• High crime rate which is the basis for the premise of that world is probably a result of high poverty
  • State responds to it by profesionalizing "heros" which are just glorified cops
  • Extreme glorification of "heros" in the media and propaganda
  • "Heros" must form or work at private hero agancies so that means they are privatised

So yeah, japan in the world of my hero academia is a private police state that responds to poverty by being "tough on crime", this show is just pure ideology

  • QuillQuote [they/them]
    ·
    edit-2
    4 years ago

    Oh absolutely, and honestly the most sympathetic characters I’ve seen so far are some of the villains who want to tear down the system that oppresses them and labels them villains because of what kind of quirk they have or their life circumstances that are outside of their control

    Haven’t finished reading it to know where that arc is going, if anywhere, but if I never do finish it I’ll just assume shiggaraki and deku team up to overthrow the current world order together and install super powered communism

    “This is the story about how I became the number one hero... of the communist revolution”

    I mean, that’s still lib garbage cause great man history can eat a billion dicks but hey

    • KobaCumTribute [she/her]
      ·
      edit-2
      4 years ago

      I mean, that’s still lib garbage cause great man history can eat a billion dicks but hey

      I don't know, One For All is thematically opposed to Great Man Theory in interesting ways: rather than being an individual's strength, it's a culmination of generations of work, with each bearer standing on the shoulders of the previous ones. It's also something that's transferred and grown into, rather than being an intrinsic trait someone is born with. Super-hero stories are inevitably messy and plagued with Great Man shit, but it feels like a lot of the themes are playing with ideas about ability that's worked for versus natural, the limits of individual effort versus group solidarity, etc.

      At the same time, the presentation is also too incoherent to draw any conclusions about intent: the writing is clearly cynical of the might-makes-right hierarchy of the world and seems to be making a point that the difference between a hero and a villain is what side they're doing violence for rather than if they're personally a good person or not (although the villains seem to generally be just as self-serving and openly fascist as the heroes, if not more so). It honestly comes across as deeply liberal: there's the understanding that the institutions are flawed and people in power may be complete monsters combined with a belief that that system is still just and right, or at least a lesser evil, while all dissent is either misguided and "too extreme" or is rolled into one incoherent "criminal" mass that's seen as fascist and vile regardless of where it's coming from (and because the world is crafted with this view, it makes it true for the setting no matter how incoherent that makes it).

      Overall, I'd say they have some very good ideas but don't really have the political literacy or understanding to elaborate on them, and they also have some absolute galaxy brain libshit ideas. The storytelling and fight choreography (or whatever the fuck you'd call it for animation storyboarding) is still pretty good though, and it consistently hits just the right notes of self-sacrifice and solidarity that I'm an absolute sucker for.

            • QuillQuote [they/them]
              ·
              4 years ago

              see now in my head I'm havin fun coming up with dumb quirks that are communist liberatory etc, this shit and deku's wholesome optimism is what got me interested in the show, but since I radicalized I haven't really come back to it aside from in my memory because I don't want to watch it and hate it and ruin those memories

            • KobaCumTribute [she/her]
              ·
              4 years ago

              Literally the original run of Superman, where he was just a strong guy who saved workers and trapped Capitalists in unsafe mines to teach them a lesson about safe working conditions.

            • bottech [he/him]
              hexagon
              ·
              4 years ago

              Communist quirk:

              Organizer - user of the quirk can "organize" people, among the people that are organized anyone of them can lend use of their physical strength and quirk to another organized person