#tbh the real reason to hate afo is cuz he's the bnhaverse equivalent of an mcu stan

[bootlickerhawks]

I don't know if it is a bit too late but could you do AFO for the character ask game? I just want to hear your thoughts about him.

/!\ 900 words of Pure Salt under the cut /!\

Hoo boy where to even begin...

AFO is a character that worked really well at the start of BNHA but now, the more time he spends on screen the more he drags the story down :/

AFO falls under the very hard to execute character archetype "all according to my keikaku" (i know there's an official name for it but shh) . These types of characters only work well when the plan is comprehensible and "simple". Allow me to elaborate with one of the best executed, imo, example: Sousuke Aizen. 

(spoilers for Bleach and more specifically the Soul Society arc, skip the orange text to avoid spoilers)   

Aizen completed 2 key steps that allowed the rest of his plan to run smoothly: he managed to hypnotize all the captains and lieutenants with his "shikai presentation" and he assassinated central 46 who serve as the judicial authority in Soul Society. So while the rest of his plan is complex it's believable for the readers because of the 2 key steps I mentioned.   

To the reader’s knowledge, AFO’s plan for the longest time was to troll All Might, recover and gather more quirks, and most importantly, to raise Tomura to be the Symbol of Fear. Now we know that raising Tomura was a facade in order to body snatch him because he needs “hatred” to obtain OFA. Also he wants to become the Übermensch Capitalist Demon Lord… cuz of Reasons. 

The problem with AFO isn’t his plan, that’s fine it’s boring but serviceable, the problem is that he makes decisions that work against his own interests. Let’s list some:

He refuses to take BJ’s quirk because it “wouldn’t suit Tomura” even though he planned on taking over Tomura’s body anyway. (I will concede that this one is nitpicky because it’s likely Hori hadn’t fully committed to the bodysnatch plotline and wanted to keep his doors open.) 

For some inconceivable reason he doesn’t take Overhaul (the quirk). This becomes especially bizarre if you take into account the theory that Chisaki was one of the kids in Ujiko’s orphanages. AFO wouldn’t have lost against All Might in the fight 5 years ago if he had had Overhaul! He would have been able to heal himself! And even if you disregard that theory, why take a risky gamble with Rewind now when he could have just taken Overhaul during the prison break?!!!!   

Hori is good at writing perceptive and observant characters (Izuku and Bakugou being good examples of this), but, and what I’m abt to say isn’t meant to disparage Horikoshi but uh… he’s not the best at writing smart characters. 

A good example of this is Hawks’ coded message to Endeavor. Full offense to Skeptic but if I was in charge of surveilling Hawks I would have known right away that something was up when Hawks kept insisting that Endeavor read the “highlighted parts” of the manifesto in chapter 245. Plus Hawks’ code was basic af but that could be explained away by Hawks’ thinking that Endeavor’s an idiot.  

Other examples include Deku’s revelation to start kicking instead of punching, and Endeavor’s advice to *checks notes* “learn to multitask”. 

Hori frames these instances as being a lot more clever than they really are. And honestly that’s fine, at the end of the day they’re just small plot points. But it does show Hori’s difficulty writing intelligent characters, which becomes a problem when writing a character like AFO. He's supposed to be smarter than the rest of the cast, he's supposed to have planned for every contingency and yet, as I’ve pointed above, he makes stupid mistakes which makes that hard to swallow.

But of course this isn’t where our problems end! AFO biggest crime isn’t murder, or kidnapping or grooming a traumatized child to be his sockpuppet. No no no no… his biggest crime is that he’s BORING AS HELL 😩

What do we know about AFO? 

He’s over 100 years old

He had a little brother and he still has hang ups about him 

He’s a petty manipulative egomaniac 

He won’t shut up abt a comic book he read with his brother as a kid 

This would be fine if he weren’t the Final Fucking Villain! 

And to add salt to the wound AFO’s continued existence has deprived us of the best character in bnha, Shigaraki, for over 50 chapters. 

This is the part where I feel conflicted. Because it does make sense for AFO’s character to refuse to relinquish his empire to Shigaraki. It makes sense for AFO, an egomaniac from a bygone era, to refuse to move on.  

I’ve seen people argue that it ruins the parallels between All Might/Deku and AFO/Shigaraki. And I can definitely understand that argument but it makes more sense than if AFO just gave everything away to an immature, at the time, kid that he groomed. 

So on a textual level I’m fine with the plot development of AFO Norting Shigaraki but as a reader it’s frustrating to watch because AFO sucks on all levels :/ 

AFO used to be entertaining at least, throwing All Might’s catchphrase to his face during the Kamino fight was funny as hell. But recently he’s just been throwing quips around like an MCU character 🤮 “iN tHe oLd CoMic I uSeD tO rEaD tHeRe WeRe JoBbEr ChArAcTeRs WhO oNLy ExIsTeD So ThE dEmOn LoRd CoULd ShOw WhAt He WaS mADE Of” Someone pls rip his tongue out I’m begging 😭

It's a shame cuz there are conceptual aspects of AFO's character that I enjoy: his opportunistic nature, his pettiness, "oopsie daisy" as cringe as it is could have been better if Hori leaned more into AFO's old-timiness, even his stupid comic book references could have been a nice subversion of the typical "villain monologues and quotes classic literature" trope if executed better.

#asks #ask game #ask game : character bingo #tbh the real reason to hate afo is cuz he's the bnhaverse equivalent of an mcu stan #i think most people know this but just in case ''norting'' is a KH reference #there's a chance i got some things wrong abt his character because i dont pay attention to him much #but i think most of my criticism holds anyway