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silentfanmusings · 2 years

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Todoroki Family Abuse Analysis

So, I’ve been thinking about the Todoroki family, specifically Enji’s abuse, and I want to know…

When did Enji start to physically abuse his wife and children?

I can speculate based on what is canonically shown during any of the Todoroki family flashbacks in the manga and anime, but it’s hard to know if my interpretation is true without it being stated outright.

Canonically we know that he has hit Shouto (5) so hard that he ended up puking. Afterwards, when Rei tried to get him to stop being so harsh with Shouto, he hit her and knocked her aside (in anime only scene).

From Ch 39 - Todoroki Shouto: Origin

The next time we see Enji physically hit someone is during The Wrong Way to Put Out a Fire (Ch 301 and 302) - which dived into the Todoroki backstory more and focused on Touya’s trauma - when he hits Rei for not stopping Touya from going to Sekoto Peak (implied by the fact that she’s lying on the floor), and Shouto steps in to protect his mother.

From Ch 302 - The Wrong Way to Put out a Fire Part 2

Enji also roughly grabbed both Touya and Shouto: Touya when he found he was training when he grabbed Touya’s shoulders and later on in order to pull back his clothing to reveal his burns after finding out that he was going to Sekoto Peak; Enji’s also dragged Shouto behind him towards the training room while refusing to allow him to spend time playing with his siblings.

From Ch 301 and Ch 302

(1st image (Ch 301): Touya 8; 2nd image (Ch 302): Touya 13)

From Ch 39 and Ch 302

So looking at all these images, while it’s hard to tell for certain, I highly doubt that Enji was physically abusive towards Rei or his kids before Shouto was born. She was uneasy around Enji, but she also didn’t appear afraid to talk back to him slightly when she was proven right about Enji’s mishandling of Touya’s situation.

At this point she probably felt safe enough to express her opinion towards Enji and try to get him to look at the situation and stop being so stubborn and neglecting the fact that Touya needed help and wanted his father’s attention.

From Ch 302

After this point in time we have a time skip. So what has been going on with the family between the point when Touya (8) attacked baby Shouto and five years later when Shouto (5) started training is unknown. All we know for certain is that Shouto was isolated from his older siblings, and Rei was tasked with keeping an eye on Touya.

We don’t really see any scenes of Rei and Enji alone together after the time jump. Enji was probably rough with her, that’s implied, and he likely got angry at Rei for calling him out on things, but I believe one of the first times he’s actually struck her was after Shouto started training when he was 5. When he was also being harsh and brutal with Shouto in the name of training him. (I am absolutely not blaming the physical abuse starting on Shouto. This is entirely on Enji and his own actions. But Enji having a proper successor likely triggered him to become more abusive.)

There’s nothing to indicate that Enji was this aggressive and harsh when training Touya as a child, even if he was training Touya from a younger age. Touya definitely saw his training with his father as something fun to do together and a way to show that he could become a hero and make his Quirk stronger.

This likely means that while Rei was concerned about Enji’s goals and obsession after they found out that Touya’s Quirk would continue harming him, she was unaware that Enji would start harming his family in pursuit of his goals. He didn’t want Touya harming himself. So Enji’s solution was to have more children to get Touya to give up on being a hero, while also providing Enji with a proper successor/heir. Rei knew that this was cruel and wouldn’t help Touya, but she obviously relented to Enji’s desires to have more children.

And it took two attempts, and nearly 4 years, for Shouto to be born. And even after that, Enji had to wait for Shouto’s Quirk to manifest and for Shouto to be older to begin training. And by that point, it’s been nearly a decade between when he stopped training Touya and when he could properly begin Shouto’s training.

All of this makes me think that Enji didn’t really start getting physical with Rei and Shouto until he started training Shouto when he was 5; while he was neglectful of Touya, Fuyumi, and Natsuo since Shout was born. By this point, Rei’s mental health was deteriorating from the stress of living in the house. But I believe that once Enji started taking his anger and frustration about Touya out on Rei and Shouto physically that Rei reached her tipping point.

From Ch 39

Which is what led to the Tea Kettle Incident that ended up with Rei removal from the house after she harmed Shouto during a mental breakdown.

There’s absolutely no denying that Enji was mentally and emotionally abusive towards his family. But Shouto’s birth was when Enji started to see his goals within reach. Before that point, he’s mostly just neglected being a father towards any of his children. It’s only after Shouto that he has also been shown being physically abusive in addition to mentally and emotionally abusive.

But Enji’s spiral further into his obsessive mindset ended up with him taking out his anger on his family - likely starting with verbal and mental abuse to make his family fear him before taking things to the physical extreme.

He also likely became even worse with Shouto once Rei was out of the house, and then there was the added tragedy of Touya’s death on Sekoto Peak pushing Enji to take things further. Because if Touya was killed by Enji’s ambitions to be #1, then Shouto had to be perfect. Otherwise Touya’s death would have been for nothing.

From Ch 302

Enji knows that his ambitions killed Touya. But instead of realizing that he’s taken his obsession too far, killing his eldest son, breaking his wife, neglecting his other children, and harming Shouto in the name of training. He doubled down on all his bad actions and continued to abuse the rest of his family by either ignoring them completely or controlling their entire lives.

And he didn’t even start trying to atone for any of his actions and abuse until nearly a decade after Touya died, and after realizing what it was like to become #1 Hero. Having not actually earned it himself, but instead getting it by default when All Might retired from the position.

He destroyed his family and didn’t see all the damage he has done and willfully ignored it all until finally looking back on all the actions over the last 20 years and saw the broken family he had created.

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fra080389-2-me · 1 year

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Some "why-they-even-bothered-to-do-it" changes in the anime:

The fact Rei was always bringing the lunch on a tray to Enji every time we saw them talking without their children

Enji being in his hero costume when he went to search for Touya

A severely lack of All Might being All Might in those flashbacks, they were the cherry on the top in the manga

The first point in particular, it confounds me... Like... why? What Bones was trying to say there? That there was no other occasion of communication between them beside when she brought him food in the training room, because he never went out of it? Or it was just to make us to see he was regularly deserting family lunches, the same family lunches we know Enji is now dreaming from a while, with his family all dining happily without him (but apparently that would totally normal even with him in the house, according this)? Was it to enhance Rei's position as "traditional house wife", and to underline how much it felt different in the last season (the Ending episode) with Enji eating with the others and washing dishes? Or they just wanted to stress how much he obsessed on his work, always being in the training room at home, and in hero uniform outside?

Either way, meh.

Another difference is the engagement scene: Enji's eyes were more thin (like in his "bad days") and they used a lot more words to explain Rei's relatives were not beggars needing of money to survive, but entitled people being greed, and clearing up how they made it to look as a common arranged marriage for the public but the involved people all knew it was a quirk marriage. They wanted to stress the fact Rei knew what she was accepting (not the abuse but that the purpose of the marriage was to produce the perfect heir, justifying Touya's rage against her) and the fact she could refuse the arrangement. But the scene with Enji being angry and looking at her with blame after Natsuo's birth, kind to weaken that excellent point. And that is a shame, because people marrying and having children without to properly reflect about what that means for the new life you are creating, people making arrangements without to care about the fact they are signing up more than themself in the deal, is a problem that deserves more attention. But I think that it hit too much close to home, there are so many people who put children in this world without to be prepared, they don't want to feel blamed and hear they should to do things differently, especially if they are suffering too. But if we don't talk about it, nothing can change.

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pikahlua · 10 months

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[MASTERPOST] My Hero Academia Spoilers/Manga Translations Part 2

Continued from Part 1 here.

Ch. 359

Ch. 358

Ch. 357

Ch. 356

Ch. 355

Ch. 354

Ch. 353

Ch. 352 (full chapter)

Ch. 352

Ch. 351

Ch. 350

Ch. 349

Ch. 348 (clarification on Izuku’s response to Toga)

Ch. 348 (first three pages complete)

Ch. 348

Ch. 347

Ch. 346

Ch. 345

Ch. 344

Ch. 343 (full chapter)

Ch. 343

Ch. 342

Ch. 341 (first six pages)

Ch. 340

Ch. 338

Ch. 337

Ch. 336 Part 1

Ch. 336 Part 2

Ch. 336: The MHA 336 leak(???) translated

Ch. 335

Ch. 334

Ch. 333

Ch. 332

Ch. 330

Ch. 329

Ch. 327 (but only the first three pages)

Ch. 326

Ch. 325

Ch. 324

Ch. 322: What Katsuki needs to say

Ch. 322

Ch. 321

Ch. 320

Ch. 319

Ch. 318 Part 1

Ch. 318 Part 2

Ch. 318 Part 3

Ch. 310 Translation Notes

Ch. 302 Translation Notes

Ch. 290-291 Dabi’s broadcast translation

Ch. 284 Translation Notes

#mha manga translations #mha spoilers #my hero academia leak translations #anime only friendly #linguistics fun #masterpost #meta index

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seri-41 · 1 year

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For the love of god, stop saying Endeavor was a good father (A long-ass RANT)

With the recent episode of MHA season 6 coming out, I started to see a lot of fans talking about how good of a father Endeavor was before Touya started burning himself. Let me start by saying I am a huge Endeavor simp and fan myself, but even I have the decency to acknowledge what a horrible shit he is. This is a rant about why Enji Todoroki has never been a good father. Spoilers ahead obviously.

Endeavor and his family

Endeavor started a family because he couldn’t beat All Might. He started a family and had children for his own gain. Starting with Rei, the wife he bought off who was like 19 at the time only because of her quirk. He never had any intention of treating her as anything but a baby-making machine and a nanny for his kids. The only reason he married her was to have children. After he got what he wanted (Shoto), he sent her away because he damaged her beyond repair and he didn’t need her anymore.

Endeavor loved Touya because he had potential. Touya loved the training so that wasn’t a problem, but when his first son turned out to be defective, he quickly tossed him and forgot him.

My point is this, Endeavor only ‘loves’ someone when they prove to be useful to him. There are a million ways he could have handled Touya. Training him how to use his quirk without hurting himself or quirk therapy or even heat-resistant skin grafting. He’s a top hero who had all the experience and money in the world, I promise he would have been able to call up the best doctor in the country, which is what he would have done if he really did love Touya.

Fuyumi and Natsuo are literally by-products. I bet the only reason he ever noticed Fuyumi was because she was a replacement for Rei as the ‘mother figure’. He treated Natsuo the worst, not even acknowledging his existence, which is why Natsuo was the one who was impacted the most (other than Touya).

Shoto is one who he really loved, not in a healthy way, but because he was the masterpiece. Even after Touya died, Enji never learned his lesson and kept up with the abuse. I couldn’t imagine what would have happened if Shoto wasn’t born the way he is. Would Enji just keep forcing Rei to have MORE babies?

Was he really an abuser?

Some fans say ‘oh he wasn’t that bad’ or ‘he never really physically hurt them’ because we never explicitly see it. For the kids it was mostly emotional and verbal abuse, I doubt he physically hurt Shoto other than the training. Enji would beat him until he was vomiting for the sake of training, but with Rei he damaged her the most. She married him for the sake of her family and tried to love him. She tried to be a partner to him, and he still pushed her away. He treated her horribly and was a monster. He never physically hurt Natsuo or Fuyumi but he beat Rei up like it was a routine. He slaps her around when she tries to voice her opinion or talk to him, and he downright blames her for everything, including Touya training in secret.

This panel is downright horrifying because it shows what a monster he was and how Rei saw him. This strong pro hero is pulling her and throwing her around like a sac of potatoes in front of the children. He is violently beating his wife. So for fans saying there is no proof of him doing this regularly, here is the page to prove it. I don’t think Horikoshi can show graphic abuse, so he tried to make it as subtle as possible, just showing hints. Not many people have seen these extra pages (from chapter 301-302) because it was only quite recently added to the chapter. The anime studio literally censors blood, so I honestly doubt this will be animated. Also in the manga, there is a panel where it is insinuated he slapped Rei. You can see the giant SLAP in bold letters.

If this is a man who is supposed to be a top pro hero then these children and Rei have no one to run to.

Power dynamics and victim blaming

Its very interesting to see how much the Todoroki children blame themselves for how Touya ended up. This image is from chapter 302.

Even if they went to the police, nothing could have stopped Endeavor. Given how corrupt the hero system is, the abuse would have worsened if someone ratted him out. There is no way Rei, Fuyumi or Natsuo could have stopped this. They are victims as well. Endeavor was the #2 hero, they would have easily swept it under the rug and called them crazy or ungrateful. Enji with his connections and status could have sent them away. What hero could they have gone to that would have believed them? Who’s to say they would even help?

Misogynistic?

Endeavor had this tendency to treat women who are not heroes in an odd way. He saw them as weak and preferred boys as successors. If you look at his behavior with women outside of the hero profession, it's super awkward and he in general doesn’t know how to treat or interact with them. This is mostly based on speculation, but I feel like this is where Touya got his misogynistic way of thinking. He had to pick it up from somebody and I doubt it was Natsuo or Shoto.

Facing the consequences

Endeavor wanting to atone and not asking for forgiveness is a major sign of growth. I’m glad he acknowledges his wrongdoings and is now trying to bond with his family, but that doesn’t erase the past. Enji had abused and tortured his family for years. You don’t come back from that.

I don’t like how Enji thinks he can do a few favors for them and call it atonement. He doesn’t face real consequences because in the end, he’s the #1 hero, he’s rich, and he still has his masterpiece. He is thriving and doing great careerwise. The punishment does not fit the crime. Enji being forced to atone is a super lenient consequence.

This is actually pretty scary. Endeavor is the hero with the most cases solved, you CANNOT tell me he didn’t run into a few domestic abuse cases in his 25+ years as a hero. He is locking up abusers while being an abuser himself. Talk about double standers-

Glad he got exposed (#Endeavoriscanceled)

If it weren’t for Dabi/Touya revealing what Enji did publicly, I don’t think he would have ever faced real consequences. The world needs to know this man is no hero behind the scenes. In any country, abusers whether male or female get jail time, probation or fines. For long-term abusers, I’m pretty sure jail time and a criminal record is on the table. Also, aren’t quirk marriages illegal in some places? Or at least have laws and regulations?

After the final war arc there might be a chance he will retire, but this retirement won’t be easy. Endeavor will be disgraced and knocked off his pedestal, which is exactly what he deserves. It's devastating as an Endeavor fan but honestly this man needs to learn his lesson the right way. Thank you for reading my rant.

#mha #bnha #enji todoroki #endeavor #bnha endeavor #mha endeavor #rei todoroki #shoto todoroki #fuyumi todoroki #natsuo todoroki #mha touya #small annoyed rant #I love Endeavor but I can’t excuse his behaviour #consequences #jail time #if u have any other opinions let me know #the bitter truth #Endeavoriscanceled #I’m not anti-endeavor I’m just showing y’all he’s no a saint

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thyandrawrites · 2 years

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I love reading your insightful thoughts on topics regarding mha and especially touya you alone bring my hype up

I just wanted to ask, after having read your rei meta (which I agree with wholeheartedly) I can't help but feel kind of a distaste towards some actions towards some members BECAUSE of the narrative framing

Rei calling her son "dabi" in the hospital scene was so distasteful considering she was ready to forgive her husband after everything but it almost narratively seems she holds no such regard towards the son whose demise she took part in regardless of intention

Also in the mental hospital scene where fuyumi was telling that "natsuo is the only one who isn't letting begones be begone" like hello? we are talking about you dead brother who mer his end due to your father's actions?

I don't know I am pretty sure it's because of horikoshi and I shouldn't think like this blaming the characters because he is the writer after all but the way he writes rei and fuyumi sometimes is so distasteful to me that I almost wish touya never returns to that home where he was labeled a black sheep simply for being self aware because of how they used him as a scrapegoat especially in the hospital chapter

Ps i am well aware touya will probably reunite with his family and all will be well but it's the narrative choices that kind of make me dislike them even endeavor who is pathetic is at leadt enjoyable to read in a sense that he stays true to character to an extent. Shouto is on the way of reaching an epiphany about how to reach his brother as family instead of a hero so i still have hope for him and natsuo is still true to character kind of in the hospital chapters but fuyumi and rei got me fighting against everything in me to not dislike them. Even toga and freaking afo calls him touya but his family is stuck with dabi like bffr

Hey! First of all, thank you for reading my stuff! I'm glad it can bring you some positivity in these otherwise trying times as a Touya stan.

Now, to answer you... I debated how best to approach this reply, because there's a number of ways I could go about this. But you specifically mentioned the framing, so I'm gonna build my argument on that.

So. How is Horikoshi framing Touya in the eyes of the Todofam? As you said yourself, they’re treating him like the black sheep to Shouto's golden child, and uniting to stop him.

From what I understand, though, you seem dissatisfied with the execution because you think that while every other fam member acts coherent about either blaming or wanting to rescue Touya, the Todoroki women are outliers because they have instances where they go back on that resolve to save him to blame Touya instead.

Am I getting this correctly?

If so, I think there is a problem with that conclusion. It's not just the women who go back and forth, and in fact, I think Rei and Fuyumi are the mildest ones of the bunch. But for reasons that I'm going to dissect later, I also think the fandom… latches on to them as exceptions, and in the process doesn't understand that it's meant to be a family narrative in which all of them are imperfect.

(putting this under a cut for length)

I think it’s important to remember that all the Todorokis agreed that Touya needs stopping. Not just Rei and Enji, or not even just the two heroes, Shouto and Enji. All of them gathered in that hospital room to discuss family matters, and they reached that conclusion as a collective decision.

Now, I’m stressing this because the language they used is peculiar. We all noticed that they said that Touya needs stopping, not saving. But when it comes to the Todofam, that word carries a certain weight, and I don’t think it was used randomly here.

As this person pointed out in this post, Touya was always asked to “stop” whenever his self-awareness or his attempts to be acknowledged disrupted the family dynamics. This is less apparent if you haven’t checked out the revised flashbacks in chapter 302. But the fact that Horikoshi went back to alter the storyboard and narration for the tankobon release means he wanted to draw more attention to something, to make it clearer for the audience. And indeed, the why becomes clear when we see Shouto confront Dabi and echo the same words: “please, stop.”

[source]

The Todorokis haven’t yet reached a place where they can fully sympathize with Touya. In Shouto’s case, it’s because he doesn’t know his brother; he can empathize with Touya’s circumstances, but not with Touya’s reasons. After all, Shouto is a successful creation. He never faced the brunt of the entire family’s blame and disappointment. As a result, he doesn’t understand that this approach is doomed to fail, because it echoes the scoldings Dabi’s used to.

Whenever someone tried to reason with Touya, it was always framed as if the root of Touya’s unhappiness (and the family’s by extension) was his refusal to quit his ambitions. Basically, they told him that it was his fault, and not his father’s for putting those ambitions in him. Even if it’s Enji who’s guilty of rewriting Touya’s sense of self around an impossible goal, the one who’s held accountable for it is the victim.

Not only do they all ask Touya to stop over and over (and not his father), but Touya’s also blamed for the fallout of Enji’s abuse. First, he was framed as the reason for Enji to keep making replacements, then for why Enji isolated Shouto from his siblings. It’s always because of him. Because Touya couldn’t quit.

Even now that the family supposedly knows better, they’re still struggling to move on from that pattern. Just like how back then Touya was always singled out as the disruption, as the element of unrest, Dabi is still pushed into this role. Except now he’s singled out as the disruptive element that exacerbates not only the inner dynamics of the family, but of society as a whole. Once again, his refusal to stop is making things worse for everyone willing to just lay down and take it in silence. Because of it, he’s not regarded with sympathy. Instead, all the flaws he addresses are his responsibility to bear. It doesn’t matter if those issues existed before him. He becomes the suitable scapegoat.

Now, all of these are things you seem well aware of. But you still singled out Fuyumi and Rei as subjects of your ire, and I don’t think that’s entirely fair. If this was something we could blame just on one character, or just on Rei and Enji as parents, we wouldn’t have heard the same words repeated by multiple family members. We would’ve at least seen someone push back against them.

Instead, even Shouto is still torn between seeing Touya as a villain and as his older brother. Linkspooky wrote an excellent post on this recently that I encourage you to check out.

This makes sense for him because Dabi was just a villain to him until a while ago. He has no solid memories of Touya because as a kid he wasn’t allowed to exist in the same room as his siblings. Yet, he has several memories of his brother as an enemy. He fought against him. Dabi kidnapped his classmate. So that mental divide is at least somewhat justified. It’s hard to wrap your head around the fact that your presumed dead brother, who you only saw as a normal kid in your sparse memories, committed atrocities and tried to kill you and your dad (and himself).

However, I also think this divide works on a societal scale as well. During the present arc, we’ve seen the hero kids struggle to reconcile the idea of the League as victims with the crimes they’ve committed. Those two sides should coexist; one doesn’t exclude the other. Hurting people doesn’t mean someone can’t have hurt you first. The kids seem aware of this, unlike the rest of society. They see the League’s victimhood. The problem is, they still think in terms of which side weighs in more, which one deserves more of their heroic efforts. And because the people they’ve hurt are multiple, while their victimhood only involves a single person, the good of the many always ends up being more important than showing sympathy.

This is what happens with Uraraka, for example. She remembers Toga’s tears, and wants to help her smile, but because Toga is part of the League and wreaked havoc in several cities with the PLF, killing many innocents… that sympathy becomes conditional. So Uraraka looks at the destroyed landscape to remind herself that there’s also another side of Toga. One less worthy of her concern. One that deserves it, because this suffering she’s experiencing is Toga’s own fault. If Toga wants to live her version of a happy life, she tells her, she also must be ready to live with the consequences.

This sentiment is the same that Shouto later directs at his brother. You can’t blame dad for the lives you took, he tells Touya, because you did those things, not Endvr. They are your own fault.

The problem with this approach is that it asks victims to put their shit together on their own, for everyone else’s convenience, without anyone else involved in fixing a broken system. And most importantly, it also asks victims to face the consequences of their actions, while also turning around and not holding abusers accountable for their own.

The fact that this idea is explored through Toga and Shigaraki as well makes me think it goes beyond the Todofam’s dysfunctionality. But to bring this back to them…

Do I think it’s distasteful that the framing treats Touya this way? Yes. It hurts to watch on a near constant basis, even when I know there’s likely a reason for it. But at the same time, I dislike on principle when people hold Rei and Fuyumi to a higher standard than the men in the house for displaying character flaws.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not accusing you of purposeful malice or anything like that. You're clearly struggling against your instinctive dislike, and you came here to discuss it, so I presume you're looking for reasons to either reinforce it, or to let go of it. I hope that by the end of this, you will find some more reasons to be kind to them regardless of the quality of the writing.

What I’ve noticed during my time in this fandom is a certain... expectation, almost...? for women to always perform the role of "perfect victims", with the penance of getting the brunt of the fandom's anger when they don't.

What does that even mean?

In short, women in fiction aren't given the same leniency as their male counterparts when it comes to displaying said flaws. While for men having any is typically regarded as a good thing because it gives the character depth, when women do something “wrong,” they get crucified.

I believe this happens in the bnha fandom as well, particularly amongst Todofam stans. While Shouto, Natsuo and Touya are all allowed to be imperfect, and their rough edges get widely recognized as faucets of trauma, Fuyumi and Rei aren't given the same sympathy.

As I mentioned above, Shouto gets to be undecided and to direct unkind words to his brother without the same backlash from fans. Natsuo is allowed to put faith in Enji because he shows reluctance to trust his old man. But the women are hated because they take a less belligerent approach to Enji’s atonement.

I believe that the reason why so many fans struggle to like Fuyumi and Rei is because they misread them. Their lack of outright hostility is widely interpreted as forgiveness, when in fact, it’s not quite written that way. I find that equating their willingness to let Enji try to be a better person with forgiveness is a flattening of their depth as abuse survivors.

I think much of the blame Rei faces isn’t actually rooted in anything particularly bad she did in canon. Most of the things we can blame her for are also things that Enji did alongside her, and Enji did them with far more cruelty and selfishness. But! I also think that some people have an instinctual dislike of her because she’s written with a lot of stereotypes of submissive femininity in mind, and that understandably makes a lot of folks uncomfortable.

What I’ve seen is that because Enji is a pos, people have turned to Rei in hopes she could be a better parent, or someone okay-ish enough to make up for the bad, you know? And that’s totally fair. I’ve done the same. But I also think that in the process, people sort of created this idealized version of her that then didn’t live up to her canon characterization. They—perhaps subconsciously—wanted her to be a good victim and a good mom, when she’s meant to be neither. I think she’s more nuanced than that, and that perfect victims don’t really exist anyway.

But because they expected her to balance out Enji’s bad, they don’t really know what to make of a character who’s now written to parallel him in many ways. While she did not hit her kids, she still hurt them in other ways. While she tried her best to oppose her husband’s will, she still didn’t oppose it in a way that mattered when it came to Touya’s mental well-being in particular. Just like Enji, she was shown to be neglectful and avoidant of her eldest.

This makes her a nuanced character. Just like Touya, she can have done horrible things and still be a victim because the two things can coexist. But expecting her to be just one over the other, ironically, results in the same scapegoating Touya’s being subjected to by the narrative.

The fact that she’s a victim and that she ended up hurting others as a result of unaddressed and spiraling mental health problems aren’t factors that are battling for dominance. You’re not supposed to look at her and think “the bad she’s done outweighs the good, hence she doesn’t deserve any sympathy.” If you’re not doing that for Touya, why are you doing it for her?

To address the one complaint you mentioned about her, the fact that she calls her son “Dabi.”

She does that once.

In fact, if you look at it closely you’ll notice something interesting. She calls him “Dabi” when she’s thinking of him as a villain. When the topic of fighting comes up, and with it, the emotional baggage that “stopping” Touya already has as an ongoing theme. But Rei also calls him “our son” when she’s apologizing to Hawks for the burns, and she calls him “Touya” when she’s confronting Enji. To me, this confirms the idea I talked about above, the mental divide that makes it harder to reconcile the villain with the crying boy they remember. Rei, like Shouto, loves Touya, but her reaction isn’t perfect because she’s an imperfect victim living in a flawed world.

In the grand scheme of things, the issue with the framing of Touya as a bad sheep does exist, but I don’t blame it on Rei specifically. I think there’s a fundamental difference between her calling her son “Dabi” that one time versus Enji privately thinking of Touya as a mass murderer.

Putting this out there for those who can’t read japanese. The word (in kanji) Enji uses here reads tairyousatsujinsha. Which means indeed “mass murderer.” We only know that he’s even referring to Touya because the furigana (which typically shows the actual reading of the word in kanji) reads a different word, musuko, “son.”

So, sure, might be more internally coherent as an asshole who can’t face his actions, but getting angry at Rei for calling Touya “Dabi” seems rather… mean-spirited imho, when it’s not even on the same magnitude of alienation Enji shows for the blood of his blood here. He doesn’t even call him the more generic word for villain. Not his chosen villain moniker, either. He goes straight for the moral upper ground of calling attention to Dabi’s crimes, when he can’t even properly own up to his own.

Anyway. Moving on, there’s also the topic of Fuyumi. You mentioned that her line “letting bygones stay bygones” was in the hospital chapters, but I couldn’t find it there. Were you by chance referencing this?

because if so, I believe the above panel on the left comes from a fan scanlation. If you compare it to the official Viz translation, her words don't carry quite the same edge. Now, the wording is similar enough that it might be an instance of Viz correcting the release at a later date (it has happened before. Japanese is a tricky language).

But since you quoted this line, let’s discuss the nuance.

In the picture on the left, Fuyumi appears less sympathetic towards Natsu. It reads like she's blaming him for being too stubborn to let the past go, while also minimizing the extent of his trauma as something that can be just… brushed off. As something that should stay in the past.

As opposed to that, the version on the right puts more emphasis on the process of grieving, on Natsuo's mental well-being. "Can't seem to let go" still carries the same implication that closure on Touya’s death is desirable, but her phrasing is soft enough that it comes across like she's sad about Natsuo’s sadness. Like she wishes he'd let himself find some peace, after all this time.

I'm bringing up both these versions because I wanted to compare and contrast them to the original. See, the jp text says this:

Which translates to: "Only Natsuo can't lower his raised fist."

Being fair to the eng translation, all these versions more or less say the same thing. She's still singling out Natsuo for reacting differently from the rest of them. Which does indeed seem like she’s blaming him for it.

However, the original wording has a completely different nuance imho. By bringing attention to his raised fist, Fuyumi is commenting on Natsuo using anger as a coping mechanism to deal with his grief. The emphasis then is not so much on whether or not she thinks he should "let go" or "let bygones be bygones," but on the fact that Natsuo is stuck in that defense position. His fists are permanently raised, and he cannot let them lower. He's constantly poised for a fight, and as a result, he always slams headfirst into one.

I think this confirms my reading of Fuyumi as a mediator, as someone trying her best to de-escalate all the fighting in the house.

In this post I explained why I think she's stuck into a part herself. As the big sister who stepped into the role of caretaker at a young age, Fuyumi displays all the traits of someone who learned early on to fear explosive tempers, and resorted to acting like the patient one to protect her siblings. She sorta acts like a… fire-retardant blanket, so to say. She attempts to put out fires before they can get bigger by sucking out the air that keeps them alight. She’s shown doing this with Natsuo during dinner, and she’s shown often playing mediator to avoid explosive tempers from bursting.

I think a lot of people read her as someone pursuing her idea of a perfect family because she remembers a time where things were better and wants that again. The problem with that, imho, is when people call her selfish for it. When they say she’s pressuring her brothers into forgiving Enji like she did. I find that—at least the latter part—a malicious misreading rooted in badly hidden misogyny. Why is she not allowed to want things that are at odds with her brother’s wishes, but her siblings are allowed to want things that are at odds with hers? Why is she perceived as selfish for it, but her brothers are not? And why is the reading of her as forceful in this pursuit so widespread, when she made no attempts to steer Natsuo back in both times he stormed out the room?

It seems to me like the same issue with Rei. Fuyumi needs to be a good victim and a good sister, or be crucified if she dares have flaws and imperfections. But again, just like Rei, she’s a victim as well, and she has trauma too. I think people shouldn’t presume that her feelings for her abuser are clearcut and black and white.

I know it’s easy to dislike her because she seemingly “forgave” Enji, but so far she’s never stated that. It’s the audience’s inference that she has. The fact that she wants a shot at having a more normal family doesn’t mean she thinks Enji did a 180°. It just means she’s willing to give him a chance to be a better person, which is something that Shouto’s also shown doing. But because Shouto remains hostile while Fuyumi makes an effort to treat Enji like a person, it’s widely assumed she must have no complex feelings for her father, or that she’s okay with moving on.

I find that an oversimplification. Don’t get me wrong, I know the Todoroki women are much less fleshed out than the men. Rei doesn’t even have a character profile yet. But because of this, I wish the fandom didn’t jump for their throat based on those few sparse lines we do have. Just because Horikoshi hates women doesn’t mean we should all follow in his example

Let’s all allow ourselves to think these characters can have depth. To experiment and play with ideas when something’s yet unconfirmed, to headcanon and theorize and fill the gaps of missing info like we do for other (male) characters. I promise it’s much more fun than getting angry or upset at all the failings from canon

If that's not your cup of tea... that's fine, but I hope I was at least able to make you consider something you hadn't thought of before

#bnha meta #meta:rei #meta:fuyumi #my post #bnha #bnha spoilers #todoroki rei #todoroki fuyumi #todoroki shouto

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