"Come Watch." "I Won't Forget." "I Better See You!"

My Hero Academia is the first series ever where the main character get throw in the sideline so much he is not the main character anymore for another character. Like holy shit wtf man. I am still struggling to understand the ending despite rereading the entire time. There are rushed endings but my god at least the author in rushed endings do give him some of respect to main character. In MHA, it is nothing

When it comes to shonen anime and manga (i say shonen because that's where i have seen, it mainly happen tbh)

Heck, this is a common thing to the point that there are YouTube videos based on showing it. Take, for example, this👇.

In this case, you kinda get the obvious, which is the main character : izuku midoriya and the one who stole the show : katauki bakugo.

See here is the thing a lot of the time mangakas due to the competitive and toxic industry they are in will prirotise and parade the fan favourite character as that's what gets them money. While you can argue that this may not be true for every series, you have to admit that it's weird that just right after bakugo started getting popular after the sports festival arc he also ended up getting a lot more screentime and that in my own opinion is due to the money that bakugo can bring into the series.

Now add this and combine it with the fact that horikoshi has stated that his favourite character is also bakugo katuski, and then you get well a certain mixture (unpleasent to say the least)

Due to this combination, the focus of the story shifting to bakugo makes sense while izuku becomes an accessory piece to the story that the author uses to vaguely delve into the intracies he built in his story.

I wasn't particularly surprised by the ending as the treatment of the izukus character and the way the stories themes were being handled were already quite poor from the beginning of the bakugo vs. izuku 2.0 fight, meaning that my expectations were low.

There are various posts talking about the characters' assassination that izuku has been through, and honestly, I agree heck I was one of them.

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"Deku is written like a goddamn side character": My Hero Academia Ruined Deku's Character that a Decade Long Run Should Have Saved and Perfe

Someone, please save Izuku. FandomWire released an article about how Horikoshi enjoyed working on Bakugou more than Izuku. 🥲🥲🥲 The only way

MHA is like those webtoons where the kids are always fighting and it's just like "where are the adults??" (like Weak Hero) except the adults are right there and just doing basically nothing.

How appropriate.

Something silly I drew just to learn how to draw these guys. Or, just learn how to draw 😭…

It is crazy how much Nicki hates literally any woman that is blowing up in rap. Holy hell.

When KIBUTSUJI MUZAN had the GOATED villain entrance in anime history.

💠 here and I just realized something about mha’s narrative is that these kids have no down time whatsoever. Like the narrative gives them no time to breathe, it’s always something that fowards the narrative. They want to go to the mall? Boom! Shigaraki has to be there. Training camp to be better heroes? Let’s just have one of these kids get kidnapped and let 5 other kids rescue him at the downfall of a mentor. Not to mention THE ENTIRE WAR ARC BECAUSE THESE ARE STILL FIRST YEARS (iirc on the timeline that they were first years during war arc). While I get why the writing is like this, shonen jump could've cancelled it at any moment, it just kinda rushes everything and leaves most of the cast to be bland/forgettable (most of 1-A) if not outright have their writing thrown in the trash (I still will not forgive them for throwing the Tenya and Ochaco dynamic with Izuku away).

Like the most they get is the sports festival, some of the training camp arc before it gets thrown out, the cultural festival and maybe the internships but Tsuyu is the only one shown to get a reasonable break in the anime exclusive episodes.

Like let me see Momo trying “commoner’s food”/street food for the first time and seeing how hard people work on the streets, let them having a day to go back to the beach Izuku cleaned up (because I don’t think they ever mentioned it after the early series), or a day where they all talk about updating their hero costumes or Izuku mentioning things about their quirks (kinda like how you were sprinkling in for the rewrite). Just GIVE THEM AND THE STORY SOME DOWN TIME AND LET THE CHARACTERS DEVELOP AGH.

NAH BUT LIKE FOR REAL!?!?

People can say what they want about filler or the obligatory beach episodes, but they were great! Just seeing these characters having fun, seeing how they act outside of high-tension, high-stake scenarios.

Who organises hang-outs? Who comes thirty minutes early, who comes an hour late, (totally not me, sorry guys), who always brings painkillers or lip balm or plasters/bandages? Who brings out a deck of cards, who cheats, whose poker face is terrible, who loses every game?

It's great seeing characters, especially teenagers, act their age. Not only does it serve to make the bonds between them feel a bit more real, a bit more strong, but it also allowed the audience to get attached to them properly.

See, I don't have an issue with Tomura showing up at the mall episode. I would have just liked to see the kids actually have fun before the sprinkle of plot development.

Show me Momo or Tenya or Shouto buying that trinket Ochako kept staring at but couldn't afford. Show me Mina beating everyone on DDR, and Tooru trying to compete like a fool. Show me Izuku or Mezou nearly breaking the punching machine. Show me Denki or Hanta making Momo and Shouto try crappy fast food and them actually enjoying it.

The timeline of MHA is ridiculous. Like, pace yourself please?? At least, show me what the kids get up to in the spring, summer, and winter breaks.

Downtime and breaks are extremely important, even in plot-heavy works. It's not just the characters who need a break, but the readers too. It gets exhausting reading about all this tragic stuff, maybe a gag here or there.

I guess Horikoshi may have been afraid that the momentum would be killed, but curbing momentum is what makes final acts feel so grand!

To compare it to a song or a musical number, you never want the score to feel stagnant. If a songs starts slow, the end will be all-out, only going down at the very end. See: It's All Coming Back To Me Now. Starts slow, ends with a massive note, and Celine Dion is joined by other vocals.

If a song starts high and up-beat, what composers will do is drop the melody, either cutting out the vocals or the beat, then let it all go out. Like... Uptown Funk with the toned-down bridge, segwaying into a powerful ending.

Stories work in the same way.

If you continuously build that momentum, without a break, it's going to peak early and feel stagnant the longer it goes. Horikoshi refused to give characters more than a chapter to settle down, and it made it all feel so same-y.

That's part of the reason by the ending of the Final War doesn't feel impactful at all. You're not left thinking, 'wow'. You're thinking, 'finally'.

Goodness gracious

post-canon senjuro being a lot taller than kyojuro gives me LIFE. akaza stay mad about it 🙄

did i crop the feet out bc i hate drawing feet maybe i did

The Greatest Boy In The World: Izuku Midoirya

This was originally part of a discussion I was having with @mikeellee but it got huge so this became its own thing. When I call Izuku privileged, I meant from multiple levels.

We've got our viewpoint, where we see beyond what the narrative shows us: a bunch of fake friends, an abusive rival, shoddy mentors, a school that failed him constantly.

Then there's what the narrative tells us: 1-A as a family, Bakugo as his best friend, him liking Aizawa, Nighteye, All Might and so on, and apparently Izuku's issues being something he himself needed to work on and not something that an educational facility should have been able to help him fix.

But here's why I say it.

What does Izuku actually lose across the story? Every single situation meant to bring tension and danger turns out to not come to pass, or gets walked back right away.

His teacher is a hard ass who seems to have it out for him? Well, no, Aizawa cools off entirely and is just there to be a grumpy toothless dragon. His bark is far worse than his bite. He'll make constant threats but never act on any of them.

Izuku is fresh to using his quirk and his classmates are all ahead of him? No, Izuku actually does way better than the majority of these loser kids and only actually lost to Shoto because, 1, he decided to sacrifice his win to taunt Shoto into using fire, and 2, bad luck.

Izuku's arms are in serious danger and breaking them could ruin their use for good? Nothing ever becomes of this. He breaks both arms against Muscular, uses a primarily kick based fighting style, then goes ham against Shigaraki during the first war arc. They reveal that, no, actually, OFA adapted to his body and prevents him from getting hurt so badly anymore and it prevents permanent damage.

He then loses his arms in the most nonsensical way possible, via a dream sequence? Only to have Eri mutilate herself (how did she know she could do that, how did they know it would work, why was she allowed and helped by Ectoplasm to do this?) and walk it back right away. His arms are restored so he can punch Shigaraki apart with the embers of OFA.

Losing his arms was completely meaningless and was done entirely for shock value.

Izuku's habit of going plus ultra is dangerous and people warn him it'll end poorly? Actually, no. Every single time he's gone plus ultra, he's saved a life or it worked out for him in the end. He scarred up his arms fighting Shoto, just for this to lead to Shoto coming to his and Iida's rescue in Hosu. He fought Gentle and La Brava and got criticism for it, but that turned out to be one of the best decisions he ever made, because they came back to save EVERYONE in the final war arc. He risks his life to save Bakugo and gets yelled at by the pro heroes, and then All Might decides he's his new successor and tells him he's worthy. He kept poking at Kota who just wanted to be left alone? He's in a prime location to save this little boy's life.

The only negative outcome of his reckless habit of going plus ultra was him losing to Dictator, who is then near instantly defeated by his classmates who happened to show up just in time to save him.

When you compare this guy to other shonen mcs and just look at the end results, what did Izuku lose?

He lost his quirk, but according to Izuku, he never really was all that serious about being a hero and always wanted to be a teacher. Regardless of if he lost his quirk or not.

Oh, but then his friends gave him an ironman suit anyways so he can do hero work when he's not being a teacher.

He gets a pity shonen hetero relationship, as one does in this genre.

He's known as the greatest hero who inspired the entire world to be more kind.

He didn't lose a single friend. None of his mentors died, besides Nighteye who was killed in the same arc he was introduced in. And I guess Midnight?

He's also never lost a real fight. Besides school games and the fight with Bakugo, what Ls has this guy ever taken? He either beats his enemy, an ally comes to his rescue and wins, or the enemy flees.

Even the abysmal 8 year timeskip was another of the author's fakeouts. He makes you believe that Izuku gave up on his dream and is no longer a hero, that he's super sad he doesn't get to see them as often, then his friends arrive to give him a handout just as All Might did all those years ago. What was originally meant to be the final chapter ends with Midoriya leaping into action with all his friends.

The author uses negative events and dumps on this guy to make you feel sorry for him and to make him seem like an underdog. Even his backstory is just that: a Cinderella story to get you to like him.

The author just walked the ending back because of fan backlash.

So rather than being a guy who doesn't try and needed his friends to even be a hero again without a quirk, he's a guy who only wants to play hero on the weekends.

Compare this to other Shonen MCs. Naruto at least lost his mentor and had his friend Neji die. Luffy lost his brother and has also lost multiple people across his journey who helped him, Pedro being one of them. There's also Jujutsu Kaisen which is absolutely excessive with how much it torments Yuji, but boy does that guy suffer for his victories.

Does Izuku even actually have any personality flaws? His flaw is that he's too heroic and he's too self sacrificing. But that's like saying he's too awesome.

People just act like the muttering is creepy and he's a loser for being a hero nerd, but what actual impact does that have on anything in his life? He still gets the friends, the fame, and the girl.

At no point is he ever socially isolated once he gets to UA nor is he seen as one of the weird or lame kids or anything like that. He's the heart of the class. The only person who ever dislikes him are people the narrative specifically frames as antagonists or mentors whose respect he has to earn, and Bakugo.

Even his dark hero arc where he left his friends to go out and become a hero…completely fucks up the moral because many characters would be DEAD if he hadn't left school to go save people.

The giant lady? Dead via a hate crime. Yo Shindo, his girlfriend, and the civilians they were protecting? Dead at Muscular's hands. All of All For One's assassins he sent after Izuku? Would still be at large and in AFO's pocket for the final war arc.

The numerous villains Deku beat down in defense of citizens? Still rampaging. Still killing people.

His friends left the ivory tower of UA to bitch at Izuku for saving lives and isolating himself while the narrative ignores this very real fact.

Hell, Lady Nagant wouldn't have been redeemed if he didn't do that. A world where he stayed at UA is an objectively worse off universe.

You see what I mean? Even when he does wrong, it ends up right.

Has Izuku ever actually make a mistake or choice in this story that wasn't rewarded or shown later to be the right one?

No.

He's a paragon of morality and good who the narrative warps reality around to ensure his actions have no lasting consequences for anyone.

Think about it. Let's take a look at how he said he'd save Shigaraki and didn't. What consequences came of that? Nothing. Spinner got mad at him for a few seconds and then Izuku talks him down and the guy decides to write a book.

Did heroes take Izuku's example of killing being a way to save people and use that to justify killing villains who don't surrender? No.

Was Izuku's triumph used by bad actors who wanted to push an agenda that would oppress more people and eventually create more people like the League? No.

Is there some threat out there that could have been handled by the power of One For All but couldn't be because the quirk is gone? No.

The world is actually more peaceful than it's ever been! Meaning even if Izuku kept his power, he'd probably be out of a job soon. Allegedly.

Did the death of Shigaraki, leader of the PLF, trigger second and third waves of terrorism from his followers who escaped capture? Did society have to face the backlash of this and it complicated the efforts to rebuild? No, the MLA might as well not have even existed.

Nothing happens. Deku just sometimes thinks back to Shigaraki while he enjoys what he claims is his dream job.

So that's my reasoning. He's simultaneously privileged but also gets shit on. His life sucks, but it's also awesome. His actions are dangerous and reckless, but they save lives and always result in a positive outcome.

I'd actually argue that the author dumping on Izuku is meant to portray him as a false underdog so you don't notice his other qualities. And of course, because he doesn't like the guy, but we already know that.