For a show with a cast as big as My Hero Academia, it's hard to fit character
growth in for everybody while still making room for our protagonist to learn
important lessons about friendship, or what it means to be a hero, or...
...having legs.
But in this show, you could argue that, other than Deku and All Might,
no character has grown more than U.A.'s own resident IcyHot expert, Shoto Todoroki.
Controlled by his father at a young age,
entering U.A. as standoffish and reserved, Todoroki's changed a lot since then.
Now, instead of avoiding people, he actually goes on adventures while still wishing
he was somewhere else.
Which might make him the most relatable character in class 1A.
While we've gotten time to get to know Shoto in the
anime though, his dad is another story; let alone, the rest of his family.
And to those of you already in the comments section: yes, we're doing this one this week.
So, as you might recall, at the summer training camp, our heroes were
attacked by a group of new villains, including, but not limited to,
David Copperfield, the rusty Argonian blade the colossal Titan and Deadpool.
But today, we're focusing on the coolest-looking of this group, the fire wielding Dabi.
Specifically, the potential relation that people have been tossing around ever
since his first appearance. Im Jacob with Channel Frederator and today we're
once again diving into the hero course at U.A. to examine the question:
Is Dabi Shoto Todoroki's older brother?
Before we get started, though, I just want to
remind you of our new anime channel: Get in the Robot.
We want to share our love of the medium with you, and we're gonna have
all sorts of great anime related videos over there.
We've already got one video there about Hero Aca, we've got
one about Gun Gale Online, so go check those out when we're finished here.
Now, this theory has had a lot of fuel added to it over time, so there are going to be
some season 3 spoilers as well as some manga spoilers, but I'll warn you about
the manga spoilers later on if you want to follow along with the anime.
With that in mind, let's talk about the mysterious Dabi. Dobby? Dab-y?
I'm probably gonna flip-flop on the pronunciation, uh, go easy on me in the comments.
And actually, let's start with that name, Dabi. A name he appears to have given himself as he
introduced himself as such in episode 38 with the qualifier "Right now, I'm going
by Dabi." And when pressed by Shigaraki about his real name, he gets defensive.
And if this theory is true, that makes sense.
Shoto Todoroki is the son of Endeavor, the number two hero behind All Might.
If Dabi is Shoto's brother, then keeping his identity a secret would be
smart seeing as when we met him for the first time he hadn't "committed any flashy crimes yet."
If he used his real name and then he was outed as the son of
the number-two hero, that probably wouldn't have gone over super well with the League of Villains.
Furthermore, Dabi is a fanatical devotee of the hero killer, Stain,
a villain who believes that true heroism is not as common as the
super-powered world of My Hero Academia would have us think. Only truly
respecting All Might and Izuku as true paragons while vilifying every
other hero, as he believes they all do their good deeds out of self-interest.
And you know... he's kinda right! Whether it's in favor of fame or money or otherwise,
there are many heroes that seem to consider heroism to be the least
important part of the job. I mean, Stain's extremism falls apart when you realize
his goal is to murder all the false idols but other than that...
...yeah, he's not wrong?
And no one embodies this more than the previously mentioned number two hero,
Endeavor. Or Enji Todoroki, but we're gonna stick with Endeavor for today.
This dude's entire life is driven by his own pride. He forced himself to become so
good not to save people but to surpass All Might, going so far as to
strategically breed his children in the hopes that one of them could surpass
All Might themselves, like a frustrated Pokémon trainer farming eggs to hatch
one with perfect EV's and IVs.
No, I'm not salty for hatching a 50-percent Rattata, what makes you say that?
So, naturally, Endeavor did have a son, and he
did what he could to be a loving parent and foster this kind of relationship
with them so that they could discover their own drive to becoming a hero...
I'm just kidding, he's a garbage parent who abused the hell out of his son.
With a home life like this, would it be any surprise that one of Endeavor's kids
would run away from home, rebelling against their father, and adopting an
ideology that ran directly counter to what they were raised to believe? And
let's talk about Endeavor's strategy here. As we covered two weeks ago,
quirks are passed down from parent to child.
Now what was Dabi's quirk again? Oh, that's right,
explosive fire like two other members of the Todoroki family that I could name.
Another thing that's usually brought up is the exchange
between Dabi and Todoroki when they crash the summer training camp. It's not
much more than Dabi looking at Todoroki while he says his name but people have
noted the dramatic weight of the scene. Especially in the manga, insisting the
Dabi knowing Shoto's full name has gotta mean something.
And as far as Dabi's quark, there is a lot to unpack there too - first let's look
at his scars. We know that in this show, sometimes quirks can just be a huge
detriment. For example, you'll never be able to convince me that Tokoyami's
quark is anything but absurdly dangerous to himself and others. But even Shoto,
according to his bio can suffer frostbite when he uses his ice too much.
Conversely, it's unknown what would happen if he over uses his fire, but it's
pretty safe to say it probably wouldn't be good. But Shoto can thankfully
regulate his body temperature by being the embodiment of A Song of Ice and Fire.
Dabi, not so much. If we look at the Todoroki children and we assume that
this guy is our buddy Dabi, it would be clear that he inherited fewer traits
from his mother than his siblings. But some people have theorized that Dabi
may have inherited at least one trait from his mother's ice quirk: a
considerable weakness to fire which would have led to his extensive scarring.
Which appears to be in a very similar formation to Endeavor's fire if we
cross-reference the appearance of both. Not to mention that Dabi and Shoto
even wield their fire quirks similarly. Could this be a nod to them having the
same trainer in similar stages of their lives. Granted, that's not how Endeavor
handles his fire but Dhabi and Shoto both have a sort of calm, aloof
demeanor to them. Maybe one influenced the other at an earlier age here. But other
than how cool they are, is there anything else we can expand on? I mean the answer
is yes, cuz, I mean, look at how much video is left.
So I want to bring up something
about Hero Aca that doesn't get enough airplay from theorists. And considering
that one of the biggest pieces of evidence with this theory is Dabi
knowing Shoto's full name, this is pretty important.
U.A. students are celebrities!
Okay, that's not totally a fair comparison. I mean, they're not
always being hounded by the media.
Except for when they are.
U.A. students, I feel, are analogous to NCAA athletes.
They're not quite pros yet, but everybody knows
who the ones to look out for are and Shoto Todoroki is about as close to a
hero version of a star quarterback that you're gonna get. Any villain worth their
salt is gonna be keeping an eye on him based not just on his performance in the
highly publicized sports festival, but also his involvement in the Hosu City
incident. You could also write off Dabi's similar form as a result of this.
Shoto is a master technician, the Daniel Bryan of quirk users, I've moved
on to wrestlers now because I realized I don't know enough about footballs to
keep that analogy going. It's possible Dabi could have just been
taking notes after seeing Shoto in action. That said, it still doesn't
explain the dramatic weight lent to the exchange where Dabi calls Shoto by his
full name. The logic can be explained away but not the intensity so this one
is still up in the air for me.
Let's move on to the quirk. Some of you eagle-eyed
viewers may have noticed a tiny difference between Dhabi's quark and the
other two firing quirks we've been focusing on today. It's also something
that I've completely ignored up to this point. Dabi's fire is a bright blue
while Shoto and Endeavor produce a more familiar red orange color. That said, we
have seen Endeavor conjure blue flames while fighting the Nomu in the Hero
Killer arc, so, that explains it, right? Dobby just has blue flames instead of
his alleged father and brother. Bsdsa, hang on a second, there's something
funny about Endeavor's flame here. As it turns blue, it becomes more concentrated
and when Endeavor stops his flame, no smoke or sparks or embers or anything
emanate from his hand. All the smoke we see is coming from that ashen stump that
used to be that Nomu's head. This lack of anything other than the
pure blue flame we saw is characteristic of a complete combustion reaction,
usually achieved by adding more oxygen to the flame allowing for less leftovers
to form during the reaction. A large part of what gives flames they're scattered
yellow orange appearances because of the incandescence of soot particles formed in
the flame out of carbon. Not so with blue flames, where the extra oxygen prevents
that soot from forming. This is why most gas stoves use small blue flames to
mitigate the formation of any byproducts of incomplete combustion, which can be
incredibly dangerous if not dealt with properly. So I guess part of Endeavor's
move here allows him to regulate how much oxygen he's producing with the
flame, allowing him to condense it to a smaller blue flame like a walking Bunsen
burner. And I think the phrase walking Bunsen burner is probably the most
boring way I could have described one of the coolest things we've seen in the
anime so far. Dhabi's blue flame on the other hand has basically the exact same
properties as Endeavor or Todoroki's normal flames, other than the color. His
body even emanates smoke after his quirk is used, implying something other than
complete combustion. So this might be a question of what exactly is being burned
here? Since it probably isn't the same sort of reaction that Shoto and
Endeavor produce. A bunch of chemicals and compounds actually burn blue
naturally, like methanol, natural gas and many copper compounds, just to name a few
examples. Counter to Endeavor's highly concentrated blue flame, a significantly
more untamed flame like Dabi's here would probably require the burning of
something like copper or another blue flame producing fuel. With this, you could
come to the reasonable conclusion that Dabi and Endeavor's quirks function in
fundamentally different ways, which would hurt the idea that they're similar
quirks. If the chemical makeup of Dabi's quirk is completely different from Shoto
and Endeavor's how can they be in the same quirk line? But let's not call the
whole theory off just yet. After all, some people are already convinced that this
theory is a hundred percent true and the question isn't whether or not Dabi and
Shoto share the same dad but whether they share the same mom. And, pff, well, if
that's the case, then that could explain the differences in the quirks. A new
parent would throw in some uncertainty into the quirk department... but here's the
thing... I don't think so. If Dabi is Shoto's brother in any
capacity, I think the likelihood of them having the same mother would actually be
pretty good. Not because of his burns or how he wields his fire but his eye color.
I almost said his hair color, we're gonna get to that I meant his eye color. Shoto
Endeavor and Dobby all share the exact same blue eye color.
Well, except Shoto, who also has heterochromia, which is a condition where
someone can have two different colored eyes and ten times out of ten, it looks
cool as ****. Also, sometimes, he has a red eye and becomes a terminator, but let's focus on
the blue eyes here. After all, while heterochromia is passed down by genetics
through certain symptoms and diseases, no one else in the family seems to have it,
so let's consider it an outlier here. But blue eyes, just like the pigmentation in..
you know, everything with humans, it all comes down to the production of melanin,
this time in your irises. Meanwhile, we see in the show that Shoto's mom Rei
has grey eyes. Which, incidentally is also what it says on the Hero Aca wiki, we
only use the most trusted sources here. Grey eyes are very rare but, much like
blue eyes, they're attributed to a lack of melanin production. The actual gray
color being a result of collagen deposits in the eye which interfere with
how light reflects off of them, which results in the gray tone. It's like the
difference between how the sky looks on a bright sunny day versus a dull rainy
day, with the collagen deposits taking the same role as the
clouds that stretch across the sky. Larger amounts of water droplets in the sky or
collagen in the eye dull the effect of the light scattering, causing a more
washed out gray color. Although keep in mind with gray eyes, the scientific
community isn't a hundred percent sure on this, since there's such a rare
natural occurrence. But because grey eyes are genetically similar to blue eyes and
that they both hinge on a lack of melanin production, let's say that
they're both recessive genes which both Rei and Endeavor possess. This would
significantly raise the likelihood of Endeavor and Rei having a blue-eyed
child as opposed to if endeavor had had Dabi with somebody else.
Unless, of course, by some coincidence, they also had blue eyes. I mean, Endeavor
could have had Dabi with somebody who had brown eyes, provided they also had a
blue-eyed gene but then the likelihood would be significantly lower. Without
knowing the eye color of the Todoroki grandparents, it's impossible to know for
sure but with the parents eye colors, which we'll simplify to both being blue,
since a gray gene isn't really a thing, we can roughly estimate the likelihood
of their offspring having blue eyes to be between 95 and 99 percent. Which seems
to support not just Dabi and Shoto sharing the same father but the same
mother as well. And while, yes, this could be considered an overly simplistic
representation of gene inheritance and there are way more factors we can
consider, this is just a small part of today's theory. There is one problem here
though if Dabi does share the exact same parents as Shoto. Why does nobody
recognize him? Dabi's scars seem like something that he
would have gotten at a young age, especially considering the pressure that Endeavor
puts on his children. Still, is it possible that Dabi left the family
sometime between this moment and when he got his scars for the first time? Or
could it be that I'm just overthinking things and Dabi is just a half-brother
of Shoto's, I'll leave that to you in the comments. But if we stick with color
for just a tiny bit longer, there's one more thing I haven't mentioned which is
hair color. Black hair isn't exactly on brand with the Todoroki clan. Hell, even
in this still where we assumed the one kid with his back turned to us as Dabi,
that dudes hair is red! Not black! But as many people were quick to remind me a
couple weeks ago, uh, tiny manga spoilers incoming. Characters dyeing
their hair is a thing in Hero Aca, since we know that Kirishima dyes his red. And
really, Dabi would be totally justified in doing this. It would allow him to
further distance himself from his father. Not just for the purpose of disguise but
to stop reminding himself that he's the same flesh and blood as the most vain of
of the pro heroes. After all we've talked about today, you'd think we'd be done but
there actually is one more thing that I want to talk about and it's something
that just happened in the manga like a couple of weeks ago so the show isn't
gonna be getting to it for a long time. So if you want to skip this bit and go
right to the conspiracy rating, go to this time stamp that I'm showing you
right now. Otherwise, I hope you're ready for spoilers here we go.
That was probably long enough of a buffer. In Chapter 191 of the manga we see Dabi
return to antagonize Endeavor before quickly leaving without too much
conflict. But as he leaves we get this panel where Dabi taunts the now number one
hero at a particularly low point. The parallels between this exchange and the
one he had with Shoto are clearly there. The manga even reminds us of it when
Shoto sees Dabi upon his arrival. Furthermore, Dabi says he is eager to
talk with Endeavor as if they have some sort of unfinished business to deal with.
Though Endeavor's only knowledge of Dabi is that he's the one who murdered
Snatch, the sand hero. There's no family acknowledgement by
either party.. yet. But more than this we see that, when Dabi faced Snatch, he was
asked if he ever thinks about the families of his victims, of which include
the likes of pro heroes. Especially after that confrontation. And it wasn't until
now that we heard his answer which was "I thought so hard about it, I went
crazy." now if Dabi's a Todoroki, he wouldn't
exactly have the fondest memories of living in the family of a pro hero and
this likely would have solidified his resolve in Stain's philosophy that
selfish Pro heroes have no business living. The families of heroes are
constantly suffering, whether it's the pro hero imposing his unrealistic
expectations onto his children or the heroes risking their lives on a
consistent basis to the horror of their family members, Deku. These are all
thoughts that could swirl through Dabi's mind. Recollecting his past in
this way may lead him down a dark path and cause him to... go crazy, in his own
words. The theory that Dabi is a Todoroki, despite all of the nitpicking
that I've done today, I feel is actually really strong. And based on the amount of
hints dropped in the series, in the manga it almost makes too much sense within
the context of the story. Besides there's already a precedent for dramatic soap
opera twists like this in the series, you know like Shigaraki being Nana Shimura's
grandson, so who's to say that there isn't at least one more of these waiting
for us in a future chapter. So, with all of this in mind, on
the plausibility meter, despite the differences in the quirks and despite
the questions about his scars, I'm gonna rate the theory that Dabi is Shoto
Todoroki's older brother the rating of "Basically Canon, but Just to Spite Us it
Probably Won't be True", of four villains out of five. But what do you think? Do you
think that Dobby is Todoroki's older brother or do you think that people are
just grasping at straws and that this is a red herring. Who's your favorite
villain in the show? Let us know in the comments. Also, like I said before, if
you're a fan of anime and you want to see some more awesome videos, head on
over to our new channel, Get in the Robot. Make sure to LIKE the video, subscribe to
the channel, ring the bell, all that good stuff. Once again, I'm Jacob and never
forget, Frederator loves you.