#psychologicalmanipulation

Haruaki Sun-Sun and the AFO Orphanage

Haruaki Sun-Sun

Role: Caretaker (alias: Mr. Sunny) of a secret orphanage owned by Dr. Kyudai Garaki, operated for All For One (AFO).

Appearance:

Tall with sunflower-like facial features.

Brown hair, perpetually cheerful demeanor.

Wears a white hoodie and pink apron.

Quirk: Unnamed Sunflower Quirk—alters his appearance, but specific abilities are unknown.

Personality:

Outwardly warm and welcoming, especially to new arrivals like Toya Todoroki (Dabi).

Likely a façade masking the orphanage’s sinister purpose.

Not shown abusing children, who appear cared for on the surface, but they are raised as potential “spare vessels” for AFO.

Key Incident:

Managed Toya Todoroki during his three-year coma.

Attempted to prevent Toya’s escape and facilitate contact with AFO via computer.

Toya lashed out, setting the orphanage on fire.

Dr. Garaki blamed Haruaki for the incident, after which Haruaki disappeared from the story.

The AFO Orphanage

Purpose:

A front for AFO and Dr. Garaki to raise children as backup vessels for AFO, in case their main candidate (Tomura Shigaraki) failed.

Operations:

Shelters and heals children, but treats them as expendable resources for AFO’s ambitions.

Notable Incident:

Toya Todoroki (Dabi) recovered here for three years after near-death flames.

Overhaul used to reside there.

After waking, Toya’s attempt to escape led to him burning down the orphanage.

Major Characters Involved

Haruaki Sun-Sun:

Role: Caretaker.

Notes: Manages children, including Toya, with a deceptively nurturing demeanor.

Dr. Kyudai Garaki:

Role: Owner/Manager.

Notes: Orchestrates operations, loyal to AFO, prioritizes experimentation over care.

All For One (AFO):

Role: Ultimate Controller.

Notes: Uses the orphanage to secure vessels for his Quirk.

Toya Todoroki (Dabi):

Role: Patient/Orphan.

Notes: Spent three years in comatose recovery, escaped after burning the orphanage, marking his transformation into Dabi.

Other Children:

Role: Potential vessels.

Notes: Raised as spares for AFO, with sinister but largely undisclosed fates.

Insights & Analysis

On Haruaki:

A rare nurturing figure among villains, similar to Kurogiri, but his kindness serves AFO’s manipulative goals.

On the Orphanage:

Poses as a caring environment but is a utilitarian tool for AFO’s plans.

Toya’s arc underscores the psychological trauma inflicted by AFO’s manipulative “care.”

Story Impact:

The orphanage is a pivotal but subtle setting for Toya’s rebirth as Dabi.

Symbolizes AFO’s method of exploiting vulnerability for evil purposes.

Other Notes:

Garaki’s involvement emphasizes experimentation over genuine care.

No other children besides Toya are shown to have significant story impact.

Comparative Notes

Unlike typical villain “labs,” the orphanage blends psychological manipulation with biological exploitation.

Balances a “nurturing” façade with a sinister purpose, undermining the children’s agency.

Trivia

Haruaki’s cheerful demeanor and sunflower face may draw inspiration from Flowey (Undertale), a character whose kindness hides darker motives.

Summary

Haruaki Sun-Sun is a minor yet symbolically important villain, managing an orphanage that serves as a front for AFO’s vessel-replacement scheme.

The orphanage’s major arc revolves around Toya Todoroki’s recovery, trauma, and escape, shaping his path as Dabi and impacting both villain and hero dynamics in the My Hero Academia universe.

All For One (AFO) sought to create powerful vessels—subordinates molded or engineered to serve as hosts, tools, or possible successors to carry on his ambitions. Both Kai Chisaki (Overhaul) and Toya Todoroki (Dabi) were involved in versions of these plans, but both ultimately became failed vessels. Here’s a focused analysis, drawing directly from the detailed file provided.

All For One’s Vessel Strategies

AFO’s core vessel plan was to ensure his legacy and domination would persist, often by manipulating or “raising” gifted individuals to serve his agenda, or—if their Quirks and bodies were suitable—serve as hosts for his own power. This process included both careful psychological grooming and direct Quirk experimentation.

Overhaul (Kai Chisaki)

Background as a Vessel: Raised in an orphanage owned by Kyudai Garaki (AFO’s chief scientist), Chisaki was among children considered as potential hosts for AFO. His destructive perspective on Quirks (believing them to be a disease) and his Overhaul Quirk’s incredible reconstructive and destructive potential marked him as a prime candidate.

AFO’s Direct Intervention: AFO duplicated Overhaul’s Quirk (stripped of its restoration aspect) and gave this copy to Tenko Shimura (later Tomura Shigaraki), which would evolve into Decay. Overhaul himself was manipulated but never became a true vessel, instead pursuing his own plans for power via Eri and Quirk-destroying bullets, showing a dangerous independence.

Failure Reasons: Overhaul’s ideology and trauma isolated him, and he was unable to submit to, or be controlled by, AFO. He prioritized his own plan to restore the Yakuza and monopolize the Quirk market rather than work as AFO’s vessel. Eventually, his defeat, the loss of his arms (and Quirk), and complete psychological breakdown rendered him useless to AFO’s original designs.

Dabi (Toya Todoroki)

Background as a Vessel: Toya was “rescued” after his near-death experience by AFO and Kyudai, who rehabilitated and attempted to groom him into a subordinate. Physically rebuilt and emotionally fragile, Dabi was recognized as having extraordinary potential due to his powerful (and unstable) blue flames.

AFO’s Direct Intervention: Kyudai anticipated Toya would not survive long post-coma, but Dabi’s psychological grudge kept him alive. Despite attempts to brainwash and manipulate him as a weapon/subordinate, Toya rejected their control, insisting no one but his father (Endeavor) could be his guide. He fled, and AFO classed him as a failed project.

Failure Reasons: Dabi ultimately became self-directed, fixated on personal vengeance against Endeavor and the hero system rather than serving anybody’s ambition. His instability, obsession, and disregard for AFO’s actual plans made him impossible to control. He did not care for the broader goals of the League or AFO, only for hurting his family.

Pattern of Failure

Autonomy: Both Overhaul and Dabi had strong, trauma-driven personal agendas which prevented complete subjugation or loyalty to AFO.

Lack of Psychological Hold: AFO’s methods failed to instill sufficient mental control; Overhaul’s grandiosity and Dabi’s obsession led both off-script.

Physical Limitations: Overhaul lost his Quirk and arms; Dabi’s body was fatally incompatible with his Quirk, limiting their long-term viability as vessels.

Conclusion

Love Always Wins! Bullies—especially authoritarian-leaning leaders—don’t cling to power because they’re strong. They cling because they’re afraid. A few things usually collide at once: 1. Loss of control triggers panic For people who define themselves by dominance, losing power feels like erasure. When influence slips, they don’t self-reflect—they lash out. Violence (verbal, institutional, or…

⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️

Content warning: This post contains descriptions of psychological manipulation, cult dynamics, abuse of authority, and mentions of violence and emotional trauma.

⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️

Hi everyone! The other day, I remembered a story that happened more than 10 years ago, back in 2015. I thought that sharing it might be helpful for people who could be going through something similar, so I decided to write about it. I hope you like it and find this post helpful.

Main story:

As I said, this story goes back to the year 2015. At school, I had my group of friends, which consisted of 3 girls, two other guys, and me. We used to be good friends until one day some other students came into our classroom, started looking around, and chose to get closer to my friends and me. These students started talking about a group they had, in which you could talk about your problems, make friends, and have awesome experiences, all while getting “closer to God”.

Something seemed fishy about them, so immediately I said, “No, thank you”, but the 3 girls in my group didn’t see the red flags in the speech those other guys were giving, so they started to have doubts about joining that group or not (nobody knew yet that it was a cult). So they went to the school counselor, who told them to join, that it was going to be good, that they needed to be close to God, etc., etc. She also told them that they should stop talking to their friends who weren’t going to join, because that would harm their relationship with God.

Strange thing to say, right? Well, later I found out she was part of the cult as well, but I’ll get into that later. The thing is, she managed to convince them. Those 3 friends of mine joined the cult that day because “they had to live it” to understand, to give it a chance, so they could see the “true love of God”. Immediately, slowly but steadily, they started to cut ties with their friends (me and the other guys in the group), classmates, and later even family.

The cult started summoning them to reunions in which only cult members could attend. Their family and friends couldn’t know where they would be staying until after the session ended. These reunions used to last between 2 and 3 days, in which the older members would “initiate” the new ones, making them expose their secrets, their problems, their family issues, everything, to later be used against them. They made them write letters about how bad their family and friends made them feel. They would cry together, pray together, and claim that they were now “a new family”, and that “they didn’t need their old families and friends anymore, only this new family and God”.

They repeated those rituals constantly until the end of the reunions, getting up early in the morning and sleeping late at night until all the rituals were done.

When the reunions ended, they would get close to their “old family” and old friends to give them the letters they had written before, tell them how much they had hurt them, and explain why they chose this “new family and friends closer to God”. After that, they would partially cut ties with their families and friends unless they “wanted to know God as deeply as they did” and wanted to join the new family.

Thanks to these tactics, this cult started to become somewhat prominent in my city, but I won’t address its name in this post for safety reasons.

After cutting ties with their relatives and friends, the new cult members would climb the cult ladder to a new level, which implied being “closer to God”, getting more tasks to try to get people to join, while not being able to talk to outsiders for anything else. They would be summoned to those reunions way more often than before. They would get a wooden fish necklace that the cult members made to help identify themselves among outsiders when outside the cult walls, and they would avoid interaction with other people unless it was for conversion purposes only.

My non-cult friends and I tried to talk to the girls about what we were seeing and the danger they were facing, but the school counselor always got in the way, telling them not to talk to us because we were outsiders, that “we wouldn’t understand”, and that we would “undermine the beautiful relationship they were building with God”.

Later, the counselor would never leave the girls alone. She would come and pick them up after every class so they wouldn’t talk to outsiders. They were often locked up with the counselor, praying and confessing sins to her, while crying and “making the new family ties stronger”.

At this point, you probably think this was some kind of “teen cult” with some adults involved, but you’d be wrong. This was a full-on cult with people of all ages. They would always try to recruit their members when they were young. The young members would have the mission to talk to young outsiders and get them to join the cult.

As they got older, depending on how many people they recruited, they would climb the ladder according to their “accomplishments”, receiving special treatment from the cult. The main leaders were religious older men (priests included) who lived double lives. In their “main life”, they were local religious leaders, and in their “second life”, they led the cult.

Back to the story: obviously, all of this led to my group of friends getting destroyed. One of my non-cult friends left school after the cult started to gain too much power over it (he was trans, so the cult especially disliked him and made him a target, ordering cult members to try and attack him only if no one else was watching). The other one tried to join the cult but got rejected for “pretending to be close to God”, which led him to be ostracized and later leave school.

After seeing everything and being left alone, I got mad and started to investigate this cult as much as I could, collecting evidence and trying to free some of the members. This made me an “unpleasant person” in their eyes, who needed to be avoided at all costs. I really tried to free my friends (or those I used to consider my friends) from the cult’s brainwashing, but it was too late. They were too far gone, so I chose to only investigate, hoping that someday I could have my friends back again (that never happened, the cult destroyed them as individuals until years later).

Later, I gave up. There was nothing I could do to free my friends. I left the school as well and never tried to talk to them again. Five years passed, and one of my ex-friends looked for me. She told me that the cult leaders were being searched for by the police. They had fled the city and left the cult to die.

The leaders told the members that they “needed to look for good souls to save elsewhere as well” and left them waiting for God to take care of them. After that, they disappeared and never came back.

She told me she didn’t know the police were after the leaders, and when she found out, she didn’t understand why. According to her, they were doing nothing wrong. With time and the absence of the hierarchy, she started to realize how fucked up everything was. She realized what she had gotten into and chose to leave.

That’s when she thought about reaching out to me. She needed to say she was sorry. She didn’t expect me to forgive her or to be friends again. When she came to see me, she was still wearing the wooden fish necklace. I told her I understood what had happened and what she went through. Even though it was hard at first, I had already forgiven her, but I didn’t want to be friends anymore, not after everything that had happened. She understood, and that was the last time we met.

About the other two girls, I only know they managed to leave the cult as well and tried to rebuild their lives, but they never fully became themselves again. It’s like something inside them died in the cult. I know that if the cult came back someday, they would join it again, since the girl who reached out to me said that openly and proudly. From an outside perspective, it feels like they never truly learned anything from that experience, which is honestly sad to see.

Sadly, to this day, I remember them as best as I can, with the sad certainty that those friends will never come back, and that even if I wanted to get close again, it would be too dangerous for me.

The reason I wanted to write this post is that back then I didn’t have enough knowledge to face that situation alone. I knew it was a cult, but I wasn’t able to do anything to save my friends or to clearly point out the manipulation they were under.

For a long time, I felt guilty for not being able to protect them. That’s why I wanted to write this—just in case someone is going through a similar experience. Know that it’s not your fault. You can’t save people who don’t want to be saved.

And if you are the one getting into a “new group” that promises to complete you, beware. Not everything is what it seems. Be alert. Don’t be naive. Be smart. Don’t be gullible.

————————————————————————————————————————————————————

How to identify a cult:

1.- Progressive isolation:

A cult will try to distance you from your family, friends, and support networks. They don’t do this instantly, but they begin discrediting with phrases like “they don’t understand you”, “they hurt you”, “they drive you away from the truth”, “only we can help you”, “you need us and no one else”.

If a group tells you that your external relationships are a problem, it’s not a coincidence, it’s deliberate.

2.- Recruitment of emotionally vulnerable people:

Cults will actively look for people in hard situations or a fragile emotional state. They would look for people who face loneliness, depression, family conflicts, identity crises, or even grief. Anything works for them as long as it means you’d be easy to manipulate.

They get close to people with these characteristics not because they want to help, but because vulnerability facilitates control.

A healthy group helps without asking for dependency. A cult needs you to be broken.

3.- Forced trust and use of personal information:

They’ll ask you to tell them your trauma, your mistakes, and speak ill of your family and friends. And later, they’ll use that information to inflict guilt on you, emotional blackmail, and enforce control over you.

If what you share stops being confidential and starts being used to blackmail you, pressure you, or make you comply, get out as quickly as you can.

4.- “Our new family” narrative:

Cults often replace your ties for a “new family”, “the chosen ones”, “the superior ones”, “the spiritual family”, etc.

This is useful for them to justify making you abandon your previous relationships, create an emotional dependency, and make it harder for you to escape the cult.

No healthy group will ask you to give up your family or friends to belong.

5.- Us vs. Them logic:

For a cult, the world is divided into “the ones who understand” and “the ones who don’t”. Those who are outside are “ignorant”, “dangerous”, “a threat”.

When a group dehumanizes or invalidates outsiders, they are closing a cage. The least amount of contact you have with outsiders, the less you’ll question authority.

6.- Unquestionable authorities:

They can be a leader, a counselor, a spiritual guide, a priest, but you shall not question them, they are always right. If you doubt, they’ll accuse you of a lack of faith, compromise, or label you as a traitor.

If asking is forbidden, leave immediately.

7.- Commitment climb:

Each step you take on their ladder requires more of your time,  requires you to dedicate yourself to more of their tasks, to get more isolated, to give them more of your loyalty, and so on.

Getting out gets harder the higher you get in the hierarchy, because you have already invested too much to leave.

This is progressive entrapment.

8.- Manipulative emotional language:

Phrases like “if you leave you’ll be betraying us”, “it’ll break our heart”, “it’ll bring you further away from God”, “God would be disappointed”, “you are nothing without us”, “you need us”.

Those are subtle threats, that is not love or belonging.

9.- Identity reduced to the group:

Your personal value starts to depend on how much you do for the group, how many people you recruit, how obedient and compliant you are, etc.

You disappear as an individual, if it’s not you anymore, but a member of X, then there is a serious problem.

10.- Guilt or blackmail when trying to leave:

If someone leaves, they’ll get ostracized, shunned, seen as a traitor, defamed, labeled as insincere, and so on.

This is used to scare the others, to prevent them from following the example of the deserter.

————————————————————————————————————————————————————

Remember: It’s not your responsibility to save someone who doesn’t want to be saved, but now you’ll know how to identify a cult, so you won’t fall into their grasp.

I hope you found this post helpful or entertaining in some way. I trust this post will find those who need it, I’ll entrust that to the universe. Have a wonderful day, and don’t forget to comment. I’d love to hear your stories as well. Goodbye!

————————————————————————————————————————————————————

© 2026 Tebaxmun. Originally published on SpaceHey. - https://blog.spacehey.com/entry?id=2043540.