My Hero Academia Characters are kinda Petty (And that's the Point!)

wanna see me run to that mountain back you wanna see me do it again the word hero has been given many meanings and connotations throughout literature and human history in general but usually it has intersected with concepts such as altruism and self-sacrifice the archetypical hero is someone who sets out to defeat evil uphold justice and save the day all while being relatively unconcerned with their own desires and well-being this is an image that has crystallized itself through history and through mostly transcends cultures and groups across the globe so when you regardless of who you are here title my hero academia there is a certain expectation that's placed namely to find and recognize these archetypical images of the hero however there is a slight issue my your academia characters are kind of petty contrary to the connotations of the heroic story a lot of characters in a series have their motivations and behaviors founded in pretty small irrelevant and sometimes straight up childish basis this is seen a small scale with people like Oaxaca who only wants to become a hero for the money or manera who is on the hunt for fame which will bring him female attention on the other hand you get characters like bakru who based her hero journey on a foundation of a desire for superiority and dominance and in an extreme case and ever who torments his family endlessly on his quest to unimpeded glory this tendency of pettiness puts them all very close to their counterparts the villains who the glance also shared his quality be it gentle becoming an outlaw because of selfish wish to be recognized or shigaraki bound to destroy everything because why not pettiness penetrates every corner of harakas world and that's the point let me explain you could take everything I just said at face value and just say oh I guess they're all just prettier and leave it at that but that would be very reductive and would be ignoring most of the framework around these instances of pettiness because in most cases that pettiness has a clear reason in place both who dissociated character and the story because there are multiple angles to approach this and because I'm an English student and have brain rot let's look at the function and presence of pettiness in three distinct sections one first thing the inclusion of this penis does is that it humanized the characters quite significantly remember the hero definitions I was busting out in the intro well one general challenge all classic fictional figures need to tackle is the question of humanization how much do you want your hero or character to just be a symbol versus a human being the larger-than-life figures may work excellently and clearly and unambiguously communicating themes concepts and messages but are not as efficient at emphasizing human struggles whereas more human figures excel at that at the cost of their symbolic and thematic clarity this becomes increasingly important when talking about a fundamental conflict like good versus evil depending on your priorities you might want to keep your characters rather on one side or the other for example if you're crafting something like a fable or a symbolic tale where the main point is to be an ideological or conceptual vessel keeping your characters more as larger-than-life symbols will do the trick meanwhile if your idea is to create a story based on direct minut human moments the human side is more your stick this isn't a black and white University valid spectrum by any means but these tendencies do crystallize themselves in quite a few stories and their creation processes hero akka decides to put its focus squarely on the human side while still occasionally flirting with the larger-than-life signed to illustrate let's look at an easy example Oh chocolate Ericka when read on a wiki page as I know some of you do her motivations seem incredibly small minded yet money but when looked within context it makes a lot of sense in here akka being a hero is just a job and a very well-paying one at that so someone being born into a poor but loving family with a quirk that would work well for a hero wanting to chase that profession to earn money and all support her parents is very human Express supposed a streamlined capitalistic nature of heroism in this world in Rakas carrying nature is of this nature that is later used to mature her when a death of night I caused her to realize that not only is there a lot of suffering in the world but she has the power to prevent some of it and it is there for her duty to do so so her petty initial goal sets up a trait of her character which combines with her journey through the story to get her one step closer to becoming a more classical heroine while still being founded on a goal that is very understandable money is great I love money give me this pattern of humanization is used all throughout Haraka like with bars childish to prioritise slowly giving way to an admission of his flaws this is also not just limited to heroes every character in this story can be touched by this idea gendell's drive can on paper seem relatively empty at first yet famous but when he considered a horror of being forgotten a society that idolizes immortal Fame as the only real way of validation his motivation is incredibly human and understandable 1 and again this pettiness later gives way to true altruism when he decides to not only spare midoriya the pain of having his festival ruined but also doing his very best to make sure la Brava doesn't get incriminated alongside with him so as you can see the presence of pettiness in here akka is consistently used to humanize its characters on their journey to larger-than-life symbols it turns cartoony caricatures into human characters the presence of pettiness is also utilized to continuously complicate the world of hiraoka many characters within the story have their position and generally expected quality subverted and contextualized by a hearty degree of pettiness which makes them into relations restore his moral narrative a lot more complicated tomato tomahto endeavor as a top hero after communal incident he is the man who's responsible for helming all of her society and leading it to prosperity and peace he while not unilaterally beloved as all might is the pillar that has to hold the fabric of daily life together but he is also the man who started his journey of true heroism glory out of a petty desire for dominance over the established number one and desired had led him to torment his family for two whole decades the symbol of justice is nothing more than a sad selfish man bent on proving himself superior however this is then again contrasted with this overwhelming competence of being a hero as endeavor agency mini Ark shows becoming a professional at this level is an enormous achievement and endeavor has saved countless lives with that expertise the inclusion of his petty initial goal contrasts with his position within society to make him a more complicated felt understand and feel about which is good because it makes him more interesting to follow many other heroes have similarly petty initial motivations like mount lady being the hero equivalent of a titty streamer these small inclusions make the positions as heroes a lot less clear-cut which gets pretty juicy once you compare them with the villains one of my favorite examples for this approach is stained he is superficially a very clear symbol a man with an ideology that lights the people of flame and heralds many of the developments of the story his influence is immense still to this day therefore he is narrative Lee speaking in a position where he should be a large and life symbolic entity someone who embodies his ideal so strongly that they permeate throughout the entire story however once you take a closer look at him this revealed itself not be entirely true his ideals some pretty grand at the surface but what is his actual game plan how does he intend to make heroism great again the answer is he doesn't have an answer stain doesn't offer any solutions or ideas he just kills in the vague hope that it wakes society up more importantly his murderous quest is based pretty much only on his personal disillusionment of society in short he is an angry tween who hates society and wants to kill instead of actually advocating for any practical solutions the embodiment of pettiness this is not only in stark contrast whose proposal in the story as the revolutionary Messiah but also interesting point of alignment with a series true main villain shigaraki angry tween who hates society and wants to kill is a somewhat apt description of him too after all however with shigaraki this pettiness is evolved and elaborated into something bigger not a selfish desire to see the world changed but rather a profile nihilism stemming from real experience with the world failings combined with his newly formed PLF shigaraki brings with him a strong ideological force which is itself a stark contrast to the more small-minded hero side the PLF as much as they are led by shigaraki who is a bit of a nihilistic lunatic are a force that presents itself as completely devoted to Destro's ideology of liberation which is again a more outspoken and more defined ideology than anything we see on the hero side and again it is not founded in just pettiness even if she gerak his initial development did have that sort of vibe with him in short pettiness pops up consistently as a means to complicate the various character situations in the plot and make the whole shebang just that more interesting to follow as conflicts form naturally lastly the presence of pettiness is like pretty much any aspect in here Alka there to reinforce some of its central themes I would like to revisit this specific point in a later video but to set the stage real quick one of the most central and also sometimes overlooked thematic cores of Heroica is the idea of the generational shift many elements of the story and characters strongly emphasize and hold in on the questions of how a society progresses from one generation to the other on a macro scale and how individual people contribute to that shift in the micro scale this is seen especially well in how the series essentially creates a divide between two eras prime all night and post all night and pettiness embellishes that divide when we talk about larger-than-life heroic figures symbols of concepts it's safe to say that no one here ARCA fits the description better than all might he is righteous powerful inspiring grand and overall the de facto glue that keeps society together but and this is the crucial bit he doesn't really have any motivations or goals his driving thought is a simple and vague I must protect society which further emphasizes just how much of a classical figure he really is and it is this figure that everyone else in a story fails to live up to by having the story filled with these flawed heroes people aiming to be ideals but falling short of it weighed down with her human small-mindedness the story distinguishes between two all mites and the not all mites of the world quite harshly but this doesn't mean that those who aren't unflinching symbols of altruistic justice are wrong we see that all mites unilateral reign as the shining beacon has left society over reliant and vulnerable unable to cope with his absence moreover as feelings towards heroism in general begin becoming more gray and complicated as simple I want justice here like all might just ain't gonna cut it any more so the simplicity of the prime Almighty era gives way to the more human complexity of the post almighty era a shift that is in part also communicated through the various instances of the newer generations having more grounded human and yes even petty goals so the pettiness of the newer generation ends up fleshing out the theme of the generational shift quite significantly as society scrambles to find beacons of hope in a more complicated petty toast all-night world in conclusion pettiness is continuously present within the characters of hiraoka however that presence is intentional and utilized pretty well for various goals most notably the humanization complication and feminization of various story elements and characters or maybe I am just insane who knows I went without seeing a person for two months and then had exams for another three weeks my brain is literally broken by thank you so much for watching today's video I hope you had a wonderful time if you wish to support the channel more you can like the video subscribe ring the bell or if you really want to help me out you can also go down to link in description and support me over on patreon you can pay whatever amount you want you'd become a patron and you put your name at the end of every one of my videos if that is something you're interested in thank you so much again for your time and I'll see you all next time bye bye you

Channel: Oceaniz

Views: 60,142

Rating: 4.9412441 out of 5

Keywords: MHA, BNHA, HeroAca, My Hero Academia, Boku no Hero Academia, Petty, Analysis, Manga, Anime, Deku, shigaraki, Endeavor, All Might, Oceaniz, Oceaniz96

Id: IstrjFiYaIM

Length: 13min 24sec (804 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 09 2020