- 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
It reminds me a bit of One Punch Man's world, but in that setting you get the feeling that the corporate nature of the Hero's Association is a parody because the org is relentlessly self-serving despite its propaganda, while in MHA it's all presented more positively.
OPM also has that strawman anti-capitalist gang. https://onepunchman.fandom.com/wiki/Paradisers
They could have been written by your bog-standard city-reddit reactionary.
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
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.
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
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.
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
I've always hoped the plot goes in a more subversive direction with the hero/villain dichotomy, but I don't expect anything, I just enjoy the animation of the big fights
Im not saying that no one can enjoy it, i read fanfiction of it after all, im just saying that one should be aware of the fucked up undertones
because the corporate news said he was bad
That makes me think, isn't the news like super complicit in the Kira killings? I only watched bits and pieces of the show but eventually they should've stopped showing the faces of every criminal unless they actively supported kiras actions
Watched "Tiger and Bunny" a while back... its kinda the same. The show had far fewer "super heroes" but while they fight crime they are followed around by viewers at home in a live reality TV styled program like "Cops" in the USA.
I think I've heard of that one but haven't taken the time to find it... its a comic that has some animated? or live action version right?
I mean yeah? This is all kinda explicit within the text, like the first chapter introduces the idea of most Heroes being self interested and from there pretty much every arc will introduce another problem with hero society.
that's the point, the villains have points when they critique hero society. My prediction is the series will end with Deku beating the last bad guy and changing the way society works
I doubt that thats the point, in the text there isnt much critique of the hero society, maybe that part about endevour(also, 40%) but it doesnt get at the foundation of the hero society, the idea that the solution to crime is more policing and i dont remember any critique of that idea in the text
The spin off manga is a bit better at this, it should really get an anime adaptation at some point.
MC isn't an official hero, he's a vigilante and his mentor at one point goes over the history of the hero license system and a bit of how fucked the politics around it were.
Vigilantes is so much better than MHA, every character is cooler and more interesting and they actually discuss how their society is just weirdly structured, seeing how basically only superheros are allowed to use their powers, even tho everyone else has them too.
