The Dabi Experience - Journey to the Twist

june 24th 2017. my year academia had just aired its 26th episode where fledgling heroes pick some names and head off to their work studies it was also here that it was announced that the anime would take a two week break before heading into the next arc i coming off the heels of the phenomenal sports festival didn't want to wait that long so i caved and read the manga suffice to say i kinda liked it but among the many many things that i ended up loving in this manga there was one character that stuck with me one person who really had no business being as popular and as intriguing as he ended up being this was of course dobby holder of the blue flame and the local frankenstein's monster cosplayer this might be one of the most overanalyzed and over theorized characters i have ever come across perhaps on par with the crazy nonsense we had going on before toby and naruto got his reveal every time this stenchlord came onto the page me and numerous others started pointing fingers screaming him and scrambling to fit every word he spoke in every step he took into our theories regarding his identity and role in the plot every single time and now at least one part of that his identity has been revealed this doesn't mean the theorizing will stop as there are still countless unanswered questions up in the air but it does mean that a multiple year-long saga has come to an end so for the occasion i would like to do a little retrospective this isn't really going to be an analysis video per se but rather just me going through the various clues and foreshadowings how the fans reacted how i reacted and how reasonable slash unreasonable and fun it all was piecing together how this twist worked and how i experienced it so join me today as you reminisce about the dobby experience [Music] now i came into the manga kind of late so our story has to actually start before my entry into the source material the dobby experience started all the way back on august 8th 2015 with maywear academia chapter 57 this chapter only gave us two glimpses at the character as this is technically before his proper introduction however one interesting thing to note here was a detail in the very first panel this figure appears in while it isn't completely visible in the manga the anime's more detailed background shots showed and confirmed that this character is walking out of what seems to be a beauty salon you know the place where you'd get hair dye [Music] as the stain arc ramps down following the eponymous villain's defeat shigaraki begins recruiting followers of the hero killer to his cause among them is a mysterious patched up young adult rude and cold immediately ready to fight dobby's first appearance happened at a time when the fandom wasn't really at its peak yet the anime hadn't even been announced and while the manga was enjoying success it was nothing compared to what was to come due to this i couldn't really find any indications of fans already theorizing who this guy was and it's easy to see why they wouldn't this scene doesn't really give us much aside from a new really cool and mysterious design and a bit of dialogue that is very anime-esque you don't know who i am we don't even get to see his quirk yet however there was one bit of dialogue one phrase that would much later be used as a piece of evidence and a juicy one at that time the right now along with chi's reaction makes it clear dobby is a fake name which is quite exciting and would much later be used to fuel a lot of the theory crafting what does he have to hide why is his name relevant enough to be brought up as a mystery who is he [Music] as our heroes enjoy a summer training camp in a remote woodland area they are besieged by the league of villains vanguard action squad under command of none other in darby this is the first time we really get to see how this character speaks and acts and funnily enough this was the point in the story that began planting the seeds for what would become a frenzy of fan theories and head gammons for starters readers were finally introduced to dobby's quirk which while unnamed has been referred to as cremation ever since the term coined by anime youtuber young orphy was accepted and used by the fan wiki this flame quirk capable of burning at immense temperatures was at first seemingly inconspicuous due to a few differences to the other main flame users in the story for one the appearance dobby's flames were drawn completely differently than the regular orange fire of shoto and ng being a darker shade and having different patterns it's important to note that until the anime reached this arc much later we didn't actually know the color of dobby's fire since no character ever mentions it until much much later in the manga i personally thought they were black when i first read it because i like amaterasu additionally the way dobby uses flames is quite different while the rookies were capable of shooting even beams of fire dobby's quirk seemed to cause a sort of recoil with him having to retract his arm after almost every blast but while dobby's quirk was not yet very suspicious his behavior told a different story while he exuded a general hatred of the pro-hero system arguably being the first character of the stain to vocalize it it was his final moment in this arc that really started the fire pun intended how sad for you shoto tororoki this moment was even back then quite suspicious while dobby's general attitude towards our heroes was a sadistic glee shoto was the only student he directly called out by full name and besides just that there is the visual composition of the page dobby's shadow perfectly covering toroki's scarred flame side some brush it off is just a cool page but one thing to remember is that in both writing and art there are no coincidences since artwork is almost always constructed every single detail is a choice koheiorikoshi deliberately drew and inked every bit of shadow in this image including that on churro's face emboldened by this fact this page remained a salient part of the dobby experience in fact i would confidently say that it was this exact page that gave birth to the dhabi todoroki theory this now influenced theory basically assumed that dabi was one of endeavour's sons turned into a villain through some means and now hell-bent on terrorizing his family at this point evidence for this theory was somewhat scarce but present dobby has a flame quirk dobby hates heroes dobby has some sort of special interest in shoto and choda's two older brothers we at that point hadn't seen yet outside of flashbacks none of those brothers had black hair but then again this is where dobby's appearance from the beauty salon came back in dying your hair isn't an outlandish concept it is also here where one of dobby's introductory lines was given renewed importance i go by dobby right now which many just reaffirmed that not only was this man hiding something but also that that something was due to that specific focus and dobby's growing present in the story quite important this spring chapter wasn't necessarily interesting for what it did do but rather for what it didn't do as the united hero front storms the league's hideout gran torino lists the names of those they arrest one by one each of them except one dobby for some reason dobby is completely omitted from this scene which is actually really weird this is the government making a formal arrest with almost infinite resources and intel at their disposal and yet dobby remains unidentified more peculiar however is how the scene is constructed all the big name heroes storm into the hideout except endeavour who even comments at how dumb it is that he is left outside with the police now there's a bunch of good reasons why he might be left behind his quirkin fighting style doesn't really suit indoor team battles and his large arsenal of firepower makes him a better asset outside however from a narrative perspective him being the only one left out got people thinking maybe this is so that he doesn't meet dobby as a sort of future proofing for a potential reveal of a relation between the two if they never saw dobby it would probably force the reveal since he should recognize him so having the two miss each other by a hair seemed to many as an indication by horikoshi that their meeting would be one of importance and had to be therefore saved for later if you needed an example of just how crazy people were getting over this frankenstein boyband [ __ ] listen to this chapter 160 was considered another piece of evidence for the dobby todoroki theory because dobby says he's carsick and motion sickness is one of the lasting symptoms of abuse trauma yeah i know but you gotta remember what 2017 was like the anime had started and was airing its crazy successful second season which caused a massive influx of new manga readers me included when those readers arrived they found an already well-established pot of fan theories regarding the patch-faced man which was further fueled by the fact that the dude hadn't appeared in the manga for almost a full year and also let's not beat around the bush 2017 was also a year when tumblr was still very active and if there is one place that breeds the most rabid head cannons founded upon shoddy understanding of pop magazine level psychology it was tumblr so it was this environment in which people saw dobby wanting to barf as a confirmation of his connection to endeavor i'm not bringing this up because i believe this was an actual piece of evidence it definitely wasn't but because i want you to understand just how crazy we were for dobby theories and tidbits like there was no real harm done through this it was kind of fun just geeking out with people about details like these we were all having a blast and honestly as dumb as it was i do cherish those days a lot outside of the manga the anime now began taking its first steps into this absolute mess of a character as episode 41 introduced the smell master properly giving anime onlys their first real look at his power set the reason i bring this up is because this was the very first time after two years that we got a canonical color for dobby's flames deep blue this by itself wouldn't be cause for much emotion as it just means his flames are quite hot but staying true to this absolute fever dream of a plot point this revelation sent the fandom into overdrive for one simple reason back in season 2 studio bones was flirting with the idea of original filler anime original content that they would clear and discuss with horikoshi beforehand thus making it semi-canon and one of those anime original scenes included endeavour fighting a nomu using blue flames and well you can imagine the rest it didn't matter that it was filler in fact i'm sure some of you didn't know until right now that this scene isn't canon because now we had both a scene of endeavour using blue flames and the confirmation that dobby's flames were also blue so as you undoubtedly already surmised the dobby toroki theory went from relatively obscure fan fiction to almost generally accepted pseudo canon it in fact became so mainstream because of this that we would soon see people actually try and disprove it because of course the moment something becomes popular someone has to immediately dislike it because we've kind of equated being cool to being dismissive in this absolute health scape of modernity but i'm getting off track [Applause] [Music] [Applause] now we're getting into the juicy stuff with the dabitaroki theory having become a pretty well-known head canon and with the fanbase rapidly growing it was only a matter of time until the next instance which sent the fandom into a frenzy to euphoria and it came in probably the most unexpected form imaginable endeavour's character arc two years after the fact it's easy to take it for granted but i cannot tell you how incredible it was to see horikoshi actually address endeavor and is passed through the now iconic pro hero arc short sweet and action-packed this mini arc was a rollercoaster from top to bottom and it was doubly interesting for us derby connoisseurs because this increased focus on endeavor naturally came with more insight into his family and was immediately apparent that it would be quite important to the fan theories as the arc pretty much starts with us finally getting to see more members of the toroki family namely we finally got to meet natsuo who up until this point had gone unnamed yeah this theory has been brewing for three years at this point and we hadn't even seen either of the male siblings yet that's how crazy this [ __ ] was more importantly than his name however was his hair color back during the sports festival shoto's brothers have been shown very briefly with the anime later showing one of them to be white-haired while the other was red-haired looking at how chodo's dichromatic hair shows which side got ice in which got fire it was then easy to guess that the white haired brother had ice powers from rey while the redhead would be a pure fire user so now we had natsuo the white-haired brother casually appearing in the story while his red-haired sibling the supposed fire user was not even mentioned to the fans of the time this seemed like too overt of on a mission and people went of course crazy there was only one problem the hair colors were actually anime only in the manga both brothers were seen to have white or at least light hair and we know it's white and not red because hori draws red hair fairly dark this presented a bit of a monkey wrench but people remain undaunted no fan theory is complete without openly ignoring canon material that contradicts your ideas after all regardless the hype kept trucking on through the ark as the fight against the gnome wound down the theorists were given another jolt as the patch prince himself made an appearance marking his first on-screen meeting with endeavour the latter of which is conveniently visually impaired during their encounter suspiciously convenient eh this however was only the beginning as this scene ended with dobby leaving endeavour the same way he did choto gleefully shouting his full name now there was a pattern a parallelism that dobby established only with two members of the taraoki family additionally just like his scene with shoto this parting also involves visual clues as he is engulfed by ujiko's quirk the teleport juice on dabi forms a pseudo-recreation of endeavour's flame patterns in his face bit but oceans isn't this a huge stretch well a have you been paying attention we were clearly insane reasonability is not a factor here and b as i said with the shadow scene when you have to draw every single line deliberately coincidences are a nigh on impossibility so it isn't unreasonable to assume things like that based on the visuality of the scene before the arc ended we received one final thing that's relevant to the theory the missing brother's name natsu mentions that he will never forgive what happened to big brother toya in this short phrasal segment natsuo gave us an immense amount of information for one we finally had a name crazy to think about we went this long without even knowing what he was called also he's the big brother meaning he was older than natsuo since natsu is 19 that manatoya had to be at least older than that if we look at the ages of the dorothy siblings do you notice something they are all about three to four years apart which is the exact amount of time it takes on average for a child's quirk to appear the implication here would be that after he made each kid endeavour would wait to see if they would manifest the perfect ice fire mix he was looking for before making the next one dark but in character going off of this assumption the theorists at the time surmised then that since putin is three years older than not so toya must have been the first child putting that around 26 years old lastly we are told something bad happened to him we don't hear any more about it but we really didn't need to the anime's red calling of his hair his age and his unfortunate fate pretty much confirmed that toya was probably dobby to a lot of people it just fit too well with the exception of the hair color thing especially since dobby is black-haired but again clinical insanity and whatnot so we just presumed that he probably dyes his hair or something the joint training arc carried with it loads of characterization for much as secondary cast but what interests us in this context is the treatment todoroki got as he gears up for his match he remembers his training with his father in his flashback we get the second ever mention of toya and even some additional information according to endeavour toya's fire burned even hotter than his but the child unfortunately manifested the same weakness of fire in his body as his ice using mother possessed in short it was implied that toya's quirk was so strong and his body was so weak that his own quirk hurts him now a fire user who is full of burns i wonder if we've ever seen someone like that as the bombastic my villain academia arc went on dobby ended up in a tussle with ice user gettin who fun fact was for a while theorized to be fuuimutaroki in disguise yeah i know we were that insane during that fight the observant gettin realizes something about dobby that you guessed it just fueled the fires even more getting states that dobby's quirk hurts him and burns his flesh considering it had been just 28 chapters ago that we heard this exact line used to refer to toya the connection was easy to make but what's even cooler is that once you found this out if you went back through earlier parts of the manga you could see this happening in real time one thing that always stuck out to me was that dobby's quirks seemed to have a different activation method than the todoroki's whenever he released fire he had to quickly retract his hand like a recoil what i said earlier but now we knew that this wasn't actually a feature of his quirk but rather him just trying not to get burnt really cool and satisfying to see a detail like this end up mattering i feel rewarded when stuff like this happens as autumn came around my academia launched into the endeavor agency arc a super fun mini arc where the three stooges train under endeavour this was cute but also super interesting for us lunatics that was because shortly after the arc started the folks got invited to a dinner at the todoroki mansion a setting that would definitely yield new and juicy morsels about toya surely enough it happened with the caveat good news we got our first look at toya bad news toya is dead yeah as our first real look at toya came in the form of a memorial shrine something reserved for dead people the dobby toroki theory began shaking a bit this was not helped by the fact that toya clearly had white hair in the image which to be honest start to give a lot of people me included the impression that the anime coloring was just a mistake that we had taken too seriously still we held out hope and we were actually kind of rewarded when endeavour addresses the event that killed his son he says i might as well have killed him myself not only does this mean that endeavour didn't just actively murder a child but it also somewhat implies that he was not present and that leaves room for a lovely theory to breathe a few relieved breaths because now the death could be faked or orchestrated or whatever however it still didn't fix the hair and it made it more ambiguous than this theory had maybe ever been you know as the paranormal liberation war arc began and raged i think many of us kind of stopped talking about dobby yeah like sure we still had a lot of evidence and the idea of dobby destabilizing hero society by revealing endeavour's pass to the public perhaps via video broadcast floated around here and there but generally people kind of stopped caring and i think the reason was fatigue many might have felt that dobby twist was long overdue and that there was little horico she could do to keep it interesting when it inevitably happened i even mentioned this in a video in january additionally i think some people were also dissuaded by the reveals of the endeavor agency arc taking toya's death at face value and leaving it at that so basically those who believed in the theory were getting sick of waiting for confirmation and those that didn't believe in it didn't think much of it thus slowly as more interesting and pressing events took the stage the theories surrounding dobby just slowly faded until he did this in the middle of their fight dobby calls hawks by his name not his hero name but his actual birth name keigo takami this is a name that hawks left behind as a small child when it was taken in by the hero association and their mysterious secret training program [Music] to repeat this is a name the public doesn't know because the government scrubbed it from all records dobby knowing this was huge because it implied that he had some sort of connection or tunnel to the government and was to some extent privy to information he really should not have and it didn't stop there after twice's death daby does not cry he laughs gleefully commenting that his tear ducts were burned off ages ago this is also the first time where it's confirmed that the marks on dobby are actual burns getting did kind of soft imply it but this is the first time we get it from the horse's mouth itself hawks remarks that dobby is as much of an unknown quantity as shigaraki who let's not forget was specifically hidden by the lord of evil in response dobby drops the now infamous black speech bubble where he reveals something to hawks that we don't get to see we in fact still don't know what he said while this is infuriating i love the tone of the scene nonetheless hawk's eyes open in pure horror and dobby declares that out of everyone on the field today he is the most dangerous one due to what he is what he knows and his desire to realize stain's will this scene single-handedly got us back into business the dobby reveal became an actual factor now because now it was less about who he is and most about what his plans are everyone kind of accepted he was toyah but now the why was more important after the scene dobby almost seemed to carry the potential to become a third party in the story a main villain besides shigaraki which is the coolest [ __ ] in existence he somehow had ties to the government and knew something that had hawks someone who had literally just killed a man so shook that he didn't say a word dobby would continue to act suspiciously for the rest of the arc being oddly happy about the destruction and nabbing skeptic the tech guy for some reason and so the arc continued dobby continued to laugh and as machia reached the main battlefield and tv and radio stations started failing for mysterious reasons as the arc raced towards its climax as the league race to reach shigaraki and to heroes it happened [Music] [Applause] [Music] you might think that calling this a twist is not quite right at this point this character and his story had been pieced together bit by bit over a period of five years with dedicated and casual fans alike being at the very least aware of this possible connection a surprise this was not but let's consider a twist for a moment does it inherently necessitate surprise what exactly does a surprise twist the word does indeed actually not directly reference surprise instead denoting an event that twists the story in a new and interesting direction although it is colloquially often conjoined with the idea of a shock or surprise but if a twist's main goal is to alter the course of the story through consequences and implications then the dobby reveal does exactly that as he washes the black dye out of his hair and announces his thread entity half a decade worth of theories finally find confirmation in one joyous moment and i unironically love it i don't think anyone was shocked or surprised at this reveal as most people like me were relieved to finally have the answers to our questions and to not have to wear clown costumes but i think surprise was clearly not the intended effect anyway if hory wanted to emphasize the shock of this moment he would have probably ended the chapter here on this panel having the reveal be a big cliffhanger but he precisely doesn't do that instead making the reveal a chapter long event this to me at least makes it clear this isn't much of a reveal as much as it is a celebration dobby is celebrating finally being able to reveal his father's sins while hori is celebrating finally being able to reveal dobby's real position in the story to us instead of some dramatic moody scene of dobby unveiling his big secret we get him dancing and clapping like a goofball rambling on and glee as he lists the atrocities the heroes committed it doesn't just characterize the otherwise stoic gobby as much more unhinged than previously believed but also sets in motion a proverbial thematic tsunami as now hero society is at its lowest point possible this reveal is perhaps the biggest upset the story's world has seen thus far and i am so happy about it that a plot element i was so curious and worried about ended up getting such a phenomenal treatment every little detail we theorized ended up actually mattering the saloon scene did actually foreshadow his hair dye the anime's coloring consistency actually made sense because toya had red hair that went wide from stress his flames burning him was indeed to his body being weak to fire etc etc etc as a fan who has followed this particular series for years now it felt so immensely rewarding to see all my insane ramblings finally pay off you know we often talk about reveals and twists like they have to completely blow your mind but this is a perfect example of a twist that didn't surprise anyone but it rewarded its fans for being loyal and for being attentive and honestly if a series can give me the the feeling of building a puzzle of finding the pieces and playing detective myself and then confirming it happily i am perfectly fine with that that is a tremendously cool achievement and i love it and as the chapter closes on the awesome and haunting panel of dobby declaring the past as undying this reveal cements itself as everything i wanted and more i understand that some might feel differently and that's fine i think my hero is one of those series where your personal investment really determines how you perceive the story but to me this was an amazing ride from start to finish and now that dobby has probably entered the plot i cannot wait to see where the story takes this crazy dude next personally i am super excited for the next chapter in the dobby experience because now we know who he is we of course must ask what's his plan what does he want and why does he want it but that dear viewer is a video for another day thank you all so much for watching for going on this insane journey with me i know this isn't what i usually do but this was such a cool reveal i just had to do something special for it thank you of course also to all our patrons including christian thinkpina erina victor perez fiction ape kendri williams ceni zanji one and mr meander thank you all so much have fun in life be happy i'm recording this at christmas so merry christmas even though this will probably come out like months afterwards because oh my god that i think is going to be a [ __ ] but anyway thank you thank you thank you thank you so much we're almost at 100k it's insane you can tell i'm kind of out of my mind right now i'm tired but take care of yourself wash your hands be safe bye bye i love you all bye

Channel: Oceaniz

Views: 230,714

Keywords: Oceaniz, Dabi, Toya, Endeavor, MHA, BNHA, Manga, War Arc, Shigaraki, All for One, Prison, Quirk, Shoto, Todoroki

Id: Oy087dEdGPA

Length: 32min 34sec (1954 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 16 2021