#VBNHAC79

[thelreads]

So, alot of people(myself included) were pretty frustrated with how Endeavor was characterized in this arc with both his expression and his actions. Pre-"Aw fuck, I have what I wanted now" development he never gave off the vibe that he was willing to just blast gigantic heat waves and tornadoes. He was described as rough, not absolutely insane.

The only time he ever showed his insanity was with his family and while one could argue it would leak out to his job, I find it hard to believe he got to No. 2 and stayed there acting like an arsonist.

Now, while its not hard 'canon', the anime original content of him during the Stain Arc(which came before this) made him look so much more competent without making him look like a madman.

All this to say that, I hate this portrayal of Endeavor and it makes him frustratingly like a saturday morning, Team Rocket, cartoon villain.

Exactly! He is a bastard, but as a hero he's supposed to be one of the best. I was already miffed when he almost blew up a building full of heroes against the Bomberman back then, but I could let slide as just some writing awkwardness, but with this I can see that Furuhashi absolutely has no fucking clue of the canon he was supposed to follow.

I wouldn't say he hates him, but he absolutely completely misses the point of the character. He saw a big burly fire guy that is arrogant and immediately went "so he's a dumbass that let his fire do the talking instead of thinking of a plan, and who would kill a Villain instead of trying to take them down because he is angry" and that is the exact opposite of what endeavor is.

Sure, he is the lowest scum as a person, but as a hero he's on another level. This sort of thing is just so we have someone worse than Pop to antagonize him, and make Koichi looks badass and a true hero in comparison.

You know, the classic "Ron the death eater" character derailment trope.

[thelreads]

And that`s the end of it, and, my god...

You know, I had some high hopes for this chapter, and thought that at the very least it would be fairly entertaining to see some bullshit made up so Koichi and Pop had a chance against endeavor, but... holy fuck man, that was far from entertaining.

Like, I hate endeavor as a person, but I can`t deny he is absurdly efficient in his job. He doesn`t give villains a chance, he doesn`t show off, he goes in up-and-personal and puts them down, and then he moves to the next one. This... This was not endeavor. He was still a douche, that part Furuhashi got correctly, but everything else was so... off.

Captain Celebrity was more efficient on his job, and he was actively looking to show up in front of the cameras. What was this chapter?

Actually I know what that was. This is that strategy of making your characters look cooler and more competent by making other well-established competent characters dumb.

That was what I feared when Endeavor showed up, because he`s such a no-nonsense relentless hero that it would be almost impossible to actually give the characters a fighting chance if they followed the canon.

And it`s not like we can make an original hero to be the antagonist here, right Furuhashi? No, we need to pick the literal second-rated hero after All Might to make Koichi look cooler and more badass.

sigh

What a shame. It was not even fun to hate on Endeavor because this is not the Endeavor we know and hate, he`s just some Endeavor-lookalike that apparently took some lessons from fucking Zuko.

[thelreads]

wait- HUH??? Don`t tell me he actually did what I think he did

I`m going to have to repeat myself here

ENDEAVOR, IS NOT A FUCKING FIREBENDER

WHAT YOU MEANT HE JUST PUT DOWN THE FIRE WHEN IT WAS ALREADY AT THE OTHER END OF THE STREET

FURUHASHI, IM GOING TO BREAK YOUR KNEES WITH A BRICK

[thelreads]

Hey, remember when heroes tried to minimize the damage to their surroundings whenever possible? I sure don`t, and I can already tell that furuhashi also is unaware of this well-established rule.

okay, but he is inside that thing? that seems a bit counterproductive, he can fly goddammit, he can be way faster than that firenado, that just let`s Pop dodge more easily what the fuck Endeavor

WHAT THE FUCK YOU MEAN HE ISN`T INSIDE THERE

HE IS NOT A FUCKING FIREBENDER, HE SHOTS FIRE AND THAT`S IT

THE AIRFLOW IN THE BUILDINGS MY ASS, THAT WAS THE BIGGEST BULLSHIT IN A SERIES WHEN A GIRL IS A FROG AND A GUY HAS A MANGA PAGE FOR A FACE

THAT`S NOT HOW HIS QUIRK WORKS GODDAMMIT. HE CAN MAKE IT BIGGER OR SMALLER ONLY WHEN IT`S BEING EMITTED FROM HIM, WE SAW THAT PRETTY MUCH ALL FIRE-USERS FOLLOW THIS RULE. OH MY GOD FURUHASHI WHY

[thelreads]

I must be tripping. This definitely feels like I`m tripping. That or I`m reading fanfiction.

I don`t see any Ao3 watermark, there must be something wrong, because this is definitely not what Endeavor is like. Endeavor doesn`t sit around waiting for ~civilians~ to clear the area, he goes in, takes down the villain, and another hero or his sidekicks deals with the rescue.

What is this that I`m watching?

[thelreads]

"it would be almost impossible to actually give the characters a fighting chance if they followed the canon"

Yes, i got you a friendly reminder that when Endeavor chase a winged Nomu that kidnapped a hero, he walk through the walls using his heat in his feet to be able to run using the walls and made a spear of fire!

Pop Step, even mind controlled, had no chance againts Horikoshi's Early Endeavor.

You know the two characters that would be actually interesting as a hero antagonist for this arc?

One of them would be Tensei, and not just because I fucking love Tensei, but because he's an interesting counterpart to Koichi, both are nice people that are true heroes at heart and both are super fast, but one is a hero and another is a vigilante, a criminal, and even though they hit it off with a friendship that sadly hasn't been showcase since, with Tensei even acknowledging that Koichi is at a place where he is more useful to people than if he became a sidekick, in a situation like this we could have an interesting clash.

Tensei is a hero, his duty is to stop criminals and save people, and although he didn't knew pop personally, Koichi is there vouching she's not doing this out of her own volition, and that he will stop her on his own, but Koichi already failed at stopping her once, and people got hurt, Tensei could be torn between trusting a friend that although he knows has the heart and potential, might still not be able to achieve that goal, and stopping a dangerous villain and saving innocent people, and meanwhile Koichi could still be torn between showing he can do it on his own, or trusting a hero that could be useful to help him, but which he knows will be legally forced to arrest Pop because of what she has done.

See? Connection, emotion, conflict, it works. The only problem would be that Tensei is stuck to the ground.

The other person who could work here, if hadn't fucked off from the story, would be Captain celebrity, and he could work even better than Tensei in a plot sense. He knows Koichi and Pop, he was their friend for a long time, and although he doesn't know about the parasite he would still believe something was wrong, but that wouldn't mean he could turn a blind eye, and even worse because due to Captain celebrity's excessive use of the media whenever he goes, he couldn't even help Koichi by taking her down and letting him do the extraction, because everyone would be looking at him, and if he suddenly wasn't recording something people would be suspicious and he would ruin the reputation he worked hard to rebuild. That would give him a fairly impactful conflict to deal with, and even though his power is op and he could in theory take down Pop in a few seconds, we have seen his quirk is not infallible when he needs to protect others, Pop could easily keep him at bay by using the swarm of bees to target people or buildings with people still inside. But this would better as an impactful moment for him if the whole sky egg thing hadn't happened, because this would be just a kind of repetition from that scenario.

So, there were ways to bring actual impactful drama to this arc and give them an understandable fighting chance, but no, need to bring the biggest boomstick around because people like to see shit being destroyed.

[thelreads]

Furuhashi looked at the Endeavor Agency Arc and thought: I'll ignore that.

I find it extremely amusing that even though it's a character we all hate and despise, Furuhashi fucked up him so badly that many of us felt the urge to step forward and go "he would not fucking do that"

But yeah, this is the problem of using a well-established character in a spin-off, you need to make sure they don't contradict the canon. We know little of how Endeavor was when he wasn't chasing after All Might, it could be that he was more trigger-happy and would've gone that far, but Horikoshi already showed us that Endeavor had been by now in his life completely obsessed with becoming a better hero than All might by doing a good work. You can expand on the former because it doesn't contradict the canon, it could be he was a bad hero and changed when he became focused and then obsessed, but the latter is something you can't change.

Now, If this was an original character from Vigilantes we could ignore it, an arrogant and hot-blooded hero that has a bad record and would be willing to kill pop ASAP so he can get some glory and recognition for protecting the people, or even killing her for the fun of it and then claim later she gave him no choice, would be far more interesting than this. And having a bloodthirsty hero would give a nice contrast to all the heroes we've seen so far that just turn a blind-eye to Koichi and Pop's shenanigans.

[thelreads]

While I may not always agree with your over the top reactions to certain things it was strangely satisfying this time watching you yell about the mischaracterization of Endeavor. Dude is awful at this point in time, but this guy is just dressed like like and using his name.

Endeavor is already written well enough in the main serirs to justify hating him for perfectly justified reasons, we don't need to mischaracterize him to add more fuel to the fire

[thelreads]

Endeavor can manipulate any fire that he himself produces, as long as he hasn't detached the fire from himself, he can change the fire's shape, like a spear in the anime episode in Hosu, forming an arrow with his fire to tell hawks to get him & Hood to the sky. This attack has him connected to the Fire Strom through the burning ground. The issue isn't that the technique isn't possible, it's that Endeavor is shown to have a very direct fighting style. He prefers close if he can, he's not a zoner.

Now, this scene is completely bullshit, because although you two ha mentioned those facts, they are not alike.

Endeavor's beard and pauldrons are simple, he just emanates flame in a direction and that's it, he doesn't shape them, he just makes them bigger or smaller in a single direction, we never saw them being bended in any way.

The scene about hous I couldn't find in the manga, so I think it might be anime exclusive, which makes things trickier, but the arrow one I could find on chapter 190

And being honest, that was passable because it was a really simple form close to his body, the precision to make a small fire arrow shot up is minimal for him, it's a single direction, and you just need to change the amount of fire you emanate, now what he did in vigilantes... That one won't fly.

So Furuhashi, you're saying he shot fire on the ground, made it go forward some good hundred meters, at the end of it being a firenado, and Endeavor just ordered it to be out with a move of his hand? Let me ask the council...

Yeah, sorry, the council found you guilty. That is the death sentence. Sorry, I don't make the rules Furuhashi.

[thelreads]

And I have another thing to point out that I forgot about. The siren thing is a stupid thing on another level, besides it never been shown before or after in the story, and certainly the fact that Endeavor wouldn't be the one to have one that is:

You have a villain terrorizing people, then you just blow a big horn that will warn him a hero is just about to arrive? So he can just run and hide and wait for another moment to cause chaos? What

[thelreads]

“And also my brother-in-law. I`m gonna need to have a talk with him later, don`t mind him, continue to incinerate half the street please” -Phelps, probably.

Oh, thank you, at least you recognize that Koichi is technically a villain before the law.

But I swear to god endeavor, if you stop focusing on Pop to go after Koichi I`m going to snap every bone on your body

[thelreads]

Unfortunately, I ain`t.

If the bees were the problem, there were far better, less convoluted and definitely more cannon-friendly ways of doing that.

Yeah, and when she jumps out of the way smartass? That`s her quirk, and she`s fairly mobile with it, that firenado only travels in a straight line, why not just move closer and punch her goddammit

[thelreads]

WHOA

*funky music playing in the background*

Huh, so my magnificent and perfect brain did figure out correctly, that the guy with a compass for a motif and which was named “compass kid” did have a localization-based quirk. As usual, my mind is far more advanced and precise than that of any human being on earth. Albert who? Stephen what? Never heard of people so below my IQ.

...

trying... not to think... about the siren...

it`s not... going well...

[thelreads]

Endeavor could have maybe also worked better if they DIDN'T have the area evacuated. She stays around civilians to make it harder for him to take her down with a fire blast from range, uses trigger bees to make a bunch of instant villains, maybe even getting a couple heroes who are there trying to help Endeavor. Maybe he's trying NOT to kill her, but she doesn't really care about her own wellbeing, so he also has to adjust to someone using their own life as a hostage.

Another perfect solution for this situation. Even If the heroes were trying to evacuate people and she used trigger to make instant villains it would keep the tension high, because they would need to both try to reason and save people that are rampaging in fear from themselves, each other, and from Pop who would still be targeting them.

And considering Pop is full of trigger herself, her quirk must be off the charts, even with Endeavor speed he probably would still have some trouble following her, but that part would need us to see her quirk powered up by the drug, we haven't seen her make a single jump that wasn't possible without the enhancements

[thelreads]

Quick question, does Iida count as enough of a car to Isekai people he runs into?

Only if he's wearing his armor, the weight of that thing makes him legally a heavy-duty vehicle.

[thelreads]

L, please, Phelps is trying to make sure Endeavor isn’t going to put her in a hospital with third-degree burns all over her body and melted bones 😭 Endeavor might be the Number 2, but that doesn’t mean he’s not someone who goes full ham on villains even where there’s no need. Heroes not really caring about villains’ well-being when dealing with them and their conditions and circumstances is a major theme in both Vigs and MHA. Endeavor doesn’t care that she’s brainwashed - she’s a villain, and she pissed him off, and he’s not going to hold himself back or care that she’s a victim here.

We saw him fighting villains on the main series, and he never did more than necessary. we can argue that was post his humbling by getting the position of number one, but that didn't change how he worked, that changed his personal life, and he has shown to be able to separate them quite well.

We can also argue that Pop is too dangerous and that's why he had to make sure he took her down as quickly as possible, but again, if that was the case he would just fly to her and put her down, the bees wouldn't be able to get close to him because of his fire. He's a pragmatic hero, he doesn't make flashy shows when he can just finish the job quickly.