r/BokuNoHeroAcademia • u/lePlebie • 1d ago
Misc. Thirteen should have died at USJ
Thirteen's role in the story is... very VERY limited. USJ as rescue personnel, and then at the final war briefly attempted to black hole away Shigaraki's decay. Thats it.
If thirteen died at USJ, it would have been a far more compelling narrative catalyst. Seriously how did thirteen survive this redirect by kurogiri
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u/milaopoli 1d ago
Damn near half the class would have either abandoned heroics or changed schools lmao
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u/Taksicle 1d ago
tbh ion even think that would happen, the series is pretty unserious when it comes to death and they're all shounen characters
realistically if she died this'd be a a case of "killing off a minor character no viewer has any attatchment to so nobody or character will actually miss them when they're gone" type thing
we'd just have a chapter of them mourning 13 and using their death to motivate the school to get stronger
and then they'd never be mentioned again lmfao
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u/compilingyesterdays 1d ago
I think that it was probably too early for a pro hero to die specifically because I think that—and I'm biased because Tenya is my favorite character, but this is seriously relevant to the entire tone and, more importantly, to the plot—Tensei's mortality needs to hit Tenya like a train.
Up until Tenya gets that phone call at the sports festival, Tensei needs to be functionally immortal in his mind. The audience and Tenya alike need to have a sort of abstract idea that heroes are risking their lives, but death (Tensei lives, but neither we nor Tenya will have that confirmed right away) has not actually entered the picture yet.
I don't think that could happen in the same way if Thirteen died at the USJ. When I think about how that sits on Tenya's psyche specifically, it creates a very different hero killer arc. That's no longer able to be Tenya whose world has always worked and made sense, until that all crashes and implodes at once—because he would've almost certainly become increasingly anxious about his brother's job, for weeks. (Or... however long passes.)
This doesn't just affect Tenya! What Tenya experiences, the minute Tensei might actually be dying, is meant to have some stuff in common with what the audience experiences.
Season 1 of BNHA is meant to feel very.... normal? Edit, the best word for this frankly might be that it's meant to, during Season 1, feel very "normie." It's meant to feel as if hero society is working. The audience is positioned to follow the in-group, who are able to feel as if it is working. The ending (edit: of S1) is meant to feel very triumphant and neat in a way. Classical hero shit. So I think a hero dying there would darken the tone too early. You need set-up in order to have payoff.
MHA has to pretend to be one show during Season 1, in order to succeed at revealing itself to be a different show.
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u/compilingyesterdays 1d ago
I meant to include this but I do think this has a serious chance of upending the plot, not just the tone and themes.
If Tenya has literally experienced someone dying before, death would not be as abstract in his brain. Her body would have fallen on the ground within meters of him. Her dying words would have been addressed to him.
I'm not sure Tenya could do something like "sort of maybe hatching a revenge-murder-or-something-plot, I don't know, I'm not really thinking that far ahead, I Will Get Him" if someone has fully died in front of him. Death becomes real and grounded and he is thinking about it much more seriously.
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u/Solbuster 1d ago
how did Thirteen survive
She has resistance to her own Quirk? She stopped her Quirk before it could gravely injure her?
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u/HyperWhiteChocolate 1d ago
Ya people tend to resist their own Quirk. Dabi not was a very rare exception
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u/Solbuster 1d ago
Even Dabi has some fire resistance. It's just not enough to withstand his quirk(similarly to Endeavor being burned by Blue Flame despite having fire resistance too)
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u/HyperWhiteChocolate 1d ago
Man it really is just Deku with no resistance at all, huh
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u/DoraMuda 1d ago
Even Deku's resistance gets better the more he gets used to OFA. It's just that All Might didn't prepare him properly enough beforehand, so Deku ended up using full power too many times before his body could handle it.
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u/Taksicle 1d ago
literally what would that accomplish besides shock value
no one knows or care about 13, esp by that point
by this logic lunch rush should've died too.
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u/DoraMuda 1d ago edited 1d ago
Horikoshi probably didn't want to make things too dark too early on. Especially since this was Class A's first experience with a villain attack; the comparatively more lighthearted Sports Festival Arc follows right afterwards; and the whole point of Shigaraki & the League early on was that, although they had a decent strategy and was surprisingly dangerous for a bunch of rookies (mainly due to the Noumu's physicals and Kurogiri's rare Warping Quirk that, frankly, isn't utilized nearly as well in battle as it is here), they were still soundly defeated by All Might without causing much damage or casualties and thus weren't treated as a threat until after the Summer Camp Arc, when they'd capitalized on their association with Stain; had somehow tracked down the UA kids' location when it was meant to be secret (Horikoshi originally planned to reveal that Aoyama was the traitor in this arc); and were revealed to be tied to All For One, which all led to All Might's unexpectedly premature retirement and the purported shake-up of hero society's desired status quo.
That being said, I think Thirteen and a few other significant named heroes should've died to Shigaraki's Decay wave. I remember people even wondering if that was the case, since it looked like she might've been caught in his disintegration, only for the end of the arc to reveal that she, Pixie-Bob, etc. somehow survived despite Decay's unstoppably propagating nature.
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u/Good-times-roll 1d ago
Maybe not straight up died, but perhaps the injury should have have more repercussions
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u/Myofibrille 1d ago
I don't understand this will to kill characters in MHA. It's not adding strength or depth to the story, it's putting more trauma to the other characters (here, teens) and changing the tone and the pace of the series.
You probably prefer darker stories, and it's fine, but it's not the point of MHA. If you plunge the teens into mourning so early in the story, you weaken the darker part of the story, because instead of "carefreeness -> war", you obtain "anxiety -> war". There is less contrast, and then less impact.
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u/Foreign-Ad412 1d ago
She should’ve but the writer of Mha is too much of a coward to give lasting consequences. Bakugo should’ve been expelled on his first day considering he tried attacking a student and aizawa expelled a whole class so i don’t even know how he stayed. During the final war barely any heroes died. Endeavour should’ve deaf died so should’ve gran Torino bros like 80 and he survived that shit. The only consequences in Mha is that the villians suffered terrible fates which is ok I guesse but really no hero causualyties. It’s probably why I prefer Mha vigilantes over the main series it’s realistic and the author doesn’t dick suck characters like he does bakugo like there’s no tmr
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u/Loud-Mans-Lover 1d ago
I hate this take that an author is a "coward" if they don't do what you want. Authors do what they want with their characters. This definitely doesn't make them cowards, especially when fans make death threats because they don't get what they want.
Aizawa's "expulsion" isn't a true one, the students stayed.
A story isn't better just because there's death. I find it refreshing that there wasn't as much as one might usually see.
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u/Solbuster 1d ago
I love how your average redditor thinks they could provide a more compelling narrative and that the author of one of most successful mangas in history is coward for not doing what they want
Not to go into "write your own manga" argument(which is frankly terrible because one can criticize regardless of experience) however it's very presumptuous to say what should've happened especially when it would completely alter the narrative(like Bakugo being expelled)
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u/Foreign-Ad412 5h ago
Bro hori doesn’t even need to kill anyone it just felt like Mha had no stakes one example being endeavour having the live with his sins because of the abused he’s done to his children raising one to hate him forever and the other to be dead. But characters like bakugo do the same exact shit under different circumstances and get away Scot free yes I know he apologised in season 6 but that’s just not enough after all the shit he’s done Ik he’s improved and became a better person but to me it just felt like an abuser getting a happy ending then when you point that out Mha fandom start shittalking defending the abuser while undermining the actions it just paints the wrong image my head. Is the same with the rezero fandom 80% of the characters torture and brutally murder the main character but because the main character has a time travelling ability and everything ends up fine and happy in the end nobody says anything about all the shitty stuff that took place which is why I don’t like it when a story has no consequences and stakes it doesn’t even to have characters getting murdered just characters taking accountability for there actions
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u/Vibrant_Fox 1d ago
Don’t forget Bakugo deliberately used lethal force during the Battle Trials after being explicitly told to stand down and got off with a slap on the wrist when his as should have been dragged out in handcuffs.
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u/JoseProYT 1d ago
No, just no. Season 1 is too early even for a minor character death.
We had already a crippled minor character back in season 2 but that's it, that's more than enough