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bkdkdeeznuts · 2 years

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katsuki’s save to win in 285

285 will absolutely never cease to make me tear up, but also scream into a pillow. because. how. how the FUCK is there so much to examine and analyze in ONE CHAPTER. fuck off, horikoshi. i’m going to scream.

The most important thing to remember when reading 285 is Izuku and Katsuki’s save to win / win to save narrative (first introduced in chapter 120, shown below).

What All Might means by this is that, essentially, they are two halves of a whole. In order to ultimately win, they need each other. Izuku can’t win without Katsuki’s save, and Katsuki can’t truly win without Izuku at all. So, what they need to do is learn to win and save, respectively.

This line is what sparks their development. Katsuki goes to work on his internal conflict (learning how to save), and Izuku goes to work on his physical conflict (learning how to win). We get to see both of them achieve small victories within their goals (saving Eri is a big highlight for Izuku, and the fights against class 1-B are a big highlight for Katsuki), but nothing too huge for the most part.

That is, until chapter 285.

The most important thing to keep in mind when examining 285 is that stupid fucking line from 120. It’s to keep in mind that Katsuki is saving to win.

In that moment, saving Izuku meant that Katsuki was winning. Which means multiple things, the most obvious one being that Izuku is crucial to winning the war. Izuku has OFA, which is the quirk made to directly challenge AFO. In order to beat Shigaraki, they need OFA. Simple. That’s the main plot of MHA. Cool. Just about anyone could point that out.

Don’t get me wrong, even if that really was the reason Katsuki’s body moved on its own, that’d still be cool as shit. Early manga Katsuki might not have even had the realization that Izuku is crucial to winning the war, in fact, I’d say he definitely wouldn’t have. Look at this fucker during his and Izuku’s fight against All Might.

Katsuki is one of the most intelligent characters in the whole series, but his fatal flaw (in the early manga, anyway) is his pride. The fact that Katsuki has grown enough to use his save to win in 285 is telling of his development enough.

So, when Katsuki sees Izuku inches away from death, he sees the threat of failure. Katsuki “The Image of Victory” Bakugou, does not want to lose, so he takes the hit for Izuku. Once again, simple. Very very basic analysis. It’s not wrong, per se, but here is what you’re missing:

Katsuki wasn’t thinking of losing the war when his body moved on its own. He was thinking of losing Izuku.

“Blah blah blah, losing Izuku means losing the war! We established this!” Wrong! You’re wrong. You don’t get it. Sit back and enjoy the show, because I’m about to blow your fucking mind.

Look at the little Google slideshow that Katsuki made at the bottom. There’s not a single panel of Shigaraki, is there? Not a single panel of him losing. Not a single panel of anything involving the actual war, really. So, what can we gather from his silly little Favorite Deku Moments collection?

We can gather that, when his body moved on its own, he wasn’t thinking about losing the war. He wasn’t thinking of the threat of Shigaraki winning. He was thinking of nothing but Izuku.

(A bit off topic, but we all know how those damn antis can get. One could argue that Katsuki’s little, “head empty, just Izuku Midoriya” moment was just his life flashing before his eyes. Which, honest to God, I am praying someone uses that argument on me one day, because I would laugh my fucking ass off. If that was his life flashing before his eyes, that implies that Izuku is his life.

Also, that is his life flashing before his eyes, in a way. He’s thinking of all the things he has yet to apologize / thank Izuku for, and now he may not get to. This man is so fucking gay oh my GOD)

Anyways, he was thinking of Izuku. Not about winning the war, but about winning Izuku.

Let’s compare this to Izuku’s win to save ideology. We have seen time and time again that “winning” doesn’t necessarily mean coming out on top. This is particularly evident in Izuku’s match against Shouto during the Sports Festival. Although he technically “lost,” Izuku won in the sense that he got Shouto to use his flames. Again, during DVK2, Izuku didn’t “win” the fight. But he won in the sense that he got Katsuki to finally open up and have a conversation, and also in the sense that he now has someone else to help him with OFA.

In MHA, winning does not mean the physical type of victory that you typically think of when you imagine “winning.” And this is exactly the case in chapter 285. Katsuki was not thinking of winning in the physical sense. He was not thinking about winning the war, or even about beating Shigaraki.

In his mind (at that moment) winning meant saving Izuku. Winning meant not losing Izuku. Not in the sense of winning against Shigaraki, in the sense of winning to him. Winning as in, without Izuku, Katsuki is nothing. Izuku is his world, his motivation. Katsuki Bakugou, the boy who only ever thought of winning and being the best, was willing to die for Izuku. Not for the sake of actually “winning,” but for the sake of himself. For the fact that, without Izuku, he has no purpose.

Without Izuku, he is losing.

#i'm actually so sick of them #the way this isn't even like. a quarter. of what i have to say about 285.#i am sick to my stomach actually !!#mha #bkdk #mha analysis #i hate gay people

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