Discussion Paranormal Liberation War Arc - Current Events and Aftermath

[Franz]

Reading the manga again I asked myself one thing:


But on balance what the hell did it help to create all these teams and divisions with leaders in the Front if then:

1) Twice is killed without even showing his subordinates in action (and his division is tactical)

2) The co-chiefs (Toga and Skeptic, Dabi and Geten) don't even collaborate with each other and make each one their own

 

[Wookitake]

Maybe we'll get a better handle of it once Re-Destro the political machinery kick in. But I guess that in part there was a change of plans. The groups introduction, with tons of designed new characters, made it seem the arc would be different.

Maybe that's for the future, maybe there was a change of plans.

 

[Sirin]

I’m pretty sure one of the points were to establish some sort of friendly terms by sharing the status and responsibilities between the members of initially hostile groups (well, at least in cases of Toga and Skeptic, Dabi and Geten). However, it didn’t work well, because the League doesn’t care about the liberation front in the slightest, and Dabi seems not to care even about the League.

 

[DemonKing888]

I guess we will have to see what actions Shigaraki takes going forward with the PLF. He called for Gigantomachia to bring everyone over to him, does that include Re-Destro and the others or just the League. If it's all the leaders then the PLF wasn't for nothing, if it's just the League then 100% it was pointless.

It's all up to Shigaraki now, it doesn't matter if the League doesn't care about the PLF. If Shigaraki sees them as allies the league will follow, Dabi included they have no choice. Shigaraki now has AFO, Regeneration, Search, Upgraded Decay and more, he'll end whole careers if he wants too. everyone will follow what he says or die.

 

[KingAzureRequiem]

It's clear by this point that the divisions don't matter at all considering several advise are going down without being named. It's doubtful that most of them will even make it past this arc and even if some due it's obvious that the previous structure won't be a thing anymore. That's to be expected considering the MLA was just a source of income for the league and they could careless about them beyond that while the MLA is at best indifferent to the league.
I want to point out again that advisers are getting taken out before even getting a name and machina is moving to the hospital so is highly doubtful that he is bring those extras with him. I mean it's not like the MLA resources and manpower mean anything by this point.

 

[Kariya]

It's clear by this point that the divisions don't matter at all considering several advise are going down without being named. It's doubtful that most of them will even make it past this arc and even if some due it's obvious that the previous structure won't be a thing anymore. That's to be expected considering the MLA was just a source of income for the league and they could careless about them beyond that while the MLA is at best indifferent to the league.
I want to point out again that advisers are getting taken out before even getting a name and machina is moving to the hospital so is highly doubtful that he is bring those extras with him. I mean it's not like the MLA resources and manpower mean anything by this point.

So then Shigarakis "bring everyone" would equal to "bring Dabi, Toga, Compress, Spinner and Twice (as Shigaraki should be unaware he is dead)? why not just say "bring my original VA buddies"

hori wasted the concept of the regiments, thats for sure... but maybe its not too late. I hope he is aware he actually had a good system with the perfect villain henchmen for Shigaraki for the future fights (villain that would make sense that are strong as they are the top of a 110 000 army and supposed to be trained.. so much better than Shigaraki just running into a bunch of powerful mooks by chance).. at this point the only thing it amounts to "Re-Destro and co really planned this crap, look, they even have these nice divisions for this and that, and top 3 of each division serve as advisers.." etc etc, than just throw it to the floor and step on it. I guess it also gives credit to the heroes for the preemptive strike, like look how much they ruined this nice system that could've worked so well, heroes know how to fuck villains plans.

it would be the shame if that was all the purpose it had, just like how the LA part of the PLF is just a punching bag so far. its up in the air hori drops a perfectly fine villain organization for whatever without even using them, or maybe they are getting a second chance to get their shit together. If Giga has a way to like transport the whole battlefield - remember, he has multiple quirks and seem to have an affinity with earth, maybe he could like put the whole shit on his back and run with it - even advisors previously taken out might have a chance to return. only ones captured onscreen so far are electricity advisor and slide'nGo.

 

[nectar]

I don't think the Divisions have been wasted as much as Horikoshi didn't plan on using them much this arc. The fact that they exist may hint at how screwed the heroes will be by the end of the arc, with the PLF in open warfare (or some sort of publicly know conflict) against the government after this arc.

It's clear by this point that the divisions don't matter at all considering several advise are going down without being named. It's doubtful that most of them will even make it past this arc and even if some due it's obvious that the previous structure won't be a thing anymore. That's to be expected considering the MLA was just a source of income for the league and they could careless about them beyond that while the MLA is at best indifferent to the league.
I want to point out again that advisers are getting taken out before even getting a name and machina is moving to the hospital so is highly doubtful that he is bring those extras with him. I mean it's not like the MLA resources and manpower mean anything by this point.

Yes, some advisors were defeated by a perfectly executed surprise attack by heroes with inside information on their organization. That doesn't make them less of a threat to me.

This arc wasn't about showing them as a threat, it's about showing how competent the heroes are when they plan ahead and have a double agent giving them everything they need to win. Their time in the spotlight (however long or brief that is) will come later.

 

[Sereen123]

The Paranormal liberation war arc has been going on for 30 chapters and I believe that it might end in the next 10 chapters or so. This arc includes the biggest stakes out of all previous arcs and has a real chance of being a turning point of the series. Personally, at first I believed that the arc would end with Shiggy and Villains victorious, freeing all the prisoners, and killing All might meanwhile all the students go to different countries in the MHA verse and we get a small time skip. That stuff could still happen but since the arc might be almost over i can see either Villains "losing" and going into hiding in Japan while the students go back to school or I can see Villains winning and good guys leave Japan to train and we get a time skip. The only reason i am hesistant against the idea of the students going back to school is that i can't see Horokoshi doing ANOTHER sports festival and ANOTHER provisional licencing program and just repeating the same school related storylines that we had before. Also, gigamachia and Shiggy are destroying land every where and i feel like there is a better story of students leaving and shiggy being left in Japan to try to reshape the destruction in Japan. But What do you guys think?

 

[KingAzureRequiem]

The idea that the heroes or just the will just leave their homes to go somewhere seem ridicules especially by this point in the story. Do you really think they will just leave their homes to fend for themselves while they train in someplace the audience doesn't care about? However, if the heroes win they would have to kill shigaraki but it's too soon for that. The most likely thing that would happen is if both sides fold and lay low for a while. Also the serious is has academia in it's name so like it or not there will be more schools activities.

 

[kkck]

Personally I think the villains will become a league of doom type of deal. Since the endgame here is to basically make shigaraki into a saturday morning cartoon villain who pretends to be more grounded than a saturday morning cartoon villain.

The heroes and "society" have taken a beating recently. But the same applies to the villains. The PLF had its plan exposed meaning that its chance of success is basically nothing at this point, unless the government is incapable of exploiting the fact that they have spied and documented the activities of the PLF for months, which would be absurd and stupid. Add to that, they were attacked which resulted in a massive conflict against a hero army in which they have also taken heavy casualties, along with having lost at least a base. On top of that, there is no way this attack is going on without every known PLF member having his assets frozen. Basically, the companies and resources which made the PLF what it is today are lost. I will assume that they do have hidden bases and money even without that though. Overall, villains might win the battle today but their loses are in fact just too great to brush over. So the most likely scenario is that redestro along with other big names will escape and regroup elsewhere.

On the other end of the battle you have machia bulldozing the country and heading to shigaraki who is running on fumes. machia will definitely make it to shigaraki and rescue him of course largely because otherwise the manga is over. Add to that the league of villains on his back to cover for them. But shigaraki isn't only exhausted, he is incomplete. he will likely need time to recover.

So now we have an incapacitated shigaraki along with the remnants of the PLF... Tired, wounded, with however much they manages to have hidden on the side without society knowing and looking for a new path forward because at least for the time being the MLA ideals are dead due to the government finding out in a lot of detail how they wanted to false flag the world into their dumb quirk society based ideology. They lost their companies and assets but they still have a "charismatic" leader in shigaraki (because he isn't actually charismatic but in context he gets people to follow him) and the vast majority of the PLF is probably still roaming around but without much to go on in terms of direction.

Enter the league of doom scenario. Shigaraki uses his "charisma" to rally the underworld around him and starts getting his own cut out of crime in exchange for protection. Which he manages to provide because the vast majority of the PLF are just regular people in regular jobs who do favors to shigaraki. And that alone is actually a gigantic amount of influence.

As for the heroes.... Welp, everything that happened here is their fault because they were comically inept. So they will take a lot of shit and society will start questioning whether justice should be enforced by people who just happened to be born with quirks which are adequate for punching crime in the face. I wouldn't be surprised if the military starts getting involved here because its about damn time. Dunno what the exact reaction will be though. less heroes, more heroes, more police, more heavily armed police... I assume society will quadruple down on whatever it is that makes them feel safe again though its hard to tell what that could be.

 

[Taka12345]

I really hope that the aftermath of the current arc won't be that the heroes leave Japan because such a drastic change of the setting to a completely new one would probably make me drop BnHA. I am also reading it because it is set in Japan. Considering the huge focus on Japan it wouldn't make much sense for them to leave. Especially considering that Shigaraki wants to, can and probably will destroy the whole world the way he likes (once he is healed up and complete again but it might not take up more than a few months). So after probably half a year to a year the world would be destroyed anyways. That aside the current setting is still not fully developed. The government, the police, the heroes and the society can still grow in this manga. Abandoning everything would be the cheap and boring way out.

The "villains retreat" option sounds like the most likely to me but it also probably wouldn't fully satisfy me. First and foremost it would give the setting and world building room to grow which is a plus. The society would probably start splitting up more and more and the villainy rates would grow. This would be an interesting plot point. There will also be more room to develop the government. Shigaraki could be used to gather more "unknown underground forces" or something and their force could grow in secret while the general society would further crumble apart but mainly stay civil. There is no need for another license exam aside of probably a full license exam but I could also imagine that provisional licenses are turned into full ones after finishing school or simply because the current situation has changed. Another sports festival would be awesome. A few weeks ago I was really sad when I saw some dragonball tournaments and thought that I'd love to see some in BnHA again. I'd prefer it to change into a tournament with more hero schools though. That aside the students would probably have more real fighting experience due to the aforementioned growing criminal rates and internships would continue. Some students might ask more questions about the right or wrong of their actions though and they'd mature. Yet, there is a huge problem with this option and that is: Which teachers are going to teach them? Their injuries seem heavy and it's also questionable how many agencies can still be active and even train the students. They might also have to rest for some months. Nonetheless Horikoshi keeps on bringing up Eri. So he might plan to use her to rewind most of the injuries. I am not a huge fan of Eri and her powers though. Maybe there will be some heroes like Gran Torino involved who aren't really part of the ranking because they already retired or maybe some also started questioning the heroes' action already but are still willing to work for the hero side after the current arc.

My favorite option is "Other" and I hope that it will happen xD But I personally don't think that it's the most likely one. So here is my imagination of what else could/should happen:
1. AFO is destroying Tartarus from the inside (It does not really seem like he is really bound in Tartarus) or those ominous supporters of AFO that keep on getting mentioned are going to do this. Then he goes to Shigaraki to a) support him or b) finally take what he wanted to take already but now he is going personally.
2. This has the effect that with Tartarus' destruction a lot of already known villains can reappear in the story and also a lot of unknown but VERY DANGEROUS villains can appear in the story! So it opens up a lot more diversity on the villain side. Currently we are having only Shigaraki's force and small fry that's able to act and tbh I think this is really boring. When you look at for example One Piece there are a lot of forces with different goals interacting and acting accordingly which is also part of the way to move the story forward. It also opens up a lot of material for discussion. But here in BnHA all that's currently left is one force (which imo is also mainly boring and not strong enough for the end game anyways) and some unknown fodder that gets taken out easily. Yet, we are having wasted villain potential waiting in Tartarus and as mentioned also unknown people who are very dangerous but already got caught once. Especially those guys can be used to move the students forward though so that instead of them fighting small fries all the time, they can fight villains who are known for being more dangerous. Maybe they are even having their own networks and they could break apart even more prisons to get back their companions. The diversity on the villain side would massively grow and different forces with different goals could come into play and make discussions much more interesting.
3. By destroying Tartarus and probably more prisons, caught villains in the current arc do not really have a place to be thrown away anymore and Horikoshi is forced to put them better into the storyline. This opens up more interesting storys by not throwing away the villains all the time but instead putting more effort into them. In general it's better to actually destroy prisons than to destroy symbols lol
4. Shigaraki and AFO are also 2 interesting forces. If it's not option 1a) but instead option 1b), then we could also end up with a split between them. I could imagine that AFO succeeds in taking his power but has to retreat for a longer time than Shigaraki to fully recover. He'd also be a better end game villain imo. Shigaraki who would then have lost most of the power and probably be seriously injured but is able to escape with his companions would have to restart the game at zero but probably keep some companions. This time though he'd start working hard for achieving something and use the time to heal and make his own group grow according to his own ideals instead of stealing from other villains and getting power gifts from AFO. Then I'd like him a lot more and as mentioned in 2 it would definitely add to the diversity among the villains. Shigaraki's goal would probably be to get the power back and attack society which would give him a role between both parties.
5. Regarding the hero side I could imagine something similar to the option of the "villain retreat". With this option I could imagine a time skip first though up to the end of their third year or somewhen during their third year/the beginning of the third year. It would also give the different forces more time to start planning and put those into action. Yet, in one year they might rebuild the prison already and this might take away from the third point but who knows. It's all up to Horikoshi.

 

[Sereen123]

I just don’t see how you can have the aftermath of the war be like eraser head scrolling into class in his wheel chair and say” alright class, the majority of Japan is destroyed because of shigaraki and the league but anyway who is ready for math class?!”. I just don’t get how we can go back to school setting. I honestly feel like best option is the kids going to different countries, learning about different heroes and expanding the world.

 

[Taka12345]

I just don’t see how you can have the aftermath of the war be like eraser head scrolling into class in his wheel chair and say” alright class, the majority of Japan is destroyed because of shigaraki and the league but anyway who is ready for math class?!”. I just don’t get how we can go back to school setting. I honestly feel like best option is the kids going to different countries, learning about different heroes and expanding the world.

To be honest I can imagine this pretty well since this already happened after Shigaraki attacked the school for the first time. He also just came in and wanted to start class lol And considering Horikoshi this is totally something he would reference... That aside the majority of Japan is not destroyed yet and I doubt it will get destroyed. Gigantomachia is just causing a huge line of destruction and is not completely destructing the cities at least that's how I understood the chapter where it was described. Even if he was destructing the whole cities imo it does not equal to the majority of Japan though. Nonetheless it is a huge destruction und maybe it will be as a kind of figurative scar or wound on Japan. As long as they are able to stop Shigaraki and the league for a while, they are able to buy time and go back to school. I doubt that school will be exactly like before though. They will have to adjust the school to the situation but not abandon it.

Simply leaving a destructed Japan is not the best option. It would be awful. At the time when Japan needs them the most, they'd just leave. That's not ok. The world of the manga can also get expanded inside Japan. No need to change the setting. Instead school and hero work could get adjusted, so that it's part of their studies to help rebuilding the destructed areas and help the people to get back up. Maybe even on a deeper level to avoid villainy in those areas and get a bigger understanding for people's circumstances. Nonetheless there is still a problem with the heavily injured heroes in Japan. Maybe heroes from the rest of the world will come to Japan instead to help with growing villain rates and to help rebuilding. This sounds pretty reasonable. Everyone leaving Japan only makes sense when Shigaraki is unstoppable and continues his destruction. It would still be disgusting to leave all the poor people in this case though and as mentioned before Shigaraki would still destroy everything because that's what he wants to do and can do and he would also be pretty fast at doing so. The time to train would probably not be enough. So they need to get Shigaraki out of the game for a while (a year at least imo).

 

[KingAzureRequiem]

I just don’t see how you can have the aftermath of the war be like eraser head scrolling into class in his wheel chair and say” alright class, the majority of Japan is destroyed because of shigaraki and the league but anyway who is ready for math class?!”. I just don’t get how we can go back to school setting. I honestly feel like best option is the kids going to different countries, learning about different heroes and expanding the world.

Why should any the characters and the readers give a damn about the rest of world when villians are going ape shit in their home country? It's not like the rest of the world matter before so why should it matter now everything in that has happened has been contained in Japan. The most likely case is that shigaraki will be out of commission for a while so everyone can have some breathing room.

 

[Sereen123]

With the most recent chapter... it seems like option 3 is the most likely to happen now. Hopefully there is at least a time skip lol

 

[Allan_Panda]

From Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises:

“How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked.
“Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually, then suddenly.”

Societies don't get destroyed by a catasclimic event. Well... these do happen, like the fall of the roman empire had their share of it... But societies majorly unravel. This War arc is and is not the end of the Hero society. By the end of this arc, all strings that form the fabric of the society will be loose and start pulling, but we will not see it fully come apart, just have it inevitably be pointing to that ending direction.
UA will "be fine". They will not attack UA, or stop them from having classes or anything. Why would them? Endevour will be exposed, exposing the loose morals of this society(or at least, perceived loose morals), and not one will trust their capacity to save them for even after pulling all resources together, planning, scheming, and surprising the enemy, thy still only got a thousands-of-civilian-dead TIE. Their first public "tie" ever since Kamino, the true.... beggining of the end.

Now society will turn on itself, and the structures that holdit will start corroding. Maybe that's how UA stop being: Society asking the end of the madnessof training and using children as child-soldiers in a losing war for a unrealistic defeated society. Why Hero training when you wish to abolisih such a position?

Shigaraki will retreat and will not need to act anymore. The gradual bankrupcy of society is now on a steep slope that it cannot gain any footing anymore.
Eventually, sure... There might come a cataclismic moment to finally put an end to it all but... It is all already done, essentially.

 

[nectar]

For one thing, society will be scared in a way it's never been before. Even if all the PLF not counting Shigaraki and the Commanders and Gigantomachia are captured (and I doubt that'll happen), I think most will see this battle as a gigantic loss. Too many heroes have died and been injured, both low-rank and high-rank. And, let's not forget the damage to multiple cities.

The heroes' ability to stop the PLF will be debated and other measures may take effect (mechs, arming the police to go after villains, Suicide Squad, etc.). Basically, society just got a nasty dose of reality and things will never be the same again.

 

[ShadowSJG]

We have Deku vs Shiggy be done but this arc has stuff like
Ochako vs Toga
Giga arriving and Best Jeanist
Dabi reveal
Maybe traitor

So based on this, how much longer could this arc go through?

 

[Griffithpt]

I think we're somewhere between 10 and 20 chapters away from this arc ending, maybe even less. We've already had the climax so now all that's rest is the resolution and finishing the loose threads.

 

[Cat Sidhe26]

15 - 20 more chapters