Where Hori Went Wrong With Bakugou

Where Hori went wrong with Bakugou

So, a day or two ago I saw an old reddit post quoting Hori explaining why he started to change Bakugou's character.

(I did't save it, because, 1, I don't really do that, and 2, even if I did... I don't actually attach things to my rants? I'm far too lazy to put the work in to try and do that. So.... My source is that I made it the F@#& up, I guess?)

The gist of it was that when Bakugou lost, he cried, right? That was... apparently a moment Hori realized he could have more depth? And basically, because of that realization, he decided he could give Bakugou more any development, and presumably from that point on decided to make him a more important character.

Alright, I... *sigh*

*deep breath*

Alright. Let's start with this:

Bakugou cried because he lost... and this was Hori's great sympathetic, 'I can fix him' moment? I just... I just... what? Why???

*recalls All Might going out of his way to comfort Bakugou and cheer him up, despite the murder attempt he had done a few minutes ago*

...Was he self-inserting in All Might at that moment then?

....

*deeper breath*

Alright.

So there's that. And beyond that... this is connected to something I mentioned before... I'm not sure Hori really knows how to make bad guys with sympathetic traits?

Like, he can make bad guys. And he can give characters sympathetic traits. But when he tries to do them both at the same time, it's like he can't balance the elements right, because he keeps ignoring a point:

Sympathetic character traits do not make a sympathetic character. But Hori seems to assume they do? So he always ends up making a bad guy, who does bad things, and acts in bad ways, but will have random moments where they act radically different for no apparent reason, and are often treated by people around them like they're not acting in horrifying ways all the time.

Because, like, if I spent my life, like... going out murdering people, but when I got home at the end of the day I was... really nice to my pet hamster Fluffles, or something, that's a sympathetic trait. But that doesn't make me a sympathetic person, because... you know, I'm still a serial killer, Fluffles or not.

The problem isn't that he tried to develop Bakugou, or that he wanted to give him traits against his current characterization, because, well, people are complicated. Everyone is complicated, everyone has depths to them.

The problem is he saw 1 (One) sympathetic trait (or, rather, 'sympathetic', because that moment was literally him just throwing a fit over losing, but OK, Hori, you do you), and instead of either, A, using that trait as a launching point to meaningfully change Bakugou's behavior, or B, keep Bakugou as the same character despite this extra information we received, with other characters acting the same way in response to him since they didn't have that information....

He made a radical third option: where Bakugou wouldn't change his behavior, and yet everyone changed how they treated him as if he had changed, and this is the point where things started to go to shit.

Because there were already concerning things with how Bakugou was being treated before this point, true, but it was.... contained. Manageable. His presence in the story made sense, if was over hyped, and how people treated him was somewhat in line with his actual behavior.

After this point? That started to change, and by the time we hit the Sports Festival, Bakugou was a 'new man' who somehow acted almost exactly the same as he did before, which was a theme that would continue to repeat for the rest of the series.

I saw your post about Black Whip and I wanted to get your opinion on something that to me, is so damn obvious, but maybe I am looking at it differently than others.

When Midoriya is explained how Black Whip works, why isn’t the first thing in his head is, “Hey, I should talk and pick at Tokoyami’s brain to get some insight from him on how to keep it under control!”? Because when Banjo explained Black Whip, my mind immediately went, “That’s literally Dark Shadow, just not sentient.”

And it would have been a perfect segway into Tokoyami possibly becoming a more defined character if he’s hanging around Midoriya and they chat and Izuku gets to know Tokoyami better. Because for the most part, Tokoyami is around Hawks a lot, but he acts a bit like a blind fanboy to him and we never explore Tokoyami more, it’s always about Hawks.

Then it could have started a trend. When Midoriya unlocks Float, then introduce Uraraka into the meetings. And both her and Tokoyami can replace Bakugou because he was absolutely useless and obnoxious in Midoriya’s “training”. And for the other quirks, Midoriya will gradually gain his own circle of trust with OFA and the stored quirks through their help of similar quirks or advice from other brainy students like Yaoyorozu, Iida, and Todoroki. Such as how All Might had his own circle that knew the actual truth about OFA when he was it’s wielder.

I don’t know, I just think Horikoshi squandered an opportunity to flesh a few more prominent characters and instead stuck to the boring, tedious BakuDeku scenes.

*tilts head*

That... that is actually a really good point? I never thought of it, probably because he wasn't really even a character at that point, but it makes a lot of sense.

Both of them are dark, shapeshifting energy, and both of them require self control... somehow. Not quite sure how that works for Tokoyami since they never really got into how he 'self controls' a separate entity, but, damn. This would have been a great way to get into it. I mean, hell, in the war arc Izuku uses Black Whip to get past his body's limitations by supporting himself and cushioning impact of OFA (which I'm... eh on), but that's really similar to how Tokoyami uses his Quirk later on in the story with Black Abyss. That being a collaboration idea between them is great character development, and makes these newer power ideas feel more organic than they are when a big fight rolls around and Character X deploys New Power Y seemingly out of nowhere.

And using that as a segway into introducing OFA to the rest of the class, rather than just finding out in a note (I mean, considering how disconnected all of that felt by that point, I'm kind of confused to why Izuku even told them at that point, you know?)? Using Izuku as the glue to bind 1A together (like he was implied to at one point, before they stopped being relevent)? That's honestly inspired, it really is.

So much of the drama thus far in the Final Arc is built around 1A, but they're so out of focus, so undeveloped, and such strangers that it makes it all fall flat...er. But if we get an arc or two of Izuku binding them all together, making them relevent again, then the stakes would feel that much bigger to us (and you know, we could avoid the Dark Deku arc all together, or at least make it feel more... anything, really. And less dumb.)

Hori squandering opportunities to waste them utterly, or drop some fraction of the idea on someone else isn't a new thing, but damn, now I'm really regretting this was never a thing.

Art by ksuwabe

They’ve really grown as a team, huh?🥹

Anger looks like he’s hitting them high notes🤣🤣

Well, doesn’t THIS put a smile on my face. 🥲 Two of probably the most recognizable voices when I was younger.

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