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bnhaobservation · 1 year

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Ramblings about the Takami family

So, the past time I was rambling about the Shimura family.

Next up the Takami one, which is, if possible, way worse as no one in it is on little Keigo’s side, with his father being openly abusive and his mother being absolutely neglectful and an enabler of how Takami abuses little Keigo.

But let’s dig into it.

Keigo’s father doesn’t get a name, he’s referred just as Takami.

He was a thief who killed someone over pocket change and, while he was running away, ended up being sheltered by Tomie. By mistake he made her pregnant and so Keigo was born.

Overall it’s implied Takami didn’t want to make a family with Tomie and was only using her because, somehow, her quirk was something he could rely on.

Supposedly, the place in which they live (a ‘house’ that’s falling apart, filled from trash and that’s out of the city) is Tomie’s.

It’s unclear what Tomie’s quirk (which manifests as two floating eyeballs) does, if it kept Takami hidden, or just surveys the surroundings so that he can know in advance if the police were to come looking for him.

Takami views Keigo as a nuisance at best and as a liability at worst. He’s paranoid about Keigo leaving the house and reporting him to the police, beats him for petty reasons (Keigo leaving the house, Keigo turning his back on him)...

...fundamentally wants to keep Keigo trapped inside the house and openly says how he regrets Keigo was born, probably because he’s so paranoid Keigo will end up tattling him out.

The story doesn’t really dig much into why Takami is the way he is, like instead it did with Kotarou, we’ve no idea if Takami became a criminal due to a sad past or he was just born this way of if he even came to work for AFO at one point in life. The story also isn’t subtle on his abuse of Keigo.

In short Takami is depicted as a villain and, although he is not shown being physically abusive with Tomie, who psychologically depends on him, he fundamentally seems only to use her. Interesting enough though, he sees Keigo’s existence as something that’s trapping him…

...when he’s shown free to come and go from the place and is likely remaining there solely because it’s a safe shelter for him… unless there’s something we don’t know about him.

I mean, the whole story is told from Keigo’s point of view, so Keigo might work with missing information.

As for Tomie… she seems disconnected from the world.

Keigo defines his parents as ‘both broken’ but, differently from how Takami seems to see Keigo like a punching bag, Tomie seems to be completely disinterested in Keigo (which includes her turning a blind eye to the abuse her son suffers at the hands of Takami), worrying about how the tv isn’t working instead, looking as if she’s completely unaware of what was going on around herself (like how Takami makes clear he doesn’t love her either).

Although Takami doesn’t beat her, he’s clearly not a loving husband/companion but someone who’s taking advantage of her, yet her only worry seems to be for him not to leave her, even though it’s Takami who’s supposedly dependant on her for sheltering and who urges her to find a job.

Her house is falling apart and filled with litter, there’s tin cans and bottles everywhere and papers and letters on the floor. Either her or her husband are alcoholics or possibly both, and this might also be tied to how Takami is violent and paranoid and she’s just lethargic, but it’s hard to say.

There’s just so much trash those tin cans might have piled up gradually for all we know, no one bothering to throw them away.

Also Tomie seems unable to take care of herself, although Takami supposedly depended on her quirk.

In fact, when Takami gets arrested by Endeavor for trying to steal a car, Tomie asks Keigo, a small child, what they should do...

...then decides they should escape from the house because she could get arrested for harboring a fugitive but, as Keigo points out, she misses what it takes to live in society and ends up sitting curled up on the ground, a finger in her mouth as if she were an infant, her gaze lost as Keigo tells they should go to the police. At first she seems to agrees as long as they get money, then, pointing out how Keigo is his father’s son she asks him why he was even born and why he had such wings which denotes she didn’t seem to really care about her son, her questions hurtful and abusive.

Still it’s unclear which is the cause of her inability to function properly, if she’s really an alcoholic or not.

Her behavior is neglectful, verbally abusive and enabling of her husband’s physical, verbal and psychological abuse of Keigo but there could have been a time in which she was somehow a better mother.

We see that outside the house there’s a child’s tricycle...

...and, since it’s hard to assume Takami bought it, it might probably come from Tomie, who also bought an Endeavor doll for Keigo. Even though Keigo claims she did carry him out because he couldn’t stop whining about leaving the house, she still did it even though she knew Takami wouldn’t like it if he were to find out, and when she bought him the toy, she even said she hoped he would grow up as strong as Endeavor.

When, years later, she escapes from her house after giving the MLA info about Keigo and his father, she still leaves him a letter apologizing for what she did and telling him she’s proud of him.

So, inside her, there could have been some measure of care for Keigo, care that she lost when her life took a turn for worse and that she partially regained when she was allowed to start over.

In theory it’s possible that Keigo’s family’s backstory will be expanded, because part of Keigo’s behavior is rooted into his perception of his abusive family… but it’s also possible that Tomie was always just the terribly selfish and uncaring mother we saw her being, who occasionally had sparks in which she was a little less terrible just because the story needs so.

Of course, whatever the story were to make of her in the future, wouldn’t make up for all the abuse Keigo has suffered at her hands and Takami’s, it would just expand Keigo’s backstory and give him (and us) more points to ponder.

Still, to sum it up, Takami is terrible, unloving and abusive and Tomie is pretty bad herself.

In this terrible family Keigo has to do his best to survive. Curled up on himself, hugging his Endeavor doll, he looks alone and broken as well, a kid without hope for the future who yet is still struggling to remain afloat, to not sink like his parents.

Part of that disillusionment will remain within him.

Keigo believes that “those who can fly, should” and wonders why should they keep grounded [Chap 199],

...which seems a positive message when said to Tokoyami, but if we read it in reverse it means those who can’t fly shouldn’t, and will never know the sky and having a bird’s eye view of the world means getting the bigger picture, but also missing the details.

But we’ll dig into this more later.

Anyway, in this setting, Keigo’s rejection of his parents takes shape. He wants to avoid their fate, he says, which also means he doesn’t want to become like them, he wants to be different.

And it’s meaningful he sees Endeavor arresting Takami as Endeavor saving him…

...even though Endeavor never came to save him back then, possibly didn’t even know he existed and just arrested Takami because he stole a car and Keigo being freed of his abusive father due to his action is an unplanned consequence.

But Takami was Keigo’s biggest abuser and, all of sudden, that abuser is out of the picture and the one doing it was someone he thought was a fantasy character and of whom, by coincidence, he owned a toy doll at which he used to clung and that was his only emotional comfort.

In a way this likely caused him to idealize Endeavor, to take him as a role model and wish to be like him. Where we previously had Keigo state he didn’t want to become like his parents, later he’ll claim he wants to become like Endeavor, someone who beats the bad guys, a shining light for everyone, someone who will save others the way he was saved. [Chap 267]

But I’m running ahead.

While Tomie feels lost because Takami is out of the picture, and Keigo feels blessed because his abuser was put into jail, the truth of things is little Keigo wasn’t saved at all, he’s still a little kid in a home that’s falling to piece with a mother who’s unable to properly care for him and who decides to escape with him because she fears the police will come for them.

Tomie though, can’t really handle escaping and it’s Keigo who has to somehow acts as if he were the adults between the two, when he’s actually just a small kid. Maybe he feels some loyalty to Tomie because she was less bad with him than Takami, maybe it’s just he’s a kid, so he doesn’t leave her but suggests her to go to the police.

Tomie replies ‘whatever it takes to get us some money’. While this might seem to imply she’s agreeing with Keigo, she later points out how Keigo was his father’s son, asks him why he was born and why he has his wings. The implication seems to be instead than going to the police she’s trying to suggest to Keigo he should do like his father and steal to provide money for them both.

If little Keigo will do it or not is unclear, we see how, while he’s away from his mother and carrying a bag (and there might be a tear in his eyes?), he ends up saving some people from a car crash thinking back to his mother’s words, “why do you even have those wings?”. [Chap 299]

In that moment he probably realized his wings could become a mean to save people the way he felt he was saved by Endeavor… and his actions ironically seem to save him further… though in a way they also condemned him.

The Hero Public Safety Commission takes interest in him [Chap 192/267], they judge him hero material and promise him they will provide to him and his family but in exchange they enroll him ‘to a special program to become a very special hero’.

Keigo accepts and the Hero Public Safety Commission promises to provide support to him and his family (which at the time was constituted only by Tomie) and will erase any connection to the Takami name so that they can start over (and Keigo’s hero persona won’t be associated to a thief).

Then, as Keigo claims he cut connections with his mother when he renounced the Takami name, likely the Hero Public Safety Commission took charge of him and parted him from Tomie.

Tomie changes name and gets a fancy house to live in and Keigo ends up in the special program for special heroes… which likely wasn’t about just training him but also about grooming him into becoming the Hero Public Safety Commission spy and killer, something that would work much better with him than with Lady Nagant as she was older and, probably, not traumatized when she ended up in their grasp and therefore harder to groom the way they wanted.

So, in a way that parallels Shimura Tenko, Keigo leaves his abusive family only to end up groomed by his new caretakers to become the one who’ll take care of all the dirty work for the Hero Public Safety Commission, which included secretly executing whoever the commission deemed a threat.

Sure, where Tenko is meant to destroy the current society, Keigo is meant to protect the status quo hiding its dark side but, ultimately, they were both 2 kids who were manipulated by adults in order to turn them into killers under the delusion those adults cared for them and were saving them and helping them to fulfill their dreams.

And it’s pretty ironic how All for One gets the kid that’s the grandson of a hero (and One for All user) while the Hero Public Safety Commission gets the son of a thief and they shaped them to look the opposite of who their relatives were, the grandson of the hero becoming a villain and the son of a villain becoming a hero.

“The experiences of one’s youth determine the entirety of one’s life.” [Chap 374]

It’s All for One’s words but they hit pretty close to the mark as the years of the youth are formative years and contribute greatly in forming a person.

So in which sort of person little Keigo was shaped?

On the surface, all seems well with him.

He looks like a cheerful, confident and easygoing hero, an impressive one for that matter as he managed to open his agency at 18 and having the personal record of being the first at being among the top 10 before the age of 20 (in the second ranking of the same year in which he opened his agency), rising to number 3 4 years after and, after All Might’s retirement, becaming number 2 at 22 (this wasn’t a personal record because Endeavor managed to become number 2 at 20).

But that’s just how he presents himself, interpersonal skills having been drilled into him from young age by the safety commission so that they could use him for infiltration missions.

How’s the real Keigo then?

Well, he still holds inside his heart the wish to be a hero, to save people and be a shining light for them like Endeavor was for him and genuinely longs for a world in which heroes can enjoy a little boreom.

However… in a way Keigo hadn’t found his path yet, he’s merely following the instructions and teachings of the Hero Public Safety Commission.

He has left the small house in which his parents caged him, but he’s actually still in a cage, one that seems bigger and more comfortable but that’s a cage all the same and, although his aim is to help people, he’s still asked to kill people and steal (trust and information) like his father did.

There’s a big irony in how, in order to win Jin over he told him “The world I once admired and dreamed of joining turned out to be a birdcage locking me up. I wanna fly free. I don’t belong in a cage.” [Chap 258]

His words hit the mark because, even though he’s saying them to win Jin over, he’s actually being sincere and Jin answering to him in kind “Anyone who helps his friends can’t be all bad. Let’s fly free together!” hit him back because this is probably what he wanted to hear.

Both him and Tenko were manipulated by their ‘saviors’, used, but the difference between them is that, ultimately, Tenko managed to diverge from AFO, he doesn’t merely want to obey to him, he wants to be independent and handle things differently from him so, where AFO merely uses people, he instead has genuine care for the LOV and used to love AFO as well.

Keigo isn’t quite there yet. He has figured the Hero Public Safety Commission uses him but doesn’t fight their orders beyond pointing out he has no choice but to follow them. Actually he has a choice, he could attempt rebelling like Lady Nagant (yes, things didn’t go well for her in the end, but this didn’t stop her from trying), instead he does the same thing he did as a child, he endures.

As the Hero Public Safety Commission raised him, he follows their teachings. After all they were, in a way, the only education he received, his parents solely neglecting and mistreating him.

Why Tenko wants to choose independently and ultimately rebels to AFO while Keigo doesn’t?

“The experiences of one’s youth determine the entirety of one’s life.”

Banally, Tenko was exposed to more options and ended up interacting with more people.

He comes from a family of 6, where part of the family members are supportive and his father is abusive and we see how, at the tender age of 5, he questions his situation and doesn’t just submit passively to it (yes, it’s resistance is merely the one of a child who struggles against being dragged away and protest about it but it’s more than the one of Keigo who just accepts everything that’s done to him).

Little Tenko asks why his dad acts toward him like that? What should happen for things to change? We also see that, when the world crashes around Tenko, he tries to rationalize it, he believes no one helps him because he’s bad.

The result is that when later, when he’s older and freed from the presence of AFO (as the man get arrested) and exposed to the one of the league, living and struggling at close contact with them and confronting himself with them, he manages to grow further and partially distance himself from his master, the latter’s betrayal making the break definitive.

Keigo instead, comes from a family of 3, both his parents neglectful and abusive. He doesn’t question his situation, he endures it...

...until his father is arrested. When his mother asks him why was he has wings, again Keigo endures.

When Endeavor arrested his father, Keigo took it just as if fantasy has turned into reality and then blindly elected Endeavor as his savior and role model. When the Hero Public Safety Commission comes for him, Keigo doesn’t question their motives.

Mind you, Keigo is young but in a story things happen for a reason.

We’re shown young Tenko questioning why bad things happen, we’re shown Touya doing it as a kid, we even saw Shouto coming up with an explanation for why his beloved mother tossed boiling water at him, which means he asked himself why she did so, but we’re never shown Keigo doing it. Not because he’s young and in real life it wouldn’t be reasonable to expect it from him, but because the story is telling us it’s a character trait he’s meant to carry on, he doesn’t question why bad things happens, he endures them.

His parents were abusive and he endured the abuse. The Hero Public Safety Commission used him, made him do terrible things and he… endured.

There’s a scene in which Keigo questions if he’s expected to turn a blind eye if people are hurt during his infiltration into the league and the answer is that “You can and will. That’s why we came to you.” [Chap 191]

The Hero Public Safety Commission knows he can, they likely made him stain his hands other times. Keigo doesn’t want to hurt people nor have them be hurt, but they make clear they know he can endure letting people be hurt for the sake of the mission. They chose him exactly due to this, because he can turn a blind eye to people being hurt for the sake of the mission... as well as for the fact he can’t refuse. And so Keigo accepts.

Due to his ability in enduring Keigo doesn’t… fall to the dark side, he doesn’t kill his father like Tenko, doesn’t attack a schoolmate like Himiko, doesn’t burn himself like Touya, doesn’t rebel to the Hero Public Safety Commission and ends up in jail like Lady Nagant but, at the same way, he maintains the status quo, he doesn’t really change things and therefore he doesn’t change himself nor the world around him.

Sure, during his time with the Hero Public Safety Commission, he likely had hope that, if he endured, someone would save things like how he was saved by his parents (or the world would change as the Hero Public Safety Commission promised) and… ironically it happens, he’s ‘saved’ by the Hero Public Safety Commission because the Hero Public Safety Commission is shut down due to Re-Destro’s clone killing its president.

And once this happens he believes he’s free of his shackles because the Hero Public Safety Commission isn’t there to control him anymore, and he also thinks that when one’s backed into a corner or when they’re truly free they show their true nature.

He believes like Jin, his true nature is being a decent guy desperate to be helpful and he’s not completely wrong. He wants to be helpful.

However he’s been backed up in a corner, both when he was abused by his family and when he was used by the Hero Public Safety Commission. His true nature there was enduring, keeping the status quo and then he conflated his true nature, enduring, with his wish to help and decided that enduring the wrong was also ‘helping’.

Yes, he wants to help the others, that’s also part of who he is, but Jin was willing to clash with the others to help people (we see it when he argues about not joining the Yakuza because they killed Magne or when he insisted they should help Giran), he was willing to change himself to help others (when he ultimately say he would join the Yakuza to help the league and when he overcome his trauma to help Himiko and save his friends).

Now that the Hero Public Safety Commission is out of the picture… Keigo is still doing what he did before, maybe minus the dirty work for the Hero Public Safety Commission (though he just showed he’s still willing to kill who he thinks is a threat even though heroes shouldn’t kill).

Keigo doesn’t really clash with others, he played along with the Hero Public Safety Commission even when they told him to let the league hurt others. Even when he’s ‘finally free’ because the Hero Public Safety Commission is shut down and he interacts with other heroes a lot more, I can’t remember seeing him entering in contrast with them, confronting with them about something.

He doesn’t really change himself, even when he realizes he has weaknesses (when he failed to save Twice or when he comments he couldn’t save his mother even though he’s a hero or when he admits he couldn’t face his parents like Shouto is doing) he’s not shown as pondering on the bit he believes he failed to try and see what he should have done differently.

It’s not that the manga is against showing self reflection, we’ve plenty of characters pondering on their failures and wondering what they should have done differently or how they can improve, but the most we get from Keigo is his apology at the press conference which… isn’t much as it’s something that was forced upon him due to the people demanding an explanation.

Keigo is not shown reflecting on his mistakes, he’s actually shown repeating them.

That’s the problem when your defining character trait is enduring, that you don’t really seek change, even if you’d like to get it. That’s why his character seems stagnating, because his strongest point isn’t changing, is enduring.

By comparison Lady Nagant was less prone to endure, when she couldn’t bear it any longer she started questioning and when questioning didn’t give her the answers she wanted/needed, she reacted. It didn’t go well for her, yes. She ended in jail, yes, she ended up used by All for One, yes, but she reacted, she changed, she changed when she realized the truth of what she was doing for the Hero Public Safety Commission, she changed when she realized she wouldn’t stand for it. She didn’t stagnate, she just didn’t find a better way to handle things, which make sense because they were too heavy for her.

Now, Keigo’s tendency to endure things instead than fight them is, in the present circumstances, a character flaw, it stops him from evolving, from growing, it makes his character stagnate. However, we’ve to keep in mind Keigo is a survivor and that this characteristic which now works as a flaw of his, is also what allowed him to survive in a situation from which he, very likely, couldn’t escape.

“The experiences of one’s youth determine the entirety of one’s life.”

Keigo learnt from a very young age that ‘enduring’ allowed him to carry on in unpleasant situations. As those unpleasant situations ended due to external causes (his father got arrested by Endeavor, the Hero Public Safety Commission ‘saved’ him from a miserable life with his mother, the death of the president of the Hero Public Safety Commission freed him from the Hero Public Safety Commission’s control), he remained hopeful his enduring wouldn’t be eternal.

We even see it in how he wants a society in which heroes can enjoy boredom and tells himself he’ll make it happen… but basically, his plan is obeying the Hero Public Safety Commission and supporting Endeavor. He’s fundamentally relying on them to ‘make it happen’.

Which makes him a foil for Touya who instead wants to be the one who’ll change society and has troubles obeying other people’s orders. Touya didn’t endure, he fought against his situation all the way, it was a battle he couldn’t win, it ended up worse, he wasn’t saved so he remained the only one on which he could rely on. He doesn’t depend on Shigaraki to fulfill his dream and rejects All for One offering to get more quirks. Touya sits on the opposite extreme of the maladaptive behaviors , where Keigo endures, Touya fights to the point of self destruction.

As usual, ‘est modus in rebus’. Excesses of whatever kind are doomed to damn us more than save us because ‘in medio stat virtus’.

However, maladaptive behaviors born from extreme circumstances aren’t easy to get rid of, people need support to do so, but those characters are in a society that doesn’t support them, in Keigo’s case it actually profited from his own maladaptive behaviors because if Keigo were to just endure he would never rebel to the Hero Public Safety Commission.

And, differently from Jin or Midoriya, Keigo can’t even count on a ‘safety net’ built on the support and affection of other people. Although on the outside he seems extremely social, that’s just a mask he wears. He has sidekicks but they aren’t shown being like Sir Nighteye with All Might. They don’t look out to him, they don’t even know he might need support as they’re always basically on cleanup duty since Keigo is just too darn quick. They admire him but they can’t keep up with him and just trust his judgment blindly.

Keigo normally doesn’t take interns nor work study students as he doesn’t want to train the next generation of heroes and he makes an exception for Tokoyami because he wants info from him. The Hero Public Safety Commission taught him to use people, he admires Endeavor but he manipulates him into coming in Kyushu where he knows there will be a Nomu attack and tries his hardest to win the truth of the Villains, but this makes him isolated by people who could support him and be his real friends… and it’s not all the Hero Public Safety Commission’s doing.

As a child he grew up with abusive and neglectful parents, isolated from other people. He couldn’t trust people, he had to do on his own. When the Hero Public Safety Commission took him, they taught him interpersonal skills but also to use them for an end. So he has fundamentally no one who could support him and help him to recognize and overcome his maladaptive behaviors.

Nobody actually is shown or seems interested in giving him support because they don’t even seem to realize he might need some.

When Keigo, after the war, joins forces with Best Jeanist, he has a nightmare about his past, Best Jeanist didn’t realize he was having a nightmare and he’s only relieved he’s napping instead of having passed out (because they both left the hospital even though they were in poor shape). Their talk is about why Best Jeanist wasn’t dead as we believed but, even if we skip the fact that it feels more like exposition for the readers’ benefit than a normal talk they could have, it’s a business like talk. They’re talking about job, not about how Keigo might feel after the reveal of his past.

They drop to Tomie’s house and Best Jeanist seems to empathize with him on how… Keigo’s mom has exposed his identity and escaped after having been threatened by some Villains… but it’s a really tame reaction and the topic is dismissed as soon as Keigo says he’s fine that way and then they move to focus on supporting Endeavor.

And that’s all.

When Lady Nagant will point out the dirty job she had to do for the Hero Public Safety Commission and how Keigo had to take her mantle after she broke down, no one really confronted him. They accept Keigo’s answer he wasn’t alone in this (because he had an Endeavor’s plushie) and that he’s optimistic to a fault. The visual though shows Keigo’s face wet with rain in a manner in which the rain looks suspiciously like tears and his eyes don’t really look like they’re smiling.

Keigo has hope, yes, he’s used to endure, yes, but it should have been hard for him too, to be used by the Hero Public Safety Commission to kill people.

Through all the story we only saw one adult, Jin, reaching out for him, and Keigo had to kill him.

So it sadly make sense that Keigo so far hadn’t managed to give some serious thoughts to his past decision to kill Twice and that now he’s falling into the same pattern. This is what he learnt to do to survive and, without a strong push, he won’t reconsider the way he copes with what live throws at him.

The way he is the consequences of his past experiences.

Said all this, although it’s a bit unlikely he’ll have time to revalue things in the middle of a war, I hope he’ll manage to do so, that he’ll manage to find his own path without merely following the lines the Hero Public Safety Commission traced for him without even realizing it. I hope he’ll manage to finally get free from their influence, I hope he’ll have the chance to finally do more than just ‘enduring’ what it’s painful for him.

I don’t know if it’s meant to happen though. I can only wait and see.

#Boku no hero Academia #Bnha spoilers #Takami Keigo #Takami #Takami Tomie #Todoroki Touya #Todoroki Shouto #Todoroki Enji #Shigaraki Tomura #Hakamada Tsunagu #Tsutsumi Kaina #Bubaigawara Jin #Toga Himiko #BNHA Ramblings #All for One #Tokoyami Fumikage

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