Eri's touted as sort of a 'Tenko But Things Went Right', which isn't wrong, but I feel like her save relied a lot of luck too. And luck shouldn't be a determining factor in child welfare??
It was by pure chance that Deku and Mirio first encountered her. 100% random bump. Nighteye had no idea about any child in the Shie Hassakai compound, despite having staked it out for at least a few days already.
The rescue effort was launched to save Eri, yes, but only because the Heroes had that one lucky detail to connect “DNA inside bullets” to “visibly injured child”. Without that...who knows? If Heroes had no compelling evidence to storm the compound, would they have just continued a routine drug investigation? If they raided the compound but didn’t know about the child beforehand, what would’ve happened to her? Shunted off to an orphanage because she’s ‘a criminal/yakuza’s child’? Place under HPSC supervision because of her relation to the bullets?
The manga itself stated that Eri was going to be sent off to an orphanage, BUT her out-of-control quirk was cause for concern and fortunately there was the one (1) guy who can suppress her quirk and help train her - who happened to be a teacher at a private educational campus run by a multi-millionaire who can afford to take her in as a ward. How amazingly lucky!!!! (And everyone themselves said that they were hoping to teach Eri how to use her quirk so that she can cure Mirio. How nice that her quirk is deadly but also has this miraculous healing ability that lends this additional incentive to take her in.) Eri is still only in custody of UA because her last living blood relative, her grandfather, is still in a coma. Would Pops ever want her back, if he ever wakes up? Would UA let him? Good thing UA has the resources and connections to win a custody battle, in this case.
Plus, before all of that, Eri was already another abandoned child, way before the Heroes ever learned of her. Her mom abandoned her; then her grandfather took her in, but when he fell into a coma, she ended up with the worse possible caretaker. Yeah, Overhaul is Overhaul, but a relative falling ill and being unable to take care of a child is something that can happen to any family.
Eri was abandoned by her mom because she killed her dad. What on earth was the police doing then? Did her mom is not report this? Five seconds after the dad disappeared, the mom immediately plopped the toddler in the car seat and drove her off to Pops? Or is it more likely the mom screamed and panicked and called emergency services, but it turned out that there’s nothing to be done about the dad… and then emergency services also apparently did nothing about the mom or Girl With Newly Lethal Quirk or the beginning of quirk counseling so that the mom could understand the accident as ‘mutant quirk’ and not ‘curse’??
There were points where Eri could've been saved, before she ever bumped into Deku, before Overhaul put Pops in a coma and started cutting her up.
Similarity, saving Tenko shouldn't have just been 'Hero happened to be in the area and wasn't busy and was able to spot this injured child and go help him' (if it doesn't turns out AFO was behind this too lol), or 'if only there could've been a Hero 15 years ago who could handle his quirk, hold his hand, and give him relief'. It should've been 'first person who saw this injured child called the police or took Tenko to a police box'. It should've been 'Kotarou's last act of parenting was not to pick up garden shears and whack his kid with it, but know to keep calm and know what to do in a quirk emergency' or whatever. It should've been 'the three other adults in the household had enough conscience to not let Kotarou bully his toddler'. Hell, it should've been 'All Might and Gran kept tabs on the Shimura boy'.
idk. I just don't think 'Luckily a Hero noticed!' is good enough.
i think a lot of fic writers who are trying to stay in-character would benefit highly from figuring out some characters’ senses of humor and just… letting them be funny in different ways. ime i’m taken out of the story not during the serious and angsty moments, but most often when the writer inserts a line that they clearly think is funny but just reads so completely ooc for the specific character—polar opposite of the char’s usual word choice and humor, that it almost always immediately pings me as “something the author inserted because they personally think it’s funny.” more often than not i can probably tell when it’s actually the writer speaking, not the character, and it happens a looot with humor.
Boy, the heroes of MHA sure do find their questionable actions needing defences like “but it’s a war” or “AFO/Shigaraki/Twice is/was so dangerous though” or “well the villains are committing war crimes too” lately. You don’t really see other media’s heroes needing those excuses; at least not the ones going for MHA’s optimistic tone. I’d like to talk about why for a bit, as well as why MHA changing that script doesn’t really work for the heroes.
You see; while we on Tumblr like to make fun of how villains in media are always trying to fix something but kick a puppy so you know we’re supposed to side with the people not trying to fix things: the way it’s supposed to be is that villains, at least the well-(enough-)intentioned extremist types like the League & most of the PLF, try to better the world but go *dramatic voice* too far in the process. Meanwhile the heroes harden their resolve and take them down by the book through ingenuity and determination; and although they are protecting the status quo, in the process of this victory the heroes prove that whatever problems initially sparked the conflict can be solved in *dramatic voice* a better way.
But if the heroes also go *dramatic voice* too far in their efforts to protect the status quo, as they do in BNHA, well that kind of undercuts their platform. I mean what’s the message there? That there actually isn’t a better way because underhanded & sketchy tactics are the only way to get things done? That message sucks and so do these heroes.
I can see why the manga keep trying to ignore or brush aside the heroes’ moral darkening, clumsily hand-waving Machia’s brainwashing or framing Hawks as still a good guy ‘cause he’s so optimistic and the like. It makes it really hard for them to be inspiring with all their ‘light of hope’ talk if you don’t forget all that. I know because I make a point not to forget this stuff and I don’t find these heroes inspiring at all.
Not to be bitter or anything but im happy dabi killed fanon touya