Todoroki Natsuo My Beloved - Blog Posts

Could you speak some more on Natsuo? I feel like the general consensus is he absolutely hates his father, and I would agree with that if not for a few things. He was just as worried as Fuyumi during Endeavor's fight with hood and like you mentioned in your last post, his reaction to his father making a new house for them isn't at all positive. I'm of course not saying he doesn't dislike Enji, I just feel like his feelings are a lot more complex than people choose to acknowledge.

Sure! I love that boy!

Again, this is a personal opinion, I'm not Horikoshi, I can only speak for the feelings the story gives me and for how I interpret the scenes.

I think Natsuo's feelings for his father are more complicate than 'he just hates him and that's it'.

It would probably be more accurate to say Natsuo is totally furious with him, and that's because Enji deeply hurt him, keeps on doing so even when he doesn't mean to and he also hurt the people Natsuo cared about.

But maybe we could start from the beginning.

When Natsuo had birth, the Todoroki family was already slowly starting to break down.

Enji and Rei's marriage was one of convenience for both, she wanted his economical help for her family, he wanted her to bear his children in hope their Quirk would mix in a positive way.

I'll quote the anime because it sums it pretty well:

"It was more or less made to look like an arranged marriage, but this was a Quirk marriage. Choosing a spouse to make one’s own Quirk stronger and passing it on… The purpose of the marriage was to have babies. It’s what I wanted. If my flame Quirk and the ice Quirk of the Himura family were to mix, I thought we could give birth to a hero who could surpass even All Might. And even though the Himura family was once prestigious, they were now struggling. Wanting the status and prestige of the number two hero, and the bride price, her father easily agreed to my proposition. She could have refused. However, even knowing that it was a Quirk marriage, she became my wife for the sake of her family."

Rei though, wanted to make the effort to keep smiling. In short, we can assume she wanted to try to make it work... and, for a while, it works.

Rei's family get the money, Enji gets children who aren't the perfect mix of his and Rei's Quirk but he still think he's satisfied.

This scene is important because it shows Enji basically babysitting Touya and Fuyumi. He's looking after them, he's looking at them for something that's not training and he claims he's satisfied. They aren't masterpieces, he won't even try to train Fuyumi, but he's okay, Touya has potential and Touya will show he's delighted to train with his father.

But then Touya can't use his Quirk anymore and things start to go downhill.

This scene too is important.

It's well known Enji is a bad father but, credits when it's due, when he's told Touya shouldn't use his Quirk, he doesn't shrug it off and says who cares, I want him to surpass All Might, who cares if he does it as a charred man, no, he stops training Touya.

However... in this scene it's Enji's day off, he could spend it with Touya, even though Touya wants them to train they don't really have to, instead he's leaving. He's starting to neglect his kids, likely for the same reason he'll neglect them in the future, he doesn't know what to say and wants to dodge the responsibility. Touya reacts by training harder on his own.

Enji can't stop him, which is frustrating and painful and he can't even get what he married for, a child who would surpass All Might.

It's in this setting he decides they should conceive Natsuo.

He dresses it as something done for Touya, so that Touya will give up, but it's actually something that's done for himself, so that HE will give up.

Rei initially disagrees with the plan but in the end she likely gave up. She know she was married for the purpose of giving Enji children after all.

Natsuo though, can't be the child Enji wanted. He has an ice Quirk. We don't know if it's a powerful ice Quirk but Enji still was biased against ice Quirk or if it was just an ordinary ice Quirk, what we know is that Enji doesn't even take into consideration the possibility to train him, even though, as far as we know, his Quirk doesn't hurt Natsuo.

And this is, according to the School Briefs, how Natsuo was in his own early years:

"Even now, Natsuo would beat himself up over how he used to be before the abuse really began, recalling the period in his life that had made him feel pathetic and ashamed. Before Shouto was born, Natsuo had sought his father’s love and care, and when Endeavor was around, he would turn into an excited ball of energy, eager for attention.

But that love never came. It was only thanks to his warm and caring mother that Natsuo had survived those early years and learned to cope with the rejection from his other parent. But after Shouto was born, even their mother grew distant, though not out of indifference. Natsuo could sense how much energy she’d had to devote to protecting her youngest, her baby, from her husband’s so-called training-which most would label abuse-but at that age, Natsuo couldn’t help but feel that his mother had been stolen away from him. After witnessing his mother and brother crying and screaming on that horrible day, Natsuo had been overcome with crushing shame."

Natsuo started out as a normal child who wanted his father's love but NEVER experienced it. He had to cope to such lack and uses a pretty strong word to define how hard it was, he said it was thanks to Rei he SURVIVED.

Now, I don't really know the original text so it can be that's just the translator using an excessive word but the bottom of the line is Natsuo had to learn to cope NEVER feeling loved by his father.

We can speculate the result was he likely distanced from him, stopped hoping... then his mother too couldn't give him all the time a small child like him needed. Let's remember Shouto had birth when Natsuo was three and, short after, it was decided he would be kept apart from his siblings. An infant needs his mother a lot and since he has to be kept away from his siblings when Rei was with him, she couldn't be with Natsuo.

But then things go further downhill, Enji begins abusing Rei.

He and Fuyumi look scared.

And then Rei is hospitalized, Shouto is scarred for life and Touya is dead. And all this should have been terribly painful for Natsuo, who was merely 8 back then, and the root cause can be traced back to Enji, his enstranged father.

Using anger to cope with pain is a really common thing.

Add to it that Natsuo also had to cope with guilt, he was ashamed of himself for having wanted Enji's love, he felt guilty for haivng felt neglected by Rei, for not having wanted to listen Touya as he vented. Natsuo should have been feeling really bad, and turning all that pain in a ball of anger directed at Enji (who definitely deserved it) should have helped him to cope.

But they didn't heal him. Natsuo is angry... but the anger is just a way to cope with the hurt.

In a tamer way he accuses his father of the same thing Touya will accuse him, of wanting to leave them behind.

It pains him and it makes him angry. He lacks a way to vent his anger.

Fuyumi doesn't want to talk about it (here but in the "School Briefs" as well), she had known the good times and wants them back. Natsuo isn't the type who, like Touya, would try to murder his father and can't even do what Shouto was trying to do at the start, get revenge on him by refusing to use his fire Quirk and becoming a Hero solely with his ice Quirk. Natsuo doesn't have a fire Quirk and no wish to become a Hero after all.

So he's with this huge ball of unresolved pain inside himself and tries to cope with it through anger.

What hurt Natsuo? He says it.

Enji never looked at him, he kept him away from Shouto, made him feel like he was a failure, hurt the people Natsuo loved, caused Touya's death.

Natsuo was hurt over and over and hid everything behind anger. When you strip him of the anger only pain remains.

Enji has left inside him psychological scars, the mere seeing of Enji causes him to remember all that and feel pain.

And to cope either he avoids Enji or he tries to summon up anger.

Staying away from Enji doesn't fix things. After all Enji kept away from him for years before he decided to start his atonement arc and Natsuo remained as hurt as he was the first day. The most staying away from Enji does, is not pocking to his wounds.

Being angry with Enji doesn't help either, it's just a temporary relief, he vents but that's all. It helps him to lower the pressure, I guess, but it doesn't heal him.

And what Natsuo truly wishes is likely to heal. Seeing Enji in troubles, risking his life, gave him no relief.

Natsuo isn't after revenge... he just doesn't know how to help himself, he's stuck with his pain and with, as only means to cope, his anger.

He doesn't know how to heal. The fact Enji initially expected him to just put aside his pain hurt and made him angry... but Enji deciding to keep away likely doesn't solve things because to him it likely feels like what his father had done his entire life... ignoring him.

And if it hurts being ignored... well, this is likely the sign inside him there's still an inner child who's love for his father to look at him...

...a bit like how in Tomura little Tenko is still alive.

BNHA has plenty of characters plagued by the past, who just can't let it go and, since the past hurt them, they claim to hate it.

It's a defense mechanism.

And Natsuo is also another character plagued by the past. He's not to the point he'll destroy the world like his brother or Tomura, he's psychologically much better than them but he's still hurt and needs to heal.

So yeah, if you ask me his feelings for Enji are definitely very complex but that's what makes him realistic and interesting as a character, after all.

At least, that's what I think. I'm not Horikoshi, I don't own The Truth, so of course other people might feel differently.

Thank you for your ask!