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His flames are probably burning between 3,000- 5,500 degrees, he’s a walking crematorium and easily could have slaughtered everyone in that forest in about ten seconds flat from either straight up incineration or smoke inhalation. Hell, Mustard had half that forest filled with, likely flammable, gas. Twice was there to make as many clones of him as he wanted. That forest should have been lit like the Fourth of July in Missouri.

And yet there’s not a single casualty. Imagine that.

Dabi's flames are hotter than his. The argument of "It's just anime physics!" no longer applies when the source material canonically applies them for a cool fight scene. PEOPLE are less durable than buildings, steel, and trees! If Dabi shoots blue fire at you, even physically avoiding the flames still means he most likely either kills you or inflicts third degree burns on your body that cause catastrophic damage. Blue fire burns upwards of 5,000 degrees, which means even if you successfully dodge roll ten feet away from his blast, the extreme UV light and ambient thermal radiation will permanently blind you before you even hit the ground. A fire that hot acts like a massive welder's torch, emitting a UV flash so intense it causes immediate photokeratitis, while the radiant heat,traveling at the speed of light! instantly boils off your eyes' protective tear film. Because the human blink reflex is far too slow to beat the speed of light and heat, the ambient air temperature would literally cook the proteins in your corneas, turning them cloudy like egg whites hitting a hot skillet. Dabi doesn't even have to try to blind you; permanently boiling your eyeballs in their sockets is just the passive, unavoidable side effect of standing in the same zip code as a walking blast furnace. A man who can casually set an entire forest on fire, which killed absolutely no one, by the way, is not a person that you try to dodge roll like a dark souls boss.

A degrading word relating to a feature is not inherently a slur

Slurs are tied to a history of antagonization, repression, and other evils.

I dont think we get any indication that calling the dog guy a "mutt" is tied to any repressive history more than say, calling someone a fatty.

Ive been called a fatty, its not a fucking slur guys. Its not comparable to say, the N word, R slur or stuff like that.

Can we stop diluting the meaning of things to sound smarter than we are friends

Entire character arcs for Spinner and Mezo Shoji revolve around the violent prejudice, lynch mobs, and societal rejection that heteromorphs face, particularly outside of major cities.

There is literally an extremist hate group in the lore called the Creature Rejection Clan. Because Chief Tsuragamae is a heteromorph, targeting his animal features absolutely taps into a history of systemic in-universe bigotry. Now, if you wanted a bulletproof argument, you could have said: "The story doesn't treat it like a slur because it constantly lets Bakugo get away with the exact same behavior." That would be much, much stronger.

The narrative wants to have its cake and eat it too. On one hand, it wants to tell a serious, heavy story about systemic prejudice against heteromorphs. On the other hand, it wants to use Bakugo’s aggressive, boundary-crossing behavior as a recurring gag.

Okay then.

One for all is overrated and boring.

It feels like hori was trying to turn it into the quirk equivalent of the sword in the stone and turn izuku into "the chosen one". Everything added to it from the vestiges, the the fact that it can't be stolen or replicated just made me further lose interest in it.

Izuku hurts himself constantly and is warned he'll lose his arms. What'll become of that? Nothing. His body adapted to it. He later loses his arms and gets them back because a first grader mutilated herself to restore him. Losing his arms had nothing to do with OFA. Izuku can't control his full power, and he needs to grow into All Might's shoes. How's he gonna handle that? He actually doesn't. He becomes Spider-Man for a bit and never actually masters his strength. He uses ad hoc methods to try and grasp 100% but is never strong enough to do it. The only time Izuku tastes full 100% power in this series are when a child clung to his back. We saw his MAXIMUM POTENTIAL way back in the Overhaul arc and the never again. Izuku's ending up with lots of new quirks! I bet they'll be so cool and unique! How is he going to master these when he already struggles to deal with the ones he's got? I bet this is going to be material for lots of chapters/episodes, right? Nah. He fumbles a bit at first and then gets to the point where he starts mastering new powers immediately after getting them. His development happens offscreen. Also, the powers are all mid, Spider-Man cosplay, or tools that exist solely to enable Izuku to use more strength than he ought to because the author crammed the series into 1 year of events. OFA is a big secret he has to keep. What goes down with this? Nothing. He spills the beans assuage Bakugo's feelings after the guy lost a school game, causing Bakugo to eventually piece things together. He then spills the secret to all of his classmates and absolutely nothing happens. Then the quirk is destroyed. Oh, wow! The Second And Third OFA users REALLY HATE Izuku! I wonder what their points are and what issues they have with the guy? Does he work hard and earn their trust? No. Yoichi does the work for him. And they never actually had a point, they were just being butt faces for no reason. Also, that door inside of OFA they were allegedly guarding? It didn't mean anything. And here's the one that ruined OFA for me. It's a death curse. It kills its users. If someone gets the quirk and they have a quirk, it will eventually take them out. We saw the Fourth user die of old age at 40 from the quirk. The quirk is exponentially stronger than it was before when he held it. So Izuku isn't special because he's the coolest, or the bravest, or the most empathetic. It's because he was born quirkless so he's the best, and honestly, only possible vessel.

The pro-heroes would attack Spider-Man because he helps the system without being apart of the system. It questions their legitimacy. The way you become a hero is to beg the government for permission to use a power you were born with. You are a servant of the status quo. That's what a hero is. So he'd be an even bigger threat than the League in some cases. The League are bumbling fools and monsters to fight. They're, even though they want to destroy the system, apart of the system. There's a protocol for them. There's a response for them. They're a problem to be solved. An actual hero like Spider-Man, though, makes heroes look incompetent. He's not doing this for fame, or for money, or for power, or to rise in rank, or for toy deals. And that makes him dangerous.

(Aka: explaining Enji’s abuse towards Touya)

Enji’s abuse towards Touya is often reduced to a simplistic argument by the fandom: Enji told Touya to stop training, Touya refused, and therefore Touya is the sole responsible for his own ‘death’ and suffering. But this argument fails both morally and psychologically. Touya’s self-destructive tendencies were not born out of ‘defiance’ or ‘stubbornness’, they were manufactured through years of ideological indoctrination, emotional conditioning, identity abuse, and parental neglect.

From the very beginning, Touya’s existence was shaped by Enji’s eugenicist worldview. Enji never laid the foundations for a loving family, he laid the foundations in order to create a successor. His marriage with Rei was completely transactional (never mind the fact that he bought as if she where an asset and not a human to sexually exploit her), built on the idea that combining their quirks could create an heir capable of surpassing All Might. That’s textbook eugenics right there: engineering a specific situation to produce a ‘perfect’ child by selecting partners for their genetics rather than other factors like genuine love or care, turning a marriage into a breeding program. The moment Touya’s quirk manifested, his body and said quirk were no longer his own, they became an instrument for Enji to accomplish his ambition. Touya had never been seen as a person or child, but as a means to an end (all the Todoroki children had been dehumanized that exact way, actually). Touya’s value was never inherent. It was conditional and based exclusively on his physical performance. That alone makes Enji not a good father from the very beginning.

This conditioning led to what can be best described as identity abuse (not sure if that’s the actual definition/term, but it is how I’ll be referring to it). Enji builds Touya’s entire identity to revolve around his own selfish dream: surpassing All Might. Touya is being told that his existence and value as a person is completely tied to whether he’ll accomplish that goal or not, and as a result, every personal desire or aspiration he might have is dismissed or reshaped to fit that imposed purpose, leaving him unable to form a sense of self independent of Enji’s ambitions. He doesn’t exist outside that goal.

Touya is taught that being loved means progressing and training harder, becoming stronger. He isn’t deserving of love and care because he exists as a person, but because of his achievements. When Enji later tells Touya to stop training after discovering the incompatibility of his body to his flames, the psychological damage has already been done. The order to just “stop” can’t undo years of emotional and psychological indoctrination that had made him equate success with affection.

After his body fails, Enji doesn’t replace Touya’s old purpose with a new one. He doesn’t help rebuild his son’s concept of identity, and neither does he reassure him of unconditional love. Quite the opposite, actually. He withdraws and completely shuts Touya out. Touya is left with a specific message: the reason he existed is no longer valid, he failed. That’s not good parenting, like a lot seem to claim, that’s straight up abandonment. Telling a child to stop pursuing the only identity trait they have ever been allowed to possess is psychological erasure, not “concern”.

This argument of ‘Enji told Touya to stop’ completely collapses when looked at through a psychological trauma lens. Children don’t develop values and attitudes on their own. They mirror the habits and behaviors imposed on them by, you guessed it, their parents (or the closest figure to a parent that they may have). Touya continuing to train in secret is a survival response. He is not disobeying his father out of “rebellion”, he is just desperately attempting to reclaim his place in his father’s world after being taught that success was all that mattered.

Enji is pretty much aware that Touya’s quirk is self-destructive and dangerous, both to himself and those around. He also has access to the highest medical resources in hero society (hell,he was literally THE #2 Pro Hero at the time!), and yet he gives Touya no safety gear, nor access to any kind of support system (like therapy, for example). Touya is left alone with a body that burns itself, with nothing but a warning that literally contradicts a lifetime of indoctrination. That is negligence towards Touya’s emotional and physical needs.

Like we all know, Shoto’s birth was the main catalyst of Touya’s mental spiraling. And that’s because Shoto isn’t introduced to Touya as a brother, but as a replacement. He embodies all that Touya isn’t and that Enji searches for. Touya isn’t given a new role within his father’s world wither, he gets completely shut out and replaced. In a way, Shoto's existence confirms Touya’s deepest fear: he is no longer needed, and therefore not wanted by his father. Touya doesn’t just lose his father’s approval, he also loses his reason for existing. Enji builds Touya into a tool, discards him when he ‘fails’, and then acts surprised when the discarded child attempts to destroy himself (and those around) trying to become useful again.

Even putting aside the human trafficking, the martial rape, the spousal abuse, the abuse of his children. What he did to Touya was extra neglectful. He KNEW:

-Touya's quirk was dangerous. -Touya's power was strong. -That he didn't teach the boy how to turn his quirk down, just how to turn it up. -That the boy was practicing with it to impress him. He saw the burns. He yelled at him over it. -That the boy told him he had a surprise for him and that he needed to come to the mountain to see it. He's 100% guilty of:

Contributing to the Destruction of Property / Environmental Damage His son took a mountain with him. That environment is never going to be the same again. They're just lucky no one else (but AFO) was up there when he went up. Involuntary Manslaughter (or its equivalent) His son BURNED TO DEATH! They all believed Touya was dead at the time! All they found was the fragment of a jawbone!

Criminal Negligence / Reckless Endangerment of a Child As a parent, you have a duty to care. Endeavor failed that in every conceivable way here.

So when pushing the concept of Endeavor having had a proper redemption arc, kindly fuck off. That monster is a special kind of evil and should've been locked up in Tartarus for all the things he's done to Rei, Touya, Fuyumi, Natsuo, and Shouto.

The pro-heroes would attack Spider-Man because he helps the system without being apart of the system. It questions their legitimacy. The way you become a hero is to beg the government for permission to use a power you were born with. You are a servant of the status quo. That's what a hero is. So he'd be an even bigger threat than the League in some cases. The League are bumbling fools and monsters to fight. They're, even though they want to destroy the system, apart of the system. There's a protocol for them. There's a response for them. They're a problem to be solved. An actual hero like Spider-Man, though, makes heroes look incompetent. He's not doing this for fame, or for money, or for power, or to rise in rank, or for toy deals. And that makes him dangerous.

He's only important to the story because horikoshi has made him important, not because he is inherently irreplaceable from a plot mechanics standpoint.

Yes, the sludge villain scene is powerful because it’s Katsuki — the person who’d belittled Izuku his whole life. Izuku saving him isn’t just heroism, it’s narrative irony and emotional payoff. If it were a random kid, the moment loses that personal weight.

But after that? Katsuki often feels inserted rather than integrated. It’s not that he’s useless to the plot, but it’s clear Horikoshi has a soft spot for him, to the point where he gets pushed into arcs and fights that don’t always need him.

This is why Kota's critique resonates because it's something directly related to to the main character, All Might, and the lived experience of Nana Shimura. A hero, in Kota's eyes, is someone who dies to protect strangers while abandoning their family.

The person in your screenshot intentionally is missing the point. It could have been literally anyone held in that sludge villain's grip and Izuku would have run in to save them.

To say he only did it because it was Bakugo makes you question everything about Izuku's heroism. Because since when does he NEED it to be someone he knows to lend a hand? He doesn't know the victims most of the time: he just acts.

I don't believe Izuku would have just stood and watched someone die if it didn't happen to be his childhood friend.

It's me, I'm everyone

To put it simply, kirishima is a fraud with a capital f.

The series tries to make him out to be this uber cool and manly guy that stands up to bullies and someone we should all be like!

The only problem?

He's best friends with a bully. Anybody with common sense and functioning eyes and ears could tell that napalm-breath is a bully, in every sense of the word. Yet somehow, kirishima continues to not see the writing on the wall, cmand constantly enables and kisses up to bakublowhard.

And mind you, kirishima has gotten on mineta and monoma's cases for their behavior, but has hardly ever called out he-who-shall-not-be-named.

But that's not even the worst part, you wanna know the worst part?

Kirishima knows what bakugo did to izuku before ua. That's right. In one of the light novels, kirishima encounters bakugo's old cronies when out studying, and they basically yell him what bakugo put izuku through during their childhood(which includes the "swab dive" comment.). And his reponse to this? "Forgiving is just a small deed for midoriya."

...

Kirishima. You shark-toothed clown, you phony redhead, you shirtless buffoon. Go screw yourself.

I'm actually furuous about that. How can this putz call himself "red riot" and simultaneously be the biggest bootlicker in ua?

The League's actions were the catalyst for every event that led to a better outcome for hero society. They:

Assassinated the HPSC leadership which was corrupt. The heroes NEVER would have done anything about that.

The League activity led to Stain meeting Tomura and eventually being captured. Had Hosu not been burning to the ground, Izuku wouldn't have noticed Iida was in danger. The guy would have been murdered, Native would have been murdered, and Stain would have gotten away. Knowing that Endeavor is chasing him means he skips town. He doesn't get caught.

The attack on Endeavor by Hood/High End directly caused Endeavor's popularity to rise after he became number 1 hero. It was one of Dabi's biggest missteps. The public saw Endeavor as a poor replacement for All Might and that trial by fire caused them to see him as a real hero.

Took out the CRC. If the heroes didn't acknowledge discrimination, why would they be focused on a hate group?

Caused the MLA to come out of hiding. Had they not taken the terrible plan of confronting the League, they could have done a stealth takeover of society. Once the MLA becomes the government, the heroes become their employees.

Their arrest led to Garaki's arrest. Garaki was a respected doctor who owned multiple orphanages and worked in hospitals. His income wasn't related to League activity and presumably he controlled AFO's income streams. Left to his own devices, he'd have done mad science forever.

Machia was a threat who could destroy entire cities who could have marched on UA himself at any moment to hunt down and kill All Might for getting AFO arrested. And god help whoever is in his way when he does. The heroes would NOT have been prepared for that.

Scissors boy escaped his family's basement because of their chaos. Without League activity, he either dies down there or does a violent escape that eventually leads to him becoming a villain.

Uraraka would never decide to "be a hero for the heroes" without the League. Nor would she realize she needs to play with kids without having met Himiko.

Gentle Criminal remains a petty nuisance because 1-A not getting attacked means he has no reason to care about UA.

This is the consequence of the author not allowing any major lasting negative events from the villains uprising. It just makes them a net positive for the world.

What did they lose, in exchange for this? Snatch, Midnight, a handful of heroes who got killed by Machia, a few cities that got broken and in which no one died in them because they were evacuated. And then the whole country was rebuilt in some months like nothing happened.

They also lost OFA, but what impact does that have at all? Nothing! The world is safer and more secure than it was with All Might at his prime!

They should all thank God for the League. God Bless the League of Villains. God Bless all of them.

1. A lot of his most evil actions are the result of REALLY shitty writing or had extenuating circumstances people don't bring up (IE him being Literally 8 Fucking Years Old when it happened)

You can't have a series that shows us villains aren't really people and the characters lock them up and never think about them again unless said villains happen to be people they can empathize with. Named villains, sometimes, get to be people. Generic mooks are just bad guys. No one cares what happens to them.

So what does it matter if Dabi decides to burn a bunch of them to get himself some street cred? And then we're meant to think that means anything? It means nothing!

Now, if Dabi burned down Shiketsu with everyone in it, and we watched Inasa be consumed in flames and die screaming, then I'd be like "Wow, Dabi is a real villain." Murking an entire hero school that's allegedly as strong as UA is ungodly levels of aura.

it cements Dabi as the ultimate menace. But to be honest, I'd rather he make it more personal. What do the Flaming Sidekickers ever actually DO in this series? Like if Dabi went ham and he took out every single one of Endeavor's sidekicks, professional friends who work with him on the streets, and even took out the guy's driver, that's a heck of a lot more personal. If you're gonna murder people, murder people the audience knows about. And who matter to the main characters. You could straight up have the Endeavor Agency Arc end with them coming back from getting crepes to seeing the building on blue fire and scores of burnt corpses on the streets. And it's like, "Holy shit!" You could actually just have Deku say that. Bakugo is too shocked to even say anything. Have Shoto cover his mouth, Bakugo covers his ears, and Deku covers his eyes immediately upon seeing this. You stunned these boys. And Endeavor can dramatically drop his groceries and the bag of sports drinks falls onto the ground. He can roar "Nooooooooooooo!"

So when the reveal that Dabi is Touya comes in, Endeavor is like "I'm going to avenge my homies!" But then Dabi is like "The person who slid on your crew was me, father! I was the one who slimed your squad! I, your son, have made it my life's mission to destroy your life's work! I'll take EVERYTHING from you!! Your agency, your legacy, your pride! And then, only when you're begging for death, will you have my permission to die!"

And then Dabi does his dance. He says that Endeavor's agency got the first one. And now Enji can get the second dance, in hell. Enji is stunned. He can't believe it. When he's later crying in the hospital about how fucked this is, you'd be able to maybe empathize with him and not just see him as a big blubbering baby. What's wrong, wife beater? Is abusing your family not so fun anymore when one of them actually hits back? Boo hoo. Poor diddums. I have no empathy for Endeavor whatsoever because he created his problem and then he cries about having to fix it. While, of course, everyone around him offers infinite support, shares in the responsibility, and takes on his burden.

Since the flaming sidekickers accomplished nothing in this series and existed just to be background to show Endeavor is wildly successful, no, I don't think sacrificing them to give Dabi more aura and credibility in the show is a bad thing.

Literally the only one anyone would even pretend to care about is Burnin', because she's a beautiful woman. Does anyone care about Onima or Kido? No, of course not. But the people in the story would care, and the audience would feel that. No, canonically Dabi killed a bunch of bums. F rank villains who we know nothing about and were, given how things usually go for villains, probably homeless. He was being a bully, not a menace.

Also, a side benefit. In death, the sidekickers never have to acknowledge Endeavor being an abuser, since they'd be dead. They don't have to later justify why they still stick with the wife buyer, child abuser who let his son burn to death on a mountain despite knowing he was training with his self damaging quirk when he wasn't supposed to be. We don't need to have Burnin' awkwardly go "Well, he's a really good hero, so him putting his wife on the floor every so often with a two piece is just the price of doing business, Touya. Listen, he gave me a bonus and I was able to buy a new car. I've got a toy line. A branding deal! He's just so very...useful."

Recently, on tiktok (like always lol) I entered a debate with a bunch of Hawks fans that were hellbent into claiming that him losing his wings was symbolism to him becoming ‘free’, and while the OG creator blocked me, I can’t stop thinking about it. It genuinely left this weird taste in my mouth and I NEEDED to rant about it.

One thing that’s always bothered me about the “Hawks loses his wings and stays with the Commission, but he’s finally free because they can’t use him” is how easily it shifts the blame. On the surface, it reads as symbolic: wings as chains. But narratively, it ends up placing the weight of his exploitation onto his quirk rather than the institution that deliberately stripped him of agency in the first place. Because once you frame his loss of autonomy as something that happens because of his wings, you subtly imply that the wings were the problem. And that’s… just not it.

Hawks didn’t lose his autonomy because he could fly. He lost it because the Hero Commission made an active, conscious decision to weaponize a vulnerable child.

If Hawks hadn’t grown up in poverty. If he hadn’t been neglected. If he hadn’t lacked any form of protection or adult supervision. Would he have been utilized the way he was?

It genuinely doesn’t mattered what quirk he had. Wings, fire, speed, something flashy, something discrete, etc. none of that changes the outcome. He wasn’t molded into a hero because of his quirk. He was molded into a tool because he was available, disposable, and easy to isolate.

That’s the part that gets erased when the narrative leans too hard into the wings-as-chains metaphor. The Commission didn’t exploit Hawks because he was useful. Plenty of children have quirks that make them useful, some even more than Hawks’. They exploited him because he was usable. Because he had no safety net. Because no one would question where he went or what was done to him. Because he could be trained, controlled, and emotionally conditioned without resistance.

His wings made him useful. But his vulnerability made him controllable.

So when the story frames the loss of his wings as the moment of “liberation” or “freedom,” it completely destroys the social commentary it’s supposed to represent (even if it had been an accidental commentary, which I believe it was, with how inconsistent Hori is). It suggests that removing the power (his quirk) solves the problem, when the problem was never the power: it was the system that decided some children are resources instead of people.

Keeping him with the Commission after that, especially without directly interrogating that power dynamic, risks turning institutional abuse into a kind of tragic inevitability. Like this was always the cost of being Hawks. Like the system didn’t choose this. Like it couldn’t have gone any other way.

Hawks’s story is only meaningful as social commentary if we keep the responsibility where it belongs: not on his wings, not on his usefulness, not on the symbolism, but on the institution that saw a child in crisis and decided to sharpen him into a weapon.

Some months ago I saw someone saying how amputee representation in mha is awful. I was busy back then so it kinda slipped my mind, until 2 days ago. And I haven't been able to stop thinking about it. There are many things that I criticize about mha but it seems like I've been so focused on other things I missed how mha treats amputee representation. Since I agree with many of your takes, I wanted to know your opinion about this.

Now I haven't finished mha yet I'm still at season 5, so I haven't seen everything. I did spoil myself tho so kind of know what happens in later seasons.

Hi, thanks for the ask. Sorry it took me a while to answer, this post turned out very long.

Mutilation and limb loss is exceedingly common in Mha. When talking about amputees I will include characters that lose limbs or facial features, but also characters that lose physical quirk factors or lose limbs in ways that wouldn't be possible in real life. I chose to exclude amputations on characters with established, inherent regenerative or growth abilities like Shoji or the Noumu.

Also disclaimer that while I am physically disabled, I am not an amputee. Please take everything I say with a grain of salt.

Mha contains a lot of disabled characters and amputees make up more than half of them. Generally, it's good to represent a demographic with more than one character, but Mha also steps into several pitfalls common to amputee protrayal in sci-fi/fantasy media.

The main manga contains 14 characters who experience one or multiple amputations, 13 of which spend considerable time living as amputees and 10-11 of which remain disabled for the rest of their lives. You can already see the issues here.

I made an excel table to give everyone an overview. It also functions as a decent TLDR:

The premise is that if a bad thing happens to someone in the series, and they previously did a bad thing, it's because they did bad things. It just falls apart when you look at people who didn't do anything bad but they still got hurt.

Some months ago I saw someone saying how amputee representation in mha is awful. I was busy back then so it kinda slipped my mind, until 2 days ago. And I haven't been able to stop thinking about it. There are many things that I criticize about mha but it seems like I've been so focused on other things I missed how mha treats amputee representation. Since I agree with many of your takes, I wanted to know your opinion about this.

Now I haven't finished mha yet I'm still at season 5, so I haven't seen everything. I did spoil myself tho so kind of know what happens in later seasons.

Hi, thanks for the ask. Sorry it took me a while to answer, this post turned out very long.

Mutilation and limb loss is exceedingly common in Mha. When talking about amputees I will include characters that lose limbs or facial features, but also characters that lose physical quirk factors or lose limbs in ways that wouldn't be possible in real life. I chose to exclude amputations on characters with established, inherent regenerative or growth abilities like Shoji or the Noumu.

Also disclaimer that while I am physically disabled, I am not an amputee. Please take everything I say with a grain of salt.

Mha contains a lot of disabled characters and amputees make up more than half of them. Generally, it's good to represent a demographic with more than one character, but Mha also steps into several pitfalls common to amputee protrayal in sci-fi/fantasy media.

The main manga contains 14 characters who experience one or multiple amputations, 13 of which spend considerable time living as amputees and 10-11 of which remain disabled for the rest of their lives. You can already see the issues here.

I made an excel table to give everyone an overview. It also functions as a decent TLDR: