#provisional licensing exam arc

[princess-of-the-corner]

does transfem bakugo have long or short hair?

I will be giving her longer hair if only because I can! Though re: the new Icon my intent on drawing that version of her is within the current story arc of CC, not the 'fully out and transitioning' version.

[ash-nico]

I really need to get back into mha

[aspenforest732]

Bello Licentiae Chapter 1: A Fresh Start

Summary:

tw: gang activity, foster care, anxiety Moving into the dorms

Notes:

everything (except their hero costume) Akira has ever considered theirs is in their duffle bag. Figured we’d start with a little fluff after all the trauma that ended last fic 😊 ‘text’ JSL Text thoughts

Akira lazily spun the chair at Hitoshi’s desk with their crutches propped against the wall as they helped Hitoshi decide what they could pack. So far, they figured posters and figurines weren’t expected to stay, but books, bedding, stuffed animals, and small storage were up in the air. ‘ I thought you knew more about this from foster homes, ’ Akira signed exasperatedly.

“It’s different, though,” Hitoshi sighed, dramatically flopping onto the bed in between options. “We’re not leaving the home, just the house. Right?”

Akira shrugged, tossing their hands up lightly as a small smile slipped onto their face from the lack of effort it took. ‘ I think so? At least for you. We can worry about my room later, though. ’

“How are you listeners doing?” Yamada asked from the doorway, knocking softly on the open door.

Akira and Hitoshi looked at each other, silently checking each other’s comfort levels. With a small sigh, Akira hesitantly signed, ‘We’re a little confused. What can each of us take?’

Yamada cocked his head, drawing an awkward chuckle from Hitoshi. “I thought we gave you the school’s list. Do you need another copy?” He beamed and rushed on, “Or do you want to add more to the shopping list? We can get you anything new for the dorms if you want to keep some of your stuff here.”

Already committed to taking the lead this conversation, Akira tensed but forced themself to sign, ‘ No, what can we bring? What can we take from the rooms? ’

Yamada still looked between them confused for a moment before the bright grin faded into a soft smile. “I get ya, kiddos. Can I bring Shou in on this conversation?” At their nods, he quickly returned with his husband. “We bought everything in the rooms for you two specifically. If you want to leave some items here for when you visit on weekends and breaks, that’s totally fine, but you can bring anything you want with you.”

“As long as it’s on the list,” Aizawa added. “If it’s not, you’ll need to run it by us first so we can make sure it’s within guidelines and will fit. Anything you want or have to leave, we can buy another, sometimes smaller, copy for your dorm rooms.”

“Yeah, little listeners,” Yamada softly smiled. “We want you to feel comfortable and safe at school, yeah? We’ll also be a phone call away if you need us and we’re not on chaperone duty.”

‘ Everything? ’ Akira signed, eyes flickering between the couple and Hitoshi, who seemed more relieved than surprised.

Aizawa huffed, “Except the bed, yes. We already planned on getting you a futon for the dorm when we go shopping this afternoon.”

Akira slipped out a few minutes later with a nod to Hitoshi as Aizawa helped him decide which of their items not to take. They padded to their room and started adding more of the blankets and plushies to their box before pausing at the weighted blanket. Mad Banquet had already confirmed that their parents agreed to the dorm setup, although Shoto’s sperm donor wasn’t happy about it. Akira wasn’t entirely sure if he was moving from Dekusquad to their group or double dipping, but the kid definitely needed a break.

Speaking of needing a break … Akira mused, running their hands through their hair as they tried not to think too hard on the implications of dorm life. Would they be expected to return to the Yamazawa house on weekends? Would they even be allowed back into the warehouse district? Akira’s thoughts swirled in uncertainty. The Inoue still hadn’t made a statement on their status, and it wouldn’t be long before someone leaked or found just the right piece of information to uncover Akira’s relation.

Their phone vibrating pulled Akira from their thoughts, and they quickly picked it up with video. ‘Haru? Is everything alright? ’ they asked.

“Yeah, Mortis, everything’s fine here. Just wanted to check in, buddy. Do you know if they’re allowing you back any time soon?”

Akira shook their head, ‘ After the first weekend, we have to sign out of the dorms, and I doubt they’ll let me sign out to the district. Eraser will probably want me here. ’

“You could always sneak out, right? That’s something teenagers do.” Haru grinned mischievously.

Akira winced, ‘ I told you they know where I am, right? What do you think would happen if U.A. drops custody? I can’t risk that, and besides, you’re talking about sneaking out past multiple pro heroes. ’

“I know you better than that,” Haru rolled his eyes playfully. “But seriously, we miss you out here. Isao keeps asking about his little shadow, and Dabi’s brooding more than usual. Oh, and Boss said you should show Kid Lavender the protective signs.”

Akira smiled fondly, ‘ When is he not brooding? ’ After hesitating a moment, they added, ‘ I’ll see what I can do, but- ’ After dropping another hoodie into their box, Akira turned around to start on books and saw Yamada hovering in the doorway, concern written all over his face.

‘Gotta go, ’ Akira quickly signed, flashing the sign for safe adult before hanging up. They took a steadying breath and turned back to Yamada. ‘ When did you come in? I need to know what context you have. ’

“Sneaking out,” Yamada said gently after a moment as his expression softened. “He’s the ‘family friend’ you mentioned, right?”

‘ Yeah, we check up on each other, ’ Akira stiffly signed. ‘ He’s just worried and was teasing. ’

After a moment, Yamada perked up. “Oh! I came to see if you’re up for getting more clothes with autumn approaching. We were planning on getting Toshi a few things, and your sweaters are looking pretty worn down. We even found a shop that specializes in adaptive clothing if you want to check that out.”

Akira nodded after a moment, a little overwhelmed at Yamada’s energy. ‘ I need a haircut. Can I go home for a few hours for that?’

“Oh! I can take you to my hairdresser if you want,” Yamada grinned broadly. “Ni’s very discreet and does exactly what you want. I’ve been going to nim for almost ten years now.”

‘ It’s really no trouble, ’ Akira hurriedly signed. ‘ Yasmin does everyone’s hair. ’

“Mori,” Aizawa sighed from behind his husband. “We’re not comfortable with you going unsupervised so soon after the attack and your family came into the picture. And I know you don’t want either of us to go with you, so you can either go to Zashi’s stylist or we can find another.”

Knowing the hero was technically one of their guardians, Akira deflated and signed for the first option. Maybe they could even go for a more adventurous androgynous look. Short hair did always sound interesting …

Akira readjusted their duffle bag as Class 1-A trickled into the courtyard in front of the Heights Alliance dorm. Fortunately, the forecast was pretty mild for mid-August, so they were getting by with crutches instead of their hybrid wheelchair from Hatsume. Akira looked forward to testing out some of the extra features in training, but that would have to wait until after the provisional license exam.

“Mori!” Kirishima called out as he rolled up with Katsuki and Kaminari. “Good to see you in one piece. I love the new hairstyle. Good to see you, too, Shinso.”

‘ Good to be back, and thanks. ’ Akira tentatively smiled, running a hand over the satisfying fuzz of their undercut. ‘ Any trouble with your guardians? ’

“The old hag was glad to get rid of me,” Katsuki huffed. Akira’s brows drew together as they shared a look with Hitoshi before Kirishima spoke up.

“Yeah, my parents totally understood. Didn’t take Aizawa-sensei much convincing.”

Kaminari’s smile seemed a little more forced as they added, “Yeah, no problems here.”

As the other students filed in, Aizawa’s eyes narrowed slightly at the rescue team members. Koji and Fumikage stood a little closer than usual, although careful to respect Akira’s space when they started to tense. They sent a teasing glance to Hitoshi as he was a little closer to Kaminari than they needed to be, but Hitoshi just rolled his eyes.

Akira winced as Aizawa brought up expelling most of the class if not for All Might’s retirement and expected them to just follow with the foreboding cloud hanging over the class. Katsuki fondly looked to Kirishima and shoved money at him, muttering about night vision goggles before stalking off to the dorms. He called over his shoulder, “If you want dinner, you’d better stay out of the kitchen, damn extras. We’re having chicken tempura tonight.”

Midoriya went off about Katsuki’s apparently amazing cooking as something twisted in Akira’s gut. They looked away from his group, briefly catching Aoyama’s eyes as the boy’s expression flashed with uncertainty. Akira slunk towards the dorms, closely followed by Mad Banquet. Damnit, he knows something.

Aizawa walked through the dorm layout, pointing out the automatic door buttons, key fab access for dorm rooms, and the need to keep walkways clear as Akira noted the lower-than-usual height of the counters and other commonly used surfaces. The individual rooms were large enough to maneuver their wheelchair, and Akira flashed Aizawa a grateful look at their room being on a corner on the second floor. The two windows provided enough light and view to help the space feel less confined without the added nervousness of being on a higher floor. Akira was right next to Koji and had no one directly above them, so they also shouldn’t have to worry about noise disruptions at night. Mad Banquet was all on the same floor, except Shoto, and Shinso pouted a little at not being in the empty room next to Kaminari.

‘ You can always visit, ’ Akira signed, jostling their shoulder lightly. Hitoshi waved them off with a slight smile and blush, which Akira took as a win. They quickly shoved down the thought that they’d never get to tease Asami like this.

Later, as Katsuki worked on preparing dinner, Akira caught his attention and pointed to the blender. At his nod, they quickly shifted it to the stool side of the large island and grabbed their usual ingredients from the fridge and pantry. The air quickly filled with the smell of spices and oil as Katsuki worked, and Akira found themself enjoying how similar, although better, it was to Dabi trying to cook.

“Did you need something?” Katsuki asked, stiffly leaning against the counter with arms crossed as Akira stuck around with their smoothie.

‘I know you have Counselor, but if you want to talk, I’m here for you,’ Akira offered. ‘You looked a bit beat up when you warped in, and I’m familiar with the physical and mental aftermath of various quirks.’

For a moment, Akira thought he was going to explode on them, but Katsuki closed his eyes and took a few steadying breaths. “Thank you for the offer,” he said haltingly, almost like a script. “I’ll let you know if I want to take you up on it.”

Akira offered a small grin, ‘ Great. Thanks for taking the moment. ’ A few small pops were the only sound that followed Akira to the elevator as they felt a belated sense of relief at the stove being electric instead of gas.

They stopped by Hitoshi and Fumikage’s rooms to check on their progress unpacking and appreciate the latter’s dark taste. Akira looked curiously at the pentagram and definitively non-Shinto altar tucked into the corner of his room, but at Fumikage’s discomfort, they dropped the subject. They spent the next hour playing with Koji’s rabbit, Kerfluffle, while he finished unpacking his stuffed animals. The pastels and soft rug lulled Akira into relaxing against the bed frame as they tried to ignore the edge being in a new space brought. Kerfluffle tucked himself under their arm, demanding pets as the soft bunny settled against their stomach. Koji cooed when he next looked over but let them be as he added a giraffe to the arrangement on his bed.

After dinner, the girls proposed a room decoration contest. Fumikage was the first victim, and Akira quickly got the others out of his room, giving Midoriya a glare that held a little more heat than they meant to slip as the boy cringed back in confusion. Hitoshi’s room held a few sketches of Eraser Head and Present Mic posters on the walls along with a meditative mat and some weights. His color scheme was mostly purple and black with a few splashes of yellow.

“It’s so… soft,” Aoyama said as the class peeked into Akira’s room. The floor was mostly covered in a dark purple rug similar to what they had at the Yamazawa house, and there were various cat plushies in a pile next to their futon. A bookshelf held a few nick knacks and their Latin books, and a couple Fat Gum posters hung on the walls. Their wheelchair was folded against the far wall next to their bed, and two beanbags sat by a wheelchair-accessible desk.

“Is that a nest?” Uraraka giggled, pointing to the pile of blankets.

‘ Futon, ’ Akira shrugged. ‘ I find it easier to sleep on. ’

“Are these in Latin?” Ida asked, reaching out to their bookshelf.

‘ Yeah, I like translating poems mostly, although some of the headstones are pretty funny, ’ Akira signed, watching him carefully.

“Certainly! I prefer the romantic languages, but Latin is quite an admirable undertaking.”

Akira nodded, ‘ To each their own. Shall we move on? ’

They felt another gut twist at Midoriya’s All Might-themed room, quickly backtracking into Fumikage to his confusion. He and Aoyama were just too much to process at the same time as moving in, Akira reasoned. From the look in their eyes, Mad Banquet would probably stage an intervention soon, though. After spending a few minutes blinking the sheer brightness of Aoyama’s room from their eyes, Akira made a mental note to never step foot in it again.

Next Chapter

[bkdk-prophet]

Ochaco Uraraka and Katsuki Bakugou: Who saves heroes when they’re the ones in trouble?

Do ya’ll every think abt how Katsuki took over the “who supports/saves heroes when they’re the ones in trouble” plotline in the current arc, which Ochaco originally had? Yes, that question came to her first when she saved Izuku from the Blackwhip rampage with the help of Shinsou, and once more reflected on that said question with her speech to let Izuku in UA.

But the thing is, her attention has shifted from saving heroes (Izuku) to villains (Toga); even during her speech to save Izuku, she thinks of Toga’s smile and ever since then couldn’t stop pondering it—so much so that she had to voice out this dilemma to Izuku which, after talking to a bit, had her arrive at the same conclusion to save their respective villains.

Where does Katsuki come in this? Well, as seen from his development in the JT arc, a lot of it is centred around being willing to “be saved” and “save” as a hero towards other heroes. He acknowledged the save aspect of “win to save, save to win” and had therefore improved on his ability to lead a team and find compatibility in working with them (Also notice the placement of the texts lmao).

This is a huge sign of improvement, as he used to despise the idea of being saved/helped cause he believed it to be a sign of weakness and vulnerability. Also, the “saving” aspect of heroism wasn’t something that came naturally to him, so instead he put most his energy into winning in order to compensate for it. It was huge character flaw that held him back in a number of ways. However, that flaw had began to unravel bit by bit as early as the final exam arc when he and Izuku had to work together, then the Kamino arc (where he took Kirishima’s hand), the provisional license exam arc (where he trusted Kirishima and Kaminari to win and save him) and had since been accelerated after Deku vs Kacchan pt. 2.

Further down the line, we have seen him grow into the belief that heroes save everyone, even other heroes. But as he’s been opening up to this idea, Izuku’s been closing himself off from this idea in relation to himself. His self-sacrificial tendencies, something Katsuki’s already aware of, were now worsened due to the duty and weight of carrying OFA. As he allowed himself to worry, it became clear to him that Izuku will not share his burdens unless someone insists their presence. Because of that, he’s made it his personal job to follow Izuku to war, catch up to his pace and match him, and make sure he doesn’t endanger himself (this is true before, during, and after Katsuki Bakugou rising).

Going back to Ochaco, it’s clear that both she and Katsuki’s focal point in the “saving other heroes as heroes” plot line is Izuku. The idea of them also being heroes who save heroes had been introduced in the same arc, which was during the JT arc. The difference is that Ochaco had mostly diverged from this plot line, while Katsuki has made it his main priority alongside winning (save to win), cause saving people is what paves the path to absolute victory. He even singles himself out as being the person who steps in when Izuku can’t handle it all on his own. Furthermore, he worked together with Izuku in saving All Might (both their childhood hero) to win against AFO.

So what gives? Why was Ochaco the person to introduce the question of who saves heroes, when Katsuki’s the one to pedal it in the final arc? Why didn’t Horikoshi stick with this motivation for Ochaco when it could’ve been used as an opportunity to make leeway for more romantic tropes concerning the main couple? Where the presumed heroine wants to save the hero, is closest to the hero, and becomes targeted by the villains. The answer is simple.

Horokoshi isn’t following a formula, and loves subverting our expectations.

Ochaco’s crush towards Izuku and former motivation of being the one to support/save heroes acted as a red herring to Toga. Her crush introduced the conflict of how to love others and yourself authentically, a conflict that’s central to Toga and Ochako’s fights all the way up to their final confrontation. Then the “who saves heroes” plot line is what put a crack in her imagine of hero society, a society who views heroes as infallible and abuses their selflessness, making people such as Deku—someone she had idolised for his heart and self-sacrificial traits—buckle under the weight of unrealistic expectations. Although this was important to the development of Izuku and Ochaco’s relationship itself, considering her speech which emphasised that she was one of the first people to truly support Izuku, it also made leeway for her to reflect on how hero society views villains, too. Then there she discovers that she wants to see Toga smile again, and find her among the crowd of happy faces in front of her.

Katsuki, on the other hand, takes on the roles that were expected to be given to Ochaco on account of her ‘love interest’ status. He’s the person whose consistently been saving/supporting Izuku from the first to the last war, the person targeted by ShigAFO cause of his closeness to Izuku, the person that has known about OFA longer than his peers, and the person at the center of Izuku’s “control your heart” plot line. The choice for Katsuki to take on these roles weren’t made willy nilly, as the narrative makes sure time and time again to emphasise that his relationship with Izuku is unique, complementary, deeply personal, and intimate; they are two people who complete each other’s brand of heroism by having what the other doesn’t.

Anywho, that doesn’t mean his individuality as a character is diminished cause these roles are typically associated with lazer-focused-on-the-mc heroines. Remember, his biggest character flaw had to do with being too independent and hyper focused on winning. He was a hero who formerly had trouble with the concept of being saved and saving others, especially towards the person he had refused the hand of and despised all these years, so it’s impactful and telling of his character development to now be the one who outstretches his own hand to other heroes, notably to his classmates and All Might, and most importantly Izuku.

His journey is of reaching an understanding with the person he wronged and couldn’t understand due to the views hero society ingrained in him, and to save that person from themselves. It’s understanding that heroes such as him, Izuku, and All Might, no matter how much power they hold, won’t always win if they refuse saving and support; so far, his arc focuses on the humanisation of heroes. It’s not unlike Ochaco’s, Izuku’s, and Shoto’s, who want/wanted to reach an understanding and save the people they had despised and couldn’t understand due to the views hero society ingrained in them; their arc focuses on the humanisation of villains.

That’s why I’m hopeful about DvK3 happening, where it’s Katsuki’s turn to see and respond to Izuku’s inner turmoil, and save him by his words.

Anyways, I’m sure by now we’ve all reflected on the romantic implications the roles Katsuki takes on, so I think bkdk being implied canon isn’t far off. However, I’m still not sure on what kind of deconstruction/subversion Hori is aiming for—does he want to say that the tropes usually applied to love interests can be platonic? As to say that romantic relationships aren’t always the closest? Or is the rival the actual love interest, and the perceived love interest is not. We’re not sure yet.

[jp---v]

I don't need to, but I'll explain my Bakugou hate because I want to.

Long post. Beware

When I started reading the series I was the same age as the characters. Looking at my interests you can probably guess that I was bullied, but instead of getting all sad, I got angry at the people treating me poorly.

So as soon as Bakugou was introduced, I didn't like him. Seeing someone my age verbally threaten and physically attacking people without being punished just really put me in a bad mood whenever he showed up.

Then certain parts of the fandom got incredibly toxic, and suddenly the author is pandering to the worst of them

But the problem keeps getting worse. The entire world warps to kiss his ass. He got everything he wanted at every turn. He deserved nothing and got everything.

Immediately established as a long-term bully. His bullying is then retroactively justified by the world itself saying that Midoriya is worth less than Bakugou as a person.

Why did Aizawa, who was famous for expelling students, not so much as give Bakugou detention for trying to attack Midoriya on the first day of school?

Why didn't All Might punish him for using that gauntlet in the Battle Trials?

Despite all of his actions so far, just since being accepted into UA, the other students still want to be friends with him. They actively choose to spend time near him.

Why is it never mentioned how him(and Kirishima) attacking Kurogiri and getting in Thirteen's way is a large part of why the USJ played out how it did?

His speech at the Sports Festival

Everyone wanting to be on his team, but he doesn't know any of their names or quirks.

Trying to make an unconscious Todoroki fight back in the finals

Aizawa constantly excusing all of his behavior, circling back to my point about the world itself justifying Bakugou's shitty behavior

Attacking Midoriya in the Final Exam.

How did Sero fail his exam by being carried out but Bakugou passed?

At the Training Camp, he actively tried to go fight the villains that have openly stated were trying to capture him. Making himself an easy target and hindering the people trying to protect him

During the Rescue Operation he somehow managed to hold his own against the majority of the League of Villains on his own? Really?

He forced Midoriya to break curfew and just starts attacking him until Midoriya fights back. It's caught on camera and Midoriya somehow gets in the same amount of trouble?

And for some reason he gets let in on the secret of One for All after being such a monumental asshole since forever, despite the fact that even Inko doesn't know? Or literally anyone who would be, like, supportive of Midoriya?

He failed the Provisional License Exam, but don't worry there's a special make-up class just for the people that made it into the second half. Everyone who failed in the first half will have to wait for the next exam.

Oh wow, flawless victory in the Joint Training Arc by displaying teamwork out of thin fucking air that was really just him barking orders at the others.

For a while we just get his usual brand of egotistical asshole-ery and now being needlessly shoved into places where Midoriya's actual friends should be. Or even any of the other side characters. Horikoshi, give them some screen time

But then the war arc and the vigilante Deku arc all just get down on their knees to suck his dick so hard that his quirk evolves and his heart explodes. And I finally get a glimmer of hope for the series to finally stop shoving him down our throats, but no.

Edgeshot decides that this one kid is so important that he will sacrifice his own life to save Bakugou specifically and no one else is on his level of importance.

Going back a step; That apology was pure fucking lip service. Not a single goddamn thing changed in the way he acted afterward. He had a couple of "soft" moments when he wasn't actively screaming and cursing, but that's it.

And Horikoshi keeps fucking doing it.

Somehow each and every thing has to include Bakugou or be about how it's effecting Bakugou or has to mention Bakugou.

The majority of the (much more interesting) cast has been completely forgotten, and Midoriya's characterization got taken out back, given three rounds to the head, skinned, washed in bleach, and hung out to dry, but Oh Wow! BAKUGOU'S HERE!

I said it before and I'll say it again, I'd throw a brick at him.

These are only the broadest strokes of what happened too. If I reread the entire series I could write a massive in-depth character analysis, but that's too much even for me.

[epickiya722]

Actually, now that I'm thinking about it. Yuuei may be the one school that gives their kids just a tad bit more free will.

Already talked about it in another post, but the dorm rooms are individually unique. Some even were decorated that would make you think "that cannot be allowed" like Koda having a pet or Aoyama's abundance of mirrors.

Then there's the uniform bit.

Some of the students don't wear the standard shoes like Midoriya and Todoroki. Some don't wear the ties or jackets. Some wear accessories and makeup and I don't think having dyed hair is even a concern given in-universe, it's very common for people to have outlandish hair colors and styles due to quirks.

Compare Yuuei to other schools and you'll see some differences.

Shiketsu students wear their hats with their hero costumes and Ketsubutsu students' looked very uniformed when they first appeared. Same shirt worn the same way and I don't recall anyone wearing their bottoms different from their peers. Even the anime-only schools had everyone dressed the same way. The Seijin (ninja) and Seiai (all girls) schools.

Visually, it supposed to help differentiate the schools for the Provisional License Exam arc, but let's think deeper than that.

Who is the principal of Yuuei? Nezu.

Why does that matter? His backstory! He was experimented on, caged. I doubt he would want anyone to feel that way, so while he does have rules, as long as the students follow those rules they are free to express themselves.

[deusvervewrites]

I Think I Know Why I Dislike Bakugou's Writing

Yes I know I just did the AFO/Asano Meta, but I feel like I need to do this too

To clarify: this is not me bashing on Bakugou. I want to like Bakugou. If you like Bakugou, you aren't wrong. You just deserve better for him.

Let's begin.

For at least a week now, I have had a picture open in a tab on my browser. This picture is something that I was beginning to think was made up by an Ao3 author because I had only ever seen one mention of it. And now that I've found it for myself, I found myself holding on to it and trying to figure out how to feel about it.

But now that's led to me finally having a way to verbalize the issues I have with how Bakugou has been written throughout the series.

On paper, Bakugou has one of the most interesting character arcs in manga. He goes from being a self-absorbed asshole with a superiority-inferiority complex who only wants to be a Hero because they win fights to the genuinely Hero Midoriya believes he can be.

In practice... well.

Let's play a game really quickly. I'll describe a scene from My Hero Academia, and I want you to guess what chapter it is. It doesn't have to be exact, just a general idea. Here's the scenario:

Midoriya manages to use a Quirk that's destructive to him without seriously hurting himself, and is proud of this accomplishment. In response, Bakugou gets incensed and physically attacks him.

Thought about it? Got an idea? Keep that in mind for later.

So here is my issue with Bakugou: there are two Bakugous. I know that sounds weird but let me explain what I mean. I'll call them Interim Bakugou and Dramatic Bakugou.

Dramatic Bakugou saw his classmates at the Battle Trial and realized that he wasn't the Big Man on Campus. He was furious with Todoroki for not using his fire at the Sports Festival, and infuriated by his internship with Best Jeanist. Dramatic Bakugou was kidnapped by the League because he's an asshole. He blames himself for All Might retiring, and he failed the Provisional License Exam because he's a asshole. Dramatic Bakugou told a kid that he needed to acknowledge his own weakness, took a hit for Midoriya in the War Arc, and apologized to him.

Dramatic Bakugou is improving as a person and a Hero.

Dramatic Bakugou also barely appears in the manga.

We are instead left with Interim Bakugou, the Bakugou who exists in the interim between dramatic moments. Interim Bakugou has not changed from his first appearance on the first page of Chapter 1, when he was five, beating the shit out of Midoriya.

Interim Bakugou tried to attack Midoriya on Day 1, and tried to kill him on Day 2. Interim Bakugou listened in on a private conversation about how Endeavor's obsessions broke him and learned nothing. Interim Bakugou told the League of Villains that he wouldn't join them because he likes how Heroes look when they win. Interim Bakugou told the Help Us Company actors to fuck off. Interim Bakugou dragged Midoriya out to Ground Beta to beat the shit out of him because he was butthurt about his exam and making it all about him. Interim Bakugou won the Joint Training Battle because he wanted to be the Undisputed Best. Interim Bakugou never calls people by their real names.

Interim Bakugou called himself Great Explosion Murder God Dynamight. Interim Bakugou told the class that Deku is fucked in the head and doesn't care about what happens to himself, while ignoring that he called Midoriya 'Useless' so often Midoriya responds to it like his own name. Interim Bakugou uses Deku right up to the moment that Dramatic Bakugou apologized for inventing it in the first place.

Interim Bakugou never changes, no mater how much Dramatic Bakugou tries.

Here, let me prove it. You remember that game I had you play a few paragraphs ago, yes? What chapter did you say? Chapter 7, during the Quirk Apprehension Test?

Well, I have to admit that I lied a little. That picture I've had on my browser for the past week or so? It's actually a screencap of the manga.

This is from Chapter 253, after Midoriya shows his progress with Blackwhip.

This is five chapters away from the start of the War Arc.

This is 69 chapters before he apologizes, most of which aren't focused on him at all.

This is within the Final Saga, as Horikoshi puts it.

And Interim Bakugou is indistinguishable from Orientation Day eleven months ago

I will freely admit that this is clearly meant to be a joke, and that he did not hurt Midoriya as severely as the class is acting, but the behavior is still there. It hasn't changed a bit. Interim Bakugou hasn't changed a bit.

Dramatic Bakugou, in a flashback, confessed to All Might that he used to bully Midoriya.

Interim Bakugou still does.

This is why I don't like how Horikoshi writes Bakugou. I want to like Dramatic Bakugou and follow his journey, but for every step forward he takes, Interim Bakugou takes two steps back. All of his apologies feel hollow because Interim Bakugou is demonstrably the same.

And that's why his apology rings hollow. Here's a transcript of it from my fan translation of choice:

Do you remember what I told you after Shigaraki stabbed me? (...) "Don't even think about winning this alone!" After yelling that out, my body moved on its own, and I was impaled. Yet I knew that I had to tell you those words.

I always looked down on you, just because you were Quirkless. You were always far away behind me, yet, I felt that you were somehow miles ahead of me. I hated that. I didn't want to feel like that. And I didn't want to recognize that. It's why I grew so distant from you and always tried to beat you down.

I opposed you and tried to show my superiority over you. But I always lost. After entering UA absolutely nothing went as I thought it would. I spent all my days trying to figure out your strengths and weaknesses.

It probably doesn't mean anything telling you all this but that's what I really think. Izuku... I'm sorry for everything I've done up until now.

The path you took as a successor of One For All is exactly what All Might did. Your choices weren't misguided at all. But as of now, you can barely stand on your own. Your ideals alone can only take you so far. If you ever encounter a road bump, you can always count on us for help. To surpass All Might, your ideal Hero, we would all have to protect UA and the civilians in there together. It's the only way.

There are three parts to an apology.

You have to be sorry for the harm you caused. Bakugou says that he is.

You have to understand how you hurt them. Bakugou... acknowledges that he "grew distant" and "beat Midoriya down."

You have to either ask how to make it right, or promise never to cause that harm again. Bakugou... promises that they'll all surpass All Might.

Though I will give him credit for acknowledging the protection of civilians, good job Dramatic Bakugou.

Dramatic Bakugou seemingly can't apologize for Interim Bakugou, because Interim Bakugou isn't sorry. Interim Bakugou is the same as always.

So the truth is that I love Dramatic Bakugou's character arc, and I hate Interim Bakugou for not having one

[class1akids]

The constant Shouto put downs wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for the fact it feels like Shouto is being blamed for how Dabi was treated. Shouto can't be a hero because it's unfair on Dabi. Shouto can't get a power up because it's unfair on Dabi. Shouto can't be the only one who has ice and fire because it's unfair on Dabi. Right now it feels like Shouto is the one being punished for Endeavour's mistakes.

I'm not sure if you are talking about the narrative framing or fandom takes. Fandom takes you will never be able to control - there will always be people whose reading of the story triggers you - all you can do is to choose the spaces you interact with and the people you follow.

As for the narrative framing of the story:

The narrative doesn't blame Shouto for Touya's treatment. It puts the blame squarely on Endeavor and to a lesser extent on Rei. Touya's neglect started before Shouto was even born - in fact, his birth was to "discourage Touya". Yes, Shouto was born for all the wrong reasons, and his birth is clearly not a happy event in the family. He was born to break it, but he chooses to piece it together. That's his arc, his choice, his own affirmation of why he exists. Btw, I feel like Touya is not blaming Shouto for how he's treated. He's envious of Shouto and he blames him for throwing away so carelessly all the things Touya would have wanted for himself. There is a difference.

Shouto couldn't be a hero fully until he faced the turmoil inside himself (hence failing the provisional license exam), but he is definitely portrayed as the hero for the final arc (in fact already starting from the Endeavor internship arc and even earlier, like the Stain arc or Kamino - Shouto is usually on the right side of events, for the right reasons). More precisely in the endgame, he's embodying the theme of the hero who is there both for his family and the public.

I'm not sure why Shouto didn't get a power-up during the final arc. Maybe HK is viewing Phosphor as his power-up - even if it's not a quirk awakening but something he developed and worked on himself, it is clearly a power increase. In the PLF War, Shouto couldn't match Touya fire vs fire. Now he can: fire vs (fire-fuelled) ice. But it's also possible that he'll still get a power-up because saving his family was his "long way around" to the "path he's aiming for". There is plenty of foreshadowing that his endgame is to join his friends.

Like I said, I don't really view Touya having both ice and fire as something that takes away anything from Shouto. They could have the exact same power-set (although that doesn't appear to be the case) - the important thing is what you do with the power you have. That's the theme of the Todoroki family. We know what Shouto chose to do with his power, and I hope we will see at least some resolution with Touya too.

I agree that Shouto is suffering from Endeavor's mistakes - that's one of the points of the entire Todoroki family plot: the whole family suffers for Endeavor's sins. And even if he wishes to atone, he cannot fix anything - as those mistakes keep coming back to haunt them. Shouto's choice to pick up the pieces after Endeavor, to put himself in the path of Touya's wrath, to choose to face him is meant to be a pure and heroic choice contrasted with Endeavor once again not being there for his son. The narrative tries to balance these: the near catastrophic consequences of Endeavor's choice and the heroic save that Shouto gets for making the right choice. I personally think that we should still get a scene, where Endeavor fully steps up as a father and takes on the responsibility that comes with it, and for once in his life puts Touya above everything. This would also let Shouto be able to make a choice freely without having to worry about his family. I think that's the logical endpoint of the three arcs: Endeavor's atonement path to be a father, Touya getting the attention his inner child needs to heal, and Shouto's arc of emancipation and being able to decide who he wants to be.

[stillness-in-green]

On Heteromorphs & Heteromorphobia (Arcs VI - X , Hero Killer to Provisional License Exam)

(This post will also cover the bonus chapter “Tsuyu's Ribbity Diary.”)

Thank you all for your amazing response to last week's post, my goodness! I thought I'd found about all the audience I was likely to get for my harping about heteromorphic discrimination, so I was delighted to see a number of new names!

I do have to warn you all, if you haven't done much looking into my archives, that I'm pretty critical of BNHA these days, especially of the ways it insists on holding up individualistic solutions to problems clearly established as systemic in nature. That will become more apparent when I get into the post-war material, as the endgame is absolutely rotten with it.

This week, though, we'll start by getting out of the school to get a look at signs of and contributors to heteromorphobia in the wider world.

The Vs. Hero Killer Arc (Chapters 45-59)

Chapter 45:

Mina’s preferred alias, Alien Queen, in reference to the Xenomorph queen from the Aliens franchise, is turned down by Midnight.  The reason for this is never made especially clear.  Class 1-B gets away with a number of villainous or monstrous hero names, like Phantom Thief and Gevaudan, violent ones like Battle Fist, even an animal reference in Jack Mantis.  But Mina, for whatever reason, gets pushed towards the indescribably twee Pinky instead.  Does Midnight the R-rated hero not think girls should get to have hero names with some edge?  Surely not; her entire persona is based on titillation.  Length is clearly not a factor, given that Midnight personally approves Can’t Stop Twinkling. I don’t know exactly what went down here (from a Watsonian perspective, that is; the Doylist guesses are readily apparent and all eyeroll-inducing), so I will simply point out that a non-baseline gal wanted to name herself after a famous monster with acidic blood and was pressured into going with something cutesy based on her skin color instead.  Bakugou’s choice gets turned down as well,[1] but he actually has “murder,” like, right there in the name; Alien Queen is quite roundabout by comparison!

Chapter 48: 

Introduction of Uwabami, the Pro Hero gal with the head snakes.  She’s a bit of a weird case.  Given that all we know she does is find hidden people using the snakes’ keen senses, do they have some self-awareness that makes them able to communicate with her—a case somewhat like Tokoyami and Dark Shadow, perhaps?  Does she just tap into their senses at will rather than being able to speak to them?  Or are they rather just extensions of herself, with no particular consciousness of their own, and they function like what must be a fairly dizzying array of extra-sensory perception that she receives at all times?     Whatever the case, she’s a model and celebrity, and thus our first clear example of a heteromorph who doesn’t seem to suffer for her looks. Her looks are, of course, quite accentuated, given that her hero costume is a low-cut evening dress with a slit in the side up to her hip.  Other than the hair-serpents, she’s a baseline woman who checks all the boxes for modern beauty standards; she will serve in this fashion as a good predictor of other highly ranked heteromorphic Heroes.

Chapter 51+55:

Endeavor, as will be made clear in Chapter 55, doesn’t really have any idea what the Noumu’s deal is.  As far as he knows, it’s just like any other villain—and yet in Chapter 51, he opens up with an attack that bathes the Noumu in flame anyway, and comments in 55 that he’s never known anyone to remain conscious after such an attack.  While I think this mostly speaks to the general brutality with which villains are treated by heroes—much different from standard police practice in real-life Japan!—it’s nonetheless notable that the Noumu he attacked with such casual ferocity certainly doesn’t look very baseline to the casual eye, between the exposed brain, the significant height, and the crawling movement.

Chapter 56:

Midoriya is startled by Chief Tsuragamae’s “woof” interjections.  He doesn’t comment on it out loud, so I’m not inclined to hold it against him (not like someone else I’m about to bring up), but it wouldn't be the first time he’s come across this kind of vocalization: Tsuyu makes ribbit noises pretty frequently.    

Tsuragamae notes that the authorization of a certain class of people, called “heroes,” to weaponize their quirks against others was initially a heavily criticized decision, one which only garnered public support because those original heroes were careful to always obey the laws dictating the circumstances in which they used their quirks.  He goes on to say, of using one’s quirk to inflict harm without explicit instruction from the powers-that-be, “Such action would represent a stunning breach of law.”  Like Thirteen before him, he completely omits any mention of how such laws disproportionately affect heteromorphs, who can’t turn off a permanent physical trait, and, particularly in cases of people whose entire bodies are divergent, have little choice in whether or not to use their quirk in any sort of physical altercation that might lead to harm.    

Shouto, angry over what he perceives as punishment for a good deed, calls Tsuragamae a mutt.  The chief doesn’t react particularly strongly to this, but as the chief of police, you have to imagine he’s pretty used to the slings and arrows of public opinion.  The incident passes without comment, but it will not be the last time we hear a Todoroki derisively referring to another human being as an animal.

There are some sweatdrops and exhortations to get the kid to cool it, but those were ongoing before the animal words came out.

Chapter 57: 

Gran Torino notes that the age they live in, for better or for worse, is one of suppression, and that the situation with Stain and the League will draw people out who are influenced by that ideology.  Gran doesn’t elaborate on exactly what sorts of people he has in mind—All Might says only, “Then heroes will deal with them,”—but it’s an early hint that there are people in this society who feel unjustly suppressed.  Crucially, Gran Torino doesn’t even necessarily think those people are wrong; he just thinks it’s a necessary evil.  But what, exactly, is it that he’s grudgingly accepting as inevitable for the sake of maintaining the status quo?  And how might his circumstances need to differ for him to have a different opinion?    

In Chapter 27, we learned that producing support goods requires a government license; here we find out, courtesy of Giran, that dealing in and producing support goods without such a license is a major crime.  So if you, for any reason, failed that “rigorous examination” to get cleared for support goods for quality-of-life reasons, you’re unlikely to find someone who’ll just provide them to you out of sympathy provided you keep quiet about where you got them.  Instead, you have little choice but to turn to black market brokers—all because the government doesn’t think your quirk is affecting you negatively enough to qualify you for support equipment.     Again, this isn’t specifically about heteromorphs, but someone having an emitter quirk they can’t control well who needs the support item because they are choosing to pursue a career requiring them to learn that control is a very different case than someone who needs government support because of an immutable, always-on physical trait.    

This chapter contains the first appearances of both Gigantomachia and Spinner, both fairly extreme heteromorphs: Machia for his size and rocky hide, and Spinner for animal traits considerably more prominent than e.g. Tokoyami’s bird head or even Tsuyu’s conglomeration of mildly froggy traits.  Indeed, Spinner’s heteromorphic traits are so much more prominent than something like Jirou’s earlobes that it hardly seems accurate to even categorize their bodies the same way.    

The sidebar for Daikaku Miyagi, the anchorman with the quirk that gave him two big horns who amputated one so that it would be less in the way during newscasts and other things that required there to be a camera on him.  This in and of itself wouldn’t necessarily be notable, save that the same extra goes on to describe how the decision garnered some backlash from “a certain human rights group” who said that decisions like his fostered discrimination and were linked to the rejection of quirk-based society on the whole.  Horikoshi further notes that he enjoys thinking about the lives and stories behind minor characters—even this far back, then, three and a half years before the introduction of the CRC, we have concrete evidence that the author was thinking about quirk-based discrimination and the politicization of heteromorphic features.

Chapter 59: 

All Might drops some exposition about the Advent of the Exceptional, during which we see an image of a crowd full of implied-quirkless people holding up signs proclaiming their humanity and the monstrosity of those with quirks.  Conversely, three of the four quirked people we see have obvious physical divergence from baseline human appearance.  So from early on, that “monster” turn of phrase was heavily associated with changes in the physical appearances of those with special abilities.  Later on, the PLF advisor at the hospital will tie these two things together explicitly.

   

The Final Exams Arc (Chapters 60-69)

Chapter 61:

Ectoplasm’s character sheet.  The teeth are creepy no matter which way you cut it, but they look much more profoundly unsettling when they’re right there on his unmasked face, as opposed to behind a black cowl, where you can let your eye fool you that they are in some way part of its design.  His hero costume, naturally, includes the cowl, but his daily clothes do not—I wonder if he ever tried to have a gentle talk with Shouji about why Shouji wears the mask even in his downtime?  I wonder even more how much the teaching staff in general, and Nedzu and Aizawa specifically, actually know about Shouji’s history.     o It’s also noted that Ecloplasm looks scary, but has received continued support after coming back to the job after losing both legs in a fight with a villain—we see this same pattern with Jeanist after Kamino.  No word on how regular his support was before the traumatic double limb loss, though.

Chapter 66: 

Nedzu, we find, was “toyed with by humans in all sorts of ways in the past.”  Nothing we know about him suggests that he has any particular longevity, but his dynamic with Endeavor,[2] many chapters down the line, does suggest to me that he was at least on the staff when with Endeavor was at UA some thirty years ago.  Thirty years is within the span of All Might’s career, well after society began to stabilize with the formalization of the Hero System.  And yet, despite that, a sentient being, one with human—above human!—intelligence, was mistreated badly enough that he bears a grudge to this day.  Nedzu is, again, not in precisely the same situation as a human heteromorph, but he serves as an indicator of what humans have, even in the age of heroes, been willing to do to those they think of as “animals.”    

A shot of Koda and his mother, who look much alike.  Interestingly, the biggest difference in their appearance is that she has horn-like protrusions that her son lacks.  We’re a long way from the first quirk evolutions, and even farther from Koda’s quirk evolution, but we will later see Koda’s mother specifically tie those horns to her animal communication quirk becoming more powerful.  This makes for another good piece of evidence towards Horikoshi having a grasp of heteromorphobia from early on, as the evidence is pretty good that Koda-mama got those horns as a result of a quirk evolution of her own, and those don’t happen under normal, non-stressful circumstances.  More on Koda’s parents in a bit, as they're a pretty stand-out case in another way that isn’t immediately apparent here.

Can we call it foreshadowing for Koda defending Shouji at the hospital that Koda is wearing the same scarf as the main character in Horikoshi's Oumagadoki Zoo? Hmm. I'll leave that one to codenamesazanka.

Chapter 67: 

A flashback panel to Mineta’s days in middle school.  While I don’t doubt that there are P L E N T Y of reasons Mineta would be unpopular with the girls in his class, it is nonetheless notable that the popular boy getting showered with attention is perfectly baseline, while Mineta and his friends are not.

Note also that the cute heteromorph girl has long-ish ears and no other obvious divergent features.

Chapter 68: 

Shouji and Iida are specifically called out to at the mall, trying to attract them as customers with claims that whichever storefront employee is hailing them can help them find anything they need.  Midoriya mutters to himself about the difficulties of catering to everyone, given the many different types of quirks scattered across multiple age groups.    

Crowd scenes at the mall show scattered numbers of heteromorphs, a somewhat higher number than usual for such civilian crowd scenes.  The Kiyashi Ward Shopping Mall is noted for being the biggest and trendiest in the prefecture, with a variety that attracts lots and lots of people, so perhaps it’s no surprise to see somewhat more heteromorphs than usual there.

   

The Forest Training Camp Arc (Chapters 70-83)

Chapter 70: 

Introduction of the Wild Wild Pussycats.  A team of three Emitters and a Transformation-type, none of them in the slightest heteromorphic (give or take Tiger’s permanent :3 mouth), they nonetheless theme themselves after cats, including fake tails, big costume paw gloves, and cat-ear-esque headsets.  It’s cute and unobjectionable in and of itself, but I do wonder what people like e.g. Officer Sansa think of it.

Chapter 71: 

Shouji is missing from the hot springs scene.  It doesn’t hugely stand out in the moment because Aoyama and Sero aren’t there either, but it does read a bit differently with the benefit of hindsight.  Given the strong possibility that Aoyama is off doing Traitor Activities and Shouji is avoiding any possibility of having to torpedo the hot springs fun-times with an explanation of that time he was savagely beaten by people in his hometown right in an open street, it kinda leaves Sero as the only one who maybe just skipped for normal reasons, like that hot springs would gunk up his tape or something.

Chapter 73: 

Bakugou addresses Ojiro as “Tail”—referring to him by his heteromorphic trait.  He’s not even particularly angry at the moment; he’s just still nursing a grudge about Todoroki’s underwhelming performance in their Sports Festival match and wants to swap partners for the Test of Courage.  Early Bakugou is very much a “judge a person by their quirk” sort.    

Pixie Bob ushers Tsuyu and Ochaco into the woods for their turn at the Test of Courage by referring to the latter as Uraraka-kitty and the former as Ribbit-kitty.[3]  While in the English, this reads as a baseline woman in a cat costume referring to the heteromorphic student by her animal-themed verbal tic and the baseline student by her actual name, uraraka is a fairly onomatopoeic way to say bright and cheerful.  I would guess that Pixie Bob is probably referring to Ochaco’s personality here, which makes it somewhat less egregious.  It won’t be the last time someone refers to Tsuyu via the frog sound instead of her name, though.

Chapter 75:

Mandalay telepathically compliments Spinner, calling him both cool and handsome.  While I doubt he’s the only person in the world who’d react the way he does—he blushes, gets flustered, and missteps, giving Mandalay an opportunity to attack him—the moment does get some new context when you consider how everyone called him “the lizard freak” in his hometown.  Approximately zero people calling him cool and handsome back there, one imagines!  Having it immediately turn out to be a ploy likely informs some of the outraged anger in his response.

Chapter 81: 

Mandalay points out that Spinner never used his quirk during their combat, implying that she doesn’t think just his lizard-like appearance or his claws “count.”  Chalk another one up to the classification problems of “heteromorph” as a descriptive term.  This will turn out to rather neatly illustrate one of the issues I’ve been talking about with regard to the way heteromorphs are unfairly disadvantaged by the current laws about public quirk use.  Remember, a “Villain” is someone using their quirk illegally.  So if Mandalay doesn’t think Spinner used a quirk here, and since he has no record, why does he get categorized as a Villain instead of just a garden variety criminal?     Now, one could say that by associating with the League of Villains, Spinner is rather claiming the designation for himself, and we don’t know how the legal system will technically classify him, when and if he ever actually faces trial.  To that, I would say to hold the thought, because Skeptic will eventually back me up on the, “Heteromorphs are unfairly targeted by Villain designations,” claim all but word for word.    

BONUS CHAPTER 1: Tsuyu’s Ribbety Diary

We meet Tsuyu’s family, all various froggy types.  They’re a cute family, but the husband and wife both being froggy kind of raises some questions about pressures that might exist about marrying your same “type,” or at least refraining from marrying anyone too obviously not.  I’d be more willing to wave it off if not for two things.      First, we get the same sort of scenario from Spinner’s character sheet, that his is “a family full of reptilian quirks.”  Second, there are very few romances in the series between someone close to “baseline” and someone with a more extreme heteromorphic appearance.  The most obvious, clear-cut, canonical example is Koda’s parents—his dad has slightly weird hair but is otherwise entirely baseline; we see him defending his wife from other peoples’ mockery.  That, of course, is a single panel limited to a flashback inside a flashback, so not exactly very visible to the reader!  The next-most significant one I can come up with is Natsuo and his mouse girlfriend, who has likewise been seen in one (1) panel, had no dialogue, and whose appearance and identity were so incidental the anime deleted her entirely.     Who’s next?  Well, if you assume all those No Comments from Kamui Woods and Mount Lady about their relationship are indicative of a relationship between them, they’d be another, though we don’t actually know what Shinji actually looks like under his mask, only the implication that it’s divergent enough that he prefers to cover his face.  Next up on my tally would be Thief Takami and Tomie, but since the sum total of Takami’s animal traits are tiny little elbow wings, you can see how fast the drop-off is there.     Compare this to the number of pairings/families we have between people of like type: Bakugou’s parents, Iida’s, Jirou’s, Aoyama’s, Tsuyu’s, Ochaco’s, Shouto’s, Toga’s, Spinner’s, and Tomura’s whole family on both sides.      Then you get the ship-teasy stuff that’s more about crushes, people dating, or hints that are perceived as pointing towards epilogue romances: Deku and Ochaco, Jirou and Kaminari, Shindo and Yo, Gentle and La Brava, Miss Joke’s flirting with Aizawa, and Toga’s variety of crushes (among which Tsuyu is the most distant from Toga’s own body type).[4]  I think Kirishima and Mina are right on that borderline, with Mina having a normal body type but a collection of minor but highly visible divergent traits.     So like, the vast, vast majority of the romantic relationships in the show are between relatively baseline people.  In that context, it sticks out like a sore thumb to me that Tsuyu and Spinner are both explicitly said to have the same type of animal heteromorph quality on both sides of their family tree.  It’s not an incest concern or anything, just that I wonder what the pressure is on cross-type couples, or what social circles look like post-graduation.    

Two classmates talk about how it’s hard to tell what Tsuyu is thinking; one of them says, with her eyes hooded and a kind of cool expression, “That expression of hers never changes.  Maybe ‘cuz she’s a frog?”    

Tsuyu tells us that she never really made any friends; while some of this may simply be because Tsuyu didn’t have much time to socialize, between hero training and looking after her family, it’s also true that all of her classmates that we see have baseline appearances.    

This lasts until she starts getting stalked by a snake-headed heteromorph girl named Mangusu Habuko—a fellow loner.  Tsuyu is initially frightened by Habuko’s behavior, but has an intuitive sense for what the deal is, that Habuko wants to be friends but is awkward and doesn’t know how to broach it.    

When asked if she wants to be friends, Habuko flips out.  She calls herself treacherous and untrustworthy; she calls Tsuyu a foolish frog and says she must be joking, and that she should choose her friends more carefully. She then immediately dissolves into tears.  Somehow, I doubt all this self-loathing about her innate nature manifested out of thin air!    

The Hideout Raid Arc (Chapters 84-97)

Something that’s observable throughout this arc is that we’re in another sequence, like the Sports Festival, where the percentage of people with heteromorphic features in the crowd shots tends to run a bit higher than the norm of the series to date.  Unlike the Sports Festival, though, these crowds are just civilians, not heroes.  So what’s the difference between Kamino and the earlier on-the-street crowd scenes?     Well, the neighborhood the Noumu warehouse is in is a somewhat rougher area.  Part of the visual shorthand for that is people in edgier clothes, stuff that’s indicative of districts with bars, clubs, sleazy hangout spots, and so forth, but another shorthand is an increased number of heteromorphs.

These panels are respectively from Chapters 87 and 92.

Chapter 87:

The character sheet for Kamui Woods notes that the story of his early childhood is “grand and compelling,” and that his story was made into a documentary.  That, to me, has Inspiring True Story written all over it.  Probably not coincidentally, Kamui Woods is another character whose face we’ve never seen.  As more pointing in the direction of him having a childhood marked by severe discrimination, he’s not sure of his age—it’s given as “29 since he started counting.”  So was he abandoned as an infant for his weird face?  I could come up with other explanations, all equally over the top (extreme confinement, for example, that left him unable to properly mark the passage of time), but the fact that he can’t e.g. look up a birth certificate for himself suggests that whatever went so wrong for him, it happened very early.     …Though I suppose there’s the possibility that he’s not human, but rather a tree that manifested a quirk.  As documentary-worthy origins go, though, that feels less Inspiring True Story and more Educational Biopic About Rare Phenomenon.    

The Provisional Hero License Exam Arc (Chapters 98-121)

Chapter 99: 

Shouji’s room is shown, all but barren.  He says that he doesn’t care much about owning things, but knowing what we come to know about his history, it’s easy to wonder if he really doesn’t care about owning things or if this is rooted in a childhood in which it was believed that anything he touched would be polluted.  Not a situation that led to him being given much of his own, one suspects!

Chapter 103:

This chapter introduces Yokumiru Mera, from the HPSC, who gives an opening statement that has some very interesting ruthlessness lurking in its subtext.  Particularly relevant to our current topic is his comment that in the modern era, the time it takes to resolve a given incident is incredibly short, so the test that year will be prioritizing speed.  Prioritizing speed (wouldn’t want some other hero to get the metaphorical kill first, after all!) is a surefire way to guarantee that heroes are not taking the time to really examine all factors in a situation or make any attempts whatsoever at calm, considered de-escalation, but rather are just making snap judgements based on their biases and gut reactions.  Guess what group of people that’s going to disproportionately impact?        o Now, it’s notable that Mera says the test prioritizes speed, but the conclusion many others come to is that the test only pretends to do so; that actually, it prioritizes care and information gathering.  Indeed, we find a few chapters later that the actual priority is teamwork, as requested by police higher-ups—the idea is to fill in the gap left behind by All Might with hero squads that work well together.[5]   However, while the intention may be to gather those good at teamwork, it certainly doesn’t stop people like Shouto and Inasa from cruising through—and, in any case, whether the groups learn teamwork or not doesn’t take away from an HPSC rep telling them to their face that speed of incident resolution is one of the most important things to a modern hero and never following that up with any kind of amendment or clarification.

Chapter 107:

Introduces the HUC, or Help Us Company, professionals trained to act as victims in disaster rescue exercises.  Given that context—what they’re communicating to students training to understand what “victims” look and act like—it’s extremely worth examining what they, well, look like.

God, this is so Yikes.

And having asked that question, we find that the only people in this group that might not be baseline—the ones with short, childlike statures—are dressed to emphasize that stature.  The end effect is a crowd of “victims” with not a single heteromorphic representative.

Chapter 109:

Shiketsu’s class rep, Mora Nagamasa—the extremely hairy one—approaches Bakugou to extend an apology for Shishikura’s behavior during the exam.  It’s noticeable here that, having matured somewhat since Early Series Bakugou, and having been approached in downtime in a reasonable manner, Bakugou manages to refrain from coming up with any demeaning nicknames centered on Mora’s appearance.  Kirishima remarks internally on all the hair, but only internally; he’s much too polite to say anything out loud.

Chapter 110:

A big splashy introduction for the man ranked #3 in the Heroes Who Look Like Villains ranking, Gang Orca.  He’s at the test to play villain and is, just as noticeably as all the play-victims are baseline, a heteromorph.  At the time of his introduction, he’s ranked Number 10 in the Hero Rankings, but will be bumped out later on.  This does, however, make him the highest-ranked known heteromorph who doesn’t have a human face,[6] with the possible exception of Kamui Woods—who, like Shouji, covers it with a mask.

Gang Orca’s character sheet notes that, while he’s a popular guest at aquariums, his intimidating face and “stony personality” always result in weepy children.  He apparently finds this relatively upsetting (“lots of angst”) but, unlike Shouji or Kamui Woods, has not taken to wearing a mask, nor trying to tone down his personality on any level—to the contrary, Present Mic suggests much later on that he exaggerates it.

-----------------

Next time, I'll cover from the Shie Hassaikai arc through the end of Joint Training. Thanks for reading!

--------------------- FOOTNOTES ---------------------

[1] Initially.  He sticks to his guns long enough that he gets away with it in the end, though.

[2] The big tell is that Nedzu addresses Endeavor as Todoroki-kun rather than Todoroki-san or simply by his hero name, but his observation that Todoroki-kun has “matured” (literally in the Japanese, “become an adult”) doesn’t hurt, either.

[3] Kerokero neko and Uraraka neko.

[4] You can get further out there with this, but by the time you get to e.g. Shouto and Momo or Ojiro and Hagakure, the ice is definitely getting thinner on whether you’re seeing groundwork for future wedding bells or just reasonably close male/female friendship.  Your mileage may vary depending on how tightly attached your shipping goggles are or how cynical you are about shounen authors’ tendencies towards timeskip marriages.  Also, I can’t be bothered to dig up and list out the crushes or shipping patterns among the Class B kids. Koroiro likes the mushroom gal?

[5] Note that Mera phrases this as being merely a stopgap until they find the next All Might.  The HPSC is not so eager to change the methods they’ve come to rely on over the last thirty some-odd years!

[6] We don’t know enough for me to say for sure whether Wash is a heteromorph.

[mccloudyyy]

OK SO I HAVENT WATCHED MHA IN FOREVER but I wish Deku was the one who started crushing on Ururaka first

So I'm not up-to-date with any of the newer stuff so forgive me if any of my info is wrong! From what I remember Ururaka liked Deku first. I think Deku ends up crushing on her later (correct me if I'm wrong tho)

But personally I like the idea of Deku having to balance his hero life and his normal life. I would have loved to see him struggle with his crush and realize that "hey I've gotta focus on being a hero"

Now ik that is what kinda happens with Ururaka during the whole provisional hero license exam arc (although it's not well written) but tbh I just don't see her getting distracted from her goals as easily as she did. She has been motivated to be a hero ever since she was a child and you're telling me that some crush is making her less focused?? She wants to become a hero to give her parents a easier life and she wants to be a help heros as well. AND A SIMPLE CRUSH DISTRACTS HER??? LIKE THIS DOESN'T MAKE SENSE AT ALL

While I don't think Deku would get super distracted by a crush, I feel like he would realize that he needs to think realistically. We are always shown the negatives of being a hero and I would love to see how being a hero affects their personal lives and Deku would be a good place to start with that! Like having him crush on her but realizing that during the provisional license exam arc that rn he can't focus on romance and stuff like that. So then he grows and Ururaka grows and they both develop into good characters 😎

[delawaredetroit]

Hi! I love your BNHA analyses! But I do have to say one thing about the licensing exam.

Your points about Todoroki would hold up... If most of what the manga is trying to communicate about his character hadn't already been resolved.

Todoroki already learned a) not to underestimate his opponents and b) to respect his teammates and fellow hero students. He learned the latter during the Sports Festival when his move against Sero drained him and during his fight against Midoriya. Not to mention the incident with Stain showed him (through Ida's situation) the importance of relying on and trusting others. And for the latter, he learned during the final exam. He took charge, messed up, and had to face the reality that someone else (Yaoyorozu) knew better and that he had to follow that someone's lead.

These faults were already acknowledged and addressed. There was no reason to do so again during the licensing exam. In fact, I would argue that it kept his character stagnant. His character didn't improve from the remedial courses- only Bakugo's did because that entire arc was about him, not Todoroki- and was left out of a major arc. This is also supported by him and Inasa- the reason he failed- barely interacting during the remedial courses. The only reason he failed was so that Bakugo wasn't the only one to do so. Because Horikoshi can never let Bakugo be the worst or fail at something/face consequences on his own.

(I would also point out that the way he failed and what you listed had nothing to do with one another. The only reason Todoroki failed was because Inasa held a grudge. He didn't actually do anything wrong except for engage with him for a little too long. And who wouldn't? This kid he barely knew and doesn't remember him is attacking him for nothing. How is he supposed to do the task at hand when another participant- that would irl be a fellow hero- is purposely sabotaging him?)

I agree with most other things you say, but Todoroki failing was something that shouldn't have happened. He was already humbled and learned better

I knew one of these would end up in my inbox eventually after I wrote this post.

Shouto has had a problem with cooperating with others since the beginning of the manga. An established character flaw like that doesn't go away over night just because he starts to address it.

It's true that he learned not to look down on his peers in during the sports festival. And he was able to work with Izuku and Iida during the Stain Arc, but Izuku was one of the closest relationships he had and Shouto trusts him with his life. After much handholding and being told directly what he was doing wrong, he was able to work together with a classmate who deeply respected him (Momo) during his midterm.

That's improvement for sure. But it in no way meant Shouto had the ability to work with people he didn't see everyday or who were hostile to him in particular.

As I've said, Shouto likely would have failed the midterm if he had been paired with someone else who also had difficulty with teamwork like Bakugou. That's likely the only way Shouto would have learned this lesson early enough to prevent a failure at the provisional licensing exam.

2. Whether Shouto's character improved from the remedial course arc is a separate question. I'd be inclined to agree with you that that arc was mostly for Bakugou and Inasa's sake.

3. On the issue of the reasons I listed and the reason he failed having nothing to do with one another.

Shouto made a series of mistakes during the licensing exam.

First, he immediately rejected cooperation in the first stage of the exam and bulldozed through it without thinking about what the purpose of this test was and what they were measuring. Because he is quite skilled, he still passed the first round anyway. But since he didn't consider the big picture at all in the first half, it put him at a disadvantage in the second half of the exam.

Second, he stirred up conflict between the tests by confronting Inasa (this was unintentional obviously, but this was the effect of his behavior).

Third, he rejected cooperation with Inasa during the second phase of the exam from the second he appeared, though that was a mutual error for both himself and Inasa.

Fourth, he was significantly distracted by a personal matter and got into an argument with another hero in the middle of a fight with a villain.

Fifth, Shouto and Inasa almost severely injured a fellow examinee who was incapacited and was in need of help during a rescue exercise.

To some extent, it feels unfair because the HSPC changed the scoring of the exam to weigh cooperation more heavily after Kamino and because UA doesn't value this as highly (see Bakugou not failing after attacking his teammate in the midterm), but there is an internal logic to it. Shouto was lacking in a main skill they were testing.

4. On how anyone would react to Inasa's provocation

It's not that Shouto's reaction isn't understandable, but he was in a licensing exam to become a type of first responder. People say and do dire things in emergency situations, and sometimes they make it personal. Yes, he shouldn't have taken the bait and he should have continued to focus on the task at hand because that was his job in this exam. He was asking for a license to save people's lives, so more can and should be expected of him. What Shouto demonstrated here was that he prioritized arguing over a personal matter over rescuing the civilians in this exercise. Of course they were going to fail him.

Again, Shouto is one of my favorite characters in BNHA, but he earned this L.

[masterdizzi]

Not sure if it is just me, but MHA needed more breather arcs for class 1A and UA in general. (No the school festival arc DOES NOT count, Gentle and LaBrava took up a lot of the screentime.)

What I mean is that between some of the earlier arcs, we should have gotten the chance to explore the 1A dynamic and UA more.

I mean, the series gives us so little time to adapt to the school and characters before jumping into the USJ attack and then jumping STRAIGHT into the Sports Fest

Hori also had the perfect chance to devote a few chapters to adapting to dorm life but after the room contest, we dive STRAIGHT into the "special move" bs and then the provisional license exam arc.

I KNOW this is a Shounen but would it hurt to let our main characters goof off for a little more than five seconds because as the series went on, the stakes grew and the series lost more windows for breathers.

It is especially annoying in Mha's case because as a result, a LOT of the recent choices felt forced. Like the 1A vs Deku arc, Midnight's death and Toshinori using the kids' moves for his mecha suit.

I am not asking for a series of shenanigans, I am asking for 1A to feel like an actual found family.

Also the teachers. Genuinely, why do we never get to see them teach more.

They are all super interesting and I would have loved to see more of them bonding with the students.

I KNOW I am kinda forcing a relationship between 13 and Ochako in my head but think of how good that would be.

13 is cheery like Ochako and is space themed. It would be cool to have 13 be Ochako's inspiration for a space-themed costume update. (I have many issues with her canon outfit.) [HEELS] and Anyhoot, 13 is in DESPERATE need of more screentime, same w/ Snipe, Cementoss and Ectoplasm.

[darkonekrisrewrite]

Toga seems to avoid killing when possible

Especially when it comes to heroes, even select heroes after Twice’s death

(Spoiler warning)(Toga meta and Quirk Theory)

In Bnha Toga Himiko has had multiple chances to personally kill many individuals, including Ochako and Tsuyu but for some reason she never strikes a fatal blow.

I think this adds and plays into the conflict that she’s currently having in recent chapters using Twice’s Quirk, a part of why she’s not able to use it to the fullest extent.  

Starting with all the examples of Toga’s avoidance of critical hits:

(Very easy cut available here.)

The first instance of Toga not following through ^, here in the first conflict between the three girls, the forest training camp arc.

While true that she did try to cut Ochako’s facial area, possibly implying a fatal hit, I think coupled with this ^ and all the other instances (especially with Ochako), Toga was possibly aiming for the cheek.

The next example came later in the Provisional Hero License Exam Arc:

(Camie seems extremely fine ^)

Toga impersonated Camie, a hero student from another school, to get into the Hero license exam.

Drugging her so Toga could take her blood, Camie was asleep for four days and when she woke up, didn’t remember anything and as shown by the picture above (from the/stated by the Bnha Wiki) she “doesn’t care”.

There wasn’t much reason for Toga to kill or not kill Camie, the mission could have been completed either way as nobody realized anything was suspicious or discovered the real Camie in that timeframe.

But Toga went with the latter option.

(Side Point: I don’t think that body disposal could have been a problem either thanks to Kurogiri’s Quirk, if Toga went with the kill option, as Kurogiri was captured during the Shie Hassaikai Arc after the License Exam Arc/Camie mission.)

Next example Rock Lock:

Toga, with the help of Twice, very easily takes out the Pro Hero Rock Lock during the Shie Hassaikai Raid.

But not kills, despite the fact that she could have easily stabbed him in the throat.

Keeping the Hero silent wasn’t an issue, as Toga would have had his mouth covered either way as shown above and while Rock Lock was only stabbed in his side but was still unable to warn his Comrades about Switch going on when they entered the room, the results would have been the same.

But still no kill.

 Bnha games provide evidence too, only with Civilians instead of heroes:

While this could be seen as merely creating a distraction, I think a dead or very close to dying body would have gotten a similar response from the heroes, maybe even more so than a “knocked out passerby with a little blood loss”.

The logistics of this example are a bit iffy but I think it does add more weight to the overall point.

 Cut ahead to the Final Arc:

(Toga landing a stab on Ochako’s back shoulder ^)

There’s no reason Toga couldn’t have gone for the back of the neck or upper spine/center back here, and at this point in the story there’s no reason for her not too.

Toga had already been rejected by Ochako (though Ochako did later have a “change of heart”, wherever that may lead) so there weren’t any of her blood/love related reasons to miss the kill shot unless there still are lingering feelings or the kill isn’t really what she wants.

I think it’s both in this case.

Same with Tsuyu soon after:

(Tsuyu seemed okay in the moments/chapters following this ^)

This doesn’t seem hostile at all, of course I mean after the initial take down.

The same instances come and go with the same results in Toga’s actions not to kill certain people, even after Twice’s death.

 Although that being said, Toga does still definitely kill others, those who are a threat to her and the Lov’s existence.

The other Pro Heroes on the battlefield (Post Twice death, giving rise to Toga’s very justified belief that the heroes will kill her and all the people she cares about) and the civilians in the way/part of hero society’s system (I again say that’s not a problem as 90% of the Bnha Civilians are still awful).

So while I don’t think that Toga has a problem with the concept of killing, I think it might have more to do with her targets.

Why can’t Toga use Twice’s Quirk to its full power?

A number of reasons coming together I think, including but not limited to this ^ one.

Loving and the desire to become (the person Toga is turning into) are necessities to the full power of Toga’s Transformation Quirk.

Toga usually does need some form of love for the person who’s blood she takes and then in that way knowing enough about them to function properly in the transformation but I do think that the idea that “Toga’s power is more based around the intent to become that person” makes slightly more sense when looking at Toga’s Nature.

With Toga wanting an “easier life” and the bonds/happiness that come with it, so she zeroes in on people she believes have the qualities/lifestyle that she wants.

But another part of why Toga can’t use the Twice quirk might be because of the targets of her current battle, tying back into the ‘Toga avoids killing sometimes’ point.

Ochako and Tsuyu being the Heroes she’s fighting and needing to be in conflict with, with the clones stating that “All Hero must die!”, and with that intent not being what Toga really wants.

Toga’s “Pure Love” (though bloody) isn’t to kill others, at least not them.

Current Chapter Spoilers: I think the resent leaks help this theory even more at least for now, as any of the clones could have killed Tsuyu when they had her tied up and the real Toga could have stabbed Ochako center or a little higher, hitting more vital organs.

Also Ochako will be fine; Bakugo survived a Rivet stab in roughly the same area (and several other places) running him through completely, even kept fighting for a while despite the blood loss, so no worries.

[nutzgunray-lvt]

Something interesting about Bakugou that I've only seen addressed a few times is that he couldn't care less about the collateral damage resulting from his actions.

Thirteen tells him and the rest of 1A to stay back as she tries taking on Kurogiri? Bakugou (and Kirishima) bumrush him and ruin her plan, causing her to get seriously injured.

During the Forest Training Camp arc, Todoroki has to keep warning him not to use his Quirk, otherwise it'll only cause Mustard's poisonous gas to spread.

During the Provisional Licensing Exam arc when they're making their ultimate moves, Bakugou obliterates an Ectoplasm clone and nearly gets All Might seriously injured as rubble starts to fall on him.

And again, THIS is the guy that Shota "I hate All Might for playing favorites" Aizawa is putting all of his faith into.

[bibibbon]

Characters with wasted potential: Bakugo Katsuki (rant)

Look as much as I don't and I mean DON'T like bakugo I have to admit that Horikoshi's favouritism has caused the own downfall of his own favourite character which is just sad.

There are many things I don't like with bakugo which are :

HIS ATTITUDE. I know hori was going for the moody deuteragonist trope but it fails horribly when it comes to bakugo because the guy has NOTHING AND I MEAN NOTHING to be angry about. This guy basically won the lifes lottery so by making him like this he literally just comes of as an aggressive, ungrateful child.

HIS REDEMPTION ARC. His redemption arc was utter and complete BS I mean he literally still does bulky izuku and others but it's just being treated as a gag instead of him learning not to and why it's bad. Also what makes it so bad is the lack of izukus pov and personal thoughts/emotions about it like izuku is the victim so we should see his negative and positive emotions towards bakugo and we should see bakugo take all of these emotions and try his best to make it up to izuku and change

HIS INTERACTION WITH OTHER CHARACTERS. I have no idea what those MHA stats were but they were horrible and why is it that every single time bakugo interacts with a character they will end up thinking he is cool and worthy of respect when he CLEARLY ISN'T.

LACK OF CHALLENGES. In my opinion, as a character bakugo doesn't go through enough obstacles or challenges and if he does he always has someone who goes through it with him like his whole I caused all mights downfall thing or the failed provisional license exam thing were so horrible in my opinion

A LACK OF CONSEQUENCES. Bakugo lacks consequences for a lot of his actions like the suicide incident and many other things. The problem is when he does finally receive the consequences it's always him and another character which doesn't make sense especially when izuku also got house arrest for what? Defending himself.?!?!

Bakugo could of clearly been a well written character that would be involved in the plot when necessary. Honestly, I hate bakugo and if it were to me I would have him erased as a character from the plot or bring in ORIGINAL BAKUGO!!! Who was soooo much better then the canon bakugo we have now!

But if we were to go with the 1st option of keeping bakugos character the same I would :

Change his attitude or actually give him something to have that type of attitude. Honestly, it's so infuriating that this guy only knows how to be an angry Pomeranian and it irritates me even more when he has nothing to be angry about. I know it's said in the manga that bakugo has a nasty attitude due to whatever mixture of superiority and inferiority complex he has and while you can do that and explore it a whole lot more like how did this happen? Where does it stem from? And stuff like that. It would be good to do something like that and Involve/show how society contributes to making these type of people which you can then use to expand on the world building that MHA lacks in. Or alternatively, you can give bakugo a reason to be angry all the time but in my opinion you already have so many of those characters so it would be better to stick with the first option.

Make him have obstacles and more realisations while gradually propping and hinting at a redemption arc. In my opinion it should of taken the entirety of the series for bakugo to have a redemption arc and when that arc is finished DONT GIVE HIM HIS OWN VILLAIN TO FIGHT. If you wanted him to fight someone make him fight himself and his own ideas. Also I think his development should start from the moment he gets saved by izuku and all might from the sludge villain where we can see him realise that maybe he has been lied to and that he isn't as great as he thought he was or everyone thought he was. He can also try and start focusing on what he has done or what he has been doing and at first you can have him ignore it, ignore it, ignore it and still not change until he reaches rock bottom in one of the earlier arcs preferably early season 3 when he fails the final exams BECAUSE HE SHOULD OF AND JUSTICE TO SERO!!!

Change the way characters interact with him. At first I loved how class 1A didn't like bakugo and viewed him as annoying and all of that and I think this should of continued until bakugo himself starts seeking for change during the training camp arc. Probably also have aizawa and other teacher reprimand him for his actions like the battle trials we don't see Katsuki receive any consequences just him on a verge of a mental break down and that's it. Also, we should definitely have more of Katsuki and best jeanist because let's be honest it was only best jeanist that tried to help bakugo and guide him in the right direction. You could also have him interact with all might but scrap the whole I got kidnapped and ruined all mights career I find it better if it were izuku to get kidnapped during the training camp arc.

Give him CONSEQUENCES. Iam all for Katsuki getting consequences for his own actions and faults and I feel like he should of got them during the battle trials, failing the provisional license exam alone, the final exams(he should of failed that fight with all might). Also I don't think he should be expelled from UA but I do think he should have more of a severe consequence that's NOT him getting anger management classes or therapy because that's not really a punishment. The idea might work if you also add him getting house arrest or losing a clean record and getting those types of classes but just that doesn't work for me

Lack of challenges. Katsukis character arc would work great if we focused more on his challenges and him ACTUALLY LOSING and not winning all the time. Realistically speaking there are many challenges bakugo can go through which are: having to realise he isn't the best and there are people better then him, he should treat people with respect, his behaviour towards izuku and other kids he bullied was bad, him trying to differentiate himself from endeavour and become a better hero and human being then endeavour by redeeming himself, his superiority and inferiority complexes.

Overall, Katsuki in this role should of been someone who is arrogant and has basically won lifes lottery but then he gets into UA and realises "oh Iam not as special or stronger then everyone else" which could then cause him to become insecure aka que the superiority and inferiority complexes which he develops out of and slowly redeems himself and becomes a symbol of how society can create bad people by too much praise or just thinking they are superior and how these people can go on to them become heros or people that society is supposed to trust and praise when they don't deserve it. Something that bugs me is how katsukis character mainly focuses on just izuku and whenever izuku is mentioned Katsuki has to be mentioned or vice versa.

Also it would if been better if you emphasised on the Katsuki and endeavour Parallels and don't redeem endeavour but redeemed Katsuki. Also, have Katsuki and todoroki have a difficult relationship it's out of character for todoroki to get along with someone like Katsuki. You can then explore the relationship and have Katsuki change and todoroki interact a bit more with him or something of the sort.

ALSO WHEN WE GET AN APOLOGY LET IT NOT BE WHEN IZUKU IS ON THE VERGE OF DEATH AT HIS MOST VULNERABLE AND LET HIM HAVE SOME THOUGHTS ABOUT IT

Ps: this is my opinion!! And I think I could of done more justice for bakugo but Iam not his biggest fan so ... Yeah. If I missed something definitely add it !