Endeavor - The Dangers of Biased Memories
One thing i really like about MHA chapter 291, is that it paints a very clear picture of how endeavor thinks about his past actions. Namely he truely does regret them, but he simply isnt able to see his own past actions in their true light.
Its a very human thing to do, but it also goes to show what Endeavor’s big problem is. He isnt able to understand that everything about his past, from its very foundations were wrong, and thus, he isnt able to really, truly change in regards to his view on hero work and his family.
Endeavor just isnt able to understand that it was his obession with hero work that destroyed him, his wife and laid the foundation for a broken family, and that if he truely does want to make ammends with his family, he cannot simply just be a better hero. being the best hero was what destroyed him in the first place, and its what his son called him out on in chapter 290. the past doesnt forget, and if youre not willing to fully accept it, consider it, and actually introspect and understand what you did wrong, you will never change.
As he sees his son before his eyes again, Endeavor flashes back to happier times, at least in his perspective. His son happy to be training with his fire power.
it is however, a lie, one that endeavor is telling to himself. there was never a point where Endeavors awfull motivation wasnt tarnishing everything he tried to build, both with himself, his abused wife and his children
This is where the road of his pushing Touya to become the best hero he could possibly be ended up, with a emotionally destroyed teenager who had an extencial crisis once he got old enough to truely comprehend what his father was doing. and in the end, he destroyed himself pushing himself as far as he possibly could, just like endeavour wanted.
yet, rather than confront the fact he was wrong from the very beginning, and that his very fundamentals were rotten, endeavor pretends in his own mind that there was something noble in his training of touya.
He just isnt able to accept that While he may or may not have treated Touya as harshly as he later would todoroki(my guess is that he did, but we just arent shown it here, because this is his own flashback and he isnt focusing on it) He didnt have a shred of noble motivation for doing any of this. Touya was when it came down to it, a means to an end.
The reason why Touya mattered to endeavor, as compared to his daughter who he tried to distance from her big brother from the moment she was born, was that he had a quirk more powerfull than his own, and thus had greater potential.
that was his only motivation. as we were shown time and again with shouto in the earlier chapters of the manga.
He made it perfectly clear that he only made shoto as a means to an end and that was the end of it.
however, faced with Dabi, he just isnt able to admitt this very, very ugly fact about himself. he WANTS so badly, to be able to think that there was something noble about him as a father to his son, who’s death he blamed himself for.
He tries to tell himself in his own mind that he would have been willing to let go of his obsession, hatred, and all of it for Touya’s sake, when what actually happened proved that it just wasnt the case.
When Touya dissapeared, Endeavor did the exact opposite, and doubled down making shoto his “masterpiece”. And now, rather than take responsibility for his actions, and acknowledge his part into the making of the monster before him, he tries to desperatly justify himself, and rewrite the past in his own mind by not focusing on the bad stuff.
It’s an incredible human thing to do, but it also proves that endeavor hasnt really changed all that much fundamentally deep down. he still refuses to take full responsibility for his actions and acknowledge that he was, in fact, wrong. hundred, percent, no argument about it wrong.
And as long as he isnt able to do that, he is never going to be able to truly grow as a person.
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