#midorya

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Anime: Boku no hero

Midoriya and Bakugou

I don’t like that Mirio got his quirk back.

It really lowered the stakes of the fight and felt narratively weak to walk back his sacrifice like that. I was really excited to see how he would cope, both mentally and practically, with this sudden and drastic change in his career path.

It also made him mirror Deku in a really interesting way. They’re obviously meant to be compared because All Might said Mirio was a contender for OFA, they both had to fight extra hard with a quirk (or lack thereof) that worked against them, they both have sunny dispositions despite (or maybe because) of their struggles, and both of them feel that being a Hero is the only thing that has ever mattered to them. So with all of that when Mirio loses his quirk it made him a sort of reverse Deku.

We’ve spent the entire series with a boy who went from quirkless to quirkful we saw how that changed his drive and perspective toward heroism. Mirio had the potential to show us the reverse. Quirkful to quirkless. How does society treat him? Is he a pariah, an anomaly, or is he pitied. Does he drive himself to the brink trying to find a cure or does he move on, become a cop, a social worker, a heroes secretary?

okay so i was scrolling and i came across this post and it helped me reorganize a lot of thoughts ive been thinking sense i first started mha. ive always been not a fan of izuku getting ofa in the first place as it felt to me as it almost completely erased any meaning of his backstory. it felt like such a plot armor/mary sue moment but in the end i got over it, assuming that most likely he would loose it at one point (i was right but we'll get to that later).

after he enters UA its almost as if his entire past is just like- not important?? i have plenty of hcs about his suppressed trauma and if you read into a lot of the situations he goes thru in the manga i can see it but is not blatantly said/expressed that he struggles with a complex from how he was treated as a child.

in the end mha becomes a manga mostly focused on some sort of version of not judging a person by their cover. The fact that a technically "villainous" quirk does not make someone a bad person.

now ofc this is totally true. no one should be overlooked or declined rights or decency because of the quirk they have. this lesson is a valid one.

the analogy i have made up in my head is this.

people who are born with "hero-like" or "useful" quirks, for example: bakugou, todoroki, hawks etc are beautiful people

(for the context of this metaphor ignore the fact that beauty is complex and is in the eye of the beholder just roll with me)

and then you have the people with "useless" or average quirks that are just average people

and then you have people like toga or shinsou with quirks that are seen as inherently dangerous. quirks that are unable to be used for good. those are the ugly people.

now obviously we shouldnt discriminate people just because society says they are ugly. there is no doubt in that and it is a tragedy that it happened and still happens.

however

20% of the population cannot even fall onto this scale. the quirkless. aka the disabled. they are not even seen as being worth a label on the scale because they are so disgusting and strange that no one wants to remember yhey exist.

i wouldnt be as upset by the lack of talk about quirkless people if izuku wasnt quirkless, if the first arc of mha wasnt izuku struggling with the fact that no one in the world cares about him but his mom and that not even her believes he can achieve anything because of his disability.

the whole set up was izuku wanted to be a hero DESPITE his disability. even though truly he thought it was impossible. he didnt work out, he didnt try and do anything to become a hero because he believed everyone was right. that what society had been telling him his whole life was true and he couldnt be a hero. but he wanted to despite that. that was the hook of mha. at least for me.

a bullied lonely boy with a disability achieves his dream despite society. despite being told at every turn that he couldnt do it. he said he can and he does.

but thats not what happened at all.

instead some pillar of all that is heroic drops down from the sky and magically cures his disability. and suddenly hes just a normal kid.

and suddenly we forget all about midoriya izuku and how hard it is to be quirkless. how much quirkless people struggle. how many of them must commit suicide because of yhe seeming completely normalized harassment of them in everyday life.

and i dont want to blame izuku for this because in the end hes a kid with trauma who just wants to fit in. its frankly quite obvious that he whole heartedly agrees with bakugou and everyone else from his past that yeah quirkless people are useless.

the way he treated Melissa in the movie broke my heart. he belittled her like it was second nature and while he obviously had no malicious feelings toward her because of her quirklessness he sees her as a second class citizen. hes surprised that she is able to achieve things despite her disability. that she manages to be happy in a world where she isnt "normal".

and again in the long run i dont truly blame izuku for feeling this way. like everyone he is a product of his environment.

again, however:

i do blame horikoshi

do we need to be nicer to people with villainous quirks: yes ofc

but your manga isnt about that. your manga is about someone whose seen as even less than that. you can address both issues.

having bakugou break down about izuku becoming quirkless was good but that was pretty much all we got.

and what happenes when izuku looses ofa?? he gives up on being a hero.

how the hell does that make sense

everyone in japan knows this boys name. he is considered a top hero. and he just drops off the face the hero scene?

hatsume exists??? izukus face has been in her boobs TWICE for gods sake. yaoyorozu can make things out of thin and are they had to wait 8 years.

izuku is too smart to not think of that.

it would take hatsume 3 days max.

and ignoring that whole point again hori is pushing the idea that bakugou and everyone from aldera were CORRECT. that yeah u were right to think the quirkless of useless cause like they cant do anything :3c

izuku has had NO growth this whole manga. all hes learned is how to hit things how to kick things and awww kacchan sad :(((.

nothing about believing in himself. nothing about how he can be a hero despite the odds. nothing even about the power of friendship helping him to overcome.