#the only things Sasuke and Bakugo have in common is that they’re rivals to the mc

[julieemarine]

I need people to stop comparing Sasuke to Bakugo. If anything, he’s more like Todoroki:

Aloof personality

Top student in his class

Pretty boy of his class

Villainous older brother

Family trauma

I couldn’t come up with any more reasons, but you know what I’m talking about.

[aquaburst3]

A theory I saw floating around from time to time is that Keith and Lance will fight during s8. I highly doubt this is the case. 

1. One argument I see people say to back this statement up is that Keith and Lance relationship mimics a typical shonen rivalry, making them destined to fight one another. After watching shonen anime for a decade, trust me--they don’t  have a shonen rivalry. At all. 

Shonen rivalries are added to stories to bring more tension and conflict, being another way to test the hero. Shonen rivals are written to be foils to the heroes, sharing some traits in common with them, but contrasting them a lot. Since usually shonen protagonists are usually hot blooded and/or naive, the rival is cold, calm, serious and intelligent. Usually, unlike the optimistic hero, the rival is distant and doubts The Power of Friendship, but comes around over the course of the narrative. Some examples of this are your Sasuke & Natuto, Kaiba & Yugi/Yami, Vegeta & Guko, Bakugo & Izuku (though, it’s reversed personality wise here), Gary Oak & Ash, etc. None of this fits Lance and Keith at all. 

While, sure, Keith is some ways the opposite to Lance. However, the other bit I mentioned about shonen rivals seeing friendship as stupid doesn’t fit Keith in the slightest.  Keith pushes people away because he’s afraid of his friends abandoning him. Not because he hates being around people like the examples I mentioned! Even at the start of the series he is close friends with Shiro. As the series went on, he has bonded with the other paladins, excepting them into his life willingly. 

They also don’t really push each other like what happens in shonen rivalries. Most of their development happens without the influence of the other. Because Lance developed into a better person after Keith left for the BOM. And Keith began trusting others after his vacation the space whale with his mom. 

They they don’t have a rivalry. More so that Lance declared him as such at the very start of the series, but Keith doesn’t view him in the same way at all. In that sense, it was used to set up Lance’s baseline personality traits before he developed into a better person, establishing that he was petty enough to declare Keith as his rival and pick fights with him for no reason. Because of this, it’s never brought up again after Lance sets aside his one sided rivalry during s3, starting his journey to being a better person, seeming to cement that fact it was just a way to set Lance’s baseline personality traits and nothing more even further.

Instead, Keith’s rival in the narrative is Acxa, not Lance. They’re the ones who are contrasted with one another. Logical, serious and calm Axca to the hot-head, caring and loving Keith. Keith is the one to push her to grow as a person. Just like all of the shonen rivalries I mentioned before. Since Acxa’s character arc is pretty much complete, I don’t think the series will dive more into that aspect anymore. The same thing can be said even more about Lance and Keith’s rivalry. Because that hasn’t been a factor in the story since the beginning. 

2. I talked about narrative set up and payoff on here before. VLD has some great examples of this like pointing to the fact that Shiro and Keith would fight early on and that Sendak would attack Earth.  There is no foreshadowing to say that they will fight like there was with the Shiro vs Keith fight. 

While one could sort of make the argument that maybe that Zarkon and Alfor fighting is possibly foreshadowing that, but that seems to be setting up the Keith and Shiro brawl more. Like Zarkon and Alfor, they were close friends, but after Shiro died and was replaced by a clone, Keith had to fight him. In many ways coming off like the “Shonen Hero fighting his BFF” trope that crops up in shonen anime like Yugi duelling Jou/Joey in the Battle City Arc in YuGiOh. While Keith and Lance are friends, and I would never doubt that, they don’t have the same strength of bond like Shiro and Keith do. Lance hasn’t known Keith for years, only starting to understand him more and accept his position as the right hand in the recent seasons. So Keith and Lance fighting won’t have the same narrative payoff. 

3. To take a page out of Mother’s Basement’s All Might vs One for All video, fight scenes need a reason to happen.  When writing something, you needed to ask yourself, “Why are they fighting?” In shallow or bad series, it’s because the plot said so. But in good series, each party is fighting for a reason. For example, during Black Paladins, Keith fought to save Kuron and Kuron was pushed to kill him.  

With that in mind, Keith and Lance have no logical reason to fight one another. They’re getting along well, so no one would betray the other. And I doubt Haggar or Lotor would be able to manipulate either of them to gain their skills. While mind control is an option, the only character capable of doing that has been killed off a few seasons ago. While I have heard people bring up Haggar, to be honest, I don’t think she has mind control powers. Allura has similar powers to her and never demonstrated that she could do that. If Allura can’t, even after going to Oriande, same can be said for Haggar.

With all this in mind, I don’t think there is enough of a reason for Keith and Lance to fight and for it to be some sort of narrative payoff. But who knows what will happen next season.