What Helck Does Right That BNHA Is Doing Wrong
I wrote this out in a spate of frustration a while back, lost it, and then was able to recover it again, so in the interest of conservation, I figure I might as well share. It contains massive spoilers for Helck—details of its ending, its overarching plot, deep world secrets, and so on—so read at your own risk if you're one of the few people following the anime. On the other hand, very few people do seem to be watching Helck, so if you watched the first episode and then dumped it for being too goofy and comedic, this write-up will definitely give you some context for where that story goes.
(More people should read/watch Helck. Please read this and then go read Helck.)
(If you prefer, you can also just skim the Helck bits until you get to me complaining about BNHA’s crappy endgame. Hit the jump, either way!)
Helck: What It Does
For my readers unfamiliar with the series (e.g. probably most of you), Helck’s elevator pitch is, “After the Hero defeats the Demon King, the demons hold a tournament to select the new Demon King. But wait, why is there a human here?!” It’s riffing, obviously, on the foundational JRPG story, and starts out in a high-key goofy comedy mode, which, while representative of its sense of humor, is not actually very reflective of the tonal zone it winds up occupying for most of its run. The darkness and horror elements of the series are foreshadowed by the title character—Helck, the human who showed up to join the Demon King selection tournament—cheerily proclaiming that he hates and wants to destroy all humans. Something is very wrong in the human lands, it seems, and the main character—Vamirio, one of the Four Heavenly Kings of the demon empire, sent to oversee the tournament—uncovering and then responding to that wrong forms the bulk of the story.
That said, it takes a good long while for Helck to reveal the true nature of its conflict. While there are some key villainous figures that have been in play for long before that point, the ultimate truth is that the world of Helck contains a disembodied force that contacts people when they’re in their darkest, most despairing moments, providing them an “answer” for why their situations are so miserable and how to go about fixing the world that hurt them so badly, as well as power to help them do so. The answer given by this force, called “The Will of the World,” is twisted and omnicidal, but between a degree of implied mental influence and the timing of the approach, lots of otherwise innocent, hurt people can wind up becoming the figures behind literally world-threatening dangers.
Eventually, we find out that Helck himself was approached by The Will when he was a child in a bad situation. He wasn’t quite ready to give in yet—he had a kid brother to look out for—and so he powered past it, but it’s remained in the back of his head since that day, ever-ready to whisper its apocalyptic solutions to extreme class disparity and abuse. This gives him a degree of empathy for the villains of the series, even as they do extremely awful stuff that he can’t otherwise forgive.
In the epilogue, a new king is crowned and we’re generally assured that things in Helck’s country are going to improve from now on. The demons are developing magical treatment to reverse a once-thought-irreversible transformation from sentient person into mindless monster, preparing groups that will venture forth to find all the affected humans still wandering the countryside so that they can be helped. Helck himself could easily rest on his laurels, either settling in with the human friends he had to go to extreme lengths to save or accepting his demon friends’ invitation to come live with them, the ones who fought at his side and gave him hope when he was so often on the verge of despair.
But he does neither, because he knows that The Will of the World is still out there whispering to other people in pain—it’s a force of nature that will always be out there, until someday it succeeds at finding someone it can use to overturn and restart the world. It can never be killed, only circumvented. However, The Will can’t act on its own, only through those that have fallen under its sway, and those people don’t start out as raving, gleefully evil maniacs! They start out as people experiencing unconscionable suffering, because people suffering to that extent are the only ones who can be convinced to believe that the answer is total annihilation.
Helck knows better than to assume that simply installing one good king in one overall-good country will be enough to save everyone in the world—or even in that one country!—from despair, and he’s intimately familiar with what that despair is like. So, he packs up with one of his besties and they set out on a journey that will, implicitly, never really have an end. Of course, he’ll come visit his friends and loved ones from time to time, but what he’s really dedicating himself to is finding and rescuing other people, other victims, giving them reasons to hope, reasons to believe in the world as it is now, because, as he himself experienced, that’s the only thing that can really stop someone from falling prey to The Will of the World.
Saving those victims is a practical means of preventing all the harm they would have gone on to wreak, yes, but it also means said victims don’t have to be put to the sword when they turn up at the head of an army of monsters or some shit a few decades down the line.
Helck’s answer to the problem of recurrent, inevitable suffering is thus threefold:
Improve the system at large by clearing out the corruption on top.
Dedicate active, ongoing efforts to redressing the sins of the previous system and helping its victims, even if they seem too far gone.
Proactively seek out and bring aid to problem areas before the sufferers there metastasize into world-shaking dangers.
Its characters are involved in all three of those stages—the heroic side cast does Point 1, Vamirio and her allies handle Point 2, and Helck takes up the responsibility of Point 3. He goes out into the world to be that extra safety net when the better society he helped put in place inevitably still fails people, in places where his allies can’t reach. To find them—the people who are in such bad situations that apocalypse looks like a reasonable solution—he’s going to have to wade, personally, into the deepest and worst mires he can find, pulling people out of that darkness one hand at a time.
As a series, then, Helck believes in systemic change while also believing that systemic change will never be sufficient on its own to prevent all suffering. However, rather than then simply shrugging and accepting that suffering is inevitable and so the heroes will have no choice but to deal violently with the people who fell through the cracks when they inevitably return as dangerous villains, it sends its hero out to do that ground-level work of saving people. And he himself isn’t enough either, but his actions are still meaningful, because every life he saves is both that one soul saved from darkness, and one more vector cut off that could otherwise spiral into exponential amounts of suffering and death.
BNHA: What It's Not Doing
We can see an echo of the path into darkness which turns victims into villains in BNHA, where the villains are not Born Monsters, but rather become monsters because of the circumstances of their lives. The pain they endure, the discrimination and violence they face, leads them to their extremist reactions to try and repair—or simply destroy—a world they perceive as fundamentally hostile to them. While there’s no overarching Will of the World manipulating them for its own ends—All For One is akin to it in how he operates, but at the end of the day, he’s still just another man, not a literal planetary anima—the end result remains the same: people forged by suffering into enemies so dangerous and resolute that they threaten the entire foundation of the world as it currently exists, as well as all those who are living in peace and happiness in the current world.
So, when faced with the prospect of enemies who are an unavoidable consequence of the endurance of the status quo (because the status quo the heroes have chosen to support is full of discrimination and repression), what exactly is BNHA proposing to do about those enemies arising in the future? How will the heroes’ course of action regarding those enemies be different at the end of the story than it was at the beginning? Well, so far we’ve got:
Shouji functionally telling the heteromorphs at the hospital that all they can do is endure their suffering until the people around them decide on their own to improve.
Even as she’s embraced by a Hero, Toga believing there’s no possible ending in which she can reach a world she wants to live in, and so resigning herself to finding a satisfactory death instead.
The seeming resolution of the subplot concerning the civilians lashing out at the heroes for their failure being for them to collectively agree to support heroes even more, with no explanation of what that would change for the children out of view of a hero, like Tenko was, or being victimized by a hero, like Touya.
I feel like the manga wants us to believe that the future will be better because heroes as a group, inspired by the kids of 1-A and with the corruption of the HPSC purged, are going to be more empathetic towards villains as a group going forward. I don’t believe that, however, thanks to even the students’ (and especially Deku’s) continued willingness to completely ignore the humanity of the villains they don’t have pre-existing bonds with. Their empathy for “their” designated villains is admirable, certainly, and a good start on the necessary change, but it’s not sufficient if it starts and ends with that highly conditional empathy.
What is going to be different on a systemic level to help people like Toga or Spinner? What will change in society at large such that the average person on the street will become willing to help someone off-putting and potentially dangerous like Tenko or Jin? What overhaul of professional heroism can we expect to help prevent situations like Touya’s or assuage the generational grudges behind Mr. Compress or Re-Destro? What new oversight mechanisms will be put in place to prevent more children from being scooped up to be raised as weapons like Lady Nagant and Hawks? What can be done to catch people like Muscular or Moonfish at a younger age and intervene before they grow up into murderers? What better counselling programs in prison could be introduced such that someone like Ending might actually be less suicidal when their prison sentence ends than they were when it began? What social safety nets need to be strengthened such that children like Overhaul and Geten wind up in normal, loving homes with the resources to help them sort through their issues rather than criminal organizations and cults?
After the dust settles on this endgame, what in god’s name is going to change?
Further, even if those changes are enacted, what are the main characters going to do personally for those who still slip through the cracks? As @robotlesbianjavert wrote previously, once everything has been done as best it can for the greater good, what’s the second safety net there to catch those who can’t be saved in the greater good’s first pass?
BNHA vs. Helck's Threefold Answer
Consider again the three points Helck’s ending contained—improve the system, care for the victims that already exist, and proactively seek to prevent the creation of new victims—and contrast them to how things are going in BNHA’s end game.
1: Have the main characters improved the system?
No, not at all. The most concrete change to the system has surely been the death of the HPSC President, but no heroes had no hand in that, much less one of the kids. Clone Re-Destro took her out, one villain to another, so no hero had to sully their hands or risk taking on the very office that grants them their authority. Even with her death, we have no guarantee that whoever takes her position next will be any different than she was.
All Might’s retirement shook the system, but the series is out there as I type this recanonizing All Might and his legacy as wholly beyond reproach.
Endeavor and Hawks were exposed as, respectively, an abuser and a murderer on national TV and absolutely no official consequences befell them.
A heteromorphic mob stormed a hospital and the best a professional hero could muster was a feeble apology for not “realizing sooner,” with not a single word from anyone about being more mindful going forward.
Ujiko was removed from the web of orphanages he was maintaining, but there’s been nothing to address how he managed to get away with cultivating his “seedbeds of hatred and ferocity” right out in the open for decades, either, and so we have no real reason to believe the vulnerable children in those institutions are going to be safe from the next unscrupulous figure with ulterior motives to come along after him.
There’s been no recognition whatsoever of the role quirk counselling played in Toga’s repression, no discussion of making prisons more humane, no intention stated of making the current system even the tiniest bit less regressive via actual changes to the law and government-funded social safety nets. The system shows no signs whatsoever of improving, least of all due to any actions on the part of the main characters.
Neither Deku nor any other student has shown the faintest inclination to push back against the reactionary violence demanded of them by the system they intend to join. While they may act mercifully on their own time, they are wholly unwilling to actually protest against the authority that gives them their orders.
2: Are the main characters making efforts to care for the victims that already exist?
Yes and no. This is about the only one I can give them even partial credit for, but partial credit they do still get.
Ochaco made a world-shaking offer for Toga, one that melted away Toga’s aggression and brought her violence to a dead stop. That’s amazing! Shouto has managed to stop Dabi from killing himself and everyone around him against all odds, and we have every indication that he’ll keep dedicating himself to that for as long as it takes. Deku has concretely changed the paths of Gentle Criminal, La Brava and Lady Nagant,[*] and I have little reason to believe he’ll do any less for Shigaraki, however that turns out to look. Attempts are even being made to help the Noumu, following the reveal of Shirakumo’s lingering presence in Kurogiri.
…But that’s about where it stops.
[*] I hate absolutely everything about the way Lady N reacted to him, mind you, but what’s on the page is on the page.
Shouji never bothered to actually ask Spinner or Scarecrow what drove them to villainy, nor do we have any indication that he’s going to follow up with them now that the riot they were leading has been quelled.
Deku’s compassion begins and ends with people whose motivations he can understand; he has none to spare on those whose desires and goals are alien to him, or he attaches that compassion to stone-hearted ultimatums he has no authority to make.
Tsuyu’s got Ochaco’s back, and Iida has a line that you could interpret as being charitably disposed towards Dabi, but no one else in the class seems to be making any efforts to reach out to villains. Shinsou might have brought Gigantomachia to a place where he could confront AFO, but he damn sure didn’t give him a choice in the matter.
Things are even worse on the professional level. Between the flying coffin and the mass arrests, we’ve had no indication that the Pros are doing or are interested in doing the first damn thing to try and help the victims of their flawed status quo.
The first thing Hawks does when confronted with a risen Twice is scream to kill him again, for god’s sake. That’s as clear an indication as I could possibly ask for that nothing he’s experienced has altered Hawks’s methods or his willingness to use them.
As I said above, the empathy a tiny handful of students have for their villain foils is commendable, but insufficient to serve as tidemarks indicating an improved status quo.
3: Is there any indication that the main characters will proactively seek to prevent the pain that leads to the birth of villains?
No. In fact, under the current system, that isn’t even possible for them. That is simply not what professional heroism is or does. Under the current system, heroes are definitionally reactive; they’re not there as a preventative against suffering so much as they’re a topical ointment for it once it’s already arisen. Because the role of heroes seems on track to remain the same as it ever was, heroes can’t go into the dark places because that’s simply not their job.
Addressing bigotry and discrimination is not a hero’s job unless someone perpetuating it is using their quirk to do so.
Preventing domestic abuse is not a hero’s job even if a quirk is in use because quirk use is legal inside the home; abuse is thus a problem for police and social workers to handle, not heroes.
Dealing with corrupt systems and repressive laws is not a hero’s job because they’re enforcers for systems and laws; they can try to change them through the legal pathways available to all citizens, but they can’t bring their powers to bear without becoming villains themselves.
Heroes cannot walk into the heart of darkness of Hero Society because their job is to exist outside, in the open, in the light. Their only function is to stop villains—people using their quirks illegally—and to help out in disaster situations. That’s it. That’s all they’re there to do. And if the parameters of their jobs don’t change, that’s all they’re ever going to be able to do: try to talk a victim who’s already gone sour out of getting worse.
As it stands, if the 1-A kids are still just running around being Cool Heroes Punching Out Villains in the epilogue, they are failing to act as the second layer of aid Helck represents, but rather still only acting as their society’s last defense against those who have become twisted by pain and unaddressed need. In effect, they will continue to be the sword that puts down a monster rather than the hand that reaches out to a victim before the monster can be born.
Right now, I have seen precious little to convince me that, ten years down the line, they’re going to be anything more than fractionally better heroes than their predecessors were—punching first, asking questions virtually never, standing around in the aftermath congratulating themselves for their victories, posing for cameras as the people they just unthinkingly pummeled get packed into police cars to be dumped into a perfunctory legal system followed by a monstrously inhuman carceral complex.
The Impact of Timing
Is anyone thinking that it's not fair of me to compare stuff in BNHA's endgame to stuff in Helck's epilogue? Couldn't most of my complaints be handwaved in BNHA's epilogue? I mean, I guess, yeah, but with the small problem that such a resolution would be incredibly unsatisfying.
The thing with Helck is, that series doesn’t leave those three points for the epilogue; rather, its epilogue is a natural extension of the choices its characters have been making all along.
Helck leaves his chain of command, his kingdom, even his own species, when he realizes how deep their corruption runs. Helck’s struggle to overcome corrupt authority is the foundation the entire series rests on, from its beginning hook of, “Human hero tries to become the new Demon Lord,” to its climax of fighting against The Will of the World itself. (Point 1: Improve the system.)
Vamirio decides upon getting to know Helck that humans, her enemies, are ultimately victims of the corrupt power manipulating them. She shouts out loud her intention to save them, exulting in the sense of relief it gives her to clear away her uncertainty and come to that decision. Later, she passionately declares that she will disobey orders from her Emperor himself, if those orders are to fight humans with the intent of killing them. She’s a figure of authority amidst her own kind, but she is more than willing to go against that authority—and vocally so—if her morals tell her she must. (Point 2: Dedicate active efforts to helping the victims of the corrupt system, even if they already seem too far gone.)
I’ve already talked about Helck’s decision to wander the earth in the series’s epilogue, and this of all points would seem most likely to be relegated to the aftermath, but no, dedication to preventing future tragedies can be found in the body of the series itself as well. Vamirio’s peer Azudora has history with both humans and the transformations wrought by The Will of the World, and he’s been working on a cure since before the series even began. His efforts bring hope to the series at a critical point and provide a model for Helck’s decision at the series’s end, as both men make the same choice: to devote their lives to the hope of doing something that will better the future, even if it doesn’t change things for those who have already been lost. (Point 3: Proactively work to save today’s victims so that they don’t become tomorrow’s monsters.)
In essence, the entire run of Helck is dedicated to presenting the problem Vamirio and Helck are facing, exploring how and why they come to the decisions they do about how to solve that problem, and then forcing them, over and over, to face down their own doubt and fear, their allies’ hesitancy, and their opponents’ highly dedicated efforts to break them down and defeat them, be it through force of arms or despair. The heroes get the ending they do because they decide on the ending they want and then they spend the rest of the series damn well fighting for it.
BNHA’s epilogue handing the kids the passel of resolutions and changes they so desperately need for their bright futures to be remotely convincing—offscreened, timeskipped victories to battles they haven’t even yet realized the need to fight!—will just cement this rant’s contention that the series and its heroes don’t have half of the clarity of purpose and intellectual integrity of Helck and its lead duo of shounen manga Determinators.
In summary, please read Helck.
Disclaimer at the bottom: I don’t want to utterly oversell Helck here. The way it handles its classism angle is simplistic, even reductive, a bog-standard portrayal of, “All nobles are cartoonishly evil save the one (1) pure-hearted exception who just isn’t for some reason.” Its big change to its corrupt system at the end is simply to replace a “bad king” with a “good king,” which is self-evidently not a change that’s guaranteed-effective beyond the good king’s lifespan. Further, there’s obviously going to be a difference in realism between a story set in a medieval fantasy JRPG world and one set in a modified version of real-life, present-day Japan—BNHA does portray a much more complex, well-articulated society.
Still, even acknowledging that comparing the two series is kind of comparing apples and mandrakes, it’s striking to me how similar the themes are when you strip out the language of their respective genre idioms. Both are interrogating notions of traditional heroism and villainy, examining what drives villains, pushing to recognize the humanity in the traditionally monstrous. In that sense, Helck is just across-the-board better, more honest, and more passionate at portraying those themes, while BNHA consistently gestures at them only to bafflingly write them off again the moment they get a little too challenging to deal with.
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I have a sudden, unsolicited opinion on the moment where Ochako admits that she fell in love with Izuku. Since it has been going around as one of those context-less, surface level articles on Google(I spotted it too)
So it's talking about the moment when Ochako is fighting Toga and she tells her that she fell in love with Izuku.
Does she use the exact wording? Yes.
Does that mean it's an end all declaration? Does it mean she is endgame with Izuku? I do not think so.
I don't think it's the final nail in the coffin to the argument for any other ship involving Izuku or Ochako. Here's why:
The admission is so anticlimactic.
We have known for a while that Ochako has complicated feelings about Izuku. We know that it has been a bit of a crush. And that has led to ANTICIPATION to see what becomes of those feelings.
But along the anticipation, we have also seen her going through some feelings of discomfort about the whole thing...unusual, for a supposed love interest of a Shonen manga!
So the audience has been waiting for a LONG time for something, anything, to happen between Ochako and Izuku that rewards that anticipation and that waffling on Ochakos part.
And for something like a supposed love confession, a line like "I fell in love with Izuku Midoriya", to heppen....
But NOT in a moment between Ochako and Izuku themselves, just also does not reward the anticipation that was built up.
She did not confirm and admit these feelings TO izuku. She admitted them to Himiko.
And that is the first time the audience hears her positively confirm that she had those feelings, blatantly.
But it TAKES AWAY from the actual relationship because Himiko received that confession...not Izuku.
We didn't get a charged confession between Ochako and Izuku. The relationship was STILL not mutually developed. It's still just a quality of Ochako, it says nothing about Izuku. The anticipation of Ochako having a crush, and changing, complicated feelings for Izuku and where that would eventually climax, where it would reach its peak for Ochako and Izuku both, instead is diverted. Kind of literally. Because it didn't happen at either chance they had to talk it out, to confess, she sent Izuku away when Himiko tried to trap him into a love discussion. She didnt bring it up before the war began even though they had such a calm moment to be able to do so. It didn't come out in the logical places. And now in the endgame, they have split up to fight different battles...Ochako has even exhausted everything she has right now to save Himiko and likely is out until we receive the wrap up.
So, the anticipation I mentioned, again, does not have a payout in the form of even a rushed battlefield confession because the two of them are fighting different battles.
Instead the audience is given the confirmation of "I fell in love with him" when he is not even present, when Ochako is not confessing to him or confronting him. It comes out with Toga, when she Is trying to reach out and level with her, it almost could read as a "I had a crush on the same boy" kind of statement. It comes out when saving Himiko is Ochakos main priority.
What I'm saying here is that Ochakos love confession for Izuku, which is usually a big deal in any story, is in the back seat to prioritize each of their other relationships and goals. Which is great that it is not forced upon us when there are bigger things happening, however it just does a disservice to the pairing itself when most of the feelings are expressed onesidedly, and an actual statement of love, if it's not even outdated because of changed feelings, means a lot less when it's not filling the gap between the two people in question. When the confession doesn't reach the other person.
(And I will go ahead and say that is kind of similar to how bkdk is right now as well, bc we have SO MUCH material on Katsukis side, about how he feels and how much he cares about Izuku, but not a lot on what Izuku feels or allows himself to feel about Katsuki. I will call that out as well.)
Like at this point, the best we could hope for, for Ochako and Izuku being a couple, is a very open note about it in the aftermath. Like maybe Ochako asks Izuku if he would like to get crepes with her. That's just enough given context clues to suggest to the audience that yes there are still some feelings there, she heard what he said about crepes and holding hands and took note of it, but also that Izuku himself is willing to explore those feelings as well. It would be Ochako finally choosing her feelings for Izuku, but without it being too sudden for Izuku to accept. This whole time we are not shown Izuku crushing on her at all it would be strange to have him suddenly initiate.
But anything more romantic and profound than that? Any dramatic reveal/confession of feelings, any chance for them to have a moment in the midst of war to have the "i love you" discussion? That has been bypassed time and time again. Horikoshi COULD HAVE WORKED IT IN, IF IT WERE A PRIORITY TO HAVE THEM ENDGAME. While no, romance doesn't have to be a priority in a Shonen, and Ochako has flipped the script on how she handles her feelings as a shonen love interest, Hori has demonstrated that threads and concepts of romance ARE part of his narrative.
And right now? Hot take, but the most romantic thread that Izuku, his main character, finds himself in, is whatever the hell is going on between him and Katsuki Bakugou.
You'd just think if the mc was going to be with a romantic partner, a girl, by the end of the story, something would have happened.
I feel like I'm going in circles past my point, but it boils down to Izuku not having any indication of interest in Ochako besides friendliness....the fact that the audience received confirmation of Ochako loving Izuku from her telling a 3rd party and NOT her subject, and the anticipation of that confession, built up for YEARS of this manga and animes run, of supposed feelings not really being paid off, if the two are meant to be the romantic end game. It also boils down to the fact that the anticipation of the confession had a CHANCE to occur with Izuku, the subject, multiple times. It boils down to again, ochako and Izukus relationship being romantic in anyway being little more than an after thought.
AND! it doesn't even guarantee that her feelings of love for him are still the same! We don't know for sure if she STILL loves Izuku!
So yeah. I hope this made sense, but it sure feels anticlimactic to have a love confession(supposedly) not even occur while the subject is present, where the audience can view it and celebrate that long awaited conclusion.
As always, these articles that pop up on Google leave a lot of context out, and are very face value. They saw Ochako say the L word and called it endgame. There is a reason I don't read them.
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I know it was never gonna happen but I think it would have been cool if instead of Kirishima and Shinsou it should have been Hoseface on Gigantomachia telling AFO that that “we serve the true liberator” before tossing a mountain at him
You are so right, @plf-advisor-stan. You have blown my mind with how right you are. Everyone look at this incredible plot we could have had. My god, that would have been so incredibly good.
I wanted—so, so wanted—for Gigantomachia to have an actual character arc about choosing between Old Master and New Master. He loves AFO so dearly, of course, far more than he does Shigaraki, but AFO transparently doesn’t care about his minions once he’s had his use of them,[1] whereas Shigaraki’s care for his team is repeatedly shown in scenes like him remembering Mr. Compress’s desire for sushi or reflecting out loud that he wants his comrades to get what they want.
There’s obviously a difference in the levels of Shigaraki’s regard for the League and for the rest of his followers, but all the same, I can’t imagine a Shigaraki who’d gotten to spend any significant time with Machia as a follower being willing to leave him in the dust the way AFO does in Jakku—indeed, calling the lonely Machia back to him is one of the first things Shigaraki does after getting out of the tube. Shigaraki wouldn’t have left Machia alone in the mountains for 15+ years if Machia didn’t want to go, either.
Machia, as he was originally written, was not a mindless Noumu. He spent the entirety of MVA vehemently not blindly submitting to Shigaraki because it’s what AFO wanted him to do, but rather testing Shigaraki’s worthiness, telling Shigaraki the kind of master he, Gigantomachia, would bow to, and insisting that Shigaraki rise to that level. Shigaraki did, and Machia accepted him—it’s such a letdown that all of that effort on both their parts has, thus far, come to nothing. Machia chose Shigaraki as his master once. He deserves the chance to do so again.
And, of course, the same goes for the erstwhile MLA. All that bleeding Shigaraki did, all the work the League put in while he was in the tube, and we just get nothing at all about what the PLF think about being repurposed to serve AFO. Good lord, the higher-ups were so open about their disdain for the League when they thought they were just villains with no larger goal for societal reform, but how does their vision of liberation work at all with AFO at the helm? As recently as Chapter 363, Skeptic—who’s nominally still giving the PLF remnants their marching orders!—spoke rather dismissively of AFO, instead citing Re-Destro’s desires, Shigaraki Tomura’s interests, and the intent to bring about anarchy that would contain neither heroes nor villains.
AFO is, consciously and intentionally, the ultimate villain. And even if we’re meant to believe the MLA is all about the quirk supremacy,[2] it’s not like AFO’s even doing a convincing job of being An Strongest, given that All Might has defeated him twice!
The MLA never chose AFO as a leader; they followed Re-Destro in choosing Shigaraki. It’s maddening that the story seems to want me to view that loyalty as so interchangeable.
Anyway, yes, your scenario is good and you should feel good; A++ thanks for sharing it with me, and it’s my pleasure to share it with my followers.
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[1] AFO, you cad, rescue your danged husband from prison!!!
[2] They weren’t all about quirk supremacy, of course, which is what makes their lack of on-panel reflection even more exhausting. I’ll spare the full rant on that until I eventually get around to that What Does the MLA Believe post, however.
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