431 is irrelevant and it’s dumb as hell to rewrite your reading of the series to account for its bullshit.
It exists because Horikoshi is a failure and idek why everyone in eng fandom wants to blame Izuku for that.
fyi this post is made up of two parts—the first is for roasting Mr. Horikoshit, and the second is a play by play of how everybody has always been wrong about who Izuku even is, because damn, you know, in hindsight my blog was basically dedicated to debunking eng fandom’s stupid ideas about Izuku. consider this second bit an annotated bibliography.
First, the main thing I wanna say is that I ain’t watching the OVA, because it is a meaningless adaption of some shit Horikoshi churned out simply because he is incapable of matching the production level of his peers.
For the last 3 years of MHA’s serialization, Horikoshi managed on average a scant 15 pages per week, which is 20% less than all of his peers. Whether they were drawn by longtime veterans or debuting newbies who got axed after a year or two, basically every other series consistently released 19 pages of material or more on a weekly basis. Only one series I looked into had fallen to similarly low page counts week-to-week. Horikoshi has admitted that his editor had to negotiate with WSJ to allow him to produce such a low page count every week, because whenever he attempted more, he failed to complete the chapter and made life hard for everyone downstream of him in publishing. He openly stated that his editor asking him to add just 2 pages to one of Toga’s final chapters was a dire fucking request that, if Horikoshi failed to deliver yet again, could have serious consequences for the editor professionally.
And yet the whole eng fandom threw regular parasocial pity parties for Horikoshi, going wehhh it’s such a hard and stressful life. Yeah, and he chose it. He’s a goddamn adult. He could have pitched to a monthly shounen magazine, but no, he chose to publish with WSJ because like every other male mangaka filled with hubris from a young age, he wants to be bigger than One Piece. I ain’t gonna pity a guy who successfully got work with the publisher of his dreams and then proceeded to trip over his own dick week after week for years. To be honest, 431 dropped the scales from my eyes and I realized my own admiration of this dude was deeply flawed and naive.
The final arcs of MHA were not drawn to their full potential nor do they function to meet the needs of the story, they were materially constrained by Horikoshi’s inability to produce the minimum amount of work expected of an artist in his position.
If the final 8 chapters of MHA had just 4 more pages each—comparable to every other regular release in WSJ—431 would not even exist. He would not have had a 38 page deficit in the final tankōbon he needed to fill. Hell, if the last 20 chapters had just 2 pages more each, this wouldn’t have happened. Izuku's final battle chapters might not have felt like a weird fever dream with cheap cliffhangers. The epilogue chapters would have better pacing and, who knows! Maybe they would have lightly touched on some important moments we all expected to happen! You know, like they did in the anime, because Horikoshi knew he fucked up and had to add shit! Just some bare minimum expansion on literally any emotional conclusion!
Anyway, onto Izuku.
I'm writing this bit because, for a long time, I tried to write Izuku character meta that expressed my perspective on him, and over and over again I found myself having to address what felt like willfully mean interpretations of him. It was exhausting and left me unsatisfied.
After being immersed in jp fandom for several years and seeing fanworks by people who adore Izuku, I realized that much of English speaking fandom just straight up hates him. Even if they don't, they seem to like him for traits that don't materially exist in canon and themes they have misread into the series through blatant misinformation posts spread all over twitter by people who don't speak Japanese and don't understand Japanese culture pretending to be experts.
It took me a long time to realize just how badly misunderstood Izuku is, and that a huge swath of the questions sent to me in my askbox over the years were strangers trying to make me validate their bizarre misreading of his character. I spent my blog being as even-handed and intellectually generous with these misreadings as possible, and in some ways I regret that, because the end result seems to have primarily been people I completely disagree with using my posts as "proof" their extremely wrong opinions are correct, actually. So I'm just gonna be super explicit here.
1. Izuku tried to resolve the conflict with Katsuki many times without success; ergo, the narrative onus is not on him to mend their bond, it is on Katsuki. Blaming Izuku for not “appreciating” Katsuki’s growth “enough,” whatever that means, is unhinged and not rooted in respect for either character’s emotional journey.
Source: Bullying in Japan and how Izuku sees Katsuki’s behavior
2. Izuku cares deeply about Katsuki and is not meaningfully dismissive or inconsiderate towards him. These are wildly uncharitable misinterpretations of one of Izuku’s core traits—being kind-hearted but oblivious to how other people feel about him personally. This trait is not framed as malicious or harmful, but rather as a charming albeit exasperating quirk of the person shitty little nerd Izuku is. If you hate that, then you just don’t like Izuku.
Source: “Deku is fine, Kacchan”: Izuku is sincere and Katsuki is hilarious, 424: Katsuki’s confession and Izuku’s tenderness, that bkdk car conversation is really fucking gay
3. Izuku does not repress his feelings for Katsuki; he resolved his own misgivings about emulating Katsuki during DvK2. From then on, he sincerely receives each of Katsuki’s gestures of reconciliation out of respect for the fact that Katsuki is the one who pushed him away to begin with. Katsuki’s redemption is meaningful BECAUSE he is the active agent of it, making Izuku the passive recipient of Katsuki’s active pursuit. If you don’t like that and you want Izuku to be the one pursuing Katsuki somehow, you just don’t like their canon relationship or Katsuki’s character arc.
Source: Does Izuku Think His Feelings For Katsuki Are Gross? (or, DvK2’s Endless Emporium of Nuance)
4. Izuku isn’t some weird possessive psycho about Katsuki, and him learning self-control over his righteous anger is framed as positive character development. If you think self-control is bad, you misunderstood everything about “control your heart.”
Source: Did Izuku say, “Give him back TO ME”?, “Control your heart”: A Misunderstood Narrative
5. Most of what eng fandom seems to clamor for regarding Katsuki and Izuku’s relationship is rooted in fundamental misunderstandings about what the characters want and need from each other. There is plenty to be said about the glaring lack of emotional closure afforded to the end of the series and, specifically, Katsuki and Izuku’s relationship, but this ain’t it.
Source: Stories are driven by what the characters need (“why didn’t Izuku and Katsuki talk about [blank]?”)
6. Implied romance that lacks explicit confirmation is not new, nor is it an inferior approach to storytelling. A manga from conservative-ass WSJ is not going to give you your canon queer representation, but that doesn’t diminish the beauty of Katsuki and Izuku’s bond or the story. You don’t need Horikoshi’s approval to think gay thoughts about them.
Source: Implied romance in shounen manga, “Queer-coding” is only useful for a narrow range of media and it’d be great if we could stop using it for literally everything
431 exists to justify Horikoshi’s half-assed attempts to center ideas he introduced vaguely, late in the series, and did not develop at all. It flies in the face of everything that came before, and its primary goal is to make Ochako seem super duper important and heroic and deep while simultaneously gutting any trace of character development for her.
No one wants to admit it, but 429's whole "You're my hero" shit takes a scenario that could have been used to develop Izuku and bring real meaning to the question of how he can continue being a hero without OFA, and instead it stops the whole plot to glorify Ochako for *checks notes* saving Izuku from tripping and stuff.
We could have had a Deku vs. Kacchan 3-type scene where Katsuki challenges Izuku to see how his own heroic heart has always existed regardless of whether he had OFA or not, which would have been effective because one, Katsuki is always right, and two, Katsuki was the very first person to recognize Izuku for the hero he is back when they were kids. We could have had real, concrete exploration of what Izuku learned about being a hero and saving people, instead of, you know, what we got, which was a single solitary panel of Izuku staring blankly at Aizawa and his student with zero introspection available to the audience.
On her side of things, Ochako could have demonstrated real character growth by learning a single fucking thing from Toga and not repressing her feelings. Instead of regressing into a blubbering lying mess, she could have affirmed her own goals to live honestly in honor of Toga's memory and spend the rest of her life meaningfully reaching out to outcasts like her.
BUT GOD FORBID WE DEVELOP ANYTHING TO AN EMOTIONALLY SATISFYING CONCLUSION!!! NO, WE MUST JUSTIFY THE BAD WRITINGGGGGG.
Ochako and Izuku are both objectified for the sake of Horikoshi stroking his own ego. Izuku is turned into an "untouchable symbol of heroism" who isn't allowed to meaningfully reciprocate the feelings of anyone around him except Ochako, and that's the most "romance" Horikoshi could wring out of that shit. If you don't blame Ochako for how bad her writing is, you can't blame Izuku for his.
That's all I've got to say about it.
I want everyone to know that you don't have to think about 431 or the OVA, you don't have to care, and you can in fact ignore the drama and bellyaching about it. Stay off twitter, ignore people who've never recovered from it and want to let it make them miserable, do your own thing.
431 is so irrelevant, me having even said this much is far more than it deserves. The OVA got made to make money, which is exactly why they are animating the fanbook extra separately, too. The studio executives are just trying to milk the series for all it is worth because they made an investment. Corporations chasing advertising and merch money into infinity doesn't validate the material in any special way.
Over the last few years, I've immersed myself in doujinshi made by people who actually give a shit about Izuku and Katsuki and who WANT to explore their flaws, miscommunications, and yearnings for each other. These stories actually grapple with what Izuku losing his childhood dream and facing Tomura's death could mean for him in those intervening years. And man, that has been so refreshing and truly reinvigorated my love for these two. My advice to everyone is to find your bliss and stop lingering on the big shounen ending failure.
