It Makes Sense To Think Nods To Frankenstein Such As Dabi Doing The Monster Pose Are Just Generally For

Anyone wanna guess what my next Animatic is gonna be? 0.0

Not-Really Chapter Thoughts BNHA 424

You know, I really think there should be a point at which Deku rushing in with no plan and doing whatever he thinks feels right should become Heroic Malpractice.

Just me?

Because, like, Shouto had a plan. He spent the time between the two war arcs specifically developing a brand-new combat technique that he planned to use to shut down Dabi's combat advantage without killing him. He convinced his dad not to change the plan like Endeavor was hesitantly sounding him out about[1]; he went out and talked and asked questions, and even if they weren't the right words every single time, he did his best and he did it with intention. If Dabi proves to be dead, it won't be because of anything Shouto did to him; it'll be because Dabi himself chose to stand back up, take a warp gate across the country, pick a fight with the guy who doesn't have the power set to shut him down without unduly hurting him, and try to replicate an Ultimate Move specifically tailored for someone with a balanced power set Dabi doesn't have.[2]

And if Dabi lives, it's still going to be because Shouto booked it across the country and used that same technique to stop him again.

1: Dabi surely would have preferred to fight Endeavor from the start, and it probably would have been the more "just" choice if it had to be one or the other, but Shouto is the nominal focal character between the three of them, so, critiques of the broader Hero-side decisions aside, Shouto's arc has to come first. This is one of those places where you can clearly see how much the decision to let Endeavor survive where Horikoshi originally planned for him to die hurts the shape of the later story.

2: Obviously ultimately if Dabi dies, it's going to be because his family and Team Hero made repeated choices to ignore and neglect him, culminating in the entire family swearing to deal with Touya together only to passively accept a battle plan that involved splitting them all and letting the kid who knows Touya the least be the one to fight him. But like, in the context of that fight, Shouto isn't the reason Dabi takes all that hurt.

Uraraka may or may not have had much of a plan, but at least the words she said to Toga reflected that she had been seriously thinking about Toga in the here and now, what Toga's told her, what Toga needs. If Toga dies, it will be because Toga chose to give Uraraka an unsupervised blood transfusion with no intention of stopping it. (With the same general caveats as in Footnote 2.)

But Deku? From the very beginning, Deku has been valorized by the manga for how much he doesn't plan. All Might tells him specifically that it's a sign of greatness shown by future "top Heroes" that, in some crisis situation, their bodies moved before they could think. Bakugou's Rising chapter is defined by him reaching that same state.

Deku claimed he wanted to save Shigaraki; he's sad in the latest chapter that he couldn't save Tenko's[3] life. But did he ever have a real plan to do that? With all the quirks he had at his disposal - both his own and those who would be in the flying coffin with him, or classmates whose presence he could specifically request - did he think hard and come up with a technique that would let him stop Shigaraki without harming him? Did he try to connect with the Shigaraki right in front of him by citing to the future?

3: And I have nothing but scorn for Deku's insistence on that name when "Tenko" goes out very pointedly calling himself Shigaraki Tomura.

Well, no. Deku obstinately yelled at the phantasms in Shigaraki's mindscape that he had no plan whatsoever. The only plans we saw him carry out were ones handed to him by the OFA collective that involved "breaking" Shigaraki's psyche; the only plans he came up with himself involved more efficiently breaking Shigaraki's body.

Way back in Chapter 130, Nighteye harshly scolded Deku by saying that his way of thinking was arrogant. He said, "Go after him haphazardly and he'll slip through our fingers. You're not so special as to be able to save who you want, when you want. (...) This world is not so accommodating that you can act the Hero because you feel like it."

It felt like something that Deku should have taken to heart, a lesson to be learned and applied later, but I never much got the feeling that he did. Nothing he did in that moment, in that arc, or anywhere else in the series afterward indicates that he thought Nighteye was right. He just chose not to talk back, and the arc ended with Nighteye dead and no longer around to pose objections to Deku's mode of heroism.

But Nighteye was right. Three hundred chapters later, Shigaraki is dead because Deku could not be arsed to plan for how he could stop Shigaraki without killing him. Because he let Gran Fucking Torino give him the intellectual out that killing someone could be a means of saving them. Because he followed his gut instincts of prioritizing the phantom Crying Child that he always saw as more valid and real than the human being standing in front of him.

Because he haphazardly acted the Hero and let his body move without thinking.

And he wants to act sad about it now? I hope Nighteye materializes in his bedroom to sneer at him every night for the rest of his life.

--

Incidentally, fuck All Might, seriously. "Wow, Deku and Bakugou, you two are the greatest Heroes ever. Fuck me and everyone else who fought tooth and nail, arm and leg, eye and earjack, life and death, to contribute to the pile of damage that was necessary to kill and/or save Shigaraki and All For One. You two got the last blows in, so you're the only ones who get the credit for it in my eyes. Hero Society is definitely going to be different and better with you two around."

normalize blaming endeavor for everything

so you’d rather the mla stick around as a sore thumb and the lov to stay broke and weak than for both to join forces, creating a definitive resolution to the my villain aca arc and consolidated threat for the heros? are you so against it being settled by a fight that you’d rather it be dragged out?

my feelings about the resolution to the mla arc are honestly mostly negative. i don’t feel like it makes sense for either side join forces (unless they plan on backstabbing each other, or unless hori is deliberately introducing a regression for the lov, which are all possibilities but lets take the resolution at face-value for the sake of this discussion). it’s been laid out since overhaul’s arc that the lov are tight-knit and value one another as comrades. even if you excise tomura out of the equation for his questionable/nebulous attitude towards relationships, twice and toga are very explicitly characterized as protective, and vengeful toward people who hurt one of “their own.” but at the end of the mla arc, they’re inducted into this organization which not only tortured and held giran for weeks, but also has no second thoughts about using their own members as canon fodder—which is, again, almost exactly what the shie hassaikai were like! if hori were going to have them collab with a shie hassaikai-ish organization later on, then why even bother drawing a comparison between shigaraki & the lov and overhaul & the yakuza?

on the mla’s side, their reasons for capitulating (at least as internally narrated by redestro during his defeat) are completely bs. the mla’s vision wasn’t just a nebulous conception of “freedom”; they had a specific vision of what that freedom looked like. they were a group who planned to rebel for the legalization of indiscriminate quirk use (defined as “freedom”), which is a specific, targeted, and limited goal; no amount of marveling at decay indicates that the logical progression is to embrace shigaraki’s desire for indiscriminate destruction. for a group of people who have largely benefited from the overall structure of society (they’re fucking ceos with some top heroes on call and shit ffs), it makes very little sense for them to buy into the utter unpredictability of shigaraki’s agenda just because he put on a very compelling live performance piece by curbstomping redestro. having two different visions of the future really isn’t a narrative conflict that should be solved by a physical fight, or at least not a straightforward a fight as this one.

like, i know it’s the Way of Shounen to have most things settled by a fight as an easy shorthand for interpersonal development. maybe the L is on me for feeling like the conflict could’ve been handled more satisfactorily & for ideology to actually interact in meaningful ways (even if it leads to one side renouncing theirs) rather than for the resolution to be a metaphorical dick slinging contest. sure, it’s true that it does all those things you said (consolidate a base for the villains, become a real threat, etc. etc.). it’s true that it moves things along, and i’m not against that. BUT i think that making these two particular villain groups ally with each other makes both of their characterizations worse: the lov bcs they’re turning back on earlier characterization from the overhaul arc, and the mla bcs it feels like they can’t fucking stick to a conviction. this wouldn’t be such a big problem if the mla were written differently from the start or, yes, if hori took more time to tell me why the fuck these guys aren’t still trying to kill each other, because tbh nothing about these two groups tell me that joining together is the logical conclusion.

ONE FOR ALL ┊ - do not repost -

“… Swimming with the fishes.”

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My deepest darkest fantasy is that I collapse on the street and I am rushed to the hospital. They perform a bunch of tests and find out I am severely deficient in some kind of vitamin. Then I start taking the vitamin and I become the happiest cleverest person alive because all my problems were caused by this one deficiency

- I missed you…

My Villain Academia here I come

i actually didnt think it could get worse but touya's reveal being the thing that brought the todorokis together and finally made them ally themselves with endeavour regardless of all the trauma he caused them and how impossible they've found it to even hang out together as a family for the entire decade touya has been gone. THAT being what binds them. they might as well have spat in the face of touya's memory. it's not even an acknowledgement that dabi must be stopped it's just like they never even loved him. endeavour is giving him more sympathy than them. 'you will have to fight dabi one day' et tu rei?