basicallykiyotaka - Tumblr blog

basicallykiyotaka · 3 months ago

Text

Enji being a complete coward is actually the thing Iove most about him. He doesn't know what to do when it comes to anything except his job because he's been pouring himself into that since he was fourteen. How could he possibly know what to do or say when he's gone his entire life not being confronted by other with his behaviour and not being supported through the worst times in his younger life? He didn't build those skills as a child and now he and everyone around him suffers for it.

One thing that I like to take into account about him the fact that he became a hero out of fear. Fear of losing people and fear of not being able to do anything to prevent that. Fear that if he is not capable and strong, then he is not good enough and he can never be good enough. He runs away from situations he doesn't know how to deal with because his inability to act exposes the fact that he is weak and it's better to pretend to be strong than admit defeat. He treats every situation like it is a serious career moment because he doesn't know how to navigate anything that isn't heroics. He went to UA and that training became his whole life to the point that it left him without any knowledge on how to actually build and maintain relationships on a personal level.

He loves his family in his own way - in his head he truly thinks of them all in a fatherly way I think, but he's very dishonest with himself about his feelings and therefore is dishonest with everyone around him. He can't simply say I love you because that's vulnerability and vulnerability is weakness, so instead he attempts to show interest and initiative, able to admit that he's proud but unable to slow down and fully embrace what people are saying. Enji can't forgive himself, so he denies other people the ability forgive him and instead does what he thinks everyone wants. He theory it's the right thing to do but in practice it's applied to the wrong situation because these are people he wants a connection with rather than something he's doing for the sake of PR.

Something that I actually like about Enji's arc is the fact that, within the story, it's incomplete. And he's left with the rest of his life to figure what to do and how to actually properly listen to people. He takes mental notes on the people he cares about and brings them up when relevant, quietly doing things he thinks are what will make them happy because he's not really sure how to ask. With time and therapy and support, he could be a deeply loving man. But right now and where he's left off, he's at the stage where he's just learning how to set the bad habits aside and he's mourning the life he never had because of his own actions. He's allowing himself to feel his emotions organically, which is a good first step, but the grief and self-hatred is defining him and not allowing him to see a path forward. He's in a position now where he'll evolve into the person he could have been (as much as he possibly can) as long as there is someone to guide him to it at the start.

I like to imagine him, twenty years later, that feeling of guilt isn't gone but he can live with it now, and he's able to allow himself a smile and to truly appreciate the lives his children have created for themselves. He'll always be worried, but he's learnt how to love and support in a more healthy way...and it's not perfect but he likes to pretend it is for briefs moments and imagine himself as the father his children always wanted.

Endeavor: Physical Strength vs Emotional Strength

Or The Total Mess that is the Todoroki House.

*Note: The following is not a defense of Endeavor nor is it excusing his actions. It is a deep-dive analysis into the complexities and nuances of his behavior and how it affected his life and everyone else in that family based on observations I’ve made throughout the series. There are also comparisons with other objectively violent characters from other series.

Trigger Warning for domestic and child abuse.

...

We're gonna start out by looking at what happened to his character over the available time frame. Endeavor did not start out as a violent person to his family. We can see that in the flashbacks of the family's early days.

Starting here, note that he’s not cold toward Rei in this scene. The way they’re walking around out here in the garden gives the impression that negotiations between him and Rei’s family are going well so far, but they’re out walking and talking in private just to make sure this arrangement is going to work and making sure further negotiation isn’t going to be a waste of everyone’s time. I say this because if he was dead set on ice powers for this Quirk marriage, Rei probably wasn’t the only option.

It's also important to remember Rei did choose this. She chose for her family rather than herself, but it wasn't her parents' end all be all decision. (And maybe there was familial pressure on her side, but it's not explicitly stated in canon so exactly how much free will Rei actually had is up for interpretation.)

However what I think shows here is they weren’t really talking all that much. Specifically, he is not ‘talking down to her.’ He is not treating her with any particular disrespect or putting her down as inferior. He doesn’t have the arrogance he later exhibits. This also isn’t him being aloof and ignoring her either. Look at his face, specifically his eyes. That is the same blank, deer in the headlights, “I have one brain cell dinging around in my head that is struggling to find a way to interact with people,” stare he shares with Shouto.

He has no idea what to say to her.

So finally, Rei turns off to the side to admire the garden, and he asks, “Do you like the flowers?” It’s a small thing, but it does show that in some capacity, he did show some interest in Rei and making her happy. He’s just stupidly awkward about it at this point. (Even if his ultimate goal was…well, we’ll get into that.)

But this trait of never knowing what to say is a massive defining part of Endeavor’s character that has manifested in a myriad of disastrous ways throughout his entire arc.

Now I don’t think there’s enough shown about Endeavor and Rei’s relationship that we can conclusively say they ever loved each other at any point, but I do think they were, at the very least, cordial in the beginning. They got along, they loved their children, and that in their minds was good enough for them. If you look at the scenes that are Touya and Fuyumi's early childhood, the family seems content. There's no sign of the abuse we see later.

The other big indicator that Endeavor was not originally a violent person to his family is the two very different ways he approaches training with Touya and Shouto. His motive for training them hasn't changed, but compared to the warmth and pride extended toward Touya we see in the above picture, Shouto’s experience with training in the second screenshot is harrowing and traumatic.

So why the difference?

A big reason is it has to do with age. When Rei defends Shouto, telling her husband that, “He’s only five!” and Endeavor is still pushing their son to achieve the standards of an older child, yes, this does show his impatience. However, the other unspoken sentiment here is he himself is not getting any younger. When Touya was born, Endeavor was twenty-two and had his whole life, career, and all his hopes with it ahead of him. His kid has a greater Quirk than his, his legacy is secure, nothing to worry about. But then they learn about the genetic issue with Touya’s Quirk. He can’t use his fire safely, he’ll never be able to use it safely, and he will never be a hero in the way Endeavor can.

Touya: Failure

Fuyumi: Failure

Natsuo: Failure

Shouto was probably viewed as his last chance. Endeavor was getting older and running out of time. If Shouto didn’t work out, then this legacy was dead in the water. At least, I hope Shouto was the last chance, otherwise he might've tried getting another kid out of Rei, divorced Rei and married someone else for the same reason, or attempted securing his successor through a grandchild.

Which is some freaky medieval way of thinking.

Anyone else getting Henry VIII vibes here?

Remember what I said about him never knowing what to say? The most obvious example of this is his complete and total inability to control the situation with Touya.

The tragedy of both Touya and Fuyumi's characters is they are the only two kids in the house who remember the happier childhood, and they both cling to that in their own way. It's why Fuyumi is so determined to 'fix things.' She's trying to regain the family they lost. For Natsuo and Shouto, things have always been bad in the house, hence why Natsuo bailed as soon as he could.

Then we have Touya. His flashbacks start with him at a toddler age. It is very common and normal for a child that young to prefer one parent over the other, but usually it's the parent they're most familiar with: The one that stays home with and takes care of them. Remember, to a toddler, everything is new and potentially scary, and that can also include a parent that is not always present: The parent that's working. In the Todoroki house, Endeavor has his career as a hero, so we have the indication that Rei was the parent who stayed home. In that situation, the probability of Rei being the 'familiar parent' was more likely, so for Touya to prefer his father over his mother shows just how close he was to Endeavor. Or because Fuyumi was the new baby and needed more attention, he could have gravitated away from Rei and gone to his father instead. He didn't see his father's ambitions for him. He didn't see that he was a successor as opposed to a son.

What he, through a child's innocence, saw and understood was that his father loved him and wanted to spend time with him.

Cue the genetic disparity of his Quirk: Where Endeavor failed as a parent was him never talking to Touya about what had happened. He didn't sit down with him and explain it wasn't safe for him to use his Quirk.

The My Hero world has a social problem of Quirks defining one's worth. It's not just the PLF's philosophy. Having no Quirk is viewed with pity and having a Quirk that can't be used could be viewed as a disability by this society, regardless of the fact it's completely possible to live a healthy life without having a Quirk. So Touya's 'issue' required compassion and understanding, especially from a parent. What Endeavor needed to say and what Touya needed to hear was, "This is a path that is blocked to you, it isn't your fault this happened, and I will love you regardless."

Instead, he just dropped him completely. (Given his character, I doubt he's even the one who broke the news to him.) In Touya's eyes, he didn't have the adult nuance to understand why he was being ignored; he just had the child innocence of, "I don't want to hang out with Mom and Fuyumi, I want to be with Dad. Why is he ignoring me? Why won't he train me anymore?"

What Touya learned from this is he only has value in his father's eyes as a hero. So he began training himself to be a hero because he was desperate to get that love and affection back. When Endeavor discovers the fact he's been training and burning himself, Touya never apologizes for disobeying him. He just repeatedly says variations of, "I can do this, then maybe you'll finally be proud of me."

Fuck, dude, just tell the poor kid you're already proud of him. That's all he needed to hear.

And Rei does call Touya out on this. She asks him, "Do you want to be a hero because you want to be a hero or are you doing this because it's what your father wants?"

In order words: "Are you doing this because you think it will make your father love you?"

And we come full circle to the 'death' of Touya where he realized, "I was never a son. I was a product."

...

Endeavor never addresses the problem going on under his roof. He handed the problem off to Rei. He didn't know what to say, he didn't know (and still doesn't) how to be a parent, and instead of confronting that lapse in his character, he instead made a coward's retreat back into the safe and familiar territory of being a hero.

This was the catalyst for his violence to his family.

Being a hero means fighting villains.

Fighting villains is often solving problems with violence.

Because he never knows what to say, he didn't know how to properly navigate a complex emotional situation, so he resorted to the only method he knew that worked:

Beat it into submission.

And since we have the previously mentioned signs they were once a happy, normal family, I have a feeling the violence began very suddenly and without warning.

...

To back this up, I'm gonna give a little personal insight here. I used to work in an orthopedic clinic and a lot of injuries that came through were hand injuries due to someone punching a wall out of anger/frustration. You may think this is fine since they didn’t hit another person and only hurt themselves, but the issue with taking your aggression out on even an inanimate object is you are unwittingly training your brain to associate anger with violence and make it all the more likely for you to lash out violently against another person.

Throughout his career, Endeavor has conditioned himself into this same mindset of repeatedly forging and reinforcing the physical connection of violence with the mental/emotional connection of anger.

Look at this scene from Arcane.

If you haven't seen this series yet, 1.) Get on that. You're missing out. (Don't worry, there's not too many spoilers below.) and 2.) This is Vi and this screenshot is from a scene where she, in a moment of anger and grief, strikes her little sister hard enough in the face to knock her to the ground.

Look at the horror in her eyes when she realizes what she’s done.

Now before and after this moment, we see Vi undoubtedly loves her sister and would die for her. (Season 2 pending...) The first thing she does when they're reunited is hug her and tell her how sorry she is. But Vi has also been a fighter all her life. The sisters grew up in the rough part of town, they had to fight to survive, and they've experienced a violent atmosphere from a young age. We also see that when Vi gets frustrated or angry, she punches/slaps inanimate objects, so she too subconsciously associated violence with intense emotions, and in a moment of blind rage/grief, she failed to dissociate and she hurt her sister.

It wasn't a conscious decision, but it happened nonetheless.

What follows is she walks away from Powder. She doesn't go far, she just puts some distance between herself and her sister to calm down and process what's happened and hopefully find a way to move forward. Only, for unrelated reasons that don't pertain to this topic, she is apprehended by authorities and spends the next 6-7 years in prison, obsessing over her regrets and finding her way back to Powder.

She is never going to forgive herself for this.

I bring this scene up because as far as fiction is concerned, we as the audience do often excuse a character losing their temper and hitting a loved one once. What Vi did was not okay, but because it only happened that one time, nobody is labeling Vi as 'abusive.'

...

So consider the first time Endeavor hit Rei. We don't see it in canon, but with all the indicators of a relatively happy home, I believe that first act of violence was the culmination of these factors:

Endeavor's ongoing inferiority complex with All Might and the frustration in his inability to surpass him, and then projecting that frustration onto his family.

The career of solving problems with violence.

The subconscious association of anger with violence resulting from that career.

I'm also going to throw out the possibility of multiple head injuries incurred from his career playing a role. Traumatic brain injuries can and often do lead to behavioral changes where an individual has trouble managing emotional responses, experiences anxiety, has a shorter temper, etc.

Obviously, none of the above should be treated as excuses (not even the TBI possibility because there's therapy options for that), but they are potential contributors to the pivotal moment of frustration and impatience where Endeavor, like Vi, failed to dissociate and did something he couldn't take back.

Striking Rei is his tea kettle incident. Think back to the awkward moron who didn't have a clue what to say to her when they first met. That young man never thought he would do something like this. That first moment when he hit Rei, I really don't think it was a conscious decision and it may have taken him off guard as much as it did Rei. Like Vi, he probably acted out of blind anger and may have been just as horrified by what he'd done, and I can imagine Endeavor walking away from that to calm down and process that he crossed a line he thought he would never cross.

Unlike Vi, who was going to return to Powder after calming down so she could apologize, beg forgiveness, and move forward, Endeavor is an emotional coward who never knows what to say or how to confront a complex emotional hurtle. So he did the same thing he did with Touya: He retreated from the problem and pretended it didn't exist, and because it was never addressed and he was never held accountable, it only got worse. The lid was off and there was no getting it back on.

I'm not saying there was a definite chance he could have come back from that (that ball was in Rei's court as much as it was Powder's) but Endeavor had a choice:

He could have addressed what he'd done and made amends by submitting to whatever consequence Rei set down for him.

Or he could have rationalized his own twisted justifications for what he did.

He chose wrong.

For another comparison of the violence aspect, I’m also going to bring up Shizuo Heiwajima from Durarara!!, a character who I think flies off the handle far more frequently than Endeavor does.

If you haven't seen Durarara!!, same as above with Arcane.

The nuance of Shizuo is the intense rage he experiences, the violence that follows, and his own inner turmoil. He associates violence with anger, but these are traits that he fully recognizes as detrimental to himself and his personal relationships with other people. He has a temper, he gets violent, he lashes out with abnormal strength and has seriously injured many people.

But the people he's attacked are usually people who provoked him, whether it's thugs who opted to harass him on the street or he heard that a friend was in trouble and rushed off to help them. Not that violence is the answer, but they were people who arguably deserved a beating. More importantly, though, is the way Shizuo treats his relationships with caution. He's a loner by choice. He does want to connect with other people, but he keeps his distance because he legitimately fears harming someone he cares about. Because of his caution and self-awareness, he is a complicated and likable character that I think anyone with a short temper who has said or done things they regret can relate to.

If he didn’t have that level of control on himself and was violent with everyone regardless of who they were to him, he would be despised by the fandom as much as Endeavor is.

This is how Durarara!! can get away with presenting a violent character in a comedic fashion. Shizuo, despite his temper, is an absurdly strong guy, a little bit of an idiot, and fiercely loyal to his friends. All three of those are endearing qualities.

And in the right framing, Endeavor's violence is also presented as comedic.

This scene is funny, but grabbing Hawks like that and lifting him off the ground is technically assault and it is intimidation. Replace Hawks with Rei and this scene changes drastically from funny to very unsettling. Replace him with Touya and it's a fight.

...

Where Endeavor really differentiates from Vi and Shizuo is marked by two important factors:

Shizuo, for all his claims at being unable to control his anger, has it very much under control around the people he cares about. He really only lets loose against a perceived threat.

Vi mostly has that same control even though she lost it for a moment, but she was also separated from her sister in an indirect punishment for her actions.

Endeavor does not have Shizuo's restraint nor did he face any immediate consequences like Vi.

Which brings us to Rei.

I have mixed feelings when it comes to Rei, and the absolute harshest opinion I have of her is that she is pathetic and she failed her children. And I know that's a very black and white, cold-hearted view, but hear me out because it's a lot more complicated than that.

Endeavor is ultimately responsible for his own actions, but Rei also had the option to deal with the problem when it started. When he started hitting her, she could and should and have taken the kids and run as fast as she was able and not looked back. No amount of financial security, family appearance, or whatever justification one finds in this scenario is worth it. She should not have tolerated that abuse against herself and she definitely should not have subjected her children to that. While there's nothing conclusive to say Endeavor was physically harming any of the kids aside from Shouto, not fighting for her autonomy/safety was inadvertently teaching all four of them this is how men treat their wives, women are supposed to tolerate this treatment, and a marriage like this is 'normal.'

And in the end, she straight up abandoned her children. We see from Shouto's point of view right before she attacked him with the tea kettle. She's talking to her mother on the phone, saying she 'can't take it anymore' and she just wants to 'run away from this life.' Well...considering she goes on to spend the next ten years in a psych ward and left her children to her abusive husband...she did get what she wanted. Ten years and she really didn't put any more effort in trying to get back to them? She knew Endeavor was hurting her youngest. Going home and protecting her babies should have been her priority. For a long time, I legitimately thought she was in Fujiya because she was considered unsafe to rejoin society whether she was a danger to herself or to others. When she shows up in Endeavor's hospital room, I stared at the screen and thought, "The fuck? She could discharge herself at any point?"

All right, now that I've gone over my hard-line point of view, let me dial back the judgment and consider what else is going on here:

Rei is a refrigerated character.

She has very little characterization beyond her abuse and being the victimized mother in Shouto's story, so we don't know all that much about her. In all fairness, her oldest son suddenly dying while she was hospitalized certainly would have contributed to her downward spiral and account for her prolonged hospitalization.

She tolerated her abuse longer than she should have, but it is possible:

She learned that from her own parents. Tolerating abuse is often a byproduct of generational trauma. Maybe her father treated her mother the same way and she grew up thinking this was normal.

Maybe the first time Endeavor hit her, she rationalized it into a point of acceptance where she told herself that everything was fine and that it was only the 'one time' and it wouldn't happen again, a sentiment she kept repeating every time it happened.

Maybe she was raised to believe ‘the man of the house is always right,’ and that is a mindset that is hard to break if instilled from childhood.

Her parents certainly didn’t seem all that supportive with what was going on, but we also don’t know how much she told them. We don't even know if that one phone call she had with her mom was the first time she reached out for help after years of pretending everything was fine or if this was was something she was repeatedly updating her parents about and those parents chose to be aloof to it.

Maybe she really did grow up in a loving home and just didn't know what to do when confronted with the violent relationship she found herself in.

Maybe she was gaslit into believing it wasn't abuse.

Maybe she really did report the abuse and the godforsaken, root-of-all-evil Safety Commission told her, "Your husband's a hero. Stay quiet and don't ruin that public image." Basically told her to suck it up. That is also a possibility, and one I think could be the most likely, but the series doesn't really go into just how corrupt the Commission was, so we're in headcanon territory.

Maybe she did try to take the kids and run but failed to get away. (Unlikely since it’s never mentioned in canon.)

Not everyone is fortunate enough to have an upbringing that instills the belief, 'if your partner hurts you, they are dead to you' and not everyone has the good fortune of a reliable support network that can help them recognize a bad situation and get them out of it.

Given how well-known Endeavor is to the public, maybe Rei was afraid no one would believe her about the abuse. "A hero would never do such a thing. She's making it up for attention. Her family was poor, so she must be a gold-digger trying to screw over her hero husband in the divorce proceedings."

There is also the important fact that Japan has a social stigma against divorce. Persevering for the sake of family stability and maintaining an ideal appearance is a deeply ingrained cultural norm, which does introduce a troubling power imbalance between a husband who works and a housewife who doesn't have her own independent income. We also have to remember that Rei and her family were financially dependent on Endeavor, so she may have feared the monetary fallout at the prospect of leaving him. Also, with the popularity of the hero ranking system, the No. 2 Hero's wife divorcing him would have been very public and potentially humiliating for all involved.

And we can’t ignore the fact that Endeavor systematically broke her down into a shell of a person who couldn't see a way out of her situation and was tormented to the point she had a psychotic episode and attacked Shouto, the very child she tried to protect. And this too could have contributed to her prolonged hospitalization if this was the final straw and she viewed herself as a failure of a mother.

Maybe it was a combination of two or several of the above factors.

At the end of the day, abuse is a multi-faceted beast, and just as the abuse comes in many forms, the victim can have any number of reasons for staying in their situation.

So even though I have my harsh opinion of Rei and I think she should have done more to protect her children, I do 100% sympathize with her. She is a victim and she in no way deserved what she went through.

But while her inaction wasn't the cause of the crisis in her family, it was definitely a contributor to how badly it got out of hand because whatever the reason Rei didn't expose Endeavor or try to take the children and leave him, that lack of accountability opened up the opportunity for him to rationalize his own twisted justifications for his actions. “It’s fine. She deserved it because ______. She was 'acting out.' She was overreacting. She doesn't know what she's talking about.” Whatever he needed to tell himself to believe he didn’t do anything wrong even though he knew he wasn’t fooling himself or anyone.

She didn't stand up to him. Their children couldn't stand up to him.

So he continued the physical abuse unchecked.

...

Moving on into the redemption arc.

After the Kamino Incident, Endeavor finally, finally, finally got that vaunted No 1. Hero spot he'd been chasing for two decades. But he didn't earn it the way he wanted to by proving he's the best of the best. All Might retired, so he won by default.

And then he finds it's just one spot further up on a ranking system that means absolutely nothing in the grand scheme of things. So he looks back at what's really important and he sees the charred skeleton frame of a house he burned down.

One institutionalized wife

One dead son

One daughter who clings to the memories of a happier home

One estranged son

One son who only has a use for him as a teacher and not a parent and will probably drop him the second he no longer needs him

In spite of everything, I do genuinely think the man deserves some credit for at least being willing to make an attempt at reconciliation. Not a lot since he dug that hole himself, but let's face it, a lot of lesser people would have looked at that mess and thought, "Fuck it, no going back now," and continued business as usual. So the question becomes:

Is Endeavor trying to redeem himself out of a need to make himself feel better about everything he's done or is he truly doing it for the benefit of the people he's hurt?

I tentatively think/hope could be a mix of both--I believe there is a part of him that cares about his children--but it definitely skews more toward making himself feel better because there's never a moment before the redemption arc begins where he's isolated, thinking back on everything, and just has the appropriate, "What have I done?" revelation. If his remorse was genuinely all about his family, we would have had that 'crying in the hospital scene' a whole lot sooner.

I think if Horikoshi wanted to portray Endeavor's redemption as genuine remorse for what he did to his family, I think he would have put more of a focus on Endeavor actually seeing the impact of what he'd done and feeling the inner turmoil and regret. Not just Natsuo's anger but also seeing firsthand Shouto's isolation and complete lack of social skills as a result of his training or having a conversation with Fuyumi where she admits she never wants to marry or have children because she doesn't 'want to risk ending up like Mom.' Seeing the effects of his behavior, realizing it's his fault.

So no. While there may be a part of Endeavor that loves his children (or he tells himself that he does), his wanting to atone is inspired mainly by his self-worth. He realized the ends did not justify the means and he tries to fix it.

But either way, how does he go about it?

The biggest change he makes toward earning forgiveness is to his hero career, which tracks with his character. That's familiar territory, so it's easier for him to navigate. He takes a significantly gentler method of teaching/mentorship with Shouto and he tries a kinder approach with his fans. That's progress, but it's still avoidance of the main issue that is the rift he caused with the other members of the family.

His relationship with Fuyumi doesn't have much friction. Fuyumi clings to their family's happier memories. With Touya gone, she was the only child who could remember a childhood without fighting parents, abuse, and suffering siblings. In a twisted way, this is something she and Touya have in common. So it makes sense that she would be the one who's the most receptive to Endeavor's attempts to be a better father. She sees this change as their best chance at being a normal family again. Like Touya, she wanted her father back.

Natsuo is different. He was 3-4 years old when the toxicity in their household really began to spike and when the violence started. Incidentally, this is also when memory cells in the brain start to fully develop and form concrete memories. Compared to his older siblings, the abuse is all he knows and that is why he's the child who left and went low-contact. The only thing Natsuo's really done wrong is start family drama when there's company over for dinner. I mean, c'mon. That's just rude. Don't do that in front of guests.

While Endeavor makes attempts to better his training methods/fan interaction, what he doesn't do is call a family meeting to discuss things, not that this would have resolved anything by a long shot, but it would have established a baseline of where everyone in the family was at and whether or not forgiveness was even on the table at all. It is an extremely arrogant thought for Endeavor to think forgiveness for something of this magnitude is possible, and if he wanted to seek forgiveness (or to atone, whatever the hell that means) for the lifelong mistreatment of family, he should have been more prepared for the most abject, humble groveling to the people he wronged that he could manage.

He should have admitted to his mistakes and faults, laid out everything he'd done wrong, apologize for that as best he could, then express he wanted to repair their relationship and be a family again while also acknowledging that he understands if that is not possible. Lay down that groundwork, maybe be open to family therapy so that a professional third party can act as a mediator and provide impartial guidance, figure out where the boundaries are, acknowledge he can't give them back their ruined childhoods but he can *insert anything Fuyumi, Natsuo, and Shouto ask as recompense, even if it's just leaving their lives forever*, and listen for once to what his family is saying.

Instead, he tries to have normal conversations with his children as if nothing bad ever happened. He offers to come watch Shouto's remedial training like that's a totally ordinary thing for him to do. He tells Natsuo during the family dinner that he would like to try his cooking some time. That is a good olive branch! There is nothing wrong with saying that, but without that prior baseline conversation, it comes off as contrived and that's how Natsuo interpreted it. He sends flowers to Rei, also a good signal to send, but he should have done the the uncomfortable thing and contacted her through her physician to see if she's open to meeting with him for a conversation or sending her a letter she could choose to open at any time (or send back unopened.) That would have established that same baseline and helped move forward towards the atonement he wanted.

But he does the same thing he always does: He pretends the real issue just doesn't exist and he tries to control the situation to suit him.

Why?

Say it with me: He never knows what to say! He can't navigate complex emotions!

He doesn't try to find out if his family is even willing to forgive him, frankly because he's an emotional coward who doesn't want to hear the answer.

However, we cannot say he has no character development at all.

There is one thing worth noting around this point in the plot that I think is important to recognize. If Endeavor ever had any character development that was in favor of his redemption, it was when Natsuo was kidnapped and nearly killed, and it's not because he ran and hugged him in the street.

In this scene, he admits to Natsuo that his actions might as well have killed Touya.

This is a small thing, but it's also huge because you have to consider that up until this time, Endeavor has been gaslighting himself into believing it was Touya's fault for getting himself killed or Rei's fault for not doing as she was told and watching him. He could even have been irrationally blaming All Might for just being a barrier to his goals. Any warped excuse and justification he could think of to escape the blame.

It's not a lot, but he did finally give voice to the guilt that he is the reason he failed and his child died. He finally acknowledged that the blame lies squarely with him and no one else, and acknowledging he drove Touya to his own death means way more than just talking about his intentions to atone.

He took accountability here, at least within the family.

That is one point he's earned. We as the audience can begrudgingly concede that one.

But this progress is again stalled when Endeavor makes the decision that it would be best for his family if he distances himself from them. He chooses to build another house for them where they can all live together with their mother and away from his shadow.

The initial reaction I had to this decision was, "Okay, your solution is kicking them out of the only home they've ever known?" But then I considered that having those kids leave a house where they lived through a traumatic and stressful childhood was a good call. Natsuo already bailed, after all. And then there's Fuyumi... Yeah, you know what, maybe a conversation would have been appropriate here. Instead of finding out what they want, he goes and decides it for them like he always does.

Touya has a genetic disparity that prevents him from using his Quirk safely? Endeavor decides he shouldn't be a hero, disregarding any possibility of finding a potential workaround.

Shouto finally uses his fire at the Sports Festival? Endeavor has his whole speech that pretty much shows he has Shouto's entire life planned out after graduation.

He wants to do what's best for his family? He decides what's best for them.

And we're back to the big dumbass never knowing what to say and still running away from the main issue by making assumptions and decisions without actually considering the thoughts/opinions of the people around him and controlling the situation to his benefit.

He may have his intention to do better, but he has no idea what he's doing. He doesn't know how to relinquish his authority role.

And then we have Touya with his, "Bitch, you thought!" grenade. Or is it a nuke?

It's important to note is that failure to articulate emotion in a healthy way is a trait that is shared by all of the Todoroki family members.

Endeavor - the emotional coward who resorts to violence when confronted with an uncomfortable situation

Rei - the passive mother

Fuyumi - the peacekeeper and people-pleaser

Shouto - the child who was systematically deprogramed into an angry husk imitating his father that he has only recently started to recover from

Touya and Natsuo are the only two who actually have some pushback against the bullshit in their family. Touya's a whole kettle of insane fish who's warped psyche deserves a character analysis of its own, but the point is, even as a kid, he doesn't creep around his father or try to make peace with him. Natsuo also has no problem calling out Endeavor for everything that went wrong in his childhood, plus he moved out and went to college as soon as he could.

Touya - the unstable sociopath who shares his father's tendency to violently lash out while stuck with the mental fragility of his mother

Natsuo - the traumatized avoidant

Neither of them have a functional way of dealing with their issues. (In fact, Touya is so unhinged about it that the door has peaced out and is halfway down the street.)

Endeavor wanted to atone for what he did...by burying and not actually taking any real accountability until the unavoidable moment Touya is screaming down to him, "Is it because you became No. 1 that you finally paid attention to your family?"

Touya has a warped view of the world brought on by years of trauma, but he hit the nail on the head.

Endeavor's main motivation for atonement is for the self-satisfaction.

So we have the symbolism of Endeavor, who has always used his physical strength to solve his problems by beating them into submission and used his intimidating height to glare down at everyone beneath him, and then we have Touya standing on top of a mountain, shouting down. Endeavor's in a position where he's looking up at his dead child, who is arguably the broken bough, elephant in the room, core unavoidable reason a full atonement was never going to be possible, bringing about a twenty-year overdue reckoning.

And he once again doesn't know what to say.

As the story ends, this is where we leave him: Crippled, looking up at his dying child, and confronted by one of the lives he ruined. By choice, he's going to sit here and face what he did. These talks are not going to be pleasant. I doubt Touya is so burned out and exhausted that he doesn’t have the heart to spit out more of the lifetime of vitriol he’s built up.

I know a lot of fans were disappointed Horikoshi didn’t kill Endeavor off in the end, but I personally prefer to look at it this way:

Some characters deserve death.

But some deserve to live in despair.

...

To revisit Arcane, I think this quote neatly sums up Endeavor.

#fuck that ended up longer than i thought #i really go off the rails when i think about this guy and go rambling for an hour #also i will mention that with the whole visiting rei in the hospital thing #it is stated that he visits rather frequently and always brings flowers #the only reason they didn't talk in person until the war arc is because the doctors didn't think it was a good idea #but if they had gotten that chance to talk I wonder what that conversation would have been like #anyway he goes to therapy on wednesdays and has lunch with his daughter on fridays #at 52 he gets cats because it'll help him feel less lonely but he ends up projecting his fatherly desires onto them #because he feels bad for being unable to be there when his kids needed him most and dotes on them the way he wishes he had when he was 30 #but also no this is a great post and articulates things about enji that i sometimes have a hard time describing #i love this man i get so defensive about him but his story is good i promise

196 notes · View notes