#Bakugou's long standing issues with basic impulse control

[justatalkingface]

Hey! I've been reblogging some of your stuff and throwing my two cents in what I think. So I come here with a simple question...

What're your thoughts on Shota Aizawa?

Because for me, he's no different than the teachers in Aldera when it comes to handling Izuku. He's also a flatout hypocrite by getting onto All Might for favoring Izuku when he does the same with Hitoshi.

And I'm not even mentioning how he uses his trauma to justify his bs teaching ways

...Hahahahaha! So, you have no way of knowing this, but I've basically been preparing for this moment, to make this rant, for the longest time. More than probably any other character in this series, I've thought about Aizawa, tried to put into words what bugged me about him, scoured the internet for opinions to broaden my understanding, to find the right words. Quite a few posts have been yours, actually.

The short answer is that, simply, I hate him. Once I got past his Kakashi Aura from my first impression, I didn't like him, but fandom hype for Dadzawa, as well as the fact that usually comes with horrifying levels of bashing for people like All Might (ironically, perhaps the most unsung hero in the setting, seeing how few people seem to like his character) curdled it deep into loathing. Still, I'm going to be try to be objective as I talk.

The long answer is more complicated, and very, very long, but still overwhelmingly negative. For me, part of it is that Aizawa is easily the winner of the title of being The Favored Mouthpiece. This is a mixed blessing for him, to say the least; on the positive side, this fact has done a lot for his positive reception and total screen time, the the narrative bends over backwards to agree with what he says, time and time again. On the negative... for all that I'm aware that he's just lines on paper, on deeply visceral level I have sympathetic disgust for all the times he's been used like a puppet to parrot one agenda or another, and it muddles the water on who his character actually is. Honestly, it's been going on for so long, and it's still going on, I wonder if I should just... accept these random outbursts as part of his actual characterization.

At a fundamental level, I've had this question burning inside of me for a long time now: does this man even want to be a teacher? No, this is a serious question: he is effectively working two jobs, and managing it terribly (unlike every other UA teacher, who are all heroes for no apparent reason, and especially Present Mic who somehow has three jobs and still is full of energy. Does that man ever sleep?). He seems to hate the daylight. He seems to hate being clean. He seems to hate children. He hates, if not teaching, then teaching people that don't vibe on his level. He hates being on a schedule. He hates following authority. Really the only part of being teacher he does probably like is the actual paycheck.

So, again, why is he a teacher? I know he likes taking someone under his wing, but that use of a singular pronoun was very specific: he wants one person, one that fills whatever bizarre and unknown criteria, to teach (I'm still not sure what made him look at about five minutes of Shinso and say, 'This, this is the child I shall give all my skills, all my knowledge, and even my physics defying combat weapon.' Like, do they have to be his mini-me? Bear the soul of Grumpy Cat? I really don't know), an apprentice, not students plural. From what I gleaned from the Vigilante manga (which I should probably reread at some point), it's that desire, but misunderstood, combined with nostalgia, loneliness (his friends were already at UA) and peer pressure, that motivated him to start teaching at UA.

I don't really need to say it, but those are terrible reasons to become a teacher, and probably help explain why he's so bad at it.

Before I get into that, I want to address one thing: I've seen, online, that Aizawa's role as homeroom teacher is something completely different in Japan than it is for anywhere English speaking. So these various comments and what not say is, in Japan, these home room teachers aren't actually supposed to teach. They're supposed to be... something like councilors, I believe: they stay with the children and help guide them, and so on, and that's why he's a better teacher than we think he is. I've never actually seen anyone counter that argument, just agree, and I've had this response waiting for a long time now: when do you see Aizawa do that?

I know the Final Exam arc is supposed to show us that, yes, Aizawa is perceptive and does notice things about his students, and does care, but that's shit. His inner monologue tells us about Momo and her lack of self confidence. The implication of that, that he's only dealing with this now, means he's been sitting on this for... how long? However long he noticed that, I guess? So, from a time period ranging between the first day of class, and just before they prepared for the test, Aizawa noticed Momo had confidence issues and apparently did nothing until that test, probably because he wanted to be 'efficient' and deal with two things at once. Why do extra work and deal with a student's issues, when you can do it while they struggle to pass their final exams? Wow. A+ job there, teach.

On Shoto... just... just no. Come back to me, someone, anyone, when Aizawa even acknowledges that that mess is made out of red flags: the fact he doesn't use half of his goddamn Quirk until Izuku beats some self reflection into him. The fact he unsubtly hates his father. The fact he doesn't seem to know how to be a normal person. The burn scar on his face when he's heat resistant. Anything. Anything. I don't expect him to look at the kid and magically realized he's abused, but there's enough there that if he's a good teacher, or councilor, or whatever, he should probably be low key probing for information on his situation, see if there's something wrong in the most general of senses, because there's clearly something wrong there.

Literally anything about Izuku or Bakugou, though I'm putting a pin on discussing that mess until later.

See, the problem with saying that Aizawa is supposed to be the class's... councilor or something, instead of a teacher, brings up the fact that he's a shit councilor. Even if it's true (I'm not Japanese, I have no idea), this doesn't make his character better, this just brings up different problems instead.

Alright, so now that that's out of the way... now I need to point out that Aizawa is a Kakashi clone, and that's a good deal of the reason he's so popular; he rode off Naruto nostalgia. Let's list off how many traits he blatantly got from him. It's more than you think!

Aizawa is like Kakashi in that: he's a teacher that doesn't want to teach, his students include the Great Hope of the setting and his 'rival', he's traumatized from a friend dying when he was young, he deals with his heavy PTSD with unhealthy coping mechanisms, he has an eye based power that turns his eyes red, he loses an eye, he takes on an apprentice that reminds him of himself and gives him his signature technique/equipment, his dead best friend is alive, his dead best friend is the enemy, his dead best friend has been heavily experimented on, his dead best friend has warping powers, his friend group consists of people more cheerful than him who respect his skills, his best friend is overwhelmingly cheery in a way that balances with his low key behavior.

...When you list it out like this, it starts to get a little nuts, doesn't it? I wonder, sometimes, how much actual thought went into the character Eraserhead, and how much was Hori just... copying the copy ninja.

Here's the problem with that though, beyond the laziness of it all: Kakashi is a ninja. He is a mercenary, a child soldier, has killed more people than we have names for in all of MHA. He lives in a military village, under a military dictatorship, and is expected to kill. The teaching system he's part of is largely involuntary, though he avoids in in part because he's so good that everyone looks the other way when he ducks out of it. These students are also ten. There is just... just so much there, so much that is utterly alien to how MHA works, that putting a copy in is... flawed, to say the least.

That's why the Bell Test Quirk Apprehension Test is so bad: Hori put that in, as a blatant echo of Kakashi testing Team Seven, without thinking once of the differences in the setting.

He's in a school, and his job is being a teacher. His literal, actual ass job is to teach students (or 'help guide them', either way). This is something he chose to do, of his own volition. Kakashi trying to ditch his potential students is him trying to avoid an unwanted burden and him avoiding poking at this massive issues with teammates and responsible and everyone he knows and loves dying around him. And when he's forced to take some on? He tries his best to teach them, and he does: think about the first Battle of the End. The way Naruto and Sasuke fought each other. Think about how Naruto used to fight. Where did he learn to throw a punch like that? Kakashi. He may show up late, but the man did his work off screen.

Aizawa trying not to teach his students is literally a man too fucking lazy to do his own job. We all know Hori retconned it with 'he just wanted them to get a taste of death' via expulsion (which, apparently in Japanese culture is something that would set them back in their prospects for life) but it's so nonsensical that it's hard to take it seriously that he just... does this. Was planning to do this the first day, because they were excited about being heros, like that deserved a taste of death (They aren't in the military, you ass, they're in high school). Is allowed to do this. That he did this to an entire class for some reason but not Bakugou, when Bakugou exists.

Which means it's time to wade into the mess that is Aizawa and Izuku and Bakugou. Let's start with Bakugou, first, since I already started.

Blatantly, obviously, Bakugou has plot armor in how people react to him, or don't, as the case may be, and one of the worst victims of it is Eraserhead. The fact that Mr. 'Taste of death' and 'Expels entire classes' doesn't at least punt Bakugou into detention, or more likely a 'taste of death' to threaten the other students (because that's how you teach your class of high schoolers! By fear!), after he actively attacks Izuku, is just... mind boggling. The way he constantly refuses to acknowledge which of them is the aggressor, which of them is the first to throw a punch, which one is constantly threatening the other....

The obvious conclusion here is that Aizawa likes Bakugou, for whatever reason, but... I don't think it's true. The thing is if he liked Bakugou, you'd think he'd... spend time with him. Try and train him. Something. But no, by and by large he acts like Bakugou doesn't exist, right until Hori needs someone to compliment him for the readers, or someone to defend him after he does something bad, yet again, and then all of a sudden he's singing his praises. This is where the downsides of being The Favored Mouthpiece comes in: every time he's complimented Bakugou, every time he's said that this mess of a child is going to be a great hero, every time he cries desperately that he, 'Still needs to be Number One!' or whatever the hell that bullshit was? That was Hori. That was always Hori. Aizawa basically isn't allowed to exist near Bakugou without Hori running interference for him.

Izuku, on the other hand, is half the opposite, half Aizawa's own biases coming in. Part of it is Hori needs Izuku to feel stressed to pump up the tension, make cliffhangers, and get Jump selling; Izuku can't have a normal school life, he needs a heart pounding one. In most shonen school settings, this is easy to accomplish because they're generally hell holes that put their students in life and death situations on the regular, and live in hierarchies based off power levels. UA, though? It's a normal, or at least "normal" school, if exceptional, in the "real" world, plus some super powers. There are standards, is the thing; they can't and won't send their students off to maybe die because of they're a secret society or whatever. They have accountability (to some extent) to the general public, in other words.

So where does Izuku's cliffhanger filled school life come from? Well, Tomura and the Tomura-ettes, for one, but for all the other times... Hori turned to his teacher.

Let me say this again, because I want to emphasis this: part of the reason Aizawa exists as he does, is so that Izuku can feel threatened at school by his teacher. Why? Because Izuku's suffering sells.

Meanwhile, though Izuku does get pulled into Bakugou's plot armor sometimes, and suffers for it (more), but as a person and a character, I think Aizawa unironically disliked Izuku from the start. He grows out of it, to some extent, but....

Let's backtrack a second, back to the Quirk Test. Izuku, at this point, is ripped. Even without his Quirk, he was throwing around fridges and working all day and night to prep for UA. He was at the peak of realistic human fitness, instead of whatever increasing soft cap we have for heroes is.

Toru is invisible. Sure, she's in shape, since she passed the exam, but Izuku clearly focused on his body in a way most of the other students aren't, and she has no Quirk that'd help her pass the test (a test that, as many have pointed out, Aizawa would have failed). She's a nice girl, sure, but there's no way she could have out performed Izuku in raw physical ability, even before the ball throw which was one of the best of that category, and far beyond whatever she could have done.

Yet Izuku was the one at the bottom, not Toru. Why? Well, you could blame Hori, and that's technically true, but the thing is, unlike Bakugou, Aizawa acts like he doesn't like Izuku. He blames him for everything, he refuses to do anything as he breaks his bones constantly, he calls him Problem Child, and anyone who thinks that's affectionate, and that Izuku should as such, and that it's a cute little nickname needs to consider that through the lenses of Izuku's low self esteem, much less from a teacher who constantly threatens his students.

Aizawa sabotaged Izuku's scores. He did it because, you're right: he's just like the teachers at Aldera, if more restrained, and for different reasons. Not because Izuku is Quirkless (though he would if Izuku was, because the man honestly is Quirkist), but because he has the wrong Quirk. Because Izuku had the audacity to come to a school to learn about how to use his Quirk, instead of practicing it illegally, or inside his own house where, at that power level, one wrong move could accidently his house. Because he apparently didn't read the files that said Izuku got it a month ago, or didn't care. Or maybe it's just he looked at Izuku, and realized that having him learn to control that was just... too much work?

At the end of the day, which reason he did it doesn't even matter. What matters is he did. The same way he plays constant mind games with his students for shits and giggles, in ways that should undermine their faith in him, the same way he paired a bully with his victim so they could 'work it out', the same way he puts minimal effort into so much of the work he does, and it's why I loathe him as a teacher.

Aizawa is a good hero, but the moment Nezu let him into a school was a mistake.

[ichichikacchan-blog]

Midoriya vs Bakugou - why Bakugou's actions make sense psychologically and why Midoriya constantly added conflicts - unintentionally

Soooo, I watched the latest episode and like I predicted, it fuckin killed me.

Before I dive in and get to the main topic, I really want to shout out to Bakugou's VA Okamoto Nobuhiko. This guy is a beast and he captures Bakugou SO well, it's insane. I knew what was coming but his voice acting left me broken, I ached so bad for Bakugou I was so down after his break down.

So, the biggest part of my wall of text will cover my thoughts on why Bakugou's actions made sense from the beginning, psychologically.

So leaving all my emotions behind and turn to a more objective view, I'll talk about a topic that bugged me a lot for several months now and it's the amount of hate Bakugou receives. I'm kind of glad to see that there are a lot of his fans out there, too but the haters are quite aggressive and while I do understand where this is coming from, a lot of people miss the big picture and they just don't try to understand. Which is sad. I know there are a lot of people just consuming things and don't really want to get into deep thoughts about animated shows, but maybe they should. It’s okay to hate a character but please recognize character development.

First, that he bullied Deku and even told to his face that he should kill himself IS NOT COOL and should NOT be defended. These were absolute dick moves, period.

Digging deeper, WHY did he do this? It's a very interesting and complicated topic and the whole conflict caught my attention early on as I'm a sucker for anti-heroes and complicated characters. And boy, complicated is the word I'll always choose if I need to describe Bakugou with a few words.

The latest episode finally shed some light on Bakugou's feelings and though the fight took not that long in the manga I'm so glad they decided to use a whole episode with added flashbacks and adjusted the dialoge a bit.

It's important to understand 2-3 stages of the conflict, so it's necessary to start with the childhood of Midoriya and Bakugou.

Stage 1 : Arrogance

The manga and anime made it very clear in the beginning that Bakugou has been very ambitious and with his quirk manifesting early and all people around him handling him like a prodigy, he grew up believing that his dream will become a reality no matter what. For him, as he was powerful, strong willed and intelligent, these were the main things needed to become the best of the best - because these attributes made him the best in everything. So he automatically claimed a leader position with many admirers, including little Midoriya. You can see in this early stages that due to societys perception of him, he became a little arrogant fucker but he wasn't toxic at that time. What was toxic were his expectations for himself that manifested, because in his mind, powerful and strong are things to be admired, hence, everything else was weak and to stay on top, weakness is no option and to be avoided at all costs. And well, Midoriya did add to that A LOT because he treated him like something special all the time!

So all quirks manifested in the little so called gang they had and poor Midoriya didn't have one. That alone let to teasing, but he didn't receive cruel child teasing by Bakugou alone. It was a mixture of pity and cold rejection he reveived from nearly everyone around him. And still there was this amazing guy next to him, the one he called a friend. So little Bakugou took Midoriya kind of under his wing because Midoriya was weak and a crybaby (he always was). Bakugou did not do that out of kindness, he did it because he was the leader and weaklings need leaders to know what to do. And Midoriya wanted that back then because despite having his dream, he was nothing but a dreamer, absolutely no threat to Bakugous' goals and in all things, he was weak. Except for being intelligent.

1.2 All about the respect

So they still hanged out after that, people tend to forget that. The only thing that changed that Bakugou started teasing him. With Midoriya out of the game, he he had no competition. Again, it was not toxic back then but it grew to be and we will encounter that change soon, but I'd like to talk a bit more about their relationship in the early stages because understanding what Midoriya did wrong by being himself is essential to understand what pushed Bakugou from being a teasing and arrogant shit to a full grown bully.

So, young Bakugou and Midoriya still were something considered friends back then and it all changed with Midoriya diagnosed as quirkless.

So, we remember the scene, Bakugou in full leader mode falling from that tree trunk and Midoriya coming for help. So what happened here is essential because, Midoriya rushed to make sure he is okay out of concern but WHAT did Bakugou see? He fell, yeah. But it was not dangerous. He just slipped and got wet by falling into the little river beneath. And here was Midoriya, trying to help him for... what exactly? Because the situation was so trivial Bakugou did not understand why the hell he looked like he needed help. He wasn't even hurt. Remember, he was the leader. Again, he totally misinterpret good intentions and concern and the mood shifted between them. Because in this moment, Bakugou felt disrespected.

Midoriya literally made himself the perfect victim (not his fault intentionally, but the circumstances made it so).  Midoriya had one feature that made him such a lovable precious guy and that was his willingness to help others no matter what. Something Bakugou did himself to an extent too, but for him that was natural because he was the strongest. Midoriya tried to help even when he couldn't and he never understood that. What is important to note is that they are such different characters, it was not possible for Bakugou to grasp Midoriyas intentions, so he interpreted them.

The beginning, stage 2: Pride

So they went to school together and the mood changed drastically. Midoriya kept chasing his dreams but to be fair, he didn't do anything for it except analyzing a lot of things and sharpen his intelligence (which is admirable too but remember, we're analyzing Bakugous' perspective).

Bakugou, as the prodigy he was, noticed that Midoriya was intelligent. What he didn't understand was his clinging to his dream, because he made no effort in appearing heroic or something and was simply not strong enough to accomplish anything. Midoriya turned out to be everything he despised, a definition of weakness. Still, he chased his dream but without doing anything and THAT pissed Bakugou off. You could clearly see that Bakugou, despite having it easy the whole time because of his talents, was still working his ass off. He trained a lot, mastered his quirk and, the big difference to an ordinary bully, he learned a lot, studied eagerly and didn't want to get involved with illegal shit (he told his followers off for smoking around him and so on).

So Midoriya somehow planned to become a hero without having at least some physical abilities and a respectable personality, he was just a dreamer. 

Back to topic, seeing the crybaby dreamer wanting to accomplish the same thing as he wanted to, pissed Bakugou off. For him, it was futile (and let's be honest, without getting One For All, it would've been futile because Midoriya didn't fulfill the requirements for getting accepted from a hero school so he'd never gotten his license otherwise!) and with Midoriya still believing that he somehow could do it (he was not that determined as Bakugou, so his thing was more dreaming of becoming a hero than making an effort to become one) he totally got on Bakugous nerves and Bakugou decided to "put him into place". That, OF COURSE, was so wrong. But Midoriyas whole actions attacked his pride and Bakugou needed to make pretty clear that no one, especially a nerd (he called him that because he recognized his intelligence and did fear it, because it was Midoriyas only attribute being a match to his own) will somehow manage to be in his way. Plus he developed a poor impulse controll. 

He just couldn't handle the thought that Midoriya could somehow do something to threaten him due to his intelligence or pure luck. So he needed to break him. Would their relationship have been different if Midoriya stood up for himself? ABSOLUTELY. Still, it doesn’t excuse Bakugou’s bullying, bullying is just WRONG.  

Remember when I said that Midoriya made himself the perfect victim? His nature collided with Bakugou's and totally prevented him to stand up for himself, which automatically proved Bakugou right (in his perception), that Midoriya is a weakling. What makes that clear is, Bakugou's somehow best friend at U.A., Kirishima, is EXACTLY like Midoriya characterwise (except for the crying part) BUT he doesn't take shit from Bakugou, that's why he earned his respect. Midoriya didn't and he never tried to step up because he let Bakugou make him weak. In a way that Midoriya believed himself that he was weak! So basically the conflict came about because Bakugou lacked empathy and suffered (still does) from poor control of his emotions and Midoriya lacked self esteem and will. A toxic combination that led Bakugou to hate Midoriyas guts and react the only way he could due to his anger issues and Midoriya living in fear. But he still was somehow not able to hate Bakugou and why is that? Because deep down, with his empathy for others, Midoriya knew that the tough guy thing was an act and that Bakugou really had anger management problems. The scene after Bakugou told him to go kill himself proved that, because Midoriya thought he was stupid for saying that because he would've gotten in trouble if Midoriya did something to himself. Yup, Midoriya was so precious during that aweful time and Bakugou surely didn't deserve it. Especially after the incident where he appeared to Bakugou's rescue with risking a lot. And deep down, Bakugou knew he couldn't do anything against that enemy and that Midoriya risked and actually DID something. And it pissed him off.

Stage 3: The inferiority complex

Now, we all know what came next, Midoriya got acknowledged by All Might and received a quirk. He trained a lot and took the entrance exam for U.A., just like Bakugou. And with a lot of luck he passed, while Bakugou scored first. So he came to class and shocked the hell out of Bakugou and with the first fitness test, the whole thing escalated. Midoriya had a quirk. What the actual fuck? For Bakugou, Midoriya TRICKED him his whole life and knowingly looked down on him the whole time. Just waiting for an opportunity to surpass him. Making a fool out of him for a long time. And with all the other good quirks in his class, the chances of Midoriya somehow beating him were threatining him. In no fuckin way he could let that happen so even with the high intelligent people in his class (Momo, Todoroki, Midoriya, Iida,..) and the powerful (Todoroki, Tokoyami, Kaminari, Kirishima, Midoriya..) he still managed to be the best, losing slightly in intelligence to Momo and power to Todoroki, but being the best as a package of both attributes. And he continued to work hard because now, he had actual threats for the first time. 

In a school with prodigies you need to be better than everyone else. And so Bakugou tried to stay away from everybody, being a Maverick. But he saw Midoriya getting stronger and stronger and he was afraid. Losing to him literally shook his worldview and with wanting to be the best at all costs he pressured himself so much that a breakdown was inevitable. Especially after All Might's fight with All For One, because he blamed himself so bad for that. The breakdown happened today in this episode. He stuffed everything down, suffered from major setbacks, and was confronted with something he didn't want to hear: That everybody saw him as a villain, not a hero. Now imagine having a goal since early childhood, admiring a hero and wanting to become one just to realize that everyone, including villains, saw a villian in him rather than a hero. Well, ouch. His own fault of course but please don't forget that he is still a teenager (Thank you All Might for understanding this). So he failed the provisional license exam and Midoriya passed it and that, plus his realization about the connection of Midoriya and All Might and All Might's end send him over the edge. 

He worked so hard and Midoriya got acknowledged, why? Well, rethorical of course, I'm pretty sure that he already guessed why but he didn't want to admit it. That's why he wanted to fight, because HE wanted to acknowledge Midoriya too to be even able to handle the fact that All Might didn't acknowledge HIM. So Midoriya finally needed to prove to him that he has what it takes to be a hero, to earn his respect - and he did! FINALLY. All Might telling the truth, Bakugou earned the right to know the details. All Might acknowledged him too and Midoriya finally understood what was wrong all those years.

Their conflict is so powerful and real, it's one of the best rivalry stories I've ever come across and I didn't expect that much depth in a Shounen jump story. Now, the Bakugou haters have a point, the bullying was beyond shitty and it takes more effort to somehow make it right again (that's up to Midoriya to decide). But to state that Bakugou is plain evil and an asshole and just did what he did because he is an asshole pains me. The world is not black and white. As I said, even though a lot of people don't want to hear that but Midoriya didn't do anything to get out of the role of the victim. Was it okay for Bakugou to use this, of course NOT. But he's so much more than a bully and guys, for real, haven't you done anything wrong in your life? Have you never hurt anybody with things you did? Don't be ridiculous. Bullying, of course, is not just some mistake, it's really shitty and nobody needs to forgive him (I certainly didn't and he's one of my all time favorite characters). I won't defend him. But my point is, everybody makes mistakes, especially in teenage years.

Also, please consider that Horikoshi intended Bakugou to be a hated character so he did a good job with pissing people off xD the popularity polls in Japan showed that he has a lot of fans and I did my best to explain why. If you still hate him, do as you like but please, acknowledge his character development and that there is more to him than just the asshole feature, even though you hate his guts.

So I needed to get this off my chest. Because Midoriya being not so innocent in this whole conflict is a really unpopular opinion but yeah. I love the two so much and really hope they can maintain the gained respect for each other and help each other grow.

PLUS ULTRA!