There's been quite a lot of discussion of the themes of My Hero Academia.
Heroism, self-improvement, society.
All fascinating stuff that one can dive pretty deeply into if they're so inclined.
Along with that comes a look at the iconography My Hero Academia clads itself with,
reveling in golden and silver age American comic book aesthetics.
However, the most interesting piece of symbolism in the series for me is the scars most of the primary characters acquire over the course of the story.
At the outset there are a few of them, but soon more and more characters begin sustaining them.
Or new characters also barring them arrive.
And it quickly became apparent that this is perhaps THE primary recurring visual motif in My Hero Academia.
And central to the ideas it puts forward.
From Todoroki's burns to All Might's debilitating injury,
to fresh wounds inflicted along the way like Deku's hand.
In all these cases and more, these characters are branded with visual testaments to their own shortcomings and hang-ups.
But by that same token, are left with inescapable reminders of their personal resolves to overcome all of that and emerge as better heroes and better people.
Of course, the visions each of them have for what exactly constitutes a better hero and person can vary wildly.
And what exactly they resolved to accomplish may not be something we'd be inclined to agree with.
Though his is somewhat subtle, and gets obscured by an overall terrifying presence, the Hero Killer Stain carries with him a scar.
One that he explicitly refers to as a symbol of his resolve.
In the vigilante spin-off manga, we see a younger Stain have a run-in with another vigilante whose ideals clash with his own.
A conflict he leaves with a broken nose and a newfound sense of his own failings.
To mark his resolve to do better and be worthy of those ideals,
he carves off that shattered representative of weakness
and is left with an eternal reminder of the frailty of living people.
Being a hero does not make you special or grant some kind of deific ability to transcend your own flesh and blood.
It is only through an immense amount of work, refinement of one's body and one's skills.
In a single word, resolve, that you may truly call yourself a hero.
Deku and Iida are also left with reminders of that frailty.
Iida's selfishly personal actions have left him with a debilitated arm whose function he might only regain
with the further progression of some currently in development medical procedure.
Because he lost control of his emotions, he has now literally lost the ability to control that piece of his body.
Deku's reckless use of One For All when his body is not yet up to that task finally catches up with him.
And he is forced to learn that unless he starts using more restraint, he will destroy himself.
What's so fantastic about this motif is that these scars can be present and each encapsulate one of these interesting and valuable ideas
without requiring Iida to just sit on his hospital bed and state aloud,
"I lost control of myself and so now I've lost control of this arm."
The fact that they exist everywhere in this series clues you in to the fact that there might just be a reason for that.
But you aren't going to be getting beaten over the head with this stuff.
Of course, the series isn't content to merely let this motif serve that singular role.
Closely related to the scars' conveyance of the lessons we can learn from these characters
is the role they can play in some of the character arcs they go through as they learn those lessons.
Not all scars are gained at the end of going through that journey and learning what it has to teach us.
Some journeys revolve around grappling with one's scars.
Todoroki's childhood in a broken and abusive household has scarred him.
And it's the emotional and psychological scarring that is far more significant here than the physical scars that clue us into that.
What his burns most specifically represent is his perception of himself.
A part of him, those elements acquired from his father specifically, is viewed with intense hatred, as abhorrent and ugly.
His dad punched him so hard in the gut that he threw up at the age of fucking 5,
and he watched that same man hit his mother immediately afterwards when she asked him to ease up.
This is brutal.
Endeavour is a brutal, disgusting person.
But he's also a person who for Todoroki's entire life has been explicitly raising Todoroki as an extension of himself.
So he's internalized the idea that all of those qualities are inherent in him.
And his scars are the externalization of that idea.
Through the help of people like Deku, he's able to learn that our scars and the people who left them don't need to define us.
Instead, we can choose to define ourselves.
And in so doing, decide what they mean.
Todoroki goes from viewing his scars as representative of an inherent evil that exists inside him,
an element of himself that he has to suppress, to accepting his mother's words.
There's nothing wrong about your parent's quirk or their blue eyes or their left handedness.
It's what they chose to do with those that is unacceptable.
And with those same qualities, you can go out and do good.
Todoroki is not the only character scarred by a history of abuse though.
The Hero Academy principal, Nezu, has a very prominent scar.
And when you look into things, a dark past from which it came.
Because that info will come up in the anime in not too long, I won't spoil it here.
But he does provide us another perspective on dealing with the repercussions of abuse.
And not every scar borne by a UA teacher is something that they start the series with.
Even older characters can acquire fresh scars, as Aizawa sensei demonstrates.
When he comes to the defense of his students during the attack on UA, he is left with a scar and along with it, lasting damage to his ability to use his quirk.
Which is an important character moment for him.
To his students and probably to many audience members, he initially comes off as cold or even sadistic.
But just like his ultimately caring, empathetic nature and good intentions that he keeps hidden away beneath a layer of aesthetic bluster...
That scar, that proof of his self-sacrificing devotion to the well-being of his students
is obscured by his costume.
Only visible when he lowers his guard and his persona.
The ultimate genius of how the series uses this motif
is that beyond the individual meaning each of these scars carry,
the presence of them itself conveys its own meaning on top of all that.
As Stain argues and the series seems to agree to,
heed to heroism is a willingness to give up oneself and one's desires
and give higher priority to others, even at the risk of oneself.
It's a lesson that All Might had forgotten briefly, taken over by concerns about exacerbating the scar he'd already acquired, and leaving himself even weaker.
Until Deku reminded him of what true heroism means.
Bakugo is still rather selfish, and still has some important lessons to learn.
So I would not at all be surprised to see some of those lessons come in the form of his own scar some time in the future.
Key to giving up oneself and one's desires is bearing the abuse an unfair world may throw at you.
But continuing to believe in the value of protecting that world.
To give yourself in service of it.
Injustices and all.
In the hopes that through your actions, you can bend the arc of society just that little bit further in the direction of eventual justice.
With themes of resolve, sacrifice, frailty, and mortality,
scars are a perfect fit for the world Kohei Horikoshi wanted to craft with this series
and the ideas he puts forward in it.
And I'm back.
After, no I'm not making this up, my channel being taken over by Moroccan hackers.
Yeah, it was real scary for a while there, but thankfully everything's back in order
with the only loss being any comments I had made on my videos here.
Which are now gone it seems.
One of the biggest sources of comfort through all this was the base of support I have
and the security that would have provided even if I had ended up needing to start from scratch.
So an extra emphatic thank you this time around to (list of patrons)
and all my other patrons.