#fuyumi deserves better

[bibibbon]

I just read 426 officially, the todoroki family Endeavor congratulations selection sounded so forced.

"You've also been punished already... Can't you just stop now?" The f*ck? Objectively that's not true, the law hasn't punished him at all.

Many stories have cases of child abusers avoiding jail time (usually being disconnected from the family but whatever). But MHA puts a lot of effort telling the audience that Endeavor is well.. putting the effort and bearing a cross. So, when the obvious case of jail time is never brought up, the context of the dialogue sounds stupid. Especially when most of the chapter is in a jail.

Completely agree anon!!

I have said this before but i will say it again I completely hate how the todoroki family arc was handled and I wholeheartedly believe that enji todoroki shouldn't of gotten either a redemption or an atonement arc at all.

Enji todoroki doesn't actually end up getting any concequences legally speaking that is when he 100% should of gotten them. Enji should of probably ended up in jail at the end of this arc for his history with child abuse and implied marital 🍇 however that isn't the case and he is simply allowed to do whatever Scott free in a retirement home. It also seems that the public don't actually mind enji and may tolerate heck even accept him even after what he did. This probably has something to do with him stepping up and doing his job as a hero so people may of let it slide which ISNT OKAY!!

In the end all that enji receives is karma and no actual punishments at all. Sure his family leaves him but he is free to do whatever and go visit touya which in my opinion is something that he shouldn't be allowed to do.

I have already said this but my preferred route for enji is to have him never be redeemed. I would of liked for him to die as a worthless and abusive father who never got to realise that maybe he should of changed as his own actions have caught up to him in the form of his own son touya. Enjis death in the first war arc would of ended up serving many plot points justice including his and this is by:

Having there be actual pressure for heroes and anyone in the hero industry that there is no number one and that they're all in danger

Give more focus to the todorokis

Give enji what he deserved by having him taste his own medicine (dying by touyas flames would of been ironic)

Also drive the touya and shoto role because when enji dies there will probably be mixed reactions and some would glorify his last actions

Allow for characters to get more agency that was suppressed to humanise enji like the Rei and hawks

Parallel his arc with bakugo which would make bakugos redemption more impactful (if bks redemption is done right that is)

But yeah it's such a shame that a big plot point in the series ended like this and to be honest I feel bad for touya who just has to slowly suffer and die at least Shigaraki had the mercy of a quick death (I still hate both their endings and hori flopped so badly)

[cat-eyeball-nul]

Not me crying sad-upset-angry tears whenever i see an endeavor apologist, or him interacting with any of the kids in a positive light, i HATE that fictional man, he does not deserve their love or respect or forgiveness

[justatalkingface]

I have to say, it is endlessly frustrating that every female character in mha, bar like, Toga, is not allowed to be angry. While Fuyumi’s response to abuse is realistic, I think its a really good showcasing of how hori views his female characters. Out of four children, the only one who even remotely puts up with endeavor’s behavior, who wants to have a real relationship with him, is his daughter. Why is she the only one who’s forgiving of him? I mean, I know why, but its still infuriating that none of the female characters in this manga are allowed to be anything other than alluring, happy, scared, or *briefly* upset.

Yeah, when I was writing that post out I noticed that stark difference between Fuyumi and the three guys, all of whom rebelled, and how their broad personality traits came down pretty straight from their same gendered parent.

Like, in general, all of the various Todokori family's reactions to Endeavour are legit, though Dabi's is, fittingly enough, turned up to eleven, but when you look at it from a broader perspective like that it is... prominent.

Like, real talk for a minute, if I could choose how Fuyumi was written, I'd have had her been quiet and passive her whole life, like she was knuckling down under the pressure... but the second she got of age she was gone. And when I mean gone, I mean gone: not just out of the house, like Natsuo, not just out of the city, but out of the country. Just... gone. The day of her eighteenth birthday, that morning the family wakes up and realizes that she vanished, there's nothing left in her room, and there wasn't even a mention of even wanting to leave or anything beforehand, nothing. Fuyumi just plans and executes this completely under the radar.

And then it turns out she's off somewhere riding motorcycles or something, probably in the US since that's the second most developed country in the story, living her best life and never looking back, with a changed name and a different hair style, nothing to connect her to her old life. It'd be easy enough for her to enter the story proper when Dabi Dances, wanting to see her long lost brother (maybe build that up as the point where she just gave up on Endeavour and everything and everyone even remotely related to him) and such, and there's a lot of potential conflict to play off her just abandoning everyone, but... a Todoroki wouldn't be a Todoroki if they weren't fucked up somehow, right?

Refocusing though... if anything, you're too generous to Hori. Toga was half assed angry for a handful of chapters, and even then it was muted and nonsensical, mixed with a basic inability to grasp reality ('"a hero killed us?", she said incomprehensibly; there was this bizarre lack of understanding of the consequences of the the PLF's actions and how killing people, gasp, may get you killed!) and a really weird refusal to actually be angry at the person who flatout murdered Twice. The murder that, you know, she watched happen, since Dabi conveniently broadcasted it for the world to see. After that though, she was depressed, and now she's in some weird 'Let me be evil' subplot where she's thoeretically doubling down on being an actual villain (like she wasn't already), but she's too busy having an identity crisis or something to actually focus on that, and a good half of her airtime is still about the weird, completely undeveloped 'love triangle' thing.

And now that you say this I really, honestly, can't think of a time a woman was properly angry in this series. I mean, hell, Mirko is usually the exception that proves the rule to most of Hori's sexist treatments about women, but even she's more determined and just plain aggressive rather than angry. It's pretty nuts when you think about it.

And it's just... it's not like we need a lot, but there's enough shit that happens in MHA, to everyone, that there's every reason for some woman somewhere to want to scream at someone good and proper.

I mean, normally I'd expand on this a bit, but I can't really think of anything to say beyond the obvious. Women should have been angry throughout the entire story. They weren't. There's nothing that can really explain it, or mitigate, or anything, beyond just Hori not wanting to write a woman that way for reasons that are all too obvious.

[gece-misin-nesin]

i hate it when media portrays someone angry about what happened to them or loathing their abuser as someone who's 'letting anger control them' and 'not healing'. i don't see why unequivocally despising and hating the person who hurt you means you aren't/can't be healing. like, why does every character have to forgive and forget to heal? why can't characters just resent their abusive parents while still healing/having healed. why can't they be angry about their traumatic experiences without every other character telling them bullshit like 'you should forgive' or whatever? it's so fucking annoying AND entirely unoriginal.

[thedynamicworm]

In honor of Mha’s conclusion, I’m finally posting the sketches I did of Fuyumi if she was the one who became a villain instead of Touya.

This version of her is inspired by the art @nev4chii did of her with Dabi’s scars and hair dye and partially inspired by the Dabi!Fuyumi au by @cyber-phobia

[sapphic-agent]

When I'm in a "My character was wasted and reduced to propping an abuser" competition and my opponent is any of these guys:

[punkeropercyjackson]

Dabi's disabled pretty boy swag and twunk rep really blinds y'all to his actual personality.He's never even looked in Hawks direction with anything but 'Your vibes are beyond rancid,you're growing black mold' energy and his cluster b ass has too much self-worth to date him after him going full cop complete with an inaguration speech on his first best friend slash situationship,that being Jin,he's a straight edge punk specifically,he loves Rei and his siblings with his whole heart and soul but thanks to Enji the world ruined him too much for even him to realize that,he's Red Hood-adjacent and The Joker is a less than nothing character compared to him,he's part south asian for other reason than i feel like it,he's closer to Himiko than he is to Shigaraki,Momo would've fixed him and he would've made her worse in a found siblings way where the older one is also a pseudo-parental figure because that's the natural order of being an eldest and Shouto and them would've been a trio if Horikoshi knew how to write women and abuse stories like a decent person.And that's on reading comprehension and writing experience

[nutzgunray-lvt]

I know I'm beating a dead horse here, but It's really funny how Horikoshi writes characters that seemingly only exist to be cheerleaders/mouthpieces to his favored ones. What's even funnier is how divisive these favored characters are.

Izuku - He's the main character and he does have a personality, but he's never allowed to grow beyond his "Kacchan is the best" mentality, despite it literally being painful for Bakugou to actually call him by his name instead of 'useless'.

Present Mic - Pretty much only exists to show that Aizawa supposedly isn't a bad person, despite Aizawa canonically not treating him that good.

Aizawa - Exists to show that "Bakugou's totally a good guy!" despite him having expelled students for much less. It's REALLY not a good look for Aizawa as a person that he wants BAKUGOU to be the No. 1 Hero.

Hawks - Is ride or die for Endeavor, despite him being a domestic abuser and an all-around douche.

Rei and Fuyumi - Minimize the negativity Endeavor has brought into the family's lives and violate the boundaries and feelings set in place by those not favorable to Endeavor (though this last one is soley on Fuyumi)

The frustrating thing about these characters is that there are the building blocks for more nuanced characters there.

Izuku could gradually come to the realization that the way Bakugou treats him was never okay and leave him behind for the sake of his own healing.

It's all but stated Hawks latched onto Endeavor as a replacement for his own abusive father - have him see and fully realize that Endeavor was no different from his dad.

Hori brushes over the parentification Fuyumi underwent as a result of Rei's hospitalization and Endeavor's neglect - just fucking give her SOMEONE to take care of her, as well as someone calling her out on pushing her feelings onto her younger brothers.

I don't really know with Rei, but I guess just have multiple people reminding her that not only was the abuse she suffered never okay, but Endeavor leaving her favorite flower is the bare minimum of apologizing.

[gonnagobankai]

The reason why I can’t deal with either bnha or atla discourse is because I’m of the apparently controversial opinion that it doesn’t matter if it’s a result of child abuse, if your sibling is causing you great harm or trying to kill you (or helpless civilians and children) then you are fully within your right to cut them out or not take their feelings into account

Zuko doesn’t owe azula anything and the todoroki kids would not be selfish or inconsiderate for being angry at touya

[toyasgirl]

Am i the only one who doesn’t like this line? Not just her line but the todo family lines when it comes to touya

I mean i was waiting for the official maybe she could sound better than the scans but it’s even worse

It shows how she doesn’t want anyone to go down with touya (rei and enji die with touya) but she never said anything about touya himself? Like it should’ve been “touya, please!! Don’t take yourself again!” Or smth like that like touya is the one who’s closer to death than any of them. It’s like fuyumi still can’t see touya and she sees him as making the family she wants falling apart and like she doesn’t care about if he was included or not. It’s really so sad to see how each todo member still can’t see, feel and know touya’s pain and they all still act with him as they used to do. Also natsuo’s line isn’t even much better. First it was rei underestimate touya’s pain and then shoto defends Touya’s abuser in front of him and then enji sees touya all burned and instead act like that is fine and ask if shoto is okay and now fuyumi and natsuo :/ like Touya deserve soooooo much better than this family. They learned nothing and they all still the same.

[bibibbon]

It's not a fix, but what I immediately thought of at reparations.

Natsuo: I'm having wedding. You aren't invited. In fact, fiancée already has a restraining order on you. Your paying for everything though.

Fuyumi: You're bad publicity has been terrible for my job. Have any connections to a more rural workplace?

Rei: Remember the amount of money you used arrange our marriage? I want a hundred times that amount as reparations.

Shoto: Buy me a couple of restaurants.

Endeavor: Of course. *knees*

Yeah it's definitely not a fix but it's better than what we got in canon! (Even if it's by a little)

[ocdhuacheng]

endeavor you piece of shit cocksucker im gonna rip you to shreds

[justatalkingface]

Your meta about endeavor's 'redemption' is really good, extremely well thought out and written 👍

Can I ask you about a specific part of the todoroki plot?

Shoto and fuyumi specifically, do you think that their priorities are a little messed up sometimes?

Like yeah shoto is trying to overcome his hang-ups with endeavor but his interning under him and basically giving him exactly what he wanted (in learning his techniques and everything) the best way to 'become the hero that he wants to be' ? Does that even make sense from a goals perspective?

Shoto says that he's there to use endeavor but he never went any further than that, and in giving endeavor the chance to show him what kind of father he's going to be, it really does seem like he came crawling (but pretending to demand) back to his father, to get what he wants from him and for a second chance at a happy family, despite the fact that endeavor pretty much ruined their lives over what amounted to nothing.

And fuyumi's even worse, in the dinner chapter whining to Shoto about 'burying the hatchet' and asking natsuo to be there in the first place, she doesn't seem to care at all about their feelings, or about toya literally dying from neglect. (what happened with toya was basically that right?)

Can I ask how you feel about this?

Hmm. I guess the question is do you think the priorities are messed up as a character, or as a person?

Because I see Shoto's priorities, as a character, are messed up, but while Fuyumi largely makes sense with what has been established for her character, if that makes sense, even if her actual priorities are messed up about the abuse.

I've said it before, but my problem with Shoto reconnecting with his father (beyond, in all honesty, it happening at all, because I'll freely admit I hate Endeavour) is how it happened: original Shoto hated his father, loathed him to point approaching madness in a way that really made it clear how similar he was to Dabi.

Then the Sports Festival happens, and he talks to Izuku, and I want to stress this part: Izuku doesn't say, 'Your father isn't so bad', he doesn't say, 'You can use him to your own benefit', all he says is, 'You are not your father'.

And honestly, I think it's the first time Shoto ever really heard that, ever really considered a life not defined by his father's shadow, one way or another, which is why it hit him so hard. But the thing is? There's nothing about... trying to talk with Endeavour, or anything like that, it's specifically about distancing Shoto from the idea of his father, that just because he also uses fire doesn't mean it's Endeavour's fire.

So you can imagine my confused fury when, next arc, after Shoto has been planted with the seed of being his own person... we hear that he's interning with Endeavour.

Because the thing is, Shoto's ultimate problem wasn't that he hated his father, it was that he let that hate consume his life. He has every reason to loathe him, really, it's just making hatred of Endeavour the cornerstone of his life means he's letting his father win just as much if he made obeying his father the cornerstone of his life.

The set up was there for him to start removing his father from his life, his mind, his focus, to go his own way without the burden of his father dragging him down, and this sudden desire to get use out him just conflicts with everything we'd seen out of him before that point, and from then on, Shoto was built off that new dynamic, the idea that secretly, Shoto liked his father to some extent the whole time, and was just driven off by his horrible behavior. The worst part of it is that Hori is building New Shoto well enough, since that point on he's been a largely consistent character, but it's just a different person than the one we were introduced to and I just can't like it, because I liked Old Shoto, I liked that we were going to watch this kid forge his own path and grow beyond his dad.

That's not even mentioning the nasty, clusterfuck of a problem that Shoto, of all people, knows how flawed Endeavour is as a hero. There's so much off on him going to Endeavour to learn to be a hero, when as far as we can tell heroics is the very reason Endeavour is the kind of man he is. Why does he want to learn that?

Fuyumi... the thing is with Fuyumi is that people react to abuse different ways. Shoto, Natsuo and Dabi all took after their father in personalities; when there was something they didn't like, they fought against it. They fought against it, honestly, like rabid animals.

Fuyumi, though, from what we can tell, took after their mother, and while Endeavour bit, clawed, and howled against everything he didn't like, no matter how unreasonable it was, Rei accepted her situation, meekly, until the point she was crushed under the weight of it.

Fuyumi just isn't a fighter like her brothers are. She doesn't want to reject Endeavour the way they do, she genuinely loves him, and wants them all to get along. It's not that she doesn't care about her siblings, she just honestly, truly, thinks it would be for the best if they all got along. And oh, there's definitely trauma in there, though she's not displaying it as openly as her brothers, and to some extent her wanting them to get along, even knowing what she knows, is probably shaped by her trauma to some extent, but she also just... loves her family, even Endeavour. And, let's be honest here, she's not the first person to love their father, even if he's done horrible things.

And... well, personally, that attitude makes my skin crawl, and if I could I'd have them all leave Endeavour far behind and live their Best Lives away from him and his influence, but as a person she's entitled to love him even if he's a dumpster fire of a human being. Ultimately, I'm not in a place where I can judge her for that choice... though she clearly needs some therapy, much like everyone else in that house.

(For the record, what makes her different as a character, with her wholehearted acceptance of Endeavour, compared to Rei's wholehearted acceptance of Endeavour, is that Rei is so traumatized by Endeavour that she had a psychotic break. That break was so bad that years later he's still not allowed to see her because of how badly she would take the very sight of him. Everything about Rei, narratively, says that at a fundamental level she should fear and loathe Endeavour in equal measures, because just seeing the image of him on Shoto's face was enough to trigger panic-fueled violent break down, and there's absolutely nothing that indicates she should have moved past that mindset before she appeared in canon. Fuyumi, on the other hand, was a largely blank slate, so her acceptance didn't have anything to conflict with like it did with Rei.)

Oh, and there was totally neglect happening with Toya, for the record. Not just neglect, a big part of it was how Endeavour raised him, built him really, as a tool with the single purpose of Being The Best to Surpass All Might, to the point where he had no life other than training and no idea how to be a human being. Everything really went to shit with Toya, though, when his dad basiclly abandoned him once his Quirk came in wrong, and then he had nothing left because Endeavour told him to give up on that one purpose Toya had devoted every part of his life to, without really doing the work to replace that gaping hole inside him. And then, for bonus points, he watched Toya fall apart in real time, frantically trying to earn his father's love without having any idea how to do it (much less understanding that he shouldn't have had to earn it at all), trying all the things that used to earn his father's approval.

Every time he tried to do better, to be stronger, it only hurt him. Every time his father deigned to notice his efforts, it only earned his anger. All the same, though, Toya didn't know any other way to live, any other way to act, any other way to possibly get his father's attention back, or anything to strive for beyond that attention, no matter how much all of this harmed him, and it slowly drove him farther and farther into a negative, self-destructive spiral of hatred and self-loathing until he fell apart. Spectacularly.

And this entire time, the only thing Endeavour did was yell at other people to resolve the situation, and fix his mistakes for him, because he didn't give enough of a shit to deal with it himself.

[gece-misin-nesin]

A comment on reddit:

I think this is the main thing with MHA - the villains are just bad people, and the audience can tell. All of the villains have at least one unshakeable anti-social impulse that they absolutely cannot get over. They can explain how deeply hurt they feel by not being able to act on that impulse, but ultimately they just want to hurt other people in one way or another. They are childish, whiny, and entitled, and none of them has the slightest desire to participate in society whatsoever, no matter the infinite well of understanding and patience the heroes draw from*. So Endeavor, who is not a villain but rather just a douchebag, is able to atone and begin repairing the damage he did. But Dabi, who is a villain, can't do that. It's fundamentally beyond him - he has a selfish, childish mindset forever. Douchebags change, but villains are forever. As readers, we find this frustrating. After everything the todorokis go through, nothing really changes within Dabi's mind or heart. The siblings can beat themselves up about it and feel guilty, which is realistic - if only we had enough love and patience, we could have saved him! But as readers, it feels like bullshit. We know what the villains are like, and we know that they were all hopeless from the start. Not a one of them ever had a shot at being happy or associating with others in a healthy way, because there's a fundamental distinction between the basic, in-born personality of heroes vs villains that is just as immutable as the gap between the empowered and the quirkless. So when it comes to still feeling guilty over little Toya, it's like...I don't know, get over it? He was cooked from the start. You should have recognized he was born a villain.

I think I need to take a chill pill oh my fucking god. How can you read this manga and come to the conclusion that *checks notes* the villains were always destined to be evil, fundamentally different from the 'normal and basic', and 'born a villain'???

Even the manga itself, with its shitty epilogue and shitty messaging, acknowledges that the villains COULD have led normal lives if things had been different.

Like this is such an insane conclusion to come to?? I have no fucking idea how you can read bnha and write THIS shit???

This is EXACTLY why people say that media literacy is dead 😭

[nillabean]

Keitou: Ok so, apparently the "bad vibes" I've been feeling are actually severe psychological distress.

[sapphic-agent]

Ooh, we're talking about Rei? Alright, here we go!

The Todoroki family arc WAS one of the greater aspects of MHA. Keyword: was. It was great until Horikoshi decides to redeem Endeavor. The same man who practically bought his wife. The same man who neglected his three other children, Fuyumi was parentified, neglected Toya and Natso, Toya had constant breaks of his neglect, made a 5-year-old Shoto THROW UP from training so hard, physically and emotionally abused the shit out of his wife where she was on the verge of a mental breakdown everyday. Like, it's so disgusting, honestly. It's a slap in the fact to all of their trauma. Like Endeavor had YEARS to change, but randomly wants to change??? Like dude gave zero shits that Toya "DIED" via from his mental breakdown of his flames and carried on like nothing fucking happened. Also, I just wanna say people who also villainize Fuyumi can also get a big fuck you. Fuyumi just wanted a normal ass family and pushed all of her feelings in her traditional, sexist household. People react to trauma in different ways. Sure, Fuyumi doesn't always handle things the greatest, but the girl was made to look over her siblings at a young ass age. The problem with redeeming Endeavor is that, there's just somethings you can't say sorry for or fucking atone for. Buying your wife, neglecting all three of your kids, physically abusing your youngest son, physically and emotionally abusing your wife then locking her away from her children for 10 years is just not grounds to redeem someone. I thought MHA was good because Shoto saying fuck you to his dad and not forgiving was so refreshing but then paints Natsuo as the bad guy for not forgiving him, and having Shoto consider forgiving his father within one FUCKING YEAR after YEARS of abuse is just baffling to me. Ik Horikoshi is shit on writing women, but, I want to know what Rei is like outside of her dynamic of being a mom. I wanna know what her true personality is, because her abuse doesn't define her. I wanna also know more about Fuyumi because it's clear to me her parentification even carried over into adult, and even with her teaching elementary kids. Fuyumi also deserves to be pissed off at Endeavor. Shoto, Natsuo, and Dabi have shown them being PISSED at Endeavor, and they have EVERY right to. I just wanna see Fuyumi growing out of her parentification Endeavor clearly put her through.

fuck endeavor and his big toe looking ass People can change, yes. But not abusers who do the most godawful things to their family and don't atone for it. Fuck Endeavor.

Well said, anon👏🏾

I agree that the Todoroki past was a really good aspect of the MHA world before they redeemed Endeavor. It was a great aspect of world-building and it was refreshing seeing a character that wasn't begging for their abusive parent's love or acceptance. Then, 4/5 of his victims decided to rally around him and support him for the mess he created...

Why.

I'm actually really glad you brought up Fuyumi because I agree. She wasn't only neglected, she was parentified. And this wasn't something that happened when Touya died or Rei was committed, via the Touya flashback her parentification started at least around the time Natsu was born. She wants a normal family because it's the only way she knows how to cope with that childhood trauma (yes, parentification is traumatic). Yes, she doesn't go about it in a great way but we need to stop expecting victims to react perfectly. Nastu and Shoto made the choice to play nice to make her happy, she didn't force or demand them to.

Fuyumi, overall, deserves more agency. It would have been great for both her and Rei to be something outside of their trauma and supporting their abuser. They also deserve to be angry.

(I've noticed that Hori doesn't really make women in his story angry. I mean, Mirko sometimes but that's more her gag than anything. They all either cry or when they're being "strong" he just gives them this face 😐 (I'm not exaggerating: Rei, Momo, Inko, Uraraka, etc.) I mean, I don't expect a shonen mamgaka to know how to write feminine rage well, but MHA is just pathetic when it comes to this)

Hori got me fucked up for the way he treats Natsu. He's the only one able to see last the trauma/abuse (probably because he was the most removed from it) to be able to make healthy choices and create boundaries. Yet Hori over here wants to paint him in a negative light for calling out Endeavor repeatedly. It's the same thing with people who criticize Bakugou; they're made out to be in the wrong (Monoma, the pros, the journalists, etc.) even though what they're saying is completely valid.

I would also like to point out that Endeavor only changed once he got what he wanted. Not when his son died because of him. If he was going to really change, don't you think it should have been when his actions resulted in dire consequences?