Something that I really like about Bakugou and Midoriya’s
rival dynamic is how their fighting styles are both the opposite of each other and the opposite of what you would
expect.
Midoriya is always muttering some strategy or other and he’s
got his notebook full of ideas and different counters to fighting styles so you’d
expect him to be really good at targeting weaknesses and having multi-layered
plans and back-up plans to have a sure victory.
But it’s actually the opposite.
His low self-esteem leads him to not care about his own well-being and the
majority of the time he ends up relying on the brute strength of his Quirk
alone and badly injures himself by being too reckless with his power. Like he does strategize, but he always seems to
fail at accounting just how much damage One for All does to his body, and with
his battle with Chisaki he completely disregarded the limits altogether by
having Eri on his back. Which seems like a practical plan but not really a good plan if you think about the fact
that he has a small, emotionally distressed child with a difficult-to-handle
Quick on his back during the entire thing. A lot of the time he usually goes
into the fight with some kind of sound, logical plan but then when it goes
awry, he almost always finishes with a huge SMASH to end things quickly and
usually ends up broken in the end. Yes, he wins, but yes, he’s done. Most of his plans come with too
much risk to himself.
You’d also think that as someone who has spent a long time
observing people, he’d be good at discerning emotions and the intentions of
other people, but due to his big heart and naivety he lets his guard down a lot
and is surprisingly reckless when it comes to defending others and acts before thinking. Like how he
charged in when Bakugou was captured by the sludge villain. Or like how even
though he knew what Shinsou’s Quirk was he just rushed in out of anger because
Shinsou had insulted Ojiro.
I would have thought that Midoriya would have been smart enough to understand that Shinsou was just trying to rile him up, but nope. Just… just charged right in there screaming like an idiot. This scene was even more frustrating because a lot of us viewers expected him to know better.
On the other hand, Bakugou is loud and brash and always
emotionally straightforward with what he approves and disapproves of. You’d
think that he charges into battle recklessly without any regard to his personal
safety as long as he can win, but he’s
the one who strategizes for maximum efficiency.
His fighting style is incredibly
self-preserving, with his costume designed to minimize the risks his body takes
and his actual fighting style in the Databook is listed as “Hit and Away”,
meaning that he gets one good hit in, then backs away and waits for or creates
another opening to get another good hit in. Plus, he’s a quick thinker in
battle and both discovers and targets weaknesses within a single fight, like
with Tokoyami and Kirishima. And it’s not that he doesn’t take risks at all,
but he usually thinks of the consequences of his actions before actually
performing them. In other words acting after thinking. Like how he realized
during his kidnapping that even if he blasted them all away with a huge blast,
Kurogiri would have been able to counter him. So he didn’t do it and tried to think of another strategy.
He always seems really closed off towards other people and
rarely gives a damn about what they think, but he was the only one who could
tell that Shindou (from the Hero Exams) had bad intentions towards their class.
He’s also an occasional Mr. Exposition, explaining things like Quirk limitations or knowing about the rival Hero schools. And he’s surprisingly observant towards other people’s feelings. Like how he
could tell that Kirishima was depressed and tried to cheer him up (twice) and
more recently he seems to be keeping a close eye on Todoroki and his family
problems.
And the best part is that even though their fighting styles and certain personality aspects are the opposite of what you would expect, they
make sense.
Midoriya is a total newbie at using his Quirk and he’s
always been on the sidelines when he was Quirkless so of course he wouldn’t be
able to account for the damage he could take to himself, nor would he always be
able to have a logical Plan B if his first plan went awry. And of course, if he’s
never been in a fight before, he’d have a hard time both thinking and moving at
the same time like Bakugou does. Which is part of why he froze up during the U.A. entrance exam. In a way, his weakness is similar to Yaoyorozu’s.
Both great thinkers, but actions can be difficult to do at the same time.
Bakugou on the other hand is a veteran with his Quirk and
possibly has the best practical Quirk control in the class. He’s also been in a
lot of fights when he was younger, so he’d be better at finding strategies
to win and he’d know how to minimize damage because he knows how much damage he can take. His thinking is almost completely
instinctual, like an animal surviving in the wild. Like how he immediately knew
that running away from All Might was impossible, so the best thing to do would
be to fight (well, not the best
thing, but the more practical thing. He probably would have been more
clear-headed if anyone but Deku had been his partner).
So Midoriya’s body acts before he can think (as
pointed out by All Might) and Bakugou usually acts after he thinks. Midoriya is actually the really reckless fighter
who often injures himself and Bakugou is actually the really cautious,
quick-thinking fighter (though he does make some questionable decisions when he’s
lost his temper). And you’d never know it by looking at their daily behavior
alone.
It’s such an interesting contrast, and I appreciate Horikoshi for
writing it as such.
When I was training to be a battered women’s advocate, my supervisor said something that really blew my mind:
“You can always assume one thing about your clients; and that is that they are doing their best. Always assume everyone is doing their best. And if they’re having a day where their best just isn’t that great, or their best doesn’t look like your best, you have to be okay with that.”
Any now whenever anyone in my life, either a friend or a client, frustrates me, disappoints me, or pisses me off, I just tell myself They are doing their best. Their best isn’t that great today, but I have days where my best isn’t that great either.
This might come as a shock to some of you but saying “I’m not informed enough on this particular topic to have an opinion” is about 100 times more respectable than being misinformed
I know in school they often teach us that ‘I don’t know’ is the worst possible answer and that you are better off making your best guess than admitting ignorance, but that’s because the educational system is a dumpster fire, and this is a habit that it pays to un-learn.
Xena | she/her | Multifandom | Illustrator, future executive producer, and professional nerd.
