#pyj rambles

What must non-bkdks think is going on? I’m not even sure if we’ve fully discussed what is going on? Whyyy would he have a vestige if he doesn’t have OFA?

It’s not ghosts because a) ghosts haven’t been introduced as a concept in-universe and b) AM is there and he ain’t dead.

SO WHAT IS HAPPENING? Did we just totally overlook the fact that Hori made it canon that Katsuki either has OFA or just has access to the vestige realm for reasons unknown?

Also why is he fully clothed and able to speak, when poor Izuku spent every vestige scene nude and mute? And why is the background white not black? Vestige purgatory? A vestige waiting room?

I feel like when you suddenly realise you haven’t studied and the class has all moved on to new topics and you’ve somehow missed a key, fundamental part of how The Whole Thing works.

If anyone has meta on this please point me towards it because at this point I’m—

Edit 19.01.23: before anyone else tells me he had OFA in the movie, I know. 😙 I wrote a whole ‘nother bit about it here:

They’re actually being honest with their emotions, but they aren’t ready for people to see it play out on their faces. 🥺

First though, a few notes:

Ao no Flag was published by the Shonen Jump team in Jump+ (digital manga platform). This makes the context around the editors and serialisation an interesting insight into their process. Obviously the creators here would be given more freedom than in the main property, but it shows they are NOT averse to telling diverse stories.

Kaito is a male mangaka, just like Horikoshi, and also previously had manga serialised in the main Weekly Shonen Jump. Just like Horikoshi, his previous manga did not have queer themes.

The series started in 2017 and ended in 2020. It was not advertised/tagged as an lgbtq+ manga, and weekly readers were left guessing who the ‘endgame’ pairings would be. Throughout the serialisation, it became increasingly clear that this was a—at least one-sided—mlm love story.

Kaito worked with the Shonen Jump team to integrate themes of diversity and homosexuality into the manga. MHA certainly shares the theme of diversity.

Finally, he makes it clear that once the manga was serialised, he had the freedom to ‘do whatever’ he wanted, and that the production team were pleased and congratulatory when the manga went viral as soon as Toma’s actual love interest started to become clear. Having people talk about your story is good marketing, it’s good business sense.

Anyway, it’s a great read—a little verbose at times but very thoughtful and truly makes you reconsider your assumptions about the roles certain characters play in popular media. I just wish the final chapter had been expanded to let us really absorb it.

Mineta and Tokoyami have their own reasons for being apprehensive, but Deku has never tried to hide his All Might fanboy nature! And then just before we (as the class POV) see his room, we get THIS panel lmfao.

Omg Deku what are you pulling off the wall?! Look at that panic! This is how it looks on the page, so you can see he’s yanked something from the wall in front of him and is now sweatily leaning on the desk.

Considering the vast array of All Might merch everywhere else, I’m gonna go out on a limb and say he was panicking about something non-AM related. Hmmm… childhood photos of the amazing person even closer to him than All Might? A Kacchan Shrine?! Bahahaha Deku you lovable little creep.

In fact, his reactions to the whole activity are shown to be different to the other boys. While they’re visibly bored (or asleep, bless), he is panicking, then he disappears!

We don’t see him at all in the panels on floor 4 (Bakugou, Kirishima and Shouji) or floor 5 (Sero, Todoroki and Sato).

In fact, he is also absent in the panels for the girls’ floor 3 (Jirou and Hagakure) and floor 4 (Uraraka and Ashido). He actually doesn’t rejoin the group until girls’ floor 5 (Asui and Yaoyorozu). You don’t just not draw your MC in multiple group panels for no reason, unless he wasn’t there. What was he doing?!

Would Kacchan have rejected Deku’s hand if they had been alone? Put another way, how much of his problem was inherently Deku, and how much of it was concern for how he was perceived?

Deku is the only one who sees Katsuki as potentially vulnerable, and (the way his kid brain sees it) if he wasn’t around everyone would think he’s amazing and perfect. Needing to be saved is shameful and embarrassing, and not something that someone with a cool and powerful quirk like him should ever need, right?

He’s over that now though, having been saved multiple times during his time at UA (poor baby). He’s finally reached the point where he understands that it’s okay to let yourself be saved, it doesn’t make you weak, and MY GOD we’re going to get the most amazing, perfect, cool and powerful handhold ever.

Like, it is so fun to look into these little hidden details and meanings to what goes around these two it's amazing, when many characters have a more straight foward relationship with each other, and bkdk themselves.

Like, Uraraka is Deku's friend, she has a crush, and is trying to figure this out while she has a similar desire to understand her own villain counter part, Toga.

Todoroki is friends with both of them, and he is very sure that he is. He is around them a lot, and is part of the "big three".

We know all these things pretty clearly, but NEVER get the same with bkdk.

Nobody currently describes them as "friends", but they do often point out their status' as "childhood friends", Bakugou is the closest person to Deku. Deku is the one that has chased him his whole life. He is "the guy" Bakugou is waiting for, the one who knows him best. Deku was striving to make ofa his own for him. He loses control of his heart for him. He YEARNS to be closer to him again. And at some point the idea of standing shoulder to shoulder with Bakugou "sent chills down his spine".

Like??? Those you can all excuse by saying it's just strong frienship or fondness but. The actual narrative NEVER said that it was the case.

My first anon ask! But not really an ask 😅.

Yes, it IS fun to look at hidden details, I love it too. I agree, there’s so much of their story that could be fleshed out more, like we don’t even know that much about the nature of their childhood friendship! Please indulge me while I ramble for no reason just because you invoked me.

We have a few single panel snapshots of their interactions as kids, but we never have a full scene/chapters like with the Todorokis, Tenko, Hawks etc. even though their relationship is so central to the narrative! There’s also a massive gap after the river scene and quirk manifestation right up to the final year of middle school—that’s like 8 or 9 years where we have no idea what their relationship looked like.

We know that Deku was often there when Kacchan was playing with his friends, but they’re both unreliable narrators so we don’t actually know whether Deku was part of their group, or if he just following them around. That makes me so sad to think about but it’s a big question mark. I personally think they’re both so dishonest with their feelings for each other that they both misrepresent the relationship in their memories. Maybe they were close but both twisted it after everything went wrong. Who knows! But it’s fun to wonder.

Let’s take the weirdly inconsistent forest scene where they get further away each time they remember it (thanks deleted Reddit user for the almost accurate image);

Ch 9 is Kacchan reminiscing during Dk Vs Kchn 1, Ch 117 is Deku’s flashback in the lead-up to their Ground Beta Fight and Ch 275 is Kacchan thinking while following Deku to lure Shigaraki away from the city (side note how tiny Deku is in this one!).

So each picture represents something:

A) ‘I’ve always seen Deku as behind me’

B) ‘I’ve been chasing/following Kacchan my whole life’

C) ‘I need to keep up, Deku’s not going to leave me behind’. Literally:

Essentially, they have always been each other’s yardstick, the thing against which their own success and value is measured. But the yardstick kept changing length and I think at this point in the manga they’ve both realised that relationships aren’t about who’s ahead or behind.

The panels after the one in 275 are some of my favourites. He remembers their childhood, he remembers their fight, and he GRINS as he finally gets to work side by side with Deku.

Look at that smile! Not for the first (or last) time, he thinks about how he had it wrong and now he’s letting himself just be at the same level. Of course he keeps his typical competitive bravado, because he’s still the same brat we love. ‘Losing’ isn’t losing to Deku anymore though. Based on the context, it’s not absurd to suppose he doesn’t want to lose the opportunity to be by his side, to fight with him, to keep him close. Aahhhh.

The title of the episode and ch324, 未成年の主張 (Miseinen no Shuchō— lit. Young Person’s Claim), was actually the name of a popular segment of a Japanese tv show. They would live broadcast from a real school, and a student would climb onto the roof to shout a confession or something important to them. Apparently it was typically love confessions, but also sometimes apologies or thanks. It was so popular it’s often emulated in manga and anime as a trope, and spawned derivative segments in other series over the last 20 years.

The image of a young person stood on the roof, in the exact posture Ochako adopts in these chapters, would be extremely familiar to most Japanese readers. They would read it expecting that they were about to hear something deeply personal and heartfelt—maybe even a young girl confessing her crush on a fellow student!

In fact, Ochako’s speech is her being a Hero, setting aside any personal feelings and trying her best to get the crowd to see Izuku as just a normal kid. Her declaration is essentially that “there are no special people, he’s just an ordinary person so please see how tired he is and let him stay here.”

Izuku has built his life around Kacchan: his whole childhood chasing after him, Middle School always conscious of keeping out of his way while watching him, modelled his future watching him, using the name he gave him, thinking of him every time he fought. Kacchan is the first thing on his mind in every situation. He can’t imagine a world without him in it.

But Katsuki’s the same: he only sees himself through Deku’s eyes, always checking behind him to see if he’s watching, showing him how far he’s come. Always has to know where his shadow is, what he’s doing. Deku’s the only one who understands how much he’s changing.

He’s the only one who understands how much Deku’s changing too. He sees Deku flourishing, making friends for the first time, learning new things, spreading his wings and moving ahead, not always behind. He has to adjust all his expectations, rewire his perception of the world. He sees Deku doing things he can’t do. That’s new…

How does Deku know how to do it if he hasn’t watched him first?

One day Izuku has to leave, maybe he has a top-secret vigilante mission, maybe a placement elsewhere or something. Either way, for the first time in their lives they’re not able to watch each other. How does it work when they have to wake up every day and not see the other—how do they fill that space in their minds with other things?

What fills that huge gap? Where do you look when you’re not always watching someone? What’s the point of doing your best when the people who see you don’t know it’s your best?

I just think their whole brains are so full of each other, how does it work if that’s stripped away?

Maybe they finally realise what they are to each other, that this isn’t how most people’s brains work. This isn’t admiration and disdain. What are they to each other?