Okay, I didn't think that I'd be doing a part two of this, but apparently I'm a sociopath and I enjoy writing about my criticisms of MHA.

Now, like before, it should be noted that whatever I say may be subject to bias, so please keep that in mind. Relevant to that previous point, the things that I am going to be commenting on are my own personal opinions and no one else's. Feel free to agree or disagree with me on anything that I might say, but do keep in mind that these are my own opinions, and may change depending on whatever future circumstances come across MHA in the future.

Also, do keep in mind as while these are my own personal criticisms and disagreements with how MHA has been constructed, there are possible reasons on Horikoshi's end that may have played an impact on how the story was written. I covered these things in the previous chapter, but be aware that things like differentiating cultural norms, differentiating target audiences, and so on, so forth, so please keep this in mind.

But with that said and done, let's get down to business, starting with:

Deku as a protagonist:

Yeah, I felt like it would be best to get this out of the way with first.

Look, I enjoy Midoriya as a protagonist, at least to an extent. However, the central problem that I have with Midoriya is that, well, he's not much of a protagonist. In fact, I'd go as far as to say that he's not much of a character at all. He's incredibly flat and without much depth to him.

As far as I can tell, his entire character is just 'Shounen Protagonist', and not much else.

Allow me to elaborate:

Izuku Midoriya grew up as a quirkless child, bullied for his lack of power in a society where personal power is the key to everything. Despite that, he still wants to be a hero like his idol, All Might, and is one day given the chance to do so.

Okay, this is good. We have a good start for a character. We have a backstory, we have a possible source for a motivation to push toward his goal, and now we have a chance to do so. So let's dig a little deeper.

Why does he want to be a hero?

To save everyone like All Might.

Why?

Unfortunately, that's where it ends. Sort of. The story itself never gives a reason as to why Midoriya wants to be like All Might, but it is one that we can infer from his quirklessness. However, it is something that we have to infer, that we have to figure out for ourselves. It's not something that we're told or informed about.

And that's not all. One for All damages Midoriya's body, and he keeps using it to save others, which shows to us that he has a degree of self-destructive disregard for his own safety, which many people call him out on, and as such he spends much of his time regulating his quirk and trying to use it without damaging himself. However, we never hear his internal thought process on this matter. We never hear about him contemplating on why he continues to use One for All in spite of it damaging himself, at least not in any substantial way that I can remember.

Izuku Midoriya is the protagonist of our story, yet we never get into his personal thoughts and motivations. We never learn why he is so adamant about saving others like All Might. He just is. Even during the Vigilante arc, where Midoriya is supposed to be at his lowest point mentally... we don't see it. We don't get into his thoughts during this part of the story. It's all other people talking about it, never himself. He never openly discusses why he does all the things he does. All we know about him is that he wants to save people and be a symbol like All Might because... because.

We can't even reliably say that the reason that he does anything is because of his former quirklessness. Like I said before, we can infer this, but we don't ever hear it from him. It's all fanon, not canon.

And this is the biggest problem with Midoriya as a protagonist. Better, smarter people than me have made better arguments about this, but, in my opinion, the central problem with him as both a protagonist and a character is that he's not got much of anything to him. He's a flat character, he wants to be a hero because because, and is lacking any real depth to him, or anything of any substance.

Midoriya has the foundations of a good character, but it seems to just stay like that. His existence is just that, an existence, and without much substance to him when compared to all the other characters around him.

However, one other problem that I have with how Midoriya is used as a character is in relation to the problem above: how he is compared to other character. I think it's fair to say that Midoriya is generally put down a lot in the story when in comparison to others. He's treated as someone who doesn't stand out, as someone who is far behind everyone else in terms of power, and these points are true, if we consider the former in relation to his past as a victim of bullying, and the latter for not getting his quirk at the same time as everyone else. However, there are also gaps in which he is put down needlessly, such as when he is talking to others, how people perceive his notebook taking as creepy, and how he is treated as one of the lesser in the class. Considering how he had trained for ten months in total before coming to U.A., whereas almost everyone else probably wasn't putting in the same work beforehand like he was, this kind of treatment toward him seems unfair and almost dickish when coming from the rest of the characters. It feels like Horikoshi is trying to put down Midoriya as a way of making him seem more two-dimensional, but instead comes across as him just bullying his main character.

Favouritism:

In relation to the point above, let's just make a quick detour to talk about Horikoshi's needless favouritism of Bakugou. Now, I've already made my point about Bakugou in the previous chapter, so I'll keep this brief. Horikoshi has made it clear that he views Bakugou as one of, if not his most, favourite character, and it shows. His constant focus, victories against Midoriya, and continued persistence in involving himself in both the main plot and also the major fights, despite having been mortally wounded and logically out of those same fights for good reason, shows that Horikoshi desires to keep Bakugou in the main plot as much as possible, which is honestly detrimental to the story.

Recently, Bakugou came back from the dead in the manga and began his own fight with All for One, despite having been impaled and supposedly totalled a couple dozen chapters earlier. This isn't the first time that Bakugou was brought back from the dead after a fatal injury, as it happened during the War arc, when Bakugou pushed Midoriya out of the way of Shigaraki's attack. This, now more than ever, seems less like a plot twist and more like Horikoshi pulling things out of thin air in order to keep Baugou in the game.

Bakugou's blatant resurrection, to me at least, comes across as cheap and needless, and helps to remove any real steaks from the story. Who cares if anyone dies when they can just be revived from the dead, right? In some shows, this premise can work. Re:Zero comes to mind, but that's a different story with different ideas and goals. so the idea has a few obvious catches to make it work. MHA doesn't have that luxury. This is someone suddenly being revived from the dead without any consequence, all because of 'The strength of his quirk' according to Edgeshot, which just doesn't make any sense to me.

It doesn't come across as a fascinating plot twist, it just comes across as an excuse to keep the fight going and keep Horikoshi's favourite character in the fight, and as such completely destroys any sense of stakes and consequences within the story, of which has already been damaged by the fact that Midoriya physically destroyed himself during the War arc, and then is just instantly fine in the next.

Villains:

Moving on from that, now let me expound onto you my opinions on the villains of this story:

I don't like them. At least I don't like most of them. Allow me to explain.

First of all, allow me to join say this as a point of personal preference: I enjoy hero-villain dynamics when there's a sense of personal connection between the two parties. I enjoy the idea of heroes and villains having a sort of connection to each other, like some backstory or personal motivation that they share with each other, whatever that might be. As such, the League of Villains' lack of personal connection to any of the main characters is a bit of a let-down for me, so keep this in mind when I'm talking about the villains of the story, as it may be result of some sort of internal bias.

That being said, the biggest problem I have with the majority of the villains in the story is this: they're too one-dimensional. Like Midoriya, the villains of the story, particularly the League of Villains, lack any real depth to them in terms of morality and motivations. I think I may have covered something close to this in my previous chapter, but the point still stands: many of the villains in the story, mostly centred around the League, lack anything close to moral depth to them, making them seem more like cartoonish villains.

Now, here's the thing: each member of the League of Villains has a compelling backstory. Toga does, Spinner does, Shigaraki does... but they don't do anything with them. They're just excuses for them to try and do whatever they want. And that's basically the core of the League of Villains' motivations: they want to tear down the world just because. They want to do whatever they want, regardless of consequences. The problem is that the things that they want to do usually revolve around, y'know, murdering people. Toga's an unapologetic murderer, Shigaraki blatantly says that all he wants to do is destroy everything just because he wants to...

And Dabi? He didn't get enough attention as a child and decided to MURDER HIS FATHER AND SIBLINGS IN RESPONSE. Dabi is himself one of the most blatantly evil characters in the LoV and is an unapologetic psychopath. Before the big reveal, we all thought that he was going to one of the most nuanced and complex characters on the LoV, and then he suddenly... wasn't, and that leaves me so disappointed.

The only one in the LoV with any real sense of nuance is Twice, who's just a good guy on the wrong side of the tracks and just generally wants to help all his friends... and then he get's shanked by Hawks (from which are seemingly no consequences for the flying hero. At all) and dies, so there goes that.

And All for One? Well, that's another can of worms.

All for One is possibly the biggest let-down in terms of character and morality when it comes to MHA, going from one of its strongest villains to a flat board of a personality. His entire motivation in terms of becoming a villain is just because he wants to. No deeper motivation, no hidden depths, nothing. He is just evil for evil's own sake. He's someone who's implicitly stated to be absolutely lacking in positive traits, and is even said to be psychologically incapable of understanding good will, and instead of coming across as threatening and serious, it instead makes him seem like a joke, an empty human being devoid of any reason to give a damn about him, and instead of making him a likable character, that just means that we, as readers, lose all reason to care about him, especially when he starts pulling powers and stronger forms out of his butt on random, as has been displayed in recent chapters.

It didn't have to be like this. All for One, despite his obvious Darth Vader inspired helmet and life support system, is clearly inspired by Emperor Palpatine, and he is explicitly meant to be a character without any redeeming qualities at all. In fact, within the fiction of Star Wars like the Revenge of the Sith novelisation and Darth Plagueis novel, Palpatine is described as a well of the Dark Side, a, inhuman creature who is less a person and more a living embodiment of the Dark Side itself, with no positive traits to him and nothing redeeming at all about him.

And it works. It really works. Palpatine is this deep, threatening character who is always working behind the scenes to get what he wants, sees everyone around him as nothing more than pawns, and is nothing more than the living embodiment of evil, and we are frightened of him for it.

And yet, where it works perfectly for Palpatine, for All for One, it just... doesn't. I don't know what it is, but where this idea of the main villain being nothing more than the living personification of evil works for Palpatine, for some reason I don't believe it works for All for One. He just seems so... ridiculous. He seems like a joke; someone I can't take seriously at all.

I can't put my finger on what it is, so if any of you could please make your own comments about this, that might help me figure out how to make sense of it.

Regardless, All for One and a majority of the League of Villains are lacking in any real sense of moral ambiguity when it comes to their motivations, goals, and actions. They never consider if what they are doing is wrong, they never try to make sense of what they want in the world... they simply want to make a world where they can do whatever bastard thing they want, and it makes them seem like nothing more than psychopaths and hypocrites.

Again, it didn't have to be like this. Most of the other villains of the story seem to follow the same trend as the League of Villains. The Sludge Villain is just a petty robber who likes to murder children, the MLA are Social Darwinists who want to make a world where the strong rule over the weak, as does Nine from the movies, and I have no idea what Wolfram's deal was.

Humarise, however, is just one of the few villains who seem to buck this trend. I'll get to the others in a moment, but first I'll start with these guys. Humarise, on paper, seems like it would be a great antagonist on a psychological level, being that they want to wipe out all quirks from existence because of a doomsday theory that states that one day quirks will grow so powerful that they would one day destroy the world. That sounds like a fascinating motivation, and something that would be a great villain in a world where quirks themselves are seen as some of, if not, the most important things about a person and-

Oh, wait, Midoriya just said that the theory has little in the way of scientific validity.

Well then...

From, there, Humarise just begins to fall apart, as it becomes clear that it's nothing more than a terrorist cell seeking to spread chaos wherever it goes by attacking cities and killing hundreds of innocent people, and the basis for its entire motivation is deconstructed by Midoriya in the same movie, rendering them as simply another generic villain for Midoriya to battle against, without any consideration as to their motivations or ideals. Humarise's ideology is an interesting idea to explore in comparison to the rest of Hero Society, and yet nothing is done with it.

There's a fanfiction out there called Fear No Evil by katydid and chibikaty that goes more in depth into Humarise as an organisation, and it is a fic that I highly recommend to all of you, but it just goes to show how much potential that Humarise, and all these other organisations that are presented within MHA's narrative, have to challenge said narrative and the themes inside, only for them to fail to do so.

The only real exceptions to this rule are Stain, Gentle Criminal, La Brava, and Lady Nagant. Stain is a violent fundamentalist, but despite his extreme methods and murderous tendencies, he at least has principles to him and ideals, and presents himself not just as a physical challenge to overcome, but an ideological one as well, which hangs over the whole narrative even to its recent chapters.

Gentle Criminal and La Brava, by contrast, lack the murderous tendencies of not just Stain, but also all the other criminals and villains that have come before them, which already gives them an ideological boost over said villains as well. They have principles and standards, and are only committing villainy out of a want to be noticed and remembered by Hero Society. And to my knowledge, they haven't seriously hurt or killed anyone, and are obviously redeemable in the eyes of the world, so that's a generous boost to them as characters.

And Lady Nagant? Lady Nagant has killed people. She's killed lots of people. But she did so in the name of Hero Society under the orders of the HPSC, and unlike the other villains in the story who have taken lives, Nagant at least has regrets over it. She, like Stain, presents an ideological hurdle to overcome, but alas, she is left to around ten chapters or so to serve as an obstacle, and then defects over to the heroes during the final battle, which, yeah, irks me greatly. Lady Nagant is a living embodiment of the ugly dark side of hero society, a walking personification on the draconian and dystopian laws that the HPSC and the rest of Hero Society force upon its people, and she's quickly dealt with and the background that she came from is quickly dismissed and forgotten without any real contemplation by the rest of the cast.

(This is why I personally feel that Lady Nagant should've been the main villain of the story instead of Shigaraki. Or rather someone like Lady Nagant. Having a former hero leading the League of Villains instead of just another villain would've presented the League as an ideological danger to the heroes instead of just another gang of villains to deal with.)

Overall, while there are a few standouts, most of the villains within MHA come across as flat and morally unambiguous, becoming more generic in how they conduct themselves and go about their actions. And while I wish that there was more in the way of standout villains that serve to make the heroes question themselves and their own ideologies, I know that it's now too late to ask for it.

Villain Deku:

On a side note, this next part will be less about Horikoshi's writings and more a general issue that I have with the overall MHA fandom, in that I don't particularly enjoy the idea of Villain Deku, at least with how this concept has been portrayed within the wider range of fanfictions available.

My problem with the fandom's portrayal of the concept of Villain Deku is that they all seem wildly out of character. In these stories, Midoriya as a villain seems like the complete opposite of who he was before. I know that I said earlier that Midoriya himself didn't have much of a character to him, but at the same time I can hardly find it in myself to enjoy most Villain Deku fics. In them, Midoriya is suddenly violent and smug, condescending and losing his morality, becoming this uncaring character who murders others and doesn't seem to so much as bat an eye to it. And the other problem is that he's always portrayed as being in the right and just, that we're supposed to root for him as he murders people, seemingly always All Might as well as the latter is continuously bashed by Midoriya and his allies. It's cool the first time, but you can only read so much fics like this before it gets stale.

There are two Villain Deku fanfics that I enjoy that break this mould. The first is Villain Notebook of the Future by MeanandTurf, and that works because it plays up the concept for as much silliness as you can imagine. The second, a much more serious story, is To Cross the Line by JustaPerson1, and it involves Midoriya being driven to villainy and joining the League of Villains. However, unlike most other Villain Deku stories out there, he doesn't just lose what made him who he was in the first place, he finds himself unable to adjust to being in the League, and is still a good person underneath the mask that he tries to put up. I won't say what happens specifically in the story, but after reading so many stories where Villain Deku is completely unrepentant as to the things that he does, it's a breath of fresh air.

Hero society vs Quirk Society:

Going back to Horikoshi's writing, this particular section won't take long, but I feel that the biggest difference between the good villains that I talked about before and the bad ones is this difference. Most of the villains that I hold in good favour, save for La Brava, have been set down their paths by their interactions with heroes. Everyone else (save for Shigaraki. Maybe) is because of discrimination against their quirks or even just revolving around their quirks.

This is the distinction. Stain, Nagant, and Gentle Criminal were affected by Hero Society. Everyone else was affected by Quirk Society.

Here is the central problem when the likes of the League of Villains and so on talk about why they hate heroes. They talk about being discriminated against because of their quirks, but they don't talk about how they were impacted by heroes specifically. Heroes, and not ordinary people. There's a big well of potential there to explore how heroes affect others and turn those people against them, but it seems to just, for the most part, go ignored within the narrative.

Quirk Discrimination:

If you saw the fight between Spinner and his army and Shoji and Koda during the Final Battle arc, you know that their entire fight revolves around the concept of quirk discrimination, or more specifically mutant discrimination. Something that has been mentioned in passing before, but not talked about until now.

If you were like me, then you were probably as annoyed as I was that the story suddenly brought up the topic of mutant discrimination despite having never discussed the matter beforehand in any meaningful way. This part of the story feels less like a real part of the story and more like just the writers trying to suddenly force in something that he should've been talking about from the beginning.

And then one of the villains, one of the ones leading the mob during chapter 373, yells out to the mob when they stop fighting something along the lines of, "Don't be rational," as if the topic of racial discrimination is something that can be dismissed and talked about in such a simple light.

That just- I- it makes me angry. It honestly makes me angry, so let's move on so I don't have to think about this any longer.

Tell, don't Show:

I posted this on Reddit not too long ago, and it didn't get any comments or traffic, so I'm just going to copy and paste it here.

There's a concept in storytelling called 'Show, don't tell'. What this means is that if you introduce a concept into your narrative, the best way to display this concept is to show it in action within the narrative instead of delivering it through exposition. This is done as a way to, as best to my knowledge, reward the audience for keeping track of what is going on and also to keep the story itself streamlined and free of any unnecessary expository language.

MHA, however, seems to rely more on telling us information through exposition and character dialogue more than actually showing the concepts themselves to us, something which I feel is a detriment to the story at large.

Allow me to provide an example: Stain. His character revolves around combating heroes who he feels has succumbed to corruption. He constantly spoke about how hero society was filled with fakes and false heroes who should be purged to allow for a purer, more altruistic form of hero to take their place. However, the heroes that he targets and kills are all, to their core, good people. Tensei, Native, and Manual are all portrayed as good people who do not deserve to be targeted by Stain. In fact, almost all heroes are portrayed as fundamentally good people who deserve to be heroes (barring Slidin' Go, and even he's got some niceness to him). Endeavour is the one exception to this rule, and he gets a character arc down the line, so I'm not sure if he counts. All of this ultimately serves to make Stain's ideals seem hollow, which does not serve the narrative well if this is a story all about questioning what it means to be a hero.

Another example: The concept of society being unfair. The League of Villains talk about how society is unfair, and sure, we get some of that in flashbacks when relating to the LoV, but we don't see any of it in the present day, which only serves to make them seem one-dimensionally evil and without much depth to them. Meanwhile, we get some idea of hero society being unfair in the beginning few chapters, with Izuku being discriminated against in Aldera for his quirklessness, but beyond that, we don't see any more of this concept beyond Aizawa's speeches and info dumps from the likes of the LoV, Gentle Criminal's flashbacks, and even more flashbacks beyond that.

(I swear, a third of MHA's entire runtime is told through flashbacks. It's annoying.)

Ultimately, it seems to be that MHA has a serious problem with putting its concepts into action and showing them to the audience, and rather keeps them to being exposited and talked about by characters without putting much real thought to them. This is, in my humble opinion, one of MHA's biggest flaws, and something that holds it back from becoming a truly great show.

But please, let me know your thoughts on the subject.

Plus Ultra:

For some reason, the concept of Plus Ultra, of pushing yourself past your limits, irks me. Like, I have a serious problem with it, and I can't properly explain it.

MHA's central message revolves around the idea of accepting your talents and skills, and pushing yourself past your own limits to achieve your goals. However, the main way to do this, according to MHA and by extension Horikoshi, is to train yourself to the point of breaking yourself, of breaking your bones and body in order to do so.

That's not inspiring in my eyes. That's self-destructive to the point of suicidal.

This kind of training is ridiculously unhealthy in my eyes, and yet the main characters are constantly forcing themselves to push themselves to the limits in an unhealthy form of training, with the main character even breaking himself repeatedly just to go 'Plus Ultra' as the story demands. These are children, and they are being forced to physically strain and break themselves on a level that they shouldn't be forced to go into, all so that they can adhere to an unhealthy and unrealistic expectation that has been forced onto them by those that are supposed to be looking out for them.

I can't be the only one that feels this way, right?

One again, I should point out that these are my personal opinions and are subject to possible bias, so feel free to agree and disagree with me on anything that I might say.

I should point out that, while it may seem like I dislike or even hate MHA, it's actually the opposite of true. I like MHA, but not for its main story. I like it for its fandom, for the art and stories that the fans of MHA create from the bones of the main story, many of which ends up becoming better than the story itself.

And these criticisms that I have aren't because I want to bash MHA's narrative. They're because I have genuine criticisms with the story and world that has been introduced, and wish to express them in one of the few ways that I know how.

So, please, let me know what you think and how you feel, and leave your thoughts and comments for us all to see. No flame wars in the reviews and comments, please. Let's keep this civil, and with that, I shall see you again soon!

Titanmaster 117 out!