The Best of Us, The Worst of Us, The Lot of Us: Bakugo

Welcome, weebs, to Animated Observations

My Hero Academia’s latest season has put its characters into a final battle of sorts. A winner takes all scenario where Tomura and All for One are fighting against the remainder of Japan’s heroes for future of humanity and hero society. The previously mentioned Tomura and Deku are indeed the centerpieces of this battle with the majority of the arc thus far being on the two of them. However, arguably one of the more interesting characters of the current story and someone who I neglected for a long time is Bakugo.

Bakugo has largely serves as Deku’s head canon rival despite him spending a pretty huge portion actively despising our main hero. His quirk, which allows him to create explosion from the nitroglycerin in his sweat, makes him naturally very powerful, especially for a prodigee who has barely started his career. His powers are so cool, in fact, that they even inspired a rap song from artist KVMIL which has garnered millions of streams.

Still, Bakugo’s early screen time in the series was less than encouraging. His character in season’s one, two, and big portions of three is largely plagued by a recurring trope of being way too full of himself and continually yelling or threatening Deku at every possible opportunity. There’s a big difference between making a point about his immaturity and beating a dead horse, something Bakugo would probably do if it look vaguely like his favorite victim.

There are things that do eventually bring them together, at least in some capacity. For starters, while he is often quick to hide it, he does admire All Might to the same or maybe even greater extent as Deku. He was, after all, a symbol of peace to everyone, little kid Baguko included. On top of that, the league of villains recognized the potential of both them, hence why they went after the two during the training camp arc.

What starts out as pretty annoying character does turn into something good. Realizing Bakugo’s potential and trustworthiness, All Might does eventually reveal the secret behind One for All and that his power has been passed on to Deku. For a long time, he resents this. Thoughts of “it should have been me” run threw his head. Part of it is obviously because he wants that power, but another is the fact that he still sees a scared little kid trying to be his rival.

Bullies are often said to be those that project insecurities onto others, and this is no less true of the explosive wonder boy. His constant badgering of others reveals just how unconfident he is in his own strength, using his quirk as a means of posturing. However, in order to come to terms with his true feelings, he does eventual lift the veil of his angrier persona.

This brings us to his more recent appearances. His time spent training and fighting alongside Deku has, well, not entirely softened his character, but certainly made Bakugo more understanding of the current paradigm with All Might. He even went so far as to risk his own life in the previous fight versus Tomura by pushing Deku out of the way of an oncoming attack.

Ultimately, I think Bakugo’s character is more poorly executed than anything else. If it hadn’t been for the almost 80 episodes of excessively reminding everyone just how angry he is, his arc could have been a lot more concise and, as a result, a lot more compelling. I’ll refrain from going into any more detail since, at the time of writing, there is currently a major development happening related to him. Suffice to say, he’s not all bad.

How do you all feel about Bakugo’s development in My Hero Academia? Let me know in the comments.

Thank you all so much for stopping by. For those who want to read a bit more, feel free to click back up top. Anyone who’s feeling generous or who would like to read some original poetry/short fiction from yours truly, look no further than directly below.

As always, special thanks to these lovely people for their support:

If you can’t, or just don’t feel like it, no worries. Thank you all again for reading, and goodbye, for now, friends!

Originally published at http://animatedobservations.com on August 8, 2024.