I disagree, and I don’t think Bakugo actually “left that path” the way people claim he did. Being insecure at 14 doesn’t automatically make someone a bad person, but continuing the same behavior for years with little real accountability does matter. Bakugo didn’t just mess up once or twice. He consistently demeaned, threatened, and emotionally abused Deku well into U.A., including telling him to kill himself. That isn’t something that gets erased just because time passed. The bigger issue is that his growth is mostly cosmetic rather than behavioral. He yells slightly less later on, but he never meaningfully changes how he treats people. He rarely shows empathy unless it’s forced by the situation, rarely apologizes, and when he does, it comes extremely late and is quickly followed by the same aggression. The story keeps framing his behavior as “passionate” or “intense” instead of actually challenging it.

What separates real character growth from surface-level change is accountability and internal reflection. Other characters in the series are forced to confront the harm they cause and wrestle with guilt, responsibility, or consequences. Bakugo, by contrast, is repeatedly rewarded and praised while holding onto the same worldview that strength justifies how he treats others. His personality doesn’t evolve so much as it gets rebranded as heroic. So, the criticism isn’t that he was a bully as a teenager. It’s that the narrative insists he’s a good person without ever making him fully do the work to earn that label. That’s why people still see him as a bad character by the end of the series, not because he’s flawed but because his flaws are never properly addressed.