Shouting at your spiraling child after completely stripping them from any kind of identity and then proceeding to shut them out completely is not good parenting, actually.
(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.
Claiming that Enji was a ‘good father’ to Touya, or that Touya (a spiraling five year old with no support system or guidance) was the issue all along completely misses the entire nature of their relationship and quite literally goes against canon material. Enji is and has always been the sole responsible for all of the Todoroki family’s problems. Shifting the blame towards the others (literally the exact same thing that Enji does before the ‘atonement arc’ that everyone claims is the ‘best written’ part of the entire anime) goes to show how many of you Enji fans don’t even understand your favorite character.
