My Hero Academia: Why Nejire Deserves Better

This entry contains My Hero Academia spoilers

In a previous entry, I discussed how Horikoshi is squandering Uraraka's narrative potential by keeping her out of focus and holding back her development. Unfortunately, Uraraka is not the only My Hero Academia character to suffer from this problem, so I'll also look at Nejire Hado.

Who Nejire Is

Unlike Uraraka, who is ostensibly a main character, Nejire is more of a secondary character who is introduced near the start of the Internship arc, but she has a role to play.

Nejire, along with Mirio Togata and Tamaki Amajiki is one of U.A.'s "Big Three," three of the school's best third-years, who'd risen to prominence despite being unimpressive. While Mirio and Tamaki are long-time best friends, Nejire is more of an acquaintance to them; Mirio and Tamaki call each other by their first names, but refer to Nejire by her surname, and she responds in kind.

The three of them work as interns under pro heroes- Mirio works under All Might's former sidekick Sir Nighteye, Tamaki works under Fat Gum, and Nejire works under Ryukyu- and Nejire has the good luck to work with one of the top 10 heroes in Japan. They scout out a few students from 1-A for the internships- Mirio takes Midoriya to work with Nighteye, Kirishima convinces Tamaki to introduce him to Fat Gum, and Nejire recruits Uraraka and Tsuyu for Ryukyu. Tokoyami works under Hawks, and doesn't get any panel time in the arc, although he is show later.

Unlike Uraraka, Nejire's Quirk- the ability to fire spiraling blasts of energy- isn't all that creative, since it's basically Aoyama's without the drawback. It's also less memorable than Tamaki's ability to sprout the parts of the things he eats, or Mirio's ability to phase through solid matter (which is more realistically portrayed and difficult to use than one would think, but I digress).

How Nejire Was Shortchanged

You should be able to have some idea of the problem just from reading the previous section, as well as my post on Uraraka. To be more specific, Nejire comes off as rather extraneous to the plot, despite supposedly being equal to the other two.

Unlike Mirio and Tamaki, Nejire's backstory- her reason for becoming a hero, the experiences that impacted her and other such things- is never explored. She has few significant relationships, save from an implied friendship with her classmate Yuya, and barely interacts with her kohais Uraraka and Tsuyu. As a result, her character is not explored in much depth.

It's worth noting that the team-up for the raid on Overhaul's hideout came from the three hero agencies involved coming across evidence of the Shie Hassaikai's operations. Nighteye had been investigating the Hassaikai for some time, and Mirio and Midoriya had a close encounter with Overhaul while out on patrol. Fat Gum and his interns arrest some drug dealers, resulting in two Quirk-destroying bullets being fired and Fat Gum learning the awful truth about how they were made. Ryukyu and her interns simply fight some giant villains who'd purchased the Hassaikai's Quirk boosters. The latter group only gets a single short fight against them that proves mostly irrelevant tot he plot.

Now for the raid on the Shie Hassaikai itself. Let's compare each of the three Big Three members and their fights.

• Mirio, thanks to his intangibility Quirk, is able to phase through the walls and catch up to Overhaul before the others do. He fights Overhaul and a few of his men- Sakaki, Kurono and Nemoto- and while he loses his Quirk, he's able to continue fighting long enough for Midoriya and Nighteye to catch up.
• Tamaki agrees to hold off the "Garbage Trio," three desperate and suicidal Quirk users that Overhaul recruited, so the others can continue their pursuit. His fight is shown in its entirety, and he's able to win by using clever tactics and creative applications of his Quirk.
• Nejire, along with Ryukyu, Tsuyu and Uraraka, fights Katsukame outside the hideout. The four are not seen again until Katsukame falls through the street into Midoriya's fight with Overhaul, and Nejire barely plays any role after that

The reason why this is a problem is that in many shonen manga, battles aren't just the bread and butter of the story, but they're also an opportunity for many characters to grow as people and get stronger. Tamaki and Mirio's backstories were elaborated upon during their battles, so this should have been a perfect chance for Nejire to receive the same treatment.

When all's said and done, Nejire returns to school with the other U.A. interns, and while that might seem like the end of her role in the story, she returns for the culture festival. Surely this would be Horikoshi's chance to finally show more of her character and have her develop, right?

Wrong. Nejire's main role is to appear in a beauty pageant and dethrone a yearmate who won the two previous contests. The culture festival arc is such a wasted opportunity for Nejire's character it feels like a bad joke.

Nejire plays no role in the Joint Training arc, which is between Class 1-A and 1-B, rather than any of the third-year classes, or in the Meta Liberation Army Arc, which focuses on the League of Villains and the eponymous organization. As of this writing, she has made a few appearances in the Paranormal Liberation War arc, but none of them have been significant for her character.

Nejire's Character Arc

To put it bluntly, Nejire doesn't have one. Mirio's role in the plot involves him learning how to use his Quirk, and potentially learning how to live without it, while Tamaki slowly but surely builds up his confidence. Nejire, however, has not changed since her first appearance, and likely never will.

Conclusion

I'll admit that Nejire's character doesn't have as much to work with as Uraraka's character does. Rather, her character is proof that in My Hero Academia, males are often "more equal than" female characters, to quote Animal Farm, since despite being Mirio and Tamaki's equal, she's treated as an afterthought in the story. The fact that the majority of the female characters' battle in the Internship arc happens almost completely offscreen is further proof of this.

Still, I have to wonder whether this says something about the Japan shown in the series, since Japan is fairly patriarchal in real life. Consider the following statistics:

• In Class 1-A, only six out of 20 members are female. Hagakure was originally going to be male, so if that had happened, there would only have been five girls in the class.
• Class 1-B is a little better, with seven out of 20 members, but both first-year Hero Course classes have a roughly 2:1 male-female ratio.
• There are only three significant female faculty members- Midnight, Recovery Girl and Thirteen(who was later confirmed to be female) at U.A. out of 14 named characters.
• Only two of the top 10 heroes- Mirko(#5) and Ryukyu(#10)- are female, since Wash's gender has not been confirmed. Considering that Mirko lost an arm fighting in the hospital, she may not stay in the Top 10.
• On the villains' side, Himiko Toga is the only female member of the Paranormal Liberation Front after Magne and Curious's deaths.
• Almost all of the police characters and government officials, with limited exceptions, have been male.

As such, it is possible that while hero work isn't necessarily socially unacceptable for women, many would-be heroines choose to forgo careers in favor of getting married and becoming homemakers, thus resulting in few female heroes.

Still, while this is a plausible theory, the fact remains that Horikoshi can do better when it comes to writing female characters. It's probably too late to add more females without coming of as shoehorning them in, but Horikoshi can give some of the neglected female characters development and focus, as a way of improving on the story.