more Deku bashing, if you'll forgive me
Seeing lots of shocked tweets and posts that Deku seems so cold and distant about Shigaraki dying in front of him; that Deku doesn't seem to care much at all; that Deku isn't devastated he wasn't able to save that little boy.
I have to point out that Deku never cared in the first place. He really didn't! It's why he needed to see The Crying Child to feel any bit of empathy for Shigaraki, and why ever since then, he only yammers on about saving the Crying Child and only the little boy. He never gave a shit about the Shigaraki in front of him. Never treated Shigaraki like someone real to engage with. That Shigaraki is unforgivable; and it was impossible to have ever bring the Crying Child into reality because the Crying Child was a memory, it happened 15 years in the past that cannot be changed, so all Deku can do is comfort the Crying Child then beat the shit out of Shigaraki.
I mean, just look at the imagery and the word choices:
Are those the words and expressions of someone who's trying to be careful about not hurting Shigaraki? Actually trying to help someone in pain? I remember when people were excited that Danger Sense would tell Shigaraki that Deku doesn't want to hurt him - turns out nah. He was so ready to make Shigaraki throw up blood.
Deku never tried to talk to Shigaraki. He never asked any questions during the whole time they were fighting. Mirio asked a question and got a response; but Deku? Nothing. Even in the memory-realm, when Shigaraki via memory-villains ask Deku what his plan was, Deku just shouted 'No!' and that was that.
When Deku said 'Somewhere inside of you is a person' he literally meant that. Inside of Shigaraki is the Crying Child, who is the actual person. Did he catch Shigaraki saying 'Spinner will be looking forward to this' and think, 'huh, Shigaraki has someone he cares about, I think? Then he wouldn't want to destroy Spinner, would he?' No. The fan-translation got everyone's hopes up that Deku wants to 'shred the rug' of societal failures, but the official translation was correct - Deku wanted to pry the lid off Shigaraki's trauma, accusing Shigaraki of repressing himself.
If he cared about Shigaraki at all, he would've protested when Gran told him he might have to kill Shigaraki. Instead:
He would've opposed the construction of something called a SKY COFFIN DEATH ARENA. He would've spoken up when Heroes talked strategy about how AFO is the better opponent to fight, implying that it's better if AFO had taken over Shigaraki, despite Shigaraki being the victim of AFO here.
Even when he ends up saving Tenko from Decaying the Shimuras, he's utterly lackluster there. Tenko's in tears, saying that he must have wanted to kill his family, he was born with a quirk like Decay, who could ever validate his existence the way he is??? And Deku's response? "Well. Holding my hand might make you feel better. So here." Saying something like, 'No, you're a child! It's not your fault!' or 'Your quirk isn't meant for harm, it can be useful too' or 'It's okay. You're not an evil existence' seems obvious, but Deku doesn't.
and really, all this has been obvious since the Mall Encounter in Chapter 69. Remember when Shigaraki point blank told him that All Might's smile is stupid because he acts like there's no one he can't save? And it's clearly full of resentment? And Deku picked up on this, which is why next chapter he asks All Might if it's true there are times where All Might couldn't save someone.
But once Tsukauchi said, don't worry about it, Deku did just that. When he does think about it one time, it's this absolutely nothing of a reflection
"I guess we just have to agree to disagree!" Come on. And this kid has a 'drive to save that eclipses all common understanding'??? for real?????
Deku has never given a crap about Shigaraki or Villains. Honestly, him wanting to save that sad little boy might as well be just Horikoshi putting lines in his mouth to move the story along.
If Deku really did care, I think he would've wanted to save the entire person that is Shigaraki. The Crying Child is a phantom - Shigaraki is real and solid and there. The Crying Child is innocent and easy to care about because it's a cute baby and it's openly weepy; saving hand-monster junji ito twink Shigaraki who laughs and talks about destroying everything Deku loves would've been an actual challenge. But clearly we couldn't have that because even the Crying Child was too far gone for Deku to save.
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Guys...I think Whit is the culprit.
Sorry guys this is gonna be a long one
You know I'm a big believe of Whit mastermind theory and depending on how the trial goes he could still be the mastermind despite being the culprit but uhm...
Mf has like an 80 pourcent chance of being the culprit
My theory of Levi being the culprit kinda has went down the drain though i'm not really that upset about it because it was admitidely the most generic route.
I still do not buy for a second Eden is the culprit mainly because it contradicts a lot of her behaviors and also is only really based on one piece of evidence that could be explained by something else.
I think the most credible option to me right now, is Whit, especially because with how certain things are laid out for us we can actually make out a concrete motive for why Whit would do this.
I'm gonna write down what I think and explain why I believe Whit is most likely the culprit (also i'll deal with a couple of holes and explain why the theory still works alongside them) and also i'll use a couple of speculations made by other people as well
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I think it's known by everyone that the way Whit's secret was revealed is extremely strange, for like two reasons.
One, it means that it's impossible for anyone (including Whit himself, we'll get into that later) to have known what Whit's secret was, or to confirm it with certainty in the trial. We only have Whit's word for it.
Second, Whit takes a very strange amount of time until saying what secret he has, like right after Hu denied to say which secret she has. Which is extremely weird because if his life was so uneventful wouldn't he have managed to pick out a secret as blatant as this.
I thought this would be meant as a red herring to put suspicions on Whit however with Levi revealing his secret and this loose thread still not being addressed, I think it has to be important to the case at hand.
Now, despite people pointing this out every analysis that tries to handle this kinda goes into a brick wall because it immediatly assumes that Whit is lying about the dead mother secret being his. However there's too much pointing towards Whit having the dead mom secret.
No, I think we're going about this the wrong way. It's not about us not knowing what Whit's secret was, it's that Whit had no idea what secret actually was his
In fact that's mentionned before trial on how Whit just didn't know WHAT his secret even was, and no one could really tell him what it was because Rose threw it away
But that's weird right ? You would think Whit would know that his dead mother would be the likely secret, you could argue he just didn't want to share with everyone but that still doesn't explain the strange amount of time until he revealed he had Rose's secret.
And if he didn't want to share that his mom was dead, why did he let everyone the opportunity to say if they had his secret and to spill the beans...
Unless things are more complicated than just Whit having a dead mom, after all if it was just that wouldn't he have known immediatly that was his secret ? After all Teruko had the same issue as well as she didn't know what her secret could actually even be.
You could argue that I put my back against the wall here. If Whit not knowing his secret was his motive as to why he commited the murder then why did he let a bunch of people the opportunity to air out a potentially incriminating secret. Wouldn't that mean he wasn't worried about it ?
However, you have to keep in mind Whit had no idea how bad the secrets were, the only secrets that was revealed was J's which in retrospect of other secrets seemed like a much lighter one.
You could argue "Well Whit had David's secret which was pretty bad" however despite how bad that secret was it was also very vague and since Whit didn't know how much about David it doesn't really mean much on how deep the secrets were.
Considering Whit's personality as well, it was possible he was in denial or some deeper reason as to why he wasn't thinking about it. "Bitter things need to go down the drain" and all that.
In fact Whit was one of the first ones to say they shouldn't reveal their secret before J's secret was immediatly revealed.
I also don't think Whit being in denial has to be rooted in logic either (especially with how inconcistent he seems to be about the secrets), the murder was commited right before the deadline and although there was planning behind it, it was still a last minute decision (aka not done immediatly during the day of the motive reveal). You could argue pressure got to him or he overthought it as it became increasingly clear how much deeper the secrets went and how much the people who set this game up knew about them (something Whit investigated himself).
I think the way Whit acted about the secrets is too contradictory to really use any of what he says as actual evidence against the secrets not being his motive basically.
Now, let's go into the other point and how it works with the potential motive, the speculation that Arei was waterboarded.
Yeah, this seems to hint heavily that this is what happened and Arei's actual cause of death would be by drowning instead of strangulation like expected.
But why not strangulation ?? Why do a technique that is much harder to kill Arei, unless they were trying to get something out of drowning her. I mean we don't technically know if it was actual waterboarding but considering how planned this murder was and how we do actually have pieces of clothing that would serve for waterboarding, it seems to be likely.
(I'm not exactly sure how it stuck together with the starch afterwards but considering how the playground's ventilation works it's possible it dried up quickly) (There's also Arei's missing glove if you don't believe Teruko and Hu's clothing where used for it)
There's also no reason to drown her instead of strangling her with the rope unless there was another justification for it. But the episode actively goes out of it's way to say that there probably wasn't an attempt at tricking people into thinking the murder happened during 7:30 PM.
Anyways, why would the culprit waterboard Arei then ??? Clearly this means they were trying to get information out of her...
Which makes 0 sense unless it was Whit who would at least have a small justification for it, aka him not knowing what his secret is. I do admit it is a bit blurry on what type of information Whit would've truly wanted or why he did this before just killing her. However out of anyone (that already isn't pretty much confirmed innocent) it would only make sense for it to be him.
Now onto other stuff unrelated to the secret thing, like how unhelpful Whit has been this trial to a suspicious degree. AKA :
-Trying to distract away from the letter framing Eden and then just throwing her under the bus immediatly when he's questioned about it.
-Refusing to reveal David's secret
-Coincidentally having an excuse for not seeing Arei's body swaying
Now all of these could be argued to be in character reasons, after all didn't he do something like that chapter 1 with Charles (kind of). However this is a new level of trial interferance that really isn't justifiable at a certain point.
You could argue "well wouldn't talking about the note and David's secret be useful to make them seem guilty"' and while that'd be right to an extent. However everytime Whit witholds something like with Eden and David, he seems to cave eventually so the only thing he has achieved in this trial so far is to stall for time. Which could potentially be intentional if he's the culprit.
Now that I've kinda covered the major points, here are a list of suspicious things, mostly things that Whit knew before I get to my final point (how this would fit the narrative this chapter).
(I do wanna say most of this things isn't technically necessary info that the culprit needed to know but it definitely helps).
Whit was present during Teruko and Hu changing, meaning he would have known about their old clothes and could have found out where to get them.
Whit was present during the fight in the cafeteria, which is when Arei demanded to have her rope thrown away leading to Mono-TV putting it in storage
(Eden was busy helping J and Arturo so only Teruko, Charles and Whit could've known this information by listening in)
Whit also is the reason David is in the relaxation room leading to his conversation with Arei although idk how much of that would even possibly be planned or how that would help him, still important to note though.
There is probably more I could say however I want to get to my last point, I do think Whit being the culprit fits this case more than anyone else.
I know the question of the tape is still unanswered, if Eden did take it wouldn't that mean she is the culprit ? Well I don't think so but overall I just don't think this one singular piece of evidence is enough to say Eden's the culprit especially if we look at the bigger picture.
I'm probably just repeating the same things people probably have heard already but Eden committing such a gruesome murder for pratically no motive at all (outside getting out but it would make the secret motive useless) just doesn't really make sense.
However it is true that from what the title of this chapter suggests "all that glitters (is not gold)", it would mean a character isn't as innocent/good as they seem.
But wouldn't that title make more sense with Whit ?
Eden and Whit both are seemingly the positive vibes character of the cast, both being seemingly "normal". However Whit's positivity is a lot more toxic than Eden's, cracking jokes at innapropriate time and seeming to not let himself show even negative emotions (contrary to Eden who has let herself be upset multiple times).
Narratively speaking, Whit being the culprit, would put Charles in a similar situation to Teruko perhaps deepening their bond further without having Teruko going through a regression arc (she was way closer to Eden than she was with Whit).
It would allow Eden's message to not be lost/contradicted while also going with the apparent theme of the chapter that things aren't as they seem.
And also "all that glitters is not gold" would be a very smart saying for Whit, the one who died his hair blond (would be a very fun double meaning)
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