When the My Hero Academia anime first launched, the narrative had a mixed to positive attitude about supernatural Quirks. Such superpowers were the gifts that pro heroes like All Might used to defend society from villainy and crime, but over time, the anime revealed the bigger picture: that Quirks had permanently affected society and individuals in destructive ways. In fact, this often led to trauma for individuals and, in the Todorokis' case, entire families at once.
Sometimes, Quirk-based trauma is an accident based on what kind of Quirk someone inherited, as Himiko Toga and Spinner would know, while other Quirk-based trauma was practically by design. Such was the case for the Todorokis, a family that suffered immense generational trauma because Enji Todoroki/Endeavor got a Quirk marriage to conceive the ultimate child. Endeavor got his wish, but in the process, he hurt many people, and only now is Endeavor coming to terms with what he did to two generations of Todorokis.
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The Todoroki Family Trauma is a Cautionary Tale Against Quirk Marriages
It's No Wonder This Practice is Discouraged
There are several layers and aspects to the Todoroki family's generational trauma, one of which is directly addressed in the anime. For the most part, people in Deku's era kept their Quirks suppressed and thought little of them, and didn't identify with them much. By contrast, some people cared a great deal about the power and nature of their Quirks, and for that matter, the Quirks of their children as well. Pro heroes, in particular, may have a serious stake about what kind of Quirks their children have if their kids will be inspired by their hero parent to become heroes themselves. In the case of the Todorokis, the pro hero Endeavor decided to game the system, even though he undoubtedly knew that such things were forbidden. Enji Todoroki couldn't surpass his shonen rival All Might, so he decided to genetically engineer an heir who could succeed where he failed.
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Thus, Enji needed a wife with an ice Quirk, thus his arranged marriage with a woman named Rei. Their first three children were deemed failures for Endeavor's purposes, only for Shoto to be born as a genetic superman, perfectly balancing his father's fire and his mother's ice. But even when Endeavor got what he wanted, he ruined the lives of two generations of his unnatural family. His oldest son Toya nearly destroyed himself trying to meet his father's expectations, and his son Natsuo and daughter Fuyumi were practically ignored, while Shoto was pushed too hard to become a pro hero candidate. The stress and trauma affected everyone involved, including Rei, who deeply resented her husband and then scarred her son Shoto because she saw Endeavor in him. Eventually, the Todorokis scattered, with Endeavor being alienated from everyone else.
This kind of generational trauma is a clear example of why Quirk marriages are so heavily discouraged in the world of My Hero Academia. All kinds of problems may arise, from overpowered Quirks that hurt people by accident to the children being defined entirely by their Quirks and not by who they are. It's the familiar paradigm of a parent pushing their child too hard and the child resenting their parents for it, but with powerful, even dangerous Quirks added to amplify the trauma in both physical and mental ways. It can be tough to tell where the Quirk ends and the person begins, and the line is even fuzzier in the case of the Todorokis, both for those with the engineered Quirks and their relatives. For a time, Rei wasn't sure whether to view Shoto as her son or as her husband's living weapon, and the stress caused much hardship and trauma for both of them with the hot water incident that gave Shoto his scar.
How My Hero Academia Soothed Shoto Todoroki's Generational Trauma
The Power of Friendship Saved His Soul
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My Hero Academia didn't just show where Shoto Todoroki's generational trauma came from and how it affected him -- the anime also showed how such trauma can be assuaged. For the sake of positive shonen messaging and entertainment, the anime made the process of overcoming trauma relatively straightforward and even easy compared to real-life trauma, but that's just how fiction works in certain genres. In this case, Shoto mainly needed the classic power of friendship to help him move past his generational trauma, all because of the real-life technique of making sure a victim of trauma doesn't feel alone. Fortunately for Shoto, going to UA meant being surrounded by people his age who shared his mission of becoming a pro hero. Shoto had no one to turn to back home, but UA was a totally different social context.
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Isolation may perpetuate and possibly even deepen someone's trauma, and as Shoto's arc suggested, even if the traumatized individual tries to remain alone, having good-hearted people around them can still make a difference. As a symptom of his generational trauma, Shoto tried to emotionally numb himself in certain ways and tried to push people away, but his classmates were his friends and peers, and they wouldn't let him bear his burden alone. Gradually, that positivity rubbed off on Shoto, and he began to act less like a lone wolf and more like his true kuudere self, becoming more of a team player and even connecting with his new friends on a personal level. He pleasantly surprised everyone by making a joke after the Stain battle, for example, and gladly did his part to cook dinner during the forest training camp arc.
By this point in My Hero Academia, Shoto has fully embraced the power of friendship and empathy, fighting to protect something rather than push something -- or someone -- away. When he first started classes at UA, Shoto was driven to defy his father and independently become a hero, but now Shoto fights for loftier idealism, as do his classmates. Shoto fights to protect others and their happiness, to the point he united with his parents, brother, and sister to stop Toya/Dabi from exploding and destroying everything. If Shoto is willing to fight alongside the people most closely associated with his trauma to risk his life protecting something else, then that shows how far Shoto Todoroki has come. There will always be lingering mental scars and unpleasant memories for him, but in terms of his everyday actions and worldview, Shoto has largely overcome his generational trauma and is giving his family a second chance at happiness.
How My Hero Academia Addressed Endeavor's Role in the Generational Trauma
He Worked Hard For an Ambiguous Redemption Arc
The Todoroki household's generational trauma can all be traced back to Endeavor, since it was his idea to have a Quirk marriage, and he was the one who either pressured his children too hard or ignored them as failures. This affected his sons, daughter, and wife greatly, meaning he is to blame and must do the most work to try and overcome the generational trauma for the benefit of all. It's his responsibility, and starting around Season 5 of My Hero Academia, Endeavor got started on that. Perhaps becoming the #1 hero and having nothing left to fight for gave him the mental clarity necessary to finally face the music.
That launched Endeavor's remarkable redemption arc, which was intriguing not just because of the action and drama of it all, but the ambiguity of that arc. It's important that Endeavor's redemption arc is actually his attempt to atone for his past wrongs and get a second chance, because My Hero Academia makes it intentionally unclear whether Endeavor deserves redemption. It's open-ended and left to discussion among fans, which actually deepens the content since there are no clear-cut, absolute answers in the anime for fans to default to. The only fact is that Endeavor wants to atone and is making a serious, honest effort at it, and the characters had mixed views about it that changed over time. Endeavor's wife, sons, and daughter could all blame him for their suffering, so it said a lot about them whether they gave him a chance or not, and why. There were no right or wrong answers for the other Todorokis, just different ones.
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By the end of his arc, Endeavor had accomplished remarkable things not just to save Japan from supervillains like All For One, but also to fix his family and try to prove his remorse for his past wrongs. He risked his life more than once and suffered many physical losses, and even in the manga's final chapters, there was still some open-ended ambiguity. That makes Endeavor many things at once: monster, abuser, antihero, sympathetic, unsympathetic, and above all, ambiguous.
There is no one single word or label that sums up Endeavor thanks to his role in the generational trauma and his sincere effort to fix it, making him one of My Hero Academia's most complicated and discussion-worthy character of all. Is he a good person deep down who made terrible mistakes, or a symbol of everything wrong with Quirks and hero society? His role in the generational trauma is the main context for this meaningful debate, because his attitude and Quirk hurt two generations of Todorokis while his noble side sought to make amends. Perhaps the very existence of hero society is ethically ambiguous, like Endeavor himself, since Quirks have done as much harm and good, and there may be more than one family like the Todorokis out there.
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My Hero Academia
Action
Superhero
Animation
Izuku has dreamt of being a hero all his life -- a lofty goal for anyone, but especially challenging for a kid with no superpowers. That's right, in a world where eighty percent of the population has some kind of super-powered "quirk," Izuku was unlucky enough to be born completely normal. But that's not enough to stop him from enrolling in one of the world's most prestigious hero academies.
Release Date April 3, 2016
Cast Aoi Yuki , Ayane Sakura , Christopher R. Sabat , Yûki Kaji , Nobuhiko Okamoto , Luci Christian , David Matranga , Justin Briner , Kenta Miyake , Clifford Chapin , Daiki Yamashita
Rating
Seasons 7
Website https://www.funimation.com/shows/my-hero-academia/
Franchise My Hero Academia
Characters By Kohei Horikoshi
Distributor FUNimation Entertainment
Main Characters Tsuyu Asui, Katsuki Bakugo, Ochaco Uraraka, Izuku Midoriya, Shoto Todoroki, All Might
Production Company Bones
Story By Kōhei Horikoshi, Yōsuke Kuroda
Number of Episodes 113
Streaming Service(s) Hulu , Crunchyroll
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