(Very Late) Thoughts on the Villain Report

Per some asks about the Hawks Villain Report, I extremelybelatedly went back through the translations of it and noted down my thoughts on what’s in it and what isn’t (Spinner). Hit the jump if you’re curious!

•  The idea of different classifications of villains is interesting but also strikes me as fairly arbitrary as presented here.  What “past standards” can Gentle and La Brava not be measured against?  Why include Stain, the very image of a society-rattling criminal motivated by ideology, in the category of “traditional lawbreakers using their quirk for criminal purposes”?  What does, “villains born from a change in hero society” even mean?  The MLA have been around since before Hero Society even got settled, so how could they possibly be classified as people born from that society changing?

•  I’m particularly shaking my head over the idea that there are “special case” villains for whom “caution must be paid when arresting, as their arrest may influence society,” as if there was any difference at all between the arrest of Overhaul and that of, say, Trumpet. 

    Both featured a big joint task force between police and a bunch of heroes Raidin’ the Enemy Base, with about the only difference I can see being that Overhaul was ultimately arrested on an open street while Trumpet was arrested outside the eyes of the public.  That strikes me as less a difference in methodology than one of expediency and circumstance, however.  Consider that Slidin’ Go, an honest-to-god hero, was alsoarrested right out on an open street, and I fail to see how any particular caution was paid to what “society” would think.

    God knows we didn’t get any follow-up on how politicians, CEOs and heroes being arrested “influenced” society.  I think the onlyscene that even hinted that anyone cared about any of those types being arrested was the scene with the two Tartarus guards, and that was all just supposition on their part that the audience never got to see.  Literally every other scene with rattled civilians that had anything to do with villains was about the fallout from Dabi’s video, Hawks’ murder of Twice, the failures of (non-MLA) heroes to contain Gigantomachia’s damage, and the pervasive fear of Shigaraki/AFO.

•  I was already salty during the events themselves that Shigaraki—whose speed was commented upon by both Deku and Re-Destro, many, many chapters apart, even beforethe surgery—was always lagging behind Deku during the Jakku confrontation.(1)  It does not assuage my salt levels to read the report say that Shigaraki “easily outspeeds” Deku.

•  Dabi’s quirk being officially designated Blueflame is silly.  As others have pointed out, quirks are named when they first manifest, and Touya’s flames were red when he first manifested them.  No one knew that Touya had become capable of manifesting blue flames until his reveal as Dabi, so there’s no reason for his quirk registry information to have been updated accordingly.

    Blueflame (souen) is not entirely without precedent in the manga, but that precedent is that it’s what Getencalls him.  As with so many things Geten says, I get the feeling we shouldn’t be taking his word on this at face value!

    Fun note about that, by the way: So like, souenis the on-reading of the kanji for “blue” and “flame,” words which in spoken conversation would use their kun-reading pronunciations, aoandhonou.  However, souenalso crops up in a number of medical terms involving inflammation of various body parts.  It definitely isn’t the sameword—itssou is a different kanji, one that translates to something like “nest/hive” rather than “blue”—so I could just be reaching here, but given Dabi’s crispy physical state and Horikoshi’s love of wordplay, it strikes me as not coincidental that someone insulting Dabi would use a non-standard pronunciation of “blue fire” that just so happens to be homophonous with a word fragment that’s in at least three different medical terms for different kinds of rashes and inflammations.(2)

•  I recall seeing some jokes around about Dabi’s section being written particularly stringently Because Hawks, and I don’t entirely disagree, but at last as far as the, “Keep in mind that he is always up to no good,” goes, given that Dabi is the core League member most likely to murderate whatever random schmucks he crosses paths with, it seems like a fair cop.

•  Forever annoyed that Dabi is the “natural enemy” to “non-heat-resistant” people like Hawks and Kamui Woods,(3) and yet neither Hawks nor Kamui Woods sustained permanent damage after being immolated by said natural enemy.

•  I only really pay attention to stats when they’re funny, as I think they either don’t translate well or are arbitrary as hell, but the only one of Dabi’s that seems abnormally low to me is his Technique score—a D is a hell of a grade to give someone who’s taught himself most if not all of Endeavor’s moves.  I’d cut it some slack for being “written” (by Hawks) before Dabi started using said moves openly, but even during the war, Dabi did demonstrate Endeavor’s “flight” and the beginnings of a Prominence Burn.  A Technique of D is fine for something like Dabi’s fight against Geten, in which literally all he does is blast away, but it’s very low for “decisive second war” Dabi.

•  “Hawks” noting that Toga is considered “different” even within the League of Villains—is that Hawks saying that even the League find her a bit odd?  Or is that him saying that heroesconsider Toga to be a different sort of villain than her compatriots?  If the former, that speaks of more Hawks/League interaction than we ever got, which seems a shame.

•  I think it’s interesting, and probably intentional, that the manga is making such a big deal out of the villain/student pair-ups, to the degree that the villain report even says Ochaco should be Toga’s counter, but none of those students get their thoughts on “their” villains included.  I like to think this is because Deku, Ochaco and Shouto, if asked their thoughts on Shigaraki, Toga and Dabi, would probably not give the ‘woooo, a scaaaary villain’ response that was clearly the general thrust of of the piece.

•  I’ll believe All For One is an S+ Intelligence character when he starts getting more creative in combat than “punch super ultra hard.”  Also when we get any motivation for him other than, “Demon lords are cool.”

•  If Re-Destro’s strength was meant to stand out even among villains, maybe Horikoshi shouldn’t have shown him or a clone of him being overcome four times.  Christ, Re-Destro was robbed.

And that’s what I’ve got on a cursory read-through of the translations.  As to what isn’tin there, the omission of Spinner feels like some cross between the way people in canon keep conspicuously not bringing him up or planning for him—like, no duh, of course Hawks doesn’t see him as enough of a threat to even waste a page on—and yet more real-life “Spinner isn’t popular, so he gets regularly shafted everywhere outside of the manga itself” tiresomeness.  I can only continue to hope that Hori himself is not being unduly pressured about Spinner.

Thanks for the asks, two anons who sent asks about it!

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1:  To say nothing of my salt about the fact that Black Whip was treated as a safe way to keep Shigaraki at arms-length, even though it’s apparently physical enough for Deku to detach it to use as a distraction during the Nagant fight andfor Toga to slice through it with a perfectly mundane knife.

2: Housouen, ransouen, andseisouenare the three most common results yielded by an off-the-cuffsearch.  Respectively: cellulitis, ovarian inflammation, and epididymitis.

3:  Though it seems more appropriate to call them “heat-vulnerable,” rather than simply not being especially resistant, no?