My Hero Academia is a shounen manga and anime series and given the kinds of audiences that genre generally attracts, it's no surprise that what most people tend to think of as most important is combat power, no matter how much the series tries to make clear that it isn't.
Most shounen manga and anime tend to have a fair amount of fighting due to the fact that that's what adolescent boys tend to be attracted to, that and the voluptuous waifu's and given that Death Battles and versus matches also tend to be popular among teenagers, it's no surprise that when comparing Deku and Bakugo as characters that combat power is going to be a major factor.
And while comparing them on the basis of combat power is fine, Manimematt made the mistake of assuming that combat power makes a quality hero. For those of you who don't know, I'm responding to this video. I'm responding to it for the simple fact that the video itself is flawed, and in the worst way possible.
Now, when I say that, what do I mean? Well, flaws are generally subject to gradation depending on the severity, there are minor flaws, major flaws, and critical flaws. A minor flaw is a flaw surrounding some small piece of evidence or some small fact that may have been presented incorrectly but has so little impact on the conclusion and the video as a whole that you can just ignore it as long as you're looking at the big picture and how to get there. In this way, the act of critiquing one of these flaws can usually be summed up as a nitpick.
A major flaw is a flaw that heavily damages the path to the conclusion and needs to be rectified in order for the video to work. Maybe it's a piece of crucial evidence that was either forgotten or simply not communicated properly. When this happens, this can usually damage the credibility of the video but, so long as you're intelligent enough to get the gist of what they're communicating, you can argue it on the basis of merit.
Critical flaws are flaws with the premise behind the video. A critical flaw is something that destroys an entire video's credibility because, while the evidence supporting the premise may work incredibly well, the premise itself simply does not work.
This is the problem with the video I'm responding to. There are some things people have brought up as responses, like Midoriya not innovating as much as Bakugo because he doesn't have the same experience or amount of practice, or that Bakugo is an insufferable cock yodeler, however, my problem with the video is based on the fact that it's surrounding only combat power.
Skipping ahead in the video somewhat past Todoroki for a moment, all of the reasons he lists for Bakugo being the number one hero over Midoriya can be summed up as "Because he's a better fighter." From coming up with new techniques to counter opponents, to winning fights against people who counter him, pretty much all of his evidence surrounds combat power.
This is an issue inherent to the discussion because he's not arguing that Bakugo will become the strongest fighter or the greatest crime fighter even but that Bakugo will become the Number 1 Hero in general. Now, this is a flawed assumption at the foundation because Heroism, even in My Hero Academia is not solely about combat power.
Although you could argue that combat power is a factor on a surface level if you look at how strong All-Might is, in reality, this is a false assumption. To prove this, we only need to look at the number 2 hero (as far as the anime, anyway) Endeavor. Endeavor, as a hero, has a really powerful quirk, is very skilled as a fighter, and has more criminal arrests under his belt than any other hero, including All-Might.
Now, this is the single area of Heroism you can argue that combat power is most important because, in order to arrest villains, you have to be able to subdue them, and you simply can't if you're not physically capable of it. And yet, despite that, All-Might is still the number 1 hero (in the anime). Why is that?
Well, there are plenty of reasons, major ones being that All-Might doesn't just fight, he also rescues, and the fact that All-Might doesn't have the same level of issues with abuse that Endeavor does. However, one major thing is that All-Might inspires hope in the people. It's really hard for Endeavor to do that because, due to his methodology, he is incredibly intimidating. All-Might, despite being just as buff, and for the most part, even stronger, he seems very approachable and, in some cases, even awkward, giving him a layer of humanity and relatability that Endeavor simply lacks.
In fact, this translates over to Deku and Bakugo very easily. Bakugo may be the superior fighter but Deku better embodies all of the traits that All-Might has that makes him the symbol of peace. In this way, Bakugo is just like Endeavor, he may be a powerful fighter but if fighting is all he's capable of, no matter how good he is at it, he simply will not be the number 1 hero.
Sure, for series like Dragon Ball, YuYu Hakusho, Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple, or even things like Naruto, combat is the be all end all because Martial Arts and fighting are intrinsically linked, you can't have martial arts without combat, though you could arguably have combat without martial arts. However, My Hero Academia is about heroism. Combat may be part of the job for a number of heroes but as characters like Eraserhead, 13, or even Hakamata will tell you, fighting isn't all there is to it. Eraserhead even says himself in Season 1 "You can't be a pro hero if you only have one trick."
Sure, characters that aren't suited to combat like Uraraka may be attempting to gain more combat power but that's really only because that's their deficient area. If Uraraka can save hundreds of people but can't defeat a decently powerful villain, then she can rescue more people than Bakugo, but Bakugo clearly defeats her in crime fighting.
In this way, Bakugo isn't a better hero than Deku, Todoroki, or even Uraraka at this point, his strength is simply leveraged in a different way. Of course, Uraraka is also better at communication than Bakugo is (not that that's necessarily an achievement) so if she gets paired with a hero who is good at combat, she'll work much better on a team than if Bakugo is paired with another rescue hero.
That's another thing that this video fails at, the assumption that a hero will be by themselves 100% of the time. The reality is that heroes have to work with other heroes whenever possible, even Endeavor, the number 2 hero, has to work with others consistently, and though All-Might doesn't, in his state (in the anime) you could argue that he probably should.
That is the problem with this video. As I said, the facts of the video aren't necessarily incorrect, it's just that those facts are being used to support a faulty conclusion. And, in order to fix a building that's faulty at the base, the first step is to tear it down.
That's all for today, have a good day.
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