My Hero Academia, Chapter 192: The Todoroki Household
Yeah, this was what I hoped would happen -- a scene devoted to Endeavour being confronted by his family and especially by Shouto.
And this is the sort of good writing I've came to associate My Hero Academia with. Yes, the characters might be... questionable, especially with someone as polarizing as Endeavour. The problem with characters like Endeavour has never been the fact that he was redeemed. It's the fact that commonly, in shonen manga, detestable characters that are redeemed get away with a slap on their wrist, and sometimes not even then, with the authors taking the whole "he cried and feels bad" to be tantamount to atoning to every single one of their heinous crimes. But with Endeavour, the way it's done is pretty well-done.
Endeavour goes home to meet with a dinner with Shouto, Natsuo and Fuyumi, and it initially is set up as "the sons are awkward and don't quite not how to forgive", with a pretty hilarious deadpan from Shouto about Endeavour's scar. But turns out that, no, not everything is swept under the rug.
Fuyumi tries to play peacemaker, but Natsuo, the eldest son, is the one that explodes first. Endeavour tells him the standard "if you have something to say, say it", which basically triggers Natsuo to go into this rant about how he's never given any shits about them, and how he kept Shouto segregated from the other kids so much that Natsuo doesn't even know that soba is his favourite food until now. (All the while, we keep cutting away to Shouto slurping his soba, which I thought is just hilarious) Natsuo goes into this rant about how, no, trying to come back into their lives and becoming a good dad doesn't mean automatic forgiveness, or the annulment of all the hideous abuse he's heaped on Shouto or their mother.
And this is something that the anime fandom tends to skim over -- they basically go for "redeem this character and anyone who refuses to accept him is shit!" or "this character is irredeemable, fuck him let him die!" Real life's a bit more complex than that. And while we know that Endeavour's gotten a significant amount of character development in the past couple dozen chapters, and I personally am rooting for the man to truly change, at the same time it also doesn't excuse all his past sins and I actually do like that he doesn't get a free pass.
Hell, even the comparatively more supportive Shouto doesn't completely forgive Endeavour. Yes, he shed some tears for the man a couple of chapters ago when Endeavour fought the Noumu on the news, but being impressed with your dad being a superhero or being glad that he's not dead also doesn't also automatically means that Shouto is suddenly okay with everything. Shouto then plays a bunch of news that show public interviews of Endeavour. Some people are dismissive, but that one kid ends up shouting just how Endeavour's straining himself ragged for the people, and how "Mr. Can't Ya See" ends up being his own brand of inspiration to these people.
Shouto notes how "Endeavour The Hero" is amazing and remarkable, but everything Natsuo says is still true. He still hasn't forgiven him for everything he's done as Todoroki Enji. Shouto at least gives Endeavour a second chance, to see what kind of father he will become. Shouto himself notes just how he knows how a small inspiration can change a person, referring to his own character development in the earlier arcs.
And that's a pretty damn great way to resolve Endeavour's story, at least for now. He's given a second chance, but not forgiven. I like that.
Plus, there's still another huge mistake that Endeavour apparently did in the past, concerning a fourth kid Touya, with Endeavour thinking to himself about the "future I cut short". Is the Dabi-is-Endeavour's-kid theory going strong? It appears that it is.
Other things happen in this chapter too. We get to see Endeavour and Hawks talking and discussing about the Noumu incident, including an interesting bit where Endeavour notes how convenient it was that they were attacked very briefly after their first meeting. We also briefly get to see Hawks's backstory, where he was recruited into heroing incident after being at the Kamino Ward Incident? And Hawks.... was a kid during Kamino Ward? It's bizarre, and I'm not so sure what to make of it. Some neat scenes of Hawks thinking about his position as a double agent, and acknowledgement that his feathers will grow back.
Oh, and the final scene, of course, cuts away to Midoriya having a dream... and then that dream apparently being the confrontation between One For All and All For One, the ancient brothers in the past? Huh. Certainly did not expect this.
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