Anime:My Hero Academia

Oh yeah, thanks.

I wish I found Stain more charismatic.

Because if you don't find him compelling and you don't think he has a point, then the people deciding to follow him in droves look really contrived.

It's always been why I respect the idea and fallout of Stain more than Stain himself. He just doesn't come off a charismatic to me in any way.

Charisma is hard to write, I find. Though the author succeeded with All Might so I dunno.

Edited by GNinja on Feb 18th 2020 at 8:43:50 PM

Kaze ni Nare!

I think it goes back to what I said earlier, people want to story to say "it's wrong that Heroes get paid" so they look to Stain and ignore all of the things that say he's supposed to be wrong.

People do that with other things too, but going further would involve spoilers so I won't elaborate much further.

Edited by LSBK on Feb 18th 2020 at 2:58:24 PM

Imo Stain has the kind of “charisma” that mass murders and other monstrous people exude; they’re more like a force of nature than a person, and in Stain’s case he was a symbol of “cleansing” hero society back to its pure altruistic roots, when heroes were unpaid vigilantes. I like the idea of Stain, and he has good potential as a deconstruction, but the world and writing isn’t friendly toward him. He also looks a lot less impressive because he got wrecked by three 15-year-olds barely having begun hero training

The people inspired by Stain would realistically or logically be the people with a bone to pick with hero society, trying to justify destructive anti-hero actions with “true heroes shouldn’t act that way.” Maybe his message attracts people who are legitimately critical of hero celebrity culture who don’t see any other way to express their opinions and grievances; there don’t seem to be any real, non-villain avenues of hero society criticism. We just don’t see enough of that.

I’m all for less likable and altruistic heroes; Endeavor and Bakugo are kind of a start, but despite Endeavor’s complex toward All Might and his being the world’s worst father, he’s still genuinely heroic, and Bakugo’s mountain of personality problems bely his perseverance and commitment to taking down villains.

MHA has always had the potential to explore the ramifications of its hero-omnipresent society, but the tone and setting means most of the in-depth political stuff is pushed to the background. Kind of a shame.

Adventurers: homeless people who steal from tombs and kill things.

That's a respectable opinion, but I don't really agree. I think there are other things that try and focus on such things (One Punch Man being the prime example), and they can do it well, but that's not really what the main critique here is about, and that's okay.

But as for why people would be attracted to Stain's message, that's already a thing with the League, even though the anime hasn't actually gone into specifics for most of them.

Edited by LSBK on Feb 18th 2020 at 3:03:29 AM

I mean, those fifteen-year-olds are:

1. The protege of All Might wielding probably the most powerful strength Quirk in the world.
2. The son of the Number Two Hero who has raw firepower surpassing most pros.
3. The son of the esteemed Iida family of heroes.

Stain's defeat is also logical. For the longest, he's relied on ambushing heroes, licking their blood, and killing them while they can't fight back. His Quirk is his instant win button, not his martial skill. When forced into a scenario where he's deprived of that win condition, he gets desperate, especially with the knowledge that more help is on the way to capture him. This makes him sloppy, and so the kids are able to beat him.

Edited by reppuzan on Feb 18th 2020 at 4:16:53 AM

Also, Stain was deliberately not trying to kill at least one of them.

x3 Fair enough. For clarification I’m fully caught up on the anime, but haven’t read past where the anime is in the manga so I’m not quite up on all the details yet.

I’ve never read or watched OPM, and I get that MHA is primarily lighthearted and idealistic wish fulfillment, and I love that aspect of it, but I also like the elements of the series that deconstruct and analyze various shonen or hero tropes and play them differently from the norm. MHA has a very interesting backstory and interesting setting elements, but due to the series’ focus it tends to get sidelined. I definitely don’t want it to lose that idealistic feel-good charm and there is strength and appeal in that direction, but I’m also a fan of complexity and exploration of big ideas and concepts.

---

x2 It was more of a lighthearted jab at Stain and his intimidating dating aura and everything.

I get the logic behind the kids’ victory, I just think it’s funny that three hero students ended up being the final coup de grace to him after lots of pro hero deaths. Three skilled and strong hero students, but students nonetheless.

Edited by ILikeRobots on Feb 18th 2020 at 1:33:14 AM

Adventurers: homeless people who steal from tombs and kill things.

See i think that Stain does have at least some point, that heroes need to be heroes and not celebs. Getting paid for the job you do is one thing, marketing it towards selling coffee, makeup and whatnot is another.

But much like Stain's methods, his ideals are extreme. He can only bring about his ideals via a purge, his ideals spurn any sensible option.

And i think that's very much the point of Stain. That on the face of it, there's appeal, but if you look at it more closely you see the flaws and issues. I've said before that Stain bought into the idea of All Might too much. It's no coincidence that the Stain Arc also shows Toshinori as the human behind the persona "All Might". That while he cannot be everywhere, an ideal can, and that an ideal can be both a warning and an assurance. But Stain confused the person with the persona, the hero with the symbol.

Hey, my new fave Camie's special stat from the second Databook is "Party Animal" which she got an S in.

Like I said, she's just a free spirit. Little shits calling her a floozy is just another reason to hang 'em from that tree.

God I hope she stays around for cameos at least.

Edited by Nikkolas on Feb 18th 2020 at 2:12:19 AM

MHA and OPM are two ends of the "hero as a job" spectrum in recent anime works, IMO. Of course, the main meat of the latter is Saitama and his quest to not succumb to depression from being too OP, but once you start looking past that, OPM-verse is an incredibly depressing place to live in.

• City-busting threats are daily and come with little to no warning. The ending of Season 1 is even dedicated to the uncounted casualties of one of these attacks.
• Hero Association is entirely private, and most of its members are terribly unimpressive. To wit, anyone can be a member if they carry enough cats off trees, which obviously doesn't compare with the amount of training a MHA hero hopeful receives.
• Awful, awful bureaucracy. Genos gets to be inducted into the S-class, top 16 heroes of the world, on basis of an entry exam (and then proceeds to be the series' biggest jobber). The same entry exam lands Saitama in C-Rank despite the fact that his physical was out of this world and broke all records - because he flubbed the theoretical.
• There are actual gatekeepers (The Blizzard Group for A-Rank, Sweet Mask for S-Rank) actively keeping people down from ascending in the ranks based on their own personal opinion and some arbitrary limit of power.

MHA's hero society has its own hangups (prejudice against the Quirkless and "villainous" Quirks, popularity rankings, hardcore bystander syndrome), but it's a functioning model on the whole.

Edited by FergardStratoavis on Feb 18th 2020 at 12:03:57 PM

Big Grah

Interesting stuff. I don’t know OPM, but yeah, MHA’s hero society isn’t nearly that questionable.

Granted, it’s important to note that MHA’s society did have lot of (offscreen, granted) growing pains until it got to the fairly stable place is in the present. We still don’t even know how long it’s been exactly since the first generation of Quirks and how much time society has had to fix the major issues and acclimate. Long enough for there to have been eight other OFA users, and enough for some advanced technology like holograms and big robots to exist, at least.

There was a lot of tension when Quirks first started appearing, people had to redefine personhood in regards to the law, and iirc it was somewhere that technology and progress was delayed due to Quirks appearing, and of course (at least in Japan’s case) there was AFO’s takeover.

That’s not to say that bureaucracy isn’t a decent part of it as well. Speaking of Stain, Izu, Shōto and Tenya being lectured and punished for the incident despite saving each other and a pro hero’s life, as well as taking down a dangerous villain, and the fact that Aizawa even mentions that the Bakugo rescue mission would have gotten the entire class 1-A expelled if All Might hadn’t been depowered. Yeah, both cases were risky, but there’s always been the “isn’t that what a hero is supposed to do?” side to it.

Also the heavy Quirk use regulation and how only heroes can use them in public, how one has to be licensed to hero in the first place, etc. It makes sense in a world where (almost) everyone has powers, but it’s still a bit eyebrow-raising in some circumstances.

Edited by ILikeRobots on Feb 18th 2020 at 4:39:24 AM

Adventurers: homeless people who steal from tombs and kill things.

A little while ago I came across somebody I think dismissing the fanbase being mad at Bakugo's mom for being abusive? I'm guessing the idea Bakugo Mom beat her son comes from Bakugo saying "that's how my mom raised me" after considering hanging the kids from a tree and beating them?

I'm not sure how literally or seriously we're supposed to take that. I wouldn't have given it a second thought if not for the fact there are apparently fans who dislike his mom.

In the manga version of that scene, Bakugo backtracks after saying all that because he remembers what he overheard about Todoroki's upbringing.

Well that changes things significantly. Thanks for the info.

Somebody elsewhere is really leaning on me to just read the manga but I'm like...if I read the manga it will spoil the anime. I get that the anime leaves out stuff but...spoilers.

All for One vs. All Might wouldn't have been so good if I knew it was coming.

Edited by Nikkolas on Feb 19th 2020 at 5:40:11 AM

Itls literal. We even had her blaming Bakugo for being weak as she slapped him and All Might being awkward about it.

Official 4koma by Hori even makes fun of the fact she destroys the house in her violent spats with Bakugo.

Every accusation by the GOP is ALWAYS a confession.

It's actually only this season that the anime has started leaving stuff out. It used to be that we'd often get stuff expanded on like the sports festival fights or the bit where it's revealed that Present Mic came up with Aizawa's hero name, which was an extra page in the manga's collected volumes.

She was also very "forceful" in pursuing Mr. Bakugo, but haha funny women right.

The difference in treatment of Bakugo and Todoroki's upbringing by the narrative is pretty telling; in the former, his Mom is the aggressor and his Dad the passive one while its inversed in the latter.

Even their own perspectives on their parents differs; Todoroki hates his father for the effect his abuse had to his mother, but while Bakugo argues with his mother, I don't get the feeling that he hates her for it, and he sure as hell respects her more than he does his father.

Edited by BlackYakuzu94 on Feb 19th 2020 at 8:47:40 AM

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

Well, it's pretty obivious that Bakugo's mom's behavior, while not perfect, is not remotely on the same level as Endeavor's abuse.

True, but Endeavor is actually an important character while Mitsuki is not. So we know more about one than we do the former.

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

And also weirdly, despite how bad Endeavour is, apparently nothing he's ever done is considered in the least bit criminal.

Edited by GNinja on Feb 19th 2020 at 2:44:06 PM

Kaze ni Nare!

The general assumption is that Endeavor 's domestic abuse isn't well known in universe. It's less "it's not criminal" and more "nobody knows criminal acts are happening".

@Yakuzu: True, but I think it's the opposite way: the Todoroki family is enormously problematic and Endeavor's abuse had a huge impact on Shoto, therefore it gets a lot of spotlight. Bakugo's family, while quite strange and a bit problematic in its own way (it had to be, to generate someone like him), is just a normal family, so it just gets mentioned in passing like the other ones.

Edited by Cozzer on Feb 19th 2020 at 3:46:11 PM

That's because nobody knows the full extent of his actions. Endeavor prefers to stay out of the limelight, so his more heinous actions aren't really known to the public at large.

And to clarify, it's not that Endeavor is trying to cover up what he did. It's just something rooted in Japanese culture that Domestic issues like the Todoroki situation is generally something that families keep to themselves as a private matter.

Edited by BlackYakuzu94 on Feb 19th 2020 at 9:50:26 AM

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

Wonder how certain things will be seen once revealed.

Edited by Blueace on Feb 19th 2020 at 11:48:16 AM

Wake me up at your own risk.