My Hero Academia

That's just how sdsaa posts.

Different topic, but I think I see many western readers get way more hung up about the fact that Hawks killed Twice than Japanese readers. To be precise, that him killing Twice shows the critical flaw of his character and/or that there SHOULD be heavy consequences for that kill for the story to make any sense. Or just straight up calling him murderer.

I could be wrong, but is this maybe sort of a backlash from police brutality problems in US? When I hear "heroes don't kill, they capture" I think "Yeah sure. Like cops, right?" I take that statement to mean that heroes should always aim for capture when that's feasible, and if they end up using lethal force there better be damn good explanation for that. But it seems that some people take the statement to mean that there should be NO deaths happening at the heroes' hands, at all, and if a hero does intentionally kill that's no different from any random murder. So I've been trying to understand why people would stick to that extremely strict standard. Maybe they lost faith in the realistic "capture if feasible, kill if absolutely necessary" standard because the real life police, who should be operating under that standard, is wracking up way too many unwarranted kills?

Edited by heejung on Feb 26th 2021 at 10:20:52 PM

You hit the nail on the head.

it's still weird though, because even if we assume "hero" = "cops" is valid, and that cops in real life often kill without proper reason and get away with (on that point I do agree, don't get me wrong) calling Hawks a murder still doesn't make sense given the actual context of everything surrounding Twice's death.

I've always find people's thought on the killing policy in this series weird. It always seemed natural to me to assume it's "only kill as an absolute last resort" because that seems like the natural response for people in the heroes position. But the story hasn't explicitly said that, and so it takes hits from both extremes - you have the people who claim heroes being willing to kill under any circumstance means they're monsters, and you have the people claiming the heroes and the story are idiots because they don't immediately try and kill every villain.

Edited by LSBK on Sep 2nd 2021 at 3:50:30 AM

I definitely think that is a reason, real life stuff like police brutality and medical workers suffering burnout are definitely something people think about and see applicable scenarios in fiction; but another one is that we (the audience) have seen far more of Twice, and for much longer, than we have of Hawks. We saw Twice undergo his requisite "I gotta get stronger to save my friend" Shonen moment, we saw him befriend the various villains (and Hawks), we saw him grieve for Magne: we grew to like the guy.

Even if we recognize the fact he's part of a terrorist organization, we still feel this sense of pity that his life had spiral downed to this point. That he was left forgotten and abandoned by society to the point he latched onto the L.O.V. as his only human connections.

Plus Dabi's callous reactions to Twice's death stung all that much more.

If Hawks had capped off someone completely unsympathetic like Moonfish, or Muscular, or any of the thugs that invaded UA the first time and came back for round two, people would still care, but I don't think as many would.

The weird paradox of character death - if you kill anyone you can expect the audience to actually like/feel something for they'll complain about you wasting the character, but if it's not someone they'd feel for they say it's a copout and doesn't matter.

Exactly how I feel about all the heroes that died in the War Arc not named Midnight. They had no character to them and may as well have been a bunch of Red Shirt characters, meaning the only reason they were killed was just for the sake of having a body count. And while I still feel the series absolutely wasted the potential Midnight had, I will at least admit her death had some form of impact by virtue of being a recurring character that was likeable. Probably would have been better if Gran Torino bit it too.

I was actually surprised Gran Torino survived this time, because it felt like an appropriate occasion for him to die. He sits right on that sweet spot of "having enough character building to kill off for good impact but not too important to kill off". And he was attacked by Shigaraki, who he has indirect connection to, and even had a flashback to the root moment that led to Shigaraki's tragedy. So I was kinda expecting him to die here... but since he didn't, I guess that means Horikoshi has something more left for him to do.

Edited by heejung on Feb 27th 2021 at 1:10:06 AM

I still wouldn't be surprised if he dies after a heartfelt conversation the same way Nighteye did. I'm not assuming that'll happen, but I haven't completely removed it as a possibility.

Speaking of other things, it's been brought up so I imagine we're actually going to see the press conference or whatever about Endeavor's statement regarding Dabi and everything he said.

I can't imagine Dabi's going to like what he sees and hears from that.

Gran Torino becomes the Reiner of Hero Academia.

Not even wanting to die will get him killed.

Oh, pretty cool attention to detail that Failed to notice.

Dabi is the only one who knew his fire was Blue; he "died" before he could show it to anyone else, which actually goes about explaining why nobody recognized him.

Edited by BlackYakuzu94 on Feb 26th 2021 at 1:10:26 PM

Oh. I never thought of that.

I picked up on that. Horikoshi colors blue flames different from normal ones, and he wasn't doing that throughout most of the flashback.

But a lot of people don't seem to notice that detail.

It is a pretty subtle one.

New trailer.

I honestly think the JTA will be well received by anime-onlies. The reason why the arc was regarded with disdain was because of the incredibly short chapters released weekly which then made the arc feel longer than it actually is.

I would have to agree with that. I've only just caught up with the manga and read that entire arc in a single evening. I thought it was awesome.

It also got flack for being "filler" because some people use the term filler to mean any content that isn't personally catering to their interests at the moment. But there's nothing you can do about that.

I do think the medium has a lot to do it with it; some people just prefer watching things animated as opposed to static images. There's also more content covered per episode as opposed to getting a chapter every week.

Hey! Look everybody!

It's Midnight!

Isn't that great?

......yes, I am an asshole. Why do you ask?

Edited by HandsomeRob on Feb 27th 2021 at 3:33:14 PM

The filler thing is just an extreme overreaction to how filler often has fluff content, but now people seem just allergic to anything not immediately relevant to the main plot.

x6 the trailer definitely has me interested. Looks like we'll get some quality adaptation even in places you wouldn't expect. Should be very fun, can't wait.

Edited by devak on Feb 27th 2021 at 4:40:45 PM

Hopefully the next generation give those complaints a rest.

(Funny thing is, a sort of rivalry seems to be growing between fans of Shounen and fans of Slice of Life, the latter of which has basically nothing besides filler. Makes me wonder if that has to do with anything)

It's kind of hard to call Slice of Life "filler" when it's meant to be the main content of work. That same content might be filler when transposed to a more plot-driven series though.

Yeah,hence why I call that.

There's not really much of a plot to speak of, the filler is the point.

Remind of those wojack comics of Shonen fans complaining about "filler" while Slice of Life fans are like "real shit?"

As I've gotten older, I've come to appreciate the slice of life "filler" bits injected into plot driven series. It lets us see who these characters are outside of fight scenes and gives both them and the audience a chance to breathe.