#I'm working from home and it's a slow day so this recap is earlier than usual

[makeste]

BnHA Chapter 236: Mr. Stark I Don’t

Previously on BnHA: We kicked off Year Five Of This Bullshit with another Tomura flashback! Once upon a time there was a boy named Tenko. Little Tenko was very cute and happened to have a real prick of a father who forbid his kids from talking about heroes and punished them severely when they broke that rule. Like, he locked Tenko outside for hours and even fucking hit him when he found out he looked at that picture of Nana. It was super fucked up and very unpleasant to read, and on top of that Horikoshi peppered the entire chapter with hints that the supposedly quirkless Tenko was slowly developing his Decay quirk, so much of the chapter was also spent waiting for that shoe to drop. The chapter ended with a sobbing Tenko hugging his dog Mon-chan (a very good boy) and thinking that he hated everyone, as the scene slowly faded to black. After that we don’t know what happened. Presumably Mon-chan went to live on a farm with lots of other puppies where he could spend the rest of his days in cute doggy bliss. I’m sure Horikoshi will allow me to continue indulging in this theory.

Today on BnHA: Horikoshi doesn’t let me indulge in shit! Horikoshi is all “lol bitch you thought!!” Horikoshi shows us the dead dog!! Horikoshi shows us the scared and sobbing child! Horikoshi shows us the sister! Horikoshi shows us the grandma and grandpa and the mom! Meanwhile poor Kotaro is all, “I suddenly wonder where my whole family has gone,” and goes outside and sees All Of That and is horror-struck. Through a series of terrible but also hilarious coincidences he accidentally smacks Tenko with a big stick, and Tenko suddenly realizes he’d like nothing more than to just STRAIGHT UP!! MURDER HIS DAD!! and so he does. And that’s basically it, guys. That’s my summary of the chapter. I would also like to add that for some reason I ended up fucking loving it in the end, though it was a real roller coaster back and forth until those last few pages. So yeah. Might want to steer clear of me, because I’m sure that’s some kind of red flag there. This motherfucking chapter, guys. I don’t even know.

(All comments are my unspoiled reactions from my initial readthrough of the chapter. I did a quick edit for grammar and clarity immediately afterward, and added one or two ETAs in the process, but aside from that there are no changes.)

thank you anon but rest assured I’m already filled with a deep and profound dread. so we’re good

oh. heh

well that’s just. okay. sure. so a whole nother chapter of this. okay yeah that’s great

oh sweet jesus mary joseph oh shit oh fuck oh SHIT

THAT’S NOT A FARM!! HORIKOSHI!! WE HAD A DEAL! YOU SET ME UP

holy shit!?!? and this is only the start of the chapter oh god. oh god oh god. MR. STARK I DON’T

no thank you I want to return it. reason: item exactly as described. I don’t know what I was expecting. we knew exactly what was going to happen. but I still -- !!

how is the anime going to show this?? no one even wants to watch the senseless blood and violence for once. does Japan do those warning things where a “the following program includes scenes of graphic violence that may be disturbing to some viewers” screen appears before the thing airs? if not they should probably consider it. maybe change “some” to “all”, because let’s be real

anyway so guys I’m waiting for Horikoshi to email me my free shipping label so I can send this back, but in the meantime let’s continue to read I guess

WOW

THAT’S A DEAD DOG. THAT DOG IS LYING IN PIECES IN A POOL OF HIS OWN BLOOD, HUFFING HIS LAST HUFFS. HORIKOSHI REALLY DREW THAT. THAT IMAGE WAS BURNED INTO TENKO’S MIND FOR THE REST OF HIS EXISTENCE AND NOW I GET TO LIVE WITH IT AS WELL. WELL THAT’S JUST REALLY FUCKING GREAT. YIPPY SKIPPY

OH JOY

HANA GO BACK INSIDE, IF HORIKOSHI GRAPHICALLY DRAWS YOU BEING BLOWN INTO CHUNKS BY THIS FUCKING QUIRK I’M FUCKING DONE AND I QUIT. AND I KIND OF NEED TO CONTINUE UNTIL I AT LEAST LEARN BAKUGOU’S FUCKING HERO NAME, SO I’M COUNTING ON YOU HERE OKAY

by the way, this is weird though. because that didn’t look anything like the prior instances where we’ve seen Tomura use his quirk! there was no crumbling apart, no dust ominously drifting away on the breeze. it was more like poor Mon-chan just kind of fell apart into pieces. is this because the quirk is still developing and not yet at full power? or is this more AFO shenanigans in play. it at least explains why it was plausible for their hands to be intact once everything was said and done though

really I’m just trying to talk myself into believing that this didn’t actually happen and is all some grand fucked up psych out and his family is actually fine. I saw this post going around about Tenko’s mole (you know, the one on his chin) not being present in all the scenes last chapter, and the theory was that the scenes where he doesn’t have the mole were not actually real and were implanted by AFO. I personally think this is a reach, but I’m also prepared to 100% subscribe to this theory if and when anything happens to this precious baby girl when I click to the next page you guys. we shall see

okay so Hana’s apologizing because I guess she’s the one that ratted him out to their dad? girl it’s okay you were under a lot of pressure. it’s not like it’s your fault Kotaro flew off the deep end and started beating your brother

anyways but this is currently the least of your worries though oh god. she hasn’t noticed yet, and Tenko’s sobbing and trying to talk to her but his voice isn’t working??

is that because he’s traumatized, or because this is in fact a fake memory? not being able to warn a beloved person of an imminent danger is basic nightmares 101, I’m just saying. I’m actually a bit more convinced than I was just a minute ago

anyway so now she sees the dead dog, and I have a new least favorite panel in the entire series, great

hello, I hate everything about this. what the actual fuck

now she’s turning to run and I SWEAR TO GOD if Tenko instinctively reaches out to grab her... shit. I fucking...

-- WHAT DID I JUST -- !! !!!

son of a bitch. fuck. I’m literally frozen in place and having trouble willing myself to scroll down to see the rest of this. like, can we seriously just stop here. fuck!!

shit. I need a minute. holy fucking shit. I want an actual apology from Horikoshi, and an explanation for why he thought his readers apparently lacked the imagination to fill in the rest of the blanks themselves. like, I was perfectly fine with all of this just being Very Much Implied, dude. seriously

fuck me. I’m just gonna do it. power through the rest of the chapter and assess the resulting psychological damage once it’s all over and done with. okay deep breath. we’re going in

oh honey. oh baby no. oh my god the “crack crack” sound effects again, and the lines of blood appearing oh god

and of course he didn’t realize what was happening at first, didn’t realize it was him. honey it’s not your fault. but you now officially have Murder Rights to All for One, and if anyone else gets to deal the final blow I will fucking sue

hahaha, fuck

at least he didn’t go into the same level of detail as with the fucking dog. but I’m still calling the police, holy shit

if anything, Tenko’s reaction actually makes this even worse than Mon-chan’s death, though. and you know, also the fact that it was a six-year-old girl. who died terrified and in agony and not knowing why this was happening to her. fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck

somewhere Ito Junji is reading this and wishing he’d come up with this shit. Nakayama Masaaki is taking notes. Stephen King is waking up in a cold sweat thinking to himself that for some reason he really wants to start reading shounen manga all of a sudden

sob now everyone is running outside except for his father. of course. saving the best for last. it’s almost as though someone fucking engineered all of this to make it as psychologically damaging to the kid as possible! but who could possibly be twisted enough to do something like that? oh hey there All for One, you sure look happy. why are you smiling so much. what do you mean, it’s a secret. you son of a bitch

hey do you guys want to see the expression of a mother seeing her youngest child screaming and sobbing and covered in blood and surrounded by the bloodied remains of a dead dog and something else that is hopefully unidentifiable because if not holy shit for real? anyways, do you? you don’t? sure you do. Horikoshi thinks you do, so here it is

t-minus five seconds before the level of Horrifying escalates yet again! five... four... three...

oh shit??

did he do that thing again?? disintegrate them without even touching?? or did we just jump-cut to right afterward? because if it’s the latter, you mean to tell me we did that with the mom and grandparents but couldn’t do it with Hana and the dog!? and if it’s the former then that’s really interesting though, because I was under the impression he’d been incapable of that until just a few chapters ago when the grown-up him awakened the ability in the middle of Deika City. maybe it’s something he can only do when under extreme mental duress

oh wait, never mind, I scrolled a bit further down and it seems like his mom is still alive. I guess that was Hana he was reaching out towards there. anyways so here’s his mom’s horrified face again

actually, wait. before we click to the next page, let me go back to the four panels right above these, because this is actually really interesting and deserves more analysis

I really like this actually. Horikoshi acknowledging that even though his mother and grandparents were very kind and loving, they were still complicit in his suffering in a way because they knew what was going on, and they let it happen. this is actually huge, and I’m really grateful to Horikoshi for calling attention to it and pointing out how damaging that was. I’m actually very pleasantly surprised to see it acknowledged

but maybe I shouldn’t be, because this is after all something that’s very important to the story’s themes of heroism. my thoughts immediately ran to Horikoshi’s own favorite hero, Spider-Man, and the whole “with great power comes great responsibility” thing. if someone needs help, and you’re in a position where you could do something but you choose to not take action, then you do bear some responsibility for what follows. “when you can do the things that I can, but you don’t, and then the bad things happen, they happen because of you”

just, this is a theme that has always resonated with me, and one of the most important themes of hero stories in general. and obviously I’m not saying Tenko’s mom and grandparents are in any way bad people, or that what happened is their fault, because it’s not! but all the same they could have done something and they didn’t, and if you were to ask me what I think is the most essential, defining aspect of what makes someone a hero, I would say it’s that. the difference between stepping in, and not stepping in. if you were to boil it down to one single point, that would be it. a hero is someone who helps

anyway. so I really like that. maybe I won’t send this chapter back after all

OR MAYBE I WILL AND NEVER FUCKING MIND!! I DON’T!! FEEL SO GOOD!! MR. STARK!!

holy shit you guys. I have no words. somewhere the person who wrote Mufasa’s death scene is taking notes. the person who wrote Littlefoot’s mom’s death is shook. the person who wrote Bambi’s mom’s death is rubbing their chin and thinking, “honestly mine is still more traumatizing, but I can still respect that”

meanwhile I, a millennial forged in the ashes of all of those childhood-defining fictional tragedies, am going to just suck it up and move on because fuck. my whole life has been preparing me for this day

oh my fucking god

fuck me why did I laugh. I fucking lost it just now. fucking gallows humor, idk

just. his entire family is being blown to little bits in the backyard, and Kotaro cracks open his fucking door and peers his head out like “hmm I thought I heard something just now. hey, where is everyone. did I miss something.” no you didn’t miss anything Kotaro, go back inside

he looks like a kid who’s not sure if he just heard the ice cream man driving by

sob. “better go investigate”

look what happened while you were taking your fucking nap, Kotaro. JUST LOOK! your son disintegrated your whole entire family and uprooted a fucking tree somehow. jesus christ

you know, the irony is I bet you that despite all of his hang-ups, he’s probably thinking “okay maybe a hero would come in fucking handy right about now”

oh shit

“you think this is a fucking joke?!” Horikoshi screams, shoving this page in my face. “you’re just going to sit there and keep making your cute little remarks?? A FAMILY IS DEAD!!” okay jeez I get it fuck

oh no, oh shit for real though I can’t

he’s so scared and traumatized and now he knows, he knows it was him who did it and he can’t bear it, and even though he hates his dad, he’s still his dad, and he’s terrified and looking for comfort from anyone at this point oh god

and for Kotaro to see his son like this, and the rest of his family dead in such a horrifying way! just!!

and fuck me, because if he reaches out to try and comfort him, if he ends up dying because his better instincts finally take over now of all fucking times; if he tries to help and Tenko knows what’s going to happen when they touch and tries to stop him but can’t...

okay but what

Tenko’s quirk is really behaving strangely though. like this is ridiculous. at this rate he’s gonna take the whole house down with him

also there’s no way all of the neighbors just sat by all la dee da and didn’t go to investigate afterwards. 100% AFO had a hand in all this. shit

now also feels like a good time to point out, before we wrap this all up, that with Kotaro being the only one still alive now, there is no one around to shout “Tenko, no...!” when that hand is reaching out to his forehead. so I’m very curious to see how Horikoshi plays this out, because now more than ever I’m suspecting that the altered memory theory is really true

(ETA: well. shit.)

anyway, so now what looks like a tree pruner is just randomly falling into Kotaro’s hands, for some reason. just like we all expected

of all the ways I imagined this actually playing out, this was not one of them

hmm, interesting

so did he disintegrate the pruner and then get pissed at his dad thinking he was trying to hurt him again? and then instinct just took over? guess we’re about to see

oh SHIT!!!

shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit

just, imagine like another 7 paragraphs of me just typing out “shit” over and over again. I don’t feel like actually doing it, but that’s basically an accurate summation of my thought process right now

I bet even AFO wasn’t expecting that. I picture him whistling softly from his hiding place nearby, watching all of this go down and making that excited Andy Dwyer face to nobody in particular

holy fucking shit, holy hell

guys I just decided this is actually my favorite villain origin story of all time. just like that. holy shit. this page though

okay you know what, let me just finish this up, and then I’ll try to sort out all of my messed up feelings. one more page to go I think. probably his hair turning white

why didn’t his hair turn white. Horikoshi you’re such a fucking troll

(ETA: or did it start to change though?? it’s really hard to tell with the shading on this page tbh. but it does seem to be lighter than his shirt, and closer to the shade of his pants instead. but I can’t tell if that’s just due to the lighting here or not. anyways.)

anyways, wow. so that’s the end. let me just sit down here for a moment and try to process this

that page, though. that mental break. the idea of him being so overwhelmed by the pain and trauma of what just happened that when his dad shows up and tries (from his perspective) to hurt him again, his mind just goes !! and snaps and goes “you know what, this is better, let’s just reframe all this shit to make it a good thing so that we can cope, because to hell with that. big fat nope to the alternative, right there! yeah no thanks we are not going to do that”

and him realizing that he finally has the power to stand up to his father and stop him from hurting him. and probably a part of him is also irrationally blaming his dad for being the reason this all happened, because it’s much easier to assign blame to something tangible here, rather than it all being a freak tragic accident that no one could have prevented. (or worse, his own fault. which it isn’t, but I’m sure he subconsciously blames himself regardless, so)

and even better if the person to blame is someone you already hated. so yes, that’s much better, let’s just do that

and that whole “somewhere deep in my heart” thing, I don’t buy that for a second to be honest. but I do believe that he believes that. that for his own self-preservation he desperately latched on to this idea and convinced himself that he’d wanted this all along. that it felt good. fine, then, I’ll become a monster to save myself

I keep going back to look at his face, though. and just. holy shit. if you’d told me a week ago or even five minutes ago that Horikoshi would write out the entire thing, all of it, in all of its sickeningly detailed glory, that he would just say “fuck it” and go all out, and that I would go from “take it back” to “okay I’ll allow it” to “you can pry this incredibly fucked up chapter out of my cold dead hands” in the span of three pages, I would have thought you were insane. and yet here we are. and it is insane. and I’m fairly disturbed by my own heel-turn here actually, but I can’t deny it though

just, shit. that was so good. I’m blown away by how good that was. Deku, stop looking at me like that

you know what, you don’t get to judge me, kid, okay. shut up

anyway guys, so that was one hell of a ride. I learned some things about myself, like that I will follow this maniac of a mangaka into much deeper and more fucked up chasms than I ever expected. and Tomura learned some things about himself, and I have a lot of Concerns about those things, but I guess that’ll just have to wait until next week! all the best until then, everyone

#bnha #boku no hero academia #bnha 236 #shigaraki tomura #shimura hana #shimura kotaro #bnha spoilers #mha spoilers #makeste reads bnha #I'm working from home and it's a slow day so this recap is earlier than usual #do you know who is not having a slow day #shigaraki f***ing tomura #holy hell my man #I'm so sorry kiddo