My Hero Academia

Chapter 226:

Season 5 Episode 21: Do you see the problem in omitting the Quirk Counseling? When Curious brings it up, it's meant to preface the fact that it wasn't actually Toga choosing to do this, it was her having been conditioned by the counseling so that she would fit in with societal standards. It emphasizes how ultimately, Toga donned a mask because that's what she was forced to do to fit in society.

By removing the aspect of the Quirk Counseling, it instead changes the action of donning a mask. Instead of making it look like Toga was forced to change herself to fit in with society, it looks like she willingly changed herself to fit in, that she knew she didn't fit in and as such faked being happy. It also makes it look like the problem was Toga's Quirk, rather than her just being given crappy means of handling her urges.

One is everyone else denying her identity, the other is her denying her own identity. One is that society is what damned Toga, the other is that her Quirk is what damned her.

Just removing one detail can drastically change how it's meant to come across, and part of the MLA arc is how the LOV were ultimately people that society failed. But by removing the Quirk Counseling from Toga's origin, it no longer looks like society failed her, but rather that she was doomed from the start because of her Quirk.

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I have more sympathy for Curious than I do Toga to be honest. I don't think either one is a great person but Toga really creeps me out.

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Frankly, I just think I always interpreted that scene differently, then.

Toga was told to stop acting like that by everyone so she suppresed her real self and faked being the person everybody wanted her to be, until she couldn't handle it anymore and broke.(I think she even says something to that effect herself at some point?).

Quirk counseling is only really mentioned in passing, so I never took as the main thing in Toga's backstory, just something else that adds to the same theme of trying to force people to fit in.

And I do believe the quirk being the ultimate source of the issue is how it's supposed to be, because that's how it is with every character one way or the other.

Edited by WashTheLaundryHero on Aug 29th 2021 at 3:15:04 AM

I think I'm with Rebel on this. Toga's a particularly egregious case because there is nothing else like her backstory. Obviously, LOV members are extreme outliers failed by society in most spectacular a fashion, but the closest thing to her background is its direct opposite: Bakugo being praised by his closest environ as the best thing since sliced bread just because he got a winning Quirk.

Both created warped individuals due to how society saw them; the difference being, Bakugo could and did change for the better while this opportunity was denied to Toga. And like, imagine telling a five-year-old kid that they can't use their left hand because it's sinful or whatever. Obviously, "drinking blood from small animals" is not the same thing, but Toga's parents showcased a fundamental lack of empathy for their own kid and didn't do anything to help her with this obvious plight.

Just saying "oh, Toga was always evil because of her Quirk" might as well be followed by "oh, Touya was always going to take a swing at his infant brother" or "Tenko was always going to kill his family".

Big Grah

If the Quirks were supposed to be the issue, there'd be no point in the constant talking of society failing them, since while society can judge their Quirks, they can't change their Quirks. If the Quirks were meant to be the root cause of their issues, then Toga, Jin, and Spinner were damned the moment their Quirks awoke.

It's not the Quirks that's the issue though, it's society. The society where people will ignore a child clearly in need of help due to Holding Out for a Hero. The society that would drive someone to become a hikikomori for looking too little like the accepted norm for humans. The society were a man lost his parents to a villain attack, and then was forced on to the streets by a rich asshole clientele taking advantage of the fact he had a Face of a Thug. The society where people like Toga and Shinso are harshly judged for having Quirks that aren't part of the accepted norm, one called a devil child, the other called a potential villain. The society where the Number 1 was such an unreachable goal, it drove a man to obsession and caused him to become a monster and ruin his family, with his eldest son becoming an even worse monster.

Ever since the MLA arc, society and how it failed people or was a flawed one doomed to fail has been at the center of the themes.

Edited by RebelFalcon on Aug 29th 2021 at 6:39:12 AM

Vegeta: I'm back bitches!

That's not what I'm trying to argue here.

I didn't make myself clear, of course Toga wasn't inherent evil and society absolutely failed her, but the general theme of this story is society dealing with quirks specifically.

The actual disagreement here is how relevant quirk counseling in particular is to Toga's backstory.

'Society won't accept the real Toga and her blood fascination'. I think that always was the main point here.

Edited by WashTheLaundryHero on Aug 29th 2021 at 3:53:16 AM

And then Japan wonders why they have such a high suicide rate. If you can't even talk about society's problems in the context of fiction depicting an extreme case, you wind up with non-answers that leave people feeling trapped. Friday's episode of Let's Ask Shogo on You Tube points out how that attitude is pathological in modern society.

But then it becomes a question of "Could the society have accepted the real Toga and her blood fascination?", and it feels like the answer should be yes - if she had been given proper counseling and care.

That obviously didn't happen, and while it's easy to suspect Curious of sensationalizing the issue, Toga never denies any of it; society just failed her that hard.

Big Grah

Again, yes.

I'm just trying to say quirk counseling is not THE thing that made Toga supress herself, just one more thing pushing in that direction.

The quirk counselor was supremely important context that would have make the proper tie to the society’s viewpoint as a whole. Without that, the onus of Toga’s psychotic break is placed squarely on the shoulders of her and her family.

And yes, it should have been on her family to make sure she was getting proper mental healthcare, but showing that they got her improper healthcare would have gone a long way to not villainizing the metaphor for mental illness.

Edited by SalFishFin on Aug 29th 2021 at 5:15:43 AM

I just don't really agree with that. Because Curious still goes on to explain the viewpoint of society at large, and establishes that that was in fact the reason Toga put on a mask. The social issue is still there.

Sorry to distract from the conversation but who's backstory is that? I don't remember that for any member of the LOV.

I think Twice?

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I don't see the removal of quirk counseling bit as a big deal. The overall idea that the society made her suppress herself is still plenty apparent. Like, parents telling a child "why can't you just be normal" and the child masking her instincts and drives in response is NOT the child "choosing" to suppress herself.

As for why they cut it, I'm guessing they were looking for a section of Curious' speech to remove to make it shorter(long speeches are more awkward in anime than it is in manga+they are looking to compress the whole MVA arc in general) and they deemed the quirk counseling thing a branch that could be removed without breaking the remaining tree.

Edited by heejung on Aug 29th 2021 at 11:17:27 PM

I think the main issue that arises from omitting the mention of the counseling is that it changes the nature of the flaws in society that lead to Toga becoming who she is.

Without reference to that, it leaves in a sort of "out" for society in the form of, "Maybe if her parents had gotten her better treatment, she wouldn't have turned out that way." The problem with society is that she basically fell through the cracks and didn't get the support or treatment that she needed, and more importantly, framing it like that makes her transformation into a villain take place outside of any sort of official channels for dealing with this sort of thing.

Meanwhile, the manga shows that she did get treatment and it didn't help because said treatment was flawed and only makes things worse. She did everything that she was supposed to do and still got screwed over because the official policies for dealing with situations like hers are fundamentally flawed.

It's a subtle difference, but I think it's pretty important. In the anime, the issue seems to be "A solution for her situation exists, but she wasn't able to get it", while in the manga it's "The solution society presented her with not only doesn't work, but actually exacerbated the issue."

In the former case, society's official way of handling these things is fine and the application just needs to be improved. In the latter, society's official way of handling situations like Toga's isn't working at all and needs to be changed, and that's a much harder pill to swallow.

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Chapter 324:
An Uraraka chapter. This is her speech to the crowd of people opposed to Midoriya staying in UA. It. was. MOVING!

Edited by thuse on Aug 29th 2021 at 11:14:18 PM

Chapters out.

Prepare for tears.

Get yourself a woman that will yell at an angry mob for you.

The real Hero Academia were in fact, the friends we made along the way.

A lazy millennial who's good at what he does.

No, I want my fucking gold.

Yeeessss that chapter was great. I love how both the deer woman and Kota were incorporated into it as well. It did a great job of tying together a lot of bits from earlier in the series. I think the Title Drop was a little on the hokey side, but it still worked great.

Although she should be careful about making Izuku burst into tears, because if he does he might end up flooding the bunker.

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Is she a deer? I always thought she was some sort of shark-fox hybrid.

Edited by drakecake72 on Aug 29th 2021 at 9:15:38 AM

This is a series where hokey has a place from time to time

I'm pretty sure it's Ochako the one that's saying this is the story of how we all became the greatest heroes.

The flashback to little Ochako hits different when you know Eel-Boy was killed by Twice during the war, and then later used as a disguise by Toga to murder others.

Edited by MrSeyker on Aug 29th 2021 at 9:22:05 AM

Yeah, it's kind of a Nezu situation where the species is ambiguous.

It's definitely a Narm Charm moment. It's a bit goofy, but it's completely sincere and heartfelt, so it works.

Edited by JapaneseTeeth on Aug 29th 2021 at 11:21:41 AM

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