#this isn't to take away from the bs happening with mva in the anime

[mettywiththenotes]

Bakugou and The Cuts

Okay so I absolutely agree that Bones is just so stupid for cutting out the League’s important moments, it sucks. BUT this isn’t the first time they’ve done this

While, yes, Bakugou’s cut scenes aren’t the same as the League’s, there are a couple of moments that piss me off where there is just a lack of context. A lack of context which really doesn’t build Bakugou’s development up well

First we have this scene in the second PL exam with Bakugou and Todoroki. In the manga, we see this

Bakugou insists that violence is the way to teach the kids a lesson, since that’s how he was raised. Shouto counters this with “There’s a better way of doing things.”

Bakugou REMEMBERS the Sports Festival and the conversation between Izuku and Shouto. He remembers the very topic of that convo: Shouto’s abuse and his scar.

He then realizes “Oh shit I fucked up” and lets Shouto take over, insists that he show him how he does things, in a very Bakugou fashion.

This moment was meant to show the significance of that moment in the Sports Festival, it was meant to directly link back to it so we’d see what Bakugou thinks of Shouto’s situation. Here, we are shown that he’s respectful of Shouto’s trauma, that he now realizes he shouldn’t have insisted that “violence was the answer” and that IN A SINGLE INSTANT he’s willing to change his mind and fix the situation. It showed Bakugou’s compassion and care

He doesn’t mention the abuse like “Oh shit sorry Todoroki I forgot you were abused”, he doesn’t call out WHY it was wrong of him to say it (because then that would be outing Shouto’s situation without his consent). He realizes his mistake and fixes it, allowing for Shouto to show what he means instead of forcing him to do things the Bakugou Way

This is an incredibly important moment. Not only does it show that he’s willing to give the reigns to someone else sometimes, it shows that Bakugou is capable of being compassionate, he’s capable of understanding and being respectful. This little moment holds so much to Bakugou’s character and that’s why I love it

Whereas when this scene was done in the anime...

There’s no reference to the Sports Festival Scene. There’s not even a little bit of a “oh I just realized something but I won’t show you what it was” moment. Here, it looks like Bakugou just wanted to get a rise out of Shouto in a competition way

As if he’s saying “Oh you think you’re better than me? Then why don’t you show us how it’s done, hotshot!”

While this does show that Bakugou is willing to let others take control sometimes, the point of this scene was also to illustrate how Bakugou remembers things. He remembers important information, not just basic info but personal info, and he’s willing to take all these factors into account in order to make a complete victory

I know that when I watched the anime (the first time I got into the series before reading the manga), I watched the Sports Festival convo, saw Bakugou listening in and thought “Oh, this is going to be relevant at some point. Cool!”

And it was. It was brought up again in the manga and I was so happy because then that scene of Bakugou listening in had significance. It was so good and it showed so much about how Bakugou’s mind works. It was so wonderful to see

I guess, if you’re an anime-only, you could use your brain and eventually figure out that the reason Bakugou let Shouto take control was because of his knowledge of the abuse but... there’s no indication to that moment. There’s no surprise or epiphany expression. There’s nothing to show you that Bakugou remembers

In fact, as an anime-only, you could look at this moment and say “That’s so inconsiderate of him not to remember Shouto’s abuse! He was there for that convo! Why didn’t he remember? What an asshole! And, oh yeah here we go, he’s sizing him up and trying to provoke Shouto again😒”

Which is the wrong reaction to have. Because that didn’t even happen. Bones just decided to erase that special thought-provoking moment and settle for “Haha Bakugou hothead moment”, and it gives off the wrong impression. It doesn’t give you the realization you’re supposed to have when looking at Bakugou’s character, and that’s what pisses me off

Another moment is the scene after Bakugou’s team wins against the 1B team in the Joint Arc. In the manga, we see this

Izuku calls his nickname, all happy to see that he won, and Bakugou yells at him. This, as we can see, is a reflex, because we see the sfx next to Bakugou himself. Izuku gives a meek reply to the yelling

This is such a relevant scene. Arguably, it is the most important to fully understanding how he interacts with Izuku. The Reflex sfx is to show that, while Bakugou is still at the point in his relationship with Izuku where they are still rocky, his outburst wasn’t intentional. It was a reflex because of 1) how he’s always acted with Izuku like this, so it’s just muscle memory to lash out like he always has and 2) Bakugou doesn’t know what to do with positive feedback and compliments. We literally just saw All Might compliment Bakugou and he walked away rubbing the back of his neck, saying a quip under his breath

In Bakugou’s arc, we’ve seen him be considerate to Shouto and his history with abuse. We knew that he was caring and respectful thanks to that. And when this scene came up of Bakugou yelling at Izuku like he always has, but this time with the Reflex sfx, that’s what lets us know that Bakugou didn’t mean to do it

It’s that connection from “caring” “respectful” to “he didn’t mean to do it”. You gather this information about Bakugou and it allows you to get a grasp on who he is as a person

It makes you wonder if it wasn’t a reflex, would Bakugou have done something else? Would he have said what he said after this Reflex scene and had that back and forth with Izuku a second earlier?

Would he have jumped straight into challenging him?

The Reflex sfx speaks volumes of Bakugou’s character. I consider this an important scene because it gives you more information about Bakugou and his mindset, how hard it is to recalibrate how you’ve always acted to someone

Whereas in the anime...

No Reflex sfx. Which wouldn’t be a big deal if the anime had decided not to animate most of the sfx’s from this arc... *inhales*

EXCEPT THEY DID DECIDE TO DO THAT. THEY ANIMATED MOST OF THE SFX’S APART FROM THIS ONE.

Here, it just looks like Bakugou is once again being his old “I’m better than you so shut up” self. Which is a repeating thing Bones likes to show

As an anime-only, you do have the info of Bakugou meeting up with Izuku and All Might before his match and him challenging Izuku softly, you do have the knowledge that Bakugou was thinking “Just watch me” about Izuku, but it sucks that you don’t get that very obvious moment of Bakugou yelling at him being a reflex. It’s in your face, in text, and you just can’t ignore it

Taking away or adding the sfx in changes the scene’s context. Taking it away shows Bakugou as The Bully, while adding it in shows a different side of him

It was around about this time in the manga where I think Bakugou was considering his actions and what he had done (I mean, that already shows in how much Bakugou had calmed down when challenging Izuku softly in comparison to the past), so to have this moment that makes the viewer think “Wait, it was a reflex? He didn’t mean to insult him? Did he not want to yell at him?” to just cutting it out and giving us standard Bakugou Yell And Insult Deku is really... frustrating

When I look back on the anime, I can see them cutting out scenes like this as them deciding that the audience already has enough information to know that Bakugou is changing, but

1) PL Exam moment was important. It connected directly with the Sports Festival conversation and showed the consequence of Bakugou listening in - that he took the information into account and decided to quietly change how he acted

And 2) Joint Arc moment was to show that Bakugou acts this way mostly because he doesn’t know how to act around Izuku (because he’s always done it this way), and that it’s likely muscle memory to spit out insults or yell when he sees him

These scenes are the information that anime-only’s need in order to grasp him as a character

When I think about the possible reasons as to why they cut the moments out, studio-wise, I kind of lean to animation budget issues with what to animate and what not to. Though, in the case of these scenes

1) PL Exam moment is literally just a flashback moment. You know, the kind that Bones have been using excessively in the Internship Arc? This could probably be down to time limit in the episode, that they didn’t have enough time to add it in, buuuuut nothing to do with animation budget (to my knowledge) and it still annoys me

2) Joint Arc moment was filled with useless sfx’s all over the place. While they are fun to see, they also have no meaning other than to announce a super move (which we don’t necessarily need in order to know what is happening), whereas Bakugou’s Reflex sfx does have meaning

I know we’ve all talked about how Bones’ handling of MVA being stupid and dumb, but this isn’t the first time they’ve cut development scenes out. From memory, they haven’t done this to any other Hero character except Bakugou. It just kind of... says a lot about who they prioritize and how they treat him

These are just missing moments that irked me personally. I haven’t seen anybody else talk about it, but with everyone currently talking about how Bones fucked up with cutting out necessary development moments in MVA, I thought this was relevant