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bnhaobservation · 1 year

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Ramblings about BNHA chap 381

And here chap 381 comes…

..and I’ll warn you beforehand so you know if you want to keep reading or not, this is not a chapter I particularly enjoyed because fundamentally nothing happens, beyond the story trying to give a positive light to the heroes… which wouldn’t be bad at all if it wasn’t for the way it chose to go at it… All for One going for a Villain decay path and… a previous important point of the story being destroyed. So, if you decide to keep on reading, don’t expect words of praises for this chap. Consider yourself warned.

In fact we start with the POSITIVE VIBES immediately thanks to the Shiketsu kids and, more specifically, thanks to Shishikura’s inspiring speech who claims he’d like to kill All for One for killing his father but won’t do it because his father was a prison guard set to protect.

This of course remarks how nobles the hero kids are, you might remember how, back in the past, Stain scolded Iida for giving in to hate because a real hero wouldn’t have gone there for selfish reasons but to save Native.

So where’s the problem?

Shishikura’s father is a Tartarus guard and, although we don’t know exactly who, among them, he was, from the little we saw of the Tartarus guards, they viewed the Villains as sub humans, beasts, and would have probably not hesitated to kill All for One if they had been given the chance.

We’ve the bit in chap 297, with a Tartarus guard who claimed all the Villains there are disasters on legs or wild beasts, animals, claiming that the convict might walk and talk like people but are actually disgusting beings who only managed to be allowed inside society solely because Quirk have warped the standards for humanity, while we’re also informed Tartarus is basically MHA version of Alcatraz with plenty of accusation of human right violations… and we’ve the guard in chap 327 who yes, managed to heroically hold the information that Stain will later deliver to All Might, but also clearly shared the previous guard’s ideal as he asked Stain if he was a man or a beast.

Maybe neither of them was Shishikura’s father, all right, but since we saw them, they left an impression and this impression wasn’t of positive role models.

Yeah, they guarded the prison, which resulted in protecting people from criminals… but what about protecting the prisoners from human violations?

It would have felt better if Shishikura aimed to surpass his father, to protect everyone, to be always rightful, instead take him as a role model.

That, or we could have been shown a Tartarus guard that actually was a role model, someone against mistreatment of prisoners and who wanted to improve things at Tartarus.

The way Tartarus is depicted, a place in which Villains are abused and jailed for life so that they can be forgotten instead than reformed is why, when someone suggests that the LOV should end in it to pay for their crimes, I would find more merciful if Horikoshi were just to kill them. There’s no redemption path in Tartarus, it’s just a place to bury them alive.

Meanwhile, thanks to Inasa we move on DESTROYING SOMETHING THAT HAD SEEMED SO IMPORTANT PREVIOUSLY.

In fact Inasa is effortlessly holding the Toga as Twice’s clones at bay.

Why this is a problem?

Because the whole excuse for Twice’s death was that his Quirk was oh so powerful if he were to be left free to run rampant, the heroes would have lost the war and Hawks, to save the war, had no other solution but kill him.

Hawks knew of Twice’s Quirk. Students were deployed during the previous war as well. Yes, they didn’t ask Inasa, but they should have if he could be the solution without causing any death.

It was all organized and planned with so much care, Endeavor and Eraser Head knew of Inasa’s Quirk and Twice’s Quirk was known as well and… no one thought at it?

What’s more, Twice’s Quirk was never used to his full potential, not back then nor now.

I mean, in both situations Twice and Toga as Twice are using the Sad Man’s parade… when they should have just cloned Shigaraki or Dabi or All for One.

Twice has strength in numbers, but Twice isn’t particularly strong or fast, we saw how Geten could easily kill a good bunch of Twices with his ice attacks… but we might have given it a pass because if Twices were to keep on coming the heroes would eventually exhaust themselves… but here we’re outright told they just had the perfect Quirk to stop the Twice problem and… didn’t even think to use it.

And yet, we’re not really tackling how bad it was from Hawks to kill Twice. Actually, since the sad man’s parade was so easily stopped, it seems as if Himiko’s revenge too won’t manage to affect him and, anyway, he’s just not caring to face her (and Twice).

Yeah, maybe this will come back to bite him later, maybe one Himiko will manage to get to him and make him regret what he did but it’s been a long time from Twice’s death and it risks to become a case of too little too late.

It would have been a great development for Hawks to ponder on what he did, to face it, and I was fine with waiting a bit but… all this waiting makes me wonder if at the end there will really be a payoff or if it will be all just shrugged off or rushed through. We’ll see.

Okay, going on with the next part which is… A RECAP OF THINGS WE ALREADY KNEW.

We’re remembered that Deku and Shigaraki left U.A., which we shouldn’t have forgotten already since it happened what? 2 chapters ago and was mentioned in the previous chapter as well.

Tsukauchi has a chat with Hawks in which we’re told Shiketsu students came there on their own… which was also said on the previous chapter. How, in case someone has missed it, All for One got back his old body and how they’ve to keep All for One at Gunga because this could decide the whole war... which was something that was made clear from the start of the war, in case someone has forgotten.

We then get an All for One monologue in which he explains how he can solely steal Quirk by touching the body of the owner, not by touching the effects of the Quirk (meaning he can’t steal Touya or Enji’s Quirk by touching their fire or Kaminari by touching his electricity and so on)… which I would like to think everyone figured out already even without this monologue but whatever. I can’t remember this being spelled out, but I never really felt the need as it seemed intuitive enough.

Then All for One claims that why the heroes attacked him with solely Endeavor and Hawks instead than a larger force. Which we already knew as it was said in chap 354 and still wasn’t such a great plan.

All for Once goes on saying they’re now attacking him with a larger force because they’re tossing all precautions away… because yeah, in the previous chapters it was said the divide and conquer strategy didn’t work and it was also made clear Endeavor and Hawks needed back up, but I guess it was important All for One were to remark it so we can waste some panels on all this.

So, in the best Shonen tradition, All for One starts using stronger attacks combining more Quirks together… only to focus on HERO POSITIVITY by showing how bravely they’re resisting to his attack.

Okay, this doesn’t have any backfiring, different from the previous one but… feels like a waste because it simmers down the threat that All for One is by showing the heroes resisting anyway.

All for One is a cool adversary as long as he’s scary, when he knocked down everyone in chap 89, we were all scared and in awe, and we got even more impressed when he could keep up with All Might, but now he’s not really sending the Number 4 and other heroes down on the ground causing them to be hospitalized for months. Now he’s sending Kinoko and Kamui Wood fly away but we hardly see the damage, so it doesn’t feel as scary as when Best Jeanist was sent on the ground with Midoriya’s group hidden and trembling in fear.

I’ll spend a moment talking about how Touya seems to be chasing Endeavor, who had previously promised he would FINALLY, FINALLY look at his son. Well, he’s apparently looking back at him as he seems to be escaping. Small consolation.

I know people have already joked on it and, actually, it’s possible the idea might be to lead Touya away from that battleground so as to cause his flames to shrunk while he’s away (because Inasa’s wind tears up trees and their roots, so they can’t feed the fire… but I guess this means they’ll end all up in the air? And there’s also rain) but who knows.

It sure doesn’t look good how Endeavor is letting his son burn himself alive, instead than doing something to stop him, like, I don’t know, talk to him, apologize or whatever.

But I think Endeavor’s plan was always to die with Touya (because it’s unlikely they’ll let them go to Tartarus together since in Tartarus prisoners has single rooms and therefore this would make hard for Enji to keep on watching over him) and watch over him while they’re in hell together, and not try to save him or something. Maybe he thinks if he wounds up as a corpse with Touya the same way his father wounded up as a corpse with the little girl he failed to save, it’ll count as atonement.

I don’t know. It feels like Horikoshi is planning to go for redemptive death, because as burned as it is, I’m not sure Touya can survive (and we were already told he shouldn’t have lived this long) and have him die due to this instead than being killed would be awfully convenient as it would be kind of a suicide instead than a murder and… well if Endeavor, who’s the one who caused Touya’s downfall, is the one who survives while Touya dies it won’t really be that inspiring so maybe Endeavor dies of blood loss due to his lost arm.

But whatever, let’s wait for future developments.

Meanwhile we move to… ALL FOR ONE GOING FOR A VILLAIN DECAY PATH.

What’s a Villain Decay path? The process by which a villain who is extremely scary on first appearance becomes a joke after a few more appearances.

So how’s being done.

All for One launches in a speech about how the heroes think they can beat him because they don’t know of his glorious past, his golden age… meaning until now he hadn’t accomplished anything worth looking scary or impressive or whatever. -_-

I mean, he’s not boasting about his powers, about how he broke All Might, about how he continued to manipulate the underworld, no, those things wouldn’t be scary at all, he boast about his glorious past, sounding like a grandpa who just can’t stop reminding everyone when he was young he did something great.

All for One isn’t the sleeping beauty who just awoke and can only talk to us about how he was in the past, to feel as a big threat to us readers, he has to impress us with what he did NOW. Or up close.

If he has to summon a golden age we hadn’t read about after he’d been around for so many chapters… we aren’t impressed. And the narrative seems to think it’s a bright idea to remark this by dismissing the whole of All for One’s speech.

In fact Inasa informs him he has studied all that at school… or better, All for One was condemned to damnatio memoriae and never mentioned in class but the dark age is some trashy thing they study at school so no big deal.

I hate to repeat this, but for the battle to work and the heroes be amazing, All for One has to feel like a genuine threat. If the heroes who’re attacking him en masse aren’t at disadvantage it isn’t scary.

Think at classic shonen like “Dragon Ball” or “Saint Seiya”.

The enemy is always this overpowering force that the hero must struggle with all he has to overcome and who feels fearsome until the hero finally manages to find inside himself enough strength to triumph.

Instead, although occasionally All for One’s group managed to land some good hits, the heroes have been more or less in a stronger position from the start.

They divided the group as they wanted. Yes, Deku didn’t end where they wanted but eventually got there and yes, Bakugo died but it was made clear it wasn’t permanent so no harm done.

Touya didn’t manage to cause any serious harm to Shouto, Shouto almost knocked him out and yes, Touya managed to recover and to reach Endeavor but he’s basically burned to a crisp.

Spinner was beaten up and half out of it due to incompatibility with his new Quirk and the people helping him decided against it because… violence is bad.

Yes, he freed Kurogiri, and Kurogiri managed to move people around but… Kurogiri is short circuiting now and even saved Eraser Head and Present Mic.

Skeptic basically didn’t manage to accomplish anything as all he did was thwarted by La Brava and Gentle and he was captured.

Himiko’s back up was taken care of, she used Sad Man’s parade but, guess what, Inasa is making it ineffective so she can’t face Hawks.

Shigaraki was out of commission for a while as All for One took control of him, but now he’s back and ready to fight Deku which, again, is a nail in how All for One’s plan fail and the man who previously predicted Lady Nagant would betray him, felt surprised when Lady Nagant continued to help the heroes.

As for All for One himself, Endeavor and Hawks managed to get a good hit at him but yes, he rewinds but then… does nothing but babble of how cool he was in the past? He doesn’t have to say anything about his present? He can’t show us how he’s cool RIGHT NOW?

But we pause a moment in his decay path to have another moment of hero positivity that doesn’t really work well with Inasa claiming he decided that he’s just going to cheer up for Shouto and Endeavor because their hot-blooded passion is going to make them win the day and he wants to see a future for the guys he’s cheering on which prompts Hawks to go in Endeavor’s fanboy mode, dismiss how Inasa mentioned Shouto too and claim it’s not just One for All but Endeavor also who’s linking people’s hearts together.

And why this doesn’t work very well?

Because the reason why Inasa decided to cheer for Endeavor is totally unconnected to Endeavor. Endeavor did nothing to gain that trust apart for fighting for the same side Inasa is fighting for.

Inasa, after his hero licence exam with Shouto, simply decided to give Endeavor a chance too based on how his interaction with Shouto affected him and then we never heard how he reacted to the news of how Endeavor abused his family, Shouto included, because it doesn’t look good for this HERO POSITIVITY moment.

And yeah, I guess it’s a big deal but it dismisses completely Endeavor’s previous abuse of his family. Which I get people who’re afraid of All for One don’t care about, why should they feel sorry for Shouto, Touya, Rei, Natsuo and Fuyumi when they can just have Enji fight in the frontlines to save them?

And don’t take me wrong, in many tales the wrongdoings of a man are forgiven due his doing some heroic acts… but this happens when he can make up for his wrongdoings directly to the people he wronged.

If character X murders someone and then saves 100 people, it might feel as he atoned, because he can’t undo the fact he killed someone but he can prove he has understood murdering his wrong and has given his all saving people.

But here all of Endeavor’s family is alive and the most he has done is to stop beating Shouto and Rei and building a new house for Fuyumi and Natsuo.

And let’s not forget Endeavor is the number 1 hero, which was what he longed for through all his life, as much as this fight can be risky and painful, this was what he wanted.

He’s not a child who didn’t know what he was getting into. His battle with All for One doesn’t work as atonement, it’s just his job, it can save him from the public opinion who might not care if he’s an abuser at home as long as he saves them, but it doesn’t wash away what he did to beloved characters.

Poor Shouto still has to see him acting like a father.

So this ‘oh, Endeavor, you too link people’s hearts’ speech, which is here merely to give out HERO POSITIVITY vibes, actually doesn’t work well.

And back to ALL FOR ONE GOING FOR A VILLAIN DECAY PATH we go.

All for One decides to steal some more Quirks, but his oh so powerful blast only manages to bloody Inasa a bit and not stop him at all, which again remarks how he’s not that all powerful and scary.

He then has an inner monologue in which he complains about how heroes has a light in their eyes which might go out but then is relight, which feels as another round of HERO POSITIVITY this time from a bad guy because heroes are so damn amazing and hopeful they impress even the big bad… which somehow doesn’t seem to fit with All for One. But whatever All for One never fully had his character well defined so he can do everything and the contrary of everything.

More ALL FOR ONE GOING FOR A VILLAIN DECAY PATH comes when All for One can’t read the mood and claim the heroes don’t dare to approach him for fear of losing their Quirk when we had Endeavor and Hawks getting up close in the past and other heroes still coming close enough if he were fast to move (and he can be fast, we saw him being fast in the past but now I guess he feels like being lazy), and then All for One challenges them to come to him and meet his fate because evidently he doesn’t want to run after them and expect them to come to him in a line and stand still so he can steal their Quirks comfortably. -_-

I wonder… where’s the chessmaster of the previous parts of the story, the guy who could predict people’s moves? The guy that since he had tons of Quirk was oh so fast and oh so strong? Where All for One went and who’s this stranger who realizes too late that Dark Shadow has gotten behind him and, when he does, seems to realize it’s an attack he needs to dodge at all costs because evidently Tokoyami now has an attack that’s scarier than Endeavor’s.

I get that part of MHA’s goal is to have the adult heroes pass the torch to the kid heroes, but it somehow feels again as if All for One got depowered if he’s scared of Tokoyami, because previously we were never told Tokoyami’s dark shadow could creep out even someone like him.

Tokoyami gives him a speech about darkness and how he doesn’t get to speak of the dark because they already devoured the darkness All for One brought and, as he does so, he thinks back at when they brought Midoriya back to U.A. as that moment evidently solved everything.

No, I don’t mean to say it didn’t help but… Japan was in disarray with all those Villains roaming so Midoriya finally getting a chance to rest among friends doesn’t really feel like they swallowed all the darkness All for One brought, just that they managed to turn on a light in it.

But whatever, Dark Shadow seems to be planning to devour All for One, so we get a speech about how the dark clouds and the flames having shrunk, as well as Tokoyami buring himself under earth, allowed him to build up his power. Then, again, Tokoyami reminds us that All for One can’t steal Endeavor’s power by grasping his flames, which was told to us pages ago, so that’s why he was chosen to support Hawks and Endeavor, since All for One can’t steal Tokoyami’s Quirk by touching Dark Shadow.

Then Dark Shadow seems to swallow All for One but, I guess, this can be his end or it’ll be a total left down if he gets knocked down in this way. But whatever, he’s on a Villan Decay path so it might be?

Still I don’t think this will be the case, they’ll probably will need to join forces with the LOV, it’s too early to defeat All for One.

Meanwhile we get an introspection bit saying

‘If I was able to connect to you even a little bit then I’m glad I was born with these filthy wings’

‘If I was able to pay it forward to you, even a little, then dirtying these wings was well worth it.’

It depends if you’re reading the fan translation or the official one.

The general speculation is that it’s Hawks’ inner monologue referred to Tokoyami.

Fan translation and official translation differ as in the fan translation Hawks is born with filthy wings, while in the official one he dirtied them. I prefer the fan translation because it would make sense Hawks would loathe his wings, which connect him to his father, a Villain, and call them filthy but also see them as what pushed him to connect with Tokoyami.

The official translation instead seems to imply Hawks is glad for the crimes he has committed because, although they dirtied his wings, they also allowed him to connect with Tokoyami.

I prefer to think Hawks isn’t glad for dirtying his wings but maybe that’s just me.

The chapter ends and as you can see I had next to nothing to say that’s positive about it.

It feels like nothing was accomplished, too much time was wasted on explanation and All for One felt even less threatening, which isn’t good.

Horikoshi had to previously take a break because he wasn’t well so the previous chapter and, especially, this one, might be under standards due to this. We’ll see.

#Boku no Hero Academia #BNHA spoilers #Utsushimi Camie #Shishikura Seiji #Yoarashi Inasa #All for One #BNHA Chapter Ramblings #Tokoyami Fumikage #Tsuchikawa Ryuko #Takami Keigo #Todoroki Enji #Todoroki Touya #Komori Kinoko #Nishiya Shinji #Uraraka Ochako #Jiro Kyoka

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