I’m A Little Confused, What Does Rei Telling Shouto About Rejecting Bloodlines Have To Do With Himura

I’m a little confused, what does rei telling shouto about rejecting bloodlines have to do with himura mutant phobia?

(Re: a comment I made about Shouto's Sports Festival flashback in my post on Chapter 387.)

It’s not a direct correlation!  I was pointing out that Rei has early dialogue that can potentially be read as foreshadowing for the familial issues discussed by Geten 350 chapters later.  Basically, that Horikoshi might have chosen to specifically frame the conversation in terms of bloodline—mangling an explanation of All Might’s catchphrase to do so*—because he was already aware that fears about the sorts of things one can inherit via bloodline were significant to the characters in the scene.

Shouto is afraid of inheriting his father’s willingness to hurt Rei, but what sort of fear of bloodline inheritance has Rei already faced in her own history such that she can now reassure Shouto that blood is not binding?  It could simply be a generic assurance, not connected to Rei’s history at all, but what if it isn’t?

What if Rei is able to reassure her son that one isn’t bound to one’s bloodline because she already has personal experience with the consequences of excessive regard for bloodline?  And given that she’d later burn Shouto out of fear of his resemblance to Enji, did she really even believe it at the time, or is it the same as when she tried to get Touya to change course and he lashed out at her for lecturing him about choices, save that, unlike Touya, Shouto was young and attached enough to believe her?

To look at it another way, when Horikoshi was brainstorming the Todoroki family’s general situation, he would have had to figure out Endeavor’s obsession and the forms it took—the attempts to wrangle genetics, the failures that came before the success, the spiral into abuse—as well as at least the broad strokes of the ways Enji’s kids and wife reacted to it.  It’s entirely possible that all Horikoshi originally had figured out about Rei was “mentally fragile because of the abuse; gets institutionalized after she burns Shouto,” but he’s on the record as thinking a lot about the lives of his minor characters and there’s plenty about Rei that begs further thought.

For example, why would the woman with the ice powers Enji sought agree to the marriage?  Why would she stay in the marriage even after it turned sour?  Was it all out of love?  Wouldn’t it be a bit convenient that Enji could find a woman who just loved him that much given his unabashed ulterior motives?  Further, Rei was open to her mother about the dire straits she was in—why wouldn’t her mother step in, call child protective services, tell her own husband, do anything?  Rei’s family being traditionalists, with old-fashioned ideas about marriage and commitment, works to answer the question.  Then, on top of being traditionalist, Rei’s family needing the financial resources Enji brings to the table bolsters that answer even further.

The questions that follow logically from that scenario are what tradition looks like in the world Horikoshi’s created, and why Rei’s family need money?  If they were an old-money family but lost their fortunes, what caused that?  Geten provides the reader with the answers, but it’s not impossible that Horikoshi’s known them from the start.  If that’s the case, then even Rei’s earliest lines in the series can be read as speaking in light of her family history, and that family history is intimately entwined with heteromorphobia.

It's somewhat reachy, I acknowledge, but I hope that explains my thought process a little better? Thanks for the ask!

* The conversation on TV is so weird.  What in god’s name does self-love and the DNA inheritance of quirks have to do with All Might’s, “I AM HERE!” catchphrase?  That’s nonsense, counter to everything else he’s ever said about the meaning of the phrase, which is supposed to be both reassurance to those in danger and threat to those endangering.

It’s an awkward and baldly contradictory contortion of a response that, so far as I can tell, serves no real purpose save to suggest a question from the interviewer that upset Shouto because it implied that his blood doomed him to grow up like his father, and give Rei a chance to answer in the same framework.  What question could the interviewer possibly have asked that would have both given Shouto that impression and prompted All Might to respond, “Yes, quirks are naturally passed from parent to child.  However, that’s not the only thing that matters.  It’s not just blood ties…  Instead, one must recognize and appreciate oneself!  That’s what I mean when I say, ‘I am here!’”