You know, I really think there should be a point at which Deku rushing in with no plan and doing whatever he thinks feels right should become Heroic Malpractice.
Just me?
Because, like, Shouto had a plan. He spent the time between the two war arcs specifically developing a brand-new combat technique that he planned to use to shut down Dabi's combat advantage without killing him. He convinced his dad not to change the plan like Endeavor was hesitantly sounding him out about[1]; he went out and talked and asked questions, and even if they weren't the right words every single time, he did his best and he did it with intention. If Dabi proves to be dead, it won't be because of anything Shouto did to him; it'll be because Dabi himself chose to stand back up, take a warp gate across the country, pick a fight with the guy who doesn't have the power set to shut him down without unduly hurting him, and try to replicate an Ultimate Move specifically tailored for someone with a balanced power set Dabi doesn't have.[2]
And if Dabi lives, it's still going to be because Shouto booked it across the country and used that same technique to stop him again.
1: Dabi surely would have preferred to fight Endeavor from the start, and it probably would have been the more "just" choice if it had to be one or the other, but Shouto is the nominal focal character between the three of them, so, critiques of the broader Hero-side decisions aside, Shouto's arc has to come first. This is one of those places where you can clearly see how much the decision to let Endeavor survive where Horikoshi originally planned for him to die hurts the shape of the later story.
2: Obviously ultimately if Dabi dies, it's going to be because his family and Team Hero made repeated choices to ignore and neglect him, culminating in the entire family swearing to deal with Touya together only to passively accept a battle plan that involved splitting them all and letting the kid who knows Touya the least be the one to fight him. But like, in the context of that fight, Shouto isn't the reason Dabi takes all that hurt.
Uraraka may or may not have had much of a plan, but at least the words she said to Toga reflected that she had been seriously thinking about Toga in the here and now, what Toga's told her, what Toga needs. If Toga dies, it will be because Toga chose to give Uraraka an unsupervised blood transfusion with no intention of stopping it. (With the same general caveats as in Footnote 2.)
But Deku? From the very beginning, Deku has been valorized by the manga for how much he doesn't plan. All Might tells him specifically that it's a sign of greatness shown by future "top Heroes" that, in some crisis situation, their bodies moved before they could think. Bakugou's Rising chapter is defined by him reaching that same state.
Deku claimed he wanted to save Shigaraki; he's sad in the latest chapter that he couldn't save Tenko's[3] life. But did he ever have a real plan to do that? With all the quirks he had at his disposal - both his own and those who would be in the flying coffin with him, or classmates whose presence he could specifically request - did he think hard and come up with a technique that would let him stop Shigaraki without harming him? Did he try to connect with the Shigaraki right in front of him by citing to the future?
3: And I have nothing but scorn for Deku's insistence on that name when "Tenko" goes out very pointedly calling himself Shigaraki Tomura.
Well, no. Deku obstinately yelled at the phantasms in Shigaraki's mindscape that he had no plan whatsoever. The only plans we saw him carry out were ones handed to him by the OFA collective that involved "breaking" Shigaraki's psyche; the only plans he came up with himself involved more efficiently breaking Shigaraki's body.
Way back in Chapter 130, Nighteye harshly scolded Deku by saying that his way of thinking was arrogant. He said, "Go after him haphazardly and he'll slip through our fingers. You're not so special as to be able to save who you want, when you want. (...) This world is not so accommodating that you can act the Hero because you feel like it."
It felt like something that Deku should have taken to heart, a lesson to be learned and applied later, but I never much got the feeling that he did. Nothing he did in that moment, in that arc, or anywhere else in the series afterward indicates that he thought Nighteye was right. He just chose not to talk back, and the arc ended with Nighteye dead and no longer around to pose objections to Deku's mode of heroism.
But Nighteye was right. Three hundred chapters later, Shigaraki is dead because Deku could not be arsed to plan for how he could stop Shigaraki without killing him. Because he let Gran Fucking Torino give him the intellectual out that killing someone could be a means of saving them. Because he followed his gut instincts of prioritizing the phantom Crying Child that he always saw as more valid and real than the human being standing in front of him.
Because he haphazardly acted the Hero and let his body move without thinking.
And he wants to act sad about it now? I hope Nighteye materializes in his bedroom to sneer at him every night for the rest of his life.
--
Incidentally, fuck All Might, seriously. "Wow, Deku and Bakugou, you two are the greatest Heroes ever. Fuck me and everyone else who fought tooth and nail, arm and leg, eye and earjack, life and death, to contribute to the pile of damage that was necessary to kill and/or save Shigaraki and All For One. You two got the last blows in, so you're the only ones who get the credit for it in my eyes. Hero Society is definitely going to be different and better with you two around."
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I had a sudden thought and now I'm really annoyed by it, so I'm making it everyone's problem.
Ron. Specifically in fics that want to show him in a negative light, or even just hint at him being careless or whatever. A lot of times I've seen them mention the fact that he almost always only ever gives candy as gifts, and the way that usually gets framed is that he doesn't put any thought into them or whatever.
Guys. He's fucking poor. Has it occurred to anyone in this godsforsaken fandom that maybe he can't afford anything more expensive than a bar of chocolate for his friends? He's also a kid, and like... bro, the fact that he even thought to get anything at all is really impressive to me, as a former kid myself. I never remembered to get anyone anything without my mom basically doing the whole thing for me. (I am still very bad at gifts, but I at least do remember to get them on occasion lol.)
And anyway in canon his gifts get a bit "better" as the years go on and his parents don't have to support Percy, and then the twins in addition to Ron, Ginny, and themselves. But I still see so many fics stick with him just giving chocolate or whatever as gifts even into adulthood and using that as something to point to regarding why he's a bad person. I hate it.
You can dislike Ron as a character. I disagree with you strongly, but like... you're entitled to your opinion, and I will respect that. But at least don't use him to perpetuate classist stereotypes. This has the same energy as the "make coffee at home" argument that gets thrown around. Like the $2 coffee you get every day is going to make or break your budget, and like that coffee isn't sometimes the only thing getting someone out of bed every morning. The fact that Ron doesn't forego little things for himself to scrape and save for a single present for his friend doesn't mean that he's a bad person. It means he's a teenager, and also that he's entitled to his goddamned jelly slugs if they make life a little less shitty and maybe he could do without the judgement, Deborah.
HEY does anyone know about things about how A.I. is affecting the digital advertising market. and i mean like really deep scholarly shit, not âcookiesâ or programmatic advertising by A.I.??? examples??? anything?? im literally hanging on the end of a loose nail here im dying squirtle
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Some of this will be a rephrase/expansion on stuff I said in Part 3 of the fascism essay, particularly the section about how Heroes view the prospect of long-term peace, but itâs all worth saying here as well.
Hit the jump for some roughly ordered thoughts primarily about Ochacoâs counseling program, the romance stuff and how itâs facilitated, some stray character observations, and some Stillness-typical complaining about the handling of Villains.
O It was nice to see Ochacoâs program in more detail than the jaw-droppingly bad handwave it got in 430, but I still think it didnât go anywhere near far enough. To wit, what we see is a nice introduction to a program that could well be effective at finding some people with behavioral, familial, or quirk-based problems, but the depiction is badly lacking an illustration as to what will be done regarding people with problems that canât be helped by a tiny bit of encouragement and support. As itâs with Toga in mind that Ochaco undertook this whole project, it seems fair to ask: How would Toga have fared in it?
If it had been young Toga Himiko in the scene instead of Shy Mining Helmet Boy, Ochaco offering her a little anti-gravity boost would have gone exactly nowhere because no amount of manuevering would have changed Himikoâs basic inability to participate in the activity. It would have clued Ochaco into Himiko having an issue, though, and perhaps that discovery could have led, with further interaction, to uncovering her feelings of repression and, critically, her problems at home. Great! That stuff absolutely needed to be uncovered!
Butâthen what? When Ochacoâs program turns up Himiko, a girl with a problem so severe that no amount of welcoming class play is going to resolve it, whatâs the next step? Recommend counseling for her parents, too? What if theyâre resistant, resentful, or they outright refuse? Do you then remove Himiko from the home? Letâs switch the lens over to a different kid for a second: Shimura Kotarou.  As evinced by his massive unaddressed abandonment issues, the alternative child care system clearly did him no favors! And he didnât have a taboo quirk[1] to add on top of the perception of his being an âunwanted childâ!
So if you havenât improved the state of Japanâs alternative child care systemâand thereâs no specific evidence that anyone has[2]âhave you done much but kicked the consequences down the road a few years or slightly changed the color of the problem at hand? Would Himiko really fare so much better in a group home or orphanage? Would the views of the people in charge be significantly different than those of Himikoâs previous counselor? Or would they just be, as Tomura described his family doing to him, rejecting her kindly instead of cruelly?
1: And âtabooâ is honestly putting it lightly. Shinto beliefs about the spiritual pollution of spilled blood being what they are, Togaâs quirk would actually be profane to a devout adherentâif the reader is familiar with X-Men, think about the kind of nastiness that periodically gets thrown at Nightcrawler by particularly militant Christians.   Thereâs no indication that Togaâs parents are more devout than the average Japanese person, of course, but values embedded in the culture are going to be embedded in the culture all the same.
2: All we have in that direction is Uraraka enthusing that the program has a lot of support and does very thorough work, and noting that Hawks does negotiations with the Ministry of Education and other (non-specific) organizations, which we see him framing as âinvesting in young people.â While this could be indicative of efforts being made somewhere, by someone, to improve the situation for children in alternative care, that read is undercut by Uraraka following up with the note that all this work has done a lot to improve âthe quirk education environment.â  This falls far short of specific evidence for improvements to any given other aspect of child welfare.
While Iâm sure weâre intended to read Ochacoâs program as one that will be meaningfully helpful to children like Togaâand I donât even think that it categorically couldnât be!âwhat we see directly on the page simply does not prove that case. Encouraging a baseline kid with an emitter quirk and age-typical shyness does not prove that The Problem of Toga has been addressed. So what was even the point of showing it to us?
What Himiko really needsâif youâll pardon my MLA Stan coming out here for a bitâis a complete reevaluation of what quirks are and how people can use them. She needs a world thatâs willing to throw out its old ways of thinking, to update its ânotion of normalâ to something that will allow the Toga Himikos of the world to live without suppression. For all the good I'm sure it will do, I donât see Ochacoâs program doing that.
O Itâs so hilariously telling that we got that whole shpiel about updating the Billboard Charts such that non-professional Heroes can be recognized for their efforts, only for the last chapter to give us jack shit on any non-Pro Heroes charting at all. And like, Iâm willing to be generous here: I always assumed that Hawks wasnât talking about adding non-Pros to the charts verbatim, but rather creating a brand-new chart for the recognition of Civilian Heroes. But we donât get anything like that at allâand Deku being a teacher and public speaker gives us a perfect opportunity to indicate such a chartâs existence! But then, maybe he canât count because he does Hero work on the weekends, which leads me to my next point.
O Ochaco and Deku should both have just retired, and Shouto should be on sabbatical.  Seriously, if Horikoshi really had the courage of the convictions he was putting to paper, and if it were really true that the Villain emergence rate was down and Heroes were beginning to have more free time, then Ochaco and Deku should both have decided to prioritize the work they believe is more meaningful and helpful than Professional Heroics, and Shouto should feel free to take some time completely off for his self-exploration. That none of this happens suggests that Horikoshi either didnât believe or didnât trust his audience to accept his idea that there are meaningful ways for these characters to be heroic without them also having to be Heroes.
O Ochaco musing about Toga still existing somewhere inside her, and especially all the junk about the dead bisexual teenager being used to encourage the exhaustingly hetero endgame, really just makes me want to read the actual ghost story where Toga is literally haunting Ochaco.  Toga still loves Ochaco-chan, of course, but her encouragement for Ochaco-chan and Deku to hook up is aimed solely at getting the two of them alone in a quiet, private room. Once that happens, Ochacoâs eyes will go gold and slitted, the walls will start dripping blood, and Deku will find out quite quickly that not everyone is so willing to move on from him murdering Shigaraki Tomura of the League of Villains.
O I miss the Bakugou who was on-course for a big personal growth arc about learning to work in a team. I feel like that Bakugou, alongside having had a way less tiresome endgame battle, might actually have been able to keep some sidekicks without being chiefly concerned about the level of their personal ambitions. I donât give a shit about his (or anyone else save one guyâs) chart position, but itâs exhausting that he had great development into being a proud but capable team player all the way up through the 1-A versus Deku fight, and then all of that gets flushed down the toilet to revert to him getting a badass solo fight against All For One and an epilogue that allows him no work partner options whatsoever outside of the main character.
O The comedy visuals of Dekuâs dumb face being subsumed by Bakugouâs plush backseat make me want to die. Someone please throw this main character away.
O Iâm glad Mina reclaimed at least some aspect of her original Alien Queen aspirations with the âRidley Heroâ thing. Good for her.
O On a worldbuilding note, my attention is caught by Shinsou being described as ânot contendingâ for a chart position, though the kanji can also mean things like âout of contentionâ or âbeyond the sphere of.â I assume itâs just indicating that Shinsou is an underground Hero like his mentor Aizawa, but a) I feel like that runs a bit counter to his goal of proving that he can be a Hero even with a quirk like Brainwash, and b) isnât it a bit sketchy if underground Heroes can just choose to exempt themselves from the most visible, public-facing form of Pro Hero evaluation? Maybe the HPSC charts them for its own records and then removes them from public visibility, of course, or maybe the charts only go down to 200 or so and stop after that, with Shinsou, not seeking for attention, comfortable to be below that cut-off. Not sure, but there are some interesting possibilities there, as well as some concerning ones.
O HOLY GOD, Monomaâs new look. I like it very much. He is also the only person I want to see on the charts at all. Two hundred ranked entries of Monoma's daily work antics. I support him wholly and with only the most loving of faceitiousness.
O Extremely funny to me that all the people I saw on Twitter talking about this chapter confirming KamiJirou had to first ignore Jirou explicitly denying that thereâs anything going on and second be very disingenuous indeed with the panel crop they used to wave around crowing about their ship. I donât have a strong distaste for KamiJirou relative to my distaste for Kaminari himself, but my tolerance for him pretty much starts and ends with KamiJirouMomo as a poly arrangement, so I was pleased to see that left open here.
O If I dislike Togaâs image being used to encourage Ochaco to hook up with Deku (and I dislike it very much, particularly given the loathsome last words Deku spoke to Toga when she was alive, but at least I can see the sense it makes from a thematic and characterization perspective), I have only profanity for how much I hate Shigarakiâs image being used to encourage Deku in confessing to Ochaco. Just take my entire folder full of negative reaction memes. Jesus Christ.
I have said before, and will have more to say in the future, about Dekuâs assorted failures as a protagonist and hero, but him deciding that the kind of adult he wants to be is a Hero high school teacher really is the ultimate indicator of just how little he cared about who Shigaraki was and what he wanted. Ochaco is making a good faith effort to help the Toga Himikos of the future. Deku, meanwhile, is shallowly paddling around in his Hero Worship wading pool, ignoring both the Shimura Tenkos and the Shigaraki Tomuras of the worldâthe people Hero Society outcasts, villainizes, and sweeps under the rug.
Shigarakiâs last behestâthat Deku ensure the things Shigaraki fought to destroy remain destroyedâwas wasted on Deku, who, once he got Spinner and Overhaul off his conscience, clearly could not give less of a shit about helping the people Shigaraki fought for. To see that last behest come back in the context of Deku using it to bolster his goddamn love life is a fucking travesty, and I hope Ochaco dumps him inside of a year if Toga Himikoâs vengeful ghost doesnât get him first.
O DONâT WORRY, GUYS; IâM SURE THE HEROES TOTALLY TRY TO BE MORE COMPASSIONATE AND UNDERSTANDING TOWARDS RANDOM, DOWN-ON-THEIR-LUCK VILLAINS NOW. THINGS ARE SURE TO BE TOTALLY DIFFERâ
Oh. Oh, itâs not different at all, is it?
(Have I mentioned enough times yet how much I really, really dislike the street crime scenes where Our Heroes stand around and chitchat in the middle of a crime scene, having successfully dealt with the big bad villain whose actions they did not even attempt to de-escalate and whom they have immediately forgotten all about?)
O Wow, thanks for letting us know you donât think impulse criminals arenât wicked to the core, Iida. That makes me feel real reassured about how you guys are handling Villains who premeditate! (It does not.)
O Iâve already said I disliked how Togaâs âimageâ is used here, but let me not shortchange the fact that it also sucks because it puts the last nail in the coffin of Uraraka having any agency over sharing her own feelings. She has a lengthy arc about how she isâlike Toga in the pastârepressing her feelings for the one she loves; she gets through to Toga by frankly admitting to those feelings, as well as all the other things she was sitting on about Toga herself. And then in the aftermath, she goes right back to repressing her feelings, now ones of paralyzing grief over Togaâs death. Deku witnesses those feelings not because she chooses to share them with him, but because he tracks her down mid-cry. And now we find out for sure what Chapter 430 left unclear: that in eight years, Ochaco hasnât said a word about her once-again repressed feelings for him. Instead, just as she did when she was a teenager, sheâs doubled down on putting those feelings away in the name of what she âshouldâ be doing.
And here? Does she finally take control of her own life, her own feelings, her own expression? No. At least, not until after Deku has been the one to confess first and Vision!Toga psychically shoves her forward to close the gap. The only thing left for Ochaco to do, the only assertiveness asked of her, is to accept or rebuff Dekuâs overture. Good god, youâd think she was Eri, a helpless waif wrestling with indoctrination about how much sheâs not allowed to want anything for her own sake, whose turning point in the narrative is finding the strength to reach back for the hand being extended towards her.
Coming from a long-term abuse victim, thatâs a perfectly worthy character arc, even a deeply moving show of strength, but itâs wildly pathetic for BNHAâs most prominent female hero, the gal whose character arc was founded entirely on balancing her desire to help others with pursuing her own happiness. Good lord, did Shonen Jump tell Horikoshi that boys donât like it when girls are too forward or what?
This is posted as a stand-alone because lord knows I spent long enough on it, but it's in response to this ask:
This got lengthy, and it could be lengthier stillâit's very easy to imagine doing a full-series breakdown on this like the heteromorphobia one I'm still slowly plugging away atâbut the TLDR is that I think Horikoshi's women are perfectly acceptable as people, but become much more problematic when you start looking at them as characters.
Hit the jump.
BNHA's Women As People
As peopleâcharacters who act in ways reminiscent of real-life humansâHoriâs women are relatively solid, especially the 1-A students. They have varied personalities and body types,(1) loads of different interests and styles, and outside of the unified front against Mineta, theyâre never really treated like a monolith. That is, no one (as best I can recall) makes big summary statements of Girls Like X or Girls Canât Y that go uncontested by the narrative like youâd see in truly, openly sexist works.(2)
The worst I can say about the Class A girls' characterization is that they're all too nice, but I would contend that that's true of most of the students, which is why I don't care much about Class A: With the exception of Bakugou, they're all too nice, and it leaves them undernourished, dramatically speaking. But the girls at least aren't blandly nice; they do all have distinct personalities beyond, "Pretty and sweet."(3)
They also have trackable, unique relationships. Consider, for example, the difference between Urarakaâs relationships with Tsuyu and Mina, and how different either is from Momo and Jirouâs friendship! Further, theyâre allowed to be friends with boys without it having to be romantic. Yeah, thereâs Urarakaâs whole thing with Deku, and thatâs a chore, but Kaminari and Jirou, or Kirishima and Mina, wherever they may wind up later in life, really are just friends right nowâthereâs no blushing or stammering or awkwardness going on between those pairs at all.
The Class A girls arenât defined by their proximity to the nearest maleâand that much, at least, is also true of the Pro Hero women like Mount Lady and Mirko. Hell, even someone like Nanaâonly in the story because of her relationship with/to menâis actually so important to so many men that Iâd contend that she crosses out the other side and winds up in territory that is far more often populated by male heroes and mentors, people who might be dead but who mattered to a bunch of really important living characters.
Nana may be a Dead Mom, but sheâs not a saintly photo on the mantelpiece, taken down to be remembered fondly by her widower. Sheâs All Mightâs beloved mentor, yes, but sheâs also the reason Kotarou was such a mess, which is in turn a huge part of Shigarakiâs damage. Sheâs the reason Gran Torino is involved in the plot at all. Even AFO seems to be able to make room to be especially vindictive about her compared to the way he talks about most or even any of the other bearers.
All that, and she even still gets to be âaliveâ inside One For All so we get to hear her opinions on things now and again!
Things are spottier with the lady villainsâmostly because there are so few of them, and even fewer who walk out the other end of their arcsâbut even there, I think thereâs room for nuanced reads.
Magneâs motivations, such as we ever got of them, were all about being able to live freely.
Curious may have had that flashback to her blushing in front of Re-Destro, but the takeaway from it is how something he said inspired her to mature as a writer, not her being in looooove with him(4)âindeed, Geten is much more directly motivated by RDâs approval, and both Trumpet and Skeptic pivot entirely into being driven by fear for RDâs life the instant they think it might be in danger. Even now, every single one of Skepticâs appearances from the cave onward sees him namedropping Re-Destro somewhere. So even if RD is Curiousâs Most Important Person, that just puts her in good company with the rest of her peers.
Meanwhile, Lady Nagant is no more âdefined by a manâ than Hawks is âdefined by a womanâ because of the genders of their respective HPSC Presidents. The easy way out with Nagant would have been to have Bitty Keigo play some role in her turnâindeed, loads of people expected exactly that as soon as the audience realized who and what she was. But her President being a man is immaterial; the real entity that victimized Nagant is the HPSC as a governing body; its President was simply the face of that body, exactly the way President Pearls was to Hawks a generation later. Likewise, her turn isnât because of her feelings about Some Guy, itâs because of her own awareness of the discordance between the façade and the reality of Hero Society.
Until either of the remaining PLF advisor women get anything to say, that brings us to Toga and La Brava. And okay, yes, La Brava is motivated entirely by a dude; there's no getting around that. On the other hand, I canât help but compare her backstory to Spinnerâs. Both of them suffered judgment and ostracization because of their quirks, both were hikikomori, and both had their lives changed because of a man they saw in a video who showed them a new world. Hell, Spinner had his life changed because of a man showing him a new world twice.
La Brava calls her feelings love, while Spinner calls his devotion, but itâs the same story, just wearing a different costume. At the very least, then, you canât say that that plot is one Hori only gives women. Rather, I think it just ties into the broader theme of how the public consumes people they see on TV, for better or for worse. You could tie that to a lot of stuff in the series, including Dekuâs own heroic aspirations as embodied by that iconic video of All Might he saw as a kid, Canât-Ya-See-kun's fannish opinions about Endeavorâs heroic persona and his later attempts to reject Dabiâs video, the refugee civilians having to wrestle with the reality of heroes as opposed to watching them from the couch, and so on.
Meanwhile, Toga is so fascinating because, yes, her concerns and interests are stereotypically feminineâher appearance (both in the sense of cosmetic things like A-line coats but also her transformation quirk), cute things, talking about boys, relationships in general, her prioritization of her own inner landscape as opposed to big worldly ambitions.
On the other hand, Horikoshi really commits with Toga. Sheâs stereotypical in some waysâthe predatory bisexual being a big glaring oneâbut she is in no way a shallow stereotype. The reader canât just write her off as being a collection of tired tropes because of the degree to which the story insists on her being specific and deserving of attention. Sheâs not Like That because, for example, thatâs what Horikoshi thinks of all bisexuals. Sheâs Like That because of an array of factors in her nature and nurture, her societal conditioning, her lived experience, othersâ reactions to her, and so on. Bisexuality is really only the tiniest fraction of who Toga Himiko is. Thatâs my feeling, at least.
(As an aside to Anon's suggestion about Toga being polyamorous, while that is clearly the case in the sense that she freely falls in love with multiple people, rather than having monogamous affections, her being interested in poly relationships is much more in the air. As she is now, her idea of fulfilling love lies in becoming the object of her affections, not being with them. I feel like if she could find someone into bloodplay, sheâd do just fine with that without having to get to the point of murder, but as it is, it doesnât seem she or anyone sheâs met has considered that an option. That being the case, we donât know if sheâd be willing to limit herself to taking only safe and consensually given amounts of blood, or if her desire to become the people she loves can only be satisfied by murdering the other party. If the latter, it rather takes romantic relationships off the table entirely!)
To sum up: As people, Horikoshiâs women are generally just fine. He was a wide variety of them and they all manage to stay pretty distinct! There are some that look more stereotypical than others, but even those still tie in well with the storyâs overarching concerns or feel like sincere explorations of the stereotypes they represent.
Horikoshiâs problems with his female characters come in, to me, much more when you start looking at them as characters, instead of as people.
BNHA's Women As Characters
Consider the female characters in BNHA. Do their stories contribute in a major way to the narrative as a whole, or are they just side color? How much focus do they get? Are they granted comparable interiority as their male counterparts?
Given the storyâs nature as a shounen battle comic, how many big wins do women get compared to the dudes, and are they fighting those battles against equally dangerous opponents? Do the women always and only fight other women? Do they only ever beat other women, but lose to men? How much would be lost or radically changed if they were removed from the story?
Mount Ladyâs a fantastic example of the characterization/attention dichotomy. Iâm inclined to agree with Anon that sheâs probably Horiâs best lady-type Pro Hero, allowed to have real flaws, enough backstory to get an idea of where sheâs coming from, and a startlingly clear character arc. However, unlike e.g. Endeavor, whose arc is taking place entirely in the foreground, given lavish amounts of time and attention, Mount Ladyâs is all background. We donât know what her crux point was in realizing that she needed to get her priorities in order, if she indeed ever had one. Itâs possible sheâs simply matured over the course of the story without ever quite clicking into Endeavorâs mode of self-reflection.
People like Ryukyu fall even farther behind. Sheâs been heavily involved in the climaxes of two major story arcsâthe Shie Hassaikai arc and the War arcâyet we donât know the first thing about her away from the job. Same with Mirko: She gets that huge blowout against the Near High Ends, but as far as what she wants, why she became a hero, what she thinks about this huge collapse sheâs witnessing? Total blank slate.
And sure, thatâs true of plenty of male heroes tooâlook at all Mount Ladyâs teammates, for exampleâbut we donât have any female heroes equivalent to Endeavor, Hawks, or even Best Jeanist, the latter of whom has gotten ample room to espouse his ideals and a variety of his beliefs about heroes, even as we donât know anything about his personal life.
I think Momoâs the clearest example of this issue on the student side. Virtually all of her development is narrated by other characters, mostly male ones, rather than the reader getting to see Momoâs own thoughts directly the way we do with buckets of male characters.
Momo contributed the tracker that got Deku and company to Kamino, but was given no contributions to the action of retrieving Bakugou. Sheâs ultimately the one who organized the students into dosing Gigantomachia,(5) which did eventually take effect some chapters later, but in the moment it happened, it looked like a failure, so instead of it being a big triumph for her, we had to see her and the rest on their knees in what seemed like a moment of total defeat.
Momo lost two mentors in the warâMidnight and Majestic. What does she think about that? Who knows? Weâre just not privy to it. Momo spent her entire arc learning how to be more decisive and better at overseeing resources. Where is she now? Popping out industrial goods for a girl who doesnât even know her name.
Meanwhile, we have things like the ludicrous disparity between Gran Torino, a shrunken geezer in his 70s getting punched through the chest by the final boss and surviving, and Midnight, a young and healthy 32-year-old getting merely jumped by a third-string PLF guy who hasnât even gotten a name yet and then dying off-panel. Donât get me wrong; I love Hose Face, and I donât even mind that Midnight died as such. I mind that it was so ignominious compared to the fates of all the similarly important male heroes who took part in that battle.
Star & Stripe? She is alleged to be the strongest woman in the world, yet her arc could be removed from the story with zero consequences whatsoever. Everything she brings to the story is new for her arc; she doesn't resolve or remove anything save that which was introduced in her own set of chapters.(6) Her accomplishments are arbitrarily defined, and could be equally arbitrarily redefined without her.
Thatâs just a few examples of story structure issues, which is where my main concern lies, but you could certainly look at surface stuff, too.Â
Consider: Does the way women in the story dress match their personality? In movement and at rest, does their body language match who they are as people? How does the âcameraâ view them? Are they introduced as people or as collections of attractive body parts? Are they allowed the same range of expressiveness men are, or are they more limited because their anger or pain still has to be attractive to the presumed audience and/or the artist?
Some of this Hori does okay withâMirkoâs doing some fantastic angry glowering this week, and Toga can absolutely tip over into horror manga expressions sometimes, ones that are very clearly not intended to be sexy or cute. But he does sometimes let his women down on this front, tooâspeaking of Mirko in this weekâs chapter, WOW, that sure is a boob hanging right there front and center at eye level, when it would have been so easy to just have ShigAFOâs hand-o-rama wrapped more fully around Mirko's torso.
Toga is a bit more complicated to me, in that, taking it at face value, I actually donât really mind her frequent goopy unclothedness. Her posing in those scenes stays pretty true to her personality and the situations at hand, and she's drawn with what seem to be to be decently realistic curves and weightiness. Rather, the issue with Toga's nudity goes to another frequent problem with the way the women in the series get treated, and thatâs the inconsistency between how men and women's quirks interact with clothes.
The go-to contrast here is Mirio and Hagakure. Neither of them can affect clothes with their quirk, but for some reason, Mirio can get a costume made out of his own hair and thus stay respectably clad during all his fights. Hagakure, by contrast, is noted more than once as fighting completely nude save for her glovesâwhy doesnât she get the haircloth fix? If thereâs an answer to this, itâs arbitrary.
Togaâs quirk would seem to be based in DNA, in that she requires blood to use it, but DNA certainly wouldnât explain her ability to shapeshift clothes. Itâs easier for the story if she can shapeshift clothesâitâd be a lot harder for her to impersonate specific costumed heroes if she didnât have ready access to their costumes!âbut it doesnât make much sense as a blood-based ability. Taking it a step further, if she can shapeshift clothes because Magic Wand That Says She Can, why canât she just change the shape of her own clothes? If her goop can change her body, why canât it change her clothes? Because Magic Wand Says Then She Couldnât Be Nakey When She Changes Back, thatâs why.
For a contrast to Toga, consider the Hassaikaiâs Mimic, whose power is to merge himself into objects, including ones much, much smaller than he is. Yet somehow he doesnât have to strip before he merges or lose his clothes to the ether when he exits.
Midnight and Momo both have quirks that emit material from their skin, nominally justifying why their costumes are Like That. Okay, sure, but where are the equivalent male heroes who just have to wear skimpy or easily shredded costumes for reasons of quirk utility? Wash and Bubble Girl both emit bubbles from their bodies, but for some reason the dude wears a cartoony washing machine costume,(7) while the woman is saddled with an underboob-exposing crop top.Â
Suneaterâs another easy referent; he transforms parts of his body into much larger animal parts, yet he still manages to have a costume that covers up everything except his feet. Even his arms are covered, when his arms are his most frequently transformed limb! He might have a bare spot on his back for his wings, but if so, the reader never gets to see it because Suneater wears an enormous hooded cape that covers that area right up.
It makes sense that Mirko would prefer to leave her legs bare, given her all-kicking fighting styleâbut Deku switches to a kicking style and just gets heavier, reinforced shoes. (To say nothing of All Might and other punchy heroes still having full sleeves, when you'd think the same reasoning would apply as does with Mirko's bare legs.)
Eriâs power only works on âpeopleââexcept that it totally works on clothes, too, otherwise weâd have to see a dude naked when her power separates Overhaul and Nemoto.
And so on and so forth. I donât hold any of these individual examples against Horikoshi (except maybe Momo, who runs afoul of the âdoes this costume match this personalityâ critique pretty hard), but it really does become a bigger problem in the aggregate.
BNHA's Women In the Aggregate
And thatâs kind of how I feel about a lot of it. I think Hori means wellâyou are never going to catch me out there yelling about how Horikoshi is just slobbering all over himself to brutalize his female charactersâand he legit is doing better than a lot of other manga Iâve read. But then, Iâve read a lot of manga, you know? âBetter at feminism than manga that say straight to the readerâs face that women will never understand a manâs desire to win,â is not a high bar.(8)
Regardless of Horiâs good intentions, though, I think Shounen Jump is not an environment that is challenging him to think more critically about his women, nor one that is pushing him to include them more or give them better material. He could absolutely do better, though, and yeah, Iâm as tired as everyone else of new female characters who show up for a handful of chapters and then get obliterated by a villain or put on a bus to imprisonment and obscurity by the hero who defeats them.
If nothing else, Iâve got to hand that to Mirko. Down two limbs and that rabbit is still going strong, and not for one single second is there a suggestion that prosthetic limbs are going to slow her down or force her into retirement.
Thanks for the question, Anon, and sorry for taking so long with the reply!
---FOOTNOTES---
1: Not a huge variety, and the adult women have less than the high school cast, but Iâve read plenty of manga across all demographics that are far worse at having female characters you could distinguish by bald silhouette.
2:Â For some really clear examples, see e.g. everything the Death Note guy has ever written.
3: I might make an exception for poor Hagakure, who never had a chance to establish a personality because she needed to stay a viable candidate for the Traitor Plot. Definitely the most Generically Peppy of the girls, but at the very least she's balanced out some by male students like Ojiro, Sato and Koda in never getting enough attention to transcend their characterization shorthand.
4:Â And speaking as a writer, let me tell you, a critique like the one Rikiya offers in that flashback is absolutely the kind of thing that would leave me red in the face, but definitely not because I was internally swooning.
5: And even that isn't entirely her moment, given that it stems from her being ordered to do it by Midnight and ends with Kirishima getting the final move, a move he gets at Mina's expense.
6: Wow, a Reflect quirk! Neat! Wonder why that hasn't come up anywhere before? Regardless of the three sentence back-and-forth I could get into on that subject, Reflect is the only named quirk New Order destroys, and it was nowhere to be seen at either Kamino or Jakku.
7: Assuming, of course, that Wash isnât a washing machine heteromorph. Juryâs still out on this.
8: See again a lot of Ohba's work, but the same sentiment is why I ragequit Megalobox in the first episode. Likewise, I will love Eyeshield 21 until my dying days, but I super could have done without that late-series swing at, "Mamori will never understand Sena's Man Feelings about Sports because she is A Girl."