My problem with MHA
is something I've realized that can be boiled down to one simple fact: Hori doesn't respect his story. Everything else, everything I and others talk about, originate from that one fact, like waves from a boulder dropped into a pond.
It feels to me that Hori is so focused on telling a story that he's lost track of, or interest in, all the parts in the story. So, this may be dipping too much into personal opinion here, but to me, writing a story like this is like you're creating a world, a world inhabited by people, each of which is motivated by their own fears and desires. When it comes to things happening, what a certain character does at any given point, I think writing should exist around the rule of, 'What would this character do in this situation', and yet in MHA, we see instead, 'What does this character need to do to make what I want to happen happen', mixed with what seems to be an uncertain grasp on the 'what I want to happen' even is.
The thing is... the characters aren't real, but for a story to be successfully, they need to be sold to us as if they're real. Hori can't just point and say, 'This is a bunch of artistically arranged black ink', he has to say, 'Meet Izuku. He's in junior high. He wants to be a hero. He likes helping people and All Might, and cries maybe a smidgen too much, but he really means well'.
We can't just look at his pretty pictures, we have to have a connection to the characters, we have to feel for them, like they're real.
And for that to work, they have to treated like they're people, with desires and impulses of their own, otherwise that connection with them, that thing that's so essential for keeping an audience, isn't going to stick.
Let's go with a super easy example here: Izuku is walking down a street, and he sees a crying child. What does he do?
A. Try and comfort the child?
Or, D. Start break dancing because he's filled with the overwhelming desire to go into a career as a background dancer?
...Alright, I don't think I need explain what the correct answer is, but let me ask you this: what if he does, say, B instead? Let's say I'm suddenly a super good artist, and I throw together a chapter where Izuku ignores a crying child as he walks down the road.
Wouldn't that feel weird?
Because that's the thing; it's very clear what Izuku would do in this situation, to the point where it's in his DNA as a character, but if I write it out where he doesn't do what Izuku, as a person, would do, it'll feel off. It's out of character, and out of character behavior is dangerous if you want to have a good story. It can be managed, but if you over do it... well. There's a reason there's a BNHA critical tag.
Like, it can be done well, but there needs to be a reason, is the thing. Let's say that chapter I made continues and suddenly we learn that Izuku was just informed his mom has cancer. That would explain why he's acting different than usual, except he's still being treated as a person, in that he's reacting to something that's happening, an extreme event that's altering his life, and that's the reason why he's not acting like he normally would.
So. Let's apply that logic again.... how about this? Why is Hawks OK with Endeavour abusing his children?
Not, why is he working with Endeavour, because he canonly does things he doesn't want to for what he thinks is the greater good, but why is he OK with it? Why isn't he upset? Why isn't he disappointed that Endeavour, a hero, his hero, the very symbol of hope that kept him going through a childhood an abusive father, is himself an abusive father?
What is the reason, here?
*looks around as crickets echo*
...Nothing? Yeah. There is no reason that we can tell that he should be this overwhelmingly positive about the situation, and yet that is what we have. Hawks, the character, isn't acting like Hawks, the person.
Like I said, this goes back to just about every problem you can have with this story:
Why is Momo, a genius with an OP Quirk so seemingly useless?
Why does everyone just laugh off Bakugou when he treats them like shit?
Why is All Might so stupid when he's a grown ass man who has lived on his own for his entire adult life, isolated from literally everyone, and yet is also wildly successful in his chosen career?
Why doesn't anyone seem angry about Endeavour?
Hell, this logic even applies to the setting:
MHA is set in a society where a major part of the social contract is built off the idea that people can't be trusted to use their Quirks, but they also don't have to, because heroes are there. Every major problem is dealt with by heroes, citizen, so don't sweat the hard stuff and go about your day; the way their society continues is built off an unrealistic and impossible faith in a bunch of people who are being incentivized to act in increasingly mercenary ways, yet it's made clear to us that the average person still thinks everything is fine, and so they continue to be blinded to reality by lifelong propaganda and a social system that will harshly punish those who stir up a fuss by labeling them 'villains', officially or otherwise. The problem being, of course, that that set up is doomed to fail, and by the time of the War Arc, trust in heroes is dropping.... and then thousands of people die as the heroes take an enormous loss in actually achieving their main goals, publicly. With video evidence, to boot. Shigaraki and Co ride off in the sunset and leave the image that everything is going to be OK in ruins behind them.
That fundamental part of the social contract is falling apart, the blinders are falling off, and people are losing trust. So, in that atmosphere, how do people react to the idea that their new Number One Hero made one of the biggest villains around, both in a literal and metaphorical sense? A few angry press conferences? Some angry mobs everyone treats as stupid and pointless?
Or... something more, perhaps? Because that's the thing, with Dabi's plan: it's simple yet effective in that he says, 'Society is a lie', and then he slaps everyone with enough truth that no one can ignore him.
Forget mobs; why in the fuck is the Todoroki's house still standing? Why aren't people throwing things at Endeavour when he walks by them in the streets? Why aren't Dabi's victims suing him for what his son has done? Endeavour is the Number One Hero, he is the symbol of everything 'right' in society, and that fact that symbol is rotten to the core is brushed over in the story.
Doesn't that seem weird? There should be entire arcs on the fallout of this alone, because MHA Japan at that point should be filled with a lot of very scared, very angry, very unhappy people, who are primed to act irrationally and take out their frustrations on anyone they think is responsible for it, and the people in charge are handling their valid concerns... poorly.
*looks at Enji 'Watch Me' Todoroki meaningfully*
It's like that because Hori doesn't respect his world enough to treat it realistically.
And look, I get that he needs to keep writing, and he needs to keep on track, even if he realizes the story would diverge from his plan if he just let things progress organically (even if MHA has some real signs of having been changed once or twice in new, forced directions in it), but what he's been doing all this time is sacrificing his characters to tell his story, not just once or twice but all the time. And the thing is? The characters are how he can tell that story, they are the foundation the story is built off of; if he undermines his characters, then he is undermining his story.
