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chiasaur11 posted:The fights don't feel like they're moving things forward much, either. It's just fight scene after fight scene, rather than fight scenes building to larger plot progression. Yeah, they honestly have the same problem, JJK's fights are just more entertaining in concept at least. (though honestly I didn't mind Dabi vs Shoto but it really should have been the end of that story beat.) I'll take the Culling Game over MHA's infinite nothing happens works but I think both series are at their low points by far and it just works in JJK's favor that its low point still has high moments so I can enjoy the raw ridiculousness of the recent chapter more than the "Oh look we're still on Namek" energy of MHA
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Sep 7, 2022 03:45
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ImpAtom posted:The recent chapter was fun but it took an intolerably long amount of "lol isn't it funny someone is playing panchinko and people keep talking about how amazing their luck is" to get there. If you don't like Hakari and his goober technique you don't deserve JJK. Sorry.
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Sep 7, 2022 03:58
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ZenMasterBullshit posted:If you don't like Hakari and his goober technique you don't deserve JJK. Sorry. Maybe if it had 1/3rd the chapters but I'll take Judgeman over him 10 times out of 10.
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Sep 7, 2022 04:04
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jjk's sudden shift to one-on-one fights with an ever-increasing and wacky cast is a weird change of pace compared to the vicious free-for-all brawls it had mostly been using up to that point but they've all been visually and conceptually interesting and most have also been used for major character beats as well. if i have any concerns (other than the manga ending, ever) it's that the power creep is going to get nuts if the likes of hakari and okkotsu become regular players unless the story enters its final stretch after this (which would mean it's ending, ever) also i think it's extremely unlikely that kugisaki's out of the running, some badguy's going to get a nail through the skull at a crucial moment followed by a splash page with her face all over it
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Sep 7, 2022 04:13
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The culling game has been off and on for me but I feel like the general change in tone was deliberate because The Shinjuku Incident arc is a pretty bleak affair even for the series, and the fights were mostly incredibly brutal knock-down-drag-out affairs in comparison to this HxH stuff we're seeing now. Okkotsu is extremely uninteresting though- he's basically the Shoto of JJK. I mostly just see lame/unsatisfying stuff happen in MHA off and on because of a seeming unwillingness to do anything serious (which doesn't have to include death!) with its presumed main cast to make you really care about them. The art of writing this stuff is that you establish some sort of tension or make big character moments out of all the punching- because this is a weekly jump property and we know the good guys are gonna win. But we're just not really seeing any of that here. If Horikoshi had just started cutting back to the other fights, and done the AFO reveal, and then had the final part of this big war be the cut back to the Tomura fight and have Bakugou get killed (and stay dead) instead of this weirdly paced mess I'd say it was a pretty drat good ending even if it's all just waiting for Goku. Waiting for Goku can be good- people like that when it's done right. One of the most tried and tested moments people get hyped for is someone showing up in the nick of time to save the day, and when you do it right your brain doesn't register the "why did it take so loving long to get to this?" question.
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Sep 7, 2022 04:49
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poo poo, Black Clover's pacing for its big climactic battles can only be described as "agonizing" and it figured out how to do the character moments/tension here at the end. You KNOW the main character isn't going to be loving dead before the end of the series, and yet it spends basically a whole chapter selling you everyone's reactions to his presumed death and it's good even though you know this is going to end the same way literally every single arc in the series has ended: Asta is going to show up and brain the badguy with his magic cancelling swords that defeat all magic, and they're just not gonna be able to believe it. It even finally has a big-bad who takes Asta's busted rear end abilities seriously! He shows up and is like "Yeah this anti-magic poo poo basically defeats everything and step numero uno is killing the guy who can use the anti-magic. I'll even have someone he cares about do it so he hesitates and I can hit him through his martial-arts ki bullshit I am also fully aware of." It's pretty clever!
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Sep 7, 2022 05:00
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Babysitter Super Sleuth posted:mainly because after years of getting abused by her shithead family she got to brutally murder all of them, and is currently undergoing self-actualization by doing wrestle therapy with a vagrant sumo wizard So sick of mangaka forcing their sexual fetishes into their work
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Sep 7, 2022 10:59
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the best part of the recent jjk chapters is this page
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Sep 7, 2022 11:09
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Endorph posted:the best part of the recent jjk chapters is this page It's so good
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Sep 7, 2022 15:17
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the long string of fights in jjk right now is a lot but every time I start to get tired of it, something like katana and sumo guy happens and I'm drawn right back in I love those guys, they're great
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Sep 7, 2022 16:22
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Shere posted:I just wanna see cool poo poo at this point and it's not delivering. I don't even hate it, I just want it to stop stalling. He's the Next Generation, which will save us from the mistakes the Previous Generation made. We entrust him with our future. What's that, Bakugou et all are ideologically indistinguishable from their parent's generations? Nevertheless,
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Sep 7, 2022 20:25
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Getting really sick of unironic martyr culture in my ninja wizard shows.
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Sep 7, 2022 21:55
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The philosophy of this manga is that boomer quote about how hard times make strong people and peaceful times make weak people. All Might was apparently shouldering the burden of a hundred years of war on his own and Endeavor was the only hero who was taking being a hero seriously, not because of AFO but just because All Might was his rival and he wanted to use genetics to create the perfect child soldier that could surpass his rival which ended up just creating another villain in his own selfish quest to surpass All Might. The manga was at its best when the stakes were much lower than world domination. Now we've got to deal with the intricacies of Aizawa being able to disable Ojiro's tail which is a physical quirk, but somehow not affecting Froppy's physical frog quirks or Hagakure running around naked half the time. Also Deku has all the abilities of Spider-Man now and we've got an origami hero and a guy who makes jeans repairing the heart of a guy who's quirk is blowing himself up, against a guy who's original power was just turning everything he touches into dust who is now made of playdough and also unaffected by Aizawa's quirk I think the author of this manga has just given up and is trying to both finish this manga because of burnout and stall because of how much money he's making. My Villain Academy was the last good arc
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Sep 7, 2022 22:45
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Tampa Bae posted:All Might was apparently shouldering the burden of a hundred years of war on his own and Endeavor was the only hero who was taking being a hero seriously, not because of AFO but just because All Might was his rival and he wanted to use genetics to create the perfect child soldier that could surpass his rival which ended up just creating another villain in his own selfish quest to surpass All Might. Thinking back, the manga is trying to have its cake and eat it too with this. It was a big point that All Might was fighting a forever war on his own to the point that everyone was able to live in peace and harmony and contentment, and psychopathic monsters like Stain were able to say "Hero society is corrupt and there's no real heroes any more" and have enough people believe him that it was a plot point that people believed him, but ever since the war arc started we've seen that society actually has a whole lot of heroes who are willing to fight to their last breath and die violently and horribly in order to protect the innocent and helpless, including an entire next generation of kids who were inspired and raised by those heroes. It feels like more of the blame for "hero society built itself on All Might and now it's all going to poo poo" should have been placed on All Might for never bringing anyone else in on his war, because there are very clearly a lot of heroes who would have given their all to help him fight it.
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Sep 8, 2022 01:46
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you could communicate the idea that all might falling has made the other heroes rise to the occasion, and thats sort of communicated with endeavor, but you dont really get that from, like, best jeanist
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Sep 8, 2022 01:52
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I mean, part of the point was Stain was in fact, wrong, and targeted legitimate heroes (like Iida's older brother) for not matching his insane ideals of a hero. The story never actually said Stain was, on the whole right. Furthermore they've made a good deal about part of why the Hero side of the War got screwed so bad is all the not-legitimately heroic people quit. So we're basically left only with the ones who would go all out the way they are.
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Sep 8, 2022 01:58
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Endorph posted:you could communicate the idea that all might falling has made the other heroes rise to the occasion, and thats sort of communicated with endeavor, but you dont really get that from, like, best jeanist None of the other heroes we see fighting in the war were really portrayed as slacking before All Might went down. Kamino had Jeanist and Edgeshot willing to throw down with AfO himself despite being clearly horribly outclassed, to the point where you had Gran Torino screaming at them to get back or they're hosed. Endeavor definitely did rise to the occasion, but him rising to the occasion feels less about "I gotta step up now that All Might is down" and more about "I have realized that I turned myself into a monster and now must attempt some form of atonement". Lord_Magmar posted:I mean, part of the point was Stain was in fact, wrong, and targeted legitimate heroes (like Iida's older brother) for not matching his insane ideals of a hero. The story never actually said Stain was, on the whole right. Furthermore they've made a good deal about part of why the Hero side of the War got screwed so bad is all the not-legitimately heroic people quit. So we're basically left only with the ones who would go all out the way they are. I never said that Stain wasn't wrong, I said that people believed him and it was a major plot point that people believed him. All the non-legitimately heroic people quit in a situation where society was put into a full-on open warfare situation and collapsing and they were dying by the dozens, and even then after all that death and desertion they still have enough people and power left that they can run a gigantic counteroffensive on multiple fronts and are only struggling to win because the villain side has what amounts to two demigods with infinite asspull cheat powers and the protagonist who was supposed to counter them apparently got sent 10,000 miles away given that it's taken him a year to get here despite One For All being able to travel so fast he's basically teleporting. That pretty clearly says that there's a whole lot of 'real' heroes, and they're not weak or powerless, and maybe All Might should have brought some of them in on the shadow war instead of fighting it alone.
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Sep 8, 2022 02:22
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Kanos posted:Thinking back, the manga is trying to have its cake and eat it too with this. It was a big point that All Might was fighting a forever war on his own to the point that everyone was able to live in peace and harmony and contentment, and psychopathic monsters like Stain were able to say "Hero society is corrupt and there's no real heroes any more" and have enough people believe him that it was a plot point that people believed him, but ever since the war arc started we've seen that society actually has a whole lot of heroes who are willing to fight to their last breath and die violently and horribly in order to protect the innocent and helpless, including an entire next generation of kids who were inspired and raised by those heroes. After she lost the entire planet just decided "Well our hands our tied, we did our best, better let these 15 year freshmen solve our problems for us"
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Sep 8, 2022 04:18
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Yeah this final battle in MHA would be enormously more believable if 1-A had made it to their third year (with all the accompanying training) and the Big Three were in their first/second year of actual heroism (with all the accompanying drawbacks).
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Sep 8, 2022 04:29
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SKULL.GIF posted:Yeah this final battle in MHA would be enormously more believable if 1-A had made it to their third year (with all the accompanying training) and the Big Three were in their first/second year of actual heroism (with all the accompanying drawbacks). If Deku hadn't been in class A-1 Bakugo and Froppy might've been the only two who were actually capable of being heroes on their own with a small shout-out to Uraraka whose motivation was just getting her family out of the slums. Every other person in class 1-A had to be pushed along by Deku to get better except for the side characters who would've just became side-kicks at best.
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Sep 8, 2022 04:45
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Lord_Magmar posted:I mean, part of the point was Stain was in fact, wrong, and targeted legitimate heroes (like Iida's older brother) for not matching his insane ideals of a hero. The story never actually said Stain was, on the whole right. Furthermore they've made a good deal about part of why the Hero side of the War got screwed so bad is all the not-legitimately heroic people quit. So we're basically left only with the ones who would go all out the way they are. I forgot that I had opened the My Hero Academia thread for a bit and initially read this as "I mean, part of the point was that Stalin was in fact, wrong, and targeted legitimate heroes (like Iida's older brother) for not matching his insane ideals of a hero."
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Sep 8, 2022 06:55
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You could probably put it down to "ultimately the manga toys with the idea that society is corrupt but doesn't really commit to it being corrupt in a way that affects the vast majority of people so society feels mostly okay instead of 'coming apart at the seams'." This is honestly a common problem for MHA, which also toys with ideas like "actually being willing to throw your life away with zero hesitation is super loving unhealthy" but isn't willing to commit to the bit.
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Sep 8, 2022 08:14
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You can basically sum it up as "MHA toys with having themes." The author clearly has some ideas for what the message of the story could be, but doesn't actually carry those through into the plot or characters, being more caught up in the moment with a character they like or story beat they're enjoying (or rushing through, now). I think whoever said earlier that the team-up spinoff comics might actually better represent what the series could have been was right. If Horikoshi's not actually up for building a sweeping, high-stakes, high-drama epic, scale back a bit and focus on a slower-burn, lower-intensity series of mid-tier villains. Even Harry Potter managed to wring six or so years of school life out of a story that was ultimately about the return of a world-conquering supervillain. That might be part of why it feels like either editorial pressure or burnout has to be behind the decision not to keep the series going for years, extending over the cast's whole school career. There's not really any special reason the story needed to kick into the endgame after the Villain Academia arc, a switch just seemed to flip.
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Sep 8, 2022 18:36
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If anything, My Villain Academia seemed to be specifically written to lay the groundwork for a long term, slow burn story. MVA introduced an entire huge rogue's gallery of potential antagonists with all the various metahuman liberation front dudes and a powerful and pre-established counterweight organization with resources and connections to bolster the league of villains to allow them to transition from being a group of hopeless hunted fugitives to being persistent supervillains. At the time I was positive that MVA represented basically the end of the introduction/prologue part of the story, rather than being the trigger for the endgame to begin.
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Sep 8, 2022 21:58
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Electric Phantasm posted:Edgeshot will live on Bakugo is gonna be able to fold his explosions super small and will weave them throughout shigaraki's body.
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Sep 8, 2022 22:30
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Oh god I just realized, is Bakugo going to gain Edgeshot's quirk? He's basically becoming part of him, I guess it's possible? That's kind of a weird quirk combo though.
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Sep 9, 2022 04:18
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Rand Brittain posted:You could probably put it down to "ultimately the manga toys with the idea that society is corrupt but doesn't really commit to it being corrupt in a way that affects the vast majority of people so society feels mostly okay instead of 'coming apart at the seams'." At first I really thought that the whole thematic arc would develop into "All Might being as good and noble as he was let other heroes just turn into competing corporate franchises more worried with standing than altruism. With him gone, the solution will have to be through strong teamwork and dedication to a shared ideal". The Stain arc pretty much spelled it out in small print. Then it...got lost? The story moved to both the main villain and the hero getting big power boosts that make the others look like chumps 90% of the time, and then stumbling in random directions that don't really cohere.
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Sep 11, 2022 02:23
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Plus Toga and Shigaraki lost pretty much any depth and who knows what's up with Spinner
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Sep 11, 2022 02:41
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Spinner is still spinning
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Sep 11, 2022 06:06
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FireWorksWell posted:Plus Toga and Shigaraki lost pretty much any depth and who knows what's up with Spinner if you told me during MVA that one of the planned final battles in the series would be spinner vs shoji i would've been so excited for what that implied about how interested the manga would become in exploring the body-changing quirks and the alluded-to discrimination associated with them, lmao. what a waste.
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Sep 11, 2022 06:07
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Valentin posted:if you told me during MVA that one of the planned final battles in the series would be spinner vs shoji i would've been so excited for what that implied about how interested the manga would become in exploring the body-changing quirks and the alluded-to discrimination associated with them, lmao. what a waste.  Was Spinner actually fighting him? I couldn't tell from the panel, I thiught he was just raging against random hero mooks
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Sep 11, 2022 06:11
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Spinner versus Shoji as an actual fight would have been so cool. Especially considering Spinner's massive underdog status, and the effort he'd have to put in to match a UA kid with a top-tier quirk who still has to wear a mask to hide his face to avoid scaring children — like, hell, he's not going to win, but ideologically it's going to loving rule. Like, hey, kids, notice how exactly one of you is a mutant with an even mildly deviant body plan instead of some embellishments stapled on, and he has to wear something that covers his face all the time, and none of his teachers appear to have said anything? Great institution you're defending there!
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Sep 11, 2022 13:31
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I don't think they've ever said that Shoji wears the mask because someone told he had to, he probably wears it out of courtesy and concern that he'd freak people out because he's very different. The closest thing to a real life example that comes to mind is people who wear eyepatches or other cosmetic alterations that cover up disfiguring injury - there's absolutely nothing wrong with missing an eye or having scarring or something, but some people choose to cover it or alter it as a courtesy to others, because even open-minded people can be startled when they see for the first time. Shoji's appearance isn't an injury or a disfigurement, but the principle applies. "I don't want to scare people" is an especially valid reasoning for him to have because he's trying to work in a field where he will have to rescue people from dangerous, high-stress situations and if the initial reaction that they have to his appearance - which is happening during a situation where the people in question are already terrified and might be under threat by villains - is fear and rejection, it will both endanger the people he's trying to save and make it impossible for him to do his job. Even if you're the most tolerant person on the planet, if you're cowering in terror for your life because some dude with bombs for hands is blowing up the building around you and then an 8 foot tall dude with 6 arms with eyeballs and mouths on them and a monster face shows up, your initial gut reaction is probably going to be "oh god, I'm going to die". That's not really the fault of society, that's just a baked-in fear of the unknown that pretty much every living thing has by default. Kanos fucked around with this message at 14:06 on Sep 11, 2022 |
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Sep 11, 2022 14:02
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He's also likely less strange than Koji Koda anyway, who looks like a rock person.
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Sep 11, 2022 14:22
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The problem with that is that Shouji lives in a society where people can look insanely different from a 'normal' human all the time. It's not a disfigurement and if you live in the MHA world, you probably expect to see people with mutation quirks every single day of your life, whether you can predict the kinds of mutations or not. My brother previously had a disfiguring 'injury' (it wasn't really an injury, he was born with a tumor on his eye that made his eye look like a red, pink, and white blobby mess) and he always refused to cover it up as soon as he was old enough to make his own clothing choices. He had figured out pretty quickly that if he just didn't hide it, other kids his age got over it really fast. Like, yeah it's a gross out moment the first time you see it, but by Week 2, everyone in class is over it and you're just another kid on the playground. The eye later had to be removed and people who knew him before it was removed thought he looked weirder with two seemingly-normal eyes. Now as an adult, he just freaks people out by tapping his glass eye without telling them it's fake first. Shouji hiding his face is less an indication of courtesy to me and more one of shame. People have probably freaked out in the past when they saw his face so instead of making people get the gently caress over it, he got embarrassed and hid behind a mask. Like, this is pretty much the one upside to heroes being celebrities. Getting people used to heroes with major mutations. Gang Orca would scare the absolute poo poo out of anyone meeting him if they'd never seen him before - but Gang Orca is on TV and in magazines and at public events. Hell, you don't even have to go as hard as Gang Orca - if you were trapped in a collapsing building and some guy bursts in with huge wings and you've never seen him before, your first thought is probably not "I'm going to die" but "I'm already dead."
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Sep 11, 2022 14:25
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Edgeshot must have some hosed up teeth, because I haven't seen his face either.
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Sep 11, 2022 14:27
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CuwiKhons posted:The problem with that is that Shouji lives in a society where people can look insanely different from a 'normal' human all the time. It's not a disfigurement and if you live in the MHA world, you probably expect to see people with mutation quirks every single day of your life, whether you can predict the kinds of mutations or not. You expect to see people with mutation quirks, but everyone's mutation is different and requires its own acclimatization. It's not a standard pattern "10% of the population has blue skin" or "1 out of 5 children has three arms" or something. You have visual mutations ranging from "a standard human but he has a tail" to "this family has bird heads for some reason" to "this person is a 9 foot tall jacked praying mantis". People can be used to the concept of atypical body types existing, but they definitionally can't be accustomed to every single individual unique mutation. Your anecdote is very heartwarming, thank you for sharing it(this isn't a sarcastic statement, I want to make that clear, it's legitimately nice to read). The two takeaways there are first that 1. your brother made that decision for himself and lots of people make precisely the opposite decision, and 2. your brother hung around with the same people consistently and they got accustomed to his appearance rather than pursuing a career and environment where he would have to interact with terrified strangers in incredibly high stress, dangerous situations that he needs to trust him on the spot on a regular basis. I've never gotten the sense that Shoji is at all ashamed about who and what he is, in large part because Shoji has virtually no screen time. He's certainly not at all afraid or hesitant to show off his extremely freaky monster arms that can sprout animated mouths and eyeballs. oh jay posted:Edgeshot must have some hosed up teeth, because I haven't seen his face either. They showed him maskless in the one-panel flashback of him at UA hanging out with Jeanist when Jeanist was like "oh, man, he's going to die by doing this".
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Sep 11, 2022 14:42
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I have a suspicion that Shoji just flat out doesn't have a mouth/ears/nose on his head. Hence why he wears the mask.
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Sep 11, 2022 15:03
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horikoshi sketched what he looks like, iirc got a hinged canine sort of mouth with no lips and jagged teeth
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Sep 11, 2022 15:13
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I wanna say that a bio page somewhere said that Shoji wears a mask because he scared a little girl when he was younger or something like that. Not that he was forced to, but did it of his own choice because of a bad experience in the past. Now I'm remembering an interview from years ago where Horikoshi mentioned that he had ideas for a whole Shoji arc and now I'm bummed that never happened. I think he also mentioned a Mina one too, which is even more of a bummer.
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Sep 11, 2022 15:15
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