#or suddenly make shigaraki capable of overtaking his control lol

[haleigh-sloth]

As someone who loves BNHA for everything that it is, good and bad, I gotta say that there are a lot of instances where the fans give the creator too much credit.

By that I mean, expecting him to subvert things that majority of manga in this genre adhere to.

The biggest example is Shigaraki and AFO.

I can appreciate the idea of setting Shigaraki up to be redeemed and be the victim in need of help, only to manage to free himself of his abuser and become the enraged final villain that still gets saved, though it's more gritty and difficult and more of a challenge to the protag (and would require a lot of retconning of Shigaraki's character and casting aside a lot of characterization of the rest of the League, which I don't see happening).

But I feel like people are giving Hori way too much credit, or have way too high expectations for his "subversion" tendencies. Honestly idk of anything that he's subverted, but there is close to, if not completely 0% chance that AFO and Shigaraki will be an example of that.

AFO's presence isn't just Shigaraki's obstacle. His existence in the story is to be the common enemy that both the hero and villain sides can unite to overcome. Relating him to Touya, Aoyama, and All Might on a personal level shows this. Call it what you will: easy, cheap, outdone, whatever, but it's clear that's what he is.

The clear lack of reflection on the heroes' side of things should be pretty much proof of this. There is no reflection on society and its systemic issues, the issues that exist outside of AFO's manipulation of people, just outside of everything AFO does in general. The only ones thinking of the villains as people are 3 of the kids, and nobody else. It's clear that it's not a wide scale dilemma being considered, and that in order for the villains to be seen differently by the majority of the other side they will have to show it through their individual choices and actions. It's a flaw in the manga, I will not deny. Because if the manga was going to present these issues as relevant, it should follow up on it. But it's very present this close to the end and probably not going to change or go away.

So no I don't think AFO is there to be a subversion. He's there to adhere to the easy pathway to redeeming villains and being the guy who does worse than the redeemable villains do. There's the bad guys, and then the even worse guy--which his him. The guy who not only has wronged the heroes, but also the villains, giving them a reason to team up with the heroes at the end and "switch sides". The common enemy that exists so everyone, no matter which side they are on, can relate to each other on some level.

I agree with the complaints that he's boring. What I don't agree with is that he's secretly meant to be more than he is, and we just "haven't seen it yet". I'm sorry but I do think he will remain the boring big bad that he's always been. I'm not necessarily complaining about that fact, because for the characters I DO care about everything is going the way I prefer, but I don't disagree with the criticism that he’s boring and could be handled or utilized much better.

#idk i just think people expect too much from afo's character #he's just #he's a basic bitch #being in denial about it won't change that #or make him more interesting #or suddenly make shigaraki capable of overtaking his control lol #THAT has no set up for happening that i can see #bnha #bnha afo #bnha rants #another instance of fans giving hori too much credit is hawks #though i do wonder if that is justified on our parts since the set up was so good #and that it really was hori who decided to scrap the tragic plot line #idk #we'll probably never know on that front #boku no hero academia