#remember they threatened to kill lady nagant for leaving

[takami-takami]

Hot take: I do not think Hawks is lying to Twice here. I've seen people say he was lying to get an in with the league, was picking at Twice's weaknesses and insecurities (which he did do, granted, but not all of it was a lie.) The first part about empathising with the liberation army is a lie, he does not agree with their morals at all, but I don't think the second part is.

Notice how he visualizes Endeavor's back when he says "the world I once admired and dreamt of joining"— This is crucial, and intentional. It's evidence that the image is a flashback to young Keigo, looking up at Endeavor from behind with a spark to want to be a hero. This scene, I think.

Endeavor was his link to "heroes are real", he thought of Endeavor when the commission picked him up and warned him of the brutal training he would have to endure to become one. But he wanted to save other people like he was saved. So he said yes.

Now take a look at this panel (ignore the top-right part, that's from a different part of the conversation.)

Keigo wasn't lying when he said he felt caged down by the world he admired, how it turned out to be.

The commission ordering him to kill over and over is what he's talking about here. The grip they held on him and his life, the leash they tried to keep him on.

A fantastic source of insight into what happened to him there is explored in the episode with Lady Nagant. Essentially, what happened with her is what happened with Hawks.

[dabistits]

378 thoughts just going to put them in bullet points

pretend i inserted screenshots of: [endeavor hitting rei] [endeavor hitting shouto] [hawks killing twice] [the hpsc head threatening to get rid of lady nagant] [the tartarus guards discussing the prison’s supposed human rights violations]

is it really “a crime is a crime” or only when people who aren’t on your side do it lmao.

aoyama isn’t a lost cause but he’s a guilty and terrified teenager whose only option is to comply with the demands of the “justice” system. even if he’d want to help in the first place, it’s really funny to ignore the presence of coercion here.

so you’re telling me no villains who planned to escape that prison wanted to see their family or visit their mom in the hospital huh. it sure is convenient no one had a “valid” reason to want to leave!

again, the liberation of prisons portrayed as a disaster for society because of course everyone who gets locked up is a pure killing machine.

bnha being like “yes, criminals are senselessly violent (unlike heroes!) but um they can change! not through any kind of self-reflection or personal growth though, because if you just leave them alone they stay violent, but through the heartfelt lecture of a hero who is different and inherently good :)” it simultaneously wants liberated villains to be violent, scary, and unproblematic to indiscriminately beat up while also having a touching message about personal change.

very off-putting to me that bnha reflects the notion that the worst thing to happen in a time of crisis is for inmates to be freed. there is a body count for the number of inmates who were just left to suffer from illness or natural disasters because letting them go would be “worse.”

gentle criminal stopping all the inmates being the basis for getting the heroes’ trust. what if he didn’t succeed at stopping everyone or just got beat up himself? again, there’s this notion that people who are viewed as ‘deficient’ in some way (villains, mutants, etc.) should go above and beyond to the point of perfection to attain any kind of decency.

this is a good message (albeit a very basic message) but does your story actually support it?

also to act like this is a profound, eye-opening message or something, and not a terrible failure of everything the cops and heroes have been doing up until now if you’re only just realizing this.  

and it raises the question: HOW are you going to recognize them as human beings? saying it isn’t enough. is it “recognizing them as human beings” to lock them up in tartarus? to kill them and dismiss it in a press conference? to let their abusive parent retain his power and status without question?

HER VILLAIN ORIGIN WAS YOU HER ORIGIN WAS THE FUCKING HERO SYSTEM HER ORIGIN WAS THE THING SHE’S FORCED TO WORK WITH NOW BECAUSE HORI THINKS EVERYTHING THE HEROES DO IS EXCUSABLE AND JUSTIFIED IT WAS YOU HER ORIGIN WAS GKJGLGVJKBHGLAKJDKGBHBGKF

remember how i said the only options for anyone to be is a hero or villain, no other option?

[dereksmcgrath]

It’s surprising how a chapter can have such a boring setup--Koichi, still on the run--before wrapping up with a pleasant surprise of a return character but also a potential death flag on a character.

“Careless,” My Hero Academia: Vigilantes Chapter 110. By Hideyuki Furuhashi and Betten Court. Original concept by Kohei Horikoshi. Translation by Caleb Cook. Lettering by John Hunt. Available from Viz.

Spoilers for My Hero Academia up to Chapter 327.

Koichi’s escape from Six has reached a point that is so boring that I shouldn’t be surprised that Six has had enough and decides to just snipe the kid. That this attempt is happening back where all of this started, in Naruhata, just outside of Koichi’s apartment, is thematically bringing everything full circle. It just all feels more tiresome when Koichi is realizing he needs to go grab All Might--which he was supposed to do earlier, but he didn’t, because the plot said so in order to drag this arc out longer. As well, the Nomu-like Anonymous Bombers aren’t that engaging as antagonists--silent automated extensions of Six’s will, and whose designs are appropriately just as dull, sporting Six’s same face scar (for branding). Ending the story now would make sense: we’re in the right setting, we’ve exhausted all Six and Koichi can seemingly do, so let’s wrap things up.

While this part was dull, I do appreciate the chapter upped the stakes to force Koichi to get injured, however minor those injuries were, to protect civilians. This moment helps in two ways. First, Koichi is finally bleeding from an attack, so we got one of the first death flags for this chapter, a very real hint that Six could pull this off and kill him. Second, we get to see that this neighborhood is not as desolate as you may imagine even if Koichi and the Anons have had the literal run of the place. (If only certain CGI-animated series could fit in this number of extras in their abandoned cities and rural locations.)

I did say Koichi was the first of two death flags, and that brings us to the next one, Miu. I can be wrong, but it is a common enough trope to differentiate identical twins first by slowly having them grow apart due to diverging interests, then altering their appearances as has done now, before giving us the ultimate separate, that being killing off one of the Feathers. Miu and Yu already had distinct enough personalities, and since the timeskip they have had separate interests and slight alterations to their attire. Now with Miu using a previously (as far as I remember) undisclosed Quirk overhearing how hurt Koichi is, and now with Miu running out to that danger, yeah, if she got killed off, or if her sister died protecting her, I wouldn’t be surprised.

I haven’t re-read the manga, and the wiki has not indicated what if any Quirks the twins have, so it’s odd to wait about 90 chapters before finally revealing Miu’s Quirk. Maybe it just wasn’t relevant up to now (story of my week…), or maybe this will be a Quirk awakening (and I have so much to complain about that idea of a “Quirk awakening,” and I kind of hinted at it about Toga earlier, but I’ll get to that later when writing about Shigaraki).

But I had started this review pointing out that this is about things getting back to where it all started--and you’re not here for Koichi or Miu or my pickiness: you’re here to welcome back Knuckleduster.

As hinted when he invokes All Might’s “I am here” line at the end of this chapter, Knuckleduster has always been the All Might to Koichi’s Izuku, and both of these spinoff manga characters have always been foils to their main-manga counterparts. Izuku run into danger, Koichi ran away from it. Izuku sought to become a Pro Hero, Koichi couldn’t even get into the entrance exam and is a vigilante. Izuku jumped at the chance to study under the optimistic and friendly All Might, Koichi was coerced into being tutored by the psychotically violent Knuckleduster. All Might was born Quirkless and earned a Quirk passed down from All For One’s brother, Knuckleduster was a Pro Hero born with a Quirk who lost it to All For One.

And after all the shit Six has done to Koichi and Pop, as awful as it is to say, witnessing Knuckleduster draw blood off of Six with his brass knuckles is cathartic.

Plus, that well-done last page spread gave me an excuse to make a response image to my own meme about the previous chapter:

Alt Text: In this PhotoShopped version of My Hero Academia: Vigilantes Chapter 110, Knuckleduster, only one of his white eyes visible under his mask, his face unshaven, pulls back a hand in the middle of his punches. His hand, which has brass knuckles, is dripping with blood. He has a murderous smile. I changed the word balloons to say: "You hate to see it...cuz they're kicking your ass in the QRTs!"

I had shared this image of Knuckleduster’s return with a friend, whose response was a very impressed “damn.” I had not appreciated how well Court had drawn Knuckleduster here, in part because I was more impressed how Court has revised Six’s design to now give him Lady Nagant’s sniper method (bolstered by Caleb Cook making Six sound actually threatening instead of how I keep viewing this schmuck as a hapless poser: the “brain” line was well handled), and also because I just appreciated Knuckleduster finally returning! And he doesn’t seem to be like the ghostly O’Clock visage/hallucination that has been an insufferable bore for so many chapters until he finally got interesting with that creepy All For One sinister smile.

Now the real Knuckleduster is back, and I’m excited to see where this goes. Is this actually Knuckleduster? Did he survive his earlier fight with Six, or is he just another hallucination by Six? Was he what Soga found under that sheet chapters ago? What has he been up to for, what, two years now since leaving Koichi and Pop to train on their own? I don’t ask these questions to expose some potential flaw to the storytelling: I ask because the timing of his return, and how it’s done, obviously opens these questions, and I’m excited to see those answers soon (I hope--don’t leave this dangling like trying to explain the MHA timeline).