#MLA should have been the main foes

[violetlunette]

I saw your anti-lov posts and god do they explain everything i dislike about the league.

The thing is, i like the concepts of each league member, but the way they're handled just falls completely flat.

The one i think the most about is Mr Compress. I love phantom thieves and they're my favourite character archetype (which is why i also like monoma and sad that hori caved into fan pressure to make him a joke character after his initial introduction, but thats another rant). Mr Compress, until that dabi revealed himself, NEVER hinted at the whole stealing for the greater good angle. Hell, gentle is more of a phantom thief than Compress is! It feels like it was tacked on to give him a motivation which sucks since he could have been an interesting character.

He's supposed to be a thief with morals yet i see no morals from him or the league.

Honestly its the same issue with stain. Show don't tell. We are told Stain wants to get rid of 'false' heroes and the corruption of society like we are told Mr Compress wants to reform society for the better. We see them senslessly kill people with no regard or indication that they are part of the corruption. We are told society is corrupt but never SHOWN.

We never see greedy heroes and the sole 'evil' hero was endeavour and even then he gets 'redeemed' (he's working towards it but the point is he's the only one we can point at and say 'your fucked up'). We never see the heroes be corrupt or hoard wealth or any of the sort! We don't ever see how heroes perpetuate the cycle that produces villains which makes the league unsympathetic.

This extends to bakugou as he should be the perfect cautionary tale embodying society faults and how heroes focused less on saving and more on money and fame. So many characters had the chance to be that but they get put in the right and their consequences ignored.

And even then, the league's action never addresses any systemic issues. We don't see them exposing endeavour or other heroes like them (that was all on dabi and he just wanted to hurt endeavour so not selfless at all), we don't see them exposing quirk discrimination nor do we see them HELP ANYONE! if theyre meant to be revolutionaries, they need to care for people OUTSIDE of each other! But they don't so they all end up as morally bankrupt villains who pretend to be noble.

And even then, there's a teeny tiny detail that the 'moral' members should have had a problem with.

The nomus.

Why do the other members of the league never question the nomus? I doubt none of them know the implications that a person was experimented on and turned into a puppet. Why was this not something spinner (the most 'moral' member) took an issue with? In fact, I'm surprised that wasn't a plot point for the league! Why weren't there more people who took issues with Nomus and how they were produced? It feels very strange to ignore to me. That could have easily been a reason why other villains didn't like the league! They experimented onto people! Why are the implications of the nomus so heavily ignored?

It infuriates me since the MLA are right there and are already much more complex villains who could have shaken up society and bring into question the heroes better! There's a hero in the MLA! Why couldn't there be more? Why are the league, the ones who don't have a distinct purpose nor do they do anything ASIDE from destruction the central focus? Oh right AFO and all that.

TLDR: i really don't like how the villains in the series are handled as what they say never matches with what we're told and we never see the corruption heroes perpetuate. I'm also confused on why nomus are glossed over in universe from a 'holy shit these were people' stand point and i also wish the MLA were the central antagonists rather than the league as they make more sense and can showcase hero society better.

EDIT: I see that these old posts are getting attention. Please keep in mind that these anti-lov posts were written before I knew the whole story and I was recovering from an extremely tense time. As such, these are inaccurate due to lack of information.

Notes:

*Anti LoV

Now sweetie, don’t hold back! Tell Looney how you really feel. (Lol, no, I love this.) And YES. Yes, to all this. There was potential, but either Hori didn’t know how to handle the villains or someone at Shounen Jump got in the way. And you brought up a good point about the Nomus. Why does no one even blink at this shit? I also love that you brought up the fact that despite the manga constantly saying that the heroes are just as bad as the villains, there is a significant slant between the two. And guess who has the higher moral ground? (hint: NOT THE TERRORISTS!!) The LOV of villains at the end of the day is just a bunch of entitled kids throwing a fit that can’t do what they want. Yes, bad stuff happened to them. No, it shouldn’t have happened. No, they didn’t deserve it. But that doesn’t justify all the terrible things they did. But I digress. The MLA is a lot more compelling as a) they’re more of a threat, b) They have a leg to stand on as they tried peaceful protests in the past but were ignored.

BUT YES!! The nomus are the most wasted and glossed over plot point! And two of them were childhood friends of two main characters! (Izuku and Aizawa.) Plus, think of the angst if AFO had been smart enough to use Nana’s corpse as a nomu! Wasted! The nomus were WASTED!!

But oh well. As said in the past, I intend to do a deeper dive when the manga is finished. But you brought up some amazing points!

[thequietmanno1]

Thelreads, Vigilantes 5, Replies Part 2

1) “ALSO THOSE NOISES, THERE’S MORE THAN ONE BEE IN THERE

THERE’S DEFINITELY MORE THAN ONE BEE IN THERE”- Yep, probably a whole-hive’s worth, though for what it’s worth it doesn’t seem like she has the bees anywhere else but her eye socket- she probably used up all her ‘children’ to deliver the mass injections and transformation we saw, so there is a limit to them, and kuin is powerless without them should enough be destroyed, since she’d need more time to ‘breed’ more- assuming her brain can handle the psychic backlash that comes with crushing so many of her children at once.

2) “AND NOT ONLY THAT, BUT IT SEEMS LIKE SHE’S ALSO INVOLVED WITH THE DRUGS

NOT EVEN A REGULAR-ASS VILLAIN, BUT THE EXACT PERSON WE WERE LOOKING FOR”- In this series, there are either regular-ass villains like you’d leave to the heroes, trigger users….and the trigger suppliers, the ones running the show from the ground level whilst the mastermind stays in the shadows. These are the foes the vigilantes are primarily focused on identifying and tracking down to stop the supply of trigger on the streets. Kuin is our first glimpse as to who’s next up the chain of command amongst the ring members…and she’s not just another villain of the week like they’re used to. Dealing with her? Gonna be a whole other level of danger compared to what Koichi’s been dealing with so far.

3) “Crap, this is going to be bad. Those people aren’t focused on getting revenge or hurting others, but they’ll definitely get out of control once they are injected with the drug. We saw with our little axolotl boy that you don’t even need to want to hurt others to cause a lot of trouble.”- Even worse, they’ve absolutely no idea what caused it. People can panic when forced into a situation that they don’t understand and lash out in fear. As far as these poor shmucks can see, one minute they were walking down the street, the next they feel a pricking sensation and then their quirks start going out of control, mutating them uncontrollably and leading to them flailing around, presumably in massive pain from the unexpected transformation, and desperate for help… and then the heroes arrive and start beating the crap out of them en masse, even All Might Himself. 

Were we in the main story, a situation like this would probably help contribute massively to the lowered trust in heroes that the league would capitalise on. Thankfully, it seems like the heroes and such were able to hush up and suppress the news of this accidental assault on civilians to avoid Heroic PR taking a hit, but still, these people probably held a lot of distrust towards heroes afterwards, once they got out of the hospital. On the other hand, the fact that the official authorities apparently covered up the truth of the matter lends its own concerns to their conduct…

4) “And so it begins, the world’s revolving and chaos is the only order. Christ, this is basically a large-scale test of chemical weapons in a unsuspecting civilian population, how fucked up is that, now I’m expecting the government to be involved somehow.”-Well, small-scaleish, considering it’s just a single street that gets affected and not an entire city block getting hit with a gaseous form of trigger that induces the same effects uncontrollably, for example, but yeah. We Told you starting out this series goes a bit darker than the Main series- or at least it was before the MLA arc- and this mass assault upon the very people heroes are supposed to be protecting is one of the prime examples of that.

5) “Yeah what I expected, the drug lower the brain functions, removes inhibitions and ups the power to the max, those people are just trying to get some help, but they have no control of if they’ll hurt someone in the process or not.”-Well, I don’t know if it lowers the brain functions- Teruo seemed fairly lucid-ish even as he’d transformed into a gigantic axolotl- but maybe the difference is that he voluntarily triggered the transformation. These people may just have trouble speaking because they’re overcome with panic, or in pain from their bodies twisting and warping with no context as to why, to all they can do is scream and flail around in confusion, too overwhelmed to form words to call or help- or depending on the transformation, their bodies might not be physically capable of vocalising their distress.

6) “CHRIST FUCKING ALMIGHTY I WASN’T EXPECTING BODY HORROR TODAY, EVEN AFTER THAT GIRL SHOOT BEES OUT OF HER EYES

OH GOD THE BEES

NOT THE BEES” -Ah. There it is. I’m disappointed in you L. Going for the low-hanging fruit like that, For shame.

7) “And sure enough, they appear as villains, and will definitely hurt someone if they are left alone, but I don’t think that the team can handle this many people all at once, unless they all work together that is.”-  

‘what looks like a villain, sounds like a villain, but isn’t actually a villain? These heroes will be quite upset to be told the answer’. But in all seriousness, the vigilantes can only handle small-scale crimes or villains that appear instantly before a hero can respond.

 A mass villain appearance like this is way out of their league to handle but that also means they have no incentive to actually attack ‘villains’ like this- the extent of any heroism they perform in these circumstances is helping others around them get to safety and out of the way, leaving it up to the ‘official heroes’ to actually fight the sudden villain parade.

8) “Oh wait, with Phelps here then the heroes will be way quicker to reach this place, since he’s already calling for reinforcement. Now hopefully they won’t take five pages to walk a single block like Aizawa did.” -I checked and It didn’t even take 2 for them to show up- and pretty much ‘every’ hero we’ve seen in the main series yet to boot. Having a direct line to the police and a friendly relationship with official and more experienced heroes defiantly has some benefits, but unfortunately, thanks to their ‘illegal’ status, Koichi and co won’t be able to benefit from this too much, so they should savour it while it lasts.

“9) I SWEAR THAT IF THIS BOY GET CAUGHT BY THE BEES AND TURN INTO A MONSTER AGAIN I’LL BE REALLY PISSED

HE DOESN’T NEED TO GO BACK TO JAIL”- It’s very possible that being sent to jail might be preferable to whatever it is Kuin has in mind for him, so…

10) “HE SAW IT

PAPADUSTER IS TRACKING DOWN THE SOURCE, YOU GUYS HANDLE THE REST OF THE VILLAINS. SOMEHOW.” -And this is why the vigilantes are the only ones that can properly handle the trigger ring’s method of operations. Everybody else sees the result of their actions, and watches the chaos. Knuckleduster alone sees the source of the trouble sneaking off, and tries to run after it. Alas, due to the ‘hands-off’ nature of the bees as a distribution method, he can’t find Kuin just by tracking down her bees, but it shows that he knows what to look for when she starts causing chaos with them.

11) “Alright, a hero is already there, thank god that CJ was able to come all the way from San Andreas and reach the scene of the attack, Aizawa would’ve taken at least three volumes and a special chapter to leave his damn front yard,’- I don’t know if you’ve read it, but have you ever heard of the ‘let’s play archive’? there’s a San Andreas screenshot playthrough on there that’s basically written like a first-person perspective of CJ as he 100%s the game and it’s honestly a fascinating story- to the point I kinda wish it was an actual book. San Andreas already has my favourite story of GTA and this just enhances the viewing experience.

https://lparchive.org/Grand-Theft-Auto-San-Andreas-(Screenshot)/

12) “ALRIGHT WHAT THE FUCK EVEN IS THIS”-A blatant excuse for Furuhashi to cram as many main series cameos as he can into a single chapter and get away with it.

13) “AIZAWA IS THERE AS WELL BUT HE’S BEING DRAGGED ALONG BY THE SHEER ABSURDITY OF THIS SCENE, THE ONLY THING MISSING IS ALL MIGHT AND WE’D HAVE ALL THE MAJOR HEROES CONVENIENTLY IN THE SAME PLACE”-

Speak of the Devil and he shall appear.

Speak of All Might and his theme shall start playing in the background, his laughter rapidly approaching your location….

14) “They don’t know, but we do, that those are actually innocent people turned into monster by the drug. Can you imagine if a mosquito landed on you, injected you with bathsalts, and then you get the curb stomped out of you by the army?”-Situations like this show why people like Koichi and co- who are willing to provide a non-violent method of dealing with villains, if only because they tend to lack the straight-up strength to handle them- are probably best to deal with the trigger situation. Sure, they’re not outstandingly strong like the ‘official’ heroes, but they try to understand their opponents and talk them down- when knuckleduster doesn’t get a say, anyway. 

This whole mass beat down showcases a distressing attitude to ‘shoot first, don’t ask questions’ amongst the government-approved heroes, which, you can kinda see their POV on. They spend their entire lives dealing with villains appearing and causing chaos on a daily basis, how were they to know this was the one time where they needed to hold back and show restraint? Hesitation in the face of danger can cost lives, something that All Might alludes to when he pointed out that Izuku moved before he thought, but the Kuin just took advantage of that to abscond with her target in the chaos and sow distrust agasitn the heroes at the same time- and she’s just a part-time villain for fun. Can you image what she’d get up to if she decided to go full-time?

15) “AND 13 IS USING THEIR POWER AGAINST THOSE VILLAINS WHAT THE FUCK 13 YOU’RE GOING TO MURDER THEM ITS NOT ENOUGH HAVING SNIPE JUST SHOOTING PEOPLE LEFT AND RIGHT?!”-More likely 13’s just sucking up debris and stray rubble from the more massive villains smashing up the streets to avoid anybody getting hurt. I’m more worried about snipe- some poor civilians defiantly had to be treated for bullet wounds inflicted by a genuine hero in the hospital afterwards, assuming he doesn’t have sleeping rounds to use for subjugation.

16) “WHY AM I EVEN SURPRISED THAT HE SHOWED UP, THEY DID CALL ALL HEROES IN THE AREA

STILL, THAT’S LIKE BRINGING A SHOTGUN TO A THUMB WAR

A TAD OVERKILL, I NEED TO SAY”-For his own sake, All Might can never find out the truth behind this instant villain outbreak. Can you imagine the guilt that would cause him, knowing he used his powers to attack those he swore and sacrificed so much to protect? It’s the exact same scenario as when he attacked Tomura at USJ, unaware of their true relationship and deepening the boy’s hatred against him, though that was more invoked specifically to screw with All Might in the deepest and most intimate manner possible- Kuin just did the same with a few milligrams of a drug and a stealthy injection. Official heroes are too willing to take action based on what they see, without taking the time to figure out what the circumstances are- because if they were this hesitant all the time, more people would get hurt on their watch. It’s a cruel move, but very effective- and it wasn’t even Kuin’s main aim at the time.

17) “I can’t believe that All Might basically pulled a One-Punch man here, he showed up just to close the curtains”- Well, that is the point of the power discrepancy between him and basically every other villain in the series- we’ve seen the kind of chaos that can result fro All Might fighting an opponent who can match him for more than a few seconds in combat, so it’s a good thing that this isn’t like Saitama’s world where the strength of the monsters is practically always overwhelming in comparison to the heroes- it lets them get more of the spotlight for one thing, but at the same time, it also means that when AFO starts introducing All Might-level villains in the main series everything starts going downhill

18) “Oh no wait, you did see him run off, you just decided that it wasn’t worth bothering with it at the moment.”-sure he’s just starting out, and is largely ignorant of the truth regarding the trigger ring, unlike Knuckleduster who seems to have more imitate knowledge about them in comparison, but it does show that Koichi has the same level of observational skills towards the important details like Knuckleduster does- it’s just that he’s not motivated or ready enough to take action based on that stuff yet, still believing in the idea that heroes will save the day, and not yet accepting that for this story to have a happy ending he’s got to save the day before they do, since we see here how their normal procedure plays right into the villain’s hands.

19) “I wonder how long will it take for you guys to actually figure it out to be honest. It looks she’ll be some sort of arc-villain, but she’s still small fry, she isn’t the one developing the drug, she’s just testing it.”-And behind Kuin, there’s likely to be an even more efficient and clever trigger supplier, running operations at a higher-level than their ‘junior’, who’s content to leave things in the area to her digressions, but will likely take an interest in affairs should Kuin be taken down by three ‘nobody’ heroes, and start making things more dangerous and personal for our heroes as they get closer and closer to the ultimate mastermind- and same as Kuin, there’s likely to be even more higher-ranking suppliers past them, involved in the top-level operations of the drug ring, reporting directly to the mastermind and being frighteningly efficent and ruthless when dealing with interlopers who are getting dangerously close to them. You can see how the story will proceed from this point.

20) “YOU HAD ONE JOB! ONE. JOB!

GOD FUCKING DAMMIT DUDE, I SWEAR THAT IF HE ENDS UP IN JAIL AGAIN…”-  Welp, no jail so… wish granted?

21) “Knuckleduster wasn’t really up to explaining it, he just wanted to show it to make sure he wasn’t hallucinating it. He should’ve taken the bee back to the rest of the team to show what they are up against, but no, he just crushed it, he got rid of the evidences for some reason.

That’s a bit weird, now that I think about it.”-  Kuin’s a different  threat level than the Instant Villains Knuckleduster is using as training for Koichi right now- should they go after her, Koichi will be ill-equipped to handle the kind of danger she’s capable of unleashing, and if he keeps the bee around, Koichi and Pop may take an interest in it and end up investigating on their own, like they tried to do unsuccessfully at the beginning of the chapter, which could put them in her crosshairs without Knuckle around to protect them. 

Best to ensure that he’s not mistaken about the presence of the hidden perpetrator with Howataro, and failing to ascertain if he’s seen anybody linked to the bees, destroy the evidence so only he alone will take steps to find the bee-keeper whilst Koichi and Pop Step slowly improve, safe from Kuin’s machinations in their ignorance.

22) “NO

THIS BITCH

SHE GOT AXOLOTL BOY”- It’s unknown why, but it’s very possible that she wants to simultaneously eliminate evidence/witnesses and bring back a valuable ‘volunteer’ to try out some more chemical trials on. After all, Teruo is the only person we’ve seen thus far that suffered a completely non-human transformation when exposed to trigger- even these guys in this chapter have a humanoid shape when the mass injections happen, so by ‘conscripting’ him, she can let her employers try and find out what was different about Teruo that resulted in such a drastic change, allowing them to further develop trigger for whatever purpose they are aiming for. And if it ends badly for him? Well, her main goal was to remove the eyewitness, so it suits her purposes either way.

23) “Oh yeah, he definitely knows that the Queen Beetch back there is involved with the drugs, he knew that bee from just a pacing glance, even if he has no idea what the person behind that power looks like.”- Which implies that Knuckleduster has had a personal experience with the bees rather than the wielder- an experience that seem to be deeply personal to him, given how angry he got upon discovering evidence of their presence… but for now, he has no leads to go with, and he cannot confide in his erstwhile allies, inexperienced and naive as they are, so he just bottles it up and hopes he’ll get a better chance to track down the user next time, when he’s more prepared for them.

24) “This was apparently the last chapter of the first volume, and we already got what I presume is going to be our main villain. We already had a antagonist as Phelps, but he’s a good guy that just happens to oppose the protagonists, now that girl, she’s the real deal alright, a true villain.”- Phelps stands in the light of the law, trying to shine a light into the darkness covering the trigger Ring’s drug activates. Kuin hides in the shadows, manipulating events from afar, aiming to take any measures necessary to avoid being identified. Koichi, Knuckleduster and the others are caught in-between, closer to Kuin and thus more likely to pick up her trail, but also more likely to be identified by Phelps first, and arrested for their illegal heroism and investigation into an ‘official police matter’. It’s a delicate balance, but an interesting dynamic to balance between multiple parties as a plot hook going forward.

@thelreads