#question yeah the flesh thing in the current era it’s alive the red stuff on his hands from the last era were the first stages

[changewingwentz]

Originally caption “iii wears more Victorian ahhhh looking fits for the teeth of God tour maybe haha” but these look too Victorian lmaaoooo

Inspired from a character also placed in the same time period wearing the thigh high boots and iii ……in those boots guys hear me out…..

[makeste]

so let’s talk about the new bak-u-go stuff

hey guys, so long story short, I took all of the bak-u-go stuff out of my weekly liveblog/recap post, and put it into its own separate post so that it didn’t take over the recap completely. so this is my big “all of my thoughts about the second OFA user’s vestige in chapter 304” post, basically.

my opinion going into the chapter

okay so without mincing words, my very controversial stance on this theory going in was more or less, “yes, I do think that maybe that Bakugou-shaped shadow who looks exactly like Bakugou could, in fact, be Bakugou.” not only that, but it strikes me as much more feasible than the alternatives, “Bakugou’s ancestor who looks exactly like him was the second user of OFA for some reason, and Horikoshi keeps hiding his face because... we don’t really know”, or “this is just some random guy with spiky hair, and again his face is being hidden just because.”

like, there is some reason we’re not allowed to know what he looks like, especially at this point. and writing-wise, there are really only three possible explanations for this. (1) it’s a red herring meant to trick us for some reason, (2) his character design hasn’t been completed yet, or (3) something about this character’s appearance is a spoiler, and the reveal is supposed to be a surprise.

regarding (1), I actually think this is the case with the Third. clearly he is not Kirishima as some had speculated. he doesn’t appear to be familiar at all. so if that’s the case, why is his face also being hidden? my theory is that it’s simply to lampshade the fact that the Second is being hidden as well. if Second was the only vestige whose face we couldn’t see, it would be beyond obvious at that point that he was someone familiar to us. having another vestige doing the same weird stuff makes him stand out slightly less.

anyways though, as far as Second himself being a red herring, I guess he could be. but a red herring for what? not to say it isn’t possible, but I don’t really see what the purpose would be.

regarding (2), this is a remote possibility, but imo it would be pretty uncharacteristic of Horikoshi. plus by this point he’s had more than enough time to flesh the design out. all of the other vestige character designs are completed, and we’ve seen all of Second and Third except their fronts and faces by this point. so I’m gonna go out on a limb and say this isn’t the reason.

which leaves (3): this character’s identity is important in some way, and is being purposely kept secret. this to me implies that it must be someone we know (because otherwise it wouldn’t be a spoiler). which basically means that no matter what, the possibilities are about to get weird.

my thoughts on the new “evidence” in the chapter

first off, my biggest impression is that there really isn’t much new evidence at all either way lol. but okay, let’s review what we got.

I’m ignoring Third at this point because I honestly have no idea who he is. he may very well be someone we haven’t met yet, so I don’t think there’s much point in speculating. so let’s focus on Second instead.

the hair

first off, his hair isn’t quite right to be Bakugou’s. it’s darker than Bakugou’s hair usually is, at least in the close-up, and also the hair on the nape of his neck doesn’t quite look right; it’s got more of an undercut vibe than Bakugou’s usually does. Bakugou’s hair is usually more out-of-control dandelion puff from the back.

so yeah, I’m not sold by this image. though on the other hand, I will say that as far as the argument that his hair is too dark, that’s undermined by the wide angle panel right before the close-up in which his hair isn’t colored in at all.

so yeah, it could just be something about the lighting in the close-up. also, the RHA scan seems to have upped the contrast a bit more than the original image.

here it doesn’t seem to be quite as dark compared to the wall he’s standing against. I could be wrong, though; we’ll get a better idea when the official version is released in a couple days.

but overall the style of the hair seems more off to me than the color. on the whole, I’m not really convinced either way here, so I’ll move on.

the rest of him

okay so first off, obviously this is not Bakugou’s current hero costume in any way, shape or form. honestly my first thought was “what is Shippuuden-era Naruto doing here in the OFA Mystical Space Land” lol. so yeah, no idea what that’s all about.

however he does have gauntlets! so this is definitely someone with some sort of arm or hands-related quirk. and Kacchan does have a new gauntlet design that we’ll see in movie 3, so it’s not outside the realm of possibility that these could be another new design along those lines. that said, these are clearly not his current big ugly grenade-style gauntlets.

last but not least, this person seems older than Bakugou, which for me makes me considerably less enthused about the possibilities here, since I’m a weirdo who likes the idea of a timeskip even less than most people seem to like the idea of time travel, lol. then again there really isn’t much here to support that “he seems older” statement; that’s just the general vibe I get from him, idk.

I will say though that he has Kacchan’s same triangle-shaped torso with the same broad shoulders and upper back tapering down into a more slender build. that stuck out to me right away when I looked at this image. but he really does give off Naruto vibes as well lol, like I can’t unsee it sob.

anyway, and last but not least,

the hidden faces

because so far most of the attention seems to be on their appearances. but those aside, this chapter introduces a very interesting question that this mystery will have to address one way or the other. namely, why are these two vestiges turned around and not interacting with the others?

“so that we can’t see their faces, duh” -- no, I get that, lol. but let’s talk in-story explanation now. why are they huddled in the time-out corner not moving or speaking? what could possibly be the reason for that. we can see them clearly enough, so we know that they’re “unlocked” and fully formed in that sense. All Might’s vestige is the only one that’s not yet visible, and supposedly that’s because he was quirkless?? and so he didn’t have a quirk factor that could be passed down through OFA initially. though I didn’t quite understand all of that part tbh.

but so then what’s the deal with these two losers? are they just antisocial or what? OFA First says that the vestige souls which were chilling out inside of OFA gradually gained the ability to take a physical form as OFA grew more powerful. and these two clearly have taken a physical form. so then why don’t they talk? there are only a few explanations for this that I can see.

(1) it could be that these guys are still alive, just like All Might (who doesn’t seem to be able to speak either, although the other vestiges can communicate with him in other ways).

(2) or, these guys are purposely hiding from Deku for some reason. (or at least, hiding as best as they can in this weird little rock slab floating in space.)

that’s it. if anyone else can think of more possibilities let me know because I’ve been sitting here racking my brain lol. this is all I can come up with. and honestly, either of these explanations would be suspicious as hell, theory-wise. if these two vestiges are still alive, that almost guarantees time travel right there. and if it’s simply that they’re hiding themselves from Deku, then that begs the question of why. which, again, leads us back to “they’re familiar, and Deku would recognize them.” (though that last bit goes against what I was saying earlier about the Third, doesn’t it. honestly I’m just spitballing here now, I haven’t really thought this all out too thoroughly.)

soooo... yeah. that’s pretty much where I’m at. nothing about this seems to make any more sense than it did a chapter ago tbh. though I will end this post by addressing one more thing, just cuz.

“this theory is dumb and makes no sense”

the correct statement to make here isn’t “this makes no sense”; it’s “we don’t know what’s going on yet.” if and when we finally get an explanation, then we can start making judgments about how much sense it does or doesn’t make. but until then we have nothing to base that verdict on.

same thing with “it’s dumb” -- look, “I hate time travel plots because they rarely work” is a valid opinion. but “rarely” isn’t the same thing as “never.” there are good time travel plots out there. idk why everyone keeps rolling with the assumption that this is going to be some cliche plot hole-filled science fiction bs narrative with a tragic ending. we have literally nothing to base that on. we have no answers and a whole lot of questions, is what we have.

maybe it will be disproven! or maybe it won’t, and it will be exactly as awful as everyone thinks and it will ruin the manga entirely. or maybe it will actually be really cool. we don’t know yet. that’s my one and only conclusion here -- that we shouldn’t jump to conclusions. but then again I guess it wouldn’t be BnHA fandom if we didn’t. anyway so thus concludes my post.