Aside From Muzan And Maybe Obani, This Is So Out Of Character For Giyuu And Especially Sanemi.

The UA Entrance Exam

This was going to be part of a larger post about UA as a whole, but I decided this was probably best to stand alone, because this is more random thought/opinion than a proper critical post. Welcome to what is probably going to be a controversial post: the UA Admissions test isn't bad?

The main argument against it is that it puts those without a combat quirk at a disadvantage, right? And, well, that's true. But... is that wrong?

Here's the thing: the more heroism as a whole is developed in the setting, the more something becomes startling clear, one simple fact that stands above all others.

Heroism is a profession defined by fighting.

You can be a rescue hero, you can spend your time saving people from collapsing building or finding those who are lost, but if you've gotten to the point of being a professional hero? You know how to throw down.

I'm not even talking about UA, here: there's a license exam that everyone has to take, as part of a process of being a hero. Half of it is saving people, yes... but the other half? It's purely about fighting other people. Hell, even part of the saving people portion has combat aspects, since it's focused around, not just saving people, but saving people while under attack.

I'll say it again: if you are a hero, you are a fighter, by definition.

So, what's that have to do with the UA entrance exam? In all honesty, that exam is functionally a simulation of running around a city, beating up random street thugs. It's testing if you can beat people up, one of the most fundamental parts of heroism (deadpan stare).

The follow up point is, what about Quirks that aren't combat focused, but are still useful for heroism? Shinso, for example? If those were actual people, he probably could have beaten them, right? That's unfair!

And, I'll admit, that's right; in the context of that exam, it is unfair, because some people can vomit lava lasers and some can't. Is Brainwash useful? Absolutely. Counterpoint: what is day one Shinso going to do if he meets some guy in an alley with no mouth and a knife?

Die.

Literally, if he didn't run away, all he'd do is die.

Everyone who passed, and quite a few who didn't pass, could take down Wannabe Slenderman, while Shinso would just end up dead in that alley. This is going to sound bad, but life is unfair, and if you're going to go around picking fights with dangerous people and not prepared for that fact, you will pay for it.

Now, let me introduce you to Chad Hagakure.

In the grand scheme of things, while Toru has a useful support power, Shinso's is a lot better than hers, more versatile, more powerful. You can, in the words of Ollivander, do great things with a power like that. While Toru's Quirk gives her some advantages against the robots, it isn't going to beat them for her, either, and the off button idea is fanon with no canon backing.

So how did she get in, with her inferior quirk, when Shinso didn't?

Because Shinso coasted through his life with only his Quirk, and then was helpless when met up with something with the amazing ability to shut up. Everything he did, before Aizawa took him under his wing, revolved around making the other person talk, and absolutely nothing else. Toru, meanwhile, found opponents her invisibility couldn't magically destroy for her, and responded by beating them to death.

You probably think I'm being dramatic or something, but I'm not kidding. You need to stop robots to get points to pass; Izuku is the only person to pass on rescue points only, canonly. She doesn't have a power or tools to let her restrain them like Minoru did, so she had to, had to, break them. She doesn't have laser beams, or fire blasts, or anything to make it easy for her; all Toru had was the ability to ambush things, her muscles, and maybe a rock or a steel plate or something she picked up along the way.

That's all she had... and then she managed to kill her way in the heroism course anyways, past people who probably had Quirks much more compatible with the problem at hand. She went up to robots, probably from behind, and then hit them until they stopped moving.

In other words, Toru went into the Entrance Exam... and then the Doom music kicked in.

At the end of the day, though, I'm saying all these things, and while they're true, I feel like I'm dancing around the fundamental point: being a hero is about more than just a Quirk.

As a setting, MHA is one with a broad set of powers and abilities, by design. It means that there's lots of cool and interesting people to meet, which is the point, but on a practical level, it also means that every Quirk, every Quirk, has something that counters it. For support Quirks especially, there's seemingly always that One Simple Trick to beat them; a pair of thermal goggles, for example, renders Toru Quirkless. If you just don't talk, Brainwash is useless. And when that happens, you can't just say, 'Time out!' and get a new villain; you'll have to fight them anyways.

If you depend on your one special trick and nothing else, one day that will be your downfall.

UA has a lot of questionable decisions in it, about it, around it, but it is good at teaching its students how to beat the living shit out of people; you could even say it specializes in it. It has no illusions about the reality of the job it's preparing them for. And in the same vein, this isn't something that should be a surprise to any applicant; almost every time we see a hero in the media? They've just finished fighting someone. If they're not entering UA with wide open eyes about what they're going to have to do (and probably after signing some liability waivers to boot), then frankly they're idiots.

The Entrance Exam, mostly, tested one simple thing: are you ready to fight someone? Are you ready to walk into that alleyway and beat those thugs into submission? It's easier for people with combat Quirks, yes, because those are Quirks that are good at fighting, but that's not the end all; in another life, if he had worked out before hand, if he was determined to win, even if he was at a disadvantage, Shinso could have walked in, picked up a piece of rebar, and just hit things until he passed.

Like, let's compare Shinso and Bakugou: both of them have a good Quirk, and both of them knew it. (I know fanon and the narrative say otherwise, but Shinso has had nothing but praise from the flashbacks we've seen, with only a few comments that were somewhat negative but still held implicit respect for his Quirk and it's powers. Everyone he talks to says he has a good Quirk. He's happy using his Quirk. He is not the fanon abused little racoon.)

Shinso accepted that as fact and walked into UA without putting any work in, from what we can see (he faced Izuku, who was effectively Quirkless, and the second his Quirk failed he panicked and basiclly flailed more than fought, still only trying to make Izuku talk rather than actually beat him in a fight, even though Izuku was right there, about to beat him in a fight, and prepared to avoid his Quirk) and was smacked down accordingly.

Then we look at Bakugou, and that's the thing with Bakugou: he had an easy road to heroism, and knew it. I've said this somewhere before, but Hori leans on 'Bakugou works hard' as an excuse to not talk about his moral failings, because he does work hard, but not that hard. 'Bakugou working hard', in all honesty, is peak 'Tell not Show', and is repeated so damn often I'm sick of it.

The thing is that the idea of that isn't wrong, just the execution of it. With his muscles, with the way his Quirk is supposed to work, he had to put work into bulking up, staying in shape. He didn't just get his Quirk and say, 'I'm set for life', he fought for it. And while Hori praises him like Rock Lee when we barely see him do shit, the idea of a talented person working hard anyways could have been great. It's something you see in a lot of shonen manga, and is emblematic of heroism itself, and the spirit that UA is supposed to show: you can't just coast into heroism. You need to fight for it, earn it.

...I got a bit off topic there, but the point is the kid didn't just manifest those muscles out of the ether, he has to be training off screen, even if we should be seeing it more on screen.

Bakugou had a good Quirk, but was willing to train himself to achieve his goals.

Toru has a, honestly, medicore Quirk, but still managed to fight her way to her dreams.

Shinso has a good Quirk, but his only strategy when his Quirk failed him was, 'try harder to get them again with my Quirk!'.

Heroism is about power, true, but it's also about attitude, willingness, determination, the ability to perform under pressure and to make good choices and act on them, all the things that got early Izuku through the series before he got Full Cowl, often without using his Quirk at all. Most of that, if not all of it, can be trained over time, true... But if you're not born lucky, and you're not willing or able to work out enough, to think cleverly enough, or to be vicious enough to smash some weak robots, then honestly you're probably not ready for the hero course.

he is just a little guy

Time to shit on Bakugou

I've seen so many takes of "oh Endeavor is meant to be a parallel showing what Bakugou could have become if he never improved"

Where once again the actions show he has not fucking changed.

Also, why wouldn't he want to be like Endeavor? The guy by the end of the series retired as the number 1 hero, is fucking rich, tons of support, including the now HPSC president Hawks, Deku indirectly calls Natsuo unkind for not forgiving him, Rei is seen pushing his electric wheelchair even with three young able-bodied heroes right fucking there. Everyone who criticizes either of them is always casted as wrong end of story

Shoto is for some reason his friend, just like Deku and the Bakusquad, despite the fact that he treats all of them like shit. And the only punishments he ever get is either shared despite the other person not doing shit to deserve it (He forced Deku to fight him, and Shoto was literally being attacked by Isasa), or oh he's not the number one hero because he's just that mean to the press

The narrative never lined up with Bakugo, in that nobody ever responded to him naturally as their characters should have.

How they should have responded based on their own personalities and beliefs.

Stain, Dabi, Aizawa, kirishima, Mina, Iida, Shoto or even ochako.

All of them should have had big issues throughout the series with Bakugo for many reasons.

And even if one ignores all of this and focuses strictly on Bakugo, the delivery on his personal "growth" never really culminated in much real change either.

Because the final chapter shows he's still in the same place as he was during the provisional license exam, his attitude not being great with the civilians he's saving/protecting.

He was failed in the exam for this attitude and skated by through the make-up test.

(By being able to calmly talk to a single kid once I guess?)

Then nearly a decade later, he's still doing the same thing! 😆

It's kind of ridiculous when you look at all of it, like: "Where were we going with this??"

yuck!

no offense but if ur into this shit proudly n publicly, shoo shoo 😭 stop interacting with me if you are into this or that stupid d¥kebreaking bs!! yuck!!

Pressure

A rapper who's deemed herself "The Queen of Rap" went down a 24-hour spiral on various social media platforms with the inclusion of dragging another rapper's deceased mother into her conjuring and allegation-filled commentary and a 4-bar foot rhyme to boot (no pun) because that opposing rapper hissed on a track with no names dropped but a Megan's Law and ass shots that crawled under her skin.

All of this instead of committing to silence, pen to pad, getting in the studio, and dropping in 24 hours. I just—

Weird ass behavior. Nicki has more venom for Megan than for a woman who threw a whole shoe at her and tried to fight her. Megan being silent after the release of her track resulted in Nicki releasing hot air hoping she would respond outside of the studio. Like hello? Where is your track, Ms. "Queen of Rap"?? 🎤

Muzan when he can’t leave the infinity fortress cuz of the sun

I know I’m really going hard with the Bakugo bashing today, but I’m not gonna lie, he has the energy of that one white kid at school who listened to Eminem, or gangsta rap in general once and thinks he’s had a hard life, getting upset at facing actual consequences for his actions, meanwhile he’s the most spoiled/privileged kid in the class. We all went to school with that kid don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about.

So this might be a hot take or it might not be but I 100% believe Bakugo was an entitled kid whose parents probably spoiled the fuck out of him along with everyone else. Or at the very least probably fueled his superiority complex. And the entire reason for the inferiority complex he had is because he knew Izuku was better than him in every way except being quirkless and that's why he was such a shit to him. Hell we see Bakugo's thought process play out during his shittastic "apology" because Izuku tried to help him when he fell into the river he's a better person than Bakugo because he has fucking empathy for everyone and Bakugo couldn't stand that. And it's a large part of why I will never like Bakugo as a character. Fundamentally could he have changed? Yes. But the execution of his change was done so poorly that even Horikoshi admitted in the epilogue that Bakugo is still not a good person. He still treats others poorly and will probably go down in the rankings because of that. He's an entitled shit who never had anyone truly check his behavior and just because he's done a few good things does not outweigh all the bad he's done and continues to do.

Not “Only my reading of canon is correct” or “Interpretations are subjective and all valid” but a secret third thing, “More than one interpretation can be valid but there’s a reason your English teacher had you cite quotes and examples in your papers, you have to have a strong argument that your interpretation is actually supported by the text or it is just wrong and I’m fine with telling you it’s wrong, actually.”