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justatalkingface · 1 year

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So I know you haven't seen The Boys but I have a topic that I think fits MHA because I got it from that same show. MHA had a totally missed opportunity, I mean, among hundreds of others lol

But then I think about Momo (who is more than a hundred missed opportunities) and her pitiful internship with Uwabami, who was more interested in how pretty they were to sell her products.

It would have been a great opportunity to emphasize the beauty standards held for female pro-heroes. They're clearer there just not said but I know they are because they really like to make the female pro-heroes look as conventionally attractive as possible since the most popular female pro-heroes in-universe are conventionally attractive women. Do NOT get me started on Midnight (I'll save that one for another question though XD)

And also the sexualization, that ties in with the beauty standards since Momo and Kendo were clearly uncomfortable with everything in that internship. And it's extremely obvi that the female pro-heroes are sexualized, even the underage aspiring female heroes. SIGH... if only... if only Momo could have had that opportunity to explore that, because she didn't come intending to use her looks, she came intending to use her brains. How devastating would it be to realize that people only pay attention to how you look? Gosh I wish that could have been something for her.

Yet no, she and the other girls are still sexualized, in fact I think they got even MORE sexualized after this? I mean jeez...

That will always bother me. The sexualization of the girls and what's bullshit on top of that is the extra bullshit argument that the boys are sexualized too? Yeah right.

Now it's true, the boys are seen shirtless a LOT but... it's not through sexualized lens, it's through idealized ones since the boys being so physically fit and demonstrating their strength is a sign of manliness and promoting that masculinity. It's not meant to be sexual, the GIRLS are meant to be sexual, which is sick.

I mean god you don't see the girls emphasizing their strength the way the boys do. Except MAYBE Mirko but I emphasize 'maybe' since she's STILL very sexualized as you said in another post.

The girls are pretty much only there to be oggled whether it's for sexualized means or moe-ified means because even if the girls aren't being sexualized, boys love seeing the girls act like typical waifu-material and I say that because almost ALL the female characters are generally kind, docile and cheerful. Moe traits that appeal strongly to men, and no problematic traits that make them more two-dimensional.

Have you noticed that? Even the 'meaner' girls like Mt. Lady and Toga have moe-ified or sexualized traits. Toga is arguably the most nuanced female character but she's a victim of sexualization too by having her quirk make her naked for God knows why. Mt. Lady from her first scene was doomed from the start since that was all sexualization.

It's like the girls aren't allowed to be even remotely unpleasant or even have any kind of flaws in ways that would make them seem like real individuals. They're pretty much the same kind and caring person with a different face but somehow the same body shape.

Does... that make sense? ^^; I ask that question too much only cuz sometimes I don't always articulate my words right.

Yeah, it's clear that women in heroics are judged as much for sexual appeal than anything else; it makes a bad sort of sense because of the whole 'heroes are celebrities' bullshit.

I think... I think this is something that, in canon, probably got worse as time went on. When Quirks were starting out, and heroes were all just vigilantes, it was about ability, and with AFO around, survival. Like, look at Nana, she's attractive, sure, but her outfit is probably what is best described as 'bog standard hero': it's a bodysuit that covers most of her skin, practical looking gloves and boots, and a cape (has Edna Mode flashback). Beyond the cape (shudders), it's basiclly a costume that exists to just identify her as a hero, nothing more.

I'm not really in the mood to try and pour through hundreds of pictures, but that is both one of the most practical female costumes that I remember and the oldest one.

It makes an insidious sort of sense, even, in the most realistic kind of way: when everything fell apart, and heroes first started being a thing, the public perception was probably, 'Save me! SAVE ME! I don't care if you look like Pennywise the Goddamn Dancing Clown, I DON't WANT TO DIE!!' Nobody cared about outfits, or if you were a hobo or a weirdo, as long as you protected them.

Things settled and heroing became a career, and the costumes became... not standardized, but professional. There was quality behind it, but it was still less 'This is me in particular!' and more an identifier that 'I am a hero!'.

Then, as time passed, and safety became something standard, instead of exciting, the heroes become more... public. There was competition, money was needed to pay off damages, so the celebrity-ness of it all starting kicking into play, and from there it spiraled as certain people got ahead using their appearances, which probably caused a sort of publicity arms race until we have the canon system of ranked heroes and what not.

In a Watsonian sense, it does track. But, let's be honest here, Doyalist is right in this case, Hori wanted to draw sexy women.

You mention Mt Lady, right? Yeah... here's the thing about her. She's sexualized because she's a fetish. I'm not going to tell you what, or go into detail, because that's not what I want to spend time on, but if you don't already know it's not that hard to figure out which one.

The choice of Mt Lady as the first female hero we see, I think the only one in that first chapter, is telling. It's even more telling when the second female hero we see in any real depth is Midnight. And, let's be honest: she's literally just a different fetish. I mean, Mt Lady, in five seconds, shows more depth of character by being glory hungry, and as a living example of the corruption of the hero society, than Midnight does in MHA almost the entire time.

Like, "canonly", Midnight wants to dress like that. She was going to dress more extreme than that, if I'm remembering Vigilantes right, and I think a law was passed that basiclly boiled down to, 'Midnight, no horni?' I went "canonly" because, of course, that's bullshit, and Hori is just trying to explain her everything off by just going 'she's just like that!' I know you didn't want to go into her in depth, but I just would want to say... instead of making excuses for her (non)characterization, I would have loved if she had taken the female students aside before the internships.

Then she could have explained the 'facts of life', that she's like this because it's how she got this far as a hero, and that they'll be expected to do the same. After that, you could go the jaded route, and have her advise them to as the practical way forward, or the 'ra ra heroic' route, maybe have her explain she grew to like her outfit if you have to, but more importantly that things are different now and that they don't need to listen to anyone who tells them to dress down, and they should go their own path, Plus Ultra. But you know, Midnight doesn't get character development.

Really, the Uwabami thing was interesting to me, not because it was good, but because it seemed like it was going to be good, but then dropped it at the last minute.

The way it was set up, how mercenary Uwabami was about looks, how unheroic she was in general, the sheer confusion with Momo, how Kendo was there to point out the flaws for her, the set up was there to talk about about the sexism, and heroic corruption. I think at some point that was supposed to be the start of Momo's character arc, that she was supposed to go through a Hermione like loss of unthinking trust in authority, grow frustrated, maybe rebel a bit, and start coming into her own. Possibly Uwabami could have done something to make her seem... you know, competent in any way as well, instead of literally being a model who (checks the wiki)... finds people sometimes. There was a lot of work put in to undermine Uwabami, to highlight how shallow she seems and how Momo didn't like it, but it just... never went anywhere. Momo just remained obedient, then it ended and she basiclly wasted a couple weeks for nothing.

It really feels like someone pulled the plug there, and I'm curious about who and why, not that we'll ever know.

Ah, yes, the guys 'being sexualized'. I mean, they're attractive, I guess; there's enough fan girl simp threads for Eraserhead's whole... hobo-ness that that's clearly there, but Eraserhead isn't exposing more skin than he's covering, or wearing skintight spandex.

Really, to anyone who thinks its the same, I want to direct them to the Hawkeye Initiative, aka: imagine the male characters in the female character's clothing and/or poses. Just... just do that, and then marvel at how much skin there suddenly is. Or, imagine Izuku going to his internship with Nighteye and the man spends the entire time dragging Izuku to commercials and trying to update his outfit.

Or both!

Just imagine that for a minute for me. Right now. I'll wait.

...

....And, now that I've proved my point...

I just want to highlight something about Toga here: in theory, the idea behind clothes getting in the way of various Quirks makes sense. Quirks are biological, the powers comes from the body, thus it radiates from them, and clothes are directly in the path of that. So Momo being restricted to her body's available surface area, like her skin is a defacto sort of door she chucks items through, tracks with the settings logic. The fact that Tooru is actually invisible, and so clothes would make her noticeable because they aren't makes sense.* The problems I have with that is, A, they're just used in the most stripperific ways possible (people: give Momo more clothes! Hori: gives her a cape, then exposes more skin) and also, and worse, that we have Mirio, who has this exact same kind of problem... but he's given this convenient solution because he doesn't look attractive when naked, so he can use it for comedy on demand.

*Or, at least it made sense until we found out she just... bends the light around her, instead of being physically transparent. This gives her an option to do things beyond being invisible, thank fuck, but... if she bends light around her body, why can't she bend it around the clothes on her body?

Toga, though? Toga adds to her body; she coats herself in her magic identity slime. When it's done, it melts, and it's clear it's extra mass; she doesn't change her body, she disguises it. Out of all of them, it makes sense that she should be able to keep her clothes, since her Quirk just magics her target's outfit out of her magic identity slime along with everything else it's mimicking. They may be wet, sure, or maybe damaged, but she literally layers it over herself. I can't really think of a reason for her to have this specific weakness of 'I can't use this with clothes' beyond 'for the sexy'.

Personality wise, I've mentioned it before, Toga literally is an archetype, the crazy yandere, that's blood themed. Almost every single major female character I can think of is themed, and generally in a sexual way. It gets escalated, I think, because the hero thing means costumes, and branding, and I do think it's so... same-ish, that all the women are caring, because, A, as heroes they're literally mandated to try and take care of people, and B, there's no time spent on them to develop them.

By and by large, the male heros also try to take care of the people around them (I mean, unless you're named Endeavour, then you have other people do it), but it kinda hits different when Kamino Woods is a walking tree and Mt Lady has a skin tight outfit, doesn't it? Moreover, the only actively 'harsh' female hero I can think of is Lady Nagant. Who... is also an assassin, and had recently broke out of prison, so that's not exactly a quality example.

As to not feeling like real people... Uraraka does, since she came for money with her backstory of being poor, and seems to have graduated to wanting to help people just to help people (before Hori began to ignore her for half the series). Again, though, she has some of the largest amount of female screen time as The One True Waifu, so it's not that she's more than the others, she just has that luxury of development where the others can't.

When Hori used to post his notes in the manga, it was easy to see that he (usually) had a grasp on a character beyond what we saw, he just didn't have a chance to show it (Mt Lady, for example, wants fame to get money to pay off the massive property damage bills that she constantly makes since her Quirk doesn't work well in cities; that's actually really humanizing, but it's side material, and not something we can understand just by her jockeying for more good press).

In other words, at least at the start of the story, before Hori began to pump and dump characters to fill one specific purpose and never use again, the characters were actually characters, he just never gave us a chance to see them beyond the most shallow of takes.

But yeah, you're right: in and out of universe, the female characters exist to be females first, and always attractive ones at that, and characters second, if they're lucky to even get to be characters.

#bnha critical #mha critical #ask #Hori's chronic loathing of women #Edna Mode Gave Me Cape Based Trauma for life #Actually I think it was always there but she gave words to it #Please give them some clothes #Momo's Aborted Character Arc #Momo has been nerfed #the hawkeye initiative #Toga's magic identity slime #If you want people to respect them as characters #then spend time DEVELOPING them as characters

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justatalkingface · 1 year

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i really like how you analyze things you know how hard it is to find people who can criticize things properly? Very lol but I guess I'm guilty of that myself but I really like the analysis you've given about MHA. I kind of have a question even though it might be a lame one? But what's your take on the female characters of MHA? I'm personally disappointed by them because... I don't know they have potential yet haven't shown any sort of real depth that makes me really root for them. Does that make sense?

It makes perfect sense, actually. In the simplest, most brutal way possible, there's nothing actually there to root for, though I hasten to mention that's not actually their fault; they have potential, like you said, plenty of it. Hori's female characters have just, broadly, been abandoned on the side of road, like he has so many others (Class B, literally the entire school of Shiketsu, who has a nigh Todoroki level character, to name a few), but it's just that much worse because it's all of them.

Seriously, off the top of my head, the last time a female who isn't Toga or Mirko did anything really relevant was... when Uraraka talked down the crowd? If I'm being honest, (and minor manga spoilers here, if you're not up to date) Hori's about to have all the female characters involved in a fight in the manga, so maybe something will happen there, but to be even more honest, there's something about that whole scenario when the main members of the fights are all female that screams 'catfight' in the worst kind of way. I know they just joined a bunch of others, but how much do you bet that it'll end up being Toga, Uraraka, and maybe Tsu again somehow?

Also, I'm going to note Toga and Miruko for later in that they have special issues, but I'm on a roll here.

The potential is there. The way that the ones in 1A alone could be more relevant are broad; Mina's acid could be used in ways like water attacks are in Naruto, for example. Give me an acid dragon, Hori, that sounds awesome. Kyoka's sounds are strong enough to shatter the ground, with some support tech, yet she can't get something to focus them, make them hit harder? You know, how Bakugou somehow does with his explosions, and, like, his fingers, somehow, yet you have all this support gear right there. Concentrate all that noise down to foot of area and it'd hit like a truck. Momo is literally the poster child for wasted potential here, along with how Hori just left all the women behind: she's a recommended student, which comes with this built in hype of 'this one, this one is going to be good'. And... she never is. Out of the all the stuff we've seen her make, has a gas grenade of some kind never came to her? One with sleeping gas maybe? Or how about a tranq gun? And don't tell me about Japan and their gun laws; Snipe exists. (On a personal note, do you know what I yearn to see? A little cartoon or comic or something of Momo going, "I'm going to beat you with the power of friendship. And this gun I found!" Can you imagine? She's so serious, so refined, then she says that, dead ass serious, while pulling out one out of her arm??? I laugh every time I think about it. I really do.) Momo is scary in a way lot of the characters aren't, and it's not for her raw power, but her flexibility, and how she can target weaknesses with it. Weaknesses like breathing. The thing is that she's just not allowed to use it. Seriously, they struggle so much to try and put Gigantomachia to sleep, yet a few arc later she pulls out this giant ass machine to drug up Izuku, and it's just so... overcomplicated, how many steps they're taking to make her less useful. The tools are there. The potential is right the fuck there. These two things I've mentioned alone are simpler than some of the things she's made before, and the narration has made it clear that she's more than smart enough to think of these basic ass solutions. She's just not allowed to be, well, that useful. And Asui, honestly, is an interesting case. On the face of it, Frog is kind of a weak Quirk, but Mirko exists. In all brutal honesty, Asui has the same kind of Quirk as Mirko, it's just the less sex appealing version. And if Mirko could be a top hero on Rabbit, why can't Asui with Frog?

And that's the other thing. Out of all the female cast, we have a small handful of relevant people, like Mirko and Toga, and all of them seem to embody some sort of sex appeal. Midnight, before she was killed off off screen, was a joke character that got more development in a spin off in her entire run, and was literally a walking bondage costume. Toga is the token female for the League, but the reason she has so much focus is that she's popular, and she's popular because she's, as I've heard someone put it, some kind of Yandere otome character. Uraraka is the Hinata to Izuku's Naruto, and so has some One True Waifu energy. Nana's built like a brick house. Mirko is literally a bunny girl. These things? These things that people find attractive, and judging by his sketches, I'd expect that Hori is one of those people. Moreover, almost all of them have their characters defined by this one attractive quality, if only because they aren't allowed to show literally anything else.

It gets worse when you realize how many things happen just for that, for the sex appeal: Toga needs to be naked for her Quirk. Actually, this is an oddly common 'flaw': Toru has no clothes for her hero costume. She is literally running around naked. Momo's descriptions all talk about how she exposes skin to use her Quirk better. Mirio exists. Mirio literally phases out his clothes, but because he's a man, and thus not attractive, his costume is made of his hairs, somehow, and so phases with him and he never accidently flashes anyone. Hmm, UA. I wonder who else could use something like that. This is so mysterious.

That's not even mention how Mirko keeps getting brutalized like a toy owned by a particularly careless child, and by the way it keeps happening, the way it focuses on her pain, it seems Hori is into that? The worst part of that, I think, is if he had just done that once, he probably could have gotten away with it, and no one would have noticed. But it keeps happening. Mirko has no limbs now, Hori what the fuck?

So, yeah, Anon. I'm disappointed in the female characters too. I'm disappointed that Hori never gave them a chance.

#ask #mha critical #bnha critical #Hori's chronic loathing of women #Momo has been nerfed #Really they all have #Please just give them all some clothes

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justatalkingface · 1 year

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Your points on Stain were great. I've always said that the guy was crazy and a total loser. He was just killing people for not being All Might. Not pointing out corruption. Not exposing anyone. Not hunting down the most horrible corrupt heroes. No. If they aren't All Might, then he decides you need to die. His logic is also very self-serving. He can justify hurting you if you happen upon him murdering someone and you decide to leave. And if you intervene, he's also justified in hurting you. Like many MHA foes, Stain was created as an enemy for Izuku to fight. But the implications of him being allowed to exist at all shows that he didn't achieve much of anything, despite what the narrative tells us. Imagine someone in real life calling themselves the cop killer and they kill dozens of cops and wound twice that number. An enormous manhunt would have them converged on and killed within a week, at most. In MHA, though? Nothing. They put Endeavor on the job and business continued as usual. Despite the sheer resources hero society has, a mass hero murderer wasn't worth an exhaustive manhunt where they either have this guy's corpse or drag him away in chains. From a story perspective, this had to happen this way because Izuku needs to fight this guy. In universe, though? It proves that heroes are disposable and replaceable commodities, and that the system is very adept at churning out new ones. It doesn't matter at all that Stain killed or maimed these people so they can't return to work. The hero schools will graduate plenty more of them every year. In fact, given that UA alone graduates 40 heroes a year, Stain could kill 1 hero a week and still not make a real dent in the hero population. Every other hero school would be graduating a similar number of people, after all.

But really, it's the government that he had a problem with. You could blame heroes for being false or corrupt or whatever. But who lets people become heroes with zero questions as to their motivations? Who lets hero schools graduate people that are unfit? Who bases all the tests and exams on becoming a hero around combat and brute force? Who's responsible for all the propaganda that markets heroes to children to convince them that being a hero is a path to wealth, happiness, adoration, and success? Who decides who even gets to be a hero in the first place? The government does. The entire crop of current heroes are just a symptom of a system that has no quality control or real restrictions on who can become a hero. He should have been murdering politicians, and rich people. They're the ones who control these policies and ensure things stay the way they are. They create the status quo. I like Stain only in fanfics, where Dabi meets him before Shigaraki. At the very least Stain can be used to go after Endeavor to help out with Dabi's revenge. This is the one time him attacking someone is somewhat justified. And it makes for a very interesting what if. As far as your point about corrupt heroes, I wish this series had that much depth. Take this post here. https://www.tumblr.com/djunk411/161410092505/its-now-canon-that-midnight-wanted-to-become-a It's got panels from the spin off where Midnight explains she wanted to be a predator and that's why she's a teacher, and Shota doesn't care. We're meant to see this as a joke! But what if it wasn't?

I think the point is with Stain, actually, just goes back to one of the big things that kind of fucks up MHA's world building: civilians are useless.

Unless you are directly connected to a villain or hero, if you are a civilian you are a useless sheep, who exists only to be saved or to cause problems. This includes the police; as a society, all the responsibility is just... given to the heroes somehow, for some reason, and everyone's fine with it. No none villain hates that status quo, not one really rejects it....

And to top it off? We see civilians try to do things once. With some support gear? They're so criminally incompetent that they kill themselves with it, and Wash, I think, is left to mourn over the foolishness of the people.

Hori just really seems to hate having to have normal people in his story in any length of time, so it's not surprising that the police are completely useless. To be fair, though, Stain is, as far as we can tell, completely off the grid. He is the kind of fanatic that is willing to live with nothing, and so it's probably hard to track him.

Except. Where does he get his literal arsenal of weapons? (And five seconds on Google tells me that katanas are illegal in Japan, so.... there's that too) How does he successfully find his targets? Or is he just randomly hunting down every hero he can find in a given area? How long has he even been doing this?

*shrug*

Stain just doesn't make sense. The idea of him makes sense, there's a place for him in the setting, and he needs to be there to help drive the division with heroes and the rest of society to the point of breaking, but his execution is empty and hollow.

It says... something, that when you said talked about the government, my knee jerk response was, 'Well, Hori is limited by his medium', but... that's bullshit.

Like, look at Jujutsu Kaisen. Though I hate the pacing of it in general, and I have trouble giving a shit about the characters at this point, I really do like it, and it handles politics a lot better than MHA.

The thing is that while the blame is clearly on these old fuckers, who for all intents and purpose are the government of the magical part of the setting, there isn't a giant focus on them. We don't need to see, like, hours of debate to realize that these guys are the problem: there's some scenes of them being, well, them, and then we see the repercussions of what they decide throughout the series. We see Gojo hate on them. We see Itadori all but getting a kill order. We hear about how fucked up the Zenin clan is, and how they've ruined the lives of multiple characters.

I wish they'd go into all of that more, sure, but it's made very clear that a lot of the problems comes from the top, and descends down from them to everyone else, which resonates with various people, and from them to other people and so on.

Contrast that with MHA: we see some references to the Hero Commision, sure, but beyond Hawks and Lady Nagant, there isn't much there, and even with them there's just... build up, and no development. We get hints, we're teased, but it never... goes anywhere. This is the greatest level of authority we honestly see in the entire setting, until our brief, standard manga blurb of how the U.S. is useless, anyways. I think we literally see more of the American government than we do of the government of the country the setting is set in.

Here's the thing: the way MHA is set up? Heroes have a lot of influence. They're super celebrated celebrities, they're almost universally loved (unless they aren't), if they're successful they're rich, and they can kick all sorts of ass. If a hero wanted to push a social agenda? They're in one of the best places to do it, and there's honestly some good plot points there that never get any love; what happens when they do that? What if a hero supports a politician, and thus gets control over them, and through them, the government? That would be a realistic place to explore about heroes influence on society.

The way they talk, though, is like they are the government. Like All Might is the Prime Minister, and so on, and so they all have this massive control over things. And, again, they do have a lot of control, but they aren't actually writing the laws. Civilians are placid cow people because heroes save them, but... do you not want heroes to save them? Should they just leave people to die so they can toughen up or something, learn to be independent? Their job is to save people, everyone wants it from them, they're literally being paid to do it, and I really can't blame them for not being total assholes and doing their actual jobs. The blame for everything falls onto the heroes, with how the manga shows it, but they aren't gods, they aren't the overlords of the setting; it falls onto everyone else as well, the cattle-like civilians, the insane villains, the government who set up the system, all of them.

I just... it just looks like Hori didn't want to deal with the fact that his heroes, building smashing, laser firing heroes, would be subservient to the people, and especially to the government. He didn't want god-like All Might, or Endeavour, or anyone else really, to have to obey mere mortals, who should only exist to be saved or harmed by their betters without any control over their ultimate destinies.

And again, this is something Jujutsu explores better, with Gojo: he's no All Might, personality wise, but he's absolutely the strongest in the setting, literally hailed a god. And yet, he listens to some old guys he could blow up with a finger, because they have control over so much of the world he lives in. This is acknowledged, and talked about in story, but he never goes through and slaughters them like he so easily could, because while he's a bit of an ass at times he's still genuinely a good person at the end of the day. While I don't expect All Might to have delusions of godhood, wouldn't it be interesting if they explored how all these people who are getting trained to beat the shit out of everyone they don't like, and are constantly growing stronger generation by generation while getting all the more revered by the public, but have to listen to some weaklings? At least in Jujutsu, the elders actually have powers in their own right, and are often talented combatants, and so have that implicit ability to back their decisions against most of the setting with force if necessary, while in MHA, politicians are still just politicians, nothing more.

*looks at the Meta Liberation Front, who want a Quirkocity, and who canonly already has heroes on their side*

Nope, no way to work that into the story!

On Midnight, I just... I just can't take that seriously. I know this is technically canon, but I really can't, I really can't think she's both a hero and school teacher with an attitude like that, who genuinely wants the best for her students. Whenever I imagine Midnight as something closer to an actual person, she's so much less.... that. All I can think of is just how Hori loves to use women constantly for their bodies, and she's just a symbol of that. The fact that she literally exists just because he thinks she's hot, is built off the idea of bondage, and almost has no characterization beyond that is just insulting.

#ask #mha critical #bnha critical #stain is a hollow character #hori's deep and unexplained loathing of civilians #the failure of the development of heroic society and corruption #hori's chronic loathing of women #midnight deserves better #midnight deserves anything basiclly

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justatalkingface · 1 year

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can I ask you what you think of ochako as a character in bnha? I know that in theory she was 'developed to match toga', with all the things toga has going on with her character and where she is in the plot. But when I think about ochako a little deeper I don't really get her 'goal development' exactly, because don't they kind of conflict with each other rather than evolve together?

Because first ochako wanted to make lots of money for her family, then later it became 'who saves/protects the heroes?' But if she runs with that goal and continues to rock the proverbial boat in hero society, that probably won't lead to her making a lot of money right?

And her third emerging goal likely being something about saving/helping the villains in some way, which is definitely better/more interesting for the overall plot, but even more conflicting with her previous goals.

Which would be cool if it was really focused on in her head about how that all might work out or not but we never really get that with ochako. Can I ask you what you think about all this?

As a series, MHA has reached a point where every character can easily be labeled with 'wasted potential', but Ochako is a special case because she's a main character that was sidelined.

I always knew that, to some extent, 1A as a whole would be sidelined over time (though I couldn't have predicted how fast it would happen), but Ochako was part of the main trio, she was one of the more important characters in the early narrative. Even more, compared to Sakura, for example, or Orihime, she wasn't just the girl teammate, or someone's love interest. She had her own goals and ambitions. Most importantly of all though, and what made her so interesting to me, is that she decided to put aside her own feelings.

Manga is... let's be honest here, manga is broadly sexist. Shonens like this are worse. When a woman in shonen is in love? It defines her character, drives it. Their entire character arcs for the entire time they're in love, if not beyond it, hinge on that basic fact.

Sakura, Hinata, and Orihime are all broadly driven by their love for their men at first, and even when they grow past that being their sole motivation to fight, it still remains a fundamental core of their drives. Sakura's big growth early on, for example, is that she wants to marry Sasuke and become a proper ninja, when before her primary purpose in living seemed to be to unironically to have his babies. It was a good step, but it was kind of an insulting step, is the thing, and she never gets beyond her love of Sasuke even when both of them are trying to kill each other after he abandons her for years.

Ochako, though? She has goals first, then gets a crush, and then weighs being in love with her own ambitions and chooses her ambitions over love.

I shit over almost everything Hori does with anyone that isn't a man, because it's pretty much always shit, and the more I think about it the more I almost want to applaud him, just for this, because this? This isn't just a main heroine uninterested in love. This is one who explicitly rejects it for her own agenda, and as pathetic as it is to phrase it this way, that's a huge improvement for a shonen manga.

I mean, I've seen people say that she didn't need to do that, that she could both train to be a hero and chase her love interest, and when you think about it UA students do seem to have enough free time for her to pursue it, but you know what? Who cares?

Maybe there's actually not that much free time, maybe she just doesn't realize how much time she has, maybe she's exactly right! Does it matter? She decided she's not ready for a relationship at this portion of her life and she'd rather do something else with her time; good for her! Chase your dreams! Do what you want when you want!

And for a time, Hori seemed content to treat her as an actual important character, who develops as a combatant (which, as much as I like to say 'power ups aren't character development', I'm not blind to basic facts that mangas like this orbit around a lot of fighting, and you need to be able to fight to stay relevant to the story line) as well as develop as a person.

Actually, let me stop here and pivot a bit to better handle part of your question: her development.

Early on, Ochika training to be a hero was a basiclly a poor kid going to be a sports star to support their family; it wasn't about the job itself, per say, so much as that the job would pay well, and they could get in without getting crippling debt in the process. She had the talent, so she wanted to use it to support her family because she loved them. This was a lot more modest than, say, Lemillion's goals, but it was still noble, and she'd still do a lot of good while supporting her family. At the same time, though, she also just wanted to help people just to see them smile and what not, and so becoming a hero was really a multifaceted goal for her.

The problem with the later development, though, is the same thing that happened to everything about her post her learning Gunhead Martial Arts or so (let me take a brief aside to kind of laugh at that, because 'Gunhead' Martial Arts, rather than just martial arts or whatever just seems really ridiculously to me, but whatever): she was replaced, then her development was largely just given to her by the author happened off screen so we couldn't really connect with how it happened.

That replacement was bad for a bunch of reasons, really: because Bakugou was being promoted from classroom bully to rival character, he needed more focus with his 'rival' so he replaced Shoto. Shoto, who had all the build up of the rival character at first, needed to be in the story since he was so important to later plotlines, but didn't have a place anymore, so he needed to be put somewhere else still in the audience's eyes. The eventual fallout of all this, plus Endeavor's heavy character salvaging attemptings by Hori, is Izuku's core friend group of Ochiko, Iida, and himself was replaced by New Trio of Shoto, Bakugou, and Izuku.

Or, if I'm being even more honest, The Duo of Shoto and Izuku and then Bakugou is there too for some reason.

Something I want to point out here, while we're on talking about it; then new trio isn't a friend group, like the original one was, they're more... work associates. Shoto and Izuku are friends, by this point (and for some reason Shoto is hanging out with a person channeling the traits of his father he despises the most (cough cough, to try and salvage Bakugou)), but we don't see the three of them, like, hang out: they're together at first because they were all interning with Endeavour (for some god forsaken reason (cough cough, to salvage Endeavour)), then after that because they were heavy hitters and honestly just them being put there by the author. There's every indication that the original three are still friends, we just... don't see it, anymore.

But I'm off topic: point is, with the focus shifting from school life to 'let's save the world as first years!', the friendships took the backseat, and Ochika was just... ignored by Hori.

Eventually, she started being put back into the story, since she was still somewhat important, but by this point we had reached The War Arc (and shit, I don't think there's a post where I haven't dunked on that, is there?), and, well.

Everything Changed When The War Arc Attacked.

Everybody's characterization went to shit after that, not just her, and it's not surprising her story went down the cracks.

So, part of her changes, and part of the reason they're confusing with her original goal, is that at least part of them is mixed with her largely dropped but still weirdly there romance plot. Izuku is the origin of her thinking, 'who saves the heroes', because, well, Izuku needs saving from his own idiot self all the time later on, and he's heroic.

I'll point out that this isn't, fundamentally, a conflict with her original goal of supporting her family: she wants heroes to be treated better, she doesn't want heroes to stop being monetized (because that's too far against the status quo for any hero to support!). Even if that impacted her career (which, logically, makes sense as a possible concern and probably part of why you were confused, yet I don't think she thought about once) she's not Mt Lady; she's not going to be paying thousands in damages everytime she does anything. A rescue hero like her is always, unfortunately, going to find someone who needs to be saved by having heavy things lifted off them. Maybe she'd never be rich if this backfired on her, but she'd certainly be well enough to support her parents, at least, since we've never seen a poor hero (sighs, gestures vaguely in a, 'gee, wouldn't that have been nice to see to help develop the profession in literally any way!' sort of fashion).

The second point of 'development'... now that is honestly shit. I've mentioned before how, after a certain point, MHA's plot started turning more and more from the complex and fascinating topics that they presented to us (and got so many of us engrossed in the first place), to a more cliche format that I fondly call a 'Full Shonen'. Part of a Full Shonen plot is, unless an important villain is truly, absolutely evil (so, basiclly AFO) they aren't beyond redemption, no matter how little sense that makes. If they're not beyond redemption, The Good Guys(TM), are therefore obligated to at least try and save them from themselves. Another typical Full Shonen plotline is, if there's a female bad guy, the female good guy will have to be the one to fight them.

Following that logic, Himko, the crazed female serial killer, is not beyond salvation, and so it fall to Ochako, the female hero, to save her, no matter how little sense that makes on a character or narrative level, because, you know, cat fight or something.

*sighs for forever*

Problem being everything post-War is so quarter-assed that this entire new plot line is built off, and really isn't held together by, the fact they both love Izuku. Or rather, Himiko is vaguely in love with Ochiko because she's cute (or 'cute', by whatever arcane and ill-defined criteria she uses to target people) and feels a bond with her because she also loves Izuku, and Ochiko is just... there, basiclly, and fights her because, you know, she's a villain. The connection is beyond forced, and yet we all know that somehow she'll be essential to 'saving' Toga.

While we're talking about these two, I'm going to point out that people saying Ochaka in the latest chapters wanting to talk about love are dramatically missing the point. She didn't want to go girl talk with Toga about their mutual crush, no matter how hilarious a meme summary that was. Toga was leaving via warp portal, while turning into Twice, and Ochkaka wanted to stop her because, you know, Twice-Toga is going to make their temporary existence everyone else's problem. She couldn't physically stop her from where she was, so turned to the one thing that has always distracted Toga in the past: talking about love. Even a mere thirty seconds of Toga gushing about Izuku, after all, is thirty seconds less of a one man army fucking up the heroes plans, not even mentioning duplicating AFO or SFO or some other nightmare scenario; anything she could do to run the clock on Twice's blood at all is priceless for the heroes.

And before anyone says it, that's not some brilliant insight on Ochako's part, it's not some sign of their 'deep connection'; anyone who spends two minutes around Toga would know that much. Anyways, because of Toga's... random ass character development just before all this happened, she's finally able to control her impulses like a normal person, and leaves instead. Ochaka's comment at the end, 'she didn't want to talk about love', isn't sad that she didn't get to talk about some threesome or whatever bullshit, it's surprise, because that's not how Toga works.

So, yeah, Ochaka's great start early on fell apart after she lost the spotlight, and it's a shame. The evolution to 'saving heroes' could have easily been handled better just by, you know, focusing on her at all, and we could have seen rising concerns about how heroes are treated in their cutthroat line of work (obligatory screaming at failed heroic society development) over time, and grow more organically in her mind and motivation. Saving Toga... Toga is so unreasonable as a character that, barring a drastic redesign of her characterization, or more reasonably, something for Ochika to connect with her and make her care beyond being a female who, gasp, likes Izuku too!!!!!!, that... that was never going to work well. It, and she, are too much of a mess, and Ochaka is too good of a person.

#ask #mha critical #bnha critical #urakara ochako #wasted potential #ochako chose her own path #too bad she was left behind on it #hori's chronic loathing of women #bakugo critical #Everything Changed When The War Arc Attacked #the failure of the development of heroic society and corruption #Full Shonen #Himiko critical #quarter-assing the plot

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justatalkingface · 1 year

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I've personally always been frustrated with Ochako's character and her so called fans. I'd like to know your thoughts on 3 things about her:

Do you think the so called "parallel" between her and Toga seems forced and just ridiculous? Horikoshi has said he created them to "match" each other but it's just doesn't make much sense to me. It seems to relate to love and emotions, but it was just so poorly handled. Ochako's constant association with Toga and having her as the only major opponent she faces, it feels like her potential is being cheated because it feels recycled and rehashed like it's just going in circles at this point.

Wouldn't it be better if in the end, Ochako decided to grow out of her feelings and just became friends with Deku? It would at least show some maturity on her part and that she was faithful to her original goals all along, wouldn't it? At the very least, it doesn't force her to be boxed in the obligatory love interest role like a lot of female characters because a lot of her so called fans only ever see her as just that; a love interest who is meant to be with the MC, they can never seem to mention her without addressing her "love interest" status and her individual accomplishments for herself are just ignored in favor of her "ship" and I don't think I need to explain why that's bad. Even fanboys agree that female characters who exist solely just to be a love interest are not interesting at all. I'm not saying Ochako is boring but rather she was originally praised because she was the girl who broke the "shonen mold" for shonen girls in anime. Kaede Kayano from Assassination Classroom didn't really end up with Nagisa in canon and she was just fine.

Do you agree/disagree on the notion that Ochako is being forced/boxed into the "obligatory love interest trope" like many other anime girls typically fall into? Shippers would deny that or try to justify it, but I'd like to know your thoughts. Like I said, she was originally praised for breaking the shonen mold for anime girls but sometimes canon and especially the fans seem to keep forcing her back into that "typical love interest" category when originally, she pushed her feelings aside to focus on herself but now it seems even that part of her character keeps flip-flopping all over the place.

I know this is a lot but you give thorough answers and I like how detailed your analysis is and the particular topics I'm talking about have always been issues that surround Ochako as a character that it's caused so much cognitive dissonance when people talk about it, so I'd really like to know what you think.

Hmm. Alright, let's talk about parallels.

Are there parallels between Himiko and Ochako? Technically, yes. Are they handled well? No.

The thing is, both of them parallel around crushing on Izuku, right? As well as both being women he's had 'cute girl panic' moments over, and so on. If Hori was actually willing to put work into that, maybe it could have been interesting: Ochaco was putting aside her feelings for her dreams and the greater good, while Himiko was hedonistically chasing him, along with anything else that pleases her (blood, Ochaco herself, etc etc...) unrealistically, without worrying about the practicalities, or the cost of her desires. There is a dynamic there, and in theory that could have been something interesting. In practice?

Well, in practice, Ochako hasn't been in really in focus for awhile now, and we haven't seen much of how she thinks. And when she does... well, to be honest, I'm not sure the last time she thought about her crush was. She's been focusing on, you know, society crumbling around her rather than how she feels about her first crush, which, good on her! Nice priorities! The thing is, if the story wants us to focus on her being in love, it needs to show her, well, in love. I know she probably still is (and at this point I expect her to hook up with Izuku in the end, if he doesn't die), but it falls flat when this is supposed to be a major part of her connection to this other character, but we never see it.

Himiko, meanwhile, has the opposite problem: she loves Izuku, or rather 'loves' him. The thing is, she's rather shallow with her love: she loves Izuku, sure. And Ochako, and I think Tsuyu, and pretty much everyone else she's killed on her own time in the series, and more than a few she's killed while she was on 'business' for the League. As long as you are 'cute', in other words, Himiko will 'love' you. The main thing that makes Izuku different than her other love interests is he isn't dead yet, so she has to keep chasing him, which probably makes her obsess over him as the one that got away.

In other words, while Ochako's love feels meaningless because it feels like Hori forgot about it, Himiko's 'love' feels meaningless because her love is cheap and easy, and really isn't even love so much her just saying that someone is hot, and she doesn't know how to distinguish lust, or hunger, or a mix of those two, from romantic interest. And when those two things are the main points of connection between the two characters, that connection is going to feel weak.

On Ochako moving on... honestly, it's hard to care much about it either way since she hasn't had on screen time to think about it in god knows how long. She's this important main character from the original parts of the story, but in story she hasn't had time to truly think about anything that isn't a crisis in probably months, and from our perspective... in a year? More? If I had to choose right now, I'd lean towards her moving on, but that's just because her crush feels like it's been atrophied from all this time without it being brought up beyond Toga sort of mentioning it. Personally, I wouldn't have cared all that much if she ended up with Izuku as long as it didn't subsume her character, since there were so many ways for her development to go, but you're right: back when she was an important character, and had focus to explore her opinions, the way she was trending with Izuku was less interest on her crush and more focus on him as her friend and colleague, a friendly rival to compete against and an ally to work together with.

And that would have been great, it really would have; the friendship with Ochako and Izuku was so nice and wholesome at the beginning. At this point though either choice, moving on or hooking up, is just going to come out of nowhere because there hasn't been any time on it.

Is she being shoved into the love interest role? Oh yeah. Like, if you ship them, there's plenty of stuff before the War Arc help support that in a natural way, more power to you, but after?

*hisses through clenched teeth*

Post War has done Ochaco dirty. Her main focus, post War, is about how she's contrasting with Himiko, and that contrast is about how they're both attracted to Izuku, which is really bizarre since we don't actually get to see how she even feels about him, at this point. All the same though, the way Himiko talks, the way the fight is being arranged, it's about the parallels them and their 'love', and there's some energy of them fighting over him even while they're actually fighting over completely different things (while also giving off threesome vibes that are solely coming from Toga, because of course), while not putting any... work into it? It feels like Hori is kind of absently prodding her towards being the love interest, through her fight with Himiko and how they're supposed to be mirroring each other. Basically, it's sort of saying that, since Himiko 'loves' Izuku, and Ochako is supposed to be her thematic rival, then therefore Ochako still loves Izuku!

Only, you know, without giving it enough thought, or Ochako enough courtesy, to do it well. Or barely at all, really. I mean, fuck, it's worth stating this again: I don't think Ochaco has actually confirmed she's still attracted to Izuku recently? And I'm being generous here when I say 'recently' by condensing all the Final Arc fights that are all technically happening at the same time to the same time frame, and not using how bloated it is for us readers to experience. From what little we've actually seen, Ochaco could have moved on entirely, at this point, but the narrative still wants us to think she's still interested. And let's be honest, if Hori is, quarter assedly or not, pushing the idea that Ochako is still in love with Izuku this late in the story, then they're going to hook up, no matter how little Ochako actually seems to think about it, not to mention how I'm not sure Izuku has ever thought about.

#urakara ochako #ask #mha critical #bnha critical #Hori's chronic loathing of women #ochako deserves better #is it ochaco or ochako? Auto correct says one thing and the internet says another

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