#this isn't even bakugou critical really this would be annoying regardless of what guy character's arc that was focused on here

[delawaredetroit]

Sigh. I understand that touching on misogyny would make sense in a story that routinely touches on structural inequalities. But when it's only really brought up directly in order to prop up the guy deuteragonist (who is inarguably one of the most privileged characters in this story), no one should be surprised that it leaves a bad taste in people's mouths.

I'm not arguing like some do that Horikoshi hates women. I think the people who say this haven't read a lot of shounen manga and haven't seen how bad it can really get. Because as far as male shounen authors go, Horikoshi is probably slightly better than average at writing women, maybe solid B- work. Which is insult enough in a manga that is thematically about going beyond expectations and all that.

What's frustrating is that Horikoshi has handled issues like this better in his prior work. In his oneshot Tenko, the main character, who in some ways is a proto-Izuku, is a girl named Hana who dreams of being a warrior in a world where only men can be warriors. At the very least, Hana is the focus of that storyline.

Why in the world is Bakugou's character development the central character of BNHA's misogyny plotline? Considering that Horikoshi has previously done better on this issue in the past, honestly this train wreck might be the fault of the Shounen Jump editors. Because I can easily see their logic: teen boys don't like talking about "girl problems" but our audience loves Bakugou so lets make this about him actually