i actually didnt think it could get worse but touya's reveal being the thing that brought the todorokis together and finally made them ally themselves with endeavour regardless of all the trauma he caused them and how impossible they've found it to even hang out together as a family for the entire decade touya has been gone. THAT being what binds them. they might as well have spat in the face of touya's memory. it's not even an acknowledgement that dabi must be stopped it's just like they never even loved him. endeavour is giving him more sympathy than them. 'you will have to fight dabi one day' et tu rei?
Hm. Yeah. I think this may be an extension of me being a cynical hater but there’s a thin line ok not thin but fandom analysis really makes it seem this way lol in storytelling between “marginalization drives people to crime when society fails them” and “people with issues *wink wink nudge nudge* are inherently more prone to crime,” and I think BNHA leans more heavily on the second side than the first.
i remember when the bodysnatching happened and how hardly anyone else in the fandom (or what i saw of the fandom) seemed to find it as horrifying as i did. then the same thing happened again with the mind invasion. and yes the fact that the mind invasion happened at all and not even the story gave much of a fuck about the fact that it did is still one of biggest gripes with the finale
it's interesting that bnha attracts many "fandom isn't activism" types (it's a big fandom, so of course they come here) when bnha IS imo very concerned with instilling a sense of ethics within its readers. bnha IS a series where the protagonist is right, the flawed characters on the protagonist's side "get better," the good guys win and the bad guys answer for their crimes. "fandom isn't activism" but good lord bnha is guiding you down the most lawfully sanctioned route.
yes, bnha goes through the trouble of characterizing the bad guys and showing the reasons behind their actions, but it insists that the bad guys should still be held accountable. which is fine, plenty of stories do, but bnha is: (1) really ethically very simple as a story because of that, and (2) stymies its own emotional storytelling because it's fundamentally more concerned with drawing lines in the sand that "good" and "bad" guys can't cross.
for example: good guys can never overly identify with the bad guys or put the harm bad guys have done on the back burner. we have to remember endeavor, natsuo, and shouto are more worried about other people's lives, even as touya is burning to death in front of them. there's no lapses in judgment, no wrong decisions, no selfishness, nothing crazy, no one making insane gambits that put others in the line of fire to save their loved one, no one to say "fuck the world, you're the one i choose." only villains do that.
it's love at its safest and most sanitized for capitalism, love that is only self-sacrificial, love that doesn't interfere with the law, love that doesn't upset the social order, love that never implicates the world. at this point, even deku going berserker mode over bakugou's death would be more interesting, but that impulse is immediately suppressed and he follows the plan to fight shigafo, without even going to bakugou's side. in ten years they'll be married with a child and they'll miss its 13th birthday in a row because they have to bust a trigger smuggling ring. please god it's so fucking bleak.
so, yeah, i believe in the villains' relationships more. they make disruptive, unhinged, terrible decisions out of love and i love that for them. spinner puts the hand back on tomura's face, dabi burns down himiko's house, spinner wants to save tomura by walking into hell with him, himiko wants to pay back twice's death a hundred times over, and she knows what dabi will try to do and she lets him do it. it's fucking unhinged and i am invested!
people really are out here giving takes like "fandom isn't activism so the characters i like aren't really cops, but the LOV make each other worse so they have to be saved from themselves by paw patrol" as though that isn't the most vanilla take on the gotdamn earth... i don't want the shit that's been workshopped by therapists and lawyers for maximum correctness, give me some crazy deranged shit that'll determine the fate of the world.