Latest Posts by mothy-guy - Page 8
hey guys here is my little crazy man hodge podge. im insane about him
any way . how are yo u guys
erm bonus creature one too . guh
A part of me dies every time a piece of media has world building that would cause incredibly complex social issues and would need systematic reform to change the oppression and solve conflict but the author doesn't know how to write complex issues like that so instead they make the protagonist kill the Big Bad Guy who is the root of all evil and suddenly everything is okay even though nothing has changed.
i don't like the growing opinion that people are being 'too hard' on deku for his failing to save shigaraki.
i've seen quite a few people complaining that a lot of the bnha-critical crowd are being too mean to deku for getting tomura killed, arguing that it isn't really his fault, and that hes a 16 year old child soldier who's been failed by almost every adult in his life, why should we be putting all of this on his shoulders? hes just a kid after all?
and the truth is, they're right. deku IS a 16 year old boy whos had the fate of the world thrust on his shoulders. but the story itself just plainly refuses to acknowledge this.
the narrative doesn't acknowledge how fucked up having a school that trains literal children how to be combo cop-celebrities is. it only tentatively acknowledges the fact that a universe having combo cop-celebrities is fucked up, and even then the only people who ever point this out are antagonists, who are portrayed and treated in-universe as untrustworthy. the narrative doesn't care how fucked up dekus circumstances are. the narrative treats deku like hes a fucking messiah here to touch the hearts of the evil depressed villains with his magical empathetic heart of gold before they get blown up or just sent to fucking superhell for daring to challenge the status quote.
deku isn't a person. he's barely even a fucking character at this point. he's a plot device, and a mouth piece for the objectively shitty themes bnha is trying to spout. the themes that tell you that if you're mistreated by society and want to do something about it, you're a villain. that disrupting the status quote and refusing to repent to some random teenage boy spouting empty platitudes at you means you deserve to get sent to fucking superhell. the themes that portray people fighting for civil change as mass murdering supervillains. the themes that look the audience dead in the eye and can call deku the greatest hero to ever live.
deku, who barely spared a second thought to lady nagant telling him the truth about the hero commission. who spouts meaningless platitudes about heroism and morality at nagant, and aoyama, and toga and shigaraki, when even the thought that he should question the world around him comes up. who's constantly talked about as this truly kind, empathetic person, but hasn't spared an empathetic thought to literally anyone who is classified as a villain. who listened to every authority figure around him except the ones who asked him to question his worldview. who saw la bravas tears, shigarakis various breakdowns, himikos plead for understanding, chisakis catatonic state, lady nagants truth, and barley batted a fucking eye. deku, who killed tomura shigaraki.
people don't criticize deku for failing shigaraki because they just hate deku. people criticize deku because of what he represents. because hes a mouthpiece for the atrocious morals and themes of this ideologically rotten manga. because any character he had was chopped up to bits in favor of the incomplete husk we have now. people criticize deku because hes the main character of my hero academia. theres nothing more damning then that.
I'm so glad people actually talk about this!! The whole first episode is spent building up Izuku's backstory just for it to never matter outside of him not knowing how to use his quirk.
The worst part is that 1) mha isn't known for having shitty backstories, many of the characters are known specifically for their well written stories (the todorokis, most of the league, even the relationship between bakugo and izuku before and throughout canon) so it's incredibly frustrating to see the main character's hardly affect him after a while
and 2) that the original plot WAS that Izuku would stay quirkless and use weapons to become a hero. I'm not sure how true this part is, but I've heard that the reason it was changed is because one of the editors convinced horikoshi that the main character not having a superpower would make it boring.
MHA: Izuku Midoriya
I know I'm kicking a hornets nest here, but I feel like Izuku was more interesting as a protagonist before he got a handle on One for All. Like, way back when he was still breaking his own bones on the regular. It just feels like he got super powerful and it doesn't have a cost or stakes for him anymore. (I'm not saying it doesn't, I'm saying it doesn't feel like it.) It also kind of undermines who he started off as.
Like, he was a smart and goodhearted kid who wanted to be a hero, but didn't have a Quirk. On that premise, I would have expected him to Batman or Iron Man his way into heroics. Instead, they kind of Green Lantern/Blue Beetle it. Which is fine, sort of. Except GL and BB origins are usually good people going about their business and suddenly granted power they feel obligated to do good with. It vibes differently for a kid who desperately wants to do good and is suddenly given the powers of Superman (and later everyone else in the justice league). Comparison is getting away from me.
Giving that power to an untrained, unprepared child feels like Izuku is being taken advantage of. And he kind of was. There were better options, for both passing on the Quirk and training the recipient. But narratively it also helps give Izuku seemingly impossible expectations to live up to and a very short timeframe to do it in. It keeps him an underdog, even with access to unholy levels of power. And we were introduced to MHA as an underdog story.
As Izuku struggles to become the hero we (the audience) know he can become, we also watch him lose the rose-tinted view of heroics. The system is corrupt. Its not just a few cowards who don't help because of a bad quirk match-up (I have strong feelings about the sludge villain incident), its built into the system. If the story had stayed more on that, I think I would have enjoyed where it went. You can have the most powerful hero in the world and a corrupt system will still leave them the underdog.
But instead they make it more of a legacy 1v1. All Might v All for One, then Izuku v Shigaraki. Which might be easier to illustrate and finish, but it less narratively satisfying. I get that this is battle shounen, and they're all about their big power-scale-shattering fights with their arch enemies, but was it weird I was sort of expecting better by a certain point?