spared an empathetic thought to literally anyone who is classified as a villain. who listened to every authority figure around him except the ones who asked him to question his worldview. who saw la bravas tears, shigarakis various breakdowns, himikos plead for understanding, chisakis catatonic state, lady nagants truth, and barley batted a fucking eye. deku, who killed tomura shigaraki.

people don't criticize deku for failing shigaraki because they just hate deku. people criticize deku because of what he represents. because hes a mouthpiece for the atrocious morals and themes of this ideologically rotten manga. because any character he had was chopped up to bits in favor of the incomplete husk we have now. people criticize deku because hes the main character of my hero academia. theres nothing more damning then that.

The UA Entrance Exam

This was going to be part of a larger post about UA as a whole, but I decided this was probably best to stand alone, because this is more random thought/opinion than a proper critical post. Welcome to what is probably going to be a controversial post: the UA Admissions test isn't bad?

The main argument against it is that it puts those without a combat quirk at a disadvantage, right? And, well, that's true. But... is that wrong?

Here's the thing: the more heroism as a whole is developed in the setting, the more something becomes startling clear, one simple fact that stands above all others.

Heroism is a profession defined by fighting.

You can be a rescue hero, you can spend your time saving people from collapsing building or finding those who are lost, but if you've gotten to the point of being a professional hero? You know how to throw down.

I'm not even talking about UA, here: there's a license exam that everyone has to take, as part of a process of being a hero. Half of it is saving people, yes... but the other half? It's purely about fighting other people. Hell, even part of the saving people portion has combat aspects, since it's focused around, not just saving people, but saving people while under attack.

I'll say it again: if you are a hero, you are a fighter, by definition.

So, what's that have to do with the UA entrance exam? In all honesty, that exam is functionally a simulation of running around a city, beating up random street thugs. It's testing if you can beat people up, one of the most fundamental parts of heroism (deadpan stare).

The follow up point is, what about Quirks that aren't combat focused, but are still useful for heroism? Shinso, for example? If those were actual people, he probably could have beaten them, right? That's unfair!

And, I'll admit, that's right; in the context of that exam, it is unfair, because some people can vomit lava lasers and some can't. Is Brainwash useful? Absolutely. Counterpoint: what is day one Shinso going to do if he meets some guy in an alley with no mouth and a knife?

Die.

Literally, if he didn't run away, all he'd do is die.

Everyone who passed, and quite a few who didn't pass, could take down Wannabe Slenderman, while Shinso would just end up dead in that alley. This is going to sound bad, but life is unfair, and if you're going to go around picking fights with dangerous people and not prepared for that fact, you will pay for it.

Now, let me introduce you to Chad Hagakure.

In the grand scheme of things, while Toru has a useful support power, Shinso's is a lot better than hers, more versatile, more powerful. You can, in the words of Ollivander, do great things with a power like that. While Toru's Quirk gives her some advantages against the robots, it isn't going to beat them for her, either, and the off button idea is fanon with no canon backing.

So how did she get in, with her inferior quirk, when Shinso didn't?

Because Shinso coasted through his life with only his Quirk, and then was helpless when met up with something with the amazing ability to shut up. Everything he did, before Aizawa took him under his wing, revolved around making the other person talk, and absolutely nothing else. Toru, meanwhile, found opponents her invisibility couldn't magically destroy for her, and responded by beating them to death.

You probably think I'm being dramatic or something, but I'm not kidding. You need to stop robots to get points to pass; Izuku is the only person to pass on rescue points only, canonly. She doesn't have a power or tools to let her restrain them like Minoru did, so she had to, had to, break them. She doesn't have laser beams, or fire blasts, or anything to make it easy for her; all Toru had was the ability to ambush things, her muscles, and maybe a rock or a steel plate or something she picked up along the way.

That's all she had... and then she managed to kill her way in the heroism course anyways, past people who probably had Quirks much more compatible with the problem at hand. She went up to robots, probably from behind, and then hit them until they stopped moving.

In other words, Toru went into the Entrance Exam... and then the Doom music kicked in.

At the end of the day, though, I'm saying all these things, and while they're true, I feel like I'm dancing around the fundamental point: being a hero is about more than just a Quirk.

As a setting, MHA is one with a broad set of powers and abilities, by design. It means that there's lots of cool and interesting people to meet, which is the point, but on a practical level, it also means that every Quirk, every Quirk, has something that counters it. For support Quirks especially, there's seemingly always that One Simple Trick to beat them; a pair of thermal goggles, for example, renders Toru Quirkless. If you just don't talk, Brainwash is useless. And when that happens, you can't just say, 'Time out!' and get a new villain; you'll have to fight them anyways.

If you depend on your one special trick and nothing else, one day that will be your downfall.

UA has a lot of questionable decisions in it, about it, around it, but it is good at teaching its students how to beat the living shit out of people; you could even say it specializes in it. It has no illusions about the reality of the job it's preparing them for. And in the same vein, this isn't something that should be a surprise to any applicant; almost every time we see a hero in the media? They've just finished fighting someone. If they're not entering UA with wide open eyes about what they're going to have to do (and probably after signing some liability waivers to boot), then frankly they're idiots.

The Entrance Exam, mostly, tested one simple thing: are you ready to fight someone? Are you ready to walk into that alleyway and beat those thugs into submission? It's easier for people with combat Quirks, yes, because those are Quirks that are good at fighting, but that's not the end all; in another life, if he had worked out before hand, if he was determined to win, even if he was at a disadvantage, Shinso could have walked in, picked up a piece of rebar, and just hit things until he passed.

Like, let's compare Shinso and Bakugou: both of them have a good Quirk, and both of them knew it. (I know fanon and the narrative say otherwise, but Shinso has had nothing but praise from the flashbacks we've seen, with only a few comments that were somewhat negative but still held implicit respect for his Quirk and it's powers. Everyone he talks to says he has a good Quirk. He's happy using his Quirk. He is not the fanon abused little racoon.)

Shinso accepted that as fact and walked into UA without putting any work in, from what we can see (he faced Izuku, who was effectively Quirkless, and the second his Quirk failed he panicked and basiclly flailed more than fought, still only trying to make Izuku talk rather than actually beat him in a fight, even though Izuku was right there, about to beat him in a fight, and prepared to avoid his Quirk) and was smacked down accordingly.

Then we look at Bakugou, and that's the thing with Bakugou: he had an easy road to heroism, and knew it. I've said this somewhere before, but Hori leans on 'Bakugou works hard' as an excuse to not talk about his moral failings, because he does work hard, but not that hard. 'Bakugou working hard', in all honesty, is peak 'Tell not Show', and is repeated so damn often I'm sick of it.

The thing is that the idea of that isn't wrong, just the execution of it. With his muscles, with the way his Quirk is supposed to work, he had to put work into bulking up, staying in shape. He didn't just get his Quirk and say, 'I'm set for life', he fought for it. And while Hori praises him like Rock Lee when we barely see him do shit, the idea of a talented person working hard anyways could have been great. It's something you see in a lot of shonen manga, and is emblematic of heroism itself, and the spirit that UA is supposed to show: you can't just coast into heroism. You need to fight for it, earn it.

...I got a bit off topic there, but the point is the kid didn't just manifest those muscles out of the ether, he has to be training off screen, even if we should be seeing it more on screen.

Bakugou had a good Quirk, but was willing to train himself to achieve his goals.

Toru has a, honestly, medicore Quirk, but still managed to fight her way to her dreams.

Shinso has a good Quirk, but his only strategy when his Quirk failed him was, 'try harder to get them again with my Quirk!'.

Heroism is about power, true, but it's also about attitude, willingness, determination, the ability to perform under pressure and to make good choices and act on them, all the things that got early Izuku through the series before he got Full Cowl, often without using his Quirk at all. Most of that, if not all of it, can be trained over time, true... But if you're not born lucky, and you're not willing or able to work out enough, to think cleverly enough, or to be vicious enough to smash some weak robots, then honestly you're probably not ready for the hero course.

Goodness gracious

my thoughts on canon Douma

(will have manga spoilers!)

Douma is one of those guys I feel like a lot of people misunderstand. And to be honest, I don’t fault either the people for not looking deeply enough nor Gotouge for writing him “weirdly,” he’s written just fine, but he’s genuinely so different and uncanny that it’s hard to nail his character down. He’s not someone you’re really supposed to relate to, where his lack of humanity is his core characteristic and the most intriguing parts of his character is just how distanced he is from the concept of having personhood.

This being said, he kinda suffers from the same problems as Muzan where the fact that he’s placed in a story full of fighting and action did him a huge disservice. Any interesting mentalities or thought processes he could have sparked are overshadowed by blood and gore and flashy colors.

He’s also not given nearly enough time to properly establish his role as an influential, scarily competent cult leader. In the narrative, he’s painted as this positive, airheaded guy who’s a little fucked up sometimes, which completely skips over exploring how he acts in front of his followers, or just people he generally wants to keep up appearances for. Does he act more mature? Does he try to fit the image of the savior in his followers’ minds? Does he not try to change his persona at all? What does he actually say? What does he actually do? You might point out that Kotoha shows an example of how he treats followers, maybe a little warmly, maybe with a little pity, but the fact most of her story was revealed through exposition and through his POV alone can give him grounds to skew it in order to fit his own philosophies (and we already know he’s a bit of an unreliable narrator so).

The above point is definitely a problem that could have been fixed had he had a whole arc dedicated to himself while in his Savior persona, with more people to tell Kotoha’s story in a different point of view, but I digress.

I do think his role serving as a foil to Shinobu, Kanao, and Inosuke was nicely executed. But, it did feel half baked since it was all shoved into the Infinity Fortress arc with barely any build up. Well, hmm, Shinobu is fine? It’s Kanao and Inosuke I have more issues with, which I’ll explain more in their specific analysis posts.

(Ooh, I kinda want to touch on the discussion on if Douma is misogynistic or not, but I’m not sure if people would be more interested in me just analyzing the canon content alone and giving a solid yes or no answer, or if they want to hear my personal interpretation which can branch from canon quite a bit. In any case, it’ll be its own separate post.)

@lavender-rosa

also @keniaku bc its your babygirl

I firmly believe that things like enneagram, MBTI,astrology etc. are tools that are meant for self development, they are something that can induce greater empathy, more tolerance in you, give you a broader perspective. These tools are not meant for enforcing stereotypes like portraying certain types as immoral psychopaths, hard hearted robots and then certain types as angels or Messiah; People aren't really two dimensional like that. Just because you struggle with rational thinking or social skills as an effect of belonging to a certain type doesn't mean you have to stay that way till you die. Putting people in a box won't get us anywhere, it limits our potential, makes us close minded. Instead, these tools are are supposed to make you open minded by showing you that there is no only one true, right way of looking at or doing things, that each type plays an integral & equally important role in our society, its supposed to tell you your weakness & strengths so your can better yourself and become a more well rounded person

Omg welcome back!! You've been sorely missed, I hope you're well <33

Also I'm not on twt and haven't paid attention to the spiky pompom in a while but people hate him now?? :O

Yep 🙌. Well, either they’ve woken up/changed their tune as they grew up/consumed better media or those who were once afraid of speaking out against him have begun doing so. It ain’t perfect but people can finally hate him without worrying about being doxxed 😂

the next strip for soryuu sensei hakuji! :)

i realized i neglected to mention that it'll loosely follow canon, just in modern times. i still havent decided if i want to save people, and if so idk who or how, but nezuko will probably be a demon next update lol.

< prev | masterlist | next >

Jiro and his wife 💎

This is Kaori, she’s the Hidden Wood (Kobayashi clan) village doctor and the first wife to the clan leader Jiro Kobayashi. Her personality is quite timid but she is very stubborn when she wants to. Her work with medicine and herbs is unmatched to anyone, her passione to help people comes off as healing to the point the marking on her forehead appeared after her patients are properly nursed back to health.

But due to her patients being healed from even the most life threatening condition she was seen as a witch in her old village and was treated so poorly that she was banished from the village. When she stumbled upon the Hidden Wood village she healed an injured bear and it guided her into the village. The elders saw that she was no threat and had them tended to an injured Jiro. Once nursed back to health they fell in love and got married. He gifted her that hair pin she wears.

Jiro also has two other wives, after marrying Kaori he marries Tenshi who was a fellow hashira that he met through his sister Akira and lastly the women he was formerly engaged to named Ares. Who unfortunately got married by Tengen after Jiro called it off due to a family crisis.