A Smol Rabbit

Behold; the undercover (Decchan) Bakudeku.

Bonus; Minigou.

Hey! I agree and disagree on this, so I hope you don’t mind if I expand on why.

The bit I agree with is that Enji didn’t become a dick after Shouto’s quirk manifested. His actions are unjustifiable (and some of them are crimes) even before Shouto’s birth. He still bought Rei for eugenics purposes. He still breeded children irresponsibly by trying to mix two quirks so at odds with each other. He still trained Touya, and whether Touya liked it or not (I’m gonna return on this in a second), that doesn’t matter at all, because the responsibility of those actions still falls on Enji, his legal guardian and the adult of the two. He still neglected Natsuo and Fuyumi. Still forced his wife to breed more children (while Rei might or might not have suggested having Fuyumi, there’s no mention of her wanting more than two kids. There’s no mention of her even wanting to be married. Whenever the marriage agreement is brought up, it’s always said that Enji made a deal with her parents, not Rei herself, and it’s strongly implied that money was involved). 

So. Endeavor was an abuser even before Shouto’s quirk manifested. Marital rape and child neglect are still abuse. And pain is not something you can put on a scale, so whether or not he became more abusive afterwards, that’s not a valid or even appropriate argument to bring up when talking about the responsibilities of his actions. Point still stands that he had a duty as a husband and a father, and he still abused his power. Besides, breeding children to make them the recipients of your ambitions is another form of abuse. Your children are not your property. They have wishes and desires of their own. Whether Touya wanted to be a hero at first or not, that doesn’t change the fact that Endeavor wouldn’t have given him the option to opt out of that career. Touya “liking” it is just a favorable plus that happened to work in Endeavor’s favor, not a requirement.

Now, about the things I disagree on.

One thing I think it’s important to keep in mind while analyzing 290/291 is that pov narratives are always inherently biased. Pov means “point of view”, and as such it’s a subjective take on the events narrated, filtered by the beliefs / morals / feelings of the person who is narrating it. This is why, for example, Deku can punch Shigaraki with the force of a thousand suns and feel no regret or sympathy for him, because to him Shigaraki is not an abuse survivor trying to regain his personhood against a system that tried to silence and kill him, but he’s a violent mass murderer who hurt Deku’s mentor and tried to kill Deku’s friends.

Why am I making this digression, you might be wondering. Well, I’m doing it because the two chapters purposefully present us with two opposite versions of the same events. Compare this:

to this:

The first panel is Endeavor’s pov. Touya appears smiling, chipper, eager to please him and really self-confident. The second one shows us Touya crumpled to the floor, clutching his head, the opposite of easy-going and confident as he informs us that he was suffering so much in that household that he not only wondered what was the purpose of his existence, but he also had to seek out comfort from his little brother. Not his mother, not his father. His little brother, a fellow child.

The first panel shows us that from Endeavor’s perspective, there was a certain degree of complicity between himself and his son. Touya talked to him openly, and even goaded him a little. Yet that reading of their dynamic is contradicted by the fact that Touya never sought him out for comfort and understanding. For emotional stabillity. Let me state here again that Endeavor is a parent. Parents are supposed to care for their children’s emotional wellbeing. They’re the adults of the family. Yet Touya had to crawl to Natsuo in tears to get a little sympathy.

Now, I’m not trying to state that only one of these events actually took place. It’s possible that both did. It’s possible that Touya was enthusiastic about his training at first, and that his father’s expectations started to weight heavily on him at a later date (as it’s also suggested by the hair color shift). But regardless of that, the most important thing to take away from this is that Hori deliberately set up their opposing povs to show something.

Dabi/Touya doesn’t linger on the training, skipping over to the consequences, and how severely it impacted his emotional and physical wellbeing. Remarkably, Endeavor does the opposite. He focuses his narration on how enthusiastic Touya was, how proud he was to show off his powerful quirk to his dad, and deliberately skips over the entire latter part of Touya’s life, skipping over the suffering he inflicted on his child, and neglecting to acknowledge his responsibility in it. Endeavor’s pov is only focusing on the part of the story that make his action look justified. Touya wanted this. Touya liked this. So Endeavor can’t have failed him. And that’s the point Hori is trying to make: where was Endeavor when Touya didn’t want this anymore? Why is he deliberately skipping over the part of his actions that unequivocally paint him as the abuser he always was?

Because the point of Endeavor’s arc is to make him acknowledge that he’s trying to make amends for the wrong things.

(click the link above for a more detailed breakthrough of why exactly Endeavor’s atonement arc predictably ended in a huge failure)

Endeavor is essentially someone who has been making easy excuses for his actions for over 20 years of his life. That’s not going to abruptly change because he decided he wanted to do something nice for his family, or because he just got faced with his presumed-dead son. His pov is biased, and so is Dabi’s.

But the point still stands.

He cannot get real atonement so long as he keeps brushing the obvious elephant in the room under the rug. That’s Dabi’s narrative purpose in the story. The villain moniker “Dabi” exists to confront Endeavor with the truth that his actions have consequences. The past still exists even if Endeavor skips over it. And for Endeavor’s atonement to ring true, he needs to make true on his supposed desire to right his wrong.

Back in the Tododinner miniarc, Endeavor mentioned wanting Touya to still be with the rest of the family. The point now is, does Endeavor still want that, now that he saw who Touya became?

Does he still think Touya is worth saving, or will he judge him a lost cause and conveniently brush the past under the rug again?

Endeavor here is a symbol for the society he represents. His choice will represent hero society’s standing on villains. This is a question bnha has been asking over an over.

Where do heroes draw the line between who gets to be saved and who doesn’t?

Jin tells us that only the virtuous get saved, and Hawks’ actions point in the direction that he has a point.

This is hero society’s biggest flaw: its hypocrisy. They apply this standard to villains, but they don’t do the same to heroes. And the League exists within the story to point out this fallacy.

If someone like Endeavor wants to do what he pleases with his family and make them go through hell, then he also has to face the consequences. So his choices are gonna reflect the direction hero society is also going to take after this.

So a new friend of mine I made on tiktok wanted a meta on Deku v Kacchan 2, and of course I obliged because I never get tired of analyzing their relationship. 

Deku v Kacchan 2 was the starting point to a shift in their relationship, because this was when Bakugou came face to face with his inferiority complex, and all of the emotions he had been holding on to came bubbling to the surface, and I would like to preface by saying Deku is the ONLY PERSON Bakugou has EVER shown his weaknesses to without question. 

We don’t ever see him cry or vent to anyone else. Not a single person. He is completely open only in front of Deku.

The first example of this is actually in the start of the manga, when Deku means to tell him about One for All out of fear Bakugou would misunderstand him, and Bakugou makes his first step in becoming better by admitting he recognizes he isn’t as strong as he always thought and that Deku beat him. This is also the first time we see Bakugou cry out of frustration, which is a side of him he only ever shows to Deku.

For reference, this is Chapter 11. 

My boy is just wanting to be the best, ya know? All his life he’s been boosted up for having such a strong quirk, and for always being the best at stuff, and now suddenly he just…isn’t. That would mess with anyone’s head, honestly.  But the one he spills those feelings to, it’s Deku. Not any other person, just Deku. You think if he hated Deku at this point, he would open up about such vulnerable feelings to him? 

I don’t think so.

Then we have the second time he’s vulnerable and recognizing different things about himself and Deku during their fight with All Might, and it is another instance we see him crying. Yes, All Might was there, but those emotions were a direct result of Deku’s words to him about not giving up. 

For reference, these are chapters 62 & 63.

Look at the raw emotion Deku is able to draw out of this kid. You will never be able to convince me he EVER hated Deku. Yes, even when he bullied him in middle school and told him to kill himself, I don’t believe Bakugou hated him. I believe that he misunderstood him and it scared him, and so he lashed out in anger since that was the only real form of emotion he knew how to properly convey. Was it right? Obviously not, but at least we are able to understand more of his thought process at that time. 

So from here, we get into the end of All Might and Deku vs. Kacchan 2. 

From the very start of everything, once Deku was given One for All, Bakugou has been spiraling. He had been struggling and fighting with himself, trying to come to terms with the fact that reality proves he isn’t the strongest or greatest and there is actually a shit ton he’s lacking, so he needs to change to be better. That’s a little difficult though when the person who is a constant reminder of your weaknesses is always around you. 

Then he comes to the conclusion that Deku was given All Might’s power, and that is kind of like an epiphany to him. I think, when Bakugou realized All Might gave Deku OfA, he really came to understand the parts of Deku he hadn’t before. The parts that made him the perfect individual for that power, even if he acted like he didn’t know and said some shit like “I’m weak, too!” when All Might broke up their fight, he doesn’t want OfA. He wants acknowledgment. Because to him, All Might giving OfA to Deku was like saying that he is the strongest, and he deserves that power.

When in reality it’s the opposite. Deku had nothing, he was weak and powerless, and yet immediately willing to protect those around him even if it meant losing his own life, and that’s the true make of a hero. Bakugou recognized that, I believe at least, during Deku vs Kacchan 2. 

For reference, these are from chapters 117 & 118

So he’s venting, obviously. This is his opening to the big bit that we’ll be getting to shortly, but this is important but he’s opening himself up to Deku. I’ll say it again,

DEKU IS THE ONLY PERSON BAKUGOU HAS EVER OPENED UP TO EMOTIONALLY

This always gets me because Bakugou knows. I made a whole separate meta about him recognizing those attributes of Deku’s and recognizing that’s what makes him so powerful in his own right. 

Bakugou completely understands by this point what it is that made All Might choose Deku. He witnessed time and time again how willing Deku was to throw everything away for other people, how his desire to save came before absolutely anything else. He understands that. This is just his denial, and his pride wanting proof. 

Now we’re coming to the big bits, the meat of this entire fight. 

I wanted to talk in between them but honestly, they should speak for themselves. 

“This battle might have been pointless. Win or lose..maybe it didn’t really matter. But at that moment, I knew I had to fight. Because the only person who understood what Kacchan was feeling, was me.” 

Now we have Deku recognizing what this is all about, that Bakugou is opening himself up to him and exposing those weaknesses he’s been struggling with for so long. Guilt, fear, anger, sadness. Bakugou has been holding onto so many things and had nowhere for it to come out until this fight. Remember, right after Kamino and All Might’s end, they went straight back to every day life. Bakugou was forced to train as normal and even take the provisional licensing exam before he was able to get a moment to process everything. 

Now that he had time for it, he decided to come out with his feelings, and obviously they needed to be expressed to Deku. He does this because he knows Deku is going to accept them. If he’s learned anything from his time being a little shit, it was that Deku wasn’t going anywhere, and he would listen to him whether he was screaming in anger or crying in pain. Because Deku was raised to show emotion, he cried and it was okay and he wasn’t shamed or told he was weak. He wasn’t held to some imaginary scale of strength because he…never really had any, not the way strength is perceived in this universe, at least.

But Bakugou did have strength, and so it was pushed onto him since his quirk developed, which led to his horrible combination of an inferiority complex and a superiority complex. It skewed the way he saw the people around him, and he couldn’t understand that someone could have strength even if they lacked a quirk or a way to fight. Deku had strength Bakugou didn’t, the strength to protect and care and love without restraint. It terrified Bakugou, and so he tried to push Deku away because of it. 

But Deku vs. Kacchan 2 put a ton of stuff in perspective for Bakugou. 

For reference this is from chapter 120.

This scene is so beautiful to me. The way it’s implied they make eye contact. The emotion in this scene alone is so powerful, and should immediately tell you their relationship will never be the same; and it wasn’t. 

I feel like a lot of people don’t see a difference because Bakugou is still hot-headed and foul-mouthed, but he is in no way the same kid from before this chapter. Not to Deku, and not to anyone else. Being able to express himself and get all of that frustration out from what built up over almost a years time, it allowed him to begin truly changing himself into a better person. This was his starting point to recognizing that he can’t continue just fighting on his own, and he would eventually have to depend on other’s if he wants to be the best. He would have to open himself up. 

It’s gradual, and subtle, but it’s there. There are instances of it everywhere. From him joining in on OfA’s meetings, to the ways he encourages Deku to keep getting stronger by pushing him, to the JT when he acts with his team to win, all the way to the current chapters. 

Spinner : Fucking.

Shigaraki : -KIDDING ME?! YOU-

Toga : Fucking!

Shigaraki : IDIOT-

Dabi : ...what was that?

mysterylover123

Yesterday: “I’ll go on Tumblr for just a minute. Surely no spoilers have leaked yet”. Instantly learns: “HEADLINE: INTERNET HAS GONE CRAZY DUE TO BAKUGOU PRETTY MUCH DYING”. 

never go on tumblr on thursdays

Honey I was wondering about this. So unless Deku manifests a healing/regeneration quirk right the Ff now we’re gonna have to start looking into some robot arms.

Don’t you dare get my hopes up Shiggy. I saw those leaks I know how this ends.

sobs

You’re making your boyfriend worry so much Deku.

Quick, time for some TD/BK to distract me from my emminent feels!!

YAS I KNEW YOU WOULDN’T LEAVE TDDK OUT OF THIS! THE OT3 IS COMPLETE. (and apparently about to become an OT2 sobbbbbbssssss)

HE SAID THAT CAUSE HE WAS WORRIED ABOUT DEKU OH. MY. GOD. Litereally everything Bakugou has ever done is now legitimately interpretable through a “cares about Deku” lens.

MORE BB BKDK SOB HORI WHAT’RE YOU DOING TO ME

Guess who just rewatched season 1 guess who’s drowning in BKDK feels you got it me

I’m sure this’ll work. Hey Endeav remember the last time you used this attack on a regenerating League of Villains baddie? Remember what he did to you IMMEDIATELY AFTER that looks remarkably similar to those leak images?!

is Tomura actually getting possessed by the Ghost of AFO or something?

Shoto’s gon lose his dad and his boyfriends in one day dammit our ½ and ½ boy doesn’t deserve this mus protecc shoto he deserves the world

IKR? That’s what we’re all thinking!

shit shit crap here it comes

SAD BKDK MONTAGE TO MAKE THE MOMENT HURT AS MUCH AS FUCKING POSSIBLE BECAUSE OF COURSE KACCHAN’S LAST THOUGHTS WILL BE OF DEKU AND MY OTP NEEDS THEIR SWANSONG DAMMIT IS THIS THE LAST RIDE?!

I think this image has burrowed its way into my psyche and will never leave until I either reach the series’ final chapter and see Katsuki getting a happy ending or know for sure if this is the last time we’ll ever see him next week. please oh please oh please oh please don’t be dead

I know a lot of people are being like “chill, he’s not dead, he’s a shonen character”. But I also know that this series is known for subverting shonen tropes. Hori doesn’t do things by the books and doesn’t like to be predictable. If he wants to kill Kacchan then Kacchan’s dead, that’s all there is to it. I don’t want this to be the end. But until next week…well, even beyond that, there’s no way to know for sure. If this is where Bakugou (And BK/DK)’s story ends…well, I can’t say it isn’t poetic and moving. To have Bakugou decide to sacrifice his life for Izuku, it’s pretty much the ultimate expression of both love and character development.  It would hurt like hell but if it is, I’ll just have to deal with it. If it is, Deku is about to lose his shit so badly there won’t be enough of Shigaraki left to scoop up with a teaspoon. 

 If it’s not, then this moment marks an unbelievable growth for our hero. I haven’t failed to notice that the title is “Rising”, which is likely an allusion to both Movie #2 and Yaoyorozu Rising, volume 8. The latter is really interesting to me, since that was Momo’s biggest moment of character journey in the early part of the series, and Baku is channelling her a bit here, taking over as the commander (makes those TDMM/BKDK parallells even stronger too). If Baku does live, with his quirk gone maybe, this will change things for the Wonder duo. Baku has decided to do saving, and saving Deku. I worry that him losing his quirk would drive Deku pretty far over the edge as well. And maybe have him offer to share OFA with him like in HR. And I’m not sure how this new dynamic would play going forward, though it would also be pretty poetic.