See, I came to the bnha and bkdk fandom anime first. The first impression I got from Deku's and Katsuki's characters and their relationship was from the anime.

For me it was a very interesting relationship with a complicated past that I felt very intrigued by,

and it resonated with me on a personal level bc I had experienced something similar-- having a bad relationship with someone you care for bc a big misunderstanding + an ego complex issue.

So I knew from the beginning, from the first Deku vs. Kacchan conclusion, that they would eventually work it out. (And I was not disappointed)

For me, Katsuki was the typical brash anime character with a bad mouth and a delinquent appearance, like Yuri Plisetsky from Yuri!!! ON ICE or Inosuke from Kimetsu no Yaiba and many, many others.

So imagine my surprise when I go to ye old tumblr for some shipping content and find out this MASSIVE subculture of hating Kacchan and his relationship with Deku.

When I find out that many bnha fans believe that Deku was a poor """"victim""" of Katsuki's """abuse""" and that he had been """tormenting poor Izuku for 11 years""".

(Yes Kacchan was bully bc he didn't want Deku around him, he wanted to push him away, bc he wanted nothing to do with Deku, he was afraid of what Deku made him feel & the fact that Deku didn't treated him like a superhuman + thought Deku was mocking him all the time)

(& yes Deku has at least 10% of the blame for wanting to be around him when Kacchan clearly didn't want him to, but thanks to DvK2 we know his admiration won over Katsuki's jerk tendencies and their bad relationship.
& yes Katsuki was a massive jerk & he's growing up, thanks god)

Then I found out about the bad translations and the inaccuracies in some of them and my confusion cleared a bit. But that didn't mean anti fandom was going to let go of their favorite pastime.

See, this is why understanding some basics from Japanese culture is necessary when you consume manga. Because if you don't you'll be missing a LOT of context and you'll misunderstand a lot if stuff. (Like the fact that Kacchan's constant "DIE DIE" is seen as childish behavior)

(Here is a very good thread that addresses this matter) https://twitter.com/goIdendeku/status/801625481372123136?s=19

This is why, among other things, I'm absolutely against erasing honorifics from translations. Things like -chan or -kun or -san can't be translated to English. Viz Media does this. Mangastream does this.

& I think this is really not the way to proceed when translating a work from a culture that differs in many ways from western culture. By attempting to "adapt" an art work this attitude just ends up creating misunderstandings, simplifying complex ideas & fomenting ignorance.

"But not everyone wants to learn Japanese stuff to enjoy a story, we adapt it so people can easily understand" some may say. So, people have so little brains they can't learn 10 easy Japanese words? Wow, they must think their readers are really stupid.

Some years ago you'd find that manga and manwa translators took a moment to, for example, explain how Japanese honorifics worked: Just a page at the end or the beginning of the chapter. It wasn't much trouble. A visit to wikipedia would do, too.

But now we are living in a world where we want to make everything easy for the young, filtering and purging stuff in a way that makes the end result a translation, sometimes, miles away from the original.

(For the record, this not only affects the English fandom, but the Spanish fandom as well, bc unfortunately Spanish fandom translates from the English, and it's just plain sad)

/End of rant. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.