I think I never actually explained my comically passionate distaste for the "AFO took Dekus quirk/gave Tomura his quirk" brand of fan theories.

So here goes! Thread!

One of MHAs big strengths to me is how, despite its simplistic narrative structure and characterization, it doesnt actually simplify the themes and issues it tackles all that much.

A great example is the whole Todoroki situation - there are a million different -

- ways to oversimplify and dumb down the nuances of abusive households, but the series CHOOSES to not do that and instead offer a more complicated and more interesting look.

Now, a central theme of MHA is that of inequality - "all men are not created equal" is -

- literally the first phrase of the entire text, after all. This inequality is largely due to not any one person, but due to abstract concepts like society and nature. People dont just suffer because of bad people, but because they're born a certain way or into certain -

- circumstances. It, in a way, turns nature and the state of the world itself into the underlying main villain of the series. And I think that is a wonderful theme for a story about genetic superpowers.

And it is that theme that would be utterly destroyed and butchered -

- if AFO were revealed to have been the one who took Dekus quirk or who gave Shiggys quirk.

Deku and Shiggy are the two moat central characters of the story and in turn the most important carriers of the theme of naturalistic inequality - both suffered at that -

- inequality and both dealt with it differently.

By having their suffering be not a consequence of nature, but the ACT of an evildoer, the theme is grossly oversimplified.

For one, the cruelty of the world is suddenly not something intangible and therefor untouchable, but-

- just a bad dude you need to defeat. Every time a plot element is tied to AFO, the story moves away from "Life is inherently unfair it is our duty as society to mitigate that inequality" towards "bad man do bad things", which imo is infinetly less interesting.

Also, it-

- makes the situation and its solutions way too easy.

When faced with mitigating inherent injustices of life, the solutions one must come up with will inherently be complicated, nuanced and multi-facetted, making for an interesting back and forth of ideas.

But when -

- the cause of evil is a very physical person, all you gotta do is incapacitate the bad dude and shits fine.

Overall, AFO being the source of our main duos suffering would completely annihilate tge integrity of one of the most interesting themes in the story while -

- offering little in return besides a cheap iteration of the bullshit 'it was my plan all along' shonenism.