Downtown Khazan: Ice Cold Utopia

[Lord Falcon]

I'll agree with this. I think the manga definitely tries to handwave the exact scale of shitlord Bakugou was while he and Deku were young. Deku being as weirdly emotionally dependant and friendly with him irks me because it doesn't make sense and isn't explored deeply enough for me to believe the relationship because it's not the centrepiece of the story.

Like, if we take the counterexample of Naruto and Sasuke, that made a lot more sense because we knew their respective damaged af backstories from fairly early on and we saw them meet, bond and fall out and fight and all the rest of it. It made sense because we saw it happen and they both acted in shitty teenage ways to one another. As Dog notes, Bakugou had been horrible to Izuku for literally about a decade prior to the manga even starting and, for some reason, Izuku still thinks of him as a friend?

I think Horikoshi has been somewhat scaling back just how cruel Bakugou is/was, playing it more for laughs than the actual violent bullying that it is, and is, I think, hoping we all forget about it the past in clear detail so he can move forward with the more classic flavour of rivalry. He wants that classic Shonen feel of anti-hero vs hero dynamics and the whole bonds through adversary and all that... but... eh... we are in a post-Naruto world and, while I think people will look back on the Naruto/Sasuke storyline with more understanding than was had of it at the time, that was an extremely hard and polarising sell at the time. This board alone had so much negativity towards Sasuke and the way he was handled even though, as I said, on reflection it was mostly very solid character work.

MHA is many things but solid character interactions it ain't.

This dynamic worked better with Goku and Vegeta partly because the modern shonen genre was much younger and Vegeta was a monster mostly in the abstract. He didn't have a direct and personal history with Goku, beyond being an antagonist for him for an arc, so it was easier for people to get forget his implied moral transgressions and get on board with him turning around a bit and becoming a family man rather than being a genocidal little bastard all the time. Bakugou is, in some ways, a bit too real and bit too close to home in our reality for comfort because violent bullying is a very real problem. Genocidal space monkey men are less so.

Overall, this relationship and Bakugou as a character is a tricky line to strike and I think Horikoshi has a much more complex task of humanising Bakugou and Deku's relationship than he realises.

I will never be a fan of Bakugou and I remain alienated by his popularity.

That said, I can kind of get why Izuku looks up to Bakugou. Izuku's idealism of what heroism means is to an almost overwhelming extent molded by the kind of heroism All Might embodies. A lot of this heroism stems from a selfless devotion to the public good, a willingness to sacrifice of oneself and the ability to inspire hope and confidence from those around him. But All Might is also a real-life hero who has, without fail, won every single challenge he's ever publicly had without fail, generally as easily as could be projected.

Bakugou embodies this latter aspect. As Deku admitted during his second duel with Bakugou, he admired Bakugou for always being able to back up his arrogance just like All Might did, no matter the odds Bakugou faced (such as beating up multiple bullies who were several years older than him). Bakugou also never publicly admitted to suffering, again akin to All Might. To Deku, a quirkless boy without hope of ever becoming a hero, being near Bakugou was as close as he could get to being near an all-conqueroing hero. So as much as Deku resented Bakugou, he also developed a twist of Stockholme Syndrome for Bakugou. Once he got actual All Might to recognize him and guide him to hero academy life, Deku gradually began to be able to mentally stand up to Bakugou's shitty behavior. But this has come at the same time as Bakugou has started to remind Deku more of why Deku ever looked up to Bakugou in the first place.

Deku didn't have any friends in particular growing up of Bakugou's circle. He was conditioned to accept it, a behavior exacerbated by his naturally dutiful, compliant and anxious tendencies.

I do think we need to see some reflective monologue from Bakugou as he finally becomes more self-aware of his own shortcomings. We got a glimpse of it during his second duel with Deku when Bakugou admitted through tears that he couldn't process how his weakness in getting captured had set off a chain of events leading to the retirement of their shared idol, All Might.

[Lord Falcon]

So I've started reading some Kengan Asura thanks to the hubbub around here. Some foul language and a bunch of female objectification (though the author makes an attempt to compensate), so those are the major minuses. But it is a genuinely interesting fighting manga with edge of your seat fights and a fascinating political intrigue subplot.

Also, I don't care about Ohma. Yamashita Kazuo is the long-suffering, beating heart of this manga.

[Len Ikari145]

So RWBY



spoilers:

we finally meet one of Jaune's sisters

end of spoilers

*grins* Also, spoilers:

Lancaster hug was sweet.

end of spoilers

[The MunchKING]

but considering what i wrote, the fact that it happened on my first go around was weird.

I just meant if you'd only unlocked Sonic and were playing with him, then got Zelda and immediately went into a new match and got Sonic, the odds of it picking that randomly are 1/10. Unlikely but not weirdly so.

If you'd unlocked all 73 other fighters and Zelda was you last, that's a bit more of a wacky coincidence.

[Gryphon]

*grins* Also, spoilers:

Lancaster hug was sweet.

end of spoilers

Yeah, they are building to that ship

[Nik Hasta]

Can I get Sharpandpointies or similar Lord of the Rings-savvy poster in my most recent thread please? I would appreciate guidance on how tough Aragorn and Gimli are.

[bruceleegreyhulk]

[TheLastDalek]

*grins* Also, spoilers:

Lancaster hug was sweet.

end of spoilers

spoilers:

How Maria lost her eyes was pretty brutal

end of spoilers

[Len Ikari145]

Agreed there. Poor old woman.

[Cthulhu_of_R'lyeh]

Agreed there. Poor old woman.

No mercy. Hahaha.

[Len Ikari145]

No mercy. Hahaha.

What have I told you about sending your rabid offspring after old ladies?

[Cthulhu_of_R'lyeh]

What have I told you about sending your rabid offspring after old ladies?

Not enough.

[Len Ikari145]

Not enough.

Goddammit, Cthulhu.-_-

In other news, the producer of Netflix's Castlevania plans to animate Berserk.

[Len Ikari145]

[The Chou Lives]

Can I get Sharpandpointies or similar Lord of the Rings-savvy poster in my most recent thread please? I would appreciate guidance on how tough Aragorn and Gimli are.

I just have no idea who they were fighting, why no commentary from me.

: Scuttles off like a crab. Next week, something huge.: