Thoughts on ... Endeavor, Revisited

Last year, I wrote some thoughts on Endeavor and explained several issues I had with his haphazardly written redemption. The obvious redemption itself wasn’t the issue, but rather the way in which Horikoshi had chosen to frame it: by throwing his abused wife, Rei, under the bus. Endeavor makes for a very good villain, and an even better lesson in the hypocritical hero society that Hori has created. In the world of My Hero Academia, heroes aren’t your typical white knights who always do right and always have fantastic morals. Yes, some of them truly are noble and selfless, like All Might, but others are in it for the fame, the money and the prestige. It’s a power trip being a hero: you get what you want and everyone knows you. Popularity polls determine the rank of the top ten heroes in the country using pointless metrics like social media likeability and personal traits, and heroes vie for public affection in the most superficial ways.

So Endeavor is an interesting character study in a world of morally shallow heroes. He terrorised his children, engraving deep emotional wounds and self-esteem issues that lasted till adulthood. He isolated his younger son, Shoto, as a supposed prodigy, enforcing an unhealthy need for perfection and a nonsensical goal to best All Might. He abused this wife to the point of insanity, triggering her to throw boiling water on Shoto’s face to rid him of the “hot” powers he received from his father, the same flames that burned her emotionally and physically over several years. Rei now lives in an institution, and by her own admission, she is unable to physically see Endeavor as it will cause her psychological harm. With All Might’s retirement, Endeavor is Japan’s Number One, but he struggles to convince the public with his new position. Sure, his Quirk is powerful and impressive, but he lacks much in the personality department—and compared to the charismatic Number Two, Hawks, Endeavor’s attempts are pitiful.

lol

Endeavor’s challenge is clear: how can he appeal to the public when his own children can’t love him? What use is a Number One Hero if he’s a villain in his own home? How can he succeed when his entire career was based around being better than All Might, desperately trying to preserve a rivalry that only he recognised? Whilst All Might was actually saving people and being the Symbol of Peace, Endeavor was nursing a spiteful jealousy. His position reminds me of church Pastors who spend their time preaching family values and love on the pulpit, only to have a secret mistress living down the road. There is so much potential in the story—too much, for how Horikoshi treated it in the beginning. The first hints towards a potential Endeavor redemption came when he openly asks All Might, “what does it mean to be the Symbol of Peace?” in other words: what am I missing that you excelled at so effortlessly? I was genuinely looking forward to Endeavor’s turnaround. Instead, we got this:

uhuh.

A dangerous and victorious fight that was hollow and quite frankly annoying. Endeavor’s family and friends, and the public, look on with bated breath as the new Number One faces his toughest enemy to date. We get the scared, screaming children, we see shots of the UA classmates staring on with hands over mouths. I appreciate the discomforting nature of the fight, and I understand Endeavor’s obvious conflict of looking heroic but not quite feeling it, but I think the scene fell short of amplifying the equal—if not more potent—conflict of his family.

In recent chapters, things have changed. Endeavor’s approval rating has risen. He’s been getting the job done effectively and efficiently. But a neutered dog returns home—not a hero. I absolutely love Nastuo and his ability to say how he feels with no filter whatsoever. He doesn’t give a shit about his deadbeat dad’s supposed character improvement when his family is still broken and in pain. I also love how Shoto calls him Endeavor, never dad, father, pops. Both of them make it clear that he has a lot to prove if he wants them to at least tolerate his presence in their lives, and even then, they might still reject him.

bloop.

understandable.

Chapters 250-252 have been fantastic. What’s most powerful about these interactions is Endeavor’s ownership of his past actions. He never tries to make excuses, instead, he acknowledges their feelings, and gives them the right to not forgive him if that will make it easier for them. I wish more people in real life understood that regardless of how shitty it makes them feel to have someone angry at them, it is not the perpetrator’s fault to dictate the timescale in which they should be forgiven. Do the crime, do the time, as they say. Don’t hurt people if it’s just going to make you moan and gripe about how long it’s taken them to forgive you, jackass. Endeavor’s decision to leave the family home is growth, pure understanding of what his presence is doing to his children. It’s a little heartbreaking, but a necessary action. His demeanour is markedly different from the shouting, glowering, annoyingly loud hero from the earlier chapters when he was first introduced. He’s clearly had some deep moments to reflect on his behaviour.

My other gripe regarding Horikoshi’s treatment of Endeavor was this:

????????????????

He framed Endeavor’s initial redemption within Rei’s premature and harmful forgiveness. Just like that, a flower left behind is a clear enough symbol for Rei to tell her children to give Endeavor a second chance. All Rei’s trauma is reduced to an emotional Origin Story for Shoto, and now that the plot is moving forward to humanise the new Number One, again, Rei’s trauma is now overcome, a present Character Development Moment for Endeavor. Her issues mean nothing because she’s just a plot device to prove how difficult Shoto’s childhood was, and now, she’s there to prove that Endeavor is improving. Without an apology, and without framing the abuse from the victim’s perspective, to show how it affected her and what steps Endeavor will take to regain her trust, Rei’s assurances to her children feel hollow and forced.

Oftentimes, victims of abuse are made to shoulder the burden of fixing the relationship through forgiveness: everything depends on when they choose to forgive. Abusers are known to pressure their victims in various overpowering ways until forgiveness is achieved, and on a societal level, victims of injustice are told that their feelings are overblown and disproportionate, therefore, forgiving and moving on will reconcile and correct an anger and pain that is in fact very real and valid, albeit inconvenient to the perpetrators and benefactors of social injustice. I was disappointed that this was the angle Hori had taken with Rei, when Shoto’s story arc has been dealt with much more realistically in other areas. It played into the stereotype of the soft, nurturing woman. It’s okay if Rei is vengeful. It’s okay if she doesn’t forgive Endeavor, or thinks his flower is a trite gift and too little too late. Instead, she dissolves into the perfect mother trope, reminiscent of Oda’s habit of making most of One Piece’s mothers self-sacrificing or dead, destined to be immortalised as greyscale lessons of the characters’ pasts.

Endeavor did NOT deserve for Shoto to look at him like this :(

So on that front, I still have issues, and I don’t retract my former criticisms. You’ve noticed that I haven’t mentioned a key character in this analysis so far. Fuyumi Todoroki, the only other woman in the house, has for some reason been used as the mediator of the family. Even though she’s suffered abuse, and has had to witness her overpowering father cause harm and havoc to her family, she is calm and forgiving. It is not explained why Fuyumi is like this, other than she’s the older sister. So, she organises a family meal, tries to assuage Endeavor’s discomfort, makes great pains to placate her brothers through their anger and distrust. Why? Why are the women so sweet and forgiving?

Let’s take a moment to really empathise with Fuyumi here: with an absent, mentally unstable mother, she has had to assume that position whilst still being a young woman herself. In the flashbacks we’ve seen so far, it’s clear that Fuyumi has been the rock and mother that Natsuo and Shoto never really had, buffering the worst of their father’s abuses and protecting them, whilst still needing a mother herself. Doesn’t she deserve to be angry too? It’s verging on Stockholm Syndrome just how pleasant she’s being, whilst the males are angry and torn, obviously still struggling. Why does she have to be strong and nurturing? When does Fuyumi get to heal? What is it with male shonen writers and their fear of bad women? Are the female Todorokis destined to coddle and soothe all the broken men in their lives, whilst never receiving help and healing from anyone else? It’s frustrating.

So lemme get this straight: Fuyumi does all the emotional labour and Natsuo remains present during her struggles. He doesn’t really help her, but his attending her family meal is his version of the emotional labour? Welp, at least Endeavor acknowledges this major personal sacrifice.

With that in mind, I feel my original misgivings re: Rei are more than justified, and I still stand by what I said. Regardless of who Endeavor is now, the flower stunt was a mess. Horikoshi is at risk of doing the same with Fuyumi, and I really hope I’m proven wrong on this, because he’s clearly shown that he knows how to write multifaceted stories and explore the morally dubious heroes of the world he has created. I just hope that the women don’t suffer. They need development too.

Clearly, this opens a wider discussion of how women—particularly mothers—are depicted in popular media. They are worryingly beatified at the expense of character development, and in My Hero Academia, the Todoroki women are used as doormats to uplift the pain of the men in their lives without their due retribution first, and it gets exhausting especially when the Todoroki saga is far too sensitive and complex just to fall back on harmful gendered stereotypes in the end.

I’m withholding most of my judgement because this is quite clearly a developing story, but so far I am a little concerned at how Fuyumi is being built up as the empathetic emotional stronghold in the same vein as Rei. A contrast of the two women would have been so much more powerful, even as a commentary on how the pressures on women to be self-sacrificing and forgiving no longer apply to the younger generation. Fuyumi could have been used to help give her mother a new perspective on her past, and take ownership of her feelings. It’s a shame it hasn’t quite worked out that way.

Here’s hoping that Rei and Fuyumi get the resolution they deserve. After all they’ve been through, it’s the least Hori could do.