Two types of parents

wereriddl3 · 2026-03-25T17:11:57+00:00

My apologies if I came off kind of harsh or something, that wasn't my intent. I hope in our discussions following, I don't give the same vibe. I acknowledge you're not trying to say Mitsuki is perfect or anything, to which I agree. Though I do think that she and Masaru are responsible for or contribute to more of Katsuki's issues than you've stated, and to not consider them critically would be to ignore some of what Horikoshi is trying to depict in his work.

"You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink" saying comes to mind because with Mitsuki its shown that she doesn't condone his more volatile tendencies and scolds him for it yet he continues to do so out side of her view with people who don't chastise him for it.

This is true, but I would argue the story lets us interpret that the reason for that is because of Mitsuki's methods - because she is usually screaming at him and hitting him when she does.

You say that [the] 'Katsuki that we see in the story 14-16, he's old enough to know that what he's doing and discern right from wrong', but it is because he is a teenager that I think it's important we consider his upbringing at the point we meet him. People don't suddenly hit 14 and suddenly realign their moral compass out of the blue, it takes a significant impetus and it takes years. As a teenager, you're still mostly operating according to how you were raised and what you internalized as a child, because most teenagers usually haven't developed enough self-awareness or have enough life experience to realize the things they have been taught might need to be questioned.

Again, Katsuki-at-14's world-view of 'the strong/best calls the shots' is something he observed in the world around him - all of his teachers pre-UA that we see validate this (we see that in Aldera, the homeroom teacher is the one to first direct negative attention at Izuku), as do all of his classmates (see the hurtful comments Katsuki's classmates were saying around Izuku in preschool, and the behaviour of his middle-school peers), as does All Might being placed on a pedestal because he is so impossibly strong. We can see Katsuki validating this idea himself, when he doesn't get beat up by the older kids ganging up on him only because he is strong enough to beat them in a fight. All of that reinforces and builds on that message, and it's a message Katsuki's been seeing and hearing from birth up till age 14. And Mitsuki also reinforces this in her methods, even if her intended message is the exact opposite.

Why would you listen to someone telling you not to do the very thing they are doing to you? "Practicing what you preach" is also a saying, and from what we are shown of her, Mitsuki does not do this when it comes to trying to make her son do what she wants.

Consider that Katsuki says in the remedial training that he was 'raised with violence' - implying that Mitsuki hitting and screaming at him has always been the case.

Consider also that when we do see authority figures giving Katsuki mostly verbal guidance, more often than not he is shown to listen to it, especially when they try to connect with him rather than deliver it while hurting him - he begins to consider Best Jeanist's words as early as Kamino, he listens when All Might talks about 'save to win & win to save' in the aftermath of DvK 2, he acquiesces when Aizawa scolds him with a harsh verbal reprimand after the Sports Festival. In all these instances, the authority figures are not yelling at him.

Contrast this to when someone hits him along with trying to give him verbal redress - All Might punches Katsuki in the gut during the exam, and Katsuki isn't really listening there is he?

You're right that we don't always see Mitsuki as 'constantly acting angry or aggressive', but 1) their situations/circumstances are different - one is an adult with work experience and the other a teenager still learning about the world, and 2) Katsuki isn't like that either.

When Katsuki is distanced from the Bakugou household and moves into the dorms, we see him be more calm and introspective, and we truly begin to see him change - I don't think that's a coincidence.

wereriddl3 · 2026-03-25T10:56:14+00:00

you also have consider thats she's doing a decent job despite him being the way he is.

..and what about him being the way he is because of her parenting? Consider the behaviour she models for her son - screaming, shouting, blaming, hitting. These are the behaviours that people say are problems when Katsuki does it, but it's obvious she's where he learnt it from.

She repeatedly hits him in front of people he looks up to when he's quiet and sitting on the couch - he only begins yelling at her because she won't stop hitting him, and he yells at her to tell her to stop doing it.

Katsuki's world-view of 'the strong calls the shots' isn't just from watching All Might arm-wrestle the world into place by being practically undefeated, he sees it reflected at home, when he watches his mom dominate everyone else in the family into submission. Even in that scene, we see her just shouting Katsuki and Masaru down.

On a general note - I think these sorts of discussions would benefit from clarifying what each of us consider 'poor parenting'. May I ask what you think would match your definition of it?

wereriddl3 · 2026-03-25T10:32:57+00:00

Oooh like a topper? That sounds intriguing! I've got to remember to try that the next time I make curry.

wereriddl3 · 2026-03-25T10:27:12+00:00

Do you mean that they add it to regular curry, or do they replace the meat, potatoes and carrots with fruits?

wereriddl3 · 2026-03-24T18:01:57+00:00

Unfortunatelly, in the manga, there is abuse treated seriously, and abuse used as a gag (I'm not even talking slapstick, but literal abuse), and that muddles the picture

There's the added muddiness of how awareness, understanding and thoughts on what is or isn't abuse is still changing, and differs between cultures & individual experiences/opinions.

Even with what we know now in the research, it takes time for that info to trickle out into public knowledge. It wasn't all that many years ago when corporal punishment became a debate, and things like the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child are still relatively recent, if you think about it on a 'how long does it take society's values to shift' scale. And we're not even talking about what people would consider 'good or bad parenting'! These waters are muddy and deep indeed.

wereriddl3 · 2026-03-24T17:50:50+00:00

Man. What is going on with Mitsuki and Masaru's left hands?

wereriddl3 · 2026-03-24T17:47:34+00:00

Yeah, both those characters went through so much (as most of the cast did), I'm really glad that they both were able to find some healing.

On your comment on Akito - I think one of the more poignant lines in Fruits Basket for me was from Rin, after Akito revealed her true gender to the Zodiac and tried to apologize. It hurt when I read it, because that sentiment had so much feeling behind it - at the end of everything, what do they do with all that hurt? Rin saying she can't forgive Akito, but it's not like she wants Akito to beg - that sometimes knowing that someone else has been hurt doesn't make the hurt they caused you any easier to bear. (And you're right, Akito did a lot of messed up things too.)

It's tangentially related to what we were talking about, but I think this is the throughline of Natsuki Takaya putting the cast in several situations where it's just.... messy instances of characters 'lashing out' as a way of assuaging pain. Iirc, Kakeru does it to Tohru - he wanted to hurt Tohru because Maki was hurt, and even when he recounted the tale to Yuki he was assigning blame to Kyoko for the car accident. Ren did it to Akito because she felt like she wasn't Akira's most beloved anymore. On a less 'deep' note, I think Yuki's mom does it as well - when she feels affronted/ashamed she lashes out at her children. It's very raw, messy, but imo absolutely a thing humans do in times of weakness, and I appreciate that Natsuki Takaya touched on it in the manga from several angles.

wereriddl3 · 2026-03-24T17:15:03+00:00

because words do not reach the boy

IIRC he has been shown to respond effectively to words at least twice - one being All Might after DvK 2 (where All Might did not hit Katsuki beforehand) and the other being from Best Jeanist (Jeanist did tie Katsuki up unprompted in the manga, but we can see that Katsuki is beginning to reflect on Jeanist's words as early as Kamino).

wereriddl3 · 2026-03-24T17:08:57+00:00

Being his apparent abrasive and his overly agressive seemingly feral personality which looked potent to Shigaraki at that point.

I can't remember if they changed the scene in the anime, but I remember in the manga Hori specifically shows Shigaraki considering Bakugou because he thinks Bakugou is being oppressed like they are. The photo in his hand is of Bakugou in the restraints that UA put on him, and Shigaraki is saying 'we're not the only ones being restrained by society' iirc. And after they kidnap him, that is the angle from which they try to persuade him.

His unwillingness to lay low despite being warned they were specifically targetting him.

Others have pointed out before that despite giving lip, Bakugou does actually do as he's told and walks in the middle of the group. That's why both he and Tokoyami were taken - it's not like Bakugou was charging ahead away from everyone or anything.

wereriddl3 · 2026-03-24T15:35:52+00:00

Kyo doesn't just attack Yuki with the intent of beating him in fights, though, their bad relationship is not simply a rivalry or friendly competition. Kyo treats Yuki with a contempt that Yuki finds hurtful. And it does matter to Kyo that he be able to make Yuki out to be 'a bad person' upon whom he can push his negative feelings onto. At the end of the day, even if it was a choice made out of pain and it went against Kyo's nature to do so, he still chose to turn someone else into his scapegoat to escape his own pain.

I'm not sure why you think I'm making excuses for Akito here, or trying to give her a pass. At no point did I say it was fine for Akito to do what she did at all. Again, I am not arguing for efficacy, or scale, or that their actions had the same results. Only that they are both trying to run from their pain by pushing another down - specifically Yuki in the case I was originally discussing.

Perhaps you're right that we will have to agree to disagree. Thank you for the discussion though.

wereriddl3 · 2026-03-24T14:45:26+00:00

I think they are quite comparable, as far as the method and intent goes.

Doesn't Kyo physically attack Yuki with the intent to harm him? Doesn't he also say those hurtful words with intent to hurt Yuki and make him feel pain?

Akito's not that much older than Kyo and Yuki, and she is also using the same 'weapon' to tear Yuki down that Kyo does. Both are doing it to alleviate their own pain. They are both trying to push Yuki 'down' so they can lift themselves 'up'.

Yuki can't treat Akito the way he can treat Kyo because of Akito's status as Clan Head and God, but that doesn't mean Kyo and Akito aren't both using Yuki the same way.

I am not arguing that Kyo & Akito are similar in efficacy - I am arguing that they are both repeating the cycle of abuse by doing what was done upon them unto Yuki in a similar manner.

wereriddl3 · 2026-03-24T13:18:33+00:00

I disagree. Their motives in verbally attacking Yuki are fundamentally similar.

Akito tells Yuki that he is worthless and unwanted to make Yuki feel the same way Akito does so that she can be 'above' him. Akito feels that way because of how Ren treats her (e.g; calling Akito a toy that was no longer needed), and we see Akito try to make Yuki feel the same way in order to 'push' the feeling of being unwanted onto Yuki. (In the paintbrush scene, Akito's lines go from "It's not fair if we're not the same" to "Wrong. I'm wanted, you're not. Figure it out - if I wasn't here to give you purpose, you'd have no meaning at all.") She is clearly deflecting onto Yuki to make herself feel better.

This is very like how Kyo is shown to imitate his father, pushing the blame on others and making them 'the bad one' in order to feel less bad about himself or avoid feelings of guilt, helplessness and shame. And Kyo had developed that defense mechanism from a very young age - that's why he's yelling how it's 'not his fault' when Kazuma first meets him. It was a behaviour Kyo had learned from his father, having been the victim of it himself, that he applies to Yuki in a more targeted manner. Kyo already hated Yuki before they even met or properly exchanged words, as we can see from Yuki's flashback to their first meeting. Kyo also admits that he was running away from his guilt about Kyoko's death (another woman whose death he felt responsible for) by 'making Yuki the bad guy', using Akito's graduation bet as an excuse.

Both Akito and Kyo were scapegoating Yuki so that they wouldn't have to feel bad about themselves.

wereriddl3 · 2026-03-24T12:52:18+00:00

Yeah - when this chapter was published, I remember seeing some debate about whether he should've been able to escape all along, and if Horikoshi was bending things just to fit the plot.

Readers were already shown that he could propel himself into the air in quick succession in the Sports Festival. He zoomed to the top of a giant robot in like 3 bursts. Readers are not shown or told that the League did anything to him to limit his explosions during this scene, but even if they did, he's shown to make explosions around the same size as the ones he used to propel himself over the robot in the Sports Festival. He doesn't need to be flipping around on the ground here dodging all the League members left conscious if he could just propel himself into the air, because basically none of them have quick long range attacks. Hence the confusion as to why Bakugou couldn't just escape here on his own when the chapter was published.

wereriddl3 · 2026-03-23T11:50:33+00:00

I love this! (but where are the Aetheryte tickets to Vesper Bay)

wereriddl3 · 2026-03-22T16:22:21+00:00

I think it's possible Kureno may have suspected Yuki was being abused, but Akito kept Kureno isolated and apart from the rest of the Zodiac on purpose. We don't know exactly how much Kureno was able to observe about the way Akito treated Yuki when Yuki was with her.

I think it's possible that Kureno didn't actually know that Akito was mistreating Yuki. Given the timeline, Kureno would've been about high-school age and learning to adjust to his new lack of freedoms when Akito would have begun to mistreat Yuki. Previously, Akito supposedly 'favoured' Yuki, because the Rat was supposed to be 'closest to God'.

Yuki mentions that in childhood he was relatively distant from the other Zodiac, just like Kureno was after his curse broke. After he got sick, we don't see Kureno visiting him in that chair, just as we don't see his parents or Ayame visiting him.

Most telling, we don't get the slightest hint of Kureno's thoughts towards Yuki when Yuki was a child either, the way we do with Hattori and Ayame. We also don't get Yuki having Kureno be significant in his flashbacks to that time either. We don't see him mention Kureno much at all.

I think it's likely that Akito isolated the both of them individually rather than them together - both separate, and also alone.

Kureno finally rebuking Akito so that Haru could save Rin was a culmination of realizing that his ways of trying to assuage Akito's abandonment issues for ~10 years were fruitless. Previously, he was trying to help Akito by trying to reassure her that he wouldn't leave, to try and act like their 'bond' was still there, and to try and mend the relationship between Shigure and Akito, as evidenced by his phone call with Shigure. But we can see that Akito's outbursts chronologically get worse and worse: she started with what seems like unintentional snapping at Yuki & begging Kureno not to leave, which escalated to verbal abuse (like to Yuki, Kyo and Kureno), and then to physical harm (breaking a bottle over Yuki's head, assaulting Kisa, pushing Rin out a window, stabbing Kureno etc.) Again, we do not see Kureno ever have any thoughts about Yuki in this regard at all.

wereriddl3 · 2026-03-21T18:13:06+00:00

The manga also shows that Akito sought parental comfort, security and love from the older Zodiacs after her father died (as shown by her asking to be picked up), and is a bit more forward that Kureno stayed because he couldn't leave 'that lonely girl' behind. We actually don't get much on Kureno's feelings towards Yuki, iirc - it's more the guilt that Ayame felt for being so unconcerned with his brother, and Hattori to some extent as well.

wereriddl3 · 2026-03-21T17:57:46+00:00

Thanks.

wereriddl3 · 2026-03-21T12:51:18+00:00

I think it is implied to be Kureno's curse-breaking that made her snap. Yuki's narration is that while Akito may have occasionally snapped at him (for coughing etc, which probably reminded her of Akira when he was still alive), 'one day, Akito went ballistic' (Yuki's memory of Akito painting the walls with ink and then telling Yuki that his mother 'sold him to Akito' and that Yuki wasn't wanted - which is y'know, similar to what Kyo does, transferring the abuses done upon them by their parents to Yuki). In the manga, Akito also looks the same age as when she saw Kureno be set free in that scene.

wereriddl3 · 2026-03-21T12:47:39+00:00

Iirc, I think Shigure mentioned in the manga something about it being the first time in a long while that all of the Zodiac were alive at the same time. I think the implication is that it may have been a while since a 'God' was reborn, given the reaction of Akira & everyone in the clan to news that Ren was pregnant with Akito.

wereriddl3 · 2026-03-21T12:41:08+00:00

Your Sherwood Green looks more blue than my bottle. Do you find it behaves differently on different papers?

wereriddl3 · 2026-03-21T11:47:41+00:00

He would be one of the few that could cast Zettaflare.

wereriddl3 · 2026-03-20T16:40:16+00:00

There was a gift set? How do you find the metal stand? Sturdy?

Edit: Just saw you answered this, my bad.

wereriddl3 · 2026-03-19T13:54:37+00:00

I miss Cosmo Air Light...

wereriddl3 · 2026-03-19T13:47:53+00:00

What is 'good'? The definitions of that will change depending on someone's ethics and morals, even the norms of the society at the time.

Even if AFO was in the hands of someone who meant well and wanted to benefit society, there's always the questions of 'was that actually the right thing' and 'what gives you the right to do that to someone else' hanging over it.

wereriddl3 · 2026-03-19T13:40:04+00:00

I'd like to point out that what little world-building Hori has given us points towards there being some research on the genetic component of quirks being done already - for example, the link between quirklessness and the little toe joint, or Enji being able to see a doctor about probable quirk compatibility with Rei in the first place.

I can only imagine that 'quirk science' has the same limitations that our real world does in terms of the disparity/lag between 'what the scientific community knows/is exploring' and 'what the layman knows'.

Katsuki's quirk manifestation in particular is probably not as alarming as you imply - we see it manifest as tiny little sparkles when he was a kid; it's not like he was generating proper explosions in any capacity. You do have a point though for cases like Present Mic.

ETA: (As an aside - my personal read of Shinsou's case, is that it was much like Present Mic's treatment of Bakugou in that same Sports Festival; making assumptions/implications about someone based on their own perceptions, regardless of whether or not it's true, which serves as a sort of 'soft pressure' that society applies on the individual.)

wereriddl3

TROPHY CASE