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mishy-mashy · 4 months

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Anyway I wrote about this in my fanfic notes but I think this is credible

En. He's a One For All user, young, and dies from being cut in half by All For One. He cries, but manages to pass on One For All to Nana with a smile, and hides Nana with his Quirk so she can escape.

So En. Sixth. This cutie patootie guy right here

He's been viewed as cool and collected and I'm gonna call a bit of bullshit on that.

First: he is young. He doesn't have the fullest emotional maturity (brain caps out in the mid-20s), and even if he did, he can still freak out. But that's not what I wanna talk about with him

It's more the time period in which he was born and grew up.

Kudo and Bruce, at the least, die 18 years before En receives One For All. En was born during All For One's rule, and grew up in a society struggling to cope with the new Abilities on top of Japan's crumble.

En was born at an anxious time, and grew up in the flames of it as society tried collecting itself. Since he was born while people were just barely adjusting to Abilities, and were flighty and shellshocked from the events, En was the same: used to Abilities, but quick to jump and flee. He was raised in a world like that, and thus was like the others of his time.

Look at En at his death. His Smokescreen is active. He died with his back turned. He was running away and using his Smokescreen as cover.

He later asks, fearful and stressed, why Midoriya/Ninth doesn't just run away. And Tomura calls him out on this. We'll go back to this later.

En is a product of the time he grew up—a time of trying to pick themselves up in the midst of civil war, shifting humanity, where no one trusted anyone and everyone ran to save themselves.

His Quirk is literally Smokescreen. There's no application to it beyond making smoke from the user's body to hide in. It obscures others' visions.

His Quirk hides him from others. That's its main function. He isn't as brave as the others. He's a coward when pushed into a corner. Nana describes his last smile in ch. 92 as this:

But All Might, who does this smile, describes it in ch. 1 as—

—tricking the fear inside of him. En is a combination of both; he smiled to reassure Nana, but was no doubt terrified, as he died running and got cut in half.

I imagine the reason En was the first One For All user shown passing off the Quirk with his hair was because he was too afraid to reach down and feel himself cut in half. He could've gotten the blood from there, but the cognitive dissonance alone of feeling air where your lower-half should be is terrifying as is.

By hiding her in his Smokescreen and giving his hair, En let Nana run away too, to safeguard herself and the Quirk. En ran, he made Nana run, and later on, he wants Midoriya/Ninth to run, even knowing there's no next user or chance to beat All For One/Tomura.

En knows All For One is powerful. He's scary. He killed Banjo-senpai, and Shinomori-san hid from him until he died of "old age". Everything is mustered in Midoriya/Ninth, but even then, En wants to run away because they realize they can be stolen and really die.

Now, going back a bit to [His Quirk is literally Smokescreen], they would've started calling Meta Abilities Quirks around the time En is growing up. All Might is alive somewhere when Nana receives One For All, and Meta Ability is the first term for Quirks.

Since Quirks are reflective of personality, and En was born in the coming down of the peak of fear that's trying to create some semblance of normalcy, it makes sense that, with his Smokescreen, he encourages Midoriya/Ninth to run. Because he did the same thing.

That's how he grew up, that's what he knows, it's the first thing he thought of when he realized they really were in danger. They were facing death in the eye.

Tomura/AFO even calls him out for this. Look at En's face when he's called out; he's scared of him. En is scared of just catching his attention.

The OFA vestiges know they can see into each others' realms. They wouldn't be surprised by this. They look into AFO's, they know AFO can do the same vice-versa.

Tomura is basically saying he's about to catch all the vestiges (rats) by their tails to make sure no one gets away this time.

Even if En was a vigilante or Pro Hero when he was alive (he's Banjo's kouhai, and Banjo was one of those), he has a faint heart when he feels cornered and running is an option, no matter how bad.

En acts calm and rational, and entered into the Vigilante/Pro Hero scene, but he is terrified when it comes down to it.

Like Kudo and Bruce with the Resistance, Shinomori with society's state then, and Banjo stepping up when Japan was "a lawless land", En is a product of the era he grew up; trying to find stability in a lawless land, where it was everyone for themselves.

#i try making a difference between using the terms Ability and Quirk #older generations like Kudo Bruce and Yoichi would refer to them as Abilities #but also Quirks are both the modern term and a personality thing #i hc En as 19 years old #chapter 411 made me think about his wanting to run away. i wondered before why his quirk is Smokescreen when all that does is hide people #en was the first vestige i really liked #i liked banjo when he first showed #right now im focused on the first Three tho #anyway i like all the vestiges #bnha #boku no hero academia #my hero academia #spoilers #en #ofa #afo #one for all #all for one #smokescreen #nana shimura #all might #yagi toshinori #izuku midoriya #anyway en is quick to run and will act on his fear #whats nice about ens quirk is that it doesnt hide just him. then the quirk would be something else like avoiding detection;#he can hide others with him #in the end En still decided to be a vigilante/Pro Hero so he does have a conscience/willingness to help and save others #he only gave up the ghost once Nana got his hair in her hand. once he knew OFA could keep living to win this fight one day #im not bashing en; i really like him and his character. him being afraid of death is something i like too; fear of death is realistic! nice #good job en sweetie youre doing great

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stillness-in-green · 4 months

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thoughts on the new chapter? you said before spinneraki is a pillar in the story and i think this chapter continues to be evidence of that

For these two anons who asked for them, have some Chapter Thoughts, 411-version. Herein can be found two big chunks of musing about, respectively, OFA & Shigaraki and the Shigaraki+Deku+Spinner confluence, as well as the usual handful of stray thoughts.

(I'm also going to throw in a few last minute thoughts about plot events between here and the last chapter I had a post on, Chapter 392. They'll be off-the-cuff and not comprehensive; feel free to send an ask if there's anything specific you're curious about, though I can't at this time promise e.g. the twelve thousand word essay on why the AFO vs. All Might fight sucks rocks.)

Chapter Thoughts — Chapter 411: History's Greatest Villain

OFA Vestiges vs. Shigaraki Tomura

Shinomori remains my favorite OFA bearer by a large margin; I enjoy how his quirk allows him to be the one bearer with his act together this chapter. I also like that him being the vestige that actively chooses to sacrifice “himself” for the good of the rest of One For All makes a nice bookend with my preferred headcanon that he was the bearer who had the power forced on him against his will. That said, it is a bit ironic that Danger Sense surely had to rank right up near the top of OFA quirks that it’s most dangerous for Deku to lose to Shigaraki! Like, throw Shigaraki En or something; Smoke Screen’s not going to let Shigaraki do anything Deku can’t counter with Danger Sense! Sacrifice Nana; Deku and Shigaraki both already have ways to keep aloft enough.[1] So I appreciate both the display of Shinomori’s instinctive heroism and the dramatic choice to deprive Deku of such a key component of his defense, after god knows how many chapters of dramatic choices I pretty much hate across the board. 1: That said, it does look like the person Shinomori shoved most directly out of the way was Banjo, his own successor, which speaks to their bond and also spares Deku losing a crucial quirk, as Black Whip has been his main way to exert any control at all over the battle with Shigaraki and is also helping keep his arms braced. As someone who wanted those humerus consequences after the first war, I say, “Go, Shigaraki, go! Get the Sixth next!”

My god, the rest of them are such a mess this chapter. Very funny, actually. Shaking my head at them in there talking about how to “bring down” Shigaraki, who they know good and well Deku wants to help. “Our entire reason for still existing!” No, Bro Bro, you existed solely to take down All For One, which Bakugou et. al. have neatly taken care of for you. The only other purpose ever given to you was to save people, but I guess you’ve already forgotten that. Seriously, I love the discord this chapter, the panic and fear, particularly from the youthful En—watching that unified will crumble in the face of Shigaraki’s hatred is a wonderful balm to all the times I had to suffer through seeing commenters elsewhere on the internet blithely taking it for granted that One For All could never be stolen just because All Might said it was so, laughing it off when Ujiko promised Shigaraki otherwise. My villain fan agenda aside, though, it’s also a rare highlight for Deku that I like, which I’ll circle back to.

Regarding Shigaraki with Danger Sense, I know there was some discussion of whether he’d be able to fully utilize it against Deku when Deku wants to “save” him. As giving Deku that out would have been the story yet again undermining the villains’ fairly won victories (and as Danger Sense has been so wildly inconsistently written that Horikoshi could have gotten away with practically anything), I’m pleased to see it’s working as intended! That said, you probably could have some interesting discussion of exactly whose “intent” Danger Sense is picking up on. Deku may want to help Shigaraki, but e.g. Banjo, Bruce and Kudou certainly don’t seem to want that! Given how explicitly Kudou was synonymizing quirks and wills back in Chapter 369,[2] and particularly given that Shigaraki can perceive the vestiges now, it wouldn’t surprise me if their wills are bleeding over into Deku’s usage of their quirks. 2: I.e. the “gaslighting the readership about the historical usage of meta-ability terminology” chapter.

I do wonder if this is set-up for Shinomori—and potentially other quirks as well, including any more OFA vestiges Shigaraki manages to snag!—giving us a tired retread of the “quirk vestiges mount a resistance against their unrightful bearer at a critical juncture” moments we saw with AFO, but I suppose that’d be what Shigaraki gets for trying to steal bits of OFA after saying previously that he didn’t care about it. (Sigh.)

Deku, Spinner, and Shigaraki Tomura's "Personhood"

I appreciate Deku pushing back against Shigaraki’s dehumanization, though it does not escape me that he directs that pushback to Shigaraki himself, not any of the voices inside Deku’s head calling Shigaraki calamity and ruin incarnate, and certainly not any actual humans on his side in the real world. It smacks of the same pattern heroes always fall into of leaping to castigate villains for things they tacitly ignore in their own allies. Still, it is at least spoken aloud, and to Shigaraki’s face, which is a pleasant change.

I swear to Christ, if after all this time Spinner becomes a bridge between Shigaraki and Deku after all, I am going to be so damn smug. Albeit in different contexts, I called that years ago, and lo and behold, here we have Shigaraki, accused of having no friends, self-dehumanized, and depersonalized by Deku’s allies, immediately refute the point by bringing up his best friend of his own volition, tying his destruction to someone outside of himself. While Deku hasn’t connected the dots on-page yet, he certainly can’t have missed it, though it remains to be seen how much about Spinner Deku actually knows/remembers from their encounter at the training camp—that encounter long being an important part of my reasoning that Spinner could, via his and Deku’s shared respect for Stain and desire to help Shigaraki, find some common ground. Moreover, we get Deku flashing to Uraraka—as well he should! Since Uraraka is the only one who managed to unearth some empathy for her designated villain foil without a familial or fated connection to them, she deserves to feature prominently in Deku’s attempts to connect with his own opposite number.

I do wonder if we will yet get a flashback to the mall scene. Honestly, Deku could have kickstarted his connection to Shigaraki all the way back then, when Shigaraki functionally laid his damage out in front of Deku like fine china, only for Deku to grab the first excuse anyone gave him to write it off and forget about it. The story could probably get away with not reminding the readers of that—after all, Shigaraki hasn’t really changed his grievance since then, just expanded his invocation of blame! His monologue at Jakku is just a refined version of what he said at the mall encounter, so the only reason to flash back to the less developed take is to have Deku vocalize that he could (and should!) have been wondering about Shigaraki as “a person, too” this whole time, instead of only coming to do so after their mindscape encounter. Acknowledging the gaps in Saint Deku’s Miraculous Saving Instincts would go a long, long way towards softening me on the narrative BNHA’s been trying to sell me on its main character.

Anyway, three cheers for Spinaraki; they never fuckin’ lose, do they? It’s particularly gratifying in light of the way people on Twitter were speedrunning the shift from dismissing Spinner as unimportant to criticizing him as “toxic” as it became more and more clear that saving Shigaraki was going to be more complicated than just dealing with AFO. People really thought that if Deku could just lay all the blame for Shigaraki’s anger at AFO’s feet, then he could just wipe it away, eradicating “Shigaraki Tomura”—who was never really a person anyway, just fifteen years of grooming and coping mechanisms—and leaving behind only sweet, innocent, undemanding Shimura Tenko. But if Shigaraki was carrying anger for others, blame for wrongs that couldn’t be attributed to AFO, suddenly that narrative got messier. Suddenly the League needed to be Bad For Each Other, needed to be separated for their own good, redeemed by the grace of their designated student foils—and nowhere was that trickier than with Spinner, who didn’t have one, and whose every flashback post-war made it clearer and clearer that he had a relationship with Shigaraki that went beyond the League’s stated purpose as an alliance of Villains to bring down Hero Society. The tidier version of the story would still be salvageable if Shigaraki didn’t really care about Spinner more than anyone else in the League, if Spinner’s devotion were one-sided, if Shigaraki didn’t determine to share Spinner’s grievance. If Spinner’s problems aren’t Shigaraki’s problems too, then Deku doesn’t have to address them. And but so, the mad scramble to invalidate the connection by any means possible. But then here comes Shigaraki not just mentioning Spinner, but mentioning something Spinner wanted that Spinner never even told him about on the page, meaning either Shigaraki was paying close enough attention to Spinner to simply intuit it, or he and Spinner had an off-page conversation about Deika where Spinner in all his insecurity was able to admit to Shigaraki that he thought his horizon was beautiful. And not only does Shigaraki remember this, he dedicates his destruction of Mount Fuji to Spinner and the horizon. Not so one-sided after all, is it?

That all said, of course it’s also worth asking if Spinner actually wants the horizon anymore. Judging by his tormented inner reflections when striving to reach Kurogiri, that doesn’t really seem to be the case. At the end of Spinner’s strength, what he truly remembers and treasures is the time he and Shigaraki spent just dicking around talking about video games—just being friends. Spinner wants Shigaraki to get what he wants—but if they’re both just crediting That Beautiful Horizon to each other without realizing it’s not really about what they themselves want anymore, where does that leave them? One suspects that was one function of the possession plot—keeping them from talking to each other freely and being able to figure that out themselves. As it is, with the possession plot seemingly off the table, at least for now, that brings us back to Deku and his resolution to reach the humanity in Shigaraki Tomura—a humanity that Shigaraki just helpfully signposted by referencing his friend Spinner. So how long until we cut away to find out where the Rooftop Trio and Spinner have gotten off to?

Stray Thoughts

Re: Mount Fuji, Horikoshi’s grasp of travel times remains as totally unhinged as ever. Someone who can make rudimentary animations needs to use that battle map volume extra to demonstrate exactly the distances that would have to traversed by All For One, U.A., All Might and especially Lady Nagant and her bullets in this final arc for them to keep arriving where the story needs them to be.

I see the artistic indication is very much that Shigaraki can just spread Decay wherever he walks now. That’s both wonderfully evocative for the embodied destructive divine impulse he’s nominally become and also a bit amusing, because if you can unlock a touch-based quirk to spread through your feet, maybe Overhaul’s not out of luck just yet after all. XD

Good riddance to the mask! As others have pointed out, it’s modelled on All Might’s smile, and is therefore the last thing Deku should be wearing right now, given that Shigaraki has specifically expressed, to Deku’s face, that he hates All Might’s fucking smile, “As if there’s no one he can’t save!” Hope Shigaraki gets that damn cape next, such as is left of it.

Events Up To Now (Chapters 393 - 410)

The resolution of the Ochaco vs. Toga fight is very solid emotionally, though hampered by yet more nerfing of Toga's power set to make sure she can't do all the damage she should logically be capable of doing, as well as a lot of incredibly tiresome shoehorning in of mentions of Deku just to make sure everyone gets how Not Homo it is for Ochaco to tell Toga she's the cutest girl in the whole world. But I love that Toga remains unrepentant and faithful to Shigaraki to the end. I will turn a lot less nice about this if Toga turns out to have actually died here, however. (She should have gotten to stab fucking Hawks.)

The All Might vs. AFO fight sucks rocks. The mech suit makes a nonsense of All Might's primary arc post-Kamino, it's flatly irreconcileable with his characterization throughout the Edgy Deku arc, it leans on a bond with the 1-A students that he has entirely failed to earn, and it parades their identies and power sets out in front of the world with absolutely zero indication that he ever asked them if they were okay with that. As an answer to the "quirkless hero" question it is purest sophistry, laughably detached from reality.

The world's reaction to the All Might vs. AFO fight sucks rocks. The return of Wishing Energy is the obvious point of note, but I prefer to focus on how patently ridiculous it is that across the multitudinous barriers of age, language, culture, politics, national attitude, wealth level, and views on heroism, everyone in the world who watches the battle and gets into it enough to really pay attention is magically able to intuit that the man in the black military hardware suit injecting acid into the underclothed twelve-year-old is the "Hero."

Kunieda is a delight and he and Aoyama should have had history going back to AFO's sway over the family.

Shigaraki is great when he's getting actual attention, but as part and parcel of the AFO vs. All Might fight sucking on such intergalactic levels, it made Shigaraki awful, too, reducing him to generic last boss counting-his-evil-chickens-before-they're-hatched gloating. Praying we see no more of that going forward.

It is extremely headshaking in retrospect that the Heroes actively acknowledged during the planning process for all this that they would prefer to engage with the AFO persona in Shigaraki than Shigaraki himself, the Heroes then find out during the battle that AFO is trying to get to Shigaraki with the specific aim of reawakening said persona, and yet the Jakku team, All Might and Bakugou still blow interminable fucking chapters on preventing AFO from doing the exact thing that would get them back the persona they explicitly stated it would be preferable to deal with.

Edgeshot continues to be Just The Worst, not even having the decency to wait until the endgame to confirm what I predicted back when the nonsense about repairing Bakugou's heart first came up: that, "You won't be able to come back from this," is a bald-faced lie intended to ratchet up tension, one that would be rolled back the instant the danger was past and Bakugou could be gotten to a proper hospital room.

AFO's backstory is the laziest of lazy dreck. The new information soundly deprives Yoichi of the marginal amounts of agency he had previously managed to suggest he exercised, conflicts with what's been previously implied about the brothers' personal history, fails to reconcile the child AFO with the man we met in Deku's dream prior to Joint Training, and reduces all of the interpersonal drama between AFO, Yoichi and Kudou into nothing more than a reason for Bakugou to inspire fear and distress in BabyFO. (See @robotlesbianjavert's post and Nal's tags on it here, and @codenamesazanka's post here.)

Omni-Factor Unleash is a retread of Kamino AND Overhaul's minion forms AND Akira-fied Shigaraki. You guys, I think maybe Horikoshi is Bad At Coming Up With Final Boss Attacks.

#bnha #chapter thoughts #bnha 411 #and some other chapters as well #amazing how much more tolerable these chapters are when shigaraki's properly in the driver's seat #based on prior performance i don't expect it to last #but it's nice to have for now #and the spinaraki vindication is indeed sweet #my writing #stillness answers

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