#Black Whip is Hori's favored child

[justatalkingface]

What are your thoughts about One For All?

By that, I mean the power itself, the story surrounding it, the connections to All For One, the person, all of it. You spoke extensively about Izuku and now I'd like to hear your thoughts about his quirk. Yoichi Shigaraki seemed very suspicious, and his quirk being a death curse at first seemed like it was setting up for a really morally ambiguous OFA. But it turns out the guy's a saint and he's trying to take down the devil. As far as I can tell, One For All kills people just to justify Izuku being the current holder and to make him special. We also got the typical shōnen power escalation of Izuku ending up with a bunch of new powers out of nowhere. Many of which seemed to exist just to have him surpass All Might quickly enough so he could handle fights against super powerful foes, because this series takes places within a year. The story rushed this dude's development, so his powers had to rush him to where he could handle things. And he also became a genius who could master a bunch of new quirks in a very short amount of time. Many of the abilities felt very redundant with his power set or go mostly unused, such as smokescreen. Float and Black Whip were cool and added a lot to Izuku's kit. The OFA vs AFO plot line eventually took over the series. I prefer the battles against AFO's forces in comparison to the earlier parts of the series, where the kids fought each other in battles with no stakes. The academia part of MHA was always the weakest part, but some people preferred it. What do you think?

One For All... well, let me get this almost mandatory part out of the way: he suffers for being introducing during The War Arc, and by dint of it means we'll probably never have a satisfying amount of information on him.

Quirk wise... it actually tracks? If family Quirks are similar, both AFO and OFA both, then, have a Quirk that is based around 'transfering Quirks', the same way that Asu's family all have Quirks based around frogs, yet they are all expressed in different ways.

I've seen people argue that the mysterious door he's helping hide is AFO, since the stockpiling Quirk passed through AFO himself first.

I just, let me.... alright. Honestly? I could see it. I really wouldn't be that surprised at this point if they did that. Logically? That makes no sense. The power stockpiling Quirk was just that, stockpiling power. It was only special when it got fused with OFA's nameless Quirk, and they fused into something more, a Quirk that is apparently specialized to act as a mental arc, in his body. Moreover, it should mean that AFO would have a Vestige there, and I just... really hope they don't do that, because I can't see a way it ends well, you know?

More recently, I'm wondering if that BIg Mystery they're clearly hiding has to do with why AFO was crying when he was killing(?) the Second; did The Second kill OFA? Was that a revenge kill? Did OFA plan that? Did he go, 'My brother is too powerful to stop, so we must sacrifice ourselves until someone is strong enough to do so, and act as fertilizer for their eventual rise' and that's why the first couple of generations are edgy and the later ones, who didn't get that memo, or who were thought to be that theoretic final product, are more open?

I... could see that. It's not something I think would be done well, with MHA as it is now, but I could see that.

Really though, when you think about it the fact that each of them have suicidally went up against AFO in his prime means that there's no way that OFA should have been able to be transferred throughout the generations, because AFO has so much stacked in his favor that he should have easily been able to hunt them down and kill them (and when does he even realize they have that Quirk? Early on, especially, it couldn't have been easy, with how weak it was; it'd probably be easier to identify it based off behavior more than power).

The thing I've realized about OFA is that the early lore for it is really kind of questionable, just because they explicitly went up against AFO with barely any power ups, which is basiclly suicide. Even if AFO wanted them alive to keep the Quirk alive (and why? Before his 'development' you could argue it's because he wanted his brother back, and thus his Vestige in it, and later it's a strong Quirk, but there's a good period where it was a Quirk with potential, not power, and AFO has been developed into a two dimensional caricature who would kill for the lulz, who has no depth or moral attachment to anything. Before his 'development' you could argue that he wanted even a small part of his brother back, and it would explain things, but now? Was he just... letting it live to refine it so he could steal it when it was strong? It'd fit with how everything is AFO's fault these days), it would be dead ass easy for him to capture the current Holder and then keep them imprisoned, maybe after crippling them, until he can get what he wants from them.

The fact it's kind of incompatible with a person with a Quirk... kind of tracks, since, you know, Nomu, but if this was always a thing, under that logic everyone who wasn't Quirkless with this thing should have rendered brain damaged like, you know, the Nomu. The fact that they kind of... fall apart? That feels like bullshit. It has the energy of trying to make Izuku a True Destined Hero in a True Shonen by making him the only one who could use it safely, instead of, you know, just being chosen on his heroic merits, and goes blatantly against the themes the manga was talking about from the start, that everyone can be a hero. Because 'men aren't born equal' is wrong, and even a Quirkless kid can be heroic, can save someone. But, you know... Everything Changed When The War Arc Attacked. I'm not surprised it got fucked up.

May be a little off topic, but I'll point out since AFO has vestiges now (suddenly), that that's going to be important for whatever end game there is, and, you know, that's going to be bullshit, since OFA only has those from a Quirk that was specialized in making them, and even then they only started communicating with him at the War Arc, after generations of that one Quirk being powered up to allow it to happen. Meanwhile, AFO just takes the Quirks, and even if Quirks keep, well, a vestige of their former owner, why did it take so long to happen if it was just a thing that happened when you moved Quirks? Why didn't any OFA user before Izuku have this happen? Why aren't the Nomu filled with the traumatic impulses of their parts; not the main body, but the minds of however many extra Quirks are stuffed inside them? There's no reason for that logic to apply to AFO, since he just takes them, but... yeah. ECWTWAA.

....So, is the reason he's such a two-dimensional character is that he can't get a good night's sleep because god knows how many people are just constantly screaming at him, in a ironic own goal on their part that is making him more and more evil as he slowly loses his mind over the years, doing more and more terrible things they don't want him to? Or is that just me putting more work in AFO's characterization that Hori has actually done?

You want to know my prediction? That was introduced as the way to beat him, in the end: Izuku and OFA are going to lead a revolution in AFO's body/mind and purge him, or... something stupid to beat his mind once and for all, since AFO is apparently studying Orochimaru style immortality and we're reaching a point where killing any one body, and maybe even both, won't be enough to kill him, so they have to go deeper to finish him!

Which totally makes sense.

SIgh.

On the Vestiges, and the powers? In theory, I'm fine with it, Hori clearly was hinting about them way back when, but in practice the way that's been handled is ass. Either A, these guys all have buttons to unlock their Quirks, in which case there should have been a Team Meeting with Izuku rather than him randomly shooting out combat tentacles out of nowhere, when he could have killed someone with them, just like... you're in a fight; surprise super powers! What could go wrong, or B, it just happens, in which case them making noises about proving himself or whatever sounds... dumb when what they think about the situation has nothing to do with it.

More than that, though, the way they're being used to power up Izuku? The way that they're just his Stands now, more than actual characters? Only showing up behind him to show how serious Izuku is? The sheer fucking disrespect of it irks me; Hori, if you're going to introduce actual characters who are people, then treat them like people. If you just want to give Izuku powers, don't give him a mindscape full of people with opinions, just give him powers. One or the other Hori; you can just give Izuku a weird Animus style flashback without a personality you actually need to manage being attached.

On the powers themselves, it's clearly something that got dropped on the wayside. Black Whip, obviously, is Hori's favored child, lovingly used at every possible chance and drawn out in great detail (I hear he really likes Spiderman?) but after that? The first couple were utility skills, chosen to give Izuku some soft support while he wandered on his own without readily available support tech, beyond those.... Hori just used them as crutches to skip over all the development Izuku never had the time to do to master AFO itself. No matter how they phrase it, no matter how complicated they make the explanation, they're just there so he can punch harder.

As a person, it's hard to tell much about OFA. He has morals, he opposes his brother, he's keeping secrets from Izuku.... let's be honest here, he's more of a plot device than a human being at this point, and I have zero faith in his future development. It's kind of frustrating since there's a lot of interesting potential there (is he a Good Guy(TM)? Did AFO just go too far, and before that he was fine with his brother the warlord? Was he cowardly like Izuku, but also went through character development once he gained the ability to stand up for himself? There's a lot of ways his characterization could be spun, but that has more to do with his lack of characterization than anything) that I'm sure he'll never live up to than anything.

Beyond that... there's this symbolism with hands that keeps coming up. Shigaraki has it, of course, that's mostly his trauma being expressed with his hand based Quirk (and strengthened by AFO using hands to condition him, actually...), to the point where it became his theme. Later on, though, when they started expanding on AFO and OFA mentally, there's thing where both of them are reaching out to people, with this focus on their hands. Both of them do it, and it's always drawn in this ominous sort of way, even for OFA, the apparent good guy. Sometimes, usually (or only?) for AFO (who also has a Quirk focused around his hands; it's not surprising his mind would orient around that to some extent) it's even the only thing we see of their mental silhouettes. It's... very interesting to me, and makes me think there was probably going to be more to him at some point, that there was going to be some, any, depth to his character.

On the academia part, here's the thing: compared to later on, the early stuff was better, not on the merits of school vs fighting, but because early on, even with its flaws, it's clearly something Hori put a lot thought into, had a plan. The later stuff? Well, there's some sort of plan, but the later we get in the timeline, the more it feels like Hori is backpedaling from some original concept, and changing it to something else as we go along. And in itself, his ideas changing isn't a bad thing, but those changes are still built off the foundation of his older plans, and it leaves more and more plot points hanging out in the wind, without proper support. If this manga was a house, the higher Hori built it, the more floors he added, the more he started shifting the house to one side, while everything he had already built stayed where it was. That's not how you get a solid house, and no matter how much fancier those higher floor may look, it doesn't make up for the fact that it's only barely staying in place.

At the same time though, it's clear that, for all that this series is called My Hero Academia, the actual school part of it is something Hori doesn't seem to be all that interested in, or have put thought into. UA, narratively, isn't a school, it's an excuse, and the times when Hori puts in things like class presidents, or normal, actually academic tests and the like, it's because he has to put them in, and so it's understandable when you look at the actual school parts of this 'school', it feels awkward and out of place.

When people talk about liking it, it was probably less, 'Man, Izuku and friends in school, doing school things, was great' (though, there are are probably plenty of those as well, to be fair; again, My Hero Academia; it's not surprising to see interest in that school setting promised in the actual title) and more that, 'Wow, it was nice to focus on Izuku and the main cast we were introduced to from the beginning, and watch them actually talk to each other and interact!', since the farther we got into the actual hero stuff, the less we had of all that, and of all the characters we got attached to originally, when we first started the story.

#mha critical #bnha critical #ask #One For All #All For One #My complete lack of faith in this series developing anything anymore #OFA's transformation into The Mandate of The True Hero #The Vestiges are people not Stands #Black Whip is Hori's favored child #Remember when 1A was important?