Underdogs - Blog Posts

My take on @tamak0's draw this in your style on Instagram!

I wanted to make something a bit different from the other posts I saw so I made Luca and Alberto as sea monsters! It was written on the rules that changes on the characters were allowed so I hope that is ok 🥺

That's the situation: it's a sunny day, Alberto is on work break, the underdogs decide to hang out together and get themselves some gelato, they sit on a bench to do some small talk, but suddenly the sky starts leaking, it's nothing but a sudden summer rain, drizzle is all that falls from the sky, but it's enough water to soak their ice cream cones, luckily Giulia now has the habit of carrying an umbrella around with her since she's pretty much going to get in contact with water a lot because of her aquatic friends. Luca doesn't have one though, so he tries his best to protect his gelato from the water with his own hand while they wait for the rain to go away. Meanwhile, Alberto keeps talking about his countless stories as a lifeguard and how he's "kind of an expert" on his job saving people from drowning and teaching little kids how to swim. Poor kitty right there in the corner wasn't having fun at all though, it left its shelter just to take a closer look on the strange and flashy sea monsters but ended up getting taken by the rain and started running as fast as it could before getting completely drenched, the cat ran so fast that the underdogs only noticed it a few seconds before the cat completely disappeared from the place, they all laughed at the situation as soon as they lost sight of it

They are 16-17 in here cause I honestly have no idea of how I would picture them as adults, that's why their designs are kinda lazy too, I sort of had to do this in a rush cause the challenge's end line is almost here so I didn't have exactly enough time to think of better designs, but I guess these ones are enough to get by, I'll definitely change their designs in the future tho, but I've always pictured teen Giulia with long hair in a low ponytail, that's for sure, so I'm glad I had the chance to draw her like this!

I am still very happy with how this came out though, trees and backgrounds are usually my weak spot but surprisingly they were a lot of fun to work on and I'm very proud of how they turned out! I am really satisfied with the colors as well, I love how colorful it looks! I also played around with different colors for shading and it actually looks better than I expected, especially the shading of Giulia's skin!

I like the final result very much so I hope you like it too! 🥺

I'm so glad people actually talk about this!! The whole first episode is spent building up Izuku's backstory just for it to never matter outside of him not knowing how to use his quirk.

The worst part is that 1) mha isn't known for having shitty backstories, many of the characters are known specifically for their well written stories (the todorokis, most of the league, even the relationship between bakugo and izuku before and throughout canon) so it's incredibly frustrating to see the main character's hardly affect him after a while

and 2) that the original plot WAS that Izuku would stay quirkless and use weapons to become a hero. I'm not sure how true this part is, but I've heard that the reason it was changed is because one of the editors convinced horikoshi that the main character not having a superpower would make it boring.

MHA: Izuku Midoriya

I know I'm kicking a hornets nest here, but I feel like Izuku was more interesting as a protagonist before he got a handle on One for All. Like, way back when he was still breaking his own bones on the regular. It just feels like he got super powerful and it doesn't have a cost or stakes for him anymore. (I'm not saying it doesn't, I'm saying it doesn't feel like it.) It also kind of undermines who he started off as.

Like, he was a smart and goodhearted kid who wanted to be a hero, but didn't have a Quirk. On that premise, I would have expected him to Batman or Iron Man his way into heroics. Instead, they kind of Green Lantern/Blue Beetle it. Which is fine, sort of. Except GL and BB origins are usually good people going about their business and suddenly granted power they feel obligated to do good with. It vibes differently for a kid who desperately wants to do good and is suddenly given the powers of Superman (and later everyone else in the justice league). Comparison is getting away from me.

Giving that power to an untrained, unprepared child feels like Izuku is being taken advantage of. And he kind of was. There were better options, for both passing on the Quirk and training the recipient. But narratively it also helps give Izuku seemingly impossible expectations to live up to and a very short timeframe to do it in. It keeps him an underdog, even with access to unholy levels of power. And we were introduced to MHA as an underdog story.

As Izuku struggles to become the hero we (the audience) know he can become, we also watch him lose the rose-tinted view of heroics. The system is corrupt. Its not just a few cowards who don't help because of a bad quirk match-up (I have strong feelings about the sludge villain incident), its built into the system. If the story had stayed more on that, I think I would have enjoyed where it went. You can have the most powerful hero in the world and a corrupt system will still leave them the underdog.

But instead they make it more of a legacy 1v1. All Might v All for One, then Izuku v Shigaraki. Which might be easier to illustrate and finish, but it less narratively satisfying. I get that this is battle shounen, and they're all about their big power-scale-shattering fights with their arch enemies, but was it weird I was sort of expecting better by a certain point?