#gray-eyed fuyumi is anime only and it was a bad adaptation choice bc of the importance of eyes to this plotline

[delawaredetroit]

There's that theme of eyes/gaze again that has been part of the Todoroki Family Subplot since "where are you looking?"

In the manga overall, the Todorokis that invoked this concept the most were Endeavor and Touya. Endeavor wanted society to watch him be the strongest and later wanted his family to watch him become a better person in Act Two. Touya deeply desired to have Enji's eyes on him again like when Endeavor was training him as his successor. He created a bigger and bigger spectacle as Dabi until it was impossible to look away from him any longer.

Natsuo, however, never caught Enji's eye. Even in these panels, Enji was not looking Natsuo in the eye while speaking to him. Natsuo was uniquely ignored in the Todoroki family, more than any of the other children. Touya and Shouto were potential successors. Fuyumi was born out of Rei's desire to have a normal family. Endeavor was satisfied with Touya as a successor at the time Fuyumi was born, so it's reasonable to assume from Fuyumi's existence that Endeavor played along with Rei's wish for awhile. It's not out of the cards that he was a passable father to Fuyumi for the first two to three years of her life.

But by the time Natsuo was born, Endeavor had already discarded Touya and was at least nine months into a renewed obsession with surpassing All Might with his ongoing eugenics experiments. And Natsuo was the only one to fail in his purpose from birth.

There is also something thematically interesting in Enji refusing to look into the eyes of the only one of his children who fully inherited Rei's eye color per manga canon. It's something he and Rei have in common. When Rei was spiraling, she was particularly disturbed by Touya and Shouto having the same eye(s) as Enji. But because she was trapped in that hellish home with no support, she couldn't run away from the eyes she feared in the way Enji ran away from Rei's gaze in Natsuo.