Words From Starpeace

i was never as optimistic about the ending of bnha as some villain stans were, but i never thought it'd end so badly it left me wondering why horikoshi ever bothered to humanize the villains or make them complex characters at all.

like-- i expected that at least 1-2 of the 3 villains who were heavily foreshadowed and outlined by the narrative as people to be saved would be, you know, actually saved. i didn't think that was a high bar. i've been let down before in fandoms where everyone was certain a character would live and then they didn't, so i tried to keep my hopes low. AND YET.

what happened to tomura was upsetting, but i wasn't that shocked after how disinterested the manga has seemed to be in him for like, the past 100 or so chapters. a bit surprised, because you'd think if anyone would succeed in the 'saving' mission it would be the MC, but whatever. dabi, well, they've spent a lot of time showing the way his quirk destroys his body even before this arc, so that also sucked but at least it didn't feel completely out of left field.

........but they're not even letting toga live???

i just-- what have we even been doing here? when zero out of the 3 characters that were marked out for saving were actually saved, you have to acknowledge that something has gone seriously fucking wrong with the storytelling. not even just from the perspective of a villain fan but from the perspective of someone who likes stories to be thematically consistent or satisfying in any way.

you can set up an expectation of these characters being saved and then subvert that and turn it into a tragedy- if done well that could even be worthwhile and interesting. but you can't turn it into a tragedy and then just... keep trucking along with the happy ending messaging and act like anything in the manga has been resolved and that the characters have somehow successfully completed their heroic origin stories.

like, maybe i shouldn't have expected this much from a shounen- at the end of the day it is still a shounen so i didn't expect to feel that it truly satisfactorily wrapped up all the themes it brought up around societal ills. but i expected it to at least resolve those things in a shounen-y way where they punch the problems and help these specific people and then you can feel good assuming that the state of things will continue to improve in the post-canon world of the manga.

instead we got... uh, none of that. the story refused to answer a single one of the larger questions it's been outlining for the past 400+ chapters. in the end, it was all flash and no substance, which again could've been fine, if it weren't for the way the story seemed to spend significant chunks of time trying to delude you into thinking it had substance.

truly makes me wonder what horikoshi thought he was doing the entire time. can it really all be blamed on burnout? the most that can be said for this ending is that it is, well, an ending. fuck dude, it is that.

and that's just... such a sad way to end a project that took up 10 years of your life.

死柄木弔 🌹 Hero...

Teeny tiny🤲

lovelies 🌷🌸

do you think Midoriya agrees that he murdered Shigaraki, or that he just hadn’t come to argue with Spinner?

THIS IS SUCH A GOOD QUESTION! @granny-griffin I love the way you think! I’m going to answer in 2 parts: First, a close look at the factors that led to Tomura’s death, because a LOT happened in very few chapters; and second, Izuku’s conversation with Spinner in the context of the final battle, because there are continuing themes that are very consistent with how Izuku approaches Spinner. And finally, a lil Izuku appreciation because he does something very cool in 427.

I. How, exactly, did Tomura decay?

When Izuku held hands with Tenko inside their memories, Izuku cracked the hatred surrounding Tenko and let out Tenko’s core — the person who wanted to be a friend and hero to the LOV. When that happens, the “finger armor” on Tomura’s real body crumble too.

At that exact moment, AFO seizes his opening and re-emerges. AFO says that “Tenko’s spiritual defeat” damaged “his” body, which implicitly blames Izuku for the physical damage. But that’s just AFO’s narration, and AFO is a manipulative liar (even to himself and to MHA readers). We don’t know that Tomura’s body would have decayed if AFO hadn’t re-emerged. For all we know, once Izuku cracked the hatred, Tenko could have gone on to live a normal human life. But of course, AFO would never tolerate a normal human life in the “vessel” he spent years cultivating.

Without Tomura’s rage and hatred, and with AFO in control, AFO quickly “uses up” any remaining power in Tomura’s body. At first, hyper-regeneration doesn’t work, and as AFO uses more power he has to start using more quirks to hold his body together.

AFO’s greed burned out his own “vessel.” AFO’s overuse of his quirk condemned Tomura’s body, not Izuku.

Izuku knows exactly what’s happening because All Might warned him back in Chapter 2 about strong quirks coursing through limp noodle bodies.

But at this point, Izuku doesn’t know that Tenko’s spirit is still around. Izuku thinks he’s fighting pure AFO, and he sees a weakness he can use to end AFO. If Izuku doesn’t use this opening, then AFO will transfer himself to another person (which is likely to be Izuku himself) and begin all over again. Izuku knows this because AFO is screaming about finding a new vessel.

In the vestige world, when Izuku goes for the final strike, that’s when Tenko comes back and adds his fist to the vestige mega-punch. When Tenko comes back, which is itself an unexpected miracle thanks to Nana, there aren’t any “perfect victory” options — it was either smash AFO for good and let Tomura’s body crumble OR let AFO body snatch Izuku (or someone else) and hope that maybe Tenko’s spirit could overcome AFO in that new body — and that’s assuming AFO’s self-transfer would even include Tenko’s spirit. It’s an easy choice for Izuku to make, especially when Tenko himself chooses the smash option.

In the end, Izuku saved the crying little boy Tenko trapped under hatred and AFO’s lies. But Izuku couldn’t save Tomura’s physical body, and I don’t think there was any way he could have. It absolutely haunts Izuku right now — he wanted to save everyone with a smile and he held the strongest quirk in the world, yet he couldn’t make Tomura’s story end happily. Nobody could. To make it worse for Izuku, the world is probably celebrating the hero who destroyed the villain with a punch, because that’s what it looked like on TV. Only Izuku, All Might, and a few others know what happened in the vestige world.

II. What does Izuku think as he talks to Spinner?

Does Izuku think he murdered Tomura? Honestly no, I don’t think he sees himself as a murderer. And he’s NOT. He knows, logically, that AFO engineered a mutually assured destruction scenario with Tomura.

But does Izuku see himself as a failed hero? Yeah, I think so. That kid has so many self-esteem issues to begin with, and his whole self-identity is wrapped around being a hero like All Might. Remember how brutally All Might scolded himself in Chapter 1 when he was struggling to transform and save Bakugo from the sludge villain? I imagine Izuku’s internal monologue is something like that, cursing himself and holding himself to an impossibly high standard. It’s why All Might tried to reassure him in the hospital that he saved Tenko’s soul.

Still, I’m not at all surprised to see Izuku bravely committing himself to remembering Tomura and carrying out Tomura’s final wishes. When Izuku goes to see Spinner, he has to know Spinner will be angry over his friend’s death. And Izuku knows that part of a hero’s role is to validate someone’s pain, because he did that for Tenko.

A hero needs to SEE that crying child and be kind even when the child isn’t. A hero needs to let the child know they’re not alone.

Validation is what happens when Shoto uses Phosphor for the first time and tells Toya: “Dad was a madman! Our family was screwed up! …But you’re not taking any more innocent lives. Aim all your rage at us!” It’s what Shoji tells Spinner during their fight: “We’ve all got scars we carry.” It’s what Ochako tells Himiko: “Maybe this world isn’t a place you can be yourself…but being able to declare what you love, and do it with your whole face…that smile of yours is so perfect I’m honestly jealous!”

Izuku understands there’s no point in arguing with Spinner over who, exactly, killed Tomura. It doesn’t matter. Tomura is gone and Spinner is in pain. Spinner needs his anger and grief over Tomura’s loss validated. He needs his mistreatment as a heteromorph validated. He needs his abuse at the hands of AFO validated.

Izuku doesn’t just let Spinner call him a murderer; he lets Spinner call him a “sick puppy,” he lets Spinner talk about the destruction of Deika, he lets Spinner vent about how he had given up on life until he found Tomura. Izuku lets Spinner grab him and manhandle him so Spinner can finally express that, to him, Tomura represented hope for major change. Tomura’s death is the death of that hope. And in return, Izuku uses Spinner’s villain name (just as Tomura did). Izuku adds on to Tomura’s message too — he tells Spinner that Tomura wanted to be LOV’s hero. He tells Spinner how much Spinner meant to Tomura, which Spinner didn’t know before.

Simply by listening and sharing what he knew, quirkless Izuku validated Spinner and reached his heart, enabling Spinner to control his own raging quirk.

Izuku saved Spinner. No quirk needed.

And even if hero and villain will never see perfectly eye to eye, Izuku bonds with Spinner, encouraging him to write his book about Tomura to counter the popular media narrative (which winds all around the chapter). Izuku, who is possibly the most celebrated hero on the planet at the moment, encourages a book that will “stick it to heroes forever and ever.” Finally, Izuku promises Spinner that he will never forget Tomura. In return, Spinner finally softens and sends his own message of goodwill to Shoji.

Izuku may have been too late to save Tomura, but he will keep Tomura’s memory alive. In doing so, he saved Spinner and bonded with him, getting Spinner to implicitly admit that some heroes are good people. Izuku and Spinner, our two social outcast narrators, found common ground.

And that’s the beginning of a major change.

He’s So Cute 😍

cr: the song is Gold, Guns, Girls by Metric

"Generic passenger car pack" (https://skfb.ly/6sUFy) by Comrade1280 "2014 Toyota Corolla E180 EU (with interior)" (https://skfb.ly/oLAVz) by Armored Wave special thanks to @pan-da-hero for cheering me up during this long long journey and to [redacted] for doing hand modeling for me no questions asked <3