Shigaraki Has More Outfits Than A Disney Princess 👸💀

I tried to like “copy” @crabbng ’s style because I love her art so much but then like I ended up doing like Idk? A mashup??? Idk I’m sorry I guess you can call this a tribute to her art? I love you Jacki. That’s all.

lol y’all remember when i drew this bitch like every damn day

everyone conversing in a circle while Dabi is in time-out in the corner 💀

He looks like a volleyball

this chapter bringing up lady nagant as a villain too just makes me want to ask... why. why is she a villain? is it because she:

killed people for the heroes/hpsc

killed the person who was threatening her (the hpsc president)

momentarily allied herself with AFO despite hurting no one while taking his orders

because uuuuhhh i can think of another character who has done basically all of these things and yet isn't treated like he's indebted to society. so care to lay it out for me, horikoshi? what is lady nagant's crime?🙃

goodreads reviewers aren't human

Just a girl: Why Ochako and Toga matter.

(Disclaimer: For purpose of this analysis, I'm going to be operating under the assumtpion that the young hero trio of Shouto, Izuku and Ochako are going to be succesfull in saving their respective villain counterparts, reinforcing one of the main themes of bnha that everyone deserves to be saved, and a true hero will not give up on anyone. This hasn't happened yet, so I might be proven wrong and this meta will be outdated, but personally I find that to be unlikely)

I love this trio, and I think they are all essential to expressing the themes that they do. But out of the three, Ochako and her villain counterpart Himiko have definitely gotten the least narrative focus. Understandable, since the other duos consist of 1: the literal protagonist and the series' most prominent villain (and i suspect horikoshi's personal favorite character) and 2: the lynchpins of the most popular and interesting subplot in the entire series, as well as two of the best-written characters of the manga and fan favorites

Ochako and Himiko are both major characters and definitely the most developed female characters of bnha, but compared to the other 4 they seem... less important. And so here i'll be arguing why without the two of them, the entire theme bnha is trying to express through the kids saving their respective villains crumbles, and how that perceived ordinariness is exactly WHY they're so vital.

So, arguably the main question bnha is trying to answer besides "what is a hero?" is "is it possible to save everyone?" This is expressed mainly through the characters of all might (and the other ofa holders to an extent) Mirio and Izuku himself.

All Might, the greatest hero of all time, was still not able to save everyone on his own, which is why he constructed the symbol of peace, wanting to make even those he couldn't save feel like he was watching over them. We have seen, most obviously through tenko, how this approach has not worked. It has instead made people overly reliant on the symbol of peace, and left those that fell through the cracks to feel completely abandoned by society. The message received was "If all might won't save you, no one will."

Mirio, while a side character, is an immensely powerful hero and was considered to be a possible heir of one for all. He, too, knows he can't save everyone on his own, and nakes himself lemillion to vow to himself that even if he can't save everyone, he will save at least one million people. He is, in a sense, a mini all might. If he can't save everyone, the least he can do is get as close as possible, right?

But Mirio, too, is wrong. Like all might was. He rushes ahead during the overhaul raid and pays the price for it by (temporarily) losing his quirk. But his fault was not that he wasn't strong enoigh to take on overhaul alone, it's thst he tried to do it alone at all instead of fighting side by side with his allies. The reason Mirio can't be all might's successor is becaise he is too much liek him,and woudl make thexsame ksitakes.

Izuku, on the other hand, learns to have trust in his friends during the rogue arc, he tries to run off on his own and is proven wrong by them. Going into the endgame, he knows that he needs to let his allies walk by his side and work with them if he wants to achieve his goal. So through these three characters, bnha answers the question of "can you have everyone" with "yes, but not alone." Which is cheesy, sure, but what did you expect from a shounen superhero manga? And as far as arguments for collectivism and reformative justice go, it holds up.

So, back to our trio: why do we need Ochako?

Because without her that argument of collectivism falls apart.

Let me be clear, "together" in this context means not just 1a, not just pro-heroes, it means society at large. Communities that stand up for each other, people that don't look the other way when they see a hungry child walk past. Collectivism needs to include normal people.

And Todoroki Shouto and Midoriya Izuku are not normal people.

Shouto is the son of the number one hero, the perfect heir that has surpassed his father not because of him but in spite of him. He is literally "the boy born with everything." And Shouto isn't just saving any villain, he is saving his brother. He knows, better than anyone, why Touya is the way he is, and cares about him more deeply than he would a villain he didn't know who experienced the same kind of abuse. Would he still care? Sure, he's a good kid and a good hero, but would he care as much? No. And can you blame him? This is his family!

And Midoroya Izuku is our protagonist, our moral center, the heir of one for all. Aside from key character flaws, that are always clearly marked as such, what he does and aims to do is what the series wants us to think is right. Izuku is special, his empathy is boundless and his will unbreakable. Of course Izuku, good boy extraordinaire, wants to and actually can save everyone!

And Dabi and Shigaraki are not ordinary villains either. Touya is the son of the current number one hero, a living testiment to the monster that he was, to what he put their family through. A walking corpse too angry to die, dead set on revenge. There is nothing subtle or normal about Touya, everything is larger than life.

Tomura, meanwhile, is the descendant of a previous user of one for all, has been taken in and groomed by all for one since childhood. He's inherited a century old fight between two brothers and the two strongest powers in this world. He too a testament to the flaws of hero society, a dark mirror to the symbol of peace and those he leaves behind.

So we have the two children of the number one hero, and the heirs of one for all and all for one respectively. With just these two pairs, a reader couldn't be faulted for thinking that Dabi was saved only because he had a true hero in his family who cared for him more than anyone not his relative would. And that Izuku, in all his shounen portagonist-y goodness, is just so much better than everyone else that only HE could have saved tenko. Which is the opposite of, you know, the actual theme of the story.

So then we have... Ochako. Who is not that special, not related to anyone of note. Not the moral center who we can always trust to do the right thing because of their paragon goodness. She's kind, of course. But Stain, who saw in Izuku a true hero on par with All Might, would have judged her for going into heroism for the money. She's not greedy, she wants that money to support her parents, but she is not a beacon of selflessness.

Ochako is just a girl who saw another girl cry. And she wanted to help her, because that's what people do when we see others in pain. She did not know Himiko, had no special reason to care about her. She's a girl who saw another girl in pain and wanted to understand her.

And Himiko is also just a girl. She was a girl with a not-so-acceptable quirk, and not-so-good parents, who forced her to hide herself until she snapped. She's a girl who didn't fit into mainstream society and had to seek solace with other outsiders, and is scared that peoe like her might not be seen as people by those who are supposed to save them. Like the other two villains (and many others) she's also a testament to hero society's failures, but in a way that we could imagine many others also being, while Dabi and Shigaraki are unique and alone. There are others like Himiko. Dozens, maybe even hundreds. Kids who are cast out and find criminal life to be the only place they're allowed to exist. They might find ordinary gangs instead of the league of villains. But that's a matter of circumstance, not anything innnate to her.

And so Ochako and Himiko are the affirmation that this is an ideal that can and should be achieved by regular people. Yes they are still a hero and a villain, but they are not incomprehensibly different from everyday citizens like the others.

The trio are three pillars together holding up the theme. Izuku representing the ideal of heroism, Shouto representing family/friends/communities looking out for those close to them, because they understand them better than law enforcement could, and Ochako represents regular plain kindness. The kind that everyday people display all the time. No supernatural vestiges, no blood bond, just a girl seeing another girl crying and wanting to help.

one of my issues with the MLA arc resolution is that it just feels like a very incomplete understanding of ideology and praxis. it reminds me of people trying to ‘debate away’ nazis or antivaxxers or terfs or whatnot, bcs there’s this idea that the ideology will just… go away if you “win” somehow?? which is a very liberal understanding of ideological conflict imo. there are a lot of ideologies that are illogical, and which rely on the denial of facts and the invention of conspiracy theories to sustain themselves, which is why it’s so impossible to “win” against those people. but even when you move away from those ideologies and get into ones that are more liberal or leftist, you still get ideological conflict, and you’re often met with clashes of fundamental values, and opinions about what is morally acceptable or necessary, and so forth. ideology is a whole system of ideas, built from the ground-up, and you often have to work long and hard to get to the foundation to significantly change it (eg: marxism isn’t just about being anti-capitalist, it comes with a whole set of ideas about human dignity, and human desires, and what constitutes human nature, and through what kind of means capitalism strips them away or modifies them, and why capitalism does this, etc. even before you get to anti-capitalism, a marxist and a neoliberal will probably already disagree about, like, human nature, and who deserves dignity and what dignity even means).

that’s why Redestro giving in so easily is so unsatisfying to me, because that’s rarely how it happens ime. given how many people complain about their jobs and their wages, but refuse to take the logical next step to complain about the economic system they live under, it makes no sense to me that this guy who benefits from hero society and that kind of societal order would want to expand his concept of “freedom” to include Shigaraki’s view. the change shouldn’t be as simple as Shigaraki showing off his quirk, i want to know: why does Redestro accept this as his new vision of freedom? where does he feel like the MLA’s own ideology fits in? if he discards the MLA’s ideology entirely, why does he think Shigaraki’s is better? where does he see himself fitting into Shigaraki’s final goal? there’s just so much that goes into the formation and adoption of an ideology that this abrupt about-face, without so much as touching upon those questions, makes it feel unrealistic, because it’s never just as easy as debunking one idea. it’s an entire system of beliefs, and if Shigaraki managed to change enough of it for Redestro to willingly and happily follow him, I need to know what changed, and why, and how it leads to this conclusion.

anyways if kurogiri isn't nonbinary why are they literally a walking nonbinary flag. checkmate.

Spring themed Dabi! Because Spring is all about New Life and Rebirth, right? 😅 I guess this is a little bit to spite chapter 350. If the only thing keeping Dabi alive is his grudge, doesn’t that mean if he gives up on his revenge (or, “is saved”), then he’d just die…? :/ My fav parts of the drawing are the socks, the crystals and the little glass with the sapling. xD