Hakws - Tumblr Posts

With how much emphasis is pointed to Hawks being deep down a real hero, after everything he’s done, I think him and Best Jeanist starting out as antagoists to the save Toya squad until Enji notices they are more likely to kill his son, than actually safe him (making Enji choose his family over being a hero), it would be a nice parallell if it ended with Hawks choosing Endevour over pro heroism and killing or injuring Best Jeanist to save Endevour.

I just think it would be nice if Hawks lied to Dabi about killing Best Jeanist to destory the LoV and Dabi and ended up killing Best Jeanist to save Dabi. And HK does like parallells.

So I don’t know if you will see this @eva-white-11, because I can’t tag you, but you inspired me to do this entire post about Tokoyami, so this is for you and everybody else who loves him. Also this ended up with me noticing some wonderful writing parallels with Tokoyami and Hawks that I had to put in here. This is neither pro nor anti Hawks, this is simply an analysis of what is given.

I talked about quirk discrimination in regards of Spinner plenty and I have called Tokoyami “non-threatening”, to which I got asked how I can think that he’d be seen like that, seeing as ravens and crows are generally regarded as a bad thing and Dark Shadow is very demonic.

While both birds are associated with a lot of positive traits, such as intelligence, adaptability, partnership, foresight and transformation they are also often regarded as something sinister in the western world. Especially in the association with the famous plague masks they tend to be seen as a sign of death.

This is in stark contrast to Japanese culture, where crows are seen as something positive. Aside from the fact that the crows are playing a huge part in keeping cities rodent free, which is notable mentioned in Tokyo the mythological creature of the Yatagarasu (eight-span-crow) has a very positive background.

The three-legged crow is a creature that appears in multiple mythologies through East Asia, the Japanese Yatagarasu is a sign of rebirth, heaven, rejuvenation and divine intervention. Seeing as they clean up after death, especially being seen on battlefields eating the dead, which not only is a sign of the battle ending and something new beginning, it has also the practical effect that the bodies of the dead are being broken down preventing potential health threats to the living.

Tokoyami’s name comes from Tsukuyomi-no-Mikoto a deity with similar heavenly background, to be precise: the moon. The name Tsukuyomi having meanings as “moon bow” or “moonlit night” “looking, watching” even “reading”. Tsukuyomi-no-Mikoto is the brother of Amaterasu, the sun goddess of Shinto, and to cut a long story short: he killed another goddess, his sister got angry so she moved to another part of the sky, splitting night and day. And looking at Tokoyami’s actual spelling we get “everlasting darkness”, which fits rather well with the deity and his quirk.

His first name Fumikage’s spelling also litereally means “step, to walk through shadow”, being a direct recall to both darkness and his quirk Dark Shadow.

So Tokoyami’s name is based on the darkness, the night and the moon, but in natural manner, rather than a threatening one.

If we’re looking at Dark Shadow he’s often associated with the Enerna, a monster made of smoke and darkness that can take human form that was most likely born from the imagination of Toriyama Sekien, but that generally fits Dark Shadow rather well. And Toriyama Sekien works are known to have great influence of the public view on mythological creatures, even though his works were mostly parodic.

And because HK is a huge Marvel & DC fan, I’m going to mention Raven from DC and Venom from Marvel real quick.

Raven is a young heroine from DC Comics, usually part of the Teen Titans, which has to keep control over her powers because they otherwise can get very dangerous if unleashed. Aside from the power similarity she also has a very dark, Goth appearance, can have her body taken over while she sleeps and obviously has a direct bird relation through her name.

Venom an Anti-Hero from Marvel on the other hand is a symbiont mostly partnered with Eddie Brook, although he’s had quite a few other hosts including Peter Parker and notably Flash Thompson. In both cases there is a deep emotional connection between Venom/Eddie and Dark Shadow/Tokoyami and both can be a direct life threat to other, especially if their host is attacked.

All in all I think in bnha Japan Tokoyami has a far more positive view through his appearance as if he lived in the bnha western world, seeing as in our real world crows are seen as something darker in contrast to Japan.

Tokoyami seems more like a “night crow”, something new, something from above, something better, but instead of the sun, the light he is in the dark, the night, the shadows, but that doesn’t make him bad at all.

This would be a direct contrast to Hawks, who stands for light and the Icarus tale of flying to close to the sun.

Hawks is out in daylight with his sunny demeanor, flying like a bird wanting to be free like one. But behind this is a very dark history of abuse from his parents, of the hero commission using him and of the very controlled murder of Twice.

This is a direct contrast to Tokoyami. He is more grounded because of Dark Shadow, because he has to be careful, he needs to keep control over his powers because he could accidentally hurt someone if Dark Shadow went rouge, as seen in the forest. He is the one who saves Hawks; he kept the PLF at bay and fought Re-Destro all because he kept control over Dark Shadow.

Hawks did not lose control over himself when he killed Twice, which was on purpose, he used control something that is essential to his student and savior Tokoyami to take a life, and this is just a wonderful contrast between the two of them.

Hawks took Tokoyami in as a student because “they are both birds”, but Tokoyami is the next generation of Hakws, a better version, all while being in the dark shadows in contrast to flying into the sun.

Oh and apparently he got called a Myna in the light novels, which depending on who it came from might be a huge insult or a great meta joke, because some mynas are considered talking birds, aka they can reproduce sounds, including human speech (so far only seen in captivity).