Shinso Hitoshi: Victim Of Discrimination? Part 2

Shinso Hitoshi: Victim of Discrimination? Part 2

Last time on DragonBall Z this overly long meta post, I talked about how fanon Shinso differs from canon Shinso, looked at the evidence for him being bullied, and contrasted that with Izuku's canonical bullying and discrimination. This time, we move from how their classmates treated them to how society treats them. This section is going to be a fair bit shorter, but let's have some fun with it anyway! If you have not read the previous post, I highly suggest go and read that first! I will be building on ideas from that post in this one! With that said, let's get started!

We have seen how Izuku's and Shinso's classmates treated them in middle school, but quirk discrimation and quirkless discrimination are societal problems in the world of My Hero Academia. That begs the question, how does wider society treat Izuku and Shinso? Let’s start with Izuku. During the scene where Izuku is revealed to want to go to UA, Bakugo does this:

How does their teacher respond to this blatant aggression and attack on another student? With silence. He never intervenes at all to stop Bakugo or any of the rest of the class from insulting and attacking Izuku. Izuku is being completely let down by one of the key authorities in his life. The teacher does nothing to reign in his other students, does not scold them for their discriminatory actions or attitude, does not even try to defend one of his students. He is failing Izuku as an authority figure and one possible conclusion we can draw from this is that he thinks Izuku is not worth defending. This is not the only time an adult authority figure lets Izuku down or devalues him for his lack of quirk. That began the moment Izuku was diagnosed as quirkless:

This panel has been much studied due to the similarity in appearance between Doctor Tsubasa here and Doctor Garaki, but that is not what I want to focus on. Instead, focus on the specific wording he uses, “there’s no hope for him.” Izuku, at the age of four, is judged by a medical doctor to have zero worth because of his lack of quirk. He is immediately discounted because of the double toe joint he possesses and the quirk he does not.

Finally, we have Izuku’s own words on what people say:

He is specifically ignoring what the world is telling him and instead keeps his head up and keeps moving forward. The implication is that society is telling him to do the opposite, to keep his head down and to give up on his dreams. Let’s contrast this with Shinso.

We sadly do not see Shinso’s quirk awakening, nor how he is treated by his teachers at his middle school. However, there is one instance where we can see how society treats him, the Sports Festival itself. In chapter 34, after Izuku defeats Shinso, we get a cut to the crowd and their thoughts on Shinso. Do they think he is a villain in the making? Are they scared of his quirk? That could not be further from the truth.

The crowd, far from viewing Shinso as a villain or dangerous, instead is praising him. One person wishes they had Shinso’s quirk (as did one of his classmates previously), another wonders why UA does not have Shinso in the hero course given how useful his quirk is for heroics. Not one calls him a villain or says he is unworthy of standing with the heroes. To summarize what Shinso’s 1-C classmates say, “he’s awesome.” I could not agree with them more, Shinso is awesome.

So, let’s conclude this meta with some closing thoughts. Shinso is a great character. I love him to death, and I have loved many stories that use the fanon ideas about him as an outcast. However, we should be careful to distinguish between fanon and canon. The two are very different things. As I mentioned at the start of last post, a big part of why I was inspired to write this long essay was because I had let the fanon version of Shinso replace canon in my head. It was only when I looked back at these chapters when Sam and I were planning how to handle Shinso in Little Owl that I realized, thanks to Sam's prompting, the inconsistency between fanon and canon. Canon Shinso has his own struggles and character that I would love to see explored in fanfiction a bit more often. He does face a lot of challenges, just that his challenges are different from Izuku's and from the challenges fanon often places in front of him. Taking canon and going in weird, fun directions with it is the entire point of fanfiction. I hope y'all have enjoyed my ramblings, I did not expect this to be quite this long, but I am a bit of a windbag!

For those of you who made it to the end of this, thanks for reading! Please let me know what you think and if you would like to see more stuff like this from me in the future!

Until then, ἐρρῶσθαι!