this post was submitted on 31 Oct 2025
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It very neatly describes the way liberals see the world and political struggle.

Lots of people complain about the anti-climatic ending, but really I don't think it could any other way. I'd like to imagine that there's some alternate universe where Kōhei Horikoshi actually believed in something and Deku was actually built up as the anti-All4One he was only hinted as being in the beginning of the story. Where he opposes all the many injustices of the hero world and determines to change their frequently backwards, insular, contradictory society for the better, and forms his own faction antithetical to the League of Villains and when he finally has his showdown with All4One, Harry surpasses by adopting new methods, breaking the rules and embracing change and the progression of history. While All4One clings to an idyllic imagining of the past and the greatest extent of his dreams is to become the self-appointed god of a eternally stagnant Neverland. Deku has embraced the possibility of a shining future and so can overcome the self-imposed limits All4One could never cross, and All4One is ultimately defeated by this.

But that would require a Deku that believed in something. and since Kōhei Horikoshi is a liberal centrist Blairite that doesn't really believe in anything, Deku can't believe in anything. Deku lives in a world drought with conflict and injustice, a stratified class society, horrendous oppression of the heroes with ugly quirks, the absurd charade the hero world puts up to enforce their own self-segregation, a corrupted and bureaucracy-chocked government, rampant racism, so on and so forth. But Deku is little more than a passive observer for most of it, only the racism really bothers him (and then only racism towards quirk people). In fact, when the Meta Liberation Front stands up against the institutionalisation of dangerous quirk holders and even segregation based on quirk, they're depicted as some kind of evil for doing so. For opposing segregation. In the end, the biggest advocate for change is All4One and Deku and friends only ever fight for the preservation and reproduction of the status quo. The very height of Deku's dreams is to join the heroes, a sort of FBI and the ultimate defenders of the hero world status quo. One4All and the League of Villains are the big instigators of change and Deku never quite gets to One4All's level. Deku doesn't even beat One4All, One4All accidentally kills himself because he violated some obscure technicality where his own arrogance causes him to rewind himself out of existence.

And this is really the struggle of liberals, they live in a world fraught with conflict, but aren't particularly bothered by any of it except those that threaten the multicultural pluralism. They see change, and the force behind that change, as a wholly negative phenomenon. Even then, they can only act within the legal and ideological framework of their society. So for instance, instead of organizing Insurrectionary and disruptive activity against Trump and the far-right, all they can do is bang their drum about what a racist bigot he is and hope they can catch him violating some technicality that will allow them to have him impeached or at least destroy his political clout. It won't work, it will never work, but that is the limit of liberalism just as it was the limit of My Hero Academia.

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[–] chgxvjh@hexbear.net 19 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (3 children)

It's pretty apparent early on with how Uraraka explains that she goes to hero school because you aren't allowed to use your super power if you aren't a board certified hero even if it's for civilian purposes. And that just isn't questioned at all.

[–] KobaCumTribute@hexbear.net 10 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

That did get at least sort of retconned later on, and the spinoff Vigilantes uses the mainline manga author's later comments as its basis where it's just injuring or endangering people that's actually illegal while sort of reckless or nuisance behavior just gets a "can you please not?" response and anything below that is tacitly accepted. For example, the protagonist of Vigilantes using his quirk as the equivalent of a bike is broadly fine, but going fast on a crowded sidewalk where he's weaving in and out of people gets him yelled at in much the same way that someone doing that on a bike would.

Using it without a license in a scenario where someone could get hurt if the user fucked up or something unlucky happened would be illegal though, in the same way someone practicing medicine without a license and liability insurance would be in serious trouble IRL.

[–] chgxvjh@hexbear.net 8 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

I feel like civilian training would make a lot more sense. Why would the only place one get certified be some elite military academy.

But yeah only watched like the first half of the show.

[–] KobaCumTribute@hexbear.net 6 points 1 week ago

IIRC there were a bunch of schools specialized in training licensed heros, most of which were just less prestigious than the major ones that got any real attention. Even the license exams were supposed to have been pretty lax before the crisis the series is centered on starts and they suddenly started wanting anyone who wasn't up to the extreme danger they found themselves in to wash out and not get involved.

But yeah it's also just not a very well thought out system that seems like it was kind of riffing on the stakes attached to high school or university entrance exams in Japan, and which mostly served the meta purposes of adding stakes or making tragic stories of failure and ostracization, and to save the mangaka from having to come up with a bunch of extra quirks for like generic support personnel or first responders or the like on top of the huge cast of heros and villains with displayed quirks.

[–] Awoo@hexbear.net 10 points 1 week ago

I was looking for hermione moments that seemed equivalent to her opposing literal chattel slavery but in MHA's defence it's not quite as bad. The closest I can get is the depiction of the MLF as well-meaning but led by evil people.

[–] Spacehooks@reddthat.com 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I didn't watch the show but I did wonder why ppl didn't defend themselves.

[–] chgxvjh@hexbear.net 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Against who? People with quirks are the majority in MHA. Society is very insistent on nothing fundamentally changing. So instead of society where people work to their ability and consume to their needs, people limit their abilities so that the quirkless don't fall behind too much.

[–] Spacehooks@reddthat.com 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Against rando villians or Like surely other randos could save ppl from burning building. They rely on heros so much in a society where like 90% have powers albeit not all useful. I didn't understand.

The key part that I didn't know is this world wants to be status quo before powers. Now it all comes together.

[–] chgxvjh@hexbear.net 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Ah that's what you mean. There are quite a few scenes where civilians stand by and wait for the heroes to save the day. And like 80% have quirks.

There is also regular police where the officers don't use quirks.

[–] Moidialectica@hexbear.net 3 points 1 week ago

Major oversight

[–] CriticalOtaku@hexbear.net 16 points 1 week ago

Damn that does fit, a bit too well at that

The Shonen jump manga of the proletariat are Chainsawman and One Piece

[–] RedSturgeon@hexbear.net 15 points 1 week ago (1 children)

The rarest quirk Kōhei Horikoshi can imagine a person being born with is empathy. If you're born in the world of my hero academia with empathy, you are basically the chosen one.

[–] purpleworm@hexbear.net 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

The whole basis of the ending is hero society needing to operate on a basis of solidarity and empathy. The closing monologue is about the central importance of empathy in society and replaces the aspiration of his generation of being "the greatest heroes" (itself a development from his original more narcissistic conception of himself as the greatest hero) with the claim that their fundamental role is to "reach out" to people, an explicit nod to how Deku tried at the end to save Tomura, the secondary villain. It seems like it probably has some connection to when Uraraka tried to save that blood girl even as she too tried to kill her, since Uraraka ends up being sort of the ideological guide post of the series, but I'm not sure if the connection is explicit.

Deku's single-minded desire to help people even when it seems impossible literally is his superpower, in that it's what set him apart from his fellows, but he ends up going through several stages of being misguided in how to pursue this which he corrects as his bullheadedness repeatedly almost kills him, and his basic conception of the world and society is changed most acutely by a lecture from Uraraka that makes him realize that his chosen one shtick is nonsense.

[–] RedSturgeon@hexbear.net 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Yeah which is a nice lesson that empathy includes caring for yourself as well, because your friends care about you and by neglecting yourself, you end up hurting them. That you trust your friends and work together with them.

But it doesn't really address what is to be done in order to prevent the same event from playing again over and over. Which is fine not every story has to be super complicated, still it's disappointing that the best they can come up with is that the Heroes effort will eventually trickle down and end up inspiring others to do better and eventually tech will get so good you won't even need heroes because you'll have police with their metal gears roaming the streets presumably, keeping everyone safe.

[–] purpleworm@hexbear.net 2 points 1 week ago

While it doesn't provide a roadmap or explain it as much as we might like, the manga is pretty heavy-handed with explaining that a large part of the direct social basis for that kind of behavior was the effect of All Might, Mr. "Everything will be okay, because I am here!" aka the "Symbol of Peace," the man upon whom the entire public confidence rested. The central issue of the narrative in the broadest sense is that the Symbol of Peace was not a great means of social stability and was more a tool for cultivating misbegotten social confidence based on literally lying to the public, which then produced imitators who were liable to get themselves killed like Deku almost did, along with lacking proper solidarity. Though All Might survives to the end of the manga, he explicitly narrates that "The Symbol is dead" and that his paradigm has been replaced by that of the new generation and a more cooperative and mutual attitude toward protecting the population. This is part of the narrative reason that One for All is torn apart over the course of the final struggle and just dissolves, because All Might has positive aspects of his legacy that he passed on, but the singularity of his person as the Symbol of Peace has been surpassed with this new cooperative attitude rather than passed on to some new Great Man. There will never be another All Might, and that's a good thing.

[–] grandepequeno@hexbear.net 13 points 1 week ago

Big mha flaw that hp DOESN'T have, is that in HP they didn't try to do the whole story in his first year of school when he was 12

[–] woodenghost@hexbear.net 9 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I got serious fascist vibes from it and stopped reading.

[–] Awoo@hexbear.net 15 points 1 week ago

That's just the background radiation of Japan

[–] purpleworm@hexbear.net 3 points 1 week ago

The messaging is not remotely fascist:

https://hexbear.net/post/6591574/6633813

There's a lot of things to criticize about it, but it's not fascist.

[–] Outdoor_Catgirl@hexbear.net 7 points 1 week ago (2 children)

At least the author isn't a leading transphobe?

[–] Awoo@hexbear.net 11 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Oh yeah I almost forgot, they introduced a trans woman in the series, as one of the villains, and then immediately actually outright killed her. She is the first named character in the series to be killed.

[–] purpleworm@hexbear.net 7 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I repeat what I said before, that "heroes defend the status quo" is not remotely unique to MHA and the "Liberation Front" plot point is shitty, but ultimately MHA is ideologically not half as rancid as "ethical slavery" HP. It's genuinely above-average for the social messaging of a superhero story.

Also, MHA simultaneously has a much clearer sense of empathy for people who went down the wrong path and it also has an understanding that there's nothing wrong with stopping Hitler by killing him (instead of relying on some bullshit plot devise to kill him for you to "keep your hands clean"), two things HP catastrophically lacks. It's technically true that All for One kills himself, but there is no ethical compunction with killing him and it's deliberately facilitated by the protagonists, who were in the process of beating him to death anyway.

I don't like MHA, but this thesis is silly.

Edit: also, he obviously doesn't go far enough, but the whole point of the broader narrative is Deku's Great Man fixation reflecting society's Great Man fixation and he is part of the generation that explicitly replaces "The Symbol" (the lone individual who holds society together) with solidarity and collective action that destroys All for One, something "The Symbol" failed to do.

[–] hello_hello@hexbear.net 6 points 1 week ago

United States of Smash is the catchphrase of the lead mentor figure in the story.

MHA being western capeshit with Japanese high school aesthetics is a full synthesis of the cultural hegemony of the west on Japanese popular culture. Literally could make MHA take place in the US and nothing would change.

Also the ending was so ass even mainstream weebs made fun of it. Similar to how harry potters ending was "everyone got married and had lots of kids and they go to school with the good adults in charge"

[–] thelastaxolotl@hexbear.net 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] LeeeroooyJeeenkiiins@hexbear.net 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I stopped watching like 4 episodes in but with the way powers work in that world do you think Stalin was a literal man of steel? Do you think he personally ripped apart Hitler

[–] thelastaxolotl@hexbear.net 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

He would, but also because people thought he was made out of steel we would get the negatives of getting heavier, rusting, etc

[–] buckykat@hexbear.net 2 points 1 week ago

Stalin kept trying to resign because he was rusting but the committee wouldn't let him