#but seriously if you haven't listened to this guy talk with touya in mind

[whileyoureinschoolidothisallday]

okay the thing I wanted to talk about for Touya:

So over on the discord server we’ve been watching s5 of mha cause some of my friends hadn’t seen it yet, and I REALLY wanna watch s6 with them, and last night we finally finished.

I noticed something.

I and probably a ton of other people have talked about how Touya probably related to the High End Nomu he sent after Endeavor and very much sent that one on purpose. HOWEVER, I don’t see a lot of analysis about the Line Guy he also sent his way.

Here’s what I think: I think the Nomu battle was foreshadowing his battle vs Shouto, which was focused on who was the strongest and who could last out between the two of them, and I think the Line Guy is foreshadowing his “battle” with Endeavor.

I put battle in quotations because, like with the Line Guy, I don’t think it’s gonna be much of a fight.

The Line Guy is almost a 1-1 projection of Touya. One of the first thing he says to Endeavor is that he’s so happy he remembers him. The first thing he does when he gets out of prison is search for Endeavor, even before he eats. He’s obsessed with Endeavor. He’s obsessed with dying. He doesn’t want anyone else to kill him but Endeavor. He will hurt other people to get Endeavor to hurt him. He uses one of his sons to get to him.

For most of that battle, Endeavor is frozen on the ground. And per the last chapter:

he’s pretty much in the same position.

How that battle ends isn’t because of Endeavor, it’s because of the kids. They beat the Line Guy because Endeavor is just too frozen up to act. While I don’t think he’s gonna freeze up this time, I do think he’s going to refuse to fight Touya. And like the Line Guy, it’s gonna make him furious. He needs Endeavor to kill him. It won’t fit his narrative otherwise. Often when kids are in situations like Touya was, they start to believe that any attention is better than no attention, even negative painful punishments. In Touya’s mind, killing Endeavor, and therefore getting Endeavor to kill him in the process, is the ultimate acknowledgement.

But Endeavor’s not that violent guy anymore.

I personally have not seen enough from Endeavor yet to like him like some of y’all do, but it would be untrue to say that he is the same man that we started the series with. We’ve been with that man for many arcs now...but Touya hasn’t. The only father he knows is violent, ruthless, cold. He will hurt his family for the betterment of his Hero status without a second thought. He admired those traits in his father because his kid brain understood that as the source of his power. Just like the Line Guy.

And I think it’s gonna end in the same way, with Touya feeling rejected by a man who no longer exists. What’ll “save him” isn’t Endeavor, it isn’t him doing a round-a-bout himself. It’ll be the weight of his grief breaking him. He will never get what he wants now and that’ll be too much to bare. He’ll crack. That battle genius we’ve been seeing, him being always two steps ahead, all of that will start to slip away as his mental health reaches his breaking point, until he makes the one mistake that leaves him broken and sobbing in Shouto’s ice.

Cause that’s what happens with the Line Guy