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Something that surprised me was that during the fight that All Might and AFO have after Izuku and his friends rescue Bakugo, at one part during the fight AFO really looks like a hung man. This makes it that the fight is more twisted and terrifying.
AFO really describes the worst part of Japan society because his whole appareance represents the workaholic system (the suit), how it can push you far enought to destroy you (having the same position as someone who hung themselves) and and how japanese society values others only for the role they play in it (AFO's personality and how he values others only for their quirks and how others can be useful to him and once they're no longer useful, he discards them). That freaked me out even more when I saw that.
It's interesting to think that, in some way, Touya is what Zuko would have been if he hadn't had Ursa and Iroh's support and never left the Fire Nation and that Azula is what Shouto would have been if he hadn't had his mother's support and if he hadn't met to Izuku.
If Zuko had stayed in the Fire Nation, and by extension not had the experiences of other people, and had Ursa to love him and Iroh to advise and support him, he would have sought Ozai's recognition to extreme degrees until he injured and nearly killed himself and at the same time he would have wanted to take revenge on his father in the worst possible way for the abuse towards him and his family as Touya did.
If Shouto hadn't met Izuku and hadn't had his mother's support, Shouto would have only seen himself as a tool of is father which would cause him to focus on his personal goal to surpass Endeavor to an obsessive degree that would make Shouto become extremely perfectionist and would have repressed and controlled his emotions an extreme degree to achieve his goal that would make having relationships with others irrelevant and in case he wanted to have relationships with others he wouldn't be able to socialize or express himself with them in a healthy way just like what happened to Azula with her personal goal (be recognized by her father Ozai and unconsciously, by her mother Ursa).
Zuko and Dabi were the failures who wanted their fathers' love and recognition while Azula and Shouto possessed great power and talent that their fathers wanted to make them the perfect tools for them to achieve their ambitions.
Himiko and Eda: Search for Love, Fear of Rejection
Although they may seem different, Eda and Himiko are very similar and here I will explain why:
They both have the flaw of wanting to live a selfish life that benefits them but this stems from the fact that they have tried to fit into a society but have failed because that society rejects them for not fitting into its ridiculously high and idealized standards.
On the one hand Himiko's parents saw their daughter as a monster only because she used her quirk for the first time when she was 4 years old and despite the fact that they scolded her, they never corrected her because if they had really corrected her they would have explained to Toga why she was sucking blood from a dead bird was wrong but instead she was immediately tagged a freak and told to behave normally, repressing her quirk and her emotions.
Remember that children don't know what is good and what is bad unless someone teaches them and her parents never taught Toga that but rather gave up on her calling her a freak. Then when they took her to her quirk advisor they did the same as her parents: they didn't address the problem properly (teaching Himiko about empathy and how to use her quirk properly) and told her that she be repressed and treat her as a monster.
On the other Eda was cursed by Lilith with the Owl Beast and ended up hurting her father by accident. This caused her mother Gwendolyn to despair of getting a definitive cure for Eda but this made Eda believe that there was something wrong with her and see herself as a freak for hurting her father and for not being like the other witches (they are normal because they don't have a curse like her)
and she ran away from home because she felt rejected.
It's true that Gwendolyn loved her daughter while Toga's parents gave up on their daughter but this doesn't take away from the fact that their actions of wanting her daughters to be normal caused both Toga and Eda to see themselves as monsters and made them both believe that others would see them that way because of their conditions (Toga's quirk and Owl Beast curse).
What makes them different is that Himiko kept repressing herself to fit and be accepted in but she reached her breaking point that led her to attack a boy from her school and hurt others because she has internalized what everyone thought about her (that she's a monster that likes suck people's blood and kill them) while Eda was afraid that something similar would happen to her, so she decides not to tell Raine about her curse which leads to their breakup as a result.
The reason Eda didn't have a breaking point like Toga was the fact that she had people who loved her even though her relationships with them became complicated and problematic (Lilith and Raine) and now she has people who love her despite her condition and they taught her to have empathy for others (Luz and King) while Himiko had no one who loved her or anyone who she can tell about how she felt or about her quirk and although she had friends,
both them and their parents didn't love her but they loved the mask that Toga put on
until she couldn't take it anymore
and the few people who really love her as she is,
she loses them in the worst possible way.
This is so bad that Himiko pretends to be the people she admires and Eda does not relate to anyone because they think that if they reveal things about them, the others will reject them.
And this fear of rejection is worsened by the society in which they're because these societies stigmatize them for their physical conditions since these conditions don't allow them to fit in it, in addition to not seeing them as people but denying their humanity and seeing them and they want to use them as if they were a symbol. Hero Society will never approve of someone like Himiko because her quirk isn't flashy, or pretty, or used for direct combat but is like that of a villain and Curious wanted to use Toga as a symbol for for the cause of her organization but denying her autonomy and humanity while Belos uses Eda's curse as a supposed Titan's punishment for those who don't fit in the Coven System, denying Eda's humanity and branding her a monster. This leads them to be constantly running away and hiding because they know that if they're caught they will be killed because they don't see them as people but as monsters that must be eliminated.
Both also have a strong desire to be loved because while Himiko disguises herself as others just to be like them and feel what they feel and that way no one rejects her, Eda simply gave up that desire in the first place.
Eda begins to improve as a person thanks to the positive support of Luz and King and for this she manages to reconcile with her family and with Raine and I think Toga could improve as Eda if the heroes see Himiko's humanity and give her that positive support so that she can change for the better and this is possible because we saw a hint of this with her relationship with Twice and the League as they saw her humanity.
Something that surprised me was that during the fight that All Might and AFO have after Izuku and his friends rescue Bakugo, at one part during the fight AFO really looks like a hung man. This makes it that the fight is more twisted and terrifying.
AFO really describes the worst part of Japan society because his whole appareance represents the workaholic system (the suit), how it can push you far enought to destroy you (having the same position as someone who hung themselves) and and how japanese society values others only for the role they play in it (AFO's personality and how he values others only for their quirks and how others can be useful to him and once they're no longer useful, he discards them). That freaked me out even more when I saw that.
It's interesting to think that, in some way, Touya is what Zuko would have been if he hadn't had Ursa and Iroh's support and never left the Fire Nation and that Azula is what Shouto would have been if he hadn't had his mother's support and if he hadn't met to Izuku.
If Zuko had stayed in the Fire Nation, and by extension not had the experiences of other people, and had Ursa to love him and Iroh to advise and support him, he would have sought Ozai's recognition to extreme degrees until he injured and nearly killed himself and at the same time he would have wanted to take revenge on his father in the worst possible way for the abuse towards him and his family as Touya did.
If Shouto hadn't met Izuku and hadn't had his mother's support, Shouto would have only seen himself as a tool of is father which would cause him to focus on his personal goal to surpass Endeavor to an obsessive degree that would make Shouto become extremely perfectionist and would have repressed and controlled his emotions an extreme degree to achieve his goal that would make having relationships with others irrelevant and in case he wanted to have relationships with others he wouldn't be able to socialize or express himself with them in a healthy way just like what happened to Azula with her personal goal (be recognized by her father Ozai and unconsciously, by her mother Ursa).
Zuko and Dabi were the failures who wanted their fathers' love and recognition while Azula and Shouto possessed great power and talent that their fathers wanted to make them the perfect tools for them to achieve their ambitions.
Himiko and Eda: Search for Love, Fear of Rejection
Although they may seem different, Eda and Himiko are very similar and here I will explain why:
They both have the flaw of wanting to live a selfish life that benefits them but this stems from the fact that they have tried to fit into a society but have failed because that society rejects them for not fitting into its ridiculously high and idealized standards.
On the one hand Himiko's parents saw their daughter as a monster only because she used her quirk for the first time when she was 4 years old and despite the fact that they scolded her, they never corrected her because if they had really corrected her they would have explained to Toga why she was sucking blood from a dead bird was wrong but instead she was immediately tagged a freak and told to behave normally, repressing her quirk and her emotions.
Remember that children don't know what is good and what is bad unless someone teaches them and her parents never taught Toga that but rather gave up on her calling her a freak. Then when they took her to her quirk advisor they did the same as her parents: they didn't address the problem properly (teaching Himiko about empathy and how to use her quirk properly) and told her that she be repressed and treat her as a monster.
On the other Eda was cursed by Lilith with the Owl Beast and ended up hurting her father by accident. This caused her mother Gwendolyn to despair of getting a definitive cure for Eda but this made Eda believe that there was something wrong with her and see herself as a freak for hurting her father and for not being like the other witches (they are normal because they don't have a curse like her)
and she ran away from home because she felt rejected.
It's true that Gwendolyn loved her daughter while Toga's parents gave up on their daughter but this doesn't take away from the fact that their actions of wanting her daughters to be normal caused both Toga and Eda to see themselves as monsters and made them both believe that others would see them that way because of their conditions (Toga's quirk and Owl Beast curse).
What makes them different is that Himiko kept repressing herself to fit and be accepted in but she reached her breaking point that led her to attack a boy from her school and hurt others because she has internalized what everyone thought about her (that she's a monster that likes suck people's blood and kill them) while Eda was afraid that something similar would happen to her, so she decides not to tell Raine about her curse which leads to their breakup as a result.
The reason Eda didn't have a breaking point like Toga was the fact that she had people who loved her even though her relationships with them became complicated and problematic (Lilith and Raine) and now she has people who love her despite her condition and they taught her to have empathy for others (Luz and King) while Himiko had no one who loved her or anyone who she can tell about how she felt or about her quirk and although she had friends,
both them and their parents didn't love her but they loved the mask that Toga put on
until she couldn't take it anymore
and the few people who really love her as she is,
she loses them in the worst possible way.
This is so bad that Himiko pretends to be the people she admires and Eda does not relate to anyone because they think that if they reveal things about them, the others will reject them.
And this fear of rejection is worsened by the society in which they're because these societies stigmatize them for their physical conditions since these conditions don't allow them to fit in it, in addition to not seeing them as people but denying their humanity and seeing them and they want to use them as if they were a symbol. Hero Society will never approve of someone like Himiko because her quirk isn't flashy, or pretty, or used for direct combat but is like that of a villain and Curious wanted to use Toga as a symbol for for the cause of her organization but denying her autonomy and humanity while Belos uses Eda's curse as a supposed Titan's punishment for those who don't fit in the Coven System, denying Eda's humanity and branding her a monster. This leads them to be constantly running away and hiding because they know that if they're caught they will be killed because they don't see them as people but as monsters that must be eliminated.
Both also have a strong desire to be loved because while Himiko disguises herself as others just to be like them and feel what they feel and that way no one rejects her, Eda simply gave up that desire in the first place.
Eda begins to improve as a person thanks to the positive support of Luz and King and for this she manages to reconcile with her family and with Raine and I think Toga could improve as Eda if the heroes see Himiko's humanity and give her that positive support so that she can change for the better and this is possible because we saw a hint of this with her relationship with Twice and the League as they saw her humanity.
Do you remember the panel in which Himiko bites her wrist while she sleeps?
It turns out that this panel occurs right after, here Himiko's parents saw how their daughter woke up after biting her wrist in her sleep but instead of showing concern for their daughter's well-being, they took her to a doctor to treat her bite wound or try to heal it themselves, or even ask "are you okay?", "what happened to you?" or "how and/or why did you do that to yourself?", they simply say that she's rotten to the core, leaving Himiko's physical or emotional well-being aside. And the fact that Himiko biting her wrist in her sleep is an analogy to self-harm makes this situation and the behavior of Himiko's parents and the upbringing they gave her that much worse.
This shows once again that Himiko's parents never cared for her daughter to the point that they saw her as a monster as an excuse for their psychological abuse and neglect of her emotional and physical well-being and that all they care about are appearances.
I've been thinking about something and it's that both the Hero Society and All for One, the main villain and antagonist of My Hero Academia, see the world in the same way as the villains of Medaka Box.
In Medaka Box, its antagonists and even the main protagonist herself, Medaka, feel that they have to live only as roles in a story and they are defeated by Zenkichi, a normal boy, for the simple fact that he treats them as people and not by their roles or archetypes.
What I'm getting at with this is that Hero Society judges its citizens according to the quirk they are born with (they call those with a powerful or flashy quirk heroes, those with a nasty or dangerous quirk they call villains, and those who do not have quirks simply look down on them) and treat them under character archetypes (heroes are required to be perfect and save all the people on the planet at the expense of their physical and emotional health, those who have unpleasant quirks are treated as villains who must be stopped at all costs without being offered the opportunity to rehabilitate, being imprisoned without a trial at best and killed at worst and the quirkless simply treat them as extras who have no importance). It is thanks to this way of thinking that Hero Society has that Bakugo, Endeavor, Hawks and others acquire a quite toxic mentality and got away with their abuses and it is even thanks to the society that All Might believed he had to solve the problems. everyone's problems alone and the citizens became dependent on the heroes causing bystander syndrome and people like Tomura and the League were discriminated against for their gifts and no one did anything to help them or show them that there is another way to solve things without reaching to violence and quirkless people they treat them as useless all the time and mistreat them whenever they can.
On the other hand, AFO lives with the role of the main villain of a story (he wants to be the Ultimate Lord Demon) and wants others to live in that narrative. He sees the world from a story point of view and sees others by archetypes (he sees Tomura and the League in general as villains because of their powers, he sees any wielder of One for All as the main protagonist who is destined to face him, see anyone who isn't a villain or a One for All wielder as an extra).
The reason everyone in the League became violent is because everyone has dehumanized them by seeing them as villain archetypes and not broken people who urgently need help. Heroes are also dehumanized because they are seen as perfect beings who have to be powerful and do all the work, forgetting that they are humans who make mistakes, who need help and who cannot do everything alone. Quirkless are still people who can contribute in other ways and deserve to be treated with kindness and respect like anyone else.
For Hero Society to improve, everyone has to stop seeing people as character archetypes because of their quirks and see them as people and give them real support.
Do you remember the panel in which Himiko bites her wrist while she sleeps?
It turns out that this panel occurs right after, here Himiko's parents saw how their daughter woke up after biting her wrist in her sleep but instead of showing concern for their daughter's well-being, they took her to a doctor to treat her bite wound or try to heal it themselves, or even ask "are you okay?", "what happened to you?" or "how and/or why did you do that to yourself?", they simply say that she's rotten to the core, leaving Himiko's physical or emotional well-being aside. And the fact that Himiko biting her wrist in her sleep is an analogy to self-harm makes this situation and the behavior of Himiko's parents and the upbringing they gave her that much worse.
This shows once again that Himiko's parents never cared for her daughter to the point that they saw her as a monster as an excuse for their psychological abuse and neglect of her emotional and physical well-being and that all they care about are appearances.
I've been thinking about something and it's that both the Hero Society and All for One, the main villain and antagonist of My Hero Academia, see the world in the same way as the villains of Medaka Box.
In Medaka Box, its antagonists and even the main protagonist herself, Medaka, feel that they have to live only as roles in a story and they are defeated by Zenkichi, a normal boy, for the simple fact that he treats them as people and not by their roles or archetypes.
What I'm getting at with this is that Hero Society judges its citizens according to the quirk they are born with (they call those with a powerful or flashy quirk heroes, those with a nasty or dangerous quirk they call villains, and those who do not have quirks simply look down on them) and treat them under character archetypes (heroes are required to be perfect and save all the people on the planet at the expense of their physical and emotional health, those who have unpleasant quirks are treated as villains who must be stopped at all costs without being offered the opportunity to rehabilitate, being imprisoned without a trial at best and killed at worst and the quirkless simply treat them as extras who have no importance). It is thanks to this way of thinking that Hero Society has that Bakugo, Endeavor, Hawks and others acquire a quite toxic mentality and got away with their abuses and it is even thanks to the society that All Might believed he had to solve the problems. everyone's problems alone and the citizens became dependent on the heroes causing bystander syndrome and people like Tomura and the League were discriminated against for their gifts and no one did anything to help them or show them that there is another way to solve things without reaching to violence and quirkless people they treat them as useless all the time and mistreat them whenever they can.
On the other hand, AFO lives with the role of the main villain of a story (he wants to be the Ultimate Lord Demon) and wants others to live in that narrative. He sees the world from a story point of view and sees others by archetypes (he sees Tomura and the League in general as villains because of their powers, he sees any wielder of One for All as the main protagonist who is destined to face him, see anyone who isn't a villain or a One for All wielder as an extra).
The reason everyone in the League became violent is because everyone has dehumanized them by seeing them as villain archetypes and not broken people who urgently need help. Heroes are also dehumanized because they are seen as perfect beings who have to be powerful and do all the work, forgetting that they are humans who make mistakes, who need help and who cannot do everything alone. Quirkless are still people who can contribute in other ways and deserve to be treated with kindness and respect like anyone else.
For Hero Society to improve, everyone has to stop seeing people as character archetypes because of their quirks and see them as people and give them real support.
via Gridllr.com — Likes well done!
I agree with the parallels between tenko and eri but I remain resolute that Tenko is long gone and can't be saved at this point. If he was taken in by someone whom did properly teach him right from wrong as a child yes but Shigaraki is an adult that was raised to seek nothing but destruction and has committed many many murders at this point. People seem to ignore the fact that person might not want to be saved. 1/2
Eri is a child with very little agency of her own, but Shigaraki is an adult who can make conscious decisions of his own. I think either deku will save shigaraki by putting him out of his misery or shigaraki will show deku that he cant save everyone 2/2
Thank you for sending me this ask anon! Once again you’re free to have your own opinions, I just hope you’ll join me for a discusssion of ideas.
Let’s choose to focus on this idea you have that Shigaraki is “Someone who is long gone”, because I believe the story establishes the opposite. I agree in fiction there are villains that need to be defeated rather than saved. The reason I am arguing that Shigaraki can be saved is not because I peresonally want him to be, or I believe he’s owed it, but because those ideas are present in the text itself.
Shigaraki is a Villain who Fights other Villains
The reason Shigaraki is constantly facing off against other villains, is to make the comparison between them. To show that there are villains who unlike Shigaraki, are set in their ways and not capable of learning from their actions. These villains are past the point of no return in a way that Shigaraki isn’t because his arc is structured differently. Shigaraki is a character that experiences positive growths, whereas these villains are characters that experience negative growth and spiral out of control.
The reason Shigaraki is constantly compared to other villains is to show that he is not the same as them, because he can do better.
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