Is Dabi Touya Todoroki Or Is It Maybe Geten? Let’s See What They Say

Why Deku's ultimatum to Overhaul is bad and he should feel bad

This is a bit outside my normal character wheelhouse, but I really need to get a rant about it off my chest, so here goes:

The Deku and Overhaul scene in Chapter 316 is terrible. It is fucking terrible.

I took a whirl around Overhaul's tag up through when the leaks first started dropping, but didn't immediately see anyone talking about why it's so fucking terrible, only concerns about letting Overhaul see Eri (understandable, but baseless, I think), some empathy towards Overhaul's current state (totally warranted!), some snark about Deku being So Done with Overhaul (haha because who cares about Deku's stated goal of trying to understand villains, right?), and, worst of all, some cooing about how Deku was being so compassionate and noble by offering Overhaul that olive branch.

Deku was not being compassionate and noble there. Deku was being arrogant, small-minded, and so shockingly cruel that it leaves me speechless that anyone could think his stunted and hard-hearted "offer" reflects well on him.

Deku's entire motivation in this arc has been wrestling with the realization that he might have been able to avoid some of the desperate battles of his past if he'd understood more about the villains he fought. He thought of three very specific people--Stain, Muscular, and Overhaul--as he reflected, "Maybe it wouldn't have had to go that way if I'd understood them better." He then thought of Gentle Criminal and La Brava, people who he’d come to some understanding of, who he’d been able to soften the conclusion of his battle with by going along with Gentle's fiction downplaying what had happened between them. The whole line of thought was intended to contextualize his newfound desire to save Shigaraki.

It soon became apparent that Stain, Muscular and Overhaul were, in fact, encounters that he would be revisiting, as a chance to see how he'd grown since he faced them, and as a dry-run on reaching out to villains that would give him a chance to practice ways he might reach out to Shigaraki when the time comes.

Well, based on his performance so far, the idea that Deku might be able to reach Shigaraki is laughable.

Firstly, his tentative questions to Muscular were ill-timed, all wrong for the middle of a battle. Muscular laughed him off, and I don’t think there’s any version of that scenario in which he would have done otherwise. Muscular was a huge threat, gleefully violent, disinterested in conversation about his history. Obviously, right in the middle of a fight was no kind of time to try to figure out what made the man tick! But Deku didn’t get the luxury of choosing the circumstances of that encounter, so yes, that battle probably was unavoidable, certainly if Deku wanted to stop him from doing further damage. But the idea that because Deku couldn't reach him right then and there, it's impossible for Deku--or, indeed, for anyone--to reach him at all is fallacious. Not every person has to be able to like or understand every other person. If Deku couldn't reach Muscular, so what? That doesn't mean it's impossible that someone might. And that means an obligation to treat Muscular like a human being, to afford him human rights, to not stop trying to find a way to rehabilitate him, even as you safeguard other people against him.

Deku's battle with Muscular being unavoidable was not some great triumph, for all that the narrative used it as an opportunity to let him show off how far he’d come in mastering One For All. In the way that matters, the way that Deku himself is currently trying to better, he hasn't advanced at all. Imasuji Goto represented his first test in the lead-up to saving Shigaraki, and Deku failed it.

His next trial was Overhaul.* Here, again, was someone who Deku was explicitly trying to understand. So what was the one thing that was most key to understanding Overhaul's current motivation? What was the one thing that Overhaul was ranting about out loud, incessantly? And what did Deku conspicuously fail to ask about? Overhaul's relationship with Pops.

This was so easy. So obvious. And Deku didn’t even try. All he could think about in the moment he was faced with that broken man was the little girl that man hurt--all thoughts of trying to understand where the man himself was coming from went right out the window, flown away in an instant. Instead of asking about why Overhaul feels the way he does, he demanded that Overhaul feel the way Deku wanted. He was essentially holding the only person Overhaul cared about hostage for the remorse he wanted Overhaul to feel.

I'm not going to try to armchair diagnose Overhaul with mental conditions. I don't have the educational background, and I'm positive Horikoshi doesn't. But it seems pretty clear that asking Overhaul to feel guilt about Eri was asking for something that he might not be capable of feeling, at least not without years of therapy that he was plainly not getting in Tartarus. And if Overhaul is not capable of feeling that guilt, then what does denying Overhaul his meeting actually solve? Who does it help? It doesn’t help Eri. Doesn’t help the old man. It certainly doesn’t help Overhaul himself. The only person who gets any satisfaction out of demanding remorse from Overhaul is Deku. And even Deku didn’t look like he found it very satisfying!

Another failure. A meaninglessly cruel, petty failure. A failure that served only to hurt a man who was already a live wire of agony, to sentence an old man to a coma he might never wake from without Overhaul's expertise, and to deprive Eri of the only actual family she had left.

And look, Pops might very well not be the ideal guardian for Eri, and I'm not saying he should get to "keep" her just because of the blood connection, but it's not like he cheerfully handed her over to Overhaul and walked out the door! He turned to Overhaul because he trusted Overhaul, because he wanted someone to help Eri and thought that maybe Overhaul could. And when Overhaul's thoughts about Eri took a very dark turn, Pops first denied his request about using her to further his research and then, when Overhaul kept pushing it, chose Eri over the kid he personally took in from the streets by telling Overhaul that he needed to leave the Shie Hassaikai if he couldn't muster any more respect for human life than that.

But, you know, Eri is so cute with Aizawa and stuff. And Pops was a criminal. Probably. Maybe? I mean, he was yakuza, anyway, so he obviously must have been a criminal even if the police never actually arrested him. Apparently, this means it's okay to just leave him in a coma forever! Even though Overhaul absolutely has enough medical expertise that letting him talk to a neurologist about what he did to Pops might enable them to figure out how to wake Pops up even without Overhaul being able to use his quirk to undo the damage. Hell, Overhaul is also the person alive who has the best handle on how Eri's quirk works. He might even know what her accumulation condition is. Maybe a better thing to ransom his access to Pops with would be Overhaul telling Aizawa everything he knows about Eri's quirk so Aizawa can use the knowledge to help her get a better handle on it.

But no. Obviously undoing some small part of the concrete harm Overhaul did was less important than how Deku felt about that harm.

And there's more! Oh, is there ever. I called Deku arrogant before; let me circle back to that.

Deku said that if Chisaki would feel the way Deku wanted him to feel, then Deku would uphold the promise to let Overhaul see Pops. But where in hell did Deku get off making that claim? Deku is a student. He's not a pro. He has no authority, medical, legal, carceral or otherwise. He has no say in where Overhaul goes or who he's allowed to see.

What the fuck? What the actual fuck? What kind of strings did Deku think he could pull that he could just casually make that claim without so much as going into a huddle with Hawks and Endeavor about it first? How inflated has this kid's sense of importance gotten that he made Overhaul that promise without even stopping to think about whether it was something he was in any position to ensure? It was such a bullshit ultimatum, not only because of how needlessly obstructive it was, but because it was so formless.

"If only you would feel a wish to apologize to Eri…" Okay, so what if Overhaul goes back to prison and, three days later, calls out to say, "Okay, I thought about it and I really feel like I want to apologize, now can I see Pops already?" Who gets to make that judgment call? Deku? Is he going to drop his faux-vigilante act and come visit Overhaul in prison just so he can squint at the man really hard to see if he's lying? Is Deku going to delegate the call to someone else? All Might? Hawks? A prison warden? A psychologist? Who? Who gets to be the one to say, "Okay, I think his remorse is genuine."

Then, once that call has been made, how many people have to arrange for Overhaul to be escorted out of prison and to whatever hospital Pops is in? Will Deku get to oversee that visit? Does he think he can overturn a warden declaring, "The scum doesn't deserve a visit, and the old man probably doesn't either," or a doctor protesting, "I'm not letting that man anywhere near my patient!"

The hell of it is, I think Deku could do all of that. He's got a close personal connection to All Might, who was basically a demi-god to this society for decades; he has the ear of the current top three heroes. Everyone is apparently convinced that the power to save this society rests solely in Deku's hands; I'm sure he could ask for anything he wanted. But the fact that that is the case suggests that this society is not even slightly turning away from its dependence on heroes dictating its morality. A hero having the sole right to dictate, out of hand, based on his personal feelings, the fate of people designated "villains" while the rest of society turns away is exactly what Shigaraki is angry about.

The only thing worse than Deku perpetuating the worst problems of hero society in an arc that's supposed to be about him finding a better way is that he didn’t even stop to think about it. It never even occurred to him that that was what he was doing. He thought that what he was asking of Chisaki was just and fair, and thus, he didn’t need to ask for any second opinions or permissions; he didn’t need to think about what would actually be feasible, about what was best for the people involved. He'd made his judgment call about a villain, and that's all there was to it. The villain could fall in line or--nothing. There isn't actually another choice. Hero's way or nothing

I hate it. I hate it. I don't care about whether Overhaul "deserves" to suffer; heroes making the cold decision that they will make him suffer is antithetical to everything a carceral system intended to rehabilitate prisoners stands for. And yes, Japan does at least claim on paper that the goal of incarceration in state hands is rehabilitation.

Restorative justice is superior to retributive justice. It's better for society and it's better for individuals. It is kinder, it is more compassionate. Retributive justice poisons people. It perpetuates suffering for no reason but moral grandstanding. Individuals are allowed to forgive or not forgive anyone they want, but a society should conduct itself with an eye to the long-term welfare of all of its people. That means that even the worst kinds of criminals still have human rights. It means not inflicting pain that serves no purpose.

I've gotten off-track here. Yes, I think that if Overhaul could feel regret about Eri, that would obviously be a positive development for his character. It'd hurt like hell, but it would be a hurt that indicated he was becoming a better person, a person who wanted to do more good, less ill, with his life and efforts. But you can't mandate that someone become a better person. No ultimatum handed down from on high is going to change Overhaul's heart. Telling someone, "I'll help you, but only if you only feel the way I want you to feel. Otherwise, you can just stay there and suffer," is not reaching out to help people who are suffering in the dark, which is, again, what Deku claimed he wanted to do, what he begged for Nagant's help in doing, the way he insisted to the vestiges that OFA should be used.

Deku writing people off because they don't conform to his expectations, because they can't be "good" the way he wants them to be, nor even "bad" in ways he can understand, is him failing to live up to his own expressed ideals. "I wish you'd feel bad about hurting people," wasn't enough to reach Muscular or Overhaul, and it damn well shouldn't be enough to reach Shigaraki.

Cruelty does not beget kindness. You cannot treat people with only callousness and severity, then condemn them for not taking the opportunity to grow. You have to give them opportunities to better themselves. For Overhaul, giving him an opportunity would be letting him help the man he wronged and then moving forward from there. Telling him to feel regret about Eri or else? That's doing nothing but sweeping his pain back under the rug.

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*I have more or less exhausted my outrage over Lady Nagant in chats with friends, so I'll spare the rant on how disjointed, contradictory and ludicrous her turn was; the gist is "very, on all counts."

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P.S. Anyone who says that Overhaul "has nothing left to live for" is being a level of ableist that defies description. Prosthetics exist. Assistive devices exist. Speech-to-text software exists. Overhaul is intelligent, driven and highly educated. Even if he never got prosthetics at all, there would still be things he could contribute to the world if he were motivated to do so. The better thing to do, though, would be to get the man some damn prosthetics, hook him up with the neurologist consulting on Pops' case, and let the two of them get on with the matter of waking up the old man.

P.P.S. Overhaul spent six months in solitary confinement. The United Nations considers solitary confinement exceeding 15 days to be a form of torture. Solitary confinement creates severe mental health issues and exacerbates existing ones. It frequently leads to a deadening of empathy, something Overhaul has in little enough amounts as it is. It is absurd to ask a man who's just come out of these conditions to "feel sorry for what you did to Eri," especially if you're planning to turn around and send him right back to solitary. Tartarus is inhuman, and the only reason more of the escapees aren't total wrecks like Overhaul is because Horikoshi clearly didn't bother to do the reading on the wide array of problems that those characters should be experiencing physically, mentally and socially.

Not to be bitter or anything but im happy dabi killed fanon touya

Ep 153 sketch by Noriko Morishima

and the other layer for me i guess is what the shounen fight usually represents, not only a physical determination of who’s stronger but also of whose ideology is more legitimate, and it just sucks that dabi loses on both counts, which is. rough. considering how much of his character is built on the pain of being deemed a failure and the narrative just goes “yeah the inferiority is true actually”

Me: I'm done yapping

Reads Viz's translation for chpt 427

Actually no I'm not.

Let's talk about Izuku Midoriya, intense hero fanboy, everyone he looks up to is a hero, ect ect

Passively listening to Spinner as he sorrowfully tells him "he was my friend. He was my hero".

Like??? Midoriya doesn't even bat an eye but at the least that should resonate some with Midoriya. He can at least imagine what it'd be like to (permanently) lose All Might/Toshinori. Or Bakugou who was dead for long enough in the Sky Coffin. And we get.... A close up of Midoriya, showing some dark circles under his eyes and a blank stare. What. The. Fuck. Does he have so little empathy once people turn into "villains"? That he can't sympathize and try to ease their pain? And we're supposed to believe he has this incredible heart that's so inspiring to even antagonistic characters who've otherwise lost hope in hero society? (I'd maybe say that he's still processing the end of the war, dealing with his own stuff, ect ect and excuse that lack of interaction if not for the fact that he quips back "make it a comic book" - which he's not a big quip person so it's not like that's in his character to do, especially not during emotional exchanges. I'm sorry but it's just... callous at worst, tone deaf at best)

If someone can explain this chapter's Deku to me - not with suppositions, but with canon only evidence - that'd be great. But I no longer believe that Midoriya has such a great heart. Show don't tell, but we had plenty of telling and little showing.

13 yrs. Touya under care of Ujiko [theory]

I really like hori Noumu design it a perfectly mixture of hideous and cute

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I don’t think Ujiko is a good person, he really twisted and a mad scientist type. but I think he have soft spot for all his creature [aka. noumu] like it his child/possession.

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I wonder if Noumu is cuddlable? or even comfortable to cuddle or not [but it made out of flesh so maybe it smooth for texture?]

Call this a conspiracy theory

but with the recent reveal about Tenko's quirk and having spent some time dwelling on the details of Touya's death there are more and more things not making sense in the context we were given.

Touya died in a fire on Sekoto peak after having a breakdown which lead to him losing control of his fire. This happened notably on a day when Enji was at home, having a day off from work.

Then Touya's burned body was taken away by All For One, who had broken off a fragment of his jawbone and planted it as evidence of his death.

As neglectful as Enji may have been as a father, he was still a hero. I have no doubt he got to the mountain as soon as he realized there is a fire. The Todoroki mansion was also located close to the Sekoto peak, as both Enji and Touya used to go there regularly to train. Are we really supposed to believe AFO just so happened to come across the fire started by Touya, manually break off his jawbone, leave it there and get away from the mountain with his body faster than it took for Endeavour to come there? Enji is the one living there, not All For One. Touya's breakdown is not something that can be predicted by the other party, unless they are keeping close contact with the Todoroki family. Ujiko directly confirms they were indeed aware of the private matters happening in the Todoroki house, which lead to AFO taking interest in Touya.

Those kids were our spares, in case anything happened to Tomura Shigaraki.

What did happen to Tomura Shigaraki, when he still was Tenko Shimura?

AFO sought him out when he was still a baby, and immediately took away his quirk factor. He was meeting with his father privately and encouraged his behaviour towards his son. He even contacted Tenko's friends. When Tenko was 5 years old, AFO personally passed the Decay quirk to him in another meeting.

AFO was a fucking control freak, manipulating Tenko's life to unbelievable degree. Everything that happened to Tenko was a doing of All For One, pretty much. And once he had hold on him, he kept him in complete control and isolation for most of his life.

Is it really so far fetched to believe that Touya's death on Sekoto was also AFO's doing?

We already have the confirmation Touya was one of Shigaraki's possible replacements and AFO toon specific interest in his quirk, before giving up on it.

We also know the only reason they let Touya go was because his body was so messed up Garaki prognosed his life expectancy after leaving the facility to be a month tops.

Another point that stands out is Touya's ice quirk awakening. The evolution of quirks explanation is handwavey at best. But if the condition for Touya was a near-death experience, then wouldn't a 13 years old boy who was used to dealing with minor burns and didn't want to burn to death fulfill those conditions better than a 24 years old man who was dealing with extreme burns on the regular and actively wanted to die?

Anyway, All For One is the one who started that fire on Sekoto, not Touya. In this essay I will-

“what will we do without police to arrest child abusers?” well, you see, in the anime my hero academia, a few characters took it upon themselves to ruin a child abuser’s career, chase him down on the highway, and cut off his arms, all the while police guarded him, and i think that’s the real kind of grassroots bottom-up initiative we need to be looking into. it was an aspirational example of how justice could be served without involving police

oh my god making grilled cheese with dabi idk why

Ok! So I’ve been playing Ultra Rumble a lot. Like, A LOT. And I mainly main Dabi because I like his alpha skill and laying fire traps everywhere. But what my brain keeps on focusing on is how Dabi was probably a B-student/average kid in school.

Let me explain!

In the game you get rankings based on how you play. D being the worst and A+ the best. And Dabi’s comment are “I was so close to achieving greatness” (im paraphrasing) in C rank and “The expected outcome” for B. And for A he’ll go “you talking about me? I’m not mad.”

He takes being an average student so calmly and even expects it. He doesn’t mind it either. Yet when he gets noticed, he’s happy. Just…ughhhhh makes my brain rot start reaching because it makes it sound like THIS DUDE REALLY PUT ALL HIS EGGS INTO THE HEROICS BASKET AND THAT BASKET BROKE.