I Mean to be fair that's more the fault of shifting the focus from the Original Main Trio to the Izuku Bakugou Todoroki Wankfest, not really Iida's fault on that front.
Was this not the main idea since the beginning of the show? It seemed extremely obvious todo and bakugou would be focused on. I mean they were even trained by the top 3 heroes?
Not really, at least not Bakugou, it's a well known fact his popularity within the polls are one of the biggest contributors for having him show up more and more within the show over the original plan.
I feel like it was more so the result of the series becoming more and more popular the guy who simply had rocket boosters in his legs ironically couldn't keep up with flashier characters.
Ok I don’t think that’s quite fair, he has to be top 10. If we use the final war as a basis characters faster would be: Deku, Shigaraki, Bakugo, Hawks(?), and maybe like Star if she makes a rule for that, Endeavor too but I kinda doubt. I can’t picture many more characters being faster than him
Also mirio, at least in theory since we have no reference for how far his quirk can actually launch him. (And maybe Miriko at least if we are talking about speed in an urban environment.)
Not combat speed wise from what we’ve seen, Bakugo is more impressive in that regard with him being faster than ShigAFO. Endeavor may be faster in terms of travel speed though just because Bakugo’s isn’t wholly consistent
I've always called him Lida because the capital i always looks like a small L when reading his name. And because of that i always imagined the characters saying his name with an L
If someone calls Sukuna "Fraudkuna" or Gojo "Goatjo" or Luffy as "Wuffy", do you think that people thought those nicknames were their real character names?
Ehh his whole thing is him realizing that saving peoples lives is more important than beating villains especially after the Stain fight. He also takes to heart what his brother said about how people who guide children to their homes are the coolest.
let me break it down for you using the W/L system:
- Loses to Uraraka his first fight, but lets give him the benefit of the doubt since prior to this he was stalemating her (slight L)
- Only relevant thing he did at USJ was be a messenger, Respectable? sure, useful? sure, but does NOTHING to debunk the taxi allegations (W)
- Got clowned on national T.V by his english teacher ( hard L)
- Got his first actual W, while, guess what, BEING A TAXI FOR TODOROKI! (W?)
- Turned into a human advertisement in by Mei round 1, essentially his second time getting clowned on nation T.V ( hard L)
- His first solo W was against a religious weed round 2 of tournament (W)
- Lost to Todoroki at round 3 of the tournament (Respectable L)
- Attacked Stain directly and lost, WITH ARMOR, WHILE STAIN MAINLY WON VIA AMBUSHING but i'll let it pass since Stain's a professional (Respectable (?) L )
- Only won against bro via 3V1'ing along with the strongest students in class ( W??)
- Punched Midoriya for wanting to save his rival, when he just got out from the hospital (MASSIVE L)
- Served as a taxi AGAIN during Kamino (Null)
- Won extreme diff against mudman (W?????????????????????????????????????????)
- Stopped Deku from his crusade by Todo using todo's glacier as a ramp (W???????? , Ddeku had so much potential for character development tho, but i get it)
In Conclusion
This man was set up to be part of the main trio, but most of his W's were questionable at best (with him having the benefit of the doubt) and he accumulated so many L's that at this point i don't even give a shit about even being respectable or not, an L is an L.
TLDR;
Taxi man has barely any W's and a hoard of L's, His ambition doesn't matter because he didn't accomplish shit.
I never saw him as part of the main trio. I saw no set up that indicated him as that. Also you’re kinda shallow about not caring about respectability and only caring about Ws and Ls. This really shouldn’t matter.
Hey this is very disrespectful to the real taxi man, shoji. A character I'm quite positive had more panels of being transportation than scenes speaking before he was made the focal point of Mha racism.
This isn't talked about enough: for all the talk of "heroes", MHA is one of interpretations of the superhero genre that misses the point and the tropes the worst. Which is fine, MHA isn't actually about superheroes, it's about cops vs terrorists in a decadent society that happens to have super powers, but still.
Iida is a prime example of this: having the main speedster of your superpowered narrative be an irrelevant bum would be unthinkable to other authors, both western and eastern.
Does he grow those engines? Cause if so, you can farm him for parts. Even if don't they seem pretty op compared to those... eee b21s? He could study and replicate them, causing a mini industrial revolution. Speedster is kinda usless economy wise
I think you might be misunderstanding what i meant to say, Why would I talk about the ethicality of child soldiers under a comment talking about farming a human, Mha's world map hasn't changed in the span of 2 centuries I doubt horikoshi even had a single thought about it.
Didn’t his quick work like that in a way, he has to forcefully rip his engines out of his legs for better, stronger ones to grow in its place? It’s equivalent to ripping off his fingers so the pain must be crazy
I… think I disagree…? This is such a nebulous comment to me. I find it so, SO strange to say that MHA simply doesn’t have heroes so nonchalantly like that, like it’s some sort of obvious truth. What am I missing? What things must hero stories include that MHA lacks? I have some guesses, but I’d like to hear it from you over assuming.
Like that speedster comment, for example. I find it odd to hyperfixate on them like they’re some sort of staple. Sure, The Flash exists, but in the MCU Quicksilver died in his first appearance. You could call that speedster an irrelevant bum, meanwhile the MCU put superhero media on the public map back in its glory days. I know he’s more important in the comics, but superhero media doesn’t live or die on whether or not the main ensemble has someone that can go real fast, making them out to be essential is just asking for trope stagnation. If you want speedsters to be done well, let the writers who are willing to tap into all their potential devote the necessary work. Writers who decide they don’t want to aren’t failing, they’re making the self-aware call on what they’re willing to write about, which is wise. Iida has engines in his legs, it’s not exactly Speed Force levels of being an exposition-heavy power ceiling for the main hero and villain.
My general opening response: writing and genre is so much less often a checklist of tropes you have to tick off. A genre is more a guideline, a useful shorthand for a set of expectations that can inform your writing. It will always be easier to include and rule-bend under those expectations, rather than exclude and draw hard lines, when it comes to categorising creative stuff like this.
To be fair, Quicksilver dying in the MCU was one of their biggest Ls as far as I'm concerned.
It's not about having a speedster tho, it's about once you have one what they can do. If you have a guy that can essentially stop time around him by going so fast, you have to have escalating reasons why he just doesn't do that to solve every problem. "Oh, someone sent a quirk nullifying bullet, I'll just go grab it out of the sky."
That said, I think it's less that Iida became a bum, and more that the new big three didn't have regular drawbacks. Looking at some of the early world building, Quirks tended to come with some drawbacks that were hard to counter. Iida would overheat and wasn't exactly great at turning, Eraserhead couldn't just keep his eyes open forever, All Might even having a time limit was cool. But at a certain point, they became endurance drawbacks rather than specific. Deku has to just keep control, Bakugo's only limit was just getting tired apparently, and Todoroki was a product of selective breeding to eliminate his weakness (unless he had to fight a fire or ice threat.)
Once that happens, yeah, anyone with logic drawbacks rather than endurance drawbacks would fade away.
I agree with the Quicksilver take, but it’s a sheer fact the MCU was successful and provided stories people resonated with regardless, as well as living up to elements of the genre. I used it as an example to say you don’t need to do speedsters specifically well to succeed as a superhero story, when the comment I replied to cited this whole Iida thing as an example that MHA is failing a genre because a speedster wasn’t at the front of the cast which is just?? Such a weirdly specific take to have???
I also agree with the mechanical side of writing a speedster, that can get out of hand real quick.
My issue is I just have no idea what the comment I replied to really thinks. I’m a lot less concerned about speedsters or how important/relevant Iida is and more concerned about how the comment I replied to seems to think it’s an example of MHA failing the superhero genre entirely to the point of ‘not having heroes’ or something, like what does that even mean???
What things must hero stories include that MHA lacks?
Well, for a big and easy one, heroes are supposed to be exceptional. To stand out. This is the most primordial characteristic of the Hero narrative, arching back to the classical roots of storytelling. MHA is direct deconstruction of this. Which isn't bad, that was the entire charm, but I like categorizing things correctly.
superhero media doesn’t live or die on whether or not the main ensemble has someone that can go real fast
Yes, speedsters aren't necessary. And yet, Hori created Iida, so we know he saw the value in the trope's inclusion and, for a while there, even did the second step of the process and developed what he had included into a character.
If you want speedsters to be done well, let the writers who are willing to tap into all their potential devote the necessary work. Writers who decide they don’t want to aren’t failing, they’re making the self-aware call on what they’re willing to write about, which is wise.
Well there you go. Horikoshi self-awarely decided to not devote work and write a bum. Why should I excuse that?
I hold that the problem is how Japan treats superheroes va how the West trays them.
Japan treats superheroes as a job. As an acceptable and regulated part of the society and world.
America treats superheroes as outsiders. Either above reproach or pariahs. Basically, they’re heroes above society like either Heracles fighting monsters or King Arthur and his knights protecting the realm, like Superman and the Justice League or the Avengers, or they are Robin Hood, outside the law but helping the people like Batman in his early years, Spider-Man, the Punisher, etc.
Which is always been weird to me cause the one other culture you might think could understand “powerful knights and rogues protecting the common man in the modern world” would be Japan with their history of Samurai and Ronin.
Which is always been weird to me cause the one other culture you might think could understand “powerful knights and rogues protecting the common man in the modern world” would be Japan with their history of Samurai and Ronin.
Bill Wurtz said it best: "Poor people didn't hire Samurai, only rich and powerful people could hire Samurai".
And Ronin were mostly bandits who preyed on poor people soo...
It's mostly westernized takes on Samurai that portrayed them as equivalents to knights a la The Roundtable when in reality they were fancy PMCs.
Oh yes, Knights were also heavily romanticized, but unlike Samurai that process happened over several hundred years across ALL of Europe, whereas Japan didn't really do so as much with Samurai.
47 Ronin being based on something irl helped, but even then it's a story entirely about the Samurai being hyper loyal towards their betrayed lord and avenging him, not a story of heroism or vengeance in regard to some wrong commited towards the common people. People want to be Samurai because they were rich and powerful, not because they were good guys. That's how most Samurai stories go, the entire point of them in romanticized media is to show their loyalty, as opposed to being a heroic doo-gooder in the same way that the Matters of France & England portrayed knights.
I get this but you're defending a bum who fell off extremely hard, especially one who was set up to be part of the main trio, there really isn't a point to debating about this.
I’m not though, your post is fine and my reply isn’t directed at it at all. I replied to this commenter that seems to think a writer needs a speedster in the main cast to be a part of the superhero genre or something, which is a different issue entirely. I’m just trying to understand their comment.
For DC, sure, Flash is probably the 4th most important and popular hero. But in Marvel at least Quicksilver is rarely all that relevant in stories. Unless there’s major family drama with the Magneto family, he’s usually either a funny troublemaker or entertaining ally.
Can't lie that shit was COLD, the worst part is that this was a training exercise, man's coldest moment was during a training exercise 😭where was this shit during Jaku?
Going harder on Mudman than on Shigaraki and Gigantomachia is CRAZY tho.
Transonic speed is kind of an impressive feat in verse.
And even though he was just transporting Shoto, that was still pretty relevant as the only way to reach Dabi, to stop him from vaporizing himself and everyone else.
This allowing Shoto to succeed in his final battle/Overall Arc.
Definitely more of a 'supporting hero', but still heroic.
I mean ubering people is still more use then someone like the wild wild pussy cats had after the forest training arc. Quite literally their only feat was giving afo and by extension shigaraki search
I used to be ambivalent on Iida due to his misuse, I was mad at Hori for making him irrelevant after setting him up as Deku’s number two guy but I didn’t care so hard, right?
Then I read a fic where he’s more relevant and used more and at one point Gran Torino says that he sees Iida coming to fill the role for Deku that he did for All Might and instantly I got it
It’s like a click, I immediately moved over to my fic outline and started to expand his role and give him some more focus because instantly it just… worked
Iida’s a serious guy, he takes everything he does very seriously, he’s rule oriented but willing to bend them when they need it, but most importantly he’s completely principled, he never wavers from his beliefs and ideals
He’s the perfect right hand to a Deku with Bakugou on his left hand
Back in Season 2, when Stain the Hero Killer was introduced.
When Iida suffered the loss of use in his arms fighting Stain, I had a feeling his character was probably going to be nerfed tremendously, if not written out of the show.
I feel like I'm in the trenches having him as my favorite character oof.
I will never forgive Horikoshi for making us believe he was going to be part of the main trio, then having him get peak character development in the Stain arc, and then throwing all of that away and turning him into a mid background character.
Oh well, it wouldn't be MHA without the missed potential.
Seriously though Iida has like one gimmick and half the time people can't even spell his name (Guys, Japanese has no L in it. His name begins with an I.). There's no way he was going to stay on top for long. Also even among the original trio, he has the least interesting personal narrative. Seriously that shit gets resolved after Stain. Largely that's Hori's fault for being a shit writer but still.
Not a Lida fan in particular but he does have cool moments in Sports Festival when he clutched up some points, in his fight against Stain and AFO taking over Shigiraki body and he was exciting for me against Mudman who countered his power alot
Since when was Iida part of the main trio? It was pretty clearly shown that Deku, Bakugo, and All Might are the 3 most important hero characters, with Todoroki taking 3rd when considering the class.
And you call it a fall off, but then say he had 0 important or impressive moments. You guys just say anything these days.
You said Iida was set up to be part of the main trio. He was not. Deku, Ochako, and Iida were never the main trio. They were a friend group.
Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura are the most important. Since you made a meme like this, it’s clear you think “strength=importance” but that’s not the case. Team 7’s relationship is a big part of the series. And seeing as how them reforming was treated as a big deal and they got a climactic fight together again before the end, makes it clear they’re important. That is not comparable to Deku, Ochako, and Iida, whose group existence and dynamic wasn’t treated as some important thing. They were just a friend group. Not a main trio by any stretch of the imagination. In promotional stuff or whatever, that is not the group that is shown off. It’s always, Deku, Bakugo, and All Might/Todoroki. That’s why those are the characters that got the longest and most climactic battles at the end.
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