#Chapter thoughts

[stillness-in-green]

do you have thoughts about the way MHA431 went?

Sure, I'll bite. Let's have a

Chapter Thoughts - Chapter 431: More

Some of this will be a rephrase/expansion on stuff I said in Part 3 of the fascism essay, particularly the section about how Heroes view the prospect of long-term peace, but it’s all worth saying here as well.

Hit the jump for some roughly ordered thoughts primarily about Ochaco’s counseling program, the romance stuff and how it’s facilitated, some stray character observations, and some Stillness-typical complaining about the handling of Villains.

O It was nice to see Ochaco’s program in more detail than the jaw-droppingly bad handwave it got in 430, but I still think it didn’t go anywhere near far enough.  To wit, what we see is a nice introduction to a program that could well be effective at finding some people with behavioral, familial, or quirk-based problems, but the depiction is badly lacking an illustration as to what will be done regarding people with problems that can’t be helped by a tiny bit of encouragement and support.  As it’s with Toga in mind that Ochaco undertook this whole project, it seems fair to ask: How would Toga have fared in it?

If it had been young Toga Himiko in the scene instead of Shy Mining Helmet Boy, Ochaco offering her a little anti-gravity boost would have gone exactly nowhere because no amount of manuevering would have changed Himiko’s basic inability to participate in the activity.  It would have clued Ochaco into Himiko having an issue, though, and perhaps that discovery could have led, with further interaction, to uncovering her feelings of repression and, critically, her problems at home.  Great!  That stuff absolutely needed to be uncovered!

But—then what?  When Ochaco’s program turns up Himiko, a girl with a problem so severe that no amount of welcoming class play is going to resolve it, what’s the next step?  Recommend counseling for her parents, too?  What if they’re resistant, resentful, or they outright refuse?  Do you then remove Himiko from the home?  Let’s switch the lens over to a different kid for a second: Shimura Kotarou.  As evinced by his massive unaddressed abandonment issues, the alternative child care system clearly did him no favors!  And he didn’t have a taboo quirk[1] to add on top of the perception of his being an “unwanted child”!

So if you haven’t improved the state of Japan’s alternative child care system—and there’s no specific evidence that anyone has[2]—have you done much but kicked the consequences down the road a few years or slightly changed the color of the problem at hand?  Would Himiko really fare so much better in a group home or orphanage?  Would the views of the people in charge be significantly different than those of Himiko’s previous counselor?  Or would they just be, as Tomura described his family doing to him, rejecting her kindly instead of cruelly?

1: And “taboo” is honestly putting it lightly.  Shinto beliefs about the spiritual pollution of spilled blood being what they are, Toga’s quirk would actually be profane to a devout adherent—if the reader is familiar with X-Men, think about the kind of nastiness that periodically gets thrown at Nightcrawler by particularly militant Christians.   There’s no indication that Toga’s parents are more devout than the average Japanese person, of course, but values embedded in the culture are going to be embedded in the culture all the same.

2: All we have in that direction is Uraraka enthusing that the program has a lot of support and does very thorough work, and noting that Hawks does negotiations with the Ministry of Education and other (non-specific) organizations, which we see him framing as “investing in young people.”  While this could be indicative of efforts being made somewhere, by someone, to improve the situation for children in alternative care, that read is undercut by Uraraka following up with the note that all this work has done a lot to improve “the quirk education environment.”  This falls far short of specific evidence for improvements to any given other aspect of child welfare.

While I’m sure we’re intended to read Ochaco’s program as one that will be meaningfully helpful to children like Toga—and I don’t even think that it categorically couldn’t be!—what we see directly on the page simply does not prove that case.  Encouraging a baseline kid with an emitter quirk and age-typical shyness does not prove that The Problem of Toga has been addressed.  So what was even the point of showing it to us?

What Himiko really needs—if you’ll pardon my MLA Stan coming out here for a bit—is a complete reevaluation of what quirks are and how people can use them.  She needs a world that’s willing to throw out its old ways of thinking, to update its “notion of normal” to something that will allow the Toga Himikos of the world to live without suppression.  For all the good I'm sure it will do, I don’t see Ochaco’s program doing that.

O It’s so hilariously telling that we got that whole shpiel about updating the Billboard Charts such that non-professional Heroes can be recognized for their efforts, only for the last chapter to give us jack shit on any non-Pro Heroes charting at all.  And like, I’m willing to be generous here: I always assumed that Hawks wasn’t talking about adding non-Pros to the charts verbatim, but rather creating a brand-new chart for the recognition of Civilian Heroes.  But we don’t get anything like that at all—and Deku being a teacher and public speaker gives us a perfect opportunity to indicate such a chart’s existence!  But then, maybe he can’t count because he does Hero work on the weekends, which leads me to my next point.

O Ochaco and Deku should both have just retired, and Shouto should be on sabbatical.  Seriously, if Horikoshi really had the courage of the convictions he was putting to paper, and if it were really true that the Villain emergence rate was down and Heroes were beginning to have more free time, then Ochaco and Deku should both have decided to prioritize the work they believe is more meaningful and helpful than Professional Heroics, and Shouto should feel free to take some time completely off for his self-exploration.  That none of this happens suggests that Horikoshi either didn’t believe or didn’t trust his audience to accept his idea that there are meaningful ways for these characters to be heroic without them also having to be Heroes.

O Ochaco musing about Toga still existing somewhere inside her, and especially all the junk about the dead bisexual teenager being used to encourage the exhaustingly hetero endgame, really just makes me want to read the actual ghost story where Toga is literally haunting Ochaco.  Toga still loves Ochaco-chan, of course, but her encouragement for Ochaco-chan and Deku to hook up is aimed solely at getting the two of them alone in a quiet, private room.  Once that happens, Ochaco’s eyes will go gold and slitted, the walls will start dripping blood, and Deku will find out quite quickly that not everyone is so willing to move on from him murdering Shigaraki Tomura of the League of Villains.

O I miss the Bakugou who was on-course for a big personal growth arc about learning to work in a team.  I feel like that Bakugou, alongside having had a way less tiresome endgame battle, might actually have been able to keep some sidekicks without being chiefly concerned about the level of their personal ambitions.  I don’t give a shit about his (or anyone else save one guy’s) chart position, but it’s exhausting that he had great development into being a proud but capable team player all the way up through the 1-A versus Deku fight, and then all of that gets flushed down the toilet to revert to him getting a badass solo fight against All For One and an epilogue that allows him no work partner options whatsoever outside of the main character.

O The comedy visuals of Deku’s dumb face being subsumed by Bakugou’s plush backseat make me want to die.  Someone please throw this main character away.

O I’m glad Mina reclaimed at least some aspect of her original Alien Queen aspirations with the “Ridley Hero” thing.  Good for her.

O On a worldbuilding note, my attention is caught by Shinsou being described as “not contending” for a chart position, though the kanji can also mean things like “out of contention” or “beyond the sphere of.”  I assume it’s just indicating that Shinsou is an underground Hero like his mentor Aizawa, but a) I feel like that runs a bit counter to his goal of proving that he can be a Hero even with a quirk like Brainwash, and b) isn’t it a bit sketchy if underground Heroes can just choose to exempt themselves from the most visible, public-facing form of Pro Hero evaluation?  Maybe the HPSC charts them for its own records and then removes them from public visibility, of course, or maybe the charts only go down to 200 or so and stop after that, with Shinsou, not seeking for attention, comfortable to be below that cut-off.  Not sure, but there are some interesting possibilities there, as well as some concerning ones.

O HOLY GOD, Monoma’s new look.  I like it very much.  He is also the only person I want to see on the charts at all.  Two hundred ranked entries of Monoma's daily work antics. I support him wholly and with only the most loving of faceitiousness.

O Extremely funny to me that all the people I saw on Twitter talking about this chapter confirming KamiJirou had to first ignore Jirou explicitly denying that there’s anything going on and second be very disingenuous indeed with the panel crop they used to wave around crowing about their ship. I don’t have a strong distaste for KamiJirou relative to my distaste for Kaminari himself, but my tolerance for him pretty much starts and ends with KamiJirouMomo as a poly arrangement, so I was pleased to see that left open here.

O If I dislike Toga’s image being used to encourage Ochaco to hook up with Deku (and I dislike it very much, particularly given the loathsome last words Deku spoke to Toga when she was alive, but at least I can see the sense it makes from a thematic and characterization perspective), I have only profanity for how much I hate Shigaraki’s image being used to encourage Deku in confessing to Ochaco.  Just take my entire folder full of negative reaction memes.  Jesus Christ.

I have said before, and will have more to say in the future, about Deku’s assorted failures as a protagonist and hero, but him deciding that the kind of adult he wants to be is a Hero high school teacher really is the ultimate indicator of just how little he cared about who Shigaraki was and what he wanted.  Ochaco is making a good faith effort to help the Toga Himikos of the future.  Deku, meanwhile, is shallowly paddling around in his Hero Worship wading pool, ignoring both the Shimura Tenkos and the Shigaraki Tomuras of the world—the people Hero Society outcasts, villainizes, and sweeps under the rug.

Shigaraki’s last behest—that Deku ensure the things Shigaraki fought to destroy remain destroyed—was wasted on Deku, who, once he got Spinner and Overhaul off his conscience, clearly could not give less of a shit about helping the people Shigaraki fought for.  To see that last behest come back in the context of Deku using it to bolster his goddamn love life is a fucking travesty, and I hope Ochaco dumps him inside of a year if Toga Himiko’s vengeful ghost doesn’t get him first.

O DON’T WORRY, GUYS; I’M SURE THE HEROES TOTALLY TRY TO BE MORE COMPASSIONATE AND UNDERSTANDING TOWARDS RANDOM, DOWN-ON-THEIR-LUCK VILLAINS NOW.  THINGS ARE SURE TO BE TOTALLY DIFFER—

Oh.  Oh, it’s not different at all, is it?

(Have I mentioned enough times yet how much I really, really dislike the street crime scenes where Our Heroes stand around and chitchat in the middle of a crime scene, having successfully dealt with the big bad villain whose actions they did not even attempt to de-escalate and whom they have immediately forgotten all about?)

O Wow, thanks for letting us know you don’t think impulse criminals aren’t wicked to the core, Iida.  That makes me feel real reassured about how you guys are handling Villains who premeditate! (It does not.)

O I’ve already said I disliked how Toga’s “image” is used here, but let me not shortchange the fact that it also sucks because it puts the last nail in the coffin of Uraraka having any agency over sharing her own feelings.  She has a lengthy arc about how she is—like Toga in the past—repressing her feelings for the one she loves; she gets through to Toga by frankly admitting to those feelings, as well as all the other things she was sitting on about Toga herself.  And then in the aftermath, she goes right back to repressing her feelings, now ones of paralyzing grief over Toga’s death. Deku witnesses those feelings not because she chooses to share them with him, but because he tracks her down mid-cry.  And now we find out for sure what Chapter 430 left unclear: that in eight years, Ochaco hasn’t said a word about her once-again repressed feelings for him.  Instead, just as she did when she was a teenager, she’s doubled down on putting those feelings away in the name of what she “should” be doing.

And here?  Does she finally take control of her own life, her own feelings, her own expression?  No.  At least, not until after Deku has been the one to confess first and Vision!Toga psychically shoves her forward to close the gap.  The only thing left for Ochaco to do, the only assertiveness asked of her, is to accept or rebuff Deku’s overture.  Good god, you’d think she was Eri, a helpless waif wrestling with indoctrination about how much she’s not allowed to want anything for her own sake, whose turning point in the narrative is finding the strength to reach back for the hand being extended towards her.

Coming from a long-term abuse victim, that’s a perfectly worthy character arc, even a deeply moving show of strength, but it’s wildly pathetic for BNHA’s most prominent female hero, the gal whose character arc was founded entirely on balancing her desire to help others with pursuing her own happiness.  Good lord, did Shonen Jump tell Horikoshi that boys don’t like it when girls are too forward or what?

[the-au-collector]

Entrance Thoughts

It’s that time again! Chapter thoughts!

Epona BETTER BE OKAY THERE–

Dink if you hurt her I will throw hands

Wake up babe new reaction images just dropped—

In all seriousness, I love how they’re all aghast that Wars has never been in a dungeon. We all knew they would be but it’s fun to see it in canon.

Also love how Wild isn’t technically included since he has Divine Beasts, not dungeons.

Leg is really letting his gremlin side take over. I can’t tell if this is new or if I just need a refresher on the older chapters…

Speaking of chapters, I just want to take a minute to look at the quality of this comic and appreciate it. The expressions! The colors! The movement! The poses! The character designs! Big shoutout to Jojo! She is outdoing herself!

Sky being all smug that he’s not the one being messed with this time.

And Legend being smug about messing with Warriors.

All is right in the world.

First of all, I love how realistic this is that they all can’t fit in one area. Some of these spaces are small.

I also love how the frames themselves are very jittery and cut into each other. Really makes you feel how the Links keep getting in each others’ ways in this scene.

Oh boy I can feel a Conflict brewing between the boys and Time. Time just wants to keep them safe, especially after almost losing Twi, but the boys are all heroes in their own rights and obviously are stubborn as hell.

I doubt that bad letter from a few chapters ago is making Time’s mood any better either.

I can’t wait for the Links to split off in little groups. Get to see them one-on-one together and working together. I wonder how they’ll split up? What will their teams be?

I cannot wait for this dungeon crawl!

As always, credit goes to @linkeduniverse for the panels. The chapter is Entrance.

[puimoo]

Thoughts on Batman: The Long Halloween - The Last Halloween Chapter 4: Dick's relationship with both of his fathers, the realities of circus life, and flying without a net.

A little while ago, I touched on how I wished we got a more nuanced version of Dick's parents and his time pre-Bruce. In particular, I talked about how there was something inherently selfish about his parents involving their son in an act that didn't use a net that I couldn't quite let go of, and how some of those negative character traits that Dick has that Bruce is often blamed for could have originated from his time pre-Bruce.

Which is why I am absolutely in love with the latest chapter of Batman: The Long Halloween - The Last Halloween, which surprised me by delving a bit more into Dick's relationship with John Grayson.

All the things the chapter discussed/hinted at that I loved:

The adultification of Dick at a young age, where he is performing multiple shows a day (including on Christmas Day, because his father thinks it is important to entertain other children at the expense of his own), has significant responsibilities beyond his age, and feels solely responsible for whether the people in his life live or die.

A discussion of how John Grayson leans deliberately in the 'death-defying' nature of not having a net because it draws bigger crowds. This idea that people didn't come to see The Graysons fly but to see them die was such a big moment for me, and why the lack of a net has always been something I get stuck on. We don't know why having bigger crowds at the expense of the safety of his family is so important to John - be it because of the atmosphere, being the center of it all, the money it brings in (etc), but I love how it horrifies Dick a little. It makes me think of the Coliseum in ancient Rome, where the audience sits in anticipation of bloodshed.

In light of the above, involving Dick in their act takes on an even darker edge. The only thing more exciting than potentially seeing John or Mary die? Potentially seeing an 8-year-old die. This feels as much of a deliberate choice by John as not having a net in general. How else do you attract even bigger crowds? Roll up, roll up! Come watch the show and an 8-year-old maybe fall to his death for your pleasure!

When Alfred is dismissive, cold, irritated, and abrupt with Dick (while worried about Bruce), Dick compares that behaviour with how his own father treated him, in particular around his work responsibilities.

All the above leads to this fantastic contrast between Dick and John, and what flying without a net means to each of them. For John, he flies without a net because it could mean death (and that excites and draws in the crowd). For Dick, he chooses to fly without a net to save Bruce (and he does it alone, in the dark, with no audience). For both, it is a deliberate choice. For both, flying without a net comes at a cost. John and Mary died due to John's decision, and the Calendar Man is going to break free because of Dick's.

In general, I LOVED how the chapter gently challenges the status quo of what life was like both before and after Dick lost his parents, and instead has Dick saying that Bruce didn't simply save his life, but gave him one. If you envision Dick as someone who is basically <i>working</i> in the circus as a child, 7 days a week, multiple shows a day, dealing with adult responsibilities in a likely non-child friendly environment (because circus' were terrible places for children, but in particular for acrobatic children who underwent grueling training to be able to do the kinds of things that Dick was able to). Bruce gives him Christmas and holidays, he gives him school and mathletes and basketball and friendships, computers and chemistry and options. He restricts his Robin hours to the weekend when he is younger, because Dick being a <i>child</i> is important to Bruce. This chapter is, at its heart, a contrast between the two father figures in Dick's life, and I'm so pleased that Bruce gets some of his dues for once. It doesn't negate at all that his parents didn't also give him so much as well, but that Bruce has his own, incredibly important impact on Dick growing up.

One of the things I also loved about the chapter was how odd it actually feels. It feels like Dick is narrating a Christmas fairytale, but what is interesting here is that the fairytale is about Bruce and not about Dick himself. There is something almost childish about Bruce's situation - that fairytale aspect, being woken basically by true love's kiss - while Dick is living through a nightmarish situation in contrast, caught up in death and fear and desperation. Even when Bruce wakes up and Dick hugs him, Bruce barely acknowledges him or what he has done, and the plot itself doesn't start advancing again until after Dick leaves. There is something interestingly weird about how Bruce thanks Alfred and heads off with Selina but doesn't acknowledge Dick, but it makes sense when you view the chapter as having been narrated by Dick up until that point, and who maybe doesn't quite see himself as part of the fairytale.

So! lots of thoughts about the chapter!

[akane-kurokawa]

Chapter 150 thoughts!

Glad to be back in the nightmare hell scape! Fun Tokyo Blade vibes.

Bro is so BORED of the horrors. He looks at his sleep paralysis demon and goes “augh you again??”

The most obvious answer to 123 that we’ve all been waiting for for like a year.

Seriously though, on one hand it’s a bit annoying that we’re matter of facting this conclusion after a whole volume worth of playing the ‘What is Aqua thinking?’ game during the aqrb section of filming, it feels disproportionate to the buildup (a very common criticism for subplot resolutions lately)

On the other hand, they’re finally saying what everyone with reading comprehension has been thinking! Aqua doesn’t want this stupid badly written ship to happen, and neither does fucking Gorou!

But Gorou changing the subject from the big revenge life dream to “so what girls do you like” after he just admitted he was like, fading away is a little jarring to me. Maybe it’d read better with voice acting but right now it’s just a little tonally weird.

“You don’t need to act anymore” goes hard though, all things considered. Tbh, I don’t even really dislike the conversation, it just feels a little fast to me. It’s a dream sequence though so I’m being nit picky.

You and the girl who’s telling you not to worry about

Akane aggressively playing matchmaker is a pretty funny role for her, it utilizes her knowledge of people and Aqua adjacent manipulation skills while keeping her motives as well meaning yet overbearing as I’d expect from her.

The current dynamic of her Kana and Aqua has a very Kaguya feel, which I mean positively. It’s refreshing and reminds me why I like this cast and their interactions in the first place. Again, it’s a pretty stark contrast to the rest of this volume which has been steering into horror territory, but I’m suspecting this is probably to set us up for another tone shift later.

The dual flashbacks of their building crushes and feelings is very cute, I think their ship still walks the line of healthy and toxic, but it’s still built on a strongly established foundation. That said, there’s no way they get out right now and it works out. Not without at least one more solid complication first.

So happy for you to admit that, babe. Not gonna go well for you though.

[erasso]

chapter 46 thoughts

long!!! I think this chapter is great!

I didn't really like many of the kamunabi designs originally but when given personality and more focus here they seem much more lively, I can't complain

the blood test... I hope it'll lead to us learning something about chihiro's mom. I really wouldn't want some kind of kunishige not being his dad reveal. I can see how that might play into the drama of upholding your father's legacy to find out the guy you thought was your dad wasn't your dad at all, and all the "found family" themes at play, but I really don't like it. yep. that's my whole argument about it.

hakuri is so dumb and cute. going into this big important trial meeting with tissues stuffed up your nose... and then we have chihiro shouting his name when he passed out earlier and him ready to go all out if they hadn't gotten interrupted. and hakuri just being all yep. gonna follow my samurai everywhere. straight into the gates of hell. when hiyuki says chihiro has him on a leash.

I hope hakuri gets to build himself up more over time though. relying on chihiro and letting chihiro rely on him is great, but you're more than a tool, hakuri!

it doesn't seem like the kamunabi have that much info about the storehouse. the sazanami guarded the secret even from their own strongest family members, so I wonder how many people actually have any idea of how it works? they seem to underestimate and not take hakuri all that seriously which is. also good! it's kind of a continual theme with him so far and I want him to get to show off. he's so cool aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

I don't think hiyuki or tafuku saw him use isou, so they don't know he has multiple kinds of magic either... he's in a dangerous position. if people understood what he could do, who wouldn't want him on their side? and I feel like the hishaku would be all too happy to kill him

I wonder how old hiyuki is? her comment about chihiro only cutting down evildoers makes me wonder if this is going to be a theme at some point. we know chihiro is really emotionally sensitive, he's going to face off against some grey villains in the future, right? he couldn't even bring himself to kill soya originally.

and usually while the protagonist might have some more sensible friends... hakuri is much colder when it comes to killing but he doesn't really seem pragmatic, and if chihiro wanted something, I'm not sure I could see him arguing against it as he is! please get stronger both mentally and physically, hakuri...

thinking back to chapter 1, this was always something going on with chihiro. he wanted to try to negotiate with the yakuza before he saw bodies strung up and realised they were scumbags

then we learn that chihiro wasn't born and raised in the mountain home we saw in the intro, but that he was brought there by his dad instead...

but, he could be lying. he immediately continues by saying that he's never met any of the kamunabi council before and that's obviously untrue. and it's clear that most of these council members don't know anything about chihiro, many of them didn't even know he existed and most of them don't believe him right now, so I'll have to see how that goes

I really love chihiro, hakuri, hiyuki, tafuku...

I like the asshole kunishige hater guy, too. there's no way shiba didn't kick his ass in the past, right?

I'm sad the onsen episode didn't come to fruition. please let them rest hokazono... this episode seems really dangerous. neither chihiro or hakuri seem to ever get the chance to heal, and, since they're being controlled by the kamunabi now, it doesn't seem like they could go and get char to heal them (if she's even recovered enough to heal them)

it would be nice to see shiba doing something offscreen, or if hiyuki and tafuku also feature in this rescue mission (hiyuki is the only one with the power to rival the blades, so I think she might come?) but I'm looking forward to meeting the swords master and seeing what happens next. hakuri and chihiro working together... waaa

[blep-23]

Ya know what? Yeah, Bon gets to fist fight a few people... as a treat.

[cryptocism]

It would have taken another immortal to keep up with him.

so i haven't read the books but i did read the Devil's Minion chapter and this part made me laugh out loud:

[chloesimaginationthings]

Does FNAF Springtrap or The Doctor have the better son?

[dunmeshistash]

One of the things I really appreciate about Dungeon Meshi is how the text is so clearly full of love for animals. Like the true kind of love Laios feels for the monster where he wants to know everything about them, but most of all he respects them and loves them as animals.

One of the chapters I can't stop thinking about is the one about Anne the Kelpie. It's kind of impressive how well it illustrates the different kind of love people have for animals. And how someone that loves an animal isn't necessarily an animal lover. If that makes sense.

When Senshi calls out Anne what he says is "Don't worry Anne's Harmless" but she isn't, she's a wild animal.

Marcille immediately reacts positively about it thinking it's cute she accepts the treat Senshi has for her. And hers and Chilchuck's reaction to Senshi wanting to cross the river on her back is more surprise while Laios immediately realizes how bad of an idea it is.

But Laios is the animal monster lover so how come when he finally is faced with a "docile" monster he doesn't react positively like the others? Marcille even calls him a monster. That's because Laios loves monsters, and Senshi loves Anne.

I've seen this attitude around me several times, where people love a specific animal but what they love is their idea of that animal, they don't really know them because they don't love the animal part of them.

It becomes a "this one is special because I love them" that can quickly become an issue for the animal as much as it is for the person. It's something unfortunate I see time and time again irl.

Anne wasn't wicked, Anne wasn't mean, Anne didn't trick him. Anne was a wild animal and Senshi loved her as Anne but not as a kelpie.

She acted on instinct, maybe she did love Senshi in the way kelpies can love, but animals are still animals and must be respected and treated as such. Climbing on top of Anne's back was the equivalent of putting your arm inside a alligator's mouth, the mouth is gonna close because that's what they're designed to do.

The real life equivalent I see the most of "I love this animal but I don't love the animal part of them" is with dogs. If you insist on loving an animal without acknowledging they ARE an animal they might hurt you, you might hurt them, it will only end in grief.

The best way you can love an animal is by understanding they're an animal.

That is all to say I don't mean that the love Senshi felt for Anne wasn't real or that it's all his fault. He couldn't have known with the information he had and unfortunately it came down to the worst outcome.

I just love dungeon meshi dearly.

[hinata-boke]

why is his smile so radiant

[ferahntics]

Stars? 🌟⭐

(sneaking in Bobby from @palettepainter 's DB AU cause Of Course)

EDIT: Part 2 here!

I'm imagining that since he can remember what they used to read in the orphanage, he retains bits and pieces of his memories from his components, some more than others.

[stillness-in-green]

Chapter Thoughts — Chapter 423: One For All vs. All For One

At the request of a few asks, have some chapter thoughts. I will warn everyone in advance that some portions of this post are extremely bitter. This is less salty than it is bile-flavored. It's also not quite as thorough as other posts have been, as my disillusionment with the material limits my willingness to comb the chapter for details to muse about beyond the ones that jump out at me.

None of which is to say that this post is short.

CONTENT WARNING: Confrontational rhetoric about irl prisons and the hypothetical of committing suicide to avoid them. I have strong personal feelings about some of the language I've been seeing from defenders of this chapter and I'm in no mood to prevaricate around them.

o Danger Sense continues to be some real bullshit.  My initial response to the leaks was that it was yet another dumb contrivance to make things arbitrarily harder for the villains than equivalent things would be for the Heroes, but reading the official release, I actually just think it's dumb that AFO thinks Danger Sense would have alerted him to his/Shigaraki's failing body at all.  Why would it?  Danger Sense nominally (nominally) activates based on hostility, and where's the hostility in super-regeneration failing?  If it were the remnants of Shigaraki/OFA attacking him from within his own body, that'd be one thing, but that doesn't seem to be what the first few pages are getting at. 

Rather, it's just that the power of OFA is being too much for his body, in the same way it was for Deku at the beginning.  As if, you know, Shigaraki hasn't already been surgically modified to handle both AFO and, presumably, OFA the whole time.  Ujiko only mentioned the former specifically, but given that the plan was always for AFO's new vessel to be able to steal OFA, why wouldn't that also be accounted for?  The best I can think is that AFO and Ujiko didn't know that OFA would put such strain on the body, but it's not like AFO couldn't have observed that the quirk's been growing stronger over the generations.  If he and Ujiko just failed to calibrate the body correctly, it's a failure of Ujiko's warped genius as a mad biologist and quirk scientist—which again takes us back to dumb contrivances that make things harder for the villains than they would be for the heroes.

    

o The Kurogiri scene would be very touching if it, you know, actually amounted to something.  If it didn't apparently end with Bakugou coming in to murder him.  Except we don't even quite get that level of commitment because Kurogiri was falling apart already, so you get the impression that he would have collapsed with or without Bakugou's intervention.

    

o This in turn makes Bakugou's intervention really silly and pointless.  My god, I don't care.  I do not care!  I do not care about Bakugou pushing Deku two steps forward past a barrier that was already failing.  I do not care about Bakugou getting one last stupid victory lap when he's already dramatically endured a severe beating and emotional assault, stood back up from the stupidest heart surgery in the history of fiction, and faced down everything AFO could unleash on him, far outstripping that same villain's climactic efforts fighting All Might in Kamino in what remains AFO's only semi-emotionally resonant battle in the whole manga.  As it is, this is just one more ludicrous handwaved magical cross-country teleport like every other one the Heroes have been enjoying through this whole fight.

    

o Yoichi paying attention to AFO now?  Man, imagine if we could have just skipped a bunch of bullshit and gotten this way back in Chapter 368, when Yoichi first told AFO that it was over.  Imagine if Vestige Yoichi had something like this when his actual for-real flesh-and-blood brother died, rather than having zero reaction to it whatsoever, not even looking over Deku's psychic shoulder and making a sad face about it.

o It actually kind of offends me that Horikoshi thinks he can get away with taking a stab in the direction of making AFO "sympathetic" now.  Now, after he's spent the entire endgame portraying AFO as a two-dimensional Demon Lord who was literally Evil In Utero.  And, you know, I'd buy AFO as being Evil In Utero but also capable of loneliness, sure. And I'm even more than on board with interpreting AFO as a man who's spent the last century working 24:7 to convince himself that he's heartlessly evil to deal with the loss of the only family he ever had. But the fact that this statement has been put in the mouth of Deku, who has never indicated the faintest trace of sympathy or understanding, much less compassion for AFO?  Fuck off.

    

o All that Yoichi hyping up Deku's incredible finesse in attacking Shigaraki with the stored-up OFA quirks makes me think is, "Welcome to My Hero Academia, where the stakes are made up and the past doesn't matter!"  I am so abominably weary of the endgame's—and the series in general's—willing to just baldly lie to the audience's face about what is actually happening at any given point in the story.

That was the moment when we should have had a response from Yoichi, what with Shigaraki having apparently torn AFO's vestige limb from psychic limb and Bakugou overseeing as the real man rewound out of existence.  That Yoichi didn't respond back then just made him seem like he'd written off his brother generations ago; it makes his sorrowful-yet-grateful act in this chapter incredibly unearned.  Of course, the actual reason we didn't get a beat like this back then wasn't for any reason consistent with Yoichi's feelings about his brother, nor because Yoichi was too far away to know that the brother he has a psychic bond with was dying.  No, it was because Horikoshi was already writing towards this beat instead, so he didn't need to bother.  The last time Yoichi looks the real AFO’s way was the chapter-ending Bakugou blast of 409, when it takes the first eight pages of 410 for AFO’s Rewinding death to finalize itself.  The Hawks vestige talked more to All For One in his last moments than AFO’s own brother did.

    

Internal monologue is placed where internal monologue cannot possibly exist.  Characters' plans are backdated to points in the story which are completely irreconcilable with how those characters were behaving at the time.  Surprise and dismay are pantomimed from characters who are revealed to have anticipated and planned for the very eventuality they're acting so shocked about.

The main character, a kid who was once characterized by his tendency to mutter his thoughts out loud, who had a running gag of tightly packed, densely worded speech/thought balloons, has been reduced to an empty marionette, devoid of internal monologue, scoured of thoughts more complex than the multiplication tables of his quirk combinations.  The story can retroactively say that Deku did—intentionally and willfully!—anything it wants and not have to worry about belying its phony stakes and made-for-Twitter cliffhangers because it has deprived Deku of his own capacity to reflect.  He can't spoil twist reveals of his own true intentions if the narrative completely locks us out of his head!  Nevermind how much of his final battle has occurred inside a shared goddamn psychic space.

All of this has made it totally impossible for me to read the story as a story.  Not only do I see the strings, the strings have become all I can see.

Of course the vestiges are back one last time for a dramatic punch, despite multiple chapters swearing up and down to us that we were seeing a big emotional sacrifice play.  Last chapter we witnessed the word vomit that was Horikoshi trying to justify Star's pilots surviving their planes blowing up, because that's how determined Horikoshi is that no one on Team Hero actually die.  Of course the vestiges came back.

Who cares?  Truly, who the fuck cares?  I don't care about them; I don't care about whether they'll be back again in the epilogue; I don't care about why Vestige Might and Shinomori are missing from the punch; I don't care about the story finally trying to pretend that anyone in its pages has ever given a single starving river rat's ass about All For One's humanity.

—NOW ENTERING FULL-FLEDGED RANT ZONE—

I care about the only characters who have ever been facing actual stakes in this war: Shigaraki and his followers.

    

o Even though I care, I don't have it in me to weigh in much about Shigaraki's seeming death here, and especially not his last words.  I'm far too jaded about Horikoshi's cliffhangers to think that anything I say now about Shigaraki dying and what it means for both Hero Society and the people Shigaraki leaves behind can be assumed to still be accurate two weeks from now.

I hope it's a fakeout.  I hope a chunk of Shigaraki's body fell through Kurogiri's last portal and the hyper-regen can kick back in once he's no longer being assaulted on all sides by the allies of the kid who was trying to “save” him.  I hope Horikoshi has one last stupid asspull up his sleeve.  I hope for a complete Karma Houdini ending for Shigaraki and the rest of the League.

If we don't get that, it's gonna suck, and it's gonna turn Deku into a fraud and a liar.  I don't care if the story wants me to think Shigaraki was saved; I don't care if Deku is satisfied with having saved "that crying boy."

I have not forgotten that "that crying boy" gently refused to accept Deku's "save" when the bell rang to go home. He wanted to go back to his friends, instead; he reiterated his desire to be a Hero for the Villains.  The crying child returned to the form of Shigaraki Tomura and then AFO devoured him.  Deku didn't save the child then, and he hasn't saved him now.

Remember how Eri didn't count as truly saved from Overhaul until the first time she could smile fully and freely?  Guess what stops you from doing that?  Right—being fucking dead.

And those touching last words of Shigaraki's won't do Spinner much good on account of him still being brain-damaged from a bunch of extra quirks no one can remove, because the only people who could are, again, fucking dead.

Unless, of course, the theorists are right and Deku is going to be not only not quirkless in the epilogue (meaning all that drama and emotion about sacrificing OFA is going to be another fucking lie), he's going to have the "unified" OFA+AFO quirk via Shigaraki's fistbump.  Meaning Deku can remove the extra quirks, presumably just before telling Spinner that Deku saved-via-killing the love of Spinner's life.

Solidarity among outcasts is false and toxic.  Everyone should just rely on Heroes more, no matter how much Heroes have failed them in the past.

o One last thing I want to address, less about the canon and more about the reactions I've been seeing elsewhere to the prospect of Shigaraki (and any combination of Dabi, Toga and Spinner) being dead: the idea that being dead is the best possible outcome for them because if they don't die they'll only have to spend the rest of their lives "rotting in jail."

Great job, team; nice message to take home.  Everyone pack it in.

    

Firstly, and to get this out of the way, that is a false binary that totally ignores the long history of Shounen Jump villains getting absurd Karma Houdini endings where they walk off into the sunset free as birds because they've changed their minds and resolved to be better, or at least have decided mass murder is no longer worth their time and effort.  (Vegeta wasn't the first mass murderer a Shounen Jump story rewarded with freedom and friendship, nor was he the last.)

But more importantly, that false binary is one that could only be presented by someone who truly does see prison as a fate worse than death.  No rehabilitation is possible.  No supervised release or house arrests in the care of assigned guardians who want better for them.  No lenience can be granted in recognition of the League's mental states; they can be admitted to no mental hospitals focused on therapy.

The "better death than prison" line is the product of a perspective that has never had to seriously consider the prospect of living behind bars.  It's a childish imagination of prison as a nebulous Bad Place where Bad People go to be Punished For Being Bad, or a self-righteous fantasy of a cold hell where sinners are sentenced to suffering eternal.

People can tell that the League have suffered too much to sentence them to Forever Bad Times, so they comfort themselves with the idea that at least they died happy, instead of living forever in a pop-culture-informed crayon doodle of concrete and solitude.

I’m not here to tell these readers that there aren't people in the world who would rather die than live under watch for the rest of their lives.  I won’t deny that Japanese prisons are bleak and there’s every chance that the prisons in Horikoshi’s fictionalized Japan are even worse.  But I am asking people espousing the view that death would be better than incarceration to seriously consider all the angles on what that sentiment means.

If it were you facing the life sentence, are you so sure you would prefer to take your own life?  If it were someone you loved who would rather die than face imprisonment, would you help them—hand your older brother the gun, or your younger sister the knife?

Or would you want to hope that they could get some help instead, have an opportunity to connect to something meaningful—find religion, take up reading classic literature, connect with someone inside or via letters?  Would you want them to accept the lawful punishment for what they'd done rather than evade it by ending their lives?  Would you want them to hold on in case their case could be reassessed someday, that they might eventually finish serving their sentence or be moved to someplace that would focus on helping them rather than punishing them?

Would you want a glorified cop in a cape making that decision for them—or you—based on that cop's ability to "forgive"?

If you think prison is a fate worse than death, why is it okay that people like Gentle Criminal or the Shie Hassaikai Trash Trio have to endure it, while mass murderers, serial killers and insurrectionists like the League get to escape through death?  Think of every purse snatcher who gets paraded in front of cameras with their arms bound and their face muzzled; think of Twice at sixteen; think of Mr. Compress now.  Do these people deserve to suffer in the kind of torment you're imagining prison must entail?  Would it be better for them to die rather than endure it?

If prisons in BNHA's Japan are so terrible as all that, isn't that something the kids should try to fix?  Shouldn't that be a part of the mass societal improvement project people are swearing up and down the kids will have nicely sewn up in the epilogue?  If the kids aren't going to fix these prisons—these places that take suicide risks like Ending and spit them out worse than ever; these places like Tartarus where the wardens call the people in their charge monsters and animals—then why should I believe the kids are going to fix literally anything else?

Or is it simply the case that it's perfectly fine that prisons should be this way; shitty prison conditions are only bad when it's the villains whose sympathetic backstories we know who're facing them?

"It's a shame, but the League has to pay for their crimes."  But why does that “have to be”?  Isn’t it because no one involved—not the characters, not the author, not the people who accept this ending—can envision a world where the “has to be” could be otherwise?

That's the problem with, "Killing someone can be a way of saving them," and, "They would have just spent the rest of their lives in prison anyway."  It's a stunted mentality that leaves no room for the radical reforms and systemic improvements that are necessary to stop this whole cycle from repeating.  Worse, as I very much suspect we're going to see in the epilogue, it's a mentality that says the system is actually fine as it is—the only real problems were caused by a tiny handful of bad actors, and now that they've been removed, everything else will self-correct, and things will go back to normal.

    

That precious, perfect status quo that Deku swore to return: this is the way he brings it back, it and everything that comes with it.

    

o In summary: if this ending sticks, then what we have in My Hero Academia is thus:

A world that played at being grounded, but which turned out to run on arbitrary rules, magic thinking and Evil Babies.

Characters that were presented as radically kind, but whose endgame resolutions represented a cruel underlining of the status quo, in which only those who suffer in silence deserve not to have to.

A story that wanted to be staunchly idealistic but which ultimately entrenched to hollow, meaningless platitudes.

o P.S. So like, Nana’s vestige saved Shigaraki off-screen, right?  So even after all her fear that Shigaraki would have to die, even after all the efforts she and Deku made to help Deku break him down, at the very last moment, she wanted to save him.  And she did so in the only reason she could, as one psychic scrap to another: she held his soul together when he was shattering apart.  But when Deku comes to the very last moment, when Shigaraki’s body is shattering apart, does he do anything to try to hold Shigaraki together?  Try to tell Shigaraki how to use Black Whip to hold his body together, call for Sero and his tape, Aizawa’s Erasure, anything like that?

If it doesn't stick?  That I'm less sure of.  But I'm pretty sure Deku's fucked as the Symbol of Hope no matter what.  There’s no way, at this point, to fix his portrayal as the kid who has a drive to save that eclipses all common understanding.  Every part of the story, before and after that declaration of Yoichi’s in Chapter 287, has served to undermine that claim.  This is just the last nail in the sky coffin.

    

Nah.  Instead, he just administers one last punch to finish the job.  The boy with the drive to save that eclipses all common understanding, everyone.

[franeridart]

I love dragon btw

[c-tepx]

okay since it's not a spoiler anymore

it's hilarious that izutsumi went: "come on no one would be excited over beastkin" and the whole party went: "oh no. laios"

like, zero hesitation. marcille doesn't even look at him she just rushes to cover izutsumi. senshi immediately blocks laios sight and chilchuck kicks him (as usual)

and the funniest part is... laios doesn't even understand what happened. he's so confused but accepts it???

"woah it's sure strange that I'm the only one with the blindfold. oh, whatever, I'm just gonna let senshi spoon feed me and won't ask any questions"

[akane-kurokawa]

Chapter 143 thoughts!

Alright so I skipped my thoughts on the last chapter, but I wanted to say that I don’t have especially negative feelings about it. It’s nice to see Ruby’s character taken seriously again after so long, and the framing of the chapter with the specific language and horror-esque directing was very pointed. It’s just frustrating that this matter seems to keep getting pushed off and unresolved after so many chapters whereas other major plot points (such as Ruby learning the identity of her father) are being off screened entirely.

Enough about two weeks ago, my thoughts on THIS chapter

We open where we left off, Aqua is clearly brushing Ruby off and she is being insistent. She tells him (as Gorou) that he listens to her selfishness

Aqua, having some of Gorou in his nature, calls for a compromise. Unfortunately that just fuels her on more.

It’s interesting how he “becomes” Gorou in this way for her. It’s very performative, an act he’s doing to appease her. It reminds me of how different Taiki seems when he’s acting vs when he’s not.

Small note, but does he just carry those glasses on him? Like Ruby’s popsicle that disappeared last chapter.

This is what I wanted all this time! There is a significant difference in how these two view their past lives that is finally getting addressed here. Ruby feels like Sarina, she sees her second life as an extension of the first, a New Game+ where she gets to do everything she always wanted.

But Aqua isn’t Gorou, he hasn’t been for a long time. He’s an 18 year old boy who has been shaped by the (mostly traumatic) experiences he’s had in this life already. Gorou appears to him as a manifestation of guilt, and unfinished business when he tried to move on with his life, but that’s no longer his identity.

Also ow this panel

I also think the feeling guilty about being alive comment hits so much with Ruby because that’s how she felt in chapter 121 after seeing Marina Tendouji.

To her, Aqua revealing his previous identity saved her, gave her what she needed to carry on. Which is why she does the same for him here.

Ruby right now is very “I can fix him” which makes sense for her character and experiences. It’s naive and selfish, but very in character for her. Considering she’s also avoiding her own hardships in life with love it makes perfect sense for that to be her advice to him, and forcing a kiss on him -while not a cool thing to do to someone- also lined up with that.

My biggest complaint comes afterwards, or rather the lack of afterwards. Aqua’s expression in the kiss panel is of shock, but it’s hard to gauge exactly what he’s feeling after that without the following scene. It leaves it up to interpretation in an arc rife with “all subtext no text” writing already, prolonging this arc even further.

That said, it’s an interesting transition. Ruby, the initiator of the first kiss parallels the placing of Aqua/Hikaru in the second. Outside of the movie Aqua is the one in Ai’s position.

With that in mind, Ai’s “I can’t love you” set up at the beginning of this arc holds much more weight.

[gh0stlyscooter]

I wish they could have interacted more :’{