It’s a competition for the worst chapter of the week: ‘Bungo Stray Dogs’ or ‘My Hero Academia.’ No matter which wins, we all lose.
Bungo Stray Dogs Chapter 114
“Resurrectio.” Bungo Stray Dogs Chapter 114
Bungo Stray Dogs is written by Kafka Asagiri and illustrated by Sango Harukawa. The manga is translated into English by Kevin Gifford, with lettering by Bianca Pistillo. Bungo Stray Dogs is licensed by Yen Press and can be read at yenpress.com.
The newest chapter of Bungo Stray Dogs came out last week, and it did not diminish my growing frustration with what this series is doing poorly.
This is going to be a rant, which means it is not as well organized as I would like, it’s way too lengthy, I go off-topic on tangents, and I am not going to be fair to certain comics writers.
We can pinpoint the cause for most problems in this chapter to one thing: the loose continuity (H/T Dan Drazen) that took too long to finally get around to what Fyodor’s Ability actually is.
And the story still has not explicitly confirmed what that Ability is, because after twist after twist, whenever we get another explanation as to Fyodor’s Ability, the previous evidence gives us every reason to think that is yet another lie.
Asagiri has thrown away a lot of good will, first by dragging out this mystery for so long with little payoff–and forgetting so many characters who are the actual backbone of this series. Heck, just look at how abruptly Chapter 114 shifts from what happened in the previous chapter to this one, and unless Chapter 114.5 returns to what else is going on with Atsushi and company, it’s still going to let Dazai and Fyodor distract from the larger plot.
Dazai and Fyodor Distract
I have complained for more than a year now about the Fukuchi plot. And yet, the stark transition away from him is bothersome.
The previous chapter was about the relationship he had with Fukuzawa.
And the very next chapter persists with the dull Fyodor back story and Dazai, our supposed genius, only now thinking to check the corpse in the helicopter.
Dazai and Fyodor’s prison duel overstayed its welcome. There were very few good choices for Asagiri: either save this story until he could tell it all in one fast-pace uninterrupted story, or as he did choose, parcel out that story–hence undermining the thrill, the cat-and-mouse game between Dazai and Fyodor, and now this twist.
Dazai Is a Difficult Protagonist to Write
Weirdly, though, has there been any story arc in this manga that focused solely on Dazai? He has been a lead protagonist, or at least a major supporting character, in light novels and their adaptations, although almost all of them are set in the past and hence don’t show us what the present-day Dazai is really capable of, only how he got to this point of being so capable. The only other time he was someone propelling the action of the story forward was Dead Apple, and in that case he was initially portrayed as an antagonist alongside Fyodor, not the protagonist.
As I said, it is difficult to accept, after how Asagiri placed Dazai on this pedestal as a god-tier intellect, that he never thought to check the corpse to really make sure it was Fyodor.
Instead, Asagiri thinks the better way to show off Dazai’s intellect is how he figures out Fyodor was obscuring what his actual Ability was–and that is a leap too far. If I don’t talk about it today, I will have to discuss two terms: “loose continuity”–H/T Dan Drazen–and leaps of faith.
Loose continuity, to paraphrase Drazen, who himself was taking the term from, of all things, the Archie Sonic the Hedgehog comics, is when you introduce a detail–and then don’t get back to it or wrap it up any time soon.
Fyodor apparently has been faking his Ability ever since he used it against the SWAT officer at the end of the Cannibalism arc. For reference, Cannibalism ended in the Season 3 finale of the anime, and what we are reading in the manga right now would be the hypothetical Season 6 opening should a Season 6 ever be produced–that is a heck of a long time to wait to learn Fyodor has been lying about his Ability. And that’s not even getting into the possibility that Fyodor was faking that Ability when he killed Karma–which has its own problems as to why he bothered to fake his Ability back then, so we’ll circle back to that.
I am typically a fan of foreshadowing, setup and payoff, and Checkov’s guns–but there is also something to be said for, “Get on with it already.” Loose continuity is that problem: you take so long to get to the point that the readers don’t care or don’t remember that far back to earlier chapters. Yes, readers can refer back to the earlier chapters–but that interrupts narrative forward momentum. There’s a reason Edgar Allan Poe’s most famous works were built around the notion that they can be enjoyed in one setting to get the beginning, middle, and end, as well as the emotional payoff, rather than dragged out across various chapters.
And if the readers don’t remember that far back to when Fyodor first faked his Ability, why should we believe Dazai remembered that far back? That is not a fair comparison: for Dazai, his imprisonment in Meursault started, let’s say, just a few months after he saw Fyodor kill that SWAT officer, whereas it’s been years for us readers. But this amount of time does contribute to that leap of faith problem I mentioned: how can we make this leap with Dazai each step of the way, from realizing Fyodor needed to fake his Ability (without showing why he needed to), to how he did it (dependent on a belief that Fyodor could store and use Hawthorne’s Ability–something we saw Hawthorne use against Fitzgerald in Season 4 but not something we confirmed someone else could use), to then realizing somehow that Fyodor is not really in that burning wreck of a helicopter (which is probably the only “logical” part of Dazai’s thought process–only because of self-awareness that he is in a story so of course you check to make sure you found Boba Fett’s corpse before you move on).
One Twist Too Many
As a guideline, rather than an inflexible rule, there shouldn’t be more than one twist.
We played this game already: Ace thought Fyodor’s Ability put them into a dream space, turns out Fyodor’s Ability isn’t that. Now we learn his Ability isn’t a lethal touch–despite how not only Dazai saw Fyodor’s touch kill the SWAT officer in the cafe but we in the audience saw Fyodor’s touch kill Karma.
And that’s the other problem: you can’t keep building up Dazai as this genius and have him not get it that Fyodor’s Ability is something different, and you can’t suddenly tell the audience what they saw was a trick–that’s one twist too many. So, we have to believe Dazai could mistake Fyodor’s Ability and not realize it was just Hawthorne’s, and we in the audience are to accept we made a mistake, Fyodor didn’t kill Karma by touch but by Hawthorne’s Ability–which breaks the story, because now that is not done for the sake of Fyodor covering his tracks but for Asagiri to trick the readers.
If not for the sake of tricking the reader, this would have been a legitimate case of Fyodor showing he is smart: he fakes his lethal touch, a smart precaution in case the fire on the ship didn’t already destroy the evidence how Fyodor killed, and in case any surveillance video footage on Ace’s ship gets back to the Mafia.
But when Fyodor left no witnesses, that means this was done primarily to troll the audience–and that is where the story loses me; you can’t keep playing tricks on the audience and expect emotionally resonant moments to land. This is why Dazai’s presumed death by Vampire Chuuya soured me upon revealing that Chuuya was never possessed to begin with, and it’s why any more revelations about Fyodor’s actual superpower are not engaging. The mystery has overstayed its welcome, get to the point already.
More About “Loose Continuity”
I have avoided going off on a tangent about something completely unrelated to Bungo Stray Dogs, that being the narrative problems that have persisted in another story:
I grew up on Sonic the Hedgehog comics–the ones published by Archie.
(I have barely looked at the IDW ones–and have a gripe with how that series is now “video game canon,” but, like I said, this is a tangent, so let’s avoid a tangent off of a tangent.)
And when reading the Sonic Archie comics, one of the most notable reviewers of those comics, Dan Drazen, used the phrase “loose continuity.”
As far as I can see in Drazen’s archived reviews, he didn’t even coin it–it was the editor at Archie who used that phrase (see Drazen’s review of Archie Sonic the Hedgehog Issue 49).
Quoting from Drazen, he himself defines “loose continuity” as, “[M]ake the stories as complex as they need to be, and probably more so, while placing [yourself] under NO OBLIGATION WHATSOEVER TO THE READER TO RESOLVE MATTERS BY THE END OF THE STORY AND/OR ARC.”
Drazen goes on to talk about how, as a writer, “I write each story to stand on its own.”
This has been the challenge I have had as a reader, and I think the challenge that ongoing serialized stories (not just in comics but in television and even film franchises too) suffer through: how do you wrap up a story in a way that satisfies, if not the plot beats and character developments you introduce, then the emotional payoff?
Bungo Stray Dogs has not been satisfying any of these: plot beats persist, character development gets postponed, and the emotional payoff never comes–nothing is satisfied, and as a reader I’m not satisfied. It works as cliffhangers to get me to come back for the next issue, but I increasingly come back more out of obligation and with greater annoyance than any thrill at seeing the story reach any resolution.
I don’t know whether Drazen would define any of this as “loose continuity.”
I think I’m about to make a giant blunder in mis-defining “loose continuity” and wrongly alleging that Bungo Stray Dogs suffers from it.
But I just can’t get over how much of this series matches the definition.
So, allow me to put into my own words what I think when I think of “loose continuity.”
For Drazen, I think he meant that the continuity is so loose that it is hardly followed: add stuff, don’t bother to remember it’s there, feel free to ignore it until you need it later down the line, if you ever do remember it, in which case, if you forget it and add something later that contradicts what you said first, don’t worry about it.
I want to believe Asagiri planned all of this. I also can understand someone reading Asagiri’s revelation that Fyodor’s Ability was never a lethal touch and thinking it is a ret-con poorly added to the story to keep Fyodor around past his “best by” date.
If I could take that phrase “loose continuity” and give it a different meaning than I think Drazen means, loose continuity is also when you take too long introducing something in, say, Chapter 14, but only getting around to answering it in Chapter 378.
This is “just let Fox Mulder find his sister already” territory: sometimes, you have to wrap up a plot detail as soon as possible so you can move the rest of the story forward.
Tangent: Loose Continuity Problems in Other Comics
This is also why I struggle to get through Ian Flynn’s writing in Sonic comics, the Archie or the IDW ones, where he lays down stuff as groundwork that, hardly seeming like foreshadowing to engage the audience, it comes off as setup to be paid off far later, if ever, by which point, unless you’re marathoning the comics, you’re going to forget that detail, and the payoff is underwhelming, and having to refer to back issues or a wiki makes the reading experience less enjoyable and literally takes you out of the text.
See also the challenge Horikoshi has in My Hero Academia where the traitor storyline was introduced and then barely progress until it needed to be wrapped up right before this finale arc. But we’ll talk more about My Hero Academia in a bit.
But I’m ranting about two comics too many in what is supposed to be a discussion about Bungo Stray Dogs–which shows how much I am just not enjoying this series, that I’d rather rant about My Hero Academia or the freaking Sonic comics than try to engage in the story I used to enjoy and even recorded audio commentaries for and now just find to be drudgery that I’d rather try to fix with fanfictions but don’t have the time or passion right now to do it. And this parenthetical has now gone across three paragraphs, so let’s get back to the primary text already.
Screw loose continuity–just tell us what Fyodor’s Ability is, wrap up his story for now or forever, and let this big bad disappear for a while or forever.
When Tight Continuity Works
And let’s get on with the rest of this manga’s story to persist with the ongoing plots: the Book, Fitzgerald’s quest to restore Mitchell and his wife, who Mori is impressing into the Mafia, what Fukuzawa does with One Order, how Akutagawa is brought back as a living character, whether the other vampirized characters are also brought back, how the Hunting Dogs change as a unit without Fukuchi, what that Fukuchi knockoff in the Season 5 post-credits teaser does next, and actually give the story back to Atsushi instead of making this the “Everybody But Atsushi” show.
I remember when the Season 2 opener of the anime adaptation of Bungo Stray Dogs introduced that calico cat. And if you read the manga or knew the light novel the Season 2 opening was adapting, you get excited, realizing that the cat is Natsume in disguise. And if you stick with the anime into Season 3 for the revelation, you feel like you got that payoff. I think a small moment like that works despite loose continuity, or in such opposition that it is unfair to call it loose continuity, for four reasons: it is such a small detail that you can be forgiven for missing it, it rewards audience members who already read the manga and light novels or who are paying attention, it encourages re-watching to see setup and payoff, and while it is introduced in the Season 2 opening and only paid off closer to the Season 3 finale, it’s a shorter commitment of time, helped in part by the release schedule of anime episodes (minus the lengthy hiatus between Seasons 2 and 3) compared to the monthly release rate of the Bungo Stray Dogs manga that artificially extends how much time we’re having to wait between setup and payoff that initial reader engagement suffers.
I have said before that maybe re-reading a comic in a marathon run can show the story was always good to begin with and that my choice to read each chapter as it comes out harmed the story.
(Circling back to my earlier tangent: I am incredibly harsh against Flynn and Horikoshi, so I owe both of them the opportunity to marathon their comics writing instead of eviscerating them based on a weekly or monthly release rate.)
I want to believe Bungo Stray Dogs works better when marathoning it. But having sat through the disappointing fourth and fifth seasons of its anime, where plot details are sped through without answering much of anything while also undermining what little character progression and emotional payoff is there, I’m not optimistic speed-running the manga upon the completion of this arc will help. And speed-running itself is already going to be a slog: despite how the wiki organizes chapters into story arcs, I refuse to accept that Chapter 114 (which, as of April 2 when I’m writing this based on leaks, was not yet listed on the wiki, and as of April 6 when I’m re-writing and editing all of this still isn’t listed on the wiki) is either going to be part of the “current” arc, “Vampire Infection Outbreak,” when, really, taking all things together, it really is the continuation of the “Decay of the Angel Saga” as listed on that wiki. For crying out loud, the “Decay of the Angel Saga” has been going on since Chapter 46–I can’t take this any more, wrap it up already.
Miscellaneous Thoughts
Let’s go through a hodgepodge of miscellaneous observations.
If it turns out Gogol was in on all of this and teleported Fyodor away, I’m going to be pissed. Gogol works better when he has some bit of sincerity; having him once again put on a performance robs us of that, as did letting him survive the bisecting saw trap and that scream for someone to save him.
And yes, I recognize that we should have figured out Fyodor never had a lethal touch when he already touched Sigma and the Cat Burglar and had to resort to guns and knives against them. That still doesn’t change that such foreshadowing did not suddenly lead to the leap of “Fyodor body swaps.”
Sigma
Also, if all of this is to make it so that Sigma gets possessed by Fyodor…then at that point, I’m going to stop caring about this series and may stop reactions to it at all, because it’s not worth it.
Sigma has been a character whose conception had such excellent potential, only to be undermined by how Dazai just did not care about him. You can’t introduce Sigma from the beginning as someone who is smart enough to rig a poker game, then say, “Well, you should have realized he was out of his league when Teruko told him as much.”
No. The point of Sigma’s story was that he was smart–and still had crippling self-doubt, even before Teruko beat him, and just didn’t believe how talented he was.
Yes, that was Asagiri telling the reader to think of Sigma as out of his league–when the evidence on the page showed, no, he was not, he just was against competitors he could not defeat. Sigma would hold his own against people who are not physically powerful like Teruko–but heaven forbid we see him match wits with Ranpo, Poe, or even Dazai, when we instead can have him get his ass beaten by Teruko and then forgotten by Dazai and then have his head bashed in 15 times by Chuuya all for the sake of one of the worst jokes possible.
Back to Dazai Being a Difficult Protagonist to Write
And that’s not even getting into how Dazai figured this all out.
Before the chapter came out, there were already leaks–but not scanlations. The official preview images were already online and public thanks to Yen Press and Google Books. Yen Press had already confirmed the chapter would be only 14 pages. But I didn’t process that fact until I actually got to read the chapter–and realized how the preview images pretty much give away the entire plot.
I saw the preview image of Dazai realizing Fyodor used Hawthorne’s Ability to fake his lethal touch; I then saw the preview image of Dazai removing what he thought was Fyodor’s corpse and being in shock that this corpse was not Fyodor any longer.
I had hoped, between those two preview images, there would be more there to expand upon how Dazai came to this conclusion, or more to reveal about Fyodor.
Nope–you can pretty much skip from one preview image to the next, and you’ll get as much info as actually reading the chapter.
This is a disservice to so many parties–Asagiri and Harukawa at the top of that list, that Yen and Google put out those preview images that spoil everything.
But it is also a disservice to Yen Press itself that you could get the entire story and pretty much the only really good art in the chapter by looking at those preview images and not give Yen Press a penny for it.
And it’s a disservice to readers that the story is this lacking that two preview images give you the beginning and end to all of Dazai’s thought process, with just about nothing to be gained: he moves from “Fyodor didn’t have lethal touch” to “Fyodor must body-swap” with no middle step to clarify how he figured that out. I hope the next chapters answer that–but, again, “loose continuity.”
And it does a disservice to whatever intelligence we’re to think Dazai has. We don’t see how he moved from “lethal touch” to “body swap.” If this is a tease for the next chapter or the one after that revealing how Dazai figured this out, that’s an anticlimactic way of presenting the post-mystery explanation a la a Holmes mystery story.
And we now more fully realize Dazai was just so oblivious to not think, “Pull out the corpse to confirm.”
And don’t say, “But he still feared that Fyodor had a lethal touch.” You’re telling me Dazai, god-tier genius, didn’t have another strategy to pull the corpse out? He pulled the arm out–why didn’t he pull the rest of the body out? But even if he just thought a dead Fyodor or one limb of Fyodor couldn’t have the lethal touch, you’re telling me Dazai didn’t at any point think, “Why didn’t Fyodor use lethal touch on the Cat Burglar and needed to use a gun”? You’re telling me Dazai didn’t at any point think, “Chuuya was there, he witnessed it, he wasn’t vampirized, he can vouch for what Fyodor did–even if the manga is writing Chuuya as just not as smart as I, Dazai, than at least I, Dazai, am smart enough to ask him, ‘Hey, why did Fyodor use a gun and not his lethal touch or, you know, ask you, the alleged vampire, to turn her’”? You’re telling me Dazai didn’t think to ask Chuuya to lift the helicopter first to confirm the death? (About the only good joke in this chapter is Chuuya, with gravity power, not offering to lift that helicopter to drag out the corpse.)
Fyodor Is Not Compelling
And to top all of this off, that means Bram and Ranpo killed the wrong person. I touched upon this idea very briefly in previous chapters, but it is galling how we have Ranpo, if not also Bram (mitigated, I guess, by showing in the past he wasn’t as good as I thought the story initially was presenting him as), just killing those prison guards also with Fyodor in the helicopter. And now they just killed the person possessed by Fyodor instead of Fyodor himself. I appreciate the manga has set up Ranpo as willing to now cross ethical lines since Fyodor killed that orphan with one of Kunikida’s types of grenades, and was willing to destroy Oguri, and at least in the anime willing to have Fukuzawa use One Order–but that doesn’t change the manga needing to really hammer that this is Ranpo going down a much darker road. But why do that when we can waste page space on Chuuya banging Sigma’s head 15 times in a row.
Also: that was an explosion–what do you mean that corpse is still in any good enough condition that Dazai can confirm whether Fyodor is really dead? That corpse should be completely roasted to the point that you’d need dental records to know whether it was Fyodor or Bram Stoker’s guard from hundreds of years ago. This is sloppy writing–what am I reading? How did the second Flash TV series do this same plot better with Harrison Welles and the Reverse Flash while Asagiri dropped the ball so badly here?
You’d have a better story if Fyodor was just that smart that he knew the explosion would wreck the body and give Dazai zero evidence that he really was dead. But no, we needed that arm to survive so that Gogol could cry over it–and now that complexity to Gogol is also undermined, once again reducing Gogol into a one-note “wacky guy” instead of the more complex portrayal we have had of some moments of sincere regret on his part, because either Fyodor isn’t really dead so Gogol is mourning over nothing, or Gogol was still in on this and knew Fyodor was body hopping.
There is another reason this is bothering me: it’s All For One all over again. “Oh, he isn’t dead–he’s in Shigaraki! Oh, Shigaraki overwhelmed All For One’s spirit? Well, his body is still around! Oh, his body just got burnt to nothing by Endeavor? Psyche–he’s still surviving and had Eri bullets to reverse the damage! Oh, he’s aging out of existence? Nah, he can still kill Stain and wreck All Might! Oh, Bakugo killed a baby? Psyche again–All For One is still in Shigaraki despite us strongly suggesting Shigaraki overwhelmed him, he’s still here!”
Enough of this trash: make it end. This again is me going back to the phrase “loose continuity”: let a story reach its conclusion already. You had All For One get his glorious (for the heroes–pathetic for All For One’s part) death already by Bakugo and Shigaraki–that’s your ending, stop dragging this out. And here in Bungo Stray Dogs? Fyodor just gets to survive another day despite a helicopter explosion and Dazai’s utter ignorance for not checking the corpse first.
And to top off all my complaining: we still have that Season 5 post-credits tease that was just two hours after Fukuchi died, with Atsushi and (Alt!Universe?) Akutagawa versus (resurrected?) Fukuchi at the airport. That means Dazai and Chuuya are figuring out the Fyodor stuff as whatever is happening back at the airport transpires. That means we have to rush Dazai figuring all of this out so that the big surprise of Fyodor’s next move is happening at the same time as Atsushi is fighting for his life–
Enough. Just stop. Let a moment breathe. This inane “saga” or “arc” or whatever you want to call everything that has transpired since Chapter 46 still hasn’t ended. Let this story wrap up already–and by which, I mean either this arc, this “saga,” or this entire manga, because I am about done.
All of this is worsened by why we even bothered with Fyodor asking God why They forsake him if he was just going to resurrect in someone else’s body anyway. This is as annoying as, “Why did Fyodor fake the lethal touch on Karma if no one was around?”
Why is he quoting Jesus as the helicopter is about to explode if, first, he’s just going to resurrect anyway (yes, I know, “Jesus parallel”–I say this as an agnostic, that is so gross, as bad as Jouno imagining himself as Jesus already in this forsaken comic), and second, no one (aside from the vampire security guards who likely have little awareness or would care what Fyodor is saying) is there to listen to him calling out to God?
When that stupid “Why have you forsaken me?” moment is there just for the audience, that undermines whatever logic there is to “Fyodor just resurrects anyway.” The point of Jesus calling out to God, even if Jesus was just going to resurrect anyway, was to remind us of Jesus’s humanity. What is the point here? Fyodor has shown little to make us think he is anything but a villain, and I fail to see how this story is going to pull this off to make us re-read the story with sympathy for him. He is not Gogol, he is not Sigma, he is not Oguri or Yosano or Kyoka or Lucy or any other character with regrets or complexity or sympathy. He’s not even characters like–forgive this comparison in so many ways–Mori, where as much as you correctly abhor him, you can understand how he has followers (who should know better)–whereas with Fyodor, I don’t get how he has anything to compel readers to cheer him on. He isn’t even comparable to someone like Shigaraki who at least has a mentality of “I will destroy this unfair world rather than reform it” to appeal to the edgelord idiots in the audience–Fyodor is just a mustache-twirling villain, and not even the Fukuchi sort who by comparison is leagues more sympathetic–and Fukuchi isn’t sympathetic at all!
At best, if Fyodor does possess someone we actually like–such as Gogol or Sigma–then we remain engaged in the story. But that is a cheap way to get engagement, not by the compelling quality of the antagonist, but by victimizing a character we enjoy. It’s again mustache-twirling villainy, with Gogol or Sigma the poor victim tied to the railroad tracks.
Maybe this story needs to just put all cards on the table and reveal what exactly Fyodor wants–because as we see with My Hero Academia, waiting too long to reveal what the main antagonist wants means that readers likely misinterpret details and cling to their preconceptions–“All For One wanted Shigaraki to take on his role and be the next big villain”–even as the later evidence in front of them says otherwise–“Psyche–All For One orchestrated Tenko’s entire life to get to this moment of possessing his perfected body so he could continue being the big bad forever and ever!”
My Hero Academia Chapter 419
“Design.” My Hero Academia Chapter 419
My Hero Academia is written and illustrated by Kohei Horikoshi. The manga is translated into English by Caleb Cook, with lettering by John Hunt. My Hero Academia is licensed by Viz and can be read at viz.com.
I thought Bungo Stray Dogs would be the worst manga I read this week. Then My Hero Academia came along this week–and somehow only came in second behind Bungo Stray Dogs.
I don’t usually dedicate episodes of the Sunday Morning Manga livestream and podcast to My Hero Academia. (To paraphrase Grunkle Stan, good thing this is an afternoon essay.) As frustrated as I am with the series, I think it’s better to let this entire manga play out before determining whether the story worked or failed. And an installment like Chapter 419 makes it difficult for me to not call this manga bad.
When I say the writing is bad, I don’t even quite mean that we now know Shigaraki was planned to be like this all along.
(And if I may yet again complain about Sonic the Hedgehog stuff more than one in this discussion: honestly, between Shigaraki in these chapters and Surge in the IDW Sonic comics, characters who are existential about being mere pawns as the creations of mad scientists would be the better path to take to this kind of a story. Give me a Shigaraki and a Surge who think, “I know my origins, I know what was intended for me–but I make my own goals, so I don’t care what was planned for me, I’m doing what I wish.” Hell, wasn’t that already what we got with Shadow the Hedgehog? That worked well enough, the Frankenstein monster that determines its own sense of self. And we will circle back to Frankenstein in a moment. But to wrap up this diatribe, I anticipate Horikoshi will indeed force Shigaraki back to life to assert an existentialist argument that despite his creation he is indeed in control of his destiny–but I am not optimistic, because Horikoshi really screwed up this week.)
What I mean more so about flaws to this chapter of My Hero Academia has to do with All For One’s planning, and what happens to Izuku.
I Can’t Suspend Disbelief: All For One Can’t Account for All Variables
In this section, I am not going to be fair to Horikoshi–that is my fault, not his.
This is also a word of warning about believing anything you read online, especially in leaks before the official translation comes out. Initial spoilers were flawed, wrongly suggesting that All For One had said that he had encouraged Tenko’s father to have another kid. I see none of that mentioned in the official release.
Therefore, when I read that lie, I thought that Chapter 419 was going to reveal All For One was responsible even for Tenko’s birth. That is my fault for believing that, not Horikoshi’s part–I apologize.
Then I read the official English translation when it actually came out–and, no, Horikoshi really went there. Quoting from Caleb Cook’s translation: “Children need siblings, because nobody else will help them out.” All For One really did nudge Tenko’s dad to have him, then nudged him to physically abuse him. I was already tired of the online debate about whether Kotaro Shimura was responsible for his own actions when we then learn All For One nudged him: Kotaro is responsible–but Horikoshi minimized that responsibility to just make him one more pawn of All For One, and that ruins this story.
As such, even as my earlier apology still stands, it is now rendered useless because even if All For One did not contribute to Tenko’s literal birth, the rest of this origin story for Shigaraki is too much to suspend disbelief, because we are asked to make the leap that All For One accounted for every last variable, and that is a step too far for at least two reasons: All For One could never get it that accurate, and he has shown himself repeatedly to make too many mistakes to ever get it this perfectly with Shigaraki, as I will address later in this post with regard to why he didn’t just keep a copy of Overhaul’s Quirk or the original Quirk for himself.
And that’s not even getting into how bad the paneling and monologuing is in this chapter. I needed to read username DoraMuda and other commenters on Reddit where they point out that the paneling is meant to show All For One encouraged Tomo and Mikkun to play hero with Tenko in order to foster that joy of hero work to make his downfall so tragic.
No. That is yet another variable too far. You know how you could have made this work? Show All For One approaching kids to encourage them to play with Tenko–and then just fail miserably over and over again until he lucked upon Tomo and Mikkun.
Granted, that is too much of a 4-panel gag at the end of a comic, or like Humpty in Puss in Boots pulling the strings in ridiculous fashion, or, as everyone wants to read this, as Reverse Flash.
But you know what? You could avoid the 4-panel gag structure and make it feel more grounded. And you can avoid the absurd comedy of it as with Humpty by showing All For One managing to pose as a school principal or daycare operator and trying to get Tenko to make friends and observing him long-term to make that happen.
And you could stick to the only time the Reverse Flash worked–Season 1 of the second TV series, where he has perverted but legitimate affection for Barry and homesickness for his time period.
But no, Horikoshi wanted to go Flashpoint comic book Reverse Flash because, LOL, comic book reference as shorthand to speed up characterizing All For One because he can’t do it himself without meta-textual references, and because Horikoshi didn’t want to actually comment on the Flashpoint story and why it does not hold up.
This is what has become so disappointing reading My Hero Academia: what felt like a response to prevalent superhero tropes instead is perpetuating them in the most boring fashion possible, with such a boring villain who sadly reflects our very scary reality of real-life fascists who act just like this, glorified bullies that we could stop by our vote and by our protest but instead let continue to intimidate and silence us. I am once again being political, but All For One has not been fully defeated, and when we are not stopping the fascists in our real life, and no one has successfully kept All For One locked up forever in this story, this makes for a dispiriting story intended to undermine people’s beliefs that fascism can be stopped.
But to repeat myself for emphasis: All For One could not have planned every last variable that would lead to Tenko desiring to be a hero and his father beating him. All For One could not have planned for no one else to reach out to Tenko when he was homeless. Hell, I don’t even think All For One could have 100-percent planned that all of Tenko’s family would die.
And don’t even start with how he knew that Tenko would ever be born–whether by the lie of the wrong spoilers that wrongly said he helped Tenko be born or by the in-text evidence that, no, even if he didn’t help Tenko’s dad come around to the idea of another kid, he definitely was counting on him having another kid, and that is his own leap of faith that should not have worked.
This is the kind of joke Little Kuriboh made–17 years ago! “Step on the map,” indeed!
What Happens to Izuku
Let’s talk about the flaws in writing Izuku losing his arms.
For Izuku, there are two options, neither one great: either Izuku regains his arms, or he never regains his arm.
Either way can go in a poor direction in representations of living with disabilities.
I do not say this from any experience with missing arms: I am not missing an arm.
But what happens next? Eri restores his arms? That can either work really well or work really badly.
There is a part of disability studies that supports the idea that of course a character who is missing an arm should have fiction where that arm is regained: that is not the problem, and that could work really well for this story.
But that means the initial loss of the arm is a problem, because it is treated as not just a hindrance but as a moment to make the readers feel hope is lost. I am not ignoring that there is a long history of using such injuries as a marker of loss, to take some emotional or mental anguish on behalf of the character and actualize it into physical evidence, or to take a moment of regret, trauma, or desperation and leave a physical reminder.
But for every Edward Elric, there is an Izuku Midoriya. Ed was handled well enough in Fullmetal Alchemist. Heck, the story did a better version of “Ed gets his arm back” in both the first anime and the manga and the subsequent more manga-accurate anime adaptation: Ed may get his arm back in the first anime, but he has to give that up really quickly to restore Al, and Ed may get his arm back in the manga and the second anime, but not his leg, and he’s going to lose something else, his alchemic abilities, to bring back Al. Equivalent exchange throughout Fullmetal Alchemist was just a high philosophy, one that repeatedly was shown to fail or not be as exact as it sounded or as capitalistic-minded as it sounded: some things in life are indeed unfair, or at least seem unfair, and even if you give up something, what you may get back may not be what you want, and even the knowledge or the experience gained may not have been worth the cost, especially when that same knowledge or experience could have been gained in less painful, less costly ways. Fullmetal Alchemist is a more complex way of addressing disability, loss, and exchange–and as such is able to offer not a singular one-size-fits-all answer but various answers each suited to specific narrow contexts that are still relatable to its audience because we see how each answer was tailored to the character desperately seeking to justify why they had to give up something to get anything in exchange.
My Hero Academia on the other hand? “Don’t try to reach out to Shigaraki in his brain or else you’re going to lose your arms.” What kind of a lesson is that? For the last two weeks fans have correctly praised the story for showing Izuku not giving into despair–and, oh look, his reward is losing his arms. This, again, is why I try to avoid writing about My Hero Academia until I see how one arc ends–but the problem is, this arc has been going on since the Paranormal War, we’re still stuck in it, it is the same “loose continuity” problem, enough already, wrap this up, because right now, all the reader is left with is a bad taste in their mouth that, hardly compelling readers to come back next week or the week after or the week after that, deters further engagement with a story where sometimes bad things just happen.
Also, we actually followed Ed’s life without his arm and leg, the challenges of auto-mail, the challenges of accessibility, pain, learning to use his new limbs. I don’t see that same level of dedication, care, and commitment from Horikoshi; I don’t see that willingness to make that part of Izuku’s overall story, especially when we are waiting until the last arc to finally get to that. What a joke.
Horikoshi’s refusal to commit to Izuku without arms for so long, even after all of the previous risks he had taken that should have destroyed his arms earlier, only to now do so on a whim, is gross. This is right up there with teasing Misty Knight losing her arm towards the end of Season 1 of Luke Cage, only to not do it–and then do it randomly at the end of The Defenders.
(Obligatory disclaimer: both series were streamed on Netflix–fuck Netflix’s punching-down humor–and both series were produced by Disney–fuck Disney’s kissing up to rightwing fascists ahead of the 2024 election–where is all that money you were going to spend to help marginalized people, Disney? But back on topic…)
When Izuku loses his arms, maybe this is Horikoshi interpolating the reader–in other words calling out the reader for their flawed assumptions: “You think this is a bad thing, but it’s not, so why did you ever think from the beginning it is a bad thing?” Or, if Eri doesn’t restore his arms, it is still set up as a setback and hence a thing to feel bad about. None of this is sitting well with me, as it is more about a sense of trauma than living after an experience. We have hardly seen much in the story about how Overhaul, Aizawa, and Mirko live after losing limbs; I am not optimistic Horikoshi will succeed with Izuku.
At best, maybe if Shigaraki died but fused his arms to Izuku, where now Izuku carries on Shigaraki’s legacy in his literal arms? Maybe that could work? It still wouldn’t fix that we used “disability as trauma” to get to this conclusion of “carrying on a part of the antagonist,” but it’s all I got right now.
And even then, that proposal is again going back to Fullmetal Alchemist: that’s Scar getting his arm from his brother! Even the solutions I’m proposing show FMA did this all better!
Paneling: Show Us What Happens to Izuku
I’m also annoyed at how badly the paneling has been on Izuku, from Chapter 417 to 419. While fans were pleased with the reality-warping art inside Tenko’s memories, I found the results underwhelming–especially as I doubt Studio BONES will plus any of the moments in the anime: “Oh, Izuku opened a door, but it’s really Tenko’s sister holding out the photo,” “Oh, Overhaul’s beak turned into Re-Destro’s nose.” That’s it? That’s the best mind-screw we can give the readers?
And now I realize all of that reality-warping into Tenko’s memories constituted a distraction from us realizing Izuku was going to lose his arms in the real world. I know, Nana practically said that damage to yourself in Tenko’s memories meant damage to yourself in the real world–but the ramifications were not visually communicated to let us anticipate Izuku was losing his arms. (And no, “Izuku losing his arms was foreshadowed” is not answering how Tenko’s mindscape works.) How would getting hit by a truck be actualized? Would Izuku just have a heart attack and his brain cease to operate? Or, as we see his arms lost, would the truck just explode his body to bits in the real world?
You know what would have helped? Paneling. Show Izuku getting an injury in Tenko’s mind–and then cut back to the real world to show that injury materialize on Izuku’s body. Dog bite in the memories? Dog bite suddenly cutting into his actual skin. Just nicked by the truck? Gash cut out of Izuku in the real world. Overhaul starting to dematerialize his arm? Flakes of skin coming off of Izuku’s arm. Re-Destro punching him? Bloody nose or black eye in the real world. Or just be honest and show that when Izuku threw the last parts of One For All at Shigaraki that he made physical contact with him and hence Shigaraki’s fingers were starting to disintegrate Izuku’s arms. Yes, that spoils the surprise–and that is the point: setup and clarity are more important to a story than stark surprise that fails to land on the reader except to disorient and numb them.
And it’s not that hard to storyboard this: you just need a panel-within-a-panel, it would not compromise the two-page spreads already there, yes it would add more work to what is obviously an overwhelm crew of Horikoshi and company to keep up with a toxic weekly release schedule, but it is a smaller panel that zooms in on one small piece of action to let readers who are paying attention anticipate what is happening. And hey, you can even still toy with the audience: when Izuku gets through to Tenko, the disintegrating stops, suggesting that Izuku has won this–so that, when All For One reclaims Shigaraki’s body, we don’t cut back to the real world until that reveal of Izuku having lost his arms. That is why I say setup and clarity are more important than a surprise: you still land the emotional beat, the audience is ready to receive that beat, you still surprise the reader but allow them to quickly figure out not just what happened but how and why it happened, and you’re not merely going for a cheap surprise to disorient and thereby potentially do all of this just to distract from how badly the story is written.
Overhaul
About the only good thing in this chapter is worldbuilding–which is typically the least important accomplishment you can make in serialized fiction. We finally explain why All For One never stole Overhaul’s Quirk…because he always had it, duplicated it, removed the “reconstruct” portion, and gave the decay portion to Tenko.
So, it’s not that All For One is incompetent, he’s just needlessly complicated: that’s not much better.
And, bonus, when Overhaul and Shigaraki faced off, it was two kids abused by All For One. Look, it’s one thing to make your villain someone you hate–and getting Overhaul and Shigaraki to fight each other after years of each being abused and then turning into abusers themselves works. But it only works when you actually let that impact pay off as obvious text in the story, not as something you have to think about and wonder whether the writer figured that out too or whether this is just accidentally falling into something that could have been expanded upon but wasn’t. (See also Atsushi Ohkubo creating a compelling feminist icon in Maka Albarn and a compelling trans, non-binary, or otherwise LGBTQIA+ icon in Crona–before he proceeded to throw away that goodwill with Fire Force. But we’ll get to that dumpster fire another time.)
I don’t see how in the last chapters Horikoshi will address this in a way to stage it as, “All For One is the cause of that fight between Overhaul and Shigaraki.” And I’m now more pissed how much better staging could have been done to emphasize this point the minute Overhaul and Shigaraki first interacted. Like, I don’t know, a cutaway to Tartarus showing All For One randomly grinning. It’d be stupid–but it’s comic book stupid in a good way, a campy way, a way that communicates to the audience, “Yes, this is setting something up, Horikoshi planned this, All For One planned this, be impressed.” It’d be less “All For One planned on Tenko’s birth” and more just “All For One set up two toxic people, time to see whose toxicity overwhelms the other to please their father figure.”
Take the Mary Shelley Approach
I also read complaints when the leaks first came out, about how modifying Overhaul’s Quirk to become Shigaraki’s Quirk makes little sense. I don’t entirely disagree: just leaving it as “Garaki did it” is not enough. But here’s the thing about writing, not just writing fantasy or sci-fi or speculative fiction but just about any type of writing where suspension of disbelief is needed: a reader is willing to make a leap of logic, if it is a small leap to some conclusion. And once they make that small leap to that conclusion, they can make another small leap from that conclusion to another conclusion, and a small leap from there, and so on. That is the problem for My Hero Academia: the first small leap is missing, and each leap after is too big.
At best, take the Mary Shelley approach, in which the science used to create Frankenstein’s monster was more so described like magic than science–where enough information is kept away by an unreliable narrator who worries that if you learned how he made his monster that you’d make your own.
But to go back to my “small leap” talk: what am I missing when Izuku loses his arms? Because I don’t get how that happened. Did Izuku touch Shigaraki with his arms and I’m just forgetting it? How did Izuku lose his arms? Because if you tell me, “He lost his arms in Shigaraki’s mind, so he lost them in the real world,” that is not enough. I know Nana said, to paraphrase, you die here, you die in real life. But that’s not losing limbs–that’s just dying. How did the spiritual avatar of himself, which represents his memories, emotions, and even his Quirk, lose its arms, and that means his real self loses his arms? Where are the small leaps I can make to get to that conclusion?
Bakugo Did Better Than Izuku
As Either_Imagination_9 said on Reddit, this all undermines Bakugo’s accomplishment as well. And I say this as someone who despises Bakugo’s character. But the point was, Bakugo said this was a victory that they all contributed to–and, nope, that’s out the window, All For One is back, he didn’t have to reunite with Shigaraki to overpower him, he was able to do it by Izuku pretty much accidentally doing the job for him.
So, great: Bakugo did better at this than Izuku–that’s just fucking wonderful, the toxic bully did this better than the nerdy kid whom he abused all their childhood and whom we were supposed to be cheering on for more than 400 chapters. What a fucking joke.
I just had to type, “Bakugo did better than Izuku”–do you realize how much vomit I’m tasting having to type that nonsense out?
Leaps of Logic
I already talked about leaps of logic with regard to Dazai in Bungo Stray Dogs. Let’s continue on that topic.
I will give Horikoshi credit on handling one leap of logic well: Overhaul and All For One. The clues were always there, between how their Quirks operated, and Overhaul was in the same orphanage where All For One was holding Touya.
Then there are the leaps of logic where Horikoshi does badly: see my remarks about Izuku’s arms above.
In the former: yes, it is dumb that All For One did not keep Overhaul’s Quirk. And it’s dumb that All For One cloned the Quirk and didn’t keep the original to use to reassemble his body and just end All Might, as numerous people on Reddit suggested. But here’s the thing: we already established All For One wants to re-acquire Yoichi’s Quirk, so he can’t just kill All Might without losing that Quirk forever.
But this then opens up two more problems: why not just kill All Might in Kamino, because at that point he already passed One ForAll to Izuku anyway (unless All For One wanted All Might to beat him as a way to keep motivating Shigaraki), and why not still keep Overhaul’s Quirk anyway? And no, “All For One likes simple Quirks” is no longer a viable excuse.
And as I said about the problem of Izuku, there is an easy fix: when Nana says you can get die in this vestige world, show Izuku getting an injury (such as Tenko starting to disintegrate his arms) and cut to the outside world (such as live video coverage) of skin flaking off of Izuku. Yes, this ruins the surprise–but it also sets up and pays off rather than not even showing Nana was correct.
Wrapping Up
I’ll wrap up there for today. Thanks for reading to the bottom.
Were you excited by the reveal that Fyodor had a different Ability than expected? Are you still engaged with this story? Or, like me, are you upset that this Decay of the Angel saga has not just ended already? And do you think Bungo Stray Dogs and My Hero Academia were really that bad? Let me know your thoughts in the comments section or email me, derek.s.mcgrath@gmail.com.
Special thanks to Emily Lauer, Ellak Roach, and Alexis Duran.
Until next time, as I say each week:
If you can register to vote, check your voter registration at vote.org, campaign for Democrats at postcardstovoters.org, vote for Democrats…
And stay safe out there, people: make sure to mask up, get vaccinated, install adblockers, prevent artificial intelligence from stealing your work, register to vote, campaign against fascism and against war and against ethnic cleansing and against genocide and against terrorism, and learn and practice anti-bigotry. I’ve been Derek S. McGrath. You have a good afternoon. Bye.
Derek S. McGrath 