I wouldn’t say I’m a person who’s particularly capable of insane and correct deep level thinking, and on top of that I’m INCREDIBLY EASY to impress. For me it’s like:

You know how Earth needed to be at the exact distance it is from the sun and have the perfect atmosphere to create life? Katsuki’s story is much like that.

If anyone else but Deku had been telling the story, if Deku hadn’t been as persistent, strong willed, and caring as he is, and if everything that happened to Katsuki didn’t happen in the exact order and manner it did, he wouldn’t have been as great as he is now. And while that’s simple enough to say, it’s truly such a beautiful thing to bear witness to.

We’re 300 chapters and nearly 6 years into MHA and we’ve seen.

Katsuki go from refusing to work with others to becoming a great team leader.

His focus has always been on one thing: victory. In almost every situation, he’s had his eye on the win. It wasn’t always the case when Deku was involved, because Deku was so different from him in a way that made him feel threatened. And it’s something that has most likely been on his mind for a long time.

He’s become more comfortable with his vision since his fight with Deku, and it was probably liberating in an emotional sense too. His fight with Deku didn’t just realign and solidify his own views on life, but made him more accepting of himself and absolved him of some of his heaviest insecurities.

Katsuki letting go of his superiority complex to better himself.

In the days leading up to his fight with Deku, he was also fighting an internal battle for “being the reason behind All Might’s end.”

I wouldn’t argue that he was feeling guilty. While it was surely part of it, it shouldn’t be minimized to only guilt. The expressions on his face throughout the fight were incredible, he was angry, frustrated, confused, scared, quite clearly as he claimed, he just didn’t know what the hell he should do, so he fought.

By the time he interned at Endeavor’s agency, he was already well aware that he had faults, which is a huge step for him, and he was beginning the process of pinpointing those faults.

His unwillingness to work with Deku dissolves

After reaching a certain point in the manga, it’s become hard for me to imagine a time when Katsuki full on rejected Deku. In the first few volumes Katsuki got worse before he got better. He was in a comfortable position bullying Deku in middle school, but when he started to experience failure, when he witnessed Deku becoming stronger at a faster rate than him, he couldn’t even enjoy the fact that he was going to school where his favorite role model was teaching.

Now, after everything, Katsuki was opening up to Deku. They started training together to help Deku gain control of OFA. And not just that, Katsuki was invested in the long term. While he shared the secret of OFA with Deku long before anyone else found out about it, he later started to shoulder some of the weight too, and he was good at it.

He called small might out for keeping secrets from Deku, claiming Deku trusted him with his life, but he wasn’t as easily convinced, pointing out a detail in the descriptions of the past users that might’ve gone over Deku’s head. He’s always been brilliant, but now he’s using that brilliance to actively try to become involved with Deku’s burden.

He’s changed in obvious ways, but in subtle ones too.

After so much time, this panel is still really hard to look at. If you’ve ever suffered at the hands of bullies, you probably feel like there’s little satisfaction in their story even though so much has changed between them, there’s still a long way to go, there’s still a huge piece missing. Deku is way too forgiving, I don’t think he ever held anything against Katsuki for the way he treated him in the past. Katsuki is still hard with words, since the last time he bullied Deku, he has never said anything he doesn’t mean.

Katsuki has never been the type to lie. He doesn’t beat around the bush, he doesn’t pretend to be somebody he’s not, and while that part of him hasn’t changed, the way in which he delivers has. His heart has changed, and while I don’t recall a moment where he hasn’t been able to live up to his big claims, his confidence has changed from being used to mask his insecurity, to a healthier confidence that can lead, support, protect, and save.

To think that this moment is the moment that solidified Katsuki’s path to greatness, the fact that his capabilities and brilliance have always made his future bright, he’s gone above and beyond his own expectations of the world and how it works. In the world of scientific journals, there is always a gap in the knowledge of the scientific community, a gap in the understanding of how the world works. When you find that gap, something incredible happens.

He let go of the past. Katsuki, who envisioned a life where he made it big because he knew he could. Katsuki, who was always self driven. Katsuki, who loves the taste of victory. Katsuki, who categorized the world and people around him in terms of power. Katsuki, who believed only the powerful could become strong.

Deku was the one thing in his life that didn’t fit in his picture of the world. To him, his understanding of how the world worked was defined by the strong, the weak, the good and the bad. He couldn’t understand how empathy and vulnerability could make someone strong.