There are some comments out there claiming Vergil doesn't care for Nero, or perhaps only cares about his power. But I believe the final scene implies otherwise:
So when both Dante and Vergil agree to leave to cut the roots of the Qliphoth, Nero keeps catching up with them. Nero just learned he has a family, and just spend all his energy trying to save both of them. So he is stressing hard. Because after a brief moment, they're leaving again, and he's basically losing his new found family. Which is why he keeps running after them and trying to stop them.
So when Dante turns around to talk to him, he addresses the issue he thinks Nero has, which is being scared of being the 'Dead Weight'. Because that's been the repeating issue between them so far. So he tries to reassure him that he trusts him with 'things on this side', and that he can handle this on his own.
But the point is that's not what Nero needs to hear. It doesn't calm him down (you can clearly tell by how puzzled he looks and still runs after them after that). For the first time that's not the issue he's directly worried about at the moment, because he just proved his strenght in battle. He succeeded in saving them of eachother.
So when Vergil calls out to "Make Haste Dante", Dante leaves. If Vergil was in such a hurry, he would have jumped first. But he doesn't. He waits for Dante to leave, while he keeps his eyes on Nero, and I believe he pulled Dante away from Nero on purpose because he noticed his panic, and/or wanted to talk to him alone.
So left with Nero alone, he says 2 things. "I won't lose next time", implying that there will be a reunion, aka,' I will come back to you'. And the second, he asks him to hold onto his poetry book, as a physical reminder of that fact. The significance of Vergil entrusting the book to Nero has been analysed a lot so I won't delve into it, but obviously he gives Nero something that's very important to him. (In VoV it's described as his heart). And then he leaves.
The point is, Vergil noticed what Nero needed to hear. At that moment he didn't need to hear anything about strength or power or being good enough. He didn't need validation about not being the dead weight. All he needed to know was if his new found family would come back. And Vergil reassures him of that.
Which confirms to me he does care enough to do so for Nero, and also isn't completely unaware of his son's feelings. And that action just speaks volumes to me.
click for better quality. new reblog game, tell prev which rat they are to you
please can we clean the blood off him 🥺
Nero’s thighs✨
That’s it. That’s the post.
I love drawing griffin lmao 💀💀💀 he toasts my crumbs l
*Kiritostinks used to be my old name on insta before the ac name changed to ichibananba:)) trying to make a comeback here since the insta algorithm is so horrid
I just love how similar their outfits are. I thought it would be fun to give these cuties an outfit swap then.
i spent so much fucking time on this
(Familal/not ship) I drew the second image first and for some reason it ended with ragbros.
Being fully honest Dabi coming to Endv after being ignored yet again doesn't change the fact that he has been ignored yet again. Even now endv has his eyes on afo and I can't see it changing
Nah, I get that. I feel the same. To be honest I see this as another set up for failure. So far the heroes have consistently been making the wrong choices and letting things escalate instead of trying better ways of facing their opponents.
I didn’t wanna say it in case I jinxed it with my prediction, but if we are to take Hawks and Mic’s reactions as the standard for how the old gen will continue to act moving forward, then I’m expecting Enji to be much the same. He’s gonna fight Touya like a villain who’s too far gone. Possibly he’ll even echo his colleagues and try to protect Touya’s idealized memory by killing the man his son has become.
I might be wrong about this of course… But looking back at Enji’s internal narration during the Central Hospital chapters and his thoughts as he fought AFO… He’s still nowhere near recognizing that Dabi and Touya are the same person.
Remember this line?
Well, here’s some translation trivia. In japanese he’s only calling him a mass murderer (大量殺人者). The only reason why we know that he’s even talking about Touya and not any other PLF villain is because the furigana (the little reading on the right of the aforementioned kanji string above) tells us he’s referring to his son (むすこ). Stuff like this is hard to translate because English doesn’t have an organic way to do the same kind of word play, so the only way to get across both definitions is to include them both in the line itself, like the character is uttering them at once. The famous “a dance with your son, here in hell” was another example of Hori using furigana that doesn’t match with the kanji they’re paired with, to get across a double meaning. But for the sake of understanding Enji’s mentality, I’d like to stress that he sees Dabi first and foremost as a “mass murderer”. Only incidentally, like an afterthought, as his son. You’ll also notice how in that same scene he’s thinking about “fighting him”. Not reuniting, not seeing how he’s doing. Fighting. Like he would any other villain, because to him this is still a matter to be tackled as a hero and not a father.
Point is, Enji still doesn’t fully recognize Touya in Dabi.
This is how he pictures him in his mind’s eye. This is not by far a flattering image. For all that Enji says that he recognizes the wrongs he did to Touya, the image he conjures when he thinks of him is not that of a man falling apart from the weight of unaddressed trauma and desperation. He sees a monster, grinning maniacally, reveling in Enji’s anguish with sadistic glee. This is not the son he abused, over and over, until he had an emotional breakdown and lost himself. This is Enji picturing an enemy, someone not to feel any sympathy for. Someone whose most prominent feature is his creepy grinning mouth, open wide as if ready to devour everything Enji’s been working for all these years.
Even in his thoughts, he keeps referring to Dabi as an abstract evil rather than a person:
He’s the physical manifestation of Enji’s “mistakes”, not his son. Not the boy he said he missed so dearly he hoped he could get a second chance with.
Touya is Othered as an abstract being, the sum of every flaw Enji possesses but never wanted to acknowledge.
Now compare that to how he saw Touya as an idealized martyr:
Here Touya is remembered as a good kid, not through the distorted lenses above, because up until this moment he’s still a “good victim”. Someone who died before he could become an obstacle, and as such still someone who Enji treats with humanity. He brings offer to his altar and manifests “regret” over his premature death, because this Touya is easy to mourn. After all, with Touya gone, who’s gonna complain about Enji using his memory as a justification for the continued abuse of Shouto and the rest of the family?
Certainly not Touya. The dead are the perfect people to idealize because they can no longer fight for their rights as a living person would. And Enji clearly knows this. He obviously ignores how training Shouto and punching him so hard he pukes goes directly against everything Touya ever wanted because Touya’s wishes are simply no longer part of the equation. Touya is no longer a person but just a a cause that Enji needs to honor (arbitrarily, and with even more abuse than before).
But when Touya comes back, and suddenly he’s a person with agency once again and not just an idealized memory anymore…
Suddenly, he becomes “a mass murderer”.
So… No, I’m not really expecting Enji to turn around and act like a good dad just because Dabi showed up. As you said, Dabi chasing him down doesn’t make Enji any less neglectful or any less at fault, and if Horikoshi knows what he’s doing, he’s probably about to make him do something extremely uncalled for and totally catered to himself, as Enji’s actions so far have only been shielding his own ego from any genuine remorse
19 | he/they | occasionally draws | current obession: clark kent
488 posts