#and made the Southern Poverty Law Center Hate Crime Watchlist several times

[codenamesazanka]

I feel for Shoji. I really do. And I get where Shoji is coming from.

Shoji doesn’t have seemed to forgive his town, only let go of his resentment. Shoji wants to make the world better. Shoji understands the anger and pain the heteromorphs feel, he doesn’t at all deny their feelings or experiences; he only wants them to channel it into something less chaotic and more productive. He doesn’t want anyone to get hurt, and he knows neither do the rioters. He’s got an eye out for how heteromorphs will be represented and portrayed, and it’s a somber, realistic take.

Most of all, though, he’s not trying to solve the discrimination issue, he’s just trying to stop the rioters, especially because he cannot afford to let the revolt be exploited by a Demon King trying to usher in a thousand years of darkness. What can be said in a situation like that? If I was in his shoes, trying to find a way to stop a revolt, I don’t know if I can. I’ll probably resort to rhetoric too, appealing to emotion. Please stop. This is a hospital. There could be collateral damage. No one wants that.

(This argument probably would’ve worked better if it didn’t seemed like such an underhanded move by the Heroes. The facts are:

Kurogiri is at Central Hospital. He has to be there because it seems that’s the only place they can do recovery research on him.

Heroes knew AFO will try to retrieve Kurogiri.

Heroes knew about a “call to action,” that a group of heteromorphs are going after the hospital.

They knew the hospital will be targeted by the riot specifically because Kurogiri is held there—

But for some reason they decided not to move Kurogiri elsewhere and make AFO redirect the mob, now nor they they decided to evacuate the hospital despite having days beforehand to do so.

Perhaps the Heroes underestimated the number of heteromorphs that would join in the fight. They can point out Kurogiri is in the Research Building that’s separate from the Patient Ward so maybe the mob would spare that part of the hospital. They can even say the Heroes were hoping the heteromorphs would refrain from attacking the hospital because they trusted in the heteromorphs’ better natures, which is nice of them! But, objectively, planning-for-worst-case-scenario-ly, goal-is-minimizing-the-amount-of-damage-ly, this-probably-won’t-happen-but-let’s-be-extra-careful-ly they really wanted to risk that? Apparently they did.)

But Shoji’s words still ultimately fall flat for me because he’s not actually proposing any change at all, not a hint of it. The rioters are there because they want something, anything to change. Shoji essentially tells them to endure nobly, without promising anything will be different at all. He’s just a kid, sure, he can’t make any promises, but unfortunately he is a Hero student (soldier) representative of the establishment. When he took up that mantle, he’s gotta answer for the system that had promised it would protect and save its all citizens but failed to do so. (In fact they might have enabled viewing heteromorphs as more Villainous.)

What happened 30 years ago? Did the massacres finally stop? The massacres that happened because non-heteromorphs felt like it, they felt uncomfortable around heteromorphs? Fast-forward to now-ish, and villages are still tormenting their heteromorphic citizens because they feel uncomfortable. I guess that’s improvement, because Shoji, Spinner, and PLF Speech Guy aren’t dead. But the scars left on Shoji and PLF Speech Guy are on their faces, their heads; the people that hurt them seemed to have felt free enough to not care about head injuries or leaving eternally visible scars that reminds them of what they did. The moment society collapsed after Jaku, all that old latent hatred came back. All Ordinary Woman wanted was safe shelter and was denied that over and over again. What on earth has ‘not being avengers’ done? The core of their bigotry and the unspoken allowance to unleash that remains.

(I saw a Japanese tweet that observed how a system that allows shelters to refuse heteromorphs probably means there are no laws that prohibit heteromorph discrimination in the [HeroAca] world. Makes sense, especially if you consider that these are government-and-Hero-schools-run shelters, as Best Jeanist proposed? Maybe there are also private shelters, but Ordinary Woman said she went to several and all of them rejected heteromorphs and there has to be at least one government-and-Hero-schools-run shelter in those attempts.)

I’m not saying the heteromorphs should rampage and destroy a hospital and be avengers - and in the end, they didn’t! It’s just Heroes gotta give them a promise of change, to especially if the Heroes believed in the mob’s core inner goodness. The heteromorphs are doing their part; what exactly are the Heroes giving back?

Overall, things are framed as inspiring when it really isn’t, and i really think the manga should acknowledge how Heroes risked the lives in the hospital either out of hopeful but calculated strategy or astoundingly stupid incompetence. And give the heteromorphs at least one solid promise of change.