Why Does Everyone Like this Loud, Rude, Bully?

I’ve spent a majority of my life watching anime. It’s one of my longest running hobbies; it’s something that I really enjoy digging down into and discussing about on different levels of the show, characters, scenery, art, and more. I’m not afraid to tell people that I am very egotistical and pretentious most of the time with my own opinions and shows that I talk about, which is why I love engaging in conversation. So I want to start writing more about things like this, and I figure I can start off with a bang—literally—talking about a character named Bakugou Katsuki.

Boku No Hero Academia—or BNHA for shorthand—is an action/adventure story about a group of kids going to highschool to become pro superheros. For myself, I am not a big fan of this genre. BNHA can be classified under the same show genres as One Piece, Naruto, Bleach, and Fairy Tail; long running shows, filled with constant action/adventure introducing lots of different characters and arcs. Sometimes the shows can run for over 100 episodes at least, and a quarter of those might be an arc that has no real relation to the main story I am watching for. So when I had heard BNHA was becoming really popular, I wasn’t too interested until I started hearing more about a specific character.

Bakugou Katsuki is a cherry blonde star-driven superhero from the show. From the small details I had heard from my brother, Bakugou sounded like a complete bully, rude to everyone and everything around him, and as a character that served the role of a mountain our main character and hero, Midoriya Izuku, had to climb and defeat. But what confused me the most was that out of two of three character pollings the show has done, Bakugou has been winning in first place, and even in that third polling he was still in the Top 5 out of over twenty characters. At that point, I figured there had to be something more to this character, and the only way to figure that out was to start watching the show.

I should feel like it’s important to note, as I was learning more about Bakugou and his character, that in the first volume of BNHA—the manga version—you learn some facts about Bakugou from the author. First, his birthday is April 20th and his favorite things are ALL spicy foods and mountain climbing. After these fun facts you get a note from the author as well which reads: “At first I made him a natural born genius who would inadvertently insult people, but that got pretty boring, So I went the other route and turned him into a nasty guy with an explosive personality. I’m glad he came out so unlikeable. His face just screams ‘I’m a rotten thief’.”

Even the author wanted to have Bakugou as this big, bad, angry kid who was unlikeable by everyone, not just his peers in the show, but for the audience as well. And I can still sit here and tell you, watching all 60 episodes that are currently out, Bakugou is still the rude, self-absorbed, egotistical anti-hero of the show. But I also have to come clean and say he is my favorite from the entire show. So what happened? How was this character who was intended to be so unlikeable even by the author, become one of the most loved and popular one?

I think it’s because he’s the anti-hero. An "anti-hero" by definition is "a protagonist who lacks the attributes that make a heroic figure." Another good example of an anti-hero that everyone knows is Deadpool from the Marvel Universe. He’s technically a hero even if he’s rude, brash, and the complete opposite of what we idealize as a hero. But the quirks that Deadpool have to make him so loveable is that he’s funny, has a lot of good comedic timing, and engages with the audience on a different level than any other character. Bakugou is almost the same in that way. In the first episode, he is introduced as a character who is striving to be the #1 Hero and has been a lifelong bully who likes to talk down our main hero of the story Midoriya. And this behavior continues with the story. Bakugou and Midoriya apply and are accepted to the same hero academy (even after Bakugou threatens Midoriya not to apply to the school because he wanted to be the only person at his school to apply and get accepted). And that is where I get my first taste of the Bakugou that intrigues me.

Every piece of dialogue, every scene animated is always done for a reason. It’s an argument that I have had countless times with people who try to wash away a scene as something that “doesn’t matter” or has “no meaning.” It makes absolutely no sense to me why a production team who has an idea, storyboards, meetings, and so much more time and effort going into these animated scenes and this story just to throw something completely useless for the viewer to just disregard. When watching anime, it’s analyzing everything you can because the author and animators have put it there for a reason—they want you to see it. And that is what I saw in Bakugou when he threatens Midoriya not to apply for the academy. Bakugou starts by announcing loudly to his classmates that he is going for the prestigious school where barely anyone who applies actually gets accepted into. The entire class is shown to give in, they agree, and hype up Bakugou saying that he will be the first in their school ever to have someone apply and make it into the school. Except Midoriya, he has a motivation to apply and enter the school even if he’s quirkless. Initially, Bakugou laughs at him and tells him not to apply because it would be obvious that he would fail. Midoriya and Bakugou grew up together. Bakugou knew that Midoriya had no quirk—or superpowers—to get into the academy. And yet, months later after Midoriya gets his quirk, trains, and is more confident in himself, Bakugou is suddenly serious. He felt threatened enough to take Midoriya out behind the school building and try to scare him into not applying. That scene shows me that Bakugou saw something in Midoriya he didn’t want to lose to. There was something about Midoriya, the quirkless kid compared to his powerful, explosions, that still made him want to scare Midoriya away from his number one spot. To me, I liked that about Bakugou. I liked that he could see the confidence Midoriya had gained and his drive to compete with Bakugou and take the #1 spot, and he didn’t laugh at him. Bakugou took him seriously now, and saw him as competition.

This is an attribute that gets overlooked a lot by the characters in the show, but not with the viewers. Even as he gets into the prestigious school, he still strives and isn’t afraid to talk down to his classmates in a very brute and rude manner but at the same time knows how to respect them and see them for their strengths and as competition to defeat and learn from in his own way. Another good example of this is a fight he does during school tournament that has him fighting against a girl named Uraraka Ochako. Urakaka is known as a bubbly, happy girl who is good friends with Midoriya with a quirk to manipulate gravity. She’s also viewed as timid and sweet in most scenes which is why, during their fight, the crowd is seen booing Bakugou for "going to hard against her" and should "take it easy on her." In the previous matches, it was shown that a lot of the fighters, instead of trying to beat their opponent with strength, all tried to push their opponent out of the ring to win, doing the typical heroic thing to win a fight without actually hurting anyone. But not Bakugou. No, Bakugou doesn’t and he is throwing all his punches even as Uraraka is getting pretty beat during the match. However, you find out that Uraraka had a plan the entire time to catch him off guard, even if it doesn’t work, and Bakugou ends up winning the fight. You see that he still respected her strength enough to give her a proper match instead of doing the "good" or "heroic" thing in that sense.

And that is what I think drives the audience to have such a fond attachment to Bakugou Katsuki as a character. The aspiring pro hero looks like anything but heroic with his brash and rude personality, has a hard driven goal to be #1, and at the same time has enough respect and smarts to acknowledge those around him that have the strength to be competition and someone he can grow from to become that person who can be truly the #1 Hero. To be completely honest, action/adventure driven stories tend to bore me and I lose interest pretty quickly and it’s no different for BNHA. I don’t have a real attachment to the story, and if the anime never gets renewed for another season, I wouldn’t be terribly upset or lost. I do want to continue watching this show, but for Bakugou Katsuki as a character alone. I want to see how his character progresses and grows from here on out, and I can’t wait to see the character development he brings out in himself and those around him.

Like I said before, I love anime and the topics with characters, story, art, and whatever else may come and I will definitely be writing more about different shows and different topics that have been circling in my brain for far too long. But if there is something specific you would like to hear me talk about, don’t be afraid to comment somewhere and I’ll be more than happy to talk and debate with you all.