My Hero Academia

It's harsh to think about, but would the family EXIST without Endeavour's obsession? Would he have had as many kids as he did?

Edited by GNinja on Dec 3rd 2019 at 3:30:46 PM

Probably not. Life's funny that way.

So, Dabi is the exact same height as Shoto. Which makes him slightly shorter than Natsuo and much shorter than Endeavor.

Kotaro's character profile is interesting: it lists his favorite things as all of his family members including Nana. The only other text says he only ever wanted his family to be happy.

That conversation was from a while back, but I think that pretty definitively quashes the idea that Kotaro was intended to be a Hate Sink. Now, your own personal feelings regarding him are an entirely different matter.

Edited by LSBK on Dec 3rd 2019 at 11:56:47 AM

Ah, so Kotaro is Helga Pitaki. It all makes sense now.

So Kotaro has a creepy shrine in his closet with a bubble-gum statue of Nana?

Well it most likely got dusted when Shiggy totaled the house.

...Helga isn't exactly the best person to draw comparisons to Kotaro (if you want to make him look better). She is sympathetic due to her family situation but still does a lot of unnecessarily abusive things at times.

Also the stalker shrine is straight up creepy. I know why it exists but it still is creepy.

Edited by Wispy on Dec 4th 2019 at 12:02:16 PM

Even better, Helga's shrine gets more and more elaborate throughout the series.

Who's Helga Pitaki?

Edited by slimcoder on Dec 4th 2019 at 12:22:33 PM

Shes from Hey Arnold. She's a interesting, sympathetic but very flawed character. Comes from a volatile family home situation (well more on the neglectful side of abuse) and lashes out due to that. Beats up people and insults them and so on. She got a massive hard on for Arnold, the main protag, because he is one of the very few people that treat her nicely. So massive that she created a literal stalker shrine too him. She's very sympathetic but really flawed. I can see some similarities between her and Kotaro

The main differences is Helga is a kiddo whom grew out of it I think by the time of movie and Kotaro is an adult whom seems to of refused to get help for his issues until it was far too late.

Edited by Wispy on Dec 4th 2019 at 12:33:59 PM

It's really not that hard to understand Kotaro guys. He thinks being a hero only leads to unhappiness due to what happened with Nana, so he wanted to get the idea out of his kids' minds by force if necessary.

By force

He could of told them what his problem was straight up and the end result would of been far better. I understand his problem but his way of dealing with it was fucking dumb.

He is not Hate Sink levels of bad though parenting wise. Nah that trophy remains to be Overhaul's.

At least Kotaro genuinely wanted what he thought was best for his kids even if they were misguided.

Overhaul straight up just used Eri for his own benefits with no consideration for her.

Overhaul is by far definitely the worse dad in the entire series.

Oh, I agree with that.

It wouldn't be so hard to sit Tenko and Nana and explain 'This is your grandmother. She was a hero, and she died for it. Her husband also got killed and she had to abandon her own son. So if you become heros you will only cause misery and grief for yourself and everyone you love'.

But instead he's like 'WE DON'T SPEAK OF THAT WOMAN IN THIS HOUSE HEROES ARE BAD REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!'

Its pretty clear that Kotaro never mentally nor emotionally grew past his issues with his mother with his behavior towards her still stuck to how he felt when he was a child.

This is why his treatment of her in the household is extremely juvenile.

Yeah the way he deals with his mommy issues is childish, more childish than his actual kids, because he just screams and rants instead of talking like an adult.

The fact his wife always comforted Tomura afterwards but he never did doesn't help either. Because talking to your kids properly is needed to have a functioning relationship.

Edited by OmegaRadiance on Dec 4th 2019 at 2:30:40 AM

The sad part is that's not too far from real life; especially nowadays with people coming out more with their personal issues on social media.

A lot of people can't or straight up won't seek help for any mental issues they have.

And that's especially true for a conservative and traditionalist country like Japan, where keeping your emotions contained is regarded more highly than coming out.

That's why Kotaro isn't a Hate Sink; he's literally a victim of circumstance and didn't try to change until it was too late. Everything he did was not out of malice or person gain, but because of his own personal hangups that he couldn't get over.

Edited by BlackYakuzu94 on Dec 4th 2019 at 5:35:49 AM

I consider him a tragic villain. He's the engineer of his own demise and he bears complete responsibility for the suffering he caused (because trauma or not, he's a freaking adult and a parent so he has no excuse for dumping his negative emotions on his children). At the same time, you can see the circumstances that made him what he is and you're not supposed to take pleasure or satisfaction in his demise (contrast with All for One, where his demise is/will be definitely a cathartic moment).

Edited by Cozzer on Dec 4th 2019 at 11:43:39 AM

How, in pray tell, is he a villain? Because a villain implies he has some type of evil plan or something.

Just call him a tragic figure and leave it at that instead of trying to paint him as something he isn't.

Probably "villain" isn't the right word. But as tragic as his situation is, he's still a bad person who was responsible for his actions. Depicting him as just a tragic figure feels as incorrect to me as depicting him as just a Hate Sink.

Edited by Cozzer on Dec 4th 2019 at 11:57:58 AM

I wouldn't call him the engineer of his own demise either (well, maybe the fact that Shigs chose to murder him in the end). Shigaraki's quirk awakening and going out of control wasn't really a logical consequence of his actions. I guess technically he caused it because it's more or less implied that it was result of Shigaraki's stress/anxiety/pent-up anger/hatred/etc, but that borders on Space Whale Aesop.

Like, Endeavor pulled worse crap and his family is still alive. Mostly.

Edited by WashTheLaundryHero on Dec 4th 2019 at 3:05:15 AM

A Hate Sink is a character that you're supposed to hate, period. If they have any other qualities that obfuscate their unlikable traits, then they are not a hate sink.

You're clearly supposed to pity Kotaro. If you personally hate him, cool. But the story is not saying "fuck this guy and whatever happened to him"

Because I'm not really comfortable with portraying a guy who clearly never got help for his issues as some irredeemable monster who deserved to be murdered by equally mentally unstable child.

Kotaro got killed just as he was having a Heel Realization. Maybe if Tenko's quirk hadn't manifested when it did they could have patched things up.

But he never got the chance.

One bad day made Kotaro realize he was wrong, and one worse day deprived him of the chance to ever improve. Just as one bad day awoke tenko's quirk and one worse day deprived him of rescue

Since Quirks can evolve/awaken based entirely on emotional states, and Tomuras awakened at his most broken from his dad getting physically abusive on top of having had a long time of feeling oppressed by a father who didn't really care about his sons dreams because of his own issues, does say it was his own actions that caused it. He pushed his son to the edge to make him, and his body, act like that.

And his son only actually enjoyed what he was doing when he uses violence on him once again. His child lashed out with violence because thats ultimately what Kotaro always showed him: Abuse, and not affection.

Its why Abusive Parents are a sore point For lots of folks: because even if they love their kids, that doesn't make them not be aweful parents who treat their kids horribly.

But acknowledging they love then is something I feel should be acknowledged despite this, because people then refuse to believe that someone can hurt you and still care about you.

Edited by OmegaRadiance on Dec 4th 2019 at 5:14:14 AM