My Hero Academia 190 Review: The Redemption Problem

Boku no Hero Academia, Chapter 190: The Beginning Of

It's basically the climax of the Endeavour vs. High-End Noumu, with him, well, unleashing a pretty damn badass Plus Ultra version fhis Prominence Burn, being launched into the air with Hawks' feathers so that he can unleash a fuckton of flame without fear of damaging the nearby buildings and civilians. It's a bit of a slower-paced buildup, so the actual chapter basically has Endeavour taking down the Noumu, then standing up and being accepted by the public as a hero, and striking a badass pose. Oh, and Dabi (Dobby?) shows up at the end, and there's been some theories about Dabi possibly being an earlier Shouto, a former abused child from Endeavour?

Oh, and Hawks talks about something about "you're like me from the past or the alternate future". Is Hawks a Trunks situation now? That felt like a weird line to say apropos of nothing. 

Which I guess allows me to discuss a bit about the topic of Endeavour's characterization. A lot of people in the internet have  been grumbling about the potential redemption of a child abuser/wife-beater, but honestly this is what made Endeavour's story interesting for me, actually. Child abuse and wife-beating is an easy way to just make a character straight-up hateable, and the normal course for this to go on in fiction is just to have a horrible thing happen to them and kill them off, earning cheers from everyone. The alternate way, redeeming a monster that the author has built up to be so evil and horrible, without doing the legwork necessary in writing, would end up being absolutely dumb. Like Naruto's Obito, Bleach's Fullbringers and Fairy Tail's Kagura dumb levels of just handwaving everything they've done with a simple, "well, they're beaten, so they're good guys, right?" that seems willing to ignore all the vile shit they did. 

But at what point does the redemption feel believable? Must all redemption of an evil character evoke the "Redemption Equals Death" trope? That's honestly what makes Endeavour at this point interesting. His quiet scenes with All Might sort of hints that Endeavour is easily being built up towards a proper redemption, but we'll see just what the efforts he does to make up to Shouto and the rest of his family. And if the whole "Dabi is Endeavour's kid" ends up being actually real, it's  definitely interesting to see where the author takes this.