DelawareDetroit

Because Act One depicts the fantasy of heroism, the villains are depicted as one-dimensional evildoers until after the Kamino Arc (excluding villains who don’t consider themselves villains like Stain). Act Two concerns the reality of heroism, so the main villains get to make their case on their criticisms of hero society during the PLF War Arc.

Shigaraki argues that hero society has failed in its promises to save everyone and swept all of its failures under the rug, creating a complacent civilian population and leaving many to rot. Touya asserts, albeit disingenuously, that those worshipped as heroes are unworthy of that title due to their misdeeds. They should be removed from their pedestal because they failed to meet expectations. (It’s a disingenuous argument from him because Touya does not believe in true heroes in general.)

Toga’s criticism cuts at the heart of their society’s social contract. The basic social contract in BNHA’s society is that everyone should suppress their quirks unless they have been recognized as heroes. Those who become heroes can use their quirks in exchange for taking responsibility for all saving tasks in their society. Civilians give up power and self-expression in exchange for the delegation of any responsibility for each other. Toga views this suppression of quirks as a suppression of self because her quirk is so intertwined with the expression of emotion. To entirely suppress her quirk was to deny her own emotions, so of course it eventually led to an outburst. Toga criticizes Ochako for shutting away her feelings as a hopeless denial of self that will eventually blow up in her face.

It depends on if he still “killed” All for One in this alternate universe. If All for One was still out there, All Might probably would have clung to his Symbol of Peace persona and said something encouraging but empty. He wouldn’t have shown the vulnerability or attempt sympathy in the way All Might does during the canon rooftop scene. The rejection wouldn’t have been so harsh, but All Might likely would have said something inspirational without sincerely addressing Izuku’s concerns.

If All for One was dead but All Might avoided the injury, it’s hard to predict what All Might would have done. All Might’s goals were establishing peace as a symbol through a show of strength and ending All for One. In canon after he believed All for One was dead, All Might had to scramble for the next five years to avoid losing the symbol status he built. All Might was never in his symbol position without the specter of All for One or his career ending injury.

He might have voluntarily started to pull back as a symbol and look for potential successors if he didn’t feel so constrained in his choices by the injury. If he tried and attempts to transfer One for All went poorly because he went for giving it to someone already in a hero course, he might have been receptive to trying with a quirkless person instead.

Or All Might might have insisted on continuing in his role as symbol for an extra decade or so. Perhaps he gives Izuku empty hopeful words without sincerity or commiseration. Or maybe, in a world where everything in his pro hero career went his way, All Might may have genuinely encouraged Izuku considering the miracle that happened to him despite his quirklessness.

As much as Ochako and Izuku misunderstood Toga, in retrospect it’s clear how little Toga knew about Izuku and Ochako despite her infatuation with them. Because with both she approaches them with the aspects of herself that they could relate to the least.

Here, Toga seeks understanding by starting with how her quirk affects her relationships with others, how she is negatively affected by the full suppression of her quirk, and that she used Ochako’s quirk to survive when someone tried to kill her after making a mockery of her life.

Ochako was not predisposed to feel any sympathy for Toga based on this information. Ochako had a praiseworthy heroic quirk that didn’t affect her relationships with others. She had such a safe upbringing that heroism felt like an entertaining spectacle rather than real conflict until UA. The idea that someone would need to use deadly force to survive in a society full of heroes to protect others was anathema to Ochako, so she assumes Toga was inherently in the wrong.

On the other hand, this approach would have been more effective with Izuku. Izuku has personal experience with being ostracized due to quirk status. He is also a quirk nerd who could have figured out that Toga was trying to say that the full suppression of her quirk led to violent outbursts. He could have reasoned that she was unable to integrate with society without the loosening of quirk use restrictions for non-heroes because of the negative consequences of full suppression.

Izuku also may have been more sympathetic to Toga’s self-defense argument concerning her fight with Curious. I’ve mentioned it before that Izuku was more willing to use deadly force/use his quirk before having a license generally because of his unconscious lack of faith in the hero system. Those who fit the mold would not think to use lethal force because obviously a hero would always come to save the day. Izuku, however, was a quirkless person whose life was seen by many as not having any value. Unlike Ochako, Izuku could reasonably believe a non-hero could be put in a situation where their life was at risk without a hero saving them.

But Toga led with her romantic feelings for Izuku when she confronted him in Act Three. Izuku did not have the self-worth to believe someone would love him or seriously consider pursuing anyone else, so this approach was alien and off putting to him. Meanwhile, to Ochako, having a less than ideal crush on someone she admires and feeling social pressure to suppress it is normal. Starting with the emotional repression based on admiration would have been a better way to bridge the gap of understanding between Toga and Ochako.

Thank you, I hadn’t thought about it until you sent this ask. Honestly, I didn’t expect to get this far.

This reread works because BNHA sits at a sweet spot between compelling ideas and characters with some mediocre writing. So there’s enough interesting ideas to write about but also plenty to critique. It also has a decent sized fandom without much comprehensive meta (not in the moment reactions/review) in comparison to its size.

Vigilantes is better written but less compelling, so I doubt I’d be able to get through a reread. Some fandoms already have plenty of well thought out meta where I don’t think I’d have enough fresh ideas to do something like another reread. I also like the back and forth that comes with an active fandom. I’ve certainly learned things and rethought some of my views on BNHA in response to the discussions started here.

Right now, Seraph of the End feels like a good fit for a future reread. I have a lot of thoughts about it. The manga plays with many interesting concepts but makes some deranged writing decisions with increasing frequency. A large chunk of the fandom misses most of what the manga is trying to say because of ship wars. It actually has some interesting, well written women who are crucial to the plot and themes. I could change my mind if I hate the ending enough though.

It’s important to note that both Toga and Ochako hardened on their self-identification with their roles as villain and hero in response to trauma/loss. Toga’s journey is more straightforward because she began to see herself as a villain in response to the death of her close friend Twice. In contrast, Ochako did not personally know Sir Nighteye. However, in their society, heroes are meant to be responsible for the wellbeing of everyone else. Toga’s loss had to be more personal because villains are not expected to be responsible for the lives of others. Regardless, both doubled down on their roles as their fantasies/individual perceptions crashed into the reality of their situation. Heroism was not a play for making the public happy anymore. To this arc’s Ochako, focus on anything other than saving as many civilians as she could was out of the question after experiencing the deadly consequences of failure. And for Toga, she learned that regardless of her resistance to the villain label, she was perceived by others as villainous, and therefore she was not a person deemed worthy of saving by hero society.

Toga and Spinner’s interactions, and the underlying conflict between them, are such an underrated dynamic. In essence, Spinner and Toga (and Dabi) in Act Two were jockeying for the true meaning of Stain’s legacy.

Toga liked Stain’s goal of a better future, his dedication to his cause to the point he would get beaten to a pulp, and that he acted outside of pre-set roles of hero and villain. Touya liked the visceral condemnation of current heroes, especially Endeavor. Spinner’s admiration of Stain was more aesthetic than truly ideological. Spinner felt empty as a person and rejected by society, so he emulated someone who he saw as becoming someone by opposing that society. Toga and Dabi incorporated parts of Stain into their pre-existing ideological frameworks, while Spinner attempted to graft Stain’s ideology onto what he believed was an empty vessel.

In this context, it is significant that Spinner was the one to reach out to Toga in the aftermath of Twice’s death. He previously shut his eyes and placed a mask barrier between himself and Toga when faced with Toga’s divergent interpretation of Stain. This time, Spinner didn’t turn away from Toga’s feelings. He acknowledged her grief and her modus operandi of doing as she pleased without criticism this time. However, he assigned the villain label to Toga’s way of doing things when Toga was resistant to the villain label. Spinner was trying, but they continued to fundamentally misunderstand each other.

Izuku Midoriya: 604 posts

Katsuki Bakugou: 267 posts

All Might: 227 posts

Tomura Shigaraki: 223 posts (+2)

Shouto Todoroki: 216 posts (-1)

All for One: 197 posts (-1)

Endeavor: 148 posts

Himiko Toga: 107 posts (+2)

Ochako Uraraka: 103 posts

Hawks: 99 posts (+2)

Touya Todoroki: 91 posts (+2)

Tenya Iida: 89 posts (-4)

Eraserhead: 61 posts (+2)

Overhaul (-2) and Eijirou Kirishima: 59 posts

Yuuga Aoyama: 58 posts (-4)

Mirio Togata and Nana Shimura (+6): 49 posts

Yoichi Shigaraki: 48 posts (+2)

Eri: 47 posts

Sir Nighteye: 42 posts (-2)

Twice: 41 posts (+7)

Rei Todoroki: 40 posts (+3)

Momo Yaoyorozu: 39 posts (-2)

Spinner: 35 posts (+7)

Hero Killer Stain: 34 posts (-3)

Gentle Criminal (-2) and Neito Monoma: 28 posts

Kotaro Shimura: 26 posts (new)

Natsuo Todoroki: 25 posts (+6)

Inko Midoriya (-2) and Hitoshi Shinsou: 23 posts

Tamaki Amajiki (-4) and Kurogiri/Oboro Shirakumo (new): 21 posts

Fumikage Tokoyami (-2) and ReDestro (new): 20 posts

Fuyumi Todoroki: 19 posts (+4)

Lady Nagant: 18 posts (+2) (despite no introduction)

Mina Ashido (-1) and Garaki Kyudai (new): 17 posts

Gran Torino: 16 posts (-3)

Yaorashi Inasa (-6), Minoru Mineta (-3), Kendo Itsuka (-2), and Kudou (-1) (despite no introduction): 15 posts

Curious: 13 posts (new)

Nedzu (-5), Kota Izumi (-3), Tetsutetsu Tetsutetsu (-3), Fatgum (-1), and Present Mic: 12 posts

Tsuyu Asui (-5), Naomasa Tsukauchi (-4), Kyouka Jirou (-4), Magne (-3), Tensei Iida (-2), and Nao Shimura (new): 11 posts

Denki Kaminari (-2) and Mr Compress (returnee): 10 posts

Mei Hatsume (-4), La Brava (-4), and Hana Shimura (new): 9 posts

There's an obvious hypocrisy in Toga opining on the cruelty of the heroes while watching a giant kill people indiscriminately as he barrels through several cities. Toga wanted to be someone who could be saved despite not valuing the lives of those she didn't personally like.

To some extent, it goes back to the roles set by hero society. Heroes are those who save people. Toga might have been reluctant to identify with the villain label, but as a non-hero, it was not her responsibility to help other people per society's rules. Heroes are those who save people, but heroes killed Twice. Therefore, her conclusion was that heroes don't see villains as people (who deserve saving). Self-defense might have been a good line, but it doesn't apply to this situation. Toga's question here about where heroes draw the line carries more weight given that Hawks killed Twice by stabbing him in the back while he was running away.

Toga's goal was a world where it was easier for her to live. To that end, she avoided the villain label. However, one of the flaws in Toga's logic was that she didn't take it one step further to conclude that all of these roles should be discarded, and people should have mutual responsibilities towards one another. Toga's core trauma was that she was discarded for failing to play a role, but she crashed out in Act Two in part because other people (heroes) did not play their roles properly by killing and failing to recognize her as someone who wanted to be saved. Toga's true hypocrisy was that she wanted to deconstruct villainy without deconstructing the role of heroes as those solely responsible for the safety of others. (This oversight makes sense given that she was a Stain fan).

In retrospect, All for One probably came up with the idea of tormenting Shigaraki within his own subconscious from his nightmares of the vestiges of the quirks he stole. Also, does All for One really feel discouraged from random people yelling at him in his dreams, or do these nightmares affect him because they include his mother or allies he betrayed?

All for One loses in part because he attempted to become something separate from (his own) humanity. In particular, he doesn’t have a good grasp of his own emotions. So he fails to realize that attempting to absorb the vestiges of several people who dedicated their lives to killing him was not advisable when All for One couldn’t handle the ire of mostly average people he robbed of their quirks. Giving his brother who opposed him the keys to the guilt button doesn’t seem conducive to his alleged goal of becoming a demon lord.

That’s a controversial question. In a vacuum, there are other villains who arguably have more compelling writing (particularly Touya). However, in the context of BNHA’s overall narrative, Toga’s arc is a foundational pillar. Toga provided a broad structural critique of hero society that isn’t muddied by prominent hero/villain blood feuds and believed in the creation of a better future.

No other character fulfilled this crucial role. Shigaraki and Touya’s structural critiques are harder to generalize because their origins are too intertwined with the machinations of a powerful villain or hero. Their themes also largely overlap, so despite the time spent on their writing, one of them could be removed from the story without destroying the structural integrity of the manga.

Twice might be Toga’s closest competitor as a pillar needed to hold up the themes of BNHA. He overlaps the most with Toga in the broader criticism of hero society, but crucially he is distinct because Twice did not believe in a better future and identified with the villain label. Twice’s arc has the advantage of ending prior to the Act Three decline in BNHA’s writing. However, Twice’s arc doesn’t touch on how hero society conflated a person’s moral character/worth with their quirk or the flaws of hero society’s social contract of quirk suppression of non-heroes in exchange for order, so Toga is arguably more central to the themes of the manga than Twice.

Horikoshi’s chosen societal reforms (improved quirk counseling) at the end of the manga lack any weight without Toga. She was the villain most harmed by the prior quirk counseling system, to the point that it damaged her ability to connect with others and made villainy or death inevitable for her. Ochako’s saving of Toga and the mutual understanding they reached in their fight was the most compelling of the savior squad and their villains. It was Toga who provided the clearest example of a villain who could have reformed and the potential benevolence of a “villainous quirk” when someone finally acknowledged her. She chose to save Ochako of her own volition while using the blood affinity used to condemn her to save someone else.

She was key to the manga’s choice to go beyond hero society’s narrow definitions of who was worthy of saving. Because the rest of the League didn’t believe in a future, the villains’ perspective on saving is mostly lost without Toga. Izuku also brought the idea of saving villains to the forefront with Shigaraki, but Ochako’s arc considered the saving of heroes (Izuku) and villains (Toga) in a more comprehensive way.

It’s interesting how All for One perceived Shimura as the ghost of a dead person while somehow believing Yoichi was alive and retrievable. Especially considering that Yoichi’s “death” in Act Three supports the conclusion that Yoichi’s vestige wasn’t functionally different from the other vestiges.

Anyway, this really is the All for One mansplains One for All chapter. Not that all of his explanations are incorrect, but his assumptions that he created One for All and it rightfully belongs to him led him to some incorrect conclusions. For example, part of the reason All for One believed that Shimura was particularly incompetent was because she successfully deceived him with the One for All embers. She seemed weaker than the others because she tricked him with the embers for years, while most of the other wielders only recently transferred it when they died. Part of this mockery was also a strategy to overcome One for All’s will (All for One’s choice to call Izuku “worthless” knowing of his former quirklessness makes this clear), but to some extent it was based on All for One’s ignorance concerning how One for All actually works.

The layers of symbolism of the abuse All for One inflicted on Shigaraki depicted in these void chapters have been talked to death, but All for One goes beyond all the previous abusers in BNHA by making even Shigaraki’s unconscious mind an unsafe place where he has no autonomy or control.

I was about to discuss that, yeah. Izuku has no face in Bakugou’s memory here. Bakugou is a status quo thinker (younger Bakugou even more so), and in their society, a person is their quirk/individuality. Drawing Izuku without a face illustrates that a quirkless person like Izuku didn’t even register as a distinct person to middle school Bakugou. He looks more like a dekunobou puppet with a blank, wooden face rather than a person. The “Deku”moniker became something tangible that colored his perception of Izuku’s value/personhood.

As for why this scene repeats with Izuku’s face becoming clearer over time, it likely represents Bakugou’s understanding and acceptance of Izuku over the course of his character arc. Bakugou felt guilt for his past actions in the latter half of Act Two, but his guilt didn’t immediately lead to a meaningful bond with Izuku. Bakugou failed as an osananajimi not only because he didn’t understand Izuku’s true feelings, but because he put a blank mask on Izuku himself.

He's trying to convince himself that rejecting/apprehending his friend is the right ("thats how this works" line, leaning into the hero-villain dynamic). But this doesn't make sense with the way he approached him.

He was trying to bait a violent reaction out of him to justify his murder, but got cold feet (when his face stops being in the shadow). Character-wise, this wouldn't make sense as his decision, but would if he was ordered to (but why would he be ordered to?)

So how does any of this really make sense? What was Hawks actually trying to achieve, and what was he trying to get out of Twice? Was this all his decision, or was the Nagant reveal meant to recontextualize this fight? I'm coming at this with the assumption that, if all he wanted was for Twice to be in jail, he could've knocked him out before he had a chance to react.

Well, let’s pretend I answered this ask in a timely manner while rereading Hawks v. Twice. You can square the circle of Hawks’ logic if this fight was about Hawks trying to restore his own sense of equilibrium. Twice being a kind person interpersonally made Hawks feel unsafe because it challenged the conditioning he received from the Hero Commission. Hawks wanted to stop that perceived loss of control by retreating to the safe roles of heroes and villains. He wanted Twice to act like a villain in order to justify his role in capturing him, so Hawks played up the power disparity between heroes and villains. Perhaps it was also his hope that if he played the hero role well enough (to break to spirits of villains before they harm anyone), he wouldn’t need to kill Twice.