I’ve got. All kinds of bad feelings about this. They literally put a kid on the front lines for the purpose of tanking a specific knock out weapon and I get it’s a good match up but also? He’s like 16? He’s a teenager and he’s terrified out of his mind.
You know what this reminds me of? The very first chapter when Bakugou was being attacked by the slime villain
Familiar isn’t it? We got to wait for the right quirk and let this kid fucking die in the mean time. Here they got the right quirk but it’s in a kid and he might die in the meantime.
Like I’ve been giving shit to the Villain Liberation Army about their fucked up ideals but I can’t deny it’s really just an extreme fast forward of what this society is already headed towards. And by extreme I mean kinda accelerated. This society will fucking fall apart without “the right quirks” and the heroes perpetuate it too, we’ve seen where it fails so many times now with Izuku’s quirklessness, with Shinsou, and fast forward to Kaminari here who couldn’t really say no since the entire plan hinged on a teenager absorbing the power of a fully grown, willing to kill zealot.
All this is knowing that taking too much electricity will literally fry his brain. (But that’s a gag right like All Might coughing up blood from an old injury that took out a fair amount of his organs is a gag too.)
But it’s okay because he gets his moment of badassery right? Every thing is fine as long as they look cool doing it and win (or lose making a grande finale and leave mourning in their wake cough Water Hose Duo and Kouta cough). That’s what All Might did too.
What really kills me is how through the entire chapter Kaminari keeps looking backwards at where his friends are in the “safe zone.” We get multiple panels where he’s looking around and all the heroes are charging forward and it’s so obvious that he’s scared and confused. He’s way in over his head, he’s been at hero school for less than a year and now he’s on the front lines supposed to be defending the very heroes he put his hope and trust in with his life.
Look at the composition of these two panels. Which side is the dialogue really addressing? What’s wrong with your society that a single disbeliever will bring it down? Who’s making children put their lives on the line to fight for an ideal they don’t really understand?
These are zealot words, fighting words, and smack dab in the middle is this kid who’s basically being raised in a military institution to become another soldier to die for them.
This is what being a hero means in this society.
