#meta:todoroki

1) Trying to deny Endeavor

Before his quirk manifested, Shouto still had a support system of sorts in place. He lived a (mostly) normal life. He watched heroes on tv and dreamed of becoming one himself, much like the rest of the kids his age. He was able to express his emotions freely, and he didn’t even think of suppressing them. His mother took care of him, loved him and supported his dream. 

All of that changed abruptly once Enji decided his quirk was fit for training. Suddenly, Shouto is thrown in a world of violence: he realizes that bad heroes exist. That his father is one of them, because he lashes out at his mother when she tries to defend him. He is told over and over that he needs to be his father’s heir, but if his father is such a violent and horrible person, doesn’t that mean that Enji is trying to make Shouto become a bad hero, too? Shouto refuses this notion, and latches onto his mother for emotional support, because his mother represents stability and kindness where his father is chaos and violence. He decides he doesn’t want to be the kind of hero who hurts innocent people. 

Then the kettle incident happens, and Shouto is cut off from his last stable, healthy connection. He’s isolated, lost, hurt. He’s also too young to have developed the emotional tools to process such complex feelings in any healthy way, or to understand fully his situation. All that Shouto, a five year old, can retain from that incident is that his father is a terrible person, and as such, Shouto needs to be the opposite of everything Enji stands for. 

But what can Shouto do, realistically? Enji is the patriarch, and within the constraints of their house, his authority is absolute. This is where the concept of agency comes into play. 

Agency is defined as a character’s freedom and capacity to live and act in a defined world (e.g. the ability to make choices, act freely, control their lives). Shouto’s agency is limited by Enji’s despotism. He cannot rebel against the training, and he cannot choose a different career, because his father forces both onto him (the latter less so because Shouto wanted to become a hero, but becoming one wasn’t really his choice). Agency is also defined by how a character decides to act when their predicament doesn’t allow much room to wiggle. Shouto decides to be reactive. The only thing Shouto has full control over is his quirk. So he decides to suppress half of it, and to rebel against his father’s authority by rejecting him as a role model. 

He blames Enji for what happened, and represses the parts of himself he deems to be the product of Enji’s influence. That’s a very human and realistic response to abuse, by the way. He is a child, and he literally has no other way to oppose his father’s dominance. 

In an attempt to deny Enji’s grooming though, Shouto ends up suppressing a part of his identity as well. 

Repression is a key concept of psychoanalysis, where it is understood as a defence mechanism that “ensures that what is unacceptable to the conscious mind, and would if recalled arouse anxiety, is prevented from entering into it.” 

Shouto does not simply reject his fire side - which is still a part of himself - but he also subconsciously represses the memories of his mother associated with it. 

He forgets Rei’s lesson: that he shouldn’t be bound by blood, and that he will be a good hero, as long as he remembers what kind of man he wants to be. That’s likely a result of trauma as well. The last thing his mother saw before she had a breakdown was Shouto’s fire side. And while Shouto outwardly blames his father for the worsening of her health, part of him also subconsciously blames himself.

So the problem with resorting to repression as a coping method is that it alienates part of Shouto’s own identity. Shouto doesn’t perceive his body as his own, but as a mere receptacle: of his father’s ambitions, of his mother’s fears. He is not Shouto, he is the sum of his parents’ quirks. 

This mindset is, once again, the result of his father’s abuse. As I explained before, Shouto is acutely aware that he was born for a reason. He knows that his father arranged the marriage and then “trained” him in order to achieve a specific goal. Enji himself diminishes Shouto’s personhood on a constant basis, by reminding him that he cannot have a free will, and by referring to him as livestock. 

in order to be a good hero, and thus use his body to its full capacity, then, Shouto thinks he needs to let go of his father’s shadow first and then to set his mother free; he thinks it’s partly his responsibility to do the latter, despite the fact that he literally did nothing wrong, and that the circumstances of her worsening health were entirely out of a five year old’s control. 

He thinks he needs to make up to her for his existence, for being born, despite having had no say in his parents’ decision to procreate. Self-blame is also a really common reaction to emotional abuse, but in Shouto’s case it also goes beyond that. Shouto’s self-perception is inextricably tied to his father’s image. 

Everything Shouto does, he does in an effort to prove his own personhood in opposition to his dad’s, but he fails, because he doesn’t have the emotional tools to process it in a healthy way. 

There’s a point that can be made here about how hero society exacerbated this feeling of being unable to get out of his father’s shadow, too. For the public, he’s Endeavor’s son. Every single one of his accomplishments is praised as a result of Enji’s parenting. I wrote a separate meta on how hero society is hopelessly oblivious about the darkness lurking behind Enji’s training. But, for the sake of this meta, suffices to say that all the constant shallow comparisons to his dad weren’t helpful at all for Shouto’s self-perception. They only made his wish to prove he’s different stronger. More extreme. More desperate. 

His fire side then becomes just a physical manifestation of everything Shouto has sworn to himself never to become. When he accidentally summons his flames against Midoriya at the sport festival, he thinks he failed at this; so he pulls Midoriya aside, and tries to explain himself. 

Since he once again cannot fully perceive himself as something separate from his father, to explain why he never meant to use his fire, he needs to overshare about his past. He needs to say: this is what my father has done in order to reach the top; I will not do the same because I’m different. He stopped at nothing. I have still a moral code. 

In other words: he’s apologizing for using a part of his own power in order to reach his goal, even if he used it on instinct; but if his mind and body didn’t align, it’s because his is a conscious effort to repress part of himself. It’s not natural, because he’s not supposed to suppress part of his dna, part of what makes him Shouto. But the struggle around which Shouto’s character is based is that he can’t think of his fire side as his own, because he subconsciously superimposes Enji onto half of his identity. He alienates himself from his own body, and thus from complete ownership of it. 

The symbolism is clear. Shouto wishes to hide away the part of himself he considers ugly. He covers it up, because he doesn’t want it to be seen, but it’s still there, because it’s part of his identity. 

This is why repressing it is not going to work. Shouto spends most of his time trying to outrun the expectations that choke him. Trying to become someone else. He largely fails at this, because 1) he can’t ignore that quirks are just another body function, and thus he can’t outrun himself, and 2) he’s still held back by the circumstances that caused his trauma in the first place: his father is still a hero, and he’s still a large influence in Shouto’s life. 

The latter point deserves to be expanded on further. There are a number of learned behaviors that Shouto unknowingly acquired from his dad, and a lot of other ways in which Enji’s shitty parenting stunted his growth.

Broadly speaking, a learned behaviour is a skill or an action that is acquired through routine interactions with others, by observing their behaviour and subconsciously or deliberately mimicking it, or by developing reactive behavioural patterns in response to it. 

Individualism

Early on in the series, Shouto used to be aloof, distant and overly self-reliant. It’s not a coincidence that the very first arc shows him facing a bunch of villains on his own, and come out of it unscathed. That was both a way to introduce early on Shouto’s coldly analytical, creepily efficient fighting abilities (unnatural skills for a normal 14yo, signs that Shouto wasn’t allowed to have a childhood), as well as a visual way of showing his lone-wolfish attitude. 

This is not just a quirky thing he grew past, though. Not even after Midoriya quite literally smashed through his defenses. It’s shown to be an ingrained character flaw Shouto has to actively work to smooth out. 

When he’s paired up with Momo against Aizawa, he doesn’t spare a second to consider her own contribution to their team’s strategy, despite noticing that she had something to say. 

During the licence exam, he ditches his classmates early on because he considers them an hindrance; they would just get caught in the radius of his ice. He doesn’t think for a second that they might be an asset. 

Before entering U.A., he was so focused on his end goal of getting the best results that he didn’t even look at Inasa long enough to retain any memory of him. Worse yet, he completely brushed him off by subconsciously emulating his own father’s cold attitude. In much the same way as Enji is dismissive and rude with others because he can’t see past his nose, Shouto too ends up making a rival out of Inasa without even noticing or caring.

Later on, when he meets Inasa again and doesn’t even recognize him at first, he’s forced to concede the point that he hadn’t even been looking him in the face; Inasa hadn’t even fallen on his radar. 

His excessive self-reliance is a result of Enji’s training. It’s reflected in Dabi’s behaviour as well. Both of them are slow to open up to their comrades, and both have been remarked to be the types to act on their own multiple times. This behavior is reflective of Enji’s mindset. 

Shouto has been trained to take charge and not rely on others. Even when he’s paired up, he tends to take on leadership positions (cavalry battle, the aforementioned Momo scene) with people gravitating around him less because he’s actually a good leader, and more because he projects an aura of someone who knows what he’s doing. 

His aloofness, his excessive self-reliance, his tendency to brush off others, his assumption that he should be on the frontlines… those are all things he internalized because of his father’s own mindset. 

Socializing problems

Another way in which Enji negatively influenced Shouto’s growth is on the interpersonal relationship front. Shouto struggles to understand others and to bond with them. At the beginning this was made particularly obvious, but he does show traits of it still. 

Early on in the series, Shouto was too tangled into his own issues to relate to others well. Shouto himself acknowledges this. His hatred for his dad made everything else disappear, and sort of gave Shouto tunnel vision. 

His lone wolfish attitude that results in the war declaration towards Midoriya is also a learned behaviour from his dad. His father taught him not to rely on others and to consider them all rivals on his way to the top. And at first, Shouto did. Enji’s bad influence is made painfully clear by the fact that Shouto only elected Deku as a rival as soon as he perceived a fraction of All Might’s power in him. 

Shouto’s true personality, though, is far from that cold and detached shell that was born out of a need to protect himself, though. 

Shouto is a genuinely caring person. He’s not bright on the social front, but he does pick up on a lot of things that most others miss, if it’s something he can relate to. For example, he picked up on Tenya’s mounting hatred for Stain, and how it could’ve made him lash out violently if left unchecked, when everyone else only noticed something off in his behaviour. 

Shouto is essentially a person who is strongly motivated by his emotions. He’s probably one of the most emotional characters of the series, together with Shigaraki; but just like Shig, he isn’t fully in touch with his feelings. 

Shouto feels really strongly about a lot of things. Even his cold and aloof persona is a result of this. It’s not that he was actually distant and uncaring and then did a sharp 180° turn and became the mom friend of the dekusquad. Since he never had any emotional stability, since he was denied a healthy way to vent out his negative feelings, or friends and connections to shoulder them with, Shouto’s emotions began to… burst out of him wildly at times, without him knowing how to rein them in. 

You could say that he represses and represses until the dam bursts. His cold and aloof persona was just him being unable to see past the overwhelming anger he felt towards his dad. But once Midoriya breaks through his walls and triggers the re-examination of Shouto’s motives, he starts warming up to his classmates. He keeps a close eye on Iida when he thinks he might do something stupid; he starts bantering with Bakugou; he hangs out with everyone for the dorm king competition despite feeling sleepy; he backs up Mina’s proposal for the culture festival and suggests a solution that will make every party happy. 

The manga details Shouto’s growth as both a process of relearning himself, and of learning how to connect with others. He attempts the latter a lot, but in doing so he often encounters the struggle of not really knowing how to relate to people or form meaningful relationships. 

It was easier for him to reach out to Iida because he saw his own past self in him; so he knew what kind of words were most likely to get to Iida while his mind was clouded by anger and despair. With Deku, it was less his choice to become friends, and more of a given: Deku basically planted himself in Shouto’s close circle, and refused to leave. Plus his connection with Deku was also sealed by the fact that Deku unknowingly repeated Rei’s words to him. 

So. Connection through shared understanding is something Shouto can do. But connecting in general, and processing social situations, don’t seem to come easy to him.

Times and times again, Shouto is shown not to be able to pick up social and situational cues. He takes a lot of things literally, missing out on the intended meanings. I see a lot of people calling him stupid or dorky or even sassy because of the things he says in those panels, but honestly, intelligence doesn’t strike me as a relevant factor. He’s actually a pretty smart child, and not just bright on the academic front (he’s top of his class); he also shows the ability to think on his feet, and under the right circumstances, he picks up on people’s most negative moods. 

I wouldn’t say he’s particularly observant, because he does show several signs of being oblivious and kinda in his own bubble. But he’s certainly attentive. He can’t read people well, because he struggles to understand and relate to them, but he does spend a lot of time trying to.

His struggle to pick up situational cues and his interpersonal relationship problems seem then to be the result of the isolation he faced as a child; sometimes children have a hard time picking up social behaviours when they aren’t socialized from a young age. 

Shouto wasn’t socialized like a normal child. He was cut off from his mother and his siblings pretty early on, and encouraged to keep all his feelings inside to avoid encountering his father’s ire. His own relationship with his siblings is stunted. 

He appears surprised when Natsuo first fights their dad to defend him; he’s still confused when Fuyumi laments that they cannot be a normal family. 

I think that Shouto basically doesn’t know how to reach out to people, and his process of learning is akin to that of a child approaching social situations for the first time. His evolving dynamic with Bakugou proves this point. Thanks to the remedial lessons, he spent time with Bakugou, got to know him better, and assumed they were friends as a result. I think he was being completely genuine when he declared that. No teasing, no sassing involved. 

You can see how abstract and theoretical his thinking is. It feels like he’s quoting off a rule book. “Friends spend time together”. Bakugou, understandably, notes that (“forced”, from his perspective) proximity alone is not a good way to judge the emotional closeness of two individuals. But Shouto didn’t take that into account. His is a coldly analytical - if surface-level - assessment: Bakugou and I spent a lot of time together lately + spending time together is what friends do + Bakugou banters and roughhouses a lot with people he considers friends (Kirishima and Kaminari for example) + Deku now trusts him = Bakugou and I are friends. 

Personally, I think there’s merit in headcanoning him as falling somewhere on the autism spectrum, because a lot of his actions can be read that way. The aforementioned difficulty at figuring out bonds and social relations, his struggle at picking up situational cues, and even his special interest in / obsession with soba. But that might just be me. 

Point is, Shouto struggles at relating to people and at forming meaningful relationships, and this might or might not be related to his trauma as well. 

Shouto is stubborn and impolite

I already touched on this but to make it more clear… Once Shouto makes up his mind, you literally cannot sway him at all. He stuck to his vendetta for years, despite how hard it must’ve been to talk back to his father. He was ready to throw hands with the chief of police over a divergence in ideals. He got into an argument with Iida because he refused to learn from his near-death experience in Hosu, and decided to embark into another one. He visited his mom against his family’s protests. He tried to out-stubborn Bakugou several times during training camp, when Bakugou refused to be cooperative. 

So, one of Shouto’s character traits, and a learned behavior from his dad, is that he’s super stubborn. He doesn’t let anyone boss him around, not even his teachers, not even the law. 

Then there’s the impoliteness factor. For one, Shouto never uses honorifics. This can be sometimes indicative of closeness between two friends. In Shouto’s case, it’s more to show that he’s rude. In Japan, not using honorifics when referring to your seniors and to your teachers in particular is considered pretty impolite. 

This probably also refers to that time he talked back to Tsuragamae. He wasn’t just aggressive in both his tone and his body language, but he also used an anti-heteromorph slur. 

That’s something Dabi has done before as well. Several other meta writers have commented on this parallel, and it’s really likely that both Shouto and Dabi are rude as a result of Enji’s own severe conservatism and brashness. 

Mistrust of authority & of lawfulness

I think we have established that Shouto isn’t submissive, and that he’s not afraid of speaking up. He talked back to his abusive father since the tender age of five after all. But it goes beyond that. Shouto also acts out against authority if he thinks they’re wrong. 

He was ready to throw hands with the chief of police because Tsuragamae was daring to punish him for doing what Shouto believed to be the right thing. 

Shouto, understandably, doesn’t trust authority figures by default. Nor does he blindly believe that the law will always safeguard everyone. And why should he? The law did jack shit to protect him and his family from Enji. Enji who is still an authority of his own, and a symbol of justice amongst others that actually deserve the title. 

That is why Shouto embarked in not one, but two unlicensed rescue missions. Shouto has a strong moral compass, and he does believe in justice. However, he also believes that bending the rules a little is something that can be overlooked, if the end result far outweighs the negative consequences. Shouto acts within the law, as a hero (or a trainee one), but he also isn’t afraid of getting around the law when people’s safety is at stake. I guess we could make a point here that human life is worth more to him than rules. 

The reason why he gets so mad at Tsuragamae, the literal chief of police, is because Tsuragamae at first made it sound like he prioritized keeping up appearances by choosing to give more value to rules than to human lives. That’s something Shouto cannot condone, and isn’t willing to compromise on. Again, a result of his father’s influence. This time in opposition to Enji’s mindset. 

Enji is also someone who managed to keep up appearances despite committing domestic violence for over 22 years. Shouto is understandably pissed at the mere insinuation that people’s safety should come second to lawfulness. On top of that, Enji is a pretty rash hero. Of all the three times we’ve seen him fight, he’s always rushed into battle without a care for his surroundings. He isn’t known for being the type of hero who holds back. 

In Hosu, Gran Torino had to contain Endeavor’s damage twice; first, by taking out a noumu before Enji could get to it and roast the two civilians who were too close to the battle zone, and then by shouting at him not to attack Stain and harm Izuku in the process. 

During the fight against High End, Enji immediately jumped into fight mode and expected Hawks to rescue hundreds of people by himself. 

During the recent fight against the Glass Manipulation villain, he showered burning hot glass on top of the civilians who were unfortunate enough to be underneath him during his attack. 

So basically: Enji is the type of hero who cares more about how strong he looks by immediately jumping to the flashy side of a villain attack, the fighting; he has to be held back from directly injuring civilians in the crossfire of hero work. Shouto is instead the type who focuses on people’s safety instead of on overachieving results, and doesn’t trust people who care more about appearances and about keeping a facade of lawfulness than doing the right thing. 

Shouto vowed to be the kind of hero that is essentially the very opposite of everything Endeavor is. And while sometimes he succeeds, sometime he also shows the signs of his upbringing. 

I think it’s worth mentioning again though that Shouto acts within the restraints of his limited agency. He can’t fully get away from his father, because he’s still a child living under Enji’s roof (even if he’s now at U.A., his dad is still technically his legal guardian). He can’t fully escape the expectations, because for the public he’s still Endeavor’s son. 

As a result, a lot of his choices, even the most reactive ones, tend to reflect his limited agency. As that’s the case with a lot of victims of abuse, he’s acutely aware of certain patterns of behaviour he has inherited from his father, but remains oblivious to other internalized behaviours he subconsciously also picked up. That happens because the environment he grew up in was toxic, but it still shaped his way of thinking; so it stands to reason that even when he tries to retain a modicum of freedom, he only knows how to do so by subconsciously using the tools that his father taught him.  

But this changed slightly once he finally stopped repressing half of his identity, something that triggered the beginning of his real growth. 

2) Trying to learn from / exploit Endeavor

When Deku shouts “It’s your power” at Shouto, something shifts. Those words act as trigger for Shouto to retrieve a long-suppressed memory; with it come a lot of confusion, self doubt, and the first steps towards developing a better coping method for his trauma. 

Recovering that memory acts like the cannonball that puts a giant hole in Shouto’s walls. His mother, the one person he thought he’d wronged, the one person towards whom he’d harboured all that repressed guilt, was actually the one to encourage his dream in the first place. Rei had originally acknowledged his personhood, and reassured him that he wouldn’t be the same as his dad. 

All that unbalances Shouto. Recovering repressed memories is already a taxing and overwhelming experience in itself, but this particular memory is emotionally charged, incredibly so. It’s a memory that stands against everything Shouto has believed for an entire decade. It’s too much to process at once. Plus he’s in the middle of a fight, so he cannot slow down and sort out his feelings properly. 

As a result, his emotions go into overload, and in the exhilaration that follows, Shouto temporarily loses all inhibitions. He uses his fire, because in that moment the feelings of inadequacy and guilt that prompted the repression in the first place are overshadowed by something drastically opposite. 

Afterwards, he tells his father that he “forgot about him” because his mother’s acceptance temporarily freed him of the burden of carrying a legacy he’d never chosen to endure. In that moment alone, Shouto’s fire was his own. Shouto was acknowledging his own personhood, and taking ownership of his body, instead of denying and surrendering half of it to the ghost of his father’s shadow. 

It was, however, just a temporary freedom. 

His issues with self-perception aren’t magically solved when he allows himself to think of his fire as part of himself. Quite the opposite, actually. After thinking of his fire as a destructive and bad thing for so long, he’s unbalanced when he finally has to account for it. 

To make peace with it, he needs to understand it. He needs to figure out what it means for him to use that kind of power. He needs to set his own boundaries again. What is allowed and what isn’t? How can he tame it to avoid it getting the better of him and everyone he cares about? And most importantly, is it okay for him to be freed of his father’s legacy, if his mother is still held prisoner by it? 

From then on, Shouto’s journey details his process of acceptance towards the other half of his power, and the continued struggles with self-perception that follow. 

The first step is, of course, bridging the gap with his mother. Shouto is determined to be the kind of hero who doesn’t leave anyone behind, so he can’t ignore that his mother is still suffering. In other words, his first step towards self-acceptance is proving to himself that Rei had been right about him. 

That, despite the shared dna with his father, he can still be a hero who doesn’t hurt others. 

It’s barely a step forward, because as you can see, he still thinks he needs to prove something, to catch up to an invisible standard of goodness he somehow still think he fails on because of his blood. But it’s a step forward nonetheless; from then on, his goal becomes less that of proving his father wrong, and more that of proving to himself that he can self-improve.

With this shift in perspective, he’s finally able to realize that his vendetta was giving him tunnel vision. As I mentioned above, he starts a process of relearning himself, and of learning how to relate to others. 

Shouto finally internalizes Rei’s words, enough so to try and pass them on to Iida. A good hero is someone who decides to be good. Doing the right thing is a choice. 

Since then, Shouto consistently chooses to be the kind of hero who keeps people safe. He rescues Iida from going down the same path of hatred and revenge he used to be stuck on; he makes a valid effort to protect Bakugou against the League, and then embarks on an illegal mission to save him. 

The latter in particular is indicative of his newfound resolve. Shouto admits that his motivator to save Bakugou is entirely selfish. That people will not thank them for it. He’s doing this both because it’s the right thing to do, and because he wants to prove to himself that he can. 

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Hori chose Kirishima and Shouto as the catalysts of the rescue mission. I think that they were meant to foil each other a little there. Kirishima was motivated by his frustration, by his need to prove to himself that he’s changed from his “weak” and cowardly self. He wants to take action because it’s what a hero would do, and because he wants to be true to his ideal of heroism. 

Similarly, Shouto is also motivated by frustration and by a need to figure out what being a hero means to him personally. Dabi literally snatched the Bakugou marble from his palm and taunted his efforts. 

Not exactly in this words, but I always read this line as Dabi saying “How sad of you to think you can save anyone, Todoroki Shouto.”

I think that’s probably how Shouto read it too. On a symbolic level, there’s another added layer of meaning there. Dabi is someone who uses his firepower freely. He doesn’t hold it back the way Shouto does because he’s afraid of it. How can someone who is still holding back, how can someone who is still prisoner of his own body and of his circumstances be a proper rescue hero? 

So, if Hosu was Shouto’s starting line as a person, as someone who can be good despite his blood, Kamino was his starting line as a hero. Someone who rescues and who does the right thing, minimizing casualties and taking rules into account. Avoiding violence when necessary, because heroes know when to pick their battles. 

His fire doesn’t doom him anymore but it becomes instrumental in his growth. Using it means accepting that he has a responsibility over others, and that he consciously decides to use his fire for good.

In order to do that, to learn how to use it properly, he then feels like he needs to intern for his dad. We, as readers, are able to discern that he had other options. In terms of field experience, Hawks would’ve been an equally good choice as a mentor. Especially since Hawks and Shouto share basically the same idea of what heroics is about. But, once again, we have to take into account that Shouto’s agency is influenced by his circumstances. 

There’s a point that can be made here about how hero society as a whole idealizes a concept of strength that comes pretty close to Enji’s own toxicity. The kind of strength that comes from defeating villains in flashy fights using strong offensive powers. The more Enji defeats big bad scary villains, the more he gets praised by everyone as a true hero deserving of the top spot. Enji is physically strong; his power is flashy and attention-grabbing, and his obsession with victory means that he’s often on the frontlines. Shouto understandably looks up to that kind of experience. 

So despite the fact that he had options, he chose Enji based on a cold, purely logical assessment. His father is the most experienced fire-user Shouto knows, and as such, his fine-trained control is something Shouto needs to learn. 

Shouto himself acknowledges that his control of his fire is not yet on par with his control of his ice. He’s been suppressing it all this time, so it’s only normal that it wouldn’t come easy to him. There’s psychological as well as physical reasons for that. 

Of course it would’ve still been better for his mental health if he chose to distance himself from his father more. But it’s worth noting that Shouto remains clinically analytical of his situation. He doesn’t cut Enji any slack. He’s just there to train his fire side and learn how best to be the kind of hero he wants to be. Forgiveness is nowhere on his radius. Ch 247 made that particularly clear, so I don’t think I need to expand much on that. 

He still has no intention of seeing Enji as a role model, or to welcome him back in his life. Shouto is still modeling his hero persona after All Might, because All Might inspired him as a child. At the same time, though, he’s acknowledging Enji’s strength and field experience, because he’s been trained to value those things as necessary skills for a hero. So it’s a complicated issue, really. His wish to exploit his father’s knowledge might be read in a positive light, as him finally standing up for himself in front of a crowd, but also in a negative one, as him still having to prove his personhood in opposition to his dad’s, and him still internalizing a concept of strength that’s biased and unhealthy. 

To sum up this mess of a post, I guess I could say that there are a lot of ways in which trauma shaped or otherwise influenced Shouto’s personality. I chose to analyse the ones that are the most blatant for me, but there are probably more. Shouto is a flawed character, so a lot of his choices are also flawed, and rarely as clearcut black and white as he makes them out to be. A lot of his issues have to do with self-perception, and with the lack of understanding and help he had to endure growing up. He’s a beautifully relatable character though, and I really love that complexity of his. I hope my overview managed to do his character justice! 

Hit me up if you found this an interesting read (it sure as hell wasn’t easy to write down. His mind is… complicated), or feel free to add up to this post if you have anything to contribute! 

To explain my reasoning: I was already very skeptical about Horikoshi’s decision to make Shouto intern for his dad. But I tried to remain neutral about it at the time because up until then Endeavor had always been framed as a terrible person, but a passable hero.

I can kind of understand why Shouto would think he could learn a thing or two from the number two hero. Alright, fair is fair, in terms of experience in apprehending villains, he might indeed be one of the best out there. 

… that is, if Shouto also hadn’t gotten Hawks’ internship offer. 

You see, it is my firm belief that Shouto’s ideal of heroism is grounded in making the right call, even when it happens to be in sharp contrast with the orders he’s been given, and rushing in to save people when things become dire (as I better explained here).  

On the other hand, Endeavor’s ideal of heroism is a lot more similar to Bakugou’s than it is to Shouto’s. For Endeavor, a hero is someone who beats up the bad guys and always comes out victorious, someone who’ll stand above everyone else and make peace through the threat of retailiation. His goal has always been that of reaching unequaled strength. He never had any lofty aspirations. He just wanted to beat All Might and be the best. 

Compare that to Shouto. He - understandably - straight-up abhors violence. If anything, he would’ve had a lot more to learn from someone like Hawks, who - despite his childish and ill-advised admiration for Endeavor - is someone who prioritizes the wellbeing of citizens to anything else. He’s introduced in the story as the perfect person to play double agent because he doesn’t have a single ambitious bone in his body. All he cares about is doing the right thing, and putting people at ease. 

Even ignoring the deliberate foiling between Shouto and Hawks as two small children who’ve been groomed to become the perfect heroes their abusers wanted them to become, they still have a lot more in common than Enji and Shouto ever did. 

Hawks is literally the kind of hero Shouto aspires to be. 

Look at who rushed in - despite being a child, someone not trained or even licenced to do rescue work - and prevented a bunch of people from dying in a car crash? Hawks. Unlicenced quirk use is illegal. Hawks still did it because it was the right thing to do. He saved those people lives when he was still a snotty brat. 

Besides, at around the time of the internship arc, Hawks was the number three hero, so it’s not like he was a random person without any experience. Sure, he might not have been in the hero business for 22+ years, but he certainly was no rookie. If he was talented enough to climb the ranks so fast after his debut, he clearly knows what he’s doing. 

So, all of that preamble was to say that it’s the narrative itself that’s pushing Shouto and Endeavor together. It’s not like Shouto had to choose Enji as his mentor during the workplace experience. There were more than valid alternatives. So, my point is, the set up with Enji was deliberate. HK didn’t want their interactions to die after the sport festival. 

In a way, I think that HK was just being clumsy. He intended to keep the conflict between the two of them a major focus of the story, so to make us readers remember it, he pushed Shouto to be close to his abuser even when he didn’t really have to be. 

Do I think that’s a shitty way to handle conflict? yes.

Do I think that Shouto deserved to move on? DEFINITELY YES. 

But he didn’t. So, where does that leave us…

As I explained in my comment to the flowers scene, I’m not really sure whether or not HK is pushing for Endeavor to be redeemed or to be disgraced after Dabi possibly exposes him. 

Like, the way this scene is framed really squicks me out. 

I’m generally very wary when it comes to narratives about giving second chances to people who’ve done inexcusable things, because it’s fairly easy to mess them up - even with good intentions - and to portray messages that are very harmful to real life people who might be facing stuff like that. 

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that it’s a bad thing, per se, that Shouto is willing to give Enji a second chance. All I care about is for him and his family to find their happiness again. If Endeavor can stop being awful to all of them, that’s a really good thing in my book. 

What I’m very suspicious about is the timing. 

You see, Shouto, pretty much like the rest of his family, hasn’t yet healed from his trauma. This scene is from the provisional licence repair exam, meaning months after the internship. Shouto still appears to have a lot of unsolved issues with his dad that haven’t been solved by choosing to use his fire side as his own power, or by reconnecting with his mother: 

Shouto is still struggling with his self image, with his ability to express himself and his feelings, and with the definition of heroics he wants to stick to. When he’s asked to win a bunch of kids’ hearts, his first approach is to make himself appear as non-threatening as possible, and then prove himself. 

That’s not normal. 

Sure, he just failed his exam, so his desire to prove that he’s worthy of becoming a hero might be understandable. But he’s notably the only one who reacted that way. Also please note the meaningful glance he shoots in Endeavor’s direction. The implication is there. He takes one look at his dad and thinks: “well, I’m better than him, so that’s a start.” 

I don’t think I need to explain how fucked up it is for a kid to internalize that kind of lesson. To always compare yourself to the absolute worst to gauge your own worth, and to constantly feel the threat of becoming just like your abuser if you misstep. Also, it’s repeated behaviour, because Shouto did the same thing at the sport festival after activating his flames on instinct, that’s why I was even bringing it up, by the way. 

But this scene is framed as comical - or at the very least, only half-serious. So to give a better example that Shouto has yet to properly heal from his scars, here’s an excerpt from a more recent chapter: 

during his fight against Tetsu4, Shouto gets a random flashback of his “training” with Endeavor. I’m not sure of Tetsu’s stubborn refusal to give up a fight, if the way he keeps pushing Shouto past his limits can be considered a trigger or not, but. Point still stands that Shouto still gets random, unwanted memories related to his trauma that pop up at the worst times and cloud his judgement. 

So, okay. Even accepting that Endeavor might really want to change for the best, and build a better relationship with his son, the thing is, Shouto is still not ready for it. 

It’s not just him, either. Natsuo still has a lot of pent-up anger, both on his own and his brothers’ behalf: 

And Rei’s doctors also didn’t clear her to meet him because it might set her recovery back and do her more harm than good:

So it’s definitely the narrative that’s pushing for this reconciliation, not the characters themselves. Usually, when this happens, it’s because the author is planning to move all of that build up towards something, because the story might benefit from it. For example, the narrative is also pushing for Bakugou and Midoriya to have a better relationship, because both could use a much healthier rivalry.

Now, my issues with HK’s writing stem from the fact that he seems to not always know what he’s doing when he’s dealing with this kind of issues. To be completely honest, it makes me a bit uncomfortable how he’s still pushing for Shouto to still be in contact with his father, given how many times he’s been shown to be uncomfortable with it. And mind you, by ‘uncomfortable’ I don’t mean scared, because he’s never been afraid of his dad. But he’s made it pretty clear that he doesn’t want to be buddy-buddy with him and pretend that the abuse didn’t happen. When he got Enji’s text the day before the provisional licence repair exam, Shouto’s mood soured considerably; he rudely pushed Enji’s hand away when he tried to touch him; he ignored his texts; he told him to his face that he could do all he wanted now that he was number one, so long as he didn’t bother him; he showed no sympathy whatsoever about the scar, and gave him the cold shoulder during the short time he spent with him and his siblings after the High-End noumu attack. 

I think he’s making it pretty clear that he’d prefer it if Endeavor just left him alone. 

Once again, the fact that Endeavor is willing to make amends is not a bad thing per se. The bad thing is the timing. It’s awfully convenient, from a narrative point of view, for Endeavor to suddenly realize that he did a lot of messed up things now that he’s gotten the number one position. It makes him more likeable as a character, which is incredibly important for someone who suddenly got thrown under the spotlight. 

Do you think it’s a coincidence that Endeavor ended up in the top ten in Japan’s latest popularity poll? That came out right after Endeavor’s arc? Of course it’s not a coincidence. 

Now consider this: no one felt any sympathy for Overhaul when he got targeted by the League after Eri’s arc, because he was an unrepentant and abhorrent piece of garbage who emotionally and physically abused a child and experimented on her. 

But Endeavor, despite being someone who emotionally and physically abused and neglected even more people, even more children, and went unpunished for more than 20 years, is regarded as someone who’s a bit less abhorrent than Chisaki, because he showed a modicum of guilt over his actions. 20 years too late.

Now, I’m not trying to judge people for their taste in fictional assholes (god knows I have my fair share of them). I’m merely trying to point out that HK’s decision to write Endeavor as a somewhat less one-dimensional character has done wonders for his popularity - at least with a certain portion of the Japanese fandom. 

So my issue with HK’s writing is that all of this - having Endeavor make amends to his family right now - is rushed and feels forced. 

This isn’t even about how I personally believe that he hasn’t grown at all as a person or as a hero, or how he still hasn’t understood why what he did was wrong. This is about both the pacing of the story and about the message it conveys. 

As for the pacing, as I said, it’s too convenient for him to have become a good person at the same exact moment that the rest of the world needed him to fill in All Might’s shoes as the symbol of peace. 

As for the message, well. You said it yourself. It’s really harmful to even imply that for a victim to heal from their past trauma, they need to keep in touch and to forgive their abuser. I’m pretty sure that Shouto hasn’t forgiven him yet, but he’s never been opposed to giving him a second chance, which is just as bad imho. 

I’m not sure if redemption is what HK is aiming at here (I’m personally rooting for the Touya subplot to come into play and be the catalyst for Endeavor’s disgrace), but the way he’s pushing for Endeavor to “make it up to Shouto” really makes me uncomfortable.