#me rambling about my favourite character and bnha because of the new chapter

[otaku6337]

On the Realities of BNHA’s Heroism, and Those Who Act Within It (A Look At Dadz- Aizawa)

I, admittedly, am somewhat biased because I love Aizawa Shouta, and I don’t want people to read this without knowing it. However, I would like to think myself a realist, and I have thought upon and written his character for over a year and over a million words, so I would like to think that I can see both his shortcomings and his brilliance.

He is a good teacher. A good man. Not always the kindest one, but a good one.

BNHA MANGA SPOILERS  (Chapter 340 included) (oh, and a note that this is by no means looking for discourse or controversy, nor is it a complete consideration of his character and actions - it’s a ramble I wanted to share after having read the most recent chapter released online, and thus focuses on Aizawa in relation to the direct elements related to that)

this chapter heavily featured Aizawa, and did so for the first time in a while - he’s been here, of course, and I’ve looked at every instance, but he was very prominent in this, and that gave me a lot to think about, and emphasised a lot of the thoughts I already had

He is intense. Scary, even. He has always had this start, right from his intro, and it makes sense.

See, this scene, to me, epitomises a lot of what too many people don't seem to understand about Aizawa, the Heroics Industry, and BNHA as a whole - he is an underground hero, and a man who has to teach children to be heroes, a glorified industry wherein many enter with stars in their eyes, expecting glory and money and adrenaline, to save people, but not truly understanding how they will have blood on their hands for the rest of their lives

Aizawa sees the worst of their society. A society that is very, very different to our own, not only because it's Japan rather than the Western world (speaking as someone who mostly interacts with those from the US and UK within this fandom’s sphere), but also because, as canonically-stated, the world changed a lot with the evolution of Quirks. Their standards for what is acceptable, what is dangerous or unusual, is incredibly different to ours. This fact, alone, explains a lot about many characters’ actions and attitudes, but I won’t go into that right now.

Aizawa - Eraserhead - knows he's sending these kids onto battlefields. He knows he's sending them to kill, to be killed, to lose the ones they love and even those they hate. To fail.

So yes, he can be harsh. He does it because he wants these kids to survive. He is intense, even scary, because he spends his nights dealing with the worst of society, and his days teaching people less than half his age, minors, how to do that themselves in the future. Of course, BNHA society is somewhat desensitised to this concept in a way that most of us, as consumers, aren’t, but there is undeniably still a massive weight upon him in this context.

Aizawa has nearly died for his class several times. He has nearly expelled them, at times, because they put themselves to what (in his knowledge) was completely unnecessary risk, and, though I won’t pretend to love that on a personal level, I do consider it fair. (Yes, I include Izuku’s QA Test in that - he was unaware, and ignorance does not excuse cruelty but I, personally, did not find him cruel - again, consider the different society that BNHA have to ourselves.)

He will go, no pun intended, above and beyond for his students, and I thoroughly believe that goes beyond the fact that he is employed to do so. There is a ferocity to the way he addresses their safety, a surety in his belief in them, and, in recent arcs but also as far back as the Final Exams, for example, a faith in their skills and heroism. He has taught them well, and he trusts that they are brilliant all in their own right. He does not discriminate, does not judge, only pushes and guides and nudges them to where they need to be to survive.

With this recent arc, no matter how much I dislike a very large proportion of it, between the senseless deaths and the traitor arc and more minor things that I generally don’t like (there are parts I do love, don’t get me wrong, and that is only my personal opinion regardless), you cannot deny that Aizawa wants the best for his students, Aoyama included. And Aoyama needs a push in the right direction. He needs help, needs someone to believe in him, needs to know that people are there for him. And I would find it hard to believe anyone could read the scenes in this chapter in any other way than Aizawa telling Aoyama to trust them all, to work alongside them.

So, yes, I genuinely believe him to be a good teacher.

Anyways!! Here are some of the softer Dadzawa moments from this chapter that I loved very much, if you got to the end of this  ^^;

and then this last one, guys, with that soft not-scowl (and whoops, my writer head came out when I wrote that, didn’t it?)

[iveonlyeverseenliketwoanimes]

How Horikoshi treats his female characters (Feat. How his ‘Fans’ treat him): A Rant

Something that has recently been popping up a lot in the BNHA tags, for me at least, is this idea that Hori is a “Lazy/Bad Writer”. It’s a topic that’s genuinely interesting to me and I would love to discuss it! After the reaction i got to my last post on discussing the fandom, i feel like this is a really fun topic for me to look into and i love having an open discussion with people. So just to let you know before we start, everything here is my opinion - feel free to respond with your own thoughts and i’d happily have a conversation with you about anything and everything! If you disagree with me then that's fine, if you agree with me then that's fine too! I'm just a person with a keyboard and an opinion and so are you! :)

So today i would love to discuss how people treat Hori in regards to his female characters and i hope you enjoy this 1500 word essay/ramble i did. (PS if you came from my last lil essay then this one is a lot less sarcastic because its a more serious topic and i don’t want to come across as too rude also i actually got sleep today)

Now, this was actually the first topic I came across when looking into the Hori tags. At first, I was on board with the general theme of what was happening. I saw some lovely artwork of Momo where people had redesigned her costume, they were very creative in how they did it and overall, I had no complaints – if the whole topic of this tag was about how people wanted to be creative and redraw characters in their own design then I’d 100% support it, but the more you look into it, the more…. Nasty is gets.

So, the overall theme of what I gathered from this little tag is that idea that Hori is some sort of [Word I really don’t want to type out but im sure you can guess what it is] because of how he draws his females, most of which are underage. So if you, as a consumer, are, well, consuming something, such as a TV show, film, anime, Manga etc. and you see something that makes you go “This is disgusting – I need to write a Tumblr post about this to warn other people about what's happening here” then I fully support you – please keep on doing what you’re doing. 

However, this isn’t what I see, what I see are posts going “F*CK HORI HE’S A [Nasty word] AND I HOPE HE D*ES – HERE EVERYONE I MADE AN ANTI FLAG, SHARE IT EVERYWHERE AND LET ME KNOW WHERE I CAN SEND MY D*ATH THR*AT TO” Meanwhile, when you go on this same persons page it’s all reposts of the characters and screenshots of the show, posts of them saying “Yo did you guys see the new BNHA episode last night?!?” and overall just very fandom-y stuff. I truly cannot comprehend this type of behaviour – you are so set in this belief that Hori is a [Nasty Word] and yet here you are, on the very same blog you use to slander his name, actively supporting him! Listen, if one of you Anti’s were to sit there and say “I wholeheartedly think Hori is a [Nasty word] and therefore I am no longer going to participate in this fandom or with supporting his creations” then, while I don’t agree with you, I support you in your decision as you have made a clear stance on something with both your words and your actions and I can truly respect that, and hell you would actually get my attention and I might read into what it is you’re talking about. I’m not, however, going to waste my time reading a piece of material written by someone who does all that nasty stuff I previously mentioned and take any of what they say seriously. Let me put it this way; you think Hori is a [Nasty word], you are supporting the show, you are therefore supporting a [nasty word], so why should I take anything you say seriously? I don’t want to see any more of this ‘One minute we love him, one minute we hate him’ attitude because when you hate him the things you are saying are some of the worst things you could possibly say to another person and its childish, disgusting and you’re giving this fandom a bad name.

Now back to the girls, I personally do find certain characters outfits a little distasteful, especially with how they’re done in the anime and how they zoom in on certain body parts, i also dislike how it’s ‘funny’ for characters like Mineta to get away with such disgusting behaviour. I do think that’s the biggest flaw I can find in this show – I don’t however 100% blame Hori for this. Now obviously at the end of the day, it is down to Hori what happens in his show, but can we all stop pretending that it’s just him that does this? When I think of anime the first thing that comes to mind is anime girls and their… attributes. It’s an industry issue and Hori is one of many people that partakes in it – so im not saying he’s not to blame, im just saying some of you are a little dramatic and need to realise if you truly want this behaviour to stop then you need to go after the industry and not just one guy.

Now this next point I want to make is something im sure might be a little confusing for most of you and something I can 100% see the other side of better than some other points ive made. It’s also kinda hard for me to put into words so please bear with me here.

I don’t think its necessary for Hori to develop his female characters as much as their male counterparts – now im sure that’s an odd concept but let me explain. As a child growing up in the age of great TV shows such as Hannah Montana, iCarly, Wizards of Waverly Place etc. I think ive spent a fair amount of time watching TV, my personal favourites as a child were Winx Club, BRATZ and W.I.T.C.H (Im from the UK so apologies if you have no idea what they are). Now all of these shows were ‘for girls’, they all revolve around a group of girls and their adventures in their respective worlds, they learn things along the way, because, even if you don’t realise it, these kids shows have hidden messages in them that are like ‘we should be kind’ ‘we should treat others with respect’ and all that jazz you need to know to be a decent human being. However, the one thing that these shows always lacked was any form of male presence. Now im not saying these shows had no males in them, that would be weird, but what I am saying is that the males in these shows were very one dimensional and they were always the love interest of one of the characters, or you might get the odd parental figure that would show up for one episode to be a motivation for a character. However with BNHA, a show that is specifically aimed at teenage boys, I don’t feel like they do such a disservice to females (AKA the ‘men’ equivalent of my other shows), sure they’re not treated great in certain aspects that I've already discussed, but look at their actual characters, Uraraka is the main girl, sure she very much has the same role as many of the men did in my childhood shows of the ‘love interest’ but her character is more than that and we see it in the sports festival as well as some of the more recent chapters (213-215 to be specific). Her character isn't just some airhead and neither are the other girls, Momo is literally top of the class in terms of written ability and she had her own little mini-arc around gaining confidence (which is still ongoing because guess what – people don’t change overnight), Mina has had some spotlight on her and is seen to be a very confident and skilled fighter, Tsu was literally described as the ‘perfect student with no flaws’ and is shown to be a badass on multiple occasions, Midoriya’s mum is even a character that’s had some form of arc with her learning to believe in her son and she's not some faceless character we hear about every so often when they need a plot device.

Now im not saying the female representation is perfect and it’s certainly not 100% equal to that of the men, but im saying it doesn’t need to be. This is a show for boys, sure girls can watch and enjoy it, but its made for boys in the same way my shows were made for girls, and the average boy isn’t going to want to watch a bunch of fairy princesses run around saving their fluffy little pets like I did (im sure a some of them will – and good for them, in the same way that some girls might want to watch superhero films, it’s not something im saying is bad, its just most people raise children into predetermined stereotypes of what gender roles they should fill and the media caters to that).

So what im saying is that taking a show aimed at boys and comparing it to shows aimed at girls and how each handles the opposite sex (we’re not going into gender here, that’s a whole other topic of diversity), I don’t think BNHA is all that bad. I guess if I want to be a little harsher in my approach, why is it okay to have a near-all female cast and not a near-all male cast? I understand a need for diversity, truly I do, but sometimes having a token character for each ‘type’ of person takes away from what the show is actually trying to convey – and in BNHAs case I think its trying to teach young boys that it’s okay to be emotional or vulnerable when you’re in situations that other shows teach you to ‘man up’ in. Not every show can solve racism, sexism and homophobia, I’m sorry to break it to you, but some shows are a little more basic in their approach to what it is they want to show and I think BNHA is a perfect example of that, it’s showing boys that you can cry, you can go through struggles in life, you can even come back from being a terrible person through growth and development, and I think that’s something boys need. A lot of people in this day and age want men to change (and I agree that there are a lot of things all groups of people can work on) and BNHA is showing boys how to grow up in a way that’s not this ‘tough guy that has no feelings’ and at the end of the day isn’t that something we want?

I do believe there are areas that BNHA really needs to improve in when it comes to it’s female cast, but can we stop with this awful hate? This fandom had such potential to be an amazing community of people who are skilled with art, writing, storytelling, cosplay, etc. but it seems like half of you just want to tear each other down and it’s sad to see such potential wasted because you can’t handle someone having a different opinion or view to you.