Rather than writing another Sad Dad ™ Essay since it’s Missing My Dad Day and I have time before I do errands, I wanted to write about a Bad Dad ™.

---

I think Endeavor fans – fans of Enji Todoroki from My Hero Academia – are probably in my top five “most embarrassing subclass of internet weenie”.

Maybe. I know there are villain woobifiers that are objectively more annoying but right now, as dads roam around in my mind rent free… Those fans currently claim a top spot for my mild annoyance.

If you consume the series in any capacity, you’ll know that Endeavor is the number two hero in Japan after All Might. He’s a big tank of a man with fire powers that really go hard. I’ll even admit that he’s kind of hot – literally and figuratively.

But he’s also a piece of shit who broke his wife’s psyche and alternated between ignoring and abusing his kids. He’s directly responsible for his eldest son, Touya, becoming the villain Dabi. He’s also responsible, similarly, for his wife Rei scarring their youngest son Shouta. He is a terrible person in the context of the show and just a generally shitty person. He is a walking mess of contradictions.

It’s why I find him deeply fascinating. 

I think it’s great writing – up to a point – to make one of the country’s biggest beacons of hope a gigantic piece of shit. You see that he’s a beloved hero, high in the rankings, and influential in shaping the lives of the next generation of heroes. People love him. They own his merch, they become heroes because of him. He is also a shitty middle aged man whose wife developed serious mental health issues and whose children barely speak to him because they kind of mostly hate him a ton. He is a terrible father and not much of a better person overall. He’s complex as hell.

He’s an onion of a man right down to the stink.

---

I don’t hate Endeavor.

(Sort of? It’s complicated.)

I do, however, dislike his fans.

Specifically, I’m talking about the folks who rush to woobify him. The ones who are like “oh but he’s trying to do better” or who vilify Rei in their quest to redeem him. The ones who don’t just want him to pluck Hawks like a chicken, but who feel like they have to justify his behavior to justify their interests. 

You don’t have to do any of that? You can just want to rail Endeavor – or have him rail your preferred character’s bussy – without pretending that he did absolutely nothing wrong? It’s not even like there’s a particular gray area here. Endeavor’s cruelty to his family, to the people he was supposed to protect, helped shape the series’ trajectory. He’s a very bad dad and 

A lot of people in fandom talk a big game about media literacy, about how the youth don’t get it. Don’t have it. But is the media literacy in the room with us as people rewrite Todoroki Rei to a habitual abuser, push off Endeavor’s abuses onto someone else, and get weepy and soggy because people don’t buy or aren’t enjoying Horikoshi’s late stage attempts at a redemption arc?

Doubtful.

(An aside, this does remind me of Shen Jiu stans from Scum Villain finding every reason to excuse the canonical abuses their fave does in the original novel. Out here on some “Maybe SJ sensed Binghe’s bad vibes and future tyrant status/demon energy” bullshit as if anything excuses a teacher abusing a child they’re responsible for. Ugh.)

Liking a villain, an antagonist, an abuser isn’t even remotely wrong.  In many cases, these characters are just written to be more fun. 

But the way these fans will move mountains to validate their faves’ actions while also claiming that they’re not villains, antagonists, or just plain assholes… it’s annoying. It’s wild to watch people claim they really get and love dark content and bad characters when going “oh i don’t like this guy because he essentially terrorized his family for years” will make them cry and puke and claim you’re harassing them.

As always, if pointing out facts of a shitty character makes you react like that… You don’t like them as they are, you don’t like the violence or harm they did: you like the pretty packaging and you’re too much of a wimp to say that!

Yikes!

Wanting to blow Endeavor’s back out is great. Not necessarily for me but I can understanding seeing a tree and wanting to chop it down. But pretending he’s a great father or making excuses for his actions… Often victim blaming his wife or his kids?

Well that just means you really missed a lot of what that series does say about cycles of abuse even before Horikoshi went and tried to level Endeavor out.