Hello!!!!! You’ve Mentioned Previously That You Have Some Opinions On Bakugo Mitsuki As A Mother, And

hello!!!!! you’ve mentioned previously that you have some opinions on bakugo mitsuki as a mother, and im super curious about them 👁️👁️

Hihi!!! Basically, I’m one of those people that really dislikes Mitsuki. Ultimately , my opinion is that the fandom can be really weird in their mindset about her because she is a toxic/bad mother, and I think that’s true regardless of how much someone might like her.

(This is really long because I yap about a couple different things, sorry!)

Mitsuki falls victim to an issue that I have with Horikoshi as an author; he has a really bad problem with tone and trying to merge his comedic aspects with his more serious ones. The best example I have is Hagakure, a character that solely exists because he thought it was funny to have a female character with the ‘needs to be naked to be invisible’ trope— something that destroyed her ability to be an ACTUAL character and caused her to be so overlooked that she accidentally makes more sense as the traitor than Aoyama, the one that was known to be traitor since day one.

It’s absolutely fine to have darker themes in a silly show, have a kids’ show become darker, or have two juxtaposing tones to highlight how serious things are getting. Spy x family is a show that does this incredibly well, imo, even with some of the pacing issues I have with it. With mha, however, Horikoshi will just randomly add things and commit to them just because he’s thinks it’s a funny bit and it ultimately ruins a lot of things about his work.

Bakugou Katsuki is one of them. As much as I love him, his character is fundamentally flawed because his author’s intentions with him and what the audience would interpret from him are so vastly different. The reason for this is because there are two major aspects of his character that are big deals but Horikoshi refuses to actually handle it as if it is because, to him, they’re jokes or something that’s not meant to be taken too seriously (based on the way he addresses them). The Sports Festival ending was absolutely horrifying if you think about it for more than two seconds— there is absolutely no way it is ever NOT abusive to muzzle and chain up a fifteen year old boy on NATIONAL television (possibly international because Aizawa says this festival replaces the Olympics). This is especially true when that same student had previously been attacked by a villain that GAGGED and RESTRAINED him (the sludge villain at the beginning of the show).

This is something that would traumatize him. I don’t care if he “deserved it” (he didn’t), this was humiliating and abusive and if UA wasn’t a sociopolitical superpower alongside the hero commission, the repercussions of this would’ve been devastating. But it’s never addressed because Horikoshi did it as a joke. This moment is meant to be funny and you’re supposed to laugh at how out of control Bakugou is. Despite the fact that this display is what leads the MAIN ANTAGONISTS to feel sorry for him and offer him a place with them because they believe he’s being abused by hero society. And I could hear the argument that this was all intentional and the league kidnapping him was meant to show how bad the end of the festival was, but I’d argue that nothing ever happens to cement that idea (in the anime, at least! I know that lots of stuff gets cut from the manga so it might not be wholly Horikoshi’s fault if there is manga or side content that goes against any of this). No one ever apologizes to Bakugou for it. Bakugou never talks to a friend about how these events were connected. It’s never addressed and, with how the villains and hero society are consistently treated throughout the series, I find it hard to believe that this was the actual intention here.

All this to say that his relationship with his mother is the exact same.

Mitsuki treats him the way she does because Horikoshi thinks it’s funny. She’s meant to be a parody of the strict/harsh mother that a lot of Asian households have— but the problem with this is that a lot of Asian mothers are abusive. In fact, the “harsh” way a lot of parents are across different cultures is all abusive, but it’s often justified with “well, that’s just how parents are here” but I don’t think that’s a good excuse.

It’s important to note that her being abusive makes her a bad mother, but I don’t think she doesn’t love her son or that she’s inherently a bad person. People often jump to this defense when you say she’s abusive, which is part of the strange mindset I spoke of earlier. It’s really dangerous, imo, to imply that an abusive person can’t love their victim and I don’t like that perspective, even with domestic abuse. These things have nuance and it’s not an all or nothing thing like people online like to pretend it is. Treating someone badly doesn’t automatically mean there’s no way you could ever love them or care for them, it just means that you treated them badly. Their love doesn’t justify their abuse, nor does it make it any less bad or traumatizing and saying that it’s okay because Mitsuki loves him has that implication.

In the same way I can say that someone is saying/doing something homophobic and not mean that they are a homophobe that hates gay people and wants to take our rights away, Mitsuki is abusive, but I don’t mean she’s a ruthless child abuser that feels no love or remorse. I’ll say that again: when I say she’s abusive, I don’t mean she’s incapable of love, but her loving her son does not change the fact that she treats him poorly and that she, and any mother she’s meant to parody, are bad mothers because this isn’t a healthy way to raise a child.

And I say that as someone who has a mother like her! Mitsuki as a fandom topic is really triggering for me and I tend to avoid positive posts about her because so many people like to justify her behavior, which in turn feels like they’re justifying my mother’s behavior. To add context as well, I’m white but my mother’s side of the family is all Japanese, with my great-grandmother being the one to immigrate to America. I don’t say this to compare my experiences with people who are actually Asian or Asian-American with mothers like Mitsuki (because I’m like 1/8th Japanese at this point so I’m in no way apart of this group 😭😭), but a lot of these behaviors are caused by generational trauma and I know my mother acted the way she did because of her mother, and because of her mother, and so on. Basically, this topic is kind of personal to me, even if I’m not in the exact position to be able to speak on it from a cultural standpoint.

To circle back, though, I don’t believe it’s accurate to say my mother doesn’t love me, even though she was abusive to me. I don’t think it’s accurate to say my grandmother didn’t love my mother, even though she was abusive towards her. Parents are far more complicated than that and it feels really gross to justify objectively bad actions by saying “well, she can’t be abusive because she means well and loves her son!”

Arguably, Endeavor loves his kids, as shown in his atonement arc (though, I don’t love how that one is written either)— that doesn’t make things any better, though, does it?

Mitsuki hits Katsuki. That is an objective fact because I have the scene pulled up right now and I’m watching it happen. Another objective fact is that it’s never okay to hit your kids. It’s not okay to spank them. It’s not okay to whoop them. Psychologically, this does more damage than good and Katsuki is actually such a good representation as to why. When you hit a kid for being bad or too much, they learn that when someone is “bad” then they deserve to be hurt, which leads them down two roads— either THEY become physical against other people when other people do something wrong (like the way Katsuki uses his quirk against Izuku— because, yes, Katsuki was abusive towards Izuku too. That doesn’t mean he’s a bad person now. He was a child and this was a learned behavior from his mother/his environment but that doesn’t suddenly justify it or make it better), or it means that they continue to allow other people, such as romantic partners, to hurt them as they get older because they feel like that’s the acceptable punishment.

I don’t care that he’s a teenager. I don’t care that she does it to reel him in. If it’s not okay to smack another adult because of their attitude problems, it’s not okay to do it to a child.

And the way she speaks to him is incredibly damaging. I don’t have access to the manga panels rn so this is based on the anime (dub with the translated subtitles) so maybe the manga handles it slightly better— but when Aizawa goes to ask for permission to let Katsuki stay at the dorms, Mitsuki smacks him COMPLETELY UNPROVOKED and when he snaps back at her with aggression telling her not to hit him, she responds with ANOTHER smack and says, “Oh, shut up! It’s your fault to begin with for being so weak. You got caught, and now you’re causing everyone trouble!” (subs)/“Oh hush! If you hadn’t been so damn weak, you never would’ve gotten caught and caused all that trouble!” (dub line)

Her son was just kidnapped.

Kidnapped by people that, at this point, have cemented themselves as incredibly dangerous individuals. The nomus are publicly known and publicly associated with the league because of the attack in Hosu City. He was kidnapped by people so dangerous that ALL MIGHT had to retire after he fought them— on NATIONAL TELEVISION. Katsuki could have died. Katsuki was traumatized. And this is how she treats him in front of PRO HEROES.

Following this, she hits him AGAIN and goes on about how Katsuki is good at everything because of his quirk, but that he was always being praised for shallow stuff and she says that it’s likely why he ended up like this. For starters, this obviously upsets him a bit. Humbling him isn’t a bad thing, but there’s a time and place for it and it’s very obvious that this line of thinking is how we end up with him having his fight against Izuku. He’s incredibly insecure despite his pride and if everyone was praising him for shallow stuff, what was she doing? How was she handling it other than hitting him and telling him that he’s weak? Do you really expect me to believe that the ONLY reason Katsuki acts the way he does is because his peers and teachers said that he was the best, and it has nothing to do with his mother who is aggressive even when he doesn’t do anything and describes him as “good at pretty much everything he does because of his blessed quirk”? His mother who responds to his kidnapping with “well, you got caught because you were weak and it caused so much trouble”?

Children are a product of their environment and there’s nothing anyone can do to convince me that Katsuki is the only child in the world whose biggest influence wasn’t his parents.

“He’s a hot tempered brat and we know he’s a pain” (dub)/“he’s a hopeless guy” (sub). If she talks like this to his teachers, to Pro Heroes, how does she talk to him when they’re alone? How did she respond when he was attacked by the slime villain? When he was chained up and muzzled on live television? You simply can’t convince me that she would’ve reacted any better.

I don’t care that she liked what Aizawa said at the press conference. I don’t care that she means well. I don’t care that she loves him. I don’t care that she clearly cares for him at the end of the manga when he’s in the hospital. No amount of manga panels showing her smiling when she’s near him or holding him as a baby will change the fact that she is a major part of why Katsuki is the way he is. Again, she can love him and be trying her absolute best and still be abusive or a bad mother, regardless of what Horikoshi was intending. I will never argue that she hates her son or that she does this maliciously— but based on her behavior, she’s incredibly damaging to be around.

When did she start hitting him? Was it when he was younger and getting too prideful for his own good? Did it start because he was annoying? Or because he had an attitude problem that she didn’t have the patience to solve without needless violence? Did she try anything other than hitting him or was he just getting on her nerves so that’s what she resorted to first? There are times where kids are truly uncontrollable and there really is nothing you can do to stop them from acting out. There are so many parents right now dealing with kids that refuse to listen and are engaging in really bad behaviors— again, I have personal experience with this.

But something tells me that Katsuki isn’t and never was meant to be one of those kids. Something tells me (and that something is his characterization and how he thrives under Aizawa who actually respects him and how he’s disciplined and grows without parental intervention and how he’s a hero) that Katsuki was not so uncontrollable and dangerous that it warranted any of this. He’s a fifteen year old boy going through some of the worst things people in this universe can imagine and she’s treating him like a burden. It’s actually devastating when you think about it.

My mother did the best she possibly could with the resources she had and I have no doubt that she loves me. But love should never feel like that, and while I respect anyone who wants to like Mitsuki or play with the Bakugou family dynamics, I don’t like her and I don’t like his family and I don’t like the amount of people in the mha fandom that consistently try to justify her behavior by saying it’s just a joke or just a product of the culture.

TLDR: I really dislike Mitsuki and how she’s handled in both the show and fandom. I 100% think that Katsuki is a victim— of his parents, of UA and hero society, and of the villains that target him— and it’s such a critical part of his character to me, a part that often goes overlooked because it genuinely doesn’t seem like most of it was intentional so a lot of people ignore it or just miss it entirely.