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justatalkingface · 1 year

Note

Oh I am EXCITED to hear your thoughts about the war arc and the post-war arc because that's when everything went from decent to shit.

From random ass characters getting introduced and killed off

To the HORRIBLE confrontation of 1-A vs Izuku where it feels like Middle School all over again where everyone gangs up on him.

The mistreatment of Izuku where he's treated to be in the wrong for leaving even though it was to protect everyone.

To everyone basically gaslighting him.

To the HORRIBLE apology Bakugou gave which was more justifying his actions and victim blaming.

And not to mention the rushed Aoyama Traitor reveal and Izuku refusing to connect or relate to him because as we know as soon as he got a quirk, his quirkless past was erased!

You know, between how big this ended up being, and all the things I had to do, this response came later than I would have like. Hopefully it lives up.

Ah, The War Arc.

Also known as 'The point where everything went to shit'. Oh, those were the days. It's even worse because, as it was building up, The War Arc seemed like it was going to be awesome. It was where a bunch of plot threads, from Shigaraki to Hawks to Dabi's 'surprise' were all lining up to collide, and oh I, and probably others, were so excited to see it all go down.

Such naivety. Honestly, I think I blocked out so much of this beyond pure scorn that I had to reread it just to do this justice. If I seem particularly biting or sarcastic... that's probably why. This is basiclly me rereading and commenting as I go along, so it'll probably be a bit all over the place, before I move onto the post-war arcs which are still fresh in my mind.

Where to start, where to start.... well, the beginning works, I guess.

The LOV, after absorbing the MLA in a... kind of shoehorned way (Re-Destro basically ceased being a person after Shigaraki beat him, but for all that it's shown as, 'Wow he's so cool let's follow him!', I wonder if he surrendered just so his movement and army wouldn't be annihilated more than anything, and how he feels about all this, since he has no legs and seems generally depressed even though his stress has 'disappeared'. And wow, isn't funny that, if you just give up on everything you ever stood for or care about and your will to live, your sheer crippling depression would probably get rid of your stress temporarily?) becomes the PLF (so many acronyms!) and an army large enough to need a serious intervention, and so an army is needed to oppose them.

Thankfully, they get information from Aizawa's friend from the spin off manga to help figure out where everything is! Thank god they gave us flashbacks as this was happening to explain to anyone who didn't read it what the fuck was going on!

Sigh. Introduce your shit better, Hori, especially when it's some illegal move beyond science you're trying to sell us.

Anyways, that, combined with Hawks's information (back in those days where his arc was great), lets them get a grasp on the PLF and launch a two pronged attack on them, while also dealing with moles. All of this? All of this was actually pretty great, Kurogiri as the exception. Like I said, that build up was great.

Also, can I just add that Present Mic losing his shit was actually pretty awesome and hilarious? 10/10, would watch Crazed Mic again.

Anyways, here's one of the first things that, and maybe it's just me, is just kind of off: the fact that Garaki can duplicate Quirks. Not with a Quirk, or even with multiple Quirks, but just with science, somehow? I know that he's in the best position to do it, with AFO and vast resources to support him, but still; the closest to 'manipulating' Quirks like this, beyond OFA and Garaki himself, that we've seen in this manga? Is fucking Endeavor with his Quirk marriage. Quirks, in this story, are some black box bullshit that no one understands, and attempts to control them are on the level of Mendel and his peas, and often prone to failure to even get a 'basic' change happen (like, Bakugou was another 'basic' pairing, but he easily could have gotten something useless for heroics if he wasn't born lucky), and yet this fucker is just... so far beyond them it's OOC for the setting.

Everyone else is mashing lego pieces they can't see together to see if they fit, but this guy has copied Quirks, hundreds of them, and they just sit in jars everywhere? How? How?! In retrospect (and I'm kind of afraid of how many times I may say that here), his existence is just set up for the massive escalation that's about to come at us like a truck. How are there multiple AFOs active? How is Shigaraki's new body so strong? Where does the retroactively impossible rare old age Quirk come from, that was never a big deal before now because AFO had decades to hunt one down?

All of it? All of it is this guy. He's actually kind of interesting as a character, and a mad scientist fits AFO's organization to a T, but his purpose in the story is to hand out deus ex machinas for the villains on demand, and I honestly kind of hate him for it.

Meanwhile, Mirko bursts into the lab with Tomura in it and, ah, Mirko. In retrospect (seriously, someone count this and get back to me) this is the start of Hori just... ripping off all her body parts off like she's a cheap toy that he wants to see how much it'll take to break. At the time, I didn't think much of it, at worst it was a cheap way to prove how Serious Shit Was(TM) without killing off anyone named, but once it started happening again, while it just continued to focus on her in fetishy ways as she fights, it started to be a disturbing trend.

I've got some mixed feeling about her in general, because she's.... basiclly Bakugou? But with better limits on her behavior? Like, she's what the fanfic versions of Bakugou tend to end up as, somewhat cruel and crude and definitely violent but channeling it towards acceptable targets rather than, like, everyone around her. I actually like Blood Knight characters, but in this setting, as a hero, it just doesn't fit right, you know?

Still, she's a cool character and definitely deserved better than than being turned into a human stick for whatever kicks Hori seems to be getting out of it.

While I'm at it, let me mention that it's hard to take 'Super Strength Quirks' as a whole seriously sometimes if 'Rabbit' is enough for her to tear through the Semi-High Ends with some early Full Cowl level feats, and Endeavor can be punted through buildings and shake it off. In retrospect (fucking sigh) Endeavour vs the High End and Mirko's big Nomu fight were warnings that, yup, we're going all in on the power levels now, and it's kind of frustrating when, early on, they were trying to take the 'physicality' of Quirks seriously, that they were just human bodies plus this one specific thing, and now Hori's taking the seriousness of his own setting so loosely, just to make BIGGER, more DRAMATIC fights that last a lot longer than they should.

But I digress.

On a different note, while it was nice to see 1A given a time to shine, the fact that they're in this fight, the fact that some of them were essential members of this attack, is just wow. This, making so many of the adult heroes seem so useless that the need to depend on literal high schoolers, is in retrospect a big warning sign of just how accelerated the timeline became. In a more 'normal' situation for something like this, these big, dramatic fights would have happened years later, giving 1A the chance to grow up and make it all less... child soldier-y. There's plenty of shonen settings that have this kind of thing happen, sure, but they're always generally dystopian hellholes in the first place. Naruto the sixteen year old being important is a lot less of a reach when they put ten year olds in life or death situations on the regular anyways. MHA, though, is a modern setting, and they're in an actual, semi-normal school, where they get, like diplomas and shit and learn normal school things, rather than some military academy focused on pumping out ninjas or sorcerers or whatever to fight and die and kill for the cause. Which, UA kinda actually does anyways, but UA and how it doesn't actually make sense as a whole is really getting off topic.

So. Anyways....

OK, fine, Re-Destro being, like, the 'This is Fine' meme as a person is both iconic and deeply understandable and I wish we had more focus on that, but I need to focus back up on this!

Midnight's actual combat tool is a non-combat fan that exists just to fan the air. It kind of makes sense with her power but it's just so... shallow seeming, just playing to her fetishy theme, and I honestly think her doing this, fanning the air dramatically, is one of her more impressive showings in canon? I already know Hori has never taken Midnight seriously but still.

I've already talked about how wonderfully horrible the whole Twice Hawks thing was, so we're just going to ignore that and try to save some space....

Now I think it's time, so let's talk about one of the biggest issues of this arc: Shigaraki.

I've said it before, but him powering up makes sense, especially when he starts taking on the mantle of AFO's replacement. The problem is how much he powers up, and we can lay that at the feet of Garaki, Doctor Power Up, you jerk. He was always going to be one of the top beings in the setting once he got one of the most broken Quirks in the setting, but the fact that he can walk around without a Quirk active, blatantly ignoring all the people actively trying to murder him, refusing to simply kill Endeavor because his character is too important to write off yet, still incomplete and still be so dangerous...; in other words, the fact he effectively has several Quirks even without having a Quick is way too far. The heroes nerfing his development was an elegant solution to this problem, something that was handled a lot better than AFO, both as a person and as the Quirk itself, was. Even with Shigaraki escaping at the end of this, and making the 'final confrontation' energy of this arc fall completely flat*, the fact that he was permanently damaged by this still makes it have more meaning... you know. Until they tossed that out to fix him up anyways, somehow.

*This, actually, is one of the things that made the war so bad for me, actually: the build up was so... This Is It. There was all this hype for this being the Ultimate Fight, because if they don't win here, they'll have no way to meaningfully counter Shigaraki, he'd just be too hard to fight. Maybe if it was later, if Izuku was stronger, them losing could work: there would be a somewhat reasonable way out if they lost, involving a (probably bullshit) power up/training arc with Izuku frantically trying to even begin to match Shigaraki somewhere on his level as a 'transcendent one beyond humanity' before it was Too Late.... but him reaching his full potential at this point was years away, far too late to stop Shigaraki. It didn't sit right, because it was too early, but the way it was set up this was the do or die moment. Then the heroes lost, and that was the moment the story just... went to shit because Hori decided to solve the problem of Shigaraki being too strong by just making everyone else stronger as well.

And sure, a lot of it (most of it) is just Izuku, just Deku getting power up after power up, mastering them all near instantly when before each level of strength he gained was hard fought, requiring time and practice to being able to use them well, even with the new, largely out of nowhere addition of Black Whip, but it's also all the super moves everyone starts breaking out left and right in the final arc. It's Endeavour somehow beating AFO. It's all the big, increasingly dramatic and flashy attacks, all of them being no-selled by SFO because they're not allowed to be a meaningful threat. It's the one scratch on SFO by Bakugou (of fucking course) being, not because he's that strong (thank fuck) but because of some weird PTSD flashback on AFO's end. It's Deku, The Main Character, finally showing up and being the only person able to anything. That moment, in retrospect, is the moment when the power levels became the most important thing for a character above anything else, beyond strategy and planning, beyond how a power even works; any of it, all of it, they all paled before how strong is this character, how hard can they hit, how much damage can they take. It takes the idea of everyone being a hero, of the lesson Izuku had started to reject from the very beginning of the story, that people aren't born equal, being proved right all along, despite how the story trying to tell us otherwise.

That Izuku was only ever special because All Might graced him with his Quirk, and nothing else.

Oh. I can't believe I didn't mention that one second later retcon of Shigaraki awakening 'because of his hatred' instead of the far more reasonable electricity zapping him. With the delicious irony of it only happening because a hero was doing the 'heroic' thing of not minding his own business, no less; that would have been the cherry on top of the sundae of him coming back, as the perfect symbolism of how the heroes keep creating the villains they fight.

Don't get me wrong, his awakening itself is epic, you can almost hear the epic dark chorus singing in the background as he destroys everything, but... it's flashiness for the sake of flashiness, the way he officially wakes up. Not for any logical reason, but because his hatred is so immense it breaks reality, just like Izuku magically defies Nighteye's prediction, even though MHA pretends it's 'grounded' and that all it's super powers are biologic instead of anything more metaphysical that would help explain that off. It's just empty hype just for the sake of hype, no matter how little sense it makes. In this situation, it's relatively harmless, sure, but it's easy for it to become less harmless, like, perhaps, power ups just to make Shigaraki, Izuku, Bakugou, or whoever else is in focus at the moment look better, even if it doesn't make sense for them to actually happen. Or dramatic, meaningless 'deaths' and equally dramatic and ridiculous 'resurrections' that couldn't possibly result in a drastic increase in a person's abilities.

*looks meaningfully at the final arc's bullshit*

But surely, surely, Hori wouldn't do that, right? Right?

But anyways, back to the War Arc and... 'booty incoming'. Really. Really? Must we? Must we do this? Can't we have a woman on screen for five minutes without something sexual being referenced?

And then Bakugou's back, still speaking to everyone he can like they're trash, and still with people surprised by this, somehow, like this isn't a long established character trait for him, or that he would actually have any respect for old people. And then everything's being Dusted, people are panicked, and the heroes are full in crisis mode and yet his comment on the situation is "I'll wreck him". Not something about teamwork, not something about saving people, not even that he'll stop him, which has connotations of protection, but wreck, which screams aggressiveness and destruction. And it's just... so completely ignoring the seriousness of the situation, where everyone else is concerned about the city vanishing into dust, and Bakugou just wants to crush the enemy just to crush them.

It has all the energy of someone slapping their edgy OC into a scene by saying a meaningless line that can be somewhat reasonably ignored by the actual characters because it's so out of place. And then next chapter he just screams about killing Izuku instead of the actual threat when Izuku wonders why he's even there. Look, I get that, for some god forsaken reason, that Hori wants to play Bakugou's violent, abusive tendencies as 'comedy', but even if it was comedy, actually comedy and not thinly painted over abuse, there is a time and place for comedy, and this situation is not that time.

And, oh look, Eraserhead is finally fulfilling his true purpose: not being a teacher, but desperately acting as a bandaid to try and salvage the plot after Shigaraki contracted Madara Syndrome! And yet we still get shit like, 'The worst case is losing the teacher who watched over us all this time!' You know, the person who 'watched over you' by systematically destroying your ability to trust that anything he says or does isn't just another lie 'logical ruse', instead of the already unstoppable villain being even more unstoppable, because that is the context of the worst case scenario here, just so we're all clear: losing Aizawa would be worse than Shigaraki getting OFA.

(I mean, you could make a case that losing Erasure, the Quirk, is worse than him getting OFA, because Erasure can counter OFA so in that respect, Shigaraki getting it wouldn't change Aizawa's utility, but that's not the argument that's happening here; it's not Eraserhead, the tactical asset, the would be a loss, it's Aizawa the asshole of a person, who would be a tragic loss worse than OFA, the only hope anyone in this story has.)

Hori, if you could just throttle down the overhype of your Kakashi proxy and the angry fan favorite for five minutes while the shit gets real that would be great, thanks.

"If we can't stop one person, what is the point of this hero-saturated society?" You know what... Burning(?), that's a great question; I'm just going to leave this quote here on it's own merits.

And then Midnight is merced off screen by a meaningless mook, basiclly never to be mentioned again. You know, I didn't like how hollow her characterization was, but the answer to that is not to just off her and move on.

Meanwhile, Gran Torino is torn into by Shigaraki, but still manages to shrug it off. And, while we're on this topic...

Momo: is a genius.

Also Momo: makes a drug that is administered by injection instead of in a gas form.

Still Momo: doesn't think to make anyone else some extra knock out vial... things.

Still Momo: the sleep drug she makes take so long to take effect that this entire exercise is almost pointless.

Ashido: has the toss.

Also Ashido: fumbles the toss at the last minute out of surprise so that a man can do it for her, in a reversal of a situation that she had handled better before than he did, as an excuse to show his growth at her expense.

Classic Hori. Why let a woman actually be helpful when they can just try and fail to meaningfully improve the situation for the better?

And, ah yes. After just going on, with all apparently seriousness, about how he'll fight Izuku if he dares question why he's following him around, 'Bakugou Rises', and 'has his body move on it's own'. You know, heroically. Even though by all accounts he did and still does think and act on his instinct to just attack other people. And his dramatic 'sacrifice' is just going to be shrugged off and he's still going to be able to fight in anther couple of minutes. And, despite how it's presented like he comes to a big realization, he still acts exactly the same after this.

Riiiight, I buy that. Oh, and the person to notice something off about All Might's notes? Who was that again? Was it Izuku, who started off the series by analyzing Quirks a lot, and took the notes seriously, or is it Bakugou, who instantly insulted everyone in the notes off a surface level impression of them?

...Well. Now that the Bakugou simping portion of the war is finally past us, let us continue with Hori writing off one of his most interesting villains, just to replace him with the one he's refused to develop, just so we can start undoing all his wonderful development.

Thankfully, we come to one of the few parts I like about this mess: Dabi's Dance. Fucking glorious it is; the man is just vibing about the mayhem he's causes, the wonderful little psychopath. And let me tell you, 'The Past Never Dies' hits a lot harder than anything AFO has ever said.

Say what you want about him being a crazed murderer, beyond all hope of redemption, or blindingly insane? I'm not going to argue with you (though the story might, the way things are going) but you can't disagree with me about this: for all of his many, many flaws, the man understands Megamind's lesson about Presentation.

Oh. And Lemillion's back, I guess. If I seem unenthusiastic about it, well, that's about as much enthusiasm as Hori seems to have about that, so don't blame me.

Wait, the Bakugou simping is back on, or should I say, the Great Explosion Murder God Dynamite simping is back on. Fuck, Hori, remember what I said about a time and a place for comedy? Remember that?

Sigh... And the perfect place to end this clusterfuck of an arc off: 'You look like you needed saving', in reference to one of the greatest villains in the series, a mass murder who has spent the last five minutes trying to kill you, Izuku, what the fuck. But, it's over, right? Now that the War Arc is over, it can only get better, right?! Ha, if only!

Welcome to Post War, suckers: AKA, the point where Hori just stops giving a shit.

You see, for all the many, many, many flaws of the War Arc, Hori at least spent time on them, fleshed out dramatic moments, character reactions, and the lead up to those moments. But after? Hori has a checklist, somewhere, of all the major points he wants to do before the manga ends and he's checking things off, sure, but that's all he's doing: checking off the major plot points, one after the other. We've reached speedrun manga hell, where no character gets time actually think about anything anymore, or hold a conversation with someone that doesn't involve violence, or even break down in a proper hysterical cry.

Oh, look, a new character! What's that, an interesting character with deep ties to previously untouched worldbuilding you've been curious about? You want to know more about the corruption of the heroic society, or a country that isn't Japan for once?

Well, too bad, because they're gone. Where we're going, we don't have time for the current characters, much less new ones. If you see someone you've never seen before, enjoy your handful of chapters before they're thrown away like trash.

What's this? Izuku is finally getting some new character development? He's doing something new, different, and exciting, with potential to make him think about his future and heroism? WRONG! Class 1A can't have that! They're going to hunt him down like a dog for daring to leave them, and beat the living shit out of him to prove their friendship.

Just like Bakugou does! Good thing he's leading them, just like the old days in Aldera! And wow, that's some top tier Karma Houdini bullshit there, isn't it?

Pop Quiz: according to Bakugou, what does Deku mean?

Useless, you got it!

Next question: what does Bakugou still call Izuku, the same way he has since they were young, young children up to the present?

Deku!

How about this? How long has All Might actually interacted with Izuku?

Oh, maybe two years or so, you say? That's right!

During this time, has he ever once called Izuku either useless or Deku, beyond as his hero name?

Not once, correct!

So, taking all of this into account, final question: if Izuku considers himself Dek- I'm sorry, useless, what one person is the most reponsible for that?

All Might!

Hmm. Hmmm. Something seems wrong with that last answer. Gee, I wonder what seems wrong about that last answer, I'm so confused.

So, yeah, after Izuku leaves, not runs away, mind you, leaves, because UA isn't a prison and he has every right to leave, Bakugou explains how Izuku's complete lack of self respect is All Might's fault, before whipping all his classmates into a frenzy to go hunt him down.

Then, after finding him, already exhausted from constantly fighting for his life, all of them gang up on him, attack, try to knock him out, and after he gives up on making his own choices against the sheer amount of peer pressure being thrown his way, Bakugou apologizes.

For what? Well, if we didn't read the manga, we sure wouldn't know, because Bakugou didn't want to talk about that! No, it's just how Izuku, weak, helpless Izuku who idolized him, and had no Quirk, somehow made him feel inferior, and that's why he was so angry all the time. How dare Izuku have hopes and dreams?! And then we end it up with the absolutely touching message that this won't change anything.

Wow, Great Explosion God Dynamite. I'm moved. You truly are beyond us mere mortals, to know how an apology can only be truly sincere when you explain how utterly worthless it is! Brilliant! Truly, this is that Post War quality we know and love!

Oh, and the Traitor arc. Think back, everyone, back to the days where this manga was about being in a school, and think about the traitor that ratted out the class to AFO. Remember that? Well, it's Aoyama. What, the last chapter made you think it was someone else? Psych!

Anyways, Aoyama was actually the traitor the whole time, and it just... never came up again; AFO never saw a use for someone inside UA since they attacked the summer camp, I guess, and there's no possible way he could have used that asset again, no sir. Well, now that we've all yelled at him a bit, I guess we're all fine with that now; let's use him to ambush AFO! With loopholes to get around his lie detector Quirk! Surely, after giving him one Quirk to help him infiltrate one of the most important places in Japan, there's no way AFO could have planted, say, a second Quirk in Aoyama, as a way to deal with possible treachery; no we've never seen him do that recently. Or just observe him, or really do anything to make sure he stays loyal.

Oh wait, he was Quirkless? A dark mirror to Izuku, you say, both of which got a Quirk from two of the most important characters in the series, in a way that drastically changed their lives and tied them together antagonistically?! What does Izuku think about that? Don't you know better than to ask that kind of question; we don't have time to reflect on things, much less Izuku's Quirkless past that has basiclly been retconned out of existence at this point.

Was any of that too fast for you? Maybe too confusing? Did you want me to maybe break up that last section a little more, spend some more time on each major plot twist as it happened, how people felt about it? Well, congratulations, that's exactly what it feels like to read MHA Post War.

*screams in fury forever*

Hori. Hori, why did you do this to me? This story started off so good. What the fuck is all this?